A very lanky and pale Liam Neeson (The Grey) portrays Peyton Westlake, a scientist working on creating synthetic skin, but can’t get it to last beyond 99 minutes. When his girlfriend (Moonrise Kingdom‘s Frances McDormand, who appears in a brand-new interview on the disc) stumbles onto a secret memo she shouldn’t have, corporate goons destroy […]
raimi
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Evil Dead
In Sam Raimi’s wildly original, wildly influential The Evil Dead of 1981, five friends into the woods for a cabin getaway and couldn’t get away from the demons they accidentally summon from an ancient book. In his feature debut, Uruguay director Fede Alvarez retains that setup, minus the vacation. In his vision, the young men […]
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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, […]
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The Possession
Now that the former has followed the latter onto Blu-ray and DVD, the difference is startlingly clear: The Possession is by far the superior ghost story. I’d expect nothing less from Evil Dead mastermind Sam Raimi, who produced it under his Ghost House Pictures banner, which has brought some of the better entries in the […]