Snuff: A Documentary About Killing On Camera:
There's nothing more sensationalistic in the world of moving images than the concept of the snuff movie. No paean to snorted stimulants, a snuff movie by definition features an actual filmed murder committed for the sole purpose of distribution and profit. It's a narrow definition that helps keep snuff officially classified as an urban myth, with no less an organization than the FBI claiming that no snuff films have ever been found. In this world, where evidence of every single type of crime imaginable is stockpiled somewhere or other, it's hard to believe that no one has ever seen a 'real' snuff film, but that's beside the point. The point is; if you want to eat your cake and have it too, then make a documentary about snuff - you'll get to, in a sense, decry and vilify that very thing you're peddling to the masses.

From a pair of trailers that...Read the entire review

Background: Dating these days is tougher than many people understand since there are so many conflicting messages being sent to us from all the so-called experts. A quick look at the self help section of any decent bookstore will show you how complicated people make the idea, a growing number of folks under the impression that a date is essentially a job application for either a life long commitment (marriage) or at least a romp in the hay (sex; typically a one night stand) that the art of just going out to have fun seems to be lost. Such are some of the situations dealt with in a witty little romantic comedy by freshman director & writer Stefan Marc, in Dating Games People Play.

Movie: Dating Games People Play is a low budget independent movie that explores the foibles of modern dating through the eye...Read the entire review

The Movie

James Toback's films are provocative, raw and often too stuffed with ideas to function properly. But when the writer/director truly connects with his material -- his breakout 1978 effort Fingers, 1987's The Pick-Up Artist or a personal favorite, 1997's Two Girls and a Guy -- he achieves a kind of penetrating power that leaves a considerable impression. Outside of cinema, the erudite raconteur has lived quite the life, which is, in part, a focus of Nicholas Jarecki's filmmaking debut The Outsider.

Unfolding along a parallel track in The Outsider is the making of Toback's latest film, When Will I Be Loved, starring Neve Campbell. The very genesis of the project -- a two million dollar budget contingent upon Toback's completing the film in 12 days, with no distribution deal or script in place -- reveals the filmmaker's ability t...Read the entire review

Motocross Zombies From Hell:

Did Richard Lewis really coin the phrase 'from hell' as in 'The Date From Hell' etc? If so, did he know that it was going to be tacked on to the titles of innumerable cruddy movies as an inadvertent warning to viewers to stay away? I hope to hear from some of you with some suggestions for me, but I'm going to say that any movie with the words 'from hell' tacked on to the title is going to stink worse than a sulfurous lake of fire. Even the Hughes Brothers remarkable film From Hell failed because people were confused by the implied suckitude in the title.

Thus Motocross Zombies From Hell is a big turkey, and one wonders if the filmmakers hoped to indemnify themselves with the 'from hell' bit. "Yeah, we know this movie's a DTV bomb that we hope will earn a few ducats based on outrageous titular promise, then again we (the filmmakers from hell) warned you, didn...Read the entire review

There's a compelling true-life story of Hollywood during its golden age and the sordid reality of a young girl caught in its machinations lurking somewhere in David Stenn's self-aggrandizing documentary, Girl 27, but you'll have to pick through all the specious suppositions, and self-congratulatory excess to find those isolated bits and pieces. It's a shame that this important story wasn't told by someone else; as it is, Girl 27 winds up as a largely repulsive act of directorial manipulation (of his actual subject, Patricia Douglas) and an obvious, failed attempt to make the director a film presence in his own right.

In 1937, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, then the crème-de-la-crème of movie studios in Hollywood, held a days long convention in Los Angeles for its na...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The feature length directorial debuts of co-directors Jason Gary and Greg Jacobson is Modify, a fascinating and incredibly explicit look into the world of extreme body modification.

Comprised almost entirely of interviews and footage of modifications and performance art pieces, the film concentrates as much on the individuals' motives for having these changes made to their bodies as much as it does on the 'freak show' aspect of their outside appearances. We learn through on camera interviews why these people have made these choices - some have done it for religious reasons, some for sexual purposes, some for vanity, and others simply because they thought it would look cool. The reasons are as varied as the modifications themselves, of which we are shown many. Those with a weak stomach might find themselves unsettled by footage of a man piercing his penis or of a ...Read the entire review

Hey, listen; John Schneider's a nice guy (I even met him once years ago, and he couldn't have been a classier guy). And I'm a Dukes of Hazzard fan, through and through. I even paid good money to see the terrible Eddie Macon's Run (well, it was really to see Kirk Douglas). And while I admire Schneider's pluck in trying to write, produce, star in, direct, and even distribute John Schneider's Collier & Co.: Hot Pursuit! on his own, there's no way I'm recommending this car wreck of a home movie. Good intentions, as I've written at least a hundred times before, don't make good movies: good acting, good writing, and good direction do. And unfortunately, John Schneider's Collier & Co.: Hot Pursuit! isn't firing on any of those cylinders.

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THE MOVIE:

Melissa Painter's Steal Me begins as a train rolls into a Montana town carrying a teenage stowaway. Jake (Danny Alexander) is a self-confessed thief riding the rails looking for his mother. This new locale is where he most recently heard she was, but when the man at her last known address informs him she's gone, Jake needs a new plan. He'll later tell a skeptical small-town boy that the thing about stealing is not how you get in, but what kind of exit strategy you have. It's clear pretty quick that Jake didn't prepare himself for the possibility that he'd have missed his mom yet again.

In fact, his next step is a pretty lame one. Even if he had succeeded in stealing the car stereo, where did he expect to sell it around there? Instead, he gets...Read the entire review

The Movie

Cheap-looking, obvious, and derivative are a few ways to describe the indie comedy Do It for Uncle Manny. But once you get used to the chintzy look, the scattershot acting performances, and the point 'n' shoot directorial style, the flick's actually kinda, almost, sorta watchable. Not really a GOOD movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than I could come up with for less than $200,000. (Although if I had $200,000, I'd find much better things to invest in.)

One of those wacky "all in one day" concepts, "Manny" is about two best pals: a smooth ladies man called Danny and a whining nebbish named Stuart. After a night of partying with a hottie known only as "Jenny," Dan and Stu discover something terrible: The $250,000 Rolex watch that belongs to Stuart's uncle is missing! Obviously Jenny stole the watch, but how will these two idiots get it back? (Through a le...Read the entire review

The Movie

Back in my high school days, my friends and I would sometimes hang out after school and film goofy little movies with someone's dad's "state of the art" video camera. I remember we did a Star Trek spoof once, and it made us laugh when we watched the footage. We also threw ourselves around the backyard and made an "actiony" type mini-movie, and there was one afternoon when we tried to be "extra raunchy funny" in an effort to get laughs. That last one was particularly embarrassing to watch. I mention all this stuff only because Zombies Gone Wild made me think back to those afternoons for the first time in a few years. So thanks, Zombies Gone Wild for being so awful that you reminded me of the lamest years of my life.

The thing is a "home movie" in every sense of the phrase. Here we have three young goofballs, obviously good friends and big movie fans, who took a ...Read the entire review

The Movie

To a hardcore horror freak, there's no denying that John Carl Buechler is an artist deserving of praise and attention. Starting in the early '80s, the guy concocted, created and applied some really nastily elaborate makeup effects for some of our most beloved pieces of horror cheese. Deathstalker, Re-Animator, Friday the 13th Part 7, Nightmare on Elm Street 4, etc., etc. The guy might not be on the level of a Rick Baker or Stan Winston, but we gorehounds still grew up on Buechler's stuff, and so we like the guy.

And then he started directing movies. (Actually, he directed Friday 7, which many of the Voorhees aficionadoes consider the absolute weakest of the bunch.) Either way, the guy's as rotten a filmmaker as he is gifted with the latex and gore. Troll, Cellar Dweller, Watchers Reborn, Ice Crawlers ... all directed by...Read the entire review

I have seen some messed up shows in my time but when I sat down to watch Bobobo-Bo-Bo-Bobo I knew I was looking at something truly...um, unique. Much like Excel Saga, this series from Toei Animation features irreverent humor, outlandish characters, and a concept so bizarre that it just might (I emphasize might) work.

For all intents and purposes Bobobo-Bo-Bo-Bobo was a success in Japan and managed to wrangle in 76 episodes before it went off the air. Heck, here in America the show even made it to Cartoon Network for a while and is apparently going to be making a comeback. In all fairness this is the type of series that should do marvelously in such a setting but after watching the first DVD from Illumitoon I can't say that it's something every otaku should go out of their way to see.

Bobobo-Bo-Bo-Bobo takes place in the distant futur...Read the entire review

Originally a manga published by VIZ and Shonen Jump (in Japan) Beet the Vandel Buster is the brain child of Riku Sanjo and Koji Inada. With 52 episodes under its belt and a sequel series Beet has done better than most anime over in Japan but has been relatively unknown here in the States. This introductory volume marks the first anime release by newcomer Illumitoon and really gives us an idea at what the show is about.

The world featured in Beet the Vandel Buster is in the utter chaos known as the Century of Darkness. Demons (Vandels) have surged forth and threaten to devour mankind and take over the surface of the planet. It's up to heroes/mercenaries of sorts called Vandel Busters to step up to the plate and take the bad guys down. It's no short task to be sure and not everybody is up to the job but one kid feels that he is ready.

At the ...Read the entire review

Hi, I'm Mickey Hardt. You may remember me from such German TV movies as "The Smell of Money" and "SOS Barracuda: The Girl Hunter." Now you can see me in my very first leading role, playing Max Havoc, a kickboxer-turned-sports photographer who travels to Guam for sun and thrills. It's all in my new movie, "Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon," co-starring Richard Roundtree, David Carradine, Nikki Ziering, and Carmen Electra, plus a couple of gals you may have seen posing for "Maxim" or "Stuff." And keep an eye out for the next exciting Max Havoc adventure, "Max Havoc: Ring of Fire," with Dean Cain and Rae Dawn Chong, on DVD this summer!

OK, now it's me, Dave, your friendly neighborhood film critic. I promise you that everything written in the above paragraph is absolutely true. I know thi...Read the entire review

It would be easy to overpraise a film like Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. There's a wealth of sentimental, sad scenes, enacted by old pros like Plowright and Massey and Lang, that are ruthlessly calculated to tug at the heartstrings, and which suggest a better film in your memory and in your heart than what was actually on the screen. So let's not do that; let's give the film the proper respect it deserves. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a pleasant, poignant, though familiar fable, simply presented, and touchingly acted. No more; no less.

Mrs. Palfrey (Joan Plowright) a widow, has left her safe Scotland home for life in a London hotel. Having seen an advertisement for The Claremont Hotel in a magazine, she's disappointed to see reality not matc...Read the entire review