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BLEACHEDC
Reviews
I Get Knocked Down (2021)
A worthy addition to the pantheon of punk documentaries
From a squat in Leeds, to finding the eyes of the world upon them...but what does one do when all that's over, and the dust settles?
What did it mean, if anything? Did they sell out? Can anyone involved still make a difference? Can one find integrity and peace as an old radical in this foul age?
This honest, fun, and ultimately moving documentary asks these questions and more, mostly of singer Dunstan Bruce, but the rest of the band also get their say.
Along the way others such as Crass's Penny Rimbaud and director Ken Loach also voice their opinions. The newest generation of angry young punks also turn up to take the torch.
For anyone interested in punk, the 90's, activism, or just simply getting older with some pride and a sense of relevance, this documentary is for you. It was certainly for me - good stuff!
Time to break out those old vinyls!
Aracne (2023)
Strange, poetic, dark, and beautiful
I saw this last night as part of the 'Severed Limbs' film festival, at which our own short film was also playing.
Aracne is a mood piece that is all imagery, music, and artistic expression. The narrative, such as it is, depicts a woman/creature preparing two corpses in the manner of a spider.
This sparse, four minute film really connected with me - it's how I like my art: a dark edge, but nothing too obvious, with elements of elegiac beauty, and a theme that is consistent throughout, but open to interpretation.
The music here deserves special mention, as it fits with and enhances the imagery perfectly. I can't imagine the imagery without the music, and vice versa.
I'd love to see the director's other short film, having watched this one.
Devs (2020)
Genuinely bewildered by the bad reviews.
I was hooked and intrigued by Devs from a point early on, and found myself mentally nourished and emotionally satisfied in a way I haven't experienced for some time, come the end of the series. Now, series' are not my format; it's just not often that I get on with them. That this blew me away as much as any recent well crafted film has done says much.
Hence my utter surprise at some of the awful reviews here.
Clearly this is one that splits audiences, and perhaps I should have expected that: Devs is an intelligent, existential sci-fi that extrapolates on some of the more bizarre avenues of current science. Some of it is hard to get one's head around, and is also counter intuitive when set against our own interactions with the world. That being said, all the answers you are looking for are answered within the narrative. If you can comprehend those counter intuitive scientific concepts, there's nothing much here that shouldn't make sense.
On a technical level the cinematography is adept and rather beautiful. The score is a veritable soundscape of unconventional surprises, and the acting is mostly solid. On the latter, much has been made of the lead's talents, or lack thereof, but personally I found her appropriately quirky and odd, as indeed might be suited to the role.
As to accusations of Devs being pretentious in style, well, anything dealing with the utter strangeness of the aforementioned concepts requires an equally strange style, in my opinion.
In short, I cannot recommend this show highly enough. A triumph.
Dance of the Dead (2008)
How NOT to do it....
I'm not going to go into full critique mode here; instead I'll content myself with a warning to the curious: DON'T DO IT!!!! Normally I'm a champion of low budget indie horror, and I love zombie flicks in general, but believe me, DOTD is no Return Of The Living Dead, and is a million miles away from Re-animator. Even Zombie Strippers (which I liked in spite of all of it's faults) blew this right out of the water.
As for the plethora of glowing recommendations, well it has been suggested on IMDb's boards that bulk posting and rating by those with a vested interest are at least partially responsible. I don't normally go in for conspiracy theories and rumour, but I can't think of any other reason for anyone rating/reviewing this positively.
Disturbia (2007)
Completely mediocre
This film was utterly average. I had no wish to write a review for the IMDb or anywhere else, as forgettable things should not be dwelt upon, however, I was genuinely surprised to see that Disturbia seemed to be receiving excellent reviews on this site, so felt the balance should be redressed somewhat.
As stated I was puzzled at the glowing reviews - I can only assume that most were written by under eighteens, as anyone over that age should be groaning and squirming in their seats approximately every five minutes or so at how obvious and mundane this allows itself to get. Whether it's the clichéd love element, the goofy but lovable sidekick, the lashings of teen angst, the bad decisions of the characters, the familiar psycho, or, well, too many other aspects to mention, this is never anything other than by the numbers.
I suppose if your a teenager and like Buffy, Dawson's Creek, and Scream this might work great for you. For me at the grand old age of thirty four it was simply boring.
The Devil's Rejects (2005)
Fun, but with an agenda by the director....
My views were unfortunately divided by the time the credits began to roll on this one.
On the plus side it's an exciting and lurid ride full of bizarre characters and nasty violence. Great.
On the other hand I felt a strong nagging sensation that Zombie had made a real effort to exploit me and everyone else in the audience: He had sought to 'achieve' most deliberately and on purpose what Natural Born Killers had done by accident, that is to glamorise and glorify the psychos and their actions in such a way as to incite furor in the moral guardian/pro censorship brigade.
To me this was just a cynical and exploitative career move executed with all the subtlety of a sledge hammer to the back of the head.
As stated I was split between enjoyment and annoyance at about a 50/50 ratio. However after reading some of the posts on the message boards for this flick I think the scales are tipping in favour of irritation. We actually have people here hailing Zombie as a Genius and this film as GREAT. It seems that prior to release Zombie asserted that his work was a comment on the nature of violence, an exploration of the themes therein. Clearly this has been lapped up.
Personally I'm incredulous: the parallels in tone, style and even narrative with Natural Born Killers are pretty precise. A platform from which numerous blatant plays for notoriety and outrage are made, not least in the Thelma And Louise type ending, all of which are insultingly obvious.
Now I know many fans of DR will at this point be thinking "well he just couldn't deal with the raw handling of the subject matter". The truth is though I've been a fan of extreme cinema for almost two decades, and own more brutal films than most people have had hot dinners!
If you want films that explore the nature of violence and serial killer pathology watch Henry: Portrait Of A serial Killer, Funny Games, or A Short Film About Killing.
If you want something in a similar vein to DR but with more heartfelt honesty to it go for The Manson Family by director Jim Van Bebber, a retina raping tour De force that manages to make one or two concise observations on the aforementioned subjects in between copious lashings of psychedelic sex and violence.
Brave New World (1998)
Brave new adaptation
Okay, I realize that I'm probably going to get labeled as either a moron or a heretic for this, but I'm not going to let that put me off!
Y'see, the fact is I LOVED this version of Huxley's classic!!!
The main reason for contempt aimed at this film appears to concern the matter of deviation from the original text.
Firstly, it is almost always necessary when adapting literary material, and this is the case here. Secondly, the alterations are not that severe. The only real changes pertain to character (oh, and the admittedly fluffy pink ending which appears to have been pinned on as an afterthought, I'll give you that one): Marx and Lenina are fleshed out, in that they develop the ability to learn and evolve, which in the book is impossible. Helmholtz is removed as his purpose in the book is fulfilled here by Marx in the aforementioned capacity. John is rendered here more mentally stable and exhibits none of the religious fervor for guilt and self flagellation.
Right, so why were these changes necessary?
In the study version of the text, the notes state "Thus however tempting it may be to base a reading of brave new world on a sympathetic identification with the characters, it would be a distortion of the novel to do so." It also postulates that the "characters are static, incapable of learning, changing and developing in the way real people do".
Now, these things may well be fine in a book, but in a film the medium requires precisely the kind of 'sympathetic identification' missing from the text if it is to be enjoyed by any kind of audience outside of, perhaps, the art-house crowd. Moreover, characters in films NEED to evolve in a way that is not perhaps required in a literary equivalent. It is simply a matter of adapting format to work successfully.
As for John, and again with reference to the study text, Huxley himself states "...the most serious defect in the story, which is this, the savage is offered only two alternatives, an insane life in Utopia...(or that) his native Penetente-ism reasserts its authority and he ends in maniacal self torture and suicide." He goes on to assert "if I were to rewrite the book, I would offer the savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity"
The alterations to John's character not only serve the aforementioned necessities when converting the story to celluloid, but address Huxley's own misgivings about the direction the story arc took.
Basically, the changes are justified.
As to the socio economic and eugenic details in Huxleys work - the things that made it so important, well 95% of them are in there. Some are slightly updated, but essentially they are identical. The only missing ingredients that I spotted were the Bokanovskyfication of human embryo's, and the erotic play amongst children.
The former perhaps should have been utilized, but the latter, well, they'd have NEVER gotten away with that.
All in all, and given the obvious budgetary restraints clearly present, I believe this to be a faithfully spirited, valid interpretation of a book that was always going to be incredibly difficult to film.
King of the Ants (2003)
The toughest most uncompromising US film in years!
Stuart Gordan's new flick King Of The Ants is totally amazing!
It's not a horror film in the strictest sense, more a horror film in the same way as Deadbeat At Dawn and Funny Games were horrors, ya see?
Indeed don't go expecting another Reanimator guys and gals, because this couldn't be any more differant to Gordan's previous work. What you get here is grittiness, nastiness and nihilism. In fact King Of The Ants has so much of the latter that it could be compared to All Night Long 3 in its subtextual observations on human beings and their worth....
Don't be put off though, this film's virtually perfect other than a few ill advised hallucination sequences that look, unfortunately, like something from a cheesy rock video. Anyhow, I won't say anymore, don't wanna spoil the suprise. GO CHECK OUT THIS SLEDGEHAMMER OF A MOVIE!
Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000)
The anti - showgirls.
First of all cudos to the people involved with this flick for trying something a bit different: it was almost entirely improvised, both by the actors/actresses and by the crew.
So, that good idea aside, is it any good?
Well, it's the complete opposite of Showgirls, so that's a great start! All exploitation aspects are kept to a minimum, of course to some degree such elements are inherent, unfortunately.
Characters are incredibly well brought to life and explored, to the point where the stripping scenes become annoying and you just wanna get back to the protagonist's character arcs. Hey, I'm a red blooded male too, so if I'm saying this, well, that has to be testament to its power don't you think?
I found it extremely refreshing how none of the sub plots are really finished off, you are NOT spoon fed. You are given enough information to fill in the blanks, and that's it. And you know what - that was nice, it was brave, and I appreciated it.
A lot is conveyed subtly, with looks, or with how a person in the back ground is reacting. There's a couple of stripping scenes in which the came ra actually focusses almost exclusively on the girl's face. The first scene is very short, probably less than a minute. The chick's expression is amazing - like she's only hanging on to her sanity by a thread, so cold and broken, fantastically conveyed. The second intance is longer, and is genuinely heart rending. No words or additional explanation is required for either scene. Cinema at its best.
Now for the faults.
The characters are, superficially, cliches. You've got the stupid but nice stripper. The jaded and hard stripper. The new girl. The abusive rock star boyfriend etc. However, these things are easily overlooked as they are painted in such a realistic manner.
As the aim here was realism I would NOT have introduced a character that was a contract killer! That said, the film almost makes up for this in *sploiler* the moment when he recieves a lap dance. Both stripper and killer just want to connect with another human being here, which they can't, and the scene is most poignant.
Finally, the unremitting bleakness expererienced by all characters herein does not ring entirely true. I've been to strip clubs (admittedly in the UK so maybe it's a cultural thing) and the girls are usually bright eyed and chirpy, with plenty going on outside of their line of work. They were all making a bloody good wage too, which certainly seemed to put smiles on their faces! Again though, it was all done so well, with such heart and genuine depth, that I can't really complain.
A much underrated movie.
Deathwatch (2002)
Nearly extremely impressive, but just not quite! - Spoilers
First of all - PLEASE DISREGARD THE VEHEMENCE SO FAR DIRECTED AT THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!
It is most emphatically NOT the worst film you've ever seen, and the acting is perfectly adequate!
Most (not all) negative reviews seem to have stemmed from a lack of understanding of what was presented: 'what was this, war film, horror, sci-fi?', 'Why and how did they all end up lost in the middle of a battle?', 'Why was Jamie Bell's character so reticent to shoot anyone?'. All these questions and most others posed by contributers are more than satisfactorily resolved throughout the course of the movie, though, it must be said, the answers are NOT spoon fed Hollywood style! Perhaps that was the problem.
I particularly liked the suggestion that it was the horror of that particular war itself that was the malevolent force dispatching the characters. WW1 in the trenches apparently set a new definition for horror, and it was a nice idea to make that somehow a collective, focussed enemy in the film, as if the madness of that point in time had coalesced into something else, something worse, and that further violence, even in retaliation, only strengthened it...
However, just when I was getting very impressed, it all fell through. The double pronged twist at the end of the film ruined the good groundwork layed before it. The first twist I spotted about 3 mins in, and hoped they wouldn't follow it through, due to it's derivitiveness and obviousness, the second twist, in which the evil is personified, was simply dumb! If not for this horrid let down, i'd have gone out and bought this on DVD.
To sum up then: Not great, but a good stab at something new in the genre, and better by far than box office successes like SCREAM, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, FINAL DESTINATION, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (remake) ETC ETC.