5.5
Over the last few years, the zombie genre has kept a foothold on the horror market, with filmmakers constantly trying to add a new twist on the concept of the undead plague. With Goal of the Dead, we see zombies hit the pitch with a soccer-themed tale of survival after a stadium full of fans gets infected with a deadly virus, turning everyone into ravenous ghouls.
David Dobkin‘s The Judge has been announced as the opening night film for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, kicking off September 4th and running through the 14th. The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as a big city lawyer who returns to
6.5
Based on the John le Carré novel by the same name, Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man strips away the stylish veneer of other adaptations such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and brings us a slow burn spy flick that manages to be just barely entertaining despite the great cast and decent performances.
5.5
With a title like Gun Woman, there’s a certain expectation one has even before knowing anything about the film. In the case of Kurando Mitsutake’s latest grindhouse throwback, it delivers on its title and them some. This is a nasty little film that should only be viewed by the most ardent exploitation fans who know that, in this genre, sometimes bad is actually good.
7
It's been a decade since South Korean writer/director Jang Joon-hwan's debut feature, Save the Green Planet!, an amalgamation of almost every genre swirling around a mentally unstable central character affected by his traumatized past; while, Hwayi: A Monster Boy plays out like a typical action film, the central character's storyline possesses a number of similarities with that of Save the Green Planet! as Hwayi (Yeo Jin-gu) struggles to cope with his own trauma-filled past while slowly uncovering the sinister secrets behind his upbringing.
6
Some of the most intriguing and exciting films over the last decade have come out of South Korea, so I was looking forward to seeing and reviewing one of the country’s latest exports – Cold Eyes (Gam-si-ja-deul). Although the film does not equal more famous and lauded films, such as Mother, Oldboy, and I Saw the Devil, it holds its own over a two-hour run and is a solid effort from directors Ui-seok Jo and Byung-seo Kim and a large cast of cops and robbers.
5.5
The football hooligan film genre is one that’s had many entries in the UK moview scene over the last several years. Films like Football Factory, Green Street Hooligans, The Firm, Cass and others have been giving us a glimpse into the reckless lives of football hooligans, the violent gangs of soccer fans known for clashing in the streets of England. Many of these movies share the same themes, tone and even actors, and director Nick Nevern seems well aware of this when looking to deconstruct this now-tired genre in The Hooligan Factory. In this spoof, Nevern, who also stars, aims to make the ultimate hooligan movie so there won’t be any need to make a Green Street 4.
It was announced today that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s next probable work of genius, Inherent Vice, will be making its world premiere at this year’s New York Film Festival. Based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Reese
7.5
Wish I Was Here, plays out very much like a spiritual successor to Zach Braff’s previous film, 2004’s Garden State. While Garden State saw Braff as a disenchanted and lost soul leaving his twenties, Wish I Was Here sees Braff in his next stage of life, dealing with children, money, and death.
The 52nd New York Film Festival will kick off September 26th, with David Fincher‘s Gone Girl having its world premiere as the opening night film. This year’s fest will run through October 12th and more information can be found at their web
Here’s the first trailer for the science fiction drama The Reconstruction of William Zero, which stars Conal Byrne as a brilliant geneticist who must re-learn his identity from his twin brother after an accident, however he comes to realize all is not as it
Here’s the first trailer for the upcoming horror/comedy Suburban Gothic, starring Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, Ray Wise, Jeffrey Combs, John Waters, and Jack Plotnick. The film is directed by Richard Bates Jr., who previously directed the horror film Excision, which I was
The full lineup for Montreal’s Fantasia Fest 2014 has been released, with a huge number of great looking features including Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, Dead Snow: Red Vs. Dead, I Origins, Faults, Terry Gilliam‘s The Zero Theorem and a ridiculous number of others.
9
Shot for a span of over twelve years, Richard Linklater’s latest, Boyhood, is one of the most ambitious and touching films I’ve seen in some time. This nearly three-hour journey displays an interesting portrait of an American family, and although the narrative is deceptively simple, this is a film like no other.
4.5
Coming of age stories may be the most popular genre of indie filmmaking, and perhaps this is because the storyline is a flexible one, ensuring there is much agitation in a story to propel the protagonist without offering exactly how the story will resolve. The same is not true for love stories, for example. Argentinian writer/director Matias Lucchesi's first feature, Natural Sciences, the search for self is dressed in Lila's (Petra Hertzog) insuppressible need to find her father.
5.5
What if instead of a light, family-friendly comedy, Harold Ramis’ beloved Groundhog Day was a raunchy teen sex comedy? That’s what director Dan Beers must have been thinking about when setting out to create Premature. The film takes the living the same day over and over mechanic and transplants it into an R-rated sex fest filled with dirty jokes and bodily fluids. For what it is, is mostly works and is at times laugh out loud funny, but the gimmick wears out its welcome and the humor loses steam as it progresses.
