Crime Archives - Page 26 of 36 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Wonderland (2003) [Limited 2-Disc Edition] – DVD

February 9, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

WONDERLAND
*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Val Kilmer, Lisa Kudrow, Kate Bosworth, Dylan McDermott
screenplay by James Cox & Captain Mauzner and Todd Samovitz & D. Loriston Scott
directed by James Cox

by Walter Chaw A collision of vérité with the sort of Requiem for a Dream grind-cut quick-edits that have produced some of the worst films of the last couple of years (case in point: Spun), Wonderland sets out to tell the true story of 1981's Wonderland Murders, which left four scumbags dead and porn king John Holmes–King Scumbag, as it were–implicated in the lead pipe nastiness. It's a regurgitation in so many ways of so many things: neo-Boogie Nights, neo-noir, neo-Val Kilmer's own strung-out performance in the superior The Salton Sea–and therein lies the problem, as Kilmer is altogether too likeable an anti-hero, typecast as the strung-out simpleton too good-looking to be at the bottom, too drunk on himself to be anywhere else. A section where the passage of time is represented by a montage of TV GUIDE listings provides the only spark in the midst of this spastic spectacle, demonstrating a knowledge of its cathode tube parentage as cannily as the use of Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" tune that defined the MTV-made hit, dancing on the edge of art and porn. It happens early, it raises hopes, and then Wonderland runs itself well past the point of caring.

Hell Up in Harlem (1973) [Soul Cinema] – DVD

February 7, 20041970s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Commentary A+
starring Fred Williamson, Julius W. Harris, Gloria Hendry, Margaret Avery
written and directed by Larry Cohen

by Bill Chambers There have been wiser marketing decisions: MGM leaves Black Caesar out of their "Best of Soul Cinema" DVD set while including the film's sequel, Hell Up in Harlem. Having not yet managed to see Black Caesar for myself, I wondered if that's why Hell Up in Harlem left me as confused as I was entertained. But according to writer-director Larry Cohen in his DVD commentary, one of the finest I've ever listened to (and worth a purchase by itself), that ain't the half of it. In their infinite wisdom, AIP cashed in on a follow-up to Black Caesar so soon after its release that Cohen and star Fred Williamson–whose title character had perished at the end of the original, not that anyone seemed to care–had to shoot it in tandem with It's Alive! and That Man Bolt, respectively. Since those productions were situated on opposite coasts, Williamson couldn't film his lead role in Hell Up in Harlem until one or the other wrapped, resulting in a shake-and-bake screenplay whose main dramatic consideration was how to get away with an abundance of over-the-shoulder shots of the star. This is also why Williamson's character inexplicably decides to move to L.A., and why he boards a flight to Los Angeles at L.A.X. International.

Against the Ropes (2004) + Catch That Kid (2004)

February 6, 20042000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Family, Germany, Romance, Sports, Theatrical

AGAINST THE ROPES
*/****
starring Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Skye McCole Bartusiak, Tony Shalhoub
screenplay by Cheryl Edwards
directed by Charles Dutton

CATCH THAT KID
**/****
starring Kristen Stewart, Corbin Bleu, Max Thieriot, Jennifer Beals
screenplay by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas
directed by Bart Freundlich

by Walter Chaw Erin Brockovich with more boxing, Charles S. Dutton's Against the Ropes (released in the same time of year as Steven Soderbergh's surprise obliterating feminist uplift drama and likewise inspired by the true story of a crass woman from a blue-collar background making good) is interested in mythmaking in the way that boxing manager Jackie Kallen, the subject of this would-be biopic, was. Oddly enough, the film is also interested in marginalizing its minority "product" in the way that Kallen is portrayed to have been by the film. Ostensibly the story of Kallen (Meg Ryan) discovering middleweight James Toney on the streets and fashioning from such rough loam the stuff of a boxing hall of fame shoo-in, the film takes so many liberties with history that the "truth" resembles a Hallmark Hall of Fame production complete with a jaunty score by the late Michael Kamen that made me want to punch something. It's lowest-common-denominator filmmaking, a shake-and-bake Oprah Winfrey urban melodrama that hits all the Wildcats-meets-Rocky moments of saccharine populist uplift on its road to instant Palookaville.

The Badge (2002) – DVD

February 5, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Patricia Arquette, William Devane, Tom Bower
written and directed by Robby Henson

by Walter Chaw Cornering the market on redneck hicks on the mend, Billy Bob Thornton stars in Robby Henson's direct-to-cable The Badge, a Louisiana cop erotica opera equal parts James Lee Burke and The Big Easy. Long on unmotivated slow-motion stretches and editing choices that are bizarre at best, the picture has ambition and atmosphere to burn but stumbles over its own pretension. A cop procedural, lovers-on-the-run intrigue, and ultra-liberal posturing share time in a lurid gumbo before a third-act reveal; the picture's rife with flashbacks and gravid pontificating that undermine the entire shooting match. Better than it should be for Thornton's remarkable ability to convey confusion and discomfort, The Badge is more an Issue movie than a whodunit–and like most movies erring on the liberal side, its strengths don't have a chance against the sloppiness of that bleeding heart on its sleeve.

Overrated/Underrated: Thirteen (2003) + Intolerable Cruelty (2003) [Widescreen] – DVDs

February 2, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Coming of Age, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

by Bill Chambers

OVERRATED
THIRTEEN
*½/**** Image B+, Sound A, Extras B-
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto
screenplay by Catherine Hardwicke & Nikki Reed
directed by Catherine Hardwicke

I wrote my first script at around the age that 16-year-old Nikki Reed was when she collaborated with her father's ex-girlfriend Catherine Hardwicke on the screenplay for Thirteen. In an attempt to shape a thesis about the almost-unwatchable film made from this memoir of Reed's pubescence, I browsed that script (something I haven't done in over a decade) looking for examples of didacticism; by page three, a character has died from smoking, with cigarettes themselves characterized outside passages of dialogue as "cancer sticks." This was of course written in tandem with my own misadventures in smoking, but do as I say, not as I do. (Call it Harmony Korine Syndrome.) Teenagers make exceptionally bad screenwriters because all teens are Catholic, in a sense–every rebellious action has an equal and opposite guilty reaction. Manifested in confessional writing, that hypocrisy can be deliriously egotistical.

Black Widow (1987) – DVD

February 2, 20041980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper
screenplay by Ronald Bass
directed by Bob Rafelson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I suppose there are worse fates than to be made to watch Black Widow. Scripted by '80s stalwart Ronald Bass and directed by fallen '70s wunderkind Bob Rafelson, it's a coldly professional piece of work that combines some clear (if obvious) Hitchcockian doubling with the director's patented sterile master shots. But if much of the mechanics of the thing are put to good, ominous effect, that effect wears off quickly. It's not for lack of potential: pitting a well-put-together ice-queen killer against a falling-apart-at-the-seams female federal agent, its insistence on symmetry between the two solicits a conscious feminist analysis. Alas, the film is so wrapped up in defining itself as a good-time thriller that any subtextual frisson it might have had gets buried, resulting in a not-unpleasant experience that unfortunately doesn't stick.

The Perfect Score (2004)

January 30, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Scarlett Johansson, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Scarlett Johansson, Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Darius Miles
screenplay by Mark Schwahn and Marc Hyman & Jon Zack
directed by Brian Robbins

by Walter Chaw A remake in quality and spirit of the "what were they thinking" classic Hackers, Brian Robbins's The Perfect Score is one of those stunted adolescent teensploitation flicks that makes one pine for the suddenly-glory days of Fresh Horses and The Breakfast Club–which, as it happens, seems to serve as this flick's carbuncular muse. A band of five disparate high school washouts meet in detention–errr, during a PSAT test–and plot to steal the answers from SAT headquarters. The Jock is played by real-life jock Darius Miles; the basket case is Roy (Leonardo Nam); the princess is Anna (an even more zombie-like than usual Erika Christensen); the brain is Francesca (Scarlett Johansson); and the punk is Kyle (Chris Evans). It takes some doing, it goes without saying, to cause one to reassess the acting acumen of the Brat Pack.

The Big Bounce (2004)

January 30, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Romance, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, Sara Foster, Charlie Sheen
screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by George Armitage

by Walter Chaw By the end of The Big Bounce, I was mildly surprised that it was still the same day I sat down to watch it. The film is aspiring to give Owen Wilson the role of the breezy, insouciant rake popularized by authors like Gregory MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, and, more to the point, Elmore Leonard (who I guess wrote the source material, previously adapted into a vehicle for Ryan O'Neal), but succeeds mainly in making the likable Wilson tedious. More a mood piece than a heist flick, The Big Bounce also casts ex-MTV news anchorperson Sara Foster as some kind of femme fatale so vacuous, so bad an actress, that although she's stunning in a Nicolette Sheridan sort of way, she fails to convince that there's enough going on upstairs to be even vaguely dangerous. Foster's entire performance is a yellow bikini and a variety of lucky sheets used as impromptu wraps–an object who never convinces that she's an object on purpose.

Naked Killer (1992) – DVD

January 29, 20041990s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Romance, Thriller

*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring Chingmy Yau, Simon Yam, Carrie Ng, Kelly Yiu
screenplay by Wong Jing
directed by Fok Yiu Leung

by Walter Chaw Ah, 1992. What a year for Wong Jing, as no fewer than seven of his excrescent scripts were produced and Hong Kong's answer to Jess Franco found himself behind the camera on a staggering eight more pictures. It just can't come as any surprise that there's something like creative fatigue evidenced in the man's career, and though he didn't direct Naked Killer (that dishonour fell to Fok Yiu Leung, a.k.a. Clarence Fok), the picture is only marginally better than such Wong-helmed garbage as City Hunter and Royal Tramp–mainly because it's not quite as cartoonish. A case has been made for this film being an obliterating feminist picture along the lines of I Spit on Your Grave or Mother's Day, and indeed, a tale of a band of lesbian seductress assassins who practice their deadly arts on a basement-full of rapists has the potential to say smart things about an important topic. But the execution is so unwatchable and coy that it's hard to embrace Naked Killer as either political or tellingly exploitative.

Swimming Pool (2003) – DVD

January 15, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle
screenplay by François Ozon and Emmanuele Bernheim
directed by François Ozon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On evidence of the four films of his released theatrically in North America, François Ozon has two modes: a hyper-real pastiche on someone else's work ( Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 8 Women) and a more conventionally realistic gloss on his own material (Under the Sand and now Swimming Pool). I must say that I prefer the former to the latter, as there's nothing particularly radical about the director's own ideas (which often veer off into cliché) and his style, unlike in his crazy adaptations, reads nothing into the material that might redeem it from its own limitations. Swimming Pool is a classic example of this, with a listless look barely propping up a standard-issue script fit for those who fancy themselves culturally aware but were born yesterday as far as the art of the cinema is concerned.

Lucía, Lucía (2003) – DVD

January 12, 20042000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mexico, Mystery, Romance, Spain, Thriller

La hija del caníbal
**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Cecilia Roth, Carlos Álvarez-Novoa, Kuno Becker, Manuel Blejerman
screenplay by Antonio Serrano, based on the novella Homónima by Rosa Montero
directed by Antonio Serrano

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A critic at the CHICAGO READER once pointed out that movies often show events that would traumatize us if they happened in real life. But what happens when they cheat and fail to traumatize the characters to which they occur? That's the major problem with Lucía, Lucía (La hija del caníbal), a film that takes a threatened murder and a shocking betrayal and treats them as springboards for a character-building "adventure." In reality, the events swirling around the protagonist would crush her spirit and leave her a broken woman, but in Antonio Serrano's Learning Annex version, everything is a conduit to her self-actualization–a desperately naïve approach that so lowers the stakes of the film that it barely registers.

Catwoman (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

January 10, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Superhero, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C
starring Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson
screenplay by John Brancato & Michael Ferris and John Rogers
directed by Pitof

by Walter Chaw Catwoman is all the bad that Gigli promised to be and more. It’s bad enough that not only are careers over, but somebody should be slapped. The question arises as to whether it’s as bad as Glitter, and though the answer is “sure,” that doesn’t fully address the fact that it’s bad in the same way as Glitter. It’s fabulously, deliriously, egregiously awful–a queer camp classic in the making, and the second film so far this summer to squeeze a lovely young actress into S&M gear (see: Keira Knightley in King Arthur). If this is the face of modern feminism (“I’m bad, but only as bad as I wanna be,” Berry’s Catwoman skanks), then count me in: I’m strangely un-threatened by the show-all boom-boom girl power of Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, the Olsen Twins, and so on. Call me crazy.

In the Line of Duty 4 (1989) – DVD

January 8, 20041980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts

In the Line of Duty IV
皇家師姐Ⅳ直擊證人
Wong ga si je IV: Jik gik jing yan
**½/****
starring Donnie Yen, Cynthia Khan, Yat Chor Yuen, Michael Wong
screenplay by Cheung Chi Shing & Wang Wing Fa
directed by Yuen Woo Ping

by Bill Chambers Generally regarded as the best chapter in the series (and released in America prior to any of the others), Yuen Woo Ping’s In the Line of Duty 4 is an effective action spectacle and a mediocre cop drama; intense though it may be, the film is simply not of a calibre that leaves you remembering it as such. I know there are people who swear by its star, Donnie Yen, but I’ve seen him in about six pictures now (most recently, Zhang Yimou’s awesome Hero), and I don’t find his screen presence all that enthralling. If he’s eschewed the peacocking that has catapulted his contemporaries in HK cinema to international stardom, he’s also lacking in the animal magnetism that keeps your eyes on one blur as opposed to another blur during a martial-arts brawl. Good fighter, of course. Yen is probably the biggest name in In the Line of Duty 4‘s bargain cast, a fact only emphasized by the wishful misprinting of Ping’s name above the title (implying that he’s Yen’s co-star rather than his director) on the front of Fox’s new R1 DVD release.

So Close (2002) – DVD

December 30, 20032000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Hong Kong, Romance, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Shu Qi, Vicki Zhao, Karen Mok, Song Seung Hun
screenplay by Jeff Lau
directed by Corey Yuen

by Walter Chaw Frankly, So Close could suck a tennis ball through a keyhole. Directed by action choreographer Corey Yuen (whose The Transporter I actually sort of liked), the film, a head-scratching mix of elaborate camera angles and stultifying “Dragnet” editing, is so dedicated to trundling from one rigorously disinteresting action set-piece to the next that it’s fair to wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to provide exposition of any sort.

S.W.A.T. (2003) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

December 30, 20032000s, Action, Adventure, Crime, DVD, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Jeremy Renner, Michelle Rodriguez
screenplay by David Ayer and David McKenna
directed by Clark Johnson

by Walter Chaw The promise of the premise is a return to John Carpenter's Escape from L.A., or his Rio Bravo redux Assault on Precinct 13, an idea of a seething urban cess erupting at the promise of notoriety and filthy lucre, but S.W.A.T. washes out as a flaccid, almost wholly uninteresting bit of macho formula. The potential of the film to be Aliens with rampaging hordes of West Coast gangsters seems, at the least, acknowledged in the United Colors of Benetton casting, down to the tough-talking, one-named Latina, but like everything else in the film, the only thing that S.W.A.T. genuinely achieves is a feeling of squandered opportunities and a lot of quiet time to think about them. More, the picture has that distinctive feeling of something that never started by the time it ends–a laggardly-paced two hours of limp set-up that hobbles across the finish line, sputtering on fumes and bluster, boasting mainly of the questionable achievement that it is the exact simulacrum of any episode of the dated '70s television series on which it is based.

Assassination Tango (2003) – DVD

December 29, 20032000s, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller

***/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Robert Duvall, Ruben Blades, Kathy Baker, Luciana Pedraza
written and directed by Robert Duvall

by Walter Chaw In one of a series of largely-improvised exchanges about the mystical hold of the tango on the spirit of Argentines, a crusty veteran confides in enigmatic Yankee hitman John J. (Robert Duvall, also writer-director) that the tango, among absolutes such as love and hate, is life. In Assassination Tango, the titular dance is also the metaphor for the desire to find balance between the brutish and the sublime or, failing that, to provide a strict framework within which the brute can prowl. (A visit to a caged panther in a Buenos Aires zoo becomes the visual manifestation of the idea as well as oblique reference to Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," the hero of which searches, like J., for sustenance.) The tango is the urgent pull of ritual that binds animal sexuality into the meticulous structure of dance, working on the literal level as doppelgänger to John J.'s carefully-controlled, gradually encroaching chaos and on another level as metaphor for a filmmaker seeking equilibrium between personal crisis and professional ambition at the end of his career. It's rationale enough for a picture so often interested in frustrating narrative to the benefit of the richness of its palimpsest; if ever there were a film that lives entirely in its subtext, Assassination Tango (even its title a semantic conundrum) is it.

Teknolust (2003); In July (2000); Taking Sides (2002); Monster (2003)

December 25, 20032000s, Adventure, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Music, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

TEKNOLUST
**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Davies, James Urbaniak, Karen Black
written and directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson

Im Juli.
***/****
starring Moritz Bleibtreu, Christiane Paul, Mehmet Kurtulus, Idil Üner
written and directed by Fatih Akin

TAKING SIDES
**/****
starring Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgård, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birgit Minichmayr
screenplay by Ronald Harwood
directed by István Szabó

MONSTER
**½/****
starring Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson
written and directed by Patty Jenkins

by Walter Chaw As the year winds down and distributors great and small try to cram their films into rotation for possible awards consideration, the truism that there are just as many mediocre foreign and independent films as mainstream ones proves sage for a quartet of minor releases. Lynn Hershman-Leeson chimes in with Teknolust, another of her riffs on Derek Jarman, this one obsessed with Tilda Swinton and eternity through technology. Fatih Akin’s second film In July (Im Juli.) is essentially a German The Sure Thing with elements of After Hours, obsessed with eternity through an immortal beloved lit by the nimbus of various suns. One-time Oscar-winner István Szabó offers Taking Sides, a morality tale plucked half-formed from the stage, questioning the eternity of art against the requirements of morality. And Patty Jenkins weighs in with Monster, this year’s Boys Don’t Cry; it’s vérité as lower-class urban ugly, with Charlize Theron seeking eternity through a performance that breaks her out of her starlet mold, Halle Berry-style. Only time will tell if any of it keeps.

City of Ghosts (2003) – DVD

November 28, 20032000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Matt Dillon, James Caan, Natascha McElhone, Gérard Depardieu
screenplay by Matt Dillon & Barry Gifford
directed by Matt Dillon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It pains me to have to pan something as accomplished as Matt Dillon's directorial debut City of Ghosts. On a technical level, the film is unimpeachable, moving at a comfortable click and remarkably seamless in its creation and assembly; it's not genius, perhaps, but it's certainly capable and, considering that it's a first feature, surprisingly at ease with the mechanics of image-making. Alas, image-making is not the only criteria by which we judge a movie, and so it must be regretfully said that the story that City of Ghosts has to tell is at best condescending and at worst casually racist, with a tourist's eye for the Phnom Penh setting viewing one more Marlow looking for his Kurtz.

The Christopher Lee Collection – DVD

November 10, 20031960s, 1970s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blue Underground, Crime, DVD, Germany, Horror, Italy, Liechtenstein, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK

CIRCUS OF FEAR (1966)
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Anthony Newlands, Heinz Drache
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by John Moxey

THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU (1968)
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Maria Rohm, Howard Marion Crawford
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU (1969)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Maria Perschy, Richard Greene
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

THE BLOODY JUDGE
Il trono di fuoco (1970)
**/**** Image A Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Maria Schell, Leo Genn, Maria Rohm
screenplay by Anthony Scott Veitch
directed by Jess Franco

by Walter Chaw The sort of box set that horror fans and film historians slaver over (though Sino-Western ambassadors probably aren't too pleased about), Blue Underground's exceptionally, reverently remastered four-disc "Christopher Lee Collection" gathers four obscure Lee pictures–The Blood of Fu Manchu, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Circus of Fear, and The Bloody Judge–in presentations so vibrant and beautiful that they're almost enough to distract from the uniform tediousness of the films themselves. A little like avant-garde cinema, these pictures–all but one (Circus of Fear) directed by the notoriously, appallingly untalented Jess Franco–function better as theory than fact, unfolding on staid soundstage environments with single camera set-ups, stock footage, and jump cuts, and squandering, for the most part, the magisterial presence and delivery of Lee. (For the record, a lethal drinking game could probably be devised around the number of times Franco zooms to different parts of the same shot to avoid the inconvenience of relighting or moving the camera around.)

Film Freak Central Does the 2003 New York City Horror Film Festival

November 5, 2003****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Horror, Short Films, Thriller, UK, Zombie

November 5, 2003|Held at the Tribeca Theater for the second year in a row, the New York City Horror Film Festival (NYCHFF) is a collection of low-budget feature and short genre films that, like the San Francisco Film Society's lamented Dark Wave festival (after two amazing years, there is no third instalment pending), gives weight to a much-deserved critical re-evaluation of horror film as an important artistic, sociological, academic endeavour. With special awards this year honouring Troma's Lloyd Kaufman, underestimated horror director Stuart Gordon, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, my favourite independent horror director Larry Fessenden, and special effects legend Tom Savini, the 2^nd NYCHFF is an emerging niche festival run by folks who care about the genre and, better, have an idea about how to present the material in a way as enthusiastic as it is savvy.