Horror Actressing: Sigourney Weaver in "Copycat"

by Jason Adams

Something I look forward to every single year, Film at Lincoln Center's annual week-long "Scary Movies" series, is hitting here in New York this forthcoming weekend -- check out the entire stellar run of films at this link here. While I'm most excited for Ari Aster's "Director's Cut" of Midsommar, which runs half an hour longer than the one we saw in theaters, they're mixing up showings of brand new flicks and old under-screened classics in ways that really set my toes to tingle. 

In that vein I was tempted to use this week's edition of our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series to talk about a performance not very many people have seen yet -- that of Maeve Higgins in Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman's horror-comedy Extra Ordinary, which I saw this past month thanks to the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal (here's my review) and which is screening this weekend at FLC. Maeve, in her first leading lady role, absolutely shines. 

But we'll save that for when the very funny movie gets a proper release. Especially since FLC is also screening Jon Amiel's terrifically under-valued 1995 serial killer flick Copycat, starring two of our great actresses, Holly Hunter and today's focus-of-post, Sigourney effing Weaver...

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Pussywillows! Serial Mom at 25

by Salim Garami

What's good?

The existence of Serial Mom 25 years ago establishes that America’s current obsession with true crime stories – with the likes of Serial and American Crime Story and the never-ending avalanche of Netflix documentaries – is not something remotely new to our day and age. Hell, it wasn’t even new to 1994; many of the social observations Serial Mom makes arguably were already well before up to the previous year’s The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. There is little prophetic in the satire but there is A LOT of scary forecasting regarding the OJ Simpson murder case that was just around the corner at the time of its release...

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Sundance: Zac Efron is "Extremely Wicked..."

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Everyone knows the name Ted Bundy, but I’m not sure that everyone knows as much as they think they do about him. I certainly didn’t going into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Sundance premiere from director Joe Berlinger, an Oscar nominee back in 2011 for the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. The key curiousity here is the casting of Zac Efron, onetime star of High School Musical, as the notorious killer...

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Blueprints: "Halloween (1978)"

This week Jorge goes back to Haddonfield in 1978 for the 40th anniversary of a horror classic to look at how the original film establishes its point of view.

Every script has a point of view. Even movies with multiple protagonists, or whose perspectives change from scene to scene, we are experiencing the events through someone’s lens at any given moment; even if that person is not a character, but someone behind the camera guiding us to what we’re supposed to perceive.

But there are movies with a more literal point of view, where what we are seeing is exactly what one of the characters is. A literal POV is used sparingly in movies, but it’s a great tool to get the audience in the mindset and subjective state of a film. The opening of the original Halloween is told entirely through a POV shot, and though it is abandoned quickly, this sets up the dangerous mood and tone of a franchise that's continued for generations...

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Netflix in July: Troy's Straight-Washing, Blue Valentine's Brilliance.

Time to play Streaming Roulette. Each month, to survey new streaming titles we freeze frame the films at random places with the scroll bar and whatever comes up first, that's what we share!

July is kind of a quiet month on Netflix but which of these films will you be streaming for the first time or as a rewatch? Which do you have strong feelings about. Please do tell us in the comments. Ready? Let's go...

ARE YOU CRAZY?!? IF I CAN'T PULL MY CHUTE, YOU'LL DIE TOO!

Get Smart (2008)
Despite being an Anne Hathaway disciple I have not seen this. Worth a watch? Anyone? 

Hey, can I ask you something else: What's the story of that girl that was in here a month ago? 

Blue Valentine (2010)
Ryan Gosling is visiting his grandma because he's a sweet soul. I especially love the editing here. The image cuts to this for the rest of the visiting grandma dialogue...

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