I’m a fan of a short film that can tell a complete story and foster a solid atmosphere in only so many screen minutes. Accordingly, if you happen to be in Los Angeles in time for the Dances With Film Festival, on september 1st do yourself a favor and check out “A Good Couple,” a dreamy psychological thriller from filmmaker Robert Gregson.

Gregson’s short stars Julie Ann Earls

Earlier this week I re-watched the original “Candyman” from 1992 in which a pair of enterprising though credulous graduate students (Virginia Madsen and Kasi Lemmons) seek to catalog and/or debunk Chicago urban legends. One legend in particular drew them in: the story of a late-nineteenth-century black portraitist whose affair with a wealthy white patron’s daughter resulted not only in her pregnancy but in her father’s hiring a mob

The new thriller “The Night House” indeed has its share of jump scares, though thankfully this rather clever and intelligent supernatural thriller from director David Bruckner (working from a screenplay by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski) has much more on its mind than simply inducing fright in the viewer—which it certainly accomplishes.

The filmmakers give us no time

There seems to be a wave of hatred against the films of M. Night Shyamalan. Armchair internet wannabe critics love to trash his work these days. This is completely unfair.

While it may seem that his ability to make a great film is behind him, Shyamalan has only truly stumbled once or twice. Save for his two director-for-hire studio films “The Last Airbender” and “After Earth”

The world has been thrust into darkness. Inside a house, gloved hands fumble around, searching for sustenance. A masked young man enters a bedroom, and in a sharp cut, he sees two dead and diseased bodies. We smash cut to the daytime on a sunny, open road as the man travels by bike in a quiet and seemingly lifeless world.

“After the End”, is a film about isolation

There’s what goes on in the film biz and then there’s what really goes on in Tinseltown. That’s what documentary filmmaker Marina Zenovich (director of last year’s “Lance,” about disgraced biker Lance Armstrong) was seeking to get at with her new film, “What Happens in Hollywood.”

The documentary, which is now available on Roku, shows women, and some men, speaking candidly about the sexism and misogyny that is absolutely baked into the film industry, and has been since its founding by a group of rich men a century ago.

BENTONVILLE, Ark.—Among Geena Davis’s goals for the Bentonville Film Festival is the inclusion of lesser-heard voices. The films at this year’s iteration of the festival here in northwest Arkansas certainly align with that dictum.

Among the films I watched l this week was “Waikiki,” a drama about a native Hawaiian woman’s struggles with employment, her boyfriend and family.