America's Native American problem, circa 1814, in Ted Geoghegan's MOHAWK

The War of 1812 is not used as a backdrop for all that many movies -- America's Revolutionary War gets much more screen and cable-TV time -- so it's rather nice to see this nearly three-year war lend its muted history to MOHAWK, the new film from Ted Geoghegan, who both directed it and co-wrote it (with Grady Hendrix).

Mr Geoghegan's (the movie-maker is shown below) first film foray, We Are Still Here, was a genre piece (haunted-house horror) and so is his new one -- except in this case, his movie is a genre-jumper/masher.

Part western, part military vs the Indians, part guilt trip regarding America's horrendous treatment of Native Americans back in the day (it's little better now: we've wiped most of them out and stripped the rest of their lands, so we need only make their current lives as miserable as possible), and part (sort-of) supernatural goings-on, the movie manages to blend all these with a little history, too, and Geoghagen dishes this out with just enough flair to pass muster.

The director handles some of his action scenes quite well, but his forays into suspense and expectation drag too much and may have you muttering, "Get on with it!"  Still, as Native American guilt-trips go, this one is infinitely better than the recent molasses-slow, way-too-long and uber-pretentious Hostiles.

Geoghegan has cast his film well, too, with its three leads giving impressive performances and supporting players generally good, as well. Those leads would include Ezra Buzzington (above, left) and Kaniehtiio Horn (below, right) as, respectively, military and Indian adversaries, while Eamon Farren makes a handsome, sexy almost-hero, as the Britisher trying to engage the Indians into fighting the Americans.

The film takes place mostly in yet another naughty forest which seems to have maybe supernatural powers -- we've just seen two more of these in The Ritual and They Remain -- but the director mines the place for some beauty as well as for blood, gore and creepiness. (That's Jon Huber, wrestler-turned-actor, shown below.)

My biggest question about the film, however, lies in why this story needed any supernatural element attached to it at all? It could have worked quite nicely as just an action/western. yet the other worldliness begins early on and then is left at the starting gate and only seems to reappear very late in the game. Ms Horn does turn into something of a wonder woman, I guess, which is utterly unbelievable unless you grant her that supernatural overlay.

As with all these current super-hero movies, magical powers seem to be the only way we have of righting the world's many wrongs. Too bad. My other caveat has to do with the costume that our heroine wears throughout. While it may have been researched and found to be authentic, it still looks so "modern" (not only in the design but in the choice of fabrics) as to be faintly ridiculous.

From Dark Sky Films and running a little too long even at only 92 minutes, Mohawk opens today, Friday, March 2, in seven cities -- before unfurling in other parts of the country in the weeks to come. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters. And if you're not near these particular cities, the film is also playing simultaneously via VOD and HD digital.

"Dreck" the halls: Craig Anderson's "nut"meg eggnog, RED CHRISTMAS, hits a few theaters

Can you make a decent slasher movie while tossing in themes of religion, pregnancy, parenting and abortion, among other things? Yes, if your film is as good as, say, She Who Must Burn. But a big, fat "no," if the new RED CHRISTMAS, written and directed by Australian filmmaker Craig Anderson, serves as a more recent indication. Once the killing starts -- among family members gathered to celebrate here -- these characters begin acting stupider and stupider, breaking even the cardinal rule of this kind of film: When under siege, you idiots, stick the fuck together!

Mr. Anderson, pictured at right, proves pretty good when he keeps his gore effects on the subtle side, as in the "offing" of his first victim (below, left), a nasty Outback outlier who makes quite unnecessary fun of the movie's Michael Myers/Jason/Fred Krueger stand-in, a poor cobbled-together creature named Cletus, who arrives unbidden but hell-bent for revenge at the family gathering mentioned above.  The second killing (but the first, so far as this family is concerned) is also handled with exquisite tact/taste.

Following that, however, the bigtime stupidity sets it, and the movie, as well as all its further killings, never recovers. Characters begin doing things for either no discernible reason that makes any sense -- other than merely separating them from the pack so that each can be "offed" more easily -- or to give the filmmaker another opportunity to grace us with further tiresome past history/exposition.

The cast is mostly Australian, with the exception of Dee Wallace (below), who plays the family matriarch with appropriate fear and ferocity, though even she finally joins the full-out nonsense on parade here. If you're a fan of Ms Wallace, better to revisit The Howling (does she not make the cutest werewolf in film history?), or even E.T., than waste your time with this one.

Other cast members meet either grizzly ends, via very unbelievable-looking "special effects," as below, or find themselves on the wrong end of various lethal objects. Either way, you'll probably be drumming your fingers in something like boredom, waiting for the final body count, as it piles up with tiresome regularity.

What's particularly grueling about Red Christmas is the highly unlikable group of characters thrust upon us by Mr. Anderson. They argue incessantly, while they're not doing dumb things, and as the increasingly obvious chunks of wholesale exposition come plotzing out, you'll find yourself more than ready for this overlong-even-at-82-minutes movie to end.

The film opens with demonstrations pro and con regarding abortion, above, and with a flashback sequence on which a lot of what happens later depends (below), but whatever the filmmaker might imagine he's trying to say here

gets quickly and thoroughly lost within the extreme idiocy of his poorly concocted characters. As my spouse remarked wearily, post- viewing, "What should have been aborted was this movie."

From Artsploitation Films (great moniker, by the way!) and arriving in a Los Angeles theater (Laemmle's Music Hall 3) this Friday, August 25 (just four month prior to the holiday!) for a once-daily showing at 9:55 pm, Red Christmas will then expand to San Francisco, Denver, Dallas and other cities over the weeks to come. 

Korean action par excellence in Jung Byung-gil's eye-popping, mind-blowing VILLAINESS

TrustMovies suspects that you might have to go back as far as Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita to find an apt comparison to the new South Korean action flick THE VILLAINESS. What an opening sequence this movie has! This is eight minutes or more of pre-title action and mayhem so violent, funny and enthralling that it barely gives you time to catch your breath. And then the movie gets even better: richer, stranger, funnier and more exciting.

As directed and co-written by Jung Byung-gil (shown below), the film offers up a heroine named Sook-hee who is so daunting in her fury and commitment to revenge and justice that she'll have you rooting for her in no time flat.

As with so many of these action/mayhem movies, especially the Korean variety, the themes includes love, trust, betrayal, and parent-child relations, among other things. And, being Korean, yes, the movie is very dark. This one, in fact, may be among the darkest I've seen. (Don't let that smile on the director's face fool you. He has surprises and disappointments in store here that you would never find in an American action movie.) As for the action itself, it's A-1 and often pretty damned original, too. In the first half, we get a samurai sword-fight while on motorcycles, and the finale finds our heroine chasing a bus while driving atop the hood of her car and then proceeds into full-out, gasp-inducing chaos.

Behind it all is the Korean state/government, and while this movie may take place in South Korea, we still get a good strong whiff of a police state. Why not, given this little country's long and fraught history?

Sook-hee, played quite well by Kim Ok-bin (above, of The Front Line and Thirst) makes a strong and genuinely laudable heroine, and by the time we and she have reached the final frame of the film, the smile that appears on her bloody-but-unbowed face makes the movie's title radiate with appropriate anger, irony and sadness.

The men around Sook-hee are hardly her match, though they do try -- especially the sweet, smitten State-employed handler (Sung Jun) who falls in love with her, as well as the blast-from-the-past who suddenly reappears in her life, as a surprise "target" on her second wedding day (the latter is played by the notable Shin Ha-kyun, above).

Three of the women with whom our heroine works in the "agency" also register strongly: the sweet new recruit who becomes Sook-hee's friend, the older agency diva who is soon her nemesis, and especially the ice-queen agency head (Kim Seo-hyeong, above) for whom trust is a dirty word.

At 124 minutes, the movie does ran a tad too long (though this is relatively short for a Korean film, where audiences demand their money's worth, in quantity as well as quality). The filmmaker also packs his tale with flash-backs that fill in some of the blanks in our understanding of Sook-hee's life.

Even if you're not a fan of this kind of film, The Villainess may well win you over (or at least wear you down into "uncle"-crying submission). If you are a fan, better stick it on your "must-see" list now.

From WELL GO USA Entertainment, the movie opens this Friday, August 25, in New York City at the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles at AMC's Dine-In Sunset 5. A limited national release will follow in September. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled cities and theaters.

Schrader/Bunker's DOG EAT DOG gives Nicolas Cage his most interesting role in some time

Compulsively watchable, even as it has you occasionally rolling your eyes, the new film by Paul Schrader and adapted by Edward Bunker from the novel by Matthew Wilder), DOG EAT DOG, is Schrader's most enjoyable, if hugely violent, in quite a few years. From its opening in a pastel-colored suburban home (soon to be heavily blood-splattered) to baby kidnapping-and-murder, it is also his most transgressive -- even given his past array, including The Comfort of Strangers and The Canyons.

Mr. Schrader, shown at right (and below, left), also plays a supporting role in the film, and he does a bang-up job portraying a criminal king- (or at least prince-) pin known as El Greco. I am guessing what attracted him as a filmmaker to this tale of really, really bad guys gone worse is its combo of macho posturing laced with light philosophizing on everything from love and need to religion and violence. In any case, it proves a very good match.

Visually, the film is lots of fun, too. As much as I've enjoyed and respected a number of Schrader movies -- from Blue Collar and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters to Auto Focus and (especially) Adam Resurrected -- it seems to me that this screenwriter and director is loosening up quite a bit from his earlier, more restrained elegance (remember American Gigolo?) to a more relaxed and occasionally even enjoyably florid visual sense.

As restrained as proves Nicolas Cage in his role as the "leader" of a trio of pretty stupid criminals hoping to do that last job that will set them up for life, he is matched moment for moment by another oft-seen (and oft off-his-noggin) actor Willem Dafoe, who has here his juiciest crazy-man role in some years.

Cage narrates the film in a low-key monotone, which reaches its apotheosis in the final moments with a dark, ugly but maybe on-the-nose appreciation of us humans and our motives. Beforehand we're treated to the three first-class performances of Cage, Dafoe and the other member of the trio, a big, bald, beefy lug played with equal parts finesse and frightening menace by an actor new to me, Christopher Matthew Cook (below, right) -- who would steal the film were it not for his co-stars

The women on hand are more or less cursory, but several of them are given very nice scenes to play -- usually with fear and/or loathing, given the characters of the men they're up against -- and they accomplish this with some panache.

The old honor-among-thieves gets the usual workout here, but so dishonorable in so many way is our little group that it takes the film into new realms of betrayal. To note that no one gets out of here alive is to put it rather mildly. The fine cinematography is from Alexander Dynan, and the alternately ugly and gorgeous (oh, that scene in the diner!) production design comes from Grace Yun.

From RLJ Entertainment and running just 93 minutes, the film does not outstay its dark and stylish welcome. It opens this Friday, November 4, in Los Angeles (Laemmle's Music Hall 3) and New York (AMC Empire 25) on November 4th, with a theatrical expansion and VOD to follow on November 11th. The DVD and Blu-ray hit the street on December 27.

Joe Begos (Almost Human) is back with a funnier/tighter/smarter/bloodier MIND'S EYE

Oh, yeah -- and it's a lot campier, too. TrustMovies was not much a fan of Joe Begos' earlier work, Almost Human, released in winter 2014 and dealing with an extraterrestrial kidnapping/returning that leads to a near-continuous slasher-movie massacre, so he is happy to report that he enjoyed Begos' latest film a lot more. THE MIND'S EYE involves telekinesis, which appears to be a subject that this writer/director (shown below) can have some fun with, while being a bit more creative and still get to those juicy/bloody/gory parts he clearly loves so much.

Our hero (this time, as last) is played by Graham Skipper (shown below, right), an actor of somewhat protuberant eyes, who pops them and bugs them almost consistently throughout the film. He undoubtedly was asked to do so by his director, as was his leading lady, Lauren Ashley Carter (below, left) because this eye-bugging is how all the telekinesis takes place. Time and again throughout the film, actors bug their eyes and pop their neck veins as their characters attempt to levitate and/or move everything from guns and furniture to hypodermic needles and a very nasty ax.

Trust me: you will not have seen so much eye-rolling and -popping since the last time you watched a silent movie -- and I think you'll agree that, even then, The Mind's Eye beats out those "silents" by a mile. And because it turns out that just about every character in the film is capable of this telekinesis, there is an awful lot of eye-popping going on.

Our hero (above), however, turns out to be almost the best of the bunch (think of him as a kind of hairy Carrie), although his girlfriend (below) nearly matches him by exploding a bad guy's head. Of course, all this take so much pain and intensity that you can expect to see lots of blood oozing from the telekinetics' various orifices.

Mr. Begos has managed to provide a more interesting screenplay, plot and even better dialog this time around, and so ropes us into his tale of a supposedly government-sponsored "home" for telekinetics run by a power-hungry nut case (John Speredakos, below) who goes from a cajoling nice-guy to a Freddy Krueger-style villain in no time flat. Also in the cast is the always-game Larry Fessenden, playing our hero's helpful police-officer father.

As the eyes pop and the blood flows, so, too, do the laughs grow louder and more frequent. I would like to think that this was part of Mr Begos' initial plan, and that he does not take himself or his movie all that seriously. The Mind's Eye is finally good, silly, noisy, campy fun. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

From RLJ Entertainment and running a blessedly short 87 minutes, the movie opens this coming Friday, August 5, simultaneously in theaters (a very limited release, I would assume), on iTunes and via VOD -- with a Blu-ray disc release scheduled for Tuesday, October 4, 

THE WAILING: Na Hong-jin's new everything-but-the-kitchen-sink thriller opens in theaters

What the hell has happened to that very good South Korean movie-maker, Na Hong-jin, between the time of his earlier films -- The Chaser (from 2008, a mostly first-class, if very dark and ugly thrill ride about kidnapping and murder) and The Yellow Sea (from 2010, an even darker but much quieter and more subtle exploration of the entwining of love, need and evil) -- and his latest effort, THE WAILING (Goksung)? I ask because Na's new film is the biggest embarrassment to South Korean cinema I've encountered since I first caught wind of that country's enormous moviemaking prowess around the turn of this past century. Since then, TrustMovies has watched most everything Korean he could find and had time for (including even the recent itty-bitty cable series, DramaWorld).

Even this film's title seems faintly ridiculous, as that wailing can only refer to what will most likely be the audience reaction: "When will this (spectacularly filmed) piece of shit finally end?!" Conflating -- just about as stupidly as possible -- everything from demons and ghosts to a stranger in town, serial murder, a daughter in danger, Christian parable, and so-help-me-god zombies, Mr. Na (shown at left), as both writer and director, seems suddenly taken with the toss-in-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink school of horror filmmaking. Yet there's not an original moment in the entire film.

Perhaps the supernatural thriller is not the proper genre for Na to tackle, as the result is very nearly the polar opposite to what his countryman, Bong Joon-ho, achieved with his own first-class try at a sci-fi thriller, 2014's Snowpiercer.

The biggest difference between the two films is that, in Bong's, we learn enough about almost all the characters to come to care about them; with Na's we learn so little that we can't begin to give a shit what happens to anyone (except maybe one little girl. Barely). The tale Na tells goes on for over two-and-one-half hours, and involves a small country town in which entire families are being murdered -- and by one of their own. What's going on?

The hero is played by that portly Korean "everyman" Kwak Do-won, above, right, and below, who proves as good as he's able to be as the not-terribly-bright policeman whose little daughter (below) comes under the spell of the principal bad guy. Of course, our burly cop is determined to get to the bottom of things -- which will take endless time for him (and endless patience on the part of us viewers).

The most time is spent with a local exorcist, Korean variety (below), who is soon dancing up a storm (the choreography is pretty good here!) trying to get rid of that naughty evil spirit. Toward the finale, he (and we) discover he's been barking up the wrong tree. Or maybe not. Reversals, then further reversals, do not in any way help the film's ridiculous plotting.

A big black dog (below) gets a good scene or two, and the movie is very well photographed (when have you seen a Korean film that was not?). But the South Korean penchant for length, coupled unfortunately to the obvious and repetitive, at last utterly sinks this barrage of blood, guts and heavy-duty disarray.

I can only hope that Mr. Na gets quickly back to what he's good at and leaves this kind of supernatural nonsense to those who know better how to handle it.

From Well Go USA Entertainment and running an unconscionable 156 minutes (yes!), The Wailing opens this Friday, June 3, in cities all across the country. In New York City, it is said to be playing the FSLC, the IFC Center and the AMC Empire 25; in Los Angeles, look for it at Laemmle's Monica Film Center and Playhouse 7 and at the AMC Atlantic Time Square. Here in South Florida? Nowhere at all. (Guess we don't have a large enough Korean population). Elsewhere in the USA? Absolutely. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters.

Is the new fright anthology, THE HORROR NETWORK, a good Halloween watch? Maybe...

...or maybe not. It depends, I should think, on how old you are and how many other "scary" movies you've managed to view over your years. I am fast coming to the conclusion that I've seen way too many of this genre, and an anthology movie like THE HORROR NETWORK serves mostly to underscore that point. Horror anthologies have a storied history, going at least as far back as the 1945 British gem (in its time; much of it still holds up well today), Dead of Night. Later came some fun Hammer horrors, then the more "modern," special-effects-enhanced efforts like Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt, all of which took fear into a different, less subtle direction, while the most recent examples -- the V/H/S group and the even better ABCs of Death -- tend to count on envelope-pushing sex, violence, transgression and gore to do the job. (And, one must admit, they sometimes do.)

Only one of the short films included in this five part anthology rises to the challenge, and that's the penultimate creep-fest, Merry Little Christmas. Directed by Ignacio Martín and Manuel Marín, with the latter handling the screenwriting duties, this 20-minute film is the longest in the bunch, and also the best, as well as the goriest and biggest-budget effort. Involving masked women and what they get up to (not good), spousal and child abuse, agoraphobia and self-destruction, this is one wild, woolly, yucky piece of filmmaking.

Otherwise, the movie contains four perfectly professional scare films, in which everything will remind you of stuff you've seen previously, and you'll mostly want to ask, Could you please get on with it?" Second best film honors go to Joseph Graham's Edward, shown below, in which a shrink and his patient do an eventually tiresome pas de deux, complete with everything from guck and gore to personality transference.

The film begins with 3 AM, in which a young woman in an empty house in the middle of the night is menaced by...something or someone. Sounds familiar? It is. The Quiet, directed by Lee Matthews, a bullied-because-she's-deaf school-girl go from frying pan into fire, as she becomes predator prey in some highly bucolic, beautifully photographed scenery.

The final tale, in black-and-white, offers us a guy, a dog and a killer, plus Bible verses from Proverbs, Jeremiah, Leviticus, Colossians and Revelation. Seemingly dedicated to exposing the hypocrisy of the anti-gay fringe, it's mostly a yawn -- but at least it's a short one.

That's it.  If all this sounds like a productive way to spend Halloween (or whenever), by all means, take a chance. The Horror Network -- via Wild Eye Releasing and running 87 minutes -- made its DVDebut yesterday, October 27, just in time for that favvorite, would-be holiday.