So you can’t afford the plane ticket (or you’re afraid they’ll show Mr. Popper’s Penguins on your cross-Atlantic flight). So you can’t stand to wait outside in freezing temperatures. So you can’t figure out why an international film festival is showing A Prairie Home Companion in a one-film Robert Altman retrospective. So what? That’s why we here at FSR are going to do all that for you. In 24 hours, I’ll be boarding a train, and 6 hours after that I’ll arrive at the apartment where I’ll sleep on Tim League’s floor for a week, catching all of the strange, the challenging, and the Oscar-worthy films of the future right here in the cold as hell country of Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog and Uwe Boll. That’s right sports fans, it’s the Berlin International Film Festival (also affectionately known as the Berlinale). It’s my first time, so we might all feel a little pinch, but I go undaunted into the morass of venues, celebrity sightings and movies in search of the flicks that demand to be cheered and shared. Coverage starts Thursday and will head on into next week. Berlin! It’s like Cannes except colder and more Prussian! Aren’t you glad you can experience it from home?

God, you gotta love Uwe Boll. Whether or not you despise his films like most of the online community, the man isn’t afraid of making headlines. Now he’s delivered one of my favorite stories in recent memory: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a “piece of shit” and Lars von Trier is “retarded.” As one expects, Boll didn’t pull his punches when it came to discussing The Tree of Life, “I totally hated that movie because I feel as a filmmaker that besides the fact that Terrence Malick did some great visuals on some movies, also on The New World, like the opening of that movie was really good but then he completely lost it. I think Tree of Life is a piece of shit. I think Sean Penn is ridiculous in it, like walking around in the elevator,” and Boll really isn’t the first to take a jab at those Penn scenes, although he is the only person I know to equate Malick’s epic to feces.

Another Hole In the Head 2011 Film Festival runs June 2nd through the 16th at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Check out the Festival Genius site for film schedules and tickets. Eaters Directed by Luca Boni and Marco Ristori Fri, June 3rd @ 1130pm Tues, June 14th @ 920pm Americans may have started the zombie craze by way of George Romero’s Living Dead series, but we no longer corner the market. Germany, Norway, and France are just some of the countries that have released zombie films in recent years, but there’s one other nation that has been at it for years. Italy’s been dabbling in the shambling dead for almost as long as the US has, and thanks to the likes of Lucio Fulci and Michele Soavi they’ve actually churned out some some stellar entries. It’s been a while since they’ve made an effort to return Italian flesh-eaters to the big screen, but apparently they were just waiting for the right producer to come along and lower their standards. And before your soon to be devoured tongue can even begin to utter ‘dannato non Uwe Boll!’… it’s time for a zombie apocalypse!

Another Hole In the Head 2011 Film Festival runs June 2nd through the 16th at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Check out the Festival Genius site for film schedules and tickets. Auschwitz Directed by Uwe Boll Fri, June 10th @ 920pm Mon, June 13th @ 720pm If nothing else, Uwe Boll means well. The self-acknowledged purpose of his new film Auschwitz is to remind people of the atrocity that occurred in the infamous concentration camp almost seventy years ago. Does the world actually need reminding? Boll says yes as not only have the details faded over time but genocides are still a modern day reality in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. He’s right of course on both counts, but does that mean he’s the best man for the job? It’s easy to criticize any (and all) of Boll’s films, but that task is made even simpler with a movie that begs to be taken seriously yet has no qualms about showing babies shot in the head, a young boy graphically burning in a furnace, and lengthy scenes of naked men, women, and children choking to death in suspiciously dry showers. Not to mention an extended shot of a bored Nazi guard, played by Boll himself, standing idly by while people slowly and painfully die in the room behind him. Tough to argue against accusations of exploitation when you cast yourself in such a role. So yes, he may mean well, but…

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as MonkeyTailBeard38 and LifeFindzaWay394 in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, the duo attempt to figure out word of mouth, movie advertising, critical response, and which one is to blame when a movie fails. Or, you know, it could just be the movie’s quality, but we hate simple answers around here. What separates the blockbusters from the flops? What makes people go see movies?

Early yesterday, the LA Times blog released quotes from Atlas Shrugged Part 1 writer/producer John Aglialoro which indicated that he was throwing in the towel on making Part 2 and Part 3. The reason, of course, was that the film just didn’t make its money back. Aglialoro spent a reported $10m of his own cash on the production, and a second week drop off hurt the independent flick considerably. The movie has currently only made $3.2m at the box office. It started with an impressive per screen average, but as with other films which zero in on an audience, everyone who wanted to see the movie saw it opening weekend. The numbers dropped, and an expansion was scrapped. Aglialoro very specifically blames critics and what he believes is a collective “fear of Ayn Rand” amongst them for the movie’s failings. So much for personal responsibility. However, it’s his ire and hatred of the critical response that has caused an about-face. Aglialoro now claims that, while he was once defeated, he now stands ready to proceed with making Atlas Shrugged Part 2 and Part 3. Like all misunderstood artists, he should.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, editor and writer for Cinematical Erik Davis and movie monkey for UGO Matt Patches drop by to discuss the finer things in life. We revel in the beauty of Uwe Boll’s warm glow, watch the Auschwitz trailer on a first date, erase the slate of Summer 2010 films with the best summer movies of all time, and figure out how to put MacGruber into Forrest Gump. Plus, we find time to review Resident Evil: Afterlife, I’m Still Here, and The Romantics. Also plus, Cole name drops Toys Are Not For Children which he seems to think makes him hip even though it doesn’t.

According to Uwe Boll, his genius is being overlooked. While other directors take on subjects like genocide in Africa and in 1940s Germany to grand approval, Boll has gotten nothing but vitriol spewed at him since the debut of his trailer for Auschwitz. Actually, he’s gotten mostly vitriol spewed on him his entire career. Fortunately, he’s fighting back with words. A lot of them. A metric ton of words. In an interview with Viceland, he had some bold statements to make. We’ve weeded through the block text and grabbed the most outrageous claims and put them in handy bullet formatting for your enjoyment (and sanity). Take a big drink of water and enjoy Mr. Boll’s latest response to haters. You might be surprised.

Welcome to Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz. It’s a freak show we’ve been waiting on ever since he opened his mouth at a screening of Rampage last year and mentioned that he’d be starving actors for Darfur and trying to tackle one of the most sensitive Western cultural topics of the last 150 years. Well, he’s done it. And here’s the sickening proof:

Hollywood hasn’t quite been able to grasp the video game adaptation, which is a shame. Because, much like the power glove, most video game films are so bad.

Last month as I sat down to watch Scorsese’s Shutter Island with the rest of the Austin-based Reject crew, Lost Club’s David Gunn and I had a rather enlightening discussion about the applicability of the auteur theory in today’s cinematic landscape. It got me thinking about the contemporary negotiations between the theory’s shortcomings, contradictions, and pragmatic applicability to how we perceive and view cinema on a regular basis in the 21st century.

There were a lot of bad movies released during the past decade. That’s not anything that distinguishes the aughts from any other decade before it, but then most of these movies were bad in the usual, torturous ways.

Would you like to pay for another Uwe Boll video game adaptation on DVD? We didn’t think so. How about we give you the DVD for the low-low price of entertaining us with a photo caption?

After seeing his latest film Rampage at Fantastic Fest just last month, we thought we’d seen a turning point for director Uwe Boll. As it turns out, we were wrong…

Step one to being taken seriously: Make a socially conscious film. Step two: Have a typo in the trailer.

In search of good and powerful horror, you’ve got to explore all open doors, even if those doors lead to the office of Uwe Boll.

Uwe Boll has done many things. And in the eyes of many movie fans around the world, one of them is not making a good film. And with his latest opus, the wanton violence-heavy shoot ‘em up Rampage, Boll still probably won’t have any of those folks convinced that he’s anything more than they already think him to be.

The first wave of films for Fantastic Fest 2009 has been announced — and whether you’re into robotic geishas, killer kids with pumpkin heads, crazy British inmates of wacky gentlemen broncos, there appears to be something here for you.

Paul Sileo’s coverage of the 29th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards will likely make your bowels explode.

The year of 2008 will most definitely not be remembered as a great year for horror, but that didn’t stop us from trying to pull together a list of the best of what was offered.