The Survivalist (now on video)

The SHOUT! Factory video release of Stephen Fingleton’s grim, minimalist dystopian drama-thriller is an item which actually works best in the DVD/Blu-ray format - not downloads, not on a big screen, not even on good old VHS. The menu presence of a handful of related Fingleton-scripted short subjects, clearly set in the same doomsday vein as the feature (one is, in fact, the prequel), makes the whole experience complete. That it's a complete feelbad mini-spectacle, well. that's for your individual tastes.

Some viewers may note a resemblance to Hollywood's film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, with its small cast's ground-zero-eye-view of the post-apocalypse. Only an opening graphic gives the backstory, that oil and electricity have run out for mankind, cueing a massive population die-off.

Now only remnants of humanity fight it out, these particular ones in some green part of the UK (the film was Northern Ireland production, and the milieu certainly does have a tragic aura).

It Comes at Night

Review by Bob Ignizio

Chances are, IT COMES AT NIGHT isn't the horror movie you're looking for. The recurring complaint from many who caught it this past weekend is that the marketing was deceptive. That based on the trailers, they were expecting a more traditional kind of horror film. What they got instead was more of a grim drama. It's still a horror film, but the scares IT COMES AT NIGHT delivers are not of the fun, jump out of your seat variety. Nor do they involve much in the way of violence and gore. The kind of fear this film trades in is more thoughtful and disturbing than that.

The premise is a familiar one. Some sort of plague has devastated humanity – the details are vague, but they aren't important. All we know is there's a nasty bug going around. It's lethal to humans and animals alike, and it's highly contagious.

31 Days of Halloween 2014: The Last Days (repost)

*Note: This year for our annual 31 Days of Halloween marathon of horror movie reviews, rather than write about old favorites, we're focusing on modern horror films that haven't had a wide theatrical release. So for the entire month of October, we will be dealing with horror fare that you can find in the “New Release” section of Netflix or (if you still have one) your local video store. So instead of nostalgic appreciations and recommendations, this promises to be more of a “the good, the bad, and the ugly” kind of affair. Hopefully more good than bad and ugly, but that remains to be seen.

Review by Bob Ignizio

Even if you leave out all the one with zombies in them, there have still been about a bazillion movies made in the last 10 years or so about the end of the world. All the popular methods of destruction are well represented – global warming, global cooling, plagues, Mayan prophecies, dirty bombs, the Rapture, rougue planets crashing into our orbit. Trying to find a fresh twist on the genre that isn't completely ridiculous is no easy task. So kudos to THE LAST DAYS (original title Los Ultimos Dias) for not only coming up with a nifty new way to wipe out humanity, but putting that idea into a pretty good movie, to boot.

The Last Days (now on video)

Review by Bob Ignizio

Even if you leave out all the one with zombies in them, there have still been about a bazillion movies made in the last 10 years or so about the end of the world. All the popular methods of destruction are well represented – global warming, global cooling, plagues, Mayan prophecies, dirty bombs, the Rapture, rougue planets crashing into our orbit. Trying to find a fresh twist on the genre that isn't completely ridiculous is no easy task. So kudos to THE LAST DAYS (original title Los Ultimos Dias) for not only coming up with a nifty new way to wipe out humanity, but putting that idea into a pretty good movie, to boot.

This is the End

Review by Bob Ignizio

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the writing team responsible for the extremely funny films SUPERBAD and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (and who were also responsible for the extremely unfunny films THE GREEN HORNET and THE WATCH) have decided to apply their talents to the goal of finding the laughs in Armageddon with THIS IS THE END. The film is based on a short Rogen and Goldberg co-wrote with Jay Stone back in 2007, and as in that earlier film Rogen and his Undeclared co-star Jay Baruchel are two of the poor souls “left behind” when the rapture takes place and all the good people get lifted into Heaven. Also left behind to suffer the torments of Hell on Earth are some of the other Hollywood types Rogen calls friends, including James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Danny McBride, and Emma Watson.

Miracle Mile (April 18th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[MIRACLE MILE screens Thursday April 18 th at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

One feels sorry for the neighbors of missile-rattling North Korea right now. But as a child of the Cold War part of me would like to say, "Welcome to my world, circa the Reagan years."

This was back when US-Soviet relations got uglier than their standard ugliness, and young Charles Cassady would go to bed well and truly wondering whether he'd wake up to radioactive mushroom clouds. For those of you who were too young (or Clevelanders just lost in dope, or disco, or Browns Cardiac Kids mania in this era), the angst went like this: maybe one of the aging Kremlin bigwigs would find out he was terminally ill and would angrily hit the Big Red Button (a right-wing news columnists' 1950s fantasy that I read, I know, but it still stuck with me). Or Nancy Reagan's astrologer would determine via horoscope was a great five-star day to light up the heavens with long-range ICBMs. Or Ronald Reagan's spiritual advisor - Milton Friedman, I believe, was the holy man's name - would sell the rest of the Joint Chiefs on the idea that rebuilding after WWIII would be a boost for big-business capitalism and neocons. All those millions of "DANGER: ATOMIC FALLOUT" and "MASS GRAVE DUMPING ALLOWED" signs that would sell, think of it boys! Especially now that we can make 'em cheaper over the border in Juarez! And if a few small, `stray' American nukes happen to land and detonate in our own heaviest black/Hispanic-concentration slum neighborhoods...that's the benefit of friendly fire for you.

Cinematheque to show eight end-of-the-world movies

[Press release from the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

We may have escaped the 2012 Mayan apocalypse, but will humanity survive global warming, water shortages, the next plague, extraterrestrial events, or a Third World War? These questions have weighed on the minds of moviemakers for decades, but end-of-the-world narratives now seem more prevalent than ever.

 

The new Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque film series “Apocalypse Now—and Then” (running February 28 through April 26) surveys eight great international movies from the past and the present that deal with our precarious future. Great directors like Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, Bela Tarr, and Andrei Tarkovsky are represented, and less highbrow cult classics like MIRACLE MILE and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (which may have inspired NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) will also be shown.

 

All movies will screen from 35mm film prints in the Aitken Auditorium of the Cleveland Institute of Art, 11141 East Boulevard in University Circle, telephone (216) 421-7450, www.cia.edu/cinematheque. Admission to each film is $9; Cinematheque members $7; age 25 & under $6 (with proof of age). Free parking is available in the adjacent CIA lot.