pagrn1-1 Reviews

Vampire Diary (2006)

An Inexplicable Pleasure

[10/10 · 24 August 2007]

This film should be very average, it is massively derivative and amateurish - BUT it is in fact excellent as both a Vampire horror and as a Lesbian romance. The rawness of the direction is in fact a huge plus and combines Jose Ramon Larraz's 'Vampyres' and 'The Blair Witch Project' transposed to an urban setting. The conceit of using the documentary-making format is trotted out again so that amateur acting can be passed off as realism. And yet - the energy and enthusiasm of cast and crew carry the film along to its satisfying conclusion. One can only hope that when or if this gets a release in the USA it is not censored out of existence.

London to Brighton (2006)

The Praise Was Richly Deserved

[10/10 · 4 August 2007]

The quality of every aspect of this film is breathtaking, as a debut it is astonishing. The performances delivered by Georgia Groome and Lorraine Stanley are excellent and carry the plot along at a break-neck pace. Comparisons are invidious but one thinks of Mean Streets and Mona Lisa, though London To Brighton has an even more edgy feel. It may be that having worked together on the earlier short Royalty the characters of some of the cast were well-grounded but the introduction of absurdly young Georgia Groome transports the whole gutter-based story to another plane where even the most unsympathetic become humanised - this is Lorraine Stanley's triumph as she transforms from Tart-Without-A-Heart Kelly to proxy-mother of the abused child Joanne. The gangsters here are anything but entertaining and no attempt is made to romanticise the Pimp-Whore relationship, it is a world of abuse and Kelly's attempts to rescue Joanne are all-involving. The alternate ending is very short but very powerful, I'd like to have known which was the director's choice. Paul Andrew Williams has mad a mini-masterpiece on a shoestring, one is reminded of the young John Carpenter, hopefully he can cope with the bigger budgets which will surely now come his way.

Gray Matters (I) (2006)

A Comedy Without Laughs

[1/10 · 18 July 2007]

If there has ever been a worse comedy than 'Gray Matters' I am unaware of it. The New York Jewish comedy's 'funny' premise is that siblings Sam & Gray are mistaken for a couple and so decide to fix Sam up with a girlfriend, only to find that Gray is equally attracted to their target - Charlie. The revelation that Gray is secretly gay is apparently only a surprise to her. There is a deeply offensive wedding sequence, a deeply embarrassing 'drunk act' from Moynahan and Graham, and a performance that would embarrass forests everywhere for its woodenness from Tom Cavanagh. Sissy Spacek demonstrates a complete inability to do comedy and will want this excised from her resume. Molly Shannon plays the homely friend with lumpen insouciance. Only Alan Cumming emerges with any credit but is seriously under-employed and given nothing with which to work. The whole disaster is cemented by Graham's bizarre eye-rolling performance culminating with the penultimate scene where she wears a comedy hat and an overcoat despite the scene being set in a lesbian bar. It is astonishing that this film was ever released it has no redeeming feature and should be avoided at all costs.

Instant Justice (1986)

A Contender for Worst Film Ever Made

[1/10 · 2 May 2007]

It is hard to imagine a worse film, and equally hard to believe that Craig T. Rumar did not know that he was making a turkey. There are only two stand-out things in this movie and both belong to Tessa Hewitt, otherwise there can only be interest for connoisseurs of timber as represented by Michael Pare and Tawny Kitaen who's acting might be called wooden if one were not worried at receiving complaints from Pinocchio. Dialogue is not helped by Mr Pare needing a 5 second pause before he can deliver his lines so that his scenes with Ms Kitaen have all the spontaneity of a State Funeral. Mr Pare has less acting ability than Arnie but an equally impressive physique, unfortunately when asked to do anything other than adopt a statuesque pose it all goes horribly wrong as he minces across the screen. Action sequences and special effects are laughable, the editing probably done with a chain saw, the sub-disco intrusive 'background' music unremitting. Other than Tessa Hewitt's 30 seconds on screen the film has no redeeming feature.

Three Into Two Won't Go (1969)

A cult film of its time.

[10/10 · 27 April 2005]

I watched this film recently for the first time in over 30 years and was very pleasantly surprised. I remembered a film that caught the mood and feel of Britain in the mid 1960s without falling into the 'Swinging Britain' clichés that so many other films thought they had to propagate, my memory proved correct. Those who feel that this is like a TV play are not entirely wrong but while Andrea Newman was to become famous for risqué TV drama, this film is more in the tradition of the 'kitchen-sink'films such as 'Saturday Night And Sunday Morning' but with an emphasis on middle-class rather than working-class life. Rod Steiger is excellent as the middle-aged angst-ridden lead, unhappily married to a repressed and apparently barren wife (Claire Bloom). The onset of the 'Technological Revolution' is the the backdrop for the drama in which old values and certainties are challenged. This is the stage for the central character played by Judy Geeson, a role which at the time was a shocking departure from the typical prim behaviour of contemporary heroines. The reversal of roles, with the girl rating her conquests in a little-black-book was a precursor to the Feminist movement and was criticised at the time for promoting promiscuity among young girls. The irony of these criticisms is to be seen in both Claire Bloom's and Peggy Ashcroft's characters who are both acceptingly dissatisfied. Peter Hall made few films and on this evidence that is a great shame. Steiger is exemplary and wholly credible showing why he was so highly regarded