Girly Directed by Freddie Francis Girly is not the nightmarish blur of sex, color, and violence one would expect judging by the poster. Instead, it is a slow, psychological meditation, a playful look into the disturbing details of suppressed sexuality, morbid isolation, and the notion of insanity by proxy. We are led into a world …

Stake Land Directed by Jim Mickle Horror films, despite their divisiveness, are uncannily successful as time capsules. Stake Land, despite its many flaws, quite exhaustively captures the zeitgeist of 2010 America. Director Jim Mickle’s second feature is a vampire-apocalypse-road-movie featuring a dumb, animalistic class of vampires–that is to say zombies with more rules and more …

Rammbock Directed by Marvin Krenn Rammbock is a little German zombie movie set entirely in one apartment complex and featuring–bear with me, zombie fanatics–virtually no gore. Instead, like all the best epidemic movies, Rammbock is a story about survivors.  Our main survivor is Kai (Sebastian Achilles), a dopey, kind man who is in Berlin to …

Primal Directed by Josh Reed With Primal, first time film director Josh Reed crafts a fairly by-the-numbers infection movie, but, excepting some annoying stylistic flourishes, executes it commendably well. Primal introduces its cast on the tail end of a road trip into the Australian wilderness, where a group of 20-somethings are hoping to find a …

Let Me In Directed by  Matt Reeves This review is (sorry) for people who have seen the original.  There are two other reviews up on this site for the uninitiated: Since the production of Let Me In was announced, the general consensus of Let The Right One In fans has been that Matt Reeves and …

Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story Dir. Peter Miller (2010, Canada/USA, 91 mins.) In 1934, following Hank Greenburg’s decision not to play baseball on Yom Kippur, in a time when there weren’t many Jewish baseball players and when most baseball fans did not really understand Judaism, a poem appeared in the Detroit Free Press …

Daydream Nation Directed by Michael Goldbach Usually I dislike it when people say, “Oh that movie was weird.” I’m always inclined to think that they’re missing something. Or maybe I’m just a movie snob. Quite possible. However, halfway throughout this movie, I turned to a friend and said precisely those words to her. This movie is …

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger Directed by Woody Allen I feel the same way about Woody Allen that I feel about the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Yeah, you had some awesome stuff going in the 60s and 70s but maybe, just maybe it may be time to start just hanging out with …

Howl Directed by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman There couldn’t be a more perfect time to make a movie about Allen Ginsberg and his most celebrated work, “Howl.” The beat generation has enjoyed a revival as of late, as the hipster and alternative culture has adopted them as the godfathers to their respective “movements.” Howl …

Another Year Directed by Mike Leigh Another Year is Mike Leigh’s follow-up to 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky. Though the film has a completely different cast of characters and for the most part different casts altogether (save for Oliver Maltman, who appears in both), there are a lot of themes that are explored in both of Leigh’s movies. …

Film School Rejects recently posted a list of the best — and worst — movie collaborations between directors and their spouses. It seems those capricious movie gods have decreed that for every Oscar-winning gem like Fargo (Joel Coen directs Frances McDormand) there must be a farrago like Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away, starring his then-wife Madonna. …

———— Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Directed by Oliver Stone Simultaneously doom-laden and hopelessly naive, Oliver Stone’s unsolicited follow-up to his mostly well-regarded 1987 flick Wall Street might be wider in scope than its predecessor, folding in around a dozen characters and attempting to assign both blame and explanation for the ongoing financial crisis that’s …

Within the revolving door of actors playing the iconic figures over at Marvel Entertainment, Mark Ruffalo has been chosen to fill the shoes of Ed Norton’s place as The Incredible Hulk. Vulture got a hold of Ruffalo and he revealed that he would actually be ‘playing’ the character in the film rather than voice acting …

American Psycho Directed by Mary Harron What does Patrick Bateman want? He wants to be noticed; he wants the best business card, the swankiest apartment, the best looking girlfriend, the most money, and the best connections. To be the best, is to be noticed. This seems to directly contradict his similar compulsion to conform. He …

Howl Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman I had the honor to attend an advance screening of the new Ginsberg movie Howl at Boston’s MFA in which its directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, answered a few audience questions after the credits had rolled. This provided important insights into their artistic choices. Being the …

It is one of the funniest films of the year, because it is played as straight as can be.

Here is an interesting question: can a film infuriate you and be brilliant at the same time.  There are scenes of surprising power in Catfish, only to be followed some of the most infuriating scenes  you are likely to witness this year.  You aren’t infuriated at the character but at the filmmakers.  However, does that …

Good Neighbours Directed by Jacob Tierney I deliberately tried to walk into Jacob Tierney’s Good Neighbours without knowing much by way of plot. One thing I did know was that there was no way the word “good” in the title is to be taken literally. And that it probably wouldn’t be quite as lighthearted and …

Throughout history, standing to the right of every great king one usually finds a great prime minister turning the king’s vision from abstract ambition into fact. During critical years for Roger Corman’s Concorde studio, the man at Corman’s elbow was Mike Elliott. Look up Mike Elliott on the Internet Movie Data Base (www.imdb.com) and you’ll …

If Roger Corman was the commander-in-chief, and Mike Elliott his field marshal, than Travis Rink was among the front line troops who actually had to carry the fight. Writing several scripts for Concorde in the early 1990s, Rink had a close-up look at the factory-like process which made Concorde’s prodigious output possible. Rink had made …

Let Me In Directed by Matt Reeves vs. Let The Right One In Directed by Tomas Alfredson Even in a pop culture landscape littered with the bloodthirsty undead, Let The Right One In stood out as a poignant coming of age story as well as a bone-chilling horror film. The haunting mediation on the difficult …

Easy A Directed by Will Gluck A lot happens in good teen movies. The social structure of a high school has to be established, and a character placed within that social structure must ring true as someone we “know.” That character then has to be believably transferred from there to scenes placed in something recognizable …

“A strikingly personal vision of horror…” Let Me In Directed by Matt Reeves 2010, USA In many ways very similar to the original Swedish film, Matt Reeves’ Let Me In differentiates itself through its invigorating visual style, and by contextualizing the narrative through the troubled moral atmosphere of Reaganite America. The comments that this film …