Introduced at Frightfest as “the most extreme thing we’ve ever shown”, Martyrs is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Impossible to compare to anything else, the film’s description of “multiply Inside by Frontier(s) and Switchblade Romance” simply doesn’t do justice to Laugier’s masterpiece. Closer in tone to Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible and Eric Stanze’s Scrapbook, Martyrs surpasses them all. Constantly unsettling, frequently unflinchingly, gut-wrenchingly violent, this is horror cinema at it’s most challenging.

What at first seems to be a fairly standard revenge thriller very quickly becomes something altogether different. I don’t want to reveal any more of the plot than is absolutely necessary because the less said the more of an impact the film will have. It begins with the escape of Lucie, a young girl who has been subjected to horrific physical and mental (but not sexual) abuse. We are shown her relationship with Anna, another patient at the institution the severely traumatised Lucie is sent to, who becomes her only friend. The film then flashes forward 15 years and depicts the terrible revenge Lucie takes on the family she believes to have been responsible for her ordeal.

I was reasonably sure I knew where Laugier’s story was going but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Perfectly paced, totally gripping, with a pair of magnificent gutsy performances from the two lead actresses, this is a film I would recommend to everyone with a strong stomach and a love of ground-breaking extreme horror cinema. In the Q & A session following the showing we were told that apparently a couple of people had gone outside to throw up. And this was a crowd of hardened horror fans who did not attend Frightfest expecting Snow White. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Inevitably Martyrs is going to be lumped into the torture-porn sub-genre with the likes of Hostel and Captivity. Don’t be fooled. Martyrs is so much more. Despite the violence, the film seems to ooze sadness and melancholy, and I found it incredibly moving. It also has one of the most thought-provoking conclusions the genre has ever produced. In short, this is one of the most important horror movies in decades.

Let me get this out in the open before I even start this review – I enjoyed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and I thought Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead was a damn fine film. So you can see from this that I’m not against remakes per se. I’m also a fan of Rob Zombie’s music and I loved The Devil’s Rejects (although House of 1000 Corpses was almost a total mess).

So when I bring out the axe to hack into this “re-imagining” of John Carpenter’s seminal classic, one of the most influential of all horror films, I haven’t been grinding it in preparation. I suspected it would be bad (but I’m often wrong – I suspected both the remakes above would be awful) but I really had no idea of the depths of its badness. Obviously the studio agrees – I can’t think of any other reason to open this film in August instead of the original planned Halloween date. 

Where the original Michael was an apparently normal product of suburbia (and all the more effective for it)  the new Michael is now shown in all his clichéd maladjusted glory as part of a family of trailer trash consisting of stripper Mom, drunken abusive step-dad, slutty older sister and younger baby sister. Zombie ups the body count this time around by having Michael beat to death one of the kids who’s been bullying him at school, then when he flips out on Halloween night after his sister refuses to take him trick-or-treating, preferring to go upstairs to get frisky with her boyfriend, more carnage ensues. While Mom is wrapping herself round a pole in the Rabbit In Red club, Michael tapes a drunken Forsythe to his chair and cuts his throat, bludgeons his sister’s boyfriend with a baseball bat, then goes upstairs and stabs his sister (lots of times). 

This actually works quite well but from here things go rapidly downhill. We get a completely pointless and tedious, badly written interlude where the institutionalised Michael has a few sessions with Dr Loomis, stabs a nurse with a fork, then stops talking for 15 years, while growing into a massive mask-wearing hulk who’d look more at home in a Friday 13^th movie.  

When Michael eventually gets to Haddonfield to re-enact the events of the original film (with a couple of extra murders thrown in), the film turns into generic slasher movie #999. Numerous scenes and snippets of dialogue are taken directly from the original in what is obviously intended as a respectful homage but only serve to emphasise the inferiority of this version. The camera goes completely ballistic whenever Michael goes into action, twitching and shaking all over the place. None of the characters are given any development at all in terms of either dialogue or screen time and this is where Zombie makes his biggest mistake.

The original Halloween wasn’t just about Michael Myers. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie is on screen for most of the film’s running time and she is one of cinema’s great heroines, a strong likeable girl the audience really cares about. Even cannon fodder like Annie and Lynda are given enough development to get to know them and care what happens to them. By contrast Zombie’s Laurie, Annie and Lynda are pretty much interchangeable and are really only required to get naked and scream. By wasting so much time on Michael as a child the second half of the film feels rushed, and where Carpenter spent 90 minutes building an atmosphere of dread and cranking up the tension Zombie has to cram too much in and just can’t engage the audience. The suspense Carpenter’s original built had you on the edge of your seat. The only reason to be on the edge of your seat watching the 2007 version is to get an early exit from the cinema. 

Most of the performances in the film are lacklustre to say the least, with the notable exception of Sheri Moon Zombie, who shows there is more to her repertoire than just Baby Firefly. William Forsythe goes entertainingly over the top while Malcolm McDowell is the biggest disappointment, a pale shadow of Donald Pleasence, and really fails to make any impact. The constant popping up of genre stalwarts like Udo Kier and Ken Foree for extremely brief cameos is very distracting and actually does more harm than good.

There is only one scene in the entire film that comes remotely close to capturing the atmosphere of the original – little Lindsey watches TV while a hulking Michael, knife in hand, stands motionless behind her. Because of that, because of Devil’s Rejects, because of the scene where Walton Goggins is shot in House of 1000 Corpses,  I’m willing to forgive Rob Zombie for this colossal mis-step in what will hopefully still be a promising career in film.

But for me, what this show is really about is family, and how far a man will go to protect and provide for that family. In Vic’s case, “family” not only covers his wife and children, but the rest of the strike team, Shane Vendrell, Curtis “Lem” Lemansky and Ronnie Gardocki. These are not evil men, although they commit evil acts. They are fiercely loyal to each other. Out on the streets, facing down gangs, constantly putting their lives on the line, using whatever methods necessary to keep their district safe, they are ruthlessly effective.

For Vic and his team, the ends definitely justify the means. In their view, they simply don’t get adequately rewarded for what they do, so they take a little here and there to make up for that. Unfortunately for them, life is not that simple and their lives began to spiral downward after Crowley’s killing. Only Vic and Shane know the truth about what really went down, the others believing the killing was the result of a drug bust gone bad.

Tragedy struck the family at the end of season five (the show’s best season so far) when Lem was killed by a grenade tossed into his car by Shane, worried that Lem was going to come clean about the team’s crooked past to Forest Whitaker’s obsessive IAD detective Lt Jon Kavanaugh. The opening episode of season 6 begins and ends with two powerful sequences set to the late Johnny Cash singing “I Hung My Head”. The team gather at Lem’s grave and Vic makes it clear he will go to any lengths to avenge Lem’s murder as he embarks on a frantic hunt for the latino drug lord Guardo, who he mistakenly believes is responsible. Shane is trying unsuccessfully to deal with the guilt of what he’s done, putting himself in harm’s way during a tense hostage situation at a methadone clinic. Time is running out for Kavanaugh’s investigation, and he is driven to desperate measures to put Vic away.

The second episode sees the departure of Forest Whitaker, whose magnificent performance was such a highlight of the previous season. Kavanaugh’s failure to convict Mackey leads to him planting evidence implicating Vic in Lem’s murder. Vic is slowly unravelling, kidnapping Guardo’s girlfriend in an attempt to force him to return from Mexico, despite Shane and Ronnie’s misgivings. Newly promoted Captain Claudette Wyms and former partner “Dutch” Wagenbach are suspicious of the evidence provided by Vic’s former informant Emolia, and eventually the truth is revealed, resulting in Kavanaugh’s arrest and a final confrontation with Vic through the bars of a prison cell.

One of the show’s strengths lies in it’s unusually well developed supporting characters. Veteran actress CCH Pounder, as Claudette Wyms, has never been better than the moment when she faces down Kavanaugh and orders him out of the room so she can begin to question Emolia, gradually breaking her down by pointing out that she has been used by both Vic and Kavanaugh. Jay Karnes’ sympathetic performance as Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach, struggling to cope with the promotion of his former partner and his infatuation with a female rookie is a masterpiece of understatement.

Cathy Cahlin Ryan’s portrayal of Vic’s estranged wife Corrine, Catherine Dent’s Danny Sofer, forced to return to work early after giving birth to Vic’s baby in order to get her promotion, and Michael Jace’s sexually conflicted Officer Julian Lowe are just some of the other noteworthy performances in a series that just keeps getting better. It’s a tribute to the general high standard that they aren’t overshadowed by the central characters of Vic and Shane, played so well by Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins. Former precinct Captain now turned Councilman David Aceveda seems to have been sidelined during these early episodes which is slightly disappointing but I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of him.

This ranks as some of the best TV drama ever – gripping, suspenseful, brilliantly written and acted. If you’re not watching it, you should be. If you’ve never seen The Shield before, do yourself a favour, grab the first five seasons on DVD, stack up season six on the Tivo, and take a week off.

It’s difficult to know where to start reviewing a film like Kim Chapiron’s “Sheitan”. In fact, there are no other films quite like it. On paper the rudimentary plot makes it sound just like hundreds of other “horny young guys/girls looking for sex lured to out of the way location where horrible things happen” movies.  What makes it different is the peculiar “frenchness” of it all.

Three loutish lads, Bart, Thai and Ladj, out looking for booze and sex on Christmas Eve, chat up local girls Eve and Yasmine. When they find themselves thrown out of a nightclub (called Club Styxx) they’re invited by Eve to her house in the country. This turns out to be a dilapidated farmhouse close to a village full of the weirdest local yokels since Deliverance. En route they bump into Eve’s demented caretaker Joseph (played by Vincent Cassel with a huge shit-eating grin and a satanic glint in his eye). And then…not much happens for the next hour. Joseph introduces Bart to his nymphomaniac niece Jeanne, takes everyone for a dip in the local hot-springs with the local in-breds where they indulge in a piggy-back fight and Jeanne attempts to give Bart’s dog a hand-job,  Ladj tries to get into Yasmine’s pants while being continually interrupted by calls from his wife,  Bart and Thai try to get Eve interested in a threesome, and Joseph’s wife Marie lurks about doing something sinister with a doll while remaining mostly unseen. All of which sounds vastly more interesting in print than it actually is to watch on screen.

When things start to liven up in the last twenty minutes or so, they do so in such an incomprehensible manner that it’s impossible to work out what the hell is supposed to be going on. It becomes a mess of quick cuts, crazy camera angles, snarling dogs and screaming women.

I was left wondering just what it was I’d spent the last 90 minutes watching. A horror film? There is no tension, no scares and very little gore. A black comedy? Cassel is quite obviously having a lot of fun playing Joseph but I had almost none watching him. Is it some kind of satire on the current state of French youth? If so France is now off my list of places to visit.

Following the recent releases of such films as Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension,  Géla Babluani’s Tzameti, and David Moreau & Xavier Palud’s Ils, French cinema was becoming the perfect antidote to all the Hollywood produced watered-down rubbish and J-horror remakes. Unfortunately this train wreck of a movie only tarnishes that growing reputation. I hope it’s just a blip.

Much has already been written about this so I’m not going to give it the full review treatment. I’ve been looking forward to seeing it since the first news began trickling out way back. Now I have, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s overlong, very silly in parts, woefully inaccurate historically but a magnificent cinematic spectacle for all that. Parts of the film are hauntingly beautiful and it’s never less than visually compelling. The acting varies wildly from superb (Gerard Butler’s Leonidas) to pantomime awful (Dominic West’s Theron) to just absurd (Rodrigo Santoro – what were they thinking??) and the decision to use David Wenham to narrate the film just doesn’t work. His toneless delivery almost had me dozing off at times. Some of Miller’s dialogue, which is ok in the context of a graphic novel, is risible when spoken aloud on film.  

For all that, the film comes alive during the battle scenes which transform it from what could have been a laughable Steve Reeves style sword and sandal “epic” to a masterpiece of style. See it, and decide for yourself.

Three episodes in and my fears have been mostly laid to rest. Vicki Nelson, a Toronto PD detective who chose to quit the force rather than ride a desk after developing Retinitis Pigmentosa (a condition which means her night and peripheral vision is gradually failing) is played to perfection by Christina Cox. She has the right combination of toughness, vulnerability and looks to carry off the part. Dylan Neal as Vicki’s ex-partner detective Mike Celluci does a great job with a character that could have come across as stuffy. Finally Kyle Schmid’s portrayal of graphic novelist Henry Fitzroy, who also happens to be a 450 year old vampire and the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, is sexy, seductive, playful and dangerous. These three have a wonderful chemistry together that really makes the show come alive. My only casting reservation at the moment is Gina Holden’s Coreen who is unfortunately stuck with the sidekick role, but hopefully her character will be given something meaningful to do as the series continues. 

The two part pilot episode is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the first book in the series, Blood Price. Vicki is walking home from a date when she witnesses an attack on a young man by a cape-wearing figure. She gives chase but the figure vanishes and unfortunately she’s too late to save the victim. The cops arrive, including Vicki’s ex-partner Mike Celluci, and they discover the victim has bite marks on the neck and is drained of blood. The following day Vicki gets a visit from the victim’s girlfriend Coreen, who is not happy with the police investigation and wants Vicki to take the case. As the body count rises Vicki is drawn to the theory that a vampire is at large in the city. When she continually spots the same man as she carries out her investigation, she discovers that Henry Fitzroy is indeed a vampire but not the person responsible for the murders. He has his own reasons for not wanting a vampire killer on the loose in his city. 

The two become partners and as Henry faces an old enemy, Vicki becomes more open to the previously unknown supernatural elements around her. They discover that the killings have a purpose and they must stop the perpetrator or face hell on earth. 

The series opener introduces all the characters and sets up the Vicki/Mike/Henry love triangle. There are plenty of sparks among the three leads and as Vicki’s relationship with the frustrated Mike is rekindled it feels real. Vicki’s and Henry’s mutual attraction is also believably handled. Standard vampire conventions are dispensed with – Henry wears a cross, has a reflection, and has no aversion to garlic. There is plenty of snappy well written dialogue. The only thing that lets the episode down is a fairly poor villain which shows the obvious lack of a decent budget.

Episode 3, Bad Juju, deals with voodoo and zombies and is not based on any of the original books. Vicki is visited by a young woman named Angelique who is searching for her missing brother. After Angelique and her escort are attacked, Vicki attempts to defend them but the assailant seems unresponsive to her attacks, kills Angelique’s escort then knocks Vicki to the ground and takes off after Angelique. The police arrive with Celluci in the lead, resulting in a heated discussion about Vicki’s involvement. This leads to a magic moment where Vicki storms off indignantly, and Celluci calls out “Garbage can, 12 o’clock” just in time for Vicki to avoid a collision. Vicki turns to Henry for help, who identifies her assailant as a zombie and advises Vicki to drop the case. Kyle Schmid gets his chance to shine here with Henry’s “don’t forget what I am” speech. As they are drawn further into the investigation, it becomes apparent that Angelique may not be what she appears, and Vicki becomes the victim of a voodoo curse.

This third episode manages to improve on a good beginning with some brilliant throwaway dialogue such as Vicki and Henry questioning a barman, “I’ll have a beer, and him…you don’t want to know”, and Henry’s comment on zombies in the movies, “don’t trust the movies – look what they did to vampires”. Hopefully the series has a sound base to build from, and if they can avoid the old Kolchak trap of each episode turning into a “monster of the week” formula, it could be around for a long time to come.
              

Were they telling us the truth, or is it all just hype? Has Bond been replaced by the likes of Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer and Ethan Hunt?

Happily (especially for producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson) the gamble has mostly paid off. The crucial element of the film, the new Bond, is a resounding success. Daniel Craig has proven all the nay-sayers wrong with a supremely confident performance. His portrayal of Bond as a charming, cold hearted, ruthless assassin is totally convincing and really is the closest yet to Fleming’s original. He brings a physicality to the role which gives the fight sequences a visceral impact that only the memorable scrap between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love has previously come close to. This is the best Bond yet, better even than the great Sean Connery.

The film itself, however, isn’t quite such a success. It starts well enough, with a pre titles black and white depiction of the kills which earn Bond his 00 status then continues at an incredible pace with a breathtaking stunt-packed chase sequence showcasing the free running skills of Sebastien Foucan. As Bond continues to track a bomb plot, a second action packed scene at Miami Airport isn’t quite so original and comes across as extremely derivative, while still entertaining. When Bond becomes embroiled in an effort to bankrupt terrorist financier Le Chiffre by beating him in a high stakes poker game at the titular casino, the film starts to lose its edginess. The poker game is almost ruined by some of the most excruciating dialogue ever written, and as the romance between Bond and Vesper Lynd, the treasury official sent to keep tabs on the government’s money, develops, the darkness promised by the earlier scenes begins to dissipate.

At close to two and a half hours, the film feels bloated and would have benefited from some judicious editing. Shades of the old Bond begin to creep back in and the energy built up by the explosive start runs down. While never less than entertaining the promise isn’t fully realised.

The rest of the cast perform well with some genuine chemistry between Daniel Craig and Eva Green (sporting a slightly dodgy accent) and a decent villainous turn by Mads Mikkelsen, whose torture of Bond in the final third of the film is one of the highlights. Dame Judi Dench puts in another sparkling performance as M (the only link remaining from the Brosnan era) and her interplay with Craig works well.

So, the final verdict…..The best Bond ever, but still in search of the best Bond film ever. Hopefully Daniel Craig will stay around as long as Sean Connery did.