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The DEVILS BACKBONE

I was away in Glasgow this weekend visiting a friend of mine… and as the weather was so horrendously shit outside, we decided to stay in and watch a plethora of Spanish cinema… It was a veritable Del Torro fest… Starting with this one.

From the Maker of Pans Labyrinth comes the Devils Backbone is the tail of a young boy called Carlos, the son of a fallen Spanish freedom fighter during the Spanish civil war. Carlos is sent to an orphanage in the middle of nowhere. The Orphanage is run by A doctor who is also a Leftist supporter who helps them out when he can. Carlos soon finds out that the kids in the orphanage are all scared of tales of a ghost of a little boy that died on the grounds… Soon Carlos gets an up close and personal meeting with the ghost boy and realizes that there is more to his existence than just freaking out little kids. With the threat of the Right wing government closing in on the orphanage, the doctor starts to make plans using gold hidden there by the left wing movement, to get the boys to safety. Only thing is, that a former child of the school that has become the caretaker in his adulthood has designs on the gold and wont stop at anything to get his hands on it. The ghost of the boy turns out to be mixed into the bigger plot too and the boys soon realize that they have to stick together in order to pull through.

The film is beautifully melancholy, every shot is filmed in a masterful way and the dry arid backdrop gives the orphanage the right sense of isolation it requires. I have to say that if this is what Del Torro’s Spanish movies were all like then he should never have whored his ass out to the Hollywood Pimps… I mean making shit like Hellboy 2, what a pile of crap compared to this movie.

As I said about that piece of crap Golden compass movie I watched… if you are gonna feature a kid in the lead role, make sure they can act. I am glad to say that the little boy is awesome. in fact all the children in this movie are tremendous. I haven’t seen a lot of Spanish cinema, but from what I have seen, they certainly can produce some touching and emotionally connecting work.

Some parts of this film will freak you out, some will spook you but the most outstanding this about this movie is how it emotionally connects you with the characters… even more so than Pans Labyrinth.

Verdict: 8/10 A touching piece of film making and a direction that Del Torro should have stuck on

Well worth seeing, so go out and get it manana! (”tomorrow” in Spanish… you dolts)

GP506

Yes indeed I’ve got Korean movie fever, as yet again I delve into probably one of the most overlooked areas of Asian cinema. And damn those Koreans, for yet again they take well known motifs, blend them together and come out with something as fresh and cool as the best fruit smoothie. Here we have GP506 story of a guard post on the North/South Korean border which is manned three months at a time by the Korean army, during that time no-one is allowed to leave and contact with the outside world is non existent apart from radio communications. When contact is lost with said base an army investigation unit is sent in to investigate and they find the base empty, the squad of 21 men have been butchered horribly apart from one unconscious soldier and the squad leader is found covered in blood brandishing an axe. The investigation team then find out that all logs from the past few days have been erased and through the use of flashbacks we find out the truth as to what has happened.

So the smart ones reading so far will have ticked off a few homage’s: The Thing, Aliens and any Zombie movie spring to mind. But this movie goes a bit further and also does not go to any great lengths to explain everything neatly as the virus that is responsible for the troubles is never fully explained as to where it came from and it works better that way. Like any movie of this genre its all about the atmosphere which is delivered by the bucket load here. The tension and paranoia are executed brilliantly as the virus spreads and we see the fate of the butchered soldiers revealed side by side. Also for a horror movie there is not much gore in display thanks to it being implied more than show explicitly on the screen. And also the feeling of isolation in this movie as you feel that soldiers are cut off from any help as the situation deteriotes further and further.

Stand out scenes ? the first arrival on the apparently deserted base is a masterclass of suspense building. The soldiers arrive in the pouring rain , the guard post in darkness the pouring rain all sets up brilliantly what is to follow. Every scene clicks here and there is twist after twist towards the climax and you will see a lot of scenes from 2 different angles but what you once thought was evil behaviour by some becomes heroic on the repeat viewing with the new information. The only place I can really knock points of this movie is that it is just a bit to bleak at times and that will be a bit too much for some. But if you want some decent horror this Halloween the Koreans have served up something special here which yet again I fear has the dreaded ‘American Remake’ stamped on it. Another bit of Asian cinema to watch before Hollywood chews it up and shits it out.

Rating 8/10

Those Koreans do it again, a great slice of tense, paranoid horror.

The must-have DVD of the must-see movie of the year is coming!. The incredible Dark Knight is making its way to DVD on December 8th maybe Santa should rent the batmobile?. Early word is there will be 2 different DVD versions so fingers crossed we get a Director’s cut.

First proper images from the the Star Trek movie due out next year have emerged. The Re-boot directed by JJ Abrams (Cloverfield, Mission Impossible 3) is a re-boot of the franchise and we get to see the young Captain Kirk and crew on their first mission. The Star Trek crew has been re-cast with notable inclusions Heroes Zachary Quinto as Spock and Simon Pegg as scotty. Due out next May 2009.

A Swedish horror that does not involve instructions not in English and 3 missing 1/4inch screws ?. Yes such a thing does exist in the form of this creepy looking Swedish Vampire flick: Let the right one in, due out soon.

Mcflee or anyone else comment here with your crap Sweden puns now!.

The Cut

There is real danger that I am getting addicted to Korean cinema these says, but hey what better kind of world cinema to get hooked on?. So far across every genre I have found Korean movies to be intelligent and well made, placing story and characters above all else. This movie is no exception we follow a group of 5 med students who are just starting their autopsy classes under the tutorship of a professor known as ‘The Technician’ a brilliant but cold Doctor. The cadaver they are given is that of a beautiful young woman, one night one the group stays behind to get more accustomed to working on the body but is mysteriously killed and then the entire group start to experience the same dream and having terrifying vision which relate to their cadaver and some dark secret held by the Technician. Upon further investigation the group find that their cadaver died some 20 years ago and never formally signed her body over for research and the mystery deepens…

Whilst on the surface this may sound like traditional Asian horror fare it does throw in a healthy dose of suspense and mystery so that you are guessing to the very final reveal which does not disappoint. The one drawback to this movie though is the score, it is terrible and just downright distracting at times. Some of the wonderful cinematography has completely ruined by a very cheap plinky plonky sounding orchestral score that just jars your ears for the running time. And it is a crying shame as the story here has so much substance and is very engaging with the staple of Korean cinema well round characters that develop and change over the course of the movie. Another downside is the opening half hour some of the character introduction does feel a little forced and could have been trimmed and streamlined to greater effect.

When the deaths occur , they are chilling the first one that kicks off the series of events and the unravelling of the grand mystery is a well executed piece of suspense horror. And for a movie called the cut gore is in very short supply here (Hollywood take note please) but what we do have is oodles of spooky atmosphere and tension through. The dream sequences in this movie are well don and there are also a few unexpected jumps from time to time.

This is another slice of Korean cinema doing what it does best and the only downside is the damned annoying musical score with it loses a good few points for because some the sequences start to look cheap because the music does sound so naff at times. But this is well worth checking out , before a remake is forced on us with Jessica Alba/Sarah Michelle Geller in the lead role.

Rating: 7 out of 10

A CUT above the rest, but with a music score that doesn’t CUT the mustard for me (You don’t have the copyright on cheap ass puns Mcflee )

Gwoemul  (The Host)

Some of you may recall on the podcast a few weeks back Myself and McFlee sang the praises of Korean cinema for delivering intelligent movies. Whilst wandering around the shops today I noticed in one that World cinema DVD’s were  selling for about £5 each and I saw Gwoemul and the cover proclaimed ‘Jaws meets Jurassic Park’ and I thought ‘hey this will be worth a punt’. Let me start of by saying the cover quote got it wrong. Big style for this so much more than a run of the mill monster movie.

Set in Seoul, it begins in familiar territory with a bunch of evil scientists dumping chemicals in a river causing something to mutate which eventually wreaks havoc. Working in a small diner by the river side is the loser Park Gang-Du who lives in the trailer with his daughter and grandfather. When the beast appears his daughter is taken and believed to be dead and at a quarantine facility he is re-united with his estranged siblings. His unemployed graduate brother and Bronze medal winning archer sister who all blame him for the death of his daughter. But through the night Gang-Du receives a phone call from his daughter and with the knowledge that she is alive they escape the quarantine to rescue her. I know what most of you are saying , this has echoes of Cloverfield to it but boy are you wrong. Because this movie combines horror, comedy, drama, action and raw human emotion like no other I have seen this year. The characters are all pitched to perfection and you will care for all of them. When a tragedy occurs you will have a lump in your throat, humour will make you laugh, the horror will make you jump, the action gets the adrenalin pumping and at the climax you will be routing for the three siblings in the final showdown.

The character development is incredible here all three of the siblings faults are laid out without any clunky exposition and they each go through their own journey on a path to redemption. What ill astound is how quickly this piece will flick from comedy to drama without you even realising it. The best example of this being the initial meeting of the family as they are grieving the loss of the lost little girl and suddenly it becomes a slap stick punch up without losing any of its impact as an emotional scene. The monster at the heart of this movie is exceptionally well done by the special effects team and never once does it come across as the poke you eye out type CGI that Hollywood insists on.

The one dilemma for me is originally gave Cloverfield an 8 and on the basis of this film that rating will be halved, because this movie does what Cloverfield did and then pisses on it from a great height. Whereas Cloverfield gave us stereotype characters screaming ‘Oh my Gaaaaaad’ every 10 minutes Gwoemul gives us every day archetypes that react to what’s going on and in the process they grow and develop magnificently.

Myself and McFlee lambaste subtitle-phobic people all the time but this would, no fuck it THIS WILL convert your ‘I just cannae watching a fucking film with subtitles’ ignoramus for good. Trust me, go down to your video store and seek this one out it is a must have and goes right up there on my list of best foreign language movies as well as monster monster movies.

Rating 9 out 10

A monster movie with everything, yet again Korean cinema delivers some fresh and highly enjoyable.

In a snippet from the podcast episode 1.11 Matt reviews one of his all time faves, Jacob’s Ladder

WHERE EAGLES DARE

Me and my flatmate Andy were sitting bored out of our tiny little minds when we realized that there was a war film in our collection that we hadn’t watched for donkeys years. So I made the awesome effort to get off the couch and crawl over to the D.V.D. player. I tell you I felt like a commando right there and then.

The film follows an elite team of British deep cover agents, sent into the heart of Germany to carry out a top secret mission to royally fuck up the Germans. Nice one! The British team is lead by Major Johnathon Smith… A classy British name eh? Played by Richard Burton. He and his men are also accompanied by an American agent by the name of Lt Morris Schaffer, played by the ever steely eyed Clint Eastwood. The mission they are sent on is so damn top secret that you don’t even find out what it really is until two thirds of the way through the movie. And when it comes, boy its a genius piece of plot twisting that would leave the writer of Usual Suspects clapping in awe like a fish eyed spastic.

The team have to break into a massive heavily fortified castle situated on top of a mountain in Bavaria. They find ingenious ways to sneak there way in undetected, but its how they storm out of the place once they are rumbled that truly sets this film apart. The movie was made in 1968, and for it’s time the quality of the plot twists and story telling is truly astonishing. It’s one of those movies that may be on late night TV sometime and if you start watching it at 1 am in the morning, you will find yourself fending off the sandman with an imaginary MP-40 (thats one of those cool looking Nazi machine guns to you) in order to see it all the way through to the end.

Also the acting is pretty good too, especially from Eastwood, he plays the cold calculated commando so well that you really believe he could shoot his way though the whole third rich without blinking. Burton is good, if not a little too old to be playing the roll he has. The German officers are the usual affair of smarmy, cocky twats, that love to start shouting by the time they reach the end of a sentence. One of them actually has a monocle on… QUALITY!

The only bad things about the film really is its a little dated, so the special effects let it down sometimes, but as its old, we can easily forgive it of this. Look out for the orange blood and the scenes where its snowing when one guy is talking, then in another shot it seems to be calm again.

The last 3rd of this movie is truly worth the build up, as the chase scene just leaves you piecing together more and more of what was going on earlier. Even the final scene has a twist that you didn’t see coming.

Verdict: 8/10 If all our soldiers were as crafty as this, we would have kicked Hitlers arse into touch in 3 days flat!

Shows us all that plot twists were not invented by M Night Shyamalan after all… Thank god, because hes a fucking prick!!!

With dialogue like that, promise of zombie getting a chainsaw through the head and strippers into the bargain. How can you go wrong ?