Zombie Room

Yestreday was the first day of Night Visions and as suspected Kino Engel was completely packed with people. One reason is that Night Visions is quite popular and the other is that Engel is a small, but atmospheric little theatre in Helsinki. So it doesn’t take much for it to be crowded. What I love about Night Visions is definitely the people who attend the screening (yes, movie nerds) and the feel of comradory that you get from watching weird and disturbing films in the middle of the night. Almost like only the most hard-core movie nerds can do this! Well I guess that just makes me the biggest geek of them all.

I saw three films last night in the following order: Combat Shock (1986), Harry Brown (2009) and Kick-Ass (2010). The night started with the cult classic Combat Shock. The director of the film and the main guest of the festival Buddy Giovinazzo was there to open the film and also to do a Q&A after the screening. We actually got to see the original 16 mm print and even if the quality was pretty bad, it was totally uncensored and for a moment there it felt like I was transported back to the late eighties.

I absolutely loved Combat Shock. It was, as the director said himself, a complete opposite of what kind of Vietnam veteran movies were being made in America at that time. Rambo had just came out and bunch of other films where the veterans were portrayed as heroes. Buddy G took another approach, where a soldier never recovers from the drama he had experienced in the time of war. The movie is very explicit, nasty and depressing, but it still feels very genuine and much more believable than more famous movies on the subject. Combat Shock is a combination of David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Taxi Driver, mixed with E.T on acid. These are the directors words not mine, but they just as well could have been, because the influences are very in noticeable – but in a good way.

After Combat Shock I was ready to return to modern times and went to see Harry Brown. This movie surprised me on how good it actually was. I was sort of expecting Michael Cane to be a bad ass vigilante, which he no doubt was, but the mood of the film is not what I expected. The opening scene set the tone for the whole movie and it kind of put me in my place. This is a movie that is going to be gruesome and pressing so get ready for it. And I did. Great performance from the very elderly looking Michael Cane and also from all of the cast, especially that one drug addict from who Harry Brown tries to buy an illegal gun from.

The night ended or should I say the morning began with Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass. The screening started at 01.00 am, but it didn’t matter how tired you might have been at that point, as soon as the the first images projected to the screen you were wide awake and then the fun started. Night Visions management had received specific orders from the studio that the reactions of people at the screening were to be recorded using a night vision (pun intended) camera. And after seeing the film, I can understand why. I’m writing a review of the film, so I’m gonna save most of my words on the content for that, but I have to say that Kick-Ass definitely was a full on fun fest! It was the most entertaining movie since Inglourious Basterds and it will be the smash hit of this spring. If you want to have fun, go see this film.

Tonight I have tickets to see four films (if I can just stay awake that long): The Crazies, [Rec] 2, Life Is Hot in Cracktown and Valhalla Rising.

For more info visit the official site.

See you at the festival!

Tags: Buddy Giovinazzo, Combat Shock, Harry Brown, Kick-Ass, Night Visions, Night Visions Back to Basics 2010

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2010 at 15:50 and is filed under Diaries, Film festivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.