“Playing with of-the-moment vocabulary familiar on college campuses, the latest ‘Black Christmas’ upends several slasher conventions, even if the film is a step down from the director’s excellent ‘Always Shine.'”
“Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Nightingale’ will not attract the same cult following or breadth of widespread fan devotion as ‘The Babadook,’ but her latest marks significant progress in the filmmaker’s command of story and cinematic language.”
“With ‘Daniel Isn’t Real,’ Mortimer stands by his choices and doesn’t wobble. The result is a film that’s harmonious and undiluted, if prickly and divisive.”
“Like the Master of Suspense before him, Bong effortlessly blends the horrific and the comic en route to the icebox talk that has viewers questioning their own attitudes and beliefs through the unanswered mysteries of the story.”
“In dramatizing themes of absence and presence so thoroughly, ‘Klute’ embodies a central feature of neo-noir; as a self-conscious revision of a classic film cycle, noir is always both absent and present in neo-noir films.”
“One can’t help but wonder how Waddington might reinvigorate other sci-fi tales with her fairy tale stylings.”
“What allows Cattet and Forzani’s films to flourish is that they modify cinematic influences to accommodate today’s instant gratification culture.”
“‘Suburbia’ is a punk classic not just because it deeply understands and empathizes with its culture – the music, the violence, the clothes, the often-jarring lack of political sophistication – but because it understands something important about punk’s place in society at large…”
“‘Fast Color’ deserves a close look…”
“Miraglia’s deliberate interweaving of castles and glimmering blades taps into the one element that both Gothic and giallo art share: the ability to taffy-pull delight from terror. Both Poe and Bava would tip their hats.”
