How is it possible that a movie as violent as Alien Girl could be so boring? A blood-soaked contemporary Russian gangster movie that simultaneously romanticizes and puts down the crimeridden Kiev of the early 1990s, Alien Girl is a colossal waste. It has nothing to do with aliens or immigrants and is a wholly turgid and unconvincing thug romance between a young Ukrainian hood (Evgeni Tkachuk) and his hot hostage-cum-girlshaped baggage. more

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, co-writer/director Jalmari Helander’s feature debut, effectively ushers in the holiday season with a seemingly limitless cache of delightfully perverse variations on the innate fear of punishment at the heart of the Santa Claus myth. The film’s version of St. Nick is a demon, a primordial, nigh-Lovecraftian creation that lurks in the abyss of children’s minds and seeks to punish them for any infraction that they only think they’ve gotten away with over the course of the year. The central premise of Helander’s playful family adventure is that if people want to really bring Christmas back to its roots, they have to acknowledge the pagan nature of the holiday. more

The problem with Monsters, Gareth Edwards’ festival favorite debut sci-fi thriller, isn’t that it’s derivative. Edwards, who wrote and directed the film, does knowingly grapple with similar themes as Cloverfield and District 9. But it never gets so bad that Monsters’ shared interest in shaky cameras, deformed squid-like creatures and canned racial politics becomes overwhelmingly distracting. What Monsters sorely wants is a convincing human element and a softer touch when it comes to its incoherent and mostly pretentious depiction of the way the media sensationalizes and in turn creates monsters. Edwards’s handheld digital photography helps him kill both of those birds with one stone and that’s really where his ambitious parable falls apart. more

This season, the gaping hole left in the New York film scene by the two-year absence of the Two Boots Pioneer Theater seems to have shrunk. Arthouses around the five boroughs have significantly stepped up their respective games, especially thanks to some new faces and freshly scrubbed old ones. Williamsburg's mysterious new Spectacle Theater, on South 3rd Street, has suddenly appeared and is already showing up the more established midnight movie programmers at the IFC Center and the Landmark Sunshine. The theater’s website is currently a bit of a mess, so you'll have to guess what films are showing for the "Halloween Horror Marathon," starting on the night of Oct. 29 and ending late on the night of Oct. 31, based on the films' synopses. more

We begin our tour at the Southeast corner of West 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. Peter Chiarella, better known as porno historian and trench coat personality 42nd Street Pete, is my guide. He points out where the old Anco Theatre used to be—“A real nest of rotten eggs,” he says. “It was pretty much a haven for changesnatchers, junkies and career criminals. more

The acknowledged limits of comic book adaptations dictate that a movie based on a comic book is a property first, then, maybe, a self-sustained work of art. Within that sadly conciliatory realm of expectations, the new adaptation of Red, a wisp of a three-issue mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, is surprisingly sharp, though curiously sleepy. Director Michael Schwentke has no eye for spectacle: while many of the film’s action scenes are sufficiently cocky and well assembled, none of them are memorably explosive. more

A lofty but uneven psycho-noir, Kalamity is a genre film whose ambition unfortunately exceeds writer/director James Hausler’s means. Hausler’s third feature is densely overloaded with bulk more

If you want to make films, you don’t always have to go the studio, or even traditional indie movie route. Upon graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in May of 2009, Zac Amico has already made strides in his DIY filmmaking career. A lover of Troma-Entertainment’s unique brand of schlocky movies, Amico has already caught the eye of Troma founder and spokesperson Lloyd Kaufman, and he now has a deal with them to distribute his two “Schizoid Sluts from Planet Fucktard” short films online for $2 per film more

It was a dark time for Hong Kong martial arts films. Thai actioners were saturating the market and domestic stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li had long been written off as relics of a time when using wires for kung fu was inconceivable. The year was 2008 and director Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen, the charisma-deficient Old Stone Face of Wing Chun fighting, had collaborated on Ip Man, the first of what is so far a three-film series about jingoism, self-reliance and ritualized violence. The film won a dozen awards, including the Golden Horse Award (the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars) for best action choreography. While Ip Man carries on in the tradition of contextless historical fight films—like the wildly popular Once Upon a Time in China movies—it remains an inexplicable, contextless bit of kung fu historicosploitation—albeit a very satisfying one. Because of popular demand, it now screens in New York uncut, undubbed and in its full Hong Kong version at Cinema Village. more

The Romantics is the kind of bland romantic melodrama that breeds resentment instead of sympathy for its young protagonists. Based on a novel by the same name written by director/writer Galt Niederhoffer, The Romantics is a lusterless portrayal of unrequited love gone sour over time. Filled with distracting, blousy pop songs and rote burnt-out character types whose rowdy bad behavior defines their blasé poses and the defining lack of romance in their lives, The Romantics is basically Garden State by way of Margot at the Wedding. more