Author: BRWC

In the 21st century right now we have Twilight Saga to drive people crazy. Back in the last century, people had the Halloween Saga to go bonkers for.

The first part of the Halloween movies came out in 1978. It tells a story of Michael Meyers, a troubled kid who puts on a mask and starts killing all the teenagers in his hometown in Illinois, including his step sister. Of course there are a lot of police and a psychiatrist involved, everybody trying to get this killer with supernatural abilities. He keeps on murdering everybody who gets in his way in the next two parts of the saga, cause what else is there to do in a horror movie?

Halloween 4 is the only movie I have seen from the saga and I gotta admit, in 2012 it still had some suprising elements and cool twists to it for me. But I have also never noticed so many goofs on the first watch of the movie either.

So, the story starts off with ambulance driving to the hospital where Michael Meyers has been in coma for ten years. He wakes after hearing that he has a 7-year old cousin ( Danielle Harris) . His rage rises and in this stormy night, his killing starts again. He is going back to his hometown in Illinois, in order to find the 7-year old girl.

Psychiatrist Dr.Sam Loomis, played by Donald Pleasance( big name in the British TV in the 60s) is back in action, trying to stop Michael Meyers, who in every Halloween movie is being played by different stunt actors. It makes sense why the producers didin’t start hiring a great actor to portray Michael – he doesn’t have to say a word troughout the whole movie, his only acting is to walk around slowly and scary, stand straight once he’s seen his victim and then kill them. I wish I would have gotten the role.

The little girl is played by Danielle Harris, who mader her film debut in this movie. For a child, she is playing her character very well. As I read from the interviews later, she enjoyed every bit of making the film and Halloween 4 & 5 helped her understand that horror movies are the ones she wants to do her whole life.  For now, she has played in movies such as Nuclear Family, The Victim, Hatchet 2 etc, so you can see she really meant it.

The film also includes some crap teenager scenes. Jaime’s step sister Rachael’s( Ellie Cornell) date decides to have some adult fun with another blondie by the fireplace, as everybody can see in the movie. I think it’s no suprise if I say they all die in the end anyway so no need to worry about the love.

Although Halloween 4 is a nice movie to watch with some pretty intense scenes, it is also hilarious. But I guess you gotta blame in on the equipment at that time, not exactly on the moviemakers. For example, the face of a dead police officer made me giggle instead of screaming.  Also, there are some very obvious goofs  – in some scenes, you can clearly see how Meyers has dark brown hair, in some others he’s as blonde as a Californian surfer boy.  The scars on Dr. Loomis face also change quite clearly troughout the movie and Rachael’s sweater looks too good to be true while she is fighting the killer all on her own in a moving car. But wait till you see it, there’s more !

Halloween 4 must have been a real fun to watch back in the 1988 when it was first released. But today, although the film has some amazing ideas, I think the kids of the new generation have already seen pretty much everything and nothing suprises them that much. The tricks they used in the movie might have been new back then but they are used in every horror movie now.

Overall, considering the time of its release and the film in general, I think Halloween 4 was awesome. It offers some tension and fear, a lot of fun and you can almost see a naked girl, which is always nice. Thumbs up!

Material is a labour of love, both in its construction and its content. Taking over seven years of writing and refining to get it from the souls of a few individuals to the screens of many, Craig Freimond’s film is about love in all its forms.

Set in Johannesburg, Material follows the story of the disruption of an Indian Muslim family when it is discovered the son, Cassim Kaif (played by the talented Riaad Moosa), when not working in his father’s fabric shop, is pursuing his dream to be a stand up comedian. The family, already disrupted by the father’s, Ebrahim Kaif (Vincent Ebrahim), estrangement from his brother is thrown into a turmoil that is interposed with clips of Cassim’s stand up performances. On stage, Cassim’s comic delivery is outstanding, and each performance parallels neatly with the events in his life at the time. The subjects, ranging from wedding day rituals to how much laughter is too much, are relevant, poignant and, most importantly, hilarious.

Based loosely on Riaad Moosa’s life as a Muslim stand up comedian, the film seeks to put a comical spin on the pressures faced by young adults existing in a world that does not necessarily marry comfortably with their beliefs. As he desperately tries to please his father, impress the girl of his dreams and follow his calling, the interactions between the characters, in particular Cassim and his best friend Yusuf (Joey Rasdien), are funny, touching and complex. The superb script and patient, unobtrusive filming means that we are flies on the wall to the Kaif family, seeing all points of view and taking no sides. Rather than forcing unlikely conversations between stubborn Ebrahim and reserved Cassim, the intricate and shifting relationship between father and son is represented through simple repeated sequences, such as washing their feet before prayer and opening the shop. The differing levels of closeness and respect are shown according to whether they are praying together or alone and who walks through the shop door first. It is these clever moments that make Material both universal in its representation of the family unit, and educative in its representation of a specific religion, culture and country.

This union between the universal and the specific is essential to the film’s overall success. Arguments and interactions between family members, whilst largely specific to their culture, are effective in that it is like watching your own family. All the characters and narrative effects one might expect in a romantic comedy are present, from the hero’s funny sidekick, to the almost Disney-style music that plays when Cassim sees his dream girl Zulfa (Carishma Basday), and yet there is little that is stereotypical or expected about the film itself. Without feeling as though you are being schooled on the religion, in witnessing the insensitivities of non-Muslim individuals and the expectations, rituals and restrictions of each individual family member, we are treated to a glimpse into a world that is rarely represented so gently and humorously. By becoming so emotionally invested in the Kaif family, we are rewarded with scenes of indulgent, tear-jerking emotion and a life lesson that stays with you long after the credits have rolled. Denise Newman and Ebrahim Kaif give exceptional performances, whilst Riaad Moosa’s handsome comic hero is self-deprecated, compassionate and highly endearing. With a running time of 94 minutes, Freimond wastes no time at all in making you fall in love with the dusty Johannesburg streets, stand-up comedy performances, cars that don’t start, weddings, row-boats, the Oriental Plaza and the characters themselves to boot, leaving you with a dilemma of your own; whether to watch it again or recommend it to a friend.

The name Material is apt. Not only a dual-reference to Cassim’s comedy and the cloth sold in their family shop, Material is a compassionate dedication to the intricately woven fabric of family life, with all its tears and imperfections, the result of which is nothing less than inspiring.

For more information about the film, click here

“This is what I do”, grunts a slightly-built Indonesian man with wide, intense eyes and sweat-soaked ringlets. What he does is, to be blunt, kick the living crap out of people.

The Raid is not a film that requires much cerebral attention (besides reading the subtitles). It is not a film that has strong character development, thoughtful emotions, or witty dialogue. What it does have is amazingly brutal yet beautiful martial arts, braided together in such a way that the hour and a half running time races past in a blood-drenched, sweat-stained fury.

The plot is fairly simple: an Indonesian crime lord, Tama, sits on the 15^th floor of a tower block, ruling his nest of drug-addled criminals in between staring at a bank of CCTV monitors and beating people in the head with a hammer. A SWAT team are ordered to break into the tower and “clean it out”; the audience follow their journey up the floors, as they become less and less successful and more and more dead. The corrupt lieutenant had failed to gain proper authorisation for the attack, leaving the team on their own, with no back up and no way out.

It is easy to draw comparisons with this year’s Dredd 3D: in both films, a police force take on a tower block that has become a haven for criminals, ruled over by a cruel boss. Some scenes appear almost identical – hiding in the room of the one “good guy” in the building (completely inexplicable why he would live there), or Tama calling over the PA to let his army of vagrants know that the enemy is within. A quick internet search midway through the film led to the discovery that The Raid is essentially the original, and therefore any plagiarism falls on Dredd’s hefty shoulders (it also led to asking “which came first: the chicken or the Dredd?”).

If Dredd was a slow-moving leviathan, its tower block a fantastical futuristic monolith, The Raid is a piranha, darting through the scummy South-East Asian underworld in a haze of claustrophobic, fast-paced hyper violence. The martial arts are intense and vicious, the Indonesian pencak silat style looking less like the choreographed fight scenes of a Jackie Chan movie, and more like a back-street brawl. Stylish special effects, muted colours and a handful of beautifully framed shots give this film an almost graphic novel-esque feel, and Gareth Evans, the Welsh director, also makes great use of sound, building the tension and intimacy with lip-biting silences.

Admittedly, by the end the fight scenes did drag on and it was a struggle to focus on every punch, kick and gruesome stab with little plot to bond them together. Iko Uwais puts in a decent performance as Rama, the young, good-hearted cop, but his character is never more than an empty vessel to fill with – admittedly awe-inspiring – martial arts skills. This is not a film to change your life, nor even necessarily one to remember the next day; nevertheless it should be lauded for its ability to take a simple concept and execute it to (near) perfection.

Christmas Evil, or to call it by it’s much cheesier and awesome title; You Better Watch Out, focuses on a man who after witnessing his mum being touched up by his Dad dressed as Santa grows up to be a mentally unbalanced Christmas obsessed loner. He works in a toy factory where he becomes disillusioned by corporate greed and shoddy workmanship. He keeps track of the local children to see who’s been naughty and nice, he’s generally a bit creepy. This Christmas though he can’t take the indignities of life any longer, snapping he takes to meeting out gruesome punishment on the ‘naughty’ whilst dressed as Santa Claus.

The first film that springs to mind in terms of the plot is Silent Night, Deadly Night and it’s terrifically awful sequel. Where it differs though is that Christmas Evil takes a more ‘art-house’ approach to the murder and psychology. Those looking for a grim Halloween style Christmas slasher will be mostly disappointed. Yes there are some grisly murders with fantastically over-the-top 80s gore but that comes way into the films overly long runtime. Harry Stadling is our “hero/villain” of the film, director Lewis Jackson spends a great deal of the film showing his downtrodden, Christmas obsessed existence as we build to the moment he finally snaps but it’s all done with the least level or dramatic power. Someone gets him to work his shift at work. Oh no the horror! He must die. He spots a young boy cutting photos of women out of Penthouse. The little shit, he must be punished! You may think that these small acts further emphasise Harry’s insanity but the film shows it so matter-of-factly a camper that it feels as though we’re supposed to be watching a chilling psycho-drama like Targets or Maniac. In fact Maniac did a similar thing to this film, but much more troubling and gorier. The films opening shows us Harry’s reasons for becoming the man he is today. On Christmas Eve he comes downstairs to find not Mommy Kissing Santa Claus but Santa lasciviously groping his mother. After seeing that he heads to the attic where he smashes a snow globe – in a very Citizen Kane orientated shot For some reason this turns him into a Christmas fixated hermit. Would that sight not actually turn him off Christmas? Why destroy a snow globe if he loves Christmas?

The highlight of this new DVD release is the commentary track with Lewis Jackson and John Waters who amazingly claims it to be his favourite christmas film of all time. Apparently he even used to screen it at his Christmas shindigs. They spend a great deal of time discussing how the film was misunderstood by audiences and critics as being dull. They reason that it actually has a slow-burn, ‘arty’ vibe that most audiences didn’t understand. Sadly the film is just dull. Brandon Maggart who plays Harry Stadling is far too much of a ham to fully convey the unraveling psyche of a man on the edge. He seems to think he is in a campey slasher flick as opposed to director Jackson’s harrowing vision. We do learn on the DVD though that he is in fact Fiona Apple’s Dad – nice bit of trivia. We stay with Harry for most of the film sadly and he’s just not that interesting to watch. Acting wise the highlight is Jeffrey DeMunn who horror fans will recognise from The Walking Dead and most other Frank Darabont films. He plays Harry’s middle-class, sensible brother who is at his wits end. There is also a notable early roll for Patricia Richardson who Tim Allen disciples will know as Jill Taylor in Home Improvement. Other than these and a couple of other interesting trivia facts there isn’t really a lot to recommend Christmas Evil. Perhaps you may find the chilling, slow burn horror that John Waters seems to see in the film but in this case I’m staying with the pack and say that it is laboured, dull and not actually scary. It’s less Christmassy but you’re better off with Maniac.