Articles by Shannon Page

Reviews

The Funeral Home

If you’re looking for a movie that’s going to scare the pants off of you, Mauro Iván Ojeda’s The Funeral Home isn’t it.  Only the most sensitive and lily-livered viewers will be genuinely frightened by this Argentinian tale of hauntings and family drama.  But what it lacks in terror, The Funeral Home makes up for in moderately creepy weirdness and old-school, vintage visuals.

Reviews

Stars Fell on Alabama

The most interesting scene in Stars Fell on Alabama involves the lead couple participating in a complicated line dance to a country cover of “Gives You Hell” by the All American Rejects while they squabble over hurt feelings.  The scene is vaguely surreal and doesn’t make a lick of sense, but at least its absurdity is moderately compelling to watch, which is more than I can say for the rest of this bland and charmless…

Reviews

Honest Thief

Liam Neeson has been playing a variation of the same soft-yet-secretly-badass character since 2008’s Taken, and Mark Williams’ action-thriller Honest Thief is no exception.  Neeson treads well-worn ground as Tom, a former marine-turned-bank robber who wants to turn himself in and start a new life with his girlfriend, Annie (Kate Walsh).  His attempts to make amends don’t exactly go as planned when the FBI agents sent to take him in decide to keep the money…

Reviews

Elyse

Written and directed by Stella Hopkins, Elyse is an uninventive and poorly-written depiction of mental illness.  To watch Anthony Hopkins, Stella Hopkins’ husband and arguably one of the greatest actors of our time, perform in a film this tedious and inexpert is a truly baffling experience.  Mental illness is a complex and nuanced theme, but Elyse’s exploration of a wealthy but unsatisfied white woman’s inner world is obvious and riddled with clichés.

Reviews

Love in Dangerous Times

Written and directed by Jon Garcia, Love in Dangerous Times is among the first of what is sure to be a plethora of pandemic-themed projects that will emerge over the coming months, and even years.  Written and filmed entirely in lockdown, the film follows Jason (Ian Stout), a struggling playwright searching for love in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Reviews

Fugue

Fugue is one of those movies that requires its audience to be a blank slate to be truly effective.  If you want to get the most out of this film, it is best to go in knowing as little as possible about what happens.