Greatest Living Filmmakers: A Personal Top 5

Having recently rewatched my collection of David Lynch movies, I started to wonder who, alongside the great man himself, would make it into my top 5 greatest living directors working today. Whittling the names down was tough (The Coens, Coppala, Scorsese, Cameron, Godard), but here is my list in no particular order of the filmmakers that are still (almost) incapable of creating a dud.

Woody Allen

Having made almost a film a year since 1969, Woody is by far one of the most prolific filmmakers working today. Responsible for my favourite film of all time (Annie Hall) and loads more that easily make my top 20 (Manhattan, Love and Death, Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Match Point) Woody Allen has written some of the greatest lines heard in some of the greatest films of all time. Simply put: my favourite filmmaker of all time.

Quentin Tarantino

Before I met Annie Hall, there was Pulp Fiction. Unlike any film I had seen before, it was the movie that made me want a career in celluloid. He may have missed the mark by some way with Death Proof, but by taking his time (6 films in 19 years) he has managed to shape popular culture with his razor sharp dialogue, memorable set pieces and awesome soundtracks. One of the best of my lifetime.

Gaspar Noe

Creating horror without actually having made a "horror film" Noe has been responsible for creating some of most shocking images ever seen on the big screen with only 3 films. His first film, I Stand Alone, had a 30 second break that warned people what was following was shocking and that they should leave the cinema if they felt vulnerable. His shocking follow up Irreversible wasn't that kind and left Cannes shaken as 200 walked out and 3 had to be carried. His latest, Enter The Void, is a sprawling vision far too complex to be summed up here. Evoking feelings that run way deeper than anyting Hostel or Saw could dream of, Gaspar Noe has a visual style and ethos that make him one of the most exciting, disturbingly brilliant filmmakers working today. 

David Lynch

Where better to pick up from 'disturbingly brilliant' than David Lynch. Creator of Twin Peaks, Lynch has managed to bring dreams to screens everywhere since his warped maiden voyage, Eraserhead. His other surreal highlights include Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive  and Inland Empire. Whether it be that thing behind the dumpster or that room full of bunnies, Lynch knows exactly how to get under our skin in the strangest of ways. By peeling back the skin of the suburbia and showing us the bugs that crawl beneath, he makes a convincing argument that we may be living in a place more terrifying than anything in our nightmares. Don't eat cheese before bed, just watch Lynch.

Park Chan-Wook

The South Korean master of revenge Park Chan-wook has made some of the best films to come of out of Asia in the last 20 years. Rivaling the work of Takeshi Miike for sheer gut-punch nastiness, Chan-wook's visual flair, plot twists and Almodovar-esque puzzlebox structures have made for essential viewing. His best known work include Joint Security Area, Thirst and for my money, one of the great film trilogies of all time, 'The Vengence Trilogy'. Made up of three films unconnected by plot but united by the revenge theme, this trilogy is comprised of Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. His next film, Stoker,  is his first in the english language and is suprisingly written by Wentworth Miller. Yep, him off Prison Break.

Film4 Frightfest 2011 - Total Film Icon with Larry Fessenden and the Horror Panel Discussion

 

This years Total Film Icon interview was director/producer/actor Larry Fessenden. Never heard of him? Neither had I. But after hearing him talk, I’ll soon be searching for his four feature films No Telling, Habit, Wendigo and The Last Winter.

He spoke of his passion for movies, his hatred of remakes and nasty franchises like Saw as well as the trials and tribulations he had when attempting to get films made, especially his remake of The Orphanage. Issues such as Del Toro’s insistence on building sets and Kate Winslet pulling out as she didn’t want to play another depressing character resulted in him losing the project and judging by his passion and excitement in describing how he would have done things, its both our loss and his. He described his role as a producer as ‘to protect the director’s agenda and fight against the executives who normally have pea-sized brains’. We would later see this in action in Ti West’s The Innkeepers, a film Fessenden produced.

This talk was followed by a horror panel discussion with Larry, Ti West (The House of the Devil), Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2), Adam Green (Hatchet) and Lucky McGee (The Woman) and his producer on The Woman, Adam van den Houten. The crux of the conversation was the sorry state that American horror is in due to the endless conveyor belt of studio led remakes, sequels and prequels. Green expressed his anger at fans that pay money to see the trash only to then slag it off when they could be supporting independent visions. He also told a story about a producer who put forward the idea of ‘a scary stove’ when he was in charge of Cabin Fever 2, a job that eventually fell in the lap of Ti West. West also expressed his dismay at how he was treated in the post-production of that film as well as telling the Frightfesters to use social media to spread the right messages about what should be scaring us at the cinema. Lucky McGee put forward the idea of rather than commissioning sequels and remaking classics, the studios should re-mastering and re-release them. An idea that went down well in Screen 1.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the talk was Total Film interviewer Jamie Graham admitting the greatest regret of his career was not walking out of a Michael Bay interview when Bay told him ‘Have you seen the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It really doesn’t hold up well’. A remark that is likely to see Bay lynched if he ever dared to come near any Frightfest event in the future.  

Film4 Frightfest 2011 - The Holding Review

After traffic kept me out of the first screening of Day 2, Rogue River, and my intended discovery screen film, A Horrible Way to Die, sold out, I was left in Screen 1, watching Emmerdale collide with The Stepfather in Susan Jacobson’s The Holding.

The film opens in frantic fashion with mother of two Cassie Naylor (Kierston Wareing) frantically burying the corpse of her husband Dean. Flash-forward eight months and Cassie is struggling to pay the bills for her cattle holding and fend off the unwelcome advances of her country bumpkin neighbours. Welcome to the stage Aden (Vincent Regan), a charmer claiming to be an old friend of Deans who soon finds himself slotting into the Naylor family, whether they like it or not.

The film looks great, not so much due to the Jacobson’s talent but rather than spectacular natural scenery of its Peak District setting and among the solid cast, Regan stands out with a perfectly menacing performance as a sweet-talker with a glint in his eye all too capable of melting into a glare. As soon as handsome stranger Aden walks onto the farm you pretty much know where the rest of the film is going. As Roger Ebert has said of his type ‘He's one of those guys with a bland smile and a voice so nice and sweet that right away you know he's twisted.’ In the movies, if ever a single mum finds a perfect man with shimmering abs, he’s usually a serial killer (The Stepfather), a vampire (Fright Night) or Jerry Maguire (Jerry Maguire). If horror movies tell us anything, it’s that as soon as that divorce is finalised, mum’s sense of judgement tends to go out of the window.

In a predictable film that unfortunately brings not much new to the table, a strange subplot involving the youngest daughter Amy (Maisie Lloyd) being obsessed with the bible is painfully neglected. In the Q & A after the film, the writer revealed that the initial script was much more supernatural, with Aden taking a more ambiguous existence, and Amy’s religious ramblings were a part of this initial draft. They kept her stuff in the final version as they ‘liked it’. Unfortunately, liking it doesn’t really justify keeping it in and despite it being the most interesting part of the film, it builds to nothing and feels (as it clearly was) like something from a different, far better film.

Whilst The Holding looks good with impressive acting and a few early twists and turns, it quickly turns into a story already done to death. Jacobson does throw in an out of place explosion in the final ‘sisters doing it for themselves’ third but it can’t save The Holding from being not bad, not good, just a film as formulaic as they come.

Film4 Frightfest 2011 - The Theatre Bizarre Review

And so the opening night of Frightfest 2011 came to a close with an anthology film called The Theatre Bizarre. Featuring stories directed by Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Tom Savini and Richard Stanley, The Theatre Bizarre like most anthology movies is a mixed bag with some good, some bad and some very ugly. After the first bookend piece introduced a girl wandering into a strange theatre full of seemingly paper mache audience members, a strangely powdered meat puppet played by Udo Kier entered the stage and introduced the first film – Richard Stanley’s Mother of Toads.

Mother of Toads (Richard Stanley)

Mother of Toads. Just say the name to yourself. Somewhere at sometime, a great movie is destined to team up with this awesome title. Unfortunately, just saying Mother of Toads is a million times more interesting than actually watching this opening short. The film surrounds the story of an old woman who tells a young couple the tale of the mother of toads, giving them a rare book featuring the story. The man then tracks down the old woman, entering her home and sleeping with her. The rest is entirely predictable (guess who the old woman actually is), the actors have about as much charisma and energy of a skid-mark and I’ve never seen someone suck all the impact out of an expensive ‘Mother Toad’ suit just by wearing it. Stanley directs his segment with all the skill and verve of a baked potato and when his film is lagging, as it does for most of its running time, he throws in a few arse-shots of the man’s girlfriend in a swimming pool. Why? Who knows? Aside from a brilliant ‘morning after’ shot that is obliviously played straight when it should have actually gone for laughs, Mother of Toads is a train wreck. A limp, dull short that feels long with no story, no flair, nothing of interest and without any tone or atmosphere, Mother of Toads is just plain bad despite the potential for amusing strangeness. The worst short of the lot, it could only get better.

I Love You (Buddy Giovinazzo)

Up next was I Love You, one of the more unconventional love stories of the night. The film stars Susan Anbeh as a wife telling her husband, Andre Hennicke, that their marriage is over. She has met someone else who is currently waiting in a car outside ready to whisk her away to her new and improved life. Hennicke shines in this piece and the moment that he asks for a more in-depth explanation into the demise of his marriage results in one of the best moments in the entire film. The line between comedy and tragedy has never seemed finer and Giovinazzo takes pleasure in slipping from one tone to the other. With a gruesome twist providing a neat ending, I Love You helped ease the pain inflicted by the toad and proved to be one of the best shorts of the film.

Wet Dreams (Tom Savini)

Savini’s tale is arguably the most complex as a couple battle it out in their dreams, dishing out gory and brutal punishments for each other; it’s the Inception of the group. After a brilliant opening establishes some of the man’s sexual insecurities, the film slowly descends into the doldrums as Savini struggles to capitalise on what could have been a really interesting idea. The dream-within-a-dream structure quickly becomes tiresome but fortunately a grim final act of vengeance pulls the film back up to the high standards of the opening. Not the best of the bunch by some way, but Mother of Toads it ain’t.

The Accident (Douglas Buck)

Douglas Buck created The Accident, the fourth and by far the best segment in the anthology. A bedtime conversation sees a mother explains to her daughter the idea of death, a concept that seems to have smashed its way into the child’s psyche due to an earlier accident that left a deer blankly gazing at her through the car window. This story features hardly any blood, guts or gore but is so much more haunting than anything else seen in The Theatre Bizarre. The image of the deer haunts us just as much as it does the little girl and aside from this truly unsettling dreamlike apparition, the mother’s words prove to be extremely consoling and moving. As it stands, The Accident is the best story of the film and one of the best things seen in the entire festival. Both powerful in its ability to haunt, move and engage with the life-changing moment that is our first confrontation with the idea of death, The Accident would be an award winner if it travelled as a stand alone short. This makes it all the more sad that it is likely to be remembered as ‘that good bit in The Theatre Bizarre’.

Vision Stains (Karim Hussain)

Someone had to follow it and that task fell in the lap of Karim Hussain with Vision Stains. The story follows a woman who kills people but not before extracting the fluid from their eyes via a needle and injecting it into hers, allowing her to see their lives flash before her eyes. Addicted to the stories of others, she writes down everything that she sees. One of the more gritty tales in the collection, this film struck a chord with me in particular due to my struggles with any up close eye action on a cinema screen. (Final Destination 5 also hit this nerve). With several nasty, close up eye injections and extractions, Vision Staines is initially a tough watch. However, there really is only so many times you can see a needle going into an eye and react to it and unfortunately it happens so many times in the film that by the end it completely fails to pack a punch. Combine this with the irritating voiceover of the main character and a ‘story’ that’s paper-thin,  Vision Staines ends up as merely an icky concept that runs out of steam, fast. Something that shouldn’t happen in any film, let alone a short one.  

Sweets (David Gregory)

Despite being one of the most visually interesting and well filmed pieces in The Theatre Bizarre, Gregory’s Sweets ends up biting off more than it can chew. There isn’t much of a story here aside from a girl who enjoys feeding her boyfriend all sorts of sickly sweets. With enough disgusting imagery of food on show to ruin an appetite for days, Sweets does succeed in its primary aim of revolting. However, it gets old fast and those looking for a truly interesting, scary and vom-inducing take on the subject of feeders should check out Brett Leonard’s Feed (2005) rather than stay and witness this disappointing final chapter of the anthology.

As the wrap-around cemented its position as being both dull and pointless, The Theatre Bizarre remained a bag mixed with more bad than good. Whilst I Love You is a funny and interesting short and the must-see The Accident is worth skipping to,  the rest are a muddled bunch of interesting concepts generally poorly executed. Except Mother of Toads, a short that even a toad with breasts couldn’t save.

Film4 Frightfest 2011 - Final Destination 5 (3D) Review

Final Destination 5 didn’t bode well when announced as the film following Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark on the opening night of Frightfest 2011. The previous instalment The Final Destination (2009) proved to be both a lie and completely terrible. The ‘3D’ tag, as it always should do, lowered expectations rather than raising them. And it’s a fifth instalment in a horror franchise – see Friday 13^th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) and Saw V (2008) for reasons as to why this is never normally a good thing. Lucky for us then that Final Destination 5 (3D) proved to be arguably the best in the series so far and one of the most well-received films of the entire festival.

Directed by Steven Quale, second unit director on Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009) (and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000) but the less said about that, the better), Final Destination 5 once again takes the formula of the franchise (attractive teens cheat death before death comes back to get them one by one) but spices it up by introducing the idea that the teens can kill someone else who will then take their place in death thus sparing them a grizzly end.

So the disaster. So far we’ve had a plane explosion, a motorway pile up, a rollercoaster derail, and a crash at a speedway. This time its a bridge collapse and its the best opening to one of these films so far (and the ending is sure to please anyone who has followed the franchise from the off). The explosive premonition makes great use of the 3D and even rivals the spectacular train crash in Super 8 (2011) for sheer wow factor. Alongside this moment of destruction, the 3D in the film is actually worthwhile, never overly darkening the action and the opening credits sequence makes for the best use of 3D I’ve seen in a film alongside the slow-mo sequences in Jackass 3D (2010).

The film is consistently funny, the deaths always surprising and inventive with one set at a gymnastics try-out ranking as one of the best ‘meeting-your-maker’ moments ever seen in a Final Destination movie. The only worry in terms of how much this film surprised and entertained me comes with regard to the audience. I watched this with a Frightfest crowd who laughed on cue, applauded every death scene (almost giving the gym one a standing ovation) and gave the film a perfect atmosphere. Whether Final Destination 5 will be half as effective in a cinema full of chavs, mobile phones and talkers remains to be seen.

A horror panel discussion later in the festival saw directors Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Lucky McGee, Larry Fessenden, Ti West and Andrew van den Houten agree on how remakes, sequels and prequels tend to be on the whole bad and how irritating it is to see people pay money to see them, only to then slag them off when to actually stop the buggers getting made, you need to avoid giving them any money at all. Luckily no one pointed out to them that up to that point, the film that had got the best reception was a 5^th instalment of a franchise as formulaic as they come. Oh, and it was in 3D.

And that’s why Final Destination 5 stood out as one of the best of the festival. In an age where every other film is a bad remake or sequel, Steven Quale has managed to make a film so funny, so surprising and so purely entertaining that it provides some hope enough to remind us that in the right hands, even the most tired of formulas can be resurrected into something worth watching. 

Having said that, is it enough to make anyone hopeful about the upcoming The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D?.

 No.