Inside Man

This bank robbery plays out a little different than is to be expected. A group of would be robbers, dressed in black coveralls, hoods up, face hidden by white cloth and sunglasses, walk into a bank in Manhattan and take everybody (twenty? thirty?) inside hostage. They have everyone strip to their underwear and put on the same outfits they themselves are wearing with black eye masks instead of sunglasses.

The hostages are kept in small groups in different rooms with random people being moved at times from one room to the next, the person joining a group may even be one of the robbers. Very clever, that.

The head of the outfit is one Dalton Russell, who pulls the strings and communicates with law enforcement outside. The police detective designated to save the day is Det. Keith Frazier, whose job is complicated by the arrival of Madeleine White. Ms. White's request are to be met. So says the mayor. She has been hired by the founder of the bank, Arthur Case, to make sure that whatever is in safe deposit box 392 (a box that mysteriously is not listed with the other boxes) is either retrieved or never sees the light of day - whatever the cost.

So both, Frazier and White meet with Russell to discuss terms. Frazier realizes eventually that the robbers are playing for time and not easily fooled by things like bugs hidden in pizza boxes. White learns that Russell has already taken the contents of Case's box - proof that Case made some questionable deals with Nazi Germany while living in Switzerland along with a ring and a stash of diamonds. The diamonds are what the robbers are interested in, not touching and of the money or other valuables inside the bank.

The reason they are playing for time is because they build a cell behind a row of shelves in the supply room. When the police get ready to storm the place, the robbers are one step ahead of them - having sent their own bug into their mobile HQ. The preemptively throw smoke bombs and mix themselves among the hostages, making it impossible for police to prove who was on what side.

What is more, as nothing has been taken and nobody has been injured, the case gets shelved. No harm, no foul, right? Frazier, of course, cannot let got and returns to the bank, where Russell bumps into him. Russell has spent the last few weeks hidden in the cell they have built and now walks out with the diamonds. Frazier is there to execute a court order to open box 392, which has been emptied except for the ring and a note telling him to "follow the ring", which he does - dropping in on the mayor having lunch with White, handing them the number of the Office of War Crime Issues. At home he realizes, that the man he pumped into him dropped a single diamond into his pocket.

Quite interesting and very well cast.

7/10

28 Days Later...

A group of animal rights activists breaks into a lab to free chimpanzees, that are being used for testing. Although the cause is noble, the activists are about to unleash a epidemic on the population of Great Britain. A lab technician walks in on them and, realizing what they are about to do, warns them that the animals were infected with the dangerous and highly infectious 'Rage' virus. Ignoring this, they open one cage and the chimpanzee storms out and immediately attacks a woman, biting her neck. Within seconds, the infection sets in and the woman's eyes turn red with this it starts.

28 days after this, Jim awakes in a hospital, where he was in a coma after a head injury suffered in a car crash. The hospital is empty and - as Jim walks out, wearing scrubs - so apparently is the entire city of London. He stumbles around, calling out and really only starts to understand the gravity of the situation when he finds an old newspaper with unsettling headlines. Soon enough, he encounters the first group of infected, in a church. They run after him (them things are fast) and he is saved by two young people, Mark and Selena.

They group up and after visiting Jim's parent's house, where he finds his parents in bed, having committed suicide some time ago, they are again attacked by infected. Again, they get away but Mark was infected through an open wound. Selena beats his head in. Traveling on through the city, the two survivors see blinking Christmas lights in a high rise, where they go and meet Frank and his daughter Hannah. After spending a night in relative safety, Frank plays them a recording, informing the population of a safe haven up the country some way. The group decides to make a break for it.

When they come to the spot, the road block appears to be abandoned. Frank, in a rage, kicks against the wall of a lean to, that has a bloody body on top. A drop of blood falls right into his eye, infecting him (all this in a pretty shot from the blood drops point of view). While Frank turns, military shows up to shoot the hell out of him. Jim, Selena and Hannah are taken to a nearby, very posh house, which is the military base.

They believe themselves to finally have some sort of safety. However, they are the only ones there besides the small group of soldiers. Soon enough, it turns out that the leader, Major West, has sent out the communication picked up by Frank and had promised his men women - and now there were two. After an alteration, when some of the soldiers are about to attack Selena and Hannah, the one soldier that rushes to help the women and Jim are taken into custody and brought to the nearby woods by two soldiers. There, they are about to be shot, but Jim gets away. He hides in the bushes, noticing an airplane overhead.

While the women are very much in distress, Jim sets off an alarms by the road block, Major West sets out to take care of business himself, with the help of just one soldier. His comrade gets killed by Jim, who also cuts the car's wire, stranding the Major, who has to make his way back now on foot. Jim returns to the house, where he first frees one infected former soldier, that has been kept on a chain in the yard. After the infected makes it into the house, the virus takes his usual, speedy course, getting to all the soldiers (including the returning Major West) while Selena, Hannah and Jim make their escape.

Another 28 days later, the trio is settled in a house in a mountainous area. They have been working on stitching together bed linens and - in the last scene - spell out the word 'HELLO' to get the attention of the planes, passing over in regular intervals.

8/10

The X Files: Space

Mulder meets one of his childhood heroes, Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt (what an awesome name...Marcus Aurelius). However, first he is being contacted by one Michelle Generoo, who works at the space center, where two weeks ago the start of a new shuttle had to be scrapped mere seconds before lift off. The woman presents Mulder and Scully with an X ray that shows hints of sabotage.

They go to investigate and are allowed to stick around for the second attempt of the start, this time it is successful. Mulder's hero is the one that makes all the crucial decisions on the ground. But he hasn't been the same since his own outer space travels. Apparently, he was attacked by a ghost/shadow with a weird face, also apparent on a photo transmission from Mars. The image hunts him to this day, mostly at night in bed.

The current shuttle flights experiences trouble soon enough, cut communication, falling oxygen levels and all. The ghost face appears repeatedly, but not only to Lt. Col. Belt. Michelle sees the face before running her car off the road and the crew from the shuttle calls in 'somethings outside the shuttle', bumping against the outside wall.

While Mulder and Scully find more conclusive evidence pointing to a sabotage, the drama for the astronauts heats up and they need to be brought back to an emergency landing. The one person that can keep them save with all the troubles they are experiences is Lt. Col. Belt, whose own troubles are accelerating, as well. The agents find him one the floor, seizing, but get the necessary information out of him in the nick of time. The shuttle lands safely. In the press conference following the landing it is announced that the shuttle performed their mission 'without incident'.

Lt. Col. Belt, once again haunted by the ghost face gives up and kills himself.

Hey, isn't that...?
Ed Lauter, who was one of those character actors that we all have probably seen in something a few times before but don't know the name of, portrays Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt. Mr. Lauter passed away earlier this year.

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

Du levande (You, the Living)

This is a Swedish film pieced together from little scenes featuring recurring characters without an actual plot to tie them together. It is a collection of very sad people that visually blend into their surroundings, which are very Scandinavian, as well - this is to say sparse with toned down colors.

Some of the characters we meet include: a middle aged woman, wearing animal prints, sending her boyfriend away constantly and lamenting the sadness of her life; a psychiatrist who after 27 years of listening to people complain, is tired and now merely prescribes pills; musicians practicing alone on their respective instruments; a groupie who is given the wrong address for a rehearsal space; and a husband and wife that are both devastated after a fight they had earlier, during which they called each other rude names.

The music here comes from a marching band, the Louisiana Brass Band, a middle aged woman singing out her sorrows in the beginning, a song at a funeral and people in a banquet hall singing some sort of traditional song, which also requires them to collectively stand on their chairs to have a drink.

The film got Roger Ebert's stamp of approval and a coveted 4 star review. He concludes his piece about it like this:

"You, the Living," is a title that perhaps refers to his characters: Them, the Dead. Yet this isn't a depressing film. His characters are angry and bitter, but stoic and resigned, and the musicians (there are also a banjo player and a cornetist) seem happy enough as they play Dixieland. In their world, it never seems to get very dark out, but in the bar, it's always closing time.

This is well worth your time.

8/10

Tales from the Crypt: And All Through the House

A woman kills her husband with a poker to the head on Christmas Eve. After she sends her daughter to bed, who is all excited about the impending visit of Santa Claus, she dregs the body out of the house to drop it into a well.

As she does so she misses the all important news bulletin warning people in the area of an escaped convict, murderer of four women, who is heavy set and thought to be dressed up as - you guessed it - Santa. And he attacks her right then and there. Luckily, she is able to fend him off and flee into the (yes, very remote) house.

In her first panic, she calls 911 but hangs up when she cannot see her attacker. Shortly after, her phone rings, but while she ponders whether or not she should answer, a tire comes flying though the window and Santa attacks her from behind.She manages to smash his head in with an ax he was carrying.

Then the phone rings again. Local law enforcement checks up on all residents in the area and she is informed that an officer will stop by in 20 minutes. Now that she has two bodies laying outside, she plans to frame Santa for her husbands death, hitting his head with the ax a few times to cover up the head wound from the poker.

Then the door to the house falls shut and she searches her husbands body for the keys while her little daughter looks out the window to see a shape in the snow where until just a minute ago the body of Santa had been lying. Must not have been as dead, after all.

Then she calls to report her husband's murder and when looking out the window realizes that the ax is no longer in his head and that Santa is no longer dead. Now she is in a real panic. She accidentally locks herself inside a closet right under her daughter's room and watches as Santa climbs up a ladder, ax in hand with the little girl cheering him on.

The last scene is the girl holding Santa's hand followed by a close up of the mother screaming.

5/10

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