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.

White Lightnin'

Stay off the lighter fluid

Jesco White is a real person made famous by the 1991 documentary the dancing outlaw. The main character is inspired by Jesco, an eccentric tap dancing, lighter fluid sniffing hillbilly - but this film prompty takes a massive departure from reality to religious revenge fantasy.

Carrie Fisher plays his wife and the way they meet in the film is actually true, well according to Jesco, he was hitchhiking and planning to steal the car but when Norma Jean stops to pick him up he falls instantly in love with her and even though she's a lot older than him they marry.

Told mostly in black and white with voice over, this doesn't feel authentic. The Hasil Adkins soundtrack is cool but Elvis Presley would be more fitting.

NO - gothic stereotype

Visioneers

fuck you work.

George Washington has a windowless office job working for the Jeffers corporation. He lives with his self help obsessed wife and a son they never see.

An epidemic of exploding is putting people on edge, no one knows why this is happening but having dreams is one of the symptoms and George is starting to have visions of his namesake. His life coach tries to get him back on track but after he also explodes, George becomes increasingly disillusioned.

This first film by Jared Drake, is not set in our world - there are bizarre toys, neck implants, handsign greetings and a different pronunciation of the word "chaos" but the concerns are familiar. It's a unique satire on work and family life, questioning how we think we should be living compared to how we actually want to live.

YES - brazil with a happy ending

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

Kiss of the Spider Woman

I really like the book by Manual Puig and wanted to see how it translates to screen.

It doesn't.

I'm not entirely sure why not. It's got two very meaty main roles but neither Raul Julia or William Hurt nail them and I think William Hurt got his oscar more for daring to play a queen which back in the 80s was a a bit riske, rather than the quality of his acting.

The film takes place mostly in their shared cell which gives the whole film a very theatrical feeling. Raul is a political prisoner who initially finds Luis's effeminate manner and tendency for escapism difficult to respect however this changes and they become intimate friends.

The spider woman of the title only makes a very brief appearance as the character of one of Luis's film stories that he tells Valentin to pass the time and distract them both from their grim circumstance.

NO - gay shawshank without the escaping

The Runaways

Their music is actually a bit shit but the formation of the band makes for an interesting story.

Masterminded by producer Kim Fowley, The Runaways were a 5 girl band in the 70s who were 15, 16, 17, 17 & 20 years old. We see them practise, play for free, get signed and get big in japan before the unsurprising crash and drug burn of singer Cherie Currie.

Stand outs are Michael Shannon as the hilarious nefarious Fowley and Kirsten Stewart as punky Joan Jett.

There's way too many over styled scenes that look like magazine shoots with lingering static shots of Joan posing smoking at sunrise, smoking in the bath or Cherie with sunlight obscuring her face - but this is director Floria Sigismondi's first feature coming from music videos.

YES - Joan Jett is still going strong and if you're wondering what Cherie is up to these days look no further than - chainsawchick