I've been watching a lot of movies lately stuff like...
The House of the Devil is a film I very much liked that I'm hesitant to recommend. Its a horror film custom designed for movie geeks, not horror geeks. It takes place in an 80's setting that's so thoroughly realized that anybody who ever lived through the era will have insta-flashbacks aligning with the perfectly accurate production design and filmmaking techniques (aided by the best John Carpenter score he never made). Its artifice actually helps makes things scarier, even as nothing much is happening, because the style of everything is juuuuust enough off kilter to put one on edge. Its a film that enthralled me with its technique, and really, isn't that what pretty much most good horror films do? Its plenty good, but hardly conventional, but I liked it.
***1/2
Universal Soldier: Regeneration lives up to the hype. At least as much hype as any direct-to-video sequel can ever garner, but seriously though, this movie kicks ass. Its so good that Van Damme doesn't even enter the fray until the last act and that's okay, okay because there's already a surplus of well performed, brutal, well photographed fights, shootouts, and especially bludgeoniongs before Van Damme kicks into gear, and then things get really violent. Regeneration is really a heckava big achievement, as there's been scads of low-medium budgeted DTV flicks out of Eastern Europe (see the last decade of Wesley Snipes and Steven Seagal's careers), and for the most part they all suck. This one has ambition, has some really well done set pieces (check the Hard Boiled inspired tracking shot/uzi shootout), and surprisingly good acting and writing, with Dolph Lundgren of all people very nearly stealing the show with his brief bit.
I look very forward to John Hyams' next film, and I guess it wasn't such a dumb idea for Van Damme to skip The Expendables after all if it made this fine example of cinematic badassery happen.
***1/2
44 Inch Chest looks, feels, and sounds like an adapted stage play, and it isn't. That's not really a problem, but it often doesn't feel like its anything more then an excuse to get its cast of fantastic character actors together so they can hang out and exchange whithering torrents of profanity at each other while the subtext of the impotency of these hyper masculine guys becomes more and more clear. Its like a cut-rate Mamet play, but man oh man, is that profanity something great. This all sounds pretty negative so far, and really, I did like the film, I just wish it had a better director, and perhaps, sometimes, subtitles (these guys are really damn British after all).
***
