The second collaboration between director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and Tulsa-born playwright Tracy Letts — their first being 2006’s Bug — this work serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny. Not that all audiences will get the joke. Letts’ first play rolls around in the muck, and Friedkin […]
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Naked Angels
The 1969 picture arrived at the crest of the biker-film craze, yet is so dull, it could’ve killed the genre. The plot concerns gang leader Mother (Michael Greene, The Harrad Experiment) being freshly discharged from the hospital, but in danger of going right back in as he seeks revenge on his rivals who put him […]
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Karate-Robo Zaborgar
As silly as it is satisfying, the Sushi Typhoon serving is both an update and a spoof of a live-action kiddie series from the 1970s, à la Ultraman, so the approach is both reverent and respectfully raunchy (think The Brady Bunch Movie). It’s about the love story between a man named Daimon (Yasuhisa Furuhara) and […]
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Grimm: Season One
The gist is that young Portland police detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) finds his world of working homicide turned topsy-turvy when his librarian aunt informs him that his parents didn’t really die in a car accident, but were murdered. And not only that, but they were descendants of the brothers Grimm, whose stories weren’t fictional […]
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Mother’s Day
My younger brother picked up the box and asked to rent it; my mom refused, as a responsible parent should when presented with such an inquiry by a 9-year-old. I’m unsure what appealed to him: the disembodied head in a gift box or the recipient’s half-skull head? Whatever it was, it must’ve worked for a […]
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Vile
So, yeah: It’s aptly titled. When two camping couples agree to give a ride to a stranded cougar (soap actress McKenzie Westmore) they meet at a gas station, they are gassed and awaken trapped in a house with five others. As explained by a helpful video, “Pain will be your only way out of this […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXIV
This edition — four episodes on four discs, per Shout! Factory’s usual — is like a cinematic-crap tour around the globe. We venture south of the border for 1962’s Samson vs. the Vampire Women, a masked-wrestler epic that stars Santo (not Samson, no matter what the title says), the caped superhero of Mexico’s wrasslin’ ring. […]
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Searching for Sonny
They were both shot in Texas and, hell, they even share a character name in “Future Man,” but by no means am I suggesting Sonny should be held anywhere near the level of Bottle Rocket‘s giddy brilliance. Jason Dohring (TV’s Ringer) stars as Elliott Knight, who’s accomplished a big bunch of nothing a decade after […]
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Quick
Swapping a bus for a motorcycle, it’s more than a fair comparison. Young, handsome Gi-soo (Min-ki Lee) has left behind his days as a former biker gang member, but not his sweet set of wheels, which he uses to make a meager living as a courier. On a run early in the day, he inadvertently […]
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Safe
Meanwhile, former cage fighter Luke Wright (Jason Statham, The Expendables 2) is on the brink of suicide after his wife was killed by the Russian mob when he didn’t throw a fight. He’s given purpose when he sees Mei being pursued by bad guys, and he steps in to save her. She’s wanted because of […]