Movieline Online

The Brazilian boogeyman, Jose Mojica Marins and his on-screen alter-ego Coffin Joe, return from a 30 year absence in Embodiment of Evil , a thoroughly sick, sadistic (yet somehow old-fashioned) and thoroughly unexpected third entry in the Coffin Joe series. Flashing back to his films in the ‘60s, Coffin Joe is tortured by black-and-white visitations from his victims. But that doesn’t stop him from pursing his all-consuming quest to find the perfect woman with which to mate and conceive a child (why he doesn’t just strap on some beer-goggles and head to Bennigan’s is anyone’s guess). With fingernails longer than the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills plus top hat and cape, Marins character is a reincarnated fashion faux pas. And for a while one expects the film to simply provide an aging horror star the opportunity for one last classy swan song. But Marins is one sick puppy, and Embodiment of Evil will be a rough slap in the face for anyone unfamiliar with his twisted state of mind...

While the giallo itself (Italy’s brand name for sexy, gory thrillers) was a played-out inbred mess by 1980, there are still plenty of gems waiting to be polished from the early ‘70s when the genre was full of new blood. The Perfume of the Lady in Black may not even fit the genre conventions quite right – no black gloved killer, no overt violence (more on that later) and no central murder mystery – leaning more towards a Hitchcockian psychotic meltdown than an Argento exercise in excess. Mimsy Farmer plays Sylvia, a fragile young woman haunted by visions of a childhood trauma. These visions begin to intrude on reality, taking the form of a young version of herself that Sylvia is both consoled and terrified by. But are these visions real, imagined or a supernatural conspiracy dreamed up by those around her? Director Franceso Barilli’s approach is elegantly restrained and avoids almost every crass exploitation opportunity (besides the surprisingly gory finale), complemented by a ...

The cult of Dario Argento admirers was once a pretty exclusive club. But boutique labels like Blue Underground changed all that by not only making the Italian director’s films readily available on various digital formats, but giving them the sort of treatment you couldn’t imagine back in the bootleg VHS days. Now it’s Argento overload! Even a casual message board scan inevitably turns up a dozen debates as to which of his films ranks highest. Inferno always is one of the top vote getters. And one glimpse of this new Blu-ray edition you can see why. The Suspiria sequel boasts the same oversaturated color scheme – red, green and blue practically bleeding off the screen – and numerous set-piece murder sequences. But Inferno doesn’t even pretend to adhere to a plot. There’s a continuing story structure involving the book The Three Mothers which details the secrets of a witch’s coven spread across the globe (trust me, checking that sucker out of the library gets you in more tro...

FERNANDO DI LEO CRIME COLLECTION: The films of Quentin Tarantino are a melting pot of b-movie inspirations and outright cinematic thievery. But at least the guy is honest about it! By lending his stamp of approval to this new 4-movie set from Raro Video, he’s paying back one of the filmmakers who helped to shape his career. Like most Italian director’s working in the gangster genre, Di Leo’s films are anything but subtle. Yet there’s a heavy political subtext and enough double and triple crosses to keep even the most experienced genre veteran guessing. The Italian Connection has a chase scene to rival anything put on the screen and a black / white hitman combo that will seem more than a little familiar to Pulp Fiction fans. Caliber 9 makes the most of its hulking anti-hero (Gaston Moschin) and the luscious Barbara Bouchet. The Boss plays off star Henry Silva, whose cold shark-eyes are put to good use as an ambitious hitman. While Rulers of the City twists the genre conv...

Go ahead, get out your tiny violins. I’m so tired of watching movies! I understand the idea of complaining about reviewing movies (even as a side-job) isn’t apt to get much pity. But quite honestly, Sundance can be an exhausting experience. It can also be an inspiring, fascinating and exhilarating one. Which, of course, is why we keep going. Even 30 years into its history, Robert Redford’s annual celebration of indie film is still the pick of the litter when it comes to US film festivals. It has up and down years, but so does the film industry in general. So how does 2011 stack up? Let’s run through the 15 films I managed to cover in 4 days…it’s only a snapshot but that’s the best one man and a shuttle bus can accomplish in that amount of time. THE PREMIERES: RED STATE was the hottest ticket at the fast for a few reasons. Director Kevin Smith was synonymous with Sundance ever since Clerks made him a success. But rumor was this was a bit of a departure from the guy who t...

When the front cover shows a picture of a six-seater passenger plane being attacked by some multi-tentacled space octopus, the odds are not in your favor. Not that there’s anything wrong with the idea of a space octopus per se (in fact, it’s downright exciting!) but direct-to-DVD too often means direct-to-SyFy Channel…right between to Mansquito and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus . But Altitude is one ambitious little flick. It has to rise above a cast straight out of your favorite “dead teenager” movie, a script that comes dangerously close to copyright infringement of Stephen King’s The Langoliers , and, to top it off, traps the audience inside that tiny puddle-jumper of a plane for the entire running time! But first-time director Kaare Andrews (a Marvel Comic writer and illustrator) turns it all into an exercise in B-movie Hitchcock thrills and chills. The aforementioned space octopus is kept off-screen for the most part, but it’s eventual appearance actually lives up to the ar...

The Exorcist tops most people’s scary movie lists, but if you asked them I’m not sure they could say why. After all, the film is more than 30 years old (well, past the expiration date for most contemporary audiences). It doesn’t feature a “franchise” killer good for twenty sequels. Loose ends are everywhere, characters pop in and out and the music features more keyboards than A Flock of Seagulls concert. But here’s the thing about The Exorcist : it’s a movie that could never be made today. Studio executives would burn the script. Audiences would picket the theaters. It’s simply too provocative to be created in today’s PC obsessed society. That alone makes it something in an anomaly of the horror genre, which only seems to get bloodier as time goes on. Director William Friedkin was way ahead of the curve in terms of treating his supernatural subject matter with a documentarian’s eye (something Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch took to the extreme). The film may be old fa...

There was a time when New York City was dangerous, both in the physical and moral sense. A time when hookers were more common than rich housewives with dogs stuffed in their purses. When Times Square was a place to get cheap thrills, not cheap TVs and discount merchandise. The cinema of the ‘70s captured this very well (perhaps none better than Scorsese’s Taxi Driver ), but William Lustig’s Maniac is a worthy document of NYC’s sordid past, a surprising psychological profile and a down ‘n dirty exploitation movie to boot. Joe Spinell plays serial killer Frank Zito as a tortured soul, driven to murder by the memory of his prostitute mother. The fact that his character evokes sympathy despite the atrocity of his crimes (expertly and gruesomely executed by Tom Savini, who also has a small role) is a testament to both Lustig’s direction and Spinell’s performance. By all rights Maniac should have been simply another Halloween clone (it was certainly advertised as such) but instead...

Of all the horror icons created in the ‘80s, Freddy Krueger had the most potential. Wes Craven’s original Nightmare on Elm Street gave its serial dream stalker an endless amount of unconscious scrap material with which to do his dirty work. He could pop up in bathtubs, under the bed, inside your television…even French kiss you through the phone! Eight up-and-down sequels later, we get yet another boring “reimagining,” I guess because kids today won’t watch anything made before 1990. Too bad for them, because this slick but lifeless remake doesn’t have an ounce of imagination. What it does have is a couple of good actors: the new “Nancy,” Rooney Mara, (soon to be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ) and Jackie Earl Haley who gets the impossible task of replacing Robert Englund. Haley’s make-up, although much more believable, never allows the actor to emote with fiendish glee, an essential aspect of the Freddy persona. A deleted ending sans make-up shows what Haley might have brou...

For over three decades slasher films have lived and died on the “killshot.” You know what I’m talking about: a guy in a hockey mask skewers three people on one pitchfork while doing a triple-axle on a motorcycle jumping over 15 flaming school buses. The more creatively someone could be sliced and/or diced, the more successful the movie. Hatchet proclaims itself to be a return to old school American horror, but ironically the kill scenes are a bit of a bore. It’s the victims themselves who make this derivative boogeyman flick more interesting than usual. Writer / director Adam Green sets his story deep in the swamps of Louisiana where a mismatched group of tourists wander off Bourbon street to try a party-boat “ghost tour” that drifts into the territory of Victor Crowley, a deformed man-child whose favorite weapon of choice is, you guessed it, a hatchet. The passengers and crew meet their expectedly gruesome demises with some strong effects work and a few effective jump scares. B...

Even if you were a fan of 80% of the SNL skits turned into movies (we’re talking borderline stuff like Night at the Roxbury and Superstar ) you had to be nervous about MacGruber . I mean, this is a parody of a pre-existing ‘80s TV show ( MacGyver ) with the same punchline…every…single…time. That doesn’t give you much to work with. Maybe that’s why the more successful elements of star Will Forte’s film take aim at Reagan-era clichés (mullets, removable tape decks and the bad music we played on them) rather than MacGruber himself, who is an unlikable A-hole. In fact, although his character is based on the Will Ferrell idiot man-child routine, Forte boxes himself into a corner with this expanded version. We just plain don’t like him. Ferrell’s characters always had a sweet chewy center, but MacGruber is crude and obnoxious with absolutely no redeeming qualities. You can squeeze a few laughs out of that, but not 90 minutes worth. Director Jorma Taccone does a great job of recrea...

When it comes to TV show finales, very few of them are able to stick the landing. For every M.A.S.H. or Newhart there are dozen Seinfelds which seem to crack under the pressure of wrapping up a decade worth of characters and quips into one comprehensive package. Which is what makes Lost’s accomplishment that much more impressive. After six seasons of mysteries, conspiracies and enough time-traveling to earn frequent flier miles to the moon and back, writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse finally buckled down and came to the realization most of us understood from the beginning: the show was never really about the island, it about the people on it. The reveal that this season’s “sideways” world was actually a pleasant form of purgatory, designed to help each our travelers “let go” and move into the next world, can be viewed as a cheat if you actually took any of that Dharma initiative crap seriously. But experienced TV viewers should realize that most shows aren’t mapped out six ...

As I child of the ‘80s I can tell you from experience that you had to work pret-ty darn hard to get a look at naked ladies. Before the corruption of the world wide web, curious kids only had a few magazines (always placed strategically out of reach or covered by those damn brown bags!) and scrambled cable channels to peruse after hours. Loose Screws: Screwballs 2 was one of those Porky’s clones you tried to catch a glimpse of after Mom and Dad went to bed. And, man, does it deliver the raunchy goods! As a direct sequel to Screwballs (which was more parody that soft-core copycat) the same horny foursome are sent to summer school where they bet bragging rights on who can catch a glimpse of the hot French teacher, Miss Mona Lott, in the buff. Miss Mona stays clothed until the end, but every other female student is definitely clothing-impaired. Made up of one raunchy sketch after another, Loose Screws is a near constant barrage of nudity and crudity with a script that wouldn’t ev...

Other than a few class acts, ‘80s slasher movies relied almost exclusively on their creative “kills” to attract attention. And after beheading, puncturing, smashing and exploding a literal army of zombies in the original Dawn of the Dead , make-up legend Tom Savini was up to just about any challenge. The Prowler actually has a leg up on Savini’s work in Friday the 13 th (shot a year earlier) at least in terms of its gruesome effectiveness. There’s a convincing pitchfork to the midsection, butcher knife through the brain, throat slitting and a pre- Scanners head explosion that splatters the screen like the 4th of July! Helmed by Joseph Zito (who went on to direct a Friday the 13 th chapter as well), the film bears a striking structural resemblance to My Bloody Valentine , with a 1945 preamble massacre that bans a local college graduation dance for 35 years. Of course, when the party is resurrected so is the titular killer, complete with army fatigues and assorted weaponry. As...

Other than the famous maestros Fellini, Antonioni and Leone, Italian directors really never get much respect. But watching Sandok for the first time in its original scope photography, you get the sense that there wasn’t anything Hollywood could put on screen that “spaghetti “directors could do just as well. Case in point, this rousing old-school adventure based on the popular novels by Emilio Salgari which features just the sort of Saturday matinee ingredients (snakes, rats, tigers, crocodiles, rare diamonds and dangerous thugs) that were later co-opted by Spielberg and Lucas to create Raiders of the Lost Ark . Director Umberto Lenzi is working in the classic Hollywood style, with opulent sets and exotic locations, but he keeps the tone light and loose with his two main characters – Alan Foster (Richard Harrison), an American thief on the run in India and Sitama Wilbert Bradly), a native fakir whose sacred vows are flexible depending on the situation. Their adventures in pursuit o...

Denzel Washington has been nominated for two Emmys, five Oscars (he took home two) and is arguably one of those finest actors working today. He swings from blockbusters to serious dramas without missing a beat and really has nothing left to prove to anyone. Except that he’s got mad kung-fu skills! I’m not sure how much actual “Denzel” made it into The Book of Eli ’s copious action scenes, but he’s pretty spry for a 55 year-old man. As the star of Albert and Allen Hughes’ apocalyptic Road Warrior -meets- The Ten Commandments mish-mash, Washington wanders through the wasteland on a mission from God to deliver his copy of the Bible (the very last copy, apparently) to a deserving community. Instead he runs afoul of Gary Oldman and his band of marauding survivalists who want to use the book’s inherent Biblical power to convert more followers. By now we’ve seen so many versions of this end-of-days scenario, that the Hughes brothers have their work cut out for them…even with Denzel in...

Universal’s remake of The Wolfman came awfully close to being an “Alan Smithee” production. You know, the nome de plume director’s take when their work has been hacked to unrecognizable pieces by studios who feel their work isn’t commercial enough. One director walked out (music video vet Mark Romanek) and another ( Jurassic Park 3’s Joe Johnston) went through a number of reshoots before the movie was put on a shelf like a wheel of cheese to be aged for more than a year. The odds were pretty high that Benecio Del Toro’s transformation into a hairy howling beast was going to need some serious grooming. But, as they say in professional sports, “that’s why they play the game.” And surprisingly much of the high-profile artistry shines through in this updated but engagingly retro version of the 1941 classic. The sets, scenery and photography are all gloriously Victorian. Anthony Hopkins is enjoyably hammy. And make-up artist Rick Baker’s designs hearken back to Universal’s glory d...

Like the flowers, card and candy, Valentine’s Day “the movie” is just one of those things men are expected to suffer through. It’s not really meant for anyone with a Y-chromosome despite sporting its fair share of eye candy both female (Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel) and male (Jamie Foxx, Ashton Kutcher, Eric Dane). In fact, it easier to list who’s not involved in the all-star cast than sit through the lengthy credits. The wraparound story involves several different couples who are either breaking up or hooking up on this the most romantic of holidays. Will Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner realize that they’re more than just best friends? Will Anne Hathaway’s second job as a phone sex operator ruin her chances with Topher Grace? Will Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine patch up their marriage? OK, no one really cares about that last one; this is a movie for the smartphone generation through and through. But it’s also heavily inspired by the far superior Bri...

Despite sporting subtitles, being set in Saigon and featuring an all Vietnamese cast, Owl and the Sparrow doesn’t really fall into the typical foreign film category. And Stephane Gauger, the Vietnamese-American writer-director behind the film, would be the first to agree. His story of a flight attendant, zoo keeper and young flower girl whose lives intermingle over the course of five days in the city is the sort of simple, universal story that even Hollywood producers have made hundreds of times. Yet it’s not what’s in Gauger’s film that makes it different, it’s what he leaves out . There are no pratfalls, no wacky neighbors, no talking animals, no comedic misunderstandings that result in groin hits, spit takes or falls down a long flight of stairs. Owl and the Sparrow dispenses with the complications and tells the tender story of a little girl who, on the run from her callous uncle, winds up penniless and hungry on the street. Through a series of coincidences, she brings toget...

There have been countless actors throughout cinematic history who, despite their talent, charisma, good looks and professional training, just never become stars. They pop up in mediocre to bad movies, always hinting at their breakthrough potential but never living up to it. There’s plenty of blame to go around: bad luck, bad karma, and bad agents. But Paul Bettany leads the very definition of this cursed existence. After making a huge impression in A Knight’s Tale and Master and Commander , he’s limped from one lackluster film to the next finally coming to rest in Legion , a film for which he’s vastly overqualified and probably more than a little embarrassed to be emblazoned on the poster as a machine gun totin’ fallen angel escaped from Heaven to save us all from God’s wrath. Stitching together equal parts from Terminator and Tales From the Crypt’s Demon Knight , the film hints at worldwide Armageddon but only shows us the run-down diner where an unwed mother (Adrianne Palikir)...

If you’re looking for a classic Bond fix, Dorado films has your number: 077. With any new Bond films put on the backburner thanks to MGM’s financial woes, now’s the perfect time to catch up with Bond’s brother-from-another-mother: Dick Malloy, the CIA’s answer to Britain’s super-suave secret agent. He has a license to kill, punch, slap and make love to anyone that stands in his way. And as played by the burly Hollywood cast-off Ken Clark, you might just find yourself rooting for Agent 077 despite his hand-me-down villains, gadgets and overly dramatic theme songs. Copyrights be damned, these Italian co-productions lift everything that works in the Bond franchise and tweak it just enough to stay out of court. In Mission Bloody Mary , Malloy is on the trail of a new superweapon hijacked from the US and about to hit the blackmarket courtesy of the mysterious “Black Lily.” Joining him on the job is an attractive female operative (Helga Linne) who may or may not be in his corner. M...

With any new Bond films put on the backburner thanks to MGM’s financial woes, now’s the perfect time to catch up with Bond’s brother-from-another-mother: Dick Malloy, the CIA’s answer to Britain’s super-suave secret agent. He has a license to kill, punch, slap and make love to anyone that stands in his way. And as played by the burly Hollywood cast-off Ken Clark, you might just find yourself rooting for Agent 077 despite his hand-me-down villains, gadgets and overly dramatic theme songs.

Copyrights be damned, these Italian co-productions lift everything that works in the Bond franchise and tweak it just enough to stay out of court. In Mission Bloody Mary, Malloy is on the trail of a new superweapon hijacked from the US and about to hit the blackmarket courtesy of the mysterious “Black Lily.” Joining him on the job is an attractive female operative (Helga Linne) who may or may not be on his side.

Even die-hard Godzilla fans will admit that the idea of a 60-meter tall turtle stomping across Japan is patently ridiculous. Not to mention that he breathes fire and travels through the air like a jet-powered Frisbee. And yet that’s part of the charm of the Gamera series, the only legitimate contender to Toho’s “King of the Monsters” crown. Popping up for years on TV creature features across the country (and most recently mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000 ), the Gamera films seemed to know they were second-best when it came to kaiju eiga…but damn if they weren’t going to have a good time! With a surprise announcement I don’t think anyone saw coming, Shout Factory comes to the digital rescue by scooping up the rights to all of Gamera’s screen appearances. First up is Gamera , The Giant Monster presented for the first time in its correct aspect ratio with original Japanese language tracks. As a collector’s item for giant monster fans, this is akin to finding a Spanish doub...

Fifteen years ago, Kevin Costner was on top of the world. Now he’s standing on top of an Indian burial mound shooting mud-covered zombies in a movie that was released in only two theaters. In Costner’s defense, The New Daughter is pretty good for what it is: a slow-burn, spooky campfire story that only loses its bearings during the ridiculously sloppy conclusion. Shepherded by Spanish director Luis Berdejo, whose clever zombie movie REC was remade as Quarantine , and starring Ivana Baquero, the little girl from Pan’s Labyrinth , the film is brilliantly creepy for most of its running time. Costner moves his broken family to a quaint little house in the swamp, where his almost-teenage daughter begins acting strangely after discovering a big pile of dirt in the backyard. As with most haunted house movies, the history of the property is soon uncovered and Costner questions whether his little girl is possessed by demons or just going through some hellish hormonal changes. If Berdej...

When used correctly, sci-fi gives filmmakers a chance to comment on current society with complete impunity. If you do it right, no one even knows it’s there. But with Daybreakers , set in a world where a vampirism is the new norm and humankind is on the verge of extinction, the subtext is either entirely lacking or buried 6-feet under a pile of bat guano. Ethan Hawke (who, bless his heart, always seems willing to give genre movies the ‘ol college try) plays a vampire hemotologist searching for a human blood substitute to replace the real thing. The remnants of mankind are milked for their precious bodily fluids in a big Matrix -style storage facility, but the well has almost gone dry. Sympathetic to the survivors plight, Hawke falls in with a group of human resistance fighters (including Willem Dafoe) who have a potential cure that could set the world to rights again….that is, if the prevailing vampire government (led by Sam Neill) will let it happen. Directed by the Spierig Bro...

John Malkovich has made a career of out being creepy. I’m sure he’s capable of much more but when you can give someone goosebumps by crossing your eyes, you play to your strengths. Bouncing between artistic independents and bit parts in potential blockbusters, Malkovich seems to have an uncanny awareness of his own screen persona (how else do you explain Being John Malkovich ?) and how to use it to best effect. Which makes him a perfect choice to play the intellectually superior but morally repugnant character of Professor David Lurie, a South African instructor who manipulates attractive students into questionable sexual relations and feels not the slightest bit of regret. Based on the novel by Nobel Prize winning author J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace is a difficult film to enjoy but an easy one to admire, much like another recent adaptation, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Professor Lurie’s forced resignation is only the beginning of his ethical reeducation. A violent attack on his own dau...

Records are made to be broken. No one knows that better than director James Cameron who broke his own worldwide box-office take from Titanic with this sci-fi follow-up that pushed CG / 3D technology over the edge of “pretty good” to “holy crap!” The story itself is simply blue-skinned aliens laid over a Dances With Wolves blueprint (with a few spare parts from Cameron’s own films like Aliens and Terminator), but the environmentally friendly message combined with escapist entertainment hit at just the right time. There’s been an inevitable amount of backlash surrounding the film’s success, but for all its noble intentions, Avatar doesn’t aspire to be much more than 10-year-old boy fantasy…like a Boris Vallejo painting brought to startling life. In Cameron’s defense, The Blind Side didn’t hold up to much criticism either, but it was up for Best Picture! Much of Avatar’s appeal lay in the theatrical experience, something that even the impending onslaught of 3D televisions won’t repli...

In the second half of the 20th century, Italian filmmakers were merciless rip-off artists. Box office success meant a green-light for hundreds of copycat pictures hoping to capitalize on audience interest in any way possible: rampant retitling (Django anyone?), imported American stars (you’re welcome, Mr. Eastwood) and ample amounts of sex and violence. And while very few of these plagiarized productions are true classics, upstart DVD label Dorado Films knows there’s still an audience out there. And, boy, do they deliver…with pulp poster cover art packaging, actor biographies and gobs of trailers promising more to come. Thought Goldmember was the most blatant 007 title rip-off? How about FROM THE ORIENT WITH FURY starring American Ken Clark as Agent 077 Dick Malloy, a rock ‘em-sock ‘em playboy / spy on a mission to rescue a kidnapped nuclear physicist. Malloy might not have Bond’s expense account, but he gets into more fistfights than Connery had in the first three Ian Fleming a...