That said, I’m a big boy. I can take it. That’s my way of saying I kind of dug the evil game it plays, mammoth faults and all, because how often does that happen? Having a child kidnapped is something I hope never to experience, yet that’s the premise behind this nasty little thriller, which […]
nudity
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Beyond the Black Rainbow
Ostensibly, the film’s plot — wait, perhaps I should put that word in quotation marks, and then quotation marks around that set of quotation marks just to be safe. Yeah, I’ll do that. Let’s start over. Ostensibly, the film’s ““plot”” centers on Elena (Eva Allan, TV’s Caprica), a young woman trying to escape the labyrinthian […]
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Sinister
Had I been watching it at home, alone, on a dark and stormy night, my neck likely would be sore by the end of it, from making repeated glances behind the couch — you know, just to be safe. It’s this year’s Insidious: well-built, respectful of audience members’ intelligence and yet genuinely freaky. Ethan Hawke […]
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Back from Hell
Presented as four days of a taped holiday — because apparently, that’s what young people do — the movie follows a handful of pals who vacay together, screw around with a Ouija board and eat shish kabob outdoors. In other words, not a Hell of a lot happens beyond the occasional person screaming from outside. […]
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Dark Shadows
Sporting spindly fingers à la 1922’s Nosferatu, Johnny Depp’s 18th-century vampire character of Barnabas Collins rises from the grave in 1972 where he’s puzzled by the high-tech times of television sets and breakfast waffles. He settles in with his descendants at their dreary Collinwood mansion, headed by matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer, who gets lovelier each […]
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Peace, Love & Misunderstanding
God knows this isn’t the first indie film to fall prey to contrivances, inept predictability and forced quirkiness. But what’s so perplexing is that Peace, now on DVD and Blu-ray after a small theatrical run, is made by such talented people. Its director is the usually dependable Bruce Beresford, whose credits range from Breaker Morant […]
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Hostel / Hostel: Part II
From 2005, Hostel drops three collegians into Amsterdam for a debauched vacation of pot and poon, only to accidentally become victims in a bizarre business in which the wealthy pay big bucks to torture the kidnapped in an underground warehouse. Roth spares nothing, leaving viewers to cringe at every slice of the Achilles tendon, snipped […]
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Klown
In order to convince his pregnant girlfriend (Mia Lyhne) that he is indeed “father material,” the goofy, gawky Frank (Frank Hvam) essentially kidnaps her 12-year-old nephew, Bo (Marcuz Jess Peterson), who’s staying with them while his parents are on vacation, and takes the pudgy, timid boy on a planned canoe trip. This comes to the […]
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The Revenant
I was reminded of this by the trailer for The Revenant, which touts the zombie comedy as coming from “visionary filmmaker” Kerry Prior. If he’s so visionary, why wasn’t his film given a wide theatrical rollout? Why did it take three years for the 2009 production to hit video? And why does it bear so […]
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The Tall Man
In just under two hours, a 36-hour ordeal is told, focusing on Julia (Jessica Biel, Total Recall), a free-clinic nurse turned supermom when her Chucky doll-looking son is kidnapped by The Tall Man. He drives a rusty van that practically screams “child molester.” I’ll give the film by writer/director Pascal Laugier (Martyrs) this: It throws […]