The Road (2009)

The end of the world is upon us and well, there ain't a whole lot we can do about it. This sentence just about sums up the plot of John Hillcoat's adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, author of the book that led to the brilliant Coen Brothers film No Country For Old Men. In The Road, civilization as we know it has been wiped out. The majority of the population has died, animals no longer exist and food is sparse. The reason for this remains unknown throughout the whole film but in this situation a reason isn't necessary. This sparsity has led some to cannibalism but not the Man (Viggo Mortensen) or the Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), these are the 'good guys' as the Boy often refers to them as.

The landscape is beautifully captured by Hillcoat and his team. CGI aided I am sure but nevertheless Hillcoat's palette of predominantly grey and murky colours matches the bleak outlook of the film perfectly. Visually, it's a very impressive film to look at.

The film also stars Charlize Theron in a role that is almost superfluous. She plays the Wife of the Man and mother of the Boy. She only appears in flashbacks, from a time when civilization was slightly less bleak but clearly the destruction of the world has already kicked in. We see the Wife give birth to the Boy but soon after, failing to see any hope in the future, walks out of the house leaving behind her family, and disappears, quite literally, into the shadows to die.

What The Road is, and where it stands above many post-apocalyptic stories, such as I Am Legend, is that it doesn't bastardize the situation with daft flesh-eating zombies or fantastical mythological nonsense. What we have here is exactly what I'd imagine 'the end of the world' to be like. Simply a hopeless world in which it is a struggle to survive,not because of the dangers of being mauled to death but by the sheer forces of nature and evaporation of the human world as we can to accept it.

But would I ever want to see this film again. Probably not. As I am sure I've made clear, it's a bleak film with no outlook on the future. It's not what you'd call easy viewing and isn't a film that you'd get much out of a second time round. It's lacking in as much emotive punch as it probably should have, and the emotion it does try to draw out of the viewer, especially in scenes at the very end of the film, is a little manipulative and an attempt to force the hand. But by no means is The Road a bad film and hey...it's better than Avatar.


Rating: 7/10

Snake Eyes (1998)

In a similar vain to the recently reviewed Suspiria, Snake Eyes is a masterclass in 'all style, no susbtance' film making. It seems like a tag permanently attached to director Brian de Palma, creator of familar gangster films Scarface, Carlito's Way and The Untouchables as well as the the brains behind the more experimental Femme Fatale, The Black Dahlia and Body Double.

But boy does Snake Eyes begin in a technically impressive way with an opening, unbroken single shot following Rick Santoro (Nicholas Cage) through doors, up and down stairs whilst he talks on his phone and engages with people before he finally takes his seat inside the arena. He is at a boxing match after all. This technically astute opening shot allows de Palma to introduce the key players in the film, Santoro, his good friend Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise) and of course the arena itself; de Palma uses this shot to explore it's layout.

Shortly after the bout begins the champion Lincoln Tyler does gown (Tyler never goes down) and shots are fired. The man Dunne was in charge of protecting, Secretary of Defence Charles Kirkland is wounded. The arena is cordened off and a real-time investigation gets under way. We meet two women, a fiery haired woman who fled her front row seat just before the shooting began and a woman in a blond wig who converses with Kirkland again just before shots are heard. Their place in the story is gradually explained.

Santoro hears the opinions of the various characters in the film as explanations of the shooting are attempted. People lie, things don't make too much sense, but the more Santoro hears and the more camera angles he attends to, the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together more kindly and eventually it is revealed that a conspiracy took place.

But the film descends into ridicule. Not only does the suspense that it successfully builds fall flat with still around 35 minutes to go, but the ending is so nonsensically convenient. Successful character developments like the sinister side of Dunne's personality are abadoned as Snake Eyes stumbles to it's conclusion. It's all a shame really because if de Palma could use his hands to write as well as he can use them to man a camera then Snake Eyes could actually have been pretty good.

Rating: 6.5/10

Suspiria (1977)

On a stormy German night Suzy Bannion arrives from New York to enroll at a prestigious dance academy there. But her night doesn't go too well. Starting with a less than comfortable taxi ride, Suzy is eventually refused entry to the school under strange circumstances as she witnesses one student, already enrolled, storming out of the school, screaming into the distance. In a scene many have described as misogynistic, we follow the fleeing girl, Pat Hingle, to her friend's flat where she is brutally stabbed several times before being hung. Her onlooking friend is also killed, in one of the film's most iconic images (see picture above), as her face is severed by shattered glass.

The next morning Suzy returns to the academy and everything appears to be normal. Suzy recalls something that Pat said as she fled the school the night before but she can't recall what it was. Remembering this is obviously going to be key to solving the mysterious events that follow. Argento's screenplay is the typical 'everything seems to be normal but something sinister lurks beneath' storyline; it reminded me of the superior Rosemary's Baby in that sense. I won't spoil any of the plot in this supposed Italian horror masterpiece but what I will say is that it is much less successful than Roman Polanski's film at chilling the viewer to the bone.

The films most effective, most memorable scene is the scene that sees fellow student Sarah escaping through a high window using a tower of boxes before falling into an unseen wire pit on the other side, whilst someone or something attempts to pick the lock of the door in order to catch her. The reason is stayed with me because half way through the scene Argento strips it of any music whatsoever and suddenly the urgency that the score fuels falls flat. Is Argento purposely showing us the false facade that a film's score provides? I believe so.

Where the term 'masterpiece' is most apt to apply to this 1977 effort is towards its score which is perfect. Not only is the score, provided by Italian rock band Goblin, unique in it's production but it is one of the most apt scores I've ever heard. I'm not usually one to get over excited by a film's music but Suspiria's is simply sublime. Goblin combine their instruments with excellent breathing-like vocals to create something that perfectly balances the innocent and magic of the ballet with the creepy atmosphere you come to expect of a horror film.

But an incredible score does not make a good film. The acting in Suspiria is somewhat stagy and the overall aesthetic feel of the film, despite occasional impressive colour and lighting techniques, looks somewhat grainy and dated. Further, poor direction and structure in the scenes in the film intended to have the most effect, strips them of any 'scare factor' and they are occasionally totally incomprehensible as the film descends into messy chaos in it's final act.

Rating: 5/10