Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. But they can make a smart idea for a pandemic movie. Limited characters, small settings and lots of alone time – what makes incarceration so soul-numbing can also make a script easier to shoot under Covid restrictions. And not only do those limits […]
Author: Stephen Whitty
6:45
Screams like old times… The horror film 6:45 uses what had been a fresh story-telling gimmick when Groundhog Day did it, but lately has begun to go a little stale: The time loop. Think Source Code, The Final Girls, Edge of Tomorrow, or Happy Death Day. The template is easy: Oh no, someone’s trying to […]
Caged
Sometimes the scariest thing of all is nothing. Literally. No person to talk to. No books to read. No changes, no surprises — nothing. Because that’s what solitary confinement is. And that is why it drives people mad. It’s also the story behind Caged, a taut new film that’s part character study, part mystery, part […]
12 Mighty Orphans
Just because something sounds corny, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Or isn’t good. 12 Mighty Orphans plays like a lot of other inspirational sports movies. There’s a dedicated coach. A team of underdogs, facing personal challenges and met with public scorn. A drunken old man, a couple of villains and, in the end, some kind […]
Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury
For some fans, rock-and-roll replaces religion. For the members of Luxury, it was the other way around. A beloved cult favorite of the early-’90s, the original four musicians — Glenn Black, Chris Foley, and brothers Lee and Jamey Bozeman – fired up fans with driving beats and dreamy lyrics. Then came a car crash. A […]
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This Is Not a War Story
In the movies, war is exciting and chaotic and inspiring, full of adventure and heroism and way-cool weapons. Well, as Talia Lugacy’s film warns us right from the start, This Is Not a War Story. Instead, this is a story about what happens after the war, when veterans come home. Many of them are wounded. […]
Trust
It’s hard to gain. It’s easy to lose. It’s almost impossible to get back. “Trust.” That’s the title, and topic, of a twisty new marital drama featuring Brooke and Owen, an attractive, successful, having-it-all Manhattan couple. He’s a local TV anchor on the rise. She’s just opened her own art gallery and signed a hot […]
Steps
According to the Chinese proverb, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Sometimes, though, the most life-changing journeys begin with 12. The new film Steps, though, isn’t really about Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s a story about conquering addictions, of all kinds. To drugs and alcohol. To rage and violence. To impulsive decisions […]
The Penny Black
Look around the poker table, veteran gamblers like to warn. If you can’t spot the sucker – it’s you. There’s a lot to look at in the mostly intriguing con-man documentary and clearly someone’s being taken for a ride. But who is it? The mysterious Russian on the run who says he has millions of […]
Trust
It’s hard to gain. It’s easy to lose. It’s almost impossible to get back. Trust. That’s the title, and topic, of a twisty new marital drama featuring Brooke and Owen, an attractive, successful, having-it-all Manhattan couple. He’s a local TV anchor on the rise. She’s just opened her own art gallery, and signed a hot […]
Effigy: Poison and the City
Frau Gottfried is killing people with kindness. Literally. The pretty German lady is always there when someone – a spouse, a relative, a neighbor – takes ill. She typically devotes days, even weeks to tenderly nursing them, even moving into their homes to see after their meals. It’s terrible all her patients end up dying. […]
Too Late
Violet’s boss is horrible. He’s inhuman. He uses people. Eats them up, and then throws them away like garbage. He’s a monster, she tells her friends. “You mean, a metaphorical monster,” they say. Oh, if only. Show business is full of fiends, but the truth is, Bob Devore is a real one. A man-eating one. […]
Bad Cupid
Love is blind – which is why, sometimes, you need someone to step in and save you from walking into traffic. That’s the idea behind Bad Cupid, an amiably offbeat comedy about a slacker named Dave. A loser who can’t believe he lost, he’s still obsessed with the girl who dumped him a year ago. […]
P.E.N.S. – Poetic Energy Needed in Society
Academia is not the street. Forget whatever you learned in college about Tennyson or Longfellow. Modern urban poetry is fast, unfussy, forceful. You don’t give readings, you compete in “slams.” You don’t recite your verses, you “spit” them. And if the audience sits there silently – then you know you’ve lost. If you’re really connecting, […]
In Action
Sean Kenealy and Eric Silvera wanted to make an action movie in the worst way, and they did. No money for a cast of thousands? How about a cast of two. Low-budget? Closer to no budget, with the results of the team’s $20,000 Kickstarter campaign stretched to cover everything, from dubious on-screen talent to some […]
Touch
She is a woman without a country, married to a man with a past. And their troubled marriage – and her desperate, dangerous search for something more – will lead her down a risky path and into a deadly affair in Touch. Stripped to its essentials –erotic-thriller style and neo-noir fatalism — the movie sounds […]
Here Alone
Pre-pandemic, Here Alone looked like a smart, spare horror film. Post-pandemic, it suddenly looks like a lot more. The low-budgeted post-apocalyptic thriller debuted at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Other festival screenings and a very limited release followed, but for some reason word didn’t get […]
Paint
Writers need to be read. Musicians need to be heard. But after three years of painting, Dan, Kelsey and Quinn haven’t hung a picture on anybody’s walls but their own. Are you still a painter if nobody sees your paintings? Is selling out worse than not selling at all? Paint asks those questions, and lets […]
Parallel Minds
Most movies struggle to come up with one good idea. The sci-fi thriller Parallel Minds has a handful. There’s one about a high-tech contact lens that lets you see your own memories. There’s another about a First Nations woman with psychic powers, and a half-remembered past. There’s a third about an artificial intelligence that’s become […]
Donna: Stronger Than Pretty
When Donna and Nick got married, they pledged to be together forever, for richer or poorer, for better or worse. Except it gets worse pretty quickly. Unfortunately, so does their movie. And unlike Donna, audiences are unlikely to stick around, hoping it’s going to get better again. Donna: Stronger Than Pretty is a portrait of […]