Sci-Fi thriller starts strong but strays too far outside ‘The Box’

Richard Kelly’s The Box brings with it some good news and bad news. The good is that it’s about 100% better than his last movie, Southland Tales. The bad is that despite a really solid opening hour or so, it never duplicates the kind of alternate-reality mind trip that Kelly struck paydirt with on Donnie Darko.

 I’m just going to link you over to Atomic Popcorn and you can read my more in-depth, and mostly spoiler-free, thoughts over there.

THE ATOMIC POPCORN REVIEW OF ‘THE BOX’

‘Fourth’ is a close encounter of the questionable kind

Nov. 6th, 2009–

For all those who want to go into The Fourth Kind as fresh as possible, check out my spoiler free review over at Atomic Popcorn. For everyone else, feel free to stick around but know that I’m going to get into some of the more specific details of the film and you might want to clear out. Nothing too spoiler-heavy, but some of whats working or not working in the film is difficult to discuss without revealing elements that the marketing folks have done a reasonable job of hiding.

ATOMIC POPCORN REVIEW OF THE FOURTH KIND

The Greater Reading Film Festival happens in PA this weekend, Nov. 5th to Nov. 8th

Oct 5th, 2009–

Area film fans looking for something to do this weekend might consider heading up to the Reading Film Festival in Pennsylvania, which begins its run this evening. Starting tonight and running through Sunday, where it will finish up with a screening of the Hitchcock classic, Rear Window, the festival is actually an interesting and eclectic collection of films both mainstream and experimental. I’ve seen a few of them like Make-Out With  Violence, Sita Sings the Blues and Home, but several others are new to me. I’ve got a busy schedule, so I won’t be able to make it, but for those that can here’s the info from the website followed by a list of the films that will play.

Crispin Glover brings THE BIG SLIDE SHOW to The Charles on Nov. 19th

Great Scot! It looks like George McFly himself is headed to Baltimore this month and he’s bringing some interesting work with him. The actor will be appearing at The Charles  for one performance of his Big Slide Show at 7:30 p.m. on the 19th of November.

Crispin Glover, best known for his work in Back to the Future (arguably the most normal thing he’s ever done) is an actor who has always positioned himself just off-center from the norm. Glover, who proudly displays Helli0n as his middle name, has made eccentricity and outsider antics an art form. Literally, he’s made it art, and he’s bringing a portion of it to The Charles with him when he comes.

‘Prince of Persia:Curse of the Black Pearl’ trailer arrives!

Nov. 3rd, 2009–

Wow. I’m wondering if Disney even knows how to cut good trailers anymore.

I wish I could be more excited for this one. Afterall, it’s one of the big summer tentpole movies.

It took me  a few moments to process Donnie Darko as a swashbuckler, but more than that, it’s the 1999 Mummy sand fx that seem out of place here. I’m not digging the excessive use of digital imagery and the central plot seems like a cookie-cutter genre affair. For a movie with its own established franchise, Persia looks a bit too much like LOTR, Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean stirred into a giant CGI stew.

Has Uwe Boll made a good movie? See the trailer for ‘Final Storm’

Well, here it is, the latest Boll movement. And y’know what? I’m legitimately intrigued by it.

We finally have a trailer for a Uwe Boll movie and it actually looks interesting in a non-trainwreck sort of way. The German maestro of stultifyingly sub-moronic video game adaptations and low-rent trash has seemingly made a movie with a somewhat original story and actual mood and atmosphere.

The Final Storm, or Storm as it appears in the trailer and promos, isn’t distinguished by its cast (Lauren Holly and Luke Perry aren’t exactly draws unless you are airing on Sy-Fy) but by its premise and a creepy visual style that screams psychological thriller or grim post-apocalyptic drama.

A farmer and his family start noticing strange celestial events like blood covering the moon and ominous portents of a biblical nature. Then, everything goes quiet and most of Earth’s population seem to be absent. Enter Perry as Silas, a man who may know more than he lets on and is adamant that this is the Christian end times after the Rapture and they have all been left behind. Faster than you can say Mike Siever, things are going crazy wrong and I felt like I was seeing excerpts from The Road. 

Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree

Happy Halloween everyone! Here in Baltimore it’s a foggy, overcast morning. Here’s hoping the sun comes and we can see some of those brilliant autumn leaves illuminated properly. Hard to believe the end of October is here already.  In keeping with the holiday, I’ve dug up the Cartoon Network adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree. A wonderful and childlike animation that offers the cultural and historical context for the holiday wrapped up in a story of young friends venturing out to save one of their own.

Bradbury has been evoking smoky autumn evenings and golden, leaf-strewn afternoons for years in his work and his affection for this particular holiday is evident. He doesn’t skimp on the ghouls here but it isn’t scary and it offers some educational details about the traditions and heritage that lurk underneath the candy-giving and costume-wearing.

As it isn’t available on DVD, I’ve put the entire thing up right here. If you get the opportunity, check it out. And keep your ears peeled for Leonard Nimoy as Moundshroud, the foreboding old man who owns the Halloween Tree.

Movie Review: Odd and lovely ‘Wild Things’

Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is a strange and wonderful creation, like the book that inspired it. I can understand, however, if many are disappointed by it or don’t care for it at all. Jonze and scriptwriter Dave Eggers have taken the 9 page, 9 sentence Maurice Sendak book about a little boy who retreats into his imagination and transformed it into a 90 minute film about the complex emotions and erratic feelings that drive our early childhood.

Movie Review: Bright Star

Oct 29th, 2009–

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal -yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

-John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

The life of John Keats was a frequently troubled and brief one, punctuated by a burning brilliance of the heart and mind extinguished too soon. One of the youngest of the Romantic poets, Keats lived a life dedicated to his art and it cost him much in terms of financial stability, reputation and  health. Dying at the age of 25 in Rome (of tuberculosis) he would survive on in his work–poems not much loved in his day would later be hailed as masterpieces.  And yet, in his short life, Keats still had one great love, Fanny Brawne. Jane Campion’s Bright Star is the tender and elegant chronicle of that love and it is not a modern film in any respect; it honors and celebrates Keat’s romantic ideals, even when acknowledging that the reality of the world is sometimes their enemy.

AMAD-Horror Edition: The Company of Wolves

“Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet.”

 The Company of Wolves is either a child’s nightmarish fever dream, or a lurid fairy tale about the dark, shiny promise of adulthood. I’ve just finished watching the film for the first time in years, and I’m not honestly sure which it is. Both readings are possible, but I think that each viewer will choose for themselves one over the other.