Dead in France (2012)

"Dead in France" is a pretty entertaining, dry-humored, Tarantino-esque 'noir' flick.

A seasoned hitman with a 'neat-freak' quirk hires a cleaning lady to tidy up his mansion as he goes out on his last job before retirement. While he's gone, she invites over her imbecile, mohawk-sporting boyfriend and the two fuck all over the house and go rummaging around. For some reason, they try renting out the house to some couples whom they just end up tying up and sticking in the shed. While this is going on, a thief tries to make off with 2 million pounds out of the hitman's car and another hitman (woman) - a savage lesbian, to be exact - has a score to settle with the main hitman and is hunting him down. All of these separate characters and their own personal vendetta's or acts of ignorance all end up clashing by the film's climax...

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Though it was far from a GREAT film, it had a subtle and dark enough approach to the humor element (the standout "funny" scene, to me, being the accidental shooting of a cat which made me chuckle) and a nice spread of goofy characters. A few scenes came along that didn't seem all that necessary, which is probably my main gripe with the film, but overall I'd recommend checking out this amusing piece of UK 'black comedy'.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

For quite a while I've been hearing about this one. Usually from people who are rattling off some of their favorite documentaries - it typically ranks high amongst people's preferences - so I figured I should give it a chance. Luckily, I managed to avoid having the big "reveal" spoiled for me so I think I was able to get the full effect of what "Dear Zachary" was trying to elicit in its rollercoaster of misfortune, although I don't think I was 'rocked' to my core as most were. It IS a very tragic case and I found it very frustrating how a judicial system could fail a family so profoundly.

The less you say about this film, the better, so I'll keep it short. What basically happened was a 28-year old doctor (and the spitting image of Jack Black...) hooked up with some 40-year old whackjob cougar bitch who ended up killing him in a jealous rage after he broke it off with her. During the court proceedings, it turns out she is pregnant with his kid so, while the murdered man's parents are fighting for custody of the baby, an old friend of the dead man sets out to make this doc in order to pay tribute and also show the child what kinda guy his father was...

A shitload of absurd, fucked up interactions and events occur during the period of time this movie was being shot that paints a solid picture of the effects of loss and the helplessness the court system can so easily and callously administer on regular people. I always knew the Canadian government was based in intrinsic incompetency and assbackward laws and policies (not to say the U.S. is a well-oiled machine, by any fucking means...), but "Dear Zachary" shows just how bureaucratic entities exhibit corruption and complete ineptitude in protecting their citizens. How cries for justice can so plainly fall on deaf ears and actually work in favor of cold-blooded psychopaths. In many ways, "Dear Zachary" is a wake-up call to just how freely this can happen and how your door knob-sucking, ineffectual government is completely capable of turning a blind eye and disregarding the safety of it's people (including children...) until it's too late.

The doc is put together very well in detailing the family's relationship with one another and their reaction to these events. It thoroughly tackles each aspect of the ordeal and draws you in extremely well. It's depressing and exacerbating, but it IS definitely worth checking out.

Where Evil Dwells (1985)

Part of the whole 'Transgressive Cinema movement', "Where Evil Dwells" is the supposed "preview" of an originally 2-hour long super-8 punko-horror flick that was destroyed in a fire. It's hard to say if the full version consisted of a more intelligible narrative or was just an extended variant of what currently exists, but based on this 28-minute piece of nihilistic celluloid, I'd bet on the latter...

A series of destructive and sadistic events are introduced as seemingly random vignettes by a killer ventriloquist's dummy (who sounds like Beavis, of "Beavis and Butthead"...). Such pernicious acts involve smashing up vehicles, dangling a life-size dummy off a bridge to fuck with traffic, participating in satanic rituals and a pretty gruesome head stabbing around a bonfire. It all ends with a bizarre depiction of Hell.

So, yeah, it's alright for what it is. If you dig 'experimental' aberration set to a metal/punk soundtrack then check it out. Frankly, I have to be in the right kind of mood to get at all 'into' this kind 'transgressive' type shit, but "Where Evil Dwells" was one of the better I've seen. Again, I'm not sure what the full cut of this was intended to be, but as is, it works as far as this type of 'underground' anarchist punker-flick goes. Check it out for the face stabbing scene.

The Dirties (2013)

As I've said before, I have a weakness for 'school shooting' movies so I generally try to check out anything along those lines. "The Dirties" kept me genuinely entertained, despite the 'mock-doc' style that I hate and has also already been done with this type of thing with the 2003 movie, "Zero Day". That, along with the dry comedic elements in "The Dirties", it all came together surprisingly well, I'd say.

A pair of teenage outcasts are making a parody-infused film project for one of their classes that involves them heroically murdering certain teachers and student bullies (whom they refer to as "dirties"...) around their school. They're forced to cut out the violence and obscenity which gives one of the boys the idea to switch the film over from a humorous action/'crime thriller' piece to a documentary of an actual school shooting, perpetrated by non other than them. As the mastermind behind the plan strategizes for the big massacre, the other kid can't seem to take the project seriously and a rift in their friendship deepens when he ditches out on the plan for the hot, popular girl...

Strong points of the film include the performances of the two leads, which are actually very believable considering an aptitude of 'quirkiness' - although it never goes too over-the-top with it. The pacing is spot-on and the faux-doc method - while pointless, as usual - never really gets in the way, as I far as I'm concerned. The outcome is satisfying while not playing out as the all encompassing bloodbath you may expect. Don't expect anything along the lines of Gus Van Sant's "Elephant", as far as containing a cold, protracted campus genocide, but it's not without an enjoyable payoff. I also liked the less-than-subtle correlation between high school bullies and future authoritarians by having one of the lead teenage aggressors wearing a black T-shirt with big white letters reading "POLICE" in several scenes.

"The Dirties" is another astringent and brazen statement on adolescent bullying that, like William Hellfire and Joey Smack's 1999 post-Columbine (by just a few months...) massacre film, "Duck! The Carbine High Massacre", peppers humor into it's apropos message as a more inflammatory means of shedding light on the repercussions of ongoing schoolyard torture.