The good the meh and the gory

One of the guys from New York brought some films over with him and he's got pretty good taste so I've just watched Saw II and Hostel which he'd brought with him.



Hostel is pretty damn good and quite intense. It's the second film by Eli Roth who I met a couple years ago at the horror festival in Brussels when he was there for with his first film Cabin Fever'. He's a very entertaining loon who obviously loves his horror film. This one starts off as sort of a teen teen comedy type thing with lots of attractive naked girls encountered by two young Americans and their insane Icelandic friend who are traveling round Europe. They find Amsterdam to be a little tame and follow the rumours of a town in Slovakia full of gorgeous girls who just love foreigners. For the fist 45 minutes you follow these guys and it's pretty amusing. The film has been accused of being sexist and homophobic but I can't say I see that. The three main characters are assholes sure, but they don't mean any harm. Soon after they get to Slovakia things turn nasty. Very nasty in fact. Yes, the film has been called 'torture porn' and it is intense (with some truly excellent effects courtesy f the ever reliable KNB) but we keep watching it. Which I think is part of Roth's point, he's not just providing a kick-ass horror film that plays very much on the fear of the unknown, of being a stranger in a strange land, but implicates us in the enjoyment of torture, making us identify with the bad guys at a subconscious level. Yes, Roth is a fan of Takeshi Miike and of course he's not the same level of film maker than Miike but he admits it and even features Miike in a very short cameo. In summary a very good, disturbing and bloody film.



I also watched Saw II and was pleasantly surprised, this too is pretty brutal. There's a scene with a pit full of syringes that, what with my needle phobia, I found difficult to watch. The acting is not great but the story is and I did not see the ending coming at all and loved it.

Finally I watched the last episode of The West Wing. Series seven had certainly been one of the better post Sorkin ones and had some great episodes (how they deal with real life death of one of the main actors was excellent and had me feeling all emotional), however the last episode was not one of the great ones. It was Ok but a bit of a let down really, maybe that was part of the point with the changing of the staff as a new president is sworn in but it didn't effect me the way it should have done after seven years of these characters. Everything finished the way you wanted it too and I think that was part of the problem. The way you want it to finish is not necessarily the way it should have. It didn't excite, challenge or surprise the way it should have. But it's over now and it was generally excellent. Now I just need to wait for Sorkin's new series to start later in the year.