REVIEW: New Money [2019]

You gotta look nice for bankers. The prize at the center of Jason B. Kohl‘s New Money is fifty thousand dollars. While the characters like to label it an inheritance, their descriptions prove otherwise. It’s more a promise made by a father (Chelcie Ross‘ Boyd Tisdale) to his troubled daughter (Louisa Krause‘s Debbie). If she works hard and avoids getting pregnant, the money is hers at thirty. Because of extenuating circumstances (she’s addicted to Oxycodone after a short stint in nursing school), however, Boyd has every right to renege. His…

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REVIEW: Dark [2016]

“I didn’t like what I saw” It’s summer 2003 and the entire Northeast is about to go Dark. I lost seeing Radiohead as a result of that blackout—my tickets for the weekend’s Toronto show postponed a few months later to an exam night the next semester. Some people had it better with nothing going awry besides losing some perishables in the fridge; other had it worse. How much worse is up to the people who experienced it or those like screenwriter Elias and director Nick Basile seeking to use that…

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REVIEW: Welcome to Happiness [2016]

“But then …” When you think of short stories like W.W. Jacobs‘ “The Monkey’s Paw” or Richard Matheson‘s “Button, Button” (adapted to the small screen for “The Twilight Zone” and big for Richard Kelly‘s underrated The Box), dark images of death are conjured. The consequences of earning personal reward come at great cost to those you may or may not know. They concern selfish acts that will incite chaos and a purveyor of their too-good-to-be-true opportunities who relishes in watching the destructive path cut by fate’s unyielding need to balance…

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