eli roth – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN – Review by Susan Granger

October 15, 2025October 20, 2025 Susan Granger Bill Condon, Bruno Bichir, Diego Luna, eli roth, jennifer lopez, Joe Crombie, Kiss of the Spider Woman, movie musicals, Tonatiuh

Winner of seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, delves into the complex relationship between two prisoners incarcerated in a cellblock in Buenos Aires, Argentina, circa 1983. Adaptors Eli Roth & Joe Crombie with director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters) have discarded much of the deliberate calculation between the two disparate inmates in favor of sentimentality – skewing the focus on sultry, slinky Jennifer Lopez who vamps it up in full ‘diva’ mode in exuberant, elaborately staged musical numbers.

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THANKSGIVING – Review by Maitland McDonagh

November 15, 2023November 15, 2023 Maitland McDonagh eli roth, Grindhouse, holiday-themed, Nell Verlaque, slasher movie, thanksgiving

Let’s go to the trailer for Thanksgiving, a slasher movie in the grand tradition of Halloween, Christmas, Mother’s Day et al., which use take holiday traditions and color them blood red. After mock-promising us back in 2007 that “white meat … dark meat … all will be carved,” Thanksgiving–is set in Plymouth, Massachusetts, because of course it is–serves up just that. It’s sleekly efficient and delivers both some solid suspense sequences and one of the more imaginatively grotesque images I’ve seen in a lifetime of watching horror movies–one of which is in the set of promotional images that are already all over the web.

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