“The Lovely Ones, with its Kathy-Bates-in-Misery surrogate may have birthed this year’s greatest screen villain.” The Loved Ones Directed by Sean Byrne If in a parallel dimension a young John Waters had been born in Australia and decided to remake the eighties rom-com Pretty In Pink then it would resemble Sean Byrne’s teenage love satire [...]
“Wings is a rare cinematic achievement – a poetic, literary script turned into pure cinematic expression…” Wings Of Desire Directed by Wim Wenders Every so often, a filmmaker will turn to a smaller project while he’s impatiently waiting to get a bigger one financed, and often that small independent film will turn out to be [...]
‘From the Saul Bass inspired, cascading titles it’s evident that the master of suspense would be proud; one can quite clearly imagine an intrigued Hitchcock mining Buried’s foundations for all their anxious credentials.’
“A well made pulpy-genre piece that entertains as well as provoking some genuine emotion thanks to its earnest final showdown…” Red Hill Directed by Patrick Hughes Red Hill is a slightly oddball yet very sincere modern-day Australian cowboy movie. Its setup is simple: city cop moves to backwards middle-of-nowhere town with his pregnant wife to [...]
With the sponsorship and assistance of the UK’s Total Film magazine the Frightfest organisers instituted a new filament to the festival programme last year, the Total Icon event that was awarded to John Landis who hitch-hiked over to London with a sparkling digital print of An American Werewolf in London in tow. This year the strand continued with [...]
Monsters Directed by Gareth Edwards Monsters begins with a flurry of panicked hand-held night vision shots as troops battle with a looming, Lovecraft-ian creature that towers above them, tentacles rippling through the night sky. It’s an arresting first impression and one whose key tone – realism – is maintained throughout the rest of the movie. [...]
“At eighty minutes, this brisk film never outstays its welcome, and provides some entertaining quips and distressing gore effects that should satiate the gore-hound crowd…”
Two decades before The Blair Witch Project, the 1980 Italian exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust, directed by Ruggero Deodato, broke traditional cinematic conventions while creating major controversy following its release. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest, the movie tells the story of four documentarians who journey deep into the jungle to film indigenous tribes. Two months later, [...]
“If you’re in the mood for some mindless genre affection, for a film whose plot trajectory can be summarized to: revision scene, ‘legend’ episode, characterization sequence and blistering blitzkreig, then Hatchet 2 comes warmly recommended.” Hatchet 2 Directed by Adam Green World Premiere A suitably gloomy, rainswept August pallor ushered in London’s Frightfest film festival yesterday [...]
Under-appreciated throughout much of his career, with his early work made up of catch-as-catch-can projects, his credits meandering from Westerns (The Beguiled, 1971; The Shootist, 1976) to science fiction (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956), war stories (Hell Is for Heroes, 1962), period pieces (The Verdict, 1946), crime stories (Dirty Harry, 1971; Charley Varrick, 1973), [...]
“A surprisingly invigorating horror film.” The Last Exorcism Directed by Daniel Stamm Thanks to its wicked humor and unexpected smarts, The Last Exorcism sets itself apart from many recent attempts at faux-documentaries. In the film, documentary filmmakers follow a disillusioned preacher who hopes to expose the danger exorcism poses in the modern age. He attempts [...]
Jaws Directed by Steven Spielberg Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw star in this terrifying thriller about an enormous man-eating Great White Shark that terrorizes the fictional coastal summer resort town of Amity, Long Island on the Fourth of July weekend. Based on the trashy best-selling novel by Peter Benchley (who also provides the [...]
The American: Visions of damnationA look back at “Wings Of Desire”
Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)
8: The Mormon Proposition
This Movie is BrokenThe Last Exorcism: A surprisingly invigorating horror filmA Look Back At Spielberg’s Masterpiece “Jaws”
Fausta: The Milk of Sorrow
MIFF2010: The Illusionist
Piranha 3d
The Switch
Afterschool
Rampage
Stonewall Uprising
Toronto After Dark 2010: Doghouse (Review #1)
The Expendables
Toronto After Dark 2010: Last Lovecraft (Review #1)
