Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

One of the most hilarious horror comedies in, like, ever.

Tucker and Dale go into the woods in the Appalachian Mountains to fix up Tucker's newly acquired "vacation home" aka cabin in the woods. At the same time, nearby, a group of college kids are camping.

After a short encounter in a small store, they run into each other again. The college kids go skinny dipping while the two country boys are fishing. One of the kids, Allison slips and falls into the water, hitting her head. Tucker and Dale come to her rescue and as they pull her into their boat, they are immediately mistaken for psycho killers by the rest of Allison's group. Leaving messages like "we got ur friend" carved into a log with an ax are not helping the communication difficulties.

What transpires then are a string of very creative accidental deaths by the college idiots as they try to "rescue" their friend from the psychos in the cabin. They run into pointy branches, fall on their homemade spears, jump headfirst into a wood chipper (and Tuckers asking the bottom half of the kid, "are you okay?"), shoot themselves in the face and so on.

It is awesome.

Also, Tucker and Dale are perfectly cast, played by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine.

9/10

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

If there is one man's life story that deserves to be told, it is Nelson Mandela's. After a few interpretations on film, the latest effort - Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom - is based on the words of the man himself, as recorded in his autobiography of the same name. Basically, this is the story he told of himself, starting from his beginnings as a lawyer, the ANC, prison, and the time after his release (including him becoming the president of South Africa).

Though the story is powerful and the life inspiring, the film does not necessarily live up to the greatness of the man. Idris Elba, portraying Mandela, is nothing short of brilliant. Physically, his resemblance is limited and he is only made to look like the man in the older years. While still playing a young Nelson Mandela, he frequently takes his shirt off, which is gratifying in so many ways but probably not the point.

The cutting of the film appears fitful, made up of short scenes, that feel like unfinished thoughts and makes the story somewhat incoherent. The advantage is, of course, that most of us know the story anyway. But is that a good enough excuse to make the film into a lengthy music video?

But what really, really bothers me about this is rather ridiculous because it is unimportant to the story. Winnie Mandela does not seem to age. There comes one scene, set in the mid to late eighties (I think), where a half-hearted attempt of making Naomi Harris look the age she is supposed to be by putting a little grey in her unkempt hair, but throughout most of the film she appears to be in her thirties.

Ultimately, this is the kind of film biography that caters more to the MTV generation of kids with short attention span than anyone who is seriously interested in the life of Nelson Mandela.

6/10

Aftershock

After boozing and dancing several nights away in Chile, a group of friends (some old, some new) are caught in some big ass dance hall during an earthquake. The main group (three boys, three girls, how inventive is that?) that the film follows doesn't come away unscathed - far from it. In the initial aftermath, one of the guys loses a hand and when his friends try to send him to safety up a rack railway, he cable breaks, the car falls and everyone in it dies.

The next to croak is the gringo with the group, played by co-writer and co-producer Eli Roth....and he's not really much of an actor, is he? He gets burned alive by a group of escaped convicts, who turn out to be much more of a threat to the survivors than the aftershocks of the earthquake are. They give as much as they get, though. The burning is followed by a rape, which leads to the rapist being killed with an ax and the rape victim being shot. 

That is three down and three to go.

The remaining guy in the group gets shot by a terrified woman trying to prevent the beaten gang from coming to relative safety. He dies soon after (courtesy of the escaped prisoners), the two girls left (sisters! awww!) follow who they think is a firefighter (wrong!) into a church and then - now with the priest in tow - into a down to a secret tunnel. Things go wrong, still. The priest falls to his death and the firefighter turns out to be just another convict and kills one sister and dies through the hand of the other.

The last woman standing stumbles out of the tunnel onto a beach. But wait, wasn't there to be a tsunami that everyone throughout the film was dreading? 

Yes. Yes, there was.

3/10

Cat People

A classic B horror movie from the studio that gave us Citizen Kane. Yep, they did make horror movies, too. And some pretty good ones, I might add. Like this film. Also, I Walked with a Zombie.

Sure, the gore is practically non-existent, which is a bit unusual for a film that features wild animals attacking humans (in moderation, of course), but the film is very shadow-y and dark and very much of the time it was made in....with the suave gentleman with hat and/or cane, the pretty ladies with the well-kept hair and the friendly and pretty black girl serving lunch.

The story is of a Serbian immigrant, who meets a decent, handsome fellow, who for some reason wants to marry her, despite her vague hints of her being strange and different and possibly a cat woman (with Serbian folk tales and all). He laughs such silly things off and marries her anyway, only to be denied the marital bed because sex will surely turn the girl into a beast. Eventually, the blue balled man will turn to another woman (also all very appropriate and perfectly clinical), which makes the wife jealous and finally really makes her turn into a psychopath/beast.

Alas, the beast only shows up way, way into the movie. It is beautiful, but mostly hidden in the shadows. And it/she only kills once (if you don't count her sort of suicide by zoo animal).

Very pretty and noir.

7/10

Orlando

This is one story that is hard to explain, which makes it all the more impressive that Sally Potter managed to make a coherent film (well, as coherent as one can make it) out of it. And if you don't know what to expect, this may weird you out.

The film is based on the novel by Virginia Woolf. Orlando is a man and a woman and lives over several centuries, unfortunately during times when being a woman made you less of a person. The female Orlando could not own land and - when turning down a suitor - was told that she would remain a spinster and, well, lose everything.

Luckily, though, a suitable husband fall right at her feet. Well, actually, her face, seeing that she just fell face down herself. And even more luckily, it turns out she does not actually need him. But whatever I tell you about the story will only make it seem even more confusing than it actually is.

It is lavish and beautiful, with some dramatic use of music.

The only sour note (for me) was that even though the film lists Billy Zane as one of the main actors, he only shows up 1 h and 10 min into the film. And then he departs 12 min later.

7/10

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

How's that for a blunt movie title, huh?

The film tells the story of one James Allen, the fugitive in the title. But long before that, Allen returns home from war with dreams of becoming an engineer, work he has trained in in the military. But his mother wants him to take a secure desk job that was lined up for him and enlists the back-up of the parish priest to help talk him into the boring life. But it is no good, he simply must follow his - rather modest - dream.

Then he ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time and gets mistaken for an accomplice in a robbery. For this he is sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. Allen escapes not once, but twice, from this ordeal. After the first time he manages to work his way up in society before being turned in by his mean wife, who blackmailed him into marrying her in the first place by dangling his past over him.

The second escape is much more spectacular, involving guns, an accomplice who dies and dynamite. Following this he descends into paranoia and spends his days running from law enforcement.

Even though the film was made in the days before subtlety become a common acting trade (the faces they all pull!) and everyone involved is easily recognized as either good or bad, it is quite an entertaining watch. It does have occasional spells of dragging on, but is diverting, nonetheless.

6/10

Black Mirror: The Entire History of You

In this episode everyone records what they see through a lens and an implant. That way you can replay any episode from your entire life - maybe to look more closely at the picture that presented itself or to review moments and learn what you could maybe do different in similar situations. Of course, you can also show your daily adventures off to others and get their input.

This instrument then turns into an obsession for a husband who - on closer/second inspection - notices his wife laughing a little more loudly and readily at some other man's joke and how the way she looks at the other guy differs from the way she looks at the husband. From a drunken night and a very uncomfortable conversation, that even the babysitter is drawn into, this spins into a visit to the expected rival.

The situation gets entirely out of hand when the husband realizes that the other man is a former boyfriend of the wife, whom she was not completely honest about. What is more, there is a growing suspicion that the couple's child may not actually be his.

Like so many new electronic inventions that everyone partakes in, this total record of one's life can be both, a blessing and a course.

Again, very intriguing.

7/10