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The Driller Killer (1979): B-
Abel Ferrara may have gone on to make some great movies, but The Driller Killer – his “respectable” first feature following a few shorts and the skin flick Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy – only sporadically exhibits the skill and wit of his scintillatingly skuzzy subsequent efforts. Using Repulsion as its template, Ferrara’s rote…
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The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (2005): B+
A neorealist coming-of-age story infused with the pulse-pounding anxieties and excitement of first love, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros focuses its tender gaze on the titular twelve-year old Filipino (Nathan Lopez), an effervescent, effeminate boy whose loyalty to his criminal father and two brothers wavers after he falls for adult police officer Victor (JR Valentin).…
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Iron Island (2005): B+
Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iron Island details the day-to-day dramas aboard an immobile oil tanker in the Persian Gulf that functions as home to a disparate collection of Iranian outcasts. Their shipboard community offering a microcosmic glance at Iran’s social and political strains, the film might have functioned as an unbearably obvious metaphor-writ-large were it not for…
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In Bed (2006): C
A man and a woman meet at a party, retire to a motel, and spend the night alternating between screwing their brains out and sharing their innermost thoughts on relationships, movies, and other potentially revealing topics. A sluggish rehash of Before Sunrise minus the romance and philosophical insightfulness, Matías Bize’s In Bed (En La Cama)…
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Signs of Life (1968): B+
In Werner Herzog’s feature-length debut Signs of Life, injured German paratrooper Stroszek (Peter Brogle) – no relation to the lost-in-America protagonist of the filmmaker’s 1977 tour de force – finds himself stationed with his wife and two fellow soldiers on the Greek isle of Kos, where he’s tasked with protecting a fortress’ cache of ammunition…
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Junebug (2005): B+
Phil Morrison’s Junebug so thoroughly immerses itself in down-home Southern culture (or must I now refer to it as Blue State culture?) that it manages to delicately avoid Hollywood’s typical condescending caricatures of those who dwell below the Mason-Dixon line. Chicago art gallery owner Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) travels to North Carolina to woo a half-crazed…
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Farewell My Concubine (1993): B-
The epitome of Miramax’s early ‘90s foreign imports, Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine combines lush period detail, thriving melodrama, and a hint of the risqué (i.e. gayness!) to form something simultaneously sweeping, self-important and only moderately stirring. Winner of the Palm d’Or at Cannes, Kaige’s debut is a decades-spanning affair charting the relationship between two…
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The Hills Have Eyes (2006): C+
As with 2003’s remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alejandre Aja’s update of Wes Craven’s 1977 The Hills Have Eyes exhibits more technical proficiency, and piles on significantly more gore, than its illustrious predecessor. Yet in both cases, what’s fundamentally missing is the anarchic, irrational unpredictability that made the originals so terrifying. Coated in dust…
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Just Friends (2005): C
Ryan Reynolds may don a fat suit for Just Friends’ countless ‘90s flashbacks, but director Roger Kumble’s romantic comedy – despite its star’s prosthetic poundage – is painfully light on laughs. After having spent his high school years as an overweight nerd hopelessly in love with sexy best friend Jamie (dull-as-always Amy Smart), Chris (Reynolds)…
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Venom (2005): C-
A dim-witted companion piece to Kate Hudson’s voodoo-rific Bayou spookfest The Skeleton Key, Venom piles on the Creole witch doctors, bloody enchantments and rituals, and frazzled white folk without ever straying from the mainstream slasher genre’s long-decayed bylaws. Thus, the first to die at the hands of reincarnated mechanic Ray (Rick Cramer) – who, the…
