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Compound Fracture (2013)
Directed by: Anthony J. Rickert-Epstein
Written by: Renae Geerlings, Tyler Mane
Featuring: Tyler Mane, Muse Watson, Derek Mears, Leslie Easterbrook, Renae Geerlings, Susan Angelo, Alex Saxon
In early May, Dallas hosts a huge horror convention called Texas Frightmare Weekend. TFW always features some of the most prominent and exciting guests in the horror genre as well as some terrific screenings, and this year was no exception.
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05/21/13 |
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Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)
Directed by: J. J. Abrams
Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof
Featuring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alice Eve, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller
Star Trek: Into Darkness might just be the perfect summer blockbuster. (Yes, I know it's still spring, but my thesis stands.) It's big, it's loud, it's well crafted, it's immensely entertaining and quite clever (or, more important, feels clever in the moment). What else could you want from a major Hollywood popcorn flick?
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05/17/13 |
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Skull World (2013)
Directed by: Justin McConnell
Featuring: Greg Sommer, Jason Pluscec, Shane Patterson
Justin McConnell's new documentary, Skull World, focuses on the fun but eclectic Greg Sommer and his alter ego Skull Man's Box Wars cardboard-based combat league.
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05/09/13 |
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Wrath of the Crows (2013)
Directed by: Ivan Zuccon
Written by: Gerardo Di Filippo
Featuring: Debbie Rochon, Tiffany Shepis, Tara Cardinal, Domiziano Arcangeli, Suzi Lorraine
From the trailers, I expected Wrath of the Crows to be in the vein of the classic Italian exploitation films, and in a way it is, with a generous amount of extreme gore and a scream queen in fetish gear throughout the film. But what I wasn't expecting to see was a very personal, metaphysical exploration of life after death told through heavy symbolism.
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05/05/13 |
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Thanatomorphose (2012)
Directed and written by: Éric Falardeau
Featuring: Kayden Rose, Émile Beaudry, Eryka Cantieri, Roch-Denis Gagnon
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05/05/13 |
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Iron Man 3 (2013)
Directed by: Shane Black
Written by: Drew Pearce, Shane Black
Featuring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle, Jon Favreau
On the sliding scale of big Hollywood blockbusters, you could put the Transformers films at one end of the spectrum and the Dark Knight films on the opposite end. One franchise is big, dumb plastic eye candy, where the plot is nothing more than a way to trigger the FX setpieces. The other is a thought-provoking, highly artistic set of films disguised as popcorn movies. The Iron Man movies fall somewhere between those extremes and tend to slide up and down the scale depending on which film in the series you are talking about. Sadly, the latest entry, Iron Man 3, slides a little down the wrong side of the scale.
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05/02/13 |
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Manborg (2013)
Directed by: Steven Kostanski
Written by: Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski
Starring: Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Meredith Sweeney, Connor Sweeney, Ludwig Lee, Jeremy Gillespie
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04/30/13 |
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Oblivion (2013)
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Written by: Joseph Kosinski, William Monahan, Karl Gajdusek, Michael Arndt
Featuring: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Melissa Leo
Containing manic energy is a skill. Suppressing it is hazardous. When Tom Cruise was bouncing off walls and generally making himself into a punch line cliché, you could still sense the charisma that made him a star. In Joseph Kosinski's sci-fi epic Oblivion, Cruise smirks and struts his way through a post-apocalyptic earth like he's on downers and barely registers a heartbeat.
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04/24/13 |
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Resolution (2012)
Directed by: Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead
Written by: Justin Benson
Featuring: Peter Cilella, Vinny Curran, Emily Montague, Zahn McClarnon
I have read a lot of online reviews lately bashing indie horror as a whole for being derivative, unimaginative and amateurish. I have been reviewing indie horror films for years, and I have watched my share of knockoffs made by people with no knowledge of the genre and "homages" made by filmmakers who follow the rules of the genre so slavishly that their films end up adding nothing new. Like these other critics, I get sick of it too. But every once in awhile, I come across a great indie horror movie like Resolution, a clever, innovative, unique little film that slowly gets under your skin. Films like Resolution are the reason indie filmmaking exists.
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04/13/13 |
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Stoker (2013)
Directed by: Chan-Wook Park
Written by: Wentworth Miller
Featuring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode
Stoker is, quite possibly, my favorite film of 2013.
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04/11/13 |
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Evil Dead (2013)
Directed by: Fede Alvarez
Written by: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Featuring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore
Can you believe The Evil Dead is more than 30 years old?
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04/08/13 |
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13 Eerie (2013)
Directed by: Lowell Dean
Written by: Christian Piers Betley
Featuring: Katharine Isabelle, Brendan Fehr, Brendan Fletcher, Nick Moran, Jesse Moss
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04/05/13 |
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Room 237 (2012)
Director: Rodney Ascher
Featuring: Bill Blakemore, Juli Kearns, Jay Weidner, Geoffrey Cocks, John Fell Ryan
No other movie divides opinion quite like The Shining. Hailed alternately as a work of genius and a confused mess, people either love it or hate it. Haters include the author of the source material, Stephen King, who called it "a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little." It left critics scratching their heads — Roger Ebert confessed himself disturbed by the "elusive open-endedness," while Pauline Kael declared "Kubrick mystifies us deliberately." Yet for every moviegoer who rejects The Shining as cold and impenetrable, there's one who embraces it as a masterpiece. There are even some people who believe its ambiguity holds the key to the great mysteries of modern civilization.
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04/02/13 |
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Come Out and Play (2012)
Directed by: Makinov
Written by: Makinov
Featuring: Vinessa Shaw, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Daniel Giménez Cacho
There's something about children that makes their addition to horror films so creepy. Perhaps it's got to do with the inherent innocence that each child has, having not yet been corrupted or jaded by life's callousness and disappointments. They have nothing but happiness, hope and wonder ahead of them. Or at least they should. But what if they didn't? What if some children, under that guise of innocence and purity, harbored a cold-blooded and murderous apathy?
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03/28/13 |
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Darkbound (2013)
Written by: Michaelbrent Collings
In Darkbound, a new horror novel by Michaelbrent Collings, six strangers board a New York subway, each bound for a different destination. It is early in the day and, since none of the others are open, the six people end up on the same car. They are all different: an old latina grandmother, a plain white guy, a gangbanger, a lawyer-looking woman, and an army-type guy. Little do they realize that they have just boarded a different kind of train, one that doesn't travel to any location on the subway line. The passengers are soon fighting to survive while also trying to figure out how to escape the train.
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03/27/13 |
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Good Ol' Freda (2013)
Directed by: Ryan White
Featuring: Freda Kelly, Tony Barrow, Ringo Starr
In the early 1960s, Freda Kelly became one of the most envied women in the world, and I bet you've never even heard of her.
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03/25/13 |
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