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Now Playing: ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ is a terrifically loopy time travel odyssey
By: Gordon Briggs
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We start in a diner, where people are having a meal and drinking coffee without a care in the world, when all of a sudden, he appears. A strange, disheveled… Read More
Now Playing: ‘Castaway Cinema’ – three daring desert island movies
By: Gordon Briggs
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I enjoyed Sam Raimi’s new film Send Help. The movie is the latest example of what I call ‘Castaway Cinema’, a small sub-genre of films that explore what happens when,… Read More
Now Playing: ‘Send Help’ is a creepy and comedic castaway story
By: Gordon Briggs
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I call them “castaway movies.” They’re adventure stories where one or more characters must survive both the untamed wilderness and their own demons after they’ve been washed up on a… Read More
Now Playing: Pulling back the curtain on Shakespeare
By: Gordon Briggs
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I enjoyed the recent film Hamnet, but it is one of several adaptations that have focused on the challenges of staging a Shakespearean production. Here are three movies about producing… Read More
Now Playing: ‘Hamnet’ the play is the thing
By: Gordon Briggs
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This was a beautiful film. We have seen several adaptations of Shakespeare plays, including films like Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love (1998) and All is True (2018), which each… Read More
‘No Other Choice’: When finding the right job is murder
By: Gordon Briggs
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Yesterday, Man-su was a gainfully employed factory worker with a wife, a house, and a family. But now he’s been fired. Out of work for months, Man-su is desperate for… Read More
Now Playing: ‘It Was Just an Accident’ – A remarkable thriller where past and present collide
By: Gordon Briggs
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I love movies about the past. I don’t mean historical dramas; I mean those films where some trauma from the past breaks through and disrupts the present. It Was Just… Read More
Now Playing: Three essential cyberpunk movies
By: Gordon Briggs
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Cyberpunk, with its dystopian urban settings, corporate overlords, and cybernetically enhanced bodies, is a style that has been used to describe several memorable science fiction movies. However, after being disappointed… Read More
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’: When looking good isn’t good enough
By: Gordon Briggs
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Let me start this review by admitting that I enjoyed the first two Avatar movies. While the films remain visually entrancing, I found this latest installment to be frustratingly repetitive…. Read More
Lowlifes, Liars, and Thieves: The Cinema of the Safdie Brothers
By: Gordon Briggs
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The new film, Marty Supreme, has generated both critical praise and serious award-season buzz for its director, Josh Safdie. However, before he went solo, Safdie was part of a directing… Read More
‘Marty Supreme’ is one of 2025’s most entertaining films
By: Gordon Briggs
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In the middle of this movie, there’s one hell of a scene. Down on their luck and hard up for cash, the characters Marty (Timothée Chalamet) and his best friend… Read More
Three of 2025’s best films
By: Gordon Briggs
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For devout cinephiles like myself, this is the busiest time of the year. The holidays mean many multiplexes are packed with family-friendly blockbusters. Awards season brings plenty of prestigious films… Read More
Three standout horror movies from 2025
By: Gordon Briggs
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If you are a horror fan, 2025 gave audiences plenty of bizarre and beautiful films. We had suburban horror with Weapons, rom-com horror films like Companion and Together. We even… Read More
‘Train Dreams’ is a haunting frontier film and one of the year’s best
By: Gordon Briggs
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Train Dreams follows the life of quiet laborer Robert Grainier in the early 20th-century American West. Depicting his hard work building the railroad and his happy life with his wife… Read More
‘Blue Moon’ breaks biopic conventions to cast an enchanting spell
By: Gordon Briggs
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What a charming movie Blue Moon is. I’ve been hesitant to watch many new biopics. Despite their best intentions, many of them feel like sanitized stories that often smooth down… Read More
Three masterful murder mysteries
By: Gordon Briggs
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Wake Up Dead Man is the latest installment in a series of whodunits from director Rian Johnson. His Knives Out series is packed with references to past murder mystery movies…. Read More
‘Wake Up Dead Man’ will restore your faith in the whodunit
By: Gordon Briggs
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I love a good whodunit. The idea of a dead body, an isolated location, and a room full of potential suspects, all played by a gang of talented actors, has… Read More
Three eerie early films from Yorgos Lanthimos
By: Gordon Briggs
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The new dark comedy Bugonia is a strange story about isolation and alienation from prominent director Yorgos Lanthimos. As the director has achieved mainstream success, I want to highlight three… Read More
‘Bugonia’ is another bleak and bizarre black comedy from Yorgos Lanthimos
By: Gordon Briggs
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Powerful alien overlords are secretly controlling humanity. These aliens are actually disguised as ordinary-looking people and have been manipulating humans for generations. At least that’s what a disgruntled factory worker… Read More
‘The Lost Bus’ spins a real-life story into a tense tale of survival
By: Gordon Briggs
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Recently, there have been numerous sequels, reboots, and remakes flooding theaters. In the rush to capitalize on the familiar, I want to praise The Lost Bus, a tense and effective… Read More
Frankenstein on film: Three movies that grapple with the mad scientist
By: Gordon Briggs
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The new adaptation of Frankenstein is just one of several films that have been inspired by the story or are direct adaptations. While Boris Karloff’s ’30s version of the monster… Read More
Frankenstein is a striking monster movie about science gone awry
By: Gordon Briggs
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Upon reflection, I enjoyed this new Frankenstein film. You already know the basics of the story: an ambitious scientist who wishes to create life spawns a powerful but misunderstood creature… Read More
When life is no fairy tale: three dark fantasy films inspired by classic fairy tales
By: Gordon Briggs
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Once upon a time, long before Disney sanitized many of them, Grimm’s fairy tales were ominous works meant to warn children about the evils of the world. Occasionally, we get… Read More
One of the year’s freakiest horror films is also a fairy tale
By: Gordon Briggs
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Before Disney sanitized most of them for American audiences, fairy tales were dark and twisted stories meant to frighten children into behaving. So, for this Halloween season, I would like… Read More
When horror doesn’t need humans: three disturbing films with dogs and other animals
By: Gordon Briggs
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The new horror movie, Good Boy, is quickly becoming a minor hit, thanks to good buzz and the clever hook of being a horror film that takes place from a… Read More