The Bourne Legacy

For the longest time I thought that in The Bourne Legacy Jeremy Renner simply replaced Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Not so. This film covers the second generation of special operatives and/or trained assassins.

If I got all this straight, during the Treadstone Project they were called Assets, for the Blackfriar Project they were Outcomes and then there is also a new project (but very hush-hush) called LARX and the operatives are called, well, LARX.

What is covered here is the story of what happened after (or while) the New York Jason Bourne fiasco took place. The ultimate asset (Bourne) and LARX #3 are merely the bookends to the story, however. Here we concentrate on Outcome Aaron Cross. This is the Jeremy Renner role.

Behind the scenes of Blackfriar (up to a point) and LARX (hush!) is Edward Norton, who runs a detail and yells at people around him, one of which is played by Stacy Keach. So, we have established that Stacy Keach is still alive and still working. Has he been in anything else lately?

And yes, this is all a adrenaline rush again. But if you (and I) thought that The Bourne Ultimatum had an impressive cast, well, this one here is even more impressive (see above and add Oscar Isaac as one of the Outcomes, Rachel Weisz as the Damsel in Distress and Zeljko Ivanek as a scientist that goes coo-coo; also they put Corey Stoll in the background and threw him a few lines).

The big chase here is car/motorbike, initially, and then moves to motorbike/motorbike.

A tiny step down from the previous two but still a nail biter.

6/10

Berberian Sound Studio

For someone who likes horror films and has some interest in how certain things are actually done in movies, like me, this is the perfect film. Something I also appreciate, is that the film puts a wonderful character actor like Toby Jones in the center of things. The rest of the cast are Italian, which is only right for a story that is set in the world of 1970's Italian Giallo films.

The story is somewhat convoluted and does not make a whole lot of sense at times. However, mostly the story is inconsequential. Or maybe it is supposed to represent Gilderoy going off the rails over the course of the story.

If you expect a film about the sounds created in a studio to spice up the horror on the screen to be actually entertaining on a horror film level, this film is not for you. The pace is slow, the acting is far from flashy (how could it be with Toby Jones playing the lead?), but this is beautifully staged and framed.

Also, vegetables get a lot of screen time. Fresh, hacked to pieces, cooking, rotting in ever growing amounts.

Not for everyone, but definitely for me.

8/10

My Amityville Horror

This is the 'true' account of what happened in the house in Amityville, 112 Ocean Ave. The story has been told many times, be it by the family that allegedly experienced the haunted, by Ed and Lorraine Warren or through several horror films based on a true story.

My Amityville Horror focuses on Daniel Lutz, one of the three children in the house with their mother and stepfather, that eventually triggered the legend surrounding the place now. This is mostly a string of first word accounts by Daniel, psychics, psychologists and even Lorraine Warren makes an appearance.

Some of the aspects are really interesting and unsettling in ways that make you question whether or not this could actually have happened. Some comments call the truth of Daniel's recollection into question. How much of it does he really remember and when - if at all - did he fill in the blanks of his memories?

The film does not give a cut and dried answer but really only remains on the truthfulness of Daniel Lutz's words. It is up to anyone themselves to decide. It makes - on purpose or by accident - make Daniel look very unsympathetic. This appears to be a man that is always on the verge of jumping down someone's throat and voices his anger at interviewers (that last scene!).

I feel like that guy did not do himself any favors by agreeing to do this.

If you are interested in reading more about this, I recommend: Amityville Horror: Horror or Hoax? on the abc website.

6/10

Hitchcock

Who better to portray Alfred Hitchcock than the wonderful Anthony Hopkins?

The title of the movie may not reflect it, but this is not a biography. The story is only that of getting the film Psycho, arguably the best Hitchcock film, made.

I don't know how much of it is actually true but I can believe that Hitchcock in fact was obsessive enough to have his people by every copy of the book Psycho that they could get their hands on, so that nobody would know the ending. Also, I am sure that his struggle to sell the story to the studio bosses and get certain scenes through the censors are well documented. But I am also pretty sure, that the director did not actually imagine hanging out with Ed Gein.

Aside from some doubts about the accuracy, the film is as entertaining as a film about the making of a film can be. The cast is superb, including besides Hopkins the wonderful Helen Mirren, Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Kurtwood Smith, James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins (he is great) and The Karate Kid himself, Ralph Macchio.

Well worth watching.

7/10

Celeste & Jesse Forever

This film takes about half an hour to get going. The beginning is sort of blah, like an overly long introduction (which it is, I guess).

Celeste and Jesse are separated and planning on divorcing. At the same time they are still best friends and behave as such. This freaks their other two best friends out. Jesse really still loves Celeste (as a wife and as a friend) but Celeste loves Jesse as a friend. And then at some points she realizes that she loves him as a husband, too. Yeah, it's complicated.

When she is about to tell him, he jumps in and announces that he is having a baby with another woman. This makes everything even more complicated. From then on, the film is more about Celeste and her attempt to either move on or get Jesse back. I don't know because she doesn't know.

Unfortunately, it is not quite as cute as the premise would make you believe. Sometimes it tries to be really hipster and then just straight forward comedy and then a little heartach-y. If feels all just very disjointed.

It's fine, I guess, but you're not really missing anything much if you don't watch it.

4/10

100 Bloody Acres

Another film that manifests the notion that, when in the Australian outbacks, you will die in the most horrific manner. Here, it is by the hands of organic farmers, brothers Reg and Lindsay. Lindsay is the tall, older, smarter one running the show, Reg is the hapless weakling who decides to take the initiative for once. This has dire consequences for a lot of the people in this film.

Some time ago, six bodies disappeared without a trace from a traffic accident. Nearby, the organic farm produces "blood & bone fertilizer". Does anyone make the connection? Of course not.

One day, Reg is making deliveries and happens upon another bad road accident. He decides to take the unresponsive body back to the family farm for further use. On the way back he chances upon a trio of people heading for a music festival. Their car just broke down and Reg sees this as a golden opportunity to produce some extra "new bland" of fertilizer.

Does Lindsay appreciate the help when Reg gets back? No, he does not. After reprimanding him for bringing some extra problems to the farm, the two then go ahead with their production. First to go is the victim of the accident. The trio, meanwhile, is tied up and while they try to device a plan of escape, they also start fighting over a bunch of issues they have.

As with all horror comedy hostage situations, bad just goes to worse. But here, we also get a love story developing between Reg and the girl Sophie, one of the three hitchhikers and would-be victims.

There is a lot of blood and guts and a little hilarity.

4/10

In Their Skin

The Hughes, a couple that has recently lost a child, are heading to their cottage with their young son to - presumably - find some sort of normalcy again.

The very next morning they get woken by a strange couple and their son that claim to be helpful neighbors that wanted to bring them some firewood as a welcome gift. The are so obviously loonies that everyone in their right mind would have hopped back into the car and gotten the hell away from there. The Hughes, however, ever the nice family, have them over for a very uncomfortable dinner instead.

As soon as the weirdos are asked to leave, the family dog gets shot dead, the car tires are slashed and the neighbors come back armed and very, very dangerous. The terrorize the Hughes and make it clear to them that they came to take over their life.

Mary and Mark Hughes are supposed to be almost the same age (story has it she is one year his senior) but Josh Close, writer and main protagonist is about 10 years younger than Selma Blair and had to grow a beard to at least look somewhere in the vicinity of the age he is supposed to play. Also, he is not the greatest actor in the world. The loony couple are so overplaying their respective roles (especially James D'Arcy) that they are almost comical.

The family captive story has been done over and over again and many times much better than in this film. It is nicely photographed, looking as bleak as the Hughes' situation.

4/10

Would You Rather

This is stupid.

Some rich idiot offers desperate people a way to get their hands on money by playing - and winning - a game. The main character is poor Iris, who needs the money to pay for her sick brother's treatments. The game is held in some remote house and the group is more or less diverse. They proceed to play "would you rather", only the choices are between electrocuting yourself or the person next to you, stabbing one person in the thigh with an ice pick or hitting another with a mean looking stick, having your head under water for 2 minutes or choose an unknown punishment in an envelope.

This sounds like quite interesting horror fair. Alas, it is not. The story plays out surprisingly boring. During the first twenty minutes or so there is nonstop music (which I am not a fan of...the concept, not the particular type of music).

The weirdest moment (I thought) comes when Iris briefly escapes out of the dining room into the vast house. She is followed by former MI5 agent Bevans, who instinctively opens the door she moments ago went through (the obvious door, the only unlocked door) and when it opens onto a flight of stairs he simply closes it again and moves elsewhere. Bevans is a surprisingly wooden and two-dimensional character.

Also, the son of the head honcho, who gets stabbed in the leg by Iris when he catches her in time before she crawls out the window, is never seen or heard from again, although obviously alive. He has been told off by his father before the game because apparently he tends to 'touch' the players inappropriately. This is never further explored beyond him trying to take advantage of the escapee.

In the end, Iris wins the game and goes home with a bag full of money only to find that her brother killed himself with pills.

2/10

Aftershock

After boozing and dancing several nights away in Chile, a group of friends (some old, some new) are caught in some big ass dance hall during an earthquake. The main group (three boys, three girls, how inventive is that?) that the film follows doesn't come away unscathed - far from it. In the initial aftermath, one of the guys loses a hand and when his friends try to send him to safety up a rack railway, he cable breaks, the car falls and everyone in it dies.

The next to croak is the gringo with the group, played by co-writer and co-producer Eli Roth....and he's not really much of an actor, is he? He gets burned alive by a group of escaped convicts, who turn out to be much more of a threat to the survivors than the aftershocks of the earthquake are. They give as much as they get, though. The burning is followed by a rape, which leads to the rapist being killed with an ax and the rape victim being shot. 

That is three down and three to go.

The remaining guy in the group gets shot by a terrified woman trying to prevent the beaten gang from coming to relative safety. He dies soon after (courtesy of the escaped prisoners), the two girls left (sisters! awww!) follow who they think is a firefighter (wrong!) into a church and then - now with the priest in tow - into a down to a secret tunnel. Things go wrong, still. The priest falls to his death and the firefighter turns out to be just another convict and kills one sister and dies through the hand of the other.

The last woman standing stumbles out of the tunnel onto a beach. But wait, wasn't there to be a tsunami that everyone throughout the film was dreading? 

Yes. Yes, there was.

3/10

The ABCs of Death

Here are 26 short films about death.

Each director involved in the project was given one letter of the alphabet to work with. The result is sometimes quite awesome (D) and sometimes boring (G) or even downright stupid (F).

Sadly, the really good stories are few and far between.

Here are the stories in detail:

A is for Apocalypse: The beginning is quite promising, I thought. The apocalypse itself is only hinted at and only shown as a red light outside the window of the room the story (a murder, but - as we learn - out of mercy) takes place in. 6/10

B is for Bigfoot: Also quite good. Here a bed time story about a snow creature coming for the little children - made up on the spot - becomes ghastly reality. Well, sort of. 7/10

C is for Cycle: Weird but still a cool idea. I only found it irritating that the subtitles turned 'Bruno' into 'Bruce' for some reason. 6/10

D is for Dogfight: Brilliant. Gets by without any dialogue. 9/10

E is for Exterminate: Yeah, yeah. A spider. Of course there was going to be something with a spider. Meh. 4/10

F is for Fart: Really? 'Fart' is the one word you come up to build a horror story around? And then it is not even a horror story, just plain stupid. 1/10

G is for Gravity: The height of boredom. 2/10

H is for Hydry-Electric Diffusion: Are those foxes? I've decided they are foxes. One (British?) soldier fox goes into a strip club, where a very hot (apparently) fox is on stage. Unfortunately, she turns out to be a Nazi and wants to electrocute the soldier fox. No, really. 2/10

I is for Ingrown: Woman tied up in a bathtub always makes for decent horror. 5/10

J is for Jidai-geki: A samurai has to execute someone. Very strange laughter, distorted face, buckets of sweat. Japanese weirdness. 3/10

K is for Klutz: A piece of shit. Literally. 1/10

L is for Libido: Torture porn. Actually, torture + porn. 5/10

M is for Miscarriage: This may be the shortest piece of the them all (or maybe that is Gravity). A miscarriage in the toilet. 3/10

N is for Nuptials: Hilarious. 8/10

O is for Orgasm: S&M in all its slo-mo beauty. 7/10

P is for Pressure: Prostitution and kitties. 4/10

Q is for Quack: Yes, killing an animal will totally make your movie better (the movie in the movie, that is). And shooting a duck that sits inside a cage is, like, so manly, too. These two guys are too stupid to manage even that. 4/10

R is for Removed: A patch of skin (?) is removed that is actually a strip of film (?). What is going on here? Also, disgusting. Then the guy, who's skin has been removed pushes a train. Why? Nobody knows. And then it's raining blood. 2/10

S is for Speed: A woman kidnapping another while outrunning some sort of monstrosity, flees in very, very fast car. Then she runs out of gas and the monstrosity catches up with her. He tellsher she can't run forever and takes her hand. She falls down and - back in the real world now - dies from an OD. 4/10

T is for Toilet: Ah, claymation. The toilet spews green goo and turns into a monster. Blood and gore and melting faces. Weirdly fascinating. 6/10

U is for Unearthed; There's the vampire bit. Dug up, hunted by townsfolk, gets teeth pulled, a stake through the heart and head chopped off. Very old school, this. 6/10

V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby): A robot warrior thing bites a baby's head off. 3/10

W is for WTF!: Movie makers (presumably) that have been given the W discuss the possibility of the letter. So meta. Also, clown zombies. WTF indeed. 1/10

X is for XXL: An overweight woman getting attacked and shamed by everyone she encounters. They're all French, so the being an asshole bit comes easy to them. Said woman then stuffs her face with everything in the must disgusting manner. Then she performs some DIY plastic (?) surgery on herself. Gross. 3/10

Y is for Youngbuck: A creepy janitor is really into the sweat of teenage boys. And hunting. This is like a horrifying music video. 2/10

Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction): Sushi, woman in Nazi uniform, a Japanese guy channeling Dr. Strangelove, a huge dildo and a food fight. 2/10

Ruby Sparks

Calvin, former 'boy wonder' in literary circles, has not been writing anything measuring up to his successful debut novel. He spends his days talking to his shrink, working out with his brother Harry and walking his dog Scotty, who he only got in order to meet people (preferably girls) that will come up to pet the dog. But Scotty is far too scared of other people.

He has dreams of the same girl that he cannot quite remember. Until one day he does and he starts writing about her on his old typewriter, his dream girl, and calls her Ruby Sparks. Over the next few days, he is writing in a frenzy and Scotty starts bringing him random things, clearly belonging to a woman.

Then one day, Ruby appears. He first thinks that she is a figment of his imagination until he realizes that other people can see her as well. He has created his dream girl. His brother Harry does not believe him, of course, until Calvin introduces her to Ruby and the brothers decide to try out what Calvin is able to change about her by simply writing it down. He makes her speak French as prove that this is actually happening.

At first, everything is fine and Calvin decides to never write about her again so that he can keep her forever. But soon after Ruby meets Calvin's family, their relationship turns into something less magical and more normal. After a while, Ruby wants to spend a little time without Calvin and suggest that she spent one day per week at her place. So Calvin is lonely again and does - contrary to his earlier decision - write about Ruby again. He makes her clingy. This does not work for him and when she gets really desperate about him having let go of her hand to answer the phone, he writes her happy.

When things finally come to blows (and of course, they would) and Ruby wants to leave him, he shows her what he has written about her and to prove to her that he can make her do whatever he wants, he does just that. She runs against an innocent wall, she starts speaking French, she snaps her finger, she sings and strips, she jumps and yells compliments at Calvin....until the letters on the old typewriter slam up and she falls to the floor.

Then he finishes the story, writing her out of his life and retiring his old typewriter.

He rewrites the story again as fiction (on a a laptop). And then, just for that magical ending, he meets her in real life.

7/10

Jesus Henry Christ

This is the story of Henry James Herman. Henry has an IQ of 310 (the second highest ever recorded) and remembers everything he has ever seen.

Before Henry was born, the family of his mother Patricia suffered several tragedies. First, on Patricia's 10th birthday her mother's dress catches fire and - as she is about to pat it out - Patricia's father Stan, in misguided effort to save his wife, throws the nearest liquid he can find on her. Unfortunately, it is alcohol.

Next, the twins Tim and Tom, now police officers, die in a ridiculous accident. James, the second youngest child, dies of AIDS shortly after Henry is born. The oldest, Billy, has left the US for Canada when Patricia was only 10 to dodge the draft.

Henry is born a test tube baby, something that he learns from his father Stan. When he is 10 he follows clues on Post It notes to find his biological father. This appears to be Dr. O'Hara, who has his own issues with his offspring. O'Hara published a book about his daughter Audrey, which made her her school's laughing stock. The girl, 12 at this point, is disgruntled and messed up and not necessarily happy to learn that she may have a younger brother.

O'Hara, Henry, Audrey and Patricia head to a clinic to take a paternity test. All of them. Audrey's mother left O'Hara for his oncologist, who talked O'Hara into donating sperm in the first place - as a security deposit. He suffered from testicular cancer at this point and chemotherapy may make it impossible for him to father more children. At the time he gets the news, his wife is very pregnant and greats the doctor in a way that suggests that the two are more than friends at this point already. Therefore, O'Hara is uncertain whether or not Audrey is his daughter.

Anyway, many complications and ridiculous situations spawn from this constellation. In the end, what is left of the family reunites at grandpa Stan's funeral and in the end it turns out that O'Hara is father to, both, Henry and Audrey.

Sweet and sentimental.

6/10

Hotel Transylvania

Dracula, who has been living in a remote castle raising his daughter Mavis, is preparing a huge party for the girl's 118th birthday. All the monsters imaginable have been invited for the party and opening of Hotel Transylvania. The hotel is supposed to be a save haven for monsters, who have been terrified by humans for centuries.

Years ago, Dracula has promised Mavis that she will be allowed to see the world he has been shielding her from on her 118th birthday. He sends her off to a nearby village, which he had built especially for this occasion to put the fear of humans into her. His zombie employees are dressed up as a mob, coming after the newly arrived vampire. This works and sends Mavis flying home again.

In the midst of the chaos of everyone arriving, a young hapless backpacker finds his way into the castle. Dracula detects him just in time to dress him up as a monster and sneak him into the party when he realizes that he cannot get rid of the human without drawing attention. The human, Johnny, is passed of as a cousin of Frankenstein's right arm, here to plan the party with Dracula.

All the while, he tries to get rid of him without having any of the monsters suspect a human among them. The only one suspicious of Johnny is Quasimodo, alerted by his rat Esmeralda, who can smell the human. Dracula fiddles around to keep Quasimodo and Johnny away from each other and trying to get the party rolling - with games of charade and bingo. Those turn out not to be a party favorite. Whenever Johnny causes mayhem, however, the guests get really into it. Mavis and Johnny, when they first set eyes on each other, fall hopelessly in love.

Dracula still does everything in his power to get rid of Johnny and even reveal to him how he lost his wife Martha in a fire, set by a human mob who discovered that he was a monster. When Quasimodo finally reveals to the party guests that Johnny is, in fact, human, everyone is scared out of their wits. After this, Johnny leaves.

When all the guests try to check out of their rooms at the same time, Dracula, having realized that he only wants his child to be happy, even if that means letting her be with a human, implores his monster friends to forgive him and help him bring Johnny back. When a delegation leaves to drive to the airport, they come to the village during a big monster party (Halloween?) and realize that humans may not be a danger to monsters, after all. They rally up the village people to help get Dracula to the airport as quickly as possible.

Dracula returns with Johnny and a monster-human alliance is formed. Happy faces all around.

6/10

Gimme the Loot

Sophia and Malcolm tag (that's graffiti speak, yo) a wall in someone else's hood. They are frustrated after their piece gets sprayed over and plan to do something big to have their names go down in history. They want to tag the New York Mets' Home Run Apple, a feat that has been often tried but never accomplished.

Fortunately, Malcolm knows Pedro, who works at the Mets' stadium and will let them in a few days later for $ 500,--. Problem....they don't have 500 bucks. So they both try to find ways to scrape together the money. This includes Malcolm stealing weed from a guy he used to deal from and keeping the profit. The girl he sells to has jewelry lying around in her apartment, which could go a long way toward the money they need.

Meanwhile, Sophia has her bike stolen and when chasing down one of the culprits she takes his cell. When she tries to sell it she gets ripped off. So she sells a pair of sneakers and a bag full of spay paint cans, and then she gets jumped by a trio of kids that take the money she just earned right out of her pocket.

The last resort is little miss rich girl's jewelry that they plan to steal. Unfortunately, the help they solicit to break open the lock to her apartment while she is out running, with Sophia hot on her heals to call in a warning when the girl returns, fails to do so and another smart plan goes bust.

Their final great idea is to put a bunch of newspaper pieces in between two dollar bills to pay off Pedro with. Pedro never shows up, of course.

6/10

Deadfall

Well, this was always going to end badly.

Two siblings, along with the driver of their getaway car, go through the middle of nowhere (somewhere in Michigan, I guess) on snow covered country roads. The idea is to get to Canada after having pulled off a heist. They are dressed to the nines and one of the siblings, Liza, is wearing a skimpy dress, counting money on the backseat. Then, the car hits a deer and skitters off the road, turning over and landing upside down, killing the driver. Liza and her brother Addison make it out without a scratch.

A patrol car happens by and calls in the accident. As Addison gets out of the car he apologizes to the cop before shooting him. The siblings flee the scene further into nowhere and the oncoming heavy snow. To better their chances of getting away, they split up and try to make it to Canada, separately.

Addison walks off into the woods and runs into a native American, who has difficulties re-starting his snow mobile. The two men start fighting which costs Addison a pinky and leaves the other man dead. He moves on from one chance encounter to the next, picking up vehicles along the way and leaving a trail of bodies for the cops, who have by now found the body of the patrol man, to follow.

Liza gets picked up by Jay, who is on the way to see his parents in a remote farm house after just getting out of jail. Barely freed for a few hours, he accidentally kills his former boxing coach and thinks the road blocks he sees set up are there for him (I assume). As he drives away from one, he finds Liza who, despite having changed into something more appropriate, stands by the road freezing terribly. In the car, she finds out where Jay is headed and after spending the night with him at a motel, she calls her brother and leaves a message with the location of the farm house of Jay's parents.

Addison, wounded by now, makes it there first and takes Jay's parents hostage and together they sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. When Jay arrives he has Liza in tow and at first the two siblings do not acknowledge each other but soon enough old wounds break open. Liza told Jay earlier that her father, the devil, was killed right in front of her and her brother took care of her ever since. The relationship between the two siblings appears to a little too close for comfort and it also seems that Addison, who was the one to kill their father, took over the role of would-be devil in his sister's life.

At this point, a police woman comes by, looking for Jay because of a call she got from Detroit. She also ends up a 'guest' at the dinner table. Ultimately, law enforcement catches up with Addison and the distraction caused by the local sheriff - the police woman's father - gives Jay the chance to overwhelm Addison (Jay is, after all, a former champion boxer and silver medalist at the Beijing Olympics). In the end, it is Liza who shoot Addison to end his torment of the family and free herself.

I thought the police woman with the daddy issues was just one complicated family relationship too many. Otherwise, quite interesting.

6/10

The Campaign

The Campaign is about an election for Congress in the 14th district of North Carolina, where Congressman Cam Brady has been running unopposed for the last 8 years.

Unfortunately, he can't keep it in his pants and loses voter trust when he dials the wrong number and instead of calling his mistress he leaves a message on the answering machine of a family, who overhear it while they are saying grace. In his following appearances, he tightens the sling around his neck by saying things like, "When the family plugged the phone into their answering machine they became consenting adults."

In Washington D.C., where money does the talking, the campaign financing Motch brothers (get it?) decide that Brady is no longer a viable candidate and make sure that this time around he will have an opponent. The only viable option, however, is helpless Marty Huggins, a sweet but hapless family man that could never make his daddy proud. The Motch brothers provide him with a campaign manager who introduces himself with the words, "I'm here to make you not suck" and starts grooming Marty, his house, his family, even replaces his dogs and feeds him lines.

When Marty does surprisingly well in the first debate, Brady understands that he could indeed be a threat and the gloves are off. Both race towards a baby there for the sole purpose of being kissed. As Marty is about to kiss the infant, Brady initiates a fight and swings to hit his opponent, who ducks in time and, well, Congressman Brady punches a baby. Down go his poll numbers.

Then the campaign ads and rhetoric get fiercer and - as Marty sports a mustache - Brady accuses him of sympathizing with the Al Qaeda, likening him to another man with mustache: Saddam Hussein. Marty's reply to this is, "I am not beholden to Cam Brady's accusations. I am only beholden to one man and that is the greatest American that has ever lived: Jesus Christ, who happened to have a mustache."

After a mushy, eye-opening moment with his son, Brady decides to bury the hatchet with Marty Huggins and swings by his house, where he is treated to a number of drinks. Afterwards, he gets in the car and Marty, who has learned a lot from his campaign manager, calls the police to report a drunk driver. The video from the police car shows Brady running away from the cop, stealing the police car and running over a cow. Again, not good for the numbers.

When during another campaign, Marty accuses him of communism by citing from a manifesto Brady wrote as a 2nd grader running for class president, titled "Rainbowland", things again get out of hand and the two candidates get in a fist fight. This time, as Marty ducks, Congressman Brady punches Uggie, the dog from The Artist. After this incident and the worsening poll numbers, Brady's family up and leaves and the next Huggins campaign video shows Marty with Brady's son, showing that he is a father to Cam jr. that Brady can never be.

Brady's revenge to this is having sex with Huggins' wife Mitzi and using the sex tape in his next campaign ad. This prompts his long time campaign manager to leave and somehow gets Brady a two-point bump in the polls. After the ad airs, when Marty and Brady are at the same hunting even, Marty gets out of the car and shoots Brady in the thigh, calling it a "hunting accident", which improves his poll numbers.

In his all important meeting with the Motch brothers, Marty is informed that the 14th district is to be sold to China, with cheap laborers coming in along with factories. This they call "insourcing" and they want Marty's support and urge him to use the term in the remainder of his campaign as often as possible. Marty, realizing that he is on a slippery slope, refuses and walks out of the meeting.

This prompts the Motch brothers to throw their support back into Brady's camp and Marty's campaign manager changes sides. Also, Ms. Brady is paid to return to the campaign. A "new and improved Cam Brady" again takes over the polls. On election day, Marty presents his final campaign ad, in which he promises honesty and confesses to pretty much every bad deed he has ever done.

As voting comes to a close, we see that the voting machines were made by the Motch brothers and Marty, who according to exit polls was up by about 2000 votes loses to Brady. The two candidates have a last, honest talk before Brady makes his supposed victory speech in which he decides he would also like to tell the truth and, finally, withdraws from the race, making Marty Huggins the new Congressman for North Carolina's 14th district. In the end, he heads a committee taking down the Motch brothers.

Zach Galifianakis is his usual awesome self and Will Ferrell appears here in one of his better roles.

6/10

No One Lives

A group of violent criminals (although the level of violence each member is ready to dish out varies) kidnaps a vacationing couple to - what? - kill them? rob them? torture them? Nobody knows for sure.

Then the most violent of the violent group, one Flynn, when searching the freshly obtained car, finds a young woman in the trunk, this one kidnapped herself by the pretty couple (recently considered harmless). Turns out the guy (no names, please!) is a psychopathic asshole who has not only kidnapped the girl in the trunk but apparently also the girl he was with who - rather than spending more time with the psycho - throws herself onto a bowie knife that has been threateningly held against her throat. Both women have been equiped with a sensor by the psycho, placed in their lower belly.

Things get out of hand for our group of ciminals when they find that psycho has escaped from their associate Ethan's watch and is now hunting them. And, as the title and the whipered words of the psycho suggest, "no one lives".

However, this turns out to not be quite true as the orignial kidnapped young woman survives and the psycho walks.

What it lacks in coherent story it makes up in disgust. Kind of meh.

3/10

Jayne Mansfield's Car

One of those films that flew totally under the radar. And this is a little gem.

Years ago, Naomi Caldwell divorced her husband and left her family in Alabama to go to England. There she remarried and stayed. Now that she died the two families meet up for the first time in Naomi's native Alabama, where she is to be buried.

Both, the Caldwells and the English Bedfords have unresolved family issues that break open over the few days they spend under the same roof. But there is also some healing involved for some of the family members. The two husbands of Naomi first bond over a visit to the (alleged) car that Jayne Mansfield died in, the two Bedford siblings, Phillip and Camilla, take up with Donna and Skip Caldwell, respectively, Carroll Caldwell reconnects with his estranged father over a letter he wrote him many years ago that the old man has never acknowledged but has been carrying around in his pocket for the longest time.

There is one particularly touching scene, when Skip tells Camilla about the injuries he suffered while flying a military plane in WWII.

Billy Bob Thornton directed this one. I have previously seen and liked his Sling Blade and this is the second of his that I have watched.

6/10

The Apparition

During a séance a spirit is set free into our world and it proceeds to haunt people. The haunting manifests in - at first - a fungus spreading in a nice condo, a neighbor's dog dying, claw marks in a closet and - ghasp! - open doors.

Now, this undefined spirit was set free in the second of two botched séances and the couple haunted were not in that session at all. The guy was in session 1, which went all wrong, as well. The consequence of it was that his then girlfriend disappeared into the wall (literally). Why the spirit-thingy would come and haunt the later uninvolved guy and the totally uninvolved now girlfriend is never explained.

Why the séances were held in the first place goes unexplained, as well. And why the hell there would be a second session is beyond any horror film afficionado's understanding, I believe. The group holding séance number two even thought that they could trap the spirit. Right.

Anyway, an old friend (and from all appearances the initiater of this whole ghost calling venture) comes to the rescue of the frightened couple, bringing all kinds of fancy equipment with him (lacking, apparently, a decent hand held camera or merely a run-of-the-mill phone with camera function). They want to send the spirit back where it belongs by playing a recording of the session backwards. Ta-da!

Anyone suprised that this does not work? Yeah, me neither.

What a load of crap.

1/10

House at the End of the Street

A divorcee and her teenage daughter Elissa move into a small town and a house they can really only afford because of what happened next door.

Legend has it that a young girl killed her parents years ago and now only the girl's brother lives in the house. The girl, 13 at the time, was said to have disappeared into the nearby woods and/or drowned in a nearby lake. But no body was ever recovered, so you know there is something very fishy about ti. The boy, one Ryan, had been sent away to live with an aunt after causeing an accident that left his sister mentally challenged. He is now back (and in college) to renovate the house so that he can sell it.

Elissa totally likes Ryan and even though the rest of the town, at best, shuns him or, at worst, beats him up she stands by him. Her mom doesn't like that either for some reason. I'm not quite clear why that is, especially since she has something going with a local policeman who finds no issue with the young man whatsoever.

Anyway, both Elissa and the small town cop are wrong about Ryan.

What really happened is this:
The parents were totally drugged out in the house while Ryan and his little sister were playing outside. The girl wanted to go higher and higher on the swing and Ryan failed to hold her arm for a bit and she fell off backwards and hit her head. This left her not retarded (bad word! bad word!) but, um, well, dead. The parents blame the boy and from now on decide that he is the daughter and raise him as such. But then once the teenage hormones kick in, he snaps and kills the parents and reappears as the poor discarded brother.

He cannot, however, cope without his little sister and keeps a young woman in the basement that he pumps full of drugs of some kind (whereever he got them from....). The woman in the basement is exchangeable because, you know, sometimes shit happens and he breaks her neck when she tries to run off through the forest and he catches up with her just in time.

Anyway, final showdown, cop dies, mom gets injured, Elissa kills culprit. And then....they move out again. Sure, they were fine living beside a house in which some sort of tragedy happened and where the town weirdo is still holed up, but now that it is just a house, no way José. We're done here.

3/10