Relic is a singularly magnetic motion picture that burrows under the skin leaving a lasting scar, the hushed uncertainty of the devastation left behind in its wake impossible to forget.
Shirley paints the author with an insightfully lush and vibrant brush, her relationship with Rose allowing for a level of empathetic understanding that makes enduring all those ethereal metaphorical ghouls, ghosts and demons magnetically worthwhile.
The Vast of Night is a fast-paced genre excursion into the mysterious unknown. It held me breathlessly spellbound for almost 90 minutes, the haunting nature of the questions it enthusiastically asks as prescient and as essential now as they ever were back during the McCarthyism 1950s time period in which this tale is set.
The final cry The Whistlers makes is one of forgiveness and grace, the unspoken connective pull of human understanding impossible to resist.
The Lodge is powerfully haunting stuff, things building to a climactic turn of events that are as shocking as they are in some ways equally warranted.
The final third is a massive disaster that’s bewildering in its narrative ineptitude, and as I sat there in the theatre I was dumbfounded how those involved with Fantasy Island thought any of this was a going to play even reasonably well with a paying audience.
The Rhythm Section just can’t keep the beat, and for a composition that initially showed so much promise for things to ultimately fall so flat the likelihood I’ll be playing this record again anytime soon is understandably slim.
The Gentlemen races towards an inventive conclusion that brought a smile to my face and sent me out of the theatre with a skip in my step. Ritchie returns to his Brit crime caper roots with thrilling aplomb.
Rian Johnson’s marvelous who-done-it (and how’d-they-do-it) all-star murder mystery Knives Out is more than just a witty modern-day riff on a familiar Agatha Christie-like scenario.