31 Horrors: Livid (#9)

Livid

Dir. Julien Maury & Alexadre Bustillo

Country: France

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 88mins

Lost in translation seems to be the theme I keep coming back to for Livid, the new spooky house horror thriller from the French filmmaking team of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Inside). Maybe this is genuinely new for French genre cinema, but nothing here comes off as remotely fresh or even particularly interesting. Perhaps there is stuff going on in this film that makes total sense to some people, but not me. And then there’s the look of the film, which is awash is murky digital aesthetic that lacks any warmth and depth. I wonder if it looked this bad and poorly lit when they looked at the action through the camera viewfinder?

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Review: Joyful Noise

Joyful Noise

Dir. Todd Graff

Country: USA

Aus Rating: PG

Running Time: 118mins

Sister Act meets Burlesque in the American south. As loglines go, Joyful Noise has a doozy. Throw in country music superstar Dolly Parton and rapper-turned-actress Queen Latifah and it’s almost as if the filmmakers were making a film designed specifically for my own heart. That the finished product from director Todd Graff (Camp) is somewhat underwhelming, undercooked, and under-written is disappointing, but that doesn’t stop the film having a delightful spirit that comes through loud and clear even when the direction doesn’t seem to care much about anything. Anything other than allowing Parton and Latifah to do their thing in between catchy gospel/soul ditties and cutesy simplified teen romance of its younger leads (Keke Palmer and Jeremy Jordan), of course.

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Review: Make-Out with Violence

Make-Out with Violence

Dir. The Deagol Bros

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 105mins

Zombies have been inserted into all sorts of unexpected texts in the last decade. We’ve read Jane Austen go all Resident Evil on them in Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, they put the “zom” in the “rom-zom-com” of Shaun of the Dead, and infamous Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce even made a couple of gay romance/porn movies most notably Otto or, Up With Dead People. Meanwhile, the television adaptation of the popular The Walking Dead comic series has put the flesh eaters in Prime Time. Now comes Make-Out with Violence, which takes the bittersweet American indie coming-of-age drama and gives it a zombie twist. Naturally.

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I really hope the dodgy local cover art of this film - finally being released here for the first of any kind - doesn't deter people from watching it. It's really quite special.

Review: Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

It may appear to be nothing more than a glorified DVD extra, having appeared on “Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide”, but what Jake West’s documentary Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape lacks in length, big name interviewees and theatrical prestige it gains in pure thorough entertainment. An obvious relative to Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood, which looked at the bawdy “ozploitation” films of the 1970s and ‘80s, West’s film is never the less a more historical look at a time when British politics went mad and aimed to silence filmmakers for simply failing to adhere to the prehistoric borders of good taste and decency.

Beginning with a superbly edited and comically ridiculous three minute montage of “the 72 films that changed Britain forever” (as the tagline suggests), Video Nasties then aims to educate viewers on the hows and whys, ins and outs of just what was so deemed so bad about these films, who was responsible for their subsequent banning and the fall out from what was tantamount of a right ol’ book burning, but with beta and VHS piled up instead of paper and bindings.


Jake West comes from a background of horror movie DVD featurettes as well as direct-to-DVD sequels like Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes and has directed and edited Video Nasties himself. For the first 10 minutes or so he throws in VHS-style “grindhouse effects” like tracking symbols, fuzziness and looping, but downplays it after a short while. The 72 running time (coincidental or deliberate?) feels like it could easily have been extended, but that’s probably more an issue of time and budget than West’s skills behind the camera. Unfortunately though, Video Nasties lacks a sort of bravura authoritativeness that Not Quite Hollywood had in spades.

His interview subjects are fascinating, but apart from several big(ish) name directors like Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) and Christopher Smith (Severance, Triangle) and some important political figures of the time, they lack depth. Their expertise on the topic somewhat makes up for this, but it’s a shame West and his producers couldn’t nab a big name like Hartley did with Quentin Tarantino, Dennis Hopper or the seemingly never-ending parade of cast and crew that were directly involved in the making of the “ozploitation” films that particular movie covered. It is interesting to hear them speak on something I’ve noted personally several times, that watching these movies on blu-ray almost defeats the purpose of them. The example of A Serbian Film is used, saying that it looks too good to be a true “video nasty”, the value of which comes from being grungy and done so that you either believe it’s really happening (Cannibal Holocaust) or so over-the-top that you can’t believe anybody ever thought it was scary (Night of the Bloody Apes).

If Video Nasties does improve upon Not Quite Hollywood in one aspect, it’s the way its subjects have such a strong historical context in the censorship debate. A debate that, it must be sadly noted, is still raging to this day, at least here in Australia (what with movies being banned and the like). West’s clip selections – film and vintage news – are also a riot, and it’s fascinating to see footage from so many movies and laugh at the thought that the overly silly violence was deemed too indecent for the British public. Hearing Marshall, Smith and the others discuss that thrill of entering a video store during those early years of video tapes and discovering the world that cinema would open up to them is something all cinephiles will identify with and find humour in.


Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape is not a perfect documentary, but it tells a wonderful story that is rarely discussed about in these days of everything being available to anyone, anywhere at the click of a mouse. It’s important to remember that Apocalypse Now, The Big Red One and even poor, defenceless The Best Little Whore House in Texas were once taken off the shelves purely because some people deemed fit to monitor the public’s viewing habits thought they sounded offensive and would corrupt the masses. Movie lovers should watch this and imagine what could possible happen in 2011 of a similar nature. Perhaps that’s a topic for another DVD. B

Review: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call Orleans
Dir. Werner Herzog
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 122mins

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a movie isn’t close to being as fun, funny or insane as it thinks it is. Considering the original Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara was released 18 years ago, it’s hard to see how Werner Herzog’s version is as shocking as it thinks it is either. Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant was doing drugs, masturbating in front of young women and abusing suspects around the same time Nicolas Cage was giving his patented crazy style of acting in much better movies such as David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. So what then, dear reader, was the point of this movie?

It’s hard to say. None of the actors are able to emerge out of the shadow that Herzog creates for Cage. Eva Mendes has nothing to do but stand around and look sultry, which is a hard thing to do given Peter Zeitlinger’s cinematography is so dank and confining – while the likes of Val Kilmer and Faizura Balk just stand around with nothing to do. Jennifer Coolidge is perhaps the only actor who’s able to shine since she has the innate ability to be even more deranged than Cage and Herzog put together. The brief moments where Herzog really goes off his medication, mostly moments involving alligators and iguanas, are amusing in a broad sort of way, but feel more like token oddities rather than anything truly organic.


The actual plot of The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans revolves around the trailer park shooting of a family of Senegalese refugees in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Herzog can be commended for his representation of New Orleans, he doesn’t sugarcoat this town’s misfortunes and there isn’t a pretty sight in the entire movie. As a murder mystery, however, it doesn’t even rise above the level of intrigue supplied by season 15 of Law & Order. Nor does it excite from a filmmaking point of view. None of the twists or developments feel exciting from a storytelling point of view, nor are they shown in any compelling form. Things happen and that’s about it.

Which brings me back to the lead character of Lieutenant Terence McDonagh as played by Cage. His foul behaviour is supposed to be the hook of this film, but it instead feels forced and even juvenile. I’m sure it was shocking to see Harvey Keitel strut around naked while snorting bags of cocaine whilst solving the crime of a nun being raped in the 1992 original, but in 2010 watching Nicolas Cage dive off the deep end is about as revolutionary as, well, Harvey Keitel nuding up.

And what of Nicolas Cage? A man whose tics and twitches have seemingly taken over his career and his mumbly vocals inserted itself into every performance. There isn’t anything about this performance here that we haven’t seen. Am I meant to find it better simply because he’s being directed by a man just as bonkers as he? Cage’s style perfectly fit the aforementioned Wild at Heart 20 years ago and at least that picture was stylistically on the same wavelength. And then there’s the issue of Cage’s accent, which strangely changes midway through the movie into some weird combination of Jimmy Stewart and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.


Ferrara’s original wasn’t even that good in the first place and even though there is no connection other than the bare strings of plot that they share, Herzog’s movie feels dated and warn out. As a movie made solely to frame Herzog and Cage’s duel wackiness around a story of ever-increasing moments of “shocking” depravity it lacks anything that can truly be described as shocking in this day and age as it plods along at a snail’s pace. Both of these men have done incredible work before, similar to that on display here, but The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a perfect example of two people being so perfect for one another that they end up cancelling each other out. Two pretty people equalling an ugly baby if you’d like a metaphor. It could be humourous if it wasn’t so ugly and putrid, both to look at and from an entertainment level. All that’s left in the end that’s truly new is a scene involving iguanas and that just isn’t enough. D

Review: Corroboree

Corroboree
Dir. Ben Hackworth
Year: 2007 (production) / 2009 (release)
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 90mins

Ben Hackworth's Corroboree is impenetrable. I'm sure that it means something quite profound, but by film's end that meaning remains as mysterious as it does at the start. That's not to say that the movie is particularly terrible, but there came a point when I stopped caring about how pretty it looks or the few strands of understanding I was getting from it. It premiered over two years ago at film festivals around Australia and is only now getting a DVD release, which is hardly unsurprising since it is not made for anybody other than Hackworth himself. It, in fact, ends up feeling a lot like Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, mixed with Fellini's 8½ as if made by Gillian Armstrong in the 1970s.

Corroboree revolves around a director (a shadowy barely-seen Ian Scott) holding a weekend retreat of sorts with an inexperienced actor (Conor O'Hanlon, unsurprisingly in his first role) being forced head-first into a living piece of performance art with five actresses, amongst them Rebecca Frith, Susan Lyons and Natasha Herbert. It appears that these women all have assigned parts to play from the life of the director and that that the young male actor, who bares a striking resemblance at times to Michael Pitt (take that however you like), is oblivious to and must react "naturally" to their performances. Whatever that means. All of this, meanwhile, is being filmed secretly by the director in a last-ditch effort of work out his issues with women on screen before his increasingly inevitable death. You know these creative types, unable to express words off screen.


Of course, within any story of this kind, there is the obligatory "art imitating life imitating art" stuff and all sorts of conversations begging to be asked such as about the blurring of the lines between life and death. Of course there's also the old-as-time argument that just because one atones, or attempts to, in a creative form does not mean that it's worth much of anything and that the whole endeavour is flawed from the outset. I, however, couldn't particularly be bothered with trying to go down these paths as Hackworth seemed intent on turning off viewers with his increasingly cold style.

It is filled with long takes to represent hidden cameras, arch (and at times just plain bad) acting and an air of pompous arrogance that is the sign of a director having a wank on film. I have not seen Hackworth's short films, but I can tell there is some underlying talent within the man, it is just hard to see underneath all the layers, as transparent and obviously "arty" as they are.


There are individual moments in the film that stand out, but they generally feel at odds with the movie surrounding them. The opening passage is a gorgeous way to start a picture and other early scenes have a hypnotic, mysterious quality that is intriguing and its fun to watch the cast maneuver about the set, which acts as a more compact and country-side version of the giant theatre studio from the aforementioned Synecdoche (a movie made after this one I had to keep reminding myself). The illusion doesn't last long and I soon realised that the film had its head so far up its own arse it could see sunshine. Any overtly positive feelings ideas I originally had were well and truly dashed by the final scenes, a bizarre series of events portraying a directors need to remain forever that ends with the film's star covered in blood standing in a garden completely starkers. "He is the director" and so on.

And yet I still don't think the movie is completely worthless. It has... a quality. It's hard to point out, but it's there, it's just so unfortunate that it's so hard to find when surrounded by all this prosaic artifice. I don't know what any of it means outside of general vague meanderings and half-baked ideas about "our place on Earth" and I have no qualms with admitting that. It's cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and it flaunts it. C-

Court of Lonely Review

Far be it from me to rip into a movie like Court of Lonely Royals, especially considering it's the sort of movie that was made with about $1000 in change, some dental floss, a pack of chips and a lamp from IKEA. It's a movie I really wanted to like and I did in some regards, don't get me wrong, but it's just that it's the sort of movie that I wish had gone through a few more stages of script development and had been given a decent budget so that writer/director Rohan Michael Hoole could do what he really wanted to do.

Court of Lonely Royals is a techno-thriller set on the streets of Melbourne. It definitely looks like it cost a lot more than it did, although I could have without the annoying switches to black and white. What was that about? Set in the "near future" (as the DVD box, but not the actual movie, tells us) where everything is neon and bathed in red and orange fleurescents, the movie has a sheen that reminds of something by Wong Kar-Wai. Wong Kar-Wai lite sure, but I think the visual aesthetic was definitely there.


It was about half way through the movie though that I decided that it was Hoole's screenplay that was letting the movie down. The visuals are there, the music was there - by the Midnight Juggernauts so it should be expected - and of the four main actors Ayse Tezel and particularly Samantha Noble have commanding presence, but even they have trouble getting their mouths around the sticky dialogue. Leah De Neise unfortunately seems to get stuck with a lot of it and must sprout silly phrases like "Holy Coco Pops!", although her character is incredibly stupid so maybe it was intentional? The director, now that he's gotten his first film out there, could benefit from perhaps working from somebody else's screenplay or collaborating. His tact with visuals doesn't extend to writing scenes where a character decides whether to drink coke or pepsi or when a businessman asks to be raped by a prostitute using tobasco sauce.


I hope that Rohan Michael Hoole is able to make more films, because he was certainly going somewhere with Court of Lonely Royals - what a great title by the way, even if I have no idea how it ties in to the movie - and the idea that in the future the Government will employ people to murder citizens is a good one, so there's definite groundwork that has been made, but as a movie to sit down and watch, it is unfortunately too flawed in it's foundations to fully work. I'd give it a B- for effort, but that's silly, so C