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Fried Barry (2020) With a nod towards Brother from Another Planet, The Borrower and even Bad Boy Bubby, and with a sprinkling of John Waters too this had me laughing out loud frequently as we follow a lowlife junkie's apparent renaissance into a more caring and sharing husband and father in an "outsider looking in" street level take on on the alien possession theme.

South African filmmaker Ryan has enrolled the striking looking Gary Green as the horse-hooked Barry in question, introduced while on a vomit spewing come-down. Green is a visually odd figure who could easily have stepped out of a Richard Kern movie, and in the initial stages of the alien's arrival on earth, using Barry as a vessel to interact and learn how to behave from those around him in a red light area, gets right into the dark streets of Cape Town one evening, just as Kern did back in NYC in the day, albeit less experimentally : this is played strictly for shock AND giggles. But it does also features a decent claustrophobic feeling industrial noise soundtrack.

At times surreal, unsettling and violent , this film has a more than welcome helping of low rent debauchery, violence, and insanity. And at times it's really really funny: you'll see the fastest pregnancy and birth ever, and one hilarious scene where Barry and other inmates "blast" their way out of "The Looney Bin" that Baz finds himself in after being picked up by the cops; then there's the chainsaw fight scene with its amusing gurning and growling which also scores high for quality gore content. Throughout the film, the volcanically-bubbling shape shifting facial and bodily contortions that Barry goes through help establish his "alien" persona, and there is plenty of unsettling behaviour to witness throughout, I'm very pleased to say.

The overdriven colour neon visuals include interesting trippy sequences, and there are Lynchian characters, such as the "boss" alien who seems to be heading the project, as well as Waters' degenerate film extras galore to keep trash film fans happy, with a UFO mothership that keeps appearing to remind us it's not just a usual Saturday night out for GG Allin.

A lot of fun, if you like your films squalid, low rent and OTT , order Fried Barry for a generous helping, with guaranteed extra grease. Yum 🤤

"Forgive my impatience, but I hope you will reveal your plan for me soon. I can't shake the feeling that you must have saved me for something greater than this." Saint Maud (2021) explores what might occur when hardcore religion takes over your perception of the world and how completely detaching from reality can result in calamity (Brexiteers take note 😱)... Katie (played by the immense Morfydd Clark, who manages to switch convincingly between a righteous pious carer and a deeply disturbed promiscuous misanthrope) has a life changing experience while trying to save a dying patient, converting to Roman Catholicism and changing her name to Maud. She goes to work for a private care agency and becomes responsible for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle) a retired hedonistic dancer/ choreographer who is in the latter stages of Lymphoma, needing palliative care. Amanda's carefree and ever-hedonistic attitude, accentuated by her impending death, both fascinate and disgust Maud, who while happily peeping at Amanda entertaining her lesbian lover also feels that God has sent her to "save" Amanda's soul so instructs the girl to leave her alone. Maud, consumed by her religion, further alienates herself from society.

Saint Maud is primarily about the dangers of feeling isolated, and the carnage that can come when an individual's perception of reality becomes dangerously warped. The audience is left guessing at just how far Maud has gone within her own delusion, and this is the underlying theme of much of this film's tense, dark atmosphere.

Indeed, Maud is a deeply disturbed young woman who experiences transcendental spiritual moments regularly and - like all good penance-seeking Roman Catholics - indulges in self-flagellation and self-harm: burns and pins in her shoes show her devotion to God and she looks down on those who partake in the more simplistic pleasures of life. Ironically and disturbingly, Maud spends her free time as an aggressively predatory female, having one-night-stands and sexual contact with random men in the pubs she frequents because she doesn't know an alternative way to connect, returning to her depressing flat consumed by feelings of dirtiness and disgrace.

This is director Rose Glass' first ever feature length film, and it's impressively handled in terms of cinematography, mixing magical realism with almost a documentary feel at times and the impressively dark score also contributes to the feelings of claustrophobia the film generates as the audience gets to know too much disturbing information about the main protagonist. The first two thirds of the film resemble an unsettling Ken Loach style kitchen sink drama, the final third builds logically towards the ultimately aptly scorching ending. I was reminded of the Polanski classic "Repulsion" at times, which is no bad thing ...

This amused me as it draws many parallels with Covid/ Climate issues: a satire that takes a left wing swipe at the self-absorbed "advocates of freedom" with an apocalyptic comet instead of Covid / Climate disaster. Those of course who deny the approaching comet are of the populist persuasion (Fox news and Meme/ YouTube researchers) screaming support for Merryl Streep as a female Donald Trump, slogan "Don't look up" when the comet starts to appear in the sky: "because they want you to look up to remind you of how they are looking down on you" ( cue big cheers) 🤣🤣🤣. There is also Ariana Grande lampooning those revolting rent an A-List celebs singing at a charity concert and a hybrid Bezos-Zuckerberg clone: a spaced-out wealthy private citizen with so much power (and a private escape spacecraft) that he is able to essentially control government decisions.

Leonard DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence put in great turns as the astronomists who discover the imminent disaster, and with its unveiling the film unnervingly shows a society that doesn't want to listen and prefers to reject science for hearsay and alignment with meaningless political slogans. If you're left of centre you'll enjoy, politically detached and you'll watch it like a car crash: you know you shouldn't, but you can't resist a peek; I'm expecting angry mobs similar to those depicted in the film to picket outside cinemas to denounce it immediately as fake news. Fun.