The opening minutes serve as a nifty precursor for the action, both physical and psychological, to follow. Stunt motorcycle driver Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling, Gangster Squad) emerges from a darkened trailer and into a traveling carnival. As the camera trails him over his shoulder, Luke gets on his cycle, enters the caged globe of death […]
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The Wicked
As soon as its wonderful animated opening credits finish, however, The Wicked reveals its true nature as your below-average, everyday, unimaginative horror movie. It’s wicked, all right — just not in the word’s positive connotation. Although not to be confused with the Broadway smash Wicked, this flick also is about a witch (Cassie Keller, Hostel: Part […]
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Birdemic 2: The Resurrection
You asked for it, you got it. And you have no one to blame but yourself. Birdemic 2 is every bit as incompetent as its big bro, and then some: blurred images, sound dropouts, repeated establishing shots, public high-fives and leaden dialogue (“I don’t know about the movie business, but I know how to read”). […]
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Gangster Squad
Like that 1997 film, Gangster Squad shares a real-life character in mob king Mickey Cohen. While briefly in the former, he’s the gangster (played by Sean Penn, The Tree of Life) around whom the squad circles. (He’s also explored at length in a William Devane-hosted documentary on the Blu-ray.) That squad is fronted by war […]
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Upstream Color
Here’s what I think about Upstream Color nearly three weeks after seeing it: I’m unsure. I’ve not yet finished processing it. I can’t even explain the title. Screening Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the self-distributed film marks the belated sophomore effort of writer/director/producer/actor/editor/ composer/cinematographer/camera operator Shane Carruth, who became an […]
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Thale
Presumably in her 20s, their find, Thale (Silje Reinåmo), is actually a “huldra.” In Scandinavian folklore, that’s a seductive forest creature. Her pointy tail is the dead giveaway, but the guys learn more about her from tape recordings that sound like something out of The Evil Dead. From writer/director Aleksander Nordaas, the Norwegian Thale certainly […]
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Save the Date
Not quite a pure drama, not quite a pure comedy, the scrappy charmer also is a love triangle sharing a point with a love rectangle, both hinging on Sarah (Lizzy Caplan, Bachelorette), an artist and bookstore manager who takes the plunge by moving in with her rocker boyfriend, Kevin (Geoffrey Arend, Devil), but bails when […]
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Trance
Based on a 2001 British made-for-TV movie, Trance casts X-Men: First Class member James McAvoy (presumably standing in for Ewan McGregor) as Simon, an art auctioneer who becomes a media hero for foiling the heist of an über-valuable painting, yet pays the price when the would-be thief, Franck (Vincent Cassel, Black Swan), comes looking for […]
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Dead in France
If more proof is needed — it’s not — the exploding heads, shoulder-stabbings and a good ol’ Wilhelm scream should do the trick later. Directed and co-written by Kris McManus, the UK film centers around Charles (Brian Levine, who co-wrote), a lonely hit man who’s not only a virgin, but never even kissed a woman. […]
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The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia
Once again based on a supposedly true story (which the Blu-ray’s extra features delve into), this unconnected, theater-skipping sequel to 2009’s sleeper hit Haunting in Connecticut takes place in 1993, when the Wyrick family — nary a Virginia Madsen among them — moved from the city of Atlanta to the rural Pine Mountain. An overly […]