Improv is about following the germ of an idea until it’s reach its most preposterous conclusion and with emotionally honest and rib-tickling seriocomedy Don’t Think Twice, Mike Birbiglia has, like a great improv thread taken to its most radical extreme, tangentially bloomed into himself as a director. His comedy manifesto has always tilted at harvesting...
'The Conjuring 2 'understands the virtue of patience in a way that most studio horror films do not and the result is all the scarier for it. Building on the…
There’s no debating the value of Roger Ross William‘s accomplishment. In Life, Animated – a touching documentary centered on late-onset autism “victim” Owen Suskind and how he remarkably rediscovers language through animated Disney films – he has given voice to the voiceless (technical ingenuity had him pioneer a groundbreaking method to illicit confessionals from Owen)....
Paying lip service to fans foaming at the mouth and flipping the general public the bird, 'Warcraft' is a profoundly dumbfounding clusterf*ck of fantasy derivation and nerd-centered jabber-mouthing. Wowing in…
First-time writer and director Greg Kwedar describes the six-year process of creating Transpecos like a proud, but deservingly exhausted, father. The Texas-set border thriller is as much character study as it is a certifiable nail-biter; a politically-minded meditation with a throbbing pace and tightrope tension. Kwedar’s preternatural ability to blend high drama with explosive pressure...
As dark and psychosexual a rock opera about mermaids that could be imagined, Poland’s The Lure is a melodramatic fairytale plumped with melodic house music, chilling surrealism and dripping monster fangs. Two all-singing, all-stripping sea-born sisters populate seedy dance-halls and sudsy clubs with their the croon of their siren lullabies, flirting with the idea of first...
Mickey Keating‘s Carnage Park starts in admirably economic fashion, rending down its slim cast to even slimmer form with a dead-eyed, high-pitched, Bible-thumping Pat Healy tagging human targets with his handy sniper rifle beset with all the rage and judgement of the Old Testament guy upstairs. Ashley Bell plays opposite as the desert-set horror’s shrieky...
A generally unpleasant experience from start to finish, 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows' applies an early stranglehold on the audience, smashing and bashing them with strobing lights,…
This shantytown import from South Korea sees a voyeur stalked and killed by criminals before seemingly being reincarnated and forced to live out his attack over and over again under different circumstances. Structured a bit like a choose your own adventure book when you keep running into the wrong ending and starting over, Alone covers...
The Lonely Island find comedy excellence in ‘Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping’’s sardonic song parodies but the trip from one performance to the next has an unfortunate tendency to flatline…