As wrap-up films for movie franchises go, one just has to look back at the Harry Potter empire to see how to do it right. American Reunion director Jon Hurwitz (“Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay“) was obviously not very observant. Born in 1999, “American Pie” conceived by Adam Herz and starring a group…
The bond a boy has with his teddy bear can be tough one to break. The one John has with his cuddly bear, Ted, is ridiculous. Ted, you see, is alive (John’s childhood Christmas wish) and has some very, very bad habits. He swears a lot. He drinks to blackout. He is terribly inappropriate to…
Ti West’s fourth motion picture undertaking, 2009’s The House of the Devil is an ’80s-style horror film clearly inspired by the classic shockers of yesteryear, and it even begins with a grindhouse-style opening title sequence that would make Quentin Tarantino smile. West wanted to emulate the likes of “The Amityville Horror” and “The Texas Chain…
La traición, la lujuria, la familia y el amor. Those are popular themes in Spanish soaps. For native speakers, backstabbing spouses, a secret romance between married individuals, and conflicted family men are sources of entertainment. But I’m sure they realize how convoluted and silly the onscreen drama is. There’s a lot to poke fun at…
Claustrophobia is one fear we all have. Human beings love being able to move about and frolic. In fact, I love it so much that even riding a crowded train can become painful experience. So it’s surprising that the thought of being trapped inside a box has never crossed my mind. That is to say,…
Fear in real time. That’s the most tantalizing hook the horror genre has offered since “The Blair Witch Project” opened the “found footage” floodgates more than a dozen years ago. That genre reinvention eventually led to the 2007 Spanish horror masterpiece “[Rec],” my pick for the scariest movie of the past decade. That movie was…
When the media began to co-opt the sixties counter-culture’s anti-establishment message and turn it into advertising slogans and the marketing of tie-die shirts, you knew it was the beginning of the end for any serious purpose the movement may have embodied. If the Duplass Brothers’ slacker comedy, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, is any indication,…
