The Philly auteur delivers one of his strongest thrillers in quite some time — Philly auteur M. Night Shyamalan is back, this time with his latest foray into genre — Knock at the Cabin. This film has the director adapting Paul G. …

Jonathan Majors plays a bodybuilder on the cusp of insanity in an awards-worthy performance. — Elijah Bynum’s Magazine Dreams is a daring outing for its lead. Magazine Dreams is the latest vehicle for Jonathan Majors, the charismatic young actor who understandably has become somewhat ubiquitous at the multiplex. On my last trip to the local AMC, three out of the five trailers featured the actor…

One part adventure film and one part heist movie, KIM’S VIDEO is a breezy and entertaining documentary. — Being a former Blockbuster Video manager, easily one of my most anticipated films going into Sundance this year was David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s documentary on the search for the contents of one of Manhattan’s most iconic video stores: Kim’s Video. When the store closed its doors, owner Kim Yongman…

The young actor plays against type in her latest, which recently premiered at Sundance. — Daisy Ridley was easily one of my favorite aspects of the latest Star Wars trilogy. She gave Rey, the orphan junker, an undeniable light and a heart that drove the films with her larger-than-life performance. Even though I wasn’t alone in that summation of Ridley’s take in a galaxy far…

Laura Moss’s film is a visceral, heartbreaking take on the lengths a mother will go for their child. — birth/rebirth, which screened in the Midnight program at Sundance, begins with one of the most mind-melting 15 minutes I’ve witnessed in a film recently. It somehow then manages to leverage that into the foundation for 90 minutes of blood-drenched drama. The debut of Laura Moss feels like a feminist retelling…

Cronenberg shows us that every nightmare could be another man’s daydream. — What might be Brandon Cronenberg’s most divisive film yet, Infinity Pool, recently screened at Sundance. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård as author James Foster, who is at a high end resort on the fictional island of La Tolqa with his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman). …

The Sundance Midnight track offers a welcome new spin on werewolves. — My favorite track at Sundance is their legendary Midnight selections, and this year it started off strong for me with a late night screening of Jacqueline Castel’s debut feature My Animal. The film is scripted by Jae Matthews of the band Boy Harsher, who famously met her bandmate in film…

That weird Satanic game guy from those viral videos gets his own full length movie, and it’s actually REALLY damn good! — I think I first came across Andrew Bowser’s, alter ego Onyx the Fortuitous sometime in 2015, after viewing the viral “E3 Weird Gamer Guy” video. In the video, which starts out like your standard amateur gamer site E3 vlog, we have a woman gamer interviewing con attendees, when she comes…

Come for the title, stay for the charming family indie. — Something I love to do at festivals is check out a film based simply on the title alone, and Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out was one of those films. It’s the latest fromdirector Jake Van Wagoner (Christmas Time, “Studio C”) and writer Austin Everett…