Source Code

This reasonably clever lil sci-fi thriller wants to have been directed by The Hitch…or maybe to have taken place in The Twilight Zone. It’s a interesting premise done with conviction, especially by Jake Gyllenhaal as the displaced and desperate Army pilot tasked with averting a terrorist incident on a Chicago commuter train. The small budget […]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

This is a very mature, realistic and deliberately paced espionage story. It is definitely not cut from the same cloth as the Bond or Bourne films. It takes its time with the complexities of the narrative and its look at the international ‘spy game’ of the Cold War in the early 1970s. The cast are […]

Apollo 18

As ‘found footage’ movies go, this one is handled FAIRLY well. The ‘actors’ do a credible job, the NASA props and moonscape sets flow seamlessly into the actual archive footage and the location and situation lends perfectly to the genre. On the down side, there was a point where it was hard to overlook the […]

The Divide

This IS the ‘Feel Good Movie of the Year’! This intense, nihilistic and ugly film from 2011 focuses on a group of survivors who escape the outbreak of WW3 by retreating into the basement of their apartment building as the nukes fall. Once there, it’s a steady decline as they start to lose grip on […]

The Company of Wolves

This retelling/hybrid Little Red Riding Hood-werewolf movie from 1984 is a good example of ‘style over substance’. The story is too fragmented for its own good and has some high-school level acting tossed in the mix. On the plus side, it boasts a very detailed Gothic style and atmosphere that Tim Burton would be right […]

Special Forces

This French/English/Arabic language military thriller from 2011, despite being saddled with a horribly generic, ‘Direct-To-DVD’-sounding title, is actually really well done. The fact the the filmmakers had the full cooperation of the French military goes a long way as the equipment, the tactics and the vehicles all feel legit with no CG enhancements. Stylistically, the […]

The Monster Squad

So after 1990’s TMNT, I felt brave enough to try another childhood fave, this time from ’87. And…2 for 2!!! This flick is still a hoot! It’s surprisingly well done with some cool ‘slants’ style-wise on the classic Universal monster styles and a noticeable mean streak, which I appreciated. Another reason that I dug this, […]

The Quiet Earth

This strange little sci-fi film from New Zealand circa 1985 is an interesting one. It follows a scientist who wakes up one morning to discover that the population of the planet has disappeared, in all probability, as a result of an upper-atmosphere military experiment that he was a part of. As he deals with first […]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I hadn’t seen this one in about 20 or so years and I hit ‘Play’ with a certain amount of apprehension, fully expecting age and nostalgia to be unkind. You know what?…it held up pretty damn well actually. What was fun was to now pick up on certain jokes that flew right over my immature […]

Sleeping Beauty

This strange little Australian tale from 2011 features Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) as Lucy, a morally flexible waitress/student who ends up moonlighting as a very unique escort. Willingly drugged, she sleeps through the physical whims of a series of rich old men, all varied in their issues and depravities. This film is full of almost […]