Tonights twisted thriller on Netflix Disk: COLD IN JULY (2015), based on the Joe R. Joe Lansdale novel of the same name. A small-town Dad played by Michael C. Hall shoots an intruder and finds his family targeted by the burglars own vengeful father, played by Sam Shepard. You think you know where this story is going, but you would be wrong: at about the thirty-minute mark it completely departs from what before that time looks like a fairly conventional iteration of the CAPE FEAR formula. It takes a left turn and heads for Texas. The movie misses some of the character nuances of Joes novel, but handles the terror of a key revelation splendidly, and the action climax is terrific. As much as we complain about the state of movies, this has actually been a great, great year for small-scale crime pictures -- see also BLUE RUIN and HERE COMES THE NIGHT --and a lot of reportedly good ones are coming out this fall.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 02:14:59 +0000