“Sisu” – Silence is golden. Aatami (Jorma Tommila), the main character in Sisu, has two lines of dialogue in the film’s entire ninety-minute runtime. Both of them occur at the film’s end and neither of them define the word sisu. According to another character, Aino (Mimosa Willamo), sisu is a Finnish concept that cannot be…

Comedy troupe Broken Lizard has been trying to recapture the magic of their one legitimate hit – Super Troopers – for twenty-two years and five movies. Hoping the sixth time is a charm, they bring us Quasi. As in Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. And they bring it to us via Hulu. That’s just…

Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey! Was the elfin Toni Basil singing about Mickey Rourke, handsome, talented bastard that he was? Probably not, but after his terrifically understated performance in the 1981 classic Body Heat as a reluctant advice-giving arsonist I guess it’s possible. At that point…

“Renfield” – All bite and no bark. Six years ago, Universal Studios attempted to start a franchise called Dark Universe that was supposed to feature a bunch of classic horror characters. The first movie, The Mummy, did exactly what I predicted it would do. Namely, it crushed the franchise in its infancy. With the Dark…

It’s always a mystery when a gargantuan talent falls off a cliff. How can an auteur like Coppola, a man who ruled the cinematic landscape of the seventies by combining searing art with the most fantastic consistency, fail to make another great movie after 1979? A mesmerizing gift can’t just evaporate, can it? I mean,…