Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
David F. Sandberg’s concept horror film Lights Out is as simple as it is curt. Clipping along at a respectable trot, the film written by Eric Heisserer (The Thing remake, A Nightmare on Elm Street remake) admirably makes use of its sparse 81 minute run time but its bare bones conceit – a malevolent photophobic entity attacks an emotionally susceptible family – feels the creative constraints of its two-minute source material (a viral horror short, also from Sandberg.) Read More
It’s been a long road to the theater for Paul Feig and the girls of Ghostbusters. Beset by accusations of vagina-washing from a very vocal (and rather pathetic) corner of the internet, a less-than-reassuring first trailer and a borderline insufferable Fall Out Boy/Missy Elliot rendition of the iconic “Who You Gonna Call?” theme song, the remake of Harold Ramis’ much-adored 1984 supernatural-comedy had many hurdles to summit. But rather than scale the obstacles in its path, Ghostbusters dispenses a powerful proton pack of carefully constructed charisma, nostalgia-fueled callbacks and no-holds-barred performances, blasting the besmirching naysayers to smithereens like cardboard cutouts of Slimer in a Chinatown back alley. Read More
Since departing Breaking Bad, the great Bryan Cranston has been in need of a pole position worthy of his might. He’s cropped up in various big budget blockbusters, slumming it for some of those Heisenberg stacks of green. He even earned himself an Oscar nomination in last year’s somewhat-well-received Trumbo. Impressive though the performance was, the film itself was not much more than a by-the-numbers biopic told without much style or aplomb. Which brings us to The Infiltrator, another half-decent true life story led by Cranston that, while in-and-of-itself is no great wonder of filmmaking, gives the charismatic performer a role to sink his pearly whites into. Read More
Anna Rose Holmer’s audacious debut, The Fits, defies expectation at pivotal turns. With a voyeuristic, almost documentarian, approach to characterization, her angle is that of a wallflower, dangling on the narrative precipice of something indefinable and otherworldly that’s also very much intimate, universal. That Holmer’s film truncates at barely an hour and ten minutes, leaving us stumbling for answers in the aftermath of its unchecked mindfucking, is a testament to her nontraditional narrative verve, even if it may leave the casual viewer yammering for proper resolution. Read More
Taika Waititi‘s oddball Hunt for the Wilderpeople continues the Kiwi director’s aggressive expansion into the mainstream while still maintaining his goofy, grinning, soft-centered tendencies. Coming off the roaring critical success of vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, Wilderpeople is a more grounded venture (but then again, what isn’t?) that maintains Waititi’s ironic and largely innocent sense of humor while injecting a fair measure of heart into the affair. Read More
Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan‘s (A.K.A. The Daniels) flatulence-fueled, sea-stranded mind trip is a totally bonkers, emotionally decadent spirit quest to the weirdest corners of reality. A man and a corpse test the boundaries of friendship and filmmaking in this boundlessly creative, wildly original tramp sure to shock any lucky enough to cross its odd path. Rich thematic elements of self-discovery and questionable sexuality slam the rocky shoals of excessive farting, boners-that-think-for-themselves and general farcical bombast in this absolutely absurd sketch; one that could only come from the minds of former music video director gurus like The Daniels. Swiss Army Man is uncompromisingly weird and goddamn if I didn’t respect the hell out of that fact. Read More
Our eyelids flow in the same direction as the Frobscottle bubbles in Steven Spielberg’s paperweight adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved The BFG : down. All the chartreuse-tinted whizpopping, electric neon dream-wrangling and slime-smelling snozzcumber buffets in the land can’t ameliorate The BFG’s nominal narrative offerings. Though Spielberg admirably ditches the chaotic whirligig of headache-inducing parade of non-stop action that defines much modernized children fare for something less expository and more steeped in otherworldly awe, his knack for forging wonder has receded like the gums of a past her prime monarch leaving us with a rather unremarkable, but ceaselessly shiny, icon of 21st century nostalgia pop art. Read More
An unmitigated, excitement-bereft disaster, The Legend of Tarzan marries the very worst tenets of spectacle-based blockbuster entertainment to a wholly abominable ringer of a script in this haphazard attempt to jump-start a franchise whose existence should never have made it past the very first boardroom meeting. Unconvincing characterization and stupendously dull scene work are overwhelmed by eye-pestering CGI with no conviction to call its own that assaults the viewer, who is turn is already forced to reckon with a dramatically barren, entirely overblown, infuriatingly retread plot. The result is a vine-swinging affront to adventure cinema that fails to even once justify why it was made and who it was made for. Read More
Nicholas Winding Refn name-drops Kubrick within the first five minutes of The Neon Demon (“redrum” is the name of a model’s deep-velvet lipstick) but it’s Dario Argento’s 1977 masterwork Suspiria that Refn imitates most. Our heroine, Jesse (Elle Fanning), is not unlike Jessica Harper, a bright-eyed newcomer who must contend with jealousy and suspicion at every turn as carnivorous huntsman, barely camouflaged, hiding in plain sight, hover around her, awaiting her virginal offerings. Their expectant gazes, unsettling and derogatory. There may be no supernatural element waiting in the wings but the characters of The Neon Demon are equally inhuman. Read More
Once upon a time, Pixar was infallible. Of their first 11 films, only one (Cars) was a dud (or at least a letdown) and even then it was one of the studio’s most bankable flicks. Now, take a peek at Pixar’s business model going forward. The animation studio, now infamously paired up with Disney, have pledged to produce an original film every year coupled with a sequel to an existing property that’ll see release every other year. This means Cars 3, The Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 have already begun development. Respectively finishing off a trilogy that adults have responded to with almost as much non-enthusiasm as toy sales the property has generated. Perhaps the most in-demand and long-awaited Pixar sequel to-be. And another capstone to Pixar’s gold standard franchise, which many believe to have already been concluded to near-perfection in 2010. Read More