Abigail Breslin (August: Osage County) stars as Lisa, a teen who’s the only one in her happy family of four to notice that for some reason, they’re re-living the same foggy Sunday in the ’80s over and over and over and over. Keeping her forever 15, it’s a cyclical grind of missing laundry, Atari Pac-Man, […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Errors of the Human Body
Fresh from relishing villainy in The Call, the near-unrecognizable Michael Eklund cleans up nice as Dr. Geoffrey Burton, a reluctant geneticist specializing in embryonic abnormalities for very personal reasons. He leaves the University of Massachusetts behind to continue his controversial research in Dresden, Germany — a far less-politicized environment. But Eron Sheean’s film is not […]
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The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
Now available on the IFC Midnight label, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is built largely on interviews with three people tied directly to the notorious serial killer who confessed to 17 murders: apartment neighbor Pamela Bass, police detective Pat Kennedy and medical examiner Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen. Each grabs your attention and holds it with his or […]
Posted inArts & Culture
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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Before Midnight
Jesse (Ethan Hawke, Sinister) — the writer we’ve watched meet, fall for and settle down with Celine (Julie Delpy, 2 Days in New York) — tells some colleagues about a story idea of his. It involves a group of characters with unique quirks of perception: One has déjà vu, someone else has no facial recognition, […]
Posted inMusic
Various artists — Never Give Up: Celebrating 10 Years of The Postal Service
With the 10th anniversary of Give Up — being celebrated with a re-release, festival headlining gigs and the first tour in nearly a decade, The Postal Service is right back at the forefront of indie music, so there’s no better time to pay tribute. Music blog Independent Clauses wrangled 22 different artists wanting to do […]
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Rites of Spring
Realizing that’s been done before, writer/director Padraig Reynolds shrewdly introduces a second storyline in the form of a $2 million kidnapping scheme concocted by a white-trash trio on a wealthy family. For these two storylines to converge takes about 50 minutes, and just before they do, Rites delivers a welcome twist. Well, it would be […]
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The Pact
Following the death of her mother, an independent-minded waitress named Annie (Caity Lotz, TV’s Death Valley) returns with dogged reluctance to her childhood home — and that’s before her sister (Agnes Bruckner, Kill Theory) and friend (Kathleen Rose Perkins, TV’s Episodes) have vanished there. As made perfectly clear by the cover art, a malevolent force […]
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Area 407
As far as I know, Area 407 is the first one to merge the medium with Jurassic Park. It begins on a suspiciously near-empty New Year’s Eve flight from New York to L.A., and told from the perspective of two sisters who look nothing alike (newcomer Abigail Schrader and unknown Samantha Lester). They take turns […]
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Penumbra
That sounds too good to be true, but stranger things have happened on the day of a total solar eclipse. And they will. Too bad Penumbra takes a full 51 minutes of its 90 to get near there. Only then does the Argentinian film approach any plot points that reveal themselves as thriller-esque. Before then […]