Happy Tuesday the 13th, everyone! While it may not be nearly as a good as getting to enjoy a Friday the 13th, genre fans still have a few good reasons to get excited, as there are some killer movies headed to both Blu-ray and DVD this week.
As far as new titles go, both The Meg and Lasso are hitting multiple formats on Tuesday, and cult film fans are going to want to grab The Blood Island Collection from Severin Films (all three films inside the set are being released separately on Blu-ray as well). Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Wizard of Gore is getting the special edition treatment from the fine folks at Arrow Video, and The Satanic Rites of Dracula comes home this Tuesday, courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection.
Other notable releases for November 13th include Perversion Story, Bloodlust, House of Forbidden Secrets, 10/21, Alpha Wolf,and Teenage Zombies.
As far as new titles go, both The Meg and Lasso are hitting multiple formats on Tuesday, and cult film fans are going to want to grab The Blood Island Collection from Severin Films (all three films inside the set are being released separately on Blu-ray as well). Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Wizard of Gore is getting the special edition treatment from the fine folks at Arrow Video, and The Satanic Rites of Dracula comes home this Tuesday, courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection.
Other notable releases for November 13th include Perversion Story, Bloodlust, House of Forbidden Secrets, 10/21, Alpha Wolf,and Teenage Zombies.
- 11/13/2018
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
This November, Severin Films will take horror fans to "Blood Island" like never before with the release of a limited edition Blu-ray box set containing all four films from Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon's cult horror film series, with a special "Blood Oath Bundle" also available for collectors:
"On November 13th, Severin Films is plunging horror fans into uncharted waters with The Blood Island Collection, featuring 4 Blu-Rays and 1 CD. On October 30th, Brides Of Blood, Mad Doctor Of Blood Island, Beast Of Blood, & Terror Is A Man will make their eye-popping HD debut on home video, packed with a truly monstrous slate of new bonus features. This collection is a strictly limited, individually numbered edition of 3500 units. As a result, fans are encouraged to pre-order so they might avoid a hellish descent into a watery grave of their own making.
They’ve been called “defiantly lurid” (1000MisspentHours.com), “delightfully depraved” (FlickAttack.
"On November 13th, Severin Films is plunging horror fans into uncharted waters with The Blood Island Collection, featuring 4 Blu-Rays and 1 CD. On October 30th, Brides Of Blood, Mad Doctor Of Blood Island, Beast Of Blood, & Terror Is A Man will make their eye-popping HD debut on home video, packed with a truly monstrous slate of new bonus features. This collection is a strictly limited, individually numbered edition of 3500 units. As a result, fans are encouraged to pre-order so they might avoid a hellish descent into a watery grave of their own making.
They’ve been called “defiantly lurid” (1000MisspentHours.com), “delightfully depraved” (FlickAttack.
- 10/25/2018
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
The Great Discord, one of my favorite bands of the last few years, has released “Omen”, their third single from their upcoming album The Rabbit Hole. The track features a guitar solo from Periphery’s Mark Holcomb. On top of being… Continue Reading →
The post The Great Discord Releases Fantastic New Track Omen appeared first on Dread Central.
The post The Great Discord Releases Fantastic New Track Omen appeared first on Dread Central.
- 8/15/2017
- by Jonathan Barkan
- DreadCentral.com
Presenting single-paragraph biographies of each member, the Cannes Film Festival's announced the Jury of the Competition for its 65th anniversary edition, running May 16 through 27: Nanni Moretti (President), Hiam Abbass, Andrea Arnold, Emmanuelle Devos, Diane Kruger, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Ewan McGregor, Alexander Payne and Raoul Peck.
"Ebertfest, the annual film festival founded by the venerable Chicago Sun-Times critic in 1989 and running April 25-29, 2012, has always had the core mission of spotlighting underappreciated films." A preview from Michael Fox at Keyframe.
With its tenth anniversary edition, the Independent Film Festival Boston "continues the tradition of mixing renowned filmmakers and unknown artists, celebrity speakers and thoughtful in-depth panels," notes Not Coming to a Theater Near You, introducing a special section where it'll be collecting reviews throughout the festival's run from today through May 2. The Globe's Ty Burr and Wesley Morris present a batch of capsule previews.
"The Seattle International Film Festival (Siff), announced...
"Ebertfest, the annual film festival founded by the venerable Chicago Sun-Times critic in 1989 and running April 25-29, 2012, has always had the core mission of spotlighting underappreciated films." A preview from Michael Fox at Keyframe.
With its tenth anniversary edition, the Independent Film Festival Boston "continues the tradition of mixing renowned filmmakers and unknown artists, celebrity speakers and thoughtful in-depth panels," notes Not Coming to a Theater Near You, introducing a special section where it'll be collecting reviews throughout the festival's run from today through May 2. The Globe's Ty Burr and Wesley Morris present a batch of capsule previews.
"The Seattle International Film Festival (Siff), announced...
- 4/25/2012
- MUBI
"It's become so fashionable to throw around the term Bressonian that the auteurist adjective has nearly lost its complimentary oomph," writes David Fear in Time Out New York: "any movie with minimalist performances and a slight spiritual bent now automatically gets the label slapped on it…. Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán's portrait of a Haitian teacher fallen on hard times has certainly lifted several pages from Bresson's playbook, notably in its lead's near-monotonous line readings (a former educator in real life, Jean Remy Gentil essentially plays a fictionalized version of himself) and a less-is-more approach to storytelling. More important, however, Jean Gentil shares a certain searching quality that marked the best of Bresson's films — and for once, the inevitable analogy with his work seems appropriate."
"Although it's steeped in tragedies both personal and cultural, this contemplative, gorgeously shot documentary-fiction hybrid… nevertheless keeps an unsentimental distance from its titular...
"Although it's steeped in tragedies both personal and cultural, this contemplative, gorgeously shot documentary-fiction hybrid… nevertheless keeps an unsentimental distance from its titular...
- 4/22/2012
- MUBI
The Terracotta Far East Film Festival is on in London through the weekend, presenting, as Electric Sheep notes in the introduction to its newish issue, "the UK premiere of Sion Sono's Himizu [review: John Bleasdale], using a comic to tackle the fallout from Fukushima." Es takes "a look at manga adaptations with Takashi Miike's stylized, violent high school movie Crows Zero [comic strip review: Joe Morgan] and Toshiya Fujita's 70s revenge tale Lady Snowblood: Blizzard from the Netherworld [review: Virginie Sélavy]."
Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo, seven years in the making, opens in Japan next week after a run through the festival circuit and, in the Japan Times, Mark Schilling gives it four out of five stars: "Hayao Miyazaki is the obvious point of comparison, but unlike many of Miyazaki's more fanciful landscapes, Okiura's port is vividly, recognizably real — so much so that you can almost smell the salt in the water and feel the warmth of the stones.
Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo, seven years in the making, opens in Japan next week after a run through the festival circuit and, in the Japan Times, Mark Schilling gives it four out of five stars: "Hayao Miyazaki is the obvious point of comparison, but unlike many of Miyazaki's more fanciful landscapes, Okiura's port is vividly, recognizably real — so much so that you can almost smell the salt in the water and feel the warmth of the stones.
- 4/13/2012
- MUBI
The most devilish spot on your radio dial (yes, we know it's the internet, just play along, damn it!) is back with your weekly music wrap-up. Read on for the latest ear-drum splitting goodness!
News
Drummer BIll Ward has released another update about his involvement (or lack thereof) in the upcoming Black Sabbath reunion. You can read his statement here. In short, he says that negotiations are ongoing and nothing is official one way or the other.
Matt DeVries has joined Fear Factory on bass. DeVries has previously played with Chimaira and Six Feet Under. He replaces Bryon Stroud, who recently left to join 3 Inches of Blood. The band's new album will be released in the early summer.
Bullet Tooth Records has signed California's I, Omega. The progressive metal band will release an Ep entitled The Ravenous in the spring. Watch their announcement here.
Nonpoint have entered Groovemaster Studios in...
News
Drummer BIll Ward has released another update about his involvement (or lack thereof) in the upcoming Black Sabbath reunion. You can read his statement here. In short, he says that negotiations are ongoing and nothing is official one way or the other.
Matt DeVries has joined Fear Factory on bass. DeVries has previously played with Chimaira and Six Feet Under. He replaces Bryon Stroud, who recently left to join 3 Inches of Blood. The band's new album will be released in the early summer.
Bullet Tooth Records has signed California's I, Omega. The progressive metal band will release an Ep entitled The Ravenous in the spring. Watch their announcement here.
Nonpoint have entered Groovemaster Studios in...
- 2/21/2012
- by Alex DiVincenzo
- DreadCentral.com
If the Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the west coast of Italy last night, looks familiar to you, it's likely that it's because it's the cruise ship that's the setting for the first movement of Jean-Luc Godard's Film socialisme ("It's less a tourist cruise than an international summit of bastards," wrote David Phelps in June). The accident, which cost the lives of three people and injured many more (and around 40 of the 4000 passengers are still missing), occurred on the same evening that a rogue vigilante group going by the name of Standard and Poor's downgraded the credit ratings of nine eurozone countries.
Which brings us to our first set of DVDs. A Forum topic on Artificial Eye's release of its Theo Angelopoulos Collection has been rumbling along for half a year now and, with the third volume coming out next month, David Jenkins has a good long...
Which brings us to our first set of DVDs. A Forum topic on Artificial Eye's release of its Theo Angelopoulos Collection has been rumbling along for half a year now and, with the third volume coming out next month, David Jenkins has a good long...
- 1/14/2012
- MUBI
"With his intuitive penchant for lingering, privileged sensations, Tran Anh Hung would seem to be an inspired choice to film Haruki Murakami's languid-erotic 1987 bestseller Norwegian Wood, where the eponymous Beatles anthem can have the effect of Proust's madeleine," writes Fernando F Croce in Slant. "When it does come, sung softly in English in a cottage in the pastoral outskirts of Tokyo, the tune quickly brings tears to the eyes of Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), whose private anguish is momentarily alleviated and then unsettled by the pop song's wistful evocation of ephemeral affairs: 'And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown…' With its gentle camera movements and wizardly cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin's amber light, the moment glows and shivers. It also illustrates, unfortunately, how Tran's adaptation works most effectively in such impressionistic glances and instants than as an emotional whole, where the swoony aesthetic comes to...
- 1/8/2012
- MUBI
Leo Goldsmith introduces Late Hitchcock, a series running all week at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "The border between guilt and innocence is fuzzier than ever in this phase, as is the line that separates sex from violence. The formation of the couple, the overriding principle of Hitchcock's work from the very start of his career, is especially embattled throughout Hitchcock's later films, challenged in the most shocking fashion in Marnie's marital rape scene, all but totally ignored in smothering political endgames of Topaz, and brutally cut short through violent sex-murder in Frenzy." Not Coming will be presenting Marnie at 92Y Tribeca on Friday.
In other news. At Film Studies for Free, Catherine Grant alerts us to a new issue of Screening the Past, "Screen Attachments," edited by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci: "The obvious highlight is a brilliant article by Francesco Casetti ["Cinema Lost and Found: Trajectories of Relocation"], but a quick glance at...
In other news. At Film Studies for Free, Catherine Grant alerts us to a new issue of Screening the Past, "Screen Attachments," edited by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci: "The obvious highlight is a brilliant article by Francesco Casetti ["Cinema Lost and Found: Trajectories of Relocation"], but a quick glance at...
- 12/14/2011
- MUBI
"In five features over two decades Christopher Munch has cultivated a singular career on the margins of the independent film world," begins Dennis Lim in the New York Times. "Although his debut, The Hours and Times (1991), was grouped with the emerging New Queer Cinema, Mr Munch, 49, has never fit in with a movement, and it's hard to think of another working American filmmaker with a similar sensibility or array of interests."
Writing in Filmmaker, Howard Feinstein suggests that Munch "explores that chaotic region where two forms of desire butt up against each other: the wish for a more perfect world, for one, usually depicted as majestic nature and whatever beauty man might have put into it (the old, deserted railroad in Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day [1996]) — an American version of classic German Romanticism, or blood and soil when taken to a nationalist extreme; and two, the physical attraction...
Writing in Filmmaker, Howard Feinstein suggests that Munch "explores that chaotic region where two forms of desire butt up against each other: the wish for a more perfect world, for one, usually depicted as majestic nature and whatever beauty man might have put into it (the old, deserted railroad in Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day [1996]) — an American version of classic German Romanticism, or blood and soil when taken to a nationalist extreme; and two, the physical attraction...
- 11/11/2011
- MUBI
"Even Joe Swanberg has to stop to count the number of Joe Swanberg movies out there right now," writes Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times. Uncle Kent premiered at Sundance, Silver Bullets and Art History in Berlin. He's collaborating with Factory 25 on Joe Swanberg: Collected Films 2011, a box set of four films on DVD plus an unusual array of bonus material — records, photo books, posters. Autoerotic, made with Adam Wingard, is available on demand from IFC. And the AFI Fest, opening on Thursday, will be screening Silver Bullets and Art History and hosting the premiere of The Zone, which, as Olsen tells us, "traces the interrelationships of a trio of roommates once an outsider enters their dynamic, before revealing additional layers of psycho-emotional complexity…. If one were to make a diagram of contemporary American independent filmmaking, Swanberg would be somewhere near the center, if for no other reason...
- 10/31/2011
- MUBI
More than halfway through October now, and it's high time for a followup to the first "Scary Monsters" roundup of the year, the one that pointed to several ongoing month-long cinephilic celebrations of Halloween. Before taking a look at a few recent and upcoming releases, let's begin with a list, namely, Glenn Kenny's at MSN Movies, the "50 Scariest Movies of All Time." At Some Came Running, Glenn kicks himself for forgetting to include Erle C Kenton's Island of Lost Souls (1932) with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi: "In my defense, I've long held that it's not a real 'greatest' list unless it complains at least one completely bone-headed and inexcusable omission, and the omission of Souls, I would say, constitutes a particularly distinguished instance of such." Update: At Criterion's Current, Susan Arosteguy lists "10 Things I Learned" about Souls — factoids, some odd, some nifty, some a little spooky. Update, 10/21:...
- 10/22/2011
- MUBI
"When I mentioned the writer Paul Goodman to an older friend," recalls Dan Callahan at the L, "he cried, 'My God, I haven't heard his name in years. In the 60s, you couldn't avoid him!' The tone of his second sentence was slightly exasperated, and based on Jonathan Lee's new documentary, Paul Goodman Changed My Life, Goodman was very adept at exasperating people. Novelist, poet, public intellectual, playwright, urban planner, Gestalt therapist, bisexual family man and inveterate cruiser of sailors, Goodman tried to be so many things at once that he didn't get the attention he felt he deserved until his book on male delinquency, Growing Up Absurd, made him famous in 1960. After that, Goodman spent a heady decade as a kind of rumpled professor Pied Piper of the 60s youth movement, but his engagement with that movement led to disillusionment before his death in 1972."
"'Anarchism is an attitude,...
"'Anarchism is an attitude,...
- 10/20/2011
- MUBI
Roundups on some of the more interesting titles opening this weekend have been updated through today: The Last Picture Show, 50/50, Margaret, Take Shelter and My Joy — see, too, Daniel Kasman's review — as well as another on the documentaries.
"Hillbilly horror is nothing new," writes Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Some might mark its heyday as the 1970s, a decade containing Deliverance (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and I Spit On Your Grave (1978). Others might point to Herschell Gordon Lewis's immortal Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), probably cinema's most persuasive example of why Yankees road-tripping below the Mason-Dixon Line should never, for any reason, detour off the main highway…. But what if, asks Eli Craig's Tucker and Dale vs Evil, you were totally misjudging those sinister-seeming whiskey-tango yokels? What if, despite being a little unwashed and fond of sharp objects and power tools, they...
"Hillbilly horror is nothing new," writes Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Some might mark its heyday as the 1970s, a decade containing Deliverance (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and I Spit On Your Grave (1978). Others might point to Herschell Gordon Lewis's immortal Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), probably cinema's most persuasive example of why Yankees road-tripping below the Mason-Dixon Line should never, for any reason, detour off the main highway…. But what if, asks Eli Craig's Tucker and Dale vs Evil, you were totally misjudging those sinister-seeming whiskey-tango yokels? What if, despite being a little unwashed and fond of sharp objects and power tools, they...
- 9/30/2011
- MUBI
When Restless opened Un Certain Regard in Cannes this spring, most critics groaned and moved on to their next screening. Some, though, such as Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, weren't ready to dismiss it entirely, and Daniel Kasman found a few kind words for cinematographer Harris Savides. Still, having screened in Toronto and now set for a limited release in the States tomorrow, Restless is being slapped with another round of pans.
Nick Schager in Slant: "Gus Van Sant's cinema, which of late has been fixated on immersing viewers in particular times and spaces, takes a detour into excruciating quirkland with Restless, a work of off-putting bathos and lovey-dovey nonsense that inspires not just the titular agitation, but stomach-cramping, eye-rolling antipathy. Written by Jason Lew with a dedication to making every single note ring false, this modern-hipster Love Story charts the unexpected and ill-fated romance of two dopey fictional creations,...
Nick Schager in Slant: "Gus Van Sant's cinema, which of late has been fixated on immersing viewers in particular times and spaces, takes a detour into excruciating quirkland with Restless, a work of off-putting bathos and lovey-dovey nonsense that inspires not just the titular agitation, but stomach-cramping, eye-rolling antipathy. Written by Jason Lew with a dedication to making every single note ring false, this modern-hipster Love Story charts the unexpected and ill-fated romance of two dopey fictional creations,...
- 9/16/2011
- MUBI
"Leonard Retel Helmrich's Position Among the Stars should be essential viewing for anyone curious to know what the rapidly modernizing 'second world' actually looks like," writes Steve Macfarlane in the L: "motorcycles, bootlegged t-shirts, plastic Tupperware containers, cell phones, and scores of dead cockroaches. Indonesia — the fourth biggest country in the world, and the nation with the largest Muslim population — has been the topic of Helmrich's life work, a trilogy of docs culminating here."
This "third documentary about the same Indonesian family is a dazzler in at least a couple ways," adds Seth Colter Walls in the Voice. "First off, it's the rare final chapter in a decade-plus-long saga — a trilogy that also includes 2001's The Eye of the Day and 2004's Shape of the Moon — that you can slide right into without any prior knowledge. There's a brief 'previously in post-Suharto Indonesia' montage at the beginning that draws...
This "third documentary about the same Indonesian family is a dazzler in at least a couple ways," adds Seth Colter Walls in the Voice. "First off, it's the rare final chapter in a decade-plus-long saga — a trilogy that also includes 2001's The Eye of the Day and 2004's Shape of the Moon — that you can slide right into without any prior knowledge. There's a brief 'previously in post-Suharto Indonesia' montage at the beginning that draws...
- 9/15/2011
- MUBI
"Born to play beautifully tortured, angry souls, the actor Robert Ryan was a familiar movie face for more than two decades in Hollywood's classical years, his studio ups and downs, independent detours and outlier adventures paralleling the arc of American cinema as it went from a national pastime to near collapse." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times: "A little prettier and he might have been one of the golden boys of the golden age. But there could be something a touch menacing about his face (something open and sweet too), which bunched as tight as a fist, and his towering height (he stood 6 foot 4) at times loomed like a threat. The rage boiled up in him so quickly. It made him seem dangerous…. The two dozen features in a Film Forum series dedicated to Ryan and opening [today] includes dazzlers, solid genre fare, some curiosities and a few duds. Most...
- 8/15/2011
- MUBI
Well-received at Sundance, SXSW and BAMcinemaFEST, Asif Kapadia's Senna finally begins its theatrical run. Guy Lodge at In Contention: "With a new breed of documentarists getting ever more playfully shape-shifting in they ways they trade information and manipulate point of view — last year's talking-point docs Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop both hinged on an abrupt turn not only in perspective, but in subject — Asif Kapadia's dazzling biopic Senna instead subverts expectations by keeping its storytelling fiercely linear. Viewers unfamiliar with the story of Ayrton Senna, the reckless, beautiful Brazilian Formula 1 racing driver who rose to prominence in the 1980s and ended his career as arguably the greatest in the sport's history, are offered no pat framing devices and wistful talking heads to say what became of him, beyond the unhappy use of the past tense. There are, presumably, more such viewers in the Us than in the UK,...
- 8/13/2011
- MUBI
"Ah, the pungent odor, the fermented esprit, the sulfurous insanity of the New York Asian Film Fest!" exclaims Michael Atkinson, introducing his overview of the lineup in the Voice. "It's a new year for the city's favorite attack of the imported-irrational, and as always, the jejune state of the late-spring/early-summer box office gets a shot in the ass. The pulp is especially ripe this year, particularly from Japan, where manga-ness seems to have gone from a national pastime to a mass psychosis."
For R Emmet Sweeney, writing for TCM, "most of the revelations in this year's slate came in the Nyaff sidebar, Sea of Revenge: New Korean Thrillers, so I'll focus there." Michael J Anderson splits the difference, concentrating on Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids!!! and Na Hong-jin's The Chaser (image above). Time Out New York's got a slide of "titles worth cutting class for." Cinespect's Ryan Wells picks...
For R Emmet Sweeney, writing for TCM, "most of the revelations in this year's slate came in the Nyaff sidebar, Sea of Revenge: New Korean Thrillers, so I'll focus there." Michael J Anderson splits the difference, concentrating on Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids!!! and Na Hong-jin's The Chaser (image above). Time Out New York's got a slide of "titles worth cutting class for." Cinespect's Ryan Wells picks...
- 6/30/2011
- MUBI
"Cars 2, directed (like several great Pixar films of the last two decades) by John Lasseter, finds itself in the unlucky position of the not-so-bright kid in a brilliant family," finds Slate's Dana Stevens. "No matter if his performance in school is comfortably average; he'll always be seen as a disappointment compared to his stellar siblings. There's nothing really objectionable about Cars 2, although parents of young children should be warned that a few evil vehicles meet violently inauspicious ends. It's sweet-spirited, visually delightful (if aurally cacophonous), and it will make for a pleasant enough family afternoon at the movies. But we've come to expect so much more than mere pleasantness from Pixar that Cars 2 feels almost like a betrayal."
Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...
Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...
- 6/25/2011
- MUBI
Of all the movies that have opened this weekend, the one that's generated the most interesting press by far is Page One: Inside The New York Times. The usual round of promotional interviews, for example, turns out to have been not so usual. Talking with writer-director-cinematographer Andrew Rossi and co-writer Kate Novack, a husband-and-wife team of a documentary filmmaker and a former media reporter, Eric Hynes acknowledges that his piece for the Voice can't help but lay on another layer of meta. Right off, he has Novack commenting on Page One's focus on the Nyt media desk: "It was journalists reporting on journalism, and we were working as journalists covering that."
So it goes in other interviews: Drew Taylor's with Rossi for the Playlist; Stephen Saito's with Rossi and Nyt media reporter David Carr, indisputably the star of Page One, for IFC; Sarah Ellison's with Gay Talese, author of the 1969 classic,...
So it goes in other interviews: Drew Taylor's with Rossi for the Playlist; Stephen Saito's with Rossi and Nyt media reporter David Carr, indisputably the star of Page One, for IFC; Sarah Ellison's with Gay Talese, author of the 1969 classic,...
- 6/18/2011
- MUBI
"With his Bud Cort haircut and morbid sensibility, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is too smart for Swansea, Wales, an industrial city mired in some seriously mid-80s Thatcherite doldrums," begins Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "The trouble with Oliver is that he knows he's clever, which could justify anything: surreptitiously monitoring his parents' sex life, taunting an overweight girl to make local cutie Jordana (Yasmin Paige) notice him as a real livewire, or trying to trash the house of downhill neighbor Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine) who may be having an affair with mom (Sally Hawkins). Fortunately, Submarine, Richard Ayoade's feature debut, is aware of Oliver's self-justifying nature and the ways it could warp him…. Acutely aware of the long tradition of films about disaffected young men coming to terms with themselves, Ayoade doesn't duck the precedent: instead, like Oliver…, he nods to seemingly every single precursor. There's a 400 Blows-quoting dash across the beach,...
- 6/3/2011
- MUBI
Of course there'll be another roundup on The Tree of Life. But first, let's give a little breathing room to some of the other films opening this Memorial Day Weekend.
"The extreme leftists of the 1960s and 70s who sought to change the world one bomb at a time might have been unhappy to know that their revolutionary legacy is doing nice business at that bourgeois temple, the art house," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It's a legacy that in recent years and specifically since 9/11 has been romanticized and critiqued in movies like The Motorcycle Diaries (a prehistory involving the young Che Guevara); Che (about his campaigns in Cuba and Bolivia); The Baader Meinhof Complex (German leftists who embraced violence); Good Morning, Night (the kidnapping of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades); Carlos (the Venezuelan Marxist turned mercenary). United Red Army tells much the same story,...
"The extreme leftists of the 1960s and 70s who sought to change the world one bomb at a time might have been unhappy to know that their revolutionary legacy is doing nice business at that bourgeois temple, the art house," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It's a legacy that in recent years and specifically since 9/11 has been romanticized and critiqued in movies like The Motorcycle Diaries (a prehistory involving the young Che Guevara); Che (about his campaigns in Cuba and Bolivia); The Baader Meinhof Complex (German leftists who embraced violence); Good Morning, Night (the kidnapping of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades); Carlos (the Venezuelan Marxist turned mercenary). United Red Army tells much the same story,...
- 5/27/2011
- MUBI
We already have entries rolling on Midnight in Paris and Pirates 4, both updated through today, and, as the Playlist puts it in a headline today, there's "Not Much Else" opening in the metroplexes today. Otherwise, though, there's plenty going on.
Migrating Forms opens at Anthology Film Archives today and runs through May 29. You may remember how promising that lineup is. "Forms grew out of the New York Underground Film Festival," writes Tom McCormack in a terrific overview at Alt Screen, "and it expands upon that fest’s interest in bringing together heterogeneous material: the celluloid revival of the American avant-garde, the rough-hewn outer edges of the European art-house, old curios, New Media, the academy, the grindhouse, and the gutter. As a result, Forms has some of the most unpredictable and interesting — and some of the best—programming of any Us festival." Further recommended reads, even if you're nowhere near New York and can't attend,...
Migrating Forms opens at Anthology Film Archives today and runs through May 29. You may remember how promising that lineup is. "Forms grew out of the New York Underground Film Festival," writes Tom McCormack in a terrific overview at Alt Screen, "and it expands upon that fest’s interest in bringing together heterogeneous material: the celluloid revival of the American avant-garde, the rough-hewn outer edges of the European art-house, old curios, New Media, the academy, the grindhouse, and the gutter. As a result, Forms has some of the most unpredictable and interesting — and some of the best—programming of any Us festival." Further recommended reads, even if you're nowhere near New York and can't attend,...
- 5/20/2011
- MUBI
"What makes Johann run — and rob?" asks Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Benjamin Heisenberg's second feature is as taut, lean, and fleet as its title character, played by Andreas Lust and based on the real-life Johann Kastenberger, who was both Austria's most-wanted bank robber of the 1980s and a champion marathoner. Writing the script with Martin Prinz, who adapted his own 2005 novel about the notorious criminal, Heisenberg forgoes backstory and psychological explanation, structuring his film as a series of adrenaline spikes."
"Lust's character in The Robber is familiar from European crime movies," suggests Noel Murray at the Av Club. "He's the stoic loner who doesn't say much, lest he inadvertently reveal some kind of motivation. When he robs banks, he wears a thin mask that doesn't look all that different from his face, and when he goes on a date with his caseworker, Franziska Weisz, he's more amused by...
"Lust's character in The Robber is familiar from European crime movies," suggests Noel Murray at the Av Club. "He's the stoic loner who doesn't say much, lest he inadvertently reveal some kind of motivation. When he robs banks, he wears a thin mask that doesn't look all that different from his face, and when he goes on a date with his caseworker, Franziska Weisz, he's more amused by...
- 5/8/2011
- MUBI
"A onetime yakuza turned jailbird turned filmmaking enfant terrible, the now-75-year-old Japanese director Kōji Wakamatsu has long been loved by cinema cultists for an outrageous string of 1960s provocations made under the guise of the pinku eiga — or 'pink' film." Steve Dollar at GreenCine Daily: "These typically low-budget sex romps could be as insane, surreal, or mind-bending as possible, as long as they included a minimum amount of nudity and softcore humping. Wakamatsu, seizing the opportunity, used the form to pursue the extremes, reveling in obsessive sex and violence as a leftist critique of Japanese society. Beyond the outrage and sleaze of The Embryo Hunts in Secret [1966]; Go, Go Second-Time Virgin [1969]; and Ecstasy of the Angels [1972], was a form of perverse shock treatment. Wakamatsu took a break from the camera in 1977, and didn't return for 27 years. But he still wants to mess with your head."
Steve Erickson for Moving...
Steve Erickson for Moving...
- 5/8/2011
- MUBI
"Denis Villeneuve's Incendies — an operatic saga of intergenerational woe — is the cinematic equivalent of a Harlem Globetrotters game, with brazen contrivances and a preordained outcome repurposed as dazzling spectacle." David Ehrlich at Reverse Shot: "A strained melodrama that unspools like the bastard child of Homer and Alejandro González Iñárritu, Incendies devotes the brunt of its 130 minutes to earning the audacity of its resolution — it's a work of such unchecked ambition that it almost has to be excused before it can be appreciated at all. But if Villeneuve's film ultimately resolves itself as little more than a gaudy parlor trick, it's an expertly executed bit of chicanery whose punchline hits you square in the gut."
"It's a dual story," explains New York's David Edelstein, "of French-Canadian brother-and-sister twins compelled by the will of their dead mother to locate a father they thought died decades earlier and a brother they never knew existed; and,...
"It's a dual story," explains New York's David Edelstein, "of French-Canadian brother-and-sister twins compelled by the will of their dead mother to locate a father they thought died decades earlier and a brother they never knew existed; and,...
- 4/22/2011
- MUBI
"The finest Western you'll see this year is set in aristocratic 16th-century France, in the heat of Counter-Reformation," declares Nick Pinkerton. Segueing into his interview with Bertrand Tavernier, Aaron Hillis, also in the Voice, sums up the gist of The Princess of Montpensier: "Adapted from Madame de la Fayette's classic novel, the film concerns a nubile, wealthy heiress (Mélanie Thierry) who loves a rugged hothead from the wrong clan (Gaspard Ulliel), but is forced by her father to marry another prince (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), leaving her to dwell on the too-modern desire for free will — defiantly bucking against the rigid traditions of her breed." Back to Pinkerton: "The setting always serves the performers rather than vice versa — though the film is also greatly enhanced by the costuming, the rugged French countryside photographed in outdoor-adventure CinemaScope, and Philippe Sarde's baroque-tribal score, its martial and romantic poles matching a tale of...
- 4/18/2011
- MUBI
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