As well as delivering some of the shoddiest straight-to-video horror efforts ever made, the 1980s were also notorious for making stars of the real brains behind most projects - the writers. Popular authors such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz saw their names frequently advertised above the movie's title, used as the main selling point over any actors attached or the director in charge of the adaptation. One of the biggest names to emerge in the decade was Clive Barker, whose pull-no-punches approach and love of the stomach-churning side of sexuality provided a racier alternative to the milder King and Koontz. He would really make his mark in 1987 with his directorial debut Hellraiser, but before that came Rawhead Rex, adapted from a short story from Volume 3 of his Books of Blood series.
Just why Barker seemed so intent on bringing Hellraiser to the big screen himself is made perfectly clear after watching Rawhead Rex, a cheap, schlocky monster movie which Barker himself wrote the screenplay for, but quickly disowned after seeing the final product. Set in Ireland, Rawhead follows American Howard Hallenback (David Dukes), who drags his whole family to the cold, wet countryside in a bid to discover his roots and research sites that may be of religious and historical significance. But little does he know that nearby, a farmer has moved a sacred stone and unleashed the snarling demon Rawhead Rex upon the world. The peculiar priest Declan O'Brien (Ronan Wilmot) starts to act even more bizarrely when he encounters a strange vision after laying his hand on the church altar. Soon enough, mutilated bodies are being unearthed and citizens are vanishing, and with the police seemingly clueless, it's left to Howard to uncover the truth and send the monster back where it came from.
Directed by George Pavlou, Rawhead Rex is a terrible movie, losing points on everything from the camerawork to the acting (although Dukes actually isn't bad). The monster itself looks like hastily clumped-together paper mache school project, with a permanent open-mouthed expression unable to disguise the clear signs that the actor inside is struggling to see where they're going. It's offensive to the Irish, and just about anybody else with reasonable taste in cinema. Still, like many horror movies from the 1980s that receiving a pounding from the critics before gathering dust in the local video store, this is tons of fun for anybody with a weakness for tongue-in-cheek trash. It has a sense of humour, and certainly isn't afraid to have the most helpless of victims be dragged away by the rabid beast when you really expect them to turn up alive. Barker was understandably embarrassed but this certainly doesn't damage his reputation, and is enough to tide us over until Barker hopefully gets around to his long-planned remake.
The films of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos are polarising to say the least, deliberately tailored to the art-house crowd seeking something new and potentially shocking, but rarely sitting well with general audiences. Both Dogtooth and The Lobster were difficult movies to watch for many different reasons, yet what makes Lanthimos so interesting is the skill in which he makes an audience feel uneasy. His latest, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is his most troubling picture yet, and I mean that in a good way. For the first hour of the film Lanthimos allows us to gaze through the windows of a seemingly happy middle-class family, before peeling back the layers to reveal the dysfunction beneath. Think a touch of Cronenberg, a hint of Bunuel, and a large dollop of Haneke, and your somewhere in the right area.
Highly-skilled surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) has battled through alcoholism to maintain a position of respect and authority at the hospital he works. He is happily married to Anna (Nicole Kidman), and enjoys spending time with children Bob (Sunny Suljic) and his teenage daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy). The impressively-bearded Steven also maintains a relationship with a confident young man named Martin (Barry Keoghan), walking and talking by the lake, and meeting in a diner to eat together. If it was anyone other than the subtly unnerving Martin, it would be easy to interpret their first scene together as some kind of strange first date, but it's clear they share some history together. Out of nowhere, Bob suddenly loses feeling in his legs, leaving both his father and specialists baffled at the mysterious condition. As Bob declines in health, Martin grows in confidence, dating Kim in secret and turning up unannounced at the hospital to see Steven on a daily basis.
To say any more would spoil the 'joy' to be had with The Killing of a Sacred Deer, as you spend the first half of the film out of the loop and likely expecting Steven and Martin's relationship to be revealed as sexual. Lanthimos takes his time to provide answers, carefully guiding you into the blood-drained Murphy household and taking you on long walks via Steadicam down endless, cold-white hospital corridors, before unleashing a revelation that will take Steven to the brink. Not all the big questions are answered however, and Lanthimos makes sure they don't need to be. As the mystery illness worsens and others start to show similar symptoms, the film keeps the focus on the central conflict between the handsome, successful doctor and the quietly menacing teen. Farrell continues to impress as he moves away from the pretty-boy roles that dogged his early career, but Keoghan, last seen in Dunkirk earlier this year, steals the film as the delicately threatening Martin. He's rarely anything less than pleasant, but there's just something not quite right, and Keoghan underplays the role to perfection. It's a touch overlong, and a sexual encounter in a car feels unnecessary, but Lanthimos is only fine-tuning his craft, and it feels like his masterpiece is only around the corner.
Last year, Netflix unleashed one of its bigger hits to date - the nostalgic, creepy and ridiculously entertaining Stranger Things. Set in the 1980s, the show quickly garnered a legion of fans old enough to have grown up on the blockbuster classics of Steven Spielberg, as well as attracting younger viewers drawn to its mystery and lovable characters. While Stranger Things itself may have been influenced by J.J. Abrams' throwback Super 8, the show's success can certainly be felt throughout cinema. One such film is Billy O'Brien's I Am Not a Serial Killer, adapted from Dan Wells' young adult novel of the same name, which manages to hide its low budget roots incredibly well and deliver an interesting character study with a supernatural edge.
Teenager John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) shows all the signs of being a future serial killer. He is well aware that his sinister thoughts and general disdain for humanity do not bode well, and openly tells his therapist so. In order to ensure that he doesn't commit a terrible act he cannot take back, John follows a strict set of rules, including responding to abuse by paying a compliment. It hasn't prevented him from developing a reputation as a freak among his fellow students in high school, but he does enjoy an easy-going friendship with his elderly neighbour, Mr. Crowley (Christopher Lloyd). In his spare time, John helps out his mother (Laura Fraser) with the family funeral home business, where he gets to stare with intense curiosity at the cadavers being readied for embalming. When the town is hit by an organ-stealing murderer, John uses his encyclopaedic knowledge of serial killers to carry out his own investigation.
It's to O'Brien's credit that he has managed to sculpt such an impressive-looking piece out of such a modest budget. It has a grungy, 90s aesthetic with a soundtrack including the likes of Donovan and Norman Greenbaum, but with the way it explores its dark subject matter and troubled protagonist, also feels contemporary. The less known about the film the better, as what little I had heard about it before going in led me to believe that I would be getting a serious study of a young sociopath, but this is only half of the story. The young Records, last seen in 2009's Where the Wild Things Are as an eleven year-old, plays the psycho with a heart of gold with a weirdly endearing blend of creepiness and fragility, and Lloyd gives one of his career-best as one of John's prime suspects. It has its flaws, and your enjoyment of the film may depend on how much genre-mixing you can stomach, but this is an odd yet compelling little indie.
Early in 2015, word-of-mouth was spreading from festival-goers that The Lobster was a strange masterpiece, a dark and bleakly hilarious portrayal of modern relationships that could even compete for the Oscars as long as the voters were not put off by the general weirdness. It however limped into cinemas with little promotion (that I saw), gaining positive reviews from the critics, but was notably absent during awards season. This may have been down to the film being simply too out-there, but I believe it's down to the fact that the incredible precision of the first act gives way to a depressingly bleak and rambling latter half.
The first half of the film is where Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos sets the scene for this not-too-distant living nightmare, where couples must either find a loving partner or face being turned into an animal of their choice. Sullen David (Colin Farrell) arrives at a hotel in middle-of-nowhere Ireland hoping to find a mate. The rules are simple - find love within 45 days or become a wild beast, and David has decided he is to be a lobster. Escape into the surrounding woods and you'll have your former buddies hunting you at night with a tranquilliser gun in the hope of gaining an extra day for each 'kill'. David tries courting the 'Heartless Woman' (Angeliki Papoulia), as she is billed, but things turn sour and he decides to make off into the trees.
The hotel scenes are mostly uncomfortably hilarious. David's new friend, 'The Limping Man' (Ben Whishaw), tries to find common ground with 'Nosebleed Woman' (Jessica Barden) by bashing his head against a wall to cause his nose to gush so they can share something in common, while the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly) is forced by the stern Hotel Manager (Olivia Colman) to put his hand in a toaster as a punishment for masturbating (which is strictly forbidden, while the inhabitants are forced to receive a dry humping from the Maid (Ariane Labed) without ejaculating every morning). Courtship here is routine and emotionless, likely commenting on the ridiculous state of modern dating, which is usually based on linking shared interests and statistics electronically. Whatever happened to a good old natural spark?
It's also depressing, but absorbingly so, but loses its pace once David is in the woods. He meets the leader of escaped hotel guests the Loners, played by Lea Seydoux, whose way of life seems even harsher than the hotels. Romance and sexual activity are punishable by violence and mutilation, but nevertheless David falls in love with the 'Short Sighted Woman' (Rachel Weisz). Once the focus shifts away from the Hotel and the bizarre hook of the films title, the film is just not as interesting while in the world of the Loners. The satire loses its edge and the story could have benefited from 15 minutes or so shaved off. Still, The Lobster is an oddball experience I would recommend anyone to sit through at least once, and features a terrifically restrained performance from Farrell, playing against type.
There has perhaps never been a more obvious metaphor in cinema for the loss of childhood innocence and the sudden arrival of the big, scary, grown-up world out there, but Irish director Lenny Abrahamson, who helmed 2014's magnificent Frank, translates Emma Donoghue's internal monologue-heavy novel of the same name with tenderness and care, successfully avoiding sensationalising the horror at its disturbing core. Room is one of the year's most complex and awe-inspiring films.
Five year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) has never left the place he knows as Room. To him, the tiny shed he has lived his entire life is the whole world, with the pictures on the television screen beamed in from some distant galaxy. He and his devoted mother Joy (Brie Larson) spend every day in a set routine, with Joy using every waking moment to tend to her son and shield him from the terrible situation they're actually in. We come to learn that Joy has been locked in Room for seven years, taken a long time ago by a man she only knows as Old Nick (Deadwood's Sean Bridgers), who routinely re-ups their supplies and rapes Joy while Jack peeks through the cracks of his wardrobe.
Larson won an Oscar for her performance here and rightly so. The relationship between Joy and Jack is more than simple mother-and-son, as it comes quickly to light that the boy is the only thing keeping her alive. Still, she struggles with his energy and growing curiosity of things he cannot comprehend, until one day she decides to tell him the truth and plans their escape. Her depression is becoming overwhelming, to the point where she may commit suicide, and then what then for her son? If you're unaware of the plot then don't read any further, for it is the moment Jack finally breaks free, followed shortly after by his mother, when the film moves into different territory altogether - Jack coping with this mind-blowing revelation. There now exists things he has never seen before, such as other people, other places, and the sky.
Tremblay is equally as good as Jack with arguably a more complex character. It's appalling that his name was missing from the Academy's line-up, as this is the finest male performance of the year (as lovely as it was to see Leonardo DiCaprio receive his long-overdue award). His experience of this new, massive planet is amplified by some intelligent camerawork from cinematographer Danny Cohen, who films in sparse wide-shots to heighten the scale, and employs intense close-ups during the early scenes in Room to almost offend your sense of space. Yet its the two leads and their natural chemistry that really assist Room in delivering its intended emotional wallop. Whenever they're apart, you feel the tear and their need for each other. This is powerful, intelligent film-making, with a real hint of the greatness that could come from Abrahamson in the future.
To try and create a film based on or around the life of musician Chris Sievey, frontman of 70's/80's group The Freshies, or his alter-ego Frank Sidebottom, a papier-mache-head donning presenter with a thick Mancunian accent, would be absolute folly. Rather than attempting to create such a redundant biopic, director Lenny Abrahamson, and writers Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan, have used Sidebottom's legacy and traits as a template to toast eccentric (and possibly mad) artists everywhere and condemn the new social media platform which does little to celebrate them.
Young, aspiring and likely talentless keyboard player Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) cannot believe his luck when Don (Scoot McNairy), member of avant-garde group the Soronprfbs, invites Jon to play with them following the mental decline of their own keyboardist. He packs and eagerly joins them, only to arrive in a countryside hut in Ireland where the band are to stay indefinitely to complete their next album. Theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) responds to Jon's inclusion with aggression, but Jon is taken by the group's charismatic singer, Frank (Michael Fassbender), a man who refuses to take off his giant, papier-mache mask or conform to the traditional song-writing process.
As the album gets closer to completion (with Jon growing a huge beard in the process), the band become popular due to Jon's frequent Twitter and Facebook video postings revealing their unconventional recording techniques, frequent outbursts and erratic behaviour. It is from this that the film succeeds in it's satire of an increasingly connected world. The followers start to pile up, and it looks as if their first gig will be well attended. But is it the music the fans are in it for? Or do they simply wish to witness first-hand the collapse of a band so riddled with idiosyncrasies that they have become the subject of blood-thirsty ridicule? Jon, finding himself completely seduced by the attention and becoming increasingly dislikeable, lusts for fame at the expense of art and originality.
At the centre of it all, is Frank himself, wonderfully played by Fassbender (although you wouldn't guess it was him under that mask). His innocence, and clear mental instability, is reminiscent of Daniel Johnston, the schizophrenic singer-songwriter from California, who creates beautiful work in his own unique way, despite the odds against him. Frank, with no trace of irony, asks Jon "why cover anything up?". Frank the character and Frank the movie are, in equal measures, funny, moving, thrilling, and best of all, really fucking weird. A third a celebration of pure, unfiltered art, another a sad portrayal of our sadistic thirst for freak-shows, but most of all, this is a superb story wonderfully told.
Following 2011's wildly entertaining The Guard, John Michael McDonagh continues his dissection of Ireland with Calvary. But there's little of the former's laugh-out-loud humour, and certainly no slow-motion action set-pieces or stylish editing. Calvary feels like the work of a developing auteur, taking giant strides after a highly successful indie debut (The Guard is Ireland's most successful export ever, financially speaking), and creating a deep, meaningful film which is capable of going to some very dark places indeed. Brendan Gleeson again takes the lead, and with his performance as Father James, a good-natured priest given a week to live, he proves that he is one of Britain's acting giants.
The film begins with Father James being visited by an unseen man for a confession. "I first tasted semen when I was 7 years old," the man says, much to the priest's shock. He talks about his sexual abuse as a child at the hands of a priest, and how his desire for revenge rages inside of him. It would be no good killing a bad priest, so he's going to kill Father James instead, because he is a good man. Father James has a week to get his house in order, and is to meet his killer the following Sunday on the beach. James doesn't go to the police, and knows perfectly well who the mystery man is. Instead, he tends to his flock and cares for his suicidal daughter (Kelly Reilly), as his world begins to crumble around him.
Set in a small village in County Sligo, Father James's community is a tightly-knit one. Although the village's inhabitants show up for Mass every week, they show little but contempt and ridicule for the good Father. There's a butcher (Chris O'Dowd) who is suspected of beating up his wife (Orla O'Rourke) for openly cheating on him with an Ivorian immigrant (Issach De Bankole). There's also a surgeon (Aidan Gillen), an aggressively cynical man; a death's-door writer (M. Emmet Walsh) who wishes the end his own life whilst he is still control of it; a socially-inept young horndog (Killian Scott); a stinking-rich businessman (Dylan Moran) who is drinking himself to death; and a strange police chief (Gary Lydon) who frequently frolics with a young male prostitute (Owen Sharpe).
Their scenes play out in multi-layered conversations, slowly unravelling their own grievances with the Church, as the film tries to keep you guessing the identity of Father James's killer. But this soon loses it's importance as James's motivations for apparently willingly drifting towards his death come to the fore. It's no coincidence that the only characters who act with a mutual respect or affection for the priest aren't Irish. The well-documented abuse cases at the hands of Catholic paedophile priests has ruined the Church's reputation, and James goes through the film being mocked, threatened, and in one scene, has a lit cigarette flicked at him as a means to end a conversation.
Yet unlike last year's Philomena, this doesn't bash or condemn the Church. Ultimately, the sympathy lies with Father James, who is a decent man who tries to help people even when he's the subject of aggression. He's flawed, certainly. A recovering alcoholic, prone to violent tempers, he unknowingly neglected his daughter when his wife passed on his road to priestdom. When he comes across a little girl on a country lane for some idle chatter, her father races up and quickly ushers her away. His faith is unshaken but he cannot help embodying something so profoundly damaged and now so closely related to those unspeakable revelations. Calvary is a grand work by a director fearlessly working towards potential greatness.
To paraphrase The Guard's FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), this movie is either really motherfuckin' smart, or really motherfuckin' dumb. Having laughed my way throughout the majority of it, my feet are firmly in the former camp, with Brendan Gleeson's towering performance and writer/director John Michael McDonagh's extremely witty script make this one of the most under-appreciated movies of 2011. It is, on the surface, a simple fish out of water story crossed with a mismatched buddy comedy. But with a self awareness that brings to mind Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), The Guard often feels like it's more intelligent than it's letting on, similar in many ways to it's morally shady protagonist.
Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is not your everyday Garda (Gaelic for 'policeman') . As he expressionlessly watches a car load of weed-toking yoofs crash and die, he helps himself to the insides of their pockets and finds some acid, which he promptly swallows without thinking twice. He cares about his terminally ill mother, so we know he's at least not all bad. His laid-back attitude to law enforcement is threatened by the arrival of the eager Aidan McBride (Rory Keenan) from Dublin, as well as a murder that may point to the work of an occult serial killer. There's also more drugs on the streets than ever before, but Gerry enjoys those almost as much as he enjoys his hookers.
If the witty yet crass dialogue spouting from this grumpy collections of Irishmen sounds somewhat familiar, then this is probably because John Michael's brother Martin McDonagh penned and directed In Bruges (2008), which also starred Gleeson. In my opinion, The Guard is better and certainly funnier. Most of the humour stems from Gerry himself and the way he plays with the characters he interacts with as much as the audience themselves. With the news that international drug traffickers are heading to Connemara to make a multi-million (or billion, no-one seems to know) dollar deal, FBI Agent Everett arrives to brief the guard's on the situation. When the dealers appear on the projector as Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong, Gerry's response is "But I thought all drug-dealers were black?".
It may seem somewhat bad taste humour, but the way Gleeson delivers his lines, and the reaction by Cheadle (who plays the straight-man extremely well), make for comedy gold. Gerry is everything Everett despises - bigoted, ignorant - but the loathing changes to curiosity as he witnesses Gerry do some good police work and appears to be the only one who cares. Is he putting on an act to catch people off-guard? Is he really an idiot with a natural instinct for detective work? Or is he a bit both? I can forgive it's formulaic shoot-out ending for suspicion that it may be mocking the type of films it's emulating. After all, this is a fish-out-of-water-story where the main character verbally acknowledges that he's in a fish-out-of-water story. I'm sticking with really motherfuckin' smart.
Hunger tells the story of the build up and event of the 1981 Irish hunger strike at H.M. Prison Maze, which was led by Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer Bobby Sands. The purpose of the strike was to protest against the British government to recognise the politics of republicanism, and to promote to the general public, an understanding of Northern Ireland's desire for independence from 'British' politics. Sands was previously involved in other prison strikes which were unsuccessful, but it was his 66 days of hunger strike that got Margret Thatchers Conservative government to take notice, and effectively paved the way for Northern Ireland's political independence in the form of Sinn Fein, completely radicalising British politics. During the 66 days of hunger strike, Sands was elected into British Parliament, as M.P. of Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Directed by artist/filmmaker Steve McQueen, who was previously known for winning Britain's controversial Turner prize in 1999. As usual, the awards create a barrage of the public abuse, with (mainly Daily Mail readers') outcry's stating that this is not art. Most of McQueen's work is film, displayed in art galleries, and are usually static camerawork. The most famous piece that was part of his Turner collection, Deadpan (1997), was a short, one camera shot of McQueen himself, stood static as the front of a wooden building falls down, but McQueen is still able to stand as he stood at the spot where an open window is. This is a recreation of a famous Buster Keaton routine. Hunger is McQueen's first Narrative work. Steve also co-wrote the screenplay with Irish playwright, Enda Walsh, who has subsequently adapted his own play, Chatroom (2010), into a screenplay that was directed by Hideo Nakata. Hunger won the Camera D'Or at the 2008 Cannes film festival.
McQueen continues his previous style of filmmaking, with use of many static shots. The camera very rarely moves. This perpetuates a sense of dread within the prison walls, and completely gives the idea to the viewer of the mundanity of day-to-day living in such a high security prison. In the first half of the film we do not meet Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), but are introduced to firstly a prison guard Raymond Lohan (played by Stuart Graham), who we see floating through his day, evidently miserable and probably pretty terrified of the IRA. We are also presented with Gerry Campbell - who is new to the prison (Liam McMahon) - and Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan), who have to share a cell. The walls of the cell are covered in Gillen's own excrement. The sense of despair within these walls is palpable. The prisoner's spend all of their time in these small cells, the only time they're out of these is if they are being beaten, or are forced to the bathrooms, viciously have their hair cut, then are thrown into baths and scrubbed with hard-bristle brooms.
Bridging the first and second acts of the film is (what I think to be the best scene of the film) a conversation between Sands and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham). In this long sequence, almost entirely as a static shot, Sands tells of his plan to go on hunger strike (whilst this scene could be viewed as heavy exposition, after a practically dialogue-free first half, the script works incredibly well in hiding this, and the conversation seems natural), and this leads Moran to question the morality of this 'protest'. He objects as it is suicide.
The last act of the film shows the deterioration of the human body when it is exposed to the effects of hunger. This causes massive internal injuries to the stomach, blood-sugar and heart rate. Sands is constantly monitored in the prison hospital. This last part is acted incredibly by Fassbender, who clearly lost a lot of weight, and portrays in anguish of his slowly withering, dying body. The film has no musical score, its only sounds are background. This also highlights the full emptiness, and despair of prison life. Despite its serious, and horrific subject matter, the film is one of beauty, the long, static shots, leaving you time to soak up the atmosphere in the mise-en-scene, giving you the sense of mundanity. It certainly is a film deserving of the many awards it got. I just can't believe it took me this long to get around to watch.
Just why Barker seemed so intent on bringing Hellraiser to the big screen himself is made perfectly clear after watching Rawhead Rex, a cheap, schlocky monster movie which Barker himself wrote the screenplay for, but quickly disowned after seeing the final product. Set in Ireland, Rawhead follows American Howard Hallenback (David Dukes), who drags his whole family to the cold, wet countryside in a bid to discover his roots and research sites that may be of religious and historical significance. But little does he know that nearby, a farmer has moved a sacred stone and unleashed the snarling demon Rawhead Rex upon the world. The peculiar priest Declan O'Brien (Ronan Wilmot) starts to act even more bizarrely when he encounters a strange vision after laying his hand on the church altar. Soon enough, mutilated bodies are being unearthed and citizens are vanishing, and with the police seemingly clueless, it's left to Howard to uncover the truth and send the monster back where it came from.
