Review #1,471: 'The Sisters Brothers' (2018)

French filmmaker Jacques Audiard has made a name for himself by focusing on morally-conflicted lead characters surviving any way they can in an environment they have no real control over. Whether it be the brutal prison setting of A Prophet, the street brawls of Rust and Bone, or the Sri Lanka torn apart by civil war in Dheepan, Audiard seems most at home when tossing his lead character in the deep end and observing as the survival instincts inevitably kick in. There is perhaps no greater time and place to explore humanity at its most savage and uncivilised as the Wild West, so Audiard feels right at home among the shootouts, saloon fights and general lawlessness of his latest film, the curiously-titled The Sisters Brothers.

Based on the novel by Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers follows the titular siblings Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix), two apparent opposites who seem to tolerate each other for their shared bloodline only. While their overall outlook on life couldn't be further apart, one skill the pair undoubtedly share is a knack for killing, and their exploits have granted them an almost mythical status throughout the land. They are hired killers in the employment of a shady businessman known only as the Commodore (Rutger Hauer), and their latest job is to track down and kill chemist Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), who has supposedly stolen from the old man. Their journey takes them from Jacksonville to San Francisco, but the mission is plagued by misfortune. Encountering everything from bear attacks to venomous spiders to rival hired hands, these mishaps allow plenty of time for the brothers to reflect on their life choices and their future, if they are ever to make it out alive.

As the elder of the brothers, Reilly's Eli hopes to eventually settle down and walk away from a life where death seems to await them at every turn. The drunken, unpredictable Charlie believes their lives couldn't get any better, and cannot imagine a world where his brother is not at his side. Little by little their backstories are revealed, and although he shares his younger sibling's flair for murder, it becomes clear that Eli's life would have turned out quite differently if he wasn't forced to pick up the pieces left in the wake of Charlie's destructive nature. The two actors are so good together that the film slows down when the action moves away from them, and more time is spent developing the relationship between Warm and softly-spoken private detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). Morris is actually working with the Sisters, but has a change of heart when Warm reveals his water-based formula that will potentially turn the tide for gold prospecting.

While these little detours slightly derail the film's pace, they prove intriguing enough in their own right. Despite the brutality of their surroundings and the natural hostility of the unexplored frontier, Warm and Morris are tidier, more articulate, and completely at odds with the survivalist nature of the anti-heroes of the title. They hint at a changing world, and the way the Old West is imagined by cinematographer Benoit Debie - shot in Spain - would be more at home with the auteur-driven revisionist westerns of the 1970s, but not so different to cause traditionalists to scoff. The key ingredients are all there: bursts of violence, whiskey-drenched brothel visits, and a long, perilous journey across country; but there is a sensitive, character-driven drama at its core. It was billed as a comedy of sorts upon its release, and although there are certainly laugh-out-loud moments, they serve only to reinforce the humanity lurking within its murky characters.


Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Starring: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rebecca Root, Rutger Hauer
Country: France/Spain/Romania/Belgium/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,452: 'Horror Express' (1972)

With a cast list boasting the names of both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and a claustrophobic setting aboard a high-speed train, it would be easy to assume that Horror Express is another low-budget gothic effort from Hammer, or perhaps a portmanteau effort from Amicus. It is neither, and is in fact a joint Spanish and UK production made at a time when gothic horror was falling out of favour with audiences, who were being treated to more graphic, socially-aware films such as Night of the Living Dead, and psychological horrors from the US. Helmed on a measly budget by Spanish director Eugenio Martin (so low-budget that the shadow of the camera and cameraman is clearly present in the very first shot), Horror Express actually deserves more attention. It may not be particularly original, but it's shockingly entertaining, utterly bonkers, and provides an interesting sci-fi twist to a familiar genre piece.

Stuffy British anthropologist Sir Alexander Saxton (Lee) discovers the mummified remains of what appears to be a primitive human in a Manchurian cave. With hopes of this find-of-the-century providing some insight on the missing link in human evolution, Saxton packs the body into a wooden crate and hops onto the Trans-Siberian Express from China to Moscow. Before boarding the train however, a Chinese thief attempts to pick the crate's lock, and is found dead just moments later with his eyes completely white. The discovery also catches the eye of Saxton's friendly rival Dr. Wells (Cushing), who pays a baggage handler to cut a hole in the box so he can sneak a peek. The porter is too found dead soon after, and the crate empty. With the beast now loose aboard a moving train, it isn't long until the bodies start to pile up. Saxton and Wells are on the case, but the commotion also catches the attention of Inspector Mirov (Julio Pena), Polish countess Irina (Silvia Tortosa) and crazy Orthodox monk Father Pujardov (Robert DeNiro lookalike Alberto de Mendoza).

It's a strange but enticing mixture of Agatha Christie and The Thing from Another World. The discovery that their foe is actually a body-hopping alien capable of devouring memories and knowledge with each kill allows for some whodunnit fun to be had in between the many gory moments, and gives the film a strange sci-fi kick that, while completely ridiculous, adds something different to an otherwise straight-forward monster flick. The special effects have also aged rather well. It isn't scary, but the sight of corpses frozen in shock with their eyes rolled to the back of their heads makes for a rather creepy sight, and graphic scenes of surgical procedures means that Martin's picture has a welcome nasty edge that helps it to distance itself from Hammer's campier gore. You can pick the film apart, but Horror Express is simply outrageously entertaining and never lets up. Once the horror starts, each scene seems to want to double-down on what came before, even introducing Telly Savalas late on as an intimidating, vodka-swilling Cossack officer named Captain Kazan. A must-see for any fans of European horror from the Lee/Cushing era.


Directed by: Eugenio Martín
Starring: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza, Silvia Tortosa, Julio Peña, Telly Savalas
Country: UK/Spain

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,198: 'A Monster Calls' (2016)

The idea of a protagonist delving head-first into a realm of fantasy to escape the traumas of the real world is one that is employed by film-makers frequently, enabling them to inject an independent spirit into what could appear to some as a big-budget crowd-pleaser. Although these kinds of movies seem to pop up every year, the fantasy angle remains an incredibly effective tool, and occasionally a bona fide masterpiece will emerge such as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006). While del Toro's film saw its central character enter the titular labyrinth to escape a fascistic stepfather and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls, based on the novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, sets its focus on a more personal and relatable tragedy. Young Conor O'Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is struggling to deal with bullies, a strict grandmother and his mother's terminal cancer.

His young mother, played with incredible warmth by Felicity Jones, spends most of her time in bed as her body becomes exhausted from multiple hospital treatments. Conor watches her become weaker and weaker as his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) tends to her, and spends his hours in school terrified of bully Harry (James Melville). Struggling to sleep, he spends most of his nights drawing, finding refuge in his art. One night, he watches as the yew tree on the hill in the distance grows limbs and pulls itself from the ground, bounding towards Conor's bedroom window with fiery eyes. Voiced by a gravelly Liam Neeson, the Monster promises to tell Conor three stories, and insists that the boy tell him the fourth in return. The stories, which tell of good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things, seem nonsensical to Conor, but he gradually learns of the complexity of being human and dealing with grief and trauma.

With a reported budget of only $43 million, the special effects are incredibly effective in bringing the monster to life. He is not your usual kid's cuddly best friend, but an intimidating mass of branches and roots with a fondness for demolition who takes out most of Conor's bedroom when we first meet him. Yet spectacle is the last thing on Bayona's mind. The film's title and trailer may suggest a film to take your kids too, but A Monster Calls is a grounded and subdued drama similar to Bayona's breakthrough, the elegant and genuinely scary horror film The Orphanage (2007). While the emotional moments tread familiar ground and with this comes a sense of manipulation, there is a honesty to the performances, especially by the sad-eyed MacDougall, that help make this a lip-quivering experience. It didn't receive much attention during awards season and will no doubt pass most people by, but A Monster Calls is compelling study of a young boy struggling to understand his feelings and the events going on in the grown-up world around him.


Directed by: J.A. Bayona
Starring: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson, Toby Kebbell
Country: UK/Spain/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,150: 'The Skin I Live In' (2011)

The work of lauded Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodovar has always been relatively unclassifiable. While his movies clearly bare his fingerprints, the tone can often switch between high drama and comedy, tragedy and farce, restrained and sexually liberated, and often within the same scene. 'Melodrama' is the tag he usually receives, but his vision is far more complex than that. The Skin I Live In, a film which reunites him with actor Antonio Banderas 22 years after Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) is perhaps his most genre-conscious yet. It's a teasing thriller cleverly disguised as a horror, taking inspiration from classics and art-house pieces that explored both the beauty and horror of the human form, and our eagerness to tamper with it.

The reserved and clearly mad plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is on the verge of a breakthrough in the development of a synthetic human skin; one that avoids blemishing and has a resistance to mosquito bites and even fire. While his ethics are questioned by his peers, he also holds a terrible secret. At his home, he keeps a beautiful woman named Vera (Elena Anaya) locked away in a white room surrounded by cameras. The images are shown throughout the house, and Robert usually watches with fascination and desire on a huge screen that takes up most of the wall its perched upon. His loyal housekeeper Marilia (Marisa Paredes) also seems to harbouring a secret, and when her violent son Zeca (Roberto Alamo) returns, he sets off a sequence of events that will affect the lives of everyone involved. To give any more of the plot away would be to reveal too much, and Almodovar is happy to tease us by jumping back and forth between the past, present and the not-too-distant past.

It could be argued that this technique is a cheap tactic, but Almodovar wants to keep us from making any knee-jerk judgements until we've fully grasped the mindset of the characters. The movie goes to some seriously twisted places, and would perhaps be laughable if the events weren't so masterfully and elegantly pieced together. The doctor is terribly mad - this is evident early on - but Almodovar is clearly intrigued and seduced by Ledgard's dedication to his craft and his obsession over his creation. Banderas is brilliant in the role and reveals a more reserved and darker side to the persona seen in his American movies, as is Anaya, who manages to exercise a range of emotions through those stunning brown eyes of hers. If you enjoyed the themes explored in the likes of Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960), Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Face of Another (1966) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, then The Skin I Live In will no doubt fascinate you as it wanders into some incredibly dark places.


Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, Roberto Álamo
Country: Spain

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,140: 'Midnight in Paris' (2011)

The sheer volume of prolific writer/director/actor Woody Allen's back catalogue means that any new work will always have audiences comparing them to his earlier, more universally-acclaimed pictures. Born in 1935, it has been over fifty years since his first peek behind the camera with What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), and he still pumps out roughly a film per year. The declining quality doesn't help either, with (before Midnight in Paris) his only truly excellent film being the incredibly sexy Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) since 1999's charming Sweet and Lowdown. Perhaps he had the idea for years, but it felt like Allen may be having a sly pop at the nostalgia-fiends feeding off his past glories with Midnight in Paris, a heart-warming and funny exploration of a writer pining for a bygone age.

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a successful Hollywood screenwriter holidaying in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams). He is also struggling with his first novel, about a man working in a nostalgia shop, and his bride-to-be isn't helping matters by insisting they spend time with her rich, conservative parents and her annoying, know-it-all friend Paul (Michael Sheen). Gil feels like he belongs in a different decade, namely 1920's Paris, where the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salvador Dali enjoyed decadent parties and frequented the boisterous bars. On a walk one night, Gil is approach by an old-fashioned taxi as the clock strikes midnight, and the passengers beckon him to join them. Soon enough, he is chatting with the likes of Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill), as Cole Porter (Yves Heck) plays piano.

As Gil's nightly visits to the 1920's play out, a wealth of famous faces bring other famous faces to life. The likes of Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and Dali (Adrien Brody) all brush shoulders with the awestruck writer, as well as the mysterious Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a muse of Picasso who catches his eye. The fantastic performances aside - Stoll is a particular revelation - Paris itself is a star of the movie, akin to what Allen did may times with his New York-set films. It's certainly overly-romanticised, but this only serves to heighten Gil's sense of wonder, and he is hopeless romantic after all. Midnight in Paris is Allen's wittiest, warmest and most effortlessly entertaining films since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway. It may be difficult to avoid comparing this to the director's classic works, but Midnight in Paris sits easily as one of his best.


Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy, Corey Stoll, Michael Sheen, Tom Hiddleston, Alison Pill, Kathy Bates
Country: Spain/USA/France

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,042: 'Death Walks on High Heels' (1971)

Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks on High Heels begins with the murder of a famed jewel thief on board a train by a balaclava-clad killer with piercing blue eyes. The police suspect the slaying may be linked to a recent heist during which millions of francs worth of goods were taken, and believe that the missing loot is in the possession of the departed's daughter, Nicole Rochard (Nieves Navarro, here billed as Susan Scott), whose life may be in imminent danger. They may just be right, as the beautiful exotic dancer starts to receive phone calls by someone speaking through a voice-changer. After discovering a pair of blue contact lenses at the home of her boyfriend Michel (Simon Andreu), she flees to England with rich admirer Dr. Robert Matthews (Frank Wolff), only to discover that her would-be assassin may still be lurking.

Regularly paired with Ercoli's fellow giallo Death Walks at Midnight, made the following year, Death Walks on High Heels may not contain the same skill for ingeniously-structured set-pieces of Dario Argento or the gore level of Lucio Fulci, but it has in spades that other key ingredient of the giallo - fun. Many of the Italian thrillers to emerge in the 1970's contain a suitably bonkers and convoluted plot, but High Heels can boast one of the best. It's a film in which anyone and everyone could be the one behind the mask, with inexplicable red herrings at every turn and more than a few moments of extensive, but required, exposition. It plays on the camp appeal of the genre, and very much succeeds in doing so.

There's also Nieves Navarro/Susan Scott, who is not only unbelievably gorgeous, but also manages to transcend the usual roles her type of character gets to play in these types of films (eye candy) and stands out as a playful presence. She also delivers a marvellously bizarre performance in the first of her exotic dance shows we get to see it, which she performs in blackface while wearing a trimmed afro wig as Wolff looks on utterly enamoured. It's weirdly endearing, and highlights the void between now and then in terms of our attitudes towards political correctness. If you try and piece the puzzle together yourself, you'll probably leave yourself in a spin. Like many of the best gialli the Italians have to offer, view it with a blind acceptance of anything the film throws at you and it'll zip by in a flash.


Directed by: Luciano Ercoli
Starring: Frank Wolff, Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Carlo Gentili
Country: Italy/Spain

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,021: 'Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country' (2008)

In 1962, the Burmese government was overthrown in a coup by the socialist military, who maintained control of the country until 2011. During this time, Burma deteriorated into poverty, while any protests or statements made against the ruling government were quickly crushed through intimidation, torture, outlandishly long jail sentences and executions. In 1988, a series of marches, rallies and protests now known as the 8888 Uprising were brought to a bloody end as the military killed 3,000 civilians in the streets.

With the media controlled by the state and a ban on any footage leaving the country, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) has trained its journalists to work as guerrilla cameraman, working in the shadows to capture any acts of oppression or revolution. They work as a network but rarely meet, communicating using mobile phones and internet chatrooms, and frequently putting themselves at great personal risk. Being captured could mean death, with our narrator, known as 'Joshua', having his footage wiped early on by secret police and being forced into exile. Clever reconstructions of Joshua receiving updates on a new uprising now known as the Saffron Revolution, led by the Buddhist monks, forms a tense narrative.

The footage captured by the DVB is astonishing, with the action taking place right before your eyes. It is also, at times, incredibly intimate. Early on, the monks distrust the DVB, suspecting they are secret police. When the cameramen are attacked by plain-clothes military, the monks protect them and trust is immediately solidified. You are instantly swept up by the protesters elation and feel their incredible sense of hope, so it's absolutely shattering to see it all torn away. Director Anders Ostergaard weaves the footage together expertly, and the film is wholly deserving of its Best Documentary nomination at the Academy Awards in 2010 (and probably deserved to win). It's as close as you could get to being on the streets of a country under a crushing regime, and the results are frustrating and terrifying.


Directed by: Anders Østergaard
Country: Denmark/Sweden/Norway/UK/USA/Germany/Netherlands/Israel/Spain/Belgium/Canada

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,016: 'In the Heart of the Sea' (2015)

When taking into account the reputation of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick as one of the Great American Novels, it is surprising that so few directors have taken it upon themselves to adapt the epic tale of man against nature. The most famous and well-respected is John Huston's 1956 effort that starred Gregory Peck as the obsessed Captain Ahab and, dismissing the few straight-to-DVD efforts and TV movies over the past few years, it is really the only one of note. Ron Howard has also decided to side-step Melville's tricky beast in favour of the true story that inspired it, the sinking of the whaling ship Essex.

Almost as if Howard was afraid that the sight of a group of battered, starving sailors drifting would be too boring for the audience to stomach for two hours, the story begins with Melville himself (played by Ben Whishaw) paying a visit to the only remaining survivor of the Essex's doomed voyage, Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson). After a bit of nagging from his wife (Michelle Fairley) and the promise of whiskey, Nickerson soon begins spilling the tale he has kept bottled up for years, and reveals that it is not just a story of a giant, extremely peeved-off whale, but that of two men - first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) and captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker).

The men sitting behind the desks at the Nantucket whaling company view Chase, despite his impressive record at collecting whale oil, as a 'landsman' - someone born outside of the vast whaling family. Pollard is inexperienced and envious of Chase's reputation and popularity, and there personalities soon clash. Most is viewed through the eyes of the young Nickerson (played by Tom Holland, the new Spider-Man), and just when the two potential father figures reach a mutual understanding and finally discover whales after months at sea, they are rammed by a giant sperm whale and left hundreds of miles from shore with limited food, water and supplies.

You would think that a story so packed with sea-faring adventure and the promise of an unknown monster lurking beneath the surface would be effortlessly thrilling, but sadly In the Heart of the Sea is not. While certainly an overrated director, Ron Howard has made exciting films before, but here the action is so laced with obvious CGI that it makes it impossible to truly engage with the action. The film actually works best during its quieter moments. While peppered with survival-movie cliches and sluggish character development, its well-performed by the (mostly British) cast, particularly Walker, whose character arc pleasantly surprised me, and Holland, who is surely destined to be a star in the future. Still, we wait patiently for the film that does Meville, or the story behind his greatest work, justice.


Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw, Paul Anderson
Country: USA/Australia/Spain/UK/Canada

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #943: 'Planet of the Vampires' (1965)

The crews of two giant interplanetary ships. the Galliott and the Argos, head to an unexplored planet shrouded in fog and mystery after intercepting a distress signal. When landing the two crafts lose contact with each other, and the Argos, lead by the experienced Captain Markary (Barry Sullivan), lands safely after some brief but heavy turbulence. Upon arrival, the crew of the Argos inexplicably attack each other, with only Markary able to resist the strange urge to kill. After they've been knocked out of their trance-like state, they travel to the nearby Galliott to find the entire crew either missing or dead. They bury the dead they find and set out to explore the vast wasteland, but Tiona (Evi Marandi) keeps having visions of the walking dead.

Though far more experienced in horror, gialli and sword-and-sandal pictures, the great Mario Bava turns Planet of the Vampires into the most gorgeous sci-fi of its era. The planet, Aura, is desolate but strangely beautiful. Using bold primary colours and going overtime on a smoke machine, Bava infuses the planet with a suitably otherworldly atmosphere, which helps distract from the relatively formulaic plot. The director's love for horror can barely be contained as the crew start to rise from the dead. Placed in makeshift tombs and wrapped in a plastic sheet, they rise like blue-faced ghouls. Free from any distracting edits and backed by Gino Marinuzzi's eerie score, it is the most visually arresting moment in the film.

It often gets cited as one of the inspirations for Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), though Scott and writer Dan O'Bannon claim to have never seen it prior to making the film. While Markary and his crew's discovery of giant humanoid skeletons does bring to mind the space jockey found in Scott's masterpiece, the two share little else in common. Behind the visual splendour, Planet of the Vampires suffers from a cheesy script and wooden acting, the common bane of the B-movie. Aside from an exciting set-piece involving an escape from a locked room having its oxygen sucked out, the film is actually quite plodding when it forces us to spend time with its collection of cut-out archetypes. Beautiful, certainly, and perhaps inspirational, but mark this amongst Bava's more mediocre efforts that are still worth checking out.


Directed by: Mario Bava
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, Ángel Aranda, Evi Marandi, Stelio Candelli
Country: Italy/Spain

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #913: 'Cemetery Without Crosses' (1969)

Ever since I saw Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as a child after burrowing into my brother's VHS collection, I've loved spaghetti westerns. It was only in my teenage years that I realised just how many of these films were made - some excellent, some terrible, and some just outright bizarre - and it's been fun tracking down some of the more obscure titles. While not strictly a 'spaghetti' western due to being French (a 'baguette' western as Alex Cox puts it), Cemetery Without Crosses is a stoic curiosity. Clearly influenced by the work of Leone, the film is an existential, near-silent work that is in equal parts hypnotic and plodding.

Humble farmer Ben Caine (Guido Lollobrigida) is chased and gunned down by members of the Rogers family, who are scooping up all the livestock business from the surrounding areas through fear and violence. Ben is gunned down and hanged in front of his wife Maria (Michele Mercier). With her livelihood destroyed and Ben's brothers Thomas (Guido Lollobrigida) and Eli (Michel Lemoine) opting to flee across the border, Maria turns to old friend Manuel (Robert Hossein), a brooding gunslinger residing in a nearby ghost town, for help. Manuel soon infiltrates the Rogers family and joins them on their ranch, where he sets Maria's revenge in motion.

Though more of a homage to spaghetti westerns, Cemetery Without Crosses certainly looks and feels like it was born and reared in Italy. There are a couple of glimpses of brilliance - a familiar scene of intense stare-downs at the dinner table quickly flips into a moment of outright comedy, and the scene in which a character lights a candle to reveal that they are not alone is truly nerve-shredding. But the plot is wafer-thin, so the camera is often left lingering while the characters do little or nothing at all, and the dialogue is especially sparse, even for a spaghetti western. Hossein, who also directed and co-wrote the film with the credited Dario Argento and Claude Desailly (though in reality Argento had no involvement), simply doesn't possess the magnetic presence of Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson. Exhilarating in bursts but meandering in places, Cemetery Without Crosses is still worth checking out.


Directed by: Robert Hossein
Starring: Michèle Mercier, Robert Hossein, Guido Lollobrigida, Daniele Vargas
Country: France/Italy/Spain

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #865: 'Exodus: Gods and Kings' (2014)

There is a moment during the climax of Ridley Scott's latest epic where your mind will drift to the image of a bearded Charlton Heston waving his giant staff and parting the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Exodus: Gods and Kings tells the story of Moses and Ramses, the familiar Old Testament tale about two former brothers-in-arms fighting on opposite sides of the battle; the former for the Hebrews, long enslaved by the ruling Egyptians, and the latter recently becoming the new Pharaoh in the wake of his father's death. It's the type of story that - even if the build-up lacks dramatics - is destined to be spectacular at the climax, as if there's on thing we do well in the modern age, it's spectacle.

Yet Exodus is an alarmingly bland and stuttering attempt to paint a revisionist's view of an age-old tale, resulting in a mixture of Ben-Hur (1959) and Gladiator (2000) without the scope or entertainment factor. Even Christian Bale, an actor usually of such ferocious intensity, fails to squeeze any dimensions out of Moses, and invites little sympathy during his darkest hours. Scott teases us with his own atheistic views, portraying Moses as a troubled man with possible schizophrenia, an idea which, if fully developed, would have justified this film's existence as a revisionist piece. His personality disorder manifests itself as a mediocre British child actor playing an angry God while Moses skulks on a mountain top, but outside of these moments he is little more than the archetypal command-blaring, sword-waving hero who delivers speeches and observes his men during training montages.

The only one appearing to be having any fun at all is Joel Edgerton, the Aussie actor playing the shaven-headed, bronzed-up Egyptian Pharaoh. Though he is kept at a disappointing distance, he at least manages to bring a little swagger to his performance, regardless of how utterly ridiculous he looks. The bulk of the rest of the cast are also played by Anglo's, all either frustratingly underused or comically miscast (or both). The likes of Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn, and every director's favourite go-to ethnic actor Ben Kingsley come and go, making little impact and offering no explanation as to why such familiar faces are required to fill such a role. Aaron Paul no doubt gets the worst deal. His Joshua gets the most screen time outside of Moses and Ramses but does little more than watch in confusion or awe at his leader, depending on how the script wants you to feel at that moment.

As a cinematic spectacle, Scott does manage to occasionally enthral. The early battle scene, which has Moses and Ramses charging as comrades, plays like a check-list of war cliches, and you would find better sword-clanking on TV with Game of Thrones. The ten plagues set-piece is extremely CGI-heavy, but the sweeping shots of the city running red with blood and infested with locusts and disease proves to be a beautiful sight, with Scott determined to offer a rational explanation to the events rather than it being the work of a vengeful God (though the jury is still out with the first-born deaths). This idea wouldn't be such a hindrance if Scott didn't make the rest of the film such a formulaic blockbuster and took the time to go deep into the psyche of Moses and his struggles with his belief in a God he sees as barbaric. But Exodus is neither revisionist piece nor a straight-forward Biblical epic, which is why I found myself longing for the simplicity of DeMille's vision, for at least you know where you stand.


Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Aaron Paul, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn, Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver
Country: UK/USA/Spain

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #737: 'Nightmare City' (1980)

Of the countless Italian-produced zombie movies that came out in the late 1970's and 1980's, many of them can easily be labelled the worst of the lot. Nightmare City, a silly, gun-and-knife-wielding zombie attack movie directed by hack Umberto Lenzi, is certainly up (or down) there. With it's bland, beardy lead, nonsensical story, lazy plot devices and extremely dodgy make-up, Nightmare City is very bad indeed. But it just manages to squeeze a toe hair over the so-bad-it's-still-bad-but-bearable line and raises a few titters with it's ludicrous execution, and can also boast that it's not quite as bad as Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980).

'American' news reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) travels to the airport to await the arrival of a scientist, whom he is to interview following a recent nuclear accident. When the plane arrives, it is surrounded by the military when no-one responds or opens the door. After a brief stand-off, the plane opens it's doors and dozens of bloodthirsty zombies pile out and attack the soldiers with guns, knives, bats and teeth. Eager to report the outbreak, Miller is halted by General Murchison (Mel Ferrer), who wants to hush the incident to save face. When his television station is attacked during the filming of some disco aerobics programme, Miller must find his wife and escape to the countryside.

Looking between a mixture of an out-of-date potato and a used teabag, the zombies here are much more human than your traditional Romero zombies, using weapons, moving at pace, and even clearly taking some sadistic pleasure when slitting a throat and carving a woman's breast off. As the film plods on, at a breakneck pace that somehow still manages to be boring, the make-up department seem to lose interest in the 'new' zombies and simply smear their faces with some dirt. But if Lenzi deserves credit for something, it's in keeping the violence inventive. There's eye gouging, stabbings, exploding heads and blood-drinking, and the fact that the gore looks absolutely crap makes it all the more fun.

The other familiar Lenzi traits are there, recognisable from his large collection of bizarre giallo such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), Spasmo (1974), Eyeball (1975), and Cannibal Ferox (1981). This means lots of boobs. Every female attacked by the zombies seem to have their tops torn off. Didn't nurses wear bra's back then? We also the obligatory wrinkly has-been actor (Francisco Rabal - who made three films with Luis Bunuel) fondling a beautiful European model scene. It's quite despicable film-making if taking seriously, which you simply can't, you can only try and enjoy this for what it is, a film designed to make money by spilling some blood and showing some skin. But even that is hard, as when the film finishes with a 'twist', you feel like you've had 90 minutes of your life snatched away from you in some cruel joke. Pure dread, but it's earned an extra star through sheer audacity.


Directed by: Umberto Lenzi
Starring: Hugo Stiglitz, Laura Trotter, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Francisco Rabal
Country: Italy/Mexico/Spain

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #639: 'A Lizard in a Woman's Skin' (1971)

Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan), the daughter of a wealthy politician and lawyer, sees a psychiatrist to help deal with her increasingly bizarre and possibly prophetic dreams. In the dream, she is running down a corridor filled with naked, writhing young bodies to meet her neighbour Julia (Anita Strindberg), only to stab her to death. When Julia is found dead for real, stabbed repeatedly with a letter opener, chain-smoking Detective Corvin (Stanley Baker) is brought in, and pulls Carol's prints off Julia's bed and corpse. In what at first becomes an open and shut case, soon develops into a complex mystery where everyone is a suspect.

Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci is better known for his splatter-fest horror and zombie films, some of which are excellent, some of which are distinctively below par. But his early giallo output is where he seemed to excel most, and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is one of the finest of the early giallo's, showing Fulci's (and the genre's) flair for beautiful Italian women, gorgeous cinematography, paint-red gore and a mysterious killer. But here there is only one murder, which in itself sets the film aside from most other giallo's, which more often than not revel in their blood-letting. This is slow-building and driven by atmosphere and mystery above all else.

With a jazzy score by the great Ennio Morricone, the film dazzles with two beautifully realised dream sequences, which show Fulci's unrecognised eye for the visual. With the naked flesh of beautiful women combined with the bold colours of the set design and splashings of blood, evoke an LSD trip - with Fulci here dabbling in the hippy scene. But behind it all there is a gripping mystery, one that will keep you guessing until the very, very end. Red herrings pile on top of red herrings, and alibi's are proven and then disproven. It all gets a bit too much, up to the point where you wonder whether the baffled Corvin is just going to give up and arrest himself. But that is the joy of the giallo, pushing things so far to the extreme that they go beyond ridiculous and into sublime surrealism, and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is one of the finest examples.


Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Florinda Bolkan, Stanley Baker, Jean Sorel, Silvia Monti
Country: Italy/Spain/France

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #522: 'Giallo' (2009)

In Turin, Italy, beautiful young model Celine (Elsa Pataky) is kidnapped by a taxi driver, who takes her to his torture chamber where a previous victim still lies half-dead. Celine was on her way to meet her sister Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner), who eventually suspects foul play. With the police unwilling to help, she turns to Italian-American detective Enzo (Adrien Brody), who is deep into an investigation that stretches way back, involving many missing girls who turn up tortured and murdered at seemingly random spots.

Former master of horror Dario Argento has been in deep decline since his 1970's heyday. Even his own fanboys admit that the visionary has lost his touch, and his films no longer have the gliding beauty he injected into the likes of Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Thankfully (or should I say hopefully?), it would seem that Argento must be on the ascension, as Giallo, his homage to the sub-genre that prevailed in the 60's and 70's, must surely signal rock-bottom. He surely cannot produce anything so confusingly dire, or he should simply pack his bags and stop making movies. It beggars belief how the man that created some of the most elegant horror movies ever made can fail to raise even a moment of inspiration, and at times seems to parody the genre rather than showing any real love for it.

After being promoted as being something of a return to form for the auteur and a return to director's roots, Giallo was given a very limited release (I believe it went straight-to-DVD here in the UK) after a verbal slamming from audiences and critics alike. The most famous thing to come out of it was Adrien Brody's law-suit against the producers, claiming he had yet to be paid, and tried to halt any releases of the film until he was given what he was owed. Well, judging from his performance here, the Oscar-winner doesn't deserve a dime, sleep-walking through his role and bringing no life to his thinly-written, cliché-ridden character. Any attempts to blur the lines between his miserable detective and the sadistic killer comes across as laughable, and the 'big reveal' that explains his back-story is just plain silly.

For a film marketing itself as a giallo, the film lacks anything resembling the visual class or the sleazy atmosphere of the best of the genre, with Argento's camera glides feeling more like the director's futile attempts to polish a turd. It instead has more in common with that popular, ugly sub-genre of the modern age - torture porn. We see a girl's lips cut off with scissors, and a particularly nasty hammer-to-the-skull moment, cheap tricks that are more akin to the likes of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) and its countless imitators. The killer looks like he's wandered in from the set of Joe D'Amato's Anthropophagus (1980), and is one of many plot devices that confuse and defy logic. Depressing then, seeing a once-great director stoop so low, but maybe his ambitious Dracula 3D (2012) will see a return to form.


Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky
Country: USA/UK/Spain/Italy

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

Review #467: 'The House That Screamed' (1969)

Spanish director Narciso Ibanez Serrador was never happy with the marketing for the release of his first horror film, particularly in the United States, where it was released by AIP. It is understandable when the trailer is not very representative of the tone of the film. The trailer is more salacious, and hints at more kinetic horror than is actually delivered. However, this does not mean that the film fails. Far from it. In fact, the trailer does a disservice to this rather atmospheric, slow-burning story with horror elements, set in a French boarding school for naughty girls. Teresa (Cristina Galbo) is newly introduced to the school, and the tensions of hierarchy are established immediately, and this brooding sense illustrates itself in moments of sexual frustration, sadism and humiliation.

The school of corrective discipline is overseen by headmistress, Sra. Fourneau (Lili Palmer), whose son, Luis (John Moulder-Brown), lives a floor above the girls, but is known for his voyeurism - he often peeps whilst the girls shower (consequently, the girls shower in bathrobes). Fourneau is over-protective of Luis, and refers to the girls who come through the school as no good for him, too unsettled and dirty. You could indeed call Luis a Bates-in-waiting. As Teresa discovers, through gossip and hearsay, girls have been "escaping" because they need to see boys - their sexual urges too great to ignore. But as a love-struck girl, Isabelle (Maribel Martin), takes the advice of Luis to leave with him, she is murdered on her way to meet him, in a slow-motion, abstracted and balletic scene in the forests.

Whilst the finale's "twist" will be spotted instantly, this does not effect the impact of it, with its macabre, and chillingly sycophantic nature. It certainly plods often, particularly in the first half, but it instills a climbing sense of peculiarity. With the dynamic of the hierarchical systems in the school, suspects are everywhere, and it is the relationships, often signified with repressed sexuality, a deeply sadistic nature, the girls are often humiliated, and Fourneau seems to relish (much like her son) these voyeuristic-sadistic explorations, as non-conformist girls get beaten. The setting of a Gothic period piece lends itself to the ponderous repression, and makes the girls less accessible; the time of full coverage, their frocks thicker than a winter quilt.


Directed by: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador
Starring: Lilli Palmer, Cristina Galbó, John Moulder-Brown, Maribel Martín
Country: Spain

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy

Review #450: 'The Blood Spattered Bride' (1972)

Like Carl Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), Hammer's The Vampire Lovers (1970), and Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1960), The Blood Spattered Bride adapts the 1871 Gothic novel 'Carmilla', a story of feminine control over masculine dominance. The 1970's saw a rise in lesbian vampire narratives, partly due to the cultural openness to the representation of female nudity in the cinema. Here Susan (Maribel Martin) is the young, newly married bride, who's husband's (Simon Andreu) sexual desires become increasingly horrific to her. With this escalation of pressure for sex, Susan's dreams become permeated with nightmares of rape. However, after hearing about the 17th century legend of Mircalla Karstein (Alexandra Bastedo), - who murdered her husband on their wedding night - her nightmares entwine inextricably with the ancient brides hatred towards men's sexual demands.

The husband increasingly becomes suspicious of Susan's behaviour, as her dreams lead her to a specific knife, that seems to be intended for him. In a strange introduction, he discovers a beautiful and mysterious woman hidden beneath the sand on a beach. This manifestation of the 17th century bride, comes into their home, and begins a sexual and dominating relationship with the young Susan. Whilst this is not over explicit, the two almost become one singular body, as many of the idiosyncrasies of the "ghostly" manifestation are transposed onto Susan.

The Blood Spattered Bride is an interesting film. It offers nothing particularly revelatory or new to this story, but it holds back where many would have been over-explicit, particularly with female nudity. The sensational aspects are kept subdued and this creates a more atmospheric experience (something that Jess Franco would certainly not have done). The languid pace of the film is in no way a hindrance, and offers time for contemplation. Whilst the climax of the film is very conspicuous early on, the short moments of gory violence do tend to come as a little shock amongst the usual beauty of the leading ladies. But this juxtaposition is pretty much all the shock you will get - the violence isn't as surprising if considered separately, and therefore has the same effect as seeing a shot of a crying baby, after seeing a shot of a knife wielding maniac.


Directed by: Vicente Aranda
Starring: Simón Andreu, Maribel Martín, Alexandra Bastedo
Country: Spain

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy

Review #405: 'Cannibal Apocalypse' (1980)

On a rescue mission in Vietnam, Norman Hopper (John Saxon) is bitten by two of his old drinking buddies Charlie (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) and Tom (Tony King) who are trapped in a pit and are feasting on the flesh of a charred Vietnamese woman when they are discovered. Back home, Norman is haunted by his memories, and has a strange urge to bite people. Charlie calls Norman after recently being released from hospital and wants to meet up, but before Norman can act, Charlie manages to kill some people and finds himself cornered and barricaded in a mall. Soon enough, more people are infected with this strange virus that seems to cause cannibalistic urges.

Another cannibal/zombie cash-in that was riding the wave caused by Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) and George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), Cannibal Apocalypse attempts to blend the two horror sub-genre's but ends up being a bit of a mess. I never thought I would say this, but there is too little cannibalism, and certainly no apocalypse. There are brief moments of horror surrounded by long moments of police procedural and our flesh-hungry heroes running through sewers. The one saving grace is John Saxon, recognisable from many B-movie turd-fests, he provides a welcome familiar American face in this mainly Italian production from horror and western 'legend' Antonio Margheriti. Yet the film is entertaining enough to waste 90 minutes of your life on, and thankfully avoids being as unpleasant as other cannibal entries such as Cannibal Ferox (1981 - also starring Radice).


Directed by: Antonio Margheriti
Starring: John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardo Radice
Country: Italy/Spain

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #318: 'Zombie Creeping Flesh' (1980)

When two workers accidentally cause a chemical leak at a research facility, the staff are turned into flesh-eating zombies. After a hostage situation that calls for the research centres to be close, is contained, four commandos are dispatched to Papa New Guinea to investigate the zombie threat. Already there, is journalist Lia (Margit Evelyn Newton) and her cameraman, who are investigating recent strange murders and events amongst the tribes people who live on the island. They mix with the natives, only to come under attack from a hoard of zombies, and are forced to a nearby house to investigate further.

After the massive success of Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), there was a hunger (ho ho) for zombie films. Director Bruno Mattei was brought in based on his ability to work under a tight budget, but the shoot was sporadic and problematic, with uncredited director Claudio Fragasso shooting the gore scenes, and having to incorporate scenes from another mondo film to give the film some continuity. The result is a silly mess of a film that doesn't really make much sense, and even for an 80's zombie film, is pretty bad. For one, when the world faces the threat of global contagion and the human race possible extinction, why send four of the dumbest commandos in history to neutralise the threat? In a scene in the final third of the film when the group reaches the house after coming under attack, one of the commandos dresses up in women's clothes and prances in front of the mirror, clearly amusing himself. And this is one of the men they choose to save the planet?

The film does include buckets of enjoyable blood and guts. And there's plenty of it. Granted, it looks ridiculously fake and silly but it's all you can want and expect from a low-budget video nasty. They save the best for last, where a character has their eyes popped out from the inside by a zombie hand inserted through the mouth. It's certainly an amusing note to finish the film on. But the film is so fucking stupid and overlong that no amount of gore can save this film from being yet another uninspired zombie cash-in.


Directed by: Bruno Mattei
Starring: Margit Evelyn Newton, Franco Garofalo, Selan Karay
Country: Italy/Spain

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie