Empire Pictures, 1985
starring: Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres and Jack Nance
written and directed by: Luca Bercovici

rated R

Once you’ve gotten high and gone on a mind-bending odyssey to White Castle, the only place left to go for some extreme strangeness is Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. military prison camp that’s physically in Cuba but exists in a legal no-man’s-land, where the rules of the real world don’t apply. Throwing two high-strung stoners into the mix sounds like a recipe for some off-the-wall comedy, but “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” never really gets as weird as it should. There’s some pointed jabs at the war on terror and snipes at racial stereotypes amid all the dick and fart jokes, but the movie never gets as subversive as you might expect.

Ioka will woo the Seacoast indie-film crowd

“It is a great way to bring in a new demographic,” said Roger Detzler, owner of Exeter’s Ioka Theatre. He’s excited about a new arrangement between the Ioka and Emerging Pictures, an independent film distribution company.

Over the past couple of years, Detzler had noticed increasing public demand for a venue dedicated to independent films. He saw the trend as a steady source of revenue, but couldn’t conjure up an appropriate business solution.

When Emerging Pictures contacted him two years ago, he was at first reluctant to adopt such a “quirky business model.” The two sides conversed sporadically, but Detzler remained uninterested until he was certain that Emerging Pictures would steadily progress into “a more marketable product.”

Filmways Pictures, 1981
starring: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer and
Lou David
directed by: Tony Maylam

rated R

To get a good idea of what to expect from the new break-up comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” look no further than it’s star and writer, Jason Segel. A veteran of Judd Apatow’s televised “Freaks and Geeks” school, with a brief stint on “CSI,” you may have last noticed him as Seth Rogan’s towering slacker friend in “Knocked Up.” Like many of the men on Apatow’s crew, he comes across as a doughy, needy, ne’er do well, with a sly comic outlook and an undeniable attraction to smokin’-hot ladies. This movie is a lot like that.

Crown International Pictures, 1980

starring: James Westmoreland, Ben Frank, Flo Gerrish and Nicholas Worth
directed by: Robert Hammer

Martin Scorsese is no stranger to great music. The soundtracks to his films are plastered with fabulously pitch-perfect selections, and his respective roles as producer and director on oft lauded televised documentaries about the blues, as well as rock legends like Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan, signify a clear appreciation and understanding of the form.

rated PG-13

For a movie about a team of super-smart MIT students using card-counting skills to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in Vegas casinos, “21” is surprisingly average. On the surface, “21” is slick and sexy. The story is about a team of five MIT students who jet to Vegas on the weekends, beat the casinos and make it back in time for class. But under the surface … well, it’s pretty much all surface and very little depth, slightly better than the fake mustaches and colorful wigs the students wear to avoid detection by the casino’s security guards. It’s sort of like “Ocean’s 11,” but with a lot less snap and very little star power.

a tribute to Richard Widmark

Pushing an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman down a flight of stairs is an unlikely way to become a star, but Richard Widmark was never a typical actor. Widmark shot to stardom in 1947’s “Kiss of Death,” in which he played Tommy Udo, a sadistic, giggling killer who plots revenge on the former partner who sent him to jail. In the film’s most memorable scene, Udo drags an old, wheelchair-bound woman out of her apartment and pushes her down a flight of stairs, gleefully laughing the whole time.

NF Geria III-Produktion, 1980
starring: Catherine Mary Stewart, George Gilmour, Vladek Sheybal and Joss Ackland
written and directed by: Menahem Golan

PMS Filmworks, 1987
starring: Rick Burks, Carl Crew, Lisa Elaina and Drew Godderis
directed by: Jackie Kong

rated R

“Doomsday” could have easily been billed as “Grindhouse 2.” A mishmash of bits from the last 25 years worth of post-apocalyptic flicks, “Doomsday” is derivative, but fun. Part “Mad Max” and part “Escape from New York” with a dash of “28 Days Later,” “Doomsday” is like downing a dozen Twinkies and drinking a gallon of Mountain Dew. It’s a momentary indulgence in excess that’s thrilling but not necessary to repeat.

“Gravityland” takes viewers on an online journey

The Internet has diversified to offer numerous forms of interactive entertainment, including many Web-only TV series. John Herman’s new project, “Gravityland,” launched on March 3, fits that category, but that does little justice to his creative foresight.

“I feel like I’m putting together a lot of things at the same time,” Herman said with a chuckle. 

If you have already made the trip to www.gravityland.com, you understand what he means. The “Web series” is a set of five- to seven-minute episodes, but that’s just the beginning.

Viewers can interact with the show’s actors and writers through the Internet and make suggestions as the plot unfolds. “There is always some way you are interacting with the show,” said Herman, who has spent much of his life as an improvisational actor. “It gives me an outlet.I’m really into collaboration.”

Universal Pictures, 1973
starring: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andrew Robinson and John Vernon
directed by: Don Siegel

rated R

While applauding a filmmaker for boldly breaking genre conventions, one should take a moment to consider why those conventions found their way into the process in the first place. In the case of the most successful heist pictures, the things we generally expect to see is ingenuity, flash, danger, gadgetry, romance and coolness. By successfully delivering a thoughtful, complex and realistic version of a very familiar type of story, “The Bank Job” effectively turns the genre on its proverbial head. But, in so doing, unfortunately, it undoes everything that makes a heist picture fun.

Ostensibly based on an actual bank robbery that occurred at Lloyd’s Bank of London in 1971, it makes sense that the filmmakers would grind off some of genre’s sharper edges for verisimilitude’s sake. Real life larceny is probably a fairly sloppy business, and not often pulled off by swaggering gin ’n’ tonic pretty-boys like George Clooney or Steve McQueen.

The immense changes that Portsmouth has undergone over the last several years are difficult to put into perspective. New buildings have crept into the city’s infrastructure, while others have rapidly vanished from the horizon. A new documentary from local filmmaker Thomas Clark provides a rapid-fire pictorial timeline of the city’s evolving personality.

Will Ferrell’s formula for box office success—Will Ferrell + ’70s attire = big bucks—is so well known and easy to capitalize on that anyone can do it. Enter first-time director Kent Alterman, who has assembled Ferrell and a gang of co-stars in “Semi-Pro,” the latest attempt to stick Ferrell’s ridiculous man-child persona into some paisley suits in an effort to mine comedy gold. But, this time around, the cracks in Ferrell’s comedic foundation are starting to show. It may be the beginning of the end for movies that rely on Ferrell’s goofy antics and inappropriate wardrobe choices to carry the production.

Director Julian Schnabel’s third film is, put simply, a work of art. A lifelong painter himself, he’s made it his business to celebrate the lives of fallen compagnons d’art on film—precocious grafittist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1996’s “Basquiat”; Cuban born poet Reinaldo Arenas in 2000’s “Before Night Falls”; and now playboy/fashionista Jean-Dominique Bauby.

“Jumper” starts out with perhaps the most annoying voice-over in the history of film, with Hayden Christensen smugly listing his day’s activities: hanging out in Rio, having lunch atop the Sphinx in Egypt, surfing in some tropical locale and so on, all before retiring to his New York apartment that evening. It’s an innocuous list, but Christensen delivers it in such a thoroughly unlikable manner that it’s hard not to hate “Jumper” immediately. The rest of the film presents a similar challenge—lobbying hard for you not necessarily to like the film, but to not hate it as much as you should. “Jumper” is a superhero movie for the unimaginative, with a half-assed plot, unlikable characters and lackluster special effects.

a.k.a ‘The Horrible House on the Hill’

Barrister Productions, Inc., 1974

starring: Gene Evans, Taylor Lacher, John Durren and Leif Garrett
directed by: Sean MacGregor

rated R 

Almost all men have the desire to challenge themselves and society. For most people, this desire is never acted upon, either because it would be too hard to do so or because responsibilities to family, careers and social pressures weigh too heavily upon them. But, those individuals who do act on this desire are the ones most likely to find truth. Sean Penn’s new film, “Into the Wild,” introduces us to such an individual.

Based on the 1996 book by Jon Krakauer, “Into the Wild” tells the true story of Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch), an upper middle class graduate of Emory College, who, upon graduation, gives away his life savings and burns his pocket cash, because money “makes you cautious.” McCandless wants to unburden himself of comfort and security in order to experience life in the raw.

Although temperatures have been rising for some time, climate change is a relatively new issue. It’s only in the last decade or so that people have begun to realize its catastrophic potential. Global warming is also a very complex issue, to which people outside of the scientific community sometimes have a hard time relating. Its newness and complexity has demanded innovative thinking on how best to convey the message that climate change is happening and that people need to start doing their part to stop it.

Recently, three Seacoast filmmakers have answered that demand by creating a series of short Internet-ready videos. The series is called “Now or Never” and is produced by Court Street Media. Creating a feature-length film usually takes months of preparation, filming and editing, but because global warming is an immediate problem and poses an immediate threat, the filmmakers—Bill Rogers, Melissa Paly and Peter Vandermark—wanted to expedite the creative process.

rated R 

Known for sprawling, ensemble-cast films like “Magnolia” and “Boogie Nights,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” feels like it was beamed in from another universe. It lacks the spiritual uplift of “Magnolia” and 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love” and is without the dark humor and quirky characters that populated “Boogie Nights.” No, “Blood” is unrelentingly dark. The humor is as black as the oil that flows throughout the film and the lead character is an unlikable scoundrel who just happens to be the American dream turned frighteningly real.

For an apt illustration of John Rambo’s epic journey, and possibly his place in American pop-culture, you need look no further than his right hand and the knife it’s preparing to jam into your guts. The blade he carried in 1982’s “First Blood” made for a decent representation of his character—beaten and used, but fairly utilitarian and still razor sharp. It had a saw on its spine, a matchbox stowed in its pommel and a compass on its butt. The knife, like Rambo, seemed to be an oversized government-issue instrument for surviving rough situations, and was shockingly out of place in the quiet, domesticated Jerkwater, U.S.A., in which the film took place. The simple threat of its presence was enough to scare the bejesus out of the yokel cops, and subsequently re-trigger poor John’s military conditioning as a cold-as-steel killing machine capable of eating things that would make a billy goat puke.

Canon Films, 1986
starring: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Bill Moseley ad Bill Johnson
directed by: Tobe Hooper

PG-13

With an intense viral marketing campaign complete with fake Web sites and MySpace profiles, “Cloverfield” positioned itself as a giant monster flick for the Web 2.0 world. Presented as a recording of a mysterious monster’s rampage across Manhattan, “Cloverfield” really feels like a post-apocalyptic artifact, dredged up from the rubble and covered in dead monster bits. Although it’s built around a conceit that could easily become tired, “Cloverfield” doesn’t let up, sticking faithfully to its premise and delivering all the necessary monstery goodness.

multiplex screens two important films about the Middle East

The multiplex theater is very rarely accused of being a bastion of political interest or cultural significance. With most of the “higher profile” tent pole productions (primarily concerned with superheroes, sequels and sequels about superheroes) being held for release in the warmer months, January is well regarded by the big distributors as an entertainment desert. In a season, however, generally reserved for spackling over empty screens with smaller, more emotional productions and last minute Oscar bids, some good things occasionally happen.

L

­Turns out, in a fabulous and frightening irony, Hollywood’s own creative bankruptcy in 2007 was apparently a one-way ticket to unprecedented riches. Of the top five highest grossing films of the year, four of them were sequels, and one was based on a toy line from back in the ’80s. Four of them—“Spiderman 3,” “Shrek the Third,” “Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End” (three seems to be a magic number here) and “Transformers”—all grossed more than $300 million apiece—a feat never before achieved by any one film in a single year. Against much fear and anticipation that such a glut of bloated tent pole productions would cannibalize each other’s box office potential, they inexplicably seemed to feed each other. Not too shabby for a slate of films with about three original ideas among them.

Columbia Pictures, 1981
starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane and Tracey Bregman
directed by: J. Lee Thompson

To paraphrase Tom Stoppard’s award winning play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” all good drama needs to blend elements of love, blood and rhetoric. Blood and love without the rhetoric, blood and rhetoric without the love, or all three concurrent or consecutive. But blood is compulsory. They’re all blood. Enter Sweeney Todd, stage right – legendary Victorian barber butcher whose thirst for vengeance against a libidinous court magistrate who stole his wife and daughter is matched only by a disturbing facility with a straight razor.

The last man on earth versus a bunch of angry vampires is a killer premise, one that should be easily adaptable in any medium. However, that’s not quite the case, as proved by “I Am Legend.” Originally a novella written by Richard Matheson in 1954, “Legend” has been adapted three times, with director Frances Lawerence and Will Smith at the helm of the third retelling of Matheson’s seminal vampire story.

Matheson’s premise was simple: A mystery virus kills most of humanity and turns the rest into vampires. The lone exception is Robert Neville, an average Joe living in the California suburbs who stubbornly carries on with life. Neville spends his days killing vampires and looking for the scientific causes behind what seems like a supernatural plague.

Alliance Communication Corp., 1986
starring: Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes, Sherilyn Fenn and Randy Quaid
written and directed by: Mike Marvin

rated PG-13 

Just about everything you really need to know about “The Golden Compass” can be found in the initial teaser trailer for the film, released last summer. Rife with details, big stars and cute computerized animals, it proposed, right from its opening shot (a golden ring transforming into what appeared to be a very complicated pocket-watch), to quote and build from the foundation of New Line’s last and biggest hit, “The Lord of the Rings.” An ambitious promise, certainly, but a surprisingly obvious tip of the hat that gave off a distinct odor of repetition.

After such nuanced and contemplative successes as “Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” both adaptations of Stephen King novels, it can easily be forgotten that writer/director Frank Darabont was also responsible for resurrecting “The Blob.” He also wrote for HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt” and wrote sequels to both “The Fly” and “Nightmare on Elm Street.” An avid reader, Darabont fell in love with King in high school when a copy of “The Shining” fell into his hands, and he has obviously been studying the man’s work with close attention ever since. His first directorial effort in 1983 was, in fact, an adaptation of the short story “Woman in the Room,” from King’s “Night Shift” collection.