severin72

Often dismissed (probably fairly) as an attempt to transplant "The Big Chill" into the English countryside, "Peter's Friends" is even more striking now for showing some familiar faces looking way younger than we now see them and for deploying co-writer Rita Rudner so far outside her familiar, Emo Phillips-in-drag persona. Peter (Stephen Fry) hosts a new year's reunion of college friends and their partners at the English country house (read: mansion) he has just inherited from his father. Nostalgia, crises and comedy ensue. It's as well acted as one would expect from the ensemble cast (oddly, Brannagh, the most distinguished actor among them is most the uneven, possibly distracted by directing duties) but the writing is inconsistent. The pace is too pressured with no time for reflection between constant emotional highs and lows. It's all a bit too frantic and formulaic. Despite all that the film is compelling. The characters are sufficiently well-rounded and likable to keep the viewer interested and Brannagh manages to make England in the dead of Winter look more lovely than bone-chilling. If you're the same age as the cast or up to about ten years younger it's intriguing. Outside of that demographic it's more likely to come across as puzzling or dull.

Given how long this thing spent in post-production, enduring multiple re-shoots it's a great deal better than one would expect. It looks beautiful (as long as it stays out of a tediously CG London) with suitably bleak, and Gothic location work. The performances are solid all around with Anthony Hopkins, who could do (and occasionally has done) this sort of thing in his sleep, stealing the show.

The downfall is the amount of time spent slyly referencing other werewolf movies and otherwise planting its tongue deep in its cheek.

The werewolf rips someone out through the side of a tent - Bad Moon.

The rampage through London (right down to a bus crash) - American Werewolf in London.

The dream sequences - see above.

The dismembered arm firing a gun - Wolfen.

Someone falls from a high window and is impaled on railings - Howling 2.

It goes on.

The last one is an example of how gratuitous the violence is. Once someone has been thrown out a window, the railings are a predictable bit of overdoing it. The whole film, in fact, suffers from being predictable which helps explain the lack of genuine scares, let alone suspense. This isn't just because the tale is familiar. Most viewers will be able to call each scene and even each shot ahead of time.

Back to the violence. The body count is astronomical and the extremely graphic nature of the assorted disembowelings, dismemberings, decapitations and so forth ultimately combine to produce a sense of silliness.

The werewolf itself (or themselves to be precise) is a lovely piece of work that proves that the legendary Rick Baker (who has about the briefest cameo imaginable) is able to co-exist with CGI just fine. The desire to make it look reminiscent of the original Wolfman is understandable and the fact that it doesn't look particularly canine doesn't detract. The real problem is that it doesn't move or behave in a remotely wolf-like manner. The primate-like movements are so pronounced as to be distracting and to make one wonder what director Joe Johnston was thinking.

Having said all of that, it's a decent evening's entertainment if not, perhaps, a justifiable use of a hundred and fifty million dollars.

On the minus side of the ledger Big Bad Wolf is crass, crude, formulaic, exploitative, cheap and ultimately tedious. On the plus side, other than perhaps the tedious bit, that's exactly what it sets out to be. That, and a couple of middling-to-good performances. I would write a summary of the plot but once I reached the "teenagers go up to cabin" part I'd lose the will to continue. Points of note: the werewolf talks (chiefly so that it can spout a dreary series of corny one- liners whilst engaged in acts of rape and murder) and David Naughton was talked in to a cameo. The latter brings us to the fact that the producers had the sheer gall to claim during production that their film would have better effects than American Werewolf in London. When you see their actual results you'll at least have to award points for shamelessness. Ultimately this is typical, contemporary, straight-to-DVD, B movie horror. It's not awful. It just aims cynically low and then walks away.

I didn't entertain high hopes for Rogue. First, it's a premise that easily descends into formula (guess who's going to get eaten and in what order), and second, it comes from writer-director Greg McLean whose previous effort was the equal parts pointless and despicable Wolf Creek. Having said all that, McLean goes a fair way to redeeming himself here. He's helped by some good ensemble acting and the fact that Sam Worthington became a fairly major international star soon after Rogue was shot (the latter fact helps generate some surprises in the film's outcome) but deserves considerable credit himself. Although the script wastes little time getting down to business,much effort is expended developing the characters and the film is far more about them than it is about the giant crocodile. McLean thinks through a plausible way of putting his cast in the beast's way and then reveals the creature (impressively rendered by CGI with a smattering of mechanical effects) bit by bit with great patience. He even makes a nod towards the implausibility of the animal porking its way through an entire boatload of tourists as opposed to eating one and then going to sleep for a month and uses the problem as a way to evade a conventional outcome. All in all, a business-like and well executed affair. You should have forgotten about it an hour after watching but you don't.

How and why writer-director Roger Kumble brought to the screen this modern version of Stephen Frears' classic "Dangerous Liasons" (itself derived from an 18th century French novel via a stage play) is an interesting question. He was never going to improve on it, perhaps he just wanted to bring a classic tale to a wider audience. The darkly comic edge to the sexual decadence and idle cruelty of the privileged and bored is well honed but the overall effect is at times awkward. Making the characters a generation younger leaves the impression of watching the cast of "The O.C." reciting Moliere. The tale may (theoretically) be timeless but the characters don't translate entirely believably in to the modern world. The most entertaining performance is by Ryan Phillipe and it may be significant that he's almost parodying John Malkovich's Comte de Valmont from Frears' 1989 film. At the other end of the scale is Selma Blair who, when told her character is "naive", seems to have heard "border-line retarded". Ultimately "Cruel Intentions" is glossy, beautiful, and mannered, but a little shallow. and the ending (not helped by Sarah Michelle Gellar lacking the necessary dramatic heft for such a grand villain as Merteuil) is botched and insubstantial. Make what you will of the fact it spawned two sequels.

Surprisingly poignant and lasting, if occasionally heavy-handed attempt by Australia to create a mythology for itself. A sad-eyed Heath Ledger carries the film well in the title role but the script, based on Robert Drew's novel, takes a fair number of liberties with a subject once memorably described by Paul Hogan as; "An Irishman with a bucket on his head who f-ed up a few bank robberies a long time ago". Then again most allegedly "historical" films have a fairly tenuous relationship to actual history and this one looks better than most through excellent choice and use of locations. Intentionally or not, director Gregor Jordan has created as lyrical a depiction of Australia as has been presented on screen since Ray Lawrence's "Bliss" back in 1985.

Just about every film has its good and bad points. This is the first one I can recall that lines them up in such a way that we start with the best and then decline inexorably to the worst. The opening is simply brilliant in concept and execution. The depiction of the world coming, to all intents and purposes, to an end while people go about their daily lives, the lack of explanation, and the depictions of wildly accelerating chaos to the tune of Johnny Cash's cunningly chosen "When the man comes around" are inspired. The characters behave sufficiently believably that the situation itself becomes real. About ten minutes in things are looking good - and then the problems set in. The choice of having the zombies be fast and rabid instead of lumbering makes them scarier and far more formidable antagonists and it taps in to the current fear of pandemics adding an edge of realism to the terror. The problem is that it makes the choice of a shopping mall as a suitable fortress even more unlikely than in the original. The idea these zombies would be unable to break right in doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It also makes it impossible to recreate the satire of consumerism that drove Romero to choose the mall as the setting for his 1978 film. No zombies wandering around the stores here. What we're left with is the "small band of heroes battling monstrous horde" template that fits equally well over, Aliens, Starship Troopers, Eight Legged Freaks - the list goes on, and it's not enough to sustain interest. The gore lacks the leering voyeurism of Romero's collaborations with Tom Savini (who, perhaps inevitably, has a cameo as a Sheriff) but, even if director Zack Snyder doesn't linger on it it's strong enough. The laboriously set up "chainsaw accident" is gratuitous and silly. The rest just becomes tiresome out of sheer repetition. If you can, skip the end credit sequence. Utterly pointless nudity and despair are tacked on for no better reason than "because we could". Just as "Underworld: Evolution" marked the sorry point at which we sank from films as two hour music videos to films as two hour video games there has to be some wretched significance in going from re-makes and sequels to re-makes OF sequels. Viewed in isolation this isn't an awful film it just constitutes further evidence that, as a culture, we're pretty much terminally out of ideas.

Unnecessary re-make of the 1972 (sort of) classic features some of the best work ever incorporating digital effects and live action but has little else to commend it. The opening shot is remarkable but it's all pretty much downhill from there. This version of the story of a small (and painfully artificially diverse) band trying to survive the capsize of an ocean liner makes for yet another sad comparison of seventies versus contemporary film-making. Today (once again) technological virtuosity has to stand in for the most basic story-telling not to mention an almost complete disregard for the basic rules of nature. The actors look abandoned and lost in the face of the effects. Dreyfus seems vaguely embarrassed and Josh Lucas offers a characterization that belongs more in a James Bond film. The original was full of clichés and cardboard characters too but the largely old-school cast (Stella Stevens, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters et al) knew how to carry it off. The new ensemble hasn't a clue. Director Wolfgang Petersen's career has been wildly erratic. Perhaps it was hoped that sending him back to sea would return him to the glories of "Das Boot". Instead what we get is better than "Enemy Mine" but not much.

If nothing else, Luc Besson's big budget sci-fi bomb manages to look like no other film. The Frenchman succeeds in bringing a very European look in to a major Hollywood movie (visually, the film most resembles a certain breed of European comic book) and for that alone deserves considerable credit. The effects, production and costume design all have been thought through with considerable care and make a coherent and compelling world even if, individually, they don't always work. The story, concerning the embodiment of love being required to save the universe, is deeply silly, aiming for profundity and missing by a fair margin but that's beside the point. The ride is entertaining and it's worth arguing that no female actor has ever done better as an action hero than Mila Jovovich. Kathleen Turner bombed in V.I. Warshawski (such a comprehensive disaster that, to be fair, that she never stood a chance) and the much more physically appropriate Geena Davis failed repeatedly with scripts of varying quality. The multilingual and seriously smart Jovovich has proved to have a startling range. She can do a complex historical character in "The Messenger", a comic villain in "Zoolander" and then beat the bejeezus out of all-comers in something like this. Leeloo is the only role in the film that asks much of any of the actors (Gary Oldman, as usual, gives enormously more than he is asked) and Jovovich really responds pulling off some very difficult scenes. Accepted on its own terms and "The Fifth Element" is a unique experience.

Robert Redford's debut as a director really is that good. From Judith Guest's novel about an outwardly prosperous American family struggling with the loss of the beloved older son Redford, and screenwriter Alvin Sargent have crafted a beautiful "actor's film". This is not in the sense of a "Glengarry Glenross" where there is a pervasive theatrical sensibility and all is driven by the dialog. Many of the finest touches here are unspoken. It's the best-case scenario for a film directed by an actor (and one of under-rated talent at that). The performances are flawless all around. If top honors are to be awarded they might best go to Moore. Playing against well established type she crafts a superbly observed and all too believable character; a woman who has let her visceral habit of self-protection get so out of control it has utterly crushed her humanity. Hutton (who won an Oscar) and Sutherland are also superb as the the husband and surviving son, the other two legs of the highly unstable familial tripod. Look also for fine supporting work from the likes of James Sikking, Elizabeth McGovern, and M. Emmet Walsh. I confess to being a complete stranger to the milieu of the American preppy class (how "ordinary" are these people? I don't know anyone with a live-in maid.) but the representation of them and their world seemed, to me at least, meticulously realized - right down to maybe the most extensive collection of sweaters ever assembled on screen. Redford's done some good work since but with "Ordinary People" he started off at the top and found there was only one place to go. No matter. He's left us with a truly brave piece of film-making, never making easy choices, and staying true to each and every memorable character to the end.

This film makes one wonder what would have happened if, after the superb understated little gem that was "Nomads" Mctiernan had made something other than "Die Hard". Apparently assorted screenplays for an adaptation of Michael Crichton's pseudo-historical novel "Eaters of the Dead" had been knocking around Hollywood for years before Crichton's name become forever associated with "Jurassic Park". At that point the smell of money began to emanate from the project and so, away we went. This could very easily have been awful. That it is actually an emotionally and structurally complete and satisfying film is, in no small part, due to its respectful and level-headed treatment of two disparate and under-explored cultures, both foreign to western audiences namely Umayad Arab and Viking. Anonio Banderas is as good as he has ever been as Ibn Fahdlan, an unwilling ambassador to the Norsemen who finds himself part of a band of unusually believable heroes defending a crumbling Scandanavian kingdom against a possibly supernatural menace. The casting of (to Americans at least) unknown European actors as the viking warriors is key to making them seem to be so real and thus to committing the audience to their fate. Czech actor Vladimir Kulich as leader Buliwyf is a dominating presence and equal credit goes to the Norwegian Dennis Storhoi as the charmingly phlegmatic Herger the Joyous. Accepting that, at some level, this is "The Seven Samuraii" with longboats this is an original and entertaining experience. McTiernan, making intelligent use of night and a rain machine, films some of the better battle sequences in recent memory. He also presides over the most thoughtful (if not totally plausible) handling of different languages that I can recall seeing. It's sort of the next logical step from his transitioning from Russian to English on board the Red October. An interesting tale in a gorgeous and well thought-out historical context. Entertaining without being mindless. In other words, a rarity.

...Neil Marshall deserves one. Three years after "Dog Soldiers" Marshall would mature in to a truly superior talent with "The Descent" but even with this, his first feature effort, he was clearly something special. Marshal is one of those writer-directors who is first and foremost a fan just one with a camera and a budget and he makes the very best use of both. His fellow fans in the audience can live vicariously by counting references and spotting the influences as they enjoy the ride. Marshall has been at pains to say that "Dog Soldiers" is a; "soldier film with werewolves not a werewolf film with soldiers". He's right and the fact is perhaps the most important reason the film works. A squad of British soldiers on a training exercise in the highlands of Scotland (filming actually took place in Luxembourg) find themselves up against something much more than they expected. Holed up in a remote farmhouse they struggle to survive the night against a seemingly un-killable enemy. Marshall takes great care developing the squaddies as characters and involving the audience in their fate. Despite the minimal budget there are excellent effects on hand (these are perhaps the most formidable werewolves ever put on screen) but Marshall is smart enough to know their limitations. He never over-reaches. If you get to watch the DVD check out the cast and crew commentaries. You'll find that the film is such fun partly because all the participants are having such a blast. The action sequences are thrilling, the characters and their reactions are believable. Mckidd, Morfitt and Pertwee in particular are exceptional and by the end you'll be surprised how moved you are by the heroism they display. Yet the movie never loses its sense of fun. There's an undercurrent of absurdist humor that reminds you no-one's meant to take the whole thing too seriously. Marshal pulls this off without resorting to the kind of leaden canned witticisms that are Wes Craven's sad legacy to modern horror films. If there's a failing in "Dog Soldiers" (aside from it being a very "nationalistic" film - if you're not British you're not going to get everything) it's Marshall not yet being as meticulous a storyteller as he would become with "The Descent". Good luck figuring out the story behind Emma Cleasby's character. Watch it the first time and enjoy the ride then watch it again and have just as much fun picking out the little tribute touches.

I just realized that this film could reasonably be called a "teen horror movie". To do so though would be not far short of calling "2001" a "science fiction adventure". However you define it "Ginger Snaps" benefits greatly from being made by a relatively unknown band of Canadians with a small budget. Alas, they seem to have had an even smaller amount of marketing savvy thus denying their creation the exposure it deserves. This is a great shame because their story of two teenage sisters (Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins), morbid, awkward outsiders both, who are attacked by an animal in their suburban neighborhood one night, is the first great werewolf film since Joe Dante and John Landis opened the genre's modern era way back in 1981. Compare this to "Cursed". Young siblings + werewolf + experienced film-makers + big budget = trainwreck. Little old "Ginger Snaps" on the other hand, strives to be thoughtful rather than hip and achieves a perfect tone: darkly funny and ironic. The characters drive this movie. You believe in them and their relationships completely. You even believe that Isabelle is the older of the two sisters when in reality she's five years younger than Perkins. Both are spectacularly good as is Mimi Rogers as their well-meaning but moderately clueless mother. This a very female-centric movie. The male characters don't emerge as well and the political subtext occasionally veers towards sermonizing but the central metaphor of lycanthropy as puberty never becomes labored. The suburban Ontario locations are wonderfully bleak and work well with a Mike Shields score that emphasizes the bittersweet core of the film. It is as sad as it is funny. The werewolf design is extraordinarily ambitious considering the money available. All effects are mechanical (not one CGI shot) and, sparingly used, they work pretty well. As part of trying to fit the werewolf into the modern world Wilton and Fawcett have demythologized it. The supernatural elements are gone and the creature acts very much like a real animal not like a toy the director is using to make the audience jump. It's only after the film is over that you'll realize it wasn't scary. I don't think the film-makers cared about that and the audience shouldn't either. It's incidental to the story and there is a real story here not just an amusement park ride. It's a nice tribute to the material that the two sequels it spawned were both good (and in one case arguably even superior) to the original.

Eric Red wrote "The Hitcher" and "Near Dark" so, given the excellence of Wayne Smith's highly original source novel "Thor", there was some reason for optimism about Bad Moon. It also boasted a splendidly scary theatrical preview. What we actually get suggests Red should stay away from adapting novels. In "Thor" Smith tells the story primarily from the eponymous dog's perspective. Although the author himself disagrees, I don't think this would have been impossible to do on the screen and given the wonderful way Smith used it to create a sense of dimly understood dread in the book, it was well worth a try. Red either didn't have the nerve or couldn't sell the idea to the suits and so we lose all the queasy references to Thor's mounting and uncommunicable anxiety about "the bad thing" lurking inside Uncle Ted. Ted (Pare) returns from a trip abroad minus his girlfriend and increasingly reclusive and withdrawn. His sister (Hemmingway, for some reason converted to a single mother in the film) wants to help him. She lets Ted move in to a trailer behind her house but he continues to act strangely and Hemmingway's dog, Thor, starts to develop a very uneasy relationship with him. Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write; "Michael Pare is excellent in this movie". He's very good at being subtly evil and canine. His problem is the script doesn't know if Ted's a tormented victim or raging psychopath so ultimately the character makes no sense. Mason Gamble is perfectly fine as Hemmingway's brave young son and as for Mariel herself, well, she has nice legs. No other character rises above the level of plot device. The werewolf looks good here. The integration of CGI and animatronic/man-in-suit shots is more than competent and, to Red's credit, he actually has someone do the unheard-of and run away from it when it's transforming instead of just standing there. I think I might have applauded when I saw that. On the other side of the ledger is a truly gratuitous early scene where a naked woman is dragged out of a tent and ripped apart. It's a cheap and sleazy moment that belongs (for want of a better word) only in straight-to-video junk. It's particularly bad when compared to a similar but vastly more tasteful scene (at basically the exact same point in the film) in "Dog Soldiers". The ending of "Bad Moon" is essentially ludicrous even without the weird afterthought of a dream sequence. It all feels very rushed, which isn't that surprising as the whole film only runs eighty minutes. The novel itself is only two hundred and thirty two pages but it's a much better use of your time.

This is a title in search of a movie. It's a pitch that sounded lucrative to some studio executive and the rest be damned. When this film was made there were still two things that CGI did not do at all well: people, and fur. Furry people were thus not destined to look good when rendered by computer. This is the only example I can think of where effects for a well-funded sequel took a giant leap back landing well behind those of the original movie. For the record, the design of the werewolves doesn't help a bit. The film-makers apparently couldn't decide between quadruped and biped, tried to do both, and wound up with a creature that looks equally awkward either way. The transformations are anatomically nonsensical and the end result with a relatively high forehead and short snout looks like a cross between Ron Perlman and a hyena. But back to the crass part. This is a movie which exists PURELY to cash in on its forebear. I am not a fan of Landis' original film but boy, does it look good in light of this. If you thought some of Landis' humor was forced try some of the excruciating attempts here. The bubble gum scene, the corpse humor, the dog that...you know, you'll just have to watch that bit yourselves. Thomas Everett Scott is on vacation in Europe with friends and decides to take a break from acting the "ugly American' and bungee jump off the Eifel Tower in the middle of the night. This leads to him rescuing a young woman (Delpy - Julie it's not worth this just to become a star in America. Ask Rutger Hauer) from jumping to her death. She turns out to be part of a cult of werewolves who are plotting to...I'm not sure, something bad. Ghastly French stereotypes, gaping plot-holes, a muddled ending. No matter, the studio cared only that the title would likely fool millions of "American Werewolf in London" fans into handing over their cash. For the most part, happy to say, they were wrong.

Plodding, by-the-numbers werewolf movie which owes its existence largely to being based on a Stephen King novella (one which is equally long on atmosphere and short on explanation). Corey Haim plays a teenager confined to a wheelchair in a small New England town who becomes the first to figure out why townspeople are being brutally murdered every full-moon. None of what ensues is particularly compelling but there are some fairly high level suspense scenes to compensate for some wildly uneven acting. Everett McGill makes an imposing villain (at least when not concealed inside a werewolf costume that disappointingly resembles a giant chipmunk) but much of the rest of the cast doesn't really seem to have their hearts in it. Alas, in between the well executed set pieces there's way too much movie where anyone who's seen a werewolf flick before is a shot or sometimes even an entire scene ahead of the director. Ultimately the film is undone by its inability to make you care about any of its characters and its being made in the midst of a decade of terminally "safe" film-making.

...this should convince you otherwise. Massive credit to the location scouts and set and design team. This looks like it was filmed in the most remote, frozen desolate place in Canada (in reality far from it which is all the more to these folks credit). This is a perfectly fine little film which really has no need to be connected to the first two and it is weakest when it tries to be. There's nothing terribly original here. An isolated fort on the early 19th century Canadian frontier is besieged by mysterious wolf-like creatures. Two sisters, the survivors of a boat wrecked on a nearby river, take refuge within. There's some pretty stock characters and the werewolves are only as good as can be expected with a limited budget and a quadruped design. Overall though, the film is satisfyingly haunting in its combination of music and visuals and does a very good job of creating a world and pulling the audience in to it. Previously there'd been a notable lack of supernatural elements in the Ginger Snaps series and their presence here (Isabelle and Perkins are presumably earlier incarnations of their characters in the first two movies) is rather jarring. If you've already seen the first two go ahead and watch this but pretend that it's a separate entity.

Let me start by saying I am not a Wes Craven fan. If you made a list of people responsible for dumbing down horror movies his name would be, in my (largely unpopular) opinion, near the top. That said, what we have here is largely the responsibility of (in descending order of culpability) the culture, the MPAA, and Harvey Weinstein. Apparently this thing was ripped apart worse than Shannon Elizabeth's character in order to get a PG-13. Basic story: Twenty-something Christina Ricci and her teenage brother are orphans (something that was clearly explored more in the pre-mangled version). Returning home one night on Mulholland Drive they hit an animal, and swerve into another car which goes off the road. Trying to rescue the trapped driver (the aforementioned Ms. Elizabeth) they are attacked by a creature that kills the other driver and injures our heroes. From there on you can pretty much fill in the blanks. Most werewolf movies have one of two themes: figuring out who's the werewolf, or an infected character struggling with the curse. This one tries to do both, adds in sub plots about lycanthropy as an STD, lycanthropy as metaphor for repressed homosexuality, and a satirical look at "dog-eat-dog" Hollywood and winds up doing none of them very well. By the end we're still not sure who ripped Shannon Elizabeth in two or why. Craven and his Scream writer-collaborator Kevin Williamson escape much of the blame for this because it's obvious there's stuff missing that might well have tied it all together better (the original Screenplay is more ambitiously funny). The labored direction though is all Craven. He's reduced to the hack purveyor of "pop-up scares" some of us always suspected him of being. What do I mean by "labored"? Okay, when a character has the points of a Pentagram on their palm (after the audience has already been beaten half to death with pentagram references) you don't really need to have the character literally draw in the lines between the points. Williamson shall not escape explicit blame either. He's clearly got no reverence for the classic nature of the tale (something not incompatible with a sense of humor - see The Howling) and makes a complete hash of werewolf mythology. Nonetheless it's passably entertaining. The CGI is better than American Werewolf in Paris (take that as damning by faint praise if you will) and Judy Greer is terrific as a (oh, why not?) BITCHY publicist. A final gripe (not exclusive to this film). Where do werewolves get all the extra body mass when they transform? Judy Greer is not a small woman but having her turn in to a six-foot-five stuntman in a costume is noticeably odd unless you're totally swept up in the story - something that would require a much better film than this.

Rather to my surprise, the answer is art (in stark contrast to Zombie's previous effort "House of a Thousand Corpses"). This is a deeply disturbing film on several levels. The obvious one is the subject matter. The remnants of an extended family of psychopaths are on the run from the law and slaughter anything that gets in their path. This story, essentially a road-movie/revenge western/seventies exploitation flick is played dead straight. It's savagely graphic and, if you have an ounce of empathy left in you, in places it is hard to watch. "Rejects" is uncommonly well acted courtesy of a deep and experienced cast. Bill Moseley (eerily physically recalling Charles Manson) creates, in Otis B. Driftwood, one of the genre's most dreadful yet human characters. It's a truly memorable performance. Sid Haig again shows the kind of imposing presence that makes you wish Hollywood could have found a better use for him decades ago. Inside the man the spirit of Sterling Hayden mourns. So far, so technically proficient but this is hardly re-inventing the wheel and the long shadow of Tarantino looms over a fair bit of the dialog. The film rises to the level of art because the killers are not just mindless one-dimensional purveyors of splatter effects to the depraved masses. They are real characters, with pasts, motivations, and, worst of all, the capacity for love. This is the first curve Zombie throws the audience. The second is to have the killers become the victims, tortured with the same merciless brutality they have themselves repeatedly exhibited. While the audience is still (hopefully) struggling with how to react to this moral puzzle we run in to an ending that is, what? Sad? Beautiful? Moral closure? All of the above? None? Does it obscure the suffering of the victims or does it avenge it? I'm not sure, but the fact the film made me ask such a question, alone elevates it head and shoulders above most. Supposedly, at one point Bill Moseley (no stranger to this kind of thing) told Zombie he was having a hard time doing this film. Zombie's response apparently was; "Art isn't safe". Grudgingly, I take his point.

Greenaway's visuals (which betray his origins as a painter in almost every gorgeously composed shot) are sumptuous. Wim Mertens score is mesmerizing. Add them to Brian Dennehy's towering performance as obsessed, betrayed, and ultimately dying American architect Stourley Kracklite and you have something very special. Kracklite is in Rome battling to put on an exhibition to his idol, 18th century French architect Etienne Louis Boulet. His young wife (Webb) betrays him, the natives scheme to undermine his exhibition and he begins to crumble physically like the ruins of the eternal city around him. The story, largely carried on Dennehy's massive shoulders, is almost incidental to the glorious, poetic footage of Rome. It is so movingly beautiful that, when I finally got around to visiting the city (a trip in no small part inspired by this film) the reality of the place couldn't compete. If you can, watch this on a big screen with the best possible suround-sound. If you can't, watch it anyway.

One of the few movies that genuinely scared me. Exorcist author Blatty assumes the director's chair to helm the film adaptation of his sequel Legion. The results are vicious, thought-provoking, and original. A serial killer is loose in Georgetown and the evidence leads Lt. Kinderman (George C. Scott, at his best) to a mental institution and all manner of, to use an over-worked phrase, unimaginable horrors. A lot of the novel's philosophical and theological mediations are inevitably lost but enough remain on screen to qualify this as one of the most thoughtful chillers out there. And at the same time it will rock the unwary out of their seats. The infamous "corridor scene" is a shot by shot masterwork of suspense that clocks in at an astonishing eight minutes plus. When was the last time a major film in the music video era dared do something like that? That's the most infamous shock but the death of Father Dyer, the ceiling walks, the early suggestions that something is very wrong with the patients, and the brilliant piece of understatement that is the scene introducing us to Father Morning (who would have thought gently billowing drapes on bright day could make you shudder?) all get an honorable mention. There's a pervasive sense of dread about this film that is hard to shake. It's masterfully directed, intelligently written and full of powerful performances. The climax, alas, is confused, confusing, doesn't fit the tone, and was largely the result of studio meddling. One is left wondering what a director's cut would have looked like.

Somewhere, buried very deep inside this film is a half-way decent movie trying to get out. The only traces are a few early scenes in Los Angeles (in a bar and a graveyard) and thereafter a couple of pieces of production design. Like I say, buried very deep. One of the biggest challenges faced by movies involving the supernatural is how to have characters react believably in unbelievable situations. Annie Mcenroe's reaction to being told that her sister (presumably Dee Wallace from the first movie) is (was?) a werewolf is, if I recall, along the lines of; "Oh! Really?". Not one of the better responses to said challenge. The non sequitirs continue as the story moves to Trannsylvania in search of Stirba the (apparently self-appointed) "Queen of the Werewolves". As Stirba, Sybil Danning is the two best things in the movie. Yes, even better than the werewolf group-sex scene, Reb Brown's acting, and the oddly simian-looking werewolf suits. The end credits have assumed minor legend status and are available in all their glory (at least until the censor finds them) on Youtube. Check them out to see why and remember, the whole film makes about the same amount of sense. If you happen to catch this on US television the credits have been re-edited to replace the endlessly repeated shot of Danning ripping off her top with another endlessly repeated shot of her ripping open a cloak only this time she has some kind of top on underneath. It's a sort of absurdity, cherry-on-top moment which defies satire.

The original is over-rated but this makes it look like Citizen Kane. With the possible exception of "The Howling" or "The Exorcist" this is the most precipitous drop-off in quality of a sequel ever. Good god, it's bad. Unpleasant imagery can be powerful if attached to a purpose and none is evident here. The film appears to have been edited together at random, and the story is incomprehensible. This has been blamed on Andrew Robinson's (well advised) refusal to participate necessitating frantic re-writes. As an excuse this is severely inadequate. Although the best portrayals of the devil tend to be minimalist (see the uncredited Dustin Hoffman in "The Messenger") depicting him (it?) as a giant black parallelogram is taking things a bit far. Pointless, even the effects have dated badly. The 2 rating is in recognition of the professionalism of Clare Higgins (who decides to have a pretty good go at creating a wicked stepmother for the ages) and the passable entertainment of counting how many times characters run up and down corridors yelling; "Kirstie! Ashley!".

How's this for a pitch? We want to update a Chandler classic to the early seventies and give it to Bob Altman to direct. Oh, and Elliot Gould's gonna play Marlowe. Come again? Yet it works. Boy, does it work. It's a great adaptation of the novel overlaying a mesmerizing examination of the semi-mythical world of '70s LA (it's like a feature length video for early Warren Zevon albums). Great scenes abound including Sterling Hayden on the beach at night and one of the more brutally effective moments of shock violence in movie history from (of all people) Mark Rydell. Superbly written (making you forget how Chandler's dialog richly deserved its fate of being parodied to death), and solidly acted this is, to me, the best work of Altman's storied career.