The flu of Flu is suspected to be avian, yet advances far too rapidly, causing death within 36 hours of exposure … and that window grows ever shorter. It’s up to a rescuer (Jang Hyuk) and a disease specialist / potential love interest (Su Ae) he recently saved to find a vaccine — and stat, […]
review
Posted inArts & Culture
Contracted
Samantha (Najarra Townsend, Me and You and Everyone We Know) learns this the — ahem — hard way, after drowning her inhibitions in vodka and letting them run free at a party where she’s roofied by a stranger (Simon Barrett, You’re Next). What happens in the few days that unfold thereafter are akin to scientist Seth Brundle in Cronenberg’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Return to Nuke ‘Em High
Usually, Troma can offend with simple scoops of sex and violence and gore; here, director/iconoclast Lloyd Kaufman realizes lesbian couplings can’t serve as his ceiling, so the script includes bad-taste jokes related to James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Jerry Sandusky and Trayvon Martin. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t laugh during the movie — just […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Gravity
That said, it’s a must-own Blu-ray, and the bigger the TV you have, the better. Rightly the recipient of seven Academy Awards earlier this month, Gravity quickly gets rolling, with U.S. astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney, The Monuments Men) and scientist Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock, The Heat) left to their own devices — and possibly […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Beneath
The effort he gives Beneath makes the Chiller Films presentation better than your average made-for-TV monster movie — or below-average, in the recent case of Hypothermia, a similar film in which Fessenden appeared. To the teens of Beneath stranded on a boat in the supposedly cursed Black Lake, a killer fish provides the fatal threat — not a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Fear
After just two weeks of knowing one another, Tom (Iain De Caestecker, TV’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) asks Lucy (Alice Englert, Beautiful Creatures) to a fest in Ireland, but makes plans for nookie one night early by booking a room at a romantic hotel in the country. Driving to their destination, they get lost, failing […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Machine Head
What’s missing? A reason to care. Marlboro-throated Rachel (Sharon Hinnendael, star of the recent Embrace of the Vampire remake) and her fellow spoiled-brat friends spend spring break at a totally sweet Cali-desert house owned by some rich dude her dad knows. The girls lose their enthusiasm over a week of endless drinking and dicking when […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Homefront
The Stath plays ex-DEA agent Phil Broker, who when we first meet him, dons a Bad Wig Hall of Fame-worthy mullet for undercover work busting a Sons of Anarchy-esque biker gang / drug ring that ends in tragedy. Two years later, Broker is experiencing grief himself as a new widower. He and his 9-year-old […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Viva vegan
Vegan tacos at Tamazul Photo by Shannon Cornman A Mexican restaurant, perhaps only behind steakhouses and burger joints, is a place I expect to find meats of several flavors and varieties: chicken enchiladas, beef tacos, shrimp fajitas, pork tamales and chile con carne that is heavily carne. And even when there’s no meat, our Tex-Mex […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jung at heart
Jung was 5 years old, alone and wandering along a South Korean street when a policeman came across him. The Western world awaited; the boy would be among more than 200,000 Korean children adopted in the aftermath of the Korean War. In May 1971, a Belgian family brought Jung Henin home. “It was like getting […]