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Monthly Archives: October 2008

The Usual Suspects (Singer 1995)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/
5 crooks get rounded up after an arms transport disappeard. They realise they can start their own next mission together, but it goes wrong, with a ship going up in flames and lots of people dead. It is Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) who survives and through his interrogation, we learn how the story around the plotting of super-villain Keyser Socy unfolds. And if you really want to know what has been going on, here is the full synopsis: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/synopsis

Interesting to see that one again, especially as I have not seen it since it originally was released. Since then Kevin Spacey got famous, Benicio del Toro, Gabriel Byrne has become a well-known face (even though I relaised that apart from Miller’s Crossing, there is not a single movie with him I can remember having seen), and there are so many more big-scale supporters (Pete Postlethwaite, my fabourite one) that it is just heart-warming playing the thin line between  fact and fiction.

The movie does not hold up to time as strongly as – say – Seven (wasn’t it released around the same time), but it still a great production design, well written, well played and surely even today Bryan Singer’s prime directorial achievement.

The Evil Dead (Raimi 1981)

Group of young people, weekend out in the countryside, cottage in the woods, mysterious book and tape discovered. Do I need to say no more?

This is the classical setting for the demons to come in, and they do come with a surprising amount of humour, especially when the last girl (forgive me if I do not remember any of the characters’ names) turns into a hysterically giggling girl-demon. Sam Raimi invented a certain type of splatter-comedy that still survives today, the special effects wizards around him had plenty of stuff to splatter to the walls and into the actors’ faces, and the public controversy (and PR) was guaranteed when the decision was made that – yes – that ivy branch should rape the girl, and maybe she should like it a bit.

The film’s virtue today is more one of nostalgia, and of movie trivia in the way that a strange path leads from here to Army of Darkness years later, which properly plays the comedy card. “Evil Dead”‘s main contribution may be that it never decides whether to be horror or comedy, which makes it more disturbing. Still fun to watch if you don’t mind all these mutilations.

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