“That was the most offensive display of sexualized violence I have ever seen,” one wilting fellow in need of a camphor hankie was overheard saying in the elevator. Such blanching is the reaction Last House on the Left is trolling for, but I doubt it will be typical. Permissibility has…

Inkheart Brendan “Kids’ Choice” Fraser returns to the multiplex day-care as “Mo” Folchart, antiquarian-book-repairman-cum-adventurer. In Inkheart’s opening chapter, he’s identified as a member of a race of “Silvertongues”—those who, when they read aloud, can suck people out of and into the texts that they’re reciting from. Mo has abstained from…

For as long as it forges ahead without explanations, The Unborn works in its way, as a series of snap-cut gotchas introducing each new contestant in its pageant of cold-sweat set-pieces. Often, this involves starlet Odette Yustman approaching some obscured, inevitably terrifying figure from behind very…very…slowly. Yustman plays Casey, a…

Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation—though it moves fluidly enough, and its drawings have a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of the cross-promoted-to-saturation CGI-‘toon juggernauts—but because it translates a sensitive, introspective, true-to-life, “adult” comic story into moving pictures. While Robert Crumb only…