James McAvoy (Trance) is all frowns and glares as Max Lewinsky (kin to Monica?), a cop still pining three years later for the One Who Got Away — not a girl, but a criminal. Fleeing from the scene of a big score on motorcycle, robber Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong, Zero Dark Thirty) managed to miss […]
Rod Lott
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The Kentucky Fried Movie
Nothing more than a collection of roughly two dozen unrelated sketches, The Kentucky Fried Movie succeeds most at skewering its own medium: American commercial cinema. Fake trailers mock the exploitation fads of the era with Cleopatra Schwartz (blaxploitation), That’s Armageddon (disaster movies) and Catholic High School Girls in Trouble (youth sex films); they’re so dead-on, […]
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The Incredible Melting Man
TIMM (for short) continues his head-ripping rampage, leaving Geiger-equipped Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) to follow the putrid piles of the grubby, brown-red pus he drips everywhere, not to mention the occasional ear or eyeball. Basically, TIMM looks like he is using a Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready as a face mask. The movie is one of […]
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Black Rock
Like a gender-reversed Deliverance, three friends (Straw Dogs‘ Kate Bosworth, Childrens Hospital‘s Lake Bell and Aselton) motorboat to the titular isle for a gals-only camping trip. When three hunters cross their path, Abby (Aselton) spontaneously invites them to share their campfire and liquor. The guys accept, but after the very married Abby gets very drunk […]
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Detention of the Dead / The Demented
Imagine if zombies invaded The Breakfast Club. That’s literally the setup experienced by your stock-character students of the nerd, the jock, the misfit, the bully, the cheerleader and, so it’s not a total copy of the 1985 John Hughes classic, a wisecracking Asian kid (Justin Chon, 21 & Over) to spout things like, “I gotta […]
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Evil Dead
In Sam Raimi’s wildly original, wildly influential The Evil Dead of 1981, five friends into the woods for a cabin getaway and couldn’t get away from the demons they accidentally summon from an ancient book. In his feature debut, Uruguay director Fede Alvarez retains that setup, minus the vacation. In his vision, the young men […]
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Berberian Sound Studio
Berberian Sound Studio isn’t directed by Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, but it may as well be. His influence is draped lovingly all over the British film: • A projectionist seen only by his hands dons black gloves — the requisite accessory for many a murderer in the director’s giallo efforts. • The movie within […]
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The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh
Two more ingenious shorts have followed, and now, finally, Gudiño’s first stab at a feature with The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh. The budget remains small, while the creeps have increased exponentially. Do not watch it while alone and in the dark. Narrated by grand ol’ Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement), the newly departed woman […]
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Femme Fatales: The Complete Second Season
This second batch of episodes, 12 in all on two DVDs, seems more confident than Femme‘s freshman outing, even if story quality remains wildly varied. Tanit Phoenix (Safe House) hosts the proceedings, with scenarios that include: • a comic-book heroine, • time-traveling clones, • noir-drenched detectives • and so much moaning. For every leaden dud […]
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The Naked Jungle
Back in print through Warner Archive, the meat-and-taters adventure is based on Carl Stephenson’s classic short story “Leiningen Versus the Ants” of two decades prior. Heston is the clenched-jaw Leiningen, owner of a cocoa plantation in South America, and so lonely and away from civilization that he has to mail-order a wife, played by Parker. […]