It's hard to put into words when I have no words for this disappointment. This is not the cinema I know and love, it's a 2 1/2 hour slide show where even the music turns into nothing but bombastic sound effects cranked up to maximum noise levels. Everything is imagined as one big mind-numbing special effect. After this I wish even more that Jodorowsky's version could have been realized. It's a weird side effect that the absence of Jodo's wonderful project is now felt twice as hard. And while movies like 2001 were a monolithic vision of the fullness of the cosmos, this is the apex or rather the nadir of universal hollowness. Yeah, a cinematic monument to hollowness.
Reviews
10 Reviews
Oblivion
(I) (2013)
The electro magnetic heart
1 October 2021
Tom Cruise could just as well have played a character named Tom Cruise instead of a guy named Jack Harper. I swear this Hollywood monolith must have an electro magnet instead of a heart at his core. It's silly all too sterile fun. The characters are as artificial as the surroundings in which they move around. Morgan Freeman appears as the only truly free man in this production, but then appearances can be very deceiving. At least he projects some of that human quality of his earlier roles in this present screen reincarnation/avatar/cipher (take your pick). On the positive side, it makes for a great demo disc for all your new and fancy 4K home video equipment. A generous 5/10 because I dig polished surfaces.
Fatal Pulse
(2018)
a lonely defibrillator in frantic search of a cardiac arrest
29 June 2018
Don't feed this into your crappy old VCR after midnight! Watching a Damon Packard movie is like breaking your girl's compact mirror or deep frying that stray black cat lurking in the back alley. In other words, you will not have sex for at least seven years, run out of money faster than you can say American Express and kiss your cosmic karma goodbye as well while you're at it, why don't you? Less severe cases will move back in with their grandparents, others will straight-up opt for perpetual homelessness. There's no running from the Pulse, it will screw up your diet, it will wreck your tires, it will sully your laundry and misplace your toothpicks. It will mess with whatever little sanity you had left after Reagan's election. This is the Pulse. It's the fly in your ramen noodles and the splinter in your third eye. Every time you feel the Pulse a crooked cop is writing your next parking ticket and you just know that the landlady is already filing for eviction. Beware the Pulse, it will suck you into a maelstrom of eternal malaise. Run from the Pulse, your first class ticket for being jinxed into a second-rate loser. The Pulse will beat you into submission like a mindless bully who haunts, harasses and humiliates you with all the banalities of your daily struggle for survival. The Pulse is pulsating, like a Jane Fonda video on how to squat away your ever dwindling life force. The Pulse is harmful, the Pulse is addictive, soon you will find yourself compulsively crowdfunding the director's gold membership card at the all-night gym. You have been warned, do NOT excite Packard's Pulse!
Goodnight Mommy
(2014)
plausibility down the drain
1 May 2018
This one's thick with atmosphere. Unfortunately, I could never get over the basic premise that two young boys are left alone at home in a remote country house beside a lake and forest waiting for their divorced mother to come back from the hospital after a bad accident. The overall tone might be that of a dark and disturbing fairy tale, but at least the beginning should have been grounded in a little more realism. Otherwise, there is no real incentive to figure out the underlying psychological motivation of the characters and their interdependence. It feels like the directors had assembled all the creepy movie ingredients they could think of and then run out of their own ideas. The result is a demented shopping list where almost no cliché is left out. The bandage fetishism is a nice touch (a cross of Maria Beatty and Scott McGehee/ David Siegel), so is the art direction, although a bit obvious with the pictures of blurred silhouttes on the walls. The coackroaches, the candles, the children's games, the nursery rhymes, the bow and arrow, the pagan masks, the dark spaces, the dead cat, the bondage and torture, it's all too familiar and stripped of any real emotional attachement or narrative consequence. It's a clinical study of whatever they where trying to dissect, one that gets rather tiring about the half-time mark. The third act should have been the second act leaving room for a truly innovative story twist towards the end. Alas, that twist never comes and this viewer felt slightly frustrated when the credits started to roll.
Traffic Jam
(1979)
pitch black satire makes you choke on its fumes
21 April 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Oh boy, this was made almost forty years ago and - what a surprise! - we are basically still stuck in the same traffic jam. Only today nobody bothers anymore with the whole anti-consumerism shtick, mainly, I suspect, because we have bought this lifestyle hook, line and sinker, ingesting it to a degree that it has now become our second nature. So, here's a lot to like and a lot to learn, social commentary not only on Italian but most of our contemporary Western societies. But be prepared, I am by no means a squeamish viewer, but there is this one scene where a strong, independent, likeable female character is gang raped by three devilishly handsome yuppie guys in the back of a baby food truck. All the while, four old guys armed to the teeth watch on as if the spectacle was put on display solely for their own amusement. I found this hard to swallow and putting a somewhat sour note on an otherwise provocative, critical but also thoughtful and clever movie. On the other hand, if you compare this movie to the utter politically correct drivel we are served nowadays in multiplexes everywhere, it feels almost like a breath of fresh air, despite the toxic fumes emanating from its mega congestion.
hell-bent on dissapointment
20 April 2018
After seeing The Last Jedi at the cinema last December and being somewhat underwhelmed I was stunned to find out yesterday how little replay value this newest installment in the sprawling space saga holds. I literally couldn't make it through that dragging excuse of a story. Everything the rebellion does is either downright stupid or totally in vain or both. It's a long drawn out exercise in failure peppered with too many bits of comic relief and incessant soulsearching. The prequels were lacking in almost every respect, but at least I enjoyed revisiting them from time to time, they were fun, the storyteller's intentions seemed honest. Not so with the sequels, especially The Last Jedi. It's not only downbeat and endlessly meandering but also mean spirited in its attitude towards the source material. It's willfully disappointing viewer's expectations in the crudest and often least original way possible. You start to choke as if Vadder himself was extending his force grip over the audience. It's all so pointless and half-hearted. The rebellion gets decimated to literally a handful people, but it all seems to be fun and games for the characters, even the bad guys, with a lot of naive pep talk about the spark of the resistance thrown in every ten minutes or so. It's like the director undertook to disappoint viewer's expectations so radically, that we the audience end up with nothing but this choking feeling of disappointment. In fact, the narrative strategy forever flip-flops between those failed expectations and the constant lip service that is paid to the loyal fanbase. It's a schizophrenic experience, one that I'm not too keen to repeat because it leaves the distinct impression that a product is being sold here.
Believers
(2007 Video)
"Believers" by half a director of "The Blair Witch Project"
11 July 2007
Warning: Spoilers
"Believers" is your very average end of the world/suicide cult movie if not for the fact that it was directed by Daniel Myrick, one half of the director duo behind "The Blair Witch Project", if only Mr. Myrick had used one half of his brain too then this might not have ended up such a total mess.
Obviously, the Hollywood producers didn't trust the film-making skills of the "Blair Witch" creators, since, they both have been virtually inactive in the new millennium so far. Still, it seems that Myrick had enough time on his hands to hatch a few cinematic eggs. Since last year, he was not only producing "Rest Stop" (which I kind of liked) but also directed another three feature length movies ("The Objective", "Solstice" and "The Strand"). Although, it remains to be seen whether they will make it beyond a straight-to-video release. As for "Believers" it pretty much follows the formula of "The Blair Witch Project", but while the twist in that movie consisted of surpassing our fear that the witch was real in "Believers" we are introduced to a bunch of frauds that in the very end... I really don't want to spoil it for you here, because the movie has not much else going for it than the twist ending, and even that twist is paper thin, almost as if Kevin Costner at the end of "Water World" had found out that he belonged to the latest Sea World attraction (no, it's actually not THAT bad). The story of "Believers" is about two paramedics who are on an emergency call to rescue a woman lying conveniently in front of a gas station, having some sort of a heart attack. Subsequently, David Vaughn and his partner Victor are abducted by a bunch of weirdos who take them inside an old bunker where their fellow cult members reside. I forgot the name of the cult, it's probably some Greek letter of the alphabet. From there on, it's pretty much business as usual. There's the sinister end of the world cult and it's mysterious cult leader, lots of teaching and indoctrination, members who try to escape but are caught (the woman with the heart attack and here little daughter), some attempted brainwashing of the paramedics, large gas canisters with the required bio-hazard warnings all over them and a lot of mumbo jumbo about numbers and how God can be found in science and such. The story arch, if you can call it that, largely consists of Vaughn's partner Victor having a spiritual crisis and slowly turning over to the dark side (hey, it's a character driven movie!). A lot of hokey acting is involved in that process and finally culminates in a scene where Victor gets to bang a hot cult member chick. Well, who can resist the power of love? Overall, this is a fairly weak effort to give a new spin on the old evil suicide cult story, which would have worked a lot better as a short movie instead of a feature length film. The material is too second rate and the actor's are too third rate to carry this anywhere but the nearest lowest price blockbuster bargain bin. There is too much focus on the twist ending and not enough substance to sustain it. In order for the twist to succeed the movie has to lull the audience into the belief, that there are religious fanatics at work here like we've seen them a thousand times on TV and congregating in the living room of our neighbor's house. The "show them something ordinary and at the end reveal that they have witnessed something extraordinary"-formula usually works better in the short form. Here, the cult's religion is not intriguing enough to merit any second thoughts as to whether their predictions about an imminent doomsday might actually be true and grounded in hard evidence. ***imminent spoiler ahead*** Finally, when that doomsday arrives - oops? did I spoil anything? - it's a mere afterthought to a poorly digested potpourri of religious fanaticism and spiritual sci-fi. Thus, it also confirms my impression upon viewing the "The Blair Witch Project", namely, that its strength comes from its fraudulent direction, since, there was no direction at all. Unfortunately, for Sánchez and Myrick that means that they will be forever condemned to have directed only one great movie, which is great only because it pretends not to have been directed at all. That might turn out to be the true curse of the Blair Witch.
Obviously, the Hollywood producers didn't trust the film-making skills of the "Blair Witch" creators, since, they both have been virtually inactive in the new millennium so far. Still, it seems that Myrick had enough time on his hands to hatch a few cinematic eggs. Since last year, he was not only producing "Rest Stop" (which I kind of liked) but also directed another three feature length movies ("The Objective", "Solstice" and "The Strand"). Although, it remains to be seen whether they will make it beyond a straight-to-video release. As for "Believers" it pretty much follows the formula of "The Blair Witch Project", but while the twist in that movie consisted of surpassing our fear that the witch was real in "Believers" we are introduced to a bunch of frauds that in the very end... I really don't want to spoil it for you here, because the movie has not much else going for it than the twist ending, and even that twist is paper thin, almost as if Kevin Costner at the end of "Water World" had found out that he belonged to the latest Sea World attraction (no, it's actually not THAT bad). The story of "Believers" is about two paramedics who are on an emergency call to rescue a woman lying conveniently in front of a gas station, having some sort of a heart attack. Subsequently, David Vaughn and his partner Victor are abducted by a bunch of weirdos who take them inside an old bunker where their fellow cult members reside. I forgot the name of the cult, it's probably some Greek letter of the alphabet. From there on, it's pretty much business as usual. There's the sinister end of the world cult and it's mysterious cult leader, lots of teaching and indoctrination, members who try to escape but are caught (the woman with the heart attack and here little daughter), some attempted brainwashing of the paramedics, large gas canisters with the required bio-hazard warnings all over them and a lot of mumbo jumbo about numbers and how God can be found in science and such. The story arch, if you can call it that, largely consists of Vaughn's partner Victor having a spiritual crisis and slowly turning over to the dark side (hey, it's a character driven movie!). A lot of hokey acting is involved in that process and finally culminates in a scene where Victor gets to bang a hot cult member chick. Well, who can resist the power of love? Overall, this is a fairly weak effort to give a new spin on the old evil suicide cult story, which would have worked a lot better as a short movie instead of a feature length film. The material is too second rate and the actor's are too third rate to carry this anywhere but the nearest lowest price blockbuster bargain bin. There is too much focus on the twist ending and not enough substance to sustain it. In order for the twist to succeed the movie has to lull the audience into the belief, that there are religious fanatics at work here like we've seen them a thousand times on TV and congregating in the living room of our neighbor's house. The "show them something ordinary and at the end reveal that they have witnessed something extraordinary"-formula usually works better in the short form. Here, the cult's religion is not intriguing enough to merit any second thoughts as to whether their predictions about an imminent doomsday might actually be true and grounded in hard evidence. ***imminent spoiler ahead*** Finally, when that doomsday arrives - oops? did I spoil anything? - it's a mere afterthought to a poorly digested potpourri of religious fanaticism and spiritual sci-fi. Thus, it also confirms my impression upon viewing the "The Blair Witch Project", namely, that its strength comes from its fraudulent direction, since, there was no direction at all. Unfortunately, for Sánchez and Myrick that means that they will be forever condemned to have directed only one great movie, which is great only because it pretends not to have been directed at all. That might turn out to be the true curse of the Blair Witch.
Live Free or Die Hard
(2007)
rubbish 4.0
6 July 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Another exercise in boredom (running for no less than 130 minutes), another case of megalomaniac budget and minimalist results (the children in Africa are still hungry), another hack director going through all the political correct action routines (with two exceptions). It might be a good time to give the genre an honor funeral in the big flag waving Hollywood style.
I'm surprised that not more people are crying out against the abomination that is "Live Free or Die Hard". Frankly, after the credits rolled I couldn't remember what made me go into that theater in the first place. Part curiosity, part stupidity I guess, the drizzly weather might have had something to do with it as well. Also, it got very high ratings from both the crowd at IMDb.com and America's top critics on rottentomatoes.com. Call it blind faith then. Other than that, I was just hoping for a decent action flick in a long row of indecent action flicks. Sadly, "Live Free or Die Hard" turns out to be one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory. In retrospect, the signs were all but too clear. First of all, the swearing is gone, the holy grail for every die hard "Die Hard" fan. No f-word, no fm-word, instead a whole lot of computer lingo for the technocratic audience. Now, if there has ever been a movie beside "Deadwood" that elevated swearing to an art form, it was the "Die Hard" series. But let us sympathize with the dilemma of the producers, it's kind of hard to get a PG-13 rating - and you want to get that PG-13 rating - when your protagonist chooses to express is his inner turmoil in four letter words, not that there is much of that pathos left in Willis' character anyway. Which indirectly brings us to the next problem. They compromised. Simply put, "Live Free or Die Hard" was tailored for the widest possible target audience, which for better or worse also includes every type of nerd under 18. Gone is all the blood spilling, guts carving gusto of it and instead they moved us to a cozy little CGI place, CGisland, where nothing ever really hurts, except maybe a grain of maize that did not bust open. Which brings us directly to the next problem. The CGI sucks. I remember that "Live Free or Die Hard" was supposed to deliver some good old physical action stunts. Well, it doesn't! Especially, the sequence in which a fighter jet is chasing Willis driving a big truck is so ludicrous and over the top, that you will find shaking your head in disbelief. Plus the same sequence was already done to near perfection in James Cameron's "True Lies", not that the underage audience is bothered by such historic details. Let's talk about the villain then. Admittedly, it was fun seeing Timothy Olyphant moved out of the dirty old West and put right smack in the middle of a clear-cut techno-thriller. Personally, I think they chose the wrong bad ass from the "Deadwood" cast. Ian McShane might have made a much better antagonist in the old "Die Hard" style, instead they went for the evil grinning gentleman type, must have had something to do with target audience. Which brings us to the next obstacle. The techno-thriller genre. "Live Free or Die Hard" is about as much a "Die Hard" movie as "The Bourne Identity" or "Mission: Impossible 3" are Oscar material (okay, I got that rhetoric all wrong here). At best, it's an upgraded version of "Hackers", with more action and more explosions. It's the "Lawnmower Man" without a lawn to mow. Of course, we get the irony, analog veteran pitched against a virtual enemy he can hardly see or even smell. It's hard to knock your enemies teeth out when they hide behind a firewall. Now, there was plenty of sarcasm in the originals, sure, but they never sported this witty irony that in the latest installment abounds at nausea. How many clever one liners can you stomach before the whole thing gets ridiculous? Which brings us to another problem. The "nerdiness" of it all. Yet another cheap trick to widen the target audience and win over all the internet nerds, discussion board junkies and if they get really lucky their girlfriends as well. Formula: Throw in a goofy sidekick that will make it easier for those who were born with a dial up plugged into their cradle cushion. In every other "Die Hard" movie Matt Farrell would have been killed, probably in a particularly sadistic manner, within the first 10 minutes of the movie, and the audience would have loved it. Now instead, he gets cheered on and even is allowed to save the day, yippy ka yeeeee They even stooped so low as to play the funny guy card as well. In "Mission: Impossible 3" it was Simon Pegg who got to show his mug for a few minutes, in "Die Free or Live Hard" it's Kevin Smith! Why? Well, I'll take a wild guess here and say it might have something to do with widening the target audience. As a mere side note, I want to add that it was kind of annoying how the blue tints of the "Underworld" universe at times spilled over into the "Die Hard" universe or what's left of it. To all of this add director Wiseman's terrible timing in action sequences and Bruce's absent minded screen presence and you get a disaster of a movie. I'm enjoying a mindless thrill ride at the movies, but "Live Free or Die Hard" is flat out insulting my good taste in bad movies. With two exceptions. I liked how the Asian gal gets beaten up, that was mildly affronting. The second exception is the terrorist announcement using mash-ups of speeches from the U.S. presidents. They should separately release it on the DVD extras, it might make a good clip for You Tube.
I'm surprised that not more people are crying out against the abomination that is "Live Free or Die Hard". Frankly, after the credits rolled I couldn't remember what made me go into that theater in the first place. Part curiosity, part stupidity I guess, the drizzly weather might have had something to do with it as well. Also, it got very high ratings from both the crowd at IMDb.com and America's top critics on rottentomatoes.com. Call it blind faith then. Other than that, I was just hoping for a decent action flick in a long row of indecent action flicks. Sadly, "Live Free or Die Hard" turns out to be one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory. In retrospect, the signs were all but too clear. First of all, the swearing is gone, the holy grail for every die hard "Die Hard" fan. No f-word, no fm-word, instead a whole lot of computer lingo for the technocratic audience. Now, if there has ever been a movie beside "Deadwood" that elevated swearing to an art form, it was the "Die Hard" series. But let us sympathize with the dilemma of the producers, it's kind of hard to get a PG-13 rating - and you want to get that PG-13 rating - when your protagonist chooses to express is his inner turmoil in four letter words, not that there is much of that pathos left in Willis' character anyway. Which indirectly brings us to the next problem. They compromised. Simply put, "Live Free or Die Hard" was tailored for the widest possible target audience, which for better or worse also includes every type of nerd under 18. Gone is all the blood spilling, guts carving gusto of it and instead they moved us to a cozy little CGI place, CGisland, where nothing ever really hurts, except maybe a grain of maize that did not bust open. Which brings us directly to the next problem. The CGI sucks. I remember that "Live Free or Die Hard" was supposed to deliver some good old physical action stunts. Well, it doesn't! Especially, the sequence in which a fighter jet is chasing Willis driving a big truck is so ludicrous and over the top, that you will find shaking your head in disbelief. Plus the same sequence was already done to near perfection in James Cameron's "True Lies", not that the underage audience is bothered by such historic details. Let's talk about the villain then. Admittedly, it was fun seeing Timothy Olyphant moved out of the dirty old West and put right smack in the middle of a clear-cut techno-thriller. Personally, I think they chose the wrong bad ass from the "Deadwood" cast. Ian McShane might have made a much better antagonist in the old "Die Hard" style, instead they went for the evil grinning gentleman type, must have had something to do with target audience. Which brings us to the next obstacle. The techno-thriller genre. "Live Free or Die Hard" is about as much a "Die Hard" movie as "The Bourne Identity" or "Mission: Impossible 3" are Oscar material (okay, I got that rhetoric all wrong here). At best, it's an upgraded version of "Hackers", with more action and more explosions. It's the "Lawnmower Man" without a lawn to mow. Of course, we get the irony, analog veteran pitched against a virtual enemy he can hardly see or even smell. It's hard to knock your enemies teeth out when they hide behind a firewall. Now, there was plenty of sarcasm in the originals, sure, but they never sported this witty irony that in the latest installment abounds at nausea. How many clever one liners can you stomach before the whole thing gets ridiculous? Which brings us to another problem. The "nerdiness" of it all. Yet another cheap trick to widen the target audience and win over all the internet nerds, discussion board junkies and if they get really lucky their girlfriends as well. Formula: Throw in a goofy sidekick that will make it easier for those who were born with a dial up plugged into their cradle cushion. In every other "Die Hard" movie Matt Farrell would have been killed, probably in a particularly sadistic manner, within the first 10 minutes of the movie, and the audience would have loved it. Now instead, he gets cheered on and even is allowed to save the day, yippy ka yeeeee They even stooped so low as to play the funny guy card as well. In "Mission: Impossible 3" it was Simon Pegg who got to show his mug for a few minutes, in "Die Free or Live Hard" it's Kevin Smith! Why? Well, I'll take a wild guess here and say it might have something to do with widening the target audience. As a mere side note, I want to add that it was kind of annoying how the blue tints of the "Underworld" universe at times spilled over into the "Die Hard" universe or what's left of it. To all of this add director Wiseman's terrible timing in action sequences and Bruce's absent minded screen presence and you get a disaster of a movie. I'm enjoying a mindless thrill ride at the movies, but "Live Free or Die Hard" is flat out insulting my good taste in bad movies. With two exceptions. I liked how the Asian gal gets beaten up, that was mildly affronting. The second exception is the terrorist announcement using mash-ups of speeches from the U.S. presidents. They should separately release it on the DVD extras, it might make a good clip for You Tube.
Sicko
(2007)
no more Moore please!
23 June 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I was looking forward to this, but now that I've finally seen it I'm somewhat disappointed, this is clearly a dead end for Michael Moore's film-making career and a low point in his crusade for truth and freedom (of speech). First of all, it looks like a made for TV documentary, it has not the usual wit and cleverness of a Michael Moore documentary, the editing is pretty lame too, it is a mediocre piece both in content and execution. Bowling for Columbine remains Moore's best, Farenheit coming in a close second, but Sicko has to be one of his worst efforts to date. Just picking apart the life stories of a random bunch of people does nothing to lend credibility to his arguments, it simply makes it personal but not objective, it's not even all that personal anymore since he doesn't seem to be interested in the human factor but is looking for bizarre circumstances that he can use for HIS narrative (a good documentarian adopts his style to the stories of the people its about, it reconstructs their narrative), like he went to the interviews with a checklist this time. He's still out for laughs and tears, business as usual one might say, but this time it feels even more contrived than usual, more like a freak show than honest sympathy for the health care "victims", sadly he's not after a balanced representation of the health care system itself either, so what's his point, what's his motive? Could it be that although he does hardly appear on screen anymore it's now Moore than ever (pun intended) about self propagating his own persona? Crap happens everywhere, it's a law of nature, no system is perfect, and if you dig long enough, and obviously Moore by now has a large research team at his disposal, you'll find all the grotesque stories your heart and your audience desires, but they in no way will lend credibility to your arguments, and they do not justify calling Sicko a documentary, it's rather a biopic with Moore acting as his own ghostwriter. So, to sum it up, wait until it's on TV (or download it from the net if you must), just don't be part of the hype and buy a ticket for this, buy aspirin instead :) It doesn't even work as a movie this time around either, it's not a comedy, it's not a satire, it's not even good entertainment, with Moore's other documentaries you could at least turn of your brain, ignore the "facts" based side of his cinematic diatribes and just enjoy them as great pieces of fiction and a jukebox approach to modern history and politics. Sicko doesn't go together with popcorn all that well, it's an overlong session of finger pointing with no direction and nowhere to go, no wonder they end up near Guantanamo Bay towards the end of the movie, and when Moore unpacks his bullhorn and tries to communicate with a far off security tower you know you have reached the bottom of ludicrous, it's so pathetic it almost creates an image of Moore as a modern day anti Don Quijote or a fool's fool.
Bread and Circus
(2003 Video)
A thinking man's splatter movie
11 September 2004
"Bread and Circus" is a rare treat, a splatter movie that is brainy and yet still blows your brains out. A true Independent, in every aspect of the word, this sleeper from Norway isn't as well known as it should be. While generic output like "Undead" or even worse "House of the Dead" is peddled all over the world, movies with a heart (popping out) often remain forgotten silver. Fortunately, "Bread and Circus" still has cult potential, even more so because it stays true to the spirit of guerrilla film making and it dares to go where no man has ever gone before: quite literally into the anus of mother earth.
The story is simple, it's about a fascist regime that censors every form of life outside the ordinary. All the weak and strong, all the dumb and intelligent are cast out and left alone in the nearby woods to die. Until one day when a man rebels against the system, breaks out and with his story inspires a young couple to overthrow the fascist government for good.
The movie abounds with symbolism and social criticism as well as fart jokes and gross splatter effects. In the end, this crude mix is what makes the whole thing work. Disgusted by what has become of our world, a place of comfort and conformity, the director expresses his anger and frustration by using images of intense barbarism, almost as barbaric and wretched as the society he sets out to criticize. It's metaphors and blood, a mixture that isn't too appealing to a lot of viewers, the intellectual will be disgusted, the splatter freak might be alienated by the philosophical undertones, everybody else might feel uncomfortably normal, but one thing's for sure, "Bread and Circus" is uncompromising in it's vision, a piece of art that belongs equally in the s**t house as in the art house.
Beside that there are countless references to movies and movie history: slapstick humor from the silent era, black humor from the works of Monty Python, a sense of adventure from "Indiana Jones", martial arts sequences in homage to Jackie Chan, powerful use of music as in "Clockwork Orange", splatter effects right out of the trash masterpieces by Peter Jackson, a surreal ending that will remind you of Takashi Miike, actors that seem to come right out of comic books and direction as unyielding as Francis Ford Coppola's in "Apocalypse Now" (BaC was shot over 5 years, on an ever growing budget and a faulty camera that ruined 1/4th of all takes). All in all this is a movie lover's dream come true, a true source of inspiration for every aspiring filmmaker and a rewarding experience for everyone who dares to look beyond the surface.
It's a little film with high goals, my recommendation: dream a little dream and have great fun!
The story is simple, it's about a fascist regime that censors every form of life outside the ordinary. All the weak and strong, all the dumb and intelligent are cast out and left alone in the nearby woods to die. Until one day when a man rebels against the system, breaks out and with his story inspires a young couple to overthrow the fascist government for good.
The movie abounds with symbolism and social criticism as well as fart jokes and gross splatter effects. In the end, this crude mix is what makes the whole thing work. Disgusted by what has become of our world, a place of comfort and conformity, the director expresses his anger and frustration by using images of intense barbarism, almost as barbaric and wretched as the society he sets out to criticize. It's metaphors and blood, a mixture that isn't too appealing to a lot of viewers, the intellectual will be disgusted, the splatter freak might be alienated by the philosophical undertones, everybody else might feel uncomfortably normal, but one thing's for sure, "Bread and Circus" is uncompromising in it's vision, a piece of art that belongs equally in the s**t house as in the art house.
Beside that there are countless references to movies and movie history: slapstick humor from the silent era, black humor from the works of Monty Python, a sense of adventure from "Indiana Jones", martial arts sequences in homage to Jackie Chan, powerful use of music as in "Clockwork Orange", splatter effects right out of the trash masterpieces by Peter Jackson, a surreal ending that will remind you of Takashi Miike, actors that seem to come right out of comic books and direction as unyielding as Francis Ford Coppola's in "Apocalypse Now" (BaC was shot over 5 years, on an ever growing budget and a faulty camera that ruined 1/4th of all takes). All in all this is a movie lover's dream come true, a true source of inspiration for every aspiring filmmaker and a rewarding experience for everyone who dares to look beyond the surface.
It's a little film with high goals, my recommendation: dream a little dream and have great fun!
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