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...

The Post-Christmas Binge: Take 5 From The DVD Pile

Despite my last posting on New Year's Resolutions, one that I made in all seriousness was to make myself write more. Regardless of whether or not it'll actually be seen. Not for any glorification purposes, purely just to keep my brain ticking over in a somewhat creative manner. Which is all very well and good, but the doing of it... that's the tricky part.

While mulling over 'hings to write about, it clicked that the answer was right in front of me. Because I was watching TV at the time. I know, I know, there's a million people writing about what they watch more regularly and concisely than me. But my Christmas haul (and holidays.... ho) largely comprised of DVD's in all manner of genre shapes. Films, television... well, that was about it, really.

A combination of crappy weather, lack of funds and that general lazy feeling that sweeps over the post-Christmas haze and into the new year ensured that alot of viewing time was clocked up, and I actually made good on starting to watch (or re-watch) things that I'd always meant to, but never quite got round to it. So here's a small (five point, because more than five as I've previously stated seems excessive) selection of my post-festive film viewing. The TV pile is a list unto itself.

1. American Hustle

Apparently there's some male cast members in there, but damned if I can see them...

I figured I'd start the year by blowing the dust off of my Cineworld card and justifying my having a shitty Orange contract, and made my first trek to the pictures for David O. Russell's latest offering. I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook, although mostly for presence of Jennifer Lawrence. The Fighter was a far better film, with better performances, but this comprised the cast of the two. It was also a warm up for the forthcoming Wolf of Wall Street- something about privileged douchebags being douchey with money that I find so wholly entertaining.

American Hustle was, at best, an amusingly gritty confection. There were good performances- of course J-Law was flawless, and Christian Bale continued his chameleon-like character preparation by cutting about with a gross beer gut and nasty combover. Amy Adams looked amazing but faltered with a dodgy accent, and Bradley Cooper was so smug I wanted to reach into the screen and pull his stupid perm out of his head. Although he's supposed to be a douchebag, so fair play...?

There were moments when I thought the film was really going to take off, that the hustle was well and truly underway. However these moments were punctuated by boggy follow ups that didn't really go anywhere, and as a result the film felt as bloated as its leading man. Lop off about 20 minutes and it would've been leaner, meaner and a good sight more gripping. It never really got to the nitty-gritty of the corruption its core cast were trying to expose, but the 'good times' never really felt so good. Good, but not the classic its title suggested.

2. Lost Highway

What. The utter. Fuck.

The boy and I made the (probably foolish) decision to watch Lost Highway after bingeing on the first series of Twin Peaks (more on that later). After about five episodes, we put on Lost Highway somewhere in the region of 1am. Shit got real. And also very, very surreal.

Dynamite hairdo though 'tricia, really, well done. Also nice rack. You'll see.

In short... if that can be done... this film is a headfuck masterpiece of sex, suspicion, sex, a killer soundtrack, entirely unreliable narrators and... sex. The soundtrack features pretty much all of my Spotify playlist- think Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Smashing Pumpkins and David Bowie. Hardly surprising, considering it was compiled by Trent Reznor- who also produced one of my other favourite film soundtracks, Natural Born Killers.

If this film can be summarised in any way, it's a noir horror almost-roadtrip. It deals with themes of identity. People may or may not exist, and may or may not be other people. Characters disappear and reappear, or they might not. Characters from one story, seemingly opposites from one another, are thrown together via mysterious and tragic circumstance and the whole thing flows like one of those dreams where you and your family are being murdered and you can't wake up (the kind I had when I finished watching it somewhere in the region of 3am). Definitely one which will benefit from repeat viewings, after wading my way through more Lynch.

3. Django Unchained

I'd already seen this Southern epic in the cinema at the start of last year. Thankfully the boy hadn't, which was the perfect excuse to spend another three hours in Tarantino's sun bleached deep South. The plot is as sprawling as the deserts our heroes Django (Jamie Foxx) and Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) trek across hunting bounty and searching for Django's wife, from whom he was separated.

Being a Tarantino film, there's plenty of cussing and bloodshed ahoy. The performances are excellent, and despite its fearsome running time only really drags towards the end (when Tarantino adopts an Australian accent that makes me wonder if he's ever actually met an Australian person). I adored Inglourious Basterds, but didn't much care for Kill Bill or Deathproof, so this really could've gone either way.

                                             

Not quite the 'Candy Land' I envisaged... ever.

Thankfully my fears were put to rest, although perhaps not one I could watch again in a hurry. Mostly because it's nearly three hours long. Also its depiction of slavery is as nasty as you'd expect: it doesn't hold back and plays with its exploitation and historical genre mashing. Still, I enjoyed the fact that I could root for Christoph Waltz in this one, whereas despite his sweet performance, Hans Landa was nothing but a squirmy, scheming, cringe-inducing Nazi bastard. So that was nice... As a nice counterpoint to all the violence, it's also hilarious, something I felt was missing even from Inglourious. I'm more than excited for the tentatively titled Hateful Eight, that's for sure.

4. Pacific Rim

Autobots wage their battle, 

to destroy the evil forces of... oh. Wait.

I love Guillermo del Toro. I read an article in Empire years ago- early teens at most- where he was talking about the sound design in his Spanish Civil War ghost story, The Devil's Backbone. This article got me interested in two things: sound design and Guillermo del Toro. I even dig the films he takes on as producer: The Orphanage and Julia's Eyes are utterly chilling examples of how to be scary without a) being a tired exorcism movie and b) terrible, bland special effects.

Unfortunately Pacific Rim wasn't an unsettling, subtly creepy ghost story: quite the opposite. It was a loud, brash, boys' toys story, where the scariest thing was Charlie Hunnam's American accent. I get that it's not aimed at me: it's for boys who grew up in the late 80s, when Transformers reigned supreme and anything was cool as long as there was a robot involved. Obviously the boy loved it, being its target audience. I loved the presence of Charlie Day. I would've liked Charlie Day to appear in every scene, but alas, no.

We had more fun predicting the Speak & Spell dialogue. I didn't get why Jaegers (dudes in robots) had to fight the evil Kaiju (supposedly terrifiying sea creatures) when Idris Elba could've chewed them up and spat them out them along with the scenery. Still, it was all very loud and... smashy... the cheesy dialogue was helpfully blown away by giant robot vs sea monster fights, which helped. In saying that I'm sure more people were killed by thewir battles on land as they smashed through cars and buildings with little regard for the civilians they were supposed to be saving... I'll call it del Toro acting on a boyhood whim and reserve my real judgement for his co-authored series of books, The Strain Trilogy (which I can't read yet because I mistakenly bought the third one. Damn).

5. Serenity

I can't... it's too soon...

I first saw this when it was released in the cinema, somewhere in the region of eight years ago. I liked it fine, although I felt I was missing out on an inside joke. The dialogue seemed disjointed and I didn't feel any kind of connection to the characters. I told myself I'd go back and watch Firefly and finally, I did. A mere couple of weekends ago, I'm ashamed to say. The boy got the series on Bluray, which meant my DVD collection got another new addition. Now I could understand the torment every other sci-fi/ Whedon fan has been feeling for almost a decade. Yay...?

Suffice to say I much preferred Serenity second time around. While I still felt it was a bit more emotionally empty than the show (the feels... so many feels...), my newly found character engagement meant that I felt truly happy, devastated and connected at all the right points. There were a fair few plot points which were left to dangle from the series, but this is a small niggle: it's basically a second series condensed into a film, and there's bound to be alot left out. However infuriating it may be.

I was reluctant to watch it purely because I didn't want it to be over and damnit... now it is. I'm gonna have to get baws deep in my TV boxset pile and make up for the gaping, Firefly-shaped loss I now feel. On the plus side we've got Much Ado About Nothing to look forward to. It'll... it'll have to do.

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.

Old School Heroes

I don't have a Twitter account. I keep going to think about setting one up, then I just... don't. It's the myriad of hashtags and RT's and people referring to each other as @. I close the page and be put the idea to bed. I'm like the annoying dieter pal who can open a fridge, have a squint and walk away, waistline unscathed.
I have nothing really against it. I can see why it's a good idea. It normalises celebrities and makes them more accessible to us everyday shlubs. Only time will tell whether this is in fact a good idea.

The question was "where are you going, ma'am?". You're in an actual cab.

 

I think I'm just nostalgic for simpler times. It's frightening that Kim Kardashian's tweet was one of the better spelled examples I could find. I would've loved to have been witness to the Golden Age of Hollywood, when film stars existed in actual film, not gossip mags and reality shows (although Living Lohan has given me more snarky pleasure than I could've hoped for). They were proper idols; enigmatic and charismatic, and rarely seen slipping a nip in drunken public. I don't doubt that they did... I just like that we didn't see it.

 

My dad has always been into the 'classic' movies, the old black and white gangster epics, Casablanca, moving images containing John Wayne's presence. "God you don't know anything about films" I tuttted with a none more teenage eye-roll. Usually while on my way to see an underdressed, sweaty cast of aesthetically pleasing no-names get hack 'n' slashed. Once I turned 20 and got over the snark I began to realise he wasn't so wrong. The old yins really are the good yins. I love LA Confidential and like most pasty, nerdy twenty-somethings am partial to all of the Tarantino but I always feel that these films are better appreciated when you see what came before them.

 

Since I'm a top daughter I got my dad tickets for White Heat which was showing as part of Glasgow Film Festival. Since I tend to just get ideas and run wildly with them like a child with scissors I overlooked the small detail of an 11am start. DOOM. The cinema was surprisingly busy though, a testament to the lasting power that a truly good movie can have. Despite having all of the flu currently available in the Glasgow area I pulled it together and actually enjoyed it. Despite its two-hour running time it didn't drag (aside from a slight technical glitch). The ending is apparently infamous but I'm glad for once I know about it in advance. Even if I did, the experience of seeing it on the big screen would've been well worth the repeat viewing.

 

Jimmy Cagney also originated the expression "boo, you whore".  

The action begins with a bold train robbery that involves Cagney jumping onto the top of a train. He kills people coldly for a big money heist. He starts fights and runs amok in prison, and even plots a daring escape. With hostages. It doesn't let up right until literally 'The End'. There are shorter films made for more money that don't have that kind of action.

 

Who knows, I might even be convinced to go and rewatch The Public Enemy, which I vaguely remember from a far off uni screening. And sometimes yes, it's OK to admit when a parent is right about something that you think you know everything about. It's totally a sign of being a grown up. However being the perma-rebellious teenager I am, my next visit to the film festival will be for the latest... umm.. surely cult venture from Rob Zombie, the gloriously titled Lords Of Salem. I'm fully prepared to love it in a completely opposite way to this. But I'm still not gonna tweet about it.