Camp Crystal Lake reopens 20 years after the tragic death of young Jason Vorhees and no one is safe from the ingenious butchery. There's no hip hockey mask and few cute one-liners—just a catalogue of slaughter and a neat double-twist ending as director Sean Cunningham attempted to replicate the success of John Carpenter's Halloween.
Generally hailed as Renoir's 'unfinished masterpiece', this sad, lyrical short from 1946 is based on a Guy de Maupassant story. A young girl finds a quasi-romance after wandering off from her picnicking family near the Seine. It's all about Renoir's impressionistic eye for nature and the transience of innocence: a personal, poetic work which now, extended, looks better than ever.
Buckling under the weight of expectation inherent in all 'New Latin Cinema' (this isn't City Of God), El Crimen still has another deft performance from movement poster-boy Gael García Bernal as the eponymous priest in forbidden lust scandal. The film also has a keen eye for the ritualised sexualisation at the heart of Catholicism (the Virgin Mary, the semi-naked Christ etc). Familiar, but intriguing.
The versatile Stephen Frears merits much praise for presenting a side of London life which is usually swept under rugs. Illegal immigrants work demeaning jobs round the clock to stay afloat, and are routinely exploited—right down to their internal organs. The heroic Chiwetel Ejiofor and an arguably miscast Audrey Tautou lead this worthy, intriguing drama with a macabre twist.
This strange, haunting film follows a middle-aged man who arrives in a remote Mexican village where he plans to commit suicide. Heavily indebted to Tarkovsky, the film strains for arthouse credibility with pretentious religious symbolism and achingly slow pace. Still much of the imagery is arresting, and its glimpses of rural life are raw and underpinned by an earthy comedy.
Terry Gilliam's epic 1991 fable has both admirers and detractors: it now seems ambitious, unique and charming. The superb Jeff Bridges is a burned-out DJ who's at first irritated then revitalised by oddball visionary tramp Robin Williams and his hallucinatory Arthurian quests. The latter's hyper-babbling (like the director's flourishes) holds because Bridges is so magnificently solid and believable.
Burr Steers' debut as writer-director is perhaps a little too self-consciously off-kilter, but the film's humour is satisfyingly sour and the performances of a large ensemble cast are impeccable. Pitched somewhere between the macabre and the merely eccentric, Igby stars a convincingly debauched Kieran Culkin as the film's eponymous rebellious teen.
This sequel to 2001's The Fast And The Furious delivers the same brand of out-and-out nonsense as the first instalment without ever pausing to miss Vin Diesel or Rob Cohen, the breakthrough star/director combo who went on to deliver the less entertaining XXX. Shaft director John Singleton is on hand to whip up some hip hop flavour. Enjoyably brain-dead tripe.
