Duran Abourezk

A brutally stupid plot and unconvincing direction refuse to sell what should be a simple and compelling premise. Five kids are stuck in a cabin while back to back blizzards knock out the power, bury the roads, and plunge temperatures. Despite this, we never see more than six inches of snow outside, nor do we (but for one scene) see anyone's breath, nor do we see anyone don any clothing item heavier than a fashionable puffer. The plot works in a sleep depravation story angle that balloons into delusions of "evil poisonous snow" and has the cast turning on one another. The third act manages to land a couple scenes, and the movie seems to want to evoke the isolation, panic and uncertainty of the pandemic, but it offers neither clarity or catharsis.

Frozen has a simple premise that will resonate with anyone who has ridden an especially high and lightly populated ski lift: what if I got stuck up here overnight? Some good camera work and occasional splashes of piercing dialogue sell the existential dread of being forgotten about and left on a high mountain to die. Unfortunately, the film feels the need to expand on the (already improbable) premise by adding ravenous wolves and frustratingly stupid decision making to the mix. All of this builds to a ending that is as contrived and undeserved as much of the third act before it. Two stars.

Duran, this message is from you from the future! You watch "Bodies" and it's just, ok. The show's run is two episodes too long and milks it's (predictable) plot twists too much. Any amount of tension is lost and by the last episode you are no longer interested in following the thin time travel logic and are just waiting for it to be over. You can prevent untold anguish by skipping it. Know that you did not love "Bodies."

Yeah, DC is ready for a reset.

Great camera work and a well executed dystopia. The movie uses a minimalist approach to character and story development, with mixed results. The scene where the battle scarred protagonists are confronted with a group of over-privlidged prom-goers is rich with subtext, and is genuinely haunting. Still, major plot points do get lost, and the characters are (overall) pretty thin. Thankfully the sincerity of the actors keeps us engaged. Not all of the elements have aged well, but The Warriors still put up a good fight.

The first 20 minutes of the film belong to Carol Kane, who sells the premise of a baby sitter terrorized by increasingly disturbing calls from a deranged stalker. She is aided by careful cinematography and exact choices with scoring and audio. The ringing of the phone increases in volume each time, and the camera focuses on the mundane rotary phone for long intervals that are only occasionally punctuated by a ring. The music is tense and ominous, vs the stalker's soft and gentle voice. Carol is small statured and also soft spoken, and it seems as if the large house and surrounding pitch black could swallow her whole. The first act balances all of the elements into a steady escalation in tension and an excellent crescendo. The second act is less focused. The story picks up seven years later with John Clifford, a private eye who is on the trail of "the caller" aka Curt Duncan. Duncan has escaped a mental institution, and is now off his medications and therapeutic support, and is beginning to unravel. At first, Duncan is problematic, but harmless. He ineptly tries to woo a woman named Tracy who he meets at a bar, and his first attempt earns him a beating from another patron. His efforts become more desperate, however, and soon Tracy fears for her safety. His collapse is aggravated by Clifford, who has no character arc to follow, and is wholly focused and finding and destroying Duncan. Quite simply, the middle of the movie under-delivers. It looses much of the well crafted tension from the first act and replaces it with an underdeveloped idea: that Duncan is a gentle soul who is not fully aware of the violence he is capable of delivering and is, in effect, a stranger to himself. It's an interesting subplot, but there are problems with the execution. None of the other characters are on Duncan's side, (Tracy feels, at best, pity for him, but that is soon replaced by fear) which just leaves the audience. In 1976, audiences were able to connect to Travis, the dangerous loner from "Taxi Cab Driver." But Travis took his rage out on abusive pimps and human traffickers, not women and children. By comparison, Duncan is hardly a sympathetic character. Finally, not enough time is given to exploring Duncan further or fleshing out this concept in full, and we are soon back to the mechanics that powered the start of the movie. The third returns to the cat and mouse game between Duncan and Jill, the babysitter from seven years ago, now fully grown. The movie is able to quickly reclaim most (not all) of it's earlier rhythm, and we are suddenly back to a soft, but menacing voice calling from a darkened house to ask: "have you checked on the children?" Four stars for a well executed premise with a clumsily conceived sub-plot.

The Block Island Sound uses a limited toolset (including a great cast, foreboding atmosphere, and spot-on soundtrack) to maximum effect in this slow burning other-worldly encounter yarn. The movie also executes a troubled family subplot, thanks in large part to Michaela McManus's portrayal of Audrey. Audrey is a single mother who must balance her desire to help her rapidly deteriorating father and brother with her concern for the safety and well-being of her young daughter. She has a lot of narrative weight on her shoulders, but she carries it well. In fact, the movie actually slips up a by over-focusing on the slow unravelling of her brother Harry (played by Chris Sheffield). Initially, watching Harry succumb to the constant influence of dark powers is interesting, and builds tension. Eventually, repetition kicks in, and the story stalls. Side characters like Tom, the father of our two main characters, and Dale, the conspiracy theorist who almost sees the big picture, have a similar trajectory: they set the atmosphere and steal the show early on, but through heavy repetition they lose their impact. Still, the MacManus brothers (writer/directors) manage to inject some excitement into the third act with a well delivered performance from Jeremy S Holm as a reformed abductee who delivers an unsettling and dire prophecy to Audrey. Sure enough, Harry then becomes completely enthralled by his mysterious overlords, and it is up to Audrey to try to bring him back. The movie closes out with an innocuous bit of dialogue from earlier in the film. When framed against the final moments of the movie, this innocent enough sounding piece of audio presents a sobering perspective of our relatively small place in a vast universe.

There has a been a metric butt-ton of badass female assisin flicks in recent memory. "Kate" doesn't offer innovations. "Kate" simply nails the execution. This is a full-fleged and well delivered action entry. Nearly every frame has a nod to legacy shoot-em-ups, and half the fun was spotting the Easter eggs. There are some tired tropes, (a female lead with a surrogate child, gratuitous Yakuza stereotypes) but overall "Kate" nails the genre without going full camp. Finally, "Kate" is content to tell a single, focused story, resisting the urge to set up a franchise. "Kate" kills. End of story.

Spoiler. I didn't care. At the end of the movie when the main character takes a fatal bullet wound to the chest just as it seems all her dreams have come true... I just didn't care. I don't know if I was supposed to feel sympathy for a fallen antihero, or rightous satisfaction at the slaying of an unscrupulous theif, OR be lost in cognatine dissonance trying to reconcile both views. I didn't know what the movie was going for, and I didn't care. I was just glad it was over.

"Dracula" wants you to know that it is really, really clever. It's not. While there are relevant and urgent themes of toxic predatory masculinity xenophobia and disease inherent to the source material, the show doesn't care. Instead we watch the voyage of the Demeter play out like a whodunnit (can you guess?!), and ruminate on why Dracula fears the cross. "Dracula" certainly has great moments, like when a habit sporting Agatha Van-Helsing faces off against the naked and blood soaked Count at the gates of a Transylvanian abbey, but it spends way more time overdressing forced plot twists. Some effort is made at exploring the titular monster, but without a fresh take on the character what do we have to learn? Showrunners Moffat and Gatiss were able to break Sherlock Holmes out of the Victorian mold and reinvigorate the material for a modern audience. Somehow, "Dracula" just doesn't have a pulse.