Most of our screening contests give you passes to an advance showing of a film, but the pass only guarantees you a place in line, not a seat. Some of these early showings sell out.

Well, we have 4 pairs of reserved seats (for the “New Moon” 7:30pm screening at AMC Barrywoods 24 on November 18) and prize packs including a DVD, CD, and case of VitaminWater for four lucky winners, to be chosen at random.

That’s right. No waiting in line, no getting there an hour and a half early. Reserved seats.

The catch? We at Scene-Stealers want to make sure we are drawing from a pool of potential winners that are true fans of the “Twilight” books and movies.

That means you gotta answer some trivia questions.

You didn’t think we were going to let you off that easy, did you?

Answer these five questions correctly, fill out the form below, and you are entered to win:

One reserved pair of tickets to the “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” 7:30pm screening at AMC Barrywoods 24 on November 18.

One “Twilight” DVD

One CD soundtrack to “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”

One  poster of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”

One case of VitaminWater Sync

Good luck!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Tags: advance, CD, contest, dvd, early, free, giveaway, kansas city, movie, new moon, passes, saga, screening, twilight

Even if you haven’t seen a movie about psychic Jedi warriors in the United States Army who kill goats with their mind, you may come out of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” thinking that you’ve seen a lot of it before.

George Clooney stars in this adaptation of Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book and Grant Heslov, his producing/writing partner from “Good Night and Good Luck,” takes the director’s chair for the first time. Where Clooney exhibited measured control directing “Good Night,” though, Heslov is all over the map with “Goats.”

The movie can’t quite make up its mind about what it wants to be: a silly farce, a character drama, a military satire, a supernatural story, or the personal journey of a humiliated cuckold. This wouldn’t be a problem if it did all of things well and found a through-line, but “The Men Who Stare at Goats” doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s a random string of gags and scenes (some that work well, some that don’t) that all somehow ring familiar. What the film is lucky to have is an excellent cast that seems game for anything.

The cuckold’s tale

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, the reporter who stumbles onto the story of the First Earth Battalion around the same time his wife leaves him for a one-armed man. His discoveries about a New Age branch of the Army headed by long-haired Vietnam vet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) should be enough to get him interested, but instead it’s being dumped that gets him to Iraq, talking quite coincidentally to Django’s star pupil, Lyn Cassady (Clooney). His backstory seems forced from the get-go, but when the absurdities of the situation start piling up, it’s easier to forgive.

Silly farce

From there, the movie has a lot of fun filling in the details of this psi-ops Army division. Few actors today can do furious deadpan delivery like Clooney, but some of the stuff he has to convey is so preposterous that when the film asks you to believe in its characters, it’s just impossible. The exception: Bridges is quite sympathetic as a man who’s faith and hope are always teetering on collapse. On the level of farce, however, the film works for a good hour or so.

Military satire

The suggestion that the Army would pursue psychic exploration—and put up with a flower-carrying troop that stands for everything contrary to Army policy—for the sole reason of weaponizing it, is pretty funny. Screenwriter Peter Straughan gets a lot of mileage out of the notion, hoisting awkward notions of peace right up there against men in military outfits who start behaving strangely. But just when the movie feels as if it ought to be getting somewhere comes the sad realization that it has actually begun to wind down.

Character drama?

When all the characters from this flashback-riddled and disjointed movie finally converge, it’s the biggest letdown of the film. All the possibilities that the script hinted at earlier are unwisely scuttled for a lame escape attempt with no real consequence or purpose. It’s hard to get involved in the characters’ plight, especially when the road that they take is so arbitrary all of a sudden.

Supernatural story

Kevin Spacey plays a career-minded psychic warrior who brings unwanted change into the New Earth Army and therefore confirms our suspicions that all of this mind-literally-over-matter stuff is hogwash. Or is it? “The Men Who Stare at Goats” has an unconvincing and unfunny ending that wants to have it both ways, but just comes off as pandering.

The movie is uneven for sure and ludicrous in conceit, but that’s not to say that it isn’t entertaining at times. McGregor is saddled with a tiresome everyman role, but Spacey, Clooney, and especially Bridges make some of their scenes work better than they should. If only Heslov had been able to make a cohesive film out it …

Tags: 2009, clooney, film, goats, movie, movie review, review, The Men Who Stare at Goats

Here’s a post about the validity of the film’s “documentary footage” and true story claim. Review below.

Milla Jovovich, bathed in white light, steps into the foreground. As the camera circles her and abruptly changes angles, the actress delivers a spiel about the film’s production, its authenticity, our freedom to draw our own conclusions, and she wraps things up with the caveat that “some of what [we]’re about to see is disturbing.”

If you start things off with a proclamation like that, you’d better have the goods to back it up.

Set in a small town in northern Alaska in October 2000, the movie purports to use real video and audio from various interviews conducted by Dr. Abbey Tyler with several of her patients who were experiencing alien encounters in conjunction with dramatizations of those interviews and events. With that premise, one would think having convincing documentary footage would be the logical place to start. One would be wrong.

Right off the bat, “The Fourth Kind” can’t get its act together. The footage that kicks off the actual feature is of Dr. Tyler being interviewed by the film’s director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, and it’s so awkward and obviously scripted that the immediate effect is incredulity.

This persists throughout the entire film. None of the footage is convincing and the insinuation that it’s authentic becomes insulting. It doesn’t do itself any favors when it goes into split screen, either, showing the dramatized action alongside its allegedly real counterpart, often revealing the former to be more startling.

With that crippling problem set aside, Jovovich, playing Dr. Tyler, turns in a surprisingly decent performance. She’s convincing as a woman grieving the death of her husband while juggling motherhood and her duties as a psychologist.

Elias Koteas is good, too, as her visiting colleague who champions hard evidence, the scientific method and…yet…denies the validity of his own extraterrestrial encounter later on in the film.

And Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Dr. Awolowa Odusami (said to be an alias), a scholar of ancient languages, provided the film’s one sincere moment of intrigue and disturbance when he discussed the relationship between aliens and ancient Sumeria.

But then we have Will Patton as Sheriff August (another alias) who brings things to a screeching halt with his self-aware, arbitrarily hostile and unreasonable antics which make no sense and do further damage to the credibility the film so desperately needs.

He acts the way only a character in a bad movie would: ignoring evidence, making hasty, irrational decisions that negatively affect just about everyone, withholding basic information about Tyler’s husband’s death without purpose. Did Osunsanmi honestly think we wouldn’t find his character insufferable?

If for nothing else, the film fails by not living up to its own hefty proclamation. It isn’t scary in the slightest. The interviews seem fake and so much of the action borrows from “The Exorcist” and other possession films that it’s laughable. The scares that do occur are simply surprises and couldn’t haunt you if they wanted to.

I have a friend who’s never watched “E.T.” all the way through because he’s terrified of aliens. Just the other day, he was whining to me about being bullied into seeing “Signs” in theaters and how it nearly ruined his life. This wouldn’t faze him.

Tags: 2009, abduction, alaska, Alien, fourth, fourth kind, kind, movie, movie review, review

Mira Nair’s biopic of groundbreaking aviator Amelia Earhart has many components working in its favor. It’s got Oscar-winner Hilary Swank in the title role, supporting performances from Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor, cinematography that ranges from elegant to breathtaking, and a really thorough sense of time and place. And yet it never quite pulls itself together.

The film is competent and solid but there’s little consequence. It suffers from the same problem Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” did earlier this year, in that it exchanges what could have been a gripping examination of an historical figure for a stylistic retelling of key events in said figure’s life.

While the level of detachment in “Public Enemies” was reasonable considering its central character’s line of work and its director’s brand of storytelling, “Amelia” lacks these excuses and unwisely keeps the viewer at arm’s length.

The screenplay (by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan) glosses over the entire formative period of Earhart’s life and tries to compensate for this by giving us poetic tidbits about the glory of flight in Swank’s voice-over narration. This isn’t wholly ineffective, but it’s a far cry from the resonance that would’ve been added had Nair and her writers shown us the development of Earhart’s passion for aeronautics from its infancy to its fullest realization.

What keeps things emotionally afloat is Amelia’s romance with George Putnam (Gere). It’s an honest, loving, imperfect relationship and while their exchanges as written are never anything profound, the two actors are good enough to smooth things over with a lot of sincerity. That’s not to say the dialogue is jarringly awful; it’s just somewhat stilted at times. Ewan McGregor has a nice turn as Eugene Vidal, the West Point pilot instructor with whom Earhart had a small affair - the details of which are left fairly ambiguous and whose repercussions are almost void.

Stuart Dryburgh’s cinematography is actually really impressive, capturing transcendent aerial views of planes immersed in cloudscapes hovering over mountain ranges and beneath the expanse of the firmament, but it’s hard to tell how much of that is justly attributable to him and not the art, special effects and visual effects departments. There’s a nice variety to the ground visuals, though, as Earhart travels around the globe, flying above jungles and deserts and sojourning in various locations.

All in all, the technical excellence of the film doesn’t serve a greater emotional purpose. The performances are strong, the relationships are well established, and the filmmaking itself is pretty impressive.

But I never really got to know Amelia. She mentions her father’s alcoholism in passing and we can infer that this stimulates her fervent desire to escape in some way, but it’s not enough to justify what was ultimately a self-destructive way of life. Because of this disconnect, we are only impacted by Amelia’s fate vicariously through her husband, George Putnam, and never on our own terms.

For a film that has little problem with sentimentality, it should’ve dug deeper in its story and relied less on sweeping orchestrations to affect its audience.

Tags: 2009, amelia, amelia movie review, film, movie, review

I’m pretty sure Ed Wood would have loved “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant“. Messy, flawed, riddled with odd choices and questionable casting, and stuck with a plot that make less sense as it progresses, The Vampire’s Assistant is in every way a B-movie. And, I’ll admit, I kinda liked it.

Based on a series of novels by Darren Shan, the film’s main plot revolves around a rather bland high school student, Darren (Chris Massoglia), and his more rambunctious best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson), whose main purpose it seems is to get Darren into as much trouble as possible.

A night out takes the pair to a freak show where events unfold that lead Darren into an agreement with vampire Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly) in order to save his friend. Leaving behind his life, Darren becomes part vampire, and begins his new life in the Cirque du Freak as Crepsley’s assistant.

There’s quite a bit else that occurs in the movie concerning Darren, Steve, the mysterious Mr. Tiny (Michael Cerveris), the war between vampires (those who feed on but don’t kill humans) and the vampanese (those who, well, leave bloody messes in their wake). Not all of it makes sense, in fact much of it seems little more than convoluted nonsense to keep the story moving to its final big showdown.

When the film attempts to try and make sense of its plot, it fails spectacularly. However, when the film lets Darren’s story unfold as he discovers the new world around him … well, it doesn’t quite succeed, but it puts on a good show.

I also found the script’s rather flippant take on vampire lore amusing. “Can I turn into a bat?” Darren asks, “No, that’s bullshit.” his new mentor replies. Realizing that the material they’re working with isn’t exactly Shakespeare, no one takes things too seriously. The result is an amusing little train wreck that doesn’t leave too much carnage in its wake.

Although the main role of Darren is hopelessly miscast (and the best friend isn’t that much better) there are some nice supporting performances. Reilly is fun to watch as something far removed from your average movie vampire, and Salma Hayek works quite well as his bearded lady girlfriend (even if the part did remind me a little too much of HBO’s “Carnivale”).

Patrick Fugit is near unrecognizable as Snake Boy, and, although her character isn’t handled as well as I’d like, Jessica Carlson adds a little spark to the second half of the film.

“Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant” is deeply flawed. The film is a mess and certainly not for everyone. And even if it doesn’t make a helluva lot of sense, it didn’t bore me (an offense I’d be much less willing to forgive). The right audience–and you know who you are–should be able to find a hour or two of enjoyment out of this strange little movie. Just keep your expectations low and think of Ed Wood before the titles start to roll.

Tags: Cirque du Freak movie review, Cirque du Freak review, film, movie, review, the vampire's assistant movie review, the vampire's assistant review, vampire, vampire's assistant

We have passes for you and a guest to attend the advance screening of THE FOURTH KIND on Tuesday, November 3 at 7:30 PM at the AMC Studio 30 (119th & I-35).

All you need to do is fill out the form below. We’ll have a random drawing on Friday, October 30 to determine the winners. Here’s the trailer, website for the film, and a synopsis from the studio:

1n 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, it is called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, it is the third kind. The next level, abduction, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document…until now.

Structured unlike any film before it, THE FOURTH KIND is a provocative thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where—mysteriously since the 1960s—a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered.

Here in this remote region, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) began videotaping sessions with traumatized patients and unwittingly discovered some of the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented.

Using never-before-seen archival footage that is integrated into the film, THE FOURTH KIND exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses. Their accounts of being visited by alien figures all share disturbingly identical details, the validity of which is investigated throughout the film.

THE FOURTH KIND opens nationwide on November 6.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY

Tags: advance, contest, early, fourth, free, giveaway, kansas city, kind, movie, passes, screening, THE FOURTH KIND

Eric’s castmate on VH1’s World Series of Pop Culture, Robert Bishop from Wocka Wocka, joins him for a review of “Where the Wild Things Are.” Spike Jonze directed the movie, which is adapted by Dave Eggers from the classic kids book by Maurice Sendak. Find out whether “Where the Wild Things Are” the movie is for kids or not.

Tags: are, clips, eggers, film, jonze, movie, review, sendak, things, trailer, where, where the wild things are movie review, where the wild things are review, wild

George saw the movie during Fantastic Fest last month. Read his take here. Mine follows below:

Rarely do movie critics talk about the actual experience of seeing a film in the theater in their actual review. It happens sometimes, but it’s usually presented as an aside (the film broke, the crowd responded this way, the sound was bad, etc.) and not something that’s necessarily essential to the enjoyment of the film.

For this review, there is simply no way around it.

First off, the ultra-low-budget suspense flick “Paranormal Activity” has based its entire ad campaign around audience reaction. The trailers and ads show movie theater crowds jumping in their seats and screaming in horror while viewing the picture.

Secondly, Paramount has been rolling it out at midnight shows only in select cities (until this weekend’s wider release), so the viewing hour limits the movie to its intended demographic—college kids up for a late-night scare. It also means that with only one showing a night the shows sell out quicker.

This means the movie’s been playing to packed crowds who are already predisposed to buy into its premise of a young couple haunted by a demon who tape the bizarre happenings in their home on a video camera, especially if they watch any number of the night-vision “reality” shows based on supernatural phenomena on A&E or MTV.

One thing must be mentioned: Since 1999’s similarly themed “The Blair Witch Project,” audiences are smarter about the way their images and movies are presented, so filmgoers going in believing that this is documentary footage left behind by real people are probably few and far between.

All of the above-mentioned points factor into how this movie played for me. To put it simply, it didn’t.

Is that the fault of stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat? Not really. The acting is quite naturalistic, considering some of the contrived things they have to do and say to hit the beats of the screenplay while convincing us that the footage is real.

Is it the fault of writer/director Oren Peli? Partially. His adherence to the premise that all video was shot by Micah and Katie is part of the movie’s fly-on-the-wall appeal, but it’s also its biggest stumbling block when it comes to plot. It’s hard to believe the couple wouldn’t leave their home or seek help outside of a psychic who leaves them high and dry, bolting from the front door because of angry demon vibes.

Mostly, it’s the fault of a friend of mine who sat two people down from me.

To put it mildly, the movie is a slow build. In fact, like “Blair Witch,” there’s barely any onscreen “action” at all. The whole less-is-more approach wasn’t working for my friend, who made it known about 20 minutes into the movie that something “better happen soon.” As the movie wore on, it wasn’t simply whispers to his girlfriend or the guy next to him anymore, it was loud exhortations directed at the screen or to everyone else in the theater.

When I hate a movie, I’ll admit that my body language can give it away sometimes. I’ll even admit to a groan or loud sigh every now and then. For the most part, though, I try to keep that stuff in check.

When my friend started reaching across the guy between us to tap me on the leg and talk to me, I knew I was sunk. I waved him off and gave him dirty looks, trying to show my displeasure silently (while still concentrating on the film), but he continued to show his disgust with the movie out loud. (And with a great big “rock fist down.”)

Here’s the funny part: For some of the film, I was right there with him. I agree with him that it was hard to get into and slow to get going. There is a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, however, that you must accept in order for the movie to work for you. My friend was “out” of the film early and stayed out. (Another friend was literally out—he left 30 minutes into the movie and decided to have a drink at a nearby bar until the movie was over!)

So the bottom line is—did “Paranormal Activity” work for me? No. That night, it didn’t.

I tried to concentrate on the movie, but my environment conspired to get the best of me. (Admittedly, I even dozed off for a second or two towards the middle of the movie and was jarred awake by my friend in kind of a “ha ha—gotcha!” moment for him.)

But this brings up an interesting question: If the suspension of disbelief is such a hurdle, how does the movie play in huge, sold-out theaters, where one would expect that more people means more hecklers? I would think there would be a lot of haters, but maybe the rest of the crowd would intimidate them into shutting up.

The theater I saw it in held about 100 people, fairly spread out, and there were waiters bringing food and drink orders and checks. Their mere appearance tended to draw me out of the movie a little more too.

Or—am I simply making excuses for a movie that I never really believed? There was an impressive level of skill on display in shaping the threadbare story around the reality-style limitations it required. But I only noticed these things occasionally and on a formal level, rather than actually getting into the movie on an emotional level.

Will the movie play on TV better because the cheapo camerawork suits the medium better or will it be impossible to stay involved in with interruptions galore at home?

I can only tell you about my experience and it was mixed at best. I guess this is one of those times where I’m glad I have a rating that doesn’t commit too firmly in either direction. Instead, it’s complete neutrality. I’m happy to give “Paranormal Activity” the Swiss fist and I’m happy to ask you about your experience seeing the movie.

Comment away …

Tags: angry, audience, crowd, hated, is paranormal activity real, loud, movie, noisy, paranormal activity, paranormal activity movie review, paranormal activity review, REAL, review, sold out, theater

It looks like Marlon Wayans is going to be playing Richard Pryor in a proposed biopic about the late comedian.

The Playlist is reporting that after being in the hands of several different studios, Sony Pictures seems to have picked up the film with Wayans in the lead role and Bill Condon (”Gods and Monsters,” “Dreamgirls”) to direct.

It’s still indefinite, but it’s an interesting thought.

While Pryor’s film roles left something to be desired, his stand up was acute and confrontational and not the least bit homogenized. The same, unfortunately, can’t really be said of Wayans, whose ventures into film (with one or two exceptions) have been pretty lame and whose stand up has been fairly generic.

People can surprise us, though. Adam Sandler did great work in a few dramatic roles. Jim Carrey, too. And let’s not forget where Oscar-nominee Mark Wahlberg got his start!

Tags: biopic, comedian, damon, marlon, movie, murphy, pryor, richard, wayans

Fantastic Fest 2009 may be over, but the wrap ups are still coming. Day 5 was one of my favorite days specifically because it consisted entirely of the lower-profile films that Fantastic Fest champions. Coincidentally, my schedule for the day ended up comprised half of horror movies, though in their own ways each felt like they each were from different eras despite all being recently made. “Trick ‘R Treat” is a horror anthology that feels like a cross between the best of late 80s and early 90s horror. “House of the Devil” is made to resemble the fondly remembered low-budget horror of the late 70s and early 80s, and “Rec 2″ is very much a modern shaky-cam fright fest, but with a supernatural twist most reminiscent of early 70s horror.

“Merantau” - solid rock fist up

The first movie of the day was the martial arts film “Merantau.” The Indonesian film industry has had a resurgence lately, and this is the first straight-up martial arts film to be produced by that country. A feet all the more remarkable considering just how good the finished product is.

Easily the best traditional martial arts film at Fantastic Fest this year, “Merantau” tells the story of a young man trying to build a life in the big city of Jakarta, when a chance encounter leads him to rescue a beautiful young woman from a sex trafficking ring.

Of course, the criminals won’t let her stay rescued. As they pursue the pair and her her younger brother, eventually they are forced to make a stand. It should be noted that while the plot may sounds a little trite or inconsequential, the unique atmosphere and culture help keep things feeling impressively fresh. Also, the movie is so sincere and the characters so earnest that you can’t help but be affected by both what happens and how it happens.

The fighting style on display here is also something slightly different than anything I’ve seen before. While not as dancey as capoeira, the way the fighters move here is new to me. It’s not quite the blast that “Ong Bak” was, but “Merantau” is a great example of what this genre and the future of Indonesian cinema has to offer.

“Trick ‘R Treat” - solid rock fist up

The long delayed “Trick ‘R Treat” successfully melds so many sub-genres of horror in a comparatively brief runtime that it’s understandable why it sat on the shelf for two years. It’s not that this movie isn’t good, it’s that it’s so varied it becomes difficult to sell.

Ostensibly a horror anthology, this movie diverts from the standard by actually having all its stories take place on Halloween night in the same town. Not only do some characters show up in multiple stories, the stories are interwoven in such a way that makes for a more involving narrative.

The brisk pacing also keeps the tension up throughout. Unlike most anthologies, there’s really no place where this drags and no weak stories. It may only be 82 minutes long, but so much happens that it almost feels overly generous. The body count is high, the gore and the kills crowd-pleasing, and the performances from actors such as Brian Cox, Dylan Baker, and Anna Paquin all transcend expectations for the horror genre.

It’s really a shame that this is being doomed to a direct to video fate because it’s better than the vast majority of the mainstream horror movies that do play theatrically. “Trick ‘R Treat” is available on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow just in time to become a Halloween institution in your house.

“Mandrill” - solid rock fist up

“Mandrill” is the new spy/hitman movie from the Chilean creative team behind “Kiltro” (a mostly traditional martial arts film) and “Mirageman” (a vigilante/superhero movie grounded in reality). If you haven’t checked those out, you should definitely give them a chance. There’s an inventiveness and a wicked sense of humor that drives both of those two movies, and it thankfully also guides “Mandrill.” The star, Marko Zaror, also happens to be a talented martial artist and was most notably a stunt and fight double for the Rock in “The Rundown.”

When “Mandrill” opens, our hero is on a mission. He infiltrates, beats, or kills a string of people all the while demanding “Where’s Waldo?” From there it just gets more outrageous, including a send-up of B-movie spy films shot in a similar style to the Brock Landers segments of “Boogie Nights.”

There’s a lot more here to like. The love story mostly works, and the fighting, while less plentiful compared to the previous films, is well-staged and appropriately brutal.

The interesting thing about all three of the movies from this team is that they catch you off guard. The low-budget look and subtitled dialogue is like a Trojan horse sneaking in a generous amount of humor and satisfying fights. They all scratch the same itch that the best cult 70s and 80s action movies do. While “Mandrill” may not quite exhibit an evolution in filmmaking for writer/director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, it is the best looking and funniest of the three and accomplishes all it sets out to do.

“House of the Devil” - rock fist way up

Ti West’s “House of the Devil” looks and feels so much like a horror film of the late 70s or early 80s that it would be easy to mistake it for one if not for the presence of industry vets Dee Wallace, Mary Woronov, and Tom Noonan. Think “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Black Christmas,” or “Halloween,” and you’ll have an idea of the look and feel of this. In fact, the costumes, performances, and dialogue are so perfectly analogous to that bygone era of a film making that you’d swear this was a lost classic and not just an exercise in style.

Thankfully it also completely succeeds as an unnerving and suspenseful horror film. Its slow burn may be too much for the ADD set who think it isn’t horror without rapid-fire cuts, heavy metal music, and a death every five minutes, but those with patience will be rewarded with a movie with a rare power to unnerve.

The text that opens the film briefly touches on the Satanic panic that swept across the United States in the early 80s. It then suggests there may have been some truth to it after all. Enter Samantha, an angel-faced young woman looking to extricate herself from the untenable conditions of her dorm and the burnout roommate from hell. She thinks she’s found the perfect place, but she’s short on cash and only has the weekend to raise it. An on-campus flier looking for a babysitter draws her attention, and despite just about every warning bell going off, she agrees to take the job.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a horror movie without a really bad decision at its center, and we spend nearly two-thirds of the movie with her in the titular house as she slowly discovers just how bad one decision can really be. Like the films that clearly influenced it, this movie has creepy atmosphere to spare. It also rewards patience with a bloody, satisfying climax that makes one thing clear: we all owe Geraldo Rivera an apology.

“House of the Devil” is now available as a “pre-theatrical rental” at Amazon.com.

“Stingray Sam” - rock fist way up

“Stingray Sam is not a hero, but he does do the things that folks don’t do that need to be done. He’s got a bravery inside of him that won’t let him run away, will not let him run.”

When I sat down to watch “Stingray Sam,” writer/director/composer Cory McAbee’s followup to the lesser known cult favorite “The American Astronaut,” I had no idea what I was in for. I also didn’t realize I had memorized the lyrics to its catchy theme song, but there they are.

Originally conceived as a series of downloads for portable media players and phones, McAbee embraces the once-popular serial format to present this science fiction/western/musical/comedy. While that may sound like a lot of slashes, the focus here is on the music and the comedy, with the science fiction and western elements providing a template for pointed satire that miraculously feels both timely and timeless.

Each of the six episodes runs about ten minutes in length, includes the above theme song with its opening and closing credits, and sticks to a formula that has the welcome side effect of grounding McAbee’s myriad ideas in palatable segments that never wear out their welcome. They all feature witty and biting David Hyde Pierce narration that recalls Douglas Adams, charming lead performances from both McAbee and his bandmate Crugie, a seriously wonderful and undeniably catchy soundtrack, and the best comedic performance of a director’s daughter since “Godfather Part III.”

While there is nothing out there quite like it, fans of the recent “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog” should feel right at home here. Even McAbee’s beautiful “The American Astronaut” seems more cerebral and restrained by comparison. Thankfully you don’t have to wait long to find out just how great this is. You can watch the first episode directly at StingraySam.com and if you like it, the entire film is available now with exclusive bonus content directly from its creator’s website.

In a sea of quirky titles, “Stingray Sam” stands out as the most fun I had at Fantastic Fest this year.

“[REC] 2″ - solid rock fist up

Two years ago, the Spanish film “[REC]” burst onto the scene. A shaky-cam horror tale about a late-night television personality covering a day in the life of firefighters that could have otherwise turned into “The Blair Zombie Project,” was hailed as an instant classic. This was thanks in part to several factors, including its location, lead actress, atmosphere, and the way it unraveled the central mystery behind an illness that turns people into rabid, seemingly mindless killers.

Thankfully, the majority of these elements are leveraged effectively here as well, while the events of the first film are put into a new context and that central mystery is explored even more deeply. The events of “[REC] 2″ span a few hours, some of which take place before the events of the first film even end. In that film some emergency workers and the film TV crew following them were trapped inside an apartment building in an attempt to contain a potential outbreak of a dangerous disease.

This film begins by following a paramilitary group and a man claiming to be a scientist as they enter the quarantined tenement building after all contact with those inside is lost. Told they must document everything, the team uses cameras mounted to helmets as they search the building for survivors and continue the mission of locating the source of the outbreak in order to synthesize a cure.

More action packed than its predecessor, “[REC] 2″ does not sacrifice scares or gore. In an interesting twist, the film also shifts perspectives to a separate group later in the film. While a little jarring at first, the shift in perspective actually keeps things fresh and adds yet another layer to the film. While some people may groan at the inclusion of nosy teenagers, their story provides a more identifiable human element that the first one handled so well.

Essentially a “middle chapter” film, “[REC] 2″ is the rare sequel that effectively expands the overall story in a way that enriches both films and makes the changes made in the rote American remake “Quarantine” seem extremely shortsighted. While being a great standalone horror film, “[REC] 2″ ends in such a way that so perfectly sets up a third part that the wait for “[REC] 3″ will be a very, very difficult one.

That was it for day five. Day six brought James McTiegue’s followup to “V for Vendetta” with “Ninja Assassin,” as well the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man,” Uwe Boll’s non-videogame based film “Rampage,” and more.

Tags: 2009, fantastic fest, House of the Devil, Mandrill, Merantau, movie, Rec 2, review, Stingray Sam, Trick 'R Treat