Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 26th, 2007
Remakes of movies seem to be common these days. Originality is found almost nowhere and more often than not you get retreads of old ideas. Now it even seems that tv movies are getting remakes like The Initiation of Sarah. The original was made in 1978 and starred Shelly Winters and Morgan Fairchild. The remake produced in late 2006 would also feature Morgan Fairchild in a role. But would it be as good as the 1978 classic or would it simply be a silly excuse for teenage college mayhem with sororities and witchcraft?
Sarah and Lindsey Goodwin (played by Mika Boorem and Summer Glau) are two new freshmen at Temple Hill University. Their mother Trina (played by Morgan Fairchild) shows them the sorority that they will be rushing at, Alpha Nu Gamma. She also makes mention of the fact that they need to stay away from PED, which is a rival sorority. We find shortly after that Sarah has interesting witch like powers and is being labeled as the one. From that point forward she is pursued by both Alpha Nu and PED. For you see, both sororities are groups of witches. Alpha Nu, headed by Corinne (played by JoAnna Garcia) and PED, headed by Dr. Eugenia Hunter (played by Jennifer Tilly)want Sarah to join their side. But the questions about who is good and who is evil in this fight for campus superiority continue to mount as Sarah recognizes her true power.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 3rd, 2007
A friend that I work with said that if Hollywood ever ran out of creative and original ideas, and that if a studio managed to make a sequel about pirate zombies that lasted three hours long, it would clean up at the box office. But the fact of the matter is that if we survived a nuclear winter, we would be well prepared about what to do when zombies took over the land, because of the prep we had from guys like George Romero. So even though Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later might have presumably sealed the deal when it came to this particular interpretation, someone decided to dredge it up for whatever reason.
The sequel, appropriately titled 28 Weeks Later was written by several Spaniards, including Enrique Lavigne (Sex and Lucia), who also produced the film, and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intact), who directed. After the viral epidemic and the subsequent pronouncement that “all was well” in England, the U.S. led NATO troops helped to clean and repopulate the London area. That is slightly down the line of the film’s opening, which has Don (Robert Carlyle, The Full Monty) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack, Braveheart) separated when some of the infected invade their countryside cottage, and he manages to get away. Flash forward to the period that shares the film’s title, and Don is a key part of the repopulation effort when his children come back to England. But you know how sequels go, through divine effort or circumstance, London becomes infected again and everything goes straight to hell.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 1st, 2007
Who says horror can’t be the cinema of personal expression? Director Tim Sullivan follows up his comic horror 2001 Maniacs with this heartfelt ghost story. Raviv Ullman plays David, a teenager whose depression and death-fixation following the demise of his older brother prompts his desperate parents to ship him off to an “Attitude Adjustment Camp.” Basically a brutal cross between boot camp and prison, this is a private institution (inspired by actual places) designed to transform any insipient Columbine-copycats. Once there, David must contend not only with the sadistic Captain Kennedy (Diamond Dallas Page) who runs the place, but also with visions of a ghost who clearly wants a buried truth revealed.
There’s more than a touch of The Devil’s Backbone here, what with the ghost-story-in-an-institution premise and the emphatic socio-political overtones. Sullivan isn’t quite Guillermo Del Toro yet – the spookiness is workmanlike but hardly heart-pounding, and many of the adult performances are pitched far too broadly – but there is a seriousness of purpose here that is admirable, a refreshing (and justified) anger, and the teen members of the cast are believably natural.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 8th, 2007
Roger Corman is fond of saying that only one of his movies ever lost money. It was this 1962 release (shot in 1961), and it is his bravest film, and still arguably his most powerful. William Shatner plays Adam Cramer, a white supremacist associated with the “Patrick Henry Society” (read: John Birch Society), who arrives in the southern town of Caxton on the eve of racial integration of the school. The demagogue whips up the hatred of the white townspeople, leading to cross-burning, church-bombing, and worse.
Corman’s film has lost none of its power to shock and appal. Nor has it lost its power to amaze. An absolutely blistering condemnation of bigotry, it makes the likes of Mississippi Burning look mealy-mouthed by comparison, and its unblinking political directness is all the more astounding for when and where it was made. As we learn from the accompanying featurette, the cast and crew operated under the constant threat of violence, and the sort of events they were depicting were actually taking place nearby. One of the first cinematic statements on the struggle for civil rights, it is still hard to find another film as raw and as uncompromised as this. And those whose only impression of William Shatner is of a shameless ham are in for a revelation. His performance is a satanic mixture of charm, smarm, self-love and seething, explosive hatred. He incarnates a textbook definition of “evil charisma.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 6th, 2007
Stephen King must be solely responsible for an acre of deforestation a year in legal pads and typewriter pages alone. I have heard it said that he writes at least ten pages a day, including holidays. A quick check of IMDB shows that he is credited for writing 106 television or movie stories, at least in part, since "Carrie" in 1976. While no writer - as I well know - can hit a home run every time they put pen to paper, King's "good to crap" ratio is far superior to that of the majority of the novelists working today.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on November 5th, 2007
A woman scorned is a dangerous thing. They will break you, hurt you and leave you for dead in the most unimaginable ways possible. In fact, it might be best for most men to sleep underneath their covers with a flashlight, a security system and no contact with the outside world. It probably wouldn't help. So it makes only sense that one would make films that deal with this subject. However, they had to make it believable even if a scorned woman sometimes does the unthinkable.
A plethora of tv monitors fill into the screen and we see Jackie (played by Kate Dickie ) fulfilling her role as a CCTV operator by watching a particular part of the Scotland streets. She watches for crimes or other point of interest as part of her workday. On the outside, her life is very simple and she keeps to herself except to meet a guy every couple of weeks or going to see her parents for special occasions. One day while on the job she spots a man, one that she never expected to see ever again or at least so soon. That man is Clyde Henderson (played by Tony Curran ). From what we can find out Clyde was in jail for a crime and is out on good behavior. We suspect that it has something to with Jackie but we aren't sure on the role she plays. As the story unfolds and Jackie gets to the point where she confronts him, more of the story is given away until we reach a shocking finale that tells it all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 5th, 2007
The name of this double-pack is slightly misleading, but that is not to suggest the film and television mini-series on offer are in any way bad. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s just that they aren’t exactly “action” films per se. So don’t pick this up hoping for something in the vein of The Road Warrior. Instead, these are brutally intense dramas with strong action elements. Both titles are excellent.
Metal Skin is a 1994 effort from director Geoffrey (Romper Stomper) Wright. He returns here to the world of youth subculture. Here, instead of Skinheads, this is a world of underground races, but the denizens are just as doomed as in the earlier film. The main character is a disturbed young man whose dreams of driving a fast car and forming a romantic attachment are utterly deluded. He has a fraught relationship with a trio, each of whom has his/her own reasons to see the world as a black hellhole. When the car-duel climax arrives, it is earned at the emotional level, and makes the likes of The Fast and the Furious look even more anaemic than it already is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 29th, 2007
OK, brace yourself when I tell you that Hallowed Ground was a straight to video release. I know, you're stunned, right? You can't even get up. I was as shocked as you. But I've got to hand it to the filmmakers, they've got a decent idea by putting a somewhat scary image on their cover and keeping a brother intrigued, so to speak.
Written and directed by David Benullo, he of Shadow Man fame, this film focuses on the town of Hope, where Liz (Jaimie Alexander, Kyle XY) finds herself standed. The people are nice to her, but for some reason, they just come off as being "too nice". She manages to find out the town is pretty much composed of religious fanatics, who find out that Liz is part of a prophecy as outlined by the town's preacher. The funny part is that the preacher died a century ago and was crucified and hung like a scarecrow, resulting in the semi-cool picture. So the town tries to hold her hostage while the scarecrow gets his pseudo freaky deaky on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 29th, 2007
I admit I don't have the strongest faith. Sure I believe in God, but it pretty much ends at that like any other agnostic. So when I get a movie that is based on the idea of the Ten Plagues; let's say I'm not that familiar with the subject matter. I know there are locusts attacking and toads dropping involved along with the whole river of blood thing but outside of that I'm a little thin. However, not to say I wasn't interested. In fact I'm always intrigued by stories in the bible when they are used as methods of literature and peaks into the historical past.
The Reaping is the story of Katherine Winter (played by Hilary Swank), a LSU professor who has made a living off debunking miracles by explaining them away with science. We find out from her backstory that she was in fact an ordained minister who lost her faith when her husband and daughter were killed in Sudan on a mission. Her partner and fellow teacher, Ben (played by Idris Elba) helps her out. They are approached by Doug Blackwell (played by David Morrissey), a schoolteacher from Haven, LA about a new case. Haven, LA has seen a young 12-year old girl Loren (played by AnnaSophia Robb) murders her brother and turned the river to blood. The town also believes this is the start of the Ten Plagues of the Old Testament. Katherine & Ben go to investigate.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 27th, 2007
The Invisible appears to have been marketed a couple of different ways when it was released in early 2007, but the most used phrase for the film appears to be “Supernatural Thriller”, which might address it to some degree if it was, you know, thrilling.
Christine Roum (Bodyguard II) co-wrote the screenplay, which David Goyer directed. Goyer has been a longtime writer, providing words to such films as Dark City, Blade and Batman Begins. And for all the good work he’s put in as a writer, you’d think he would have learned some things when it comes to directing, but ultimately, he’s just another guy who was talented in one area and needs some work in his new one.
