Her Private Hell

No one ever accused Nicolas Winding Refn of not having an aesthetic. Her Private Hell begins with our heroine Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a beautiful young actress in long red leather, traversing the expansive, tastefully illuminated avenues of what appears to be an otherwise empty city bathed in pink and plum neon and permanently engulfed, to varying degrees, in “the Mist.”

The Most Dangerous Game

A formative horror-watching experience from the horror medium’s own formative years, 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game is the kind of film that resonates in a viewer’s mind like some acquired primal memory.

Beware, My Lovely

Christmas in the company of people we call friends and/or those with whom we share a last name can often feel like Christmas in isolation or alongside strangers.

A Reflection of Fear

Renowned cinematographer William A. Fraker, perhaps best known for lensing Rosemary’s Baby, naturally hired one of the best—László Kovács—to shoot his own film A Reflection of Fear, the second of his three features, and his only directorial venture into horror.

Copycat

Male buddy movies are a dime a dozen, yet finding memorable female screen teams is as difficult as securing a good therapist, doctor, lover, or any other real-world rarity. Yet in Jon Amiel’s 1995 serial-killer thriller, the steely women protagonists M.J. and Helen are a powerhouse duo thanks to the ingenious pairing of Holly Hunter and Sigourney Weaver…

Dead Calm

As we entered the 1990s, the era of sleazy sex thrillers, genre fans exited the previous decade with the parting gift of 1989’s Dead Calm. The Phillip Noyce–directed, George Miller–produced, Australian-made movie veered into racy, provocative territory without neglecting its main mission of delivering unadulterated edge-of-your-seat suspense.

The Lodger

Marie Belloc Lowndes’s 1913 novel The Lodger—an expansion of her short story of the same name—has been an enticing proposition for filmmakers, and well it should, given its delectable “what-if” premise: Jack the Ripper had to have lived somewhere, allowing that he was not unhoused, so what if he lived in the spare room you were renting out?

Strange Darling

Everyone’s got their pet peeves. My biggest movie one happens to be the use of chapters. Films are not books, so they should be able to tell a story in a cinematic way, visually and sonically. Movie chapters always struck me as gimmicky distractions—until Strange Darling came along.