It's a slow week, packed mainly with television box sets, but there are a few little-known films you might want to check out.
Please Vote for Me This was a film that I was dying to see at TIFF last year, but scheduling conflicts kept me from it. Luckily, the highly praised Please Vote for Me is now hitting DVD shelves.
Imagine a group of third-grade students putting Tracy Flick to shame as they hold a democratic election for school monitor. In my day (man, that phrase makes...
Watch This: 'Still Life' (or What 'Mannequin 3' Could've Been ... )
The other day we wrote about the new horror flick Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer(which hit theaters this past weekend), and Cinematical reader Aaron L. (who also happens to be a very good friend of mine) pointed out the fact that Jack Brooks director Jon Knautz had helmed a very cool short back in 2005 called Still Life. I forget exactly when I first saw this short (probably during one of Gen Art's many, many functions/contests/parties), but I remember absolutely loving it over and over again. And we've...
If you were a young whippersnapper in 1992, chances are the Goosebumps books were a lurid staple on your bedside table. My sister was an enormous fan, whereas I preferred, shockingly, Star Wars novelizations and sword-and-sorcery. I was just a little too old for their goofy twist endings -- although the single one I read gave me nightmares, I think because a dog was killed or something. (Let's ascribe it to a fragment of underdone potato, shall we?) In retrospect, you really are what you read as a kid -- my sister went on...
Don't Fear the Subs: 'Tokyo Gore Police' Ups the Ante
You can't accuse this movie of false advertising. Tokyo Gore Police, which screened this weekend as part of the seventh annual Asian Film Festival of Dallas (AFFD), bursts at the seams with severed limbs, oceans of bodily fluids, and enough intestines to choke a horse. More sensitive souls will run screaming from the room during the first scene, in which a man's head explodes in a cloudburst of blood, but that sets the tone of the movie as a live-action adult cartoon. Just keep repeating to yourself: "It's only latex and corn syrup, it's only latex and corn syrup...
In a marketplace of increasingly generic titles and often disingenuous marketing, the horror genre tends to bring a certain honesty to the table. Think about it: the words 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2' can simply never paint as vivid a mental picture as, say, 'Zombie Strippers'. These offerings may be comparatively lower in brow and budget, and no, not for all tastes, but with a film like that -- a title like that -- or Evil Aliens, or Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, for that matter, what-you-see-is-what-you-get chutzpah is on their side, and while that quality might not alone do...
Would You Watch a Bousman Version of 'Leprechaun'?
Things have changed a lot since Jennifer Aniston starred in Leprechaun in 1993 -- Friends, tumultuous romances, and a whole non-horror career. But what if she went back to the fold?
During a discussion with MTV, Darren Lynn Bousman, the man behind Repo!, wishes he could follow the rainbow. "I would do Leprechaun in a second. If Lionsgate is listening, give me Leprechaun." But he wouldn't get too serious with the material if given the chance to reboot it: "It's just one of those fun...
Of all the freakin' horror remake outrages, this one might take the cake. Candyman, the freakishly original 'Chicago projects urban legend' flick based on a Clive Barker story, might be remade by Sony with a Caucasian in the title role, according to Shock Til You Drop. The site says that Sony and the unidentified rights holder are in "early talks," with one idea being to change Candyman's skin color from black to white.
I know this is not confirmed, and many stupid ideas are undoubtedly floated in early conversations, but this is wrong on so many levels I'm left...
When a film called Mirrors opens with a man fleeing desperately from said objects, it doesn't bode all that well. When that individual soon falls victim to a grisly demise at the sight of them, well, there's something to be said for the fact that there is ultimately nothing to see in Mirrors that is worth grabbing something sharp over. Unfortunately, there is also nothing that you probably haven't seen before in The Ring, The Grudge, or any number of exhaustingly similar American remakes of Asian spook...
What I Learned: Naked 'Hell,' Slow 'Love,' and 'The Signal'
I like naked women, but that's not why I saw Hell Ride. Honestly, I had forgotten that naked women might be featured prominently. It was the motorcycles and the negative reviews from Sundance that hooked me (I'm a contrary fellow). I like 60s biker flicks, and because writer / director / co-star / Quentin Tarantino's friend Larry Bishop had been in some of them, I figured he could make an affectionate homage. Alas, while Bishop can indeed shoot the hell out of the motorcycle footage, it's the other...
It would be great to see the old Superman, Dean Cain, tamed by the purr of a Jaguar, but 
If you were a young whippersnapper in 1992, chances are the 
You can't accuse this movie of false advertising. 
Of all the freakin' horror remake outrages, this one might take the cake. 
I like naked women, but that's not why I saw 
