Tag: a horrible way to die

We’ve quickly come to realise that our idea to provide slightly more in depth accounts of the films we’ve seen has fallen foul of the social hours we keep. There are only so many hours in a Sitges day and a quick tally of the numbers goes as follows; 4 films a day = 8hrs, Drinking = 6 to 8hrs, Sleeping = 8hrs, leaving us between 0 and 3hrs a day to write stuff and, to be honest, it’s been leaning towards the zero end of the scale.

What can we say, we love watching films and we love tapas and beer.

…….The late nights are starting to take their toll, and having struggled to drag ourselves out of our beds, we stumbled through the doors of The Retiro just as the credits began to roll on our first film…..

PRADO – 10:00hrs – A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE

This was hotly anticipated by both members of the team as we’re developing a bit of a thing for A J Bowen and he didn’t disappoint. This is a slick, smart and well put together serial killer story. We were relieved to finally get a film shot hand held and from the hip but where the focus was still on solid story and character performance. Though the film did employ a technique of dropping out of focus and swinging away from the subject as a means to cut into the next scene and this only served to annoy.

There was an effective use of time overlap and flash back, although they possibly exposed a little more than a half intelligent audience would need them to. A J Bowen’s performance was different class as he plays one part normal, one part psycho to perfection. He’s utterly convincing, and this was particularly important at the end as anything less would have undone the effectiveness of the film’s punch line.

……..Buzzing from how much we enjoyed Bowen’s bulls-eye we hightailed it up to The Auditori, discussing on the way that when we’ve made it big in Hollywood we’re going to put AJ Bowen in all of our films. We were desperately hoping that the weekend warriors had gone back to Barcelona, but were dismayed that this wasn’t the case and that the press queue stretched right the way back to the hotel entrance. Through some strange quirk of fate, we actually managed to bag our regular seats and normal service was resumed for our next film, James Gunn’s Super.

AUDITORI – 12:39hrs – SUPER

An entertaining romp which only just sneaked in as a Sitges film as ordinary Joe dons a homemade superhero costume to combat crime in his community and win back the heart of his lost love.

This turned out to be only a 90% Hollywood flick as there were unexpected Sitges-style buckets of blood, gore and excellent swearing. The use of the “C” word in a comic store was class. The A-list cast hit their marks as expected and it was good to see Ellen Page show something different. Her on-screen orgasm just may have been convincing enough to have pre-pubescent teens everywhere reaching for the Kleenex.

……..We walked straight out of Super into our next film, Dream Home. Again, the press queue was huge but after some clever cheating/deception (we pretended to be buying coffee from the cafe near the entrance), we were one of the first in the cinema and Corridorstyle Row was ours once more…..

AUDITORI – 14:30hrs – DREAM HOME

A twist of a tale born of the current financial crash this Hong Kong horror takes mortgage meltdown to the extreme. The things people would do to get a dream roof over their heads is taken to the next level as one woman’s plan to secure her family a new home turn from bad to shit-storm

Part gore and part comedy the film ends up being neither, though the kills certainly become ever more inventive they would have had more effect had the comedy and the characters been punching at the same weight.

…..Today’s film viewing was cut short as we headed off to El Born district in Barcelona to sample tapas and Spanish hostelry at it’s very finest…….