If possible it’s best to start the week with a little lighthearted fun, and thanks to a gang of bumbling Irishmen, who decide to steal a truck full of Viagra, that’s exactly what you’ll get with Holy Water (Monday 24th September, 8.30pm).
If possible it’s best to start the week with a little lighthearted fun, and thanks to a gang of bumbling Irishmen, who decide to steal a truck full of Viagra, that’s exactly what you’ll get with Holy Water (Monday 24th September, 8.30pm).
Times are tough in the tiny village of Kilcoulins Leap; so four locals decide to hijack a Pfizer lorry full of Viagra pills, intending to later sell them in Amsterdam. Surprisingly, they manage to pull off their amateurish plan, but when they hide the loot in a well that feeds the towns water supply they give the locals a lift they hadn’t anticipated.
If you can cope with the obvious Viagra jokes, and the odd over-acting American interloper who come in search of the lost pills, you’ll likely find Holy Water an amusing distraction on a Monday evening.
Red State (Saturday 29th September, 8.30pm) is a little different in tone, and has to be one of the most intriguing and polarising films on the bill this week.
It’s the story of an extreme evangelical cult that kidnaps four men with the intention of executing them for promiscuous behaviour. Midway through their twisted vigilante session they are set upon by the FBI, after a local policeman becomes suspicious of their behavior.
This is a crude, violent comment on American gun control laws, terrorism laws, the media, and religious extremism. Not to mention all the white trash on display.
It’s a surprise to learn this controversial film is the work of “slacker” director Kevin Smith. It’s hardly the material you’d expect from the director of Clerks and Chasing Amy. About half way through a sense of humour is suddenly injected into proceedings, and you realise this isn’t a terrifyingly and perverted film, but a satire on the horror genre - albeit one with a political edge and mixed results.
I watched this film with my father, and I think he summed it up nicely when he said, “In a perverse kind of way, I quite enjoyed that film.”
Finally, you’re able to end your week with Mulholland Drive (Sunday 30th September, 8.30pm), the final film in our David Lynch Directors Showcase this month.
A surreal, abstract masterpiece, Mulholland Drive is insufferably impossible to understand. It’s filled with beautiful and memorable images, and possesses the same dreamlike weirdness that made Lynch’s Twin Peaks one of my favourite TV series of the early 90s.
This film launched Naomi Watts on the world stage and is up there with Lynch’s finest works - it’s worth a revisit for those of us who’ve already had the pleasure, and a must for those who have somehow managed to miss it before now.
Enjoy.