“Snow Honeys” is less a snow bound bit of stag porn and more a lot of short vignettes set to the frame work of Kara Lott and Ken Starbuck introducing various segments. They’re not all consistent with the opening narration of the couple at a ski lounge, but it’s fun to watch the pair struggle through their introductions. Whether it’s the cold or the exhaustion, their first segment introduction is poorly edited together and seems to have been accomplished with multiple, perhaps dozens, of takes.
Spring is a hard to describe movie, it’s a love story, a finding yourself story, and a horror story, but most importantly, it’s a fantastic, touching story. It follows Evan in the events after his mother’s death when he starts in a downward spiral, flees the country, and after some travelling, decides to stay in a small Italian town and gets a job. One of the factors pushing his decision to stay, may it be conscious or not, is his meeting with the beautiful and mysterious Louise. Very quickly, Evan starts falling for Louise, but for her everything is not as it may seem. Telling anymore of the story would be making a disservice to anyone seeing it after reading this.
While Craig Johnson’s “The Skeleton Twins” had every chance to be a self indulgent vehicle for two SNL alumnis, “The Skeleton Twins” ends up being quite fantastic, and compliments the idea that Kristen Wiig is more than a comedian. Co-star Bill Hader also proves he can handle dramatic material with the best of them. Hader’s turn as a self loathing homosexual who is one part of self destructive twins is something of a revelation, and his turn here is Oscar worthy. Maggie is on the verge of committing suicide when she gets a call from a hospital alerting her that her long lost twin brother Milo attempted suicide.
It must either be really wise decision making, or a really weird coincidence that Eva Green stars in two Frank Miller based projects in 2014, both of which are pretty much just god awful cash grabs of their former films, and she ends up being about the best aspect of both films. Green really stole “Rise of an Empire” from everyone, and here she seems to embrace the absurdity in the incredibly rancid “A Dame to Kill For.” I’m not going to say I’m disappointed that “A Dame to Kill For” is awful, mainly because I didn’t ask for a sequel and I didn’t want one. I likened “Sin City” to Robert Rodriguez’s own wonky version of “Pulp Fiction.”
Do we need a sequel to “Pulp Fiction”? Hell no.
It’s pretty astonishing how much story Francesco Calabrese is able to tell and establish in just eight minutes. “The Shift” is both a horror film and a meta-film at once, exploring a very picturesque scene draped in pure terror. “The Shift” is set in the sixties. Or at least, the neighborhood we view looks very much of its time and Betty has just decided that it’s the sixties. In either case, all is not serene when we fade in to “The Shift.” When Joe returns home from work, he is knocked out awakens to find the ginger haired beauty Betty awaiting him.
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know, but it’s got tits and a ray gun.”
I’d be lying if I said “Stranded” has aged well, but then I’d also be lying if I denied loving it mostly based on nostalgia. “Stranded” is a childhood favorite I recall borrowing a billion times from my cousin and loved every minute of it. Today it’s still a solid science fiction horror film, but one filled with flaws. Surely, it mixes “ET” with “The Desperate Hours,” but its charms are undeniable. And it’s tough to hate anything with Ione Skye. There’s just no arguing that.