A series of cute pencil sketches and a light mambo-esque theme song in the opening credits hardly prepare us for the first frames of Kill or Cure (1962), a wacky British comedy-murder mystery starring the delightful Terry-Thomas. As the theme song (featuring someone who sounds an awful lot like Thurl Ravenscroft) fades out, a slow…
Song One Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ★★★★✫ Released by Lakeshore Records Available digitally and on CD on January 13, 2015 – There’s something pretty great about an informal mixtape, a quick compilation for yourself, or a few random songs here and there you kept meaning to send to a friend and finally got around to…
Song One ★✫✫✫✫ Director: Kate Barker-Froyland Film Arcade (Official Site) 86 Minutes In Theaters Beginning January 23, 2015 (Limited) – When Franny (Anne Hathaway), a young graduate student estranged from her family, learns her younger brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield) has been critically injured, she races home to find him in a coma, and her estranged…
The Duke of Burgundy ★★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Peter Strickland IFC Films 106 Minutes In Theaters Beginning January 23, 2015 (Limited) – Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) arrives at the opulent home of Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a beautiful but stern entomologist. Angry at her maid Evelyn for her lack of perfection, Cynthia spends the day reading…
Loitering With Intent ★★★★☆ Director: Adam Rapp Metal Rabbit Media 80 Minutes In Theaters Beginning January 16, 2015 (Limited) – “What do writers do?” Dominic (Michael Godere) asks his friend Raphael (Iván Martín). “They go to the country. We’ll go to the country.” The chance to write and star in their own low-budget indie has…
The World Made Straight ★★★ / ★★★★★ Director: David Burris Millennium Entertainment (Official Site) 119 Minutes In Theaters Beginning January 9, 2015 (Limited) – Teacher-turned-drug-dealer Leonard (Noah Wyle) takes a wary interest in restless high school dropout Travis Shelton (Jeremy Irvine) in David Burris’ neo-Gothic drama The World Made Straight. Travis has shown up at…
Irish nationalists plot to rob the supposedly impenetrable Bank of England at the turn of the last century in the 1960 caper flick The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. The brainchild of a man known only as O’Shea (Hugh Griffith), the robbery is less about the money than the potential political ends; as…
Though it should rightly be an ensemble cast film, Night Must Fall, made as a follow-up to Albert Finney’s post-Tom Jones fame, is all his. He is undeniably the center of this movie, and he gives an incredible performance.
Poster for The Fan (1981). Be ye warned, gentle readers: there are spoilers ahead! “What is this ‘bliss’ shit?” shouts Belle Goldman, beleaguered assistant to Broadway star Sally Ross. A series of disturbing letters have been arriving for the aging star, but Belle can’t get Sally to understand how concerning they are. Sally,…
We Are the Giant ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Greg Barker Music Box Films (Official Site) 90 Minutes In Theaters Beginning December 12, 2014 (Limited) – Many in Western culture consider political protest to be romantic; others consider it tantamount to treason. This is particularly true in the United States, where protests held by minority groups…