As a filmmaker, if you're going to create a spoof you had better make it near perfect. First, you have got to know the genre that you're poking fun at inside and out. Second, you've got to make it funny but not stupid. And third, you better not bore us with the details. Audiences have a certain responsibility when watching spoofs as well. We had better know the genre at least fairly well, we ought to be prepared for a little farce humor, and we should try to accept certain flaws as inevitable. Dead in France is advertised as a film noir spoof, filled with cold killers, sexy broads, dumb criminals, exotic locales, vindictive hit-men...Read the entire review

I first saw Maria Valverde in Cracks, a film in which she played the new girl at a boarding school, a Spanish beauty who caused irreparable damage with her mere presence. She is definitely stunning, and she has a quality that is both desirable and enviable. When I saw that she was in Madrid, 1987 and that it was a Breaking Glass picture, I took the opportunity to see her again. Not just because she's attractive, which of course she is, but also because she's captivating. I was interested to see if she was up to the challenge of an artistic film of this kind, or whether she'd fall flat and come off as just another pretty face. As it turns ou...Read the entire review

The more Hollywood turns to comic books, board games, and Disneyland rides for story material, the more we need filmmakers like Henry Jaglom. Beginning with A Safe Place (1971), Jaglom carved a niche making smallish independent movies uniquely his. He's probably best known for his ensemble, female-dominated films revolving around a particular subject: women's relationship with food in Eating (1990), biological clock-ticking in Babyfever (1995), being single in Someone to Love (1987), recognizing a turning point and moving on with New Year's Day (1989). His movies famously allow actors the freedom to improvise, drawing from their own lives and emotions, sometimes intensely personal raw material buried deep. Yes, they're still working from scripts that define character arcs and move their fictional characters from one place to another, but most of Jaglom's actors find w...Read the entire review

When Raymond Saxx (Goran Visnjic) awakens in a Los Angeles County holding cell, he's disoriented, suffering from serious withdrawals, and nursing a massive hangover. In fact, Raymond is such a wreck that he doesn't even know why he's in prison, but before he can ask his cellmate Butterfly (Portia Doubleday) to help him get his bearings, Lt. Deputy Johnson (D.B. Sweeney) shows up and hauls him off to K-11, a unit in the prison system reserved for gay and transgender inmates. Raymond doesn't belong in K-11, both because he's not gay and because he didn't commit the murder he discovers he's been framed for, but his frustrated insistence that he's innocent fails to soften K-11 queen bee Mousey (Kate del Castillo), a feisty Latina trans woman who refuses to let anyone but herself stir up trouble.

It's hard reviewing a film like K-11: a film lacking in focus paves the road for a review lacking in ...Read the entire review

If you want to see a documentary about a relevant and intriguing topic, you would be hard pressed to find one more fitting than Out in the Open. The issues of gay rights and marriage equality are on the table right now in our country, and in ten years laws, cultures, and mindsets may be completely different than they are today. It's exciting to be alive in a time of change, whichever side you may be on, and that fervor comes through very clearly in this film. But putting equal rights aside, there are other issues confronting homosexual culture, and they may be the most important of all; AIDS, suicide, acceptance, bullying. A documenta...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
The history of burlesque via a pair of twirling tassels

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Documentaries
Likes: adult-themed documentaries
Dislikes: The general concept of burlesque
Hates: People who make good money and blow it

The Movie
Documentaries with adult themes are often quite interesting, because the world of adult-entertainment is inaccessible to most of us, its citizens live by a very different set of rules and mores and, of course, where they live, there's often a good deal of nudity nearby. That's certainly the case with the story of Satan's Angel, a well-known burlesque performer who got her start in the '60s, and who continues to perform today in her 60s. It's a story of bad c...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Nate & Margaret is a small movie. In a good way. It's focused and intimate, and follows the oddball friendship of 19-year-old film student Nate (Tyler Ross) and 52-year-old spinster Margaret (Natalie West). The pair lives in the same apartment building, and is practically inseparable until Nate meets his first boyfriend and distances himself from Margaret. Director Nathan Adloff's film is sweet and believable, with a positive attitude in a cynical world. The similarities to Harold and Maude are cursory, and Nate & Margaret is its own exploration of ageless friendship.

Eyes quickly turn to the semi-old lady in the room when Margaret accomp...Read the entire review

Our Paradise is a French thriller packed with its fair share of nudity and violence, with a sensitively depicted love story between two men at its core. In contrast to its grisly subject matter (sort of a European gender-reversed version of 2003's Monster), director Ga l Morel guides the film with a wonderful atmosphere and tremendous amount of respect for its characters.

Foremost among the array of complexe, troubled characters in Our Paradise is Vassili (St phane Rideau), an aging Parisian hustler who continues to solicit tricks despite his somewhat doughy midsection. Vassili is also plagued with the deepening resentment he harbors towards both his clientele (older, wealthy, often times closeted men) and the ever-younge...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Twisted Romance, a 2008 indie drama from Argentinian writer-director Jos Campusano, deserves some kudos for going into the kind of uncomfortable-to-watch territory that many films of its ilk won't touch.

Seemingly made on a budget of three (maybe four, max) pesos, this modest production follows an earnest young man who engages in a flirtation with a "dangerous" older man; their sexual dalliance progresses with lightning speed into a casual cohabitation, but the older man's abusiveness ultimately ends in tragedy. It's an idea that deserves an "A" for effort, but sloppy mechanics, inexplicable character motivations, and abrupt shifts in tone renders it a solid "F" in execution.

Not that they didn't try, however - young actor Nehu n Zapata has...Read the entire review

The original Sex Stories was a mess, offering numerous, endless unsimulated sex scenes to get viewers' attention, and with a laundry list of deeply sexist ideas about men and women serving as an attempt at "plot." Still, any film that dares to straddle that line between pornography and "regular" cinema can probably count on financial success, so four years later, we have Infidelity: Sex Stories 2. I'm pleased to say that this sequel is a noticeable improvement over the first film, offering an actual thematic thread that ties all of its characters together. Sadly, the differences stop there: the writing is still deeply sexist, and the sex scenes are still a bore.

Once again, the film tells the story of three couples, and once again, the men are all cheating pigs who think of nothin...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The poster tagline for 2011's documentary Hollywood To Dollywood - "Twin brothers with a dream in an RV named Jolene..." - accurately captures the feel of this lightweight but thoroughly enjoyable little film. The project follows a pair of gay twin brothers - major fans of Country music icon Dolly Parton - as they embark on a 2,100 mile trip to give their idol a copy of the film script they've written especially for her.

The film's main subjects, 35 year-olds Gary and Larry Lane, are a pair of sweet, unpretentious North Carolina boys-turned-Hollywood scenesters. They've been situated in Los Angeles for most of their adult lives, sure, but there's still a whole lot of country in them. In the introductory scenes, the boyishly hands...Read the entire review

6 Degrees of Hell is a rather confusing horror film, so much so that I had to watch it a second time with the subtitles turned on and reading them to get a better idea of what was going on. The story is primarily about an attraction called the Hotel of Horror, a haunted-house type of deal where people go in and see weird goings-on, actors pretending to be psychopaths carrying fake weapons and stuff like that. (The interesting thing is the Hotel of Horror in this movie is actually a real attraction in Saylorsburg, PA, although the events in the movie itself are fictional.) In the movie, the attraction is run by Jack (Brian Gallagher), who is always looking for ways to make the place even scarier. He finds an old psychic who has a large collection of "haunted objects" collected over her years of experience which she rents out for use at the hotel, but warns him that they really are possessed an...Read the entire review

The Movie:
A lot of men in their thirties and forties (and plenty of others) have fond memories of youthful hours misspent watching cheesy B horror movies, and an awful lot of those movies starred one of the three original scream queens: Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley. Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era is an adoring documentary about those three, how they got into movies, and the environment in which they worked, and is also lots of fun.

The film is made up of archival footage of their films and interviews, both with the three scream queens, and people who worked with them: actors such as Jay Richardson and directors like Fred Olen Ray and David Decoteau, and others. The film explores the childhoods of the trio, and one would guess that even fans will discover a new tidbit or two about their idols that they didn't know before. For...Read the entire review

The Movie

Going by its garish torso-on-pink cover design, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the DVD for the 2009 feature film House of Boys was a gay skin flick. Sure, it does have moments of brazen sexuality. Mostly, however, this '80s-set drama serves as an understated coming-of-age tale. It's a little bit of everything, actually - surrogate family comedy, New Wave musical, unflinching chronicle of the early years of AIDS. In all honesty, it fails to score on any of those counts, but at least the film has more ambition than the average "go-go boy makes good" fare.

The film's title comes from the tawdry Amsterdam nightclub where the main character - an outgoing teen named Frank (charmingly played by Layke Anderson) - has escaped a stifling life in suburbia to work as a dancer. The club is run by the imperious Madame (Udo Kier), who occasionally performs elaborate drag numbers set t...Read the entire review

15 years after her son Jakob (Adam Scarimbolo) became brain damaged huffing chemicals in a school locker room, Janice (Margo Martindale) continues to devote most of her life to him. Jakob has impaired motor functions and can no longer speak, so Janice rushes from her job at a local grocery store to come home and care for Jakob, which leaves her lonely and frustrated. She puts flyers up around town looking for someone to help watch him a few times a week, and she gets Paige (Hanna Hall), a bright young college student who hopes to assist the elderly at a home or a hospital in the future. She agrees to care for Jakob, but one day, when Janice is not home, an incident threatens to destroy the lives of all three people.

Scalene is one of those films: the kind where the gimmick and the film's delivery of heavy-handed material gets in the way of whether the filmmakers actually have something ...Read the entire review

As the quality, length, and even inclusion of DVD bonus features rolls steadily downhill, fans have begun to take matters into their own hands. Productions like Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and More Brains!: A Return to the Living Dead easily trump the depth and detail a studio-produced extra would ever go into, because nobody knows what a fan wants to know about better than other fans. Although the limited format of a TV special hampers it a little, Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era is a respectable and entertaining (if not indispensable) addition to the trend.

Written and directed by Jason Paul Collum (and adver...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Gone: The Disappearance of Aeryn Gillern is an intriguing documentary, focusing on the 2007 disappearance of American UN worker Aeryn Gillern in Vienna, and his mother's quest to discover the truth of what happened. The film is a powerful and emotional investigation without being overbearing or preachy, and the filmmakers have a light yet deft touch, letting the material speak for itself.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that, while I never knew Aeryn Gillern or his family, I do know friends of his, and it was their discussion of the film that sparked my interest in seeing it. The thoughts below are entirely my own, however.

While the putative subject of this film is obviously Aeryn Gillern, the real focus is on his mother, retired police officer Kathy Gillern. Perhaps this is inevitable, since she is alive and able to talk, while the viewer can only kno...Read the entire review

The Product:
Where do old porn stars go when they 'die?' Not when they literally pass away and no longer cease to exist as living, breathing (f-ing, s-ing) individuals? Well, there's always work behind the scenes, and many have made the transition to Internet based business models...and quite successfully. Still, for most, the urge to be legitimized and escape the stigma of a career committed to sex is too much to bear. Instead, they continue in their carnal ways until the ultimate voting entity - the viewing public - demand they put their clothes back on. And then there's someone like Aramis Sartorio. Under the name "Tommy Pistol" he has been a Burning Angel mainstay (with titles like The XXXorcist and Evil Head) and alt-genre stalwart. Still, a life in service of smut was less than profitable, personally and psychologically. So his mainstream alter ego, Sartorio, has decided t...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The facts are these: Aeryn Gillern flew back to Cortland, New York for ten days in September 2007. He then flew to Vienna, which he'd made his new home; his mother, Kathy, planned to follow shortly thereafter for an extended visit. They spoke on the phone for the last time on October 27. Four days later, his employers called Kathy to tell her that Aeryn hadn't shown up for work for the last two days. No one ever saw him again.

Gretchen and John Morning's Gone: The Disappearance of Aeryn Gillern (the subtitle was added after its festival run, presumably to separate the film from the unfortunate Amanda Seyfried vehicle) tells the story of how Kathy Gillern went to Vienna to try to find out what happened to her son, and what she encountered there. It is not a comprehensive documentary, not in any traditional sense; the filmmakers do not do much of their own invest...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Bland and inoffensive; Bollywood Beats feels like a classic bait and switch. You're lured in by promises of fun and frothy dance sequences before being served up enough drama to choke a horse (I'm making the bold assumption that horses hate drama). I have no problem with films that carry messages but writer / director Mehul Shah approaches his material with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, crushing all nuance into smithereens in the process.

The film revolves around a core group of 6 characters. We first meet Raj (Sachin Bhatt) who dreams of being a dancer and goes to plenty of auditions in order to make that a reality. His parents aren't as supportive as he would like and give him an ultimatum: he has 6 months to find a paying gig or he has to start working for his dad at the family jewelry store. To make matters worse, Raj's long time gal pal dumps him because th...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Three years ago, after I reviewed Repo! The Genetic Opera, a short blurb appeared on DVD Talk's main page noting that three reviewers for this site (including myself) had each given that unusual film a "Highly Recommended" rating. The blurb then stated something along the lines of how unusual it was to have three reviewers agree upon anything. A few days later, Adam Tyner wrote a fourth review and broke the chain with a mere "Recommended" rating for Repo!. Perhaps he did that deliberately, the rebel.

I wasn't originally going to start this review with that ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
If you are looking for an effective thriller, independent film The Fields is not stellar, but better than most of the humdrum fare one is used to, and often lots of fun. However, if you are looking to see an outstanding performance by a veteran actress at the top of her form, in this case Cloris Leachman, then The Fields is an absolute must see.

Ms. Leachman plays Gladys, the grandmother of a curious young boy named Steven (Joshua Ormond). Steven goes to stay with his grandmother and grandfather Hiney (Bev Appleton) while his parents work out their marital difficulties. (These difficulties came to a head when his father Barry (Faust Checho) pointed a rifle at mom Bonnie (Tara Reid) after she came home drunk one too many times.

The film is set in the seventies, and told mostly from Steven's point of view. The Manson murders are current news, and many of the loc...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Whips and boots and chaps, oh my ... in covering the ins and outs of the 2008 edition of the International Mr. Leather (IML) competition held annually in Chicago, Michael Skiff's documentary Kink Crusaders sheds some light on a subset of the gay male community that many gay men try to distance themselves from. Sure, the parade of big, burly guys in head-to-toe cowhide might appear somewhat intimidating (and stereotypical) at first, but this doc goes out of its way to prove that devotees of the kink/leather community are not too dissimilar from the rest of us.

Kink Crusaders is a straightforward, modestly produced but never boring mix of interviews and on-scene footage from the competition, which comes across as a mixture of business convention and beauty pageant. The doc explores the 30th edition of the IML, a nice round number and a good excuse to look back on how f...Read the entire review

The Fields:
The Fields is one weird film. I give all credit to writer B Harrison Smith and directors Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni for putting this together. Everyone gets props for coming up with something as odd as a gothic suspense movie headlining Cloris Leachman and Tara Reid. The former, a name you don't often associate with genre movies, and the latter, a name that doesn't seem to have been involved in movies much at all lately. This movie however, based on actual events, is the place where subtlety and flat-out weirdness meet in a decrepit farmhouse.

When his parents can't stop pointing guns at each other in the summer of 1973, eight-year-old Steven (Joshua Ormond) finds himself living with his wacky parents in the middle of a Pennsylvania cornfield. Steven's obsessive fear of the Manson clan combines with his demented grandmother Leachman's predilection for horror movies, (a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Breaking Glass Pictures in association with a bunch of other companies present The Fields. The tagline says "Based on True Events," so that must make it true, right? We'll see if it holds up to scrutiny.

Eight-year old Steven (Joshua Ormond) is sent to live with his grandparents for a bit while his mother and father settle up their differences. Tara Reid plays Steven's mother. Chuckle. That almost killed it for me, but due to her being in the film for a total of a few minutes I let it slide. Cloris Leachman is grandma and she comes down on Steven with a bit of wrath in her voice. "Do not go into the cornfields!" Laughter ensues, but not due to her line delivery, but due to her cursing like a sailor in general.

That's all that is asked of young Steven. Then again, Steven is only eight, so if you think Steven will heed that warning then you've got another thing coming....Read the entire review

Wound:
Breaking Glass Pictures does a bang-up job lately of finding low budget, indie horror that pushes the envelope off the mail truck and straight into the gutter. And yes, this is a good thing. Take this recent release, (please) which starts out with a real eye-opening scene. Though graphic in the extreme, these opening moments are so giddily over-the-top they put you in the mood for bloody fun. Of course, that's when writer/director David Blyth begins turning the screws: the screws that are boring holes into your skull.

If you read the back of the box, you'll get more of a line on the plot than I did originally reviewing a screener with no packaging. However, you might not want to do that, as getting there is half the fun in this highly disturbing, hypnotic psycho horror show. All the good bad stuff is there, supernatural elements, abusive family dynamics, bondage-domination/sadomasoch...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Admittedly, the most entertaining things about Black Briefs, a collection of gay-themed short films with a sinister edge, are the DVD's title and packaging. Shorts collections like this are usually a mixed bag, and this disc from Guest House Films is no exception. On the other hand, they do offer an opportunity to catch up-and-coming directors and actors in projects that take more creative risks than most feature films. While the selections on Black Briefs err towards the average (and, surprisingly, the not very sexy), there's enough variety and genuine suspense present to sustain the interest of most viewers over the course of its 90-minute running time.

The six short films presented on Black Briefs are as follows:

Read the entire review

The Product:
What is your favorite splatter epic? Is it John Carpenter's The Thing? How about J rg Buttgereit's sickening Nekromantik? Perhaps you are more inclined to enjoying such icky Eastern offerings as The Guinea Pig Series or the Mediterranean macabre of Lucio Fulci. From Day of the Dead to Hostel, Cannibal Holocaust to Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, blood and its onscreen bounty has been a jolly genre given since the gruesome gave way to the gory. Of course, there has to be more than mere vivisection, as many of the above titles and artists confirm. Still, some movies want to get away with being nothing but autopsies and atrocities. Take the recently release The Summer of Massacre. Jack-of-Too-Many-Trades Joe Castro set out to make a record-breaking bit of human deconstruction. Because of the means used to achieve this redolent rec...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Love and loathing at the dog anti-beauty pageants

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good documentaries, dogs, Best in Show
Likes: Freak show documentaries
Dislikes: Dog people
Hates: Pageant parents/owners

The Movie
I've only had beautiful dogs, from Prince, my first dog (a German Shepard), through to my America Eskimo, Schnoodle and now my Poodle. Could I love an ugly dog? Possibly. I love dogs after all. But would it be easy? Looking at the stars of this show, I would say, probably not. Call me shallow or heartless, but these are some seriously ugly dogs. And the uglier the better for the sake of this film, which steps into the world of ugly dog pageants, which are just about as competitiv...Read the entire review

The Summer Of Massacre:
The Summer Of Massacre's fevered newness electrifies with spastic, hyper-violent imagery, a breakneck pace, and a disturbing lack of conscience. The Summer Of Massacre's grammatically challenged title, near-total lack of storyline, and cartoon-collage special effects will send you into a zombie rage. This is The Summer Of Massacre, weird graffiti-horror for script-kiddies used to having three screens going at any given time.

Divided into five loosely (I think) related sequences, for an hour-and-a-half of horrific mayhem, the movie reads like a Web-culture inspired trip to hell. Sequence one exemplifies this notion, reading more like a first-person shooter video game than a movie, and convincing me for the next 15-minutes that we still hadn't made it through the credits. Pretty much what happens is that some guy is killed by a bunch of jerks; he t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Asylum Seekers is a surreal indie comedy which marks the feature film debut for its director and co-screenwriter, Rania Ajami. While the film crafts a marvelous visual style with its meager ($1.5 million) budget, this promising and seemingly dream-induced storyline is squandered by unoriginality and lazy plotting.

The film opens with a brief scene at a casual dinner party in an affluent household, one which gradually unravels when an apparently Tourettes-afflicted guest (played by Daniel Iziarry) starts blurting out sexually explicit comments at random. We then move on to a fantastical insane asylum, where the gutter-minded party guest and six other quirky individuals enter and are gathered in an admitting room:

• Antoine (Iziarry), an athletic fellow whose over-excited and childish obsession with sex cancel out whatever attractiveness he has.
• Maud (Pe...Read the entire review
  ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53576 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:57:29 PST Rent It

  

  THE MOVIE:

  When a filmmaker chooses to work in a genre that many others have taken on before him, the hope is that he has something novel to say. Zombies may have been done to death but director J.T. Seaton approaches them with a slightly different comedic spin. Although the execution is flawed, Seaton does give us a fairly clever setup before delivering multiple gory punch-lines.

  George's (Carlos Larkin) friends and family are worried about him. He has grown pale and withdrawn. Most forms of human contact end with him physically attacking someone. Of course, the worst part is that he usually ends up eating that person because, well, George is a zombie. His friends have accepted this and want him to seek help for his condition. Lacking any experience in how to handle such matters, they decide the best thing is to stage an intervention. George's best friend, Ben (Peter Sti...Read the entire review

  ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53437 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 03:55:22 PST Rent It

  Uncle Bob (2009) is a documentary with an obvious but irresistible hook drawing one in to its unexpected but fascinating story of art, sexuality, murder, intolerance, a possible cover-up, and a search for the truth behind it all. Unfortunately, Uncle Bob gets bogged down by an ill-advised approach that might be simple exhibitionism or perhaps a deliberate attempt to emulate his subject's provocateur style. It's hard to tell for sure.

  Nevertheless, it's one of those documentaries about a subject so fascinating that in the end it's not a total loss, though like me you may find yourself wishing it would end long before it does. This Breaking Glass Pictures release is fairly loaded with extra features, though the back cover is wrong, listing the feature as "16:9 anamorphic" widescreen when it's actually 1.37:1 full frame.

  Read the entire review

  ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=50963 Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:46:22 PST Highly Recommended

  

  THE MOVIE:

  The Hide is an interesting, little slow-burn thriller. It takes the engaging premise of an intimate stage play and successfully translates it to an increasingly claustrophobic confessional.

  The film features only two characters because that is all the economy of the tale requires. Roy Tunt (Alex MacQueen) is a fastidious man with a singular passion in life: bird watching. He often holes up in tiny shacks known as hides and observes his feathered friends, hoping to catch a glimpse of certain elusive species. It is a fairly solitary existence, until the day that David John (Phillip Campbell) steps into his hide. Their first meeting is truly awkward as David shows up at Roy's door unannounced expecting shelter from the elements. David's manner is vaguely menacing and Roy seems unsure as to how best to handle the situation. So he lets David in.

  This marks ...Read the entire review

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