November 15, 2025 “Self Driver” (*1/2 out of four) was a lurid psychological melodrama about an Uber driver (Nathaniel Chadwick) who joins a new money-making app involving driving but finds his psychological limits are put to the test over the span of a long night in which he encounters the heights and depths of depravity and society. Starts off well and wires you into the fervid pulse of its lead character and scenario but soon goes afield and wallows in self-indulgent unpleasantness and loses its grip. Writer/director Michael Pierro pays obvious stylistic homages to “Taxi Driver” but the meter on this one runs out long before it’s running time is up. Continue reading →
November 15, 2025 “Creeper In The Woods” (*1/2 out of four) was a by-the-numbers clunker about a group of friends (Sydney Spaulding, Mackenzie Aaryn, Kirsten Henriquez, and others) who go on a camping trip in the middle of the woods where they are (yawn) menaced and slashed by a deranged hillbilly (Brandon Yates) known as The Creeper. (Does this sound at all familiar?) Synthetic amalgam of elements from “Wrong Turn” and “Cabin In The Woods” which were already rip-offs of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Deliverance.” Film is only made for junior-high kids with low-attention spans who’ve never seen any of the above. Continue reading →
November 15, 2025 “Fan Of Mine” (*1/2 out of four) was a sordid psychodrama about a world-famous pop star (Angeleah Speights) who becomes fixated on one of her female fans (Sylena Rai) which derails her career and her sanity and blurs the lines for all of them between fixation and fear and the chilling price of fame. Intriguing psychological material is bungled by amateurish filmmaking and lame script and characterizations. 1981’s “The Fan” told similar material with more verve and resonance. Speights is a knockout in the lead but film is unlikely to find many “fans” of its own. Continue reading →
November 11, 2025 “Bang Bang” (*1/2 out of four) was a gritty but grimy underworld melodrama about a long-retired boxer (Tim Blake Nelson) obsessed with rectifying the sins of the past and enacting revenge on the boxer (Glenn Plummer) who defeated him and ended his career. Inspirational melodrama has little inspiration or emotional resonance since Nelson’s character (and performance) is unlikeable and thus film wallows in unpleasantness and never delivers the knockout punch it wants. Plummer is wasted in key supporting role; his role in “South Central” was similar to Nelson’s but carried much more bang and passion. Continue reading →
November 11, 2025 “Delivery Run” (*1/2 out of four) was a desperate horror melodrama about a food-delivery driver (Alexander Arnold) who is driving in the dead of winter through the Minnesota wilderness where he is pursued by a crazed snowplow driver (Jussi Lampi) who will not stop until he is dead and things start to get really ugly on the highway. Potentially solid B-movie material is usurped by unlikeable characters and weak screenplay. Obviously inspired by Steven Spielberg’s “Duel” and (to some extent) “Joy Ride” but fails to “deliver” any significant quota of thrills or scares. Continue reading →
November 11, 2025 “Rumpelstiltskin” (* out of four) was a wooden horror adaptation of the classic German fairy tale about a young woman (Paula Marcenaro Solinger) who risks her life to protect her newborn son by making a deal with the title forest creature (Aron Brough) who enacts bloody vengeance on her and her family. Fans of horror would be better served by watching the Disney original for more scares and certainly better acting and filmmaking. By this point, the novelty of adapting classic stories into horror films has seriously run out of gas. This makes either of the “Winnie The Pooh” thrillers look like “Halloween” by comparison. Continue reading →
November 10, 2025 “Meat Kills” (** out of four) was a pretty empty Dutch horror comedy about a young woman (Caro Derkx) who films a pig farm’s cruelty in order to join an animal activist group; upon finding that the pigs are all dead, the leader of the group (Sen Ben Yakar) enacts bloodthirsty revenge on the farm leader (Sweder de Sitter) and his children leading to a bloody battle to the death for them all. First Dutch film to be rated NC-17 certainly doesn’t spare you any in-your-face blood and gore but it becomes numbing after a while. Highly influenced by early Peter Jackson (particularly “Bad Taste” and “Dead/Alive”) but lacking his nimble and macabre touch. Continue reading →
November 10, 2025 “Icefall” (** out of four) was an iciliy cold action melodrama about a young Native American land baron (Bashar Rahal) who captures a notorious poacher (Joel Kinnaman) and plans to execute his death only to learn that the poacher is aware of a crashed plane in a nearby lake carrying millions of dollars and will offer this in exchange for staying alive. Striking wintry and snowbound locations are a plus but you soon realize that you simply don’t care about any of the characters or their outcomes. Another Coen Bros. imitation (of “Blood Simple” and “Fargo” in particular) that falls short. Final film of Graham Greene although he’s wasted in a disposable role. Continue reading →
November 10, 2025 “The Astronaut” (*** out of four) was a skillfully done sci/fi melodrama about a space explorer (Kate Mara) who crashlands back to Earth and is then placed in quarantine by an imposing general (Laurence Fishburne) and she begins to unravel and suspect that something otherworldly has followed her home. Writer/director Jess Varley builds the tension gradually and eerily in a way that harks back to Ridley Scott’s “Alien” in style and themes and is anchored by Mara and Fishburne’s strong performances. Remake of a 2020 Russian art hit “Sputnik.” Continue reading →
November 10, 2025 “Black Phone 2” (*1/2 out of four) was a wrong number about a grown-up Finn (Mason Thames) and his sister Gwen (Madeline McGraw) who begin receiving disturbing premonitions and nightmares about the killer (Ethan Hawke) they thought was dead but they soon realize that not all evil things stay buried. Well-made but yet another empty pile of fake scares and omens straight off the Blumhouse assembly line. Fans of the original (I wasn’t) may want to check this out but others will want to hang up long before film’s unsatisfying ending. Continue reading →
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