Never Mind Pop Film

Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a self-made man, just don't ask him how many people he stepped on during his way there. He has a speech prepared for why you should make him your newest employee, the problem is Louis forgets how calculating every little word is that falls out of his mouth. Desperate for any kind of inroads to a career, Louis discovers one by chance on the side of the road.

Buried is, more literally than most times the term is used, an exercise in constrained film making. In this respect, parallels can be made to the Hitchcock classics Lifeboat and Rope. More generally the film is Hitchcockian inasmuch as it places an everyman character in a terrifying what-if situation. The build up of emotion in the film is intense. While there may have been too many plot twists for what could be expected from an hour and a half in a box, the scripting was quite remarkable for being able to remain interesting in such a setting.
The film has two main strengths. Firstly, the direction, cinematography, and set design were all perfect; each was surely a triumph of film making prowess. Buried is a movie that people will be watching in 50 years to talk about the technique with which it was made. The second great strength of the film is Reynolds' performance. He almost single-handedly carries the film. It's no small feat, as he is the only actor with on-screen time fo…

I was hesitant to fully invest myself into this picture - granted I've never been a big fan of ballet - but this looks to be just as good as Aronofsky's previous works in The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream.

Oskar is a lonely child, in his spare time he finds himself playing with knives and clipping stories of homicides, arson and other calamities out of papers and pasting them in his notebook. At school he is frequently harassed by others, but he can't find it within himself to fight back. One evening Oskar attacks a tree imagining it to be one of his tormentors, Eli appears and the two, while remaining cautious strike up a friendship.
Håkan is Eli's handler and a serial killer. In order for him to feed Eli he must drain victims in the new town they find themselves strangers in. Lately, he is not able to complete his task and finds himself being pushed out of Eli's life by Oskar. When Håkan is unable to escape after trying to bleed out a teenage boy, he burns himself unrecognizably, is arrested and taken to a hospital where he has Eli feed on him. After she has her fill he falls to his death from the seventh floor window. Violence escalates for both Eli and Oskar as Eli has …

A clever revisionist take on Little Red Riding Hood, director David Slade does not pick sides with the cat and mouse thriller about what happens when an (alleged?) paedophile and teenage girl collide after sharing some heartfelt talks over the web.
Ellen Page is frighteningly good in the role of Hayley Stark, a young girl who is zealously devoted to her convictions. Patrick Wilson manages to both be distressed and disturb the audience as Jeff Kohlver, the thirty-two year old photographer, who invites fourteen year old Hayley into his home. 
This film is cold and, at times, disjointed but to be honest if you feel a connection to either one of these characters you might have a problem. Neither Hayley, nor Jeff are to be liked. While Hayley is easier to understand she seems to revel in her darker tendencies as well. If you have not seen Ellen Page in anything but Juno, Whip It, Smart People or her smaller turn as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand you owe it to yourself to see Page fl…

It has been almost twenty years since Martin Scorsese has last took on a genre film like Cape Fear but with his latest effort Scorsese has returned to the horror landscape once again.
Let me clarify that Shutter Island is not a horror film like The Wolfman where the "scares" are primarily from a loud musical score at a select moment and at least thirteen gallons of blood. This is real horror; the things that keep you up at night long after watching them like The Shining, or Jacob's Ladder.
Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo)is on investigation to find out how patient Rachel Solando disappeared from the Ashecliffe Institute on Shutter Island. The only ferry that comes to the island is under control of the institute and the island is more than ten miles away from the Boston shore. Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) is concerned with the safety of people on the island after the escape of Solando, but he is keeping something from …