Horror director George A. Romero has always been known for the social commentary of his films, the political subtext his fans claim transform his gore flicks into the equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting made with intestines. The Crazies, from 1973, is just such a film; a story about a bioweapon that’s more a [...]
Studio patch-it man Joe Johnston returns to revive the beleaguered werewolf movie genre with the The Wolfman, which triumphed over a long and troubled production history to prowl multiplexes with its mediocrity. (Sorry, spoilers.) In…celebration?…Al, Mariko and Simon take a look at Johnston’s opus as well as the 1941 original, along with two more allegorically [...]
As the dregs of January wear on, with our spirits low, sometimes it helps to pretend that there’s a higher power up above who as a place for us lowly movie reviewers in his divine plan. Unfortunately, if this week’s movies have it right. God is a petulant, fickle, bloodthirsty creep with a taste for [...]
Albert and Allen Hughes, better known simply as the Hughes Brothers, have been kicking around since the early nineties, but you’d be forgiven for a bit of confusion thanks to their schizophrenic filmography. After helming some music videos, the twins made an envious feature debut at Cannes in 1993 at only 21 years of age [...]
If I were to make a movie using only my own funds and a home computer, I probably wouldn’t be original enough to do anything other than wire a webcam into my Playskool murder shack. Thankfully, Australia’s Spierig brothers are considerably more inventive then I am. With 2003’s The Undead, they fused home made CGI [...]
Like many classic horror archetypes, the werewolf can represent a wide variety of themes, from uncontrollable lust, to humanity’s bestial nature, to how First Nations men are apparently savage wife beaters too primitive to wear clothes. Guess which one applies to New Moon, the latest film adaptation of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight series. Tonight, Sound on [...]
Part one of this week’s major housecleaning here at SOS concerns two retro throwbacks, and something decidedly different. Of the first sort, we have Ti West’s celebrated horror flick The House of the Devil, as well as Scott Sanders’ blaxploitation spoof / homage Black Dynamite. The odd one out is Australian director Adam Elliott’s five-years-in-the-making [...]
With Halloween looming, Ricky, Al and Simon take the opportunity to catch up on two recent supernaturally-inclined movies, as well as one ’80s chestnut that recently got the neutered, PG-13 remake treatment. New in theaters: the word-of-mouth phenom Paranormal Activity, made on eleven grand and beating out Saw VI at the box office, and book [...]
If Jesus gets to show up two months early for Christmas, with his goddamned Jingle Cats CDs and Jim Carrey movies, then I decree that we here at Sound on Sight can make Halloween last just a little bit longer. So, even though it’s almost mid-November, who’s to say we can’t still have a little [...]
Writer-director Richard Kelly hasn’t been around too long, but his three features have all been the subject of intense debate: Is Donnie Darko the great sci-fi fable of the 2000s or a teen angst pretension pit? Is Southland Tales, as the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman contends, a a “visionary” film, or creative control gone horribly [...]
With Halloween looming, Ricky, Al and Simon take the opportunity to catch up on two recent supernaturally-inclined movies, as well as one ’80s chestnut that recently got the neutered, PG-13 remake treatment. New in theaters: the word-of-mouth phenom Paranormal Activity, made on eleven grand and beating out Saw VI at the box office, and book [...]
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Perhaps, in the early 1980s, while still in film school, Danish director Lars von Trier saw one of the US’ highest grossing feel-good comedies, like Risky Business or Mr. Mom. And then decided to make exact opposite of that film for the rest of his life. If such a thing did [...]
The eating of human flesh is one of the last great taboos in Western society, despite the fact that the world’s hunger issues could be easily be solved by eating everyone who looks like they taste of Popeye’s chicken. Perhaps that’s why zombie films are so popular, as they touch on deep-seated, primal fears. As [...]
This past week saw Rick and Simon head to Toronto for this year’s TIFF, and one of our major focuses there was the Midnight Madness program, a selection of films too wild and crazy to play anywhere else at the fest – and this year’s program featured some doozies. Today, we’ll be talking about Spanish [...]
Nearly every slasher pick since 1978 owes a debt to John Carpenter, and it’s all because of a little movie called Halloween. Like any horror flick worth its salt these days, it earned itself a proper remake, courtesy of musician-turned-horror director Rob Zombie back in 2007. Much like the original flick, Mr. Zombie’s film has [...]
