THE KILLER (1989) directed by John Woo

"The Killer" - John Woo's seminal entry into Hong Kong's heroic bloodshed genre - an expansion on the operatic gunplay in 1986's "A Better Tomorrow" - changed the face of action as we know it. The doves, the two Beretta 9mm fired at the same time, the endless bullets erupting through displays of religious iconography as bodies jerk back and pirouette through the air - this was for many their introduction to the tropes of John Woo's unique cinematic vision. Western audiences had seen excessive violence before - the climactic battle in Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" would serve as key influence on Woo - but it was the slo-motion ballet, the sheer choreography of the action, coupled with the intensity of the emotion that international audiences had never seen before.

And in the center of this ballet - its Gene Kelly, its Fred Astaire - was the Chow Yun Fat. If "A Better Tomorrow" made him a star - "The Killer" made him a legend.  Slicked back hair - Alain Delon sunglasses - creme white suit - the aforementioned two Barettas - the grace of Baryshnikov - the intensity of Brando - Chow Yun Fat as Ah Johg brought the goods.



The story was unabashed melodrama - a rewrite of Douglas Sirk's "Magnificent Obsession" an assassin (Chow) accidentally blinds a singer Jennie (Sally Yeh) and plans to pull one last job to restore her eyesight. He is pursued by Detective Li (Danny Lee), who senses the goodness within Jong - as cop and criminal share the same old-fashioned notions of honor. The feeling between the three leads is the engine which makes you fear for their safety as Jong and Li mow down waves of mutual enemies leading up the climactic church shootout - an action event with enough Catholic imagery and blood-betting that no doubt made Martin Scorese blush upon first perusal.   

While Woo and Chow Yun Fat would later bring their collaboration to the perhaps the finest hour 1992's "Hard Boiled" - it was "The Killer" that broke the mold and made film history.

Dracula (1979) - directed by John Badham

Jonathan Harker is a drip. Kate Nelligan's Lucy Seward(whose character has been effectively swapped with that of Mina from the novel) thinks she can do better than the tedious little men in her seaside town - all of whom seem content to go around mansplaining. Her father is Dr Seward (a glorious Donald Pleasance - the anti-Loomis) who lords over one of those Edwardian asylums where treatment impact appears spotty at best. As we bathe in John Badham's (Saturday Night Fever) smooth, assured gothic canvas - in his desaturated revised version  - as grey as the grave and as pallid as, well, a vampire. 

So Lucy's life is dull - enter Count Dracula (Frank Langella). Langella, hot off his acclaimed 1977 stage performance as the Count, leans into Dracula as lover - capable of both loneliness and passion. He is, despite being a blood-drinking killer, at times, more sympathetic than those pursuing him. And in the vivacious Lucy - he finds a willfull match - a partner of spirit. To Lucy he is an escape - you get the sense when it comes to her his hypnosis is largely unneeded.




Their relationship culminates in a hot splash of colour - an impressionistic love scene gorgeous and seemingly designed to make Ken Russell jealous. Gilbert Taylor's (Star Wars, Dr Strangelove, A Hard Day's Night) composition  makes it one more example of the film's breathtaking romantic vision.



Towering and sweeping throughout, John Williams' lush, and at times, playful, score gives the proceedings an added heft that makes them appear even more larger than life.  

W.D. Richter(Buckaroo Banzai, Big Trouble in Little China) effectively condenses and adapts both Bram Stoker's classic and the 1924 stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. His script's smartest and most concise move is begin with the wreck of the Demeter, the ship carrying Dracula to England, where the entire rest of the film is set. By eliminating Transylvania and setting everything in the seaside town of Whitby (a location that inspired Stoker in real-life), Richter effectively puts all the major players closer together, which, in turn, turns up the heat, leading to a stunning conclusion.

Add Sir Laurence Olivier's performance as a grave and determined Professor Van Helsing, John Badham's "Dracula" is a visual feast that cannot be missed.

"Color Out of Space"

Watch as swirling dreamscapes of color bath the edge of a forest in their pale unearthly glow. A force has arrived - something unspeakable, something horrific, something from the darkest depths of space that perhaps should have stayed there. My friends, sometimes the Mountains of Madness are just outside your front door. And Tommy Chong is there with you, high as a kite, and he's making more sense than you are. After a quarter of a decade, director Richard Stanley has returned to bring H.P. Lovecraft's seminal science fiction/horror story "The Color Out of Space" to life, in all its mindbending glory.



After Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) takes his family to a farm near the remote town of Arkham after his wife Theresa's (Joely Richardson) masectomy, a meteorite strikes. This celestial object gives rise to a change in their behavior. A dramatic one, which is saying a lot, as the Cage character starts out obsessed with raising alpacas - yes, alpacas. (Seriously, if one were to create a drinking game and take a drink everytime a character mentions the word "alpacas" with increasingly-frantic intonation, one would be soused in the first 20 minutes.)




Cinematographer Steve Annis' lens captures vivid  images of flora and fauna as they blossom in unnatural ways. Colin Stetson's score creates an omnious and unsettling drone. And special mention should go to Madeleine Arthur as Lavinia Gardner the daughter who will practice Wiccan rituals so desperate is her desire to heal her mother. Arthur seems born to play a character with one foot in the mystical. Lavinia's rapport with her brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) has a frank, "E.T." feel, and young son Jack (Justin Hilliard) feels like a kid in the Elliot mold. And Elliot Knight as Ward Phillips fully embodies the quintessential Lovecraftian narrator who is destined to observe. And what sights Richard Stanley has to show him!

If you are a fan of Stanley's prior work ("Hardware", "Dust Devil") or John Carpenter's oeuvre, "Color Out of Space" will rock your world and somewhere beyond.

H.R. GIGER - A Retrospective

Leathery alien passages shaped like orifices and reproductive organs. Haunting, sexual nightmares, where the gothic merges with biology, where pleasure meets pain. Eyeless insectoid creatures with human characteristics. I recall the late "Alien" writer Dan O' Bannon saying that Giger used to consume opium to quell the visions that disturbed his slumber. Six years after his passing, his biomechanical images remain, to haunt our dreams.

"Its Five Year Mission: To Explore Strange New Worlds..."

"Under The Skin" - Best of the Decade

Jonathan Glazer's "Under The Skin" is an unsettling, one of a kind experience. Through the eyes of an extraterrestrial woman (?) we see North Scotland as series of stark empty benches, crowded shopping malls, and forests full of decay and rot. Glazer and his cinematographer capture grimy grey and brown flats, coupled with lush unearthly reds and the blackest of black voids, in which young men are lured to their demise by this being from beyond. With black hair, red lipstick-coated lips, her blue eyes conveying a blank apathy, which turns to wonder, then fear, Scarlett Johansson gives a truly alien performance. Not since David Bowie in "The Man Who Fell to Earth", has a performer captured the way someone not of this earth would perceive our world for the first time.

Glazer's palate definitely sports a few a Kubrick space trip reference points. Not surprising, as the late director's influence on Glazer dates back to his music video for Blur's The Universal, which places the band in a cross between heaven and the Korova Milk Bar from "A Clockwork Orange".

One sequence in particular, reminds one of fellow music video director Chris Cunningham's infamous 2000 erotic installation Flex.

But, despite any influences, Glazer makes this hypnotic trip all his own.

Of special note, is the all-consuming musical score by Mica Levi, the sound design by Johnnie Burn, and the music supervision by Pete Raeburn.

The full effect of their combined efforts is an aural symphony of raw sound which plays like a transmission from alien angels mixed with the barrage of Lou Reed's 1975 feedback opus Metal Machine Music.

Topping the "winter at the Dakota" spell of "Birth" and the bloody comic mayhem of "Sexy Beast", "Under the Skin" is Jonathan Glazer's masterpiece.

Discovering Michel Faber's 2000 novel was the best thing that ever happened to him. And dare I add, to us, as well.

Great Performances: Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year"

Benjy Stone: Alan Swann, afraid? The Defender of the Crown? Captain from Tortuga? The Last Knight of the Round Table?

Alan Swann: Those are movies, damn you! Look at me! I'm flesh and blood, life-size, no larger! I'm not that silly God-damned hero! I never was!

Benjy Stone: To me you were! Whoever you were in those movies, those silly goddamn heroes meant a lot to me! What does it matter if it was an illusion? It worked! So don't tell me this is you life-size. I can't use you life-size. I need Alan Swanns as big as I can get them! And let me tell you something: you couldn't have convinced me the way you did unless somewhere in you had that courage! Nobody's that good an actor! You are that silly goddamn hero!

The above exchange is from 1982's "My Favorite Year", which garnered Peter O' Toole a 1983 Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In it, Benjy Stone(Mark-Linn Baker), a nebbish comedy writer (inspired by Woody Allen and Mel Brooks) confronts his idol, the dashing, swashbuckling Errol Flynn-type movie star Alan Swann, over the fact that the man he has spent his life admiring is, in fact, a fearful drunk. Swann is afraid to do a live Sid Caeser-inspired type of comedy program, and is retreating to his liquid companion. Swann is also afraid of life in general, of rejection by the daughter he abandoned, and of his stardom, which had dwarfed his very existence.

Like many of his performances, as Swann, O'Toole was able to capture heartbreak, a joie de vivre, and sense of style, while channeling a carnival of emotions (often at the same time) across his beaming, radiant face.

One of the best performances, in one of my favorite films.