Films
The Beyond
One of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films, The Beyond is the Italian horror director Fulci's surreal horror masterpiece. The plot is poorly written nor does the story make any real sense. At times the acting is so wooden and the dialogue so silly that you cannot help but laugh out loud, yet all of this can be forgiven if you just allow yourself to feel the atmosphere and allow your mind to soak in the surreal imagery and haunting score by Fabio Frizzi. Some of the imagery in this film is incredible.
A young woman has run out of money and options, everything she has tried in life has failed. Looking for her last chance she inherits an old hotel in New Orleans. The hotel hasn't been used in years. What she doesn't realise is that the cellar in the hotel has been built on the 'beyond' a doorway to hell, a barren wilderness and colourless landscape where the undead walk and breathe.
She meets the local doctor a man who believes in looking only at the logical. He charges around the film looking for sane answers. Demons and zombies and the undead cannot possibly exist. He is the strong brave dependable male who fights the zombies like a cowboy in a western film and is chivalrous and protective of the female character.
As with all Fulci's film the gore is in full effect but its the imagery without gore is what really makes makes this film special. My favourite part is the end of the film where the characters find themselves in a landscape that mirrors a painting in the hotel that she has spent time staring at not knowing that her fate will be to be trapped inside it.
The Midnight Meat Train
Based on one of the best Clive Barker's stories from the 'Books of Blood' this is a great adaptation. It is directed by the Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura, who directed the amazing 'Versus'.
A photographer is trying to make it big and have his photographs displayed in an art gallery, pushed to do something new by the gallery owner he takes his photography in a new direction. He begins to take darker shots at night, shots that depict the gritter side of life, the ugliness of humanity and the brutality. It is during one of his nightly photographic sessions that he comes across the butcher Mahogany. He believes he has stumbled across a serial killer, but has no idea that the butchering and killings have a more sacrificial history that takes one before civilisation existed.
He soon becomes obsessed wtih the subway history and the butcher, unable to concentrate on anything else.
His girlfriend called Maya played brilliiantly by Leslie Gibb tries to stop him. The director takes great pains to show the love Maya feels for him, whenever she is around him she is free and warm and her face lights up like a childs just to see him, she is willing to do anything to save him even if it means she might die herself. Unfortunately this is a hopeless tale like the story. There are no happy endings.
The films darkness mirrors the short story by Barker, human beings are no more than sacrifical food, food for ancient creatures that existed before the city was even created, they go back further than time itself to a primative existence and now they live hidden in an underworld. Unless this creatures are fed the city can not go about its daily business as it has for hundreds of years. The human beings killed by the butcher must be sacrificed in a certain way for the creatures to be happy.
Emotions, love, the blue print of a person that creates individulity are torn away by the creatures who finally use the photographer to take Mahogany's place as their killing machine. Stripping him of his life, existence and the only love of his life, telling him that in the end nothing he feels or thinks matters, they transform him into an empty shell that wanders the city taking sacrifical victims at will. In the last scene we see a photograph of Maya on the wall, she is laughing, she is the only woman he has truly loved but now his existence is over, in a way the director is telling us that he is dead without physically being dead. He is the walking dead.
Videodrome Special Edition Two Disc
Long live the New Flesh
One of my favourite films as a young girl, this is one of the best films in body horror. The Rick Baker-designed special effects in this film are utterly mesmerizing including a love scene with a throbbing gasping television that come to life in the most remarkalbe way. One almost feels as though whoever made this film was deliciously high at the time.The two disc comes with commentary from one of my favourite directors David Cronenberg and Woods and Harry talk as well. Disc 2 is filled with exhaustive "Videodrome" supplementals. "Forging the New Flesh" by filmmaker Michael Lennick is an interesting short on the make-up effects team with interviews of all the key players including Baker
James woods plays Max Renn brilliantly this is his best performance. Max doesn't care about values or people, he doesn't care about approval, confident hedonistic and arrogant he strides through the movie fearlessly not realising the trap he is falling into until it is too late.
Max provides a service with his small tv channel that broadcasts violence and pornography. He is in fact he says providing a service to people, an outlet for people's perverse fantasies.Buying new content his is bored with the usual soft porn on offer, he's looking for something more perverse and dangerous something controversial. His assistant tunes into an illegal channel videodrome that broadcasts torture anoymously. He goes on a mission to find the people behind the illegal station with devastating results.
His assistant is actually being paid to show him the content and is careful never to watch it himself, after only a few views of the torture on videodrome Max begins to hallucinate terribly these hallucinations are what makes this film, he sees himself slapping his assistant, he becomes aroused by images of the woman who he desires on the television. His physical body even opens up to play video tapes. The special effects in this film are utterly incredible. Max becomes nothing more than a toy to manipulate a nightmare for a man of intellect.
During a chat show he meets Nikki a female DJ, both of them are intensely similar people and within five minutes its as though they have known each other years and years. Together they are an explosive cocktail. Nikki likes games especially sexual rough games. He is the kind of person who doesn't need a woman unless its for casual sex, but after five minutes of meeting Nikki he becomes seriously obsessed, even to the point of caring, an emotion that he doesn't usually express. When she shows an interest in videodrome he tells her to stay clear.
One could anyalse this film all day and not come to a full conclusion. It's about sex and dark desires, its about desensitization and how images and technology affect us.
Lost Highway special edition by David Lynch
Deliciously surreal this is one of my ultimate favourite films. Trying to analyse the story of Lost Highway is a difficult and almost impossible task but one doesn't need to have the answers to enjoy this film. Watching Lost Highway is an experience, seductive, dark and sexy, you feel you are watching a strange piece of art come to life in the characters moves and conversations, but you also feel as though you have entered a strangers fragmented seductive dream.
The sentences spoken at times seem hallucinatory and dreamlike.
It's about desire and obsession, its also a film that depicts human deciet, telling us that sometimes people are fooled by others into relationships before realising too late that the person in question is not the person they thought. That they have been duped. The reality of waking up to this hellish reality is a bitter poison to swallow and has lasting consequences.
When the young mechanic finally realises who the woman he has ended up with really is, the horror is palpable. He can see she is nothing that he imagined. His disgust is both with himself for being fooled and at her for what she is, a woman who consumes all that she touches without really giving a thing.
Throughout the film fear pervades, the fears that keep us awake at night, the ones we don't tell anyone come alive and reach out to destroy us. The imagery is lucious watching it is a little like tasting an exotic fruit that you immediately want more of.
Kairo - by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
I have seen this film twice, both times alone, which is amusing considering the subject matter. Not everyone would enjoy the darkness in this film! In fact after just thirty minutes my husband described it as depressing!
Kairo (pulse) is more than a Horror film, it explores many underlying themes, including loneliness and isolation in modern society and the fear of death.
At the beginning of the film Taguchi a boy in his twenties commits suicide. When his other friends are sat around the table discussing his death one of them says ‘he suddenly just wanted to die, I get that way sometimes’. This unusual sentence spoken by his friend sets up the tone of the entire film. It's certainly not something you find in a western film. The film is steeped in an atmosphere of dread that is constantly in the background. Utter longing emanates from all the characters.
When one lonely boy sets up his internet connection to reach out to someone and make a human connection, he finds himself dragged into a nightmare that is beyond his comprehension, he also finds a girl who he enjoys spending time with but all of this comes too late.
Kurosawa suggests that life in the modern world is lonely and it can be hard to find someone to really connect to. Even when we are surrounded by people and friends he puts forward the idea that making a special connection is extremely rare.
People begin to dissapear suddenly and life becomes fleeting. As this happens the characters begin to say things they may never have spoken in the past to each other, their emotions once subdued and restrained push to the surface. It is said in the film that ghosts that can no longer inhabit their own realm and so they are pushing into the world of the living. One ghost proclaims that death is 'eternal lonliness' yet many of the characters in the film live a ghostlike existance themselves and can identify with the ghosts they are terrified of.
There are some amazing haunting scenes in this film, when one of the characters finds himself in an empty arcade, the only other presence a shadowy ghost that seems to suffocate the very air that he is breathing. When one of the girls evaporates before her friends eyes, and her friend is left reaching into her trying to grasp the pieces of her that spin around the room and are soon blown away by the wind.
This is an amazing film, deeply complex and exceptionally dark. Intelligent and thought provoking, it is an astounding film one of my favourite horror films.
Neverland
Loosely based on the life of author J.M.Barrie who wrote the novel Peter Pan. The film begins in London in 1903 where Barrie is stuck in an unhappy marriage of convenience with a cold and distant wife who offers him very little love and affection and is obsessed with status. Barrie is also struggling to write anything interesting, his latest play being a failure, at least to himself.
Going for one of his daily walks in the park he accidently meets the Llewelyn Davies family, four fatherless boys and a recently widowed mother Sylvia. It is this chance encounter with the woman Sylvia that forever changes Barries life. He begins to laugh more and enjoy life in her company. Syliva is free spirited and doesn't really care about what others think. They find an amazing connection with each other. With her he finds himself and begins to write brilliantly. He sneaks out to meet her more and more, eventually spending hours with her at home until ultimately his entire life focus changes, his opinions change. When his wife and friends tell him to end the friendship he refuses and for the first time in the film we see his strength of character. Although in love neither can tell each other but as she becomes sick he does finally tell her what she already knew. They stay close friends until the end of her life which unfortunately happens earlier than expected.
It is with Sylvia who is tragically dying that he tells the story of Neverland, a place that has always been in his mind since he suffered a great tragedy in his childhood that has haunted him his entire life. It is the boys that help him pen the story 'Peter Pan' bringing the story and play to life. I enjoyed this film immensely, I think it says so much about how one event can change a persons life. JM Barrie cared little about the gossip and opinion of society when he decided to spend most of his time with Sylvia and her children. Although tragic in the end there is great hope in this film. Did J.M.Barrie meet Sylvia in the park by accident or was it destined, this is one of the questions that the film poses.
This film was both enchanting and magical, Johnny Depp gives one of his best performances as the intelligent and imaginitive author.
The Little Girl who Lived Down the Lane
The Little Girl who Lives Down the Lane
My favourite film as a young girl is now available on dvd for the first time. This film is a rare forgotten gem - many people don't even know this film exists, but it does and it is a wonderful film.
The story is about a young teenage girl who lived happily with her father, a writer. Her father became seriously ill and died at home without anyone knowing. He leaves his daughter money and access to a bank account so that she can live by herself and not become like 'everybody else' in society. She lives in the house her father rented, keeping her secret hidden from everyone. She doesn't attend school and lives an isolated existance that is strangely adult even though she is a teenager, she is an extremely intelligent and a confident young girl who has an air of maturity.
The obnoxious neighbour is played by Martin Sheen (who also gives a fantastic performance). He stands in the way of her happiness, while she wants to be left alone, he refuses to allow her any peace. He has an unhealthy eye for young underage girls and he begins to blackmail her hoping to persude her to give sexual favours, unfortunately for him she is far too clever.
The girl meets and becomes friends with a crippled boy who spends all of his spare time being a paid magician at parties. He completely accepts her for who she is most probably because he knows what it feels like to be different, he is crippled after having polio as a child.
Although the character in this film actually kills the horrible people he is viewed with great sympathy, you cannot help but like her.
I like this film I think because it has a very unusal viewpoint, that perhaps being in society and doing everything you are supposed to do as you grow up isn't always a good thing, that it can strip you of your individuality. We are taught rules at an early age from our parents if we are lucky enough to have a stable family life. These rules are meant to protect us, all around us there are rules in school, in college, in relationships we are told what is right, what we should do, how we should act. Without rules everything in life would fall into chaos. But the film suggests that living too enclosed within someone elses or societies rules can suffocate and stifle who we are. Also are all the rules right? As human beings we are complex emotionally and the rules don't always fit the complexity of our minds or situations.
Perhaps it's only when you step into the grey areas of life instead of the black and white can you really find something special. The film seems to say break the walls of rules and reach out and do something or say something you want to.
It's sometimes worth the risk to break a rule and do something or say something you want to.
It is based on the intriguing play by Laird Koenig.
21 Grams
"There are so many things that have to happen for two people to meet. I show them that numbers are a mystery bigger then us. The number of events that must happen for two complete strangers to meet. There is no greater mystery then that"
Paul Rivers
Written by the remarkable author Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, this is a remarkable moving film. The title '21 grams' is based on the concept that we all lose 21 grams in weight at the moment of death. The story focuses on three characters whose lives collide in one tragic moment, this is a story of faith, loss and overcoming great tragedy, is it possible? Can we find redemption in moments of crisis? When cruel fate decides to step into our lives and take away those we love or hand us an incurable illness, is there hope? This film is a study of all of these questions. Cristina's pain is raw, and you can feel her agony and struggle as the story progresses. We watch the three character's stories unfold in a non-linear chronology very much in the vein of films like Memento directed by Christopher Nolan . Sean Penn and Naomi Watts are at their best in this film, this has to be one of the greatest Sean Penn performances ever.
Christina has lost her husband and daughters to a drunk driver, Paul who is dying and waiting for a heart transplant receives her husbands heart and a chance for life. He searches for the name of the donar to thank the family and meets the donars wife Christina. In an unhappy and destructive relationship with a woman he does not love he finds in Christina something he has always searched for his entire life, as a mathematician he explains to Christina the amazing odds that they ever met at all. Both of them meet at a time they are very unhappy and they find a kind of redemption from the tragedy of their lives.
The entire film is about redemption and how it can be found in the most tragic circumstances sometimes by chance.
3-Iron
Kim-Ki Duk is a director that has a troubling relationship with his own country, his films have been criticized by many South Korean film critics. I look forward to watching his films as soon as they are released, everything that he does is interesting and unique, you know when you are seeing Kim-ki Duk film.
He invites you into his vision and you cannot help but be affected even if the film does not work on all levels. Although not a masterpiece, 3-iron is such a great pleasure to watch, most of the scenes are filmmed in complete silence, a silence without words that cradles the greatest and gentlest of emotions, the young couple even fall in love soundlessly. The love is unspoken between them, although neither speak it in words it is in the room, the the air between them. In this world without words both characters find a safe haven, a place of beauty that is far from the noisy talkative and abusive world they seem to be running from, the girl from an abusive marriage, the boy from a unhappy existence.
The boy breaks into houses when the owners are on vacation and changes things around, it might be a painting or a photograph. Then one day he breaks into the house of a wealthy man but instead of finding it empty he finds a young girl with bruises on her face. The scene is compelling as neither of them say anything to each other, the entire film mesmerizes. There is something achingly beautiful about some of the scenes in this film, there is a tenderness between the main characters that would not exist in the same way were they constantly conversing. Perhaps we should all say less and express ourselves in other ways. Then again perhaps not.....
This is what the director says about the title of the film. - 3-iron is the least used club in a golf bag, the image of this club parallels that of an abandoned person or empty house. It is also the tool with which Tae-Suk rescues Sun hwa.
Dark City - Science Fiction directed by Alex Proyas
This is now one of my favourite science fiction films. The 'strangers' as they are called in the film have created a physical city inhabited by humans and built from their memories. By completely changing the humans memories and placing them in new lives while they sleep, the strangers believe that they can find the true essence of a human being, and ultimately the secret to everlasting life. Why do people make the choices they do in life? Why do some people follow love and others hide from it?
Are we simply genetics and flesh and blood or is there something else, a spirit, a soul?
The strangers want to know the answers to these questions and everything about being human. They observe the humans in the city as though they were laboratory rats.
One man called Murdoch rejects the memory implant. He sees the city being changed by the strangers, his fellow humans asleep. Murdoch also has great power and he can tune, change his reality at will, something no one else can do. Murdoch continually searches through the film for a place called 'Shell Beach' a pleasant memory from a childhood he never had, the memory was created by the strangers but it haunts him. In the end when he finds that this childhood memory is only an illusion he creates this beach by sheer will alone and stands staring at it at the end of the film, it is at this very moment that he not only conquers the strangers but he also finds hope. If all of this sounds very complicated, it is. The entire film questions so many things about life and the way we think. It challenges us to question our very existence. The cinematography is incredible and the film has an amazing atmosphere.
2046 Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
I rarely ever watch films about love, but Wong Kar-Wai is the exception.
In both of his films - In the Mood for Love and 2046 the director focuses on the agonies, pain and complications of love. In both films the director says that true love does exist and he believes in it, but it is extremely rare and when you find it you will not be able to keep it, due to societies rules or even time itself. He says that life is short and you will be lucky if you find love even once in your life. As for the other relationships we have in life he tells us that these are very rarely based on love but on fear, the fear of being alone. Are we all sat with people we don't really love, yes his his answer most of the time. A dark but compelling thought.
In both films he repeats the story of secrets.
There was once a time when a person would whisper their secret into a hole and then seal it up forever. In the film 'In mood for love' a man falls in love with a married woman, she is also in love with him but they can never be together because of the time the characters live in. At the end of the film the man whispers his love for her into a hole and covers it over. He goes ahead with his life but he is changed forever and we know he will never be fully content in another relationship - he will always carry his love for her in his heart. Every gesture between the two in the Mood for Love is erotic without being sexual. Wong Kar-Wai focuses on their hands touching just for a moment and the sexual tension between the pair.
In 2046 when the character finally feels love for a woman he hides it and cannot say the words to her due to the impossiblity of the situaton and his own fears. Love always becomes a secret and something fearful in Wong kar-Wai's films. The director is even more cynical about love in his second film.
The man is played by the excellently brooding Tony Leung. A mysterious train takes along travelers in search of their lost memories. The lush direction and aching moments of nostaligia are incredibly pleasurable to watch. Love is not easy to find in 2046, Tony Leung drifts from relationship to relationship never finding what he wants in the women he dates and sleeps with. He cannot speak to any of these women about anything really interesting. The women in the film seemed to be merely pretty dolls without intelligence. They serve a sexual need but that is all they serve in his life. Although it is obvious that this affects him because he is not a happy man.
Finally by accident he meets a young talented writer, she is exceptionally intelligent and different from the other women he has known in every way. He falls completely in love with her in the shortest time. But he does not tell her out of fear nor can he be with her because of the way the Japanese and Chinese marriages are arranged. In the scenes with her he is a completely different man than he is with others. He takes every opportunity he can to spend time with her and it is with her that he has his happiest moments. Even more so once being a selfish man he changes and for once becomes affectionate and giving.
The film poses many questions. Does love actually exist in the way we want it to? And do we always long for something we can never have? When we finally find what we have been looking for our whole lives can we always tell the person? This last question is the most agonising put forward. If you feel it Wong kar-Wai seems to say even if you can't be with the person you should at least tell the person and not die with a secret.
The director leaves us with the impression that the main character, a man who cannot easily be satisfied by the ordinary or the normal arrangments in society, will end his life without satisfaction or contentment. And he questions if any of us will really have what we really want in our lives. At the end Tony Leung stares into space looking dejected and disappointed with life as though he has lived for so long that he is tired of seeing the same things. The scenes set in the future on the train seem to suggest that the short time we are given in life is not enough to find exactly what he is searching for and even if a man does find it he cannot keep it. He needs more than one lifetime to be able to be with the person he loves.
This film is worth watching for the atmosphere and beauty of Wong Kar-Wai's direction, I'm not sure that the director's story is completely whole by the end but there are moments of pure art that you cannot help but soak up and enjoy, his ideas and his thoughts linger long after the credits have rolled.
The Beat my Heart Skipped
by the French director Jacques Audiard
Tom's sadness and desperateness and his raging heart cries out in every movement and act of frustrated rage he expresses. He needs to escape a life of drudgery and thuggery, the only life he has ever known since a child. Romain Duris has been greatly praised for his role in this film and he is marvellous to watch. But like most people caught in his situation from a young age no one helps him. The attitude of the people who see his suffering is to turn the other cheek and not get involved.
As a young adult we see the brutality of his life and all that he suffers on his own. There is no hope in Tom's life its a life of pure survival and nothing else.
He has to act tough in every situation in life in order to survive but this is not everything he is. There is another side to Tom, one that he keeps hidden from everyone for fear of being viewed as weak by his brutal father who seems to have spent his life using his fists to get through the days. he spends so much time hiding part of himself from the world for fear of being hurt. Because hurt is all he knew as a child. He cannot talk to people not properly he locks his emotions away and shuts down any feelings of love for fear of rejection a word he has spent his whole life learning.
Once he turns thirty he has very little time to change things. He is scared of becoming old and living the same way as his father of becoming like his family. Once many years earlier he could play the piano and he wonders why he didn't carry on playing, Tom is full of regrets. One day he is introduced to a chinese girl and she is offering piano lessons so that she can stay in France. Even when he loses his temper around her she seems to accept it silently and patiently, she provides a safe haven for him and he begins to slowly pull away from the type of life he has been living and the people he has lived amongst his whole life.
It is through the kindness and patience of this one girl that Tom finds a way out of the emptiness of his life.
Escape and redemption are the subjects that the director chooses to focus on, how does one escape a way of life when it is all they have ever known? There is one way and that is to become someone else entirely but this comes at a price. The person you leave behind to join another part of society still exists. Tom begins to change the way he dresses the way he acts, he becomes an actor and eventually no one would recognize that this boy came from the gutter. The one trump card Tom holds is his intelligence. Elegant well versed and confident he finds an escape ticket and takes it.
When Tom stands amongst the wealthy and affluent near the end of the film, we know he has escaped, but we are also shown that his past is still there, it breathes beside him like a silent ghost. The director uses one violent act to express this idea, It will always be part of him but the the most important thing is the freedom at the end.