Beasts of the Southern Wild review

“Once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her daddy in The Bathtub"


Beasts of the Southern Wild is a physically dismantling film. It is a film that could go on forever because it’s a world you just want to be enveloped in. It’s a world of wonder, poetry and magic. It tells the story of Hushpuppy, Quvenzhané Wallis in the best child performance since Hunter Carson in Paris, Texas, and her father, Wink, played by baker Dwight Henry, and their life in the Bathtub, a fantastical community built out of poverty, circumstance and humanity. It is said that the icecaps are melting and a great storm is coming bringing with it long-frozen, prehistoric beasts. 

'gunna need a bigger boat

The first film from Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wilds is a fable about facing death and finding ones value in life. It’s apocalyptic, political, heart-breaking. It’s Malick-esque in the best possible way: it’s earthy, biblical, poetic and honest. It’s human and commands emotional engagement while having lashings of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Fantasy-realism some may call it; it straddles the divide between socio-political exploration and high fantasy. This uncanny quality is captured by presenting a relevant narrative through the eyes and mind of Hushpuppy. The film owes a debt to the aforementioned Where the Wild Things Are, certainly, but the films closest comparison would be to Victor Erice’s masterpiece The Spirit of the Beehive in its child’s-eye-view on a world and of the fabric of human nature.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a masterstroke in acting, directing, sound direction and mise-en-scene but to break the film down in to its basic components seems trivial when it really is a product of the sum of its parts. And what a product it is. It’s pure cinema, an amalgamation of sound, vision and emotion. In these days where every film, no matter what it is, can find some way of slapping a load of five-stars and praise on its poster it’s easy to become jaded and cynical and to mistrust hype. But Benh Zeitlin’s film is another beast entirely, pardon the pun. No amount of plaudits and recommendations can really account for the genuine awe the film inspires. It’s not just something you appreciate, Beasts of the Southern Wild is something you feel.

Sinister review - the horror event of 5th October

Every film critic tired of watching generic horror film after generic horror film has thought the same thing: ‘I could write a better film than this’. On the evidence of C. Robert Cargill’s first foray into the world of horror screenwriting, it turns out you can’t, but you can give it a decent stab. Directed and co-written by Scott Derrickson, Sinister tells of one-hit-wonder crime writer Ellison Oswalt, respectably played by Ethan Hawke, who moves his family into the house of an unsolved, brutal murder. From this venture he seems to hope to score another bestseller and perhaps not to provoke an ancient evil, but who knows. 

Literally just turn a light on...

Sinister is not without merit but it is cripplingly by-the-books. An over reliance on jump scares leaves the audience unsure whether they are tense due to well-constructed suspense or for fear of their ears, as each jump scare is inexplicably accompanied by a ludicrously loud bang. Sinister is at its best when we’re presented with Ellison working on the case, pinning up evidence, lining up the clues. From Zodiac to Fear X to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there is something compelling and impulsive about the obsessive, near-fetishist lying out of information. For what it is, someone pinning up notes, photos and clippings, it’s very cinematic. However, for every moment that skips along nicely there are handfuls that sag and grate. Why, for example, does the menace of the film seem fixated on making the camera jump rather than a character that would clearly see said menace standing just out of shot ready to lean in and say ‘boo’? Furthermore, there is an element to the film that explicitly recalls Guillermo del Toro’s wonderful The Devil’s Backbone, opening them up to heavily one-sided comparison.  

Derrickson directs with confidence and most actors hold up well, a special mention goes to the always watchable James Ransone as a bumbling but on-the-ball local deputy. Derrickson’s bogeyman tale is decent, jumpy fun and a film that awkwardly works best when being a crime mystery and not an all-out horror. It is contrived and ultimately throwaway but as a Halloween night out, Sinister holds up pretty well against the yearly onslaught of sequels and remakes.

"Ahh! Why am I in a box?!"

Peter Strickland's film of the year - Berberian Sound Studio

Berberian Sound Studio is a smug film like few others. It loves itself. It loves how clever, how different, how unconventional it is. There hasn’t been a film more vain since last year’s Kill List, the Frightfest film also promoted by Total Film. Peter Strickland’s follow up to the beautiful Katalin Varga tells of, no, alludes to the tale of British sound engineer, Gilderoy, going to work on a giallo horror film (sorry, a Santini film). But what toll will the violence and depravity that Gilderoy is bringing to life take on his mental and, perhaps, physical wellbeing.

Vegetables were harmed in the making of this picture

 The problem is that, without giving anything away (not that there’s much to), the film deliberately delivers on none of the intrigue the initial thirty minutes sets up. A conceptual film is fine but Berberian Sound Studio is neither here nor there and ultimately falls flat on all fronts: too much story to work on a conceptual level, not enough validation to work on a narrative level. Its ambition of being somewhat about what cinema intrinsically is recalled Antonio Campos’ sublime, under seen debut Afterschool, a film all about observation and perspectives and one that works on all levels Berberian Sound Studio doesn’t.

Toby Jone tunes up as Gilderoy

Roger Ebert once said that Mulholland Drive was an experiment that didn’t break the test-tube. For the first half hour Strickland’s film feels like such an experiment, one rife with reference, humour, unease and some wonderful sections of gruesome sound recordings, but after the initial promise any hope deflates rapidly. The film is conceited, portentous and in the end, frustratingly insulting to its audiences' intellect. The film is in a way an ode to cinema but if only it was really cinema itself.

So hilariously terrible its stupidly wonderful - Tulpa review

Two things must be said of Tulpa before we get into the meat of things: first, I genuinely didn’t know films could be this bad anymore and second, I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much in a cinema. It is on par with The Room in terms of quality of acting and scripting and no less wildly, hilariously entertaining. However, after the half hour mark you will be won over by the pure, utterly pretentious charm.

Claudia Gerni in the role of a lifetime?

Created to be a reinvention of Giallo cinema, Tulpa does throw a lot of gouged eyes, melting faces and decapitated penises (something of a trend at this year’s Frightfest). Despite such lashings of gore with the intension to shock and disgust, there is absolutely no way anyone could take the violence seriously in light of the film as a whole. It’s a whodunit erotic horror/thriller with a stand-up-and-clap worthy twist due to its preposterousness. But the miss mash of dreadful ideas and execution somehow, against all odds, manage to gel and become something truly wonderfully. It’s a rare thing for a film as abysmal as Tulpa to somehow be such a joy to experience.      

Hidden in the Woods – It manages to both suck and blow

Hidden in the woods opened Frightfest for me. I suppose it is notable for that. It is also notable to me that Patricio Valladares’s film may well be the ugliest, most stupid film I have ever had the displeasure to see. It truly is an abhorrent film of no charm, wit, intelligence or talent. It is certainly the film deserving of least plaudits of any I can recently recall. What more can I say? It’s a foul ode to misogyny without thinking itself to be. It’s utterly humourless without thinking itself to be. It looks like shit while making the mistake to think it’s intensely stylised. It’s translated by someone who does not know English or punctuation. Its violence is not only leering and salacious but also laughably executed. The director said after the film that the Chilean government now hate him. He seems to think this being because he has made such a controversial, uncompromising film. It’s not. It’s because they clearly have more than one iota of taste.

A heinous bastard

What did you think this was? - Killer Joe review

William Friedkin is a director with a love for the making and breaking of audiences expectations. Who else has the young star of his film cry “fuck me, Jesus” while putting a crucifix in her delicates (The Exorcist). Who would kill off the main character of a film twenty minutes from the end and carry on the story anyway (To Live and Die in L.A.). Killer Joe is an exercise in stripping away the barriers to the point that you really won’t know what’s coming next. And you’ll know less and less whether you’ll want to find out at all.

Matthew McConaughey is Killer

The film, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own stage play, is far from hard-boiled film noir. It has been smoked and dried in the dirt and it feels rough. The cinematography and lighting create a mucky, sleazy, claustrophobic atmosphere in which the Smith family’s decadence and stupidity unfold. From the moment Gina Gershon’s character, Sharla, opens the door to her stepson, Chris entirely bottomless we are taken close into the Smith family consisting of said stepmother, Ansel, Chris’s popa, and the naive and innocent, but no less backwards, Dottie. After petty drug dealer Chris gets indebted to the wrong people, he needs a lot of cash, very fast. Being bottom-feeding trailer trash they naturally don’t have thousands of dollars to hand so Chris devises the plan to off his mother and collect her lucrative insurance policy. The Smith’s unanimously agree with the plan and as Dottie so eloquently puts it “what good’s she doing anyone”. 

Enter the cool, charming, reptilian ‘Killer’ Joe Cooper, Matthew McConaughey in a blistering attempt to tell the endless rom-coms of his past to ‘suck my chicken’. Joe, a police detective, for a tidy sum of money hires himself out as a hitman. As Joe becomes entangled with the Smith’s, primarily the impressionable Dottie, the film descends into uncharted territories. The issue of the films sexual politics has been bounded around, many finding it an impassable barrier. The fact is the film doesn’t really have any sexual politics to speak of being pretty much morally baron. If you can take the story as its own beast with the relationships and sexual acts of the film to be no grander than the film in seclusion you will still be shocked and most likely appalled but you will accept the film on its own terms. Perhaps that is all Friedkin can ask of most people who see Killer Joe, to accept it.
 

The films take on black comedy (if black is a dark enough shade) is… well, it’s different. We often hear of films being talked of as ‘the audience laughed in all the right places’ or ‘the audience jumped in all the right places’. As it is, there isn’t much ‘right’ in Killer Joe and you may well find yourself, as I did, to laugh at something only to glance on either side of you to see if someone is looking at you with scorn and disgust. There is no right place to laugh in Killer Joe, you may laugh, you may not. The point is that any film that can vary the state of an individual in a way that transcends simply liking it or not is at least very interesting.  This is most certainly a very interesting film and if it sits right with you than it is a very entertaining one.

The Smith family dressed to impress

It isn’t as lean and intense as Bug(2006) Friedkin’s previous descent into Letts’ claustrophobic creations, but it has a manic, perpetual state of unrest and a film of such tight craftsmanship that is hard not to admire. I do admire the film very much and I enjoyed the film very much also. The film shocked me and took me aback but with atmosphere, with ingenuity and with violent lunacy, not with grim torture and pain free from irony. And that in this age of cinema is a success.