Title: Taking of Pelham 123
Starring: Denzel Washington, John Travolta and John Turturro
Walter (Denzel Washington) is a New York City subway dispatcher whose normal day is thrown into chaos by an bold crime: the hijacking of a subway train. Ryder (John Travolta), the criminal mastermind behind the hijacking and leader of a highly-armed gang of four, threatens to execute the train’s passengers unless a large ransom is paid within one hour. As the tension mounts beneath his feet, Garber employs his vast knowledge of the subway system in a battle to outwit Ryder and save the hostages. But there’s one riddle Garber can’t solve: even if the thieves get the money, [...]

Title: Gamer
Starring: Michael C. Hall, Gerard Butler, Kyra Sedgewick
It is somewhere in the near future…There is a game watched by the entire world…It’s captivating…It’s thrilling…This is the future…This…is American Ido….oh wait. It is just a remake of The Running Man.
Gamer- starring Gerard Butler (Leonidas) Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Kyra Sedgewick (y’know Kevin Bacon’s wife), Alison Lohman (The chick that gets Dragged to Hell) and Ludacris (Skinny Black from Hustle & Flow) is an action based film that put wrongly convicted criminal Kable (Butler) in the hands of a teenage gamer. The objective in this game is to make it to your checkpoint. The thing is, you are controlling a real [...]

Title: Daybreakers
Directed by: The Spierig Brothers
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Michael Dorman, Vince Colosimo, Isabel Lucas and Sam Neill.
While vampires have been portrayed as sexy and sensitive as they try to recapture their humanity while they form relationships with humans in recent movies and television series, no one has thought what would happen to them if the population they’re trying to emulate suddenly started to dwindle and become extinct. That is, until the Spierig Brothers, two Australian writers and directors, wrote the screenplay for Daybreakers, the new Lionsgate horror/thriller/science-fiction movie starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill.
Daybreakers, which is set in 2019, focuses on the mysterious [...]

Title: Evilution
Directed by: Chris Conlee
Starring: Starring: Eric Peter-Kaiser, Sandra Ramirez, Tim Colceri and Noel Gugliemi
Scores: Technical: 85, Story: 89, Acting: 79, Overall: 85
Evilution… I took one look at the cover art and expected some over the top, b-movie mush that you have playing in the background, while you’re playing Left 4 Dead. But I actually made it through with out being disinterested.
Don’t get me wrong, yes, there are plenty of cheesy parts and acting. But all in all it was pretty entertaining.
Evilution is a story of an Alien substance that seems to take over the host when injected and, turns them into (YEAH!!!) zombies. The government tries to use it [...]

Title: My Super Psycho Sweet 16
Directed by: Jed Elinoff (The Signal) and Scott Thomas
Starring: Juliana Guill (”Friday The 13th”), Lauren Mcknight (”House of Fear”), Chris Zylka (”Cougartown”) and Matt Angel (”Raising The Bar”).
MTV kicks-off Halloween a little early with the premiere of the original slasher movie “My Super Psycho Sweet 16″ airing October 23, at 10p.m. ET/PT.
The film tells the story of Madison Penrose (Juliana Guill), a spoiled and beautiful high school queen bee, and Skye Rotter (Lauren McKnight), the class outcast whose father Charlie Rotter committed a series of grisly murders a decade before the movie’s events. Madison’s plans for the ultimate birthday bash are ruined when Skye shows [...]

Scores: Technical: 100, Story: 99, Acting: 100, Overall: 99
A barber, who is getting ready to close up for the night receives an intriguing late minute guest and a curious customer comes knocking on the door, none of them are what they pretend to be, but one thing is certain: it will be an thrilling and surprising experience!
Wet Shave is the award winning short film by Boris Schaarschmidt and starring Bob Franco, Birgit Meyer, and Chris J. Milo was screened on Thursday August 6th at the 1st Annual Carnival of Darkness short film festival.
Boris Schaarschmidt is an up and coming German filmmaker and graduet of the AFI who had the honor [...]

Title: Couples Retreat
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Faizon Love, Jon Favreau, Kristen Bell
Scores: Technical: 90, Story: 80, Acting: 95, Overall: 88
Couples Retreat is a comedy centered around four couples who decide, due to one of the marriages falling apart, that they should go to a tropical-island resort that doubles as marriage counseling for a vacation. While one of the couples is actually there to work on the marriage, the others are there for fun and relaxation but soon realize that participation in the resort’s therapy sessions is not optional.
Starring Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, Kristen Bell and Faizon Love, Couples Retreat was pegged as being another [...]

Title: Dark Woods
Directed by: Michael Escobedo
Starring: James Russo, Tracy Coogan and John Muscarnero
Scores: Technical: 99, Story: 95, Acting: 100, Overall: 99
Dark Woods is the kind of movie that starts out kind of depressing, then gets intriguing, then scary, and back to an intriguing depression.
Dark Woods is the story of a loving husband Henry (John Muscarnero-who also wrote the film) and his dying wife Susan (played to an eerie perfection by Tracy Coogan) who travel far away from the city life into the secluded woods so she can die in peace. Sound depressing enough yet? As Susan drifts in and out of consciousness, Henry, out for a jog stumbles across a [...]

Title: White On Rice
Written and Directed by: Dave Boyle (”Big Dreams Little Tokyo”)
Starring: Hiroshi Watanabe, (Letters from Iwo Jima), Mio Takada, (Late Night with Conan O’Brien), Lynn Chen, (Saving Face) and Justin Kwong.
Produced by: Duane Andersen, Dominic Fratto, and Michael Lerman
Scores: Technical: 90, Story: 95, Acting: 100, Overall: 95
Director Dave Boyle both writes and directs the comedy “White on Rice”, a fish-out-of-water love story chronicling the comedic life of Jimmy (Watanabe), an somewhat strange yet charming 40-year-old immigrant as he tries to make it in America. Jimmy lives in his sister Aiko’s and his brother-in-law Tak’s (Takada) basement. Unfortunately Jimmy falls for Tak’s beautiful niece Ramona (Chen) and [...]

Title: Body of Work
Scores: Technical: 98, Story: 100, Acting: 100, Overall: 99
Written by Shayla Beesly & Alex Bram (Alex also directed and produced the film along with Renee Pezzotta & Leah Cevoli) Body of Work premiered at the Carnival of Darkness Film Festival at the Crest Theater in L.A. on August 8th along with some other great short films.
The film opens with Vogler, a deranged artist, who hires models to pose for his paintings, and then he kills them and finishes the painting with their blood. After the brief, but splatter-satisfying intro, our story begins ten years later and follows a husband and wife, who have moved into [...]