Gold movie review: dust in the wind
In a dry, dusty, desperate landscape, Zac Efron goes full grunge, effectively underplaying physical and psychological implosion. But there’s nothing unexpected in this brutal open-air chamber piece.
Twilight Zone
The Vast of Night movie review: and vast of perspective
Striking sci-fi mood piece, all eeriness and ookiness, wonder and dread. Explicitly Twilight Zone–esque, summoning a midcentury-America innocence in order to shatter its narrowness (and our own).
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché documentary review: the movie pioneer you’ve never heard of
Not only a portrait of the woman who made more than a thousand of the very first films, but a mystery detective story about how the achievements of a trailblazing woman were erased, and found again.
Lost Child (aka Tatterdemalion) movie review: little devil? or little boy?
An extraordinarily delicate balancing act between drama and horror, visually and psychologically expansive, set in a place where stories of monsters are not mere entertaining fun, and where superstition is not harmless.
Wish Upon movie review: be careful what movies you see about wishes you should be careful about
Simple, yet stupid. A magic box grants a teen wishes… that don’t come free. Apparently they’re not making eighth graders read “The Monkey’s Paw” anymore.
Get Out movie review: yes all white people
Shattering and deep-down bone-chilling. A viciously unsettling nightmare of race and privilege that carves out a much-needed paradigm shift for genre film.
XX movie review: women filmmakers bring a feminine bent to horror
My anger that women filmmakers doing a horror anthology is seen as a novelty almost overshadows my disappointment that these short films aren’t very scary.
curated: Trump’s inauguration, or an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’?
Difficult to see the difference…
Tales of Halloween movie review: buckets of blood, and lots of laughs
The best of the bunch in this anthology of vaguely interconnected shorts are the outrageous and uproarious genre pastiches “Friday the 31st” and “Bad Seed.”
Containment (aka Infected) movie review: no place like home
There’s nothing groundbreaking in this low-budget sci-fi thriller, but newbie director Mcenery-West makes excellent use of his claustrophobic setting.
