Trauma is a particularly significant horror in that it was the first film to be made by Italian genre master Dario Argento on American soil. Following a string of eye-catching, kaleidoscopic gialli and superior supernatural tales, Argento found himself at the door of Hollywood, an industry which, at the time, was struggling to churn out much in terms of originality in the horror/thriller genre. While he had employed English-speaking actors before, such as Jennifer Connelly, David Hemmings and Karl Malden, their roles were often crudely dubbed, and Trauma offered the director a chance to reach a broader audience with his unique - if obviously Hitchcockian - blend of build-up and terror.
Disappointingly, Trauma, if anything, represents the beginning of Argento's drastic career decline. The opening is full of promise, as a familiar black-gloved killer stalks a victim before killing her in a brutal and stylish fashion, here with a device which allows the victim to be garroted with relative ease. Bolstered by a POV style and traditionally great effects work by Tom Savini, it's a scene that could have easily been taken from one of Argento's native works. However, as popular as the giallo craze was, it didn't quite reach the general American audience, and so Trauma gets watered-down and peppered with horror cliches in an attempt to cast a wider audience net. While the tropes are there - an everyman (Christopher Rydell) is forced into sleuthing while dodging the police - it does little but frustrate as you realise that somewhere, deep down, there's probably a great giallo trying to get out.
So while the film has it's odd moment, the result is an incoherent, and somehow quite boring, mess of ideas and clashing styles. Starting promisingly, the story goes on to place anorexia sufferer Aura (Asia Argento, the director's then 17 year-old daughter) in the hands of illustrator David (Rydell) after her parents are murdered by the masked killer, and it is during this period that the film does nothing but lay out a string of red herrings, as well as creepily leering at Argento's youthful beauty. The final third is an exhausting conveyor belt of anti-climaxes, before the ludicrous (and not in an entertaining way) reveal that feels like it was made by a sub-par Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven arrives. While it's nowhere near the level of atrociousness that Argento would vomit out in 2009 with Giallo, Trauma feels like it was made by a once-great visionary who had tiredly given in to the producers' voices in his ear.
Artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel's re-creation of the New York art scene of the early 1980's is captured with the authenticity of a photograph from the time come to life. If anybody should be familiar with the vibrant energy and atmosphere of this era, it would be Schnabel, as he brushed shoulders with the likes of Andy Warhol and the topic of his debut feature, Jean-Michel Basquiat, as a key contributor to the American 'Neo-Expressionism' movement himself. What the film fails to do however, is capture the driving force behind Basquiat's art and the demons that drove him to heroin, which is odd given that Schnabel - here thinly disguised as a character played by Gary Oldman - was close friends with Basquiat.
Born into a middle-class family in New York to parents of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, we first meet a 20 year-old Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright, living in a cardboard box. Already a cult figure in the city thanks to his spray-painted poetry under the guise of 'SAMO', a chance encounter with Andy Warhol (David Bowie) and art dealer Bruno Bischofberger (Dennis Hopper) propels him to the front-and-centre of the art scene. Basquiat is charming and charismatic, but also detached and inwardly focused. While this may compliment his art, he remains a mystery to his girlfriend Gina (Claire Forlani) and becomes clinically depressed when an article dubs him Warhol's 'mascot'. Wright gets all the mannerisms and facial expressions spot on, but he also bring a deep soulfulness to what is a terrific, career-making performance.
Peppered with a massive supporting cast that also includes Benicio Del Toro, Michael Wincott, Parker Posey, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, Tatum O'Neal and Courtney Love, Basquiat seems frequently distracted and never really goes deep enough to unravel the thought processes of the enigmatic artist. There are moments of undeniable beauty - Basquiat dreams of moving to Hawaii and imagines the New York skyline as a surfer catching a wave - and there is a building air of tragedy as he begins his inevitable decline into isolation and drug addiction, but the film follows the familiar biopic formula to a tee. See it for the wonderful sense of time and place, and a truly astonishing performance from Wright.
There's a sense of overwhelming square-jawed machismo running through the action-packed western The War Wagon. Playing to the barrel-chested strengths of Golden Age superstars John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, the film goes about its business with a lack of fuss, packing in everything from chaotic saloon brawls, quick-draws and comedy-tinged bickering between its two towering stars, before climaxing with an exciting little set-piece involving the armoured beast of the title. This is the kind of old-fashioned western that inspires comments of "they don't make 'em like that anymore."
Taw Jackson (Wayne) returns to his home town after a stretch in prison. His presence is immediately noticed by corrupt businessman Frank Pierce (Bruce Cabot) who, three years earlier, framed Taw for a crime and confiscated his land in the process. The land turned out to be full of gold, and Taw wants his piece. He plans to steal a shipment of gold being transported in a 'war wagon', a heavily-armoured stagecoach fitted with a steerable Gatling gun on its top, and rounds up a crew of trusted misfits to help him carry out his plan. The final piece of the puzzle is skilled gun-for-hire Lomax (Douglas), the man who played a key role in sending Taw to prison years earlier while in the employ of Pierce. Needing his muscle as well as his skills as a safe-cracker, the two strike up a reluctant friendship and mutual respect, despite their clashing personalities.
Working together for the third time in as many years after In Harm's Way (1965) and Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), Wayne and Douglas have an easy-going chemistry, with Wayne playing the righteous, no-nonsense frontiersman, while Douglas gets to have more fun as the lovable scamp, flirting with anything that moves and leaping onto his horse in various showboating ways. Director Burt Kennedy - who 24 years later would throw cinematic acid in our face with Suburban Commando - has no problem handling these huge matinee idols, and delivers a handsome-looking genre piece. While the film's simplicity and lack of ambition to be anything other than a piece of entertainment doesn't damage the film, it prevents it from being great. But if you're looking for an easy-going 90 minutes, The War Wagon doesn't disappoint.
After years of hard-drinking and heavily publicised, hateful rants, Mel Gibson has seen his career plunge from the A-list to the, well, non-existent list. He was once one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, handsome enough to draw a female audience with lighthearted rom-coms, and suitably bad-ass enough to tackle the meatier action roles. He of course only has himself to blame, but Gibson has been slowly and quietly carving himself a niche with the few features he's done over past few the years - Edge of Darkness (2010), How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2012) - as a gruff enforcer not necessarily on the right side of the law.
With Jean-Francois Richet's Blood Father, the years of hard living etched on Gibson's face have never served him better. His character John Link, the recovering alcoholic ex-con getting by as a tattoo artist in a trailer park, acknowledges his past mistakes in the opening scene at an AA meeting, almost as if Gibson himself is pleading forgiveness for his behaviour. He is trying to live straight and keep his parole officer happy, but his peaceful existence is soon turned on its head when his daughter Lydia (Erin Moriarty), missing for years, turns up with the police and a Mexican cartel hunting her down. Fearing losing the daughter he failed when she was still a child, John takes her on the road and uses the skills he learned as a criminal to keep her out of harm's way.
With Mad Max (1979) clearly serving as an inspiration, Blood Father is pure B-movie exploitation. It's the kind of film you could imagine being made in the 70's with Peter Fonda in the lead role and Roger Corman producing. That said, and despite the odd explosion of action and violence, the focus is mainly on character. While this would normally be a good thing, it does so via every cliche imaginable. There's the wanted posters, news reports in dingy hotel rooms, changing of hair colour, and a climactic shoot-out, and it frequently felt like I had seen the film before. It's best when at its most furious, racking up the tension as Link faces a neo-Nazi biker gang and Lydia's drug-lord ex-boyfriend Jonah (Diego Luna). It might just be enough for Hollywood to embrace Gibson again, and from his performance here, I realised just how much I miss him.
Destricted - an experimental collection of shorts by artists and film-makers exploring the subjects of sex, sexuality and pornography - didn't cause as much of a fuss as the creatives behind it were probably hoping for upon its release in 2006. While this is one of the most extreme films ever to be passed by the BBFC, it had to resort to an exploitative tactic when released on DVD by wrapping the box in a black seal as if what was inside was too explicit to be seen by anyone passing the arthouse section of their local HMV. Truth be told, Destricted is no more shocking than late-night Babestation, and probably has just as much to say on our attitudes to sex.
The UK release featured a different line-up of films to the one released in the US, so I'll point out that I'm reviewing the UK version, which consists of seven shorts, the longest being 38 minutes and the shortest just over 2. I started with Larry Clark's Impaled, possible the most interesting film of the bunch. Clark interviews a roster of 18-23 year old males for a porn movie, and asks them about their sexual preferences. In an age where porn is readily available to anybody, it comes as no surprise that the interviewees prefer rough sex and ejaculating onto their partner's face. Shrewdly, Clark chooses the most softly-spoken and sweetest of the bunch, Daniel, who chooses older porn star Nancy to be his on-screen partner. Watching Nancy eat him alive has a strange poignancy to it.
Next up I saw Marina Abramovic's Balkan Erotic Epic, a strange and genuinely funny tale of pagan rituals told by the stern-looking Abramovic who struggles to speak English. The sight of naked men humping the ground and a group of women dancing and occasionally exposing their genitalia in the rain is bizarre and almost Pythonesque, and certainly raised my mood despite how cheap it looked. Richard Prince's House Call is a 13 minute re-contextualisation of an old porn scene, in which a busty young woman is visited by a well-hung doctor, who proceed to have ugly, hairy sex in a pleasantly aggression-free manner. Prince adds an eerie soundtrack and distorts the colour so much that the sexual organs on show looks like disgusting, slug-like creatures.
Marco Brambilla's Sync is a relief at just over 2 minutes, rapidly editing together hundreds of porn scenes to a drum-solo score. It's an interesting experiment, reminding us of the repetitive and formulaic nature of porn. Strangest of all the films on show is Matthew Barney's Hoist, which places a black actor with a gourd up his arse underneath a five-ton struck, who proceeds to rub his erect penis on the lubricated drive-shaft of the vehicle. It is supposed to be a commentary on primitive man's relationship with machinery, but at almost 15 minutes long, it long outstays its welcome. By this point, I had seen enough flatulent and erect penises to last me a lifetime, which made the next film all the more painful. Sam Taylor-Wood's (now Taylor-Johnson) Death Valley has a man masturbate alone in the desert. For eight incredibly long minutes.
While I thought I was saving the best for last, I was actually saving the worst. Gaspar Noe's We Fuck Alone feels like the cinematic equivalent of the director telling us that he's had a shitty day. Shot Irreversible-style and complete with constant strobe effects, the film has a man and a woman masturbate to same porn movie in two separate rooms. One enjoys a oversized teddy bear while the other face-fucks a blow-up doll with a gun. It's a terrible, hateful, and utterly pointless exercise, which, much like Destricted as a whole, has nothing interesting to say about sex and pornography. Porn can be formulaic, seedy, expressive and shamefully titillating. But anybody who has ever masturbated before will surely know this already, and won't have to put themselves through almost two hours of arty nonsense to come to this realisation.
Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations always had a loose spirit about them, fleshing out the source material so it would flow nicely as a 90-minute feature. With The Raven, the tale of a tortured lover tormented by a bird rapping on his chamber door that was so hilariously lampooned in a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode ("Ever more! Ever more!"), Corman uses just a couple of Poe's 18 stanzas as inspiration to tell his own preposterous story of duelling wizards and a stolen love. The fifth in the so-called Corman-Poe cycle, Corman and script-writer Richard Matheson, bolstered by the success of Tales of Terror the year before, again opt for a comedic take on Poe's haunting text.
In the 15th century, powerful sorcerer Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Price) broods in his study, mourning the loss of his wife Lenore (Hazel Court) two years earlier. Much to his surprise, he is visited by a talking, wine-guzzling raven who turns out to be fellow wizard Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (Peter Lorre), transformed after an altercation with the evil Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). After Craven turns the boozy spell-caster back to his normal self using a concoction of bizarre ingredients, Bedlo sees a painting of the apparently-dead Lenore and swears he saw her in Scarabus's castle. As curiosity gets the better of him, Craven, along with his daughter Estelle (Olive Sturgess) and Bedlo's goofy son Rexford (Jack Nicholson), journey to Scarabus's caste in the hope of finding answers.
Although it is nowhere near the standards seen in the likes of The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), The Raven has its moments, and the main strength is in the ingenious casting of Price, Lorre and Karloff, all legends of the genre. They are totally game and are bags of fun, particularly Karloff who, at the time, was being introduced to a whole new generation of horror fans. The comedy is hit-and-miss. Sometimes it's funny and charming, but often it is cringe-inducingly daft. The climax is well directed and impressive-looking, especially for such a low-budget feature, but it's also overwhelmingly silly, and not in a good way. While The Raven is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, it feels like a 20-minute piece stretched out over 86 minutes, and may have worked better as part of a portmanteau piece.
Wall Streets fat cats are the target of Jodie Foster's real-time thriller Money Monster, as a live broadcast of a tacky but successful financial advice show is turned into edge-of-the-seat entertainment by those watching. It's a satire of both our eagerness to lap up whatever gibberish were told as long as it promises to make us money, and our morbid fascination with watching live streams of death and destruction in the era of information. Although both subjects have been tackled before, it's an intriguing premise, especially with the acting talent involved. Sadly, Foster seemingly hasn't picked up on the skills of David Fincher and Martin Scorsese while under their direction, and Money Monster is a toothless, unfocused effort.
Financial expert Lee Gates (George Clooney) is about to air the latest edition of Money Monster, a show in which he dishes out money-making advice on the stock market in a cynical, over-the-top style. In the wake of a technical 'glitch' in a trading algorithm which cost stockholders £800 million, IBIS CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) pulls out of a live interview, leaving IBIS chief communications officer Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) to face Gates' questions instead. Once the show goes live, delivery driver Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) bursts onto the set with a gun and a home-made bomb jacket, demanding answers to why the $60,000 he invested in IBIS has vanished without explanation, leaving Gates and his trusted director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) to track down Camby and keep Kyle distracted.
The real-time format seems custom made for tension and excitement, but Foster displays little talent for setting the pulses racing. Her approach is to shoot clinically and unfussily, similar in many ways to Clint Eastwood, who has made some excellent movies, but whose films of late have been somewhat cold and careless. It blows its wad early on, serving up all the best moments before the film really gets going. Although he is hardly the buffoon he plays regularly under the guidance of the Coen brothers, watching Clooney dance to rap music while wearing an oversized dollar-sign necklace is a joy, and he plays the despicable cable-host reptile remarkably well. When he is quickly silenced by the gun-waving intruder, he stops his sleazeball routine and begins an unbelievable redemptive arc, losing the charisma in the process.
The same can be said of O'Connell, who channels the same repressed rage he did so well in the excellent Starred Up (2013), but is quickly subdued as Gates and Fenn start to ask their own questions. He is arguably the true hero of the film, if somewhat misguided, but Foster seems to lose interest in him while the rich take over and try to save the day instead. It's a contradictory message, and the decision to make the enemy one man with an expensive suit and an untrustworthy smile, rather than the masters of the universe running the world that the film should be attacking, reeks of a lack of ambition. It's a missed opportunity, and the performances are the only real positive I took away from the film. I would have been happier watching a movie focused solely on a man like Gates, and what helps him sleep at night.
Werner Herzog quickly establishes the gaping void between civilised man and nature in his 1972 masterpiece Aguirre, the Wrath of God, with the sight of an expedition navigating a path down the side of a mountain in the Andes. They scuttle like ants, carrying objects unsuitable for such a perilous journey through the harshest of rainforests - a sedan chair, a huge cannon - and are adorned in sweltering metal armour, complete with helmets and weapons. This is the opening scene, and the message clear - these people simply should not be there, and whatever riches or glory they seek will surely result in death. Backed by Popol Vuh's haunting score, it is one of the finest shots in the history of cinema.
The filming of The Wrath of God is possibly as well-known as the film itself, with stories of poor planning, severe injuries, and leading man Klaus Kinski's generally disruptive and psychopathic behaviour emerging from the cast and crew after the film's release. Yet while a chaotic shoot can result in disaster for the finished product, every now and then a masterpiece will be born from the rubble - just look at Apocalypse Now (1979). And Herzog's first of five collaborations with Kinski is precisely that; a glorious, brutal and completely absorbing depiction of madness and greed that benefits from the bizarre happenings behind the scenes. Set in 1560, the film tells the story of the ill-fated expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) to find the fabled land of El Dorado.
Accompanied by a band of Spanish conquerors and a hundred Indian slaves, Pizarro soon realises that his expedition will soon be cut short by a lack of food, water and supplies and orders a smaller group of approximately 40 men to carry on with the search. He puts Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra) in charge, with the maniacal but efficient Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski) as his second-in-command. With them they take the fat representative of the Royal House of Spain, Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (Del Negro), and, against Pizarro's wishes, Ursua's mistress Inez (Helen Rojo) and Aguirre's daughter Flores (Cecilia Rivera). The quest is soon in trouble, as one of their rafts is swept away by perilous rapids and Aguirre quickly overthrows Ursua, seating de Guzman in his place.
Herzog isn't interested in peppering the film with set-pieces. The Wrath of God moves along at a slow pace with not much happening for long periods of time, while the rainforest lurks all around the screen, proving itself to be a formidable and unpredictable presence. The German auteur has said before that there is nothing peaceful about nature, and here the eerie silence is frequently interrupted by the high shrill of some unseen animal. As the group journey further into the harsh terrain, their decreasing mental state starts to reflect their surroundings. They drift along the river in a raft made by slaves (the natives made them for the film), and occasionally come across an Indian. Brother Carvajal is there to spread the word of God and offers one a Bible. When he puts to his ear and wonders why it doesn't talk, he is put to death for blasphemy.
Nature, including humanity, is madness itself, and this message is hammered home further by the wide-eyed performance of Klaus Kinski, who was clearly mad himself. His spats with Herzog are the stuff of legend, and anyone with an interest should check out Herzog's documentary on his relationship with Kinski, My Best Fiend (1999). During the filming of The Wrath of God, he shot at some extras keeping him awake, removing the tip of one of their fingers in the process, and hit a cast member so hard with his sword that he still bares the scar (the incident can be seen in the film when they attack the village). Never has a film affected me, mentally and spiritually, with such power. In the final scene, Aguirre mutters to himself on board his tattered raft as some monkeys invade the screen. Herzog transports you there, and leaves you questioning the sanity of the world around you. Unquestionably my favourite film of all time.
A whopping 15 years after Clive Barker's masterful introduction to the hellish world of Pinhead and his Cenobite entourage comes the sixth entry into the Hellraiser franchise, and continues the tradition of each sequel becoming more and more removed from the original's mythology. Like the previous film, Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), Hellseeker feels like a stand-alone script with Barker's world of sadomasochism shoehorned in so that Dimension Films can retain the rights to a series that can be clumsily and cheaply churned out, and can be almost guaranteed to at least make its money back.
One of the few things worthy of note in Hellseeker is the return of Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton, who went A.W.O.L. after the third entry, Hell on Earth (1992). Instead on weaving her character back into the story, director Rick Bota opts instead to focus on her deadbeat husband Trevor, played by Oz's Dean Winters. After a car crash leaves Kirsty apparently dead, Trevor begins to suffer from delusions and a severe case of amnesia. He is being questioned by a couple of cops who are keen to get to the bottom of some unanswered questions, and he discovers that he has been cheating on his wife with a woman at work and a flirty neighbour. He is also plagued by flashbacks, including one where he gives his wife a birthday present, the Lament Configuration.
Hellseeker takes 'inspiration' from many films, especially Angel Heart (1987) and Jacob's Ladder (1990). While those films used a fractured narrative as a way for the viewer to peek inside the damaged mind of its protagonist and to keep you guessing as the story unfolds. this dud simply has Winters awaken after every other scene rubbing his temples to reveal that the previous scene was 'just a dream', long after you had already guessed it. Winters is perfectly competent in the role, but his character just isn't interesting enough to hold your attention, and it's a wonder as to why the focus isn't on Laurence instead, whose tie-ins with the original trilogy would have made for a more intriguing experience. Doug Bradley is as solid as you would expect as Pinhead, but like most of the straight-to-video sequels, he is barely used, making for a completely boring and uninspired experience.
With Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass apparently done with the world of Jason Bourne (although they both returned this year), franchise screenwriter Tony Gilroy, also on directorial duty here, attempts to expand on the universe further with the fourth entry into the series, The Bourne Legacy. While the first three focused on Bourne's battle with the CIA's top-secret agencies' attempts to hunt him down to save themselves embarrassment and exposure, Legacy unravels the rippling effect the amnesiac's antics has on those at the top-level, as well as the other assassins who were usually a text message away from going toe-to-toe with him.
One of these assassins is Jeremy Renner's Aaron Cross, who we meet early on alone in the Alaskan wilderness on a training exercise that requires him to take dangerous leaps between snow-laden rocks, ensuring he doesn't become dinner for a pack of wolves, and other harsh survival activities. These early scenes are full of promise, as Cross drops the meds key to his super-humanness and draws out fellow operative (played by Oscar Isaac) in the hope of re-upping on his supplies. They are quick to realise something is wrong when their hut is obliterated by a tooled-up drone. The attack is one of many on operatives trained under the Treadstone, Blackbriar and Operation Outcome programs, as Eric Byer (Edward Norton), an ex-Air Force colonel, is hired to clean up the mess uncovered by Bourne and journalist Simon Ross (Paddy Considine).
Cross's escape and quest to find more magic pills puts him on the trail of biochemist Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), a good doctor who manufactures the drugs that enhance his skills and who he has encountered before in the past. A mass murder-suicide at the laboratory leaves her as the sole survivor, and Cross conveniently jumps in at just the right time as she is attacked at her home by agents posing as psychologists. Every occurrence in these films seem to be the handiwork of a tie-wearing, craggy-faced puppet-master at the top of the CIA, and one of the main joys of Jason Bourne's adventures was seeing him take revenge on the men and women working outside of the law, and those responsible for turning him into an emotionless terminator who carries out multiple killings. Legacy's main issue is that Cross's mission to find a fix removes the personal and redemptive elements in favour of a McGuffin that the film spends a lot of time trying to explain.
In the early scenes, Renner demonstrates precisely why he was hired to take over from Damon, delivering a chattier, more human protagonist with even a hint of maliciousness. Renner brings the same unpredictable physicality that won him Oscar nominations for The Hurt Locker (2008) and The Town (2010), and his dialogue with Isaac is by far the best moment of the film. Yet as the film goes on, his personality all but vanishes, choosing instead to have him play the one-dimensional action hero, leaping between buildings and occasionally beating someone to the ground. It's a terrible waste, and his character would have been served better if so much time wasn't invested in scientific gobbledegook explaining why he must get from A to B. There's a couple of reasonably entertaining action scenes here and there and Norton does slimy incredibly well, but the brute nature of Greengrass's aesthetic is sorely missing, and, despite the title, The Bourne Legacy fails to distinguish itself from any other film on the action movie conveyor belt.
In 2001, teenagers Michael Perry and Jason Burkett were arrested and charged with a triple-homicide shortly after an intense shootout with the police. They were convicted of murdering 50-year old nurse Sandra Stotler, her sixteen year old son Adam, and his friend Jeremy Richardson. They shot and killed Sandra with a shotgun in her garage so they could steal her valuable red Camaro, and later murdered the two teenagers to obtain the keys to the gate of their middle-class community estate. As a result, Perry was sentenced to die by lethal injection, and Burkett was given a life sentence.
Just how one culprit can be slated to die while the other gets to spend their life behind bars for the same crime is just one of the many questions raised in Werner Herzog's objective documentary on capital punishment. We meet Perry early on, child-like and God-fearing, just 8 days before he is due to die. During this meeting, Herzog reveals his own feelings about the death penalty (he's strictly against it) and even tells the inmate that he doesn't like him very much, but that he also respects everyone's humanity and point of view. The film is not a condemnation of Death Row, but a meditation, and Herzog simply sits back and allows the story to tell itself through interviews from all sides and sporadic narration.
Although it does cover the crime itself in detail, Into the Abyss is not a re-investigation, but tells the story of the horrifying events back in 2001 juxtaposed with interviews from 2010 to allow us to make up our own mind and absorb the devastating affects such an act of brutality can cause. The most heart-breaking moment comes from the interview with Burkett's father, a prisoner himself, as he comes to terms with his own role in his son's fate. We learn of the events that attributed to his boy's character and eventual destiny, and wonder if society failed him. We then see how the crime left Sandra Stotler's daughter completely alone in life, and wonder why such a monster like Burkett should be allowed to live. You may find yourself discussing the topic in depth afterwards, but on hearing Perry's final words to the victim's families before he was given a lethal dose, I could not bring myself to believe that watching him die would ever bring them inner peace.
Deemed too controversial by Paramount in 1982, Samuel Fuller's bare-knuckled study of the psychology of racism went virtually unseen for over two decades, playing sporadically at film festivals and private screenings until Criterion remastered and re-released it on DVD in 2008. Fuller was understandably devastated and perplexed by the decision, as it was incredibly well received in the countries that actually saw a limited released, but it was made in a time when serious and unblinking social commentary was favoured less than greased-up man-mountains wielding dual machine guns.
From the very start, Fuller's movie is an exercise in resourceful simplicity, as young actress Julie Sawyer (Kristy McNichol) hits a white German Shepherd with her car, and takes the injured and seemingly innocent animal to the vets for a check-up. The dog's ferocity rears its head early on, as it takes down a rapist that breaks in Julie's house and restrains him until the police arrive. Its eagerness to attack is interpreted as protection of its owner, but when the hound starts savagely attacking black people, it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary dog. Despite her boyfriend's pleas to put it down before it kills somebody, Julie believes that it can be cured of the affliction it was taught from a young age.
The first third of the movie plays out like exploitation with the subtlest of satire running through the story, almost like the type of movie Larry Cohen used to make only without a flying serpent or mutant baby. The attacks are brutal and well-made despite its low budget, and the movie proceeds almost like a slasher (gnasher?) as the beast bares its teeth with its coat festooned with blood. The animal is truly terrifying, and makes for a chilling movie 'monster'. Yet you see a glimmer of redemption in those sad eyes, and Julie does too, taking it to animal trainer Carruthers (Burl Ives) who, like everybody else, warns her to kill the beast before it kills somebody. One of his workers, dog trainer Keys (Paul Winfield), recognises it as a 'white dog' - one conditioned from a pup to hate black people.
It is a this point that White Dog becomes an enthralling and intelligent expose of racism, posing far more questions that it quite wisely fails to answer. The pure hatred bred into the animal rings true with humans; the kind of ignorant, confused and misdirected fury so prevalent in America. The film also asks whether or not this kind of conditioning is curable. Keys certainly tries, exposing more and more of his black skin to the dog as they gradually form a bond, but the German Shepherd remains unpredictable, managing one night to escape its confines and commit an act of pure savagery in the holiest of locations. The film highly suggests that you may remove the racism, but the hatred will remain, and it's a sobering thought. This is blunt, unflinching B-movie film-making that will have you on the edge of your seat as you watch, and reflect heavily on its themes afterwards.
One may have anticipated a drop in quality upon the release of Paul Greengrass' trilogy-capper The Bourne Ultimatum back in 2007. After all, the first two movies made no real effort to cover up the fact that they are ultimately the same movie, and Ultimatum is no different, again sending Matt Damon's haggard, amnesiac super agent on the run from serious-looking CIA agents and emotionless "assets" across a variety of countries at breakneck speed. However, the Bourne trilogy does what trilogies rarely do and gets progressively better which each movie, and this third instalment has learned from the franchise's previous mistakes.
Greengrass goes for all-out action here, barely stopping to catch its breath as the film squeezes tension out of the most ordinary of places and situations, and delivering set-pieces that dwarf anything that came before. There's no doubting that Bourne will make it out of this film alive, and no matter how dire the situations the superhuman find himself in as shady CIA heads Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) and the returning Pam Landy (Joan Allen) track him down using every conceivable piece of spy equipment at their disposal, you know he will somehow find a way to smash his way out. What makes Ultimatum so miraculous is how Greengrass manages to still keep things grounded, whether it's watching Bourne pummel an assassin with a leather-bound book or causing carnage on the streets of New York.
When it does pause for breath, Greengrass thankfully seems eager to wrap up the story of how Bourne came to be the unstoppable badass he is, and uncover the organisation known as Treadstone, the secret agency that have been hunting him down ever since he was picked up by a fishing boat with bullet holes in his back. It's a revelation without any revelations, as anyone with half a brain could fit the puzzle together from the events of the previous films, so the film doesn't spend too much time dwelling on it, cutting straight to the chase when the voice plaguing Bourne's dreams manifests itself in the form of Albert Finney.
Of the plot, there is little to write about. Bourne tracks downjournalist Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), who has taken to writing pieces on the former agent's exploits and a program known as Blackbriar. Bourne's presence naturally attracts the attention of Vosen et al, and the rest you can guess. It's the simplest of McGuffin's, one that exists for the sole purpose of transporting Bourne around the globe and assaulting the senses with exhilarating action, and the experience is all the better for it. Damon is so good here that he doesn't need much dialogue to create a credible and sympathetic hero, as he manages to capture the spirit of Jason Bourne with his fists and looks of panic more than words ever could. While you may still need a barf bag on hand during some of the more frantic moments, The Bourne Ultimatum is an example of the action genre at its finest, one that will leave you scratching your head as to why the studio felt the need to add the Jeremy Renner-starring spin-off and the recent fourth instalment, Jason Bourne, to the story.
The names Argento and Bava alone are enough to cause the average gore-hound to salivate, and fans of over-the-top splattery were treated to an exercise in excess with the Argento-produced, Bava-directed Demons in 1985. While I still felt the film sucked despite the talent behind the camera (although this is Lamberto Bava, not his legendary father Mario), there was still enough bone-gnawing and blood-spraying to enjoy amidst the terrible 80's fashions and soap opera-level dialogue. For the follow-up, the horror maestros inexplicably took out the bite and accentuated the goofiness, and the result is a clumsy, camp and somewhat annoying mess of atrocious acting and even worse film-making.
The film begins with what looks to be a documentary based on the events of the first movie, with a bunch of disposable teens trespassing into an quarantined city deserted following the demon outbreak. It turns out to be a film-within-a-film, with 'reality' taking place in an apartment block as loathsome teenage brat Sally Day (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) locks herself in a room during a birthday party tantrum to watch the movie on her television. Thankfully, a demon quickly bursts through the screen to turn her into a poster-girl for tooth decay and drip bile through the various floors, turning many of its residents into blue-skinned monsters. Amongst the many archetypes fighting for survival, douchebag George (David Edwin Knight) must get back to his apartment to rescue his pregnant wife and badass gym instructor Hank (Bobby Rhodes) leads his group of oiled-up bodybuilders into battle.
It all sounds like a lot of fun, and it really should be. An apartment building is the perfect setting to induce feelings of claustrophobia, with a vast labyrinth of corridors and narrow vents for our heroes to fight their way out of. Instead, Bava ignores the need for any resemblance of atmosphere or tension in favour of a never-ending stream of badly executed set-pieces, where grisly attacks tend to take place away from view. There's also the matter of the ending making little sense and a scene in which an unexplained demon monster thingy that looks like a discarded prop from Troll bursts out of the chest of an infected young boy, in a special effect so bad you wonder why on Earth the film-makers left it in. Only the antics of Hank (a winning combination of Fred Williamson and Mr. Motivator) and a terrific British new wave soundtrack gloss over the abominable acting and frankly unprofessional direction.
When we left Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) at the end of the previous film, The Bourne Identity (2002), he had managed to out-think and out-fight the CIA operatives gunning for his head, and had seemingly found a happy ending for himself in Goa, India with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente). But the laws of franchise film-making mean that the shady types hunting him down the last time still want him dead to tie off any loose ends, and Bourne must again use his CIA-trained super-soldier skills to escape anything coming his way. Dumping director Doug Liman turned out to be the wisest choice the producers made. No disrespect to Liman - Identity was a well-made film - but the hiring of Brit Paul Greengrass took the series to a whole new level.
Jason Bourne is still trying to piece together his memories - which appear to him in dreams Manchurian Candidate style - keeping a scrapbook in the hope of unravelling the mystery. One day he notices a man who looks oddly out of place, and Bourne's suspicions turn out to be justified as the man, played by Karl Urban, quickly tries to kill him, accidentally shooting Marie in the crossfire and leaving Bourne once again on the run and trying to figure out the plot against him. As we learn in the opening scene of the film, Bourne has been framed by some Russians for killing CIA agents during an operation overlooked by Deputy Director Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) to obtain some important documents on one of Bourne's previous kills.
The film takes Bourne to Naples, Munich and Moscow, but what makes this series superior to the continent-hopping of James Bond and his quest to bed every woman he comes across is Bourne's skill-set, as well as the gravitas Matt Damon brings to the role. Whether or not he will survive the encounter was never in question (especially with the knowledge that this is part of a book series by Robert Ludlum focusing on the character), but what makes it so thrilling is the way he dodges every bullet fired at him and dispatches every brooding assassin sent to get him. By keeping the action once again grounded, the fight scenes are brutal and messy (Bourne even convincingly beats someone up with a rolled-up magazine). Greengrass brings his famous shaky-cam to the proceedings, and although it occasionally induces sea-sickness, it transports you right in the middle of the fight.
Away from the action, a group of suits similar the ones in the previous film employ every spy trick in their power to track and take down their target, while trying to decipher Bourne's actions and motivations. It's incredibly similar to the plot of Identity, and in many ways to the next film, The Bourne Ultimatum, but you'll find it difficult to care that you're essentially watching the same film again when the action is this good. Greengrass also brings a dramatic edge that Liman failed to infuse into his film, with Bourne seeking out the daughter of a married couple he executed while still working for Treadstone in the hope of seeking forgiveness for his actions. That's not to say that Bourne spends the majority of the film pouting and brooding - the film is too fast-paced to stop and catch its breath for too long - but Damon does some great understated work here, and this is the main attraction, at least to me, of the trilogy.
Few could have expected the affect Doug Liman's adaptation of Robert Ludlum's novel The Bourne Identity would have on action cinema, and on the career of star Matt Damon, when it was released back in 2002. This well-crafted, relatively low-key action thriller takes the done-to-death spy-with-amnesia story and runs with it, avoiding the lure of throwing in Michael Bay-esque explosions and wisely keeping things grounded, as shady government types in dull black suits stare at computer monitors and make demands to their younger cronies that they have the information they require 'yesterday'.
In the Mediterranean Sea, a fishing vessel picks up a man near death with two bullet holes in his back. The on-board doctor tends to his wounds and pulls a small device from his hip, which reveals a Swiss bank account number when activated. The man has no memory of who he is, and so heads to Zurich to recover a safe deposit box that contains multiple identities, a wad of cash in different currencies, and a gun. He opts to go by the name on his American passport, Jason Bourne, but soon finds himself chased by a shadowy agency called Treadstone, seemingly led by the ruthless Conklin (Chris Cooper). Evading capture at the American embassy, he pays pretty German lady Marie (Franka Potente) to drive him to Paris in the hope of discovering who he is and who is after him.
Jason Bourne can now be spoken in the same breath as James Bond, and in fact makes the British super-spy seem ridiculous in comparison, especially the Pierce Brosnan incarnation. Bourne is infinitely more interesting because he is conflicted, tortured by a past of mass-murder and seeking to make amends for his actions. While the action scenes thrill in a refreshingly unspectacular way, it's Bourne's tender relationship with Marie that generate the most sparks. Potente is lovely in the role, and her naturalism and chemistry with Damon is the film's biggest positive, and there are smart turns from Cooper and Brian Cox as the grumpy old agency men and Clive Owen as a dead-eyed fellow assassin. While it may pale in comparison to the bar-raising Paul Greengrass sequels, Identity is still a nifty thriller with characters to actually care about.
It was only a matter of time before the massive online role-playing game World of Warcraft was adapted for the big screen. With high fantasy still hugely popular thanks to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and HBO's Game of Thrones, now seemed the ideal time to bring Warcraft's world of orcs, mages, trolls and elves to the cinema-going audience. Yet even with a talented director at the helm, Duncan Jones, Warcraft flopped hard domestically, but proved such a smash-hit in China that there's now talk of a sequel tailored solely for the Chinese market. That little factoid, symbolic of the increasing importance of overseas box-office to U.S. productions, is probably the only interesting thing to emerge from the film.
Somewhere in this tale of giant green orcs, giant grey orcs, magical portals, hairy men, hairier mages, grumpy dwarves and huge CGI battles, there's the faint whiff of a plot that focuses on both sides of a war between the peaceful humans and a brutal hoard of orcs. In order to cater for us noobs - those of us who have never spent days slurping energy drinks and munching on Doritos in front of our computer playing the game - writers Jones and Charles Leavitt spend most of the film explaining this world to us and the many factions that operate within it. The main focus on both sides of the battle is Durotan (Toby Kebbell), an orc chieftain with a pregnant partner, and Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), a stock warrior-type with a charisma vacuum.
Durotan is under the command of warlock Gul'dan (Daniel Wu), who has already sucked the life out of one world using a dangerous magic called 'fel' and has used sorcery to open a portal into the next world, Azeroth. Lothar, observing the devastation caused by one of their attacks, comes across mage Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer), who wants to bring the traces of fel to the attention of Guardian Medivh (Ben Foster) and the king Llane Wrynn (Dominic Cooper). When an orc scouting party are beaten by Lothar and his fellow humans, they capture half-orc slave Garona (Paula Patton) and send Durotan back to the hoard defeated. However, seeing the devastation Gul'dan is causing to the land and his dismissal of honourable orc tradition, Durotan secretly plans to team up with the humans to defeat the evil tyrant and free his people.
I actually quite enjoyed the opening 30 minutes of Warcraft. Unhappy with portraying yet another man vs. evil orcs story, Jones' decision to give them both a voice is a breathe of fresh air. But this thoughtful approach quickly gives away to a textbook of cliches, from the humble warrior with a great destiny to the annoying young sidekick who just may be the one to save them all. And don't expect a complete film, as the 'Beginning' in the title means exactly that. Clearly the film-makers were banking on squeezing a trilogy out of this, and don't bother to give us an actual conclusion that would make us want to see a next instalment. With daft names that anyone unfamiliar with the world of Azeroth won't remember, you'll be too busy trying to figure out what's going on to care about many of the characters, with only Kebbell - delivering another impressive motion-capture performance - and Foster getting through it with their reputation in tact. And so the search for a decent video game adaptation goes on.
Disappointingly, Trauma, if anything, represents the beginning of Argento's drastic career decline. The opening is full of promise, as a familiar black-gloved killer stalks a victim before killing her in a brutal and stylish fashion, here with a device which allows the victim to be garroted with relative ease. Bolstered by a POV style and traditionally great effects work by Tom Savini, it's a scene that could have easily been taken from one of Argento's native works. However, as popular as the giallo craze was, it didn't quite reach the general American audience, and so Trauma gets watered-down and peppered with horror cliches in an attempt to cast a wider audience net. While the tropes are there - an everyman (Christopher Rydell) is forced into sleuthing while dodging the police - it does little but frustrate as you realise that somewhere, deep down, there's probably a great giallo trying to get out.
