The Torturer

Lamberto Bava's The Torturer is a picky little film. It is a soft core porn and a ultra-bloody stylistic slasher film. It seems too much like the underrated erotica films entitled FANTOM KILER. A slew of attractive women accidentally pull off their blouses and get sexually mutilated until they are no longer desirable. While flashy, the plot is water thin and leaves a lot of confusion.


It follows a mysterious killer who tortures young, busty actresses in very inventive ways. Doesn't really pave too much room for any kind of feeling in the film at all. We have the suave yet shady theater director who auditions stunning sluts forcing them to do ludicrous acts. He then promises them the world. After that, some villian who's identity is cleverly hidden with darkness much like the Wizard of Oz, proceeds to torture these women in many different forms. All the torture scenes even open with the same guitar power chord which builds up nicely, but seeing as it plays about 30+ times during the film, it gets very repetitive and stale quick.

We then meet the heroine leading lady who finds an earring of her friends on the audition stage. She puts two and two together and realizes she is missing. So she begins a classy search for her friend while beginning a love story with the director. Cue the entering of his madness. He has some sort of psychological problem resulting in him hallucinating a red toy car and a creepy Carrie-esque loop of a child saying something.


While being a mundane film, it does have great effects. Gore that makes you slightly queasy from showing you new forms of methods. Most gore nowadays are all very similar. Dismemberments and such plague our horror film. We don't see anything new and wondrous to "ew" at. In this one, we are given a cheek mutilation and nipples ripped off. Spikes embedded in womens tender flesh and a soldering iron torture scene. Oh, did I forget the vagina ripping/melting? That scene caused me to shudder.


The film has a very inane story with very naive characters with some great effects. What really made me like this film in the least bit is the editing and look. It's glossy, stylish, and very pretty to look at. Too bad so much had to be sacrificed for this look. Don't expect A Blade in the Dark with this classic directors newer film.

You'll be sorely disappointed. Loaded with a shitty twist ending, a horrible last-minute plot device, it's visibly an attempt to make it sleazy with a brief scene explaining the filthy traits of women, and the worse acting/dub seen in an Italian giallo film, The Torturer is nothing special but has enough to prevent it from being recommendable. Italians should teach American directors a thing or two about well placed misogyny.

-mAQ

Cloverfield

Cloverfield is a film in disguise. It is primarily known for the story, which is a creature ripping the living shit out of Manhattan, but it is much more than that. It is a beautiful love story. This is the part where i tell you not to judge it before you see it. Such an event would only create mass hysteria and that is exactly what we are treated to. Friendships will be challenged and normal socialites will be thrown into the middle of a chaotic environment with 0% survival rate.

This film is shown through first person. Rob is a douche bag. We know this. He is a pompous ass living in New York in his flat. He is a recently appointed Vice President of a company and is being sent to Japan. We meet such characters as his best friend Hud, who is a bit slow and brings a lot of humor to the film. Kind of charming actually. Hud is in love with Marlena and to be honest, so am i. Such a sweet pretty girl. I sympathize for her the most.

What starts off as a going away party quickly turns into a nightmarish situation which had me on the edge of my seat. It would be an understatement to say that Cloverfield completely revived the monster genre. First there was King Kong and Godzilla, then their was The Host, and now we are presented with Cloverfield. This film is so far from any normal monster film. We have The Host which was almost similar due to it's original creature design but did bring something new. Family dysfunction. Like this, Cloverfield brings paranoia, love, tragedy, and fear and blends it into a horrific smoothie of a horrifying nature.

Going into the theater today, i didn't know what to expect. Hype definitely is a killer. It cause Snakes on a Plane to bomb and did so also with the American Godzilla. This film delivers all that is promised and more. Chances are that if you do not like the trailers, you wont like the film. You shouldn't even bother. Now being a film about an unstoppable love filmed with an American Eagle cast, we have the second obstacle. The Cloverfield monster. Well, it is truly a sight to behold.

I refuse to give it away. Such fear can only be described in comparison of when we first see the killer shark in JAWS. It is big. It is bad. It has teeth. It has multiple appendages and it bites. Little creatures fall off of its back that resemble the Arachnids in Starship Troopers. Of course, no monster film is complete without it's roar. This one's is ear shattering. Many reviews i have read claimed that it was too noisy or it was just a stupid film. I look at it this way. If you are going to watch a film about a monster destroying a city with military counter-attacks, you'll be sadly mistaken if you think it's going to be a "hush hush" film.

Surrounding the viral marketing, there is two things at hand. One, J.J. Abrams is fucking with us, leading the masses of ignorant people into believing it is Voltron, Cthulu, Dodo, or a Slusho shirt that was a nod to his hit television show "ALIAS". Not many people realize this and they assume too much. Cloverfield is the most over analyzed film since Eraserhead. This film also touches down on political issues, such as all the great monster films of the silver screen and beyond do.


So, we have a blossoming love story surrounded by a sugar coating that is unstoppable and he an incredible appetite for destruction. What can go wrong? Not much. This films final moments are deeply heartbreaking and past that we hear horrifying news and a subliminal scene in the background that might hint where the monster comes from. Whats even more horrifying? The fact that creatures like this could exist in the darkest depths of the sea. Cloverfield is a near perfect film. Think of it as the first Dogme 95 monster film. Lars Von Triers would be proud.

-Maq

Tideland

Anglophile Terry Gilliam claims that his inner child is a little girl. I have no doubt of this as his most recent film Tideland (2005) is his masterpiece. This dark film follows a young girl who has lost her parents due to drug overdoses. Her father even has her help shoot up so that he can go on “vacation.” The little girl is more than happy to oblige. Eventually the little girl becomes stranded at her Grandmother’s abandoned country house.

A mentally retarded young man by the name of Dickens eventually befriends the little girl. For me his character was quite disturbing. As a child I was always scared yet fascinated by mentally retarded children. In fact, they became sort of an obsession for me. Dickens has that same effect on me in Tideland. Terry Gilliam truly was able to capture the innocence of a child in a dark and twisted world. The little girl sees strange thing after strange thing yet is able to maintain her personhood.

The little girl’s best friends are the doll heads that she wears on her fingers. Her interaction between the heads can be quite revealing to the strange mind of a little girl. The actress who played the little girl (Jodelle Ferland) gave an amazing performance. She must have great parents. It will be interesting to see what roles she does in twenty years from now.

Terry Gilliam has always been a director that is more obsessed with visuals and aesthetics than any other aspect of filmmaking. Tideland is no different however it is more successful in its attempts than any of Gilliam’s other films. The surreal visuals of the film work hand and hand with its child perspective. Most of Gilliam’s suffer from his utilization of fisheye lens and odd shots. One can’t get past the image to enjoy the film. Tideland finally does what Gilliam set out to do right.

Tideland is a film that is obviously both love and hated. I plan to revisit it every so often. Whether you like it or not, it’s a new and different experience. Something you have to invest yourself in. I doubt Terry Gilliam will ever make a film to top it. Making films about little girls at age sixty can’t be topped.

-Ty E

A Walk in the Sun

After viewing A Walk in the Sun(directed by Lewis Milestone) I felt as if I hadn’t seen anything new. It just seemed like the shell of a movie directed by Steven Spielberg known as Saving Private Ryan. Samuel Fuller’s analysis of A Walk in the Sun is dead on its remarks. Samuel Fuller was a filmmaker that liked to expose the dark nature and weakness of our society(I.e. Pickup on South Street, Naked Kiss). Like his films, Fuller’s analysis of A Walk in the Sun is brutally honest and has a complete disregard for sentiment. The generic characters in A Walk in the Sun fell into the combat film convention of representing the American melting pot(or partially). The film acknowledged the Italian American as part of the melting pot while presenting shame to real Italians. The two Italian soldiers seen in A Walk in the Sun are recognized as cowardly opportunists who sold their soul to the devil(Germany), but lack the mental capacity to understand this. I don’t think the scene was trying to represent any type of symbolic redemption. It was more of, you got what you asked for.

Fuller’s criticism of “melodramatic bickering” was also dead on. This convention of the combat film is completely pointless and one of its biggest flaws. Steven Spielberg also utilized this convention in Saving Private Ryan. I have always felt these scenes were highly contrived and left little for people to analyze for themselves. “Melodramatic bickering” has as little value to the war film as it would a horror film. Fuller’s letter fully incriminates Lewis Milestone as a propagandist and a man that has no understanding of war. Fuller points out that a colonel’s screen credit for technical authenticity is worthless. He felt that a Colonel’s technical advice on what happens to a platoon was absurd. It is obvious that Milestone had no interest in creating a realistic film, but an already cliché propaganda war combat flick. It amazes me that directors like Spielberg still use this boring 40 years ago conventions today. It symbolizes the sheer lack of innovation in regards to American cinema over the past century. The only difference is that films (like the War film) have advanced in special effects and showmanship.


Fuller’s praising of All Quiet on the Western Front worked excellently in discrediting A Walk in the Sun. This makes me contemplate the motives behind All Quiet on the Western Front. It is that obvious that Milestone was neglectful of human feeling in his later films. All Quiet on the Western Front had to have been made for an ulterior motive than just being an anti-war film. Either way, it is a much better film than A Walk in the Sun. Samuel Fuller is one of the most qualified to analyze the war film. Being a World War II Veteran, writer, and film director gave him the holistic viewpoint. Fuller later provided his take on World War II combat with The Big Red One. Saving a “Kraut” at the end of the film showed Fuller’s human view of the enemy and the universal qualities of all sides during war. A Walk in the Sun didn't even show the German enemies face. I always find filmmakers analyzing films to be the most enlightening. With film critics like Roger Ebert, it always feels like something is missing. Samuel Fuller was a rebel in the film industry when they didn't even exist. Confronting controversial issues with boldness, innovativeness, and honesty, Fuller was his own man.

-Ty E

Zinda

If you are going to incredibly rip-off a film, at least do it right. Zinda is the infamous Oldboy copy. Except filled with shitty English here and there and horrible Indian actors. The turks remakes are classics compared to this pile of scathing shit. Nothing remotely interesting about this film arises. So what happened was, this film called Zinda was released and the similarities were all too familiar. Bollywood or not, i will never forgive the label.


So this plot follows a man who is jailed for 14 years in a steel room with no explanation why. He is then released onto the roof top out of a trunk with clothes and a cellular phone and he has 4 days to find out why. Already sound familiar? So what is the prospect of India run off of? Taxi's. No matter how many New York stereotypes this fits, it is true. So he meets the female who drives him around to perform many hammer attacks.

You really cant write anything about the similarities as it would give away too much of the plot and that is unacceptable if you still haven't seen Oldboy. While the idea of watching a straight copy and paste film of a classic does sound appealing, i urge you to never watch this film.


Many remakes or inspirations dont fail too incredibly hard because they attempt to capture the "soul" of the film. The feeling of woe, despair, or utter happiness that the film provides. Zinda does nothing. It is filmed with a shitty camera, horrible camera shots, even worse fight scenes that look like they fit in a original Star Wars film, and the most horrible acting/action effects i have ever seen. Zinda is not a fun viewing film in the slightest. Not even to laugh at. Side effects include stuffy nose, irratated skin, considerably low self-esteem, and temporary blindness. Proceed with Caution.

-Maq

Exotica

Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s film Exotica has a pretty misleading title. Although a good amount of the film takes place in a strip joint, the film won’t satisfy the desires of someone looking to get off. For the most part, Exotica is a very depressing film that has not a single redeeming character. Mia Kirshner is the least flawed as a formal honor student turned lonely stripper. Elias Koteas (who played Casey Jones in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies) plays a asshole strip club DJ (former lover of Kirshner’s character). Add a gay criminal pet shop owner and a mentally disturbed middle aged widower (his daughter was also murdered among other things) and you get a film that would destroy any sexual ambitions you may have.

Exotica reminded me of a darker and more stylized film Robert Altman (has anyone realized he died?) may have directed. The editing also owes some credit to Nicholas Roeg (Man Who Fell To Earth, Bad Timing). But influences are unimportant as Exotica stands on its own as an original and quality film. Director Atom Egoyan, no doubt, has talent and I need to look further into his film lexicon. I guess David Cronenberg and Guy Maddin aren’t the only good directors to come out of Canada.

My only complaint with Exotica is its pretentiousness. Even the greatest works of cinema history let you know life isn’t 100% serious hellhole (i.e. Grand Illusion, 8 ½, Eraserhead). At no point in Exotica does anything become less than serious. Of course, its good to see very serious directors nowadays. We don’t need another Todd Phillips.

Mia Kirshner has a thing for older and pregnant women. She even gets turned on when touching the women’s stomach. I really hope that Egoyan doesn’t have a pregnant woman fetish. It was a conscious decision on his part to put this womb obssessed scene in the film. Although Kirshner’s dialog is small, her role and performance are crucial. She’s one I also plan to look out for in the future. She was quite the bitch in Party Monster.

Exotica is a dark film for those that enjoy well written, directed, and constructed cinema. It has something new to offer with each further viewing. Just don’t expect soft core pornography. You can find that on HBO.

-Ty E

Mein Papa

Jörg Buttgereit’s Mein Papa (1982) might be his most disturbing film. The short film (around 7 minutes) was shot over a period of 20 years. Buttgereit secretly directs his father who has become quite obese over the years (the film also shows a picture of Papa young and slim at his wedding). He also becomes quite intolerant of noise. 20 years later Papa is found dead in front of his TV with some of his favorite snacks. We also find out about Papa’s declining health over the years due to tumors on his brain.

Mein Papa features a poppy yet haunting score that suite the films unemotional tone. Buttgereit did not have a good relationship with his father and the short was made in spite of him. He wanted a room of people laughing at his father without him knowing. With Mein Papa, Buttgereit has immortalized his contempt for his father. It’s quite interesting taking that into context when watching the short.

Soon after watching Mein Papa for the first time a couple years ago I soon forgot about it. I just wrote it off as an early cheap super 8 short from a budding Buttgereit. Revisiting Mein Papa a couple times in the same day I realized its power and uniqueness. The film also reveals more about Buttgereit than any of his masterpieces feature length films could.

It is about time that Jörg Buttgereit got back to directing. I am finding that my obsession over his short films is fairly desperate. Starz should have given Buttgereit the opportunity to direct an episode of Master of Horror. In my opinion, he’s a far better director than John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, and the other “legendary” horror directors. The majority of the Master of Horror directors are hacks.

-Ty E