There’s an inherent sweetness to watching the women
in this documentary from director Brian Lilla (Patagonia Rising) learn their
dance routines, and it has nothing to do with the quality of their
performances. Rather, the sweetness comes from the stories they share with the
camera when they aren’t dancing, stories about love, loss and life and how
dancing has influenced every aspect of who they are and, perhaps more
importantly, who they are becoming. The film stumbles a bit when it includes
the stories of dance studio owner Caleb Young and choreographer Joe Mounts, not
because their stories aren’t interesting on their own, but they just don’t
stack up against what the ladies have to say. Seeing their final performance at
the end of the film is a true celebration.
The
zombie film genre has become so watered down lately that you have to sift
through a lot of junk to find anything even remotely interesting. Finding a
film like this one from director Mike Masters makes the search worthwhile. Set
in a post-apocalyptic future, the film tells the story of a low budget film
crew who decide to make the third film in their zombie trilogy using actual
zombies. While there is a fair amount of splatter, most of which is well done,
the real joy of the movie is watching the living cast and crew deal with the
uncooperative zombies who, like temperamental undead divas, don’t always do
what they’re told. The added bonus is that instead of storming off to their
trailers when they aren’t happy, they simply chomp on whoever pisses them off.
In terms of an alibi, it’s almost foolproof. When
the corrupt politicians want somebody killed in this Filipino crime thriller
from director Erik Matti (The Arrival) they simply give a couple of convicts a
day pass from their high security prison to do the dirty work for them. The
simple beauty of the arrangement gets knocked for a loop when one of the
political organizations best hit men, Mario 'Tatang' Maghari (Joel Torre),
actually makes parole and becomes a liability. The cat-and-mouse game played by
Benitez, his employers and his protégé Daniel Benitez (Gerald Anderson) gives
the movie an edge that most crime thrillers don’t seem to care about these
days, but even if there wasn’t any actual plot to be engaged by, Matti’s flair
for action sequences would make the film worth watching. The fact that its as
smart as it is exciting is a real bonus.
It’s a story that may seem familiar – a lowly
peasant is called upon to impersonate his king to avoid an assassination plot –
but what director Chang-min Choo does with it is completely original. The film
tells the story of the tyrannical King Gwanghae who, when an attempt on his
life comes too close to succeeding, orders his trusted councilor Heo Kyun to
find a royal body double. He hires Ha-seon, a low-life comic who makes his
living lampooning the king in dive bars. His uncanny resemblance to his royal
master, combined with his knack for mimicry, make him the perfect choice, but
even his talents are stretched to the limit when the king actually dies and he
has to truly fill his shoes. Like all such films, the key to this one is the
lead performance and Byung-hun Lee does a masterful job.
Arms dealers and child soldiers can be a regular,
tragic feature of the evening world news, so the idea of making an entertaining
anime about the subject may seem, at the least, a matter of extremely bad
taste. The makers of this superb series didn’t let a little questionable
judgment stop them, though, and the result is a heck of a lot of fun. The
series follows the story of Jonah, a child soldier who gets assigned to be the
bodyguard for an international arms dealer named Koko. While he has a personal
hatred for the profession and the people who are in it, Jonah tries to put his
feelings aside and use the contacts he makes to investigate who sold the guns
and who pulled the triggers that murdered his parents. Although he tries to
stay aloof, Johan soon develops feelings for the woman he’s protecting, as well
as the team of sharpshooters who make up her family. You will, too.
God Bless Lloyd Kaufman. While the rest of
Hollywood chases its own tail looking for the next big thing, the genius behind
Troma studios just keeps making Troma films like this one knowing that fans
will love it and non-fans will…well, they should just stay away. In this, the
fourth chapter of the Nuke “em high series, the toxic waste plant that changed
teenagers into slimy cadavers in the first three movies has been replaced with
an organic food processing plant that is
turning the green radioactive goop into ‘healthy’ lunches for the nearby
school. It’s not much of a plot, but it’s enough to give Kaufman carte blanche
to fill the screen with plenty of cheesy gore, gratuitous nudity and dark, dark
comedy. In other words it’s a Troma film and, fans will agree, one of the best
the studio has made in years.
Directed by Nicholas Kalikow, this hugely
entertaining caper flick follows the adventures of three young women and their
attempts to get away with $3 million (Canadian) they ‘find’ in a seedy
warehouse. If that description sounds a bit too vague, it’s only because nobody
should give too much away when it comes to this twisted tale. The movie stars
Carly Pope as Kris, a tax accountant with a dark past who is trying to lead a
‘normal’ life with her girlfriend Tara (Samaire Armstrong), a chef who can’t
find anybody to hire her. Their life together is complicated by their roommate
Sammi (Diora Baird), a woman who seemingly spends her days getting wasted and
having sex with her underachieving boyfriend Karl (Brian Smith). The actors all
do a good job, particularly Pope, and the script avoids the usual clichés by
constantly reinventing itself. Kalikow depends a bit too much on a
Tarantino-style switching of time and POV, but it doesn’t impede the film from
its goal of entertaining all who see it.
As a follow-up to his Oscar-winning drama, Judgment
at Nuremberg, director Stanley Kramer did a complete 180 degree artistic spin
to create what is arguably the greatest three-hour slapstick comedy ever
created. Looking at it now, a half century later, it’s still a good movie and
you can appreciate the effort it must have taken for Kramer to reign in the
enormous amount of comedic talent in his cast, both the lead characters and the
numerous cameo appearances. But time hasn’t been kind to all the routines in
the movie, and some of them are more enjoyable for the nostalgic feeling they
give you from seeing the film as a kid than one may get from seeing them the
first time. Watching Jonathan Winters destroy a gas station is still hilarious,
but seeing Milton Berle be screamed at by Ethel Merman is more annoying than
amusing. The special 197-minute extended version of the film included in the
package takes things way too far, especially the way the flow of the film is
interrupted where footage is missing.
Joanna
Lumley could probably sit at a desk and read a travel brochure for Greece and
it would still be compelling thanks to her sultry, well-trained voice and
irrepressible enthusiasm for discovery. Luckily, she’s the kind of hands-on
travel show host who isn’t happy until she can make you feel the heat, smell
the smells and hear the same sounds she does on her journeys. Lumley has a real gift
for meeting people, which is a key to her travel shows. She may not be a great
interviewer – you don’t really learn very much from the people she meets -- but
she has a way of engaging people in everyday conversation that is far more
enjoyable. She also has a self-deprecating sense of humor that gives the shows
a special flair, like when she overcomes her fear of heights to climb some
shaky scaffolding at the Parthenon just, as she tells us through the camera,
because she loves us so much. The feeling is mutual.
It’s a movie about cannibals. It’s a real shame if
that is all you know about the new thriller form director Jim Mickle (Stake
Land) because it will either keep you from seeing the movie (Ugh! How gross!)
or set you expectation way too high (Yes! That’s gross!). The fact is that We
Are What We Are is a gripping thriller with surprisingly less gore than you
would expect (or fear) and a lot more chills and thrills than most so-called
‘horror’ movies supply. Sure, it’s about cannibals, but it’s also about family,
faith, fear and overcoming that fear. The film stars Bill Sage as Frank Parker,
the taciturn patriarch of a backwoods family with an unusual family tradition:
Once a year they kill and butcher a passing stranger and make them into a stew.
The reason they do it is much more believable, and therefore much scarier, than
your usual horror movie explanations, and it’s best to let the movie reveal it
to you than spoil it in a review.
