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When expecting a new child anxieties run high. You worry about them being healthy. You worry about how they will turn out. Larry Cohen’s creepy horror flick takes those anxieties and blows them out into terror. How would you you feel if your new baby was a savage monster?

Frank (John P. Ryan, BOUND) and Lenore Davis (Sharon Farrell, THE STUNT MAN) are an expecting couple. They already have an eight-year-old son Chris (Daniel Holzman), who is looking forward to being a big brother. Sitting in the waiting room with other expecting fathers, Frank seems the bastion of calm. But then screams echo down the halls. And he witnesses the blood bath in the delivery room where his wife is still strapped to the table. The baby has killed the doctors and nurses and fled the hospital.
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The Book of Kells is considered the pinnacle of the insular illumination style and its influence on the visuals of this film is in every corner of the frame. The elaborate calligraphy of the Irish national treasure might be simplified but it’s woven into the buildings and environments. These remarkable visuals bring to life a fantasy version of the book’s creation, filled with Irish lore. The visuals alone make this film captivating.

Brendan (Evan McGuire) is a young apprentice at the Abbey of Kells, where his uncle Cellach (Brendan Gleeson, IN BRUGES) is the abbot. Brendan is fascinated with the tales of the master illuminator Adian of Iona (Mick Lally, THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH) and the book he is creating. Brendan is inspired by the magic of the book, but his uncle believes he is a dreamer and needs to focus on the construction of a wall to protect the town from marauding Vikings. When Adian must flee the Vikings at Iona, he brings the book to Kells to work on it in secret. Brendan wants to help. Disobeying his uncle’s orders to not venture into the forest, he goes in a search of gall nuts that can be used for ink. On his adventure, Brendan meets a fairy named Aisling (Christen Mooney) and his view of the world opens up.
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One shouldn’t beat around the bush when it comes to reviewing this film. It’s about a mad surgeon who wants to surgically connect three humans mouth to anus, making one long, gross gastric system. Like a long car ride it really sucks to be in the middle.

Like thousands of other horror films, two pretty young women, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), are on vacation when their car breaks down along some out of the way stretch of road. They wander through the woods and come upon house of Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM). Before letting them in the house, he asks them if they’re sisters, and when they say they aren’t, he seems disappointed. Creepy. But they go in anyway and end up drugged and then tied to an operation table. Eventually they’ re joined (at first figuratively and then literally) by the unfortunate Japanese tourist Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura, PORNO).
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This sci-fi horror flick has been called the worst film ever made. Its ranking on iMDB is 1.4, making it the second lowest rated film. The film stands up to that lofty reputation. However, unlike films like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE or ROBOT MONSTER, this one isn’t so bad, it’s good like some claim. Those films find ways of entertaining with their ineptitude. What keeps MONSTER A-GO-GO from attaining that wonderful BOMB status is that it’s painfully boring.

A space capsule crashes to Earth. Frank Douglas (Henry Hite) has been infected with radiation portion, which has shriveled his skin like a prune and made him wander around like a zombie. Anyone who comes too close to him turns into a raisin and dies. Dr. Manning (George Perry) has been keeping him alive with an antidote, but now he’s on the loose. Col. Steve Connors (Phil Morton) leads a force to contain the “monster.”
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There are so many elements of this film that make it cult. It’s a high school sex comedy that is pitch black. The director is BARBARELLA auteur Roger Vadim and the writer/producer is STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry. The star is Rock Hudson as the football coach who beds his underage female students on a daily basis. Come on you can’t write irony better than that.

Hudson is Tiger McDrew, a local hero who just has women fawning over him when he walks into a room. In between sleeping with every hot girl in the school and spending time with his wife (Barbara Leigh, JUNIOR BONNER) and daughter, he takes forever-young football team manager Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson, THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN) under his wing. The boy has a problem; he has a constant erection. Especially in the class of new teacher Miss Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson, RIO BRAVO). So all Tiger needs to do to get the older woman to teach Ponce the sexual ropes is to ask. Oh yeah, the pretty co-heads are turning up dead.
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Buy It Now!

Read my review of PLEASE GIVE.

This indie comedy was shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm. This gives the picture a softer look overall. This quality carries over to this 1080p transfer. For a Blu-ray the detail is not robust. The color balance is natural and the film grain is consistent with the source material. When it comes to the soundtrack, this isn’t a title to show off the sound system with. The soundscape is heavily weighted to the front speakers. Dialogue stands out from the nicely balanced music and sound effects. Presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless, the soundtrack is what might expect from an indie comedy.

The special features include the making of doc “Behind the Scenes of PLEASE GIVE,” brief Q&A clips with director Nicole Holofcener and outtakes. The Behind the Scenes featurette is fairly standard with Holofcener talking about writing and directing. She reveals that she wrote the lead role with Catherine Keener in mind. Keener has been in all of Holofcener’s features. The Q&A clips delve a little deeper, but there is only eight minutes worth. Holofcener’s tales about the original title and her thoughts into the creative process are funny and insightful, making the viewer want more or even a commentary track.

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Nicole Holofcener, who made the wonderful WALKING & TALKING and LOVELY & AMAZING, is a writer who understands people and knows precisely how to show an audience these people. Particularly she knows how to write women characters. They act like women and more importantly they feel like women. And by that I mean they feel a range of emotions.

Kate (Catherine Keener, LOVELY & AMAZING) and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt, DIGGSTOWN) run a vintage furniture shop in New York City. They buy their product from the children of the recently deceased. Kate feels guilty for everything. She’s the kind of person who looks for homeless people to give money to. They have bought the apartment of the old woman Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert, GRUMPIER OLD MEN) next door, giving her the right to stay there until she passes.
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Everyone knows that George A. Romeo is the creator of the modern day zombie. I have enjoyed all previous entries in this horror sub-genre he has made. Each in some way commented on the era in which they were made. Now with zombies more popular than ever, Romeo doesn’t have to wait a decade to turn a new one out. I don’t think that’s a good thing.

This entry in his zombie canon is the first direct sequel to any of his zombie films. It follows characters that appeared in the faux-doc DIARY OF THE DEAD. Nicotine Crocket (Alan Van Spring, LAND OF THE DEAD) is a National Guard sergeant who along with his troops has gone rogue since the zombie outbreak. It’s a zombie eat zombie world out there. Along with Kenny (Eric Woolfe, NEW YORK MINUTE), Francisco (Stefano Colacitti, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY) and Tomboy (Athena Karkanis, SAW IV), they rob a RV full of film students (featured in DIARY). The military deserters run into a solo teen called Boy (Devon Bostick, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID), who tells them of an island off the coast of Delaware that is inviting strangers over to live in a zombie-free zone.
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Marriage and life sometimes seem to get in the way of each other. You meet the right woman, fall in love, get hitched, have kids and end up wondering how you got stuck in some routine. The routine tests marriages. The one’s that last are often the ones that can take a moment to break free from the routine and remember what sparked it all in the beginning. For the Fosters, blackmailers, gangsters, corrupt cops and a deviant DA really do put a spark in their relationship.

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN & Tina Fey, TV’s 30 ROCK) are in that kind of rut. Their best friends the Sullivans (Kristen Wiig, TV’s SNL & Mark Ruffalo, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT) are getting a divorce, because they got in a rut. This scares Phil, because he loves Claire, but he can see their light fizzling out. He tries to make their date night special by taking her to a trendy new restaurant in NYC on Friday night without a reservation. No luck getting a table. So Phil acts spontaneously and takes the reservation of the Tripplehorns, who don’t seem to be there. Not a great call.
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For this film, 80-year-old Clint Eastwood looks at death. Based on a script from Peter Morgan (FROST/NIXON), the film weaves together three different experiences with death — a near death experience, the loss of a loved one and a metaphysical look at the issue. Each is told on a haunting emotional level. No matter what your own personal beliefs are about the afterlife, this film actually reinforces the most important part of life.

Marie LeLay (Cecile De France, HIGH TENSION) is a famous French newscaster. On vacation with her boyfriend/producer Didier (Thierry Neuvic, TELL NO ONE), she goes out to a street market to buy gifts and is swept away as a sudden tsunami strikes. She is pulled from the water, but not before experiencing the classic near death experience of the bright white light and sense of weightlessness.
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