Ti West helms a new indie horror film that fizzles rather than frightens. Premiering at Austin’s popular SXSW Film Festival, The Innkeepers disappointed with an extraordinarily long build-up with little payoff. Despite having high hopes for this one, I was ultimately let down.
Super is an irreverent and twisted comedy about an unattractive loser who decides to take his fight against evil to the next level. And if you think the next level is fashioning a ridiculous superhero costume out of red cloth and naming himself the Crimson Bolt, you’d be right. With a disturbing humor, graphic violence and comic book-esque animated sequences, Super puts the Ka-pow in action/comedies.
The new horror film Insidious premiered this week at SXSW. Helmed by Saw director/writer team James Wan and Leigh Whannell, this bizarre story of haunts and spooks delivered plenty of chills and thrills. Helmed by the Saw creators, and produced by Paranormal Activity’s writer/producer Oren Peli, this horror film had a great foundation for success. Starring Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later) and Patrick Wilson (Watchmen), the simple story of a demonic netherworld and a comatose child came to livid and gory life. With some great scares and fabulously creepy evil entities, Insidious comes across as an effective horror film, of the old school.
Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) plays Captain Colter Stevens, an Air Force pilot who wakes up one day as someone else. He’s on a train, a beautiful woman (Michelle Monaghan) he has never seen before is talking to him, and after eight tense minutes the train explodes and Colter Stevens wakes up as himself again. Only he can’t remember what has happened to him, or how he got into the little box with the screen, and he definitely doesn’t know who the woman on the screen is or why she’s asking him if he’s discovered who planted the bomb on the train.
Red Riding Hood turns out to be a somewhat vapid re-trelling of the classic fairy tale. While director Catherine Hardwicke did paint some nice visuals, the film lacked depth and substance. Out in theatres on March 11, this supernatural romance may be a hit with the tweeners, but most audiences will find it underwhelming.
In a pleasant surprise, Mars Needs Moms actually entertained me. I mean, there’s the bright colors and exceptional 3D, but there’s also some touching moments and grown-up wit. Disney and ImageMovers Digital have stretched the envelope with this animated family adventure, in theatres everywhere on March 11.
Mars has a secret life just beneath the surface; a matriarchal society that hatches its young every 25 years. The Supervisor (voiced by Mindy Sterling) rules with an iron first. The females run everything, comprising a huge security force. But that means they don’t have the time to raise the new batch of alien babies. They have a system though: they steal good moms from earth, then suck out their mothering skills (alas, they don’t survive this process) and program those skills into an army of “Nanny-bots.” The male babies all get dropped down the trash shoot to live in the garbage sub-strata. Oh, and the males are all idiots that can’t talk and just jump around and laugh. That’s why the Supervisor got rid of them long ago (and the concept of the family).
As cinephiles and movie industry pros flock to the Austin metro area for the indie film festival SXSW, Austin is already feeling the excitement. Hotels and motels are filled to capacity, and there’s a definite increase in pedestrian traffic police. I know this from personal experience, as this afternoon I debunked the jay-walking urban legend. That’s right, SXSW goers beware! You can, in fact, get ticketed $200 for walking across a street against the light.
Cinematical premiered the new illustrated movie poster for Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, along with a glowing recommendation for the old-school samurai action flick. Available on VOD on March 24th, this Magnet Releasing sword-play gem will have a theatrical release on April 29th.
Has anyone else watched the reality TV show Hoarders and wished for a not-so-freak accident in which one of the giant mountains of crap a hoarder obsessively builds up around himself suddenly collapses and crushes him to death? If you’ve found yourself wishing that, you’re sick. But also, you might just be in luck. According to Deadline, Adria Petty is making a new horror/thriller called Suffocate. Apparently, a psychopathic hoarder (isn’t that redundant?) has transformed his brownstone into a death trap. A scrappy group of city workers must enter the condemned space and thwart the evil booby-traps of the OCD killer to survive.
In what looks to be a quirky post-apocalyptic indie action flick, Bellflower has released an intriguing movie poster. Out in theatres this summer, Bellflower will play at Austin’s SXSW film fest next week for those lucky hordes of movie groupies.
