(How meta it would’ve been to see this at an actual drive-in; I’ll settle for its DVD debut from Sony Pictures’ Choice Collection, rather than the alternative, which is to never see it at all.) Like American Graffiti three years before it, the movie follows a select handful of youngsters, mostly teens, over the course […]
trailer
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For a Good Time, Call …
If you bet that means a lot of one-liners about penises and vaginas, and maybe some sight gags involving zeppelin-sized dildos, I congratulate you on your clairvoyance. But there are surprises here, too, particularly how sweet-natured this film actually is, and how winning are its two stars. Lauren (Lauren Anne Miller, 50/50), the straitlaced product […]
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The Crimson Petal and the White
Romola Garai (Atonement) plays Sugar, a 19-year-old prostitute pimped out by her own mother (The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson, almost unrecognizable) to the hoity-toity about town. One such uncool customer is William Rackham (O’Dowd), a soap titan married to a mentally ill woman (Amanda Hale, Bright Star). So taken is he by Sugar’s honeypot that he […]
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Mad Monster Party?
Filmed in “Animagic” and with characters designed and a script by two Mad magazine giants — Jack Davis and Harvey Kurtzman, respectively — the movie got beloved horror icon Boris Karloff to voice mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein, who looks just like the actor. The doc has invited all of moviedom’s monsters — y’know, Dracula, the […]
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Killer Joe
The second collaboration between director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and Tulsa-born playwright Tracy Letts — their first being 2006’s Bug — this work serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny. Not that all audiences will get the joke. Letts’ first play rolls around in the muck, and Friedkin […]
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Naked Angels
The 1969 picture arrived at the crest of the biker-film craze, yet is so dull, it could’ve killed the genre. The plot concerns gang leader Mother (Michael Greene, The Harrad Experiment) being freshly discharged from the hospital, but in danger of going right back in as he seeks revenge on his rivals who put him […]
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Karate-Robo Zaborgar
As silly as it is satisfying, the Sushi Typhoon serving is both an update and a spoof of a live-action kiddie series from the 1970s, à la Ultraman, so the approach is both reverent and respectfully raunchy (think The Brady Bunch Movie). It’s about the love story between a man named Daimon (Yasuhisa Furuhara) and […]
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Vile
So, yeah: It’s aptly titled. When two camping couples agree to give a ride to a stranded cougar (soap actress McKenzie Westmore) they meet at a gas station, they are gassed and awaken trapped in a house with five others. As explained by a helpful video, “Pain will be your only way out of this […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXIV
This edition — four episodes on four discs, per Shout! Factory’s usual — is like a cinematic-crap tour around the globe. We venture south of the border for 1962’s Samson vs. the Vampire Women, a masked-wrestler epic that stars Santo (not Samson, no matter what the title says), the caped superhero of Mexico’s wrasslin’ ring. […]
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Searching for Sonny
They were both shot in Texas and, hell, they even share a character name in “Future Man,” but by no means am I suggesting Sonny should be held anywhere near the level of Bottle Rocket‘s giddy brilliance. Jason Dohring (TV’s Ringer) stars as Elliott Knight, who’s accomplished a big bunch of nothing a decade after […]