Clara’s Ghost (2018)

In Clara’s Ghost, Chris Elliott’s family stars as…Chris Elliott’s family. Well, technically as the Reynolds family. Ted (Chris) is a once-famous actor, and his daughters Julie (Abby Elliott) and Riley (writer/director Bridey Elliott) are former children’s show stars (think Olsen twins). The non-actor matriarch of the Elliott clan, Paula Niedert Elliott, plays the titular character Clara, who is also the only one in the Reynolds who doesn’t work in the industry. And something is a little off with Clara. She rips up family photos that don’t seem as happy as the ones on facebook. She calls a winery in the middle of the night to compliment them on the look of their team. And she keeps seeing a ghost, a pale brunette in a flowing white dress, who no one else can see. The ghost may or may not be Adelia, the daughter of the former owner of the house, who was committed as a young woman, if the clippings in Clara’s office are to be believed.

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Mandy (2018)

I’m never sure what to make of Nicholas Cage. He’s such a “feast-or-famine” actor. For every Joe (2013) there’s a Rage (2014); for every Leaving Las Vegas (1995), there’s an awful remake of The Wicker Man (2006). So where does Mandy fit in? I’m not really certain. The only thing I am sure of is that many of you will group it with the latter films in the previous comparisons, rather than the former. It would seem to be a film perfectly suited to Cage’s…unique form of acting. In the dreamlike world of Mandy, full of colored lens filters, evil cults, demonic biker gangs, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Cage’s tendency to chew scenery fits right in.

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Ghost Stories (2017)

“The mind sees what it wants to see.”

So says a character in Ghost Stories, an anthology piece that is, at times, frightening, disorienting, funny,and sad. Unlike many other horror anthology films, however, this one benefits from a setup that does more than serve as an introduction to the individual stories. Andy Nyman plays Professor Goodman, who has devoted his life to debunking psychics and mediums who prey on the bereaved. One day he gets an audiotape from someone who claims to be Goodman’s idol, another famous skeptic. The only problem is, everyone believes he’s long dead. Regardless, Goodman agrees to a meeting, where he is handed three case files in an envelope marked “explain these.” It’s no surprise that those cases are the three vignettes of the film,but it’s the Goodman story that not only ties the tales together but serves as a marker of Goodman’s increasingly shaky faith in his convictions.

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