AWN Blogs

This film is totally absurd and that’s why I loved it. The film is like an Ingmar Bergman film if Bergman was a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. The film starts off with absurd vignettes that establish a modern city, at the turn of the 21-century, that has gone into total chaos. In light of the fact that the Y2K catastrophe was just another miscalculated overreaction, the events of this film seem even more poetically ridiculous.

Director Roy Andersson takes pot shots at everything and knows the old statement that tragedy is comedy. What ties together the absurd gags is Kalle (Lars Nordh, LEADING ASTRAY) who, at the beginning of the film, wanders into a café with his face full of soot and yells at his son Stefan (Stefan Larsson, ANJA) for not taking the fact that his father’s business just burning down as all that tragic. Soon enough we find out that Kalle burnt down his furniture store on purpose to rook the insurance company into thinking he sold more expensive sofas than he really did. Kalle has another son named Tomas (Peter Roth, VÄGEN UT), who “wrote poetry until he went nuts.” One of the funniest scenes in the film takes place at the asylum when we first meet Tomas and it’s only a side gag like something out of AIRPLANE!

I must admit that I have never read the book in which this film is based on. But do to its classic status and what I’ve read about it, I think it might be fair to say that the film has less bite than the book.

Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon, FREEWAY) is an orphan living at an all girls’ school. She is set to become a governess, but dreams of a better life. The mother (Deborah Findlay, ME WITHOUT YOU) of her best friend Amelia (Romola Garai, I CAPTURE THE CASTLE) describes her best – “At first I thought of her as a mere social climber, but now I see she’s a mountaineer.” The film makes Becky likeable and makes her out to be more than just a “mountaineer” at times. However, the true pleasure of the film is when it bears its teeth. My favorite sequence is with Becky and Miss Matilda Crawley (Eileen Atkins, COLD MOUNTAIN). The bite of the social commentary that the novel must have comes out brilliantly in these segments.

How dare I even think of giving GONE WITH THE WIND anything less than four stars, you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you in just a bit.

First let’s get the plot description out of the way. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE) is the beauty of her town and the desire of many of the men. She is in love with Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard, PYGMALION), but he is engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD). (I guess because that’s what Southerners do.) Scarlett is furious and that’s when the roguish Rhett Butler (Clark Gable, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT) walks into her life and they begin their love hate relationship. This story is set in front of the tragedy of the Civil War and reconstruction.

Set in Spain during the revolution, the story takes place at an orphanage in a desert area whether leftists bring their children to keep them save. However, some of the children have lost their parents yet do not know. Carlos (Fernando Tielve, THE SHANGHAI SPELL) is brought to orphanage and does not know that his father is dead.

The orphanage is run by the passive doctor Casares (Federico Luppi, MEN WITH GUNS) and the crippled teacher Carmen (Marisa Paredes, TALK TO HER). Carlos quickly learns the ropes of the place from the students, especially Jamie (Inigo Garces, MY FIRST NIGHT), who we know is involved in the death of Santi (Junio Valverde, HIDDEN HANDS), who is now a ghost who haunts the school. But more frightening than the ghost is Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega, OPEN YOUR EYES), a former student at the orphanage who has become the janitor. He is set to marry the beautiful maid Conchita (Irene Visedo, APRIL AND JULES), but sleeps with Carmen in an effort to steal the gold that is hidden in the school for the rebels.

Director Stuart Gordon is best known for the RE-ANIMATOR, a zombie like flick that played for laughs as much as for scares. This film, which is based on two H.P. Lovecraft short stories, follows Paul (Ezra Godden, TV’s BAND OF BROTHERS), his girlfriend Barbara (Raquel Meroño, THE MARK) and friends Vicki (Birgit Bofarull, SECOND NAME) and Howard (Brendan Price, THE NAMELESS) as they sail off the coast of Spain.

A violent storm quickly kicks up and their boat crashes against the rocks. Vicki is injured and Paul and Barbara head into shore to get help. They quickly discover that the town in inhabited by fish-like mutants. In Paul’s attempts to escape, he meets Ezequiel (Francisco Rabal, SORCERER), the town drunk and only surviving human, and Uxía (Macarena Gómez, PLATILLOS VOLANTES), a young woman who Paul dreamt about as a mermaid.

In 1967, BONNIE & CLYDE changed cinema. Like mainstream Hollywood, the B-movie business also likes to copy hits. BOXCAR BERTHA’s similarities to BONNIE & CLYDE are obvious. Infamous B-movie master Roger Corman produced this film on a shoestring budget. But for film fans, Corman is best known for launching the careers of young actors and directors. This was Martin Scorsese’s (GOODFELLAS) second feature directing job.

Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey, LANTANA) is a poor farm girl, who finds herself without a father and without means to an income during the Great Depression. She falls for Union leader “Big” Bill Shelly (David Carradine, KILL BILL: VOL. 2), but they get separated and she ends up with two-bit gambler Rake Brown (Barry Primus, NEW YORK, NEW YORK). After a Union bust, Shelly ends up in prison with the Thompson family’s former black farm hand Von Morton (Bernie Casey, UNDER SIEGE). Through circumstance, Bertha, Bill, Rake and Von end up falling into a life of crime.

Think ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as a maudlin message film and you’ll get an idea of the joys of THE APPLE. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film so bad and loved every minute of it. This film pretty much fails on all levels.

The film starts with a big rock competition where Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart, THE LAST STARFIGHTER) and Alphie (George Gilmour, only film performance) win over the hostile audience with a cheesy love ballad until the evil record producer/government dictator Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal, RED DAWN) tells his crony Shake (Ray Shell, VELVET GOLDMINE) to disrupt the performance. After losing the competition, Bibi and Alphie are invited to Mr. Boogalow’s party of sex and drugs where he uses his stars Pandi (Grace Kennedy, only film performance) and Dandi (Alan Love, GREGORY’S GIRL) to seduce them into signing record contracts with his BIM records. Bibi signs, but Alphie is scared away when he has demonic visions.

From director Robert Wise (WEST SIDE STORY, SOUND OF MUSIC) comes arguably the most influential sci-fi film of all time. This 1951 classic seems to hearken in the dawn of smart science fiction. The influences it had on future films is undeniable. The design of the 8-foot robot Gort (Lock Martin, INVADERS FROM MARS) is borrowed in films like THE IRON GIANT, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and the upcoming SKY CAPTAIN. The atmospheric black-and-white photography and moralistic tale must have been a huge influence on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. ARMY OF DARKNESS uses EARTH's secret phrase "Klaatu verata niktu" as the phrase Bruce Campbell can't remember.

The story begins with a flying saucer racing to Earth at 4,000 mph, finally landing in Washington D.C. A tension grips the planet waiting for something to happen. Then we meet Klaatu (Michael Rennie, THE ROBE) who has come to Earth to give all its nations' leaders a message. The film makes an intriguing comment about human nature and our inhumanity to each other. There's a great sequence where Klaatu pretending to be a human named Mr. Carpenter is interviewed by a reporter about the aliens and because his answer isn't the scared and dramatic response the reporter is looking for, Klaatu is quickly sidestepped.

This horror film is like a Chinese/Singapore SIXTH SENSE. Not that there is some big twist, but because the main character Mun (Angelica Lee, SUNSHINE COPS), after having a corneal transplant, starts seeing dead people.

Mun hasn't seen since she was two, so at first she can't tell the difference between real people and dead people. As her eyesight gets increasingly better, her dread, and that of the audience, begins to increase. There's a scene in an elevator that is truly frightening. The only person Mun has on her side is her handsome young psychiatrist Dr. Wah (Lawrence Chou, HEROES IN LOVE). A great surprise midway through the film leads Mun and Dr. Wah to search out more information about the corneal donor.

More and more documentaries are getting theatrical distribution in the States. It's the area of cinema that is most concerned with important cultural events. And the recent success of FAHRENHEIT 9/11 shows that if the topic is right; people will pay money to go see docs on the big screen.

BUS 174 is a film from Brazil, which chronicles Rio's most famous hostage situation. Sandro do Nascimento was cornered robbing a bus and ended up taking the passengers hostage. The film goes into depth about Sandro's life and what led to this incident. Sandro's mother was murdered before him when he was very young. He ran away from his aunt's house soon after and lived on the streets, which pushed him into the slippery world of drugs and robbery. The film, which uses amazing news footage of the crisis, pretty much proves that Sandro had no intention of hurting anyone on the bus; he just wanted to get away. After you see the scenes of Brazilian prisons you'll truly understand why.

This film was the first theatrical release in the popular Japanese horror series and now it has come to theaters in the States (but a good indie video store may have an import to rent). Having seen the two preceding direct-to-videos in this series, I'm very aware of how this haunted house story came to be. This film recaps the murder that started the curse then jumps into how it continues.

Rika (Megumi Okina, ST. JOHN'S WORT) is a volunteer social worker, who is sent to the haunted house to check on an old woman (Chikako Isomura), who seems to be petrified with fear. Having seen the first two films in the series, I know what Rika is in for, but the film does a great job of creating its own dread. Once Rika is infected with the house's curse – the curse moves from person to person. As the film goes along, we learn more about the old woman's family and what happened to them inside the house. As the bodies pile up and others go insane, detective Toyama (Yoji Tanaka, TABOO), who has connections to the murders that started the curse, is assigned to investigate.