Death Bed -- The Bed That Eats

So the guy who made this thing claimed he forgot all about it until he read some dude's fawning message board post twenty-some years later. We find that pretty hard to believe. Death Bed, however, is equally as hard to believe and way way stupider! It's about -- and are you ready for this? -- a bed that eats! Just like it says in the title. Weird thing is, this bed doesn't really eat, it just kinda dissolves people in this Piss Christ solution. Oooh, except in that one scene where it sends a sheet across the room to reel in a helpless victim.

We know that sounds so cool you've already added it to your NetFlix queue, but Death Bed is really fucking weird and cheap, and it's totally fucking worthless -- we shouldn't've spent our time on it and we know we'll be talkin' about it for the rest of our natural lives. The sad part about this one is really that it coulda been so much more. A bed that eats! Come on, how great! Why didn't they set it in an fleabag motel instead of an abandoned farmhouse? Why did they spend all that time telling us the bed was a lovesick demon who lived in a tree and then became the wind and then turned into a four-poster Victorian canopy? And did we mention there's a nineteenth-century ghost who communicates with the bed in a corny Bri'ish accent? Yeah, he lives behind the painting.

Interesting, right? No.

Repo Man

Repo Man's soundtrack changed our lives. Repo Man the movie satiates our 80's fetishism to a T. Dig the American made autos and Harry Dean Stanton, the punk rawk cameos and sleazy surf music. Emilio!

loudQUIETloud -- A Film About The Pixies

loudQUIETloud shows us one thing and one thing only: the Pixies had no business reuniting whatsoever. We think Frank Black and company are a sonic equivalent of junior high -- simplistic and pretentious and full of an exuberance that's equal parts annoying and naive. Ugh. We don't get it. "Crackity Jones"? A superhero named Tony? Give us a break. Now we know a little something about revisionist nostalgia, but there's certain bands we think have no business being the Don't Look Back honorees they are today. This distaste may have you wondering why we wanted to sit through this in the first place, and while, yeah, we think "Debaser"'s pretty cool, we honestly think we wanted to add more fuel to our "Pixies suck!" diatribe. And we think loudQUIETloud came through in that regard. It's not so much that we hate these guys or think they're incompetent, but there's no reason for anyone to get excited about watching this. You like the Pixies? Great. Here's ninety minutes of them not interacting with each other at all! Look at shirtless Frank Black give a phone interview. Here's the Deal sisters sitting on their Winnebago. Here's Joey Santiago on his iMac. No two people in this movie have anything in common at all. We think a better movie would have just been about drummer David Lovering whose Nye-informed magician schedule was put on hold so he could embark on this lucrative reunion tour.

Miami Blues

Like a James Ellroy book filmed by the Coens, only much worse and horribly pointless. We liked watching Fred Ward chew the scenery and Alec Baldwin play a violent, incompetent, DeNiro aping villain, but the updated film noir vibe fizzled out after the first reel and by the final twenty we felt like we'd really been cheated into sitting through something that shoulda been left on the shelf.

Mad Max

Back when we were nine our camp counselor told us once we were older we'd think Mad Max was the best of the trilogy.

We still think the The Road Warrior's better.

Basket Case

We saw this in high school and thought it was stupid because we were idiots. We also saw a shitty video transfer. But now we're super sophisticated and we have a bright 'n shiny new and improved print. "So what's all that mean?" you ask. Why...

Basket Case is the greatest movie ever!

Well, at least really darn good. So good we're putting it right at the top of the Cinema's chart. In league with Dead-Alive and Street Trash and, we dunno, King of the Kickboxers or something. Basket Case is top notch drive-in, made at a time when shootin' on film and peddlin' to sleazy theaters was on its way out and VHS and scrambled pay cable was bursting through the door. Director Big Frank Henenlotter really knows his shit and it shows. A crazy story, some late nights, and a few outlandishly bloody deaths are all anyone (errr...we) needs to have a great time and that's exactly what this flick delivers. We're so smitten we think we're finally gonna watch the two Case sequels. They were made ten years later to cash in on a decade of video store hype wethinks, but we don't mind one bit. Can you say "exploitation?"

Hey, and here's an interesting side note: the day before we watched this we finished a book on a boy's medical penis mishap. And then we read Paul Auster's book on coincidental anecdotes. How about that? A botched surgery tome followed by film of Siamese twins? That's a coin-ki-dink all by itself!

The Running Man

The best Arnold films don't always translate into the best ArnoCorps songs. The Running Man is such signature Cinema that it'd be a nearly impossible task for any song to measure up. "Running Man" has some nice guitar interaction and follows a similar narrative arc as "The Terminator" inasmuch as the focus relies solely on Ben Richards' plight and attitude rather than attempting to capture each and every plot details. Lyrically, it sticks straight to the facts -- Richards' set up for a slaughter of the innocents, the Running Man's premise and relation to an oppressive, exploitative "is it media or is it government?" controlled society -- and it is for this that we can appreciate the song. "Running Man"'s downfall, however, is that in spite of its sing-along chorus, it never reaches the anthemic nature of an "Last Action Hero" or the crushing aggression of a "Predator." It is for this that it will be forever be a lower-tier 'Corps product.

We're also bummed that a great line like "now...Plain Zero" didn't make the final cut.

The Mist

Wow, what a shitty movie. The only part we liked was when Thomas Jane is so hopeless about man's survival that he shoots and kills his own five year old son only to witness the military's containment of the bloodthirsty alien hordes minutes later. Wah wah. Too bad, huh? We know that's the end of the movie, but what the fuck? You don't want to see this.

We also liked that part where the cocooned MP falls to the ground and hundreds of baby spider monsters burst out of his chest cavity. But the rest of this movie was so lame that we had to amuse ourselves with the fact that Jane's character's surname is Drayton (like Flavor Flav) and the film's co-star is William Sadler (surname of The Bomb Squad's Eric "Vietnam").

Lars and the Real Girl

The Highland Cinema vastly preferred Love Object, a film that, in spite of its late night cable salaciousness, portrayed the creepiness of Real Doll-dom with far more accuracy. Lars is bleeding heart specialty theatre fare -- a This American Life tale of despair and misguided coping wherein a human simulacrum is anthropomorphized by an entire town in an attempt to soothe an ailing native son. Lars and the Real Girl isn't all bad -- yes, it's slow and unconvincing (evidenced by the calculated wardrobe design for leadin' man Ryan Gosling), but the film's closing third is surprisingly full of an honest and affecting poignancy. Even for us.

Is It Really So Strange?

Is It Really So Strange? introduces itself as a look into Morrissey and The Smiths' Latino fanbase, but it really amounts to a simple interview hodgepodge about everything involved in Moz hero-worship. This isn't entirely bad (such idolatry is what brought us to Manchester's finest in the first place), but the film feels incomplete and unfocused -- its monotone narration, lifeless static shots and editing, and queer-centered kino eye make it the most "San Francisco" doc we've shown. Watching this, The Highland Cinema felt like we were both UCB lecture hall and KQED-informed East Bay sublet.

But to get back on track, Is It Really So Strange? has at least one surprisingly effective moment early on as director William E Jones reaches for his introductory thesis. His ten minute Burns-esque photograph montage of the real HelL-A, the one of polluted sprawl, third generation immigrants, and plain old regular folks is the most honest depiction of California livin' we think we could ever see. It's too bad Jones doesn't delve deeper into this idea of working class suburbs and Taquerias as hotbeds of "Suedehead" worship. While nearly all of his interview subjects are of non-Caucasian descent, the interviews themselves are little more than a litany of fanboy recollections involving KROQ's Smiths airplay, Tower Records Morrissey spottings, and pompadour upkeep. The love both for and of Steven Patrick Morrissey is made rather apparent (as is Morrissey's perfectly calculated iconic persona), but there's no story here. And half of these guys get the song titles wrong. Some fans -- sheesh!

Born Into Brothels

I thought I was being an overly cynical jerk when I thought this was an oversimplified PSA for the National Endowment for the Arts, that it was just a way for privileged New Yorkers to pat themselves on the back for exposing themselves to the squalor of this world and taking comfort in the almighty healing powers of artistic expression. But then I talked to some people who had reactions even more negative than mine and I realized I was giving this film the benefit of all doubts.

Born into Brothels shows the world how children sired by Calcutta junkies and prostitutes are really just regular kids who have, gosh, immense creative talent! Look at all those fantastic photos they took with simple point and shoots! They are geniuses they are! And here we thought they were a pox on humanity. Whatever. I don't honestly believe these kids are trash, but the idea that meaningful salvation can come from a camera lens is a notion of Western bleeding hearts. There's one boy in here who's a real artist, but the rest of them are kids plain and simple, and no matter how fucking horrible it sounds their destiny is joining their mommies in the red light district and hoping for a too-soon chancre-ridden death. Too bad.

I'm well aware how much the filmmakers cared about these children and the work that they went through hounding boarding schools and shipping in photo supplies, but much of the film felt like an exercise in cause celebre, like a Save the Music campaign gone NPR. I don't believe the kids really took those pictures anyway -- they set the shots up, sure, but prints like that can't come without contrast filters and ritzy Leibovitz labs.

Yeah. You know, I am an asshole.

The Smiths -- Under Review

VH1 style biopic that sticks mostly to the band's A to B to C historical/recording progression instead of tabloid tales of infighting and pomposity (the internet-capable Cinema thinks we prefer the latter). We've secretly liked Morrissey and Marr (eh, and probably Rouke and the other chap too) for a coupla years now, but it's only been in recent times that we've decided shit yeah we really really like these guys -- something that strikes us as pretty funny since we were a bunch of years out of high school before we heard that first Manchester-bred note. Your enjoyment is based on your tolerance for fawning talking heads and, of course, for the almighty Moz croon. And as much as we like this band even we had a tough time stomaching all the praise heaped on these cats, especially considering how at least half the catalog is awfully boring.

Hostel: Part II

More like Hostel II: Electric Booga-ewwwww. The Cinema actually liked this one a little more than the original, probably 'cause we had no expectations other than it'd be really bad. Once we got into it, though, we noticed ourselves taking perverse pleasure in how it was increasingly cementing a new horror movie franchise, a "Hostel" trademark style of film that would give us an endless number of similar but different stories. Hostel II never felt like an in and of itself movie or one that could stand on its own as a veritable classic, but it succeeded in opening up many a possibility of future story arcs. Much of the plot focus had shifted to the sadist clients and their eBay style bidding wars, but we saw even extra potential in the in the know townsfolk out to warn the Daddy's-money spendin' tourists. Sure, both the gang of street kids and the Satanic ritual killing of Heather Mats were over the top updates on conventional gimmicks instead of genuine terror, but we thought the end result was a Saturday Night at the Movies story of grisly revenge that had us wanting more of those cliches and conventions we horror fans hold so dear.

Tad -- Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears

Sure it's just another self-serving musical "documentary," but given our predilection for heavy duty rawk n roll and the '80s indie scene, Busted Circuits was a home fuckin' run. We're convinced Tad would be the Greatest Band of All Time had we been temporally fortunate enough to see 'em live and in the flesh, but now that we're somewhere twelve to twenty-two years after the fact we'll NEVER get into Tad at all. Not that we won't drop a "bad-ass!" when we hear that "Wood Goblins" riffin' or see them onstage Jazzmaster headbangs, but there's something missing for the Cinema, something we can only put our finger on as a Here and Now component. Tad is still cool, clever, and Grunge, and we wholeheartedly commend their legacy, shoulda-been legendariness, and "duuuuude" enabling heaviosity, but without the prospect of performance and products we have to put 'em next to David Yow and company in the Almost Hall of Fame.

Hostel

Remember when we drove down to Arroyo Grande to see this opening night and it was sold out so we went to that bar in Pismo Beach instead and our friend tried to hook us up with that middle aged lady while a bar band played Ozzy covers? And then how we called up our bros later that week and they'd all caught Hostel without us? We weren't that heartbroken 'cause we were still looking forward to all the other sleazy horror flicks coming down the pike, but we're sure we'd have loooooved this Eli Roth torturefest oodles more had we caught it in its first run.

Watching Hostel the other day, the Highland Cinema was struck by how...well...just plain not good it was. We know we're tough to please (and tough to gah-ross out), but we expected so much more from this thing, 'specially considering its legendary hype. We were actually let down by the lack of torture (confined to the second half!) and to the not so squirmishness of the much-lauded blowtorch/tin-snips/buckets of pus eyeball scene. Funny enough the stuff that impressed us most was the wince-worthy Achilles heel slicin' and the super street cred Miike cameo. Hostel's notoriety is still well-deserved, even in the middle of this Saw world it helped spawn and the Last House world it helped resurrect; just that something this repulsive got a major studio release is a thing for the record books. And speaking of repulsive, the thing that bothered us the most? The film's overt Maxim-linity wherein pompous, unsophisticated, arrestedly developed college fucks drink and screw their way through Europa. What a bunch of douchebags.

Teeth

Ouch! Gave me the not so willies.

Fuzz -- The Sound That Changed the World

Billed as a history of the fuzz sound, but really just interviews with the creme de la creme of boutique pedal execs. What a bunch of nerds. Interesting how half of 'em are striving for a decades-passed Platonic ideal while the other half are busy inducing migraines. "Meh," we said as we collectively shrugged our shoulders. Totally not worth your time no matter how much you shred. Check out the ZVex demos instead.

Cemetery Man

We've been into horror flix for a good while now, but it wasn't until we made some super great friends at our super shitty job that we became the Highland Cinema you know and adore today. It wasn't that long ago (only a coupla years) when all our screenings were John Sayles and Woody Allen. It wasn't that long ago when we thought of our "Splatto Jacko" worship and MonsterVision pantomiming were little more than relics of our teenage past. But before we knew it we found ourselves with brand new compadres making the trek for every new blood encrusted zombie-fest we could get our hands on. Pretty soon the Fangoria convention was a necessity. Pretty soon Riki-Oh was on perpetual repeat. Before long we decided most of them other movies were fucking boring; the only thing worthwhile in this life was the brutal depiction of the epic Hobbesian struggle.

Cemetery Man is truly outstanding all by itself, but we loved it even more than you ever could just for reminding us of our own genesis.

Dave Attell -- Captain Miserable

Dave Attell's the best goddamn comedian of my cognizant life. Really, who else'll do a bit on couch fucking or drop a punchline about a crime-solving vagina? We like Captain Miserable less than Skanks for the Memories, but both are soooo much better than anything you're laughing at it's not even funny.

Sgt Kabukiman, NYPD

Classic Troma, they say. We liked this one okay we guess, but we really expected more badass and a lot less slapstick. Rick Gianasi gives great performance as a NY cop possessed by the kabuki spirit and we especially dug that Toxic Avenger inspired hero montage where he turned them crooks into California rolls.

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Yep, nothing like a mother's love.

Get On the Bus

Okay, I take it back. Spike Lee did a few good movies. Kinda cool how the Million Men marched on my actual birthday and then Get On the Bus came out exactly one year later, again on my actual birthday. You may fondly remember how a bunch of us drove to that discount theater in town on opening night just to watch this movie before it left the cinema a week later. Maybe it's the ten years of nostalgia talking but we here still think The Bus is some quality storytelling with fantastic characters and top-notch actin'. Recommended for your weekend afternoon!

Sex -- The Annabel Chong Story

It surprised EVERYONE when I told them Sex -- The Annabel Chong Story was the most disturbing thing I'd ever seen.

But they haven't seen it.

See, most people think porno is pizza deliveries and mustaches, wah-wah guitars and zebra prints. They're wrong.

Annabel Chong made a name for herself by trying to fuck 300 men on camera in a single day. Her freak show adult cinema feat put her in television interviews the world 'round where she sat, a fidgeting speed casualty, peppering her ex post facto feminist theory rationalizations with nervous tics and uncomfortable laughs. Sex tells you the whole story behind the World's Biggest Gang Bang, how Chong didn't get any of the money promised her (a cool ten grand), how 10 hours of unshorn fingernails made her call it quits at 250, and how once the vid hit the shelves a Florida stripper set a new record and relegated Chong to the forgotten annals of extreme pornography.

What makes Sex more difficult than the rest of the depraved garbage we've shown at the Cinema is that this whole thing is real. Honest to God, one hundred percent live and in the flesh. Chong's interviews show her as a delusional, damaged, emotional wreck whose own college-informed interpretation of her career as a living exercise in gender role reversal is both pathetic and unconvincing. Equally unsettling is the film's footage of adult industry mavens, sleazebags of the highest sort only out to push the human body's limits while ignoring all notions of dignity and respect. Hey, they chose to do this, right? Jesus, gimme a break. This is bad stuff, people. There isn't enough therapy in the world to correct wrongs like this.

Wait, you still want to see this? Go ahead. Stomach this primer and be one your way. Godspeed.

Bamboozled

Spike Lee did one good movie. This isn't it.

I saw this right when I turned 20 and it made me feel so enlightened the way it had me thinking everything I'd ever enjoyed did nothing but perpetuate hateful stereotypes. The older I got and less undergraduate I became, the more I thought a second time around Bamboozled viewin' would annoy the living bejesus out of me. And sure, Spike approaches Mencia-like territory the way he dumbs down and then ad nauseumly reiterates the cultural commentary, but I was quite impressed that I didn't want to throw things at the tv like I thought I would. That the offensively simplistic satire is the point doesn't necessarily make it digestible or effective, but the whole thing was strikingly less painful than the me of 2007/nascent '08 expected it to be. Thankfully there's some real power toward the film's end and a couple of great performances by Cinema fave Tommy Davidson and co-leading man Savion Glover.

Helvetica

Helvetica doesn't fuck around. Capitalist, socialist, ironic, sophisticated, straight, round, cosmopolitan, Continental...you name it and it's right there. Just try and find me something that's that built to last. Go ahead, punk, try it.

And take those fucking serifs with you.

Zombie Holocaust

These gorefests sure are boring. There's no story arcs or interesting characters or suspense, just lots of talk talk talking punctuated by poor schmucks getting their stomachs torn apart by loin-clothed savages. But are they ever fun to talk about! See:

You're probably thinking, "Hey, Highland Cinema, what the hell kinda flick is this? Now I already saw Lucio Fulci's amazing Zombi 2, the one where the New York eggheads sail to the tropics to find out why Manhattan's getting chewed up by the living dead, the one where that zombie goes mano a mano with a killer shark and that lady gets a stake jabbed right through her retina. The one that gave me the supremest case of the supreme heebie-jeebies since I faced off with Dom DeLuise at the 15th Annual Westchester County Boysenberry Pie-off. So what's this Zombie Holocaust? More New York wimps sailing to Haiti? More gruesome killings? More spleens left on the front porch next to the Daily Herald? Now why in hell would I want to sit through the same golddern movie all over again?"

'Cause this one's about cannibals and not just zombies goshdarnit! Director Marino Girolami throws a handful of living dead stumblers in the coda for good measure, but most of this flick follows these dubbed-over PhD know-it-alls as they traipse around a jungle isle searching for the secrets of primeval human sacrifice rituals...rituals that made it all the way to New Yawk and started leavin' docs and dentists chewed up on the 5th Ave pavement.

Hmmmm, okay this does sound a bit like Zombi, but ya gotta wait til the second half when Girolami treats us to this crazy ex-pat doctor whose hellbent on reanimatin' corpses, swappin' brains, and removin' vocals cords. And stay tuned for the lovely Alexandra Delli Colli, an Italiano vixen who decides to spend most of her time prancin' around all nekkid and unashamed and givin' us the most ultimate of homina-hominas. See, dear readers, how can ya lose? Ya cain't! Especially when that wind-blown Redford understudy grinds up a zombie's face with an outboard motor. Suh-weet.

Now wasn't that fun? Lookit all the great convo-sations we just had over Zombie Holocaust, a movie we're not even sure we liked!

Joe Bob, we loves ya.

Feast / Cradle of Filth -- Peace Through Superior Firepower

A double feature! This one courtesy of a dear friend who hates on Priest, but digs on zombies!

Feast was chock full of the kind of bloody, sloppy, and gloopy effects that just tickle us pink, so even if its standard Living Dead stuck in a house setup was, well....standard we couldn't help but smile. We really liked it when that Best Week Ever guy oozed maggots and monster puke, and the way that newly-pubescent creature humped that lady's face before being blown to smithereens was truly inspired. Feast also hit us with gratuitiuos Jackson-esque fluid sprayin', hip fourth-wall commentary, and tough actin' talents of Young Guns II's Balthazar Getty and the ever-classy Henry Rollins. In fact, ol' Hank's the only reason we watched this in the first place! We chuckled at his pink sweatpants and wept at his demise. Recommended!

And while we're doling out the accolades we'll also recommend this here Cradle of Filth concert. Here at the Highland Cinema we're seriously into the spooky black metal. Our lobby's been blasting the Wolves of the Throne Room, the Mayhem, the Watain, and even the mighty Frost during the many moons of '07 and now that we've upgraded our theater's specs we've decided to screen every concert clip we can get our hands on. So when the of Filth came our way how could we say no? These guys and their corpse-painty Robert Smith style never appealed to us, but it turns out they have many things we do enjoy, specifically things like blastbeats, tremolo pickin's, and glass-shattering screeches! We don't thinks we'll ever get behind their limey Poe-boy shtick, but when the stage spectacle has acrobatic ladies, comin'-to-life gargoyles, and headbanging demon robots we can't help but give 'em the benefit of the doubt. We're also glad the castle lore and lacey vampires didn't scare our guests like that Carpathian Forest concert did. Yeesh.

Inside Deep Throat

Isn't it funny how it all seems so quaint? This Golden Age of Pornography, why it was nothing but lovemaking strangers and super-8's. Everyone having a good ole libertatin' time 'til Big Brother came in to rain on the parade. At least you wore your coat!

Robocop

For a movie I don't remember watching as a child it sure gave me a weird sense of nostalgia.

Gates of Heaven

Ostensibly about pet cemeteries, but really a film about your own fucking miserable life. I don't like this nearly as much as The Rog does, but he's right in saying it's unlike anything he's ever seen or ever will see. Sit in awe and witness regular, mundane, nice people inadvertently reveal their deepest hopes, vulnerabilities, and disappointments when all they're trying to do is talk about burying the family dog. Heartbreaking.

Alice (1988)

Maybe this Svankmajer immersion wasn't such a hot idea. The Cinema got bored an hour into this and turned it off to download more black metal from eMusic.

We watched the rest later on, but wethinks your interest in the Svank's surreal portrayal of the pain and anxiety of childhood fears is much better satiated with his fifteen minute "Down to the Cellar."

Zoo

This modern internet age is turning all us regular folks into degenerate slimeballs. It really wasn't that long ago that you had to hunt around to see naked ladies, autopsies, and guys with weird diseases. You really had to have luck on your side to come across that third generation Faces of Death dub or that wrinkly sun-bleached Playboy. But now, in this here twenty-first century, you can see all kinds of gross stuff without even trying! Goatse, tubgirl, lemon party -- all things I had no intention of ever seeing in my entire life and there they are posted right there on some idiot's MySpace page or Photoshopped as some dork's avatar. Just cruising Digg every few days I've seen a whole ton of stories about a sad freak of nature like this poor asshole. Jesus, I can't even imagine what kind of horrible things I could witness if I really, truly, sincerely tried to find 'em.

Oh wait, yeah I do.

Now hold on, that's art it is, and besides, I read about stuff like Cannibal Holocaust ten years ago. The kind of degeneracy I'm talking about is the kind of stuff you'll find in this nice little movie Zoo. Stuff like (you guessed it!) animal fucking! I know the guys in this movie go on and on about how they really love them horsies, but who among us is honestly interested in the demarcation between bestiality and zoophilia? I mean, it's goshdarned gross any way you slice it! Zoo spends the first half of its run time giving you narrations and dimly lit reenactments of guys from all over the globe getting together and bonding over their shared love of the intimacy unique to a man-beast relationship. And where, you ask, did these guys meet? Why, online, of course! Just think about it, while you're here reading 'bout some of the finest feature films ever made, a handful of creepy dudes are IM'ing each other stable-cam pics and swapping stories of equine pillow talk. Yuck. Most striking to me isn't that strange fetishes exist, but that there's a community of fetishists for absolutely anything you can imagine. And the grossest thing you can think of? There's already a community of people totally bored with that! This here internet has made the world so small that nothing is off-limits and no matter what you're into there's a number of other cats out there into the very same thing.

Even if its taking a cock the size of a paper-towel roll up the ass.

Yeah, it's a fucked up world we live in.

Hey, did I mention this movie was really good? No? It was!

Carpathian Forest -- We're Going to Hollywood For This

Wow, what an okay band! Carpathian Forest is sick and creepy Scandinavians who took Sepultura's Motorhead cover to heart. These tunes, they are the good! They are the hate of the Christianity, the necessity of the sadomasochism, the fervor of the scat-pr0n, and the overwhelming of the pain and suffering of your bullshit existence so fuck you, you goddamn piece of shit! They are also a sandwich of moderate rock tempo'd grind riffs and hellish screaming that's sure to make ya say "badass!" before boring ya with its tedium.

Funny Games (1997)

I didn't like this. It was boring, I didn't find it disturbing, and Haneke's attempt to say something about filmic violence and audience participation doesn't work. Surely you will find this flick brutal and/or repulsive with all the matter-of-fact sadistic torture and tension, but my life would be better if I had these two hours back. Keep your eyes peeled for next February's entirely unnecessary shot-by-shot remake.

Sheitan

French entry into the modern arena of "torture porn" that's totally unremarkable plot-wise, but cinema-wise features a final thirty minutes that typify such a sense of mayhem and frightening uncertainty we had to change our overall opinion from "meh" to "hey, not half-bad!" Vincent Cassel's enthusiastic performance as the creepy inbred caretaker was so powerful it nearly overcame our overwhelming hatred of the film's protagonists, a Kant-violating group of discothequeing sleazebags so unlikeable that rooting for their collective demise would be a complement. We're not really sure how much we appreciated this movie and even we were a little surprised at how the film's light peppering of misogyny offended even our sick little sensibilities (especially considering we sat through this whole thing without even batting an eye), but somehow we enjoyed Sheitan's arty hipster aspirations enough to recommend it your way.

Lunacy

Outstanding. This is the first time I watched something nightmarish and surreal and enjoyed what I saw instead of worrying about what every little thing meant. One of the best things the Highland Cinema has shown and I'm even taking the scratched-disc delay into account!

Jackass: Number Two

You did say you needed more material for you Queer Studies thesis, didn't you?

They're destined for painful deaths, but at least they made us laugh.

The Isle

The Isle illustrates what should be a more common characteristic of The Highland Cinema's more erudite screenings, precisely that if we watch something smart without prior knowledge we probably won't get it at all. Chances are we'd have enjoyed this one a whole lot more had the idea that it was "a beautiful, haunting parable about a man in a woman's watery world" been planted in our brains before we dimmed the lights and grabbed the popcorn. Instead we dug the contemplative static shots while we scratched our heads wondering what this whole thing was about. Usually when we sit back to watch something ponder-worthy we already know what to expect and have our extrapolation caps firmly in place, but this time we were left all alone without any guidance and we paid the price.

But that part where the guy swallows those fish hooks and then yanks on 'em and the blood starts pouring out his mouth? Man, that was sure cool.

The River's Edge

Crispin Glover's performance was too consciously campy to earn my praise, but that those two twelve year old kids who got high, broke and entered, and conspired to kill the Keanu Reeves did a damn fine job. What a couple of fuckers they were.

Also stars Ione Skye, the former cheese to some guy's macaroni!

Little Otik

I think it's funny how my desire to visit the Czech Republic stems from my amazement with this piece of Polish animation. It's like I think anything weird is automatically Slovakian even when I know damn well it ain't. Little Otik, by the way, is both Czech and strange so maybe my borderline irrational assumption isn't entirely off the mark.

A Brief History of Errol Morris

Errol Morris is a genius.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Honesty's the only thing that matters, right? People like Johnston 'cause he lays out all his vulnerability and romance and sadness and doesn't hold anything back. His proto-Oberst quivering and ham-fisted chord strums are charming, but the fact he had no choice but to sit in a basement and record hours and hours and hours of naive mash notes made the cool kids swoon and lecture their friends about genius, goddamnit.

Or maybe they just like the mental illness, demonophobia, and XXXL sweatpants.