“Stop walking me home” Making its rounds through underground film festivals, Honey Lauren‘s Dot Got Shot brings a relevant psychological punch with its ultra low-budget aesthetic. The acting is not the greatest and the cinematography choices may be a bit too artsy at times, but the story of Dot—a decorated policewoman haunted by the nightmares [...]

“You Left Me” After reading the letter that came with my screener for Jon Alex‘s 2 Kings, I was excited to see what magic was wrought by this young creative who wrote, directed, starred, and did everything but write the song. The praise was high and the name-dropping intriguing—both Norman Mailer and James Cromwell made [...]

“I didn’t know what was inside” One could say reapers are the contract killers out to release us from this mortal coil when time expires. We don’t know when or where our end will be, but it’s always looming out of sight—behind us, around a corner, or perhaps innocuously hidden right before our eyes. The [...]

“It’s just chasing shadows” Is it bad that the first thing to pop in my head after loving the gothic atmosphere of James Watkins‘ The Woman in Black was how boring Susan Hill‘s source novel must be? I can’t stop thinking Anne Rice-type bloat with flowery, dark vocabulary lulling you to sleep before the next [...]

“Oh, God. There’s a deer in the car.” If not for the cast list, I would treat Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire as the newest entry to the experimental, off-the-beaten path section of his oeuvre. Without mentioning the larger scale Che—which is quite possibly his least mainstream film of the aughts—this quiet actioner fits right in as [...]

“I can see his leg shaking from here” I’ll give TV movie scribe Pablo F. Fenjves light applause for hooking me during the first two thirds, but the real kudos go to documentarian Asger Leth and his ability to make even the implausibly contrived and impossibly far-fetched finale not take away from the entertaining little [...]

“I can’t get you out of my mind” You could learn a whole lot about a person by showing them Phil Giordano‘s The Empty Playground and asking what he/she thought. Are you one who sees the good in people and metaphors of a lost child unable to be saved or does your cynical nature overpower [...]

“Smiley leaves with me” When I first heard about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy I didn’t think it had a chance of living up to my expectations. It possessed an all-star cast, was director Tomas Alfredson‘s English-language follow-up to the brilliant Let the Right One In, and was adapted from an espionage thriller by John le [...]

“Careful what you fish for” I am and probably always will be a Guy Ritchie apologist. I blamed Madonna for Swept Away and even bought a Region 2 DVD of Revolver in case it never made its way across the Atlantic. So when the director signed on to do a blockbuster studio version of Sherlock [...]