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Reviews
V for Vendetta (2005)
down with genocidal nazi tory boys
According to this film the war on terror will be the catalyst for a fascist take-over by the conservative party who will take from us everything we hold dear namely our freedom and our lipstick lesbians (& not necessarily in that order). Britain is a mature democracy don't believe this guff. At the worst every now and then we read the daily mail and get worked up about immigration & paedophiles. To 'argue' and this is a massively unsubtle polemic that we would so easily be led down the road of fascism is both an insult to our capacity to think for ourselves and a distortion of the reality that the social changes /values this film seeks to defend and the war on terror it attacks have both been advanced by our current labour government (ok not true of the USA but the film isn't about USA).
Personally I think its dishonest and manipulative when writers try to shore up their own particular values & beliefs by trying to associate anything critical of those values / beliefs with a slide into totalitarianism & genocide. However they did get one thing right: in a country like Britain the only way you could achieve any kind of totalitarianism is through manipulation of the media. And exactly how conservative is the media in this country? I mean if you ask the question who exactly is controlling what we can and can't say, and therefore what we can and can't think
well I'd say that honour belongs to the likes of the Warshawskis and the Islington set who made this film. So if you like being told what to think, and made what to feel, you'll enjoy this film and feel refreshed in your right-on credentials. But if you don't you'll be sure to hold up two fingers to V and his pointy beard.
The Last Horror Movie (2003)
D minus. D-rivative.
This is an objectionable film. Not because its shocking, or depicts anything that hasn't been seen before. But because it believes its saying something important. I keep reading that this film makes us think, makes us examine our own reactions / feelings about watching violence. That simply won't do. Post-Iraq any of us can download real life executions in the space of a few minutes - all of which would incalculably exceed the horror depicted here. Some of us do - usually to profoundly regret it. The premise of this film, or at least of the protagonist / anti-hero of this piece seems wrong. I really doubt people who rent horror movies secretly want to see real life murder; or that if they were to happen upon a film like this they would share any moral culpability for watching what was playing right in front of their noses. Then there's the notion that this rather unlikely not to mention very middle class serial killer thinks that what he is doing is art. Again, I don't object to the idea - I'm really looking forward to reading the Art of Murder by Somoza as soon as I can get hold of it - but this just doesn't make the grade. Besides all serial killers are arse-holes. None of them have anything to say and neither do films about them.