Entrance
Written and Directed by: Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath
Starring: Suziey Block, Karen Baird and Farley Burge

Although Entrance is being marketed as a horror film, it is actually a hybrid of character study and horror. I’m not going to lie; the first 2/3 of the movie is an exceptionally sluggish slow burn. I actually picked up the screening notes twice and reread them, because I thought I had been sent the wrong film.  There’s nary a scare to be found, although the film does effectively build a foreboding sense of paranoia. At the conclusion of the film, I understood why the first part of the film works.

Think back to Ti West’s The House of the Devil. That film literally creeps up on you by slowly unraveling, all the while lulling the viewer into complacency. The result is a climax that seems a little more horrific than it would have if the film were packed with cheap jump scares and standard horror tropes. In terms of the odd pacing, Entrance reminded me of The House of the Devil, although the films are nothing alike in terms of plot.

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Mother’s Day
Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman
Written by: Scott Milam
Starring: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Frank Grillo, Deborah Ann Woll, Briana Evigan, Shawn Ashmore

In honor of Mother’s Day, here’s my review of the aptly titled horror flick Mother’s Day. Looking for the perfect film to watch with mom this weekend?  I assure you, this is not it. Well, unless your mom is like me, and seeks out any depraved movie she can get her hands on. In that case, Mother’s Day is perfect.

It made its debut at Fantastic Fest 2010 in Austin, Texas, and there was plenty of buzz around it. With Darren Lynn Bousman (the Saw franchise, Repo! The Genetic Opera) at the helm, I was anxious to see this project. Unfortunately, I was unable to get into the midnight screening. The fact that I got to casually chat with Bousman before the film really rubbed salt in the wound. As far as I know, the film never got a proper theatrical release after its initial festival run, but that is water under the bridge. The film is now available on DVD for our viewing pleasure.

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The Five-Year Engagement
Directed by: Nicholas Stoller
Written by: Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel
Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Rhys Ifans, Chris Parnell

Last year we were bombarded by a slew of raunchy rated-R comedies (The Hangover: Part II, Horrible Bosses, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids, The Change-Up, etc.) that tried to one-up one another with gross-out gags and sexual escapades. After a while, they all started to blend together. Different movie, same old shtick. I expected more of the same with The Five-Year Engagement, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the movie charming, sweet, and touching.

Jason Segel (who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Nicholas Stoller) stars as Tom, an affable up and coming sous-chef in San Francisco. He’s madly in love with his girlfriend Violet (Emily Blunt), who has just accepted his marriage proposal. They are happy and content until life starts throwing them a few curve balls. Violet has aspirations of pursuing a psychology career at Berkeley, but she doesn’t get into the program. Instead, she receives an offer from the University of Michigan. Tom is wonderfully supportive. After all, he can find a job in a restaurant anywhere. So the two leave sunny California for the cold and snow of Michigan, and that’s where the problems begin.

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Bully
Directed by: Lee Hirsch
Written by: Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen

This year over 13 million kids will be subjected to bullying in one form or another. The problem has increased in magnitude with the advent of social media, allowing kids to attack one another from behind a keyboard or phone. Lee Hirsch tackles the hot button issue in his new documentary, Bully. It follows the stories of five families who have been directly impacted by bullying. No doubt Hirsch knows the best way to engage viewers in this type of issue is to put a face on it.

Hirsch and producer Cynthia Lowen “embedded” themselves at a middle school in Sioux City, Iowa in order to chronicle the life of Alex, who is relentlessly bullied at school. He suffers physical and mental abuse from schoolmates, and is essentially ostracized by the entire student body.  Alex was born prematurely and has some unusual features that lead to the kids calling him fish face. He has no friends, and has to suffer indignities at home when his sister tells him how creepy everyone thinks he is. It’s a horribly lonely existence for a teenaged kid to endure, and it breaks your heart.

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American Reunion
Written and Directed by: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schossberg
Starring: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Mena Suvari, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott and Eddie Kaye Thomas

American Reunion is the fourth installment in the American Pie franchise, and since it takes place a decade after the first one, you kind of expect the team to step up to the plate, and bring something new to the genre. Nah, that would be too hard.  Why be original when you can recycle the same old shtick?

Back in 1999, American Pie was still a comedic anomaly. It was released around the time as There’s Something About Mary, and the two movies paved the way for a re-emergence of the raunchy rated-R comedy (though Porky’s will always be my touchstone).  At the time, those films were fresh, fun and exciting.  The trouble is, for the last 13 years we have been inundated with the exact type of film, and quite frankly, it’s become passé.

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Natural Selection
Written and Directed by: Robbie Pickering
Starring: Rachael Harris, Matt O’ Leary, Jon Gries and John Diehl

When Natural Selection made the festival rounds last year, the film quickly became a darling of sorts, picking up various awards and accolades from discerning audiences and critics alike. Considering the fact that the film was made on a shoestring budget by a first-time director (Robbie Pickering), that’s no small feat. Now that the film is being rolled out in limited release, general audiences can discover what sets this little diamond in the rough apart from typical road-trip fare.

Rachael Harris is terrific as Linda, a sexually and socially repressed woman who has been living a joyless life with her Christian Fundamentalist husband Abe (John Diehl). He’s so devout that the two of them haven’t had sex for over 20 years – she’s been rendered infertile, so clearly God doesn’t mean for them to fornicate. The saintly and submissive Linda is still dutiful, despite Abe’s twisted logic. When Abe suffers a stroke, she rushes to his side. However, her entire life is subverted when she finds out that Abe was at a sperm bank watching porn when the stroke occurred. Even worse, she finds out that he has been doing so for the entire length of their marriage. Yep, Abe has generously been donating his seed to total strangers while Linda has white knuckled her way through years of sexual frustration.

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I must say I am excited to finally see a trailer for Sound of My Voice. It was easily one of my favorites I saw at SXSW 2011. The film was acquired for distribution during the festival, so I was asked to hold a review, but I can’t wait to see it again. It’s an intriguing movie about a cult centered around a mysterious woman (Brit Marling, Another Earth) who claims she has come from the future to enlighten her disciples. Here’s the official synopsis:

In Sound of My Voice, Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius), a couple and documentary film making team, infiltrate a mysterious group led by an enigmatic young woman named Maggie (Brit Marling). Intent on exposing her as a charlatan and freeing the followers from her grip, Peter and Lorna start to question their objective and each other as they unravel the secrets of Maggie’s underworld.

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Jeff, Who Lives at Home
Written and Directed by: Jay and Mark Duplass
Starring: Jason Segel, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon and Judy Greer

Mark and Jay Duplass (writers/producers/directors/brothers and sometime actors) are hardly household names, but they have been critical darlings of the indie film scene for several years now. The two are considered some of the forefathers of the “mumblecore” film movement, movies featuring unknown actors, and dialogue-driven character drama rather than plot-driven stories. Last year, the brothers inched toward the mainstream with Cyrus, featuring Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, John C. Reilly, and Katherine Keener.

With their latest feature Jeff, Who Lives At Home, the two bring us a short, sweet and charming tale that feels like a natural progression of their intriguing filmography. A stellar cast (Susan Sarandon, Jason Segel, Judy Greer and Ed Helms) delivers on a delightful screenplay that is ultimately an uplifting tale about a lovable loser who discovers his destiny in a most unconventional way.

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Silent House
Directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau
Written by Laura Lau (screenplay)
Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese and Eric Sheffer Stevens

Horror fans will find themselves in a familiar position when they watch Silent House, a film that does an excellent job building tension and dread, but ultimately succumbs to an unsatisfying ending that cheapens the overall experience. Why do so many horror films fall apart in the last ten minutes? It’s frustrating to experience the exhilaration of a well-executed tale of creeping dread, only to watch your well-earned admiration dissolve when the movie takes an easy out. Such is the case with Silent House, a film I will still give an enthusiastic recommendation to, because when it is good, it is very good. I’m an adamant fan of the horror genre, and sometimes, I take my scares where I can get them.

Silent House is a collaboration between directors Laura Lau and Chris Kentis, the team that brought us Open Water, a film that was equally lauded and criticized when it came out in 2003 (Kentis wrote and Lau produced and served as cinematographer). I adored the terrifying story that featured a couple accidentally left in the middle of the ocean when a tourist scuba diving boat overlooks them. Even though the film leaves much to the imagination, I bit my nails to the quick and vowed to never sign up for a scuba day trip for the rest of my life. The ambiguous ending infuriated some, but I thought it was the perfect ending for the film. Now the filmmakers seem to be so intent on delivering a neatly wrapped up ending that they allow the entire story to suffer as a consequence. Damnit. Stick to your instincts that served you so well the first time.

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The Artist
Written and Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius
Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Uggie

I’ve been frantically trying to catch up on every movie that I should see before Oscar night, but for some reason, I have continuously shoved The Artist to the bottom of the screener pile for months. I found it difficult to conjure up much enthusiasm for a film that is not only silent but filmed entirely in black and white. What’s the big deal? Why is this film a frontrunner for the heated Best Picture race? It looked dull and tedious. Wrong, on both accounts.

The Artist is one of the most charming films I have ever seen. It’s a wonderful tribute to the golden age of film, all the while managing to feel wholly original and exhilarating. It’s little wonder it has emerged as a critical darling this season. There’s nothing else quite like it. A dashing hero (Jean Dujardin) and a coquettish ingénue (Berenice Bejo) whirl their way through a tale of romance, melancholy, loss and redemption.

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The Grey
Directed by: Joe Carnahan
Written by: Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts and Frank Grillo

January is usually known as an arid wasteland for new film releases. Studios dump all the films that weren’t good enough for awards consideration, and the results are not pretty. My expectations for The Grey were tempered accordingly. I expected a campy creature-feature, nothing more. What I got instead was a complex, touching and intelligent tale of survival. Solid acting, breathtaking set pieces and thoughtful ruminations on faith and spirituality elevate The Grey from the typical ranks of action-adventure movies.

A group of oil company workers described as “unfit for mankind” depart on a small plane bound for Anchorage, which crashes in the middle of the frozen tundra somewhere in Alaska. Only seven of the passengers survive, but the crash becomes the least of their worries. The small band of men must face hunger, fatigue, freezing temperatures and a large population of territorial wolves. Ottway (a terrific Liam Neeson) instantly becomes the de facto leader when he takes charge in the chaos and panic following the crash. While others are dazed, terrified and in shock, Ottway is calm, collected and practical. A particularly poignant scene establishes his strength of character as he gently helps ease a dying man into death. That’s the exact moment that I knew the film was going to be special.  Neeson is so poised and graceful in the scene; I completely believed in his character from that moment on.

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A Dangerous Method
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Written by: Christopher Hampton (screenplay) and John Kerr (book)
Starring: Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel

David Cronenberg has always been drawn to psychologically challenging material, especially when it has to do with breaking societal taboos. Flip through his filmography (Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash) and you’ll see some seriously depraved stuff. He has mellowed substantially in recent years (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises), but thankfully, he still has an appetite for the kinky stuff. A Dangerous Method tells the somewhat sordid tale of the birth of psychoanalysis, but it’s fairly restrained for a Cronenberg film. No envelope pushing here, just a fascinating look at a trio of psychiatrists who laid the framework for the modern practice of psychiatry.

Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) is delivered by carriage to the doorstep of Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) in 1904. She’s batshit crazy, cackling and wailing like a banshee. She also has a severe vocal tic that renders her almost incapable of communication. Jung patiently tries out the controversial method of “talking therapy” on the patient, and damned if it isn’t determined that she’s a masochist at heart. Repression and shame have caused her behavioral problems, and once she becomes aware of this, she miraculously changes into a remarkably brilliant woman (who likes to indulge in the occasional spanking, like you do). Jung develops an unethical sexual relationship with the patient, all the while acting as her mentor, as the cured Sabina is now studying psychiatry.

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