The Ithacan

Accuracy • Independence • Integrity

For decades, horror movies have replicated the hard work “The Exorcist” did in 1973 to produce one sleek but soulless thrill ride after another.

“Little” opens with obligatory narration — “Allow me to introduce myself” — but there is nobody going to see “Little” who won’t realize immediately where it’s headed.

If an ominous phantom tells you not to mess with the barrier between life and death, you’d think you should listen to him.

Few images have been burned into the American consciousness like the young robbers’ violent demise in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde.” Bullets punch through the car into Bonnie and catch Clyde in an agonizing slow-motion free-fall, a haunting, iconic scene that looms over John Lee Hancock’s new Netflix drama, “The Highwaymen.” It’s about the Texas Rangers who riddled Bonnie and Clyde with bullets, and Hancock’s film never leaves the shadow of Penn’s 1967 take on the story.

Lord Huron, an indie-folk dynamo of Midwestern mysticism and lakeside loneliness, returns with an updated sound and an eye toward the stars.

Desplechin’s direction is as hypnotic as his story is muddled, and at least his central performers get ample opportunities to show off their range.

Haynes and Selznick undoubtedly set out to tell a story about children for children, but nobody said it had to be bland.

It is a slasher set in a time loop, and director Christopher Landon seems to think that premise alone is enough to power the whole film.

But the absurdism undermines the film’s attempts at genuineness, and the more poignant moments don’t land.

Garth Davis excels in ways that shouldn’t look so easy: His world is appropriately naturalistic and his story smoothly balances its emotional heft.

In Jon Favreau’s “The Jungle Book,” Christopher Walken voices a giant orangutan.

Much of the album sizzles with a popping energy courtesy of Garratt’s piercing falsetto and an inclination toward a style that’s constantly changing.