Sunday 30 April 2017

Eyes Of Laura Mars


A thriller that explicitly ties the Giallo boom to American slasher movies. The subjective POV shots of a black gloved killer and themes of high fashion demonstrate just how much Bava and Argento scriptwriter John Carpenter had clearly watched before he went off and created Halloween, whilst the idea of a killer replicating murders shown in violent art would be later lifted by Argento for his return to giallo, Tenebrae.
As interesting as all that is though, the film barely musters average, mainly due to young Tommy Lee Jones looking weird as fuck.

Wednesday 26 April 2017

The Belko Experiment


What could have been a witty riff on a familiar plot gets betrayed by mechanical direction that plunges everything into a seething mass of sudden brutal demise.

Sunday 23 April 2017

The Incident [El incidente]


An excellent head mash that avoids choking on all the over abundant exposition by just how far out its central concept eventually becomes.

The Handmaiden [Ah-ga-ssi]


For fans of sumptous visual artistry, Roald Dahl's adult fiction and scissoring.

Sunday 16 April 2017

The Fate Of The Furious [IMAX]


Eighth installment, this time directed by someone who clearly knows where to place a camera when they want to crash a few cars.
Diesel maintains his incredibly serious expression for the majority of the running time mostly as a method for holding all that air in but also because he's secretly upset that The Rock is now steering his affections towards Jason Statham instead.
There is a bit when Diesel smiles presumably because he's imagining that if they were to try and all kiss each other at the same time then from the top they'd look like a creature with three buttocks clenching it's ass muscles. Diesel likes this mostly because it's silly but also because it includes kissing, buttocks and clenching muscles which are his three favourite things.

Dellamorte Dellamore [Cemetery Man]


A certainly unique but ultimately very mopey meditation on death, love and abrupt episodic plotting that proudly wears a multitude of influences joining the dots that run through Raimi, Jackson, Jeunet, Gilliam and Hitchcock.

The Sect [La setta/The Devil's Daughter]


A curious tumble of Italianate logic and bizarre outbreaks of random terror that all conspire to make the birth of the antichrist come off as a bit of harmless stupidity. I quite liked it.

The Church [La Chiesa]


Would appear to actually be two films, the first hour is a woodenly acted relationship between a librarian and art restorer who between them uncover clues that begin to reveal hidden atrocity committed in the name of organised religion. The film then visibly becomes Demons 3 instead as the church doors close and everybody, including a wealth of bonus characters who've just rocked up, goes instantly insane except for the cool priest who must try to find the one place in the church which when activated will cause it to collapse.
Neither film really supports the other, the first hour being a staid introduction to the carnage that follows and the last part rendering all the carefully laid plot irrelevant as everybody goes insane and does whatever the fuck they want.

Thursday 13 April 2017

Raw [Grave]


Coming of age stories like this are usually told through vampirism so I did find it refreshing to watch cannibalism exploited as allegory instead. It was also refreshing to see a more subtle take on cannibalism, less chewing on intestinal rope and something more akin to the blood lust of vampire movies in its place. This balance is what made Raw excellent. That and the ending.

The Wailing [Goksung]


A beautifully told encounter with evil that deftly flits between light hearted zany and the brutally horrific, I've not felt so successfully out-manouvered by a movie in some time now.

Ouija: The Origin Of Evil


Gently builds into something that almost stands apart from the usual before descending into random death, random surprise basements and random facial surgery.

Thursday 6 April 2017

Mulholland Dr.


A master at work.

Sunday 2 April 2017

Ghost In The Shell [2017 Remake] [IMAX 3D]


Reduces the philosophical complexity of the original to an oversimplified 'who am I really?' plot whilst amplifying the visual astonishment of the original to a retina shredding glory, which is all welcome from where I'm sitting.
A quick perusal at the level of internet twattery that has sprang up around this and the fact that it's acting like sand under the foreskin for a bunch of cretinous cunts makes me like it even more.