Playing Catch-Up: The Hot Rock, Krisha, Tiger Shark

The Hot Rock (Peter Yates, 1972). This adaptation of a Donald Westlake novel — featuring a screenplay that was William Goldman’s first produced work following his Oscar win for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — is a lithe and cheeky heist film. Robert Redford plays John Dortmunder, a professional thief freshly released from his latest stay is prison. Mere minutes pass before he’s roped into a new scheme involving the theft of an African gem on display in the Brooklyn Museum. What follows is a series of setbacks — all smartly plausible — that require Dortmunder and his assembled … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up: The Hot Rock, Krisha, Tiger Shark

Now Playing: It Comes at Night

I feel compelled to write about the audience I was in midst of when I saw the film It Comes at Night. The second feature from writer-director Trey Edward Shults, It Comes at Night is being positioned as a horror film for promotional purposes. That’s entirely fair. All the elements are in place, including a constantly mounting sense of dread, allusions to a devastating and unexplained phenomenon that has ravaged the populace, and a wary appraisal of the intrinsic darkness of desperate people. And yet the film is primarily notable for its colossal restraint more than its vivid shocks. In … Continue reading Now Playing: It Comes at Night