Enter The Void Directed by Gasper Noé Ever since the notorious Irreversible prompted the dubious honor of causing the largest walkout in Cannes history back in 2002, Gallic maverick Gasper Noé appears to have been paying the rent with a couple of music videos, an advert (appropriately enough) for condoms and a contributing entry to …
Paranormal Activity Directed by Oren Peli There’s nothing more terrifying than things that go bump in the night while we lay awake helpless under our bedsheets. Writer-director Oren Peli obviously recognizes this, as he expertly exploits this fear to create the genuinely frightful paranormal thriller Paranormal Activity. Adding to the fear factor, Paranormal Activity opens …
Fausta: La Teta Asustada / The Milk of Sorrow Spain, Peru, 2009 Director: Claudia Llosa Writer: Claudia Llosa Fausta is a young woman afflicted with a rare disease. The milk of Sorrow, passed on to her through her mother’s breast milk, affects the children born to women tortured and raped during Peru’s terrorist era. Frightened …
Antichrist Directed by Lars von Trier Plunging headfirst into a realm of depraved evil, leaving behind him any and all polite norms of filmmaking (mainstream, independent or otherwise), Lars von Trier has unleashed his most audacious creation to date, which has been branded everything from “misogynistic” (according the Cannes` Ecumenical Jury, who awarded it a …
Director Spike Jonze may have spent the past seven years in hiding, but this week movie audiences will find out whether Where the Wild Things Are – Jonze’s labor of love and the product of years of work – is worth the wait. Appropriately, considering Jonze’s hip reputation, the soundtrack is handled by Karen O …
House of Satisfaction 2009, USA Director: Jesse Hartman Writer: Jesse Hartman (story), Greg Takoudes (screenplay) “New York fairy tale” House of Satisfaction takes director Jesse Hartman’s real-life club and music as inspiration, setting up camp inside Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, and turning Hartman’s band Laptop into an underground legend. Content-wise, it’s unclear where fact …
Fish Tank Directed by Andrea Arnold The UK has a proud tradition of social realist cinema, pioneered by the so-called British New Wave in the mid-1960’s and the grimly dour, class conscious debuts of Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson. Although the contemporary British film industry primarily serves as an adjunct to the Hollywood blockbuster machine, keeping their …
Ramata 2008, Dakar, Gorée Directed by Léandre-Alain Baker Written by Miguel Machalski, Léandre-Alain Baker, Abasse Ndione A rare African co-production that forgoes European assistance, Ramata is a sombre tale of love, loss, and despair. Directed by Léandre-Alain Baker, and based on the novel by Abasse Ndione , the film follows a tragic aging beauty on …
Dogtooth (Kynodontas) Directed by Giorgos Lanthimos Currently touring the festival circuit is a bizarre Greek film called Dogtooth, the third feature by writer, director, and producer Giorgos Lanthimos. Its plot could be likened to that of American Gothic, focusing on a family living in a large, secluded house. The parents have never allowed their two …
9 Directed by Shane Acker Shane Acker’s short film 9, upon which his new feature is based, is a lyrical, twisted, gorgeously conceived and shot dialogue-free 10 minute exercise. The feature length film, still directed by Acker (now with a screenplay by Pamela Pettler to accompany his story) still embodies most of these qualities. The …
Children of The Corn Directed by Donald P. Borchers In what’s being marketed as a “rebirth,” Children of the Corn revisits the 80’s classic that spawned 6 sequels and countless amounts of children to fear those long weekends in the country. There’s a trend happening again in the Horror genre. A trend that makes a …
Baz Luhrmann’s sophomore effort, 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, is today perhaps best remembered for spotlighting Leonardo DiCaprio’s pre-Titanic charisma. For a movie that took the world’s best known love story and transferred it to a new era, its soundtrack remains firmly etched in its own time. The movie very much resembles a music video with …
As part of the viral campaign, Fight Smack in the Orphanage, public service announcement has Bullhorn (Byron Minns) show how one can prevent the use of smack on the streets.
This kind of assertion gets thrown around too much, but The Revenant has a real shot of becoming a cult classic. It has enough gore and violence to satisfy the horror set, but it also has a sharp wit, a surprising heart, and a unique story. The Revenant Directed by Kerry Prior Undead horror has …
Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star in the upcoming thriller Splice, set for release some time in September. Director Vincenzo Natali is best known for his movies Cube and Nothing. Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are two young rebellious scientists who defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA …
The House of the Devil is at heart an exercise in tension, and West and Donahue deserve serious credit for stringing the audience along while revealing little of the horror to come. House Of The Devil Directed by Ti West I can’t yet speak to Ti West’s 21st century output, but with The House of …
Survival of the Dead Directed by George A. Romero George A. Romero. the undisputed king of socially relevant zombiedom. delivers his sixth entry into his Dead series with Survival of the Dead. Unlike Land of the Dead. set several years after the dead first began to rise up and eat the living, Survival opens a …
Whip It 2009, USA Directed by Drew Barrymore Written by Shauna Cross (also novel) Starring Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig Whip It is not for me. And I mean that literally: it wasn’t made for me. The producers of the film probably couldn’t care less what a 20-something male thinks of …
Take Out 2004, USA Directed by Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou Written by Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou Starring Charles Jang, Jeng-Hua Yu, Wang-Thye Lee, Justin Wan English/Mandarin In the context of film reviews, ‘hypnotic’ often means the critic fell asleep, but got the DVD for free and is trying to be nice. This is why Jean …
Undertones: Volume 6 The classic science fiction film emerged during a period of great societal paranoia in the US in the early 1950s. The post-WW2 environment saw an increased concern with nuclear armament and a fear of the infiltration of communism on the American way of life. Essentially, the sci-fi film was Hollywood’s great metaphor …
The Stepfather 2 Directed by Jeff Burr The Stepfather, one of the most effective psychological thrillers made in the early 80’s, may have been a flop in theaters, but it found a second life on cable and videocassette, gaining enough of a cult following to result in a sequel. The original Stepfather was a complex …
Mandrill Directed by Ernesto Díaz Espinoza Chilean director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza and his action star collaborator, Marko Zaror, are three films deep now, with a fourth (in 3D!) on the way. Clearly they’ve found a formula that works for them, but I’m not as convinced. There’s plenty of buzz around these guys, and they’re hyping …
Love Exposure is often gratuitous, low-brow, and even tasteless–you will never again see as many shots of young girl’s panties in one place–but is also sneakily poignant. Directed by Shion Sono Sion Sono’s new film covers a lot of territory. It’s a romance, a revenge tale, a heartbreaking tragedy, a truly zany comedy, a blood-splattered …