This straight-to-video sequel establishes a tonal shift from the relatively serious Wrong Turn in its opening scene. A young starlet spouts hammy dialogue into her mobile, speeding along country roads in a red convertible, before a deformed hillbilly literally splits her in two with a hatchet. The scene is far broader – and more enjoyable…
Wrong Turn begins with a tense, understated mountain climbing scene, competently shot and edited. It’s an encouraging start. The credits are comparatively lazy, using a Se7en-esque sequence to flash a bunch of silly exposition – shots of headlines with “Inbred-induced psychosis” etcetera. Yes, it’s one of those: another hillbilly horror film. Wrong Turn is populated…
Wreck-It Ralph is the best Pixar film in years, and it’s not even released by Pixar. Its characters aren’t quite as well-realised as Pixar classics like Monsters Inc, Toy Story or Wall-E, but has the other attributes of those films: a creative, original world that feels complete, fully-formed. an impressive attention to detail. Every scene…
The underlying concept of Cabin in the Woods is nothing special. It’s a horror movie that’s also a satire of/commentary on horror movies, but that’s not uncommon after Scream (and April Fools’ Day and Friday the 13th Part Six before then) – in fact, it’s got to the stage that mediocre horror movies can be…
I’ve mentioned before that P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia doesn’t do much for me. But I really enjoy his work: There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights are both incredible films. I was expecting a masterpiece from The Master and, instead, found another Magnolia… a well-made, well-acted film: great scenes that never had a combined effect on…
Watching Cabin in the Woods, this guy (Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain) made me wish there was a film about him: it seemed like it would be a classy gothic horror flick. Turns out he’s a direct reference to Hellraiser, but Hellraiser wasn’t exactly classy: in fact, it’s the best kind of B-movie. Pinhead,…
On Christmas Eve Eve Eve, I watched Elf for the first time with my partner, over an assortment of antipasto (as is traditional in the Carbon Copy household). Elf is not particularly original, but what family-friendly Christmas film is? The plot concerns Buddy (Will Ferrell), a human adopted by the Elves of the North Pole.…
Holy Motors demonstrates the limitations of my self-imposed 200 words restriction. I could spend 200 words summarising the plot, perhaps by detailing the overall narrative (that is difficult, since there arguably isn’t one) or by picking out individual moments to emphasize the film’s “craziness” (a naked man is cradled by Eva Mendes in a burka…
The Bay isn’t the best found footage film of 2012 – that was Chronicle, which told its fairly standard teen superhero story by pushing the boundaries of the genre – but unlike Chronicle, The Bay plays fair. The context is an environmental-horror tale of a small town decimated by an (initially) unknown pathogen, framed as…
When a Stranger Calls is, essentially, two well-produced, scary scenes bracketing a meandering, uninteresting private detective movie. It’s a shame, because the premise is actually interesting: introducing a faceless psychopath then treating him with some sympathy, revealing him to be a real, irrevocably damaged, person. This premise is executed without effort or imagination. The opening…
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