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Film (all)
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 |
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rated PG
There are some pills that make you bigger and some that make you small,
but there are just as many that don’t do anything at all. You can
include Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” among that last group.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 |
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a.k.a. ‘Savage Dawn’
HCI International, 1983
Of all the warriors wandering in search of water and other precious
resources, none are stronger than Stryker (Sandor), a battle-tested
veteran who escaped the clutches of Kardis (Lane), a cruel warlord
who’ll stop at nothing to find a legendary spring.
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 |
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area group encourages potential buyers of The Strand to keep it an independent theater
Dover resident Janine Auger created a Facebook page in support of The Strand in late February. Auger had no idea what kind of response she would
receive. Much to her surprise, 500 people signed up as members in the
first day and a half. In two weeks, that number swelled to 1,300.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Tuesday, 02 March 2010 |
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rated R
First, the murderous drooling slobs in “The Crazies” are not zombies, OK? They’re crazies. There’s a difference.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 02 March 2010 |
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MC Productions, 1984
The usual suspects are at play in ‘Satan’s Blade’: bad synth music, worse effects, and really terrible acting, all tied together with a vague plot about a gussied-up knife.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 24 February 2010 |
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rated R
It’s apt that “Shutter Island,” a pulpy thriller directed
by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens on a ferry,
where DiCaprio is battling a raging bout of seasickness. He’s
trembling, unsteady on his feet, and his Boston accent sounds as
unsettled and tenuous as the contents of his stomach. That accent doesn’t get any
better, but eventually Scorsese takes command and delivers a thriller that, though imperfect, is luridly fun.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 24 February 2010 |
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Omega Cinema Productions, 1982
Elaine’s business venture as the new owner of "Honeymoon Island" goes awry as soon as the three couples venture onto the resort. In no time at all, bodies begin to pile up, but the county’s bumbling sheriff spends his days
eating, smoking cigars and adamantly refusing to investigate the goings on.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 |
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rated R
Tales of civilized people struggling to reconcile themselves with their
beastlier impulses have been prowling the tree-line of rational thought
since, well, the dawn of rational thought. This week, the ritual carries on with “The Wolfman,” directed by Lucas/Spielberg protégé Joe Johnston.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 |
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Cohen, 1982
Even the afterlife must get dull for Japanese samurai ghosts after almost 150 years, but that’s no reason for three spirits to act like they’re stuck in some sort of unbearable committee meeting.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 |
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rated R
In “Crazy Heart,” Bad Blake, a former country music legend turned
broken-down workhorse, carries the wounds that come from life on the
road in his guitar case and on stooped shoulders. Those bruises surface whenever he picks up his guitar, but they bloom
most brightly when he’s offstage, drunkenly stumbling through his house
or puking behind a bowling alley.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 |
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Warner Bros., 1973
It’s been a year since producer Clinton Green’s wife,
Sheila, was killed in a hit-and-run accident after a lavish party.
Sheila always loved to play games, and so Clinton has devised a game of
his own: he’s invited six friends aboard his yacht (named after his
dead wife) for a week-long mystery game.
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Written by Karen Marzloff
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 |
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Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour takes viewers through remote landscapes and cultures, from Mongolia to Africa to Pakistan, and it's coming to Durham to benefit Avis Goodwin Health Center.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Tuesday, 02 February 2010 |
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rated R
As directed by John Hillcoat (responsible previously for the grisly
Outback western “The Proposition”), the screen adaptation of McCarthy’s
novel cleaves mercilessly close to the original text. The brutally
austere story of a man and his boy hardscrabbling their way to a
distant sea on bag-wrapped foot across a blasted, collapsing (and
decidedly American) landscape unfolds with a hushed, pensive
deliberation.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 02 February 2010 |
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a.k.a. ‘La venganza del sexo’
Productores Argentinos Asociados, 1967
This Valentine’s Day, why not treat your date to a showing of
“The Curious Dr. Humpp?” Of course, make sure your date loves
retro-sleaze and doesn’t mind bad dubbing and naked hippies.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 |
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Where should be
treated to what the film’s title promises—a legion of angels smashing
their way through buildings and bashing humans—instead, we get old
ladies and ice cream men with bad teeth and gangly limbs scrabbling up
the walls of a dirty diner. With such cool visual possibilities, why
stop there? Are all the angels on a coffee break?
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 |
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MGM, 1984
Since we did end up with a sequel to “2001,” we should be grateful that
it’s “2010,” a smart, engaging bit of sci-fi that focuses more on
concrete human needs (namely, survival, but also the need for answers
in the face of big questions, both moral and scientific) than questions
about the evolution of the mind.
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Written by Chloe Johnson
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Saturday, 23 January 2010 |
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can Seacoast residents be like 'No Impact Man'?
As captured in this documentary, Colin Beavan’s environmental experiment quickly becomes a test of how much his wife is willing to sacrifice for him. Seacoast residents are increasingly willing to attempt such lifestyle changes themselves, at least to some degree.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Saturday, 23 January 2010 |
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rated R
The good Brothers Hughes, having demonstrated some fairly sophisticated
taste in comic booky diversions with their underrated adaptation of
Alan Moore’s “From Hell,” pull out all the stops to illustrate their
vision of a lone preacher in a desolate wasteland, defending the
downtrodden and generally doing unto others, mostly for worse than for
better, as they would do unto him.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Saturday, 23 January 2010 |
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Scorpio Film Releasing, 2009
After she punches and kicks her way through her sleepy convent, Sister
Kelly is sent to another convent for punishment, but before she can get
there, she’s gunned down in an alley—by some fellow nuns. Featuring saloons, sawed-off shotguns and heaven as a swank dance club, “Nun of That” is pretty much non-stop hilarious, so unless you’ve taken a vow against fun, it’s a must watch.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 14 January 2010 |
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rated R
“Daybreakers” promises so much: visceral vampire action, clever world
building, and a thoughtful tweak on the vampire mythos, all wrapped in
an allegory about dwindling natural resources.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 14 January 2010 |
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ARS Nova, 2009
Black Dynamite (White) is the baddest mutha around, and everyone—from
the kids down at the orphanage and the pimps in the street to the
pandering politicians and local militant groups—knows it.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 08 January 2010 |
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As Danny satisfies his appetite for human flesh, Denise struggles to
keep her husband from tearing their marriage—and innocent
bystanders—apart.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Friday, 08 January 2010 |
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Jason Reitman, the man who brought us the angrily mischievous “Thank
You for Smoking,” takes what should have been a
snuggly cotton romcom, turns it inside out and pours cold water all over
it. That said, his latest wet blanket may be exactly the wake-up call
contemporary romance movies have been waiting for.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 29 December 2009 |
After a day of fun at the beach and an amusement park goes awry, six
teenagers venture out in their boat off the coast of England, only to
be shipwrecked. Lucky for them, they make it to a nearby island that’s
seemingly inhabited. A large, old-fashioned grand hotel dominates the
island, and soon, the teens, led by Rick and his girlfriend
Janet, start exploring. What could go wrong?
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Written by Larry Clow
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Tuesday, 29 December 2009 |
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Guy Ritchie (“Snatch,” “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) makes movies
about men who live outside the law and spend their time coming up with
ways to double- and triple-cross each other. When the various reversals
peter out, Ritchie’s characters commence with punching each other and
blowing things up. This isn’t a complaint—Ritchie’s films are solidly
entertaining, and “Sherlock Holmes” fulfills that promise perfectly.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 24 December 2009 |
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Tales from the Video Vault
Dan O’Bannon worked with big-name directors like James Cameron and John
Carpenter, but he dwelled in the shadows of genre
filmmaking and is, in a way, responsible for a good chunk of the modern
landscape of sci-fi and horror filmmaking. O’Bannon did it all, from
aliens to zombies to space vampires.
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Written by Dave Karlotski
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Thursday, 24 December 2009 |
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Twelve years after the colossal crossover mega-hit “Titanic,” director
James Cameron has returned to blockbuster moviemaking with a
gorgeous 3D sci-fantasy super-adventure. Who doesn’t want to ride a dragon and date a blue girl? Sold!
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 |
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Tales from the Video Vault
In the struggle against eldritch spirits that thirst for revenge, a big electric typewriter is essential.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 |
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movie review
It's been many years since the groundbreaking, Oscar-winning
successes of “The Little Mermaid,” “The Lion King” and “Aladdin,” and
Disney’s cookie cutter has gotten mighty dull. But if there’s anything 2009 has taught animation aficionados, it’s that
even amid all the whiz-bang-kaboom all the new tools might afford, there’s
still nothing wrong with a little oldfangled flash. There may be no better choice to
control-alt-delete the medium than the classic fairy tale story of “The
Princess and the Frog.”
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 |
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In a year riddled with highly disappointing blockbusters (“Terminator
Salvation,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” “G.I. Joe: The Rise
of Cobra”), 2009 also featured a number of quality films worth renting
for a second view. Check out this roundup of notable highlights.
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Written by Dave Karlotski
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Wednesday, 09 December 2009 |
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movie review
Consider the armored truck: a civilan vehicle built like a tank, driven
by armed men who aren’t police. It’s kind of neat, when you
think about it—there are probably all sorts of cool secret things about
armored trucks that would make great fodder for a movie, psychological
insights to be made into the minds of their high-powered rent-a-cop
crews, and possibly even fun new stunts that could be done with these
hardcore vehicles.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 09 December 2009 |
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Tales from the Video Vault
A priest's suicide has cracked the barrier between the world of the
living and the dead—a crack that will become permanent within three
days. A psychic medium and a journalist pair up in a mad race to destroy the priest’s re-animated
corpse before the world is consumed by a host of
supernatural fiends.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 |
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Tales from the Video Vault
“Equinox” started as a student film project by Dennis Muren, now known
for his special effects work on most of the sci-fi blockbusters from
the 1970s through the ’90s, including the “Star Wars” trilogy, “E.T.”
and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” In "Equinox," Muren’s miniatures include a collection of winged devils, flailing tentacles and angry ape-men.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 |
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movie review
The first thing you’ll notice in Wes Anderson’s
(“Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenebaums”) latest romp through the woods of
precocious morality and parental malfunction is the jarring, positively
antiquated “on the twos” stop-motion animation. The second thing you’ll
notice is that it really works.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 28 August 2009 |
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Films Concorde, 1978
starring: Bo Svenson, Fred Williamson, Peter Hooten and Ian Bannen
directed by: Enzo Castellari
the plot: France, 1944—a
group of American soldiers about to be court-martialed are loaded onto
a truck and shipped off to their final fate. Among this mixed bag of
misfits is Canfield (Williamson), a black private who still faces
racism while on the battlefield; Tony (Hooten), a lecherous, shifty,
enlisted man who immediately rubs Canfield the wrong way; and Lt.
Yaeger (Svenson), an insubordinate Air Force pilot who’s broken the
rules one too many times. When their convoy is ambushed by a squad of
Nazis, the would-be prisoners escape and set out for the Swiss border.
Yaeger and his men may be criminals and malcontents, but they still
want to kick Nazi ass, and soon enough, Col. Buckner (Bannen) ropes the
men into completing a secret mission behind enemy lines. Their target:
a train carrying a newly developed V-2 rocket and a cadre of German
officers. But the Nazis have a surprise of their own.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 28 August 2009 |
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rated R
In Philip K. Dick’s novel “The Man in the High
Castle,” a chronicle of an alternate history of World War II in which
the Axis has won the war and Germany and Japan have conquered America,
there’s a great moment when the characters glimpse, very briefly,
another world (that is to say, our world) in which the Nazis actually
lost. Director Quentin Tarantino has a similar scene in “Inglourious
Basterds,” his own fractured fairy tale version of WWII. The coolly
malevolent SS Col. Hans Landa (played with careful, manicured aplomb by
Christoph Waltz) tells his longtime adversary, Lt. Aldo “The Apache”
Raine (Brad Pitt) of how the hand of fate can reach out and change
history. Landa knows history is about to change, but not in the way, he
seems to sense, it’s meant to.
In this case, though, the hand belongs not to fate but
Tarantino, who’s created a singular movie that’s part revenge-fantasy,
part comic book and an all-around unabashed love letter to the cinema.
It’s a bold and brightly colored movie, bloody, utterly shameless and
supremely confident in every move it makes. “Basterds” is an homage to
WWII mission flicks like “The Dirty Dozen” and Italian director Enzo
Castellari’s similarly titled 1978 “The Inglorious Bastards,” but its
closest cousin is this summer’s “Drag Me To Hell,” another quirky piece
of old-school filmmaking that makes its own rules and revels in the
pure fun of going to the movies.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Saturday, 22 August 2009 |
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Dick Clark Productions, 1968
starring: Susan Strasberg, Jack Nicholson, Dean Stockwell and Bruce Dern
directed by: Richard Rush
the plot: In 1960s San Francisco, Jenny Davis
(Strasberg), a young deaf girl, arrives in Haight-Ashbury looking for
her brother, Steve (Dern). Jenny is immediately thrown into the thick
of the city’s hippie enclave courtesy of Stoney (Nicholson), the front
man for Mumblin’ Jim, a struggling psychedelic band. The only clue
Jenny has to her brother’s whereabouts is a cryptic postcard that says,
“JESS SAES,” and while Stoney and his bandmates help Jenny search for
her brother, the fuzz is in hot pursuit of Jenny, who ran away from
home. In order to help find Steve, Stoney turns to Dave (Stockwell), a
former member of Mumblin’ Jim who now spends his days dropping acid,
staring at a crystal and spouting wisdom. As Jenny’s search continues,
she learns free love and easy drugs carry a hefty price.
why it’s good: The saying goes that if you can remember
the ’60s, you weren’t really there. For those who weren’t there or have
hazy memories, there’s “Psych-Out,” a nice slice of psychedelic
weirdness that’s neither a complete celebration of free love nor the
usual anti-hippie cautionary tale. A young, pony-tailed Jack Nicholson
is the leader of this band of long-hairs, and for all their idealism
and platitudes about peace and love, they’re mostly selfish jerks.
Stoney has no compunctions about taking advantage of a deaf girl, and
his easy-going attitude vanishes the instant Mumblin’ Jim gets a
legitimate agent and lands a big-time gig.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Saturday, 22 August 2009 |
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rated R
Imagine if Franz Kafka had thought to give
Gregor a splatter-blast ray-gun. Or if Speilberg had equipped Schindler
with a mechanized bio-suit capable of hurling trucks across town.
Picture the favela slums of Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God” populated
with filthy eight-foot-tall bipedal lobsters. If Paul Verhoeven grew a
conscience. If David Cronenberg bought a computer. If Michael Moore had
directed “Starship Troopers.” We’re closing in on “District 9.”
The first feature film from advertising and short film whiz-kid
Neill Blomkamp, produced by celebrated Ring Lord Peter Jackson, is a
work of breathtaking science fiction. The story, in which a million
indigent worker drone space-bugs park their gargantuan broken down UFO
bus over Johannesburg and are subsequently segregated into a squalid
barbed wire and plywood shantytown by a clearly immoral international
conglomerate charged with their “welfare,” centers around the, er,
transformative journey of a bigoted pencil-pushing corporate nerd
employed to relocate the wretched creatures to even worse circumstances
farther from the city’s frightened human populace.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 14 August 2009 |
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Films 75, 1978
starring: Susana Kamini, Tina Romero, David Silva and Claudio Brook
directed by: Juan Lopez Moctezuma
the plot: Following
the death of her parents, young Justine (Kamini) is sent to live in an
orphanage/convent. Her roommate is Alucarda (Romero), a strange young
girl who likes to collect “secrets” and frolic in the ancient forest
and abandoned buildings around the orphanage. One afternoon, Justine
and Alucarda stumble first into a strange Gypsy camp and, later, into a
crumbling crypt—which, unknown to Alucarda, is the site where she was
born and her mother was killed 15 years earlier. An evil spirit
possesses the two girls and they return to the orphanage. When they’re
not involved in strange Satanic orgies, the girls are busy blaspheming
their way around the orphanage, reducing the nuns to quivering wrecks
and sending the head priest Father Lazaro (Silva) into a
self-flagellating frenzy. Lazaro orders an exorcism for the two girls.
Midway through the ritual, Justine dies and Dr. Oszek (Brook), the
village physician, bursts into the room and rescues Alucarda. He whisks
her back to his home and leaves Alucarda alone with his daughter,
unaware that the demonic young girl is looking for a new innocent to
corrupt.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 14 August 2009 |
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rated PG-13
In order to keep the 1980s animated
incarnation of “G.I. Joe” from becoming a 30-minute toy commercial, TV
producers tacked on a short moral message or useful life-skills tip
(don’t take drugs, stay away from downed power lines, etc.) at the end
of every episode. These clips made “G.I. Joe” into a 27-minute toy
commercial and supplied the franchise with its memorable tag line,
“Knowing is half the battle.” If knowing still is, in fact, half the
battle—and it may be, despite former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld’s claims that it’s actually a third of the battle, along with
things unknown and the ever-elusive “unknown unknowns”—then there are a
few things you should know before settling in to watch the summertime
explosion-fest that is “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.”
First, it’s not the worst blockbuster of the summer; that
dubious achievement still belongs to “Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen.” “G.I. Joe” is more comprehensible than “Transformers” by a
wide margin, and completely free of robot testicles, farting
senior-citizen robots and robots in blackface. That said, “G.I. Joe”
remains dumb as a bag of hammers. But even a bag of hammers has some
utility, and “G.I. Joe” is perfectly adequate at showing attractive
people blowing things up in a spectacular manner.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 07 August 2009 |
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Arkham Northwest Productions, 2007
starring: Jason Cottle, Scott Patrick Green, Dennis Kleinsmith and Richard Garfield
directed by: Dan Gildark
the plot: After his mother
dies, history professor Russell Marsh (Cottle) reluctantly returns to
the small coastal Oregon town where he grew up to settle some family
business. Russell’s homecoming, already clouded by tragedy, is made
even stranger when he learns his father (Kleinsmith) is the leader of a
bizarre religious sect, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which has come to
dominate the town. Russell, an outcast in the family because of his
homosexuality, trades barbs with his father, who wants his son to
remain in town and join the Order of Dagon. Meanwhile, Russell and his
childhood friend Mike (Green) begin a desperate romantic tryst. Mike
and others tell Russell of the strange disappearances that have plagued
the town in recent years. Late one night, town drunk Zadok (Garfield)
tells Russell of the town’s true history, of deals made with
unimaginable creatures from the sea and how Russell’s destiny is
inextricably linked to the Order of Dagon.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Friday, 07 August 2009 |
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rated R
U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Will James defuses
bombs like some people smoke cigarettes. Replacing Bravo Company’s bomb
disposal unit’s recently exploded commander in Baghdad in their last
month before rotation back to the States, James’ cavalier, even
reckless indifference to safety protocol, and indeed his own mortality,
renders him possibly more dangerous than the IEDs he’s charged with
disarming.
Strolling out each day to shake the reaper’s hand, he exhibits
all the anxiety of a man fetching his morning paper. Seeing him work
the twists of wires and switches and detonators, one gets the
impression that back home he could probably install you a thumpin’ car
stereo, though it might just be as aback-taking to discover your stereo
tech has exactly no fear of death. Picture a man standing on the edge,
looking into the abyss, and shrugging. His unit—by all indication,
otherwise a tight, well-oiled component of the U.S. war machine—is
justifiably terrified.
Director Katherine Bigelow, whose hit-or-miss career includes
the new-west bloodsucking classic “Near Dark” and the nefariously
milquetoast “The Weight of Water,” shot this one completely on location
in Jordan (didn’t have the budget for security in Iraq) with jumpy,
agitated handheld cameras, utilizing harsh, lunging zooms and jarring,
head-spinning quick-cuts. To say this handheld “vomit-cam” technique is
overused in Hollywood these days is at this point a cliché in itself
(we blame you, Jason Bourne). But to Bigelow’s credit, it’s exactly the
right tool for this job.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 30 July 2009 |
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starring: Michael Garfield, Santiago Álvarez, Phillip MacHale and John Battaglia
directed by: J.P. Simon
the plot: Normally a small, sleepy town, the rural
hamlet of Ashton is shocked when residents start turning up dead.
Horribly disfigured corpses, with eyes and internal organs missing,
start showing up everywhere and town officials are at a loss. Except
for Mike Brady (Garfield), the county health inspector, and Don Palmer
(MacHale), head of the city’s sanitation department, that is. Mike and
Don believe man-eating slugs, mutated by buried toxic waste, are the
silent, slimy killers. They run into opposition from the hard-ass town
sheriff (Battaglia), who, along with the mayor, wants to keep things
nice and quiet so that an important land development deal goes through.
When the high school science teacher (Álvarez) confirms their
suspicions about the mutant slugs, Mike and Don race to stop the
murderous gastropods from slaughtering the whole town, but they may be
too late.
why it’s good: The 1970s were prime time for eco-horror flicks,
and there were no shortage of animals and insects that, when blessed
with mutations by way of toxic waste, vengefully turned against
humanity. The well for scary mutant beasts must have been truly dry by
the mid-’80s, though, to result in “Slugs: The Movie.” Yes, slugs are
gross—they’re black and slimy and bear more than a passing resemblance
to some kind of demonic booger. But they’re not at all scary and rank
somewhere between ladybugs and snails on the insect terror scale. That
didn’t stop the team behind “Slugs” from trying awfully hard to make
them creepy, an effect achieved mostly by giving the mutant slugs the
ability to appear en mass instantaneously wherever unsuspecting mammals
might be having sex or eating dinner.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 30 July 2009 |
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rated R
A nice whitebread Connecticut couple (Vera
Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard), grieved by the pre-term loss of their third
baby and beset by the nagging alcoholism and abject failure of the mom
in almost every mom-ish category, attempts to rebalance their lives by
taking in a wayward ward.
Visiting the local orphanarium, they find themselves drawn to a
dark little sheep, a 9-year-old Estonian prodigy (little cutiepie
Isabelle Fuhrman) left parentless after a tragic (and not at all
suspicious) fire consumed her previous home.
She sits demurely by herself, painting beautiful pictures that
tell stories of remarkable depth and maturity. They accept her few
immediately visible quirks, like dressing herself like a 19th century
porcelain doll with pigtails and ribbons on her neck and wrists, as a
simple expression of her artistic personality. How precious. They
decide, dubiously enough, to welcome this little Addams to the family.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 10 July 2009 |
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Almena Films, 1982
starring: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Edmund Purdom and Ian Sera
directed by: Juan Piquer
the plot: A once quiet
college campus in Boston is filled with terrified screams and the roar
of a chainsaw as young co-eds start turning up dead. Kendall (Sera),
the campus lothario, is the first suspect, but he’s quickly cleared of
any wrongdoing. In fact, Detective Bracken (George) thinks Kendall,
with his connections to everyone on campus, might be essential to
solving the case. And so Bracken teams Kendall up with Mary Riggs (Day
George), a former tennis pro turned undercover cop, and the two attempt
to track down the murderer. The school’s dean (Purdom) isn’t
comfortable with having a police officer on campus, but his concerns
are brushed aside when more and more victims turn up—always with pieces
missing from their bodies.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Friday, 10 July 2009 |
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rated R
Director Michael Mann (“Heat,” “Last of the
Mohicans”) has said that his driving goal with “Public Enemies” was
not to tell a story about the 1930s, but to actually recreate the
experience of living in them. It was an era of fantastic innovation.
Automobiles were just learning to roar, commercial air travel was only
in its fourth year, long distance phone lines were still being wired
across the windblown dustbowl. As magazines and moving pictures
presented the nation with its first real collective cultural
understanding, America itself walked the wild lands of frontiers
sociological, political and technological. As history (or at least the
history of the movies) would arguably bear out, frontiers breed the
best outlaws. And along comes Johnny: Last American Gunslinger.
A born-and-bred whiskey-fed troublemaker from the Wild Wild
Mid-West, John Dillinger earned his first prison term at 21 for
knocking over a corner grocery store in his Indiana hometown. The $50
haul won him eight and a half years in a cold cell with a bona fide
criminal mastermind—Walter Deitrich. Deitrich had made it his life’s
work to perfect the art of bank robbery as small unit military combat.
Apparently, Deitrich was a pretty good mentor. Dillinger (Johnny
Depp), arrested after a very brief parole in 1933, cherry picked a
posse of bag men, weapon specialists and getaway drivers and instantly
broke them all out of jail. The audacity of the operation was matched
only by the precision of its success, and by the sensation stirred up
in the hearts of a hopelessly broke American populace by the gang’s
subsequent series of famously clockwork victories at opulent financial
palaces across the countryside.
Enter J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and his law enforcement bloodhound Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale).
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Friday, 10 July 2009 |
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Sub Rosa brings back drive-in theater
Audience members
may have felt much like the fugitive teenagers they were watching on
the makeshift screen. More than a dozen vehicles congregated under the
shroud of darkness at a secret location to view a guerilla screening of
the classic 1984 action flick “Red Dawn.” As Patrick Swayze, Charlie
Sheen and the rest of the “Wolverines” hid out in the hills of Colorado
to resist a dreaded communist takeover, a covert group of moviegoers
hid out behind the Bed, Bath and Beyond building to enjoy an
old-fashioned drive-in movie.
Yes, it is now safe to reveal the secret location of the second
installment of the Sub Rosa Drive-In. That’s because the guerilla
theater group will not be returning to that spot for its next
clandestine operation. The viewing of “Red Dawn” was cut short by a
combination of technical difficulties and an unexpected visit from the
Rollinsford Police Department. Still, the film zealots behind Sub Rosa
plan to forge ahead with a screening of “The Warriors” at a new secret
location on Friday, July 17.
The term “sub rosa” literally translates to “under the rose” and
is used to denote something underground or secret. Dover residents
Bryan White and Larry Clow applied the term to their drive-in theater
group, which has now shown two movies, beginning with “Pump Up the
Volume” on June 26 and continuing with “Red Dawn” on July 3.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 01 July 2009 |
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108 Sound Studio, 1988
starring: Barbara Anne Constable, Christopher J. Hart and Claudia Angelique Rademaker
written and directed by: H. Tjut Djalil (Jalil Jackson)
the plot:
In Indonesia, legend tells of the South Sea Queen, an alluring yet
vicious woman who murders her lovers while in the throes of passion.
That is, until a young man robs the queen of her hidden source of power
(a mystical snake hiding inside her vagina)—an act that causes a
tsunami to drag the queen’s seaside castle beneath the waves and
condemn her to death. But before she dies, she curses the young man and
vows vengeance on his descendants. Hundreds of years later,
anthropology student Tania Wilson (Constable) awakens the spirit of the
queen while on a deep sea dive. The queen possesses Tania, who becomes
an unstoppable killing machine. Her target: pop star Erica (Rademaker),
a distant descendant of the young man who caused the queen’s downfall.
Tania pursues Erica relentlessly, and Erica’s only hopes are Max McNeil
(Hart), a cop charged with protecting her, and her uncle, an old mystic
who may know how to defeat the spirit of the South Sea Queen.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 01 July 2009 |
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rated PG-13
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is
the most American movie ever. To be more specific, it’s an expensively,
maybe even carefully constructed meta-prank about America, pop culture
and other topics best left unaddressed by giant talking robots.
“Revenge” can only be a goof. That it would make a boatload of money
was a given, and with that goal out of the way, director Michael Bay,
stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox and the rest of the people responsible
for this travesty must have had some other endgame in mind. Laughing
with and at everything that is great and stupid about modern life in
America seems as reasonable an explanation as anything presented in the
movie, though that’s damning with faint praise indeed.
Here are the ways in which “Revenge” is the movie that most
embodies, celebrates and ridicules America. There’s nothing America
loves more than believing in crazy conspiracies, aliens and fake
religions. In this case, the ancient predecessors of the Transformers
built the pyramids to disguise some sort of giant machine that was
supposed to destroy the sun. Except they met some primitive humans and
decided not to use the machine (well, except for one evil robot, who
was banished someplace and became the “Fallen” referred to in the
title). Thousands of years later, people still believe this crazy
stuff, particularly John Turturro, reprising his role as a government
spook who likes to take his pants off and talk to himself. There’s also
a brief detour into Robot Heaven during the bombastic climax. Robot
Heaven is full of mist and robot angels and it’s so ridiculous that it
can only be a joke. This may sound like nonsense now, but don’t
worry—it doesn’t make sense in the movie, either.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 25 June 2009 |
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20th Century Fox, 1974
starring: William Finley, Paul Williams, Jessica Harper and Gerrit Graham
written and directed by: Brian De Palma
the plot:
Superstar record producer Swan (Williams) is looking for a new hit and
he finds it in the music of composer Winslow Leach (Finley). Winslow is
hard at work on a rock opera version of “Faust,” and Swan is convinced
it’s just the music he needs to open up his new rock club, The
Paradise. And so Swan does what any big-time record producer would do:
he steals Winslow’s rock opera and has the composer sent to jail on
bogus drug charges. While in jail, Winslow hears Swan’s version of his
music on the radio. Enraged, he breaks out of jail and tries to
sabotage Swan’s record label. But Winslow is horribly disfigured by a
record press, and so he takes to haunting The Paradise. He falls in
love with Phoenix (Harper), an enchanting young singer who both Swan
and Winslow believe should sing the opera. Winslow sells his soul to
Swan so that Phoenix can sing, but Swan has other plans. He seduces,
then fires Phoenix and selects glam-rock reject Beef (Graham) to
perform “Faust,” and Winslow swears vengeance.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 25 June 2009 |
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rated PG-13
Just because a movie is stupid, doesn’t
necessarily mean it has to suck. A good number of writer/director
Harold Ramis’ previous jaunts, like “Caddyshack,” “Meatballs” and
“Animal House,” stand as exceptional examples of how mightily low brow
concepts can yield some surprisingly high test laughs. If, as they say,
exceptions prove the rule, this may be the only angle from which to
qualify Rami’s latest, “Year One,” as ruling in any way. ‘Cause wow, is
it stupid, and damn, does it suck.
Plainly attempting to tap
into the spirits of the far superior efforts of Monty Python’s “Life of
Brian” and Mel Brooks’ “History of the World, Part 1,” this haphazard,
disjointed blunder through prehistory would more aptly be associated
with Dudley Moore’s “Wholly Moses” or maybe Ringo Star’s “Cave Man.”
Truth be told, to even bother making the comparison is an insult to
them both. Think about that.
The grandiloquent Jack Black and
insubstantial Michael Cera appear once again to be playing themselves
(or at least the same characters they’ve been playing in everything
else either of them has ever done) only this time dressed in matted
animal pelts and matching wigs, as an underachieving pair of
hunter-gatherers exiled from their village after Black munches down on
a forbidden golden apple. This fruit of knowledge, though all glowy and
magical and divine in appearance, presents woefully little affect on
the man’s intellect, as a character or as an actor.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 17 June 2009 |
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Warner Bros., 1982
starring: Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon and Irene Worth
directed by: Sidney Lumet
the plot: Following the
disastrous opening of his new play, Sidney Bruhl (Caine) retreats to
his home in the Hamptons, eager to put the bad reviews and poor
audience reaction behind him. His wealthy wife, Myra (Cannon) assures
Sidney he’ll climb out of his slump and write another hit, but Sidney
remains pessimistic and unconvinced. Things start looking up when
Sidney receives an unsolicited manuscript from a former student. It’s a
brilliant two-act thriller called “Deathtrap,” and Sidney soon hatches
a plan to invite the writer, Clifford Anderson (Reeve) over to the
estate—in order to murder him and steal the play. Myra finds herself an
unwilling accomplice in Sidney’s scheme and she struggles to avoid
rousing the suspicion of her neighbor, the renowned psychic Helga ten
Dorp (Worth), and in Anderson himself. When Anderson shows up at the
house, Sidney’s plan is set into motion, but the outcome is nothing
like he, Myra or even Clifford expects.
why it’s good: According to Chekhov’s old axiom, if a gun shows
up in the first act of a play, it must be fired in the second. If that
holds true, an entire armory of antique weapons showing up in the
opening credits does not bode well for anyone in the final act of a
movie, and such is the case with “Deathtrap,” a wickedly awesome
thriller that twists, turns and doubles back on itself more times than
you’d think possible.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 17 June 2009 |
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rated R
The subway is the fastest way to get around New
York City, a fact that’s noted more than a few times in Tony Scott’s
“The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” a bland retread of the 1974 heist flick
of the same name. The subway system is the city’s circulatory system
and so long as the trains keep running, the city remains alive. Messing
with something so important by, say, hijacking a subway car full of
people would typically invite a sense of urgency, but everyone in
“Pelham,” from the city employees tasked with saving the day down to
the hijackers themselves, move along as though it’s no big thing. It’s
a fine attitude to have when dealing with a crisis, maybe, but it’s the
kiss of death for what should be a taut summer thriller.
It’s a fitting project, then, for director Tony Scott, who most likely
regards being described as “all flash and no substance” as a wicked
compliment. “Pelham” tries to sex up the relatively un-sexy world of
municipal transportation management, pitting train dispatcher Walter
Garber (Denzel Washington) against a train hijacker known only as Ryder
(John Travolta). Stuck behind a desk in a high-tech command center,
Garber is the only city employee Ryder will talk to during the hostage
situation, which Ryder hopes to parlay into a $10 million ransom within
the hour.
But as the pair wait for the New York bureaucratic machine to
crank out the ransom money, “Pelham” slows to a crawl. The opportunity
was ripe for some tense exchanges between Washington and Travolta, but
since neither actor’s character is more than a sketch, their rapport
never gets as deep or intense as it should. Brian Helgeland’s script
goes to great lengths to give the two men some sort of common ground,
saddling Garber with a subplot about taking bribes from a train
manufacturer. It’s an unnecessary detail that detracts from the
character and adds nothing but dead weight to what should be a lean
script.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 10 June 2009 |
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Brooksfilms, 1986
starring: Jason Patric, Lukas Haas, Adrian Pasdar and Richard Jordan
directed by: Alan Johnson
the plot: In the distant
future, a series of “eco wars” has left Earth dry and desolate. A
brutal organization known as the E-Protectorate maintains tight control
over water rations and forces all children to live in “orphanages”
where they undergo conditioning in order to become productive members
of the E-Police. Children are allowed only a few luxuries, and one of
their rewards is the game skateball. Jason (Patric) is the leader of
the Solarbabies skateball squad, a ragtag team of misfits who always
win, despite a lack of formal training and equipment. During a match,
the team’s young mascot, Daniel (Haas) finds a mysterious glowing
sphere in an underground cavern. Darstar (Pasdar), a friend of the
Solarbabies, believes the sphere is magic and steals it. He flees into
the desert and the Solarbabies follow, convinced that the sphere can
help restore water to the dry planet. But it’s not long before their
journey is interrupted by Grock (Jordan), a sadistic E-Police commander
determined to claim the sphere—and destroy it.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Wednesday, 10 June 2009 |
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rated PG
Leave it to the vision masters at Pixar to
take a fairly grim sounding story about a cantankerous old widower
staring down his fading years and turn it into a charming, buoyant,
life affirming piece of entertainment for all ages.
Carl Fredrickson is introduced in the opening credits as a
blocky little post-depression-era ragamuffin, hopped up on Saturday
morning serials and news reels depicting the exploits of his hero, the
intrepid archeologist/pilot/explorer Charles Muntz. Skipping home from
the picture house, balloon in hand, sidewalk cracks become Grand
Canyons and tree stumps the peaks of the Himalayas. Happening upon a
plucky young lady of like imagination in an abandoned old ramshackle
house she’s turned into a rickety model of Muntz’s famously posh
airship “The Spirit of Adventure,” Carl finds his first friend, his
true love and, as an ensuing (and positively sublime) 10-minute montage
illustrates, a partner with whom he shares a wonderful and joyful, if
domesticated, life.
They grow up, marry, buy that ramshackle clubhouse and fix ’er
right up. They make a modest living together selling balloons at the
zoo. Having pledged as children to follow their hero one day on an
adventure into the South American jungles of a very Miltonesquely named
“Paradise Falls,” we see their intentions perennially deferred to the
responsibilities of the ordinary, their savings jug of pocket change
repeatedly smashed open over the years to cover costs of flat tires,
household repairs and, eventually, medical bills.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Wednesday, 03 June 2009 |
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The Music Hall’s summer time “Scope!” series promises a really big show
Remember
Omar Sharif’s marathon entrance in “Lawrence of Arabia”? First
appearing as a tiny black speck on the distant desert horizon, he
slowly, relentlessly grows in the frame to come barreling gloriously up
on horseback, practically crashing through the camera lens. On a TV,
that speck is initially so miniscule that it’s virtually invisible for
the first half of the scene, rendering the shot more than a little
confusing, and completely wrecking what otherwise was one of cinema’s
most audacious reveals.
Music Hall film programmer Bill Pence laughs. “That’s the first
movie everyone brings up when we talk about this series,” he says,
referring to The Music Hall’s summer-long “Scope!” program. The series
features classic films that beg to be seen on a really big screen each
Wednesday through the first week of September.
“As more and more people are getting their movies in smaller and
smaller forms, we thought it was a good time to remind them that movies
were meant to be seen on a big screen, and that some of the best of
them simply don’t work small at all,” Pence says.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 03 June 2009 |
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New World Pictures, 1987
starring: Roddy Piper, Sandahl Bergman, Cec Verrell and Rory Calhoun
directed by: Donald G. Jackson and R.J. Kizer
the plot:
In post-apocalyptic America, procreation isn’t something you do for
fun—it’s mandated by the government. Virile men are the key to
rebuilding society, even when they’re dirt-bags, and that’s precisely
the reason Sam Hell (Piper) gets plucked from the clutches of an angry
lawman and drafted into government service. His mission: infiltrate
Frogtown, a radioactive wasteland home to some socially maladjusted
frog-human hybrids, and rescue a half-dozen fertile, nubile women held
captive by the evil Commander Toty.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 03 June 2009 |
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rated PG-13
“Drag Me To Hell” may just be the movie Sam Raimi
has been waiting his whole career to make. Raimi is one of those
directors who has vision to spare, with an off-kilter visual aesthetic
and an expert understanding of how terror and comedy so often overlap.
But he’s always been forced to make concessions, whether due to budget
limitations, studio pressure or both. That’s why, as awesome as “The
Evil Dead” is, it still feels like a rough draft when compared to “Evil
Dead II,” and why other Raimi classics like “Darkman” and “Army of
Darkness” are almost-but-not-quite what the director had in mind.
But
after spending nearly a decade making the “Spider-Man” franchise an
enormous box-office success, Raimi finally has the clout, money and
studio backing to make a big-budget horror flick exactly the way he
wants. “Drag Me to Hell” is about as perfect a distillation of Raimi’s
film-making talent as you can get, a tight 90-minute haunted house ride
that’s hilariously scary and terrifyingly hilarious. It’s what Raimi
was shooting for all along with the “Evil Dead” series, but without the
fetters of production costs and studio meddling. “Drag Me to Hell” is
Raimi’s full-on, uncompromising return to horror, and it’s awesome.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 |
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Wild Bunch, 2008
starring: Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jampanoi
written and directed by: Pascal Laugier
the plot: As a
young girl, Lucie (Jampanoi) was kidnapped and abused. After making a
daring escape, she found a home at a children’s orphanage, where she
befriended Anna (Alaoui). Fifteen years later, Lucie identifies her
tormentors in a newspaper photo. Her alleged captors turn out to be a
nice suburban family, but that doesn’t stop Lucie from exacting bloody
revenge. Anna becomes her unwilling accomplice and the two soon
discover that Lucie’s ordeal was not a random act. While Lucie’s stroke
of vengeance has allowed her to close a painful chapter of her life,
Anna finds that her own ordeal is just beginning.
why it’s good: The French have been pushing the limits of
horror for the better part of this decade. Flicks like “Haute Tension,”
“A l’Intérieur” and others are almost like endurance tests, both in
terms of suspense and gore. “Martyrs” trumps all of its predecessors,
though, a bloody shocker that answers subtle questions with utterly
gruesome responses. “Martyrs” plays like the end of one movie and the
beginning of its sequel stitched together. The beginning of the film
feels like a climax, a tense, satisfying ending to Lucie’s story.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 |
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rated PG-13
If ever a movie was optimized to force a
“Mystery Science Theater 3000” reunion, this is it. Starting on page
one with its pretentiously oxymoronic title, every single word of the
fractured, overwrought screenplay simply begs to be ridiculed. Much
more like a randomly drawn series of movie poster tag lines than actual
discourse, it doesn’t help matters either that every line is delivered
with distinct and often multiple exclamation points.
The
writing team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris, whose dubious track
record includes the underwhelming previous “Terminator” episode “Rise
of the Machines” and the universally loathed “Catwoman,” do take a
couple of courageous shots at furthering the temporally tangled mythos
of the “Terminator” universe, in which the human race and the family of
its eventual leader John Connor (once played by punky Edward Furlong,
then weasely Nick Stahl, now by hotheaded Hollywood it-actor Christian
Bale) persistently resist eradication at the hands of uppity
time-skipping killborgs along an erratically variable series of
timelines.
It’s a fairly exasperating struggle for everyone
involved—the bots consistently fall short of terminating those pesky
Connors, and the Connors always fail to effect any significant change
in the bots’ decision to nuke the planet into a new iron age. Every
instance of time travel seems to inadvertently set in motion new events
in the past that ultimately lead to the same old events in the future.
It’s a frustrating four-dimensional chess game that keeps both sides,
and evidently the screenwriters, scratching their heads, shrugging and
loading their weapons for the next round.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
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rated PG-13
After almost a decade of conservative Christianity
dominating America’s social and political landscape, it feels like the
never-ending debate between science and religion is finally entering a
cooling-off period. But just like its protagonist, Harvard symbology
professor Robert Langdon, “Angels & Demons” rushes in just as the
party is wrapping up, ready to breathlessly opine on the tenacity of
faith and the power of science. Except, of course, “Angels &
Demons” is a summer thriller, and so these central ideas that ignite
the plot have about the same weight as a crossword puzzle where all the
across clues are about the pope and all the down clues are about
particle physics. After that, all that’s left is for “Angels &
Demons” to be thrilling, which it accomplishes just well enough to be
entertaining.
Returning to solve this not-so-taxing puzzle is
Langdon (Tom Hanks), the Harvard professor who unraveled Catholicism’s
secrets in “The Da Vinci Code,” also based on the book by Seacoast
author Dan Brown. This time around, the pope is dead, four of the
church’s top cardinals are missing and a bomb (containing anti-matter
harvested from the Large Hadron Collider) is set to destroy Vatican
City. Claiming credit for this ecclesiastical calamity is the
Illuminati, an ancient, underground conspiracy of scientists (Gallileo
was a member) that has returned to destroy the church in its darkest
hour.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
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Lucasfilm, 1986
starring: Lea Thompson, Tim Robbins, Jeffrey Jones, Ed Gale and Chip Zien
directed by: Willard Huyck
the plot: During a quiet
evening at home on Duckworld, Howard the Duck (Gale/Zien) is plucked
from his easy chair by a mysterious laser from space and beamed to
Earth. He lands in Cleveland and, after some violent encounters with
the natives, Howard meets Beverly Switzler (Thompson), front-woman for
the band Cherry Bomb. After Howard rescues Beverly from a pair of
would-be attackers, the two become close friends, despite Howard’s
improbable duckiness. In order to figure out how Howard wound up on
Earth, the plucky duck and his girl consult Phil Blumburtt (Robbins) a
lab assistant/museum janitor who’s helping with an advanced space laser
experiment conducted by Dr. Walter Jenning (Jeffrey Jones).
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Written by Chloe Johnson
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 |
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Identity rolls out local skateboarding film
An
enthusiastic crowd of 250 people visited The Music Hall in Portsmouth
this weekend for the premiere of “Slackers,” a local skateboarding film
produced by Identity Footwear and Apparel on Congress Street.
The title pays tribute to the skateboard shop formerly on Market
Street, where Identity’s co-owner Matt Jagman used to work, and to
Slacker’s former owner Perry Silverstein, who has been supportive of
the new shop. The lightning bolt, heavy metal-influenced font used on
the video was designed by Jagman years ago, but he admits he had little
to do with the film production.
Will Jackson, who celebrated his 20th birthday at the premiere
on Saturday, directed the film, and Noel Gutierrez edited it. Both are
local skateboarders and Jackson is more or less a manager at Identity,
while Gutierrez is looking for more filming work.
Co-owner Chris Rice said the title of the film also reflects the
lackadaisical nature of the kids involved, since they missed their
original deadline. But the finished product gives an opposite
impression. It is impressive.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 |
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a.k.a., ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane’
Ninth Configuration, 1980
starring: Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Ed Flanders and Neville Brand
written and directed by: William Peter Blatty
The plot: A
remote castle in the Pacific Northwest doubles as an insane asylum for
soldiers either unfit or unwilling to serve in the military. The most
recent inmate is Capt. William Cutshaw (Wilson), a star astronaut who
aborted a planned mission to the moon at the last minute and was
dragged out of the space shuttle, raving incoherently all the while.
Cutshaw is in the midst of a crisis of faith, and his spiritual
struggle is of special interest to Col. Vincent Kane (Keach), a
psychologist assigned to treat Cutshaw and the other soldiers in the
castle. But Kane’s methods are unorthodox and consist mostly of
encouraging insanity, and while he has the support of the facility’s
head physician, Col. Fell (Flanders), the rest of the military
personnel there, including Maj. Groper (Brand), grow increasingly irate
that Kane indulges the inmates. Through their separate interactions
with Kane, Cutshaw and Fell both quickly learn that the psychologist is
hiding his own dark secrets and violent past.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 |
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rated PG-13
With the exception of entire races of
Klingons, Andorians, Romulans, Vulcans and, naturally, Khan Noonien
Singh, has anyone noticed that the biggest villain in the Star Trek
universe is James Tiberius Kirk? As brash hot-blooded bastards go, it’d
be mighty tough to top this guy. He works for nothing, yet gets
everything he wants. Swaggering blithely about in the neutral zone
between self confidence and flat-out douchebaggery, he appears as a
tragic transporter accident melding Will Hunting and the Joker. He’s a
chauvinist, womanizing rebel without causality—an undefeated corn-fed
quarterback who tricks, cheats and deceives whenever it strikes his
fancy, and though historically court-martialed, imprisoned, exiled and
generally beaten about the head and face daily for his efforts, he
always manages to weasel out of any real consequence. He gladly hands
most everybody he meets new reasons to hate his guts, and just keeps on
smirking while he does it. All the engineers of the 24th century
couldn’t invent a singularity that could out-suck the gravity well of
Kirk’s impenetrable ego.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
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Vista Street, 1994
starring: Teri Marlow, Dick Monda, Clement von Franckenstein and Johnny Gidcomb
directed by: Michael Paul Girard and Jan Marlyn Reesman
the plot:
It’s a typical night at Club Body Parts, a seedy strip dive in
Hollywood. That is, until a mysterious killer slaughters most of the
dancers. Grizzled cop Otello (Monda) is called in to investigate and,
as he soon discovers, the list of suspects is as strange as it is long.
Could the killer be Marty (Gidcomb), a naïve college student eager to
have sex for the first time? Or could it be Norma Jean (Marlow), a
ditzy Marilyn Monroe look-alike with a weird fixation on her dog, Pee
Wee? Otello turns to Dr. Jacoby (von Franckenstein), a renowned local
psychic, for insights into the gruesome killing, but Jacoby’s only
explanation involves an ancient Egyptian deity and mummified cats. As
Otello continues his investigation, he falls in love with Norma Jean.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
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rated PG-13
Since he joined the X-Men in the mid-1970s,
the clawed Canadian mutant brawler Wolverine has always claimed to be
“the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn’t very nice.” For
most of Wolverine’s comic book escapades, it wasn’t really clear what
he did, apart from kick ass, smoke cigars and grow epic facial hair.
The character’s origins were kept shadowy, with vague hints that
Wolverine (known only as “Logan” when not in costume) had done
everything from fighting in World War II alongside Captain America to
becoming a ninja in Japan. As new writers took on the character,
Wolverine’s past got increasingly confusing, but his core elements—a
life marked by tragedy, betrayal and rage, augmented with uncanny
healing abilities and an unbreakable skeleton—remained the same.
Wolverine has always been the most popular of all the X-Men (he
currently appears or stars in at least a half-dozen comics each month),
and when the X-Men made their transition to the big screen in 2001, the
character, as played by Hugh Jackman, quickly became the focal point of
the storyline.
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Written by Chloe Johnson; Matt Kanner
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Wednesday, 29 April 2009 |
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potential buyer and two films aim to preserve Ioka Theater
There may be more movies in store for Ioka Theater after all.
The theater with the “always a good show” slogan has not
screened a film since Christmas Eve, 2008, when it closed for financial
reasons after 93 years of operation. But the historic landmark in
downtown Exeter has since inspired two films about it and one last
opportunity to save it.
Producer Marc Murai has entered in an intent-to-purchase
agreement with the Ioka’s owner in hopes of revitalizing the theater
with community contributions. He plans to film his efforts as a
resource for other cultural centers.
A former theater employee, Kyle Glowacky, from Brentwood, has
been working on his own documentary film to help preserve the theater,
called “Ioka,” for his senior thesis at Emerson College.
Ioka owner Roger Detzler recently signed an intent-to-purchase
agreement with Murai, an award-winning producer who wants to preserve
the building as a performing arts venue. But, the agreement requires
$10,000 by May 6 as a deposit, and the remaining $740,000 by July 9 to
purchase the building. Murai has launched a campaign to save the
theater at www.savetheioka.com.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Wednesday, 29 April 2009 |
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Warner Bros., 1979
starring: Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, Mary Steenburgen and Charles Cioffi
directed by: Nicholas Meyer
the plot: The year is 1893
and in London, notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper is on the loose.
Meanwhile, author H.G. Wells (McDowell) unveils to his dinner guests
his latest work—an actual time machine, similar to the one he created
for his fantastic novel. Wells’ friends are understandably skeptical,
and the dinner party is thrown into disarray when the police show up in
pursuit of Jack the Ripper. Their prime suspect is Dr. John Leslie
Stevenson (Warner), a well-known surgeon and one of Wells’ confidants.
During the confusion, Stevenson hijacks the time machine and travels to
the future. However, a built-in safeguard in the device returns the
time machine—but not Stevenson—to 1893. Determined to stop the mad
ripper, Wells hops in the time machine and transports himself to San
Francisco in 1979.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Wednesday, 29 April 2009 |
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rated PG-13
By all accounts, in real life, Nathaniel
Ayers, a homeless, schizophrenic Julliard dropout, and Steve Lopez, the
L.A. Times journalist who wrote about him and got him off the streets,
developed a real friendship. It’s a little disconcerting that there’s
so little evidence of this in the screen version of their journey.
Jamie Foxx’s manic, motor-mouthed portrayal of the afflicted
curbside maestro goes to some length to describe a man who, though
certainly having seen better days, seems to have found his own
solace—in this case, a retreat into the music he loves so much, which
appears to calm the cacophony of voices scratching incessantly at the
inside of his skull. Lopez, as played by Robert Downey Jr., discovers
the musician sawing away at an old wreck of a violin in a bleak cement
park, and launches a disturbingly opportunistic campaign to bring the
man’s story to the people.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 24 April 2009 |
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Paragon Arts International, 1986
starring: Tawny Kitaen, Todd Allen, Stephen Nichols and J.P. Luebsen
written and directed by: Kevin Tenney
the plot: An
already tense party turns even more awkward when Brandon Sinclair
(Nichols) whips out a Ouija board and encourages his hosts Jim (Allen)
and Linda (Kitaen) to try using it. Jim, a med-school dropout turned
construction worker, balks, but Linda jumps at the chance to make
contact with a spirit. That spirit turns out to be David, a young boy
who died years before in Jim and Linda’s apartment. Things get weird
fast, with the board flying off Linda’s lap and Brandon’s car tires all
exploding, and the party ends abruptly. Over the next few days, Linda
continues to play with the board, and her interactions with David
become increasingly violent. Meanwhile, a construction site accident
kills one of Jim’s friends, and the accumulation of bizarre happenings
convinces Brandon that David’s spirit has a malevolent fixation on
Linda. Jim, formerly Brandon’s best friend, refuses to believe in all
the occult happenings, even after an impromptu séance goes horribly
awry. As Linda becomes further entangled with the ouija board, Jim and
Brandon discover that it is a long dead warlock named Malfeitor
(Luebsen), and not David, who wants to use Linda’s body as a gateway
back into the world.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 24 April 2009 |
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rated R
It took a little more than a decade, but
someone finally did it: the Internet has been made into a movie. That
movie is “Crank: High Voltage,” a hyper-kinetic mash-up of the all the
sex, violence, casual racism, stupid humor, cameos by washed up
celebrities, video games and sick videos that collect like
artery-clogging sludge in the series of tubes that make up the
Internet. It’s a cinematic endurance test and quite possibly a
harbinger of the next generation of B movies. “High Voltage” is a movie
meant to be consumed, not pondered, and thinking too much about it is
about as useful as thinking about a can of Monster Energy Drink.
“High Voltage” picks up immediately where “Crank” left off. Hit
man Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) lands in the middle of a downtown L.A.
intersection after falling out of a helicopter. He’s scraped off the
pavement with a shovel by some no-account thugs and taken to a seedy
medical clinic. Chev’s heart is torn out and replaced with an
artificial ticker that requires constant electrical recharges to keep
working. He’s rather displeased about this development and so begins a
murderous rampage across the city, searching for the thief who stole
his heart. It’s a multi-media rampage, with a Google Maps-style trip
through L.A., some educational slideshows about Chev’s artificial
heart, and a mid-movie talk show that provides a glimpse into Chev’s
troubled childhood.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 16 April 2009 |
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Blood Bath Pictures, 2006
starring: Debbie Rochon, Leah Ford, Robert Cosgrove Jr. and Sheri Bomb
written and directed by: Jonathan Gorman and Thomas Edward Seymour
the plot:
It’s the last day of high school, and Jenny (Ford) wants to celebrate
by having a sleepover at her house. All the most popular girls in
school are invited, except Suzy (Bomb), the school outcast. Meanwhile,
the girls’ sleazy gym coach Miss Johnson (Rochon) is angling to get
invited to hang out with all the buxom girls. But the day quickly turns
bloody when a serial killer known only as Chef Death (Cosgrove) shows
up in the neighborhood and begins butchering everyone in sight. The
girls remain oblivious of the danger and don bikinis for a dip in the
hot tub, unaware that Chef Death is about to serve up a murderous main
course.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 16 April 2009 |
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rated R
After all the workdone recently in comedy to
deconstruct traditional male roles in movies and redefine the hairier
gender as pasty ineffectual schlubs, It’s interesting how quickly the
pendulum swinging back to reassert the baser, predatory and combative
elements of masculinity (see “Tropic Thunder” and “Pineapple Express”).
Seth Rogan, who’s ubiquity onscreen could lead one to believe he might
be the only lead actor working in contemporary comedy, has quite
effectively staked his claim as the contemporary king of Pasty Schlub
Mountain. But lately, he seems to be aggressively attempting to trade
the laconically wisecracking fuzzy bear image he’s made such bank on
for a far more bitter, bloodier, brutish version.
Seeing Rogan in his latest role as Ronnie Barnhardt, a wildly
unbalanced chief of security lording over a woefully generic suburban
mall, is kind of like watching Teddy Ruxpin pop in a Marilyn Manson
tape and open fire on an elementary school lunchroom. It seems so wrong
on so many levels. Like a latter day Travis Bickle, Rogan’s Ronnie is
angry, broken, dysfunctional, confused, disassociated and, as it turns
out, actually quite a menace to himself and those around him. And he’s
a complete asshole on top. He routinely loses his mind with the mallies
he’s supposedly protecting, thundering promises of bloody murder while
occasionally bashing their heads in. He’s a villain in every way, but
like all the very best villains, he clearly believes he’s the hero.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 26 March 2009 |
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Columbia Pictures, 1978
starring: Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif and Rene Auberjonois
directed by: Irvin Kershner
the plot: Fashion
photographer Laura Mars (Dunaway) is riding high on a crest of fame
from her latest book, “The Eyes of Mars.” But the good feelings are
short lived, as Laura experiences horrific visions showing the murders
of her friends and family. When one of Laura’s friends turns up dead,
detective John Neville (Jones) is called in to investigate. While
reviewing some of Laura’s photos, Neville discovers her work—often
dealing with graphic recreations of murders—closely resembles some
real-life crime scenes. Laura is terrified, but cannot explain her
violent visions. As her circle of friends and collaborators fall one by
one to the mysterious killer, Laura’s confidant, Donald (Auberjonois),
struggles to keep her safe, while her loyal but unhinged chauffer,
Tommy (Dourif), acts increasingly suspicious. When Laura begins having
visions of the killer stalking her, she turns to Neville for comfort,
but even he cannot keep her out of harm’s way.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 26 March 2009 |
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rated R
There are few cinematic meet-cutes that involve
dissecting the dynamics of a guy who tries to sneak out a fart in front
of his new girlfriend, but that’s exactly how Peter Klaven and Sydney
Fife meet in “I Love You, Man.” In this case, Sydney is not a cute,
perky blonde but a shambling, scruffy guy sent by fate to instruct
Peter on the ways of being a dude. It turns out that a budding bromance
is a lot funnier than any romantic courtship, and while “I Love You,
Man” is plenty funny, it’s always at odds with the romantic comedy
tropes it tries to both adhere to and subvert.
Paul Rudd is Peter Klaven, a career-driven real estate agent
who, according to his family, has always been a “girlfriend guy.”
That’s great news for Zooey (Rashida Jones), Peter’s new fiancée, but
it doesn’t bode well for the wedding party, which will be bereft of a
best man. And so Peter’s family and Zooey set him up on a series of
increasingly awkward man dates, putting the oft-uncomfortable Peter in
a series of increasingly strained friendship scenarios. Added to the
pressure of finding a fellow dude to be friends with is Peter’s
inability to sell Lou “The Incredible Hulk” Ferrigno’s home in the
Hollywood hills. Peter needs the commission on the sale to pay for the
wedding, but his timid sales tactics can’t attract a buyer.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 19 March 2009 |
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Carolco Pictures, 1989
starring: Peter Berg, Michael Murphy, Camille Cooper and Mitch Pileggi
written and directed by: Wes Craven
the plot: A
deranged serial killer is terrorizing the town of Maryville, killing
whole families with impunity. The media calls him the “Maryville
Slasher,” but after a troubling dream, local college football star
Jonathan Parker (Berg) knows the killer’s true identity: Horace Pinker
(Pileggi). Jonathan’s revelation is cut short by a phone call from his
father, Lt. Don Parker (Murphy), a police detective hunting the killer,
who reveals that the rest of the Parker family are the Slasher’s latest
victims. Jonathan tells his father about the dream, and though
reluctant at first, Lt. Parker and a squad of cops go to Pinker’s
rundown TV repair shop in search of the madman. Pinker escapes and
leaves a trail of bodies in his wake, including Jonathan’s girlfriend,
Alison (Cooper). Soon, Jonathan discovers his dreams reveal where
Pinker will strike next, and he uses that information to help capture
the killer.
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Friday, 13 March 2009 |
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The ninth annual New Hampshire Film Festival will take place from
Oct. 15 to 18 in downtown Portsmouth. Festival organizers have opened a
call to filmmakers from around the world to submit their work, and many
entries have already arrived.
Submissions are accepted in the categories of feature narrative,
feature documentary, short comedy, short drama, short documentary,
student, animation and screenplay. A panel of judges will select films
for acceptance. The festival will announce prizes and juries during the
coming months as other details are finalized. Past prizes have included
cash, software and equipment.
“A ton of film and screenplay entries have already poured into
the N.H. Film Festival offices,” festival director Nicole Gregg said in
a press release. “We urge filmmakers and writers to enter as early as
possible this year so that we can keep up with the incredible response
we’ve been so fortunate to experience.”
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 13 March 2009 |
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Sigma Productions, 1968
starring: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Alexandra Hay and Groucho Marx
directed by: Otto Preminger
the plot: Members of the
mob are being dragged before Congress, and it looks like high-level
mafia boss George “Blue Chips” Packard (Mickey Rooney) is about to rat
out his old friends. And so former mafia assassin turned carwash
impresario Tony Banks (Gleason) is called out of retirement by the head
of mafia himself, God (Marx) and sent to kill Blue Chips. The only
problem: Packard’s in prison, and Tony must first make it behind bars
before he can complete his assignment. He’s got good incentive to do
so: God has threatened the lives of Tony’s wife, Flo (Channing), and
his daughter, Darlene (Hay).
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 13 March 2009 |
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rated R
When “Watchmen” was first published in 1985, it
was a revelation, a striking piece of sequential art that pushed
superhero comics out of the realm of cheap entertainment and into the
realm of literature. There had always been comics for grownups, but
“Watchmen” marked the first time members of the capes ’n’ tights crowd
were treated with gravity and humanity. The reverberations from
“Watchmen,” written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, continue
to be felt, and almost every superhero comic since then owes some debt
to “Watchmen.”
This towering legacy made a film adaptation of “Watchmen” a sort
of holy grail for comic fans and studio heads alike, and a cinematic
treatment of Moore and Gibbons’ massive 300-page graphic novel has been
in one form of development or another since the late 1980s. But the
epic scope, length and intricacies of “Watchmen” made any sort of
adaptation nearly impossible. In the intervening years, Hollywood fell
in love with other superheroes, and the genre had its own version of
“Watchmen” in 2008 with “The Dark Knight,” which injected the usual
cinematic shenanigans with some operatic levels of tragedy and a
healthy dose of awesome action.
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Written by Dave Karlotski
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Friday, 06 March 2009 |
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the never-ending heartbreak of scifi television
(warning: spoileriffic)
The rebirth of the “Battlestar Galactica” television series in
2003 was unexpectedly brilliant: where the original 1978 series was a
hokey (if fondly remembered) Star Wars ripoff, the new series was a
full-on reboot of the show, with tight writing, a gritty look and a
wonderful long-term story arc. Starbuck had become a girl, the
president was a schoolteacher, Adama had turned into Edward James Olmos
and the Cylons looked like people and were kind of Christian.
Scifi fans embraced the show, and the promise that it would have
a finite 5-season run with an actual planned end to the storyline only
made them more ravenous—it turns out that people really love a story
that actually makes sense, and doesn’t just wander from week to week
and then end, as TV so often does.
Over the past seven years, not every episode of the show has
been a home run, but it’s remained a solid, intriguing science fiction
drama, and it’s mostly held up its promise to tell a compelling
long-form story—provided, of course, that the dozens of mysteries the
story has spun up over the years can be resolved, and not be put out to
pasture with narrative doublespeak like, say, The X-Files did.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 06 March 2009 |
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Orion Pictures, 1987
starring: Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Harley Cross and Robert Loggia
directed by: John Schlesinger
the plot: After his wife
dies in a tragic accident, psychiatrist Cal Jamison (Sheen) moves to
New York with his 8-year-old son, Chris (Cross). Carrying on after such
a tragedy is difficult for both father and son, and Chris doesn’t
respond kindly when Cal starts seeing Jessica (Shaver), the owner of
the apartment building they live in. Cal has his own worries, though,
as he becomes engrossed in a disturbing case involving a voodoo cult
that uses child sacrifice as part of its rituals. At first, Cal and Lt.
McTaggert (Loggia), the grizzled old cop heading the investigation,
believe the murders were committed by an undercover cop who went
insane. But as Cal digs further into the city’s population of
underground cults and fringe religions, he discovers that true black
magic is very real and very deadly. Cal soon becomes a target and he
must struggle to not only save himself but get Jessica and Chris out of
harm’s way.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 26 February 2009 |
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Thomas Coleman and Michael Rosenblatt
Productions, 1984
starring: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kellie Maroney, Robert Beltran and Geoffrey Lewis
written and directed by: Thom Eberhardt
the plot: A
comet is set to pass by Earth, and the whole world’s abuzz about the
once-in-a-lifetime celestial event. That is, except for sisters Regina
(Stewart) and Samantha (Maroney), a pair of Valley girls more concerned
about their step mom’s extra-marital escapades and their own earthly
entanglements than any heavenly body. All that changes the morning
after the comet’s appearance, when Regina and Sam wake up to find most
of humanity reduced to piles of red dust. Those who weren’t
disintegrated have been turned into raving, ravenous zombies, and Sam
and Regina go on the run in search of other survivors. While hanging
out at a radio station, they meet Hector (Beltran), a gregarious truck
driver determined to make it through the crisis. As the trio fends off
zombies, they learn of the existence of another group of survivors—a
military “think tank” that predicted the disaster and hid in a bunker
out in the desert. Led by a man named Carter (Lewis), the members of
the think tank quickly round up any survivors they can find. Their
motives appear benign, but as Sam and Regina learn more about Carter
and his crew, they discover there are fates worse than being turned
into a zombie or reduced to a pile of dust.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 26 February 2009 |
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rated R
Imagine the “The X-Files” if instead of aliens Mulder and Scully
were tracking down bankers. Let’s face it, bankers tend to be pretty
dull. A characteristically level headed and pragmatic lot, they skew to
the mundane at their worst, however nefarious their transactions may
be. What few thrills are offered in this account of an obsessive,
embittered Interpol agent (Clive Owen) and his feisty N.Y. assistant DA
sidekick (Naomi Watts) hot on the trail of a shadowy multinational
financial conspiracy are relentlessly eclipsed by a preponderance of
dudes in gray suits sitting around talking at each other.
Freshman
screenwriter Eric Singer’s script shows all the hallmarks of being
written by a freshman screenwriter. Though ambitiously, if abruptly,
bounding from New York to Milan to Berlin to Istanbul and back,
following clues to unravel the plot-heavy mystery at hand, the rare
bits of action are repeatedly hamstrung by long scenes of monotone
exposition by a succession of completely interchangeable executive
types. If it weren’t for their various European accents, viewers would
be very hard pressed to tell one from the next. It’s something of a
feat that such globetrotting adventure could be rendered down to such a
tedious boardroom affair.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 19 February 2009 |
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Paramount Television, 1987
starring: Louise Robey, Chris Wiggins, John D. LeMay and R.G. Armstrong
directed by: William Fruet
the plot: Antiques dealer
Lewis Vendredi (Armstrong) made a deal with the devil. In exchange for
a longer life and more money, Vendredi agreed to sell cursed antiques
out of his store. The enchanted items grant their owners with great
powers, but at a terrible price—usually the death of an unsuspecting
innocent. When Vendredi tries to back out of the deal, the devil comes
to collect his due. But the evil artifacts remain in the store, and
Vendredi’s niece Micki Foster (Robey) and his nephew Ryan Dallion
(LeMay) are the unwilling inheritors of their uncle’s damned
collection. Eager to be rid of their burden, Micki and Ryan attempt to
liquidate the store’s inventory. That is, until Jack Marshak (Wiggins),
Vendredi’s old friend and a part-time occultist, reveals the secret
behind Vendredi’s death and the wicked antiques. Using an old sales
ledger as a guide, Micki, Jack and Ryan set out to collect all the
antiques Vendredi sold and keep the evil from spreading.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 19 February 2009 |
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rated R
When Sean S. Cunningham began work on the
original “Friday the 13th” almost 30 years ago, he had nothing more
than a title and a vague idea about making a horror film in the vein of
John Carpenter’s ultra-successful “Halloween.” In the intervening three
decades, “Friday” became one of the most profitable horror franchises
ever, and Jason Voorhees, the machete-wielding killer who loves hockey
masks and hates campers, became a movie icon, spawning 10 sequels,
dozens of comic books and novels, and even a video game. Jason’s been
everywhere from Manhattan and Camp Crystal Lake—his home turf and the
site of his many crimes against morally-bankrupt summer visitors—to the
reaches of outer space and, appropriately enough, Hell.
With all that history, director Marcus Nispel and writers Damian
Shannon and Mark Swift certainly had more to work from than Cunningham
did for their reboot of “Friday the 13th.” But remakes and reboots of
beloved series are always a gamble, particularly for horror flicks like
“Friday,” which come with a built-in legion of hardcore fans eager to
howl about even the tiniest misstep.
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Written by Chloe Johnson
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Friday, 13 February 2009 |
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Banff Festival goes big
Back for its 13th year, the Banff Mountain Film Festival hosted
by Avis Goodwin Community Health Center is going bigger this year on
Wednesday, Feb. 18 from 7 to 10:30 p.m.
The festival is an international film competition featuring some
of the world’s best footage of mountain and extreme sports. It began in
1976 and is held annually on the first weekend in November in Banff,
Alberta, Canada. Afterward, a selection of the top films goes on tour
with about 500 screenings worldwide.
This year, the tour stops at the Whittemore Center at the
University of New Hampshire in Durham, allowing for more parking
and seating than the previous location of The Music Hall in Portsmouth.
Carleen Nicholson, of Avis Goodwin, said the festival consistently sold
out when held at The Music Hall. The event is the non-profit healthcare
center’s largest fundraiser.
Also new this year is an Expo beginning at 5 p.m. with booths
from local and national organizations including Segway and Hayden
Sports. Indoor Ascent is bringing a climbing wall and mountaineer Ed
Webster will be available to autograph his book, “Snow in the Kingdom:
My Storm Years on Everest.”
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 13 February 2009 |
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April Films, 1989
starring: Jill Schoelen, Brad Pitt, Donovan Leitch and Martin Mull
directed by: Rospo Pallenberg
the plot: All Paula
Carson (Schoelen) wants to do is study and be a stellar high school
student, but so many obstacles stand in her way. The first is her
perpetually horny boyfriend, Dwight (Pitt), who tries to convince Paula
to put aside her books and give up her virginity. The most pressing
impediment to Paula’s high school career is Brian (Leitch), who was
recently released from a mental institution for allegedly killing his
father. Now, back in school, Brian uses every chance he gets to be
close to Paula. But Brian’s motives are suspect, and not just because
he has a penchant for creepily hiding behind bushes and in dumpsters.
Paula’s father (Mull) is the local district attorney who helped put
Brian away for so many years. Brian seems harmless enough, at first,
until dead bodies start turning up around the school. Meanwhile, Dwight
is acting suspicious, as well, and Paula finds herself on the run from
both boys, fending for her life.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Friday, 13 February 2009 |
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rated PG
Celebrating vision, craft, resourcefulness and
courage in story, theme and execution, Henry “Nightmare Before
Christmas” Selick’s latest stop motion scary-tale—based on Newberry
Award winner Neil Gaiman’s book—is the first hand-animated feature ever
to be made specifically for 3D. And “Coraline” is nothing short of a
storytelling victory.
As an only child recently transplanted to a dreary old manse in
the foggy hills of Oregon, our young heroine (voiced by the ever plucky
Dakota Fanning) has lost all her friends and finds herself looking for
something, anything, to do. Her workaholic parents, employing a
disheartening policy of benign neglect, leave her also searching for
someone, anyone, who might listen to a thing she says.
Rattling around her family’s rambling apartment trying to
entertain herself, she discovers a curious little door. Papered over
and locked shut, it’s a clear invitation to mystery and adventure.
Naturally, she finds the key, opens it up, and boldly crawls directly
in.
Like so many rabbit holes and twister rides that have come
before, this particular door leads to another world. One difference,
however, is how utterly familiar this world turns out to be. On the
other end of a stretching tunnel, Coraline finds a mirror image of the
life she just left, only this one is bright and deep and colorful. In
this rich and happy Otherverse, fireflies circle her and sing and
flowers come alive to tickle her in her Other Father’s glorious garden.
Everyone there dotes on her and treats her like she’s the center of the
universe. Her Other Mother spins delightful glamours with hand-knit
sweaters and her favorite meals.
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Written by Hannah Lally
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Thursday, 05 February 2009 |
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concerned citizens turn amateur filmmakers
A true
example of small town activism, the film “The Squamscott River:
Exeter’s Connection to the Sea,” is the creative result of local
collaboration to protect a natural resource. The film will be screened
for the public at Exeter High School on Wednesday, Feb. 4.
The idea for the film began about a year ago, when Michael
Lambert of Exeter attended a town land-use meeting involving
development options that posed harmful consequences to the Squamscott
River. Only 15 rivers in New Hampshire are protected by the state’s
department of environmental resources, a short list that does not
include the Squamscott but does list three other Stafford and
Rockingham county rivers: the Lamprey, the Isinglass and the Exeter.
Lambert feared that unless community members begin to recognize the
Squamscott’s value, the six-mile stretch of tidal water will remain
unprotected. He decided it was time for lights, camera and action.
Although Lambert had never made a film before, he didn’t think
twice about his choice of medium. “Everyone has grown used to receiving
their information in this format,” he says.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 05 February 2009 |
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Quintet Productions, 1973
starring: Anjanette Comer, Ruth Roman, Susanne Zenor and David Mooney
directed by: Ted Post
the plot: Social worker Ann
Gentry (Comer) has taken on a new assignment: the Wadsworth family,
and, in particular, the family’s one male child, known only as Baby
(Mooney). Baby isn’t a normal infant, though—he’s a grown man, kept in
a state of perpetual babyhood by his domineering mother (Roman) and his
equally crazy sisters, Alba (Zenor) and Germaine (Mariana Hill). Ann
quickly develops a rapport with Baby, a fact that Mrs. Wadsworth and
the rest of the clan are none too happy about. As Ann attempts to coax
Baby into adulthood by getting him to stand and talk, the Wadsworths
make their own moves against Ann by filing complaints against her with
the state government.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 05 February 2009 |
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rated PG-13
It’s hard not to imagine what might have
been had “Taken” fully embraced its pulp fiction roots. Might shameless
marketers, capitalizing on Liam Neeson’s role as a ruthless assassin
turned vengeful father, have dubbed it “Schindler’s Revenge” in a fit
of bad taste? Would the violence and spy games have been upped in order
to appeal to fans of the Bourne and James Bond franchises and lovers of
graphic violence? It’s hard to say, as “Taken” aims squarely for the
middle, a slice of bitter pulp dressed up slightly to appeal to a wider
audience.
As it is, “Taken” is an enjoyable popcorn flick, mostly without
pretense and only occasionally making stabs at being above average.
It’s forgettable but fun, though most of that fun comes from watching
Neeson shoot, stab and punch his way through various ethnic groups and
social classes in Paris with amazing efficiency.
All the killing and maiming has a purpose, though, and that
purpose is to rescue Neeson’s daughter (Maggie Grace), who was
kidnapped by some shifty Albanian sex traffickers hours after beginning
her summer vacation in Paris. Luckily for her, her father is some sort
of former spy, and a hasty phone call to him in the minutes before
she’s spirited away provide Neeson with enough info to hop on a plane,
land in Paris and immediately start busting heads.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Friday, 30 January 2009 |
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rated R
The good news about the “Underworld” series, in which a mangy army
of werewolves presses a millennium-spanning blood feud against their
heretofore vampire slave masters, is that there’s not a hell of a lot
that could be done to ruin it. Len Wiseman, who puked out the first
installments like two fat hunks of greasy blue cheese, now hands the
saber for the third, a prequel, over to his creature designer.
If anyone deserves a “break” like this one, it’s Patrick
Tatopoulos. He’s paid his dues in the credit roll’s third act for
years, and his resume reads like the map of a movie geek’s heart. He’s
been working in and around the art and special effects departments of
some of the most respected crappy movies made in the last 20 years.
“Pitch Black,” “Resident Evil,” “I, Robot,” “I Am Legend,” even the
recently buried, much sought after Halloween anthology “Trick ’R Treat”
all bear the mark of his design and effects work. He’s done zombies,
aliens, robots, serial killers, video game characters, serial killing
video game characters ... he even designed Emerich’s “Godzilla” for
cryin’ out loud. The man knows monsters.
There may not have been a better possible choice to lens a
B-level bodice-ripper about a rebellious vampire warrior princess
seduced by an angry (yet sexily articulate) werewolf slave as he brews
violent rebellion amongst his hairy brethren against her iron-fisted
1,000-year-old dad. Trading out the steamy underground decay of
contemporary subways and sewers from the first two for the steamy
underground decay of ancient castle dungeons, Tatopoulus does maybe too
good of a job mimicking Wiseman’s tepid visual style.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 30 January 2009 |
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Full Moon Entertainment, 2005
starring: Robin Sydney, Ryan Locke, Larry Cedar and Gary Busey
directed by: Charles Band
the plot: During a crime spree,
psychotic criminal Millard Findlemeyer (Busey) massacres a diner full
of people—except for young Sarah Leigh (Sydney), who watches helplessly
as Findlemeyer kills her father and brother. Sarah escapes
Findlemeyer’s wrath, and it’s her testimony that sends the killer to
the electric chair. Sarah tries to put her life back together—she takes
over the family’s busy bakery and tries to keep the business running,
even as rival baker Jimmy Dean (Cedar) threatens to open a “bakery and
world café” right across the street. Everything’s going well until
Sarah receives a mysterious package of gingerbread seasoning. She bakes
it into an unreasonably large gingerbread man and, thanks to a
confluence of bizarre events, the cookie is animated with the spirit of
Findlemeyer. Determined to get revenge on Sarah, Findlemeyer, now in
cookie form, wreaks havoc in the bakery, and no one, not even Amos
(Locke), the town delinquent and Sarah’s secret crush, can stand in the
way of the pissed-off pastry.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 29 January 2009 |
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Levins-Henenlotter, 1990
starring: James Lorinz, Patty Mullen, Joseph Gonzalez and Louise Lasser
directed by: Frank Henenlotter
the plot: Medical school dropout turned electrician Jeffrey
Franken (Lorinz) is obsessed with creating life by stitching together
various and sundry body parts. Everyone thinks his extracurricular
activities are pretty weird, except for his fiancée Elizabeth (Mullen),
who adores her demented genius boyfriend. That is, until one of
Jeffrey’s side projects—a remote controlled lawnmower—goes rogue and
turns Elizabeth into a pile of human coleslaw. Jeffrey salvages what
parts of Elizabeth he can (a toe, an arm, her head) and preserves them
in the hopes of resurrecting his love. Jeffrey’s mom (Lasser) wants him
to stop grieving and go out with the checkout girl at the local
supermarket, but Jeffrey has another idea.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 29 January 2009 |
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rated R
There is a cardinal rule at play in “My Bloody
Valentine 3-D” that movie studios should remember, and it is this: 3-D
gore and explosions are always cool. “Valentine” is a gimmick movie
where the gimmick is more fun, and better executed, than the movie
itself, and it’s for this reason alone that “Valentine” is worth
seeing. It’s a love letter to two bygone eras of movies. As a
descendant of the novelty flicks of the 1950s and ’60s, it’s great fun;
as a retread of the worst clichés of the slasher genre of the 1980s,
it’s fairly awful. Luckily for “Valentine,” it’s the experience that
matters most.
“Valentine” is a remake of a 1981 Canadian slasher film of the
same name, and, as far as remakes go, the added dimension, complete
with popped-out eyeballs and giant bursts of flame, is what makes it so
watchable. That “Valentine” is a complete throwback to early-’80s
horror fare is not necessarily a good thing. After all, most of the
“Halloween” and “Friday the 13th” clones that flooded theaters and
video stores back then were atrocious.
What “Valentine” does have going for it is some awesome 3-D
effects. Everything from pick axes to jawbones fly off the
screen—there’s even some 3-D newspaper headlines during the opening
credits. As far as giddy thrills go, “Valentine” is up there, and the
novelty of seeing even the most mundane stuff show up in 3-D—from
scampering dogs and parking cars to flashlight beams and blades of
grass—doesn’t wear off. Lest the audience ever get bored, director
Patrick Lussier fills the movie with novelty to spare. There’s some 3-D
full-frontal nudity, quickly followed by a scene involving a busty
little person, the aforementioned pick axe and a light fixture. This
sequence alone almost justifies the whole movie.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
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Navaron Productions, 1979
starring: Abel Ferrara, Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day and Harry Shultz
directed by: Abel Ferrara
the plot: Artist Reno
Miller (Ferrara) can’t catch a break. He’s struggling to finish a
painting for fickle art dealer Dalton Briggs (Shultz) and, in the
meantime, can barely afford to pay the rent for the apartment he shares
with his girlfriend Carol (Marz) and her friend Pamela (Day). Carol
wants him to finish the painting, but Reno refuses to compromise his
artistic integrity. As he wanders New York City, he sees homeless
derelicts wasting away in alleys and muggers randomly knifing people on
the street. Meanwhile, a punk band has moved into the apartment next
door, and the incessant rehearsals have snuffed out any of Reno’s
artistic motivation. He grows more depressed and despondent—that is,
until he sees a late-night TV advertisement for the Porto-Pak, a
battery pack that clips on to a belt. Reno buys a Porto-Pak, hooks a
power drill up to it and begins putting his increasingly homicidal
thoughts into action on the streets of New York.
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Written by Trevor F Bartlett
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
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rated R
If anyone was paying even the remotest
attention to little Oskar, they might notice that he’s developing some
troubling proclivities. Though more perceptive, well read and
unassuming than your average 12-year-old, the closest he ever gets to
social interaction is the daily torments he silently endures at the
hands of schoolyard hooligans. At home, he steals newspapers from his
single mom to populate a scrapbook of obituaries and clippings
concerning dreadful murders. He secretly carries a hunting knife around
with him wherever he goes, occasionally caressing it when he thinks no
one is looking. If these weren’t Columbiney enough behaviors to entreat
a little dialogue (or psychotherapy), he frequently also can be found
prowling the frozen courtyard of his dismal Swedish tenement alone
after dark, stabbing at trees with all his scrawny, miserable might.
Yeah, if anyone at all was paying attention to little Oskar, they might notice that he’s a budding young serial killer.
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Written by Larry Clow
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Friday, 09 January 2009 |
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rated R
Frank Miller was one of the handful of creators
who helped revolutionize comics and graphic novels in the 1980s. But it
wasn’t until a few years ago that two of Miller’s creations, “Sin City”
and “300,” made the jump from page to screen and brought in big box
office returns. On the strength of those two features (directed by
Robert Rodriguez and Zach Snyder, respectively), Miller landed a
directing gig of his own—an adaptation of “The Spirit,” a comic series
created by pioneering writer/artist Will Eisner in the 1940s that’s
still kicking around today. Eisner, who passed away in 2005, was one of
Miller’s mentors, and pairing “The Spirit” with Miller seemed like a
safe, logical choice.
But “Sin City” and “300” came from
the Frank Miller of almost two decades ago. We’re dealing with a very
different Miller these days. He indulges full-bore in his
obsessions—hard-boiled violence, pulp dialog that would make Mickey
Spillane grimace, sexy ladies in a variety of fetish gear and so on—but
he’s a little more silly about it than in the past. One only need look
at “All-Star Batman and Robin,” his most recent comics work, to see how
Miller’s changed. The violence is just as brutal, but more cartoonish.
The girls are still clad in fishnets and leather, but they’re so out of
proportion that titillation gives way to laughter. In “All-Star,” the
perennially pissed-off Dark Knight goes around referring to himself as
“the goddamned Batman,” a moniker the rest of the characters adopt.
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Wednesday, 17 December 2008 |
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author chronicles Hollywood’s rocky battle between advancement and the status quo
The
rise of Pixar Animation is a story of monumental success or blown
opportunities, depending on who you ask. For George Lucas, who hired
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull to work in the computer division of
Lucasfilm back in 1979, Pixar clearly represents what could have been.
For Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who bought the computer division of Lucasfilm
in 1986 and turned it into Pixar, the company represents the value of
foresight and innovation.
Jobs took Pixar off Lucas’ hands for $10 million—not a modest
sum by most standards, but pocket change compared to the $7.4 billion
the Walt Disney Co. spent to purchase Pixar 20 years later, making Jobs
a Disney board member.
Disney executives, who had long maintained that audiences would
always prefer hand-drawn cartoons over computer animation, bought Pixar
only after the immense success of films like “Toy Story” in 1995,
“Monsters, Inc.” in 2001 and “Finding Nemo” in 2003. With the
subsequent triumphs of “Cars,” “Ratatouille” and “Wall-E,” everyone can
now agree that computer animation just might have a future.
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