As connoisseurs of DTV action cinema well know, even the most promising film is likely to wind up being about 15 minutes of good…
There is no perfect formula for a first scene — art is simply too complex to make such generalizations. The pulsing action of Jackie…
During an interview with Variety about their latest venture, Heretic, the writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (who rose to prominence for penning…
As the planet’s future grows increasingly precarious and uncertain, films exploring a post-apocalyptic landscape are certainly having their moment in the sun, particularly ones…
In animator Jérémy Clapin’s live-action feature debut Meanwhile on Earth, Elsa (Megan Northam), sister of astronaut Franck (depicted by Yoan Germain Le mat, voiced…
Xu Haofeng makes movies for people who enjoy and understand the finer points of martial arts choreography. His best-known film work (he’s also a…
Our multiplexes and home theaters desperately miss the erotic thriller. Every few years, one or two squeaky clean PG-13 studio productions will don the…
Is it an extra cute joke that Bookworm is yet another movie where Elijah Wood goes trundling through the New Zealand countryside in search…
In what is somehow 19-year-old filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay’s fifth feature, Carnage for Christmas, genres abound. Though a slasher makes up the bones of…
Skye Riley is in trouble. One year after a near-fatal car crash, which exposed her mental health and substance abuse issues for all to…
A home invasion is a terrifying prospect, though it’s even more blood-curdling, especially from a third-party vantage, if the occupants are unaware of the…
After Guillermo del Toro’s well-liked and richly imagined Hellboy films, as well as 2019’s misbegotten David Harbour-led attempted reboot, it may have seemed like…
While it’s undoubtedly true that every era of cinema likely produced more mediocrities than masterpieces, the dirty little secret of our streaming era is…
In 2016, there was Terrifier. Written and directed by Damien Leone, the film was produced for peanuts and offered little more than some decent practical…
As a filmmaking duo, directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have left a lasting impression in carving out their own little niche of low-fi…
Director Alexandre Aja’s latest film, Never Let Go, occupies a deliberately liminal space. Its threadbare plot suggests a post-apocalyptic near future, but its central…
After several festival dates in 2023, Simon Barrett and E.L. Katz’s Azrael seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. Given the current…
“Someone’s inside.” These two words, uttered with ominous clarity, spur Jason Yu’s invigorating debut, Sleep, into malevolent and mysterious somnolence; for in the world…