Movie Reviews

Context is often your most powerful ally when faced with something you don't understand. And in that vein, a little context is probably best presented before diving into a movie like A Serbian Film. Alamo maestro Tim League was disturbed and blown away by this film. Here's a guy who watches countless movies at film festivals around the globe as well as on screeners that filmmakers send him in his capacity as co-founder and head honcho for Fantastic Fest and the SX Fantastic slate that runs during SXSW. Tim's the guy who fought to get Pascal Laugier's Martyrs shown at Fantastic Fest a few years ago. The man has seen movies that have never seen the light of day in most places. And he got up on stage during this film's introduction and admitted to flinching more than once based on the heinous acts depicted in A Serbian Film.

The basic setup is that Milos, a former porn star, has retired and settled down to start a family. But his savings won't last forever, so when a former co-star approaches him with an opportunity for a big payday if he'll shoot a high-concept porn film for a mysterious producer/director, he finds himself saying yes despite his numerous reservations. Milos meets with Vukmir, the mastermind behind the plan, and he signs a contract to appear in the film, despite Vukmir's refusals to tell him much of anything about it. Vukmir is obsessed with exploring the boundaries of art and film through pornography, and even though Milos is uneasy about the arrangement, the money is simply too much to pass up. With his responsibility to provide for his family weighing upon him, Milos finds himself tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Hot rods, aliens, zombies and pin-up girls inhabit the world of D.A. Sebasstian in his first feature film, Hot Rod Girls Save the World. The campy, but stylish B-flick is dominated by a rip-roaring soundtrack, original score (recorded by the director's band KsK) and enough hot rods to make any gearhead happy. While the film is somewhat of an homage to the rockabilly lifestyle, there are some things for genre enthusiasts to sink their teeth into.

Tony is as forgotten as the world he inhabits: the vertical slums of London, the neon thrall of the red light district and the murky channels he wanders when disposing of the bodies he methodically packages like meat. Thanks to Johnson's script and the stellar performance of Peter Ferdinando (someone please give this guy more work), there are plenty of dark, comedic moments in Tony's life. Things like his obsession with violent action films on VHS (he quotes First Blood to a victim moments before ... ), cleverly timed (and often awkward) conversations with people and corpses alike inject levity into an overwhelmingly grim reality. Complementary to this is Matt Johnson's haunting score, which punctuates every moment perfectly while remaining organic and unobtrusive. Similar is the photography which uses the natural light of the city landscape as its focal point. Johnson occasionally contrasts this with a more theatrical tone using the same naturalistic elements (a street sign, an elevator, etc.) and the effect is striking.

If you watch a lot of horror movies, particularly in the last few years, you have no doubt grown accustomed to the expectation that low budget horror movies are emotionally vacant, supplanting plot and character nuance for needless gore and brutality. It's as though filmmakers working under these confines lack the confidence to deliver a movie that will be talked about for its scripting, its performances, or for the affecting eye of the camera. In turn, they gaze upon the successes of higher profile films (namely those bearing the unfortunate Torture Porn label), think, "I can top that" and then proceed to default between alternating modes of hate, dialog that would make the cast of Deadwood blush, and boundary-pushing violence, the thought process being that if they can't make a film memorable for the characters, they'll make it memorable solely for how much pain they inflict on them.

If you've seen any of the trailers for Red, White & Blue, the new film from The Living and the Dead director Simon Rumley, chances are good you have these expectations. If you do, promptly throw them out the window. Yes, Rumley's gritty-looking film is low budget, but it bears none of the low-budget trappings that destroy films crafted by lesser talents. It is not spiteful; it is not hateful; but it is beautiful in a supremely unnerving, macabre way. Red, White & Blue does not just get under your skin, it flays it from your very bones.

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas is something of a Mecca for movie geeks. In addition to first-run theatrical fare, the Drafthouse regularly showcases cult, foreign, and classic films. For the last four years, Alamo programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday and if you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, this night was invented just for you.

So I decided, since I am already a fixture at the Drafthouse, despite their best efforts to get rid of me, why not provide coverage for this weekly treat? The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience's reaction; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: Burial Ground.

Raging Sharks' title would indicate that this is a film about killer sharks, but sharks are only the subplot in this disastrous but fun film where aliens and a rescue mission are at the heart of the story. That is, if you can call it a story because I still don't think I know what the film was really about after watching it. If you're a fan of B level shark flicks then you know this doesn't matter.

The movie isn't quite sure what it wants to be, so there are a whole lot of cooks in the kitchen. And continuing in the tradition of shark movies, there are a lot of other movies being referenced: Jaws (duh), The Thing, Aliens, Leviathan, The Abyss and the list goes on and on. You would think a film that uses few (I think I counted one?) CGI sharks would be better than most, but it's not. The film is hastily edited with stock footage inter-cut with the actors looking pensive, blank, or running for their lives on a beach screaming.

[After the jump, feel more rage ... ]

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas is something of a Mecca for movie geeks. In addition to first-run theatrical fare, the Drafthouse regularly showcases cult, foreign, and classic films. For the last four years, Alamo programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday and if you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, this night was invented just for you.

So I decided, since I am already a fixture at the Drafthouse, despite their best efforts to get rid of me, why not provide coverage for this weekly treat? The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience's reaction; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: The Beast Within.

I was in a rented lodge in Park City, Utah, several years ago, and since the snow was really bad (or maybe the Sundance options were really meh), I opted to dig through some screeners from "the other festival," Slamdance. (That's not meant as a knock. I adore Slamdance.) I was in town to review some films, so when I came across one screener that indicated a running time of 47 minutes, I got skeptical.

A 47-minute film, you see, is not a short film, nor is it a feature. So while I'd normally be elated to review a film called The Call of Cthulhu, it just didn't seem like a practical choice for "work." But I watched it anyway. And then I wrote my review about 18 minutes later. Months after that I ordered a copy of the film, and it still holds a firm place in my horror collection. Also, it's probably the finest, coolest, and most "faithful" H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I've ever seen. No disrespect meant to Stuart Gordon, but his awesome Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon are "loose" adaptations, at best, whereas Andrew Leman's The Call of Cthulhu feels like it fell right out of 1931.

So what's all this got to do with you? Well hey, if you happen to be a Netflix subscriber (and I don't feel like a shill for saying you oughtta be), then you can enjoy the 47-minute Lovecraft love letter all by yourself. I'll even include the link: There. Enjoy! And then you can hit the official site and see what sort of lunatic passion inspires folks to make a 47-minute film in a resoundingly "feature friendly" universe. Hats off to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for putting this fine film together.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of independent horror. That said, having spent the last few years optimistically wading through the highs and lows of low-budget horror filmmaking in the hope of finding diamonds in the rough has, in all honesty, kind of jaded me. I have nothing but respect for anyone who picks up a camera and tries to making something to call their own, but, let's face it, more often than not low-budget amateur horror flicks remain relegated to the obscure world of the horror movie convention tradeshow floor not because they're unlucky in distribution, but because they're just not very good.

So when fellow Cinematical/Sci-Fi Squad writer John Gholson asked if I wanted to drive three and a half hours to attend the Pretty Scary Bloodbath Film Festival, a team-up between the Texas Bloodbath Film Festival and Pretty-Scary.net designed to honor independent, female voices in horror, I had a few trepidations. But the more than reasonable ticket price of $15 for 3 features and 8 short films won me over and I've got to say that I'm really glad it did.

I had a lot of fun at the Pretty Scary Bloodbath; more than expected, actually. It delivered exactly as advertised: a fine showcase of indie horror movies made by women. Below I've done a brief rundown of everything the fest had to offer, so read on to see if there were any hidden gems to be found.