visitor

A Christmas Visitor [Blu-ray]
$14.99
I love this movie. I watch it every year. The quality of the blu-ray is excellent. It's widescreen, which I wasn't expecting, but I didn't notice any cropping from the 4:3 aspect of when the movie airs on tv. It's a great Christmas classic that everyone in the family can watch. Sure, the film can seem flat at times, but you don't really notice that all that much. The last half of the movie is the best part of it, when the family gets Christmas back in their lives after 12 years. I would definately recommend picking this up if you've seen it and love it as much as I do.

Visitor Q
$29.95
Miike Takeshi is, in my eyes, one of the top Japanese filmakers in the world today, with Ichi the Killer and Audition being too of my favourite films. Eager to get a copy of this, I watched it at a friends house after he told me it was totally and utterly OTT. He was right. But is it a good movie? Not really. Pushing the boundarys of bad taste doesn't make something worth watching.

I love anything that breaks taboos and distresses the viewer, but Visitor Q simply has no soul to it. It didn't make me feel anything. I wasn't sad or angry, scared or happy,and to be honest it didn't make me laugh much either. In fact I found myself biting ym nails and playing with my thumbs. And, before you jump to conclusions, the laughs here are very very veryyyyy dark. Some would shoot me for even calling it humour.

The way it goes, Visitor Q follows part of the life of a dysfunctional family, and trust me, boy are they dysfunctional. Some of the bizarre events in the movie include:

A husband who cannot get enough of his wife's lactating nipples, a school boy who is tied to a fence and raped, a young girl who is suffocated and covered in excrement then taken into a greenhouse where she is raped and disembowled whilst the man's penis is stuck in the girls vagina due to rigamortis...you get the picture.

Oh, and there's no music either. The whole thing is very flat. None of the characters are explored. There's limited dialogue and many of the scenes are simply longgggg and pointless shots of drug taking and torture. Something tells me Takeshi's love of school girl rape is unhealthy.

So why 2 stars? Well, despite all the negatives, something still made me watch. And to be honest, it isn't the worst film ever made, it's simply Miike Takeshi's most dissapointing.

SUMMARY!

Theme - Disturbing look at a dysfunctional modern day Japanese family.
Violence - Some, strong.
Sex & Nudity - Frequent, prolonged and sadistic.
Strong language- Frequent, very strong.

Menotti - Amahl and the Night Visitors
$24.95
The classic 1955 telecast - look forward to watching the whole DVD - am involved with a local production so looking @ the DVD for help with this - looks good.

The Visitors
$9.99

This is the funniest French movie I have ever seen! Yes, it is in French with English subtitles, but I think it is funnier in French anyway. If you just can't deal with it being in French with subtitles, get the alternative movie, Just Visiting, it is in English with the same great actors.