(October 3)

——The Science of Sleep (2006)——

I really like Michel Gondry as a director. That guy has just an amazing imagination. His Director’s Series DVD, a collection of his music videos (including most of Bjork’s best videos), is must have. The documentary on it is also must see. Make sure you don’t forget to watch it. The guy just loves his dreams and loves to incorporate them into his films. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a fantastic film and a great example of this. The one problem is that Gondry thought that the writer, Charlie Kaufman, took too much credit for Eternal Sunshine’s success, so he decided to both direct and write this film as his next project.

Gondry’s visual genius cannot be denied. This film makes great use of his dream logic through some amazing dream sequences. They’re a blast. He isn’t quite as good a writer though. At least not as good as Kaufman. The plot of this film doesn’t really seem to gel half of the time. For instance, this girl Stephanie really likes our main character, but he doesn’t like her, until he realizes that he does like her but then suddenly out of nowhere she doesn’t like him. To make matters worse, his dream world is interfering more and more with his real world so much that we don’t really know what is going on. It’s confusing and not particularly pleasant. Don’t get me wrong, the film is still leagues above most crap out there that is trying to be passed off as art, but I still have to give this a reluctant

(SEE)

(October 8)

——Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)——

I really liked this movie. It’s a sort of slow burn revenge movie that takes its time building up suspense instead of just dumping on us buckets of gore. And while this movie does have its fair share of gore, its much classier stuff than you see in the average film of this genre. You’d think “art film” if everyone didn’t keep dying.

The brilliant Paddy Considine plays a man just back from the army who is good and pissed off that while he was gone some drug dealers took advantage of his mentally challenged brother. We know from the start that something bad happened to him, but what it was isn’t revealed until the very end. We just get flashbacks throughout the film of little abuses adding up into bigger ones until we are just dying to know what happened to his brother. The revelation turns out to be an honest shock.

In the meantime Paddy mentally tortures and toys with the blokes who messed with his brother until he decides that it is time for them to die for what they’ve done. It turns out that it isn’t really that hard to mess around with guys who take drugs all of the time. When you’re ex-military, it also turns out that it isn’t that hard to kill them, either. Each one goes down one by one until he gets to the last one, the reformed one who went good. That’s when the movie gets really interesting. There is the revelation about what happened to the brother, and how Paddy decides to handle the situation will make your jaw drop. Really good stuff. If you are looking for a quality movie no one has heard of with a little meat on its bones, you could do worse than this one.

(SEE)

——Defenceless: A Blood Symphony (2006)——

For some reason, Australian low budget director Mark Savage thought that it would be really cool to make a silent revenge flick. Now, while the guy has a good eye, master storyteller he ain’t. I can’t tell you how much this movie would have benefited from a little dialogue here and there. You don’t have to make it into a Howard Hawks movie or anything. Just a line here and there would have made all of the difference. As it is, the lame music just isn’t cutting it. That and towards the end this movie gets VERY weird. That could probably be taken out too, now that I think about it.

In a set-up too lame to really believe, a woman refuses to sign a land deal that would put condos on a deserted beach, and to be real bastards the three other guys decide to torture her, by killing everyone she loves. Yeah, I know. I do that too sometimes when I don’t get my way. First her husband. Then she tries to kill herself, but a lesbian saves her, they become lovers, and then they kill her! This was about the point where I thought a little more time on the screenplay could have helped. Let’s just forget about the part where she’s raped, thrown in the ocean, only to come back nine months later as some sort of mute fish girl. I know. WEIRD.

The movie has its gruesome charm, but really the whole time I just wanted to say something, a feeling only amplified when natural sound effects suddenly appear, especially moans and screams. Just say something! Seeing people getting text messages just doesn’t cut it for me. A nice try, but ultimately not worth your time.

(MISS)