Most horror movies achieve their scares by jolting the viewer. They grab them by the collar and shake them about with a blood-curdling scream or a quick explosion of strings from the soundtrack. But nobody screams in Let The Right One In, an atypical horror movie that possesses the skill and discipline to engage its audience, not with jump scares and orchestral swells, but with chilling, unrelenting quiet. Continue reading
Given the recent setbacks in the struggle for gay rights, it can be difficult to view Milk without the specter of those disappointments looming just outside the screen’s borders. The film, which depicts the rise to power of Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay political figure, serves as a stirring call to arms for gay rights activists, and as a reminder that sometimes progress is possible only through dedication, perseverance, and sacrifice.
The trailer for the French film A Girl Cut In Two would have you think that the film is a taut, sexy, tense thriller about the violent love triangle between a beautiful girl and the two men who compete for her affections. What the film actually delivers is about as sexy and tense as Rush Limbaugh enjoying the effects of a painkiller binge.
In 1999, the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club became an obsession for aimless twenty- and thirty-something males, who closely identified with its examination of the alienation felt by the so-called “middle children of history”. The film continues to resonate with disenchanted corporate drones and Ikea shoppers everywhere who work jobs they don’t want so they can buy things they don’t need.
Though Palahniuk has written nearly a dozen books since that movie premiered, it has taken until now for a second adaptation of his work to reach the screen. But it remains to be seen whether Choke, another tale of young men struggling to give their lives meaning through questionable means, will have a comparable impact.
A large crowd of power-pop fans filled Bar Pink on Saturday to celebrate the release of The Powerchords’ red-hot full-length …Think I’m Gonna.