As much as I didn’t want it to be what with the excellent cast of great actors, “The Clearing” is a surprisingly routine hostage flick with all the usual foibles and aspects you’d expect from a film such as this. Plus, it comes off in the end as utterly incomplete and half-assed. I love Robert Redford, and I think he’s still an immensely talented man, but this is just an overall lame-brained attempt at something more existential. The film goes on and on without even much of a full concept. We have Helen Mirren’s character who is desperate for her husband but begins exploring his shady past and their life together, but that’s never really explored with as much depth as it could have been, we meet the children, one is an eager son, the other is a beautiful daughter, but they’re never truly explored, then we have the bonding of this family whom were disconnected in life but connect during this tragedy, and sadly, that is a concept not truly explored as I wanted it to be.
Dark Chamber (2005)
I tend to underestimate independents sometimes, and with “Under Surveillance” I expected one thing and received the complete opposite. I knew I had this movie pegged about thirty minutes in, and then the surprise climax completely slapped me in the face, and right humbled my suspicions. Writer-director David Campfield manages to create a film that really ends up being a worthy hybrid of Hitchcock and Agatha Christie, with a story that constantly comes up with layers upon layers of plot twists and surprises that really involve the audience with what’s occurring on-screen. He feeds us this notion about what the film is alluding to, and then sneaks on us a completely different concept that fits.
Comparing "The Haunting" 1963 and 1999: The Superior and the Inferior
There’s that old term that sometimes less is more. Filmmakers subscribe to that theory–well some filmmakers, I mean Michael Bay never met a special effect he didn’t like, and of course there’s porn, but back in the golden age, less was more. With the flick of an eyebrow Greta Garbo made men swoon, with the revealing seductive smile and the flash of a shoulder Rita Hayworth made men literally shiver in their seats. Back then, less was more, and more times than none, back in the golden age of film, many filmmakers thought that less was more. I’m for that theory that sometimes our imagination can do more than an actual picture can do, because nothing can match our own sick imaginations. These days in horror films it’s hard to find a film that subscribes to that theory, let alone be able to exercise it and pull it off.
Layer Cake (2004)
Films like this make me happy I can afford to pay for them because “Layer Cake” is worth the money in the end. Taking off with a very Guy Ritchie sensibility, director Matthew Vaughn who has had involvement with one of my favorite films of the past years “Snatch” creates his own stylish monster of a mob movie with “Layer Cake”. What does the title refer to? Well, that’s basically something left for the climax, but this rampage of sex, booze, drugs, and violence make this one of the best mob movies I’ve seen since “Snatch”. Mr. X is a drug dealer/drug maker who wants to grab life by the balls.
Artie Saves the Hood (2004)
Don’t you hate it when you and your two slacker friends are trying to set up a backyard wrestling court in your backyard, and aliens from another dimension come in to your neighborhood to take it over? It happens more times than you think, and apparently, it’s happening to Artie’s hood. This pretty funny science fiction comedy asks the audience that very questions while giving us a concept that’s like “Shaun of the Dead” mixed with a bit of the Askew Universe. What if the fate of the world depended on a slacker?
Around the Bend (2004)
For all it is in the end, “Around the Bend” sure is trite, cheesy, and cliché, but it’s also entertaining and most of the time it’s hard to beat the combined talents of people like Michael Caine, Josh Lucas, and the ubiquitous Christopher Walken, respectively. In the spirit of films like “Five Easy Pieces” and “Diamonds”, we’re given the usual trifecta generational clashing between father, son, and grandson as they venture out on the open road to fulfill a request courtesy of their great grandfather (cue Caine). So we have this sometimes beautiful road flick involving these actors as they discover each other while being forced to stop at every KFC’s that is drawn out for them on the map left behind by Henry after his death. Though the whole road trip concept is tired, what the plot does with it is a rather original twist by having these three generations of men bond while at a fast food restaurant and occasionally coming across an oddball here or there.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2004)
Ranger Brad: We take our horrible mutilations seriously around these parts.
What “Cadavra” has above the rest of the lot for spoofing old B movies, is it just screams for the dudes at “Mystery Science Theater” to spoof it. “Cadavra” is essentially a B movie spoofing B movies from the fifties and many times it really manages to pull off the gags. The director has obviously done his research to a great extent with much of the flaws, plot holes, and immense lack of continuity provided with schlock sci-fi films even going down to the horrible props including cheesy alien costumes, a spaceship that looks like cardboard, and often times the props re-appear in another scene ala Ed Wood; and there are many scenes that just mimic those of the fifties including animal stock footage used for the actual film, which was a common practice then.