This film raises an interesting question: How far is a viewer willing to follow a talented filmmaker down a rabbit hole, when it becomes clear that said filmmaker has lost his way? Writer-director Darren Aronofsky certainly proved he had talent with PI, and some of that talent is on display here. But it’s ultimately wasted on a muddled scenario whose story seems to have been deliberately obscured by narrative devices apparently intended to wrap the slim idea in some kind of profundity. In fact, Aronofsky seems dedicated to not clarifying the story to viewers - which would be acceptable if we were watching a cleverly constructed puzzle that only required sufficient thought to put the pieces into place. Instead, we’re watching a film that barely contains a story. It’s more of a concept - a conceit - an attempt, laudable but ultimately failed, to create a kind of visual poetry that transcend traditional narrative. It might have worked as a half-hour short, but at feature length the concept is stretched too thin. Continue Reading »

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PENNY DREADFUL takes its title from a Victorian form of literature that often wallowed in melodramatic excess and prolonged action (because writers were paid a penny a word and dragged everything out in order to make as much money as possible). Screenwriters Diane Doniol-Valcroze and Arthur Flam felt it suited their story because it features a girl named Penny (Rachel Miner) caught in a dreadful situation: she has a phobia about automobiles, but she must take refuge in one that’s broken down in the middle of the woods, leaving her at the mercy of an unrelenting psycho killer lurking outside.

Producer-director Richard Brandes optioned the script and rewrote it for what is essentially his feature-film directing debut, after years of writing, producing, and/or directing direct-to-video and made-for-television titles. The finished film, which also stars Mimi Rogers as Penny’s therapist, is an effective combination of slasher-horror and psycho-thriller that tries to do for the automobile what Hitchcock did for the shower in PSYCHO. Continue Reading »

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PENNY DREADFUL is an enjoyable combination of psycho-thriller and slasher horror, which somehow achieves a slick, Hollywood-calibre visual style in spite of its modest budget. The film is not afraid to deliver gruesome horror, but it also dwells on the suspense, offering a tense situation featuring a vulnerable character trapped in a terrible predicament guaranteed to induce nail-biting in the audience – when they’re not leaping out of their seats at the shocks.

The story follows Penny Dearborn (Rachel Miner), a young woman who suffers from a phobia of automobiles ever since she survived an auto accident that killed her family, leaving her an orphan. Her therapist Orianna (Mimi Rogers) drives Penny on a long trip to the scene of the accident. Unfortunately, this confrontational therapy is sidetracked when Orianna’s car hits a pedestrian on a lonely, isolated road. The victim – who seems more than a little sinister – survives, hitching a ride with Penny and Orianna to a closed-down camp in the woods. The car breaks down; the therapist goes looking for help, and eventually Penny finds herself trapped inside the automobile when the hitchhiker turns out to be a homicidal lunatic, recently escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane. Continue Reading »

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There is a tradition of great ghost stories dating back to Sheridan LeFanue and M.R. James, in which hapless human characters are targeted for haunting after having committed transgressions that are slight or, sometimes, even non-existent. The supernatural stands in for the vagaries of fate, the ruthless indifference of random chance, or an arbitrary sense of moral order that allows no appeal for mercy on the grounds of ignorance, remorse, or regret. THE GRAVEDANCERS works squarely in this tradition, depicting the horrifying consquences of a relatively minor indiscretion that stirs up angry, ectoplasmic forces for whom no slight is too slight to warrant full-blown revenge. Continue Reading »

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Whether or not this is the Bond film the world was waiting for, it definitely is the film that Bond fans were waiting for: a tense, gripping thriller mercifully free of the baggage of the previous Bond flicks, CASINO ROYALE takes the essentials of Ian Fleming’s novel and updates them for the 21st century, seamlessly adding the requisite big screen action set pieces in the process.

Eva Green, Daniel Craig, Catarino Murino

The lame one-liners and jokey tone have been jettisoned, freeing the film from the moribund formula and allowing it to stand on its own, not as the umpteenth entry in a franchise. Or, to put it bluntly, this time out the filmmakers tried to make a good film, not just a fun 007 outing, with credibility laced throughout the characters and the storyline. Continue Reading »

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