Dutch director Tom Six struck a genre nerve (sliced clean through with cold, sterile precision, really) with his 2010 body-horror endurance test The Human Centipede (First Sequence), in which a mad surgeon stitched together three poor souls, end to end to end to end, in the name of twisted science. In the very least, it seems Six has thought good and hard about the film's success and why some of the most disturbed sights and ideas this side of Salo -- his favorite film, naturally -- titillated horror fans so. But in going meta with The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), in which a mentally challenged British fan of the first film plays copycat with a dozen more unfortunate "patients," Six frequently falls parallel to his own villain, indulging in a depravity of his own design with a masturbatory glee that becomes taxing and torturous to anyone else.
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Every era has its misfits, people who feel out of step with their contemporaries and the world. As a plea for tolerance and understanding of oddballs, Dirty Girl, the debut feature from writer-director Abe Sylvia, hits every note so squarely on the beat that in the end, it's nothing but square. It doesn't matter that Sylvia has stocked the soundtrack with killer '80s pop from the likes of Bow Wow Wow, Teena Marie and Joan Jett. The movie's true poster girl is the drippy Melissa Manchester, urging us to sing from our souls, because she thinks we can make it.
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In olden times -- as far back as 1993, even -- I'd sometimes see screenwriters quoted in defense of their craft, asserting that the script is always the backbone of a good movie. I don't see screenwriters saying that so much anymore, perhaps because they're so used to seeing their efforts mucked with that they don't even expect whatever good work they've done to shine through. Still, it's painful to watch a movie like Dream House -- well-acted, beautifully shot and directed with extraordinary care and attention to craft -- only to realize that the story, the alleged backbone, is absurd.
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There are hundreds of reasons we should welcome the new trend of movies featuring women who aren't afraid to admit they enjoy sex and who use language that isn't always granny-approved. In theory, the Georgia O'Keefe-like flowering of the genre should speak of a newfound freedom in how we think and talk about women's sexuality. There's just one problem: The movies are crap.
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While it's not quite enough to fuel a whole feature, the premise of Tucker & Dale vs Evil is a slice of meta-genre brilliance: What if the creepy, forbidding locals who always glare so unwelcomingly at slasher movie protagonists on their way to their haunted mansions and creepy cabins in the woods were actually just misunderstood? What if they were only trying to make conversation, and it's the college students/horny teenagers/yuppie vacationers who rush to judge and act hostile and end up dying in the wilderness? In a particularly nice touch, the hillbilly heroes of this horror-comedy (which leans far heavier toward the latter half of that equation) are actually headed to a weekend getaway themselves. Tucker (Alan Tudyk) has saved up enough to buy a "fixer-upper," a dilapidated cabin that evidence indicates might have once belonged to a psycho killer -- but hey, it's on a lake.
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The world needs more cancer comedies. But it may not need more cancer comedies like 50/50. It's not that 50/50 is insensitive or dull or unfunny -- it sidesteps all those potential flaws with the delicacy of the most precise surgeon. Then again, the picture's delicacy may be misplaced: Directed by Jonathan Levine (who, in 2008, brought us The Wackness) and written by Will Reiser, 50/50 never risks offending or shocking us as far as the cancer angle goes, but it does slot in some pretty ho-hum non-cancer-related crudeness wherever it can. When cancer-stricken Adam, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, shaves his head with electric clippers belonging to his best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), you don't have to guess where those clippers have been -- the movie tells you.
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There's always been a soft spot in my heart for grand, uncompromising, crazy-eyed acts of directorial ambition/folly -- films like Southland Tales and The Fountain, Heaven's Gate and One From The Heart -- that are either disaster or genius depending on who you talk to but that could never be described as restrained. Margaret, playwright Kenneth Lonergan's second turn as a director after 2000's very good You Can Count on Me, joins these titles after spending years in post-production purgatory as Lonergan reportedly struggled over a final cut, following lawsuits and studio battles and delays upon delays. (Among those listed in the opening credits are two people who've passed away since production began, executive producer Anthony Minghella and producer Sydney Pollack.)
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Casting Michael Shannon as a potential psychotic is a bit like crowing over the discovery that water is wet. And sure enough, in Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter, Shannon gets his chance to go all bug-eyed and thin-lipped, to sweat through his clothes, to go ballistic on the neighbors, warning them that a big storm is coming and it's going to wipe them out if they don't get ready.
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If you need yet another sign of how impossible it's become to separate the public persona of Kevin Smith from his films, look no further than the posters for Red State proclaiming it "AN UNLIKELY FILM FROM THAT KEVIN SMITH," as if the film were actually directed by the man's prolific Twitter account. In the last few years, the funny, profane voice that's made Smith's dialogue so distinctive has essentially outgrown the films that used to showcase it, as Smith's podcasts, his sometimes pugnacious social media feed and his speaking tours have made any cinematic output all but beside the point. When he made a splash at Sundance in January premiering his latest work Red State, it was more for the live auction he was reportedly going to hold to sell distribution rights after the screening than for the film itself.
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It's been established that Taylor Lautner can shuck a mean shirt, but can he hold together an action movie in its lead role? Over the approving shrieks of the Twilight fans in the audience, I'm going to gently suggest that at the moment, the answer is no. As Nathan, the teenage hero of Abduction, Lautner shows he's handy with stunts, many of which he clearly and impressively performs himself, and good with a fight scene. But when it comes to exchanges of dialogue, displays of emotion or just standing around, he's stiff and manifestly uncomfortable -- this may be the first film I've even seen where when an actor goes to put his hand thoughtfully on his chin, it's so awkward I became afraid he'd somehow miss and poke himself in the eye.
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You couldn't come up with a simpler, more nakedly inspirational story than the one told in Dolphin Tale: Unhappy, disengaged child of single mom finds a wounded dolphin caught in a trap's ropes and cuts it free; proceeds to bond with the rescue group that's working to rehabilitate said dolphin; becomes a chief player in dolphin's gradual and difficult return to swimming with confidence.
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Young actors are wonderful creatures, breezing -- or busting -- on to the landscape as if from nowhere, indulging us in the delight of discovery. But the twin pleasure of finding a new actor is watching an older one sidestep into territory you don't expect, becoming someone you'd never have thought he could be. That's where we're at with Brad Pitt, who has never been better than he is in Bennett Miller's Moneyball. As Billy Beane, the beleaguered Oakland A's general manager who turned his team around by thinking outside the Major League Baseball box, Pitt works wonders by seeming to do nothing at all.
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There's a theoretical sweet spot to be found for Machine Gun Preacher -- that of the multi-quadrant film, as the marketers say. It aims to be a hard-charging actioner that's also a based-on-a-true-story tale of rebirth and uplift; an earnest, somber look at conflicts in Sudan that's simultaneously a faith-centric, family-oriented redemption song. Directed by Marc Forster (of, appropriately enough, Quantum of Solace and Finding Neverland) from a screenplay by Jason Keller (who's also credited as one of the writers on Tarsem Singh's upcoming take on Snow White), Machine Gun Preacher always seems aware that it's working off ripe material, but can't fit it into beats that work on-screen.
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What do you call an action movie manned by people who look as if they don't want to be there? An inertia movie? Action movies aren't just about action -- they're also about presence, about watching appealing or compelling personalities go about the business of kicking ass. Killer Elite features one proven action star, Jason Statham and two actors who have played fewer action roles, Robert De Niro and Clive Owen. But it's all these actors can do to look present and accounted for. The picture, the debut feature of Irish director Gary McKendry, is rote and joyless, an exercise in disposability.
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Restless is so fluttering and tender, so guileless, that you almost can't believe it was made by an grizzled old hand like Gus Van Sant. Then again, maybe you can. Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) and Enoch (Henry Hopper, son of Dennis) play somber teenagers who meet at a memorial service. Enoch is haunted by the death of his parents -- he lost them suddenly in an accident. Annabel has her own secret, spilled early on: She's dying of cancer. They fall in love, quickly and fervently, knowing only doom and sadness await them -- and they've never even seen Love Story.
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