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Slither
Cert: 15
Starring: Nathan
Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker
Director: James
Gunn
Running Time: 96
minutes
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For
a while there it looked as if Hollywood had completely forgotten
how to make a decent horror film. If you endured the tedium of The
Fog remake, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The only
respectable recent attempts had been remakes of Japanese films such
as The Ring.
Then The Hills Have Eyes – another remake – wound the
clock back and delivered some good old-fashioned, 1970s-style horror
entertainment. And now we have Slither, another film with one foot
in the past and its tongue firmly in its cheek.
While cavorting in the woods with a woman who isn’t his wife,
Grant (Michael Rooker) finds a strange gooey mass he can’t
identify. As he takes a closer look, something shoots out of it into
his chest and soon all hell is breaking loose in the small town he
lives in.
Writer-director James Gunn gleefully plunders the likes of Society
and David Cronenberg’s Shivers as he stitches together elements
from those films and countless others to create a grotesque and consistently
entertaining tapestry.
If you’ve seen the poster, you’ll have seen the tongue/worm
creatures as they slide into a bath occupied by a teenage girl. That’s
not the half of the unspeakably gross treats on offer here, however.
Oodles of goo and gore fill the screen as the unfortunate townsfolk
are possessed (yucky), eaten (yuckier) or used as wombs (yuckiest)
by the amorphous alien life form. Gunn knows just the body-horror
buttons to push to get his audience squirming in their seats and
possibly hiding behind them.
Slither has a great sense of humour and fun, which complements rather
than punctures the horror. Nathan Fillion (seen recently in Serenity)
gets the best of the one-liners playing the town’s police chief
who leads the human resistance and remains chipper throughout. The
rest of the cast provide solid support and clearly know just what
kind of film they are making.
The ideal mix of scares, laughs and grossness. |
An
American Haunting
Cert: 15
Starring: Donald
Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, James D'Arcy, Rachel
Hurd Wood, Brent Monahan
Director: Courtney
Solomon
Running
Time: 90
minutes
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In
the year 1817, John and Lucy Bell (Donald Sutherland and Sissy
Spacek) are a couple of landowners who live in rural Tennessee.
They have two children; teenager Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and
grown up John Jr (Thom Fell), a churchman.
After John Jr is found guilty of being a loan shark by his
church pals, the victim of his greed puts a curse on the whole
Bell family. Before you know it, Betsy has some violent nightmares
before dad calls in a priest to sort out a case of demonic
possession.
With some moody cinematography and great attention to period
detail, An American Haunting is a handsome looking film, but
sadly not that exciting a one. There are plenty of scares but
they are often cheap, momentary shocks rather than genuinely
frightening.
Casting Donald ‘Don’t Look No’ Sutherland
and Sissy ‘Carrie’ Spacek backfires as they merely
serve to remind you of much better, more original and more
frightening films.
Good looking but forgettable. |
Ice
Age 2
Cert: U
Starring: Ray
Romano, John Leguizamo, Seann William Scott,
Denis Leary, Chris Wedge, Queen Latifah
Director: Jon
Vitti
Running
Time: 91
minutes
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Directors
who come out of the independent film scene all have to find
their own way to deal with the might and money of mainstream
Hollywood. Some try
to ignore it and others, like Steven Soderbergh, work on a ‘one
for them / one for me’ basis.
Twenty years after he made his first film, She’s Gotta
Have it, Spike Lee proves that, while making one for them – in
this case a straight-up genre film – you can still leave
your mark on it.
Clive Owen plays the leader of a gang of robbers who take over
a bank in downtown New York. The bank is quickly surrounded
by the police, and Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington)
is given the job of negotiating with the bad guys.
The shady owner of the bank (Christopher Plummer) then hires
an elite fixer (Jodie Foster) to use her power and connections
to make sure that a dark secret of his, contained in a safety
deposit box, is not discovered.
You don’t have to inspect Inside Man too closely to quickly
surmise that the plot is as far-fetched as any Hollywood hokum
you are likely to see. As usual with ‘perfect’ heists,
it’s all far too complicated and reliant on too many
unpredictable elements to work. Thankfully, taut writing and
slick directing, together with some well-pitched performances,
do a darn good job of keeping your disbelief suspended and
deliver some quality entertainment.
Clive Owen spends most of the film behind a mask and his customary
blankness is well suited here, while Denzel Washington plays
Detective Frazier with an abundance of swagger, but never crosses
the line into caricature.
With a range of incidents, looks and lines of dialogue, Spike
Lee draws attention to underlying racial tensions that other
mainstream films would probably ignore. It’s done with
varying degrees of subtlety but enhances what is already an
accomplished piece of work.
Clever and slick enough to make you swallow its far-fetched
plot. |
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