Monty Python: Almost the Truth

Then...

I'm not normally a fan of documentaries as I feel that many times they are pushing a particular viewpoint or opinion, but every once in a while you get that special documentary that isn't full of itself and it's own agenda. 2003's Fog of War is a perfect example, where former  US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sits down and talks for an hour and a half. That is the sort of experience you get with Monty Python: Almost the Truth, six hour long episodes tracing the forty years that Monty Python has been around in interviews with the surviving cast members.

This six episode documentary uses interviews with the surviving members and archival footage of interviews from Graham Chapman painting a more thorough portrait of the Python's creative process and some of the struggles that happened behind the scenes which are actually very interesting. And the way that the documentary is split up is also very well done where each episode is focused on one part of the history behind the group, e.g. episode 2 is the only episode about the BBC television show while episode 3 focuses on their first real feature Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

and now.

The best thing about this is probably the fact that most of the history between the participants is so old that any animosity that may have existed over this or that issue has turned into a cool, but polite appraisal of the issue. There are also segments where comedians (Steve Coogan, Russel Brand, and Stephen Merchant to name a few) who grew up on Monty Python comment on the influence that the show had on them which gives the subject of the Python's influence some real context. A thoroughly fascinating look at such an influential group of individuals.

Rating: A

P.S. My favorite sketch? The funniest joke in the world from the first episode of Flying Circus.

Bronson

Now that's entertainment!

This film chronicles the life and times of the "most violent prisoner in Britain", one Michael Peterson aka Charles Bronson. It's an interesting biopic starring Tom Hardy as the thuggish yet entertaining Bronson casting the character in the light of a showman telling his story in a sort of one man show before an imaginary audience.

Michael Peterson was a Welsh born hooligan who ran afoul of the law and was imprisoned in 1974 for armed robbery. He received a sentence of seven years but that was extended multiple times due to his constant assaults on guards. During his stay as a guest of Her Majesty's Prison Service, he was transferred over 120 different times leading to his institutionalization at Broadmore Maximum Security Hospital where he took several hostages and held a 47-hour long standoff with police from the roof of the hospital, causing more than £750,000 worth of damage to the hospital making him the most expensive prisoner Britain had ever hosted. So they certified him sane and released him. For the next sixty-nine days, Peterson took up with a former inmate who promoted illegal, bare-knuckle fights and Peterson changed his name to Charles Bronson to improve his image in the fights but was imprisoned again after he robbed a jewelry store to impress a woman. And except for another brief period of freedom in 1992, he has remained behind bars, much of that time in solitary confinement because of his combative nature.

The amazing thing about this film is not the basic character of Charles Bronson, but rather how they go about crafting a narrative around the individual, where the style of the storytelling is more impressive than the story itself. There are scenes where Hardy is dressed in a beautiful suit, painted up in pancake make-up and black paint before a theater full of tuxedoed and evening gowned spectators with classical music playing and those scenes are absolutely beautiful in a mad sort of way. I mean, there is nothing all that likable about Bronson from a surface value, and yet this is an absolute joy to watch.

Thirst

Chan-wook Park first came to my attention with his incredible, yet hard to watch Vengeance trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance) so I was very eager to see his take on vampires in Thirst. Thirst is not your ordinary vampire movie. I mean, there is blood drinking, feats of incredible strength, and a general aversion to sunlight but what it's really about is how doing a bad thing for what seems like a good reason is still a bad thing and, ultimately, very destructive.

I feel like your dead husband
 is coming between us.

The story begins with Catholic priest Sang-hyeon enrolling in a trial to first be infected with the Emmanuel virus, something akin to Ebola, so that he can be a guinea pig for a new vaccine. After succumbing to the virus, he miraculously recovers after receiving a blood transfusion and he is revered by people as a living saint and spiritual healer. Unfortunately, the blood he was transfused with leaves him with a hunger he cannot quench normally and if he does not consume blood, he begins to develop the sores and boils associated with the virus. Being a man of God, he does this by siphoning blood from coma patients without killing them and is able to keep his secret until he begins to visit the family of Lady Ra, her son Kang-woo and his wife Tae-ju. Tae-ju is initially a sympathetic character since her mother-in-law and husband are both callous towards her feelings. Priest Sang-hyeon is attracted to Tae-ju and tries to stay true to his priestly vows while as his vampiric powers begin to manifest. But it is only a matter of time before Tae-ju and Sang-hyeon begin to have an affair and Tae-ju tells Sang-hyeon the Kang-woo is physically abusing her. They hatch a plan to kill Kang-woo and drown him while out night fishing, Sang-hyeon dragging Kang-woo to the bottom of the lake and laying a heavy rock on top of him to keep the body down. Because of her son's death, Lady Ra suffers a stroke and Sang-hyeon moves in with Tae-ju. Eventually, the guilt over the murder drives a wedge between Tae-ju and Sang-hyeon and Sang-hyeon strangles Tae-ju after she lets slip that Kang-woo never laid a finger on her. Distraught over what he has done, Sang-hyeon forces his own blood into Tae-ju's mouth reviving her from the dead and making her a vampire. Unfortunately, Tae-ju isn't as benevolent a vampire as Sang-hyeon and after she callously kills several people, they get in the car and Sang-hyeon drives them out to the shore to see the sun rise leading to the final five minutes which are both hilarious and sincere moments in the film.

The thing I love about this film are the levels upon which it works. First there is the overt vampire story which is original and interesting in its own way, and I love that it's accessible even though it is a culture alien to my own. Second there is the morality metaphor for the path to hell being paved with good intentions, and third there is the fight between the duality of man between his base desires and his noble intentions. Add in beautiful direction and absolutely fantastic performances and this movie is simply a must see.

Rating: A

House of the Devil



It's right next to the Catholic church on 4th street.



There are atmosphere movies and then there are atmosphere movies, and House of the Devil is one of those films that just has atmosphere coming out the wazoo. On the surface, this is a haunted house story with slasher film elements thrown in and is filmed in the style and very much made to feel like a movie from the late 70's or early 80's. And here the key to the frights are not blood and gore, but a slow build up of tension with just the right shocks to really jangle your nerves. It reminds me of the original Halloween and the way that that movie built it's tension.

As for the story, all I will say is that Samantha, a college student looking to earn some quick cash so she can rent an apartment, agrees to take a babysitting job out in the ssticks, on the night of a full moon. That's really all I will say about it because anything else I say will reveal too much. It's a movie that feels like a slippery slope argument. Because it's not just "Come out to the middle of nowhere to babysit on the night of a full moon and someone said they saw the devil nearby and oh, by the way, the phones don't work." Each level is a reasonable and seperately rationalizable action because the things that will happen just don't happen in our lives. I mean they happen, but they don't happen to us. So each step of eerieness seems silly to freak out over by itself, but when finally taken as a whole are "let's turn on the lights" scary.

There is one thing that I did not like about this movie and that is the opening text before the movie begins. It's that sort of informational "70% of Americans believed blah in the 80's" and "the following is based on true unexplained events". And while that sort of title was part of the style for movies of this sort during the 80's, I think it takes most of the punch out of the climax of the film. If you can skip past it without reading it, I think it makes for a far better film, but I can't say for sure since I can't unsee what I've already seen. But still, it is a phenomenal film.

Rating: A

Bunny and the Bull



Bunny and the Bull is a surreal road movie with a team up stranger than Hope and Crosby... actually, I've seen a couple of their Road to <insert destination here>  and they are pretty zany themselves. So let's just say that Bunny and the Bull does the road movie proud. The really interesting thing is that the story is told in part in flashback. Actually, that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is the visual style that the flashbacks are told in, where all the props and set appear to be made out of rubbish.

Writer/director Paul King, alumni director of The Mighty Boosh, introduces us to Stephen Turnbull, an obsessive-compulsive with a Howard Hughes like routine of collecting and organizing things like his used floss... and urine, whose whole routine is broken when he finds that mice have eaten all of the prepared meals he has in his cupboard. Ordering the vegetarian option from Captain Crab causes him to remember back to a year before when he would leave the house and his best friend Bunny. Bunny convinces Stephen to bet 50 quid on a 50-to-1 horse race with the goal of going on holiday with the winnings. They proceed to visit the most obscure museums of Europe in an attempt to cheer Stephen up, and end up in Warszawa at the National Shoe Museum. Ending up at a different Captain Crab they meet Eloisa, an amazingly profane Spaniard who Stephen fancies, and the three decide to leave Poland and go to Spain for "fiesta". Once there, Bunny declares that he will fight a bull at the "fiesta". Along the way they meet some interesting characters and have memorable adventures. I don't want to say any more for fear of spoilers.

As we flip from memories back to Stephen in his apartment, an imaginary Bunny dressed the same as Stephen in flannel pajamas trying to help Stephen heal from whatever awful thing happened on their trip. So while this movie is very amusing at times, it is also a poignant drama about how Stephen, who obviously does not have the greatest coping skills, learns to with his feelings of guilt and sadness.

I'm sure my wife will be happy to hear that this is one of those movies that is so good that it might make it into my annual rotation of films, since it will give her a chance to watch it as well.

Rating: A

Centurion

At the time this came out, Dominic West
was the big name in this movie.

After his portrayal of Magneto in X-Men: First Class, Michael Fassbender seems to be showing up just about everywhere I look nowadays. His imdb page shows no less than 6 projects due out in just the next year, so I thought I'd take a look at some of his earlier work. In 2010 he was in two movies, and I think I may be the only person I know who has seen both of them. In Jonah Hex he played the sadistic sidekick to the villain of said film, so let us take a look at Centurion where he takes on the leading role.

First off, this movie starts with a terrific line, with a voiceover from Fassbender saying, "...this is neither the beginning nor the end of my story." Fassbender plays Quintus Dias, or QVINTVS if you want to get picky about it, a Centurion stationed at a remote fort in the northern regions of Britain that is attacked in the dead of night by the Picts and he is taken captive. While that is going on, the Ninth Legion led by General Virilus (West), is ordered to take his troops north to break the Pictish rebels, an order that he believes is wrong, but an order nonetheless. He is given a Pict guide, Etain (Kurylenko), a mute whose family had been butchered by Romans and had her own tongue cut out. And that is information they know when they decide to let her guide the Ninth Legion north. I'll give you three guesses what she's going to do a little later on.

Etain on the hunt

So, Quintas escapes from his captors and is able to evade capture until he stumbles upon the marching Ninth, and after Virilus learns that Quintas's father was a famous gladiator, Quintas becomes a favorite of the general. For all of five minutes before the Ninth is led into a trap by Etain, and the Ninth is annihilated and Virilus is taken captive. Quintas, along with six survivors, decide to track down and rescue Virilus from his almost certain execution, but fail to in the attempt and instead must flee from Etain and a large band of Pictish warriors back to Roman held territory. At this point, there's still about an hour left to the film, and I don't want to spoil the rest because it is actually quite good.

It really is a pleasure to review this film because it was such a pleasure to watch. I like the choice of setting the story around the Massacre of the Ninth Legion. It's not something I've seen very much of and, except knowing that they did get massacred, not something I know to many supposed details of. The acting is fantastic all around here with Michael Fassbender and Olga Kurylenko giving some of the strongest performances in the film. And I am happy to note that even though this is an action movie, the script writers go out of there way to give the story and characters depth and real emotion. All around this is a very, very good movie.

Rating: A

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a self-aware parody that also mixes its metaphors and cliches to the pinnacle of absurdity creating something so awful that it travels through that black hole from which none emerge and emerges from a white hole on the other side to become pure brilliance. It takes meta to a whole new level.

The show is the creation of Mathew Holness and Richard Ayoade (The It Crowd, The Mighty Boosh) where they play the characters of Garth Marenghi and Dean Learner respectively. Garth Marenghi is self-proclaimed "author, producer, dreamweaver, plus actor" that's really a caricature of a novel writing machine (e.g. King, Koontz, Patterson). Marenghi introduces each show by reading an excerpt from one of his novels and then explaining how, with his publisher Dean Learner, created a television show too radical and terrifying to be broadcast at the time of it's creation that television executives shelved until this time of creative stagnation.

So what you might be expecting is something on the lines of the Twilight Zone, or the Outer Limits, but what we get is a Marenghi playing the character Dr. Rick Dagless in a medical drama in a haunted hospital that's also playing with the buddy cop dynamic with a hospital administrator that wants everything by the book. So it's not really surprising when we start seeing stories about hellmouths, PMS driven psychokinesis, devolution, a spectral scotch mist, and a mutant space broccoli virus. To add to the campiness, the production values are reduced and good actors do a great job of giving some very bad performances, specifically Richard Ayoade, who hysterically funny in the roles of Dean Learner playing hospital administrator Thornton Reed.

The problems with this show don't have anything to do with the show itself, but with how it's available. While it does air sporadically on Cartoon Network un the US, the only consistent way is to catch it in a chopped up format through YouTube. That being said, it's still totally worth tracking it down in whatever method you can. Here's a taste from the opening credits.

Rating: A