Posts Tagged ‘Nick Damici’
Thursday, November 2nd, 2017
BUSHWICK is an oh-shit-what-if movie. It uses the intimate perspective of one handheld camera – mostly following one character in ROPE-style long takes edited to look like one shot – to show what it would feel like to suddenly find your neighborhood under attack. It doesn’t have the limitations of found footage, but it reminds me of CLOVERFIELD in the way it plunges us into the chaos, not really knowing what’s going on, running through hoping not to get killed, seeing and hearing mayhem going on down the street, or on the next block down. People running, screaming, cars screeching by peppering buildings with gun shots, snipers on the roofs, explosions in the distance.
There’s no science fiction here. This is a guerrilla attack. Ski-masked gunmen, other people shooting back, the factions unclear at first. The reason for the attack has been widely discussed – it was the first thing I read about the movie, and part of why I was excited about it – but since it plays as a big reveal I’ll save it for the back end of the review.
The movie follows Lucy (Brittany Snow, PROM NIGHT remake), a white girl coming to the titleistical New York neighborhood to visit her grandmother. But she and her boyfriend Jose (Arturo Castro, BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK) emerge from the subway and find themselves in a literal war zone, and he is the first casualty. Treated as an outsider in the mostly black neighborhood, Lucy is quickly grabbed by two not-well-meaning locals and dragged into a house (some rare DEATH WISH bullshit in an otherwise pro-urban movie). But then Stupe (Dave Bautista, HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN), the guy who actually lives in the house, comes in to grab his things, sees them and kills them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aesop Rock, Angelic Zambrana, Brittany Snow, Cary Murnion, Dave Bautista, Graham Reznick, Jonathan Milott, Nick Damici
Posted in Action, Reviews | 48 Comments »
Friday, January 13th, 2017
a.k.a. LATE PHASES: NIGHT OF THE LONE WOLF
I know this has been said before, but LATE PHASES is kinda like GRAN TORINO with werewolves. By that I don’t mean there’s an old guy who’s racist against werewolves but befriends a young werewolf neighbor, although that would also be cool. What I mean is he’s a grouchy old war vet who is not so happy where age is leading him, has trouble getting along with his kid and is cynical about everything and gets to know the local pastor even though he doesn’t like religion. With werewolves.
He’s a ‘Nam vet instead of Korea, and he came back blind. His name is Ambrose McKinley, and he’s played by my new favorite actor Nick Damici (MULBERRY STREET, STAKE LAND I & II, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, COLD IN JULY), looking kind of like Fred Ward and talking kind of like DeNiro. His son (Ethan Embry, CHEAP THRILLS) and more patient daughter-in-law (Erin Cummings, BITCH SLAP) help move him into a duplex in the retirement community of Crescent Bay. That very night a fuckin werewolf busts in and mauls his next door neighbor (Karen Lynn Gorney, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER) and his guide dog Shadow. The police just tell him it’s from living near the woods, wild animals kill people all the time, be sure to keep your doors locked.
“Thanks for the peace of mind,” he deadpans. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Eric Stolze, Erin Cummings, Ethan Embry, Karen Lynn Gorney, Larry Fessenden, Nick Damici, Robert Kurtzman, Tom Noonan, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2016
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE (2013), like THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, uses cannibalism as a stand-in for any unfortunate family traditions that are passed down through the generations long past their shelf date. In this case the Parker family continues a practice that should’ve expired immediately after their ancestors did it the first time in a Donner Party survival type situation. Now it’s gussied up as a religious act to be repeated yearly as “Lamb’s Day,” and the Parkers hold onto an ignorant belief that they’ll get sick if they don’t do it.
This is told mostly from the family’s perspective, and they’re not some weirdo Leatherfaces. To them it’s, like, a family doesn’t just stop celebrating Christmas one year. The Parkers are gonna eat a bowl of human chili on Lamb’s Day. It’s how they were raised. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ambyr Childers, American remake, Bill Sage, Jim Mickle, Julia Garner, Kassie Wesley DePaivia, Kelly McGillis, Larry Fessenden, Michael Parks, Nick Damici, Wyatt Russell
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2016
“I remember everybody, kid. Most of ’em are dead.”
After finally watching STAKE LAND six years after the fact I looked it up on IMDb and was surprised to learn that they already made a sequel that just premiered on SyFy last week and was free on-demand through the 30th. Pretty good timing.
It’s directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, who wrote the upcoming Dolph Lundgren picture DON’T KILL IT. Don’t worry. Part 1’s Jim Mickle did produce it along with Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix, and Nick Damici returns as screenwriter and starring as Mister, as does Connor Paolo as Martin. It’s not some bullshit TV exploitation of the title, it’s a legit sequel that they made and then must’ve gotten more money from SyFy than they would’ve going the normal VOD-then-video route. So more power to them.
(On the other hand, there seem to be virtually no reviews of it and not even poster art available online. Does anyone even know it came out?) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.C. Peterson, Connor Paolo, Larry Fessenden, Laura Abramsen, Nick Damici, post-apocalypse, Steven Williams, vampires
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2016
I’m real late to figuring out that STAKE LAND is good. I mean, I saw good reviews in Fangoria or somewhere but, not being familiar with director Jim Mickle (COLD IN JULY, MULBERRY STREET) or co-writer/star Nick Damici at the time, I pictured a different type of low budget zombie-apocalypse-except-with-vampires-instead-of-zombies movie. I must’ve thought it would be something more poser-y, more SyFy-y, more guy-trying-to-be-Bruce-Campbell-or-somebody. I saw Damici with his sunglasses on the cover and imagined a regular guy overreaching in the badass department, when in fact he’s a great character actor being given proper respect as a lead badass without having to leave behind any of his actorly chops.
This is cheap but not at all cheesy. It’s artfully moody, takes place in a fully-realized post-apocalyptic world, is thoroughly grim and serious but not without its fantastical flourishes. It’s not one of those genre deconstructions that deconstructs out all the ingredients you paid for – it has cool monsters and gore. What it lacks in humor it makes up for in the warmth of strangers bonding, working together in a disaster and hoping for a promised land. It’s a good balance of THE ROAD with John Carpenter’s VAMPIRES. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Connor Paolo, Danielle Harris, Jim Mickle, Kelly McGillis, Larry Fessenden, Nick Damici, post-apocalypse, Sean Nelson, vampires
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2016
MULBERRY STREET is a low budget horror indie with a completely unique feel. It’s basically another zombie outbreak movie, but none of it takes place on farms, in fields, on country roads, in abandoned factories or military bases. No, it takes place right in the middle of Manhattan, focusing on the diverse residents of one small apartment building. This particular zombie problem disproportionately affects the poor because the infection comes from rats. People get bit and then they act weird and sometimes they start to grow hair on the top of their ears, and their teeth, uh…
Well, they turn into rat people. Okay, I don’t like that part. But I was able to forgive it.
Before I scare you off, let me tell you what inspired me to rent it: it’s the feature debut of Jim Mickle, who directed COLD IN JULY. And I actually didn’t realize this, but the lead is Nick Damici, who is his co-writer and also appears in his movies STAKE LAND, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE and COLD IN JULY. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bo Corre, gentrification, Jim Mickle, Larry Fessenden, Nick Damici, rats, Ron Brice, urban horror, zombies
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, July 26th, 2016
COLD IN JULY is a hell of a thriller, a small town Texas crime story with a first act that provides enough story to turn into a standard movie, then adds an odd little swerve. And then a couple more, and eventually you’re down a road you never could’ve predicted. But not in a crazy twisty kind of way. More like the strange, almost random little turns that life takes.
It’s based on a book by Joe R. Lansdale, adapted by director Jim Mickle and his co-writer Nick Damici. After this they adapted Lansdale into the TV show Hap and Leonard.
It all starts in a very simple and human way in East Texas, 1989. Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall, GAMER) is woken up by his wife Ann (Vinessa Shaw, LADYBUGS, EYES WIDE SHUT) because she hears a noise. Like many Americans, especially Texans, he has a gun in the house in case something like this happens. But he’s not the hunting or target shooting type, and this sort of thing hasn’t happened to him before, so he nervously struggles to get the bullets in and tiptoes out to the living room scared as shit. And he sees that yes, someone has broken into his house.
Richard points the gun at the guy. The guy stares at him. What now? Before he can figure that out, his shaky finger accidentally pulls the trigger, shoots right through the dude’s eye. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Don Johnson, Jim Mickle, Joe R. Lansdale, Michael C. Hall, Nick Damici, Sam Shepard, Vinessa Shaw
Posted in Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 22 Comments »
