Critic's Notebook

Unhappy Death Day

Tobias Höiem-Flyckt/Dark Star Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW
Koko-di Koko-da (2020)

By SARAH MANVEL

It’s not often that a movie truly lives up to its horror billing. Sure you get scares, thrills and women being mistreated in the most unspeakable of ways, but it’s rare that you are made to feel as if you are in an interminable nightmare. This Swedish oddity, about three lives which are wrecked while on holiday in Denmark, does exactly this. It’s awful to watch, and not in a good way.

Disinfo Wars

Patti Perret/Universal Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW
The Hunt (2020)

By MARTIN TSAI

After President Donald Trump personally “canceled” it in a tweet, “The Hunt” was abruptly bumped from its Sept. 27, 2019, release date indefinitely — until now. Its premise involves a group of “woke” “libtards” declaring open season on “deplorables” and kidnapping a dozen of them. That’s basically its plot: The "elites” pick off the conspiritards one by one in gory detail over a bogus conspiracy dubbed “Manorgate” until a few escape and strike back in similarly gory detail. The end.

The Spy Who Bugged Me

Michael Gibson/STXfilms

MOVIE REVIEW
My Spy (2020)

By MARTIN TSAI

In “My Spy,” former wrestler-mixed martial artist Dave Bautista plays J. J., a nails-for-breakfast war veteran-turned-C.I.A. operative on assignment staking out newly widowed Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley) and her 9-year-old daughter, Sophie (Chloe Coleman), who have recently fled Paris and are struggling to adjust to their new life in Chicago. The clever Sophie is quickly on to J. J. and threatens to blow his cover if he doesn’t take her ice skating, participate in her special person’s day at school and train her to become a spy, all so that her new classmates will no longer ostracize her.

Necronomicon Air

NonStop Entertainment

MOVIE REVIEW
Color Out of Space (2020)

By TIM HAYES

If you’re going to return to making feature films after 27 years away, you might as well pick up where you left off. The opening credits of “Color Out of Space” have Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) carrying out a Wicca ritual, appealing to the angels to take care of her mother, and the words "Directed by Richard Stanley" appear over a close-up of the antique compass in her hand. Back in 1992 Mr. Stanley’s previous feature, "Dust Devil," started with another pilgrim looking at a hand-held totem; but then the figure was a supernatural serial killer and the item was a pocket watch going backwards. And back before that, the credits of “Hardware” ended with a post-apocalyptic scavenger dressed in the very 1990 boho-gothic style of Carl McCoy from the band Fields of the Nephilim (for it was he) holding another battered compass in equal close-up, although the credits on-screen at that exact instant are the freighted names of Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Three films, three nomads, looking at three antique analogue icons for some signal from a cosmos that shows every sign of being otherwise engaged.