The Monkey is exactly the kind of hilarious, madcap horror-comedy we need to inject a little life (and death) into cinemas this February. The latest from Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, The Monkey is based on the Stephen King short story of the same name and follows twin brothers who discover a mysterious wind-up monkey (don’t…
Presence is the latest film from director Steven Soderbergh who has one of the more interesting filmographies I’ve seen. It includes the Ocean’s Trilogy, Magic Mike, Contagion, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and Logan Lucky, a movie I really, really like. He was my most watched director last year too, as over the holidays I watched…
It’s hard to tell old stories in new ways. That’s especially true when the story in question is one that’s been told countless times since the 1890s. If you’ve never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), you’re still likely familiar with the story in some form or another. If not that, then you’re surely familiar with…
It’s been weeks, and there are images from Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist that haven’t left me. It’s an exquisitely crafted film, shot with care on VistaVision, a largely obsolete 35mm film format that hadn’t been used in the full production of a movie in decades. This is a large, dense film. In a strange way,…
The Order was one of the biggest surprises of AFF for me. I went into it with no expectations, not really knowing anything about it. What I got was one of the tightest crime dramas of the year so far. Of director Justin Kurzel’s previous work, I’d only seen his gritty, brooding adaptation of Macbeth,…
Our coverage of the movies we saw at the Austin Film Festival keeps moving along! This time I’m talking about Operation Taco Gary’s. Written and directed by Michael Kvamme, this comedy is a throwback to comedies of the early 2000s, even going so far as to cast Jason Biggs of American Pie fame. The two…
The Beldham opens with a title card, informing us of the meaning of its title: “Beldham” (alternatively spelled “beldam”)—an old woman; a witch. It immediately clues us in to what kind of monster we may be dealing with in this indie horror gem. Directed by Angela Gulner in her feature debut, the movie follows Harper…
My First Film is one of the most unique films I have seen in a while. From what I understand, the movie is at least partially autobiographical, based on events from the life of writer and director Zia Anger. It’s also incredibly meta. The movie stars Odessa Young as Vita, a young director recounting her…
Azrael, directed by E.L. Katz (Cheap Thrills) and written by Simon Barrett (You’re Next, The Guest), is the most hard-hitting movie I’ve seen at Fantasia so far, and it was one of my most-anticipated, too, solely because I saw the words “post-apocalyptic” and “Samara Weaving” in its plot summary. I didn’t need to know anything…
I went into Cuckoo with as little knowledge about it as possible, only really knowing that it starred Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, and what a wild ride it was! Cuckoo first premiered at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, but Shea and I were lucky enough to catch it for its…