The less you know going into “Stoker,” South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s stylishly macabre horror-tale-cum-family-drama, the more fun there is to be derived from sitting back and letting its mysteries unfold. The film marks the English-language debut of the notoriously bloodthirsty filmmaker behind “The Vengeance Trilogy” (which includes the cult-classic “Oldboy”) and the vampire thriller […]
Adam Lubitow
Film critic for CITY Newspaper, writer, iced coffee addict, and dinosaur enthusiast.
Posted inMovies
“The Gatekeepers”
In the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Gatekeepers,” a gripping recounting of the history of the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh has achieved a remarkable feat. Not only in creating a powerful, passionate, and clear-eyed examination of an exceedingly complex subject, but in miraculously convincing all six surviving former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s secret […]
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“Planet of Snail”
“Planet of Snail” is the final presentation in the Dryden Theatre’s “Cinema Guild” series, which has screened a wide-ranging selection of recent movies from the foreign and independent film distributor, and it’s as sweet and life-affirming a film as you could ever wish to see. The South Korean documentary, from director Yi Seung-jin, offers a […]
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“Dead Man Down”
In “Dead Man Down,” the new thriller that marks the American feature debut of Danish director Niels Arden Oplev (he directed the original “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”), the filmmaker reteams with his former leading lady, Noomi Rapace, who plays another damaged young woman with a yen for revenge. The film, an odd mishmash of […]
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“West of Memphis”
In May of 1993, the bodies of three 8-year-old boys were found stripped naked, bound, and mutilated in a creek in a wooded area of West Memphis, Arkansas, known as Robin Hood Hills. The brutal and lurid nature of the crime led to rumors that the murders were part of a satanic ritual, incensing the […]
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“Snitch”
There’s no denying that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has come a long way from his days as a pro wrestler for the WWE. Since making the transition to film acting over ten years ago, he’s appeared in dozens of movies and has always maintained an immensely likeable screen presence. He’s got good looks, charisma to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
THEATER REVIEW: “The Book Club Play”
UPDATED 3/4/13: Edited to reflect that Geva Theatre has extended the run of “The Book Club Play” to March 23. Karen Zacarías’ “The Book Club Play” began life in 2008 and has continued to be workshopped, allowing the writer to polish and refine her script. It’s now five years later, but the current production, currently […]
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“Beautiful Creatures”
With the “Twilight” series mercifully at an end — though there are already murmurings about a possible reboot — movie studios are scrambling to recapture the attentions of those film’s audiences, raiding bookstore shelves and snatching up anything with the words “supernatural” and “love story” on the dust jacket. Warner Bros.’ Southern Gothic romance, “Beautiful […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Identity Thief”
There’s a scene late in “Identity Thief” in which Diana, the titular brassy, loud-mouthed thief, played by Melissa McCarthy, gets herself spruced up with a salon makeover, and we’re meant to marvel at how nicely she cleans up, and what a pretty woman she is underneath the clown-like makeup in which she shellacks herself. The […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Amour”
Austrian director Michael Haneke has become notorious over the years for his clinical, detached style of directing, which he often employs while telling stories that evoke a visceral, often intensely negative reaction in viewers. Whether it be the brutal torture of a family in his infamous “Funny Games” or the portrait of mentally unstable, masochistic […]
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REVIEW: RBTL’s “The Addams Family”
The Addams Family originally came to life in 1938 as a series of one-panel cartoons drawn by Charles Addams for The New Yorker. Since then the creepy, kooky group has existed in nearly every possible pop-culture medium: television series, movies, Saturday-morning cartoons, and even video games. So really it was only a matter of time […]
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THEATER REVIEW: Peeling the Apple
Now on stage at Geva Theatre Center’s Nextstage: a fascinating, polarizing work that brings to light some of the high human costs of our cherished tech gadgets.
