Reviews

The final shot of The Last Stop in Yuma County gives way to the director's credit with the same sting that William Holden's line - "If they move... kill 'em" - announces Directed by Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch. And if that isn't high praise enough, there's this: Last Stop is a crisp widescreen waltz and the devil is definitely playing the tune. Each character or pair of characters peel off the hot road and into what they think is a diner, but is really a pressure cooker, perfectly tended by the writer/director Galluppi. A one room crucible that his ceaselessly prowling camera explores with grace and guile until every inch of the geography is understood... yet miraculously allowing both everything and nothing that happens to be anticipated. Compare the clarity of the film's key incident to the mess Scorsese made of the final conflagration in The Departed or the stalking in Cape Fear. Galluppi wins hands down.

This is the best film of the year so far. A perfect choreography of characters, camera, and cunning. Amazing performances across the board. Cummings, Brake, Logan, Donahue, Abbott Jr., Paolo - sly, steely, antic, moving, scary, funny. All the needle drops are spot on, virtually becoming another character in the diner. But the slo-mo montage to Roy Orbison's "Crying" is the standout -- an absolutely stellar, chill inducing 2:48 seconds.

Law & Order: SVU has done multiple versions of this narrative conceit over its multiple years on the air. SVU's versions all run a standard 44 minutes and all are told with terse character building, momentum, a few investigative dead ends, and a generally satisfying conclusion.

Confession takes a polar opposite approach. It is obvious from the get-go, moves at a glacial pace, talks the viewer's ear off to no revelatory end, is repetitive, filled with detectives, prosecutors, and lawyers who do and say very stupid things, and winds up where it began -- on a bridge to a conclusion that's been traversed countless times. Needless to say, the issue under discussion is important; the execution and storytelling lackluster.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Signs, Whitley Strieber's Communion with Christopher Walken, Whitley Strieber's The Grays, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a handful of alien encounter B films from the late 80's, a Twilight Zone or two and even a series of shots right out of Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. The interesting thing here is: how can you take/borrow/steal imagery, plot, SFX and ideas from all of the above films and make something as soulless and inert as No One Will Save You? That really takes some kind of inverted expertise. I know Kaitlyn Dever is bulletproof in today's film press, but she frame by frame 'acts' her way through this snore, only coming alive in the finale which seems to fly in the face of the 'body snatched' vs. Real world. She may have found a community, but that community is Orwellian at best.

Director Duffield, in a recent Hollywood Reporter interview, stated how he aims to write scripts that are 85-90 pages, as a way of letting the D-boys and D-girls know that he plans to get in and out of his stories fast. Given that, it's funny that this film for all its hyperventilating feels endless. Sorry, but it's a misfire on every front and in all directions.

Silly rather than scary. It's a ridiculously conceived version of The Twilight Zone episode 41 The Howling Man. Caplan and Starr play it for laughs as a serious read would have only made it more risible. While Coleman and Norman go all out in the other direction. This creates friction, but not the kind you want in a film. The performances are all good, Norman is great, and Bodin tosses up a few compositions that suggest his potential: The wide shots of Norman on the staircase stand out. But the audience is weeks ahead of the Halloween chronology and the script's predilection to telegraph the few and far between major beats of the tale. Very unsatisfying.

As in war, not every aspect of the film Ambush probably goes as it was strategically intended in pre-production, but its heart, politics, and key performances fight hard to make a difference and by the end of its hour and 40 minute running time can claim victory.

The year is 1966. The setting is a small firebase in Quan Tri erected and secured by a corp of young inexperienced engineers with next to no bona fides in combat. The platoon is commanded by Cpl. Ackerman (Connor Paolo) - who is educated and savvy but trepidatious because he knows what he does not know... and his men know it too. The titular ambush takes place above ground - the enemy appearing out of nowhere in the midst of the camp's secured perimeter - during which they manage to steal an important dossier before being repelled. The remainder of the film mostly takes place underground as Ackerman and his team are tasked with the mission of mapping the Vietcong's 'subway system', the labyrinth of tunnels they have constructed in the area that allow them free and unseen movement in their battles against the Americans.

Once in the tunnels, the film takes on more of an effective horror film vibe with booby traps, silence, claustrophobia, sudden attacks and a John Carpenteresque 80's soundtrack. But the film never lets the viewer forget that the real horror is the lethal mix of the politics of war and the caste system of the armed forces. To this end, the film's finale is particularly forceful.

Aaron Eckhart as General Drummond, remotely directing the operation, does his steely best, but his performance, literally over the phone, is detached in a multitude of ways. Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Special Forces operative Miller, who is knowledgeable about the tunnels but stays above ground, provides an understanding and a Zen-like calmness to the endeavor, a welcome counterbalance to the barking of the other higher-ups. But the real pulse of the story and heart of the film is Connor Paolo's portrayal of Ackerman who's journey from trying hard to conceal his fears about protecting his men above ground to revealing his deep care, compassion and responsibility for them underground is truly moving.

For a low budget war film with what appeared to be an extremely short shooting schedule, Ambush tells a story about the politics of war well worth seeing. The fact that it eschews back stories of both the larger and the smaller life forms benefits it theme: that at the end of the chess game, all the pieces - kings, queens, bishops, knights and pawns - go back in the same box.

Ed Wood shot Plan 9 in 1957. Mickey Keating knew he couldn't top it so he opted for Plan 10. He paid a premium for graveyard mist and definitely nailed the emergence of characters from super soft focus into sharp close-up. But then he had a lot of practice -- only used the effect 30 or 40 times. And 'woman running down center of road' -- wow! -- something else that he's mastered. Oh, and let's not forget stretching a moldy twilight zone episode to 90 minutes... he's got that down too.

And then there's the soundtrack. Doing a needle drop on Satie in the middle of a flashback office scene.... what could be better. Ed Wood lives!!!

Utterly predictable and yet glaringly obtuse at the same time. The film tells us that trauma is multi-generational... then tells us again... and again....

Every inch of this scenario can be seen coming from the bleachers. The result is neither shocking nor revelatory, just tired storytelling despite the frenetic pitch of the Hall's performance. Ms. Hall is a great actor as is Roth; pity they are wasted here.

There seems to be two aliens on the Great Plains in 1781. There's the Predator from somewhere in space and there's this girl from Beverly Hills 90210.

The second Naru opened her mouth the chronology jumped from late 18th century to the present. Her tone, phrasing and facial expressions took you instantly out of the time period and dropped you into some high school. She was more out of place than the Predator.

Not as dumb, numbing or atrociously directed as Army of the Dead, but the exact same POS movie. Every second of its 139 minutes was word for word, shot for CGI shot predictable. Risible and wretched.

No heartbeat. The film flatlines within the first 20 minutes. In a perfect metaphor for the film's relationship to its audience, Barbara (Clemence Poesy) actually appears aggravated that she has to converse with the Protagonist; to give him a modicum of information. (I don't care that she may have delivered the info before in another loop; it's simply makes for a truly insipid scene.) If she so obviously doesn't care, why should we?

Eadweard Muybridge's late 19th Century photographic studies of motion have more grace, passion and excitement.

The chords that accompany the opening shot of this costume drama are a direct rip-off of the Moody Blues song "Go Now." After struggling through 30 robotic, inexpressive minutes of this overly art-directed and stage-managed shell of a movie, I realized that the Moody Blues sampling was actually a covert warning from the production's music department: Go now, run, stop watching because there's nothing to see here beyond the wallpaper they used to cover up the gaping holes in the heart of the story.

A catalog of jump scares. Period.

Because Bertino has no interest in storytelling (see The Monster), the mecanhnics of his film making take the foreground. Once decoded (about 15 minutes in), the film's visual geography and camera placement become rote. Rinse and repeat. In scene after scene, the viewer is multiple steps ahead of the characters, what accounts for a plot, and where the bogeyman is hiding. The fate of the film making is as deterministic as that of the characters.

That said, there are good performances and some superb compositions, but ithey are ultimately in service to a lackluster script.

Closest thing to an early 60's Corman/Poe adaptation, but without Corman, without Poe, without Price, and without any of that cycle's unabashed theatricality. The Binding is covered in mothballs. Pulled from the horror closet in an utterly stale, stuffy, lifeless state, and in 2020 -- completely out of fashion. Not only does this film not contain a single moment of suspense or eerie atmospherics, it does not contain a single moment of interest.

Prep school attempt at refashioning the Polanski film. A modicum of style but absolutely no substance. Repellent characters, schoolyard dialogue, idiotic decisions.

Not funny. Not tense. Not worth the time.

Reviews suggesting that the end is abrupt are misguided. Every single scene in the film, bar one (the assault), are cut off. The form is the character, the character is the narrative.

Very, very disturbing film. Brilliant first (or any feature). Stellar lead performance. There are sounds of traffic and the city over the credits. All is good.

A premise without a plot; just a series of increasingly nonsensical interactions and character choices (and I use the word 'character' very loosely.) How Jordan convinced himself that this unprepossessing mess was a worthwhile endeavor is the real mystery of the movie. And telling himself and his cast that this is modern Grimm fairy tale about an evil stepmother is specious as it comes.

Always nice to see Stephen Rea on screen. Obviously, Rea and Jordan have been mates since Jordan's first film Angel, but Rea (and Huppert) are ill-used here. An embarrassment for all.

Not inspired, pilfered. Not visionary, childish. Not sardonic, obnoxious. Purpose of the film: we're bulletproof, so let's see what we can get away with.

In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Peckinpah appears in the final reel making a coffin for a child. He was burying the western as we knew it. Coens just pissed on the grave.

Wonder if the brothers will ever grow up?

A podcast, not a film. The worst of Cassevetes and Baumbach rolled into a therapy session without a coherent thesis or a single memorable shot. And the biggest irony is that Dorothea, Annette Benning's character, would have walked out of this movie with utter disdain if she happened into it in 1979.