It is 1879. Coffey (Karl Geary), a young Irishman settled on the plains of Dakota, is about to ask his sweetheart to marry him. His dream of wedded bliss is shattered, however, when something or someone attacks the young lady's family farm, kidnapping the women and children and slaughtering the men. Coffey joins a group of local ranchers and cavalrymen in search of the victims, who are assumed to be prisoners of a fierce band of natives.

Put off by the sadistic and single-minded tactics of self-appointed group leader Henry Victor (Doug Hutchison), Coffey sets out with a couple of ranchers (William Mapother and Highlander's Clancy Brown), as well as a teenaged boy and a freed slave (Sean Patrick Thomas). They soon discover mysterious holes in the ground and a catatonic girl buried in the dirt, suggesting that they may not be hunting an ordinary tribe. A sinister enemy seems to be stalking them from below the serene grassy plains of the vast new frontier. 

SJ Cult Movies Forum's "Snoog" tells you what he watched last night and more at his Revolving Video blog. I believe it takes it's name from the old school video store that he used to frequent back in the day.

It's hot and the folks in Astoria are bothered. Rival gangs, inter-racial difficulties, tentative friendships and aggrevated relationships stalk the mean streets of New York in Dito Montiel’s autobiographical film. Robert Downey Jr. (Dito Snr.), narrates from Montiel’s titular tome as we are addressed in what looks suspiciously like a project which will be handled overconfidently from a first-time director (Montiel from his own script.) The initial darkly-lit self-importance of the present day gives way to the hustle and bustle of 80’s Queens as everything goes decidedly Do The Right Thing. The story flits from past to present as we see grown-up Dito make the clearly painful trip from California to visit his sick father (Chazz Palminteri), whilst Shia LaBeouf (young Dito) struts the streets of growing pains, disillusionment, dreams and disaffection.

Though Montiel pulls-off an ambitious recreation of authenticity of the era and vicinity, the cohesion with which he should be presenting the temporal differences just is not there. Clearly, as we follow LaBeouf in the sweltering youth of relative poverty, there is a build up to a paternal rift; though once the realisation has been portrayed, one wonders what on earth all the fuss was about - it’s hardly This Boy’s Life. Montiel obviously has more faith in his life story than I do, and seems to think his life was one which was tougher/different/more painful than most others. I shall not ‘spoil’ this film by giving away the revelation, but lets just say it’s a precocious kid who, granted, has seen some tough stuff, is in the rotten situation of suffering an awful lot of unconditional love. Struggles with claustrophobic poverty, racism and violence have been done before and been done better. In short, this is an oft-worn track and one on which Montiel has left no lasting prints.

I don’t recommend leaving a space for this alongside Do The Right Thing, A Bronx Tale, Five Feet Hight And Rising, La Haine, Fresh, Kids etc. I do, however, recommend Dito Montiel pays a visit to an East European orphanage, or similar. 

Poor country boy Ivan Martin (Jimmy Cliff) leaves the countryside and heads to the city (Kingston) in search of fame and fortune. Ivan finds the promise that the streets of the big city are laden with opportunity a myth but refuses to give up on his dream and, although having recorded a hit record, he finds himself drawn into the ganja trade and the rude boy lifestyle.

A lot of films get given the tag’s “Cult Classic”, “Independent film Classic” and similar, and while to varying degree’s they may or may not deserve the titles, “The Harder They Come” is almost the definition of both. Working on commercials and for the BBC in Jamaica, director Perry Henzell always dreamed of making a feature film, and not just any feature film, but one with its roots firmly in his homeland of Jamaica. Perry had told people he not only intended to make such a movie, but he also intended to make it a success and the story of the process (covered in the documentary, “A Hard Road to Travel”) is almost as interesting as the film is good. When people think of Jamaica, feature films are not high on the list of things that come to mind, more than likely they will think of Reggae music and Bob Marley, Ganja and Gangsters or those hideous foreign-owned resorts that the nation’s people are kept out of. For a low budget movie full of a cast of unknowns and the first film made by the Jamaican film industry in 1972, “The Harder They Come” set a lot of firsts and has a resounding effect on influence on film since. This is really one of the first films for which the OST and was an integral selling point for the film, one of the first films to be shot on the then new Super 16 format and certainly the first film by a 3rd world nation that really showed life for the poor in such a nation. The stylistic and plot influences from this film can be seen in movies like Scarface, Taxi Driver, Perdita Durango (Dance with the Devil), Men with Guns as well as in the works of Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
Jimmy Cliff is fantastic in the lead role, utterly convincing as the man who just wants his share of the pie as he sings in the title song “as sure as the sun will shine, I’m going to get my share, what’s mine ... because the harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all ...”. Ivan’s view on life is best summed up by the conversation he has with his devoutly Christian girlfriend in which he says “you want me to go and beg work for 10 dollars a day, I tried that, Id rather die ...” and in the same scene after she calls him a dreamer he replies “me a dreamer? Who’s a bigger dreamer than you, always talking about milk and honey in the sky, well no milk and honey in the sky, not for you, not for me, it's right down here and I want mine now, tonight!” Considering the majority of the cast had never been in front of a camera before the acting is excellent, with standout performers from Bobby Charlton as the record boss Hilton who gives Ivan a measly twenty dollars for his record and Carl Bradshaw as the area’s ganja boss.
 
One of the excellent plot devices and a standout moment from the movie is the cinema showing of Django which Ivan attends with Jose, in which he is totally fascinated by Franco Nero’s genre defining performance and, when fearing that Django may die is told “Don’t be a fool man, you think the hero can die before the last reel”, the film leaves a big mark on Ivan and plays a pivotal role in “The Harder They Come's” finale. There are so many standout scenes in this film though, showing us both the highs and lows of Ivan existence as he goes all out after his dream of success and good living. Classic are the moment when, as a now legendary gunman on the run and anti hero for the oppressed “sufferers” of the Kinston Ghetto’s are the scenes when Ivan dressed in full rudeboy regalia takes his own glamorous gunman shots and sends them to the newspapers and when he takes a luxury car for a spin on a golf cause. Ivan's record, Jimmy Cliffs fantastic reggae standard “The Harder They Come” becomes a hit as his legend grows, but by now the law is closing on Ivan leading to one cult films most memorable scenes as Ivan, like his screen hero Django faces off against insurmountable odds and cal'sl out “one bad man, who can draw.” I recently read an article in which actor Benicio Del Toro listed this as one of his top 5 favorite films of all time and it's good after 30 years people can still see the genius in this movie from Jamaica. Passed off as yet another Blaxsploitation movie in the USA and given the tagline “he’s got a plan to stick it to the man,” the director took back the rights from Roger Corman and went on to sell the film himself, it took him 6 years but the movie finally made a profit. The film has gone on to find legendry status amogst fans of cult film, reggae and people who just like a damn good movie.

Great Characters, great scenes, great music and a great movie

Takashi Miike, best known for cult classics "Audition", "Ichi the Killer", and "The City of Lost Souls", redefines the Spaghetti Western with Sukiyaki Western Django, a tale written in blood. Two clans, Genji, the white clan led by Yoshitsune, and Heike, the red clan led by Kiyomori, battle for a legendary treasure hidden in a desolate mountain town. One day, a lone gunman, burdened with deep emotional scars but blessed with incredible shooting skills, drifts into town. Two clans try to woo the lone gunman to their sides, but he has ulterior motives. Dirty tricks, betrayal, desire and love collide as the situation erupts into a final, explosive showdown.

View the US trailer in Quicktime at apple.com/trailers  

View the teaser in Quicktime: High | Low

View the second teaser in Quicktime: High | Low

Official Japanese site | North American Website | Myspace 

Toronto After Dark 2008 Festival Preview Trailer featuring scenes from the *first eight announced feature titles

* Repo! The Genetic Opera, Red , Let The Right One In , Idiots and Angels, Tokyo Gore Police, Mirageman, Trailer Park Of Terror , Who is KK Downey?

www.torontoafterdark.com

Stop frame claymation by David Firth, Jimi Mwng and Crusty Crayfields.

www.fat-pie.com

Troubled mathematical genius, Maximillian Cohen (Sean Gullette) is on the brink of what he believes could be a major discovery; a numerical key to formulate a pattern from seemingly random occurrences. His intention is to apply his findings to the stockmarket but some Jewish fanatics have other ideas.

Many people will by now be familiar with the work of talented director Darren Aronofsky via the stylised but honest drug film, Requiem for a Dream, which has gathered steady acclaim through word of mouth since its release in 2000. Less well known is his first feature length film, Pi, released 2 years earlier. Though less polished and well rounded than Requiem, Pi is an incredible first feature showing Aronofsky’s great talent for presenting an insular nightmare which is expanded to even greater effect in the later and better known film. At a mere 80 minutes and coming in on a borrowed budget of just $60,000, Pi won the Directors award at Sundance in the year of its release and heralded the move from promising student to world-renowned talent.
“When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six I did.” So says Max as we see him unconscious on the floor with a bloody nose, the result of one of his frequent and debilitating migraines. It is unclear as to whether such brilliance was the cause of such brilliance but the relationship between nature and mathematics is one which fascinates our protagonist, believing as he does that everything in nature can be explained through numbers, that nothing is random.
Under the watchful supervision of mentor Sol (Mark Margolis) Max is on a mission to unlock a numerical key which he believes could help him crack the stockmarket. With an almost monstrous computer spread around the room, he obsessively eyes the figure of the market in line with his predictions. However, the content of his head is a much desired thing and he is pursued threateningly by Marcy Dawson (Pamela Hart) and not so threateningly, at least to begin with, by Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman,) each for their own ends. Marcy is similarly interested in the stockmarket angle but Lenny's need is devoutly based in his religious faith, Kabbalah.

Filmed in scratchy, grainy, high-contrast black and white with a drum and bass soundtrack and ominous score, Pi is audibly and visually like an intellectual nightmare, which is, in effect, just what it is. Though it has roots in the thriller genre as he is oppressively tracked by Marcy and increasingly so by Lenny, it is his inner turmoil, his agony and the weight of knowing something so huge that is really the subject of this film. It is his obsession with a 216 digit number which may ‘just be a number’ or may be the answer to literally everything; the stockmarket, computer ‘consciousness’ or, as Lenny believes, the name of God in numerical form. It is the latter which fuses perfectly the idea of nature and chaos as opposed to structured predictability as Max, a non-practicing Jew, is forced to reassess his ‘faith in chaos.’

With a fascinating and increasingly and frighteningly plausible plot, inspired and nightmarish visuals, Darren Aronofsky's glimpse into the psyche of a genious is both style and content.

A group of five criminals break into a warehouse at night and tie up the two watchmen so they can steal a truck load of laptop computers. Meanwhile the notorious head of an Albanian crime group is being transported to Strasburg on charges including the slavery and forced prostitution of young girls and women. When the security forces transporting him are ambushed and most are killed by members of his Albanian mob, the remaining members make a break for it and hold up in the same warehouse which is the scene of the heist. Surrounded by psychopathic gang members intent on freeing their boss those inside the warehouse must set aside their differences and unite if they are to have any chance at all of surviving the night.

The nest is the second feature film directed by Florent Emilio Siri who has since gone on to direct Bruce Willis in the Hollywood blockbuster Hostage. His first being Une minute de silence (Not a film I have seen) and he has also directed two of the video game series Splinter Cell based on Tom Clancy's characters. Making its French debut in 2002 hype has been slow building for this one, with the Internet playing as it often does a role in getting people to take notice. Thus it finally got its release in English speaking regions. Amongst the films ensemble cast the most recognisable face (To non French audiences anyway) is probably that of Samy Naceri who plays maniac behind the wheel Daniel in the highly successful Taxi series of movies and also stared in overlooked but enjoyable French gangster film La Mentale AKA The Code.

The French seem to have a knack for making these quality action films that match and in many cases surpass their Hollywood counterparts on a fraction of the budget. The Nest is basically an unofficial remake of John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 and before anyone starts I know that was a remake of Rio Bravo, but lets face it, Assault is the movie being remade / homaged / re-imagined or what ever the hell the current trendy phrase is for using some one else's ideas in your film. Now I have not seen the official Assault remake so I can’t really pass judgement although most people are of the opinion its crap (You can say crap when you’re just an Internet reviewer and not a paid scribe). Still I doubt the "Official" remake will touch this, as this is tonnes of fun something that seems to be lacking from mainstream Hollywood action films at the moment. The Nest looks great, is well lit, well edited, well shot and well directed. The actors all give top performances that suit this kind of flamboyant gun-play movie and nobody really hogs the limelight meaning this really works as an ensemble piece and not as is the current trend across the ocean as a star vehicle. Not a match in terms of cult grittiness for John Carpenters Assault on precinct 13, but then that was a film very much of it's time and budget, if this had been labelled as a remake it would however have been a worthy one. Different and fresh enough to be a great film in its own right but retaining some (not all) of the key elements that made that film such a classic.

The way the different characters interact is handled well as they try and put aside their differences to pursue the common goal of not being dead. The bonds between the criminals and the main three French security force members are well constructed with quick but well acted scenes highlighting certain friendships, which mean you believe they care about each other as the film progresses. At one point the two main male members of the heist gang hold hands and matching tattoos of north and south can be seen on there hands which a nice touch. The female roles are good here with actresses who while attractive do actually look as if they can kick some ass and so you are not asked to step outside of realty as some skinny bimbo beats down tough male opponents. The warehouse location for what is basically a siege movie is used to its full effect as the Albanians move ever closer the more claustrophobic the space becomes and the more foreboding it seems. The gang members all where light intensifying masks which give them the look of wasps (the film starts with a wasp documentary on TV). This is a great idea making them a faceless enemy that just like wasps attack without fear and in large numbers. The Albanian Boss is suitably played and is a convincing piece of work and in effect becomes the wasps queen which they seek to defend. The fact that the cops look at pictures of the women his organisation held as prostitutes who have numbers branded on their backs like cattle certainly adds to the menace of the main bad guy.

Packed with great scenes, excellent characters, big guns and wave after wave of deadly wasp looking Albanian mobsters to be gunned down The Nest is a great example of quality French action cinema.

In the "visual essay" Feast Of Titans (edited version for Internet) Alejandro Jodorowsky's contemporary Fernando Arrabal (I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse) speaks about mythology, politics and art, searching for the ways of the modern man through the theater and scientific development.

www.v2cinema.com