Museum Hours: Jem Cohen

Something of an oddity, the film tells of an attendant at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna who befriends a Canadian woman who has come to Vienna  because she is the only relative of a cousin who is in a coma.   A leisurely piece which shows a number of the paintings in the Museum without comment as well as a series of disconnected shots of various parts of Vienna (very few of these of tourist sights) coupled with a measured commentary by the attendant about the visitors to the Museum, the film is, to quote the director, a sort of conversation with reference to the philosophy of Chris Marker and John Berger in particular.   The attendant is especially fond of the works of Brueghel and there is a quite extended sequence with a youngish art historian talking about some of the paintings in the room dedicated to his work.   A quiet, unassuming work with well rounded performances from the two leads though some sequences left me puzzled - after a boat trip though some underground caves, they learn that the cousin has died but the scene then moves to a party for immigrants in the attendant's local cafe which is followed by a brief discourse on a short of an old woman walking up a slope with a tall office or apartment building off to the left.   I went to this as I had hoped there would be more on the paintings than there was but, overall, an acceptable film.

Gipsy Anne: Rasmus Breistien

A complete change of pace a few days later in this silent restoration of what is considered the first
authentic Norwegian feature.   Starring Aasta Nielsen in the title role of a foundling tomboy who has
always thought she would marry her childhood friend, the early scenes show her getting into mischief with a local farmeralways being there to protect her.   As an adult, she sets fire to the house her erstwhile boyfriend has built but  her farmer friend takes responsibility for it even though Anne has turneddown his proposal of marriage.   When he leaves prison, Annewho has moved to the town to start afresh, is there to greet him and the film ends with them both leaving for the USA with his mother.   A relatively static camera setting with but a few moving shots though one of the farmer being taken to jail ( a shot of passing scenery with the camera behind the driver) is effective; the film stock switched from sepia to black and white without reason though this may be a function of the material available for restoration.   The main drawback for me was the apparent age of the main characters, all of whom looked to be in their thirties or more though Nielsen was only 23 when the film was made.   A curiosity but no more.

Helter Skelter: Mika Nagakawa

The fourth film from the Far East we have seen, this Japanese feature stars Erika Sawajira, apparently
the Japanese Kate Moss, in an excellently played role as the current darling of the teens of Japan.   She is almost completely artificially beautiful and requires regular treatment from a clinic whose procedures are being investigated by the police.   Sawajira's beauty hides a spoilt and vicious person who corrupts her assistant sexually as well as persuading the latter's boyfriend to disfigure a girl who has become engaged to her current lover.   She is gradually supplanted in the public affection by a younger, fresher beauty and, finally, breaks down completely in front of TV cameras.  A short end sequence shows the new beauty going to a risque nightclub where she sees and follows the assistant to see the earlier teen queen still beautiful but no longer famous.   A very energetic and flashy film with comparatively explicit (for Japan) sex scenes and fine support from the other main actors though the lasting memory will be of Sawajira's central performance in this attack on celebrity and the corruption behind it.

For Love's Sake: Takashi Miike

What a versatile director Miike is. Having made his name with Yakuza style films, he has tried other genres to greater or lesser success. This is a part musical reworking of what is called Romeo and Juliet but this is misleading. The central story is of a rich senior schoolgirl's love for a punk. She sees him in the middle of a street brawl which she unsuccessfully tries to stop but recognises him as the boy who saved her years earlier from a skiing accident which left him with a scarred forehead. This incident opens the film in anime style and also features at the end. She persuades her father to get him into her very exclusive school and to pay for his being there but this does not work and he ends up in a downbeat vocational school in which she enrols even though she was head girl of her former school. Out of her depth she is followed by one of the senior boys who ineffectually tries to protect her. The action is interspersed with songs, the one featuring her parents being delightfully funny and the other blending in with the action for the most part. The girls in the second school seem to be led by a rather large bully, this being the comedic relief role, though the real leader is another girl who takes up with the hero. She has a number of the boys under her thumb including one who is bigger and stronger than the rest. The finale sees this boy fight the hero for the second time with the female gang leader intervening by throwing knives. Although good prevails, the heroine is badly hurt and taken to hospital. In the closing scene, our hero is knifed in the back by a teacher he had humiliated but continues to the hospital to die in her arms. Miike has an excellent eye for scene composition and, although I thought the middle section would have benefitted from either being tighter or possible had more music in it, my overall reaction is that this is a very welcome return to top form.

The Samurai That Night: Masaki Akahori

Seen later the same day as the first film, the title and description led me to expect a somewhat bloody revenge film with the protagonist seeking retribution on the lout who had killed his wife in a car crash. The lout has served a five year jail sentence but has no regrets and has certainly not reformed in any way. The husband is a quiet man who has a small foundry with employees who treat him very off-handedly and friends who are trying to match him up with someone to help him forget his dead wife. This is a slowish psychological study with a few touching scenes and a denouement in really heavy rain which seems to give the husband closure even though the lout is still alive. I might have thought more of it had I not had the wrong initial impression of what I was going to see though without that impression I wouldnot have seen it!

Doomsday Book: Kim Jee-woon & Yim Pil-Sung

The first of this year's London Film Festival viewings, this is a three part Korean film, the first two parts having been completed some time ago while the third is a more recent collaboration. The first segment is a zombie episode which starts with frankly nauseating scenes of food being eaten and the waste then processed into animal feed which then returns to the table as raw beef. This causes an unstoppable epidemic of walking dead. A satirical comment on the food industry filmed in bright colour with some style. The second segment is set in a Buddhist temple with a robot discussing Nirvana with the monks when a mechanic fails to repair it or close it down. A little on the long side but interesting. The final segment has the two directors co-operating in a tale in which a young girl loses her father's eightball and orders another without knowing that she has ordered it from somewhere in the universe. The problem is that the delivery comes in a giant size which destroys muuch of the earth. The family survive in an underground shelter and emerge after many years to find the oversized ball on their doorstep with the alian messenger still waiting for a signature accepting delivery. Amusing but probably the weakest of the three.

Schlink, Bernhard & Popp, Walter: Self's Punishment

Self is a former Nazi prosecutor who became disillusioned with his work, resigned and, after the end of World War II, chose not to return to this profession but became a private investigator instead. He is asked by his brother-in-law, who is now the head of a major chemical firm, to find out who has been tampering with the company's computer system. So far this has been an annoyance rather than causing any real problems. He does this, finds the culprit who is romantically involved with one of the secretaries who has caught Self's eye as well, and makes his report. A few weeks later the culprit is killed in what seems a straight-forward road accident but his girlfriend is not convinced and the bulk of the novel deals with Self's efforts to find out what happened and why. Self is no longer young but seems to have a way with women and his character is well-drawn. The actual story is anything but contrived though there are the almost inevitable co-incidences, the main one being a link to one of his wartime cases at the same chemical plant; this does allow him to work out who was responsible and why by the end of the book. Set in and around Mannheim with excursions to San Francisco and the Italian Lakes, the book portrays a likeable and eccentric detective who enjoys the company of women. The book was published in Germany in 1987 with theEnglish translation dating from 2004. If there are more, it is worth seeking them out.

Carrisi, Donato: The Whisperer

A very interesting Italian thriller starts with the discovery of six severed arms which have been buried in a forest clearing. All belong to young girls but there is no sign of any bodies. The team investigating this is headed by a criminologist and it is joined by a young female officer who is an expert at finding missing girls. She is the focus of the book with the developments told mainly from her viewpoint. She is psychologically damaged being unable to relate to others and being prone to self- mutilation though the reason for this is not clear until the final chapters. The team discover not one but a number of killers who are somehow linked. What makes the book appealing is the gradual discovery of the different strands and the way they come together. Two additional strands are the reason why the killer seems to know what the investigators are doing, the most starling example of this being the discovery of one of the dead girls in the incident room they use and the gradual unveiling of the secret life of the criminologist. The members of the team are deftly characterised and made individual, something not always seen in policiers which this novel is in a way. It is, however, much more than this. It is a well-written psychological study both of the criminals involved but also of those seeking them. A fair amount of technical detail is included but this helps maintain the reader's interest rather than being tedious. Quite a change from the better known Italian policiers by writers like Andrea Camilleri and, overall, more satisfying.

Frightfest 2012 Day 5: 27.8.2012

The Soska sisters earlier film, 'Dead Hooker in a Trunk', was such that we had not intended to see their new one, 'American Mary'but decided to do so as we had seen one of the other two and the third did not appeal. A medical student is broke and not too happy with her studies. Played deadpan almost by Katharine Isabelle, she becomes involved in the world of illegal body modification which pays well. After a party at which her medical tutor rapes her (as seemingly do others there, she takes revenge on him by removing limbs while keeping him alive while making money illegally. All, of course, eventually goes wrong. Could have been better but not bad. After directed by Ryan Smith is creepy. A man and a woman survive a bus crash to find themselves trapped in their home town and completely alone while a dark fog moves closer and closer. In their efforts to escape they fall in love and finally succeed though it may not have been the terrifying reality it seemed to be at the end. Well done tosh. Chained directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch has Vincent D'Onofrio as a mad taxi driver who kidnaps a mother and her son then kills the mother and enslaves the boy who is made to clean up after further killings. He is taught from books about anatomy and other things and, in his late teens, offered freedom if he, too, becomes a killer. He is unable to complete this but does killy his captor and returns to the family home after finding lettersand cancelled cheques from his father who has remarried. The end is a bloody one. Probably well done but distasteful. The Possession directed by Ole Bornedal tells of the possession of a young girl by a dybbuk which is in an antique box purchased at a yard sale. Eventually a young rabbi does perform the relevant ceremony and the film ends with the cliche of a cliffhanger. Solid and unmemorable. Tower Block directed by James Nunn and Ronnie Thompson was the closing film having its world premiere here. Now on general release it tells of the remaining occupants of a tower block due for demolition who find the lifts booby-trapped and exits and entrances blocked while they are sitting ducks for some shooting at them from a nearby block. Their numbers are gradually whittled down to the redoubtable heroine and two others who are able to overpower the shooter who has entered the building to complete the slaughter. Quite good.

Frightfest 2012 Day 4: 26.8.2012

We Are The Night directed by Dennis Gansel is a stylish vampire film set in Berlin. There are three of them, Louise who is searching for her last love, Charlotte who misses the daughter she last saw in 1923 while the third just wants to have sex and fun. Lena, a pickpocket on the run is seen by Louise who is convinced she is the one she is seeking. Although joining the undead, Lena falls in love with a policeman who is chasing them and from this point on, the vampires are in trouble. True love does finally prevail, however. A delightful romp of a film. The Inside directed by Eoin Macken had its world premiere and possibly its only ever showing. A group of girls go to celebrate the birthday of one of them in a disused warehouse (WHY?) where they are terrorised and abused by a group of vagrants before falling prey to something apparently supernatural. This is all seen on a camcorder picked up by a young man who goes to investigate only to be killed by the one survivor before sheescapes into the Dublin streets to be hit and killed by a car. This film made 'Nightbreed' (see Day 2) look a masterpiece. Alas we were stuck in the middle of the back row with one of the cast next to me so politeness meant we suffered! Sleep Tight directed by Jaume Balaguero unfortunately lived up to its title as I slept through a fair amount though through no fault of the film. What I did see was well done in this tale of a janitor who obsesses on a new occupant to the extent of raping her in her sleep though he is eventually found out and dimissed. Berberian Sound Studio directed by Peter Strickland has Toby Jones working as a sound engineer on an Italian horror film though his background is nature documentaries. No gory or scary scenes are viewed and the whole film develops from his reaction to what he sees as he produces the sound effects. Something of a disappointment

Frightfest 2012 Day 3: 25.8.2012

Eurocrime! directed by Mile Malloy is an interesting documentary exposition of the crime movies that provided a violent follow-up to the Spaghetti Western genre in Italy. With a number of interviews from the leading actors such as Franca Nero and Henry Silva with extracts from many of the films and intelligent use of posters, this was a fascinating slice of relatively unknown film history. Annoyingly put together at times, this did not detract from the light shed on the processes used which were much different from those used elsewhere. Kill Zombie directed by Martin Smits and Erwin van den Eshof was a delight. Four friends and a female cop emerge from the police station to discover the city has been ravaged by a zombie outbreak caused by a Russian space station crashing into the top of atall building where one of the works. Receiving a cry for help from the sexy secretary he was expecting to bed, they set off the rescue her, their journey across the city being fill with fights with the undead. Reaching the building they climb up to rescue the girl to find she had called everyone she knew and is now rewarding the first to reach her as only she knows how. Further mayhem follows with the female cop forming an attachment for the now disillusioned friend. Great fun, well done. Paura directed by the Manetti Brothers is a 3D shocker. A garage mechanic overheards a very wealthy customer telling the garage owner that he will be away for the weekend so he decides to break in with his mates to have a party there. They do and make merry with the place while waiting for the evening but... the house owner's car breaks down and he returns! The three hide and one discovers a naked girl chained up in the cellar while doing so but gets away with one of his friends but they decide they must go back for the other one. Eventually, the elderly owner kills two of them while the third releases the girl but is himself captured. She then kills her captor and finally her would be rescuer before running off naked down the road as the friends of the dead men arrive to party. Gory and reasonably done. Another Manetti brothers film followed, The Arrival of Wang. A girl interpreting Chinese films is hired for a one day assignment and is taken blindfolded to a hidden location where she starts to interpret the interrogation of Mr Wang though she cannot see him. She finds the methods used objectionable and refuses to continue without seeing Mr Wang who turns out to be an alien who eventually manipulates her into setting him free for her to discover that she has unwittingly aided the invasion of earth. Quite jolly in a weird sort of way. The final film we saw was also Italian, Tulpa directd by Federico Zampaglione. A driven female professional relaxes at Club Tulpa where the philosophy of freedom through promiscuity is practised. Those with whom she couples start getting murdered and, fearful that she would jeopardise her day job, she tries to find the killer herself. The film suffered from what was either inane dubbing or a poor script which tickled the audience's fancy; this spoilt an interesting film with an unexpected but credible denouement. I would like to see this undubbed.

Frightfest 2012 Day 2: 24.8.2012

Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut opened the day with a work in progress directed by Russell Cherrington. Claiming to present Clive Barker's true vision rather than the limited cinematic release, this effort combines two European work prints with the DVD and the theatrical release. Unfortunately, what was shown was a mix of almost unwatchable footage which would have disgraced a fourth generation video copy mixed with some much clearer footage, the whole providing a near unintelligible mess. What struck me was that Barker's imagination was as much submerged by the flat acting as by the unwatchable interpolations. I thought there were computer programmes to clean up tape footage. The Dario Argento interview which followed was hampered by Argento's limited English and would have been better served by using a translator - surely not too difficult a procedure to arrange. He did come across as a man of some wit. Hidden in the Woods directed by Patricio Valladares tells of two sisters raised in an isolated cottage in the woods who are abused by their drug dealing father. When he is reported, he chainsaws to death the two police sent to arrest him but is caught and jailed before he can tell his drug lord boss where he has hidden a recent shipment. The drug lord sends his men to find this but the two girls and their mentally handicapped brother kill them and then the drug lord before the final scene of the three of them gambolling in the sea. Unredeeming splatter. V/H/S followed which is a six director found footage compilation. This demonstrates beyond doubt that found footage has had its day (possibly except in thrillers using CCTV footage sparingly to advance the plot) and is, by and large, an excuse for a lack of both talent and imagination. The outcome was that we then left without seeing the UK premiere of [Rec}3 Genesis which was probably a better film.

Frightfest 2012 Day 1: 23.8.2012

The Seasoning House directed by Paul Hyatt was the opening film. Set mainly in a house used as a brothel to which girls captured by soldiers in an unnamed Balkan conflict (presumably Serbia/Bosnia) are brutalised and used sexually, often after their parents have been killed in front of them. The young female lead is a deaf-mute who has been orphaned and is made to care for the prostituted girls, cleaning them and keeping them drugged. Unknown to her captors, she moves around the spaces between wals and floors to comfort some of the girls when she can. While the man in charge is as brutal as anyone, he seems to have a soft spot for her but when the man who killed her family arrive, she uses her knowledge of the secret passages to exact revenge before escaping - but she ends up at the home of the doctor who has been used to treat the girls in the brothel. A reasonable first effort. Cockneys vs Zombies directed by Matthias Hoene was the second film and a complete change from the first. Two brothers decide to rob a bank to save the care home where their grandfather lives at the same time that an underground vault is opened on a nearby building site releasing the undead entombed there for centuries. The delight of the film is seeing elderly actors like Honor Blackman, Dudley Sutton and richard Briers deal with the zombies when the care home is attacked. Alan Ford plays the grandfather somewhat reprising his role in recent British gangster films not that I recognised or had heard of him. While there is ample gore, the tone is light with the highlight surely being Richard Briers using a zimmer frame trying successfully to outpace slowly an attacking zombie. All ends happily with them riding upstream to safetly.

Lukyanenko, Sergei: The Night Watch

A few years ago, the film of this book was shown at Frightfest and it proved to be a well-made and entertaining addition to the world of fantasy films. I have had the book for some time but only now have I read it. My memory of the film has dimmed but the book is far superior. It tells the story of Anton, a young Other and Night Watch agent, in three connected but separate episodes. Set in Moscow, there is no great effort made to create a cityscape though the city's geography is presumably correctly depicted. The three episodes provide examples of the way the Day Watch and Night Watch clash and the difference between them. The unreal aspects of what is effectively a parallel world entwined with the 'normal' one are shown with skill and are not overblown, there being a high degree of naturalness about most of them. The book reads like an adult Harry Potter story a lot of the time, this being an indication of the high standard of the writing and plotting. There are three sequels which I shall read over the coming months rather than immediately as it will be better to savour them slowly rather than rushing through them.

Pryce, Malcolm: The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

In the splendid alternative Wales which has been at war with Patagonia, where Louie Knight leads a Marlowe-like existence as Aberystwyth's only private eye, strange events have occured. As if the author's earlier imaginings were not enough, we now have extra-terrestrial beings and others looking for a dead man. Well up to the witty and believable standard of the previous books, this one is solidly based even though the overall premise may not be. The exposition of the plot resonates with reminders of the novels of Chandler and MacDonald without being overly strained and there is a definite hint of world-weariness appearing as the book progresses. It will be better to read the earlier books first though this one does stand on its own. Well up to the very high standard Malcolm Pryce has set himself