San Francisco FIPRESCI Review: Nights with Théodore

Nights with Théodore

Dir. Sebastien Betbeder

Country: France

Running Time: 67mins 

Aus Rating: N/A 

At only 67 minutes long, Sébastien Betbeder's captivating genre mash-up Nights with Théodore (Les nuits avec Theodore) could be seen as skimping on the drama. However, it turns out that that is in fact the perfect length, and perhaps more filmmakers could take a lesson or two when it comes to the old-fashioned way of thinking that length equals importance and worth. It is certainly a way of thinking that has taken hold amongst Hollywood with Oscar-winners and box office hit comedies alike stretching their rather innocuous storylines to absurd lengths, diluting their product in the process. The short running time is only one of the strengths of Betbeder's film, but perhaps one of the most noteworthy in a festival scenario. It certainly doesn't outstay its welcome and that is something to be thankful for.

Read the rest at FIPRESCI
Apologies for getting this review up so late, but it's been sitting on the FIPRESCI website since I returned from sitting on the San Francisco jury. You can read about my experiences on the jury at Quickflix as well as a look at all the films in competition at The Film Experience if didn't get to read them at the time.

The Brain and the Body

I've seen two horror films in the last week or so. As I like to describe them, one is of the brain and the other is of the body. One traces the gradual decline of a single individual as he gets deeper and deeper into a situation he can't escape, while the other revels in more traditional horror tropes like gore and the undead. Both are impeccable crafted endeavours that never once feel like anything on screen was unintentioned. Of course, whether they differ is a gulf so wide that chalk and cheese would baulk.

Simon Killer comes from the production house that brought us the stunning directorial debut of Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011. Director and co-writer Antonio Campos' unnerving, is dramatically too cool for school in many ways, Simon Killer is certainly not the film that I had expected given the rather dark title and creepy (and excellent) poster. Much more than a backpacker Parisian Psycho, it follows a young American tourist in Paris as he digs holes so deep he can't get out. First by pretending to be the recipient of a beating in order to stay at the home of an affectionate prostitute, and then by struggling to keep the darkness within him covered up.

The film's co-writer (I presume there was quite a bit of improvisation in that regard) is star Brady Corbet, one of the most interesting actors working today alone based on the list of directors he's worked with. His filmography isn't extensive, but considering he's worked with Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin), Michael Haneke (Funny Games US), and Lars Von Trier (Melancholia) as well as the aforementioned Sean Durkin on Martha Marcy. He obviously fostered a good working relationship with the team and is now a creative force behind Simon Killer.

Make no mistake, this is purely a horror film in broad psychological terms. There's no blood and not even any thrills despite working within a thriller template. The horror of the piece is in Corbet's performance. He is so good in the role as Simon, mentally unstable and unable to contain it. With him working at such a great level, it's a shame the film didn't pick up to meet him. It's not that the film's first half doesn't work, it's just that characters routinely do things that show such poor judgement. It's hard to be reeled in. Towards the end, however, Campos appears to elevate the material thanks to more abrasive editing and a more hurried pace. Gold stars also for the use of Spectral Display's "It Takes a Muscle to Fall in Love" to such unique and unsettling effect. B-

What the psycho-chills of Simon Killer lacks in the blood and gore department are more than made up for with Xan Cassavetes' Kiss of the Damned. A film that's as super lush and stylish as it is super ridiculous and, at times, over-the-top. One could almost call it a campire tale given its propensity to be flashy and abundantly into its own colourful aesthetic. The film, Cassavetes' debut feature after her 2004 documentary Z Channel:A Magnificent Obsession, frequently looks like Sofia Coppola directing a Florence + The Machine video (and, surely not coincidentally, Coppola's name appears in the end credit thank yous) with some impeccably rich costume and production design. Shame the actors drown in them, which can make for a slower second act.

I think Jason at My New Plaid Pants put it best: "there's a lot of talk in Kiss of the Damned about the magnetic force of Milo [Ventimiglia]'s presence, and you kinda wanna laugh every time it's spoken of." Vampires are, after all, meant to be compelling creatures and lure with lust, but while Milo - as well as the parade of women that surround him all throughout the film - is a very good looking man (that beard is working all sorts of wonders for him) he doesn't exactly command the screen. The women, too, are mostly airy beings that float about through scenes, although if that was Cassavetes' intentions then at least she cast well and got actors that have some truly captivating voices.

Where the film really succeeds is is the sound work. May sound like a strange observation, but it's true. The sound work in Kiss of the Damned is phenomenal and seeing it in the theatre certainly packed a punch that home entertainment would otherwise lack. The abrupt switches in music styles mixed with copious screams, canny dialogue dubbing, and high-pitched sound effects, not to mention the deep bass that appears to be a constant within the sound mix. The work here is a genuine wonder and was one of the reasons that I remained so focused and alert during the somewhat less exciting (if more gruesome) second half. I found Kiss of the Damned to be a much more intoxicating experiment than, say, Amer, which I think some may compare it to thanks to their pastiche patterns. B

Both Simon Killer and Kiss of the Damned are available on demand in America. Simon is also in limited release now, Damned will be in cinemas from May.

Review: Exit

Exit

Dir. Marek Polgar

Country: Australia

Running Time: 90mins

Aus Rating: N/A

A subculture has emerged within the maze of a modern metropolis in Exit. A city – one that certainly looks like Melbourne (it was shot there), but is perhaps deliberately never named – that is comprised of angular architecture, walls of concrete and glass, and somewhat zombie-like office workers that drift about as if in a fog. This subculture of people live off the grid, squatting in abandoned buildings as they seek out the “exit”, a mythical doorway that will lead whichever lucky soul who discovers it away to (so they suspect) a better life away from all of their worldly troubles. Having dropped out of society, deserted their jobs, families, and friends along the way, they attempt to navigate the so-called maze, trying not to get lost with one mere wrong turn. Oh sure, their bodies exist within the world, but they go by more or less unnoticed as they slink down graffiti-sprayed alleyways, through vacant office skyscrapers, and even through busy streets as they attempt to solve the vague clues (clues that may have conjured up out of thin air) without going the wrong way.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine

Any Which Way With Laurence

Xavier Dolan is a very young filmmaker. I don't just mean in terms of his age - although at only 23 his ambition is now embarrassing the rest of us - but in terms of his style, too. Emblematic of a lot of young directors, his brief three-deep filmography has veered wildly about through a list of inspirations as he navigates the terrain for a style that feels explicitly his own. His debut, the ferocious I Killed My Mother, was, I felt, very indebted to the American independent movement and directors of the New Queer Cinema movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s like Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes. His follow-up, Heartbeats (or Les Amours Imaginaires because the English title is lame), was like a fractured blending of Wong Kar-wai and the French New Wave. I adored them both, loved them even. For such a young filmmaker to hold such command is admirable to say the least. He wore his inspirations on his sleeve, sure, but the boldness of his storytelling and the captivating way he brandishes his style made for exciting cinema. He embraced overt style in a large-scale more than any director since Baz Luhrmann or Tarsem Singh - at least that I could think of, and as somebody with a penchant for that very type of cinema, it thrilled me to no end.

With Laurence Anyways, Dolan has made perhaps his strongest statement yet for what the rest of his career may hold. A near three-hour boutique epic if you will that charts the relationship between two individuals once the man (Melvil Poupaud in a role that demands a liquid transformative quality) decides to live the rest of his life as a woman, Laurence Anyways was clearly a demanding undertaking for the Canadian director. For the first time Dolan has removed himself from the on-screen equation (except for a brief Hitchcock style cameo during the dazzing "Fade to Grey" musical number) and stuck to a mere three hyphenated role as writer-director-costume co-designer. Still, his inspirations remain front and centre and, perhaps, that's just the way he wants it and perhaps that's his actual signature trait ala Quentin Tarantino. Of course, Dolan's work is more homage than pastiche, as he recreates and recrafts his favourite elements of cinema into something altogether unfamiliar. As he experiences more of the world - and his films imply he's already experienced quite a bit that's worth examining through a lens - I suspect his films will only grow more assured, which is an alarming concept given the impeccable streak he's already on.

With this film, Xavier Dolan has seemingly found a way to blend the exuberant flamboyance of Pedro Almodovar with that of the winsome melancholy of Sofia Coppola. Regarding the former, he all but goes out of his way to reference both What Have I Done to Deserve This? and All About My Mother, whilst allowing many moments of the film to revel in the hyper-textural landscape that the Spaniard is known for. Coppola, on the other hand, is much like Dolan in that she's used her own inspirations to help create her own style that feels both something borrowed and something new at the same time. Laurence's affinity to baroque synth-pop of the 1980s and classical instrumentals can't help but recall Coppola's Marie Antoinette, but the influence is also there in the way Dolan is able to turn a quiet moment of seeming insignificance into a painting of a thousand words. As the final scenes show the transformed Laurence finally recognising her true self and potential, the same may certainly be said for Dolan himself. Laurence Anyways is a messy film at times, but its those loose threads that give it an identity all its own, and with this film the intrepid Canuck may have just found his unique, true path to set out on.

Full of ornate, delicate beauty, Laurence Anyways is such a strong piece of filmmaking that I can't imagine its images and soundscapes escaping my memory any time soon. The billowing purple coat as Laurence's ferry takes him away through the ice, the darkened laser-lit nightclub sequence, the assortment of over-sized jackets worn by Suzanne Clément, the look of gee whiz surprise on her face as she teaches Laurence to apply make-up, the pink brink amongst a wall of white, a broad-shouldered person, whose face we don't see, disappearing into a cloud of white smoke... just remembering them now (and many others) is making me ache. This film is so incredibly beautiful that I could barely stand any more than the 160 minutes we got. Filmed in 1:33 Academy ratio, the film is nevertheless sumptuously crafted with stunning costumes and cinematography that lend the oft-maligned time period a rich decadence. The stand-out scene, a hypnotic ballroom dance sequence set to the classic beats of Visage's "Fade to Grey", is a cavalcade of hypnotic visuals as Clément struts about as if Dolan has decided to recreate a 1980s music video to full anything goes excess. Full to the brim with divine cross-fades and breath-taking camera swoops, zooms, and pans, it's an utterly awe-inspiring moment of pure grandeur and if a moment comes along in 2013 that is as eye-opening and rewatchable as that then 2013 will be a mighty good year.

And as if that scene wasn't enough proof, Suzanne Clément is truly magnificent as Frederique. She has such power in her performance that the film feels as if it's more about her journey than his. Whether breathlessly arguing with a nosy waitress, laughing maniacally along to Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" in a pot-fuelled car trip, or attempting to present a facade of normalcy as she tries to live a suburban life away from the drama of Laurence, Clément gives a performance of fiery range. She's a stunner. I can only hope that Dolan's next film proves as magnetic as Laurence and that he continues to tell queer stories in a completely unabashed way. We need a few more directors like him who are willing to go there and make "gay cinema" that embraces all the facets, both positive and negative, of our lives, whilst also inhabiting the skills to make them technical marvels. A- / A

Sweet Sweetgrass' Baadasssss Ride!

I had long wanted to catch Sweetgrass, a documentary about the modern day dying American west that received minor attention upon its release in 2010 as well as screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival (I didn't see it there, sadly). It's hardly surprising that this film hasn't received a local release given documentaries that work in a strictly anthropological sense are an even harder sell than traditional ones that have been crafted around conventional narratives. Lacking narration, a musical score, or even on screen credits to inform the viewer of who is who, Sweetgrass comes from recordist Lucien Castaing-Taylor and producer Ilisa Barbash. Both work for Harvard and have a list of credits to their name that certainly sounds lofty and indicative of people who would have a film as boutique and yet wide-roaming as this (read the sixth paragraph of this New York Times review to see what I mean).

Filmed in purely observational manner, Castaing-Taylor and Barbash's film was filmed over three years - and took something close to nine years to complete, which sounds like a lot of time before considering their roles as educators - Sweetgrass covers the now defunct shepherd of thousands of sheep across the Montana summer grazing highlands. The film's final image is of an "in memoriam" tag, stating the Reisland-Allestad Ranch, the subject of this documentary, ceased to exist in 2004 after 104 years. It lends Sweetgrass (so named after Sweet Grass County, a part of Montana that this epic march covers) a pang of elegiac sadness, one that is accentuated by the beauty of the landscape. So beautifully filmed, a true environmental documentary about man and nature, it's made with as little interference as possible. Thanks to the blessed diegetic sound design of Patrick Lindenmaier and the refreshingly still camera, every shifting cloud creating a creeping shadow is amplified. With its ghost-like presence (only the occasional sheep seems to acknowledge the camera's existence) creating an almost ethereal atmosphere, the "last of America's cowboys" are given a farewell of heartbreaking simplicity.

I'd love to see this film on a double feature with Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff. Both together (or alone, really, but together even more so) would send most audiences into a tailspin of boredom given the aversion to what's considered "slow" and "boring". However, much like Reichardt's captivating post-western trip along the Oregon Trail, Sweetgrass raises many questions. Why do these shepherds do what they (no longer) do? One sequence shows one such man on the telephone to his mother as he holds back tears telling her of the arduous journey he partakes every year. "I'd rather enjoy these mountains than hate 'em," he says. The film also asks vital questions about man's interference in the circle of life, as well as our relationship to nature. All three - man, animal, nature - can be unforgiving, but the film's strength is in how it tells the tale of all of them, and does so with powerful simplicity.

The film is as rich in warm-heartedness as it is in heart-tugging sadness. Those gorgeous Montana mountains are as lush with beauty as always, and the way they have been photographed recall the work of a master landscape painter. Sweetgrass is the type of film where a highlight is a zoom in from a long shot into to that of a mountainside as the sight of a herd of sheep becomes clearer and clearer. It's a film where the action peaks with a bear hunt in the dead of night, in near pitch black. The images within are the kind that trains cinematographers and filmmakers would spend a lot of money to perfectly choreograph and lens (see below for examples), but here are as effortless as the spinning of the Earth. There's little that's conventional here for both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking, but what there is a sterling, evocatively made portrayal of a way of life that is all but extinct. A-

New Years Catch Up Part I: The Grey, The Color Wheel, Love Story, On the Road, Pitch Perfect

I always have such grand plans to review all the movies that I see, before inevitably forgetting and letting them slide into the recesses of my mind. Even though it is hard to deny that after that initial flurry of week-of-release excitement the desire to write may dwindle, I also think it's wrongheaded to think discussions on films have a shelf life of their opening weekend box office report. Alas, we're here today to take a look at some films that recently made their way to Australian screens and that I've had a chance to see on DVD. What better way to wring in the new year than with a look back on the old ones?

The Grey

Dir. Joe Carnahan

Country: USA

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 117mins

Put me in the minority, but I found Joe Carnahan's "Liam Neeson vs the Wolves" adventure film/existential philosophy retreat to be as chilly as its Alaskan setting. From the opening sequence with its nauseating narration and foretelling blasting in neon - "I know this is where I belong, surrounded by my own. Ex-cons, fugitives, drifters, assholes. Men unfit for mankind." Hmm, do you think the film is about these men confronting their demons and atoning for sins? - to its silly, abrupt ending, I found The Grey lacking in both adventure film thrills, and moral quandaries. Featuring a repetitive structure and lacklustre use of the frame from cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi who far too often fall back on rote imagery and camera placements, I found its lofty aspirations not met.

Seemingly at odds with what it wants to be, Carnahan never truly finds the right balance between the extreme action adventure title that sees Liam Neeson say such ridiculously survivalist dialogue as "we're going to shove [this branch] up this thing's ass, then we're going to eat it." - and the film that attempts to address its themes in a more prosaic manner. A smarter film would have deemed the flashbacks to Neeson's wife unnecessary, and would have found less blatant ways of extolling its virtues about god, faith, and fate. By the seemingly umpteenth wolf chase sequence I had long given up taking The Grey seriously, which is a real shame because the filmmakers were taking it far too seriously for far too long. That it ends on such a high farce moment makes me suspect that Carnahan was unsure how to handle the potentially prickly ethics at the screenplay's core, and instead continued to fall back on scenes that hold as much emotional weight as something from a fictional Liam Neeson Movie spoof. C-

The Color Wheel

Dir. Alex Ross Perry

Country: USA

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Time: 83mins

This film isn't for everybody. In fact, it's very hard to pigeonhole this sophomore feature from Alex Ross Perry (I have not seen his debut, Impolex) as being for anybody in particular, rather unsuspecting open-minded types who respond to its strange charms. Still, charms it has, as the actors navigate their way through a story that covers an entire spectrum, much like the color wheel of the title. It's little surprise to learn that stars Perry and Carlen Altman were stand-up comedians, but their foray into cinema shows remarkable restraint and skill as they limited the use of improvisation and utilised incredibly textural 16mm film. Despite navigating the same sort of boutique twentysomethings-have-feelings-to terrain of other films from the "mumblecore" wheelhouse - as a matter of fact, writer/director/star Perry appeared in Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, itself a film that hovered around the fringes of the mid-to-late-'00s movement of ultra low budget filmmaking - The Color Wheel blooms into a refreshing and frequently candid take on bizarre adult-sized children and their fluctuating levels of morose.

Last year's winner of Indiewire's best "unreleased" film, it's easy to see what they saw in The Color Wheel. This abrasive take on familial relationships - the film covers a road trip between complicated siblings - navigates some typically tricky territory, up to and including a final act that spirals in unpredictable directions. It's a testament to the screenplay by Perry and Altman, as well as their performances, that the film is able to veer between such silly sweetness and such peculiar harshness with ease. It has a daring wit to it that is brave and uncompromising as it finds countless entertaining scenarios to thrust its frequently unlikable characters into. The Color Wheel is a striking breakthrough that should get enough people excited to allow Perry to expand beyond the boutique. B

Love Story

Dir. Florian Habicht

Country: New Zealand

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 94mins

Perhaps a perfect double feature pairing for The Color Wheel is Florian Habicht’s endearing scattershot romance, Love Story. Yes, the title is the same as a much more famous film from the 1970s, but Habicht’s take is a very modern look at romance through the prism of a changing society that is as comfortable with cameras as filmmakers are with new ways of utilising them. Habicht has made a very literal “docu-drama”, a film that purports to be about the burgeoning romance between a New Zealand tourist (that would be director/writer/star Habicht) and a woman he meets on the subway of New York on her way to Coney Island, which is interspersed with crowd-sourced moments of reality (or “reality”, who really knows?) where this curly-haired lank of a man asks people around the city what and how he should do to make this woman love him.

It’s an interesting idea, and Habicht does well to rarely fumble the many balls he has flying about the air at any one time. However, one’s enjoyment of Love Story will surely depend almost entirely on your ability to enjoy the peculiar persona that Habicht inhabits. This New Zealand art student, via Germany, is an odd duck and I’m sure he fits the bill for certain hipster credentials. I found his act wore thin by the film’s final act – I certainly wouldn’t have objected to them cutting 10 minutes from it, or at least the cereal sequence – but at least his sparring partner in Masha Yakovenko remains a visually arresting presence throughout. She lends a particularly melancholy presence to the proceedings that gives the film a far more intriguing authenticity than any number of bumbling scenes of public distraction (although the taxi sequence has to be seen to be believed). Still, it’s a curio originality is a refreshing delight far more often than a hindrance, and that’s something to smile about. B-

On the Road

Dir. Walter Salles

Country: USA / UK / France / Brazil

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 140mins

The week that Walter Salles’ On the Road was set for release into Australian cinemas, it was announced that the film’s American distributor would be trimming the near two-and-a-half-hour film to a more palatable length. Knowing that Australian cinemagoers got the unabridged version makes for a curious viewing experience. As I watched the much delayed Jack Kerouac adaptation I found myself recalling Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux – only further enhanced by the end credits that has Coppola’s name, his son Roman, and the American Zoetrope production house spread throughout – which I viewed for the first time several years ago. It was the only version of the film I could attain and, having never seen the theatrical cut (despite my preference being to see theatrical before any altered editions) I was hardly surprised to discover later which scenes were new additions as they were inevitably the film’s weakest moments. I am intrigued to know what has been cut out of On the Road for its international release if for no other reason than to prove myself right on the film’s virtues and missteps.

Virtues and missteps it most certainly has, mind you. Much to my surprise, I found myself very much enjoying Salles’ more character-minded take on Kerouac’s novel and found its meandering flurries of excess frustrating. For instance, the sidebar sequence with Viggo Mortensen as Old Bull Lee (actually William S Burroughs) felt remarkably similar to the French plantation sequence in the aforementioned Redux. Still, if Salles and his screenwriter Jose Rivera – the two collaborated on the thematically similar The Motorcycle Diaries – are prone to waffling, then they can be more or less forgiven given the task of adapting a novel such as the Beat Generation’s defining moment of On the Road.

Thankfully, he has amassed a collection of collaborators that have served his extremely well. I can take or leave Sam Riley, but the work of Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Sturridge, and a flock of fleeting supporting players manage to make the film’s somewhat ponderous ways far more accessible. Gustavo Santaolalla’s superb locational score plays with an assortment of instruments in frisky ways, whilst the cinematography of Eric Gautier amplifies the sublime location work. Whether it’s a misty dirt road, a cluster of cacti along the Mexican border, a Colorado mining town, or the post-war lights of Manhattan, On the Road constantly looks beautiful and lush. Whether that goes with or against the book’s intentions I’m not sure, but I enjoyed this road trip through America through the eyes of modern day soul-searchers. B

Pitch Perfect

Dir. Jason Moore

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 112mins

The makers of campus choir comedy Pitch Perfect have clearly modelled their perky musical on the stellar blueprint of Bring It On. While its buoyant energy is as catchy as the smartly arranged pop-heavy soundtrack, director Jason Moore hasn’t quite transferred the risqué wit of his Broadway puppet musical Avenue Q to his debut feature.

Surely nobody can mistake Pitch Perfect for original. Its underdog/girl power storyline is older than the classic teen films it references, most notable of which is John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club. Thankfully, the cast – predominantly actors in their mid-to-late 20s, naturally – give it their all and make for bubbly fun. Anna Kendrick’s barely masked contempt for the material is right in line with her character’s post-emo moping, whilst loud and boisterous Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, and Brittany Snow are working overtime to wring laughs out of the thoroughly thin material. By the toe-tapping finale, however, its joy de vivre proves too infectious to truly resist.

This review was originally published in The Big Issue

Review: Liberal Arts

Liberal Arts

Dir. Josh Radnor

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 97mins

Do you think Josh Radnor grew up idolising Woody Allen? In the span of just two films, the star of television sitcom How I Met Your Mother has marked a very clear identity for himself as a film writer and director. With Happythankyoumoreplease from 2010, and now Liberal Arts, Radnor has very much pencilled himself in as one of many “Wood Allen lite” filmmakers whose inspirations are as clear as day. His leading ladies in both have even been the same doe-eyed, winsome type. While Allen certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on films about the romantic entanglements and philosophical dilemmas of somewhat neurotic New Yorkers, Radnor’s methods are obviously in ode to Allen’s classic heyday. His dialogue heavy screenplay is peppered with supposed wit about the human condition, but it lacks the sophistication of not only Allen’s best work, but also the best work of his other countless imitators.

At the centre of Radnor’s film is the inter-generational relationship between Radnor’s New Yorker college admissions officer, Jesse Fisher, and a student that he meets at his old college when visiting for the retirement dinner of his “second favourite teacher”. The girl is Zibby – it’s short for “Elizabeth”, code for “I’m a kooky free spirit, yo” – and she’s played by Elizabeth Olsen with a refreshingly wavering sense of confidence and self. This role is so different to Olsen’s breakthrough in last year’s stunning Martha Marcy May Marlene, and there are times with Olsen chooses lovely moments to help form her character into one that isn’t simply the fantasy girlfriend redux that she constantly threatens to become. Thankfully, and this is to Radnor’s credit, the character of Zibby is written in a way that merely flirts with the (ugh, I know!) “manic pixie dream girl” idea without fully succumbing to it, whilst Jesse skirts around being the true definition of a stunted man child. That the two have discussions about art and life is nice and that’s certainly more than can be said for other films of this type, I guess.

Sadly though, many of the film’s strikes at earnest fall flat. A montage of quaint letter writing between Zibby and Jesse actually induced guffaws with its series of excessively pompous views on music and the world. It’s efforts at finding deep things to say – “nobody feels like an adult, it’s the world’s dirty little secret” – sound like little more than pageant poetry from a college student who hasn’t actually lived the life they’re trying to sell as hard knock. A stoner, played nicely by Zac Efron, appears sporadically to make wise observations and Alison Janney arrives to play a dead-hearted cougar that is treated with little more than pity. The movie’s troublesome fringes hover about as if suspended in midair as Radnor fails to find a natural way to incorporate them.

Where Radnor’s screenplay and direction really go wrong is its failure to probe either of the characters in as great a depth as he perhaps thinks he is. By allowing them the flourishes of inorganic quirkiness – she impulsively needs to hug people for reasons I can’t fathom, whilst he adopts a depressed student whose medication has rendered him zombified – they act as scapegoats for the drama. Little effort is made to explore why either of these people are the way the way they are and while the actors have nice chemistry, they make decisions that make little sense. Its central theme of never being too old or too young to learn major life lessons is a nice one, but the film, warm as it is, is tripped up by being made by somebody who hasn’t quite matured enough as a filmmaker to say it in a more grown-up way. Its flights of goofy absurdity - epitomised in a scene in which Jesse rushes around the campus with a Gene Kelly-esque giddiness, the film gushes at the idea of students sitting around reading and theorising between one another, and then throws in shots of kids playing frisbee and hippies playing the guitar - stick out like sore thumbs in a film that is so frequently aiming for the head as much as the heart. If Radnor had been able to focus more on the bittersweet nature of his lead characters without the fluff excess then Liberal Arts could have been an education worth taking. C+

Review: Compliance

Compliance

Dir. Craig Zobel

Country: USA

Running Time: 90mins

Aus Rating: N/A

Perhaps a better title for Craig Zobel’s sophomore effort – I have not seen his debut feature, Great World of Sound – would have been “It’s Complicated”. Oh sure, that title was already taken by a self-consciously zany romantic comedy with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin from several years back, but if ever those two words, made (in)famous in recent years by one of Facebook’s stranger attention seeking quirks, were applicable to a movie then it’s this one. Or, hey, what about “Stranger Than Fiction”? Will Ferrell doesn’t have a monopoly on that expression, surely. I struggled to string a few words together after watching Zobel’s noble, if inherently flawed, thriller, and still sometime after I am unsure as to how to write about it. I’m winging it here, folks. I mean, I know I didn’t enjoy watching the film, but one must assume that was the point.

Essentially a home invasion film of the Funny Games variety, but rather than a wealthy middle class family in their exquisite summer vacation home it’s a group of underclass fast food restaurant employees who are used as pawns in a progressively repugnant game of (dim) wits with a disembodied figure who places human life a little bit below that of a cockroach. These people and their actions amidst the increasingly mystifying situation that they find themselves in appear as much of a Hollywood fantasy as it does a segment on a fake Dateline spoof from Saturday Night Live. I didn’t care for Funny Games either, but at least that one utilised narrative, built genuine tension and was a vision of a filmmaker with a distinct message. It’s characters were bound by logic and physical threat, whereas here they have seemingly shot themselves so far beyond the realm of the believable and landed headfirst into farce territory. Yes, these events really happened, but many audience members will spend more time tearing their hair out at the ridiculous actions of its characters than they will engaging in its potential themes.

Potential themes, might I add, that may or may not even be present. On one hand it is a glaring look at the public’s subservience to as well as a blind belief in the possibility of extreme law enforcement. On another hand, it’s a humorless look at lower-middle class America that enforces the perceived red state mentality of the hick stereotype. That the film is all too vague in proclaiming what it is or, even, what it wants to be, or what it ever had an intention of being is one of the reasons why it doesn’t truly work. It’s too little of anything in particular and placing grand ideas upon its flimsy frame doesn’t help anybody. Even more worrying, however, is the thought that Zobel isn’t trying to say anything at all. This is a rather straight forward film and if its that hard to find a solid reading of it then something’s been lost in translation.

It’s easy to why Compliance has caused such a fuss – it’s truly maddening. Within minutes my eyebrow was raised by its alarming concept, but I rapidly grew frustrated. The matter of fact presentation of events only enforces a wandering mind – especially for somebody who has spent time working in retail – as there’s little to really grab a hold of, not to mention a lack of filmmaking flare. The actors pick up the slack for the most part, and Ann Dowd is a particular standout as the restaurant’s manager and principal punked dunce. I was intrigued by Dreama Walker’s presence, always hoping her character was withholding more than her naked body would imply, but that doesn’t appear to have been the intention of the filmmaker. A coda implies some really prickly plays on ethics and morals, but the credits role as quickly as Dowd’s deluded managerial figure begins to see the chips appear in her play innocent varnish. Much the like the film itself, there’s obviously more to Dowd’s character, but the film isn’t willing to investigate it. C-

Review: Fun Size

Fun Size

Dir. Josh Schwartz

Country: USA

Running Time: 90mins

Aus Rating: PG

There’s little that makes sense in the new Nickelodeon production beyond the name. A modern day revamp (of sorts) of the 1980s teen classic Adventures in Babysitting meets The Hangover for tweens, the feature debut of television writer/producer Josh Schwartz (The OC, Hart of Dixie) is a mess of a movie. Despite being set on Halloween, the scariest thing here is how many barrels Max Werner’s screenplay manages to scrape the bottom of. Even before the opening credits, Fun Size has descended into a hilariously bad caricature of what a teen film should be. Reminiscent of childish adventure flick Sleepover (Remember that? Lucky you!), Fun Size is an appalling, eye-opening experience that lacks all the zest and wit of its teen flick forefathers.

Victoria Justice stars as Wren – none of those words I just typed make sense to me, but maybe they do to the target audience? – a typical high schoolgirl on the verge of going to college. Her single mother (Chelsea Handler), has shacked up with an abs-flashing toyboy (Josh Pence – you won’t be looking at anything other than his muscle tone) and leaves Wren in charge of babysitting her little brother, Albert (Jackson Nicoll), on Halloween. Naturally everything that could possibly go wrong does. Once Albert goes missing, Wren’s best friend April (Jane Levy, Shameless) insists on going to a cool kid’s party, she discovers she has a crush on geeky Roosevelt (Thomas Mann, Project X), and gets tangled up in a war between a love-struck cashier (Thomas Middleditch) and his rival (Johnny Knoxville).

There’s plenty more, too, but it’s far too complicated to go into. Being a low rent redo of a film as excellent as Adventures in Babysitting would be forgivable if Schwartz didn’t inject his film with so much on-the-nose toilet humour, onerous slapstick, and burdensome subplots that do nothing but extend the runtime to feature length. Anything involving the ghoulish Chelsea Handler – if she walked up to you on Halloween night you’d scream and swear she was wearing a mask of human skin – is particularly unnecessary as she attends the house party of a fart-friendly acquaintance who lives with his parents (they discuss mammograms when she takes a time out from the beer chugging twentysomethings).

Fun Size doesn’t even attempt to engage with its target teen audience in any way that isn’t superficial. Wren and her friends are apparently unpopular nerds, but they’re also super attractive and endure nothing that anybody who’s been to high school will find particularly hellish. As doe-eyed teen love goes, the central romance between Justice and Mann is weak stuff, but at least the actors look like they’d still be asked for ID rather than being portrayed by borderline 30-year-olds. When age appropriate casting is the best one can say about a film, you know you’re in trouble. And to think, I made it this far without mentioning the giant humping chicken, the hippie Democrat lesbians, or the rap sequence that evokes cult essential Teen Witch. So wrong, so very, very wrong. D

Or, in simpler terms:



+

=

FUN SIZE

Review: All the Way Through Evening

All the Way Through Evening

Dir. Rohan Spong

Country: USA / Australia

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 70mins

There’s a scene in the charming, if somewhat overly polite, Australian drama The Sum of Us (1994) where the homophobic parents of a closeted gay man watch the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras from the comfort of their plush sofas in suburbia. To their abject horror they see their son gyrating on a platform in barely any clothing amongst a sea of body oil, glitter, and high camp. The film may have primarily been about the father-son relationship between Jack Thompson and Russell Crowe, but that scene – especially in retrospect – plays like a perfect analogy for the very sudden way that gay culture was thrust upon the public by the Australian film industry in the early-to-mid 1990s. Two years earlier and Baz Luhrmann was high-kicking a renaissance in Australian cinema into overdrive with his flamboyant Strictly Ballroom, while the same year as The Sum of Us also brought with it the bus full of drag queens of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the return of ABBA-mania with Muriel’s Wedding.

For a moment it appeared as if this country’s boutique film industry was about to push gay cinema well and truly into the mainstream, picking up the lead of the American New Queer Cinema movement as well as the more sexually open elements of European filmmaking that trickled into local arthouses and onto video shelves. Like some grand ol’ coming out party on celluloid, these films were all being released on local and international screens – Priscilla even won an Academy Award! – at a time when the AIDS crisis of the 1980s was disappearing from the news, and the image of the fun-loving homosexual with wit and sass to spare plus ace dance moves to boot was de rigueur. As a gay Australian cinephile it’s hard not to bemoan the lack of such open filmmaking since – oh sure, gay characters are frequently seen on our screens in the background, but the culture has rarely been examined in such mainstream, accessible ways since, instead left to such hard-edged films as Head On (1998), Walking on Water (2002), and the recent Dead Europe (2012).

It’s no surprise then to discover that Melburnian director Rohan Spong has had to travel to America to make his documentaries on gay life. Before now Spong’s most notable title was T is For Teacher, a look at four transgendered teachers in American high schools, but with All the Way Through Evening, however, Spong has crafted a superbly delicate and altogether moving document of one woman’s crusade to allow the victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to continue living. If not in body and soul, then through their work. An American production, but with some assistance from the Victorian AIDS Council and the Gay Men’s Health Centre, this “musical documentary”, as the credits call it, certainly deserves to be held in the same high regard as recent festival successes and award winners We Were Here (2011) and How to Survive a Plague (2012) for the impactful way it examines the HIV/AIDS crisis.

There is remarkably little to All the Way Through Evening and yet it feels as if it says so much. At a brisk 70 minutes, there isn’t far enough time to get into the back story of Mimi Stern-Wolfe and her “subjects”, but what Spong has assembles is still a loving ode to somebody who has tried to make a difference the best way she knows how. Mimi’s annual concert featuring the compositions of late acquaintances who died (predominantly in the ‘80s and ‘90s in the arts hub of the Lower East Side, Manhattan) sounds like a blessed event and ripe for a documentary telling. It’s amazing how seemingly every year a new documentary comes along telling a new angle to one of the worst pandemics of recent times. This film proves there is always something new to be said, and a new way to say it. That the music featured within this one is frequently soaring, poetic, and beautiful certainly helps.

Featuring the works of four predominant composers, none of which anybody this side of 9th Street, New York City, will have heard of, their songs and their music cut through the proceedings like glass. The stories of Kevin Oldham (died of AIDS in 1993, aged 33), Robert Chesley (died of AIDS in 1993, aged 50), Robert Savage (died of AIDS in 1993, aged 44), and Chris DeBlasio (died of AIDS in 1993, aged 34) will certainly leave audiences in a contemplative place, and that’s probably the perfect end result for this documentary. Releasing in local cinemas to coincide with World AIDS Day on 1 December, All the Way Through Evening is a perfect catalyst for remembrance. With this film now in existence the work of Stern-Wolfe will now always be imprinted in a way to be remembered. She admits to slowing down and who can blame her. In the twilight that her friends never got the chance to live, this woman has done more than enough to make her legacy as memorable as those of the men she has championed for the last two decades. All the Way Through Evening is a fitting tribute to her and a moving viewing experience. B+

31 Horrors: Peeping Tom (#23)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

I still have a few of my October viewings left to write up, but Michael Powell's classic Peeping Tom is officially the first of my horror selections to have been screened in November. I ran out of time, but am still wanting to watch the 31. It was inevitable given my late night start times usually resulted in me going "oh, I'll leave that movie that is hailed a masterpiece until another time when I won't have a high chance of falling asleep and, instead, will watch something sillier and lighter." Ya know? Yeah. I still very much anticipate watching Changeling and Don't Look Now, but at the time I felt more like, oh I dunno, Student Bodies instead.

Still, no matter whether I watched it in October or in April, I'd still want to talk about Peeping Tom! More of a thriller than horror - certainly less horror inclined that the film it is frequently linked to, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (yet another instance of my October horror selections having a connection to that particular masterpiece) - it still manages to conjure up an intensely nerve-wracking world that I found entirely captivating. Whether deliberately or not, Peeping Tom embraces an artificial aesthetic that is both glorious to look at and yet a prominent thematic device. The film is, after all, about voyeurism and what better way to subliminally instruct an audience that filmgoing is, essentially, an act of voyeurism than by playing up the cinematic language? Catching audiences off guard with damning themes seems to go down a lot easier when its drawn in bold colours and deliciously constructed imagery.

Known as the first "slasher" film - "Peeping Tom, 1960, directed by Michael Powell. The first movie to ever put the audience in the killer's POV", Scream 4 naturally - and released the same year as Psycho, it's actually quite easy to see how this film caused such a ruckus in Powell's home country of Britain (also Hitchcock's home country, but Psycho was an American production). Presenting England in such a light, especially by one of their own, can't have have endeared him to too many people. The seemingly rather easily replicable nature of the crimes with the increasing popularity of home cameras, too. As a member of the famed Powell & Pressburger team, this was a detour and one that essentially ended his career, which is a particularly cruel fate given the (eventual) rapturous response that Hitchcock's Psycho received. The film was also a very obvious inspiration on the aforementioned Scream franchise (especially number 4), which gets it bonus kudos points from me.

Peeping Tom's biggest hurdle is its lead actor, Karlheinz Böhm. With his breath, somewhat posh, vocal delivery, the character of Mark Lewis is hardly a charismatic one. Of course, he doesn't necessarily have to be. I guess if he were then the scenes wherein we're meant to believe he's coming out of his shell thanks to the inquisitive Helen, played by Anna Massey, wouldn't come off quite as creepy as hell as it does, which was surely Powell's intention. He's a weirdo that most viewers would have had a hard time responding to (much different to Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates) and the acting style that Karlheinz Böhm utilises is occasionally quite distracting in its lack of subtlety.

Still, Peeping Tom doesn't rise or fall simply on the actor's shoulder (and, it must be said that Maxine Audley is super fantastic as the blind mother of Massey's Helen). It's a film deep in rich context that's so wonderfully explained by one Martin Scorsese:

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates... From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films."

Furthermore, the character of Mark Lewis frequently alternating between real world and the world as viewed through his camera, it's almost as he really isn't there. Much like Patrick Bateman who used those almost exact words in one of his pre-homicide monologues, Mark seems permanently poised on the verge of disappearing altogether. Swathed in oversized jackets and uncomfortable without his prized camera possession, his meek demeanor only forms flesh and blood when, well, in the presence of somebody else's flesh and blood. Much like Halloween begins from the perspective of Michael Myers before effectively moving onto a permanent otherly plain of existence, Peeping Tom portrays this man as somebody who never really was. He floats about seemingly unnoticed by many, and those who do don't tend to think too highly of him. Years of seeing his predominant male figure pursuing the act of perverse voyeurism has allowed him to slink through life determined to not be the sort of person that anybody would care about.

Peeping Tom is, perhaps more than anything else, a ravishing visual treat. The cinematography of Otto Heller is marvellous and works wonders in bringing a sort of film noir meets technicolour palace to life. The human figures that navigate his frame frequently weave through as Heller's camera glides ever so gracefully around them, cornering them in their own shadows. The confrontation sequence between Mark and the blind Mrs Stephens is a master of this blend of styles and was, for me, the film's greatest moment. Maximum suspense is wrung out of the otherwise innocuous camera that Mark carries around like a comfort blanket. It's spinning gears capturing death intensely and up close makes for a stunning piece of set decoration long before we discover the secret device hidden within it.

There's obvious much more to go into with this movie, but in a more formal way. I'm sure there are plenty of people who've done that and with far more intelligence than I. I was deeply involved by Peeping Tom, and parallels to Psycho aside, found it to be a startlingly original and daring piece of work. It's entirely apt that Michael Powell's career was ruined because of Peeping Tom since he almost seems to be going out of his way to make a film that can very easily be seen as him blasting audiences for their cinematic bloodlust. It's an endlessly fascinating film and one that shan't forget too soon. A

31 Horrors: Hardware (#22)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Well this was insane and I loved it.

It's hardly surprising to discover that Richard Stanley's 1990 sci-fi/horror action flick received a poor critical reception upon its release. It's a tough film to pin down, seemingly a pastiche of so many different films that it's hard to keep count - post screening my friends and I labelled Blade Runner, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Terminator, Alien, Short Circuit, Rear Window, Total Recall, Vertigo, and several more as obvious influences - and yet one that, despite it's mad sloppy screenplay, proved to be an intoxicating winner. It's an exhausting hoot of a film that shows flutters of such astonishing technical finesse that I couldn't help but admire its chutzpah even when it was flapping about like a fish out of water. I loved this movie, perhaps against my better judgement.

Set primarily in one of those futuristic dystopian cities that became so popular in the aftermath of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner where the skies bleed red from nuclear radiation and the cityscapes are dark masses dotted with neon and fluorescent. Hardware begins with the emergence of Dylan McDermott's Moses out of the desert where he has been scavenging for spare parts. Taking some mysterious, but uber-cool, electronics home to his girlfriend who uses these type of foreign objects in her industrial artworks. They live in a world riddled with dirty violence and people are lining up for voluntary sterilisation to reduce population growth. Naturally, the machine from the desert wakes up from its robotic sleep and begins to wreak havoc in exceedingly violent and explosive ways.

I'd never actually heard of this movie before I saw it on a Halloween night double bill with, what else, Halloween at the Astor Theatre. It shares nothing in common with that 1978 classic, so it was a double bill in horror goodness only, but I'm glad I got the chance to see it and to do so on a big screen. The astonishing editing and production design is best experienced on a cinema screen where they merge to form a dizzying collaboration. As the film continues to go higher and higher with its batshit craziness - culminating perhaps in a truly confounding, eye-popping sequence that takes a bit of visual influence from 2001 and Vertigo - I was continued to grow fonder and fonder. Richard Stanley, working from a screenplay (an admittedly odd, muddy one) by Stanley, Steve MacManus, and Kevin O'Neill, never lets up and isn't afraid to go to some truly unexpected places. The gore, too, which rears its head in the final act is certainly a bright and red in a gleeful fashion.

As a visual feast, it ranks alongside Blade Runner, Dark City and The Matrix as dying worlds on life support. It's visually stunning. The claustrophobic one-set nature is obviously derived from Alien, but Stanley is still able to do some interesting, fresh things with it. I admired the performance of Stacey Travis, more the star of the film than McDermott, and found she was able to make the preposterous sequences glisten with genuine emotion, not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Even when it descends into a grotesque Real Window moment of voyeuristic perversion, she keeps the film from spinning off of its axis, something that Stanley clearly had no interest in.

This hallucinogenic, post-apocalyptic, weird, crazy horror extravaganza was a real treat. Evil robots are always fun, but I don't recall seeing anything this flat out bonkers. A movie without blinkers on in its wide-eyed technology-is-evil-yo attitude and that has the balls to really go to some odd places. I loved it! And who can resist a movie in which Iggy Pop features as a radio DJ? A-

31 Horrors: Night of the Demon (#21)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

I was entirely surprised when I happened across the DVD of this film at the local library. A Jacques Tourneur film described as "one of the scariest films ever made"? I've already discussed my affinity for this French director's horror output - specifically Cat People, but also I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man - and I'd never heard this British film from 1957 mentioned alongside them in any real reverence. It's not produced by the esteemed Val Lewton so that probably doesn't hurt, but I imagine that maybe its newfound recognition comes from this list by Martin Scorsese wherein he labels Night of the Demon as one of the "eleven scariest horror movies of all time." Why eleven we'll never know, but it's hard to not see the internet culture immediately rushing to claim it as such after somebody of Martin Scorsese's stature says it's that good.

As if the title and the poster up top (a fabulous original UK quad) didn't alert you, Night of the Demon (retitled to Curse of the Demon for its recut American release) is about a demonic spirit that forms itself into the form of a cross between a roller-skating Godzilla and the creature from the Black Lagoon. As silly as that sounds, the demon's brief appearances are actually quite startling in their effect. That instant, unexpected appearance of something unnatural in an otherwise benign scenario will always work at eliciting a chilly shudder up the spine at a far greater ratio than anything other scare you can manufacture and Tourneur does a remarkable job when he utilises it here.

Night of the Demon is actually far less about a demonic apparition than it is about a skeptic's ambition to reveal a cult as false. It that respect it would make a surprisingly apt and fabulous double with Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. They both have a very cold, but beautiful, way of getting to the core of the institution that is the cause of so much conflict with a robust and lively central figurehead and a meek, if feverishly determined, younger man trying to work it all out. Night of the Demon, of course, twists its story of a cult and its charismatic leader into a very literal horror direction, but it works.

I loved that Tourneur and writers Charles Bennett and Hal E Chester utilised classical elements into the story. Stonehenge being a particularly inspired choice as that mysterious formation will always make for an easy backdrop to something supernatural. Several set-pieces are indeed flatout terrifying for what they suggest and how they're framed - how about that visit to the homestead of a "demon" victim with the reveal of the parchment? - although an extended storm sequence at the mansion estate of Niall MacGinnis' Karswell perhaps could have been shortened (maybe the US version does as such) and causes the pace to lag. Filmed in a way that utilises Tourneur's trademark film-noir aesthetic, Night of the Demon is surely a beautifully made film. While it doesn't quite all come together as a whole that warrants the title as one of the scariest films ever made, it does make for a delicious surprise and a wonderfully smart take on the issues. B+

31 Horrors: Ghostwatch (#18)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

It's like Paranormal Activity in Prime Time!

Imagine Lake Mungo, with it's investigative Dateline/Australian Story/60 Minutes approach to a family's haunting, but done live to air. In 1992, before "found footage" was a term used to identify films of its kind. When the prospect of national celebrities portraying themselves on a BBC special event wasn't even entertained as fiction, but rather a very real documentary. Such is the idea behind Ghostwatch, a British television program that would become one of the most controversial of its time and scare almost an entire nation into believing that ghosts were real. That is, until those involved were forced to apologise for misleading the public even though the program's credits don't leave much in the way of ambiguity. Such is the rabid hysteria of the public.

Man oh man, did I love Ghostwatch! Relatively obscure outside of Britain I should imagine, but its ten year ban by its own network, the BBC, suggests it should be held in higher regard. Playing the ol' Orson Welles/War of the Worlds trick on unsuspecting British TV viewers on Halloween night resulted in thousands of calls and even a controversial implication in the suicide of a mentally unstable man several days after it aired. Ghostwatch, beyond its scary surface and spine-chilling revelations, digs deeper into the national psyche than, say, Paranormal Activity, by also working as a tell tale sign of society's more gullible nature and the domination that television has (well, had) over them.

Ghostwatch was supposedly a special event piece of television, broadcast on BBC1 and heralded as live reality. Cameras and reporters were placed in the scene of a house on Halloween night that had, before then, become known as a hub of poltergeist disturbances. Hosted by famous chat show personality Michael Parkinson, featuring several well known British identities (including Red Drawf's Craig Charles), and including actors portraying psychic professionals as well as the very haunted family of mother and two daughters, Ghostwatch takes its time to really get going, but those who are paying close attention will get chills out of the entire enterprise.

By the time the film's final 20 minutes or so comes around, I was already well and truly intrigued and had experienced a couple of very decent frights (my suspicions were right when I thought I'd caught a glimpse of the mysterious "Pipes"). What I didn't expect was the level of almost paralysing fear that the climax would throw at me. Rigid with fear and audibly gasping on a high frequency, Ghostwatch worked spectacularly well and more than justifies its reputation as an oughtta be eminent Halloween classic. The final image especially of a dazed Michael Parkinson - remember, he's a huge star both in the UK and Australia - mumbling about the BBC set before creator Stephen Volk's last chilling utterance made getting to sleep a harder task than I'd expected.

Readers would be aware that I am very much a fan of the Paranormal Activity features as well as The Blair Witch Project and the aforementioned Lake Mungo. When this type of film works well there's almost nothing I find scarier. Ghostwatch is another stellar example of it, made even more provocative by the project's history and the way its makers went about it. I watched it nearly 20 years to the day since its British premiere (it's never played since) and it's very much as effective now as it was in 1992. It's also the best thing I've seen during my month-long horror trek. A

31 Horrors: Student Bodies (#16)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Student Bodies, a very early (the first?) entry in the dubious subgenre of horror spoofs begins with successive establishing shots labelled Halloween night, Friday the 13th, and then Jamie Lee Curtis' birthday. I kinda knew I was going to like this 1981 horror spoof from right then. If the rest of this brief 86-minute film from 1981 don't quite live up to the hilarious opening ten minutes, then that's hardly surprising. Throwing so many jokes at the audience in rapid succession, I'd be willing to bed that this is some of the hardest I've laughed in, well, ever. My flatmate can attest to that. I was in hysterics. It's the old "I was laughing so hard I missed the jokes" story and boy is it relevant with Student Bodies.

An obvious precursor to Scary Movie - there are even jokes from this film that the Wayans brothers appear to have copied nearly 20 years later, which is saying something - Student Bodies came on the heels of the Zucker, Abraham, Zucker masterpiece, Flying High (or Airplane if you're not Australian). It's easy to see the inspiration and while the ratio of jokes that work to those that don't is obviously higher (people remember Flying High for a reason, although I'd say Student Bodies should at least have a fond reputation amongst the horror community), it works spectacularly well more often than not. 86 minutes is, apparently, too long - especially during the elongated prom investigation scenes towards the end that act as little more than reasons for characters to do jokes that the writers couldn't shoehorn in elsewhere - but, if nothing else, the opening thirty minutes allow for enough good will for that to not matter quite as much.

Most curious of all is that the film appears to spoof horror movies that hadn't even been invented yet. One could easily for forgiven for thinking several gags are aimed at Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, when in actual fact that dreamtime slasher wasn't released until three years later. Furthermore, the horror conventions that we now all see as cliche and easy to ridicule surely weren't that entrenched in cinema by 1981, were they? Friday the 13th is the most obvious influence, what with its "sex = death" mantra and the unseen killer revealed in the closing segments gambit, but the film's other influences, like When a Stranger Calls (1979), Halloween (1978), Prom Night (1980), and even Carrie (1976) and Carnival of Souls (1962) from which the film heavily borrows some specific sequences, work in entirely different ways to the Friday blueprint that became rather standard throughout the decade. "Ahead of its time" is a term that could probably apply here, wouldn't you think?

Perhaps Student Bodies' most odd element is The Stick, an actor (of sorts) whose skinny frame gave him his nickname. He never acted again outside of the TV series Out of Control in 1984, but he remains a mystery. In fact, many of the actors featured either never worked again (such as the "final girl" or sorts, Kristen Riter) or not much. I think this has to do with a strike that was going on at the time, an event that lead to the director, Michael Ritchie, being credited as Allan Smithee. I'd assumed that name appearing in the opening credits was just a joke, but further research informs me that's not quite the case.

I really enjoyed Student Bodies, and it's certainly a stronger horror spoof comedy than any of the Scary Movie films (albeit, lacking a go hard or go home performance like that of Anna Faris). Even though it diminishes in value over the run time, that opening scene will certainly be something I'll be giggling about for quite some time. B