Shameless Self Expression

After the death of their father (Keith David in a useless cameo), Daniel Kaluuya and his irresponsible sister Keke Palmer take over his ranch and business, providing horses for the film and TV industry. When that hits a snag, Kaluuya sells some of the horses to former child star Steven Yuen who has his own Western theme park. Meanwhile, some weird events have been happening in the skies. Something is up there. What is it? What does it want? Michael Wincott (solid as ever) plays a cinematographer who becomes involved in the mystery.   Calling your film “Nope” is just asking to be mocked. Writer-director Jordan Peele came out of the gates strong with “Get Out” , but his second effort “Us” was a muddled and unsatisfying film, and now with this 2022 alien invasion film he’s gone entirely off the rails. A horror-tinged version of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” might sound like fun, but the execution here is murky, unfocused, glacier-paced and dumb. How dumb? The whole id...

Set two days before Christmas at a small local English bank managed by the fastidious Fordyce (Peter Cushing), who runs a tight ship with little room for warmth or Christmas cheer. As we meet him Fordyce is chewing out the chief clerk (Richard Vernon) over his supposed bookkeeping errors that the man has nonetheless fixed later. In the midst of all this a rather charming man named Col. Gore Hepburn (Andre Morell), a supposed insurance investigator arrives at the bank to check their security. However, he’s not really an insurance investigator, and Fordyce’s stress levels are about to go through the roof before the jolly fat man comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve.   One of the very finest films from Hammer Studios, this 1961 heist-thriller from director Quentin Lawrence (a veteran of British TV) is little-known but absolutely worthwhile. Based on a play by Jacques Gillies (a Kiwi-born writer of mostly British TV) and scripted by David T. Chantler (Hammer’s adaptation of “S...