A Japanese salaryman stages a fake Audition to find a potential new girlfriend. He then acts surprised when she sedates and mutilates him. This is the price you pay for not watching the ‘Women Are Crazy And Will Hurt You’ genre of films.

How Did I End Up With It?

I’m a massive, massive, massive, fan of Takashi Miike. Even despite the fact his films are essentially abusive towards the viewer. His film making ethic can make the viewer giddy, nauseous and angry all at once and for that reason I find him to be a disturbingly watchable filmmaker.

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To call Audition a straight Thriller would probably do it a disservice. In many ways, it follows the basic plot archetypes of the fidelity thrillers such as ‘Basic Instinct’. That is to say, that it plays on the fear of early relationships, that gnawing uncertainty as you slowly get to know someone. Nevertheless, in many ways Audition breaks out of that genre easily, namely because it only really becomes a thriller in the third act.

Indeed if anything, the first two acts of audition play like the social love stories that sprang out of Japan in the late 90s. Using frosty relationships as an allergy for an increasingly isolated and introverted society. However while the first and second act are wistful ruminations on life and romance the third act is a kick to the side of the head that few can be prepared for.

Part of the joy of Audition is the ultimate uncertainty of what is fact and what is fiction. It is my personal view that everything that follows Asami and Aoyama’s trip to the beachside resort is just a particularly violent dream. While that may seem ultimately inconclusive, it does make a skewed kind of sense.

His uncertainty about a new relationship manifesting itself in a grim vision of a psychotically jealous lover determined to punish those who have wronged her. Indeed, before the unveiling of the bagman, which could be an allegory for his fears of becoming kept by a woman again, we see his mind morphing Asami into the objects of his desire and his past indiscretions.

Audition is perhaps a perfect showcase for Miike’s talent as a filmmaker. The movie is shot in a wonderful style that apes the pseudo documentary style of contemporary Japanese social dramas and puts it together with his own eye for aesthetics. An example of this would be the clash between the desolate and sparse interview sections and the sumptuously coloured date scene shots. After the beach house the film becomes a generally surrealistic flair, the shots are tilted and coloured unnatural hues, before it finally leads into the shocking realism of Asami’s gruesome torture.

And it is gruesome indeed. While you may argue that this film is really, a statement about isolationism in Japanese society there is no escaping the fact that the last half of the film is a demonstration in pure voyeuristic delight. The scenes of torture are both uncompromisingly hideous, Aoyama desperately trying to move his prone hand is almost heartbreaking, and darkly hilarious, the cold mannered way that Asami dispenses of a severed foot and her chilling fun suggest an uncomfortable humour in these scenes.

When the film was first shown to international audiences there were record numbers of walk outs. It’s easy to see why the violence as well as being shockingly realistic, at the end anyways, is also preceded by what could pass as a romantic comedy. The acts of torture are a visceral sucker punch that surprisingly never feels exploitative, and aside from the odd moment of gallows humour our sympathies are almost always with the victim. Audition is not a pleasurably violent film, it’s not kinetic or ultra stylised. In fact at it’s most shocking parts it is as solemnly and meticulously recorded as a documentary. That is the films ultimate strength.

The DVD

This Collector’s Edition DVD from Tartan Asia Extreme is fairly interesting in that the only reason that it’s a Collector’s Edition is that it actually boasts a viewable picture and is uncut. There is also a Miike on Miike interview which is interesting, but as usual Miike is fairly guarded about the process, his self depreciation making the interview a little strained at times.

Joe Cornish, previously seen getting his head vacated by a church steeple in Hot Fuzz, offers a written commentary on the inside cover of the disc which is informative if a little brief.

The Score

10 Severed Limbs Out of 10

Captain Willard travels upriver to Cambodia whilst the Vietnam war rages around him, only he’s too busy narrating to notice.

How Did I End Up With It?

Apocalypse Now is a film which deserves to be watched by everyone, it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought.

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As part of my ongoing campaign to go through my DVD collection I finally hit Apocalypse Now and was utterly surprised when it turned out to be the reedited Redux version from a few years back.

I’m not terribly familiar with Apocalypse Now; I’d seen the film about three times before. Twice when I was too young to appreciate it (I was aged 9 and 13 respectively) and the third time in a bizarre edited form, with advert breaks every 15 minutes and the overall runtime cut down to a suspicious 1 hour and 50 minutes.
As such seeing the new film was somewhat overwhelming, not only do I have to contend with warped childhood memories of the original cut, but I had to deal with dozens of new scenes and moments added to the runtime.

I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a film quite as much as this all year, it’s amazing how the film can absolutely capture your attention. In fact I think the extra material makes the film run a little faster and fleshes out some of the supporting cast a little more.

The two key sequences which I can certainly say are new is a second meeting with the US0 Playboy Girls and an extended scene at a French Plantation (which I found to be a fascinating foreshadow to the confrontation with Kurtz). There do seem to be a lot of character beats added as well, one that comes to mind is Colonel Khilgore giving a Vietnamese boy his water canteen before he gets distracted by Lance’s arrival.

I’m just amazed at how incredible and vibrant the film is, like Aguirre before it the film seems to pulse with a vivid madness and determination. It’s not so much a piece of filmmaking as an endurance challenge against the elements. The difficulties of the shoot are etched across the actor’s faces and it makes their slide into insanity far more believable than it should be (my one complaint is that Lance seems to freak out halfway through for no discernable reason).

What’s fascinating is how distorted the film is now due to its iconography. Because I’ve grown up with people histrionically quoting Khilgore and Kurtz it’s funny to see these manic quotes actually being delivered as casual asides in the film.

I still maintain it’s one of the greatest films ever made, although Brando as Kurtz puts me off for some indiscernible reason. Although the Redux cut does make the film obstensibly about the Vietnam War rather than an allegory for warfare in general, it just grounds the movie into a time and place and in doing so removes some of the mythical aspects the film used to have.

This is quite evident in how Kurtz is handled, in the original cut we barely see him. He’s lurking in the shadows, to try and mask Brando’s rapid weight gain, and the effect is to make him less of a man and more of an ideal. A futureshock of what Willard will become. The Redux adds a lot more Kurtz to the mix and even shows us him in the daylight, the camera placed to make the 5 foot 9 Brando look like he’s 6 and half foot tall to try and mask his girth.

Suddenly Kurtz is no longer ethereal, he’s a tangible enemy, a fat man gone mad down the river who speaks charismatically to the disaffected. His power is greatly reduced by this, but it also sets up the parallels between himself and Willard perfectly. The shot of Willard emerging from Kurtz’s temple with a bloody dagger in his hand becomes a sign of transference, whereas before it was mythical now it’s just showing that Willard has become almost as animalistic and wrong as Kurtz before him.

The DVD

Bare Bones, but with a decent audio/video presentation of the film. If you’ve got a Region Free DVD player you should probably go and import the Final Dossier version instead which is pretty much the definitive version of the film

The Score

10 Chopped Off Kid’s Arms Out Of 10

Angel Heart is essentially a remake of the Big Sleep, but with more Satan and less Satin.

How Did I End Up With It?

Angel Heart was one of the first truly adult films I ever saw. Whereas I’d seen gory boys own adventures like Aliens and Predator at a younger age Angel Heart seemed to be the first film that was designed for adults. Naturally it left an impression.

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Angel Heart is a film which is often disingenuously said to have a twist ending. Whilst there is a revelation at the end of the film, it is far more of a twist for the character than the audience. Alan Parker’s film lays out the groundwork and clues for its final revelation that the end is little more than confirmation of what we knew. In fact if you haven’t reach the final conclusion about a half hour before the protagonist then you’re perhaps a little cinematically inept.

What Parker creates is an atmospheric, creepy, and disturbing journey to damnation. Everything is set into stone as soon as we meet Harry Angel’s employer, a gentleman by the name of Louise Cyphre. Played with an odd sense of bored disdain by Robert DeNiro Louise Cyphre is certainly one of the less subtle cinematic incarnations of the devil. His pun of a name, antiquated dress style and stilted speech all paint the picture of a very, very, dangerous and powerful man. Once Harry Angel, played with affable charm by Mickey Rourke just before he had his meltdown, accepts the job from Cyphre his fate is sealed.

As such anyone with any cinematic knowledge begins to view the case as something else entirely. Know longer is it your standard noir thriller, it’s entrapment on a grand scale. An orchestrated gameplan designed to ensnare Angel whilst still using the tropes of the Noir film as an effective canvas.

Despite the affectations of being a detective movie, the film is it at its heart a gothic horror, more content to work on mood than a plausible story. Indeed towards the end of the film the main bulk of the detective work is abandoned completely to allow Angel to be bounced from set piece to set piece. Why bother trying to tell a good detective story when you can have blood soaked sex scenes, bloody murder scenes and hallucinatory visions involving yet more gore.

Whilst Angel floating from discovery to discovery probably fits in with the tone of the film (which really does overwhelm the film at the end with abrupt screams on the soundtrack and glowing demonic eyes proving to be almost comedic) it does make the main plot seem a little confused. In fact after carefully setting up Angel as a studious investigator it seems odd that the film boils down to him being chased around New Orleans by some rent-a-goons and their pitbull for the last act.

Keeping the entire film together (rather ironically) is Mickey Rourke who once again proves that he had the raw talent to be one of the best actors of the eighties and nineties. His breakdown, meltdown, burning need to get the shit beaten out of him in a boxing ring put an end to those aspirations but Angel Heart shows Rourke on fine form, even if he personally found the shoot something of a struggle.

His turn as Harry Angel is both charming and undeniably damaged, so whilst he’s an easy character to like you also feel the inherent malevolence under the surface. There’s something cold and hard beneath his good natured exterior and his performance once again provides a key piece in the labyrinthine puzzle that makes up the films plot.

With a soulful, if overwrought, score by Trevor Jones and a key focus on its design aesthetic Angel Heart is a film that is painfully aware of its own intelligence. It’s visual cues and repeated imagery are used so often that it’s almost like the film is underestimating its audience. But still as a fusion of Noir and Horror the film is quite fantastic.

The DVD

Released as part of the director’s choice series of DVDs the Disc features some photo galleries, a great documentary and a decent transfer. It’s also the unrated cut of the film which means we get those all important extra ten seconds of hot Bonet/Rourke/Blood action.

The Score

8 Ridiculously Obvious Contrivances out of 10

An American Werewolf in London is pretty much the perfect werewolf movie.

How Did I End Up With It?

It’s pretty much the perfect werewolf movie. How could I not end up with a copy of it?

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There was a time when John Landis could do no wrong. From 1977 to 1983 Landis made five utterly fantastic films and created one of the most iconic music videos ever. Starting with Kentucky Fried Movie and finishing with Thriller, his winning streak produced three of cinemas greatest comedies and one truly special horror film.

It’s easy to speculate on where his career would have gone if he continued in a similar vein, but it’s also easy to see how being responsible for the death of an actor and two small children could dent your creativity a little. It speaks to the strength of An American Werewolf in London then that it stands on its own as a great film, despite any retroactive criticism against Landis himself.

As it stands an American Werewolf In London holds a much vaunted place in my ‘favourite films of all time’ list and ranks as perhaps my favourite horror film ever (with Shaun of the Dead and Jacob’s Ladder tussling for the number 2 spot if you have to ask). What makes An American Werewolf work so well is that it straddles the genres of comedy and horror almost effortlessly. Whereas films like Braindead (Dead Alive for the non-Brits out there) and Evil Dead draw their laughs from sheer ridiculous spectacle, An American Werewolf works as an odd fusion of a talky comedy and full on visceral horror. The horror is not played for the laughs and the humour is a heady mixture of delightful absurdism and wonderful little witticism.

When it wants to be An American Werewolf in London is stunningly brutal, it’s violence has a primal quality which is utterly horrifying and makes the Werewolves in the film far more animalistic than they had ever been. In fact there’s far less emphasis on the Were than the Wolf in this film, with the werewolves being exceptionally large wolves rather than some weird bipedal mangling of man and wolf.

The first attack, in particular, is horrifying largely because the tone of the film doesn’t suggest that your about to see a graphic and realistic looking mauling so early into the run time. In fact Landis uses a Spielbergian conceit in this initial execution as he sets up the shock of the attack by counterbalancing against it a joke. It’s a technique used to staggering effect in Jaws and it works just as well in An American Werewolf, in actuality the pacing and frequency of the films contrast between Joke and Violence actually works a lot better than Jaws at times.

Even as a native Englander it’s easy to empathise with David’s position as an outsider in a foreign locale. David is isolated throughout the entire film, a lone American in the heart of Britain. And it’s this removal of safety which turns out to be one of the films great strengths.

Despite his relationship with Nurse Alex and the help of Mr. Collins (one of the few problems I have with the film is that hearing Frank Oz in full on Fonzie the Bear mode threatens to take me out of the movie everytime I watch) David is very much alone throughout the film, his only companion the ghost of his recently deceased best friend. Terrorised by increasingly vivid and increasingly surreal dreams David finds himself having a wealth of conversations with his friend Jack’s ghosts.

As to be expected Jack is hardly the cheeriest of sorts, it’s kinda hard to perky after having your throat torn out by a huge wolf, and spends most of his time trying to convince David to kill himself before he turns into a wolf himself.

Despite a multitude of wry little lines and a generally genial tone the scenes involving Jack are probably the most disturbing in the film. This is especially impressive when you consider that the film has an earlier scene involving a squad of Werewolf Nazis which is legitimately horrifying. There’s something insidious and creepy about Jack’s predicament, especially when you consider how lively his character previously was. His intentions whilst partially selfish are also there to help Jack and you can really start to hear his desperation as the film goes on.

You can tell that the film was intended as more of a comedy than a horror film and it almost seems like a happy accident that it became so visceral and horrifying. The gore in An American Werewolf certainly packs a punch and the transformation scene, by the legendary Rick Baker, is an incredible piece of work which is still utterly hideous despite its overexposure on countless documentaries.

In fact the only bone of contention I really have with the film is the look of the werewolf itself, whilst the design itself is great and harkens back to the animalism I was talking about, the actual production of the creature leaves a lot to desire. In fact in some of the final shots the werewolf looks like it has been created by someone dying some sheepskin rugs and stapling them to a clothes horse.

But shoddy werewolf aside the film is still a monumental piece of work, which horrifies and enthrals at the same time.

The DVD

A fairly packed set of discs, although not much is said and Landis is unusually quiet on the commentary and documentaries. It’s one of those situations where the information behind the film has been recited so many times that it seems almost foolish for the features to go over them again.

The Score

10 Bad Moon Risings Out Of 10

A girl proceeds to have a breakdown whilst working in a café in a slummy district of Paris. Luckily Jeunet-vision frames the mental cataclysm as an oh so cheery piece of surrealist fluff.

How Did I End Up With It?

It seemed like a really good idea at the time, and Jeanne-Pierre Jeunet’s previous track record seemed justification enough

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Like Aguirre, Amelie has a streak of darkness at its core. However whilst Aguirre studies and uses that darkness to create a visceral and thrilling cinematic experience, Amelie uses as many cinematic devices as possible to mask its own innate darkness. The result is a masterfully frustrating film, which hints at a greater subtext but seems intent to just run out its run time in neutral.

The entire film is built around the titular character, a young girl who in a display of flagrant Frenchiness manages to convince her father she has a weak heart because it races whenever he touches her. Educated at home and deprived of contact with her peers Amelie is what they in the medical profession call ‘all fucked up’.

It’s this inability to interact with people which pretty much sets up the entire film, a series of dreamy vignette filtered through the ever increasing haze of Amelie’s madness.

Amelie’s world is one of magic and wonder, of obscure references, quirky hobbies and surrealistic fantasy. Her demeanour is childlike, her actions cowardly and her view blinkered. She fails to connect with anyone and finds herself shutting herself in more and more. Which isn’t a surprise really as Jeunet’s vision of Paris comprises of roughly two dozen people, the greatest and most vibrant city in the world ethnically cleansed and reduced to an insular little hamlet.

There’s only so far that surrealist charm can get you, but Jeunet tries to stretch the quaintness of his central character to fill out two hours. The ideas and themes are grand and at times romantic but it feels too clinical and cynical to have any real magic. Everything feels preplanned, overly staged and directed to be charmingly kooky and unthreatening.

Amelie is an exceptionally child like character, in fact her symptoms seem to gravitate towards the predominantly male autistic spectrum than anything else, but nothing is done with this innocence. Nothing changes her, life is still a joke and her actions have no consequences.

As I said earlier there is a hint of darkness in the film, at one key point early on. On a quest to find the owner of a time capsule she exhausts all of her potential leads and we get treated to a shot of her dejected and sat on a train. But this is a real train, cold, noisy and packed with people. It even has didactic sound. This style is never touched upon again in the film, but the reading I get from it is a hint towards the fact that the reality of the film is an illusion created by the damaged central character. That one moment on the train is the truth of the film and everything else is the charming fantasy world that Amelie has created to try and survive.

As extraordinarily beautiful as the film is, it just lacks a narrative drive and purpose and more than anything else it feels like Jeunet trying to find his feet after losing his long time collaborator Marc Caro. Seemingly unable to connect any plot points, the film becomes a series of highly stylised vignettes, which after the narrative wonder of City of Lost Children is truly a tragedy. The argument could be made that the film is attempting to be a modern day fairytale, but it lacks the tone and strength of story to make that distinction. For a modern day fairytale to work there has to be something to justify the stylistic choice and Amelie has nothing but it’s style.

The DVD

A well stacked 2 disc edition of the film barely sheds any light on the movie. Jeunet is his usual charming self on the commentary, more taken with the greatness of his own work than anything else. The rest of the bonus material rests upon how much you like Audrey Tatou. If you think she’s an adorable little cherub her ‘funny faces’ montage and stilted Q and A could raise a few smiles, otherwise it feels like having cute little nails hammered underneath your cuticles.

The Score

3 Mentally Damaged Young Women Out Of 10

A madman leads an army on a foolish quest down the Amazon river, as the journey goes on he finds himself slipping further and further into darkness as his army mutinies around him….he also finds the time to make Aguirre, The Wrath of God

How Did I End Up With It?

As an attempt to re-educate myself on the masters of Cinema I endeavoured to procure as much work by them as possible. The Werner Herzog boxsets were an obvious starting point, and Aguirre fortuitously presented a great opening into the work of one of the greatest living directors of our time.

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There’s a darkness at the heart of Aguirre which is truly palpable and utterly mesmerising, and it’s not the hulking personification of madness that is chief protagonist Don Lupe de Aguirre. The off-screen tension between Director Werner Herzog and his star Klaus Kinski seeps from the screen at every point. Kinski’s delirious and angry performance aimed directly at Herzog (and by extension the audience).

This rage is channelled straight into the creation of a truly fascinatingly repulsive character. Don Lupe de Aguirre in any other actor’s hands would be a typical maniacal despot, his greed ultimately leading to his end like some Aesop Fable. But Kinski imbues Aguirre with a manic energy and a sense of detached madness. Aguirre isn’t a character who goes mad in his pursuit of wealth and glory, he’s already mad from the first frame, the quest for El Dorado simply gives his madness a conduit to reveal itself.

Kinski’s lurching, wild eyed, and exaggerated performance is the counterpoint to Herzog’s filming style. At first anyways. As the film progresses the shooting style morphs to represent the mindset of the characters. Starting off as a vaguely textual film, using several documentary tropes to give an extreme sense of reality the film gradually becomes more and more surrealistic. The camera becomes more apparent; its naturalistic movement replaced by grand sweeps and quick editing until the film is a true work of fictional cinema and has completely cast off its pseudo documentary opening.

By the closing moments of the film all remnants of reality are gone as the crew joke merrily (“These Long Arrows seem to have come back in style”) as they are picked off by an unseen enemy and Aguirre is left alone to fester in his madness, delivering soliloquies to an audience of monkeys and plotting an empire that will never be.

Aguirre, The Wrath of God is a film about madness and power and how the promise of glory can lead men to their own dooms. Aguirre himself is a rebel, declaring sovereignty from the Spanish Empire and setting up a malleable lackey as a mouthpiece to rally his men. His Machiavellian scheming is constantly set against his increasing bloodlust and selfishness.

The one thing he cares about, beside himself, is his daughter, and even that is a corrupted kind of caring as his fatherly affection becomes far deeper and unpleasant as the film progresses. Everyone and everything else is expendable leading to a series of increasingly theatrical murders carried out on his orders. The tragedy of Aguirre is the inevitability of the characters fate.

Just as Jack Torrance in the Shining radiates a malicious threat from his very first scene, Aguirre is a character who seems broken and dangerous from his first minutes on screen. His rise to power is bound to end in failure. In parts Macbeth, in parts Richard III, Aguirre, Wrath of the Gods is pretty much Shakespearean in how it views the ascent to power.

The DVD

The DVD included on the Boxset is presented in Full Frame. It proudly boasts this on the DVD case so I’m unsure if this is the correct aspect ratio or not. It certainly seems to suit the material in giving it an increased claustrophobicness and you never get the signifiers of pan and scan cropping like off screen characters.

Herzog offers a very funny and informative Commentary, most of the stuff he says is pretty much film legend now but there’s still some pleasure to be had from his obvious delight when Kinski chucks away a monkey after delivering a speech to it.

The Score

9 Murderous and Lecherous Conquistadors out of 10

A beautiful tale of a boy’s tentative steps through his formative years: framed against child prostitution, gang rape, murder, suicide and deadly flying fish.

How Did I End Up With It?

All About Lily Chou-Chou is something of a sacred relic within the ranks of Asian moviegoers. Popular and beautiful enough to be required viewing, without the global recognition to stop it being niche. Because that is important to Asian film fans, mass appeal is the proverbial kiss of death to their adoration.

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For anyone who had to deal with bullying, or knew a victim of bullying, Lily Chou-Chou will probably be an ordeal. It’s lucid, vivid and repellently uncompromising look at social isolation and bullying would probably cut a little too close to the bone. Not that Lily Chou-Chou is the first film to deal with such issues (it’s a fairly generic cinematic trope), but it’s rare that the issue is dealt with in such a lyrical and visceral way.

The film is utterly stunning to look at, if a little needlessly confusing at times. Its DV shot film footage grants the movie an almost ethereal grace which is heightened by the dreamy nature of the narrative. Interspersed with logs from an online message board the film plays around with Time and Chronology to a degree that it’s almost impossible to get your bearings the first time you watch.

Roughly speaking the film’s first twenty minutes make the middle section, chronologically speaking, with the second act being a flashback of sorts and the third act being the conclusion. As such it’s easy to get characters and situations confused, as personalities wildly change at about the twenty minute point. But this non-linear narrative also serves to cast a shadow over the carefree moments of the second act.

In a lot of other films the boys bonding and eventual trip to a sunny locale (in this case Okinawa) would be handled with a light and breezy touch, the slight of hand to prepare you for the sucker punch of the next two acts. What Lily Chou-Chou does is cast a shadow over these moments of exuberance; we know that Hoshino is going to turn out bad. But it’s only by seeing his mild and humble beginnings that we start to understand and even dread his inevitable turn to darkness.

When we meet Hoshino he’s delivering a speech about his class’s hopes and dreams upon entering high school. He’s a precocious boy seeking to prove himself, who finds his natural intelligence and ability being used as a weapon against him. Even in his first scenes you can detect the vague hints of what’s to come his angry looks at his best friend’s (Yuichi) admiration of his mother, his concern and anxiety over what others think of him and his impulsiveness lay the ground perfectly for his metamorphosis. What manifests the rage is the gang’s trip to Okinawa.

Having stolen the money from the rival gang, the boys seek to use Okinawa as a chill-out session from the consistent pressure of school. Whilst the other boys are happy to indulge their lusty fascination with their tour guides and play with their video cameras, Hoshino withdraws from the group. Following a few near fatal accidents and the death of a friendly traveller Hoshino returns to school without any of his previous control or composure, his abuse and ritualistic humiliation of the resident school bully is both horrific and oddly detached.

His near Shakespearean fall into isolation and near madness is juxtaposed against the stories of those whom he abuses and allows to be abused. Indeed, the last hour of the film is so shocking because of the fact that Hoshino is so calculating. His actions are carried out with a cool, detached, malice and his crimes become more and more unspeakable. A film which started off as an average treatise on school life suddenly descending into a brutal, nihilistic, vision of a schoolboy kingpin who blackmails his schoolmates into prostitution, organises a brutal gang rape and ritually humiliates one of his closest friends.

His snapping of Yuichi’s copy of the new Lily Chou-Chou CD is perhaps far more significant than any other action in the film. It’s a severance of ties between him and his old friend and also a pollution of the ‘ether’ a spiritual energy which Yuichi and Hoshino talk about on their website. The major indication of the extent of this action is the fact that the near continuous soundtrack is ominously missing for a few minutes after this action. In fact it doesn’t return until the film goes back into itself for the flashback. Music plays such a large and vital part of the film that its sudden absence feels almost like an assault and its conspicuous absence suggests the destruction of purity far better than anything else in the film.

At its core Lily Chou-Chou plays broadly with the corruption of innocence idea. The corruption of the Ether (a term used several times in the film) a pretty apt metaphor for the corruption of innocence taking place within the children’s lives.

The film offers no real answers to the problems of bullying and to expect it to would be rather moronic. What it does is paint a real picture of what it is like to be a victim of a bully and how innocuous and random their dislike can be. The overall message is rather distressing, the film seems to revel in unilateral action as the only way to fight against bullying. As such suicide, self sacrifice, and murder are the only solutions the victims are left with.

The DVD

Bare bones aside from a theatrical trailer, the picture and sound quality are exemplary though. Although to be honest given the multimedia aspects of the film, which are referenced on the back of the cover, it’s a little disappointing to find no extras whatsoever.

The Score

9 Lemming Like Travellers Out of 10

Someone, somewhere thought it would be a good idea to revive the alien series.

Someone, somewhere also thought that the one thing the alien films had been missing were good jokes.

How Did I End Up With It?

Lamentably it is part of the Incredible Alien Quadrilogy.

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If I was in a better mood I’d probably try and find something good to say about Alien Resurrection, I’d paw for the ash and find that one ember of goodness which I could extrapolate some postivity from. But to be honest, trying to think of things this film does right is much too much like hard work.

Conceptually the project is a dead weight right from the start; the alien trilogy had ended almost perfectly with that one moment of self sacrifice at the end of Alien 3. If the concept had been to focus on just the aliens with an entirely new cast of human fodder the damage would have been limited somewhat. Having Ripley be the star of the film however did massive damage to the integrity of the entire franchise.

Her Resurrection retroactively invalidated the entirety of Alien 3, which was a film all about setting up the final death of both Ripley and the Alien. As someone who really, really, likes Alien 3 it’s quite irritating to have the entire purpose of the film be swept under the carpet in such a manner (although I’m sure many feel the same way about Alien 3′s treatment of Hicks and Newt).

No matter how awful a concept a film can be saved by a great script and enthusiastic direction. Alien Resurrection has one of the above, but fans will bicker for eternity over which one. For my money Joss Whedon’s script is horrendous, and as someone who actually sought out the script online for clemency I can say that not enough was changed to validate Whedon’s claim that it was taken out of his hands.

The character beats, plot, and dialogue are all his own and they are all rudimentarily awful. I actually quite like Whedon as a writer, I think his work on Buffy and Firefly was cute and at times interesting, but as a big screen writer he’s never been able to cut it. His jokes and characters all feel like they need more time to breathe and develop than the two hours he has to work with and at times Alien Resurrection feels like an aborted pilot for one of his own TV shows.

Jeunet, despite his overwhelming amiability on the DVD, has to take some of the flack too. Despite working from a script which is ridiculously awful (a pithy joke after your emotional laboratory of horror scene, what the fuck?) Jeunet should of, as the director, taken some steps towards making the film convalesce as a whole. What he instead does is create a real episodic feel to the entire movie. When you have two of the greatest visualists in the world (Jeunet being aided by Darius Khondji as a cinematographer) you expect something a little more than what amounts to an awfully pretty sketchshow.

What doesn’t help matters is that Jeunet feels like he is being constantly held on a leash throughout the entire movie. His style is evident in the wealth of visual gags and kinetic action sequences (which he handles exceptionally well), but everything feels stunted. This could be attributed to his recent break-up with his long time associate Mark Caro (he had a minor hand as a design supervisor, but little else). The fact he spoke little English whilst making the film, relying on translators for most of the production, probably didn’t help either.

In retrospect the director of City of Lost Children and the writer of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer/Firefly should have been able to create a definitive science fiction horror film. The problem, more than anything, seems to stem from Hubris on Whedon’s part who was desperate to direct the film. In interviews conducted after the film was finished he even mentioned how much he fought with Jeunet over decisions.

As it stands Alien Resurrection is a film with some truly incredible moments (the initial alien attack, the set piece on the ladders, the clone sequence, the final chestburster) let down by a raft of plot anomalies and simple bad ideas.

The DVD

As always we have a three hour documentary on the film, although it’s largely uninspiring. The most we get from the documentary is that everyone had a good time and that it was a fun film to shoot, as such it amounts to little more than a three hour puff piece.

The Score

3 Unholy Alien Crossbreeds Out Of 10

Alien 3 is a moody, spiritual, treatise on acceptance and self sacrifice…which also happens to feature an eight foot tall killing machine.

How Did I End Up With It?

Once again it was part of the Incredible Alien Quadrilogy.

The Bigger Picture

I’ll let you in on a little secret; I think Alien 3 is almost as good a movie as the original Alien. That’s not to say Alien 3 is actually a good movie, I think many people will violently disagree with me on that one, but I think its aspirations help it come across as a far weightier and interesting work than the gung-ho boys own adventure of Aliens.

It’s certainly a messy film (for one thing its got about ten cast members too many) and its changing of the alien physiology is troubling (although what’s giving a face hugger a little bit more life when compared to Cameron changing a unique and totally alien life form into space ants) but there does seem to be something beneath it all.

It doesn’t help that the film went through numerous scripts before it started, its original concept of Aliens on Earth (as penned by William Gibson) changing to a planetoid made of wood and finally the film we see now (apparently scripted largely whilst the film was shooting). It feels that elements were brought over from each and every script and mashed together as best as possible, it’s the only real way to explain why the film has a main cast of 30 characters but only makes dozen of them vaguely recognisable. The film even goes as far as to cull half the cast in one anonymous setpiece to try and get the characters down to a more manageable number.

Whereas Aliens/Alien were decidedly ensemble affairs Alien 3 is a vehicle of Sigourney Weaver, the plot centres around her in a far more evident fashion and this focus serves the primary characters very well but does make the rest of the cast largely unknown. Thinking about it, even after only just watching the film the only characters who make an impression are the prisoners Morse, Gollic and Dillon, the ex-con Medic Clemens, Ripley herself and the two wardens Andrews and Aaron.

Even in the extended cut the other characters barely get any time to shine, there screen time amounting to little more than exposition/ a throw away joke before they get picked off by the alien. You can almost feel the conflict between Fincher (who has long since disowned the film) and the Studio here. Fincher seems far more interested in telling a more character based story, focusing his lens on the key players in the last moments of Ripley’s life.

The studio however demanded collateral damage to be inflicted by the creature and as such we essentially wind up with two films running parallel for the first hour and twenty minutes. One film focuses on Ripley’s growing sorrow and attempts to cling onto anything that she can find that is good, her quest to find meaning now that her ‘family’ (Hicks and Newt) are both dead, whilst the other film focuses on redshirts getting picked off in a haphazard manner.

I think the quickie deaths of Hicks and Newt is one the reasons fans reacted so badly to the film. It’s only a decision I came to understand as I viewed the movie as a piece of film and not as a direct sequel to Aliens. The entire tone of the film is about sorrow and the acceptance of sacrifice/redemption. Ripley needed to be cut off from all that she cared for.

Thus Newt and Hicks have to be killed, she has to lose her only ‘friend’ on the planet and eventually she has to lose her life (her discovery of the queen in the later part of the film is pretty much a death sentence). As such there’s an oppressively heavy atmosphere in the film, it’s almost apocalyptic at times (matched by the harsh landscape of the planet and the Bosch like design of the refinery) and maintains a raw intensity which is quite uncomfortable at times.

It’s a hard film to love, at times it feels like its purposefully unpleasant, but it is such a vibrant, interesting and provocative piece of work that it demands to be reappraised as one of the pinnacles of the series.

The DVD

Despite the regrettable absence of Fincher the Documentary is fairly interesting, it certainly feels a lot more warts and all than the viewer is used to and it really gives an impression of how much pressure the young director was under. Coming into the project with a half finished script and a release date already set seems to have almost destroyed him before he even began.

The Special Edition of Alien 3 is worth buying the asking price of the boxset alone. Even I’ll admit that the original cut of the film is awful, but the Extended Cut really gives flow and pacing to the films. Characters are given time to breath, scenes feel natural and subplots are brought back to the fold (in particular Golic stops being a one note red herring and actually gets his own plot)

The Score

8 Adorable Rapists out of 10

 October 2006

What do you call a mercenary violinist? Does the concept even exist? I mean guitarists, bassists and drummers have the innate coolness to justify the term ‘hired gun’ when they start lending their skills to dozens of bands. But violinists seem a little too genteel to be able to just drift from band to band offering cool phonic support like some new age cowboy.

Which makes Owen Pallet something of an oddity.

At my count he’s been a part of at least a dozen bands (The Hidden Cameras, Arcade Fire, Les Mouches, Dan Goldman, Jim Gruthie and The Vinyl Café) as either a fully fledged member, or a touring violinist on the sidelines. And whilst his live work with the Arcade Fire gave him something of a public profile (it’s hard to miss him when he’s a clear six inches taller than the rest of the band and screaming like a mad man) he is still something of a side performer to greater acts.

Which makes his solo work all that more precious.

Playing at the Cockpit in Leeds (which is essentially the McDonalds of grimy pub venues) Pallett worked from the two albums he produced under the name Final Fantasy. The first album was recorded around the time he was working with the Arcade Fire, although the only real connection is the title of the 2nd song ‘This is the Dream of Win and Regine’, and was a light but poppy affair. His caustic wit giving what could be fairly mundane music a razor edge.

His 2nd work, and the album which he was currently touring, was a far grander affair. Whereas his first album ‘Has A Good Home’ felt like a product of 60s psychedelic pop (CN Tower Belongs to the Dead could be a sister song to Eleanor Rigby tonally) his 2nd album ‘He Poos Clouds’ was much more unique, keeping Owen’s wit as a writer, stripping back the pop conformity and instead adding a luscious background of string quartet devised madness. Whilst calling the album operatic would be something of an overstatement (it never feels grand enough for that title) it was certainly an album which felt more ClassicFM than Radio 1, it’s musically vistas of tribal drumming, crescendoing strings, 30s style piano tinkling, giving the songs a near timeless quality even if the subject matter was decidedly modern (the 2nd song of the album is essentially a love sonnet to the Legend of Zelda’s main protagonist)>

As such it was with great trepidation that I went to the gig, on one hand I was excited about the prospect of seeing Pallett play live, on the other hand I knew that he played by himself using a loop box to create the multilayered effects of his song in a live situation.

Ably supported by Benjamin Wetherill (a local acoustic guitarist) the gig would allay any fear I had of Owen’s ability to play live. What was quite nice was that Pallett seemed to be generally surprised at how well people reacted to his music and seemed particularly shocked at how well know he was. Whilst Ben Wetherill did his set Pallett actually came to the bar to watch, presumably unaware that he would be recognised, only to be mobbed by his adoring fans.

This theme of general naivety about his popularity in the UK continued right into his set where he seemed generally taken aback by how well people were reacting to his music. Each song was greeted with near riotous applause which at first seemed to take Owen by surprise but eventually helped him push forward with an incredible set. Generally he avoided songs off of his new album, which gave credence to my assumption that it was a largely unplayable album in a live situation, but instead mixed together a few songs off of ‘He Poos Clouds’ and the majority of ‘Has A Good Home’.

Despite the poor quality of the Cockpit’s sound system and consistent interruptions from overhead trains the set was incredible. Playing with gusto and precision Pallett was able to create the kind of musical soundscapes you only really attribute to half dozen strong folk rock groups, what was even more impressive was that despite heavy use of a loop box he managed to maintain a naturalistic sound throughout. Injecting his set with covers of songs by Bloc Party and Destroyer Pallett became more and more ambitious in his set until he was actively asking for requests*.

Finally ending with Please Please Please (which he admitted was a difficult song he didn’t play too often, reasserting the point of his dislike of the song when he played it in the wrong key to start with).

What Pallett showcased on stage more than anything else was a true showmanship. Whilst his songs were impeccably performed what really made the evening was his gentle banter with the audience and the way he used a minimalist idea like the OHP presentation to really enrich the experience.

Scores:

The Performer: 9/10
The Support: Ben Wetherill 8/10, anonymous girl from Bradford 6/10
The Venue: 4/10 (why do bands keep going to the Cockpit?)
The Audience: 10/10

*When an audience member asked for Adventure.exe to be played (which was currently being used in an Orange advert campaign), Owen simply replied he didn’t own the song anymore which was fairly interesting. Certainly you could tell that he wasn’t too happy about his work being used in such a way.

Multimedia:

Due to Pallett’s rabid following you can actually see Snippets of the gig on youtube. So you too can marvel at the shitty sound system and gaze at the wonder of the back of someone’s head.

This Is The Dream of Win And Regine – http://youtube.com/watch?v=XC2nKcB-S2s

An Actor’s Revenge – http://youtube.com/watch?v=-TcpWNxygks

Please Please Please – http://youtube.com/watch?v=BvgJP-1G3Jo

This Lamb Sells Condos – http://youtube.com/watch?v=RMd82F4pexM