Tag: Ari Millen

FANTASIA20 REVIEW: The Oak Room [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Goose the truth. It starts with a bottle of beer hitting a bar before an off-screen fight gets that glass bouncing along to the impact of bodies we never see. And it finishes with a similar still life that may or may not be the exact same beverage—a question left in limbo considering bottles are hitting bars past closing time throughout the entirety of director Cody Calahan and screenwriter Peter Genoway‘s film The Oak Room. There are a lot of these almost cyclical moments during its brisk, dialogue-heavy ninety-minutes: drifters…

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REVIEW: Rupture [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“You will feel it soon” It’s taken ten years, but Secretary director Steven Shainberg has finally followed-up Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. The result is Rupture, a body horror-lite tale about a woman held captive as part of an experiment meant to unlock humanity’s hidden potential to evolve beyond our current state. Written by Brian Nelson (the two share story credit), its script seeks to mess with our expectations as it does its prisoner Renee (Noomi Rapace). We’re to cultivate a sense of paranoia with surveillance dominating the…

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