db_simpson Reviews

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Truly unique

[10 December 1999]

'Koyaanisqaitsi' is a truly unique film.

There is not really what you would call a conventional plot, and the film contains absolutely no dialogue - yet paradoxically it makes for far more ominous and moving viewing than your average Hollywood slush. The speeded-up vision of industrial society creates the effect in the viewer of perceiving the world's major cities as being enormous, chaotic, interrelated organisms, while it's stunning view of nature makes you realize just how precarious and yet powerful the Earth can be. Truly unique, even if many would not even classify it as a movie in the conventional sense.

Stalker (1979)

A visually stunning and haunting film

[26 November 1999]

A visually stunning and haunting film, this strange offering from Tarkovsky may be slow and seemingly without a plot, but stick with it and you'll find yourself watching one of the most original films in a long time. Filled with some spellbinding visuals, it's the kind of film which induces a trance on it's viewers that stays a long time after the end credits have rolled.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

A heady cocktail of sleazy soft-core and art-house

[26 November 1999]

This has got to be one of the most surreal films ever made. The film brilliantly combines weird art-house imagery with sexadelic soft-core to create a genuinly original film, full of strange gothic colours and futuristic, freefall visuals. The eerie soundtrack of spacey synths and sexy piano sleeze brilliantly captures Linda's confusion as she enters the world of the mysterious Countess. This film is quite unlike anything else you have seen before.