Gangleri – filmreviews

For a Cronenberg this film is not even that strange. The identical Mantle twins gynaecologists are very close until the arrival of a certain special woman. After that things go downwards for the both of them and Beverly and Eliot almost grow apart. They plan to separate definately.
“Dead Ringers” is not reall a horror, or even a thriller, but more of a drama but of course not of the dramatical sort. Cronenberg has created a nice psychological film in which two men slowly loose their minds. A nice watch.

With a lot of attention this Hungarian film premiered about 2,5 years ago. It received several awards and reviews were raving. I do not think that this is something for a large audience though, not even the larger arthouse audience. “Taxidermia” is a pretty bizar film with three stories showing three generations leading up to the person that the title refers to. First you see a small ‘community’ (of only a few houses) in the middle of nowhere how they survive, live and fullfill their sexual needs. This story ends with a pig-tailed boy who in the second story is a speed-eater who in his turn is the father of the taxidermist of the last part. “Taxidermia” is extremely explicit and disgusting with a sick sense of humour and weird characters. This film is certainly something I have never seen, especially the end. I had some good laughs though, but the crisps did not always taste very good!

A friend got me four classics, this is number two. I do not believe I ever saw this film, but horror has never been my genre, so I suppose I just never intended to watch it. In 1981 a pretty weird film was created, earlier than David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” (1981), but the film more reminds of “Naked Lunch” (1991) (but it is not that bizarre). When it was done, I had completely lost track of the story, but it is not that difficult in reality. A man (Sam Neill) comes back after having been away for a long time. His wife (the beautifull Isabelle Adjani who also plays La Reine Margot) is not so sure if she wants to continue life the same way as before Mark left, so the good man becomes rather psychotic. The wife tops this by far and as the film continues it is suggested how that can be. The film is quite bizar with scenes in which Mark tries to see if the electric knife could cut his arm to Anna having some kind of seizure in a subway station. This get weirder and weirder and more and more bloody, especially when the viewer comes to the source of things, a fact so incredible that you might come up with all kinds of explantions to the hows and whys. This is actually very well done. I have seen my share of odd films, but Zulawski managed to make the psychotic couple just credible enough to make ‘that other thing’ almost unbelievable. Of course “Possession” is an old film, which shows, but it has a very good atmosphere and a very good story that is easy to give in one line, but hard to tell in detail.

Somewhere between reality and the fantasy of the young boy Seth plays “The Reflecting Skin” in a remote US village. Living in the middle of nowhere with all kinds of strange people around them, Seth and his friends amuse themselves with blowing up frogs and sharing fantasies. The film starts as a drama and keeps suggesting to evolve towards a thriller or even a horror, but that never really happens. The best description of this film is a drama with a pressing atmosphere. I guess with will appeal to people who like things such as “Carnivale”.

A while ago I was in a DVD shop and had two DVDs in my hand from the ‘three for 25 euros’ department, then my eye fell on a nice metal box with the “Blade” trilogy. Not really my kind of film, this pompous Hollywood action, but “Blade” is nicely dark and vampyric, so why not? We watched all three in one weekend and neither of the three is actually good enough for that. Not that I fell asleep or that I was bored, but just nice film should better be alternated with good films. It turned out that I already saw I (1998) and II (2002) some time and that all three are from different directors (much like with “Batman”) and II is of noone less than Guillermo del Toro. I do not remember it being better than the other two, but still. As you probably all know Blade is half a vampire and devoted himself to killing vampires. Of course his opponents get stronger with each film, upto noone less than Dracula himself in part III. Thick comic-hero action and amusing bloody fights make “Blade” a nice watch for a drousy evening, but like I said: better not watch all three in one weekend, since they are not that good.

This Spanish horror uses the Blair Witch idea of a filmcrew following a group of firemen into an appartment building where things are not what they expected. Anything more I say will deminish the surprise, but the film mixes a nice and dark Blair Witch atmosphere with horror gore and humour. Not too badly done either, since some scenes are pretty scary. A nice horror for people who can handle the contents of their stomachs.

The first Elizabeth (“the virgin queen” 1998) is one of my all time favourite films (but apparently older than my writing of film reviews). I had seen the box of this film several times, but I thought it was just a rerelease or something. It turns out that almost 10 years after the original film, a sequel was made with almost the same crew! Apparently it has been a while since I saw the first one, since watching “the golden age” does not really bring back memories. The first one blew me away with its dark epic about the violent struggle between Catholics and Protestants. I do not even know “the golden age” is supposed to play before or after “the virgin queen” or perhaps it is another look at the same period. The story goes that since Elizabeth I (Protestant) remains childless, her cousin Mary Stuart (Catholic) is used by Spain to overthrow Elizabeth. War is waged.
“The golden age” is another great history lesson, but as a film it does not reach the level of “the virgin queen”. This could be because the novelty is gone or perhaps because “the virgin queen” is darker. “The golden age” is still a top class film though and a must-see if you like the first film.

This Finish film has the international title “Frozen Land” and shows a chain of events with each another main character. A chain, because the characters are linked in some way and a new link starts from the previous. “Paha Maa” shows a rather depressing daily life of people whose lifes took a down turn. From low-life to middle class, all characters go down the drain. The film has a bit of the Scandinavian kind of black humour, but after a while there is not much to laugh. Not that “Paha Maa” is a very depressive film, but it is quite raw and real-life and the box says. Not bad too!