The Killer (1990) Review

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(More customer reviews)As the popularity of Chinese cinema begins to spread in the US, two men must be noted for their contributions - Director John Woo and Actor Chow Yun-Fat. Their names are synonymous with action in Hong Kong cinema. Both have had projects that were successful (Face/Off and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, respectively) and some that were not so (Hard Target).
The Killer, however, is the apex of both their works.
It is possibly the best movie that very few people know about, and upon seeing it, it has become my mission to ensure that it becomes more widely viewed. John Woo's cinematic stylings and breathtaking action sequences are his trademark, and are often mimicked (but never duplicated) by more accessible works. Those who believe that action began with Desperado, Resevoir Dogs or The Matrix need only look to John Woo to find the obvious inspiration for these works.
Of course, as much as a gun is a weapon in action movies, Chow Yun-Fat is John Woo's weapon. Entire tales can be told simply with Yun-Fat's expressions - the ability to "act" without saying a word is sometimes underrated, but I would say that Yun-Fat challenges even DeNiro in his method-acting abilities. His on-screen charisma is electric, and no other actor in Woo's stable has been able to produce the kineticity required of a John Woo hero figure.
The two have joined forces for a number of movies, but none better than The Killer. Besides the afforementioned qualities of each individual, The Killer brings with it a story of "Real Men" in a world where honor is a dirty word. The Killer belongs with the great mafia dramas of Hollywood Cinema and with Kurosawa's samurai epics. The Killer is listed in the guidebook, "The Top 100 Movies No One Has Ever Seen." The latter half of that statement needs to be changed.

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Harper's Island: The DVD Edition (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)We are so hooked on this show it isn't funny, which must be a tribute to the writing and the direction. The producers certainly know how to get you going, though it takes a few episodes before they can start reeling you in and playing you the way they want to.
At the very beginning there are too many characters--if you have ever seen Robert Altman's film A Wedding some of this will look familiar, but add into it a maritime setting, a fantastic yacht, and a culture of working class people trained to anticipate the needs of the wealthy, and you have a recipe for tension right there, and that's before you get the murders going. The families of Trish Wellington (Katie Cassidy) and Henry Dunn (Christopher Gorham, often looking oddly like lean, lanky, nutty Anthony Perkins) invite you to a destination wedding, one held at Harper's Island somewhere in the Puget Sound, where you will be staying at the incredibly glamorous Candlewick Inn, but there will be plenty of time for slumming and seeing how the other half live.
Chief among the main characters is our heroine, played by Elaine Cassidy, the Irish actress who made a splash in Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey ten years back. As Abby, the daughter of the local sheriff (Jim Beaver), Cassidy plays the tragic survivor of a mass murder that rocked the island seven years ago. Could the killer, John Wakefield, thought to have been shot down by Abby's dad, still be alive? Has he gone back to his ways of hanging his victims from the trees? For many episodes Fate and the unseen killer arrange it so that one by one, victims die but nobody really realizes it, thinking they have just gone back to Seattle and will return for the wedding ceremony. That got a little hard to swallow, but during this period we began to sort out who was who, who's sleeping with who, who resents the power of who, who seems irretrievably scarred by the earlier murders, and something of the sociology. Now we know the characters and it hurts when one of them dies.
The show's gory in spots, soapy in others. So violent is it that the individual episodes are named after comic book signifiers ("Ka-Boom," "Thwack," etc) and after a few weeks you learn to wait for the act of violence each one stands for. The "Sizzle" is particularly gruesome, though nothing yet matches the shocking death that takes place in the island's lovely old church. I still get headaches when I think about that one! Every cliché of this kind of slasher film is rehearsed here, but expertly and often with a twist. Even the one where a medium reads the heroine's Tarot cards and suddenly sees something in them too horrible to put into words and she runs out of the room mumbling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." -Like the beginning of Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7!

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A horror-inspired drama, this CBS series is about a group of friends and family who meet to celebrate a wedding on an island just outside Seattle, an island that is famous for a streak of unsolved murders seven years ago. Suspense ensues when they end up dead one by one; has the killer returned or is someone else to blame?

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Dexter: The Second Season (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)Season two of this Showtime piece of excellence is just as good as the first season, if not better. If you haven't already met Dexter Morgan (played by Michael C. Hall), he's a Miami police forensic expert - he specialises in blood spatter - with a taste for murder all of his own. By twist of tale, Dexter's past comes back to haunt him this season and Dexter the hunter becomes Dexter the hunted. This takes the excitement and suspense up to new heights.
Dexter is still coming to terms with the season one's shock ending and initially finds (to his horror) that his killing skills are not what they used to be. And as if he didn't have enough worries, Sergeant Doakes (played by the lovely Erik King), the only one around who senses that Dexter is not all that he seems, is still very much on his case. Add to that the fact that his sister Debra (played by Jennifer Carpenter), who is still recovering from her own trauma from season one, is asked to join the FBI manhunt for him. The team is being led by Special Agent Lundy (played by Keith Carradine) and this is a development, Dexter remarks sardonically, that "makes for an awkward family dynamic".
Also very interesting to see this season, is the relationship between just-demoted Lt. Maria Laguerta (played by the brilliant Lauren Velez) and the new Lieutenant parachuted in over her head to take over her shift command, Lt. Esme Pasquale (played by Judith Scott). The cracks in Dexter's seemingly perfect relationship with girlfriend Rita (played by Julie Benz) that began to appear in season one, also begin to get wider this season so look out for Jaime Murray, fresh off her stint on BBC's drama "Hustle", playing the sexy, free-spirited Lila.
There's much more but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Twists and turns abound and each episode seems to bring a new shock for the viewer to take in. The humour is dark but it is hysterically funny - a shock in itself, considering the over-arching subject matter. Unless you're someone who gets squeamish easily (most of the violence is implied rather than shown but there's still violence and there's still plenty of blood) this is a definite must-see. I never thought the day would come when I would be rooting for a serial killer - even a fictional one - but here we are. That I'm doing so is more down to the excellent writing and Hall's easy charm, than to anything else. I'm as happy as Larry to know that there's already a season three on its way and I hope they take this series as far as is logically possible.
I say long live Dexter!

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DEXTER:COMPLETE SECOND SEASON - DVD Movie

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