An opening cocaine heist turned bloody has authorities thinking “gangland killing,” but the man who’s really to blame is one of those investigating authorities: Vincent (Tomer Sisley, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch), a Bad Lieutenant dealing with Far Worse Criminals. In retribution for having his bag of kilos swiped, nefarious club owner Marciano (Serge Riaboukine, […]
murder
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Sinister
Had I been watching it alone, on a dark and stormy night, my neck likely would be sore by the end of it, from making repeated glances behind the couch — you know, just to be safe. It’s 2012’s Insidious: well-built, respectful of viewers’ intelligence and yet genuinely freaky. Ethan Hawke (Daybreakers) plays Ellison Oswalt, […]
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Bath Salt Zombies
Set in New York City, the film imagines such a huge crackdown on “bath salts” — a real-life drug currently making headlines for its zombie-like effects on users — that one enterprising chemist has synthesized it in cigarette form. Smoking it, however, proves even more addictive than usual, causing withdrawal symptoms so bad “it will […]
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Nobody Gets Out Alive
Good movies, regardless of classification, are going to come from those are filmmakers vs. fans. The current wave from the latter leaves a lot to be desired, as they approach projects from a narrow-focus angle that eschews objectivity and regurgitates a mishmash of titles they’ve seen without adding anything new. Recent offenders include Mimesis and […]
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The Mad Magician
Just as he’s about to hit the big time with his super-secret buzz-saw trick, however, his show gets axed and his boss claims proprietary rights to all of Gallico’s stage tools. As all mad magicians as wont to do, Gallico snaps and kills the guy by — and this fits the theme — decapitation via […]
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Deathtrap
Here, Caine stars as Sidney Bruhl, a playwright who has just suffered his fourth straight Broadway flop. Much to the dismay of his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon, who appeared in an equally keep-’em-guessing film in 1973’s The Last of Sheila), his solution is to kill Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), the former seminar student who has […]
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The Ice House
The corpse is located in the titular locale on the grounds of an opulent estate occupied by three women whom the townspeople refer to as “the butch beauties of Streech Grange.” The home is owned by Phoebe Maybury (Penny Downie, Invictus), whose husband disappeared a decade earlier — a case that remains unsolved. She lives […]
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Chained
After catching a movie, a woman (Julia Ormond, TV’s Mad Men) and her young son (Evan Bird, TV’s The Killing) take a cab to get home, but the cabbie isn’t really a cabbie. He’s Bob (Vincent D’Onofrio, Full Metal Jacket), a lisping serial killer of “whores.” Bob offs the mom, but keeps the kid as […]
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Theater of blood
For those curious about the start of Reduxion Theatre’s fifth-anniversary season, know this: There will be blood. While Shakespeare serves as Reduxion’s bread and butter year in and year out, founders Tyler and Erin Woods — who serve as artistic director and managing director, respectively — wanted to expand beyond their upcoming slate of Richard […]
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Grimm: Season One
The gist is that young Portland police detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) finds his world of working homicide turned topsy-turvy when his librarian aunt informs him that his parents didn’t really die in a car accident, but were murdered. And not only that, but they were descendants of the brothers Grimm, whose stories weren’t fictional […]