Reviews

Planet Terror

Directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez and Josh Brolin.

The final installment of the ill-fated Grindhouse project arrives with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, preceded by a humorous-looking but overlong fake trailer called "Machete". It's a gross zombie movie with Bruce Willis and Naveen Andrews trading fatal gas that turns people into suppurating walking wounded. Freddy Rodriguez and Rose McGowan (playing a pole-dancing Pierrot who turns human machine gun) lead the resistance, while Josh Brolin steals the show as a vindictive doctor. The print is purposefully bad, with scratches, poor synching and missing reels, and there's a revolting gag based on the phrase "it's a no-brainer".

The Band's Visit

Directed by Eran Kolirin, starring Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz.

A success at Cannes this year, charming Israeli comedy The Band's Visit tells the tale of an Egyptian police band stranded overnight in a quiet Israeli settlement after taking the wrong bus. It features lovely performances from Sasson Gabai as the band's impeccably behaved conductor and actress Ronit Elkabetz as an Israeli bar owner who puts him up for the night. A beautifully controlled piece, it marks the impressive debut of director and screenwriter Eran Kolirin, who handles the delicate shades of politics with subtle tones.

A Crude Awakening

Directed by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack.

Documentary A Crude Awakening leaves the viewer in no doubt about an impending oil crisis. Unlike many recent anti-corporate docs, it doesn't point at individuals but paints an alarming picture of rusting derricks on disused oil fields in Texas, Venezuela and Baku in Azerbaijan. Quaint 1950s American car ads take on a frightening glow of irony while various experts predict the worst, from escalating war to famine.

Air Guitar Nation

Directed by Alexandra Lipsitz

Strumming while Rome burns, Air Guitar Nation by Alexandra Lipsitz follows two Americans to the air guitar world championships in Finland. Bjorn Turoque is the punning alter ego of a self-proclaimed performance artist Dan Crane from New York, while C-Diddy is the creation of an affable Korean student, David Jung. They both deliver flamboyant performances set to Eighties heavy metal that just about validates the elevation of this bedroom pursuit to public event. Curiously, no one ever asks why they didn't take up the guitar for real.

Bug

Directed by William Friedkin, starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon and Harry Connick Jr.

Oscar-winning director William Friedkin returns with Bug, a barmy piece of paranoia that is a far better B-picture than Planet Terror. Ashley Judd, in her finest performance for years, is a lonely waitress fearful of her ex-husband (an alarmingly buff Harry Connick Jr - he must really hammer the piano keys these days) returning from jail. She strikes up a relationship with Peter, a soft-spoken, twitchy drifter played by Christopher Walken lookalike Michael Shannon.

Peter starts seeing bugs in their motel room, picking them out of the sheets and carpet and becoming unhinged. "They're matriarchal aphids," he says, "like Barbara Stanwyck in Big Valley." Judd follows him into madness, and soon they're covering the walls with flypaper. Although it showed at Cannes two years ago and comes from the director of The Exorcist, Bug has been slow to appear in cinemas but it's a minor masterpiece of tension and insanity, featuring some unspeakably violent scenes of tooth extraction.

The Guardian

(China Daily 11/16/2007 page20)