The Lemon Drop Kid (Lanfield, 1951)

My review for the DVD release of The Lemon Drop Kid can be found over at Slant. This  sugary screwball hoot starring Bob Hope as a candy sucking con man who digs himself deeper and deeper in debt with a brutal gangster is great fun, but not in the same league as Sturges or McCarey.

The Social Network (Fincher, 2010)

The Social Network is a thrilling cinematic labyrinth illuminating the many layers of the modern male ego, and it’s certainly in the top-tier of American efforts from 2010. Seeing it twice theatrically just made me more eager to sit down with the Blu-ray and dissect each scene more carefully. Also posted at InRO (it was Glenn Heath Jr. day apparently).

Let Me In (Reeves, 2010)

Matt Reeves’ Let Me In had me going for the first act, which contains some excellent and chilling riffs on the original Let the Right One In. Not surprisingly, it quickly becomes closer to a tween romance (Twilight!) than anything resembling horror. Also posted at InRO.

The Town (Affleck, 2010)

The Town is the disappointment of the year for me. I’m a deep admirer of Affleck’s debut film Gone Baby Gone, and this convoluted slice of regional mediocrity makes me wonder how Affleck pulled it off the first time out. Review posted at InRO.

Last Train Home (Fan, 2010)

Last Train Home intimately follows a family of Chinese migrants making the annual new year’s trek from city to country, and it ultimately becomes a fascinating dissection of family trauma and compromise. My review is one of four new pieces recently posted at In Review Online.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (Pierce, 1976)

I’ve contributed another essay to the Not Coming “31 Days of Horror” series, this time an analysis of Charles B. Pierce’s strange serial killer procedural The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The film has some truly demented and ambitious murder scenes, and I focus on the cinematic aspects of constructing such sequences in my essay. Let’s just say a trombone gets used in new and terrible ways.

Dark Age (Nicholson, 1987)

Killer crocs, killer subtext, and killer Australian locales clash in the brilliant horror film Dark Age. I’ve contributed a long essay on the fascinating movie for the “31 Days of Horror” marathon at Not Coming To a Theater Near You.