By: Trevor Chartrand Helmed by Finnish filmmaker Teemu Nikki, Euthanizer is one moody, atmospheric and, frankly, zany thriller. Between overlapping tones and strategic musical cues, this movie blends genres in a way that just shouldn’t work, but somehow does – it’s like combining the sweetest strawberries with jalapenos and raw sewage. Euthanizer somehow creates a sweet, yet spicy, story that will leave a bad taste in your mouth (in a good way).
Face of Evil, the feature-length debut from writer/director Vito Dinatolo, is a poorly paced and unremarkable horror-thriller that is more frustrating than frightening.
Having co-founded Hilarity for Charity with her husband, along with appearing in a handful of comedies (For a Good Time, Call…, Sausage Party), Lauren Miller Rogen flexes her filmmaking muscles in her directorial feature debut Like Father, Netflix’s latest dramedy.
If you have ever read Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet or have seen the 1995 documentary based on the book, you would know quite well that Hollywood was full of closeted queer individuals working as actors, directors, producers and everything else; trying their hardest to live their truest lives, while also keeping the truth hidden. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood tells another side of that story.
Inspired by her catalogue of photography and her award-winning documentary The Queen of Versailles, Lauren Greenfield set off to encapsulate global obsessions of self-value in her latest doc Generation Wealth. However, if you ask me, Generation Wealth has not only been inspired by Greenfield’s career and questions about society, but also by various unfinished stories seeking closure.
Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Jessica Biel, Milla Jovovich, Rob Reiner, and Tommy Lee Jones. These actors all play key parts in Shock and Awe, a political drama Reiner directs. Unfortunately, they’re all overqualified for this generic vehicle.
While it isn’t a perfect film, Angels Wear White is a bleak, meditative examination of girlhood and power.
Our House graduates from the “Paranormal Activity Institute of Small and Effectual Scares”. Actually, if we’re rating this supernatural horror against the Paranormal Activity series, it’s on par with the first two films, and ranks higher than the franchise’s final two chapters. For what it’s worth, that’s a decent sweet spot for Anthony Scott Burns and his feature-length debut.
For as rambunctious as Future World is, it’s awfully dull. This disappointing joint effort comes from directors Bruce Thierry Cheung and James Franco, although considering how successful Franco has been as a director, I wonder if he was hired to guide Cheung. Nonetheless, both filmmakers fail at establishing this tattered reality, which falls somewhere between a hellscape and a subsisting rebirth. The survivors also seem to be an uneven mix of copied characters from other movies.
