We Are What We Are (2010) ROB

The hype is what got me stoked on this one. Every horror movie website I read was raving about it when it was running the festival circuit and finally it hit VOD. I put it off for awhile, waiting for the right time to watch a coming of age cannibal family drama. Oh, does that sound weird? fuckin aye..

A creepy old dirty dude is wandering aimlessly down the sidewalk of a strip mall, he stops at a display window of two mannequins in bikinis and gawks halfway like he's never seen such a thing and halfway like a weird pervert who can just see this sort of thing, touch the glass and whambamthankyama'am. He continues on his path and before you know it he's on the ground dying, dying, dead. Give the custodians and coroner a couple minutes and this sidewalk is back into shape for the regular, well off bunch to grace it with their feet.

Enter family: two young men, a young woman and their mother getting ready for the days work and wondering where the hell their absent father is. I'm guessing if you know how to read then you can guess who creepy old dude was and through a series of strange communication the daughter finds out about the fathers demise. They panic, not unlike a regular family with the recent news of their passed father/husband, but also very differently; They question and try to promote a new head of the house before the day is even over. See, there's something that needs to be taken care of within the next day and while the father always took care of it before, a new member of the family must step up to the plate and assume responsibility and care and provide in the strangest way for the family. Saying much more might spoil the fun of this insanely delightful piece of Spanish film.

Their really isn't much bad I can say about this film, it's terrificly paced and keeps you invested and interested in the characters throughout its running time and delivers a couple twists and gut punches that make you smile and make you cringe. I won't say it's scary, kinda creepy. It's gritty in a realistic 'holy shit, this probably happens' kind of way.

One one of the covers or one sheets for this I saw a quote that said something like "A cannibal gore-fest", which is a hugely inaccurate way of selling this (though I'm sure it'll bring in some unlikely fans) because I don't exactly remember much, if any, gore. Sure, there is violence and blood aplenty but this is no gore fest. It's exactly what I explained it as, a coming of age cannibalistic family drama, and if that sounds like something you're into and you enjoy all the fixins that accompany a great film like an amazing score, great acting, direction and an original story.. Well, fork over the $7 and get this while it's still on VOD and not waiting in DVD purgatory waiting to be seen by the blockbuster folk.

I was WOW'd come end..

5/5

Wake Wood (2011) ROB

The most common comparison I've seen while anticipating this films release has been Pet Semetary and while that's not way off base I think this bad boy is in a different league.

We start on Alice's birthday, her parents are showering her with gifts and confetti before she walks to school. Somewhere along the way the little girl decides it's a good idea to give a rather savage looking dog in a cage a piece of lunch meat from her sandwich. She opens the cage and it leads to one of the more gnarly on-screen child deaths in recent memory.

Enter grieving couple driving down a foggy, very Irish countryside road to their new town of residence, Wake Wood, where Louise is the new town pharmacist and Patrick is the new veterinarian. Right off you get the vibe that things are not right. There is some freaky shit going on with the residents that I won't really explain because it's most fun to go into this film without a complete knowledge of what it's all about. I think it kinda sucks I went in knowing what I knew and hell, I guess I kind of spoiled it for you too in a way. But hey, this is a creepy, well filmed chiller that isn't short on the gore (not in a cheesy, slasher way) and despite it's similarities to earlier mentioned film, is very original and it did freak me the fuck out at some points..

No complaints, this delivered everything I ask of a horror film. It lacks all that I despise from the modern day bullshit we're churning out. Thanks Ireland.

5/5

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009) THUGGY

Most people that know me have heard at one time or another that my dream in life is to strike it big, buy a tricked out double wide with all the fixings, and move into a trailer park somewhere. I’m not sure how or when I began having this urge, but I assume it has something to do with my early childhood. Though I have never officially lived in a trailer park, my family did have an eight acre ranch in Albuquerque, NM that I spent a goodish amount of years at when I was a young whipper-snapper. This property looked like a mix between a junkyard, and a machine-part graveyard. Rusted out hulls of old cars and various unidentified metal was stacked haphazardly everywhere. So nowadays whenever I see places like that it gives me that familiar nostalgic kick in the cod-piece. For example, I am a big fan of “American Pickers” for such reasons. Uncle Douvee’s house from Van Damme’s “Hard Target” and "Old Lady" Hackmore’s place from “Earnest: Scared Stupid” also come to mind. Bottom line is that I want a lot of scary looking junk lying around, and I want the “Man” to stay off’d mah property!!!

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia is a movie that I skipped over for months before this recent watch. Because I don’t have a new-fangled flat screen HDM whatever the fuck T.V. it’s next to impossible to read the new Netflix formats screen text. So I rather innocently assumed the movie was about some West Virginian prison and their Aryan Nation population and subsequently blew it off… Jokes on me.

The Dub and Dub Dubs of Dub V is actually about a legendary Boone County family that gained prominence in the mid-1980’s because of D. Ray White, the family patriarchs unbelievable talent in Appalachian “Mountain Dancing”. For those of you who don’t know what Mountain Dancing is (Don’t worry, I had to look it up myself) It is a sort of mix between clogging and tap-dancing that has been popular in Appalachia and other southern nations since this countries inception.

In the early eighties The Smithsonian Institute bankrolled a PBS documentary titled “Talking Feet: Buck, Flatfoot, and Tap in which D. Ray White was featured prominently, touted as the best Mountain Dancer in the United States. Unfortunately D. Ray was killed in a shootout before the movie was completed… He was fifty-eight years old… Amazing… This man was a G.

In 1991 PBS did a follow up documentary called “The Dancing Outlaw” on D. Ray’s son Jesco White who assumed the mantle of “Best Mountain Dancer in America”, instantly launching the White family into the type of fame only two PBS documentaries can provide. Hahaha.

“The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia” a Dickhouse production (Jackass) opens with various Boone County officials commenting on the families’ colorful and notorious nature. We are then introduced to Mimi White the self-proclaimed “Biggest and Baddest” of the White family, followed by Bertie Mae White(D.Ray’s Wife)”The Miracle Woman” because she raised thirty some-odd kids, Susan Rae White A.K.A. “Kirk”, then on to Sue Bob White, Bo White and so forth. Hank Williams III a close family friend comments on their legendary family throughout and provides much of the films soundtrack. Apparently The White family has been the subject of countless famous country and bluegrass songs and it is made quite obvious in the film. I loved this movie; I put it on around 3:00am and had Too Much Fun watching it. The family is outrageous, they smoke “the pot” around children of any age, and they snort prescription pills wherever they please like it’s going out of style. Cousins steal husbands and tear up each other’s houses; nephew’s shooting uncles, women talking about chopping people up and throwing them down mine shafts, and the flare with which they do all this is literally incredible. The Taco Bell scene needs to be seen to be believed and “The Boone County Mating Call” is priceless.

In all honesty, these people seem dysfunctional to “normal” folk, but in my humble opinion I feel like they might just be more sane then the majority of American families with all their resentment, deceit, and depreciation of self-worth. This family is going to hell as they themselves say, but they’re going to have a fuck-all of a time on the way there…

Clydesdale Scale: 2 Star…. I fucking loved this movie!!!

Rhipt Fuel: Afgoo Purps

Rhipt Viewing Rating: 1/5

RUBBER (2010) ROB

How the fuck can I begin to explain a film like Rubber? For anyone who doesn't know, Rubber is the story of an inanimate tire who has been abandoned in the desert in shit knows where for.. No reason. After a pretty fucking brilliant monologue explaining that this film is a tribute to no reason, we follow Robert as he rolls through the desert experimenting with his power of psychokinesis to explode heads.

And why else would a tire explode heads? No fucking reason..

The best way I could explain a film like this is "an adult Disney film." It just makes sense, from the score (extremely well done by Gaspard Auge and Mr. Ozio) to the fact that it has some weird, feel good attitude. Try not to smile as you witness this tire clumsily make his way through town and develop a strange interest in a beautiful European woman and blow up whoever's head he deems necessary.

It's a beautiful film that never slumps to a dull moment, constantly giving you the elbow in the ribs saying, "Get it? Get it?" which sounds ridiculous but it never stoops to the level you think it might and maintains a certain integrity throughout.

I feel awful, I'm going to bed. Rubber is on VOD and makes a limited theatrical run on April 1st, it's really just something you need to see to believe.

Let Me In (2010) THUGGY

Alright, before I get into this review I’d like to take the time to express to our readers that I am an AVID horror fan. A regular freak since childhood for all things terrifying and macabre, so when I hear classic horror (albeit a very recent classic) is being remade I usually find myself in fits of rage, cursing these Hollywood whores for their feeble-minded and cow-hearted outlook on profit vs. concept. Sadly this is not a new trend, as there have been around five-hundred and twenty-one movie remakes since films inception in the 1880’s. Now this is not to say that I abhor remakes… Hell, I spent most of my younger years thinking Bob DeNiro was the one and only incarnation of Max Cady in the ’91 version of Cape Fear, I just feel classics are made by risk and innovation… Bottom line is I came to this film assuming it would drown inside the massive size 15’s of “Let the Right One In” the 2008 Swedish masterpiece based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist…. Now get ready purists…. It did not.

For all of you film fans out there who haven’t seen “Let the Right One In” tsk tsk… The premise of “Let Me In” is this. Young Owen, a lonely and bullied middle school kid who is being raised by his mother due to an impending divorce finds himself the unwitting neighbor of Abby, a barefooted vampire child and her nameless father figure who’ve just moved in next door. Owen, left to his own devices due to his mother’s increasing despair and alcoholism spends most of his time after school in his apartment complex’s courtyard eating candy and stabbing trees, envisioning revenge upon his schoolyard bullies. It’s during one of these nightly forays that he first meets his new neighbor. Their interactions are at first cold but curious as she tells Owen she “Can’t be his friend”, but it is a small courtyard and they inevitably become strange allies, each looking out for one another in their own ways.

The film then cuts back and forth between Owen and Abby’s respective home lives. Owens being the solemn existence of an only child, constantly harried at school by a bully whom in my humble opinion is a bit over the top. Abby’s of course being the curse of having to spend her days in deep slumber locked in a darkened bathroom while her “father” makes his nighttime runs into town to abduct and drain locals of their life-blood. The “father” who we can only assume has been doing this type of work for god knows how long, coupled with his charges budding interest in Owen becomes sloppy, forcing Abby to hunt for herself leading to a string of very public murders and attacks which garner the attention of “The Policeman”.

As I’ve said, I began this film with apprehension and bias being a huge supporter of the original film, but was pleasantly surprised by the film being set in the early eighties during the dead of winter Los Alamos, New Mexico. I myself spent a portion of my childhood in Albuquerque and know firsthand the remoteness you feel there. Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) does a fantastic job keeping his camera still and creating a somber atmosphere to spin the tail of these two tragic characters, isolated in their own ways from everyone but each other. The shots are dry and desaturated, giving the film a cold feel that compliments not only the time of year, but also alludes to the fact that our Abby is very much; undead. I have to tip the old hat to Chloe Moretz who plays Abby, for her perfect portrayal of sorrow. She does not have a back story, she does not explain why she drinks blood, save for that she will die if she doesn’t. I was surprised to find out that she also played Hit-Girl in last year’s Kick-Ass, I didn’t make the connection at first because the two characters are polar opposites, and of course she isn’t wearing a mask the entire movie. Depicting Owen is Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road), a great choice for the character in my mind because he sort of has the same look as Kåre Hedebrant who played Oskar in “Let The Right One In”, McPhee also nails his part adding to the sadness of the film. Abby’s “Father” is portrayed by Richard Jenkins, who has enjoyed a fairly full career appearing in movies like The Witches of Eastwick, Something About Mary, Me Myself & Irene, Step Brothers etc... The twist is that he is usually plays authority figures, professors, judges, and law enforcement types, so to see him placing jars of acid in his ruck-sack before going out to stab people in throat is oddly fantastic. Rounding out the main cast is none other than Elias Koteas who first won my heart decades ago with his portrayal of Casey Jones in the Original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that and his part as Azazel in Denzel Washington’s “Fallen” solidified him in my mind as a bad ass. In this film he plays the straight man, a strictly by the book cop who obviously believes in his work, and is good at it.

The soundtrack is “rad” if you will, featuring classic 80’s hits from David Bowie, Culture Club, Blue Oyster Cult and others. Even now, a good two weeks after watching the movie (procrastinator deluxe) the thought of Blue Oyster’s “Burnin For You” playing in the background during one of “Fathers” truly terrifying abductions brings tears of joy to my eyes. There is CGI in the film which I could have done without, but Abby’s kills are fucking brutal, exactly what I would imagine a Vampire attack would play out like in real life, none of that soupy seduction stuff. Multiply all this with Reagan America’s “Satanic Panic”, then add it with being in a language I can understand (that’s not to say that I don’t watch foreign film, it’s just the subtle nuances that come with that subconscious “non-think” of the native tongue put me in a slightly closer place than the original), and you have a piece of American Horror that one can be proud of…

On the Clydesdale Scale I give this movie a 2 star

Please giant horses take your time in tearing my face off so I can finish this film!

Rhipt Fuel: Grandpappy Purps

Rhipt viewing rating: 2.5/5

Dream Home (2010) ROB

Boring ass Tuesday night and my netflix has been turned off because there's insufficient funds for them to take out my payment for my next month of high quality entertainment. Where do I turn? Comcast OnDemand is home to few great things but one thing I do love about it is its OnDemand feature, mostly in part to the IFC/Sundance Select/Magnolia feature where some of us that can't make it out to film festivals but would love to see the films along with others seeing it for the first time actually can.

I totally forgot that Dream Home was getting a VOD release and upon surfing my options in the IFC section discovered it, my mind let out a "fuck yeah sigh" (I've been in the mood for a slasher, not exactly mindless but nothing bottom shelf) and ordered this motherfucker without hesitation and what I got was exactly what I hoped for.

Our main character, Cheng Li-Sheung, has been saving for an apartment with a view of the sea and overlooking the city her entire life. She works one meager job after the other and saves for what she sees as the perfect living space for her grandfather and brother. One day Cheng Li- Sheung reaches her goal and is given a look at the apartment and given an offer which she enthusiastically approves only to be changed soon after to something far more than her savings could cover, for no reason in particular. What follows is our main homegirl systematically butchering everyone she can in the building with little remorse. The gorehound in you will no doubt cheer at the ridiculousness and cringe at the overwhelming brutality of some. There is one kill in particular that made me do the whole etching my eyebrow into a question mark thing that I rarely do in response to horror movie kills, most commonly done when seeing people do idiotic extremely painful things (ie. pain olympics).

It's a simple story that I welcomed after film after film of metaphors and complex storylines that I've been partying with as of late. I love my slasher films and this delivered, my only complaint was that this could have been trimmed down, a healthy amount of shitty soon-to-be-fodder filler that could have easily been trimmed to make this a 78, maybe 83 minute affair.

3/5

Our Day Will Come (2010) ROB

I've been waiting to see this for about a year now. I had heard about it on a horror movie website which was weird but it was because nobody knew what to think of it when the trailers started appearing. When I first saw the trailer I had no idea what the fuck to think other than we had Vincent Cassel acting crazy again like Vincent Cassel does so well (Sheitan, Irreversible) and that it had something to do with the fact that the two main actors had red hair (courtesy of a translator on a youtube video of the French trailer).

We start with Remy, a ginger, who is reamed day in and day out by his peers and family for being a 'faggot' and for the color of his hair. One day in a disagreement with his mother Remy flees his house only to be discovered by a psychotherapist named Patrick and the minute these two are introduced with their fire red hear and the apparent look of disdain on each of their face in the same frame we get feeling that Patrick isn't just helping this young dude out, he has a plan for Remy and a project for himself. From then on we witness Patrick try to shape Remy into something proud and as cynical as himself, forcing Remy into one awkward situation or absurd act to the next and in turn awakening something far more deep rooted and violent than he probably imagined. The two leading actors grab their parts by the throat and run with it, limp legs trailing with maniacal smiles.

The technical aspects are superb all around with an original score by Sebastien Akchote and beautiful cinematography by the homie Andre Chemetoff who also worked with director Romain Gavrais on pop star MIA's insanely cool video Born Free. All in all this a group of first time feature film makers showing their stuff and shoveling some pretty fantastic stuff into our face and I loved every bit of it. I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions by Gavrais script, marveled by the beautiful imagery shot by Chemetoff and extremely impressed at how well the score accentuated the actions happening on screen. In a lot of ways it matched the feeling of urgency in previously mentioned Born Free. It's clear by the time the credits roll that this was some sort of inside love affair and that all involved knew what they were doing and what they wanted to portray. Fantastic.

Don't let the trailer fool you, this is not near as dark as it seems, though it does stagger into darker territory at some point i would categorize this a dark comedy/coming of age jam.. Highly reccomended: 5/5