Vanquish is bad, bizarrely so, but it’s at least not boring in its own dumpster fire way. After a few hits as a writer, including Midnight Run, George Gallo has spent his career “directing” movies that seem suspiciously fake. Exhibit A: last year he…
There’s a perverse gothic sex comedy located somewhere in Jakob’s Wife, but it’s buried under reams of flat, deadening horror comedy. The work that made Barbara Crampton an icon is the work she did with Stuart Gordon in outre horror pictures, where she was used as…
Wheatley’s latest both builds and holds tension effectively, harnessing the director’s penchant for psychedelia and bruising horror to brutal effect. When Martin remarks at the wonder of being out of the house for the first time in four months, Alma, his guide into the…
Night in Paradise scans like any number of slow-burn gangster flicks, but suffers for lack of originality in both its action and drama. Park Hoon-jung’s Night in Paradise does little to differentiate itself from other gangster movies, especially others made in Korea like Park’s…
In a vertically-oriented iPhone video, director Julio Hernández Cordón tells his daughter Fabi that he wants to make a movie with her. It will be set in his hometown of Texcoco and star his daughter and his friend Paco in ten separate roles, most…
Stacey Gregg’s Here Before has all the markers of a good movie. Despite its short runtime, it proceeds at a measured pace that gives the appearance of grace. It is elegantly and thoughtfully composed, using doorways and natural obstacles to frame its characters, often…
Thirty minutes into Offseason, Marie Aldrich (Jocelin Donahue) tells her beau, George (Joe Swanberg), that the island she has dragged him to may be the home to a very spooky curse, the result of a deal some settlers made with a sea monster long…
Working late nights transferring tapes of old broadcasts to disc, James comes across a strange pirate broadcast in the middle of a 1987 newscast. The images in the intrusion are unsettling, to say the least. A person in a mask, who seems to be…
Sponge on the Run could have been a nostalgic charmer, but is instead little more than a bit of cheap brand marketing. After 22 years, Spongebob Squarepants is only now receiving a spin-off in Kamp Koral, a series exploring Mr. Squarepants’ childhood adventures at summer…
The Swordsman is hamstrung by weak direction that has no idea how to shoot its otherwise well-choreographed action set pieces. The disgraced and retired warrior at the center of Choi Jae-hoon’s The Swordsman is a cipher. Given the slightest bit of backstory and played by…
