"You're Next"
Directed by Adam Wingard
Starring Sharni Vinson, AJ Bowen, Rob Moran, Joe Swanberg, Nicholas Tucci, , Wendy Glenn, Andy Seimetz, Barbara Crampton
Horror, Thriller
94 Mins
R
With last years Cabin in the Woods, screenwriter Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard subverted the epoch of cabin-based teen slasher films, amalgamating the tropes of the genre in a style that was at once mocking and pedalizing horror. In a way, they reminded us why the genre still mattered and what exactly about it was so much fun. In similar fashion, You're Next employs gleeful violence and sardonic storytelling to solidify the paramount import of the horror's existence. In viscus-smattered effect, it is bloody, simple, unadulterated fun at the movies worthy of strong consideration for any horror buff.
While story elements are certainly borrowed from other home-invasion movie territory, there is nothing explicit in the plot that defines the fun cemented deep into the foundation of this film. Sure, we've seen paramilitary groups armed to the teeth stomp in on helpless, unexpecting families but the ability to gleam such an element of nonstop fun and balls-to-the-wall excitement is a rare feat that You're Next achieves with amateur ease.
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Film and the Arts
"GMO OMG" Delivers Nutritious Fare
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 24 August 2013 21:03
- Written by Laura Blum
The good news about Jeremy Seifert's eco-documentary GMO OMG is that it breezes into your heart as he and his adorable children explore genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The bad news is much of what they uncover and its implications for global health.
Seifert, who previously directed a short about dumpster diving (Dive!), came to his current food-dunnit while probing the Haitian burning of GMOs donated after the 2010 earthquake. "It's a gift to destroy you," says Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of Haiti's Papaye Peasant Movement, about Monsanto Company's 475 tons of hybrid seeds that local farmers preferred to incinerate rather than compromise Haiti's food sovereignty.
America should be so lucky. Here, as in many countries around the world, Monsanto and its agrochemical ilk are tinkering with our food without credible proof that it's safe to consume -- and without labeling that'd let us choose what we put in our bodies.
To cite but two distressing stats, we learn that 93% of our soy is modified, as is 80% of our processed foods. Less appetizing still is the fact that when we eat GMOs, we're literally eating pesticides. If that doesn't give pause, maybe the images of tumor-infested rats fed Monsanto herbicide and altered corn will make us rethink our diets.
Increased risks of cancer, auto-immune disorders, autism -- all this might be fabulously worth it were there truth to the fundamental claim that GMOs are humanity's only hope for feeding its burgeoning population.
According to the Millennium Institute's Hans Rudolf Herren, yields are now double what we need, enough for 14 billion people. More to the point, the proliferation of superbugs and weeds in the wake of GMOs bust the myth that the current bag of bio technology tricks is a sustainable solution.
GMO OMG fires a wakeup call to reclaim what environmental hazards, lab-brewed toxins and the corporate monopolies behind them have shanghaied. The soundtrack is rousing -- Seifert and his band created pulsating, up-tempo grooves -- but not enough to drown out the ticking of the clock to safeguard uncontaminated food sources for humanity and other species on our spinning mud ball.
One of the highlights of the film is Seifert's visit to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on a far-flung archipelago in Norway. No less than the "survival of the planet" is at stake as corporations yield up monocrops and tampered seeds, so it's at least some comfort to see that samplings of the world's unadulterated seeds are being preserved in this priceless repository.
At the core of GMO OMG are a field of questions: Who controls our future sustenance? Can we still have a say? How can we join the global food effort to take back what's ours? Seifert's pacey family road trip shows why anyone with a body ought to, OMG, do so before it's too late.
Film Review: "You're Next"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 23 August 2013 11:52
- Written by Matt Oakes
Film Review: "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 21 August 2013 12:02
- Written by Matt Oakes
"The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones"
Directed by Harald Zwart
Starring Lily Collins Jamie Campbell Bower, Kevin Zegers, Jemima West, Robert Sheehan, Robert Maillet, Lena Headey, Jared Harris, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Aidan Turner
Action, Adventure, Drama
130 Mins
PG-13
Going to see The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is like getting a filing from a dentist whose supply of Novocaine has run dry. It's a painful eternity of an experience that hacks and saws at our entertainment-guzzling sensibilities, defying each and every lesson culled from filmmaking 101 and spewing formula like a film-school-dropout on Ipecac. The "talent" both in front of and behind the camera is so raw-dogged and askew that it almost seeks to redefine "so bad, it's good". Needless to say, it misses that mark by a long shot and winds up in its own realm entirely, almost unknowingly. The result is strangely akin to watching a child play in a turd-peppered litter box, mistaking it for the sandbox he knows and loves, helpless to clue the poor thing in on its brown-handed error.
You may find yourself laughing aloud at the twisted excuse for a story as it fumbles over and over but it feels like laughing at a cat chasing after a laser pointer. You feel the cat's pain and its confusion as it bounds around searching for direction, tragically confuzzled when it comes up empty-handed time and time again, but when all is said and done, you're thinking to yourself, "What a dumb cat." In this regard, director Harald Zwart is much like a dumb cat.
Directed by Harald Zwart
Starring Lily Collins Jamie Campbell Bower, Kevin Zegers, Jemima West, Robert Sheehan, Robert Maillet, Lena Headey, Jared Harris, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Aidan Turner
Action, Adventure, Drama
130 Mins
PG-13
You may find yourself laughing aloud at the twisted excuse for a story as it fumbles over and over but it feels like laughing at a cat chasing after a laser pointer. You feel the cat's pain and its confusion as it bounds around searching for direction, tragically confuzzled when it comes up empty-handed time and time again, but when all is said and done, you're thinking to yourself, "What a dumb cat." In this regard, director Harald Zwart is much like a dumb cat.
August '13 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 19 August 2013 02:04
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Cavalcade
(Fox)
Noel Coward’s play about a British family living through the first three decades of the 20th century was turned into an entertaining epic by director Frank Lloyd, enough to win 1933’s Best Picture Oscar.
The intelligent performances of Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard as the Marryots, who live through the horrors of the Boer War and World War I (and historical events like the sinking of the Titanic) keep the expansive drama from becoming too unwieldy. The Blu-ray image looks impressive for an 80-year-old film; extras include critic Richard Schickel’s commentary and a brief glimpse of its Oscar win.
The Damned
(Cohen Media)
Rene Clément’s tense 1947 drama about a submarine with Nazis escaping Europe for South America at the end of WWII, claustrophobically set within the sub’s confines, has a tense situation that never relies on Hollywood touches like excessive melodramatics or overbearing music.
The superlative French and German-speaking cast, led by Henri Vidal, makes Clement’s taut film even more engrossing. The Blu-ray image looks great; lone extra is a terrific hour-long documentary, Rene Clement or the Cinema of Sketches.
The Devil’s Backbone
and Seconds
(Criterion Collection)
and Seconds
(Criterion Collection)
Unlike Carlos Saura’s films, Guillermo Del Toro’s Devil’s Backbone—a 2001 Spanish Civil War allegory—is a clunky, unsatisfying blend of horrific reality and terrorizing monsters; John Frankenheimer’s 1967 Seconds embodies Vietnam era paranoia, even if its story—about a man who buys himself a new life—is Twilight Zone lite, with little of the wit or economy of the classic TV series.
Both films have fantastic Criterion transfers; Devil extras include a Del Toro commentary, intro and interviews, making-of featurette and deleted scenes; Seconds extras include Frankenheimer’s commentary and interview, star Rock Hudson and fan Alec Baldwin interviews, and retrospective featurette.
(Synapse)
In this clever variation on the haunted house movie, a crew shoots a horror film in an old mansion with a history of mysterious murders; one by one, performers and filmmakers are offed grotesquely.
It’s essentially tongue-in-cheek trash—and the appearance of zombies at the end ruins the gothic mood—but Paul Harrison’s 1974 film is still fun. The grainy Blu-ray image adds atmosphere; extras include actor John Carradine interview and associate producer Gary Kent commentary.
(Disney)
The Muppets’ first flick—which begat sequels like The Great Muppet Caper and delightful Muppet Christmas Carol—was made at the peak of their popularity (1979), when The Muppet Show was the hippest thing on TV.
That coolness shows in the roster of guest stars like Mel Brooks, Steve Martin, Milton Berle and Bob Hope, all one-upped by Kermit, Miss Piggy and my favorites—Statler and Waldorf, the grouchy, sarcastic old men. The Blu-ray image looks good; extras include a Kermit featurette.
Once Upon a Time—Complete 2nd Season
(ABC)
Merging fairy-tale characters and 21st century civilians seemed like a good idea for a new series, but how does the gimmick keep going during the second season without becoming old-hat? The creators don’t entire solve this problem: the combination of soap opera and fantasy that worked during the first season ends up weirder but less entertaining.
In such a format, even charming performers like Lana Parrilla and Jennifer Morrison can’t escape their restrictive shells. The Blu-ray image looks tremendous; extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette, deleted scenes, bloopers and commentaries.
(Warners)
George Stevens’ iconic 1953 western stars Alan Ladd as the eponymous gunslinger who arrives in a small town to assist a homesteader against a ruthless cattle baron and his scary hired gun. If Stevens’ direction is stilted at times, the story and characters’ simplicity has ensured that it remains a landmark Hollywood western.
Warners’ hi-def transfer gives Loyal Griggs’ Oscar-winning cinematography the color and detail it’s longed lacked on video; the lone extra is George Stevens Jr.’s informative commentary.
DVDs of the Week
The Company You Keep
(Sony)
In this occasionally gripping political thriller, director Robert Redford plays a former radical whose “new” life as a single father and lawyer is blown with the arrest of one of his compatriots for a murder 40+ years earlier.
Despite its by-the-numbers plot and mixed bag of performers (Shia LaBeouf is too slight as the crusading journalist—he even pronounces “Albany” incorrectly—while vets Redford, Julie Christie and Susan Sarandon score), Redford and screenwriter Lem Dobbs have made a rare intelligent American movie. Extras include a making-of featurette, interviews and press conference.
(Strand)
The first film in Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s trilogy, Love follows a 50-year-old mother of a teenage daughter who vacations in Kenya to have sex with local black men: while the sex-tourist angle isn’t condescendingly dramatized, there’s also none of the insight of Frenchman Laurent Cantet’s Heading South.
Seidl unflinchingly shows the simultaneous exploitation of tourists and natives, so this stridently anti-romantic film never becomes sentimental. What that bodes for the rest of his trilogy is anyone’s guess.
Robert Williams—Mr. Bitchin’
(Cinema Libre)
Underground artist Robert Williams might be best known to mainstream audiences for his painting Appetite for Destruction, which became the controversial cover of Guns’n’Roses’ smash debut; Mary C. Reese’s impressively offhand documentary doesn’t dwell on it, instead putting it in the context of Williams’ long career.
Williams himself comes off fairly engaging in interviews, and Reese smartly balances biographical info for those unfamiliar with him and details for Williams’ fans.
(Warners)
In its fifth season, this L.A. cop series has a gritty look as it displays the dirty work other shows don’t, but some of the writing—especially when showing the personal lives of the men and women who deal with violent individuals daily—is clichéd and lazy.
Still, the solid acting makes the flawed show a watchable look at flawed people trying to protect society. All ten episodes of the final season are included; extras comprise deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.
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