“One tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense!” That tagline from 1974’s The Towering Inferno could easily have been slapped on Renny Harlin’s Deep Water. Maybe combined with “You’ll Never Go in the Water Again!” from Jaws. […]
David Rooney
9 posts
Anyone who has seen Charlize Theron kick butts onscreen knows she has the tough athleticism to handle herself in the most punishing action roles. Whether with firearms and blades, fists and feet or behind the […]
Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan don’t exactly break the mold with Michael, nor do they stuff it with major revelations. But they tap into a vein of melancholy underlaying the stratospheric success that’s surprisingly […]
Irish director Lee Cronin showed a lip-smacking eagerness to exploit parental fears in The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise. He doubles down on that thematic horror staple in his vigorous reimagining of The Mummy, a bonkers […]
Righteous indignation over the travesty of the American justice system and staunch advocacy against wrongful incarceration make it natural to want to applaud The Fear of 13. The same goes for Adrien Brody’s intensely wrought performance […]
Merciful Mother Mary, deliver us from evil. Or from whatever this risibly self-serious metaphysical nonsense about performance and possession, creation and exorcism, aims to be. David Lowery is an adventurous director, alternating studio material like Pete’s Dragon, The […]
Every shark movie owes a debt to the sacred mother Jaws, but the thriller about bitey creatures spreading carnage and mayhem in bad weather that Thrash most resembles is Alexandre Aja’s superior nail-biter, Crawl. (By the way, where is […]
Few if any modern plays retain their scalding currency decade after decade like Arthur Miller’s heartrending commentary on the hollowness of the American Dream, Death of a Salesman. Joe Mantello’s psychologically probing Broadway revival takes place […]
There may be no more fertile ground for screen horror than the enchanted woodlands of the Emerald Isle, which makes it disconcerting when Hokum — a title not entirely inaccurate — opens with a desert […]