Reviews

If Peter Jackson set out to make the goriest movie ever, then I think he succeeded. I'm amazed the thing was ever released! It's low budget, but well put together and incredibly inventive, showing the technical brilliance he built upon in his subsequent films. His crew of FX artists deserve particular praise for making the complex practical gags work without any help from ones&zeros. Along the way it pays tribute to many films, most notably George Romero's Dead Trilogy (especially 'Day of the Dead'), but also 'King Kong' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. Totally sick, extremely wet, but somehow lighthearted and fun. A must-see for any horror fan.

This is a pretty good horror film that doesn't really break any new ground, but for what it is it's well done. It's basically a haunted house movie, except instead of horny teenagers or an innocent family, the characters are civil war soldiers on the run after committing a (violent) bank robbery. They hole up in an abandoned house with a bloody history and soon start seeing creepy things. The acting is good, it's got some real scares, and the production design-particularly costume is excellent. Although heavily influenced by "the Ring" this film has a reasonably original feel, which elevates it from the usual fare. One question though: Where are all the dead birds???!!!

This film could have been a cult classic, instead it's just a film that had a lot of potential but couldn't live up to it. The premise is totally original but because of a bad screenplay and uninspired direction it struggles and ends up being just another by the numbers horror film. I say horror film but it doesn't really know what it wants to be-not really scary enough to be a horror, not funny enough to be a comedy, so it ends up being neither. Don Coscarelli made a name for himself directing the popular "Phantasm" movies so he knows horror, but he needed a better screenplay for this movie to have worked. Bruce Cambell is terrific as Elvis though.

No-one makes films like the Coen brothers and Barton Fink is a film like no other. Like all their movies it can be watched over and over and each viewing is as rewarding as the last. It's basically a film about writer's block (it was written when the Brothers Coen were struggling with 'Miller's Crossing',in the midst of their own block) and how lonely the "life of the mind" is. But the message here is that a writer must do everything he can not to be isolated from his fellow man. Barton is trying to write a screenplay for the common man but won't even listen when one such common man (his neighbor in the Hotel Earl, played by John Goodman) tries to tell him stories. He's too interested in spouting clichés about the nobility of the art of writing and the great service he is providing in his works. From the above Barton Fink may sound a little dry but it is anything but and as is customary in Joel and Ethan's films, the narrative never goes where you think it will. If you see Barton Fink for anything though, it should be for the characters, because they are incredibly well written and acted.