Movie Junction

Before we get into the details of the review, one thing I would like to mention is that I have never watched the 1973 Tobe Hooper release of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”  I own the 1973 version on Blu-ray, but I’ve never gotten around to watching it.  Maybe it has to do with the subject matter of the movie and the fact that I am not big into the horror genre.  So, for this review of the 2003 version, I chose not to watch the older version so I could evaluate the newer movie on its own merits. The film begins with five friends led by Jessica Beil driving down a desolate highway and encountering a lonely girl.  The curious friends try to get some insight on how the girl ended up alone on the highway.  The friends then stop at a creepy farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.  From that point, the friends are chased by a deadly, chainsaw-wielding fiend (a.k.a Leatherface) played by Eric Balfour.  One by one, each of them falls prey to Leatherface. ...

Mira Nair made a stunning directorial debut with the Oscar nominated drama, “Salaam Bombay!” in 1988, a gritty film about day-to-day life growing up in the streets of Bombay. Even before “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) became a household name, it was “Salaam Bombay!” that introduced Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) to Western audiences along with its new, talented director.  Mira Nair started her film career directing documentaries on a wide variety of subjects with a focus on capturing life as it happens. Her earlier works, “Salaam Bombay!” and “Mississippi Masala” (1991) generated critical acclaim and box-office successes respectively.  However, “Monsoon Wedding” (2001) remains her most well-known film to date. The story revolves around Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah) trying to organize a big and expensive wedding for his daughter Aditi (Vasundhara Das). Aditi is having an affair with a married man, Vikram (Sameer Arya). Nevertheless, there are also a couple of subplots inter...

Recently, I received four horror titles--“Seventh Moon,” “Offspring,” “The Thaw,” and “The Children”--from Lionsgate as part of their new “Ghost House Underground” series. The series is perfectly marketed by an imprint on the cover of the movie:  “From the makers of the Evil Dead Trilogy.”  Still, I haven’t heard about any of these movies, so I needed one title for the review that would stand out.  After looking at the stories and actors, only one movie seem interesting to me with the presence of Val Kilmer in “The Thaw.”  I decided to check it out. Val Kilmer stars as a famous environmental advocate, Dr. David Kruipen, who discovers the real horror of global warming when he finds the carcass of a woolly mammoth in the polar ice that also contains a prehistoric parasite.  Soon, a team of four students lands on a remote Arctic station to find Dr. Kruipen.  Through a series of events, students find themselves trapped in this station trying to escape the ...