Until the Light Takes Us - Stabby metal weirdos and their burny ways

Do you remember Anvil! The Story of Anvil? Well this is nothing like that. It's a way overlong documentary about Norwegian Black Metal...just what we've all been crying out for. Now, metal in general's pretty far down the foodchain when it comes to social credibility - dont get me wrong, quite partial to a shouty blast of Dillenger Escape Plan myself from time to time - but even among the vaguely geeky, soap-dodging echelons of "the scene" the black metallers are like that kid in class who ate worms and smelt like athlete's foot. Just check out an Immortal video on youtube and witness the unholy and hilarious depths which this sub-genre plumbs. The story in UTLTU isnt funny at all though. It concerns a small clique of black metal musicians in Norway in the early 90's and their frankly bizarre descent into church burnings and homicide. Some of the interviews with the guilty parties are quite candid and provide a vaguely interesting insight into what happens when boredom and low self esteem meet bad music and f**ked up nazi/pagan ideology. The documentary is lacking elsewhere though, and would work a hell of a lot better at 50 minutes long without all the hilariously bad performance art rubbish and tuneless fisher-price keyboard soundtrack.

A Serbian Film - It's sodomy o'clock baby

Well...the world cup's over. As the screams and self-flagellation of the english/french/italians fade away, its time to reflect. And... it wasnt very good. But a bad World Cup is like a bad blow job...it's still pretty goddamn good. So ditch your vuvezela, take your penis out of your cat's mouth and read the words. Which I am typing...here.

Oh dear! Well THAT was remarkably unpleasant. I am currently restraining the urge to scrub my monitor and hard drive with bleach...and maybe my eyes and soul as well. Only kidding...it's not that bad. But it's not nice either...basically, you know you are in cinematic freefall when one of the LEAST offensive kills in a movie is someone getting skullf**ked to death via their eye socket (possible opportunity for an ad campaign for specsavers here?) Serbian Film isnt a non-stop bloodbath - there are 4 or 5 scenes that are staggeringly grim - but the overall tone is just bleak, grimy and explicitly sleazy. If youve seen the trailer you know what to expect.

Retired caveman-looking porn star Milosh has two things going for him...(a) a lovely family and (b) a legendary willy. Some sick f**k producer appears out of nowhere and offers him a fortune to de-retire and appear in some conceptual porno epic which needs his supercharged penis. After a few unpleasant early on-set experiences milosh has had enough and walks...needless to say, thats not the end for him, and milosh spends most of the second half of the movie nude and up to his eyeballs in horse viagra killing or f**king pretty much anything the film crew shove in front of him. There are no happy endings here...for anyone. Very harsh...but all executed very well indeed, it's not some amateurish cheapo gore-flick made by and for 14 year old idiots, but it's an actual, serious movie...which just happens to have horrendous scenes of machete sex decapitation, baby rape(!!) and a final coda which is so unbelievably mean-spirited that I actually started laughing in shock.
Not a chance in hell this is going to get through the censors either, so if you're really that curious to see the current holder of extreme cinema's equivalent of the Jules Rimet trophy then you know where to look, you sicko.

PS Ive just realised this is the second movie I've seen in the past month or so involving people being killed by erections (other peoples obviously) I don't know if this is a reflection of a growing cinematic trend or my own viewing habits. Let's just pray Toy Story 3 doesnt go down this particular phallocidal route.

COMING SOON!

Why aren't you watching the World Cup fatty? Ah never mind, pull up a chair, stick some bees in your ears and crack open a warm beer, it'll be just like South Africa, without the endemic rape petty crime. I'll have to leave you there though, because I AM watching the world cup so let's just have a quick look at some exciting movies about to drop. You've probably heard about a couple of these already...if not...then you probably never will!

A SERBIAN FILM
This looks....a tad pretty f**kin messed up. Advance word is that it's genuinely excessive...jaw-dropping trailer, makes even Master Gi-Bag a bit hesitant about seeing the full filum...



More Bold Balkans! LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG



So our friends in Europe are still pushing the limits, whats going on in Japan?

GOTHIC & LOLITA
By the perpetrators of Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, why not indulge in some cheapo CG, meatheaded humour and fine engrish, after all "this is the only movie that  blows stresses and blues of your boring life!" I'll take your word for that lads. All your base, etc.



and eh..the rest....

PREDATORS
They surely cant f**k this up again can they? What's that wet-end from King Kong doing in here? And bloody Morpheus as well! Fingers crossed eh?



SPLICE
What the...there's that guy from King Kong again, this time looking like an unattractive emo chick. Looks like Species by way of David Cronenberg...there are dodgy versions of it out there lurking in the dark corners of the interweb, but they arent decent quality, otherwise you'd be reading a review of it now. Or possibly doing something more productive.




CENTURION
I reckon this one is just about to hit the internet equivalent of that dodgy stall in Blackrock Market that sells 3 dvds in a blank case for a fiver so expect a review fairly soon. It's Neil Marshall, even when he's bad he's good so hopes are high here. Cant be worse than Valhalla f**kin Rising anyway



Thats all for now, I hear the in-no-way-annoying siren drone of the vuvuzela so I'll post again when I actually have something to say. ANYONE BUT FRANCE

PS I watched Alice in Wonderland, and as I expected it was a tedious, overlong and narcissictic Burton-by-the-numbers load of emo wank. I wasnt surprised. And I bet you're not surprised that I'm not surprised. Has Tim Burton done anything decent since Sleepy Hollow?

Here's some more films...mostly pretty bad ones!

Right, well...I'm ill. Very ill indeed. It feels like beelzebub himself has ejaculated broken glass down my throat and my entire body feels like its got toothache so lets pass that general feeling of unhealthiness onto you gentle reader. No clever wordy foreplay, lets get your mental underpants off and onto the rough and unlubricated penetrating reviews.

BIRDEMIC - SHOCK AND TERROR

F**k me. So this is what it's come to. A "movie" (and I use that word with grave reservations) which has gained significant internet buzz simply because it's so bad it doesn't really deserve to be described as a serious piece of work at all. Look at the trailer. This has really annoyed me to be honest, its obviously a calculated attempt to deliberately make a truly bad movie. It's utterly without worth, but of course in our sensation-craving tinternet culture an extreme of whatever variety can be passed off as a virtue. Don't buy in to this horsec*ck of swill, I watched this entire f**kin thing and i'm genuinely offended by its laziness and cynicism. Just...no. Believe it or not, its actually F**KING BORING watching something that looks like it was made by special needs teenagers with a stolen camera for 100 minutes, really really boring. F**k off Birdemic. Non-actors being attacked by animated gifs, yeah maybe that's worth 5 hilarious minutes on youtube but this?

Everyone involved is in the wrong industry. Genuine Bad Movies should be accidental, like babies. Mongy, harelipped babies perhaps, but inspiring a vague uncomfortable affection nonetheless. Watch The Room or Troll 2 or Deadly Spawn if you really do want to see a bona fide bad movie classic. Will writer-director James Nyugen have the bird seed to make a sequel? Who knows, but I reckon if you attached a camera to a chicken and made it film James Nyugen for a couple of days the resulting movie wouldnt be much worse than this contrived avian abortion.

SOMEONE'S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR

Have you heard the one about the grotesque fat rapey man with the 15 inch penis? No, its not one of lovely David Brennan's home videos on youtube ("I swear, someone stole them from my usb drive") It's the antagonist of this genitally fixated basement-quality horror endurance test. A bunch of terrible acting drug-happy medical students being raped to death by the aforementioned excessively-willied bad man forms the basis for this delightful little tale.

Eh....thats it really....the students are an unspeakable bunch of nob-ends and every moment where they are not being horribly murdered seems endless. So we've got awful, bad-improv acting, an ending that seems very similar to Reeker/Campfire Tales, detestable characters and face-palm dialogue, but it also has interesting weird sound editing/effects, and an agreeable grimy feel to it, and has VERNON F**KIN WELLS IN IT so...

Well I can't really recommend it because it's clearly complete and utter rubbish, but at the same time its also mental and wilfully warped, so well...go on then, just so you can go in to work the next day and tell people you just watched a terrible horror movie starring a penicidal serial killer, you'll be even more popular than before! (Have a wash as well, people are starting to talk)

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE/ THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST

The sequels to Steig Larsen's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but apparently despite having the same actors, shot back-to-back on a much lower budget intended to go straight to swedish TV. Didn't really notice a massive quality dip myself as I can't remember the original that well. And I only saw it a couple of months ago. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE kicks off a year or so after the events of the original, dead-eyed goth hacker Lisbeth and froglike journo Micke get involved with deformed evil russian spies and James Bond-like unstoppable giant henchmen. It's not bad, it's pretty tight, some gratuitious lesbionic sex, bursts of graphic violence....quite enjoyed it.


The third one, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST is a f**king two hour courtroom-based bore-gy that finally drops all the plot pieces onto the table while the viewer stares at them and goes "WHAT, IS THAT IT? THAT'S IT?" I'm convinced these books/movies are only so massively popular because of chubby introspective females that see Lisbeth as a fascinating totem of aggressive feminine independence, and an equal number of socially-challenged geeky men who fantasise about showing Lisbeth the hetro-light (shining on their sweaty glans no doubt) when in actuality she's merely a borderline autistic computer nerd good with violence and useless at small talk. That's just not enough for me. But she does have a nice bottom. And she's far more interesting than the rest of the tedious lineup of zero-dimensional script fodder. Watch the one that isn't cack, skip the other, you'll be no worse off.

THE WOLFMAN

An American Werewolf in London is one of the greatest horror movies of the past 30 years. Big words. But I honestly think its a work of pure enduring class that still looms over the manwolf genre nearly 30 years later...there are quite a few movies that aspire to horror-comedy, more and more nowadays, as its easier to be mediocre at both than excel at either (exhibit A: Zombieland) but John Landis' 1981 masterpiece is actually properly scary, genuinely funny, clever and ultimately sad and melancholic. With awesome Rick Baker effects. And Nurse Jenny Agutter. Yes. I showed my little brother the transformation scene when he was about 5 and it made him cry. That's abuse, to be honest. It covers these disparate bases better than any other film I've ever seen and The Wolfman is one movie that, well let's not get carried away here because its nowhere near as good, but it uses AWIL as much as a reference as it does its alleged source material, the Lon Chaney original.

Really, its a bit AWIL meets Sleepy Hollow, with surprising amounts of carnage and gore. It's a bit camp, it's a bit messy, the transformation ratio is about 60% simian, 40% vulpine which makes the lycanthropic antagonist a bit unintentionally humorous, the movie also bears the hallmarks of being edited and post-produced by committee...but I enjoyed it. After the raft of awful straight to video shite I've endured of late it was pretty feckin decent. Well after Birdemic I think David Brennan dancing in his underpants miming "I'm Every Woman" for an hour and a half would be pretty feckin decent. And a turn-on, to be honest.

VALHALLA RISING

Look at that cover! F**king look at it! Quite possibly the most blatant bit of false advertising imaginable. Heres the synopsis, its sounds cool and I'm going to tell you why the actual film is not cool in the slightest, but actually w**k. Hard as nails, mute and optically challenged slave fighter from muddy viking-era scotland kills a few people in a grisly fashion to gain his freedom and then joins Christian warriors on a crusade to Jerusalem, except they take a wrong turn somewhere and end up in Canada(?) where they come up against the local unfriendly natives. Again look at that cover. Sounds good right? Vikings versus savage apocalypto-style natives, cant go wrong can you? Turns out you can ...YOU CAN GO VERY WRONG INDEED. While the cover would suggest a gory and action packed 300-style sword-and-axe filled epic romp, instead we have a handful of bearded men stumbling around in the mud for 80 minutes. It is the very opposite of "epic". The first 20 minutes are quite promising... very graphic violence, stunning cinematography, you'll be thinking "what was he on about, this is cool!" Alas, the movie then slowly, slowly morphs into a self-indulgent, surreal and painfully slow endurance test. It still looks great, but if I want to see something that just looks good I've got a mirror. Unbelievably anti-climatic ending as well, and probably deliberately so. There's a real whiff of anti-audience hostility here, or maybe its just a boring and pretentious wasted opportunity? Ultimately  I'd describe it as Terrence Malick's down-syndrome brother doing an arty remake of The Thirteenth Warrior, except much, much worse than that sounds.

I watched this film so you didnt have to. What a load of film-school c*ckwash. Instead of a rating, I've actually painstakingly recreated a far more accurate dvd cover for your education. Probably wouldnt shift as many units as the one above, but at least its not a shameless bit of blatant marketing misdirection.