Three laughs: Tokyo Gore Police

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart. 

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three Laughs Case File #43:
Tokyo Gore Police (Tōkyō Zankoku Keisatsu, Japan 2008)
Director: Yoshihiro Nishimura

We live at stressful times right now, so a way to make things feel a bit easier is to take some flights of fancy. Like, say, this Japanese film about a privaticed police that leads to major bloodbaths.... Wait, but it's more or less a parody of anime stylings and over-the-top violence in Japanese flicks in a way that's more reminiscent of Braindead with it's firehosing of actors with blood.

In future Tokyo, law-enforcement is left for companies and private entrepreneurs. One of the latter is Ruka (Eihi Shiina), a super-skilled katana-wielder, who's also after the persons who killed her policeman father. At the same time, odd body manipulations and mutations are all the rage in the underground. Someone is using these body-melt technologies to sprout biological weapons to kill cop company workers, though, so Ruka is off to find the culprit.

I came of age at the time where most of the coolness and edge of Asian action movies had started to wear off. But there were still some last gleamings in parodies such as this, which I first saw at my beloved Night Visions film festival. This, along with stylistically similar OTT gore films Meatball Machine and Machine Girl, were one of the starting points of independent studio Sushi Typhoon, with which Nishimura and fellow director Noboru Iguchi made a string of bad taste gore flicks, with diminishing returns. You can't keep up if even before starting the business you've already gone to 11. Still, they managed to fund some of Sion Sono's films as well before closing doors so it was all for art in the end. 

But at this point it was still odd and novel, inventive even, to do a sort of cross between RoboCop, Akira and Tetsuo. The film has its tongue firmly in cheek and offers plenty of surprises and cool practical effects so it has still stayed surprisingly fresh today. 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The film begins with a lengthy action scene where Ruka faces off against a guy wielding a chainsaw on a chain. After this we get a pretty straightforward nod to Starship Troopers with a propaganda commercial showing the strength of privatized police forces, who execute a guy tagged to be a murderer of 15 childern on a rooftom by repeatedly shooting him like he's Hitler in Inglourious Basterds. A later commercial features a family using a Wii-like katana controller in order to perform remote executions as a kind of party game.

2. It takes a while to see just how gleefully perverted the movie is, but the auction scene is pretty hard to top in this regard. A cheerful crowd of punks and vampires is presented with a number of female dancers, each with a more bizarre mutilation. The snail-girl with her eyeballs in tubes is already pretty weird and disgusting but what takes the cake is the breathing half-woman-half-chair that squirts a lengthy pee to the faces of the ecstatic audience.

3. The main bad guy has a massive shotgun dick he uses to blast out police officers. That's it. That's the laugh. 

Three laughs: Double Down

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watvh them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.


Three laughs case #15:
Double Down (2005)
Director: Neil Breen

It's about time to get to the filmography of one Neil Breen. Double Down may not be his best movie, but it is the first, so let's begin there. Breen began as an architect and a real-estate agent, but he had aspirations for a movie career. Nowadays he is a director, actor, writer, editor and a producer with a sizable internet following.

The reason for this is because his style is so unmistakable. Breen is both akin to Tommy Wiseau in his delusions of grandeur and acting style, and somehow totally unpredictable and weird, no matter how many movies he makes. He  likes thriller movies with little suspense and big stakes that are informed to the viewer mostly through dialogue or voice-over over some stock footage. Usually, Breen is out to save the world with his hidden knowledge, superior hacking skills and/or magic powers from evil and shady military, medical or financial institutions.

While all of Breen's films have been made on a pittance, here he basically doesn't even have money to any other actors save for a few cameos. A lot of the fun of Double Down is the ingenuity of getting past this fact. Breen is a former government agent and hacker, who has ran away from his former masters because they killed his fiancée for some reason. Hiding out, he threatens the world with hidden biological weapons he has hidden in several cities and that he will kill hundreds of thousands of people if not left alone. Somehow, the film twists this premise so that he's the hero?

Logic is not big in these films, even though Breen likes to repeat lines and themes over and over again.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Breen's unenthusiastic line-reading is a thing to behold, it's like a parody of Steven Seagal done by Bob Odenkirk in a weird wig. Thus it's preposterous how he keeps finding even worse actors than himself. This film has plenty of flashbacks and so we are also treated to the scene where Breen's wife got killed in a pool. And boy, is she atrocious an actor. Even lines like YES! seem worse presented than in the cheapest porn you can find, no matter lines like "I can't wait to be your wife!" After this, she is shot by a sniper (though there's no wound on her back) and left to float on her face in the pool as Breen cries to some bloody orchids.

2. Between stock footage and Breen talking to powerful people with some dubious connections, every once in a while we have a scene with him either hacking on the laptops in his car, or killing an intruder. One of my favorites is when he announces, playground-style, that his desert base is protected by an invisible barrier. We then see a soldier walk awkwardly with an assault rifle. He suddenly falls down dead with blood in his ears.

3. There's a lengthy scene of Breen climbing a rock formation on the desert. The camera pans to show four AK-47's resting to a rock. Breen blurts out "Sorry to interrupt your lunch" and blasts away with his handgun with arcade machine sound effects and with blood sputtering to his face. It seems the scene means he managed to catch four mercenaries out to get him off-guard, yet without ever having one image of any of the would-be attackers. Avantgarde!

Bloody Vikings

Vikings has very rarely gotten their due in cinema history, which I find it a bit odd. Even though a complex Nordic culture with interesting gods and a drive for both exploration and pillaging in early Medieval settings might seem like prone for exciting historical adventure movies, more often than not, something goes awry with these. Anyway, let's take a look at several of the more interesting ones.

Erik the Viking (UK/Sweden 1989)
Dir. Terry Jones

Freed from obligations from Monty Python, director Jones was free to do whatever he wanted. His interests in medieval history, comedy and children's books met with an adaptation of his own book. He should have aimed the film more obviously for children. As it is now, the film has problems with its tone, as there are parts where there's too few jokes to be a comedy, and parts where the adventure doesn't advance at all. As a visualist or a mythic world-builder, Jones is clearly secondary to Terry Gilliam and doesn't quite get how to work his more fantastic ideas into the story properly.

The worst thing about it is that the comedy itself is often lacking. The movie opens with some rape humor which certainly hasn't aged well. Jones seemed to have made the same mistake as Graham Chapman with Yellowbeard thinking that rape is a good source of laughs. It does introduce us to the timid lead character, but it is a bit of a cheap way to get sympathy when he has performance issues during a pillaging event, and have him turn on some of the more rapey vikings.

Tim Robbins does do a good job, and there are some actual good laughs to be had from Tim McInnery's childish viking complaining about sitting arrangements to John Cleese's cheery sociopath order people getting flayed. The contrast between the awfulness of the violence and people might have worked better today as a kind of parody of Game of Thrones -like sadist entertainment. Jones himself pops as a clueless leader of a lost continent. I admit I have a soft spot for the film and have seen it a lot more times than its actual qualities would warrant.

★★1/2

Erik the Conqueror (Gli invasori, Italy/France 1961)
Dir. Mario Bava

Bava's historically inaccurate film sees Vikings clash against the Brits in the 8th century. This is contrasted by having one of orphaned twin boys being raised by the Brits and the other by Vikings. A fate of countries laying on the schism between siblings of course has been seen used from the Book of Moses to New Gods by Jack Kirby. It is a reasonably epic, if not terribly original way of presenting conflict.

As is often the case in the director's works, visually it is purely stunning, with elaborate color lights and psychedelia. There are many Technicolor epics with a lot bigger budgets that never were this inventive in their visuals. The film was mostly shot in a studio, but several battles are also shot on location with natural light and the landscapes a Medieval Nordic adventure warrants. These scenes bring a little contrast, but are just as good-looking, with merciless natural powers highligting the brutality of the warriors fighting on the same canvas.

But Cameron Mitchell is not a very interesting leading man, and in the film his voice is in fact dubbed. I like him better on 80's trash movies phoning it in while visibly drunk.


★★★ 1/2

Knives of the Avenger (I coltelli del vendicatore, Italy 1966)
Dir. Mario Bava



Bava did another viking picture, with his star Cameron Mitchell also attached. As the audience's tastes have swithed from large epics to smaller, more spaghetti western -like character studies, this one is more akin a western set in the viking era. The obvious comparison is 1953's Shane from which the movie's plot is pilfered. A disgraced viking warrior becomes a protector of a woman and her child when a group of more violent warriors come calling for his past mistakes. If the previous film was about brotherhood, this one circles again around family, with its themes finding redemption in adopted fatherhood.

The film's look is decidedly more down-to-earth in tones and settings than his previous viking film. Nevertheless the gloomy athmosphere is strong and Bava has a knack for keeping things interesting with some wild camera angles and a nice sense of misé-en-scene. A lot of the action is set on limited sets, darkly-lit farmhouses, taverns and even caves. The pacing is quite slow and one does get a bit bored in the meantime, whereas Erik moved along quite swiftly.

I feel Mitchell has a better role here, having him act more of a stone-faced loner with undelying guilt and growing warmth, is more suited to his talents, as he manages to give his character an air of mystery. In action scenes, though Bava can still play gritty and dirty even if its not quite the blood bath that would warrant such a title in my opinion.

★★★

Viking (Russia, 2016)
Dir. Andrei Kravchuk



With several popular tv series set on either the viking era (Vikings) or a mythical age quite similar to it (Game of Thrones), there has been several small-budget films that have tried to capture that same audience. Some of them are laughable (like 2014's Northmen - a Viking Saga), and many of them have a similar boring gray scale, predictably boring plots and nothing interesting to say. From modern viking films I remember Nicolas Wingding Refn's Valhalla Rising to at least try a little as compared to most of them.

I feel the Russian Viking is a case in point. I would have wanted to like this a lot more since it took seven years to make, and expected more of a Russian flavour to the story, as opposed to just do the same thing everyone else is. It sells itself for being historically accurate, which is itself a very dubious claim, and doesn't really do the boring story any favours. In many parts it is confusing and goes off in rails when compromised would have at least made the plotline somewhat understandable. Plus, it's nearly 2,5 hours long so there's an extra hour of suffering through this when compared to most other films on this post.

The title in and of itself is false marketing. While it takes place roughly in the Viking era, it is more concerned with the goings-on in Russian Novgorod in Prince Vladimir's reign, his brother, the warlord Kievan Rus and the Slavonic wars during that era. The virtues of the film are firstly to generate interest in Russian history, and secondly of its (very expensive-looking) battle scenes, which are in parts very impressive looking. If you really want to see the movie, read up on history before viewing, so the logic between characters making decisions and the context of many actions are more easily understood.

★★

The Raven Flies (Hrafninn flýgur, Iceland/Sweden 1984)
Dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson

My favorite Viking film comes from Iceland, which I feel is the best-suited country in the world to tackle the history, since most of the country's occupants are descendants anyway. I wouldn't call this any truer to history, though, even if more care than usual is made to the Medieval costumes and armors. The film is basically a spaghetti western revenge story, with tiny ponies instead of horses, and I love the film for it.

The film captures the dark and gloomy nature of Nordic countries in a way a film like Knives of the Avenger attempted, but didn't quite feel genuine. Life is hard, cheap, brutal and over in an instant. Blood feuds reign from generation to generation. Yet the film concerns ways of trying to break a never-ending cycle of violence. It sees a Celtic underdog prevail by using his wits and knowledge of viking's superstitions against his enemies. With plenty of close-up shots and ugly glances.

The genuinety from the actual settings makes this feel a lot more down-to-earth and less exoticized than most viking movies. It pays a lot to show the real Icelandic shore line and the right kind of houses so it doesn't feel like a general Hollywood epic. One can practically feel the cold wind and the dread of the upcoming winter.

The film spawned a number of sequels, none of which I have sadly seen.

★★★★

Terry Jones in Memoriam

 
It's been a tough year for Monty Python fans, and it's still January. We've lost the songwriter and Python friend Neil Innes, and any remaining shreads of respect for Terry Gilliam to boot. And now dementia got the best of one of the remaining Pythons and Terry Jones is no more. He has ceased to be, etc.

Jones might have been the most important glue that kept the Pythons together, arguing for good connective material from one sketch to another in Monty Python's Flying Circus, and for the material to push forward. While he had to do his share of fighting for these artistic ideas, particularly with John Cleese, I think the entire group respected him for it. His ideas made the stuff funnier. That's why it was he who emerged as the main director of their movies instead of Gilliam, who was more gifted as a visualist.

Jones' career also was lesser after the group went their own seperate ways. He did direct a number of movies, comedies and kids' films, wrote books and scripts, and actually went back to be a historian and researcher of ancient English texts. I remember from early 2000s how he wrote some beautiful anti-war essays to protest the emerging Iraq war, sadly to no avail. But films are which he's remembered for, so let's take a look at some of his work.

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Director: Terry Jones

This is the last major Python film I haven't reviewed on this blog throughout the years. And it's the third movie directed by Jones. The movie won at Cannes film festival, and has an important place in my heart since it's the first film I ever got as a dvd. One could say I got a dvd player in order to see this movie. Thus, I loved it dearly as a teenager, but since then I've started to notice it has some flaws as well. But Jones himself considered the film to have some of the best material they ever did and was not wrong about that.

Python member Eric Idle's problem with the film was that they retread their steps and went back to just doing sketches without a story or a concrete thoroughline. But if there was, the film couldn't jump back and forth in time and place to the Third World, the Zulu War, the First World War, to the edges of the Galaxy and to Heaven itself. But one can see how the bigger themes such as religion, school and war seem to interest the group members more than actual life phases beyond the middle age. And they didn't actually manage to find any good funny answers to life's biggest questions in the end, with a fake-out which feels quite cheap after they've done something akin to this a couple of times before already. Probably they should have just saved the Galaxy Song music number for last.

In the films he's directing, Jones tends to keep his roles few and minimized. But here, he has the probably most memorable and grotesque character of not only the film, but the entire Python oveure; the morbidly obese Mr. Creosote, a seemingly fabulously wealthy culinarist and bulimic, who goes to eat every possible treat a fine French restaurant has to offer only to shoot vomit over the staff and fellow guests. But John Cleese's maitre d' gets the last laugh with the help of a wafer-thin mint. The film dares to go more into gross-out humour than Pythons ever before, but they did find a way to make everything character-based, and having the butt of jokes be a recognizable type of character rather than just the shock of guts flying or someone getting a bucket of vomit on the head.

★★★★

The Wind in the Willows (1996)
Dir. Jones

I have fond memories of this children's film of Kenneth Grahame's classic book. Besides writing and directing, Jones himself plays the lead role of Mr. Toad, although only gives himself the third billing. The whole cast is wonderful, featuring Steve Coogan, Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Bernard Hill and Nicol "Merlin" Williamson. Interestingly, Michael Palin was also involved in another Wind in the Willows released the previous year, being the voice of Rat in an animated film. Fellow Python Eric Idle plays Rat here, with Palin having a cameo as the Sun. I guess Teletubbies is set on the prehistory of this universe.

It is a bit of a film of two halves, the first being more akin to the original book, with Mr. Toad's obsessions with cars and the sunny countriside milieu. The other, then is more of a heist movie with Mr. Toad breaking out of jail and trying to get his house back from rascally weasels who have turned it into a meat-packing factory. Jones can carry the movie very well, being equal parts annoying, silly and a little bit tragic as well. And he sells the groth of the very immature but rich Mr. Toad in the latter half. The film was very much sold as a Python reunion, but other from some fleeting jokes and a general anarchic viewpoint, it is a lot more testament of Jones's singular styles.

★★★

Absolutely Anything (2015)

Dir. Jones

I wasn't expecting much from this film, since a lot of the latter-day Pythonesque works tend to be either forgettable or even terrible. Case in point was the Graham Chapman animated biopic A Liar's Autobiography (that did at least have respect for the late Chapman and some inspired moments). This was not only the last film to feature five Pythons, but also the last role of Robin Williams (as the voice of a dog). And yet, you very rarely hear anything nice being said about it.

Jones started to write the movie in the early 90's, and since then there have been a number of films that have had a similar premise of an ordinary schlub being able to do anything he wants. Most notable were Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty and Adam Sandler's Click. Even though the film feels like a retread of similar ideas, at least it's not cynical American shit like those ones. Most of it is due to it's charming cast, featuring Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale as leads, and nice voice workd from the aforementioned comedy legends. The main problem is that it's just not very funny.

But really, the sort of film like this is hard to follow through, since it gives so few rules on which to work. Every problem the main character comes up with, he could fix easily if he just thought about it longer than a second. And since the possibilities given are so limitless, keeping the film mostly Earthbound feels very unimaginative. The bits with weird aliens are my favorites, but you could say this also about any Star Wars movie. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, but it didn't make me mad or anything. Just a bit bittersweet, since we are living in an age where old legends like Jones keep disappearing.

★★1/2

The Adventurous 00's

The 10 Best Adventure Films of the 2000s – Part 16 in our ongoing series

The Motorcycle Diaries ©2004 Pathé Pictures International

We are heading steadily towards the conclusion for this series. I used to have an idea that I'd do seperate posts about both Martial Arts films and Road Trip films, but in the end, it seems more accurate to shoehorn them both into the same post. Now, it may seem that a few of these films fit pretty loosely to the Adventure genre per se, but seeing as I'd like to cover as many of the very best films of the decade, this is one of their last chances to be featured, so I had to loosen up a little. I see adventure as a film that changes locations during its running course. Die Hard is purely an action film, as it stays among the limits of a single apartement building, but the James Bond movies are action/adventures. Of course, many fine adventure films have already been dealt with in posts such as The Fantastic 00's or The Action 00's. But the leftovers are all the more sweet because of limiting the ranks a little.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long, 2000)
Director: Ang Lee

This chinese wu xia epic truly changed the face of cinema in the western world. It became the most succesful foreign language film of all time in the Unites States, and its iconography was soon adapted into larger cultural context. It also helped a number of Asian directors whose careers in the US were going downhill – you could be succesful even when going back to your homeland. This brought new chances for new rising for the careers of John Woo, Tsui Hark and the like. Yet, at first viewing, I didn't like the film much. I was subsequentally proven wrong.

The legendary warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) decides to give away his famed jade sword as a present to his friend Yu Shu Lieh (Michelle Yeoh). But before he can do that, the sword is stolen by the master thief Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi). The pursuit is further complicated when Li learns that Yu is working with the notorious assassin Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei). The Fox has her own reasons for wanting revenge toward Li.

Part of the wu xia genre is that the characters themselves are legendary and possess superhuman powers. Yet this is never underlined, or explained to viewers used to pampering and thorough explanations. More crucially, the characters act and feel as human as us who don't possess flying kung fu superpowers. The importance is in the melodrama and the relationships between the three-dimensional characters. It's nice to see that the film features multiple strong female characters, who are treated as more than equals in fighting, compared to the men. The action, of course, is also jaw-dropping and beautifully shot.


Hero (Ying Xiong, 2002)
Director: Zhang Yimou

When talking about beautifully shot martial arts films, nothing can hold the candle to Hero, the finest hour in the careers of both director Zhang Yimou and director of photography Christopher Doyle. The eerily quiet landscapes are flowing with living colours and breathtaking beauty. All the better, then, to host a kick-ass wu xia battle. Which come aplenty in this story as well.

Before the reign of the first emperor of China, the kingdoms are raging and there is much bloodshed on the battlefields. The most powerful warlord Qin (Chen Daoming) is gaining power and influence over others fast. That's why there are multiple plots going on to assassinate the ruthless war-mongerer. A minor servant of the warlord, who has no name (Jet Li) defeats three of the most notorious assassins of the land to save Qin. That's why he gains audience with his liege, to tell the stories of his victories. But Nameless has some plans for himself as well.

Hero cuts down on the melodrama on brings on the business. Yet its characters are still finely caharacterized, with subtle strokes. Different fighters have a style matching their name (Broken Sword, Flying Snow, Moon and Sky) and also personalities to match. Usually also their scenes refer to their names somehow. Initially, the film is kind of Chinese nationalistic and preaches that one must obey the leader as he is the only one that can bring peace and unite the country. One may not agree with the statement, but there is still no denying that the resulting film is impressive and beautiful.

Kill Bill, vol. 1 & 2 (2003, 2004)
Director: Quentin Tarantino

Kill Bill vol. 2 ©2004 Miramax

It's hard to believe that before delivering this two-parter, Quentin Tarantino dropped out of the limelight for six years, as it feels like he's been with us from time immemorial. Likewise, it's hard for me to imagine the time watching movies before Kill Bill any more. The first film had a huge impact on me when I first saw it. It is one of the most important films leading me to other films that I've had. Tarantino decided to go even further into his love of old-school films and created perhaps the most kick-ass love letter to martial arts cinema ever created.

Volume 1 presents The Bride (Uma Thurman), an ex-assassin who has tried to escape her old life, and thus been tracked by her former employer and lover Bill (David Carradine). She is shot in her head on her wedding day, yet survives in a coma. When she wakes up, she makes a list and goes to kill every one of Bill's Assassin Squad one by one. In the first film she takes on Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), who has managed to leave her old lifestyle a lot more smoothly than the Bride, and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), the boss of a big Triad gang called the Crazy 88. While Volume 1 is light with its story, the way it executes its action scenes is nearly flawless. The editing, photography and black humour in the script make this one of the best American action films, not just from the 2000s, but ever.

Volume 2 is the more story-oriented of the duo, and thus a bit more uneven in execution. Still, Tarantino manages to pull the rug under the feet of the viewers and brings a real heart into the roaring rampage of revenge. The Bride takes on Bill's loser brother Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill's current lover Ellen Driver (Daryl Hannah) and finally, Bill himself. Even though the film has a few scenes that feel like padding one film into two (particularly the one about asking for directions from Bill's foster father Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks)), it still has a brutally honest spaghetti western heart beating inside it.

It would be a dream come true if tarantino could finally be arsed to release The Whole Bloody Affair as a blu-ray. The second one could use a few more scenes of the Bride and Bill's backstory, so at least the deleted scenes should be included. But by the way the things are going, we are probably going to get Kill Bill: Vol. 3 before that will happen. I'm not actually particularly interested in seeing that.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Director: Peter Weir 

Moving on from Martial Arts films to more classic syle of adventure we have this sea-faring adventure that is multiple times more exciting than anything the Pirates of the Caribbean films can throw at us. It's not exactly swashbuckling, with it having a more realistic look at life in a Napeoleonic era war ship. The attempt really makes it such an exciting film for viewers of all ages. Peter Weir is truly a master of making captivating films set on unexpected milieus.

The film deals with the friendship that the determined Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and the more analytical surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) experience. Together, they're on a trip to destroy Napoleon's most formidable war vessel, the Acheron. To achieve this, Aubrey commandeers his ship, H.M.S. Surprise to a lengthy journey to the south along the coast of South Africa. His men, the ship, and his commands must be taken to the extreme, should they survive the dangerous trip. 

It's a film about different world views and how they can find common ground and peace when facing a threat to both of them. It is also a film about determination,a nd to what extent it can lead. The life of the adolescent sailors is a sad one, but historically accurate. The crew must face horrific conditions among scurvy, gangrene, malnutrition, and of course, enemy bullets and cannon fire. Yet while Weir manages to make all of those elements seem concrete threats, he never forgets the sort of boyish charm the film has, and the excitement of life at the sea. Well done, old boy.
 
The Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de motorcicleta, 2004)
Director: Walter Salles

A film about the trip that Ernesto Guevara (later to be nick-named Che, played by Gael García Bernal) and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De La Serna) made through South America on their motorcycle in the early 1950's is bound to be political, right? Well, yes and no. For Guevara's book itself is adored by students across the world for reasons that go beyond political issues. Like the book, the film is more about the sensation of being young, going out feeling the wind in your hair, and experiencing the world first-hand. Like today, back then there were a number of inequalities in the world, and seeing them with your own eyes shaped bothe men for the rest of their lives.

It is also a buddy movie. Ernesto and Alberto don't always see eye to eye on every thing, bickering and teasing each other. Along the trip, there are bound to be a few minor crises, and overcoming them is also a part of the coming-of-age that the film portrays. All of these elements are brought to life by the believable performances by Bernal and De La Serna. Of course, the most important part of this kind of road movie is the sense of being there yourself, which is achieved beautifully with shooting both the magnificent natural landscapes of Argentina, as well as the living conditions the poor working class have in the small villages. Also, in this film it really feels that things are happening, and it is not mind-numbingly boring. Steven Soderbergh should have taken a page here.

O Brother Where Art Thou (2000)
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

The first part of their George Clooney-starring Idiot trilogy sees Clooney's Ulysses Everett McGill and two even bigger morons, Pete and Delmar (John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson) escape from the chain gang in the Deep South of the 1930's. What follows is a sort of Homeric Odyssey, where the boys meet Sirens, a Ku Klux Klan Cyclops (John Goodman), a bank-robbing gangster, and a blind prophet. And they also become succesful bluegrass artists, which makes the film music-filled and lively.

Early on in the film, a treasure is given as a McGuffin, which turns out to be false. Nevertheless, it is one of the most captivating and fun adventures of recent memory. As ever, the Coens have filled the film with outrageously funny comedy, well-observed charecters, just the right amount of absurdism, and some of their own je ne sais quoi. The whole film is shot with a yellow-toned nostalgic lense, which might explain the fondness that this film has towards its Folk music. More than actually updating Homer, the Coens are more interested in creating a mythical history for the roots of a genre of music they adore. Everything else in the film is just a sweet, sweet bonus.

I'm a Dapper Dan Man, myself.

The Road (2009)
Director: John Hillcoat

This is not a very happy adventure. But it is a road movie of sorts. When the world has reduced to nothing but ashes, a father and a son must fight for survival and hit the road to have a purpose. Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece novel is not an easy one to adapt by any means, but John Hillcoat succeeds in the job about as good as would be possible. The film is also very utilitarian – there's no unnecessary metaphors nor parables (and you can make your own mind about those that are there), and the film is to the point. Most of the running time is spent while the father tries to fight off starvation as well as the outside forces who are looking for their own interests. he sleeps one eye open, and ready to protect his son, no matter what the cause. Their journey takes them through what used to be America, but is now nothing more than a giant game of survival of the fittest.

The film is pulled of course by the leading performance by Viggo Mortensen. There isn't anyone who can portray just the right mixture of love and compassion, yet also hard-nosed determinism and the ability to resolt to brutal acts to achieve that, quite like him. Beside the father and the son, other characters are pretty disposable, popping up for a quick cameo of sorts. But nevertheless Hillcoat also manages to cast these small roles very well, and altough the film has major movie stars, they feel believable as their characters as well. The film's worldview is bleak as all hell, but it seems that the determined father is not so much the one leading as the son, who still has kindness in his heart. Thus the story has a glimmer of hope in its resolution. The children may yet turn out better than their parents did.


Sideways (2004)
Director: Alexander Payne

It felt a little unfair to just leave Sideways in the Comedy list with your Anchormen and Dodgeballs. While Alexander Payne's depiction of midlife crises can also cause just as big giggles, it is also much more than just a vehicle to make people laugh. It is also a melancholic film by nature, and as a mature piece of cinema, head over shoulders better than anything else on that list.

The recently divorced Miles (Paul Giamatti) is an expert in wines, so he takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) out on a trip through California's Napa Valley. Jack is getting married soon, and the trip is a bachelor party of a kind. Or at least Jack takes it as such, trying to get laid as much as he can when his soon-to-be wife isn't looking. Miles is against this, but powerless to stop Jack's raging libido. When he gets drunk, he also starts to feel crushing depression, and is bound to call his ex-wife. Jack also tries to get Miles feel better and hooks up with a pair of friends, Stephanie and Maya (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen).

Payne makes films about real people, and Hollywood glamour is far from the film's characters. They are middle-aged, and not particularly well-matured. Every one of them has their personal crosses to bear, but the perfect cast makes them all believable in their vunerability. I've praised a lot of casts in this blog post alone, but the cast in Sideways is so pich-perfect, it could probably take on any of them. Wine as a metaphor is first used as an excuse to deal with something else as their troubles, then as a means of pouring some gasoline into already raging fires, and in the end, a sort of metaphor to life itself. Depending on who's tasting it, the same kind of life can taste bitter or delicious, but it usually pays to let one's feelings mature and allow one to move forward. For a roundabout long-weekend trip, the goal is a long way away looking at the start, but at a comfrotably lofty place looking from the finish line.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Teenagers can be just as horny as the middle-aged men. I know, shocking, right? This is another film that I dismissed upon my initial viewing. It felt too much like another teenaged sex romp, only without that many jokes. But I came to my senses. It's certainly not a clear-cut coming-of-age tale, and its ending can actually seem quite bleak. the things that Hollywood films usually praise, like finding the one to love, that friendships endure, and that the journey makes people grow up, don't apply here. Two of the film's three main characters would probably be better off without ever going on the film's trip. But the third one... Better not spoil too much.


The teenaged friends Julio Zapata (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch Iturbide (Diego Luna) stay at home while their girlfriends go off to Europe to become exchange students. The boys immidiately start to miss their sex life, and start to plan further hookups. They meet Luisa Cortés (Maribel Verdu) at a wedding and try to persuade her to join them to a road trip to find a beautiful secluded beach. The married Luisa is initially recluctant, but suddenly changes her mind when she finds out her husband has been cheating her. The road trip will take strains on the formerly tight friendship between Julio and Tenoch, and also Luisa will walk away with mixed feelings.


The film does sell itself as a sort of teenaged hijink show with loads of sex in the beginning. Director Cuarón has a wicked sense of humour, and isn't afraid to cross boundaries of good taste to show just what is going on in the mind of his main characters all the time. But the heart of the film, which starts to slowly unravel, is that even with a carpé diem attitude towards life, good times start to vanish and seemingly untouchable relationships can also crumble and die. The film surprisingly doesn't seem very nostalgic or autobiographical given its source material, but actually has the sort of in-the-moment sort of rhythm to it. It is a cynical film, in which a road trip doesn't heal all wounds, but also deepens them. But in that, it is also a suitable remedy to all the other road trip movies.





Bubbling Under:


About Schmidt (Dir. Alexander Payne, 2002) – Payne's other soul-searching road trip looks at the difficulties of one's autumn years and coping with losses.

The Darjeering Limited (Dir. Wes Anderson, 2007) – Three depressed brothers try to deepen their souls and to come together during a railroad trip through India. Anderson doesn't veer too much out from his comfort zone, but this is still among his better works.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Dir. Gillermo Del Toro, 2008) – Del Toro's sort-of superhero film is more of a creature feature, that discards the gothic sensibilities of its source comic, and flows around various magnificently realized fantasy worlds. Better then the first one.

Into the Wild (Dir. Sean Penn, 2007) – A graduate decides to leave everything behind and hitch-hikes to Alaska to survive on his own terms. Ponderous look at the human spirit, a road trip, and a character study of a real-world incident, all at the same time.

Ten Canoes (Dir.  Rolf De Heer, Peter Djigirr, 2006) – These mythical stories about the Australian aborigines open up a lot of questions about our relationship with Earth and the way we deal with our histories.



To Be Seen:
District B13, The New World, OSS17: Lost in Rio, The Russian Ark, Sunshine


So, don't be shy. What are your favorite martial arts / road trip films (or straight-out adventures) from 2000-2009? Also, I'd love suggestions on what I've left out on previous lists for the grande finale of this series.

Documentaries in Financial Times

The most internationally dreaded way in which the world can end on 2012 seems to be financially. The world's economies have struggled against the advent of the second great depression since 2008 and are at breaking point in many parts of the world. Personally, I see the hardships that the world's economies have faced as a sign that they should be developed into better-controlled, more equal systems where the richest 1% of investors doesn't reap all the benefits when the poor get poorer and poorer. But then again, I am a dirty liberal, possibly even a communist depending if your economic views are particularly right-winged. You don't have to believe me, as more qualified documentarists have already explained the causes of financial crises and how we should go on from there better than I ever could. In honor of DocPoint also starting tomorrow in Helsinki, here are four of them.


Inside Job (2010)
Director: Charles Ferguson

The most famous documentary about the current financial crisis is this film, which also won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2011. The film, as narrated by Matt Damon, goes to the roots of the international financial problems. The film makes complex financial subjects so simple even a child could understand them, using simple graphs and clear-worded interviews. It also dares to point out the seedy CEOs and government officials who gain massive bonuses while their own companies are failing and requiring government bailout. If one doesn't get angry at fat cats while watching this film, one must either be one of the 1%, or have no pulse. Things aren't even necessarily getting better as of this moment, since politicians aren't preparing to change the system but rather just waiting for things to go back to the status quo. That's why it should be the duty for every voter in every western country to be aware of the shortcomings of current international economy and demand for change.

A lot of time and money has been used to make the film. This is seen in the huge number of interviewed financial experts, and the polished style with which the film flows forward. So, the film is multifaceted. Therein also lies the biggest flaws of the film. It attempts to capture too much of faults of the international businesses according modern neo liberal world view. Thus it takes fleeting shots here and there but doesn't linger on, or delve into many interesting things properly. The film could do well without life stories of poor people foreclosed by banks – their story is fascinating but now feels like only an afterthought in an overtly stuffed film. However, if the viewer feels that the economic crisis is a massive, hard thing to grasp, and doesn't know where to start unfolding the international issues, this is a good place to start. In other words, if you only watch one financial documentary, make it this one.

★★★

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Director: Michael Moore

On the other hand, the erstwhile gripping documentary maker Michael Moore's subsequent efforts continue to diminish in their outcome. The Michigan-born liberal filmmaker grew famous with his Oscar and Cannes winning films in the mid-2000s, but with the growth of his fame he has had to struggle to create all of his subsequent films. No longer can he just play dumb for his interviewees and lure them into revealing sinister agendas. All the while Moore has listened to his critiques and made his films less comedic, and featured less of himself in them. But there's still no mistake about who has directed this, probably one of the most big-headed documentaries of all time.

For Moore's aim is no less than to get the United States to renounce the Capitalistic world view. Or, at least the neo liberal ethos that has transcended in the nation's economic affairs since Ronald Reagan's presidency, but Americans are not known to be that good with political concepts. Moore uses his trademarked sarcastic wit and sense of humour to paraphase his points, as well as using archive footage to illustrate them. At times this is quite funny, but the whole thing feels more like a political pamphlet than anything resembling journalism. Moore has also been one to make entertainment out of issues, which usually works in balance, but he's lost it here. Even more than Inside Job, Capitalism bounces back and forth on issues that Capitalism touches.

As the whole political-economic viewpoint is even a more vast subject than the economic crisis, it is nigh impossible to fit everything important about it in two hours. Moore's ideas on how to replace the system are ill-rationalized and confusing. Does he want the sort of social democracy Nordic countries have to descend into America, or does he want to return to the more state-controlled capitalism of American pre-Reagan era? It's hard to believe he'll be able to convince anyone with his half-baked film even though judging by the film's final words he seems to think he can start a massive rebellion against monetary power.

Hey, Moore, you're a millionaire yourself. That's why it should be questioned whether you can really be the voice of the 99%. I know you use some of your massive fortune for charities, but if you really would want to hammer the message home, you'd give it all away, like Jesus taught.

★★ 1/2

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Director: Alex Gibney

As a proof of the economy's ongoing redistribution of wealth, this film works better than Moore's or even Ferguson's efforts. Even though Enron was released seven years ago (and is based on an even older book), it still feels fresh. The bankruptcy of the Texan energy, commodities, and services company Enron corporation in 2001 was a tip of the iceberg for things to come. The template of that financial disaster was followed pretty clearly by companies such as Lehman Brothers or the Bank of America, that really got the ball rolling on the new worldwide depression. The difference is that Enron's executives actually were prosecuted in court, whereas the culprits for more modern financial crises tend to walk away scot free.

The film itself is about the funnest one about economy issues. You don't have to dig pertty well, when there's always indescribable greed and power-hungriness beneath huge failed businesses. In Enron's case, the decadence this has caused for the giant oil corporation would be hilarious if it weren't so damn scary. Strip clubs, gambling, cheating in booking, even getting involved to earn more moolah from California's energy crisis. It seems that Enron's executives and traders had little to no morale or decency when it came to earning money. But they had an ace in keeping good realtions with politicians who'll help them out here and there, such as, infamously, the then-president of the United States, George W. Bush. He also appointed his own friends to high-ranking seats in Enron, and gave good new jobs to former Enron executives who lost their job for one reason or another.

The film's problems are that since there are little actual filmic evidence of these happenings at Enron, it has to rely a lot on talking heads. That is quite a usual approach in financial documentaries. Fortunately, they have quite interesting stories to tell here. The film is also a fascinating piece on how certain news events affect corporations. It also shows how the personalitites of the high-ups can affect the company's big decisions. But it is also a sad reminder that no one actually fixed the system where executives and traders are rewarded for taking more and more outrageous risks at the cost of poorer people's jobs.

★★★ 1/2

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (2011)
Director: Peter Joseph

Unlike many other financial documentaries, this one takes a look in the future and attempts to visual how society should be developed to be more equal and to take away the power given to bankers and rich investors. A valiant effort, but sadly, the film is utopist to the point where it starts to work against itself. No wonder The Zeitgeist movement is seen by many as being only for nutcases such as conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts. That is not entirely true. The international Zeitgeist movement is a low-level social movement aiming for resource-based economy based on the principles of sustainable development (meaning that people shouldn't consume resources more than Earth can produce). It is an important issue worth fighting for, because the survival of every individual on this planet is at stake. The only thing I disagree with the Zeitgeist movement is what the end result should be, but since we're not there yet, we should all work together, not give each other easy labels.
 
The film is the third and the most popular of the trio of director/writer Peter Joseph's films about the economy. The 2,5 hour film (!) goes through four parts which consider what kind of an economic future is possible. Each part takes about 40 minutes. It has to be said that by content, this film is the furthest away from journalistic commentary of financial issues. Maybe Joseph's two previous films deal with the issues further. This one starts with (well-grounded) physical and psychological proof that greed is not in human nature. rather, living in communities, assisting others is. Joseph takes it that the modern aggressively capitalist system is unnatural and made for unsocial individuals that are bent on abusing others for their personal gain. Because this is mostly done with interviews with a handful of experts, it is not as interesting than it really should be.

The other half of the film is devoted to the new world view of Joseph, and by extention, the Zeitgeist movement. The resource-based future abolishes money, rebuilds cities to work more efficiently . There are certain good ideas in the mix, such as the localization of distribution of resources, but as a whole, it seems silly and way too big a change. We would need a nuclear war (to clean the plate), thousands of years of time and international cooperation to actually achieve it. The bad CGI model pictures do little to convince that this would be the only possible future for all mankind. The film is also shaky in its tone. Most of the time it's almost hilariously straight-faced which makes a single Monty Python-tributing scene fit the film poorly. Joseph himself is hardly as magnetic a personality or even as good a filmmaker as Michael Moore, so it is easier to take his sayings with a grain of salt. But it is at least couraging that there are people internationally willing to work for a better future, and distributing these films and giving free screenings...

★★



... Likewise I'm proud that the sort of non-violent protests such as Occupy Wall Street have spread around the world. I try to be a realist myself, but I do think that it is possible to change the outcome of this here Earth and end the tyranny of neo liberal economy, which serves only to redistribute wealth for the small upper class. You should fight against injustice, too. Get out and spread the word!

The Horrible 00's, Part Deux

More Best Horror Films of the 2000s – The Cursed Number 15 in our ongoing series that just won't stay dead!

 I'm not often dissatisfied with my list type blog posts, but I did have the feeling that last years Best Horror Films of the 2000s was somewhat lacking. Never to back away from a challenge, I did realize there were a lot of other very fine horror films made in the last decade that deserved to be mentioned.

Tonight, Night Visions Maximum Halloween 3011 kicks off at Helsinki. So, to celebrate that and the upcoming Halloween, let me present to you the further top 10 of recent horror flicks:

[REC] (Spain, 2007)
Directors: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza



Found footage horror flicks would've just be forgotten gimmicks in period pieces such as The Blair Witch Project and Cannibal Holocaust if it weren't for this highly innovative film. A spanish news crew happens to be with the fire departement as they are called in on a block of flats. Some rage-infusing disease is spreading among the inhabitants. Soon the entire area is quarantined, leaving the crew stuck inside the building with blood-thirsty monsters. For a modern zombie film, there isn't any tongue-in-cheek humour, just fighting for survival. This sort of film works best in the cinema, because it allows you to feel dropped in the middle of the critcal situation yourself and start to feel the panic. It's a real roller-coaster ride, fast and unrelentless with scares coming in thick.

To be fair, I saw the film's American remake Quarantine first and I kind of like it more, because it allows us to spend a little more time with the characters before everything goes to hell and doesn't have as clear reason for all of the things to happen. If you haven't seen either one, pick that, but if you've seen [REC] alreaady, don't bother. It recreates most of the film in a shot-by-shot fashion.


American Psycho (USA, 2000)
Director: Mary Harron



Bret Easton Ellis' masterpiece novel of the same name must've been one of the most difficult books ever to turn into a film. The novel's first 150 pages follow the sleazy rich yuppie businessman Patrick Bateman as he goes through business lunches in high-end restaurants with his obscenely rich "friends" who he secretly loathes. Bateman notices all the luxury product brands around him and gets insanely jealous if someone's wearing something more expensive than he is. After excruciatingly long scenes of upper-class assholism, it is revealed that Bateman is also a blood-thirsty psychpath, bent on torturing and killing (especially women) in a most violent way possible.

The film, of course, makes this revealation much sooner. It does feel like a quick run-through of the novel's events, but it does manage to reveal the obscenity of having it all. Christian Bale made his first truly iconic performance as Bateman, a guy who can go from charming to petty to a douchebag to a dangerous lunatic in seconds. The violence is also toned down from the novel, but director Harron allows much of it happen off-screen, making the viewer's imagination make the worst out of the scenes. Bateman's paranoia of getting caught is increased, but really the world around him isn't interested in his blood work, and sees no difference in his victims. The possibility of it all happening inside his head is also open. Like the novel, the film offers no exit when the credits start to roll.

Antichrist (Denmark/Germany/Poland/France/Sweden/Italy, 2009)
Director: Lars von Trier



Leave it to Lars von Trier to transcend genre lines. Horror is what this film mostly resembles, even though it really doesn't belong to any genre. It's just pure Trier. I don't necessarily think this is his very best film (altough a number of reasonable people would also argue so), but at least it is his most raw, most powerful and most shocking work. It is a manifesto of his own depression and the feelings of inadequacy, guilt and gloom, and the dismissal of trying to alnalyze them rationally and cold. See, you get a lot more out of this than your generic slasher flick.

A couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) have suffered the death of their firstborn child. They were having steamy hot sex while he jumped out the window. Later on, the couple retreats on a distant cabin to find redemption in their devastating feelings. But when the civilized way to look at the thing runs against the sher forces of nature itself, things are bound to get messy.

Trier's symbolism is a little on the nose here, a little inpenetrable there. Like in many of his work, it's impossible to decide whether he's pulling the collective leg of his entire audience. Yet the odd little film is like none other and its devastating athmosphere more horrifying than in any other film of last decade. The film also needs a little time to grow on the viewer. At first viewing I was disappointed in it, but it has grown on me. Mostly because its haunting imagery will never leave the viewer alone.

Eden Lake (United Kingdom, 2008)
Director: James Watkins

Seemingly normal people, not possessed by any kind of demons or rabies etc. are often the most frightening antagonists in horror films. In this film we have teenage hooligans who have been so spoiled that they grow ever more blood-thirsty when they don't get what they want. A young couple (Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly) take off to a romantic weekend in the British countryside but run into these sorts of little beasts. Refusing to allow the obnoxious, loud ruffians to spoil their weekend, they resort to threats, which the teens respond ever more harshly. The teens start to dare each other to step over lines, which leads to real brutalities, while the adults respond the same way. Soon both sides have blood on their hands.

The film's subject is handled with some weightm, as the problem isn't solely with the youth, but in their parents' empty lifestyles and disinterest in their doings as well. In this world, the nice die first. The community doesn't care much for the weak and the wounded, but a dog's death brings great sorrow. The movie's violence is really sadistic, but it can also be really pressuring, not just disgusting. The film is also the first annual Night Visions Audience Award Winner.

House of the Devil (USA, 2009)
Director: Ti West

In the 80's, there was a wide-spred scare that Satanic cults thirsting on innocent blood may hide in any neighbourhood without a trace to the outside. Ti West's film works great as a tribute to both that era's panic-driven news items and the good old-fashioned horror films. College student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) opts to become a babysitter to an odd family living in the middle of nowhere. She and her sassy friend Greta Gerwig (Megan) are no fools and the girls take off to the house together to avoid any psychopath shenanigans. Yet as it turns out, there is foul play going on and the girls are soon separated and scared.

Unlike many other nostalgic horror directors, West hasn't chosen the campiest and silliest aspects of the 70's and 80's to replicate. The setting, the music and clothing do bring back those times, but not in an in-you-face or over-the-top style. Instead, the film is a welcome return of the kind of horror films that play on having a disturbing mood to them and are constantly one-upping the feeling of paranoia shared by the main characters as well as the audience. The film is created with seemingly small resources, as you don't really need more than a small scratch or a moving shadow to scare the audience if it's played right. So good is the first part of the film that the ending is a clear let-down of panicky running around. It's not that bad per se, as the most obvious clichés are avoided, yet still feels too conventional for a movie that started this good. But as a whole, it is a really spine-tingling work that doesn't explain everything in it through and through.

Open Water (USA, 2003)
Director: Chris Kentis

This minimalistic horror film really divided the audiences. I happened to love it. A scuba-diving couple (Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) are left in the middle of the ocean, when their boat has sailed off. So they just have to float around the ocean, figuring out what there is to do about their situation. And then the sharks come around. When they only need to survive the ordeal, they start to realize how little the daily woes in their rat race life actually matter.

I really like the kind of horror films where the situation is plausible, but you couldn't figure out how you would save yourself in the same situation. This whole scenario scares the living shit out of me, and knowing it's based on actual events makes it all the more horrible. There isn't a single special effect used on this film and its shows in unrelenting realism. Of course, this sort of film is pulled off by the actors and their characters and I must say that I could hope for a little more convincing performances from the main pair. But as a bickering married couple in a jam, blaming each other, they are believable enough. One cares about what's going to happen to them. The stylish ending doesn't spell it out for us viewers, altough there really was no escape at any point anyway.

The Others (USA(Spain/France/Italy 2001)
Director: Alejandro Amenábar



Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) lives with her two children, who are sensitive to light, in a large mantion. The Second World War is about to end and Grace is waiting for her husband to return home from the front. He has strict rules for her children, in fear that they hurt themselves by coming in contact with the sunlight. But it seems the house is also inhabitetd by malicious others, who attempt to break those rules, apparently to drive the family out.

The Others is easy to dismiss on these sorts of lists because the sort of filmmaking it represents was farmed to death in the early 2000s and seems like it has run  its course by now. But nevertheless it is a powerful piece of cinema that left an impression me on the only time I've seen it. It is spooky and its mysteriousness tingles the imagination.

Shadow of the Vampire (USA/UK/Luxembourg 2000)
Director: E. Elias Merhige

Horror films are often about other horror films. But rarely do they go as far into that field as here. This is seemingly a drama about the time F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) shot his classic silent horror film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des grauens (1922). Murnau is a true perfectionist, wanting to create the ultimate horror film. That's why he has hired Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe) in the lead role. Schreck is, after all, an actual vampire. The death and disappearance of multiple crew members doesn't worry Murnau at all, as long as he gets everything he wants on film. But what to do when Schreck sets his eyes on the lead actress when there is still a lot of film to be shot?

The film's plot is, of course, utter baloney, as Schreck was already an acclaimed stage actor when he was cast in Murnau's film in the real life. But that hardly matters. What matters is that it's plausible. Schreck's vampire is one of the most terrifying in the history of cinema, because it has been shot so it moves unnaturally. It doesn't matter that his make up looks ridiculous by today's standards. The film does a good job depicting the spiralling madness concerning ambitious cinema auteurs. Malkovich and Dafoe make a good lead pair, almost as much at each other's throats as Kinski and Herzog. The film is actually pretty light on actual horrors, but as a mind game, it is quite swell.

Slither (Canada/USA 2006)
Director: James Gunn

If horror films of the 70's and 80's are hard to emulate on the modern day, even harder are the B-movies of the 1950's. But even that wouldn't be difficult enough for director-screenwriter James Gunn. No, he emulates the kind of outrageous B-movie parodies they had in the 80's (as well as work from such horror maestros as Romero or Carpenter in the 70's and 80's). So the end result's a sort of double-parody. No wonder it tanked at the box office. But that was just the fault of the movie-going public, because Gunn's film is actually both extremely creepy and pretty darn funny.

A meteor hits the outskirts of a small American town. It contains parasitic worms that can take over people or turn them into gruesome monsters. Cool B-list actors such as Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks try to salvage the town from the alien rampage and possible taking over the world. As one can witness from the film's awesome poster, there is a strong sexual sense in the penile aliens, and the R this movie got was well justified. But it works as well to parody the sex-hungriness and boozehoundiness of the American midlands. Of course, this doesn't reach the lofty qualities of Cronenberg's Shivers, which has been a major influence, but it is one of the best horror comedies of the last decade that too few people have actually seen.


Wolf Creek (Australia, 2005)

Director: Greg McLean

Horror genre also likes to play with stupid gimmicks time and time again. It's no wonder the Australian Greg McLean's stripped first feature film was hailed exceptionally good by horror experts around the globe. Seemingly, it's a really back-to-basics horror film. Three young backpackers go on a trip to a middle of nowhere. Their car has trouble. A friendly-seeming stranger offers them help and towes their car to his far-away ranch. You can see how it plays out. But, at the risk of SPOILING the film for those who haven't seen it, the real strength of the film is in the end. McLean refuses to play out to the genre's convictions any more. So whenever we think that a strong, pure heroine is emerging that will survive the whole ordeal, our hopes are shattered. The serial killer Mick Taylor (the wonderful John Jarratt) is so relentless, ruthless and merciless that he will use any chance to off them. People don't do moronic horror movie mistakes in this, they only come unprepared to what Taylor has in his bag. There isn't going to be a purifying catharsis in the end of this film and that's why it feels all the more harrowing.

McLean shoots everything in a matter-of fact way. He doesn't build a threatening athmosphere but rather gives out some magnificent postcard views of the Australian Outback. It doesn't seethe with evil, but all it needs is one apple rotten to the core that can hide very easily in the middle of nowhere.


Bubbling Under: The Devil's Rejects, Dog Soldiers, Hierro, The Human Centipede, Session 9

To Be Seen: Hard Candy, Hatchet, May, A Tale of Two Sisters, Them

Have a Happy Halloween and if you're coming to Night Visions, I'll see you there!