Medusa Deluxe

Angie and Cleve demonstrate the fontange

“Who scalps a hairdresser?” The key line in Medusa Deluxe, an ingenious low-budget whodunit set entirely inside a regional hairdressing competition, where big characters vie to produce the hairdo that will grab the judges’ eye. Or they would have vied, if one of their number, Mosca, hadn’t wound up dead, the victim of the bizarre scalping incident. Who might have done it? An old flame, a rival, a cranky judge, an angry security guard or any one of a number of young female models, all of whom have enough spare energy to murder any number of people who get in their way. Now, the paramedics are here tidying away Mosca’s scalped body and … Read more

Snowpiercer

Jamie Bell and Chris Evans

That sound? The plane taking off from LAX taking another great Asian director back home, sobbing with disappointment. It happened to John Woo, who did at least manage to crank out Face/Off, but his sad run of Hollywood films include Windtalkers, Mission: Impossible II and Hard Target. To the Pang brothers too, whose The Eye was one of the attention-grabbers of 2002. They came to Hollywood, made The Messengers for Sam Raimi, then put their tail between their legs and went home. So what about the latest Asian import, the great South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, whose uniquely flavoured movies include Memories of Murder, a killer-thriller-whodunit whose cops get their man more … Read more