Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on October 3rd, 2014
"I like your dolls."
The Conjuring was one of the best horror movies to come along in years. Why? Because it was a good scare with a story that didn't totally insult our intelligence or leave us scratching our heads too many times. The movie also dealt with its own red herring of sorts in a possessed doll kept under wraps by that film's hero couple. We're treated to a tease of her story before we move on to other matters. It was used more or less to establish the expertise of Ed (Wilson) and Lorraine (Farmiga) Warren, who would play a central part in the film. After a rather chilling tease and more than enough establishing shots of the doll in a case with all sorts of ominous warnings, we moved on to the story that film was setting out to tell. No question James Wan delivered yet another frightening film that did not really involve the Annabelle doll at all, as it turned out. For the next 90 minutes we forgot about Annabelle, but after a while we went home, and the creepy image of the doll wouldn't shake from our slumber. There was really only one thing for a studio to do, either to exorcise the distraction from our minds or mine a little coin in the doing. The result is the highly anticipated Annabelle.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on October 3rd, 2014
In 1987 Fatal Attraction was released, and now decades later it is the go-to movie when discussing classic scorned women in cinematic history. Now a new film is about to take the mantel for the greatest scorned female character, Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Based off the widely successful novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl is perhaps the most haunting film about marriage to ever hit the screen. Director David Fincher is no stranger to directing strong, self-sufficient women on the big screen; look at Panic Room and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- but Gone Girl is the closest he’s come to filming his masterpiece.
It’s on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary that we meet Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), and it’s on this day he discovers that his wife, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) has gone missing. What’s interesting about this film is that the opening moments aren’t necessarily the beginning of the story; the film takes a very non-linear approach to telling the story, and we see the events unfold through the eyes of both Nick and Amy. You know how they say “there are always two sides to every story, and the truth is somewhere in the middle”? Gone Girl takes that precise approach, and what we get is something unique and terrifying.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 2nd, 2014
Despite its found-footage conceit and similar-sounding title, The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill is somewhat of a different demon animal than a certain recent horror franchise. Given that found-footage fatigue seems to be setting in among critics and audiences, any sort of deviation from the norm should be welcome. The problem is this film ultimately doesn’t deviate far enough and hedges its bets with a climax that seems transplanted in from a handful of other movies. More importantly, viewers will probably be too bored to even care by the time movie gets around to being scary.
The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill, like many of its horror brethren, is “based on true events.” (I cannot emphasize those quotation marks strongly enough.) What does help the film stand apart is its real-life spooky setting. In 2010, a group of filmmakers sets out to explore and document the haunted history of St. Mary’s Church in Clophill, a quaint English village. That history includes rumors of Satanic rituals and ghostly apparitions. As a result, Clophill and its church have become a popular attraction for grave robbers and people interested in the macabre.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on October 1st, 2014
Stop-motion animation remains a rare treat, but your appreciation of the new film, The Boxtrolls, will likely fall into an either love-it or hate-it camp. I will tell you which camp I fall into shortly. Laika Entertainment Studios produced Coraline and Paranorman, which were both oddball stop-motion fun that I enjoyed immensely. The stop-motion process is a dying art that is only rarely attempted any more, but it is widely beloved by film fans. The stop-motion work in The Boxtrolls is excellent. The cast of voice-over actors are excellent as well. The roster includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Elle Fanning and Tracy Morgan.
The setting is probably some alternate reality where people dress like it was the start of the 19th century England, but machines of all sorts exist. Boxtrolls are very shy and much smaller than regular trolls, which is why they wear cardboard boxes as clothes, also useful as a hiding place when the need arises. A small boy lives down in the depths of the sewers and has been adopted and fitted with his own cardboard box so he will fit right in with the loony, goofy trolls. The boy also eats little creepy crawly bugs like the rest of the trolls. I'll stop right here to say that things only get weirder from there. The people above street level are crazy and distastefully off center, so as to make the trolls seem normal by comparison. The Boxtrolls is based on an illustrated novel by Alan Snow called Here Be Monsters. The novel is much more detailed and part of a series of books called The Ratbridge Chronicles.
As I said before, I think most people will either love it or hate it. I hated it. I think it is too disturbingly bizarre for most kids, and you'd have to be a pretty weird adult before I would recommend it to you. I already said that the stop-motion work is excellent, but it is in aid of a script that is odious, unpleasant and dimwitted. One could make a case that the story is a satire on class struggle and oppression of minorities, but I say they are not doing anyone any favors including minorities and the oppressed.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 1st, 2014
It’s that time of year again, where spooky decorations are set up and pumpkins are carved. Most importantly, though, is that October is the month where horror fans can celebrate their favorite month of the year with as many blood-soaked horror titles as they can handle. Unfortunately, though, it seems companies enjoy taking advantage of this time of year and will attach the Halloween name to just about anything in hopes of getting people to buy their product. I mention this because though the title may be Grave Halloween, it has absolutely nothing to do with the holiday but everything to do with the Suicide Forest in Japan. The Suicide Forest is an actual location in Japan where hundreds of people go to year after year to take their lives. It’s gone on for years and has been a hot spot for paranormal researchers to investigate and to try to uncover what brings so many people to this location to die. It’s a location that screams to be the focal point of horror and fantasy, and it seems SYFY channel is the first on American soil to take on this mysterious location.
Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) is a woman who is haunted by the memory of her birth mother. These are not fond memories but instead nightmares that revolve around her mother’s death. Though she was only four when she was adopted, Maiko has a need to discover the truth about her mother’s death and to release her soul that is possibly trapped within the Suicide Forest. A team of student filmmakers are working on a documentary about the Suicide Forest and Amber (Cassi Thomson), the producer of the project, plans to make Maiko the focus of her film.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 30th, 2014
If you were around in 1972, television was a very different place. By midnight most stations were shutting down to the tune of the national anthem. After that there was a test pattern and a high-pitched ring that would fill your screen until dawn when programming would resume. Of course, there were also only three networks, and, if you were lucky enough to live in a large market, a handful of local stations. All good people were expected to be safely tucked into their beds long before 1:00 AM. It was a very different world from today when we get 24-hour programming on over 200 stations or more. Oh, and there was no home video, in case you thought you could just pop in a movie for your late-night viewing pleasure. Video games? Forget it. In just a couple of years you were going to get Pong.
The music business was also very different in 1972. It was the age of the singer-songwriter and rock bands who actually played instruments. Music was sold on vinyl record albums, and there was no MTV or VH1. If you wanted to see your favorite band perform, you went to a concert. There were dance shows that went all the way back to the 50's with Dick Clark's American Bandstand or Soul Train. But these shows featured performances that were lip-synched to the familiar recordings. These were almost never live performances. If you were lucky, you're favorite band might show up on Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan before that. Downloading music meant you worked at a record store, and you were unloading boxes of albums from the back of a delivery truck. Even the Walkman was a decade in the future. Bands just didn't have access to the fans the way they do today. All of that started to change on August 19, 1972. That was the day The Midnight Special arrived, and things would never be the same again.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 30th, 2014
To the point, Criminal Minds is very compelling television. Ever since The Silence of the Lambs and perhaps long before, we have been fascinated by serial killers and the profilers who try to get inside their heads. To see evidence of the continuing trend, one needs only look toward the success of films like Zodiac and shows like Dexter. Of course, serial killers are not the only prey this FBI team pursues, but they are certainly the marquee item on the agenda. To be sure, there are equally disturbing subjects such as arsonists, bombers, kidnappers, and rapists to give the show a touch of variety, but let’s face it, it’s the killers that keep us tuned so attentively to Criminal Minds.
Let’s not take anything away from the show’s true force here. This is an excellent cast being fed brilliant scripts playing to an awesome crew. Everything just clicks on this series, and it only got better in the second year. I am truly impressed with how much these characters are fleshed out and how much we learn about them without the need of office romance. No precious show time is squandered on excessive personal life stories. We’re given just enough to bring the characters alive beyond their team dynamic, which is quite strong. Each character is constructed through the subtle nuances the actors infuse their performance with. From the moment you watch your first episode, you will find this team believable enough to care about them and their work. Surprisingly, the show often gets muddled in a ton of exposition, but somehow it’s carried off by the cast so that you never find yourself going numb with clinical information overload. Granted, the material itself is attention-worthy, but these guys pull it off no matter how interesting the information might be. Add to the stellar portrayals a writing team second to none in the industry. The support teams do everything they need to make sure these talents are never wasted.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 30th, 2014
It’s been quite some time since The Chappelle Show went off the air, and it would appear Comedy Central has finally found its replacement. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the show is on the same par, but what Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele bring to the small screen is something that has piqued my interest and shows some potential. Both Key and Peele got their big break from working on the sketch comedy show MADtv, and it would seem they are taking their talents and what they learned to bring us something that is a little familiar but still fresh and keeps its audience laughing.
The biracial pair takes chances with their show which is a hybrid of live bits in front of an audience and filmed sketches. Whether they are poking fun at Django Unchained, racial stereotypes or Latino gangsters, Key and Peele manage to keep it entertaining.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 29th, 2014
"Prisoners of the ARC, hear me now. You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."
It's 97 years ago and nuclear holocaust has made life on Earth unlivable... at least that's what most people believed. Fortunately, for humanity, several countries had space stations in orbit. These various stations eventually came together to pool resources hoping for a better chance at survival. The ragtag collection eventually became the ARC. Now, nearly a century later they have created a civilization ruled by the dire necessity of their situation.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on September 29th, 2014
The eyes are the window to the soul, or so we have been told. I Origins is about a scientist studying the evolution of sight in organisms. Part of his research seems to be focused on countering creationists who claim that eyes are an obvious indication of a creator in life on this planet. The scientist, Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is working on proof that the development of eyes is a process of evolution. His new research assistant, Karen (Brit Marling) surprises Ian with intuitive brilliance and fanatical commitment to the task. They find a species of worm that is an origin species which might be able to prove his theories and make his career. He becomes somewhat distracted by a mysterious woman at a masquerade Halloween party. They have sex in the bathroom and she disappears, but not before he has taken pictures of her eyes, which is an obsession as well as part of his research.
Through a series of almost otherworldly coincidences, he is led to a billboard featuring eyes identical to the ones he photographed. He has become obsessed with that encounter on Halloween and manages to hunt down who he believes is the woman. The mysterious relationship blossoms into a full-blown courtship that leads to going to the courthouse to get married. It turns out they have to wait 24 hours. His impetuousness and fascination is tempered by the fact that they seem to be polar opposites in many ways. It culminates in an argument in a broken-down elevator. He pushes the door open halfway between floors and climbs out. He wants her to climb out as well, but she is nearly hysterical in fear. He thinks she is acting like a child. She agrees to take his hand and climb out. What happens next changes everything.
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