We can, as a race of thoughtful, movie-watchin' human beans, choose to marvel at gimmicky stuff like a well-established filmmaker with access to tons of resources and ballyhoo-generating press making a movie with the same cast over a 12-year period, or we can be equally, if not more impressed by a couple of tenacious exploitation stalwarts patching together 15-years worth of short-ends and workprint trims and outs leftover from various productions and tying it together as a single feature with…

1977: Joe D'Amato wanders into the Italian woods to make a South American Emanuelle film. He winds up jumping from softcore into horror, setting the template for the Italian shock-smut film.

1990: James Bryan and Renee Harmon wander into the Californian woods to make a South American horror film. They wind up ending their film careers.

The weird irony of Jungle Trap is that it may not only be Bryan and Harmon’s best film, but one of the most conventionally…

A brutally shrewd satire that pities its characters and lambasts the endlessly contradictory social and cultural rituals that flourish in America. There are so many moments in this film where the jokes cut so damn deep. The laughs carry more than a hint of uncomfortable bite and they often surprise. Just look at that last shot for a prime example. It’s a bold gut-punch of a statement in a film that’s full of them. Satirizing beauty pageants seems like an…

It's almost unbelievable that so gentle a satire can land with such an emotionally powerful wallop (like an iron glove cast in velvet, to rearrange a quote from Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Kill). It's a cumulative effect that is patiently built, scene by scene, across a wide cast of characters. The ambition seems to be nothing short of deconstructing the "American Dream" by detailing how its pursuit has emotionally crippled an entire small town and negatively affected the values of…

This witty and enthralling Finnish heavy metal drama from he duo directing team of Jukka Vidgren and Juuso Laatio depicts what happens when a newly formed death metal band that names itself Impaled Rektum goes through a major road to traveling to a major heavy metal festival concert with all of the trial and tribulations that they go through that are as tragic and serious as they are comedic and touching in the way they pursue their dream in attending…