Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
If Black Christmas brings slashing to the holiday season then Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale brings Guillermo Del Toro. A Finnish horror film that was released in 2010 it gives you a Santa that is very different to the Jolly Old Saint Nick we are all used to.
We are into December, and the bells are jingling as we dust off those Christmas classics and pull them out of the cupboard for their yearly viewing. There’s enough good cheer on the TV to make Santa Claus puke, and for a few weeks, we pretend the world is a better place. However, what do you turn to when that cloying feeling of happiness becomes too much? You don’t want to completely give up on that Christmas feeling, but you do fancy seeing some slashing? Enter Black Christmas.
There are few filmmakers as frustrating as M. Night Shyamalan. When he’s good, he can shock and awe but when he’s bad he feels like a rip-off of himself. Someone trying to capture a magic that they don’t understand. While Devil didn’t come under his direction – that joy goes to John Erick Dowdle – it does come from his script and his fingers are all over it.
It’s no secret that your average fairytale is twistier than a pair of headphones pulled from your pocket and while Disney has done their best to clean them up there are still those that cling to the Brother Grimm way of telling these tales. Authors like Neil Gaiman have kept that tradition alive, and films like The Company Of Wolves make sure that Disney Princesses aren’t the only ones that find adventure in the woods.
Last year I sat down and watched every single Nightmare on Elm Street film before splurging my thoughts about them onto the internet. It was an endeavour that went from the dizzying heights of the first film to the genuine surprise of Dream Masters and New Nightmare to the absolute horror of Freddy’s Dead. It was also great fun. So, this year I decided to do the same and delve into another slasher franchise, Halloween. Now, obviously this would have made a lot more sense around a week ago, but there are ten fucking films, so give me a break. (I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but when discussing an entire franchise there will be the occasional titbit dropped.)
A group of friends and a resort so remote that when you arrive your car is running on fumes. It’s a movie set-up that means you can almost hear the machete being sharpened. And yet, Don’t Blink is not a slasher. No one gets decapitated, and the masked stranger stalking the woods is on holiday. Instead, this group of friends begins to slowly disappear. The second you take your eyes off someone they blink out of existence. Why? No one knows.
As promised at the end of my review of the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera I have since gone back and watched Universal’s first attempt at this particular ‘monster.’ Released in 1925, this is a silent film and sees Lon Chaney step into the mask of the Phantom.
Halloween is approaching, and it seems as good a time as any to re-explore the world of the Universal Monsters. However, while Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy have become synonymous with that term, it’s not one that many will associate with the Phantom of the Opera. More commonly known as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, the Phantom was part of Universal’s pantheon with them releasing both a silent version in 1925 and this version in 1943, the only Universal Monster picture to win an Oscar.
Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Potter career has been a brilliant example of how to do it. While he obviously has a comfort blanket lined with money to take the pressure off his shoulders, you still have to step back and admire a man who is willing to take the risks he has, which leads us to Swiss Army Man in which he plays a farting corpse.
Calling the zombie movie genre oversaturated was right about five years ago. Today, it’s gone far past that. We’ve had classic zombie movies, we’ve had running zombies, we’ve had zomromcoms, and we’ve had Arnie looking sad zombie movies. You name it; they’ve done it. So unless you have something new to bring to the table, then you are better off staying at home.
Ramblings About Wrestling 