Cinema Mishmash

The prologue to Antichrist, Lars von Trier’s latest cinematic provocation, is among the most moving, sumptuous, beautiful imagery ever set to a score and projected for an audience. Washed in a blue monochrome, the slow-motion sequence both takes your breath away and paralyzes you. It is so beautiful, in fact, that it nearly anesthetizes you [...]

[Read more →]

Behind the scenes of Surveillance sits an underdog story with considerable appeal.  A staggering 15 years passed between Jennifer Lynch’s directorial debut feature, Boxing Helena, and this, her second effort. Despite its patent absurdity, I rather fondly recall Boxing Helena, a film which is perhaps underrated due to its inability to stand up next to the [...]

[Read more →]

How often do you get the chance to see a film made once of video (in 1982) and then again in film (in 1996)? (Okay, El Mariachi and Desparado don’t count.) A friend lent us a copy of Larry Fessenden’s Habit (the 1996 version) and thereby introduced me to a film and filmmaker of whom [...]

[Read more →]

Proving that even interesting, talented actors like Uma Thurman can choose dogs for projects, The Life Before Her Eyes is built upon a narrative conceit that is so self-congratulatory in its own cleverness that the only thing worse that not figuring it out from the beginning (most people will have it at least 75% sorted by the first big [...]

[Read more →]

I guess I just wanted to see what all of the fuss was about, but now I feel a little silly wanting to watch Twilight on the week of its home video release. Like the teenage protagonists here (one human female, one undead male), I found myself quietly laughing throughout the film, yet for me the [...]

[Read more →]

Vampires often serve a symbolic role as the proxy for those who are marginalized by society, the ones who don’t or can’t follow the rules and are therefore reviled and misunderstood. While that sounds sympathetic, traditionally the vampire is still the villain destined to be slain. In contemporary storytelling, however, vampires have been taking on [...]

[Read more →]

This latest adaptation of a Steven King short story involves – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – a cynical writer who becomes the victim of his own skepticism. John Cusack is well cast as an unflappable author who has written a series of second-rate books about haunted places, yet believes in nothing [...]

[Read more →]

While there is nothing as maddening as the inability to skip them, trailers on DVDs are a great resource to the discovery of films and filmmakers. I can’t recall what DVD had the trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001), but I do remember being instantly intrigued. Despite a few hair-raising [...]

[Read more →]

By the time this sci-fi/horror/action mashup made its US theatrical release this past February, its sequel, Day Watch, had been on screens in its native Russia for over a month. Night Watch is the first installment of a trilogy, and the first two films have been cause for talk of a Russian cinematic [...]

[Read more →]

This film is something else, and the filmmakers know it. The clever trailer for the film features intertitles that say “This is not horror,” “This is not sci-fi,” “This is not comedy,” etc., each one displayed before clips that appear to contradict each claim. Add to the list martial arts action flick, revenge [...]

[Read more →]

Episodic film collaborations, in which a number of directors each contribute a short segment, can be great entertainment, especially if the collection allows the viewer to compare and contrast how each director’s distinct style is applied to the common theme, be it love (Eros), disaster (September 11), change (Visions of Europe), a place (the upcoming [...]

[Read more →]