New In The USA: Miami Connection
I have not actually seen this myself, but it seems to be popular in ScreenAnarchy circles and amongst net-savvy cinephiles, so here is a snipped from our own Charlie Hobbs' review from Fantastic Fest:
There is nothing better at the end of a long night of rockin' out to songs about Tae Kwon Do and friendship, than a good old fashioned pizza party at your adult home for orphans/grown-up clubhouse. You really know how to bring a family together, Grandmaster YK Kim. Whether it is uncomfortable sounding, clearly improvised teasing from untrained actors, or playing "got your nose" onstage using your feet and the nose of your emotionally fragile keyboard player, you know just how to make me smile.
Sure, Miami Connection isn't perfect. A lot of the dialogue is badly overdubbed, many of fight scenes are poorly choreographed, the script is non-existent, and no one on screen could act their way out of a paper bag, but all these imperfections are what makes it stand out.
Bonus - Quality Trash Cinema Also on Netflix USA: John Flynn's classic revenge pot-boiler Rolling Thunder, as well as the Tak Sakaguchi starring Japanese splatter flick Dead Ball also popped up this week in the US.
New In Canada: Attack The Block
Joe Cornish's creature feature one-ups Super 8 for being the best Amblin Entertainment wannabe of 2011. Splicing parts of Gremlins, E.T. and The Goonies into something freshly modern and distinctly British. Attention geek-loving filmmakers of the world: This is how you should wear your influences on your sleeve.
On Guy Fawkes night, the residents Wyndham Tower Council Estate, particularly the pre-teen hoodlums and the slightly older drug dealing neighbours, bear the brunt of stopping an alien invasion by pitch black critters with rows upon rows of teeth that glow in the dark. The leader of the gang, Moses, in a wonderful turn by John Boyega, goes from thug to hero over the course of a hellish night with comedy, gore and above all, heart, wrapped in a handsome package.
New In The UK: The Expendables 2
Guns, Guns, Guns, and a cocktail of aging action heroes with established and up and coming superstars. Sylvester Stallone hands over directorial duty to blockbuster veteran Simon West so he can focus on keeping his 60 year plus body in a wiry muscled state. This time, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger are along for more than just cameos, and Chuck Norris and JCVD enter the fray.
We know you don't care about the plot, so we won't tell you that it is a revenge piece of some sort, but aren't they all, really? Welcome back to the 1980s. Sort of.
New In Mexico: The Book of Eli
Thirty years after nuclear war, presumably a holy war, as all the religious texts were torched sometime shortly thereafter, a long-in-the-tooth solitary walker, the proverbial Man With No Name (you can call him Zato… -err- Yojim… -err- just Eli) wanders into a one horse town in the desert to get a little fresh water and recharge his iPod. He gets sucked into a struggle with the towns tyrant (Gary Oldman – chewing scenery like a champ.) Eli, is reluctant to get involved, like a prophet (or stoic warrior monk), his focus is to stay the course in his journey “west.” But like any good western, he becomes entangled when Carnagie’s prized beauty (Mila Kunis) likes the cut of his jib.
It was only a matter of time before someone took Denzel Washington’s confident teacher shtick and turned the actor into a bonafide preacher. Although the Hughes Brothers are far more interested in comic book appropriation of Spaghetti Westerns, Samurai films and Post Apocalyptic landscapes, is a winning combination that was, I believe, unfairly written off by pop culture. Any film that adorns a brothel room with a poster for L.Q. Jones’ 1975 cult post-apocalyptic A Boy and His Dog has got my attention.
New In Norway and Sweden: The Human Factor
The last film in Otto Preminger's career came in 1979 and has some serious heavy-weights in the writing department with Tom Stoppard writing the screenplay adaptation from the classic Graham Greene novel of the same name. In front of the camera, you've got some of the brightest actors Britain has to offer: Nicol Williamson, Derek Jacobi, Richard Attenborough and John Gielgud. It was also the feature film debut of Somali fashion model and wife of David Bowie, the tall and beautiful Iman.
An MI6 officer, formerly stationed in Africa, is now working a desk job in London. When it emerges that leaks of confidential documents have been occurring, he falls under suspicion along with a colleague. Much of the suspicion against emanates from the fact that he has a black South African wife.
Downplaying drama and emotion, for more of a tone-poem monotone, The Human Factor baffled audiences of its day who perhaps were not used to this sort of wild experimentalism with spy stories. Now might just be the right time to see how well the film has aged.