The Last Winter [2006]

Customer Reviews:

Chilling Chamber Piece.......2008-02-28

Having recently watched the irritating 1408 and the ridiculous NUMBER 23, it was a pleasure to sit down with the low budget LAST WINTER, about which I knew nothing, and let the unease soak into my bones like a hard, cold wind. It's a movie that looks like developing a cult audience on DVD. And it deserves it. The sense of isolation and despair that develops as the characters slowly crack open is good. As the permafrost melts away, so does their sanity, and the idea that there's something really nasty about to rise up through the slush is pretty disturbing.

What Lies Beneath...?.......2008-02-23

It's so good to see a self-proclaimed horror movie actually be scary for once. "The Last Winter" is extraordinarily creepy, and extremely intelligent stuff considering its set-up seems highly derivative of "The Thing." Larry Fessenden co-writes and directs this eco-horror drama that provides us with some nicely fleshed out characters in a beautifully stark snow bound environment. The question at the heart of the matter is about man's external destruction of nature and of our own internal self-destruction, and which will have the more deadly outcome.

It's always a pleasure to see Ron Perlman back in the saddle delivering his lines with the gruff superiority of a seasoned thesping veteran. He leads the motley crew of oil drillers holed up in the Alaskan wilderness into the belly of the beast. It's the standard ignorance of leadership role so familiar but so essential to the horror genre. Then we have James LeGros in a welcome return to the screen (and to good movies) who discovers early on that something isn't quite right out there in the darkness of the baron landscape they inhabit. Connie Britton keeps the ensemble quality going by playing the strong and capable female, without collapsing into Linda Hamilton mode at anytime. The cast is exceedingly well assembled and each actor does a fine job in squeezing every last drop of dread and drama out of the pared down script. And it is indeed a very well conceived and written script.

"The Last Winter" has very few failings. Like all great horrors it is a slow build-up of drip feed tension and foreboding before fear strikes and makes its mark. In fact the first hour is indeed an expertly crafted play in subtleties. The characters are given time to develop as their conflicts simmer to a boil until Fessenden starts tightening the screws. One by one. We begin to get the feeling this is going to end badly for all of them. Much is to be made and afraid of about the unseen foe or monster out beneath the ice. The fact that they don't know what's out there means we don't know, and that makes for unbearably tense excursions into the black unknown. Every time a character stands out in the bleak night air, anything could come out from the darkness to steal them away. This is the magic of Fessenden's design. A scene taking place on a night vision video camera provides perhaps the scariest moment of the year. Well, it got me good anyway.

Unfortunately for a film that builds so well, right up until the last twenty minutes, all the mystery and all the fear bleed out of the concept when Fessenden breaks the number one horror movie rule: Never show the Devil's face, because the audience's imagination is ten times more terrifying than any CGI beastie you can cook up on a computer. This is "The Last Winter's" only real failing, and considering the whole film hinges on this mystery monster or evil force, it's a pretty big one to mess up. When we finally glimpse this force of nature it is mildly frightening in comparison to the dark, suggestive use of lighting, camera movement and sparingly used special effects of earlier. It seems while we were thinking oil monster manifestation, Fessenden was thinking long dead animal spirits. It is disappointing to say the least. However, it is not so bad that it destroys the film's integrity or suspense factor completely.

The ending itself will be confounding to anyone who did not like the ambiguous nature of John Carpenter's incredible ending to "The Thing." This works on a level of fatalistic inevitability that man will lose the war with nature because he does not know he is fighting a war. That mother nature's greatest powers lie in our own weaknesses. What lays dormant beneath the ice? Can it be worse than what we as a race are capable of, or will it simply put us all out of our misery in one foul, vengeful swoop? It's an eco message for sure, but an intelligently poised and for the most part, terrifyingly rendered one, that pulls no punches in using fear of the dark and isolation as a powerful weapon to scare its audience witless. Eighty minutes of this film are masterfully tense and beautifully envisioned. The final ten minutes however keep "The Last Winter" from that extra star it so very nearly deserves. Still, a refreshing change to all the slasher nonsense Hollywood keeps pumping out onto our screens.

Highly Recommended, just don't watch it in the dark.

Good Film.......2008-01-28

This is a good film it has sense of menace and foreboding. The reviews below giving the film 1 star are being most unfair or must have watched a different movie! The film is good have no doubt - a good rental worth watching.

Slow, Slow, Slow.......2008-01-26

No pace, no vision, no sense of dread or terror, little meaningful drama, a lot of over-acting and not enough editing turn what should have been a good yarn into a one-dimensional waste of resources. Read The Terror by Dan Simmons for an idea of what this dud could have been.

Absolute Tripe!.......2008-01-17

I'm not going to waste many words on this review other than to say don't be sucked in by what's on the reverse of the DVD jacket. It's all baloney,save your dosh for something decent not this rubbish which wouldn't scare my cat.

Zuflucht in Shanghai - the Port of Last Resort (John Zorn) [2006]

Average customer rating:

Zuflucht in Shanghai - the Port of Last Resort (John Zorn) [2006]
Zuflucht in Shanghai
Manufacturer: Winter & Winter
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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DVD | Format (binding_browse-bin) | Refinements | DVD | Video
ASIN: B0009W4LL8
Release Date: 2005-10-03

Customer Reviews:

Fine La Scala production.......2006-05-22

Alessandra Ferri is a superb Giselle, making the transition from a high spirited girl to death and then to initiation as a Wili with complete conviction. Massimo Murru cuts an athletic romantic figure as the deceiving Count Albrecht who steals Giselle from Hilarion (Paul Conelly) another fine performance.

The staging is traditional but extremely effective, particularly in Act 11, some lovely dancing by the corps de ballet (at one point they received spontaneous applause mid dance) and fine orchestral playing.

Excellent Production.......2003-08-12

This is a recreation of the Ballet Russes production in the 1920s and I will have to say that it is absolutely spendid.
Alessandra Ferri dances in the title role with a great sense of tragedy and it is so hard not to cry during the famous Mad Scene. Miss Ferri is truly a major star. Her love interest who is played by Massimo Muru is very handsome and is a very good dancer. It is easy to see why Giselle would fall in love with him.
A great advantage of this production is that it includes the mine squence in which Giselle's mother tells the legend of the Wilies. That makes a lot more sense for me for so often this piece of mine is very often cut in modern productions. The picture is excellent and the music is so beautiful and so heartrending especially during the Pas de Deux in the second Act when Giselle is trying to protect her lover from the vengeful spirits. At the end, I was crying my eyes out.

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