Shameless Self Expression

After the death of his terminally ill mother, Elijah Wood is sent to live with his uncle (Daniel Hugh Kelly) and aunt (Wendy Crewson), whilst dad David Morse accepts a one-year job in Japan. Wood immediately hits it off with his cousins Macaulay and Quinn Culkin, but soon Wood learns that Mac has a dark, malicious side. Possibly even homicidal, he may have even killed his baby brother years ago. Unfortunately, Mac has his mother wrapped around his little finger, and there doesn’t appear to be a damn thing Wood can do about it. Also, Wood starts to suspect that Crewson might be the reincarnation of his mother, after his mother told him on her deathbed that she’d never leave him. This doesn’t exactly help in convincing people that Mac is the murdering loon, not Wood. Jacqueline Brooks plays a dense and extraordinarily gullible child psychologist called in when there is concern over Wood’s increasingly tempestuous and heightened behaviour.

This 1993 ‘bad seed’ thriller isn’t the best off…

Clayne Crawford stars as a bank robber on the run after his latest heist, which has left him a little worse for wear, if $300,000 richer. Bleeding and needing somewhere to hang out until he makes his getaway in a few hours or so, he finds a postcard from a young woman in the mailbox of Warwick (David Hyde Pierce), who appears to be the nicest guy alive. Pretending to be a friend of the woman who wrote the postcard, he manages to play on Warwick’s sympathy (claiming he was mugged and the airport lost his luggage) to get inside his house, and even stay for dinner, as Warwick (a bachelor) is hosting a dinner party about to start shortly. Before long, Warwick’s friendly but nosey questioning starts to annoy Crawford, but...hey...is the room spinning, or is it just Crawford? He awakens to find himself tied to a chair and about to endure the strangest dinner party of all-time, as his generous host appears to be somewhere in between Niles Crane, Rupert Pupkin, and Patrick Bateman. Brooke ‘Mi…

A hobo (played by Leon M. Lion) and a couple of other people, stumble upon a dead body, and some nasty jewel thieves planning to escape on a train out of England. But no one is quite as they appear in this extraordinarily convoluted tale.
Superb black and white cinematography and nicely captured atmosphere, and an interesting central idea save this somewhat archaic, confusing and talky 1932 Alfred Hitchcock (“Psycho”, “Strangers on a Train”, “The Lady Vanishes”, “Vertigo”) film from being one of his worst.

The ridiculously named Leon M. Lion is an acquired taste as the hobo character (Hitchcock apparently hated the guy intensely, but then Hitch was never much of a fan of actors, was he?), but aside from his dorky attempt at a cockney accent, I rather enjoyed him compared to some of the stiffer members of the cast. In fact, with the rather appropriately loud music score by A. Hallis, and the Expressionistic photography and so on, this might’ve worked a lot better as a silent film. Sham…

Las Vegas teen Charlie (Anton Yelchin) gets a visit from geeky former best friend Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who tells him that a friend of theirs has gone missing. Ed (Mintz-Plasse) claims the kid was killed by a vampire. But not just any vampire, no, it was the vampire who just happens to be newly moved in next door to Charlie and his mother Toni Collette! Yelchin doesn’t buy it and continues to snub nerdy Ed in favour of his (surprisingly hot) girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots). However, when Ed too goes missing, Charlie starts to investigate, and Ed’s suspicions prove right. Mysterious neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell) is indeed a vampire. In response, Charlie goes to Goth stage magician (yes, you read that correctly) Peter Vincent (David Tennant) for help in defeating the undead blood-sucker.

Being much more a fan of Tom Holland’s subsequent film “Child’s Play” (one of my all-time favourite horror films, I nonetheless like the original “Fright Night” from 1985 well enough (It belongs in …