Thursday 29 April 2010

Extract


An attrociously unlikeable collection of characters manoeuvre themselves into situations that only serve to amplify their detestability. Throw in Ben Affleck displaying the comic timing of a turd, and you have a film that caused my hatred of humanity to grow to such an extreme that the next time I read of some terrible genocide I will probably just sit back and applaud.

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Waltz With Bashir [Vals Im Bashir]


Astounding animated documentary about memories of war.
Its reticence to discuss a bigger picture verges on propaganda by the end, but who cares when a film is this captivating and visually arresting.

Monday 26 April 2010

The Informant!


A far too understated knot of confusion that plays out like a Coens movie only without any snappy dialogue, unique characters or a sense of fun.

Sunday 25 April 2010

Awakening Of The Beast [O Ritual dos Sádicos/O Despertar Da Besta]


A doctor uses Coffin Joe movies to demonstrate the link between drug use and depravity. This is obviously an excuse to show a significant amount of drug use and depravity, yet there is an intelligence at it's core as the director also uses scenes to put his own films on trial and to pass comment on the state of Brazillian cinema in the seventies. Then the whole thing suddenly spirals into a fucked up, truly demented, technicolour meltdown.
King.

Saturday 24 April 2010

Harry Brown


Weird schizophrenic addition to the 'Old Man Being Violent' sub-genre which would appear to be trying its best to be both social commentary as well as an octogenarian remake of Death Wish.
It's easy to tell where you are though, you're in social commentary when there's teenagers using the word 'cunt' in agressive conversations with policemen, and Death Wish where any attempts at subtlety have been stripped away to a pure excess of drugs & violence which will usually end with a lot of weird looking CGI blood shooting about the place.

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer


Carefully replicates the joyous retardation of the original film, then builds upon it by intricately weaving in a generous flourish of total shit.

Sunday 18 April 2010

Mirror [Zerkalo]


In a bad mood you'd describe this as incomprehensible crap where everybody has a face like an old man's ballsack, but Tarkovsky puts me in a good mood and so the enforced absence of plot is an obvious mechanism allowing the brain to be enraptured by a plethora of oneiric images which, to sum them up, would require the use of some meaningless phrase such as 'pure cinema'.

Toy Story


A groundbreaking piece of work due to the leaps it took in animation and story telling.
Does not at any point rely on being a story about a boy wanting his dad to love him and so in terms of modern CG kids films it manages to be retroactively groundbreaking too. Modern CG kids filmmakers take note.

Friday 16 April 2010

Bad Biology


Totally insane, trashy, art school hybrid of soft porn and horror about a girl who has seven clitorises and is addicted to giving birth to freak babies which she concieves within two hours of intercourse. The story then goes on to describe her chance meeting with a man who has been ritually injecting his dick with animal steroids causing it to grow to two feet in length and develop a conciousness of its own.
Definitely unique.

Thursday 15 April 2010

Bronson


Utterly compelling biopic of a man whose reaction to nearly everything is to try and smash its teeth in, suffused throughout with dark humour and outright surrealism.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

No Distance Left To Run


Very superb and absolutely lovely documentary about four blokes and their slow realisation that being friends is ace and everything else, everything else is totally irrelevant.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

The Strange World Of Coffin Joe [O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Caixão]


A portmanteau effort introduced by Coffin Joe in his own inimitable way.
The Dollmaker is a standard Tales From The Crypt type of thing.
Tara (Obsession) is a strange attempt at making necrophilia arty.
Ideology is basically Saw, but a balls-out mental version.
King.

Sunday 4 April 2010

Clash Of The Titans [3D]


The only thing authenticly recreated from the original movie is the sense of lavish preposterousness in this adventure about a time when Gods ruled all the CGI, and men only had powers of toe-curlingly bad acting.
The men don't like this imbalance one bit so they send Avatar off on an adventure with a person who looks like The Rock with a terminal illness. On their way they kill a giant CGI Medusa with a bit of help from The Predator and then Avatar goes on to play Quidditch in an exploding city whilst being chased by the Rancor Monster.
Silly.

Friday 2 April 2010

Acacia


Stultifying shit whose twist is to reveal that the only mildly interesting bit was left out so it could be shown at the end, by which point I had lost patience, interest and the will to live in an impressive triple whammy of bollocks.

Blood: The Last Vampire


I'm not entirely convinced that this counts as a film.
If it is a film, then it's one where they forgot to include a beginning bit and an end bit, and these are bits I would consider quite important in the making of a film.