Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2008
I’m going to admit right from the start, I hate cell phones. They’re evil, and I didn’t need a horror film to tell me about it. The world would be a safer and certainly a more courteous place without them. Just last week I was run of the highway by a Werner semi because the idiot driver was on his cell phone. So it didn’t come as any surprise that someone was bound to include them as part of a horror film. One Missed Call is simply the latest Asian Invasion film to be retooled for American audiences. What started with The Ring, which was a truly original and suspenseful film, has also given us losers like The Grudge. Unfortunately this film falls into the latter category. Believe me, I wanted so much to love this film. I was the annoying guy cheering the trailer at the local cineplex.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 25th, 2008
A government project goes badly awry, as all government projects do, and, just as inevitably, a plague of zombies is loosed upon the local community. A group of high school students are the only ones able to mount any kind of defense against the flesh-eating ghouls. Sounds reasonable to me.
Writer/editor/director Steven C. Miller and friends put this together for a mere $30 0000, and for that, they should be applauded. The effort is surprisingly slick and sick, and many of the gore effects are effectively done. The zombies themselves, though, are a bit slapdash in appearance. The high school characters are so familiar, furthermore, that they barely qualify as characters. Then there’s the odd decision to shoot the action so that all movements have the herky-jerky, headache-causing aspects that suggests that the entire film was shot on a cell phone. And did I mention that the film ends on a “To Be Continued” cliffhanger?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 23rd, 2008
Does ultra realism make for a better movie? There have certainly been examples of startling realistic moments in cinema that have been quite effective, but mostly because they create an experience for us that actually reaches us in a way that we’ll never be able to forget. The storming of
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 15th, 2008
Still grieving over their father’s death, two sisters – the outgoing Dagmar (Stefania D’Amario) and the neurotic, antisocial Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi) – check into an out-of-season hotel. They are almost immediately immersed in a tangled web of relationships and betrayals involving the hotel manager, his estranged wife, a lounge singer and a drug-addicted patron. At the same time, a series of gruesome sex slayings gets underway.
Writer/director Enzo Milioni’s first film is a clumsy giallo. The elements are all there – psychosexual delerium, black-gloved killer, beautiful cast. So too is the aura of misogyny that haunts so much of the genre – the killings here all involve lethal penetration, and while the murders are generally dealt with relative restraint (a hilarious shadow of a looming erection followed by fade to black), there are, late in the film, a number of particularly tasteless shots of naked victims with bloody crotches. Charming. The ineptness of the filmmaking, however, robs these moments of much of their power: the sex scenes are dull and saddled with the same irritating score every time; the editing is rife with nonsensical cutaways (one of which unintentionally suggests that a dog has been masterminding a drug deal); and the story is so choppily told that characterization varies between the risible and the nonexistent. Add to this a resolution that even the most casual viewer of gialli will see coming a mile away, and you have a pretty weak entry. And yet, for all that, there is that delicious ineffable whiff of 70's Italian exploitation that makes even the weakest entries plenty of fun.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 14th, 2008
Anesthetic Awareness is a phenomenon where a surgical patient is completely aware and able to feel pain while under anesthesia. It occurs in about 5 out of every 1000 patients, with about half of those 5 aware enough to feel excruciating pain. Apparently the condition is not readily noticeable by the surgical team and is only discovered through recounts of the experience after the procedure. Patients are often able to tell doctors details of conversations they had while the patient was supposed to be completely out of it. Sounds like a creepy idea for a thriller, doesn’t it? It sure does.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 10th, 2008
Sean Patrick Flanery is Harry Balbo, an introverted nobody at a nothing job where he constantly mocked by the unfunny office clown. One night, on his way home from the convenience store, he sees a female vampire rip off a homeless man's head. No one believes him, and his feelings move from frustration to terror when, a couple of nights later, he sees her at work again, and she scratches his face, marking him. He turns to crippled vampire investigator Michael Biehn for help, and eventually captures the vampire. Unable to bring himself to kill her, he is torn between sacrificing himself or others to her bloodlust.
This is a film that finds its strengths in its incidentals. Harry's depressing work environment, the tossed away dialogue from minor characters, the little humiliations of his life and his eccentric little obsessions all work well, and are very funny. The actual vampire storyline isn't quite as fresh and witty, though nestled in such an enjoyable context, it works well enough.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2008
In The Mist, Frank Darabont returns to familiar territory, directing another movie based on a short story by Stephen King. Darabont struck gold in 1994 with The Shawshank Redemption and then came close to, but did not equal, that magic with 1999's The Green Mile.
Is the third time a charm for Darabont working with King material? The answer is a resounding "yes".
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 25th, 2008
Do you ever look at some covers in disbelief and wonder why this ever got made? Okay, some directors are trying to break into the business or perhaps an actor is taking on an indie release that one can show their acting range with. But if a movie looks, smells and feels like a B movie; then most likely you are in for a rough ride. At the end, you might come out okay. A lot of times however, you might not. I witnessed such an example in Killer Pad. A movie directed by Robert Englund. Yes, the "Freddy" guy. The box sports some clueless guys and a hot devil lady. Oh and a spooky house behind it all. I'm scared, mainly cause I have to watch it.
Three friends; Doug, Craig & Brody (played by Daniel Franzese, Eric Jungmann, & Shane McRae) decide to leave their small midwest lives and head for the Hollywood Hills. After some searching, they meet up with a landlord named Winnie (played by Bobby Lee)who gets them to a sign a deed to 666 Perdition Lane (gee I wonder if it could be evil). Once they get there, they realize it is the house of their dreams and decide to host a party at their "killer pad." Little do they know that the house is haunted and foul things are a foot. The rest of the adventure is spent finding out the answer to various supernatural occurrences and trying to still host the most awesome party ever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 21st, 2008
A tough-as-nails cowboy (James Denton) unwillingly hooks up with a naive greenhorn (Chris Kattan) when they have a run-in with a bent sheriff. They may think they have some problems now, but things are much worse than they think, as the town and the surrounding countryside are in the initial stages of a zombie plague.
Simon Pegg and company might well be starting to rue the day they came up with Shaun of the Dead. Though not the first zombie comedy (that would probably be Return of the Living Dead if we exclude some non-cannibal zombies appearing in some 30s horror-comedies), their magnificent film and its success are the proximate cause of the current flood of would be “zombedies” (as this flick labels itself). A western zombie comedy might seem like a promising mix, until one realizes how few western comedies have actually worked, and this one isn’t breaking the trend. Its opening scene (a clumsy zombie attacking his family) veers uncertainly from the tired slapstick to the truly distasteful, and the rest of the film has all the comedic zing of dragged out SNL skit (Chris Kattan, I am casting my baleful eye at YOU). Turgid stuff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 4th, 2008
"The Invasion" is a remake of the classic "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers". This time around, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are the heroes that uncover the diabolical truth behind a secret plot to take over the world. This is a film that has been re-made several times before, in various forms. Each time, the film is turned into a heavy-handed metaphor for the current political climate. That is most certainly the case this time around as well, as the oblivious citizens are expected to accept everything their leaders tell them, no matter how implausible that information might be. I'll spare you the pop politics, but the parallels between the Bush administration and the story are rampant.
I don't have the slightest problem with films that use metaphors as long as they are done in a subtle and graceful way. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing subtle and graceful about this film. Forty minutes in, there is a montage scene that is meant to shock the viewer, "The Usual Suspects" style, by showing a series of fast cut images to help the viewer put together the plot in their own minds. The real problem is, by the 15-minute mark, the whole of the plot is obvious to even the most oblivious viewer, and the remaining hour-and-a-half are spent laboriously trudging through to the inevitable conclusion.
