Nil By Mouth

UK/France | 1997 | Directed by Gary Oldman

Logline: A working class family, and their immediate friends, struggle to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence.

“I remembered that day ... because I could've put that on his fucking tombstone, you know? Because I don't remember one kiss, you know, one cuddle. Nothing. I mean, plenty went down, not a lot come out. You know, nothing that was any fucking good ... He was fucking freezing cold. It frightened the life out of me. I was looking at him, you know? For the first time in my life, I talked to him. I said, ‘Why didn't you ever love me?’”

Based on his own experiences growing up Gary Oldman penned an utterly uncompromising, searing portrait of addiction and violence. With French director Luc Besson an unlikely co-producer it is the grim as nails life and times of South-East Londoner Raymond (Ray Winstone), his pregnant wife Val (Kathy Burke), her young brother Billy (Charlie Miles-Creed), and their immediate friends and family, a devastating, blistering nightmare of working class urban disease.

Billy is an adolescent, a junkie, and a thief. He does petty crime for Ray and his mate Mark (Jamie Foreman, son of the notorious Cockney gangster Freddie Foreman), and steals Ray’s stash. Ray is a violent, belligerent thug and an addict too, and doesn’t think twice in viciously assaulting Billy when he confronts him over the theft. They are a family trapped in a vicious circle of drug and alcohold abuse and domestic violence. But the worst is yet to be unleashed. 

Val and Billy’s mother Janet (Laila Morse, Oldman’s sister) spends much of her time socialising with them, and their grandmother Kath (Edna Doré) is often included in get-togethers, as is Michelle (Leah Fitzgerald), Ray and Val’s young daughter. Billy hangs out with his heavily tattooed mate Danny (Steve Sweeney). Val hangs out with her girlfriend Paula (Chrissie Cotteril) and her partner Angus (Jon Morrison). They all spend much of their time at the local pub or in front of the telly at home getting blitzed, but no one more so than Ray, while Billy’s smack habit is getting out of control. 

Shot with mostly handheld camera, using available light,  filling the background with non-professional actors and locals as extras, and employing the thick Cockney vernacular, Nil by Mouth has an authenticity and gritty realism like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. This is enhanced ten-fold by the extraordinarily convincing acting of the core cast, of which Ray Winstone’s central performance is monumental in its ferocity and conviction (his inebriated monologue to his own reflection is something to behold). How he could not have been nominated for an Academy Award is a travesty (just as David Thewlis’s snub was for Naked). Mind you Kathy Burke is particularly affecting (and upsetting as her character drinks and smokes whilst pregnant), and she won Best Actress at Cannes for her role as Valerie. 

I have never seen such a frightening drunkard on film as the Raymond of Nil by Mouth. The movie is dedicated to the memory of Oldman’s father, so is it safe to assume that Raymond is modeled on Gary’s own dad? If so, Nil by Mouth is a desperately sad obituary, depicting the harshest of truths that most violence is part of a cycle of poverty and bad parenting. It might sound like a terribly clichéd analogy, but love makes the world go round, without it the cogs seize, the giant machine crashes, and blood is spilled. 

What is most horrendous is not Billy’s junk habit, not any of the appalling verbal abuse hurled from the mouths of Billy to his mother, or from Ray to Billy or Val. There is a scene of physical violence when Ray assaults Val and beats the living daylights out of her borne of his own drunken jealousy and coke-addled paranoia. The beating is terrible to witness (although it’s actually delivered out of shot from the camera), but when we see the horrific nature of Val’s injuries and her denial to her mother that it was Ray who beat her, the effect is absolutely devastating. This is the kind of violence too close to home, the kind that riddles broken families, the kind that is so often never reported. 

Special note must go to the awesome special effects make-up applied to Kathy Burke (although how her wounds heal faster than the “love bite” on Billy’s nose is a small distraction), and to the use of music; Eric Clapton provides a surprisingly low-key score, while additional songs are used to punctuate scenes, including two evocative nu-soul tracks from singer Frances Ashman.

As repellent and harrowing as this domestic scenario and its surrounding seedy London working class is, Gary Oldman has made a darkly brilliant and dangerously compelling movie (his one and only as director). The last scene echoes on a disquieting note; the extended family gathered around discussing the plight of incarcerated young Billy who has narrowly escaped death. They joke about him being moved to the infirmary wing housing the freaks where he’ll probably get raped. The family is re-forming a dysfunctional bond, over the violent misfortune of one of their own. Very little has changed. This is no morality tale, yet Nil by Mouth paints a hellish picture that speaks a thousand hardened words. 

“When you go out, you go with your mates ... and when you are in, you're pissed asleep in front of the television. I'll turn the television off, go to bed ... you follow me at three in the morning stinking of booze. That's what I get. Either that or you're knocking me about. I'm 32 today, you know, and I feel so fucking old. You know, I'm so tired. I wanna be able to look back and say, "I had a bit of fun." Instead of saying, ‘Everyone fucking felt sorry for me.’  I mean, that's the life I've got. Do you hear what I'm saying? I just don't want it. I'll find somebody else. You know, someone who can love me. Someone kind.”

Naked

UK | 1993 | directed by Mike Leigh

Logline: A homeless man arrives in London where he bothers an old girlfriend, and wanders the streets ranting at strangers, whilst another equally embittered man harasses and abuses women.

 “You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. And humanity is just a cracked egg. And the omelet stinks.” 

Mike Leigh’s greatest movie, Naked, is a tour-de-force of direction, acting, and writing; the screenplay of which was created mostly from improvisation during an eleven-week rehearsal period. Director Leigh’s original script was only twenty-five pages long and in utilising his renowned in-depth dramaturgy and workshop ethic, he carved a powerhouse narrative about the desolation of relationships and the despair of humanity. A cracked, fragile society desperate for love, starved of affection, weighed down by the burden of urban pressures, maimed by the cruelty set upon each other by each other. Naked is the human soul and its psyche laid bare and scratched raw until it bleeds.

Johnny (David Thewlis in the performance of his career) is on the run. He’s sexually assaulted a woman in a dark alleyway and she’s escaped, screaming bloody murder. He steals a car and high tails it out of Manchester, arriving in London where he makes his way to his ex-girlfriend Louise’s (Lesley Sharp) flat, then abandons the car and waits outside the front door. Louise’s flatmate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) arrives and lets him in for a cuppa. 

Johnny spouts blackly comic vitriol and pearls of darkened wisdom in equal measure. Sophie soaks it up as it washes over her. Before you can say “cheeky young monkay” Johnny and Sophie are having urgent sex. For Johnny it’s contemptuous release, for Sophie it’s any port in a storm, and she wants this particular wretched boat to stay moored. Louise arrives home from work and is surprised and disgusted with Johnny and her flatmate. Johnny lingers until Louise’s indifference and Sophie’s desperation starts to buckle his patience, and he flees the house. 

Johnny encounters various lost souls during the course of his nocturnal wandering and early morning crawl; an erratic young couple (Ewen Bremner and Susan Vidler), a lonely night watchman (Peter Wight), a booze-addled older woman (Deborah McLaren), a pretty wallflower waitress (Gina McKee), as well as an aggressive man postering walls, and an intolerant chauffeur. All of these people are in many ways not too dissimilar to Johnny; lonely, affected, embittered, struggling with their place in society. Johnny manages to charm his way into their lives, but finds himself banished or he becomes frustrated and leaves. 

Jeremy/Sebastian (Greg Cruttwall) is a wealthy playboy sociopath (borderline psychopath). While Johnny is weaving his way in and out of London’s back streets Jeremy is worming his way through his own series of dodgy escapades; first he propositions a masseuse, then following a dinner date he leaves with the waitress, and eventually winds up at the flat of Louise and Sophie. It turns out he not only knows Sandra (Claire Skinner), the lease-holder who’s return from holiday is imminent, but is apparently the landlord. He and Sophie have sex and he treats her with contempt and cruelty. Johnny arrives back at the flat having been beaten up by a roaming gang. Jeremy and Johnny share a strange moment of surprised recognition. 

There is an underlying sadness that permeates Naked like rising damp. But it’s not a tragedy, although its characters are all inherently tragic, pathetic and/or loathsome. Naked is the darkest of comedies, as pitch-black as smoldering English coal. Johnny is an extraordinary, misanthropic piece of work. It seems he wishes from deep within his bruised and aching heart that the world can be a better place, but his psyche and soul are so damaged he can only find disappointment and spill forth a perpetual cynicism; the centerpiece of his school of thought is his extended stay with Brian, the “insecurity” guard, whom Johnny shares a discourse on the apocalypse. 

One of the primary themes of Naked is the failure of human beings to connect, of a basic, almost primal, behaviour based on selfishness. All of the characters presented are locked in their realm of despair and loneliness. Naked portrays a truly lonely planet. Even Louise, the only person in the movie with the capacity for unconditional love is abandoned. Sandra is neurotic, Sophie is pathetic, and Jeremy is evil. Johnny is not quite the anti-hero, more the tortured protagonist, capable of abject antagonism, yet is oddly, grotesquely fascinating, as a result of his searing intelligence and acidic wit. 

Leigh’s cinematographer Dick Pope shoots the city in a cold, grim palette, and the characters are dressed in dark hues. A memorable image from the movie that sums up its dysfunctional themes and intent is that of Sophie in black bra and panties straddling Jeremy in black jockeys, hands behind his head, a smug expression on his face, she whipping her long dark hair against his body like a cat o’ nine tails, moaning in submission. It’s both funny and depressing at the same time. 

Naked takes no prisoners, makes no concessions, offers no explanations, leaves no excuses. It is a nightmare torn apart to expose the broken dreams of the emotionally fragile and frail. Johnny is an opportunist whose abhorrent behaviour is born from desperation, while Jeremy is a scheming manipulator whose aberrant actions are born from wickedness. I like to imagine a Biblical perspective to the narrative suggesting that Johnny and Jeremy have been kicked out of heaven, holding contempt for God and all of His creation, humankind, but especially women. Jeremy is a demon, Johnny is a fallen angel. Both are in purgatory.

Naked is not a movie specifically about misogynist men, but a movie about the capacity men have for self-destruction and cruelty, and the women who allow these contemptuous creatures to enter their lives. Naked is a movie where optimism has been crucified and human frailty is abused.

Endlessly quotable, blackly funny, harsh, corrosive and deeply resonant; a movie that ages with the tannin of a fortified wine, yet retains the taste of the most bitter pill. A portrait of despair, a study of misanthropy, a disquieting glimmer of humankind’s perseverance in the face of moral decay and low-esteem, Naked is cinema’s quintessential suicidal cry for help. “Don’t waste your life.”

"Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night it was never weaker."

Morvern Callar

UK/Canada | 2002 | Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Logline: Following her boyfriend’s suicide an impulsive young woman uses his money to go on holiday with her best friend and indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle. 

In a career performance Samantha Morton becomes the titular character from Alan Warner’s brilliant 1995 debut novel about a shellshocked and careless woman on a spiralling journey of self-discovery and self-abandonment. The novel is Scottish in origin, however while best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) is full brogue Scots, Morton’s Callar is English. Not that it really matters, Much of the narrative takes place abroad in the tourist hotspots of coastal Spain (the island of Ibiza, mainly). 

Many of the novel’s peripheral characters are still floating in and around the narrative (Red Hanna, Cat in the Hat, Dazzer, Couris Jean, Sheila Tequila, Creeping Jesus, and Tom Boddington, the eager beaver literary agent who visits Morvern in Spain), but for almost the entire travelogue, emotionally, psychologically, and physically, the perspective is Callar’s. This is her journey, both inner and outer. But there isn’t an ending, well, not a conventional one, and the movie works all the better for it. 

Beautifully shot and edited by Alwin H. Küchler and Lucia Zucchetto, respectively, Morvern Callar has the unusual distinction of having the source material written by a man, but of a woman’s perspective (rare), and the movie adaptation co-penned (with Liana Dognini) and directed by a woman. It is director Ramsay’s female intuition that gives Morvern Callar and added depth of colour and tone. The narrative becomes Ramsay’s vision as viewed through Morvern’s eyes. 

There is a sublime, darkened poetry at work within Morvern Callar, watching this fearless, troubled young woman dive into the deep end and swim with the sharks, pretending they’re dolphins. This may very well be Morton’s vehicle, but it is Ramsay navigating and driving. Warner’s novel becomes a shell, but it’s a hard shell with strong, distinct markings. 

Ultimately Ramsay isn’t interested in capturing or portraying realism, but neither was Warner. This is a story of inner turmoil, executed through outer impulsions. It is xenophobia embraced, it is gregariousness thrown in a corner, the extroverted held captive. Where is love? It is lying in the warm surf. Where is lust? It’s sprawled on the dancefloor. Where is responsibility? It’s floating in the Champagne. Where is the future? It’s present in the past. 

Morvern Callar is an acquired taste, like a ocean delicacy; salty, slippery, viscous, invigorating, elusive, immersive. Samantha Morton and Lynne Ramsay become symbiotic, as they traverse the landscape of the feminine wastrel, the fox unaware of its slyness, the damaged, self-medicated soul who has stitched herself up. 

“Where are we going? asks Lanna , after Morvern has made a most ambitious decision involving her dead lover’s manuscript. He’s history, it’s time to find hers. “Somewhere beautiful,” Morvern replies with a grin. Leave your sensibilities behind, let yourself be entranced on this languid, wayward rave. 

It’s curious to note that Ramsay didn’t direct again for nearly a decade, finally following up Morvern Callar with the excellent, deeply disquieting We Need to Talk About Kevin. 

Badlands

US | 1973 | Directed Terrence Malick

Logline: In the late 50s an impressionable teenage girl is befriended by a reckless young man who leads her into an interstate murder spree. 

“Of course I had to keep all of this a secret from my Dad. He would had a fit because Kit was ten years older than me and came from the wrong side of the tracks so called.”

Holly (Sissy Spacek) is a fifteen-year-old girl with her head in the clouds. Her father (Warren Oates), a sign painter, has relocated them into Fort Dupree, South Dakota, and it is here where she meets the handsome, restless Kit (Martin Sheen), a greaser biding his time, toying with escaping the clutches of small town existence. He lures the pretty redhead away from her front yard and before you can say “Good golly, well I'll be damned!” they’ve fallen into a hapless, hopeless infatuation, much to the concern of her strict father.   

“Little did I realise that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana.”

It is Holly’s voice-over narration that provides Badlands with its dreamy, juxtaposed morality. It’s as if Holly is watching herself drift along on a picturesque travelogue, unable to intervene, her life inexorably becoming a train wreck in beautiful slow motion. It is love’s sweet adventure that unfurls and traps her in its web and it is life’s bitter irony that leaves her amidst love’s ruin. 

Terrence Malick’s feature debut is, arguably, his most accomplished and resonant movie. Loosely based on the real-life killing spree of Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in 1958, although not credited or acknowledged at the time, here’s a conciseness that encapsulates the narrative, that keeps the edges from fraying, yet still manages to harness a poetic sense of the wilderness, of wandering. Malick has always managed to imbue his movies with a soft, dreamy mise-en-scene, even within the framework of a war movie (The Thin Red Line), but with Badlands the narrative and style are so perfectly entwined, it’s hard to imagine anyone else at the helm. 

Spacek and Sheen are terrific. Spacek, who was twenty-three at the time captures the wistfulness of a teenager with a delicate charisma and brooding intelligence. Sheen, all James Dean swagger and nonchalance, had already spent fifteen years doing television, with a couple of features under his belt. His performance is amongst the best of his career. 

“One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad's stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody... For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened.”

Three cinematographers worked on the movie, but kudos to Malick for reigning in the visual style with such fluidity, something he’s achieved and maintained on all his movies. It’s interesting to note that the production designer, Jack Fisk, would go on to marry Spacek and work on David Lynch’s Eraserhead, of which Spacek helped secure financing for. It was her experience on Badlands that made her appreciate the artistry of cinema, and aware that visionary filmmakers needed the support. Sheen still regards Malick’s screenplay for Badlands as the best he’s ever read. 

Badlands is melancholy and disquieting, undeniably American, brilliantly evocative, and one of my favourite movies of the 70s. 

10 Cloverfield Lane

US | 2016 | Directed by Dan Trachtenberg

Logline: Following a car accident a young woman is held captive in an underground shelter, sharing it with a two men, both of whom claim the outside has been affected by a catastrophic chemical attack.

Originating from a script titled The Cellar by Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken, and whipped into more interesting shape with the addition of Whiplash screenwriter Damien Chazelle, as a debut feature vehicle for director Trachtenberg 10 Cloverfield Lane is a much better movie than the producers probably thought they had on their hands when they decided to dress it up as a kind of “blood relative” sequel to the excellent found footage monster flick Cloverfield. 

It’s a shame that the Cloverfield tag has been attached, because it ultimately does the movie no real favours. Fans of the original Cloverfield expecting another hapless-pretty-young-folk-on-the-run-whilst-a-behemoth-beast-runs-amok will probably be disappointed. There are some surprises to be had, but the less you know of them, the better. Hopefully you can get to see the movie before the idiots spoil the fun. And there’s a lot of fun to be had with this movie. 

It’s an old-fashioned nail-biter, in the Hitchcockian/Spielbergian tradition. Essentially a three-hander, and claustrophobic to boot. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, delivering a truly superb performance, plays Michelle, a woman escaping her married woes. She is sideswiped on a dark country road, far from the city, but manages to survive a nasty crash. She regains consciousness inside a bunker. Soon enough she’s introduced to her captor, a hulking embittered man called Howard (John Goodman), and his “Igor”, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), a lost soul. Seems they’ll all be underground for quite some time, as Howard insists the world above ground has been polluted from some kind of invasion, and Emmett backs the story up. 

As Michelle attempts to find out the truth, the the screw of suspense tightens, and the tension rises. Emmett leans in closer to Michelle, as Howard squints from across the table, and strange sounds echo from Howard’s farmland above. Just what exactly has happened? And just what is Howard’s real agenda? 

The first two-thirds of the movie unfold with Michelle getting to grips with her captivity and trying to cope with the preposterous notion of a possibly scorched, contaminated earth that only one night ago was perfectly fine. But if Michelle had listened more closely to her car radio on the route out of the city in the movie’s first ten minutes she’d have heard that major blackouts were affecting parts of the country. Something not right was definitely afoot. 

The final third - the last quarter even - of the movie shifts dramatically into an extended and thoroughly unnerving action set-piece, with a frayed denouement that harks back to the grim and mysterious allure of classic late 60s and 70s thrillers. At first it feels as if we’ve been thrown headlong into an entirely different movie, but the overall tone, mood, atmosphere of the movie is consistent, and the refreshingly nihilistic psychology, with a hint of hope, provides the movie with serious genre weight, not forgetting terrific periodic injections of wry humour. 

Trachtenberg has crafted an excellent old-fashioned thriller. See it on the big screen, before the twists and surprises are spoiled. If that’s at all possible in this harsh and unforgiving social media-saturated climate. 

Deliverance

US | 1972 | Directed by John Boorman

 Logline: Four adult friends embark on a weekend canoe trip only to be terrorised by angered backcountry woodsmen. 

Based on the brilliant first novel from James Dickey, an acclaimed American poet and university lecturer, who also wrote the excellent screenplay, Deliverance is a deeply impressive, but harrowing portrayal of masculinity, and the ferocious nature of man, that has lost none of its visceral power since it was first unleashed back in 1972. It is a tale of shattered innocence and ruptured, primal machismo, with an undercurrent of social and eco commentary (awe and contempt) that is apparent only through the movie’s superb use of symbolism and metaphor. Freedom is sought with single-mindedness, but the darkness of the soul is eventually laid bare, only after the mind and body is subjected to humiliation and violation. 

Lewis (Burt Reynolds in a breakthrough career performance) is the macho leader, an imposing go-getter, who loves the great outdoors. Accompanying him are his buddy Ed (Jon Voight), a pipe-smokin’ family man who likes a tipple and a challenge, Drew (Ronny Cox), another family man, with strong morals and a dab hand on the guitar, and chubby Bobby (Ned Beatty), who likes to complain, but yearns to cut loose. These four friends drive up into the heavily-wooded Appalachian hills and negotiate for some local moonshiners to drive their two cars down the mountain road trail to the Aintry river-stop where they’ll rendezvous in their canoes a couple of days later. The greasy feral mountain men wonder what the hell they wanna tackle the river for. “Cos it’s there,” replies Lewis smugly.

Not a scene or shot is superfluous in Deliverance. I raise my hat to the consummate skill of Boorman and Dickey, who along with late, great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (one of my favourite DOPs), editor Tom Priestley, and special effects technician Marcel Vercoutere, fashioned a nightmare thriller as sharp and deadly as the powerful bow and arrow brandished by Lewis and Ed (which is almost a character in itself, the other “character” being the Chatooga River – renamed the Cahulawassee in the movie - which divides South Carolina and Georgia).

The performances from the four leads are terrific, especially Jon Voight. It was Ned Beatty’s first movie, but special mention must go to Bill McKinney as Don Job, who forces poor Bobby to squeal like a pig, a nasty piece of work he is, and with few lines to utter, Herbert ‘Cowboy’ Coward, as Job’s toothless grinnin’ bosom buddy. These two backwoods bandits are an understatedly fearsome pair (decades later McKinney named his own website squeallikeapig.com!)

It’s hard to believe but the Deliverance production was uninsured. The actors all performed their own stunts, the rapids tossing resulted in Burt Reynolds breaking his coccyx. Jon Voight actually scaled the sheer vertical cliff face. Ned Beatty was the only one who had any canoeing experience, the others learnt on location. To further minimise costs, locals were hired to play the resident hillbilly folk, with one elderly gentleman improvising a buck jig which was included in the movie.

Sam Peckinpah wanted to direct, and when Boorman was signed on Peckinpah went off to make Straw Dogs. Donald Sutherland turned down one of the roles because he objected to the violence (and later regretted his decision), yet ironically a year later he starred in Don’t Look Now (1973). Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando both declined the role of Lewis, as did Lee Marvin for the role of Ed, telling Boorman he thought he and Brando were too old for the parts. James Dickey appears in a small, but convincing, part as the Aintry Sheriff who suspects the men’s story might be a little taller than they’re admitting to.

There’s an apocalyptic atmosphere that permeates the narrative of Deliverance, the title of which is a clever play on being rescued or set free and a thought or judgment, often from an authoritative voice. In this case, the title suggests the pursuit of unbridled adventure amidst the wilderness that is being threatened by urban development (the damming of the river) and the plunder of human progress. Dickey was passionate about this socio-political stance and he designed his novel as a nightmare metaphor. Boorman had a kinship with Dickey and used his skill as a director to design a mise-en-scene, a vivid, succinct visual narrative that employed both symbolism (Ed’s faltering when he tries to kill a deer and the river reducing Lewis from He-man to whimpering invalid) to the analogy of the violence of man’s inhumanity to man vs. the violence of humankind’s geographical greed.

Whilst nowhere near as graphically violent as most of today’s R-rated horror movies, Deliverance still contains the power to shock and upset, especially in the infamous rape and murder sequence, and later when we witness Lewis’s horrendous leg injury (that’s one gruesome compound fracture!), Ed impaling himself on an arrow, and the discovery of Drew’s twisted corpse (Ronny Cox suggested taking advantage of having a double-jointed shoulder!). There is an implicit violence that courses through the entire movie, despite the natural beauty of the surroundings. The movie even ends in a dream-like paroxysm of guilt and fear … and finally stillness, but with anxiety floating just below the surface.

The only thing that dates Deliverance is the use of day-for-night shooting during Ed’s nocturnal scaling of the cliff. In 1972 anamorphic lenses and film stock were a lot slower and night scenes had to be under-exposed and given a blue tint during post-production. Little else apart from that gives Deliverance away from being nearly forty-five years old (it’s not like mobile phones would’ve helped the men’s predicament!) Even the famous “Duelling Banjos” scene somehow seems ageless.

In Germany the title was changed to (and translated as) In Dying, Everyone is First. 

The Hitcher

US | 1986 | Directed by Robert Harmon

Logline: A young man manages to escape the clutches of a psychopath, but finds himself being pursued relentlessly, and framed for several murders.

The Hitcher is a ferocious beast unto itself. It was Harmon’s feature debut, having worked as a still photographer on Fade to Black (1980) and Hell Night (1981), and it was also screenwriter Eric Red’s first feature (he’d write another top-notch screenplay, made the following year, Near Dark). Red claims inspiration for The Hitcher came from The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. 

Teenager Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is on a car relocation from Chicago to San Diego. He’s tired, it’s dark and raining heavily, yet silhouetted by the roadside is a hitchhiker. Halsey picks up the stranger, immediately announcing that his mother told him never to do this. The dangerous-looking character turns and smiles, “John … Ryder”.  

Ryder (Rutger Hauer) is soft-spoken, brooding, and guarded. His silence is calculated, and the cold, slippery night weighs heavily on Halsey. Soon enough Ryder presents his hand, and Halsey’s fear grips him like a vice. The stakes have been raised, and Halsey has swallowed the bait. This game (of cat and mouse) is on for young and old. 

For an American movie, The Hitcher is in an atmospheric league of its own. It exudes more of a European mood and sensibility; minimalist dialogue, a deadly, drifting menace that verges on the supernatural, an evocative and haunting score from Mark Isham, a central tour-de-force performance that still towers above most other on-screen psychopaths, and a mythological, surreal framework that encompasses the narrative. The Hitcher is like John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978); presenting the audience with a villain that defies logic and reason, has no background, essentially no real motive, and lives primarily to terrorise and murder all those around a central figure whom has provided the killer their obsession, their morbid infatuation.

One can argue there’s a homoerotic undercurrent in The Hitcher, that John Ryder is taunting Jim Halsey in an unconsciously sexual way. There’s the touching and the looks, the teasing and the play on male virility. But more interesting is the concept that maybe John Ryder doesn’t even exist, that he’s actually a split personality of Halsey’s, or, more tenuously, a figment of his twisted imagination, created to rationalise Halsey’s serial murder spree. Sure, the entire movie is far-fetched, but, like Halloween, you embrace this internal nightmare logic in order to allow the dream-fabric to breathe. 

Later, after Halsey is framed for several murders and Ryder is definitely guilty of one, and both he and Ryder have been arrested Ryder is then interrogated by State Troopers. They discover that he has no driver’s licence, no social security number, probably no birth certificate. It’s as if he never existed. So when they ask him where he’s from, Ryder smiles and says, “Disneyland.” This is one of the movie’s many moments of brilliance; the irony of the pure evil nestled within the sanctuary of manufactured entertainment. The law is confounded by Ryder, and decide the only thing to do is have the dangerous lunatic carted off to a holding cell at the local State prison. If only it were that simple. 

I’ve not seen anything else director Robert Harmon has made, but I feel safe in stating he started at the top; The Hitcher is a masterstroke of paranoia and dread, of tension and suspense, excellent action sequences and ultra-violence to boot. C. Thomas Howell is the one weak link, delivering a stilted, wooden performance, but Rutger Hauer (in his second career-defining piece of controlled wrath, after Blade Runner four years earlier), and in the only key support role, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Nash, the waitress whom Halsey befriends in desperation, provide enough high calibre. Also notable is Jeffrey DeMunn as Captain Estridge. 

The Hitcher is a lean, mean, killing machine, cut from the uncompromising cloth of cult material. There may be a moral denouement, but the journey has been decidedly amoral, transgressive even. Pay no heed to the straight-to-video 2003 sequel or 2007 remake, they’re not worth your time. Embrace the lunacy of the unique original, let the madness take hold, and do what your mother told you never to do: go for a ride with John Ryder. He’ll kick your ass into the middle of next week, and give you nightmares for a few more.

Angel Heart

US | 1987 | Directed by Alan Parker

Logline: A dishevelled private eye takes on a mysterious client and becomes caught up in a missing persons search that threatens his sanity and endangers his life. 

A supernatural thriller that looks and feels like a 50s noir, but is wrapped in the macabre, Southern fried funk of the occult. It’s New York City, 1955. Private Investigator Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) prefers to take the easy jobs, where his cream-coloured, crumpled linen suit won’t get torn. He gets hired for a what seems like a fairly straightforward seek-and-ye-shall-find job by a man who calls himself Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro): track down a popular young crooner called Johnny Favorite, who vanished around the time the boys came home from the war. 

Angel’s investigation takes an unexpected and sombre turn after he discovers the doctor who discharged Favorite from a hospital ended up with a bullet through the eye and his brains splattered over his morphine-stained pillow. Angel digs deeper, about six feet down, and finds himself becoming shrouded in the voodoo cloak of New Orleans, especially after he becomes entangled with the sultry, teenaged priestess Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), who just happens to be Favourite’s daughter.

Based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg (who also penned the phantasmogorical fantasy Legend, filmed by Ridley Scott), Parker’s screenplay spins a dark whirlpool, with the narrative following Angel closely, so as to keep the audience at his level of bewilderment. I haven’t read the novel, but the movie makes for a powerful, seductive piece of nightmare cinema, as the diabolical revelations unfold, and the tendrils of temptation unfurl.

Parker has made numerous excellent movies. Like another talented Englishman, Michael Winterbottom, who approaches each movie with a different style and technique, and who moves effortlessly between genres. Angel Heart is among my favourite Parker movies, along with Midnight Express, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and Birdy. Mickey Rourke delivers a career performance, an actor at the top of his game, before the boxing robbed him of his looks, and his career fell on the ropes. 

Angel Heart has aged very well, considering it’s nearly thirty years old. The vintage-style cinematography by Parker’s long-serving cameraman Michael Serresin is superb; a colour palette that verges on monochrome, and combined with Parker’s brilliant compositions, the loaded imagery, the clever mise-en-scene, the movie is a darkly beautiful joy to behold. It helps when you’ve got a key cast as charismatic as Rourke and De Niro, and as sensual as Bonet and Charlotte Rampling, as tarot reader Margaret Krusemark.

With long hair, a full beard, and talons De Niro was apparently impersonating Martin Scorsese in his performance as “Lucifer”. He certainly commands every scene he is in, but Rourke matches him, beat for beat, and although Parker originally offered the role of Angel to Al Pacino, Jack Nicolson, and even De Niro, Rourke fits the character like a suede glove. It’s curious to note that Parker found De Niro so uncomfortably eerie in the role of Cyphre he allowed the actor to direct himself! 

Parker’s attention to detail (once described by a critic as an aesthetic fascist), especially with the rustic locations, art direction, use of music, and the editing, provides much authenticity within the scenes; the atmosphere is pervasive, especially in some of the movie’s more intense scenes, such as the provocative, now legendary “Soul on Fire” rain/sex/blood scene, the village voodoo ritual, the murder aftermaths, and the chase scenes (oh, to see the version before it was heavily trimmed for the MPAA). One of many images burned onto my retina is a frightened Harry Angel bolting out into a New Orleans’ street, into the torrential rain, his flailing trench coat making him seem like a ghostly apparition.

“I’m an athesist,” states Angel to Cyphre, while they sit together in a French Quarter church, the humidity thick, the tension palpable. “Are you?” Cyphre replies a little surprised. “Yes I am. I’m from Brooklyn,” Angel says emphatically. The humour drips like black molasses. Cyphre twirls his ebony cane, “The future isn’t always what is used to be Mr. Angel,” he muses, and soon Harry Angel will know the truth, and it will scare him to the very bottom of his very soul. When one dances with the devil in the pale moonlight, one doesn’t realise how terrible wisdom can be, when it brings no profit to the wise.

Taxi Driver

US | 1976 | directed by Martin Scorsese

Logline: A Vietnam vet, working as a cab driver in NYC, struggles to cope with his surrounds, and deal with his inner demons bearing down.

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” --- Thomas Wolfe, “God’s Lonely Man”

Five features into his distinguished career, but only his third major release, director Martin Scorsese delivered Taxi Driver (1976), the first of three masterpieces; the other two being Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990). At once a searing portrait of emotional alienation and psychological deterioration with a realm of urban decay, and also a blistering study of humankind’s innate loneliness and man’s propensity for extreme violence, Taxi Driver is still as powerful and dangerous now, as it was 40 years ago. 

Screenwriter (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader penned the potent tale of Travis Bickle’s pathological despair in five days following his own nervous breakdown, being rejected by his girlfriend and in the midst of a divorce. He didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, frequented porn cinemas, and an obsession with firearms meant he kept a loaded gun on his desk for inspiration and motivation. Brian De Palma was slated to direct, but was fired. With the gritty realism of Mean Streets (1973) and the emotional depth of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) on his resume, Martin Scorsese entered the picture and brought with him Robert De Niro (who’d just won an Oscar for The Godfather Part II), and the rest is history.

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a cab driver in New York City, working long hours and driving to all the boroughs. His only acquaintances are a handful of other cabbies working for the same company. Bickle attempts a romance with uptown Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who is working on the political campaign for Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), a Presidential candidate, but he screws that up royally. Twelve-year-old streetwalker Iris (Jodie Foster) crosses his path on several occasions, and as the weight of the city’s filth bears down on him and his psyche begins to crack Bickle decides to save Iris and free her from the pimp shackles (Harvey Keitel as Sport) of her pathetic prostituted existence.

From the opening image of the subway steam filling the screen and Bernard Herrmann’s jazz-wounded score soaked in melancholy, the ominous strings scraping, the sad alto saxophone singing a song of desperation, a yellow checkered cab pushes through the white subterranean mist of the city and begins its long drawl in and out of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx, uptown, downtown, midtown and the lower East side. Taxi Driver is Scorsese’s dark ode to the city that never sleeps, capturing the quintessential grime and low-life glamour of 70s NYC that perpetually feeds its moral and physical corruption.

“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is … a man who stood up.”

Building steadily towards its frightening, shattering denouement Taxi Driver is a tour-de-force of direction and performance. Robert De Niro is mesmerising in his method brilliance, Cybil Shephard exudes a wonderful coquettish charm, while a very young Jodie Foster exhibits amazing subtlety and vulnerability, and Harvey Keitel provides the perfect sleazy foil to De Niro’s deadly coiled spring. A nod also to Steven Prince, in just one scene, as Easy Andy, a cocky gun salesman with style and merchandise to burn (Scorsese would later make a short doco called American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince).

It’s curious to note the extraordinary who’s who of actors who were offered, auditioned for, and in some cases cast - but withdrew, in the role of Betsy; Farrah Fawcett, Jane Seymour, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Ornella Muti, Isabelle Adjani, Liza Minnelli, Barbara Hershey, and Sigourney Weaver, and in the role of Iris; Melanie Griffith, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Geena Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Dabra Winger, Carrie Fisher, Mariel Hemingway, Bo Derek, Kim Cattrall, Rosanna Arquette, Kristy McNichol, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Linda Blair. 

Martin Scorsese himself appears in two scenes; the first as a background extra (seated on a ledge outside Palantine’s campaign office), but the second is as one of Travis’s more unhinged fares, spouting a disturbing, misogynist monologue which undoubtedly contributes to Bickle’s already heavily affected and troubled persona. Scorsese stepped into the role after the intended actor sustained injuries prior to filming.

Whilst Bickle’s psychotic slow burn toward the inevitable brain-snap is the movie’s tightening screw, it is the ultra-violent bloodbath at movie’s end that provides Taxi Driver with its piece-de-résistance (although Robert De Niro’s improvised “You talkin’ to me?” scene commands its own cult adoration). Dick Smith, special effects make-up legend, was hired to provide shocking authenticity to the brothel carnage, but ironically Scorsese was forced to de-saturate the blood’s hue (making it look an odd pinky brown) in order to avoid an X-rating. It still packs a punch, especially the shocking .44 Magnum impact to the hand. Smith also made the famous Mohawk wig for De Niro (which I always thought was real!)

Taxi Driver continues to impress and fascinate; superficially as a date stamp of mid-70s New York City (Scorsese shot entirely on location), but more importantly Scorsese’s effortlessly fluid, but controlled and deliberate visual narrative that never once feels contrived, yet sustains the tension of a crouching tiger, a sleeping cobra, a lost soul at the end of his tether. Schrader’s story wraps up with a curious epilogue that has Iris’s father’s voice-over praise on Travis Bickle’s rescue efforts while the camera drifts over newspaper clippings describing the gun-battle with the gangsters and his subsequent pedestal as urban hero.

But has this twist of fate actually happened, or is it just a figment of Bickle’s distorted imagination, a wish-fulfillment fantasy he’s projecting in the moments before his death as he sits on the sofa mortally wounded …?

Scorsese adds a coda to suggest otherwise: Travis Bickle back behind the wheel of his safety net, his trusty checkered cab, on the dark crowded streets of the big rotten apple, and low and behold, into the back seat climbs Betsy. The vibe is awkward; she acts aloof, “Travis I’m … How much was it?” Travis replies, “So long”, as he clears the meter. She gets out, he drives off, but something catches his eye in the rear-view mirror and Travis does a double-take …

We’ll always wonder just what was it that caught the eye of God’s lonely man, but, perhaps it’s best we never found out. 

Bone Tomahawk

US | 2015 | Directed by S. Craig Zahler

Logline: In the Wild West four men set out to rescue a group that has been abducted by a tribe of primitive cave dwellers.

Novelist and aspiring screenwriter Zahler’s dream comes true, Hollywood comes a-knocking, with Kurt Russell attached. His dark Western journey into the heart of darkness is brought to life with bone-dry black comedy and gut-wrenching ultraviolence. Bone Tomahawk is one of the best revisionist Westerns of the past twenty years, and, along with Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, gives Russell the second best role – and performance - he’s had/given in years. 

Set in 1890s, at the tail end of the Wild West, in Southern California, the story opens with a prologue that depicts the plight of two drifting vultures, Buddy (Sid Haig) and Purvis (David Arquette) on the outskirts of the township Bright Hope. Eleven days later Purvis shows up at the local bar, somewhat worse for wear. Back-up deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins) has observed suspicious behaviour, and he notifies the Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).

The lovely Samantha Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is called away from attending to her husband Arthur’s (Patrick Wilson) injured leg, to extract a bullet from a culprit’s leg. Meanwhile, young Gizzard (Maestro Harrell) hears a strange call on the night breeze. He inspects the stables.

Subsequently an arduous journey is embarked upon by Hunt, Chicory, a loyal sharp-shooter known as Brooder (Matthew Fox), and Arthur, as they set off on a five day jaunt across the Mojave desert to find the Valley of the Starving Man, where a tribe of brutal, in-bred cannibals dwell. The four townsmen must execute a daring rescue. The odds are against them.

Clocking in at two hours-ten minutes, the bulk of the movie is the incidents at Bright Hope and the trek itself. In the movie’s third act horror rears its monstrous head and cuts a bloody path of destruction, a standout set-piece being a savage vivisection of a man. In fact there are numerous special effects makeup moments, I was surprised the artists involved weren’t given proper credit, instead just being mentioned amidst the usual crawl at film’s end.

All performances are top notch; Russell, of course, delivers a wonderfully measured, restrained presence, a noble lawman indeed. Wilson is always good, but special mention to Jenkins, in the role of the old timer, and Fox (almost unrecognisable) as the suave, well-heeled Injun killer.

The cannibals are, apparently, troglodytes. Lathered in white okra, adorned with tusks, and brandishing bone tomahawks, and bow and arrow. The also have human teeth embedded in their throats, enabling them to make a harrowing scream/call-to-arms. The women of their clan have been blinded and left as baby machines.

There is a brooding minimalism and historical authenticity that exudes from Bone Tomahawk’s sweaty skin; the mannerisms, the dialogue (which reminds one of Tarantino-esque exchanges, but not as self-conscious or as clashingly modern), and a shroud of nihilism that hangs over like a dark desert cloud.

I’ll be bold enough to say, this is the Western Tarantino would love to make, but would never pull off. So put your timepiece away, it’s time to ride, it’s time to kill, it’s time to bleed. 

Straw Dogs

US/UK | 1971 | Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Logline: An earnest American and his young English wife settle in rural England and face increasingly vicious local harrassment. 

At surface level a powerful study of violence both implicit and explicit, but under the skin, Straw Dogs is a complex and disturbing morality play that poses far more questions than answers. It provokes and outrages, yet by the end offers only slight reward, leaving a bitter taste of copper, and the acid after burn of contempt. After the assault on the senses that is the siege at Trencher’s farm, empathy is left in ruin, humanity torn a sunder. 

Two years prior Sam Peckinpah had delivered one of the great, uncompromising Westerns, The Wild Bunch (1969); a ruthless, indulgent portrait on male self-righteousness, bravado and violent machismo. It was a farrago of raw energy and moral corruption. Peckinpah then polarised audiences even further, pushing his dark fascination with the human spirit and society’s innate misanthropy to a deeper, more insular level. Straw Dogs would tear apart all notions of love and trust, of jealousy and desire, and of man’s acumen for violence.

Based on the novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams and adapted for the screen by David Zulag Goodman and Peckinpah, Straw Dogs tells the story of meek and mild David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), an American mathematician who, with his pretty young wife Amy (Susan George), has moved from the States back to Amy’s home of Wakely, a small village on the coast of England, where she grew up. They’ve bought an old farmhouse up on the hillside that needs repairing, so David has hired a few of the local handymen, so that he can concentrate on his treatise on celestial navigation (the “astro-mathematic structures of stellar interiors”).

One of the builders is Charlie (Del Henney); an ex-lover of Amy’s who makes it very obvious he still carries a torch for her. Amy is flattered by his attention, but won’t stand for his sleazy behaviour. Charlie and his cohorts, Norman (Ken Hutchison) and Chris (Jim Norton) despise David, and challenge him by inferring he’s a milquetoast for abandoning his country in time of need (the Vietnam war). There’s tension between David and Amy as well, since David is so wrapped up in his equations and seems only to patronise Amy, leaving little time for genuine loving. Amy is restless, David is preoccupied. Frustration and neglect will soon collide, and tragedy will ensue.

Straw Dogs is such a thematically rich and intelligent work, darkly provocative, nightmarish, subversive. The characters don’t fit any easy mold, all drifting within a morally grey area. Obviously there are some that can be easily pigeon-holed as villainous, but there are agendas exposed that suggest not all intentions were evil at heart. If only ...

The most controversial part of the movie is the rape scene (which got the movie into a lot of trouble when it was first released and in the years following), or more precisely Amy’s response to Charlie’s rough attempt at seduction. It is apparent Amy still harbours an attraction toward him, but he’s by no means the man who makes her laugh, as her husband does. Amy’s flaunting of her naked body, and not wearing a bra beneath her sweaters, has been driving Charlie wild with lust.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

After orchestrating a snipe hunt for David, where the men stick it to him in the bush, leaving him floundering on the hilltop waiting for pheasants and ducks to fly by, Charlie arrives back at the farmhouse and surprises Amy who invites him in for a drink. But it’s more than booze Charlie’s after. He forces himself on Amy, she slaps him, he pulls her by the hair over the sofa where he pins her down and tears her robe and panties off.

At this point the assault changes gear. It appears no longer to be rape, but consensual sex as they have intercourse and she caresses his face and they kiss. It began as forced entry, but has become something far more complex. The image of Charlie is intercut with David, both men making love to her. But is Charlie providing a more passionate experience for Amy? “Hold me,” Amy whispers. Suddenly Norman is there in the room also, brandishing a shotgun. Amy isn’t aware as she lies on her stomach, her eyes closed in a state of post-coital satiation. Whilst Charlie holds Amy down, Norman sheds his pants and sodomises her. Amy screams in shock and pain. The first intercourse had been questionable in its reception; the second is violation, impure and simple.

David never finds out about the rape, which makes his act of defiance in the last third of the movie a curious stand. One would expect the drama to come from David seeking revenge, but Straw Dogs confounds this by having David respond to something more prosaic: one man’s house is his castle and should be protected at all costs. It is here that David’s failings as a husband and his strengths as a coward in turnaround are made explicit. He was witness to Charlie’s blatant interest in his wife, and he was too cowardly to confront the men about the killing of Amy’s pet cat, yet when David has brought the local pederast, Henry Niles (David Warner, in an uncredited role), into his home after accidentally hitting him with his car and the village lynch mob have come to collect him because local girl Janice (Sally Thomsett) is missing, presumed dead at the hands of Niles, David refuses to give him over. It is here where the siege takes place, and where David turns the tables on his attackers.

Whilst Amy is hysterical, David is transforming, becoming less human, more animal; less logical, more instinctual. But the most telling and the most distressing point is not made until the very end. Having dispatched all of the assailants in numerous violent ways, David tells Amy to stay in the house while he drives Henry Niles down to the village, even though he can’t be sure all the attackers are dead. As they drive through the impenetrable darkness Niles says, “I don’t know my way home.” “That’s okay,” David replies with a strange smirk, “I don’t know either …”

Straw Dogs deals with game-playing and the strategy of battle as metaphors and symbolism. We see Amy playing chess in bed, David working on his elaborate mathematical equations on his huge chalkboard, David and Amy fool around as if on a perpetual one-on-one game of their own making, David taunting the cat by throwing fruit at it, there’s the snipe hunt David is coerced into going on, and of course, the final siege, which is a series of confrontations and dispatches. There’s also the strange voyeurism that involves Janice and her brother Bobby (Len Jones), spying on David and Amy. Janice has a crush on David, but she ends up manipulating Henry Niles, as if on some strange death wish.

There’s also a thematic element concerning immaturity and its potent fragility in relationship to experience and innocence. “You act like you’re 14,” teases David to Amy, “I am!” she replies with a cheeky laugh. Charlie, Norman and Chris all act like they’re adolescents, bragging and cajoling each other. Henry Niles is a man-child. And of course David and Amy are cocooned in a bubble of immaturity as well.

Peckinpah’s direction is superb, helped by atmospheric cinematography from British cameraman John Coquillon. The editing is brilliant, especially the inter-cutting during the church social gathering which highlights Amy’s paranoia and trauma, and also during the siege (three editors, plus an editorial consultant were employed on the movie). The score, mostly sombre brass and woodwind, captures a suitably terse mood.

The performances are all first rate. Hoffman is at the top of his game (and only a couple of features into his career) playing the emotionally retarded stranger in a strange land, while Susan George matches him with her delicate balance of vulnerability and assertiveness. The support cast can’t be singled out, they’re all great.

Straw Dogs is a difficult movie; but for all the best reasons. It presents the moral quagmire of human frailty, it slaps you in the face, slashes you, and leaves you scarred, with blood on your hands. 

“Heaven and earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs.”

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne

Romania | 2015 | Directed by Adrian Tofei

Logline: A deeply disturbed young man makes an unusual audition video in an effort to convince Anne Hathaway to act in his film.

With experience only as an actor, but many years of studying film history under his belt, this Eastern European filmmaker has decided to tackle the found footage genre head-on, taking the bull by the horns, and biting the bullet. His experimental feature blurs the lines of documentary and thriller, of reality and fantasy, of pipe dream and palpable nightmare, of social savvy and introverted delusion.

Adrian Tofei plays Adrian, a determined, albeit quietly desperate, man obsessed with the illusion of Anne Hathaway as a kind of altar, pedestal of Tinseltown. Cats are also one of his “things”, and at one point he casually admits to strangling them as an adolescent. But let’s get back to Anne. Anne and Adrian. He badly wants to impress her. Armed with a small consumer level camera Adrian rents a nearby pension (he lives with his mother, and there’s no way he’s going to be able to audition the substitute “Hathaways” with mother poking her nose in).

There are three women Adrian has selected, to be part of the process of luring Ms Hathaway. Local actors, obviously keen for the performance experience, the women have no idea of Adrian’s hidden agenda. Sonya (Sonia Teodoriu) is first up, and almost immediately butts heads with Adrian who tries to push her panic buttons.

Flory (Florentina Hariton) and Alexandra (Alexandrea Stroe) arrive more or less at the same time. Flory, who most closely resembles Hathaway, has her own flirty agenda, simply wanting to bed Adrian, whilst Alexandra is eventually forced into Final Girl mode. Adrian’s demands are simple: he wants the women to act as truthfully as possible, and in order to act truthfully, he must provide the necessary motivation: fear.

While Tofei injects a creepy sense of humour with his role, it is the naturalistic performances of the three women, especially Stroe, that give Be My Cat the dramatic gravitas, and keeps it so darkly fascinating, and genuinely unnerving. 

Trying to get a handle on Be My Cat is difficult; docu-drama as meta-horror, or maybe that’s faux-snuff as mockumentary. It’s a curiously refreshing blur, but definitely a vehicle for Tofei to indulge his passion for method acting. As the deranged director, Tofei immersed himself utterly into the character, only allowing filming decisions to be made as the obsessive director, not as Tofei. The result makes for a compelling, disquieting, resonant, and unique experience. It’s an existential nightmare, pushing the envelope of conventional found footage, but keeping in mind the grounded “authenticity” and creative inspiration and execution of The Blair Witch Project. 

Cat Sick Blues

Australia | 2015 | Directed by Dave Jackson

Logline: A young man becomes a masked serial killer in a deranged attempt to honour and resurrect the life of his beloved feline pet.

It’s always resfreshing to see a horror movie that strays outside the boundaries, jumping fences, spraying on walls, hissing at strangers, clawing at faces. Any narrative that refuses to play by the rules, yet delivers the goods, gets my enthusiastic nod of approval. Dave Jackson’s debut feature, which stemmed from a 2013 short, is probably the most original, unapologetic, and strangely affecting Australian horror movie since Bad Boy Bubby. They both involve dead cats, funny that.

Twenty-something loner Ted (Matthew C. Vaughn) is suffering rather badly. His cat, Patrick, his beloved pet since childhood, has passed away. Now Ted has had a major brain snap. In a desperate attempt to bring back his one and only he believes he must take the nine lives that his feline friend once possessed and harbour the blood for his successful resurrection. 

Ted has a sculptor make him a pair of cat gloves with razorsharp claws. He dons the too small red jumper from his adolescence and the huge full head black cat mask he got one Christmas as a lad. Now he is Catman, and (rather inexplicably) a danger to all women.

In a bizarre parallel narrative (or sub-plot, if you will) Claire (Shian Denovan) has a white cat called Ismelda, an Internet sensation. But in a cruel and tragic turn of events Claire’s beloved is also taken from her. Claire and Ted are on a collision course.

Channeling the surrealist cinema of late 70s/early 80s low-budget Euro, US, and Aussie exploitation fare, with many references, and yet, the movie remains thematically elusive and feels disturbingly original. It’s a troubling and confronting tale of a young man’s mental disintegration and a young woman’s grief and survival. Nothing can quite prepare you for the seemingly indulgent, harrowing weirdness, and nightmarish comedy, that is director/co-screenwriter Dave Jackson and co-screenwriter Andrew Gallacher’s Cat Sick Blues.

Props to Matthew Revert's retro-vibed score, and to Shian Denovan and Matthew C. Vaughn for their dedicated performances, but I must take my hat off to the special effects team for their dynamic and seamless use of excellent practical effects and in the right places CGI.

Cat Sick Blues is one of those instant cult classics. I could feel its dark, stylish energy from the startling credit sequence. The ending doesn’t quite deliver the pay off you are anticipating (although quite what I was expecting or wanting, I wasn’t sure), but in an unctuous and perverse way, it works; one can almost feel the fur ball working its way up the back of your throat, making you gag, spitting it out, and then licking it, because its your own.

Cat Sick Blues screens as part of Sydney’s A Night Of Horror International Film Festival, tonight, 7pm, Dendy Newtown. 

Goddess Of Love

US | 2015 | Directed by Jon Knautz

Logline: A mentally unstable woman begins a volatile descent into madness when she suspects her lover has left her for another woman.

From the working titles of Mania and The Dark Side of Venus, Jon Knautz’s third feature became the elusive and alluring, but more importantly, the double-edged sword, Goddess of Love. The Venus of this tale is no deity for worship; this is a warrior for whom reality and fantasy have collided and there will be intentional and collateral damage.  Goddess of Love is one bitchin’ psychosexual thriller.

Venus (Alexis Kendra, who co-wrote and co-produced with Knautz, and was also production designer) lives alone in her apartment decked out like an exotic Arabian love nest, although, sadly, she has no lover to share it with. She spends her days taking ballet lessons, tickling the ivories at home, and drinking lots of red wine and smoking pot, while her nights are spent dolled up and zoning out, taking her clothes off at a strip club.

One of her private lap dances is for Brian (Woody Naismith), a handsome photographer, and recent widower. They strike up an immediate rapport, and the mutual attraction leads them straight to third base, and an enthusiastic home run. Venus is over the moon. Despite Brian’s emotional fragility, she feels she has found the one, and it is time to invest her everything, beginning with serving his favourite pasta dish and finding him that perfect keepsake. 

But the honeymoon period, though sweet, is very short. Before Venus can say “Aphrodite’s got nothin’ on me!” Brian has retreated, and suddenly Venus finds their communication has been reduced to short, sharp text messages. Worse still, she intercepts a voice message to Brian from another woman, Christine (Elizabeth Sandy), who sounds way too friendly.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  

Jealousy rears its ugly head with the savage intent of a green cut snake, and Venus is on the warpath. Infatuated with Brian, but more importantly, obsessed with Christine’s invasion and the injurious repercussions it is having on her own psyche Venus swiftly descends into a delusional rage, hell bent on revenge.

Knautz also acted as cinematographer, and the movie looks sensational. Whilst embedded with a cool, sensual style, awash with colour and dynamic movement, the narrative, both in mise-en-scene and character, is compelling. Kudos to Alexis Kendra for her fantastic central performance - she’s in almost every scene - as she bravely rides the rollercoaster of emotions, laid bare, being thrown around the arena of love’s cruel intent. 

As the tagline warns, “Be careful who you get close to.” This is one bombshell with a very short fuse. Her Tinder account should read, “Danger UXB.”

Goddess Of Love screens as part of Melbourne’s Monster Fest, Sunday, November 29th, 3pm, Lido Cinema.

Tangerine

US | 2015 | Directed by Sean Baker

Logline: On Christmas Eve, two Los Angeles streetwalkers spend most of their time trying to find a rogue pimp to learn the truth of his cheating ways.

As refreshing as sherbet ricocheting off your tongue, dang! Tangerine is fresh and vibrant and funny as forever. I love a movie like this; a small, but beautiful present, that unwraps with perfect folds, the packaging glittering, the merchandise gleaming, happy endings all round!

Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is a transgender motormouth. Her BFF, Alexandra, (Mya Taylor), another transgender, deals with it. But Sin-Dee has serious drama going on. She’s recently emerged from a stint in prison, and now she learns her pimp boyfriend, Chester (James Ransone), has been sleeping with a mangy “fish” (slang for woman). She’s livid, and she’s determined to track the cheating asshole and give him a piece of her mind, and probably a black eye too.  

It’s the desolate urban wilderness of West Hollywood, in the City of Angels, on Christmas Eve. A taxi driver, Razmik, has had his fare share of fallen angels. He needs some sexual relief, and his homosexual predilection is to give head to a good-looking trannie. He picks up a stunner, who calls herself Selena. But much to Razmik’s shock, she’s all woman.

Alexandra is handing out flyers for a small singing gig she’s doing that night, nearby. She needs as much support as she can muster. It’s not helping that Sin-Dee is on a mission. Soon enough Sin-Dee’s unruly antics are too much for Alexandra, her tolerance exhausted. She storms off.

Sin-Dee finds the blonde slut whom Chester has been breaking off, and, after yanking her from a filthy sex party motel dive, she hauls the bewildered girl around the streets, whilst she tracks down the other culprit. Meanwhile Razmik has learned of Sin-Dee’s return, his favourite mister-ress, and he’s prepared to risk his marriage to see her before Xmas! Everything comes to a head downtown at Donut Time.

Tangerine was the darling of the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of the year, and it’s charming the pants and skirts off every audience it plays to. It’s an instant cult classic before it’s even got off the festival circuit. Shot on three iPhone 5S devices, using the $8 FiLMiC Pro app, with a clip-on anamorphic lens, it’s sensational looking, but it does the movie a disservice if you let that “lo-fi” spec become a gimmick, or cloud your appreciation. Sure, it’s impressive, and I’m sure it will inspire a lot of wannabe filmmakers, but if it wasn’t for director Baker and his co-writer, Chris Bergoch’s witty and mischievous screenplay, and the bang-on performances from the two amateur, but undeniably charismatic leads - not forgetting James Ransone’s hilarious turn at movie’s end - then Tangerine would simply sink in the glut of indie movies that swamp the scene each year, regardless of its cool tech-stylistic.

What I loved especially about Tangerine (the meaning of title is frivolous, but I love it just the same) is all the movie directors and films that are reflected and embraced. Some influences are obvious, others less so, but all in a lovely, unpretentious way. The camp chaos of Pedro Almodovar, the sarcasm and bitchiness of Greg Araki, the anarchic wit of Shane Meadows’ Small Time, the layered naturalism of Robert Altman, the magic hour vibe of Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle, the swagger and bravado of Doug Liman’s Swingers, and the dreamy summer antics of Evan Glodell’s Bellflower.  Such a melting pot of influences, simmered to perfection.

Tangerine is a sweet delight indeed; my favourite movie of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, and one of my favourites of the year. 

Black Souls

Anime Nere | 2015 | Italy | Directed by Francesco Munzi

Logline: Three brothers from a southern Italian crime family become embroiled in an escalating feud with another family.

Imbued with the same sombre tone and dark design of two American modern classics, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral, comes this authentic tale of morality and despair from the tenebrous heart of rural Calabria where the ‘Ndrangheta have laid down the law beyond the law for decade upon decade. Black Souls is as powerful and disquieting as its title suggests.

Based on a novel by Gioacchino Criaco, it tells the story of three brothers who are trying to keep the wealthy dynasty together, but petty differences, and the unruly younger generation is proving difficult. The eldest, Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), wants to remain out of the business, so he can continue to enjoy his twilight years with his goats and, hopefully, his son, Leo (Guiseppe Fumo), who idolises the two charismatic younger brothers, staunch Luigi (Marco Leonard), and savvy Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), the business head of the family.

Following an argument, Leo, the hot head, acts impetuously and recklessly, blasting the windows of a rival gang’s bar. The consequences are tragic, and as a result, the family is drawn into the bitter machinations of feudal revenge. But this kind of vengeance is never just black and white, there is always red, and it spills every which way.

Black Souls doesn’t re-invent the wheel, as there is simply no need. There is nothing new on parade, no clever sub-text, or political angle. It is this straightforward, rustic approach, but executed with panache and attention to authenticity, which places Black Souls upon the mantle of the modern classic. A study of violence begetting violence, of morality being crushed under the weight of darkest human nature, Black Souls is the Italian crime family tale we’ve been waiting for.

The movie boasts superb performances from the entire cast (faces with more character than a fine aged vino rosso), with stunning cinematography and production/wardrobe design; all deep shadowy hues, black leather, steel, and wool. The dialogue measured, the behavior slowly unraveling, the slow-burn tension creeping up. You know this is not going to end well, but just how the cards fall is Black Souls’ Ace of Spades. A most darkly rewarding surprise, indeed. 

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

US | 2015 | Directed by Alex Gibney

Logline: An in-depth look at the Church of Scientology, its history, its methods, and its effects on those who have been on the inside.

Basing his documentary on the book by Lawrence Wright, Gibney – an extremely talented filmmaker – was primarily interested in finding out why so many people, especially high profile celebrities, had joined this so-called religion. He ended up with a powerful, and ultimately very disquieting, exposé on the inner workings and devastating consequences of this complicated belief system that has seduced so many.

I went into this packed (some two-and-a-half thousand) Sydney Film Festival afternoon screening knowing a little about Scientology, but not a lot. I was chiefly interested in the Hollywood connection, which includes Tom Cruise and John Travolta as two of its long-term poster boys, and the science fiction background stemming from its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. What I learned was a real eye-opener.

In a nutshell, Hubbard, who had enjoyed success as a prolific author of mostly pulp science fiction beginning during the 1930s, served in the military for numerous years, then became involved in the occult, and, after during his second marriage, made the declaration "Writing for a penny-a-word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” Hubbard published his book on Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which sold by the truckload, and subsequently, founded the Church of Scientology, with his book as its bible, and “auditing” (via his electrometer) as its chief practice.

Going Clear (which refers to the process in which its members rid themselves of the emotionally painful experiences of their past enabling them to live joyful lives) exhibits a very damning picture of Hubbard’s creation, and in particular shows David Miscavige, the Church’s Chairman of the Board of nearly thirty years, as a megalomaniacal sociopath (it doesn’t do any favours for Tom Cruise either). This is an organisation that prides itself on being a non-profit church, and as such, is tax-exempt. It has, however, become one of the wealthiest financial institutions in America, worth well over a billion dollars.

No here comes the big crunch … This is a “religion” that reveals to its members, only after they have already “invested” huge sums of money and ascended up to the higher levels of indoctrination, that seventy-five million years ago an evil galactic ruler, named Xenu, solved overpopulation by bringing trillions of people to Earth in DC-8 space planes, crashing them into volcanoes and nuking them. The souls of these dead space aliens were then captured and shown films of what human life should be like, including false ideas containing God, the devil and Christ. The alien spirits, known as thetans, inhabit our bodies, and Scientologists believe that if they rid themselves of these they will be healthier and will even gain special powers like mind-over-matter.

Apparently some Scientologists have spent more than $300k to gain this knowledge. 

By using a combination of fascinating archival footage, recreations, and candid interviews with key figures, including director Paul Haggis, actor Jason Beghe, and high-ranking Church officials Mike Rinder and Mary Rathbun, who have managed to prize themselves free of the sticky web that is the Church of Scientology, Gibney has constructed an altogether gripping and enlightening portrait and study on the dangers of intense faith. Notably, but not surprisingly, Tom Cruise and John Travolta declined to be interviewed for the documentary.

And herein lies the documentary’s most salient point; one of humankind’s most fallible traits is our inherent “loneliness” and fear of thinking for one’s self. Religion – faith – seems to be the answer, but devoting oneself to the doctrines of a religion and/or cult (and let’s be honest here, Scientology is not a religion) can lead to emotional vulnerability, psychological manipulation, and, ultimately, abuse and exploitation. The Church of Scientology blatantly manipulates and abuses people, emotionally, psychologically, fiscally, and even physically. There is no joy here, only a mask hiding fear. 

I’m inclined to make a disclaimer: I’m not about to compare Scientology to other religions or cults, which is, in itself, a huge can of worms. I know there are religions that condone murder and practice paedophilia, but I’m not inclined to discuss them. My opinion here is simply on Scientology, based on viewing the doco Going Clear.

What is heartening to learn is that the membership for the Church of Scientology is shrinking. Hopefully, as a result of this high profile doco, the IRS will re-consider their decision to allow the Church to remain tax-exempt. I hope the FBI will initiate a criminal investigation into the human trafficking. And, maybe, just maybe, one day the Church will implode under the weight of its audit files. However, it is highly unlikely Cruise or Travolta will ever turn their backs on Hubbard (who passed away in 1987), as their audit files would probably contain enough dark secrets to ruin half of Hollywood. But that’s another kettle of fish!

Going Clear is required viewing for anyone who is fascinated by the question of faith, and/or the insidious influence of cults, or for anyone has been involved either directly, or indirectly, with a cult or sect. It is essential viewing, period.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief screens as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, Wednesday 10 June, 8:35pm – Event Cinema 4.

Slow West

2015 | UK/New Zealand | Directed by John Maclean

Logline: A young Scottish man has traveled to America to search for the older girl he loves, and is reluctantly befriended by an outlaw who serves as the lad’s protector.

Writer/director Maclean is a Scotsman who shot a black and white short, starring Michael Fassbender, on a mobile phone in 2009. He then made another short which won a Bafta. Slow West is his first feature, and it stars Fassbender, alongside a grown-up Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s a very accomplished first feature that captures all the right elements of a Western.

Shot in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, doubling for the Mid-West frontier of America, and it serves the landscape well.  It’s an evocative picture, a sombre and reflective piece, perhaps a lost companion story to Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. Certainly there are many similarities, and the way Maclean’s narrative flows, the self-contained scenes, the study of violence and yearning.

Jay (McPhee) is sweet sixteen. On a horse he rides, naïve of the trouble he is trotting toward. Silas (Fassbender) intercepts the boy, and together they ride across hill and dale. Silas has a hidden agenda, he knows the girl, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius) and her father John (Rory McCann) are fugitives, and wanted dead or … dead. Silas keeps the wanted flyer to himself.

Bounty hunters are on their trail, lead by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn, sporting a fine fur coat). It won’t be long before they’ve caught up with Jay and Silas, and there’ll be trouble.

There was a period when Westerns were the ciné du jour of Hollywood, but they’re far and few between these days. Slow West is not your average Western, it lingers and meanders, taking inspiration from the masters, such as Leone and Ford, but also carving its own style. Slow West is an Irish and New Zealand co-production, a curious combination for such a genre, I can’t think of any other Westerns that have emerged from those countries.

Slow West reverberates with a curious sense of humour, and a romantic longing. The cast is excellent, and once again Fassbender delivers all the right nuances. How he manages to do period and contemporary films so effortlessly is something rather special. Props to Caren Pistorius, making the smooth transition from television to cinema, who completely fooled me into thinking she was a genuine Scots beauty.  

Slow West will be too languid for some, but it rewards with a suitably violent pay-off, and harnesses an ending that is not quite what you’re expecting, which is always a good thing.

Slow West screens as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, Monday 8 June, 6:15pm – Cremorne

Strangerland

2014 | Australia/Ireland | Directed by Kim Farrant

Logline: A couple that has moved to a remote outback town find themselves at wit’s end when their two teenage children go missing.

The debut feature from a former documenteur, and it’s a mystery-drama smothered in the dust-laden atmosphere of the great Australian red desert. It’s a classic tale of rebellion and betrayal, of innocence and promiscuity, of the wounded and the living, of the present and the missing. Strangerland won’t be every person’s cup of tea, but for those who like those delicate moments in between Strangerland offers a darkened bounty.

The Parkers, Catherine (Nicole Kidman) and Matthew (Joseph Fiennes) are struggling to hold on to their marriage. He is irritable and disinterested, she is frustrated and mournful, together they are depressed, but functioning. Their two children, Lily (Maddison Brown) and Tommy (Nicolas Hamilton), are a handful. Ten-year-old Tommy likes to wander the empty streets at night, and fifteen-year-old Lily yearns for sexual intimacy.

It is Lily’s prior behavior that has prompted the move from the city. She was involved with her schoolteacher. The local boys take advantage of her loose morals. One night Lily follows Tommy on one of his jaunts. Matthew watches them slink off, his contempt for his daughter leaving him devoid of responsible parenting.

The next morning they’ve vanished. The night has swallowed them. This drives a wedge between Catherine and Matthew and their ugly past rears its head, as local detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving) tries to make sense of the disappearance. 

With a brooding soundtrack from Keefus Ciancia and stunning cinematography from P.J. Dillon, Strangerland is infused with a resonant and mesmerising mise-en-scene. The heat-soaked imagery and sweaty indecision permeates the characters as they struggle within their emotional turmoil. Catherine slowly loses the plot, as Matthew begins to unravel, and both resort to bad habits.

The performances are top notch, especially Nicole Kidman, whose bravura display of naked vulnerability and cracked resilience is amongst the best work of her career, up with Dead Calm, To Die For, Dogville, and The Human Stain. Hugo Weaving, although in a fairly thankless role, still owns his scenes, he’s just one of those reliably watchable actors. Also props to the young actors, especially Maddison Brown, she’s definitely one to watch.

Echoing the untouchable Picnic at Hanging Rock, Strangerland is a mystery that becomes less about the actual mystery and more about the people close to it, dealing with the event. This is ultimately a sad story about a crumbling marriage, and how extraordinary pressure can create a dangerous force of human frailty.

Strangerland screens as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, tonight, 6:30pm, Saturday 6 June, 11:30am, 7:30pm, & 8:30pm – State, Casula & Cremorne.

Deathgasm

2015 | New Zealand | Directed by Jason Lei Howden

Logline: Two teenage metalheads form a band, summon an evil entity, and then attempt to reverse the demonic chaos they’ve unleashed. 

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to that quaint hospital soap opera, there’s a howl and a screech … nek minnit, a heavy metal demon snaps your funny bone and tears your soul asunder! All hail Deathgasm! \m/

Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), a slightly geeky heavy metal fan, befriends Zakk (James Blake), a cooler version of himself. With a couple of Dungeons and Dragons nerds, Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Crewsswell) onboard they quickly form a band, Deathgasm, and with the lure of a black hymn promising power and fortune, Brodie leads them into a hell on earth after an ancient evil, The Blind One, is summoned.

It takes spunky love interest, Medina (Kimberley Crossman), to give Brodie some balls and take the demonic bull by the horns. But first there’s Aeon (Andrew Laing) and a horde of Satanic worshipers and all-round nasty motherfuckers to deal with first. There’ll be hell to pay, and there will be blood. Lots of it.

If you like your horror-comedy splattered from head to foot, a la Peter Jackson’s Braindead then you’ll love this decidedly Kiwi gore riot. Writer/director Howden, a visual effects whiz, has made his first feature, and it’s a bonza! Hilarious performances, with notable cameos from veterans Andrew Laing and Cameron Rhodes, crackingly funny dialogue, OTT cartoon gore gags, and enough metal references to keep the diehards happy.

It’s been a wicked period for New Zealand horror, with several ripsnorters over the past year. Deathgasm is best enjoyed in the cinema with a full house, all hooting and hollering along with the foul-mouthed, longhaired louts on screen. These are anti-heroes worth rooting for.

Might I add, Deathgasm would play very well after Housebound (another Ant Timpson-produced comic gem) in a comedy-horror double-bill. Keep that in mind a little further down the track when you’re wondering what crowd-pleasers are required for that pizza, beer and bullets night with the mates and sheilas at home.

Like I said, all hail Deathgasm! \m/

Deathgasm screens as part of Freak Me Out in the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, tonight, 8:15pm & Sunday 7 June, 8:30pm – Event Cinema 8 & Dendy Newtown