Director Taika Waititi has a keen and admirable understanding of humanity as well as the relationship with death and loss we have every waking moment of our life. Whether it’s a gory horror comedy like “What We Do in the Shadows” or a family drama like “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” Waititi is never above examining our everlasting relationship with death that begins when we’re very young. “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is destined to be a classic drama comedy that pits two men against the wilderness in their efforts to make sense of life and come to terms with death.
Tag Archives: Crime
The Toxic Avenger (1984) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
The character that helped build Troma in to the company we know and love it as today, is still a wonderful and fun anti-hero who finds himself dropped in to fate’s door after a mean prank pulled on him one day. In Tromaville New Jersey, Melvin is a young janitor for a local health club dominated by a pair of muscle bound bullies. By day, the bullies roam around the club taunting Melvin and hanging around with their busty girlfriends, but by night they’re vicious hit and run murderers that take joy in killing children and helpless animals. After Melvin accidentally runs afoul one of the bullies, his girlfriend invites Melvin to a private rendezvous on the condition he wear a pink tutu.
After realizing he’s been the victim of a prank, Melvin crashes through a window and falls in to a drum of toxic ooze. Disfigured and transformed in to the muscle bound Toxic Avenger, he roams the streets of Tromaville murdering criminals and rapists, and laying down the law with his handy mop. Despite the very low budget, “The Toxic Avenger” works as a simultaneous superhero action tale and monster movie. A lot like “Robocop,” Troma’s superhero gets the job done in the most violent manner possible.
Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman are never above being as splatterific as possible, showing off a ton of gruesome moments including Toxie taking off a thug’s nose, and tearing another’s arm clean off. Of course a lot of the movie doesn’t reserve the grue for the bad guys, eliciting genuine cringe inducing moment when Melvin is turned in to the Toxic Avenger. Even for an indie film in 1984, the sight of Melvin’s skin pulsing and bulging from the toxic waste is grotesque and you hate to see such a goofy protagonist be reduced to this monster. Toxie is kept in the dark for most of his introduction, as he begins feeling his way around his strengths and weaknesses, and realizing his mutation allows him a chance to fight evil.
He begins to take on the bigger nemesis when he realizes the local police force is run by a corrupt chief and his sergeant whose attitude is very Nazi like. Herz and Kaufman give Toxie some time to even fall in love with a beautiful blond girl, and do battle with the villains from the gym. “The Toxic Avenger” is still a fun and off the wall action horror movie with its own twist on the superhero sub-genre. Leave it to Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz to take typical superhero tropes and twist in to something wonderfully gruesome and absurd.
Iron City Chronicles: Bitter Heart (2015)
NOW SEEKING FUNDING ON KICKSTARTER – It’s a real testament to Jason Turner’s talent that he’s able to pull off such a unique neo-noir with such a low budget. “Bitter Heart” is kind of a sequel to the original adventures of robotic private investigator Iron Joe. After being plagued with nightmares of a lost love, Joe is contacted by his ex-colleagues from Iron City’s police force when a young man is mysteriously assassinated. Linking evidence on the scene to a specific culprit, Iron Joe goes looking for the minds behind the murder and runs afoul a lot of interesting thugs willing to protect some secrets.
In particular, Iron Joe is on the track of a lead named Stoker, who is a CEO of Teknika, a corporation responsible for the robotic augmentations in the entire city. What link this assassination has with Stoker remains wholly ambiguous, but it’s intriguing to see how far Iron Joe is willing to go to take aim at corruption in the city. With some neat special effects both CGI and traditional, Turner unleashes this bold and unique wasteland where Iron Joe has somewhat bitten off more than he can chew with his assistant J.E.S.S. I hope we get to see how Iron Joe fares in the future, as “Bitter Heart” is a wicked prologue to an epic crime thriller.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016): Ultimate Edition [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]
From the man who gave us such rousing successes as “Sucker Punch” comes a new vision of Batman and Superman that’s pitch black, violent, and painfully stupid. Zack Snyder is a man with so much admiration for Alan Moore and Frank Miller, he spends the majority of “Batman v Superman” ripping them off wholesale. Snyder’s film is such a botched job he works in reverse, and takes the time out to deconstruct his vision of the iconic superheroes we haven’t even gotten to know yet. But hey, at least we get to see Bruce Wayne’s parents murdered in an alleyway once again. To make matters worse, the film is long, overstuffed, and painfully boring.
Sentinel (2015)
NOW SEEKING FUNDING ON KICKSTARTER – Jason Turner’s “Sentinel” reminds me a lot of the Harry Canyon segment from “Heavy Metal” except so much more of a neo-noir cyberpunk love letter than the former. Presented as a motion comic, Jason Turner plays Ex-Cop Alex Calibourne, a man with enhanced body augmentations that lives in a crime ridden albeit futuristic city named Iron City. Calibourne lives and breathes by his robotic enhancements, and uses his artificial intelligence J.E.S.S., a sassy female AI, to guide him through his adventures in the underworld.
Tickled (2016)
It’s almost like something out of a Creepypasta, a documentary filmmaker who comes across a fetish video of men tickling one an other for sport, learns there is a deeper and more sinister tale behind it. He then risks all to throw down the veil behind a seemingly large web of scandal and dark shadowy figures. Rest assured the unusual and eerie events that occur in Dave Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s “Tickled” are very real and unfold in a bizarre and eerie experience. Much like “Catfish,” this documentary feature explores one facet of a story and completely transforms in to something so much more enigmatic and mysterious.
And even potentially life threatening, once our filmmakers find themselves incapable of turning back from the hole they’ve begun digging in to a darker side of humanity and the internet. “Tickled” follows Dave Farrier as he stumbles upon a seemingly odd fetish video involving young men tickling one another strapped down on to tables. What Dave learns is that there is an actual sport called endurance tickling. Confused and slightly fascinated, Dave makes it a point of contacting the founders of the sport, only to learn that they greet him quite aggressively with homophobic slander and slurs.
Despite the initial correspondence confrontation, Dave continues digging in to the topic of Endurance tickling and falls out of favor with two conductors of the sport. After inviting them to New Zealand for interviews, they greet him with immense anger and aggression prompting a storm of legal threats, potential lawsuits and the promise of his career ending should he pursue the topic further. Shocked at how dark the initial search for a film subject has taken, Dave and Dylan challenge any threats at their professional career and begins to dig ever deeper and more thoroughly.
What’s so compelling about “Tickled” is not the world Dave Farrier uncovers, but the legal threats lobbied against him that most certainly can destroy his career and livelihood if he doesn’t walk on egg shells. The sad fact behind the documentary is the very absolute idea that the law is on the side of the folks that Farrier investigates, no matter how much deception and scandal he unearths. “Tickled” is a fascinating and entertaining documentary that spirals in to a rabbit hole of a shady subculture, online harassment, and the destruction of many lives all of which are met with the clicking of a mouse. There certainly won’t be another documentary like “Tickled” released in 2016.
Now in Theaters in Limited Release.
Slasher: Season One [Blu-Ray]
When last we saw Katie McGrath, she was suffering a cruel and unnecessary death in “Jurassic World,” and has now entered the sub-genre of the slasher film. A skosh more entertaining and engrossing than “Scream,” Chiller TV’s “Slasher” is a very entertaining, and tense slasher film that mixes in elements of a murder mystery in the process. I had no expectations for “Slasher,” and surely enough it won me over after two episodes, working within the confines of the slasher sub-genre, while also side stepping some of the more common clichés here and there. Much like “Scream,” main character Sarah comes from a small town where everyone has skeletons in their closets.