The first film introduces future cop Mad Max Rockatansky and director George Miller’s violent, pedal-to-the-metal world of carmageddon. Its chase sequences are as exciting as anything the action genre had seen, and they still hold up because their influence is ever-present. While Max’s family life slows the middle, it fuels a bang-up final act of […]
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Snitch
Here, he’s John Matthews, a successful businessman with a trophy wife (Nadine Velazquez, Flight) and an adorable little daughter. He doesn’t live with his other child from his starter marriage, Jason (Rafi Gavron, Celeste & Jesse Forever), now a high school senior. He’s a good kid. He just has bad taste in friends, one of […]
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This Girl Is Badass
But how much more badass might she be if her stunts were rooted in reality? For example, Jackie Chan can do — or could do — most of the things we saw him do in his movies; the blooper-ridden end credits attest to that. But from the start, Jukkalan’s tricks are aided by, well, tricks […]
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Fred Won’t Move Out
That might sound like emotionally exhausting stuff, but this small indie has a surprisingly light touch. Writer-director Richard Ledes is more interested in capturing the stirring moments of family life than he is in heavy-handed exploration. The elderly couple at the center, Fred and Susan (Ruby Sparks’ Elliott Gould and Choke’s Judith Roberts), reside in […]
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Rolling Thunder
Now available in a Blu-ray from Shout! Factory that puts MGM’s 2011 burn-on-demand release to utter shame, the film stars William Devane (the POTUS of last summer’s The Dark Knight Rises) as Maj. Charles Rane. After spending a grueling seven years as a prisoner of war, he returns home to San Antonio, Texas, to a […]
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Sadako 3D
This time, that creepy, crawling girl with the stringy black hair known as Sadako (Ai Hashimoto) comes not through TV sets, but computer and smartphone screens. The cursed VHS tape is now a cursed video clip of a live suicide, and anyone who views it immediately kills himself or herself. Well, anyone except pretty, young […]
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Dark Skies
The first sci-fi-heavy effort from Blumhouse Productions, that mighty machine of menace that brought you the Paranormal Activity pictures, the film focuses on the Barrett family. Lacy (Keri Russell, TV’s The Americans) is a Realtor; Daniel (Josh Hamilton, J. Edgar) is an architect, but currently unemployed in the midst of the Great Recession. Because of […]
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Identity Thief
Yes, it’s stupid. But it stars Jason Bateman, one of the scant few actors currently working who can turn the otherwise throwaway line “The fuck you are” into a genuine laugh. Recently seen showing his dramatic side in Disconnect, Bateman reunites with Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon as Sandy Patterson, a Denver family man whose […]
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The Howling
Reunited with his Piranha screenwriter John Sayles, Dante spins a suspenseful, spooky and spoofy tale of TV anchorman Karen White (E.T. mom Dee Wallace in her best role), ordered by her psychiatrist (Patrick Macnee, TV’s The Avengers) to take some time off following a traumatic, near-death experience that has left her with amnesia. Said sojourn […]
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Electra Glide in Blue
That Guercio never made another movie is a shame, because so much of Electra Glide in Blue — an opening shot of the highway cutting through the Arizona desert, the introduction of the motorcycle-cop protagonist in full uniform, the haunting final minutes — reveal a keen eye for composition. Two years away from TV’s Baretta, […]