On last night’s Most Eligible Dallas finale, Courtney and Matt took important steps toward a long and lasting love affair. OK, you’re right. It’s all bullshit. That much was confirmed in the Watch What Happens Live episode following the finale, in which Andy Cohen alternately questioned and poked fun at…
The Exorcist, the original, isn’t a film. It’s a two-hour study of anxiety and dread. Beyond the demonic possession scenes, there’s happy-pappy moments like the ol’ “you’re going to die up there scenes,” or Father Karras’ dream about his mother. For that scene,which is presented with minimal sound, William Friedken…
Director Takashi Miike is totally fucked up … but brilliant. In the realm of Asian horror, he’s what many would call “the man.” (He also owns in action — just check out this year’s 13 Assassins for proof.) In 1999’s Audition (or Odishon, the original title), rubber gloves have never…
Little big ago, The Dallas Film Society announced their plans for the second Art of Film at the Hall of State in Fair Park. If you weren’t around for last year’s inaugural shindig with Elvis Mitchell and Robert Duvall, it was apparently a damn good time. Anyway, today the DFS…
In hindsight, the 1984 hit Footloose can be seen as the link between the old Hollywood model of a let’s-put-on-a-show musical, based on original songs brought to life in elaborate choreographed numbers, and the later Hollywood model of youth films, perfected in the ’80s by John Hughes and terminally calcified…
Life is a series of constant adjustments to ever-shifting realities in Gun Hill Road, a Brooklyn-set indie about a criminal, Enrique (Esai Morales), who returns home after a three-year prison term to find that things aren’t quite as he remembered them. Specifically, wife Angela (Judy Reyes) is trying to end…
Premiered as a BBC1 telefilm, now flaunting its wasteful widescreen in theaters, Toast adapts the autobiography of Nigel Slater, a popular British food writer looking back in condescension on the Midlands of his youth. The film begins in the middle-class Wolverhampton home where young Nigel is raised on a tinned-food…
A home-invasion movie as instantly forgettable as its title, Trespass is not without disturbing images: namely, Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman as spouses. The two Nics play Kyle and Sarah Miller, owners of a sprawling modernist manor and parents of back-talking teen Avery (Liana Liberato). Yet the luxe exteriors cannot…
In 1968 Roman Polanski produced a bit of magic that remains one of the best pieces of film to combine the quiet and the horrific. Now, before you say that we should never comment on his work, Rosemary’s Baby was filmed and released before both the Manson Family’s murder of…
The new musical version of Edna Ferber’s Giant, about a mid-century West Texas oil-and-ranch family, won’t open at Dallas Theater Center until January. But to prime the pump, the theater, ATTPAC and the Dallas Film Society are hosting a free screening of the 1956 epic movie of the same name…
Since Silence of the Lambs, there’ve been dozens of trashy Hollywood attempts at remaking the success behind the brooding, dark serial killer thriller. They’ve all been punch-yourself-in-the-nuts bad. Except for Se7en. You don’t forget Se7en. Who can: there’s a scene where you see a knife attached to a dildo [shudder]…
Last night brought us the premiere of The A-List Dallas on the gay-centric network Logo. It’s the new edition of a franchise that began in New York City and follows the lives of five gay men and one straight woman in the same social circle. And, unlike its distant second…
While in town promoting another film, Gerard Butler gave us a little preview of his character in Movie 43 — a feature film comprised of various comedic shorts directed by Brett Ratner, Peter Farrelly, James Gunn, Elizabeth Banks, Bob Odenkirk and other Hollywood heavy hitters of comedy. The film features…
Peter Jackson’s 1992 zombified gora-a-thon has been called the “goriest fright film of all time.” Look, it says so right there on the poster. But that’s really not much of a stretch. Dead Alive (originally called Braindead) may have been shot in the Land of the Long White Cloud, but…
Dear David Cronenberg, You permanently re-wired me. Not sure if it was the scene when Jeff Goldblum, who becomes a massive, bipedal fly, dissolves a man’s hand with battery-acid vomit, or the scene where the baboon blows up from the inside-out, but I’m permanently fucked. Toodles, Young Nick. David Cronenberg…
It may be a little too clot with blood now to see — given the less than killer fourth sequel this year and the countless copycat films in the years prior — but Scream was pretty groundbreaking for the horror genre upon its release in 1996. Heavily influenced by films…
I credit two people for introducing me to the wonderful world of Dario Argento and to both of them I’ll be eternally grateful. I love a good gorefest, but I especially love an artful one — one that entails vivid colors, ballet (an almost career choice) and the music of…
A procedural on the political manipulation of medium and message, George Clooney’s fourth directorial effort is bookended with scenes of media-op prepping. In the first, Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), a 30-year-old campaign adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Mike Morris (Clooney), fills in for his boss at the sound check for…
Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a two-bit trainer traveling the state fair circuit in a not-too-distant future. His line is robot fighting, a sport that has absorbed the audience for boxing, MMA and, apparently, demolition derby. After a tough match leaves Charlie ‘bot-less, he gets news that his ex-girlfriend, with…
There is no body of water immune to the fear from Jaws. Any lake, any pond, any tepid street puddle is a possible place to swim and be eaten by a large, meat-hungry shark. I’d even bet there’s literally no swimming human on Earth that doesn’t, at some point, imagine…
We’re watching Bravo’s Most Eligible Dallas every week so you don’t have to. Scene 1: Courtney’s at home, hangin’ in her boudoir (which apparently hasn’t featured new wall decorations since elementary school), chatting with Matty on the phone about her bad mood at the Granada concert (from Episode 6). He…
Underrated. Underrated. Underrated. In 1981 Student Bodies took the horror movie genre to task for punishing happy, healthy, sex- and fun-having kids. The movie rips off the opening sequences, music and “the call is coming from…” ploys for one of the best and most disgusting horror parodies around. Filmed in…
