Boy Wonder(2010)"Boy Wonder" was a bit of a surprise for me when it played at MIFFF this year. I had been told it was good, but sometimes with independent films good means "Good, if you forgive the low budget, not-so-great performances and [insert one or two of a dozen other reasons here]. Thankfully, "Boy Wonder" suffers from none of these.
The storyline for this film is of a young man who suffered the loss of his mother at the hands of street thugs and decides to pull a poor man's Batman/Daredevil and make other street thugs, drug dealers and pimps pay the price for it. He has no gadgets, no utility belt or mansion. He's just a sharp young man with a burning desire to avenge the death of his mother and save anyone/everyone from what could be a similar fate to his own.
First off, the casting is about as good as you can cast an independent film. Everyone except two bit part actors, that don't really matter anyway, give performances that are very well handled. Every cast member embraces his or her character with an honesty that's refreshing.
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Bloodrayne: Third Reich(2011)There are few constants in this universe, sure. There is death. There are taxes. Then we have the simple fact that EVERY Uwe Boll movie will suck the teste’s off a donkey. A foolish man would think, “With practice Boll has got to get better.” The simple fact is the universe has already dictated that any movie with the name Uwe Boll attached will suck really really badly.
If you didn’t read the above and come to your own conclusions let me recap. “Bloodrayne: The Third Reich” sucks! Not only does it suck as a movie, but also sucks in just about every way a movie can suck. Screenplay = sucks. Acting = sucks. Cinematography = sucks. Direction = Uwe Boll. Uwe Boll = sucks.
Now that I’ve cleared up how crappy this movie is we can move on to the more saddening parts of a trilogy that doesn’t have the decency to prove that a vampire movie don’t always have to “suck.” Pun totally intended.
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Black Swan(2010)Nina practices ballet real hard. Nina gets role she’s been practicing for. Nina is barely pressured to do a good job. Nina looses it because, well, who freaking knows? Her mom’s an ass and her instructor wants her to do a good job, but there isn’t a reason there beyond Nina’s own neurosis.
Needless to say this Bitter Swan was not impressed. Aronofsky’s decision to direct this in the style of ‘70s horror sounds good on paper, but all we get are some awful shot selection, mediocre lighting, and 20 too many shots of the back of someone’s head while they walk. It’s incredibly uninteresting and bores the audience. It would have been better to direct this in a beautifully shot high art style and had the horror/violence in stark contrast to the rest of the film.
