Posts by Gino Sassani

It's Planet Of The Apes meets Cujo, and it sure isn't pretty. Part of me actually loves this kind of thing, but it has more to do with when the film is than how good or bad the film happens to be. For a lot of critics, we have just spent the better part of our last year being inundated by awards bait in one form or another. Everyone wants your attention right then. I have to vote in two guilds, and honestly by the time it's over and I've managed to cram 60-70 films or more into my holiday activities, I'm more than a little burned out. So after that little break as the new year begins, I always welcome those first films that asks nothing more of me than to sit there and soak it in. There aren't going to be any Best Picture nominations here. No one is going to be buzzing about Primate when we start talking Best Actors and Cinematography.

And as if I needed another reason to feel inferior to Rege-Jean Page, he can sing too! This talent was displayed in an impromptu moment in You, Me, and Tuscany, where he provides a rendition of Mario’s Let Me Love You that came as an utter surprise. Naturally, Mr. Page is not the only singing talent in the film, nor would he be the only one to seize an opportunity to showcase that talent. Paired with the live-action embodiment of Ariel herself, Ms. Halle Baily, the two take an old idea and put a new spin on it. You, Me, & Tuscany is an entertaining and enjoyable film that embraces the romance of its location in every possible way. Filmed in Pienza, a town and commune in the province of Siena, Tuscany, in the historical region of Val d'Orcia situated between the towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino, it is considered the "touchstone of Renaissance urbanism".

"Trauma is such a powerful force. If untreated it can slither into all the facets of your life, corrupting until finally it transforms you into something you never wanted. That negative energy, it's what that entity feeds off of. I know this is hard for you to hear, but you need to accept the fear that lives in a world that's both seen and unseen, and part of the unseen world detests humanity and wants to see it destroyed, both physically and spiritually. This entity is as ancient as it is evil. Whatever you do, don't let it get you alone in the dark." 

That's actually good advice that applies to movies. They certainly can get us alone in the dark, and sometimes it's a great time. Sometimes maybe not so much. That can be doubly so with an entry in the "found footage" sub-genre of horror films. Sometimes it's a scream. Sometimes it makes you want to scream ... and not in a good way.

"Tragic images continue to emerge following the U.S. Military accidental deployment of an experimental weapon off the coast of Tasmania last week, which resulted in the decimation of Hubert and a total loss of life across the island ... Just why news reporters can't go in the disaster zone is still unknown. A clearer understanding of the tragedy has started to take shape. Stretching beyond the fireball at the center of the blast, an electromagnetic pulse resulted in the catastrophic neural failure of all living things on the island, causing their deaths."

Look. It's really hard to make an original zombie movie. Ever since George Romero took the creatures out of the control of Voodoo witchdoctors, there has been a pretty standardized approach to zombies.

I’ve watched more than my fair share of horror movies, and I like to believe that I am a fair judge of which ones are good and bad. And it is with that wealth of knowledge that I say that Evil Nun falls into the latter category. And for me this was disappointing, because based on a cover art which has a pretty intimidating picture of a possessed nun, I got my hopes up that I was going to be in for a heart-pumping scare-fest. I know that I’m not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but typically when following that lesson, the moral is not to assume something will be bad based off a first impression. How ironic that I saw the cover and assumed that the film would be good. How very ironic indeed. I won’t go as far as to call the film unwatchable, but I also wouldn’t go so far as to call it horror given that several of the deaths happen off camera. In my experience, for a film to be considered a horror film, death scenes are a pretty important component of the genre.

"The mental facility to detect conspiracies and betrayal are the same qualities most likely to corrode natural judgment. Everything that seems clear is bent. And everything that seems bent is clear. Trapped in reflections, you must learn to recognize when a lie masquerades as the truth, and then deal with it efficiently, dispassionately."

Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) believes in all that America stands for and will do whatever he must to protect what his country stands for. As one of the founder members of the CIA in 1939, Wilson is also one of the most trusted members of this group of secrecy. When the idea that a mole may be working within the CIA is found, Wilson is told to find out which member is the mole. The path Wilson must take to discover this mole will lead him to question not only the CIA as a group, but also his personal life.

Of all of the cop or detective shows I’ve seen over the years, I can relate to this one better than any of them. You see, years ago, I was a detective. I wasn’t a cop and mostly did internal investigations for a large Florida retail chain. While I was a fair detective in most areas, I did eventually develop a specialty of sorts. When other detectives ran into a brick wall interviewing their subjects, they’d often call on me to get whatever information they were trying to extract. No, I didn’t beat it out of them. I was never a physically intimidating guy. I was just good at getting them to talk. I guess I was a little bit of a con artist who was working for the good guys instead of preying on hapless marks. I never lied to a subject and never threatened violence. It was a battle of wits, and I always won. That’s exactly how you would describe Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) in The Closer.