Celluloid crimes

Dust Devil
I read about this one in an issue of Fangoria where some critic said that this movie was like Tarkovsky on acid. It isn’t. It doesn’t even come close to the power of the Russian. Still, it’s got it’s own style, it’s got some truly WTF moments, some terrific scenes and the myriad African accents are damn trippy. The story is incidental and the opening and closing shots seem like a tribute to High Plains Drifter but the movie’s worth watching at least once if you’re a horror fan.

Lord of War
Another movie that I read great reviews for. It’s a black comedy with Nicolas Cage as a Ukrainian immigrant in New York who makes his career in arms dealing, mostly illegally. It’s plays out like a more hardcore version of Thank You For Smoking with Cage taking the viewer on a tour of his life from helping out at his parent’s restaurant to becoming the Lord Of War. Ethan Hawke drops in every now and then as an Interpol agent on the trail and he’s as irritating as ever. While things do slow down in the middle, I loved the end. Surprisingly good and exceeded expectations.

The New York Ripper
I don’t like The Beyond. Now that that’s out of the way, this was yet another movie that I’d read about for a long time. It was supposed to be nasty, misogynistic and bloody. Well it’s all three. It’s a dark, cynical, angry film with no real redeeming qualities. There’s a serial killer, killing young women, there’s a sexually repressed woman who’s desperate for it, there’s lots of nudity, blood and gore and an ending that seems like an afterthought. Not all of it makes sense either. Works more as horror than a crime thriller.

The Gravedancers
3 friends dance on 3 graves and unleash 3 ghosts from the past. One for each of them. This low budget indie was supposedly a big hit at horror festivals and it has a terrific first half with some good tension build ups. It’s derivative of everything from The Grudge to Poltergeist and plays out every haunted house cliché but is still good fun. Then the paranormal investigators turn up and the movie just looses steam. Plus some really hokey effects come into the picture and the special effects in the climax are ridiculous. Could have been a much better movie.

10,000 BC
I don’t know why I went to the theatre to watch this. Luckily it was in Rex. We didn’t last the whole movie and left at the interval. This movie was so bad it made me angry. What the fuck were these people thinking? We’ll dress a few people up in furs, put dreadlocks on them, make them talk English with a vague Arabic/ Jamaican/ European accent and make believe it’s 10,000 BC. Let’s also make sure there are some landscape shots for that epic feel. The cherry on top though was the narrator. He sounded like Sean Connery being butt-raped and was incredibly irritating. Rubbish from start to interval. I hope it flops and Roland Emmerich won’t be able to make a movie ever again.