 Don't be fooled by the marketing campaign that promises a fun and whimsical vampire film with a mix of action and adventure thrown in because, frankly, that's not the Vampire's Assistant. The Vampire's Assistant tells the frightening tale of a boy named Darren who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, Darren must choose a side and rise up to be the vampire he was foretold to be. Unfortunately, by the time Darren does rise up, it's only in time to set up the hopeful sequel, and not even the super celebrity cast of John C. Reily, Orlando Jones, Salma Hayek, Ken Watanabe, Ray Stevenson, and Willem Dafoe can save this thing. More after the jump... Logic Defying Cinema 10/16/2009
 What would you do if two men broke into your house, stabbed you, and then raped your wife and killed your daughter in front of you? Not only that, but one guy rolls on the other after being apprehended, and, while one gets sentenced to lethal injection, the other walks after three years of 'hard' time. You'd probably bleed a little at first, then stew in your anger for 10 years, and then methodically plan out the dumbest, most implausible form of revenge you could think of, wouldn't you? I knew it! Such is the premise for Law Abiding Citizen, the latest from director F. Gary Gray (Italian Job, A Man Apart, and several R. Kelly Videos). Gerard Butler plays the judiciously wronged father, while Jamie Foxx plays the well-to-do lawyer who is seeking to advance his career by keeping his conviction percentage high. Upon being wronged both by the aforementioned stabber/rapers and by the justice system, Butler takes the law into his own hands and tries to create what could have been a fun little revenge flick. Unfortunately, though, things go horribly wrong. more after the jump...  Every once and a while there is a movie that manages to sneak up under your skin and affect you in ways you didn't think it could. It's a movie with a message—but don't they all have messages? This message, though, manages to stealthily work its way inside you, bypass all rational thought, slide past the shell surrounding your bitter, jaded heart, and leave you deeply entranced. Where the Wild Things Are managed to circumvent my emotional defenses and tap right into the mainline of the nine-year-old kid inside me. More after the jump... Fantastic Fest Review: Rampage 10/07/2009
 Uwe Boll is quite the prolific director. He has made several video game adaptations, as well as shot some original visions of his own. He writes, he produces, he directs, and no matter how gigantic the failures of his productions (both critically and commercially), he always has another movie coming out. For a guy who's made 18 movies now, none of which have broeken $10 mil at the domestic box office or even garner more than a 10% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it is astounding. But as they say, every dog has his day, and today is Uwe Boll's day. Rampage is the director's latest effort that tells the story of Bill, a mild mannered suburban-dwelling twentysomething who works at a mechanic shop and lives with his parents. Bill goes about his life like most of us, dealing with everyday struggles and frustrations--from the guy who can't make our coffee right to having to go out on our own and make it in the world. Only difference is, where you or I would sink or swim in the world, Bill decides to create and bulletproof steel suit of armor and go on a killing spree across his town, murdering indiscriminately. Sounds like a blast right? more after the jump... Fantastic Fest Review: Antichrist 10/07/2009
 The film opens on a tight shot of a shoulder in a shower in high speed slow motion, cut to: an intimate embrace between two lovers, cut to: close ups of various body parts that are difficult to distinguish, cut to: graphic money shot of Willem Dafoe's penis sliding into Charlotte Gainsbourg's vagina. Somebody read that opening and actually thought, "I'm going to finance this film." Amongst the chaos of the extremely long, ultra slow motion 10 minute opening of Lars von Trier's Antichrist we see an intercutting of the couple's young son exiting his room and leaping to his demise from a second story window while his parents are in the throes of passion. The result of this child neglect leaves us with the child's hospitalized grief-stricken mother (Gainsbourg) and her detached therapist of a husband (Dafoe). The husband decides to take his wife to their cabin in the woods and treat her to deal with the grief in each stage. Along the way, we will see clitorides (that's plural for clitoris, folks) being cut, penises ejaculating blood, talking foxes, and a whole lot of pretentious, self indulgent BS. Fantastic Fest Review: Zombieland 10/01/2009
 A plague has swept the world over, and people have turned into zombies--everyone, that is, except a select few who have somehow managed to find a way to survive living by their own rules for keeping alive. We start on a young man named Columbus (after where he is from, people are identified by locations so no one gets too attached) who is on his way back home from Austin (represent!) to see if his parents are still alive. Along the way he fights some zombies and happens upon a bad ass, take no prisoners, Twinkie hunter named Tallahassee (guess where he's from?). Together the two set out for Ohio until they happen upon two con girls who steal their car and weapons. It's no-holds-barred when you're living in Zombieland. MORE after the jump... "Extract" your expections 09/04/2009
 Mike Judge has brought us some funny in his time. The adolescent boy in us loved Beavis and Butthead, the Texan in us enjoyed King of the Hill, and the everyman in us simply adored Office Space. And though it may not be hip to say, I found Idiocracy pretty hilarious. So when it came to the release of his latest comedy starring the likes of Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, and Kristin Wiig I was pretty excited. Well it didn't take long for this film to dash any and all hopes of me laughing as I found the film all encompassing of the word 'meh'. The story follows average ordinary Joel (Bateman), the owner of an extract plant. He loves and is fascinated by various flavors of extracts. Joel has his own company, a frigid wife, and his employees are always trying to find ways to take advantage of him. On top of this, Joel's wife might be less than faithful, and the only advice he gets is from a drug-popping bartender at a local hotel (Affleck). Sounds like the ingredients are there, right? Wrong. More after the jump... Jeepers Creepers, it's The Mystery Team! 08/28/2009
 No mystery too big, and no mystery too small. In their heyday The Mystery Team were the lovable little neighborhood sleuths in the vein of Encyclopedia Brown. Their childlike innocence was so charming as they got down to the root of who stepped on a bug. Now, these three boys are all grown up, but they haven't shaken their childlike sense of wonder or their foolish games of solving simple mysteries for a dime. The cases have dried up, and now people are tired of these 18 year-old man-boys. The boys seem ready to hang up their magnifying glasses until one last case comes knocking on their door, and this time it's a real mystery. One big case. Zero clue. more after the jump... "Funny" People 07/30/2009
 For years it has eluded major Hollywood films. How is it that Judd Apatow and his rag tag group of geeks can wrangle up a film that is both commercial and critically successful? Is it their completely original premises? Not really. Do they completely kick convention in the face and bid adieu to film clichés? I wouldn't say so. You see Apatow and Co. have a formula—a formula that seems to succeed every time he steps onto a movie set. His scripts take all the Hollywood clichés we have begun to groan over, and he personalizes them. We've seen all these things before; guy keeps secret from girl, girl finds out, gets mad, then they make up; or guy does something stupid, doesn't realize it, then girl gets angry, guy learns from mistake, and they make up. This isn't new territory, but Apatow takes these conventions and roots them in a realistic base. Hollywood clichés exist because they happen to all of us, but what most films do is boil them down to their one sentence stereotypes and make them so pedestrian and dull, what Funny People does is it takes those premises and relate them to real people in real experiences with real internal conflicts. Funny People tells the story of George Simmons and his privileged life. He has it all except friends, family, and that one girl who got away. When he learns he has a terminal disease, George decides he needs to make a change and takes a young comedian under his wing. I won't spoil more. ...more after the jump  Every once and a while a movie comes along and just strikes a chord. Sometimes you sit there watching a movie, and it shoots an arrow of unadulterated truth from the screen straight to your heart, and you can't help but want to stand up like a black lady in church and scream out 'Hallelujah!" Well my friends, this is that film. With a charming cast, deft direction, and what is sure to be a hit soundtrack, (500) Days of Summer has done something very few films this year have done, it affected me. | Archives
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