Judging from the majority of the comments on YouTube, a lot of people do not seem to understand that Eli Roth’s upcoming Death Wish is a remake of an earlier film. And the few who do realize it seem to be under the impression that it’s either a remake of one of the Punisher films or a rip-off of The Foreigner.
I mean, seriously, that’s kinda pathetic. There’s no excuse not to know your film history.
Anyway, here’s the 2nd trailer for Death Wish! It doesn’t really look that good but hopefully, it’ll still be better than The Brave One!
We all know that Chicago has one of the highest murder rates in the nation. What is not so clear is what to do about it.
Now, some would argue that perhaps a good first step would be for Chicago voters to stop electing douchebags like Rahm Emanuel, reject the city’s political machine, and actually make the sacrifices necessary for actual reform while taking an honest look at the effects of systemic racism, police corruption, and the bloated municipal government.
You could do all that or you could just give Bruce Willis a gun and send him out on a murder spree. Guess which solution Death Wish goes for?
This film, from Eli Roth, will be released on November 22nd. I imagine our resident Charles Bronson experts, Gary Loggins and Jedadiah Leland, will have a lot to say about it.
What a mess it is trying to narrow down David Lynch music videos. If it isn’t undocumented, then it’s mis-credited to Lynch.
BlueBOB was a group composed of John Neff and David Lynch. The video has Naomi Watts, David Lynch, and John Neff in it. It also has Eli Roth. On that note, I’m not dignifying this with anymore than that. I will just include the remake of Cabin Fever if it were made by Dingo Pictures that Phelan Porteous and Allison Pregler put together for April Fools’ Day.
Director Jon Watts is having quite a career right now! Last year, Cop Car was released to considerable acclaim and, as a result, he was hired to direct the upcoming MCU blockbuster Spider-Man: Homecoming!
Here in America, Cop Car was pretty much sold as being Watts’s first film. However, that wasn’t really the case. Before Watts directed Cop Car, he made a movie called Clown. Clown was executive produced by Eli Roth and, though it did play in Europe in 2014, it was never released in the U.S.
Until now!
Now that Watts is about the become the next big thing, Dimension Films is going to give Clown a limited release in June.
Apparently, Clown is about a man who dresses up like a clown for his son’s birthday party and then discovers that he can’t take off the big red nose. The clown makeup is apparently demonic and it ends up possessing him.
And apparently, it’s not a comedy.
Anyway, here’s the trailer! Again, while watching this preview, consider that Clown is apparently not supposed to be a comedy…
Hi, everyone! It’s Thanksgiving! Well, actually, it’s the final hours of Thanksgiving. In fact, it’s 10:03 as I start this and it’s totally possible that I won’t be ready to post it until midnight so, by the time you read this, Thanksgiving will probably be over and you’ll be in a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/None of the Above type of mood. Well, no matter…
So, every year, I make out a list of what I’m thankful for and I post it on this site. Today, as I relaxed at my uncle’s house and I listened to all my cousins talking about football, I realized that I wasn’t really quite sure what I was specifically going to mention.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot that I am thankful for. I’m thankful to be alive. I’m thankful that I have people in my life who love me and I’m thankful that there are people who I love. I’m thankful that my sprained foot is much, much better. I’m thankful that it rained today so I would have an excuse not to lay out in the sun and pretend like I’m actually capable of getting a tan. Seriously, I’m a redhead. We don’t tan, we just burn.
And, because this is an entertainment-related site, this would be a good time to mention that I’m thankful that 2015 has been a pretty good year for film. Mad Max, Ex Machina, Sicario, 88, Inside Out…I’m not even beginning to scratch the surface of how many good films have been released this year. As for the bad films — well, The Fantastic Four, Ted 2, and Vacation were all terrible but you know what? None of them did a bit of good at the box office so at least the movie going public is not adding insult to injury.
It’s been a good year and, as a lover of the Oscars, I’m especially excited by the fact that there is no clear front runner. Oscar season is going to be exciting! Sure, it would appear that The Martian and Spotlight appear to be early favorites but neither has dominated. Seriously, this is going to be fun.
So, there’s a lot that I am thankful for but you know what I’m really thankful for? I’m thankful that I have thoughts to share and I am even more thankful that are people out there who are actually interested in learning them. There is nothing more wonderful than the freedom to say whatever the Hell you want. That, along with so many other things, is what I’m thankful for in 2015.
So, instead of coming up with a big list and trying to show off how witty I am, I’m just going to use this holiday to say “Thank you.” Thank you to all of the writers and reviewers at the Shattered Lens. Thank you to Arleigh Sandoc for asking me, 5 years ago, if I would be interested in contributing to an entertainment blog that he had just started. Thank you to all of the writers who were here before me and thank you to everyone who joined after me. Thank you for keeping this site alive. Thank you for keeping this site interesting. Thank you for keeping things lively. Thank you to all of you. Thank you for everything.
Even more importantly, thank you to all of our readers. They you to everyone who subscribes to this site. Thank you to everyone who has ever left a comment. Thank you to everyone who has ever clicked the like button. Whether you’re a regular reader or if you just found us through a google search, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Whether today was Thanksgiving or just another Thursday, I hope it was a wonderful one for you!
All my love — Lisa.
P.S. Wow, it’s 10:26 and I’m already ready to post. Happy Thanksgiving!
P.P.S. By the way, since it’s Thanksgiving, here’s the NSFW trailer for Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. Hurry up and get this movie done, Eli!
P.P.P.S. Finally, since it is Thanksgiving, why not read my review of the classic killer turkey film, Blood Freak?
Seriously, it’s hard for me to think of any recent film that has made me cringe as much as Eli Roth’s cannibal epic, The Green Inferno. A film about a bunch of Occupy activists who end up getting eaten by a native tribe in the jungles of Peru, The Green Inferno does not shy away from showing us all the icky cannibal action. Eyes are scooped out of heads. Heads are removed from bodies. Flesh is ripped off of a bones. Blood flows everywhere and …. well, let’s just say that I didn’t have much of an appetite after watching The Green Inferno.
And, to be honest, I have no idea whether or not the gore effects were realistic or not. It always amuses me when some of my fellow film bloggers say, “That’s not what the inside of a human body really looks like.” Like we would know! Listen, I have no idea what it’s like to cook a human body and I never will. It may have been realistic or it may not have been. It doesn’t matter. All I know is that, in a very visceral and frightening way, the effects worked. They made me look away from the screen. They inspired me to say, “Agck!” and I imagine that’s the exact response that Roth was going for.
If The Green Inferno was a box office success, I imagine that thousands of people would leave the movie and promptly google, “Can you get cannibals high by stuffing a baggie of marijuana in a dead body?” (The Green Inferno certainly argues that you can but it also suggests that, once a cannibal tribe gets the munchies, bad things will happen as a result.)
However, I doubt that The Green Inferno is going to be a box office success, at least not during its theatrical run. The film was originally made in 2013 and it’s taken two years for it to finally get a theatrical release and it’s pretty much being dumped into theaters with little fanfare. Not surprisingly, it’s currently getting slammed by most mainstream critics and it’s hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t review films online waking up and spontaneously saying, “I want to see that movie about people being eaten alive!” (Myself, I had no great desire to see it but I felt somewhat obligated, considering that I’m a self-described grindhouse fan and horror lover.) Jeff and I saw The Green Inferno on Tuesday, at the Cinemark 14 in Denton, Texas. The theater was nearly deserted.
And, in many ways, it is a difficult film to recommend, though that’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s not an easy film to watch but it does what it does well. Back in the day, many grindhouse films were advertised as being “a film that goes all the way” and, for better or worse, The Green Inferno goes all the way. At a time when so many horror films are either watered down or just the usual found footage rehash, The Green Inferno is a film that actually made me squirm in my seat. It’s a film that delivered exactly what it promised and that does count for something. The Green Inferno is being advertised as being nightmare fuel and that’s exactly what it is.
(SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU’RE GOING TO WHINE ABOUT SPOILERS AS A RESULT!)
There’s an interesting and unexpected political subtext to The Green Inferno and, I would argue, that political subtext is exactly why so many online critics are having such a violently negative reaction to the film. The Americans who end up getting eaten by the cannibals are all Occupy-style political activists. The reason that they are in Peru is to protest a company that is chopping down the rain forests. When they do their protest, they all wear masks (which makes the Occupy comparison obvious) and they use social media to make sure that the whole world is watching. It’s only later, once the surviving activists are all locked away in a cage and waiting to be eaten, that they learn that their leader, the arrogant Alejandro, was actually working for a rival logging company. And now, they’re desperately waiting for that rival company to show up, tear down the rain forest, and save their lives.
And, oh my God — some reviewers (mostly the ones that write at sites like the A.V. Club) are so upset about this! But, honestly, those reviewers are missing the point. The Green Inferno is not attacking the politics of the activists. Instead, the film is attacking the shallowness of the activists themselves. Almost all of them are caucasian, all of them come from privileged backgrounds, and all of them are so high on their own self-righteousness that they don’t even realize that they’re being manipulated by the same system they claim to be destroying. And, just like the college students who spent a few months doing the Occupy thing and then went on to get a job on Wall Street, they ultimately expect the system to protect them even as they play revolutionary. At the end of the film, hundreds of new white, privileged protestors are wearing t-shirts decorated (Che-style) with Alejandro’s face. It’s a deeply cynical vision of political activism but, in many ways, it’s far more realistic than a lot of people want to admit and it makes The Green Inferno a bit more interesting than your typical gore film.
(Add to that, there are thousands of movies about heroic political activists so what’s wrong with having one film where they all get eaten in the Amazon rain forest? Seriously, it’s not the end of the world…)
Admittedly, the film does make a huge mistake. It features a mid-credits scene which sets up a sequel. (And a sequel was announced way back in 2013 but has apparently been abandoned.) That mid-credits scene — which feels more appropriate for a Marvel film — is totally unnecessary. There’s no need for a sequel. The Green Inferno accomplishes exactly what it set out to do.
It would be difficult to call Through the Shattered Lens a film blog that appreciates grindhouse filmmaking if we didn’t mention something about the cannibal subgenre of horror once in awhile.
Once a huge thing during the 70’s and right up to it’s demise during the early 1980’s, the cannibal films from Europe (especially by exploitation filmmakers from Italy) would compete with Italian giallo film and Euro-zombie knock-offs for on which one could be the most gory and grotesque. It was like a grand guignol royal rumble.
As founders of the site there’s one particular cannibal film that both Lisa and I have some sort of admiration for. This film is Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. It would go down as one of the video nasties that kept the film as one that new fans of horror were told they must see if they were to complete their journey into the dark side.
After two years of distribution limbo, Eli Roth’s homage to the cannibal films of the 70’s and 80’s finally gets to show it’s wares up on the bigscreen and this red band clip will give audiences a brief taste of what to expect.
The Green Inferno is set for a September 25, 2015 release date.
That was my main reaction to watching The Stranger, a film from Chile that, for some reason, is set in Canada. (There’s absolutely nothing about the film that brings to mind Canada. The film was obviously shot in South America and almost all of the actors are Chilean. And, just in case you forget, they’ve all been badly dubbed.) The Stranger is full of atmosphere and it does attempt to do something new with the vampire genre so I guess we should give it some credit for that…
No, sorry.
Can’t do it.
Listen, I love horror movies. I think that some of the most interesting films being made today are coming out of the South American film scene. And, in the past, I’ve even defended Eli Roth, who is credited as being one of the producers on this film. But I’m sorry — The Stranger is an incredibly boring and unpleasant film.
And yes, I fully realize that the best horror films are meant to be nightmarish and, as a result, somewhat unpleasant to watch. However, there’s a difference between the stylized violence of a good giallo and the relentless sadism of The Stranger. There’s no real point or style to the overbearing violence and gore in The Stranger and, as a result, it gets pretty boring after just a few minutes.
Of course, another huge difference between good horror and The Stranger is that The Stranger takes itself way too seriously. Again to return to the Italian horror comparison, the best giallo films always featured quirky characters, clever dialogue, and plot twists that took us by surprise. They were exercises in pure style that celebrated cinematic excess. The Stranger is so somber and grim and serious that it all becomes a bit tedious to deal with.
Also, an innocent black cat is brutally murdered about 30 minutes into a film. Then, towards the end of the film a dog is similarly attacked and left to die in the desert. And you really don’t get the feeling that there was any reason for these scenes, beyond the fact that the director needed to keep up with his onscreen death quota.. If you’re going to portray an innocent animal being killed by your hero, at least make sure it’s absolutely necessary to the plot. Otherwise, it just comes across as pointless sadism.
Anyway, the movie itself is about a stranger (Christobal Tapia Montt), who shows up in what we’re told in a small Canadian town. He’s looking for his runaway wife, who he discovers has subsequently died. The man has secrets of his own, of course. He hates the sunlight. He apparently cannot be killed by ordinary methods. His blood can heal others but it also tends to transform them into being blood-thirsty monsters. Yes, the man is obviously a vampire but the film never comes out and admits that.
There’s all sorts of small town intrigue going on but I’m not going to talk about it because it was tedious enough just trying to watch it. Ultimately, the whole film is basically just a collection of scenes of people threatening the stranger, the stranger looking somber, and then people threatening each other. None of the actors are particularly memorable and very few of them speak in their own voices. One gets the feeling that the Chilean cast could not sound properly Canadian and so a bunch of American actors were hired to overdub everyone’s dialogue. (I say American because I heard many regional American accents but not a single Canadian one. All of this again makes you wonder why this film was set in Canada as opposed to some place like maybe Chile.) The dubbing is atrocious, with the voices rarely matching either the facial expressions or the body language of the original actors.
This movie is a total mess. Sorry, Eli. I still think that the Hostel films have a lot more to say about America’s place in the world than most people are willing to admit but ultimately, The Stranger is a disappointment.
Ah, the Italian cannibal subgenre of grindhouse and exploitation films. It’s been awhile since we’ve had something like this. Sure, we’ve had cannibal-based films throughout the years with some even becoming cult hits (I look at Ravenous as an example), but not one that takes it’s setting and basic plot straight out of the cannibal films of the late 70’s and early 80’s from the Italian horror filmmakers of that era.
Eli Roth returns to directing after a seven years in hiatus to give horror fans a taste of the old-school cannibal flicks with his homage to Ruggero Deodato’s classic grindhouse film Cannibal Holocaust. The interesting bit about Roth’s film is how it’s title actually is part of the homage to Deodato’s film which was originally suppose to be called….The Green Inferno.
This is the second official trailer for The Green Inferno and it even uses a quaint, serene song to open it up the way Deodato’s film and trailer for said film does over thirty years ago. We don’t see much cannibal feasting going on, but it’s hinted at that it’s what’s for dinner.
Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno is set for an September 5, 2014 release date in the US.
Here’s the first official trailer for Eli Roth’s first film in 6 years. It’s been awhile since we;ve had a proper cannibal film in the theaters and from the buzz coming out of the festival circuit this one could be something to keep a look out for.
Through the Shattered Lens 