The opener is the best of the bunch, documenting the first — and quite possibly the last — night shift worked by a pretty young college student (Alex Datcher, Passenger 57) at a gas station. She sits locked in the cashier’s booth as a serial killer lurks close. The suspense gets to her as much as […]
NSFW
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Samson & Delilah
Not much happens in the movie, at least initially, which I suppose is entirely the point. When he’s not huffing gasoline, teenage Samson (Rowan McNamara) ambles about his surroundings — empty fridge, dirty water, hard floors, merciless sun — and listens to music and screws around in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, his sorta-kinda girlfriend, Delilah (Marissa […]
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Breaking the Girls
Also drawing upon Single White Female and director Jamie Babbit’s own The Quiet, this frigid thriller stars Agnes Bruckner (now the poor man’s Abbie Cornish, after starring in Lifetime’s recent Anna Nicole Smith biopic) as Sara, a struggling college student by day and bartender by night. When she loses the gig of the latter, it […]
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Grabbers
On an Irish island, the whales and villagers alike are being attacked by an alien creature that thrives on blood and water alone. Looked like Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley, Alarm, In Her Skin) picked the wrong two weeks to sub as an officer there. Her jaded partner, the functioning alcoholic O’Shea (Richard Coyle, Prince of Persia: […]
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The Eyes of Charles Sand
Why not both? As his aunt (Joan Bennett, TV’s Dark Shadows) informs Charles, now that he is the sole surviving son of the Sands, he and he only possesses powers of ESP, and with great power comes great responsibility — not to mention pesky, spooky visions of milky-eyed, heavily wrinkled corpses appearing wherever he goes. […]
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12 Years a Slave
The film’s discomforting imagery is depicted with shrewd precision and unflinching directness, both pivotal to the potency of the film. But McQueen also proves himself to be a uniquely accomplished storyteller, and the story here is extraordinary. Based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 autobiography of the same name, 12 Years follows a free black man’s sudden […]
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Girl Most Likely
One of them, Bridesmaids star/scribe Kristen Wiig plays Imogene, a magazine writer in New York City so down over being dumped by her longtime boyfriend that she concocts a faked suicide attempt in order to win him back. Unfortunately, her sitcom premise backfires, forcing her to move in with her estranged mother, Zelda (Annette Bening, […]
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Black Devil Doll from Hell / Tales from the Quadead Zone
Who’s Chester Novell Turner? He’s a correspondence-course filmmaker who shot two homemade horror opuses at the height of the home-video revolution: 1984’s Black Devil Doll from Hell and 1987’s Tales from the Quadead Zone. Until recently, these ultra-rare, ultra-obscure titles fetched hundreds of dollars on eBay. I might feel sorry for the poor bastards who […]
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Passion
A remake of the 2010 French film Love Crime, Passion burns in an advertising agency in Germany headed by Christine (Rachel McAdams, To the Wonder), a bratty, manipulative bitch who uses one of her creatives, Isabelle (Noomi Rapace, Prometheus), as a puppet. When Christine takes credit for Isabelle’s idea for a smartphone campaign spot, it […]
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Lovelace
This approach speaks to the controversy that dogged Lovelace’s later life, in which she denounced porn of all forms, saying that she was coerced by gunpoint and other means into performing oral sex for the cameras of Deep Throat, not to mention dalliances into prostitution. So, no, Lovelace is not the feel-good hit of the […]