The Hellraiser franchise has always been a bit of a dichotomy – the profane and the beautiful, the elegant and the crass, the sexuality and the agony all go hand in bloody hand. Some entries are better than others, but this has always been a series where the point is the extreme nature of it. …
Movie Review
Bones and All, the new film by director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), wastes no time in establishing itself. Young Maren (Taylor Russell), at a sleepover, suddenly attacks her host, nearly biting off her finger and escaping in the night. Maren feels a compulsion to consume human flesh. Whether this is a physical …
Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges is a distinct kind of hitman movie, one with a lot on its mind, moral clarity in a world of nefarious criminals, and terrific performances by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. All three return for The Banshees of Inisherin, but while many of the components are the same, Banshees has a …
Simultaneously explorative and deeply reductive, Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Blonde delves as deeply into Marilyn Monroe’s (Ana de Armas) battle between her public and private personae as anyone ever has, but the film only manages to find tired Freudian pop answers beneath the sediment. Joyce Carol Oates’ semi-biographical novel (Order Now) provides a moderate starting point, turning …
It should come as no surprise to learn, once audiences see the movie, that The Menu was produced by Adam McKay and directed by Mark Mylod. The Menu could easily take place in some back corner of the Succession universe – I imagine that Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) would probably move heaven and earth to …
There’s a trend going on in horror cinema that’s been happening for several years now – the exploration of past traumas and how they inform the present, often done metaphorically. That movie monster or thing that creeps in the shadows of the room isn’t just a monster – it’s something horrific from the past that …
Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh) is happily married to Jack Chambers (Harry Styles). Every day, she wakes up, sends Jack to work at the enigmatic Victory Project, cleans house, cooks Jack dinner, welcomes him home with a glass of liquor and a loving embrace, goes to bed, often after making passionate love, wakes up the next …
Tom George’s See How They Run is a fun, albeit predictable affair. The film tells you exactly what it is from the very start and luxuriates in its ribbing approach to the genre. Clearly reverent of the murder mystery genre, everyone, from cast to crew, seems game in their commitment to carry out this Agatha …
As a Generation X’er, Kevin Smith and I have something of a tempestuous relationship. I saw Clerks at a special early screening when no one knew who this guy from New Jersey was, and I sat down to it, having no idea what the movie was about. When it was over, it felt like I …
The first thing to be said about Zach Cregger’s Barbarian is that you can’t really talk about it; to say too much about it is not just to spoil its inherent surprises but to reduce its actual power. It’s a cinematic version of Fight Club, less of an actual narrative and more akin to a …