Movieline Online

THE FLICK: It’s not unusual to see classics of the horror genre recycled and updated for each new generation. Just look at how many versions of Dracula and Frankenstein have attempted to freshen up the author’s original themes to make them relevant in each era. It seems like each character is “reborn” every decade or so. But when it comes to science-fiction, there’s really only one story that has remained relevant over the past 50 years: Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers. Now on its fourth official filmed adaptation – which doesn’t even account for the widespread “borrowing” of its central idea in countless films and novels - there’s something about the concept of losing our own individuality that becomes more and more terrifying as our world evolves. Perhaps because technology and social evolution make it seem more like a frightening prediction rather than a tale of implausible pulp nonsense. 2007’s The Invasion lifts most of its inspiration from the 1978 version directed by Philip Kau...

THE FLICKS: Two or three years ago the DVD market was flooded with enough Italian imports to keep even the most rabid fan of gothic horror, giallo, poliziotteschi and soft-core porn satisfied. But things seem to have dried up recently, which means Dark Sky’s two new releases – Tragic Ceremony and Ricco the Mean Machine – are a welcome return to the Spaghetti ghost stories and tasteless revenge flicks that we so recently took for granted. A workhorse in his native country since 1942, Riccardo Freda is best known to the enlightened for directing The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock featuring Euro-starlet Barbara Steele. Produced in 1972, Tragic Ceremony comes at the tail end of Freda’s professional career, just as the failure of the “peace and love” generation had become inevitable. Both events are a major influence on the film, which tells the story of a group of hippies who weather a storm in a gloomy country estate. Unfortunately, the Lord of the manor (Luigi Pistilli) has plans to sacrifice on...

THE FLICKS: It’s ridiculously ironic that, thanks to companies like Blue Underground, I’ve written more comprehensive reviews for the work of Jess Franco than John Ford, Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg combined. Of course, Franco’s filmography has the edge in quantity, with some 200 films attributed to the director under various pseudonyms. But quality: that’s a word not often associated with any of his productions. So it’s surprising when you stumble upon something like Eugenie de Sade, another psycho-sexual foray into soft-core shenanigans based on the writings of the 17th author / pornographer / sadist Marquis de Sade. Franco freely admits an affinity for the writer, whose name lends a naughty sort of legitimacy to the director’s usual exploitation oeuvre. And in this 1970 entry starring Franco’s first real muse, Soledad Miranda (aka Susan Korda), he finds himself making a real “film” for only the 2nd or 3rd time in his entire career. As with most of Franco’s work, the success s...

THE FLICK: The teaser trailer for Resident Evil: Extinction promised an impossibly geek-tastic scenario: a zombie apocalypse set against the ruins of Las Vegas with supermodel Milla Jovovich kicking ass in a Sergio Leone leather duster. It looked almost too good to be true. And, of course, it was. As the third chapter in an average trilogy, the law of diminishing returns was destined to kick in. Extinction never delivered the genre-bending, Spaghetti Western-inspired horror experience we all hoped for. But as another moderately entertaining entry in the “film-based-on-a-videogame” category, it serves its purpose. Flush with a new set of psychic powers, Umbrella experiment code name “Alice” (Milla Jovovich) is on the run with the wind in her hair, riding her hog across a wasted Earth; yet another environmental side-effect of the T-Virus which has destroyed all life on the planet, not just humans. The survivors from the second film, Apocalypse (a title I bet producers are kicking themsel...

THE FLICK: Cinematically speaking, the United States has been on top of the world for nearly a century. We have the talent, the resources and most importantly the money to produce 90% of the world’s big screen entertainment. But you’ve gotta love it when foreign film producers try to buck the odds and win one for the home team by going toe-to-toe with Hollywood. I’m not talking about the odd art film or Merchant-Ivory production; I mean an honest-to-god special-effects laden monster-movie extravaganza. And that’s exactly what Dragon Wars (or D-War as it’s known in its native Korea) attempts to do. Much it of it laughable, illogical or just plain lame. But at least 30-minutes of writer / director Hyung Rae Shim is a real hoot to watch, boasting computer-effects that can stand up to anything produced in the U.S. of A. Attempting to reprint the plot is nearly impossible and, honestly, a little embarrassing. Suffice to say that warriors are reincarnated every 5000 years to do battle over s...

THE FLICK: The death of the Western has been greatly exaggerated. For proof, one need look no further than 3:10 To Yuma, a simple (but never simplistic) shoot ‘em up that takes the classic “outlaw” story and adds two of the top actors working today. Like the much ballyhooed pairing of Pacino and DeNiro in Heat, the casting of Russell Crowe and Christian Bale is a dream-team combination; but unlike the unsatisfying 5-minute face-off in Michael Mann’s crime drama, director James Mangold (Walk The Line) orchestrates a slow-burn rivalry between his two leading men in this remake of the 1957 Glenn Ford oater. Based on an early Elmore Leonard short story, there’s plenty of clichéd machismo on display from the get-go. Crowe plays smooth-talking, sharp-shooting criminal Ben Wade, whose gang has just knocked off their 20th Pinkerton stagecoach and all the monies therein. After a domestic entanglement slows down his getaway, Wade finds himself in the hands of the law and en route to Yuma prison....

THE FLICK: For a guy who has been pretty outspoken about his indifference to “genre” filmmaking, Danny Boyle is exceptionally good at it. Even in my personal run-ins with the director (during a lull in production of his misguided screwball comedy A Life Less Ordinary) he was quick to point out his preference for the stage, where actors act and directors are more than just glorified special effects technicians. So his success with screenwriter Alex Garland on the groundbreaking 28 Days Later and its sequel must be a particularly agonizing sort of irony. The one thing Boyle would find unbearable I’m sure is a career trapped in formula filmmaking hell, pigeonholed as a one-trick horror director making endless zombie sequels. Luckily, Sunshine, another experiment in genre reinvention, bombed in theaters stateside. From a Hollywood perspective, Boyle’s streak was over. But for fans of literate science-fiction, 3/4ths of Sunshine proves that there’s no better director working in the field of...

THE FLICK: Story goes that the Velvet Underground’s first album only sold 30 copies on its first pressing...but every person that bought it started a band, making their sound one of the most influential in music today. For my money, Richard Matheson’s novella I Am Legend is the Velvet Underground of the horror fiction world, inspiring countless apocalyptic knock-offs, rip-offs and authorized adaptations, including the recent Will Smith theatrical release, the first to use the author’s original title. But the Fresh Prince wasn’t the first to play scientist Robert Neville on screen; that honor goes to Vincent Price, whose Last Man on Earth was a low-budget but faithful approach. And wedged comfortably between them is The Omega Man, the second in Charlton Heston’s unofficial apocalypse trilogy (Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green being the bookends) that finds everyone’s favorite bare-chested, gun-totin’ Republican hunting for chemical vampires in an abandoned Los Angeles. Draped in all ...

THE FLICK: There’s probably no harder trick to pull off than an adult fairy tale. The very nature of the format calls for the sort of delicate distortion of reality and fantasy that only children are able to buy into convincingly. As adults, we bring too much cynicism to the table to believe in princesses, sprites and talking tree men as anything more than cinematic escapism (Return of the King’s Oscar win is the exception that proves the rule). But Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth has a toe in both worlds, working real-world atrocities into the fabric of a dark storybook tableau right out of the Grimm Brothers’ black forest. Forced to live with her sadistic Spanish army stepfather, young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) escapes into a fantasy world based around an abandoned labyrinth populated by fairies, monstrous toads and a smooth-talking faun who claims she’s the reincarnation of an ancient princess. To reclaim her heritage, Ofelia must perform three dangerous tasks before the moon is f...