Crime

Longlegs

Most of the horror community loves a good serial killer story. As morbid as it is, there are hundreds of thousands of hours of true crime podcasts, TV series, and films that either recount the true events of innocent people being dispatched by a depraved mind or take inspiration from these murders to create fictional […]

Longlegs

Apple TV

Wolfs (2024)

“Wolfs”, which was released on Apple TV+ in a few days ago, works best whenever it simply focuses on whatever is exchanged between its two charismatic star actors. Having actually worked together more once in several notable films, they constantly click well with each other with considerable chemistry, and that is why it is rather […]

Wolfs (2024) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): Two fixers stuck with each other

Comedy

The Delinquents (2023) Movie Review

Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents is not a heist film, but it does begin with an elaborate bank robbery. It is not exactly a thriller, either, though it borrows from plenty of the tropes you’d find in an exciting thriller film with a heist as its centerpiece. Elaborate planning, blackmail, prison politics, uneasy partnerships, paranoia of…

Link

Comedy

Burn After Reading – Precious Bodily Fluids

One feels that thinking on a film by the Coen brothers, especially a comedy, is a fruitless exercise. Those guys design their work in such a way that it’s not merely immune to navel-gazing, it actually mocks the navel-gazers. And bless their hearts for it. As David Bazan has sung: You’re so creative With your…

Link

Comedy

Delicatessen Film Review: Unforeseen Events for Louison

  What’s an out of work clown to do? Louison (played by Dominique Pinon) didn’t lose his job due to a lack of charm, he has that in abundance. Unfortunately his life took an unexpected turn with the death of his performing partner. The truth to be told, his partner didn’t simply die, he was…

Link

Crime

Movie Review: Purple Noon

This is the first post in The Cinematic Mr. Ripley, a series for the MovieThoughts category of my blog that considers moral themes in Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels and the film adaptations of those books. This post looks at Purple Noon, the 1960 French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Alain Delon. It…

Link

Crime

Le Cercle Rouge

Gliding almost without speech down the dawn streets of a wet Paris winter, these men in trench coats and fedoras perform a ballet of crime, hoping to win and fearing to die. Some are cops and some are robbers. To smoke for them is as natural as breathing. They use guns, lies, clout, greed and nerve with the skill of a magician who no longer even thinks about the cards. They share a code of honor which is not about what side of the law they are on, but about how a man must behave to win the respect of those few others who understand the code.

Link

Crime

Nightmare Alley

A swing and a miss this boring noir drama is brimming with quality visuals and A list talent. Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, and Cate Blanchett put the story through its paces and make it watchable to a point, but it is a hard watch.

Nightmare Alley

Crime

THE UNFORGIVABLE (2021): The Things I Liked…

I’m glad that Sandra Bullock said yes to The Unforgivable, a well-executed tale of one woman’s journey to reconnect with her sister after finishing a twenty-year prison sentence. Directed by Nora Fingscheidt, what stood out immediately, in addition to the excellent performances, is how engaging the story is. I cared about Bullock’s character and couldn’t wait for […]

THE UNFORGIVABLE (2021): The Things I Liked…

Crime

WEST SIDE STORY

Hollywood loves a remake. Sometimes it’s a successful foreign film recast with English-speaking celebrities. Sometimes it’s a decent story that just didn’t work the first time around. Most of the time, it’s a hollow-minded cash-grab by a studio rejiggering its intellectual property. But now and then, it’s a filmmaker of regard taking a bonafide classic […]

WEST SIDE STORY

Crime

The Forever Prisoner (2021): It was torture indeed

HBO documentary “The Forever Prisoner” is often sobering and chilling in its calm but blistering presentation on what the US government allowed to happen in the name of War on Terror. While it did not surprise or shock you much if you are familiar with its main subjects, the documentary is still captivating as providing […]

The Forever Prisoner (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): It was torture indeed

Crime

Review: Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s followup to his surprise Oscar winner The Shape of Water. It serves as both a remake of the 1947 film noir of the same name and a new adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s novel from a year earlier, with the beloved filmmaker delivering […]

Review: Nightmare Alley

Comedy

Zola (2020)

Zola (2020) Y’all wanna hear a story? Perhaps this is simply what happens when you turn a Twitter thread into a movie. Zola, the film’s origin lies in a 148-tweet thread posted by Zola the person — A’Ziah ‘Zola’ King — in October 2015, detailing a wild, chaotic road trip from Detroit, Michigan to Tampa, […]

Zola (2020)

Crime

Musical Masterpiece: Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”

I remember the first time I saw “West Side Story.” I watched the 1961 film during class at my Catholic elementary school decades later — on a square TV on a rolling cart — and it was transformative. I immediately loved the music, choreography, dancing, characters, and storytelling. I watch that version from time to […]

Musical Masterpiece: Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”

Crime

Blu-ray Review: Malignant

After switching gears and directing the comic book movie Aquaman, Warner Bros. has allowed James Wan to return to his low-budget horror movie roots with Malignant, an absolutely gnarly little film that I’m honestly impressed the studio even agreed to put out. Wan, who has kickstarted no less […]

Blu-ray Review: Malignant

Visitors

518 hits