Robert Lieberman’s dose of mean spirited brutally disgusting torture porn entitled “The Tortured” is a lot like “Hard Candy” except dunderheaded, half-witted, and a pure right wing cartoon. Two young good looking parents in an upper class neighborhood are angry that the police aren’t doing enough to find their son who was kidnapped before husband Craig’s very eyes in their back yard one day. Wife Elise of course barely blames her husband, except blames the authorities. We learn all of this information in only the first five minutes of the film that speeds through the kidnapping, the investigation, Elise’s anguish at the kidnapping, and we even visit the hilariously cartoonish Koslowski, a pedophile hillbilly too ridiculous to be horrified of.
Tag Archives: Crime
Brain Dead (2007)
Director Kevin S. Tenney, the mind behind eighties cult classics like “Night of the Demons” and “Witchboard” aims about as low to the ground as possible with a mini-budget horror comedy that’s neither scary nor funny. I guess it takes a special kind of mind to appreciate what Tenney has to offer audiences, but I just couldn’t find the fun in what was really just a series of misfires in an unfocused muddled movie that, in the end, is just a waste of time. I enjoy horror movies where you have to just go on auto pilot and not ask for logic, but “Brain Dead” asks almost too much from its audience.
Circle (2010)
I held out almost little hope for Michael W. Watkins crime thriller slasher film about a Greek mythology obsessed serial killer who has a penchant for gathering and murdering his victims on the basis of fulfilling some need within him to manifest some Greek legend, but “Circle” gradually proved me wrong as it progressed. While it’s not a masterpiece by any definition, it definitely is a solid horror film with some roots in the formula cop sub-genre in which we’re following two mismatched hard boiled cops on the track of the vicious Bennett, a mastermind and genius psychopath who manages to break free from his asylum after ritualistically killing off a group therapy session he was engaging in.
Case 39 (2009)
Floundering in movie purgatory for a few years, “Case 39” is a supernatural thriller that has managed to be not only an indicator of its star status and how far its performers have come, but it’s also a statement that sometimes, just sometimes, studios can be on to something when they shelve or keep movies back in production. Held back for four years only released in the UK and now just being introduced to American theaters (maybe due to Bradley Cooper’s rising star status), “Case 39” is about as horrible a movie as you can imagine. It’s a movie that should have just been given a DVD release instead of a theatrical release as a movie starring Cooper pre-“The Hangover” fame. Hint: During filming he clearly wasn’t a big enough star to live through the whole movie.
Wanted Dead or Alive (1986)
In the eighties, Rutger Hauer was king. He was a man who managed to impress as both villain and anti-hero in many movies from the classic “The Hitcher” and “Bladerunner” to the not so classic but memorable “Blind Fury.” And as is the case, with every generation of bad asses, there’s always someone Hollywood is looking to peg as the next McQueen. “Wanted: Dead or Alive” is based on the excellent Western series starring Steve McQueen as a lone bounty hunter in the old west who travels along the land with his shot gun acquiring his next catch and teaching them lessons along the way while fighting the local bad guys. As is the case with the eighties, director Gary Sherman completely diminishes all of its period settings and sets its hero down in to modern times coating him with black leather, slicked back hair and teaming him against local terrorists as played by the tongued one Gene Simmons.
Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour (2008)
To say the writing behind “Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour” is clunky, sloppy, and utterly lazy would be a gross understatement. The movie makes no effort in being at all coherent or fluid and instead just does nothing but make all of the wrong movies when applied to competent writing. Sarah Landon is the heroine of this picture and the best characterization we get from her is during her introduction when she gets in to her car and the director zooms in on her bumper sticker that reads “My Friend was Killed by a Drunk Driver.” Director Lisa Comrie doesn’t even try to giver her some complex characterization, she literally explains her entire story on a bumper sticker! And this is supposed to give us insight on Landon? Why not put another bumper sticker that reads “Sarah Landon: The Main Character”?
Noise (2007)
In the end I really wanted to love “Noise,” because as a born and bred New Yorker, I tend to sympathize with character David Owen whose humble nature makes it impossible for him to ignore the random city sounds around him that eventually begins to disrupt his life. Regardless of what he does he is a fish out of water, and soon he becomes a beast who uses that disturbance and somehow gains something of a thrill out of it. He loves to hate what he hates, and he never quite knows why, even after confrontations with the mayor and a courtroom stand off. By the final scene he’s embraced his lunacy, but hasn’t found a way to resolve it. And that’s where the problem lies in the narrative, Henry Bean never quite knows what message he’s trying to convey.