Killer Charm

Based on a true story that took place in Texas, and it's fairly riveting. A young nurses' aid in an old folks' home goes out of an evening. She drinks, drugs, and dials all while driving home, or should I say, all while slamming her car into a pedestrian. He goes slamming through her windshield and she doesn't even stop the car. She just keeps right on going all the way home! With him stuck through, blood flying, passersby getting the occasional eye-shot. Like I said, riveting. At one point in the poor guy's grueling night she goes out to her garage, where she has parked her car and passenger, whereupon she finds him awake. He begs her for help. AND SHE SAYS, "It's not my fault, you should have been watching where you were going."(!)This is a mantra she oft repeats, that it's not her fault. She acts like she can either be innocent or get him help, but not both. This flick is a great, engrossing ride.

Wild and woolly horror show. Psychopathic sadist of a serial killer fresh out of prison breaks into a home and destroys the family he finds. He is so emotional that he can't do anything right. He makes a mess of every murder to the point where he is found out as easily as if he were a child. He wastes the lives he encounters. The movie is good because one feels as if one is watching the real events. There is no prettying up, at least not easily discerned prettying up. The killer's emotions are palpable. Even though it is obviously a well thought out film it feels as if it were filmed on the fly. Amaze.

Ugh. What a mess. A young woman is kidnapped by a cult whose remnants then re-kidnap her a year later. It all has to do with the bringing of their god into the world. This here is a jumbled mish-mash of time jumps and hallucinations. What's more, it's not fun. Barely even scary, which is unforgivable.

This flick is a sharp tale of two women. The chemistry between Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively is strong and engrossing. The two women entwine with each other but nothing is what it seems. One is up to no good, but they both have deep secrets with the depth it takes to hold such secrets. They're great fun to watch and I suspect Paul Feig is much of the reason. Plus the soundtrack is a swinging French time. Two moms, a goody two-shoes and a power-to-reckon-with start hanging out. The two-shoes (Stephanie) is being used by the powerful woman (Emily) but she loves it. One day the Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her child from school and take him home with her, to her house. A week later and Emily still hasn't come to pick up her son.

One of my all-time favorites. Made in the 70s but set in the 60s in an uber-catholic world during the Kennedy administration, this movie is about catholic killings. It's magnif. Paula Sheppard is incredible, a wonderful actress at so young. Gotta love Brooke Shields. Such aplomb. She's like her own damn cult. The direction is many-layered. Asides like the landlord downstairs feel so right. That scene in the stairway when the aunt is stabbed is amazing. You can watch events on two different levels. The music is choice. A young girl is murdered during her first communion, right there in the church. Her barely-psycho sister is blamed but it doesn't quite fit. This is only the first murder.

Bette Davis plays the 1930s version of a femme fatale, in which the fatal part is because of a curse rather than because of her fatal allure. La Davis plays a Broadway actress who has brought her every man, producer and play to ruin because she's cursed. Now no one will cast her in a play so she drinks herself into oblivion. Enter goody two-shoes Franchot Tone who's going to save her, until he falls in love with her. Bette Davis is mesmerizing; she's so fun to watch. The movie itself, though, is so dated that the abruptness of emotions and reactions are false. It's that last scene - the absurdity of the ending is the movie's biggest downfall.

A sun-drenched joy in the happy-family parts and a gloomy horror in the sad work-slave parts. This is one of a trio of newish Charles Dickens adaptations that I just love. This one, like Polanski's Oliver Twist and Mike Newell's Great Expectations, is readily available to the sensibilities of the millennial viewer. There isn't a sour note in the whole movie, well, okay, maybe one. Talking to you, Miss Anne Hathaway. This is the story of a mother, brother and sister who travel to the city to ask the recently dead father's rich brother to help. He doesn't; if anything he hurts. I don't quite understand why.

This is a basic b-flat flick if ever I saw one. I’m thinking, these are talented actors, but it seems like they and the whole movie are just going through the motions. It feels like, "Well, we better make a horror now." The flick gave me no fear, no tension, just run of the mill – play by numbers horror. If I've seen the steps gone through in this formulaic horror once I've seen them a thousand times. The characters don't take any logical action in response to their environment. I mean, what Daddy is going to don headphones while he's home alone with his young child who needs to be supervised, especially once spookiness enters the picture. A widower and his young daughter move to the country to get a new start when mommy dies. The twist is so common a twist that it's not even a twist.

A woman wakes to a nightmare scenario; she's hurt, kidnapped, locked in a room, alone, and she has no memory. The man who has her walks in and announces that he will not let her go until she falls in love with him. She doesn't know what to think. How could she? As days go on she starts to piece things together a bit. Much of the storyline is absurd but just as much of it is absorbing. The cast is about as spare as they come, with only a handful of actors, but the two stars are spot-on.