The horror, the horror: Fright series hits theaters. (2024)

Byline: Dann Gire

- You've probably seen the TV commercials for "8 Films to Die For," a series of eight horror movies starting today and running through Nov. 18 at area theaters.

Here they are: In "The Deaths of Ian Stone," a man must die every day until he can solve the mystery of his life. In "Nightmare Man," a woman on her way to a mental institution gets attacked by a boogey man. In "Crazy Eights," a map puts six funeral-goers in contact with a dead girl. In "Unearthed," a 900-year-old creature goes crazy in a desolate town and makes it more desolate.

In "Borderland," three Texas college students meet up with a blood cult in Mexico. In "Mulberry Street," an infection turns humans into savage creatures. In "Tooth and Nail," cannibals assault survivors after a worldwide apocalypse. In "Lake Dead," three sisters meet a backwoods family of psychopaths.

For more information, go to www.horrorfestonline.com.

- The first Geneva Film Festival, an ambitious movie celebration sponsored by the Geneva Cultural Arts Commission, starts at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Riverside Receptions and Conference Center, 35 N. River Lane. The fest includes behind-the-scenes workshops and competitive movie showings at the Geneva History Center, 113 S. Third St., and Geneva City Hall, 22 S. First St. Admission costs $5 for the first screening; $2 per additional screening. For tickets and schedules, go to www.genevarts.org or call (630) 232-8171.

- Attention trekkies! "Star Trek: The Original Series" will be beamed onto local silver screens with showings at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

Both parts of "The Menagerie" - the TV series pilot starring Jeffrey Hunter and Leonard Nimoy - will be shown in their original TV format (1:1.33) and digitally remastered in High Definition and Cinema Surround Sound. Tickets cost $12.50.

For details and participating theaters, go to www.FathomEvents.com.

- Mainstream movie audiences, used to simple characters and thematic spoon-feeding, might well walk out of the theater wondering if those Coen brothers simply forgot to put an ending on their new movie "No Country for Old Men."

Nope. It's there, but those wily Coens - Joel and Ethan - have opted for something less conventional than the expected climactic clash between the hero and villain. The Coens have in mind nothing less than the eternal (as in never-ending) battle between good and evil, the just and the wicked.

To tell this stylish, nihilistic tale, gouged out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, the brothers have created a horrific, blackly comic, murder mystery/thriller, something like "Blood Simple" merged with "Raising Arizona," but more fun and sad*stically shocking.

It starts in 1980 when a trailer-trash cowboy named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) comes across a botched drug deal in the desert, littered with expensive SUVs and dead bodies. He takes drugs and a briefcase full of money from a dying thug, then returns home to his waiting wife (Kelly McDonald).

Then, proving that no good deed goes unpunished, Moss' conscience forces him to go back to the scene to help the dying man. That's when the you-know-what hits the fan.

Moss, an unusually street-savvy character, grabs his money and runs, soon to be followed by world-weary, noble lawman Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones with a voice like fine, weathered leather) and the freaky Jason Voorhees of the hit man world, Anton Chigurh (a frighteningly excellent Javier Bardem).

Chigurh uses two tools: a ridiculously macho shotgun with a silencer, plus a tank of compressed air that can instantly kill people and blow the locks off doors.

Armed with these elements, the Coens are back at the top of their cinematic game with a provocative movie scarier than most horror films, more suspenseful than most thrillers, and funnier than most comedies starring Vince Vaughn.

"No Country for Old Men" opens today at the River East 21 and Century Centre in Chicago and the Century 12 in Evanston. Rated R (violence, language). 122 minutes. * * * *

- The retrograde story in Alison Eastwood's "Rails & Ties" sounds so preposterous, it could be true. A train accident kills a drunk woman on the tracks. Her young son, seeking revenge against the engineer who didn't slow down in time, tracks the man to his home.

It turns out that the engineer, Tom Stark (Kevin Bacon), and the kid, Davey (Miles Heizer), share a passion for trains, both the real and model ones.

Davey has no parents. Tom has no children. However, he does have a lovely wife, Megan (Marcia Gay Harden), dying of cancer - and his arrested maturity can't deal with it. At all.

Just when "Rails & Ties" appears to be barreling down the tracks on its way to Soaptown, Eastwood (yep, Clint's daughter) averts a collision with the MadeForCable Express. Eastwood shares her father's gift for direct simplicity. That, coupled with exquisitely wrought performances, keeps this weepie from spinning its wheels in mawkish sentiment.

Nobody in Hollywood acts anguish better than Bacon, who imbues Tom with enough quiet angst to fuel a locomotive. Harden presents Megan as a noble sufferer who deserves better from life.

They, along with young Heizer, liven up Mickey Levy's emotionally strait-jacketed, almost anachronistic script to the point it chugs along nicely, although never builds up a proper head of dramatic steam.

"Rails & Ties" opens today at Renaissance Place in Highland Park. Rated PG-13 (language, nudity). 101 minutes. * * 1/2