Ain't It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com)
Movie News
AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy: EL INFIERNO, HALKA, FUBAR II, CARIBBEAN BASTERDS, And More!!
The big Canadian behemoth is almost upon us. The Toronto International Film Festival announced the complete lineup this week, an announcement that triggered a wave of trailers and PR materials from the films involved and we’re passing the best of them – plus a whole slew of others – on to you. You want a cat shot with a crossbow? We’ve got that. A Japanese cult icon in a Russian comedy? We’ve got that, too. We’ve got Venezualan hit men and Swedish serial killers and a huge helping of naked breasts filmed in the Philippines. Hell, we’ve even got the return of INGLORIOUS BASTARDS – note the spelling, we’re talking about the original here – director Enzo Castellari, though I honestly kind of wish we didn’t have that. And, in case you haven’t seen it already, we’ve got the Bangladeshi Incredible Hulk, too! Yep, this is Todd from Twitch with another edition of International Eye Candy.
We begin in Finland where we discover a serial killer so evil he can only be referred to as a PRIEST OF EVIL. Based on a popular local crime novel it’s hard to look at this one and not think that the success of Swedish effort THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO inspired the neighbouring Finns to dive into their own crime literature but this looks to be darker and more violent stuff by a significant margin. Harsh and stylish, this could be a keeper.
For crime of a different kind we head to Hong Kong where we find a new trailer for STOOL PIGEON, the latest from Dante Lam. Now, Lam is coming to Toronto with another film released this year – FIRE OF CONSCIENCE – but he’s a busy man smart enough to ride a hot streak and this is an entirely different picture, one that reunites the director with the cast of his breakthrough hit THE BEAST STALKER. And before anybody tells me otherwise, yes, I know Lam made several films before BEAST STALKER, it’s just that that’s the one that got the international market to sit up and take notice. Lam is the man in Hong Kong right now, the guy most likely to produce the sort of tight, explosive action films (often layered with melodrama) that marked Hong Kong’s Golden Age. This one looks to be fairly sombre by recent Lam standards, following a police informant whose cop protector couldn’t give any less of a damn about him, but sombre doesn’t mean not good. Because it looks fantastic.
You want more hard men doing bad things? You got it! Off we go now to Venezuala and Diego Velasco’s THE ZERO HOUR (LA HORA CERO). Set in the midst of a real medical strike from a few years back the story follows a hit man and his gang of thugs as they invade and take over a private medical clinic – holding its doctors and patients hostage – in a bid to save the life of a young, pregnant woman from our killer’s past. We’ve included a teaser for this one in the a previous column but now we’ve got a full trailer to follow and it’s big, burly stuff.
Good lord, there are a lot of people getting killed in this outing of the IEC. I’m willing to wager that if we tally up the bodycount at the end we’ll have set a new high. And more get added to the pile with BAD FAITH (OND TRO), a beautifully bleak serial killer thriller from Sweden. Now, this is a risky comparison to make given that all we’ve got to go on is a teaser – and the film’s selection to Toronto – but the last time Sweden attempted a high end, arthouse tinged genre film the end result was LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. And guess who’s the cinematographer on this one? Same guys as LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Given that, we know at the very least that this is going to look absolutely fantastic. And given the calibre of the actors involved – Kristoffer Joner is one of my favourites in the entire world – we’re solid on that end as well. Yum.
Given the title and the image on the poster you probably think all the characters in Polish effort THE CHRISTENING – also coming to Toronto – are all going to be okay. But no. People get killed here, too, it just comes later. The film has a feel that a friend described to me as BROTHERS meets EASTERN PROMISES as it tells the story of a man starting a family while on the run from a violent past that he knows only too well is going to come back to get him eventually, a situation that leads him to try and set up his young wife with his best friend. Don’t let the poster put you off into thinking rom-com, this is very likely the best trailer in the column this week.
Hong Kong / France co-production RED NIGHTS marks our first foray into Toronto’s Midnight Madness program in the column and as the glossy, stylish thriller descends into extreme kink and violence you’ll quickly see how it earned its spot in the cult film lineup. The directorial duo on this one have been screen writers for Johnnie To in the past, if you like your trivia. And the woman with the claws likes to use them, if you like your kink.
Another Madness title here, this one VANISHING ON 7TH STREET, the latest chiller from THE MACHINIST director Brad Anderson. FRINGE fans know him well, too, from his repeated directorial stints on the show this past season. And, honestly, this one sounds as though it could be right at home on FRINGE, the story revolving around a sort of apocalypse of darkness with the dark itself being the enemy, contact with it simply causing people to vanish and the dwindling survivors to huddle together and fight for life. Annakin’s in it but don’t hold that against them, he looks pretty well suited to this one.
Ladies and gentlemen, the director of BUPPAH RAHTREE presents SATURDAY KILLER, a film about a hitman with erectile dysfunction who is assigned the job of killing the only girl who can get him aroused and who also turns out to be a paid killer. Thanks, Yuthlert!
What makes me happier about the new trailer for NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD director Mark Hartley’s romp through the Phillipines-shot exploitation film of the late seventies and early eighties? IS it the presence of John Landis, Roger Corman, Joe Dante and Jack Hill? Or is it all the breasts? I’ll have to get back to you on that. Believe it or not while this one is screening in Toronto it is not in Midnight Madness, which tells you something about the general tenor of this year’s selections.
Right, regular readers of this column will have realized from the intro that YAKUZA’S DAUGHTER would have to be turning up somewhere and here it is. The latest film from MONGOL director Sergei Bodrov is an action comedy revolving around the youngest daughter of a Russia-based yakuza clan as she is pursued and protected by Russian mobsters of various stripes. VERSUS star Tak Sakaguchi handled the action choreography in this while appearing in a minor role, a good chunk of which turns up in the new trailer.
The “so bad it’s good” moment of the column is coming soon but first we need to get the “so bad it’s baaaaad” moment out of the way. And it comes courtesy of Enzo Castellari, director of the original INGLORIOUS BASTARDS. Enzo hasn’t been able to find a lot of work lately and with the success of the Tarantino tribute to his early film ringing in people’s ears he somehow managed to finance a low budget return to the big screen. It’s called CARIBBEAN BASTERDS and mostly seems to involve a bunch of pretty young things acting like prats. Hate to say it but continuing to not work may have been a better choice.
Don’t worry ... here to wash the bad taste of Enzo’s latest effort out of your mouths is EL INFIERNO, a bloody and bleaky hilarious action comedy from Mexico. Our hero is a middle ages man recently deported from the US and drawn into the narcotics trade as a means of survival. This, of course, assumes he’ll be able to survive chainsaw rampages, frequent gunplay and the removal of small body parts. Yes, please!
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Bangladeshi Incredible Hulk.
Anybody out there seen Koen Mortier’s EX DRUMMER? If you have, you need no reminders. Some of those images are going to remain burnt into your brain forever. If you haven’t, you should. Fans of Mortier’s work will be glad to see that his second film has made it to the Toronto fest – the same place EX DRUMMER was launched – and while 22ND OF MAY’s story of a mall security guard caught in a terrorist bombing is radically different from his debut the trademark visual virtuosity is in full effect. The trailer is stunning stuff.
Canadian comedy has a special relationship to beer. In STRANGE BREW Bob and Doug McKenzie stuffed a baby mouse into a beer bottle to get a free case. In FUBAR II a car trunk gets dry humped because it is loaded down with the stuff. And yet people still think we’re such polite people ...
The follow up to the Canadian cult hit will be the opening night picture of the Midnight Madness program at TIFF and it’s going to get things off to a stupidly hilarious start if the trailer is any indication. Think TRAILER PARK BOYS meets AMERICAN MOVIE and you’re in the right ball park.
Readers Talkback
