The Cutprice Guignol

Now, of the Big Three of Horror- Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and this- Friday the Thirteenth is by far my favourite.

Why? Specifically, I could tell you. Sean S. Cunningham (or S.S. Cunningham as I like to call him-get it? Hur hur.) isn’t the most superbly gifted of directors, but there’s somethign innatley charming about his pretty neo-conservative fumble into the Dead Teenagers category.

And there it is: why FT13 is one of the most influential horror films ever. It really kicked off that idea of teenagers rolling around in debauchery, rubbing themselves up on one another with a bong dangling out their back pocket and, hell, I don’t know, a bikini in clashing colours. Basically, the wildest bastards you could imagine, the type of teenagers who really barely exist in the real world (and, when you meet them, what ragingly awful wanks they are), and THEY’RE GETTING MURDERED! Is there anything more life-afirmingly brilliant than that?

The scares are moderatley scary, the sex is moderatley sexy, the plot is moderatley….plot-ty. Essentially, it’s overall an average film-surprisingly good at ratcheting up the tension to truly unbearable levels- with a really good ending and lots of campy campfire fun in between. It’s delightfully cheap in the way it approaches horror-not as something to be revered and tiptoed around, but as something that should be cheap, shocking, gory and gross. Hence why I’ll always be setting sail on the S.S. Cunningham. No, not light that. Urgh.

The Great Gatsby is a novel all about style over substance. A novel about the power of suggestion of class and style, with the roaring twenties fashion of the time taking precedence over all the decadence and pretty little fools of the story.

First off, you’ve got the divine Carrie Mulligan as Daisy “Pretty Little Fool” Buchanan, dressed up to the languid nines in every scene. She represents one side of the female fashion in the movie, all lashings of jewellery, gorgeous, quirky headbands and pastel-coloured this and that. It’s all about her beautiful, delicate and equally awful nature of her character-the flapper dress particularly, with the soft tones complementing Mulligan’s English-rose complexion and general air of knowing vulnerability. It’s one of those styles that looks better the more you do with it; just sitting around in a flapper dress does make one feel perhaps less Daisy Buchanan and more I-came-to-the-party-in-a-sack.

Fighting the other corner for the feminine fashion in Gatsby is Christina Debicki, co-starring as the wonderfully cynical golfer Jordan Baker. She represents a somehow more androgynous yet equally feminine style; ballsy, yet clever in a raised-eyebrow-and-scotch kind of way. She’s definitely the character I’d be most inclined to model myself on, both in style and standards. She also seems to have somewhat of a penchant for veiled headpieces, which I can simply see not one thing wrong with.

Then you’ve got the men-oh, the men, from an almost saccharine Toby Maguire looking like a trembling fawn taking it’s first steps in loungewear to Leo DiCaprio looking like the proud daddy who’s showing him how. All beautifully cut suits, clean lines, little bow ties and luscious tweed, there’s not much to be said about it other than fifty points to the first woman who can convince her boyfriend to dress like that 24/7.

In short, the glorious Gatsby adaption perfectly captures the feeling of the novel-that sublime notion of decadence, languorous natures and the tragedy of Gatsby himself. And it’s thrown us all into a flux of wanting to dress like a lady golfer from the 1920s. But then, what’s new?

There’ll be no beating around the bush here. No skirting the issue. No dodging the bullet. No dancing round the point. No talking around the real conversation. No literary procrastination. No tantric writing. No humming and hawing. No passing the buck. No bollocking on about nothing in particular. No pussyfooting. No waffling. No previcating.

I LOVE Gremlins.

Joe Dante’s surreal, touching and wildly entertaining movie lands in a rare and prized area of the horror genre; a family horror film. It matches wierd-looking but ultimately not TOO terrifying creatures with black-as-night humour and ridiculously fun action sequences. And probably the cutest protagonist ever (no, not a wide-eyed and goofy Zach Galligan-Gizmo, the unbelievably adorable Mogwai who I utterly and totally want as my own).

It mixes a Twilight-Zone-y premise with a small-town Christmas setting, and doesn’t once let up the barrage of jokes and sequences of the Gremlins running amok throughout the town (for such a light film, they do seem to murder an awful lot of people in incredibly violent ways). There’s also this scene in which a Gremlin puts some popcorn packets over his ears and does a little dance for a fraction of a second; I truly believe this to be one of the, if not the, funniest moment in cinema history. The first time I saw it, I was very nearly sick with laughter.

Add to that one of the catchiest film scores not written by John Williams, Dante’s madcap direction, and a cast who look like they’ve never had more fun in their life, and you’ve got one of the finest films to toe the scary/witty lines in all of silver-screen history.

Choose life. Choose a fucking big television. Choose to watch more films directed by me, Danny Boyle, etc etc. No, really, Trainspotting’s brilliant.

First off, you have the source material; that searingly witty, brilliantly dark Irvine Welsh novel that just spits at you as you turn the page. Packed with emminently cinematic characters, there’s no way someone wasn’t going to adapt it at some point. Terrific stuff.

Then, that music-right from the borderline criminally fun Lust for Life opening scenes, to Blondie (who were the first band I ever saw live, fact fans) crooning about being radioactive or whatnot. In a very Tarantino-ish move, Boyle wove songs that should have no right to work into scenes they have no right to work in-the overdose/Lou Reed’s Perfect Day scene lollops into mind.

Then, those performances. First off, you’ve got a sterling Euan McGregor as Renton-the sad, slightly bitter, ultimatley unlucky hero of the piece. But he’s backed by scores of other brilliant characters. Johnny Lee Miller as one of my ultimate movie crushes, Sick Boy, knocks it into the stratosphere with his sleazy, witty charm and mismatching eyebrows, while his foil, a bumbling Euan Bremner, staggers around screwing up job interviews and generally being the most lovable heroin addict ever. Then there’s the supporting cast; a gorgeous Kelly Macdonald playing someone far too young to be called gorgeous by a legal adult, and the simply electric Robert Carlyle as Begbie. A sickeningly cruel wide boy with a penchant for the kind of arrogant violence this kind of group is all too privy to, he’s scary, cruel and simply one of the best on-screen characters ever.

So, aye. Trainspotting.

Shudder. Retch. Save me from myself. Yes, it’s time to tackle to colossal titan of a blockbuster that was this summer’s Man of Steel.

Right off the bat, Superman is a boring superhero. He’s the ultimate good guy- no layers, no facets, no deeper meaning, no dead parents, no fear of flying rodents. Swooningly handsome and donning the stupidest outfit I’ve seen in yonks (trying to make the ridiculous rubbishness of the original outfit better by “modernising” it just drew attention to the fact it’s still just as bloody ridiculous), the Man of Steel was already manging to do the opposite of piqueing my interest.

Then there was the actual plot. Granted, I fell asleep four times in the cinema when I went to see this with my consort (apparently, at one point, I woke up, took in the wildly stupid goings-on onscreen, laughed once, then dozed off again), but Chrsit almighty. Aside from demolishing practically an entire city, the plot was dizzily all over the place, bouncing around girtty pathos and big silly fight scenes. And I will stand by my defense that Superman ALWAYS looks a bit daft when he’s flying around.

And this brings me to my main point. This movie took itself far too bloody seriously. Much as I thought Michael Shannon was slightly brilliant as Zod and everyone else seemed to WANT to have fun with it, the movie still remained a slightly too po-faced rendition of what is, at the heart of it, a bit of cartoon fun from a long time ago. I can see why one might think a gritty reboot of the Batman franchise might work (more importantly, it actually did), but when someone went “Hey! Wouldn’t it be awesome if we redid the whole Superman series as a deadly serious trudge through moderatley good-looking Americana? We could even have Kevin Costner being nobly killed by a tornado!”, someone should have punched them in the face.

Also, right, there’s a bit towards the end which apparently I was the only one to take issue with where Superman and Zod are battling away on a building or whatnot and Zod snarls with glee “There’s only one way this can end- either you die, or I do!”. That’s TWO WAYS. He presented two seperate options with no equivocation right there in front of Superman. And, frankly, I don’t want the person defending our planet to be devoid of basic literacy skills.