phantom-90 Reviews

The League of Gentlemen (1999–2017)

The Most Warped Show Ever Created

[17 November 2003]

My roommate's English girlfriend gave him a DVD of the League of Gentlemen. Being a huge fan of Monty Python (own the entire series on DVD), Black Adder (likewise), Fawlty Towers (likewise), and The Young Ones (likewise), I was greatly intrigued by the stories I had heard of this series. Then I watched it. Oh my goodness. When I first saw Monty Python, I thought it was bizarre. Then the Young Ones came along and upped the ante. But the denizens of Royston Vasey set the bar so high that I doubt it will ever be topped. Half the time you're watching LOG you're laughing because it's genuinely funny, the other half of the time you're laughing because you can't believe what you've just seen. This series is Stephen King meets the Twilight Zone meets Stanley Kubrick meets Monty Python. It's easy to be funny, and it's easy to be bizarre and sinister, but to combine them and be all of that at once is truly a feat of genius. So, providing you've got a taste for the dark and strange, settle down on the couch with a nice glass of "aqua vitae" and watch this series. Oh, and don't take your pet turtle to the vet.

Vertigo (1958)

Not light fare

[28 May 2003]

One of the less-favorable reviewers on IMDB commented that "We see movies to be entertained," thus implying that no one could possibly be entertained by a slow-paced, intense character study. Movies can serve numerous purposes, including entertainment -- and in today's saturated market entertainment is virtually required -- but entertainment is a subjective thing. Some people find light-hearted comedies highly entertaining, while others prefer serious, psychological thrillers. "Vertigo" is at the head of the class in the latter group. If you're looking for excitement, action, car chases, gun fights, and great lines that you'll quote for weeks, go elsewhere. But if you're in the spirit for a staggeringly intelligent movie with more layers than a princess' wedding cake, you simply can't go wrong with Vertigo. This movie is simply raw emotion and neuroses thrown onto celluloid, and Alfred Hitchcock wields them with such skill that the movie has a depth and emotional impact that few films have achieved before or since. The movie IS slow-paced (as it should be; if you want fast-pacing go watch "Speed" or "Natural Born Killers"). The movie is also entirely devoid of humor or light-hearted moments. It starts out seriously, and only intensifies over the course of the entire film. By the end of the movie the scenes are almost stifling in their emotional tension and darkness, and... well, suffice it to say you shouldn't expect a nice Disney-fied ending that will leave you with warm fuzzies the rest of the night. This movie ranks as one of the best ever made for numerous reasons: the enormous technical skill with which it was filmed, the powerful acting performances, and (perhaps most of all) the way it exposes the deepest, darkest recesses of human emotion, the side of the human spirit most people never want to talk about or even admit exists, of how a man controlled by obsession gets driven into the ground by a love he can't let go of.