Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Robert J. Maxwell Moira Harris is a country girl who moves to the corrupted urban pit called Dublin. She has a teaching job but we don't see much of it. Her main interest seems to be in finding a suitable mate.She doesn't have much luck. The first man who asks her out on a date is a queer duck. It's her Headmaster of English. He's older than she is and he ought to be stable, if a bit boring, but instead he gargles his wine while tasting it at a fancy restaurant, then, when he drives her home, asks if he can rub her tummy before she goes in. The habit traces back to his mother. ("I was lucky. She died when I was ten, before I could outgrow her.") So much for Robert the Headmaster.Then she meets a visiting American writer in a neighboring apartment, Timothy Bottoms. He's charming at first, one of those Yanks with a sentimental attachment to the land of his ancestors. But, if anything, he's more screwed up than the Headmaster. He pulls childish stunts like telling her to hide a coin in her underwear and letting him dowse for it. The charm quickly morphs into rage when he thinks he's been mistreated. Finally he blows his cork entirely, calls her all sorts of filthy names, and throws her into a thicket. So much for Danny Sullivan.But through all this, by means of a curious set of circumstances, she has met a police inspector who limps. Somebody has been calling the young girls of Dublin and whispering dirty nothings into their ears. Not VERY dirty. Not vulgar really, but insinuating, with an occasional physiological trope like Mallarme. "I envy the slab of pavement that bears the imprint of your foot." THEIR slashers are more pretentious than ours. Some of his listeners, he tracks down and stabs to death, leaving their naked bodies in an odd posture. One of the victims happens to be a neighbor of Moira Harris, and she's taken by the polite but rather intense police inspector who interrogates her, played by my erstwhile co-star, Christopher Cazenove. "Oh, Inspector," she gushes to herself, "your breath doesn't smell like pipe tobacco but like basil." Harris has an unanticipated encounter with the Dublin slasher, after which, instead of running to the nearest police station, she takes the ferry for England so that the utterly absurd climax can take place in the Irish Sea and the perp can fall screaming into the icy water, leaving Harris behind, holding a piece of him in her arms.Just a few impressions. One is that there is nudity and cursing going on here and even simulated coitus, which tells me that there must have been big changes in Irish cinema since I was last in a Dublin theater, watching an American movie from which the words d*** and h**** had been excised. Second, Moira Harris has large expressive features that can turn in a twinkling from joy to fright with only a minimal muscular rearrangement. She has one of those rolling walks too, of the kind that used to be attributed to sailors. Lindsay Crouse and Lee Remick had it too. She's quite attractive without being stunningly beautiful. The script by Robin Hardy is commercial trash combining sex, violence, and romance. The best performance is that of Mick Lally as Uncle Lar. His impression of a drunken guy peeling a boiled potato is peerless. And Hitchcock would have appreciated the stomach-churning story he tells during the act.This is one of those rare movies that should have just dropped the sex and violence and concentrated on the characters. Instead it looks like a poor imitation of an already exhausted American genre movie.

The_Void I saw this movie for one reason and one reason only and, probably like everyone else who has seen it, that reason is because the film is directed by Robin Hardy; the man behind the all-time cult classic 'The Wicker Man'. I honestly have no idea how a man behind such a great film as The Wicker Man could end up directing something as crap as this. The Fantasist does not have a very good reputation, and that's hardly surprising as this film is completely boring. It was thirteen years between the release of this film and Robin Hardy's classic, but I actually believe that shooting for The Fantasist began in 1974, only production was slow as the cast and crew kept on falling asleep during shooting! The film takes place in Ireland and follows an Irish woman who moves to Dublin. It's not long before she begins receiving obscene phone calls from a stranger, and (coincidently?) there also happens to be a killer on the loose known as 'The Phone Call Killer'. Most people in that situation would change their phone number, but our heroine is drawn to the mystery caller instead...The film starts off slowly but any hopes of it getting better are quickly dashed when it becomes quite clear that the pace is never going to pick up. This movie will grind you down; such is the sheer boredom on display. The film could be termed a slasher since people get sliced and diced, but it seems that Robin Hardy wanted it to be a bit more than just a slasher, and it's backfired horribly as there is no interest created around the central premise which absolutely kills it. Robin Hardy also had no luck in the casting department either as American actress Moira Harris fails to convince or generate any sympathy from the audience. The Wicker Man was a largely aesthetic affair with the picturesque island featuring strongly as well as the standout ending; but there's nothing like that here; all the locations are dreary and drab and that adds to the intense torture that is The Fantasist. Hardy probably wanted the movie to be a bit steamy and while there are brief flashes of nudity, the film certainly isn't sexy (though a sequence that sees the killer undress a girl with his knife is one of the few memorable moments). It all boils down to a stupid and predictable ending and overall, I would not recommend this rubbish even to hardcore fans of The Wicker Man.

jessica-147 Even though it was made in 1986, I had never saw this film before. To describe it as a horror film would be wrong, even though I watched it on the UK Horror Channel. It's more of a tales of the unexpected.The film starts off fairly incomprehensible, when the central character of Patricia Teeling, a 25-year-old, moves house and basically does her thing. She then starts flirting with two guys, one a man in his mid 40s, the other, slightly younger at around 35, who's an American. The story is rather stodgy, and takes some time to get going but it transpires there is a killer on the loose. And Patricia suspects the American guy. <SPOILER> dont't read on if you want to see the film without reading this...The killer is in fact the 40-year-old detective played by Christopher Cazenove. Toward the end of the movie, Patricia goes to Christopher who has a bad, stiff leg. She has coffee, then the detective asks her to see something. He lets her into a small room, whereupon he locks the door and tells her to undress so he can take "artistic" photographs of her. He has pictures of Patricia plastered all over the walls of the room, and so the detective is a murderer and a stalker.And here comes the twist. For although it looks like Patricia might be raped, and SHE LOOKS SCARED INITIALLY, the movie takes an unexpected turn. As Christopher begins tapping the bare buttocks of Patricia, she is turned on by this, and it's a remarkably realistic piece of cinema as Patricia really looks all hot and bothered and sexual. Suddenly, she grabs Christopher's finger and sucks it passionately. They then make love willingly with the clock showing how long they're in bed. If you watch the film, you would never imagine this happening as Patricia is a virgin and would never contemplate sex with a guy she knew never mind a pervy detective. This reveals something in Patricia's character which is something akin to the pervy detective.Like I say, it was a very expected turn to the film, and the end follows swiftly. You need to watch it!

Paul English Although nowhere near as good as "The Wicker Man", Robin Hardy has made a good stab at penetrating the Irish slasher genreAn interesting plot with some oddball characterisation and great scenery. The Dublin shots bring back memories of a pre-Tiger city. A motley crew of familiar and somewhat unpleasant actors [especially Ronan Wilmot and Jim Bartley] add to the frenetic atmosphere.Definitely worth 95 mins of your time.7/10