Seen any good films lately?

Unfinished Business, Part II

2008-01-09T14:04:00.001Z

Onwards we go, with another bunch of films. On the whole, these are better than the ones reviewed in Part I, although some duffers may have slipped through that are just as bad or even worse. (My division of these reviews into Parts I, II, etc., is essentially pragmatic; i.e., so that I don't have to face such a dauntingly huge list of films to be reviewed.)

Confetti (Debbie Isitt, 2006)
British comedy mockumentary about three couples competing to win a glossy-magazine-sponsored 'Most Original Wedding of the Year' competition. Given the wealth of British comedy acting talent involved, it's probably not as funny (or as dark) as it should have been, but it's reasonably watchable stuff.

Failure to Launch (Tom Dey, 2006)
Predictable rom-com about which I now recall very little.

Flightplan (Robert Schwentke, 2005)
Moderately engaging psychological thriller that probably would have sucked balls without someone like Jodie Foster putting in a committed performance (although her presence, and the endless running around, does make it feel a bit like a remake of Panic Room on a plane).

Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005)
Stylish, interesting, and enlightenting portrayal of the efforts of CBS broadcaster Edward R Murrow and his team to criticise and undermine McCarthy and McCarthyism in the 1950s.

The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977)
Mediocre. I was expecting something substantially more brutal and harrowing from a film released just three years after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I was disappointed. Then again, I should have known that Wes Craven cannot deliver genuine horror; only a mild form of cheese-laden suspense.

Hollywoodland (Allen Coulter, 2006)
Private dick drama centering around the mysterious death (officially a suicide) of George Reeves, the actor who first played Superman on TV in the 1950s. It hasn't exactly stuck in my mind, which is never a good sign, but from what I can remember, Adrien Brody puts in a good performance as the detective hired by Reeves's mother to investigate his death.

Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
As a fan of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead, I had high expectations for this film. But whereas those two earlier works appealed to me through their non-mainstream references to comics, sci-fi, console games, recreational drug use, horror films, and the like, Hot Fuzz adopts a much more populist genre - the cop/buddy/action film - as its inspiration. Not being a particularly big fan of this genre, the references left me feeling distinctly cold and disconnected. The Wicker-Man-esque storyline was pitifully weak, and it all dragged on way too long.

Huo Yuan Jia (aka Fearless) (Ronny Yu, 2006)
I guess Jet Li's getting a bit old now, so it's increasingly necessary to CGI / undercrank / severely cut the action to keep it fast. It works OK, but is nothing spectacular.

The Ice Harvest (Harold Ramis, 2005)
Yet another twisty noirish crime caper. This one comes across like a blatant (but failed) attempt to replicate the style of the Coen brothers. The pairing of Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack also makes it feels like Ramis is trying to recreate the dynamic they brought to Pushing Tin. In summary: derivative.

Ils (aka Them) (David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2006)
A French horror film which is allegedly, but from what I can gather probably not, based on actual events. It starts promisingly enough, but turns out to be not much more than an extended footchase sequence. And because of the misleading way in which the story is presented, one can't help but feel mildly Shyamalanned.*

[*Shyamalan (verb): to intentionally misdirect an audience from the truth about what's happening in a film by using sounds, images, sequences of events (etc.) that are in fact inconsistent with that truth. Hence: (i) Mild Shyamalanning: a type of Shyamalanning used to add mystery and drama that would otherwise be absent; (ii) Strong Shyamalanning: an extreme form of Shyamalanning designed to conceal the final twist upon which the effectiveness of one's entire film rests.]

Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door (Gregory Wilson, 2007)
Adaptation of a book based on the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens in 1960s Indiana. Considered as a true story, it's undoubtedly a shocking and disturbing case, but this attempt to transform it into a horror film somehow lessens the impact. I'm only speculating here, but it's almost as if the film-makers couldn't help but hold themselves back, not wishing to revel in the nasty details out of respect for the real-life tragedy. If that's the case, then it's questionable whether they should have made a horror film at all. Horror films are an intentionally over-the-top form of entertainment, the point of which is precisely to revel in (and, more often than not, have fun with) nasty details. If a film-maker finds it inappropriate to treat a particular subject-matter in this way, then they should really be doing something different (making a serious documentary, for example). Then again, maybe I'm completely misreading the whole thing. It could merely be a bad attempt to make an all-out horror flick.

Jeepers Creepers (Victor Salva, 2001)
Silly monster-based horror film which starts promisingly but offers nothing original.

Kakushi Ken Oni No Tsume (aka The Hidden Blade) (Yōji Yamada, 2004)
Period melodrama focusing on the life of a low-ranking samurai and his immediate family in the mid-nineteenth century. Thematically, it's very similar to Yamada's Tasogare Seibei (aka The Twilight Samurai), but is unfortunately nowhere near as well-executed or as interesting. The most enjoyable and historically illuminating scenes are those in which the local samurai clan grudgingly undertake lessons in new-fangled Western military techniques, such as marching in formation, sprinting (samurai were not accustomed to running in the Western style) and operating a cannon. Other than that, the film is overly sentimental, and too long by half.

The Matador (Richard Shepard, 2005)
Yet another film I can't remember much about. I suppose I should have grouped these into a short list of their own. As with Syriana, reviewed in Part I, I was hoping that a browse through the synopses on IMDb would resuscitate some dormant memories and enable me to rattle off a few quick comments. But no. Therefore: Verdict: Forgettable.

Memoirs of a Geisha (Rob Marshall, 2005)
Oh Christ, here's another one that's faded almost entirely from my memory. Apologies, then, for all of these non-reviews. (My current backlog contains some films that I watched as long ago as the summer of 2006, so I'm bound to draw some blanks). All I remember in this case is: it was extremely sappy, and annoyed me with its obvious self-conscious striving to appear 'epic'.

Mibu Gishi Den (aka When the Last Sword is Drawn) (Yojiro Takita, 2003)
Another samurai period drama. Similar to Kakushi Ken Oni No Tsume (aka The Hidden Blade), insofar as it's historically interesting, contains solidly written characters / relationships, and is by no means unwatchable, but suffers from being overly long and melodramatic.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (Ivan Reitman, 2006)
Surprisingly funny and, for my money, certainly preferable to most of the 'serious' superhero films that have dribbled out of Hollywood's arse in recent years.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006)
Big budget blockbuster nonsense made palatable only by Depp's somewhat enjoyable buffoonery.

Proof (John Madden, 2005)
Maths-based mystery drama which succeeds in telling an interesting tale, but isn't half as clever as its own lofty atmosphere tends to suggest.

Scary Movie 4 (David Zucker, 2006)
These films are hardly the pinnacle of cinematic genius, but as a fan of horror films I quite enjoy the spoofs. Let's just call it a guilty pleasure and move quickly on ...

Sennen Joyū (aka Millenium Actress) (Satoshi Kon, 2001)
A reasonably creative and enjoyable anime adventure. But it's far too gentle and slushy for my liking. Nowhere near as dark, challenging, and absorbing as Kon's Mōsō Dairinin (aka Paranoia Agent).

16 Blocks (Richard Donner, 2006)
If you can allow the extreme silliness of it all to wash over you, then there's a fair amount of mindless entertainment to be derived here.

Starter for 10 (Tom Vaughan, 2006)
Tame and predictable 1980s-set British comedy which purports to be about a team of students preparing to compete in University Challenge, but loses its focus by deviating into too many unimaginative side-plots.

Storm Warning (Jamie Blanks, 2007)
Another variation on the ever-popular Stranded in the Wilderness with Psychopaths theme (for more on which, see this review). The main problem with this particular contribution to the genre is the amount of time that elapses before the outbreak of any substantial violence. The characters and dialogue are much too weak to sustain such a lengthy delay. What should, according to the grammar of the genre, have been a period of gradually building tension is actually a period of gradually declining credibility and interest. To be fair, once the shit hits the fan, there's some enthusiastically executed and thoroughly enjoyable splatter. But it's just slightly too little, slightly too late.

Unknown (Simon Brand, 2006)
Another variation on the recently popular Waking Up Imprisoned With No Idea How Or Why theme (for more on which, see this review). The premise of the story is fairly clever (a group of trapped characters realise that they must belong to rival hostile groups, but can't remember who belongs to which), but it suffers from the obvious defect of being ludicrously implausible (and too damned twisty for its own good). The script is also weak and unrealistic, which does no favours for the cast (featuring the always-charismatic Joey Pants) who struggle to sustain the dialogue-heavy scenes. Recommendable only if you're gagging to see yet another twist film.

Walk the Line (James Mangold, 2005)
Biopic about Johnny Cash, the main strength of which is the quality of the vocal performances put in by Phoenix and Witherspoon, who do an outstanding job of sounding like Cash and his wife, June Carter. I didn't have much prior knowledge about the pair's lives, so the film worked for me as a source of information (although I'm aware that it's been criticised for inaccuracies - see here, for example). It doesn't chart the whole of Cash's life, so the ending is a bit jarring if, like me, you were assuming you'd be given the entire story (not an unreasonable assumption, given that Cash died two years before the film's release).

The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)
No doubt the street gangs depicted in this film would have seemed a lot less camp and cheesy in 1979, but despite looking like a Village People fan-convention gone badly wrong, it's still quite an enjoyable ride, with a simple yet effective premise.

You, Me and Dupree (Anthony & Joe Russo, 2006)
Poor.*

[*I was considering writing a much shorter review ("No."), but in the end I opted for a slightly more explanatory choice of word.]

Unfinished Business, Part I

2008-01-04T14:23:00.001Z

I'm running about 120 films behind schedule, so it's time to get back on track. I'll start in this post, with the worst of the bunch.

Big Nothing (Jean-Baptiste Andrea, 2006)
Uninspired crime caper in which the talents of Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer resoundlingly fail to shine forth.

Casino Royale (Martin Cambell, 2006)
Dreary mess of a film in which the makers of Bond desperately attempt (a) to keep pace with the two more recently successful J.B.s (Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne); and (b) to cash in on the recent boom in the popularity of Texas Hold 'Em, which results in a massively inaccurate representation of the game itself, along with lashings of ridiculous "let's-talk-explicitly-about-what's-happening-so-that-the-audience-understands" dialogue.

The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles, 2005)
Run-of-the-mill political thriller.

Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)
Strange film in which everyone seems to be completely obsessed by racial issues (see also Munich, discussed below). Watchable, but hard to see the point (assuming that the point is supposed to be more than simply: "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone wasn't racist?"). Earnest, maybe, but ultimately just plain silly.

Date Movie (Aaron Seltzer, 2006)
Perhaps I chuckled once or twice, but this scrapes the very bottom of the 'spoof movie' barrel.

Epic Movie (Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, 2007)
The bottom of the barrel having been scraped clean away, we're now just digging down into the dirt and shit beneath.

Expiry Date (Karen Bird, 2006)
It's not every day that you see a Welsh comedy-horror film. If this puerile piece of shit is anything to go by, then we should all be thankful for that.

The Family Stone (Thomas Bezucha, 2005)
To be honest, nothing much about this film has stuck in my memory, other than the fact that the characters are all smackable twats whose conception of the logical space of possible political stances is primitive, dogmatic, and parochially American.

Gadkie Lebedi (aka Ugly Swans) (Konstantin Lopushansky, 2006)
Overly pretentious Russian sci-fi with plenty of atmosphere but nothing substantial to offer beyond vaguely sketched metaphors. (The book on which it's based may be better, but I honestly don't know.)

Heart of America (Uwe Boll, 2003)
I've seen three different post-Columbine high-school massacre films, and two of them were superb (Elephant and Zero Day). As Meat Loaf said, two out of three ain't bad; unlike this film, which was very bad indeed.

Inosensu: Kōkaku Kidōtai (aka Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) (Mamoru Oshii, 2004)
Boring anime sequel about robots, or something.

The Lives of the Saints (Chris Cottam & Rankin, 2006)
There's no story here at all, just a vague idea for one. For the first 60 minutes, it seems like it might go somewhere; but this is merely an illusion which dissipates over the final 30 minutes, leaving only the cold realisation that people actually fund pointless shit like this.

La Marche de L'Empereur (aka March of the Penguins) (Luc Jacquet, 2005)
I disliked this for two reasons: first, the subject matter has already been covered with greater competence (by, e.g., Attenborough's Life in the Freezer); second, the interpretation and explanation of the penguins' behaviour is naively anthropomorphic and shockingly non-scientific. The tagline says it all, really: In the harshest place on Earth, love finds a way.

Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
I don't feel qualified to comment on the relationship between this film and the historical events on which it's based. And I don't have anything to say about the politics of it all; then or now. I disliked it because of the characters, who are depressingly obsessed with issues of race, and whose self-conceptions are defined entirely by their own racial origin.* A set of cunts, the lot of them. The only thing that kept me going - throughout the excruciating two and three-quarter hours duration - was the hope that I might get to see a few of them die horribly (no joy there either, unfortunately; a few of them do indeed die, but not sufficiently horribly).

[*I suppose that this comment on the characters could be interpretable as a comment on the history or politics of the situation. Either way, that's not my intention. My reaction to the characters would have been the same had it been a work of pure fiction.]

Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)
This was shown on TV a while ago, and I watched it out of curiosity, since it was so heavily referenced in Hot Fuzz. Prior to this, I'd had no inclination to watch it, because I'd assumed it would be shit. And I was right.

Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, 2006)
Considering that this is the work of a world-renowned director, it's very disappointing. It's a plain, simple, straightforward Vietnam POW escape story. It's neither badly directed nor badly acted; it's just dull, and rather old-fashioned (I mean, seriously, who makes Vietnam films these days?). If you edited in a couple of scenes featuring the main character's family, and coloured the credits in yellow, then you could easily mistake it for a made-for-daytime-TV melodrama with a housewife-heartstring-tugging title along the lines of Mommy, When Is Daddy Coming Home?

Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005)
God-awful rip-off of various aspects of the Star Wars films in conjunction with several other well-worn sci-fi elements, to be duly fawned over by Joss Whedon's fuck-witted Buffy-loving army of inexplicably existent fans.

Syriana (Stephen Gaghan, 2005)
So tedious I can't remember a god-damned thing about it. Even after reading a few online synopses, my memory remains steadfastly blank. Apart from Clooney's beard. That, I do remember. Unfortunately, a well-remembered beard doth not a memorable movie make.

Thank You For Smoking (Jason Reitman, 2005)
Some films based on books seem to scream: THIS IS A SCREENPLAY ADAPTED FROM A NOVEL! I'm not always exactly sure why this is, but I guess it often has to do with the presence of narration-heavy sequences of fast-edited no-dialogue shots. You can almost feel the hand of the screenwriter at work, struggling to transform a story told in an essentially linguistic medium into a story told in a principally visual medium. As far as I'm concerned, this is a mark of cinematic failure. It's a shame, because this film does feature a few very funny scenes, especially one where tobacco industry spin-doctor Nick Naylor discusses with movie producer Jeff Megall a possible product-placement deal:

Megall: Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they're looking to make.
Naylor: Cigarettes in space?
Megall: It's the final frontier, Nick.
Naylor: But wouldn't they blow up in an all oxygen environment?
Megall: Probably. But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the ... you know, whatever device.'

36 Quai des Orfèvres (aka Department 36) (Olivier Marchal, 2004) I'd heard that this was like a French version of Heat but, as we all know, you shouldn't believe everything you hear. Heat is one of the best films ever made. This isn't.

Unrest (Jason Todd Ipson, 2006)
Stupid story about a cursed cadaver ending up in a medical school. Not in the least bit scary. I've felt more tension waiting to hear a valuation on the Antiques Roadshow.

V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005)
Sort of like The Crow crossed with Equilibrium, but not as good as either. The main character is thoroughly annoying, and the politics are too facile to be worthy of serious discussion.

Volver (Pedro Almodovar, 2006)
This could have been interesting, but it all added up to nothing much in particular. I've had it with Almodovar. All his films are disappointing slices of nothingness. Verdict: do NOT vote for Pedro.

Reeker

2007-08-21T08:24:00.000Z

(Dave Payne, 2005)

I'm going to tentatively recommend this. There are some negative aspects: it's not an entirely original plot, and the delivery of the "twist" at the end is annoyingly patronising, with a long montage of explanatory flashbacks obviously designed to guarantee that even the most thick-headed members of the audience can retrospectively comprehend what has happened. But on the plus side, the direction, dialogue, pacing and acting are all well above-par for a horror film of this type, and there are plenty of nice funny touches throughout. Also the SFX are basic but very effective.

Saw III

2007-08-21T08:06:00.000Z

(Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006)

I wasn't hoping for much, especially in the wake of the frankly irritating Saw II, but this is actually the best of the series so far. Of course, the story is a bunch of bollocks. But it's twist-laden gore-filled torture-horror, and if that's what you're looking for then that's what you'll get, so the fact that the story is a bunch of bollocks is really beside the point. I like the fact that there are still some bunch of bollocks horror franchises kicking around. I was a big fan of the Elm Street films when I was younger. That was a bunch of bollocks too. But I liked watching Freddie being witty while slicing people up, and I was always willing to sit through another installment. It's good to have a contemporary horror franchise such as Saw taking up the reigns and pumping out sequels. (Final Destination is another current franchise that does its job well - it's a bunch of bollocks plotwise, but it ticks the "gore" and "clever twist" boxes with a sufficient degree of competence to keep me watching).

28 Weeks Later

2007-08-20T14:48:00.000Z

(Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007)

Jesus wept, this has to be one of the most uninspired ~~zombie films~~ viral thrillers I've ever seen. If you're going to make a ~~zombie film~~ viral thriller in this day and age, you need to do something new with the genre. Or you need to do the same old shit, but throw in some fucking good gore. This does neither. Plus it's yet another film where the director has opted to shake the cameras around so that you can barely tell what's going on (as opposed to choreographing genuinely sophisticated action sequences that look effective from more stable camera shots).
I didn't realise until the end credits that this sequel was not directed by Danny Boyle. I don't know how that fact passed me by. I just assumed it would be Boyle. Whether he'd have done a better job than Fresnadillo, I do not know. Fresnadillo gave us Intacto, which was pretty good, so why he made such a fuck-up of this, I also do not know. (All in all, there are many things about directors I do not know. Why Raimi made Spiderman, for instance.)

Hard Candy

2007-08-20T14:42:00.000Z

(David Slade, 2005)

A young girl meets an older man, initially through the internet, and subsequently in real life. She's gonna tie him up and have his nuts for ear-rings 'cause she's convinced he's a kiddy fiddler. But he says he isn't. So is he or isn't he? Oooh, the suspense! Actually, the initial stages of the film build up an incredible sense of foreboding, but when it all kicks off, it isn't really as gory and horrific as I'd hoped, and the twists and turns near the end utterly sapped my patience. Still, as a film that consists largely in one long dialogue between two characters, it was very well scripted and acted.

CSA: The Confederate States of America

2007-08-20T14:34:00.000Z

(Kevin Willmott, 2004)

Fake documentary based on the premise that the confederates won the civil war, the emancipation proclamation was overturned, and slavery continued to exist until the present day. The alternative history is quite cleverly done. The whole thing is presented as though you're watching a US TV channel (except of course it's not the USA, it's the CSA) airing the documentary, which was made in the UK and previously banned in the CSA. The only problem is that it's just not quite funny enough. If they couldn't think of any more decent gags, then they should have bitten the bullet and made it a completely dead serious, dark and disturbing satire, rather than aiming for more of a "lighthearted chuckles" satire. The most interesting things are the commerical breaks throughout the feature, which include adverts for all manner of products with racist / slavery-based brandnames and logos. Some text comes up at the end of the film explaining that all of these products really existed at some point in US history ("Coon Chicken", as featured in Ghost World, is one of them).

La Science Des Rêves (aka The Science of Sleep)

2007-08-20T09:05:00.000Z

(Michel Gondry, 2006)

As I watched this film, I felt convinced that it was supposed to be about a man (or possibly two aspects of the same man) struggling to recognise and resolve a metaphysical conundrum concerning perception, reality, and his own personal identity (or, perhaps, identities!). By the end, however, I realised that I must be wrong. The man turns out to be more or less unaware of the existence of the conundrum, which itself remains unexplored and unresolved by the film. What remains is a despressing and pointless story charting the social ineptitude and confusion of a man with some kind of mental illness. The effects of the illness are interestingly illustrated, but rather than being a source of insight (and drama), they are simply a means by which the viewer ends up sharing the man's confusion.

A Scanner Darkly

2007-08-20T08:54:00.000Z

(Richard Linklater, 2006)

My experience of watching this film was very true to my experience of reading Philip K Dick books (even though I haven't read this particular story): it's basically interesting, but slightly old-fashioned, it fails to cash out the potential of its own ideas, and it somehow feels lacking in pace and resolution. The animation helps to convey the phenomenology of drug-taking, and thankfully saves the viewer from what would otherwise have been a bunch of actors making lame efforts at pretending to be muntered (think: The Breakfast Club spliff scene). But Linklater already showed us this visual style (with a much better story, and to much greater effect) in Waking Life.

Night at the Museum

2007-08-20T08:47:00.000Z

(Shawn Levy, 2006)

This is an unusually old-fashioned kids' film. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe all kids' films are written like this, but I don't watch enough of them to be aware of it. Either way, it was clichéd and predictable. If you could instruct a computer to automatically generate a film according to a general blueprint, this hollow, empty and lifeless piece of work is probably what you'd get as the end product. To make matters considerably worse, the whole thing is accompanied by one of those full-on orchestral scores that make you want to grab the composer tightly by the balls and shout "STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO THINK AND FEEL!"

An Honourable Mention

2007-01-15T22:05:00.000Z

Even though I'm not in the business of reviewing TV series, I was sufficiently impressed by the Japanese TV anime series Paranoia Agent to give it an honourable mention. I'm not going to say much about it, because then I'd be reviewing it, and like I said, I'm not in the business of reviewing TV series. I will say this, though. I was originally going to see it at the Leeds Film Festival back in November (they were showing all 13 episodes in 4 separate screenings), but as the first episode began, two things became distressingly apparent: (1) they had chosen to screen a version dubbed by American voice actors, rather than showing the subtitled version; and (2) they had somehow managed to screen the 1.78:1 image on what appeared to be a roughly 4:3 screen without any letterboxing (i.e., the picture was stretched vertically to fill the entire 4:3 screen). So ... I walked out, put it on my DVD rental list, and soon had the pleasure of watching it in the comfort of my own home in all its subtitled 1.78:1 glory!

Brick

2007-01-05T22:14:00.000Z

(Rian Johnson, 2005)

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's noir-style Chandleresque detective bullshit. Consequently, I've found myself in the position of loathing several generally well-regarded films. One example (which enjoys a status of almost Biblical proportions among screenwriters) is Chinatown. I've made two attempts in my life to sit through this ponderous film, and in each case failed to last more than about twenty minutes before experiencing the onset of a particularly acute sense of rigid boredom. (No further attempts are likely to be scheduled.) Another, more recent, example is Sin City, which I endured in its ridiculously overstretched entirity only because I'd paid cold hard coin to see it in a cinema. Sure, it looks nice; but all it really amounts to is yet more dreary old bollocks about dangerous dames, world-weary private dicks, shady characters inhabiting dockland areas, and enigmatic one-word clues hand-scrawled on the backs of nightclub matchbooks.
Now, given that the aim of Brick is to transpose genre conventions such as these into a contemporary high-school setting, I was, as you can imagine, extremely wary about the prospect of watching it. To my astonishment, it works brilliantly. Yes, there is a potential stench of contrivance about the way that familiar high-school character types are played up as slick-talking detective-genre types (loner kid = world-weary private dick; rich bitch = dangerous dame; school bully = shady thug; etc., etc.). But the unreservedly surreal results of this transposition entirely freed me from any presupposition that I ought to be taking things seriously (which is the main thing that annoys me about detective stories in the first place); especially when we're introduced to gangland drug overlord, The Pin; who is, in fact, a disabled kid who lives in his mum's basement.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (aka Tommy off of TV's Third Rock from the Sun) plays an absolute blinder in the lead role, and the script and direction are crafted to perfection. This film has atmosphere dripping out of every orifice. Watch it.

The Hours

2007-01-05T14:24:00.000Z

(Stephen Daldry, 2002)

This is strange. A biopic of the final days of Virginia Woolf intercut (rather overenthusiastically, it has to be said) with two entirely fictional stories apparently bearing no more meaningful a relation to Woolf than that they involve certain themes (e.g., lesbianism, illness, suicide) relevant to both her life and her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The question is: why? A straightforward biopic of Woolf wouldn’t necessarily have been as interesting (especially in terms of narrative structure) but would at least have been possible to interpret. Similarly, a biopic of Woolf intercut with a screen adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway could have formed a more coherent whole (and offered some structural complexity, especially in those scenes where we see Woolf making decisions about the direction of the novel’s plot). But a biopic of Woolf intercut with two distinct yet thematically similar fictions? I understand the idea, but I really don’t see the justification for it. It just seems so arbitrary, like if Oliver Stone had intercut The Doors with an independent fictional piece about a man who happens to enjoy drug experimentation, writing quasi-mystical poetry, and getting his cock out.
The Hours is a decent, well-made, well-acted film. It just left me with a bad aftertaste; the sour flavour of unwarranted randomness.

The Hours @ IMDb

Dark Remains

2007-01-04T14:10:00.001Z

(Brian Avenet-Bradley, 2005)

A young couple mourning the recent murder of their child seek solace and relaxation by moving to an isolated woodland cabin. Close to their new home, they discover an old abandoned … ah, let me see, what was it now? … an old abandoned ice cream and cookies factory? … no, wait, that wasn’t it … think, think … what was it? … an old abandoned workshop in which a nice old lady used to handcraft little knitted woollen jackets for puppies to wear in winter? … no, no, that wasn’t it either … fuck me, what was it? … ah, yes! I remember now … an old abandoned prison / mental asylum … of course it was! … how it could it not have been!
From this threadbare set-up, a crude form of plot is gradually hacked out, but the exposition is badly handled, and the need to bring a sizeable cast of secondary characters into play somewhat undermines the original premise (wasn’t this supposed to be an isolated retreat?). So far, so shit. The only positive thing I can say is that it’s nice to see some J- and K-horror influence in a Western horror film (without it being a commercially calculated US remake of an already established East Asian success). Ghosts appear, subtly and for fractions of seconds, in the corners and backgrounds of shots; and when they come straight at their victims, they move at high velocity. So there are, to be fair, a few decent scary / freaky moments. Scariest of all, though, is the casting decision that landed such an uncharismatic pair of planks in the two lead roles.

Dark Remains @ IMDb

Colour Me Kubrick

2007-01-04T12:08:00.000Z

(Brian W. Cook, 2005)

Based on the story of Alan Conway, who blagged loads of money and free lunches in early-nineties London by pretending to be Stanley Kubrick. The story itself is fascinating, which means that the slightly sluggish pacing of the film does no real harm. Likewise, the effort put in by Malkovich (as Conway) is more than enough to counterbalance the occasionally awkward script and lack of co-acting talent (for unknown reasons, Jim ‘The Laughing Fascist’ Davidson features in a minor role). The film is peppered with Kubrick references (both visual, and in the soundtrack) which also add nice touches (I love references, but I’m not sure why; maybe it’s the satisfaction to be derived from ‘getting’ them).

Colour Me Kubrick @ IMDb

Gruesome

2007-01-02T15:42:00.000Z

(Joshua Cook & Jeffrey Cook, 2006)

Take a look at this description of Gruesome (from the 2006 Leeds International Film Festival brochure - see link below review):

"Doomed to relive her own horrendous murder over and over again, Claire realises that she may never wake up from her nightmare unless she uncovers the truth behind what is happening and why. As a psychopathic killer stalks and murders her everyday, Claire starts to lose her mind and her grip on any kind of reality disappears, leaving her in an unrelentless world of torture. Switchblade Romance meets Groundhog Day with a bit of Hostel thrown in makes this film unmissable with a twist to boot."

Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of a torture-genre version of Groundhog Day sounds pretty fucking excellent to me. Such a concept could allow for multiple layers of tension as the victim struggles not merely with an immediate ‘escape-or-die’ situation, but also with a deeper, more metaphysical ‘solve-or-relive-the-whole-thing’ mystery. Cashed out in the right way, this concept could make for a seriously twisted horror film. Needless to say, then, I went to see Gruesome with high expectations.
Unfortunately, the Leeds Film Festival’s description of the film is factually inaccurate on two main counts. Firstly, Claire does not relive her own murder over and over. She does get killed a couple of times, but not in the same way. In other words: there is no repetition of a single chain of events (and, therefore, no riffing on permutations and offshoots of that chain) of the kind that made Groundhog Day so ingenius and appealing. Secondly, Claire’s situation can in no way be described as a ‘world of torture’. With the (admirable) exception of one instance of facial skinning (the only part of the film that could possibly justify the phrase ‘a bit of Hostel thrown in’), Gruesome trades in a sparse and watery form of psychological, rather than physical, horror. (Look carefully at the quoted paragraph again and you’ll see that Claire’s situation is actually described as an unrelentless world of torture. Presumably this was supposed to read ‘unrelenting’ or ‘relentless’. The term ‘unrelentless’ is actually quite accurate! A Freudian slip perhaps?)
As for the twist, it’s shit, and if you’ve seen Switchblade Romance (or any of a large number of other films that deploy a similar lame-arse-cop-out-masquerading-as-shocking-twist ending) then you’ll know exactly what sort of nonsense to expect.
(So … as it turns out, the idea of a torture-horror version of Groundhog Day is still very much up-for-grabs. If any screenwriters happen to be reading this ... What are you waiting for?)

Gruesome @ 2006 Leeds International Film Festival website

The Last of the Mohicans

2007-01-02T14:29:00.000Z

(Michael Mann, 1992)

This is overblown sentimental crap. It’s also extremely confusing, insofar as it appears to be set in a parallel universe where the act of driving a sharp blade into or across the skin of a human body results in no noticeable degree of injury or bloodshed (although, curiously, it does seem to make the person struck by the blade manifest a sudden compulsion to throw themselves dramatically to the ground).

The Last of the Mohicans @ IMDb

Another Day in Paradise

2007-01-02T14:01:00.000Z

(Larry Clark, 1997)

Clark’s follow-up to his controversial debut, Kids, is a surprisingly mediocre and predictable middle-of-the-road drama about a couple of young drug-fuelled criminals taken under the wing by a couple of old drug-fuelled criminals. It has the feel of a made-for-TV movie and progresses in exactly the way you’d expect from beginning to end. Yawn.

Another Day in Paradise @ IMDb

Anaraifu (aka Analife)

2007-01-02T13:57:00.001Z

(Kenji Goda, 2005)

Against the background of a constant stream of multiple on-screen images and a hypnotic, pulsing soundtrack, three not-entirely-likeable characters (a rapist; a death-obsessed photographer who's sexually involved with a murderer; and a guy who stalks strangers at a distance by going through their bins) narrate their stories, all of which culminate in rectal injury of one kind or another. Damaged arses in tow, they all end up visiting the same proctologist’s office, wherein they encounter some aliens and sing a song about meeting a bear in the woods. What it all means, I really do not know, but I found it utterly compelling and strangely enjoyable. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I doubt I ever will again.

Anaraifu @ IMDb

Broken

2006-11-23T15:50:00.000Z

(Simon Boyes & Adam Mason, 2006)

The opening of this film does not fuck about. We get a brief glimpse into the everyday life of the main character (just enough to establish that she’s a single mother) and then we’re dumped straight into the heart of horror-central, as she wakes up in a wooden box with no indication how she got there.* A day later, she is freed from the box, knocked unconscious, and awakes to find herself caught in a deadly trap from which she must escape or die.** When she finally struggles free, her captor appears, puts a rifle to her head, and asks “Will you continue?”
This has to be one of the most powerful and promising openings to a horror film I’ve seen since Tears of Kali (the first scene of which involves a woman cutting off her own eyelids with a pair of scissors). The problem is, it's too powerful and too promising. It makes the events that follow seem tame by comparison and lends the film an overall sense of anti-climax that never quite fades away. Indeed, the majority of Broken has more in common with a run-of-the-mill hostage thriller than a horror film, as the story traces the day-to-day interactions and subtly developing power-plays between the captive and her captor as she is kept chained up in an isolated woodland encampment and forced to perform menial chores such as washing pans and tending a small vegetable garden. When a third character is introduced—a schoolgirl who also survives the initial ‘test’ and is enslaved at the camp—the film almost begins to mimic a domestic abuse drama, with the older woman as a ‘mother’ desperately trying to placate a hysterical ‘daughter’ before her constant wailing induces the rage of an abusive ‘father’. Despite further scenes of violence (and a very effective shock ending) I couldn’t help but feel badly let down. The film’s opening gambit led me to believe that what I was about to witness would be a relentlessly brutal succession of senseless and sadistic trials to make Hostel look like The Care Bears Movie. What I actually witnessed was often no more unsettling than watching Reed and Donohoe bickering away at each other in Castaway. I have to admit that Broken does offer some impressive low-budget drama and suspense; but it's not the kind of horror I’d been hoping for.

* The idea of a character waking up imprisoned with no idea how or why seems to recur so frequently these days that it may be justifiable to regard it as a sub-genre in its own right. Recent examples include: Oldboy (2003), the Saw films (2004 onwards), Zulo (aka Hole) (2005), Haze (2005), and House of 9 (2005) … not forgetting the Cube series (1997 onwards), several early Twilight Zone episodes such as “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” (1961), and an episode of NBC’s Experiments in Television series, “The Cube”, which can be downloaded here.

** Once again, the Saw films spring to mind. However, Broken achieves a much more gruesome atmosphere than these films, with less reliance on fancy-schmancy editing. The scene in question here is certainly not recommended viewing for the squeamish. If the representative of the Leeds Film Festival who introduced its screening is to be believed, it caused at least one member of the audience at the previous week’s screening to pass out.

Broken @ IMDb

The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell

2006-11-23T14:28:00.000Z

(Jonny Gillette & Kevin Wheatley, 2006)

A joyfully insane comic-book style comedy-horror / adventure-quest in which a host of bizarre characters (including, but by no means limited to, the descendants of JFK and Castro, a pair of not-too-bright androids, a deadly female cannibal, a genetic super race, and the spawn of Satan) battle for political control of post-nuclear-holocaust ‘New America’—all of which madness is presented in the form of a historical documentary from an even more distant future.
As an exercise in low-budget film-making, this is an incredible piece of work. It’s creative, original, funny, visually distinctive, packed full of ideas, and massively entertaining. The entire cast invest an admirable amount of energy in their performances, with co-director Wheatley playing the lead character of Tex Kennedy like a mutant conjunction of Jack Black and Bill Hicks. Something about the style of the film (specifically: the frequent interjections of the narrator; the quick cut-aways to illustrative diagrams, photos, etc.; and the highly amusing bickering among characters) reminded me of the US TV sitcom (which hasn’t had anything like the respect it deserves in the UK) Arrested Development (but then again, maybe this was just a subliminal effect of the presence of Tony Hale, who plays Buster in AD). It might also be possible (given the large cast of weird characters and the overall ‘adventure-quest’ feel) to describe Beach Party... as a kind of post-apocalyptic splatcore version of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But enough of trying to explain the inexplicable. The bottom-line is: You should watch this film. It is good.

The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell @ IMDb

The Woods

2006-11-20T16:30:00.000Z

(Lucky McKee, 2006)

Beware of anyone who tries to plug this film by saying that it stars Bruce Campbell in the male lead. What they are neglecting to tell you is that The Woods is set almost entirely within a girls’ school, and the only male roles other than Campbell’s are those of ‘Sheriff’ and ‘Doctor’. (Campbell’s character is on screen for slightly longer than either of these two, and therefore wins the title of ‘male lead’ on a technicality).
There are some positive things to be said about the film: The effects are quite slick; there’s a nice twist on the typical US high school queen-bitch character; and Campbell initiates a few brief moments of splatstick near the end. But the gore is too little too late; the exposition of the plot is garbled; and the whole thing is about as scary as Harry Potter.

The Woods @ IMDb

Resonnances

2006-11-20T13:05:00.000Z

(Philippe Robert, 2006)

Wouldn’t it be good if a film combined (1) a ghost story; (2) a ‘stranded in the wildnerness with a serial psychopath’ story; and (3) a sci-fi monster story along the lines of Tremors? If Resonnances is anything to go by, then the answer is clearly ‘no’. This film tries hard but achieves little. It obviously wants to be perceived as a whacky and enjoyable genre-mixing romp; but rather than being whacky, it seems desperate and unconvincing; and instead of being enjoyable, it’s boringly predictable. It has the overall feel of a rejected episode idea for The Outer Limits.

Resonnances @ Leeds International Film Festival website.

Splinter

2006-11-20T12:21:00.000Z

(Kai Maurer, 2005)

Ever wanted to know what happens when science fiction is written by someone who knows nothing about science and nothing about fiction? Well, here’s your chance. The speculative psychological theorising on which the plot of this film depends is at best naïve, and at worst utterly incoherent. The script is cringe-worthily awful, and the plot itself culminates in the single most atrociously offensive story-telling cliché known to humanity: the principal character wakes up at the end to find that it was all a dream (well, near enough: she actually wakes up to discover that she had fainted near the beginning of the film, and that the rest of the ‘story’ was a fiction created by her unconscious mind and captured on a thought-monitoring device). This is risible shit of the highest possible order.

Splinter @ IMDb

Kairo

2006-11-02T12:21:00.000Z

(Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)

Ostensibly, this is a horror film about an overpopulated ghost realm spilling its occupants over into the real world. But the actual horrors with which Kurosawa is concerned appear to be far less supernatural: loneliness, isolation, social breakdown, and their relationships with technology. This makes Kairo one of the most highly metaphorical horror films you’re likely to see. For this reason, I have to say that I respected it. Whether I actually liked it is another question. The metaphysics underlying the story (i.e., how exactly the ghost realm and the real world are supposed to be interconnected) are virtually impenetrable; so it feels like fighting an uphill battle trying to figure what the hell is going on from one scene to the next. A large part of this is, undoubtedly, due to the film’s being steeped in cultural meanings and references that are bound to pass well below the radar of a Western viewer like myself. (According to this entry in Wikipedia, for example, Kairo is critiquing Japanese cultural trends such as Hikikomori and suicide pacts; a fact—if it is one—that I had no idea about when watching the film.)
On the whole, then, I feel obliged to blame myself rather than Kurosawa for the fact that I found his film difficult to like. I also find myself forced to re-evaluate my opinion of his more recent Rofuto (aka Loft), which I originally dismissed as total shit. I’m now more confident that Rofuto, like Kairo, is working on some highly figurative level as a statement about fears and obsessions the interpretation of which is heavily culture-dependent, and not at all easy for a Western audience to appreciate.*

Kairo @ IMDb (UK)

*Like several other recent J-Horrors, Kairo has been subject to a US remake. I haven’t seen it, so can only assume that the Japan-specific metaphors have been lost, and the plot has been rendered comprehensible for the average multiplex-going American. Would that mean I’d enjoy it more? Sadly, I fear the answer could be ‘yes’; but the real question is: would I respect myself in the morning?

Everything is Illuminated

2006-10-27T09:23:00.000Z

(Liev Schreiber, 2005)

This is the story of a strangely obssessive American being helped by Ukrainians to find the village his grandfather came from. Even though the plot is essentially quite simple, I had a really hard time following it. One contributing factor was that throughout the opening scenes, I found it impossible to concentrate on anything other than the fact that Elijah Wood’s face appears to be made entirely from some type of pale, smooth plastic. A compounding factor was that the relevance of the plot comes into play only during the film’s serious moments, and since these are both sickeningly over-sentimental and downright tedious, my attention found itself wandering. Thankfully, the serious moments comprise only about 80-90% of the film. The rest is pure comedy. And it’s hilarious. Granted, the source of mirth boils down to the presence of two simple items: (1) a Ukrainian who speaks English in a comedic way; and (2) an amusing dog. But still, funny English and funny dogs are comedy gold, so this is no reason to complain. It’s just unfortunate that the serious bits don’t cohere with the comedy (I don’t know whether the original book does a better job). It’s like someone decided to remake Road Trip and Schindler’s List as one film. Or like one of those inappropriately weighty scenes in a US sitcom, where we’re all supposed to learn a valuable moral lesson (but what we’re really doing is wondering why the jokes suddenly dried up). This misfiring mixture of comedy and seriousness also makes it difficult to interpret certain characters. A woman who appears towards the end of the film lives in an isolated house stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes containing the remains of a village exterminated by the Nazis during the war. The pompous, holier-than-thou atmosphere of the ensuing scenes suggests that we are to perceive her as a very wise and knowing old soul, with a deep connection to the truly valuable aspects of life. But had she appeared as a character in any other film with such a high incidence of comedy, someone would have turned up and said “Come on, love, this really isn’t healthy. Let’s throw away some of this shit and get you out and about. You really ought to de-clutter. Have you read this book?”

Everything is Illuminated @ IMDb (UK)

Saw II

2006-10-24T13:31:00.000Z

(Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005)

The basic story idea underlying this film isn’t bad. The problem is the way in which the idea is executed. For a start, the direction is awful. Two things stand out in particular. One is the use of intentionally over-shaky hand-held camera shots in an obvious attempt to pull the viewer ‘into the action’. This serves only to draw attention to the camerawork itself, and therefore has the complete opposite of the desired effect, detracting from the perceived ‘reality’ of the images on screen. The other is the overuse of rapid-fire jump cuts, punctuated by electrical-sounding snaps and pops, in an obvious attempt to inject a sense of frenetic panic into scenes of horror. Again, the effect of this is to draw attention towards the film’s style and away from its content. And horror is clearly a matter of content, not style. Either a scene is horrific (because it contains something horrific happening to someone), or it isn’t. No amount of pop-video-style film- and sound-editing is going make the difference.
The film’s biggest problem, however, is the incredible number of ridiculously implausible twists and turns required in order to grind out the storyline from beginning to end.* As I said, the basic idea of the film is not bad, so it’s a shame that by the time the final twist eventually arrives, the viewer’s patience has long since been eroded.

Saw II @ IMDb (UK)

* (I’m adding this as a footnote since it assumes knowledge of the film and contains major spoilers. Consider yourself warned.)

On the most charitable interpretation I feel capable of mustering, the implausibility of the plot can be reduced to the following two things:

(1) When the police arrive at Jigsaw’s lair and are presented with the ‘game’ that they have two hours to resolve, they make no attempt to conduct a systematic search of the premises, despite the fact that they have very little information to go on and appear to be occupying a building that is packed to the rafters with potentially clue-laden drawings, plans, designs, tools, machinery, drawers, shelves, containers, etc. Other than standing around idly, the only steps taken to discover information consist in interacting with Jigsaw himself and calling out a tardy tech team to trace the CCTV feed. Had a more thorough search been conducted, one obvious focus of attention would have been the safe that turns out to be crucial to Jigsaw’s entire scheme. “But who’s to say they’d have located the safe?” As the end of the film makes clear, it’s in a prominent position, unhidden from view. “But who’s to say they’d have considered opening the safe?” Safes are pieces of equipment typically used by people to lock away important or precious items—if any part of Jigsaw’s lair is worth searching, surely this is it. “But who’s to say they’d have been able to open the safe?” Well, even allowing that safe-cracking personnel / equipment could not have been dispatched within the two hour time-frame (and let’s face it, the tech team take their sweet fucking time), surely this is a generous window of opportunity to be exploited by a team of physically strong men situated in a building that appears to be packed to the rafters with all manner of industrial-strength engineering equipment.

(2) Jigsaw’s plan involves waiting until Eric (Donnie Wahlberg) gets desperate enough to fall back on his evil cop tactics: extracting information through violence. When this happens, Jigsaw intends to take a bit of a beating, and then feign a concession of defeat, at which point he will offer to take Eric to the location where his son is held. Since it is crucial to the plan that no other cops accompany them to this location, Jigsaw must convince Eric that they are to go alone. Here’s roughly how it transpires:

- Tell me where my son is or I’ll shoot you.
- Ok, you win, I’ll take you to him. Nobody else, though, just me and you.
- Seems reasonable. Let’s go!

What more obvious sign of a set-up could there be than the fact that a man who, at one moment, claims to be utterly surrendering to your authority, suddenly starts imposing fresh conditions only a few seconds later? Here’s how the scene should have played out:

- Tell me where my son is or I’ll shoot you.
- Ok, you win, I’ll take you to him. Nobody else, though, just me and you.
- Fuck that, I’m bringing a massive amount of heavily armed backup (for example, a handful of those SWAT guys that are currently standing around idly in the background, blatantly failing to search the place for clues).
- No, no, it’s got to be just the two of us.
- Look, mate, it’s obvious that this is just another ruse of yours. Either you take me and my massive amount of heavily armed backup right now, or I’ll shoot you.
- Damn, my cunning plan is foiled either way!

Zero Day

2006-10-20T09:02:00.000Z

(Ben Coccio, 2003)

A Columbine-inspired film charting the activities of two teenagers over a period of several months as they plan an attack on their school that will culminate in joint suicide. Stylistically, Zero Day is identical to The Blair Witch Project insofar as the viewer is expected to interpret the film as though it’s an edited package, assembled after the fact by unknown agents from a larger stock of footage shot by the now-deceased characters. But the main advantage Zero Day has over Blair Witch is that there are no points at which the viewer is forced to ask “Why the hell are you still filming this?”. Since the intention to leave behind an explicit record of their activities is central to the declared agenda of the self-named “Army of Two”, the fact that they continue to film themselves is never a problem. (The issue is even played on by the script, which has several peripheral characters querying the fact that they’re being filmed—this is a trick that Blair Witch couldn’t have got away with, since that film relied on the viewer either not noticing, or willingly ignoring, the implausibility of sustaining the filming). Zero Day also goes one further than Blair Witch by switching its source of ‘footage’ near the end. Since the killers do not take their camera with them when they assault the school, the film shifts to CCTV footage (with sound cleverly provided by having one of the characters phone 911 and leave the line open). The quality of the acting in Zero Day is also much higher than that in Blair Witch, manifesting a dynamism and intimacy that is no doubt helped by the fact that the parents of the two main characters are played by the parents of the actors themselves. By the way, I really don’t mean to run Blair Witch into the ground, since it’s a film I like and which I thought worked well in its own right, but since its stylistic aims are so similar to those of Zero Day—and occur relatively infrequently elsewhere—I can’t help but draw comparisons such as these, especially since Zero Day deploys such elegant solutions to problems that Blair Witch was unable to avoid. There are also obvious comparisons (and contrasts) to be made between Zero Day and Elephant, which came out shortly afterwards in the same year. Whereas Elephant offers very little background on the killers, concentrating instead on delivering meditative glimpses into the lives of those affected by their actions, Zero Day displays the other side of the coin, focusing in on the lives of the killers themselves and revealing hardly anything about their school or victims. Notably, though, neither film goes out of its way to offer an explanatory analysis of the killers’ actions. And this is a large part of the reason why both films work, since it respects the fact that there are no easy answers.

Zero Day @ IMDb (UK)

Save the Green Planet!

2006-10-19T13:26:00.000Z

(Joon-Hwan Jang, 2003)

An artful South Korean blend of cop-drama, torture-horror and bizarre slapstick comedy (which, let’s face it, doesn’t sound like an easy combination to pull off). Although the story develops along more or less predictable lines (and is slightly overlong at a running time of almost 2 hours), this is more than compensated for by the charismatic lead performances, and some highly energetic and imaginative direction, which throws up a constant variety of unusual and unexpected images. I don’t know why Jang hasn’t directed anything since this feature-length debut, but if he does, I’ll be watching.

Save the Green Planet! @ IMDb (UK)

Romance & Cigarettes

2006-10-19T11:31:00.000Z

(John Turturro, 2005)

Now filed under "Films I Found So Unbearably Bad I Had To Stop Watching" (alongside such torturous cinematic disasters as Crimetime, Dreamcatcher, The Producers (2005 remake), The Sweetest Thing, and Wild at Heart). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that’s so far up its own arse. Plus it’s a musical. Lord have mercy.

Romance & Cigarettes @ IMDb (UK)

Match Point

2006-10-19T11:18:00.000Z

(Woody Allen, 2005)

This is one more lame effort in an increasingly long line of lame efforts from Allen (who hasn’t made a really good film since Sweet & Lowdown, with the possible—but, to be realistic, unlikely—exception of Hollywood Ending, which I haven’t seen, so can’t comment on). It’s tempting to compare Match Point to the staggeringly abysmal Closer, since both are infested by a predominantly affluent transatlantic population of humourless tossers relentlessly engaging in soulless extra-marital ruttings. This would be slightly unfair, however, since in the case of Match Point, the affluence and the rutting bear at least some vague relevance to the plot. The main problem is that the precise nature of the pivotal decision faced by the main character towards the end of the film is not at all clear. Presumably, the dilemma he faces is supposed to be: poverty with a woman he loves versus affluence with a woman he doesn’t. But whether he actually loves either of these two women is difficult to judge (given that all concerned are humourless tossers engaging in soulless ruttings), and the “poverty” putatively threatened by the first horn of the dilemma consists in having to fall back on a career as an ex-tennis-pro turned coach (hardly the fucking breadline, is it?).

Match Point @ IMDb (UK)

Bully

2006-10-10T15:34:00.000Z

(Larry Clark, 2001)

If you were initially intrigued but ultimately disappointed by Mean Creek, then watch this. It’s essentially the same premise (a group of kids conspire to take revenge on a local bully) but cashed out with far greater intelligence and intensity. As with his debut, Kids, Clark uses a young cast and a natural documentary-like style to portray juvenile characters engaging in a range of unrelentingly shocking behaviours. As a technique for building tension towards the anticipated scene of revenge, this full-on hyper-real explicitness works very well. (If you've seen my earlier review of Wolf Creek, you'll know that I’m all in favour of good quality tension-building prior to scenes of horror.) The revenge scene itself is appropriately gruesome (I haven’t seen a more realistic and frightening depiction of someone being stabbed with a knife since the opening of Goodfellas) and its aftermath is saturated with a cruel black humour. My only criticism of the film would be that at certain points, Clark’s explicit style edges over into gratuitousness. I’m not at all surprised to see naked flesh during a sex scene, but when a character is simply walking down the street, or sitting on a chair, do I really need to see an entire screen-full of arse, or a close-on upskirt shot?

Bully @ IMDb (UK)

Clearing the Backlog:

2006-10-03T15:15:00.000Z

29 Reviews Covering Every Film I've Seen But Haven't Reviewed Since I Started This Blog.*

*in alphabetical order, and with the exception of several films I watched but had seen before (I've decided not to review those).

Clerks II
(Kevin Smith, 2006)
Not great, but not bad either. There are just enough decent gags to keep the whole thing afloat, although it does start to sink towards the end under the weight of its own self-referential smugness. My main complaint is that instead of resurrecting Brian O’Halloran (Dante) and Jeff Anderson (Randal) to make this sequel, Smith should have utilised the far greater talents of Jeremy London and Jason Lee to make Mallrats II. All it would have taken was a fat chronic blunt.

A Cock and Bull Story
(Michael Winterbottom, 2005)
This nosedives after the first twenty minutes or so, when you realise it’s going to focus more on the making of the film-within-the-film than on the film-within-the-film itself. I found the bickering between Brydon and Coogan (playing themselves) reasonably amusing, but could have done without the pointless subplots involving Coogan’s marital and extra-marital relationships.

Corpse Bride
(Tim Burton & Mike Johnson, 2005)
I do not, have never, and will never see the point of musicals; so the fact that I managed to sit through this film surely must count in its favour. The main problem is that it’s simply not dark, gruesome, or disturbing enough. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t looking for a remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with puppets; but this is the cinematic equivalent of a skull & crossbones t-shirt sold in Asda’s George section for mothers to buy as accessories for their 13-year-old wannabe-goth daughters.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
(Kenneth Bowser, 2003)
Based on a well-known book by Peter Biskind which I hadn’t previously read, and will now never read, since after watching both this film and the accompanying DVD-extra interview with Biskind, it’s patently an unprofessional hack job pursued solely in the interest of making a bit of cash. The lack of interviews with major players such as Scorsese and Coppola is telling.

Festival
(Annie Griffin, 2005)
Laced with irony insofar as it’s a film about amateur writers and performers that features amateurish writing and performances. It would have been better as a TV drama (like Griffin’s most well-known work, The Book Group), not least because if it had, I probably wouldn’t have felt inclined to watch it.

Fun with Dick and Jane
(Dean Parisot, 2005)
I have to admit, I quite enjoy a bit of mindless Carrey nonsense now and again. And this was no exception.

Ghost in the Shell
(Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Stylish (albeit in an overly blatant guns-and-tits kind of way) but somehow deeply unsatisfying. Not that I’m a big fan of Anime anyway. I tried to watch Akira many years ago, when it first became cool to do so, but quickly got bored of it. I stuck this one out, but only in the hope of seeing some stunning action sequences - of which, it turns out, there are too few. It all ended very suddenly, giving rise to a vague conviction that I must have completely misunderstood what had been going on. Strange. But not in a good way.

Hidden Fortress
(Akira Kurosawa, 1958)
Drags a bit towards the end, but still worth watching, even if only to witness the expert shot-framing and camera movements generally associated with Kurosawa. Not meaning to sound pretentious, but when the camera pans, it’s almost as if the scenery bends to Kurosawa’s will. (Damn, that did sound pretentious.)

Howl’s Moving Castle
(Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
Enjoyable enough, and full of nice little ideas and images, but the story itself is uninteresting, and the ending is ridiculous.

The Island
(Michael Bay, 2005)
Fairly average on the whole, but affords the kind of mild enjoyableness that arises whenever something turns out to be slightly better than the crap you thought it would be. Buscemi’s presence helps (as always), and McGregor isn’t bad in the lead role either.

The Jacket
(John Maybury, 2005)
A nicely effective fusion of several genre clichés (sane man locked in asylum / time-travel romance / whodunnit) helped along by very good performances from Brody and Knightley. If anyone can explain to me why this film required no fewer than 19 producers, I’d be interested to know.

Kagemusha
(Akira Kurosawa, 1980)
More directorial fried gold from Kurosawa, although I was surprised to find the final battle scene visually underwhelming. Some of the early camera moves are incredible, though. Just a slight pan one way or the other, and a whole new scenic image opens up. Makes me wish I knew more about cinematography, in order to describe it properly.

Lady Snowblood: Blizzard from the Netherworld
(Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
Overlong, and not enough swordplay for my liking, but features some entertaining bloodshed nonetheless. I hoped it would compare well with the Lone Wolf and Cub films, but it doesn’t.

Last Days
(Gus Van Sant, 2005)
Undoubtedly not a film to suit all tastes, but as far as I’m concerned Van Sant is a cinematic genius, especially when shooting in 4:3 aspect ratio, as here (I’m not a huge fan of Drugstore Cowboy, and that’s probably because it’s in 1.85:1 rather than 4:3). This isn’t as good as Elephant – one of my favourite films of all time – but it’s still a pleasure to watch.

The Longest Yard
(Peter Segal, 2005)
I have to admit, I quite enjoy a bit of mindless Sandler nonsense now and again. Unfortunately, this was an exception.

Maborosi
(Hirokazu Koreeda, 1995)
Excruciatingly tedious. No doubt there will be some hardcore fans of world arthouse cinema who think it’s a beautiful and / or poignant representation of something or other. And maybe it is. But it’s still excruciatingly tedious.

Nacho Libre
(Jared Hess, 2006)
The perfect vehicle for Jack Black’s physical-comedy talents (namely: jumping, arm-flapping, jumping whilst arm-flapping, bounding, jumping and bounding, bounding whilst arm-flapping, rolling, singing in a silly voice, and further combinations and permutations thereof). Genius. If you like that kind of thing. Which I do.

Night Watch
(Timur Bekmambetov, 2004)
This is far better than most recent American attempts to make superhero / vampire flicks. The pacing is a little off, resulting in one of the most anti-climactic sequences I've ever witnessed, but there are some nice details in the story (no doubt because it came from a novel), and some effective (Fincher-esque) use of CGI to bring those details to life. I particularly liked the way in which the alternative dimension of 'the gloom' was represented (this is how it should have looked in the Lord of the Rings films when Frodo wore the ring).

Ping Pong
(Fumihiko Sori, 2002)
A very funny and original film about two table-tennis-playing schoolfriends. As entertainment, it's got some good CGI-ping-pong action, and some great characters and dialogue. As a sports-based drama, it's wholly refreshing insofar as it doesn't all come down to the usual cliché of the hero's team securing a victory in the face of adversity in the final few frames.

The Princess Bride
(Rob Reiner, 1987)
Many people seem to regard this as a classic, probably because they first saw it as kids and have been fond of it ever since. I didn’t, and was therefore disappointed (although I could tell that I probably would have thought it was fantastic had I seen it as a kid). The first 30 minutes are resoundingly unfunny. After that, it improves. Overall, I liked it, but I was about 19 years too late to stand a chance of really loving it.

Princess Mononoke
(Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
Imaginative ideas, nice animation, and a mature downbeat ending. From what is essentially a kids' cartoon, you can't ask much more than that.

Red Eye
(Wes Craven, 2005)
Since I was a fan in my teens, I’ll always have a soft spot for the Elm Street movies (the first of which is genuinely a good film), but Wes Craven really is a talentless old hack.

Severance
(Christopher Smith, 2006)
Generally disappointing UK comedy-horror. The script is painfully bad in places, especially for the first 30 minutes or so. After that it gathers some pace and style. It’s saved from being a total disaster by one or two genuinely funny scenes, and a couple of clever horror-genre references.

Stoned
(Stephen Woolley, 2005)
A fairly average dramatisation of the lead up to the death of Brian Jones. Not helped by the fact that I watched it in close proximity to Van Sant’s far superior Last Days.

The Squid and The Whale
(Noah Baumbach, 2005)
On paper, this looks dull: a story about the effects of divorce on a family. To my surprise, it turned out to be superb, with excellently crafted characters and relationships and great acting all round. The only thing that spoils it is the fact that it’s American, and therefore manifests the dogmatic conviction that therapy is required to bring about genuine self-understanding.

Survive Style 5+
(Gen Sekiguchi, 2004)
A unique, stylish, and surreal interweaving of 5 disparate story-strands into a fascinating whole. The only slightly off-putting aspect is the large amount of English scattered throughout. This will no doubt make it seem ‘cool’ from a Japanese point of view. But ironically, from a Western point of view, what makes the film ‘cool’ is its overridingly bizarre Japanese-ness. But anyway, it’s excellent. Go watch it immediately.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
(Adam McKay, 2006)
Much like Anchorman, but with NASCAR drivers instead of newsreaders. Either way, it doesn’t matter, since Ferrell is hilarious. Sacha Baron Cohen is less than 100% effective as a comedy Frenchman (he just doesn’t seem able to bounce off Farrell as well as some actors can), but this is a minor quibble, since a more-than-adequate amount of comedy support is provided by John C. Reilly and Gary Cole.

Tony Takitani
(Jun Ichikawa, 2004)
Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, this is a slow, surreal, film that sits strangely halfway between kind-of-uplifting and kind-of-depressing. The intriguing characters and storyline make it worthwhile, and it's very nicely shot and edited.

Wedding Crashers
(David Dobkin, 2005)
The plot is pure clichéd romcom-by-numbers, but Wilson and Vaughn (plus Ferrell, in a small part) are funny enough to make it work.

King Kong

2006-07-11T10:16:00.000Z

(2005, Peter Jackson)

A movie producer seeking an exotic island location discovers and captures a large ape which, when shipped to New York, escapes and has to be shot. Despite having a plot so pitifully thin, Jackson’s film spans no less than three mind-numbing hours of the viewer’s life. How is this unlikely feat achieved? Fight scenes: a ship’s crew fight tribespeople; the ape fights dinosaurs; dinosaurs fight each other; the ape fights the ship’s crew; the ship’s crew fight giant insects; the ape fights giant bats; the ship’s crew fight the ape (again); the ape fights the US military. All of which risible pointlessness is produced via extensive use of CGI—which, of course, means that hardly any of the objects on screen appear to be obeying the laws of physics. (In the old days of movie special effects, huge falling rocks were made from polystyrene. The problem was, they looked like they were made from polystyrene. Nowadays, huge falling rocks are made from computer graphics. The problem is, they look like they are made from polystyrene.) Kids will probably love it, and Empire readers will probably already own it in the form of some overpriced multi-disc ‘collector’s edition’ DVD package to be viewed on one of those vast plasma TVs which I can only assume are sold with free self-hypnosis kits (how else do people convince themselves the picture’s not shit?) Jack Black is wasted. Jackson should be ashamed of himself.

King Kong @ IMDb (UK)

Primer

2006-07-09T13:47:00.000Z

(2004, Shane Carruth)

Two technological entrepeneurs, working out of a family garage, stumble across the discovery that the device they have been building acts as a time-machine, allowing objects placed inside it at the time it is deactivated to re-emerge at the time it was activated. They initiate a seemingly simple money-making scheme: turn on the machine in the morning, spend the day monitoring stock prices, enter the machine in the evening, power it down, and re-emerge in the morning forearmed with profit-making information. The possibilities of power opened up by the machine, however, prove to be too tempting for one of the pair, and events begin to spiral out of control in complex temporal loops of deception and manipulation.
Carruth’s debut is a subtle, low-key and intelligent sci-fi puzzler that concentrates on spinning a satisfyingly intruiging storyline out of dialogue rather than action. Admittedly, the sound quality is less than perfect (which isn’t surprising, given the film’s ultra-modest budget of $7,000) and this, in conjunction with the naturalistic style of acting (with characters conversing rapidly, sometimes mumbling, and often talking over the top of each other), makes it virtually impossible for the viewer to catch all the information needed to fully comprehend what’s going on. But this isn’t a film for those who like to be spoon-fed plots in easy to swallow, readily digestible chunks. It’s a film to be puzzled over (and, in this sense, is similar to the likes of Memento and The Usual Suspects). All the information is in there somewhere, and it’s down to the attentive viewer to extract it and piece it together. Viewers are offered this kind of responsibility all too rarely. It’s something to be valued.

Primer @ IMDb UK
Primer Official Site

Azumi 2: Death or Love

2006-06-11T10:32:00.000Z

(2005, Shusuke Kaneko)

The original Azumi was based on a popular Manga series set shortly after the rise to power in the early 17th century of the Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu. The story follows Azumi (played by actress and J-Pop star Aya Ueto), a female assassin whose mission is to cement the peace established by Tokugawa, and prevent Japan from lapsing back into its previous state of civil war, by disposing of the last few remaining warlords hostile to Tokugawa’s rule.
In Azumi 2, the story continues in essentially the same vein, with Azumi pursuing one final assassination target – only this time she is aided by a band of Robin Hood-style bandits, hunted by a team of super-powered enemy ninjas, and stalked by a treacherous infiltrator (played by Chiaki Kuriyama, who Western viewers will most likely recognise as Gogo, the sadistic schoolgirl assassin from Kill Bill, Volume 1).
Azumi 2, like its predecessor Azumi, somehow manages to have a script and plot that are overly simplistic and needlessly convoluted at the very same time. However, whereas director Ryuhei Kitamura (notable for his entertaining yakuza-meet-zombies romp, Versus) brought a distinctive and inventive visual flair to the fight scenes and overall comic-book feel of Azumi, Kaneko’s Azumi 2 is a limp, wooden, lacklustre, uninspired, and meandering affair. Kaneko clearly attempts to emulate Kitamura’s style by using different cinematic techniques in every fight scene, but the creativity and effectiveness of Kitamura’s deployment of multiple techniques is simply absent. (Strangely, the same can be said for Kitamura’s own Sky High.) Even the snappy, colourful comic-book feel of Azumi is lost in Azumi 2. The whole thing looks like footage of a bunch of people who got lost in a forest on the way to a cosplay convention.

Azumi 2: Death or Love @ IMDb(UK)

Wilde

2006-06-06T21:36:00.000Z

(1997, Brian Gilbert)

The question of this film's quality rests principally on the question of the accuracy of Stephen Fry's performance in the role of Oscar Wilde. If Wilde was a gentle, sensitive, intelligent, yet generally ungraceful, awkward and bumbling sort of chap, then Fry's performance is difficult to fault. If not, then Fry (coincidentally well-known as a gentle, sensitive, intelligent, yet generally ungraceful, awkward and bumbling sort of chap) is merely playing himself, and it was a severe miscalculation to have him cast in the role. Unfortunately, the resolution of this conundrum cannot be divulged here, since my knowledge of Wilde is limited to the basic biographical facts: author and playwright; renowned wit; tried and imprisoned for homosexual acts. I have no inkling whether he was, in essence, the kind of character that Fry portrays. Frankly, I had imagined him to be more of a powerhouse, more of a force of nature, like some kind of turn-of-the-century Oliver Reed (albeit much more pithy, and not quite so drunk). As played by Fry, he comes across as a kind of ... well, as a kind of turn-of-the-century Stephen Fry. For this reason, I watched the film with an acute sense of disappointment. Whether this ought to be blamed on Fry's performance or my own distorted conception of a famous historical figure I cannot say.
There is little worth noting about the film's other aspects. Jude Law, as Wilde's lover Bosie, demonstrates his undeniable talent for playing smug and arrogant, yet fragile and disturbed, characters; but this talent is insufficient to carry a film (further evidence of which, for those who wish to seek it, can be found in Mike Nichols' dismal turd of a film Closer). Wilde chugs along in the placid, efficient and unexciting manner of a three-part Sunday afternoon BBC period drama. True: it goes some way to augment the factual understanding of viewers such as myself whose knowledge of Wilde's life may be a little sketchy. But the majority the film's attention is focused on Wilde's relationships, and remarkably little light is cast on the man as an artist and intellectual. On the whole, this is a difficult film to damn by faint praise; better, then, to damn it by vague criticism.

Wilde @ IMDb(UK)

Wolf Creek

2006-05-31T18:19:00.000Z

(2005, Greg McLean)

Loosely based on a handful of Australian murder cases (such as the Snowtown Murders, and the Sydney Backpacker Murders), Wolf Creek is a horror story about three friends whose car mysteriously breaks down in the middle of the Outback, forcing them to accept a lift from a man who turns out to be a serial torturer / killer.
It goes without saying that this is not an entirely original idea. But novelty (or lack thereof) is not really an issue with this kind of film. The "Stranded in the Wilderness with Psychopaths" theme, established by such classics as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, has been reiterated so many times that it has really become a horror genre in its own right (some recent additions to which include: the poor but not-entirely-terrible mainstream remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the ridiculous and uninspired Wrong Turn; the massively underrated League of Gentlemen-esque Calvaire; the disappointingly twist-ended Haute Tension; and, assuming it counts as belonging to the genre in question, Eli Roth's powerfully effective torture-fest, Hostel.) Making a film within this genre is like recording a new version of a jazz standard. The fact that the tune has been played before doesn't matter - what matters is whether the new interpretation does something creative and worthwhile with the old theme.
McLean's variation on this particular theme is (one or two minor complaints aside) outstanding. The first part of the film does an incredible job of generating two essential ingredients: tension and realism. Cool, sombre cinematography in conjunction with an unsettlingly ominous-sounding piano-&-strings based score help to build up - at a slow, measured pace - a powerful sense of foreboding and paranoia (the feeling that you're about to witness something that's almost too much to bear is palpable long before anything unpleasant has actually happened), while credible, naturalistic performances from the entire cast contribute to a solid sense of reality. By the time the horror begins in earnest, the viewer has been optimally primed to feel the shock of it like a punch in the chest (an effect that's hard to mention without referencing Takashi Miike's masterclass in priming the viewer for shock: Ōdishon). From this point on, the film is as gruelling, horrific, and bleak as it ought to be, and maintains high levels of tension with some lone-highway-cat-and-mouse sequences reminiscent of Duel and The Hitcher.
The only significant problem with the film derives from the fact that the point of view of the protagonists is used to define and constrain the point of view offered to the viewer. This is an effective technique insofar as it contributes to an overall sense of claustrophobia and confinement, but it means that when McLean wants the viewer to be able to pause and linger over the surroundings, this has to be achieved by having the characters pause and linger - which, given the situation they are in, is implausible and frustrating to watch. (Other frustrations include the occasional recurrence of the perrenial horror-viewer's complaint: "Surely you'd try to find something to use as a rudimentary weapon at this point?").
Minor criticisms aside, Wolf Creek is beautifully shot and edited, and achieves its horrific effects with surprisingly little reliance on gore. This may be a disappointment to gorehounds, but it really isn't a film about the horror of gore. It's about the horror of pain, of suffering, and of what one human being is capable of doing to another.

Wolf Creek @ IMDb(UK)

Friends Forever

2006-05-29T16:08:00.000Z

(2002, Ben Wolfinsohn)

Documentary following the two-man band Friends Forever on tour. Shunning the idea of performing at music venues, Nate (stage-name: Wizard 333) and Josh (stage-name: Cunt) simply drive to a town, find a good spot to park, fire up a generator, and play chaotic, noise-based gigs—complete with smoke machine, light show, and outlandish costumes—from the inside of their tiny little VW van.
Wolfinsohn does a decent job of capturing the energetic audio-visual spectacle of the band’s performances, the daily grind between one show and the next, and the variety of equally intriguing characters that lie in orbit around the whole phenomenon; but the film struggles to offer any real insight into either Nate and Josh as individuals, or the nature of the friendship between them. This is a shame, because even when they’re not performing a show, the two of them still seem to be putting on an act of some kind, and it’s frustrating not to be able to gauge how much of what they say is genuinely meant, and how much of it is just Jackass-style posturing prompted by the presence of a documentary crew.
Still, the sheer unconstrained energy, enthusiasm and creativity of the pair is impossible to deny and fascinating to behold. It even spills over into individual side-projects: Josh’s 'Incrediball Boy': "Well basically it’s a big huge ball structure with arms sticking out of it, and each arm’s gonna play a different instrument … I’ll drink thirty beers and try to break a TV with my head." / Nate’s unfinished movie: "It’s an experiment to see if I can make a movie completely drunk, but I’m slightly buzzed sometimes and just flat out drunk at other times … like one whole night I was so drunk that the actor had to tell me what to do."
What the band may lack in actual musical talent, they make up for by possessing admirable degrees of honesty (they openly acknowledge the shortcomings of their music, their record label is named ‘Nothing Gets Worse Than This’, and their avowed intention is to provide the kind of noise that parents can complain about their kids listening to) as well as integrity (when attempting to sell merchandise after gigs, they inevitably feel so guilty about it that they either immediately drop the prices or just give it all away for free).
Ultimately, it's good to know that there are people out there doing this kind of thing. And despite the fact that Wolfinsohn's film fails to get under the skin of its subjects, their surface appearance alone makes for sufficiently compelling viewing.

Friends Forever @ IMDb(UK)

Jarhead

2006-05-24T14:07:00.000Z

(2005, Sam Mendes)

A depressingly true story about a singularly uninteresting man who joins the US military and ends up in Gulf War I where he spends most of his time acting like an imbecile alongside his idiotic colleagues. The war ends before they have the opportunity to take any human lives, which leaves their thirst for sadism unquenched and makes them all feel sad. Whether Mendes expects us to feel sorry for them because of this, I really don't know. The film begins and ends with some narrative spiel lamenting the irrevocably damaging psychological effects on human beings of their involvement in war. This kind of message might have succeeded in generating some amount of sympathy had we been dealing with a band of noble heroes reluctantly but bravely taking up arms in defence of a just cause. But Jarhead is set in the context of US involvement in the Gulf and focuses on a bunch of thugs who have joined the military either because they couldn't think of anything better to do with their time, or simply because they wanted to engage in legitimised forms of violence against other people (or, failing that, the local wildlife; or, failing that, each other). Chuck Palahniuk-style narration (repetitive, monotone, mantra-like recitation of technical instructions, lists, rules, etc.) fails to add any point to an entirely pointless film. Granted, there's only so much you can do to improve a script when it's based on a true story, but the whole thing would have at least been a source of amusement had the entire cast of thoroughly dislikable characters been violently butchered at the hands of their enemies.

Jarhead @ IMDb(UK)

Jarhead Official Site