A limited choice of in-flight flicks

I've been back a couple of days but just getting around to finding the time to update anyone who cares on my recent viewing -- which was solely limited to the round-trip flights.  With all the recent hoo-ha and disruption at Heathrow, I thought it might be best to avoid that airport completely and to travel with a small, all-business-class airline (MAXjet) out of Stanstead which worked out very well in terms of easy check-in and security.  Yes, it cost a few bob more, but in the present climate it was well worth it and an exercise I'd repeat.  The only problem from Pretty Pink's point of view was the rather pathetic choice of entertainment, although this probably is far more important to me that to any rational traveller.  One was presented with a device rather like a portable DVD player, but pre-programmed with a selection of films, TV programmes and music videos; there were perhaps 30-odd movies to choose from -- but most of them were elderly, not classics mind you, but a selection of popular fare from the last five years or so, nearly all of which I've seen (in some cases more than once).  However there were a very few recent films to watch -- in my case two outward and one back, as follows:

Inside Man (2006): Rather atypical fare from director Spike Lee in much the same way as his recent "25th Hour", since despite its co-starring Denzel Washington, this bank heist caper is not any sort of black diatribe.  He plays a police detective attempting to negotiate with bank robber Clive Owen who is holding a number of hostages, but who -- as it turns out -- is not there to rob the bank in the conventional sense.  Owen's hidden agenda becomes apparent in due course and his success in this mission is not without interest.  However, Jodie Foster, as a society busybody brought in by the bank president, is handed a rather underwritten and thankless role.

Firewall (2006):  Another caper movie tailored to the aging charms of Harrison Ford, who plays a bank security specialist forced to cooperate with Paul Bettany's band of baddies, if he wishes to save his wife and kiddies.  A little unnecessarily violent and designed to present Ford in the best possible action- hero light, the film is really only of interest for Bettany's unusual casting.  No prizes for guessing who wins out in the end.

The Sentinel (2006):  I find it rather amusing that Michael Douglas is beginning to be more and more like his old man in choosing "look-at-me-how manly-and-irresistible-I-am" roles.  In this film he plays a special security agent who once took a bullet for the president (much like Eastwood in "In the Line of Fire"), who is being framed for a plot to kill the current president.  The fact that he is having it off with the president's wife (Kim Basinger) doesn't help his case.  Agents Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria come down hard on him initially, forcing him to flee to clear his name, but of course they are soon won round and help him expose the real culprit (who is so obviously the baddie that his unmasking comes as no surprise).

All three movies were watchable but disposable, and time-fillers rather than rattling entertainment.  The playing device did, I must confess, give a far better and controllable picture than the usual airline screen.  Now if they could only mesh that with Virgin's choice, I'd be a very happy bunny.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

Totally unrelated to my occasional humour-bypass, I must confess that I have never really liked Peter Sellers, and the only film of his in my collection is "Doctor Strangelove...".  I'd be hard-pressed to explain why I don't even like the Pink Panther films -- there is just something about his persona (or in his case personae) that I find disturbing.  This US cable/BBC joint production is a good try at filming a biopic and Geoffrey Rush does a very professional job in the lead, but the movie comes nowhere near explaining the man and the insecurities that made him such an unpleasant human being in real life.  One has often heard that Sellers only had a personality in the characters he played and that the man himself was an empty shell.  I don't believe it since it is clear to me that behind the humourous characterizations was a difficult and tormented soul.  Perhaps that explains my own distaste for the actor.  Anyhow this film was well-mounted, reasonably well-cast but fairly spotty in providing a good insight into the man, especially since parts of his story were not included for various legal reasons.  One story-telling ploy which I did find annoying was to have Sellers morph not just into the characters he played, but also into actual people in his life -- hence we had Sellers at various stages playing his father, Blake Edwards, and even his dead mother, where these roles had previously been filled by other actors.  I think this is taking the point about his not being his own man just a wee bit too far.

This will be my last entry for a while as I am reluctantly off to New York again.  But as Arnie said, I will return.  See you then.

A Lot Like Love (2005)

Having finally warmed to big lunk Ashton Kutcher in the director's cut of "The Butterfly Effect", I had no reluctance watching this rom-com starring him and Amanda Peet.  Of course neither one of them is guaranteed box office gold, but in its small way this movie was entertaining enough and an acceptable way to spend ninety odd minutes.  Just don't expect me to remember much about it in say a month from now.  After spotting each other at the airport, the couple "meet cute" by her barging into the airline toilet just after he has entered and effectively having her way with him.  Not that he objected.   They part (several times as it happens) but agree that she should look him up in six years to discover how big a success he has become and how gorgeous a wife he will have.  Fortuitously the couple does meet periodically over this period, but since each has his own agenda, their obvious attraction is not permitted to develop -- until of course the very end, where in the nick of time they realise that the other one is really the perfect one they have been seeking all along.  No big surprise that, but a pleasant enough ride. 

Song of Freedom (1936)

Does anyone else remember the period back in the '80s when both BBC2 and Channel 4 featured themed movie seasons?  It's been a long time since either channel has seen fit to do so, apart from the occasional run of a few films with the same well-known lead.  Anyhow one of these seasons back then was dedicated to Paul Robeson, a name that probably doesn't mean much to anyone under 40 and probably not much to many over that age.  He was a huge, black American-born baritone who was larger than life in every sense.  Being effectively very left-wing, his career was virtually destroyed by the Communist witch-hunts of the l950s and his many accomplishments long forgotten -- but his voice, once heard, lives on forever.

His main film career, oddly enough, was in Britain and the above movie is one of several made here in the '30s.  His only major American role of the period was in the l936 version of "Show Boat", of course singing 'Old Man River'.  Anyhow when the films were shown on TV I taped them all and they are now languishing on unplayable beta tapes; I think I can forget about their being screened again.   I was therefore delighted to find an American "black heritage" label that has packaged some of these in double-disc sets with minor all-black movies of the period.  The non-Robeson movies are unfortunately pretty pathetic, with poor prints, poor production and even unmemorable musical numbers.  But the Robeson films are great; the big difference is that he starred with a mixed black and white cast in the British offerings and back then there would never had been a black hero in a mainstream film in the States.  In this one he plays a British-born docker who yearns to learn more about his African past.  When an impressario hears him in full voice, he trains him to become an internationally-acclaimed opera singer which allows him to not only discover his origins and claim his kingship, but also to do something for his people despite the opposition of local ignorance.  I am just so thankful that someone has seen fit to preserve these performances for posterity.

City Slickers (1991)

I first became aware of Billy Crystal when he played Jodie on "Soap" -- still my favourite long-running TV comedy series.  After enjoying "Momma..." below, I wanted more and found my copy of the above movie which I personaly consider his best (even better than "When Harry Met Sally", although it's a close call).  In this film, he and his two closest friends (Daniel Stern and the late Bruno Kirby) are each facing a different mid-life crisis and they try to resolve them by taking a working cattle-drive holiday.  The result is a movie full of smiles rather than chortles, an amusing meditation on the meaning of friendship and responsibility. It is well-played right down the cast list, including David Paymer and Josh Mostel as Ben-and-Jerry-like ice cream makers and Jack Palance in Oscar-winning support as the tough trail boss.  The latter's scenes with Crystal smack of brilliance as two characters who are a world apart find common ground.  Even now thinking about Norman the Calf makes me feel happy -- and that has to be a good thing.

Throw Momma from the Train (1987)

While I'm on a 'do I or don't I have a sense of humour' jag, I had another look at this piece of mayhem which I'd not seen for a while, and it's yet another black comedy that seems to work.  The first directorial effort from Danny De Vito, it pits him as a hopeless would-be writer taking a course from frustrated writer Billy Crystal, whose brilliant first novel was stolen by his ex-wife and who has had nothing but writer's block since.  After De Vito watches "Strangers on a Train" at Crystal's suggestion, he immediately assumes that he is meant to dispose of the latter's hated wife in exchange for Crystal ridding him of his overbearing mother.  She is an incredible grotesque, brilliantly embodied by a raucous Anne Ramsey, and one can just about sympathize with De Vito's quandary of dealing with a woman that he both loves and fears.  Of course nothing ever really goes as planned; when Crystal is sought for his wife's supposed murder, he hides out at De Vito's home and they gradually form an unlikely bond.  They also both eventually find unexpected success as writers, but that would be giving away the film's final joke.  One can have a good time with this movie without necessarily rolling in the aisles. 

Si Que Di (Say I Do) (2004)

Returning to the vexed question of what strikes different folk as funny, I was completely knocked over by the silliness on display in this Spanish comedy and I must confess I enjoyed myself.  Yet it has a miserable viewer rating on IMDb.  The lovely Paz Vega is a would-be actress looking for a break on television and Santi Millan is a 35-year old cinema usher living at home with his mother.  Through a series of unlikely circumstances the pair ends up as contestants on a looking-for-romance reality programme, and her off-the-wall kookiness mixed with his get-me-out-of-here clumsiness endears them to the viewing audience.  They are then sent off on a luxury holiday for a week in the hope that they will return to marry on the show; there is a lot of money at stake, so they come to an uneasy truce.  A backfiring prank by the station forces them to go on the lam, before the inevitably happy conclusion.  I liked it.  Ms Vega is not only gorgeous to look at -- far more appealing than Penelope Cruz -- but has a vivacity and unselfconscious naturalness that is winning.

11'09"01 September 11 (2002)

I've known about this film since its release and since it was partially British-financed, I half expected it to turn up during the last week amongst the various 9/11 programming.  Well it didn't, so I set it to watch off German television and with the help of a 'Sight and Sound' summary, I managed to make some sense of it -- but it just left me feeling so very, very angry, not so much regarding the event itself, but what some very well-known film-makers had made of it.

The French producer Alan Brigand came up with the wheeze that he would approach eleven leading directors from around the world and ask each of them to film a segment lasting exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame -- depicting their take on the disaster.  In order of their presentation, I will attempt to briefly summarise the results:

Young Samira Makhmalbaf  from Iran portrayed a teacher attempting to describe the day's events to a group of young Afghan refugee children who had no concept of towers or airplanes or any understandable motive to take part in a minute's silence.

French director Claude Lelouch used the occasion as a mawkish reconciliation between a deaf woman in New York who is oblivious to the events being shown on her unwatched television and her dust-covered returning lover.

Egyptian director Youssef Chahine had an actor playing him and used the occasion to dwell on the ghosts of an American soldier killed in Beirut some years before, a young arab suicide bomber, and a role-call of American-inspired deaths and invasions over the years.

From Bosnia we had the rather muted story of how a monthly march by the women of the community commemorating a 1995 massacre was not postponed by the news from New York.

The jolliest meditation came from Burkino Faso where a young schoolboy with an ailing mother thinks he has spotted Osama bin Laden, and with his pals plans how to spend the 25 million dollars reward.

Our own dear Ken Loach gave us an exiled Chilean poet meditating on the day and the same date in 1973 when President Allende was murdered by a CIA-financed military coup, starting a reign of terror in that country.

The most pretentious entry was from Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Innarritu which was nearly eleven minutes of black screen with various ambient sound occasionally showing brief shots of bodies falling from the towers and ending on a white screen with an Arabic inscription translated as 'Does God's light guide us or blind us?'

From Israel, director Amos Gitai focussed on a street reporter trying to cover a car-bombing who gradually loses her feed to the station as New York takes over the news.

Indian director Mira Nair told the purportedly true story of a Pakistani family living in New York whose son disappeared on 9/11 and whom everyone assumed was some kind of conspirator, until his remains were found at the site some six months later -- when all of a sudden the people who readily condemned the family now treated them as raising a hero.

The most maudlin story and something of an embarrassment was the only American-directed one by Sean Penn.  He showed Ernest Borgnine as a lonely old man talking to his dead wife and going on from day to day.  Living in the shadow of the Towers, when they fell, his apartment was suddenly suffused with light and his dead plants sprang into vibrant life.  No doubt some sort of allegory about hope -- but it just didn't work.

The final and weirdest section came from 76-year old Japanese director Shohei Imamura and was set at the end of World War II with ostensibly little relevance to 9/ll.  A Japanese soldier returns home thinking he's a snake and is caged; when he escapes, he slithers down to the river and drowns.  Yeah, war is hell.

With friends like these, you don't need enemies.

 

Black Sunday (1961)

There was a time and not that long ago when one could see foreign films on BBC2, although the powers that be seem to have given this up for Lent.  The above Italian film, also known as "Mask of Satan", used to be aired regularly although dubbed, but is no longer available in any format.  More's the pity as it is one of the most important horror movies of all time.  It was the first directorial effort from Mario Bava who was originally a cinematographer and who did the camerawork here, and it is one of the most beautiful and atmospheric films ever.  The story is one we have seen often: a woman is burned as a witch and swears revenge on the descendants of her accuser who happened to be her brother; however this witch was not an innocent and a mask of nails was placed over her face.  She is played by horror icon Barbara Steele, a British beauty with a patchy career, largely in Italian films.  Steele also plays her descendent 200 years later, and after a drop of blood reawakens her from her tomb, all stops are pulled out to achieve her ends: to slaughter all who stand in her way and and to possess the young woman.  The movie was only ever released in its English dub here and the voice is not even Steele's own, but the image of her punctured face and her striking beauty are unforgettable.  Bava has created an enduring work that still terrifies and it is criminal that this movie is not more readily accessible.  The holy grail would be a copy in the original Italian with subtitles. 

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Having waxed ecstatic yesterday about the charms of John Cusack, I decided to revisit the above movie in which he shines.  It's a black comedy which for once is both dark and funny.  The title is a pun recalling the Lee Marvin noir "Point Blank" combined with the name of the wealthy Detroit suburb where our hero Martin Blank grew up.  Having deserted his high school sweetheart ten years previously on prom night, he returns for the school reunion which fits in with his latest assignment as a hired assassin; try explaining that to your old school friends as to what you do for a living!  The old girlfriend in question is played by Minnie Driver during her brief period as a star (as opposed to the many awful films she has made since), and her chemistry with Cusack is remarkable.  Concurrent with the above we have a number of killers trying to dispatch Cusack because he doesn't want to join forces with another totally unlikely killer played by Dan Aykroyd; one of those after him is Hong Kong favourite villain Benny Urquidez of whom I have written previously.  For someone who was an undefeated world kickboxing champion, he never wins out in his film appearances and Cusack manages to finish him off with a freebie advertising pen.  Meanwhile in the background we have some nice turns from Cusack's sister Joan as his office manager/Girl Friday and Alan Arkin as his extremely reluctant psychotherapist, all blessed with a sharp, clever script. 

Un Soir, Un Train (1968)

I wrote as few days back of the season of "lost" films from previous London Film Festivals now being shown at the NFT and how disappointed I was with my first selection.  I therefore wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing the above -- another French movie from the same period and another one set on a train.  At first my wariness seemed justified as the first half of the film verged on the boring as one followed the story of a linguistics professor (played by Yves Montand) at a university in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium and his somewhat strained involvement with a Frenchwoman (played by the very handsome Anouk Aimee) who continually feels like a duck out of water in his world.  The only compensating factors were some rather splendid landscapes straight out of the old Flemish Masters.  However when she joined him on a train journey, events took an 180 degree turn and we were suddenly in a scenario like something out of the paintings of Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux (no relation I think to the director Andre Delvaux).   Montand surfaces from a nap to find all the other passengers asleep, bar an older professor whom he recognises and a young man who was once his student.  When they disembark to discover why the train has stopped, they are immediately abandoned when the train suddenly pulls away.  They have no idea where they are or how to get back to their worlds until they eventually stumble on a strange village which initially appears deserted.  When they find its inhabitants who speak in an unintelligible language, we just know that they must be in a half-world between life and death.  Finally Montand finds himself back at the train which has been in a spectacular crash, but the film ends with his discovering that nothing can ever be the same for him again.  Perhaps some lost films do deserve to be rediscovered.

Volcano High (2001)

This is one very weird Korean movie and one which neatly defies categorisation.  Set sometime in the future at a high school for powerful misfits -- kind of an oriental X-men story -- we follow new student Kim as he tries to keep a low profile and fit in, however with his bleached blonde shock of hair he sticks out, and he finds it hard to play down his not inconsiderable fighting skills and Chi.  While it is not based on a manga, it plays like one with fantastic wire work and probably an over-reliance on special effects.  We follow the showdowns between Kim, another alpha male student Jang, the pretty Kendo star that they both fancy, and one of the teachers who tries to dominate them all.  The movie is absolutely gorgeous to look at, shot nearly exclusively in primary blues and reds on a black-and-white background -- which helps to further remove the action from any semblance of reality.  It's not really the kind of film that makes much sense, especially since the lead actor feigns a gormless naivete at times -- but this too adds to the fun.

Max (2002)

I went to see this film in the cinema when it was first released and have just returned to it on DVD; meanwhile it has very unjustly faded into obscurity, while far less thoughtful movies have mined gold.  It stars John Cusack who like Jeff Bridges is a sorely underrated actor and one who brings a professional intelligence to all of his roles.  He was an associate producer on this film and took no salary to ensure that such a controversial picture could be made.  Set in Munich in 1918, Cusack plays an ex-soldier who has lost an arm in the war, which means he can no longer paint, but coming from a rich Jewish family he has the means to start an expressionist art gallery in an old foundry and to continue his urbane and somewhat debauched life.  Here he meets another veteran who believes he has an artistic gift -- his name: Adolf Hitler!  Played by quirky character actor Noah Taylor, this Hitler might have found quite a different future were he not so embittered and if he possessed just a wee bit more talent. 

The film is not based on a true story, but it is a fine example of the "what if" genre.  Cusack tries to be kind and can even see an artistic showing for Hitler's fascistic sketches, but the gulf between the two men is too great and the temptation for the latter to use political demagogery as his escape proves too easy.  In a brilliant bit of montage, the director cuts between Cusack at prayer with his father and Taylor rabble-rousing.  How these two scenes merge is the nub of the story.  A Hungarian/Canadian/UK  production written and directed by Dutchman Menno Meyjes -- his first released film to date -- the movie deserved to make more impact, since it is a brave and sincere portrait of how the quirks of fate can affect the world. 

Martin (1977) and some other fellows

Talking about humour transplants, let me admit that I lasted about 25 minutes into "The League of Gentlemen Apocalypse".  I did manage to watch all of "Green Street" (known in the US as "Hooligans") which was hardly my cup of tea.  We have angelic-looking Elijah Wood being thrown out of Harvard on a frame-up and escaping to England to visit his married sister, Claire Forlani.  After being fobbed-off on her football-mad brother-in-law, young Frodo learns all about street violence (hence the American title) and how to be a better man -- as if this follows.  The film was actually watchable and reasonably well put together and acted, but with an unappetizing and depressing subject.

So I'll write instead about the above little-known movie from George Romero, which I hadn't seen recently and which still holds up as one of his best.  Rather than dealing with the walking dead or zombies, this film deals with vampirism -- or not, depending on one's reading of the story.  The eponymous lead, nicely played  by John Amplas (who has appeared in only a few films) is a shy young man who truly believes that he is a 90-year old vampire.  He does in fact stalk victims to drink their blood, but he has no fangs and has no fear of sunlight, garlic or mirrors; more likely his is some form of psychological disorder, reinforced by persistant family myths.  He leaves his home to live in a depressed city area with his uncle, a nice performance by Lincoln Maazel (father of the conductor) in his only film role; he is warned that any local blood-sucking will be dealt with by the traditional stake in the heart.  His obsession with what he believes himself to be is somewhat alleviated when he starts doing "the sexy thing" with a local frustrated housewife and when he vents his fantasies on a talk-radio show, but his fate is predestined.     

A History of Violence (2005)

The Canadian director David Cronenberg is best known for his "body-horror" films, and at first glance this movie seems far more commercial than his previous ones -- but that is not a criticism in this instance, as he has turned out something of a masterpiece.  Based on a graphic novel, the story concerns clean-cut Tom Stall, played by Viggo Mortensen, who is a small-town diner owner and a loving husband and father.  That the family has its own minor problems -- the young daughter has nightmares, the teenaged son is bullied at school -- is only the tip of the iceberg when one discovers what lies beneath Stall's easygoing manner.  When some thugs come into Stall's cafe and threaten his customers, he instinctively unleashes lightning-fast violence to deal with the situation,  This makes him a local hero, but attracts the attention of heavily-scarred thug Ed Harris, who turns up with his henchman to suggest that Stall is really Joey from Philadelphia with whom scores must be settled.  As the violence escalates the backlash affects Stall's wife, nicely played by Maria Bello, who, while hating what she now suspects is the truth about her husband, is also sexually turned on by this change in him.  Similarly the son finds something within him to deal with not only the school bullies, but also the threat to the family.  Finally Stall returns to Philly to thrash things out with his older mobster brother, dubiously cast and improbably played by Willaim Hurt.  The movie is extremely raw and graphic, but the audience becomes complicit with the violence on display, as despite its ugliness, we really like the man behind it;  I can find no faults in Mortensen's portrayal.  The ending is left deliberately open, since although the genie is well out of the bottle, the strength of the family may well be able to embrace it.

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

I wonder if I can get a humour transplant on National Health since I seem to be increasingly out of joint with what is meant to be funny nowadays.  This film was a surprise hit and the breakout feature for its lead, Steve Carell, but I found the humour largely juvenile with only the occasional real laugh.  The story is apparent from the title insofar as we are presented with a nice enough fellow, albeit rather obsessed with collecting toy models, who has never managed to "do the deed".  When his co-workers learn what they consider to be the sorry fact, they do everything they can to make him one of their club -- the fact that they are also losers in their own way is skimmed over.  He tentatively begins a relationship with Catherine Keener without initially having to show his prowess or indeed to admit the truth to her -- and the moments between them do have a certain charm -- but hardly loud yaks.  She is a most likeable actress and the viewer does root for their future together.  The action behind the end credits is the most amusing part of this movie -- if only the overall tone had been so charming, without depending on scenes of his getting his chest waxed or not knowing what to do with a condom (to say nothing about his being vomited upon!).

Trans-Europ-Express (1966)

Well now that I've ploughed through FrightFest, I can go back to reviews of my regular viewing and it's a pity in a way that I am starting with the above French film -- only because it is freshest in my mind, having seen it at the National Film Theatre last night.  They are doing a season of so-called lost masterpieces from earlier London Film Festivals -- movies that made a splash at the time but have been little seen since.  In the case of this one by director Alain Robbe-Grillet I can understand why.  In a word it was pretentious; in two words it was very pretentious (but should I expect otherwise from the director of "Last Year in Marienbad" -- a film whose appeal I have never understood).  We have the director himself playing a director on a train journey with some friends, throwing out possibilities for a potential film script on drug smuggling between Paris and Antwerp.  As each idea is refined, the story is acted out by Jean-Louis Trintignant playing the would-be smuggler and interacting in various scenarios with whore/spy Marie-France Pisier.  It's meant to appear ever so clever as the characters engage and disengage into some kind of Chinese box puzzle, but each variation of the film-maker's reality became less and less involving.  There was also a sub-theme of the protagonist being fixated with bondage which allowed for some purely gratuitous and largely unerotic semi-nude poses.  All something of a disappointment.

Memorable Monday at FrightFest

To compensate for yesterday's disappointments, I decided to brave all five films today with a positive attitude.  Well, that nearly worked:

H6: Diary of a Serial Killer (2006): I had originally planned to skip this Spanish entry on the grounds that one had seen sufficient similar films, but it was better than expected.  After his release from gaol for killing his girlfriend in a fit of jealous rage, the now 40-something protagonist finds he has inherited a dilapidated boarding house-cum-brothel.  After marriage for appearance's sake to a nurse who works nights and who has been carrying on an affair with a married doctor both before and after, he makes it his life's calling to "save" fallen women by strapping them to a table in room H6 and, after various deprivations, dispatching them with his trusty chainsaw.  He is finally apprehended after eighteen such encounters (fortunately most not shown), but is clever enough to limit his incarceration on the grounds of assumed nuttiness and to presumably resume his vocation on his next release.

The Ghost of Mae Nak (2005): The next feature was meant to be the latest from the Bangkok-based Pang Brothers, but it was pulled at short notice to be replaced with this Thai film, based on a bit of traditional folklore.  Written and directed by Brit Mark Duffield but with a Thai cast, it follows a newly-married couple's problems when the bridegroom has been possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ghost and how his bride and her friends manage to appease its wrath.  There were a few OTT deaths of neighbourhood baddies, but otherwise a fairly unhorrific narrative and the expected happy ending.

Puritan (2005):  Again, I didn't expect much from this British occult thriller starring Nick Moran as a writer/fake spiritualist dealing with a mysterious badly disfigured man who predicts his future and a treacherous femme (Georgina Rylance) who seems to be using their relationship for her own ends.  We also have David Soul (what did we do to deserve this?) as her tycoon husband.  Moodily photographed and determinedly puzzling, we are presented with a somewhat unexpected twist to reward our attention.  We are also presented with the unnecessary appearance of Aleister Crowley in whose former home our hero now lives -- a complete irrelevance. 

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006):  I had higher hopes for this film which had a pretty high IMDb rating (obviously voted upon by people with less expectations than I).  It was a so-called mockumentary on how a would-be serial killer plans to achieve his immortality a la Freddie Krueger et. al.  So as in "Man Bites Dog" we have a film crew following his activities in what rapidly becomes an all-too-knowing and fey approach to the genre.  However when it comes to the start of the blood-letting, they realise that they can not condone this and therefore find themselves part of the proposed victims.  The kicker is that the killer's chosen "virgin" who is meant to survive turns out to be a full-blooded slut and it becomes necessary for the sole female on the film crew to assume the role.  Very droll I'm sure, but just a little too tongue-in-cheek to work.

The Host (2006):  The closing film was this Korean creature-feature which was a cross between monster mayhem and lowish humour.   Deliberate pollution of Seoul's main river breeds a mutant monster -- a sort of ginormous lizardy fish that rapidly terrorizes the population and which American busybodies decide is spreading a horrible virus.  The action takes place via one family -- an elderly food-stall owner, his sleepy son and another feckless son, his daughter who is a would-be archery champion, and his brave grand-daughter who is believed to be one of the first victims.  When they get proof that she is still alive, despite being carried off by the thing, they break quarantine to try to save her.  That they don't all survive proves something of a disappointment, but one can't really fault the non-stop action and clever special effects that serve to maintain the romp.

Well that's another FrightFest weekend until next year, but I understand some special Halloween celebrations are planned in the meantime -- and if I find out what these are, so will you.

Sleepy-time Sunday at FrightFest

I guess there are days when I should cut myself some slack and take a break from obsessive film-watching, if I am really not up to it, for one reason or another.  This day proved one of them and while I had every intention initially of sitting through all six movies in the programme, after the first four, I had all I could do to stay awake -- which possibly says more about me than about the films in question (although they were to some extent pretty questionable):

Broken (2006): This was a singularly unpleasant British effort in which women are snatched and subjected to various indignities such as having to slice open their stomachs to get at a razor blade that's been left there in order to free themselves from hanging.  The film mainly focused on one such woman who was not particularly attractive nor a particularly good actress (but she was the director's wife!) who needs to free herself from "The Man" in order to establish what he has done with her young daughter.  Low-budget junk.

The Living and the Dead (2006):  Another British effort and a far-more ambitious one from director Simon Rumley, which yearned to be a cross of art house and Eastern psycho-horror, but which verged to my mind on the "trying-too-hard" side of good with mixed time frames, shifting characters, and confusing plotting.  It was also not helped by the frenetic lead actor (Leo Bill) who began to grate early on and whose action was speeded up to express...  Your guess is as good as mine.

Them (2006):  I had hoped that this French film (set in Romania) might wake me up -- if only because there were now titles to read, but it only managed to nail my eyelids tighter.  Filmed in a documentary style, it followed the night-time horrors of a youngish couple as they are besieged in their home by  telephone threats, bumps in the night and unseen stalkers from whom there was no escape.  Yes, it was creepy and the end-title explanation somewhat alarming, but over all not particularly involving, probably because the viewer had little opportunity to empathise with the leads in their plight.

Grimm Love (2006): I particularly (in advance) wanted to see this one since it had been banned in its home country, Germany, and this showing was the World Premiere.  Big deal!  I don't know exactly why it was banned -- probably not on the grounds of being boring, but you never know.  It was a fictional recreation of the Armin Meiwes case where he surfed the net to find a lover who wished to be eaten -- the so-called Cannibal of Rothenburg.  Visiting American student Keri Russell is intrigued with the case and tries to unearth the background.  It culminates with her finding the actual "snuff" tape and playing it, all the while beginning to lose her own grip on reality.  The film was competently made and reasonably well-acted, particularly by Thomas Kretschmann in the lead, but somehow did not deserve to see the light of day.

Monday was far more satisfying and that summary will appear soon.  

FrightFest Saturday

I've decided that the only way I'll find the time to get through the remaining FrightFest reviews and to get back to the films I've viewed subsequently is to do a blow-by-blow precis for each day.  Saturday is probably the easiest to summarise, since I skipped three of the six on offer.  (Couldn't bring myself to watch a doc on the development of the Klingon language or "Adrift" -- known to the rest of the world as Open Water 2 and now on general release -- or a black compilation film of horror from the 'hood which would have made me miss the last train.)

Isolation (2005):  After last year's Irish mad-cow horror I didn't hold out much hope for another cow movie from the Emerald Isle, but this one was more ambitious and frightening -- even if it was at times hard to follow.  Farmer John Lynch allows some experimental genetic work to be carried out on his herd and the result is a mutant calf born pregnant with nasty creepy crawly embryos, kind of  bovine "Aliens", which must be destroyed before they destroy the world.  Not too many survivors nor the expected ones in this gory glory.

The Marsh (2006):  I can't say that I thought this one was much cop.  Writer Gabrielle Anwar rents an isolated house to find new inspiration and everything begins to seem frightfully familiar to her, as repressed images from her past reappear.  She hires friendly local psychic Forest Whitaker to help her unravel the pretty obvious clues.  I quite like this actor, but it did look to me that he was biting his tongue half the time to avoid bursting into fits of giggles.

See No Evil (2006):  Yet another mad slasher movie where you can start to guess who will survive, but an oddly enjoyable and inventive one.  Directed by Gregory Dark whose main outout previously has been soft-porn erotica, he shows a good eye for unusual horror.  We are given a group of petty criminals, boys and gals, who are told they can get their sentences reduced if they help to clean up a derelict hotel.  Also on hand are a handicapped cop, a female detention worker, the old biddy in charge of the restoration and an eyeball-collecting maniac, played by a wrestling superstar (not an area where I have much expertise).  The film is only 80-odd minutes, so the murders pile up rapidly, without allowing the viewer to get too bored in the process.  And for once part of the killer's pyschological past is revealed which does in fact add to the plot.  Best bits: watch out for the wild dogs!

Hatchet (2006)

After the kick-off movie reviewed below, the next film didn't stand much chance of rising to anything approaching the same standard and this one certainly didn't, although I understand that it has been well received at other festivals.  Part of the appeal might have been having Elm Street's Robert Englund and Candyman's Tony Todd in cameo roles plus having four-time Jason Voorhees, Kane Hodder, in the dual role of the unstoppable killer and his father.  The rest of it was really a load of rubbish.  A bunch of unknowns take a "Haunted Bayou" boat tour one evening during Mardi Gras (the film was obviously made pre-Katrina) and are picked off one by one in the traditional gruesome ways.  Apart from conveying very little that one hadn't seen many times before, nearly all of the characters were so gormless that it was hard to give a damn about their survival, in fact one was pleased to see the end of most of them and even more pleased to see the end of the film.