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Quint sees John Rhys-Davies in the NZ horror flick FERRYMAN and Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine in BACKWOODS at FF!!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a couple of Fantastic Fest reviews for ya’. We have a New Zealand horror flick starring John Rhys-Davies and a Spanish thriller starring Paddy Considine and Gary Oldman. Let’s get the Kiwis out of the way first.
THE FERRYMAN
Maybe I’m just getting tired of the modern horror style, but one of the very first things that grabbed me about this film was the way it was shot. After a flashier opening, the movie is done completely old school… like they were editing on film and every single cut was a lot of work, not like they were cutting on a computer where they can throw as many stylistic cuts in as they wanted.
This film felt like a real throwback, something you’d find on video at a mom and pop video store when you were a teenager and eating up every horror flick with a decent video cover.
I’m also a sucker for the sub-genre this film falls under. Going into it, I knew nothing about it other than Sallah was in it and it was a New Zealand horror flick. So, of course I wanted to check it out. I can’t think of a New Zealand horror film I don’t like. THE LOCALS was a little lame, but BLACK SHEEP, BRAINDEAD and now FERRYMAN. They know how to make ‘em.
So the movie is about a group out on a boat sailing from New Zealand to Fiji. Three couples… a Kiwi couple, the Fiji driver and his Kiwi wife and an American couple. They run across an SOS and rescue John Rhys-Davies from a rundown ship.
The subgenre I was talking about above is the body jumping subgenre. Stuff like FALLEN, for instance. I didn’t have any idea that this film fell under that subgenre.
Essentially, The Ferryman of the title is a looming threat. He’s not the main villain. The Ferryman takes you to the other side, so when you cheat death you cheat The Ferryman out of his fare and he’ll always try to find you. Our group stumbles across someone who has cheated death for a thousand years and has this creature breathing down his neck, just waiting to finally claim his soul.
It’s not perfect… the American characters sport the most ridiculous Southern accents ever, there are a few moments where they use what I’m assuming are indie NZ band rock songs where they should have really used a good, tense score and there are a few lines that are so on the nose as to be over-the-top, but the good very much outweighs the bad.
Amber Sainsbury is our lead, the innocent girl. She’s a good actress on top of being very beautiful. Tamar Hassan is the Captain of the boat and plays it with such a happy go lucky, gentle giant glee that you can’t help but like him almost immediately.
When all is said and done, it’s not going to change the genre, but it’s a solid addition, one that deserves better than to be lost through the cracks or condemned to direct-to-video land.
THE BACKWOODS
THE BACKWOODS surprised me as well. Once again, it’s a movie that goes for a traditional, non-experimental or non-formulaic genre storytelling method. It’s a traditionally executed film with a strong focus on character.
We have two English couples going out hunting in the woods of Northern Spain. Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine are the men and Virginie Ledoyen and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon are the women.
The guys go out hunting and stumble across a seemingly abandoned building. What they find in there begins a cat & mouse game with some of the countryfolk.
There’s a strong STRAW DOGS feeling to this film. The way it is paced, the situation, the characters… all feel very inspired by Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece. And not in a bad rip-off way, either.
Considine’s character is the closest we get to a direct homage. He’s squeamish, he’s clueless with his hot wife, he’s a little bit of a pussy, but even he has a snapping point. That’s pretty much Dustin Hoffman in STRAW DOGS, but Considine is a talented enough actor to make his character his own.
As always, Oldman’s great. I think that guy knows what he’s doing. I’ll go out on a limb and say I think he might be a really good actor.
Director Koldo Serra made a confident, beautiful throw-back to a more character-driven suspense picture. It looks like a million bucks and just watching Paddy Considine and Gary Oldman play in the same sandbox is worth seeking this out.
Lionsgate has it, supposedly, but they don’t have a release date yet.
I’ve seen a couple more flicks worth writing about, so I’ll get started on reviews for those before my midnight movie.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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No way
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Nice mix of actors, looks like it could be good throwaway fun with a couple of creepy scenes. There is a pizza-face monster man in it though (bit of a worry that).
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That creature does look pretty forgettable, but luckily you don't deal with it in the movie for more than 90 seconds. It's more about the human characters with a little Thing-like question of "what body is hiding the evil."
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Are you kidding?!?! Have you seen "Sid & Nancy", "State of Grace"? The man is an icon - he's a great actor who always makes the characters he plays uniquely his own & is always a treat to watch - one of the great actors. You were kidding, right?
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That's what I like to hear, thanks for the info Quint. I'll be sure to check this one out.
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So is the "Ferryman" JRD? I thought the concept of the ferryman was to get a ride from him from one side to the other. If they pick him up shipwrecked doesn't that break the rules?
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Quint was kidding. Oldman is a genius.
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By your own admission you (whoevers reading this) is a lying, stealing, blasmephous, adulteress at heart and you will have to face god on judgement day. If you dont have jesus in your life you will be send to hell. One big difference between christianity and the rest, its grace through faith (NOT WORKS). Google video search the ark, ITS THERE FOLKS, up on a mountain where the bible said it was, EXACT cubic measurements, the turkish govt even built a memorial visitor center around it. Google video search red sea chariots, there there, 17 century with thier wheels broken, JUST LIKE WHAT THE BIBLE SAID. Sodom and gomorreah, huge sulfuric balls, millions, at the sight. THEN go research evolution, nothing will open your eyes up when you see that its a joke and that carbon dating is a joke, if dinosaurs did exist millions of years ago why do we have chunks of flesh from t-rex, folks its impossible, it would be fossilized. YOU ONLY HAVE ONE SHOT AT THIS FOLKS> and jesus loves you.
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*You* go first!
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at house, can't wait to watch it. Hope I don't agree with quint.
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I'm in, that's all there is to it.
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But I haven't watched it yet.
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Saw it a few weeks ago, this thing screams DTV. The concept seems quite nice at first and some scenes work disturbingly well like the switch to a female body and the following conversation and not to forget the dog scenes that got me but most of the overacting and unimpressive direction made this pretty annoying to sit through. The ferryman himself wasn't that much of a revelation and that running out time concept didn't work that well either.
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Piss off!
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god it was awful; and it kills me to say so as I'm a huge Oldman fan but c'mon it was terrible.
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Sep 22, 2007 5:22:14 AM CDT
I will never forget "Rys-Davies will eat a phone book."
by daddylonghead
That was one of the all-time funniest things I have ever read on AICN, and for me is now indelibly associated with Rhys-Davies...I don't remember what the movie was, but it was a stinker, and Quint was commenting on Rhys-Davies being in it, and said "Rhys-Davies would eat a phonebook if you paid him." That still cracks me up, years later.
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...will release Backwoods ASAP. I'm waiting for this one for a looong time. And Quint: "Gary Oldman might be a good actor..."??? Watch "The Contender", right now!
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SO MUCH latent homosexuality in your post, Repent. You're going to hell for sure.
And I agree wit -
h your obviously sarcastic understatement Quint. Gary Oldman is fucking great!
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... suck on my huge sulphuric balls.
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Oldman v Considine its like Ali v Frazer. should be good then
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its like Ali v Frazer. should be good then
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I've watched it in Spain some months ago. I think it's a good movie, maybe not as much as its references (Deliverance and Straw Dogs) but it works, the characters are good and you can feel the situation in your own body.
I think Koldo Serra will give us great movies in the future.
www.cinemavip.com -
Hilarious, and so very, very true.
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Anyone know when or if Into the Wild is going to be released nation wide? I live in Seattle and it's not playing anywhere. You'd think a movie like this was tailor made for Seattle , WTF?
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...a phone book.
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Oh, yeah. That proves something. Not.Apologetics is for those with shakey beliefs. Faith doesn't require tangible confirmation. Quantifiable evidence is sort of beside the point.
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EEEEEEEEEVEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRYYYYYYYY OOOOOOOOOONNNNEEEEEEEEEEE
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This is reputedly a very powerful website, though I think there is not much one can do to derail a corporate children’s film; the kids are at the mercy if the adults who decide that the film is suitable for their offspring and get dragged to mediocre garbage all the time. But SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE.
I haven’t seen any news on AICN about the trailer for The Dark is Rising. Suffice to say that there are sloppy adaptations, incomplete adaptations and then there are adaptations are that evil, immoral, corrupted. TDIR is the latter. Susan Cooper’s glorious pre-Christian epic has been delivered into the claws of Walden media, into the hands of some foul Christian fundamentalist film-maker, into the putrid corporate magical tripe of yet another ‘world beyond your imagination’ those worlds so small, so tacky and empty of all mystical or spiritual feeling.
Someone commenting on the film has remarked that ‘as a fantasy film, it has not historical context’. That, in a nutshell, encapsulates everything stupid, ignorant and ridiculous about the corporate American attitude to fantasy; everything that these vapid suburbanites can’t grasp about the world of myth, everything that separates the glory of The Lord of the Rings (thank you New Zealanders and Brits) from the lustreless, ugly trash of The Lion The Witch and Wardrobe (thank you corporate America and Walden media). If you think that there was any similarity between those two films then I can’t begin to describe what lack of sensitivity you display.
And The Dark is Rising is many hundreds of steps lower down the ladder than the Lewis adaptation. The Dark is Rising has been stripped of its Arthurian myths, emptied of its Celtic content; no Mabinogion for the children; why should they be taught about the ancient roots of their own civilisation? Why not substitute something warm and air-conditioned and dry; something with a plastic Jesus at the center that smells like the inside of a mall?
This film must be destroyed. It’s a violation. It’s evil because it’s ignorant and heartless where it should be richly informed by its source material; a channel for the deep spiritual history of Britain and Ireland, not a soapbox for a synthetic, factory-farmed faith fifty years old. I urge AICN to do all it can to torpedo this monstrosity and not to let it ride in on the coattails of Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. Do not let kids see this film.
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Eat the shit, it's warm and it's not so bad after the first three mouthfuls.
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those are fine books; my niece and nephew have been reading Lloyd Alexander and I was going to give them the Dark is Rising books next.
Looking at the movie's wikipedia entry, I see that the protagonist has been taken past puberty and given a love interest, turned into an American, there have been action sequences added as well as a school bullying subplot... I don't doubt for a moment that it's also been butchered into a goddamned christian parable, but where did you hear that? Any details would be welcome.
BTW, Sepulchrave, I am a big Peake fan & even have a Peake illo (from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner) on my arm... http://tinyurl.com/2ujezb. Did you ever see the BBC adaptation of Gormenghast? I have not, but heard it (understandably) fell short.
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