The found-footage horror film is the ugly stepchild in a family of ugly stepchildren. If slasher films do not get respect, found-footage movies, save for one or two, tend to elicit groans and rolling eyes. They are super cheap to make, the cinematography and sound are generally awful, and the acting worse because, for the […]
Body is reminiscent of an episode of an old Alfred Hitchcock TV show. (I’m not aging myself here. It aired long before I was born). It has a quick, concise high-concept idea that can play out in an hour. It also barely rates as a feature, coming in at 75 minutes, and for the most […]
The World of Kanako is not a film that produces a lukewarm reaction. It’s pretty much a love or hate kind of situation. Of course, you can do both. Connections to films can be like relationships, and this is one you can absolutely despise loving. In fact, it’s a response the movie practically demands.
There is […]
The behind-the-scenes documentary I Am Thor is about a heavy metal singer who dresses up as, yes, the Nordic god Thor, bends steel bars, vanquishes foes onstage, and smashes bricks with sledgehammers. So, essentially, he’s the band GWAR before GWAR. He almost made it in the halcyon 1980s when He-Man (who he uncannily resembles) and […]
Entertainment is one odd film. Possibly the weirdest I’ve seen in quite a while. If you can imagine the Coen Brothers’ deadpan stare, Sam Shepard’s white trash western goth aesthetic, and David Lynch’s dream-fuck phantasmagoria skillfully mulled together, you have an idea. Still, you will be shaking your head in disbelief at what you have […]
There is a fascinating story within the documentary Rock in the Red Zone, about musicians and artists under constant rocket attacks in a small town in Israel, but it gets a bit lost.
American director Laura Bialis travels to the border town of Sderot, the target for homemade rockets called Quassams lobbed over from Gaza by […]
Before Quentin Tarantino set the world afire with blazing guns in Reservoir Dogs, indie films were dominated by character studies of quirky people who did not quite fit in. There tended to be a sense of irony and distance that deepened rather than lessened your emotional experience. Hal Hartley was the prince of that realm […]
Extraordinary Tales is the perfect little bon mot to kick off the Halloween season. It is a slight, charming, and charmingly macabre animated adaptation of five Edgar Allen Poe short stories, all illustrated, directed, and adapted by Raul Garcia.
There is also a mediocre framing device that sets up Poe as a raven chatting with death, […]
Rock the Kasbah is an intermittently funny, frequently tedious slog burdened with a mediocre script that leaves some heavy lifting to a stellar cast and a first-rate director. Without Barry Levinson at the helm and Bill Murray at its center, it would have collapsed due to its lazy, haphazard plotting and annoying “this is my […]
