October 16, 2007

Keep the Scares Coming

In another bio-chemical take on the zombie genre (see also, 28 Weeks Later), Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids) brings us his half of the Grindhouse double feature, Planet Terror. Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under) leads a classic band of zombie outbreak survivors, including Rose McGowan (sporting the poster's leg gun, is also starring in Death Proof, making her Grindhouse's crossover star), after a military Bruce Willis (16 Blocks, Sin City) instigates the release of a gas that turns everyone it touches into bloodthirsty mutants. As much a high octane action movie as a zombie film, Rodriguez ups the action and keeps the guns blazing.

Hilary Swank (Freedom Writers, The Gift) sets out to prove that the locust swarms and rivers of blood plaguing Haven, Louisiana are not the start of the ten Biblical plagues in The Reaping, only to find more and more evidence that they may be preceding something terrifying. A man with no social life constructs a Halloween costume out of cardboard and heads to a Murder Party, only to find out that it is to be his murder at the hands of a group of art students trying to capture something "real," in a picture that manages to be clever, tense and funny in equal measure. The Invisible is the story of a young man whose body is left for dead after a vicious attack, but his spirit, invisible to everyone but one girl, is searching for the person who attacked him. A sequel to The House of Haunted Hill, a group of visitors are trapped with malicious ghosts in Return to House on Haunted Hill, and this time, the house has no intentions of letting anyone leave. Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) brings us the newest entry into the Masters of Horror series, The Damned Thing, where a small town sheriff (Sean Patrick Flanery: The Boondock Saints) is haunted by the childhood murder of his parents, and the fear that their murderer may return.

Science Fiction, post-Island

The newest picture by Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, The Island), Transformers embroils CGI robots and live humans into Bay's trademark action sequences. Shia LaBeouf (Disturbia, The Battle of Shaker Heights) helps Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen, who also provided the voice for the 80's cartoon) to hunt down the All-Spark, which could either rebuild the Transformers' homeworld or, if it falls into the hands of the evil Megatron, destroy all life on Earth.On DVD and Blu Ray. Now with Rifftrax!

The Japanese Casshern is an action/sci-fi picture about the titular warrior, fighting to reclaim the Neo-Cell that could rejuvenate a withering human race in the late twenty-first century.

Hoaxes and Hearts

Angelina Jolie (Taking Lives, Hackers) portrays Mariane Pearl, as she composes her memoir of the capture and death of her husband, Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman: The Birdcage, Enough) in Pakistan in A Mighty Heart. Another film based on a true story, Richard Gere (Pretty Woman, Final Analysis) attempts to fabricate the autobiography of famous recluse Howard Hughes in The Hoax, directed by Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules, The Shipping News). The documentary Crazy Love is the true story of a couple that meet, obsess, hurt, incarcerate, and marry... with details so wild that contend that truth is provably stranger than fiction.

Our two new entries to the TV New Releases are the third season of the supernatural procedural Medium and the debut season of Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor.