Movieline Online

A fresh-out-of-film-school production, Kolobos (1999) certainly wasn't the launching pad it cast and crew expected it to be. But its early skewering of MTV's Real World clichés and pre-torture porn slashers like Saw make it a bit more worthwhile for forgiving lovers of the genre. There are plenty of clever homages to Italian horror, but you have to be willing to put up with roommates with weak back stories and bad acting habits to get there. Responding to an ad for participants to shack up in a fully-wired rental home and allow their daily lives to be recorded 24/7, five ambitious 20-somethings wind up under lockdown with a serial killer who has rigged up laser-beam deathtraps throughout the property. The weakest link seems to be Kyra (Amy Weber, now best known as a WWE diva!) whose visions of a mutilated madman make the rest of the group suspect she's partly to blame. But as the finger-pointing increases so does the body count and it's likely they all will ...

As a rule of thumb, anything starring Alec Guinness is usually worth a watch; even a film as obscure as 1955's The Prisoner , an unapologetically stagey and political drama that features its fair share of scenery chewing. Based on the notorious show trial of a church official accused of treason by the Hungarian government, director Peter Glenville's production obscures the setting but keeps all the anti-Communist agenda intact. So much so that the film was banned from the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals to prevent any political turmoil. A hero of the resistance and face of the church, The Cardinal (Guinness) is arrested mid-sermon and hauled before an interrogator (Jack Hawkins) whose psychological techniques have previously proven successful in forcing false "confessions" by those who challenge the authority of the State. As the two match wits, the power struggle causes an unexpected transference of sympathies, leaving both men in a compromised situation with c...