south of heaven Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Film noir can be painful when it's done poorly, but overall, there really doesn't seem to be enough of it out there. Sometimes, you get something as straight-faced and reverent as Brick, and at others, you get goofy-but-affectionate riffs on the genre like Assassination of a High School President and South of Heaven.

So it's nice to hear something about The Missing Person out of Sundance or, in today's case, a title called The Perfect Sleep. Twitch, as reliable a geek barometer as any, has shared the trailer with us, and I suspect that we're looking at a stylish return to that "straight-faced and reverent" thing I was just bringing up. A nameless man (screenwriter Anton Pardoe) looking to fight his way through thugs and assassins alike to get back to that one dame (Roselyn Sanchez, and who can blame him?) -- can you get more noir than that?

Sleep apparently opens in Los Angeles on March 13th, with its New York bow to follow a week after and Chicago, Dallas, and Portland after that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find out what my Orlando contacts know about a missing movie...

For the first time in its four-year history, Austin's Fantastic Fest decided to premiere a handful of its titles on the internet, thereby giving the hardcore genre fans of the world a chance to sample what this festival is all about. One of those titles was South of Heaven, which I decided to watch online, so as to give myself the option of seeing something else once the festival began. Plus I figured, hey, if the movie's are already posted (albeit temporarily) on the net, then how "top-grade" could they be? Surely the FF crew would save the BEST stuff for the actual festival, right?

Wrong.

I finished the film at about 3:30am and I immediately dropped the following email to the Fantastic Fest programmers, and this is a censored-yet-direct quote from yours truly:

"Just finished watching South of Heaven, and I can't remember the last non-horror flick I was this jazzed about. It's the Coens meets Sam Fuller while watching Looney Tunes and making an '80s mix tape full of The Smiths and Depeche Mode. I (freak)ing loved it."