Four Lions

harpo, groucho, gummo and zeppo or maybe hasan, gabir, ghulam and zafar

Chris Morris specialises in smart black humor. His groundbreaking television shows Brass Eye and Jam freaked out 90s viewers looking for relaxing come down tv and inadvertently stumbling across skit shows with themes of incest, the pimping of people with down syndrome and paedophilia.

He's more mainstream these days (Nathan Barley and IT Crowd) however with his first feature film he's returning to controversy by catering to the zeitgeist fears of suicide bombers.

The four lions are Omar, Barry, Ed and Waj who after attending a training camp in Pakistan, plan to use homemade bombs to kill themselves at the London marathon.

There are some very funny scenes; Waj training a crow to bomb a birdhouse, the running style to use while carrying bombs, and Omar indoctrinating his son using the lion king as a metaphor but these characters are too farcical. Omar the most intelligent seems to completely disregard the fact that two of his friends are retarded and the other is an insane sadomasochist.

It's not until the last part of the film where they reluctantly go through with the plan, that this hits home and becomes a moving tragedy.

NO - successful satire but low buffoonery

The Room

I saw a poster for a late night screening of this at the nova in melbourne. The poster features Tommy Wiseaus face looking mysterious in black and white with a lazy eye. I thought it might be some cool lynchy film but instead it's actually a really bad days of our lives drama complete with soft focus sex scenes that go on way too long.

Tommy Wiseau wrote, directed, starred and paid for this film (It cost him $6 million of his own money) that's actually quite a lot of money for a massive piece of shit considering that such gems as American Movie, Cube, Primer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre  and Clerks were made for less than  a mill.

Johnny is engaged to Lisa who is having second thoughts and beings an affair with Johnny's friend. It's high melodrama and low everything else - acting, continuity, sets, lighting, soundtrack, direction, plot, greenscreen effects - all terrible just where the hell did that 6 million go? on Tommy's hair?


YES - bad but strangely mesmerising


You can buy a badge of Tommy's face, he's featured in the philosoface directors series of badges alongside such luminaries as Sergio Leone, Jim Jarmuch and Spike Lee.

Trilogy of Terror

Julie, Therese/Millicent, Amelie.

These are the titles of the 3 stories in this portmanteau horror directed by Dan Curtis and written by Robert Matheson. Dan must love Karen Black as he has her starring in all of them and she sure is awesome to watch, it's her acting that raises this above other movies of this genre.

The first story is about an english teacher menaced by one of her students, the second a tale of twin sisters and the last a doll that comes to life.

It's shot straight up 70s and as usual the 70s dialogue comes across far more adult than todays horror fair, although there's some shonky writing in the weakest second story the last one more than makes up for it.


YES - I'm glad I didn't see this when I was 10, that doll would of scarred me for life.

Day of the Locust

I knew this existed but for some reason never watched it, but wow holy shit I'm glad I finally did.

Directed by John Schesinger (Midnight Cowboy) and based on Nathanael West's book this film is a masterpiece.

Tod Hackett moves to sweltering 1930's hollywood with plans on becoming an art director, however he slowly but surely gets his soul sucked out by the flaky parasites who dwell there.

Karen Black as Faye Greener with her freaky cat eyes and trowel makeup make her a delicious horror to watch but the best performance comes from Donald Sutherland. His sad sack Homer is pathetic and while initially you feel sorry for him it's hard not to finally feel annoyance as the other characters do.  His loneliness has contorted him into a simpering parasite of another kind and watching him sitting in a deck chair, crying silently while his fingers clench and knuckles whiten, you know something bad is going to happen.

This symbolic surreal tapestry slow burns it's way to an unsettling final 20 minutes - where a crowd at a film premiere turns into a murderous mob.

Not a horror film but certainly about the horror of the film industry - the fakeness and desperation, the billions spent on creating illusion. Not a lot has changed really. Maybe plastic surgery.


YES - this is now in my top 10

Summer Wars

Kenji receives a mysterious text message challenging him to break a complex code which he does, inadvertently allowing a rogue AI to break into the massive online world "Oz"

Mamoru Hosoda who made the excellent The Girl Who Lept Through Time follows it with another modern story featuring teen crushes and technology.

The interesting thing about this film is it's massive generation spanning cast, the Jinnouchi clan. They feel like a real extended family and their interactions give this film the warmth it needs to transcend the usual boy saves world fare.

The film looks great and the setting of Oz is nicely contrasted with the edo era house of the Jinnouchi family who have all returned home for their matriarch's 80th birthday.

Has the heart but doesn't quite reach the heights.

YES - family saves world