(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.
Showing posts with label B. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B. Show all posts
05 January 2007
23 November 2006
Broken
(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 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
(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
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
10 October 2006
Bully
(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)
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)
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