Fureur (2003) Movie Review

“Fureur” is one strange movie. It’s mostly in French, shot around the Chinatown community in France, and it counts among its cast members a variety of Asians, including but not limited to Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Burmese. And although the box cover will have you believe otherwise,...

March 13th, 2004 | Read More

In America (2003) Movie Review

Irish writer/director Jim Sheridan’s “In America” is about a family haunted by a tragedy that seeks an unfamiliar environment with which to get lost in. As it so happens, Sheridan and his two daughters (Naomi and Kirsten, the co-writers) had actually moved to New York in real life once,...

March 11th, 2004 | Read More

High Tension (2003) Movie Review

The French Slasher movie “Haute Tension” has been re-titled “Switchblade Romance” for its North American release. Why? I don’t know. I suppose movie execs are talentless hacks rather they are in France or America. Certainly the thought of needlessly renaming a film is something...

February 16th, 2004 | Read More

The Old Fairy Tale: When the Sun Was God (2003) Movie Review

The Polish movie “The Old Tale” reminds me not to take things for granted — although not in the way you might be thinking. Here’s why: the film’s script is oddly unconcern with imparting important info to the audience — such as the names of its characters. Seriously,...

February 13th, 2004 | Read More

Book of Fate (2003) Movie Review

Movie anthologies are very hard to critique. With some, like the Japanese “Twilight Zone”-esque “Tales of the Unusual”, I reviewed each segment as individuals, and that seemed to work. And so, with that in mind, we take a look at the Finnish movie “Book of Fate”, about...

February 6th, 2004 | Read More

Last Exit (2003) Movie Review

David Noel Bourke’s “Last Exit”, about an Englishman in Denmark who gets into trouble with some criminal types, is problematic in the same way most low-budget films are problematic — there is a distinctive lack of an interesting single storyline. Or in other words, there isn’t...

February 2nd, 2004 | Read More

Deadline (2002) Movie Review

I guess it was only a matter of time before the rest of Europe gave in and offered up their own version of a zombie movie. The Italians nearly killed off the genre in the ’70s by saturating the market, even though they did manage to create a master of the genre in Lucio Fulci. The Japanese have...

December 13th, 2003 | Read More

The Nest (2002) Movie Review

2002’s “The Nest” probably surprised a lot of people, myself included, who didn’t think the general French movie industry was capable of producing anything other than films about how great it is to have sex all the time or how crappy and miserable the world is and we should all...

December 7th, 2003 | Read More

Kopps (2003) Movie Review

If the premise of the Swedish comedy “Kopps” sounds familiar, it might be because it’s similar to the recent American comedy “Super Troopers”. The latter movie was about a group of tight-knit State Troopers facing lay-off because there’s just not enough crime to justify...

October 26th, 2003 | Read More

Anatomy 2 (2002) Movie Review

Despite everything you may have heard, “Anatomy 2″ is not a Teen Slasher film — and in this case, that’s a bad thing. Not having seen the original, I can’t tell if the whole point of the “Anatomy” series is to be goofy and not to be taken seriously. The biggest...

September 29th, 2003 | Read More

I Capture the Castle (2003) Movie Review

It’s probably just as well that the English film “I Capture the Castle” never states what time period its story is taking place in. The film, about an eccentric family that themselves itself living in a rundown castle in the English countryside, could have taken place anywhere and in...

September 23rd, 2003 | Read More

Johnny English (2004) Movie Review

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know why spy parodies aren’t as funny as they should be. After all, when you’re freed of the responsibility of coming up with a half-decent plot, shouldn’t your entire time be spent coming up with jokes and gags? As was the case with “Agent...

August 17th, 2003 | Read More

Demonium (2001) Movie Review

I knew I was in trouble when the first 12 minutes of “Demonium”, an Italian horror film, involved these scenes: a very unattractive woman having sex with her lover over the opening credits, then the lover exchanging silly greetings with people in business suits at his “office”,...

August 14th, 2003 | Read More

Alone (2001) Movie Review

I am reasonably certain there was a good movie in the British Serial Killer film “Alone”, but the final product is, alas, not so good. Even if you could survive first-time director Philip Claydon’s extreme A.D.D.-inspired directing style, you’d still have to deal with a cast of...

August 2nd, 2003 | Read More

Ghost Rig (aka The Devil’s Tattoo, 2001) Movie Review

The British horror film “Ghost Rig”, essentially a Last Stand in a Haunted House movie set on an oil rig, immediately peaks my attention. Not because it’s an outstanding horror flick, but because of something much simpler. Originally released in 2001 as “The Devil’s Tattoo”,...

July 14th, 2003 | Read More

Scarfies (1999) Movie Review

The New Zealand movie “Scarfies” is a good movie only if you can forgive its farcical and truly terrible ending. The film, about 5 college students who discover an elaborate marijuana stash growing in the basement of their rundown house, requires you to take one big leap of faith. It’s...

June 28th, 2003 | Read More

Birthday Girl (2001) Movie Review

I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying that Nicole Kidman (”The Others”) stars in “Birthday Girl” as a Russian mail-order bride who turns out to be one part of a 3-person con operation. This also adds to my ongoing theory that movie trailers nowadays are only...

June 20th, 2003 | Read More

Princess of Thieves (2001) Movie Review

It’s unfathomable that I wouldn’t like “Princess of Thieves”. It has everything I’ve come to appreciate — it’s a period movie, it has swords and horses, knights and battles, the Robin Hood legend, and best of all, a gorgeous lead in the young Miss Keira Knightley....

June 15th, 2003 | Read More

Dobermann (1997) Movie Review

It would be a mistake to consider Jan Kounen’s “Dobermann” an actual movie. It’s a 90-minute music video in the guise of a “clever” crime thriller with hidden desires to be cheap splatterpunk nonsense. The plot is appropriately simplistic, and the characters are accordingly...

May 27th, 2003 | Read More

The Pool (2001) Movie Review

“The Pool” joins the recent spate of German-made Teen Slasher movies to go international. Although the film is made by Germans and set in Prague, and most of the actors are German, the film’s American pedigree makes its classification as a German film somewhat irrelevant. You have to...

May 3rd, 2003 | Read More