The Babadook / ***1/2 (2014)

“If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of ... The Babadook.”

“The Babadook” is a work of implicit realizations, of painful memories that rise to the surface when two wounded souls encounter a malevolent force lurking in the shadows of their home, and attempt to disarm it without understanding its underlying nature. Why has it drifted out of obscurity to stalk them? Most urban lore suggests that such beings exist because they feed on the negative emotions of others. It is the requirement of this plot, therefore, to tether the entity to those who represent the extremes of that value. Consider the deadened demeanor of Amelia (Essie Davis), who occupies space as a withdrawn woman incapable of escaping self-imposed isolation. That reality comes from a distant memory: the moment when, on the way to the hospital to deliver her son, her loving husband was killed while driving their car. She survived the crash, and so did the unborn son; years later, there is an indifference in her to the possibility of moving on, and her heart is frozen in a stasis of unending grief. Adding to that tragic implication is the personality of her son, whose wide traumatic eyes and shrill voice are the outlet for a very vivid imagination that believes ghosts and demons are always lurking under the bed. Watching him, one can only imagine what fate has in store for his adult years.

Inside Out / **** (2015)

Inside the mind of every teenage girl is a plethora of conflicting emotions struggling to find a meaningful balance. This is the narrative according to “Inside Out,” the newest Pixar film, which takes that dependable sense of adventure of animators, quite literally, into the head of one such young girl who is learning to deal with the tribulations of growing up. She has more than her fair share of reasons to doubt her own stability, too; a rather joyous sort who was perfectly happy in her Minnesotan hometown, she finds herself thrust into the realities of cross-country relocation to San Francisco, learning how to function in a new school (without friends), and living in a house where the narrow walls seem to create their own sense of anxiety. To suggest she feels like a stranger in her own life only scrapes the surface of the realization; her eventual detachment informs her perspective so thoroughly that her joyous demeanor quickly falls under the weight of conflicting feelings, all of them extreme. Many kids inevitably must walk the long mile of change when it comes to a family moving away from a sense of security, and yet how can poor confused Riley possibly rediscover her lost optimism, especially when everything she has ever known has been replaced by things so frighteningly foreign?

Zodiac / **** (2007)

The conventional sense is that serial killer films must almost always deal in certainties. While the details and underlying motives will be dynamic based on a specific vision, each detail comes to the screen with decisive clarity, as pieces of a puzzle that must always be assembled within the structure of a dependable formula. Sometimes, the root causes take on a deeper importance if one descends into the maw with more psychological considerations; in other examples, they are simply narrative obligations used to propel suspense or style. Our collective acknowledgment of this reality is so impenetrable that it becomes somewhat of a shocking revelation when a movie like “Zodiac” winds up moving into our sphere. After eight decades of dealing with a genre that has always been about an oblivious police force trying to solve the crimes of someone who is usually made the way they are because of childhood torment and social alienation, here is a film about fewer absolutes: confusion, frenzy of the masses, dead-ends, distant obsessions, silent warnings, patterns without consistency, false leads and gut feelings, and an instinct to suspect that maybe, just maybe, the real answers are right in front of us defying all procedural reasoning.

Philadelphia / **** (1993)

There are two stories running parallel through the course of events in “Philadelphia”: one about a man dying of AIDS, and the other about a former colleague learning to find acceptance of alternate lifestyles. Their struggles converge early on in a moment that plays like accidental destiny, when one of them arrives at the office of the other in hopes that he will take on a case of wrongful termination. The scenario: Andrew Beckett (played by Tom Hanks) believes he was fired because of his illness, a factor that came to light suddenly after he was promoted high up into a law firm partnership. So few share in that perception, however, and when he arrives in the presence of the cynical Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), it is because all other possibilities have already been exhausted. Joe shares in that skepticism, but is also silently unnerved by the discomfort of being around a gay man dying of a contagious disease. But through scrupulous desires to take on big challenges, eventually he comes back around to representing the case, all while acknowledging that his client’s own death sentence is fated to be more than just a peripheral detail. That discovery is ultimately what gives added validity to these two intersecting lives, whose mutual wisdom and courage are made universal in a situation where an uninformed mind must ask itself: at what point must we overcome personal prejudice and realize that we all share the same right to live without persecution?

Jurassic World / *** (2015)

The wisdom of Ian Malcom’s chaos theory ought to have inspired more heeded warnings in the “Jurassic Park” films, but sometimes tragedies are doomed to enter vicious cycles before higher influences catch on. In Steven Spielberg’s first of these outings, those words served as foreshadowing in a premise where man’s gift of scientific advancement became the tool for which he could recreate the dinosaurs from extinction, essentially for monetary gain. When a pair of paleontologists (and some skeptical investors) were then offered a chance to see those endeavors in a new theme park on a remote island in the Atlantic, it became the launch point for an elaborate nightmare of chases, accidents and skillful animatronics. It all began when security grids were compromised during a bad storm. Then electrical fences went down. Dinosaurs escaped their compounds. And at the height of it all, the eager visitors were all thrust into a situation where they had to act – and often quickly – in order to maintain their survival, if for no other reason than to ensure continuity for additional chapters.

Poltergeist III / **1/2 (1988)

The high-rise is essentially a character all its own, with corridors and rooms and vast galleries that seem to permeate an aura of supernatural danger. That one prospect is what separates the much-maligned “Poltergeist III” from its predecessor, and all with good reason; whereas the first movie’s direct sequel often took the launch point of thrills and lost them in a haze of elaborate confusion and boredom, this movie – the last of the original franchise – isolates them in a single space where they could fester into something of underlying tension. Often, the key scares don’t amount to everything they should; that much is never in doubt. But because nearly all the attempts are gathered within an area that offers foreboding identity, that which does not amount to something lucrative still has the benefit of some peripheral creepiness. Was it by accident at all then that the director Gary Sherman, an enthusiast of B-movie horror well before his Hollywood undertakings, used ice as a conduit for a poltergeist’s violent obsessions? Or was it at all surprising that their dimension of malevolent unrest could be spied through the reflections of mirrors, as if they had always been windows into their nightmarish intentions?

Mad Max: Fury Road / **** (2015)

The road is a long and unforgiving stretch of desert, linking barbaric societies that harvest the fundamental resources of a man’s ideal paradise: weapons, fuel and agriculture. Collectively they speak zealously of an afterlife that seems to beckon them with increased severity, and their ruthless leaders are idolized from a place of fanatical devotion. Above all certainties, their reality is made so though the loss of mainstream deceptions, which kept humans in order through the checks and balances of more civilized government bodies; all that remains now in their broken world are the bare instincts of survivors striving to endure, who do so by recognizing that their nature has always been to kill and enslave. When one is so deep into this reality, however, what hope is there left of a basic good deed? To resist obligatory cycles is to invite a decisive fate, and the more one fights, the more severe the punishment is dealt.

The White Ribbon / **** (2009)

It is the season preceding the outbreak of war across Europe, and a small community in the heart of the German countryside grapples with the fallout of a series of very strange events.  During a horse riding accident, the village doctor is seriously injured and whisked away without warning. A barn is set ablaze, with no indication of who is responsible. A lone woman working the sawmill falls through rotting floorboards and perishes. The young son of the Baron is strung up and beaten. And then in a moment where the inexplicable bad luck seems to have exhausted all present parties, another boy – one who is mentally handicapped – is brutally tortured and nearly left for dead by unseen faces. What causes such despicable deeds, unfortunately, is less important to the power heads than the obligatory response to them, which must always result in self-loathing, castigation and pleading for forgiveness at a God who refuses to reveal his wisdom. And at the nucleus of those responses is an even graver reality: the realization that all punishment must eventually cascade to children, who are tormented with silent liability all while being branded as unruly sorts who bring about such consequences by, basically, just being present while it all occurs around them.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side / ** (1986)

The family at the heart of the original “Poltergeist” lost more than their sense of security in the wake of their encounters with vengeful spirits – they also misplaced a few brain cells along the way. There is a scene in the sequel that demonstrates such prospects with disheartening clarity; in it, the young son Robbie (Oliver Robins) is attacked by unseen forces in an upstairs bathroom, and  the metal from his braces expands in a violent attempt to cocoon him. Audiences immediately recognize this ambush as a decoy, replicating the sensibilities of an earlier attack by an evil tree in the front yard of the first movie: it occurs not because the poltergeist is after him specifically, but because it needs to distract the parents in order to get closer to Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), who is their primary target. The virtue is that a Native American named Taylor (Will Sampson), assigned to watch over the family, is there to hold onto her while the others flee to the aid of their endangered son. But in the wake of his rescue, there is an angry outburst from the father (played with over-the-top gusto by Craig T. Nelson) in which he accuses Taylor of refusing to help in a critical moment. Did he forget that his frightened young daughter was snatched away the last time she was left alone, and probably needed the protection more? At the height of fear, one of our most easily lost qualities is the ability to perceive what might keep us safe. For the Freeling parents, one wonders if their experiences have simply rendered them mentally incapacitated.

Avengers: Age of Ultron / *** (2015)

Two prominent thoughts are all that come to fruition during the course of “Avengers: Age of Ultron”: 1) a villain wants to destroy the world in a very ambitious way, and 2) a gathering of colorful superheroes attempt to thwart those plans by destroying a few human populaces in the process. That has been one of the most amusing ironies of action pictures in recent years, especially when it comes to comic book adaptations; no matter how hard one tries to circumvent the delusions of an overbearing villain, inevitably it’s going to cost the human race a few precious lives and billions of dollars of structural damage. Not so content to just fill the screen with wall-to-wall destruction, of course, here is a movie that intercuts most of it with sarcastic dialogue, too. Consider an elaborate sequence in the second act, for instance, when the character of the Hulk is corrupted by a mind control gimmick that sends him into the city on a violent path of chaos, and the movie sends in the Iron Man as a defense in order to stop his physical tirade. Buildings are flattened, streets are littered by the shells of destroyed vehicles, highways are toppled and innocent bystanders run screeching through the scene like scattered insects. Yet it never escapes good old Tony Stark’s notice that an astute one-liner is the best antidote to catastrophe, which certainly has an interesting effect over the loud explosions of a metropolis in ruin.

Poltergeist / *1/2 (2015)

Every suburban household, they say, shelters a conflict threatening to unravel the strength of the family unit. The characters in “Poltergeist” have their fair share of such dilemmas, but nearly all of them are upstaged by a presence they cannot see: a ghostly entity that erupts in violent fits whenever it attempts to make contact with someone on their side of reality. The earliest scenes of this obligatory remake set that point in motion with almost textbook precision; on a trek through a neighborhood searching for a new home to purchase (ironically enough while both parents are unemployed, no less), five family members -- two parents and three children – wander into the lap of a conventional two-story home, and their daughter Madison (Kennedi Clements) starts carrying on a conversation with something on the other side of the closet door in an upstairs bedroom. Is it an imaginary friend, perhaps? Her ambivalent parents do not wonder too much until later in the setup, when a similar occurrence occurs in front of a television set and is instantly followed by some kind of electrical current pulsating violently through the rest of the house. Inevitably, one such strange event inspires a domino effect. Electronic devices become fried. Static shock awaits each of them on every surface. Furniture moves by itself. And the youngest son, already walking through life with cautious eyes because of an even earlier trauma, rightly fears the sight of the old tree on the property, which looms over his attic bedroom window like a shadowy hand waiting to snatch him away.

No Country for Old Men / ***1/2 (2007)

Sherriff Ed Tom Bell’s sad, prophetic opening monologue in “No Country for Old Men” is a framing device amplified by events that are the stuff of rousing local legends, and the circumstances surrounding them are driven to deep intensity by a presence that looms like an avalanche of terror.  To consider them from a distance would simply inspire obligatory discomfort, but as we absorb them in the context of a grizzly series of murderous impulses playing out on screen, any notions of skepticism are replaced by the same forlorn considerations that have worn down their tireless witnesses. As the movie lumbers on, it becomes more apparent that a man like Ed does not arrive at his conclusions because he is simply sensitive or grieving for lost traditions, either. The world has always been full of dangers, but seldom have they fallen into hands that seem pulled directly from the abyss, or eyes that have evolved from a sense of chaos that crushes all points of hope. For the weary law enforcer who must follow them in the dogged hope of bringing it all to some sort of an end, his country of enforcement and neighborly courtesy has been caught in the trenches of “the dismal tide,” and anxiously awaits a tearful eulogy.

Moon / **** (2009)

A lone man, isolated in the quiet embrace of space, longs for the day he will return home to his wife and daughter. After three years as the proprietor of a mission on the moon in which minerals are harvested for clean energy, two weeks is all that remains of his lengthy stay, and nearly every waking moment indicates a dreary existence filled with tiresome wonder and impatience. He exercises, observes as drones grind the moon’s surface into usable particles, and watches old episodes of “Bewitched” on a nearby television monitor. When video feeds of his family arrive over the computer mainframe, they are the only source of inspiration in a routine that has otherwise moderated any remaining enthusiasm. Unwilling to unravel from the solitude, however, he passes the days by exchanging indifferent banter with a computer named Gerty, who watches over the base with little regard to the stability of its lone host. Does it have a reason to be concerned? In most movies, the deafening silence would expose an already fractured psyche; in Duncan Jones’ “Moon,” the point reveals itself through a series of discoveries that arrive as a result of curious prodding, and in a pinnacle moment when the stillness of the routine is so piercing that it seems to supply its own sense of tension. Inside every loner is a rebel aching to be liberated, even if he isn’t ready to deal with the realities that await him on the other side.

Chaos / zero stars (2005)

David DeFalco’s “Chaos” is an unholy assault on human decency, a worthless and hateful celebration of evil that not only delves into excessive cruelty, but has the insolence to frame it all within the perspective of a pretentious moral obligation. At the opening of the picture, a title card informs us that the ensuing material is purposely extreme for the sake of “education,” although any initial claims of the sort are usually shields in these sorts of pictures. From what, you dare to ask? It usually comes down to the inevitable reality that all subsequent events are glorified to a point of perversion, which often necessitates a disclaimer for damage control. But any sensible person who will be unfortunate enough to witness any two minutes of this shameful and mean-spirited disaster will easily protest such prospects, because what they will be seeing is 74 minutes of senseless torture and sadism lacking all notions of context. By the end, the only certainty is that we are united in our wonder of more underlying concerns: namely, how the people who made this ever thought it could be palpable to audiences with some semblance of ethical integrity.

Willow Creek / **1/2 (2013)

There is one unbroken shot in the last hour of “Willow Creek” that is reason enough to applaud the chutzpah of filmmaker who finds inspiration among formula. Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, that guy!), the scene features two single figures sitting inside of a tent at night while the light from the camera fills the space with an ominous point of focus. They are awake because they hear noises – many of them slight and non-threatening, but so patterned that they begin to suggest the presence of some unseen threat tiptoeing beyond the shadows. What is the source? The lack of an answer has become a well-known cliché in this genre of found footage horror excursions, but that isn’t the point; it all comes down to the fact that any notions of excitement (or skepticism) are replaced by fear of uncertainty, and while most films would lose sight of the human faces in a nonsensical display of camera jumbles and swift chases in the dark, the frame remains on them for gradual reactions, and finds ones that would be effective in almost any context. Seeing them in yet another one of those genre excursions reveals an intention that one hopes could be utilized in something much grander in scope for future endeavors.