Thursday, August 23, 2007

Rooms for Tourists

I picked up this little indie-horror film from Argentina, Rooms for Tourists, and was really pleasantly surprised by it. You can tell it’s low budget, and the acting is not primo, but overall, it had some scares, decent effects, and a good plot.

Five girls, strangers to each other, are traveling to the city on a bus. (True, they are stereotypes, but what do you expect in a horror film?) They stop over in a small town and end up needing to spend the night while waiting for transportation. They find rooms in an out of the way house owned by two strange brothers. Little do they know, something is hunting them one by one. The girls band together to try and survive, and in doing so, discover why they are all traveling to the city. It seems like the locals have a thing or two they want to say about it, and it becomes a race to see who will survive the night.

The movie is shot in black and white and on some sort of video. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s all right. The acting is all a little over the top, but you don’t expect a whole lot from semi-professional actors. The locals have a whole set of creepy to them that adds to the atmosphere. (If you have ever been on a driving trip and driven through one of those really small towns, halfway abandoned with crusty locals sitting on porches, you know what I mean. Every time that happens, I think, yeah, I have seen this movie, and it’s not good for me.) The story is good, and there’s even some social commentary thrown in there for good measure. It’s not what I expected at all, so I was nicely surprised.

Overall, I would say this was a great indie-horror effort. If you aren’t scared off by a low (really low) budget horror film with subtitles, check it out. It’s worth a rental. If you like the idea, you could make it a double billing and rent Turistas as well, another surprisingly decent horror flick with a bit more of a budget.

Rating: 4 Purrs, for a good low budget scare with a sympathetic main character and a town I would not want to get lost in.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Cover Her Face by P. D. James

I hear of P.D. James a while ago because of a BBC TV adaptation of her Adam Dalgliesh story The Murder Room. I really enjoyed the adaptation, and Dalgliesh seemed like a pretty interesting character, so P.D. James was added to my list of used books to buy. What an excellent author, what an excellent story, and what an excellent character.

In Cover Her Face, Sally Jupp has come to Martingale to serve as a housemaid. She is an unwed mother, so many frown upon this appointment, but Sally works hard and seems to catch the eye of the young Dr. Epps. This wouldn’t be a problem if he weren’t the son of the lady of the house, so expects him to marry someone else. Soon after announcing their engagement, Sally is murdered in her bed, behind a locked door. Adam Dalgliesh must solve the crime by choosing which person in house thought their reason to kill Sally was important enough to go to prison.

Adam Dalgliesh is everything that I want in a British detective. He is thoughtful, observant, and quick-witted. The setting was just right, with the small country manor, the town fete, and the locked room whodunit. All in all, Cover Her Face was like a perfect, long lost but way more mature Agatha Christie mystery. (Don’t get me wrong; Dame Agatha is my favorite mystery writer ever. Dalgliesh is not a caricature, like Poirot or Marple can sometimes come off as being.) If you like British mysteries like Christie's, you should definitely check out P.D. James. Even if you just like mysteries that aren’t the funny, Carl Haissen kind, but more of the locked-room country estate kind, check P.D. James out.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a truly exciting, tightly written mystery

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devestating Plague of All Time by John Kelley

I have always been fascinated by outbreaks. My favorite book is The Stand. I love plague movies like Outbreak and 28 Days Later. After reading books by Anne Benson called The Plague Tales and The Burning Road, both very good books on their own, I decided I wanted to know more about the real history of the Black Death and y pestis.

In The Great Mortality, John Kelley traces the full history of the Black Death, from its origins in Mongolia through the trade routes of Europe. He talks about the variations the plague took, from bubonic plague that had the trademark bubo, bruise like splotches on the body, and bad odor, pneumonic plague that spreads directly from person to person though coughs, and includes coughing up blood and constant vomiting, and septicemic plague, that causes extremities to become black and hard as coal. He talks about what made the medieval world so easy for plague to spread and what helped stop it after thousands died. (Estimates say numbers of a third to 60 percent of the population.) Not only does John Kelley trace these facts, he includes stories of people who lived during the plague times, straight from their own journals and letters. He talks about people who stayed by friends and family to help them, and those who ran and hid. He talks about the Flagellants, who whipped themselves sin the name of God to “save” others from plague and he talks about the rampant anti-Semitism that ran through the world before and along with the plague.

Overall, the most interesting thing I found was how John Kelley traces how the culling of the population due to the first round of plague (and the two others that followed) helped usher in a new age of development. Suddenly, the laborers were in demand, food was plentiful, and the hierarchy of the serfs and nobles was breaking down. While the plague was devastating and destroyed thousands of lives and wiped whole families out, it ushered in a new hope for all those left behind.

It's an interesting look at a world forced into change and the nasty little bug that spured it on.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for making something that could have been terribly dry into something intriguing and informative

Sunday, August 05, 2007

The Gathering

From what I can tell, The Gathering sat on shelf for a while, despite having Christina Ricci as the lead. While it wasn’t a terribly suspenseful horror movie, or really a horror movie at all, it was an okay rental for a slow weekend afternoon.

Cassie (Christina Ricci) is drifting through life, passing from town to town. She finds herself drawn to Ashby Wake after being hit by Marion’s car and losing her memory. She stays with Marion (Kerry Fox – yeah for Shallow Grave!) and her family while she recovers. Cassie becomes a nanny of sorts and becomes very close to Marion’s son. Cassie is also drawn to Marion’s family and Ashby Wake for another crazy reason: Marion’s husband Simon is researching newly discovered First Century church buried in the countryside, with strange carvings of the crucifixion. Cassie starts having visions and the townspeople start showing up staring at her ominously. Dan (Ioan Gruffudd) is the handsome love interest, but what role is he really playing in Cassie’s life? Is there a murderer in the town? Why is she even drawn to Ashby Wake? What is her role there?

It’s an interesting premise overall, but you are lead to expect one thing and I was surprised at the resolution to the story. It’s not a true shocker or anything, but it’s a twist that I don’t think I have seen before. You can see why the movie went straight to video, while the actors were okay, you could tell there just wasn’t a whole lot for them to work with.

Rating: 3 Purrs for a decent straight to video mystery thriller that sad to say, was better than the Da Vinci code.