Above average, scalpel-sharp South Korean medical thriller Wide Awake (Genius Products) is out on DVD. It's another story involving "anesthesia awareness" -- people who are unfortunately wide awake during operations and unable to communicate this horror to the people doing the surgery -- which made for a nifty American chiller: Awake starring Jessica Alba. This one is about a young boy traumatized by the experience. 25 years later, a series of unexplained deaths to the doctors who participated in the operation suggest that it is tied back to this incident. Kim Myung-Ma is terrific as the noble Dr. Ryu, unaware that everyone around him, particularly his wife, is in danger of this crafty madman. There are a lot of unexpected twists, and the killer is strikingly original in many ways. I must admit anything with vivid surgery shots gives me the creeps...

Out this week on DVD is: Irina Palm (http://www.strandreleasing.com/). Marianne Faithfull is quite wonderful in this surprising sentimental story of a grandmother named Maggie, desperate to raise money for her sick grandson who ends up taking a job in a London sex club jerking off strangers through a hole in the wall. She's so good at it that in no time there are lines around the block for the services of "Irina Palm," or as she calls herself: “the wanking widow”. Maggie befriends a single mother fellow sex worker named Luisa (Dorka Gryllus) and the club owner Miki (Miki Manojlovic) even comes to care for her. Directed by Sam Garbarski, Marianne Faithfull is utterly compelling and delightful in this bizarrely charming film.

A Girl Cut in Two, a deliciously dry dark comedy from the famed French director Claude Chabrol, who hasn’t lost his touch in skewering the intellectual and bourgeois set, opens this week at the IFC Center. Ludivine Sagnier plays a sweet TV weather girl who falls under the spell of a very married, acclaimed, elderly novelist (Francois Berleand) while being wooed by the wealthy, unstable heir to a pharmaceutical fortune (Benoit Magimel). And what would a Chabrol film be without a little murder thrown in... Chabrol's film goes against the grain of the normal thriller (as is his style) but delivers the goods nonetheless. And Magimel as the jaded, rich eccentric is sublime.

The great thing about the screamingly funny stoner action comedy Pineapple Express is that it will a box office hit for the scarily talented director David Gordon Green. Green’s films -- George Washington, All The Real Girls, Undertow and the criminally under appreciated Snow Angels -- have been critical favorites but hardly theater fillers. This should change that drastically. Seth Rogan plays Dale Denton, a pot-smoking process server, dating a high school girl, who dreams of one day being an on-air radio host. But his plans get sidetracked when he witnesses a deadly drug lord (Gary Cole) and his unscrupulous cop girlfriend (Rosie Perez) kill an Asian drug rival and it forces Dale to go on the run with his drug dealer pal Saul (James Franco). Franco is just a riot as the laid back, spacy, endearingly goofy dealer -- as an actor he’s never been this loose and physical and funny. My minor quibbles is that the movie has too many starts and stops and the end is overlong and exceedingly violent -- but it’s hard to be critical when you’re laughing your ass off.

Shane West really channels the gutter punk spirit of Darby Crash in What We Do Is Secret, which opens Friday in selective theaters. The legendary front man for the late '70s L.A.-based band The Germs is the focus of this biopic written and directed by Rodger Grossman. Crash put together a band with friends who couldn’t play instruments but their concerts were notorious for chaotic mayhem. They eventually cut an album that got rave reviews but no clubs would let them play because of their nightmare behavior and the wave of destruction they would cause. Penelope Spheeris was forced to rent a space to film the band for her punk-umentary The Decline Of The Western Civilization. Grossman nails the L.A. scene of that era pretty decently, but it’s the expertly cast band members who really rock: guitarists Pat Smear (Rick Gonzalez) and Lorna Doom (Bijou Phillips), plus goofball enthusiastic drummer Don Bolles (Noah Segan). His hard drug use, closeted homosexuality and gloomy suicidal nature finally did Darby in at age 22 -- but he even fucked up his death. His intentional overdose was overshadowed by the shooting of John Lennon the next day. But that renegade spirit really lives on in Shane West’s go-for-broke snaggletoothed performance.

Out this week on DVD is the spectacularly suspenseful killer crocodile film Rogue. It's set on a remote Northern Australian river where a tour boat and its passengers come under attack by a very territorial, very predatory, very large croc. Directed by Greg McLean, who made the grisly, upsetting, Wolf Creek, and starring handsome Michael Vartan (Alias) as a travel writer from America, and the gorgeous Radha Mitchell as the native boat driver, this film is visually astonishing, basking in the almost supernatural beauty of the outback. And director Greg McLean creates a streamlined, incredibly taut thriller with believable characters and surprising shocks along the way. I’ve been hearing about how great this was for some time from friends who have had the good fortune to have seen it, and it’s nice to report I was not disappointed.

This really ticks me off -- I was all jazzed about Aug. 1st as the opening day for The Midnight Meat Train, the film based on the great Clive Barker short story. Directed by Japanese cult director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, Azumi) and starring Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb and Vinnie Jones, it's about a New York photographer tracking down an elusive serial killer who prowls the subways late at night. I heard from friends who saw it at Fantasia Festival that it was terrific, but good luck finding the movie. Lionsgate is dumping it in second string theaters in Arizona, Texas and across the country. They obviously are uninterested in its theatrical possibilities and are ditching the film, which is a shame for fans who want to experience it on the big screen and with an audience. I want my Midnight Meat Train!

A Warner Brothers Home Video '50s-era Sci-Fi double-bill is available now on DVD exclusively at Best Buy... and I had to run out this morning to make sure I snagged a copy. One is World Without End (1956) about a mission to Mars that goes terribly awry when the crew is sent hurtling into the future because of a strange space/time warp. They find the world decimated by a nuclear war and on top of the earth are mutated cave men and giant rubber spiders. The normal people live underground in fabulous nifty space outfits. It's directed by Edward Bernds, who also brought us the fabulously stupid Queen Of Outer Space (1958) starring Zsa Zsa Gabor.

The other feature on this double-DVD is Satellite in the Sky (1956) an incredibly talky British film directed by Paul Dickson about a space flight called "Operation Stardust" which is used to detonate an atomic bomb in space as a demonstration to the world of its destructive power and the "futility of war." Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny from the James Bond films) plays a reporter who stows herself away on the ship only to discover the bomb will not disengage. Now how can you pass up seeing Miss Moneypenny in space?

Out this week on DVD is Madame O, a sublimely twisted 1967 Japanese shocker directed by Seiichi Fukuda about a female doctor named Seiko (Michiko Aoyama) with a secret double life. When Seiko was 16, she was raped on the beach by three boys which left her pregnant and infected with syphilis. Still consumed with hatred towards all men, she prowls the streets after work like a prostitute, picking up men and then injecting them with the disease. But when a co-worker of hers, a doctor, discovers her secrets and is nonjudgmental she falls deeply in love with him. But what dark secrets is the doctor hiding? This bizarre film switches back and forth between black and white and color and has some jarring sequences -- most notably one in which Seiko deals with a blackmailer by throwing a pot of boiling tea in his face, conking him over the head repeatedly with a large ceramic mask and then cutting him up with a saw in the bathroom and dissolving his body parts in acid. Yes, it is that weird. Thank god for Synapse who put out this lovingly restored DVD!

Opening Friday is a fantastic indie film, Frozen River. Melissa Leo gives an achingly authentic portrait of a woman on the edge -- as Ray Eddy, a mother struggling to raise two kids in a wintry U.S./Canada border town. Her husband has left her, gambling away their savings before Christmas, and Ray enters a shady scheme with a down on her luck Mohawk woman Lila (Misty Upham), who is smuggling illegal aliens across the border in the trunk of her car. Leo is one of those actresses I’ve loved since seeing her on TV’s Homicide, and she gives this woman a fierce vulnerability but also shows her brittle toughness as well. Director Courtney Hunt’s film won Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Festival and expertly illustrates the thin ice these two desperate woman of different cultures skate on in this tense, splendid film.

Out this week is a spectacular ten film box set: The Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection.The impossibly handsome Tyrone Power was 20th Century Fox’s dreamboat matinee idol from 1937 to 1952. He was cast in swashbuckling adventures, sparkling comedies, dramas, and through the course of his varied career proved himself a surprisingly good actor in such films as The Razor’s Edge, Nightmare Alley, The Sun Also Rises and Witness For The Prosecution.

This “Matinee Idol” set illuminates many other facets of that pretty face -- starting with hi first scene-stealing role in Ladies Dormitory (1936). Loretta Young was frequently paired with Power and three films featuring the duo, are included: Cafe Metropole (1937), a sophisticated comedy with Adolphe Menjou in which Tyrone Power poses as a Russian prince; Second Honeymoon (1937) wherein Power and Young play a divorced couple still in love with each other; and Love Is News (1937) in which Power plays a crafty newspaperman writing a series of scathing articles about a spoiled rich girl (Young) until she turns the tables on him by announcing her engagement to him to the press which turns his life upside down. Tyrone even remade this with Gene Tierney in the heiress role in That Wonderful Urge (1948), which is also part of this fun box set.

READ MORE »

Another cool movie opens Friday: Baghead. The Unknown Comic meets Friday The 13th's Jason in this sardonically inspired deranged gem of a movie by the Duplass Brothers (The Puffy Chair). After attending an underground film festival, best buds Chad (Steve Zissis) and Matt (Ross Partridge) decide to take their girls Michelle (Greta Gerwig) and Catherine (Elise Muller) up to a remote cabin for the weekend to write a movie script. Chad is really into Michelle who is eyeing Matt, and Catherine is not amused. Michelle has a bad dream about a guy wearing a paper bag on his head in the woods and they start writing a horror movie -- that is until a guy with a paper bag on his head shows up.

Remember when you were a kid and you and your friends tried to scare each other until suddenly you actually freaked yourself out? Well, this is that movie. Call it “slackerscare” cinema. While the film could have headed into many different directions, the outcome is vibrantly satisfying and had me smiling to myself contentedly all the way home.

Opening this Friday is the must-see, Man On Wire. This spellbinding documentary by James Marsh about Philippe Petit -- whose high-wire stunt in 1974 between NY's Twin Towers was the obsession and pinnacle of his career of amazing feats. The dramatic tension director Marsh creates by describing Petit and his merry band of co-conspirators as they sneak into the Towers to fulfill Philippe Petit’s insane dream is extraordinary. The movie is remarkably funny, and at times downright thrilling. It’s also refreshingly free of any mention of 9/11. The description of the actual event (the “coup”) is almost as supernatural as it is suspenseful. Marsh's film a high wire act of its own.

Coming out on DVD next week is a three-disc “explosive edition” of The Inglorious Bastards, the Italian version similar to The Dirty Dozen, except with fewer men -- it actually could be called The Filthy Five. When I was at the Provincetown Film Festival, Quentin Tarantino announced on stage that the night before he arrived he had just completed his script for his remake of the movie.

The Inglorious Bastards (1978) was directed by Enzo G. Castellari (The Big Racket) and stars Bo Svenson, Fred Williamson, Ian Bannon and is set during World War II and follows five prisoners (“deserters, cutthroats, thieves...”) who escape and head for the Swiss Border. They are mistaken for an envoy of soldiers sent to derail a German Train and go along with the ruse but end up signing on for this dangerous suicide mission. With plenty of action and hard-boiled dialogue such as when one of the tough guys is asked if he wants pepper with his meal he replies: “No, it makes my asshole itch...” The special features on the disc include an extended interview with Tarantino and the director, a documentary about the movie, a “Back To The War Zone” feature on the locations where the film was shot, and a bonus CD of the soundtrack. A whole lot for a movie a lot of people have never heard of. But the movie itself is tough, gritty and loads of fun.

Coming out on DVD this week is The Last Winter. I admit to being a fan of director Larry Fessenden’s artful, eerie terror tales (Wendigo, Habit), and his new slice of strangeness takes place at a remote Alaskan outpost where a team is investigating the readiness for oil drilling while the drastic climate changes and increasing alarming behavior of the crew suggest that there’s “something off." Ron Perlman (Hellboy) plays the blustery macho boss, desperate to get the project rolling, who locks horns with an ecological investigator (the always terrific James Le Gros). But when mysterious deaths begin to occur it does seem to suggest something supernatural might be rising from the earth. I suppose this can be called environmental horror, or An Inconvenient Spook. But Fessenden does wonders with fluid camerawork and music, creating a sense of isolation and catching the shifting moods of the crew in this icy wilderness. When the terror kicks in it’s wonderfully disorienting and creepy. It's a darkly poetic apocalyptic chiller that proves “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature."

The Bank Job, a taut, tense, thrilling heist movie amazingly based on a true story is out on DVD this week. In the 1970s a drug-dealing black militant in London was using compromising pictures of Princess Margaret as a “get out of jail” card with authorities. A plan to use petty criminals to rob the safety deposit boxes at a bank is hatched in order to retrieve the incriminating photos. The plan is organized by Martine (the gorgeous Saffron Burrows) who rounds up a colorful but unsavory gang led by Terry (Jason Statham) to commit the robbery. But while the execution is a success, the revealing contents of other safety deposits has the crooks dodging attacks from sleazy porno kings, shady cops and corrupt government officials. Director Roger Donaldson successfully cranks up the suspense as the noose tightens, and it’s a wild, fun ride.

Out this week on DVD is Voice, (http://www.geniusproducts.com/)a South Korean film that follows the spooky shenanigans at an all girls’ school. A young singer stays late one night rehearsing a song when she feels an evil presence alongside her. The next day she goes missing but her spirit is in limbo in the school and can only be heard by her best girlfriend, who attempts to unravel the mystery behind her friend’s disappearance. According to a strange psychic girl, “a ghost can have a voice where there is a strong attachment so it can talk to the living.” But there’s a hitch too. “The ghost remembers only what it wants to.” Directed by Equan Choe, this is the fourth of the "High School Ghost Stories" series of films and this one does has some eerie touches and gory moments, including the requisite lesbian subplot with a mysterious music teacher. And you’ve got to admit that the DVD box cover is awesome...

Opening this Friday is one of the must-sees of the summer: The Dark Knight. “Dark" is the operative word in director Christopher Nolan’s masterful, edgy, and exhilarating follow-up to Batman Begins (which reinvented the franchise). Christian Bale expertly returns as the billionaire caped crusader Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Aaron Eckhart stars as a brash District Attorney Harvey Dent ruthlessly crusading to rid Gotham City of crime. But suddenly a wild card, “The Joker,” (Heath Ledger) enters the equation hellbent on throwing the entire city into chaos by taunting the crooks and the cops. Ledger’s performance is as good as people have been saying -- he plays it not as a cartoon villain but a punked out schizophrenic who takes delight in the destruction he causes and is as funny as he is totally frightening. The fact that Ledger is no longer among the living adds a darker patina on an already film noir canvas as this installment careens off into dark waters for most of the cast... and quite a few don’t live to see the outcome. I was riveted by the breathless action sequences and gothic tragedy in this sensational film.

The IFC Center just announced a great midnight festival starting in late July and running through the summer that will feature hippy counterculture movies from the '60s -- like Riot on Sunset Strip (with Mimsy Farmer's fabulous acid flip out dance); Maryjane, a pot movie starring Fabian; Psych-Out about drugs in San Fransisco starring Jack Nicholson; The Love-Ins about a Timothy Leary-like professor advocating LSD; and my favorite, Wild in the Streets, starring Christopher Jones as a rock star who becomes president and forces everyone over 30 (including his mother, played with gusto by Shelley Winters) into concentration camps where they are dosed with LSD. It's a wickedly funny satire and also stars Hal Holbrook, Diane Varsi and Richard Pyror.

Opening this week at Film Forum is Berlin, the new film by Julian Schnabel. “In Berlin, by the wall, she was five feet ten inches tall. It was very nice. It was paradise...” begins Lou Reed’s 1973 rock opera Berlin. I loved that album to death when it came out -- it was about speed freaks, suicide, taking children away from an unfit mother and looking back at really bad love affairs... everything rock operas should be about. But it bombed at the time. Here director Julian Schnabel covers Lou Reed’s staging of it at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2006, with a top notch orchestra, children’s choir and guest singers like Sharon Jones and Antony, who sings an unearthly beautiful version of Candy Says. Schnabel’s artful photographic interjections really don’t elevate this beyond just a concert film, but I still insist it’s a great goddamn record.