Shut up or Die

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Adapted from the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie. Pontypool is another take on the zombie genre. Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is a fading "shock jock" who has fallen from favour and landed in Pontypool Ontario in deepest darkest Canada, where his "take no prisoners" approach to radio DJing is at direct odds with the small town radio producer Sydney Briar's (Lisa Houle) wishes. What starts out as a run of the mill day about missing cats and school closures slowly degenerates as reports of mob violence start to seep in via eyewitnesses and escalates into a town wide quarantine with no-one, especially Mazzy, knowing exactly what's going on. Pontypool starts off as a marvelously crafted film, it has a strong Outer Limits feel to it with the majortity of the drama being played out mainly by only 3 actors in one room and a sound booth. The feeling of desolate isolation that you get from what little you...

In the near future, you don't live to play... you'll play to live

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Any movie where the first line apart from the roars and screams is “Ha I tea bagged him.” You would pretty know what to expect and such is the case with Gamer. Or is it? Set in the near future where online gaming has pretty much escalated beyond the next level of gaming to where the human gamer takes control of another human “icon” and their movements are mapped onto them, think project natal on crack and you pretty much get the idea. In this future there are two main games, both brought to the public by Ken Kastle (Michael C. Hall), “Society” which is much like Sims but with more sex and insect cocktails and “Slayers” a call of duty shooter in which death row inmates are given the chance to play for their freedom if they Survive 30 rounds. Such is the case of Kable (Gerard Butler) whom at the beginning of the move is 27 rounds down and with 3 to go is looking like being the first ever person to do so allowing him to be reunited with his wife and daughter but of course there...

Sex, rocks, and mental health issues.

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I tend to post film reviews when I think that there's a really good film out there you shouldn't miss, and this is no exception. Choke is directed by Clark Gregg, and I would be lying if I said that the main reason I wanted to see this was anything other than the fact that he directed Fight Club, which again was taken from a Chuck Palahniuk novel. I'll admit to never having read either Fight Club or Choke, so I can't compare this film to the book, but I'm going to seek it out anyway. The various reviews I've read have said that the two are fairly different. So anyway, Choke focuses on Victor, (Sam Rockwell) a smart, sex addicted bachelor who devotes a large portion of his life to looking after his mother Ida (Angelica Houston) who has severe mental problems, and nine times out of ten doesn't realise it is he who is visting, calling him by the name of family friends or the family lawyer. He and his best friend Denny (Brad William Henke) work in a medieval theme park as tour...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/1/6/7/3/The_Yes_Men_poster_71942.jpg The Yes Men are a small band of anti-corporate activists who through use of the internet have grown in fame and notoriety through spoofing George Bush's election site back in 1999, and more recently the World Trade Organisation's website. The spoof of the WTO's website looks exactly like the WTO's site in appearance, but the content was satirical. This amazingly managed to fool a large number of people who didn't read it closely enough. People Googling for the WTO came across www.gatt.org, and mistook it for the official site. Much to their pleasure, they started getting e-mails asking them to attend conferences and seminars to present on behalf of the WTO. Siezing the opportunity, they set to work producing Powerpoint presentations, video clips, and even a skin-tight golden "managerial leisure suit". The movie follows them as they travel to Finland, the USA, and Australia giving talks...

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The Camorra are the brutal reality of organised crime in Naples. This is their story - a barebones nightmare with none of the frills of Western cinema

Evil in ink

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You may remember a while back I submitted a review of "In Bruges" where I admitted that my sole reason for watching the movie was due to a snippet in the trailer? This was also the case with The Tattooist. The scene in question opens with a Middle aged Eastern man standing in front of a bed where lays a sickly looking young boy. Cut to a young tattooed Western man who states "He Needs a Doctor." To which the older man replies "No...he needs a tattoo."

Shoot first. Sightsee later

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Exiled to Bruges, Belgium after a hit goes wrong, hitmen Ray and Ken begin to re-evaluate their lives.

More monsters, more beers.

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Hellboy has to save the world yet again - this time from the Golden Army.

New offering from Shane Meadows

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I like what I've seen so far of Shane Meadows—Dead Man's Shoes was great, and This Is England has one of the tensest five minutes I've ever seen on screen and is probably one of my favourite films of last year—so I was really looking forward to this. Shot mostly in black and white, it tells the story of Tomo (This Is England's Thomas Turgoose), who has run away because he's got “nothing to go home to.” He gets beaten up, his things are stolen, and when the kindly woman he met on the train takes him to a café for some breakfast, he meets Marek: a slightly older Polish teen with a penchant for photography. In particular, Marek enjoys taking pictures of Maria—a waitress in the café he frequents. After a bit of a rough start, the two hit it off and Tomo ends up hiding in Marek's flat, which he shares with his father who spends each night drinking and appears to have little time for Marek between work and drinking with his friends from the buliding site where he works. Tomo...

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The Machinist is a psychological puzzler which sees Christian Bale playing Trevor Reznick, a factory worker who, due to insomnia and broken concentration, accidentally causes a colleague to lose an arm. This leads him deeper into paranoia and obsession as he tries to identify a mystery man who is seemingly following him around. This film is always going to be known for the fact that Bale lost around 4 stones to play the part of the 120lbs Trevor, but that's massively unfair on the script and the performances. The colour has been drained, and this sets a dark and weary tone throughout. There's a real sense of fatigue and atmosphere about the movie, leaving you totally sympathetic with Trevor. To explain much more would perhaps ruin the twists, although in fairness it's not the most complex movie - the ending wraps up most of the confusion quite easily, although there are a few unanswered questions left. I'd highly recommend it. Possibly the best movie I've seen this year so far.