The British thriller A Patch of Fog creates a great big feeling of deja vu. It tells a story that’s been told dozens of times before. The characters are different, and the setting is different, but the plot is familiar stuff. This is one of those movies about a person who becomes obsessed with another person, […]
Author: Mike McGranaghan
A Beautiful Now
A Beautiful Now is a compendium of every indie movie cliché about unhappy, confused twenty-somethings. It’s the kind of movie where one character says, “Why do you hate me?” and the other replies “Because you love me.” At another point, someone asks, “Does [life] ever turn out the way we want it to?” That’s pretty much the eternal […]
Vigilante Diaries
Vigilante Diaries is the kind of movie that seems to come to a logical end after about eighty minutes. Then a character says, “You know, it’s not over,” and you sit there groaning because you realize she’s right. This is a slick-looking, but stunningly empty picture that contains more chaos than common sense. Jason Mewes (Jay […]
The Break-In
Everyone knows about big Hollywood releases like Batman v Superman and Zootopia. And many people are aware that the independent scene provides lower-budget, buzz-worthy titles like Everybody Wants Some!! and My Name is Doris, to cite two recent examples. What many folks do not know, however, is that there exists a thriving “micro-budget” filmmaking scene. The low cost/high utility nature of modern […]
A Country Called Home
A troubled, directionless young person is forced by tragedy to return to their hometown (or some other remote location), where quirky relatives and new acquaintances unknowingly help them sort out their personal problems. What movie is this? If you’re a fan of independent cinema, you probably had at least a dozen titles flood your head […]
Forsaken
Westerns were once a dime a dozen, but they’ve become less common in recent years. One reason for this is surely the fact that there are only so many ways to combine the genre’s core elements: dusty towns, saloons, shootouts, whores, and so on. Finding a new angle with which to approach these things isn’t easy anymore. […]
Krampus
In folklore, the Krampus is kind of an anti-Santa Claus – a horned, hoofed creature that comes around every yuletide season to punish the children who have behaved poorly. Nothing like getting your kids to comply by telling them a demonic-looking beast will show up to terrorize them on Christmas Eve, huh? At the same […]
Youth
Youth has something to say, but that something is pretty obvious, and so the film dresses it up in a lot of self-satisfied artiness. The approach is akin to hearing someone say the alphabet backwards: impressive if you don’t think about it too much, rather pointless if you do. Michael Caine plays Fred Ballinger, a retired […]
The Danish Girl
Roger Ebert once said that movies are like a machine that generates empathy. What he meant was that good films help us understand people who are different from us by emphasizing what we have in common: emotions, dreams, desires, and so forth. Movies like Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl currently serve an important purpose […]
A Snowball’s Chance: Awards Season’s Least Likely Contenders
Awards season is once again in full swing. With numerous film critics’ groups and industry guilds preparing to unveil their annual awards — all leading to the ever-important Oscars — studios now have their PR departments working overtime to secure as many nominations as possible, from as many voting bodies as possible. This is done […]
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War Room
Alex and Stephen Kendrick are the Joel and Ethan Coen of the Christian movie scene. The brothers made a name for themselves with the independent faith-based drama Facing the Giants in 2006, then scored two more indie successes, 2008’s Fireproof (starring Kirk Cameron) and 2011’s Courageous. Each time, they hit the bullseye with the target […]
It’s Not “Game Over” For Videogame Movies
Here’s a list of every great movie based on a videogame: Short list, huh? It’s not news that movies based on videogames are terrible. We all know that they run the gamut from “Well, I guess that didn’t completely suck” (Tomb Raider, Silent Hill), to abysmal (Need For Speed, the current Hitman: Agent 47), to downright unwatchable (Wing […]
The Marvel Cinematic Universe Is Evil and Needs to Die
Marvel Studios has, for the past several years, been carrying out one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted in cinema. Under the direction of studio president Kevin Feige, they have been attempting to replicate the interconnectedness of their comics via the “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” or MCU. The original idea was simple, yet brilliant: produce a slew of superhero movies that […]
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The Dead Lands
The Dead Lands, an import from New Zealand, is a breath of fresh air. It’s got enough hardcore action to please the most dedicated of fight fans, yet the film is far from empty-headed. There’s a cultural element to the story that sets it apart from other action pictures of this variety. If you’re in the […]
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
In 1996, Joel and Ethan Coen released their classic crime drama Fargo. The movie started with an onscreen notice stating that it was based on a true story, and that the names had been changed to protect the innocent. It didn’t take long for the media to uncover that this was not true; the claim […]
The Rewrite
The Rewrite marks the fourth collaboration between writer/director Marc Lawrence and star Hugh Grant. Okay, so they aren’t exactly Scorsese and De Niro. They’ve never delivered a Taxi Driver or a Raging Bull. The Grant/Lawrence productions have run a relatively small gamut, from “reasonably pleasant” (Music & Lyrics) to “slightly more appealing than actual physical […]
Are We Still Friends On Monday? – The Breakfast Club Turns 30
On February 15, 1985, a landmark film was released in theaters. No one had any clue of the impact it would have. It was, after all, “just” a teen comedy. Within a short period of time, though, The Breakfast Club would become the teen comedy. It would turn writer/director John Hughes into a household name, and […]
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Black or White
Mike Binder is a filmmaker interested in telling stories about identifiable people dealing with identifiable problems. In films such as The Upside of Anger, Indian Summer, and Reign Over Me, he has displayed an empathetic desire to understand humans at their weakest moments, to see what makes them tick and what allows them to keep going. In an age where […]
Frank
Frank is a movie so bizarre and strange that it’s practically a miracle it got made at all. Aside from its eccentric subject matter, the film keeps the face of its most recognizable and bankable star obscured for the majority of its running time. One can only wonder about the reasons why anyone ponied up the […]
The Mule
The Mule is the only movie I can remember seeing where suspense is built by making you wonder whether a man will have a bowel movement. As the title suggests, this is the story of a drug mule — one of those people who smuggle narcotics through customs by ingesting condoms filled with them. It’s […]