Slow day at work sooooo...

R-Point:

The first film I caught at the festival (I would have gotten there sooner, if it wasn't for those meddling furcons!) is a Korean ghost story that takes place during the Vietnam war. Now after having seen "A Tale of Two Sisters" and "Oldboy" I had yet to see Korean cinema do anything but good.

R-Point on the other hand... well it's not bad, it just showed me that Korean cinema could do good and 'pretty damn average'. It reminded me of 'Dead Birds' (good movie, by the way) a lot, but without scares and only a tiny fraction of the tension. A bit of a dissapointment that they couldn't use all the tall grass to generate some tension, and ultimately the only that got scared was my eardrums, thanks to the uber-loud soundtrack.

Ultimately R-Point is nothing to get thrilled about, it was just a barely-chilling cruise-control ride, although I can't quite call it a bad movie because it kept me interested all the way through.

Ju-on: The Grudge 2

The sequel to the Japanese movie that got remade overseas as simply 'The Grudge' is pretty much a rehash of the first one. That first sentence should pretty much tell you if you should bother with this one, if you liked the original or the remake and you're up for another round of 'Creepy Japanese ghosts appear in the darndest places', then pick this one up and have a blast. And if you didn't care for the first one then this one won't offer you anything to change your mind.

The narrative structure is the same as in the first one: loosely-connected plot threads about people who visited the haunted hause and end up dying. Unlike the first one, I felt the plot-threads were thankfully more connected. While the first one seemed to wander around until they ran out of film reel, this one is actually heading towards a climax... and what a satisying climax it is! I am not giving birth to a child anytime soon...brrrr!

But unfortunately the 'Been there, done that' hurts the movies in terms of scares. Sure, there's the occasionnal groovy bit, but after so much screen time the duo of Nippon poltergeists simply lose their effectiveness.

Overall, I'd say I enjoyed this one as much as the first one.

The Devil's Rejects

Hard to tell from the title, but this one is the sequel to Rob Zombie's first movie, House of a 1000 Corpses. If you didn't like the first one then... don't worry, because this one is an entirely different ballgame. Gone is the campy, cheesy, Halloween-y seventies vibe of the first film, what we
have now is a violent, gritty and more realistic tale of three ruthless killers on the run... my nose didn't twitch once from the familiar scent of cheese. "Natural Born Killers" came to mind often as I was watching this dark opus.

The often present senseless violence, combined with the realistic vibe of this movie will most liekly repulse a lot of people. For those who think that the movie sounds like a good time from what I've said so far, then you should consider seeing it because it accomplishes what it's trying to do rather well.

First of all, kudos to Rob Zombie for trying something different with his second movie and actually succeeding. It almost feels like someone else is behind the camera, considering how more subdued and less flashy the style is. Not that I mean boring when I say subdued, the movie is well shot and not
too surprinsingly mixes music and action very well (another difference here, the hard-rock music from 'House' has been replaced by slower seventies songs).

The actors playing the titular trio reprise their roles from the first one very well, Bill Moseley as Otis comes across as menacing, although quite different from his character in the prequel (as Maude put it, he looks like an evil Iggy Pop). Sid Haig still nails the Captain Spaulding role and gets a lot more screentime this time around, while Sheri Moon Zombie, the actress whose name is the most likely to be used as the title of a B-movie, is still convincing as Baby Firefly. Despite the bleakness and violence that coat this movie, there's a welcome ammount of laughs in this one, mostly thanks to the dialogue and the chemistry between the 3 anti-heroes.

So as you will probably see in most reviews... this movie is not for everyone, it's definitively brutal and gratituous, and if you can't leave your morals at the door to enjoy this one then you probably shouldn't bother. But the movie delivers what it promises, and I for one (sick bastard) liked it. I look forward to Rob Zombie's next movie.