Mujer Del Diablo's Reviews From Hell

IRREVERSABLE
2002
Directed by Gaspar Noé
Running time: 97 minutes
French with English subtitles


The plot for this movie is rather simple: horrible things happen to good people. But in this case, the horror takes form of the unmentionable of situations and the good person comes in the form of undeniably beautiful and seemingly untouchable Monica Bellucci.

So begins the tale of Irreversable. This film is shot in reverse order and desplayed in constant swirling camera angles, which seem to prepare you for the chaos, violence and sick feeling you will now come to realize once the story "unfolds". Beware, this movie makes Memento seem like childs play.

In Irreversable, we are immediately introduced to two violent men searching for someone in a gay sex club. They are desperate and determined, frothing with anger and rage. You have no idea what they are looking for or who they are looking for. The camera continues to draw you in and at the same time the images and words start to transform the situation to something somewhat clearer. What these men are seeking is vengence for something so horrible that when this horror is finally revealed, you understand their rage.

I cannot go any further in describing or letting you now "how it ends", because the end of this movie is really the beginning of the real story in chronological time. But the irony of such humble beginnings displayed at the end of the movie doubles the intensity of how raw this movie really is. The imagery, the tragedy, the violence will keep you RAW FOR DAYS.

There is no real way to describe how this movie ends. Sad. Tragic. Graphic. Vomitatious. Violent. Disturbing. Brilliant. Irreversable.

Also recommended: Haine, La (Hate 1995) & C'est arrivé près de chez vous (Man Bites Dog 1992)

THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL
2004
Directed by Byambasuren Davaa
Running Time 87 minutes

Hardly a "documentary" as much as it is cultural/spiritual observation, The Story of The Weeping Camel is a subtle and simple tale of a family of a Mongolian shepherds whose otherwise harmonious and successful camel breeding "farm" is interrupted by an ornery female camel who rejects her unique newborn colt.

It is a wonder how this group of film makers came about arriving and filming this Mongolian family in the remote Gobi Desert during such a dramatic shepherd challenge. What can be respected about this film maker and the crew is their ability to not interfere with this family's experience by narration. They simply show what's going on and allow the family to be themselves. There is no narration except for the Mongolian family, who seem to ironically face the same difficulties that most other families face: running a business, dealing with their aging parents, their young children and a 5 year old boy who wants a brand new tv imported to his yurt immediately (they do not have electricity).

Although the family's herding business seems flawless, it turns out that one of the last pregnant camels in their flock is starting to act a little weird: she strays away from the camp and has to be retrieved over and over again by the patriarch of the family.

Through a difficult and violent labor, the camel finally gives birth to a beautiful white colt - very rare it turns out - but the family is shocked and worried because the mother will not allow the newborn to suckle. The shepherds gently try to persuade the mother camel to warm up to her child through what may seem to most people as bizarre methods: binding her rear legs together to prevent kicking the colt away, forcing her to smell her colt over and over again and then leaving mother and child to wander about together in the desert hoping that her post-partem depression will soon fade.

After about a weeks time, however, the family becomes seriously worried. The colt has only eaten very little from the family's force feeding and they fear he will not be able to live much longer. They turn to the elder folk in their family, who suggests there is only one solution: they must send for a spiritual musician to serenade the mama camel to get over her blues. Their two young boys are sent on the trek into a far away Mongolian Reservation camp to retrieve the specialist. Will they be able to find the savior for their colt?

The Story of The Weeping Camel is very gentle and organic, therefore not recommended for those with MOVIE A.D.D. or any other type of patience, attention or narcolepsy problem. But it is a pretty cool movie. The family we are introduced to in the 87 minutes this film runs showed such awesome fundamentals of things most people don't seem to have. Caring for the success of this one camel and her colt seems like a metaphor for the way they live their lives. We see their love for eachother, the love for their land, the respect for their elders, respect and sensitivity for the animals they tend and a spiritual tie to their religion and faith.

THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
2000
Directed By Adam Simon
Running time 73 Minutes


For those who would like to take a more historical and theoretic approach to horror, you can thank your PUSSY ASSES for The American Nightmare.

Written and directed by cheesy horror dude, Adam Simon, The American Nightmare is the kind of documentary one could watch without being scared necessarily, yet walk away with an understanding of why, how and where horror movies get started.

Instead of taking a super geeky approach to behind-the-scenes horror movie special effects or subjecting you to slightly creepy Trekkie-like dorks spitting and frothing at the mouth explaining how horror movies changed their lives, the thorough approach of this documentary gives the horror genre (most noteably the 60s to mid 80s era) a high-class, intellectual edge.

One of the best reasons for watching this movie: get yourselves educated by the masters themselves. In the 73 minutes your eyeballs are glued to the TV, you will be listening to the legends of the 1960's, 70's & 80's...the directors, writers and creaters of the movies that changed most of our lives: John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, George A. Romero....just to name a few. You'll learn about their personal nightmares and how they metamorphesized onto the big screen in the forms of Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, etc.

So if you find yourself too scared this Halloween season to watch an actual horror movie, the least you can do is still act cool by saying you're EDUCATED on the subject.

Now go change your diapers before mommy comes back to find you've wet your little panties again.

RINGU
1998
Directed by Hideo Nakata
English Subtitles
Run Time 100 minutes


Before the horror of The RING, there was Ringu (1998). The 1998 Japanese version may not bring the huge box office appeal of it's American counterpart, but the simplistic storyline and suspense techniques seem to carry its own.

Those who have seen THE RING may wonder what the major differences are between the two movies. THE RING follows RINGU almost exactly to the T in general. However, there are some differences. All in all, I felt that THE RING, although more horrific and suspenseful than it's counterpart, was actually more confusing than RINGU and after watching the original Japanese version, I find it more confusing that Americans make things more confusing when they don't need to make the confused even more confused.

RINGU, is the story of an independent young woman, Reiko Asakawa(Nanako Matsushima) who struggles to balance the role of single mother and journalist. She is currently interviewing school children for the purpose of finding out what socio-psychological aspects lay behind urban legends. Ms. Asakawa's current subject of obsession: an urban legend of a mysterious and enigmatic video tape with a deadly curse. After watching the video tape, the telephone rings (with no one on the other end) and exactly seven days after viewing the puzzling video,the viewer dies horribly. The film does a great job of immediately setting the tone of giving children a voice and trying to find the keys behind their minds, their fantasies, their imagination and how little of it fits or is misunderstood by the adult world. This, of course, becomes an important part of the plot.

During a standard interview with one of the many elementary school children, Ms. Asakawa asks the child if she knows anyone who has died from this video tape curse. The young child gives her the names of two teenagers, found dead in their car of a sudden heart attack.

intrigued by the child's innocent but naked honesty, Ms. Asakawa researches the incident, only to find that her interviewee was not lying: an article in the newspaper confirms the little girl's urban legend was not a legend afterall.

Meanwhile, tragedy has struck Asakawa's own family. The sudden death of her teenage niece forces Asakawa to confront her niece's classmates at the funeral. Reluctantly, the teenage girls divulge that Asakawa's niece was one of 6 friends who spent the weekend together at a remote cabin a week earlier and they all had watched a strange video tape. Asakawa's research into the teens' death verify that all 6 of the teenage vacationers died mysterious, gruesome deaths at exactly the same hour: their hearts simply stopped beating an their were faces frozen in terror.

To get more answers, Asakawa visits the cabin where the teens vacationed, to find an unlabeled video tape in the hotel lobby. Exhausted but curious, Asakawa watches the tape, full of strange, bizarre images. A few seconds after the tape, the phone in the cabin rings...with no one on the other end.

Somewhere deep down inside, Asakawa is freaked THE FUCK OUT. She makes a copy of the video tape, goes home and enlists the help of her dead-beat but hot ex-husband, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada)to help her with the mystery. He watches the video and thinks nothing of it, as HIS phone does not ring after he watches it.

THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET A LITTLE....FREAKY.

Unlike THE RING, the two main characters, Asakawa and Ryuji start to have ESP capability after watching the video tape. This special telepathic passageway is what makes skeptic Ryuji turn around and believe in the urban legend. To make things worse, their son gets a hold of the video tape and watches it 2 days after his parents. They are both driven more than ever to find the answer to the video tape riddle. The couple does some research and finds out that the woman in one of the images in the video is a famous clairvoyant who died mysteriously by throwing herself into an erupting volcano on a remote Japanese island decades before. Asakawa and Ryuji's ESP "flashbacks" draw them towards this remote island and there they find that their mystery woman had been the victim of a witchhunt. They also find out that she was the mistress of a married doctor and that she and the doctor had a daughter together. As Asakawa and Ryuji get closer to the core of the island, they start to understand that the mysterious daughter of the clairvoyant possessed the power to kill people with her mind alone. Those who she "wished" dead fell to the ground: their hearts had stopped suddenly and their faces were frozen in terror.

Both Asakawa and Ryuji share a vision: the young girl was struck over the head by her father, the doctor, and pushed down a well. Later, the doctor covered up the well and his mistress jumped into the volcano in anguish. The doctor and island people, fearing the powers of the young girl's mind, pressured her father to commit the heinous act of doing away with his own flesh and blood. When Asakawa and Ryuji find out that the well lay beneath the cabin getaway where Asakawa's niece watched the video tape with her friends, they rush back to the location to "free" the body of the murdered spooky daughter at the bottom of the well, hoping to lift the curse forever.

Surely they have solved the mystery of the video tape...and saved themselves.

All seems right when they finally do find the remains of the murdered little girl and Asakawa, the first out of the three to watch the video tape, outlives the curse. Ryuji and Asakawa return to their separate homes, certain that Ryuji and their son are now free from the curse of the Well Girl.

...of course, it's not true!! For as soon as Ryuji comes upon his hour of doom (the seventh day on the hour of watching the video tape), his TV turns on by itself and the horrible continuation of the video tape plays...as we sit there watching a super duper creepy girl crawl out of the well and , through the tv screen and onto his apartment floor, killing Ryuji in the same manor as all of her other victims.

Upon hearing this, Asakawa has to be shitting in her pants, because she cannot figure out why she lived but Ryuji did not...and worse off, she has less than one day to figure out the riddle before her young son dies, too.

This review is long enough, plus I've given most of it away, don't you think? I'm not going to give you the answer to the riddle....Now get off your fat asses and go watch a scary movie....

Mean Creek
2004

There are some films that are so simplistic in essence, they just move me. Mean Creek is one of those movies.

Brilliant in form, storyline and acting, this movie is a rare indy gem. Following in the likes of George Washington and Fresh, Mean Creek is a movie about a group of kids, bored and slightly troubled, who go on a river ride that turns out to be a nightmare.

But make no mistake, director Jacob Aaron Estes worked long and hard to make this "not another teen movie". In fact, I'd have to say that this movie has less to do about children than it does human nature.

The cast includes surprisingly impressive performances; raw in nature and so purely delivered, that you find yourself stressed in your seat as you watch the awkward moments, the looks of fear and shock in their eyes, as they process the world around them that fateful day at the river. The characters are played by Rory Culkin (Macaulay's younger brother), Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Trevor Morgan, Josh Peck and complete show stopper, Carly Schroeder.

Mean Creek carefully conveys the delicate balance of nature, strength and weakness. It is difficult to express in writing what this movie did to everyone in the theater after it ended. I looked around: people were blown away, speechless...as a hauntingly beautiful melody caresses you into the darkness of THE END (performed wonderfully by Estes' wife, Gretchen Lieberman).

The silence and dumbfounded faces were not quiet because of a two hour overload of images and over-acting. It is a rare look that can only be delivered by a brilliant and simple classic.

WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Fruit Of The Vine
1999

Directed and produced by skaters Coan Nichols and Rick Charnoski, Fruit of the Vine is an interestingly simple movie about one specific topic: swimming pool skating. Pool skaters are a subculture within a subculture in the skating world. More rugged, simple and rustic than it's counterpart, Dogtown and Z Boys, this film explores and explains how swimming pool skating started on the West Coast in the mid-seventies and has exploded in the last 30 years with the development of skate parks.

Shot entirely in Super-8 film, Fruit of the Vine combines new and old footage of some of the best and most interesting "spots" where this type of skating goes down. Framed by a wide array of thrash metal and punk songs, this movie offers a no frills documentation of an exciting and carefree lifestyle.

For 70 minutes, the viewer follows skaters around the Southwest, Northwest and even the Northeast. Like the blonde, tan surfer boys in The Endless Summer (1966), these guys are looking for the ultimate place to ride. Instead of the search for the ultimate wave on tropical islands, the boys in Fruit of the Vine as well as their predecessors, have always used what society has thrown away: abandoned swimming pools, most of which are located in once-thriving cities and communities.

The dedication and determination of these pool skaters take you to the outskirts and underbelly of Southern California, the desolate abandoned stench of California's Salton Sea region, to the intense reserves of the Arizona desert. It also exposes you to the reasoning and hard work of skate park designers and developers, some who design for free. Why? As one skate park designer explains, "I do it for free because I don't want skate in a shitty skate park. If that means that I have to build it for free, then I will."

You really get a sense of the mentality and lifestyle of these skaters by watching this film. The voice-over narration and commentary adds to the depth of this movie by the likes of legendary skaters Lance Mountain, Steve Alba and David "Shaggy" Palmer. Some of these men have been skating pools since the mid 70s...and still dive in with fierce integrity and skill.

The quality of this documentary lay not in it's footage of the best skate moves you've ever seen. There are a lot of underground skate films that do that. Nor is it a polished, in depth, super produced masterpiece. You can get that from Dogtown and Z Boys.

For what it IS, though, this film was enjoyable and respectable. And it'll make you think twice the next time you see those skinny little skaters with their jeans falling halfway down their ass carrying a pair of bolt cutters heading towards an abandoned house in Southern California.

King Arthur
2004


 
Cursed by the beauty, grandeur and all-around awesomeness of Excalibur, I should, in all actuality, be banned from commenting on any King Arthur-esque movie that has been made since.  But perhaps it is only out of pity and disgruntled curmudgeonry that I find myself writing this review on such a sad, sad excuse of a film.

In my opinion, the order of King Arthur movies goes something like this:
1) Sword in the Stone  (1963)
2) Monty Python and the Holy Grail  (1975)
3) Excalibur (1981)
4) First Night (1995)
5) King Arthur (2004)

Now, one of these kids is doing his own thing, one of these kids is not like the other....and even the completely retarded performances in "First Knight" could not outdo the hell that I endured watching "King Arthur".

This movie version of the King Arthur tale takes the position of telling the story in the essence of supposed facts, not fantasy.  The Knights of the Round Table are not silver-clad honorable and gentle men, but members of English pagan tribes, who have been taken away from their families as teenagers in order to serve under the Roman army.  For 15 years they have fought along side of Arthur (Clive Owen), not yet a king, but whose legacy as a handsome and fearless warrior echoes throughout the dwindling empire.  Guinevere (Keira Knightley) is not a flirtacious damsel princess, but a feisty tribal warrior who questions Arthur's involvement with the Roman Empire and accuses him of being a traitor to his own people.  With Guinevere's fierce guidance and ice-cold accusations, Arthur finds his roots once again and gains a warrior queen and rule of England.

I know what you're thinking, and all this sounded pretty good to me at first, too.  But what I felt after about an hour of watching these facts unfold proved to be it's downfall.  The acting was a bit on the cold side, the action scenes were mediocre at best.  And then after about 1 hour 10 minutes, the inevitable, unmistakable sign of a bad movie was identified: I heard people in the movie theater start to yawn.  I was one of these people, but not the only one.  It didn't take a genius to theorize that the reason for our boredom was not due to a popcorn carb low but because we were simply apathetic to what we were watching.  None of the characters held much depth or intense interactions.  And although the movie was a good 2 hours, 10 minutes, I still felt pretty empty when it was all over.

The acting and character development was a dead lay.  I was really looking forward to the awesome animalistic sex that should have occurred between good ole Gwen and Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), but no such luck!  I think they might have shared a intense glance or two...?  But that was it.  How about a hot, long, angry sex scene between the future King and Queen?  NO!!  Just a 1 minute, cheesy exchange of "this could be our last night together, let's explore that" moment...I think maybe I saw a smidgen of Keira Knightley's thigh at some point, but I can't be sure because it was over before it began. 

Perhaps a story like this does need a little more fantasy in it after all.  Let's face it, the classic story of King Arthur is based on fact, but there is a legitimate need and a desire to acknowledge the beauty and fantasy of such a glorious story.

Note to future King Arthur directors: keep the dragons, wizards, hot sex and fog machines....ditch the realism.