"Hailed" by wondrously camp film maker, John Waters, as the best Christmas film ever, Christmas Evil begins in 1947 where the young Harry Standling (played in adult form by Brandon Maggart) witnesses what he believes to be Santa Claus getting off with his mum! How traumatising!? Moving to the present we see the adult Harry working in a toy factory, collecting dolls, and keeps books of lists of the local "naughty" kids, in a strange bid to become the true Santa. in the work place, and in his social life, Harry is also exploited by the people around him. And most people believe him to be a total tool.
On witnessing a work colleague laugh at him through a bar window (the same work mate that persuaded him to do a shift for him at the Jolly Dreams toy factory), Harry seems to flip, dressing himself as Santa, and beginning a killing spree. The first kill sees Harry approach a group of people leaving church. He uses a toy soldiers protruding sword to stab a guys eye out (you can imagine that by January, these toys would have been reported in the media as utterly dangerous - this doesn't happen in the film).
It's a pretty awful film. Harry's pathetic character is simply not interesting. What makes him go crazy just doesn't seem to be enough - I mean, after all, the Santa seen groping his mother in 1947, was clearly his own father. It has a thoroughly bizarre ending, also trying to sentimentalise Harry, but particularly his love of all things Santa (does he love him? Who knows). But it seems at the end as he takes off in his sleigh-painted van, into the air, moving in front of the moon just like Santa. and, like the ending of 2003's Elf, we are offered a seeming plea of, why do we not believe in Santa anymore? Just awful! But then again, Waters may well be right. We all need alternative festive seasons, and the anger that Christmas brings should surely produce more killer Santa's. Why are there no killer Santa's? Fingers crossed for a barrage of them in 2012.
The early 1980's were an furtive time for American genre cinema. Of course Steven Spielberg had his hand in most of those pies, with his name emblazoned above all the film titles. Whilst this is particularly annoying, the fact of the matter is, he did get some great projects made, such as Poltergeist (1982) and Back to the Future (1985) et al; plus a little gem of a horror-comedy written by then unknown, Chris Columbus and directed by Roger Corman luminary Joe Dante: Gremlins. As with many of the genre films made at the time, their influence of 1950's science fiction was obvious (and of course the film makers of the time would have grown up in the first decade of the popularisation of television). And Gremlins is no different, with a range of references, blinding obvious. In two scenes for example, we see on television screens, two iconic movies from the past, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): The former film is represented by the picture postcard image of wholesome Americana - a Norman Rockwell painting showing a quaint little "village" square. Kingston Falls is the setting, and the time of year is Christmas.
The story is a simple tale of a father, Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) purchasing something "different" for his son, Billy (Zach Galligan). On his travels as an inventor and salesman, Rand stumbles across a small basement shop in Chinatown, where he buys an unknown species of animal, the overwhelmingly cute Mogwai. However, the "pet" comes with three very important rules: Never expose him to light, especially sunlight; never get him wet; and never feed him after midnight. Unfortunately, two of these rules are broken in a series of misdemeanours, and eventually unleash the anarchistic monsters of the films title. Of course the idea of a gremlin is no new thing, as is stated by Mr Futterman (played by Dante regular, and always brilliant, Dick Miller), the gremlin was a creature that had a fetish for interrupting the workings of technology during World War II. In fact the first recorded use of Gremlin was in a 1929 poem written for the men of the Royal Air Force stationed in Malta. But I digress.
Needless to say, once the gremlins are unleashed - led by Stripe - the quiet town is turned into chaos, disrupted beyond belief of Christmas Eve. The scaly green monsters cause car accidents by tampering with traffic lights; the local property owner and general icon of evil, Mrs Deagle (Polly Holliday), the seasons Scrooge in female form, is sent flying out of her window on a chair lift. You get the idea. The job of thwarting the monstrous tykes is left to Billy, Gizmo (the Mogwai - as if you didn't know!), and Kate, Billy's new girlfriend (played by the stunning Phoebe Cates).
Released on the same weekend as another '80's comedy classic, Ghostbusters, the film became a bit of an issue. Here was a Christmas film, like Ghostbusters, that mixed comedy with horror, but was packaged as a kids film. The massive campaign of merchandising was everywhere. From cuddly toys to Pez dispensers, every kid was able to participate in the ideas of the film. In America, the film was released in the equivalent PG rating, causing problems when young children saw it. This film eventually led to the MPAA (The Motion Picture Association of America) created the PG-13 rating. In the UK the film was released as a 15; therefore, I was unable to see the film at the cinema (you can't imagine how badly I wanted to see it, after all as an 8 year old, seeing the trailers on TV, there were little monsters in it!). And of course the BBFC (British Board of Film Certification) didn't act on this (despite a huge media frenzy), and would not create the 12 certificate until 1989's Batman.
The film could be read as American fear of "foreign" technology. The Mogwai/Gremlin do originate form China (how ironic they are soon to be the worlds super power), but the duality of a cute creature manifesting itself as a anarchic monster, is representative of that view of the orient: A seemingly traditional continent complete with archaic practises, that also produce some of the most advance technology around. Maybe too hard a pill to swallow from the land that brought us Hollywood!
I genuinely loved this film when I was a kid (I did manage to see it before the video release on a very bad VHS pirate video - shhh!), and I have to say that it has not lost any of it's charm, humour, and fun. The film holds so many iconic images probably for most of my generation. Well, we did collect the stickers to complete the Panini album. And the sweets; the dolls; the T-Shirts etc, etc etc..... Excellent Christmas fare!
With the Leveson inquiry displaying the inherent underhanded practices of journalist, ironically in the media at the moment, it seemed quite apt to watch this early 1980's thriller about a stalker attempting to kill a TV journalist, Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant). Admittedly, this particular spewer-of-the-news has not hacked into any phone of celebrity or grieving family. Instead, Colt Hawker (the always sinister looking Michael Ironside) dislikes Ballin's ultra-feminist views, which are shown in an early interview. Her producer, Gary Baylor (the always exaggerated ham, William Shatner), expresses his concern, believing that her outspoken views could attract violence. Inevitably Colt attacks at her apartment that night, but unknowingly only injures her, landing her in hospital.
On discovering his failure, he attempts attacking her in the hospital. This is pretty pedestrian storytelling. It is often placed within the sub-genre of slasher films. However, Visiting Hours has none of the signifier's associated with films such as Halloween (1978) or Friday the 13th (1980): No point-of-view from the killers perspective; no puritanical equation of sex and death; no supernatural being and undead icon (Freddy Krueger/Jason Voorhees/Michael Myers). Instead of stylistic verve, it often feels like a contemporary TV movie, which is exacerbated by the music (although there are moments of brilliance in the score). As Colt's attempts to get to the guarded journalist become too difficult, he moves onto a young nurse, Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl).
Colt Hawker is evidently a misogynist. Whilst we occasionally see flashbacks of the abuse he and his mother suffered at the hands of his father, we are never really furnished with the ability to dig any further - we can perhaps only surmise that it is simply feminism itself, the changing power-balance of genders, that he is attacking. After all, the women he stalks or kills are evidently independent, working women. A strange entry into the Video Nasties list, this is a film that bores more that it creates suspense. The main saving grace is that powerful, contorting face of Ironside. I swear that whenever he gets angry on film, his face looks like it will explode (I know we did see that in Scanners (1982), but he does it in nearly all of his films).
This Swedish "erotica" film from the 1970's is on the Grindhouse Project as The Depraved. A run-of-the-mill erotic fantasy film (that also owes much of it's narrative charms to Bunuel's classic Belle de Jour (1969)), is elevated by the elfin-like, nubile-innocent beauty of Swedish star Christina Lindberg. Her ethereal Lena, like Catherine Deneuve's Severine, displays an ambiguity in her sense of reality. We are never really sure if her sexual experiences throughout the film are fantasies or not. Lena drifts from Jan (Bjorn Adelly), a mummy's boy, and Helge (Heinz Hopf), a seeming playboy who offers her to friends who hangout at parties at his house.
The direction and cinematography are quite loose, giving it's mis-en-scene an elemental idea of realism. But with this technique, the result has very little suspense or atmosphere. Beginning with Lena taking off from boyfriend, Jan, hitchhiking out to a country house. She is picked up by a couple who go with her, and Lena imagines an encounter with the man of the couple. From here Lena simply goes back and forth between the two men who offer their utter love to her. She seems uninterested in either. We are reminded throughout the film that Helge took some nude photographs of her, and he attempts to blackmail her - something that never really happens, and some humanity suddenly comes from the sullen-seeming Lena, as she demands that she have them and the negatives.
Whilst the film has a reputation for it's depiction of sexuality, and now relatively soft sexual violence, it is rarely shocking. Also, with a very thin plot, it plods along in quite a pedestrian fashion. However, this is not to say that the time spent with this film is certainly no waste of time. Christina Lindberg is incredibly watchable. She radiates beauty, and has an incredible presence. So, with utter beguiled fascination, the film goes from being a two star reward, to a...
A middle-class family, consisting of father Georg (Dieter Berner), mother Anna (Birgit Doll), and young daughter Evi (Leni Tanzer) live out their routine daily lives in apparent discomfort. The film is split into three sections - 1987, 1988, and 1989. The first two years, we are given an insight into their thinking as Anna narrates letters written to her parents. We witness the mundaneness of their lives in scenes showing them eating breakfast, at work, going through a car wash, driving in their car. They are trapped by their repetitive surroundings in an unavoidable consumerist world. The third section sees the parents quitting their jobs, buying power tools, and emptying their bank accounts. They tell people they're going to Australia, only they plan to destroy their home and kill themselves.
Haneke is the master of the cold and the uncomfortable. This was his debut feature, only he seemed to have already mastered this skill. In his later films, we witness brutal animal slaughter in Benny's Video (1992), genital mutilation in The Piano Teacher (2001), and possibly the most shocking suicide ever depicted on film in his masterpiece Hidden (2005). In The Seventh Continent, we know what is coming. It is laid out quite early in the film. When it comes, it is every bit as unpleasant as you would hope it wouldn't be. Haneke doesn't need blood or dramatic music. Instead he just lets us hear the last gargled breaths, taking place off-camera, of someone taken an overdose of pills. Powerful, terrible and profoundly disturbing.
Haneke, in my opinion, is the world's greatest living director. Granted, the likes of Godard and Herzog are still making films, but their heyday was in the 1960's and 70's respectively. Haneke is in his prime, and their is no-one making more skilful films. He based The Seventh Continent on a newspaper article he read about a family that committed suicide in a similar fashion (as we learn over the end credits), and uses it as a commentary on a world obsessed with formality. This is certainly not an enjoyable film, but it is one that will linger with me for a long time, which is similar to the effect Hidden had on me. It will occasionally test your patience (scenes are repeated and their are long periods without dialogue), but its power is undeniable. An assured debut.
A British oddity (released through BFI's flipside series), written and directed by Polish emigre, Jerzy Skolimowski (whose previous work included the screenplay for Roman Polanski's masterful Knife in the Water (1962)), Deep End is a story of naive obsession. 15 year old Mike (John Moulder-Brown), takes a job in a typical Victorian, city bathhouse in London. The brooding, awkward teenager falls for Susan (Jane Asher), a beautiful redheaded attendant, with a colourful secret life, and a fiance. His obsession with her increases and he begins following her outside of work. In this act he falls upon a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Susan outside a strip club in the red-light district of Soho.
Whilst the film is primarily a marginally twisted drama, there are some intentionally funny scenes that elevate the narrative. A stand out moment in the bathhouse has Mike trapped in a room with Diana Dors' lady client, who coaxes him and pulls the unnerved child to her breasts, asking if he likes football, and then chanting "Georgie Best". Mike follows Susan and her fiance, Chris (Christopher Sandford), into a cinema and sits behind them. In a moment of tactless teenage bravura, Mike grabs Susan's breast, and her reaction is to complain and press charges as the police arrive. Mike's futile stalking of Susan inevitably leads him to her secret world, which he does not favour, confronting her with the aforementioned two-dimensional replica of the topless Susan, demanding that she justify these occupations.
There is a coming-of-age narrative imbued in this film, with elements that many will recognise such as the inherent awkwardness that is teenage existence. And as our protagonist is male, he therefore has a deeply bungling nature, his hormones seething. The scale with which Mike's obsession with Susan becomes is bordering on the nature of John Fowles's Frederick Clegg character in his novel The Collector. He steals that Susan cardboard replica, throwing it into the swimming pool he stands over her floating duplicate on a diving board. A dive and sensual swim with it is reflected in the closing, relatively haunting closing images. An interesting, sometimes funny, but not altogether exciting piece of cinema.
Before Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams' success with Airplane! (1980), Top Secret (1983), The Naked Gun (1988), and John Landis' short series of good comedies National Lampoons Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and Trading Places (1983), they collaborated on this "sketch" movie. Consisting of oh-so-very contemporary 1970's cultural tropes, the films mixture of spoof exploitation movie trailers ("You will cream in your jeans when you see..." Catholic High School Girls In Trouble; That's Armageddon; Cleopatra Schwartz), humorous commercials (which includes one quite disturbing, United Appeal for the Dead, that has a family keeping their son after death, showing him involved in everyday family activities), public service announcements and many references to Deep Throat (1972).
The stand out "Main Feature" is a parody of the 1973 breakthrough martial arts film, Enter the Dragon. As was exacerbated in the writers' next effort, the aforementioned Airplane!, the visual gags are sometimes quite brilliant. I first came across this film when I was quite young. I'm not really sure how this would be viewed today. As I mentioned, this is very much a part of the 1970's. But if you love the blaxploitation, sexploitation et al trailers and movies, then there is certainly some fun to be had with these. There's a splattering of double entendre, and a more exponentially greater visual helping of T&A. It is a good comedy sketch film, with the usual quality problems with the format (i.e. not all the parts will be as good as others). And for those who suffer from premature ejaculation, this film comes with... Big Jim Slade.
DEA Agent John Hatcher (Steven Seagal) is busy kickin' ass in Colombia when he decides to make his return to the U.S. after some spiritual enlightenment from his priest. He returns to find his city overrun by Jamaican 'posses', and when at a bar, he and his old friend Max (Keith David) find themselves caught amidst a gang war shootout. Hatcher, naturally, kicks the shit out of some of them and finds that he and his family have been 'marked for death' by gang boss Screwface (Basil Wallace). His sisters house is attacked and when his niece is shot, Hatcher and Max team up with Jamaican police man Charles (Tom Wright) to find Screwface and end his reign of terror.
Clearly neither Screwface nor his ever-dispensable gang of cronies have ever seen a Steven Seagal film, or they would have left him the fuck alone. Guns, swords and even voodoo cannot stop the pony-tailed action hero. This is actually considered to be the 'finest' of Seagal's vast action backlog, which is quite tragic given that this film is pretty shit. I will say this for it, however - it's relentlessly entertaining. Yet this derives from the unintentionally hilarious dialogue, woeful acting, some appallingly gruesome action scenes, and plot devices that simply defy logic.
Possibly the funniest moment in the film has Hatcher, who has, by the way, just committed murder (he's retired from the police) and has to be the police's main suspect, taking part in a high speed chase through the city that sees one car drive along the pavement causing massive damage, only to later fly through the window of a department store. Hatcher walks in shooting and stabbing his way through the bad guys only to calmly stroll out afterwards. Surely the police would have noticed something during the carnage? Yes, yes, I'm missing the point, this is a dumb action film - this is hardly trying to be The Wire.
Marked for Death does have the sense to show off Seagal's martial arts skills. While many of his other films have him mainly either carrying a gun or simply throwing people onto tables, this has him breaking many, many bones with his bare hands. It's shockingly gory for an 90's action film, which naturally makes the whole film more likeable. Basil Wallace is plenty of fun as the interestingly named Screwface, all wide-eyed and using an over-accentuated Jamaican accent. The voodoo element is certainly different, and the practises shown in the film are apparently well-researched and accurate. Definitely one for the action junkies, but for me, it's a laughable nostalgia trip into an overly macho time, and ultimately a rather forgettable one.
I must confess that I have not read Lionel Shriver's 2003 novel that this film is based. What I do know is that the books structure is assembled with letters written from mother to father after the events involving their son. The film however, uses an altogether more intricate, fractured reveal through the tragic memories of a mother dealing with an alarmingly profound problem. The escalation of Kevin's (Ezra Miller) behaviour towards his mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), is seen in flashback. Fragments of information scatter the narrative: In infancy, Kevin's screaming becomes unbearable for Eva, she stands for a moment of pure bliss next with baby in tram, stood next to road works, the immense concrete driller becoming simply a different (and therefore perfect) emitter of high decibel noise: Kevin treats his mother with disdain, whilst having a seemingly normal relationship with his father, Franklin (John C. Reilly).
Whilst we are aware throughout the film that the Kevin of the title is to commit a horrific act in the Columbine-style massacre, the film never really focuses on him as the simple arbiter of evil. As the structure is based around the grief stricken memories of the mother, we are given elements of her memories and their relation to Eva's search for any form of reasoning behind what caused this to occur. She visits her son in prison, and their pained relationship is laid bear.
This is Lynne Ramsey's first film since 2002's MorvernCallar, and is an exceptional exploration of grief, the accumulation of memory, and the guilt association with parenthood. What would any parent think of a child who goes to high school and attacks the students with a crossbow? Both pivotal performances from Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller are excruciatingly brilliant (if Swinton does not get an Oscar nomination, I will eat a handful of flesh-eating ants). Whilst not an easy subject to deal with, the way in which it has been written, directed and performed makes it absolutely essential viewing. Possibly the best film of 2011.
Julia (Trish Everly), a disturbed young woman haunted by memories of her abusive and mentally ill twin sister Mary (Allison Biggers), works with blind children near her Savannah home. She learns from her uncle, Father James (Dennis Robertson), that her sister is suffering from a rare skin disease that is killing her, and is persuaded to go and see her for the first time in years. While there, Julia is attacked and abused by Mary who threatens that she is going the kill her. Mary does escape, and Julia finds her friends and co-workers being murdered and mauled by a killer dog that is very similar to the one Mary had when they both children.
Added to the Video Nasty list due to some rather gruesome scenes, Madhouse does stand out amongst the others due to its apparent higher-than-you-would-expect budget. I assume this due to the pretty nice cinematography, which makes full use of its sets and features some effective colour patterns. The scenes where Julia is followed through her seemingly gigantic house, almost evokes the likes of Polanski (due to the claustrophobic indoor locations) and Argento (characters running through endless corridors and doors building suspense). Sadly, Madhouse generates little of the actual atmosphere conjured up by these two geniuses and these scenes eventually becomes slightly tedious.
Although it looks like a John Carpenter, it is at its heart a by-the-numbers slasher that follows traditions and cliches seen a thousand times. The main appeal is the play on the killer - here being a colossal Rottweiler rather than a man in a mask. This provides the opportunity for some nasty throat removals that feature plenty of blood, but a rather unconvincing fake dog being shaken above the screaming body. The rather macabre climax almost rescues the film, but then descends into a frustratingly slow stalk-and-slash. The fact that its a bit of a slow-burner makes a nice change from usual set-piece-heavy horrors, but horror fans would do good sticking to Argento, Bava and Fulci for their operatic slashers.
When young, intelligent store owner Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) exchanges some groceries for a law book, he becomes infatuated by it, and decides on a different career path. He arrives in the town of Springfield and co-runs a law firm, and although his techniques are a bit rough and maverick, he becomes well-renowned and respected. After staging an Independence Day parade, a murder takes place, in which two brothers apparently attack a man and stab him to death. Enchanted by the brothers' family's simple ways, and how they remind him of his own roots, he offers to take their defence.
While in France, movie-making was pushing the boundaries and were creating films that were more works of art than movies, America was making very American films (this is not a criticism, by the way, as America created some of their best pieces of work in the late 1930's and 40's). There was no more American a film-maker than the great John Ford, who was never more at home than when he was in the mythic Wild West, a place of beauty, violence and mysticism. And what more American story can there be other than the story of how one of the greatest Presidents in their short history came to be the man he was.
Ford had already fleetingly portrayed Lincoln in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), showing his assassination at the beginning of the film, and then moving on to concentrate on the man accused of harbouring John Wilkes Booth. While that film portrayed the brutality that people are capable of, juxtaposed with a story of one-man's fierce determination, Young Mr. Lincoln shows the brutality of America, and how one man's fierce determination can overcome the odds and make a difference. The partially-fictionalised court case is based on the case of William 'Duff' Armstrong, a man accused of murder who was proven innocent by Lincoln, against a state that believed he was guilty.
Although Ford wisely chooses to keep the focus on Lincoln's early manhood rather than to fit in his entire life, the film is sill confined to the rules of the biopic. The film suffers by being episodic, shifting from Lincoln's early discovery of law, to his re-location, to the love interest, to the 'big event' that will define him (at this point in his life). Knowing Ford's gift for storytelling, the film is disappointingly simplistic in structure. It is however anchored by a very impressive Henry Fonda performance, whose appearance is uncanny to Lincoln, under some effective make-up. And, as you would expect, the cinematography is superb, and proves that no-one can capture America like John Ford.
A band of military prisoners being transported through the mountains come across of group of bandits who kill all but one of the military, crashing the wagon full of the chain-gang convicts. The surviving Sgt. Brown (Claudio Undari) must protect his daughter Sarah (Emma Cohen), and help get the convicts to their destination. They have no food, no transport, and the gang of killers, rapists and thieves are becoming increasingly cunning and violent. When they discover that the chain binding them together is made of the gold the bandits were looking for, the convicts begin squabbling between themselves, while Sgt. Brown must work out which of the bandits raped and murdered his wife.
Billed as the 'goriest and most violent western ever made', the film certainly has its fare share of gruesome moments (although I would assume there are plenty of gorier and more violent westerns out there). Cut-Throats Nine isn't in the vein of classic American westerns that starred the likes of John Wayne and Henry Fonda, but more like the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, and the ultra-violent revisionists like Sam Peckinpah. Only with more guts, charred bodies, rape and general unpleasantness. Given it's many flaws, it's actually not a bad western, and the extra horror adds to the dirty, grimy feel of its exploitation roots.
Technically, the film is quite well shot, with the snowy mountains providing a beautiful backdrop to the carnage. Sgt. Brown's story is peppered with flashback scenes shot in dream-like slow-motion, as is some of the violence. It brings to mind Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), where the gun-fights were poetic, mythic, and almost pornographic. But the film often becomes tiresomely grim, with little or none of the characters being remotely sympathetic. Well, maybe that's the point, showing how relentless and wild the 'West' was. Hardly up to the standard of the aforementioned The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974 - also Peckinpah), which were both nasty masterpieces, but a pleasingly entertaining and exploitative western.
Young radio writer Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is happily living his life when he is diagnosed with a rare form of spinal cancer. Frustrated and gob-smacked, Adam tries to carry on with his life living with a disease that has a 50/50 chance of killing him. He lives with his selfish, self-centred girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is more fond of partying than looking after Adam's interests. Always there for him is his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen), who is always on hand to provide medical marijuana, and his trainee psychologist Katherine (Anna Kendrick), while Adam's mother Diane (Anjelica Huston) has difficulty accepting it.
Seth Rogen and his writing team have already blended comedy-drama with disease in the brilliant and vastly underrated Funny People (2009), which brought out an award-worthy performance by Adam Sandler. Yet where Sandler's characters' disease was a prop that would propel his character in re-evaluating his life and choices, in 50/50 it is the focal point. We follow Adam though every stage of his illness, from the emotional torment and confusion after his diagnosis, through to his chemo, to the final operation that may ultimately kill him. Screenwriter Will Reiser, who wrote the film based on his own experiences, beautifully juxtaposes the sad and profoundly moving along with the funny. It is more heavy on the drama than the comedy, but the film is still hilarious, mainly thanks to the supporting actors.
Levitt is an extremely likeable and hugely talented actor, and after years in independent cinema (starring in the likes of the wonderful Mysterious Skin (2004) and Brick (2005)), seems to be finally getting his deserved big break after the recent (500) Days of Summer (2009) and Inception (2010). Here he uses his every-man charisma to create a wholly believable nice-guy character. Ultimately though, the film belongs to Seth Rogen. He is surprisingly touching as the reliable best friend who can only communicate his affection with cock jokes and trying to get Adam laid. He also hates Rachael, and when he finds out that she is not putting out for Adam, he has possibly the best line of the whole film - "if I was your girlfriend, I'd be sucking your cock right now!".
Anna Kendrick also does herself no harm, expertly playing cute and sweet, and one half of a potential romance that I was really rooting for. The fact that Adam may die before they have a chance adds to underlying sadness. With Levitt and Kendrick as the two players, 50/50's rom-com moments achieve far more in small doses than the majority of other rom-com's can only dream of reaching. Huston displays why she is still an acting powerhouse, with her concerned yet hard-as-nails mother stealing the few scenes she has.
It is a film full of great performances, but special mention must also go to director Jonathan Levine, who keeps any technical flourishes to a bare minimum, allowing the actors to play out the fantastic script in front of a mainly hand-held camera. A wise decision, as the subject matter and the brilliance of the dialogue doesn't require flashy moments of quirkiness. He does, however, deliver an amusing and weirdly moving scene where Adam, stoned from his cancer-buddies 'special' macaroons, wanders down a hospital corridor in slow-motion, giggling at everything he sees, which includes people in various stages of their cancer and a dead body.
One of the best comedies of the decade, and one of the finest films of the year. 50/50 can sit alongside those other modern greats from Rogen and his gang - Superbad, Knocked Up (both 2007) and Funny People. Powerful, uplifting, hilarious, sad and extremely moving - it is not often that a film can achieve so much in such a subtle way.
The U.S. is a wasteland. It is the result of a vampiric plague that has seen the world overrun by vicious, blood-drinking beasts. When his family is butchered by one, young Martin (Connor Paolo) is taken under the wing of mysterious and grizzled vampire hunter Mister (Nick Damici). Mister is already on a journey to travel across America and get to Canada, now known as 'New Eden'. The country is in turmoil from gangs, and the most notorious of these is the Brotherhood, a religious fundamental group who believe the vampires are a plague sent by God, led by Jebedia Loven (Michael Cerveris).
Vampires are so huge these days, especially amongst teeny-boppers and fantasy-addled women, that possibly the coolest supernatural creation has become redundant and non-threatening. The astronomic popularity of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books and the inevitable films, along with Charmaine Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries that was later to become HBO's True Blood have take the edge and (sorry) bite out of the vampire myth. Stake Land's director Jim Mickle seems to be more than aware of this, as he has brought it back down to Earth, and has created a sobering and brutal apocalyptic vision, and a damn good film.
It's clear from the opening five minutes that this won't be an easy watch, as Martin goes into the barn where his family has just been murdered to search for the vampire. His torch flashes around, and he sees his mother dead and his father dying, and then, perched on a high beam, is the monster sucking on his baby sibling, whose limp body he then drops thudding to the ground. The vampires here aren't handsome and seductive, nor are they human. They are more like the undead from Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981).
If there's a complaint to had about the film, it's that there isn't much plot. It's basically watching the characters try and get from A to B. It's very much The Road (2009) with vampires. But what happens between A and B is so full-on that you won't really care too much, but you will need a strong stomach. Mister isn't the archetypal heroic hard man - his morals are very questionable, and his anger, eagerness and the pleasure he takes in killing is often unsettling. When Mister and Martin come across a Sister (Kelly McGillis) fleeing two Brotherhood rapists, he coldly slits one of their throats, and throws a stake into the other's back, leaving him to die a slow death. No punch-lines here.
Stake Land does for vampires what HBO's Game of Thrones has done for epic fantasy. It has brought it back down to Earth, creating an adult world where the realm is more reality than fantasy. By doing this, it gives a fresh perspective and a new respect for the fantasy genre, and rather than create a world we can get lost in, it engages us more by setting it very much in our world. Stake Land won't be for everybody - it's moody, devoid of humour, and often relentlessly depressing and nasty. But it's also very much about family and loneliness, and spends a lot of time focusing on the father-son relationship between Martin and Mister, and is done so well it is actually extremely moving in some places. Refreshing, then, and shows there is plenty of life in the vampire genre yet.
