A optimist would say that the second collaboration between director Scott Stewart and actor Paul Bettany would, by simple logic, have to be an improvement over their first one: the rather dire 2009 effort known as Legion. A pessimist would say there’s no prooof that their second film, the comic book adaptation Priest, would be any better than Legion, and a realist would, of course, decide to simply judge each flick on its own merits. All of that is an elaborate way of saying that Priest is indeed a (vast) improvement over Legion, but also that that’s not that tough a task to accomplish. Maybe by the time Stewart and Bettany get together for their seventh collaboration, they’ll cook up a full-bore classic. Until that unlikely time, we do have Priest, which is broad, pulpy, silly, and weird … but not stupid and dull. That alone makes it cooler than Legion. And yes, what you’re about to read is actually a positive review. More

Given a choice between an Australian film and pretty much anything else at a genre-intensive film festival … I’m choosing the Aussie flick. From my earliest days as a movie freak, I knew that the far-away and magical land of Australia produced movies like The Road Warrior, Razorback, Road Games, and Patrick, and that was enough to make me a lifelong fan. In recent years the land down under has unleashed horrors as varied as Wolf Creek, Undead, Rogue, Storm Warning, Black Water, The Loved Ones, The Horseman, and a little indie called Saw. Needless to say … I’m a big fan of the Aussies.

So it was with no small sense of anticipation that I sat down with Patrick Hughes’ Red Hill, a rather strong genre film that capably combines old-school western intensity with a more modern approach to violence. It’s a simple film, and an unexpectedly excellent one as well. More

Take a big slice of Troma-style tongue-in-cheek nastiness, sprinkle it with some legitimately (if consistently) raunchy dialogue, pepper it with liberal doses of over-the-top (nay, cartoonish) ultra-violence, and cap it all off with a truly entertaining performance from a great veteran character actor, and you’re halfway to appreciating the serious lunacy on display in Jason Eisener’s Hobo With a Shotgun. It’s crazy, it’s messy, it’s even got a few moments of truly schizophrenic weirdness — but Hobo is also the sort of gleefully broad piece of grindhouse exploitation we don’t get much of these days. And if it sounds like Hobo With a Shotgun would make for a perfect complement to Planet Terror, Death Proof and Machete, there’s a good reason for that: not too long ago, Mr. Eisener and his pals won a “Grindhouse” contest that was sponsored by SXSW and the Alamo Drafthouse. More

I simply do not envy the filmmakers who feel inspired to make a haunted house flick in today’s cynical age. What used to be so beautifully easy in The Haunting or House on Haunted Hill or The Innocents became a little bit tougher in The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist — and nowadays you have to break out the video camera if you want to dazzle a young audience with your Paranormal Activity and your Grudge-inspired phantoms. But of course the haunted house movie is an essential sub-division of our beloved Horror genre, which means it’s always good news when someone finds a fresh way to upgrade the essential cobwebs once in a while. More

Self-taught filmmaker Emily Hagins is on her third feature with the clever little comedy My Sucky Teen Romance. And since I consider the young lady to be self-taught, I opted not to review her earlier films, Pathogen and The Retelling, because I felt they were akin to student films. Legitimate, fitfully entertaining student films that showed a lot of talent and promise, but student films all the same. And I’m not in the habit of reviewing student films. I wondered if I’d have a similar response to her third directorial effort, My Sucky Teen Romance, but those fears were allayed less then five minutes into the film: the youthful director has really honed her craft, discovered a new angle, and now returns with an entirely accessible mini-budget comedy that coasts on by through sheer force of wit, energy, and “let’s put on a show!” creativity. More

You’re bound to read and hear a lot of opinions that call Drive Angry a mindless piece of stupid action flick trash … as if that’s some sort of shocking revelation. The trailers and TV ads all but scream “mindless action trash,” and the producers seem perfectly fine with that assessment. The question that stands, of course, is whether or not Drive Angry actually works as a slightly amusing, clever, or FUN piece of mindless action trash. And to be fair, it does … but not without a few serious issues. Yes, even mindless action trash is held to some kind of standard. More

One doesn’t look at a nifty-yet-slight little horror flick like Paranormal Activity and think “definite sequel potential.” As one of those “found footage” gimmick movies, it works surprisingly well. It’s a clever little slow-burn indie chiller, which made it no surprise when Paramount picked up the $20,000 movie, primed their hype machine, and delivered it to an audience worth over 100 million bucks. When you take all that into account, it’s no surprise at all to see a film calledParanormal Activity 2 hitting the screens precisely one calendar year after Part One. (Hell, that’s less time than it took for the original flick to go from its Slamdance premiere to its theatrical release!) More