Also drawing upon Single White Female and director Jamie Babbit’s own The Quiet, this frigid thriller stars Agnes Bruckner (now the poor man’s Abbie Cornish, after starring in Lifetime’s recent Anna Nicole Smith biopic) as Sara, a struggling college student by day and bartender by night. When she loses the gig of the latter, it […]
trailer
Posted inArts & Culture
The Eyes of Charles Sand
Why not both? As his aunt (Joan Bennett, TV’s Dark Shadows) informs Charles, now that he is the sole surviving son of the Sands, he and he only possesses powers of ESP, and with great power comes great responsibility — not to mention pesky, spooky visions of milky-eyed, heavily wrinkled corpses appearing wherever he goes. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
12 Years a Slave
The film’s discomforting imagery is depicted with shrewd precision and unflinching directness, both pivotal to the potency of the film. But McQueen also proves himself to be a uniquely accomplished storyteller, and the story here is extraordinary. Based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 autobiography of the same name, 12 Years follows a free black man’s sudden […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Devil Doll from Hell / Tales from the Quadead Zone
Who’s Chester Novell Turner? He’s a correspondence-course filmmaker who shot two homemade horror opuses at the height of the home-video revolution: 1984’s Black Devil Doll from Hell and 1987’s Tales from the Quadead Zone. Until recently, these ultra-rare, ultra-obscure titles fetched hundreds of dollars on eBay. I might feel sorry for the poor bastards who […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lovelace
This approach speaks to the controversy that dogged Lovelace’s later life, in which she denounced porn of all forms, saying that she was coerced by gunpoint and other means into performing oral sex for the cameras of Deep Throat, not to mention dalliances into prostitution. So, no, Lovelace is not the feel-good hit of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bounty Killer
In its post-apocalyptic setting of 2042, what remains of our country is a barren wasteland where death warrants are issued for white-collar criminals (somehow, there are still plenty) and bounty hunters compete madly for them, racking up quite a body count. Speaking of rack, “the greatest killer the world had ever known” happens to be […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Killer Holiday / Murder University
Killer Holiday is so named because the killer’s name is Holiday (ha-ha?) and because for the aggravating eight college students passing for protagonists, it’s spring break, dude! So your Overweight Douche, your Frat Douche, your Party Girl, your Smart Girl and so on pile into an RV to get their kicks on Route 66, because […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Big Bus
Never as readily available and accessible as it should be, The Big Bus belatedly pulls back into in-print status through Warner Archive. Better manufactured-on-demand than never! His lead-up to The Muppet Movie, director James Frawley keeps the atmosphere light with slapstick as the company behind the $12 million nuclear-powered superbus known as Cyclops has no […]
Posted inMusic
My Name Is Nobody
A half-decade later, Fonda re-teamed with Leone, who this time served as producer for My Name Is Nobody. Although a far less serious film, it’s arguably more entertaining — a pure delight. See if you don’t agree, now that the 1973 film gallops out of the sunrise and onto Blu-ray. Fonda’s Jack Beauregard is an […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Hijacking
The Rozen is en route to Mumbai when the weapons-toting Somalis overtake the ship and its seven-man crew. Writer/director Tobias Lindholm doesn’t utilize the captain as our viewpoint, but the cook, Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk, TV’s The Borgias), a nice man who makes a mean omelet. The other half of A Hijacking gets inside the head of […]