- There were 39 specially written, thirtyminuteTV Sherlock Holmes filmsmade starring Ronald Howard asHolmes and Howard MarionCrawford as Watson. They wereproduced by Sheldon Reynolds andfilmed and scored in France. RonaldHoward was the son of the actor LeslieHoward, with whom he appeared inPimpernel Smith. Howard Marion-Crawford is one of those rare Holmes-Watson actors. This delightful collectionof
Academy Award® winner Renee Zellweger stars in this terrifying, supernatural thriller about a social worker who has been assigned the unusual and disturbing case of Lillith Sullivan…a girl with a strange and mysterious past. When Emily (Renee Zellweger) opens her home in an attempt to help Lillith, it turns into a deadly nightmare she may not survive. Coâ€"starring Bradley Cooper (The Hangover), Case 39 is a heart-stopping chiller with startling surprises that lead to a shocking and sinister en! ding.A top-notch cast led by Renée Zellweger meets Hollywood's newest member of the Evil Little Girl army in the long-gestating supernatural thriller
Case 39. Zellweger is a concerned social worker who takes in young Jodelle Ferland (
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) after she is nearly roasted alive by her foster family. She soon discovers that the girl possesses a wide array of unpleasant abilities, from the prerequisite foul mouth and bad attitude to devastating powers of suggestion, which bring untimely ends to most of the cast. Director Christian Alvart (
Pandorum), working once again with his talented
Antibodies cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski, delivers a suitably creepy-looking film but can do nothing with Ray Wright's inert, derivative script (Wright also penned the equally DOA remakes of
Pulse, 2006, and
The Crazies, 2010). What's left is a smattering of shocks and straight-faced turns by such capable vets as Zellweger, Ian McSha! ne, Bradley Cooper, Cynthia Stevenson, and Callum Rennie. Horr! or fans will find more compelling kiddie chills in
The Omen,
The Exorcist, or even 2009's
Orphan.
--Paul GaitaAcademy Award® winner Renee Zellweger stars in this terrifying, supernatural thriller about a social worker who has been assigned the unusual and disturbing case of Lillith Sullivan…a girl with a strange and mysterious past. When Emily (Renee Zellweger) opens her home in an attempt to help Lillith, it turns into a deadly nightmare she may not survive. Coâ€"starring Bradley Cooper (The Hangover), Case 39 is a heart-stopping chiller with startling surprises that lead to a shocking and sinister ending.A top-notch cast led by Renée Zellweger meets Hollywood's newest member of the Evil Little Girl army in the long-gestating supernatural thriller
Case 39. Zellweger is a concerned social worker who takes in young Jodelle Ferland (
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) after she is nearly roasted alive by her foster family. She soon discovers that ! the girl possesses a wide array of unpleasant abilities, from the prerequisite foul mouth and bad attitude to devastating powers of suggestion, which bring untimely ends to most of the cast. Director Christian Alvart (
Pandorum), working once again with his talented
Antibodies cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski, delivers a suitably creepy-looking film but can do nothing with Ray Wright's inert, derivative script (Wright also penned the equally DOA remakes of
Pulse, 2006, and
The Crazies, 2010). What's left is a smattering of shocks and straight-faced turns by such capable vets as Zellweger, Ian McShane, Bradley Cooper, Cynthia Stevenson, and Callum Rennie. Horror fans will find more compelling kiddie chills in
The Omen,
The Exorcist, or even 2009's
Orphan.
--Paul Gaita From Matt Reeves â€" the writer/director of Cloverfield â€" comes the new vampire classic that critics are calling “chillingly real†(Scott Bowles,! USA Today) and “one of the best horror films of the yearâ€! (Cinema tical). In bleak New Mexico, a lonely, bullied boy, Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee of The Road), forms a unique bond with his mysterious new neighbor, Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz of Kick-Ass). Trapped in the mind and body of a child, however, Abby is forced to hide a horrific secret of bloodthirsty survival. But in a world of both tenderness and terror, how can you invite in the one friend who may unleash the ultimate nightmare?
Based on the Swedish novel, Let the Right One In, “Let Me In is a dark and violent love story, a beautiful piece of cinema and a respectful rendering of my novel for which I am grateful.†(John Ajvide Lindqvist, author).
Let Me In blends the innocent face of Chloe Grace Moretz (
Kick-Ass) with the darkness of vampirism. A young boy named Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee,
The Road) has troubles at home (his parents are divorcing) and at school (bullies pick on him mercilessly). But when a mysterious girl named Abby (Moretz) moves i! n next door, Owen hopes he's found a friend, even though she smells a little strange. Unfortunately, his new friend needs blood to live, and the man who seems to be her father (Richard Jenkins,
Six Feet Under) goes out to drain local residents to feed her. But even as Owen starts to suspect something is wrong, having a real friend might just matter more. Because the Swedish film adaptation of the novel
Let the Right One In (on which
Let Me In is based) was surprisingly popular and critically acclaimed, it's going to be hard for
Let Me In to avoid comparisons. Surprisingly, it retains much of the flavor and spirit of the original. It's not as understated--this is an American movie, after all--and some of the creepiness is lost along with that subtlety. Despite that,
Let Me In has its own spookiness and the performances (including Elias Koteas,
Zodiac, as a local policeman) are strong. Directed by Matt Reeves (
Cloverfield).
! --Bret FetzerUnited Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it! WILL NO T play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (2.35:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Deleted Scenes, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Oscar-winner Renée Zellweger stars in this terrifying supernatural thriller about a social worker who has been assigned the unusual and disturbing case of Lillith Sullivan … a girl with a strange and mysterious past. When Emily (Zellweger) opens her home in an attempt to help Lillith, it turns into a deadly nightmare she may not survive. Co-starring Bradley Cooper (The Hangover), Case 39 is a heart-stopping chiller with startling surprises that lead to a shocking and sinister ending. ...Case 39 ( Case Thirty Nine )Trapped in an elevator high above Philadelphia, five p! eople discover that the Devil is among them â€" and no one can escape their fate. This chilling, supernatural thriller from M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to a heart-stopping ending with a truly wicked twist.Five people trapped in an elevator, and one of them is the
Devil--it's an intriguing launch pad for a movie, and in the hands of producer M. Night Shyamalan, it has all the makings of a first-class supernatural thriller. Unfortunately, Shyamalan's concern is more with the mechanics of the story--how to pull off that celebrated final-act switcheroo--than in presenting flesh-and-blood characters or dialogue that reeks of pulp. There's a moral high-handedness to the proceedings that's also off-putting--there's a reason why these five strangers are trapped in the lift, and why Detective Messina (the very likable Chris Messina from
Julie & Julia) is summoned to rescue them, and why every character ! is set in motion in Shyamalan's Skinner box of a plot, but it ! hinges o n very well-worn territory, which bites deeply into the story's novel conceit. The cast is uniformly fine--in addition to Messina, there are fine turns by such underrated actors as Bokeem Woodbine, Jenny O'Hara, Geoffrey Arend (in the elevator), and Matt Craven and Caroline Dhavernas (outside)--and the direction by John Erick Dowdle (
Quarantine), who coproduced with brother Drew and Shyamalan, does an impressive job of keeping the action fluid in the confines of the setting. But the central conceit of
Devil is comic book material tarted up as an event picture, which doesn't elicit much hope for the rest of Shyamalan's
Night Chronicles trilogy, of which this is the first entry.
--Paul GaitaWhen he arrives on the rural Louisiana farm of Louis Sweetzer, the Reverend Cotton Marcus expects to perform just another routine “exorcism†on a disturbed religious fanatic. An earnest fundamentalist, Sweetzer has contacted the charismatic preacher as a last! resort, certain his teenage daughter Nell is possessed by a demon who must be exorcized before their terrifying ordeal ends in unimaginable tragedy. Buckling under the weight of his conscience after years of parting desperate believers from their money, Cotton and his crew plan to film a confessionary documentary of this, his last exorcism. But upon his arrival at the already blood-drenched family farm, it is soon clear that nothing could have prepared him for the true evil he encounters there. Now, too late to turn back, Reverend Marcus’ own beliefs are shaken to the core as he and his crew must find a way to save Nell â€" and themselves â€" before it is too late.Just when you thought it was safe to see another shaky, handheld, faux-documentary horror movie… along comes
The Last Exorcism to raise the creep factor. Supposedly we are watching a documentary crew tagging along after one Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a hell-raising preacher who sidelines in exorci! sms. He's got a leather-bound volume full of dire drawings and! incanta tions, and he knows the rubes just eat this kind of stuff up. Now Cotton has vowed to expose his own gimmicks for the camera, so he journeys to backwoods Louisiana to answer the call to save a putatively possessed girl--the better to debunk his own methods, once and for all, and get out of the exorcism business. Sounds like nothing could possibly go wrong. Then we meet the Sweetzer family: bible-thumping papa (Louis Herthum), not-quite-right son Caleb (eerie Caleb Jones), and possessed daughter Nell (Ashley Bell). Someone's been mutilating the farm's livestock, and dear little Nell has the vacant stare and sweet smile of a demon child. Director Daniel Stamm wisely allows the buildup to go on and on in non-hyped fashion, letting the sense of reality increase with each scene--the better to unleash the mayhem in the second half of the movie. It all goes over the top, and obviously the "found footage" gimmick has long since become a cliché that you either go along with or rejec! t. But the climax is enough to warm the heart of any self-respecting fan of devil movies, and
The Last Exorcism is distinguished by some very good performances, especially TV veteran Patrick Fabian, who creates a deft, funny, full-blooded character.
--Robert HortonFrom the makers of Paranormal Activity,
Insidious is the terrifying story of a family who, shortly after moving, discovers that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son has inexplicably fallen into a coma. Trying to escape the haunting and save their son, they move again only to realize that it was not their house that was haunted.For most of its first half,
Insidious creeps along in top form as a classical haunted house movie, seething with chilling riffs and cinematic idioms that embrace the best elements of the genre. Director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell (the cocreative team that unleashed the
Saw franchise onto unsuspecting moviegoers in 2004) create ! a genuine sense of foreboding that many audiences may experien! ce as th e kind of imagery vaguely recalled from actual nightmares. Shadowy figures are glimpsed behind curtains or are barely visible through darkened windows, with the tension building from something that is only halfway there. Or maybe that something is all the way there and we just can't make it out clearly enough through the haze of our gathering dread. There aren't any cheap thrills or phony scares; the menacing tone is measured and well earned and doesn't have to rely on things jumping out of the darkness. The terror often comes from what we don't see, or rather what we're afraid we're about to see.
It's a simple story about a young family--Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) and their three small children--settling into a new home. Again following classical form, there's a presence in the house that either doesn't want them there, or needs them to stay for the evilest possible reasons. When 8-year-old Dalton (Ty Simpkins) falls into an unexplained coma after a sp! ooky encounter in the attic, Renai starts seeing the above-mentioned figures lurking around the house, sometimes none too subtly. Though the goings-on are unexplainable, no one acts crazy and Josh believes that his wife's bizarre encounters are real. Like any sensible people who believe they've taken up residence in a haunted house, they move. But the spookiness moves with them and the menace gets worse as months pass and Dalton remains unconscious without reasonable medical cause. Since things can't stay unexplained forever, the plot begins to intrude, especially when a geeky pair of paranormal investigators (Angus Sampson and writer Leigh Whannell) provide some slightly out-of-kilter comic relief. Fortunately their boss (Lin Shaye) is a bona fide psychic who's all business, and she determines that the ghosts, or demons, or whatever they are want Dalton, not the house or its other inhabitants. As the explanations continue, it's revealed that the little boy has the gift of ! astral projection and his spirit has left his body without rea! lly know ing it's gone. If he doesn't come back soon he'll be lost forever, taken by the strongest of the creepy phantoms, a blood-red fiend who provides the most terrifying moments of half-glimpsed horror. It turns out that Dalton inherited his gift from Dad, who has repressed his own childhood encounters with out-of-body flight, but must revisit the dark limbo where all the specters lurk in order to reunite his son's body and soul.
All this narrative sometimes gets in the way of the sinister unknowns that started the story, but there are still plenty of frights to maintain a consistently disturbing tone (and without a drop of blood or gore). Wan and Whannell preserve the less-is-more strategy to fine effect, honoring the legacy of a timeless horror style while ably stamping it with their own unique imprimatur. Whether or not you have a personal history of nightmares, there are plenty of willies to go around in the eerie confines of Insidious--an apt title for a movie who! se ideas and images invade the mind with scary and spectral imagination. --Ted Fry39 Specially written, thirty-minute TV Sherlock Holmes' films made starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion as Watson. They were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed and scored in France. Ronald Howard was the son of the actor Leslie Howard, with whom he appeared in Pimpernel Smith. Howard Marion-Crawford is one of those rare Holmes-Watson actors.
This delightful collection of adventures infuses the wonderful Holmes mysteries with fresh energy and vigor that provides hours of thrilling entertainment. Each disk is prefaced with an introduction by Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings) who re-invigorated the role of Holmes in later features.
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