The new Korean thriller Office has one of the most dramatic demonstrations of the power of image in recent memory. A single shot, some five minutes into the movie, showing a hand gripping a hammer in the foreground and a domestic scene within an apartment in the background elicits gasps from audiences anticipating and fearing what will happen next before it is even shown. That director Hong Won-Chan can capture such a moment in his first feature film merits kudos, and, even if that represents the dramatic zenith of this uneven effort, his talent is unmistakable.
Office (O piseu) review
Posted: August 24, 2015 in 2015 Fantasy FilmFest, Foreign, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Bae Seong-Woo, Fantasy FilmFest, Hong Won-Chan, Ko Ah-Sung, Korean films
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Drive-in Dive in: Some Kind of Hate
Posted: August 21, 2015 in 2015 Fantasy FilmFest, Horror, ReviewsTags: Adam Egypt Mortimer, Brian DeLeeuw, Grace Phipps, Ronen Rubinstein, Sierra McCormick
Drive-in credo is never, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Drive-in credo is always, “Get mad, then get even.”
Revenge is a dish best served with boiling hot blood in your basic exploitation movie, and Some Kind of Hate gets the recipe exactly right. The special ingredient here is the outsourcing of the violence to a malevolent spirit as high school bullies get their comeuppance from the evil incarnation of a victim who died at the hands of her tormentors.
H. Review
Posted: August 20, 2015 in 2015 Berlinale, 2015 Fantasy FilmFest, Drama, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Daniel Garcia, Helen of Troy, Rania Attieh, Rebecca Dayan, Robin Bartlett
Film audiences in Berlin have enjoyed two opportunities to see the film H. this year, first at the Berlinale in February and then, more recently, at the Fantasy FilmFest in August. It is a movie that does well with a second viewing as the allusions to the Helen of Troy mythology from the Iliad and The Odyssey can be distracting rather than illuminating the first time around. As the events slowly unfold on screen, filmgoers can feel as if they have wandered into a graduate school literature class without reading the assignment or even having access to the CliffsNotes version. Letting go of these concerns during a subsequent viewing allows audiences to escape a sense of frustration and enjoy the pleasures of understated storytelling within a technically sound framework. Of course, you still need to devote more mental energy than in most films, but here, one feels as if it is worth the effort even if there are elements that must be pushed to the side.
Drive-In Dive In: Hellions
Posted: August 19, 2015 in 2015 Fantasy FilmFest, Drive In, Horror, ReviewsTags: Bruce McDonald, Bucket Head, Chloe Rose, Robert Patrick
If Hellions is the third feature on the drive-in line-up this weekend, take the speaker off the window after the second flick, and call it a night. Even with a crisp 80-minute runtime, this would-be scare fare about the Halloween night from Hell is not worth the time or heartburn from snack bar French fries.
The most unsettling aspect of Hellions is its treatment of teen pregnancy. At its worst moments (worst as in truly bad rather than frightening), this otherwise conventional horror story comes off as right-wing, pro-abstinence, anti-abortion political propaganda. If you’re a seventeen-year old girl who screws around with her boyfriend even once, be prepared to get knocked up and then visited by evil children intent on taking possession of the unborn, all in short order and, quite naturally, all on Halloween night. Read the rest of this entry »
Kill Your Friends Review
Posted: August 18, 2015 in 2015 Fantasy FilmFest, Comedy, Reviews, ThrillerTags: 90's Zeitgeist, Britpop, Gertrude Stein, John Niven, Moritz Bleibtreu, Nicholas Hoult, Nobody knows anything, William Goldman
Kill Your Friends is not nearly as deliciously nasty a film as it should be and not half as clever as it thinks it is. Scripted by John Niven from his own novel, the movie takes a satiric look at the British music industry in the late 1990’s, the supposed heyday of the late, unlamented Britpop movement. Yes, the acting is bravura, the direction appropriately brisk, the dialogue and cinematography respectively knife-edge sharp, but the end result is merely diverting rather than engrossing.
Big Game Review
Posted: June 19, 2015 in Action, ReviewsTags: Die Hard, Escape from New York, Finland, Jalmari Helander, Onni Tommila, Samuel L. Jackson
If you have an 11-year old boy or, even, better, if you are an 11-year old boy, Big Game might just be your favorite movie of the summer of 2015. If you are an 11-year old Finnish boy, Big Game might be your Citizen Kane.
For everyone else, it is important to realize what Big Game is not before you make the trek to the Cineplex for a showing. It is not plausible, logical, or consistent within its own narrative. It is not a movie that is on par with Escape from New York or Die Hard, although it borrows liberally from both. It is most decidedly not a conventional Samuel L. Jackson movie. Read the rest of this entry »
Jurassic World Review
Posted: June 12, 2015 in Action, ReviewsTags: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Colin Trevorrow, Godzilla, Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg, Toy Story
The most amazing thing about Jurassic World is that none of its manifest flaws are fatal. Somehow, the movie retains enough magic from the original to be entertaining in spite of the sub-standard dialogue, tired plot, uninspiring special effects, indifferent performances, and recurrent boneheaded decisions by pivotal characters. The success of this film will stand as either a testimony to the enduring strength of 1993’s Jurassic Park or as a contemporary milestone marking the low threshold in place for summer blockbusters.
More likely the latter. Read the rest of this entry »
Drive-In Dive In: Gun Woman
Posted: May 31, 2015 in Action, Drive In, ReviewsTags: Asami, Kurando Mitsutake, Noriaki Kamata
Too much of what passes for drive-in movies these days are arch ironic from the get go, overly self conscious attempts to cook up the heady cinematic concoctions of the late 60’s and early 70’s with modern ingredients reheated in a 21st-century Hollywood microwave. This trend started with Grindhouse, but traces of modern taint can be found even in otherwise stalwart efforts of late including Hobo with a Shotgun and Bring Me The Head of the Machine Gun Woman. The genuine stuff is out there, but it’s rare and easily missed.
That’s what makes Gun Woman special. This 86-minute extreme import from Japan is the real deal, an organic exercise in hardcore drive in. Leave the kids at home with the sitter for this one, or, at the least, make sure they’re asleep in the back seat with a blanket over their heads. Accidental exposure will result in more than a nightmare – we’re talking years of lockdown therapy. Gun Woman is the finest exploitation film since Raze (2013), the absolutely bonkers flick that showed captured women fighting to the death. Read the rest of this entry »
Survivor Review
Posted: May 30, 2015 in Action, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, James McTeigue, Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Robert Forster
How bad can it be?
Very.
It is natural to take a glance at the new thriller Survivor as a possibility for an evening’s entertainment and come away favorably disposed toward giving it a go. The cast has a slew of familiar names who have been involved in quality productions in the past and been rewarded for it. Survivor boasts an Oscar winner, a Golden Globe winner, a former James Bond, and a Quentin Tarantino resurrection project among the leads: Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Pierce Brosnan, and Robert Forster. The cherry on top is Milla Jovovich, who has single handedly made the Resident Evil series viable. Read the rest of this entry »
San Andreas Review
Posted: May 29, 2015 in Action, ReviewsTags: Alexandra Daddario, Carla Gugino, Disaster Movies, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Leslie Nielsen, Paul Giamatti
Disaster movies are like cicadas: noisy, plentiful, routine, and predictable. Fortunately, for most, both are only a minor annoyance. We are made aware of the insects by the unique song a swarm produces. Disaster movies let us know of their arrival in a less subtle manner: a bombastic trailer that reveals the world falling apart around our hero du jour. Our reaction to these occurrences are usually a comment on how time passes: “Didn’t we just have a tornado movie?” or “Is this the every 13-year or 17-year kind?”
The summer of 2015 will see the hatching of both 13-year and 17-year cicadas in North America, and the premiere of San Andreas. One thing is certain right now: the movie represents a particularly nasty infestation in way too many Cineplexes. Read the rest of this entry »
Meet Mr. Karma 