Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Pretty intense

I finally got to see Guillermo del Toro's much heralded Pan's Labyrinth last night at the Penthouse. Frankly I was blown away. It wasn't entirely what I was expecting - I was thinking it would be something 'magical' and a little Jim Henson-ish - kind of like Labyrinth. But this was on a whole other level.

Such intensity, I was litterally rivetted to the seat. This is an absolute must-see and makes a mockery of the Oscars - how on earth this didnt win Best Foreign Language Film I dont know - let alone Best Picture!.

At the other end of the spectrum I also recently saw Jonathan King's black-comedy/horror - Black Sheep. The trailer calls it the "Violence of the Lambs" - its kind of like Shaun of the Dead but on a NZ sheep farm - and with sheep as the Zombies. The effects were of course done by Weta. Hillarious - and very New Zealand, I really enjoyed it.

And finally yesterday I revisited a classic Aussie film - Hercules Returns. Its the story of a guy who buys a Cinema, and on opening night his competition sabotage everything by organising an Italian language version of the film Hercules. So the projectionist, cinema owner and their PR woman get a microphone and improvise the script. Its hillarious with characters like Labia from the town of Chlamydia and her lover Testiculi. IMDB calls it "Pant wettingly hiarious".

So on the whole three pretty good films. Pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

2 comments:

gus said...

Pan's lab rules, glade you finally got to see it.

hercules returns brings back memories! what a classic that, unfortunately, so many people haven't heard of.

beetlebum said...

Yeah no one has heard of it, great film.

The Larry David reference in there was for Karen too!