Wednesday 19 Jun
 
 

The Last Exorcism Part II

Unlike many moviegoers, 17-year-old farm girl Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell, The Day) has no memory of the events of The Last Exorcism, a found-footage smash of three years prior. The Last Exorcism Part II finds her taking steps to build life anew, beginning in a boarding house for troubled girls, where the deeply devout Nell is exposed to such heretofore corrupting influences as lipstick and rock music and YouTube and cotton candy.
06/19/2013 | Comments 0

The ABCs of Death

Suspense novelist Jeffery Deaver once praised the short-story format, writing that the minimal time investment on the part of the reader allows the writer to get away with endings he or she cannot in the long form. In other words, the writer can be meaner, more devious. He's absolutely right, and the theory applies wholesale to The ABCs of Death, more or less a horror anthology depicting "26 ways to die."
06/19/2013 | Comments 0

Ninja III: The Domination

Don't ask why Ninja III: The Domination begins with a ninja assault on a municipal golf course. Just be grateful it does. You also may wonder why its sex scene employs a can of V8: Don't question it. Just lie back and enjoy it.
06/14/2013 | Comments 0

Lifeforce

Tobe Hooper got a raw deal. The director of horror hits The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist didn't deserve to be sent to movie jail for 1985's Lifeforce. It's a well-crafted, well-intentioned work that was mismarketed and misunderstood, losing a bundle of money and soon sending Hooper into the lands of episodic television and direct-to-video features.
06/14/2013 | Comments 0

Dead Souls

With Dead Souls, we can prove something about the Chiller cable network's original features that Remains could not: Source material is not to blame for their pervasive generic nature — it's the economy, stupid.
06/11/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Drama · Choke
Drama

Choke


None October 2nd, 2008

choke

Reviewer's grade: C-

Sam Rockwell stars as Victor Mancini, a 30-something who works as a guide at a reconstructed colonial village. His best friend Denny (Brad William Henke) works with him and they both have the same two problems "” their boss, Lord High Charlie (Clark Gregg, who also wrote the script and directed), who peppers his speech with "thees" and "thou hasts," and the fact that they are both sex addicts. Denny masturbates 15 times a day, which is more often than some people exhale, and Victor will screw any woman who, well, exhales at least 15 times a day.

Victor's mother Ida (Angelica Huston) is in a long-term care hospital and the cost is killing Victor. To make some extra cash he runs a unique scam: he pretends to be choking in upscale restaurants and he allows rich people to save his life. He then makes sure they feel responsible for his continued well-being by sending him cash. Victor's life with Ida becomes complicated when she, mistaking him for an old lawyer friend of hers, tells him that the man he's always thought was his father, wasn't.  There's a real chance that I've missed the point of "Choke," which is based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel.

Maybe I'm not supposed to believe any of it, or, if I do, find any social redemption in it "” that it's all just nihilistic fun "” but I'm not sure it works on that level, either. No matter how you look at it, it's either too much or too little. R

"”Doug Bentin

 
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
 
 

 

 
 
 
Close
Close
Close