 |
| Join us on Facebook! |
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
13 May 2019
Murder, Bestiality, Tinder, And Pokemon
28 April 2014
Finish With All Your Gobbledygook
Religion has brought so much good to this
world that it's no surprise that people are open enough to believe in it. Just
look at the great works of art, the literature and the millions of lives that
have been given some sort of comfort. Of course, where the Catholic Church is
concerned, there's the small matter of its fondness for child rape to put a
small downer on things, but I guess that's just swings and roundabouts isn't
it? Err- no, obviously it isn't. The whole church-pedo-thing is fucked up
beyond belief, with more effort seeming to be placed on hushing it up than
stamping it out. I swear that only the other year, in the church down the road
from me, the priest was caught mid blow-job with a boy in his care. Not only that
but a friend who has relatives that attended that church told me that his
family were apparently more concerned by when the abuse started in case it
meant that they had an impure Priest perform the ceremony at their wedding. I
mean, what the actual fuck? I'm sure
religion has brought some good to the world but at the end of the day I'm also
sure that we all have to agree that it's really more trouble than it's worth.
To quote the great Billy Connolly who was himself a victim of child abuse and
for which he also holds the Catholic Church accountable, “that's it for me-
religion is fucking finished. That's it, it's fucking over lads. It's fucking
over! You've had a couple of thousand years, you've fucked it, it's over. It's
fucking over! So take your reformation, your Vatican, your fucking Mecca and
fuck off”.
So... Calvary is the latest film to
star the always amazing Brendan Gleeson and originated from the psychotically
dark mind of writer/director John Michael McDonagh. It tells the story of the
one good Priest in an area full of selfish arseholes who are all intent on
abusing him in some way for the various atrocities being committed by the
Catholic Church. Whereas most people are simply content to verbally punish or
belittle him, the film begins during confession when one angry fucknugget goes
one further and informs the priest that he's going to kill him in seven days
time. His murder however won't be a revenge attack for one of his own past
crimes but rather because the would-be-killer had also previously been abused
and feels it'd send a stronger message if he killed a good priest rather than a
bad one. Within the first thirty seconds, the entire film has now been laid out
as Father James then potters about his local area whilst trying to help the
various scummy people wherever he can and yet also coming to terms with the
possibility of his own upcoming death. I can honestly say that if this film was
an emotional roller-coaster then it couldn't have been more of a ride had they
replaced the chairs with the raging hard-on of a weeping sex-pest. I'm
currently writing this blog at midnight on April the twentieth and as of now Calvary
is by far my favourite film of the year. Perhaps even of the last couple of
years. I'm in awe. Oh, and yes, for those who looked it up, that does means I'm
writing a film blog at the peak social hours of a Saturday night but you
know... Fuck you!
 |
| I retract that bit about your cunt fucking kids... |
Anyway, I saw In Bruges when it
first came out a few years ago and it has also since become one of my top ten
favourite films of all time. That was of course directed by Martin and not John
Michael McDonagh however having now seen all of their movies it seems that the
two brothers have a lot in common. Both make the darkest and most bleak- but
hilarious- comedies that deal with themes such as guilt, duty and forgiveness
and generally revolve around an Irish actor at the centre of it. And by Irish
actor I guess I mean Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson or both of them. The two
directors can also be quite self referential at times too, with Martin
Mcdonagh's Seven Psychopaths basically being a film about a writer
called Martin who is writing the film that he's unknowingly in. Even here with Calvary,
characters comment on everything from the opening line of the movie, they
discuss which of them is an interesting character and which is clichéd and they
also try to second guess what they actually refer to as the upcoming 'third act
revelations'. I don't want to spoil too much but for what are presumably sold
as comedies, each one of their four films has a fucking grim-as-fuck ending to
it too. Particularly in the case of In Bruges and Calvary too,
half of the jokes aren't even jokes with both films really being more like
downbeat, melancholic dramas but with an obvious sense of the absurdity of
life. I guess my point to all of this is to suggest that the McDonaghs must
have had some seriously fucked up parents... and thank god they did because
their work is amazing.
I've read a fair few reviews of Calvary since
seeing it and pretty much all of them have gushed over it as much as I am now.
However, the one slight criticism I've read is that perhaps it has some minor
tonal inconsistencies to it but I disagree. I mean- yes, this is a film with a
laugh out loud scene in which a weird young man argues that he should be
allowed join the army because his desire kill women is basically a
qualification, and yet, at the same time, there are scenes of such sadness and
emotion that I was honestly holding back tears at times. I mean, I suppose I
could have just had a little cry but you know... I was with friends, I'm young,
male and British so fuck that! However for me, the balance seemed just right
with the first half being more about the jokes and the second half simply being
the observations of the shitness of life. I think if there's one scene that
sums this film up then it's one in which a coffin is being wheeled to a plane
for transportation. At first, the sheer lack of dignity as the corpse is
trollied over seems quite funny, however when Father James looks again, the two
baggage handlers in charge are now leaning over the coffin and chatting before
it can be loaded on board. What was originally fairly amusing becomes
heartbreaking as, along with James, we see the emptiness of life in all its
pointlessness. I mean, maybe I'm wrong but the journey from jokes to melancholy
seemed perfectly natural to me. Compare this to Tarantino's Inglorious
Bastards for example which would go from a tense scene of Jewish abuse at
the hands of the Nazis to one in which Mike Myers did his Austin Powers schtick
and Calvary will look like a tonal fucking masterpiece... but then again,
by comparison so would most films, I suppose.
As I said, this film is an emotional
roller-coaster which, as well as the director, is also thanks to the
mesmerising performance of Brendan Gleeson whose huge talent is only matched in
size by his huge ears. Seriously- check them out. The man he plays isn't a
saint but rather a human trying to do his best below that shroud of misery that
smothers our lives. He's the one man attempting to show that the Church isn't
the child-fucking-nonce-fest that it's presumed to be and as a result every
member of that town is trying to break him to validate their own positions on
the matter. However, as he absorbs all of their abuse and even their problems,
and tries to counter it, you get the sense that actually they don't want to
beat him. As much as they're trying to justify their own cynical positions, he
represents hope to them and at the end of the day they need him to give them a
chance of redemption. Gleeson's priest is basically a piñata at a party of the
angriest, brattiest children who might be hitting him as hard as they can to
vent their frustrations by hurting him but secretly they really just want to
eat his sweets and enjoy the party. Okay.. not sure if that analogy works and
it's also kind of weird but fuck it, you get the point.
Speaking of the locals, it's also worth
stating how amazing some of the performances surrounding Gleeson are with
randomly small but memorable performances from Dylan Moran, Aidan Gillen, Chris
O'Dowd and some creepy looking old coffin dodger that I later realised was M.
Emmet Walsh. I haven't seen Walsh in anything since Blade Runner and he
looked old then and yet it seems in the subsequent few decades he's managed to
age even more into what looks like creepy, porn addicted hobbit. Still good
though, and I suppose he's in his late fucking seventies so it'd probably be
weirder if he didn't look old. In fact, you've got to just presume that all of
these people have turned up solely as a result of the writing which is up there
with The Coen's at their best and easily matches the genius that people wrongly
credit Tarantino for being.
 |
| It's easy to moan about how easy it is to make fun of their religion... That should be a clue... |
Anyway, I don't want to say much more
because I'd hate to give away the ending and I'd hate to just spoil everything
that made me laugh. Although, I do think that it's ironic that Aronofsky's Noah
is the film that's causing the most controversy at the moment seems as all that
movie did was try and make the religious fairy-story seem a little more believable.
Considering that this is an angry film with genuine issues that the Church
needs to address you've got to wonder where the outrage and attempted
censorship is here? Is it that religious people only get mad when the film that
they believe is offensive to them has a bigger budget or perhaps more likely is
it that in the case of Calvary they've actually got something to be
ashamed of? With its mass marketing, there's no way that Noah is going
to go away but perhaps if it's just ignored then Calvary's accusations
of the Church’s evil just might... for now. There's nothing left for either of
us to do now except just go and see this film again because it's the most
hilarious, profound thing I've seen probably since In Bruges. Apparently
the next 'comedy' that Gleeson and McDonagh will make will centre around an
angry paraplegic, investigating the murder of his best friend. Count me the
fuck in.
28 May 2013
What Could Go Wrong?
When I was younger I asked my Mum how
Corned Beef was made to which she replied, “You don't want to know”. I have
never eaten it since. Apparently all it is, is beef treated with corns of salt
however by leaving it up to my imagination, I created the worst possible
scenario. With as little information as possible available, to me, Corned Beef appeared
to be the cow’s tits having been fucked off by a randy farmer and left to
fester in soupy bucket of bull-spunk and diseased farmyard shit. Interestingly
this is kind of like a cinematic technique used in horror movies during which
filmmakers cunningly imply violence allowing the audiences imagination to fill
in the gaps. For example, in Psycho's famous shower scene, not once do
we actually witness the knife penetrate Janet Leigh's body but instead it is
simply suggested so heavily that we think we did. Opposing this school of thought
however, is Sam Raimi whose entire career has been based on the idea of showing
more than we really needed to see. His first film was of course The Evil
Dead which was famously made for so little money that, to match the budget
now, all you'd need is a few hours on your knees in an alley with a lonely
stranger. With that in mind you'd expect Raimi to take the cheaper option of
having most of the violence happen off screen as a way of avoiding the cost of
effects. In Psycho I only thought I'd witnessed a full on stabbing
however with The Evil Dead I very definitely saw a tree get shoved up
some screaming girl’s minge.
Since its release in 1981, Raimi's infamous
gorefest has gone on to become a cult classic and personally, I fucking love
it. I mean perhaps the branch-up-the-vadge was a slight mistake but there's no
doubting that The Evil Dead is a masterpiece just brimming with fun,
blood, bile and random green gunky shit. However there's also no doubting that
over the last thirty years the film has aged pretty badly. The effects are
still impressive but they're hardly photorealistic and I'm pretty sure the only
people who'll be frightened by it now are those with a life threatening allergy
to mushy peas. Though for me, that's not an issue with the clunky stop-motion
look only adding to its handmade charm. The actors too where never of the
highest quality with the only decent performance coming from a man who is
ten-percent human and ninety-percent chin. However if you can only afford one
good actor in your entire movie then Bruce Campbell is very definitely the one
you'd want.
 |
| Starring Mickey Rourke... |
In general, the idea of remaking a classic
horror film fills me with a kind of rage
that makes blood drip from my ears and hate leak from my soul. The original Amityville
Horror was a nun-puking-load-of-bollocks and yet somehow the 2005 remake
managed to be even duller. I don't even want to talk about the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre remake because
it's too traumatic for me. I've locked the idea of that crappy movie away in
the little box of forgotten memories I keep in my brain along with childhood
trauma and explanations to my burn-scars. However in the case of The Evil
Dead, I awaited it with a kind of optimistic open-mindedness. I figured
that at least Raimi was heavily involved with this new one and he'd already
pretty successfully remade the film himself with the equally classic Evil
Dead 2. Not only that but his reason for wanting to make it again was
because of how badly aged the first one has now become. Like I say, I love the
shittiness of the original but there is something interesting about seeing it
with modern effects and hopefully better acting. I suppose on top of all that,
the reason I didn't approach this remake with arse clenching anxiety was
because like all the others it wasn't produced by cinematic mega-cunt Michael
Bay.
This new Evil Dead begins with a
gang of youths holidaying at a cabin in the woods whilst one of their junkie
friends goes cold turkey. Obviously this can be quite a tough experience to go
through and so it'd be best to do it in a calm, controlled environment. The
stupid retards however instead select the most clichéd horror movie setting
possible. I'm assuming that an ancient Indian burial ground, nuclear testing
site and Joseph Fritzl's basement had already been booked out that weekend.
Also I've never had to try and give up a smack habit before but if I ever do, I
think I'd prefer a place that didn't have a basement full of cats hanging from
the ceiling. I know animals are meant to be therapeutic but I don't think
that's still the case if their eyes are popping out of their strangled blue
heads. Just to make life a little more interesting, the gang also decide to
read from a book that unleashes a shitload of evil demons. I guess in general
if you find a book in which somebody has scrawled “don't read this
motherfucking shit”, then perhaps it'd be best to put it down and just wait for
its film adaptation instead. I found a blood stained threat identical to that
in a book once which is why I'm still yet to read The Da Vinci Code.
So having now seen it I guess the biggest
question is, is it good enough to justify its existence? Well if I was being
generous, I guess I'd say it probably just about is. As I mentioned, Raimi's
goal was to remake the film with modern day effects so that he could make
something as scary as the original originally was. Well on the first point, the
film is very definitely a success as the gore is fucking mental. Blood is casually
sprayed everywhere and people puke shit up like they're having a pressure
competition at a bulimics convention. There's also a few scenes in which people
quickly rip off their own arms as though we're watching a Danny Boyle movie in
fast-forward and on crack. However, for me at least this Evil Dead just
wasn't scary in the slightest. Stephen King famously described the original as
being, “the ultimate experience in gruelling terror”,
which this very much wasn't. Nor does this film fix the main issue of the tree
rape scene which is simply redone but to a point where the branch goes all the
way up the new girl’s vagina and confusingly never comes out or is mentioned
again.
 |
| "Hey kids!" |
But despite all that I genuinely found the film
to be really good fun. Once it gets going, the pace of the thing is absolutely
relentless and I think the violence is genuinely inventive. I also liked that
because the main character was going cold turkey, everybody assumed her first
demon attack was either bullshit or just the fevered delusions of a desperate
smack-head. Unlike the first film there was no one person here to root for but
to be honest I was quite happy to watch all the new characters get chopped up.
I'd much prefer a new cast of faceless meat puppets than see anybody new attempt
to play the original’s Ash. There's only one man groovy enough to play him and
sadly he's at an age where it'd end up being the creepiest thing in the film if
he was hanging out with a group of teenagers. In fact by having completely new
characters, this new film almost plays out as a kind of sequel in which a fresh
group of morons stay in the same cabin with their fates playing out in a
slightly different way. I mean they still end up as the main ingredients to
cheap supermarket burgers but it's nice that there was some variation from what
was expected.
If the new film lets itself down
slightly it's that it goes on for about ten minutes too many and accidentally
descends dangerously close to the formula of Michael Bay's crappy remakes. It
also works too hard at saving the life of a character that I pretty much had
nothing invested in anyway. There's a bit where the junkie actually dies but is
brought back to life by being stabbed in the heart with a syringe attached to a
car battery. I mean if resurrection is that fucking easy then I can't help but
think that the NHS is being severely over-funded. Like I say though, I did
enjoy the film and I'd like to think it might encourage at least some people to
go back and discover the originals. I guess you could argue that this film is a
little clichéd but then the The Evil Dead invented the clichés so that
really can't be helped. The only
way to avoid that issue would be to be subvert it instead but then that
wouldn't be an Evil Dead remake but a Cabin In The Woods remake and it's certainly
too soon to be rehashing that.
Like I've said, I personally did
enjoy it but as a fan of the original- if you go in hoping to be disappointed
then you more than likely will be. If it wasn't for the title, I'm sure this
film would be forgotten in time but for the ninety minutes it was on I
certainly enjoyed myself. Perhaps it was directed by some bloke called Fede
Alvarez but Raimi's influence definitely
shines through. I've no idea where they're going to go in the sequel, but for
now let’s just appreciate that unlike other horror remakes, this was not a complete
mess. It won't swallow your soul but if you've got an old student card to
fraudulently claim the discount, it's certainly worth at least five quid.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)