Francesca (Luciano Onetti, 2015) DVD Review

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“Through me you pass into the city of woe, through me you pass into eternal pain.” In recent years the 'neo-giallo' movement has grown, moving hand-in-hand with the re-evaluation of gialli from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, as well as the few that were released in the 1990s. Through DVD and now Blu-Ray – distributed by high quality and dedicated labels such as Arrow Video, 88 Films, Shameless Screen Entertainment (plus many more in various markets around the globe) – the genre has gained a whole new audience, with the films afforded lavish restoration and supplemental packages for unparallelled home viewing experiences. With the love spreading for these movies – made by filmmakers such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Sergio Martino (among many others) – it was only natural that new examples of the genre would begin to appear. Masks, Amer, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, and Yellow are all examples of this 'new old school' of highly stylised murder mystery – and the Argentinian Francesca (from the director of Sonno Profondo) is perhaps the one which nails the classic style closest of all...

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Only God Forgives: quick review...

What's it about?
An American drug dealer living in Bangkok is sent into the criminal underworld by his domineering mother to seek revenge for the murder of his brother. Bloody, stylish, straight-faced chaos ensues.
Who would I recognise in it?
Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Tom Burke.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
I recently posted my thoughts on Nicolas Winding Refn's latest film - The Neon Demon - and found it to be extraordinarily stylish and obsessed with obtuse symbolism, but I was disappointed by how it sought to dispense with as much plot, story, characterisation, and redemption as possible (and it was decidedly over-long at an indulgent two hours). So I figured it was time I caught up with Only God Forgives, the film that sits between TND and Refn's 2011 film Drive (a richly textured, yearning, ultra cool modern classic). Where, I wondered, would it fall on the scale between those two films...

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The Neon Demon - a quick review...

What's it about?
A delicate young girl enters the viper's nest of the Los Angeles modelling world where retirement often strikes just when you reach the legal drinking age, as sparkly dreams give way to DayGlo-coloured nightmares.
Who would I recognise in it?
Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, and others.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) seems to be striving to reach a 'post-narrative' world of his own. The plot to The Neon Demon could be written on the back of a postage stamp (surprising, then, that the screenplay was penned by three people), with the climax never really daring to push narrative boundaries. Here, style is king - and doesn't it look (and sound) good? However, strip that away and - much like your average model's lunch - there's little nourishment on offer...

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This Cat is NED...

Do you like puppets? Do you like cats? Do you like puppet cats with a sense of humour in the general vibe of people like Will Forte? Then how about the web show This Cat is NED?

This isn't a sponsored post, I just happened to stumble across this recently and it tickled my fancy - so I figured I'd share it. They seem to do episodes every two weeks, 1 to 3 minutes per episode, and at the time of posting they've got 33 episodes. Dig in and enjoy - I certainly am.

Turbo Kid: Mini Review...

What's it about?
An apocalypse, ravaged by acid rain and pollution, has obliterated much of the human race, with those still left alive reduced to scavenging and bloodthirsty combat. The year is 1997. The Kid (Munro Chambers), a lone teenager scrabbling through the rubble for the plastic relics of the 1980s, and all-round comic book obsessive, one day stumbles into Apple (Laurence Leboeuf), a curiously manic pink-haired waif whose previous best friend is a festering corpse. As he teaches her about the rules of the wasteland - which is ruled over by the monocular Zeus - he finds the mysterious remains of his hero: Turbo Man - arm blaster included - and takes on the mantle of 'Turbo Kid'...

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