Quarantine
Screenings
This effective remake of the 2007 Spanish zombie-contagion film [Rec] takes the kaiju eiga (monster) verité of Cloverfield and repurposes it in the service of baser, gooshier thrills. It has more startles per sequence than you'd expect given that it's been unceremoniously dumped into an abysmal thriller market with precious little fanfare. With all the film's running around in the dark shot from POV angles, it does come off as 28 Weeks Later meets David Cronenberg's Rabid or, alternately, an un-fun-house mirror image of Night of the Living Dead with the zombies barricaded inside with you. It's also more than a little like George Romero's Diary of the Dead but less self-aware, ironic, and cheerlessly fun. For all its hyperkinetic camerawork and Carpenter's breathless, panic-attacky hysterics (and some unnervingly realistic gore effects), Quarantine is a one-note nightmare, nicely pitched to the high-C howls of the bitten and the biters.


The Sting
Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek
13729 Research
219-5408
Sat, Nov 22, 7:30 PM
Sun, Nov 23, 7:30 PM
This template for the modern buddy picture stars a duo who can do little wrong in the eyes of the American public. Altogether, this film about small-time Chicago con men won seven Oscars. If only Scott Joplin were around to collect the royalties.


Religulous
Alamo Drafthouse South
1120 S. Lamar
707-8262
Fri, Nov 21, 4:55 PM
Sat, Nov 22, 4:55 PM
Sun, Nov 23, 4:55 PM
Mon, Nov 24, 4:55 PM
Tue, Nov 25, 4:55 PM
Though fashioned as popular entertainment with laughs, light moments, and mostly humorous segments, Religulous is as serious as a disapproving Jehovah about its mission to upend our rote allegiance to blind religious faith. Bill Maher hosts this globe-hopping whirlwind of interviews with various representatives of Western religious faiths. As always, Maher carries with him his sharp wit. He and director Charles play it somewhat safe by never going toe-to-toe with sophisticated thinkers or experienced theologians. Neither do they delve too deeply into the more indecipherable sense of spirituality that seems to infuse the majority of people even if they don't consider themselves members of an organized religion or faith. Yet if, as Maher states, 16% of the U.S. population identifies as secular humanists who don't believe in God, then that's a large cross section of the country whose voices are muffled by the status quo. It is to them, more than the believers, Maher speaks, in essence saying, "Let my people go."