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.

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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.

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The Train Robbers has been sitting in my Netflix queue for ages, hoping every Tuesday night that I’ll finally pick it for a Western Wednesday.  It may have stayed there forever had not Justin Gray suggested it.  Gray, as you should know by now, is coauthor of the DC series Jonah Hex. If he says “You should watch The Train Robbers!”, you call up the Netflix queue, and then you apologize to John Wayne that you required someone to intercede on his behalf.

However about halfway through, I began wondering if I had picked the right movie.  Nothing was happening. The villains were a dustcloud shrouded bunch who just thundered around,  Ann-Margaret was getting on my nerves,  the sidekicks were blurring together, and Wayne was just being Wayne.  I checked the clock and was relieved to see there was only about 15 minutes left.

And in that 15 minutes, The Train Robbers becomes an epic, edge-of-your-seat Western that just beg the question “Why the heck did they save up all the good stuff until now?” There’s explosions, a dynamite-loaded mule, guns, a creepy town,  a train used as an entire weapon, and a big twist.  It’s really one of the best action pieces I’ve seen in a Wayne Western.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Make no mistake about it, Chloe Moretz (500 Days of Summer) owns this movie. She may only be 11 years old, but her performance as Hit-Girl is spunky, sassy, and exciting. Hit-Girl is poised to become a new comic cult icon, and Kick-Ass is quite simply a rollicking good time.

At one of the panels I attended this weekend, someone likened Kick-Ass to a comic type Pulp Fiction, which I would say is a pretty accurate description. British Actor Aaron Johnson plays Dave Lizewski, a nerdy high school type whose only interaction with the popular kids is when he brushes up against one at his locker.

One day out of the blue he decides he is going to become a vigilante superhero. He concocts a hideous green costume that resembles a wet suit, sets up a social media homepage for his alter ego, and starts “training.” When someone asks his name, he proudly proclaims, “I’m Kick-Ass!”

Completely inept and not blessed with any actual powers, Dave gets the living crap beat out of him by a few thugs mere moments after his official debut as Kick-Ass. This results in a multitude of injuries requiring steel plates and rods being placed throughout his body, which makes him a little more impervious to injury, but still not in possession of actual powers.

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I’ve never heard of Bill Hicks before this movie. In fact, when I first heard about the film, I thought it was a fan mockumentary about Kevin Smith’s character Gil Hicks, the sorry sap from Mallrats whose idea of showing a girl a nice time opened with letting her shop at the places she wanted to shop. But it wasn’t about Gil, it was about Bill.

Bill Hicks was an American comedian in the vein of Sam Kinison or more recently Lewis Black—the angry, shrieking outragers who savage the spirit of their times and stomp around the stage menacingly, careful not to slip on their own froth. And he was also very funny, too.

However, it takes An American: Bill Hicks a while to get to them—the first half hour or so focuses on his early life, his entrance into the world of stand-up at a precocious 15, his heavy reliance on drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, and his early rise to fame. This is done through a few interviews with his mother (who was in attendance), his brother (in attendance as well), and some fellow stand-up friends (check and check). Their words play over photographs of the young Hicks that turn static, 2D photos into 3D animations with fore and backgrounds, movement, and charm.

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Tucker & Dale Vs Evil is a film I went into with low expectations and, for the most part, I was not disappointed. Showing at midnight on the first day of SXSW, it was a perfect way to start off the late night screenings. However, the film works best and can be most enjoyed if you don’t take it too seriously or expect too much from it.

While the two leads, Tucker (played by Firefly and Dollhouse’s Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine, recently of Reaper and the upcoming Sons of Tucson), are immensely likable and have good chemistry and banter, the film falls short and doesn’t live up to their potential. This is unfortunate on many levels because given more effort and time, it probably would have turned out a lot better and been a more fitting vehicle for these two actors.

The premise of Tucker & Dale is very simple and in most cases when it comes to filmmaking, simple is a good thing. Sadly, a simple premise alone does not a complete movie make and as the movie progresses, the slender thread of that premise starts to unravel. This is where this film chiefly falls in that while it does have a simple premise, it doesn’t expand much beyond it and instead offers a string of somewhat uninspired and progressively repetitive “accidents” that go along, leading the film to its inevitable conclusion.

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