Expelled Grey Matter

I remember when Dragonfly came out it the previews made it look like it was a somewhat more sentimental version of Flatliners .  I also remember getting it constantly confused with The Butterfly Effect since both were mediocre movies with insects in the title. Since being burned by Kevin Costner in The Postman , I really haven't paid too much attention to many of the movies he has been in sense.  I liked him most recently in History's miniseries The Hatfields and McCoys , but otherwise I often find him an overhyped actor that I can do without.  He has one good movie as a direct ( Dances with Wolves ) and a few decent ones as an actor ( No Way Out ), but by and large I remember him for his biggest disappointments ( Waterworld, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves ). It should have not been a surprise that Dragonfly would be a disappointment as well. Dr. Joe Darrow (Costner) loses his wife Emily (Susanna Thompson) when the bus she is on is pushed into a raging river by a lan...

Ever spend a good portion of the movie yelling at the main characters for their stupidity?  That is what you will end up doing with In Their Skin , which follows the recent "strangers show up and try to kill you for no reason" formula.  I guess it made enough money for Stangers and Them that studios are just starting to churn this out. In truth, this whole genre largely goes back to Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs , in which a family is set upon by supposedly "real man" survival types while the weak father (who typically doesn't like violence) has to suddenly defend his family and become a "real man" himself.  Mark (Joshua Close), Mary (Selma Blair) and their son Brendon (Quinn Lord) visit Mark's family cottage in the woods in order to reboot after the death of their daughter.  Understandably, things are tough between the couple, with Mark feeling responsible for the death and Mary feels the family growing apart.  To make matters worse they su...

I am always happy when I stumble upon a Hammer film that I haven't seen before.  In this case it's one of the later ones, Hands of the Ripper.  In a lot of cases Hammer's quality had taken a dive by the 1970s, but occasionally a pretty good film emerges. When Jack the Ripper is pursued through the streets of London he retreats to his home.  His wife suddenly realizes what he is and he murders her in front of their daughter Anna.  Afterward he picks her up, gives her a kiss and abandons her to her fate. About 15 years later Anna (Angharad Rees) is living with Mrs. Golding (Dora Bryan), a fake medium who uses her for spirit voices and also pimps her out on occasion.  It is on one of these occasions that a member of the House of Commons, Mr. Dysart (Derek Godfrey) gets frustrated with Anna and begins to beat her.  It seems Anna has been entranced with a necklace that Dysart brought for her.  When Mrs. Golding breaks up the altercation and gives Anna...

I got my hopes up a bit during the opening credits.  Truthfully, I really liked the first two installments of this series, and seeing James Wong (who was involved in many of the best X-Files episodes) and Glen Morgan (responsible for a number of my favorite Canadian-based sci-fi series) teaming up on this one I thought I might be in for something more than another cash-grab.  I was mistaken. Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is taking pictures for yearbook during her senior class's trip to a local amusement park.  When she has a premonition about most of the class dying on a roller coaster ride, she panics, getting off and causing seven others to get off with her.  Everyone thinks she is crazy, but the accident happens, killing her boyfriend Jason (Jesse Moss) and best friend Carrie (Gina Holden), who were unable to get off the ride, as well as several other people. Soon after the survivors start to die in extremely complex accidents following the order in which ...

I remember video stores from the 1990s fondly because it was direct-to-video films that largely replaced what would have been drive-in films decades earlier.  Sure, there was the usual milking of a series that should have ended after two or three movies, tons of softcore porn and movies that looked like they were filmed in someone's back yard, but a number of great movies came out during that time that, for whatever reason, didn't see theatrical release. Return of the Living Dead III is one of those.  It received a very limited release in theaters in the United States, but was largely intended for the video market.  The strange thing is this series really hadn't played itself out; the first one is a classic horror comedy, while the second is largely annoying but still with some good parts.  Since the third decided not to rehash the plot of the other two, and some actual effort went into making it, one would think it would have seen a wider release.  We fin...

After part three, I was probably one of the few people who actually cared where the Paranormal Activity series was going.  Although it was getting rather annoying watching the same buildup when I already knew from the first that it was a demon related to the girls' family I found the core story interesting enough and was curious to see how things would wrap up.  Unfortunately, part four did absolutely nothing to forward the plot, leaving me thinking that the makers of these movies were totally lost on how to bring the series to an end. The fact that the next movie was going to be a spin-off, and not even released around Halloween, seemed to confirm it.  Honestly, by the time they got around to making a fourth, they really should have found a way to stop making them found footage, as they had stretched the concept about as far as it could go.  Not too mention everyone wanting to get a movie out on the cheap went in this direction. Well, it comes as a welcome sur...

Being the son of one of Italy's most famous directors has to be hard.  Mario Bava had such a particular style, especially after making films in color, that it would be easy to fall into a pale imitation of him to keep the family name going.  And when you decide to team with Dario Argento on writing your film you suddenly have another person whose particular style is known by many. Fortunately, Lamberto Bava manages to make this film his own.  Some of the primary colors his dad is known for show up, and the movie definitely goes in a number of directions (which is typical of Dario Argento), but in the end Lamberto has his own style.  Despite the different elements he doesn't let trying to get a specific shot overshadow the fact that he is making a horror film, keeping things on track throughout, especially after the action starts. Which may be where some people have a problem.  He's not trying to create art with Demons , but rather a straight apocalyptic ho...