Sugar Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), aspiring Dominican baseball star, is the focus of the sophomore effort from Half Nelson writer-director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, a film long on empathy but short on revelation. Santos is eventually picked to play for a minor-league team in …
Cult Cinema: Volume 8 At their best, horror films hold society up to a funhouse mirror, providing a grotesque yet revealing reflection of cultural concerns, values, and above all, fears. And then there’s torture porn, in which the only insights are gained from peering deep into the vivisected ruins of a woman’s genitals. The term …
Although he was born in Berchem-Sainte Agathe, Belgium, with the name of Jean-Claude Van Varenbeerg, Van Damme once called himself “Frank Cujo” when he first moved to Hollywood in 1981. When he couldn’t find work as an actor the former European Professional Karate Association’s middleweight champion decided to take English classes while working as a …
Body Count: Volume 4 . If two things go together like chocolate and peanut butter, it’s Satan and horror movies. Satan, by himself, is the ultimate adversary and boogeyman so it just makes sense that the genre falls back on the devil from time to time. Seemed like in the 70’s you couldn’t throw a …
Cult Cinema: Volume 7 Good comedy is a mix of the familiar, the unexpected, and the shocking. Which is an elaborate way of saying that ending a knock-knock joke with a line about killing a baby is a sure way to get a laugh. Try it some time. At work. So, it’s no surprise that …
16 Blocks 2006, USA Directed by Richard Donner Written by Richard Wenk Starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse, Jenna Stern I broke a promise today. Long ago, I swore that should I ever again stumble upon a film that uses a hand-held tape recorded as a deus ex machina plot device, I would douse …
Body Count: Volume 3 Vampires are starting to make a come back, in case you haven’t noticed. Teenage girls seem to be swooning at the thought of gentlemanly “vegetarian” vampires that sparkle in the sunlight that should be burning their wretched husks to a crisp. A little while back, I did an article studying the …
Upon viewing Begotten for the first time, one could easily mistake it for an archaic silent film made by a seriously deranged director on crack (or whatever popular drug they used a hundred years ago). Low and behold, this is a movie from 1991 by 45-year old Edmund Elias Merhige (Suspect Zero, Shadow of the …
Cult Cinema: Volume 6 In the 1980s, author Clive Barker was dubbed the new face of horror. And what a face it was, one that looked like it should be fellating both Lord Byron and Aleister Crowley during a sex magic ritual, all arched eyebrows and smooth cheeks and smoky eyes. Barker’s 1985 short story …
Body Count: Volume 2 I was recently asked to write a horror script that would be produced by a local group that’s trying the Sam Raimi/Robert Rodriguez means of raising money for real features by making schlocky b-pictures as a revenue source. They’re hell bent on producing a zombie picture because everyone seems to have …
Although Brad Anderson’s career as a feature-film director spans less than a decade, the American director has consistently satisfied audiences with his own peculiar brand of supernatural tales. Happy Accidents, Session 9, The Machinist and Transsiberian all have their own following by people who enjoy an alternative to the mainstream “thrillers” we’ve been inundated with …
1. The Shining Jack Torrance only kills one person yet he is the monster of the film. No one ever questions Wendy, who not only repeatedly hits Jack over the head with a baseball bat, but also lashes after him with a knife, finally leaving him to die of hypothermia. Clearly the so-called “victim” in …
Cult of the Week: Volume 5 Quentin Tarantino is every video store clerk’s idol, and every film critic’s nightmare. Venerated by midnight movie buffs and Blockbuster cashiers for his unadulterated love of cult cinema, Tarantino has proved that a film school education is no match for passion, creativity, and kinetic energy. Unfortunately for film critics, …
Body Count: Volume 1 Horror. The much maligned, hard partying, estranged uncle of cinema. Being the reasonably presentable professional that I am by day, it often shocks people that I, a man in his thirties of above-average intelligence devotes such a large portion of his free time mentally cataloguing some of the worst movies ever …
On a dark and rainy night a few years ago I attended an 11pm screening of Eraserhead at Cinema du Parc, my favorite source for late night cult classics. Afterwards I popped into the bathroom with a full bladder and made my way into one of the stalls. Two guys walked in while I was …
Adventureland 2009, USA Directed by: Greg Mottola Written by: Greg Mottola Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kirstin Stewart, Bill Hader, Kirstin Wiig, Martin Starr, Michael Zegen Based on his own real life experience working summers at an amusement park in Long Island, NY, Greg Mottola’s follow up to last summer’s sleeper hit Superbad is a poignant and …
Cult Cinema: Volume 4 David Lynch films are a litmus test of intelligence. You don’t have to like them to prove that your cinematic IQ is above the level of a mouth-breather with a Vin Diesel DVD collection. But you do have to realize the films’ artistic merit. And then give lengthy interpretations of their …
My Bloody Valentine 3D, released in early January of this year, was just the first of a parade of 3D films to be released in 2009. The remake of the 1981 cult classic with a budget of $15 million went on to gross over $67 million at the box office. Although the film received mixed …
Cult Cinema: Volume 3 In the 1950s, a group of French writers revolutionized film criticism with the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. By re-evaluating the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and John Hughes, among others, the critics gave birth to a grand unified ‘auteur theory,’ which positions the director as the ultimate creative force behind …
5 – The Ring (2002) Considering I didn’t find the original scary, it’s impressive that I was thoroughly creeped out by the nearly shot-for-shot remake. There is always something a little more interesting in the exploration of the unknown, so if your senses have been dulled by the formulaic slasher film, then its quieter take …
Cult Cinema: Volume 2 In terms of cult cinema, anime, which encompasses a wide variety of genres within the blanket term of Japanese animation, can be difficult to categorize. Thankfully, its fans are not, because they all adopt the same high-pitched tone of indignation whenever you point out that jerking off to 14-year olds covered …
There are questions to be asked about films like The Last House on the Left, which ostensibly comments on society’s approach to violence. Can graphic gore be discussed without being glorified? Is it possible to portray a vigilante in a way that won’t inspire at least part of the audience to stock up on balaclavas …
The definition of a slasher film varies depending on who you ask, but in general, it contains several specific traits that feed into the genre’s formula. Every slasher has a killer whose identity is often concealed (or at least his face in cases of characters such as Michael Myer and Jason Voorhees) and for no …