Blue Valentine (2010)

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

Director Derek Cianfrance ‘s romance works on the premise that subtlety is everything. That quirks and facial expression can do more than actual dialogue can achieve. But it also helps if you tell a story that’s actually involving and engrossing. “Blue Valentine” is a film we’ve seen a thousand times around Oscar season. It’s the experimental drama about a couple in turmoil struggling to regain that spark. We saw it with “American Beauty” to some regard, we saw it with “Revolutionary Road,” we saw it with “The Good Girl” and lord almighty we’re seeing it again. This time, “Blue Valentine” is about the choices in our lives and how sometimes we can make the wrong ones and not have any idea how to get out of the perpetual rut we’re in. The characters of Dean and Cindy are a couple whose strengths are based around habit and routine.

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Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula (2011)

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

Ah that Dracula sure does get around, doesn’t he? He’s met more historical figures than Forrest Gump. In the grand tradition of “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula,” “Emmanuelle vs. Dracula” and “Batman vs. Dracula” comes the lost adventure of two of the world’s most notorious criminals and their confrontation with the lord of darkness. Timothy Friend’s horror crime thriller is in the hokey tradition of absurd battles and there hasn’t been one more absurd since Bonnie and Clyde’s meeting with the undead. Tiffany Shepis stars as Bonnie along Trent Haaga as Clyde in their efforts to thwart off rival criminals and the lawman as they travel across the country. Now down on their luck after a series of unfortunate events leave them penniless and without a car, they meet up with an old friend promising them a big job robbing a local bank.

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Transylvania Twist (1989)

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

Along with being one of my earlier horror movie memories, Jim Wynorski’s “Transylvania Twist” also happens to be one of the earlier horror movie satires that predates “Scary Movie” by almost ten years. It lampoons the slashers of the eighties, it tackles horror movie clichés to a fine art, and even props a few music videos here and there. A mix of “Kentucky Fried Movie,” some “Monty Python,” and a dash of “Young Frankenstein,” Wynorski’s “Transylvania Twist” is an admirable and often giggle inducing attempt at spoofing the entire horror genre and the fads of the mid to late eighties by staging some raucous old fashioned television commercials (with a horror twist of course), while also positing its own plot line in the process. After a hilarious prologue involving a hapless busty traveler and three demented slasher icons getting more than they bargained for, we meet Dexter Ward, a young man who visits his dead uncle at his funeral and is shocked to discover his uncle has yet to kick the bucket.

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Vamp (1986)

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

As a kid, I spent my time around many adults who used to rent videos from my neighborhood video stores. And often times they’d have viewing parties where they’d all hunker down, pop in one video after another and experience whatever title they took a chance on renting sight unseen. And as a child born in 1983 I spent a lot of my time watching with them. As such “Vamp” from 1986 is one of the earliest memories of a movie that continues lingering in my mind to this day. The climax of our protagonists escaping from the vampires in the sewer attempting to reach daylight has been etched in to my brain along with the lowering platform finale of “Day of the Dead.”

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Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

A ridiculously talented cast leads what is easily one of the most underrated films of the last few years; “Monsters vs. Aliens” is a Mad Magazine style action adventure film that not only manages to pay tribute to the classic science fiction B movie tropes of the golden age of cinema, but also manages to create its own monster squad, that show they can save the world and not terrify it. “Monsters vs. Aliens” teams a blob, a gill man, a bug man (Hugh Laurie in his noticeable smug but likable demeanor), a giant grub, and a 50ft woman to take on archetypal alien menaces as they go on an exploration of themselves and their strengths as a team.

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MacGruber (2010)

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

I’m still not sure if it was a large bid of admirable faith or mind numbing stupidity for Lorne Michaels to fuel an adult comedy based around a Saturday Night Live sketch that barely anyone is familiar with on a show no one really talks about anymore, based around spoofing an old 80’s television show that stopped being relevant ages ago. “MacGruber” is a film that is about eighty minutes too long, an endless barrage of ridiculous and droning attempts at comedy that fails on every single conceivable level.

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All Star Superman (2011) (DVD)

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Felix Vasquez

“My last adventure is about to begin…”

I never actually was able to read all of Grant Morrison’s much hyped and controversial “All Star Superman” when it was originally released in newsstands back in 2005, so for me watching “All Star Superman” was mostly new territory. While I loved Morrison and Quitely’s treatment of the man of steel (for what I read), I lost track of the series, so 2011’s “All Star Superman” is fresh terrain that I was mostly excited to sit through, especially when you consider the cast of seasons heavyweights like Christina Hendricks, Anthony LaPaglia, Frances Conroy, and John DiMaggio respectively. “All Star Superman” remains about as true to Frank Quitely’s unique artistic design as possible while adhering to the neo-anime tone that DC has sidled with over the years. While the 2011 movie is short in the tooth, it is absolutely satisfying, especially in its ability to remain firmly entrenched in anime devices that keeps “All Star Superman” anything more than another stock Superman title.

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