Category: Watch Movies!

LFM Reviews Grozny Blues @ ArtDocFest/Riga

By Joe Bendel. Taita Yunusova was released a mere nineteen hours after she was abducted. She would know better than most how fortunate she was. Yunusova is one of four middle-aged women independently documenting the horrors of the Chechen Wars and the subsequent human rights violations of Putin’s puppet, Ramzan Kadyrov. Although no longer held captive, you wouldn’t exactly say Yunusova and her colleagues are “safe.” However, by selecting Nicola Bellucci’s Grozny Blues, in which they prominently appear, for their fifteen-film documentary shortlist, the European Film Academy will help spread awareness of the activists and the constant danger they face. Fittingly, Grozny Blues screens this coming Wednesday at the Riga International Film Festival, as one of the ArtDocFest selections programmer Vitaly Mansky doubted he could present in Moscow under the current regime.

Yunusova, Zargan Makhadzhieva, Tais Titieva, and the exiled Zainap Gaishaeva do not look like independent filmmakers, but they document the devastation of their country and the oral history of grieving family members, because someone has to do it. In many ways, they are living in a hostile environment. Like a lord currying favor with his emperor, Kadyrov demands Chechens kowtow to the despised Putin. Increasingly, he uses stringent Islamification policies to maintain control, even while Putin uses the specter of Islamic terror to justify his harsh pacification campaigns. Chechnya is a man’s world, affording little rights to the four citizen archivists, but it is an old man’s world, since most of the younger generations were wiped out in the Chechen Wars.

Frankly, Bellucci’s approach is less authoritative than that of his subjects. Instead of facts and figures, he prefers to give viewers an impressionistic sense of life in Grozny and the surrounding provinces. It was probably quite picturesque once, but the many bombed out buildings and the massive public portraits of Kadyrov and Putin are an ever-present blight on the country.

GroznyBluesWe also get to meet the Chechen Archive’s neighbor, the Blues Brothers Café. Arguably, the proprietor is just as idealistic and even more impractical than Yunusova and company. After all, he is trying to run a legit, no heavy metal or grunge, blues club in Grozny. Of course, the system is stacked against him too. He has discovered a promising young talent, but as a woman, she cannot perform in his club after five o’clock.

You might say Bellucci’s style is observational and maybe even a little roundabout, but he clearly understands what he is seeing. When you listen to the women explain their trials and tribulations, including a shotgun marriage to avoid legal problems, it exposes Putin’s rhetoric as the propaganda it is. There is definitely terrorism going on, but most of it is conducted by Kayrov’s militias. Likewise, since the dramatic Grozny-City Towers fire seen briefly in the film was attributed to safety violations, it probably can also be traced back to the notoriously corrupt regime.

Instead of a formal indictment, Grozny Blues is like a mastercut of small, telling moments all spliced together. By going micro, we see just how systemically dysfunctional the Chechen Republic has become. As its subjects become more widely known internationally, they will probably be less likely disappear in the dark of night. Therefore, the mesmerizing and alarming Grozny Blues is recommended with considerable urgency when it screens this Wednesday (10/21) during ArtDocFest/Riga.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on October 21st, 2015 at 10:54pm.

LFM Reviews When Bette Met Mae @ The 2015 NewFest

By Joe Bendel. Mae West practically single-handedly saved Paramount from bankruptcy, while Bette Davis was the first actress to bring a little glamour to the hardboiled Warner Brothers studio. Yet, despite their mutual admiration, it took decades for the two movie stars to finally meet. Optometrist and volunteer bartender Wes Wheadon was a fly on the wall when they did and he has the standard audio cassette recording to prove it. With the help of lip-synching actors, he recreates the lively early 1970s dinner party in the hybrid documentary When Bette Met Mae, which screens during the 2015 NewFest.

Davis had four husbands and West never had a shortage of men, but both became gay icons, in part through drag show impersonations. It was a phenomenon they discussed on that night in 1973, so WBMM is not so out of place at NewFest. Sadly, the movie business had largely forgotten them at this point, but Davis still worked regularly in television, resenting nearly every minute of it. Having invested wisely in real estate, West did not need to work at all. Still, neither was the type to sit about idle.

Despite its obvious artificiality and the disorienting distance between the on-screen figures and their voices, it is rather lovely to hear the real life Davis and West again, in any context. The former was especially her tart-tongued self, venting her spleen against agents, producers, and former SAG president Ronald Reagan. In retrospect, most historians give Reagan credit for standing up to the moguls, but clearly anything less than a May Day storming of the studio barricades would not impress Ms. Davis.

Wheadon, who had already been pulled into Bette Davis’s orbit through mutual friends at the dinner party, serves as an easy-going and informative host. He augments the gossipy conversation with some intriguing background and context on the often overlooked later years of the two stars’ lives. It is particularly amusing to hear New York publicist Gary Springer (whom those of us who cover film and theater know and respect quite well) speak of an evening at Town Hall his father produced. Conceived as a sort of 92Y-style Q&A, it became a command appearance for the royal Davis to receive her adoring fans (who were apparently 99% gay men). Nevertheless, since the breezy forty five minute dish session constitutes the core of the film, Wheadon can barely stretch it past sixty minutes.

From "When Bette Met Mae."
From “When Bette Met Mae.”

Karen Teliha and Victoria Mills are both the respective spitting images of Davis and West, but Teliha also shows a command of the former’s instantly recognizable mannerisms. She seems comfortable in Davis’s skin, whereas Mills does not. However, the night was largely Ms. Davis’s show, so we can just watch and listen to her do her thing.

The graphics and Jack Anderson’s cinematography have a retro vibe that look like they might have been produced in 1973, along with the muffled audio. Yet, there is something appealing about its throwback grunginess. It is also a NewFest selection that could draw a lot of straight fans, because Mae West was Mae West and Bette Davis was smoking hot in The Letter and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Recommended for fans of Golden Age Hollywood, When Bette Met Mae screens Thursday afternoon (10/22) with the short film, Who Stole the Ruby Slippers, during this year’s NewFest.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 21st, 2015 at 10:54pm.

LFM Reviews The Diabolical

By Joe Bendel. Madison is a conscientious mother, but since the death of her emotionally disturbed husband, she has been saddled with a difficult mortgage and a problem child. Unfortunately, she cannot sell her son Jacob, because that would be wrong, or her house, because it is haunted. The family is stuck between a rock and a supernatural place in Alistair Legrand’s The Diabolical, which opens this Friday in select theaters.

By now, Madison, Jacob, and his younger sister Haley fully accept they are living in a haunted house. They have simply seen too much, too frequently, to remain in denial. Madison has brought in paranormal researchers, but they have all beat hasty retreats. So who’s she gonna call? Maybe Nikolai, Jacob’s cool science teacher, who she has been seeing on the sly.

Unfortunately, when it rains for Madison, it pours. Just as Jacob was finishing his mandated counseling sessions for his last “incident,” he launches into another fight at school. Ostensibly, she seems to catch a break when her mortgage company offers to buy back her house at favorable terms as part of a dodgy development scheme. However, an unseen force refuses to let Jacob and Haley leave the property, attacking their nervous systems as soon as they advance past the front porch.

DiabolicalActually, things are not what they seem in Diabolical, but it would be telling to explain how so. Technically, we have seen all the elements Legrand eventually reveals in some form or another in any number of previous films, but he gives them all a deeply sinister twist, while telegraphing absolutely nothing. His execution is unusually tense and creepy. With co-writer Luke Harvis, Legrand taps into the current mortgage-based economic anxieties, without overplaying the topicality card. Viewers just get a visceral sense Madison is physically and emotionally trapped in that house.

Despite still looking like a supermodel, Ali Larter is quite compelling as Madison. Frankly, her work as the anxiety and guilt-ridden mother compares favorably with Essie Davis in the over-hyped Babadook. (The Diabolical addresses similar themes, but does a better job taking care of the genre business.) Arjun Gupta’s work as Nikolai is also notable for its subtlety and intelligence, especially when grading on a horror movie curve.

This is turning out to be a very strong season for horror films—and The Diabolical definitely reinforces and advances that trend. Larter and Gupta show actors can still ply their craft in genre films, while Legrand maintains a distinctively uncanny atmosphere. Recommended with enthusiasm for horror fans, The Diabolical opens today (10/16) in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema and also releases on iTunes.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 16th, 2015 at 1:59pm.

LFM Reviews The Sand

By Joe Bendel. After a long, hard semester of sun & surf, Kaylee and her friends can finally enjoy spring break. So far, there has been less reality in their lives than a typical episode of Friends, but karma, if not realism, is about to catch up with them. Something hatched during their bon voyage blowout and it has turned the beach deadly in Isaac Gabaeff’s The Sand, which releases today on DVD from Monarch Home Entertainment.

There was a lot of drinking and hooking up the night before, but nobody will be embarrassed, because Mitch had the foresight to collect everyone’s phones and smart devices. He will spend the night consoling Kaylee over her ex now hooking up with her former bestie Chandra, but that is as far as he gets. It is already awkward when Kaylee and Mitch wake up in the life guard station twenty feet from the convertible where Jonah and Chandra still slumber. However, things really get awkward when they realize there is something horrific lurking under the sand.

Kaylee only needs to see a few seagulls sucked under to draw the right conclusions, but Mitch, Jonah, and Ronnie in the backseat, will have to watch her boyfriend die a gruesome death before they accept the situation. Unfortunately, Jonah the knucklehead drained the battery over the course of the hedonistic night. Things will get uncomfortable for them as the sun starts to beat down, but the convertible trio is still better off than their pal Gilbert, whose tubby butt was stuffed in a barrel.

From "The Sand."
From “The Sand.”

Do not jump to conclusions based on the bikinis. The Sand might sound like a silly Cormanesque beach monster mash-up, but it is really a surprisingly credible lifeboat thriller, executed with Kevin Williamsonesque attitude. Granted, these are all nauseatingly privileged airheads, but by horror movie standards, they are extraordinarily proactive. Following Kaylee’s lead, they start taking productive steps as early as the first act. Unfortunately, the beach patrol blowhard is played by Jamie Kennedy, so no help there. At least, it is his funniest screen appearance in years.

It turns out Gabaeff is quite adept at staging their halting attempts to shimmy around the sand. It is sort of like a lethal game of twister in which both feet must remain on a hard surface. He rather sparingly shows the monster itself, which is just as well, since the big CGI spectacles are not so hot looking. However, whenever someone falls into the same, the resulting gore is totally satisfying. While it is conspicuously obvious why Brooke Butler, Meagan Holder, and Cynthia Murrell were cast as Kaylee, Chandra, and Ronnie, they never give the sort of awkward line-readings you would expect to find in 1980s direct-to-video gems. Seriously, they are all pretty solid. Yet, it gets downright painful (in the right way) to watch Cleo Berry’s Gilbert sweltering in his barrel.

If you are the sort of person who approaches every new low budget horror movie with optimism, The Sand is the kind of film that justifies your faith. It has a knowing fondness for all the piranha and crab monster creature features that came before it, but it still gets down to genre business quite effectively. No kidding, this is a cool film. Recommended for anyone looking for Halloween viewing with a lot of beach bodies, The Sand is now available on DVD and VOD from Monarch Home Entertainment.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 16th, 2015 at 1:59pm.

LFM Reviews The Hollow One @ The 2015 Toronto After Dark

By Joe Bendel. Being a scientist is sort of like a form of original sin in horror movies. Linda Wade inherited that sin from her parents in the form of a very sinister artifact. For years, she tried to protect her own family, but when her well-meaning husband starts snooping into her past, he stirs up a ferociously powerful force in Nathan Hendrickson’s The Hollow One, which screens during this year’s Toronto After Dark.

Michael Wade had two daughters with Linda, but he literally did not know the first thing about her past. You might think he would figure she had her reasons, but instead he hires a private detective at the urging of his youngest, Anna. What he gets is a manila envelope full of field notes and a pepper grinder from Hell. It seems Linda’s medallion fits rather snuggly in the artifact. Unfortunately, Wade will not have much time to peruse the material before dark malicious figures start tormenting him.

At least the Wade sisters were not around when darkness fell over their home. Linda Wade tries to contain the damage, but to no avail. Ironically, she will be fatally injured when she dashes in front of Matt Hoffman’s car. He and Rachel Wade were a heavy item, but she refuses to forgive him for her mother’s death. However, the tragedy leads the Wade sisters away from the rural Washington State town for several years. When they finally return, they find the place a veritable ghost town. What few zombie-like people remain, including their apparently deranged father, have bizarre, ancient metal disks affixed to the back of their necks. To get to the bottom of it all, they will have to work with Hoffman, who was just finished serving his sentence for the accident.

Although Hollow has not played a lot of the big genre fests, it is one of the scariest films currently in circulation. The ominous forces threatening the Wades are not merely malicious. They are malevolent in a greater, metaphysical kind of way. Probably the last horror film that dared to suggest an equivalently big, evil picture was H.P. Mendoza’s I am a Ghost.

HollowOneWhile the implications of Hollow are massively unsettling, the execution is also wickedly effective. Hendrickson’s macabre visuals and the Exorcist-esque sound design are profoundly unsettling. Honest to gosh, if this film does not give you the heebie-jeebies than you must have absolute nerves of steel. Still, it is not quite the pinnacle of perfection. Hendrickson often resorts to glaring contrivances for the sake of advancing his narrative. Frankly, there are a few “oh, c’mon” moments in there.

Still, we can forgive such micro shortcomings, because the macro whole is so blasted creepy. When the sisters and Hoffman start investigating the wreckage of their former home, detail after little detail will just set you on edge. Production designer Lisa B. Hammond and her team did terrific work crafting the distinctive look of the film. The cast is also uniformly consistent and credible. It should also be noted how much Tonya Skoog and Kate Alden’s Rachel Wade look like mother and daughter.

A lot of scary things have come out of Washington State, like Microsoft, so it is nice to see one that is frightening in a good way. Hendrickson’s film will truly get into your head and under your skin. Therefore highly recommended for horror fans, The Hollow One screens this Sunday (10/18) as part of the 2015 Toronto After Dark.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on October 16th, 2015 at 1:58pm.

LFM Reviews Tales of Halloween

By Joe Bendel. Ever since Silent Night, Bloody Night, it seems like there are more horror movies set during Christmas than Halloween. While there is something appealingly subversive about some Killer Kringles, the exploitation of a holy day remains less than edifying. Finally, eleven filmmakers (two working in tandem) put horror in its proper season—Halloween. By the way, that is sixteen days from today. All sorts of malevolent monsters and men come creeping out in the multi-director anthology film, Tales of Halloween, which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Adrienne Barbeau will guide us through the assorted stories and give us warm nostalgic feelings as the voice of the radio DJ working Halloween night. When she warns us this town goes nuts on Halloween, she is not kidding. The film starts with Dave Parker’s Sweet Tooth as a candy-themed warmed up. It is a pretty traditional bogey man-is-more-real-than-the-stupid-teenagers-using-him-to-scare-a-naïve-kid sort of story, but like many of the constituent tales, Parker’s execution is strong.

Frankly, The Night Billy Raised Hell might be Saw franchise veteran Darren Lynn Bousman’s best work to date. Again, a young trick-or-treater is led astray by older siblings. Peer pressured into pranking their rarely seen neighbor, Billy discovers the hard way he is a rather Mephistophelean gent. Alas, the lad is whisked off into a bacchanal of mischief and violence that will definitely leave a mark. Seriously, you have never seen Barry Bostwick this evil before, but it is worth the wait.

Adam Gierasch’s Trick easily boasts the most sinister twist of the entire film. It starts out reminiscent of Bruce McDonald’s Hellions, with its Hellspawn trick-or-treaters, until it isn’t. It’s the sort of story that depends on the reveal, but Gierasch totally pulls it off.

Finally, the bullies start to get their comeuppance in Paul Solet’s The Weak and the Wicked. Grace Phipps and her two sociopathic running mates have tormented their meek victim well past reason—until tonight. Cue the gruesome transformation effects. Again, this tale is relatively conventional, but Solet gives it a distinctly creepy vibe.

Perhaps the weakest link, Grim Grinning Ghost, comes from the film’s conceptual organizer, Axelle Carolyn. When a Halloween party guest is so freaked out by her host’s story, she bolts for home, where she will be completely alone and vulnerable. We pretty much know what will happen beat-by-beat, but at least fan favorite Lin Shaye gets to tell the spooky yarn.

In a twist, it is the trick-or-treaters that are in jeopardy in Lucky McKee’s Hansel & Gretel riff, Ding Dong. Let’s just say an unstable middle aged woman without children is a little too eager for Halloween each year. It is not the best in show, but it is certainly a weird little bauble.

Andrew Kasch & John Skipp’s This Mean War is a mere trifle about rival neighbors and their Halloween decorations. However, things really heat up with Mike Mendez’s Friday the 31st. What starts out as an homage to old school slasher movies quickly goes totally nuts. There will be Claymation and delirious gore. It is a total treat.

From "Tales of Halloween."
From “Tales of Halloween.”

The same is true of Ryan Schifrin’s The Ransom of Rusty Rex. Yes, as a transparent horror take on O. Henry, we know exactly where this is going, but Schifrin (son of Lalo, who scored the film) keeps the energy and attitude cranked way the heck up. The voice of John Landis gleefully declining their ransom demands is the icing on the cake.

Neil Marshall ends Halloween strong with Bad Seed, a sort of “Attack of the Killer Pumpkins” story that is considerably moodier and far less campy than it sounds. It also features the highest density of cult movie cameos, with Joe Dante getting the most screen time.

Anthologies are always uneven, but since it all happens in the same put-upon town on Halloween night, the constituent tales mostly share a consistent look. Frankly, the score card is pretty good: four really strong tales and maybe three or four that are mixed bags, but still have something interesting to offer. Recommended for horror fans, especially those who follow the assorted filmmakers and cast-members, Tales of Halloween opens this Friday (10/16) in select cities, including the Littleton Alamo Drafthouse in Colorado.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 15th, 2015 at 2:45pm.