After the very entertaining “Power Rangers” tribute “Super Task Force One,” I like where director Steve Rudzinski’s head is. He seems interested in delivering audiences good old fashioned genre entertainment, and he has the talent to back up the ambition. Even with the obvious rock bottom budgets, he can churn out some amusing and charming indie films. If he’s ever given a huge budget, I think he could blow audiences out of the water.
It’s hard to believe this film took eight hours to shoot. Director Jakob Bilinski manages to cut together such a tightly wound and excellent little horror film that it’s impossible to believe it came out so great, let alone coherent. “Lucky” is a fantastic horror film in the tradition of classic comeuppance stories that really do allow the audience to revel in the twist before us.
It’s a testament to the talents of directors Jon Gorman and Thomas Edward Seymour that they can transplant a Rudyard Kipling horror tale in to contemporary America, and still derive a creep or two. Though “Mark of the Beast” seems like another cabin in the woods horror tale on the surface, deep down it strives to break any conventions, and brings about a unique disgusting monster among a small group of friends.
See, here is what I hate in porn: Artsy fartsy. Whenever a porno director convinces himself that he’s going to make something other than another stag movie and tries his hand at arthouse, it’s really annoying. Case in point: “The Devil Inside Her,” a mixture of Andy Warhol, Merchant-Ivory, and “The Crucible,” Zebedy Colt attempts an actual story in an hour, and fails with laughable results. To call this a pure monstrosity is an under statement, as every bit of direction and dialogue is painful, while even the hardcore porn is reduced to satire that fails to be even the slightest bit arousing.
While I was interested in watching “Constantine”, I didn’t really get what I was expecting. I never once read a comic of “Hellblazer”, but I know the general gist of it, and despite my disappointment with the miscasting of Reeves and the loose adaptation, I did get more than I bargained for. Constantine was essentially a story that takes place in the UK, but despite the Americanization, it ends up becoming a really solid adult thriller in the end. Constantine is a demon fighter who has been diagnosed with cancer and is now seeking to buy his way in to heaven, and through that journey, director Francis Lawrence who is shockingly a music video director, surprisingly gives some grade A direction for what is rightly a stylish yet very murky supernatural thriller.