Category: Film Reviews

Welcome to the World of Lemmy Kilmister, the God of all that is Rock and Metal, the coolest bloke in rock’n’roll, the most under the influence and most straight talking and caring rock star we are lucky to still see sat drinking a Jack Daniels and Coke at the Rainbow in LA playing a video games on a weekly basis. Finally someone, somewhere decided to make a film about him so we went along to the UK premiere at the NFT on October 23rd to have a look at what’s coming up.

This documentary put together by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski took 3 years to make and covers the life and times of Motörhead’s most infamous front man starting from the living room of the man himself. It’s very much like a bomb site in there, paperwork everywhere, memorabilia piled up from the door to the walls, even the bin couldn’t be spotted by the directors. Lemmy has lived in this same apartment for years, a spot where he collects his favourite Rickenbacker bass guitars and Marshall Superbass II amplifiers amongst tonnes of gifts he’s received on tours that stack up all over the place. His apartment also houses a huge amount of Nazi memorabilia; cutlasses, knives, swords, bullets, outfits and quite bizarre in the way they are all piled up in rooms – in his own words it’s pretty much a ‘museum’ in there.

The film delves into his history of watching the Beatles, being the front man of psychedelic legends Hawkwind, discussing the uppers and downers of the band’s rise to fame from the underground in detail covering the pills, the powders, the tabs and the reasons why Lemmy was left to fend for himself after being hauled into jail for carrying illegal drugs whilst on tour through the borders of Canada. You also get to see the family side of his life. His son Paul talks of the reasons why Lemmy has never married, his past relationship with a girl who died from a heroin overdose and his upbringing around the chaotic lifestyle of a touring rock star. I think one of the best quotes of the film was based around this subject when asked what his preferences were to getting blown and playing in Motörhead, he answers ‘sex can last at most about 30 minutes and Rock and Roll about an hour and a half…’ – he would choose the latter hands down.

Women still throw themselves at the man in his sixties to this very day. The directors of this movie spend time in the van with Motörhead on tour to find out what goes down and also attend a show where Lemmy guests with Metallica, one of the many great rock bands who appear in this movie to big up Stoke’s biggest star. Interviews from other famous faces include Slash, Scott Ian from Anthrax, Ozzy Osbourne, Geoff Rowley from Flip Skateboards, Dave Grohl and most surprisingly Jarvis Cocker, Mick Jones and New Order’s Peter Hook amongst others. They all praise the Legend as a man with morals and as one of the most unique rock and roll stars still living the life.

Overall, the film does cover a lot of facts already known from the various interviews he has done since he has been in the game but also offers a reminder that Britain’s stars of the past laid foundations for rock music all over the planet when they broke. Lemmy Kilmister will go down as one of the main dudes in the Rock and Rock Hall Of Fame and that’s why you should definitely have this on your to do list when it is released to cinema’s in December with a DVD release scheduled for January 24, don’t miss it.

Zac

Kaleidoscope Entertainment
nightofdemons.co.uk

If you have ever seen and enjoyed the original cult classic Night of the Demons released back in 1988, then this remake will have you glued to the screen.

The plot is very similar to that of the original. In this instance, everyone gathers for a Halloween party at the notorious Broussard Mansion in New Orleans, where over eighty years ago, six people disappeared without a trace and the owner hung herself. When cops shut down the party, its host and six of her friends are left behind and mysteriously locked in. While searching for a way out they discover hidden rooms in the basement and the remains of the missing individuals. Soon it emerges supernatural forces are at work and one by one the friends are picked off and turned into some of the most hideous creatures cinema has seen in some time.

This is not your typical horror film. Night of the Demons has an uncanny ability to make you experience all the same emotions you did back then, as well as applause for the same creepy, ridiculously hilarious events that occur as well as the ways characters respond to them. The dialogue at times is shockingly bad and the acting not much better, but it is these qualities that keep it closer to the original and a little on the funny side. Such as when Colin (Edward Furlong) falls though the floorboards and Maddie (Monica Kenna) just happens to have a rope handy in the corner of the room. Such scenes are outlandish and unbelievable yet you accept them instantly.

The original film was controversial for its terror, violence and gore. Even though times have changed and many horror flicks go by the concept that the more gore you can pack into a film the better, Night of the Demons has not reverted, but continued to grasp viewers with its scares (there are a few of them) and inconceivable and preposterous situations that although make you laugh out loud, will also have you in their grip.

A bonus this movie has in comparison to others in its genre is its fast pace. It starts as the girls are getting ready to go to the party, instantly takes you there and it’s here the remainder of the film is set; all in one big, hollow and very creepy looking house. It is because of this you are never given time to dwell on boredom or make comparisons to the original; you take the film for what it is at face value.

This is certainly not one of Edward Furlong and Shannon Elizabeth’s most moving performances, yet seeing both turn into repugnant demons and getting up to all sorts of ‘naughty’ things is definitely worth a watch. Night of the Demons is the perfect teen horror flick and the ideal warm up for a terrifying Halloween to come.

Michelle Moore

Anchor Bay Entertainment
frozen-film.com

I’ve never been skiing, no actually I have. I’ve been once, dry slope skiing, which I’m told is nothing like the “real thing”, and I should definitely go, because “it’s so much fun”. HAH. NOT ANYMORE! This is another classic ‘what would you do?’ film, full of “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” and “DON’T DO THAT!”. It’s about basic fear; being alone, trapped, hungry, cold and surrounded by hungry man-eating wolves. Writer-director Adam Green attempts to do to skiing, what ‘Open Water‘ did for scuba diving and upcoming ‘Buried‘ does for being buried alive (so hot right now).

Green sets the film up pretty quickly, our protagonists are three college students; a couple and a friend (piggy in the middle), immediately asking for trouble when they lie to get onto the ski lift. After some skiing, fun and jokes about the awkwardness it all is that the three of them are there instead of just two of them, it gets dark, they beg the lift operator to let them do one more run, despite him being adamant the weather is getting bad… He lets them on, obviously. And then the lift operator has to take a phone call (obviously) and leaves his post with another operator letting him know they’re waiting for the three kids to come down. So when a different group of three kids ski past he assumes that’s it, and shuts the lift down for the week, trapping our protagonists half way up the mountain, 30ft in the air, in the offset of a storm.. At night. AND to make matters worse, it’s Sunday night, and the slopes don’t reopen until the following Friday.. Obviously.

The final hour of the film pretty much plods along with implausible situations and terrible attempts at trying to escape. One of them decides to just fall from the lift, but sort of pushes himself off, as if gravity might fail him. With disgusting, gory and predictable results, then as he can no longer move, a pack of wolves start to surround him, while the other two in the lift, watch in horror. We watch the other two bicker, then cry, then bicker, then decide they have to leave by climbing to the nearest pylon and shimmying down, only the taught ski lift wire is like barbed wire and shreds his hands, leaving him bleeding and unable to properly defend himself against the wolves.. Again. But he gets down, finds a board that he sits on because it’s already been established that he can’t board, and his skis are somewhere under all the fresh snow, that he threw down at some point. I know. I know. And he semi-sledges out of shot, wolves in tow. So we’re left with the last victim, stuck in the chair lift, she waits and waits, and by the next day we assume that he hasn’t made it to base camp.. And she is left to decide if she wants to die or try to get down.

In fairness, Green does create tension with horrifying but predictable consequences. If you jump, you risk the breakages, if you don’t you risk frostbite and hypothermia, and he does throw in some lovely frostbite scenes. As you sit there you think of a million ways you’d do it differently, you know if you were there you’d be fine, you’d have a plan of action, and follow through with meticulous caution. I suppose this film works in a way, it’s a very simple and believable idea and it does look very good, the cinematography is tight and clean, the colour is bleached and desaturated and the sounds are eerie and at times, more gruesome than the visuals. Frozen, although at points seems to take forever to get to an end does succeed at pulling you in and keeping you fully clenched until it reaches the cold, damp end.

Emily Paget

Four Lions, written and directed by Chris Morris, has been criticised for not having the kind of jaw-wrenching satirical bite that The Day Today and Brass Eye had; shows, in which he also appeared, that helped build the image of Morris as an elusive ‘media terrorist’. But together with Peep Show writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, Morris has pocketed the brash finger wagging of previous work to make a more story-driven film about British wannabe terrorists. On the surface this seems too simple for someone of Morris’ reputation. But this is exactly the point, and the film’s greatest satirical achievement. Morris hasn’t just stepped behind the camera – he’s taken the camera out of view as well.

Thanks to Morris’ notoriety, the film- not only threatening an explosive end within the plot- also hums with the constant threat of a contextual pullback and a satirical wink, of Morris himself entering the frame and bellowing over the authorial shield of an immaculate suit. But the biggest, and bravest, shock of the film is that it never comes. The film is unnervingly, and necessarily, ‘normal’, spooking the familiar narrational haunts of Western storytelling and challenging cinema’s capacity to accomodate the comical humanising of the perennially demonised.

Focussing on a group of young British Muslim men during their often hilariously hazy plotting of a terrorist attack, the film fits the conventional coming-of-age ‘buddy’ comedy mould of a bunch of bantering, bickering lads searching for direction in life, a route that, less conventionally, zig zags from a training camp in Pakistan to a peroxide-stuffed garage to a London charity fun run. And that’s it. That’s the film. It is not, as a Newsnight Review panelist suggested, trying to trivialise the devastatingly tragic impact of terrorist acts. It’s more complicatedly simple than that, offering moral, ethical and thematic ambiguity through deceptive simplicity that doesn’t just challenge depictions of evil, but also slyly prods the medium that helps cultivate these depictions. Morris et al are exploring the psychology of those plotting to attack a culture that’s bred them. A culture that they, quite contradictorily at times, appear to enjoy.

Consequently their vague plans become a metaphor for the disillusionment of Western youth, of striving beyond immediate humble surroundings to something better. But as the terrorist plotting develops into more serious, disquieting specifics, doubts begin to rupture their resolve and the group literally struggle with the burden of their explosive tools, weighing them down into a farcically plodding galavant of tragic uncertainty. With this he exposes the inherent farce of human nature, that even the most distressing and destructive aspects of humanity can – and should – be made amusing.  Even policemen, representations of western authority – helmets almost slipping, weaponry timidly handled- are depicted as squabbling fools as ridiculously costumed as the runners of the marathon they’re overseeing during the film’s most tonally challenging final scenes. Everything gets eventually caught in a current of compassion that churns the film’s world into an inseparable mess of tragedy and farce, forcing you to laugh and gasp at the same time.

That the film has trickled into cinemas and drained away with minimal fuss is a notable dwelling point; Morris has made a film that avoids the stigma a controversial film would acquire that would make people approach it with caution, and allowed it to almost exist as a conventionally plotted comedy drama. In doing so, Four Lions has caused as much cultural damage as the film’s ‘heroes’; being satirically successful through being mostly unremarkable. It’s been criticised for it’s broadness, for not being challenging enough, for being quite ‘safe’. But it should be praised for this. The broader it is, the more focused the point. This film has to not only be seen and enjoyed for it’s low-key controversy, but also celebrated through unperturbed, uneventful tolerance. So uneventful is it that the DVD doesn’t even have a synopsis on the back, and extras are scarce but interesting. Deleted scenes are woven into the menus and documentaries illustrating the level of research conducted into the psychology of disillusioned British Muslims are interesting, but there should have been more. This shouldn’t detract from what is a fantastically challenging film, in ways more subtle than anything Morris has ever done.

Four Lions is out now on DVD and Blu Ray. See what the lack of fuss is about.

Jordan Brookes

Scott Pilgrim is many things, one part hilarious slacker comedy, two parts SNES sound effects, three parts terrible wigs, four parts awesome fight sequences and the rest is made up of  an aesthetic overload of such bezerk, A.D.H.D suffering visuals that this grey, crusty and constantly more depressing reality we live in will never look quite the same.

It is also concrete evidence that it’s possible to adapt a video game into an incredible film. So long as that video game happens to only exist as a comic boo…I mean graphic novel.

It’s a hell of a fun ride, the sort of thing that you, dear reader – I’m assuming the fact that by browsing this here skateboarding website means you are likely to fall within an age bracket where the idea of drinking something brightly-coloured with mind altering attributes and playing an extremely complex Tekken tournament for days on end without sleep seems like the best god damn idea ever – will utterly empty your bowels for.

The plot follows the hapless Scott Pilgrim, (Michael Cera, doing what Michael Cera does), the bass player in (self-proclaimed) awful (though fantastically named) band Sex Bob-omb. A young man with no real drive and or purpose in his life, until he latterly encounters the girl of his dreams, one Ramona Flowers, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in a series of wigs so utterly atrocious it’s a testament to how fucking hot she is that your balls don’t die every time she’s on screen.

However, life’s not easy for our idiot hero and in order to win her hand, he must first defeat her seven evil exes in a series of battles to the death. And cue an explosion of awesome shit.

The film is relentless in it’s pace, we know that Edgar Wright is a pretty fluid filmmaker…but here, he’s pulled out all the stops. It is constantly in motion, characters, camera, scenes, locations, it all just hurtles along like a relentless freight train covered in Nintendo graffiti. But Wright really shows what he’s made of when it comes to the fight sequences, each one upping the ante in terms of  both video-game-referencing visual clout and the exes themselves. Chris Evens and Brandon Routh as a vain skateboarding movie star and a psychic vegan in particular completely steal their scenes.

It’s the sort of film that, those who love it, will love it with such a passion that those not in the know will never want to see it; because it’s “that bloody movie that (insert generic name here) never shuts the fuck up about”… So yeah, it’s a pretty damn good film; Wright’s best to date, and one that, in this short space, I will fail to accurately and authentically convey the sheer blitzkrieg that the senses take watching it.

I’ll leave you with this, as the movie opens and the camera pans down over Scott’s house, the Legend of Zelda theme twinkles in over the top. If that tiny little reference is something that would make you fist pump the air and scream “fuck yeah!” like an absolute moron (see…me) then I urge you, see this film.

Jonathan Day