And Snipes’ signature character of Blade will come to mind. As that Marvel Comics hero was cursed with vampirism, this film’s hero harbors a curse that turns the dead into the undead. Therefore, High Noon of the Living Dead would not be an inaccurate title for Gallowwalkers. Not to overpraise the film, but with its […]
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Under the Bed
After living with his aunt for two years, teenager Neal Hasuman (Jonny Weston, John Dies at the End) returns home. He was sent away following a fire that accidentally killed his mother; the blaze was set by him in an attempt to kill the creature lurking in his room. Naturally, Neal’s high-strung and short-fused father […]
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Kiss of the Damned
Ushered into that world is Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia, That’s My Boy), a screenwriter who meets the mysterious, gorgeous Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume, Johnny English Reborn). Because of her “skin condition,” she’s a night owl who spends much of her time holed up in an isolated mansion watching old movies by Buñuel and Di Sica. […]
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Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
Boris Rodriguez’s low-key Canadian comedy concerns Lars (Thure Lindhardt, TV’s The Borgias), who moves to a small town to become an art teacher at a tiny, underfunded school. Once was a gifted painter himself, Lars has been stuck in a 10-year creative rut. One of his students is Eddie (Dylan Scott Smith, 2012’s Total Recall), […]
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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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RED 2
Its inevitable successor, RED 2 (the acronym stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous,” per the comic-book source material), is, instead, a caricature of a caricature, one that revels in its lack of substance to the point of phlegmatic disinterest. The film revisits retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard), who, […]
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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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The Way, Way Back
Fox Searchlight — the studio that brought us Garden State, Juno and Little Miss Sunshine — has a knack for these pleasure centers, and The Way, Way Back is the latest installment in this line of cutesy, sentimental films. It opens Friday. The story follows the 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James, TV’s The Killing), an awkward, […]