Watching Cabin in the Woods, this guy (Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain) made me wish there was a film about him: it seemed like it would be a classy gothic horror flick. Turns out he’s a direct reference to Hellraiser, but Hellraiser wasn’t exactly classy: in fact, it’s the best kind of B-movie. Pinhead,…
On Christmas Eve Eve Eve, I watched Elf for the first time with my partner, over an assortment of antipasto (as is traditional in the Carbon Copy household). Elf is not particularly original, but what family-friendly Christmas film is? The plot concerns Buddy (Will Ferrell), a human adopted by the Elves of the North Pole.…
Holy Motors demonstrates the limitations of my self-imposed 200 words restriction. I could spend 200 words summarising the plot, perhaps by detailing the overall narrative (that is difficult, since there arguably isn’t one) or by picking out individual moments to emphasize the film’s “craziness” (a naked man is cradled by Eva Mendes in a burka…
The Bay isn’t the best found footage film of 2012 – that was Chronicle, which told its fairly standard teen superhero story by pushing the boundaries of the genre – but unlike Chronicle, The Bay plays fair. The context is an environmental-horror tale of a small town decimated by an (initially) unknown pathogen, framed as…
When a Stranger Calls is, essentially, two well-produced, scary scenes bracketing a meandering, uninteresting private detective movie. It’s a shame, because the premise is actually interesting: introducing a faceless psychopath then treating him with some sympathy, revealing him to be a real, irrevocably damaged, person. This premise is executed without effort or imagination. The opening…
The Omen is silly when it should be scary, despite the stately sets and sombre acting surrounding it. David Warner (not the cricketer) does an admirable job of delivering a huge chunk of ominous exposition without it sounding too absurd (until he loses his head) and Gregory Peck is always reliable. The soundtrack and special…
I had expected something revolutionary from The 400 Blows: imaginative, exciting filmmaking from the film that began the New Wave movement. The cinematography itself didn’t wow me as I’d hoped, aside from a spectacular and extended series of tracking shots that conclude the film. But the story of young Antoine Doinel is certainly touching, particularly…
Yes, another horror movie… Sinister is, for its first half, a genuinely scary film populated by reasonably well-developed characters. Ethan Hawke, writing a true crime novel, finds a handful of creepy snuff films in the attic of his latest house (the site of a recent murder, naturally) and watches them, one by one, late at…
David Lynch is one of my favourite filmmakers, so I thought Wild at Heart, which left me cold on first viewing, warranted a second chance. I’ve heard many others unimpressed by Lynch’s work, even masterpieces like Mulholland Drive, describing them as simply random events strung together. Sadly, Wild at Heart puts me in their shoes.…
A horror “classic,” starting Wes Craven’s career, The Last House on the Left is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good film. The cinematography and editing can be generously described as amateurish, the screenplay (a loose reinterpretation of The Virgin Spring) decides that the best thing to play against a harrowing rape/murder sequence…
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