Movie Review: Anatomy Of Hell (2004)

There are few filmmakers that I respect as much as John Waters. Waters has made a career of shocking people and when he refers to another movie as being "shocking", you have to take it seriously. The Pope of Trash is quoted on the back of the DVD for Catherine Breillat's, Anatomy Of Hell as saying " That's one effed-up film". Sold!! Breillat is no stranger to the tactic of evoking a response out of the audiences for her films. The director's films, Romance and Fat Girl pull no punches - so what does that leave in store for Anatomy of Hell, starring porn-king Rocco Sifferedi and Amira Casar? Can she possibly top either of those films?

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Based on the novel Pornocratie, Anatomy of Hell follows the relationship between a curious young woman (Amira Casar) who meets up with a stranger (Rocco Siffredi) at a nightclub. After fellating Rocco's massive junk in the parking lot of a club, she gives this mystery man an offer to come back to her house by the sea for four nights. What’s this lady thinking? Rocco’s destroyed more ass than Wal-Mart generic brand toilet paper. She’s definitely daring, if not out of her mind.

Movie Review: Acacia (2003, Tartan)

By Hal Astell

Dr Kim Do-il and his wife Choi Mi-sook are apparently unable to have children, so they decide to adopt. Actually Mi-sook takes some convincing but when she sees some artwork on the wall of the adoption agency they visit, she's all for it and quickly finds an affinity with young Lee Jin-sung, soon to be Kim Jin-sung. He's quite the budding artist and he has an affinity of his own: with trees. He draws them all the time and even seems to talk to them, including one in the back yard. Soon we discover that he's an orphan because his mother died and Jin-sung believes she turned into a tree.

Things seem to go pretty well for a while, though Mi-sook's mother is rather brutal in her rejection of the adopted son, but then Mi-sook becomes pregnant for real so there's a new member of the household. To say the least, Jin-sung does not take this well and does what he can to remedy the situation. Given that this is a horror film, albeit of the school of slow and creepy rather than rapid fire grossout, you can imagine what that means. And then he disappears and as even more bizarre things start to happen the strain begins to have an effect on those he leaves behind.

Movie Review: Sheitan (2006,Tartan/Palisades)

By Hal Astell

A suspiciously ethnically diverse group of youths get kicked out of Club Styxx the day before Christmas Eve because Bart is even more of an idiot than the rest of them and starts a fight with a bouncer. Luckily, or so they think, one of them has pulled a young lady called Eve, and so they now have somewhere to go for Christmas: Eve's place in the country. Unfortunately as her name would suggest (there are lots of symbolic names in this film), Eve has enticed them into something beyond anything they expect.

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Eve's place is large but not in the greatest shape, something I'd love to own. However it's also a pretty freaky place, partly because of the proliferation of dolls the belong to her father but mostly because of the people, especially Joseph. Joseph is the goatherder, shepherd or housekeeper or whatever, but he's played by Vincent Cassel so is completely out there with all the sort of psychotic charisma that you'd expect if you've ever seen him in anything at all, not least La Haine. He has plans, twisted ones for sure, but plans nonetheless and he's not someone you'd generally want to mess with.

Movie Review: Spider Forest (2004)

by Hal Astell

It's been almost a month since I saw a Korean movie, which is a sad state of affairs indeed, and Sundance describe this one as Memento meets Jacob's Ladder. How freaky can this be? With that description I wouldn't even care if there there aren't any spiders in this forest, but fortunately there are. They go very well with fourteen day old corpses in horror stories, but this one's not just a horror movie: it's a drama, a mystery and a thriller, all wrapped in the same happy go lucky bundle.

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We begin with a man waking up in the forest and walking back to the cabin nearby. There he finds one male corpse that he thinks looks like himself, stabbed over forty times. In the next room is his girlfriend, not quite dead yet but pretty close. She's only been stabbed three times so is still alive and talking of spiders while looking up at a hatchway. Our man hears something, so grabs a scythe, perhaps the murder weapon itself, and opens the hatch, only to find another man on the other side who he chases into the forest.

Movie Review: Tetsuo - The Iron Man

by Dineh Tom

I finally watched it. After a few weeks of having the DVD sitting around, I have at last seen what cannot be unseen! What, you may ask? Tetsuo, the Iron Man. Yes, that film directed, written, and even starring Shinya Tsukamoto. I must say those 67 minutes were a time of shocking, disturbing, squirming, inspirational, and beautiful piece of cinema I have seen for quite some time. I do not mean beautiful in the sense of a landscape perfectly lighted by the rays of the sun, and humans with animals enjoying the fruits of the earth. What I mean by beautiful is more along the lines of a piece of art crafted in a way that not many people dare to go. Creating something we may perceive of sure ugliness, but also creating it in a way that echoes how we struggle, destroy, and continue to live.

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