// Category Archive for: Movie Reviews

Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers

By Lisa Anderson

I have a confession to make: Until the movie Thor came out last summer, I didn’t know that Marvel comics had characters based (somewhat loosely) on Norse mythology. Like many people, I enjoyed Chris Hemsworth’s endearing portrayal of Thor, god of thunder, and Tom Hiddleston’s mesmerizing take on Thor’s brother Loki, the god of mischief. Their painful family history also added a layer of complexity to this summer’s Avengers, even if Loki was far less sympathetic the second time around.

Recently, I had the opportunity to see another interpretation of these characters. I watched Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers, a four-episode motion comic from Marvel Knights Animation. (For those who may not know, a motion comic is a slightly different style of animation, where the background is more static and the movements are less fluid.) It’s based on a 2004 storyline with no connection to the Marvel films.

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The Killer Inside Me

By Paul Casey

All art should be able to cover bad thoughts and bad people, as they exist, or could exist, without having to make these things pay back society in some sense. After reading Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me and watching Michael Winterbottom’s 2010 adaptation, it seems that many critics demand moral payback. Taking Lou Ford and making him a cautionary tale, or something for upstanding society to feel superior to, would make a lot more people comfortable.

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The Entity

By Less Lee Moore

As The Entity begins, we watch a single mother named Carla Moran waiting for her shift as a receptionist to end. Then, she rushes off to night school and enters her typing class after it has already begun. Frustrated, she makes a few errors on the machine. Much later, she comes home to her modest house in the suburbs, where the lights are out. There are dirty dishes on the table, which she proceeds to wash. Her younger daughters are already asleep, but she argues with her teenaged son about the mess. Soon she is getting ready for bed. A mundane start to a horror movie? Perhaps, until we soon realize that we are not the only ones watching Carla Moran.

The unseen voyeur makes itself known with a slap to Carla’s face. Stunned by the blood and the pain, she is soon shoved onto her bed, pillow over her face, and sexually violated by this malevolent, invisible being.

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The Dark Knight Rises

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Warner Bros. via ScreenCrush

Let’s be honest: The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t need my review. People are going to see it anyway. But I need to write a review. After the midnight showing I felt overwhelmed, exuberant, humbled. I couldn’t stop talking and thinking about the movie. I got home after 3 a.m., exhausted but unable to sleep. That hasn’t happened since the first night I saw Fight Club in 1999. Before that, it was in 1998, because of the movie Velvet Goldmine, with none other than Christian Bale—but I’m getting ahead of (behind?) myself. You want to know about The Dark Knight Rises.

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Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story

By Chelsea Spear

Photo © Mark Ostow

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Mark Sandman cut a wide swath through the Boston music scene. His first band, Treat Her Right, scored a local radio hit with the deadpan, eerie single “I Think She Likes Me.” The various bands with whom Sandman played—most notably Supergroup, Candybar, and Morphine—played two sets a night at the shoebox-shaped bar Plough and Stars. Even as Morphine ascended to a renowned trio with a devoted following, Sandman could be found playing at the annual Central Square World’s Fair, talking with elementary school classes about his handmade musical instruments, converting his loft apartment into a recording studio, or just hanging out in the back booth at the Middle East nightclub. His sudden, tragic death in Italy in 1999 left a huge hole, both in the music world where he made his mark, and within the Boston arts community. (more…)

Movie Review: Red Lights

By Less Lee Moore

This review also appears on The CillianSite.com.

At its most basic level, Red Lights is about two paranormal investigators who debunk cases of alleged psychic phenomena. Yet what the movie is really about is something more: Faith, and whether or not that faith can be shaken.

Sigourney Weaver plays Dr. Margaret Matheson, a psychologist who’s built her career on not just shaking, but also shattering, the faith of those who believe in the paranormal or supernatural. Cillian Murphy is her assistant, Tom Buckley, a physicist who in Matheson’s view is brilliant enough to be doing something more with his life than helping her. Early on in the film, Matheson asks Buckley why he stays with her. He doesn’t answer. Finding out the answer is part of what makes Red Lights so engaging.

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Prometheus: More Than A Spectacle

By Paul Casey

You will see Prometheus. Of course you will. If you have even a modicum of space knowledge of Ridley Scott, you will. Alien, Blade Runner, Prometheus. Even if this is a space version of Robin Hood, you have to see it. Ridley Scott is as important to science fiction cinema as Stanley Kubrick. We all know this. In spite of the cynicism and waiting Internet doom machine, you have no choice but to see this movie. And when you do, you need to see it in 3D.

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Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (Vie héroïque), Directed by Joann Sfar

By Ann Clarke

Being a diehard Serge Gainsbourg fan, I have wanted to see this film since I heard it was being made like three to four years ago. It was just so long overdue!

Eric Elmosnino as Serge Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, 2010

Many biopics suck, but that’s usually because they are about people who aren’t even that interesting or they are poorly cast and scripted. Sometimes they suck because the person in question was not only an asshole in the limelight, but even worse in private. Serge Gainsbourg embodies those traits to a degree, but that depends on your definition of an asshole. In many ways he was, but at least he was an interesting asshole! What I will give him credit for over many other dead asshole celebrities: he lived out loud. His antics were never candy-coated. He did what he did, and didn’t really give a fuck about how it was received—but, he actually DID care (he just didn’t let the world know that he did).
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The Cabin In The Woods (spoiler free!)

By Lisa Anderson

Do you love the horror genre, but feel like it’s in a rut? Do you like rooting for main characters in a terrifying situation, but find that in recent movies, they’re often one-dimensional or unlikable? Do you enjoy the exquisite treat of being confronted with a Big Bad that’s been built up for over an hour . . . but wish that could happen without a lot of sexism or torture porn?

If, so, fortunately, Joss Whedon agrees with you.
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Dinosaur Jr., BUG Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans

By J Howell

The bulk of BUG Live at 9:30 Club was shot by six fans who won an online contest to interview Dinosaur Jr. and film them performing their third album, 1988’s Bug, in its entirety at the legendary DC club in June of last year. The subtitle of “in the hands of the fans” isn’t just appropriate considering the film’s production, though. In the hands of fans from way back is the best place for the DVD.
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