19 Reviews (1 New)
A Dark and Scary Place
Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) is a kind but shy and reserved young woman who lives with overly strict parents. She has no friends but takes to visiting bars desperate to make a connection. Against all the odds, she strikes up a friendship with Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron), a wayward and luckless ex-sex worker who is determined to put her life back on track. When they become more than friends, Aileen persuades Selby to leave home with the promise of fun and excitement. However, the money soon runs out and, feeling pressure to look after Selby, Aileen returns to prostitution. She is overpowered and brutally raped, finally managing to shoot the man dead with his own gun. This would undoubtedly be considered self-defence; it begins a cycle of robbery and death, most of which Selby is blissfully unaware of. But where will the killing end and what will it do to their uneasy relationship...?
This film is from 2004. Based on a true story, in reality Aileen Wuornos was America’s first female serial killer. Director Patty Jenkins – who helmed Wonder Woman (2017) – conveys the story with both distaste and heartfelt gravitas. The two women are poles apart in terms of background, temperament and attitude and yet come together, both looking for something new in their life. The performances are strong, particularly that of Charlize Theron. You can’t help feeling both horrified and touched by her portrayal. Wuornos was thrown-out on the streets at the age of thirteen to fend for herself. Her profession was a necessary means to an end. The sympathy is gradually mitigated and then overbalanced with violence and murder. It comes across as actions she felt obliged to carry out to keep them together. So, the balance is maintained in the film to suck you in and drag you along like a Bonnie and Clyde-type experience.
Almost 20 years on from the film’s initial outing, Monster gets a brand-new release on Blu-ray in a Limited-Edition Box Set. It incorporates a rigid slipcase, original artwork by Daniel Benneworth-Gray, a Soft Cover Book with new essays by Anton Bitel, Hannah Strong & Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Six Collector’s Art Cards and Special Features – including: an Audio Commentary with writer/director Patty Jenkins, actor/producer Charlize Theron & producer Clark Peterson; Making a Murderer: a new interview with Patty Jenkins; Producing a Monster: a new interview with Brad Wyman; Light From Within: a new interview with director of photography Steven Bernstein; Monster: The Vision and Journey; Based on a True Story: The Making of Monster; Deleted and Extended Scenes with director commentary; and the Original Trailer.
I noticed a few cameo appearances throughout the film, including Jason Voorhees himself Kane Hodder. The ending is inevitable, although very nicely handled. Personally, the enjoyment came through the strength of the characters and the heart portrayed, rather than any violence. The soundtrack is also nicely balanced by events in the movie.
At a family reading of a will Herman Munster is delighted to learn he has inherited an English estate from an uncle. Now the new Lord Munster, he leaves his job at Gateman, Goodbury & Graves Morticians and moves his family from 1313 Mockingbird Lane to Munster Hall. The three remaining members of the previous Lord’s family are less than enamoured with the decision and when scaring them away fails, they resort to more desperate measures. This involves roping Herman into a dangerous two-family dispute – to be resolved in a sports car race. The other driver has been replaced and is out to kill Herman and wreck his Drag-u-la special. But Herman is more resourceful than expected and also uncovers a counterfeit ring...
The original black and white series of The Munsters ran for 70 episodes between 1964 and 1966, when it began to lose viewers to the Adam West Batman series. This was the first film outing for the show, and the first in technicolor. It was made straight after the series came to an end in 1966, screening at the end of the year as a support movie for Norman Wisdom’s Press for Time. The series creators Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher also produced and co-wrote this one. The full family is intact (Fred Gwynne playing Herman, Yvonne De Carlo as Lily, Al Lewis depicting Grandpa, and Butch Patrick as Eddie), aside from Marilyn (Pat Priest replaced by Debbie Watson). British comedian Terry Thomas is somewhat annoying, portraying a grown man acting like a little spoilt child, but John Carradine pulls off an intriguing butler somewhere between sinister and quirky.
Although this childish slapstick humour is not for me, the script is well-handled for a nonsense run-around. All of the characters are given something to do, rather than aimlessly following others around. Additional plot strands tie-up probably too well together, allowing Grandpa and Herman to embark on a spooky and dangerous snoop around to uncover the counterfeit money, and Marilyn to meet up with a gentleman who turns out to be part of the feuding family – the Munster’s long-time rivals. The car race itself is pretty zany, but an enjoyable romp reminiscent of Genervieve. It’s intriguing to see the Munster family’s horror cosmetics; on the whole they hold up pretty well.
All of those who enjoyed the series re-runs will undoubtedly love this one, but for newcomers it will perhaps appeal more to a younger audience. The only extra is a theatrical trailer.
Avian flu wipes out a little village in the Northern Philippines, and appears to spread to a poultry farm just outside Tokyo, Japan, when one of the residents travels to a wedding with a chicken as a gift. The authorities move in to contain the new outbreak, but many more people fall seriously ill, and it is spreading at an uncontrollable rate. As the public panics and natural order quickly dissolves, stripping Japan of its normality, a woman scientist arrives at the central Tokyo hospital with the directive to identify the virus. However, the pressure is on, with deaths now rising into the millions...
Let me begin by stating that, generally speaking, I’m not a big follower of natural disaster movies. It’s normally all about the spectacle rather than the inherent story (in other words, how other people are affected by events). The prospect of sitting through well over two hours of this scenario did not fill me with enthusiasm. I was, however, intrigued with how a Japanese director (in this case, Takahisa Zeze) might approach the depiction of a virus which could effectively break down a stable society.
The first part of the movie is somewhat slow to start, but that is probably due in part to too many characters being forced on the viewer practically simultaneously, and the fact that the initial inferred plot of avian influenza appears completely uninteresting (even if it does seem to spread from the Philippines to Tokyo and the rest of Japan).
Then a strange thing happens. The moment the virus is discovered to be something completely new, and not bird flu after all, events become much more personal as, conversely, the pandemic spreads. The handful of key characters emerge from the seeming cast of thousands, and suddenly we’re given realistic fictional people to identify with and care about.
The idea of the female scientist who is brought in to a hospital to help identify the virus having a past with one of the major doctors might conceivably be seen as being contrived (especially as neither of them look old enough to have much of a past), but it works, giving the isolated human events a central point.
Miraculously, the film turns into something very special, The vast majority of the actors are top notch and highly convincing in their reactions to a multitude of emotional traumas. You never at any point feel that a character is safe; many writers and directors are too protective of their main players, therefore inducing an involuntary predictability, but you never know here who is going to survive and who will perish.
Some people will need a box of tissues, as Pandemic cleverly tugs at the heart strings, and the film concludes on a thought-provoking touch of poignancy. Highly recommended, and worth sticking with though the first half hour of so when I wavered and very nearly prematurely wrote it off.
Lt. Ethan Bishop is assigned to Precinct 13 in Anderson, which is being systematically shut-down and moved elsewhere. Only a skeleton crew of the captain, a desk sergeant and two administration women are in place. Bishop is understandably expecting a quiet night, but chaos is about to descend in a manner he could never have predicted. A handful of dangerous prisoners (including the notorious Napoleon "Got a Smoke" Wilson) are being transported by bus to another location, but when one of their number falls seriously ill they are obliged to divert to the nearest police station - namely, Precinct 13. Meanwhile, a man is driving through the district with a little girl. As he stops to make a phone call, the girl goes to get an ice-cream... just as a street gang member is confronting the driver of the van. Consequentially, she is gunned-down. The distraught man drives after the gunman and kills him, but when the rest of the gang appears he is forced to flee for his life to Precinct 13. What follows is all-night assault on the station. If Bishop and the others are to survive, they will need the help of Napoleon Wilson. But can they trust him...?
This is much more than a straightforward street gang shoot-em-up. Carpenter ideally wanted to make a western in the vein of his hero Howard Hawks, but westerns were beginning to become outdated, and he couldn't afford the sets and costumes. So, he elected to do something rather clever; he wrote a then contemporary reworking of Hawks' Rio Bravo, with a siege situation on a police precinct. It's important for the sake of the story that there is only a handful of people holding out in an essentially disused station. The telephone lines are dead so there's no contact with the outside world, and no back-up support from other units. There is also a limited supply of ammunition for the few guns they have. The gang uses silencers so that their gunshots cannot be heard and attract unwanted attention. The Street Thunder gang created by Carpenter is interracial, raising its status to pure retaliation against the police for its surprise shoot-to-kill attack on the gang at the start of the film.
Assault on Precinct 13 was the first of a number of films he would make with a siege theme. He also incorporated a strong woman character (Leigh, named after Leigh Brackett - the writer of Rio Bravo) which he always felt was very important. Carpenter edited the movie under the pseudonym John T. Chance, which was the name of the sheriff in Rio Bravo. There's an element of wry humour present, especially in the scene when the hot potato game is played to decide who goes into the sewer through a manhole cover to seek escape. This is also John Carpenter's first full music score, and he produces a memorable theme said to be influenced slightly by Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song' and the music from the Dirty Harry film.
Remembering what happened on Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13 was the first film he had total control over; something he would insist on from this point onward. The film was released to a muted response in America. The MPAA made Carpenter cut out the scene wherein the little girl is shot dead. This he did, but only in the version sent to the MPAA, thereby sneaking the film out intact. He obviously knew that the entire plot pivoted on this moment, because the avenging man is followed to the precinct. It was its release in Europe which proved momentous, particularly its successful presentation at the 1977 London Film Festival. Irwin Yablans of Compass International saw the film and asked Carpenter to make a movie of his idea for babysitter murders set on Halloween. A classic and timeless movie was about to take the industry by storm.
Extras on this disc consist of a Q&A with John Carpenter & Austin 'Bishop' Stoker, a Carpenter Commentary (always worth listening to, believe me), a Photo Gallery, Trailers and the Music Score.
In 1954 a pregnant woman is the only survivor of a terrible plane crash. Although she later dies at hospital, the baby miraculously survives. She is healthy in every way except she won't wake up. Seven years later a little boy is in hospital with asthma. Against orders he wanders the corridors, and finds a sleeping girl in a secluded room. A nurse tells him the girl has never woken up since being born, and that she is a Sleeping Beauty. The boy looks up the fable in a book and then returns to her bedside, saying, "Wake up. I am a prince," and kissing her. This becomes a daily ritual, even after he is released from hospital. He returns regularly on the bus, bringing her wild flowers and a kiss. In 1972, as a teenage schoolboy he sees a flashback news report of the aircrash and is disgusted with himself that he could ever have forgotten. The ritual begins again. When she eventually does wake up she develops staggeringly quickly from a baby to a normal late teenager. They become very close, but then she drops the bombshell that she was told by someone in her sleep she would be awake for only five days...
What can I say about Sleeping Bride except that it's an unsung masterpiece. It isn't horror or fantasy, but it does have a thoroughly magical quality.
I thought this film from 2000 by Hideo Nakata had simply been thrown in to The Ring Trilogy - Collector's Edition to make the package look better, but this is without doubt the jewel in the crown of the 4-disc set. The balance and pacing couldn't be bettered; we are expertly taken though the emotions of sadness, melancholia, happiness, anger and pain with a gentle manipulation of the viewer. These are characters you really care about.
I enjoyed this one so much that I watched it again only two days later, and I can happily report that the effect was not diminished. Like Mary Poppins: "Perfect in every way."
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