The Walking Dead - pilot

After his devastating film version of Stephen King's story The Mist, I was keen to see Frank Darabont return to horror and this doesn't disappoint.

Based on a comic, this tells the story of cop Rick Grimes who after waking from a coma discovers the world has gone to shit and he can now see (decomposing) dead people.

This all sounds terrible but it's handled well, Frank creates a sombre tone and it's refreshing to get back to the shuffler zombie instead of energy drink runners.  They're more unsettling and sympathetic, a dead wife returns home pathetically trying to open the door and in a stand out scene Rick follows a still alive torso dragging itself through the park telling it he's "sorry this happened to you"


YES - not sure how this will develop as a television series but this can easily be watched as a stand alone.

Blackswan

 jeezus get some optrex for fucks sake

I don't consider Natalie Portman a good actor but she does seem to have integrity so I don't believe she would choose an "out there" role just to win an oscar like Halle Berry in Monsters Ball. This has received universal good reviews but it's actually pretty average as is Portmans performance.

Fragile Nina is chosen for the lead roll in swan lake however stress and paranoia take it's toll and she becomes increasing delusional.

It's all a bit heavy handed with over the top use of mirror imagery, feathers and shitty talking paintings which is a shame as these overshadow interesting flashes of a doppelganger and some difficult to watch obsessive skin peeling.

I'm sure real world ballerinas will loath the depiction of their world but fuck them this is catty, sleeping your way to the top, pony tail, shoulder shrug, baby jane lesbian cheese.


YES - but for way better pretty girl psycho action check out Repulsion or for a more horrifying self mutilator check out the Piano Teacher

Monsters

Displaced aliens in a mexican safari park

The monsters of the title, huge iridescent cephalopods, only make very brief appearances throughout so it's exciting when they are on screen but this film is concerned with the interaction of the main 2 characters; wealthy tourist Sam and photojournalist Andrew who is charged with escorting her back to the states through alien occupied territory.

Director Gareth Edwards comes from an fx background and like Neil Blomkamp (District 9) he knows how to use cg within it's capabilities and more importantly how to light it.  This is his first feature and it's very impressive considering the low budget.

It's going to be too slow for some viewers and the lack of alien screen time is sure to disappoint people expecting a film like District 9. There's no typical story arc or nicely tied loose ends; not everything is explained and the ending will annoy those who are after all these things but I really enjoyed this and I especially like how the aliens are just messing about doing their own thing in the background.
 
YES - if Terrace Malik directed sci fi he would of made this

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

This David Lynch presents film by Werner Herzog doesn't actually have anything to do with David (except for $) but Werner seems to have absorbed his directing style for this film inspired by true events.  

Surreal imagery and strange dialogue make for a stilted but mesmerising viewing experience. I liked it mostly because of Michael Shannon with his boggle eyes and giant head (also great in Runaways and Boardwalk Empire) His character Brad is obviously mentally disturbed but the people around him are ignoring the fact or simply don't see it.

Apparently killing your mother with a samurai sword in a religious fugue isn't that uncommon and since this film there has been more occurrences, most recently the actor Michael Brea (from Ugly Betty) who decapitated his mother while trying to kill a "demon inside her"


YES - cold heart canyon

Phantasm 4: Oblivion

another dimension, another dimension.

After the first Phantasm, Don made another film every 4 years always ending on a cliffhanger. I have the box set and am watching them one after another which is a nice way to watch them actually, I don't have to wait to find out what happens and the characters start feeling like old friends.

So where were we?   Reggie is being attacked by balls and Mike's gone off to find out why his eyes turned gold. Weirdly the character of Tim the boy has just been erased, they don't even bother killing him off he's gone and never mentioned again.

Mike's tripping out in the desert, developing new powers and changing into something not human. He tries to kill himself but the Tall Man won't let him. He discovers he can materialise dimension gates and does a bit of time travelling.

It's been 12 years since this last film so seems unlikely that there wll be another one with Scrimm, who plays the Tall Man as he's now in his eighties but I wouldn't be surprised to see a remake or reimaginging or whatever the fuck Tim Burton/Marcus Nispel call their vapid projects.

NO - great apocalyptic tone but unless you know these characters you won't care

Phantasm 3: Lord of the Dead

semi colon says it all

After a quick recap we're straight back where we left off in the last film, driving away in the hearse which promptly crashes. Reggie's ok but Mikes unconscious and Liz, who was a main character in the last film, gets her face eaten off by dwarves. Mike recovers in hospital but gets abducted by the Tall Man. Reggie sets out in his trust hemi on a rescue mission accompanied by a silver ball that it actually Mike's dead brother Jody - don't ask - and he soon starts encountering empty towns with empty cemeteries.

This is all getting very familiar now but in a nice soap opera way. I like catching up with Reggie and the Tall Man although Reggie's constant lechering of female characters is wearing a bit thin. Mike is now played by the same actor as the first film which is good and bad. Good because he's not a pretty boy like James LeGros but bad because he has such a distracting nose, really long with a weird line in the end of it.

I like this one better than the 2nd film because Rocky is such a cool character, an ex army nunchuck welding wedge haircut hardarse and it's cool how at the end she just says fuck this I'm out of here and leaves them.

NO - I've mentioned before if the film title has a semi colon in it then it's going to be bad and this film does nothing to disprove my theory.

Phantasm 2

3 years and 11 million dollars later

Mike is now a man, a good looking moody 80s style man, who has just got out of a psychiatric hospital after learning to keep stories of dwarfs, balls and a tall man to himself.

Reggie is bringing Mike home from the hospital when his house blows up as the approach!  they hit the road using Mike's visions to take them to the Tall Man who is back to his old grave robbing, dwarf making tricks.

Don made so much money out of no budget Phantasm that someone pretty much gave him the cash to make the same film again on condition that he replace one of the leads with a well known actor (James LeGros? who?) It's still a lot of fun and retains the enthusiasm of the first film. The Tall Man is such a great creation with his weird white bob haircut and the strange look he does with one eye open and the other squinty while bellowing a threatening "Boy!"

NO - just because you thought it looks awesome doesn't mean you can use the same footage of a house you blew up in the space of 5 minutes for 2 different reasons.

Phantasm

Jason, Freddy, Michael and the Tall Man.

After a funeral Mike notices the undertaker lift the coffin out of the grave single handedly and take it back to the mausoleum. Mike returns later that night to investigate and is attacked by hooded dwarfs and a flying silver ball that can drill into skulls. He convinces his brother Jody and their friend Reggie that somethings up and together they discover that the undertaker isn't human and he's digging up corpses, transforming them into dwarfs and shipping them back to some other dimension.

This all sounds a bit shit but it's handled so competently by Don Coscarelli who wrote and directed this on a tiny budget that you can easily go along for the ride (and what a ride - a black barracuda hemi) with imaginative cg free special effects, awesome theme and mysterious villain this is just as good as Halloween or Friday the 13th but it's also very strange and I think that's what stopped it from becoming as well known as those films.


YES - but just can't make it from B to A

Blow Up

David Hemmings (looking a lot like the boy from the tin drum grown up) is Thomas, a fashion photographer who captures a strange encounter in a park. It's not until later after he plays around with enlarging the photo that he discovers he has taken a photo of a dead body.

He's a bit of a cock but I ended up liking him and you need to because he's in every scene. His fashion shoots are appalling but I love his studio home - black/white/grey an amethyst crystal on his coffee table - cool.

The pace is meandering broken up with some weird scenes a threesome on a giant piece of paper, Thomas diving to answer the phone, a disaffected rock concert and anarchist mime hippies playing mime tennis.

Ultimately the mystery of the photograph goes no where but it underlines the main theme of the film - perception which like memory is personal and mutable. We believe Thomas because we are watching through his eyes but imagine if he showed you the shitty photo and took you to see a dead body that wasn't there - would you believe him?


YES - cold mods

American: The Bill Hicks Story

stay off the fags.

This animated documentary (I found the after effects animation somewhat creepy, old photos of Bill re coloured and inserted into other scenes) tells the story of his comedic beginnings in Houston as a teenager, his love of mushrooms and music, his popularity overseas and his untimely death from cancer at 32.

Bill was smart, charismatic and caring and so were his 90s style black comedy existential rants about Waco, the Persian Gulf war, advertising, abortion, drugs and meeting aliens - he inspired and offended many.

This features his friends and family and also various scenes of his stand up throughout the years.

YES - if you're not familiar with his work this is excellent, if you are it's like looking at an old photo album.