Category Movies

Jun 15 2016

Robbie Amell Needs a Date to the LA Premiere for ‘Nine Lives’

Calling all felines.

Robbie Amell needs a plus one to the LA premiere of Nine Lives, and he wants it to be you! Full disclosure: you weren’t the first choice.

EuropaCorp has partnered with Omaze to offer fans the chance to win a photo shoot with the world’s most famous cats (Lil BUB, Nala, Waffles, Pudge and more), and meet Robbie at the LA premiere. Fans can enter for the chance to win for as little as $10. All proceeds will go to the ASPCA and Best Friends Animal Society.

Watch the Omaze video HERE:

For more information, click here ME-OW.

Nine Lives hits theaters everywhere on Aug. 5.

Jun 1 2016

New Trailer for ‘Deepwater Horizon’ Released

IMG_1774A new Deepwater Horizon trailer for the Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell action-drama has been released. You can find the trailer on You Tube by clicking here.

On April 20th, 2010, one of the world’s largest man-made disasters occurred on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Directed by Peter Berg (Lone Survivor), this story honors the brave men and women whose heroism would save many on board, and change everyone’s lives forever.

Summit Entertainment and Participant Media present a di Bonaventura Pictures production, a Closest to the Hole / Leverage Entertainment production, a Peter Berg film. The film is directed by Peter Berg from a screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand and from a screen story by Matthew Sand. The film stars Academy Award® nominee Mark Wahlberg, Golden Globe® nominee Kurt Russell, Academy Award® nominee John Malkovich, Golden Globe® winner Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brien and Academy Award® nominee Kate Hudson.

Deepwater Horizon arrives in theaters on Sept. 30, 2016.

May 8 2016

Happy Mother’s Day from ‘Finding Dory’

Happy Mother’s Day. Or … Daughter’s Day. Holiday Mother? Either way, Ellen DeGeneres & Diane Keaton are here to help you share a “Happy Mother’s Day” from Finding Dory!

Finding Dory swims into theaters June 17!

Jan 23 2016

Movie Review: ‘How I Dumped My Ex-Boyfriend’s Body’

By Stacey Longo

 

How I Dumped My Ex-Boyfriend’s Body (2014) is a fun indie movie full of humor, buddy antics, and little people. (Okay, only one little person, but he steals every scene he’s in.) This low-budget flick is worth every minute of your time.

Maxine (Meredith Phillips) calls her BFF Shae (Vanessa Leigh) at an ungodly hour to beg her for help. Shae rushes to her best friend’s house, and finds Maxine sitting on the kitchen floor, distraught. It turns out Maxine has murdered her own boyfriend in the midst of a lover’s quarrel. Oops!

Shae is upset, of course—Maxine hit the guy over the head with a vase Shae gave her years ago, and now it’s broken. Maxine is more concerned with what to do with the body. The duo tries to take care of the problem themselves: they dig a hole in the back yard (until a nosy neighbor asks what they’re doing, to which Shae hastily responds “making porn”). They take the corpse for a ride, only to get pulled over by a bicycle cop (a scene in which Phillips will have you laughing so hard you’ll need to take a potty break). Eventually, they decide to talk to Shae’s cousin Mikey (Ed Gutierrez), a wanna-be gangster who sends them to Tony (Josh Pineo), who of course would be happy to get rid of the body. It’s only after Tony—a mobbed-up little person in a wheelchair, who conveys an impeccable “you don’t want to screw with me” attitude that would make Joe Pesci envious—disposes of the corpse that he then informs them of the price tag: $10,000. Now the ladies and Shae’s bumbling boyfriend, who has now somehow gotten roped into this misadventure to emphasize the strong bonds of friendship between the two girls that no man can break—in other words, “chicks before dicks”—must raise the money, fast. The ladies’ misadventures continue as they try their hands as muggers (and fail spectacularly), then explain in side-splitting detail to cousin Mikey why, exactly, they don’t want Tony to come back and turn them into sex slaves. Eventually, there is a hilarious climax and reveal that I won’t spoil for you. Suffice to say this movie was silly, funny, and a little bit sick.

Phillips and Pineo were the clear standouts in this gem of a B-movie. Phillips was unapologetically inelegant and fantastically funny. Her comedic timing and can’t-help-but-like-her attitude were fabulous. Pineo’s performance was baleful and belligerent—not for one moment did the audience think he couldn’t put some serious hurt on our two leading ladies, dwarf in a wheelchair or no. The rest of the cast played their parts well, and I laughed out loud through several scenes. If you have eighty minutes to kill and you’re looking for a good time, How I Dumped My Ex-Boyfriend’s Body is the perfect answer.

Dec 1 2015

New ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ Trailer Debuts Wednesday

A new trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice debuts this Wednesday. All you have to do to watch the new trailer is tune in to Jimmy Kimmel Live tomorrow, Dec. 2, at 11:35 p.m./10:35 CT. Here’s an exclusive sneak at YouTube: https://youtu.be/6as8ahAr1Uc.

Oct 11 2015

Looking Forward to Rock and Shock

By Jason Harris

 

Rock & Shock begins this coming Friday. I have always enjoyed going to and taking pictures at conventions. This year I’m looking forward to seeing authors Jack Ketchum, Joe Knetter, and Stacey Longo again. They have all attended the convention in the past.

The celebrity, who hasn’t been to Rock & Shock in the past and the one I’m looking forward, is Samantha Mathis. I have been a fan since her first movie, Pump Up the Volume. 2015-10-11 21.00.05
Lately, Mathis can be seen on the television series The Strain or the now canceled Under the Dome. You can find out about the other celebrities and events happening at Rock & Shock here.

Oct 4 2015

‘The Monster Squad’ Comes to Rock & Shock this Month

By Jason Harris2007-08-22 12.06.42

I was happy to see that three actors from the 1987 movie, The Monster Squad, will be at this year’s Rock & Shock, which takes place Oct. 16 – 18. These actors are Stephen Macht, Duncan Regehr, and Michael Reid Mackay. Macht and Mackay play Del and The Mummy respectively. In the last few years, Macht has been in the television series, Suits and The Mentalist while Mackay has been in Insidious Chapter 3. 2015-10-01 19.29.42

The one I’m looking forward to meeting though is Regehr who portrayed Dracula in the movie. I have always loved The Monster Squad. Yes, it has its flaws, but to me they are easily overlooked because of my love of the movie. If you haven’t seen it or don’t own a copy, it is streaming on Netflix at the moment. I own a copy, but once it became available on the streaming service this past September, I watched it there as well.

Besides The Monster Squad, Regehr has been in a few favorite television shows of mine such as V: The Series and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I recently rewatched “The Begotten,” an episode of DS9, and it dawned on me that the same actor who portrayed Shakaar was also Dracula in The Monster Squad. I’m not sure if I’ve made that connection before. Before I started writing this post, I thought Regehr was on more than just three episodes of DS9.

So if you are a Star Trek or V fan, make sure to come to Rock & Shock to meet Regehr. Don’t me surprised if you see some V cosplay when you are attending Rock & Shock.

May 24 2015

Movie Review: ‘Zombeavers’

By Stacey Longo

Zombeavers

Zombeavers (2014) is the perfect example of how to do B-movie horror right. Funny, action-packed, and full of ridiculous special effects, this might be my new favorite movie. I’m going to try to review it without spoilers, if only because this movie should be unwrapped and enjoyed thoroughly by the viewer, like a Willy Wonka golden-ticket-wrapped chocolate bar, only with zombie beavers.

The flick opens with two guys in a truck carrying hazardous waste. They hit a deer, losing a barrel of toxic goo in the process. The dialogue here sets the standard for the rest of the movie.

        Trucker #1 (after checking on the deer): “He’s not gonna make it.”

        Trucker #2: “Eh. They carry disease. Well, up and over!”

They continue on, driving over the deer corpse, unaware that toxic waste is now leaking at a nearby beaver dam.

Next, we meet three sorority sisters, Zoe (the token tramp), Jenn (the token blonde), and Mary (the token brain). Jenn’s boyfriend Sam has cheated on her, and the girls are spending the weekend at Mary’s cousin’s cabin to help Jenn get over her heartbreak. Zoe and Jenn are dismayed to find that there is only one bathroom at the cabin for three women. Also, there is no cell phone service.

       Mary: “There’s, like, a landline.”

Zoe: “A what?”

The girls go sunbathing, which allows for the obligatory topless shot that is essential to any well-done B-horror show. They decide to swim out to the beaver dam that they spot on the other side of the lake, where a bear surprises them. Uh-oh. The girls might be done for! Nah. In the nick of time, a hunter named Smyth (Rex Linn) shows up and scares the bear away with a gunshot. He then asks the girls what they’re doing.

      Jenn: “We were looking for beavers.”

Smyth” Well, ain’t we all?”

The girls are later surprised when their boyfriends, Buck, Tommy, and the two-timing Sam, show up. While everyone else is shacked up in their respective bedrooms having fun, Jenn confronts Sam with a picture she saw on Facebook of him making out with a brunette. He won’t tell her who it is, and she won’t forgive him. She goes off to take a bath, only to find a zombeaver in the tub. After Tommy smashes it with a baseball bat, they all decide the animal must have been rabid. They would be wrong.

The next day, everyone decides to go swimming, as you do after finding a possibly rabid beaver in your tub. We do find out at this point who the brunette is that Sam cheated on, but this is quickly glossed over when the zombeavers move in. All but Jenn wind up on the raft, but not before Buck, Zoe’s boyfriend, is attacked. One of the highlights of this movie is when a terrified Buck holds up his own dismembered foot, one of many, many things you don’t often see in movies these days. That and zombie beavers … but I digress.

Our heroes are trapped on the raft. Sam grab’s Zoe’s dog (did I forget to mention she brought her dog? She did) and throws it in the lake as a diversion. You know that unwritten rule in horror movies where it’s okay to brutally dismember people, but animals should never, ever be injured? Happily, in Zombeavers, this rule is gleefully ignored.

From this point forward, the movie is a smorgasbord of zombeaver attacks, horrible deaths, and near escapes. There’s a scene in the house reminiscent of a Whack-a-Mole game that will make you forget to root for the heroes, because you’ll be too busy giggling.

I cannot recommend this movie enough. It’s hilarious, entertaining, and full of beaver jokes. There were no slackers in the cast, though Rex Linn, probably best known for his role as Detective Frank Tripp on CSI: Miami, steals the show as the deadpan, no-nonsense Smyth, who quietly munches on a chicken leg while examining Buck’s dismembered foot. And you won’t want to miss the ending credits—there’s a gag reel, and a fabulous Tony Bennett-esque theme song performed by Nick Amado that you won’t want to miss.

Is this movie a thoughtful introspective on aesthetic principles and style? No. But it’s a heck of a lot of fun!

Editor’s Note:

You can pick up your own copy from Amazon here or on iTunes here.

Mar 15 2015

Movie Review: ‘The House Across the Street’

By Stacey Longo

Jessica Sonneborn in The House Across the Street.

Jessica Sonneborn in The House Across the Street.

In The House Across the Street (2013, Eyethfilms) Amy Fielder (Jessica Sonneborn) has just moved from Kansas, and rents an apartment from Tom (Ethan Embry), a creepy landlord whose over-eagerness to rent to her should have made Amy think twice from the get-go. Amy finds herself fascinated by the house across the street, and watches the goings-on over there cautiously and voraciously. She also starts meeting some of her neighbors, none who seem too eager to give her any information about the house that fascinates her so.

The neighborhood where Amy now lives must be the friendliest in New England, because Mr. Barnes (Alex Rocco) keeps insisting she come over for lunch, and Ned (Courtney Gains, who still evokes memories of Malachai from Children of the Corn even as he approaches middle age) invites her to her home and offers to bring her food. The only people who aren’t friendly are the cops—after Amy finds a woman laying in the road, Officer Peterson (Eric Roberts) warns her not to make trouble, and Amy is subsequently pulled over by the police three more times. The only person who seems willing to help is Kyle, an officer who is also fairly new to town. But the message Amy continues to get from both cops and neighbors is the same: leave well enough alone.

Apparently, this isn’t in Amy’s nature, because after snooping around town hall and getting sideswiped by a car for her efforts, she decides to check out the house across the street for herself. Now on crutches, she hobbles from room to room until she finds Daisy (Sara Murphy), the daughter of the woman who was lying in the road earlier. Daisy is drugged and weak, but Amy manages to get her out of the house and hides her away in her own place across the street.

The movie moves rapidly at this point, as Amy starts to piece together the clues and figures out what’s been going on at the house across the street and who is involved. It turns out that Amy can trust nobody, and her world and new friendships start falling apart as we head to our violent and bittersweet conclusion.

The House Across the Street boasts a dynamic, talented cast that doesn’t disappoint. Roberts is completely at home in his role of small-town officer walking that thin line between keeping citizens in line and protecting the people in his town. Alex Rocco is brilliant (as always) as the forgetful, bumbling Mr. Barnes, and stole every scene in which he appeared. Courtney Gains, Ethan Embry, and Josh Hammond were also notable in the film. The movie was entertaining, though it did drag in places, and the scriptwriters missed a golden opportunity to add the twist of unreliable narration when Amy ran out of antipsychotic medication. Some of the methods in which Amy figured out the truth seemed contrived, yet others were pretty clever. Overall, The House Across the Street was slow, suspenseful, and disturbing—all good things.

Check out the movie’s website here.

Dec 30 2014

Movie Review: ‘Thankskilling’

 

by Stacey Longo

thankskilling

Thankskilling (2009) is a delightful testament to everything that can go right in a cheap B-horror film. The plot: a legendary bloodthirsty turkey murders college kids, one by one, over Thanksgiving break. Sounds marvelous, right? It is!

Ali, Kristen, Johnny, Billy, and Darren (or, in genre terms, the slut, the good girl, the jock, the fat funny kid, and the geek) are on their way home for the holiday break when their car overheats. They decide to pitch tents for the night and Darren tells a scary campfire story about a homicidal turkey. He thinks he’s making it up, but it turns out this legend is true: Turkie soon appears on the scene, leaving a gory trail of dog innards and turkey turds in his wake.

It turns out that Turkie returns every two-hundred-and-something years to exact vengeance on the town that slaughtered his brethren for that first Thanksgiving meal. The teenagers involved might be related to some of the pilgrims—or not; it was a plot point that disappeared as quickly as it popped up. Regardless, Turkie is on the prowl, and nobody’s safe.

Turkie’s one-liners and laughable disguises as he hunts down the group of friends will make you laugh so hard, gravy will shoot out your nose. There’s one scene in which Turkie, dressed as a human (wearing a ridiculous pair of sunglasses complete with plastic mustache that will make you giggle just looking at it) has coffee with Kristen’s father (dressed as a turkey) that is just as awkward and bizarre as you’d expect from a movie about a killer turkey. After Ali meets an untimely end, the gang heads to Kristen’s house because, as she says, “My dad has a huge collection of books. I’m sure he has something on killer turkeys.” (As would any decent private library, of course. Don’t we all have books on fowl lore and legend on our shelves?) Her father greets her at the door, but wait—is it really her father, or a turkey wearing her father’s face as a mask?

“You look different,” Kristen tells her father, squinting suspiciously at him.

“Err . . . I got a haircut,” Turkie says, and the group buys this excuse without thinking twice. Fabulous.

The kids start going through all of the books in the hope that they can find out how to defeat the killer bird. There’s a delightful scene in which the brainy kid teaches the porky kid how to read, and the looks on their faces as they overact this sequence is worth every moment of your life that you’ve wasted watching this movie. The book-cramming pays off, of course, when they find an ancient ritual that seems to be the answer to all of their problems.

To fight the evil curse of Turkie, the gang must chant specific words and perform convoluted rituals, which they predictably get wrong. You won’t be upset, though—Turkie, despite being the antagonist in this film, is undeniably the most likeable character, and you’ll be rooting for him and hoping for a sequel. Your hopes will be fulfilled, but that’s a review for another day.

Full of juvenile humor, occasional frontal nudity, and cringe-worthy puns, Thankskilling is a must-watch film for any B-horror fan.