Lords of Chaos

Year:  2018
Director:  Jonas Åkerlund
Screenplay:  Jonas Åkerlund and Dennis Magnusson, based on the book Lords of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind
Starring:  Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Jack Kilmer, Sky Ferreira, Valter Skarsgård
Running Time:  118 minutes
Genre:  Horror, thriller, crime, music

Norway, the late 1980s:  Teenager Øystein  Aarseth (Culkin), known as Euronymous, forms groundbreaking band Mayhem and creates a new subgenre:  True Norwegian Black Metal.  The band begin to attract a lot of attention in the Metal scene, with troubled lead singer Pelle Ohlin (Kilmer), who calls himself "Dead".  Euronymous soon finds has his own record store and record label, Deathlike Silence, and signs singer Kristian Vikernes (Cohen), who calls himself Varg.  However, it soon becomes much darker, as some begin to act on the group's evil, Satanic persona leading to suicide, a spate of high-profile arson attacks on churches and murder.

This film is based on the early years of the Norwegian Black Metal music scene from the late 1980s until 1993.  The opening title of the film states that it is "Based on Truth... And Lies... And What Actually Happened", so I don't know how accurate or not it is, and Black metal is not really my taste in music, so i really know nothing about it.  However, I did like this film.  It has a curious mix of tones though, moving from typical music biography material (the band get together, struggle, there are conflicts, the band achieve some success, there are more conflicts, break ups and make ups and so on), almost goofy Spinal Tap style humour, and some deeply disturbing scenes.  There are several long, brutally shocking scenes of violence in the film that even I, hardened horror fan as I am, found hard to watch.  Throughout the film, the characters are very dismissive of "posers", and yet they are kind of posers themselves, they adopt this Satanic, dark evil persona to shock and frighten people, and have their own little exclusive club (called the "Black Circle"), but some take it way too seriously.  The performances are good, even if some of the actors seem a little too old and clean cut for the roles that they are playing.  The film feels too long at times and the pacing feels off at times, but it is still a compelling and genuinely disturbing true-life horror film.

Rory Culkin and Jack Kilmer are lords of Chaos   

"Beautiful You" by Chuck Palahniuk

Year of Publication:  2014
Length:  222 pages
Genre:  Satire

Naive, ambitious Penny Harrigan, from Omaha, works as an assistant at a prestigious law firm in New York City where she meets Cornelius Linus Maxwell, the richest man in the world, known to the press as "Climax-well" due to his string of famous glamorous girlfriends. He sweeps Penny off her feet, and soon she finds herself living a jet-set lifestyle meeting the most powerful and beautiful people in the world, with every luxury she could possible want.  However Penny immediately realises that she is not Maxwell's girlfriend, but a guinea pig for his experiments in sex and sensuality, and he is using the results of his experiments to devise a groundbreaking range of sex toys for women, marketed as "Beautiful You".  As the women of the world become addicted to the extreme pleasures of the Beautiful You products, Maxwell's darker purpose becomes clear.

This is the fourteenth novel from cult American author Chuck Palahniuk, who is probably still best known for his debut novel Fight Club (1996).  Like most of his books, this is a contemporary satire, in which an aspect of modern life is take to apocalyptic extremes, notably sex and consumerism, and the exploitation of women's sexuality.  This is not one of Palahniuk's best works by any means, the ending in particular is disappointing, but it is well-written and raises some compelling themes, even if they could be explored further. 

       

The Dead Don't Die

Year:  2019
Director:  Jim Jarmusch
Screenplay:  Jim Jarmusch
Starring:  Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Selena Gomez, RZA, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits
Running Time:  103 minutes
Genre:  Horror, comedy

The small American town of Centerville is experiencing a series of bizarre events:  It gets dark either far too late or far too early for the time of year, animals are behaving out of character or disappearing, and electronic equipment is behaving very erratically.  Things get much worse when the dead start to come out of the grave and feast on the flesh of the living. 

This marks the second time that acclaimed indie director Jim Jarmusch has entered horror territory, following acclaimed vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive (2013).  This did not get the same positive reception on it's release.  The humour is very deadpan, police officers Bill Murray and Adam Driver seem to sleepwalk throughout the entire film even before the zombies appear, and is full of bizarre touches, such as Tilda Swinton as an eccentric, samurai sword wielding Scottish mortician (with a frankly extraordinary accent), and Murray and Driver's characters seem to be aware that they are characters in a film, and the film's theme song becomes a recurring in-joke throughout the film.  It's also full of references to other horror films.  This isn't really scary at all, and at times it is too self-consciously cool for it's own good, and the characters are too "hip" and quirky to really feel realistic.  it also hammers home it's political message a little too bluntly at times.  Personally though, I did find it consistently funny.  The zombies themselves are effectively designed, "bleeding" clouds of black ash, and drawn to the things that they loved when they were alive.  It boasts an impressive cast, who all seem to be having fun.

Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver face off against zombies in The Dead Don't Die

"If Not Now, When?" by Primo Levi

Year of Publication:  1982
Translator:  William Weaver
Introduction:  Mark Mazower
Length:  331 pages
Genre:  War

Set during the last couple of years of the Second World War, the novel follows a band of mostly Jewish partisans and resistance fighters, from Poland and Russia, as they survive in Nazi-occupied territory.  Always on the move, struggling against harsh conditions, often lacking food and supplies, and wracked by fear, personal tensions and rivalries, they try to sabotage and hamper the Nazis as much as possible, fuelled by revenge, loyalty, patriotism, and hopes for a life after the conflict.

Primo Levi was an Italian chemist and writer who is probably best known for his autobiographical works recounting his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz, most notably It This Is a Man (1947), and his fiction was mostly in the form of short stories.  If Not Now, When? was his only novel, and this was based on his own experiences fighting the Nazis as a partisan and the stories he was told from partisans and resistance fighters that he met in the years immediately after the war.  This is a fantastic novel.  A gripping war story, full of action and adventure, telling an often overlooked aspect of World War II, it is also a story about ordinary human beings in the most terrible situations, told with empathy and compassion.  The characters are complex, particularly the main point of view character, Mendel, a Russian watchmaker turned reluctant soldier.  While there are moments of joy and humour, this is a dark tale, and touches on the emotional and psychological consequences of killing and surviving war.

   

The Festival

Year:  2018
Director:  Iain Morris
Screenplay:  Keith Akushie and Joe Parnham
Starring:  Joe Thomas, Hammed Animashaun, Claudia O'Doherty, Emma Rigby, Jemaine Clement, Hannah Tointon
Running Time:  98 minutes
Genre:  Comedy

Nick (Thomas) is dumped by his girlfriend, Claudia (Tointon) on the day of their graduation.  To make matters worse, he makes a fool of himself by begging her to take him back on stage during the ceremony.  Claudia refuses and Nick falls into despair for days.  To cheer him up, his best friend Shaun (Animashaun) suggests they go to a huge open-air music festival, where Shaun, an aspiring DJ, hopes to give a sample of his music to his idol DJ Hammerhead (Noel Fielding), who performs wearing a hammerhead shark mask.  On the train Shaun befriends chatty Australian Amy (O'Doherty).  However, when Nick discovers that Claudia and her friends are also at the festival, the stage is set for a succession of humiliating disasters.

This marks the solo directorial debut by Iain Morris, who is best known for co-creating the British TV comedy series The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) which also starred Joe Thomas, and featured Hannah Tointon as his girlfriend (incidentally, Thomas and Tointon are together in real life too).  In fact there are so many parallels with The Inbetweeners that this film at times feels like some weird spin-off, Joe Thomas plays basically the same character in both, and the film opens with almost a reprise of a gag from an episode of The Inbetweeners.  The film is packed full of crude, gross-out gags, and there is one sequence involving a nipple ring and a fence that I found genuinely hard to watch.  It is a funny film though.  If you like crude humour then there is plenty to laugh at here, and it goes form one set-piece to another, so it doesn't really drag.  The main problem the film has is that Nick is such a deeply unlikeable character: selfish, whiny, boorish and rude, so it's really hard to care about what happens to him.  In contrast Hammed Animashaun and Claudia O'Doherty provide the heart of the film, funny and genuinely likeable, I wanted to see more of them than Nick's self-involved moaning.  It's the kind of film that is fine for some late-night post-pub viewing, and it is an enjoyable romp, although not as good as The Inbetweeners.  I have never been to a music festival, so if you are a fan of camping out in a muddy field with a few thousand other people you may see it in a very different light.  It has a few fun cameos from comedians including Noel Fielding, Jemaine Clement and Nick Frost and rapper Big Narstie. 

             
Joe Thomas, Claudia O'Doherty and Hammed Animashaun are at The Festival

"The Complete Cosmicomics" by Italo Calvino

Year of Publication: 2009
Introduction:  Martin McLaughlin
Length:  402 pages
Genre:  Science-fiction, fantasy

This collection of linked short stories traces the history of the universe, from the Big Bang, across billions of years and galaxies, as narrated by the "cosmic know it all" Qfwfq, a shape-shifting being who has existed since the beginning of time, in a variety of forms and lives, including an amoeba, a mollusc, a dinosaur, a ship's captain, and a moon-milk gatherer, among others.  The stories usually begin with a brief explanation of a scientific premise (some still accepted, some of which are disproved) and then spin it off into a tale told by Qfwfq to an unidentified listener.  Qfwfq also is just one of a large number of immortal shape-shifters, who make up his family, friends, enemies and lovers, and they all have an all-too-human outlook on the cosmic events they witness and participate in.  Some of the stories do not involve Qfwfq at all, and make up unconnected scientific or post-modern tales, including a hunter at the point of loosing an arrow at a leaping lion, an assassin and his quarry trapped in a stalemate by a traffic jam, and a post modern version of the Alexandre Dumas story The Count of Monte Cristo.

Italian author Italo Calvino began writing the "Cosmicomics" stories in the early 1960s and published them off an on from the 1960s to the 1980s.  The first collection, Cosmicomics was published in 1965 in Italian and 1968 in English, and was followed by t zero (1967, published in English as Time and the Hunter in 1970), and several others were published in different collections in the 1980s.  This book contains all of the stories from Cosmicomics and t zero as well as collecting other stories, some of which had never been published before.  The stories are usually very short, usually between 10 to 15 pages, with the longest being around 38 pages and made up of three interconnected segments.  The stories are often very surreal, sometimes very funny, playful. wildly inventive, some of the stories I found a little inaccessible, but usually they are fantastic short stories.  This is a wonderful book, and beautifully written. 

 



   

Zardoz

Year:  1974
Director:  John Boorman
Screenplay:  John Boorman
Starring:  Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, John Alderton
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction

In the year 2293, a post apocalyptic world is divided into two areas divided by an impenetrable force-field:  The "Zone" is inhabited by powerful but bored immortals known as "Eternals" and the "Outlands" are inhabited by the mortal "Brutals" who are controlled by the savage "Exterminators" who worship a giant floating stone head called Zardoz which distributes guns and rules, and which is the only thing that can pass through the force-field.  One Exterminator, Zed (Connery), hitches a ride on the head and enters the Zone, where he introduces the Immortals to such old favourites as emotions, sex and death.

This film is pretentious, extremely self indulgent, deeply weird, and often very silly.  It's also stylish, ambitious and has moments of real brilliance.  It takes hoary old ideas but treats them in a very imaginative way.  It has the image of Sean Connery clad in what looks like a bright red nappy, with a  long ponytail and huge handlebar mustache, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  The Eternals are kind of a hippy commune, given to psychic communication through the medium of interpretive dance.  There is a lot of real imagination on display though and you have to admire John Boorman's nerve in bringing it to the screen, he wrote, produced and directed the film, and it certainly looks like a personal vision.  For better or worse, I think he did have a more or less free hand with this, and I have to wonder what it was like on set.  The actors do what they can with the material.  The thing with Zardoz is that it's a film that is at once great and absolutely dreadful.  It constantly oscillates between two extremes.  There are times when it feels like a parody, but it also takes itself very seriously.  Often it's very dull, but also full of scenes and images so eccentric and bizarre they almost make your eyes pop.  To put it mildly, it is a film that will divide audiences.  It's become a big cult movie, and I can definitely see why.  I cannot imagine that a film like this would be made today, because I cannot imagine that any studio would give  a filmmaker carte blanche to make something as frankly weird as this.  It's not as dreadful as you may have heard, but neither is it particularly good, however for all it's ridiculousness, pretentiousness and inconsistency, I like it for it's quirks, strangeness and imagination.

             A visit from Zardoz

The 39 Steps

Year:  1935
Director:  Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay:  Charles Bennett and Ian Hay, based on the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Starring:  Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle
Running Time:  86 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

Richard Hannay (Donat), a Canadian living in London, meets a mysterious woman, Annabella Smith (Mannheim), who identifies herself as a secret agent and tells him that she is being targeted by a group of ruthless killers, part of a conspiracy to steal British military secrets.  When she is killed by an intruder in Hannay's flat, Hannay is immediately accused of the murder, and finds himself on the run. Hannay finds himself fleeing across Scotland, handcuffed to Pamela (Carroll), who believes he is guilty, and pursued by police and spies alike.

This film, while inevitably dated, still stands up as a hugely enjoyable espionage thriller.  Full of action, twists, suspense and a strong thread of humour, it moves from incident to incident and rarely slackens it's pace.  It is a classic piece of early Hitchcock, and anyone who is familiar with his later works will recognise several Hitchcock tropes (the man accused of a crime he didn't commit, the glamorous blonde lead actress, the Hitchcock cameo - about seven minutes into the film he can be seen crossing the street in front of a bus and important plot points conveyed in small details in intricate wordless sequences, and seemingly minor things turning out to have a huge significance).  The centrepiece of the film, Hannay handcuffed to Pamela while they are pursued across country, is comparatively brief and doesn't occur until quite late into the film.  In fact Madeleine Carroll isn't really in the film much at all, until the last half hour.  Which is a pity because she is really good, and there is real chemistry between herself and Robert Donat.  Donat himself, makes for an engaging leading man.  It isn't a perfect film by any means, it is dated, and there are some of the problems of early sound recording that you find a lot in films of this period, and it has to be said some of the Scottish accents are not very convincing.  In terms of plotting it's very old-fashioned, the supposedly ordinary Richard Hannay seems to be able to get out of any situation no matter how difficult with apparent ease, and without ever once losing his stiff upper lip.  The sequence between the crofter (played by John Laurie, who would later find fame in the television series Dad's Army (1968-1977)) and his wife (played by Peggy Ashcroft) is surprisingly dark.  The film was loosely based on a 1915 adventure novel by Scottish author John Buchan, which has been adapted several times since.     

Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat in The 39 Steps          

Offspring

Year:  2009
Director:  Andrew van den Houten
Screenplay:  Jack Ketchum, based on the novel Offspring by Jack Ketchum
Starring:  Pollyanna McIntosh, Art Hindle, Amy Hargreaves, Ahna Tessler, Jessica Butler, Andrew Elvis Miller, Eric Kastel, Tommy Nelson
Running Time:  79 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Dead River is a picturesque coastal town in Maine, but is periodically plagued by attacks from a  family of feral cannibals, who attack anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths, and also sometimes attack homes, where they savagely murder the adults and abduct children.  Their latest targets are young couple David (Miller) and Amy Halbard (Hargreaves) who live in a remote house with their baby.  Sheltering with the Halbards is Amy's friend Claire (Tessler) and her eight year old son, Luke (Nelson), who are escaping Claire's abusive husband Stephen (Kastel). 

This film is based on a 1990 novel by the late American horror author Dallas Mayr, who published under the pen-name Jack Ketchum, which itself was a sequel to his 1982 novel Off Season, which has yet to be made into a film, and there are several references in the movie to a previous adventure involving the cannibal clan.  This is a very low budget film, and it is technically quite rough, and it looks as if it was made much earlier than 2009.  Some of the performances are variable as well.  The film bears quite strong similarities to movies such as The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Wrong Turn (2003), but it works in it's own right.  The characters are fairly well drawn, particularly the cannibals themselves, who are more than just monsters.  They have personalities, and are acting according to their own survival instincts.  This is a disturbing film, it's very violent and gruesome, and it is very bleak, a recurring theme in Ketchum's work is that the seemingly "normal" people are as potentially monstrous as the more obviously "monstrous" characters, and the ending hints at more horrors to come.
Pollyanna McIntosh, who plays the matriarch of the cannibal clan, returned to the role in the 2011 sequel The Woman, directed by Lucky McKee, and Darlin' (2019), which McIntosh also wrote and directed.    

Jessica Butler as one of the cannibals in Offspring

The Inbetweeners 2

Year:  2014
Directors:  Damon Beesley and Iain Morris
Screenplay:  Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, based on the TV series The Inbetweeners created by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris
Starring:  Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas, Elizabeth Berrington, Tamla Kari
Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Comedy

Nerdy university student Will (Bird), unhappily partnered university student Simon (Thomas) and dim-witted bank employee Neil (Harrison) decide to take a holiday to Australia to meet their friend Jay (Buckley), who boasts that he is a millionaire superstar DJ in Sidney.  When they get there though, they quickly realise that Jay has vastly overstated the reality:  He is a toilet attendant in a Sidney nightclub and lives in a tent in his uncle's backyard.  However, when Will chances upon Katie (Berrington), who he knows from his private school days, the lads join her and her backpacking friends.  Of course, everything soon ends in a series humiliating disasters.

This second big-screen outing from the successful British TV sitcom, The Inbetweeners (2008 - 2010), takes the basic structure of the successful first film, and expands it.  The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) took the main characters from suburban England to Malia, and subjected them to the usual gross-out hilarity.  In this film, written and directed by series creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, making their directorial debuts, the locations are more far-flung and exotic, and the gross-out gags are grosser than ever.  It is very, very funny in places, though it is not as successful as the first film or the television series, which at it's best was a masterclass in cringe comedy, partly because this film feels almost cartoonish compared to the TV series, which, while obviously exaggerated, always felt like it had a sense of reality.  This is very much a male oriented film.  The main female characters seem to be there to either be lusted after by the guys, or to be venomous harridans.  It is also unlikely to do much for Anglo-Australian relations.  It does have some heart to it, although it seems to lack the genuine sympathy for the characters that the TV series has at it's best.  It's unlikely to win many new fans, but for those already fond of the antics of Jay, Will, Neil and Simon, there is plenty to enjoy, because it really is very funny, and there is a real chemistry between the four leads. 

Simon (Joe Thomas), Will (Simon Bird), Jay (James Buckley) and Neil (Blake Harrison) go walkabout in The Inbetweeners 2   

The Crazies

Year:  1973
Director:  George A. Romero
Screenplay:  George A. Romero, original script by Paul McCollough
Starring:  Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar, Lynn Lowry, Richard Liberty
Running Time:  103 minutes
Genre:  Science fiction, horror

When a virus, created by the U. S. Military as a biological weapon, is accidentally released into the water supply of a small Pennsylvania town the residents begin to fall victim to a disease which creates a kind of homicidal mania in it's victims.  The Army quickly move in and violently impose martial law to contain the virus and prevent any adverse publicity.  As the military and civic authorities try and decide how to deal with the situation, and scientists frantically race to find a cure, a said group of survivors desperately try and escape from the virus, the infected, and the Army.

Director George A. Romero is probably best know for the groundbreaking horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), and it's sequels, and while this is not part of the Living Dead series, it definitely shares the same DNA, and feels almost like a dry run for the more lavish Dawn of the Dead (1979).  The film is very ambitious, but obviously hampered by a low budget.  Technically it is very rough, with harsh colours, choppy editing and acting from a largely unknown cast that could be politely described as uneven.  However some of the action scenes are very well made, and at times this is a very exciting film.  It is also intensely bleak, and gritty, with some really shocking scenes, including a very disturbing sequence involving a sexual assault.  As was frequently the case with Romero, there is a strong subtext of social commentary, this is a product of the early 70s and the Vietnam War, and it has a very strong anti-military and anti-authoritarian message.  The Army, disturbingly faceless in the allover white bio-hazard suits and gas masks, casually gun down civilians in the streets, or burn them with flamethrowers and loot the bodies, and the efforts to find a cure, or even settle on a strategy are constantly hampered by bureaucratic incompetence, and the Government officials chomp down on sandwiches and take-out while they casually debate dropping  a nuclear bomb on the town,  while the increasingly small group of increasingly paranoid survivors begin to turn on each other.  It's not a great film, but it is a good one, although it may be too bleak for some.  A remake was released in 2010.

The military hunt for The Crazies     

War Requiem

Year of Release:  1989
Director:  Derek Jarman
Screenplay:  Derek Jarman, based on the musical piece War Requiem by Benjamin Britten
Starring:  Laurence Olivier, Nathaniel Parker, Tilda Swinton, Sean Bean, Nigel Terry, Patricia Hayes, Owen Teale, Jodie Graber, Spencer Leigh
Running Time:  92 minutes
Genre:  Experimental, war

Tended by a nurse (Swinton), an elderly soldier (Olivier) is lost in dreams and memories.  This is an entirely dialogue-free film, the only speech we hear is Olivier reciting the poem "Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen in voice-over in the film's prologue.  The film features dramatised segments with Nathaniel Parker as Wilfred Owen, visions of home and family in grainy Super 8, and vintage newsreel footage of mostly World War I, and other more recent conflicts including World War II, Vietnam and Afghanistan, and I would warn you that the film does feature some graphic and disturbing documentary footage of wartime violence.  All we hear is a 1963 performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, which inspired the film.  While this is a difficult film, and full of distinctive esoteric images, particularly strong on religious and homoerotic imagery, this does have a strong theme about war, and works almost as a silent film.  It is also surprisingly emotional, and you don't have to share Jarman's unique vision to appreciate it.  This was Laurence Olivier's final acting role.

Sean Bean in War Requiem

The Honeymoon Killers

Year of Release:  1970
Director:  Leonard Kastle
Screenplay:  Leonard Kastle
Starring:  Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Marilyn Chris, Doris Roberts
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Crime

Raymond Fernandez (Lo Bianco) is a con man who meets women through lonely hearts adverts and fleeces them out of their money before running off.  His latest victim is sullen, nursing administrator Martha Beck (Stoler), who tracks him down and the two genuinely fall in love, and she joins him in his scams, posing as his married sister.  However, Martha's jealousy of Raymond's victims soon leads to murderous consequences.

This is based on the true story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, the "Lonely Hearts Killers" of the 1940s, and while the basic plot ad the lurid title might promise lurid thrills, this is a bleak, downbeat and gritty film, shot in grainy black-and-white on a very low budget, with an incongruous soundtrack taken from the works of Gustav Mahler.  It has an almost documentary like realism, and feels like a precursor to films such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) as well as numerous true-crime docudramas.  The central couple are never entirely monstrous, as horrible as their crimes are, there is a thread of humanity to them, and their love is believable.  However their victims are presented sympathetically, their vulnerability and loneliness, as well as the horror of their deaths makes the relatively restrained violence much more harrowing than many more graphic films.  The film is very well cast with great performances, especially from Shirley Stoler as the dead-eyed Martha Beck.  There is also a strong vein of very dark humour running throughout.
The film was originally set to be directed by Martin Scorsese, who was fired early into production, although some sequences that he directed remain in the film.  Apparently, he was fired because he was moving too slowly.
This film has attracted a cult following since it's release and, in 1980, legendary French director François Truffaut named it as one of his "favourite American films".

Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco are The Honeymoon Killers       

The Last of England

Year of Release:  1987
Director:  Derek Jarman
Screenplay:  Derek Jarman
Starring:  Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, Spencer Leigh, Jonathan Philips, 'Spring' Mark Adley
Running Time:  87 minutes
Genre:  Experimental

This plotless, experimental film is a kind of collage of sound and images exploring Jarman's feelings about the decay of Britain during the 1980s, which he believed was increasingly homophobic and repressive.  The film mixes Jarman's old home movies, new footage shot in shaky hand held, and more documentary style footage.  The sound track mixes classical music, punk, folk and features performers such as Simon Turner, Marianne Faithful and Diamanda Galás.  This is a difficult film to really enjoy.  It's inaccessible, and strangely dated.  This is a "state of the nation" film, and it is about the 1980s for a 1980s audience, and really if you are unfamiliar with the political and social scene in '80s Britain then it will be even less accessible.  Jarman creates some starling and provocative imagery and some sequences are really dynamic, however a lot of the film is baffling.  There are repeated grainy images of urban wastelands, and derelict housing and industrial estates, Tilda Swinton tears a wedding dress she is wearing on a beach with fires burning, two soldiers make love on a Union Jack, civilians are gunned down by masked gunmen, there is a bizarre sequence that plays like a rock video, and Nigel terry sonorous voice over reads from T. S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men" and Allen Ginsberg's "Howl".   It is certainly a work of art, which I don't think was ever intended to be "enjoyable".  I found it infuriating, provocative, occasionally brilliant and often dull.

 Tilda Swinton in The Last of England

Repulsion

Year of Release:  1965
Director:  Roman Polanski
Screenplay:  Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach and David Stone, story by Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach
Starring:  Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, Yvonne Furneaux
Running Time:  105 minutes
Genre:  Horror, psychological thriller

Carol Ledoux (Deneuve) is a young Belgian woman living in London with her sister, Helen (Furenaux).  Carol is extremely withdrawn and detached, and has difficulty dealing with the people around her, however she does hold down a job as a beautician, and due to her looks, she has no shortage of male attention.  However, Carol finds men and their attentions repulsive.  One man in particular, Colin (Fraser), seems to have a growing obsession with Carol, although she does her best to ignore him and avoid him.  To make matters worse, Helen has a boyfriend, Michael (Hendry), who Carol deeply dislikes.  When Helen and Michael go on holiday to Italy, Carol is left alone in the flat, with the isolation causing an increasing strain on her already fragile sanity, as her reality lowly descends into a hallucinatory nightmare.

This was Roman Polanski's second feature film, following the acclaimed Knife in the Water (1962), and his first film in the English language, which he didn't speak at all well at the time.  This is a strange, disturbing film, detailing a woman's descent into madness.  The film starts off in relatively realistic territory, detailing Carol's day to day life at work and at home and the persistent harassment that she experiences on the street.  There really are no sympathetic male characters in the film, they are either boorish, stupid, unfaithful, bullying and mostly would-be abusers (which is kind of ironic considering that Polanski himself was convicted of sexual abuse thirteen years later).  Later on the film takes on a more surreal, expressionistic tone, with memorably nightmarish imagery, such as cracks appearing in the wall, hands reaching out from the wall to grab Carol, the flat seeming to grow and shrink, and dark figures glimpsed in mirrors.  There is also the rabbit that Helen is going to cook early in the film before abandoning it, and Carol leaves the plate of meat out to get increasingly rank.  Catherine Deneuve gives a memorable performance as the tormented Carol.  The film is very well made, and stylishly directed.  If it wasn't for Roman Polanski's crimes, this could be seen as quite a progressive film and, ironically,  in the age of "Me Too" and lockdown it is surprisingly relevant to today.  It certainly is a must-see.

  Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion