Theodore Melfi’s feature directorial debut looks like a fairly conventional piece of cinema. There are many conceits that may seem all too familiar to even the least discerning of audiences. On the surface, St. Vincent looks like a piece of feel-good cinema that could have easily been dismissed as nothing more than a TV movie of the week. Despite the material’s familiarity, Melfi manages to put together an entertaining feel-good comedy that features a solid cast who elevate the film altogether.
Of all the films that could be chosen to kick off the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash seems like the perfect choice to start it with a bang. This loud, intense film provides not only a captivating story, but also gives the viewer a complete sensory overload with its boisterous performances and amazingly percussive sound design.
When crafting a horror sequel, everything generally needs to be bolder, louder and more excessive. Tommy Wirkola, director of Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead, must have taken this to heart because this is a sequel that eclipses the original in almost every regard. Playing out much more like a gory action/comedy, rather than a horror/comedy like the original, Wirkola cranks everything up to 11, and delivers one of the craziest, nauseating and most brazen zombie films I’ve ever seen.
Ivan Kavanagh’s The Canal combines the creepy imagery of a Japanese horror film with the paranoia of a psychological thriller to make one of the riveting horror films of the year. At its core, The Canal a fairly simple ghost story, not unlike Scott Derrickson’s Sinister, but there’s enough depth to the scares be effective and to make them feel fresh in the already-crowded market of haunted house movies.
The Houses October Built is yet another film in a seemingly never-ending, relentless downpour of found-footage horror. While it follows the same exact beats as so many others like it, this one does manage to provide a number of cheap thrills and a concept that isn’t wholly unoriginal. In the end though, it’s just another found-footage horror movie that doesn’t make much technical sense and would probably work a thousand times better if it were shot traditionally.
The Devil Incarnate is an uninspired, tepid and profoundly generic possession film that blends traditional storytelling with, wait for it, found footage. All the tropes are here and, unfortunately, not even some creepy imagery can save this film from being a forgettable paint-by-numbers fright flick.
Although we rarely, if ever, talk about television shows on this site, Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time series is one that deserves as much coverage as possible. It’s a simple tale about a boy and his dog (who is also his brother) and the various adventures they go on throughout the land of Ooo, which may or may not be a post-apocalyptic future Earth. It’s wonderfully written, superbly animated and contains the type of subject matter and comedy that can easily be enjoyed by adults as much as children.
If one thing can be said about director Nacho Vigalondo, it’s that he’s always coming up with new and creative ways to tell stories. Timecrimes was one of the best time travel movies I’ve ever seen and might be one of my favorite thrillers of all time. Extraterrestrial brought a different take on the alien invasion movie, and now Open Windows, his first English-language film, takes a harsh look at technology and obsession. The film is told entirely through a computer screen, which doesn’t seem like something that could hold one’s attention for an hour and a half, but somehow Vigalondo throws in enough suspense and twists to keep everyone glued to the screen.
In this day and age, it’s very easy for someone to take a video of an event and submit it for viewing, whether it’s via YouTube or on the evening news. For example, during an earthquake or tornado people will submit their footage, and if it’s deemed good enough to show, it’ll hit the airwaves. There it is, your video with your name appearing on screen. If you have just the right footage, a video on YouTube can become an overnight sensation.
When the first ABCs of Death film came out last year I was excited at the prospect of 26 different directors offered the opportunity to take a letter from the alphabet and have full creative control in crafting a macabre tale of death told letter by letter.
These days, found-footage horror films are a dime a dozen, and while most of them attempt to add something new and fresh, they rarely ever do. Directors Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates are quite familiar with the genre, having previously directed The Zombie Diaries, and now their latest effort, The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill, aims to once again present itself as a documentary, exploring the paranormal occurrences of a very real place. But does this film set itself apart from the multitude of docu-style horror films that have been coming out seemingly every week for the last few years? Unfortunately, no it doesn’t..
The title of Julian Gilbey’s action-thriller Plastic seems to not only describe the way in which the leads make their money, but also the artificiality of the film itself. Although it touts being based on a true story, it’s hard to believe anything in this movie actually happened, except for maybe a bunch of asshole college kids stealing credit cards and getting caught.
The Boxtrolls, the third stop-motion film by Laika Entertainment, following 2009’s Coraline and 2012’s ParaNorman, is a story about a family of tiny, curious creatures and their adopted human boy. The boxtrolls live underground in a wonderland-like hive among their gadgets, widgets and gizmos that they have built from the trinkets and trash they’ve collected from the human town of Cheesebridge.
Boy meets girl (or vice versa). Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.
This pretty much sums up the basic structure of the countless romantic comedies that have been made since film’s early beginnings in the early 20th century. The challenges filmmakers face when tackling a rom-com is finding a way to entertain an audience familiar with the genre’s many tropes. And finding a fresh angle is certainly a daunting task when rom-coms are a dime a dozen.
You wouldn’t know it judging from the generic cover, but Found. is equal parts extreme horror and coming-of-age story. It deals with dysfunctional family units, racism, and bullying, all while adding in some of the most disturbing scenes of horror I’ve seen in quite some time. This is a film that exudes controversy, from the dialogue to the extremely graphic imagery. It’s well made and impressively shot, especially considering its shoestring budget, but be forewarned, this is a tough movie that will linger with you far after the credits roll.
After my editor handed me a copy of the Blu-ray for Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, I popped it in the player and settled in for what I thought would be a heartwarming, animated tale of who-knows-what. Frankly, it didn’t matter; animated movies get me every time. But that aside, this is a release from Shout! Factory, which is known for its high-quality releases and is the parent company of the Film Pulse darling, Scream Factory.
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