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Showing posts from March, 2011

Lady Vengence

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In an attempt to save some money I have decided to make a concerted effort to tackle my massive stack of unwatched DVDs instead of just buying new ones all the time, some of which I have had in my collection for years! So, the first film I decided to pop in was Park Chan-Wook's 'Lady Vengeance'. A film that has been sitting unwatched on my shelf for about 6 years now. The story follows our heroine as she is released from prison after 13 years after being wrongly convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a young child. It soon becomes apparent that she knows who the real perpetrator is, and has been plotting her revenge throughout her sentence... If there is one word to describe this film it's this; bleak. There are no flashes of dark humour here that have been present in the director's previous works, nor is there any let up from reminders that we are dealing with child-killers here and all the horrific connotations that brings. I can admire the film-making on displ

The Green Hornet

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The Green Hornet was reviewed pretty poorly when it came out, in fact it's currently holding a rating of 45% at rotten tomatoes and I'm sort of struggling to figure out why. Maybe it was because the movie changed hands so frequently during it's production (Kevin Smith and Stephen Chow were both attached to direct before Michel Gondry eventually brought the film to completion) that many critics walked in expecting a turkey, maybe it was part of a backlash against the increasingly ubiquitous Seth Rogen or maybe it was because the film bucks the current trend for dark and gritty takes on classic super-hero tales, instead going for campy humour, who knows? All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The story centres around Brit Reid, millionaire playboy who (with assistance from his butler Kato) becomes a masked vigilante after the death of his father, the twist being that he decides to pose as a criminal in order to better infiltrate the LA underworld... The film is

My Thoughts on A Serbian Film

I originally posted this on the mondomovie.com forum in a thread discussing the 4 minutes of cuts levelled at 2010 horror/thriller 'A Serbian Film' but I thought I'd post it here also for posterity. Some good discussion here so I'll weigh in. I enjoyed the film greatly, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I was expecting a gritty, Guinea Pig-style torture porn and what I got was an almost Hollywood level of gloss coupled with some fun performances and set-pieces that in the end left me feeling like I had watched a hollywood thriller rather than a notorious horror. I think this is exemplified in the opening shot of the title, projected from old, scratchy stock accompanied by piano music is smashed to bits as the (frankly excellent) electronic score kicks in letting you know to drop your pre-conceptions immediately. As has been mentioned in this thread, I never felt shocked by the so-called offensive content because it never felt real to me. Be it th