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thriller

Mindhunters * Renny Harlin * 2004

At a ‘three DVDs for E 15,-‘ action I had to pick a third film from a variety of crap, ‘Intollerable Cruelty’ and this film which I didn’t know. I picked ‘Mindhunters’.
A group of FBI-profilers-trainees are dropped on an island for their final task. They have to solve a murder case, but instead get killed themselves one by one. ‘Mindhunters’ is supposed to be a grim, psychological thriller, a variation on the ‘find the serial killer’ theme. In a way it is, but the story isn’t too interesting, the film isn’t too special and the result is disappointing.

Memento * Christopher Nolan * 2000

A brilliant movie about a guy who has been in a terrible accident in which he lost both his short-term memory and his girlfriend. Because of the lack of his memory, he makes pictures of important things he encounters on the search for the murderers of his girlfriend. Clues are written on papers and important clues tattood on his body. “Memento” is magnificently told backwards, adding to the disability of the main character. You will see a scene and when it ends, you will get the scene of what happened before what you just saw. It sure takes the whole movie to figure it out and even afterwards you will have to discuss it with people to fully comprehend “Memento”. The great atmosphere, shooting in black and white, the disturbing images of Guy Pearce with his body full of texts and the idea that things are entirely different from what the main character things, make this movie one of the best that I saw in the last year.

Mathstick Men * Ridley Scott * 2003

Nicholas Cage is an actor that can pull me over the line for seeing a film. “Mathstick Men” has a not too original story. Cage is a swindler whose life changes when his fourteen year old daughter comes into his life and he teaches her his profession. Quite similar to “Leon” for example. The story develops and ends not too surprisingly. Nicholas Cage is the perfect actor for a neurotic criminal with many tics, fear of dirt and open spaces. Cage really carries the film and makes it into a nice comedy in the vein of for example Coen-films. For some reason the videoshop had this film under “thriller”. <30/8/04><3>

Lost Highway * David Lynch (1997)

Damn! Did i forget to review the best film ever? Damn! I saw it 4 times in the cinema when it played here in 1997, later I bought the video and a while ago the DVD. “Lost Highway” is completely Lynch. Dark (VERY dark I may say), strange, symbolic and ununderstandable. There are two stories that either follow eachother up or run (partly) synchronical. Especially one person being in both stories raises and answers questions. There is a story of a saxophoneplayer who meets a strange oriental person and who may or may not have killed his own wife. Also there is a story about a young car-service man who is very popular with the women, but ran into the wrong person, being the girlfriend of an extremely rich, influential and most of all insane criminal.

Anyway, the little you know about this film when you haven’t seen it, the better. As more of Lynches works “Lost Highway” is more of an atmosphere picture than a film that you can watch and enjoy. Most people don’t like it, others love it.

El Maquinista * Brad Andersson

the machinist

“If you were any thinner, you wouldn’t excist”. I suppose you all heard about Christian Bale (“American Psycho”) who starved himself to weighing almost nothing for this film and six weeks later being in his normal proportions for the shooting of “Batman Begins”, so I won’t say too much about that. Bale is playing a man who hasn’t slept for a year and thus ended up in living in some sort of dream world. When he accidentally causes a co-worker to loose an arm in the factory where they work, Trevor Reznik is eaten by guilt and his mind starts to play tricks with him.
Good acting, a weird story and a nice atmosphere makes this film a nice viewing experience.

Los Sin Nombre * Jaume Balagueró * 1999

I wouldn’t have chosen this film for the title, cover or story on the back, but my girlfriend thought it would be a nice film. “The Nameless” proved to be a very dark and particularly grim and gruesome thriller/horror. If you like Japanese films like “Ringu”, this one is for you. This Spanish film is shot in colour, but there hardly is any. The images are dark, the atmosphere pressing. This last is mostly caused by the constant deep rumbling on the background.
The story is about a women whose daughter was probably found dead six years ago. Back then an extremely mutilated body of a child was found. Yet the woman gets a call from her dead child and a haunting search for her begins. Claudia is lured into the web of a group of extremists who think that by means of pain they can concentrate the ultimate evil and gain evil powers. The atmosphere is fantastic, the story (based on a book by Ramsey Campbell) has details you would never come up with, but unfortunately the last 10 minutes and the conclusion are fairly weak. Especially see it if you like extraordinary dark films.

Kansen * Masayuki Ochiai * 2004

infection

Japanese horror is getting more and more popular. Each and every film is compared to the first and most famous films in the genre that came to the west, “The Ring” (“Ringu”) and “The Grudge” (“Ju-On”). Unfortunately, quite a few of the films are actually nothing much more than copies of these films. Dark and gloomy films without the American horror effects, but a ‘story’ about a curse or some supernatural entity. Of course the same happens with this film and especially when I saw the cover I thought of yet another Jap-film in a popular fashion. But… things are not always what they seem! Actually “Kansen” is quite a relief in the flow of Japanese horror films. Not that it is completely original or totally unlike the popular predecessors, but at least it is somewhat different.
The film begins wonderfully with some kind of “Riget”/”Kingdom” style and story. Weird things happen in a hospital. There are only a few docters, just a handfull of patients and just six rooms. The patients are strange, the docters overworked and on top of all, some strange decease comes creeping in. This results in some gory scenes that we are not used to from Japanese horror, but still “Kansen” didn’t become an American slasher-horror with fright-effects. The atmosphere is built up nicely, (still compare it to Lars von Trier’s “Riget”) and at the end comes a total outburst of crazyness. A bit too much for me, because the end is a bit too typical, but the film in total is an entertaining Japanese horror that is not entirely like other films in the genre.

Kakashi * Norio Tsuruta * 2001

I didn’t know this film, but I was caught by the beautiful cover of a cheap dvd-version that I saw. I have seen other Japanese films recently and was curious about this one. The director proved to be the same as who made “Ringu 0” which I haven’t seen, but the story was interesting enough to see how this would be.

A “Kakashi” is a scarecrow and is the name of a festival in a small village where the film plays. Kaoru goes to find her missing brother and the trace leeds to a small village called Kozukata. Most inhabitents seem not too happy with Kaoru but she persists in her quest to find her brother. The village is preparing the anual scarecrow festival which proves to be a festival to raise the dead. A scarecrow (or any human figure) is suppose to contain a soul and/or the soul of a dead person. With the festival some will try to regain their loved ones by drawin their souls into a scarecrow. The village seems to be full of ‘living’ scarecrows…

Like “Ringu” a moody horror without the splatter, but with a nice dense and dark atmosphere. Not brilliant, but the Japanese horrors do have something nice about them. Especially on dvd by the way, because a lot of the atmosphere comes from constant subsonic frequencies from your speakers!

Jin-Rô * Hiroyuki Okiura * 1998

Animation has never been really my cup of tea, yet I do like the “Animatrix”. This film was on MTV a while ago and I decided to record it. “The Wolf Brigade” is an animation with quite life-like images and it plays in an apocalyptic future where the Brigade is a para-police-unit to avoid terrorists from disturbing society. The masses are not too happy with the reign, so anti-governental groups flourish. When one member of the Wolf Brigade sees a teenager girl blowing herself up in front of him, he has second thoughts about his occupation. Then he runs into an almost identical girl.
“Jin-Rô” has a nice, quite typically Japanese, dark atmosphere and a story critical to our nowadays society. The images are quite realistic and the makers sure had an eye for detail. All this makes “Jin-Rô” almost like watching a ‘normal’ film. I enjoyed it, maybe I should see some more “anime” to get to know the genre better.

Janghwa, Hongryeon * Ji-woon Kim * 2003

a tale of two sisters

A strange film about two sisters who return home after having spend some time in a mental institution. At home there lives a terrible stepmother. I have seen the film only ones so far and I don’t understand much of the story. One of the sisters died and the other can’t get over that. The stepmother is -to say the least- strange and somehow a monster (or an imaginary monster?) is formed.
The director comes from South Korea, but the film is a horror in the Japanese style such as Ringu, Ju-On or Kakashi. The film is more horror than Ringu, but not as much as Ju-On. The atmosphere is more or less the same, but “A Tale Of Two Sisters” has some other styles of filming as well, especially in the beginning. It is a nice film, with a nice atmosphere, but I will have to see it again to be able to judge the story.