Amityville The Awakening (2017)

A new family, one headed by a lethargic Jennifer Jason Leigh as mom, moves into the Amityville Horror house and over the course of a perfunctory 87-minutes, the son, brain-dead, bedridden, unresponsive and hooked up to machines in the front room, starts to show signs of improved condition, leading his twin sister Belle to suspect dark forces are at play and luckily her new school friends have seen and read all the books and movies in the series and so can catch her up on the based-on-a-true-family-massacre paranormal story. 

★★☆☆☆

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Annihilation (2018)

As in Arrival, another sci-fi with a one-word title starting with the letter 'A', a scientist sets out to investigate and explain an alien phenomenon, but where in Arrival Amy Adams' linguist is able to elucidate the profound mission statement of a startling pair of enormous black eggs hanging in the sky over Earth, Natalie Portman's military-trained molecular biologist in Annihilation investigates an alien 'shimmer' that is threatening some prime coastal real estate and in the end admits - after exploring the abandoned Teletubbieland within the 'shimmer' and engaging with a lifeform in what looks like Sia videoclip choreography - that the phenomenon is less interesting in itself than the potential it poses as a springboard for a future alien invasion movies.

★★★☆☆

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Single White Female (1992)

This in many ways unremarkable b-movie about a roommate who gradually takes over an apartment owner's life, adopting her fashion tastes and hairstyle, insinuating herself into her relationships and eventually tipping over the edge and going plain batshit crazy, unexpectedly resonated with audiences in 1992 and became a huge success - probably due in good part to the performance of its star: the inner city New York apartment in The Ansonia building that everybody wishes they could one day own, psycho roomie or not.

★★★★☆

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The Hateful Eight (2015)

The signature Quentin Tarantino violence, when it comes, detracts from this otherwise metered, suspenseful story of eight or so men and a whole lot of lies holed up in a snowed-in room; I'd have preferred more plot and twists to the From Dusk Til Dawn gorefest that brings everything to a decidedly unfun finish.

★★☆☆☆

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