April Fool's Day **1/2

Proving that there's a slasher film to be found in every holiday, the makers of Friday the 13th also made April Fool's Day.

During April Fools Day weekend,  a bunch of teenagers spend their spring break in a mansion on an island off Cape Cod. But once the final ferry leaves, they find themselves stuck when one of them has a pretty sick sense of humor.

Pretty much this has all been done before, but there's enough freshness here to keep genre fans happy - seeing a slasher film set amongst the preppy Nantucket set is at least novel - but those who aren't fans of this particular subgenre of horror film are likely going to be repulsed by the gore and bored by the lack of character development. Although, to be fair, for it's genre and vintage, you could do a lot worse.

Machine Gun Preacher ***1/2

Here's a different kind of action film. Gerard Butler plays Sam Childers, a real life preacher who rescued children in war-torn Sudan.

The film opens with Childers' release from prison, he immediately returns to his outlaw biker lifestyle, drinking and doing drugs, committing armed robbery and other crimes, until he reaches out to Lynn, his born-again girlfriend for help. She takes him to be baptized in her church. Soon, he is on the straight-and-narrow, and goes from day laborer to owning his own construction company and building a family with Lynn.

One day Sam decides to join a church mission to Uganda, where he befriends soldiers of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, and convinces them to take him north into Sudan. What he witnesses there profoundly affects him and he creates his own ministry in the U.S. and builds an orphanage in Sudan, fighting off two different invading armies simultaneously.

One of the great things about Machine Gun Preacher is that it doesn't whitewash or sanitize Childers. He's shown as a drug abuser, single-minded, unsympathetic to others points of view, a dangerous criminal, an abusive husband and an absentee father among other things, but he's also shown as a man of tremendous compassion, a strong if selective moral code, and a loyal and courageous altruist.

Childers' actions and methods are hugely controversial, both among Christians and humanitarians in general, but it is his unwillingness to wait on talking heads and diplomats to put an end to genocide, and his willingness to kill to protect the defenseless that makes Machine Gun Preacher so compelling.

Theater of Blood ****

In a modern twist on Phantom of the Opera, Vincent Price plays a Shakespearian thespian who returns from the dead to kill the critics who humiliated him.

Overall, it's pretty much an attempt to mine the The Abominable Dr. Phibes formula all over again, with Price's mad actor knocking off the critics in gruesome ways (this time inspired by Shakespeare plays), and staying one step ahead of the police. Truth to tell, it can get pretty contrived in spots, but overall, it's one of Price's best b-movies, rivaling The Abominable Dr. Phibes itself, primarily because it plays to Price's persona - the role actually requires a hammy performance, and that is something Price can provide in spades.

Definitely recommended for genre film fans in general, and Vincent Price fans in particular if for no other reason than to see Price take such glee in answering his critics through the role.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

Mesrine: Killer Instinct is the first of a two-part story about the life and times of French gangster Jaques Mesrine. These two French films have been compared to Scarface (the 1983 Al Pacino one), for their depiction of the rise and fall of a violent criminal, but unlike Scarface, Mesrine: Killer Instinct is based on actual events that Mesrine wrote in his biography of the same name.

The story begins in Algeria where Mesrine, serving in the French army, is first exposed to killing, and the place where he claims he developed the 'killer instinct' referenced in the title. Upon his return to Paris, he falls in with organized crime figure Guido (Gerard Depardieu), pulling burglaries and armed robberies in the 1960s, until he's caught and sent to prison. Upon his release he travels to Montreal where he befriends a Quebec separatist and a female criminal. The three, led by Mesrine begin a crime spree that will soon make headlines.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct is a great fast-moving crime drama that is every bit as good as just about any true crime film Hollywood has ever put out, and is definitely worth your time. The cinematography is great, with some cinema du look influence evident, but not so much as to take away from the true-crime expose feel, and a fantastic performance by Vincent Cassel as Mesrine.

Central Station (****)


Central Station is a fairly simple story with some very complex emotional content. Isadora is a retired schoolteacher who makes money writing letters for other people in the central train station of Rio. One day a woman writes a letter to the father of her son saying that the boy wants to see him. Minutes later she is run over by a bus leaving the boy, Josue an orphan.

Josue continues to live in the station, stealing what he needs to eat. At first neither Isadora nor Josue wants anything to do with the other, but their mutual need brings them together. Eventually the two set out to find Josue's father in a far off town. On the way Isadora (who is also an orphan), and Josue deal with their abandonment issues and slowly form a bond.

The thing about Central Station is that there is something very real about it. The film shows life as harsh and unpredictable, but it also shows how adaptable humans are.

The Mirror ('Zerkalo')

The Mirror ('Zerkalo')

Soviet-era Russian cinema is difficult going even in the best of situations - leaving aside all the abstruse symbolism and propaganda (which I've previously mentioned in my reviews of Soviet cinema in general, and Andrei Tarkovsky films in particular), Russian cinema, follows the European tradition of cinema as art (as opposed to entertainment), and the French auteur theory whereby film is crafted by a single individual (the director), but in the case of the Soviets, goes a step further - since all film is essentially government funded under communism, and bearing no capitalist need to be successful in the marketplace, or editorial oversight (save perhaps the need to conform to Party ideologue standards), tends to elevate the merely pretentious to outright self-indulgent proportions. Nowhere is this more evident than Tarkovsky's ЗEPKAЛO, a semi-autobiographical film about Tarkovsky's childhood including snippets of poetry, mixed black and white photography, and the utter lack of any narrative flow or even an overarching theme.

As with all Tarkovsky films, the real highlight here is the photography, which is often stunning. In particular, the burning of a barn and lots of long takes and slow dolly shots. But pretty pictures alone do not a good movie make and the film, already difficult to follow for its intensely personal subject matter, is made worse by lots of flashbacks, including flashbacks-within-flashbacks. Couple that with all the usual nonsensical Tarkovsky motifs, such as objects falling from tables and wind blowing underbrush and whatnot, and you have a film that is beautiful but kind of devoid of meaning for anyone who is not Andrei Tarkovsky.

Mansfield Park

Coming in mid way through the Jane Austen revival that began in the mid 1990s with Persuasion, Mansfield Park is another joint production of the BBC (this time with Miramax). As with most of these joint UK/US productions, it has all the budget of a Hollywood film, combined with the authentic British locations, resulting in a lavish and immersive cinematic experience.

As with all Austen adaptations, you pretty much know what you're going to get - a plucky female challenges the status quo in 19th Century England. And, sure enough, Mansfield Park delivers exactly what you expect.

Where Mansfield Park departs from what you'd expect, is where it departs from the source material, most notably in a fairly obviously grafted-on condemnation of institutionalized slavery (something that was only passingly referred to in the book), but even so it's blatant humanitarian message does little to undermine, and perhaps even enhances the otherwise fairly lightweight girl-bucks-the-system romance.