REVIEW - Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB (Mandy Stein, 2009)

CBGBs was a venue that opened in 1973, founded and run, until it's eventual close, by Hilly Krystal. Although the famous initials stood for Country Bluegrass and Blues, Hilly's personal musical passion, it was punk that would find it's home at CBGBs with many influential groups finding haven there, including The Ramones, Patti Smith, Suicide, Television, Blondie, The Cramps, Talking Heads and The Voidoids. In it's later years it would see a change in music becoming home to another music scene, American Hardcore with key bands playing CBGBs such as Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law.

There are other genres that played a part at CBGBs that do get a mention in this documentary, including artists such as James Chance and Sonic Youth, but it is the 70s punk and later Hardcore scenes that Mandy Stein focuses on in an attempt to make the justified claim of CBGBs as a defining landmark in New York's musical history and indeed American music as a whole. What follows is unfortunately something of a hagiography. Although enjoyable to anyone who is a fan of the music that CBGBs helped, too often does Burning Down the House just simply reiterate well known anecdotes and reverentially talk of the gigs that helped found the reputation of CBGBs. The venue clearly was a landmark and one should have received this recognition and not had the difficulties it had in the final days but one cannot ignore the dilution of the music that came out of CBGBs. Also, what could have been worse for the punk ethos that was espoused in CBGBs than Hilly's idea to relocate to Vegas.

Mandy Stein was perhaps too close to the material to make this documentary. The daughter of Seymour Stein and Linda Stein (Linda tragically murdered during the filming), both key figures in punk's history, Mandy had access to all the people needed to make this documentary but I can't help but feel she was unable to cast a negative eye on the venue's later days. In the final scenes of the documentary parts of CBGBs including the telephone box and mixing board are inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and although this seems justified given the importance to music that the venue represented, it does seem counter to the punk movement central to CBGBs, which was never about celebrating the past and worshipping heroes.

Central to the story is Hilly, who sadly died in 2007 shortly after the club closed, and the film follows his struggle to keep CBGBs open in spite of the efforts by Muzzy Rosenblatt who headed the Bowery Residents Committee and made it increasingly difficult for Hilly and CBGBs. The documentary uses the struggle between Muzzy and Hilly as a central narrative but unfortunately this cheapens the story somewhat and feels like lazy journalism.

Another issue with the film is the quality of the documentary from a technical point of view. Although one could dismiss this as part of punk aesthetic this would be an easy out and one that the documentary should not be given. Many of the technical issues appear to just be sloppy filmmaking. The interviews, which I assume are the main new material, are clearly shot on a variety equipment and in different aspect ratios with some of the worst sound recording I've ever heard in a theatrically released documentary. At times, for instance, the sound moves between left and right channels for no apparent reason. There is a possibility that this was a result of the theatre I saw the film in but I think this was highly unlikely. The archival footage is obviously of very bad quality and often lacking sound (studio recordings are overdubbed in some cases) but this is understandable and something that is expected. The sloppy filmmaking on show in the newly filmed documentary footage is a different matter entirely.

The documentary does have some high points though and is still an enjoyable 90 minutes exploring one of the most important venues in music's history. Particularly fantastic moments include segments that the film cuts to where director Jim Jarmusch and writer Luc Sante explore the wreckage of CBGBs as it is torn down, appearing like archaeologists on a dig, uncovering guitar picks, scrawled notes and a lot of dirt. Another highlight is Patti Smith's final performance which is incredibly moving, including a wonderful rendition of Gloria, with added lyrics related to CBGBs, but this is perhaps the only closing performance that stands out. Sadly too many of the bands that played CBGBs have lost the edge that they once had, many of the Hardcore bands just come across as a bit silly now, Bad Brains sound dreadful in their performance here and in my opinion watching Blondie now is just embarrassing.

CBGBs was an incredibly important venue and one that helped foster the talents of new bands and provided a place for like-minded musicians to feed off each other and create new sounds. This has been touched on by excellent documentaries such as End of the Century and Kill Your Idols, both of which I would recommend above Burning Down the House, and it is this real discussion of the music that seems lacking in this film. Despite the pronouncement in the film that CBGBs went out with a bang the film does not leave me with this impression. The film ends with a montage of shots of Starbucks establishments to the song New York New York and although amusing, like a lot of the film, it also felt a little lazy and left me extremely underwhelmed.

REVIEW - Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, 2009)

Harmony Korine has described Trash Humpers not as a film but something you might find in a ditch, with blood on, perhaps in a zip lock bag. Korine is right, this is not his new film, it is a fictionalised artefact of twisted Americana, a VHS document of a very strange collection of people doing very strange things.

In a Q&A after Trash Humpers Korine described a time in his childhood when his neighbours would dump their old VHS tapes in his trash, which he would recover and watch and although the labels might say 'Pee-Wees's Big Adventure', the tape would actually be a home-made porno of his neighbours having sex. Clearly inspired by this event Korine has made his own video to be found in the trash by an impressionable young mind. The difference of course being that Trash Humpers is fictional and allows Korine to take the strangeness of this concept to twisted new heights.

The film is shot entirely on VHS, on what would appear to be a very dilapidated VHS camera. Included in the film are scenes obscured by bad tracking, distortion and general video noise. The resulting effect of all the issues with the format only add to a feeling of authenticity in the film and strangely for me, like Korine a child of the VHS generation, a strange sense of nostalgia.

With a literal title, the main characters do actually hump trash, Korine has been perplexed by walkouts at festival screenings but even in recent cinema it is hard to think of a film so strange and unique as Trash Humpers. The film focuses on four main characters and the variety of equally odd periphery characters that surround them. The main four are three men and a woman, one being Korine himself, although he remains mostly behind the camera. The characters are supposed to be in their nineties and the actors where latex masks to give this effect. I was actually surprised when Korine pointed this out as whilst watching the film I thought the main characters were wearing latex masks as part of their strange perversion as the masks are very unconvincing. I actually think the film works in this way a little better as the verite style is undermined slightly if you are supposed to accept that these are actually ninety year olds. The film is made up of a series of scenes involving these characters where they are seen having sex with trash, fellating trees, smashing up televisions, invading homes, setting off fireworks, hanging out with overweight semi naked prostitutes and eventually even killing people.

The main characters are very disturbing and many scenes are uncomfortable to watch, often even irritating, but in many cases often hilarious. Narrated by the twisted cackling laughter of the cameraman, Korine's character, who often shouts out phrases such as "Make it, make it, don't take it" until they become ingrained in your mind, the audience is complicit in the mayhem and twisted anarchy that the four engage in. It is in the scenes in which we see dead bodies that the audience is left feeling much more uncomfortable as the laughter dies down and the insanity on screen almost feels real. It is irony though that these are the most unreal scenes presented. To film Trash Humpers the cast and crew allegedly spent two weeks sleeping on the streets, and under bridges, spending a lot of time in character and reacting to situations and improvising rather than following a script.

The result feels strangely authentic despite the many contrivances. I would quite believe that the child who cackles maniacally whilst hitting a doll in the head with a hammer was probably not given directions and much like the characters in Lars Von Trier's Idiots, the 'actors' in Trash Humpers seem somewhat liberated in their play-acting. The result, therefore, is much more akin to Gummo than Korine's last film, the almost straightforward Mister Lonely and this return to his roots as a filmmaker is an exciting one and one that has yielded very interesting work.

Trash Humpers also has elements of vaudeville and all the characters perform set pieces to the camera, whether it is the tap-dancing in the car park, the poetry recital, the appalling stand up or the many songs that provide a strange soundtrack to the film. In using these performance pieces Korine has made a film that again showcases the strange and beautiful underbelly of America, in particular 'the South'. The film ends by returning to a recurring motif of babies with a scene that is both beautiful and disturbing. When the laughter dies down one realises how powerful the folk cinema of Harmony Korine can actually be.

REVIEW - Enter The Void (Gaspar Noe, 2009)

Taking it's cues from the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) Noe's latest film is the ultimate death trip. The film mostly follows the main protagonist Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) after he has died, shot by police in the bathroom of a club, as he floats over the city of Tokyo trapped between the life he has left behind and a symbolic rebirth.

The film begins with a series of POV scenes through Oscar's eyes, the cuts hidden in Oscar's blinking. The audience experiences the scenes as Oscar as he argues with his sister, take drugs, discusses the Tibetan Book of the Dead with his friend Victor and ultimately meet a friend for a drug deal that leads to his death. As Oscar lies in the toilet dying, he leaves his body and the POV camera follows. For the rest of the film we see most of the scenes slightly from above as Oscar floats around Tokyo viewing the lives of his friends unravel and the problems his wayward sister, Linda (Paz De La Huerta), faces. The camerawork as Oscar floats over the scenes and flies rapidly across Tokyo are dizzying and the constant sweeping and swaying POV camera adds to the disorientation that an audience feels watching Enter The Void. The narrative of the film loosely follows the three stages of the Tibetan Book of the dead, which are described by Victor as he and Oscar walk towards the club. Although the film is a startling and and intense experience in the first half hour, seeing through Oscar's eyes as he takes DMT (a drug believed to create a near-death like state), it is once he dies that the film becomes a crazy trip that left me feeling like I wanted to see more but at the same time desperate for it to end.

Noe originally wrote a short synopsis for this film when he was twenty and this does show, with the film's focus on the narcissistic, drug addled immature characters who wander Tokyo looking for fun. It was when watching Lady in the Lake on Television after taking 'magic mushrooms' that he came up with the particular style he wanted to employ. Lady in the Lake was a 1947 MGM film noir, filmed entirely in POV from the viewpoint of the central character, Philip Marlowe. Noe uses this concept under extreme conditions giving us the viewpoint of a dead man and constantly cutting to throbbing lights and CGI hallucinogenic imagery, inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. He has stated that this was the film that he always wanted to make and that Irreversible was actually a trial run for a lot of the techniques employed here and to him also represented a way of raising the funds to make Enter The Void. There is definitely a clear trajectory between Irreversible and Enter The Void both thematically and visually.

After Oscar has died he first drifts around Tokyo, seeing his sister having sex and even going inside the mind of the man she is having sex with, the POV switching so that on some level at least Oscar is having sex with his own sister. He then experiences his life again, not flashing before his eyes but slowly unfolding through a series of dreamy and nightmarish scenes shown to the audience not through a strict POV but filmed just over Oscar's shoulder, as if we are eavesdropping. Perhaps the most significant event seen in his life is the car crash witnessed by Oscar and Linda that kills both of their parents and leads to the children being split up. The car crash is a viscerally shocking scene as the impact flies at the screen and the resulting shock is made worse by the long shots of a young Linda screaming. Oscar promises his sister that they will not be split up and when they are he does everything possible to bring them back together. After raising the money to fly her to Tokyo, borrowing it from his friend's mother who he is sleeping with, the two are reunited. It becomes obvious at this point that the pair have a strangely sexual relationship with Linda even trying to kiss Oscar. This is of course added to by the scenes we see before this and after where Oscar drifts into the men having sex with his sister and, in the final shots of the film, even inside her vagina looking out as the penis of his friend Victor moves in and out. This scene is particularly unpleasant for a viewer in a cinema and made even worse by the climax to the scene, pun intended, which provoked laughter from a lot of the audience in the screening I attended.

The combination of the relationship between the siblings and Oscar's very obvious Freudian impulses, the symbolism overplayed in places, are made even more uncomfortable with the knowledge that Gaspar Noe was involved in a car accident as a child, although his parents survived, and has a close relationship with his only other sibling, his sister. As with Noe's other films, sex is prominent and is not always pleasant but at the same time treated with a sense of reverence. In one of the final scenes, a far too lengthy section set in a Love Hotel where all the characters are engaging in sexual activities, there is a strange glowing light that covers the sexual areas of the participants.

Although Noe stated in a Q&A after the film that he does not believe in re-incarnation or spirits leaving their bodies he uses this as device for creating a twisted trip rather than an exploration of the point of death. Enter The Void is often rambling, occasionally disturbing and always intense. In making Enter The Void, Noe has made a film unlike any other and his originality and inventiveness is undeniable. The film truly is a trip from beginning to end. Throughout it is hallucinatory, funny, boring, exciting, exhausting and terrifying and like a drug induced trip the film will leave you wanting to tell others all about it but unsure if you want to experience the intensity of it again.

REVIEW - Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977)

Rolling Thunder is the story of Major Charles Ranes, William Devane, who returns from years of imprisonment and torture in a Vietcong POW camp to his home in Texas. He and his prison mate Johnny, Tommy Lee Jones, are greeted by a heroes welcome at the airport and Charles is given a brand new Cadillac and a suitcase of silver dollars in honour of his return. Charles is not the same man that went to war and even comments that when in prison they referred to the time before imprisonment as when they were alive; the implication that he is now dead rings true in the cold performance by William Devane and the hollow and dark life that the character now lives.

Charles' wife has moved on and is planning to divorce him and remarry, and his son cannot connect with a man that he cannot even remember. Charles seems unaffected by this though, as when his wife tells him she has been with another man he just sits and listens. Haunted by the memories of the torture of the POW camp, shown in abruptly cut black and white flashbacks, Charles is clearly suffering from post traumatic stress and has retreated inward, appearing almost dead inside.

When a gang invades his home demanding to know where the silver dollars are he refuses to tell them and they put his hand into a garbage disposal in a effort to make him talk. Charles though has been tortured before, previously commenting to his wife's new lover that the only way to beat the torture is to "learn to love the rope". When the gang fail to make him talk they shoot him, his wife and his son. Charles alone recovers and refuses to tell the cops who killed his wife and son and robbed him of his hand. Instead when he gets better he embarks on a journey of revenge with a hook for a hand and a sawn off shotgun.

He forms a new relationship with Linda (Linda Haynes) who says she is his groupie, a worn out blonde bar maid who is reluctant to get caught up in Charles' revenge mission but goes along nevertheless. She comments at one point, "Why do I always end up with crazy men?" to which Charles replies, "'Cause that's the only kind that's left." Charles' view of post-Vietnam America does not have much good in it, America is bleak and morally bankrupt. The pair head South to Mexico in order to find the gang, ending up near the home of Johnny who Charles eventually enlists to help him. Johnny is also living a hollow existence with his family who ramble on whilst Johnny sits coldly waiting, alert and like Charles, armed.

Reminiscent of the hoarded food of former POW Dieter Dengler in Herzog's documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Charles fills the trunk of his Cadillac with guns, many more than he could ever use. The guns clearly give him some relief, he feels happier with this stockpile, representing the fact that he is once again in control and not at the mercy of his torturers. Also surprisingly, like Dieter, he is willing to re-enact the torture that he has suffered. Both men agree to have their hands tied behind their back, replicating the torture they suffered. Although still clearly effected by his period of imprisonment, the real life torture victim, Dieter, seems surprisingly balanced unlike the fictional Charles who behaves like a man with nothing left to live for.

When Charles arrives at the house to pick up Johnny to help in the final showdown, Johnny is not surprised, he does not ask questions, he just puts on his uniform, grabs a shotgun and follows orders. Jonny is conditioned for war, in his mind he is still at war, he has not returned to life, he remains the walking dead. When in the whorehouse in the climactic scene and pulling out his shotgun, a prostitute asks him "What the fuck are you doing?" and he just replies simply "I'm gonna kill a bunch of people." This is exactly what Charles and Johnny do exacting vengeance upon those that mistreated Charles and in the process releasing through cathartic violence the rage bottled up in side them.

With clear mirrors to Taxi Driver in the dead inside, revenge motivated male protagonist, the explosively violent finale and the doomed romantic relationship, Paul Schrader is revisiting similar material but the two films are actually very different. One distinct difference is the back story; it is hinted that Travis Bickle was in Vietnam and he clearly had a troubled past but unlike Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder dedicates almost half the film to exploring the main character's past and the adjustments he has to make to a past that no longer applies. The audience of Rolling Thunder gets a chance to understand Charles in a different way to how an audience relates to Travis. It is a different style of storytelling and one that works for each film. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese directs with elegiac style aided by a sweeping Bernard Hermann score. John Flynn direction on Rolling Thunder, however, is economical, gritty and follows in the tradition of directors such as Sam Fuller and Sam Peckinpah with a hard, violent and grimy aesthetic.

Rolling Thunder is often thought of as a exploitation picture, a 70s violent B movie and a nasty revenge piece. It is indeed all of these things but like Taxi Driver it is also a arthouse film. Rolling Thunder says so much about the 'Vietnam Syndrome', about the failure of Vietnam vets to reconnect to the life that has moved on without them and it is a brutal story of two men who no longer feel alive, exacting revenge for the suffering they have felt. A perfect embodiment of the 70s despair following the 60s with a focus on the struggle of many to move past this dark, post Vietnam, period.

REVIEW - Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978)

Lost Weekend opens by introducing a married couple, Peter (John Hargreaves and Marcia (Briony Behets), a modern couple living a modern city lifestyle. Marcia is seen at home preparing for their trip and talking on the phone. In the background a TV news story reports on a bizarre attack by birds. This is the first sign that nature is not man's friend in the film you are watching and this also is, perhaps, a reference to the film's closest comparison, Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film, The Birds.

After squabbling over whether or not to take their dog, Peter eventually smuggles him along, the couple embark on a trip to the seaside. Marcia is clearly unhappy about this but Peter seems to think this long weekend in the countryside is the cure to their obviously failing marriage. Along the way we see Peter throw a cigarette out the car window, lighting dry shrubbery by the roadside and he also hits a kangaroo killing it and then mercilessly drives over it. Peter and Marcia do not seem to care about nature and do not respect it. Later in the film we also see Peter shoot a Dugong, throw his empties into the sea and shoot his gun wildly at anything and everything. Significantly we also see Marcia destroy an Eagles egg that she finds.

The film is taut and tense throughout with the idyllic location and Peter's wish for a relationship solving dream weekend shattered by nature striking back at the couple as they are tormented by creatures that seem to feed on the couple's fear. This tension and sense of continuous dread is expertly crafted by Colin Eggleston with abrupt but effective editing and a fantastically edited sound mix. Although the score is slightly dated, the sound design on Long Weekend is incredible and goes a long way to creating the dark dread that encompasses the whole film. The script is also excellent with short and sharp dialogue helping to make the couple's relationship believable and gradually moving the plot forwards. For the bulk of the film the only characters are Peter and Marcia and it is a testament to the writing and the acting that the film is gripping throughout with just the two protagonists.

The film is heavy with symbolism, which is both integral to the plot and also something that makes this so effective as a horror film. Unfortunately the symbolism and underlying subtext of Long Weekend left me very uncomfortable as the message of the film is one that I cannot agree with and one that perhaps undermines an otherwise excellent film. Central to the break up of their relationship is the recent abortion that Marcia has had. It is this abortion that is at the centre of the allegory on screen and adds a sinister edge to the tagline, "Their crime was against nature... and nature found them guilty". At first glance the film appears to be a fantastic rallying against man's pollution of nature and destruction of wildlife. This is seen in the chopping down of a tree by Peter, just for fun, and his killing of innocent creatures. Marcia's attack on nature is somewhat different though when she throws an eagle's egg against a tree. Although the symbolism of the egg smashing may seem overdone the screenwriter is more than aware of this accusation, even including an exchange between the two where Peter references the symbolism and Marcia snaps back, "Spare me the grotty symbolism".

Also key to the allegorical tale is the Dugong, an endangered marine animal that Peter shoots. Peter informs Marcia that it is the Dugong's young that is the source of the terrifying howling (a sound she hears as a baby's cry) that punctuates the film throughout. This sound haunts Marcia, who is hearing the baby she never had screaming at her. The Dugong mother that Peter kills washes up and although dead gradually moves up the beach closer and closer to Peter, making him more and more uncomfortable until he sets fire to it before fleeing at the end of the film. The Dugong represents Peter's conscience about what he has done to Marcia and like Marcia, the Dugong mother constantly reminds him, haunting him. Peter finally tries to banish this guilt, trying to destroy the Dugong, shortly after he has accidentally killed Marcia with a harpoon gun, significantly a weapon usually used against marine animals. Peter does finally escape the nightmarish countryside, finding a road, but is also killed in a gruesome way as a truck ploughs into him, echoing his own killing of the kangaroo with his 4x4.

The film is a fable and there are elements of the story that do not appear to fit within reality, in particular the ever approaching Dugong and the way that regardless of the direction the protagonists go in they cannot escape the camp. It brings to mind the allegorical, return to Eden, tale from Lars Von Trier in his recent film, Antichrist, where a couple return to a natural setting at the request of the husband in an attempt to fix their relationship after the death of their son. Although in this instance, the son is a toddler and dies through neglect rather than being a foetus which the mother aborts. Antichrist is more effective in it's attempts at fable storytelling as the behaviour of the mother is more morally shocking although the female punishment so common in Von Trier's work is still very hard to stomach.

Despite the high concept allegory and brilliant writing there is no denying that Long Weekend is rooted in exploitation. The basis of the plot is a young couple in the wilderness attacked by nature, a perfect horror device. Also the director often lets the camera linger on the body Briony Behets, who is also topless in a handful of scenes. Like many excellent exploitation films though, there is more to Long Weekend than just sleaze and horror.

As a morality tale Long Weekend ultimately gives the viewer an anti-abortion message and one that, for me, comes close to ruining an otherwise brilliant film. The vengeance of nature against man; man that has destroyed so much and cares so little is a powerful message and one that could have been enough to carry the film. The emotional drama between the protagonists is expertly played out though and the film is absorbing and brilliantly made. A tense and dramatic thriller I highly recommend Long Weekend despite disagreeing with the anti-abortion message that seems to run throughout.

REVIEW - Giallo (Dario Argento, 2009)

Giallo is a phrase that refers to both literature and film and is usually used to describe a particular type of fiction, generally thrillers involving horror and sex. The phrase was first used to describe books in this genre which were cheap paperbacks with yellow (Giallo in Italian) covers. Since the emergence of a wave of horror films in the sixties and seventies the term has become synonymous with this film genre. Key filmmakers in Giallo include Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Umberto Lenzi and Lucio Fulci. It is Dario Argento who, at least in the West, has become most synonymous with Giallo with the success of incredible films such as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Profondo Rosso and Suspiria. Argento has continued to make films since his debut in 1970 with The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, in recent years making films such as Sleepless, Do You Like Hitchcock?, Mother of Tears and the Masters of Horror segments, Jenifer and Pelts. These most recent efforts have mostly been met with a lukewarm response by critics and even by fans, like myself, who despite the misfires still champion his work.

It was therefore with a lot of excitement that I read the news that Dario Argento was releasing a new film bearing the name of the genre, Gaillo, and was to star Academy Award winner, no less, Adrien Brody. I then saw the poster, above, and was even more excited. Everything pointed towards a return to form for Argento, a modern Giallo to justify sticking with Argento so long.

Reviews of Giallo have been universally bad from what I can tell. Scouring the internet, the only good reviews I can find cite Giallo as being the best comedy this year and some even suggest this was the intention of everyone involved. I do not feel this was intention of the scriptwriters, Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, Dario Argento or the star and co-producer Adrien Brody.

Giallo has at it's heart a reasonably simple premise which actually ticks all the boxes of the Giallo genre. Adrien Brody plays Enzo, a hard boiled New York cop who has returned to Italy and is working on the case of a serial killer who has been killing beautiful women and in the process "making them ugly". He is approached by Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) whose sister Celine, a successful model, has gone missing and Enzo guesses, correctly, that she has been kidnapped by the serial killer. There follows a race against the clock to find Celine before she is killed. The serial killer turns out to suffer from a liver condition that has given him permanent jaundiced skin, in effect making him yellow. Because of this he feels he is ugly, tormented by children when he was young, he now sets out to make beautiful things ugly. Yellow is played by Byron Deidra which, to the observant among you will notice, is an anagram of Adrien Brody who also plays the part of Yellow. Because one can tell from the voice and eyes, that you hear and see early on, that it is clearly Adrien Brody I was expecting a reveal that the detective was also the killer, a twist that would have admittedly been obvious a mile away. The problem is though that the two characters are intended to be entirely different characters which completely pulled me out of the story as, despite the ridiculous make up, Yellow and Enzo are clearly the same person. The make up is a very big problem in Giallo. Obviously in a great effort to make Yellow not look like Adrien Brody, the make up department has gone over the top and created a truly hilarious looking killer who raises a lot of laughter every time he is on screen. The film would have been so much more effective if the audience had not seen the killer until the very end as almost every scene with Yellow on screen is a bad scene. Giallo films have had had their somewhat laughable villains before; In The New York Ripper, for example, the killer adopts a 'Donald Duck' voice which is ridiculous but when juxtaposed with the truly horrific violence in the film, it does not seem quite so funny. Yellow, however, is just ridiculous and undermines the film constantly.

The acting in the film is generally of a low level, with Emmanuelle Seigner giving a particularly wooden performance, although this could be down to the script as much as her. Despite receiving criticism from many critics, I actually felt Adrien Brody was actually quite good as Enzo. He plays a archetype detective, constantly smoking, tortured by a past in which he saw his mother slashed to death and by the case that he cannot crack. Although a very underwritten part, the shorthand simplicity of the character appears to be deliberate and is somewhat effective. The only sense to the actor playing the role of the killer and the detective is revealed in the last scene when Linda states that they are both the same. This is a clumsy point made badly and does little to add to the film.

One element that was well done was the music which is an excellent score by Marco Werba. In places the music seems to come in to early but actually this creates an unnerving atmosphere of expecting something nasty to happen. Despite the score being good I was still incredibly disappointed. In a film entitled Giallo and directed by Argento, the soundtrack should have been by the recently reformed Goblin or the great Giallo composer Ennio Morricone. Perhaps neither were willing to score Giallo, a film that does little to live up to it's name.

Stylistically the film does look like a Giallo with beautiful cinematography in some some scenes, including the opening in the red opera house. There is an effective use of colour throughout by Argento, including the yellow saturation in some scenes and the use of yellow items such as Enzo using a yellow highlighter and drinking from a yellow cup that give the film a definite crafted feel. Unfortunately the story and a lot of the acting does not live up to this visual styling.

There is little good to say about Giallo as aside from a beautiful setting (Turin), Adrien Brody's adequate performance as Enzo and some impressive cinematography the film is a by-the-numbers thriller that does little to hold a viewers attention and little to restore Argento's stature as a great director. There was, however, something about Giallo that I liked and it is something that is hard to put my finger on. As a long time Argento fan I think it is just a feeling of being happy to watch a new Argento film and despite it's many faults I enjoyed the film, flaws and all.

It is rumoured that Argento has distanced himself from Giallo and has been noticeably absent from premiers of the film. Perhaps Argento was as unhappy with the film as the majority of the critics. Giallo is definitely a film for fans of Argento only who are desperate to see some new Argento on the big screen and even many of those fans may still dislike it and be deeply disappointed. If you are new to Argento or Giallo this should be low on your list of priorities and I suggest starting with one of the more impressive Giallos such as The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Profondo Rosso or The New York Ripper.