Haunting and elegant. There’s a heartrending beauty in the character of Jennifer who is brought to life by Amanda Brugel in Jeremy LaLonde’s latest film, Ashgrove. Set against a backdrop of a global pandemic that threatens extinction, an intimate character drama plays out that could change everything. There is a thread running through LaLonde’s films,…
Tag: menacing
Saboteur (1942) – Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock delivers a fantastically paced thriller, that stirs in some patriotism and humour as every man Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) finds himself caught up in a conspiracy on the eve of war. Kane works in an airplane factory, and is doing his part for the blossoming war effort. But when he inadvertently helps a fellow…
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) – Wes Craven
My exploration of the zombie genre with DK Canada’s eminently enjoyable Monsters in the Movies book continues with this over-fictionalized adaption of a real anthropological exploration and documentation of real-life zombies by ethnobotanist Wade Davis. Director Wes Craven used Davis’ book of the same name as the launching point for his horror film starring Bill…
Summer of Night (1991) – Dan Simmons
This week, I dig into another Dan Simmons horror novel, and decided on Summer of Night. While not necessarily derivative of Stephen King’s It, there are striking similarities, although both prove to be very entertaining. Set in 1960, Simmons novel doesn’t quite mine the nostalgia factor as King did (It made me long for a…
The Great Silence (1968) – Sergio Corbucci
The recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Once Upon a Time in the West have all been previously covered, except for The Great Silence. Loco (Klaus Kinski) is stirring up lots of trouble in the Utah mountains. He and his band of bounty killers are cruel,…
The Mind Reels 