To say that District 13: Ultimatum is the most socially conscious project former director-turned-screenwriter/producer Luc Besson (who also has his From Paris With Love in theaters at the same time) has undertaken would be a drastic understatement. More so than even the original District 13 or even the Taxi films, Ultimatum is hyper-aware of the racial underpinnings that support its gallic Escape from New York pastiche. Besson gleefully jangles his viewers' nerves with Ultimatum’s blissfully facile view of the Parisian banlieu. He propels the plot of this sci-fi sequel forward with the grace of the gaudiest of heavy-duty hydraulics and the pomp of sub-woofers that blare hip-hop and R&B with brazen pride—it bobs up-and-down furiously but never ahead very far. Read more

The gob-smackingly manipulative tone of Creation, director Jon Amiel’s biopic of the period in Charles Darwin’s life in which he wrote his revelatory On the Origin of Species, is set as soon as we’re told in no uncertain terms that said book “has been called the biggest single idea in the history of thought.” This is the first sign of many that Amiel, the director of such condescending and thoroughly inept entertainments as Entrapment, is playing to an ideal audience seeking cheap sentimental escapism instead of a thoughtful or even engaging presentation of its subject. Read more

While it’s hardly surprising that co-writer/co-director team the Spierig brothers’ sophomore feature Daybreakers was unceremoniously dumped into theaters by unadventurous studio heads in the first week of January, one shouldn’t take their cluelessness seriously: Daybreakers is so much better than they would have you believe. The Spierigs are a canny pair of Aussies that follow in the footsteps of Peter Jackson but unlike that famous Kiwi, they did not have to wait so long until they were able to make their big-budget American entrée. Read more

Based on a Belgian children’s TV series, A Town Called Panic (Panique au village) is a small but significant shade of quality shy of its peers at Aardman Studios, the British studio that produces Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit claymation cartoons. Though they both peddle in absurdist humor, A Town Called Panic has a much more frenetic pace. Following the hectic misadventures of Horse, Indian and Cowboy, co-writer/director team Stephanie Aubier and Vincent Patar’s film is proudly unfocussed. This reaps modest chuckles instead of memorable yuks, which for a 75-minute film is more than a little disappointing. Had Aubier and Patar taken a page from Park’s book, they would’ve known to focus less on their film’s broader jokes and instead on its more resigned playfulness. Read more

It’s fitting that the Asia Society should whittle down Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s filmography down to what they deem to be his bare essentials, leading up to Face, his latest and certainly one of his best films. Tsai’s films are about mundane phantoms, invisible people that exist in the same places as one other but rarely at the same time. A complete weeklong retrospective of Tsai’s work shouldn’t be done since none of his characters in any given film can fit into the same spot, let alone the same frame-of-mind. To respect the films’ spare vision of sexual mystery and longing, you have to be a little selective in choosing which ones best fit together. Read more

In a fitting dramatic flourish, the Two Boots Pioneer theater closed one year ago this upcoming Halloween. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was the last movie screened at the much-missed hub for both vintage and contemporary cult flicks. The saddest part about the space closing was how quickly its unusual programming disappeared with nothing to fill the space. Programmer/manager Lee Paterson’s eclectic and exciting month-long “Schlocktober” festival, featuring everything from Italian zombies to Mexican wrestlers, made it seem as if the Pioneer was going strong right up until its last night. This is the first Halloween in a decade that New Yorkers will have to get their horror fix without the theater and, while it’s tempting to say that it’s not going to be an easy one, there is hope yet. Read more

“Pulp Fiction with soul,” was what Boston-born, indie-hack-that-could Troy Duffy’s first screenplay, The Boondock Saints, was crassly dubbed by Hollywood insiders. Duffy, more memorable for the story of his rise and meteoric fall from prominence, is not really interested in the kind of misappropriated nostalgia from which Quentin Tarantino has made a career. Like its predecessor, which found a huge cult following on DVD, Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Days is much more proud of its pseudo-religious self-righteousness and strained pub humor. This time, however, Duffy offers his small but devoted fanbase an equally meaningless sheen of progressivism. Read more

Pandorum, the latest Hollywood-funded science fiction missed opportunity, makes no sense. It doesn’t really try to by the end but nevertheless, it should be said up front so that nobody has any illusions about the film since its creators certainly didn’t. Flattering themselves that they could get by on the film’s atmosphere alone, screenwriter Travis Molloy and director Christian Alvart—whose indie horror flick Antibodies kick started his career—don’t aspire to much more. Read more

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, the film adaptation of Tucker Max’s notoriously infantile and incredibly popular tell-all memoir about his fratboy sexcapades is not immediately repugnant. It may make you lose feeling in your upper extremities, thanks to its never-ending stream of proudly misogynistic repartee, but at this point, it’s not yet worthy of your ire. The film only becomes truly insipid when it makes a cloying, half-hearted attempt to show that Max and his buddies, who go on a debauch at a fabled strip club, have learned the error of their ways and now have greater respect for women and themselves. Read more

Writer/director Bob Byington’s Harmony and Me is like the mumblecore version of a Terry Southern comedy. Full of anarchic energy and a revolving door set of cameos from Austin’s film scene, it takes Southern’s love of absurd, disorientingly staccato confrontations and gives it a lo-fi tweak. That’s because, unlike Southern’s comedies, where any given protagonist is never as important as the trip they’re on, the plot of Harmony and Me is grounded in the perspective of its snarky young protagonist. Which means it’s intermittently more smarmy and quirky than charming and surreal but never enough to make it lose its indomitable momentum. Read more