This week, we have a double, er, triple feature of Euro-inflected crime movies. First up is music video disciple Anton Corbijn’s The American, starring George Clooney as a reclusive, moody “craftsman” hiding out in a beautiful Italian villa following . Accompanying it is Mesrine, the four-hour, two-part thriller/bio-pic portrait of infamous French serial burglar and [...]
Mexican-American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez burst upon the independent scene with a $7000 action film geared for the Mexican Spanish-language video market. Labelled the cheapest film ever released by a studio, El Mariachi was a fun send-up of Mexican action films, American Westerns and tough anti-hero movies informed by such auteurs as Sergio Leone and Sam [...]
Spoorloos (The Vanishing) – Hey, remember back during the World Cup when we announced that really cool movie competition modeled after it? Well, it’s high time we got to the winners, which here represent the top three teams at this year’s championship. In Germany’s corner, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, from 1987; representing the Netherlands, [...]
Though the subgenre has its roots in decades-old cult cinema (or, if you;d like, all the way back to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds in 1938), “found footage” horror is most probably still most strongly associated with a breakout 1999 flick called The Blair Witch Project, a microbudget thriller that wound up inspiring equal [...]
Few things are more fundamentally terrifying than knowing you’re prey to some unknown aquatic creature lurking in the depths, and Hollywood has fed well on our love of underwater terror. With scores of prehistoric man-eating predators on the loose in Piranha 3D, we decided to take a look at three movies that explore killer creatures [...]
This week saw the release of UK writer/director J Blakeson’s debut feature, the kidnapping thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed. To accompany of it, we’ll be dredging up two very different stories of abduction and disappearance: the first, 1996′s Ransom, stars the handsome and polite Mel Gibson as an airline tycoon whose son is nabbed [...]
One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s through the early 1990s, actor, writer, director and producer Sylvester Stallone combined sheer physical brawn with a touch of vulnerability in two major movie franchises – the Academy Award-winning Rocky and its five sequels, as well as the ultra-violent Rambo quartet. Frequently [...]
It’s entirely possible that no one has ever crossed over from the realm of pop music into film more thoroughly than Mark Wahlberg. Back in the days when he was fronting Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, it might have been hard to believe that he’d grow to be one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars, [...]
Three of the most interesting films of the last 12 months are probably not coming to a theater near you. They’re highlights from the last two Fantasia Film Festivals’ Asian programs, and you might need to do a bit of hunting to track them down. Two are Japanese – the rock n’ rooll tall tale [...]
On this hour of Sound on Sight: coming attractions. Next Friday sees the release of UK director Edgar Wright’s third feature, the anticipated comic adaptation Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. We got a chance to see it early at the Fantasia Film Festival, and we’ll be letting you know if it’s worth the hype – [...]
The UK has always been known for distinctive genre fare, and this week we have a triple dose of British horror to try and prove it. First up is Jake West’s horror-comedy Doghouse, which pits a band of wronged men against a village-ful of killer women. Next, from Neil Marshall, director of The Descent and [...]
————– The Serbian spotlight at this year’s Fantasia Film Fest is not for the squeamish. Actually, in the case of two of its films, it might not be fit for viewing by conscious beings – making it perfect fare for the deranged cousin of Sound on Sight we like to call Sordid Cinema. The two [...]
—————— Is there a more versatile oddball working in front of the camera than Tilda Swinton? Though she’s probably still best known as the sweaty corporate stooge in Michael Clayton, the role that earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but she’s been getting steady work since the mid-80s, specializing in Euro arthouse, with [...]
Fantasia, North America’s biggest and best genre film festival, is a unique experience. Nowhere else can you hold your wife’s hand through a lighthearted J-punk romantic romp in the afternoon, and spend the night jerking off to Josef Mengele’s version of scat porn. Tonight, Sordid Cinema brings you one of many tastes of Fantasia’s delicacies, [...]
It’s been roughly a year since we saw the first teaser trailers for UK director Christopher Nolan’s followup to The Dark Knight, the sci-fi/heist thriller that made its debut this past weekend. Now that it’s finally here, it’s been the source of some very hyperbolic debate: is it an elaborate con job or a Kubrickian [...]
