Author: BRWC

Precious Muir, a model most often hired for work in teen catalogues and magazines, makes the drastic decision to have breast enlargement surgery in the hopes of forwarding her career into the world of glamour modelling, and the cameras are there to see the months following.

The first thing that has to be mentioned is just how well crafted it is. The editing, score and structure are all tight, a shower shoot being a highlight, and the 85 minutes flies by. Despite this there are issues, like the confused talking head segments where we swing from reality TV style links to the (I think) intent of being confessional and insightful.

Despite the title, the film manages to swerve being leery at all, maintaining the objective eye of verite, but unfortunately this is ill fitting of the subject matter.

The premise of following one person’s post-surgery life is interesting, but because of the objective style it becomes a problem. There’s never any sense of getting past the superficial, leaving interrogation at the door in favour of just getting what Precious is happy to show on camera, resulting in her talking about her breasts for 85 minutes, something that didn’t grab my attention.

The film seems unwilling to pick a side on the issue underlying their chosen subject, glamour modelling and female body image in the mainstream media. I think they were aiming for a neutral position, instead it just feels like they didn’t want to have to. I’m not saying they had to be critical or judgemental, but neutrality on a hot topic like this just comes across as apathy, or even worse trying to keep away from the more problematic issues being raised.

Even though documentaries like Super Size Me are didactic, bordering on propaganda, they are engaging because they take a stance and have an opinion, a confrontational one. If you took out all the social commentary of Super Size Me, you’d just be watching a guy eat burgers for an hour and a half. That’s what we have here; Big Macs without the calorie count.

Hi! Vince your friendly neighbourhood reviewer here and im gonna tell you why ‘Horns’ is the movie you should check out this Halloween weekend.

So if you’re not aware, ‘Horns’ is the new movie starring Daniel Radcliffe and its pretty freaking awesome. The film tells the story of Ig and Merrin(Juno Temple), a young couple devoted to each other but when Merrin is murdered, Ig becomes the prime suspect and the entire town is out for blood. Hated and alienated Ig fosakes the world and God for taking her away from him; This results in Ig waking up to find horns growing out of his head. Ig begins to notice that the horns have a strange effect on people as they begin revealing their secrets and acting on Ig’s command and Ig sets out to solve Merrin’s murder and clear his name.

That premise is pretty god damn awesome right? It should, its based on a book by Joe Hill(Stephen King’s son) and with a writing pedigree like that you know you’re in for a great story. The film manages to be dark and disturbing in places with great comedy thrown in too. The performances are great from all involved and Heather Graham even pops up, still hot too. For the sake of balance i should probably say that Dan Radcliffe’s looking pretty badass in this movie and i must admit i had a little bit of a man crush on him in this movie. Aside from the hotness, this movie is very well put together, the effects are awesome and the soundtrack is great. There’s some truly heartfelt sections which make you really care for the characters and some great gut punches in there too.

The one thing that I really loved about this movie is that it’s basically a film noir where the protagonist slowly turns into a demon. Everyone has a secret and it’s Ig’s job to solve the mystery, get the killer and clear his name while fending off a town that’s hungry for blood. Thats why this film’s awesome, it has heart and balls, it’ll never win awards but it will end up becoming a bit of a cult classic I suspect. In a time where the market is ssturated with Superhero movies and dystopian teen flicks this films dares to be different.

The film hits theatres on the 29th and is totally worth your time and money this halloween season.

9/10

‘Killer Klowns From Outer Space’ is one of those awesome creature features that came out of the 80s, One of many that took their cues from the 50s horror classic and ran with the crazy ideas and gruesome monster effects. It became a big cult hit and was released last month on blu-ray. Yep, even the cult classics have blu-ray releases now… Roll on ‘Troll 2’ and ‘The Room’ on blu-ray then I can see the immortal line “You’re tearing me apart lisa” uttered in a picture so clear I can feel the faux anguish.

Killer Klowns is just awesome, if you’ve never seen it it’s about a bunch of really friendly school teachers who… Nah i’m just kidding, it’s about killer clowns from space I mean it’s pretty self explanatory. It’s funny, has over the top acting, some gruesome deaths and some truly great effects for it’s day. Oh and the theme tune is one that you will never be able to forget it’s so damn catchy, I’ve even got it in my head right now.

Along with the movie the blu-ray has some great little featurettes, deleted scenes and an awesome commentary track. Do yourself a favour and grab a copy of this utterly bonkers and immensely enjoyable flick. It’s a great halloween movie as an alternative to the usual horror franchises that get reprised this time every year, get some candy floss, some friends (hopefully a coulrophobic among them) and enjoy the bloody klown mayhem.

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS**

The room was dark, my phone was off, the movie was set and I placed my headphones on and began my experience with ‘The Upper Footage’. 90 minutes later after following the rules I felt well, disappointed. It was a first for me as you don’t usually get set a bunch of rules by the movie’s promoters on viewing their product, although it felt a little unneeded. With a set of rules that include using headphones and watching it at night; I expected jump scares, eerie noises and unsettling footage but this movie has none of that. I can only think that the whole viewing rules were pointless, they’d have been better not saying anything to try and set the mood just let people watch it in their own way and not trying to sell it as a horror; Which it is not.

‘The Upper Footage’ is dubbed as a one of a kind movie experience which is they edited version of 393 minutes of recovered footage depicting the death and cover up of a girl called Jackie Spearo by a group of NYC socialites. As a premise that’s great and sounds like it will contain some disturbing footage and horrific things that must have happened to this girl before her untimely demise. It begins by telling the story of the footage, how it first came to light on YouTube where it blurred people’s faces and was simply called ‘NYC Socialite Overdose’ several short clips were released and later pulled by YouTube; Leading to news outlets questioning the authenticity of the clips and a supposed involvement of several big Hollywood players, including Quentin Tarantino. This is all done to add validity to the footage which to begin with works although this later falls apart in a big way. The pacing slows and the escalation is so erratic it feels ridiculous, and the performances which start off great begin to become strained and unconvincing. The scripting is actually really well done, it’s unclear whether it was improved or not but that may explain things later on and honestly the performances on the whole are very good until the last 20 minutes.

The camera work here is actually really good in the beginning where the camera movement feels natural, shots are poorly framed and the camera becomes a prop in the vlogger Will’s efforts to seduce girls in the back of a limo. It feels realistic here, like its a 20 something trying to document an evening of partying, Hell I’ve shot bits like this on my phone. Jackie’s face is pixelated throughout adding to the illusion of authenticity. Then when things get more serious, everything falls apart. The regular stumbling block of all found footage movie comes in the form of the ‘why are you filming this?’ hurdle which they attempt to solve by playing it off as them all being too wasted to remember things and they would all need to have straight stories for the police; So they film the whole night with the plan to watch it the following day to make sure they all had the same string of events. What felt natural to begin with disappears and we’re left with many shots of the back of chairs, blurry floors and we rely on audio of mainly panicked socialites where not one of them seems to act rationally. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing that shit. I’ve seen friends in near fatal scenarios after nights of revelry and sure as shit it sobers you up fast, things are heightened but you act at least in some way rationally. Are socialites so lacking in common sense that they naturally assume the whole world has ended the second something goes south?

If you’re still reading at this point you’ve probably come to the conclusion that I hated this film and that’s actually not the case. It does a good job mostly, the premise is great and the 3 year marketing campaign is brilliant although it took so long to get released that now even a cursory Google search will reveal it’s falseness. Had the movie been released at the height of the buzz it would have made a much bigger impact and the fact that the marketing manages to still make you question if the events could actually happen; It blurs the line between fiction and reality just enough. That is where this movie’s brilliance lies, it isn’t a horror, it isn’t quite real; but it does make you scrutinise the media and the celebrity culture and for that reason you should watch this movie. The movie is available on VOD right now.

6/10