The feature debut of director Katie Dellamaggiore, the documentary is now available on demand from FilmBuff. While this institution holds more championship chess titles than any other middle school in the nation (26), the film opens with them experiencing loss — well, second place, at least, among 862 teams. They win so often that not […]
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Sinister
Had I been watching it 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 2012’s Insidious: well-built, respectful of viewers’ intelligence and yet genuinely freaky. Ethan Hawke (Daybreakers) plays Ellison Oswalt, […]
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The Imposter
Nicknamed “The Chameleon” by the press, Bourdin is known for having assumed untold hundreds of identities; Bart Layton’s film wisely chooses to focus on just one of those cases. Luckily, it’s a doozy — one so unbelievable, you wouldn’t believe it without the proof. In 1994, in San Antonio, Texas, a 13-year-old boy named Nicholas […]
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Bath Salt Zombies
Set in New York City, the film imagines such a huge crackdown on “bath salts” — a real-life drug currently making headlines for its zombie-like effects on users — that one enterprising chemist has synthesized it in cigarette form. Smoking it, however, proves even more addictive than usual, causing withdrawal symptoms so bad “it will […]
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Seven Psychopaths
Working again with McDonagh, Colin Farrell (Total Recall) is Marty, a screenwriter having troubles on the job — all he has on paper is a title — and at home with his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish, Sucker Punch). These pale to the life-or-death situation his slacker pal, Billy (Sam Rockwell, The Sitter), gets him into, involving […]
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Nobody Gets Out Alive
Good movies, regardless of classification, are going to come from those are filmmakers vs. fans. The current wave from the latter leaves a lot to be desired, as they approach projects from a narrow-focus angle that eschews objectivity and regurgitates a mishmash of titles they’ve seen without adding anything new. Recent offenders include Mimesis and […]
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The Factory
Skipping theaters and debuting on DVD free of digital bells and whistles, the Dark Castle Entertainment thriller exactly lacking in famous faces, with John Cusack and Jennifer Carpenter in the leads as partnering police detectives in snowy Buffalo, N.Y. Mike Fletcher (Cusack, The Raven) is an 18-year veteran of the force obsessed with a longtime […]
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Beauty Day
It debuts on demand Feb. 12 from FilmBuff. As Beauty Day informs us, Zavadil was a man before his time as cable-TV personality Cap’n Video, a David Lee Roth-looking, Jackass-style camcorder prankster who was doing his thing in the mid-1990s, before Johnny Knoxville and the gang even dreamt of getting paid to puke. Director Jay […]
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Lake Placid: The Final Chapter
I’m so kidding. However, it appears to pick up from where LP3 left off — I haven’t seen it — with crocodile hunter Reba (Yancy Butler, Shark Week) surviving a tussle with a giant croc … only to have it not be as dead as she first thought. “You again? You really wanna do this?” […]
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Kill for Me
For Hailey, it’s her dad (Donal Logue, Silent Night). For Amanda, it’s a stalkery ex-boyfriend. But problems can solved and, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. In other words, Kill for Me, I kill for you. Director Michael Greenspan’s follow-up to the disastrous Wrecked is a marked improvement. It’s like a gender-swapped […]