American Mary

 Released Year: 2012

Directed by Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska

Casted by:

Katharine Isabelle as Mary Mason
Antonio Cupo as Billy Barker
Tristan Risk as Beatress Johnson
David Lovgren as Dr. Grant

 Story:

Mary Mason is a medical student on her way to becoming a surgeon. Struggling to pay her bills, she applies for work at a strip club. Before her interview concludes, she is taken to an underground room by the club's owner, Billy Barker, and presented with a man who has been tortured. She is asked to save his life for $5000, which she does, then returns home in panic and disgust.

Several days later she is approached by a woman named Beatress, a stripper at the club Mary interviewed at who has had herself surgically altered to resemble Betty Boop. Beatress offers Mary a large sum of money to perform surgery on a friend of hers, Ruby Realgirl, who wishes to complete her dollification by having her nipples and labia removed. Uncertain of the ethics, but still desperate for money, Mary performs the surgery.

During her residency, Mary is invited to a party with several of the surgeons at her hospital. Once there, she is drugged and raped by her former teacher, Dr Grant. Afterwards she goes to the club once more and hires their enforcers to kidnap the doctor who raped her. She performs a series of body modifications on him, including splitting his tongue and altering his genitals, without the use of anesthetic. She then drops out of medical school and goes into consensual body modification surgery full time.

Time passes, and Mary becomes renowned as a surgeon of great skill, who is willing to perform any surgery desired. The most prominent of her new clients are a pair of twins from Berlin, who want to have their left arms exchanged and horns implanted in their foreheads. It is revealed that Mary is keeping her rapist alive, with his limbs removed and mouth sewed shut. She is discovered by a security guard while tormenting him, and she is forced to kill him to protect herself. A police detective begins to pursue her, suspecting her involvement in the doctor's disappearance.

Beatress vanishes, and then Mary receives a phone call from her. She has been brutally stabbed, and she reveals that Ruby's husband has been angered by the surgery and is coming for her. He then appears out of the darkness and stabs Mary. She manages to kill him, but dies from internal bleeding after sewing her wound.

  L² Scored: 10/10

L² Comment:

Well well well, a surprisingly good gross horror movie i have seen lately. This was directed by the Canadian twins sister who are famous of their horror movies. Tristan Risk is a Burlesque teacher and she's kinda hot and cute, if you don't see her after effect of the makeup, as for the main actress Katherine, she was good but not much to shout about.

The story went pretty well, smooth and you can't even guess what will happen next :) Definitely this is the kind of story i'm looking for... If you're a horror freak like me, don't miss it!!!

Upside Down 2012

 Released Year: 2012

Directed by Juan Diego Solanas

Casted by:

Jim Sturgess as Adam

Kirsten Dunst as Eden

Timothy Spall as Bob

 Story:

The film starts with Adam telling the story of his planet, unique from other planets as it is the only one that has dual gravity. Two planets live next to one another. The gravity has 3 rules:

    All matter is pulled by the gravity of the world that it comes from, and not the other.
    An object's weight can be offset by matter from the opposite world (inverse matter).
    After some time in contact, matter in contact with inverse matter burns.

The two worlds are separated. While Up is rich and prosperous, Down is poor. Up buys cheap oil from Down and sells electricity back to Down at much higher prices. Going Up is strictly forbidden and the only connection between the worlds is through the company "TransWorld".

Adam lives in an orphanage Down Below as he lost his parents in an oil refinery explosion. The only living relative he has is his great-aunt, whom he visits every week. His great-aunt has a secret recipe for flying pancakes using pollen from pink bees. The recipe has passed through generations and will be inherited by Adam.

As a child, Adam secretly climbs a mountain that gets very close to the Up world. There he meets Eden, a girl in Up. Years later, they are now friends as teenagers and are in a romantic relationship. They meet on their mountains and Adam uses a rope to pull Eden towards Down. As Eden sits on Adam's shoulders, they form an anti-gravity object that easily floats. But they are found and while Adam is trying to pass Eden back to her planet, he gets shot and drops her. He thinks she is dead. When he returns home, his aunt is arrested and her home burned.

Ten years later, Adam is now working on creating anti-gravity using his great-aunt's recipe. The recipe allows matter to feel both gravitational fields at once. Adam is developing it as a cosmetic product for face-lifts. Then he sees Eden on TV and learns she is alive and works at TransWorld. He finally works out his formula and gets hired by TransWorld to develop the face-lift cream. Adam's plan is to find Eden in TransWorld. In his office he meets Bob, a TransWorld employee from Up who makes a deal with him. In return of Adam bringing material (like stamps) from Down, he will help him find Eden.

With the help of Bob, Adam meets Eden by putting Up-material in his clothes to disguise himself as a worker from Up. But Eden doesn't recognize him as she lost her memories with the impact of the fall years before. The Up-material in Adam's clothes starts to burn so he has to return to Down. Later on, Bob is forcefully retired but as he leaves, he secretly gives Adam his ID to help him. Later, by calling Eden through Bob's phone, Adam manages to get a date. He presents himself as Bob.

Meanwhile, his cosmetic cream becomes of great importance to the company. While Adam is doing a presentation of the cream, Eden sees him and learns his real name. Adam runs to find her but Bob's ID has been terminated so he is noticed. He goes to Bob's house. He shows him that by mixing the matter from both gravity areas can make matter that resists both gravitational fields and tells him he didn't give TransWorld the secret ingredient of his compound, leaving the company unable to produce the product without him.

With Bob's help, he goes back to the restaurant where he met with Eden before and finds out she started to remember him. But the cops come and he has to run. When he returns to his planet, he goes to the mountain top where he met Eden. Eden comes to find him and they meet as they used to. But cops find them again and as they fail to escape, Eden is arrested by cops while Adam drops. TransWorld agrees to drop the charges against Eden if Adam gives them his formula and never contacts Eden again.

Now Adam has gone back to his old life, believing he will never see Eden again. Eden goes to Bob for help. Bob finds Adam and surprises him by showing he can stay Down without the help of the weight supplements; Bob has been able to use Adam's methods to create a way to negate the effect of gravity. Bob tells him he had the patent of his beauty cream before TransWorld and tells him he has a date.

At the spot Bob tells him, Adam finds Eden, also able to walk without weights. There, he learns that she is pregnant with twins and that is what keeps her Down.

The film ends by Adam telling their act has changed their worlds forever.

 L² Scored: 7/10

L² Comment:

I will scored it a 10/10 if not because of those mistakes they make:-

1. Why can the bullet be shot in the different world with the same speed and angle they want?

2. On the start of this film, when Eden was ridding on Adam's shoulder in the down world. Why doesn't Eden's hair flow up towards her own world?

3. How can Eden & Adam make love in Adam's world... and both of them can flow in the middle of air while turning round and round?

But overall this movie is very special, and i don't think anyone has use this idea before. Cool and i totally love it...

The Woman in Black

 Released Year: 2012

Directed by James Watkins

Casted by:

Daniel Radcliffe as Arthur Kipps

Ciarán Hinds as Sam Daily

Janet McTeer as Elizabeth Daily

Sophie Stuckey as Stella Kipps

Misha Handley as Joseph Kipps

Liz White as Jennet Humfrye

 Story:

 The film opens with three small girls having a tea party in an upstairs room in the Eel Marsh House. As they play, one of them looks up, the other two doing the same. The three girls, in a kind of trance, destroy their toys and move to the bay window. Each of them simultaneously open one window and jump to their death's. A woman screams over her child's death, and the screen pans out, revealing a portion of a woman in a black gown.

In the Edwardian era, young solicitor Arthur Kipps lives with his four-year-old son, Joseph and his son's nanny. Kipps's wife Stella has died after childbirth. Kipps keeps having visions of her and is facing financial problems along with stress from the law firm for which he works. He is assigned to handle the estate of Alice Drablow, who owned an English manor known as the Eel Marsh House, where she had lived with her husband, son Nathaniel, and sister Jennet Humfrye. Although the locals are unwelcoming, Kipps befriends Sam Daily, a wealthy landowner, and his wife Elizabeth.

At Eel Marsh House, located on an island in the marshes, Kipps repeatedly hears footsteps coming from upstairs in the house while he is going though paperwork downstairs. He then goes upstairs to a bedroom where he sees a baby crow that has fallen out of a nest located in a worn down fireplace. After putting it away, the crow's mother swoops past loudly - this being the first jump in the film. As he goes to the window and opens it, he sees the Woman in Black standing in the distance and then vanishing. He reports the sighting at the local police station but, while there, two boys bring their sister Victoria, who has drank lye. She dies in Kipps's arms. Victoria is not the first child in town to commit suicide, and the townspeople believe the "Woman in Black" comes for their children as revenge for her own child being taken from her, and believe that when someone sees her, a child nearby the person who saw her, is killed, which could be why children have been dying since Kipps' arrival at Eel Marsh House as Kipps saw her there.

Kipps and Sam arrive at the house of Jerome, the local solicitor. The house is empty, and they hear a noise from the cellar. Kipps peers through a hole in the cellar door and is startled when the face of a young girl, Lucy Jerome suddenly appears and screams at him to go away, believing he was responsible for Victoria's death. After returning to Sam's house for dinner, Kipps discovers that Sam and Elizabeth's son, Nicholas, drowned while playing at the beach and that Nicholas communicates through possession; Elizabeth, in a possessed state, then draws a hanging woman who Kipps realizes is Jennet. Later at the Marsh, Kipps discovers notes claiming that Jennet was mentally unstable and was not allowed to care for Nathaniel, who was actually Jennet's son, although this fact was hidden by Alice, Jennet's sister, who raised Nathaniel as her own son. He also finds out that Jennet hung herself due to Nathaniel's death, long ago.

The villagers desperately want Kipps to leave, but he refuses, wanting to protect his job. Throughout the night at the Marsh, Kipps has many paranormal experiences with the Woman in Black and all the children that committed suicide, as they all appear outside the house in the state they were in when they died. The next morning, Sam and Kipps return to town to see the local solicitor, but Jerome's house is on fire. Kipps rushes inside to rescue Lucy, Jerome's daughter, who has been locked in the cellar. There, he sees the Woman manipulate the girl into setting herself on fire. Lucy smashes a lantern at her feet, getting engulfed in flames. Kipps visits Mrs. Daily, who reveals in a trance that Joseph is the next victim. Kipps realizes that he must put Nathaniel to rest by giving him a proper burial. Kipps and Sam go to the Marsh. Kipps dives into the marsh and finds Nathaniel's body. They then take his body and lay him out in the nursery in the house, expecting the woman to appear and reunite with her lost son. The Woman appears and knocks Kipps to the floor and disappears. Then, Sam and Kipps finally lay Nathaniel to rest by burying him with his real mother, Jennet. After Kipps and Sam leave, the camera moves quickly through the hallway of the Marsh House, and the voice of the Woman in Black can be heard saying "I'll never forgive!... I'll never forgive!..."

Kipps is reunited with his son, Joseph, who is with his nanny, exiting their train at the railway station and plans to leave immediately. While the nanny is occupied with getting tickets to the train to London and Kipps is bidding Sam goodbye, Kipps turns to Joseph, walking along the tracks towards a fast approaching train. Sam and Kipps notice the Woman along the platform as Kipps jumps onto the tracks to save Joseph. As the train passes, Sam looks through the windows to see the unrested souls of all the children whom the Woman has claimed.

Still standing on the tracks with Joseph, Kipps looks up to see the now deserted platform. Joseph asks, "Daddy, who is that lady?" to which Kipps replies with a smile, "That's your Mummy." Realizing he and his son have died, he kisses his son and walks to his wife behind them, carrying Joseph and takes her hand. The three of them, reunited in death, 'go on' together, leaving the Woman in Black, in her grief, forever after.

   L² Scored: 8/10

L² Comment:

This is quite a good film based on a novel. The whole story is kinda scary and the pace is just nice. Its a big challenge for Daniel Radcliffe to act as a father, but a 22yo boy can't convince me at all!!!