Having suffered the indignity of being made to run around after Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie while they showcased their “talent” on TV’s The Simple Life, unit producer Jeff Fisher conceived a story telling of a pampered LA rich bitch who winds up in a backwater Dakota town and is pursued by a vicious serial killer. Amazing how ideas sometimes just come to you.
Click here to read the full review at Suite101.com.
2008
Starring: Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, Odette Yustman, Mike Vogel, T. J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David
Director: Matt Reeves
Runtime: 85 minutes
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rating: PG-13
Ever since audiences first got a taste of this gritty monster movie, by way of a mysterious clip of handheld camcorder footage that saw the statue of liberty’s tossed down a New York street like a bowling ball, a swell of anticipation began to build around its release. Producer JJ Abrahms and his team managed to orchestrate one of the most successful and widespread underground marketing campaigns via the Internet the likes of which hadn’t been seen since The Blair Witch Project. Word of mouth exploded and speculation as to what exactly this thing attacking New York was ranged from an unannounced Godzilla sequel to the smoke monster from Lost loose from the island.
After such gigantic buzz it was fair to expect that the film itself would be hard pressed to deliver on the expectations and the self-induced hype on the part of the viewer. Unsurprisingly, the final product, while certainly entertaining, is a little bit of a letdown. Shot entirely from direct POV through a camcorder, the film goes directly for the jugular of an America still somewhat wading through the hazy fog of post 9/11 paranoia where anything can happen to anyone at anytime. So with that in mind the camcorder is first switched on to record a going away party for Rob, organized by his brother Jason and his best friends Hud (our cameraman) and Lily. When the full swing celebrations are interrupted by a series of loud explosions and burning chunks of buildings flying through the streets, you cannot help but get a sick sense of déjà vu as images of the World Trade Center immediately come rushing to the front of your mind.
2007
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Michael Harney, Laz Alonso, Chrysta Olsen
Director: Roland Joffe
Runtime 96 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: R
After courting much controversy with a poster ad campaign that was deemed offensive by more than a few, this latest in a sub-genre suffering heavily from diminishing returns and market saturation initially offered itself up on Harry Potter weekend as an “alternative.” Well it certainly is all that and more. Elisha Cuthbert continues to choose disastrous lowbrow vehicles that don’t require her to be much more than the pouting damsel in distress in a tight vest that she perfected on 24. Captivity is intriguing for the simple fact that almost every single negative adjective in the English language can accurately be applied to one or more parts of it. Really, watch it and see. We defy you to find a bad word that can’t be said about this film.
1996
Starring: George Clooney, Harvey Kietel, Quentin Tarantino, Juliette Lewis, Ernest Liu, Selma Hayek
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Runtime: 108 minutes
Distributor: Miramax
Rating: R
Initially a box office flop, this unashamedly ludicrous B movie homage found some legs on VHS and scored big for several involved. It cemented Robert Rodriguez as a genuine talent, showing his hard-hitting indie debut El Mariachi was no fluke. It also showcased Quentin Tarantrino’s amazing knack for throwaway dialogue made instantly quotable and reaffirmed that he should most definitely stop taking acting roles in his films. Chiefly, it was a breakout performance for George Clooney, giving him a good reputation as a guy that can carry films as well as TV shows about hospitals – a reputation he almost ruined a year later with his awful turn in Batman & Robin, but that is another story.
2007
Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Sali Richardson, Willow Smith, Dash Mihok
Director: Francis Lawrence
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros
Rating: PG-13
Fair play to Will Smith for trying to stretch his acting chops in recent years. Post Bad Boys II Smith took off in a different direction, trying his hand at some softer roles which went beyond his accepted mastery of the word “Damn!” A generally well received performance in the much overlooked Hitch, followed by an Oscar nominated turn in The Pursuit of Happiness found Smith at something of a career crossroads. Clocking up his 40th birthday next year and with the prospect of a big budget Men In Black III being tossed around by Warner Bros, Smith has some choices to make. Does he go the Tom Hanks route and turn away from the kind of material that made him and stick with emotionally heavy Oscar pictures, or does he return to his comfort zone and his patented ‘WillSmithisms?’
2007
Starring: Lauren German, Bijou Philips, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Jay Hernandez, Richard Burgi
Director: Eli Roth
Runtime: 93 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: R
Whatever you wish to call it – gore, snuff, gore porn, torture porn, gore-ography – the current trend of mutilation based horror film is alive and burning brightly. It appears that we have moved on from soaking wet little girls climbing through televisions and cold, sterile cinematography, broken only by the harsh intermittent white noise. Now we are focused well and truly on horrors of the body and what terrible harm could befall these fragile little meat sacks that are our bodies. It broke into the mainstream with Saw with what was really just the stolen climax of the first Mad Max film – a chained-up man can choose to stay put and die, or saw off his foot and live, what would you do? It was a semi-interesting curiosity that has since spawned a group of wannabes imitators the size of which makes Tarantino’s army look like an under populated book of the month club.
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerrit, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Yaphet Koto, Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright
Director: Ridley Scott
Runtime: 117 Minutes
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: R
Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic certainly ranks as one of the single most influential science fiction films of all time. One that spawned a thousand imitators and a hugely successful franchise of its own. Not only did it revolutionize the science fiction genre, but it is a film that’s simply so frightening that the debate still rages as to whether it is in fact a horror film instead. With Alien, Scott delivered one of the first truly regressive depictions of the future to appear on screen. Light years away from the great white mind going into the vast unknown to further benefit mankind, the likes of 2001 and Forbidden Planet, Scott’s deep space is a blue collar world. A working man’s space where expanding our knowledge of the universe is a very small consideration when placed next to the idea of getting home and getting paid. This is space for poor people. A rusting metallic hulk, hauling ore through a cold and indifferent vacuum, (where no one can hear you scream of course) crewed by people who ultimately like traveling the stars about as much as the person on the other end of the phone likes listening to you when you call for the third time this year to tell that you’re certain this time that last month’s gas bill was incorrect.
1986
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, William Hope, Janette Goldstein
Director: James Cameron
Runtime: 154 Minutes
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: R
This film, along with Terminator 2, is definitive proof that James Cameron and only James Cameron should be allowed to direct sequels to universally acclaimed classics. The follow up to Ridley Scott’s iconic 1979 deep space chiller Alien was in fact quite a risk for Cameron and in the hands of a different director could easily have ended up as the worst kind of disaster (see Robocop 2). Instead Aliens is that most rare of cinematic fables, the unicorn of the silver screen, a sequel that genuinely surpasses the original in almost every respect – not only offering due diligence to the existing world of the story and its weighty mythology, but expanding those ideas while simultaneously taking them in a completely new direction. Once more reprising the role of Ellen Ripley is Sigourney Weaver, delivering a turn that would confirm her as one of cinemas most revered screen heroines and land her a Best Actress Oscar nomination in the process.
As the last surviving member of the Nostromo, Ripley’s shuttle is finally discovered with her in a state of cryogenic sleep after more than fifty-seven years. With the company less than impressed with her version of events, they discount her fevered claims that the terraforming colony that now exists on LV-426 is in terrible danger. But when contact with the colony is lost, Ripley reluctantly returns to the planet with a crack squad of marines to assess the situation with little or no idea what awaits them.
2007
Starring: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack, Jasmine Jessica Anthony, Tony Shalhoub
Director: Mikael Hafstrom
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Distributor: Dimension Films
Rating: PG-13
As the horror film finds itself tightly within the death grip of the well past tired sub genre of Torture Porn for the time being, it is refreshing to see a horror film go back to basics, with high-tension, suspense and inventive scares that don’t revolve around gore and mutilation. However, Steven King films are a decidedly mixed bag. They are either excellent or complete dreck, rarely coming out in the middle. For every Shawshank Redemption there is a Dreamcatcher, for every Shining, a Needful Things. Still, it can’t possibly be any worse than Hostel II, right?
1408 tells the story of embittered author Mike Enslin (Cusack), a man who lost faith in everyone and everything after the tragic death of his daughter. Desperately avoiding confronting his grief by traveling around the world to supposedly haunted locations and debunking them in his spook travel guides, he receives a tip that sends him to The Dolphin Hotel. As hotel manager Samual L. Jackson desperately tries to explain in a futile effort to dissuade Enslin from staying there, there have been fifty-six deaths in room 1408 and no guest has ever survived more than an hour. So off Enslin goes, safe in his dismissive cocoon, unaware that he is in for a life changing experience – if he manages to survive at all.
2007
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Catherine McCormack, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Idris Elba
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Runtime: 99 Minutes
Distributor: Fox Atmoic
Rating: R
With 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle who had been floating around in something of a creative limbo quite simply brought us one of the finest horror films in many years. Choosing good old fashioned humanistic terror over big budget CGI, he delivered an adrenaline fueled apocalypse piece that retooled and reinvigorated the zombie film in such a way that it played by the rules and ticked all the requisite genre boxes and at the same time as taking us in a whole new direction. This follow on from director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is at first glance everything a good sequel should be – more of the same, but at the same time completely different.
Looking to take the original concept and run with it, we pick up the story twenty-eight weeks later as the title suggests. The outbreak appears to have been contained, the infected are all dead and re population of London has begun under the watchful eye of a US task force headed by Idrs Elba’s marine core colonel. When two recently arrived, rather bored children decide to break out of the safe zone to go check out their old house, they stumble across a sole survivor – immune to the virus but still a carrier. Picked up by the army the virus gets loose once more and things quickly spiral out of control.
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