Dixeland

IMDb

A young, recently-released and unpredictable ex-con with bad luck, and a sexy, listless girl-next-door with a troubled family, become trapped in a downward spiral of crime and obsessive love, as they try to ditch their dead-end town for a better life.

- Written by Anon



Rotten Tomatoes
Featuring explosive chemistry between rising stars Chris Zylka (The Leftovers) and Riley Keough (Mad Max: Fury Road) and impressive supporting performances from music legends Faith Hill and Steve Earle, Dixieland is an intoxicating portrait of life and love on the margins. Fresh out of prison, Kermit (Zylka), a mostly good kid mixed up with local drug dealers, returns home to his rural Mississippi trailer park. As he struggles to keep his nose clean, he falls for Rachel (Keough), his sultry neighbor who's turned to dancing in a club to support her sick mother. Determined to overcome their inauspicious circumstances, the star-crossed lovers make a desperate, last-ditch effort to escape their dead-end town-but soon find themselves ensnared in a cycle of crime.


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Marvel's Jessica Jones

IMDb
A former super-hero decides to reboot her life by becoming a private investigator.


Hollywood Reporter

Krysten Ritter glowers and shines in Marvel's strong 'Daredevil' follow-up on Netflix.

Premiering on Netflix on Nov. 20, Marvel's Jessica Jones looks and feels a bit like a cable antihero series — but it's really more of a post-hero story, making it fascinating and unique in a marketplace that doesn't lack for costumed do-gooders of all types. Through seven episodes, Jessica Jones looks like another Netflix success for Marvel, following the spring launch of Daredevil.

Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), granted yet-to-be-fully explored powers in a yet-to-be-fully explained accident, tried to do the superhero thing, save lives and make New York City a better place. Things went pear-shaped. Tragedy ensued. Now, Jessica is running a ramshackle private-eye business, mostly taking pictures of cheating husbands. She's dodging her best friend (Rachael Taylor as a former child star turned radio personality) and taking a particular interest in a local bartender (Mike Colter). It's very early on that an abduction case involving college athlete Hope (Erin Moriarty) pulls Jessica back into the sphere of the purple-clad Kilgrave (David Tennant), the mysterious man who was the ruination of her dreams of heroism.

Working off a relatively new Marvel character created by Brian Michael Bendis, series creator Melissa Rosenberg is approaching Jessica Jones as a piece of hard-boiled noir, with Jessica as the brooding hero rather than the femme fatale. Jessica is haunted by her past and prone to outbursts of anger, self-medication with prodigious amounts of cheap booze and world-weary voiceover narration that propels the story. That she happens to be outrageously strong, able to leap to the fire escapes of tall buildings in a single bound and heal impressively fast, is secondary because even if the world can't hurt Jessica Jones, she's doing a pretty good job self-flagellating on her own.

While slight of stature, Ritter inhabits Jessica's callused mindset in a way that suggests her sarcastic quips only barely cover her real pain. It's a mix of the attitude Ritter brought to ABC's Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and the wounded soul she brought to Breaking Bad, with a new swagger that comes from knowing your character could beat the snot out of nearly everybody in the world. We know from flashbacks that Jessica always had been adrift, but her brief run as a hero gave her purpose and fortitude, both of which were stripped away by Tennant's Purple Man. How do you handle being a survivor instead of a hero?

Read more: 'Jessica Jones' Boss Says Netflix Show Will Be 'Wildly Different' From 'Daredevil'

If Ritter's Jessica is the noir protagonist, that makes Tennant's character the femme fatale. Introduced initially in creepy and insinuating vocal appearances — Tennant's native accent is back after thatGracepoint strangeness last fall — and only teased through brief glimpses in the earliest episodes, Kilgrave is the catalyst for the series' action, the untrustworthy figure whom people can't help but trust. Rather than luring people into credulity through sex wiles, this homme fatale lures women (and men) through mind control. Civilians are easy prey, but Jessica is nearly unstoppable physically, in a way enhancing the threat that comes from Kilgrave's violations of her mind. Jessica Jones therefore becomes a series about consent, abuse and trespass of the most intimate and troubling kind — a series about the impact of rape and trauma without the depiction of literal rape. New York City, even in its darkest, scuzziest alleys, is Jessica Jones' home, her security. But Kilgrave can do what thugs and deviants cannot: take away her security. Tennant makes the character seductive and crazed.

If Jessica Jones has a serious flaw in the early-going, it's that, as intriguing as Kilgrave is, the show shares Jessica's monomaniacal fixation on the character, and the result is a sort of narrative claustrophobia. Even Jessica's interest in the man we quickly learn is Luke Cage is Kilgrave-related. Taylor's Trish becomes part of Jessica's Kilgrave fascination and even ties in thematically because of the manipulation she experienced in her days as a young actress, as well as some other dark events that have Trish learning Krav Maga in a fortress of an apartment. Everything in these opening episodes ties back to Kilgrave, and Kilgrave is such a twisted figure that it's hard for any light to get in.

Fortunately, Ritter's co-stars are good enough on their own that the insularity doesn't rankle. Colter has been a valuable part of the Good Wife extended universe, but his assertive star power here instantly whets appetites for the Luke Cage Marvel/Netflix series that will be coming next. It's hard to watch Colter and not think that TV and movies should have been trying to give this guy franchise vehicles for years. Taylor, in contrast, has been a pet project of casting directors through at least three quickly canceled network shows, but this is the first time her potential properly is utilized. Jessica's relationships with Luke and Trish are driven by different needs — love, lust, friendship, forgiveness — and that keeps the Kilgrave of it all from overwhelming.

The rest of the Jessica Jones supporting cast is solidly populated, though I'm still waiting for Carrie-Anne Moss to have anything meaty to do and for Aussie actor Wil Traval to decide where his character's accent hails from.

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I Spit on your Grave 2

IMDb
When Katie innocently accepts an offer to have new photos taken for her portfolio, the experience quickly turns into a nightmare of rape, torture and kidnapping. Now, she will have to find the strength to exact her brutal revenge.




Rotten Tomatoes
A woman is brutally raped by four men, and she plans to seek vengeance. She tracks them down and has her revenge


Variety

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

Steven R. Monroe’s 2010 remake of the enduring 1978 cult hit “I Spit on Your Grave” was surprisingly strong, so it’s disappointing that this sequel — from the same director, although definitely not the same scenarists — should prove exactly the kind of bottom-feedingexploitation trash one expected the last time around. Rotely cribbing elements of “Hostel” and “Taken” to put another heroine through the gang-rape/near-fatal-beating mill, it’s a dreary affair that will thrill undiscriminating fans of torture-porn horror and nobody else. An “unrated version” launches an exclusive Los Angeles engagement Sept. 20, with various rollouts to follow in different territories. Theatrical exposure will likely again be minor, home-format sales hale.

The first “Spit” (originally released as “Day of the Woman,” and a flop until reissued under the more lurid title) was loathed by many, notably Roger Ebert. But there was a certain unsettling simplicity to its tale of a young city woman, seeking peace in the countryside, who is viciously assaulted by yokels, then (barely) survives to wreak methodical revenge. Whether it was his intent or not, writer-director Meir Zarchi (credited as an executive producer on the newer films) struck a chord among others who found the film feminist in its crude way. Certainly at the time, it could be read as both a critique of impotent male rage at “women’s lib,” and as a reversal of horror norms allowing the female victim to brutalize her tormentors in return. The remake kept that basic outline, with class/gender resentment toward the attractive, educated, “privileged” female interloper in an insular rural community again justifying (for the perps) her extreme abuse.

“I Spit on Your Grave 2” immediately announces it doesn’t understand (or care about) the value of that template, making its heroine an aspiring Manhattan model — as opposed to the aspiring writer of the first two films, removing any issue of her intellect being a threat. Told her portfolio needs upgrading, Katie (Jemma Dallender) has a session with a photographer, Ivan (Joe Absolom), which she ends abruptly when he suggests she take her clothes off. We’ve already gone “uh-oh!” the second that Ivan answers the phone in a Russian-sounding accent. Actually it’s Bulgarian — but if thrillers of the last decade have taught us anything, it’s that every former Soviet territory is an earthly hell preying upon corn-fed American innocents.

Also present at the shoot were Ivan’s comrades, vaguely sleazy layabout Nicolay (Aleksandar Aleksiev) and seemingly harmless simpleton Georgy (Yavor Baharoff). Yet it’s Georgy who later shows up uninvited at Katie’s flat, savagely binds, beats and rapes her, and kills the nice building super (Michael Dixon) who intervenes. Called to the scene, Georgy’s mates realize there’s no salvaging this situation without breaking at least a few more laws.

Next thing we know, Katie wakes up chained to a dank basement mattress in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia; somehow, she was transported all this way unconscious in a trunk. Now revealing their true, inherently evil Eastern European nature, the perps violate her some more before she manages to escape. Unfortunately (and improbably), one supposed rescuer turns out to be a dragon lady (Mary Stockley) in cahoots with the bad guys. More rape and beating ensue, including a sequence in which Katie is tasered endlessly with special attention paid to her intimate parts. (By the pic’s fadeout, one can only marvel that the filmmakers really, really have a thing for genital punishment.) At last the tables are turned, and rather than going to the police or the American embassy, Katie morphs into a resourceful, arse-whupping avenger, delivering major pain while repeating back the “I know you want this, heh heh” drivel her assailants had spouted previously. So ironic!

The script by Neil Elman and Thomas Fenton, whose bleak prior credits include something called “Mongolian Death Worm,” is a threadbare string of cliches on which to hang various forms of torture. Where Monroe’s 2010 remake preserved some of the original’s eerie, primal austerity, “I Spit on Your Grave 2” is just a hot mess, from the villainous stereotypes to the cheesy disco synth score to the Bulgarians speaking English to each other for no logical reason.

Gore and nastiness are plentiful, but they’re just wearyingly gratuitous rather than truly shocking. There is definitely something amiss when, amid depiction of so much grievous bodily harm, your mind drifts to how silly the lead thesp’s repertoire of screams and whimpers often sounds. While Dallender is indeed out of her depth, admittedly no more practiced actress could likely have lent this enterprise gravitas.

Tech and design contributions are solid enough.

Full Movie on Movie2KTO

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Demonic

IMDb
A police officer and a psychologist investigate the deaths of five people who were killed while trying to summon ghosts.


HorrorNewsNet

SYNOPSIS:

A police officer and a psychologist investigate the deaths of five people who were killed while trying to summon ghosts.

REVIEW:

Found footage films aren’t for everyone – after the success of The Blair Witch Project, plenty of filmmakers were eager to cash in on what seemed like an easy opportunity. Of course, this led to a number of poorly made, hastily produced films, many of which flopped or just went straight to DVD. Demonic is an interesting attempt to reinvent the genre. It follows a police investigation and rather than presenting the found footage as the film itself, it’s spliced with shots of the police analysing the footage, as well as their interviews with the survivor.

Demonic begins with a montage of newspaper and magazine clippings detailing the murder of a group of friends during the late eighties. Then, we cut to a gas station, where a police detective has his night off cut short by a call to a nearby house. When he arrives, he finds a gruesome scene – the bodies of a group of young people lie strewn around the house, and the sole survivor is in a state of panic. Reinforcements are called and the survivor, John (Dustin Milligan), is detained. It’s revealed that John’s pregnant girlfriend, Michelle (Cody Horn), and her ex-boyfriend, Bryan (Scott Mechlowicz) are both missing from the body count, having presumably fled the house.

Much of the film revolves around the police detective, Mark Lewis (Frank Grillo) and criminal psychologist, Dr Elizabeth Klein (Maria Bello) and their attempts to piece together the murders. Conveniently enough, the group documented their time in the house using a series of cameras, and the police team are able to recover enough of the footage to determine what really happened over the course of the night.

The video footage shows the usual – a group of friends are travelling to an abandoned location, camera in tow, to investigate something creepy. In this case, it’s the Livingstone house, the scene of the murders years prior, and their intention is to discover the reasons behind the visions which John has been plagued by. While he’s never visited the house, he is able to recall minute details of its interior with eerie accuracy.

Of course, given the history of the house, they take it upon themselves to perform a séance in an attempt to contact the spirits which may be lingering in the house, particularly Martha Livingstone, the owner and culprit behind the 1988 murders. And, as expected, in an uninspiring turn of events, this goes horribly wrong, and the group manage to unleash an evil from beyond the grave.

It’s revealed that John’s mother was the sole survivor of the original murders, leading the police to suspect that he’s attempting to imitate the killings. There’s plenty of gory footage of the night that follows the séance, but it’s impossible to tell from the videos alone who’s behind the morbid scene at the house. However, as the film unfolds, it becomes clear that everything isn’t as it seems, and that dark, supernatural forces may be responsible for the deaths.

Demonic does its best to impress with plenty of twists and turns, but in the end, I was left feeling unfulfilled. The ending was cliff-hanger, which might otherwise be considered suspenseful, but it didn’t feel as if the ‘evil’ in the film was explained well enough for such an ambiguous ending to instil any fear in the viewer.

While James Wan isn’t the director of Demonic (that would be Will Canon, also behind 2010’s Brotherhood– Wan is credited as a producer), they were quick to plaster his name over the film’s posters. With successful titles like Saw and Insidious under his belt, I honestly expected more. There were plenty of great jump scares but while the approach was, in some respects, refreshing, the raw feel of the found footage was diminished by all of the fixed angle shots and professional cinematography.

Plus, they included a stereotypically awkward, tech-savvy Asian. In 2015! I think that that says everything you need to know.

Full movie on MovieTard

Uncle John

IMDb
In this tale of small town intrigue, an urbanite returns to his quiet hometown on an impromptu trip as his Uncle, widely respected in town, struggles to evade suspicion of a murder.



Hollywood Reporter

John Ashton plays the title role in Steven Piet's debut feature interweaving thriller and romantic comedy plotlines.

You get two movies in one with Steven Piet's combination of slow-burn thriller and low-key romantic comedy. Depicting the contrasting stories of an elderly man in the heartland who's apparently committed a murder and the burgeoning relationship between two co-workers at an urban media company, Uncle John deserves points for the audacity of its stylistic conceit. The film doesn't work as well as intended, but has enough going for it to mark its director/co-screenwriter as a talent to watch.

Its other virtue is reintroducing John Ashton to the screen in his first major role in decades. The character actor, memorable for his sardonic comic turns in Midnight Run and the Beverly Hills Copsmovies, delivers an understated but career-defining performance as the title character.

Seen disposing of a body in the film's opening moments, John is an unassuming widower who looks like he wouldn't hurt a fly. Whether engaging in small town gossip with his buddies at the coffee shop or politely ignoring the flirtations of one of his carpentry clients, he maintains a low-key demeanor that is only betrayed by the quiet intensity of his gaze.

Read More 'Spectre' World Premiere in London Will Be Royal Charity Screening

His presumed victim is a former town troublemaker named Dutch, who has recently gone missing after reforming and traveling about the community making amends. He's officially declared missing, but his grieving brother Danny (Ronnie Gene Blevins, exuding wild-eyed charisma) focuses his suspicions on John.

In the parallel narrative we're introduced to Ben (Alex Moffat), an affable graphic designer at a small media company, and Kate (Jenna Lyng), his newly hired manager for whom he has an instant attraction. She seems to reciprocate the feeling but, wary of an inter-office romance, she instead becomes the sort of drinking buddy who sets Ben up with a drunken woman at a bar.

Their long flirtation, marked by much teasing banter, seems poised to reach another level when Ben impulsively suggests a road trip to Wisconsin where they can visit his Uncle John and partake of his hometown bakery's old-fashioned treats.

Their unexpected arrival at John's ranch leads to both stories coming to a head, with the characters reaching resolutions of either the violent or romantic kind.

Read More Screenwriter Strife Hits Jennifer Lawrence's 'Joy'

For much of the film's running time, the viewer is left unsure of the relationship between the two storylines, resulting in a schizophrenic cinematic experience. While both plots work reasonably well separately, they're unnecessarily padded and don't tie together strongly. As a result, the film doesn't achieve its goal of its sum being bigger than its parts, although its climactic scene delivers a quietly haunting reminder that we don't fully know even those closest to us.

The film is an impressive dual calling card for its tyro director who keeps the tension at a simmering boil throughout both genres. And the late-career performance by the veteran Ashton (sans his usual moustache) is a revelation. The now 67-year-old actor has been steadily employed over the years, but he's rarely had a role as good as this one and it's a pleasure to watch him run away with it.

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The Name of The Rose

IMDb
An intellectually nonconformist monk investigates a series of mysterious deaths in an isolated abbey.



RogerEbert
In my imagination, there are two kinds of monks and two kinds of monasteries. The first kind of monastery is a robust community of men who work hard and pray hard and are bronzed by the sun and have a practical sense of humor. They have joined the life of prayer with the life of the hands. The second monastery is a shuttered series of gloomy passages and dank cells where jealous, mean-spirited little men scamper about playing politics. Their prayers are sanctimonious and their nights are long and resentful.

In the first few scenes of "The Name of the Rose," we realize that this will be a movie about a contest between the two kinds of monks.

Here comes the first one now, striding across the open fields of the Middle Ages, his heavy wool habit little protection against the cold winds. His name is William of Baskerville, and he is portrayed by Sean Connery, who plays him as the first modern man, as a scholar-monk who understands all of the lessons of the past but is able to see them in a wider context than the others of his time.

One day, William arrives at a vast monastery, which crouches with foreboding on top of a steep hill. At its base, starving peasants wrestle for scraps of food thrown down from the monk's kitchens. At its pinnacle is a great tower arranged as a labyrinth; you might find anything up there - except the way out.

A series of murders is taking place in the monastery. William has a reputation as something of an investigator, and soon after his arrival he is involved in trying to identify the causes of death and to find the murderer. There are many suspects. Indeed, I cannot remember a single monk in this monastery who does not look like a suspect. The film has been cast to look like a cross between the grotesques of Fellini and the rat-faced devils scampering in the backgrounds of a tarot deck.

What we have here is the setup for a wonderful movie. What we get is a very confused story, photographed in such murky gloom that sometimes it is hard to be sure exactly what is happening. William of Baskerville listens closely and nods wisely and pokes into out-of-the-way corners, and makes solemn pronouncements to his young novice. Clearly, he is onto something, but the screenplay is so loosely constructed that few connections are made between his conclusions and what happens next.

During the central sections of the film, the atmosphere threatens to overwhelm the action. "The Name of the Rose" was shot in a real monastery and on sets that look completely convincing, but unfortunately the film takes the "dark ages" literally and sets its events in such inpenetrable gloom that sometimes it is almost impossible to see what is happening. The large cast of characters swims in and out of view while horrible events take place; a monk is found dead at the base of the tower, and another is drowned in a wine vat.

William of Baskerville moves solemnly from one event to another, deliberately, wisely, but then the plot takes on a crazy rhythm of its own, as the Grand Inquisitor arrives to hold a trial and ancient secrets are discovered inside the labyrinth of the tower.

What this movie needs is a clear, spare, logical screenplay. It's all inspiration and no discipline. At a crucial moment in the film, William and his novice seem sure to be burned alive, and we have to deduce how they escaped because the movie doesn't tell us. There are so many good things in "The Name of the Rose" - the performances, the reconstruction of the period, the over-all feeling of medieval times - that if the story had been able to really involve us, there would have been quite a movie here.

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Mother of all Lies

IMDb

Adopted teenager Sara goes in search of her birth mother Abby, only to find the woman in prison for bank robbery and manslaughter. In an upcoming parole hearing, Sara helps Abby win release, and decides to spend the summer with her before leaving for college. But Sara soon finds herself in danger as her mother returns to her former partner in crime, Carl. When Carl ends up dead, both Abby and Sara will be wanted for murder - hunted by the police and the dead man's cohorts.

- Written by Reel One Pictures


Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

In this taut thriller, a reunion between a young woman and her ex-con birth mother turns murderous when they get involved in a crime of passion committed at a remote cabin.

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Transporter Refueled

IMDb
In the south of France, former special-ops mercenary Frank Martin enters into a game of chess with a femme-fatale and her three sidekicks who are looking for revenge against a sinister Russian kingpin.




Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

Frank Martin (played by newcomer Ed Skrein), a former special-ops mercenary, is now living a less perilous life - or so he thinks - transporting classified packages for questionable people. When Frank's father (Ray Stevenson) pays him a visit in the south of France, their father-son bonding weekend takes a turn for the worse when Frank is engaged by a cunning femme-fatale, Anna (Loan Chabanol), and her three seductive sidekicks to orchestrate the bank heist of the century. Frank must use his covert expertise and knowledge of fast cars, fast driving and fast women to outrun a sinister Russian kingpin, and worse than that, he is thrust into a dangerous game of chess with a team of gorgeous women out for revenge.

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