Shallow Grave - Danny Boyle - 1994

★★★ - Another dar comedy crime flick. This one British. Directed by Danny Boyle, of Trainspotting fame, in his debut. Stars a young Ewan McGregor, a guy I don't recognize named Christopher Eccleston, and a mom type, probably in her late 20s, named Kerry Fox. 

Gist is a group of three roomies (flatmates) in Edinburgh look for a fourth, eventually finding some guy cool enough for them who's got cash. On his first night in the house, the mysterious new tenant dies. The group finds a suitcase full of money and decide not to call the police, opting to dismember and bury him in the woods instead. This sets off this whole chain of events that leads to a lot of death and suffering. 

I liked it alright even though I thought the characters were pretty obnoxious. While they are interviewing potential roommates, they laugh in one guy's face and ask him if he really thought they would hang out with a boring loser like him. When he shows up later, waiting on them at a black-tie function, they recognize him and treat like shit. It's bad enough that he and the other waiters end up beating Ewan McGregor's character. When they get what's coming to them, you really don't mind, is what I'm trying to say. 

Film is really a contemporary morality tale. It reminds me of “The Pardoner's Tale” from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, easily my favorite tale. If you're interested, the Pardoner sets the tale up by talking about how he sells indulgences for the Catholic Church and how it's all bullshit. He then tries to sell them pardons, which pisses everyone off, then proceeds to tell the most overtly moral tale of them all. 

Spoilers for this 600 year old plus tale. The tale involves three dudes who want to kill Death. They find an old guy under a tree who says he saw Death over by a tree. At the tree they find a treasure. They are going to carry out in the middle of the night, so no one sees them. But they don't want to go hungry or be sober, so they send one to bring back provisions. While that dude is gone, they decide to kill him as soon as he gets back. After they do the deed, they now only have to split it two ways and, hell, with all this food and wine, might as celebrate. That shit is poisoned. So, in the end, they all find Death. While this movie isn't all that bleak, it is pretty fucking bleak. Also, the theme, not exactly a new one, is “Radix malorum est cupiditas,” Latin for “The love of money is the root of all evil”—from the Book of Timothy.

The Lady Vanishes - Alfred Hitchcock - 1938

★★★★★ - I loved this movie. Hitchcock's second to last film before coming to the states.

Gist is a beautiful English tourist, Margaret Lockwood (a total babe [this was during Hitch's brunette phase]), travels by train across Europe with a motley cast of characters. Just before boarding the train, she takes a bump on the head and an elderly woman agrees to watch after her. In and out of consciousness, she awakens to find her companion has disappeared. The other passengers deny having ever seen her and gaslight her, saying she can't trust her own memory because of the blow to her head. She eventually employs the help of a musician, Michael Redgrave (who looks exactly like Paul Dano), whom she has had beef with going back to the hotel where the movie opens.

All the train stuff was filmed in a studio that used only one car for the entire shoot. Totally remarkable filmmaking.

The vanishing lady is something of a McGuffin that only sort of matters. The film gets a little bogged down with why she is being kidnapped and what have you.

Has a decent amount of humor to it. There is a great fight scene between Redgrave and Lockwood and this Italian magician who is in on the kidnapping. It takes place in the luggage area with all his magic props and a cardboard cutout of him looking on. The fight is realistic and terrible with a lot of slow choking and wild punching. The best comes after the magician has escaped being locked up through a trap door. Frustrated by the whole thing, Lockwood punches the cutout in the face.

Might be my all-time favorite train movie. Hitchcock is mostly associated with Strangers on a Train in this regard, but that really isn't a train movie. This takes place almost entirely on board.

Ghost Stories - Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman - 2017

★★★ - From anthology night for the Nightmare on Film Street movie challenge.

Through most of it I thought it was great. One of the most consistent anthology movies I’ve seen, me thought. The first one was all right, the second one was low-key and dope because of the actor, and the third one is just a holy shit kind of tale. Connecting story is even more what the fuck. Seems pretty normal at first but just goes to fucking what the fuck, shit your pants territory.

The end, though, is so cliché that it fucking ruins the movie. I’m tempted to spoil it it was so fucking stupid. Some throwback you can’t do this anymore without pissing off your audience shit. If this was an ending to a story you wrote in high school you would fail.

Star is this guy Andy Nyman. Looks familiar and he should because I've seen him in roughly 30 things. However, I don't really remember him from any of them.

Martin Freeman is the big draw. He never disappoints. This Alex Lawther kid steals the show though. Might recognise him as the lead in The End of the F***ing World or an especially disturbing Blackmirror. I confuse him with the kid from Sex Education, Asa Butterfield. They are, in fact, not the same person though.

Dead Man’s Shoes - Shane Meadows - 2004

★★★★★ - Revenge flick. Not quite horror, but it is horrific. Great, great film. Super fucked up.

David Fincher/Christopher Nolan-esque. Black and white when in the past. Mind-blowing twists. Definite influences.

Pretty ingenious. Guy escalates his “pranks” on a group of assholes as we see what they did to his handicapped brother. As that stuff gets more fucked up so does his revenge plot.

There is a scene where they go to this woman’s house who they forced to have sex with the handicapped kid where all of them are in this tiny car. We’re talking six dudes in a smart car type of shit. A literal clown car pretty much. They are the type of guys that when having someone come at them, they choose to drink their ass’s off and do cocaine and weed to prep. I might want to be clearheaded in that situation, but what do I know. 

Gets progressively way more fucked up as the movie goes on. Illustrates that revenge fantasies aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. Though I am an atheist, I’ll say this guy NEEDS Jesus. I don’t have that in me, I don’t think. “I am the monster.“ Maybe if I was in a situation like that but who knows. Warning, this is not an easy watch. I cannot stress this enough. Incredible film though.

Ghostwatch - Lesley Manning - 1992

★ - Found footage night for the Nightmare on Film Street movie challenge. This is actually a mockumentary. Not streaming anywhere. Had to run down to Vulture Video, a local rental place that carries obscure, avant-garde films, to get it. Physical media, y’all! 

Gist is a bunch of BBC television personalities/broadcasters investigate a haunting that they present as live television. Gets progressively crazier until shit goes down, sort of. When it originally aired there was a short disclaimer at the beginning saying it was fake, but they obviously knew what they were doing. People lost their minds and called the number on the screen which supposedly said again that it was fake but over 1 million people called and no one got through. It’s never been rerun in the UK.

Found it to be pretty meh. However, the mother at the house they are investigating keeps talking about her ex-husband’s “gloryhole.” “I’m sorry, did you just say gloryhole?” It’s what he called his dark room. Things didn’t work out between you, you say. 😒

Witchfinder General is the okayest movie of all time

"If they swim, the mark of Satan is upon them. They must hang." Yeesh. Too much torture, rape, hanging of innocent people, and screaming in agony for my taste. Even see a woman get burned alive while her husband is forced to watch. While a "good" movie, I fucking hated watching it. Therefore, okayest, I guess. 

Gist of this extremely disturbing movie is that Matthew Hopkins, a real POS, and his even worse assistant, John Stearne, wander the English countryside gathering up supposed witches before torturing confessions out of them and condemning them to death. 

Law and order are pretty much nonexistent. The film takes place during the English Civil War between the Royalists and Parliamentarians when everything was in complete chaos. The film mostly focuses on a Royalist soldier named Richard Marshall who pursues Hopkins and Stearne for raping his fiance, Sara, and murdering her priest uncle, John Lowes. 

Released in 1968, the film was directed by Michael Reeves. It stars Vincent Price, Rupert Davies (Lowes),  Hilary Dwyer (Sara), Ian Ogilvy (Marshall), and Robert Russell (Stearne). It was based on the book of the same name by Ronald Bassett. 

Vincent Price plays the role of Hopkins, the witchfinder general, a historical figure, making it all the more disturbing (though this is highly fictionalized). It was in the government's interest to murder clergy at that time. Clergy lived off tax money, so murdering them meant that they could just pocket that money. They paid sociopaths like Vincent Price's character to do this shit. It was cheaper to pay them a one-time fee than continually pay the clergymen. Plus, they could seize the land and whatnot. So, yeah, these witchfinder general types not only loved killing and inflicting pain, but it was also in their best interest to make shit up and kill as many "witches" as they could. The world has never been just. But eventually, Parliament got uneasy with his mass murder and such and accused him of witchcraft, because why not, and forced him into retirement. When Oliver Cromwell tells you you need to chill the fuck out, you are indeed wilin' out. 

Anyway. This is part of a folk horror collection on Shudder. It's considered part of the unholy trinity of the genre, along with Blood of Satan's Claws and The Wicker Man. I saw the remake of the latter, a real insane piece of work staring Nicholas Cage, this is the "not the bees" movie. I'll probably check those out. If they are equally brutal, I'm done with folk horror. 

Following - Christopher Nolan - 1999

★★★★-Following. “You take it away... to show them what they had.” Made my high school girlfriend watch this. All I remember really was that it was pretty fucked up and she hated it. You’re welcome. Also, another 1999 film, one of the best years for cinema. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Super brief but efficient, Following represents director Christopher Nolan's burgeoning talent in tight filmmaking and hard-edge noir.

Gist of the flick is a grungy dude follows around strangers like a fucking creep and picks another fucking creep that draws him into London’s criminal underworld. Eventually they get caught up with the girlfriend of a crime boss and shit goes south pretty quick.     

Nice little short flick. Christopher Nolan’s first. You can see a lot of his signatures here. Time is all fucked up and confusing. Dudes spend the movie investigating shit. Complicated male relationship at the center of the movie. Femme fatale between them. Great shit. Plus, I fucking love neo-noir. Great story told with impressive technique with some twists and turns.     

Definite MVP is Nolan. Currently watching all of his flicks again. Doing it sort of in order. Figured I’d do the Batman films together though.    

Prevenge is the greatest movie of all time

Prevenge. British. Pretty good for an independent movie with little budget. Is sort of marketed as a comedy horror. Would more call it a horror movie that has some dark comedy tossed in. It's pretty solid. Carried by the performance of Alice Lowe who is great in the film. She also directs. This is her first movie. She was really pregnant in the flick. Looks like a young Catherine O'Hara (the mom in Home Alone who is also in pretty much every Christopher Guest movie). Took me forever to realize where I knew her from. It was the British show I fucking loved called Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. She plays Madeleine Wool/Liz Asher. The female doctor who "went to Harvard College Yale, passed all her classes, and got an A." One of my favorite programs of all-time and what opened my eyes to British humor. Anyway, the movie is pretty good and very engaging. Mostly because of her. She wins the movie. Also, the (mostly) dickbags that she kills. They are good, too.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: As ambitious as it is daringly transgressive, Prevenge should thrill fans of pitch-black horror-comedy -- and open untold opportunities for writer/director/star Alice Lowe.

Gist of the flick is that a recently widowed pregnant woman, Ruth (Lowe), is told to kill the people "responsible" for her baby daddy's death (we get bits and piece that show him on a climb and his line getting cut with him falling to his death in a situation where they had to sacrifice him in order for the rest of them to survive) by the unborn fetus growing inside her. The film is basically a slasher movie told from the perspective of the killer. It also stars Tom Davis, Kate Dickie who is in a bunch of stuff like Prometheus, Game of Thrones (she is Catelyn Stark's sister who breastfeeds her nearly grown son), and The Witch, Kayvan Novak who stars in the television version of What We Do in the Shadows and is also one of the terrorists in the mockumentary Four Lions, and Gemma Whelan who is also in Game of Thrones as Yara Greyjoy and one of the detectives from the show The End of the F***ing World (she also looks straight up like a former coworker of mine).

A bit on the costars. Also, spoilers. Never seen this Tom Davis chap before but he is memorably good and disgusting as fuck. At one point he pukes in his afro wig and then goes in for a kiss. He then tells her she looks like Elton John whilst trying to bone her. Killing this guy is easy because he is such a piece of shit. Ruth asks if anyone loves him and he tells her his mum. We then see his mother lives there with him and is seriously clouded mentally, coming out several times to do the laundry. He sort of berates her and then gets murdered by Ruth. The mom comes out during this and says something about that needing bleach, you see, Ruth cut his dick off and he is covered in blood. As Ruth puts her back to bed, the mom tells Ruth she is too good for her son. Yep, even the mom knows. This looked like a fun role and the actor does a good job yucking it up. Whelan is pretty funny, too. Ruth poses as someone going door-to-door for charity who attacks her. But she is proper fit, as the Brits say, and throws on boxing gloves to defend herself punching Ruth in the gut even though she is preggers. After Ruth finally kills her with the cops on in earshot, she has trouble opening the door and has to escape through the doggy exit, dragging her enormous belly along the bottom of it as she goes.

Not all of the people really seemed to deserve to die like the Davis character or a creepy pet store owner whom she kills first. Like the HR chick, Dickie, sort of sucks, I mean, I wouldn't hang out with her, but she isn't terrible. Like every HR person. But she gets got. Then the flatmates, at least the one we talk to, is lovely. Does kind of complain about the other one, the one that was part of the event or what have you, but goes out of his way to say what a good guy he is. They get it too and one of them wasn't even there at her husband's death. He was just a witness to her crime.

Eventually she has the baby (on Halloween whilst she is dressed like some sort of demon) and with the help of Kayvan Novak (who was the climb leader who cut the rope on her dude so the rest of them survive) realizes that it wasn't the baby making her kill, she was doing it for herself. We think she learns her lesson or whatever and then, in the final moments, she returns to the spot where her dude died and the Novak character is there. They sort of smile at each other and then Ruth screams in rage with Novak looking on in horror. Yeah, she gonna kill him anyway.

That last scene is pretty representative of the film's humor. Dark as shit. You aren't gonna LOL but you'll chuckle in a fucked up way. Pretty solid flick that you can find exclusively on Shudder. Check it out.

Mindhorn is the greatest movie of all time

Fuck, Mindhorn, or "Brain Thorn" as my female companion calls it, is dope. Just my type of movie... so weird. This out there premise involves one Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt who was the main guy in The Mighty Boosh and was also in a few episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace [do yourself a favor and watch that shit]) who was famous for a long forgotten fictitious television show on the Ilse of Man called Mindhorn. Long after burning all the bridges he's had in the entertainment business, Thorncroft returns to the island when a mentally disturbed young man sends him evidence of a murder, believing his character of Detective Mindhorn to be a real investigator who solves crimes with the help of a cybernetic eye that allows him to see the truth. This movie is amazing.

Last week while having dinner with friends at Falafels, we were all talking about movies and my female companion and I hyped Mindhorn up big time. Explaining it, the companion mentioned the Ilse of Man. This older guy eating there with his daughter and her boyfriend, overheard us and came over stoked, saying that he teaches there every other year in the summer, and asked if we had been there or something. Nope, just watched this ridiculous movie which you should totally watch. The dude seemed intrigued. The boyfriend, meanwhile, looked at us like he knew. But whatever. I hope he watches it as everyone should since it is the greatest movie of all time™ and all.

Pros: Super camp. Good pacing and humor. Interesting locale. Made me nostalgic for a show and place I've never seen. Again with the ridiculous cameos.

Cons: It is out there. There are a few times where it is hard to follow along.

I'd totes check this show out

Notes: While this movie is a totally odd comedy, it is also sort of a bummer of a movie. No one knows him anymore but he still thinks he can turn it all around. You have a guy that gambled on life and lost, taking his friends and people that depended on him along with him. As a result he is forced to find work in a bastardized perversion of his trade. Ironic punishment is a mother fucker, yo.

Some stuff I liked about this were the absurdity of it, the cameos, and the male lead. Whenever they show the show that he was on from the 1980s we get the old square television format while when it cuts to present day we get the standard widescreen picture. This was a nice touch that I liked and noticed for some reason. The main characters absurdity is my favorite though. Like a delusional wild-man for a protagonist and this one, whose name in the movie is Richard Thorncroft, is totally unself-aware. He meets Kenneth Branagh and treats him like an old friend (and later fantasizes he has gone bald and reveres him), thinks every lady wants to sleep with him (including a woman he ditched during the height of his fame), and thinks himself the Brad Pitt of the Isle of Man. He also thinks he can (and successfully does) dodge bullets by the end of the film.

The movie in a nutshell

Mindhorn has a super fan who is also delusional, thinking he is actually the role he plays on the elective teevee machine, sends him evidence of a crime he is wrongly accused of committing so he will clear his name. Lots of funny stuff here. When his hero is knocked out, for example, the super fan superglues fake hair, the guy's robotic crime solving eye, and fake muscles onto the actor so he looks the role. He is insane. As he is dying, hilariously, he says to Thorncroft, obviously dressed as Mindhorn, "One last thing, Mindhorn. Tell me the truth about Richard Thorncroft. Who is he?" Mindhorn/Thorncroft replies "Let's just say he's someone I used to know." The super fan then gets out "Right, that's..." and seemingly dies. Mindhorn/Thorncroft then says "You poor, deluded fool. I am Richard Thorncroft." The super fan then looks up at him incredulously and then dies. It's super awkward and the hero offers up to his love interest, the one he left years earlier, "At least he didn't die in vain."

Anyways, soooo fucking good. You should definitely make time for this insanity. The parade scene is worth it alone. Totes made me LOL which rarely happens.