GREEN INFERNO BLU-RAY review

Released on the 88 Films label, this Italian production sees a group of westerners encounter more than they bargained for in the Amazon jungle, AKA The Green Inferno. The plot (what there is of it) consists of four travellers, searching for a missing professor in the Amazon jungle and interacting with the Imas tribe in order to earn their way back out again. In the jungle they capture monkeys using blowpipes, have a close call with a jaguar and are witness to some bizarre and potentially deadly customs, such as having their exposed genitals threatened by a poisonous snake. The message here is, if you go down to the Amazon jungle today, don't be surprised if you end up dead.

Release number 49 in 88 Films' long running series of vintage Italian shockers, this 1988 Antonio Climati film (variously known as Natura Contro/Against Nature, Green Inferno and in some places as Cannibal Holocaust 2) is a strange, often confusing journey through cultural stereotypes. Firstly, if you approach this film looking for something akin to Cannibal Holocaust, you'll be sorely disappointed by the lack of cannibals as the closest this film gets to flesh-eating is the tiny fish that tries to swim up a guide's rectum.

To wind it back a bit, the film starts with the pretty cool stealing of a sea-plane which is then driven down the highway to their take off destination, followed by the introduction of Jemma (May Deseligny) a journalist interviewing a man about shrunken heads but more concerned with the whereabouts of a missing professor who has entered the Amazon jungle never to be seen again. With her three co-conspirators, they follow his path into the jungle and into immediate danger. Perhaps the biggest problem this film faces is the inescapable feeling that the main characters (jock guy, jock guy number 2, nerd with glasses and woman) deserve anything that happens to them as frankly, they shouldn't be there in the first place.

Still, the location is wonderful, and there's a gonzo documentary approach to the early scenes catching shots of fresh water dolphins and tending to ill monkeys in a way to establish the exotic weirdness of their destination but also the beauty of this land, untouched by modern life until now. The main characters take part in the capture of tree-dwelling monkey using blow darts in a manner that is slightly unsetting. Whether it's the sight of drugged up monkeys or the capture of a jaguar in a pit, if you know anything about the lack of animal welfare in films of the late 1970s and 80s (most notoriously in this film's cinematic step-cousin Cannibal Holocaust) it's easy to be distracted by how real the danger to these animals appears to be. Along with that, the actors appear to be in some danger too, as they come perilously close to the jaguar as they attempt to drag it out of the pit.

Apart from sounding like a kick-ass name for a super hero, the Green Inferno is another name for the uncompromising Amazon Rainforest, shown to be the most deadly place imaginable, but then also a giant water park built for the pleasure of the white folk. A native girl is caught by the current and is at risk of drowning in the river? No worries, just get dragged behind the seaplane using your feet as makeshift skis to save the day. There's a strange mix of tone that is at once a deadly trip into the jungle using witch doctors to heal snake bites, but then laughing and joking around, not dissimilar to Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach.

It may be a greatest hits of jungle hysteria, but as long as you don't go into it expecting flesh-eating tribesmen and gory body mutilations, Green Inferno is a fun, bizarre and occasionally culturally problematic travelogue.

Verdict
3/5

Special Features-
 -Option to play the film in English or Italian (either way the dubbing doesn't line up)
 -Scenes from documentary 'Banned Alive'
 -Italian opening and closing credits
 -Trailer

THE UNHOLY BLU-RAY review

Following a near death experience that he inexplicably survived, Father Michael (Ben Cross) is given his own parish, St Agnes. There, he meets Millie (Jill Carroll), a teenage runaway who has become involved with a local nightclub owner with links to the occult. As Father Michael tries to save Millie and determine if the demonic goings-on are a hoax, he is forced to question the strength of his beliefs.

One of a number of religious films released in the years after The Exorcist, The Unholy takes the familiar idea of a priest trying to save a young woman but sets itself apart from the opening scene, which sees Father Dennis, the former priest for St Agnes, praying at the alter as a red-headed temptress in very see-through clothing approaches him for the last kiss he will ever have. With its garish lighting and liberal use of wind machines its like a more biblical version of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart music video, but also with more boobs.

It turns out that when he died, Father Dennis was also trying to save Millie from her association with Luke (William Russ), the owner of a local club called The Threshold that performs on stage ritual sacrifices of debatable authenticity. Luke, a weird Billy Idol-esque bad boy with a strong 'N'awlins' drawl denies having any real association with the occult and also wants to save Millie. Is Luke really who he seems or is it possible she's leading both of them on?

It's inevitable that any horror with a heavily religious theme is going to be compared to The Exorcist, but to give it its dues, The Unholy does its best to offer something different than a simple clone of that film. At times it lacks the subtlety or restraint of The Exorcist, and that had a teenage girl masturbating with a crucifix. This is more in B-movie territory, the kind of schlocky nonsense that in the early 90s you'd find in the VHS collection of your mate's older brother, with corpses bursting into flames and voluminous bloody vomit splashing down at the foot of the alter. Nice.

It also relies more on some gloopy creature effects, that work to a varying degree in the context of the story. Some of the scenes of demonic possession are exemplified by billowing curtains and torn up pieces of paper flying around, but by and large this is a well shot film with a nice visual style. Hal Holbrook, Ned Beatty and Trevor Howard pop up in small roles, but the film belongs to Ben Cross who really sinks his teeth into the role of Father Michael, giving an admirably weighty performance that keeps the film from slipping into farce. With shades of Suspiria and The Wicker Man, The Unholy is an enjoyably pulpy take on the religious horror movie.

Verdict
3/5

Special Features-
- Audio commentary from director Camilo Vila
- Isolated score and interview with composer Roger Bellon
- Audio interview with production designer and co-writer Fernando Fonseca
- 'Sins of the Father' with Ben Cross
- 'Prayer Offerings' with production designer and co-writer Fernando Fonseca
- 'Demons in the Flesh', the monsters of The Unholy
- Original ending with optional commentary from producer Mathew Haydon
- Theatrical trailer
- TV and radio spots
- Storyboard and stills gallery

PARENTS BLU-RAY review

Meet the Laemle's. At first glance they're your typical 50s American family... Dad goes to work every day whilst Mom stays at home doing housework and preparing dinner for her 10 year old son, Michael. Except Michael isn't your average child, and he's starting to question why they have leftovers for dinner every night, and what were they before they were leftovers?

Pitched somewhere between Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure and David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Parents is a very weird film about a very weird family. Main character Michael (Bryan Madorsky) is not a chip off the old block, generally scared and concerned about who his parents really are behind the sheen of suburban harmony. Dad (Randy Quaid) may be all comfortable sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses on the surface, but his job at Toxico doing experiments on cadavers hides something sinister about the man inside the sweater; and Mom (Mary Beth Hurt) may look like she's straight off the cover of a family cookbook, but there's definitely some strange ingredients in her recipes.

Directed by character actor Bob Balaban, probably best known for his appearance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or his more recent work with Wes Anderson (or maybe just as Phoebe's dad in Friends), it's always interesting to see what material drives actors to make their first film behind the camera. Although this was Balaban's first theatrical directorial effort back in 1989, he had previously (and has primarily since) worked in television, perhaps most pertinent to this film on the pilot episode of the television series Tales from the Darkside.

Featuring orchestral music by David Lynch regular Angelo Badalamenti, Parents has a dark and sombre tone not unlike Twin Peaks, but as a dark suburban fantasy it nails the weirdness whilst never quite managing to be scary or gripping enough to match the world created by Lynch and Frost, which to be fair, is probably asking too much of this film. Kind of like a junior school version of Society, it works best when the smiles of this perfect nuclear family start to crack and Mom and Dad start to reveal their dark secrets, although Michael is such a weird little boy it's up for debate as to how real what he thinks he sees is.

The sole acting credit for Bryan Madorsky, he's great at playing the kind of kid you'd be worried about your own offspring hanging out with, like a young Norman Bates in waiting. He never does anything more irrational than worry about his own safety, but still... you just sort of know he's a weird kid. But Madorsky is more than capable of holding his own against the likes of Randy Quaid - a man not afraid of putting in a big performance when asked to do so-, and he has some great scenes with Mary Beth Hurt's Mom, like a deadpan Wednesday Addams interacting with Laura Linney's super chipper housewife from The Truman Show.

Make no bones about it, Parents is an extremely odd, sometimes sinister and occasionally disgusting vision of the perfect 1950s suburban life, and although you many never find yourself corpsing with laughter, it's an eccentric and curious oddity that raises a few smiles in its downright weirdness.

Verdict
3/5

Special Features-
- Commentary from director Bob Balaban and producer Bonnie Palef
- Isolated score and interview with composer Jonathan Elias
- 'Mother's Day' - a new interview with Mary Beth Hurt
- 'Inside Out' - an interview with director of photography Robin Vidgeon
- 'Vintage Tastes' - with decorative consultant Yolanda Cuomo
- Theatrical trailer
- Radio spots
- Stills gallery

CLASS OF 1999 BLU-RAY review

In 1999 there is no law. Society is crumbling, and Dr Bob Forrest (Stacy Keach) thinks he has the answer in the shape of highly advanced, lifelike robots that can keep the youth of the day in check. With gangs taking over his school, Malcolm McDowell's Kennedy High principal agrees to let the robots teach classes, as long as they can deliver what the children need most... discipline.

Released from juvie and headed back to school on the same day is bad boy Cody (Bradley Gregg), former leader of the Blackhearts gang, now eager to serve his time in school and keep his nose clean, until he learns that his younger brother Angel (Joshua John Miller, aka the late 80s answer to Edward Furlong) is about to be initiated into the gang. Hoping to keep himself and his brother out of trouble and away from the mysterious new teachers at school, Cody still finds himself landing on their radar. The three teachers, 'old man-bot', 'not Arnie-bot' and 'actual Pam Grier-bot' start doling out a variety of punishments, quickly escalating from spankings and a good shove, to actual cold blooded murder. In order to uncover the real truth about the new teachers and where they come from, Cody, along with the help of the principal's daughter Christie (Traci Lind) breaks into the teachers' apartment where the robo-conspiracy begins to unravel when he find cupboards filled with (dun, dun, dun)... WD40.

What's quite impressive in Class of 1999 is that cinemas favourite rent-a-baddie Malcolm McDowell isn't even that bad a guy. Heck, he isn't even the second most evil white haired man in the film. The top honours go to Stacy Keach, introduced to us with a bright white mullet and irises to match, later gleefully covering up the murder of children whilst chowing down on a banana. All his dialogue is delivered through a maniacal grin that would give schoolchildren nightmares.

Part of the fun of re-visiting "old" genre films is how wrong (and sometimes how right) they got their visions of the future. Now, I'm not suggesting that director Mark Lester saw this scenario actually becoming a reality, but it's an added bonus to look back on this film, 20 years after it was set and enjoy the many "thank god that didn't happen" morsels. Here Lester is doubling down on the concept of outlaw school kids he used for Class of 1984 (released in 1982), but at least this time he gave a good 9 years notice for his futuristic vision to come into effect.

I think it's fair to say that this film quite liberally 'takes inspiration' from James Cameron's The Terminator, but does it in a style that would please Cameron's former mentor Roger Corman. Class of 1999 takes Cameron's idea and says "what if school teachers were Terminators?", running with the concept to its illogical conclusion. There's also plenty to snark at in the vision of the future that begins with infographics straight out of Escape From New York and then features its three 'deadly' robots orchestrating gang warfare by driving around in a nice, functional Ford saloon car. It also doesn't have the same level of special effects as Cameron's original - less Cyberdyne systems and more like Jones from Police Academy 6 stuffing off-cuts of metal up his sleeve to pass as a robot - although there is a step up come the finale when the teens are pursued by a very Arnie-like walking metal skeleton. And yet despite all these moments of ridiculousness, Class of 1999 is not a bad film by any stretch.

The latest film to be given the hi-def upgrade as part of the Vestron Video Collector's Series, Class of 1999 is derivative of other, better films, for sure, and definitely doesn't make enough of having Pam Grier in the cast, but any film that has enough sense of humour to have a teacher profess how much he likes to "mould young minds" as he drills through a students forehead is okay with me.

Verdict
3.5/5

Special Features -
- Commentary by producer/director Mark Lester
- School Safety - interviews with Mark Lester and producer Eugene Mazzola
- New Rules - interview with screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner
- Cyber-Teachers From Hell - interview with special effects creators Eric Allard and Rick Stratton
- Future of Discipline - interview with director of photography Mark Irwin
- Theatrical trailer
- TV spots
- Stills Gallery
- Video promo

WORLD ON A WIRE BLU-RAY review

World On A Wire, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's sci-fi paranoid thriller, is out now in a deluxe blu-ray boxset.

When Vollmer, the technical director of the secretive Simulacron 1 project dies under mysterious circumstances, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch) is brought in to take over the project. Wary of what the real intentions of the project are, Stiller becomes a gumshoe of sorts, hoping to crack the case of what really happened to Vollmer, uncovering more than he anticipated about the true nature of the Simulacron project along the way.

First shown on television in 1973, World On A Wire has been billed as an influence on The Matrix, and while that is a parallel that can be seen in the high concept, big thinking ideas that question man's own existence, the visual style of the film couldn't be more different. The decor and clothing of this world are oh-so very 1970s. But this is a film all about its ideas, and it has a lot of them. The work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the prolific enfant terrible of the new German cinema known for his avant-garde experimentalism, it's a lot less controversial than some of his other works, perhaps due to its television roots. World On A Wire's concerns are based on man's fear of new technology, rather quaintly in this case, "computers".

Firstly, this boxset is not just aesthetically pleasing, but also probably necessary to fit it all in. The film itself is 3 hours 25 minutes and split across the 2 blu-ray discs, both with additional extras. Personally, I'm of the argument that a perfect film is between 90 to 100 minutes, so the 3 hour plus runtime may seem a little daunting. It is probably best viewed as originally intended; a high quality TV drama that can be viewed over two nights; but if you're into it... binge away.

It's a cerebral, talky exploration of the concepts of an artificially programmed world. If we were in some sort of manufactured world, would we really know? A film with ideas coming from every direction and that moves at a pace, it would have actually benefitted the story to divide this up more and allow longer for the ideas to develop in the mind of the audience. I could see this getting a 21st century revamp at some point, where it would probably be re-imagined as a mini-series across 6 to 8 episodes. It's often po-faced, with lines such as "could you convincingly explain our computer to a layman if all of society depended on it?" delivered in such a flat, humourless manner that it was unavoidably humorous to my modern ears.

World On A Wire is at its best when evoking classic 70s paranoid thrillers like Parallax View, with Stiller doubting who to trust and which of his former colleagues are who they say they are, and even manages to have a sly wink towards Alphaville (complete with Lemmy Caution cameo). At its core it is a pre-cursor to the technology obsessed psychological thrillers that were to come in the following decade. Scanners without the head pops, Videodrome without Debbie Harry; it's at times dated and mind meltingly confusing to keep up, but it's a visionary work that has plenty to offer audiences who like to deep dive into the sci-fi genre.


Extras -
- Rigid slipcase packaging
- 50 page book featuring new essays from Anton Bitel and Daniel Bird, archival writing from Daniel Oberhaus and Christian Braad Thomsen, stills and rare on-set photos by Peter Gauhe
- No Strings Attached - an interview with assistant director Renate Leiffer
- Observing Fassbinder - a tribute to photographer Peter Gauhe
- Looking Ahead to Today documentary
- On-set featurette
- Original broadcast recap
- The Simulation Argument - an interview with professor Nick Bostrom

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD review

During the filming of a low budget horror movie, the cast and crew suddenly find that they're under attack from the very things they thought weren't real. Zombies. As the director tries to capture the madness on camera, the action follows the lead actress in her attempts to survive this bizarre and unexpected turn of events.

Shin'ichirô Ueda's One Cut of the Dead is a zombie film, the likes of which you haven't seen before. The film starts in the middle of the 42nd take of a zombie attack, breaking when the director is frustrated by the lack of authenticity in the performance of his leads. As they chat and prepare for the next run through, the single take continues to film as lead actress Chinatsu (Yuzuki Akiyama) and heartthrob Ko (Kazuaki Nagaya) find themselves in real peril when the crew starts to turn into flesh hungry maniacs. Okay, so far so meta.... but wait, as One Cut of the Dead has plenty more tricks up its bloodied sleeves.

I would recommend seeing this film (and I most definitely DO recommend seeing this film) with as little prior knowledge as possible, as the many surprises it has in store for you are an absolute delight to discover. I'm going to avoid heavy spoilers, but it's impossible to review this film without giving away something. More than just a found footage style horror, One Cut of the Dead is a story that is told to us a few times over from different angles, some following the process of making the first portion of the film and some moving onto a broader scope that will have you applauding its ingenuity. It's meta, but without the snarky 'wink wink, nudge nudge' you might associate with the practice.

It's also incredibly funny. There's a perverse joy in seeing the crazed director (Takayuki Hamatsu) continually put his cast in harms way as he puts a camera in their face, shouting "action!", and as the film piles up the body parts and rushes its camera through dense shrubbery, there's definite nods to Peter Jackson's low budget gore-fest, Bad Taste. The film isn't light on splatter and throws everything it's got towards (and sometimes on) the camera lens, and as the film peels away its layers like some sort of zombie onion, gorehounds will love the reveals of its methods.

Of the different approaches to telling us the story of the making of the film within the film (still keeping up?), the simple and effective first segment and final re-telling that puts everything we've seen before (including what appeared to be mistakes made in the long, single take) in a new perspective are the most satisfying parts, with an unfortunate drop off in energy in the middle segment when it ceases to be a single take. It has a change of style that is jarring at first and that had me worried that this film had lost its edge, but thankfully it doesn't take long to recalibrate yourself when you understand (or when you think you understand) what the film is doing, with plenty more crowd pleasing reveals still to come.

More of a film about filmmaking than anything else, the greatest triumph of One Cut of the Dead is how it is able to re-invent and re-contextualise itself, right before your eyes. In every way imaginable this is a vibrant love letter to the creative, collaborative spirit of independent filmmaking. It's Living (Dead) in Oblivion for the digital filmmaking era, proving there's life in the zombie genre yet.

Verdict
4/5

CRUCIBLE OF THE VAMPIRE DVD review

When a family reports that they may have found the missing piece of the ancient Stern Cauldron, research student Isabelle tries to uncover what lead to the cauldron being split in two. But how was it only just uncovered, and is there a reason why now?

It's not nice to give a little film like this a kicking; after all, I've never made a film, have I? I have to appreciate the boldness of director Iain Ross McNamee, who clearly has grand ambitions for his material, releasing a graphic novel tie-in for this film, and his next effort I Saw Black Clouds some sort of cross platform multimedia experience with an accompanying video game.

It's a shame then, that Crucible of the Vampire is not very good. At all. There's a huge disparity in the level of acting ability, with Neil Morrissey leagues ahead of a whole number of stilted dialogue deliveries and sneering looks given by lesser actors; and without wanting to sound incredibly cruel, that's Neil Morrissey from Men Behaving Badly, AKA the voice of Bob the Builder we're talking about. Morrissey is hardly known for his dramatic performances, is he? But he is rather good here, playing the groundskeeper for the family who have uncovered what may be the missing half of an ancient cauldron.

In charge of uncovering the truth about the cauldron is trainee museum curator Isabelle (Katie Goldfinch), sent to research the artefact whilst dealing with the owners of the estate and their oddball daughter Scarlet (Florence Cady). The locals keep warning Isabelle of strange goings on at the mansion, and Robert (Morrissey) is keen to help this outsider navigate her way through the family's dark past.

It was only at about 55 minutes in that I remembered this film has the word 'vampire' in the title, as up until then it's like a slightly gothic episode of Midsomer Murders. There's a variety of creepy things happening, including a brief flashback to the 1640s where an old man who may or may not have been looking for his cat gets hung from a tree by the Witchfinder General; but vampirism plays a very small part in it. It's a shame that McNamee hasn't drawn more from classic British horror influences, as a Hammer-esque telling of this type of story would have worked better and been more warmly received. Instead, there's some blatant cinematic influences that simply weren't achievable at this level.

The obvious Wicker Man parallels start to become a bit laughable when Isabelle reveals to a barmaid she's known for the time it takes to order two drinks that she is a virgin due to her strict catholic upbringing; religion being something she has referred to earlier in the film as something she doesn't practice. Eh? And as the film approaches its finale and Isabelle darts around the house like it's the Overlook Hotel, the "borrowed" shots from The Shining seem less an homage and more a fan fiction film that would go straight to YouTube.

Crucible of the Vampire is a cheap, low stakes Brit horror that's light on scares and overstuffed with lore and mythology. Sadly, it's not able to match the overwhelming weight of the influences it draws from and arrives undercooked.

Verdict
1/5

ASSASSINATION NATION - London Film Festival review

When the town of Salem is rocked by scandal after the contents of the Mayor's personal hard-drive get leaked by a hacker, everyone starts looking for the culprit before they themselves fall victim. In the firing line is a group of four young women, unaware that the mob are coming for them.

Assassination Nation sets out its stall early on, delivering a Gasper Noe-esque list of potential trigger warnings the film features in brightly coloured text. "Toxic Masculinity", "Sexism" and "Transphobia" are just a few of the hot topic subjects this film goes after. To its credit, the desired outcome doesn't seem to be to just ruffle some feathers and piss off audiences who veer both left and right, but to expose public outrage for all its ridiculousness and ask its audience to put themselves in other's shoes.

At the centre of the film is Odessa Young's Lily, a high school student prone to taking lewd selfies to send to "Daddy". Along with the rest of the school, she and her three girlfriends, Em, Sarah & Bex (Abra, Suki Waterhouse & Hari Nef, respectively) join in with the viral spreading and meme-ification of every new piece of scandal that appears in increasing regularity. Although the poster may feature all four young women dressed in red leather coats (a knowing steal from nod to Japanese exploitation flick Delinquent Girl Boss), this only relates to the later stages of the film when they find themselves in increasing danger from the jeering mob, lead by the police and authority figures who should be protecting them. For the most part Assassination Nation sees the main characters dealing with normal teenage life; school, boys, parties, parents, etc, and for all the doom and gloom of the story, it's nice to see such a supportive group of female friends without it falling back on some typical high school movie stereotypes of bitchiness and in-fighting. I suppose there is some of that present in the film in the Maude Apatow/Bella Thorne subplot, but the core four stand strong together.

These teenagers exist in an age where their every move is published on the internet. The "adults" in the film may think they know what's best for the younger generation, but they are less equipped to pay the price of having their internet search history revealed and having to deal with a small subsection of the community quickly descending into a vocal, violent mob. It is of no coincidence that this film is set in Salem, home of the infamous witch hunts, as both the Mayor and the school Principal face the same braying mob (although under vastly different circumstances), demanding action to match their outrage. The film pulls no punches in asking the audience to question their allegiances and ask what side they would take in the argument, as characters fall victim to the hacker's indiscriminate outings and are branded pedophiles and child molesters without evidence of that. Lily's actions and relationship with "Daddy" have drastic consequences for her family and others, but is she a sexually confident young woman taking advantage of modern courtship rituals, or is she a child being manipulated by an older man into sending pornography?

Assassination Nation is upfront about its satirical approach, delivering its message with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to a cheerleader's head. It often skirts pretty close to sacrificing story in favour of style, but has enough nastiness propelling it forward to paint a troubling picture of a society not too far away from our own, filled with revenge porn and violent groups that wouldn't look out of place in The Purge films. Although not the main focus of the film, I found the most compelling story to be of Bex (Hari Nef), the transgender member of the group. Looking for a nice, normal teenage relationship with one of the jocks but having to deal with how easily mob mentality will dictate people's actions, for all the many outlandish set ups in the film, Bex's story seemed to be the most disappointingly, believably truthful.

Taking stylings from exploitation films and visual cues and colour schemes (good old red, white and blue) from Gaspar Noe and Joseph Kahn, Assassination Nation is a vibrant, nasty, clever film that's tough on the constitution of the prudish and a shit load of fun. Come for the shock value, stay for the marching band cover of Miley Cyrus's We Can't Stop. Assassination Nation is one wild ride from start to finish.

Verdict
4/5

BORDER (GRANS) - London Film Festival review

From John Ajvide Lindqvist, the writer of Let The Right One In, Border stars Eva Melander as Tina, a border control officer with an uncanny ability to sniff out wrongdoers. She lives a boring, mundane life until the arrival of Vore (Eero Milonoff), a mysterious figure who she shares a lot in common with promises to change what Tina thought about who she really was.

What's immediately obvious in Border is that Tina is no regular woman. With a heavy brow and caricatured features that she shares with no one else in her life (until Vore appears), she has grown up considering herself deformed, and unable to find someone who finds her attractive. Instead, she lives with a man who stays at her home all day, breeds muscular dogs and may be taking advantage of Tina's generosity. Things change for Tina when she encounters Vore passing through her security control. Immediately she is fascinated by him and can smell he is unlike anyone she has met before, but strangely familiar. Through their interactions and burgeoning relationship Tina finds out many secrets about herself that explain why she has never felt comfortable in the world she lives in.

Border swings from incredibly dark to incredibly weird, tackling some familiar themes of gender identity and physicality that Lindqvist has explored before in his writing. This is something of a mixed success in the characters of Tina and Vore, as your ability to enjoy this story depends on your suspension of disbelief that they could realistically exist in our world. Their characterisation and performances are extremely good, but then also the prosthetic work on both leads is far from subtle and wouldn't look amiss in a Vic & Bob sketch on a BBC budget. The filmmakers have clearly gone to some lengths to make Tina and Vore appear otherworldly, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that the make-up was occasionally a distraction.

Luckily the performances are very strong, with Melander giving Tina a real sense of growth as a person as she uncovers more about herself. Likewise Milonoff's Vore, who is a unique thrill to watch on screen, even if he looks like a disgusting creature, part ape man, part Aphex Twin, has complete disdain for the human race and may or may not be connected to the dark, dangerous world of child pornography Tina gets drawn into through her job. It's a disturbing subplot that you wouldn't expect to be covered in a typical love story, but then this ain't no When Harry Met Sally.

An off kilter romance with a nose for the bizarre side of life and the tenderest, weirdest sex scene you could imagine, Border goes to the edge and then bounds over it. Some of the subplot themes may on the surface be unpalatable, but at its core this film is about the connection two people can find with each other and the wider world around them. Surprisingly sweet.

Verdict
4/5

WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOUR - London Film Festival review

Part of this year's London Film Festival is Morgan Neville's touching documentary about one of American television's nicest personalities, Fred Rogers.

If you grew up in the UK, Mister Rogers is best known as one of those ubiquitous American pop culture references made in films, that you never quite understood. Thankfully this film provides the context of who Fred Rogers was, and why he had such an indelible impression on the youth of America for so many years. A presbyterian minister who saw the need for informative children's television, his show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ran from 1968 until his retirement in 2001, his kind and gentle persona teaching young children how to feel about their emotions, covering a wide range of topics like divorce, bullying and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

Using his tiger puppet Daniel Stripe and a host of characters for Rogers to interact with in the three walled set of his house, this was the kind of programming that seems quaint through modern eyes, like part of a bygone era before children were easily distracted by video games and brightly coloured cartoons. I'm aware that I'm sounding like a grandad by saying that, but this documentary makes clear that without Rogers there may have never been progressive, educational children's programming like Sesame Street. The filmmakers are also aware of how easily pastiched Rogers was, featuring clips of Eddie Murphy's affectionate homage on SNL, Mister Robinson's Neighborhood.

This is an extremely endearing documentary that, even if you weren't aware of Fred Rogers before viewing, will have you completely won over by the end. Even if you go in with a sense that there must be some dirt on such a kind and gentle soul, Neville digs as deep as he can to make sure the character of Rogers can't be called into question. The most controversial opinion Rogers had was asking long time cast member (Officer) Francois Clemmons in 1968 to remain in the closet for fear of the scandal it may cause, but as Clemmons attests as one of the key interview subjects here, he never considered Rogers to be an intolerant man and Rogers made right on the times he went wrong.

It's easy to be cynical about Fred Rogers as a subject with his kindly demeanour and trademark comfortable loafers and sweater, and (Academy Award nominee for 20 Feet from Stardom) Morgan Neville's doc is designed to be an uplifting experience, but I defy anyone with a heart not to find the footage of Rogers singing "It's You I Like" to disabled child Jeff Erlanger one of the most touching things you've ever seen. A kindly uncle to all of America's children, it's easy to see why Rogers, who passed away in 2003, has remained such a vital figure in American pop culture. Check your cynicism at the door and allow yourself to be open to the most heart-warming cinematic experience you could hope for, Won't You Be My Neighbour is one of the essential documentaries of the festival.

Verdict
5/5