Change Your Image
Tammy08
Reviews
Attack the Block (2011)
Terrible, just terrible
I thought we had grown out of the 'if it looks different kill it' attitude. Mind you we are dealing with a mentality that believes torturing animals and 'anyone not of their own' is a fun night out. Never mind. I've got an idea for a sequel where the whole estate then the whole human race is wiped out by a virus caught from the aliens. Or the aliens come back for their revenge. And get it. Or isn't that 'funny' and 'exciting' and 'fast paced' enough? Someone compared it to an Ealing Studios comedy. I can imagine the shades of Will Baker and Basil Dean shaking their heads in sadness at how their name has been so badly debased. I suppose it'll 'capture the hearts of the world' and win all the possible awards it goes in for. Arty types, eh? If I could give it less than 1 out of 10, for the subject matter alone, I would. Anyhow,that's just me.
The Killing of John Lennon (2006)
A very disturbing watch from a disturbed mind
Take one light-hearted, happy-souled, dreamer who wanted to give peace a chance and introduce him to an angry, confused disturbed young man man fifteen years his junior. Add an obsession to the death and a .38 gun. You get 'The Killing of John Lennon', told in Mark David Chapman's own words, from when he first flies to New York 'because I want to travel' to his reading from 'The Catcher In The Rye' in a court where he stands guilty of murder. Forget the blockbuster idea. If you want to label it, it's indie, art house fayre. It took three years for the money to be raised to make it. Very few special effects, filmed on location. Lots of close ups of hands and feet and faces, along with shots shown over and over again.
It is not an easy film to watch, it was as if the happenings on screen had reached out and wrapped me up so much so a day after seeing it it am still stunned and my brain is full of it. The killing itself, along with other notable scenes, of close ups of Chapman behaving in a disturbed, disturbing way, leafing through a magazine full of pictures of Lennon, flipping through 'The Catcher In The Rye', holding it to his face, sitting rocking violently on his bed, dancing around to the Beatles music while his mostly unaffected wife Gloria stands in an adjoining room with her hands flat to her ears, writing 'John Lennon' in the signing book at work, holding a heavy gun and pretending to shoot people outside the window of the Hawaii gun shop, fantasising about shooting two gay men in the next room at the YMCA in New York, his obsessive behaviour after getting his copy of 'Double Fantasy' what turned out to by John and Yoko's last album signed by John, and all to a calmly spoken track of Chapman's own thoughts.
The killing of John Lennon itself; the DVD itself has a fifteen certificate because it 'contains strong violence and language'. I have watched many scenes in films that contain violence and language, but the killing was truly horrendous; so bad I found myself speaking out loud, over the roars from the gun and Lennon's body being bloodily torn apart, 'good god, that's enough now!'
After being arrested, he had a bullet proof vest wrapped around him to be hustled through the waiting press; as the police captain in charge said, 'This man just killed John Lennon. There ain't gonna to be an Oswald on my watch'. A moment of peace in a toilet, and the captain asked Chapman why he did it. He answered that he liked John Lennon. Helplessly, the captain added, 'so did I'. In fact, whenever he was asked why he did it he almost literally always gives a different answer. I believe he did it for the fame, he was sick of having a wife and a job and living in one of the most beautiful places on earth,living an ordinary life; he needed to be noticed.
Today, Chapman is in Attica state prison, in solitary confinement for his own safety, in a room six yards by ten yards. He has been turned down for parole four times so far. But don't pity him. He has never once expressed an apology for what he has done. He's only fifty-four now. If released, it's just possible he might get an obsession with another great person to notch up his fame level again. Chapman might be locked away, he probably would never be released, but he's alive. John would have been sixty-nine, a venerable, well respected old gentleman of rock, rich in memories, like Paul McCartney perhaps even still making music.
All that wiped out because a sad, pathetic little oddball nonentity wanted to be noticed.
Gacy (2003)
Very atmospheric, very creepy
I came to watch Gacy with a lot of notions at to what the gentleman was like in 'real life' (in so far as it's possible to really know what anyone is like in real life, their motives and reasons for doing things) and I must say compared to 'To Catch A Killer' the OTHER Gacy True Crime film, with the excellent Brian Dehney in the title role, the Mark Holton version captured the true personality of the Killer Clown, and just like in the 'To Catch A Killer' version without any really overstated violence. Just one up front drowning scene and another where in the darkness of the early hours, Mrs Gacy sees or thinks she sees the bulk of her husband pushing a young man across the yard, plus a single hammer blow to a screaming young man's head. The real Mr Gacy created and maintained many links with the community, throwing parties and organising parades, all slanted around the patriotic theme USA, even dressing up as a clown at weekends to entertain the poorly kids in the local hospital. At one time, his charitable work got him photographed shaking hands with the then First Lady, President Carter's wife Roslyn, an unconscious gaffe that had some terrible repercussions for the Democrat Party in general and the Presidency of Mr Carter in particular. Married twice, and owning a successful business, Mr Gacy was a front man in the community. And yet this film, I believed, captured the dull detached personality of the true serial killer. He was so alone, and although he had friends, and many acquaintances, when it came down to it the only one who ever really loved him was his mother! The way his young male workforce treated him, with sniggers and sneers and behind-his-back asides referring to his homosexual proclivities, my personal favourite being 'if you drop your keys you'd better kick 'em', advice given to a young house mate of Mr Gacy by another of his workforce! The contrast between the inner real Mr Gacy, the chloroform using, torturing, boy sodomising murderous evil killer and his benign, bumbling, lovable front shown to the world was expertly handled, even though towards the end there was the seemingly obligatory scene where Mr Gacy started to auditory hallucinate hearing voices of boys in the wall, ie he is a mass killer and therefore must be mentally ill, where most truly mentally ill people, voice hearers, are generally sad and not violent at all. Some of it was, yes, funny, especially the way people kept hammering on his door with violent requests 'god damn you Gacy, get your stinking house cleared up, your muck is stinking my yard up' or 'damn you Gacy you owe me money for that job I done for you', and his gentle responses, 'all right yeah, I'll see to it, I'm having dinner with my family right now, come back tomorrow, I'll see to it'. And yet, the references to the smelly house (due to young male bodies discarded under his crawl space) was a bit overdone, as was the part when he walloped his young assistant on the head to the tune of hearing his (dead) dad's taunting voice 'hit me, come on, you can't can you?' but all in all, a perfectly crafted study as to what can go wrong when a person follows their fantasies as far as they can go.
Dahmer (2002)
Very creepy
Some films just grab you and others don't. Obvious enough. Dahmer was one of those who grabbed me. A dark introspective look into the world of a man who was doomed by his DNA makeup from birth to kill young men, after first drugging them across bath houses and the back rooms of seedy gay night clubs left him as alone as ever. I first of all read the book 'The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer' by Brian Masters and then dared to watch this low budget expertly crafted drama documentary. A lot of scenes included just him, even those where other people should be involved, like outside and then inside the building where Dr Lionel Dahmer dropped his son, sending his for counselling. I believe this was purposefully done to show just how alone this young man was. He was incapable, though desperately wanted to, join in, be one of the crowd. Even the party scene he sits or stands away from everyone else, not really part of anything, and at the end wanders off alone. I especially liked the contrast between the slow moving necrophiliac Jeffrey and the young life affirming rapid moving and talking young man Rodney played with understated camp brilliance by Artel Kayaru, and the interaction between them that took up large amounts of this film. Rodney loved and trusted people, and proved it by,coming back knocking on his door asking for a cab, after escaping an attempted assault by Jeffrey, and then insisting Jeffrey give him the key to the handcuffs Jeffrey had very kinkily fastened onto him, and once he was back in the apartment, trying to seduce him. It was only when Jeffrey tried to strangle him did Rodney give up and run off, smashing Jeffrey's bedroom window. The saddest, shout-at-the-screen bit was when that poor Laotian boy escaped and those two black girls were attempting to save him and were shooed off by a trio of patronising cops who escorted Jeffrey and his too-drugged-to-protest soon to be murder victim home and after giving them a rather patronising talking down to, left them to it. Not fair! And then there was JeremyRenner the young man who portrayed Jeffrey, with his wispy flop of blonde hair and round rimmed glasses, as a wholesome John Boy Walton type that no one had to fear at all, a bland faced unemotional wreck of humanity with all this confusion and rage inside invisible to the world at large. Well done, well acted and well crafted and earning an 8 out of 10.
Ted Bundy (2002)
Wow! And all this was real.
Sometimes you sit down and switch on your DVD player and put a film on and if it's the kind I like, the drama documentary types based on true life killers, you can sometimes get so carried away by the story that you forget it really all happened. Mr Bundy was a real killer who was so pathetic and inadequate and a childish loser that he had to prove his manhood by smacking innocent girls around the head and dragging them off and raping their corpses. How anyone could even see anything heroic in this man I do not know. I'm afraid to admit that my two favourite scenes were the one when the Carol deRoche character who Mr Bundy picked up pretending to be a copper telling her her car had been broken into, and drove her off to his killing ground, suddenly awoke to the truth and smacked him around the head and even when he pulled a gun out did not back down and managed to escape. I cheered through that scene! Second was when he was killed at the end, electrocuted and first had to submit to having his backside plugged, sort of anally raped, as he did to his victims, getting a taste of his own back. Plus a woman pulled the lever. A couple of points that rankled; his girlfriend (called Lee in the film)seemed to have no idea what he was doing to those girls, even submitting to being tied up and told to play dead, with her eyes open, for his sexual entertainment, and yet when he was in gaol and confessed he had been accused of murdering a 'girl up north',or something she saw something in him that made her see what he'd done, and what he was capable of and walked out! What was that all about? Another point,Mr Bundy was in reality a left-hander, according to Anne Rule's definitive work, 'The Stranger Beside Me' where Mr Michael Reilly Burke the actor who played him was right handed, and though this might be nit picking, his hand of choice was used vigorously and frequently and it spoilt it a bit for me. All the same - another winner from Mr Hamish McAlpine's Tartan Terror series.
The Hillside Strangler (2004)
Frightening stuff!
I watched this film with a mix of dread and anguish. At more than one point I was shouting at the screen; 'No, no! Oh Lord! Don't kill her! Oh let her go!'And other pointless instructions. The victims were tragic specially victim number two, the addle brained young hooker who, on being fooled into believing she was being arrested was taken to the cousins home and started to realise something was wrong, quietly begged Kenneth Bianchi 'you aren't gonna hurt me, are you, Mister?'While Angelo Buono was in the bedroom preparing her death bed. According to the sleeve notes in the UK DVD version, the genius level producer Mr Hamish McAlpine wanted to make clear that these two men were not role models, after being accused of making Ted Bundy and Ed Gein, the other two serial killer subjects of his films too sympathetic. Well, he succeeded! Evil swines, both of them. Mr Buono died of a heart attack a bit back but Mr Bianchi is still in prison, lying and fooling those around him that he is a changed man! My favourite scene was when that black pimp and his gang threatened the twosome with guns and Ken was begging for his life, even though sparky little Angelo stood up to them. One slight niggling complaint; Mr Nicholas Turturro who portrayed Mr Buono was far too handsome and clever in a cocky posturing macho way. The real Mr Buono was an ugly slow witted low life who didn't kill before or after Mr Bianchi came into his life. Also, I think there should have been some kind of sequel made, where Mr Bianchi took on the whole forensic psychological profession with his faked tale of Multiple Personality Disorder and held them to a draw for a good while, till he was seen through. THAT would make a whole film in itself. All the same - whenever two men come to repair anything in my home, I always make sure neither of them can get behind me with a rope, just in case!
In the Light of the Moon (2000)
Odd business, all of it...
First of all, I must say that I LOVED the Steve Railsback/Carrie Snodgress teaming, they acted so well together. I know it's an odd thing to admit, but I howled at the scene when Ed's Mother came back from the dead to him and his voice went all soft like an awed little boy's and he said, 'I'm so glad you come back to me', and she held him in her arms and told him she loved him! If only it had stayed like that,if she'd come back before he'd killed Mary Hogan, and they would have been happy in the confines of Ed's broken mind.(I KNOW he killed his big brother Henry prior to this, but the real Ed was not charged with Henry's murder so this is just conjuncture plus artistic licence)Only one slight complaint; According to my reading, Augusta Gein, the Mother, was a big woman, and the slender, slight Carrie Snodgress seemed too small and delicate to play her. I imagined someone like the excellent and underrated Tyne Daly in the role of the powerful, well built Mrs Gein. But apart from this minor gripe, it's a well done all round and the 10 out of 10 I give it is well earned.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
What is it trying to say?
First of all, the main thing that struck me about this film was; Human beings are bad and evil and selfish plus; If you are good looking sweet faced and appealing you deserve to live, but if you are odd looking, then it's the acid wash or dismemberment for you! The little lad David was an obnoxious little snot and part of me wished he would go under the acid in the 'Flesh Fair' scene but no - the mob decided that because he was appealing looking he could live, when all those other odd looking machines prior to him, the poor dustbin with a face and the machine with the woman's face plus the others were rounded up and torn apart! I did like the Gigolo Joe character, the way he moved and spoke, and how he changed his hair colour with a twitch and switched on romantic music by jerking his head. What he said, about how human beings could never love AI's, they could use them, but could never really love them because they weren't really alive said it all for me. But I wish some not so photogenic creature had more of a starring role. (Teddy not included, he was sweet therefore fitted in with what was right!) I'll probably get into trouble for writing this, now.