Movieline Online

THE FLICK: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is a pretty savvy guy. He’s currently responsible for both the #1 show on TV (CSI) and the #1 box-office winner from 2006 (Pirates of the Caribbean 2). So it’s mystifying how he completely botched the marketing for Déjà Vu, a pseudo-sci-fi entry starring Denzel Washington that was pitched to audiences with such an aire of vagueness one was expecting a Shyamalan-style supernatural mindf*** instead of an Enemy of the State-meets-Timecop thriller (writer Bill Marsili actually quotes Time After Time as an inspiration, so that works too). The advertising held everything back; an admirable plan of attack in a world where trailers give away everything except who played “Pedestrian #2. But, truth is, the movie itself is pretty up front about the “big secret” only a scant 20-minutes into the picture. So all that valuable ad time would have been better spent telling people exactly what to expect. Washington plays ATF agent Doug Carlin (yet another in the act...

“We had a pact!” You can almost hear Robert Rodriguez whining after his directorial gang-bang with pop-culture crotch-sniffer Quentin Tarantino failed to produce the collective audience orgasm they both expected. For his half of the double-feature - Planet Terror - Rodriguez delivered a frenetic, pus-filled time-waster that fit perfectly into the contemporary zombie zeitgeist. Pops, hiss, scratches and missing reels help sell the concept but it’s Rose McGowan and her machine-gun gam that gives you something to remember. At its most inspired, Grindhouse makes good on its promise of a unique recreation of the back-row, ripped-seats, shit-cinema two-fers that folks enjoyed on both coasts. QT, however, doesn’t bother to play by the Grindhouse rules, wasting a truly man-size performance by Kurt Russell and focusing on his puerile fascination with Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman’s stunt double in Kill Bill). Death Proof is a throwback, not to the exploitation hey-day, but to Tarantino’s immature, mast...

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THE FLICKS: As a movie Phantasm is almost impossibly hard to describe. Yet that didn’t stop it from entering the pantheon of must-see ‘70s horror films right alongside Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes and other drive-in ready shockers. Yet unlike his fellow filmmakers, Phantasm­’s director Don Coscarelli never turned that success into much of a career (unless you count endless repeats of his Conan knock-off The Beastmaster on TNT). And watching this new special edition from Anchor Bay it’s pretty clear why. Phantasm is a home movie at heart. Its flaws are obvious but endearing. The cast of amateur actors don’t even approach the normal level of professionalism in a B-movie. They look and dress like authentic hippies working for free beer and a bag of weed. Not to mention the script, which skips scenes and adds characters with the kind of free-form surrealism borne from budget constraints rather than artistic choice. Still...Phantasm has an unpredictable imagination. And Coscarelli bravely...

THE FLICKS: Directors like Mario Bava are the reason cult movie fans exist. Working under miniscule budgets with fly-by-night foreign producers who distributed the final product under a seemingly endless amount of alternative titles, often just tracking down the muddy lineage of Bava’s work is a genealogical case study unto itself. But it’s the thrill of the chase that fans enjoy most, sifting through the pseudonyms and cinematic dead-ends to unearth something truly special from a man who was 30 years ahead of his time. Well, Anchor Bay has done most of the work for you in the form of The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1, a 5-disc set that includes two of the director’s most notable and celebrated works (Black Sunday and Black Sabbath), an early giallo comedy (The Girl Who Knew Too Much), a Viking action-movie (Knives of the Avenger) and supernatural thriller (Kill, Baby, Kill), not to mention the heist-gone-wrong exploitation entry, Kidnapped (aka Rabid Dogs), sold as a separate release...