Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: PLAN C Is A Sly Anti-Caper

Police work has rarely looked more like an ordinary office job than it does in the wryly amusing Plan C, where the desks are stuffed side by side in cramped spaces, bureaucracy reigns, and bald, middle-aged Ronald has lost his... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING Will Take Your Head Off!

Following the surprise success of 2009's Universal Soldier: Regeneration, director John Hyams continues to steer the previously wavering franchise in new and invigorating directions, thanks in large part this time round to the involvement of Larnell Stovall and new... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: MIAMI CONNECTION Is The Best Tae Kwon Do Rock Avengers VS. Ninjas & Stupid Cocaine Film You've Never Seen

Dear Miami Connection,You're the one for me. I've loved you since the first time I saw your trailer. I don't know whether it was the insanely acrobatic Tae Kwon Do or the incredible friendship-themed power pop that first got me... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: LEE'S ADVENTURE

Talk about a pleasant surprise. I referenced the new and upcoming generation of Asian film makers a couple of times already (pk.com.cn, Honey PuPu), Lee's Adventure is allowed to join this illustrious duo as the film further underlines my belief... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012: Max Porcelijn Drunkenly Reviews Max Porcelijn's PLAN C

Waarom Plan C de beste film ooit is >??????\Ik ben max porcelijn, the writer /director of plan c dus dat is gezegd\Dus is a bad situation - todd browne got me drugged, trying to get me to review my own... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: DOM - A RUSSIAN FAMILY and its Brilliant Brutality

And you thought your family reunions were rough... It's a bitter dance of family dynamics and gangster guns a-blazin' in the engaging drama Dom - A Russian Family. With a more serious tone than one might expect, Oleg Pogodin's film... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012: WAKE IN FRIGHT Defies The Mold Of Rural Horrors

Everybody loves a good hillbilly horror film. Of course, the elephant in the room when anyone talks about the terrors of the uncivilized parts of the civilized world is John Boorman's Deliverance. In that film, a group of weekend warriors... More »
By J Hurtado   
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: UNIT 7

As anyone reading, or writing for, Twitch will probably tell you, there's a fine line between genre conventions and outright clichés. To an outsider, someone who's not a fan of a particular genre, anything that looks somewhat familiar can be... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: THE CONSPIRACY Makes You Paranoid, But Don't Tell Anybody

With absolute conviction and unwavering intelligence, The Conspiracy unpacks complex theories and raises disturbing questions that are not easily dismissed. What distinguishes the faux-documentary framework from any number of "mock docs" is that writer/director Christopher MacBride doesn't pretend that... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012: This Is A Review For NEW KIDS NITRO, Homo!

(See how the title of the article is noticeably more offensive than the one I did for its prequel? Well...) One of the biggest surprises moviewise last year was "New Kids Turbo", a full-length Dutch feature describing the chaos... More »
By Ard Vijn   
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: SINISTER Aims for Subconscious Scares

True crime writing never pays. Ellison (Ethan Hawke) had a widely-acclaimed bestseller his first time out, but that was ten years ago. He hasn't been able to replicate that success, though he keeps trying, continually moving his family as close... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: HOLY MOTORS Shoots Past the Moon

With so many serious, dramatic and even generic (see Lawless) films in competition at Cannes, director Leos Carax's Holy Motors came as something like a 100 mph gust of fresh air. In fact, this sci-fi/comedy/I-don't-know-what-to-call-it is such a wild, weird and joyful film that... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: VEGETARIAN CANNIBAL

There must be something in the water in Eastern Europe because they have been cranking out some of the most confrontational films in the world for at least the last 40 years. The first major movement to get any kind... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: COMBAT GIRLS (KRIEGERIN)

I was lucky to be born half brown. I was just the kind of angry kid that would probably have fallen in with the wrong kind of people had I been born all white. Product of a broken home. Too... More »
By J Hurtado   
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: FRANKENWEENIE 3D Barks But Doesn't Bite

Tim Burton's return to stop-motion reanimates many of his favourite themes, from 50s Americana to Gothic horror, but fails to generate an emotional spark. It was back in 1984 when Burton, then a burgeoning young filmmaker in Disney's stable, produced... More »
  

Fantastic Fest 2012 Review: BLACK OUT Sparkles in a Darkly Comic Criminal Vein

Is there anything more annoying than waking up in the morning to discover a gun -- and a bloody corpse -- in bed with you? On the day before your wedding? It's very tempting to describe Arne Toonen's Black... More »
  

TIFF 2012 Review: COME OUT AND PLAY Drops the Ball

A textbook case of a remake failing to improve on a classic original, Come Out And Play not only loses the context of the hidden Narciso Ibáñez Serrador directed gem, which was released on the heels of the Vietnam War... More »
  

L'Etrange 2012 Review: HENGE is Hilarious, Outrageous, Violent... And Kinda Heartwarming

I doubt that the "in sickness and in health" line of wedding vows was written with demonic, mutant transformations in mind. But, as director Hajime Ohata shows, sometimes them's the breaks. Indeed, Henge establishes its love of body horror right... More »
  

TIFF 2012 Review: ROOM 237 Axes Film Theory, Blows Minds

Few films have the power to truly haunt their audience in a way Stanley Kubrick's The Shining does, and continues to do, 30 years after its initial release. Like many of Kubrick's films, it received a relatively lukewarm reception upon... More »
  

TIFF 2012 Review: HERE COMES THE DEVIL, And He's Looking For Sex

Here Comes the Devil is only the second film I'm seen by writer-director Adrián García Bogliano, following a recent viewing of his "geriatric lunatics with nitroglycerine" horror movie Cold Sweat only a few weeks ago. Seeing both films in such... More »
  
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