The opening scene of Aux yeux des vivants (Among the Living), the new French horror film from the makers of Inside and Livid and contributors to the anthology The ABCs of Death 2, is intense. Intense in this case translates to shocking, violent, and graphic. How intense? Even hardcore fans of the macabre may fear that they are in over their heads with this one. If the movie starts with this type of shock, you might ask yourself frightfully in the cool black of a darkened movie theater, what lies in store over the remaining 85 minutes?
Archive for the ‘Foreign’ Category
Aux yeux des vivants (Among the Living) Review
Posted: December 6, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Foreign, HorrorTags: Alexandre Bustillo, French movies, Julien Maury, Slasher Film, The Hills Have Eyes
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1001 Grams Review
Posted: October 23, 2014 in 2014 London Film Festival, Comedy, Drama, Foreign, ReviewsTags: Ane Dahl Torp, Bent Hamer, Laurent Stocker, Norwegian Films, Stein Winge
2014 has been a very good year for Norwegian cinema on the international festival circuit. In February, a pair of exports from this Scandinavian nation attracted favorable attention at the Berlinale, where Kraftidioten (In Order of Disappearance) appeared in the Competition division and Blind played in the Panorama program. This fall has seen 1001 Grams garner comparable praise after showings in Toronto and London. The three films share an engaging sense of quirkiness in the writing, ultra-professional and understated acting, clean, crisp cinematography, and terrifically paced and assured directing. (more…)
Blind Review
Posted: October 22, 2014 in 2014 Berlinale, 2014 London Film Festival, Drama, Foreign, ReviewsTags: Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Eskil Vogt, Norwegian Films
How can you trust if you cannot see?
If you lose your sight, how can you be sure that your husband is not sneaking into the room to stare at you? How would you know if your hair is graying? How could you read the results of a home pregnancy test?
Sightlessness is not a mere disability in Eskil Vogt’s sublime debut feature, Blind. It is solitary confinement, isolation on a strange, new planet fashioned by one’s imagination with indeterminate physical laws and a time-space relationship unique to a particular universe. Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) has a rare condition that robbed her of her sight as an adult. Her visual memory is fading, and even though she exercises it daily, her doctor informs her that she will lose it all together one day. (more…)
Vie sauvage (Wild Life) Review
Posted: October 21, 2014 in 2014 London Film Festival, Drama, Foreign, ReviewsTags: Céline Sallette, Fortin family, French movies, Mathieu Kassovitz, Yves Cape
The French drama Vie sauvage (Wild Life) starts at full tilt. A father is headed out for the day to run errands, leaving his wife and three children behind in less than bucolic splendor at the rural site where their camper is parked, their chickens are roosted, and their goats are roped. No sooner is Dad’s car pushed through the mud by the three boys than Mom begins to move frantically through the checklist of an obviously well planned and rehearsed escape. She gathers a few belongings, corrals the boys, and meets a friend by the side of the road who will take them to the train station and a start to their new life. The boys have other ideas, and she must keep control over them and make the train, while the threat of her husband returning looms. (more…)
Musarañas (Shrew’s Nest) Review
Posted: October 19, 2014 in 2014 London Film Festival, Foreign, Horror, ReviewsTags: Álex de la Iglesia, Carolina Bang, Esteban Roel, Hugo Silva, Juanfer Andrés, Macarena Gómez, Misery, Nadia de Santiago, Spanish films, The Beguiled
Festival program writers and film reviewers have been rather free in comparing the new Spanish horror movie Musarañas (Shrew’s Nest) with Misery, the 1990 feature that presented Kathy Bates as an obsessed fan tormenting her favorite novelist, James Caan. Yes, there is a man held captive through much of Shrew’s Nest, but the best point of comparison is not the excellent Stephen King adaptation directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay by William Goldman that focused on celebrity obsession and fan expectations that straightjacket artists who try to break from type. There was zero sexual tension in Misery between Bates and Caan, except for those who consider ankle breaking a form of foreplay. Shrew’s Nest, by contrast, is heavy with sexuality, even if unfulfilled or absolutely forbidden. (more…)
Yat ku chan dik mou lam (Kung Fu Jungle) Review
Posted: October 15, 2014 in 2014 London Film Festival, Action, Foreign, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Baoqiang Wang, Charlie Yeung, Donnie Yen, Hong Kong Action, Kung Fu Jungle, Michelle Bai, Teddy Chan
Immediately after the conclusion of Kung Fu Jungle and just prior to the rolling of the credits, a dedication to all those who have worked in front of and behind the cameras to make Hong Kong action cinema the uniquely entertaining genre it has become is shown on the screen. Brief clips of these pioneers are presented with identifying graphics. Many have cameo appearances in the film; some have passed away. Director Teddy Chan explained in a Q&A session after the world premiere of Kung Fu Jungle at the London Film Festival that he wished to pay tribute to the unsung heroes of the industry, many of whom began in the business before green screens and CGI, when the stunts were real and dangerous.
La cueva (In Darkness We Fall) Review
Posted: October 3, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Foreign, Horror, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Alfredo Montero, Cannibalism, Formentera, Found Footage, Spanish films
The only good that could possible come out of widespread viewing of the latest group underground, found footage, schlock horror film known as La cueva or In Darkness We Fall is if audiences united after suffering through it and demanded a moratorium on trapped underground movies or found footage movies or, at a minimum, trapped underground found footage movies. It’s not going to happen, but it is nice to think that every film, not matter how awful, has an opportunity to make a lasting contribution to the arts.
R100 Review
Posted: September 26, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Action, Comedy, Foreign, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Bondage, Hitoshi Matsumoto, Japanese Films, Matsuo Suzuki, Nao Ômori, S&M, Satire
Do you remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoons where it looked like Bugs was trapped, but he would pull out a can of paint and a brush, paint a door, and then escape through it? Hitoshi Matsumoto employs a similar device each time his movie, R100, is in danger of running into a dead end. Matsumoto simply changes the rules, not to mention the genre, and his madcap characters crash through the newly drawn door and veer off in another direction. For viewers willing to sit back and enjoy the ride without giving a whit about the destination, R100 is a blast of originality and a poke in the eye of the, at times, too staid Japanese film industry. (more…)
Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da (A Hard Day) Review
Posted: September 17, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Action, Foreign, ReviewsTags: Changju Kim, Cho Jin-woong, Cop Movies, Korean films, Seon-gyun Lee, Seong-hoon Kim
Ahead of October’s release of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, we have the Korean adult version known as Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da or A Hard Day. Alexander may have to deal with setbacks like gum in his hair and a trip to the dentist, but that hardly measures up to the grown-up problems our hero, Go Geon-soo (Seon-gyun Lee), faces.
Geon-soo must plan his mother’s funeral, deal with his own divorce and the custody of his daughter, and stay a step ahead of the internal affairs team investigating him and the other members of his police squad for alleged corruption. But what proves to be the capper for the good detective is when he runs over a pedestrian late at night on a deserted stretch of road.
Séptimo (Seventh Floor) Review
Posted: August 20, 2014 in Foreign, Reviews, ThrillerTags: Belén Rueda, Buenos Aires, Patxi Amezuca, Ricardo Darín, Twin Peaks
The landmark television series Twin Peaks initially focused on the death of the young, beautiful homecoming queen Laura Palmer and the subsequent search for her killer. The creator of the series, the visionary director David Lynch, had no intention of ever solving the mystery in the course of the show, but rather planned to use the murder as the springboard for an exploration of the underside of small town America. Lynch was eventually forced by the network to reveal the killer. In doing so, Twin Peaks lost its special quality and was canceled at the end of its second season. This cautionary tale comes to mind when seeing the Spanish-Argentinian thriller, Séptimo (Seventh Floor). The build up in the first half of the film is such exquisite, stylized suspense that the viewer wants it to continue as long as possible. When an explanation appears and a resolution follows, the movie almost immediately becomes a pedestrian procedural. (more…)
Meet Mr. Karma 