Do people still like movies where Elijah Wood walks around the New Zealand wilderness? Because there’s a great deal of that in Bookworm, the latest directorial effort from Ant Timpson (Come to Daddy). It may not be quite as epic as the Lord of the Rings movies, but it’s impossible for that landscape to not look incredible, and there’s plenty of adventure on this sweet, earnest journey of reconciliation between a long-estranged father and daughter, a journey that also happens to be something of a cryptid hunt.
When you hear about a DIY Estonian horror-musical that took the filmmaker (Sander Maran served as director, writer, editor, cinematographer, songwriter, and probably more roles) a decade to make, you can’t help but be curious. And Chainsaws Were Singing is all of that and so, so much more. This is a bizarre, wild time that goes way, way out in the wilderness and is something fans of movies like Cannibals: The Musical and Hundreds of Beavers need to check out.
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. So goes the well-worn saying, so goes the story of Donna (Dana Namerode). A talented pianist, the diagnosis of an aggressive, highly localized cancer means the only way to save her life is to amputate her arm. As her days become a series of indifferent doctors and callous support groups, the prospect of losing everything she’s devoted her life to leads her to accept an offer from Sam (Johnny Whitworth, Empire Records), a mysterious (sketchy) scientist who claims he can cure her. What initially looks like an immediate, miraculous cure turns into something much more sinister. And occasionally quite gooey.
19-year-old Australian dynamo Alice Maio Mackay already has a hell of a roster of low-to-no-budget horror movies under her belt with the likes of T-Blockers, So Vam, and Bad Girl Boogey, among others. And now she’s back to throw her hat in the holiday horror ring with Carnage for Christmas, a bloody fun yuletide romp that’s definitely going into my regular seasonal rotation.
Well, it’s that time again, time for the Fantasia Film Festival in ye olde Montreal. That’s in Canada for the geographically challenged. It runs from July 18 through August 4.
The Raid on a Blank has become the new Die Hard on a Blank, action movie shorthand wise, and I’m here for every last one. And the easiest way to describe Indian director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s Kill is as The Raid on a Train. That is, of course, reductive and not the whole story, and while awesome, Kill is no Raid. (What is? That’s an unfair comparison.) Still, what follows is a brutal, badass time full of gnarly, head-smashing, bone-snapping violence steeped in sweet melodrama that’s one of the best times at the movies this year.
“Do you have it in you to make it epic?” one character asks another near the end of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. In answer to his own question, George Miller casually strolls over, taps the mic, leans in, and responds, “Yes, yes I do.” The 79-year-old action maestro has once again stepped up to show the whippersnappers exactly how to do it. And it is good.
