Then one night after joining the Morgan clan for post-labor supper, Nath mentions something about cutting through Ox Head Woods on his walk home, prompting the farmer to bark warnings about a supposedly cursed and evil piece of property deep within. Mr. Morgan begs Nath and Meg to stay away, to not go near that […]
blu-ray
Posted inArts & Culture
Dark Tide
In South Africa, Berry (New Year’s Eve) unconvincingly plays Kate, a shark expert and pro diver reduced to running ship tours for tourists, however few there are, after more or less turning one of her fellow divers to chum a year beforehand. Guilt keeps her from getting back into dangerous waters until her old flame, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Innkeepers
Heed its warning, my children. Like so many cerebral horror films in which gore is not their reason for being, carefully crafted sound design is a large, integral part of the experience, and writer/director/editor Ti West’s follow-up to 2009’s acclaimed The House of the Devil is indeed an experience. That said, I fully understand why […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Terror Experiment
This one takes place in a federal building on Christmas Eve. (For a federal building on Christmas Eve, the place sure is packed.) A terrorist manages to infiltrate security enough to bring in a bomb, which he detonates on the fifth floor. (The explosion’s aftershocks are depicted via tilted, shaking camera.) The airborne agent gets […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Divide
No sooner as the movie opened than a nuclear bomb has dropped. The precious few apartment building residents with the most recognizable, screen-friendly faces are those who conveniently find shelter in the basement, barricaded by a huge steel door that the supe, Mickey (Michael Biehn, Take Me Home Tonight), seals to keep out any radiation. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Wicker Tree
The new film is based upon Hardy’s own 2006 novel, Cowboys for Christ, but here’s the deal: If you’ve seen the original Wicker, you know exactly where this new one leads, and without the benefit of having Edward Woodward as your guide. In The Wicker Tree, it’s young Christian country starlet Beth Boothby (newcomer Brittania […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Darkest Hour
Amid a citywide power outage, aliens fall from the sky in the form of orange fireballs that then turn more or less invisible, but immediately incinerate all humans they can get their “hands” on. As luck would have it, our heroes manage to survive by holing up, along with the aforementioned babes (Transformers‘ Rachael Taylor […]
Posted inArts & Culture
We Bought a Zoo
Based on a true story, the movie stars Matt Damon (Contagion) as Benjamin Mee, a widower of six months and father of two who, sick of pity, unreasonably quits his newspaper reporter job on the spur of the moment, only to more unreasonably purchase a home in the country with a built-in, rundown zoo — […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Killer Nun
After having a brain tumor removed, Sister Gertrude hasn’t been the same. She thinks she still has cancer and cries out for a shot filled with sweet, sweet morphine. The doctors at the psych ward where she works assure her that her thoughts are simply stress-induced and psychosomatic, but Gertrude’s much-younger roomie, Sister Mathieu (Paola […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Killing: The Complete First Season
That’s the question posed by the first season of AMC’s The Killing, and also one famously answered — and then infamously not — by its finale (an extended cut of which is on the three-disc Blu-ray set) that incited the Internet equivalent of a riot. Whereas so many viewers were angry, I was elated: Seriously, […]