17 Again
Teen heart melter Zac Efron leads the cast in a pastiche of Click and all those body switch/time travel movies of the mid-to-late-1980s (Big, Back to the Future and the eerily similar title 18 Again!, for example). In this one, Zac’s loser adult manifestation (Matthew Perry) is sent back in time by a weird janitor to ... the late 1980s. There, in the irritatingly dissimilar body of spunky Zac, our hero gets his chance to straighten out his life, but not before some uncomfortable propositions. Younger male moviegoers are advised to skip this and see Splinter instead (see below). Older males might wish to see ...
Two Lovers
Joaquin Phoenix has taken a strange turn lately with a bizarre new appearance and manner and an attempt at a career in rap. Hopefully it’s a trick, because movies like Two Lovers, Walk the Line and 8MM show that Phoenix the actor should never be underestimated. This film by James Gray was made before Phoenix grew the beard; in it he is a troubled New Yorker enticed by two women (Vinessa Shaw and Gwyneth Paltrow). The emphasis here is on dialogue, character and complexity.
The Lark Farm
A movie about the Armenian genocide directed by Italy’s famed Taviani brothers sounds unmissable — unless you’re a Turkish nationalist, of course. The story follows the misfortune of a well-to-do family brought undone by massacres and expulsion. But Variety expressed disappointment at how the epic approach clouded characterization. Still, the subject matter alone may intrigue audiences dimly aware of this little understood historical outrage.
Night Train
Danny Glover continues to dabble in low budget genre fare with this nocturnal horror flick. Weird passengers and Glover’s conductor start behaving very greedily and/or bloodily when a strange box activates their worst instincts — starting with the theft of diamonds from a dead fellow passenger. Sadly, Night Train is apparently still looking for a release in the US. This and the next three titles are being released in Taipei by distributor CatchPlay as a horror festival of sorts.
Splinter
Any low budget horror opus that gets killer reviews from Variety, the Village Voice and Fangoria magazine is probably worth seeing. The central plot device borrows a bit from From Dusk Till Dawn: a couple are forced to end a night’s camping, and on the way to a motel they are held at gunpoint by another couple. But all nefarious plans are abandoned when a much more dangerous foe emerges — a creature that exists and infects through splinter-like spines — and the luckless foursome are besieged in a gas station. Gory, fun, scary and smart; not many horror films can claim all these.
Dante 01
In the future, humans will be sent to a prison in space, where they can be quietly experimented on and killed by state medicos. If this grim French mixture of science fiction and Kafka sounds like a cross between the third and fourth Alien installments — but with human cruelty replacing the Alien — then there may be good reason. It was directed by Marc Caro, a member of the team that made Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, and whose partner directed Alien: Resurrection.
The Guard Post
It was an idea whose time had come: a gory horror movie set in a gloomy military station on the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. The Thing meets Event Horizon as a military investigator on a tight schedule probes a massacre at Guard Post 506. But the forces of evil that triggered the killings couldn’t care less about his superiors’ deadlines, and start playing havoc with his own team of soldiers after awful weather traps them inside. Also known as GP506.
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