Phoenix, Arizona. A group of kidnap victims are taken in a house like many others. There they are kept captive, beaten, and forced to contact family and friends for their ransom. Part of the group is an expecting couple who are split up as they keep the men and women separately. The father-to-be does everything he can to protect his wife and unborn child.
Tag Archives: Adaptation
Clown (2016) [Blu-Ray/Digital]
For such a unique premise and concept, it’s surprising how unremarkable “Clown” ends up being, in the end. Despite its best efforts, “Clown” feels like a short film that perhaps should have stayed a short film, as most of its narrative feels spread out to fit a hundred minutes. And I don’t know how they’ll pull off a sequel, if the final scene is any indication. “Clown” probably watches a lot better as a short film, but it breezes through the premise in the first thirty minutes and stops being interesting by the end of the first hour. Kent is an average dad who finds out the clown he had booked for his son’s birthday has cancelled. Anxious to keep his promise of a clown, Kent goes rummaging through his basement and finds a clown suit locked in a mysterious chest.
X-Rated Alley: Up in Flames (1978), Tinto Brass 4-Set
Unofficially based on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Mr. Natural underground comics, “Up in Flames” is an adult film stinker that looks like someone took a bunch of stoners and tried to create their own X Rated comedy for the local grindhouses. At only an hour in length, we meet a trio of slacker stoners that are given one more day to come up with rent for their apartment, or else they’re going to be kicked out.
Supergirl: The Complete First Season [Blu-Ray/Digital]
The series “Supergirl” is in a tricky dilemma from episode one. It’s been created by a network like CBS in America that doesn’t quite understand it. CBS has never really embraced the superhero boom of the aughts, and “Supergirl” pretty much was walking on egg shells from episode one. It’s a good bit of fortune it’s been ported over to the CW where it can live and breathe among other superhero fare like “The Flash” and “Arrow.” After swearing off Supergirl for many years, I decided to be a good little super fan boy and check out “Supergirl” and I’m glad that I did. It’s a pretty remarkable and loyal adaptation of the DC Comics character that is so much more Superman than Superman has been in the last sixteen years.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Viola Davis plays a big muckety-muck named Amanda Waller who works for the government. Much like Bruce Wayne, she saw a lot of the carnage inflicted by Superman and Zod in “Man of Steel,” and now that he’s dead, she wants to ensure there’s never another Superman coming to Earth to cause chaos. So naturally, she goes to Belle Reeve prison to assemble a team of super villains, all of whom have already had their asses handed to them by Batman and The Flash. Her reasoning is that the best way to defeat another potential alien menace is by enlisting a group of super villains on a suicide mission including a man crocodile, boomerang throwing maniac, and a Joker fan girl with an obsession with bats and mallets.
The Inerasable (2015) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
A horror writer works on a serial using fan letters about paranormal activity in their lives. After receiving a letter about a haunting that rings a bell, she teams up with the student who sent it and they work to uncover where all the paranormal happenings in the area come from.
Dark Side of the Moon (2015) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
Dr. Urs Blank is a successful lawyer with a pharmaceutical company hell-bent on becoming the biggest in its field in Europe. They ruthlessly merge with other companies and eliminate them. His work taking its toll on him, Blank goes through an accelerated mid-life crisis that brings him to try psychedelic mushroom with dire consequences on his psyche.
The film based on the novel by Martin Suter is adapted by Catharina Junk, David Marconi, and Stephan Rick. Their script is brought to the screen by Stephan Rick. This team creates an almost mesmerizing film in which we get to see a man go from a very business mentality, to a sweeter man, to a psychological break that leads to violence and out of character actions for the lead. The way this is shown is with a slow-burn of a film which takes its time to get to the point, but is absolutely worth it.
In the lead of Urs Blank is Moritz Bleibtreu turning in a nuanced performance of a man who thinks he’s going psycho after ingesting psychedelic mushrooms. His performance here is great and multi-layered; he gives his character depth and emotions, showing the right amount of guilt, of feeling lost, of despair. His character drives the film and his performance is pivotal, making it of utmost importance, which Bleibtreu grabs onto and for which he gives one the best performances of his career. Also, giving fantastically nuanced performances are Doris Schretzmayer as Blank’s wife Evelyn, Nora von Waldstatten as Lucille, and Jurgen Prochnow as Blank’s boss Plus Ott. The ensemble is very strong, a sign of good direction but also of good casting, done here by Veronique Fauconnet and Nilton Martins.
This reviewer being a photographer first and foremost, the cinematography for Dark Side of the Moon caught attention. Stefan Ciupek and Felix Cramer do an amazing job of framing the story and characters in a way that is stunning and that brings everything together. The fact that this was done by two persons shows how well they work together and adapt to each other’s style as never in the film does it feel as though two people did the cinematography, which is not an easy feat as each of them as his own style, his own vision.
Dark Side of the Moon is a slow-burn of a film, a stunning film, filled with great acting, and with a very good story. Not knowing it is based on a book until after watching it makes this reviewer want to track the book down and see what other layers to the story can be found there.
Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 14th until August 3rd, 2016.