| Author | Message | ||
     John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.146.96 |
At last a film that lives up to its claim of being “weird”! In fact this low budget Greek production may well be the most fucked up, strange and just plain wrong art house film to grace our screens in years. I saw it this afternoon at one of the Bristol arts cinemas in the company of my good Lady P of course, who enjoyed the perverse and unpleasant proceedings as much as I did. The film’s narrative is pretty much confined to a house in the country where a Greek couple have brought up their now twenty-something children (two girls and a boy) with no knowledge of the outside world save what they have been told. Words have different meanings (keyboard means vagina, a small yellow flower is a zombie), cats are deadly killers, and aeroplanes are actually toys that occasionally crash land in the back garden. We are immersed in this whacked out environment for pretty much the entire running time, during which we are treated to prolonged, almost painfully unpleasant and decidedly unerotic sex scenes, a bit where a cat gets hacked up with garden shears, and the best Sylvester Stallone impersonation you’ll see all year. I’m not going to give away the ending but that, like everything about this film, is so wrong that it’s just perfect. So be warned – this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like your art house cinema so weird you wonder how anyone came up with it, let alone how anyone was able to convince a cast to act it out you’ll love this. We certainly did. We even laughed quite a bit. But seeing as we were the only ones doing so that might just be because we’re weird too. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
I was reading about this the other day - sounds right up my decidedly oddball street. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.210.209.136 |
That sounds fantastic. | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.151.35.154 |
Sounds great. I've just had the pleasure of reviewing "Frightmare" for VideoVista and I'd never seen it before - it's barmy and bloody brilliant! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.182.229.104 |
Frightmare's good fun - seen House of Whipcord yet, Mark? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.248.172 |
I've just watched the oddest Planet of the Apes sequel I've ever seen - some unnofficial Spanish film with zombie apes in it. (No - of course I know it's the first Blind Dead film; they just once tried to fob the public off with the above concept as a cash in.) | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.146.96 |
That's a great little intro isn't it Tony? I can't remember seeing anything quite as crazy - they couldn't even be bothered to put an 's' on the end of the title so it just says '...Planet Ape' I think. | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.39.177.173 |
I haven't Mick, do you recommend it. There were some great trailers on my screener copy - “Cool It, Carol”, “Die Screaming Marianne”, “Home Before Midnight” and “The Flesh And Blood show” - that looked like good fun too. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 193.109.254.19 |
Haven't seen Whipcord for years, but it's another 'classic' Pete Walker film - "thees Champagne - eet goes straight to ma 'ead"!! I have a DVD copy of "The Flesh & Blood Show"... | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.39.177.173 |
I was surprised to see Jenny Hanley in the trailer for that, amongst the boobs and blood. I remember her fondly from Magpie | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.194.127 |
Finally got the chance to see Dogtooth and while I agree it was brilliant, there didn't seem to me anything capricious or 'oddball' about it. It's the angriest film I've ever seen about the distorting impact of parental authority on the young. The three adolescent children (surely none of them is over eighteen) are portrayed with painfully acute attention to detail as youngsters whose perceptions and emotions have been deformed by an upbringing so restrictive they have literally no conception of the outside world. Everything in the film is well thought out, and while there is humour (of a very black kind), nothing fails to make sense within the overall picture. It left me angry, shaken and miserable. A genuinely fine film, but I rather wish I hadn't seen it. Given that the father is a very wealthy businessman, and that he thinks nothing of buying the sexual services of a girl at his factory, it's significant that this film has been launched at a time when Greece is is in political and social turmoil and the authority of the ruling class is being openly questioned. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Hardly mainstream cinema though, is it? When I used the term oddball, Joel, I was simply revelling in the role society has manhandled me into: that of the weird, oddball creative with offbeat interests. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Watched Dogtooth last night and thought it was rather brilliant. I'll post a link to my review here when it goes up on the Videovista site. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
My review, if anyone's interested: http://www.videovista.net/reviews/nov10/dogtooth.html | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 81.152.74.159 |
"Ambiguous ending", Zed? | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.152.74.159 |
"Swill-fest", Zed? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Great phrase, isn't it?  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.202.203 |
Hmm... I wasn't struck by this film, sadly (I seem on a shoot-it-all-down mission!) - it just struck me as slight. That said, it did occur to me it's an odd unnofficial remake of Son of Rambow, which is a much more enjoyable and family-friendly film and with exactly the same points to make. In a versus match, I'll take Rambow.  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.202.203 |
That said, Dogtooth did have the wanky factor... |