It’s not uncommon for movie studios to produce cheap straight-to-video “sequels” to well-known movies based solely on name recognition, often with virtually no connection to the originals. At first glance, you might expect Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven to be one of those movies, trading on the notoriety of Paul Verhoeven’s infamous 1995 flop, which […]
Author: Josh Bell
Passion
It’s sort of hard to believe that anyone could make the dopey 2010 French thriller Love Crime more ridiculous, but Brian De Palma manages to do just that with Passion, a mostly faithful remake. The final movie directed by Alain Corneau, Love Crime is a trashy, pseudo-titillating story about a ruthless corporate shark (played by […]
The Kings of Summer
So breezy that it threatens to blow apart entirely, the coming-of-age dramedy The Kings of Summer has some sweet moments but ends up feeling wholly inconsequential. The self-consciously quirky supporting characters take away from the emotional impact of the central story, about teenage best friends Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso), who decide to […]
Rushlights
As far as dumb ideas go, impersonating your dead junkie roommate to collect a mysterious inheritance from a shady lawyer is pretty high up there. But the protagonists of the moronic thriller Rushlights don’t seem to see anything wrong with it, at least not until they are in way over their heads and being targeted […]