Take 5 Romantic Horrors: Actual, Published Film Words

OK, I've been naughty. I haven't updated like I said I was going to. HOWEVER, there is reason for that (ish). I've been busy applying for all the 'hings, and I even had an interview for which I had to create a five-minute presentation from the vaguest of vague briefs. I've also learned to drive, helped out some at a Glasgow Film Festival event (more to come on that once my job actually starts), convincing scholarship funds to give me money, learning to drive annnnd THIS.

http://www.scotcampus.com/take-5-romantic-horrors

'This' is my first post for the new, improved Scotcampus website. It's a brief rundown of my Top 5 Romantic Picks for Valentine's Day, whether you're loved up, in the tenuous early days or happily single. I've watched all of these films at a variety of relationship statuses so I'm speaking from experience here.

Now I really have nae excuse to not blog, so I'm gonna go right ahead and get on with that. After body pump because, y'know, fitness is important...

Shocktober; Or 'Predictable Horror Binge' Post

October is quite possibly my favourite month. It's a month where it's acceptable to pile on jumpers, wear anything decorated with bats or ghosts and include pumpkin in all manner of cooking. It's also an excuse to binge on horror: much like drinking before noon on Christmas, it's something you can do any time of the year but only during October is it truly acceptable. Lock yourself in a room (or in our case, a caravan on the coast of the Solway Firth), dim the lights and power through as many as humanly possible before the wee caunles flicker oot and every tiny creak becomes irrationally terrifying.

Also much like Christmas, there are a few classics I like to revisit every year: Hocus Pocus is the obvious and long standing favourite. It's full of black humour, set in Salem, features a talking cat and was quite possibly my first introduction to the word 'virgin'. I don't think I'll ever tire of this one. I missed it last year; unfortunately I thought I had it on DVD when I didn't, and I just never got round to buying it. As a result I enjoyed it doubly as much this year and am now wondering if a purple cape would be a suitable wardrobe investment.

 Yes kids, there was a brief period in the mid 1990s when Sarah Jessica Parker was actually pretty slammin'.

Another obvious choice is of course Halloween: not the crass Rob Zombie remake (eew) but the 1978 original. It doesn't matter how many times I've seen it. There's nothing freakier than a dude in a mask standing perfectly still, and then disappear. I do have a slight phobia of masks, which makes it possibly more frightening for me than it actually is (I don't think The Strangers is an especially terrifying film but the night I watched the trailer I slept in my living room). HOWEVER, it's a genre classic; a simple story, well executed (harhar) without an over-abundance of blood, guts and exposition. Perfect. This film may be the reason I think I'm going to be murdered all the time, but that's just... that's just the sign of a good horror right...?

I AM SO NOT COOL WITH THIS.

I do try and mix it up around this time of year and use Halloween as an excuse to buy up new films purely because "it's a horror I've never seen, tis the season etc". I bought Berberian Sound Studio in a mammoth Amazon binge and have been saving it until now as I thought it'd be something special. I thought I'd love it due to it being set almost exclusively in a sound studio (the.... one in the title), based around the experiences of a sound engineer working on a horror film (one of many dream jobs) and is a modern entry into the 'giallo' cannon. So far, so good yes?

Hrmm. I really wanted to like it, and I think I did... but I think a lot of my enjoyment was down to the little insider nods. I too have hacked at vegetables to recreate the sound of stabbing. I too have wanted to commit bodily harm upon a producer. However, this isn't exactly an accessible film even for those familiar with the processes. It's hard to tell where it's going, and it crawls along at some points before plummeting into 'batshit crazy' territory. It's certainly spooky and atmospheric, and before long the close confines of the studio become quite stiflingly claustrophobic. Possibly a little curio that could benefit from repeat viewing.

I watched Don't Be Afraid of the Dark after seeing that it had been produced by Guillermo del Toro and foolishly thought this meant it was good. It wasn't. Opening sequence and nasty third-act leg break aside, it was one of the most frustrating wastes of a film I'd watched in a while. This was a good couple of years ago and I still winced at del Toro's producing credits on Mama, which we finally got round to watching recently. It's purely only taken so long to get around to because we were waiting for the price to drop in Asda: yes, we could've ordered it online, but that would've felt like losing. Or cheating. Or something.

Anyway. It was with trepidation I approached this one, unwilling to let myself get excited by the producer tag. I figured that nothing with Jessica Chastain in it could be all bad, so I softened a little. Even more so when I realised the male lead was Nikol.. Nicol... Jaime Lannister. Kind of made it harder to take it seriously, but too many horrors are let down by casts of bland unknowns, so I took it as a positive.

I could mostly relate to Jessica Chastain because this is how small children appear to me all the time. Even when they're being 'cute'.

 

The film's set up was pretty creepy, although I feel it played its hand early in showing 'Mama' before the credits. The two little girl leads were creepy and played their parts well, Jessica Chastain was less convincing as a goth rocker (I don't know anyone in a band who has ever said "I'm in a rock band!"), and at first her unwilling surrogate mum act made her seem selfish and whiny. However, she soon warms to her new responsibilities somewhat, and accepts the supernatural elements of the film surprisingly easily. It really annoys me when characters spend entire films refusing to believe in the obviously ghostly goings on, so it was nice that both she and the girls' psychologist buy into them without a huge deal of convincing. The film also veers from the typical syrupy happy ending, and despite some storytelling issues, was more satisfying as a result.

Also thrown into this year's spooky mix was Beyond Re-Animator, which if anything is possibly more ridiculous than the original Re-Animator film. It suffers a lot from being released in 2003, which was a good year for... well, nothing really. The acting is 90% terrible; the saving grace being whenever Jeffrey Combs is onscreen. Besides him, most of my enjoyment of this was based on me and the boy's running commentary. Oh, and a (shadow) fight between a reincarnated rat and a severed penis, which is TOTALLY worth sticking around for.

Lastly (so far, anyway, there's probably more I've forgotten and more to come), came An American Werewolf in London. I remember seeing the infamous transformation scene when I was far too young to have any business watching it. I'm fairly sure Thriller had something to do with it; I loved that video before I realised it was by the same White Michael Jackson I was so terrified of as a child. In any case, it still stands as one of the best uses of horror make up and effects I've seen, as does the decomposing state of David the Werewolf's travelling buddy, Jack.

Paper cuts are always so much worse than you think they're gonna be.

 

This is yet another film I've seen countless times but still creeps me out: I don't know whether it's the sprawling, drizzling countryside or the claustrophobic Tottenham Court Road station, but both the city and rural locations are used to great effect. The use of music is ridiculously heavy handed but the inclusion of songs with 'moon' in the title always raises a smile as well as an eye roll.

My spooky film watching seems a little down from previous years, but that's purely down to a) taking a collection of Spanish horrors to watch on a TV with no working remote, therefore no subtitles and b) an alarming upsurge in awesome things to watch on TV. Well. That were intended for TV and subsequently acquired. Sleepy Hollow has been surprisingly watchable and I'm super intrigued to see where it goes. (I did actually watch the Tim Burton film version recently too, although I'm fairly sure I blogged about it a few years ago. I doubt I'd have anything more to say on the subject: for my money it's possibly Burton's best). American Horror Story: Coven is only two episodes in, and already looks like it could be my favourite of the three so far. I was pleasantly surprised by Bates Motel: after initial disappointment that it was actually set nowadays, we got really into it and powered through the first season in a matter of days.

I'm sure after posting this I'll remember everything else I've watched this month but for now, my mind's drawing a blank. Which is probably just as well. It looks like the kind of night where I'd look out and see an oversized man in a white mask just staring up at me... I should probably go and look at pictures of pugs or something.

The Truth Is Out There. But It'll Cost You.

Ah, the internet. The great equaliser, international forum of fact and information sharing, home of amusing cats. Not even Jen from The IT Crowd could break it. Safe to say the internet has pretty much changed the way we conduct everything in life. Information we might never have known is readily available at our fingertips. We have the power to start revolutions. Or take pictures of cats sniffing our dinner plates. Whatever, I'm not governor of the internet. What you do with it is up to you.

OR IS IT? (ooh). There are many higher ups who would prefer the public are still kept in the dark when it comes to sensitive information, and those who sound the alarm are treated as outcasts, hounded down and often forced into hiding. The most famous and historically shocking was that of Wikileaks founder and platinum haired egotist/cyber prophet, Julian Assange.

Or quite possibly Ellen DeGeneres.

 

Depending on what you believe, he's either a freedom fighter for the digital age or sexually deviant blowhard who doesn't care about the consequences of his own actions. The anarchist in me likes to think the former, but there's no denying there's something a bit... odd there. The Fifth Estate attempts to lay bare the 'real story' of Wikileaks, which is somewhat difficult considering it's based on a book by his estranged former business partner Daniel Berg.

 

In any case, I enjoy a good biopic, and I also enjoy Benedict Cumberbatch. Despite bearing little physical resemblance to Assange (he kind of looks like a 6ft lizard crossed with Viserys Targaryen), he has the accent and mannerisms nailed. I also loved Daniel Bruhl in little-seen German film Goodbye, Lenin!, as well as Inglourious Basterds, and I'm enjoying his increased presence in mainstream Hollywood. So far so good, yes?

 

Well. Hmm. It's definitely a hit and miss affair. Being adapted from the side of the wronged party, The Fifth Estate paints a sympathetic portrait of Berg: a keen volunteer and initially Assange's biggest disciple, he becomes the 'straight man', reigning in his partner when he gets carried away by the bluster of his own ideas. Berg is seen here to be the one with common sense, who's looking out for people's well being while Assange seems intent of posting confidential documents regardless of the effect. Berg starts off as keen as Assange; posting the names and addresses of BNP members and proudly boasting to his kind-of girlfriend Alicia Vikander. He firmly believes that the information shouldn't be edited: this reflects bias, whereas Wikileaks only bias is towards the Truth.

 

"Look at my glorious beard, Benedict"

"I know, I Khan't quite believe it"

...sorry.

 

However, when super classified information about the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs is sent to the site, the bromance cools as Berg feels publishing the documents with names intact spells danger for those involved. It's all very tense, and they talk about it a lot in boardrooms and during heated hissy fits. This leads to one of my main problems with the film, and one of my pet hates: clunky exposition. The film's script is pretty explanatory, in that it doesn't leave much food for thought. It doesn't show anything; rather characters; backstories are revealed through lengthy monologues. Which wouldn't REALLY happen in real life.

 

Also, with the film being based on Berg's account of the story, much is made of his own private life. He was a Judo champion as a child. He has very supportive parents. There's a lot of time spent developing his relationship with his girlfriend. This would be a nice sub-plot in a fiction, but here I don't really care. It means  Assange is portrayed as some other worldly character, who we don't really dig under the skin of.

 

However, there's some attempt made to explain his motivations and why he is the way he is. The central relationship follows a nice arc, and the tension in their relationship is quite palpable. This, however, is down to the strength of the two lead performances. Quite often the supporting cast is left without much to do: David Thewlis is always a treat, but he does bluster an awfy lot. Peter Capaldi has a handful of lines, but sort of looks an ageing scarecrow wizard. Melisandre from Game Of Thrones shows up, leading me to the conclusion that the virus that eventually shuts down Wikileaks is in fact a cyber shadow child (I'm not sure; as I said it's not really explained). There's another subplot with Laura Linney as a US government aide whose career is put in jeopardy by the leaks, despite by (apparently) stellar track record. This one is probably the most developed, but it still feels a wee bit tacked on.

 

That said I did actually really enjoy this film. It's definitely a slow burner and the pace drops to a standstill at many points. It's definitely not for everyone, and some background knowledge/or interest in the scandal is probably necessary to see it through to the end. If you keep an open mind prior to watching, it's easy to get drawn into it: you're left wondering how much truth there actually is in anyone's story. Don't be put off by lazy comparisons to The Social Network: I for one liked it alot more than that. Although I really hated The Social Network. I kept wondering when Zuckerberg was going to send Spider-Man a box with JT's head in it. Or something. I definitely enjoyed it more than Assange himself. In the end, the truth of the story is so distorted that you're left to make up your own mind. Or find out more about it, at least. And isn't that really the point of a good controversy?



Insidious Really Isn't Very Good

I love me a good horror film. I also love me a bad horror film. However, when I say bad, I mean wobbly sets, wobblier accents and huge palmface moments kind of bad: think Demons, Return of The Living Dead, that kind of bad.

What really grinds my gears is a potentially good premise and a good first act thrown away by schlocky plotting and worse acting. The Conjuring was one of the highest grossing horrors of all time: good for the genre, bad for the endless vacuum of identifilms which will no doubt trail behind it. I wasn't a huge fan- there were a few good jumps but I rolled my eyes when the first ghost appeared and by the final act it had just descended into another by-the-numbers exorcism flick.

With Insidious 2 getting talked up a whole bunch, the boy and I decided to work on our ever-growing List and crack into the first one. The premise seemed interesting enough, if a little standard. However I did enjoy the first Saw (OK, the first three) and the writer/director combo of Leigh Whannel and James Wan was enough to sway me.

I had avoided Insidious because it had the bad luck to come out round about the same time as Orphan. If you haven't watched Orphan, don't. That's all I'm gonna say on the matter. I figured I'd be fair though, and give Insidious a fair chance. Turns out this was a mistake by my all too generous nature.

If you don't know or haven't guessed, the plot is fairly straightforward. Stressed out teacher dad Patrick Wilson and terrible ballad writer mum Rose Byrne and their floppy haired weans move into big, spooky house. Annoying oldest child questions lack of photographs of Dad then KO's into an inexplicable coma. Strange noises are heard on a baby monitor. More spooky things ensue. The family then move to another house (because it's that easy), where further spooky things ensue. Exposition dropping mother in law Barbara Hershey drops some exposition and tells them to call in a team of 'experts', batshit insane things ensue, BOOM, shovel to the face of a twist ending.

Thankfully I wasn't alone in thinking so. Rose Byrne thought so too.

Don't get me wrong, there were some very effective scares in this film. Mostly involving dancing children, which terrify me at the best of times. But this film is so keen to force scares in your face that most of them are hard to avoid. The lighting, sound design, hammy exposition: nothing's a surprise, so that when the good scares come along they're noticeably good.

Sadly anything which might have salvaged the film are ruined when the psychic investigator experts come a-knocking and the whole thing just becomes some weird inexplicable mess. When the link between annoying coma child and his Dad is revealed via some badly Photoshopped pictures, all logic (if that's even the word) flies out the door almost as fast as my interest.

All of this could have been somewhat saved if I had actually cared about any of the characters... but I didn't. Rose Byrne plays one bad ballad then sniffles and screams her way through the rest of the film. Patrick Wilson is predictably sceptical then buys right into it. The psychic investigators provide some laughs but they're dropped right in the middle of all the awkward hand-wringing that it feels a little cheap. There's a séance scene involving a gas mask that was unintentionally hilarious (at least I think it was), and then the climactic battle is a scare free zone that's like watching a bad stage play.

Overall, I'm very glad I watched Insidious. I could've watched the second one first and then went back to check out the original, but instead I've saved myself two hours. I'm... gonna consider that a win. Incidentally here's a better film that uses a baby monitor to beat you over the head with scares. You're welcome.

I've Had Worse Sundays, But Needs More Gosling

It must be a sweet life being Ryan Gosling. Really. He makes super cool films, in which he even portrays head-stomping loners or shiftless alcoholics as being sympathetic and strangely likeable. He is also awesome in these films. Ryan Gosling literally does not make shit films. (I say this as I've never seen The Notebook. Apparently by admitting to this, I am waiving my right to a vagina).
From what I can tell this film is about Ryan Gosling's relationship with a giant face eater who has no regard for umbrellas.
After a distinctly indistinct reaction to Lords Of Salem, I was keen for something a bit more chewy. Maybe a bit of gritty realism, some character turmoils, Ryan Gosling in some kind of vehicle, emotional growth, Ryan Gosling seething, a densely plotted story, Ryan Gosling sans shirt...

At first glance The Place Beyond The Pines promised all of these. It was from Derek Cianfrance, helmer of ambivalence-fest Blue Valentine. I wanted to love Blue Valentine, and after a second viewing I did... not... hate it... but I couldn't quite feel the love that everyone else seemed to have for it. Still, I felt somewhat for our protagonists. They'd gotten a bit of a shitty deal. There was even an abortion scene for good measure. Because it's not a serious relationship drama without an abortion scene.

I didn't actually know anything about The Place apart from the blurb I'd read in the GFF programme. It really didn't give anything away and I decided not to read anything further about it. I'm glad I did; the film took several directions I wasn't prepared for, including an end-of-first-act finale that fully shocked me. R-Gos plays Handsome Luke, a stunt bike drivin' carnie covered in rubbish chicken-scratch tattoos. Obviously this makes him entirely more appealing for me (I worry sometimes). He catches up with last year's carnival flame Rowina (Eva Mendes, given a scraggy hair job and puffy eyes so you know she's doing serious acting). She now has *drum roll* yup, a baby.

Me and Ryan Gosling are meant to be because we have the same terrified expression when faced with a tiny human. Also nothing says "Mr Right" like a tiny knife face tattoo.
Handsome Luke decides the best way to provide for his child is to bluster in as though he's never been away, despite Rowina having a new man. One who has a home, car, money and is in every way a better choice of father figure. Still, it's to R-Gos's credit that you can't help but feel for Luke; his ham-fisted attempts at makeshift parenting are deeply flawed but there are some very sweet moments. All he wants to do is provide for the baby he feels he's neglected (despite not knowing he was a father in the first place).

It ticks all the boxes of indie relationship drama so far, huh? The film then takes a turn into Bradley Cooper's story. After Silver Linings Playbook I was fully prepared to get as involved in this as I did with Handsome Luke. After all, Luke was a 'bad egg' yet still adorably likeable. Cooper's Avery Cross is a husband, father, cop and comes from a good family. He's clearly the one we're supposed to be rooting for, right? Wrong. His story drags, his character comes across as utterly underhanded and unlikeable. Poor Rose Byrne is shoehorned into a tiny role which gives her no room to breathe. She's referred to as being a ball-buster by Avery's cop pals, because she shows concern over his premature return to work. That's it.

There's also the dreaded tacked on end section, thrusting the film 15 years into the future. It does this without any sort of character development; except that Avery's son AJ is a massive jock douchebag, and Luke's son Jason is a loner stoner at odds with his disjointed background. There were several points before this where I felt the film should've ended, but didn't. It was a nice touch, but slightly unnecessary. The leap forward would, I feel, have worked better if the film was in fact not a film, but a serial drama. There's alot of good ideas here, but it almost feels like too many.

As a character study, it has plenty of potential but there's so much going on that there's no wiggle room or space for anyone to develop fully. Characters such as Avery Cross seemed so single minded with their own agenda, it was hard to care for them. Even Handsome Luke's characterisation wasn't as rounded as it could've been, and the supporting cast are underdeveloped too. Female characters don't come across well; the contrast between Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne could've been far more interesting had they been given more than just sideshow roles.

This is by no means a bad film. It's a very well made film. It looks good, the buzzing neon of the carnival, the dusty streets of backwater upstate New York, the glorious stretch of green horizon of the title. There's no shortage of ideas on show, I just wish they'd been a little more selective. Blue Valentine's study of a relationship breakdown felt a bit claustrophobic at times but the closeness at least allowed us an insight into the characters' motivations (or lack thereof). At 140 mins it's already pretty lengthy and still there's alot that could've benefitted from some extra padding. Maybe I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and rewatch. Maybe I'll imagine how much more expansive and engaging it could've been as say, a three part drama. Maybe I'll remember that I'm not just a female in anatomical terms and actually get round to watching The Notebook. Stranger things have happened...

My First Frightfest

After some serious panic-writing at uni, when I'd leave blogging or writing 'til the absolute last minute, I swore I'd never again find myself writing about all the things at once. It's not as if I even took notes. I'd literally be relying on my sketchy memory alone, which was evident more so in some things than others.

Thanks to Google Image and sweet improv skills, no one will ever know I totally fell asleep before the end of The Searchers. Perfect. Crime.
In between a couple of trips to Glasgow Film Festival and a midweek cinema trip with Mama Calgie (thank you Orange and Cineworld Unlimited cards for making it easier than ever for mother/daughter bonding times), I also made a wee trip to some museums, celebrated boyface's birthday and terrorised the roads. Sooo it's been relatively busy round these parts and yes, I fell behind in my attempts to blog. Boo me. Still, I'm nothing if not really, really unemployed so thankfully my Mondays are pretty empty, giving me time to catch up in between Four Weddings (shut up) and Come Dine With Me (I bet more people watch this than admit to it).

Friday saw my first ever trip to FrightFest, a weekend long embarrassment of gory riches. I've always wanted to go for the full weekend, but our trip was for one film and one film only... Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem. I saw a trailer for it at the Twins Of Evil tour in November, and was super disappointed that I'd have to wait until April for official release. Thanks to my good pal beewaits I managed to sneak in early and get tickets for the film's UK premiere and have been counting down the days since January. Rob Zombie's last two offerings (Halloween and Halloween 2) have been nothing short of a bit rubbish. That said, House Of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects were hardly masterpieces, but they were shlocky and inventive enough to hold my attention.

The real gem, however, came before the main feature. Squeezed up in the nosebleed seats, we were introduced to the first episode of Norwegian comedy/thriller/whatever, Hellfjord. I was a bit squeamish when the words 'dead horse' were mentioned, but no way was I going to wuss out in a room full of horror fans. I have since tried to decsribe the sublime joy of Hellfjord using the words 'dead horse', but no one's buying. Trust me, it's so much better than that suggests. And I'm a vegetarian. You can find the trailer here. You won't regret it. Especially as it's Norwegian without subtitles therefore gives nothing away, apart from amusing Norwegian pronunciation HELLFJOOORD.

I was almost disappointed when it ended and up rolled Lords Of Salem. I'd kind of forgotten that's what we were there to see. Still, we'd been waiting for it long enough, and I had a wee gingerbread man, so I was pretty easily placated. In actual fact it wasn't as terrible as I thought. Even a terrible film can be saved if it's enjoyably terrible, but Lords captured my attention for the most part. (In no small part thanks to the fact that RZ thinks his wife is super hot and should wear as little clothes as possible at all times. I don't disagree).

Thank you, RZ, for slow tracking shots and liberally applied face paint.   The plot is simple enough: radio DJ and recovering addict Heidi receives a weird vinyl addressed from the cryptically titled 'Lords'. The music has a creepy effect on her, as well as several other women around Salem. Her super overfriendly landlady may or may not be involved (given that the landlady's sister is played by Dee Wallace it's easy enough to make an educated guess). Some super in depth research by local writer Francis Matthias (Bruce Davison) uncovers some 'surprising' truths about Heidi's bloodline and a link to Margaret Morgan, local coven leader and victim of the Salem Witch Trials.

The film trundled along until the last twenty minutes, after which any semblance of plot was discarded in favour of Sheri Moon Zombie riding a goat. Because of course. There was an onslaught of fake blood and gory imagery, a quick summation at the end and that... was really that. I kind of felt robbed of a payoff. We even stayed 'til the lights went up, in the hope of a wee somethin' somethin' at the end, but no. I'll no doubt make a return trip to see this when it opens on general release in April, but until then I'm actually kinda undecided how I felt about it. I did kind of love everything SMZ wore, but that's just my inner mini-mosher talking, she likes stripy 'hings and skull make up. I WILL NEVER GROW UP.

Saying that Lords Of Salem is better than the Halloween films is kind of a backhanded compliment, like saying having a cold is better than straight up dying. It's not game changing but if you like your gore in your face and a lax approach to storytelling, it's not the worst. I wish I'd been able to catch at least one more flick at FrightFest for comparison, mostly because I kinda really want to see another delicious episode of Hellfjord. I'd been hoping to catch The ABC's Of Death and Byzantium, but alas was too slow off the mark. Ah well. There's always next year. Until then, at the very least I've learned not to trust kindly faced women bearing cake. And that if I ever go under a pseudonym, it's a good idea to ensure my real name can't be found by typing said pseudonym into Google. Simple things, but valuable nonetheless.

Incidentally, just for once I'd love to see a film which deals with heroin without using a Lou Reed track. Seriously. Rather than actually shoot a heroin scene (no pun intended, for once), I'm surprised most films don't just cut to black and play a few bars of Venus In Furs.