$9.99


$9.99 is your typical Israeli-Australian co-produced R-rated stop-motion about the meaning of life. How many of those do we see year after year? In all seriousness, $9.99 is an honest, poignant, and insightful exploration of that beautiful nuisance we call life. It’s that rare gem that manages to be genuinely whimsical and quirky without collapsing under the weight of that pretentious self-importance many similar art-house films fall victim to. That might have something to do with director Tatia Rosenthal’s love for renowned Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s work. $9.99 is not Rosenthal’s first collaboration with Keret. Before this, her first feature, she directed two short stop-motion projects based on Keret’s work. $9.99, co-written by Rosenthal and Keret, does a wonderful job of bringing many of Keret’s... READ MORE >>>

35 Shots Of Rum
35 Shots Of Rum is one of those films that deal more with the loneliness and separation between its characters than their external relationships.  It's not proccupied with exploring exactly how they communicate with each other, but how the small little moments in their day-to-day lives lengthen the emotional gap between them.        It definitely belongs in a substantially large group of introverted, meditative character studies that the French do so well, at least for their target audience of strictly art-house viewers.  Everyone else who seeks a more inclusive, more universal approach to the story and characters will inevitably find the film to be unnecessarily tedious and slow.     Apart from fans of director Claire Denis (Trouble Every Day) and connoisseurs of the... READ MORE >>>

9
     Imagine Edward Scissorhands meets Lord of the Rings but without the original charm of the first and riveting battles of the latter. Like Edward Scissorhands, 9 consist of a Pinnochio theme but set after the end of civilization. One of the last humans, a great scientist, creates “stitchpunks” (more like beanbags with eyeballs) to save the world from the machines. The last of the stitchpunks, 9, (Elijah Wood, The Lord of the Rings) sets out on a mission to save the world from the ultimate machine, a brain-like monster that devours souls. Along his path, 9 encounters the previous stitchpunks made before him and together they aid in destroying the life source of the machines.      9 borrows themes from The Terminator to The Matrix (plus... READ MORE >>>

A Dangerous Man
Action, action, and more action!  That's what I want when I watch a Steven Seagal movie.  I don't want any of that artistic stuff, a plot full of learning about the inner child of characters nor do I want a sappy love story.  When it comes to cheesy action movies, all I want to see is ass kicking, sexy women, and a fast plot where I don't have to think.  A Dangerous Man is exactly what a Seagal movie should be.      The story starts off with Shane Daniels (Seagal), attacking a mugger who attempted to rob his wife.  Soon after the incident, police find the mugger dead and Shane is interrogated about his past in the Special Forces.  The evidence is damning and... READ MORE >>>

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
"I'm going to shove art down people's throats, without them even being aware of it," declares Samuel Bayer, the prolific commercial and music video director charged with rebooting A Nightmare on Elm Street for 2010. As quoted in a recent Los Angeles Times article, Bayer is an auteur who producer Michael Bay had to personally convince to take the job of remaking one of the great scare flicks of the 80's.        &nb sp;    For horror fans, the only "art" they're usually interested in is how convincingly the gore is churned out and sprayed across the screen. In this Nightmare, the bloody killings are unusually restrained (when compared to the wildly gory remakes... READ MORE >>>