In the past few weeks, New York City and the United States experienced a grueling, sweltering heat wave that swept over the East Coast after parching the rest of the country. This writer spent most of it indoors, in close proximity to a rumbling air conditioner — when I did go out, it was to…
Ever go to the grocery store and, while standing at the checkout, glanced at the tabloid papers? With Rumor Patrol, People, and Life & Times all detailing the juicy details of Lindsey Lohan or Britney Spears’ latest mental breakdown (using a combination of badly Photoshopped pictures, corny puns and headlines reading, “Drugs, Booze, and Floral…
Filmmakers Carlo Ledesma, Enzo Tedeschi & Julian Harvey clearly took heed of the philosophies and techniques of renowned scare-meister Alfred Hitchcock for 2011’s The Tunnel, namely his mantra that less is more: It is not always what you see that scares you, but what you imagine. A low-budget horror pic filmed in 14 days and…
While there have been some great films of the alien invasion genre, many of the biggest have been the most lackluster — from the mediocre Independence Day to the horrid Battle: Los Angeles. Instead, the best invasion films that come to mind are usually those that depict isolated incidents in small towns or at remote…
To begin this review, let’s get one thing straight: despite the misleading name, Titanic II is not an official sequel to James Cameron’s big-budget retelling of the Titanic disaster. Nevertheless, a film entitled Titanic II is sure to seem like a bad joke, even after watching the official trailer or spying the DVD cover at…
Gimmick films always start at a disadvantage, and as such it’s not surprising that most films which are completely one shot (no editing) or try to be completely real-time (or, at the least, cheat to appear so) often fail. The most notable film to attempt this, Hitchock’s Rope, actually wasn’t one shot (due to a…
In 1953, Morris Engel made a film called Little Fugitive. It was about a boy who thought he had killed his older brother and ran off to Coney Island to live on his own. It’s a charming piece (even though Engel was more interested in capturing the realism of this little boy in this big…
