(*)as is also often the case with Catherine Breillat, the underlying disingenuousness and lack of real-life transgressive experience (beyond that of a febrile romantic imagination) is the imperative for masking Enter The Void with such excess: every aspect is exaggerated as a form of compensation for an underlying real-world naïveté (just as in Irreversible); and yet while people are creaming themselves over opening title sequences like classic rock fans to a Clapton guitar solo, or else bedazzled by psychedelic graphics condemned to age faster than a Windows 98 screensaver, or even worse, the interminable overhead 'ghost' shots of the streets of Tokyo, what really bothered me is that all this wankfoolery is a set-up for one of the most cringeworthily moralistic final acts I've endured in years
Jackass 3-D (***)
3D and the irrepressible Johnny Knoxville and comrades is a match made in heaven - this valedictory compilation of their latest stunts and pranks, while certainly patchy and played-out at times, does include some classic vignettes that Buster Keaton himself would have been proud of
Easy A
(*)what is it about Hollywood having to cast actresses in their mid-twenties as high school teenagers? I hate that, and I hate this incredibly dishonest film that makes issues out of teenage sexuality that surely do not exist
Our Guys: Outrage In Glen Ridge
(*****)featuring the inestimable Heather Matarazzo, Our Guys is a superb compelling TV movie dramatisation of real life events in which a mentally handicapped girl was raped with a broomstick and a bat, by members of the local high school football team
Farmhouse
(**)you know when horror films start out so promisingly only to fall apart halfway through? usually involving some incredibly silly chase scene - Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Shining come to mind; well, Farmhouse trumps even that infamy with the most spectacularly gratuitous dissembling of an initially great narrative ever witnessed, it will blow your mind
Get Him To The Greek
(*)what starts out promisingly with a mildly subversive take on the mainstream music industry ends up as a dreary unsatisfying formulaic popcorn comedy
Machete
(**)the pro-Mexican immigrant message of the film, however laudable it may be, gets in the way of what should be basic popcorn retro mexploitation entertainment; also, there's nowhere near enough of a sex and sleaze component; and finally, the veteran Danny Trejo might look the part in stills but simply doesn't have enough on-screen charisma or acting skills to carry off the lead role, whilst the reinvigorated Don Johnson and Steven Seagal, in their respective baddie roles, manage to steal the show
FILLMORE DISCOS 56
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FILLMORE DISCOS 54 - '70s RARITIES 5
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