Reviews: Jonathan Jackson & Nick Stahl in Kalamity; and Max Thieriot in My Soul To Take

Last night I got complimentary tickets to a screening of Kalamity, a movie featuring lead roles by Jonathan Jackson of the music group Enation (he also was on Boy Meets World twice and played Kyle Reese on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), as well as Nick Stahl (Meskada, Terminator 3: Judgement Day). The other main lead was Christopher M. Clark, who played Jonathan's roommate and close friend. The movie begins with discussions about Jonathan's ex-girlfriend, played by Alona Tal. She's been missing, and Jonathan indicates that he hasn't gotten over her, but his discussions about her are also sketchy, it's obviously a sensitive topic that can get him angry and irrational. Nick tries to talk sense into Jonathan when this happens to calm him down and get him to be more rational about it, but his efforts don't seem to work. Nick's role is that of Jonathan's best friend. Nick's character is having issues of his own, as he has flashbacks constantly of the time he spent with his own girlfriend played by Beau Garrett. Nick is obsessing over his breakup with her, and having trouble sleeping. This makes it more difficult for Nick to realize that the things Jonathan is saying to him are increasingly psychotic and indicative that some serious issues are going on with him. Jonathan one night almost shoots a girl he knew from a bar but while she was driving home and only changed his mind because of something he overheard from her cell phone conversation distracting him. Then later he is talking to Christopher, and something angers Jonathan, so Jonathan punches Christopher so hard he knocks him unconscious and when Christopher falls to the ground his head hits the pavement and he is seriously injured and begins hemmoraging blood. Jonathan takes Christopher home and cleans the wound with dish soap and then leaves Christopher bleeding, instead of bringing him to the hospital. The next day, Jonathan claims to Nick that he will go to a trade show out of town, but in reality he is going to stalk Nick's ex girlfriend. Nick finds Christopher and takes him to the hospital to get stitches and then they realize that Jonathan would not be sent to a trade show, his employer would instead, so they know this was a lie and Nick calls Jonathan who lies again and talks a lot of cryptic psychobabble to try and confuse Nick about his whereabouts. When Jonathan finds Nick's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, Jonathan lures them into the woods for a hiking trip and kills them both. While this is happening, Nick and Christopher find the dead body of Alona near where Alona and Jonathan used to go on their dates, thier "spot", and they know Jonathan killed her. When Jonathan gets back he finds his belongings out of place and realizes incriminating things have been found and moved, so he shoots Christopher and has a nervous breakdown. Nick arrives too late to save Christopher, and confronts Jonathan who confesses everything, and then Jonathan shoots himself to death.

For showtimes and tickets in NY visit
http://bit.ly/aV3b7C

For showtimes and tickets in LA visit
http://bit.ly/aqVbDI

To stay up to date about Kalamity join their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Kalamity/72198969249?v=info

http://www.kalamitymovie.com

For trailer:




I also recently went to see Max Thieriot's new movie "My Soul To Take" in 3-D. The movie is about the return of The Riverton Ripper, a dead serial killer with seven souls and only one of those souls was the killer. The serial killer was killed by police and on the day he died, the same number of kids was born as the number of souls the serial killer had, 7. Legend had it that those kids all were born with the different souls of the killer. Max Theiriot (Jumper) plays Bug, the lead character of the movie, one of the Riverton Seven, the children who were believed to have been born with the Ripper's souls. Every year the kids gather along the riverfront for a ritual where they talk about the legend that one year, on the day of the Ripper's death, the Ripper will rise from the river and kill the Riverton Seven, as he had vowed to do before he died. So each year the Riverton Seven challenge the Ripper to rise from his grave, as THEY vow to kill the Ripper if the Ripper ever returns.

On the night of thier latest gathering which is also their collective birthday party, Max is chosen to challenge the Ripper and he gets too terrified to finish the ritual. The other six of the Riverton Seven are played by Jeremy Chu, John Magaro, Denzel Whitaker, Nick Lashaway, Zena Gray, and Paulina Olszynski. Max's sister is played by Emily Meade. Max's sister runs around school spreading bad rumors about him, falsely accusing him of being a murderer, and telling her friends about his history in psychiatric institutions, which hurts Max's chances with the girls in school. His best friend is John Magaro's character, who helps him disrupt the class in what I would call the coolest scene in the movie. John dresses up in a Condor costume and Max begins a narrative about the life of the Condor as a class presentation. John runs around the room menacingly in the condor suit as Max loudly and terrifyingly boasts his knowledge of the Condor, warning the classmates about how deadly this bird can be. At the end of the lecture, John activates a contraption in the condor suit that causes fake vomit to spew out the beak onto Nick Lashaway who is also a class bully. Max is asked to leave the class. That day it becomes known that Jeremy was killed the night before while crossing the bridge. This is just the beginning. At one point John takes Max aside and asks Max if Max has ever killed anyone, and Max replies "Not that I can remember". This is the beginning of some serious self questioning for Max, who begins to wonder why his dreams are containing details related to the murders that are beginning to take place. As each of the riverton seven die, Max sees visions of them trying to give him clues, and Max doesn't know what to make of them. Also, Max is noticing that as they die, his mind begins to work faster and differently. Eventually it's clear that as each of the Riverton seven are brutally murdered, Max's body is absorbing thier souls and all their knowledge as well. Max tries to use this to help him figure out who the killer is... is it one of the Riverton Seven? Or did the Ripper never die in the first place and survive only to return to kill again all these years later? When I review movies, I usually like to write about the endings, but since this a whodunit mystery and not just a horror movie, I will not give away the identity of the killer. I will only say that up till the end of the movie Max was viewed by most as the most likely suspect, and what I will tell you is... Max was not the killer, even though he at times doubted his own innocence. Max was ultimately the hero of the movie. You'll have to see this movie to find out who the killer is and how the killer is stopped. This was one of the best horror movies I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few of them. The entire cast's performances were top notch, though Max Thieriot stood out as the most talented of them, exhibiting his talent through a wide range of emotions not seen in many horror movies. A perfect Halloween movie for 2010.

For more information on this movie visit:
http://www.iamrogue.com/mysoultotake/site/index.html

Join the facebook page at:
http://www.facebook.com/mysoultotake

Thomas Dekker to perform live at special screenings of his movie All About Evil

Thomas Dekker & The Evil Kids will be performing an unreleased song, live in concert, at special screenings of Thomas' movie All About Evil. Also appearing live will be other members of the cast including Nikita Ramsey, Ashley Fink, and Anthony Fitzgerald. These events will take place October 21st, 22nd, 23rd, & 24th, at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco. Also performing live and hosting the night will be Peaches Christ and her crew. There will be additional surprises as well.

The movie is reviewed on this blog (see July 31st post). The movie features leads by Thomas Dekker (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, From Within), and Natasha Lyonne (Party Monster, But I'm A Cheerleader).

For tickets, visit
http://store.peacheschrist.com/category/9-show-tickets.aspx

For more information visit:
http://www.allaboutevilthemovie.com

Here is the trailer:

The Social Network review + advance review of Katherine Heigl's movie "Life As We Know It"

Yesterday I went to an advance screening of Katherine Heigl's (27 Dresses, Roswell) movie "Life As We Know It" at the AMC on Broadway and 68th St. I had seen 27 Dresses before, because James Marsden (Disturbing Behavior, Superman Returns) was in it. This movie follows the tradition of the classic romantic comedies of the 1990's. Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel (Transformers, The Romantics) play the leads who inherit their best friends' baby Sophie - even though the two of them are not married and didn't usually get along! The task of raising a child hadn't occurred to them before but they both realized this baby needed to be raised by someone who was already like family to her, so they decided to both move into their best friends' house and raise the baby together.

At first there is serious tension between them and they are not getting along. Josh Lucas (Poseidon, Sweet Home Alabama) plays a doctor who Katherine has been wanting to ask out on a date for a long time. She is so busy taking care of Sophie that she barely has time to meet up with Josh. They do get to go on one date to a nice restaurant. Josh Dumhamel also is having trouble with his past tradition of meeting hot girls and taking them home after one date. Eventually Katherine and Josh Duhammel spend more time together and begin doing things together and Katherine destroys Josh's motorcycle by accident and he says not to worry about it, a sign of how close they are getting. One night they decide to make marijuana brownies together and eat them, and they get high and end up in bed together. Trouble ensues when Josh Duhamel gets a job offer in another city, and Katherine gets angry when she finds out and she believes their whole relationship was a lie. Initally Josh moves and takes the new job, but after a fight on Thanksgiving, Katherine goes to the airport to stop Josh from leaving. Josh takes his car from the airport back home and waits for Katherine, and when she does he tells her his feelings and they live happily ever after.

The website for the movie is
http://lifeasweknowitmovie.warnerbros.com

The trailer is here:


After seeing Life As We Know It, I went downstairs and got a ticket for the Social Network, which I had been meaning to see. Jesse Eisenberg (Adventueland, Some Boys Don't Leave) plays Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook. The other co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, who started as the company's CFO, was played by Andrew Garfield (Lions For Lambs, Spider Man Reboot). Justin Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the founder of Napster who also played a major role in Facebook's transformation from a college dorm room project into a major corporation. A fact of interest is that Natalie Portman made significant contributions to the script of this movie, being that she too attended Harvard, the school where Facebook was founded.

The movie begins with scenes from mediation meetings between the lawyers of Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss, two Harvard Students who had asked Zuckerberg to build an elite dating website for Harvard Students. Instead Zuckerberg created Facebook, a social networking site intended to compel students to spend time checking out their friend's pages and sending emails to their friends asking them to join. Zuckerberg got the startup money from Saverin, who laid out $1,000 of his own money initially, and later contributed $19,000 while the company was supposed to be looking for advertisers and find funding. When Zuckerberg met Parker, Parker helps him expand Facebook to all 50 States, and gets him an additional investment worth $500,000, enough to expand Facebook to other continents. When they do this, they call Saverin, who has been in New York courting advertisers, to California. Zuckerberg and Parker fool him into signing contracts which take away his power at Facebook, and then later call him back to California asking him to sign more documents, which he then decides to read - and the contracts would've totally eliminated his shares in Facebook. This is when he decides to sue Zuckerberg. Soon after, there is an incident with Parker, who was throwing a party with interns from Facebook, where the police barge into the party to break it up and finds girls under 21 drinking with Parker who is also caught with cocaine. It is questioned in the movie whether Zuckerberg called the police to set the incident up, and it's also questioned whether Zuckerberg was involved with a media piece on Saverin accusing him of torturing chickens because he fed chicken meat to a chicken he was taking care of as a college fraternity ritual. There is no definitive answer in the movie as to whether Zuckerberg staged the bad press incidents with Saverin and Parker to push them out of the company. Andrew Garfield was at his usual best in the movie playing a compelling character who the audience sympathizes with. Eisenberg and Timberlake were excellent too. This is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a while.

For more on The Social Network visit:
http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com

For the trailer: