“The world was not round, not from where I stood.” My Father Die opens with at least three different kinds of myth. First there is the voice-over narration, casting its flat-earth perspective “downstream into the mouth of the Mississippi, into the heart of what I call home.” Then there is the close-up detail of Rubens’…
Death always leaves an empty space, previously occupied by the deceased, that those left behind can fill only with memories and mourning. Yet in the first act of Buttercup Bill, the absence most keenly felt by Pernilla (Rémy Bennett, who also co-wrote and directed with Émilie Richard-Froozan) is not that of her childhood playmate Flora,…
Eaten Alive first published by FilmLand Empire Texan filmmaker Tobe Hooper peaked early. Following his freakout debut with the rarely seen hippie time capsule Eggshells (1969), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was only Hooper’s second feature, but would go on to become an important and influential classic of atmospheric unease, changing the genre landscape forever…
First published by movieScope Drawn, like William Friedkin’s previous feature Bug (2006), from a play by Tracy Letts, this bucket of southern gothic is a Coen-esque caper of small-town double-crosses that starts off trailer-trash tawdry, before steadily gearing down into truly unhinged realms—even for the Texas hinterlands. Owing big-time to a local gangster, Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch)…