Ever since her auspicious debut with Girlfight in 2000, director Karyn Kusama has been drawn to stories about flawed, driven protagonists, but she’s never had a heroine as forceful or complex as Erin Bell, the LAPD detective played by Nicole Kidman in Destroyer. Bell is a onetime undercover cop whose experience infiltrating a gang of thieves went horribly wrong, and who lives in a constant state of regret, resentment and rage — a volatile combination when the murder of one of her former associates opens up old wounds. The expertly constructed script, by Kusama’s frequent collaborators Phil Hay and Matt […]

Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation achieves the kind of cinematic alchemy one finds in Blood Simple or the best of Hitchcock, where genre meets philosophy and character to yield something both razor-sharp in its clarity and infinitely complex in its provocations. The script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi follows a group of friends over the course of one night when they reunite after a tragedy that has affected all of their lives. The intentions of the hostess, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), are mysterious and only grow increasingly troubling as the night progresses, at least as far as her ex-husband Will (Logan […]