Opening with a disclaimer that the producers have no memory of making the motion picture, the indie feature obviously revels in that era of exploitation, immediately passing itself off as a ’70s no-budget, B-horror pic as authentically as it can: heavily embedded grain and scratches, a couple of “SHOT MISSING” frames, reel-to-reel tape decks, lava […]
comedy
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The FP
The credo of 248 leader JTRO (Jason Trost, who co-wrote and co-directed with his brother, Brandon) is “We roll together, we die together.” That’s tested when JTRO vows never to play again after BTRO dies during a rather heated Beat-off (go ahead, snicker) against 245 head L Dubba E (Lee Valmassy), and disappears. A year […]
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The Lowbrow Reader Reader
Thirteen years later, my zine became the victim of its own success: The process simply ceased to be fun for me, so after 37 issues — or was it 38? — an exhausted one-man publisher called it quits. I only tell you this because as I was wrapping up, a New York-based zine called The Lowbrow […]
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A Bag of Hammers
Jason Ritter (The Perfect Family) and co-writer Jake Sandvig (Easy A) star as best buds Ben and Alan, two con men who make money off a valet-parking scheme. But other than that, they’re really nice guys. The axis of their felonious world shifts when they meet a boy who moves into the neighborhood with his […]
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Hysteria
Yeah, that kind of feel-good. Based on a true story and scheduled to open Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, Hysteria unfolds in late 19th-century London — a time when modern medicine amounted to a jar of leeches, theories about germs were “poppycock,” and the plague of the era was hysteria among women. Per […]
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Project X
So much potential is built in the first 15 or 20 minutes, in which mild-manner high school loser Thomas (Thomas Mann, It’s Kind of a Funny Story) is goaded into hosting a party while his parents are away. The goal, per obnoxious buddy Costa (newcomer Oliver Cooper), is for the rest of the student body […]
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Meatballs
Things such as:• the kid-vocalized “Are You Ready for the Summer?” theme song;• the nerd, Spaz (Jack Blum, Happy Birthday to Me), getting a milkshake dumped on his head;• clown counselor Murray downing so much club soda that he burp-talks, “Oh, really? Really?”;• the fat guy, Fink, getting depantsed;• the rival camp’s entire basketball team getting depantsed (don’t accuse Meatballs […]
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Demoted
Luckily for Klein, as the head honcho of Treadline Industries tires, he checks out early, leaving the tire company in the hands of Ken (the too-good-for-this David Cross, TV’s The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret), a nerdy, put-upon salesman/laughingstock who’s long been the target of fellow salesmen Rodney (Michael Vartan, Colombiana) and Mike (Sean […]
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Monster Brawl
If the answer is “yes,” then the feature film Monster Brawl was made for you. If you let it, watching it can be a ball. Just know going in it offers neither plot nor story — it’s a series of bouts in the ring, pure and simple, with eight monstrosities summoned from around the globe […]
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Bernie
Bernie was also a murderer, as it turned out, convicted in 1997 of killing an 81-year-old widow and stuffing her body in a meat freezer. But in the eyes of townsfolk, that didn’t make him any less lovable. In Bernie, now playing, our antihero is played by Jack Black (Gulliver’s Travels), but it’s not the […]