"new" releases October 2010

Frozen: Sound design decent, some music, but mostly ambient sound of wind and animal howls and crunching. Three kids pay a chair lift attendant to go up one last time before the end of the weekend/weather rolls in, and when he goes off duty on Sunday night, there is miscommunication about how many customers are still on the mountain. Two best guy friends and one's recent girlfriend are the protagonists.
Their choices range from jumping down off the highest point, climbing up to the cable and sliding along to the next chair/post and down that ladder or trying to last until the next Friday. Effective frostbite makeup, frozen tears & snot, skin tearing from sticking to metal... Open Water on a ski lift (will all survival movies be compared to that one from now on? Thirst was "Open Water in the desert..."). Emotional intensity is nice but sudden switch from nice guy to asshole is odd for Shawn Ashmore. Wish there had been more lead-up, more gradual transition there. And the plot line about urination was a nice touch too, realistic.

I watched 45 minutes of The Human Centipede (before getting sick to my stomach and turning it off). Typical stranded tourists in a foreign country, getting caught up in situation beyond their control (can't begin to count how many movies contain that plot line). The specific punishment meted out by the madman who captures them is new, and portrayed well enough, but really not planning on seeing the sequel either. Ugh.

The Oxford Murders: I love Spanish directors. I loved earlier works by Alex de la Iglesia such as Accion Mutante. Stars Elijah Wood as a physics/math student who has come from America to study under a specific professor (John Hurt) who embarrasses him at first meeting.
Alex Cox (of Repo Man, Sid and Nancy fame) appears briefly as Kalman, a crazy mathematician in The Oxford Murders. It's like a cross between Pi, The Butterfly Effect, Johnny Depp's The Ninth Gate and another Spanish movie I got from Redbox, Fermat's Room. I like the characters, the setting, the build-up, the pacing, and the bulk of the plot. Not sure if it was the editing or the original script, but something was off, making the plot not as satisfactory as it could have been. Feels like it should've made for more of an academic ending, but became more simplistic instead. Worth at least one viewing, but I won't be buying it.

I did buy Suck! The Movie, a Canadian release by Alex Stefaniuk. Very much fun, all the way through! I got this, sight unseen, because Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Dave Foley, Henry Rollins, Moby, Alex Lifeson of Rush and Malcolm McDowell appear in it, and was highly satisfied with how the director utilized them. I liked the surreal colorization, the bizarre world it's set in (complete with stop-motion animated travel sequences), and found the plot and characters interesting enough to follow into a sequel, if that's where it leads. It's about a second-rate band that's been together for about ten years when they run into Queeny (Dimitri Coates, who looks naturally like Johnny Depp's Hatter makeup from the most recent Alice incarnation). The first character to be transformed into a vampire during this story is played by Jessica Paré, last seen as the topless girl having sex with married time-traveler Craig Robinson in Hot Tub Time Machine. Her vampire makeup is most excellent, with blue blue eyes (making her look less like Liv Tyler), pale pale skin and fabulous red lips. The sleazy band manager who sees them going nowhere (Foley) comes back to the band once she transforms the other members one by one, and they start becoming popular. The band members have the familiar choice whether to stay immortal and feed on humans or go back to being negligible talent. Check out www.suckthemovie.com for more info!