Maps to the Stars premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in April of this year, competing for the Palme d’Or as best picture and earning a best actress award for Julianne Moore. The takeaway from that success for the casual filmgoer may be somewhat misleading. Just as many went to see Black Swan after hearing of Natalie Portman’s performance as a troubled ballerina only to be shocked that director Darren Aronofsky had used horror film conventions to tell his story of a dancer descending into a hellish madness, so, too, may some viewers be lured into this movie by incorrect expectations. Maps to the Stars is not a mainstream motion picture. Director David Cronenberg was, is, and always will be, a genre director. That is not intended as an insult or a limitation. Is it a knock on Hitchcock to say he was a director of thrillers? The brilliance of Cronenberg’s filmography is self-evident; his influence on the industry well documented. From the venereal horror productions of They Came From Within and Rabid through the sci-fi mind screws of Videodrome, The Fly, and eXistenZ with stops along the way to look at the outcasts on the fringes of society in Naked Lunch, M.Butterfly, and Crash, Cronenberg has been directing the most demanding, challenging, and prophetic of genre films for almost 40 years.
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Maps to the Stars Review
Posted: September 21, 2014 in ReviewsTags: Bruce wagner, David cronenberg, Evan Bird, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon
Reclaim Review
Posted: September 19, 2014 in Action, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Adoption, Alan White, Jacki Weaver, John Cusack, Puerto Rico, Rachelle Lefevre, Ryan Phillippe
John Cusack is in the midst of one of the more fascinating contemporary Hollywood careers. At 48 years of age, Cusack has already appeared in over 70 motion pictures – often in the lead – covering an almost unfathomable range of genres. He has appeared in action films (Con Air and 2012), comedies (Hot Tub Time Machine and Better Off Dead), art house fare (The Paperboy and Bob Roberts), romcom (Say Anything), horror (1408), drama (The Butler), and satire (War). That list is hardly inclusive as it omits some of the more notable films featuring Cusack, including: Sixteen Candles, Broadcast News, Eight Men Out, The Player, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Thin Red Line, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, and Adaptation.
Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da (A Hard Day) Review
Posted: September 17, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Action, Foreign, ReviewsTags: Changju Kim, Cho Jin-woong, Cop Movies, Korean films, Seon-gyun Lee, Seong-hoon Kim
Ahead of October’s release of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, we have the Korean adult version known as Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da or A Hard Day. Alexander may have to deal with setbacks like gum in his hair and a trip to the dentist, but that hardly measures up to the grown-up problems our hero, Go Geon-soo (Seon-gyun Lee), faces.
Geon-soo must plan his mother’s funeral, deal with his own divorce and the custody of his daughter, and stay a step ahead of the internal affairs team investigating him and the other members of his police squad for alleged corruption. But what proves to be the capper for the good detective is when he runs over a pedestrian late at night on a deserted stretch of road.
White Bird in a Blizzard Review
Posted: September 16, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Drama, ReviewsTags: Angela Bassett, Christopher Meloni, Eva Green, Gabourey Sidibe, Gregg Araki, Shailene Woodley
“I was 17 when my mother disappeared…”
There is a haunting beauty to the tag line of White Bird in a Blizzard, an ambiguity that echoes throughout the film. Kat Connor (Shailene Woodley) loses her mother (Eva Green) just as the young girl is becoming a woman, but has Eve Connor walked away from her family or was she taken? The mystery of the mother’s departure, and the effects of her absence for better or worse on Kat and, to a lesser degree, on husband and father Brock (Christopher Meloni), form the center of the film. Unfortunately, the narrative is burdened with too much extraneous material that distracts and detracts from the beautiful, wondrous, excruiating, painful, scarring and fascinating mother-daughter relationship that should be the sole focus.
Open Windows Review
Posted: September 15, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Action, Drama, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Elijah Wood, Nacho Vigalondo, Rear Window, Sasha Grey
If you try very hard, you can make a case for Open Windows to be a cyber-inspired reimagining of Rear Window. In the 21st century, laptops, smart phones, and surveillance cameras are to us what a telephoto lens and an apartment window were to Americans in the 1950’s: a means to look into the living rooms and bedrooms of our neighbors. That would make Elijah Wood this generation’s Jimmy Stewart, and Wood does carry some of the same nebbish Everyman qualities, though his characters, to date, have not shown the same flinty internal strength. Where this imagined connection between movies falters is with Sasha Grey as a stand-in for Grace Kelly, or Nacho Vigalando for Alfred Hitchcock. Still, Rear Window was a gimmick movie as is Open Windows. The difference is that in Hitchcock’s masterpiece, the gimmick is used to introduce the action; in Vigalando’s rather ordinary effort, the gimmick overwhelms the action.
It Follows Review
Posted: September 12, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Horror, ReviewsTags: David Robert Mitchell, Detroit, Julio Perez IV, Maika Monroe, Mike Gioulakis, Oedipal Complex, Richard Pryor, Teenage Sex
The brilliant stand-up comedian Richard Pryor had a routine about venereal disease in which he expressed his concern that drug-resistant STDs were becoming so worrisome that soon, a man would begin the act, and his junk would immediately explode. Until the day Brother Richard’s prophecy comes true, we have David Robert Mitchell’s new horror film, It Follows, which centers around a particularly virulent form of VD. To wit, have sex just one time – particularly if you are a teenage female – and an evil spirit, that may or not take the shape of someone you know, will track you down and bend you like a pretzel until you snap, penicillin or industrial-strength Trojans notwithstanding. The film works as social satire and horror flick until it doesn’t, which is to say that it never pushes past its initial premise to develop into a story greater than its log line.
Jamie Marks Is Dead Review
Posted: September 11, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Drama, ReviewsTags: Cameron Monaghan, Carter Smith, Liv Tyler, Madisen Beaty, Morgan Saylor, Noah Silver
Jamie Marks Is Dead is a film that is more interested in being earnest than it is in being entertaining. It is a muddled mess that purports to be a message movie, but one that cannot articulate a coherent view. Jamie Marks Is Dead is more easily characterized by the things it is not, than by what it is. It is not a horror movie. It is not a ghost story. It is not a mystery or a thriller. It is not an allegory about bullying or even a worthwhile feature-length public service announcement for It Gets Better.
On the other hand, it is long, languid, and dull, albeit well intentioned.
Coherence Review
Posted: September 10, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Drama, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Alternate Universes, Emily Baldoni, James Ward Byrkit, Quantum Physics, Schrödinger's Cat, Sci Fi
Coherence is a vigorous affirmation that a great script trumps special effects in crafting a superior science fiction movie. James Ward Byrkit’s screenplay is the real star of this rock solid, thinking man’s flick. The film has a theatrical sense to it with a relatively small cast of eight spending most of the 90-minute runtime in a dining room as a typical suburban dinner party turns into a cosmic event, but what the movie might lack in explosions and spaceships, it makes up in tension and intellectual provocation.
Rufus Review
Posted: September 5, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Drama, Horror, ReviewsTags: Dave Schultz, Edward Cullen, Lawrence Talbot, Merritt Paterson, Richard Harmon, Rory J. Saper
Rufus is not a bad movie. In fact, it is almost a good one. One final rewrite of the script, the removal of one character, a clarification or two of the central figure, and a slice of about 20 minutes from the 110-minute runtime, and you would be staring straight at a modest Canadian independent production with strong cult appeal that would play very well on the festival circuit. As is, however, Rufus suffers from a lack of clarity and purpose. Director/screenwriter Dave Schultz overextends in what should be a more barebones effort; in the process, he muddles the narrative and leaves the audience wondering what might have been.
iNumber Number (aka Avenged) Review
Posted: September 4, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Action, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Donovan Marsh, Heist Movie, Presley Chweneyagae, Reservoir Dogs, S'Dumo Mtshali, South Africa, Vic Vega
The best thing to be said about iNumber Number is that it leaves you wanting more. You want to see more work from director/screenwriter Donovan Marsh. You want to see more of a stellar cast, particularly lead actor S’Dumo Mtshali. You especially want to see more of South Africa as a setting for hard-nosed crime flicks. The downside to this desire for more, more, and more is that iNumber Number is not quite satisfying in itself. A good bit of the 96-minute runtime is given over to waiting for the film to hit fifth gear, only to discover that it’s more of an automatic transmission ride.
Meet Mr. Karma 