agneepath Bollywood has started 2012 with a vengeance, literally, with Agneepath, a remake of a 1990 film. It includes everything you would expect from Indian cinema; romance, action, elaborate dance sequences, and lush colors, only this film has so much more violence and heartache.

As a child, Vijay’s father tries to talk the townsfolk of a small island off the coast of Mumbai out of loaning their land to Kancha, who wants to grow coke in their salt fields. Kancha will stop at nothing to get the land, so he has a little girl raped and murdered and sets Vijay’s father up, leading to mob justice and the father’s death. Vijay and his mother move to Mumbai where he comes across Rauf Lala, Mumbai’s top drugs dealer and human trafficker and becomes a member Continue reading »

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the-grey What would you do, if you survived a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness during a blizzard? Would you have the know how and basic primal instincts on building fires and seeking shelter? Now throw into the mix a pack of vicious Timberwolves who know you and your party are injured, and are just waiting to pick you off one by one. Would you survive? The answer to these questions is answered very blatantly in Joe Carnahan’s new film, The Grew, starring Liam Neeson.

Ottway (Neeson) is a wolf hunter for an oil company who oversees the workers while they’re drilling in the Alaskan terrain. He makes sure they don’t get attacked, and is very good at his job. Upon returning home from an expedition, the crews plane goes down leaving a handful of survivors with Ottway taking charge and Continue reading »

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the-los-angeles-ripper Cute, chaste and innocent Kristy White (Celeste Martinez) moves to Los Angeles from rural Ohio in order to pursue a career as a metal singer. Staying at the home of her lump-on-the-couch Aunt Peggy (Beverly Bassette) and her self-obsessed party animal cousin Angel (Chase Monroe) while taking vocal classes, Kristy is the embodiment of fresh meat dropped into the shark tank that is L.A.

Meanwhile, L.A. local Grahm (Randy Tobin) spends his days wandering the streets of Los Angeles, enjoying the local color, selling and imbibing in the local drugs, picking up and having sex with the local hotties, and brutally killing them for kicks.

On a night out clubbin’ with Angel, Kristy is introduced to Grahm when Angel scores some “party favors” from him. Grahm takes an instant liking to Kristy, and, as he Continue reading »

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mission-impossible-ghost-protocol-poster Five years ago, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) saved the world from certain destruction, but lost his wife in the process. Now, mourning the loss of her, Hunt has chosen to accept a new mission, one that again would mean certain world destruction and the start of possibly World War III in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

While on a mission in Russia infiltrating the Kremlin to obtain nuclear codes, Hunt’s mission is aborted due to another spy in the premises also seeking the codes Hunt escapes just in time before a bomb explodes, leaving high tensions between the US and Russia, since all evidence points towards him on detonating the bomb. The US President declares Ghost Protocol, or the shut down of IMF, leaving Continue reading »

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a-better-tomorrow Throughout the years, there are a handful of films that are made that are truly game changers. Films that not only stand the test of time, but also redefine genres and how future filmmakers hone their own craft. John Woo’s 1986 masterpiece, A Better Tomorrow is one of those films. So much of the way we see action films nowadays is because of this film. So to take a film such as this and remake it, the filmmakers have to not only love and understand the original, but also know how to make their own film and relevant to the world around them.

Hae-sung Song, and his team of six writers set out to remake this classic and not only did Woo’s original justice, but they exceeded in making the film completely fresh and Continue reading »

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territories Following a weekend at a wedding in Canada, a bunch mates get pulled over when they drive their minivan across the border to America. Two customs officers ask to see Jalil’s (Michael Mando) driving license and move back to their car to check him out. When they point out that the youngsters are driving with a bust front light, Jalil tells them that they hit a deer a while back, which triggers the officers

Despite constant claims of “only trying to do our job” the custom officers become increasingly agitated and act more and more threatening towards the group of youngsters. When one of the youths, Tom (Alex Weiner) starts Continue reading »

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Promo Poster

The Devil’s Toy has sat hidden away at the back of Grandpa’s (Joe Capozzi) closet since his return from tour of duty in WWII. Acquired for a horrifying price during the raid of a Nazi concentration camp, he’s kept it safely concealed for decades. But one night, his young grandson (Liam Makrogiannis) and his best friend (Alex Marshall) decide to sneak it out of the closet and find out for themselves what’s kept inside the mysterious old box…

Ironically, one of the most common annoyances encountered in the medium of The Short Film is that most short films are too damned long. I’d say that a good 75% of all the short films I’ve ever seen could’ve used one final polish with a pair of scissors. It’s a tricky medium, and very difficult to get right from a Continue reading »

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Theatrical Poster

Imagine a world where money doesn’t exist, only time does. Everyday you work to earn enough money to live another day, to eat and try to enjoy life. In the ghetto’s there are gangs of time thieves who’ll rob you of the time you have left, leaving you to die in the gutter. The Time Keepers roam about keeping track of time and making sure that not too much is being spread out. On the other side of the spectrum, the rich have centuries to live and have lavish parties where they play poker with the excess time they have left. And all the while, you never grow older than twenty-five years old.

Sounds pretty cool, I know how excited I was when I saw the trailer a few months back and thought to myself what a great social commentary on Continue reading »

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DVD Artwork

Filming H.P Lovecraft has never been easy, adapting that particular brand of cosmic horror does not tend to come out well on screen and the only movies that has had some success are the ones that have taken liberties with the original story it is based on. Cthulhu is another one of those and does it quite well.

This is basically an adaption of The Shadow over Innsmouth, the same short story that gave us Stuart Gordon’s entertaining Dagon. In this case however, Dagon is the one that sticks the closest to the source material where Cthulhu tells an entirely different story set in a town that very well could be Innsmouth though not as dingy. The main character, Russ, receives a message that his mother has passed away and is forced to return to the place of his birth, a small coastal town Continue reading »

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Theatrical Poster

After many years in anticipation, Johnny Depp reprises his role as a Hunter S. Thompson alter ego in the new film The Rum Diary, and sadly, I think he took it one film too far.

It follows a young writer, Kemp, as he travels to Puerto Rico to join a failing newspaper and begin his writing career as an astrology writer. Along the way, he drinks a lot of rum with the paper’s photographer and roommate, nearly goes to jail, meets a beautiful young blond (Amber Heard), is invited to help a shady business scheme put on by a gentleman named Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), and tries to discover his own “voice” to write his own novel.

That is all I took away as being the story from the seemingly endless two-hour marathon that is the film. Yes, it looks like there’s a lot involved, but it’s so sprawled out and Continue reading »

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Theatrical Poster

Beat Takeshi goes back to his roots, eh? Outrage is truly a “classic” Yakuza tale, featuring several groups of gangsters being played out against each other by the top dog, and sadly, that is about it. The first 30-40 minutes of this movie aren’t exactly what I would describe as entertaining, it is just a collection of scenes featuring Yakuza screaming, beating each other up and so forth. Not that heavy violence is a bad thing, but when Outrage has no characters whatsoever it gets kind of… dull actually. They can shout how much they want but, beat up innocent people just for the fun of it but when there really isn’t anything separating the characters other than the fact that one of them is played by Takeshi Kitano and the others aren’t, it doesn’t make great viewing. The actors are all good, except for the fact that Kitano himself does one of those roles that he can Continue reading »

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Theatrical Poster

There’s no real reason to waste space and time trying to sell this movie on you with fancy writing and descriptive amateur journalism. The Skin I Live In is a modern masterpiece, Pedro Almodóvar a genius and if you miss this movie, then you have no reason to ever call yourself a genre fan ever again.

Horror has always been at the core of Pedro Almodóvar movies. In one-way or another, it’s been an important part of the universe his movies work in. Be it the rape victim taking violent revenge, the lunatic kidnapping the woman of his obsession, or the sexual predator being caught up in his own game. If you know your Almodóvar, you know that I’m talking about Kika, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and Matador – which starts with a scene of Diego Montes [Nacho Martínez] having a good old wank to the death scenes of Mario Bava’s Blod & Black Continue reading »

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