Author: Ezra Stead

Faye (Dale Dickey) lives alone in a trailer currently parked at a campsite overlooking a view so gorgeous it’s hard to believe it is real and not a matte painting of the type employed as background in old Hollywood westerns. She lives simply, always finding the perfect song for the moment on her old transistor…

It is nearly impossible to begin describing the relentlessly entertaining over-the-top Indian historical action epic RRR (Rise Roar Revolt), so let’s begin roughly where the movie does, with the introductions of its two lead characters. Based on real Indian revolutionaries from the early 20th century, each is given an entrance that an average action movie…

An amuse-bouche of mystery and rising tension bursts into shocking flavor in the early courses with the introduction of a familiar but always startling red claret, finishing with redolent notes ranging from The Wicker Man to Ratatouille (the movie, not the “peasant dish” after which it was named), which combine in the climactic denouement to…

The original Orphan was a “real slice of trash deserving of a long shelf life,” as our own Matt Cale wrote in his excellent review of the crafty and relentlessly entertaining 2009 thriller. “Or at least until Esther rises from her watery grave for a sequel.” Thirteen years later, we finally have that sequel (actually…

On its surface, Little Monsters is merely a fun, visually compelling mashup of Peter Pan and Beetlejuice, as well as a movie that seriously overestimates the charms of one Howie Mandel. Beneath that surface, its intended subtext taps into common childhood anxieties about moving to a new place, fitting in, and the overwhelming dread that…

It was a nine-year wait between writer-director-producer-actor-composer Shane Carruth’s first film, Primer (perhaps the most realistic, challenging, and compelling time-travel movie ever made), and his masterpiece, Upstream Color, an even more complex and challenging movie, and certainly a more visually appealing one. It has now been nine years since the latter was released, with no…