PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life.
I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).
FAVE FILMS DEAD MAN What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...
THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.
NIGHT ON EARTH Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.
ORLANDO Quiet, passionate, time travel.
PITCH BLACK Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.
RESERVOIR DOGS Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...
ROMUALD ET JULIETTE Truely lovely romance comedy.
THREE COLOURS TRILOGY Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.
Seen The Reviews
11 April 2004 Starsky and Hutch Wood Green Cineworld
Its not big and its not clever. Its not even funny. Not worth spending good money on. Don't even get it on video. In fact don't even watch it on TV on terrestrial channels.
So there's been this resurgence of the horror movie genre over the last few months. Its one of those funny things about films that once one comes out it seems everyone needs to make one. So you have loads of Vietnam movies, then loads of space movies etc etc. So I suppose it was only a matter of time before Zombie movies were the IN thing. Coinciding with the Zombie thing are a couple of horror movies for those film makers who didn't realise we going through a Zombie phase but wanted to catch the tails of the fright-band-wagon. Incidentally Shaun of the Dead looks funny in its trailers.
Typical horror setting - everything was grey and dark and it rained incessantly through the whole film. Set in a prison for the criminally insane. Doctors had offices in what looked like cells, the swimming pool had no lighting at all hardly. It was up a steep drive in the middle of nowhere. The penitentiary nurses wore blood red uniforms (and they were all men apart from the one-flew-over-the-cuckoo-nest-nurse-Ratched-esque matron in white). Like anybody would want to work there EVER.
I scare easily at horror movies. Even ones where the shocks are cliches. Its my temperament. Anyway. This film set its scene, crazy patients claiming to be raped by the devil himself every night, psychiatrist played by Halle Berry doing the science on them knowing that they are crazy, married to some top bod in the prison (this was probably the most shocking thing of the film and certainly raised a huge shock then giggle from the audience - cos he was old and ugly and when he kissed her it looked like he was going to eat her face, I expect).
Then through a weird turn of events she found herself an inmate at the prison. The story slowly unwound for the rest of the movie.
However, it was so predictable that approximately 20mins in I knew exactly what was going to happen, why the people who were killed were killed, what was driving it and what the outcome would be. There were a couple of twists added in later but hell even they were easy to figure out.
So it started well but wasn't clever enough to carry it through. It relied heavily on the don't go in there alone factor for scaring you, people falling out of cupboards and jumping out of the dark. A bit of blood. A sliver of religious iconography (always good for a fright). A lot of wild staring women. A bit shit it has to be said.
