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Three ...Extremes, a review by Jon

Three ...Extremes
4 out of 5



This is a clever anthology of Asian horror. It's nicely produced, because each of the three is a separate country as well as director.

Dumplings (dir. Fruit Chan) Hong Kong
An ageing actress wishing to reclaim her youth goes to a woman who makes dumplings that supposedly have regenerative properties; however, they contain a gruesome secret ingredient.

Wow, this is intense stuff! It's rather unassuming, with straight-forward direction and there are no jump moments or gore, but the subject matter will probably stay with you for some time. I say there's no gore, but that depends on your perception; safer to say, don't watch it for gore, because it isn't that sort of film. It's a drama, that follows a middle-aged actress as she visits an enigmatic lady who promises she can restore her youth. This lady seems much younger, but claims to be far older. Her secret is in her special dumplings, which she prepares for her customers at her apartment.

You find out what is in the dumplings fairly early into this 40 minute story, though you see her preparing something even earlier. And it obviously ain't chicken! It's as sick an idea as they come and for the rest of the running time, it fairly wallows in the idea. When the actress finds out, she does a runner, but then comes back and gets stuck in. The camera lingers a lot on her eating and the sound effects really turn the screw.

As with much Asian horror, it has substance beyond it's premise and deals with societies obsession with youth. It's very good and is a short version of a feature length film. I have yet to decide if my stomach can handle another dose!  


Cut (dir. Park Chan Wook) Korea
A successful film director and his wife are kidnapped by an extra, who forces the director to play his sadistic games. If he fails, his wife's fingers will be chopped off one by one every five minutes.

This was a bit disappointing, to say it came from the director of OldBoy. What did I say about about substance above? This is rather empty in comparison, relying on a torture setup. It's still better than most of what the Saw films came up with and it's an ingenious trap and visually powerful. Korean films love to push the boundary of what cameras can do and Park pulls out all the tricks to brilliant effect.

The story is good to, with the director forced to consider something truly awful to free his wife, or at least save her remaining fingers. The kidnapper also forces all sorts of confessions and has an interesting theory about how rich and poor are depicted on TV compared to real life. Ok, I concede it has plenty of thought behind it. It's just the ending that felt a bit sensationalist. Almost as if they'd written themselves into a corner. Anyway, well worth seeing.

Box (dir. Takashi Miike) Japan
A soft spoken young woman has a bizarre recurring nightmare about being buried in a box in the snow. Searching for her long lost sister, she realizes her dreams and reality may possibly be connected.

With perhaps some very deep rooted similarities to the notorious Audition, this is easily the most ambitious of the three, but you wouldn't expect less from Miike who is a true master. He's also clearly mad! Visually the most powerful as he creates wonderful compositions without using any camera tricks (apart from a couple of subtle "twitches" that work very well), just well-dressed sets and contrasting tones. There are scenes in a snowy landscape that are simply gorgeous.

The story is the cleverest and most substantial of the three, again, relying on deep rooted psychosis rather than anything sensationalist. That takes away some immediacy, but I dare say this is the one that will continue to intrigue me. It isn't in anyway obvious and marks Miike out as the most Auteur-ish of the three brilliant men who contributed. I'd try to tell you more of the story, but the overview is good enough. I'm not sure I completely agree with the sentiments of that last sentence, but I can't describe it any better so I'll keep my mouth shut! Suffice to say, the ending leaves you in no doubt of the situation and may fascinate you enough to consider watching it again. Quite brilliant.

Three ...Extremes works very well in it's own right and just about escapes the problem that so many similar releases get trapped by. That feeling of style over substance, undone in the final moments, is common with short horror stories, but here, only Cut suffered and even then, it's still very good.

It works as an excellent primer to Asian cinema as well. They've been the best for horror for some time and the short stories make it easy to stop and come back to it, if you aren't used to their styles or even subtitles.

(From DCO third annual November Alphabet Marathon - discussion/review/banter thread on November 26th, 2009)

Alien, a review by Jon

Alien (The Director's Cut)
5 out of 5



The crew of the Nostromo are awakened early from hyper-sleep to answer a distress call from a seemingly abandoned planet. While investigating on the ground, they discover an alien craft, seemingly lifeless. Yet one of their number is attacked and brought back to the ship, complete with unwanted guest.

Alien is one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made and a long term favourite of mine. Sorry, but I'm bound to go about this one! If you've never seen it, erm... why? It's influence is huge. That it can be accurately described as near-perfect is astonishing given the scope of it's ambition. There are so many layers to this film that it's hard to know where to begin.

Let's start with the ship as that's the first thing we see. The Nostromo is essentially a huge tug-boat, dragging an even larger refinery. Inside the camera moves slowly around the quiet vessel, languishing in the design. Finally stopping at a panel that bursts into life, processing what we later learn to be a distress call. The fascinating thing about The Nostromo is it looks old and well used. A working, grimy industrial ship. I suppose to most people at the time, the clean regimented Federation ships of Star Trek would be the typical sci-fi notion of space travel and this couldn't be a starker contrast.

Throughout the film, the sets boast huge lonely cavernous storage areas, dark and full of feasible equipment that looks like someone has it there for a reason, though a long forgotten one judging by the rust. Aesthetically I don't think there is a better realised film. There is an almost Victorian look to it,  including lots of steam, in keeping with that industrial mood. That old fashioned look means it should never date, right down to computer panels with CRT monitors, basic text readouts and "clack-clack" operating noises. This is a machine age where flat screens and holograms will always be unwelcome.

Soon the crew awaken from their hyper sleep. A dishevelled bunch, ranks are observed, but not formally. As it is a working class ship, this is a small working class crew and even Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) has the weary look of someone who is simply doing his job. That must have struck a chord with audiences in the economically rough 70s. In keeping with which, the relations between the crew are typical of any factory. The engineers Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) are always arguing with the others about money. They're one step away from calling their union and going on strike! Lt. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) similarly pisses everyone off by waving a rule book around all the time, though in retrospect maybe they should have listened. A "told you so" wet dream for any Health & Safety official!

While investigating the call that caused them to be awoken early, Dallas, Kane (John Hurt) and Lambert (Veronical Cartwright) discover the alien vessel and the dead pilot. As with everything else, a lot of work has gone into this to make it look like it could work without actually showing us how or why. Soon Kane finds eggs and is attacked by a facehugger and has to be taken back on board.

And so begins the intricately detailed lifecycle of the greatest monster ever to stalk cinema. This thing is an invasion in more ways then one. Importantly I think it is as alien to the crew as it is to us. These working class people don't expect to find gooey bugs in their factory as much as we don't.

The Alien was created in the mind of bio-mechanical genius H. R. Giger and it has specific stages in it's process to match the machinelike environment it attacks. It's the most effective monster because that process is very sexual, attacking the human psyche at a base level. The Facehugger stage is mating with -perhaps raping even- Kane and the result is flippantly called "Kane's Son" by science officer Ash (Ian Holm), who seems a little too fascinated by the creature that the others are happy to destroy.

If this all sounds a bit deep and Freudian, well actually the birth scene is a notorious horror classic. The resultant creature then haunts the ship and it's scary as hell. Each set-piece picking off the crew one by one is different to the last, dripping with metaphor and tension. And what a magnificent beast it is too, brilliantly photographed. It is basically a bloke in a rubber suit with a huge cock for a head, though it never looks like that. Strobe lighting, slow movements, more steam; we never see the creature in full, but all the shots combine in our imagination. Ridley Scott directs the whole thing with an almost priapic confidence and he throws everything in to grace his creature with as much terror as he can muster.

The director's cut includes a scene of Ripley finding past victims cocooned against a wall. Though never explored this is the next stage in the creatures cycle which surely included a Queen. Obviously we don't see her. Yet.  But even on first viewings it's obvious the Alien has a purpose beyond a boogey man in fancy dress. We've just been dropped down the food chain and that gives the story a lasting fear. Ripley going back for the cat is a human weakness this ruthlessly efficient thing would never do and such a small act just emphasises that it is better than us. That's scarily one of the most important elements in any horror. Superiority. The victims don't even have a moral high ground; their extinct.

All things considered, there's a lot could of gone wrong. The film is so rich without a single cliche (even the black guy doesn't die first! And picking the survivor when you first see the crew is impossible) it almost seems a waste to pace it as a simple haunted house story. But that's the sort of ambition that is lacking in todays cinema. This is possibly Scott's masterpiece and that's why rumours of his involvement in a possible Alien 5 endure. I hope it's true.

(From October Marathon: Horror! on October 19th, 2008)

Tom's TV Pilots marathon, a review by Tom

Dinosaurs: Seasons One and Two (1991/United States) IMDb | Wikipedia Buena Vista Home Entertainment (United States) Length: 676 min. Video: Full Frame 1.33:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Subtitles: English

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Plot:
Meet the Sinclairs -- the funniest family in 60 million years! They're just your average family with one BIG difference. They're dinosaurs, living the good life in sixty million and three B.C.!

Daddy Earl, his wife Fran, their kids, Robbie, Charlene, and the Baby, and feisty Grandma Ethyl, bring a hilarious Jurassic twist to daily life as they eat, drink, make merry, and get their kicks watching cavemen rub rocks together.

Based on an idea by Jim Henson, the award-winning comedy series features state-of-the-art puppetry and audioanimatronics. For the first time, you can enjoy the complete first two seasons and rediscover the pre-hysterical fun all over again.


Dinosaurs
1.01 The Mighty Megalosaurus
Writer: Michael Jacobs (Created By), Bob Young (Created By), Michael Jacobs (Writer), Bob Young (Writer)
Director: William Dear
Cast: Dave Goelz (Earl Sinclair), Bill Barretta (Earl Sinclair), Stuart Pankin (Earl Sinclair (voice)), Allan Trautman (Fran Sinclair), Mitchel Young Evans (Fran Sinclair), Jessica Walter (Fran Sinclair (voice)), Steve Whitmire (Robbie Sinclair), Leif Tilden (Robbie Sinclair), Jason Willinger (Robbie Sinclair (voice)), Bruce Lanoil (Charlene Sinclair), Arlene Lorre (Charlene Sinclair), Sally Struthers (Charlene Sinclair (voice)), Kevin Clash (Baby Sinclair), John Kennedy (Baby Sinclair), David Greenaway (Roy Hess), Pons Maar (Roy Hess), Sam McMurray (Roy Hess (voice)), Steve Whitmire (B.P. Richfield), Sherman Hemsley (B.P. Richfield (voice)), Brian Henson (Arthur Henson), Terri Hardin (Additional Dinosaur Performer), Michelan Sisti (Additional Dinosaur Performer), Jack Tate (Additional Dinosaur Performer), Teri La Porte (Cavepeople), Michelan Sisti (Cavepeople)

I enjoyed this series while it was on TV. It also had a fitting ending. Strangely this time around I felt the pilot was a little slow. Like they weren't really comfortable with the big dinosaurs suits yet.

Rating:

(From Tom's TV Pilots marathon on April 7th, 2011)