I watched this due to it making an appearance on a list of the ten most gruelling films (sorry, I can't remember the exact page to link to it) and despite not being particularly gruelling, it's a good film.
Hayley Stark (a pre-Juno Ellen Page who interestingly enough was born in Halifax) is a fourteen year old girl who meets a trustworthy fellow in a chat room. She agrees to meet him. And meet him she does. He turns out to be the thirty-two year old Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson). At this point alarm bells should be ringing at a rather loud volume. Ah, no, it's alright. He's clean shaven, well dressed, handsome and doesn't smell of rancid lard. Phew. Not a paedo, then. She agrees to go back to his house...
The film pretty much revolves around just these two characters - with a smattering of bit parts as variety - so they had better be good actors. No worries. It's Ellen Page. She's great. She's in the same category as Natalie Portman and Émilie Dequenne. She can make any film watchable and entertaining. Except maybe Inception. But in that, her powers were negated by a general level of boredom. And okay, maybe she didn't swing it for X-Men: The Last Stand, where she was cancelled out by Vinnie Jones. But even if a film was crammed with the aforementioned actresses plus Nathan Fillion, Jackie Chan and Mark Dacascos, Vinnie Jones would still bring the film down to the direst of levels. Suffice to say, Ellen Page is brilliant in this. And Patrick Wilson is not too shabby either.
Acting: tick. Directing: tick. Ish. Most of the film is thoroughly engrossing. By the end of it, I had two major needs: a cup of tea - I like a nice cup of tea - and also, I was desperate for a Peters and Lee. This is just one of those films that demands being watched in one sitting. My only problem with the direction were a couple of action shots where the irritating style brought me crashing out of the experience. They jarred badly with the rest of the film.
The writing definitely gets a tick. Brian Nelson has done a cracking job of not telling us what to think (helped by the general absence of music). For the majority of the time, it's unclear who you're supposed to be rooting for. There are quite a few line from early scenes that resonate later. Some are remarked upon and just push against that border of insulting intelligence but others are left well alone, allowing the viewer to have that moment of realisation without it being pointed out. Good ending, too.
So, why is it supposedly so gruelling? It's virtually gore free. But it does become really tense at times and veers into extreme squirmy territory. Gentlemen: prepare to cross those legs. After watching Martyrs and Antichrist this feels like gruel-lite with 50% less gruel. I wasn't expecting much from Hard Candy but I was pleasantly surprised. This gains my Seal of Approval. Tick. 7/10 evlkeith
If you like this you could also try: Juno, The Tracey Fragments, Antichrist.
Probably the most famous of all zombie films, Dawn of the Dead is widely regarded as a classic. Fair enough, really.
George A. Romero got the original idea for the film because some of his buddies owned a shopping mall. The idea of zombies and shopping went so well together, he wrote a script about it. The theme is not put across subtly, it's rammed down your throat until it comes out of your bum-hole covered in solid gravy. But the message is as relevant, if not more relevant now. Consumerism has surely grown so much larger since the seventies. My mum used to make my trousers. Who does that now? All it needs to bring it bang up-to-date are a few scenes where we see gormless zombies staring at pictures of cute dogs on their mobile phones as they wander around the shops.
The story is possibly familiar to most people, even those who haven't seen the film, so I'll keep this brief. Two SWAT team members Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) join forces with TV executive Fran (Gaylen Ross) and traffic reporter Stephen (David Emge). They head off in Stephen's helicopter and eventually come across a shopping mall that's overrun by zombies. Taking advantage of the situation they hole up in the mall and partake in some retail therapy.
Considering the inexperience of most of the actors (Gaylen Ross in particular hadn't acted before) the acting is surprisingly good. Fran for the most part is pretty miserable (and rightly so) but when she learns how to fly the helicopter and smiles she lights up the screen, and from that moment on you want her to survive. I won't give anything away but one of the actors has the best zombie walk in any zombie film. The inclusion of a gun hung on a finger is inspired.
Dawn of the Dead is fairly comic book in tone, helped along greatly by the colour of the blood. The red stuff flows from the very start when the SWAT team go into a local tenement and continues right up to the end. Tom Savini still moans about the bright red hue of the blood even now. It would look better with darker blood but it wouldn't have eased its passing through the censor's snipping mitts. Savini's effects still look pretty nifty even now (after watching Centurion recently, seeing real blood squirting out of wounds rather than CGI is a very welcome sight). The two signature effects have to be the exploding head and the machete in head incident. Both are effective thirty five years on from when they were originally filmed.
Strangely my favourite scenes are the television interviews with experts on the zombie outbreak. They give the film a very bleak and realistic feel.
There are three different versions of the film on my Arrow Films Blu-ray. The Theatrical Cut and Director's Cut are pretty similar, apart from the score (The Theatrical Cut is actually Romero's favourite). The Argento Cut (Dario helped to finance the film with the proviso that he could edit the film for non-English speaking countries) is substantially different in the way it feels. It is a lot pacier and has the full-on Goblin score. The helicopter zombie is also missing, maybe due to pacing, or maybe because it looks a bit ropey in a Frankensteiny fashion. It's also a little gorier. The UK censors had a dim view of the Dario version and wanted to cut about thirty minutes. Perversely, when the longer theatrical cut was submitted, Jim Ferman only wanted to cut about five due to better characterisation and clearer motivations. If you've never seen Dawn of the Dead before the best order would probably be the Theatrical Cut first, then the Argento Cut and finally the Director's Cut. If you want to find out about the differences in detail go to http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=177418.
Dawn of the Dead is a very influential film and for once, a very good film too. It is one of those films that you should probably see at least once in your lifetime (if not more) but it's still not my favourite zombie film. It feels a little slow in places and I can't say that I've ever been that keen on the pie fight. Also, I still haven't made my mind up about the climactic music that sounds more like the Battle of the Planets theme tune. I prefer the Fulci offerings inspired by this very film. As for the remake, I'll come to that soon... 8/10 evlkeith (Average rating for the season so far = 5.8)
If you like this you could also try: Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead (2004).
As we walked to the cinematic picture house Doccortex asked me a pertinent question: "So, is Korean animation any good?" Based on this showing. No.
Beavis and Butthead boasted higher production values (albeit similarly grotesque teeth). The walking animation makes Bod look like John Travolta at his silkiest. The King of Pigs bears the hallmark of low budget animation: still screens where only slight portions move. And whereas Paprika, and more recently Redline, delighted in distorting faces, this does the same. But it doesn't necessarily look intentional.
You may think that as a lover of gorgeous animation, such as Nausicaa and Laputa, this would all be the kiss of death for The King of Pigs. Not so. It actually makes it quite endearing. They've made a film regardless of the lack of budget. And while it still has its problems, it also has its moments.
Jong-suk and Kyung-min were childhood friends and meet up years later. The conversation drifts to their life at school and the bullying that they put up with until Chul, a mysterious lad in their class, entered the fray. The film flits between their conversation and flashbacks. Now, I'm not normally a fan of flashbacks, but in this, they make up the main bulk of the story so I'll let them off.
The bullying action is all pretty familiar to someone who went to a relatively rough high school in South Yorkshire. But whereas, the cock of our school was invariably the most violent sociopath, here the school is ruled by the posh clever kids with rich parents who are able to bribe the teachers with cash and other services. (One of the bits of teacher bribery is a pearler and should become common practice in the UK.)
The Dogs (as they're called) are generally unpleasant characters. One of them has a penchant for fiddling with other boys privities and then questioning their sexuality if they start to enjoy it. They don't take kindly to show offs either. A lad joins from another school who can write and work out hard maths questions. He doesn't last long, filthy little show off. Easily the best bully is a lad in an orange jumper. He's a right sneaky little grass who hides behind the bigger lads and eggs them on.
A large problem is that all of this bullying happens quite slowly. A little bit of a pace injection wouldn't have harmed things. Add to this an ending where there are some startling changes of heart by the characters and it gets increasingly difficult to see why I liked it. But as soon as I see the screen shots I feel a warm sensation in my chest (although that could just be the dodgy pickled eggs I had for brekkie).
If you decide to watch The King of Pigs you are in a select little gang. There was only one other person in the cinema screen with us, and he spent most of his time looking at his phone. We quite liked it though. It's got some of the greatest manic laugh animations to hit the screen in a fair while. And at least this time we didn't get eggs thrown at us on the way home. Bonus. 6/10 evlkeith If you like this you could also try: Tekkonkinkreet, Bod.
Curse of the Golden Flower is a tale of intrigue in a severely dysfunctional family seasoned with a smattering of incest. It's directed by the fellow who gave us Hero and House of Flying Daggers, both of which are rather good films. Curse isn't quite as good but it does have its moments.
It has got such richly opulent colours that I felt like my brain was going to dribble out of my ears, eyes and nose due to colour exposure. Have a look at the screenshots to see what I mean. But imagine watching that for just shy of two hours, blown up on a large telly screen. I was half tempted to adjust the saturation on the remote to give my eyes a rest.
But when a rest comes the contrast is very welcome. There are dark and moody shots of ninja types swooping down and attacking people with throwing sickle type devices. The Special Features stated that all of this action is realistic. I find that a bit difficult to believe. If it's true though, ninjas were so immensely cool, and some other films like, Ninja Scroll, were probably realistic too. Brilliant.
This film isn't for the impatient of mind. It takes a fair old while to get going. Despite this I was engaged with all of the characters and skullduggery. It builds to a large scale battle that is mightily impressive. It doesn't have the emotional power of Hero but it shows the horror of war during China's Tang dynasty.
Given that the two leads are Chow Yun-Fat (Hard Boiled) and Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern) some half decent acting is pretty much guaranteed. And despite it all getting a little melodramatic towards the end, they both deliver. They make the realtionship between the Emperor and the Empress believable. Yun-Fat is particularly great when he has to whip his son with his belt. A huge golden belt.
Being English, I'm quite used to supporting the underdog who has absolutely no chance of winning but has a go anyway. (It would be fair to say that I'm not a Man Utd fan.) Curse of the Golden Flower requires that same commitment. I'll let you find out for yourself whether the underdogs manage to jam a last minute goal or whether they get hammered six nil. 6/10 evlkeith
A plane approaches a runway without any radio contact from the pilot. The control tower is very wary so they send out some military types to investigate. The plane lands and stands silently. No-one is visible in the cockpit. A warning is given for the occupants of the plane to come out and surrender. Intrepid honest reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) is on the scene filming with his trusty camera man. The door opens... and all hell breaks loose with zombies charging about hitting, knifing, biting and shooting everyone. Yep, these zombies can use sub-machine guns.
As you might have guessed this is pure comedy. It is definitely a bad film but it's not so bad that it's good, although it is funny for a while. Along with the zombies, the camp eighties dancing in the style of Pan's People is a highlight. As are the characters' bizarre behaviours. You desperately need petrol and you find a deserted petrol station. Do you A) Fill up quickly and leg it before the zombies come or B) Make yourself a coffee and sit down for a bit of a chat? You can guess what they do in the film.
The zombies themselves look like what can only be described as turd-people. That wear suits. Most of the violence is very tame with joke shop knives being drawn across necks but the director seems to have a liking for having ladies' tops ripped open and then stabbing them. One unfortunate lady has one of her begonias pruned in a very nasty fashion. This does seem to be a theme in certain zombie films: Zombie: Nights of Terror and The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue also contain similar scenes. Worrying indeed.
The music is by Stelvio Cipriani - of A Bay of Blood fame - but this soundtrack isn't a patch on that. The title music is fair enough but by no means memorable.
A zombie-fighting climax atop a roller-coaster with a slight degree of excitement is completely wrecked by a stunningly bad ending, but again it raises a smile, especially when the text overlaying the final image appears. It all makes sense, in a strange kind of way - unlike the ending of The City of the Living Dead - it's just that a six year old child could have written it. I'm surprised that they didn't all go home, have their tea, play on their PS3, chat to their friends and talk about how much they love their mums and dads and baby sisters and hamsters.
It's worth watching about five minutes of the rampaging zombies careening around (and the camp dancing) but after that it all falls a little flat. One for zombie completists only. 3/10 evlkeith
(Average rating for the season so far = 5.25)
If you like this you could also try: Zombie: Nights of Terror, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Zombie Creeping Flesh.
What Richard Did is not that interesting really. It's the Irish version of Paranoid Park. But without skateboards. Not quite as bad as the aforementioned film for moping teenageryness, although it gets close.
Based on a true incident the story centres around Richard (Jack Reynor) a slightly dubious upper middle-class fellow who is popular, but has an unpleasant urge to thieve other gentlemen's lady friends. He is reminiscent of the amoral Arthur in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Reynor even looks a tad like a young Albert Finney. One evening he has a tiff with his stolen girlfriend and we find out just what that little tinker Richard did.
In real life his situation would be fairly upsetting. In a film, it all comes as an anti-climax, more of a drunken accident than anything else. It doesn't help that the whole thing is generally boring. This is how boring: I spent most of the time looking at technical details such as working out what lens they used and trying to approximate the f-stop that they shot at. Riveting.
For saddo camera perverts like me it's not too tricky to work out. The majority of the film is shot with such a shallow depth of field that you end up watching character's heads against a very blurry background with no visual interest for most of the running time. (I didn't exactly have to try hard to find examples of this for the screen shots.) Okay, that's maybe on the harsh side but I came out of the cinema feeling that way so it must be bad.
So has it got anything going for it? There is a smattering of good acting lurking around. Richard losing it in his parent's holiday home is powerful stuff and Lars Mikkelsen as Richard's dad is fairly impressive throughout. Even then, these two are guilty of looking like they're acting at times. Apart from that, it hasn't got much else. Is it really a surprise that some posh, silver spoon sucking, rugby playing lads would perform the titular dastardly deed? Surely all of that drunken mindless violence is for those dirty working class people.
For me, it committed the cardinal sin of being dull. I was expecting a solid drama not an action film, (Shooting the Past is stunningly slow and yet engaging throughout) but I must admit that some death-dealing, acid-spitting ninjas would have spiced things up no end. 3/10 evlkeith If you like this you could also try: Paranoid Park, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
