Obscuriosities

Scre4m I said to a few people that this film is to me, what Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was to Star Wars fans. I loved the first three movies as a kid, and I've been waiting over a decade for a new instalment to the franchise. The question is; as an adult, will I be impressed with the flashy pod-racing sequences or will I find it all to be a bit Jar-Jar? Thankfully Scream 4 lives up to its name and is a proper Scream movie, giving us more of what was fun about the first three. It takes pot-shots at remakes and long running franchises and turns the snark up to eleven. It even parodies the concept of the meta horror movie (in a brilliant opening sequence that had me grinning from ear to ear) a concept that the first Scream pioneered, so I guess that makes this movie meta meta horror? I thought the movie missed a trick in that there was 10 years of horror tropes that it could have played off, but ignored (J-Horror and 'Torture Porn' spring to mind). Instead the film chose ...

Just some bullet point style thoughts on the movies I've watched this last week. Sucker Punch There is a huge amount of fun to be had with this film as long as you keep in mind that Zack Snyder is a visualist, not a storyteller. I feel his style works better within the framework of another's script, but as the logical apogee of the current generation Project A-Ko/Call Of Duty inspired film-makers I think the movie works. An interesting thesis could probably be written about filmmakers being inspired by the pop culture of their youth. I'm thinking Speilberg/Lucas being inspired by early film serials and creating Indiana Jones, Tarantino and Rodriguez being inspired by 70s exploitation and creating the likes of Desperado and Death Proof and now we have the new crop of up-and-comers like Snyder and Wright who are inspired by anime and videogames of the 80s and 90s and come up with things like Sucker Punch and Scott Pilgrim. In ten years time are we going to see mo...

In an attempt to save some money I have decided to make a concerted effort to tackle my massive stack of unwatched DVDs instead of just buying new ones all the time, some of which I have had in my collection for years! So, the first film I decided to pop in was Park Chan-Wook's 'Lady Vengeance'. A film that has been sitting unwatched on my shelf for about 6 years now. The story follows our heroine as she is released from prison after 13 years after being wrongly convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a young child. It soon becomes apparent that she knows who the real perpetrator is, and has been plotting her revenge throughout her sentence... If there is one word to describe this film it's this; bleak. There are no flashes of dark humour here that have been present in the director's previous works, nor is there any let up from reminders that we are dealing with child-killers here and all the horrific connotations that brings. I can admire the film-making on displ...

Digging through my pile of unwatched DVDs I came across this movie from David Cronenberg, one of my favourite directors of all time. HERE WE GO Dead Ringers is the tale of the Mantle twins, Elliot and Beverly, a pair of gynaecologist brothers who share everything, including women. The pair pair have built a reputation as the best in their field, but everything begins to unravel when Bev starts falling for one of their conquests, a former patient and beautiful actress. Slowly he becomes obsessed with her and begins becoming involved with her drug habit... The first thing that needs to be mentioned about this movie is Jeremy Irons central performances as the twins themselves. He manages to infuse the two roles with enough individuality that you are never at a loss as to which twin is on screen with Elliot the brash, off-hand brother and Bev the sensitive soul. As the movie progresses and the characters devolve his performance takes on a terrifying other dimension of a man (men) losing th...