I had my doubts about this one, thought it looked cheap and I really wondered how riveting a film about predicting the weather could be. Answer? Pretty goddamn riveting. “Pressure” is a vital entry in the ever growing “Dad Movie” cannon. If this were made in the 90s, it would be destined to play on TBS every day. It’s well made, strongly acted, and doesn’t have an ounce of fat on it. Much like a summer storm, it gets in,…

I wonder if I would have liked this less had I not come to it after being a fan of Mike Flanagan for years. His first feature film is very clearly the urtext for his later (better) work. You’ve got your creepy ghosts hanging around silently in the background, you’ve got your heartfelt, tearful confessions between characters, you’ve got your potent understanding of grief, and hell, you’ve even got a main character reading a “Dark Tower” graphic novel. It’s a…

Maybe slapstick is not my thing. Maybe I needed to see this with a large crowd. Maybe I’m just an old scold. Whatever the reason, I HATED this. An excruciating experience that made me want to disembowel myself with a plastic spork. 

Credit where credit is due: the filmmakers wanted to create a live action cartoon on a low budget and their craft and vision is somewhat impeccable. They commit to the bit, as do all the performers. You cannot…

This a largely tedious affair with dodgy special effects and a real lack of thematic coherence. I kinda hated this. 

It starts well enough. Kaitlyn Dever plays an isolated woman fighting off an alien invasion. That basically means she’s in a slasher movie, and a relatively skillful one. There’s some good suspense early on, but that quickly gives way to nonsense. 

First of all, there’s no dialogue in the movie. None. And while that may seem like a daring artistic…