Molly Hartley suffers from hallucinations, headaches, nightmares, bad cell phone reception, an overly-protective father, an insane mother, and a director who loves SHOCK cuts.
Mickey Liddell’s The Haunting of Molly Hartley is too timid to dig into the deeper issues it eventually raises, so instead much of the running time is devoted to a surfeit of SURPRISE “scares,” accompanied, of course, by SLAMMIN’ sound effects and/or a random discordant musical chord. When the movie isn’t trying to FRIGHTEN you with an unexpected finger on the shoulder or the unexpected THUMP of the daily mail as it COLLIDES with the wooden floor, it THREATENS to bore you to tears with mind-numbingly banal parental conflicts and/or tired HIGH school anti-dramatics.
It’s not much of a SPOILER to reveal that Molly Hartley is a watered-down SPAWN of Rosemary’s Baby and any one of a hundred semi-religious horror flicks about an unholy deal made at birth. (Take one look at the poster.) A preamble set in 1997 shows a father killing his daughter just days before she turns 18, muttering “I don’t blame you, I blame myself ... I’m so sorry ... I have to save you ... I can’t let you become one of them” (or words to that effect).
Continue Reading "Not Very: THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY Review"...
Posted by Mack at 6:58pm.
A third trailer has found its way to the light for the upcoming Malaysian martial arts pic Kinta. We’re mighty impressed with the look of the film and the raw power of the action as well. Definitely worth checking out. This third trailer puts a whole lot of emphasis on the action side of things again. It is a bit dodgy at parts so forgive the quality of the trailer but I love the sinister laughing from the baddies in this. Ah, that takes me back to those good old Shaw Bros days where you knew who was good and who was bad based on how they laugh. From the belly? Not these guys. Through sneering teeth do they cackle. You know you’re evil when you don’t even have to open your mouth.
Glorious! No annoying voiceover guy this time but the rapcore soundtrack does sound a touch out of place here. Never mind. Check out all three trailers after the break!
via KFCCinema
Continue Reading "New trailer for Malaysian martial arts pic ‘Kinta’!"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 6:28pm.
The festival is over, the votes tallied and today the 2008 edition of Toronto After Dark announced their awards. Awards were given in four categories: Audience Award For Best Feature, The Toronto After Dark Vision Awards for “outstanding independent filmmaking from emerging talent”, Audience Award For Best Canadian Short and Audience Award For Best International Short:
Audience Award For Best Feature:
Gold: Let The Right One In
Silver: Repo: The Genetic Opera
Bronze: 4bia
The Toronto After Dark Vision Award
Gold: I Sell The Dead
Silver: Home Movie
Bronze: South of Heaven
Audience Choice Award for Best Canadian Short Film
Gold: Treevenge
Silver: The Facts In The Case Of Mr Hollow
Bronze: The Flower
Audience Choice for Best International Short Film
Gold: I Live In The Woods
Silver: Kingz
Bronze: Martians Go Home, The Revenge of Sarah Clockwork
Congratulations to all the winners!
Posted by Todd Brown at 5:38pm.
Posted in
Dear Sekiguchi-san, please make another movie. It’s been a long time since Survive Style 5+.
That is all.
Posted by Todd Brown at 5:30pm.
Can’t say that I’m a fan of the new onesheet for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire - I actually think it’s one of the worst posters I’ve seen this year - but, yes, I flat out love the film. By this point people should be well aware of the basic set up - a young man from Mumbai’s slums is poised to win the local version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire when he is accused of cheating and must recount his life story to explain how he knows the answers to the questions he has been asked - for the much acclaimed film but other than a single clip there hasn’t been anything to look at yet. Until now. The first proper trailer has just arrived and you can find it in the Twitch Player below the break.
Continue Reading "A Proper Trailer For Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 5:21pm.
Oh, it’s a good time to be a fan of prolific Japanese author / director / actor / musician Kankuro Kudo right now. A good time, indeed. First of all, the author of Ping Pong, Zebraman and a host of other titles has just debuted his latest directorial effort - aging punk rocker comedy Shonen Merikensak - to much acclaim at the recently completed Tokyo International Film Festival. And just in case that’s not enough Kudo for you, he’s also adapted his own award winning stage production Donju for his friend Hideaki Hosono to direct.
Donju stars Tadanobu Asano - who doesn’t do nearly enough comedy for my liking - as a remarkably dumb author named Dekoyan who becomes the target of a series of ludicrous murder attempts. Kudo and Asano together? Oh, yes please.
The first trailer for this one has just arrived on the scene and you can check it in the Twitch Player below the break.
Continue Reading "Kudo! Asano! DONJU! Trailer!"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 5:11pm.
Gen Takahashi’s Goth is a film we’ve been keeping an eye on since first hearing about it a few months back for a few reasons.
First, it’s the film adaptation of a very popular novel by a writer known simply as Otsuichi.
Second, it’s a prime example of the sort of youth-gone-wrong film that makes up a significant sub-genre in Japan while being almost entirely non-existent here in North America. Graphic scenes of attempted suicide, self abuse and teen on teen violence are included, thins that have never been real popular with the powers that be in North America and became pretty much verboten in the post-Columbine media environment.
Finally, and most intriguingly from my perspective, this novel is also being adapted right now by director JT Petty (The Burrowers, S&Man), which will give audiences a very rare chance to see material adapted almost simultaneously both within its country of origin and from an outside viewpoint, which I think could prove a very interesting little experiment.
The first teaser for the Takahashi version of Goth has just arrived online and while it’s certainly not about to overwhelm anyone and has obvious budget limits there’s some pretty compelling stuff in there. Check it out in the Twitch Player below the break.
Continue Reading "First Teaser For Gen Takahashi’s GOTH"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 5:09pm.
[Updated with higher quality version of the trailer.]
Japan’s patron saint of cheap cult comedy seems ready and poised to claim the crown as that nation’s most prolific film maker from Takashi Miike. By my count Neko Rahmen Taisho is the third feature film from Calamari Wrestler director Minoru Kawasaki this year and while how he turns them out so quickly is obvious enough - they’re cheap and the whole attraction is their goofy, slapped together energy - this third one looks likely to claim as much attention from his fans around the globe as did his previous, the loopy Monster X Strikes Back! Attack the G8 Summit!.
Titled Neko Rahmen Taisho the film is based on a manga about a little white cat running a ramen noodle shop and, true to form, the title character is played by a little white cat puppet. Who, at one point in the freshly released trailer, makes out with an actual cat that is something of a real life Japanese celebrity - an honorary train station master, adopted as a sort of mascot when the train system went fully automated. Hopefully we’ll have a higher quality version of the trailer soon but the graininess seems only appropriate here. Check it below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "From Men In Monster Suits To Little Cat Puppets, Minoru Kawasaki Returns With NEKO RAHMEN TAISHO!"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 11:22am.
It was just yesterday that we posted the international sales poster for No Do - known as The Beckoning outside of Spain - the latest project from La Hora Fria (The Cold Hours) director Elio Quiroga. We’re still waiting for a trailer on this one - and expecting rather a lot from it since La Hora Fria was pretty much a textbook example of what talent can accomplish on a budget - but in the meantime we’ve just stumbled across the official - and much superior, in my opinion - Spanish poster for the film. Very nice.
Shot in Spanish with substantial high-tech effects, “NO-DO” is a horror story in which a woman sees ghosts. The explanation to their appearance lies in an old NO-DO newsreel (i.e., one of the state-sanctioned documentaries made during Franco’s regime).
The film speculates around the little known “Secret NO-DOs”, made in the 40s for the Catholic Church in Spain. It is told that those confidential films were used by exorcists to document supernatural events using a special film emulsion designed for this purpose. Some “Secret NO-DOs” are rumored to be stored in subterranean vaults in the Congregazione del Santo Uffizio, Rome, but its existence is officialy denied by catholic church leaders.
Posted by Todd Brown at 11:18am.
With principal photography complete and the film now deep into the editing and post production process we should be seeing a trailer for Iceland’s Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre any time now but while we wait for that we do have a fresh still to share. Still no sign of Gunnar Hansen - that’s Leatherface to you, making a proud return to his native country for this - but the production values are looking good,
An epic tale about a group of whale watchers, whose ship breaks down and they get picked up by a whale fisher vessel. The Fishbillies on the vessel have just gone bust, and everything goes out of control.
It’s a cross between the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Blairwitch Project, combined with the dark and bloody humor of Evil Dead.
Posted by Stefan at 9:57am.
The Code has an excellent premise which succinctly introduced the fictional espionage world in which the Detective Office 5 operates in the city of Kawasaki. Like an MI6 or CIA equivalent, their agents and operatives go without names, and are referred to by 3 digit numbers starting with 5, and distinct uniforms of black suits and bowler hats. Could have been a classic in the making, if not for the overwrought plot weighed down by plenty of confused, emotional baggage between its characters.
Continue Reading "Tokyo Film Fest: THE CODE Review"...
Posted by Stefan at 9:29am.
The brainchild of director Mamoru Oshii, Kill is an omnibus movie concept where four directors each contribute their own segments based on the blade action concept as supervised by Oshii himself. The synopsis would have led you to believe that the film contains only the last act of an action movie, which almost always features an action sequence to top all action sequences that went before it. Conceptually, this means cutting down the crap (of a plot and character development) and giving the audience what they want - unadulterated, stylized violence with good battling evil.
Continue Reading "Tokyo Film Fest: KILL Review"...
Posted by Ard Vijn at 7:44am.
A very funny mix of mockumentary and Kaiju movies, Hitoshi Matsumoto’s “Dai-Nipponjin” made quite an impact when it toured festivals worldwide during the past two years. This tragicomic story of a reluctant Japanese hero who has to fight not only monsters, but also television-ratings and his own cowardice, was a huge (haha) local success and it got a fair share of reviews here.
To be more precise : here, here and here.
Unfortunately, when it was released on DVD in Japan those editions weren’t English-friendly in the least, resulting in a lenghty wait for non-festivalgoers.
Well, wait no more!
This week sees not one, but TWO simultaneous releases of Dai-Nipponjin: a region 2 PAL release from the United Kingdom, and a two disc Special Edition region 3 NTSC release from Hong Kong.
Below are links to both, for sale through our affiliates.
Posted by Jim at 12:01am.
Poor production value and a weak story – most everyone knows those are long-standing tenants of your average adult film. Enter Kevin Smith, everyone’s favorite purveyor of foul-mouthed, stitched-together comedies produced with Hollywood money. He is the standard bearer for hilariously raunchy dialogue, which always finds itself set amid stories with a mushy soft center. Up until now, Smith has been a say-it-don’t-show-it kind of filmmaker, and with great success for the most part. As one may surmise from the title, his latest, “Zach and Miri Make a Porno”, crosses his established line. The film dishes up a notable share of skin and sex, (none of it ever actually sexy, might I add,) and as it turns out, Smith’s sleazy aesthetic is a lot more fun when we don’t have to actually see the grotesque acts in question. But the true deal breaker here is the tired and trite boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, etc.” plot at the film’s overly sappy core. With this film, Smith has in effect, delivered the Hollywood equivalent of an adult film – his standard poor production values, and a weak story.
Continue Reading "ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO review"...
Posted by Mack at 6:09pm.
Oh. My. Forget everything you heard about New York having a rat problem. The West Coast is about to get a taste of rodent sized mayhem!
This is just so stupendously silly and wacked that you can’t NOT post about it. Jeff Leroy, the writer, director, cinematographer and editor of the upcoming giant monsters take over the city and mayhem ensues movie Rat Scratch Fever dropped off a trailer over at Fangoria. Astronauts employed by the Steel Space Corporation land on a distant planet. They are attacked by giant rats who hitch a ride on board the spaceship back home. The giant rats then wreak havoc on a small scale model Los Angeles with explosive results! New Yorkers celebrate through the night.
Okay, I added that last bit but if it’s in the movie consider me psychic and I’ll be taking donations for lottery tickets in the future. Below is what Leroy told Fangoria!
“The film is a homage to 1976’s FOOD OF THE GODS,” Leroy tells Fango. “I picked up *Famous Monsters* magazine every month, and they had a cover story about Bert I. Gordon’s film with all kinds of really cool stills of giant rats attacking people, with oversized rat heads by makeup mastero Thomas Burman. FOOD OF THE GODS didn’t live up to that hype, but it still had a lot of energy and animal attacks. My film has the same energy and better effects. No rats were hurt, but plenty of humans get gnawed to pieces.”
Thank you Captain Awesome for the heads up. This is awesome news indeed. What fun! Head over to Fangoria for some pics and we’ve got the trailer on the Twitch Video Player after the break!
Continue Reading "It’s an itch you just can’t scratch! ‘Rat Scratch Fever’!"...
