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How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town (2016)

howtoplanIt’s pretty remarkable how so many good actors can be in such a sub-par unfunny situation comedy. It’s also pretty surprising how a movie centered around sex and orgies really ends about as blandly and vanilla as pound cake. “How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town” is yet another of those slice of life dramas, where a city bound thirty something protagonist goes back to their old town to re-visit the ghosts of their past and discover something about themselves. We saw it in “Garden State,” “Beautiful Girls,” “Junebug,” and about a hundred other dramas since the early nineties.

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Bedeviled [Kim Bok-nam salinsageonui jeonmal] (2010)

bedevilledI’ve never seen such a soul sucking and soul crushing film as “Bedeviled” in my life. That’s not at all a negative remark about Jang Cheol-soo’s drama thriller. It’s just my warning that if you go in to “Bedeviled,” be prepared for a film with absolutely no silver lining or hopeful plot twist. Like “Martyrs,” it’s a trip down the darkside of humanity, but you know, unlike “Martyrs,” this is a great film from beginning to end. It’s not often that Asian revenge pictures are given a sensationalist tone, but Cheol-soo’s drama is gut wrenching and really offers a glimpse at a small chunk of the world where sadness is pretty much a way of life.

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The Boy (2016)

BOY2016I would only suggest “The Boy” to folks that are quite fond of Lauren Cohan and want to see her dip her toes in to the horror genre yet again. It’s honestly the only reason why I bothered with “The Boy.” While director William Brent Bells‘s film has a neat concept, the premise quickly runs out of steam and the writers almost seem to scramble for a way to stay ahead of the audience and come up with a neat twist they simply weren’t expecting. Seriously, I would have preferred they gone down the road I was hoping they would, rather than drop this completely goofy plot twist in the climax that simply made no sense whatsoever.

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Captain America: Civil War (2016)

CA-CWIt’s apropos of Marvel to finally bring in Spider-Man to “Civil War.” Because while it is essential that he be introduced to a brilliant cinematic universe, he is representative of the underlying message behind “Civil War.” With great power comes great responsibility. After spending so many years doing battle with aliens and super powered foes, the Avengers are finally taking a toll on the world, and the government from all sides of the globe is angry at their inherent recklessness.

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Coda (2014)

codaAlan Holly’s “Coda” is a remarkable and beautiful animated masterpiece. It’s rumination on the beauty of life and how senseless it can be. But Holly also observes that the beauty of life can be in how senseless and unpredictable it tends to be. Surely, people die for no reason, especially good people, but there’s a lot of amazing things that happen without prediction either. Often times some of the best moments of our lives happened spontaneously like fireworks from the darkness.

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Emelie (2016)

emelieA babysitter is kidnapped and another girl takes her place to watch over a couple’s three children as they celebrate their anniversary.  The minute the parents leave the house, the new sitter turns the weird factor way up and begins with a series on increasingly creepy games and situations. Written by Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck and director Michael Thelin, the story gets going very fast here.

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The Survivors (2016)

survposterI really like where director Steve Rudzinski’s head is with “The Survivors.” I love the idea of a movie about the survivors of slashers and serial killers teaming up to bring down random slashers around the country. The war of good and evil materializes in to a wicked concept where the slashers have the tables turned on them, resulting in the slashers forming their own cabal where they murder people in various towns around the world. Director Rudzinski pokes fun at the horror genre and team movies in general, offering some fun and funny satire of horror icons above and beyond.

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