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Review: The House of the Devil
Filed under: Horror, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews
By Eric D. Snider (reprint from 5/3/2009 -- Tribeca Film Festival)
The House of the Devil is a great name for a movie. It hearkens back to the days of grindhouse horror, when a film's title and its trailer told you basically everything you needed to know. Yet it's different from those movies, too, in that it prefers slow-building tension over frequent bloodletting and mayhem. You have to wait for "The House of the Devil" to deliver on its promises -- but when it does, holy crap. I know that isn't a very scholarly analysis, but seriously. Holy crap.
The film is set in the early 1980s, apparently, with appropriately synthesized rock on the soundtrack and lots of freeze-frames in the opening credits. Our perky young heroine, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), is a college student who's sick of living in the dorms and is preparing to move into an apartment with her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig). Eager to earn some money to facilitate the move, Samantha responds to a flier posted on a campus bulletin board looking for a babysitter. Rather suspiciously (to me, anyway), the flier is blank except for a phone number and the words "BABYSITTER WANTED."
The clients are the Ulmans -- Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) is a tall, gentle-voiced man who uses a walking stick; his wife (Mary Woronov) is old-school sophisticated, a woman whose evening wear requires fur. Samantha learns when she arrives at the house -- a huge old isolated place, I needn't tell you -- that the babysitting duties will be slightly different from the norm, but it's not a deal-breaker. And the Ulmans are offering a lot of money.
AFF Review: Serious Moonlight
Filed under: Comedy, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews, Austin
The first thing everyone seems to mention about Serious Moonlight is that its screenplay is the last one written by the late Adrienne Shelly. Actress Cheryl Hines, who had a role in Shelly's film Waitress, is making her feature directorial debut with the dark comedy, which stars Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton. The movie opened Austin Film Festival this year. It sounds like a sure-fire comedy, but unfortunately it just left me with a headache.
Serious Moonlight focuses on a married couple, Louise (Meg Ryan) and Ian (Timothy Hutton), who are supposed to meet in their country house for a rendezvous, but both arrive a day early. Louise wants to surprise her husband, but finds out that he also has a surprise: he's leaving her. She refuses to accept this, and ends up cracking him on the head with a vase, binding him with duct tape, and refusing to let him loose until he comes to his senses and realizes how much he loves her and wants to stay with her.
Review: Ong Bak 2
Filed under: Action, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews
By Todd Gilchrist (reprinted from 9/23/09)
Cinematically speaking, there may be nothing worse than when an action star or purveyor of thrills starts taking himself too seriously. Such a transformation almost invariably begets a personal crusade, which often takes the form of a vanity project, and usually turns out about as well as The Quest did for Jean-Claude Van Damme, or On Deadly Ground did for Steven Seagal. Thai martial artist Tony Jaa launched his career with the original Ong Bak, and after that film and its superior follow-up, The Protector, made him an international sensation, he apparently started believing his own hype: Jaa not only co-directed Ong Bak 2, his latest film, but conceived it as the ultimate Thai adventure, reinforcing his own legend with a self-aggrandizing historical epic that somehow proves that you can actually make a movie without a plot – which unfortunately but perhaps predictably isn't a compliment.
Ostensibly a prequel to the original film, Ong Bak 2 chronicles a series of fairly awesome fights that Jaa's character Tien gets into en route to becoming a martyred national hero. There's some back story about the betrayal of Tien's parents and his training by guerrilla fighters in the jungles of Thailand, but for the most part the film is front-loaded with one scene after another where he beats the bloody pulp out of any and all comers. Meanwhile Jaa's mentor and co-director Panna Rittikrai documents the action with a surprising, satisfying lyricism, reminiscent of Zhang Yimou's Hero and House of Flying Daggers, but it seems obvious they're more interested in throat-ripping than truly capturing the poetry of Thai martial arts.
Fantastic Fest Review: District 13: Ultimatum
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews, Fantastic Fest, Remakes and Sequels
When it reached American audiences two years after it opened in France, 2006's District 13 (or B13 here) served as a breezy introduction to the art of parkour, not to mention director Pierre Morel's knack for shooting action sequences both energetically and visibly (an underrated quality, that last one). Morel moved on to Taken, though, while parkour began to infiltrate more high-profile Hollywood fare, like Casino Royale and Live Free or Die Hard.
However, writer/producer/all-around action maven Luc Besson stuck around to cash in on the promise of a follow-up, and now we're greeted with District 13: Ultimatum, a competent if flabby rehash of the first film's race-against-time plot and dystopian setting.
Review: Bronson
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Thrillers, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews
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By Scott Weinberg. Reprinted from Sundance Film Festival, 2009
Raw, blistering, harsh and compelling in the way that only a really good "prison film" can be, Nicolas Wining Refn's Bronson is a rather rough experience. Fortunately it's also very smart, dark, intelligent and disturbing, supported by a force-of-nature lead performance and a screenplay that focuses more on the "character study" angle and less on the "wow, prison sure is disgusting" perspective.
Based (apparently very closely) on actual events, Bronson is about a British thug named Michael Peterson, a rough, gruff, and muscle-bound troublemaker who somehow earned the title of Britian's most violent prisoner. Incarcerated for a stupid (but non-violent) post office robbery, Peterson adopts the moniker of American film star Charles Bronson and begins a long and rather unpleasant life behind bars. Although he's more of a angry man than an outright evil one, poor Bronson has a serious problem keeping his temper in check. Stuck in a cell with little to do besides build muscles and pace around nervously, Bronson snatches every opportunity to dole out some raw-knuckled fisticuffs whenever the "screws" invade his cell.
Poll: How Do You Watch Most New Indie Films?
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Documentary, Foreign Language, Horror, Independent, Thrillers, IFC, Magnolia, Distribution, Home Entertainment
With one art house dedicated to showing independent films and the spare multiplex screen occasionally hijacked by them, Orlando -- like most markets -- doesn't always get those that open in NY/LA first, and even when we eventually do, it can take months (for example, we got July releases Thirst and In the Loop in September).As such, I'm keen on keeping an eye out for whatever's available on-demand. That's how I recently caught up with the very good Flame & Citron, and between Magnolia and IFC, I can hope to see the likes of Red Cliff and Antichrist for myself and in the comfort of my own home. (Well, I hope that the former hits VOD...)
So now I ask you: Do you have access to on-demand programming? Do you take advantage of it out of convenience, or is it because you might not have any other chance to see something before DVD? If you live in New York or Los Angeles, do you make a particular concerted effort to support a film in theaters if you know you can just watch it at home? Or will you guys and girls just wait to watch a movie whenever it comes home from your Queue?
The 'Humpday' DVD Cover Has Been De-Gayed
Filed under: Magnolia, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing, Posters
Ask anyone who has seen Humpday, the low-budget indie comedy that's been getting rave reviews since Sundance, and they'll tell you it's NOT a gay movie. They will tell you this because otherwise it really sounds like it is: It's about two straight male friends who decide to video themselves having sex as a sort of artistic expression. But what it's really about is how heterosexual male friendships work in the 21st century, and its portrayal of those relationships is hilariously, insightfully dead-on. That's why so many straight people who wouldn't enjoy a "gay movie" are enjoying this one -- because it's about straightness.But convincing people to see the film has been a hard sell all year long, and to be honest, the poster wasn't helping. The movie is called Humpday. Its tagline -- "Some loves are meant to be. This one, not so much" -- and its scruffy stars suggest a gay hipster romantic comedy. The title hides their guts, makes them look thinner than they are. The poster is pink, for crying out loud. Once you've seen the movie, the poster feels perfect for it -- masculine, with a hint of irony about how obsessed we are with being masculine. (The flowery wallpaper is a nice touch.) But without having seen the movie, the poster just looks ... well, gay. Which the movie isn't.
It seems like the people at Magnolia might have been thinking along these same lines, because the DVD cover -- which only seems to be posted at Amazon so far -- changes the color scheme to blue and shoves a wife between the two man friends. Here it is, after the jump:
Review: World's Greatest Dad
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Sundance, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews
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By Scott Weinberg (reprint from Sundance Film Festival 2009)
You hear it in lots of (usually sad) movies, and I'd say it's probably one of the truest things ever spoken: "There's nothing more tragic than having to bury your own child." But, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend -- for just a second -- that (in one specific case) it wouldn't be the end of the world. As a matter of fact, let's further pretend that the death of a child could somehow lead to several wonderful and life-changing results.
Sick, I know, but that's one of the ideas that runs through the twisted-yet-amusing dark comedy World's Greatest Dad. Written and directed by the consistently unpredictable Bob Goldthwait (he also gave us the similarly strange Shakes the Clown and Stay), and anchored by an unexpectedly strong Robin Williams performance, World's Greatest Dad is indeed about a high school poetry teacher who finds his life blossoming after his son accidentally commits suicide.
Interview: Bobcat Goldthwait
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Independent, New Releases, Magnolia, Interviews
The Bobcat Goldthwait I knew from watching cable as a kid was not the same Bobcat who greeted me at the Magnolia Pictures office and offered me a cookie. It's hard not to refer back to the "old" Bobcat that squawked and spazzed his way to stand-up stardom in the '80s, as well as three Police Academy movies and other flicks that took advantage of his off-the-wall stylings, although it is, in fact, lazy. Goldthwait is now a writer and a director, with three indie movies under his belt. And no, he doesn't really talk like that.
Goldthwait's first movie, Shakes the Clown, has become what people affectionately call a cult movie; Goldthwait plays the main character, an alcoholic womanizing clown mired in an equally bizarre clown subculture. His second outing as a writer and director, Sleeping Dogs Lie, examined the nature of truth in relationships and how much we really want to know about those we love, especially when one's fiancée might reveal she performed oral sex on her dog in college because she was bored one night. It played well at Sundance, but didn't get the same traction from the festival and word-of-mouth that his current film, World's Greatest Dad, is enjoying. Maybe because dog BJs – even implied ones – are gross and could impede viewers from sitting through the first five minutes.
Currently available on-demand and opening in limited cities August 21st, World's Greatest Dad stars Robin Williams as schlubby Lance Clayton – a poetry teacher who has had countless manuscripts rejected, a sad sap with a smile that looks more like a grimace, and the father of one of the most loathsome teenagers to grace the screen in a non-horror movie in quite some time.
Honoring Adrienne Shelly in NYC
The murder of Adrienne Shelly was obviously not just a devastating loss to her friends and family, but to the people who followed her work eagerly from her early days as a star in Hal Hartley movies like The Unbelievable Truth and Trust. (By the by, Trust is only available on VHS, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one rushing to buy it on DVD.) She was also just getting back into writing and directing after taking a break for a few years; Waitress, which she wrote, directed, and also acted in, had just been accepted to Sundance when she was murdered. (Read Jeffrey M. Anderson's take on the movie and her murder.) Through the efforts of her husband Andy Ostroy and friends and costars like Cheryl Hines and Keri Russell, Waitress was shephered through the festivals, inevitable press days, and release. Ostroy also began the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, which was created to "support the artistic achievements of female actors, writers and directors who are either working on current short and feature film projects, new productions, or are seeking to transition from acting to writing and directing."
Check Out Concept Art From Marvel's Futuristic Theme Park
Chris Weitz to Direct Two-Part 'Breaking Dawn' Finale?
Girls on Film: The Academy's Shallow Actress Pool_thumbnail.jpg)
Alec Baldwin Becomes Latest to Threaten Retirement
The First 'Iron Man 2' Poster Appears!
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