Movieline Online

THE FLICK: Suddenly, the end of the world is in fashion again. After 28 Days Later found a way to cheaply and effectively wipe out life as we know it, the cinema has become obsessed with our own destruction...usually resulting in some sort of flesh-eating zombie plague that holds a mirror to our own inadequacies as a species. The inspiration for all this anarchy is often laid at the feet George Romero and his seminal undead epic Dawn of the Dead. But the true source goes back much further to author / screenwriter Richard Matheson’s influential novella I Am Legend. Twice adapted for the screen – 1964’s underappreciated The Last Man on Earth and 1971’s The Omega Man with a bare-chested Charlton Heston – this third version went through years of development hell before emerging with Will Smith in the lead and director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) behind the camera, telling the same story of a scientist/soldier fighting off an army of mutated survivors of a chemical apocalypse. At least, ...

THE FLICK: Alfred Hitchcock, among his many cinematic talents, had a knack for elevating popular entertainment to high art. Joel and Ethan Coen have proven themselves adept at doing the exact opposite: turning art into popular entertainment. Working in the post-modern Hollywood universe, none of the Coen Brothers’ films are outrageously original; they seem to relish jumping into recognizable formulas (screwball comedy, film noir, etc) between more prestigious projects. But when they choose to bring their A-game, no filmmaker can match their ability craft “indie” ideas with mass audience appeal. Fargo announced their artistic arrival, but No Country For Old Men cemented their reputation. Leaning heavily on their previous set-in-Texas potboiler, Blood Simple, the Coens waste little time and even fewer words getting things started. Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a pile of bodies and a stack of cash in the desert. Taking a calculated risk, he absconds with the money only to be pursue...

THE FLICKS: The giallo might have officially begun in 1970 with Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, but it was perfected over the next decade by innumerable directors who never got much credit. Blue Underground does their part by re-releasing the films included in Anchor Bay’s previous Giallo Collection as stand-alone titles: Short Night of Glass Dolls, Who Saw Her Die, The Case of the Bloody Iris and The Bloodstained Shadow. Which ones are worth adding to your crowded collection? Well, three outta four ain’t bad. Just a year after Argento’s groundbreaking work, director Aldo Lado tried to up the ante with his politically-minded thriller, Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971). Featuring a fair share of recognizable stars (Jean Sorel, Ingrid Thulin and Barbara Bach), some jazzy stylistic touches and an Ennio Morricone score, the film is a direct reflection of Lado’s enthusiasm as a first-time filmmaker. The raw ingredients are nothing special – Bach disappears without a trace, Sore...

THE FLICK: Is it possible to make a movie about a lawyer who never sets foot in a courtroom? I mean, imagine all the wasted dramatic potential; all those gasping jurors, banging gavels and unforgettable pronouncements like “You can’t handle the truth!” Is it even legal to skip those cinematic clichés? Well, writer / director Tony Gilroy pulls it off in Michael Clayton, a legal thriller that stays above the law and was rewarded with a seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. George Clooney stars as the titular lead character, a “fixer” for a prestigious New York law firm whose talents lie in finding solutions outside of the courtroom. Despite his usefulness and tenured status in the firm, Michael is 80-grand in debt and looking for way out of a career he never wanted in the first place. Called in to handle an embarrassing situation surrounding a critical case, he finds his loyalty tested by a fellow attorney who’s gone off his medication and “off the reservation,” threatening to...

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...

THE FLICK: History is littered with failed innovations that were supposed to change the way we spend our leisure time. 8-tracks were going to revolutionize music. Dragon’s Lair was going to turn the videogame industry on its head. And 3D is poised, yet again, to invade theaters. So you’ll understand my hesitation to crown the “Make Your Own Movie” Blu-ray feature on Return to House on Haunted Hill as the next big thing. Don’t get me wrong, the “choose your own adventure” concept is a novel one. It makes for a fun party game and adds a bit of replayability to an otherwise tired sequel to a remake of a ‘50s B-movie. But it can’t save a train-wreck of a script full of bland characters and a low scare ratio. Concocting a ridiculous chain of events that bring together a group of archeology students and hired mercenaries in pursuit of an evil artifact hidden inside the abandoned Vannacutt Mental Asylum, director Victor Garcia makes the most of the previous film’s production design since he r...

THE FLICK: Where to begin? Actually, the question that must have been plaguing director Gore Verbinski is how the hell do we end this thing! It was obvious at the end of part two – Dead Man’s Chest – that the screenplay by Ted Eliott and Terry Rossio had been pushed, pulled and stretched beyond all narrative comprehension. Their cinematic eyes were bigger than their stomachs, and the playful, swashbuckling adventures of Captain Jack and his crew had evolved into a dark, dreary, convoluted series of backstabbing character arcs that were left completely unresolved. It would take nothing short of a miracle for the final chapter to pull all the strings together for a satisfying conclusion. And while producer Jerry Bruckheimer may be the most powerful man in Hollywood, he’s no miracle worker. In fact, the Pirates franchise, as financially successful as it is, may be the one project he let get away from him creatively. For one can’t imagine that such a savvy filmmaker (he turned Nicolas Cage...

THE FLICK: Inspired by the true story of American pilot Dieter Dengler’s capture and eventual escape from a North Vietnamese prison camp during the early years of the war, there was probably no better choice to direct the screen adaptation than Werner Herzog. After all, the man had already let Dengler tell the story himself in the riveting documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. And Herzog’s penchant for shooting under exceedingly uncomfortable jungle conditions (proven in Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath of God) set up some high expectations for the director’s first foray into traditional narrative filmmaking in quite some time. And there is much to praise about this survival story, namely the acting by stars Christian Bale, Jeremy Davies and especially Steve Zahn - who performs a complete career transformation as the soft-spoken Duane Martin - along with the smothering rain forest locations, so thick with suffocating greenery you can’t imagine how they squeezed a camera between th...

THE FLICK: I know that it’s not the popular opinion, but in a side-by-side comparison I prefer the tangible carnage in director Marcus Nispel’s Pathfinder to the fantastical CG renderings of 300. Yes, I understand that Zack Snyder’s film is a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking that will influence cinema for the next 10 years or so. It’s the better movie, no doubt about it. And Pathfinder will most likely fade away into Netflix limbo, rented only by customers who couldn’t get the latest Bourne film added to their queue fast enough. But for kids who grew up on a healthy diet of Heavy Metal magazine and repeats of Conan the Barbarian, this one will strike a nerve. The sole survivor of a failed Viking raid on North American soil, “Ghost” (Karl Urban), as he is billed in the credits, is adopted by a Native American tribe and grows to adulthood under their gentle tuteledge. Although the white warrior never quite fits in, his skills with a sword are put to good use when another band of Nordic...

THE FLICK: From the first thundering echo of footsteps over a black screen, you just know Godzilla is different from other films in the atomic monster genre. There’s an ominous sense of doom, dread and tragic destiny at work that’s at odds with your expectations of a man in a rubber suit crushing scale-model buildings. And the long-awaited release of the original Japanese version of Gojira (sans Raymond Burr and the re-shot American footage) only serves to prove this point further. Director Ishiro Honda may have been working in a B-movie domain, but he was delivering an A-movie message. Rising from the depths in a boiling fury of atomic age retribution, Godzilla himself is a fairly clear-cut embodiment of Japanese fears of reckless nuclear testing in the aftermath of their own personal losses during WWII. And unlike later films in the series, Gojira is a serious, somber metaphor of the consequences mankind may endure if he doesn’t smarten up. This is no light-hearted monster mash. Now ...

THE FLICK: It’s a minor Hollywood miracle that the Ocean’s remakes even exist at all. The cumulative salaries of the stars involved would stretch around the world six times if they hadn’t deferred a good chunk of change to work together under the guidance of director Steven Soderbergh. The appeal to the trilogy is that “backstage pass” vibe you get by watching “A-list” celebrities goof off for a couple of hours. Of course, Ocean’s 12 took things too far, stretching out poorly improvised dialogue that probably seemed funny on the set but came off as arrogantly self-serving on the screen. And the whole Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts meeting Bruce Willlis thing? Save it for the after-party, people. Luckily, things are back on track for part three. After a cocky casino owner (Al Pacino) gives one of the gang a raw deal, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) gets the band back together for a one-time-only revenge heist with the intent of breaking the auspicious new Bank casino on opening night....

THE SHOW: The rise of the serial TV drama has been both a blessing and a curse. Shows like Lost, 24 and Prison Break have elevated episodic television to Hollywood standards, delivering mini-motion pictures in the course of 45-minutes that equal anything you might pay $7.50 for in a theater. But TV is a marathon, not a sprint, and the challenge of creating 20+ episodes of the same quality is next to impossible. And let’s not even talk about the Season Two slumps! That being said, I believe the first season of Lost is the best thing ever produced for the medium. And Prison Break ain’t far behind. The writing isn’t nearly as complex, nuanced or imaginative, but it’s compulsively crafted with built-in cliffhangers and cul-de-sacs that all but guarantee you’ll be back next week. And now that Fox has blessed us with a Blu-ray set of Season One, next week means right now! When Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), a dashing young structural engineer with no criminal record, suddenly commits a...

THE FLICKS: All hail the DVD box set! Sure, there are bound to be a couple of stinkers in there you really don’t want to own - two thirds of a trilogy that just aren’t up to snuff (ahem, The Matrix) or a remake that went horribly off course (yo, Superman Returns). But when you plunk down $50 bucks and change for a box set, you’re also buying a little piece of history, aren’t you; a document of our pop culture fascinations and foibles on a few shiny metal discs...and maybe some liner notes, if you’re lucky. Severin Films understands this completely. And because no one else had the courage to do it, they took it upon themselves to release not one, but two Black Emanulle collections featuring the immortally exotic Laura Gemser. Why preserve second-grade soft-core porn, you might ask? They’re not particularly well-made, not particularly arousing, and very few would complain if the prints simply deteriorated in some private collector’s basement. But for fans of the history of cinema, these ...

THE FLICKS: While he doesn’t have Dario Argento’s fanbase or Jess Franco’s padded resume, Italian director Lucio Fulci is not without his admirers, mostly earned during his gory glory days during the ‘80s with The Beyond, House By The Cemetary, and Zombie. But like any filmmaker of note in his native country, Fulci dabbled in almost every genre, including the giallo (mystery) format and even a sex comedy or two. Severin Films has released one of each, showcasing a less bloody side of the director not known for his restraint. Based on the title alone (not to mention the delightfully naughty artwork) The Eroticist would likely be dismissed as nothing more than subtitled T & A. But the film has much larger aspirations and a much broader canvas, ridiculing the Italian political system and all its inherent corruptive influences with equal gusto. Sure, there’s some ass-grabbing and naughty nuns, but Fulci’s emphasis is on satire and slapstick rather than soft-focus sex scenes. Candidate ...

THE FLICKS: As with every other film genre, when the Italians stumbled onto something that made money, the market was flooded with an infinite number of variations of the subject. Cannibalism was no different, and although it offered less creative opportunities for exposition (explorers trek into the jungle, get eaten, roll credits please), producers found ways to get prints into theaters, even recruiting good ‘ol Jess Franco – the prolific Eurosleaze director who ineptness crosses all genre boundaries – to step up to the buffet. Cannibals was sold under a number of other titles, but, as Led Zeppelin so aptly put it, the song remains the same. Al Cliver (Fulci’s Zombie 2) brings his family along on a scientific expedition only to lose his arm, his wife and his young daughter to a tribe of natives sporting KISS make-up. His wife is promptly eaten alive in a genuinely disturbing slow-motion montage. His daughter is kidnapped and proclaimed a white goddess to be worshipped. While his arm,...

THE FLICK: The comic-book generation has grown up to rule the box-office, commanding enough clout to get even the most minor Marvel / DC / Dark Horse character his or her very own franchise. And yet, when the Fantastic Four, one of the tentpole supergroups from the ‘60s, finally got its own movie (not counting the unreleased Roger Corman version) that very same audience bitched and moaned their way through the whole thing. Their chief complaint? It was too juvenile, too jokey, too kid-friendly. Does anyone else see the irony here? The comic-book generation has grown up, and they expect their heroes to grow up with them. Batman, Superman, even the usually fun-loving Spiderman were all saddled with some major emotional baggage when they finally hit the screen. With Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, director Tim Story sticks to his guns by producing a light-hearted story (well, as light-hearted as worldwide destruction can be) featuring spandex clad-characters who celebrate their...