Psycho Raman (April 5th and 7th at the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival)

[PSYCHO RAMAN screens Wednesday April 5th at 4:35 pm and Friday April 7th at 9:20 pm at Tower City Cinemas as part of the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

The Indian film industry is best known for their vibrant "Bollywood" musicals. Indian writer/director Anurag Kashyap makes very different kinds of films. His 2012 film GANGS OF WASSEYPUR was an epic (5 hours-plus) tale of generation-spanning crime that drew from Scorsese and Coppolla for inspiration. It won numerous awards and made it onto many "best of the year" lists.

PSYCHO RAMAN (original title: RAMAN RAGHAV 2.0) is a crime film of a different sort. It's a wallow on the dark side that focuses on serial killer Ramanna (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and the coke-addicted, misogynistic cop Raghavan (Vicky Kaushal) pursuing him. The solitary Ramanna sees his soulmate in the corrupt policeman, a man cloaked in the respectability of the law who, deep down inside, may be just as evil as his quarry. Maybe even moreso. Comparisons to Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT and Jee-woon Kim's I SAW THE DEVIL are not unreasonable, but ultimately RAMAN is its own brutal beast.

The Silence of the Lambs (November 7th at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

[THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS screens Friday November 7th at 7:00 pm, 9:30 pm, and midnight at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

The entertainment media/pop-culture industry was making money off serial killers wayyy before THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (see Ripper, Jack the...), but the monster success of Jonathan Demme's 1991 thriller was taken by tastemakers to be something of a cultural watershed. Released in a spring movie-off season, the slick, satisfying, sinister picture was a box-office smash that won the Best Picture Oscar, making its murderous antihero Hannibal Lecter a much-imitated screen icon. And it gave film-critic-turned-right-wing-talk-show-host Michael Medved (hey, how do I get on board that gravy train? I need money too) exhibit A for his culture-wars book Hollywood vs. America.

31 Days of Halloween 2014: Serial Killer Culture

*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

Some people just can't seem to get enough of serial killers. And not just the witty, fictional ones like Hannibal Lecter and Dexter, either. There are plenty of folks out there who are fascinated for varying reasons with real life murderers. For the most part this fascination goes only as far as watching reality shows or reading true crime books. For others, it extends to collecting “muderabilia” or producing creative works about these real life monsters. It is this latter group that John Borowski's documentary SERIAL KILLER CULTURE concerns itself with.