Two of my least favorite movies of the past few years are The Brave One and Gran Torino.  Seeing how Harry Brown is essentially the exact same plot of The Brave One but with the “beloved old actor playing a hardass” aspect of Gran Torino plugged in for the main character, one would think that I fucking hated Harry Brown.  Ah, but there’s where you’re wrong, hypothetical-reader-who-apparently-didn’t-understand-what-I-was-setting-you-up-for-with-those-first-couple-sentences.  On the contrary, I actually kinda liked Harry Brown.

In case you forgot the plot of The Brave One, let the Nerd give you the low-down on Harry Brown.  Michael Caine plays the titular character, an old pensioner and former Marine who loses his wife to cancer early in the film.  He lives in a shitty London ghetto where the gangs rule the streets, harassing anyone they feel like – typical pointless movie bullies.  When Harry’s only friend Len is killed by some kids and the cops, led by Emily Mortimer’s character, can do fucking nowt about it, Harry starts murdering motherfuckers.  Can Emily Mortimer stop him before it’s too late?  More importantly, seeing how he’s doing what she can’t, does she really want to stop him?

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The record is broken and it keeps fucking repeating itself, dear reader, and the bit of song that is driving me mad goes like this: “The best crime flicks today are from overseas.”  The latest example, Animal Kingdom, comes from Australia, a country that previously this year gave us the undeniably awesome The Square.  Shit, some of the dudes (part of a film company known as Blue Tongue) from The Square also had a hand in making Animal Kingdom the burly beast that it is.  On the strength of these two offerings and the (hopefully kick ass) upcoming feature Hesher, here’s hoping Blue Tongue keeps cranking out quality shit like this for years to come.

Animal Kingdom opens with Melbourne teenager Josh Cody’s mom dead of a heroin overdose.  Faced with few options, J is forced to call his grandmother, turning shit into an out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire sort of situation for the kid.  His grandma is mother to a dangerous crew of armed bank robbers that includes the sociopathic Pope, the temperamental Craig, their reluctant little brother Darren, and family friend Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton from The Square).  Initially things seem solid, yeah, they’re criminals but good blokes all around, seems like.  Naturally, it isn’t long before a something horrible happens to the family and the reasons for J’s mother’s abandonment of her family become extremely fucking clear as their violent natures surface.

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by Karl McGowan

I recently got to see the film adaptation of Ken Bruen’s The Guards, shown on the Irish channel TV3, it’s the pilot of a proposed series of TV movies based on the Jack Taylor series of novels. I have to admit to having a bit of trepidation about how the film was going to turn out, I’ve been reading Ken Bruen for years and I have been disappointed by screen adaptations in the past eg John Hanna as Inspector Rebus and the Jeff Bridges version of Matt Scudder in Eight Million Ways To Die. I needn’t have worried though, ‘Jack Taylor’ was a gripping crime thriller and I hope the pilot gets taken up as I’d love to see more being made.

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A psychological ballerina thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis sounds pretty crazy right? Well wait until you get a load of the trailer. Looks pretty intense.

Black Swan will premiere at the 67th Venice Film Festival in September 2010 and have a limited release on December 1, 2010

After the jump check out the synopsis and the trailer.

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The director of House of Flying Daggers and Hero, Zhang Yimou, has filmed a remake of the Coen brothers Blood Simple called A Woman A Gun and a Noodle Shop.

It looks pretty cool.

After the jump check out the trailer.

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It’s shaping up to be a hell of a year for foreign prison movies, dear reader.  Earlier in the year we saw the release of the fantastic French film A Prophet and now Spain has dropped Cell 211 on our sunny shores, albeit with far less fan-fare.  How a movie this undeniably kick ass could be over-looked by the Landmark Theatres chain while bring-your-own-blanket-and-pillow-lookin’ flicks like Countdown to Zero and Agora clog up their valuable screen space is fucking beyond the Nerd.  Cell 211 is a fucking straight-up sleeper, a movie that shames all the limp “blockbusters” that’ve shrugged their way to the multiplexes this summer with its stomach-turning tension and balloon-sized balls.

Juan Oliver (Alberto Ammann) is taking a tour of the prison he’s been hired on at when the fearsome inmate Malamadre starts a prison riot.  In all the confusion Oliver is abandoned in the cell block while the other guards flee to safety.  Thinking fast, Oliver chucks his visitor pass and shoelaces and pretends he’s a new inmate, his cunning and toughness soon making him a confidante of Malamadre.  As Malamadre starts making demands to the warden over the lives of vital political prisoners, Oliver struggles to keep his cover and stay alive through all the chaos, eventually finding out just how much of his soul he’s willing to lose in order to survive.

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Wow! This is huge news. Everyone’s favorite high school science teacher Bryan Cranston Breaks Bad joins the cast of Drive, the adaptation of the brilliant novel by James Sallis.

You’ve got to love this development.

Get all the info after the jump

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After the jump Spinetingler has the full trailer for the first Jack Taylor film, The Guards, based on the Jack Taylor novels of Ken Bruen.

Magma has the rights to the full series of books so please join me in collective prayer that Ken’s fans in the U.S. will be allowed to see these films some day.

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Holy crap, this makes me jump up and down.

Cruddy is one of the best dark fictions that people haven’t read yet and is a personal favorite of mine.

I reviewed it awhile back:

I swear to God, it’s hard for me to remember reading another book that is as uncompromising in its brutality as Cruddy is. But wrapped up inside of all this brutality is a wicked and black sense of humor that keeps the reader chuckling while the asylum burns to the ground.

Cruddy is bloody, insane, funny, violent, bleak, stark, brutal, and dark. Go read it and be amazed.

PS – You’ve got to love a book that is described as “part Easy Rider and part bipolar Wizard of Oz” and then lives up to the description.

I urge everyone to read it.

Belladonna Feature Films is working on a filmed adaptation of Cruddy by Lynda Barry that will be a mix of live action and animation.

Get all the info after the jump.

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