Winter’s Bone is  stark, bleak and haunting. It won the Grand Jury Prize and a screenwriting award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. This is the second film by director Debra Granik.  Her debut film Down to the Bone played at the 2004 Sundance Festival, and earned her a Best Director Prize.

At the heart and soul of this drama is Ree, a seventeen year old girl living in the wooded Ozarks with her mother and two younger siblings.  It is never made  apparent why, but Ree’s mom is completely incapable of caring for the family. She is non-communicative and just sort of stares into space all the time.

That leaves Ree to man the household, so to speak. She chops wood, shoots and skins squirrels, and cares for their animals the best she can. As played by an astonishing Jennifer Lawrence, Ree is the embodiment of a girl forced to be a woman and caretaker far before her time.

Continue Reading →

In the past week, I got a chance to sit down and talk to Mark and Jay Duplass about their movie Cyrus with a handful of journalists at the SXSW Film Festival.  Cyrus stars Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener,  and John C. Reilly.

How long had you guys been working on the script?

Mark Duplass: Good question. You know, we normally write our scripts pretty quickly when it’s just us producing them, because we know we’re going to improvise the dialogue a bit, so once their structure is rock solid, we are production ready. But you know, this was a script where you have to write it well and make it attractive to writers and to the studios so that they want to green light it. So we did spend a little time making it look pretty. I think we worked on it maybe a year or so.

Do you have any experience as children of single parents dating again or knowing people in that situation?

MD: None, really. We are good little Catholic boys and our Catholic parents have been married for 42 years and they are still together.

Jay Duplass: What we do have a lot of experience with is desperation.

MD: and interpersonal dysfunction, we’re good at that.

Continue Reading →

When you go to as many film festivals and see as many movies as I do, it is refreshing to find a film from out of virtually nowhere that gives you renewed faith in the filmmaking process. During SXSW I was lucky enough to discover such a film: Gareth Edwards’ Monsters.

As I said in my review, Monsters takes several elements and blends them together well to create a director’s singular vision. It was one of my favorite movies from SXSW. I had a chance to sit down with the talented Mr. Edwards during the fest and over a couple of beers discovered the man behind the Monsters.

The Flickcast: First off, let’s talk a bit about your background.

Gareth Edwards: Sure, well, like a lot of people it all began when I saw Star Wars. I basically decided I wanted to join the Rebel Alliance and blow up the Death Star. But then I learned that it was all made up by someone called a filmmaker so I decided I wanted to be one of those instead.

TFC: A lot of directors like to plan out shots, do storyboards, etc. You didn’t even really have a completed script for Monsters, right?

GE: I had a scene by scene outline but I didn’t want to write dialog. Although, it’s funny when you say to an actor “I don’t want to write the dialog” then they say “Well I have to write it then.” But that’s not what I wanted.

Continue Reading →

Let me be gushingly frank.  If you are anywhere other than the SyFy Channel on Wednesday nights, you’re missing one of the coolest shows on television: Destination Truth.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. SyFy Channel! Sure, they have Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, but it’s really just the land of classic films such as Wyvern and Manticore and the unconfirmed Sharktopus.  It’s the channel of camp, even if you are tempted by Ghost Hunters’ Halloween special.

Or maybe you’re secretly indulging in Ghost Hunters all the time.  I know I am.  It’s my one reality show pleasure.

At least it was. But I became so intrigued by Josh Gates’ enthusiastic SyFy spots that I gave in and watched Destination Truth.   Forget Ghost Hunters. This is now my reality show addiction.

The concept is silly:  Gates and his team go looking for monsters.  It’s cryptozoology at it’s silliest as he and his team race around dangerous locations looking for evidence of yetis, giant serpents, giant squid, and werewolves. They break it up with forays into the paranormal, and do a bit of ghost hunting or sail around the Bermuda Triangle.

Continue Reading →

Mark and Jay Duplass caused a bit of a commotion at Sundance and SXSW in 2005 when their feature film The Puffy Chair debuted to rave reviews and serious buzz. The brothers’ approach to filmmaking was so innovative that they had a new genre of film named after them: mumblecore.

Mumblecore is an indie genre characterized by low budget, improvisation, “non-actor” actors, and plots dealing primarily with personal relationships. The brothers followed up The Puffy Chair with Baghead (2008.)

Even though Cyrus cannot be categorized as pure mumblecore, it is certainly heavily influenced by the Duplass brothers’ earlier films. The movie stars well known comedic actors Jonah Hill (Superbad) and John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), as well as Oscar winner Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler.)

John C. Reilly is wonderful as John, a downtrodden divorced man who finds out that his ex-wife Jamie (played by Catherine Keener) is getting remarried, and wants him to attend an engagement party. Humiliating stuff for even the most confident of men, and John is far from confident.

Continue Reading →

Featuring a terrific ensemble cast led by Lee Tergesen, Melanye Linsky and Gillian Jacobs Helena From the Wedding is a straightforward and simple story well told about a group of friends gathered at a house in the mountains for New Years Eve. Naturally, none of the relationships among these people are exactly what they seem on the surface and as the film progresses you learn more about their darker, hidden sides and their flaws and insecurities.

When you have a great cast and give them interesting things to do you end with a good film that doesn’t rely on any sort of effects, CGI, explosions or any of the crutches many of the big time directors making big budget movies rely on these days. It’s the mark of a skilled filmmmaker who can take a simple film where people interact and talk about things and still manage to make it interesting.

Of course, it helps to have a very gifted actor at the center of the film. Lee Tergesen is one of those actors you’ve undoubtedly seen in something but you may not be able to place him. He inhabits a role so well that you almost don’t recognize him from project to project. That’s one of his major strengths.

Continue Reading →

As I was watching the new Eclipse trailer, out of sheer boredom and a hint of curiosity, I found myself wondering why in the world two super-powered boys would fight it out over a girl clad in American Apparel who’s a hell of a downer.

How is there an entire film series devoted to one girl’s delusional obsessions of a fairy tale ending with a born-again killer? Sparkely vampires want to kill you, strapping werewolf shape-shifters want to keep you safe.

Do these Edward fans have a death wish and a yearning for abandonment? Is Bella Swan so heavily marketed as mesmerizing that it erases the history of the brazen blonde that came before her?

A long time ago, otherwise known as the 90’s, there was a series called Buffy the Vampire Slayer where a feisty girl from the southland slayed Urban Outfitted demons. This legendary show paved the way for multi-tasking girls who cheer by day, slay by night, and every once in a while hook-up with a tormented blood sucker.

Continue Reading →

Zulu Dawn (1979) is the prequel to the 1964 film Zulu which tells the story of a proud British army which suffered the worst defeat ever inflicted by a native army during the Victorian era. Burt Lancaster (Colonel Anthony Durnford), Peter O’ Toole (Lord Frederick Chelmsford), Simon Ward (Lt. William Vereker), Bob Hoskins (Sgt-Major Willams), James Faulkner (Lt. Melvill and film’s producer), Denholm Elliot (Lt. Col. Henry Pulliene), and Sir John Mills (Sir Henry Bartle Frere) head the cast of British officers and bureaucrats which began the legendary Anglo-Zulu war.

The film is a rather well researched account of the battle at Isandlwana. This was in Zulu land which bordered the British colony of Natal in South Africa. In January, 1879. Sir Henry Bartle Frere (Mills) is the High Commissioner for her majesty Queen Victoria who along with Lord Chelmsford (O’ Toole), insight a war against King Cetshwayo, the King of the Zulu people who rules in ways that the British view as a threat to their colony and hegemony in the region.

After a British ultimatum to disband his army, Cetshwayo refuses to capitulate to the British and the war begins. Lord Chelmsford leads his army which consists of two battalions of the 24th regiment of foot, to cross the Buffalo River which divides the border of the Zulu territory. Believing that their technological superiority will aid them in victory, the British send 1350 troops against a Zulu army of 25,000.

Continue Reading →

A little while back, we brought you the first clip from the upcoming rock biopic, The Runaways, in which Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) meet for the very first time. With the film’s release less than a month away, we’re now getting even more stuff to share, including some great clips of the rest of the band.

The film is written and directed by artist Floria Sigismondi, and covers the formation and eventual break up of one of the first all-girl rock bands. The film is sure to get the attention of a younger crowd as it teams Twilight: New Moon’s Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.

Also along for the ride is Halloween’s Scout Taylor-Compton and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat. The film looks to fall in the ranks with other great music biopics such as Almost Famous and Ray, while adding a younger appeal.

Check out four brand new clips from The Runaways after the jump, and be sure to catch the “cherry bomb” when it hit’s theaters on April 9th.

Continue Reading →

Much Like District 9, Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity before it, Monsters exists in a world where filmmakers with a singular vision just decide one day to go out and make the film they’ve always wanted to make. Packing his cast and a small crew into a van, writer/director Gareth Edwards traveled for several months throughout Central America in an attempt to realize that vision. Monsters is the result.

Part alien invasion, part road movie and part love story, Monsters balances all three well and manages to entertain and generate quite a few thrills and suspenseful moments. It also has other moments of genuine humor, emotion and character which are often lacking in other more mainstream films and doesn’t rely on heavy-handed spectacle to get its points across.

It’s also the strength of the developing relationship between the two leads, Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) and Sam (Whitney Able), which gives Monsters its emotion center. Perhaps it’s because the two leads developed a real romantic relationship over the course of making the film that their onscreen relationship works so well. You believe it because it’s actually happening.

As they go through the ordeal of the film, you trust they are experiencing what is happening to them and as they do, this brings them closer together. At first, of course, they are far apart but as the film progresses and the danger increases, they draw closer and must fight together to survive. Adversity, as it often does, brings people closer together, and these two are no exception.

Continue Reading →