Sex, Leins & Videotape #21. Paignton’s resident film critic Tom Leins gets stuck into a bumper selection of DVD releases.
Flying the flag for Latin American cinema is Sin Nombre (Revolver) 
, a gritty, twisted drama that recalls the hey-day of Amores Perros and City of God.
Sayra is a teenage girl from Honduras who sets off with her father and uncle in search of a better life in America. El Casper is a Mexican juvenile delinquent who runs with the vicious Mara Salvatrucha gang. His allegiance to the gang is sorely tested by his love for local girl Martha Marlene, and he finds himself on a collision course with cruel gang-leader Lil’ Mago. El Casper finally snaps during an attempt to rob a train full of immigrants (including Sayra and her family) and his subsequent actions have grave repercussions for everyone involved.
Sayra and El Casper grow close on the long journey North, and it isn’t long before she abandons her family and sets off with the hunted El Casper. Novice filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga injects the movie with enough visceral thrills to distract you from the movie’s melodramatic heart, and the terrific lead performances from Paulina Gaitan (Sayra) and Edgar Flores (El Casper) imbue the movie with a riveting sincerity. Not just a superb debut movie, but a superb movie full-stop.
Anyone who thinks that they don’t make ’em like they used to should check out Blood & Bone (Momentum) , an unsophisticated but brutally enjoyable fight movie that recalls the halcyon days of Jean-Claude Van Damme! Upon his release from prison, Isaiah Bone (Michael Jai White) immerses himself in the vicious world of bare-knuckle street-fighting, taking on all-comers and busting them open without breaking into a sweat. His success earns him the attentions of James, a suave hustler with an eye on the lucrative international fight scene. James makes no bones about his interest in Bone’s fighting skills, but it gradually becomes clear that Bone has a vested interest in James and his hoodlum empire, too.
Michael Jai White’s debatable acting skills fall well short of his fighting skills, but he coasts through the movie with a blank-faced sincerity that Van Damme himself would be proud of! Eamonn Walker (Kareem Said from ‘Oz’) adds a touch of class as chief villain James, but the real pleasure comes from the muscle-bound carnage perpetrated by the unstoppable White. This isn’t high art by a long stretch, but it will delight anyone who craves a dirty dose of bare-knuckle trash.
Just when you thought that the zombie movie sub-genre had reached its creative limits, along comes Pontypool (Kaleidoscope) , an inventive psychological horror movie that unfolds at a radio station in the small town of Pontypool in Canada. Irreverent DJ Grant Mazzy is in the midst of presenting his early morning radio show, when his laconic flow is interrupted by a spate of weird phone calls reporting people babbling in nonsensical speech patterns and committing horrific acts of violence on one another.
Initially, Mazzy and the radio team suspect that someone is playing an elaborate hoax on them, but it quickly becomes apparent that something genuinely sinister is afoot. With claustrophobia gnawing away at them, the radio team try not to unravel, and the rest of the town gets swallowed up by a sinister zombie plague. Stephen McHattie (Nite Owl in Watchmen) excels as sceptical disc jockey Mazzy, and his running commentary injects the tense set-up with an appealing vein of dark comedy. Although the movie loses its edge as it reaches the final third, it remains a distinctive, intriguing exploration of the dynamics of horror.
At the end of a month in which Britain has been plagued by sub-zero temperatures, Whiteout (Optimum) is timely if nothing else! Kate Beckinsale stars as Carrie Stetko, a US Marshall who is struggling to conquer her demons whilst stationed at a desolate military base in the Antarctic. Three days before she is due to fly back to the United States, the discovery of a dead research scientist throws the base into chaos, and Carrie is forced to investigate.
Despite a handful of interesting set-pieces -not least a blizzard-wracked fight scene towards the end of the movie -everyone seems numbed by the cold, making for a suspiciously low-key adventure. Coming after the labyrinthine conspiracy theories generated by hit TV show ‘Lost’ the deserted bunkers and crashed plane full of secrets feel decidedly lame. Despite a neat premise, the meandering pace renders Whiteout curiously underwhelming, and very difficult to recommend. With boring characters, sloppy plotting and weak twists, Whiteout is a desperately average piece of work.
Another week goes by, and another one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite movies rears its ugly head. This week it’s the turn of Hannie Caulder (Odeon) -the notorious rape-revenge Western that influenced Kill Bill. When her husband is murdered by a posse of vicious bank-robbers -who subsequently turn their degenerate attentions towards her -Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch) persuades enigmatic gunslinger Thomas Price (Robert Culp) to teach her how to shoot, so that she can track down her attackers and wreak revenge.
The radiant Welch makes for an engaging focal point throughout, but her steely-eyed determination is at odds with the comic behaviour of the Stooge-like villains lead by Ernest Borgnine. Despite sporadic smatterings of snappy dialogue and regular splatterings of bloodshed, Hannie Caulder is a weirdly half-baked affair. The fact that it veers between slapstick, smut and existential angst undermines its poise somewhat, and it never quite rises above the B-movie benchmark. Any cult cinema fans with a hankering for some QT-endorsed exploitation should make a bee-line towards Hannie Caulder. Casual fans should just stick to Kill Bill
- Interview: Billy O’Brien and William Todd-Jones - March 2, 2017
- The Childhood of a Leader: the birth of a terrifying ego - February 10, 2017
- Hold your breath: Don’t Breathe, and more reviews - January 26, 2017
