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Recently we got a nice mainstream genre (yes, they exist!) surprise in the cinemas with the horror movie “The Ruins”.

Doesn’t automatically sound like the best of movies, does it: obnoxious American students on holiday in Mexico visit an uncharted archaeological dig and encounter something which starts to pick them off one by one.
A rather lame set of trailers didn’t exactly help…

But what made it actually a nice surprise was the amount of detail lavished upon characterization, acting and the general portrayal of how a small group of people (might) react in an extremely stressful situation.

All these things were fleshed out to the extent that, in general, people were shocked to discover that this wasn’t just a funny B-movie but a pretty serious drama.

It might even have been one of my all-time favorites if not for some big issues I had with the “monster”, but I digress.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big spoiler when I tell you the big threat in the movie is (beside human nature) a big flesh-eating member of the “flora”, instead of the traditionally popular “fauna”.

Which brings me to my top 5 movies featuring extremely aggressive plants.
Read on!

Continue Reading "When Plants Attack!"...

Summer, at least according to Hollywood, is almost here.  With the high-dollar Iron Man set to kick off the blockbuster season tomorrow, now seemed like the perfect time revisit a few of those inevitable, potentially career-crippling box office misfires that crop up every May through August.  Don’t get me wrong - if anyone knows that receipts don’t equate to respect, it’s Twitch readers.  That being said, big budget films that tank hard tend to get the shortest end of the cred stick from all corners.  With this edition of the Twitch-o-Meter, I’m singling out a few lavish productions which not only bombed but took something of (in my mind’s eye, anyway) an unfair critical drubbing.  The only criteria for selection was that the films have release dates post-1988 (’89 being the first year I can recall palpable excitement for the start of summer movie season).

Continue Reading "Summer Floppin’"...

[In accordance with our internal agreement Twitch-O-Meters will remain at the top of the page during the duration of the day. Please scroll down for today’s film news]

If you haven’t gone back to Michael’s review of The Forbidden Kingdom since the film opened this past weekend to enter into a discussion about the movie then you haven’t missed much. No slight against Michael but I would have thought anyone who saw the movie would have gone back to his review and and least shared your thoughts on it. No worries. This could be just a case of what I call ‘Thumper’ logic: If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. I, however, thought I had something good to say and so I’ll repost it here, as a lead in to this week’s ToM. 

It’s hard to be discouraged about a western made martial arts movie that tries to tap into Chinese folklore. The reason I say that is because The Forbidden Kingdom is an important movie from a western standpoint. From a Chinese standpoint? It’ll likely be very embarrassing.
Ask yourself this, what is better? That you appease the relatively small legions of hard core Jackie, Jet and HK film fans? OR, that you provide a stepping stone movie, a movie that will introduce you to key players and themes found in their cinema?
The hardcore fans don’t need to be won over, we’re there with bells on! But if there is anything remotely accessible for that kid in some backwater town and he can get this experience for the first time, not knowing what we know - that it only gets better, then isn’t that better than pleasing the minority? I know, I know, when we all heard that Jet and Jackie were finally going to be in a movie together we collectively screamed in ecstasy. But the pinnacle opportunity for these two has long since passed and we should be glad that it has finally happened rather than how it went down.
Forbidden Kingdom is good. Not great. Not monumental in any regards from a hardcore fan’s perspective. I will say that I am glad that I can finally watch a Jet or Jackie film without having to worry about busting caps in asses, loud hip hop and bass scores, scantily clad Asian girls whoring themselves at nightclubs and listening to Anthony Anderson crack lame jokes every five minutes.
But the good it can do for recruiting potentially new fans is awesome.

So where do you go from there? You’ve seen The Forbidden Kingdom and a little spark has lit in your gut. You liked what you saw. You want more kung fu. And because we here at Twitch sometimes see ourselves as film educators, second to being fans of this type of cinema, we’re going to look at the key players in this movie and tell you what your next rentals are going to be. All titles mentioned hereafter are available domestically.

I introduce you to the Forbidden Kingdom Four!

Continue Reading "Okay. I’ve seen ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’. What is next?"...

For one reason or another, the science fiction or often noir laced existentialist films with a anxious mood and a strange or disturbing ending, an offshoot of the paranoid thriller perhaps more succinctly known as simply the ‘mind fuck’ movie became somewhat of a staple in mainstream American cinema in the late 1990s, early 2000s:  12 Monkeys, Memento, The Sixth Sense (the bulk of M. Night Shayamalan‘s films actually), The Usual Suspects, Seven, Fight Club, What Lies Beneath, Pi, Primer, Donnie Darko; yea, you get the idea.  Was this particularly new to cinema?  That Richard Matheson novella that nobody has come close to getting right since the Vincent Price version in 1964?  Did the Charleton Heston starring science fiction trilogy (Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man) set the stage?  Stanley Kubrick with his one-two-three punch of A Clockwork Orange, 2001:  A Space Odyssey, and The Shining?  David Cronenberg‘s early horror pictures up to and including Videodrome? Adrian Lynn‘s Jacob’s Ladder?  Well, no, in the 1960s (in particular 1962) there was another rash of these films made in America, films that have aged quite well actually, and thus the subject of todays Twitch-O-Meter:  5 Prototype Mind Fucks.  Outside of the silent and German expressionistic era, these are the stew from which many modern culty films are birthed.

Continue Reading "Primordial Soup of the Spotless Mind"...

When I saw Johnnie To’s “Exiled”, it became one of my absolute favorites and I still consider it to be one of the best films of the last few years. It has style, a masterful use of sets and locations, with a gallery of memorable characters.

Amongst the cast one man stood out and totally bowled me over. He turned what could have been a one-note supporting role into a masterful charismatic performance, combining quiet dignity with a dry sense of humor.
I’m talking of course about Anthony Wong as the older hitman called Blaze.

Shortly after that I saw him as a deranged madman in one of his exploitation films and couldn’t fathom that I was looking at the same man. And then I noticed how prolific he was, constantly popping up in titles I had already seen years ago.

What an actor…

Which means that once again, I’m going to use a turn in the Twitch-O-Meter to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of one of my favorite thespians.
Guess which 5 movies they’re from. The “Exiled” pic on the top-left doesn’t count.
No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.

And I’ll post the answers Friday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).
Good luck!

I have not always been the grizzled old man you see before you today. Once I was young and fresh and unspoiled, schooled only in the ways of innocent black and white television and Disney films, barely cognizant of the occasional PG-rated temptations to which I snuck away with my elders. Then I got my driver’s license, an old car, and a minimum wage clerk’s job that made possible a new world of cinematic sin.

But enough about sex on film. What really opened up my mind were the initial excursions into unexplored territory, the tentative expanding of boundaries and possibilities and new ways of looking at the world, all things that came about only when I broke down barriers I had set for myself and sampled various types of new cinema, whether they be from different genres or different countries.

After the jump: the Top Five that were most significant to me. In the comments section, please share: What were your groundbreaking first adventures?

Continue Reading "Losing My Virginity - Top 5 Experiences with New Cinema"...

This week’s edition of the Twitch-o-Meter presents a very unusual topic, yet one that everyone somewhat old enough may still relate to - at least if you grew up somewhere around Europe. I am here to tell you about a time when TV films were still worth watching, strange as it sounds nowadays. I don’t know if these were ever popular in the US, but in certain parts of Europe, they were a phenomenon: The historical mini-series, or multi-part TV movie. The sweeping historical epic that would be shown on Easter or Christmas, going on to drain any signs of life from every street, as families huddled together in front of their TV screens and watched in awe. Originating somewhere in the 1960s, they reached their culmination with the European co-productions in the late 1970s and 1980s; big-budgeted adventure romps which often utilized star ensembles of internationally renowned actors. More interestingly, these kind of features represented a new home for many Italian directors fleeing the sinking ship of the Italian film industry during the early 80s. For me, as I watched quite a few of these miniseries as a child, they were the purest form of escapism one could get from a TV set. In retrospect, although I freely admit to being nostalgic, which surely taints my view to some degree, I am still surprised how well some of them have held up, especially in comparison to what constitutes TV movies in the 21st century - soulless, corny, CGI-laden snoozefests. So let me share some especially fond memories with you…

Continue Reading "Mystique of the Miniseries"...

When I read here at Twitch about upcoming manga adaptation ”Detroit Metal City” this picture on the left really had me in stitches, even more so when I read that the character’s name is ”Johannes Krauser II”! That is… so wrong, it’s brilliant.

But really, not in a million years would I have recognized Matsuyama Kenichi, and neither would his mother, I think.

Which gave me the idea for this week’s topic: 5 actors who were so rigorously made up that they became completely unrecognizable.
To my surprise some good examples turned out to be quite recent. So much for the theory that computers will make that art obsolete (although I love what they did with Davy Jones in the Pirate films...).

Read on to see my list! 

Continue Reading "His Mother Would Not Recognize Him!"...

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, George Miller must really be feeling the love right now.  Neil Marshall’s anticipated follow-up to The Descent, Doomsday hits multiplexes tomorrow and looks to pay more than a little lip service to Miller’s big-screen beacon of post-apocalyptic mayhem, the Mad Max series.  In light of Doomsday’s high-dollar riff on the bleak world of tomorrow, it seemed to me the perfect time to look back at some of the better Mad Max imitators which popped up on video store shelves with clockwork regularity in the ‘80s.

Continue Reading "The Apocalypse on a Budget"...

Whenever I am at Todd’s house we’re doing one of a few things. Either we’re playing video games with the boy or we’re talking about movies and all things Twitch. Last week I was in a mild state of panic because I hadn’t finalized my theme for this week’s ToM. Lots of ideas but nothing was crystal. So we brainstormed for a few minutes and came up with Death by Power Tools. No guns [per se]. No swords or knives [per se]. No human physicality. Nope, they got to be a blue collar man’s type of kill where death comes swiftly by means of electric motor, compressed air or combustible engine. They got to be kills that your drywall installing dad would appreciate at the end of the day when the dust had settled and he has a cold beer in one hand and the remote in the other. It’s time to man up! Death by Power Tool awaits you in Aisle 3 next to Home Electronics…

Continue Reading "The Home Depot. You can kill it. We can help."...

An interesting thing about cinema is the question of how much emotion can a viewer take before he/she is turned off from the subject matter.  This is hardly a test of extreme violence, gore or even silliness - is the human condition more hard-wired to accept misery?  How else could you explain a certain type of film that goes from a bad situation to a much worse one and takes a hard subject matter and piles the right balance of truth, pathos and ugliness up to make it a misery masterpiece?  The patron saint of this type of film may be Vittorio De Sica‘s gloriously sad and intimate Bicycle Thieves, a film that is now 60 years old, but is still seen often at rep cinemas, cinematheques and on DVD; or a case could be made for François Truffaut‘s The 400 Blows. Ken Loach has an extensive c.v. of films that may certainly qualify as well as a subset of middle-eastern cinema (Turtles Can Fly and Osama are but two of many anger-via-sadness portraits to recently come out of Iran and Afghanistan in recent times) I’m sure the Twitch readers out there have their favourites (if that is the right word).  Here, I’d like to offer ten modern testaments to tears or perhaps endurance tests of empathy.  One of them is disingenuous yet still surprisingly effective, another is animated, still others include incest, child abandonment, Alzheimer’s disease, and youth-prostitution.  This is not just to function as a marathon on how much your empathy can endure.  Films that flirt with the extremes of the human experience often yield up the telling bits of the characteristics worth striving for. 

Continue Reading "10 Films to Cry From Punishment"...

Back in November I wrote a Twitch-O-Meter reveling in the wonders of the Oscar Curse:  that spectacular phenomenon where winning the little golden man seems to mysteriously sap its recipient of any recognizable talent.  Part One dealt with the men, this time around it’s the ladies’ turn.  But in preparing this I ended up wondering whether women simply are smarter than men because there just aren’t as many examples of the Curse to choose from, the malicious effects of the wee man only becoming truly evident in relatively recent years.  Oh, sure, there are winners such as Faye Dunaway and Whoopi Goldberg who have some dodgy moments on their resumes simply because they like to work a lot and accept a broad mix of projects do seldom do the award winners descend to the levels of extreme crappiness need to make this list.  Nominees are a different story - there are loads of examples there - but the actual winners tend to do okay ... and so the ladies list is limited to a mere three entries.  Read on!

Continue Reading "When Oscar Goes Bad Part Two.  Here Come The Ladies …"...

Promise, soon we’ll have a regular Twitch-O-Meter up and running again but for now lets have some more fun with a quiz, just like last week.

Only this time we feature a lady! And this is also bound to be the most controversial yet. We didn’t get any negative reactions to either Song Kang-Ho or Tadanobu Asano, everyone seems to love them. But with Zhang Ziyi…

Whatever her name is, Zhang Ziyi, Zhang Zi-Yi or Ziyi Zhang, I saw her first in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and was smitten. Not only did part of my brain set off my ‘babe alert’, but I also thought her to be a damn fine actress. And, to quote Ghostbusters, a “nimble little minx” as well. She’s got moves, wires or not!

A few similar roles later and I keep reading everywhere she can’t act. Huh?
When I watch a movie like Wong Kar-Wai’s “2046” (see the picture top left), statements like that really baffle me. She’s got a very expressive face and is not afraid to use it. She’s definitely not a reason to avoid a film, especially if she’s allowed to jump around.

Which means that once again, instead of the usual list I’d like to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of another one of my favorite thespians.
Guess which 5 movies they’re from and I’ll post the answers Thursday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).
No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.

The “2046” pic doesn’t count as it’s a cut-out of a screenshot, but good luck with the other 5!

A couple of months back I posted 5 stills of Song Kang-Ho in the Twitch-O-Meter for people to guess which movie they were from, and I got a lot of positive feedback.
So let’s try this once more, with another Asian actor I love: Tadanobu Asano.

The first time I saw Tadanobu Asano was in Miike Takashi’s “Ichi the Killer”, and that’s the picture on the left. His Kakahira is a sight to behold, in fact it’s downright impossible to look away from him.

Seeing Asano in other movies was a bit of a revelation. Never mind what role he plays there is always a quiet dignity underneath. And when you see his face it’s like you can see straight into his soul, guarded or not. Humble, hurt, arrogant, lazy, simmering, rotten…
How exactly can he act so well, often seemingly without moving a single facial muscle? I honestly think I’ll never know.

But I think he’s very cool and my wife thinks he’s very handsome (she hasn’t seen “Ichi the Killer” yet...).
Thankfully his choice of movies is generally excellent, so for both of us a film will automatically get our seal of approval once we know he’s in it.


Which means that once again, instead of the usual list I’d like to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of another one of my favorite thespians.
Guess which 5 movies they’re from and I’ll post the answers Friday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).
No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.

The “Ichi the Killer” pic doesn’t count as I gave it away already, but good luck with the other 5!

Blimey, with the IFFR going on I almost forgot it’s my turn in the Twitch-O-Meter!
OK, here goes…

The end of 2007 had a very special treat in store for lovers of DVD’s, specifically classic science fiction DVD’s, even more specifically Blade Runner DVD’s.

In a move designed to shock and awe collectors everywhere, Warner Brothers released the final cut of “Blade Runner” in a bewildering variety of versions, editions and formats. Two discs, four discs, five discs, cardboard boxes, metal boxes, toys, pamphlets, booklets and books…
Pity the fool who wanted to collect all things Blade Runner, because the blank spots on his list must have tripled in a single month.

For those who wanted to buy only one edition there was an unusually large selection to choose from. And somewhere on that vast list there was a holy grail. Some regions got it, some didn’t, but everyone who wanted to buy “Blade Runner” last month knew of its existence. It even topped our list of geek Christmas gifts.

I am of course referring to… the briefcase.

Another list is “Five of the best-packaged DVD-releases ever”, and you can find that after the break.

(...and yes, the title of this article is a pun...)

Continue Reading "Briefcase! BRIEFCASE!"...