Okay, okay this post is a little bit late in the month, what with only 10 days left. Though I've found after January's rich pickings of film choices, February and early March (for me at least) have been a little flat, devoid of any real standouts. As the month approaches it's finale there's a few decent films on the way...
Kick-Ass (March 26th) Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of the graphic novel. Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan with a few friends and who lives alone with his father. His life is not very difficult and his personal trials not that overwhelming. However, one day he makes the simple decision to become a super-hero even though he has no powers or training.
Todd Solondz's latest, is a sequel of sorts to Happiness, not a great amount of details about it, no poster or website for example.
It's an unconventional follow up as you'd expect from the director. All the cast from the original have been changed. For instance Phillip Seymor Hoffman's character Allen of Happiness is replaced with Michael K Williams (Omar from The Wire).
Of course it'll have a limited release, supposedly out on The 26th March, but my local arty cinny isn't showing it until April 23rd! I've heard mixed reviews about this ranging from brilliant to terribly unwatchable, so go figure. His first two films the brilliant Welcome to the Dollhouse and the excellent Happiness were followed by not-quite-as-good yet the still enjoyable Storytelling. Then he did the much anticipated but flawed and rather difficult Palindromes. Hopefully it'll be a return to (albeit confusing) form.
Thomas Turgoose of This is England fame stars in this tale about two friends David and Emily who live on a caravan parkWhen David learns that Emily is being forced to move away, he agrees to help her hide out in a remote cave on the beach. But their innocent secret soon becomes complicated, as David watches the police close in on his missing friend, but there's more to it than at first meets the eye. A trip back to the golden era of horror (the 80s) this film looks like an authentic horror film of that era.
Yet is a decidedly fresh antidote to the modern horror dominating cinema. In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes who needs to pay the first months rent, takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual.
Swedish adaptation of the multi-million selling book trilogy from Stieg Larsson. A faithful adaptation which boldly captures the novel's more disturbing elements but also shares it's faults. Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate.
Valhalla Rising (March 19th) Nicolas Winding Refn's follow up to Bronson is a violent Nordic adventure filmed in Scotland on a micro budget.
Following mute slave 'One Eye' (Mads Mikelsen) and his bid to escape and to join the Christian Vikings setting sail for the Crusades.
That Banksy documentary as previously posted about here.
