[  Mood: Sleepy ]
The Burrowers

J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers performs solidly as an old school, straightforward horror film. The movie plays fair with both Western and Horror conventions with a subtle grace and doesn’t rely on jump scares or WB alumni.

Set in the untamed frontier of the 1800s, The Burrowers tells the story of a rescue party in pursuit of women abducted by Indians. Ranch worker Coffey’s fiance is one of the missing women and he and Parcher, the ranch boss, join in with a group of U.S. cavalry troops to find the unknown Indian tribe called the Burrowers. They find the Burrower’s victims paralyzed and buried along the way. The party soon realizes they are not up against a marauding tribe but something much older and much more terrifying.

Though the film seems a little long as the search party crosses the prairie, I was hooked all the way through. I was impressed with the unblinkingly bleak ending too. The Burrowers probably won’t balloon into a massive box office success, but If you dig proper horror or are a Joe Lansdale fan, you should check this film out.

Gachi Boy: Wrestling with a Memory

Okay, so underdog sports films usually use adjectives like "rousing" and "inspirational", but how can you not be curious about film that takes the premise of Memento and turns it into a goofy, rousing lucha libre movie? And if you’ve always wanted to be a luchador, you might find it inspirational too.

In Gachi Boy, law student Igarashi joins his university wrestling club, a band of bickering misfits who have more heart than talent. Igarashi is odd and quirky so he fits right in. But Igarashi suffers from permanent brain damage which causes him to forget everything since his accident when he goes to sleep. Like the hero in Memento, the young wrestler lives by his notes and photos to fake some continuity in his marooned life. How will his teammates react to his secret and how can Igarashi win the big match when he loses his training each night?

As ridiculous as Gachi Boy sounds, it flat out works. The movie was adapted from a one room play and that stage background forged the strong characters that make this movie. Breakout your subtitle glasses and watch this film. You’ll be crying from laughter until the end where you just might squeeze out a tear and a lip tremor for the underdog.

AICN Secret Screening #2: Role Models

David Wain (from the comedy troupes The State and Stella) leaves his indie leanings of Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten behind and turns out a decidedly mainstream comedy with Role Models. But when one of the leads is Sean William Scott, you knew this was going to be a mainstream affair, right?

Danny Donohue (Paul Rudd) has a bad day, and when you’re bad day is fueled by an overdose of the energy drinks you pitch to high schoolers, that’s enough to land you and your best friend 150 hours of public service mentoring children. But Danny and Wheeler (Scott) have no business being around kids, let alone troubled ones. Danny gets paired with LARPing introvert, Augie while Wheeler is the ‘big’ for his foulmouthed mini-me, Ronnie. If you think that Augie may teach hardcore realist Danny a lesson about being yourself while Ronnie teaches Wheeler about responsibility, whoa, you’re right. There’s a formula at work here and it mechanically hits each plot point beat for predictable beat.

I was entertained by several of the gags though the sum turned out to be much less than the parts. This film is in an awkward place, though. A few relatively minor edits could turn Role Models into a PG-13 family comedy. Right now it plays like a family comedy with a boob shot and extra cursing just to grab the R rating, but really isn’t satisfying as an R comedy. The LARP climax of the movie obviously owes a debt to Darkon, a doc that made the festival rounds several years ago. Since Second Skin came out this past spring, how long will it be before a mainstream MMORPG comedy shows up?