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According to its DVD jacket copy, 1983's Sledgehammer boasts the distinction of being the first direct-to-video slasher shot on video. The resources on tap are evidently scant: the budget appears to have gone mostly to the impressively-gruesome killings, courtesy of honestly named f/x pros Blood & Guts. The synthesizers and sledgehammer-yielding tall, carpenter-looking killer come from Halloween and the kills are straight Tom Savini territory. The X factor is video: Sledgehammer is the real Trash Humpers. Read more >>
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: The Illusionist, Blue Valentine, and more.
- What We're Watching: Red, White and Blue; Paranoids; Something Wild.
- Explore: Makioka Sisters; Caterpillar.
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Sylvain Chomet's film, based on a story by Jacques Tati, was nominated for a Best Animated Film Oscar. "However much it conceals the real-life events that inspired it," writes Roger Ebert, "it lives and breathes on its own, and as an extension of the mysterious whimsy of Tati." It's "a handcrafted jewel of a movie," adds Ty Burr, that "understands the illusions that sustain us in youth and that we have to let slip in the end. It's the rare work of art that cherishes both the magic and the trick." |
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" [Ryan] Gosling and [ Michelle] Williams have the most palpable chemistry of any screen couple this year, never striking a false note in this achingly tender tale of a love that implodes before our eyes," wrote Claudia Puig of Derek Cianfrance's drama that goes back and forth in time. "An unrelenting glimpse into relationship hel," writes Nathan Rabin."It could easily have devolved into sweaty, pretentious melodrama or ersatz John Cassavetes if Cianfrance and his actors didn't maintain perfect control over the material." |
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Simon Rumley's Red White & Blue [on DVD next week] is a half-step up from this writer/director's earlier The Living and the Dead, a slight tale about a very odd dysfunctional family which the filmmaker buried under a bundle of repetitive visual tics and back-and-forth time trips. Rumley and his well-cast lead actor offer some interesting situations and characterization before the film's raison d'etre – a raft of unpleasant tortures/murders – begins. From what I can gather, Rumley's themes encompass everything from America's sex/drug/rock-and-roll mentality to its current mid-east wars, general state of health (pretty sick) and.... Read more >>
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Argentinean filmmaker Gabriel Medina's offbeat first feature The Paranoids (Los paranoicos) moves a bit slow, but it's still inventive and occasionally enchanting enough to make one curious about what the filmmaker may do next. Essentially a character study, the film follows Luciano ( Whisky's talented Daniel Hendler, looking a bit like a Uruguayan Paul Schneider), a quirkily neurotic, procrastinating screenwriter who earns a living entertaining at kids' parties (garbed in a Smoochy-like suit as his character "Cachito"). He spends a lot of time brooding in his apartment because he's, well, paranoid and sociophobic. He's such the perfectionist that he's spent years struggling over one script, and... Read more >> |
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"[Jonathan] Demme himself has modestly characterized Something Wild as 'an exciting attempt to marry screwball comedy with film noir,' declaring that he wanted to 'show people a real colorful time.' Colorful indeed, for what distinguishes Demme’s moviemaking is an openness to life in all its diversity, and Something Wild, with its playful generosity, is as fine an example as anything in his career. He has a fond eye for the textures of Americana: the boasting billboards, the friendly signs, the even friendlier storekeepers, the name tags sported by waitresses, the gospel chapels. Each character, however small, is invested with telling details to make his or her appearance memorable." Read more of David Thomson's insightful essay, on Criterion. |
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