Cosmos (TV Series 1980) Carl Sagan (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081846/?ref_=nv_sr_2

R.I.P. Carl Sagan, you were a visionary, and an inspiration to all. Cosmos, his greatest accomplishment ,cannot be faulted, with most of the theories and science put forward over 30 years ago still holding true today, set to a beautiful score that's a mix of Blade Runner and Boards Of Canada. Are we closer to total annihilation than we were 30 years ago, or further away? It's hard to say, as religious idiots still maintain positions of power and influence in our society, totally afraid to take responsibility for their own place in the world, instead turning to mysticism. Shame on them and their inferior reptile brains, holding us back indefinitely in our progress as a species. Carl Sagan articulates this point beautifully over 13 one hour episodes. Essential.

SUPER SMASH WARS: A Link To The Hope

The Wolf of Wall Street - Trailer 2

"I mean, being shot in slow motion doing cocaine by Martin Scorsese is, like, maybe every actor's dream. Nothing will compare to it. Except maybe having kids." - Jonah Hill

V/H/S/2 (2013) Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sanchez, Timo Tjahjanto & Adam Wingard (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450186/?ref_=nv_sr_1

I enjoyed this much more than the first one, with the third short being a standout for me (and most people in fairness). I would have scored it a point stronger if it wasn't for a weak end section and the poor attempt to link the shorts with the found footage approach like the first one. Still decent overall though.

Beyond Two Souls (2013) David Cage (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2192570/

Question. Is this, A. The worst science fiction movie you have ever seen or, B. One of the worst games you have ever played? The answer is C. Both. I could list the infinite number of reasons why this game is so bad but you'd end up with a blister on your index finger from scrolling, just steer clear, the scene in Heavy Rain where Ethan presses X to look for Jason is probably better than every scene in this game combined. Makes the Matrix Revolutions look like Blade Runner.

The American Scream - Trailer

'Tis the season...

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone [2013] Dir: Shane Meadows

There's a sequence about forty minutes into this documentary when, after being in rehearsals for a few weeks, the band announce via social media an impromptu gig to be held in a small venue in Warrington, England. This is to be their first concert in nearly twenty years and the whole portion of the film built around it is just brilliant. It becomes less about the Stone Roses themselves and more about the fans and their stories relating to them and what their music means to them. There are some really great moments here during the fan interviews with it all leading up to the first song of the concert, I Wanna Be Adored. On a greater scale, the film gets across a point that it's not just about what this particular band's music means to people, it's about the general importance of music in people's lives.

The film is at its best during that part of the film, with the opening and final third simply being just very good. You'll probably have to be a fan of the band to watch it. I really enjoyed it and think it's worth seeing.

31 Days of Terror - Day 19 - 26: Critters (1986), etc...

I'm running a couple of days behind this week, it's double bills all the way 'til Thursday for me...

Critters (1986)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090887/

This hackneyed horror/sci-fi/comedy is a pastiche of half a dozen better movies, from E.T to Invaders From Mars, It Came From Outer Space and of course, Gremlins. A group of small, fuzzy and extremely hostile alien invaders known as the Crites turn up in the Brown family's backyard, pursued by a duo of intergalactic bounty hunters, their subsequent battles wreaking havoc on a whole rural community.

The thing is, the Critters themselves are a bit shit. Yeah, they've got big teeth and can shoot poison spine-darts, but they're only strong in numbers, fairly useless on their own. They don't walk around so much as roll and these goofy rolling scenes were about as good as the film got, with much of the comedy falling flat. The E.T. references are the most prevalent, Dee Wallace (the mom from E.T.) plays Mrs. Brown and at one stage a Critter bites the head off an E.T. doll, hammering its point home. Fuck knows how they got four sequels out of this, Siskel & Ebert must have had both thumbs up their their arses when they scored it such a positive review. Watchable, but only just.

 

The Gate (1987)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093075/

This is the kind of film that would have scared me shitless if I'd caught it on TV at a more impressionable age. A bunch of kids fight a horde of pint-sized demons after they discover a gate leading to another dimension through a hole in their back garden. It's like the most terrifying episode of Goosebumps ever but it's hard to know which audience the film makers intended it for, it's too damn scary for kids, but far too tame for horror fans. The SFX are decent, the demons are all stop-motion animated and the compositing is especially impressive. The performances are passable I suppose, but the plot is pretty humdrum and by the end gets more than a little tiresome. Watch it for the effects, but don't go in expecting much.

 

Carnival of Souls (1962)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055830/

An independent horror-mystery by actor-turned-director/producer Herk Harvey, featuring without a doubt, the most abrupt opening to a film I've ever seen. Candice Hilligoss plays Mary Henry, a head strong woman who, after surviving a car crash, moves to a new town to take up a job as a church organist. Except something isn't right, weird things start happening to Mary. It begins as she's on the road, driving by an abandoned pavilion on the great salt lake, minding her own business, from out of nowhere THE MAN (played by director Harvey) appears at the car window causing her to veer off the highway, and me to almost crap myself.

The scares aren't cattle-prod, with loud noises piercing deliberate silence, they're much more subtle and as a result, far more effective. Much of the film sees Mary trying unsuccessfully to adjust to her new surroundings in the wake of the accident, she moves to a boarding house, but is relentlessly pursued by leering neighboring lodger John Linden (played with sleazy zeal by Sidney Berger), she begins her new job as Church Organist, but manages to weird out the Minister when she falls into a trance and shifts from church hymn to eerie carnival themes.

The film has a fantastically creepy atmosphere and it's mainly due to its sound design and organ-based score. At one point, Mary's browsing through a dress shop, when all of a sudden the sound drops out. We know something's not right, our suspicions confirmed when she attempts to talk to a shop assistant, Mary's become invisible to all around her, and runs from the store in a panic. It's a terrifying device, one that's been used  dozens of times since, but there's certain satisfaction about seeing where it originated from. I won't say much more, Carnival of Souls is definitely recommended viewing, if only to see how influential its effects have been on subsequent horror films.

When A Stranger Calls (1979)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080130/

We've all heard that ghost story and seen countless slashers derived from it, the one about the babysitter and the man upstairs. Here, director Fred Walton delivers a far subtler psychological horror based on that legend than Carpenter's Halloween, released the previous year, the success of which directly inspired Walton to adapt a short into this feature.  Jill Johnson (played by the wide-eyed Carol Kane) is the baby-sitter who's minding the children at the house of the Mandrakis family when she receives a series of menacing phone calls, "Have you checked the children?"

The man upstairs is Curt Duncan, brilliantly played to disturbing effect by Tony Beckley. You see, in this film we know who the killer is. And we know that he was hiding upstairs the whole time, having murdered the two kids, we don't witness it thankfully, but the verbal description is horrifying enough. "The coroner told him there had been no murder weapon. The killer had used only his hands." After the initial murders, the story cuts ahead 7 years, Duncan has escaped from the mental asylum and its up to former-police-investigator-turned-private-detective John Clifford (played by the always brilliant Charles Durning) to track him down.

I watched a blu-ray copy of this and I'm very glad I did, as both the lighting and cinematography are among the best in a film of this type and era. The sound and music too are quite subtle, but used well and add to the film's ominous tone. This isn't a slasher where you're routing for the killer to take out as many douche-bags as possible, but a suspenseful man hunt akin to Fritz Lang's M, Duncan is a mad dog and needs to be put down. The story ends up full circle, with former baby-sitter Jill now a married mother of two herself, out for dinner with her husband when she's contacted by Detective Clifford. The ending is handled particularly well with a shock I really didn't see coming. Recommended.

 The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061655/

Impeccable production design in this, the 4th feature from Polanski, which is a good thing too, because the story is told mostly through the visuals. The plot, seemingly based (very) loosely on the Bram Stoker classic, sees doddering Prof. Abronsius (played to perfection by Jack MacGowran) accompanied by his bumbling and sexually inexperienced assistant Alfred (played well by Polanski himself) as they travel to Transylvania seeking their prey. The film is a horror-lite comedy farce, but makes for compulsive viewing due to the lavish scale of the production, inventive camera tricks and the onscreen/offscreen romance blossoming between Polanski and Sharon Tate. She is fucking gorgeous in this.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095444/

This bizarre clown-themed horror comedy throws all sorts of crazy props and inventive death scenes into the mix: Mummified corpses wrapped in cocoons of pink cotton candy, flying saucers that resemble circus tents, killer popcorn, murderous shadow puppets and malicious balloon animals. Best of all is grumpy, cynical, hard-drinking police Sherrif Curtis Mooney played by John Vernon (Dean Vernon Wormer from Animal House) who's life ends in an exceptionally creative way. The makeup effects of the clowns are excellent and the soundtrack is thoroughly rocking.

Troll Hunter (2010)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/

Meh. I was wondering what I wasn't getting as I sat through this found footage flick last night, after reading a couple of reviews on IMDb I now understand. I think you really have to be pretty familiar with Norwegian culture to get the most out this one, and despite sharing a house with a Norwegian man for 4 years,  it still passed over me. 

The plot goes like this: bears have been turning up dead in the Norwegian countryside, 3 film students decide to pursue a suspect poacher, only to discover that he is in fact, the titular troll hunter. Trolls really do exist, the government has been keeping it a secret and they do this by hiring hunters to keep them in check. Trolls to me are "Who's that clip-clapping over my bridge?" Three Billy Goats, JRR Tolkien and assholes on the internet, but they have a far deeper significance in Norwegian folk culture it seems. This isn't to say the film is bad, it's just culture-specific, and I admire that. I mean, who the hell else is going to get much out of The Guard, Grabbers or anything by The Rubber Bandits besides us. The most enjoyable part of the film for me was the effects, while I'm usually adverse to most of it, the CGI here is undeniably impressive, especially for a non-Hollywood film with a relatively low budget of $3.5 million.

Tom's Restaurant - a documentary about n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ everything

A documentary about the restaurant from Seinfeld - this was only up the road from my hostel there last year. Never got a photo though...

Captain Phillips [2013] Dir: Paul Greengrass

Paul Greengrass directs here. He also directed the excellent films 'The Bourne Supremacy' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum' and the not so excellent 'Green Zone' and 'United 93'.

I can't fault too much with it. Tom Hanks does a great job in the lead role. It's a really well made and gripping piece of work. It could have gone so wrong in the hands of a lesser director but Greengrass keeps the focus on Phillips and the Somali pirates for most of the film and it is so much better for it. Recommended, see it in the cinema.

Monsters University (2013) Dan Scanlon (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1453405/?ref_=nv_sr_1

In keeping with the Halloween theme! Eh, it was grand, not great but still light years ahead of the likes of Brave or 'gulp' Cars 2. I never bought into the first Monsters Inc. as much as everyone else did, I didn't dislike it or anything, I just never thought it was a part of Pixar's A game, and neither is this for that matter. Not being a massive fan of the first one I'm not sure whether that worked out better or worse for me in regards to the sequel due to my lack of expectations... 

Per Qualche Dollaro In Più (1965) Sergio Leone (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059578/?ref_=nv_sr_2

Fuck yeah now that's what I'm talking about. I will start out by saying I still slightly prefer The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West, with the latter being my personal favorite Western ever; however I can find little fault with this movie. From the incredible soundtrack to the fantastic interplay between the two main characters, something that is missing from the first of the 'Spaghetti Trilogy' the movie is a splendor to behold. They are all classics as far as I'm concerned. 

Per Un Pugno Di Dollari (1964) Sergio Leone (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058461/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Classic western and the first of the 'Dollars Trilogy'. Great spaghetti western, great Morricone soundtrack and great remake of Yojinbo, despite being cheeky enough to attempt to hide it! I knew within 10 minutes, but can't blame Leone for trying. It went to court and Kurosawa won 15 percent royalties earning him more in the long run than Yojinbo did!

Saboteur (1942) Alfred Hitchcock (reviewed by Jason Presents).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035279/?ref_=nv_sr_2

By far the worst Hitchcock movie I have ever seen. I mean it was bad! I don't expect masterpiece after masterpiece but I didn't think Hitchcock's low was this low, and that's assuming this is his worst one (I have seen 9 out of around 66 I think...). The plot mechanics are awful, so is the acting and the horrifically forced exposition, lack of the director's trademark suspense, or anything that makes him great really. And don't get me started on the wartime patriotism flag waving bullshit.  A very generous...

British film and TV director Antonia Bird dies, aged 54

From the Guardian site:

"She was perhaps best known for her work with actor Robert Carlyle on the 1994 film Priest, 1997's Face, and Ravenous two years later. She also worked in TV, including contributions to Spooks, Cracker and the BBC's The Village."

Ravenous was really good and I remember Aindiriu you had Face on tape.

Gasland Part II [2013] Dir: Josh Fox

I enjoyed this very much, although enjoyed might not be the correct word to use for a documentary that explores how so many people are being screwed by big corporations and the United States government (nothing new I guess). It's a messed up situation and some of the stuff seen and heard on screen is just 'fracking' nuts.

If you've watched the first film, then you should check this out. The director's laconic narration style is a bit grating and the shooting and editing style of the piece seems to be deliberately 'rough around the edges' with all the shaky shots and cuts but maybe I'm just being a bit picky there.

 

WNUF Halloween Special - Trailer

Papillion (1973) Franklin J. Schaffner (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070511/?ref_=nv_sr_3

I enjoyed this although I feel not as much as I'd hoped I would. We watched it in a group of five and I scored the lowest of the five (still a very good score). It is a great movie, there is no doubt about that, but I prefer Planet Of The Apes and The Boys From Brazil if we're to stick with the director, and for escape movies I prefer Shawshank or Le Trou. I just never really engaged with either of the two characters too much I guess...

Trailer: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

The American version





 The European version

Spriggan (1998) Hirotsugu Kawasaki (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164917/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Straightforward enough action sci fi anime that borrows heavily from the likes of Akira and Raiders Of The Lost Ark, although it is nowhere as good as the two I just mentioned, its still enjoyable enough if you like anime. 

Room 237 [2012] Dir: Rodney Ascher

I watched this last week and really found it quite tedious to watch. It had some slightly interesting things in it but overall it was a poorly made piece of work. I wouldn't class it as a true documentary because that would be insulting to the genre. It was annoying not to see any of the interviewees at all throughout the piece, and some of them were really talking out of their arse.

How this work made it into any film festival is beyond me, as is the high rating on Rotten Tomatoes. An overly generous...

Parkland [2013] Dir: Peter Landesman

Parkland is a film that deals with the immediate aftermath of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

The film doesn't waste anytime in getting going and it maintains a good momentum pretty much throughout its ninety minute length. It focuses on members of the FBI, the Secret Service, the family of Lee Harvey Oswald, Abraham Zapruder (who filmed the 8mm footage of the kill shot while Kennedy was passing nearby in the motorcade) and of the staff of the Parkland hospital where Kennedy was brought after being shot. I thought it was a really interesting way to tell a version of a story that we all know (but, with regard to who really killed him, certainly not agree on).

The only thing that bothered me in the film was the character of Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, played by Jacki Weaver. I have no idea what she was like in real life but she's just really annoying in this. I think that people might be put off by the lack of focus on one character, but this wasn't an issue for me.

It was a nicely photographed and well edited piece of work, with some really solid performances, especially from Paul 'I am not drinking any fucking Merlot' Giamatti. It's worth a watch in my eyes.

Premium Rush (2012) David Koepp (reviewed by Jason Presents)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1547234/?ref_=nv_sr_1

First of all the entire concept of this movie is nonsense. It all plays out like the 4th or 5th mission you would do in most GTA games with bikes. I didn't particularly like or dislike any of the characters and the whole thing is ridiculously over stylized. Now that I have that out of the way I can try and figure out why I kinda enjoyed this movie... it moves at a very fast pace so although I was never entirely engaged, I wasn't bored either. The two leads are great as they usually are in everything so they're a safe bet. Love triangle not necessary but whatever. I suppose you could call it enjoyable nonsense.

Koch [2013] Dir: Neil Barsky

This is a documentary about Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City. I really enjoyed it. He was a great character, very funny at times and straight talking but certainly not universally liked as shown in the film. 

The documentary utilises some great archive video footage and photographs of New York City from the 1970s and 1980s which (being the city it is) was fascinating to see. I wasn't too familiar with Koch (pronounced 'kotch' by the way) before watching this but I'd like to read more about him based on what I've seen. It's just over an hour and a half long so I'm guessing that a lot of stuff has been left out or skimmed over. It's definitely worth a viewing.

31 Days of Terror - Day 14 - 19: Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971), etc...

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067341/

An aging hippy couple, accompanied by their close friend, move out to the country to begin a new life, living off the land, surrounded by nature. The trouble is that baggage follows you everywhere you go, and that's especially true for Jessica, a psychologically fragile woman who's only 6 months out of the nut house. 

Zohra Lampert puts in a pretty convincing portrayal of a woman close to the edge,  you're never quite sure if the strange things she's seeing are real or the product of her psychosis,  resulting in a genuinely unsettling scenario of isolation. Unfortunately Lampert's performance is about the only thing to recommend here, as the rest of the characters are of no great shakes, they exist simply to disbelieve her and the story plays out rather predictably.  

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075342/

Directed by Charles B. Pierce, this period proto-slasher is based on a series of real life murders that occurred in 1946 in the rural South, the city of Texarkana (on the border of Texas and Arkansas) Following the first killing, where the masked murderer dispatches a young couple parked up in 'Lover's Lane',  the Sherrif's Dept. call in Texas Ranger Captain Morales, a famous criminal investigator to work the case.

There's a real heavy handed use of VO in this one, with the narrator explaining the events to the audience, rather than showing them unfold. The film has this 1940s retro feel to the dialogue and performance that just doesn't gel well with the low production value and bland, cheap-looking color photography, it would have worked a lot better in black and white. The kill scenes are grand, but the movie stumbles with some poorly judged comedy featuring the bumbling efforts of Morales' police chauffeur named 'Spark Plug'. All in all a pretty uninspired movie, one that suffers from that Zodiac-Killer style ending, I was mostly bored throughout.

The Changeling (1980)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/

George C. Scott plays John Russell, a grief-stricken music academic who moves from New York to a big old house in Seattle in an effort to get his life back on track after losing his wife and daughter in a motor accident. The long abandoned mansion is the ideal place for John to work on his composition, but it isn't long before doors are closing by themselves and mysterious noises are heard in the night.

Slow building, suspenseful and intensely somber, The Changeling is quite the effective haunted house movie, made more so when you consider that it's based (supposedly) on the real-life experiences of the actual screen writer, John Russell. Personally I don't believe in any of that sort of shite, but it can work to the film's advantage (I'm thinking The Excorcist, and even Blair Witch Project) Scorsese apparently listed this on his 11 Scariest Films of All Time, personally I wouldn't agree with that, by the end of the film, I found it teetering right out on the edge of silliness, the plot is over-worked, a little too serious for its own good. Still, worth a look. 

Brain Dead (1990)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099173/

No, not the Peter Jackson splatter classic, but the very reason that Braindead is confusingly known as 'Dead Alive' in the United States. This psychological horror tale was produced by Roger Corman's wife Julie and directed by Adam Simon. Essentially playing out like an extended episode of the Twilight Zone, it's a pretty drab tale of Dr. Rex Martin, a top neurosurgeon who's study of mental illness brings him to the attention of medical corporation Eunice who task him with probing the mind of one of their former employees, a genius mathematician now committed to a mental asylum. 

The film is slow to start but picks up round the mid way mark as Dr. Martin begins to experience his patients paranoid delusions first hand. Despite a stellar cast, two of the three Bills: Pullman and Paxton and the always watchable Bud Cort, the movie hasn't got much to recommend. It's hard to be engaged when a movie has such a god awful muzak soundtrack and overall, it felt like a bit of a slog. 

Brain Damage (1988)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094793/

By far the best film I watched this week, directed by Frank Hennenlotter (of Basket Case fame) is horror comedy gold. Rick Hearst plays Brian, a young punk who unwittingly becomes host to a parasitic being known as Aylmer, basically a distended mutant cock-like-worm thing that latches onto its victim's neck before stabbing them with a needle-like stinger, depositing a highly addictive blue fluid directly into their brain which causes all sorts of awesome hallucinations, leaving victims in a state of total euphoria and utterly unaware of their surroundings. By using the host as a mode of transport, the Aylmer can easily access fresh victims, jumping onto their heads, burrowing through skull to devour their brain flesh. Hell yeah!

The Aylmer itself is sentient (voiced by John Zacherle, known for hosting horror movie broadcasts on American TV) and speaks in polite, mannered tones with an air of smug superiority. After just a few shots of the blue fluid, Rick becomes totally addicted to the stuff, to the point where he stops going to work and holes up in his bedroom, alarming both his younger brother Mike and loving girlfriend Barbara. 

I won't say much more about the plot for fear of spoilage, but I will say that the Aylmer origin reveal is especially satisfying. The genius of Brain Damage lies in the subtext of Ricks dependency on the Aylmer as a metaphor for the smack epidemic that surrounded the punk scene in the Lower East Side at the time. With some crazy-inventive visual effects, decent score and genuine laughs, I highly recommend it. 

Aftermath (1994)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094793/

What happens to your body after a fatal car accident? Well in Spanish director Nacho Cerda's 30 minute short Aftermath, it's taken to a morgue where an assistant pathologist in a surgical mask and pronounced eyebrows slices you up, removes your organs, becomes sexually aroused, locks the door, stabs your genitals with a kitchen knife, masturbates, sets up a camera to automatically capture him climbing up on the remaining bloody mess and violently fucks your corpse. Then he cleans up the mess with Cilit Bang, brings home your heart in a paper bag and feeds it to his dog. As stomach churning as it sounds, and about a hundred times more disgusting than Nekromantik. Recommended.