THE FILM:

One could be forgiven for having some reasonably high expectations of Sympathy for Delicious, actor Mark Ruffalo's (Zodiac, The Kids are All Right, Shutter Island) directorial debut. Ruffalo is an actor to admire, and there is a recent wave of similarly accomplished, devoted actors like Sean Penn (The Pledge, Into the Wild) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Read the entire review

As Year of the Carnivore begins, Samantha "Sammy" Smalls (Cristin Milioti) is having trouble connecting with Eugene (Mark Rendall). They're friends, and both parties are interested in taking things to the next level, but each is saddled with their own set of neuroses that prevent them from getting truly intimate with each other. Following an awkward night of hesitation and inappropriate laughter, Eugene has had enough, telling Sammy to go get some experience as a lover before trying to force their relationship any further. As it turns out, Sammy and the film may have the same problem.

The film's central conflict is Sammy's sexual repression and social anxiety about herself. Sammy is a cancer survivor with a hobbled leg. Despite this, she works at a supermarket as an undercover loss prevention operative, and she lives alone, away from her bickering parents. On the surface, these seem like aggre...Read the entire review

A friend of mine once explained he thought the word "pleasant" was, to him, a word that indicated a bland, uninspired sense of complacency. I don't necessarily agree, but "pleasant" does leap to mind when trying to describe Spooner, a quirky romantic comedy about an anti-social car salesman on the verge of turning 30, at which point he will be forced out of his parents' house. It's not that Spooner does anything wrong in its attempts to be sweet and funny, but it fails to do anything different or inventive, either, meandering along until the the few plot points the characters run into along the way have been resolved.

The car salesman, Herman Spooner, is played by former teen star Matthew Lillard, known for his high-energy, high-volume characterizations in films like Hackers, Scream, and Scooby-Doo. It's interesting to watch the actor dial down his natural pe...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Imagine "Inception." Now imagine "Inception" with a C-list cast, obscure locations, and a visual effects effort similar to a PBS production from the 1980s. "The Speed of Thought" is yet another indie film too ambitious for its own good, constructing a psychological thriller without a proper budget, rendering the feature awkward and downright silly at times, despite an intriguing concept.

John Lazarus (Nick Stahl) is a telepath employed by the government (led by Blair Brown) to infiltrate the minds of enemies, probing their every thought and stealing their secrets. While healthy, John is prepared to face madness via a disease that debilitates the gifted, held off temporarily through a routine of pills delivered by his friend, San...Read the entire review

It's funny that the DVD cover for The People I've Slept With is of a faceless, sexy woman, lying on a bed in her panties. It's a sexed-up image that will likely catch a few guys' eyes on the DVD shelf, yet not a single iota of the movie's content feels like it was written or directed with the idea of appealing to straight men within a good hundred-mile radius. On one hand, it's not surprising that I didn't glean any real entertainment value from a film that has no interest in attracting me as an audience member, but The People I've Slept With is also a slog, built out of cliches and convinced it's smarter than other films in the same genre.

Angela (Karin Anna Cheung) is a young woman who gets plenty of enjoyment out of her laundry list of conquests, until a pregnancy test reveals that she's expecting. Deciding that maybe it's finally time to grow up and be a "responsible" adult like her...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Zombie films can usually be broken up into two distinct types. First, you have the voodoo type zombie films, e.g. I Eat Your Skin or I Walked With a Zombie or The Serpent and the Rainbow, in which the zombies are not actually dead, but living humans put into a trance like states by neurotoxins and/or voodoo spells. Second, you have the George Romero type zombie films, in which the zombies are reanimated corpses, brought back to life by chemical exposure or radiation or what have you, as in Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead or The Living Dead of Manchester Morgue. Independent film The Zombie Farm is something of a hybrid between these two flavors, and is an intriguing attempt at a new take on the genre, even though it stumbles as often as it succeeds.

A few plot lines are woven together at the beginning of the...Read the entire review

THE FILM

"See You in September" is yet another roll around the muck of New York City neuroses, fiddling where many films have fiddled before. Missing a performance miracle or outstandingly scripted concern, the picture instead wilts instantly, offering viewers a snapshot of slapstick anxiety that's neither merry nor original. It's all just utterly forgettable.

Freaking out after her therapist (Whoopi Goldberg) declares her intention to vacation for the month of August, commitment-phobe Lindsay (Estella Warren) is anxious to continue her self-exploration with a new analyst. Finding every therapist she seeks out is breaking away for the month, Lindsay bravely assembles her own support group of damaged people, including wisecracking A.J. (Justin Kirk). Bonding over their shared fear of life and love, the team finds new ways to mature, relying on one another to make a signif...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM
"...the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children."
-Launcelot ("The Merchant of Venice")

If your knowledge of Pablo Escobar only comes from what is printed in the history books or delivered through a documentary on the rise and fall of Colombia's cocaine kingpin, Nicholas Entel's wonderful documentary, "Sins of My Father" will likely be come as somewhat of a shocker. In just 90 minutes, Entel shatters expectations and reaffirms sad truths about Escobar through the saga of Sebastian Marroquin, an engineer in his mid 30s living in Argentina. Marroquin along with his mother is forever banished from his home country of Colombia due to Escobar's infamy, and Marroquin is a man full of unwarranted guilt, a result of being born Juan Pablo Escobar Jr.

Entel's documentary is tasked with not only telling Marroquin's story and desire to reach out to the sons...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

"Hunter Prey" is likely to go down as one of the best sci-fi films in a long time that most people will never see. Based on a story from and directed by Sandy Collora, a Hollywood designer (he created the iconic Jurassic Park logo) who is best known for his two fan-films taking place in the DC Universe: "Batman: Dead End" and "World's Finest." Armed with an obscenely low budget (by sci-fi adventure film standards) of around $450,000, Collora took his production down to Mexico to produce a film with many lofty aspirations, nearly all of which it succeeds in accomplishing.

Set on an unnamed world, "Hunter Prey" opens with a trio of armor clad soldiers led by Commander Karza (Isaac C. Singleton Jr). Along with Centauri 7 (Damien Poitier) and Logan (Simon Potter), the squad receives orders to track down their prey, Jericho (Clark Bartram, who also played Batman in both of ...Read the entire review