The Devil Inside (2012) Review

By Paco McCullough

Does the world really need another found footage horror film? The
Devil Inside certainly does nothing to distinguish itself from the
heap of other crappy films that use the same cheesy gimmick. Indeed,
it may be one of the worst of the genre.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) Review

By Jason Haskins

Tilda Swinton stars as the mother of a kid who was not right from the start. He grows up until high school and decides to massacre students with his bow and arrow. Jumping between past (where it shows Swinton’s character trying to raise and relate to this clearly disturbed child) and present (where all of the townspeople hate her because she didn’t do anything sooner), you are given an inside look into how an event like this affects the people responsible for raising these kids. The movie isn’t as predictable as you’d think. This features a more sadistic type of killer who’s insane and depraved from the beginning and has a dad (John C. Reilly) who doesn’t seem to notice.

Another Take: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Review

By Paco McCullough

Snow falls on the cold streets of Stockholm as Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is convicted of libel against a prominent executive. Shamed and pressured into quitting his job, he gets a call from an old man, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer). Vanger wants Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his sixteen year old niece almost forty years older, and who's kidnapper sends him a rare flower every year. The suspects? The twenty or so family members who were on the island at the time.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Review

By Jason Haskins

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in the Millenium trilogy published posthumously by Stieg Larsson (his wife actually published ‘em). The trilogy continues with The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest—all growing to be international best sellers and spawning Swedish movies. This is David Fincher’s remake of the first film and book, of course, with his own take on the source material, which I’ve heard is different from both. (Editor's note- There are slight changes from the source material, but should be quite familiar to those with a previous telling of the story.)

Another Take: Straw Dogs (2011)

By Terry Cleveland

I am not one of the many who have seen the original Straw Dogs so I can’t comment on this film’s inadequacies as a remake, but I can certainly comment on its inadequacies as a standalone end of the summer thriller.

Straw Dogs (2011) Review

By Paco McCullough

Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film, Straw Dogs, is unarguably a classic. No matter your opinion of the film, it has certainly stayed in the cultural consciousness for the last forty years. Peckinpah's film makes the viewer feel quite dirty, especially during a prolonged (and questionable) rape scene. It's been called misogynistic and even facistic by respected critics like Pauline Kael. So what does this weekend's remake do to bring the story to a new generation of viewers?

Red State (2011) Review

By Jason Haskins

Red State is Kevin Smith’s departure flick. After almost twenty years of building his empire of movies with connected stories (his Viewaskewniverse) and conquering most forms of media including comic books and redefining what podcasting is capable of, he returns to film in a big bad way with a whopper that is completely different from everything he’s done before. He set out to finance the movie for an independent $4 million dollars and make a small movie that would be the spiritual successor to his only other indie flick, Clerks, back in 1994.