B Movie

Does the world really need a fond, precise parody of 1950s alien-invasion movies right now? No, but we've got one with "Alien Trespass," and it's pretty endearing - a low-budget labor of schlock. The guiding hand appears to belong to director R.W. Goodwin, who produced an awful lot of "X-Files" episodes back in the day and who here bows low to the craptastic sci-fi B-movies of his youth: venerable swill like "It Conquered the World" (1956) and "Attack of the Crab Monsters" (1957)

Jacques Audiard is on a quest to revive the B movie. The French director has won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival and been nominated for an Academy Award, but he has a passion for the colorful cut-price end of the cinema market: horror films and thrillers, melodramas and westerns. Audiard said the original notion for his new feature "Rust and Bone" was to make "a B movie with a star" — the star being France's Marion Cotillard, whose best-actress Oscar for Edith Piaf biopic "La Vie En Rose" has spawned a Hollywood career.

The 3-D in “Piranha 3D’’ means that objects will float close to your face. Given how many of those objects are braless breasts, 3-D may as well be a new cup size. (The fake ones go nicely with the plastic glasses.) The most fun to be had comes courtesy of the inevitable posses of boys in flip-flops, cargo shorts, baseball caps, and T-shirts, who fall over each other on the way out of the theater: “Dude, I could almost touch them.’’ One imagines that for this movie’s $14.50, a different field trip could be arranged to do away with “almost.’’ But this passes for a...

CATFISH ★★ ½ (HBO on Comcast) An entertaining but highly problematic documentary (quotes optional) about three New York hipsters who venture into the Midwestern heart of darkness when they Facebook-friend a family that - but we can say no more. Is it real? A hoax? Are the filmmakers shallow naifs or just pretending to be? See it for the excellent arguments you'll have on the ride home. (PG-13; runs through Jan. 31) TY BURR THE GREEN HORNET ★★ (Starz on Comcast)

The word “cinema’’ derives from kinema , the Greek word for “motion.’’ All it means is that movies should move, and that when all is said and done we pay our five cents or 10 dollars to be transported by the illusion of objects hurtling through space. This is why there are so many trains in movies, from 1903’s “The Great Train Robbery’’ on, and this is why “Unstoppable,’’ whose sole premise is right there in the title, works like a well-oiled charm.

"The Roost" is a homespun Halloween attraction loaded into an abandoned barn. It's not about slick production values. It's more about remembering just how little it took to unnerve you as a child. So keep your big-budget horror movie expectations locked away in a separate crawl space, because this grainy feature debut from writer-director Ti West demands that you buy into the silliness, and the cheese. The filmmaker even acknowledges/excuses his preference for B-movie style by inserting "The Roost" within a "Frightmare Theatre" TV show, complete with a Crypt Keeper-esque...

LOS ANGELES -- Yvonne De Carlo, a beautiful star who played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" but achieved her greatest popularity on TV's "The Munsters," died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Los Angeles. She was 84. Ms. De Carlo, whose shapely figure helped launch her career in B-movie Westerns, rose to more important roles in the 1950s. Later, she had a key role in a landmark Broadway musical, "Follies. " But for TV viewers, she will always be known as Lily Munster in the 1964-1966 slapstick horror-movie...

LOS ANGELES - Maila Nurmi, whose "Vampira" TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died, coroner's officials said. She was 85. Ms. Nurmi died Jan. 10 at her Hollywood home. The cause of death has not been determined. Ms. Nurmi created her Vampira character - reminiscent of Charles Addams's spooky New Yorker cartoons - to host horror movie broadcasts on KABC TV in Los Angeles in 1954. With darkly mascaraed eyes and blood-red lipstick, Ms. Nurmi appeared each week in her revealing black dress and slinky fishnets to introduce such films as...

Ever since the release of Pixar’s first feature, “Toy Story,’’ the studio has been synonymous with the highest quality in animated fare, movies that speak to all ages with a mixture of warmth, wit and wondrous visuals. This week’s “Cars 2’’ is the rare exception, and by far their weakest film yet. But hey, we’re all about focusing on the positive around here, so let’s take a look at the five best movies Pixar has to offer: — “WALL-E’’ (2008): Daring and delicate at once, this is Pixar’s most inventive film.

"The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" is a terrifyingly cheap-looking B-movie comedy mocking terrifyingly cheap-looking science-fiction B-movies. As such things go, this one has its moments. Written and directed by Larry Blamire, "Lost Skeleton" dreams up a meteor that's crashed to earth in 1961 somewhere in a remote forest. (The location looks suspiciously like -- and is -- Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles, where many classic sci-fi flicks were shot.) Serious-minded Dr. Paul Armstrong (Blamire)

Ever since the release of Pixar’s first feature, “Toy Story,’’ the studio has been synonymous with the highest quality in animated fare, movies that speak to all ages with a mixture of warmth, wit and wondrous visuals. This week’s “Cars 2’’ is the rare exception, and by far their weakest film yet. But hey, we’re all about focusing on the positive around here, so let’s take a look at the five best movies Pixar has to offer: — “WALL-E’’ (2008): Daring and delicate at once, this is Pixar’s most inventive film.

ANNISTON, Ala. — David F. Friedman, the B-movie producer of the 1960s and ’70s who turned out the cult classic “Blood Feast,’’ died Monday at age 87. He died of heart failure at a nursing home in Anniston, Ala. Mr. Friedman worked with director Herschell Gordon Lewis to create 1963’s “Blood Feast,’’ a roughly acted film that depicted the dismemberment of attractive women. The film is considered one of the first of the so-called gore movies, said Mike Vraney, owner of Something Weird Video in Seattle.

The word “cinema’’ derives from kinema , the Greek word for “motion.’’ All it means is that movies should move, and that when all is said and done we pay our five cents or 10 dollars to be transported by the illusion of objects hurtling through space. This is why there are so many trains in movies, from 1903’s “The Great Train Robbery’’ on, and this is why “Unstoppable,’’ whose sole premise is right there in the title, works like a well-oiled charm.

From the belly laughs of “Hot Tub Time Machine’’ to the body count of “The Expendables,’’ movies have lately been a feast of winking retro overkill. Just as the trendlet is getting tired, here’s Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete’’ to show us how it’s done: with wit, moviemaking skill, and a cast to die for. The movie’s an unexpected end-of-summer tonic: a trash guilty pleasure with a healthy (if really violent) sense of outrage. It’s also Rodriguez’s freest movie yet, and possibly his best.

THE BIG CHILL (Encore on Comcast) A suicide brings together former college classmates for a weekend of friendship-testing reflection and recrimination. More than a mere ’60s nostalgia bath, this seriocomic lament for idealism lost, or at least misplaced, dramatizes a generation on the edge of a rueful self-knowledge. The Motown soundtrack is a knockout, and so is the ensemble of young actors — Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, et al. — who were near the beginning of big careers.

The 3-D in “Piranha 3D’’ means that objects will float close to your face. Given how many of those objects are braless breasts, 3-D may as well be a new cup size. (The fake ones go nicely with the plastic glasses.) The most fun to be had comes courtesy of the inevitable posses of boys in flip-flops, cargo shorts, baseball caps, and T-shirts, who fall over each other on the way out of the theater: “Dude, I could almost touch them.’’ One imagines that for this movie’s $14.50, a different field trip could be arranged to do away with “almost.’’ But this passes for a...

A PERFECT GETAWAY (HBO on Comcast) Newlyweds (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich) are stranded on a remote Hawaiian trail with a homicidal couple or two. Proof that a dumb idea can be brought to life by smart people, this is a neatly crafted B-movie pleasure – nothing fancy, but the gasps, screams, and (mostly) intentional laughs are there. (R; runs through Oct. 4) TY BURR GHOST (Comcast Movies: All Movies) Disarmingly original, potently romantic supernatural thriller starring Patrick Swayze as a murdered man who won’t give up the ghost until he’s sure that Demi...

THE BIG CHILL (Encore on Comcast) A suicide brings together former college classmates for a weekend of friendship-testing reflection and recrimination. More than a mere ’60s nostalgia bath, this seriocomic lament for idealism lost, or at least misplaced, dramatizes a generation on the edge of a rueful self-knowledge. The Motown soundtrack is a knockout, and so is the ensemble of young actors — Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, et al. — who were near the beginning of big careers.

New releases Adam A kind of romance between a lonely New York toymaker who has Asperger’s syndrome and the woman who moved in downstairs. The movie, which Max Mayer wrote and directed, also flavorlessly combines romance, sitcom, and television drama in the hopes of entertainment. It’s probable that this movie will bring Asperger’s to an audience that’s never heard of or experienced it. It’s also likely to bore them. (99 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)