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.

Lawless – They forgot the F

Lawless was, for me, the most anticipated film of the year. I couldn’t fathom how it could not be film of the year - it was directed by John Hillcoat, written by Nick Cave, shot by Benoit Delhomme, scored by Nick Cave and long-time bad seed and grinderman, Warren Ellis and just look at that cast… What a compelling list. But the higher something climbs the harder it falls or, in fact, the easier it is to fall. To make it very clear, Lawless doesn’t fall. It is a towering achievement in cinema in the exact same way that Hillcoat’s The Proposition(2005) was.

Shia LaBeouf, the breakthrough star, and Mia Wasikowska

The film tells the tale of the Bondurant brothers and their lawless meddling in the distribution of moonshine during prohibition era Franklin. The two oldest brothers, the bullfrog Forrest and the looser cannon Howard, are revered as legends. The men of the Bondurant are said to be immortal and when we see Forrest clutching closed his slit open throat, we’re inclined to believe the legend. The youngest brother Jack, in an excellent turn by Shia LaBeouf, is the runt of the litter; he just drives the car and hangs out with his cripple pal Cricket. The narrative takes off when Special Deputy Charley Rakes comes to town and upsets the balance of the brothers and of the landscape of the townsfolk permanently. Much attention will be drawn to Guy Pearce’s portrayal of Rakes and quite rightly, it is a wonderful piece of characterisation. In the year of Matthew McConaughey’s Killer Joe Cooper who’d of thought we could get a more hideously charismatic and watchable villain but Guy Pearce has given us the most barnstorming performance of the year. However, with a performance as showy as that of Pearce’s it only works if the film around him is sound enough to not be out performed by one role and Lawless is strong on all fronts.

A Pearceing stare

Nick Cave’s script is impeccable - laced with violence, soul and a modest, dark but beautifully witty vein of humour (like all his music). The Proposition (Hillcoat and Cave’s last writer/director collaboration) owed a great debt to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (for me, the greatest novel ever written) and Hillcoat has said as much. His last film The Road was based on the incredible, bleak McCarthy novel. Lawless though, along with Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada(2005), is the film that best captures McCarthy’s lyrical yet grounded dialogue and the ingrained poetry and base, impulsive violence of a certain time and place, whether that is the old west or the apocalypse. Hillcoat and Cave have captured just that in Lawless.  

The film is exhilarating in a way that only film can be. It’s exhilarating in the same way that no film has been since Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive last year. It’s perfectly paced, all characters utterly relevant (Jessica Chastain has a lovely role as the woman that adds weight and humanity to the reserved Forrest) and builds to a Peckinpah worthy shootout. Lawless reminds me (as if I need reminding) why I love film as an entire medium. It’s also the best use and disregarding of genre tropes since The Proposition. John Hillcoat and Nick Cave have absolutely cemented themselves as one of the greatest cinematic collaborations of all time. Rubbing shoulders with the heady heights of Powell and Pressburger and have, in Lawless, crafted an immortal film of masterful impact.