Fox Searchlight — the studio that brought us Garden State, Juno and Little Miss Sunshine — has a knack for these pleasure centers, and The Way, Way Back is the latest installment in this line of cutesy, sentimental films. It opens Friday. The story follows the 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James, TV’s The Killing), an awkward, […]
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The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh
Two more ingenious shorts have followed, and now, finally, Gudiño’s first stab at a feature with The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh. The budget remains small, while the creeps have increased exponentially. Do not watch it while alone and in the dark. Narrated by grand ol’ Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement), the newly departed woman […]
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The Naked Jungle
Back in print through Warner Archive, the meat-and-taters adventure is based on Carl Stephenson’s classic short story “Leiningen Versus the Ants” of two decades prior. Heston is the clenched-jaw Leiningen, owner of a cocoa plantation in South America, and so lonely and away from civilization that he has to mail-order a wife, played by Parker. […]
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Bullet to the Head
Based on a French graphic novel, Bullet shoots in the so-tired setting of New Orleans, where Sly’s Bonomo plies his trade as a hit man. Following his assassination of a former D.C. police officer, Bonomo finds his own partner killed by a hulking minion (Jason Momoa, Conan the Barbarian) taking orders from corrupt businessman Baptiste […]
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Fill the Void
The film zeros in on a Haredi (which means “those who tremble before God”) Jewish population living in modern-day Tel Aviv, Israel. Amid celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim, a family mourns the death of Esther (Renana Raz, Munich), who dies giving birth to her first son, Mordecai. Esther’s death sends a shock wave of […]
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Would You Rather
In order to afford a bone marrow transplant for her ailing brother (Logan Miller, The Bling Ring), young, unemployed Iris (Brittany Snow, Pitch Perfect) accepts an exclusive invitation to a dinner party hosted by businessman Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs, the Re-Animator trilogy), at which his foundation will award a sizable sum of money to one […]
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Blood Runs Cold
In this Swedish take on the all-American slasher film, Winona (newcomer Hanna Oldenburg) seeks refuge from stress at a vacation home, only to find more of it. Part of that is because she runs into her ex-boyfriend, Rick (Patrick Saxe, also making a feature debut), amid all the wintry conditions, but most of it is […]
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Enter the Dragon: 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition
With this, director Robert Clouse made what is easily Bruce Lee’s finest film (and then proceeded to follow it up with a never-ending string of schlock). While Lee is technically one point of a heroic triangle — with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon and blaxploitation icon Jim Kelly being the others — let’s […]
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The Call
Halle Berry (Cloud Atlas) leads the show as Jordan Turner, a veteran 911 operator in Los Angeles. (If anything, she should dial 911 for help with her distracting hairdo.) In the prologue, she’s giving questionable advice to a girl who calls about a prowler, resulting in the teen’s death. Six months later, Jordan is still […]
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Crimewave
When I ran across Crimewave at the Buttons video store at N.W. 63rd and May Avenue in 1988, I had never heard of it. However, I rented it as soon as I spotted that it was co-written by Joel and Ethan Coen; at the time, they had just made this little comedy I absolutely adored, […]