I'm now up to midday on the Sunday and shall bash on:
Botched (2007): I hadn't realized that this was a British film with American actor Stephen Dorff in the lead and despite my disappointment with a number of other UK efforts in recent years, I found this one kind of amusing in a sick sort of way. In debt to the Russian mafia and after a botched diamond heist, Dorff must redeem himself by stealing an iconic crucifix from the penthouse of a tower bloc. With his two idiotic Russian henchmen in tow, their escape is hindered when the lift mysteriously stops on the l3th floor. Thinking that the police are after them, they take the other passengers hostage, including a group of bible-thumpers, a feisty female, a pretty dumb security guard, and a couple of cowardly males. Turns out that there is a modern-day Rasputin on the loose as well and he gets his kicks by dispatching any and all comers in imaginatively gory ways to create his own weird works of art. The movie probably suffered a bit for not knowing whether it wanted to be a comedy or a horror film, since it was a little of both without being overly brilliant at either.
Postal (2007) and Seed (2007): Many of the films screened had their directors in attendance for a brief intro before and a Q & A after. I was beginning to think that the fest organisers had briefed them all to believe that they way to ingratiate themselves to this particular (and largely male) audience was to use copious quantities of swear-words and to comment that this was the best horror festival of all. I can live with that but I can not, definitely can not, live with two films in a row by the German director Uwe Boll, often described as the Ed Wood for our century; but since he was in attendance, we were shown his two most recent horrors (and I use that word to describe the quality of his film-making and not the genre). Maybe if I were a mid-twenties fella I would have laughed as heartily as many of the surrounding audience at the idiotic "Postal", undoubtedly one of the very worst movies I've seen . It was all about the idiotic antics of phony evangelicals, Osama bin Laden and his Taliban mates, make-believe neo-Nazis, and a very fat woman who was also the town bicycle. Awful beyond belief. The second film was more in the horror vein about a mass-murderer who survives execution and continues his pursuits. However the film was so dark visually and so confusingly constructed, that I finally gave up and walked out (not something I do often).
Waz (2007): This American entry was more than a little muddled in the telling, but absorbing and extremely well-acted. Cops Stelland Skarsgard and Melissa George (extremely good) are investigating a series of gruesome murders which appear to be revenge killings by the victim of an earlier traumatic rape, as played by a skeletal Selma Blair. To punish the members of the gang involved, she sets up a scenario where each of her victims is captured with a loved one and must choose between extreme physical torture or pushing a button that will kill the other. The theory is that when taken to the bone, altruism will always give way to self-preservation -- or will it?
This just leaves the five flicks I saw on Monday to deal with before I get back to more up-to-date matters, since you can well believe that I have been watching other films in the last few days. So tune in again tomorrow...
3 comments:
Do you wear square glasses for your square eyes?
A short comment on the flavour of the festival - Uwe Boll. His words beforehand
were naturally self-serving but did leave one wondering, as is the case with a
number of others, how he manages to keep raising funds though he does seem to
have worked on the cheap. Of the two films shown, 'Postal' was something of a
romp which reminded me in tone of some of the films of the 70s, brightly lit and
unbelievable monsters - killer tomatoes etc. 'Seed' might have been good and the early part was reasonably taut and atmospheric but, like you, I have a decided aversion to films that are so drak that it is all but impossible to tell what
is happening - unless that was his intention in which case it was brilliant.
Botched: a rather sickish romp which fell a little awkwardly between the gore of a
horror movie on the one hand and a comedic heist movie on the other. A pleasant enough way to pass the time without being that memorable.
Waz: a filmic interpretation of some social psychologist's theory that there is no
such thing a true altruism. The three leads, Skarsgard, Blair and George were all
more than competent, George in particular.
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