putitinthebasketchief Reviews

Buffalo Soldiers (2001)

A Hip, Subversive Film

[12 March 2004]

This is my favourite film of 2003. Why they waited two years before releasing this superb movie in the UK is anyone's guess - although it may have had something to do with its total lack of respect for the U.S. Army. I'm not sure this would have went down too well in the aftermath of 9/11. Regardless, Buffalo Soldiers is an absolute gem. It is nasty, intelligent and hilarious. It is critical of American values, specifically capitalism in the 80s and it takes no prisoners. This is an outsider's perspective on the American occupation of West Germany in 1989: Jordan is Australian and as a result he brings an Australian aesthetic to his work. But it is also a tender film that is structured around a touching central romance between Elwood and Robyn. I love their scenes in the pool, it is such a warm, intimate location - a perfect setting for the heart of an otherwise deeply cynical film. Jordan is a director of considerable talent and Buffalo Soldiers is magnificent.

The Frighteners (1996)

Hope This is Reappraised in the light of Lord of the Rings...

[29 February 2004]

Although this was funded by Hollywood don't let that fool you. This is as New Zealand a movie as Bad Taste or Brain Dead. Ok so its got an established star in Michael J Fox and CGI effects, it still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth long after it should do. It is stranger and more violent than the average supernatural comedy and for this, Peter Jackson, I commend you! He clearly made them think he was making a derivative Ghostbusters type film (this is the general view of the film and maybe the reason for its poor box office performance) but kept control and gave them an essentially dark and twisted film. This deserves to be far more popular than it is. An underrated gem.

The Funhouse (1981)

Hooper's last great film

[10 January 2004]

Possible Spoilers:

This is Hooper's last great film. It works best as a companion piece to Chainsaw Massacre: sharing and expanding upon many of its chosen themes with rigorous intensity, such as, the idea of malevolent astrology within a fundamentally unreliable world, an emphasis on concealed horror within the image of the terrible house that is associated with the dead weight of the past crushing the young, notions of rural degeneracy that are tied to this, the use of anarchic black humour, class conflict (affluent, permissive white teens who are stalked by a working class monster) in a fragmented society that is on the verge of disintegration, ideas of vegetarianism: children are meat, the parallels that he insists on between what is normal/abnormal: the repressive patriarchal family unit where mom and dad drink and son and daughter run wild upstairs finds its mirror in the the monstrous all male family and finally the idea of this all coming to an end with an apocalypse.

For an 80s horror it is not nearly as reassuring or as conservative as most of the output in that decade. It is also a clever pastiche of Universal monster movies of the 30s and a Hooper's response to John Carpenter's seminal Halloween and the seemingly never ending tide of teenie kill pics that cashed in on its success. Funhouse is a joy to watch and Berridge makes a great 70s-esque final girl who survives more by accident rather than by actively 'taking the monster on'. Compare Laurie from Halloween with Alice From A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Warriors and you'll see what I a mean. Overall, a brilliant film.

Fandango (1985)

SPOILER: A Stirring Valediction To Youth

[31 August 2003]

This is the best Road Movie of the 80s. By that I mean better than Midnight Run, Wild at Heart, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Rain Man and all the other films that belong to that quintessential 80s genre. I love it - Spielberg financed it on the strength of Kevin Reynolds' first feature, Proof, but apparently he was disappointed with the results. Maybe that is because in Fandango there is a lack of Spielbergian sentimentality that has dominated everything he has made post-Jaws. Here, Reynolds counters every up with a down. From the explosive opening in which the group hit the road in Phil's cadillac for a day of revelry in the arid Texas outback (which is perfectly set to Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting) I was hooked. The rest of the film is a hangover by comparison, sure, because the opening is so powerful. But the opening is misleading - Fandango is a downbeat film. Reynold's captures the perfect tone for his work by using the dead Texas scenery that is so reminiscent of Malick's Badlands and Hooper's Chainsaw Massacre. In Fandango, which is set in the early 70s, the ghost Vietnam is never far away. Reynolds refuses to let the group forget about War - there is always a sense of the 'last chance' about their odyssey. Everything from the massacre site they visit to the dilapitated set used for the filming of the James Dean classic 'Giant' that they sleep in speaks of death and decay. See the brilliant scene in the Cemetery where they shoot fireworks at each other for further evidence of this. In this respect, Reynolds pays homage to another film I love - The Deer Hunter. This is most obvious in the group's name - The Groovers - which is also shared by the Pennsylvanian Steel Workers of Hunter. Both films have a similar theme - friends who are torn apart by Vietnam. Fandango is an underrated classic - I urge you to see this film - if only to prove Spielberg wrong.

Se7en (1995)

SPOILER: An Exceptional Thriller

[10 July 2003]

Se7en unfolds in a dark, nasty and rainy place. Two hopelessly mismatched Detectives try to overcome their differences and solve an escalating series of gruesome murders that punish the Seven Deadly Sins. Somerset (Freeman) is about to retire and Mills (Pitt) will be his youthful replacement. From the very onset of the film they resent one another and this lends a disturbing quality to the overall film which I really like. The photography is grainy and dark - this is a perfect medium with which to portray the warped, Noir-ish logic of film's plot. It also looks great. Visually, its similar to Alex Proyas' The Crow but within the world of Se7en it really can rain all the time. At least until the dazzling conclusion where the killer's terrible plan comes to light and we witness the film's crowning moment. Not since The Wicker Man has the rug been so firmly pulled from beneath a central character's feet. Like Sergeant Howie in Robin Hardy's classic chiller, Detective Mills is manipulated and used as an unwitting pawn in a game of the 'hunted leading the hunter'. I love this film: it is way, way above average for its genre.