What’s in a trailer? If it’s a horror movie, it’s terror. It’s the exceptional fear of the narrative crammed into a span of two minutes. It evokes the primal need to experience the film, to tiptoe into the unknown and conquer your fears, all with a guarantee that you’ll pee your pants in the process. That’s exactly what the trailer for Goodnight, Mommy, a mysterious new Austrian horror film, accomplishes. The trailer lit up the internet like a house on fire last week, and with very good reason. It features a mummy-like bandaged mom, children in masks, a desolate setting, and most importantly, a giant roach going into a mouth, and a subsequent crunch. Aglow with midday light in milky, shadowed interiors, the trailer encapsulates the fear of something you once knew and loved turning into something foreign and terrifying right before your eyes. But does the movie behind this much-talked about trailer live up to its ominous expectations? Yes and no. We saw a rooftop pre-release screening at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a very cool venue, and very much worth the trek for those in other parts of the city. Their rooftop screening series hosts an outdoor setting which oddly added to the experience, as did the giant and enthusiastic crowd that came out for the showing.
Read Moreby Robbie Imes
Smoking is a headache before you open your eyes
That ocular throbbing, snooze button lies.
Smoking is thirsty, cotton mouth grumble,
The wrong shoes on, down stairs stumble.
Smoking and bourbon, the night before
Early night promise, but home at four.
Read MoreBeing young parents is enough to drive you mad, and that’s just what happens in this quiet little indie from IFC. The story conquers new love, moving in together, getting married, meeting the family, and, finally, having a baby. And that’s just the first half hour. What follows is an unexpected, and deeply complicated, piece of a yuppie couple’s challenging life puzzle. With an intimate gaze at the cozy confines of a New York City apartment, this disturbing, sometimes muddy thriller delves into some big ideas with varying degrees of success.
Read Moreby Robbie Imes
I’ve hated you from the beginning.
When I woke up at three o’clock in the morning with a slight pain in my back. When I awoke again at four-thirty and looked outside, the still, dead tree indicating another cold day. Nothing had changed. Spring had come, but it was you holding it at bay.
The night before I feared you. As I went to bed, sayonara social media friends, the pit in my stomach grew. I knew you were there, wicked. You waited for me in the dark. You wanted to devour me. And I sort of wanted to die. I shut my eyes.
Read MoreIt’s been 55 years since we last heard from Pulitzer Prize winning author Harper Lee, but that silence ends this summer. Lee, inarguably one of the greatest writers of our time, will release a sequel to her famed and much beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird this year. Entitled Go Set a Watchman, the book is set to come out in July, with a proposed run of two million copies, says publisher Harper.
Read MoreLove lasts forever, or at least until we’re dead. And let’s face it, we’re all going to die. Some of us swiftly and tragically, some slowly over a gruelingly long period of time. Either way, we all face the same fate – that long black corridor of eternity. Our literary characters are no different. They’ll meet their fate at some point during the narrative, or maybe long after the final pages have turned, careening forever toward their destiny, entertaining us along the way.
When a character is taken from us, plucked from the narrative in some dramatic way, it hurts. It truly hurts. Their demise, though completely made up, haunts us. As in real life, we’re often left thinking about what could have been – if only they wouldn’t have made that stupid choice, got on that plane, lit that fire, etc. But, much to the author’s devilish delight, we must live with their deaths. And it’s even more heart wrenching when the characters are in love. Because what doesn’t make your eyes fill like water reservoirs more than a tragic love and death?
Read MoreWithin our personal existence there’s so many experiences we will never truly know. A select few of us experience the vast, depthless wonder of stepping onto the moon, while others live in the lap of luxury, afforded the gifts of all creation at their whim. There are triumphant athletes and hero firemen, medical geniuses and musical prodigies. Then there are those that live a less thrilling life by those standards, those that live the lives of the ordinary people of the world. Those that read about the extraordinary and wonder what could be, or maybe just don’t give a shit about any of it at all. They live with little means to make happiness bloom, and never fully know how much better their lives can be.
Enter Ugly Girls, the new novel by the fiercely talented Lindsay Hunter. Known for her assaultive flash fiction, pieces that shout the tales of crude and forgotten denizens of planet earth with visceral poetry, she’s an author with little regard to boundaries. Not surprisingly, her novel doesn’t stray far from that broken glass covered path. Written from several points-of-view, all of them deeply insightful to the human condition, and sometimes upsetting in their own morbid ways, you’re taken on a no-fucks-given journey through the minds of people who have not quite given up hope, but are standing, shaky legged and tippy-toed, at the brink of the cliff, ready to fall into the quarry of no turning back.
Read MoreAh, it’s that magical time of year when all the scary things in the dark can finally show their face. A celebrated season of spooky fun and gruesome delights, where kids can dress up like monsters and their parents have full permission to scare the shit out of them.
Read MoreWhat to say about The Tribe? Let’s start with this: it’s a very difficult film to watch in every respect. It’s a Ukrainian film entirely cast with deaf-mutes, most of them non-actors. There is no speaking in the film and no soundtrack, only ambient noise, and no subtitles, only sign language. It’s also terribly grim and brutal, and it’s unlike any movie you will ever see.
First time Ukrainian feature writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s film seems daunting from description, a 2-hour and ten minute movie featuring only deaf-mutes with no names. However, the movie is transfixing from the opening scene, and somehow through actions and reactions, you know what is unfolding before you. After a few moments you’re so engrossed you don’t even miss what’s not there.
Read MoreEdan Lepucki was just minding her own writerly business when she was suddenly thrust into the center of a pop culture frenzy earlier this year. When her book, California, came up on the TV screen one evening, brought forth by the hands of none other than Stephen Colbert, her fate as a famed author was sealed. Since then, she’s had quite the ride.
Read More
