As his first film since The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is horror director Ti West’s opportunity to show a winning streak, or at least an uncanny corridor. It also happens to be a chance for star Sara Paxton, often cast as that pretty blonde in really forgettable roles, to earn a new start, not unlike West himself. Continue reading
It isn’t uncommon to see movies at the After Dark Film Festival where you can tell others that the plot can be excused. Monster Brawl, which aspires to be a mirror image of a televised WWE special, replaces the scary looking beefcakes with scary looking monsters.The film seems to have a better idea of what it wanted to be rather than how to really accomplish that. “The story didn’t matter” is a common thing to overhear at these events, but I gotta hand it to you, Monster Brawl, “I’m not really sure that was a movie” is a new one. Continue reading
Redline isn’t about nothing, but it isn’t about much. Nothing stops Redline from hitting goals. Nothing stops Redline from victory. Redline is so ferocious and unwieldy that it’s too dangerous to be bound in your hands, it’s too fast for the qualms of plot or logic. It can’t slow down. The wonderful thing about animation is that it’s a world from scratch, created only by the pen instead of constructs of likelihood. Redline is its own universe, and it rockets through it so fast you’ll miss planets if you blink. Continue reading
Manborg is meant to recreate that VHS tape you once found misplaced in the corner concert film section of a pawn shop. In a world being rapidly flooded with these rehashed nostalgia bombs, Manborg is challenged to represent a new era/aesthetic of re-re-re-rehash, and to be more entertaining than many of the other films in the running. Thankfully for Manborg, it is half man, half cyborg, all Manborg. Continue reading
As his first film since The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is horror director Ti West’s opportunity to show a winning streak, or at least an uncanny corridor. It also happens to be a chance for star Sara Paxton, often cast as that pretty blonde in really forgettable roles, to earn a new start, not unlike West himself. Continue reading
There’s a moment when Michael Shannon, chaperoning his sleeping family across the dark flooded highways, pulls over and steps out of his car. Off in the distance, crackles of lightning tear apart the sky, pounding the earth below it in fury. Looking around while cars behind him continue to drive by and his family rests undisturbed, he asks aloud, to the world, if he’s the only one seeing this apocalyptic sight. Jeff Nichols’ second feature Take Shelter has been conjuring its own storm on the festival circuit, a study of a humble man who suffers against an behemoth enemy only he can see. Continue reading
Moreso based on Yasunari Kawabata’s The House of the Sleeping Beauties than the popular fairy tale, Emily Browning, whose butt you may remember from Sucker Punch, is Lucy, a university student who is very comfortable with performing tasks for money. Continue reading
Pseudo-historical, slightly spooky, but infinitely kung fu (with choreography by the beloved Sammo Hung) do Detective Dee’s massive CGI set pieces and explosively absurd fight scenarios create any competition for our biggest ‘busters back home? Namely Sherlock Holmes? Which I’m saying because I guess that’s the easiest reference point for a spectacle detective story? Continue reading
Twixt is not a blockbuster, but it is certainly a genre piece; a dream-inspired, Dan Deacon scored, Poe-themed vampire ghost murder story genre piece. The film is a weird stand out even in the Francis Ford Coppola portfolio. It’s definitely nowhere near Apocalypse Now, it’s not even Rumble Fish, but Twixt, for all of its uneasy flaws, is incredibly fun to watch. Continue reading
In Sarah Palin – You Betcha! British documentarian Nick Broomfield and his tiny team cozy up in Wasilla, Alaska to try to gather opinions and footage from Palin’s friends, colleagues and even Palin herself. Two thirds of those goals do not go very well at all, and for some bizarre reason Broomfield lets you in on every production misfortune. Continue reading
The Cat Vanishes is a quirky Argentinean psychological thriller that asks the audience to question sanity as a whole, all the while unable to stop giggling about the card it has up its sleeve. Continue reading
The Skin I Live In is a hypnotizing feat, a contemporary reflection of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die resulting in a Frankenstein tale making sweet, Spanish love to body politics. Almodóvar is gently taking us by the hand down and leading us down a trail of science gone mad, and it feels as classically minded as it does completely original.- Continue reading
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