Red State review

With the Red State tour stopping off in London we caught Kevin Smith's latest, and it's by far the best "41% Fresh" movie you're going to see this year

Many reviews of Kevin Smith's self-distributed indie movie Red State have fixated upon the director's public tirades against film critics, both during and since the poor critical response to Cop Out. This one won't, firstly because it smacks of sour grapes, but mostly because the film stands apart from its director, love him or hate him, in such a way that its background and publicity pales into insignificance.
Red State, as billed by Smith, is a horror film. I hadn't expected a drama in which people do horrific things, but that makes it scarier to me, because it's rooted in the banality of evil. Smith's career began with a study of the mundane and tangible setting of a convenience store, in 1994's Clerks, so perhaps that should have been expected. But still, there's no denying that it comes together in such a way that you would never know it was one of his.
We begin with Jarod (Kyle Gallner), Travis (Michael Angarano) and Billy-Ray (Nicholas Braun), three mid-American teenagers who head out into the woods on the promise of a ménage à quatre with a hot older woman. They wind up in the middle of Cooper's Dell, where they meet Sara (Melissa Leo) in her trailer. She gives them beer to warm up, and they guzzle it down, little realising that it's been spiked.

The three of them wake up inside the Five Points Church, a Christian fundamentalist organisation, made up of a family of gun-nuts and led by Pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). Sara is his daughter, and the family are delivering what they believe is God's judgement upon homosexuals. Funnily enough, it's only at this point that the boys seem to twig that there might be a little too much sausage in that sex sandwich.

Big Trouble in Little Twilight? Potentially awesome Twilight spin-off movies

Forget about The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, says Mark, what we need next from Twilight are some historical flashback spin-offs…

The general problems with the Twilight books and movies have been discussed over and over again, to where there's really little point in repeating that, at best, they aren't very good. Less discussed is the fact that sometimes the sun hits a scene in one of the movies just right, and a glimmer of potential can be found.

At its basest level, The Twilight Saga is a teenage romance with Gothic conventions, set against an ongoing feud between sparkly vampires and a werewolf boy-band. But every now and then, the action segues into a flashback or a throwaway scene that would actually be better than the movie we're watching at the time.

Even with the largely mercenary decision to split the final book into two films, there's just one film remaining- next November's Breaking Dawn Part 2. Summit must be either badgering Stephanie Meyer to write another sequel, or else looking for spin-off ideas.

The unequivocal highlights of Eclipse were the flashback scenes, which generally served to flesh out the mythology and back-story of the characters. The first flashback is essentially a folk tale about the origin of the werewolf tribe, and their rivalry with the vampires. During a fight to the death with a vampire, the chief's third wife kills

10 movie outfits we’d like to own more than Bella Swan’s wedding dress

Forget about Bella Swan’s sacrificial virgin silky number, these are the movie outfits we’d really like to own…

As news arrives that replicas of the wedding dress worn by Kristen Stewart in Breaking Dawn Part 1 are now available for the handsome sum of $799 (about £500), we got to thinking three things. Firstly, people spend far too much money on wedding dresses. Secondly, who exactly would want to emulate the emotionally abusive wedding of the damned in their real-life nuptials? And finally, there are a ton of more movie outfits we’d rather own than Bella Swan’s silky gown.

So here they are, the ten movie outfits we’d most like to see copied in real life. You’ll find no demure Kate Middleton-esque numbers here, nor any gold Leia bikinis (too much chafing), just awesome outfits. Some are practical, others less so, but their common factor is this: all of them are way more interesting than Bella bleeding Swan’s wedding dress.

Bear Man’s bear suit in True Grit 

One of the Coen brothers’ additions to last year’s True Grit provoked bewilderment and cries of “Genius!” in equal measure. We are of course referring to the appearance of Bear Man. A travelling

Hugo review

 

Martin Scorsese's journey through cinema's long forgotten history is a joy to watch, and uses 3D to stunning visual effect...

Hugo, Martin Scorsese's first foray into the world of family entertainment, is a film about passion. On the surface, it has seemed strange for a director like Scorsese, most famous for his efforts in the gangster and crime genres, to be working now with children in what can only be classified as a fantasy film, but his fingerprints are all over Hugo. For anyone who's ever heard the legendary director talk about his love of film, his overwhelming infatuation

Happy Feet 2 review

 

George Miller's great-looking but uneven sequel to Happy Feet has just as many songs, just as much schmaltz, and an even more unwieldy story...

When the first Happy Feet won its Oscar for best animated feature in 2006, the thought “There mustn’t have been a Pixar release this year” had to have passed through more minds than mine (there was a Pixar release, as it turns out, but it was Cars so that hardly counts).

The “Huh?” moment had nothing to do with the animation in George Miller’s first singing penguin picture – it’s spectacular as it goes, just as it is in this second instalment – but the story. Unfortunately for Happy Feet 2, the sequel may look even better than the first, but it suffers with the same circuitous narrative and overloading of characters.

Sappy and convoluted, the story of Mumble the animated penguin’s quest for self-actualisation trod an odd path between preaching at kids and terrifying them (a tip: when swimming, leopard seals are generally to be avoided). It was a combination that translated into a baffling win come Oscar season, a success Warner Bros. was evidently hoping to duplicate this time around. Stunning animation aside, one fears they’ll be disappointed.

To get everyone up to speed, the Happy Feet films take place in the Antarctic amongst a group of penguins. The first film dealt with little Mumble’s inability to sing, a failing which almost ruined his chances of finding a mate (unlike the ones Attenborough’s been telling us about, Happy Feet penguins pair up via karaoke versions of chart hits).

After some hero’s journeying and an

Adam Shankman to direct new Nutcracker movie

Hairspray director Adam Shankman wants to remake The Nutcracker, just in time for Christmas 2013...

Another day, another stale idea. The time it’s The Nutcracker getting the rehash treatment, with the news that Hairspray director Adam Shankman wants to direct a new family-friendly version of the tale.
The script comes from Darren Lake, who

Tom Cruise joins All You Need is Kill

After what seems like a long process, Tom Cruise has officially been confirmed for to star in All You Need is Kill...

For a while, it looked like Brad Pitt would be starring in All You Need is Kill (formerly We Mortals Are), but now the other guy in the hat, Tom Cruise, has reportedly signed on to the project.
The film is an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's expensive novel (Warner Bros. bought it for $3 million last year), and everyone from Ryan Gosling to Joseph Gordon Levitt has been slated to