A Dark Reflection

IMDb
A journalist digs deep into the world of aviation and discovers some uncomfortable truths. And a conspiracy trail dating back to 1954. But why is no one saying anything?


Rotten Tomatoes
The film, an investigative thriller, based on actual real events occurring globally today, tells the story of two British journalists that by chance, discover aviation's biggest cover-up. A serious in flight incident not disclosed by JASP Airlines reveals a hidden truth. Their investigation soon seeks to prove passengers have been knowingly put at risk since the 1950s. When new airline CEO discovers the darker side of the airline industry and its secret campaign of denial being withheld by airline owner, he is faced with the nightmare scenario. Corporate profit or the public's safety? The film reveals facts that every airline passenger should watch before they next fly.


Full movie on Pubfilm

A thosand Kisses Deep

IMDb
An unsettling drama that cinematically captures and recreates the psycho-analytic experience.



Rotten Tomatoes
How well do you know yourself and those you love? Returning home from work, Mia witnesses an aged woman leap from a window. Scattered around the old woman's broken, lifeless body Mia discovers shredded pieces from a beloved photograph of herself and her former lover Ludwig. Highly unnerved, Mia begs Max, the buildings' custodian , to let her into the deceased woman's flat. While inside this strangely familiar place, Mia recognizes the contents as her own. Confused and disturbed by what lies before her, she bolts back and forth in time where she is forced to realize it was her very own life that ended before her. Now, the only way to safeguard her future is to go back to her past and confront the man she loves deeply but dreads most.

Full movie on Pubfilm

The Pack

IMDb

A farmer and his family must fight for survival after a ferocious pack of wild dogs infiltrates their isolated farmhouse. Through a series of frightening and bloody encounters they are forced into survival mode to make it through the night.

- Written by Kent Smith


DailyMail

'They've become bigger and bolder': Australian horror movie The Pack based on real-life accounts of 'increasing' wild dog attacks in the Outback

• Wild dog attacks across Australia to be basis for new Australian horror film
• The Pack follows a family in the Outback besieged by blood-thirsty dogs
• Real farmers say livestock attacked two to three times a week by wild dogs
• Increased numbers and size of the animals contributing to the problem

By MARIA LEWI

From crocodiles and sharks, to deadly spiders and snakes, Australia is notorious for being home to some of the deadliest animals on the planet.

Now a new Australian horror movie is set to shed light on a whole new breed of deadly predators: wild dogs.

The Pack starts shooting in the South Australian Outback in June and follows the journey of a family fighting to survive after their rural property becomes besieged by ravenous dogs.

It's a terrifying premise, and one that producer Kent Smith reveals is based on several 'real life' occurrences. 

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

+9

Real-life danger: Wild dogs attacking people is the basis of a new Australian horror movie, but they are also a genuine danger - such as this feral pup caught in a trapping program in the Hunter Region of New South Wales

'There's so many stories at the moment - true stories - out there about the dogs increasing in numbers and becoming more vicious,' he told the MailOnline. S

Full Movie on Pubfilm

Contagion

IMDb
Healthcare professionals, government officials and everyday people find themselves in the midst of a worldwide epidemic as the CDC works to find a cure


Rotten Tomatoes
Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving epidemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself. At the same time, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart. -- (C) Warner Bros.

Full movie on Pubfilm

Voodoo Academy

IMDb

Young Christopher has just enrolled at the prestigious Carmichael Bible College, managed by the somewhat unusual Mrs. Bouvier. After some unexplained disappearances, Christopher does some exploring and discovers that Mrs. Bouvier and the Reverend Carmichael have some very unwholesome intentions for the young men of their school. Will Christopher graduate with his body and soul intact?

- Written by Jean-Marc Rocher



Rotten Tomatoes
A young bible college student learns that his future (or lack thereof) may literally lie in the hands of a malicious clergyman in this shocker from Witchouse director David DeCoteau. Though Christopher Sawyer's (Riley Smith) arrival at Carmichael Bible College goes smoothly as expected, it isn't until he meets the mysterious Reverend Carmichael (Chad Burris) that something appears to be amiss. Between the reverend's strange behavior and the downright un-Christian seductiveness of his financier, Mrs. Bouvier (Debra Mayer), Christopher slowly begins to realize that something is amiss at Carmichael Bible College. When it's revealed that the students are slowly being transformed into human voodoo dolls, the stage is set for a supernatural struggle that's likely to blacken the souls of both the faculty and the student body.


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and SharePro
and VeeHD

The Remaining

IMDb
Friends gather at a wedding, but the celebration is shattered by terrifying apocalyptic events forcing them to examine life, love and faith as they must choose between redemption and survival.



Rotten Tomatoes
A group of close friends gather for a wedding, but the celebration is shattered by a series of cataclysmic events and enemies foretold by biblical end-times prophecies. The Remaining - Dan, Skylar, Tommy, Jack, Allison and Sam face a horrifying, uncertain future as they fight for their lives. Who will survive?


Full Movie on Pubfilm

Black Christmas

IMDb
A sorority house is terrorized by a stranger who makes frightening phone calls and then murders the sorority sisters during Christmas break.



Rotten Tomatoes
Although this Canadian production saw its widest U.S. cable TV distribution in the early '80s (primarily under the title Stranger in the House) to capitalize on the phenomenal success of Halloween and its offspring, this effective suspense-thriller actually predates John Carpenter's film by four years. The story involves a dangerous psychopath hiding out in the attic of a sorority house who torments a small group of pretty young sisters (including Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder) who are staying behind over Christmas break. His tactics range from making obscene phone calls from their house-mother's phone, to stalking the terrified boarders with sharp objects and murderous intent. Director Bob Clark, who mistook dreariness for tension in his previous horror effort Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things! (1972), here demonstrates a tight, aggressive style that generates some very original shocks -- particularly the surprise ending -- which clearly influenced dozens of similarly-themed slasher films to follow.


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And SockShre

P2

IMDb
A businesswoman is pursued by a psychopath after being locked in a parking garage on Christmas Eve.

RogerEbert
If you have seen the ads for "P2," or even heard about them, you know what the movie involves. A woman works late in the office on Christmas Eve, leaves after everyone else, descends to parking level P2 to get her car, finds it won't start and then meets the homicidal madman who is the overnight lot attendant. Yes, I know, it sounds like a formula slasher film, but it's actually done well, and in the current climate at least most Women in Danger films end up with Men in Danger. Elements of "P2" even reminded me a little of Jodie Foster's "Panic Room" -- especially in complexities involving cell phones, alarms, spycams, and doors that are locked or unlocked.

The movie benefits from being played about as straight as it can be, given the material. Rachel Nichols, as the endangered heroine Angela, doesn't do stupid things or make obvious mistakes. And Wes Bentley, as the lonely guy on overnight duty, doesn't froth at the mouth and cackle with insane zeal. Oh, he's insane, all right, but he's one of those insane Lonely Guys who can't understand why Angela doesn't want to share his Christmas dinner (turkey and trimmings, and even corn muffins!), even though he has stripped her to her lingerie, chained her to the furniture and has a savage dog lunging at her. He's just trying to be friends.

A movie like this depends on invention in the screenplay. You can't merely have the woman running around frantically while the guy pops up in the foreground with a standard horror movie swooshing sound. There has to be a little logic. And Angela thinks of most of the right things to do, even though most of the time she can't do them. In today's high-security climate, if you're locked in, you're locked in. One day when we have more time, I'll tell you about when I went for a winter stroll in London's Hyde Park and didn't know the gates were locked at 6, and how it started snowing while I was trying to climb a slushy hill to get to a tree branch that I thought might allow me to drop over a 6-foot fence topped with sharp spikes, and how when I balanced on the tree and called for help to passers-by, they walked a little faster.

It's that kind of an evening for Angela. She does everything right, but it doesn't work. And when she somehow gets out a garbled call for help on 911, two cops turn up and they do everything right, too. Often in thrillers, the cops are practically standing on a dead body and don't notice anything. But these guys are pros, they follow the ropes, they don't take Thomas' story at face value, and still they don't save Angela. It's a lot more exciting that way.

This is, in case you haven't noticed, the best autumn for movies in years. There are a dozen, maybe two dozen, movies in current release that I would recommend over "P2." Maybe four dozen. Maybe three dozen. But horror movies routinely "win the weekend" at the box office, and it is no small consolation that the customers who insist on their horror movie this weekend will see a well-made one. It's such a good season that even the slashers are superior.

Full movie on Pubfilmno1

Silent Night Bloody Night

IMDb
A man inherits a mansion, which once was a mental home. He visits the place and begins to investigate some crimes that happened in old times, scaring the people living in the region.




Culture Crypt

Summary:

A small town is stalked by a mysterious murderer connected to an abandoned mansion that was once the site of an insane asylum.

Review:

“Silent Night, Bloody Night” is not as “Christmas-y” as its name would imply, which is likely at least one reason why it was initially released with the less seasonal title, “Night of the Dark Full Moon.”  Without a killer Santa Claus or any plot-motivated holiday theme, the December setting is largely incidental, necessary mainly to justify snow on the ground.  A carol or two can be heard in the background and one character is briefly seen wrapping presents, but the story could take place in June or July just the same.

Still, “Silent Night, Bloody Night” (“SNBN”) would make a perfect opening feature on a double bill with Bob Clark’s 1974 classic “Black Christmas” (review here).  Even though the two films are unrelated as pure holiday horror, they share thematic elements in common as precursors to the late 70’s, early 80’s boom in slasher cinema.

There are those quick to raise an index finger and say “not so fast” to laud “Black Christmas” whenever John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (review here) is mentioned as a jumpstart to the genre.  A similar case could be made for “SNBN” when referencing Clark’s film.  Both films feature creepy phone calls, first person POV perspectives, twisted family trees, and outdated scenes involving phone bank switchboards as memorable hallmarks.  Yet while “Black Christmas” became hailed as a contemporary classic, “SNBN” fell into public domain obscurity.

Among the reasons for that disparity is no doubt the fact that “Black Christmas” is a much more accessible film by mainstream scary movie standards.  “Silent Night, Bloody Night” is an unusual mix of old dark house thriller, small town secret mystery, and ax-murdering mania from a time in slasher history when dramatic theatricality went beyond snarky one-liners and creative kills.  It is continually engaging as a gradually unfolding horror whodunit, though it surely fails to grab some viewers because of that slow pace, and because its plot is probably more complicated than it needs to be.

The short summary is that in an effort to help his troubled daughter, Wilfred Butler welcomed doctors into his home and eventually turned his house into a mental asylum.  Twenty years later, Butler returned to the house after a mysterious absence only to be set on fire and burned to death in a Christmas Eve incident ruled to be an accident.  Twenty more years later, Butler’s grandson Jeffrey decides to sell the long abandoned house back to the town that wants it destroyed.  But a mystery figure in the house going by the name “Marianne” has plans for the townspeople involving an ax and their true connection to the Butler house’s sinister past.

With various threads relayed via flashbacks, diary readings, newspaper narrations, and present day scenes spanning the 1930’s, 1950’s, and 1970’s, “SNBN” already has plenty going on within its 84 minutes before introducing a cargo net bursting with red herrings.  In addition to the identity of “Marianne,” the mystery of Wilfred Butler’s death, and the sudden reemergence of his grandson Jeffrey, there are also side stories involving a philandering estate attorney and an escaped inmate from a nearby mental hospital.  Changing directions almost as much as it changes scenes, “SNBN” has a lot of story on the table, though not all of it adds up to a meaningful payoff in the end.

Regardless of its relative impact, “SNBN” is a film unafraid to take chances in its effort to stand out.  Its cast alone is proof.  Mary Woronov features prominently as just one of several Andy Warhol superstars making an onscreen appearance, although the others are bit cameos as asylum inmates and dinner guests.  In a move that is either brilliant or baffling, “SNBN” takes film legend John Carradine, an actor partly known for his distinct voice, and makes him a mute who communicates by ringing a desk clerk’s bell.  That’s just one Twin Peaks-like eccentricity assigned to the roster, another being a pillbox hat-wearing woman with no less than forty occupied birdcages populating her home.  This is quirky behavior befitting a cast of characters where almost no one is who they say they are.

It’s a clichéd assessment to assign, but “Silent Night, Bloody Night” is a sign of its filmmaking times.  Enjoyably odd performances and a story that is slow but never dull make for an interesting film, even if the overall execution is questionable.  Tolerance for seventies cinematic stylings certainly helps, though “SNBN” does come up short in enough categories related to quality that it is understandable if it does not make the annual rotation of fright films to revisit every December.

Full movie on WN

and VideoBash

Backtrack AKA Nazi Regression

IMDb
When four friends go camping on the South Downs, they are quite literally tortured by their past.



Brutalashell

Review: Backtrack – Nazi Regression (AKA Nazi Vengeance) (2014)

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Ben

By Quin

Nazi horror really isn’t my thing. I’ve seen very little of it, and what I have seen does nothing for me. But, when it comes to reviewing horror films, I’m always up for a challenge. I am now very happy to report that I enjoyed Backtrack: Nazi Regression quite a bit. It grabbed me right away. The ninety-something minute movie flew by and I was actually invested in it. In spite of what you may have gotten out of the trailer, I was surprised at how well this film manages to not veer too far into exploitation – and that is something that is usually synonymous with Nazi horror. I’m all for camp and sleaze, but the subject matter should dictate which direction the tone of a movie should go. Backtrack: Nazi Regression is neither campy nor sleazy. It also doesn’t try to re-write history. Even though the past is important to the story, the action is still very much rooted in the present; and thankfully, I didn’t find any disrespect to anyone who may have been affected by atrocities committed during World War II. This is an original story, well directed and well acted, that should entertain you.

Our introduction to the two couples in Backtrack is slow and deliberate, but also slightly confusing at first. We see Ralph and Claudia beginning a session of past life regression. Claudia claims to be psychic and Ralph has been experiencing strange feelings and wants to see if his issues are connected to a past life. He lays on the bed with his eyes closed while she guides him through his thoughts. Ralph and Claudia are just friends – they’re actually both in their own relationships with Andrea and Lucas – but Andrea and Lucas are having a torrid affair with each-other. During the regression session, Ralph has a vision of himself doing some pretty horrible things and he appears to be a Nazi soldier around 1940.

The four decide to take a backpacking and camping trip and while they’re out, Ralph and Claudia are going to see if they can find some of the locations from the regression and hopefully figure out why Ralph is having weird thoughts and hallucinations. When Ralph and Claudia are out looking for clues, the other two have some sexy alone time in the tent. Well, that gets ruined by an old man who appears. He knocks them out, ties them up and takes them back to his lair. Now Ralph and Claudia have to find them.

If my description sounds convoluted, I assure you it’s not. The fact that there are only four main characters (not counting the creepy old kidnapper) makes it easy to follow. Plus, Ralph and Claudia are so likable and easy to identify with, while the two cheaters are annoying and rude. This all changes once the two are kidnapped and tortured. You really start to feel horrible for them. I am also quite aware that many of you are all tortured out. This is definitely brutal and realistic, but it never became gratuitous. The acting in these scenes is particularly good and the director gets some nice looking close-up shots with the victims gagged while their faces contort from the agony.

Julian Glover is the face you see on the poster art for the film. You can probably guess that he’s the one who is trying to get rid of these meddling kids. His acting is superb, but his prosthetic makeup looks more like silicon than actual facial burns. This hardly matters for a guy who has had a part in Game of Thrones, The Empire Strikes Back (General Veers – the creator of the AT-AT – the greatest vehicle in all of science fiction), an Indiana Jones movie and a James Bond movie. The man knows what he is doing. There are a few lines of dialogue that may have sounded silly if read by an amateur actor. Even though his mug graces the poster, he isn’t shown until almost the end of the film. This was a wise move. It made him a bit more mysterious and we got less time to be distracted by his face and weird makeup.

I definitely recommend Backtrack: Nazi Regression. I was honestly expecting things to go the other way, but it’s nice when you watch something you might not have and end up enjoying it. Excellent job, to all involved with this one.

Full Movie on Pubfilmno1

Honeymoon

IMDb
A newlywed couple finds their lake-country honeymoon descend into chaos after Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of their first night.



Rotten Tomatoes
Young newlyweds Paul (Harry Treadaway) and Bea (Rose Leslie) travel to remote lake country for their honeymoon, where the promise of private romance awaits them. Shortly after arriving, Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night. As she becomes more distant and her behavior increasingly peculiar, Paul begins to suspect something more sinister than sleepwalking took place in the woods. Treadaway (CONTROL) and Leslie (HBO's GAME OF THRONES) give captivating leading performances as a couple that takes new love to disturbing depths. With romance slowing giving way to terror, writer/director Leigh Janiak puts her unique stamp on this intimate, chilling thriller. (c) Magnet Releasing


Full movie on Pubfilmno1

Bitter Moon

IMDb

Nigel Dobson is an English perfect gentleman, married to equally respectable Fiona. On a cruise heading for India, they meet a highly unconventional couple, American unpublished would-be literary celebrity Oscar, in a wheelchair, and his much younger Parisian wife, Mimi. Oscar insists to tell his unsettling life story to Nigel, who is too polite to refuse although its gore content, shamelessly explicit details and foul Yankee language rather disgust the well-bred Brit, yet becomes also fascinated. Oscar tells how he found by chance in Mimi a willing partner for sex, ever pushing their boundaries. When he tires of spiraling passionate devotion to her, the tables turn: Mimi begs Oscar to stay with her at any price, and gets what she bargained for, sadistic scorn and abuse till she's a mere shadow of her former self, yet is finally abandoned on a flight to Martinique. Later Oscar has a car accident, and Mimi returns to Paris to make sure he is condemned to a wheelchair for life, this time utterly dependent on her, no longer free to choose accepting her abuse, yet they get married. Meanwhile Fiona tires of waiting for Nigel during Oscar's story sessions and spends time with flirtatious Italian Dado. During the New year's Eve party, things come to a surprisingly real and personal closure, not in the least for Nigel...

- Written by KGF Vissers



RobertEbert

The returns are in from Europe and the coasts, and the critics have found Roman Polanski's "Bitter Moon" an embarrassment: It is too melodramatic, too contrived, too overwrought, too overacted. Polanski has come unhinged. His portrait of a doomed marriage may be high porn but it is low art.

What bothers some of the critics, I suspect, is the audacity which Polanski exhibits by casting his own wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, in the central role -- as a voracious seductress with black widow tendencies, whose amusement is to blind men in the headlights of her sexuality, and step on the gas. But "Bitter Moon" is nothing if it is not audacious, Polanski is far beyond concern over matters of taste, and his wife at least never seems miscast in a role which would have stopped many another actress cold in her tracks.

His story unfolds aboard an ocean liner, where an embittered husband, paralyzed and in a wheelchair, buttonholes a complete stranger and begins to tell him the story of his marriage. The stranger would like to escape, but cannot. For one thing he grows fascinated by the story. For another he is mesmerized by the man's wife, who has perfected that trick of looking a man boldly in the eye until, by looking away, he concedes sexual supremacy. Hour after hour, day after day, the sordid story unspools, and in flashbacks we see a romance that turns into a dangerous obsession.

Oscar, the man in the wheelchair is played by Peter Coyote, as a sardonic, self-loathing drunk who frankly holds out the bait of his wife as a lure to keep the stranger listening. Nigel, the stranger is a well-behaved, bashful Englishman (played by Hugh Grant, in much the same role he also plays in "Sirens" and "Four Weddings And A Funeral"). Seigner is Mimi, Oscar's wife, a bold exhibitionist.

And Kristin Scott Thomas is Fiona, Nigel's wife -- a cold, distant, somewhat dry woman who would seem to offer little competition for Mimi's juicy come-ons.

As Oscar describes how he met Mimi, we see their marriage in long flashbacks. At first it is a romance, pure and simple. Then boredom begins to creep in -- and, worse, antidotes to boredom. Mimi likes sadomasochistic fun and games. Oscar is fascinated. The two of them retreat into their marriage and pull the door closed behind them; in a kind of game of sexual chicken, they go farther and farther, acting out kinky fantasies until finally . . . well, we find out how Oscar ended up in the wheelchair.

These stories should act upon Nigel as a warning, but, predictably, he is fascinated. He starts telling lies and making excuses to Fiona, so he can spent more time with Oscar . . . and, it is hinted, Mimi. At first it seems that Oscar is the puppetmaster, but then it appears that he and Mimi may be up to a new game, with Nigel as the prize. We can't be sure, and that is one of the movie's pleasures: Somehow we know that although anything else may happen, Nigel will probably not end up with Mimi.

The word "lurid" was coined to describe films like this.

Like all stories dealing with the extremes of sex, it arrives at moments when we can barely prevent ourselves from laughing. (There is a reason for this: S&M combines humorless scenarios with absurd choreography.) It is the easiest thing in the world to walk out of a movie like "Bitter Moon" shaking our heads wearily and complaining about Polanski's bad taste, grotesque situations and fevered imagination. The purpose, of course, is to prove that we didn't fall for it: That we are much too mature, serious and well-balanced to be taken in by his juvenile fantasizing. Well, of course "Bitter Moon" is wretched excess. But Polanski directs it without compromise or apology, and it's a funny thing how critics may condescend to it, but while they're watching it you could hear a pin drop.

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The Wave

IMDb
Even though awaited, no-one is really ready when the mountain pass of Åkneset above the scenic narrow Norwegian fjord Geiranger falls out and creates a 85 meter high violent tsunami. A geologist is one of those caught in the middle of it.



Variety

COURTESY OF TIFF

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015 | 06:44PM PT

Norse disaster movie imagines what would happen if Akerneset mountain were to collapes into the fjord, sending a massive CG tsunami down on a family of stock characters.

Peter Debruge

Chief International Film Critic@AskDebruge

With “The Wave,” awesomely named Norwegian helmer Roar Uthaug has made an equally impressive tsunami-peril thriller — a thunderous rumble-rumble-hustle-hustle-glub-glub nerve-racker that hits all the same beats as its Hollywood equivalents, right down to the implausible group hug at the end. Not to be confused with last year’s deeply upsetting Scandi avalanche-aftermath drama, “Force Majeure,” which delved into the profound psychological damage these disasters can also wreak, “The Wave” sticks mostly to the big-studio formula (albeit on a much smaller budget), introducing a handful of bland soon-to-be-victims before bombarding them with spectacular digital effects. Having already made a big splash in Norway, the country’s foreign-language Oscar submission may be too popcorn-populist to get nominated, but should attract decent specialty business when Magnolia releases Stateside.

Whereas most nature’s-angry movies exploit relatively far-fetched fears (“Sharknado,” anyone?), “The Wave” anticipates a dauntingly plausible disaster scenario. According to Uthaug, with 300 unstable mountainsides in Norway, sooner or later, his countrymen will have to contend with the sort of massive landslide and subsequent 250-foot tidal wave he so enthusiastically imagines crashing down into the fjord, sending a wall of water toward the sleepy tourist hamlet of Geiranger, where family-man geologist Kristian Eikfjord (Kristoffer Joner) has all but extricated his brood — working wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp); sullen, skaterboarding teenager son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and cheek-pinchably adorable young daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) — when the big one comes.

That means, had it taken place 24 hours earlier, Roar could have called his disaster movie “The Move,” as the first act centers on a perfectly normal family relocation that gets rapidly accelerated the instant the Akerneset emergency alarms go off. But first, we get to watch the family box up their belongings, as Kristian says his good-byes as work, Sondre huffs about how he won’t make friends in the new city and Julia begs to spend one last night in their old home — the sort of yawn-inducing luxuries that become perfectly laughable when nature decides to dump a jillion gallons of seething water on you.

It should be said that Geiranger is a remarkably picturesque place to destroy, and d.p. John Christian Rosenlund’s widescreen lensing gives us plenty of opportunity to admire this soon-to-be-doomed corner of the world during the film’s pokey opening. Then, idly gazing over at the Jenga app on his son’s iPhone, Kristian realizes that the ground water measured by a series of Akerneset mountain gauges didn’t simply disappear, as his colleagues believe. Rather, it means the cables were cut! And if the cables were cut, then yes, Chicken Little, the sky is falling.

Uthaug must have tested the film and realized that this science-y eureka moment wasn’t quite as sexy as he’d first imagined. He keeps a scene in which Kristian tips over a stack of three-ring binders, Jenga-style, to demonstrate his theory that a landslide is imminent, but there are clear signs of reshoots in which Kristian and his co-worker helicopter off to a remote crevice, shimmy down its depths and retrieve a length of severed cable. If this were a Perry Mason episode, the frayed wire would be the big reveal (Dah-dah-dum! “Your honor, nature did it!”), but here, the scene appears awkwardly wedged in the middle of another where Kristian swings by the office and asks his kids to wait — and wait and wait — in the car.

No wonder Sondre decides to get out and rejoin his mother back at the hotel where she works, effectively splitting the family in two. When Kristian’s worst fears prove correct and the mountain does collapse — this time, crushing a co-worker caught in a now-redundant spelunking scene — dad and Julia are on one side of the scenic gorge above Geiranger, while Idun and Sondre are stuck in town, smack in the bull’s eye of where The Wave will do its worst damage. As if giving all of Geiranger’s residents 10 minutes’ warning to pack up their lives and run for the hills weren’t dramatic enough, screenwriters John Kare Rake and Harald Rosenlow Eeg decide to send Sondre down to the hotel basement, where the pouty teen dons his headphones, cranks up the volume and skateboards around halls that will soon become a watery grave.

So, at the moment audiences have been waiting for, in which a stunningly rendered slosh of angry-looking water comes barreling toward Geiranger, Kristian and Julia are running uphill (dad ducks into a car at the last minute to help an injured family friend, giving us a passenger-seat view of the big impact), while Idun and Sondre are searching for one another in the hotel. Somewhere in between, a cute co-worker Sondre had been flirting with mere hours before and few thousand other victims are drowning off-camera, more or less ignored as the film shifts into reunite-the-family mode.

Here, it’s hard not to think of J.A. Bayona’s vastly superior “The Impossible,” and while the human drama of “The Wave” feels emotionally puny compared to that post-tsunami family triumph, it should be said that Uthaug and his writing team have surpassed the low bar offered by nearly every other Hollywood disaster movie in recent memory (including Clint Eastwood’s waterlogged “Hereafter”).

Augmenting an immersive Dolby Atmos-mixed sound design with the bombast of a big orchestral score, Uthaug combines Norway-shot location footage with Romanian stagework, blending the two via handheld camerawork that draws us into the action. The helmer maximizes the few big visual effects shots the deceptively frugal production could afford before ending on a wide shot where our eyes drift from the battered survivors in the foreground to the CG-rendered carnage all around. Good for one last quake is the fun pre-credits factoid that “experts agree,” with so many unstable mountain in Norway, it’s a matter of when — not if — all we’ve just witnessed will actually come to pass. Let’s hope the documentary has a happier ending.

Full movie on Pubfilmno1

Dead On Campus

IMDb

A freshman on campus discovers that the only way to be admitted into the sorority of her dreams is to seduce a nerdy introverted guy and film it. When the sorority "prank" goes viral, the boy is discovered dead from apparent suicide, but his sister does not buy it. She goes under cover to expose the sororities' hidden secrets.

- Written by Reel One Entertainment



Pubfilmno1
A freshman on campus discovers that the only way to be admitted into the sorority of her dreams is to seduce a nerdy introverted guy and film it. When the sorority "prank" goes viral, the boy is discovered dead from apparent suicide, but his sister does not buy it. She goes under cover to expose the sororities' hidden secrets.

Full movie on Pubfilmno1

Return to Sender

Rotten Tomatoes
Miranda (Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl) is a dedicated nurse, an exquisite cake maker and an impeccable friend. But when she agrees to a blind date and the wrong man comes to her door...her perfect world is shattered by a brutal assault. Even after her attacker, William (Shiloh Fernandez, Evil Dead), is convicted and locked away for the crime, Miranda can't overcome the fear and trauma enough to put her orderly life back together. Desperate for closure, she reaches out to William - first through letters, then prison visits - and slowly builds a relationship with him. But when William is paroled and comes looking for her, Miranda seizes the opportunity to exact revenge. (C) RLJE/Image Entertainment


IMDb
A nurse living in small town goes on a blind date with a man who is not the person he says he is.


Full Movie on Pubfilmno1

Cut Snake

IMDb
A pair of ex-cons hatch a scheme to burn down a nightclub in Brisbane.



HollywoodReporter

Sullivan Stapleton, Alex Russell and Jessica de Gouw play the three points of an incendiary romantic triangle in this noirish 1970s-set crime thriller

The Australian idiom "mad as a cut snake" describes either insanity or anger so extreme you don’t want to get near it, and while it might not mean much to audiences beyond Oz, it provides a terrific title for this dark, romantic crime thriller. A homoerotic twist enlivens the familiar dynamic of an ex-con trying to go straight, in more ways than one, when a former cellmate resurfaces to lure him back down a dangerous path. But directorTony Ayres often seems to be aping a vernacular that's foreign to him, making the moments of conventional melodrama more persuasive than the noir-flavored genre package.

On the plus side, Cut Snake is reasonably engrossing thanks to its eye-candy cast of rising stars, notably a ferocious but emotionally exposed performance from Sullivan Stapleton.

Written by Blake Ayshford, the film is set in the retro-sexy mid-'70s, unfolding primarily in suburban Melbourne and at a semi-isolated cottage in the peaceful bushland hills on the outskirts of town. Merv (Alex Russell) is the dream boyfriend who has dropped from out of nowhere into the life of twentysomething Paula (Jessica de Gouw), and while she knows little to nothing about his friends, family or past, marriage is on the horizon.

Enter James (Stapleton), nicknamed Pommie, fresh out of prison in Sydney and looking to pick up where he left off with Merv. Paula soon learns that her fiancé, whom Pommie calls Sparra, spent four years inside on manslaughter charges. She's slower to catch on to the full extent of their past relationship, but to the audience it's instantly clear. The sexual tension of their rough trade/pretty boy connection hangs in the air like storm clouds. The spell lingers especially for Pommie, whose hardened exterior and scary intensity can’t hide his raw hurt when Sparra shows resistance.

Pommie's volatile behavior invites trouble, backing Sparra into a tricky corner. His criminal history, his jeopardized future with Paula, his conflicted loyalty and love for his former cellmate and his own violent instincts force him to take drastic action.

Much of the setup is standard-issue stuff. The film acquires its most potent dramatic currency in the heated emotional exchanges between Pommie and Sparra, when the complexities of their feelings for one another are explored.

For an emerging actor doing muscle movies like 300: Rise of an Empire, Stapleton, who first turned heads as a different kind of thug in Animal Kingdom, doesn't shrink from displays of the torn heart that beats beneath brawny Pommie's '70s porn-star chest hair. His mad-eyed desperation becomes unexpectedly affecting, and Ayres pumps up the character's tragic vulnerability with some Christ-like poses.

Sparra has less definition but Russell locates the shadowy depths churning away as the character battles to regain Paula's trust and protect the life he's trying to create, while at the same time wrestling with his debt to Pommie, and perhaps his conflicted desires. De Gouw registers warmth and sensitivity, though Paula is frustratingly under-developed as the confused third point of the triangle, leaving her little to play beyond anxiety.

It's in the accelerating spiral of crime that the weaknesses of the script and direction become hard to ignore, particularly as cops close in, led by a detective who's all snarling, overstated menace. Plausibility is also called into question at several key junctures. In one particularly on-the-nose sequence, editor Andy Canny cross-cuts between Sparra and Paula having sex as a reaffirmation of their tested bond, while tortured, unpredictable Pommie dallies with a prostitute in a scene that lurches into heavy-handed violence.

It's admirable that Ayres is stretching himself in new directions after Walking on Water andThe Home Song Stories. But he doesn't seem at ease on this turf, making for a drama that's both overwrought and underpowered. While the film has a crisp look splashed with rich colors, the propulsive energy, punchy rhythms and insinuating camera angles that make this kind of material sizzle are present only intermittently.

Cast: Sullivan Stapleton, Alex Russell, Jessica De Gouw, Megan Holloway, Kerry Walker, Robert Morgan, Paul Moder, Jim Russell, Catherine Lacey, Richard Anastasios, Luke Elliot, Brett Swain, Syd Brisbane, Christopher Bunworth, Rosie Traynor, Jack Daye

Full movie on Pubfilmno1