by Normandy D. Piccolo

“She’s the damsel. He’s in distress.”

With all these found-footage films that seem to be coming out week after week, I wonder just how audiences will react when they finally get a scene that is shot on a tripod.  It will be hailed as a revelation, I’d imagine, and finally the world will be able to watch a film without pondering if they should have double-dosed on their motion sickness pills.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Infliction is yet another entry into the canon of found-footage films and is also another example of why it is a style that is not meant for everyone to try or to use as an excuse for a low budget.

Though this boasts that it is a horror film, I can’t help but shake my head and disagree.  Is the subject matter disturbing?  Perhaps for some.  Is it gruesome or violent?  Nothing too bad.  Instead this film is misdiagnosed from the get-go.  This is a family tragedy at best and has some heart to it, if only more attention was paid towards the performances and story, rather than film needless exposition.

Any time I see a film released with the words Once Upon a Time (insert location), I feel the film is already setting itself up for failure. There are numerous classics that boast that title; Once Upon a Time in the West as well as Once Upon a Time in America are two that come to mind that are classics in their genres.  But then you have Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which for me was a lackluster conclusion to the El Mariachi trilogy.  Now we have the release of Once Upon a Time in Vietnam and, well, despite its attempts to be a big sprawling epic, the film just doesn’t deliver.  Dustin Nguyen puts on many hats in his first feature release, filling in the roles of actor, writer, director and producer.  It’s an ambitious undertaking and seems to be a labor of love; unfortunately, it doesn’t always reflect in the film.

Master Dao (Nguyen) is something of a loner, on a quest to find other warriors like himself.  What Dao plans to do with these warriors simply depends on whether they are good or bad.  In some ways you can see this Dao character in the same vein as The Man With No Name, the similarities are there and are very apparent, but Dao seems to lean more towards the “hero” side, considering he follows in the ways of Buddha.  Once he arrives in a small village, he rents out a room from a couple who have a young rebellious child of their own.

by Normandy D. Piccolo

In 2011, four men, Larry Black (big cat expert), Ben Black (cinematographer/Larry’s brother), Budi (a local) and Adi (a government tracker) ventured into the jungles of West Java, Indonesia in the hopes of finding and filming a documentary about the endangered Javan leopard. Unfortunately they crossed paths with something deadlier, and it was all caught on film.  The Jungle, a documentary/found footage film, was written/directed/produced by Andrew Traucki. Mr. Traucki’s other works include the ocean thriller, The Reef (2010), which made the sharks in Deep Blue Sea (1999) look more like tame goldfish. He also wrote/directed, Black Water (2007), a swamp saga that had folks bidding a fishing trip in a bayou adieu. The term ‘gator-bait’ pretty much sums it up.

"We have some interesting times ahead of us."

This is really the tale of two cities; no, not those cities. But like the Dickens character, we are dealing with two different countries, and while neither is going through a revolution, they are two very real and disparate places indeed. Juarez is in Mexico (the state they named those annoying little yip-yip dogs after). Here there is poverty and crime on levels that would make most Americans shudder. There is corruption that runs through every aspect of government. Here most of the police are bought and completely owned by the drug cartels. Here literally thousands of young women and girls disappear or die each year. Americans come here to sin and leave it behind them when they cross the border again.

After the number of horror films I’ve seen, the prospect of going on a road trip and taking a back road seems like just about the worst idea anyone could ever have.  Whether it’s in the mountains where you have to fear backwoods cannibals (Wrong Turn) or it’s the open desert highway and fearing maniacs in semi-trucks (Joy Ride), really, is anywhere safe to travel?  Even the quaint little roadside motel is a place to fear, and I don’t mean the bedbugs either.  No Vacancy comes along on DVD as families and friends are getting ready to embark on the open road, and in case none of the previously-mentioned films were enough to make you think twice about that road trip, perhaps No Vacancy will.

A group of friends are on their way to Vegas; considering they’re all young twenty-somethings, I seriously doubt it’s to catch Celine Dion live on stage.  Drinking and plenty of debauchery seems to be on the menu for these guys, that is until they get two flat tires and are stranded in the middle of nowhere.  The guys set off to find help while leaving the girls behind with the car.  The help that the guys do find turns out to be better than they ever could have expected.