Violet is a distinctly 21st-century woman-celebrating flick, perhaps a bit saddled by its too trite messaging, but still something of a feminist force of nature. Violet, written and directed by actress Justine Bateman in her feature film debut, is a tale of female empowerment…
Louis Wain has one distinctly lovely stretch, but it’s shrouded in pervasive busyness and zaniness that ultimately sinks the whole enterprise. Will Sharpe’s The Electrical Life of Louis Wain opens with Benedict Cumberbatch, heavily pancaked in old-age make-up, manically dancing in a way that immediately recalls Grandpa…
Halloween Kills is a smug bit of a ill-advised fan service with dull kills, sanctimonious plot beats, and little narrative progression. David Gordon Green’s 2018 take on John Carpenter’s seminal horror classic Halloween was not exactly the return to form many were hoping for when…
The Manor isn’t necessarily a good film, but it’s a fun enough lite-horror outing that reflects an improvement from the Blumhouse/Amazon team-up. The law of averages dictates that it was bound to happen, but it still comes as a bit of a shock that the…
Venom: Let There Be Carnage successfully course-corrects from the original, delivering a deeply funny and deeply human film that ranks among the best recent comic book adaptations. 2018’s Venom, like so many comic book adaptations before it, suffered from a severe case of déjà…
Bingo Hell is at least a horror film unlike last year’s Amazon/Blumhouse offerings, but is too full of questionable craftsmanship and hollow messaging to recommend. The title Bingo Hell is a play on the phrase bingo hall, which anyone with a half a brain cell…
Old Henry is about as dusty and unoriginal as westerns come. Writer-director Potsy Ponciroli’s Old Henry dares to go where nearly every Western in the history of the film medium has gone before. The titular Henry (Tim Blake Nelson) leads a life of solitude in…
The Guilty should be primed for easy thrills, but Fuqua’s bland direction and the Scriptwriter 101 screenplay sap the film of any tension. Antoine Fuqua has made a career out of directing populist, middlebrow fare that seeks nothing more than to entertain audiences for a…
Featuring a floor-to-ceiling stacked cast and a festive setting and title, one might assume that Silent Night, the feature film debut from writer-director Camille Griffin, would be in the same vein as another beloved and meme-able English Christmas staple, Love, Actually — or at…
I’m Your Man has a clarity and vibrancy in its direction that isn’t achieved in its high-concept thematic concerns. Questions of humanity and love are pondered in I’m Your Man, a German production from director/co-writer Maria Schrader that imagines a future where realistic robotic humanoids…
