September 21, 2013 Prisoners should come with a warning: Angst alert! Sitting through the new film by Oscar-nominated Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve, is like choosing to experience 2.5 hours of emotional torture. But potential audiences shouldn’t let that keep them from journeying through the complicated morality maze that is this story of abduction, vigilantism and …
April 12, 2013 Director Danny Boyle, fresh off being dubbed a national hero for his triumph directing the Olympic ceremonies in London, took another big directorial risk with his new release Trance. It is a frenetic, haunting genre-bender that grabs hold of and keeps your attention from its first moments to its last with such …
March 15, 2013 I’m sitting outside the Verizon Center, once again fighting for parking this week with the sports fans next door to my screening movie theatre. It reminds me, even when it matters, sometimes the winning team is a fluke, sometimes it’s well deserved… As Cinema Siren is meant to “guide you through a …
Monday, October 15, 2012 Cinema Siren stumbled off a plane from Paris and stumbled into a darkened movie theater this weekend to see actor/director Ben Affleck’s great new fall release, “Argo.” This highly entertaining movie was made all the more fun by being in a sold-out theater with a crowd entirely made up of people …
The Woman in Black Friday, February 3, 2012 Dan Radcliffe, the boy who lived, has officially become a man on film. You may go see his new film The Woman in Black to see your favorite wizard, but very quickly you’ll forget all that and focus on Radcliffe’s impressive work in this surprisingly engaging and …
Friday, December 23, 2011 Over the river and through the woods to grandfather’s house we go. The grandfather, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), patriarch of the Swedish industrial dynasty, seeks to solve the 40-year-old murder mystery and disappearance of his grand-niece, Harriet. This is the lynchpin in the first story based on Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster The …
Friday, October 14, 2011 Not everyone has the luxury of watching a film with an expert on all things “The Thing” related. So Cinema Siren will forgive the ignorance of the multitudes of critics who chalk this film up as just some lukewarm retread, or a pale copy of the 1982 John Carpenter scifi/horror classic. …
Saturday, October 8, 2011 When those bad boys of ancient Rome decided to bring the big man down on that famed day of betrayal on 44 BC, they weren’t kidding around. Caesar was stabbed no less than 23 times. Clearly they committed fully to the task and succeeded. A bunch of senators in togas then …
Saturday, September 10, 2011 Some would say Steven Soderbergh’s latest directorial offering is his version of the disaster films of the 1970s. That may be partly true, albeit an updated version for the new millennium. In this 2011 take on the plague-pic, it’s more like CSI: Contagion Source Investigation. There’s a decidedly dispassionate air to …
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 In the history of the silver screen, there have been many films that have been underrated, under appreciated, or gone unnoticed, but few reach the level of magnificence and genius as the suspenseful, alternately lyrical and visually jarring American gothic creepfest, “The Night of the Hunter”. Amidst hundreds of cherished ones, …
