Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
What a kick-ass report. This guy's list of reviews is either good strange stuff I've seen or good strange stuff I want to see. If I don't get a look at AMELIE FROM MONTARTRE soon, I think I'm gonna bust. I've got a BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF review I'm putting up in the next few (tardy, tardy, tardy... it's like it's my middle name now). Newmarket should be rolling DONNIE DARKO out sometime soon, and if they do even 1/2 as good a job with DARKO as they did with MEMENTO, then Richard Kelly is in good hands. Sounds like New Line is starting to tell people JASON X will definitely be going straight to video now. I hope that's just a misunderstanding, since this is actually an entertaining movie. Not a classic, by any means... it is a FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel after all... but worth a night at the theater with your friends.
Anyway... enough of me. On to... DWARF NOSE!!
Hi Harry,
Call me Dwarf Nose. I hope my ranting which follows is not too long, but I have seen 23 movies in the past eight days, some of them unspeakably bad, but also some fascinating ones.
(For a quick decision if this is of any interest to you, the movies are:
AMÉLIE FROM MONTMARTRE
THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF
DONNIE DARKO
THE HOLE
JASON X
JEEPERS CREEPERS
RIPPER: LETTER FROM HELL
VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST)
While my esteemed colleague The Mild Mannered Reporter beat me to it (no wonder, he attended the Munich Fantasy Filmfest which has a three-week head start over its reincarnation in Hamburg), I'd like to talk about some of the more interesting movies I saw there; that is to say those that aren't old news to anyone in the US, and which have a chance of making it across the Pond.
For the record: In case anyone remembers (correctly) that in Germany movies are usually shown dubbed, all these movies were shown in their original language, subtitled if that language isn't English.
THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (Le pacte des loups)
This was a big hit in France, and I suspect that is in part due to the nice incorporation of historical detail into the story. Or so my wife tells me, since I'm not a history buff by any stretch, much less French history.
The movie is entertaining, but takes a long time to get anywhere, running about 145 minutes. To get technical, the end of Act One is about sixty minutes into the movie, and what follows is tonally quite different--supernatural horror movie territory instead of the first hour's period movie feel.
While the action scenes interspersed in the first hour are quite effective (especially the opening quasi-"Jaws" hommage), the movie employs a lot of speed-up and slow-mo in its action sequences which may be hip post-"Matrix", but to me seemed mostly overwrought.
The acting is very nice, however; especially the lead, Samuel Le Bihan, really grew on me. I've always liked Vincent Cassel ("Doberman", "Elizabeth", "Les rivières pourpres"), and Mark Dacascos (from "The Crying Freeman", which I did not see) is a really strong presence. (My wife liked his loincloth scenes.) Somebody let this guy make more movies.
Overall, sadly, the movie fails to come off as anything other than "entertaining but silly".
RIPPER: LETTER FROM HELL
This is a Canadian movie (and, like "Ginger Snaps", already an Australian video premiere), which unfortunately wasn't told that nobody gives a damn about teen slasher flicks anymore--I think "Valentine" saw to that.
At its core, it's yet another movie in which a group of teens are murdered one by one, but the search for the killer is somewhat more interesting since the teens are in a criminal psychology course in college. Also, the lead (A.J. Cook, the cutest of Kirsten Dunst's sisters from "The Virgin Suicides") has survived a serial killer attack some years earlier. And finally, as the title alludes to, the teens are murdered "based on" Jack the Ripper's victims.
Given that I really hate slasher movies--I fail to see the entertainment value in somebody being chased for five minutes, knowing perfectly well that they're going to die like all the others--, I like to concentrate on the plot in between. It isn't great, but the plotlines mentioned above make it bearable, plus the ending is weird and confusing in a good way.
Just one more thing, I think one should keep an eye on A.J. Cook. Her world-weary bad girl shtick was a bit old, but that's not her fault and besides being cute as the proverbial button there was some good acting by her. (To be fair, Bruce Payne as their professor was quite good also.)
AMÉLIE FROM MONTMARTE (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain)
Euro-AICN has been covering this movie quite regularly, so let me just chime in and say that although I didn't love "Delicatessen" and *hated* "Alien: Resurrection", this movie is one of the most wonderful, charming and--cough--enchanting (believe me, you'll hear this word some more once Miramax starts promoting it in the States) movies I've ever seen, and the best movie of the year for me so far. It's surely not for everyone, but anyone who's ever been called a dreamer should feel right at home. There's a trailer on the 'net and while it's in French, it's worth checking out even if you don't understand any French (like me).
VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST
I'm not too big on animes either, but this one managed to be quite charming, mostly due to its nice story. It didn't say "Bloodlust" in the titles on-screen, but once you're halfway through the movie you'll realize it's not as bad as one might think; quite cute, actually. (I only read it afterwards, so I can only assume the moment it might start to make sense.)
The Renaissance/Wild West/Mad Max setting is surprisingly coherent and effective and the only thing that turned me off and keeps me from calling it great is the lack of explanation of the characters' super powers (for lack of a better term), which often appeared quite deus-ex-machina-ish.
JEEPERS CREEPERS
This also has been covered on AICN quite extensively, but not surprisingly, opinions differ quite strongly. Once again, I fully agree to Moriarty.
Everyone seems to love the first half hour, and rightfully so. Gina Philips and Justin Long are great as sparring siblings, and once the plot really starts, the suspense is almost unbearable.
However, your eventual opinion on the movie depends strongly on what you expect. "Jeepers Creepers" isn't much more than feature-length "Twilight Zone" episode, but a darn effective one. (This is NOT to say that it is lacking in plot like, say, "They Live".)
Moreover, this movie LINGERS in your mind, more than "Blair Witch" ever did for me.
DONNIE DARKO
This is a very strange movie. I'm not sure the overall story is meant to make sense, and if it is then I simply didn't get it.
But that doesn't matter since the movie is just so spectacularly weird, funny and touching at the same time. Plus, its a chance to see Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore, and Noah Wyle in the same movie. And then there's Donnie Darko himself, Jake Gyllenhaal, who manages to evoke Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr. and Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Main" at the same time.
I'm pretty sure--and I hope Richard Kelly will forgive me for saying this--that the movie is going to make about $2.50 at the box office, because nobody will know how to market it (here's hoping they'll at least try) and if any of the "mainstream" audience see it, they'll bitch and moan about how little sense it makes in Talkback, rec.arts.movies.current-films and wherever.
Still, the movie is a gem. I feel like I should say something more tangible about it, but ... adjectives fail me. It's about an, well, unstable teen who is told by the voice in his head--Frank the Bunny Rabbit--that the world is going to end in 28 days.
Let me just say that about two thirds into the movie I would have accepted all of the following as a perfectly acceptable means of furthering the plot:
a) Transdimensional beings
b) Aliens
c) Time travellers
d) Illuminati
e) teen pranksters
f) Hallucinations on Donnie's part
g) The movie just ends
If this makes you want to see the movie, go right ahead.
THE HOLE
This is a British movie starring Thora Birch, Keira Knightley (the fake Queen Amidala, who is really quite striking without THAT makeup and hair), and Embeth Davidtz.
Four teenagers (two male, two female) go into an abandoned air-raid shelter for three days. Eighteen days later, one of them finally gets out of there. The rest of the movie deals with finding out what the hell happened.
This is NOT a slasher movie taking place in a very limited space which the poster seems to imply. It is a movie about all those things that make being a teenager only really fun in retrospect; being cool, not being cool, crushes, lust, that sort of thing.
Talking of lust, these teens are not Americans, so don't expect them to "decide they're mature enough to have sex" or some such. They have the hots for each other and want to get laid, period. Maybe it's a European thing, but this feels far more natural.
The movie has its surprise twists, and one of them, about half an hour into the movie, is bound to appear in about every review, so once you think you might want to see the movie, try not to read those.
Three days after seeing it, I still cannot find fault with it other than some (minimal) directorial choices. With me, that's a good sign.
JASON X
The official finale of this year's Fantasy Filmfest was "Jason X". While I thought that the idea of having Jason Vorhees kill 450 years in the future was weird enough to warrant a look, I still wondered why anyone in their right mind would choose a ninth sequel as the grand finale.
But I'm not too big on horror movies anyway, much less have I seen any of the previous "Friday the 13th" movies, so what the heck, I thought. I expected it to suck at the level of, say, "Wing Commander" or "House on Haunted Hill". Please keep that in mind when I say:
This was one of the five most entertaining movies I have seen at this year's FFF.
I'm not too big a fan of violence either, so I was a bit surprised when I enjoyed all of the killings; it took me a while to realize that this was because the violence is completely over the top, so much that some of the scenes wouldn't feel out of place on "The Itchy & Scratchy Show".
The screenplay is clever and stays JUST this side of being obviously tongue-in-cheek. Only at the very end did it ever become ironic and, ahem, post-modern. (A direct reference to the first movie, I suppose, which everyone around us seemed to love as much as we did.)
Before seeing the movie, we were told that it would be a video premiere in the US, which would be a crying shame. At $14 million (according to IMDb) the movie shows every penny on the big screen, and then some.
All in all, great, great, GREAT fun.
GINGER SNAPS
Whoops, that was last year. But I thought I'd mention it just the same, since the movie really is quite brilliant (and has even had a cinema release in the UK now), but has yet failed to show up anywhere in Germany or the US, as far as I know. At least there seems to be a Canadian DVD coming.
And that's all I have to say about that.
signed,
Dwarf Nose
