SPEAK NO EVIL. It was only after seeing this English language remake — a softer version than the 2022 original Danish film of the same title, I’m told — that I realized the Danes must be a good deal tougher and take their drama bleaker than I do (“Hell is Visiting Other People,” Sept. 22, […]
Broadway Cinema
Posted inArts + Scene
Rebel Ridge Lands a Punch
REBEL RIDGE. It may seem silly or outmoded to continue to subscribe to the auteur theory. It is, after all, a 70-ish-year-old French construct whereby a bunch of critics who wanted to make movies could attribute the success or failure of a project to a person’s singular vision; seems almost quaintly mid-century, almost without the […]
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Afraid is More Artificial Than Intelligent
AFRAID. The previews for Afraid held a little campy promise — the premise of a family cowering before its power-drunk Alexa has plenty of scary/funny potential — especially under the Blumhouse imprint. In our current climate, it shouldn’t be terribly hard to sketch out an AI villain. If the Google Gemini instructions for adding glue […]
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Red Flags and Surprises
STRANGE DARLING. That a movie like this (not that I can say I’ve ever seen one) should exist, much less be available in theaters in a remote little outpost like ours, speaks to something promising in the business of American movies. Pardon the optimism. I’ve joined my voice to the chorus of lamentation about the […]
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Back On Board with Alien: Romulus
ALIEN: ROMULUS. Large as aliens (lower case) continue to loom over our collective curiosity and paranoia — even governments are getting in on the party now — these visitors, real or imagined, tend toward one of two primary species (genera?) suggested by movies and literature. There are, of course, the little gray ones of Whitley […]
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New Movies of a Bygone Era
CUCKOO. Even from its opening frames, this struck me as the kind of living relic that will (or should) reward some horror nerd, years from now, who discovers it without foreknowledge or judgment. Which is an admittedly reductive way to address a movie that in real time yields its own rewards, conflicting though they might […]
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Trap Can’t Find a Way Out
TRAP. The conversation I have been having about M. Night Shyamalan movies for a decade begins with recent disappointment, acknowledges The Sixth Sense (1999), maybe Signs (2002) or Unbreakable (2000), and lands with fingers crossed for the next one. Just as I enjoy being tricked at a magic show, I’m happy to gasp at a […]
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Deadpool & Wolverine to the Franchise Rescue
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. I don’t know that I’m eating crow exactly, but, if I am, I am very much making a meal of it. For those keeping score — mostly vindictive white men of a certain age, if I had to guess — I have been less than effusive in my praise of Marvel movies […]
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What Twisters Left Behind
TWISTERS. Even in 1996, when we didn’t know how good we had it, some of us approached Twister with what felt like a healthy degree of skepticism. Despite being Jan de Bont’s follow-up to Speed (1994) — which was, if we’re being honest, almost revelatory for what and who it brought to the action genre […]
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The Nightmarish Enchantment of Longlegs
LONGLEGS. Uncharacteristically, I experienced little-to-no creeping cynicism before, during or after my time with Longlegs. As I walked into the theater, one of the staff suggested that I should approach the movie without expectations, mostly because its marketing campaign threatens to overshadow the very thing it is intended to promote. Not too much to worry […]
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Maxxxine‘s Bloody Point
MAXXXINE. Slashers, a storied genre that runs from the comic and campy to the psychologically complex, following the bloody progress of a (mostly) unseen killer as they cut down a cast with brutality and/or sometimes goofy creativity to enact vengeance or work out some issues, aren’t for everyone. Honestly, they mostly aren’t for me. As […]
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Apocalyptic Roots
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE. In the before times, when A Quiet Place (2018) was released, it seemed unlikely to spawn a series, much less to outlast and outwit the 800-pound gorillas that were essentially unbeatable at the box office and in the popular consciousness. But in a sort of “turnabout is fair play” moment, […]