Despite the subtitle, it’s not really a prequel. Ingeniously presented as a cheesy wedding video, complete with menu and photo montage, the film documents the nuptials of Clara (Leticia Dolera) and Koldo (Diego Martín), and the subsequent country-club reception that gives new meaning to “blow-out.” At some point deep into the dance-party portion of the […]
nudity
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The Phynx
To review the movie, I need only tell you what it’s about. The dictator of communist Albania has swiped dozens of United States “world leaders,” including Butterfly McQueen, Johnny Weismuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Dorothy Lamour, Xavier Cugat, Col. Sanders, Busby Berkeley, the Bowery Boys, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. (Mind you, all of them appear as […]
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House of Dark Shadows / Night of Dark Shadows
Both directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis (Dead of Night), the pair of flicks conveniently has arrived in long-overdue DVD and Blu-ray releases from Warner Home Video. Both also benefit in the production value inherent of theatrical releases, which the live, shot-on-video soap often severely lacked. It took me a while to realize this, […]
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The Campaign
After helming two fact-based political dramas for HBO in Recount and Game Change, director Jay Roach must have found the opportunity to poke fun at the circus irresistible. I’m glad he did. In North Carolina’s 14th congressional district, the four-time incumbent is Cam Brady (Will Ferrell, Casa de Mi Padre), a shoo-in for a fifth […]
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Safety Not Guaranteed
Feature-debuting director Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed marks the rarest of indie comedies — the speculative kind — as Jeff, a cocky magazine writer (Jake Johnson, TV’s New Girl) in Seattle, relies on his intern, Darius (Aubrey Plaza, TV’s Parks and Recreation), to use her feminine wiles to get close to the lonely grocery clerk/would-be […]
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The Sorcerers
Explains the Monserrats to a complete stranger (Ian Ogilvy, TV’s Return of the Saint) they’ve secured in what looks like an electric chair, the couple has devised a scientific system offering “complete abandonment with no thought of remorse … intoxication with no hangover, ecstasy with no consequence.” (To the viewer, this means a sequence of […]
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Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty
And when he penned that adjective, he wasn’t even aware of the single’s video, which features a bona fide porn star! Yes, appearing in the Queen of Rockabilly’s video for “Tore Down” is none other than Ron Jeremy, the hairy Hedgehog of f–k flicks. Among other spots, look for him nearly two minutes into the […]
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Supernatural Activity
The gist is that for its season/series finale, one of those ridiculous ghost-hunting shows goes to Hicksville, Texas, in search of the “yeti-demon” known as Smallsquatch. To give you an immediate idea of the level of humor the flick operates, the creature tickles its victims to death. Ha-ha! I mean, ha-ha? This flimsy setup allows […]
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Rites of Passage
It concerns a group of party-hearty students at the University in Santa Barbara — that’s right: in, not of, per the opening scrawl — taking a field trip to a burial ground of the Chumash Indians, a tribe evidently known for shape-shifting and downing toxic, hallucinatory flower tea. Along with much sexual activity and drug […]
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The Girl
Premiering Saturday, The Girl is the first of two high-profile biopics of the master filmmaker to hit screens this season. The other, simply titled Hitchcock, is a larger-budget feature with a whiff of Oscar bait, yet there’s room enough for both. While that forthcoming film focuses on the making of 1960’s Psycho, The Girl concerns […]