By design the home invasion thriller incorporates a framework, the disturbance of one's place of protection and intimacy by malevolent outside forces, for riveting nail-biters which at times has been filled with more high-brow explorations of the philosophy of violence (Straw Dogs) and our relation to its depiction in media (Funny Games). Adam Wingard's The Guest doesn't attempt to reach that high, for the first hour it's following the path of The Strangers as a well-made execution of the genre…

Taken for themselves, the titular character's actions in Morvern Caller are unethical at best: after her boyfriend commits suicide, she cuts up his body, dumps it in a hole and publishes his recently finished novel under her own name. Yet the film doesn't pass judgement on her. Her motives aren't ever laid out explicitly, but we do get a look into her bleak circumstances of a low-wage worker in a desolate area. Samantha Morton's Performance is devoid of emotional outbursts,…

It doesn't exactly feel like self-parody and it doesn't exactly feel like Tarantino jumped the shark, but The Hateful Eight most definitely does not feel as well crafted as any of his other films bar Death Proof. The bursts of gory violence are timed for big laughs, but the narrative lacks the usual mix of importance, freshness and cleverness. Awkward slow-motion, a puzzlingly pointless flashback and the use of a special narrator move the film past the edge to overindulgent…