The Ward

Kristen is put into a mental facility after she burned down a farm house and can't quite remember doing it or why she did it.

She shares the ward with a handful of other young women who are different kinds of crazy. Collectively they are being haunted by one Alice Hudson, who appears to be a ghost or apparition. Alice kills off the girls one by one while the remaining few try to get away from the hospital.

In the end, Kirsten slays the ghost (with an axe, you know....like you do) only to learn that she was all the inmates all along. She came in as Alice and to deal with a childhood trauma she developed multiple personalities.

The whole thing was kind of meh! and the conclusion is stupid if you want my opinion.

3/10

My Brother the Devil

Mo idolizes his big brother Rashid (played by the ridiculously handsome James Floyd), who is in a local gang called DMG (drugs, money, guns) and smuggles drug money into their mother's purse to help the family get by.

But when their friend Izzy gets killed in a run-in with another gang, Rashid starts to reconsider his actions and wants to get out. Mo, on the other hand, wants to get in on the action and doesn't understand his brother's change of heart. What's more, he one day realizes that Rashid is gay. This he also does not know how to handle. When he is pressed by his friends to tell them what's on his mind, he tells them his older brother is involved in some terrorist stuff. He would rather have a brother who is a bomber than a 'homo'.

Rashid, who always tried to protect his little brother from the gang culture and wants to use the money he made to put him through college finds out that Mo is involved with the drug business. To get him out again he is even willing to kill Izzy's murderer as a means to buy him out of the business.

The other gang members, who also do not want to associate with a homosexual, try to set him up. When their first attempt to kill Rashid fails they try to use Mo to locate him at his lover's apartment. On the way there it Mo realizes what their plan is and he saves his brother's life, taking a bullet instead of Rashid.

A bleak portrait of gang culture in the outskirts of London, beautifully shot.

9/10

Tales from the Crypt: The Sacrifice

Insurance salesman James sells life insurance to rich asshole Sebastian Fleming. Soon after he starts an affair with his wife Gloria and together they hatch a plan to kill Sebastian. They do so by throwing him off the balcony.

Since Sebastian had not yet signed the papers the police have no reason to suspect murder and file the case away as an accident. So far so good. Unfortunately, as soon as the police has left, old family friend Jasper shows up to commiserate the new widow.

He also shares the information that - since he has been in love with Gloria for a long time - he had rented a place right across the street to at least see her every once in a while. Also, he takes the occasional picture with a long lens camera and he just happened to snap a few of James throwing Sebastian to his death.

Jasper threatens to give the pictures to the police unless he is allowed to "share" Gloria with James. They agree, but James has a hard time dealing with the situation and eventually kills himself. Which was the plan all along. Gloria and Jasper ride off into the sunset together.

3/10

The Quiet Earth

Scientist Zac Hobson wakes up one day to find that everybody has disappeared. He believes that this is due to a project he and his team have been working on with (or for) the US.

In the beginning, he is going a little crazy, wearing a woman's nightgown and holding speeches to cut-out figures of famous personalities. Gradually, his senses come back and one day he chances upon another human being, Joanne. Together the set out to check the surrounding towns for any other survivors.

That is how they meet Api. After a while they figure out that the disappearance of the world population happened through some 'effect' caused by the project Zac was a part of. The reason the three of them are still alive is that at the precise moment the effect took place, they were about to die. Hence, their deaths kept them alive.

Zac calculates that the effect is about to repeat itself and figure out a plan to influence the outcome. The plan involves a truckload full of explosives. Of course, them being a group of two men and one women, eventually their relationship gets strained.

Whereas the character Zac is somewhat amusing and likable, I strongly disliked both, Joanna and Api.

6/10

Floating

Speaking of Norman Reedus...

I clicked around the internet for a bit and ended up watching a stream of the first film he was ever in, Floating. He plays Van, whose plans of going to college are shattered after his father loses both legs in a car accident and his mother took off with all the money and valuables she could get her hands on. Now he is stuck in a small house by the lake without a plan for the future.

Both, father and son, cannot adjust to their new situation and the only diversion Van finds is hanging around with a couple of friends, smoking joints and raiding houses. When Doug moves in across the lake, he and Van become friends. Doug has what looks from the outside like a 'good' family, but suffers under the pressure from his father, who is not willing to accept that his son is gay and puts him down any chance he gets. Doug is on the college swim team but the whole concept of going to college to get away from your family gets defeated by the fact that his father is also his swim coach.

The four friends continue to steal anything they believe they can make into money from the lakeside houses until one of their raids ends tragically.

In the end, there is a glimpse of hope that Van and his dad may just be alright.

A sad and desperate story, but there is a lot of shirtless Reedus to lift our spirits.

6/10

The Messengers

The Solomon family moves to a farm in North Dakota to plant sun flowers, after they have had a rough time of it in Chicago for the last two years. The father lost his job and the daughter got into trouble back there.

The house they bought with their last money is, unsurprisingly, haunted by the ghosts of a family that died there. There are ominous shadows in the background and the daughter and her toddler brother seem to be the only ones seeing them - the teenage girl terrified by them, the boy having a blast.

When a mysterious stranger shows up and stays on to work on the farm, nothing much seems to happen for months, however. Then suddenly the visions come back with a vengeance. Nobody believes the teenager, however, as she is a known troublemaker.

In the end, it turns out that the farm hand was involved in causing all of the trouble back in the day, he was actually the father that did away with his entire family and loses it one day, after he has been attacked by the ever present crows. He suddenly cannot tell the new and old family in the house apart and tries to kill his all over again.

There are a lot of eye-rolling moments in this, mostly about the philosophizing of the farm hand and a local teenage boy. The scares are kind of interesting. The film also gives Kirsten Stewart an opportunity to show off the entire range of her acting.

Yes, I was being sarcastic just then.

Why the ghosts would be called "messengers" is not ever addressed. They don't appear to be giving any messages to anybody, unless you interpret their weird behavior in trying to scare the hell out of people and possibly trying to kill them as warnings. Come to think of it, though, the  crows on the farm are the probably the messengers.

Maybe we get confirmation in the sequel. Yes, there is a sequel! Part two at least bears the promise of some serious eye candy in the form of Norman Reedus. The only saving grace in part one was William B. Davis (the cigarette smoking men from The X Files).

4/10

Dog Day Afternoon

This is brilliant!

Sonny and two cohorts try to rob a bank. Everything that can possibly go wrong does. First, one of the accomplices chickens out. Money has just been picked up the day before so the vaults are empty. To top it all off, the police swarm the place.

Whenever Sonny comes out, waving a white flag, to negotiate an escape for him and his friend Sal, he gets cheered by the crowd. And he loves it. He yells out paroles, throws money into the crowd and screams "Attica! Attica!" referring to a riot at Attica prison facility some time earlier.

He is more concerned about keeping his hostages safe (bathroom breaks and pizza) and leaving money in his will to both his wife. The second wife is actually a man named Leon and is sort of the reason Sonny got himself into this mess, he was going to steal the money to pay for Leon's sex change.

The film is based on true events (according to the actual culprit, only loosely so) and is one of Al Pacino's finest performances.

9/10