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Cloverfield (2008) --> An ambitious attempt to show a monster movie through the lense of a handheld camera, Cloverfield fails for two reasons. The first is the urge by many audience members to ask why this story couldn’t be filmed in the normal way to help spur on what might be renaissance of the monster flick that Jackson’s King Kong and the Korean film The Host re-popularized. The second reason for its failure is the inability to believe that anyone short of severe mental illness would care enough for posterity to film New York’s destruction; especially since it puts the cameraman in direct danger. The guy isn’t a war correspondent’s cameraman for god’s sakes.


Scott D. Brown

Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) --> If you were looking for the same spine chilling suspense story like the original Halloween then you will be disappointed in this remake by Zombie. Zombie tells a more elaborate story including the development of Myers from maladjusted child to gargantuan serial killer which, in hindsight, was the best part of the film. Zombie, known for violent scenes involving lots of blood and nudity doesn't disappoint with Halloween. But once you get past the gore, you continue to return to Myers as a child for the most interesting and entertaining part of the film; everything else after was better done in Carpenter's original.


Full Spectrum Staff

Seul contre tous [I Stand Alone] (1998) --> Franco-Argentinean director Gaspar Noé's first feature-length film, Seul contre tous stars Philippe Nahon as a misanthropic unemployed butcher. Out of jail (for the killing of a man he believed raped his daughter), the butcher is now married to a critical and condescending wife who uses her minimal wealth to bully him to the point of violence. After repeatedly punching her pregnant belly in a blinding rage and pocketing a handgun to possibly use later on anyone who pisses him off, he escapes to Paris.

The butcher visits friends who knew him when he owned his own charcuterie to borrow money. He is stymied in his attempt which only increases his rage. He plots to kill a local bar patron who riles him after a confrontation but again is retarded when he returns to find the pub closed.

He visits a prostitute who has lost her touch on reality and leaves to visit his daughter at a local mental institution. Plotting to put his daughter out of her misery, he in the end decides to rape her instead. The film ends with the butcher looking out on the city from the balcony of the hotel room where he sexually assaulted his daughter.

Gaspar Noé's first film is not a pleasant viewing experience. It is actually a continuance of a short (Carne (1991)) he previously filmed with Philippe Nahon that showed more in detail the reasons for the butcher's incarceration. Seul contre tous established Gaspar Noé as one of France's more controversial directors. He likes to push limits, with Irreversible, his next film, cementing this fact.

In Seul contre tous, Gaspar Noé uses narrative as a center. There is little physical movement in the film. We watch the butcher sit on a bed or stand in a bar as he speaks about his thoughts on French society, blaming it for his miserable existence. We hear racist remarks and class hatred mixed in with vitriolic explosions promising future violence.

Gaspar Noé opens the film with flashing and pulsing credits and it foreshadows a viewing experience meant to be uncomfortable. During the film, he continues the theme by dispersing brain-pounding musical pulses and flash imagery between the butcher's incessant and continuous tirades. They occur during the butcher's fits of brutality both imaginary and actual.

Not a film for most, especially those who use film as light entertainment, Seul contre tous nevertheless is worthy viewing. It is a striking presentation meant to challenge its audience and perhaps alter their preconceived notions of what makes a great film.


Full Spectrum Staff

Katakuri-ke no kôfuku [The Happiness of the Katakuris] (2001) -->Takeshi Miike's films are some of Japan's most sexually and violently graphic. They are also littered with a certain kind of subtle humour sometimes bordering on farce. The Happiness of the Katakuris mostly discards the former to concentrate on the latter. The film tells the story of a patriarchal Japanese family led by an inept father. Thinking a highway will be built near a rural village, the father uses his retirement savings to buy the village inn. Thinking it's a goldmine in waiting, he moves his family to the inn and waits for the multitude of tourists to come.

Unfortunately, the highway doesn't arrive and the family falls into poverty. Not one to leave a tragedy alone, Miike has the family suffer a series of unfortunate events which leads to some farcical results. The few guests who do stay start dying off, and the family decides to take matters into their own hands to protect the reputation of the establishment. If the inn is seen as a death trap, it will be avoided if the highway ever does come.

Miike uses stop animation in various sequences to add to the film's strangeness, has conflict between the father and son to add drama, throws in a few songs sequences at add joy, and a love story subplot between the daughter and a con man to further the tragedy, but it is the main plot line (burying dead guests in the forest after they meet their strange demises) that is the film's core brilliance. Miike is a prolific film maker, and is accused by many critics as being unfocused and overly brutal, but all of his films have worth; whether they involves graphic sex and violence or not. The Happiness of the Katakuris is one great example of this.

Scott D. Brown

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