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AFI Fest || ||

Shirley MacLaine Earns AFI Honors, IFC Eyes Cannes' Sightseers: Biz Break

Shirley MacLaine Earns AFI Honors, IFC Eyes Cannes' Sightseers: Biz Break

Also in Wednesday morning's news briefs: Lee Daniels finds his Jacqueline Kennedy for The Butler, Harvey Weinstein and Karl Lagerfeld seek a star at amfAR auction, Cannes Film Market reports an increase in attendance and screenings, and more...
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Review || ||

REVIEW: Ben Wheatley's Kill List Works Hard to Be a Cult Film — Which Is Why It Can Never Be One

REVIEW: Ben Wheatley's Kill List Works Hard to Be a Cult Film — Which Is Why It Can Never Be One

Everyone wants to be the one to discover the next low-budget and/or indie supernatural shocker, the stylish, wicked little thing that scares the bejesus out of you and sends you running to your friends, saying, “You’ve gotta see this!” UK filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s Kill List isn’t that wicked little thing -- not by a long shot. Yet it’s a frustrating case. Wheatley drops enough unnerving bread crumbs in the first two-thirds to leave you wondering where the hell he’s headed, and even the big finale should be satisfying enough: It just belongs to a different movie, and it’s unsettling in a way that doesn’t feel earned.
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Festival Coverage || ||

Is IFC Midnight's Brutal Pick-Up Kill List the Dogtooth of SXSW '11?

Is IFC Midnight's Brutal Pick-Up Kill List the Dogtooth of SXSW '11?

The psycho-sexual anthology Little Deaths made a minor splash at SXSW as the Serbian Film of this year's fest, leaving many searching for the film most analogous to Ben Wheatley's even better-loved SXFantastic buzz film Kill List. But while parallels to previous SXSW hits like Monsters and Wheatley's own Down Terrace have been drawn, another entry from last year's festival circuit instead comes to mind: Yorgos Lanthimos' crazypants domestic drama Dogtooth.

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