Change Your Image
SC-20
Reviews
Freedom Fields (2018)
A great achievement
Saw this tonight at Glasgow Film Festival and was blown away. I was so invested in the journey of these incredible, inspiring women. A very nuanced film that offers a unique perspective on Libya in the years following the Arab Spring. Highly recommended.
Patchwork (2015)
Body horror with a twist is an absolute hoot
When is a body horror not a body horror? Maybe when the female protagonist (technically three protagonists, stitched together by a guy with a circular saw and a staple gun) is reanimated and promptly dons a practical lab coat.
Despite this being a film about body image – or maybe because of that – the camera (held by a male director) does not linger on bodies, preferring to explore minds.
It's also a hoot (at one point literally), not nearly as gory as you might imagine, and very well crafted.
I'm away to load some "rampage" music onto my iPod...
Dark Nature (2009)
Not for the faint-hearted!
Don't be fooled by the low budget - there are plenty of gory surprises in this bloody thriller about a family holiday gone horribly wrong, as well as a sprinkling of red herrings and twists.
Director Marc de Launay contrasts the shocks with lingering shots of the deceptively peaceful scenery (the setting is Cumbria but it was filmed in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland), but the accompanying score never allows the edge-of-the-seat tension to drop.
This is one for the genre fans - unlike in Hollywood slashers, there are close-up shots of the wounds and spurting blood. Not to mention a hands-over-the-eyes finale involving the optimistic setting of an ancient animal trap...
Creep (2004)
Excellent film - and the scariest I've seen in a multiplex
It takes a lot to scare me, but I screamed my head off watching Creep. And not because of cheap shocks or scares, but because the film is so expertly constructed. I haven't seen anything as terrifying outside of horror festivals. Creep combines the menace of modern Japanese horrors with the gore of the old Italian shockers, but with cutting-edge special effects and no unintended laughs. The script is spot-on. A lot of the IMDb critics seem to have a problem with the central character - one even refers to her as a 'cheap slut' which doesn't make much sense to me (and is pretty offencive given what her character endures). I don't think that Kate is an unlikeable character at all - she behaved in exactly the same way I would if faced with her situation, bearing in mind the only individuals she comes across in the station are drug addicts, a rapist and a cowardly dead weight. Unlike with many horror films, I wasn't constantly thinking 'don't go in there!' or 'run the other way!' Though there is plenty of gore in the film, there's also a lot of very clever camera work and highly original scare-tactics (the torch switch-on in particular is very effective). The plot, though relatively straightforward, is water-tight. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no supernatural element. The writer/director is clearly a very clever guy, but judging by a lot of the posts here his audience are a little less sharp. This isn't just a great horror film - it's a great film full stop. But it's scary, and there is one very VERY nasty scene so if you don't like bloody and horrible violence then definitely don't watch it. It's all justified by the plot though. And if you think about it properly you can even sympathise with the Creep. Which is more than can be said for Leatherface et al. Highly recommended.
Serendipity (2001)
Terrible
This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. It's supposed to be a romantic comedy but both of the lead characters are utterly charmless and unsympathetic. The views of Manhattan and jazzy soundtrack are the only reasons we watched beyond the first 15 minutes.
25th Hour (2002)
Good performances, terrible film
Other reviewers have commented that 25th Hour 'makes you think'. What is there left to think about after Spike Lee has hammered home every single point he touches on? Perhaps how shallow and pointless the film is. Perhaps it in indeed a complex analogy and each character represents a different nation, but that doesn't make it a good film, merely a self-indulgent waste of two hours
The Rules of Attraction (2002)
not great
The Rules Of Attraction was never going to be an easy novel to adapt for the screen, by Roger Avary has made some highly dubious changes to Ellis's characters. Perhaps because he feels that the audience won't be able to stomach a dumb, boring, promiscuous Lauren, he has completely re-invented the character and transferred all of her bad qualities on to her blonde American Pie-style roommate. James Van der Beek as Sean Bateman spends most of the film glowering at everyone and generally being an American Psycho, while in the book he is a much more rounded - if selfish and narcissistic - character, and nothing like his infamous brother Patrick. Victor, the star of Ellis's far superior Glamorama, is represented here as a camp, over-excited idiot - miles away from the description in the books. There are some great moments - the boys dancing on the bed to George Michael's Faith, Dick's scene and Victor's whistle-stop tour of Europe, which nicely captures those passages in the book - but any director who bigs himself up within the first 5 minutes of his own film is going to have his work cut out from then on.