Film Clips
In these movies, home is where the hell is
It’s family survival week in a pair of punchy sci-fi thrillers, where death lurks just beyond the mailbox. “The Last House,” on Netflix, finds a Pacific Northwest family sealed inside their house due to mysterious forces at play. Over at the “End of Oak Street,” a big-screen undertaking with Spielberg-ian overtones, dinosaurs move into a […]
Gregg Araki’s latest, an erotic comedy thriller
“I Want Your Sex” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 4. And keeping with the sex theme: It’s been 12 years since Gregg Araki made his last film, “White Bird in a Blizzard,” a competently done mystery and something of a restrained effort compared to his gloriously gonzo, queer-leaning, desperado films of the 1990s (“Totally F***ed […]
A devastating drama and a near-future rom-com
“Blue Heron” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 4. In case you missed the best film of the year (so far) — it didn’t play a Cambridge or Somerville theater — you can now catch the devastating picture digitally. In Sophy Romvari’s semi-autobiographical film, a Hungarian family relocates to Vancouver Island, Canada in the 1990s. She […]
A spaghetti western and new Spider-Man
“Dead Souls” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 2.5 out of 4. For his self-proclaimed final film, cult warrior Alex Cox has laid his sights on Donald Trump, ICE, and AI. Not a bad hit list, but a little weird when you consider it’s a spaghetti western based on the 1842 book by Nikolai Gogol — where a shady […]
Two movies on rules rewritten & rules broken
“Ladies First” ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 4. Speaking of gloriously gonzo, Sacha Baron Cohen, the hot mess (said with respect and gratitude) behind the devilishly caustic “Borat” films, stars in this rom-com-lite, gender-reversal spin with a side of nasty. The movie has a killer cast (Charles Dance, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw, […]
Two new movies grapple with our disorienting, disoriented world
“Backrooms” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 4. If you’ve ever made a wrong turn in a shopping mall and found yourself in a space not intended for public view, you’ve had the eerie sensation captured by “Backrooms,” the new horror film from first-time director Kane Parsons. The seemingly innocuous setting is Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, […]