Excerpt: Leigh Whannell aces adapting H.G. Wells’ nineteenth century novel for the modern #MeToo age as a paranoid thriller, low budget effects à la “Paranormal Activity” effecting big chills, Elizabeth Moss excelling as a woman with only herself to turn to.
Excerpt: Even when the film reaches certian places that feels contrived or silly, you’re still invested in the characters, you’re still compelled by the narrative, and you’re still thrilled by the set pieces. It’s thoughtful, slick, fun, and delivers everything you’d want in a crowd-pleaser horror film.
Excerpt: ‘The Invisible Man’ is a terrifying update to the classic Universal horror narrative, creating an intense atmosphere that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats as they search for what can’t be seen.
Excerpt: Harrowing and resourceful, using ingenuity and imagination rather than unlimited funds, Leigh Whannell skillfully constructs a tight, terrifying horror film.
Excerpt: Wanna see a magic trick? Because writer-director Leigh Whannell, screenwriter of Saw, has evolved into a proper illusionist with his old school yet radical retelling of The Invisible Man.
Excerpt: The fight choreography and special effects are flawless, but they’re nothing but aesthetic bells and whistles without Moss giving them substantive purpose via her performance.
Excerpt: What you want from a film like VFW – the kills, the gore, the style, it totally delivers without wasting an ounce of your time, but but one element the film surprisingly nails is the dynamic between the characters, and how they connect with us.
Excerpt: Marry that carnage with performances hinged upon authenticity specifically because of what kind of film this is rather than despite it and you’re in for an entertaining treat.
Excerpt: It is telling that an animation director…was attached to this property as its star, Buck, rarely fools the eye into believing that one is watching a real dog… this “The Call of the Wild” works well enough as the kid-friendly version.
Excerpt: Despite some occasionaly strange and jarring choices, the film proves itself to be quite endearing, especially with Harrison Ford’s performance.
Excerpt: An old-fashioned kiddie adventure, sweetly earnest, equal parts scary, funny, exciting, sad, and happy, with only a bit of uncanny valley in its CGI doggo star. Definitely had something in my eye.
Excerpt: When Buck makes leaps that make one wonder if he’s really from Krypton instead of California, it requires a suspension of disbelief that might challenge Clark Kent.
Excerpt: The problem is less the technology, which is very impressive, than it is the uneven storyline, which zigzags from slapstick to poignance to action.
Excerpt: By not making Buck – a computer-animated dog – a cutesy ham with a celebrity voiceover, the film pushes us out of our Disneyfied comfort zone and forces us to accept that it is truly Buck’s story. It is in this endeavor that The Call of the Wild deserves to be lauded.
Excerpt: One of the smart things about Green’s screenplay and direction is its quiet subtlety. There is no one big moment here, nor an outright smoking gun, instead a steady build of small injustices…
Excerpt: ‘The Assistant’ is a real-life horror docudrama portraying a young woman made to feel helpless to stop the daily abuses of power she witnesses.
Excerpt: The Assistant stares at a recent college grad’s first real-world moral dilemma – what will you do when your black and white ethics lessons confront the gray areas of innuendo, the behavior of powerful men, and the inevitability of personal consequences should you challenge the system.
Excerpt: Green wants us to experience the silent prison of knowing the truth and being helpless against it. A palpable, tense drama exists beyond the mundane day-to-day of all victims.
Excerpt: Solidly telling in its methodical truth, Green’s film is unassumingly dazzling in its low-key observations. The Assistant is impressively potent without the overstated exclamation of acrimony.
Excerpt: The Assistant es todo lo que Bombshell pretendía ser, pero sin la necesidad de recurrir a un gran reparto, a la magia del maquillaje o a un tono ligero para abordar una temática sumamente oportuna y sensible. Una mirada aséptica a la cultura tóxica que afecta al mundo laboral, y que encubre los abusos y las conductas inapropiadas de quienes se encuentran en una posición de poder.
Excerpt: …the film’s themes of Christian guilt don’t amount to much in the end, its climax more of a been-there, done-that deflation. “The Lodge” gets more mileage out of a creepy bowl of sea monkeys in a clear case of style over substance.
Excerpt: The filmmakers know how to set a mood, and while the story is engaging in the moment, especially with Riley Keough’s performance, it doesn’t have much lasting impact.
Excerpt: ‘The Lodge’ is a chilling thriller that tests a family’s sanity when they’re stranded in a snowstorm with no supplies and someone with malicious intent.
Excerpt: This exasperating movie is so obnoxious it could be deliberately trolling us. Wants to have its ambiguous cake and eat it, too, smothered in a gloomy frosting. *extremely pinches nose in despair*
Excerpt: I imagine becoming a stepparent is difficult. Especially when the kids hate you, you’re snowed in alone at a remote cabin, and you’re the lone survivor of a doomsday cult.
Excerpt: It’s less about leading us down one road to pull the rug and expose a second than carefully traversing multiple forks in tandem to show how they can all be true simultaneously.
Excerpt: Led by a strikingly gloomy performance from Riley Keough, ‘The Lodge’ uses the power of psychological warfare and brutal natural elements to spook up a dark cabin fever horror story that refuses to let up.
Excerpt: What was left ambiguous and threatening in the original here is flatly stated or weakly joked upon, like this film’s literal dumping of its ending.
Excerpt: Downhill is a perfectly serviceable film, especially due to the performances from Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but you are ultimately better off watching the original.
Excerpt: The aptly entitled Downhill is a lackluster effort that dilutes the organic impishness of gifted comic performers in both Louis Dreyfus and Ferrell…an uninspired piece of snowbound sludge.
Excerpt: Downhill es una comedia blanda e irregular que a pesar de contar con actuaciones admirables y de llevarnos por nuevos territorios que la original Force Majeure no exploró, termina por sentirse incompleta e inconsecuente.
Excerpt: …quiet and pensive with an undertow of melancholic regret and a light topping of comic relief all set to Robert Glasper’s elegant jazz score. Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield create a tentative romance, its unspoken emotions simmering into a full boil.
Excerpt: It’s meet-melancholy in an elegant, female-gazey romantic drama audaciously mingling past and present. A swanky celebration of confident, complex women and the bittersweetness of adult relationships.
Excerpt: Considering the horror of Sonic’s earlier design, it might seem counterintuitive to say “Sonic” would have profited from more experimental courage, but here we are.
Excerpt: It is what it is: a simple plot to teach kids about friendship, empathy, and responsibility while having fun with over-the-top characters and cartoonish visual effects.
Excerpt: A pesar de jugársela a lo seguro y de no ofrecer algo distinto o innovador, Sonic the Hedgehog posee los elementos necesarios para dar inicio a una exitosa franquicia cinematográfica.
Excerpt: Personality is the ultimate saving grace for Birds Of Prey, and personality goes a long way. There are definitely elements that didn’t work quite as smoothly as I had hoped, but the experience of watching it all unfold was such a blast.
Excerpt: Birds of Prey, and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn proves a serious misfire, and not even a truly gonzo mess. In fact it’s often perversely dull.
Excerpt: Behold ladyrage given full candy-colored, sparkle-sprinkled voice in an ironically comical spectacle: Haha, isn’t this delightfully absurd? Or is it? This is kidding-not-kidding on celluloid.
Excerpt: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), as it is gloriously titled, answers the ancient cinematic question: What if Suicide Squad hadn’t been godawful?
Excerpt: By letting action and comedy become augmentation for its underlying crime caper, it proves more character-driven romp a la Snatch than another ploddingly edgelord blockbuster.
Excerpt: The movie’s tone, while still a bit on the bleak side (this is the DC universe, after all), is sarcastic, snide, and overall pretty funny. That all translates into a mostly enjoyable time with this latest comic book movie outing.
Excerpt: Unlike last year, the Best Documentary Short Film nominees are not a collection of misery with only one having any sense of hope. Each of them is an exception film, well-crafted and I think worthy of recognition.
Excerpt: The Czech Republic’s Daria Kashcheeva’s stop motion puppet animation is the first of three stop motion animations to be nominated, each using a different medium… This is my pick for the Oscar.
Excerpt: Dysinger’s uplifting look at how women are finding poor young girls in Kabul and giving them…courage and confidence by teaching them how to skateboard, Is an infectious and uplifting work which I’m betting will take the Oscar.
Excerpt: Tunisia is the setting for two of this year’s Live Action shorts in film, one a searing drama beneath the shadow of ISIS, the other a comedy involving a mule listening to the wrong music…
Excerpt: My pick: I haven’t seen a short film this year that is as full of pure joy as “Hair Love.” I’d like to think that its sweet positivity will be the thing that, at this awful moment, gives it an edge.
Excerpt: My pick: “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” a tremendous ode to the power of sports to boost girls’ self-esteem and set them free from the shackles of the limited expectations.
Excerpt: My pick: The gorgeous “Brotherhood” opens up reductive notions of Middle Eastern cultures in the Western imagination while telling a moving story of family and forgiveness that is quite universal.
Excerpt: This year’s Doc Short nominees share common themes even though they range from skateboarding girls in Afghanistan to the South Korean ferry disaster and even a Ferguson, Missouri state legislator.
Excerpt: All masterfully made, this year’s Oscar nominated Animated Short Films address emotional topics and issues that bridge the gap between fantasy and reality.
Excerpt: Tissues at the ready, this year’s slate of Oscar nominated Documentary Short Subject films are important, topical works of impassioned conviction that are hard to shake and ride a rollercoaster of emotions.
Excerpt: This year’s Oscar nominees for Best Live Action Short Film represent stories told from around the world, but all unify around the power of human interaction, no matter your age or where you come from.
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