Lesson of the Evil (Aku no kyôten) (2012)

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

It’s so gratifying to see Takashi Miike returning to his chaotic roots that helped make him such a beloved auteur. While I’m sure his court room movie “Ace Attorney,” and the “Ninja Kids” actioner were fine outputs, “Lesson of the Evil” is a return to form for a man who proves he hasn’t lost a bit of his step. “Lesson of the Evil” isn’t just shocking, but it’s gory, disturbing, and features some of the most surreal supernatural elements I’ve seen in years. Miike comes back with a bang, and I had a difficult time turning away from “Lesson of the Evil,” even when it was tough to sit through.

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Contracted (2013) (DVD)

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

You can definitely look at director Eric England’s horror drama in two plains. You can either watch it as a gory tale of a woman rotting gradually in to something beyond herself, or you can look at it as a metaphorical tale of a woman rotting in to the ugly being she’s probably always been her entire life. When you cut it down, the character Samantha is the protagonist, but never really is an empathetic individual. She’s this lecherous, vapid, and utterly narrow minded being who does nothing but ride on people’s good will and expects big returns. That’s not to say she deserves what is coming to her, but who’s to say her final transformation isn’t what she’s been her entire life?

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Stories We Tell (2012)

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

No matter how much we love someone, no matter how much time we spend around them, we never truly know them. Even when we’ve spent enough time to know their routines and their flaws, we can never really know the person we love. Director Sarah Polley constructs an extraordinary documentary in where she attempts to figure out who her mother was. Surely, she knows who her mother was, but after her death, she’s spent an immense amount of her time during her film trying to figure out who she was. And surely enough, she realizes the person her mother was, wasn’t the person everyone else knew her as.

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Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II (2014)

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

One thing Lars Von Trier makes it apparent from the outset is that the sex in his epic tale of a nymphomaniac named Joe is never erotic. It’s ugly, uncomfortable, weird, funny, disgusting, and surreal. But never erotic. He begins the tale of her discovering her sexuality as a toddler, and then explores her pre-pubescent obsession with her “sensations” between her legs and the tricky methods she implemented to experience them, and then recalls the awkward encounter where she lost her virginity to a local boy that garnered immense pain and unusual emotions.

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Philomena (2013)

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Stephen Frears’ drama about a woman touching down on her roots and seeking some sense of purpose is a sweet and simple dramedy that really reaches emotional lengths beyond its quaint story. Based on a true event, Steve Coogan is fantastic as a jaded and somewhat disgraced political journalist Martin Sixsmith who decides to leave his world in exchange for writing about Russian history. He’s approached by Jane, a waitress, at a party who offers him a chance to help her mother Philomena search for her long lost son. At first he’s put off by the idea of the search but soon sees it as his opportunity for a best seller.

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Maniac (2012)

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

As a man who had absolutely no faith in the remake of William Lustig’s grindhouse classic, it’s quite telling that the opening of the film inspired a gasp out of me, followed by a “Holy crap.” Director Franck Khalfoun also wisely sidesteps the grit of New York (New York now no longer the wasteland is was in the eighties) entirely in favor of the more menacing and vast Los Angeles, all the while injecting an artistic gloss that makes the madness seem more surreal. “Maniac” is a gruesome and disturbing re-working of the classic horror film, that pays respect to the original, while also challenging its gore and violence, in the process. Elijah Wood’s performance is surprisingly unsettling and occasionally horrifying, since his character Frank Zito is a victim of his own madness.

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Nebraska (2013)

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

In “Nebraska,” Woody Grant is convinced that he’s won a million dollars. So convinced is he that he’s won, that soon everyone begins to believe it. What were once old friends, are now people intent on collecting a debt from him, while old relatives come knocking at his door asking for a hand out. Woody Grant is known as the town degenerate, a man who lived life as a loser and will die a loser, only when he perceives himself as a winner, do people begin to believe he is, and try to exploit that.

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