CineNiche

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden team up again in this coming of age film that steals a few ideas from every teen film ever made and infuses them with a hint of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest .  The directing duo created a powerhouse film in Half Nelson but here lack the imagination to transform seemingly cliché material into something extraordinary.  Ned Vizzini’s novel is the stepping stone for this pseudo-memoir piece, but as with any novel that is told from the first person point of view things are lost in translation or become too contrived from narration.  The film carries some feel good moments that stand out and sequences of mixed media that attempt to go beyond the normal teen fare but seem forced.  Anytime a film switches from normal narrative structure to animated sequences or a music video it has a inorganic feeling of manipulation, but certain films are made with these elements in mind from the beginning and weave in well, but here they stop the forward m...

In 1968 George A Romero created a subgenre in horror that would continue to frighten audiences even forty years later.  With Night Of The Living Dead a slew of followers came and each country throughout the world would copy this blueprint.   Romero was especially influential to filmmakers in Italy, he lead them to a new genre – the spaghetti-zombie film.  The leader of this new genre was Lucio Fulci, he was determined to out-gore Romero, which he did successfully in his film Zombie (1979).  Released the same year as Dawn of the Dead , Zombie is an intense and beautiful film about the beginning of a zombie plague.  When Dawn was released in Italy the title was changed to Zombi, so Fulci’s film was then titled as Zombie 2 .  This caused confusion and made Fulci’s film instantly linked to the Dead trilogy.  Now you can find this film under the titles: Zombi, Zombie, Zombi 2 , Zombie Flesh Eaters , or Island of the Living Dead . "When the ear...

I've heard of some people that will only watch Criterion Collection films, which would brand them the ultimate in cinephile snobs - but little do they realize it harms their street cred because that would mean they hold films like Armeggedon and The Rock to be true cinematic classics as well. It doesn't matter what studio puts out a film, whether it's Janus or Lions Gate if it's good its good.  I will admit for some older classics I am a bit faster to track them down if they have the Criterion seal of approval, because overall they choose socially relevant films. This leads us to Arthur Crabtree's 1958 SciFi classic Fiend Without A Face .  Here's a film with such an original premise and wonderful use of early gore that its hard to complain about a few wooden actors and monologue driven script.  These fiends, from the beginning are invisible creatures that attach themselves to you and suck out your brain and spinal cord.  We watch the actors ...

Bill Maher, the stoned genius, creates a wonderful religious debate in his comic documentary directed by the controversial mind behind Borat , Larry Charles. The biggest problem with this otherwise brilliant dissertation on the logic of religion is that the dogmatic masses who should see this film - won't. In fact they tried to ban it. Religulous preaches to the choir, in this case its agnostic/atheist choir. The public whose immersed in their religious beliefs steer away from it and ignorantly label it as simple blasphemy. What makes this film brilliant is Maher's approach to the subject. No matter which faith monger he interviews, he remains level-headed without harshly attacking their beliefs. He's done his research here and the questions he posits only point out gaps or illogic of religion. Mostly he debates with evangelical Christians, but also Mormans and of course Scientologists. He is attempting through these interviews to fill in these gaps, but the questions he a...

When Wes Craven first pitched this screenplay he was turned down by every major studio, they said it was absurd - unfilmable - and uninteresting. That was 26 years ago, and over the course of those years we've been given 9 Freddy related films and an unnecessary 44 episode TV show . So, keeping in mind that Freddy is a modern icon or modern urban legend/myth and there isn't a single person that doesn't at least know of Freddy Krueger - "he has knives for fingers." It is a lot of pressure for a first time feature length filmmaker to create or recreate something so iconic. Now, the general consensus is: why remakes? And no matter how good a remake is you'll always - I repeat always for emphasis - have to say I liked the original better. This leads to the second part of the why remakes question, why remake something that will never live up to or be as good as its original? The simple Hollywood answer: Money! We are in economic crisis and even though y...