Matthew Justice Movies

Adventurous young couple Tom and Lucy (Iain De Caestecker and Alice Englert) are en route to a music festival when they attempt to stop at a countryside hotel, and find themselves pursued by a malevolent stranger as all signs only seem to lead them further down the darkened, unfamiliar roads. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A group of London teens find themselves in the middle of an alien invasion and fight to defend their tower block from some evil extraterrestrials in this stylish sci-fi romp from the producers of Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Beset by a gang of young thugs as she passes through a South London housing estate, Sam (Jodie Whittaker) is in the midst of being robbed when a ball of light falls out of the sky, and destroys a nearby car. Frightened, she flees from the scene just before an unearthly beast emerges from the wreckage and attacks Moses (John Boyega), the leader of the youthful gang. In retaliation, Moses and his crew slay the creature, and take it to a local drug den owned by ruthless gangster Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) for safe keeping. Later, as the police assist Sam in pursuing her assailants, strange lights start to rain down on the streets, heralding the arrival of a second, more ferocious, wave of creatures. With the city under siege, there's no place left to run. Quickly realizing she's going to have to fight if she wants to survive, Sam once again crosses paths with the street-tough teens, but instead of running away vows to battle alongside them to the bitter end. Meanwhile, Moses becomes the primary target of the aliens, and the group arms themselves with everything from baseball bats to high-powered fireworks in the fight to save the human race. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Actor-turned-director Gary Love makes his feature debut with this screen adaptation of co-screenwriter Dominic Leyton's acclaimed stage production Collision. Tom (Steven Mackintosh) is a middle class city boy who is currently scouring the back streets of London in search of an elusive and unnamed object. When Tom comes into contact with desperate young crack addict D (Ashley Walters), it looks as if he may have finally found what he's been looking for. Now, with time running out for Tom and D and psychotic local crime-lord Hoodwink (Andy Serkis) quickly closing in, the pair enter into a deadly game of cat and mouse that finds their mysterious goals gradually coming into focus as their hope to see another day glows ever more dim. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Raúl Ruiz's Klimt uses an amorphous, nonchronological narrative to cinematize events from the life of one of the 20th century's most profound artists: the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (here portrayed by John Malkovich). Ruiz begins with Klimt's painful death from syphilis, and spends the remainder of the film transitioning, loosely and freely, between episodes that befell the painter. The film pays particularly strong attention to the artist's proclivity for scandalizing the European upper crust with overtly erotic subject matter and presentation, and his many affairs -- notably a lengthy one with his perpetual inspiration, Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows). Throughout Klimt's life, a figure known as the Secretary (Stephen Dillane) comes and goes, who is actually a product of his fevered imagination -- and with whom the painter debates continually about the function of art in contemporary Western civilization, and the relevance of the artist. This enables Ruiz to create both a biographical sketch and a philosophical treatise. Visually, Ruiz and director of photography Ricardo Aronovich make the ambitious decision to recreate Klimt's style of painting on a cinematographic plane.

Unfortunately, difficulty befell this picture from the beginning, when the director (for some unascertainable reason) opted to draft the initial script in French, have it translated into German, and then have the German draft translated into English and revised by author Gilbert Adair -- rendering the dialogue stilted and unconvincing. Complications also arose on the distribution end. Still infuriated by the distributive mutilation that befell his previous film, the whopping Time Regained (and doubtless concerned that this might happen again), Ruiz pliantly struck a bargain with distributors for Klimt. He trimmed his original, 135-minute "director's cut" down to a 96-minute "producer's cut" for general consumption, which rendered much of the material less fluid and coherent. Both versions screened at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

The emotional torment brought upon by the schoolyard bully or the desire to fit in can't hold a candle to the soul-shredding terror of realizing that your high school sweetheart has become a flesh-eating ghoul, and when a lovelorn teen develops a taste for his fellow classmates, the stage is set for a frightful good time in this horror comedy from director Ernie Barbarash. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In between the big-budget Blade and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, British filmmaker Stephen Norrington directs the straight-to-video crime drama The Last Minute. Told in flashback, the story follows the rise and fall of Billy Byrne (Max Beesley). With a determined goal to be famous, he lands his first big show with the help of his slick agent, Walsh (Anthony Higgins). Fame comes quickly as he travels the globe and gets invited to hip clubs, becoming the darling of the London art scene. Due to his excessive, self-centered behavior, his girlfriend Janey (Kate Ashfield) leaves him. His fame fades away and he falls into a life of crime, drugs, and gangsters led by Grimshanks (Tom Bell), where he meets Anna (Emily Corrie). ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi