Monster

Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

Model-turned-actress Charlize Theron leaves her glamorous image behind for this gritty drama, in which she plays a disturbed prostitute who becomes a serial killer. Aileen Wuornos (Theron) was a woman who survived a brutal and abusive childhood in Michigan to become a thick-skinned but emotionally damaged adult. Homeless most of her life, Wuornos subsisted by working as a street prostitute; later, when she was in Florida, down to her last five dollars and pondering suicide, she stopped into a bar for a beer. There, Aileen met Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), a woman in her early twenties who had been sent to live with relatives after her Christian parents became aware of her lesbian lifestyle. Selby is immediately attracted to Aileen, and while Aileen tells Selby she's never been in a lesbian relationship, she soon finds herself equally infatuated with her. Selby runs away from her family and moves into a cheap hotel with Aileen, who initially pays the bills by hooking. However, as their money runs low and Aileen finds herself unable to land a regular job, tensions mount between the two. One night, after a john attacks her, Aileen pulls a gun and kills the man. Although her first murder can be categorized as self-defense, Aileen's loathing for the men who pay her for sex becomes so extreme that she begins killing her customers regardless of their behavior. Meanwhile, Selby slowly becomes aware of the full extent of her lover's instability and the bloody consequences of her actions. Monster was inspired by the true story of Aileen Wuornos, whose life and death was chronicled in two documentaries by filmmaker Nick Broomfield, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, and Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

RogerEbert

What Charlize Theron achieves in Patty Jenkins' "Monster" isn't a performance but an embodiment. With courage, art and charity, she empathizes with Aileen Wuornos, a damaged woman who committed seven murders. She does not excuse the murders. She simply asks that we witness the woman's final desperate attempt to be a better person than her fate intended.

Wuornos received a lot of publicity during her arrest, trial, conviction and 2002 execution for the Florida murders of seven men who picked her up as a prostitute (although one wanted to help her, not use her). The headlines, true as always to our compulsion to treat everything as a sporting event or an entry for the Guinness Book, called her "America's first female serial killer." Her image on the news and in documentaries presented a large, beaten-down woman who did seem to be monstrous. Evidence against her was given by Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), an 18-year-old who became the older woman's naive lesbian lover and inspired Aileen's dream of earning enough money to set them up in a "normal" lifestyle. Robbing her clients led to murder, and each new murder seemed necessary to cover the tracks leading from the previous one.

I confess that I walked into the screening not knowing who the star was, and that I did not recognize Charlize Theron until I read her name in the closing credits. Not many others will have that surprise; she was just honored as best actress of the year by the National Society of Film Critics. I didn't recognize her -- but more to the point, I hardly tried, because the performance is so focused and intense that it becomes a fact of life. Observe the way Theron controls her eyes in the film; there is not a flicker of inattention, as she urgently communicates what she is feeling and thinking. There's the uncanny sensation that Theron has forgotten the camera and the script and is directly channeling her ideas about Aileen Wuornos. She has made herself the instrument of this character.

I have already learned more than I wanted to about the techniques of disguise used by makeup artist Toni G. to transform an attractive 28-year-old into an ungainly street prostitute, snapping her cigarette butt into the shadows before stepping forward to talk with a faceless man who has found her in the shadows of a barren Florida highway. Watching the film, I had no sense of makeup technique; I was simply watching one of the most real people I had ever seen on the screen. Jenkins, the writer-director, has made the best film of the year. Movies like this are perfect when they get made, before they're ground down by analysis. There is a certain tone in the voices of some critics that I detest -- that superior way of explaining technique in order to destroy it. They imply that because they can explain how Theron did it, she didn't do it. But she does it.

The movie opens with Aileen informing God that she is down to her last $5, and that if God doesn't guide her to spend it wisely she will end her life. She walks into what happens to be a lesbian bar and meets the 18-year-old Selby, who has been sent to live with Florida relatives and be "cured" of lesbianism. Aileen is adamant that she's had no lesbian experience, and indeed her sordid life as a bottom-rung sex worker has left her with no taste for sex at all. Selby's own sexuality functions essentially as a way to shock her parents and gratify her need to be desired. There is a stunning scene when the two women connect with raw sexual energy, but soon enough sex is unimportant compared to daydreaming, watching television, and enacting their private soap opera in cheap roadside motels.

Aileen is the protector and provider, proudly bringing home the bacon -- and the keys to cars that Selby doesn't ask too many questions about. Does she know that Aileen has started to murder her clients? She does and doesn't. Aileen's murder spree becomes big news long before Selby focuses on it. The crimes themselves are triggered by Aileen's loathing for prostitution -- by a lifetime's hatred for the way men have treated her since she was a child. She has only one male friend, a shattered Vietnam veteran and fellow drunk (Bruce Dern). Although she kills for the first time in self-defense, she is also lashing out against her past. Her experience of love with Selby brings revulsion uncoiling from her memories; men treat her in a cruel way and pay for their sins and those of all who went before them. The most heartbreaking scene is the death of a good man (Scott Wilson) who actually wants to help her, but has arrived so late in her life that the only way he can help is to be eliminated as a witness.

Aileen's body language is frightening and fascinating. She doesn't know how to occupy her body. Watch Theron as she goes through a repertory of little arm straightenings and body adjustments and head tosses and hair touchings, as she nervously tries to shake out her nervousness and look at ease. Observe her smoking technique; she handles her cigarettes with the self-conscious bravado of a 13-year-old trying to impress a kid. And note that there is only one moment in the movie where she seems relaxed and at peace with herself; you will know the scene, and it will explain itself. This is one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.

Christina Ricci finds the correct note for Selby Wall -- so correct some critics have mistaken it for bad acting, when in fact it is sublime acting in its portrayal of a bad actor. She plays Selby as clueless, dim, in over her head, picking up cues from moment to moment, cobbling her behavior out of notions borrowed from bad movies, old songs, and barroom romances. Selby must have walked into a gay bar for the first time only a few weeks ago, and studied desperately to figure out how to present herself. Selby and Aileen are often trying to improvise the next line they think the other wants to hear.

We are told to hate the sin but not the sinner, and as I watched "Monster" I began to see it as an exercise in the theological virtue of charity. It refuses to objectify Wuornos and her crimes and refuses to exploit her story in the cynical manner of true crime sensationalism -- insisting instead on seeing her as one of God's creatures worthy of our attention. She has been so cruelly twisted by life that she seems incapable of goodness, and yet when she feels love for the first time she is inspired to try to be a better person.

She is unequipped for this struggle, and lacks the gifts of intelligence and common sense. She is devoid of conventional moral standards. She is impulsive, reckless, angry and violent, and she devastates her victims, their families and herself. There are no excuses for what she does, but there are reasons, and the purpose of the movie is to make them visible. If life had given her anything at all to work with, we would feel no sympathy. But life has beaten her beyond redemption

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Vampire Boys 2

Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

Jasin and Caleb's eternal bliss is put to the test when Jasin's exes Demetrius and Tara are unable to get over his rejection. Demetrius plots to get revenge by creating an army of vampires from the local boxing gym. In his quest for power, he recruits Tara who is still reeling from her own very recent rejection by Jasin. Revenge is a dish best served cold and Tara cannot resist the chance to show her worth and might. It will take a lot more than prayers for this undead couple to triumph over the ills of their past.

IMDb

Jasin and Caleb's eternal bliss is put to the test when Jasin's century old rival Demetrius returns to get his revenge. Demetrius plots to destroy Jasin by creating an army of vampires by recruiting unwilling victims from the local boxing gym for his new brood. In his quest for domination, he recruits Jasin's ex, Tara, who is still quietly grieving from Jasin's rejection. Power and passion collide when the two broods finally clash. Who will remain and who will be destroyed for eternity?

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Vampire Boys

Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

A vampire seeks to reclaim his immortality and save his progeny from certain death by transforming a chosen mortal into a bloodsucking creature of the night. Unless Jasin finds his "chosen one" soon, he and his brood will perish. But while the gang has unanimously chosen attractive young college student Tara as the mortal that will grant them eternal life, Jasin finds himself increasingly drawn to naïve Midwestern transplant Caleb. Meanwhile, as the deadline for Jasin to select his eternal mate draws near, Caleb's suspicious roommate senses that something is horribly amiss, and vows to do everything in his power to stop the vampires before it's too late. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

IMDb

Jasin and his vampire brood's time is running out. In order for them to survive, Jasin needs to find a mortal to turn into a vampire to spend eternity with. Los Angeles provides plenty of young candidates. The brood has their eyes set on Tara, a young, gorgeous blond college student. Tara is open to the idea of becoming a vampire, but someone else enters the picture to disrupt the brood's plans. Caleb, a fresh face college student new to Los Angeles, keeps dreaming of a mysterious stranger. At school, Caleb meets the stranger, Jasin, and they have an instant connection. The problem is that time is short, and Jasin needs to convince Caleb that eternity as a vampire can be a very sweet life.

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Freezer 2013

IMDb

• Robert is an ordinary man who is faced with extraordinary circumstances. He is locked in a meat freezer by Russian thugs who believe that he owes them 8 million dollars. Robert, who is in every frame of the film soon discovers that he is not alone in the freezer. Sam, a stranger, is also locked in with him, and it becomes a struggle to survive the cold and the forces that are against them.
  - Written by K. Tobin
• Dylan McDermott stars as Robert Saunders, a New York City mechanic who is knocked unconscious at his birthday dinner and wakes up to find himself locked inside the restaurant's walk-in freezer. But why he's there - and how he'll survive - will reveal a chilling nightmare of mistaken identity, the Russian mob, a missing $8 million, and a wounded cop (Peter Facinelli) who may hold the key it all. The temperature is dropping. The fear is growing. And for a man caught between frozen death and vicious thugs, what happens next may lead to the most cold-blooded twist of all.

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Killer Movie

Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

Writer/director Jeff Fisher, who cut his teeth directing episodes of such popular reality shows as The Simple Life and The Real World/Road Rules Challenge, make his feature directorial debut with this slasher satire about a television crew being stalked by a murderous psychopath. Up and coming television director Jake Tanner is out of a job. The reality show he was working on, "Back to the Ranch," has been cancelled, and now his agent has landed him a job as replacement director on yet another reality show - this one tracing the unlikely winning streak of a North Dakota high school hockey team. The first order of business for Jake is to contend with demanding celebutante Blanca Champion, who has been hired on as a production assistant. But Blanca doesn't seem to be taking the job too seriously, because when she's not taking cat naps or hitting on the local teenage boys, she spends most of her time researching an upcoming film role that she hopes will be her big breakthrough. Later, when Tanner's crew-members start disappearing, Blanca proves to be the least of his worries. The body count is piling up fast, but who could be responsible? Is it the bible-thumping ex-convict from the backwoods, the short-fused hockey coach, or perhaps the producer with an unhealthy fixation on ratings? ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

IMDb

Storyline

Killer Movie tells the story of a reality television shoot that goes awry when its crew finds itself stranded in a remote Northern town. A killer is on the loose, stalking cast and crew members one by one. As past suspicions, betrayals and secrets inexplicably come into play, the nightmare of shooting this reality show becomes all too real for Jake, the show's director, his crew and Hollywood starlet Blanca Champion. Written by PMK

Taglines:

 Fear Reality.

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Bully

Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

Photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark, who made a controversial feature debut with the disturbing drama Kids, returns with another disquieting look at amoral and sexually precocious youth. Bobby (Nick Stahl) is a high school student growing up in southern Florida in the early '90s. Bobby is also a borderline psychotic; he frequently lashes out with brutal violence against those around him and especially enjoys humiliating his best friend Marty (Brad Renfro). While Bobby professes to hate and fear homosexuals, he goads Marty into performing phone sex with men, makes Marty and his friends watch hardcore gay porn films with him, and may have sexually abused Marty. But Marty is hardly the only victim of Bobby's abuse; Bobby has sexually assaulted Marty's girlfriend Lisa (Rachel Miner) and more than once has barged in on the couple while they were making love. Lisa's best friend Ali (Bijou Phillips) has also been raped by Bobby, and he has mistreated nearly everyone in their circle of friends. One night, Marty, Lisa, Ali, and several others decide Bobby's cycle of abuse must stop. But their solution is as ugly as the problem -- the teens stab Bobby, slit his throat, crush his head with a baseball bat, and throw his body into the bay, where the remains will be eaten by alligators. Bully is based on a book by journalist Jim Schutze, which recounted the facts of the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent, who after years of abusing his friends and classmates, was killed by seven of his acquaintances in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. As with Kids, Larry Clark's startlingly graphic depiction of sex, violence, and drug use among teenagers crossed the boundaries of what the MPAA could permit in an R-rated film, and the picture's distributors chose to release the film without a rating. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

RogerEbert

Larry Clark's "Bully" calls the bluff of movies that pretend to be about murder but are really about entertainment. His film has all the sadness and shabbiness, all the mess and cruelty and thoughtless stupidity of the real thing. Based on a real story from 1993, it tells the story of a twisted high school bully and a circle of friends who decide to kill him. But this is not about the evil sadist and the release of revenge; it's about how a group of kids will do something no single member is capable of. And about the moral void these kids inhabit.

Clark moved to the Hollywood, Fla., suburb where the actual murder took place, and sees it as a sterile expanse of Identikit homes, strip malls and boredom, where the kids drift from video arcades to fast food hangouts, and a car means freedom. There is no doubt a parallel universe in this same suburb, filled with happy, creative, intelligent people and endless opportunities--there always is--but these kids are off that map. They are stupid by choice, not necessity; they have fallen into a slacker subculture that involves leading their lives in a void that can be filled only by booze, drugs, sex, and the endless, aimless analysis of their pathetic emptiness.

The movie is brilliantly and courageously well-acted by its young cast; it's one of those movies so perceptive and wounding that there's no place for the actors to hide, no cop out they can exercise. Their characters bleed with banality and stupid, doped reasoning. Their parents are not bad and, for the most part, not blamed; their children live in a world they do not understand or, in some cases, even see.

We meet Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro) and Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl). For as long as Marty can remember, Bobby has picked on him, and we see it as a daily ordeal: The ear twisting, the hard punches, the peremptory orders ("Get back in the car now!"), the demands that he go where he doesn't want to go and do what he doesn't want to do. In a key scene, Bobby takes him to a gay strip club and makes him dance on the stage while patrons stuff bills into his shorts. Marty is not gay. Bobby may be; certainly his relationship with Bobby is sublimated S/M.

Marty and Bobby meet Ali and Lisa (Bijou Phillips and Rachel Miner). Bobby eventually rapes both girls. He also likes to watch Marty and Lisa in the back seat. He is, we sense, evil to the core; something has gone very wrong in his life, and maybe it was engendered by the authoritarian style of his father, who likes to dominate people under the guise of only doing what's right for them.

The movie establishes these kids in a larger circle of friends, including the tall, strong and essentially nice Donny (Michael Pitt), the anything-goes Heather (Kelli Garner), and Derek (Daniel Franzese), along for the ride. It watches as they drift from coffee shops to malls to one another's cars and bedrooms, engaged in an endless loop of speculation about the only subject available to them, their lives. The leadership in this circle shifts according to who has a strongly held opinion; the others drift into line. A consensus begins to form that Bobby deserves to be killed. At one point, Lisa simply says, "I want him dead." It's chilling, the way the murder is planned so heedlessly. The kids decide they don't know enough to do it themselves, and need to hire a "hit man." This turns out to be Leo Fitzpatrick (from Clark's powerful first film, "Kids"), who is essentially a kid himself. The conspirators vaguely think his family is "Mafia," although his qualifications come into question when he worries that car horns will bother the neighbors; eventually we get the priceless line, "The hit man needs a ride." The details of the murder are observed unblinkingly in a scene of harrowing, gruesome sadness. It is hard, messy work to kill someone. Once the body is disposed of, the arguments begin almost immediately: Everybody had a hand in the assault, but nobody actually can be said to have delivered the fatal blow, and we watch incredulously as these kids cave in to guilt, remorse, grief, blaming one another, and the irresistible impulse to tell outsiders what happened.

Clark's purpose in the film is twofold. He wants to depict a youth culture without resources, and to show how a crowd is capable of actions its members would never commit on their own. In "Kids" (1995) and in this film, the adult society has abandoned these characters--done little to educate or challenge them, or to create a world in which they have purpose. One of Bobby's sins, which I neglected to mention, is that he is still in high school and plans to go to college; the others live with fast-food jobs and handouts from parents, and Ali has a revealing line: "I was married once, for about three weeks. I have a little boy, but it's no big deal--my parents take care of him." "Kids" takes place in Manhattan and "Bully" in south Florida but these kids occupy essentially the same lives, have the same parents, share the same futures.

It may be that "Bully" helps to explain the high school shootings. We sense the chilling disconnect between an action and its consequences, the availability of firearms, the buildup of teenage resentments and hatreds, the moral vacuum, the way they can talk themselves into doing unthinkable things, and above all the need to talk about it. (So many high school shooters leave diaries and Web pages, and tell their friends what they plan to do.) Yes, Bobby Kent is a bully (and one of the most loathsome characters I've seen in a movie). But he dies not for his sins, but because his killers are so bored and adrift, and have such uncertain ideas of themselves.

Larry Clark is obviously obsessed by the culture of floating, unplugged teenagers. Sometimes his camera seems too willing to watch during the scenes of nudity and sex, and there is one particular shot that seems shameless in its voyeurism (you'll know the one). But it's this very drive that fuels his films. If the director doesn't have a strong personal feeling about material like this, he shouldn't be making movies about it.

Clark is not some objectified, outside adult observer making an after-school special, but an artist who has made a leap into this teenage mindscape. Some critics have attacked him as a dirty old man with a suspect relationship to his material; if this film had been directed by a 25-year-old, some of these same critics might be hailing it. I believe "Bully" is a masterpiece on its own terms, a frightening indictment of a society that offers absolutely nothing to some of its children--and an indictment of the children, who lack the imagination and courage to try to escape. Bobby and his killers deserve one another.

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