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Ryûhei Kitamura ("Versus", "Midnight Meat Train", "Alive", "Godzilla: Final Wars", "No One Lives", "Azumi", "Aragami") is heading to Tiff's Midnight Madness with "Downrange", a “terrifying” new thriller starring Stephanie Pearson ("Insidious: Chapter 2"), Kelly Connaire, Rod Hernandez-Farella, Anthony Kirlew, Alexa Yeames, and Jason Tobias. Produced by Kitamura and Eleven Arts' Ko Mori, the film is executive produced by Taro Maki. Screenplay is by Joey O'Bryan ("Motorway", "Fulltime Killer"), with a story by O'Bryan and Kitamura.Six college students are carpooling cross-country when one of their tires blows out on a desolate stretch of country road. Getting out to fix the flat, they quickly discover that this was no accident. The tire was shot out. With their vehicle...

Hopefully you know the name Ryuhei Kitamura. In 2000 Kitamura released a movie best described as his Evil Dead a nifty little actionhorror flick called Versus. It featured the Yakuza zombies gunplay swords all kinds of awesomelooking imagery and action. He followed it up pretty successfully with the likes of Alive Aragami and Azumi before directing what was basically the giant monster version of The Avengers Godzilla Final Wars. Things slowed down for him after that and it was with some surprise I saw that he directed the Clive Barker adaptation Midnight Meat Train starring a preHangover Bradley Cooper. Not a classic by any means it is still a lot of fun including a wonderful cameo from Ted Raimi. It is odd that here we are again...

Be a man! That's the motto of Otokojuku, the all-boys high school for those who wish to temper their inner samurai. It is also, of course, the motto of this irreverent 2008 film that seemingly reveres and at the same time parodies a genre that's unique to Japan. No, not samurai films—the juvenile delinquent genre, or whatever the hell it's called. There's a subsection of Japanese fiction that's dedicated to the conquest of high schools overrun by bad seeds, a very popular but often overused formula in Japanese comic serials. This one is based on Akira Miyashita's 1985 manga, which you can tell from the outdated "respect" attitude (something even recent Japanese gangland stories like to avoid), as well as one character's blazing pompadour, a relic of 80's Japanese culture.

Samurai School starts out as one of these stories, with the cliched premise of the freshman entering the school and, through sheer impressive fighting skills,...