Ebola Syndrome (1996)

Director: Herman Yau
Stars: Anthony Wong


Review:
The chance is you probably do not know this movie, except you are a HongKong-er like me. But alongside Riki-Oh (1991), this is one of the best cult movies from Hong Kong.

The movie starts with Ah-Kai (meaning Chicken in cantonese) fucking his boss' wife, and get caught shortly thereafter. He killed his boss and his boss' assistant, and fleed to South Africa, layed low and worked in a Chinese Restaurant. On a trip to an africian tribe to trade for some meat with the restaurant owner, he raped a black girl and caught Ebola virus. The good news is he is immune to Ebola, and the bad news is he gonna flee again and spread the virus to anyone he meet.

The black girl had a seizure while being raped, and Ar-Kei killed her to make her release his dick.

The plot actually also involves survivors from his first murder and the police pursuit, but it doesnt really matter in this movie. This movie is all about this character Ah-Kai. He doesnt eat dog shit but he is a candidate for the filthest person alive. He is even crazier than Mr. Blonde from Reserviour Dog (1991). He tried to burn a girl of maybe 10 years old and told her that burning to death is not painful. He is splitting everywhere, masterbate with a piece of pork meat and make hamburger out of human meat. He doesnt get dirty only on himself but on you also. He make meals in the restaurant using the meat he jerked off last night, and serve the human hamburgers to customers. He never feel sorry or apologize for any deeds he did, but only blaming on others and thinks he is the victim. He is scary that he resembles the normal guy you meet everyday, but with all his secrets revealed.

"It wont fucking hurt burning to Death! (燒撚死, 唔撚痛架!)"

The infection with Ebola virus only makes him more menacing. If he spits on anyone, that person is dead and horribly so. In movies like Outbreak (1995), you know there is a group of scientist taking control of the situation. In this movie, the crazy guy took total control. He went everywhere he wanted and spread the decease everywhere, and the most scary part is he resembles a normal man you meet on street, and you can really imagine this happening right besides of you. This makes the movie so effective in giving you chills.

Pork meat as sex toy. Will Lady Gaga wear this particular one?

In the last review I said that it is dirty that we scared, and this is the reason. Differ from the cool, calm seriel killer that we almost love, we do not want Ar-Kai close to us lesser than 30 feet.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Director: Sam Raimi
Stars: Bruce Campbell


Review:

Work is so utterly terrible, and I am giving myself a good treat tonight. Despite being a horror movie fan, there's quite a number of mandatory horror movies that I havent seen yet, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), It's Alive (1974), and this one. I have seen Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992), but it even surprise me that I havent had the opportunity or occasion to watch this original masterpiece.

A group of friends went for camping. They came to a camp that hidden a book and a tape. The tape was recorded by a archaeologist that was researching the evil demons. He left an incarnation in the tape translated from the book to woke the evil demons, and the demons are possessing the group of friends. To cast out the demons, our hero Ash must dismember them one by one.

The basic is same as other horror movies, but it gets to original content as soon as possible. We spent several minutes to know that they get to the camp, and several minutes for them to discover the book. And from then on, all hell was gonna break loose.

Raped by a tree. Where else could you see this?

Many of the shots are taken in subjective camera angle, in which the audience were in the position of the demons, watching the victims screaming scared, but not exactly know what the victims were seeing. A cheap reason for using this camera angle is to avoid special effects. Another reason that works for the movie is the audience get to see how scared the characters was, and imagine the horrible things that they see. Nowadays it would be a monster in CG, but that is not imaginative. The beauty of it is the audience will automatically project what they think is scary to what they did not see, but showing everything ruined the whole imagination.

Subjective Camera. What you can think of is what they see.

I am a Computer Scientist and CG is no mystery to me. Ray tracing, Marching Cubes, Point-cloud reconstruction with B-spline surface and Newton's Method etc I know all their tricks, and this really makes CG non-effective to me. One main weakness that they couldnt do in at least 5 years I would say, is CGI looks too clean. People's guts were flying out, but they look shiny and clean without a particle of dust, and we know it is CG. This is beyond their reach since actually they are not modelling the CG with every little tiny details, but just generate it with bump mapping and interpolating. (Sorry for getting a little technical) And with such cleaness we are not scared. We are scared of dirtyness, which only old special effects can give.

He has blood, or at least red liquid, covered his face. At least you know that.

The director Sam Raimi now best known for his Spiderman movies, shown a change of tone in his Evil Dead trilogy. The movies gradually increase in comedy and lessen horror, and that is why I like the original 1981 Evil Dead the best. Horror and comedy are really opposite things. You do not laugh when you are scared, except you have lost your mind. A movie can be funny or scary, but not both. For a movie like Evil Dead, I like it the scarier the better.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Director: Stephen Chiodo
Stars: Grant Cremer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson


Review:

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) is a so-bad-it's-good kinda cult classic. It is self-aware that it is stupid, but added with the cheesey special effects, dumb characters, and silly clowns it really goes a little too stupid.

The plot is the common cliche sci-fi story, which alien monsters come, and only a bunch of kids know about it and the whole town do not believe them. This formula has been done to death and this time they are klowns, with laser that turns human into candy cocoon, and guns that shot pop-corns. "Why pop-corns?" "Because they are clowns!"

It turns out that the clowns come down to turn human into candies and have a feast. But half of the movie we see the clowns having fun in town and fucking around. In this aspect it seems closer to Gremlins (1984), with more B-movie touch to it.

In this kinda formula there always a stubborn character that does not believe no matter what. That character in this movie maybe the most stubborn of them all, until Buffy in Scary Movie (2000). He does not believe when some kids tell the story at first, and he does not believe when another cop is telling the story, and still does not believe when his friend who is another old man is telling the story, and continue disbelieving when the whole town in telling him. When he actually sees one, he think it was one of the kids. He just loses to Buffy that he finally believes right before he dies.

*Screams in the phone*
"How the kids had the whole town in this?"

This is one of those cheesey trash films, though not one of the best even in that regard, it still worth a bunch of laughs.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Director: Richard Kelly
Stars: Jake Gyllenhall


Review:

Donnie Darko is an american small town teenager, with mental problems. He have imaginery friends, got into arguments with his sister, rebellious towards teachers, well basically a normal teenager, except he follows order from a creepy imaginery bunny to flood the school and burn down the house of a preacher.

In terms of direction and atomsphere, this is not a bad film, but it is not impressive to me. A major problem with the film is that we agree with Donnie in his viewpoint. Stupid, old-minded teacher preaching about moral lessons, hey, who doesnt want to tell her to shove that up her own ass? Dumbass preacher giving a talk which you forced to attend, hey, who doesnt want to told strictly in his face that what he just said is bullshit and he just doing for his money? And flooding the school to get a day off, well let's face it who doesnt want to do that? So for the most part Donnie is just a pretty ordinary guy, and there is no evidence for anything unusal.

So as the film progress Donnie obsessed with time travel, since the imaginery friend claimed to be from the future, and told him the world was gonna end. He had some  premonitions, scared his psychriatist and wanted to go back in time. Well, I just dunno what should I care about. And the ending, I just pissed when I see that kind of ending. It may seem deep in the first or second time, but it appears so many times that it is annoying and provoking. It simply tells you what you have just witnessed is just shit, and you wasted 2 hours watching something that never happened, not even in the story. It provides shock when The Usual Suspect (1997) did it, when Jacob's Ladder (1990) did it, but now it is provocative and became a big fuck-you in the face to me.

Of course one could bring up the argument of time travel or parallel universe, so that the events did happen in some space-time continuum. But to accept this explanation, you have to buy time travel, a worm hole that appears as a tsunami (a worm hole could easily suck the whole earth in by the way), a human can get sucked in and come up intact, and a ghost that can also time travel with his bunny suit. An alternative explanation would be he is just a nutcase, which you do not have to assume anything. By the principle of Occam's Razor, I would say he is just a nutcase. After all I am a scientist in the general sense of the word.

Maybe my expectation of this film is too high that I have seen or heard nothing but good things about this film, and it turns out to be good in creating suspense and atmosphere, but not much of a masterpiece. And another thing I want to mention, I know it is tasteless to judge an actress with her face, but Maggie Gyllenhaal is too ugly to be a star. Jake is quite handsome but she is just ugly I am sorry.

As long as psychological thriller goes, Donnie Darko would be an good additional to the collection, but I know some better.

Clive Barker's Nightbreed (1990)

Director: Clive Barker
Stars: David Cronenberg


Review:

Although films often adapt the story from novels, films and novels are quite different forms of art. That's why writers turning into directors often dont work. It didnt work when Stephen King did it, and it didnt work when Clive Barker did it.

Clive Barker created some really scary stories that successfully translated to other medias, such as the 1987 film Hellraiser and the 2001 video game Clive Barker's Undying. But Nighbreed is a mess. It is not scary, and it keeps you asking the movie why, why and why.

The movie follows a guy who dreamt about monsters and a place called Midian, where all the sins are forgiven. He saw a psychiatrist, who tricked him to think he murders people. He learnt that Midian is a real place from a mental patient, and went there, and stumbled upon a shapeshifter race. Someone in the race told him he cant join since he is innocient. The psychiatrist traced him and have him gunned down, only turning him into a shapeshifter. The psychiatrist turns out to be a hunter of the shapeshifters....o forget it, I cant make sense of it anymore.

Why cant the guy join the race when he is alive, but able to do so after he was gunned down? How is he sinned to just being gunned down? Why the psychiatrist hate them so much? They are shapeshifters, another kind of animals. Why they can bring back life? Who wrote the law of shapeshifters? How does the psychiatrist see behind the killer mask? Oh nevermind.

Despite the clumsy storytelling, this is actually once again the Avatar (2010) story. An outsider discovered a old race, which faces to be wiped out. He joined them and fights back. Of course almost Avatar did just about everything better, but the story is not too original.

A major reason to watch this movie is to see David Cronenberg, the Baron of Blood himself playing the killing psychiatrist. He is calm, cool, and we know that scenes of sex, flesh and blood occupied his brain. It would be wonderful if this movie is directed by him.

I like Barker's stories, especially the masterpiece that is Hellraiser (from the novel Hellbound Heart), but a good novel does not necessarily become a good film. If you want to watch a good writer fails in telling a story, watch Nightbreed.

Riki-Oh (1991)

Director: Lam Nai Choi
Stars: Fan Siu Wong


Review:

As a Hong-Konger, if I were to list some of the famous Hong Kong movies, I would say those Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movies, maybe also Infernal Affairs (2002). But it turns out that this one is actually pretty famous, at least among cult-film lovers. It is hard to define what is a cult-film but Riki-Oh is a cult film in every sense of the word. The special effect is cheap, and several parts of the plot seems unexplained or irrelevent, but everything is so bad it's good.

The movie follows Ricky, who was thrown into prison because of manslaughter and assault. He started a fight over an innocent old man, and turned out he is so strong that he can punch through human bodies. The warden afraid he is actually a special agent coming to investigate their secret of planting opium, he sent the Gang of Four, the four most powerful people in the prison to take care of Ricky. And, spoiler alert, what hysterical is Ricky is really not a special agent.

Riki-Oh is a film adaption of a manga, and faithfully so. It reenacts almost every scene in the first chapter of the manga, and maintained, if not exceeded, the gore level. It is so brutal that it maybe one of the gorest movie of all time. People seem to feel no pain and despite seeing all those gore and violence, they still have the mood for some sense of humour. For example there is this infamous scene that a guy cut himself to strangle Ricky with his own guts. Witnessing the badassness of this guy, the vice-warden said, "Alright you got a lot of guts Oscar!"

Alright you got a lot of guts Oscar!

Same scene in the manga.

Other crazy scenes include Ricky connecting his tendons of his own arm by himself, Ricky punches through someone's jaw, Ricky completely destroy one's fist, someone got skinned alive, and someone got shredded into a pot of meat. And more, and more.

Head explosion.

Same scene in the manga.

Punching half the head away.

Same scene in the manga.

Riki-Oh is definitely not for one with a faint of heart, or anyone who does not appreciate exploitation movies. But for cult movie fans, this is mandatory.

Rope (1948)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger


Review:

Remember the stupid villain in novels, movies, tv shows comics and animations, who did his bad deeds but thought it was too boring to totally cover it up, left some sort of evidence as a taunt or challenge to the good guy, and became the downfall of him? Well there is two of those in this movie, and we know that right from the start. But we cant really blame them because this movie probably the first to give the villains such stupid ideas. Another reason you cant blame them because this movie is so great that you accept their stupidity so that you can watch this film.

David got kill in 2 minutes after film starts, counting from the Universal trailer.

Brandon and Philip killed their schoolmate David in their house, and hid his body inside a chest, because they think they are superior and David is inferior, a convenient reason to have a killing spree for the audience in countless movies. To make things funnier, Brandon held a party to invite their friends in their house will David's body hidden, but the teacher Rupert, played by James Stewart, already felt fishy.

Brandon explains to Rupert what is that occation to have champagne with stupid reaons.

What makes this movie so great is the pacing and the imitation of the stars. Right after the opening credit we saw David got killed. This might be one of the fastest death in movies I have ever seen. Philip is freaked out and scared. Brandon look enjoyed and want to play it cool, but he also freaked since you see his hands shaking and stutters, and feel his tense. Along the way the guests tested their nerves, in which David slowly breaks down and the tension between Brandon and David grows.

Rupert spotted something not right.

James Stewart plays the clever detective role and picked out the strange things. He is more sober and less talkative than I have seen him in Read Window (1954). He also looked older too, probably to better match with the character. He stares and hestiates to remind us in such a natural way the mistakes Brandon and Philip had made. The final showdown between him and the murderers are also beautiful. He knew all the things by then but he had to play stupid, since he suspected Brandon had a gun in his pocket. But he could not back away since he wanted to know what happened to the victim and to expose their crime. The moral conflict effectively transcents to the audience by the acting.

Humanity lecture. Yes but no thanks.

My only complain of the movie is towards the end we got about 5 minutes of lecture on human equality, that nobody is to decide who is superior and all of that crap. By then it was probably referring to the Nazis, but now we have been fed of this so many times we are sick of it. Yes I got it and I agree, but I do not like to be lectured.

This is probably my second favourate Hitchcock movie, the first being North by Northwest (1959). Both are fast paced and intense, but I prefer the humour of the Cary Grant character just a little more. While I love other Hitchcock movie like Vertigo (1958),  I appreciate the simple set and plot and the drama Rope creates.

Silent Hill (2006)

Director: Christophe Gans
Stars: Sean Bean....and a bunch of people I never heard of


Review:

Film adaptations of video games suck. They always are not even bad, but also painful to watch what have the game we knew and loved became. Even put Uwe Boll out of the question, consider Super Mario Bros (1993), Street Fighter (1994), Mortal Kombat (1995) and Doom (2005). Silent Hill is no masterpiece and is quite stupid in terms of plot, but it still easily be the best of film adaptation of video game I have ever seen.

A couple adapted an orphan girl, and when that girl become 9, or 10, she sleep-walks and screamed "Silent Hill" in her unconscienceness. Her mother took her to Silent Hill the ghost town, and experience the haunting there.

If you examine the plot more closely, it is stupid. But this film is not about the plot, but the visual and re-enactment of the scenes from the video-game. It adopted the original score, re-enacted the car crash scene, and the outlook of the town is faithful to the game. I found it creepy the first time I saw it and I have never played the game back then.

If you didnt see the movie, you can still tell this is silent hill.

Remember the mirror scene in Silent Hill 3?

No Silent Hill is complete without hospital and nurse.

I can understand gamers hated it because it differs from the game. In the film, Dahlia is a mother that wanted to protect her child, and all townfolks wronged her child. In the game, silent hill is a town the draws sinners to face their own sin by witnessing and facing monster that resembles their own guilt. The film lacks such deeper meaning, and just about a women seeing some creepy stuff.

The film is not as good as the game, yes I totally agree with that. But Silent-Hill fans should be grateful that at least the film captured some of the feel of the game. I am a Max Payne fan and look what it became. A fucking trainwreck. As far as video game adaptation goes, it is not bad.

Suspiria (1977)

Director: Dario Argento


Review:

An attractive young girl get admitted to a ballet school, which has strict discipline and two bitches as teacher and directress. She saw a student escaped from the school on the night she arrived, and next day heard the news of that student was murdered. Do I really need to mention that the teachers are evil?

The plot that a traveller went into a place, and discovered the dark secret over there is so old, I remembered watching it so many times. The oldest example on film maybe House of Usher (1960, adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 story), or The Old Dark House (1932). Hell it was even parodied in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). However, the mysterious killer thing does resemble a slasher film, which was not too well established in 1977. The popular consensus of the first slasher film is (John Carpenter's) Halloween (1978), but arguably Black Christmas (1974) is the first film to employ the slasher formula, so Suspiria caught in between.

Stabbing a beating heart. I have to admit you dont see this too many times

Plot aside, the amount of gore does be ahead at its time. Movie gore started from the shower stabbing scene in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), and developed to Night of the Living Dead (1968). Suspiria, in its time, contains quite amount of gore. Young girls get cut open till seeing her beating heart, girl bleeds to death in barb-wires (yeah Saw might referenced this), would be shocking in 1977, but man, I have seen Braindead (1992) and Riki-Oh (1991).

Caught in barbwires. Saw?

All history aside, this is an enjoyable movie if you havnt seen so many horror movies. You cant really blame the movie since it was still early in the horror genre, well at least modern horror. But for me this film is more a history in horror than horror movie itself.

Escape from L.A. (1996)

Director: John Carpenter
Stars: Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi


Review:

John Carpenter is one of my favourate director. He works with low budget and made the film work with atomsphere. Some of his works are really good, like the Original Halloween (1978) and the Thing (1982) which is my most favourate Horror movie of all time. Some of them are bad, but doesnt mean they are not enjoyable. They are cheap and stupid but fun to watch in a strange way I myself could not fully explain.

Escape from L.A. is one of the bad ones. The plot is pretty much the same as Escape from New York: some shit happened, L.A. is seperated from the continent by a flood and used as a place for exiling criminals and everyone who "unfit to live in a new America". The criminals seduced the president's daughter and ordered her to stole some weapons apparently, and Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) went in to L.A. to retrieve the weapon and kill the girl.

There are so many stupid scenes in this film, but all in a playful fun way. You can feel that John Carpenter is having fun with it, and aware just how stupid it is. In a scene, Snake was surrounded by a bunch of villains with guns, and he propose that he played a game of "Bangkok Rules", that they all draws when a can he threw up hits the ground, and the quickest survives. This happened also in Hitman (2007). But in Hitman, the hero and the villains played along the rules, but in this, Snake guned them all down before the can hits the ground. This is like asking just how many more dumb could movie villains get?

Dumbass.

I was told that Snake is a bad-ass, but just how many times could he fails? He was captured and tricked so many times, despite the fact it always come back. But he even fell for the "look over there" gag in this movie. 

Dumbass.

Also stupid scenes include Snake playing basketball and surfing to chase a car. But it doesnt make you angry since you feel that the director is fully aware and having fun with it, and you laughs along. The special effects are bad, that I agree. I rather it use animatronics and minitures, but they goes for many modern movies nowadays.

Put yourself in a right mood for a movie that just for fun, and this is not such a bad movie, but this is coming from a mouth of a guy that even enjoy Vampires (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001). If you enjoy cheap movies like me, give it a watch.

For a few dollars more (1965)

Director: Sergio Leone
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonte


Review:
For a few dollars more (1965) is the second installment of the dollars trilogy, followed by many considered to the the greatest (spaghetti) western of all time, The Good, the bad and The Ugly (1966). Leone's directorial debut, the first of the dollars trilogy, A fistful of Dollars (1964) is actually a rip-off from the Akira Kurosawa film Yoyimbo (1961), and was successfully sued. For a few dollars more is the first time Leone is all on his own, and you can see that it is carefully designed and structured in story and characterization.

The film starts by setting up the characters. Lee van Cleef saw a wanted poster in a train station and the ticket seller told him "nobody dared to go after that killer". Actually that guy is just schmuck and Lee got him and claimed the reward. Eastwood is set up the same way, and we see and understand Lee and Eastwood are both good gunfighters.

Next the villian Indio was established. He was imprisoned and ruthless killing everybody in his prison break, with one exception so that he can tell the other his tale. Probably the tutor of Mickey Knox from Natural Born Killers (1994). Indio also got the man who put him in prison in the first place, and killed his whole family, including a infant child. We now have the image that Indio is a crazy, brutal, and reckless bad guy.

The characters do things in the most "western" way in any other western I have ever seen, and it is so much fun to watch. They just awkwardly doing things, and after they have done we understand what they was trying to accomplish. Lee light a match using the face of one of the member of Indio's gang to piss him off. But the gang member holds back and leave. The bartender asked "Why did you chose my place to commit suicide? I know that guy and it is a miracle he didnt shot you." "Yes there must be some reason." So Lee wanted to confirm that those are the gang members, and they wanted to do something big.

Shadowed by The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, relatively few people talked about For a few dollars more, but that doesnt mean it was a ton of fun to watch.

High Plains Drifter (1973)

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood


Review:
This maybe one of the first movies that Clint Eastwood directs, who turned into a great director nowadays. But I am always a fan of spaghetti westerns and Clint Eastwood as "The man with no name" who we know and love.

It starts like a conventional western, with a mixture of plot from High Noon (1952), The Magnificent Seven (1970), and a little bit of Il Mercenario (1968). A town had some enemies that has just been released from jail, and planned to get revenge on the town folks. They hired a stranger that just stopped by to handle the bad guys, and promised the stranger everything he wanted in town with no charge, and he wanted a bit too far. As the film progresses, we understands the townfolks had themselves a little secret, and the strangers might not be dropping by afterall.

It really shows that the style and direction is different between american westerns and spaghetti westerns. Though I like spaghetti westerns more, this one gives something different in visual and feel. An anti-hero he might be in "The Dollars Trilogy", Eastwood in more evil and sinister in the film, and adds to the coolness of this character. It is no doubt that the main character of the video game "Blood", my favourate game of all time, was inspired from this movie.

In comparision, I still prefer the Dollars Trilogy, for the drama, score, and uplifting feeling. But this one is just awesome in its own right.

Sucker Punch (2011)

Director: Zack Snyder


Review:

Before I went in the theatre my friend warned me that this movie is not gonna be one of the best movies, but only something visually stylish. I was fully aware of that but I have too heightened expectation from Zack Snyder, since he has yet to make a bad film. Although this is not really bad, but it easily be his worst.

All things aside the opening credit is good. Zack Snyder made some very good opening credits in the past and this one is no exception. We see how the girl became an orphan, how his stepfather was pissed because she and her sister inherit all the wealth, and how she accidentially killed her sister and be committed. This is done without saying any dialogue and with some girly punk rock music to perfectly suit the girly theme going on here. However it is all going down hill from here.

The film is filled with different incoherent action sequences, from fighting in a Japanese Temple, the castle in "The Two Towers", the train in "John Carpenter's Ghost on Mars", to some futuristic war zone. Each fight represents a dance that the girl has to perform to get other's attendion while other girls steals some tools for their escape.

While these action scenes are nicely shot, and stylish, they are boring since we are not emotional invested. As long as we can tell they just fight and fight for some goals we fed right before, and though the computer graphics do look beautiful, it felt flat and meaningless. At the end when the narrator spills some words of wisdom we feel nothing cause what we have witnessed is just some beautiful girls in pointless action.

The plot is reminiscent to the 1962 short french film "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", and the ending should be the same too. I looked upon this movie since I played a video game when I was small, called "American McGee's Alice". The story of the game is that Alice's (that Alice in wonderland) family was burnt to death in a fire accident, and tormented by guilt of inability to save her family, she was mentally ill and shut down in a mental hospital. When she was locked up, she visited the wonderland once more but this time it turned into a dark and brutal world.

Americn McGee's Alice

The movie should have done the same as the game: the action should be symbolize something of her mental problem and some obstacles that are tormenting her. And through the action she gained revelation and redemption.

I was hoping "American McGee's Alice" would be made into a movie. At first Tim Burton would be the perfect one to direct it but he failed with his "Alice". Now Sucker Punch also failed, and there is little hope on the official film adaption. Maybe it's for the best, and let the game exists as it is.

Videodrome (1983)

Director: David Cronenberg
Stars: James Wood


Review:

Videodrome is one of my favourite movie of all time, and the best ever from David Cronenberg, among other classics such as The Fly (1986), Scanners (1981) and The Brood (1979). It is a multi-layered movie that can be enjoyed on your preference.

The president of Channel 83, Max Renn, had captured pirate signal of a underground show called Videodrome, which contains nothing but people getting tortured and murdered. Amused by the show and seeing the business opportunity to broadcast it, he tried to track the programme down, and gradually came to realize that the show creates a brain trumour to the viewers and made to lost in what is reality and hallucinations.

On the outfront it is a mid-night thriller, the one that would be shown as late night programme on TV, when the kids were sound asleep. It had it all: sex, violence, 80's special effects to gross you out, you name it. And it is on repeated viewing did I know it is so fast paced that once you predict how the plot goes, it already was happening. It satisfy anyone who like 80's horror movies.

SM-ing with a television

On the next level you relate to the protagonist, Max, played by James Wood. We realize we are sort of the same person as him: we enjoy watching violence and torture on video, and we always demand more hardcore stuff. There is a lot of movie now that is just like videodrome, with little or no plot and just people getting tortured, mutilated and murdered. It makes us feel we are as vulnerable as Max, and wonder whether we will have a brain tumour ourselves.

Videodrome. You have watched it now. Be prepared for a brain tumour.

On top of that, we gets political and realize the scary fact the television had become the retina of the mind's eye. When there was no internet, people sit around at night just watching television. Whatever the television shows, people bought it and believe it. It could be advertisement tells us to buy products, or some government propagada instructs us not to question anything, or videodrome. Nowadays with the internet the effect of television diminished but the phenomenon just transformed to a new morph, and we were never as close as to living in the "strange new world" the movie described, in which we are nothing but some data that causes the liquid crystal to shine in a certain way.

James wood is an actor that, though not with a handsome face, with a lot of personality. When he plays a character you believe in real life he is the same in realife, sort of like Bill Murray. He is sly, with a smart mouth, and didnt lose his sense of humour even when he is in deep shit. Shame that the only performance I have seen him do besides Videodrome are Scary Movie 2 and GTA:SA as Mike Torreno. I will sure track down some more of his work.

Shelter (2010)

Director: Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein
Stars: Julianne Moore


Review:


There is not much to say about this film actually. The plot is derivative and predictable, with some silly moments. The first hour of the film is filled with nothing to interest you except for cheap scares and false climax, and even those you can tell from a minute before happening.


A psychiatric doctor tells his daught Cara (Moore) who is also a psychiatric doctor  about his patient that is having multiple personality disorder. But why is this case out of other cases of multiple personality disorder is so interesting I do not know. Maybe a shrink and figure it out but the audience probably is not. The patient, calls himself David, was a cripple. But when he changes to another personality called Adam, he can walk but have colour blind. So the theory is Adam is the host and David is imaginery. "Why didnt you let me interview Adam first?" "That wouldnt be so interesting." The father replied.


Later Cara found out the real David was murdered, and took the patient to the site where the murder happened, and he switched to another personality and gives Cara a cheap scare. "Why didnt you told me about another personality!?" "Because you didnt asked! Because you only want to prove me wrong!" The father replied. 


When Cara watched the security camera recording over the patient, some dark shadow seems to lurk around and get sucked into the patient. Cara asked his brother "Did you see that?" His brother replied, "Nah, you know father." It really makes me laugh that apparently their father had a reputation being a prankster.


When it progresses it does savage a little bit but still very predictable. So things are real, the patient is not just a psycho, but we have heard that tale many times before. Towards the end the film basically turns into a slasher film with a non-iconic villian.

Julianne Moore's role reminded me of her performance in Red Dragon, which is terribly boring. But she seems to be able to give more, and was impressive being the eccentric sexual artist in The Big Lebowski. I guess just dont do anymore investigator role.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Director: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Stars: Eihi Shiina


Review:
Is this a comedy?

There are movies that contain so much gore, but are making fun of it and obviously are comedies, like Braindead. Some movies wanted to scare you, but fail in every level that make you laugh uncontrollably, like (M. Night Shyamalan)  Signs. But how about this one? Is the director aware how hilarious this is? I am not sure.

The movie simply tells you all the facts in the beginning: tokyo police force is privatized; there are some human-transformed monsters who kill polices, called "engineers"; their wounds turns into weapons, and can only be killed by destroying a certain key-shaped tumour in their body; the main protagonist Ruka is a engineer hunter. During the movie we know that Ruka's father was murdered during a protest against the privatization of the police force, and Ruku was raised by the privatized police force. Spoiler alert! Guess whose behind the assassination.

It seems there is a theme going on, that tries to question infinite punishment on criminals...but wait, what am I talking about? How do you take something seriously when you see a man's head got chopped off in half, and his eyeballs became a gun barrel that shots flesh. It may be powerful but how does this guy sees and aims? Ruku chops off the arms of a guy that molested her on the railway, and he sprays blood as if it was snowing while Ruku put off an umbrella and walked away. It was brutal but I wanted to laugh at how that man became a snowing machine just to make a scene.

I can shot bullets from my eyes but I cant see shit.

The part that is most hilarious to me is when her father is murdered. Her father was in the demostration again police privatization, and when he was giving a salute to Ruka, a guy stood up besides him, and shot him in the head. Was the assassin crouching all the time to wait for the chance? Didnt all other people see a weird guy crouching besides him? Besides, this guy is a professional assassin that can shot the target in Tokyo tower from Fuji Mountain. Shouldn't he be standing a little bit further?

Dont mind me crouching with a gun. It's nothing at all.

But it kept showing satiric advertisement like it meant to express something about the Japanese society, like a Wrist cutter adv aimed for schoolgirls; a suicide prevention ad saying "Seppuku (Disembowelment by yourself) is suicide". But I lost track on all the gore and funny scenes such as this:

Ahhhhh....I'm dying.....

In the same breath as Braindead or Riki-Oh, this maybe considered as the gorest movie ever made. In a normal star rating ratio I would give 1.5 out of 5 probably, but as a cult movie, I give a 3.