Sinister

Where's Linklater when you need him?

Grade: B +

Director: Scott Derrickson

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Dalton Thompson, James Ransone, Michael Hall D’Addario and Clare Foley

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Harvested from a host of horror film cadavers, Sinister is engrossing, effective and just plain scary as hell. Ellison Osborne (Ethan Hawke, top-notch), a true-crime novelist, moves his family into their new home, which just happens to be the site of a recent family hanging, hoping to pen his return to past acclaim. When Ellison stumbles across a box of Super 8 film capturing this grisly murder and several decades of similar slaughters, it triggers a chain reaction of chills and things that go bump in the night.

With a gripping opening shot that establishes a paralyzing tone, this frightener from director Scott Derrickson lifts from The Shining, The Ring, Saw, the found-footage subgenre and many other influences, but Derrickson also makes smart use of camera angles and framing to concoct scares both actual and perceived. The film falters from a trite denouement that strays too far into the supernatural. But amidst all the homage, Derrickson also finds ways to subvert the rules: If you think just moving out of the haunted house will secure safety, think again.

Brooklyn's Finest

Hey Don, there's this tax guy I gotta hook you up with...

Grade: B –

Starring: Antoine Fuqua

Starring: Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, and Wesley Snipes

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hour, 20 minutes

A thin blue film coats Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest, the director’s welcome needed return to his hardboiled cop drama roots. And, like Fuqua’s Training Day, this is a testosterone-fueled, actor-driven policier that favors melodramatics over originality.

The narrative is a loosely connected triptych following the travails of three ethically challenged police officers: A burned-down flatfoot on the eve of retirement (Richard Gere); a drug-addled, financially strapped narc (Ethan Hawke); and an undercover cop (Don Cheadle) dug deep inside the drug network of a local kingpin (Wesley Snipes). The archetypes and clichés run as long as the Brooklyn Bridge, but Fuqua infuses them with incisive character development that transcends the superficial plot and rationed screen-time.

Brooklyn’s Finest is a live Wire electrified with almost cartoonish intensity. Luckily, the actors walking this beat know the score. While an emotionally distant Gere is miscast, Hawke has perfected the man-on-the-edge role. But, the film belongs to the tremendous yet still strangely underrated Cheadle, flashing the same streetwise verisimilitude and offbeat dialogue that previously informed his performances in Out of Sight and Devil in the Blue Dress.

Neil Morris