The 2024 Houston Cinema Arts Festival, which ran from Nov. 7 to 17, showcased a vibrant array of films with unique storytelling and artistic vision. Here are four of this year’s festival standouts, each offering a distinct and memorable cinematic experience.
The River Oaks Theatre, freshly renovated and restored, reopened its doors to Houston audiences Oct. 3. Taking visual cues from the movie palaces of the 20th century, the new theatre now boasts three screening rooms, two in-house bars and a kitchen that serves food to guests.
It’s hard to understate how big of a cultural moment “Joker” was. It was a rare moment when a film succeeded in nearly every metric a film can. It grossed over a billion dollars, was critically praised and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, with star Joaquin Phoenix taking home one of the two Oscars the film ended up winning.
I have covered over 30 movies for the Thresher but have never reviewed a straight-up horror film, until today. Generally, I am more than apprehensive about spending money on a movie that will, at best, give me nightmares and, at worst, be an unpleasant string of jump scares.
“Rebel Ridge,” director Jeremy Saulnier’s fourth feature, is my exact type of movie. A terse, political crime thriller with excellent hand-to-hand combat sequences? You can count me in, not only because I find the content exhilarating, but also because these kinds of thrillers seem few and far between in the blockbuster age we live in.
The legacy sequel has been a mainstay for Hollywood for almost 15 years (“Tron: Legacy,” anyone?), and it has proven to be a winning formula. Ever since the seventh “Star Wars” installment made a whopping $2 billion, every possible franchise has been resurrected from the dead to recapture profits.
It’s hard to say much about “Blink Twice,” Zoë Kravitz’s (“The Batman”) directorial debut, without giving it all away. The film follows a pair of women (Naomi Ackie, Alia Shawkat) invited on an impromptu vacation on a creepy private island by an even creepier tech billionaire (Channing Tatum). The film, a solid debut feature, has quite a bit going for itself, or at least enough juice for me not to spoil the surprises. But what I can say is that if you have seen a thriller, nothing in “Blink Twice” will blow you away.
It’s a shame that I didn’t know about Julio Torres’ work before “Problemista” popped up on my radar. The Salvadoran comedy writer is a collaborator with many of the current best voices in comedy — he is a co-showrunner for the HBO show “Los Espookys” alongside Fred Armisen and was a writer on SNL from 2016 to 2019. “Problemista,” however, sees Torres taking center stage as he directs, writes and stars. The inherent gamble of this immense level of authorship ultimately pays off, as Torres has created an intensely reflective coming-of-age story filtered through a surreal, kaleidoscopic sense of humor — a unique combination and subsequent balance that will leave you wishing you knew about Torres’s work sooner.
Record Store Day, a celebration of independently owned record stores, happens April 20 — but knowing where to celebrate can be challenging. Whether you are just discovering records via one of the 9,000 Taylor Swift vinyl variants, are addicted to flipping through the bins or infuriated by the fact that I referred to an LP as a “vinyl” earlier in this sentence, here are some local, independent record stores you should check out.
Neo-noir is one of my favorite genres — it’s often a perfect blend of crime, action, dark comedy and snaking narratives that equally enthrall and disgust the audience.
