Rick's Flicks Picks on AWN

With Halloween nearly upon us, I took inspiration from the Eerie Books Blog's list of 50 Must-See French Horror Movies to dedicate This Weekend's Film Festival to foreign language horror films. We have a French, black & white, horror classic. From Austria, we have a frighteningly real story of mental torture. We have a genre-changing Japanese fright fest that curses TV viewers. Arriving from Germany, we have a 1970s remake of a classic silent horror tale. And we close with a chiller from Italy created by one of the country's masters.

Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a twisted mad scientist tale. Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) is consumed with giving his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) a face transplant following a car accident that has left her terrible scared. Her emotionless white mask with her gorgeous sad eyes peering out is a classic film image. She is tormented with the reality of how her father is getting the faces for his surgical experiments. As I said in my original review, "The film becomes a battle between the evil doctor and his good daughter, who is as much a victim of her father as the woman he lures to his castle in the woods." Bubbling under each frame is a sick sexuality as the father obsesses with his daughter's beauty and the doctor's assistant Louise (Alida Valli) obsesses about the brilliant scientist who barely pays her attention. While it's hauntingly gothic and eerily poetic, this film is all the more frightening because it feels like it could be real.

The popular ICE AGE films have fallen into a comfortable formula -- mix tired SHREK pop culture references with some sitcom plot devices and add in a dash of LOONEY TUNES gaggery. Young kids might find the concoction palatable, but teens and adults who have more refined tastes will be able to call back how much better Pixar cooks up CG courses.

Speaking of eating, Diego the sabertooth tiger (Denis Leary, TV's RESCUE ME) is tired of simply chasing gazelles around the frozen tundra and decides to leave the makeshift herd. But doesn't he want to do that is every film? Maybe in the next film he can go into therapy for manic-depressive disorder. Anyway, he's feeling left out because the wooly mammoths Manny (Ray Romano, TV's EVERYONE LOVES RAYMOND) and Ellie (Queen Latifah, CHICAGO) are having a baby. Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo, SUMMER OF SAM) is also feeling left out and goes searching for his own kids to nurture. In a cave he finds three eggs, and as one can guess from the title they turn out to be tiny destructive dinos. So when their T-rex mommy comes looking for them, Sid is inadvertently dragged down into a lost world of dinosaurs under the ice. So the herd, including the annoying possums Crash (Seann William Scott, AMERICAN PIE) and Eddie (Josh Peck, TV's DRAKE & JOSH), venture down into the cave to save their friend.

It was a light week for trailer buzz. THE WOLFMAN was the biggest thing to hit the Net, unless you count the bootleg versions of the new three minute-plus AVATAR trailer, which was gone in 60 seconds. Other than the big spring horror flick, there were a few of interesting indie pics to consider.

Getting Buzzed
5) The Wedding Song (Oct. 23, 2009)
Trailer
Set at the dawn of WWII, two friends, one Jewish and one Muslim, find themselves jealous of each other's lives. Nour is put into an arranged marriage with her handsome and passionate cousin, while Myrian has a chance to go to school. Their friendship is tested as the political winds change. Sounds like a promising premise.

Vampires are hot these days. Family friendly fantasy is hot these days too. So Darren Shan's THE SAGA OF DARREN SHAN series seems like a good choice to make the jump to the big screen. In the hands of director/co-writer Paul Weitz and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL writer Brian Helgeland it becomes a captivating world of fantasy creatures and bizarre freaks.

Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) and Steve Leonard (Josh Hutcherson, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA) are best friends, but Darren's parents don't like their son's bad influence. One night, the two sneak out to see a freak show where they meet Mr. Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly, CHICAGO), a centuries old vampire with a colorful, but deadly, pet spider, Madam Octa. This intrigues Darren, an arachnid-phile, and Steve, a troubled young man yearning to be a vampire. Darren steals Mr. Crepsley's spider, which bites Steve. So to save his friend, Darren agrees to become Crepsley's vampire assistant in exchange for the antidote.

The World Series is nearly upon us so This Weekend's Film Festival gets into the baseball spirit with the best baseball films of all-time. It's an eclectic mix of films, some are in Little League, some are in the minors, some are in the majors, and some are simply in a field in Iowa. Some of the films deal with the directly and some deal with it in a bigger sense. But one thing all the films have in common is a respect for the game. Lets play ball!

Coming in at #5, just beating out the good, but sentimental, classic THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, is THE BAD NEWS BEARS. As I said in my original review, "In addition to its look at how competitive Little League can get, another thing that was surprising was how honest it is about the Bears journey to the championship game." The Bears is a team made up of all the players who other teams didn't want. Former minor league pitcher Morris Buttermaker, played wonderfully by Walter Matthau, is paid to coach the team. Early on they get trounced, so Buttermaker recruits his ex-girlfriend's girl Amanda Whurlitzer — Tatum O'Neal following up her Oscar win for PAPER MOON — who helps lead the team to victory with the aid of town thug Kelly Leak, played by a young Jackie Earle Haley. Buttermaker gets consumed with winning and pushes the kids too far and fails to allow the lesser skilled kids a chance to play. Director Michael Ritchie takes a realistic approach to the material, using natural sound and never making the Bears go from losers to pros overnight. THE BAD NEWS BEARS captures a truthful look at why kids want to play ball and why adults want to coach them.

In 1919, the game of baseball was much different than it is today. John Sayles' wonderful chronicling of the 1919 Black Sox scandal captures how different it was. Players were stars, but they didn't get the astronomical salaries of modern players. They didn't live in a bubble of celebrity, owning homes among their fans. One thing that was the same was the players had a limited window for their careers, so the needed to earn enough to support their families after baseball was over. There were not sportscaster jobs waiting as a back-up. Combine these factors with a notorious greedy owner, and you have the conditions for gamblers to get the players to take a dive.

Sayles, who based the film on Eliot Asinof's novel, lays out the conditions for why the legendary White Sox players took money to throw the World Series with attention to detail and pathos. The team was being hailed as one of the best ever. The team owner Charles "Commie" Comiskey (Clifton James, SILVER STREAK) never gave them the respect they deserved, nickel and diming them whenever he could. Family man pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn, GOODNIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.) was in line to receive a $10,000 bonus for winning 30 games, so Comiskey benched him for the last two weeks of the season. With cheapskate moves like that, one isn't surprised by the animosity of players like Arnold "Chick" Gandil (Michael Rooker, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) when embracing the gamblers' offer.

There's not a great deal of new buzz this week, but certainly the debut of the full TOY STORY 3 trailer has fans excited about 2010. In one small 2009 awards season news, there will be one less Oscar contender in the mix. Indie distributor Apparition has pushed Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE to 2010 so it can focus its support on the wonderful BRIGHT STAR and the upcoming THE YOUNG VICTORIA.

Getting Buzzed
7) Dear John
Trailer
Only two things have me slightly interested in this weeper from sap master Nicolas Sparks — Amanda Seyfried and Lasse Hallstrom. Seyfried plays a young girl who falls for a soldier played by Channing Tatum as he's about to be shipped back to war. So for seven years their relationship exists through letters. Oh this sounds like movie-of-the-week material to me, but Seyfried is emerging as one of the best 20-something actresses around and I have always respected director Hallstrom, who made two of my all time favorites — MY LIFE AS A DOG and WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE? I'm hoping this is as engaging as THE NOTEBOOK, but that's hoping for a lot, because Tatum is no Ryan Gosling.

Phil Alden Robinson's FIELD OF DREAMS is nostalgic and sentimental and just right. The story, based on W.P. Kinsella's novel, captures the innocence of baseball with an emotional honesty that taps into the generational gap that grew wide during the 1960s. With the conceit of the magical field, the film conjures the notion of simple times when a boy and his dad could share in the game and people of all walks of life could come together in the celebration of the American pastime.

Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner, DANCES WITH WOLVES) is a farmer in Iowa. The ex-hippie works the family farm with his wife Annie (Amy Madigan, POLLOCK), who he has a young daughter named Karin (Gaby Hoffman, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE) with. One fateful day in his cornfield, Ray hears a voice say, "If you build it, they will come." Ray becomes obsessed with the voice and is convinced that he needs to build a ball diamond in his cornfield. A classic film image.

With Sam Raimi's fabulous horror/comedy DRAG ME TO HELL now on DVD and Blu-ray, this week's lineup gets into some early Halloween scares. These chillers take place where people live. A witch curses a bank worker who fails to extend her loan. A woman hits a homeless man who becomes stuck in her windshield. Two wayward souls become obsessed with bugs under their skin. A vengeful cop torments his new neighbors. And we end with a classic real world battle between good and evil.

"At its core, [DRAG ME TO HELL] is about how the pressure of success can curse us and make us do things we never thought we’d ever be capable of doing," to quote my original review. Christine, played wonderfully by Alison Lohman, is a farm girl trying to make her way in the big city. Her boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) is from a rich family, so she wants to move up at her bank job to impress them. Enter the gypsy Mrs. Ganush, in a classic villain performance from Lorna Raver. She is behind on her mortgage and Christine makes the tough decision to decline another extension. The old woman curses Christine, who is then plagued by demons who in three days time will drag her to hell. Christine tries everything to rid herself of her demons, both literally and figuratively. Raimi crafts a story that is driven by its character's desires and our desire for their wellbeing. He perfectly balances between pathos, humor and real tension. Throughout, the film Christine is pushed to the edge and she must learn what kind of person she wants to become.

HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1990) Review

HENRY, one of the best serial killer horror films ever made, has arrived in high-definition. This low-budget scarefest isn't the kind of Blu-ray disc you pop in to impress the friends — it's grainy and worn looking at times. But that represents the low-budget origins of the film. This isn't the kind of film one would even want gussied up in 1080p. This release is about as good as the film has ever looked or might ever look. The imperfections, especially in the amount of grain during night scenes, really pop in HD. It is what it is. The colors are balanced nicely, but again the grain does mute the blacks. The look of the film certainly mirrors the subject matter. As for the sound, the film does its best from the original source. Imperfections in mixing and editing are present, but that is not the fault of the Blu-ray makers. Like the picture, the Linear PCM 2.0 stereo mix is gritty, but it fits this film perfectly.

After a week hiatus, the Getting Buzzed column is back. Award season is heating up and we have some family films in this week's countdown that are getting Oscar buzz. We also have George Clooney and Freddy Krueger and God.

Sinking Slowly
Pirate Radio (Nov. 13, 2009)
Trailer
Richard Curtis' comedy about a pirate radio station run on a boat during the 1960s has been delayed over and over again in the U.S. Previously it was known as THE BOAT THAT ROCKED; now it's PIRATE RADIO. Rumors of recuts aren't supporting a positive case for this once promising release.

Getting Buzzed
9) Red Cliff (Nov. 20, 2009)
Trailer
The domestic trailer for John Woo's Chinese war epic is out. I've already seen it and it's a good John Woo flick. When it's acting more like BRAVEHEART it's great.

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES Review

Disney goes back to the original artwork of their first animated feature to bring SNOW WHITE to 1080p. This first rate transfer brings out the details in this handmade animated film like never before. In many scenes, one can see the brush strokes and ink lines. The colors pops when they need to and the shadowy scenes are filled with rich blacks. For me, the focus wavers at times, but many are dismissing this as a product of the original artwork. That being said, SNOW WHITE has never looked better. And best of all, it retains the integrity of what the filmmakers had in mind. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack stays true to the original soundtrack. Directionality is done well, but the soundscape is left limited. I would have liked a little more rear speaker balance. Diehard fans can even indulge in the original mono track.