VOX LUX (Directed by Brady Corbet, 110 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Vox Lux opens in 1999 during a Columbine-esque school shooting. A young Celeste Montgomery, played by Raffey Cassidy, is shot in the neck after she offers to pray with the gunman for the release of her classmates. Miraculously she survives and while in the hospital writes a song about her nightmarish experience and what starts as Celeste trying to find a way to heal herself becomes an anthem for a fractured country. In no time, the show biz vampires descend and Celeste is groomed for […]

CREED 2 (Directed by Steven Caple Jr., 130 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Creed 2 picks up a few years after the first film where Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) wins both his Mustang and the world championship title from Danny ‘Stuntman’ Wheeler. With Johnson now the world champion, from the shadows emerges Ivan Drago and his son Viktor to challenge him, not just the title, but for a chance at redemption. After the events of Rocky IV, we find Ivan was left disgraced not only in front of Russia, but his family as well. Ivan’s wife […]

  SUSPIRIA (Directed by Luca Guadagnino, 152 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC When discussing Italian horror’s influence on cinema as a whole you would be remiss if didn’t name check Dario Argento’s 1977 supernatural masterpiece Suspiria, a surrealist nightmare about a young girl who is sent to a dance school run by a coven of witches set to the score of prog rockers Goblin. As a devout horror fan, my initial response to the news that a remake of Suspiria was in the works was akin to hearing someone had planned to remake The Godfather. But director […]

  BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Mid90s, Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, is an impressive feat for a first-time filmmaker. This coming of age drama set in the skateboarding subculture of the 90s is heavy on the nostalgia as you would probably expect, but also has something genuinely important to say about youth. We experience the film through the eyes of Stevie (Sunny Suljic) the son of a single mother who is taken in by a group of skaters much older than him who teach him some very important life lessons and how to be a man. It’s not the film […]

  HALLOWEEN (Directed by David Gordon Green, 105 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s been nine long years since the last Halloween film, Rob Zombie’s 2009 franchise-killing sequel to his ill-fated 2007 re-boot of the series. The latest chapter in the Michael Myers’ slasher saga — simply called Halloween — dumps six sequels worth of convoluted plot, mythology and character development to position itself as a direct sequel to the original 1978 film. David Gordon Green (Eastbound & Down) is directing this entry with a script co-written with Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride that picks up 40 […]

  BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC A few weeks ago Bradley Cooper kept up his tradition of hosting a Philly “friends and family” screening of his latest film, this time with his directorial debut A Star is Born. Cooper who got his start playing the “pretty boy” on Alias, proved he could also be the “funny guy” in The Hangover but with A Star Is Born he’s effortlessly transitioned into the role of auteur. His highly-acclaimed re-imagining of Star, with songs furnished by Cooper and co-star Lady Gaga, is the tour de force unveiling of Cooper’s emergent triple threat: director, […]

  A STAR IS BORN (Directed by Bradley Cooper, 135 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s been hard to ignore the buzz surrounding the latest incarnation of A Star is Born, which marks not only Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, but also the first starring role in a feature film for Lady Gaga. The pop icon had a rather successful transition from music to television taking home an Emmy for her work on American Horror Story, and this time she’s here to prove she can do it all and Cooper helps her get the ball across the goal […]

  THE PREDATOR (Directed by Shane Black, 107 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s been eight years since the Predator last stalked our multiplexes and he’s back thanks to director Shane Black (who played Hawkins in the original), who reunites the franchise with its 80’s action roots. To fully realize this vision Shane has also enlisted co-writer Fred Dekker the man who gave us such ‘80s monster classics as The Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps and House. Given those two pedigrees, you know what to expect here, the film is as heavy on the laughs as […]

  BLACKKKLANSMAN (Directed by Spike Lee, 135 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC BlacKkKlansman is the real-life story of how the first African American police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department infiltrated the Klu Klux Klan. Starring John David Washington (son of Denzel) as Ron and Adam Driver as his partner, BlacKkKlansman proves to be one of Spike Lee’ most ferocious social commentaries to date cleverly disguised as a hilarious buddy cop movie. Lee uses the very relevant narrative to comment both on the backsliding of race relations in America and how it wasn’t exactly an accident […]

  THE FIRST PURGE (Dir. by Gerard McMurray, 97 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The Purge series has had an interesting trajectory throughout the last five years. While the first film was an interesting high concept meditation on race in a near dystopian future where one night of the year for 12 hours, any crime including murder is legal. The consistently profitable franchise now on its fourth outing has afforded writer James DeMonaco the ability to not so subtly comment the state of America. For example, the last film Election Year featured a blatant stand in for […]

  SICARIO 2 (Directed by Stefano Sollima, 122 minutes, 2018, USA) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s mesmerizing 2015 Academy Award-nominated meditation on the US government’s invisible war with the Mexican drug cartels, isn’t the kind of film that leaps to mind when you think franchises. But the original story of one FBI agent’s descent into the Hell of south-of-the-border gangland drug warfare was populated with such uncommonly rich and dense characters — courtesy of screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s boffo script — that audiences simply demanded more. Directed by Stefano Sollima (Suburra), Sicario: Day Of The Soldado traffics in […]

JURASSIC WORLD: Fallen Kingdom (Dir. by J.A. Bayona, 128 min., USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return for what is now the second entry in the reboot/retcon of the Jurassic Park series Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom.  Picking up three years after the fateful events on Isla Nublar, the film begins as the volcano on the island that once housed the dino theme park is about to erupt annihilating all life on the island. On the world stage, the US Senate is deliberating on whether or not they will intervene to save the island’s […]