• Halloween

    October 24, 2018 - By 

    For the Final Girl, nothing’s really final. Laurie Strode might have thought it was game over when a doctor in a raincoat put six holes in the chest of her masked attacker, but Halloween wasn’t even close to done with her. Strapped to the wheel of fate, she was brought back, again and again, for twenty years, enduring more nastiness, more reboots, more bloodline backstory. For survivors, surviving is a full-time job. For the eleventh film in the franchise, writers Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green (who also directs) plunged a butcher’s knife into the heart of the…

  • Stronger

    December 14, 2017 - By 

    For most of its running, Stronger is a watchable if unremarkable disaster biopic, admirably uncomfortable with terrorist attack cliche. It traces the story of Jeff Bauman, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, had both legs amputated above the knee after being caught in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, where he was cheering for his on again, off again girlfriend Erin. This is the second film based on the Boston attack released this year, but whereas Peter Berg’s typically muscular Patriot’s Day tracked the manhunt for the bombers, Stronger keeps its focus on personal consequences, John Pollono’s script working off Bauman’s memoir…