'Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street': Film Review

A quarter-century after starring in a film called Floundering, James Le Gros still makes an ideal embodiment of his generation's ambivalence about joining the world of squares. In Gary Lundgren's gently warm Phoenix, Oregon, the actor plays an unpublished comic book artist who, after years of tending bar for others, is talked into starting a business of his own.

A rideshare with a giggly geek driver who may be a serial killer. The staggering-through-the-ink-black-woods-with-nothing-but-a-flashlight look and mood of “The Blair Witch Project.” A mystic schlock demon like Candyman, the Slender Man, or the spectral figures from “The Strangers.” A Victrola in the middle of the road, cranking an ancient warbly ditty à la “The Shining.” A cabin full of snowy TV screens out of the “Poltergeist” showroom.

A rideshare with a giggly geek driver who may be a serial killer. The staggering-through-the-ink-black-woods-with-nothing-but-a-flashlight look and mood of “The Blair Witch Project.” A mystic schlock demon like Candyman, the Slender Man, or the spectral figures from “The Stranger.” A Victrola in the middle of the road, cranking an ancient warbly ditty à la “The Shining.” A cabin full of snowy TV screens out of the “Poltergeist” showroom.

A three act play-like look at a certain kind of man's response to the ascent of Donald Trump, The Misogynists casts Dylan Baker as an all-purpose bigot who, deep down, probably knows he's reveling in his last chance to be himself, and better cram in as much as possible. It's a tour-de-force for an actor who's more than willing to be loathsome, and will be welcomed by both Baker's fans and those of writer/director/provocateur Onur Tukel.

A college student proud of his array of mental disorders reacts oddly to being expelled in Inside the Rain, Aaron Fisher's feature writing/directing/acting debut.

An indignant, activist doc about one of those subjects most people agree is crucial but unsexy, Chris Durrance and Barak Goodman's Slay the Dragon takes up the scourge of gerrymandering. Viewers who don't need that word explained to them —it's the convoluted drawing of legislative district boundaries, done in favor of the governing political party — may feel a feature film is overkill.

Dim echoes of David Lynch and early Roman Polanski abound throughout “The Carnivores,” a fitfully fascinating mix of teasing narrative opacity and stylized psycho-thriller atmospherics.

In the striking pre-title sequence ofSchoolgirls,a choir of youngsters move their mouths silently, as though their voices have been stolen from them.

In a family with 10 children, all raised around horse racing, isn't one almost mathematically guaranteed to grow up to be a champion? A sense of inevitability hovers over Ride Like a Girl, despite the film hinging on an underdog theme: It's about one of the family's daughters, after all, and girls don't win the Melbourne Cup.

How many newspaper stories, magazine features and TV segments have been produced so far that marvel at the revolutionary capabilities of CRISPR while giving almost no idea at all how the gene-editing discovery actually works? Those who lament the state of science journalism should take note of Human Nature, in which Adam Bolt and helpful scientists offer an easily understood introduction to techniques often described with head-scratching phrases like "it's a word processor for DNA!" A cogent,

Director Philip Harder, whose previous credits mostly consist of music videos for such performers as Liz Phair, Hilary Duff, Foo Fighters and Prince, has chosen ambitious subject matter for his feature narrative debut. Tuscaloosa, a coming-of-age drama set in 1970s-era Alabama, deals with such issues as mental illness and violent racial clashes.

The screen adaptation of James Patterson and Liza Marklund's 2010 best-selling crime thriller The Postcard Killers begs several questions: Shouldn't Patterson, who seems to produce a book every other week, be concentrating more on quality than quantity? Why is it that serial killers in bad movies and books seem to be less interested in murdering their victims than mounting conceptual art projects? And finally, why was this mediocre adaptation starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan retitled The Postcard

“You have to understand, we’re not here to be happy,” a so-called spiritual adviser counsels one of his wards in a Catholic seminary — a rare moment of truth in the shadowy morass of governmental and theological manipulation that consumes Ivan Ostrochovský’s impressively icy Iron Curtain noir “Servants.” Though happiness has never seemed the objective of priesthood so much as a kind of affectless peace, both are in short supply in a film that jitters and shivers with anti-authoritarian sentiment

The “White Terror” period in Taiwan’s history, during which thousands were executed by order of the repressive Kuomintang (KMT) authorities, has been little explored in film. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “A City of Sadness” is one exception, and Edward Yang’s “A Brighter Summer Day” makes oblique reference to it.

You can't blame the Erwin brothers for capitalizing on a hugely successful formula. The filmmakers' last faith-based film, 2018's I Can Only Imagine, was a surprise mainstream hit, grossing $83 million.

Blending dark comedy and graphically bloody violence isn't as easy as Quentin Tarantino makes it look. Too many films have fallen into the trap of attempting to replicate that complicated recipe, with Clover, directed by and co-starring Jon Abrahams, being the latest example.

With Bloodshot, Vin Diesel adds a new hero to his collection of wisecracking rebels, after notable turns as a street racer, intergalactic raider and deep space fugitive, among a series of other memorable (or not) roles. A muscular actioner with enough explosions, shoot-outs and beatdowns to satisfy the young male audiences typically drawn to Diesel’s material, Sony Pictures’ feature should benefit from release in the immersive ICE cinema format.

A movie hero gets unplugged from the web of grand illusion he’s been living in, then dunked into the reality behind the façade. That’s what happened in “The Matrix,” when Keanu Reeves’ Neo woke up to learn that he’d been trapped in a narcotizing dream world.

Is it too soon to say that Misbehaviour is the Elizabeth Warren of recent feminist-themed, history-inspired British comedies? That is to say, it’s quite lovable, funny and smart, maybe the best option in a disappointing field (see Made in Dagenhamor Suffragette for comparison). It’s sensitive to the intersectional complexities of identity politics and protest, accessibly pragmatic and generally solid enough to deserve the top prize in the strictly metaphorical sense needed for this analogy.

With his perverse (and some might say perverted) look at the early life of Canada’s longest-serving Prime Minister W. L.