Chopping Mall
Chopping Mall was my first blog, which I started way back in 2009. It was dedicated exlcusively to ridiculous and terrible films, which I watched a lot of back then. (So much time, so little work!)
I’ve resuced the posts from oblivion, to be preserved here for …uh… whatever.
It’s a pretty clunky process getting them out of blogspot (XML export, eww) and into here, so there may be a few formatting issues.
Looking Back: 2010 in ZOMBIES
This is the first of my “Looking Back at 2010” posts, in which I plan to have a look at what I watched this year and see what was great (and not so great…). First up: Zombies! This is based on the list of films I watched in 2010, not necessarily those released in 2010.
Last year I sat through a fair number of Zombie films and, much like the genre, I have to say they were a pretty mixed bag. My film list contains 29 that I would describe as either being Zombie films or at least significantly featuring zombies. Of these, there were a handful of true genre classics - several of which I’d seen before - including Umberto Lenzi’s zombies-with-weapons masterpiece Nightmare City (which I reviewed here), Hammer’s brilliant Plague of the Zombies, the creepy Spanish Tombs of the Blind Dead and cult-classic no-budget cheese-fest The Video Dead.
By brokensbone at 2011-01-03
Somewhat less memorably, I also endured Zombie Cop and Zombie Nosh, neither of which I’d recommend even to Zombie film-fans! At this end of the scale The Asylum’s I Am Legend rip-off I Am Omega sneaks in too, falling just about on the right side of watchable, but not by far.
Big name Zombie offerings were perhaps a little thin. Although Zombies are supposedly making a bit of a come back (from the dead, heh) Hollywood and big name studios are yet to put out much of any worth. As much as I love Shaun of the Dead, I’d like a few more not-comedy Zombie films, and Hollywood is not exactly leaping at the idea. George Romero’s newest, Survival of the Dead, went straight to DVD and, though not a bad idea or unwatchable film, it certainly isn’t comparable to his best. Zombieland was pretty disappointing too: although it started out well, it was as if some Hollywood executive had stepped in at around the half-hour mark to tell them what they were doing wrong. What’s starts promisingly turns into a predictable, warm-n-fuzzy feeling inside, relationship drama with predictable characters. You mean the big mean one is actually sensitive? And the nerdy one who looks like Michael Cera will get the girl? Who’d have thought it? Come on Hollywood, get some guts and kill off lots of main characters in a depressing, violent and gory ending. Please?
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Away from the US, this year confirmed to me (as if it needed confirmation) that the Spanish are just damn good at zombies. Mucha Sangre, Kárate a Muerte en Torremolinos and [Rec] were all brilliant fun in their own ways but it was (new to me) Una De Zombies that really astonished me. It’s some months since I watched it and I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but it’s an incredible and clever film that plays with the viewer from start to finish. Highly recommended! It’s also worth mentioning here that, although not a feature film, the Spanish short Zombies and Cigarettes is just about as much fun as you can have in 17 minutes. And it’s free to watch online!
Back in the English language, I saw the compelling but utterly horrible Deadgirl - think carefully about whether you’ll enjoy it before you watch it: I did, many wouldn’t - and the ruthlessly intelligent Pontypool (which I shall be re-watching as soon as possible), both of which I’d recommend. Nazi Zombies made an appearance in both the hit Norweigan Dead Snow and Brit-classic Outpost, whilst I was puzzled and thrilled in equal measures by a handful of mad-as-can-be zombie flicks, including Killer Shrimps, Wild Zero and the brilliantly titles Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead. Excellent!
The film that eclipsed all others for this year though was the world’s first zombie film set in West Africa - Burkina Faso if we’re being precise - The Dead. I don’t know quite what made it so much better than any zombie film I’ve seen in recent years. Maybe it was seeing it for free. Maybe it was sipping a pint of ale as I watched it. Or maybe it’s just fantastically good. It was introduced by one of the Ford brothers who directed it (I’m afraid I don’t remember which) as being a Romero inspired Zombie epic and I think they certainly achieved that. The Dead is like Zombie films used to be. It’s sprawling, rural and slow. The Zombies themselves are not especially threatening, but it’s the endless, lonely tension that builds and builds that brings the sense of despair.
I’m certainly no hater of the modern-day speedy zombies (and having watched Nightmare City this year I was reminded they’re not actually that modern a creation at all) but The Dead is a film that throbs with the pessimistic, end-of-the-world threat that characterised early Romero and Fulci films. It’s also great fun. I have no idea if/when a DVD release is scheduled but I’d recommend it to anyone!
CHOPPING MALL 2011
Well, I don’t think there’s any point denying that the 2nd half of 2010 was pretty disastrous in terms of keeping this blog updated… Five posts in as many months? And one of those was a post saying that I hadn’t been posting enough, a post where I promised all sorts of exciting film reviews that I then never wrote.
Part of the problem, it would appear, is that I watched too many films. Early in the year I set myself the goal of watching 365 different films in the year and, though I did manage that, the goal did rather take over a lot of my free time - time that I would and could (and should?) have spent writing about films here.
I certainly did see some wonderful films over the last year. And some not so wonderful. And some utter dross. Over the next couple of days I’ll write about a few of the best individual films or genres but then it’s onwards into 2011!
List of 365 Films I watched last year!
Huacho
[as these films were all seen on cinema screens rather than DVD, screenshots are much harder to include. I’ll stick to poster/cover images and trailers where possible]
One of my first films of the festival was the Chilean film-cum-documentary Huacho. I describe it as such because, the film is so very ‘real-life’ as to feel as if we are watching the reality of their existence - an idea only supported by the cast only being credited with a single name.
The basic premise of Huacho is that we enter into the world of one poor Chilean family, living in very rural setting, as they struggle on through their lives. The film takes place over the course of a day; the opening scene is breakfast; the closing scene is the family all heading off to bed. Between these scenes we follow each member of the family in turn.
It’s a decidedly minimal venture in film making. There are scarcely any named characters outside of the central family and we’re shown them in happiness and in sadness. What’s crucial to the film - and what makes it so interesting - is apparent lack of agenda. Although their lives are certainly difficult and you could easily read all sorts of criticisms into it (rural-urban poverty gap etc) there is no escaping from the fact that, at the end of the day, each of them is smiling. This might not sound much, but in a film quite as subtle as this it certainly is. We are invited into their lives to see how they cope with a normal day; there is no heavy handed, dramatic plot-line that, by a stroke of luck, sees them all become rich and famous. Nor, to the other extreme, are we lead to believe that their existence is impossible or too miserable to cope with. Rather than either of these false creations, we see how people simply get on with life, even if it is hard.
Huacho is an incredibly sensitive film which takes us on a journey through lives we would otherwise not see and, thankfully, never uses them to make a point or send a message. It’s not a thrilling watch but it’s definitely worthwhile.
The only trailer I found is only in Spanish but it does give a sense of the film:
Some time later...
Ok, ok, it’s been a while. This blog hasn’t been updated in faaaar too long.
Not to worry though. Half of the reason for this is that, in volunteering at the Leeds International Film Festival (the UK’s biggest outside London, apparently), I’ve been way too busy watching films towrite much about them!
So, coming very, very soon will be reviews of every single film I’ve seen as part of the festival. Let’s go! Dr Strangelove, Huacho, A Town Called Panic and many many more to come!
Starts tomorrow, stay tuned!
The Idiots
[NEAR THE END THERE ARE A FEW SPOILERS! ]
I’ve not seen a lot of Lars Von Trier’s films (Antichrist, *shudder*) and generally know more about him from interviews and reviews than from his films. What I do know, however, is that clear meanings and easy answers tend not to be big in his films. The Idiots is a perfect case-in-point and, whilst I would never say I want a director to be heavy handed, to spell things out in an overly laboured manner, I do sometimes, just sometimes think that, when you finish a film and think, “uh….. what?”, the director has actually failed slightly.
The basic set-up here is that we follow Karen and her time with ‘The Idiots’ who are a bunch of white, middle-class hippies in Denmark who are living together peacefully enough in a commune (well, Stoffer’s uncle’s house) and get their kicks by prancing around in public pretending to be mentally retarded. They call this ‘spazzing’.
Now sure, top marks for potentially offensive material but this is nothing unique in itself. In fact (and yes, I realise it’s actually a later example) the League of Gentlemen springs to mind as a comparison (Legz Akimbo theatre group have a day pretending to be disabled). The difference however is that whilst the League of Gentlemen’s characters are awful, horrible people who you watch whilst peeping through your fingers, unsure whether to laugh or cry, the characters of The Idiots by contrast are sympathetic, funny and friendly (for the most part). They have a good time “spazzing” and then go home to laugh about it.
Ah, ok then. So if we’re not groaning at the characters’ sheer insensitivity we must be laughing at their targets, right? After all, this is a projected social-attack. They pretend to be retarded to draw responses from the people in society, to demonstrate how poorly most people know how to react or engage with the mentally handicapped, right? This is about sticking it to the man!
Hardly. Although lead Idiot, Stoffer, firmly believes they are challenging societies values, von Trier goes out of his way to make it clear they are a long way from that. Most of the people we see reacting to the Idiots are a little awkward, sure, but generally pretty nice. If anything, Stoffer must have been fuming and just how accepting their victims were. In an excruciating scene in which Stoffer dumps his pretend-idiot friend in the hands of a group of Hell’s Angels and scarpers, the director shows us extreme and selfless kindness on the part of the bikers; it becomes clearer and clearer that the cold, unsympathetic, economy-lead society that the Idiots are kicking against are simply all too accepting.
So what is the point? Well that’s less clear.
Let’s turn briefly to the more simple goods and bads: the acting is simply fantastic. You don’t have to understand, agree or approve of a film to notice the acting and, whatever you think of the Idiots, there is no doubt that von Trier was working with a fabulous team of actors; they’re just so credible it’s er… incredible (!). Similarly the (wonderfully unconventional) sex-scene is simply brilliant, jaw-dropping and unforgettable. I don’t want to say too much and spoil it but let’s say it involves lots of people and a bit of running around the garden…
Where the film falls down however are the unexplained or implausible points. For such a well acted film, the occasional structural hole is just irritating. For one, much of the film is shot as a documentary. We have interviews with the Idiots looking back at being Idiots yet the story has no real close. This is simply irritating (and very similar to the drifting approach to documentary that plagued District 9) as it makes no sense; if we can talk to the characters afterwards it doesn’t follow that we leave the story and such an undecided ending. There are certain characters missing from the interviews - why? what happened to them? why doesn’t anyone finish their story? This is not ambiguity; this is a set of lazily loose ends that go nowhere.
[THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS]
My major problem with it though is, when all is said and done, not a very major problem. It only sticks out so much because it is the last scene in the film, from which we fade to black and so it obviously hangs around in the memory. In it, we see Karen go home to her family and pretend to be an Idiot there. It turns out that she actually joined the Idiots the day before the funeral of her child and had been hiding from the reality of it ever since. Ok. So a woman disappears the day before her child’s funeral? What do you do? “We thought you were dead” says Karen’s sister… so why wasn’t there a police hunt for her? Since when did almost-certainly-depressed women vanishing before a very depressing funeral get shrugged off with a “oh she’s probably just dead”? Seriously? I totally understand that part of the point was the uncaring, heartlessness of her family but you still don’t just presume someone’s dead and do nothing about it. Even more impressively, her piggish brute of a husband jumps to the staggeringly illogical conclusion that, seeing as she is, in fact, alive, her disappearance for two weeks from the funeral and her family demonstrates that she “didn’t care about it very much”. If this were a less realist film, if the characters and reactions were all so implausible I might let this slide as but in this context it just sticks out as patently unrealistic and silly. No-one could come to the conclusions her family and husband come to.
If that seems like a bit of a rant over a comparatively minor point, well, it is. But it’s a point that did irritate me and certainly lessened my enjoyment of the film. Generally, however, it’s an enthralling, interesting and funny film which is definitely worth watching. You do feel slightly uncomfortable afterwards when you realise that, without any clear message, your enjoyment of the film is derived mostly from watching people pretend to be retarded but… perhaps that guilt is the point?
[no screenshots, sorry]