lisacamillek

Felidae is a noir cartoon about cats and murder, based on the best-selling novel by the same name. It is very rare and unique in its genre - an animated animal picture with some of the most disturbing and dark subjects in film.

A serial killer slaying fellow cats in gruesome manners when they are on heat with the wrong race. There are visions of hell, animal experimentation, dead mutilated bodies, sex scenes and race purification - very much like Germany was during the Nazi regime.

It starts out as a plot similar to Basic Instinct, has a human-like tone just as Watership Down had, gruesome murder notions and Satan worshiping somewhat akin to Angel Heart and a few tragic characters like in Apocalypse Now.

Not recommended for children of course! But it is true to the novel and shows the world as we are in now, violent, hateful and cruel and more so in the past but with a future that still leads a way to hope.

For this wonderful masterpiece of a film. Such brilliant direction, powerful acting and superb writing that is hard to measure up to nowadays. The list of characters is one of the most astounding creations of story-telling ever.

First off is Lester Burnham, a self-pitiful somewhat loser who goes through a midlife crises. His overbearing, sexually frustrated, all-too-perfect wife Carolyn drives him into rebelling against her outrageous authority and control over his life. His snotty spoiled brat of a teenage daughter, Jane, is not so popular at school, unlike her 16 year old friend Angela Hayes, who raves about her sexual encounters with various men. Much to Jane's repulsion, her father develops an obsession for Angela, having sexual fantasies about her, surrounding beds, bathtubs and kisses with rose petals. He also meets an unforgettable character, Ricky Fits, his next door neighbor, son of Colonel Frank Fits, an open and proud homophobic who is tightly closeted himself. These reasons become Lester's ultimate wake up call and he starts living his life as he has always dreamed it, like quitting his job to work in a fast-food restaurant, smoking pot and lifting weights to "look good naked".

Ricky Fits, who becomes Jane Burnham's boyfriend, sees the world through a different perspective, like a painting of the world, rather than what it naturally represents.

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

I was hoping the main character, played by Janet Jackson, would lead to more adventures, like making a career out of her poetry composing, or befriend a nicer guy than Lucky (Tupac). After her boyfriend is killed at the beginning, Justice dives into despair and writes poems to escape her depression. She is dragged along for an anonymous ride with her friend and her boyfriend plus Lucky, which ends up in nothing but arguments and domestic violence.

Why is Justice hanging out with these people? She could have made it big with her poetry and gotten out of South Central, get her dreams started and move on from her harsh life. Instead nothing really happens except that she and Lucky seem to share the same views on violent social life, which turns out to be boring.

John Singleton seems to put in more bitchy, annoying domestic and social arguments between his characters in this film, Higher Learning, Baby Boy and this film unfortunately lack the deepness of his outstanding directional techniques he used for his first feature film, Boyz In Da Hood. 2fast 2furious and Four Brothers are taken out of the ghetto, but they don't share the rawness and desperation of Boyz. Shaft, on the other hand, is a change to the director's inventory and also shines a few "behind the camera" genius sparks he first showed us in his Oscar-nominated film Boyz In Da Hood.