Elisabeth Moss is still fleeing Gilead. In The Invisible Man, Leigh Wannell’s psychodramatic remake of H.G. Wells’ science-fiction classic, she plays Cecilia Kass, wife/prisoner in a sleek fortress owned by a tech billionaire on a secluded cliffside in Northern California. He controls every aspect of her life — what she wears, eats and says, and increasingly what she thinks — … [Read more...]
Doppelganger portals and inequality in America: This is ‘Us’
As a horror movie setting, a groty carnival on the beaches of Santa Cruz in 1986 is a ready-made place to start. And so begins Us, Jordan Peele’s gripping new creep show. A proud father has just won his curious little girl, Adelaide Wilson (Madison Curry), a prize at one of the midway games. She picks a Michael Jackson “Thriller” T-shirt (speaking of scary things), many … [Read more...]
‘The Square’: An absurdist look at the shape we’re in
In the inciting incident of Ruben Östlund’s The Square, Christian (newcomer Claes Bang), the chief curator of a modern art museum in Stockholm, is walking to work when he encounters a terrified woman racing through a courtyard, screaming that an assailant is going to kill her. With the help of a stranger, Christian protects the damsel from her muscle-bound predator, defusing … [Read more...]
Punches in pedestrian ‘Chuck’ rarely land
The road of the almost famous is paved with frustration, resentment, anxiety and, for a certain type of self-destructive personality, awfully bad behavior. That’s the lasting takeaway of Chuck, an otherwise pedestrian biopic of the former heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner. A New Jersey pugilist known around his community for his “dirty” style in the ring and his loose blood … [Read more...]