CineNiche

Red State does not feel like a Kevin Smith film at all.  Since leaving and reuniting and leaving his View Askew universe Smith has not been able to find his own voice.   Zach & Miri Make A Porno  felt as though it rode on the coat tails of the Judd Apatow empire and here in Red State  Smith seems to have made a Tarantino Cohen Brothers film.  While Smith has always infused a bit of politics within his films, here he does so in ample amounts. To give away the plot would spoil the uneven thrills that populate the film, but to say the film digs at the Westboro church is an understatement.  Tarantino veteran, Michael Parks, gives us long winded but perfectly acted monologues about the fire and brimstone God who hates homosexuals and seeks the fear of his wrath.   Red State  feels more like a political novel rather than a film.  Each character we believe to be the main protagonist works only to lead us to the next chapter.  T...

Normally we here at CineNiche have standards, but on this particular day we were roped into this one.  Jennifer Westfeldt wrote, directed, and stared in this slightly amusing rom-com that offers you and hour and a half of fulfilled expectations. The moment Friends With Kids  starts you already know the end, and as usual the perfectly acceptable retort to this type of film is that it is all about the journey.  The only trouble with stock answers is that they normally come attached to sub par films. The journey Friends With Kids  offers is the very American institution of monogamy.  From the offset we have two best friends who sleep around in an attempt to find, "the one," this is not their fault because popular culture dictates that soulmates exist so we cannot foul them for their search.  What comes next is the fundamental flaw of having a child - not that child rearing is a flaw but the instilled notion that it is what one ...

Larry Cohen is not known for style, nor gruesome effects, or even good horror.  Most of his films can be easily overlooked and have been.  He's not likely to acquire a lifetime achievement award or any accolades for horror.  He has made a better name for himself in the last decade as a screenwriter of a few mainstream hits such as Phone Booth and Cellular, and while these films make him more money than anything he directed they don't have the power of his horror fare.  His directed films speak volumes about society.  Comparisons can be drawn between Cohen and Romero in this regard, but Cohen is often a bit more subtle. Cohen began his filmmaking career interestingly enough working within the blacksploitation sub-genre.  His first feature film was Bone made in 1972, then Black Caesar  in 1973.  As all the films within the sub-genre they featured a dominate black male figure.   Bone  is a thug who breaks into a white couple's...

David Fincher's eccentric film resume gives him the upper hand in this needless remake.  The tone of the film is in perfect balance with last years Social Network.  In the future people will discuss the pre Social Network era of Fincher and the post as if one film divided his work.  There is a sense of authorship in Alien 3, The Game, Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, and Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.  Each of his films relied heavily on inventive cinematography, whether it was amazingly orchestrated movements of the camera or his ability to light his scenes in a way to aide in character development.  There is a contrast on the celluloid that cannot easily be explained - a mysterious secret ingredient that allows for an immediate identification that the film is indeed a Fincher creation. The Social Network is Fincher's transitory film within his oeuvre.  The cinematography and lighting are the same, while less extravagant. ...

David Cronenberg's take on the 1958 classic The Fly is remarkable.  In the original we simply have a science gone awry parable, whereas the remake offers us a god complex and a philosophy on decomposition as only Cronenberg can. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a reclusive scientist who has been working on the theory and practice of teleportation for six years and the moment his dreams come true, a nightmare is created. Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) is a reporter that chats up Brundle at a science convention.  She finds him charming and decides to go home with him.  Once they arrive at Brundle's loft/lab/home their fates are sealed.  To impress her, he teleports her stocking across the room.  This is the beginning of the end for Brundle. He pushes his experiments further and faster to continue to impress Veronica.  When he is finally able to teleport a Baboon without it turning inside out Brundle understands it is only a matter of time before his ...

From his roots as the stranger with no name, to Inspector Harry Callahan, to various secret service men, to his turn in Gran Torino no one can deny that Clint Eastwood is an American icon. It doesn't matter what taste you have in film, Clint has spiced them all either as an actor or as a director.  In 1971 he was given carte blanche to fulfill his dream of filmmaking.  The studio only asked for him to defer his acting wage which he did without a second thought.  Eastwood's thriller was lensed in 21 days and marked a complete departure from all the work he had accomplished previously.  Clint delved into the world of obsession and penance seemingly without effort. Clint's onscreen persona Dave is a locally famed radio D.J. who has had his ample fill of women, to which he left them all in the dust, except for Tobie (Donna Mills).  Dave believes he has finally reformed, he's willing to give up his playboy ways and settle down to a nice mon...

Jonathan Glazer's feature film debut is a gem to behold.  If you ever had a doubt about Ben Kingsly this is the role he was born for. In most of heist cinema you have a formula to follow: 1.) The Pitch: this is the who, what, and where of the scheme. 2.) The Roundup: you must collect the right thieves for the job. 3.) Planning: meticulous scouting and preparation that sometimes crosscuts into the action. 4.) The Job: self explanatory (the action we were waiting for) 5.) The Getaway: usually if everything else has worked out this is the step in which everything goes to hell. Sexy Beast spends most of the film in The Roundup stage leaving only a fraction to the rest of the formula.  Glazer is able to take the genre and turn it on its axis - to find new truths in old cliches.  While he doesn't pander to recreating the wheel as Tarantino did with Reservoir Dogs, he is able to use the formula to delve into character and drama - two things s...

This is our formal declaration: Steven Soderbergh is not an autuer.  While others may have already came to this decision, we had hope.  With a director like Soderbergh with around 27 titles under his belt we had assumed there may be some subtle nuance of authorial style, some flourish that when seen one can say, "oh, there's that Soderbergh moment."  This is not to say there is no merit to his work, and overall we find his films enjoyable, but his mainstream fare is only entertaining the first time.  Contagion is no different. We at CineNiche believe Contagion to be a more horrific rendering of Wolfgang Peterson's Outbreak .  We were drawn to Contagion not by the overwhelmingly star studded cast, but by the theme of apocalypse.  Of course we had assumed the film would play out like the awesome first half of The Stand and on a lesser scale it does.  It creates a world of palpable paranoia while trying to maintain the logistics of an epi...

Jo John Russo who helped write the screenplay Night of the Living Dead went on to write his own sequel to the 1968 film, called Return of the Living Dead . Since both Russo and Romero owned the rights to Night each of them retained privileges to its title. Romero kept Dead and Russo was able to keep Living Dead . John Russo wrote his screenplay the same year Romero released Dawn of the Dead (1978) . An independent producer, Tom Fox, purchased his script and gave it to Dan O’Bannon. Return of the Living Dead was released in theaters one month after Day of the Dead and received an instant fan base and reputation as a punk inspired horror/comedy. Originally Tom Fox wanted Tobe Hooper to direct the film and supposedly it was to be in 3-D, but Hooper was tied up working on his film Lifeforce and could not take the job. Dan O’Bannon was connected to Lifefoce as the writer and had been interested in directing so Fox gave the script over to him. O’Bannon began his film c...

Werewolves are wanderers like vampires, but they have the benefit of leading a normal life with the exception of three nights a month.   A werewolf is the release of our id.   The person transforms when the moon is full, the time of the month when oceans pull back and the polarity of the world is in flux.   The werewolf is our release, it is when all the troubles of life pile up and we can’t take it anymore and we let the wolf out.   It is the easy way out, instead of dealing with trouble and pain we just allow our darkness to take over all of our bodily functions.   The werewolf just kills everything in its way.   It is an animal; it is our animalistic-primordial state.   It is when we put ourselves on auto-pilot and allow ourselves to live only by instinct alone.   This can seem like a source of freedom, but it is also de-evolving.   We are a progressive species; we are the only animal whose brain grows before the skull does.   We need...

This film has us stumped, not in the sense that we don’t have any theories on its ending, but in the way that the experience was so perfect it has left us with writers block. The film begins with Aoyama’s wife dying and his seven long years of loneliness.   This leads him to need to remarry – “men can’t maintain without female support.”   He and his friend Yoshikawa set up a fake film audition for a project called “Tomorrow’s Heroine.”   Asami is one of the applicants and through spilt coffee Aoyama is completely smitten.   The titular event is creative in the way it is edited – a montage of mixed questions and answers (i.e. have you ever been involved with the adult film industry? This is the scar from my first suicide).   The only straight forward audition is Asami’s.   Over the course of what seems like weeks the two finally stay the night together in what we consider the biggest scare within the film – commitment.   It ends badly, full of regret. ...

In Joe Swanberg's latest entry Uncle Kent we see that there is still passion in the indie film scene.  Here at Cineniche we have followed the director's prolific career from his debut Kissing On The Mouth in 2005 forward.  Each film seems to offer a different side of Swanberg's own psyche.  His method of treating cinema as a naturalistic forum have caused controversy not only in the film snob community but also with censors.  The standout element of Swanberg is his dedication to telling small stories in such a way that feel voyeristic and comical.  There is always a sense of high energy in each of his films, and this is due to the almost stream of conscious way they are made.  He treats his films almost as documentaries.  In the beginning there is an outline - no script - and from there the non-professional actors fill the films with a deeper meaning than can sometimes be written in a screenplay format.  Uncle Kent is no exception. Kent Osborn...

Do not be confused by the hype machine and its marketing of Jorge Michel Grau's Mexican film We Are What We Are, this is first and foremost a family drama with a splash of horror.  The horror that is publicized occurs for the majority in the last 10 minutes. We begin with the death of the patriarch and from there we shift perspective to the rest of the family.  Here we have a useless mother, two sons, and a daughter.  It quickly becomes evident that the daughter will function as the mother and the two sons will have to battle each other to secure there place as leader of the clan. The eldest son is next in line, he's level headed but filled with anxiety.  The other son is the wild card and clearly not fit to lead.  The daughter-mother makes it her job to ready the eldest for the next "ritual." The plot moves slowly with a few impressive ingrediants, but overall doesn't deliver until the third act when all hell breaks loose.  In most ca...

This years bizarre award goes to Quentin Dupieux otherwise known as Mr. Oizo .  When Oizo's Flat Beat came into the underground techno world there was a shift that occured with club kids, this shift came in the form of intelligent music.  Oizo's music is not only good to bob the head to, but creates an atmosphere you can slip into.  So it is no surprise that years later that when Dupieux put his mind to creating 90 minutes of pleasure cinema - he does so successfully. The film begins with Lieutenant Chad delivering a monologue that breaks the fourth wall and describes to his audience and us about his theory of "no reason" in great cinema.  In an interview with Speakeasy , Dupieux describes the writing process of Rubber, " I am writing a lot stuff and I realized my best ideas were related to the “no reason” [concept]. Each time I am trying to be too smart or too clever, I think I am not too good of a writer, but when I have stupid, no reason ideas, I t...

HAMMER , the iconic label of the 70's is back but it's not necessarily a good thing.  They returned to give us Matt Reeves' LET ME IN last year which didn't live up to its original.  It's second production as a newly revamped studio is The Resident.  Later this year they will unveil Wake Wood and a remake of The Woman In Black , and maybe it's too soon to say, but the future of Hammer films looks a bit lackluster. The Resident could have been terrifying, it could have been an awesome variation on apartment horror, but instead it's a very dull mixture of Sliver and Repulsion - emphasis on Sliver.  First time narrative filmmaker Antti Jokinen was provided enough backing and talent to produce a psychological masterpiece, but gets caught up in creating the same scare effect over and over again.  We get that you were heavily influenced by the scene in Halloween where Carpenter makes Michael materialize out of the shadows.  The first time Jeffr...