HUNGER (2008)

After being so impressed with SHAME I decided to look into the previous Fassbender/McQueen collaboration HUNGER and...

It's alright. The story is about Bobby Sands' hunger strike during imprisonment and his death 66 days later. Interesting premise, but, if like me, you know absolutely nothing about who the hell Bobby Sands is or why he's starving himself to death HUNGER isn't going to clear things up for you. I literally had to pause the film about halfway in and do some quick reading online to figure out what was the story surrounding this film.

HUNGER opens with a cop getting ready for work. He's silent, distant and obviously internally scarred from beating and raping prisoners all day. Next we're introduced to a new prisoner. He's stripped naked, beaten then thrown into his small cell that's been covered from floor to ceiling with human shit by his cellmate. The new guy soon joins in the shit smearing. Finally we're introduced to fellow prisoner Bobby Sands who's is the leader of this cell block full of guys who refuse to wear clothes and like to doody all over the joint.

Stuff happens: cramming things up butts, screaming, spitting, kicking, shit smearing, pissing, maggots, etc., but unfortunately none of it fully explains what all the hubbub is about. All of the performances were powerful (and Fassbender's weight loss was visually shocking), but overall I found the whole thing to be unsatisfactory and slow. HUNGER succeeds in capturing a moment in time, but unfortunately I don't know what the context of that moment is.

CINDERELLA (1977)

[Update 03/02/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Absolutely fucking awful. I have no idea why in the 1970's there was a fad of making adult-themed fairy tale musicals, but there was and if CINDERELLA is any indication of what they were like, then I'll never watch another one as long as I live.

We all know the story of Cinderella, so I won't even get into that, it's the same old story...except this time around there's god-awful disco music, a budget of around a thousand dollars, wall-to-wall nightmare-inducing nudity and painfully terrible jokes. Examples: a guy peeling an apple is staring at some females so hard that he cuts his own finger off...ha-ha. Using a corncob as a dildo and when the chick cums, she popcorn shoots out of her snatch...hardy-har-har. A guy says his horse is the most well-trained horse in the kingdom then, as soon as he dismounts, the horse walks off...hee-hee. Or in the most worn out joke of the entire movie: the fairy godmother gives Cinderella a "snapping pussy", so for like the next 40 minutes everybody is making jokes nonstop about "the snapper" or "my snap decision" or "snap, crackle, pop." Good grief.

If you're a mentally disturbed 7-year-old child you might find this adult-themed CINDERELLA to be funny or erotic, but I would hope that the majority of people find the entire thing to be absolute shit and not erotic in the least. I'd have better luck jacking off to a old rerun of "Gilligan's Island".

NSFW images [I will try to update these as well as the ones on this review, when I find the time.]

IL POSTINO (1994)

Sweet story set back in the 1950's about a simple dude, Mario, who lives on a small Italian fishing island. He doesn't have a job since he hates fishing, but his luck changes when a world-renowned poet, Pablo Neruda, is exiled from his native Chile to the small island for being a Communist. This is a stroke of luck for Mario because now that there's somebody on the island who's actually literate enough to need a mailman to deliver his letters to him! Mario gets the job since he can read and he owns a bicycle.

Having lived his whole life surrounded by ignorant people, Mario is fascinated by Pablo. Especially Pablo's reputation for writing love poems that get women all hot and bothered. Soon enough the innocent Mario befriends Pablo and turns to him for help when he falls in love with a woman who works at a local inn. This is kinda where the film lost it for me. When I sat down to watch it I was expecting it to be a romantic film, but instead the romance part was very short-lived and instead the main story was about Mario and Pablo's friendship. There's nothing wrong with that, but I was hoping for something more, especially since the friendship between Pablo and Mario didn't seem all that strong.

Still it's an enjoyable film with a nice cast and beautiful locations. If you're into these sort of thing then it's a good watch. As for me though I'll be in my room watching CINEMA PARADISO...crying like a little bitch.