Grab the closest rock. Leave the silver bullets. And cue the New Kids on the Block. It's time to discuss It. Let's start with some background info—how familiar were you with the story coming into the new film? Adam Wagner: I knew there was a clown. And some kids. And… Read more
“They were close to the end of the beginning…” After months of waiting, several premiere date pushbacks, and cries from fans for a trailer—it’s finally here! The film adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower, has an official trailer: Check out our Dark Tower reread!
The Girl with all the Gifts is set in a dystopian world where a fungal spore has infected most of the world’s population, causing the infected to lose their mental functions and feed on human flesh. Based on M.R. Carey’s 2014 novel of the same name, The Girl with all… Read more
It’s a long stretch to call Lady in the Lake—the dark suspense film from 1947 that Robert Montgomery directed and starred in—a Christmas movie. But, you know, I’m not much of a holiday films buff, and I wanted to write a seasonal post for this site, so a film noir… Read more
Batman takes a step back from fighting crime to participate in it, as Ben Affleck directs and stars in the dramatic crime thriller Live by Night. Adapted from the award-winning bestseller by Dennis Lehane, Live by Night is set in the Roaring ‘20s, around the Prohibition era. Affleck plays the… Read more
To play a convincing Sherlock Holmes you need to be long and lean. To play a convincing Poirot you need to be… well… David Suchet. To play Georges Simenon’s great detective Jules Maigret, the requirements aren’t as specific. That’s one of the great things about Maigret. We know he’s a… Read more
In thinking about Jules Dassin’s 1950 work of film noir Night and the City in relation to the same-named 1938 novel by Gerald Kersh, one striking thing to consider is the fact that Dassin said he never read the book. He apparently fully relied on the screenplay of Jo Eisinger,… Read more
When a fierce storm all but dooms a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead and left behind. But Watney isn't dead, and when he wakes up, not only does he have supplies only meant to last one month, he also has no way of contacting NASA… Read more
Falstaff might just be Orson Welles’s greatest film. Welles himself thought so, and many among his legion of devoted fans think so. That the film remains largely unseen in America has little bearing on this opinion. In his home country, Welles is still most closely associated with Citizen Kane and… Read more
When his wife is killed and his daughter left in a vegetative state after a brutal assault, a staunch liberal seeks comfort in vigilante justice, gunning down the monsters who stalk the savage street of 1970s New York City. And in the end, he finds himself deeply conflicted over his… Read more
