Plague (2014)

Plague is not The Walking Dead or a Romero type zombie film. It's more about the disintegration of a marriage due to the circumstances of the unidentified (but zombie-creating) bacteria. The acting is decent and the script well-formed so if you're into a (Harold) Pinter-esque take on the zombie apocalypse then Plague is for you.

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These Final Hours (2014)

Australia's These Final Hours is another winner in the I've never heard of this movie sweepstakes. It takes place in the final hours before Earth will be destroyed by a meteor; this event is the catalyst for the journey the lead character takes. Written and directed by Zak Hilditch, the film has well thought out characterizations and events but don't expect thrills and chills as the film is a drama at heart (and a romantic one at that).

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Monster (2014)

Monster kicks ass! The 2014 bloody thriller about revenge on a serial killer is nail-biting (and sometimes a bit funny) throughout every bit of its almost two hours. Four star kudos to Lee Min-Ki, Kim Go-Eun and Ahn Seo-Hyun for involving and dedicated performances (especially the latter considering she was only ten years old when the movie was filmed) and writer/director Hwang In-Ho for holding me spellbound.

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Let There Be Zombies (2014)

Let There Be Zombies is a decent B-flick (on Amazon Prime now) with a script that has some characterization and is not laden with ridiculous actions by the protagonists. It's definitely a funny zombie movie although some of the jokes fall flat, and it's obvious writer/director Andrew Patterson knows his genre as there were shots that seemed direct homages to Night of the Living Dead. It's not scary and it's not very bloody but I still got drawn in by the story and the actors - who were very good in their respective roles - and it's got that social commentary thing running through it.

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Coherence (2013)

Coherence is touted as a science fiction movie but has more in common with Donnie Darko than Star Trek. Writer/director James Ward Byrkit's 2013 film is a fascinating movie with a great script and development back story. Don't read anything about this movie before seeing it although how you'll manage to do that without reading what I wrote before seeing it is certainly a conundrum; maybe Coherence is the missing piece of this three lines puzzle?!

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Housebound (2014)

It's not often that I want to watch a movie again right after I've seen it for the first time but that's exactly what I did with Housebound, the fantastically funny horror film from New Zealand written and directed by Gerard Johnstone. Morgana O'Reilly and Rima Te Wiata are spot on as a mother and daughter forced to spend eight months together in their haunted, childhood home. In spite of (or because of) the story cues from ABC Movie Of The Week, it is an almost perfect movie.

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Billy Club (2013)

Billy Club is not earth-shatteringly bad or resoundingly refined. It's a typical revenge slasher film with a denouement I've seen before. It wasn't badly filmed, kept my attention (especially the truck kissing scene with writer/director/actor Nick Sommer) and had a premise about bullying but that's all I got.

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Rebound (2013)

Although Rebound starts out as cheesy crap (despite the bra on the girl in the sex scene), it definitely proved itself as worthy of attention. I was never sure who was the bad guy and once the answer was clear it still went in a number of atypical directions. It doesn't break any new ground but writer/director Megan Freels creates a creepy movie with some nice camera work; certainly worth a watch for those into the horror genre.

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The Cottage (2012)

Wow, David Arquette must really need the money for alimony and child support to have taken the lead role as a Manson-like pedophile in The Cottage, a cinematic piece of shit posing as a Lifetime drama. The script is misogynistic, the characters and situations stock, and the only redeeming values are the cottage (a beautiful property on which most of the movie takes place), Arquette's nude swim and the little seen movie poster in the style of Saul Bass. I posted a JPG and created a triptych so you can go on with your day.

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The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

The Taking of Deborah Logan is a somewhat original yet involving horror film about an Alzheimer's patient who turns out to have more afflictions than her diagnosis portends. The acting is outstanding especially Jill Larson (All My Children) in the title role, Anne Ramsay (Mad About You) as her daughter and Michelle Ang as the filmmaker documenting Deborah's illness. Some twists and a particularly creepy end to this 2014 film (now streaming on Netflix) make this perfect for a dark and stormy night.

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The Raven (2012)

John Cusack is an anachronism in The Raven despite the 1800s set design, his Edgar Allen Poe goatee and the knowledge that he has acted in other movies. The script itself is somewhat interesting as it fictionalizes some rumors surrounding Poe's mysterious death. Ultimately though, Cusack's acting and the general malaise of the direction make this one kind of a snoozefest.

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The Sacrament (2013)

I thought The Sacrament was going to be a trashy, found-footage reenactment of the Jim Jones massacre at Jonestown (in 1978) but it turned out to be mesmerizing with a horrifying script and some incredible acting. Despite Eli Roth's name attached as presenter it is not a horror film; in fact, it brought to mind John Frankenheimer's Seconds which I had seen the week before. Gene Jones and Amy Seimetz, in particular, are excellent as the fanatic cult leader and his paramour but kudos go out to all the cast and crew (especially multi-hyphenate Ti West) for, if not helping us to understand these peoples' actions, putting them into a perspective.

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The Conjuring (2013)

The Conjuring is an intriguing and (somewhat) engrossing take on demons and exorcism. The film makers did their home work in one respect because there are bits and pieces of every demonic possession movie I've ever seen integrated into this story. In another respect no homework was done: being a pastiche, the threads in the story should be invisible, not black.

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Coma (2012)

There was no reason to remake the 1978 movie of the 1977 book Coma because, though a groundbreaking theme in the 70s, torture porn has pretty much made organ theft a mundane topic. This mundanity, a pedestrian script and some (less than ground-breaking) CGI leave you nothing but Ellen Burstyn claiming These are mah babies. This one's Chinese. And this one is a mulatto. And although her part is a supporting role, it is ALWAYS a pleasure to watch Ellen Burstyn.

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Bonnie and Clyde (2013)

In the darkness of the first scenes of Bonnie and Clyde: Dead And Alive, the 2013 uninvolving and long television tale, I thought Clyde's mom was played by Mare Winningham. In the later, brighter scenes I saw it was Dale Dickey whom I had never seen before. After almost four hours, that's all I got.

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Vera (2011)

I binged on season 1 of the British crime drama Vera. Brenda Blethyn wows as Vera (the 'surly' detective); she's surrounded by a great cast (David Leon, Wunmi Mosaku), and the intricate mysteries kept me guessing 'whodunnit' until the end. If you like puzzlers, seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Amazon Prime (four episodes each).

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Ted (2012)

If you can imagine a comedy in which overused 80s references masquerade as jokes, a romance in which Mila Kunis and Mark Wahlberg have no chemistry and a script which doesn't recognize that its story has two magical wishes (not one), you can imagine Ted, Seth McFarlane's attempt at something. If you can imagine characters having less substance than a teddy bear filled with cotton, Ryan Reynolds and Patrick Warburton as a gay couple and Norah Jones fucking, you can imagine Ted, Seth McFarlane's attempt at something. If you can imagine all this, you've got the most notable aspects of Ted, Seth McFarlane's attempt at ... oh, a first movie.

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The Newsroom (2013)

I wouldn't call The Newsroom (now into Season 2) smart. The soap opera antics of the news team - Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Alison Pill and Olivia Munn (who doesn't act well) - are mundane, the dialog is based in references not character and, excepting what one might learn about how a newsroom operates, the stories are uninvolving - even though based in relevant and exciting past history. This is the first Aaron Sorkin work I've seen and I'm not impressed.

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Oldboy (2003)

The 35% of Americans who want Sarah Palin back in elected office would be disgusted, appalled and threatened by the themes of Oldboy so, they will undoubtedly miss it's thought-provoking madness and violent, cringe-inducing landscapes. Director Park Chan-wook follows Oh Dae-su (magically and athletically played by Choi Min-sik) from teenager to oldboy, recounting how fifteen of those years were spent locked in a sealed studio apartment with only food and television. This simplistic extract does no justice to the film though because it is a linear telling unlike the visceral, tightly edited film itself.

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Man Of Steel (2013)

My penis was very happy to have seen Man Of Steel starring the man of steel Henry Cavill. My brain, on the other hand, had to deal with the craptastic story that makes Jor-El (Russell Crowe) a hypocrite and gives the Krypton back story 45 bloated minutes of screen time in addition to another ten minutes in which ghost Jor-El retells the whole story to the adult Kal-El/Superman in the fortress of solitude. Amy Adams is fine as Lois Lane but spending two hours staring at the shirtless pics below will give you the same charge I got in the movie theatre minus the 90 decibels.

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