One would be hard pressed to succinctly describe the Louisiana metal band I Wrestled a Bear Once. Its songs incorporate a pantry of sounds. Racing metal guitars pushed against adult-contemporary pop; New Wave ’80s synths punctuated with samples of the General Lee’s car horn. The alt-metal quintet formed in 2007 from the ashes of another […]
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Why so serious?
Think about it: Did Tonto ever smile? Throughout history, popular culture largely has painted the American Indian as humorless. Take the man who shed a single tear in 1971’s iconic “Keep America Beautiful” anti-litter campaign; the stoic, silent Will Sampson in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; even the famous 1887 photograph of […]
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The Killer Nun
After having a brain tumor removed, Sister Gertrude hasn’t been the same. She thinks she still has cancer and cries out for a shot filled with sweet, sweet morphine. The doctors at the psych ward where she works assure her that her thoughts are simply stress-induced and psychosomatic, but Gertrude’s much-younger roomie, Sister Mathieu (Paola […]
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Sleeping Beauty
Here, it’s Lucy (Emily Browning, Sucker Punch), a college student so strapped for cash that she holds four jobs: working at a café, doing Xerox duties in an office, participating in a medical study that requires a balloon and tube to be fed down her throat, and blowing guys at a bar. A fifth gig […]
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The Hidden Face
Drowning his sorrows in drink soon leads Adrián into the warm embrace of a button-cute waitress, Fabiana (Martina García), and they fall in love. All’s well again, but the police suspect something is up with Belen’s inexplicable vanishing act. Something is up in The Hidden Face, a thriller from Spain new to DVD on the […]
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The Cats / Hate for Hate
Proof is in two 1960s obscurities making their MOD DVD debut from Warner Archive, both from Italy: The Cats, which is not about cats, and Hate for Hate, which I did not. One of the most memorable lines in 1968’s The Cats — aka The Bastard — is delivered by Rita Hayworth, whose hot-mess-of-a-mother character […]
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Night Wolf / Hidden
Werewolves are hot right now, but you wouldn’t know it from Night Wolf, a howlingly average and predictable British entry that sadly marks the final film of Simon MacCorkindale, ’80s star of TV’s Manimal and the misbegotten Jaws 3-D. The plot plops a bunch of slackers in a dark and empty family farmhouse on the […]
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Eagleheart: Season One
For Chris Elliott fans, the Adult Swim series is worth rejoicing over. Unlike other shows of the late-night Cartoon Network showcase, this one enjoys well-crafted scripts filled with jokes that come from decades of edgy, experimental comedy experience, and not bong hits. Ostensibly a parody of Walker, Texas Ranger and perhaps a bit Justified, the […]
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The Killing: The Complete First Season
That’s the question posed by the first season of AMC’s The Killing, and also one famously answered — and then infamously not — by its finale (an extended cut of which is on the three-disc Blu-ray set) that incited the Internet equivalent of a riot. Whereas so many viewers were angry, I was elated: Seriously, […]
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All about Eve
Few bands’ horizons looked better than Eve 6’s did back in the late ’90s and early ’00s. The alt-rock outfit enjoyed a major-label record deal, a platinum album and smash singles in “Inside Out” and “Here’s to the Night.” Then, ironically enough, things fell into a “beautiful oblivion.” Sales of its third, heavier release, 2003’s […]