blackriverfalls

Without knowing the precise details of the actual events that this film is based on, it's difficult to say how faithful it stays to them. If it were fiction I'd have been inclined to critisise it for stereotyping a transgender woman as a nightclub performer, as it is, this part seems to be accurate.

Performances are generally strong, particularly Shawn Hatosy as the dangerously unhinged Justin Fisher. Lee Pace is very good as Calpernia Addams, but I don't see why the part couldn't have been played by a woman, trans or otherwise.

There are a couple of jarring scenes where Winchell and Addams are discussing her military background almost with an attitude of comraderie, and also some uncomfortable (for a non American) reflections on the US military. I also find offensive a notion that the film more than hints at several times (and which is made explicit in the DVD extras) that Winchell was somehow experimenting with his sexuality. If he loved Addams as a woman, this is a non-issue, but the film makers and actors (and Winchell's mother in the extras) don't seem to be able to understand that.

That aside, it's still a good film, and the subject matter is treated as well as we might expect for this point in time.

I'll start by getting the criticism out of the way. With the exception of Angel Benton (who plays himself), the cast of this film are so wooden that they could make a deciduous forest look positively Shakespearian. The camera work and editing is film school standard, and the few occasions where the film tries to create suspense or concern for the characters generally fail dismally. According to the extras, the crew had difficulty finding someone to direct this film, so eventually the producer took that role. A pity really, as it would have benefited from someone with more experience.

Don't worry too much about any of what I've said above though, because this movie is damn good fun. The naff acting puts it almost in the so bad it's good category, Angel Benton is super, and if your idea of a good laugh involves 80 minutes of a female impersonator unintentionally duping people into thinking that he's Britney Spears, then this film is for you. Benton is occasionally incongruous on the rare occasions that he stops acting like a 14 year old Britney fan girl and shows some of his savvy as an adult gay man.

SPOILERS

My main annoyance with this film was with several scenes that really did start to get you to care about the characters, but where handled so whimsically that 3 seconds later they've become almost an aside. The bit where the goths kidnap Benton, believing him to be the real Britney, and then he converts them into fans by convincing them that her lyrics are really dark could have been first rate, sadly it's carried off in a way that makes it almost trite.

There are some very nice touches too, another pop star type (I'm not sure who this is lampooning) who turns out to be a tranny, and the ending where Benton's Britney meets the real Britney (who of course, is an actress (or actor?) playing the real Britney to Benton's fake Britney.

It could have been better in a lot of ways, but as it stands, it's still a very entertaining movie.

Ichi the Killer is many things, revolting, inspired, incomprehensible, stylish, ingenious and frequently downright nasty. Pretty much all of the characters are vile by nature, or at best outlandishly screwed up, and every time that we are baited with an aparent good dead, a reverse value judgement is not far behind.

The premise of Kikihara searching for his boss really just a device to get the action moving, and after that, well I really haven't a clue what's going on, or quite what many of the characters motivations are, or indeed if the the events are really happening or merely part of Kikihara's deranged fantasies. There's no definitive interpretation, so really you have to watch it and draw your own conclusions.

Contains very extreme violence and torture, even by the standards of Jap extreme cinema. The UK DVD release that I saw appears to have a good 3-4 minutes missing, possibly a tender mercy.

A fascinating and original film if you can stomach it. You may also feel like having a bath afterwords...

From the synopsis that the local art house cinema provided, I was expecting this to be an edgy, intense psychodrama. Quite what it might have been back in 1968 is something else, watching it today it appears tedious, overdone, occasionally unintentionally hilarious and generally downright silly. In fact it bored me so much that I considered walking out.

SPOILERS

Much is made of the dynamic between Jagger and Fox's characters. I don't know why, all that seemed to happen was that Jagger's friend slips Fox a hallucinogenic mushroom and then they dress him up, make him up and turn him into a high 60s hip dude. The clever camera work and editing that supports this really does look painfully naive from a modern perspective, and there's no other plotlines of any merit to carry all of this along.

The Magic Toyshop is a rich and by turns sensual and disturbing adaptation of the Angela Carter book, to which the film stays particularly true.

At the heart of the story is the young Melanie, who after her parents die tragically is sent to stay with her Uncle Philip, Aunt Margaret and her cousins Francie and Finn. Aunt Margaret is mute, and Uncle Philip is a control freak who stages plays with life size puppets and when not doing so treats his family as little more than an extension of his marrionette collection. Through a series of strange and often surreal events the perverse dynamics of this family begin to reveal themselves to Melanie.

SO WHY CAN'T WE WATCH THIS FILM?

Since it was screened on BBC1 back in 1988 it has never been repeated, or released on video or any other format, anywhere. I know this because I've been trying to hunt down a copy for over a decade, it is not only unavailable but seemingly unheard of to the point where I've sometimes wondered if the film was never really made and I dreamed the whole thing. I can understand some of its themes being considered contraversial, such as Uncle Philip's symbolic molestation of Melanie with the swan puppet, or his need to assert his dominance over Aunt Margaret by making her wear a silver collar, but suppressing films that bring these themes out into the open is only reinforcing the old taboos.

I guess we can only hope that it gets some kind of release, somewhere, sometime in the future...

As someone who has read all of De Sade's major works as well as several analyses of both them and his life, I approached this move with trepidation. My fears were mostly unfounded, and it revealed itself as by far the best portrayal of the Marquis to date. The actual details of his life are sketchy and thus a generous helping of artistic license was called for, in this the film succeeds in being true to the spirit of De Sade, if not precisely to historical fact.

Quills has one of best openings ever, describing it would spoil the surprise, enough to say that it uses a superbly executed piece of bait and switch to shock and exhilerate the viewer while placing De Sade's writing splendidly in context.

The film is set during De Sade's period of incarceration in a lunatic asylum. Geoffry Rush's charismatic performance in the lead role is first rate, and a fine compromise between the generic horror movie Marquis (evil, suave & swashbuckling) and the real item (overweight, asthmatic, a writer rather than a doer). The supporting cast are all good, particularly Kate Winslet as Madellaine, the asylum's laundry girl who helps smuggle out his manuscripts.

There are some truly inspired and hilarious moments, my favourite being where De Sade is allowed to direct a play acted by the other inmates, at the last minute he changes the script from The Happy Shoemaker to his own Eugenie De Franvil!

Michael Caine as the asylum doctor is a nice study in Sadean philosophy, though the end result becomes a little silly in places.

In the final 15 minutes the film deviates completely from history in an attempt to provide a finale and some sense of closure to the narrative, the ending is entertaining but also ridiculous, ironically enough the historical version holds more real horror than a few minutes of gore, it might better have finished with a visit to the asylum 20 years on to show that he was still there, naked in his cold dark cell, desperately scratching away at his masterpiece, 120 Days Of Sodom.

Altogether this is a film whose strong points more than make up for it's rather criminal ending.

Hibiki Amawa needs a job badly, so with the aid of his gun-toting grenade-throwing electrical-engineering paragliding midget biker landlady he disguises himself as a woman to gain employment at a nearby girls school staffed by rabid man haters, on pain of his beloved pet being turned into Inu-Nabe (Dog Stew).

The first four episodes of this OVA had us almost falling on the floor in hysterics, some parts because they are brilliantly funny, others because they are so truly abysmal to be painfully hilarious.

Some of the humour is a little suspect by Western standards, including a pair of comedy peeping toms who spy on the young girls while they are in their underwear and a rather ham fistedly executed crush that one of the girls has on Amawa. By far the most ridiculous though is episode 3 'Selfish Blush Magic', where most of the plot revolves around Amawa's attemps to get the girls to wear buruma (tight gym shorts). This is obviously some sort of cultural fetish and is played quite blatently, ad nausium to the point of sheer excruciation, with none of the characters seemingly able to speak one line without buruma being in it. Some may find this tedious, in our case we were utterly groaning with laughter at the sheer lack of subtlety and trembling with fearful anticipation of the B word, and as one character observes at the end of the episode "It's all thanks to the buruma!"

While I,My,Me Strawberry Eggs has it's faults, I must confess that I haven't laughed so much all year...

The Suicide Club begins well with quite definitely the most extreme opening sequence of any film I ever saw. Fifty four schoolgirls line up on the platform of a subway station, and as a jolly tune plays, they join hands, count to three then throw themselves into the path of an oncoming train, which then races through the station spewing a veritable tsunami of blood over platform and commuters alike.

Opening aside, this is very much a movie of two halves. The first half, featuring more graphic and inexplicable suicides and following the course of several detectives investigating them is excellent. Somewhere past the half way point the narrative breaks down in favour of general weirdness and pseudometaphysical claptrap. There is a brilliant and truly surreal appearance by a sadistic glam rock artiste but the character is underused in one of many bizarre scenes that seem to have little real relevance to the story.

On the whole this is a film well worth seeing, particularly if you liked Battle Royale, Audition or Ringu, just don't expect any sense of closure or conclusion.

After I saw this film I tried to start a discussion of it on a manga board, only to find myself being branded as a 'sicko'. One of the central themes to Angel Sanctuary is the love affair between the hero and his sister, a theme that many are given to dismiss out of hand as perverted without actually having seen the film. It is therefore perhaps ironic that the exploration of a consensual incestous relationship is one of Angel Sanctuary's greatest strengths. The whole thing is handled with sensitivity, and one truly feels for the heros torment when he declares "I am weird, I am abnormal, I am condemned by my mother, by all of them". There is no graphic sex, and the couple's one carnel indulgence is implied rather than actually shown.

As to the rest of the story, Angel Sanctuary has a cast of colourful characters, including the heros deranged angel brother and a pair of cross-dressing demons,all fighting to either eliminate him or recruit him to assist in their war against heaven. Some may find the idea of god being the enemy offensive, though I personally do not.

I would go as far as to describe Angel Sanctuary as one of the best anime that I have ever seen.

This is a really good story about the trials and tribulations of two young women in love. Complex issues like pornography and censorship are dealt with intelligently. Also a very good portrayal of a transgendered character nightclub performer.

This is a delightful story about a young boy who wants to be a young girl. The reactions of family and friends vary and his passion causes friction in his family which is portrayed both well and realistically. A splendidly made and visually sumptous film about being accepted for who and what you are.

With the exception of Wim Wenders first ever movie (which I forget the title of), this is the most boring film I have ever seen in my life. There is no real plot other than that a group of characters, most ex lovers of the deceased, travel to attend a funeral. The interaction between the characters is so banal as to make even TV soap operas look professional. The only thing that stopped me walking out was my assumption that something was actually going to happen eventually. Ok, big spoiler coming up: nothing happens!

The portrayal of the transgender Vivienne was generally weak and reaks of a feeble misguided attempt to educate the audience, at the same time making the character seem particularly self obsessed.

The first ever romance movie that I've seen where one of the lead characters is transgendered. Excellent acting in the portrayals of both Kim and Prentice, good script and a fine soundtrack of 1980's music. Nice to see a TG character who isn't a prostitute or shown as two dimensional. My only criticism on it's handling of TG matters is it's occasional tendency to lecture to the audience, though this is a common and very contemporary error and does not compromise the film as a whole.

This really is a thoroughly offensive film. While purporting to be a documentary, it is in actually little more than an excuse for cheap tittilation at the expense of a number of transgender characters. Has some graphic scenes of a sexual nature which are not only unnecessary but to my mind degrading, I really hope the TG women got paid well for appearing in this drivel but I rather doubt it somehow. The only particularly memorable moment is a really sick reconstruction of a man cutting his penis off with a hammer and chisel. If you haven't seen this movie already then don't bother, you don't want to put yourself through this. If you want to learn more about transgender people, go and watch a really good film like Boys Don't Cry or Different For Girls.