From PASTO, COLOMBIA-Via: L. A. CA; CALI, COLOMBIA+ORLANDO, FL The Only TONY KISS CASTILLO on FaceBook!---------------------------

A Cult-Classic Masterpiece! Director Antonia Bird, has me totally convinced of her boundless talent! She has crafted a grippingly intense and bizarrely original film, that defies any attempt at pigeonholing or labeling! It is, at times, amusing, often deftly ironic, chillingly irreverent, with moments of intentional political INcorrectness, and ever so subtly feminist at its core.

Juxtapositioning, with flawless style and sobering effectiveness, diverse elements of Horror, Period Western, Action-Adventure, Psychodrama, Suspense and the Supernatural, against a backdrop of some of the most breathtakingly dazzling outdoor scenery imaginable(Shot near Durango, Mexico),and set to a perversely inspired musical score that highlights the full potential of music to shape the ambiance of a film and provide the psychological equivalent of running your fingernails across a blackboard!

Ms. Bird has managed to coax truly riveting performances from each member of a superb cast! Guy Pearce(L. A. Confidential),starring as Captain Boyd, provides us with an uncannily haunting portrait of a tormented pacifist soldier, in the throws of a fierce struggle for his own soul!

Robert Carlyle(Trainspotting) was icily convincing as a fanatically focused, but utterly deranged cannibal in uniform. Jeffrey Jones, in an oddly empathetic change of pace role, played mild-mannered Colonel Hart, plagued by an interminable list of human frailties. Thusly, he is easily subverted by the sinister Ives(Carlyle). Despite all of the aforementioned accolades, I feel I must offer a word of caution: Ravenous is undoubtedly NOT suited to everyone's taste!

Though it has scarcely a few moments of starkly violent or macabre footage, these moments seem so devastatingly repulsive, that they don't go away easily. Consequently, I'd hesitate to throw out the Welcome Mat on this One! If you don't particularly care for the extremely bizarre, you might just want to stay clear of RAVENOUS.

9********* ........ ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome!

When "Ravenous" first came out, a lot of people thought that it was really gross. But when you think about it, the movie actually has a pretty interesting story. During the Mexican-American War, Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce) gets transferred to Ft. Spencer, where he meets Col. Ives (Robert Carlyle). The only thing is, Ives has some very (with a capital V) strange eating habits. And he intends to show Boyd at any cost.

I guess that the movie was mainly pretty good because it showed how a person can get driven to cannibalism in desperate situations. As a vegetarian, I'm not sure whether or not I would, but the movie sure made a good point about it. Pretty impressive.

RAVENOUS is a historical comedy horror set on the American frontier in the 19th century. It's a world of extreme cold, snow, hardship and cannibalism, as those trapped in remote outposts are driven to feast on the flesh of one another in order to survive. It's an interesting film for sure, but also one that's all over the place tonally.

I understand that the film's original director quit for whatever reason, so Robert Carlyle suggested Antonia Bird for the role. Bird and Carlyle had previously worked together on the excellent low budget British crime film FACE, so the choice seemed a good one, but I'm not sure that Bird was quite right for this material. Although RAVENOUS is extremely gory, it's never in the least bit horrific, while the attempts at black comedy aren't all that successful.

Instead what we have is an action-focused story of survival, loaded with gore effects and general nastiness. RAVENOUS is worth watching thanks to the sterling efforts of a great little cast, headlined by Guy Pearce back when he was just starting out in Hollywood. Robert Carlyle makes for a great psychotic bad guy as always, and the casting director has done a good job for interesting character actors: the creepy Jeffrey Jones, Neal McDonough, and Jeremy Davies. The less said about David Arquette the better, though.