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The story of a man at the end of his life who has fallen behind the times, his wife is dead and he steadfastly refuses to sell his house which is now surrounded by a huge building site.

Instead of being forced into a retirement home he attaches thousands of helium balloons to his house and takes off to relocate to Paradise Falls, something he and his wife always talked about but never did.

In Paradise Falls he lands in the wrong place and has to "walk" his house over to the waterfall, dragging it like a giant balloon with the help of stowaway Russell, a talking dog and a giant bird. They run into a lost explorer who has been hunting the giant bird for years and will stop at nothing to capture it.

It's about obsession, letting go of the past, realising that your heros may be fallible and reconnecting with young people. This is why Pixar is such a successful studio not because of the high quality of the animation but because it's movies always contain the sad, difficult parts of life along with the goodtimes.

YES - it's true, this is Pixar's best film.

In the Realms of the Unreal

An old man who lives most of his life alone in Chicago spent his time writing and illustrating a 15000 page book. The book tells the story of the 7 Vivian girls who live in the land of Dargannian and are at war with the Glandelinians. Their homeworld is full of dark haired horned girls with giant creatures as their guardians. The 7 Vivian girls are brave, fearless and fight on horseback against the Glandelinian soldiers who are dressed in confederate uniform with leaderboard hats.

It's the type of story school children would write but this incorporates religion and a strong theme of violence against children, with the adults making children their slaves and not letting them have a "normal sleep of the night's season, the right to an education, that we may have an equality of opportunity for developing all that are in us of mind and heart."

Henry Darger just wanted to share his love. Never having a partner or wife he petitioned the church to adopt a child which was rightfully declined as he was extremely poor and had mental health issues. He once asked his landlords how much it cost them to keep their little dog but the 5 dollars a month was too much for him.

Lonely, naive and shy he never shared his work with anyone and it was only when he died that his landlords discovered the hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing and paintings in his room.

There are now many fans of his work and pieces are frequently exhibited and fetch up to $80,000 which is heartbreaking considering if only he had that money when he was alive he could of had his little dog.

YES - if only he had the internet when he was alive.

CHUD

A recent article in a new york newspaper reported that there were large colonies of people living under the city...
The paper was incorrect. What is living under the city is not human.
CHUD is under the city.

CHUDs are actually mutated bums living in the subway who look similar to but not as scary as the boys with glowing eyes in the music video for total eclipse of the heart.

This is slow and bumpy but has way better writing than many of today's films. All the character interaction feels real and actually like grown adults talking to each other for a change but as for the look of the film it's a bit shit and the rough creature effects are a lot shit.

NO - they blew the budget on the chud stretchy neck effect.

Lake Mungo

Set in Ararat, Australia this film uses interviews and news footage to tell the story of a drowned daughter and the families' subsequent haunting.

At first this film may seem cliched but it looks amazing for a no budget first feature, the acting is solid especially from the actor who plays the father and it starts to take unexpected turns.

There's no jump scares and the director knows that a lingering shot of a teenage girls bedroom in the dark is way more sinister than someone jumping out from behind a door with a loud bang!


YES - be patient and this slowly but surely draws you into an unsettling mystery.

The Tin Drum

I have been avoiding watching this for years and I'm not really sure why, it's a masterful film.

Set in Poland during Hitlers rise, Oskar in protest against his family, society and the world at large decides never to grow up and whenever any situation disagrees with him bangs a tin drum defiantly or emits a loud glass shattering scream.

A symbolic film if ever there was one, you can dig in if that's your thing but I let it wash over me for the most part just enjoying the amazing cinematography and the many beautiful and unsettling images such as Oskar's mother force feeding herself fish or Oskar licking lime fizzing powder off his young crushes belly button before going down on her.

There's only very oblique allusions to what was actually happening to the Jewish people in the camps but the rising dread culminates in the defense of the Polish post office, the first battle of the invasion of Poland.

The actor who plays Oskar is incredible. He was only 11 when he played this part and kicks the ass of Anna Paquin also 11 who won an oscar for her performance in The Piano. Be warned, his character is extremely difficult to like however that's part of the dark magic of this film.

YES - One human voice is a powerful weapon whether it be in defiance or leading a nation towards a heinous action.

Daybreakers

It's a vampires world and they get to smoke as much as they want to but still have to catch the train to work the nightly grind.

Humans are farmed and hunted for blood but it's getting scarce and without blood vampires are regressing to batmen forms and attacking their own kind. Ethan is looking for a synthetic blood substitute when he comes across a band of humans on the run.

I was hoping this would be more like Constantine in style and it certainly has a strong visual look but the writing and editing is terrible. I found myself wondering if I'd left my park lights on and left the theatre to check as I wasn't too concerned about missing anything.

Directed by Australian twins Michael and Peter Spierig, this features many Australian/NZ actors all of which are unfortunately terrible but so too is Willem Dafoe who cheeses out on his one liners, strangely enough Ethan Hawke comes out of this the best actor.

The film gets worse and worse as it progresses and ends with an out of no where to shoot the bad guy saving the day scene and a slow motion blood orgy with military dudes which looks extremely silly and a bit gross.

NO - Like Near Dark this also features a convenient cure for vampirism but Near Dark is fuckin awesome and this movie is not.

Shoot 'Em Up

Who actually owns the Nirvana song rights? why are they being used in such random places like this shit film and in the tv show Coldcase?

This film is for all the people who think Quentin Tarantino's films are ridiculous, just compare them to this and you can see Tarantinos skill and restraint (!)

Everything about this is overkilled. If you're going for a bombastic bullet ballet à la John Woo you need to use a ramp ratio of 2:3. Writing/Action/Soundtrack ok knock writing and action out the box ace but not all fuckin 3 otherwise the result is unwatchable.


NO - This film really wants to be your friend but is just trying way too hard.