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Reviews
Braindead (1992)
hellish in every possible way
what an abysmal film. the plot was beyond ridiculous, the story about the rats raping the monkeys was highly dubious in a variety of ways, the claymation (or whatever) special effects were vile - it was like one of those dire animated shorts that occasionally appears on TV, only extended to one and a half hideous hours. (i accept the possibility that some people actually like weird animated shorts with claymation eyeballs popping out - you know the sort - yawn) the gore wasn't gory but rather tiresome; it reminded me of the time my cat had an bite-wound abscess which exploded in a fountain of pinkish pus and blood. which admittedly was fairly gross but far more entertaining when coming out of my cat than it was in this film. i was bored by the end; there's only so much pus and plasticine you can take, and it was boredom rather than horror that made me switch off. yawnsville extreme
Haute tension (2003)
great until last 15 minutes
how many horror films have i seen that are ruined in the last 10 or so minutes? here comes another one. sorry for the spoiler to come - you've been warned - but too many films rely on a 'twist' at the end and my god, these twists bore the pants off me. this film would have had a 10 if it hadn't have been for the terrible ending. here at last was a film in which the female heroine was an incredible actress with an incredible part and who really has guts. i was actually cheering at the TV when she killed the bad guy - and not just killed him a little bit, we're talking battering him about the head with a club wrapped in barbed wire. go on, girl! i was shouting. strike one for women! but! of course. turns out she's a mad lesbian suffering from schizophrenic delusions; she's not a heroine, she's a psychopathic killer who's just killed the entire family of her female friend with whom she's obsessed in a psychotic lesbian fashion. there is no bad guy; he is her alter ego. OH DEAR OH DEAR. i despair, i really do. and to echo the words of the dying woman unnecessarily hacked to death early in the film, 'pourquoi... pourquoi...?' you just killed a perfectly good film.
Bamboozled (2000)
excellent piece of film-making
this is a superb film and yes, i would say lee's best to date. absolutely biting satire, i'm 300% sure that this film will not appeal to the majority but clearly it was never intended to. brilliant satire on the fate/face of blackness in the mass media. on top of that, the execution is excellent - the blackface performers are actually extremely good - close to the bone, the satire is funny, even if you're not sure what you're laughing at - i'm not 100% keen on jada pinkett in her role, but there we are. i'm not sure if that's her acting at fault or if it's down to the direction and script. a bit of both, perhaps, since i don't think lee tends to make fully dimensional female characters.
lee gets in a dig at quentin Tarantino who has said, amongst other things, that 'spike lee is p**sed because i (Tarantino) make films about black people better than he does', which of course is a highly dubious remark on many levels. does this mean that Tarantino's comments have sharpened lee up? maybe.
i have no doubt that many people will not 'get' this film, which is inevitable, and it is not without its faults. for example, it does get a bit leaden and belaboured towards the end. but the faults are outweighed by the positives and the intention, for which i;m giving it a nice fat 10 out of 10.
The Baby (1973)
must be seen to be believed
bizarre film that no-one i know has either seen or heard of, yet somehow i've managed to see it twice on very late night TV...! one of the oddest films i've ever come across, but definitely worth watching - you simply will never have come across anything so bizarre. which makes it interesting. i'm not quite sure what conclusions one is meant to draw from the film - the idea of three women keeping a grown man in a state of perpetual infancy could lead one in a number of directions, none of them particularly pleasing. this film borders on horror, but settles into a fairly straightforward uncanniness that seems to be heightened by the early 70s hippy-style crazy music and clothing. i awarded this a 7 - difficult to know how to rate it, since i wouldn't call it a great film by usual standards, but for sheer weirdness it's outstanding.
Crash (2004)
not the worst film of the century at all, in fact very interesting
I was prepared not to like this film, since I usually dislike films that have received a lot of acclaim, finding them overrated. However, I found this film surprisingly interesting, if not flawless. Ludicrus put in one of the best performances I felt, presenting a fascinating character. Somewhere on this board a user suggests that his actions in the film are not supported by character development, whereas I would argue that the timescale of the narrative (which presents snapshots of interlinking lives over a controlled timespan, i think just a couple of days) precluded any real character development anyway; rather characters were shown to be multi-faceted at any given time. The character played by Matt Dillon was also well constructed and interesting. I didn't feel the film to be Hollywoodish, and was rather well put together. It was commendably open-ended, too, although I would balk at those who draw the simplistic conclusion that 'racism goes two ways' - racism has, in fact, a distinct and persistently meaningful cultural history that cannot be reduced to such a formula (racism has been used to exploit, enslave and murder on a grand scale and spanning centuries, and is not equable to xenophobia). However, if those who would draw comfort from said simplistic analysis spend time with this film, they could do far worse. All in all, an evening well spent at the cinema.