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THE TAQWACORES - REVIEW 02
This was 83 minutes of absolute dribble. Nice idea, Bad execution.
RATING - 1/5
GORDON ARMSTRONG
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THE TAQWACORES - REVIEW 01
While “Essential Killing” benefited from the big screen, “The Taqwacores” certainly did not. I would have enjoyed this movie more if I’d been watching at home with friends and been able to talk and joke over the top. It did make me laugh, but this wasn’t enough to alleviate the over-earnest plot. It had many of the flaws of “SLC Punk” but in the end was not nearly as good.
I hope this film finds its audience: teenagers looking for an accessible way to explore some important themes, however clumsily handled. But I also hope they cringe at the skate boarding sequence as much as I did. All this said any film featuring a Propaghandi shirt and Bad Brains’ “Big Takeover” gets a bonus point from me.
RATING - 1/5
BEN JENKINS
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ESSENTIAL KILLING - REVIEW 02
Vincent Gallo, through a series of faintly unbelievable coincidences, breaks loose from captors in an unknown frozen land with two armies after him, no supplies and unable to communicate. Things look pretty futile to say the least. In a similar manor to movies I’d seen at this festival previously, “Che” parts one and two and “Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man”, the pacing and turned up diegetics sharply put you in the shoes of the guerrilla. Finding himself unprepared and alone, this film’s protagonist was far more desperate and anguished than those of the above and credit is due for expressing that effectively. I was a bit unsure about the Native American sounding score however (please do correct me here).
I don’t want to give too much away about the opening but I felt that much of the behaviour of the Americans and the anonymous protagonist was added to mitigate, or at least muddle, our perceptions of the prisoners’ guilt. With a basic knowledge of what goes on in Afghanistan I found this both heavy handed and unnecessary. More could have been made of their limited perspective, further emphasising the confusion he would have felt. On the subject of Gallo, while he was excellent, I was uncomfortable. In failing to cast a lead of Central Asian descent I worry the film stepped back a few decades.
One more thing; the cinematography was beautiful. Never before have I been treated to the site of freshly fallen snow in such subtle detail; worth trying to catch this on the big screen for that reason alone.
RATING - 3/5
BEN JENKINS
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ESSENTIAL KILLING - REVIEW 01
This film is simply Vincent Gallo running around a snow covered Eastern European woods playing a Muslim Rambo, with a sour taste of milk in his mouth. Another pint of this please!
RATING - 4.5/5
GORDON ARMSTRONG
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KILL THE MOONLIGHT - REVIEW 03
There’s hardly any reviews online of this gem and good luck with finding a trailer. You truely have to take our word for it but ‘KILL THE MOONLIGHT’ is one of the best FORGOTTEN 90s Independent GRUNGE movies of all time.
Give ‘Chance’ a chance!
RATING - 4/5
GORDON ARMSTRONG
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STREET TRASH - REVIEW 02
Although this film presented me with a game of ‘piggy-in-the-middle’ with a severed dick between a bunch of homeless bums; hints of necrophilia; plenty of one liners; a cameo from Tony Darrow (The Sopranos); an exploding fat guy and some rather nice camera work, I was kind of left feeling like I wanted more. It dubs itself as ‘The Ultimate Melt Movie’ but I thought I deserved more ‘MELT’ for my money. The ebay purchase of the VHS wasn’t cheap.
RATING - 3/5
GORDON ARMSTRONG
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KILL THE MOONLIGHT - REVIEW 02
If I had to sum up ‘Kill the Moonlight’ in one word, it would almost certainly be ‘GRUNGE’. Unfortunately I have to come up with at least 9 other words to fill the minimum requirement for this blog, so I figured I might as well go the whole hog and try and offer something more.
I didn’t go into this movie with high expectations, mostly because of my automatic distrust of anything involving, or associated with, the words ‘art house’. However my unadulterated love of toxic waste got the better of me once again and I soon found myself joining the Knights with my popcorn, and my egg, to watch this week’s instalment. It’s a slow starter, and I have to admit I was minutes away from carrying out the first ever Film Knights WALK OUT (which, I’m told, is ‘frowned upon’). However, before long the lead male (‘Chance’) was called to clean up a chlorine spill, and I knew things were about to get interesting. Unfortunately… I was wrong. Despite Chance taking his helmet off during the clean-up and breathing in what must have been a fair old whack of the fumes, this was the only incidence of anything to do with toxic waste, or its effects on the human body, in the entire movie. Unless of course you count the slight cough that Chase was suffering from throughout the rest of the feature which, if you ask me, was nothing more than a toxic prick-tease. Usually, the realisation that there weren’t going to be any mutants or further toxic spills would have been enough to make me leave, but I soon found myself caught up in the allure of Kill The Moonlight’s absurd eccentricities that kept me sitting there till not only the end of the movie, but the end of the interview with the director that followed. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the directors ‘semi-biographical’ Chase is in fact a complete moron, but a combination of his utterly incredible dress sense and his almost super human ability for one liners (e.g. “I’ll take a hundred dollars”) kept me coming back for more, as well as obviously identifying with the guy. On top of this, not since Anvil have I seen such whole hearted, unquestionable and downright unfathomable devotion in an individual who will literally stop at nothing to achieve their goal. While Chase’s ambition of getting enough money to fix his racing car for the big race might lack some of the stadium rock ambition of Anvil, it still inspired that same ‘good god I hope he does this’ feeling in me that will automatically make any lead character a hero in my eyes.
Chance aside, to me this movie was a bit like Simon Cowell, in the sense that every single thing I could possibly think of being wrong with it, was wrong with it, but I still loved it with all my heart. Oh, and there should have been more norks.
RATING - 4/5
BOBBY SHOEBOTHAM (GUEST KNIGHT)
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KILL THE MOONLIGHT - REVIEW 01
This was my favourite movie of Film-Knights so far, and the best film discovery I’ve made in quite a while. Ethereal voiceovers, sun-drenched shots on cheap stock, deviant humour, grungy outfits, alt-rock, chance meetings, mysticism and pop-culture all compound to prove that “Kill the Moonlight” is the forgotten peer of the likes of “Slacker”, “Clerks” and “Gummo”. The colours, composition and sound were often breathtaking as the antihero experiences fast cars and dirty tricks, romance and heartbreak, meditation and violence. In fairness there are maybe two points where it drags slightly but I believe that’s all part of the relaxing experience of 90s American art-house, where trashy aesthetics drunkenly reign over plots. This movie won’t be to everyone’s taste but if you like the titles above this is for you. I want to watch this beauty again right now but Gordy took the DVD home with him.
RATING - 5/5
BEN JENKINS
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STREET TRASH - REVIEW 01
Misogynist cops, hawkish hookers, indignant doormen, meathead Mafioso*, Vietcong vampires, street punks, schizophrenic ‘Nam vets, gangbanging hobos and a low-life liquor store owner that just won’t give you credit: these many colourful freaks are Brooklyn’s “Street Trash”. The vibrancy to be found in much of this movie is down to director Jimmy Muro’s dynamic steadicam work – every frame somehow looks like its straight out of your favourite comic book. No wonder then that he’s gone on to gain credits on some greats (“The Abyss”, “Clueless”, “Casino”- seriously, check out his imdb page for more).
With buckets of multicoloured toxic goo and a joke-jammed script, comparisons to films from the Troma stable are inevitable. But as the menagerie converged on the town junkyard (owned in real life by the director’s parents) for the climatic sequence I felt the film lacked the coherence and heart of personal favourites “Toxic Avenger” and “Surf Nazis Must Die”. That being said it certainly has the dubious accolade of being way less P.C. than your average Kaufman effort. It is hard to tell whether the intention was to brashly satirise middle class fears of the homeless, or if this is the most derogatory depiction I’ve seen since “Bumfights”. Please don’t let this put you off - how else will you ever see a penis getting sliced off with a knife carved out of a human femur?
*Soprano fans watch out for a wonderfully typecast Tony Darrow.
RATING - 3/5
BEN JENKINS
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SHOOTING ROBERT KING - REVIEW 03
King is an amazing photographer but this film is definitely missing something. Not quite LiveLeak: The Movie, which is what I was expecting when I heard we were going to watch a war documentary. My drawing is a fashion illustrator’s take on a dismembered head.
RATING - 2/5
DEBORAH JAMESON (GUEST KNIGHT)