The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

aka February

In his directorial debut, Oz Perkins crafts a non-traditional horror film about loss and the evil which lurks within absence. Heavily influenced by the style of David Lynch, scenes are slowly eaten up by uncomfortable pauses and seemingly mundane conversations carpeted by an unsettling score which gets under your skin. As a result, an atmosphere of intrigue is created, yet at times this method instills a lull instead. The editing ensures a cryptic nature to the story. This is one that will make more sense on a second viewing. The three young women spot lit (Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, and Lucy Boynton) give methodical performances which add to the overall unease and lingering impression of the film.

3 heads in a row out of 5

NERVE [2016]

Directors Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost's second film of 2016 is the techno teen-thriller Nerve, based upon Jeanne Ryan's novel of the same name.
Emma Roberts plays a shy high-schooler who decides to outdo her more outgoing friend and joins an online game social media game of truth or dare that gets progressively more dangerous the better she gets at it.
With it's warning of social media pressure and fear of technology, it pretty much plays out like a rich teeny-bopper version of a Black Mirror episode only with a happy Hollywood ending with no lasting consequences.  These kids are spoiled and pretty flat, so the stakes feel low and you never really feel the potential danger it could have dived into.  Fortunately the pacing is brisk enough to never really give you time to figure out all the pointless plot-points it introduces for whatever reason.  An admirable effort but in the end it isn't the sharp-witted film it could have been.  

2½ lighthouses out of 5

WE'RE THE MILLERS [2013]

Dodgeball writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber brings us We're The Millers, a surprisingly enjoyable and mildly offensive comedy/road movie.
Jason Sudeikis & Jennifer Aniston are at the top of their game here, Emma Roberts is kind of boring but necessary while it's Son Of Rambow's Will Poulter that steals the entire show as the clueless, awkward kid.  There really isn't much of a story here and what little there is, it's a bit of an uneven mess but we're here for the laughs and it delivers.  By the end of the film I found how much I enjoyed each of the characters and wanted to see it inevitably all work out.

3 wincing spider bites out of 5

The Art of Getting By (2011)

Each year, Hollywood likes to make the same "indie" drama over and over again. Fatalistic teen is obsessed with death and the meaninglessness of it all. Enter the most beautiful woman in the entire world (roll eyes) who just happens to come into his life. Do I even need to tell you how this movie ends? You want to know what the reality of this situation would be? She would have never looked his way. The lonely kid grows up into a lonely man, lives alone and dies alone. FUCK OFF.

1 unrequited hard-on in the middle of the night out of 5

SCRE4M [2011]

After getting over the initial disappointment of not living up to the first Scream, like the cast & crew interviews kept on promising it would, I found the fourth installment of the popular Wes Craven slasher flick franchise to be an entertaining ride upon a second viewing.
While not meeting it's full potential, it is light years better than the third one and just trailing in behind the first two films. It never makes full use of the killer using the updated technology to his advantage, like he would have in the original films or really acknowledging the huge change in horror cinema since the last one came out over 10 years ago. There are a few moments of using blogs, webcams, phone apps and poking fun at remakes, reboots and torture porn but not as much as it could have been and that was a little disappointing. The new cast was a hoot to watch, although some were painfully underused or killed off too early. With the hugest body count so far in the series, slasher flick fans and gorehounds won't be disappointed.
It's still fun and I hope the next two patch up the mistakes this one made.

3 Robert Rodriguez "cameos" out of 5