The Driver: Dress-Up Paper Doll!
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Korn's New Album: Industrial Metal Dubstep - And It's Really Good!
Jonathan Davis with his microphone stand designed by H.R. Giger. (Yes, seriously.)
I've long been a big fan of Korn, but it's been hard to get particularly animated when their last decent album (though admittedly my personal favourite) was Untouchables, released back in 2002. After that, first there was an okay album that seemed to be trying to revert to their old style, then an attempt to go a bit more poppy, then another album which felt similarly poppy and then finally another attempt to revert to their old style with absolutely no good songs on it whatsoever.
Now they've released an album where every song is conjunction with some kind of industrial and/or dubstep artist. The best songs are in conjunction with Skrillex (whose video seems to be doing the rounds on the internet right now). The songs in question are embedded below:
Get Up (featuring Skrillex)
(video link)
Narcissistic Cannibal (featuring Skrillex and Kill The Noise)
(video link)
The new album is called "The Path Of Totality" and it sounds absolutely brilliant. A real surprise and it just goes to show that Korn are at their best when they try to be a bit more experimental.
Also there's a rather amusing review at the AV Club which tells us that it's worse than sludge. I remember when there were nothing but glowing reviews for Blur's (now thankfully forgotten) album "13". Music criticism is such BS.
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In Defence of Jar Jar Binks
This was originally a comment on the Topless Robot website and I've received 11 likes for it. I'm quite pleased with the comment and it seemed to represent the turn of the tide from general Jar Jar Binks hatred in the comments, to a rather more nuanced view on the position with many echoing my sentiments. Anyway, below is a version of the comment with a few small changes and edited for grammar.
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Here's a little observation. This occurs to me because of a recent "Horror Etc" Podcast (check it out - that post also includes an absolutely awesome Star Wars picture), where one of the podcasters showed his daughter, who had never seen any Star Wars before, all six of the movies (in release order) and asked her views.
Anyway, she liked Jar Jar Binks because she thought he was funny. No surprise there.
However, I've worked out what is wrong with Jar Jar hate. Look back at The Phantom Menace. What is actually good in it, particularly for a young child? Ignore how much you hate Jar Jar for a moment, pretend he isn't there. Now what else is there to be happy about?
The film begins with talk of taxation and trade routes. Heck, even those of us old enough to know what that was on about didn't care about that bit! The Jedi then turn up in the glamorous position of.... negotiating some kind of business settlement...? Okay, so after a while they start fighting robots, but asides from the presence of lightsabers this isn't really anything special and let's face it, we are missing the main things we need in order to enjoy it: (a) a sense of context and (b) endearing characters. These Jedi look determined and are good at fighting, but they don't have any real individuality.
So eventually they meet up with Jar Jar. And, let's face it, Jar Jar is the first good guy in the movie who actually has a personality. (He's probably the only character you could successfully identify in Red Letter Media's character guessing game.) What's more, sure his style of humour is lowest common denominator slapstick and that's what everyone hates, but if you accept it for what it is then it does the job. If you compare Jar Jar to little Anakin I'm not actually sure that Jar Jar comes off the worst of the two.
My main point is as follows. The Phantom Menace is a pile of old rubbish. When you are a young child used to the kind of dire rubbish that is often foisted on children and you are taken to this big budget spectacle by your parents, you are inevitably asked at the end what you thought. You don't get to go to the cinema all the time, so you are disinclined to say "well that was stupid" and heck, you've seen worse. So your natural reaction to a film is to think of what bits were most appealing. After all, there's been so much buzz on Saturday morning TV that there must be SOMETHING good in it right? So which bit was moderately entertaining? Well.... I suppose the clumsy cartoon rabbit who speaks in a silly voice was moderately entertaining. Of course, you don't express yourself like that when you are young, so you are more likely to say: "Jar Jar was funny."
Don't look down on their perspective. We are more susceptible to hype as young children than in later life because we don't have such good critical thinking skills to work out when we are being fed rubbish. A child saying that Jar Jar Binks was the best thing about "The Phantom Menace", even if that extends to owning Jar Jar Binks merchandise, is about as eloquent and damning a critique of "The Phantom Menace" as you going to find....
That said, I thought Darth Maul was pretty cool. ;)
(video link)
Other videos:
- Parody trailer for The Phantom Menace 3D, highlighting many of the problems with the movie.
- Ahmed Best, who voiced Jar Jar Binks in the prequels, shows his comic talent reprising the role in this hilarious Robot Chicken sketch.
- The Red Letter Media hour-long critique of The Phantom Menace starts here.
Here's a little observation. This occurs to me because of a recent "Horror Etc" Podcast (check it out - that post also includes an absolutely awesome Star Wars picture), where one of the podcasters showed his daughter, who had never seen any Star Wars before, all six of the movies (in release order) and asked her views.
Anyway, she liked Jar Jar Binks because she thought he was funny. No surprise there.
However, I've worked out what is wrong with Jar Jar hate. Look back at The Phantom Menace. What is actually good in it, particularly for a young child? Ignore how much you hate Jar Jar for a moment, pretend he isn't there. Now what else is there to be happy about?
The film begins with talk of taxation and trade routes. Heck, even those of us old enough to know what that was on about didn't care about that bit! The Jedi then turn up in the glamorous position of.... negotiating some kind of business settlement...? Okay, so after a while they start fighting robots, but asides from the presence of lightsabers this isn't really anything special and let's face it, we are missing the main things we need in order to enjoy it: (a) a sense of context and (b) endearing characters. These Jedi look determined and are good at fighting, but they don't have any real individuality.
So eventually they meet up with Jar Jar. And, let's face it, Jar Jar is the first good guy in the movie who actually has a personality. (He's probably the only character you could successfully identify in Red Letter Media's character guessing game.) What's more, sure his style of humour is lowest common denominator slapstick and that's what everyone hates, but if you accept it for what it is then it does the job. If you compare Jar Jar to little Anakin I'm not actually sure that Jar Jar comes off the worst of the two.
My main point is as follows. The Phantom Menace is a pile of old rubbish. When you are a young child used to the kind of dire rubbish that is often foisted on children and you are taken to this big budget spectacle by your parents, you are inevitably asked at the end what you thought. You don't get to go to the cinema all the time, so you are disinclined to say "well that was stupid" and heck, you've seen worse. So your natural reaction to a film is to think of what bits were most appealing. After all, there's been so much buzz on Saturday morning TV that there must be SOMETHING good in it right? So which bit was moderately entertaining? Well.... I suppose the clumsy cartoon rabbit who speaks in a silly voice was moderately entertaining. Of course, you don't express yourself like that when you are young, so you are more likely to say: "Jar Jar was funny."
Don't look down on their perspective. We are more susceptible to hype as young children than in later life because we don't have such good critical thinking skills to work out when we are being fed rubbish. A child saying that Jar Jar Binks was the best thing about "The Phantom Menace", even if that extends to owning Jar Jar Binks merchandise, is about as eloquent and damning a critique of "The Phantom Menace" as you going to find....
That said, I thought Darth Maul was pretty cool. ;)
(video link)
Other videos:
- Parody trailer for The Phantom Menace 3D, highlighting many of the problems with the movie.
- Ahmed Best, who voiced Jar Jar Binks in the prequels, shows his comic talent reprising the role in this hilarious Robot Chicken sketch.
- The Red Letter Media hour-long critique of The Phantom Menace starts here.
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Some Long Overdue Movie Reviews: Paul, Julie and Julia, Hanna
So....these are the Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve movies respectively.
Paul (2011)
Okay so, I'd been interesting in seeing this, but concerns over toilet humour meant that I didn't see it in the cinema. So what better time to check it out than when we were auditioning a possible Christmas Day movie? First of all I feel we need to tackle the toilet humour issue. Interestingly the toilet humour doesn't seem to come from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at all, however a lot of it comes from Seth Rogen's eponymous alien. Still, as much as I'd love to put all the blame on Rogen and let Pegg and Frost off the hook, the lines aren't simply improvised by the actors. Still, it's definitely there, including a recurring joke where there is a continued reference to "spaceman balls". However, there are plenty of jokes that aren't toilet humour.
Towards the end of the movie, the film seems to suddenly need to rely on movie references with some shameless references to Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Admittedly this is set up by earlier claims that Seth Rogen's eponymous alien was in contact with Spielberg and the movie references act as a rather helpful counter-balance to the lack of interesting plot elements in the third act. Sigourney Weaver turns up with a less than worthy camero appearance (though it does serve to set-up the inclusion of an iconic line from "Aliens").
All in all this was fairly entertaining and I won't say that it was a bad movie. I think I need to bear in mind that I'd probably be rather more forgiving towards the films flaws if it weren't Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the lead parts. That said, those two manage to elevate what is essentially a typical *ahem* "hilarious" American comedy from which I'd normally run a mile.
If you absolutely need to see another Nick Frost and Simon Pegg comedy duo movie, this isn't half bad. It isn't half great either though. This is very much a middling movie and I'm disinclined to give it more credit than it deserved. There was a lot of potential here, but in the end I don't think it was built on enough. But I'll still admit that I did laugh albeit not consistently.
C+
Julie and Julia (2009)
It turned out that nearly everyone had already seen "The King's Speech". After Horrible Bosses was put on screen and "Big F***ing Asshole" appeared on screen in massive white letters, it was decided that "Horrible Bosses" really wasn't the right movie for my grandparents. (I must admit that if I hadn't mixed up "Jennifer Aniston" with "Julia Roberts" we'd probably have recognised this rather quicker.)
.....
So the movie for Christmas Day was finally switched to "Julia and Julia", the Meryl Streep film whose marketing seemed barely indistinguishable from her other film "It's Complicated". (Asides from the trailer for It's Complicated being substantially more memorable in it's level of repulsion.)
There are two appealing elements to this movie. Meryl Streep's domineering performance as the food writer "Julia Childs" and Amy Adams heartfelt performance as an aspiring writer and blogger. Both appear in mediocre storylines which are expertly combined. Unfortunately there's a limit to how much the way the two storylines are combined can avoid being undermined by the mediocre level of the two individual storylines. However, this film most definitely reaches the utmost boundaries of that limit.
Essentially this is a much-much-MUCH-better-than-average-rom-com. Amy Adams has several annoying friends who are barely friendly and you can't imagine why she'd spend time with them. They have about five minutes with her before they are pretty much never seen again, almost as if the writer were ticking off a box on the "obligatory elements in cheesy rom com" checklist. On the other hand Meryl Streep has a sister who decides she wants to get married and rather sweetly ends up with someone no one was expecting before disappearing from the storyline entirely, with this seemingly checking off the "cheesy milking of sweeter elements of history for bio-pic" checklist. At one point Amy Adams has an argument with her boyfriend that very nearly reaches the lows of the ultra-unrealistic relationship in "The Devil Wears Prada" (where the boyfriend seemingly has an argument with his girlfriend because "success has changed her" and we are randomly expected to side with the boyfriend).
Still, I cannot deny that the plot moves along very well, that there are many points where the movie pulled me into an emotional state without cheating, that Meryl Streep is absolutely fantastic in her role, that this is one of the better performances I've seen from Amy Adams, or that I wasn't fully behind Amy Adam's aspiring blog-writer by the end.
In fact when I first sat down to review this (and I'm sure that few have failed to notice that these reviews are coming to you substantially later than when I first watched the movies), I was inclined to give this a B+ (as a very good movie). It is only in retrospect that I've come to recognise the more twee elements of this film. If you are actually quite keen on the occasional cheesy rom-com and this has somehow passed you by then I'd have to recommend this particular highly to you in particular. However, perhaps it's my own misplaced sense of pride, but I feel disinclined to rank this any higher than as a good solid movie. It does what it's supposed to do and acts as a great piece of entertainment. Meryl Streep in particular provides a flawless performance (and I'm sure her role as a toothless caricature of Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" involves a similarly excellent performance). If you want something harmless and fun one evening you could do a lot worse.
B-
Hanna (2011)
This was a film I'd been looking forward to a great deal. The trailer made it into one of my "Too Good To Be True" entries and, though I know that trailers can be deceiving, I was pretty sure this wouldn't disappoint. Naturally there's the inclusion of Saoirse Ronan and Cate Blanchette, who are both great actresses, but also the director Joe Wright. While it seems to have become trendy in a few quarters (*ahem* Mark Kermode *ahem*) to badmouth "Atonement", I actually reckon that was an excellent movie. It's probably not one of my absolute favourites of that year, but it's fantastic all the same.
In this film, Saoirse Ronan is on top form as the girl "Hanna" trained by her father in the middle nowhere (in Siberia?) to be the ultimate assassin. Taking the part of our protagonist, she is fluent in multiple languages and can carry on a conversation in perfect Arabic without a hitch, but is disturbed by radios and televisions. The role of her father is played by Eric Bana who I've never really been able to take seriously since "Hulk", but admittedly does an alright job here. Sadly Cate Blanchett also doesn't seem to give much more than an "alright" performance is spite of having shown herself capable of much more elsewhere.
The soundtrack is very obviously from the Chemical Brothers, but it does the trick. Still, the central whistling theme quickly seems overused. This theme is used to introduce the evil lackey played by Tom Hollander. He is often expected to whistle it, which might have been rather more unnerving if it wasn't often also part of the background music.
Tom Hollander does his absolute best portraying a pitiless bad guy in a tracksuit and does a remarkably good job considering what he has to work with. While Eric Bana gets one of the most awesome setpieces of the movie in a gunfight where he wrestles with agents and avoids gunshots expertly, Tom Hollander doesn't really get much of a chance to anything terribly bad to anyone. As part of the overarching fairtale theme, Tom Hollander is introduced in a strip club choreographing a Snow White themed burlesque show. Apparently he's evil because the woman he's directing is a hermaphrodite. *shrugs*
Hanna's destination for much of the movie appears to be a kind of gingerbread house. It looks like she's got her own personal version of the Dutch theme park Efteling waiting for her.
Typical "fairytale" house from Dutch theme park "Efteling".
I can't say I wasn't entertained while the movie was running. The pacing is good and things are pretty interesting, particularly towards the beginning. The problem however (and I'm disinclined to be forgiving on this issue) is that the ending completely fails to make use of the initial premise. In the end, I was let down. All the elements that were set up never really went anywhere, with the rather lame excuse of "oh it's all like a fairytale". I'm sorry, but fairytales are more interesting than that. I think Joe Wright is a good director, but if he can't find enough to do with the talents of Cate Blanchett and Tom Hollander then he needs to insist on a more interesting and satisfying script.
C+
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Two New Reviews: Films From Studio Ghibli and Kevin Smith
Arrietty (2010)
I wasn't sure what to expect from this. I hadn't heard anyone else hyping this one up. Dammit internet, what is WRONG with you?
So anyway, the movie starts up with a young boy being driven somewhere in a car, so pretty similar to the beginning of Spirited Away. However, eventually we reach the house and suddenly the focus shifts from the boy moving into the house, straight to a tiny thumb-sized girl hiding from the cat in the bushes. The girl is Arrietty and it turns out she's been venturing to get a bay leaf from the garden for her mother.
It's a good thing we get introduced to the borrowers themselves nice and quickly because it means the pacing can be nice and quick from the start. Studio Ghibli are able to work some real magic with the world of "borrowers" the small people who live inside the structure of the house and live from the tiny amounts they need to borrow from humans. Where the film really impresses, however, is where Arrietty is taken out borrowing with her father. We'd already seen her bravely venturing into the garden for flowers and leaves, so when she is confronted by the vertigo-inducing drop off the sides of tables that need to be braved in order to retrieve items from the house, we really feel it.
Naturally Arrietty will eventually meet up with the boy we were introduced to earlier and relationship between the two is set up very carefully. It's also interesting to see that Studio Ghibli find an environmentalist message here (which is quite a common theme in their films). I don't remember the book of "The Borrowers" because it was so long ago, so I don't know if the original source material ever mentions the constant loss of endangered species, but I thought it was an interesting idea to employ, even fleetingly.
Any fan of Studio Ghibli shouldn't miss this out. To my mind this is up there with Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Sure, it doesn't feature the supernatural elements that were in those two films, but to me that makes it all the more remarkable. One thing though: Watch the Japanese subtitled version. When I finished the film I decided to quickly check out what the dubbed version was like. Saoirse Ronan plays Arrietty as if she thinks it's massively important that she remind us when this book was written. Sure, the book was written in the early 50s, but that doesn't mean you have to give a 1950s performance. (Apparently the US dubbing is a different set of actors, so I can't speak for that version. I can strongly vouch for the Japanese version though...)
A+
Red State (2011)
This was looking pretty impressive to start with. Oddly perhaps the biggest problem with the film was its portrayal of its only named gay character. Three older teenagers decide that they are going to have sex with a prostitute. On their way there, they scrape against a car. They don't realise anyone is in the car to start with, just thinking it was parked by the side of the road randomly. Then it becomes pretty clear that there is a man inside the car who was getting a blowjob from another man. The man in the car is a police officer. When he gets back to the Police Station he asks another officer to track down the car for him before staring at a photo of his wife and crying.
What I've described would all be fine, if it wasn't for an event that happens later, the underlying suggestion behind it and the complete failure to follow it up properly. Considering that the central bad guys in this film are a militant homophobic Christian fundamentalist cult, the way this single gay character is portrayed seemed to be lacking the level of nuance he deserved.
Anyway, anyone who has seen the trailer knows that the prostitute they meet up with isn't what she seems. They also know that there's a Westboro Baptist style Church involved (y'know, the ones who hate everything except Twilight). What you probably don't know, though you might have guessed, is that unlike Westboro, this fundamentalist group are stockpiling guns. As such, the plot leads into a shoot out with police, Waco-style.
The problem comes when the lead police officer, played by John Goodman, is told by his superiors that he is expected to leave no survivors. (Apparently because that would be better than involving the FBI???). Michael Parks and Melissa Leo give absolutely fantastic performances, but sadly there's a clear point where the film loses all sense of direction, constantly limiting where the plot can progress by killing off major characters. The final ten or so minutes of the movie involves several people in a room talking. Some quite convoluted explanations are given for some of the earlier events and this scene is also used to crowbar in references to the "war on terror" and to nudge us to wondering whether the homophobic death cult at the centre of the movie are really so bad. Um... yes they are! What the hell are you smoking Kev?
Some great acting and some great moments particularly towards the earlier half of the movie, cannot make up for the dreadful tacked-on ending. Perhaps this'll be a sign of better things to come from Kevin Smith in the future, but "Red State" is distinctly flawed. Also, if Kevin Smith wants to write his own films, he really ought to think more carefully about what he actually wants to say first.
D+
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A Selection of Lucio Fulci Classics....
Lucio Fulci is a big name in Italian horror and he's quite keen on including zombies in his films. One of the big attractions of his films is his inventive use of gore, allowing him to provide zombies that are not only scary as hell, but genuinely look dead and rotting. Three of the films reviewed here were placed on the UK "Video Nasty" list: "Zombie Flesh Eaters", "The Beyond" and "The House By The Cemetery".
Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombi 2) (1979)
I'd heard very mixed views of this. Just to clarify, this movie has several titles. The actual original title was "Zombi 2", posing as a follow-up to Dawn Of The Dead (which had the title "Zombi" in Italy). In some places the movie is known as "Zombie", "Island Of The Living Dead", "Zombie Island" and "Woodoo".
This film ties the zombie genre back to its origins in voodoo magick. A scientist is trying to explain the phenomenon of bodies seemingly rising from the dead, but he is unable to find an answer and meanwhile the appearances of zombies are only getting worse. Locals on the island can only presume that the voodoo magic is real, since what else can explain it?
Our protagonists come to mee this scientist later. At the beginning of the movie we see zombies appear on a boat which we later discover was returning from a tropical island. The daughter of the zombie victim teams up with a reporter and together they decide to check out the origin of the zombie threat themselves.
The plot is minimal, but some of the visual ideas are so inventive that they've kept the movie looking pretty fresh after all this time. The scene that is regularly talked about is the zombie vs shark fight. The zombie walks along the bottom of the sea and bites into a shark. There's no doubt about it, while some of the shots might be of a fake shark this is, for the most part, a real life shark on screen. I can only presume that the guy in underwater zombie makeup is also a fully-fledged shark trainer. Either that or this was possibly one of most risky bits of filming in movie history.
Lucio Fulci proves to be a master of gore. The top of a zombie head is chopped off revealing the brain. Zombie arms reaching through the window force a woman's eye onto a shard of wood in their efforts to pull her towards them. What's more the zombies look genuinely dead. At one stage we have particularly dead-looking zombies wandering around with clumps of earth filled with live maggots in their eye-sockets.
Night Of The Living Dead might have decent characterisation, a plot with a beginning, middle and end, the makings of a brand new genre and (arguably) genuine social commentary. However, Zombi 2 has something which gives it a run for its money all the same: It has zombies who look dead. If we compare it to Dawn of the Dead which has awful characterisation, a pitiful attempt at social commentary (zombies are in the mall because they lived in the thrall of capitalism *facepalm*) and barely has a plot, Zombi 2 (to my mind) beats it hands down. Zombi 2 is seriously creepy and while characters aren't always developed much, they are normally developed enough to get you upset when they meet their gruesome demise.
I began this movie thinking it was low budget trash and ended it thinking it was one of the best zombie movies I've ever seen. Fulci is clearly much better at realistic gore effects than he is at pacing, storytelling or dialogue, but if you want horror Fulci has it in spades. Sure, if you aren't impressed by the time you finish watching the zombie fighting the shark, this probably isn't for you. However, I'd hazard that most zombie fans willing to stick it out into the second half will find it is well worth it. This is a real gem.
A- (Excellent, but not quite the best)
Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (Zombi 3) (1988)
An entirely new setting and this time the zombies aren't linked with voodoo at all, but are entirely the fault of bio-chemical research. Scientists are working on viral research, but someone decides to steal their work and ends up accidentally unleashing it on the general public. After that, the military attempt to clean up the mess.
The main scientist struggling to create a cure berates the military, but if we were supposed to side with the scientists then I'm afraid that's a big failing in the writing. It seemed pretty clear that there was very little the scientists could do to stop their virus and that actually the military had a far greater chance of success, even if they were just killing everyone.
Overall this was a lot of fun and there are some very good scenes with zombies jumping out at people and a fair bit of creativity. However, there's nothing like the shark scene from the first film and I felt like there were few consistent characters to hold my interest. As per usual with Fulci movies, there is a lack of a consistent plot, but this was so much fun that I wasn't too worried about that.
Overall this was a good solid fun low-budget zombie film.
B- (Solidly good movie)
City of the Living Dead (1980)
When I first discovered this film it was part of a general search for zombie movies. I then discovered that this is the first of a whole trilogy of Lucio Fulci movies about gates opening to hell. The second installment is "The Beyond" and the third is "The House By The Cemetery".
At the beginning of the film we see a priest hang himself and this is seen by a psychic. I was a bit concerned about the psychic to start with. This isn't because I don't believe in psychics, since I don't believe in zombies or gateways to hell either. The issue is that psychics can sometimes be awkward to handle in movies. This can be particularly problematic when the psychics start complaining about their rights, as psychics were some kind of real life persecuted minority group. Thankfully this isn't an issue that the movie dwells on. Though that's partly because the movie doesn't dwell on anything at all. Things keep moving and often follow no particular logical pattern.
It is during this, my third Lucio Fulci film, that I finally realise that Fulci's movie not only move at a pretty leisurely pace, but they don't really worry too much about narrative structure. Stuff happens and the movie ends eventually. That said, there is somewhat of a plot here in that there are evil monsters and a threat to humanity as a whole and this threat is dealt with in some way (not to give too many spoilers).
The basic gist is that the priest who hangs himself has started a process of opening a gateway to hell. As part of this he comes back to life and acts as a kind of "master zombie" enlisting various new people into his undead army. He seems to have hypnotic powers, rather like a master vampire would. Oddly though, the means by which each victim dies and becomes zombified seems to depend on their gender. Men always seem to die by being grabbed by the head and having their brains pulled out, while women cry blood and then vomit their internal organs.... Lovely.
Fulci loves his gore and at one point the film goes on a bit of a tangent just so we can have a particular death scene. A misunderstanding means that a father believes another character is a troublemaker who is planning on defiling his daughter (or something), so the father gets very angry and decides to kill this character. What follows is a sort of reprise of the scene in Zombi 2 where a woman is gradually pulled closer and closer to a shard of wood until her eye is impaled on it. In this scene the poor unfortunate man has his head placed on a... um (showing my ignorance of woodwork tools).. sawing machine. His head is pushed down on the conveyor belt and the camera continually switches between a view of the father's angry and exertive face as he holds him down, the victim's horrified face as he realises his inevitable demise and the blade's uncaringly whirring as the distance slowly narrows. This is pretty gratuitous, it's superfluous to what little story there is (not least since this violence isn't done by zombies) and, to be frank, it doesn't work as well as the eye piercing scene in Zombie Flesh Eaters.
Anyway, the music is pretty awesome in this film, particularly towards the end and things end satisfyingly enough. However, the film plods along and there really didn't seem to be enough payoff to encourage me to keep watching. I was halfway inclined to give up on Fulci movies at this stage. Though Zombi 2 had been a pleasant surprise, Zombi 3 had simply been "alright" while City of the Living Dead had just turned out to be pretty dull. However, the next film "The Beyond" was supposed to be the real classic and I hung on in the hope that things would get better.
City of the Living Dead contains some unforgettable signature Lucio Fulci gore. However, there's not enough variety, so the movie as a whole feels repetitive, slow and dull. There are some aspects to enjoy, but this is really not a good movie, even taking into account the low budget.
D+ (Not a good movie, but containing some entertaining elements.)
The Beyond (1981)
I was a little worried going into this, but I decided to make a go of it. I made myself some pasta and sat myself down ready to go. I then quickly realised I was going to need to stop the movie and eat the pasta first, because the film begins with some pretty nasty violence and gore that really threatened to put me off my food.
This, more than any of the other Lucio Fulci movies I watched, has pretty much no narrative arc. Sure there are characters with specific identitities, but what they are doing in the film and how they are developing as people is anyone's guess. Some events in the film seem to happen entirely at random without really being resolved. This is particularly true of a scene where some acid randomly falls onto the floor and begins to fill a room, quickly leaving no possibility of escape. (Even as I'm writing that, I'm wondering how it makes sense. However, it is nonetheless what I saw in that scene.) Did the character we are following in this scene escape? Or were they eaten by the acid? Not a clue.
There are some absolutely inspired moments in "The Beyond", the most notable of which for me is the scene where an impromptu lightening strike causes a man to fall off a ladder and then be eaten alive by killer tarantulas who appear out of nowhere.
"The Beyond", like "City of the Living Dead" before it, is about a gate to hell opening. However, while they may not develop exactly, there are distinct characters who we really get to follow and who feel like real people. The gory scenes vary. What's more the mysterious blind woman with her pet dog is pretty iconic. Sure the ending makes absolutely no sense, not to mention most of the content of the movie, but the whole film is a successful experiment in general creepiness.
The Beyond is a masterpiece in and of itself. It has the same ridiculously low budget as all the rest of Lucio Fulci's movies, but there's a real classic feel to this ridiculous film.
A+ (Classic!)
The House Behind The Cemetery (1981)
Okay, so I came into this one with a very different attitude to "The Beyond". While I knew this wasn't supposed to be as good, I couldn't help but hope for the best. From a fanart poster on Reelizer (see above) I realised that the eponymous house is the same one where the mysterious blind girl lives in "The Beyond". However, it seems that's more for budgeting reasons. There isn't actually any clear connection between this film and "The Beyond" at all. In fact there's actually no mention of gates to hell.
The plot of this film is actually probably the most solid plot I've seen in any of Lucio Fulci's movies. There's a very solid structure for what happens and there is genuine development of characters.
Sadly of the two child actors, the little boy can be irritating as hell and both actors are incomprehensible at a few points.
There's some level of misdirection about the source of the threat in the movie, but it becomes pretty clear that the cellar is not a good place to be. This makes things particularly annoying when characters keep on going to that same staircase down into the cellar, falling into the same trap again and again. The horror movie "lemming" instinct really seems to have set in badly here.
Also a source of irritation is the way the camera keeps quickly zooming into the adult male protagonist's face to show just his eyes. This seems to be intended to show that he's understanding more about their situation in the house, but it just comes off looking daft.
When the threat is finally revealed it does admittedly look pretty damn cool. Also there are some good bits of gore earlier in the movie, with a particularly notable bit involving a super-resilient vampire bat. Upon first appearing it just looks cheap and nasty, but by the end when things have got really messy it all feels worth it.
The film was somewhat satisfying by the end. However overall, in spite of a far better constructed narrative, this wasn't really any more fun than City of the Living Dead.
Oh and the ending doesn't make sense, though by this stage that seems like par for the course with Fulci's movies.
D+ (Not a good movie, but containing some entertaining elements.)
X-posted to
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candycorncomm
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Movie Reviews: "Chronicle" and "Hesher"
Chronicle (2012)
This film seemed to come out of nowhere and the trailer absolutely blew me away. (Though I advise everyone to steer clear of the trailer if they want to have the best cinema experience.) This is a brand new found-footage movie. It doesn't hit the heights of "Troll Hunter", but then again I think both of these films take the crown away from "REC" (which really impressed me by both having interesting characterisation and giving a good reason for the continued use of the cameras even after things get rough).
The film follows an introverted boy who has decided to film his life because he wants a record of the way he is treated by his aggressive alcoholic father. As a means of distancing himself from the frightening world around him he has decided to film everything. This sounds pretty contrived to start with, but it actually becomes pretty natural after a while.
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rhoda_rants, you were absolutely right about how they control the cameras. The way "Chronicle" makes the film feel more natural is having the camera held up by the characters' mysteriously aquired telekinetic powers.The characters are a greater strength here than in Troll Hunter. We have three central characters who interact in a very real one. However, it becomes clear that two of the more "jock" (yeah, that's really not a UK-English word, but since this is an American film it seems to fit) characters would not be so interested in spending time with our introverted protagonist with the camera if it weren't for the powers they find themselves sharing. The limits of telekinesis are slowly extended over the course of the film. There also seem to be clear rules on how the powers work. It seems that for our protagonist the telekinetic powers give him a way to express his inner life in a way that his more extroverted friends can also understand and the way the relationship develops is actually quite well planned.
The only thing that I'd say negative about this film is (and isn't it always) the final act. It makes it especially awkward for this review. If my comment was that the ending spoils it, that'd be easy. Unfortunately the ending doesn't spoil it. It just makes it slightly less good of a movie than I hoped it would be. I suppose the point to make is that while many people are comparing this to more typical superhero films such as X-Men, the only point where it really feels like one of those films is in the last act. For those who liked the movie "Unbreakable" as much as I did, this might help to understand the appeal. Just like "Unbreakable", "Chronicle" considers what it would be like if superheroes were real and does it in a much more compelling and exciting way. The problem with the final act is that in order to take the action to the next seemingly inevitable stage, the film suddenly takes a rather more cliched turn.
Rather than actually going into spoilers, I think it might help to arm viewers with a few comparisons to Akira. Hollywood has been threatening us with an American live-action remake of Akira for a while and perhaps "Chronicle" will make up for the disappointment that remake is expected to deliver. Akira is about a disturbed boy with an inferiority complex who finds himself transforming and gaining strange kinds of superpowers. At one point in "Akira" it's suggested (with differing clarity depending on whether you are watching subtitles or listening to dubbing) that the process is causing a transformation from human to god. It's an evolution of sorts. (Though at the same time in "Akira" it's also about an imbalance of nature, with a creature reaching a higher level of evolution before it's ready. It's perhaps more indicative of the idea of karma than a serious consideration of evolution per se.)
As well as this kind of "evolution" theme turning up a little randomly at one stage towards the end of "Chronicle", another parallel with "Akira" is the way some of the powers are animated. As you'd expect from telekinesis, it involves making things rise around you. Anyway, at a certain point in "Chronicle" we see our central characters causing small rocks and dirt to rise around them in a way that I found very evocative of the Akira imagery. Sure "Akira" is set in a post-apocalyptic future (though some have noted that since the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan has been essentially post-apocalyptic anyway), while "Chronicle" is set in modern day. However, there are clear parallels in the ways the powers develop and some of the underlying themes of the film.
"Chronicle" is brilliant fun and I wonder whether I'm not sometimes more critical of films when I see them at the cinema than when I see them on DVD. Perhaps I'll be changing my mind on this when I rewatch it on DVD just like I did with "X Men: First Class". However, in the meanwhile I do think things go a little cliched in the last act and so for now this is a very good film, but it doesn't get the A grade.
B+
Hesher (2010)
Wow, okay. I found this in Filmdrunk's list of best films of the year for 2010. It's a good little list and now that the only film on the list that I haven't seen is "Youth In Revolt" I'd say that, asides from "The Social Network" (which takes the lowest spot), I'd agree with every film included in that list.
I've been interested in the concept of "Hesher" for some time now. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as the unhinged metalhead druggie who simply follows no rules. I was a little concerned with the part of the premise whereby he befriends a child, but I was intrigued enough by the chance of a darker Gordon-Levitt performance anyway. Quite a while back I saw "Mysterious Skin". It's not a film I want to revisit any time soon, but it was a really interesting film about child abuse and there's no doubting the power behind Gordon-Levitt's performance. And now, seemingly to make sure no one forgets his ability (because let's be honest here, "Inception" was hardly the showcase of his talent you might hope for) Gordon-Levitt strikes again with this indie film where every time he's on screen he completely blows you away.
There's one particularly scene in "Hesher" which I am going to call "the swimming pool scene". While Hesher (which in case anyone was wondering, is the name of Gordon-Levitt's central character) seems pretty unfazed in nearly every scene, somehow he seems to be able to become far more animated and energetic without it seeming like a major change. What defines Hesher is his unpredictability. Whenever he walks anywhere he seems to do it powerfully and with determination and even if he's just standing still there's always the impression that he could make a sudden threatening or shocking motion at any time. So in the swimming pool scene, we start off with Hesher lying in a sunbed and we finish the scene with absolute mayhem and Gordon-Levitt's co-stars Natalie Portman and Devin Brochu (the child actor) are left shell-shocked at the end. Gordon-Levitt regularly has scenes like this that had me paralysed with laughter because his character is so perfectly over-the-top. Not ridiculous, but just one of the most incredible movie characters of recent years.
So we've got a film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman (yes, she's doing well here too), with a child actor who actually does a damn good job too. I've already admitted that I was laughing hysterically for much of the film because of the strength of the central performance and I began this review with "wow". So... what's the negative side? Well, in the end Gordon-Levitt's character is able to provoke such a powerful reaction because he contrasts so jarringly with the rest of the movie.
To make a fairly poor analogy, think of the role that Shaggy and Scooby have in your typical Scooby Doo episode. There's a fairly run-of-the-mill mystery with some (as far as I can remember) fairly dull characters, but then it lightens up when you have the sections where Shaggy and Scooby are running down corridors away from the main bad guy. These scenes are a far cry from the mystery story which the cartoon starts with and finishes with, but essentially it's the way this slapstick contrasts from the main plot that caught the child audiences' attention. Well the Hesher character works a similar way. We've got our central plot of a boy whose mother has died, dealing with a depressed father and a grandmother who is losing her sight. Then we have a spanner in the works in the form of this druggie metaller whose first introduction involves him throwing an explosive in the general direction of a policeman to avoid being caught squatting. He blames the child for attracting attention to where he was living and insists that the child helps him stay in their house instead.
Hesher is very much an anti-hero, with more emphasis on the "anti" than the "hero". He's also precisely the sort of character you'd expect writers for Filmdrunk to find hilarious. (Check out one of their Frotcasts, to hear how their immature humour works.) Perhaps it's missing the point to wish the whole film was simply about him and didn't feature this child's angst on top of that, but the fact is that behind the Hesher character we have a fairly run-of-the-mill indie movie which doesn't really know how to end. Some of the stuff the child decides to do actually felt even more confusing than Hesher's random actions. The child in the film is constantly trying to buy a car that's being towed away at the very start and even when we discover the car's significance, it still wasn't obvious to my why the child was doing this.
A top notch performance of a top notch character which introduces some absolutely incredible black comedy into what would otherwise be a dull indie flick. Well worth watching and overall a good solid movie, but sadly the background world which Hesher inhabits makes the story rather limited overall.
Oh, almost forgot to mention. Towards the beginning of the film we see the child in a lesson at school where he appears to be getting a lecture in Freudian theory. The class is asked about the metaphoric function of dreams and whether they are premonitions or expressions of feelings, but instead of actually getting students to put their hands up and answer questions, the teacher then goes on to start linking dreams to relationships with one's mother. Seriously, film scripwriters out there, there are lessons taught in school and university that aren't about Freud, okay? And if you are setting your scene in high school, don't have the teacher giving long verbose lectures to the class. (Why does it feel like the most realistic depiction of a school lesson I can think of is in "The Craft"?)
B-
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A Selection Of Horror Reviews....
Humanoids From The Deep
Effects guy Rob Bottin (The Thing, Total Recall, The Fog, Robocop) does this smaller movie. It's actually pretty good and the actings actually pretty good too. It just has a ridiculous plot and premise. It's pretty similar to Pirahna in many ways and is possibly rather better paced. Good cheesy horror fun.
B-
A Nightmare On Elm Street
I've actually watched this twice because it left me thinking about it afterwards. There are some great moments in this with some clever ideas and visual inventiveness. I wasn't actually convinced by the child actors towards the beginning of the movie (yes, including Johnny Depp), but once it gets started it works pretty well. I will say, however, that Freddy comes off very cheesy, particularly when he is hobbling forward with his legs apart and his arms in the air. He also appears to get his dress sense from Dennis The Menace:
Overall this was a good fun little movie and I can see why it spawned sequels. Perhaps I'll check out "Dream Warriors" at some point since that's supposed to be rather better than the first sequel.
B+
The Scars of Dracula
Apparently not yet put off Hammer Horror Dracula movies by "Prince of Darkness", I checked out this one too. I was surprised that it was actually pretty entertaining. It was good to have Christopher Lee actually talk this time around. Cheesy and stupid as hell, particularly the actual demise of Dracula (though it was a lot more dramatic and effective than the ending of "Prince of Darkness"). Still, the victims were more interesting than before and the plot was actually reasonably interesting this time. A good little romp with the potential to be a properly good Dracula film. Sadly, it still suffers from pacing issues and a certain level of overall blandness. Not bad, but could've been a lot better.
C-
Dracula's Daughter
I have to say, there were good bits and bad bits. I actually found this pretty interesting though less and less so as it went on. The story takes place straight after Dracula. Van Helsing has just killed Dracula and claims that since Dracula had already been dead for 500 years he should not be charged with murder. Helpfully it is at this point that a mysterious woman decides to take away the body and destroy it, wishing to break the curse upon herself...
The comic relief policemen required a certain mood which I'm not sure I was able to muster. Meanwhile the suggestion that the best way to give up an addiction is to have lots of it was extremely annoying. Towards the end, the vampire's minion seemed to act rather inconsistently. This was quite fun with some good moments, but didn't quite seem sure what it wanted to do.
D+
Witchfinder General
Vincent Price is awesome as always, but the film is just horrible from beginning to end. It's made even worse by the knowledge that this is based on what were probably pretty similar events in real life. Still, I cannot criticise the skill behind the film and must admit that it achieved the kind of morbid fascination is sought from me. (I must note that a certain method of killing is lifted pretty much directly from Witchfinder General for a scene towards the end of Silent Hill. Inspiring plagiarism is possibly a pretty good sign of quality.)
Don't watch this unless you are feeling in a sadistic or strong-stomached mood. This is very nasty indeed and even with Vincent Price still being on his typical somewhat-hammy form, that doesn't make his character any less effective. I can get quite emotionally effected by screaming and this film features it regularly and harshly.
B+
Ninjas Vs Vampires
When I was looking up zombie movies I heard about the sequel to this film. This is very low budget, but it's got a good sense of fun and keeps you interested even when the acting is dire and production values are rock bottom. Worth watching and I'm sure the creators are very proud of it, but don't set your expectations too high. Even considering how little money went into it, I still think the script might have done with a bit more thought and some of acting rather let the rest of the cast down. I also can't really ignore the budget limitations of this film in my score since they are regularly very obvious.
C-
Godzilla Vs Mothra
AWESOME!
A giant egg has turned up and some tiny people (like so small they could sit in your hand) insist that the egg be returned to the island. However, greedy businessmen have instead decided to keep the egg and organise a fraudulent scheme surrounding it. Eventually there's a big fight between Godzilla and Mothra and it's all extremely awesome, not least because there is more than one moth and the fighting occurs from Mothras who are both prior to and after metamorphosis. It's just a really good fun movie.
A-
Mothra
Essentially everything that happens in "Godzilla Vs Mothra" only taking a lot longer and without Godzilla there to make it worthwhile at the end. I was a bit disappointed to be honest. Not bad, but a little pointless if you've seen "Godzilla Vs Mothra" first.
C+
Godzilla Raids Again
The sequel to Godzilla seems to miss most of what made the first film great and the effects at the end are particularly unimpressive. You can kinda tell that Ishiro Honda wasn't involved in this one. Still, it's not as bad as it could have been. I was relatively engaged, apart from the points where I found myself a little drowsy. Hmmm... yeah, I wouldn't recommend it.
D-
x-posted to Halloween Candy
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What If The Critics Picked The Oscars?
Okay, I don't know about anyone else but I was peeved with the Oscar nomination choices. I was one of many pointing out that Drive had high critical praise (as well as popularity amongst ordinary viewers, judging from IMDB) and yet seemed to be completely snubbed. Like so many, I was wondering what other great choices were being undermined by a group of rich old white men who are too out of touch with the industry to be taken seriously.
However, when Rotten Tomatoes used their scores to compare previous Oscar winners (just highlighting that the general caliber of Oscar winners has not been high e.g. Forrest Gump, Driving Miss Daisy, Crash) it occurred to me that there was a way of checking. Rotten Tomatoes gives the average number of critics who enjoyed a movie. Now while there may be a number of critics who go for the lowest common denominator and others might be bats**t insane, the combination of all of them must surely come up with something rather more reasonable...
I've come up with the following lists by taking the Rotten Tomatoes "Top 100" for the year, removing all movies which didn't get at least 70 reviews (after all, it's understandable that the Oscars should be awarding films for their success as well as for their skill) and I'm then separating foreign films and animated films for the rest. (And disregarding documentaries altogether. When documentaries are good they do very VERY well on Rotten Tomatoes, with the top film in the best the year list quite often being a documentary, but I'm not going to worry about the documentaries here.)
So, before I start separating the choices into their various categories, here's the top 5 films with at least 70 reviews that aren't documentaries in the Rotten Tomatoes top 100 list for 2011:
99% A Separation (2011) (116 - reviews)
97% The Artist (2011) (193 - reviews)
96% Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011) (275 - reviews)
96% The Muppets (2011) (190 - reviews)
96% Pariah (2011) (91 - reviews)
Now that's already quite different from the Oscars eh? (I know there are plenty of Potter fans who must be pleased to see where this is heading.)
But yeah, sadly A Separation would be shoved into the "foreign language" category so it seems that critics are just as responsible for "The Artist" being made the top film of the year. Still, I've heard good things about Pariah and it would have been nice to see a list of foreign language nominees where I recognised more than one of the titles.
Here's the five top foreign language films:
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Winner - A Separation!
Other Nominees - Pariah, 13 Assassins, Of Gods And Men, Incendies
Well, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm wondering where the hell "Troll Hunter" is in all this, eh? Anyone else thinking that? Other films I'd say were missing are "Point Blank" (French title: "A Bout Portant") and I think there's enough foreign language for "Sarah's Key" to count in this list too.
Here's the top animated movies:
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Winner - Arthur Christmas!
Other Nominees: Winnie The Pooh, Rango (yes, in that order)
And that's all the animated movies there are to choose from. For all the people claiming that Spielberg was snubbed, the critics didn't like Tintin that much either... My own favourite, "Kung Fu Panda 2" doesn't make it into the list either (though for the record, it scored much higher than Tintin on RT).
So finally.... what we've all been waiting for... BEST PICTURE!
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Winner - The Artist!
Nominees: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Muppets, The Guard, Moneyball
We best get the nominees up to the full ten, right?
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Nominees: Win Win, Coriolanus, Weekend, Drive, Hugo
Well there you go, both big winners (The Artist and Hugo) still made it into the nominees with "The Artist" still taking the spot of Best Picture winner. Moneyball is the only other entry this list has in common with the actual Oscars Best Picture nominees. Midnight In Paris would have been the next entry, so it was only just taken out of the running. After that the Oscars Best Picture nominees in the RT top 100 rank in the following order: The Descendants, Tree of Life.
The Oscars Best Picture nominees which don't even make it into the RT top 100 list are: "War Horse", "The Help" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"
So yeah, sorry fabfunk. I know "Tree Of Life" was your favourite....
So what do you guys reckon? Are the critics more reliable than the Oscars? Do you think the Oscars are better? Or are both ways of judging the best films of the year similarly flawed?
Previous Year's Results
Still don't just judge it by this years choices! Check out what RT produces for other years. The further back I went, the odder the results became....
2010
99% Toy Story 3 (2010) 253
98% How to Train Your Dragon (2010) 169
97% Animal Kingdom (2010) 143
96% The Social Network (2010) 276
96% True Grit (2010) 249
Best Foreign Language Film: Lebanon
Nominees: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Potiche, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One
Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3
Nominees (3): How to Train Your Dragon, Tangled, The Illusionist (L'illusionniste)
Best Picture: Animal Kingdom
Nominees: The Social Network, True Grit, The King's Speech, The Town
Winter's Bone, 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right, Another Year, The Fighter
2009
98% Up (2009) 274
97% A Prophet (Un prophete) (2009) 144
95% Star Trek (2009) 292
95% Mother (Madeo) (2009) 109
94% An Education (2009) 177
Best Foreign Language Film: A Prophet (Un prophete)
Nominees: Mother (Madeo), Vincere, The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)
Best Animated Film: Up
Nominees: Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Secret of Kells, Coraline, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Best Picture: Star Trek
Nominees: An Education, The Damned United, Drag Me to Hell, Up in the Air,
District 9, Crazy Heart, Zombieland, The Messenger, Fish Tank
2008
98% The Wrestler (2008) 215
98% Let the Right One In (2008) 166
97% The Hurt Locker (2008) 210
97% Entre les Murs (The Class) (2008) 145
96% WALL-E (2008) 233
Best Foreign Language Film: Let the Right One In
Nominees: Entre les Murs (The Class), Revanche, Goodbye Solo, Sugar
Best Animated Film: WALL-E
Nominees (3): Ponyo, Bolt, Kung Fu Panda
Best Picture: The Wrestler
Nominees: The Hurt Locker, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Milk
Slumdog Millionaire, In the Loop, Happy-Go-Lucky, Frost/Nixon, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
2007
98% The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) (2007) 114
97% Once (2007) 154
97% Persepolis (2007) 147
96% Ratatouille (2007) 217
95% No Country for Old Men (2007) 226
(I'm ignoring "Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection" because it appears to be a DVD release)
Best Foreign Language Film: The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret)
Nominees: 4 Luni, 3 Saptamâni si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Offside, Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters), Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Best Animated Film: Persepolis
Nominees (1): Ratatouille,
Best Picture: Once
Nominees: No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum, Juno, Gone Baby Gone,
Enchanted, Ballast, Hairspray, There Will Be Blood, Knocked Up
2006
97% The Queen (2006) 184
95% Pan's Labyrinth (2006) 196
94% Casino Royale (2006) 216
94% Away from Her (2006) 143
93% The Departed (2006) 228
Best Foreign Language Film: Pan's Labyrinth
Nominees: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), Ne le Dis à Personne (Tell No One), Volver, The Host (Gwoemul)
Best Animated Film: Paprika
Nominees (0):
Best Picture: The Queen
Nominees: Casino Royale, Away from Her, The Departed, Children of Men,
The Squid and the Whale, This Is England, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Little Miss Sunshine, United 93
However, when Rotten Tomatoes used their scores to compare previous Oscar winners (just highlighting that the general caliber of Oscar winners has not been high e.g. Forrest Gump, Driving Miss Daisy, Crash) it occurred to me that there was a way of checking. Rotten Tomatoes gives the average number of critics who enjoyed a movie. Now while there may be a number of critics who go for the lowest common denominator and others might be bats**t insane, the combination of all of them must surely come up with something rather more reasonable...
I've come up with the following lists by taking the Rotten Tomatoes "Top 100" for the year, removing all movies which didn't get at least 70 reviews (after all, it's understandable that the Oscars should be awarding films for their success as well as for their skill) and I'm then separating foreign films and animated films for the rest. (And disregarding documentaries altogether. When documentaries are good they do very VERY well on Rotten Tomatoes, with the top film in the best the year list quite often being a documentary, but I'm not going to worry about the documentaries here.)
So, before I start separating the choices into their various categories, here's the top 5 films with at least 70 reviews that aren't documentaries in the Rotten Tomatoes top 100 list for 2011:
99% A Separation (2011) (116 - reviews)
97% The Artist (2011) (193 - reviews)
96% Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011) (275 - reviews)
96% The Muppets (2011) (190 - reviews)
96% Pariah (2011) (91 - reviews)
Now that's already quite different from the Oscars eh? (I know there are plenty of Potter fans who must be pleased to see where this is heading.)
But yeah, sadly A Separation would be shoved into the "foreign language" category so it seems that critics are just as responsible for "The Artist" being made the top film of the year. Still, I've heard good things about Pariah and it would have been nice to see a list of foreign language nominees where I recognised more than one of the titles.
Here's the five top foreign language films:
Winner - A Separation!
Other Nominees - Pariah, 13 Assassins, Of Gods And Men, Incendies
Well, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm wondering where the hell "Troll Hunter" is in all this, eh? Anyone else thinking that? Other films I'd say were missing are "Point Blank" (French title: "A Bout Portant") and I think there's enough foreign language for "Sarah's Key" to count in this list too.
Here's the top animated movies:
Winner - Arthur Christmas!
Other Nominees: Winnie The Pooh, Rango (yes, in that order)
And that's all the animated movies there are to choose from. For all the people claiming that Spielberg was snubbed, the critics didn't like Tintin that much either... My own favourite, "Kung Fu Panda 2" doesn't make it into the list either (though for the record, it scored much higher than Tintin on RT).
So finally.... what we've all been waiting for... BEST PICTURE!
Winner - The Artist!
Nominees: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Muppets, The Guard, Moneyball
We best get the nominees up to the full ten, right?
Nominees: Win Win, Coriolanus, Weekend, Drive, Hugo
Well there you go, both big winners (The Artist and Hugo) still made it into the nominees with "The Artist" still taking the spot of Best Picture winner. Moneyball is the only other entry this list has in common with the actual Oscars Best Picture nominees. Midnight In Paris would have been the next entry, so it was only just taken out of the running. After that the Oscars Best Picture nominees in the RT top 100 rank in the following order: The Descendants, Tree of Life.
The Oscars Best Picture nominees which don't even make it into the RT top 100 list are: "War Horse", "The Help" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"
So yeah, sorry fabfunk. I know "Tree Of Life" was your favourite....
So what do you guys reckon? Are the critics more reliable than the Oscars? Do you think the Oscars are better? Or are both ways of judging the best films of the year similarly flawed?
Previous Year's Results
Still don't just judge it by this years choices! Check out what RT produces for other years. The further back I went, the odder the results became....
2010
99% Toy Story 3 (2010) 253
98% How to Train Your Dragon (2010) 169
97% Animal Kingdom (2010) 143
96% The Social Network (2010) 276
96% True Grit (2010) 249
Best Foreign Language Film: Lebanon
Nominees: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Potiche, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One
Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3
Nominees (3): How to Train Your Dragon, Tangled, The Illusionist (L'illusionniste)
Best Picture: Animal Kingdom
Nominees: The Social Network, True Grit, The King's Speech, The Town
Winter's Bone, 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right, Another Year, The Fighter
2009
98% Up (2009) 274
97% A Prophet (Un prophete) (2009) 144
95% Star Trek (2009) 292
95% Mother (Madeo) (2009) 109
94% An Education (2009) 177
Best Foreign Language Film: A Prophet (Un prophete)
Nominees: Mother (Madeo), Vincere, The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)
Best Animated Film: Up
Nominees: Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Secret of Kells, Coraline, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Best Picture: Star Trek
Nominees: An Education, The Damned United, Drag Me to Hell, Up in the Air,
District 9, Crazy Heart, Zombieland, The Messenger, Fish Tank
2008
98% The Wrestler (2008) 215
98% Let the Right One In (2008) 166
97% The Hurt Locker (2008) 210
97% Entre les Murs (The Class) (2008) 145
96% WALL-E (2008) 233
Best Foreign Language Film: Let the Right One In
Nominees: Entre les Murs (The Class), Revanche, Goodbye Solo, Sugar
Best Animated Film: WALL-E
Nominees (3): Ponyo, Bolt, Kung Fu Panda
Best Picture: The Wrestler
Nominees: The Hurt Locker, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Milk
Slumdog Millionaire, In the Loop, Happy-Go-Lucky, Frost/Nixon, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
2007
98% The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) (2007) 114
97% Once (2007) 154
97% Persepolis (2007) 147
96% Ratatouille (2007) 217
95% No Country for Old Men (2007) 226
(I'm ignoring "Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection" because it appears to be a DVD release)
Best Foreign Language Film: The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret)
Nominees: 4 Luni, 3 Saptamâni si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Offside, Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters), Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Best Animated Film: Persepolis
Nominees (1): Ratatouille,
Best Picture: Once
Nominees: No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum, Juno, Gone Baby Gone,
Enchanted, Ballast, Hairspray, There Will Be Blood, Knocked Up
2006
97% The Queen (2006) 184
95% Pan's Labyrinth (2006) 196
94% Casino Royale (2006) 216
94% Away from Her (2006) 143
93% The Departed (2006) 228
Best Foreign Language Film: Pan's Labyrinth
Nominees: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), Ne le Dis à Personne (Tell No One), Volver, The Host (Gwoemul)
Best Animated Film: Paprika
Nominees (0):
Best Picture: The Queen
Nominees: Casino Royale, Away from Her, The Departed, Children of Men,
The Squid and the Whale, This Is England, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Little Miss Sunshine, United 93
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Critics VS Oscars
While many were upset with the Oscars this year, it actually matched up with critic's choices a lot better than previous years. "A Separation" was the most widely favoured foreign language this year, while "The Artist" was the most widely favoured um... NOT-foreign language film(?).
More critics enjoyed "Arthur Christmas" than any other animated movie, though how many would say it was the "best animated movie of the year" might be a different matter, perhaps exposing the flaw in this method of judging films.
Below are the highest scoring films on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the Oscars winners. I've often got a different view and I've put my own choices in brackets. In cases where I've given no personal choice, I agree with the Rotten Tomatoes choice.
What do we reckon? Does this show that Rotten Tomatoes (i.e. critics consensus) is a better way to choose films than the Oscars, or are they both flawed methods? Is one method more flawed than the other? Is the fact that the Oscars' choices and Rotten Tomatoes' choices for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film come out the same this year perhaps a sign that the awards are actually becoming MORE in touch with critical opinion rather than less?
Best Foreign Language Film:
2011 (used to judge Oscars in 2012)
The critics and the Oscars agree!
![]()
A Separation (99%)
(My choice: "Troll Hunter" - 82%)
2010
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Lebanon (90%) In A Better World (77%)
(My choice: "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" - 90% - fewer reviews on RT)
2009
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
A Prophet (97%) The Secret In Their Eyes (91%)
(My choice: "Mother" - 95%)
2008
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Let The Right One In (98%) Departures (81%)
2007
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
The Band's Visit (98%) The Counterfeiters (94%)
(My choice: "[Rec]" - 96% - only 23 reviews)
2006
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Pan's Labyrinth (95%) The Lives Of Others (93%)
Best Animated Film:
2011 (used to judge Oscars in 2012)
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Arthur Christmas (92%) Rango (88%)
(My choice: "Kung Fu Panda 2" - 81%)
2010
The critics and the Oscars agree!
![]()
Toy Story 3 (99%)
2009
The critics and the Oscars agree!
![]()
Up (98%)
(My choices: "Mary and Max" - 94% + a very special mention to "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" - 86%)
2008
The critics and the Oscars agree!
![]()
WALL-E (96%)
2007
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Persepolis (97%) Ratatouille (96%)
(My choice: "[Rec]" - 96% - only 23 reviews)
2006
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Paprika (83%) Happy Feet (75%)
(My choice: "A Scanner Darkly" - 69%)
And Last But Not Least...
Best Picture!
2011 (used to judge Oscars in 2012)
The critics and the Oscars agree!
![]()
The Artist (97%)
(My choice: "Drive" - 93%)
2010
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Animal Kingdom (97%) The King's Speech (95%)
(My choice: "Black Swan" - 87%)
2009
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Star Trek (95%) The Hurt Locker (97%)
(My choice: "A Serious Man" - 89%)
2008
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
The Wrestler (98%) Slumdog Millionaire (94%)
(My choice: "In Bruges" - 82%)
2007
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
Once (97%) No Country for Old Men (95%)
(My choice: "Eastern Promises" - 89%)
2006
Critics Oscars
![]()
VS ![]()
The Queen (97%) The Departed (93%)
(My choice: "The Prestige" - 76%)
More critics enjoyed "Arthur Christmas" than any other animated movie, though how many would say it was the "best animated movie of the year" might be a different matter, perhaps exposing the flaw in this method of judging films.
Below are the highest scoring films on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the Oscars winners. I've often got a different view and I've put my own choices in brackets. In cases where I've given no personal choice, I agree with the Rotten Tomatoes choice.
What do we reckon? Does this show that Rotten Tomatoes (i.e. critics consensus) is a better way to choose films than the Oscars, or are they both flawed methods? Is one method more flawed than the other? Is the fact that the Oscars' choices and Rotten Tomatoes' choices for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film come out the same this year perhaps a sign that the awards are actually becoming MORE in touch with critical opinion rather than less?
Best Foreign Language Film:
2011 (used to judge Oscars in 2012)
The critics and the Oscars agree!
A Separation (99%)
(My choice: "Troll Hunter" - 82%)
2010
Critics Oscars
VS 
Lebanon (90%) In A Better World (77%)
(My choice: "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" - 90% - fewer reviews on RT)
2009
Critics Oscars
VS 
A Prophet (97%) The Secret In Their Eyes (91%)
(My choice: "Mother" - 95%)
2008
Critics Oscars
VS 
Let The Right One In (98%) Departures (81%)
2007
Critics Oscars
VS 
The Band's Visit (98%) The Counterfeiters (94%)
(My choice: "[Rec]" - 96% - only 23 reviews)
2006
Critics Oscars
VS 
Pan's Labyrinth (95%) The Lives Of Others (93%)
Best Animated Film:
2011 (used to judge Oscars in 2012)
Critics Oscars
VS Arthur Christmas (92%) Rango (88%)
(My choice: "Kung Fu Panda 2" - 81%)
2010
The critics and the Oscars agree!
Toy Story 3 (99%)
2009
The critics and the Oscars agree!
Up (98%)
(My choices: "Mary and Max" - 94% + a very special mention to "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" - 86%)
2008
The critics and the Oscars agree!
WALL-E (96%)
2007
Critics Oscars
VS 
Persepolis (97%) Ratatouille (96%)
(My choice: "[Rec]" - 96% - only 23 reviews)
2006
Critics Oscars
VS 
Paprika (83%) Happy Feet (75%)
(My choice: "A Scanner Darkly" - 69%)
And Last But Not Least...
Best Picture!
2011 (used to judge Oscars in 2012)
The critics and the Oscars agree!
The Artist (97%)
(My choice: "Drive" - 93%)
2010
Critics Oscars
VS 
Animal Kingdom (97%) The King's Speech (95%)
(My choice: "Black Swan" - 87%)
2009
Critics Oscars
VS 
Star Trek (95%) The Hurt Locker (97%)
(My choice: "A Serious Man" - 89%)
2008
Critics Oscars
VS 
The Wrestler (98%) Slumdog Millionaire (94%)
(My choice: "In Bruges" - 82%)
2007
Critics Oscars
VS 
Once (97%) No Country for Old Men (95%)
(My choice: "Eastern Promises" - 89%)
2006
Critics Oscars
VS 
The Queen (97%) The Departed (93%)
(My choice: "The Prestige" - 76%)
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"Jump For Us Virginia!": John Carter - Movie Review
John Carter (2012)
From the director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo. I was pretty excited about this one. Sure, the marketing has been pants, but that's not all that surprising. But I was sure that, with Andrew Stanton at the helm, this would be a lot better than the marketing made it out to be.
The movie opens with voiceover narration. It starts off by telling us that Mars has life on it, that there are two groups at war on the planet and then goes into more detail about the conflict in a way that I couldn't quite piece together on the spot. We see McNulty, I mean Dominic West, get into an airfight between his bug-shaped craft and a different bug-shaped craft. The attacking craft shoots out ominous blue rays and, at the end of this scene, everyone asides from McNulty has been vapourised into blue smoke. Some creepy guys with glowing blue eyes tell McNulty that they want to give him this blue weapon and that with it he will be able to rule the planet. He smiles, presumably because he didn't like any of the people he was fighting alongside before.
We then see John Carter wandering around on Earth in the late 1800s. He sends out an urgent telegram sending for a relative of his. When the relative arrives he is informed that John Carter is already dead and that the estate will belong to him in 15 years. For those 15 years he needs to run the estate and to guard John Carter's body which, per John's instructions prior to death, has been sealed in a large tomb without any of the typical embalming and the like.
The relative then starts reading John Carter's diary which appears to be directly addressed to him. Now we start on the story of John Carter in search of a cave full of gold. Meanwhile there are military forces in America fighting against the Apache Indians. John Carter is a tough fighter, but he has absolutely no interest in getting involved in this misguided skirmish. The local militia tries to forcibly recruit him, he escapes and to cut a long story short he finds the cave, gets into a struggle with some kind of human-shaped alien person and gets teleported to Mars.
Now I'm not going to say that this stuff wasn't entertaining. Certainly the last bit with him escaping from the army recruiters was pretty good fun. However, this was a very convoluted way to start the film. Things seem to happen in chunks and this doesn't really change once the film gets going.
The positive side of things is this. "John Carter" looks very pretty in a way that the marketing did not really make clear (probably because they didn't want to give away all the best visuals in the trailer, so fair enough). It also has a number of interesting ideas. The weird dog-thing that's been appearing in the trailers makes for quite a sweet little companion, for example. John Carter discovers on Mars that with very little effort he can send himself flying into the air and spends a while upon his arrival working out how to just walk normally on the surface. This super-jumping ability makes John Carter seem like a kind of superhero, especially when we discover that his bypassing of gravity also seems to have, bizarrely, given him superhuman strength. The dog-thing impresses us because when John Carter tries to jump away from it, it is able to run faster on land than he can jump. It scampers up vast flights of stairs and reacher the spot where John Carter means to land before he finishes his jump. That was pretty cool.
The previously mentioned "blue weapon" also involves some very cool effects. The bit that everyone shrugged at in the trailer where some blue lights spread out on the ground is actually part of a much wider and more impressive visual effects theme surrounding the mysterious bad guys' powerful technology.
Sadly, on the negative side, the characters feel pretty thin. It's not that they don't have traits that ought to flesh out their characters, but these traits always end up coming off as yet another plot element. Perhaps the only character who actually feels real is John Carter himself. I have to give the lead at least some credit because he genuinely carries the movie. Within the aforementioned opening scenes we see that John Carter is a sort of Han Solo-esque anti-hero. He's basically just interested in money (and, judging from his house when his relative finds it, old artefacts), but he still has a heart of gold and will not leave someone stranded. I had rather more trouble believing that he had already been married with children back on Earth, but the actor is 30, so perhaps it's not quite so odd (particularly for the era).
Perhaps the most annoyingly blank character is McNulty, I mean Dominic West, who avoids being the typical moustache-twirling British bad guy by having barely any expression whatsoever. If I weren't a massive fan of "The Wire" I'm not sure I'd have believed that this guy could be the central figure in a thrilling TV series. Meanwhile the some even more powerful baddies that Dominic West's character is working for, led by Mark Strong, are intentionally emotionless and they actually work pretty damn well as baddies. Unfortunately, perhaps the coolest scene with these bad guys, involves them holding John Carter hostage and forcing him to listen to them explain their whole plan, James Bond style.
The main criticism of this film? There's too much talk.
Look, I know that might sound odd. Surely the best way to make an intellectually engaging movie rather than a mindless action flick is to use plenty of dialogue. The problem is, as I said before, the characters are thin. The dialogue doesn't serve to flesh out the characters, but rather to hammer home the plot points.
With the attempts to wow me with spectacle, the characters who aren't fleshed out properly and the awkward central romance, this reminded me of "Avatar" (which I really didn't like at all). However, I couldn't help but feel there was something better about this film than Avatar. Thinking about it, I'd have to note that Avatar bored me DURING the action sequences. What's great about "John Carter" is that part of the reason why I was so annoyed by the long talky bits was because the action bits are actually genuinely exciting. The action sequences were really good and by that I don't just mean that they looked good. I mean that they engaged me, entertained me and made me genuinely concerned about the outcome.
Yes, you need a certain amount of exposition to make action scenes engaging and yes, this film has that much. But there was so much more dialogue that simply felt superfluous. I reckon the film could be at least twenty minutes shorter without losing any emotional impact whatsoever. Were there elements here that could have been improved? Yes definitely. Far too much. "John Carter" was a bit of a mess and could have done with being shorter, more streamlined and the characters needed to feel like real people rather than plot points.
C-
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Atheists Discuss "New Atheism" on the Beyond Belief Podcast
"Beyond Belief" is a BBC podcast that often does a good job of getting an even explanation of religious ideas. However, this new entry is one where I think people might be interested. It's a discussion about "New Atheism" and it seems that all three contributors are atheists.
The three contributors are:
From left to right: Professor Simon Blackburn, Vice President of the British Humanist Association; Mark Embleton, a psychologist and President of Atheism UK; and Lois Lee, founder of the Non-Religion and secularity research network.
You can download this particular podcast here
If you are interested in following this podcast in the future, the RSS feed is here.
Haven't listened to this yet, but I'm intrigued.
Cross posted to atheism
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Hesher - Swimming Pool Scene
Very probably the best scene in the movie "Hesher". It doesn't really give anything away about the rest of the film.
(video link)
(video link)
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Two films I didn't finish....
Last night I came home from work and decided to sit down in front of a movie. I picked "The Conformist". A film I'd picked up because I'd missed it when it was advertised at an art cinema where I used to live. I was actually quite excited about this one. As it turned out, it was VERY seventies. A fair bit of sex, men talking together in serious tones, beautiful shots of little happening, the main character being driven around in the back of black cars. I was pretty tired so there were a number of points where I fell asleep and I may have been missing some of the context as a result.
The Conformist is about a man who is hired to kill for the facists, but he's not entirely sure that he supports them. When he's hired, he's told that their contractors more often do the work for the money rather than because they believe in the cause, but he's different because he does the work for neither reason. He takes the job because, it seems to be suggested, he wants to fit in. It's an odd theme repeated throughout what I saw of the film, yet I never felt terribly convinced by it.
Another aspect of the film is his relationship with his odd ditzy fiancee. Yeah sure, she's pretty, but I didn't really feel much investment in their relationship and the long drawn out scenes of them together really put me off. Meanwhile scenes of our main character actually killing people seemed to have barely any build up at all.
I should probably watch this film again when I'm not inclined to fall asleep every ten minutes, but from everything I saw of the film (and I managed to watch the beginning without any gaps), I'm having a hard time persuading myself to put it back in the DVD player.
Then this morning I checked out "Perfect Sense", a sci-fi movie starring Ewan McGregor and Eva Green. I'd heard that this was about an incurable disease that caused people to lose their senses. Right from the start things didn't bode well when a narrator started poetically talking about ordinary life in a way that sounded like one of those ultra-serious advertisements. If this was just at the beginning it would be fine, but after the third narration section it was really becoming unbearably annoying.
The only issue the disease is causing to start with is for people to lose their sense of smell. This is particularly difficult for Ewan McGregor's character who is a chef at a restaurant. When the disease starts spreading to the majority of people, how can they persuade people to spend money at a restaurant? What does it mean for someone who has spent their whole life devoted to picking out subtle flavours when he too starts losing this sense?
Unfortunately the film doesn't spend much time exploring the characters' situations before shifting quickly to another narration scene. This time the narration tells us that the disease is hitting people all around the world (which we'd actually been told already within the story itself, so whatever), while in the background we are shown various random people who we don't know collapsing to their knees in tears. I thought the narration was being done by Eva Green's character, but it didn't seem to match up with how she'd been talking in the main body of the film. It turns out that the narration is done by Kathryn Engels who has no part to play in the main story.
So, back to the "loss of smell" epidemic. I know at least two people IRL, possibly more, who have pretty much no sense of smell. It's not the end of the world. I can see how realising that you will never smell anything again might be upsetting particularly when its caused by a bizarre disease that is not fully understood, however if they wanted me to care about this, they needed to put it into context. The narration shows us people breaking down in fits of tears at the loss of their sense of smell long before we are shown the emotional effect on the actual main characters. As such, when major characters burst into tears from their loss of smell, it's just another example of what we saw in the narrated sections and nothing special.
In the third narration section we are told that losing your sense of smell means you no longer have the connections to memories those smells produce. Bizarrely one example is that a particular smell might remind you of "a childhood fear of cows". Random.... Now excuse me, imagine if this film was about everyone randomly losing the ability to walk. Everyone in the entire world has to go around in wheelchairs and they are all mourning their inability to walk and their memories of how they used to run happily though fields of barley or whatever... Wouldn't we all instantly recognise how excruciatingly insulting this was to people who cannot walk anyway?
The point which finally led me to switch the movie off was when a street musical act was using violin sounds to remind people of lost smells. Give me a break!
Rather than this I would much rather recommend "Children Of Men" where we get a real sense of the feelings of those in this strange vision of the future, we can see how the scenario has genuine important consequences, we see those consequences in the characters we are following and finally when people are obsessing over what they have lost ("Children of Men" starts with a news broadcast about the death of the youngest remaining human being) the main character is appropriately cynical about it.
So yes, when I'm barely able to appreciate the shock-value of losing the sense of smell, when narration is denying me the chance to share the experience with the characters, when the worst result of the epidemic appears to be a lack of interest in fancy restaurants and when people cannot seem to recognise the stupidity in representing their lost sense of smell through violin sounds, that's when I completely give up on the whole thing.
The synopsis said that the epidemic meant people were losing their senses and I thought it was interesting to imagine the whole of the human race dying of a terminal illness at once. Having to deal with how they will leave the world behind knowing that there may be no one left at the end, even losing all connection to the world around them. I thought it could be pretty miserable, but I was sure Ewan McGregor could guide me through it. I was fairly open to whatever the film had in store, but what it actually presented me with was so petty and poorly represented that I couldn't bear to keep going with it.
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More Reviews: The Devil's Double, The Whistleblower, Mystic River and Colombiana
The Devil's Double (2011)
The story of the double for Saddam Hussein's son, Uday Hussein. Both the parts of Uday and his double are played by Dominic Cooper.
Dominic Cooper is becoming quite a well-established actor. I first saw him in the movie of "The History Boys". (The movie wasn't great but there was nothing wrong with his performance.) He played Peter Sarsgaard's partner in crime in "An Education" (fantastic film!), he played the younger version of Tony Stark's father in "Captain America" (meh!), more recently he was in "My Week With Marilyn" (haven't seen it yet) and he's scheduled to be in the upcoming "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter".
Dominic Cooper doesn't give the impression here that he can really handle the two personas he is meant to be playing, but I note that nonetheless he does manage to keep me invested in the film almost right to the very end. I think it is fair to put the blame with director Lee Tamahori, whose previous credits include the Bond movie "Die Another Day" and "xXx:The Next Level".
I think that criticism of Ludivine Sagnier has been similarly unfair. Certainly she has been cast in the role because she is extremely pretty, but in previous films such as "Moliere" and "8 Women" I think it's been made fairly clear that she is more than just a pretty face (though she was similarly underused in the Vincent Cassell movie "Mesrine"). For what appears to be a first time English-speaking role I thought she did pretty well and once again, I'd be rather more inclined to blame the director.
How about the script? Well there's a playfulness to the events, there are some moments which work very well and Uday is set up as a cruel rapist and monster. Certainly the order of events and the central performance move our emotions in the right way, even if the identity of the lead actor's two parts is not managed quite as well as it could be.
All this being said, by the end of the movie Uday's double appears to have far too much freedom. I am desperate to reveal the ending and would be inclined to justify this by saying "well that's what happened" only that would be untrue, which leads me to perhaps the biggest problem with this film. Things get out of hand towards the end and don't seem to have the logical flow they ought to. This is explained when we hear that the writer of the original account, the man who claims to have been Uday's double, is widely believed to have made the whole thing up. Apparently he's well known for providing outrageous accounts of things he is supposed to have done. Much is impossible to prove, much is hugely implausible and some of it is as close to demonstrated false as makes no difference.
Essentially this is probably better off being compared to "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind" (about Chuck Barris' claims to have worked as an undercover hitman in between creating TV quiz shows like "The Dating Game" - the US version of "Blind Date"). On the one hand, the playfulness of "The Devil's Double" suggests they might have realised that what they were portraying wasn't really true. However, it's not completely obvious and the movie also seems to expect us to be shocked by what may be a completely fabricated account of Uday Hussain. On the other hand, "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind" was vastly more believeable (which is saying something).
So um, with this in mind, written below there's essentially the spoiler of the ending. The bit of the movie which made me go "ZOMG this cannot possibly be true" (and also had me thinking that if it WAS true it could have been portrayed a great deal better).
This is not a good film. It's got some fun elements, but overall it doesn't know what it's doing. While it could have been done better, Dominic Cooper's performance as Uday and Latif (Uday's double) is pretty cool and he clearly gets to have a lot of fun with Uday's super-evil character. Still, while being based on complete lies doesn't have to ruin a film, but in this case I think it does.
D-
So, I don't normally do this but...
*COMPLETE SPOILER FOR THE ENDING OF "THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE" SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*
Uday's double, called Latif, ends up having sex with Uday's main girl (Ludivine Sagnier's character), she falls in love with him and they run away together. Not quickly and subtly though. No, first Latif confonts Uday at his birthday party (where Uday is demanding everyone at the party asides from himself strip off their clothes) and this leads to a gun battle (WTF?). After Latif and Ludivine Sagnier's character run away it becomes clear that staying hidden is going to be difficult. Uday even seems to know the number for the room they are staying at. It turns out that Ludivine Sagnier has been letting Uday know where they are because she fears for her daughter back in Iraq and is secretly making a deal to return to Uday. (This feels similarly daft in the movie.) Latif disappears on his own without her. In the final scene Uday is encouraging a schoolgirl to get into the car with him (and from previous familiarity with his character, we know he's going to take this girl away and rape her) and Latif turns up out of nowhere with a gun and aims it at Uday. Not knowing how horrible Uday is, the girl in the car tries to push the gun down away from Uday, but only manages to ensure that the bullets go straight into Uday's groin. A fitting end for this monstrous figure.
*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. COMPLETE SPOILER FOR THE ENDING OF "THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE" ABOVE!*
The Whistleblower (2010)
This is more evidence, if we needed any more, that Rachel Weisz is an absolutely fantastic actress. The first half of this film had me gripped. The second half of this movie had me thinking it was alright. And the final ending of this movie had me deeply disappointed. However, throughout the film Rachel Weisz is the one thing keeping me invested in the story, right up to the end where it ceases to work.
This film is based on a very real scandal in the UN that I had absolutely no knowledge of whatsoever. Rachel Weisz plays a policewoman who is having trouble getting transferred to a police department near to where her ex-partner and her children are currently living. Her boss suggests that she can make quite a bit of money working for the UN in Bosnia and that this would help her make the move and get herself set up. However, after she attracts the attention and praise of authorities working in Bosnia by getting justice for an Bosnian woman suffering from domestic abuse, she is given a much more long-term position and the opportunity to make a real difference. It is in this new role that she starts to uncover a scandal on a colossal scale.
I'm sorry to take away from the surprise, but I cannot fail to mention in my review that this film is about sex trafficking and, what with all this talk of "massive scandals" it will be pretty clear that the UN turns out to be complicit in that sex trafficking. Highly complicit. And perhaps I'm naive, but I was pretty shocked. Rachel Weisz makes sure that we can fully empathise with the shock of a woman uncovering the evidence behind the activities occurring amongst policemen working with the UN in Bosnia. She has a no nonsense approach to the situation and she knows what her fellow officers might be capable of, but what she is unprepared for is the way the system seems to work against her as she tries to protect the victims and bring the wrongdoers to justice.
In the second half, the momentum of the plot goes a bit haywire. The filmmakers also seem to lose faith in how much Rachel Weisz' perspective alone can keep us sufficiently shocked, so in the second half we get some scenes showing the trafficked girls with wholly characterless evil Bosnian traffickers moving the girls around and shouting at them. It's still shocking, sure, but it feels rather more Hollywood in style. It's a clear sign that the film's quality is going downhill at this stage.
In the final act of the movie there's a weird sort-of-doublecross-only-is-it-really thing going on. It's a rather cheesy way to end a film that deals with such horrific real life events. Unlike in "Fair Game" (which I also didn't like) the final scenes of our main character on the telly still show Rachel Weisz rather than the real life figure and at this stage I was having a tough time believing in Rachel Weisz predicament anymore. It was clear that the film was trying to tie things into a neat little bow to finish off the show, but it wasn't at all clear how Rachel Weisz was going to convince anyone of her shocking story. The film seemed to want us to think we had a happy ending at the end, but we had no indication that the sex trafficking in Bosnia had ended, so how were we supposed to believe that the story was over? Perhaps with a real-life figure in the interviews we could believe that the struggle was ongoing, but with Rachel Weisz' character seemingly in the same weak position trying to convince people of her story, the film seemed to feel a lot happier about the situation than I did as an audience-member.
Like I said before, you can probably guess the basic gist of the scandal. However, for more details check out the wikipedia page on Kathryn Bokovac. This is a story that lots of people should hear and it's sad that the second half of the movie messed up so badly that I cannot really recommend it.
D+
Mystic River (2003)
In the run up to the Oscars, this film served to clear up for me just how worthless the Oscars actually are. Somehow Sean Penn and Tim Robbins won Oscars for this. I have absolutely no idea how. Marcia Gay Harden was also nominated and I could understand her winning an Oscar (she lost to Renee Zellweger), but not Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.
The film begins with three boys messing around in the street together and deciding to write their names in some fresh cement. An odd figure, seemingly claiming to be a plain clothes police officer, insists that one of the boys gets into the car with him so he can take the boy home. He's not a police officer and you can see where this is going. The boy escapes from the place he's taken and abused and grows up to a timid disturbed figure played by Tim Robbins. His two friends grow up to be Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. I found it impossible to tell which of the boys was played by which of the adult actors, because one of the boys is blonde (the one with the cap becomes Tim Robbins):
Whereas neither Sean Penn nor Kevin Bacon is blonde:
The film never really had me caring much for any of the characters. It might have been possible to care about Tim Robbins character (what with the childhood abuse and all) except that it seems likely that he is the murderer.
This is essentially a whodunnit film, with the victim being Sean Penn's daughter. The problem is that while the killer is being discovered, there isn't really one central protagonist we are following. Kevin Bacon, being one of the children at the beginning, is not really distant enough for us to follow it through his eyes. In any case, he isn't made central enough to be a central protagonist. Lawrence Fishburne makes his mark, but it seems pretty clear that his part is only written to compliment Kevin Bacon's role in the story, so while he gives a bit of balance to the investigation (being more distanced from the people under investigation), he isn't a central protagonist either.
Sean Penn's character might be the central protagonist; after all, it's his daughter that dies. However, with him having his own hired thugs in the neighbourhood, he would most certainly be an anti-hero and he's regularly portrayed as actively getting in the way of Kevin Bacon's investigation. Another issue I found was that, if he is supposed to have hired thugs, doesn't that make it likely that he is involved in some kind of illegal activity? Why does the owner of a cornershop (which appears to be his job), have hired thugs and yes-men?
The final solution to the whodunnit element to the movie I felt was a bit of a cop-out. Based on the set-up at the beginning, it wasn't obvious how we reach that conclusion and as a result the solution felt a bit contrived.
I still don't like Sean Penn as an actor and I found his performance here pretty unconvincing. I wasn't really terribly interested in following these characters in general and the whole film dragged. The style reminded me somewhat of a later Clint Eastwood-directed movie "Changeling" which also had a child abduction element to the storyline and a shocking whodunnit element to the storyline. Perhaps being based closely on real life helped "Changeling" (though goodness knows that the real life events were hard to believe), certainly having the story from the perspective of a single character (played by Angelina Jolie) helped it, and while the ending does eventually tie up quite nicely right at the end of "Mystic River", the journey we take to get there didn't feel anything like as worth my while.
D-
Colombiana (2011)
First off, I have to say that the action scenes in this movie are fantastic. The intro introduces us to the central protagonist Cataleya as a young girl and, without the same neck-snapping skills, she ends up kicking ass in ways that "Hanna" could only have dreamed of. This girl truly knows how to evade capture and does so in much more interesting way than simply running down endless corridors to tunes from The Chemical Brothers. Even as a young girl Cataleya is a genuine badass.
The last film I saw from this director was "Transporter 3" which was actually pretty good, but if you've seen it you may have an impression of what this will be like. The director, with the very action-y name of "Olivier Megaton", really knows how to make an exciting action sequence. Cataleya is set up very well as our central character and her relationships with her uncle and the detective persuing her are both also set up very well. What is not done so well (and this was the weakness in Transporter 3 too) is the central romance. Michael Vartan (who some may recognise as Sydney Bristow's CIA handler in "Alias") does not give a terribly emotive performance, but the scenes between him and Zoe Saldana are a bit pants anyway.
I felt there was a similar feel in this movie to certain elements of Leon. There's a girl whose parents are killed who wants to become a professional killer in response, there's some pretty massive destruction taking place in an appartment block at one stage and there's climactic explosions towards the end. It would be extremely unfair to claim that this was in any way a remake of Leon, but I felt that there were plenty of points in the film which reminded me of that favourite from my late teens.
The central romance is relatively central to the plot and the plot is pretty simple, so that's unfortunate. Still, this film is really good fun, a bit of a wild wide and it has a very satisfying narrative arc. I am very surprised that I haven't heard any praise for this film, since if you want an exciting action movie for a comfortable night-in with popcorn, this is the perfect rental for you.
B-
↧
16 More "Drive" Style Songs
In my last post I came up with 10 songs that resembled the style of music in the "Drive" soundtrack. I'm now back to make even more recommendations, particular after having come across the "Valerie and Friends" album that showcases a lot of interesting bands in this particular synthy 80s-sounding electronica style.
More awesome songs from bands mentioned last time:
Electric Youth
(video link)
Tesla Boy
(video link)
(video link)
Flashworxx
(video link)
(video link)
Anoraak
(video link)
(video link)
Awesome songs from bands not mentioned last time:
Russ Chimes
(video link)
Jupiter
(video link)
(video link)
DVAS
(video link)
Oddly I can't find the video for their song "Consenting Adults" anywhere, but that's a really good one too.
Maethelvin
(video link)
(First three minutes or so before it turns into another song. Then around seven minutes in it turns into a song by Le Castle Vania. It's only really the first one I'm interested in.)
(video link)
Keenhouse
(video link)
Minitel Rose
(video link)
(video link)
↧
Friday The 13th - The Entire Franchise! (First Installment)
A friend has lent me their box set of Friday The Thirteenth movies 1 through 8. They've also lent me a separate DVD of part 9. I already own part 10 (the only one I'd seen prior to the decision to watch them all). So the only one I need to acquire is "Freddy Vs Jason", possibly one of the most high rated of the lot. (There's also the Michael-Bay-produced 2009 remake, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here...)
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Before I begin....
To help to keep perspective through watching these films, I'm listening to the Now Playing podcast after each one. Their podcasts can be pretty entertaining, but they always involve in-depth plot spoilers. This will hopefully ensure that I don't miss out important details in my reviews. What I've seen already, however, is how many of the (normally) three hosts recommended each film in the series. Combining that with the relative imdb and rotten tomatoes scores, I know have a rough estimate of which films I should expect to find relatively good and which ones I should just expect to spend my time snarking.
The estimates are as follows:
Expected to be good - 1,6,FVJ,(4?)
Expected to be alright - 2,9,10
Expected to be awful - 3,5,8,(7?,9?)
My opinion has already veered quite notably from these expectations, as you'll see...
Friday The 13th (1980)
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It was interesting watching this. It doesn't have a particularly good narrative structure and the characters are mostly characterless. Still, it does set up some horror movie staples. The townsfolk are worried for cheery campers going to what they locally refer to as "Camp Blood", the local police officer is judgemental of teenagers instantly presuming they will be getting into trouble and doing drugs, the film takes some cues from Hitchcock through its use of music, and there's also an interesting use of long takes where the camera follows (or stalks) the characters. That last element is probably not at all original, but it seems to be most obviously drawing from the opening scene of "Halloween".
The director admits to taking inspiration from "Halloween". "Friday the 13th" is, to some extent, building on the way the victims in "Halloween" inevitably seemed to be anyone who had sex. (I won't explain how that works here, because it is related to the ending. Even the annoying spoiler at the beginning of the movie Scream probably isn't enough to work this one out.)
Anyway, the actual events of the movie move forward fairly slowly with some of the events being pretty random. Still, there's a sort of "whodunnit" mystery building up throughout the film. It really made me resent the spoiler from "Scream" which took the fun out of it. The characters might not always act particularly logically (if you have to stop a strip poker game part way through, you CAN put your clothes back on when you go out into the pouring rain), but we do get a sense of what sort of people they are (as a group perhaps, if not as individuals).
Still, the real ace-in-the-hole for this film was the ending. The reveal comes a bit out of left field, but once it does things get pretty crazy very quickly. I was reminded very much of the over-the-top ending of "Halloween" (being very vague - the bit with the gravestone on the bed), but "Friday the 13th" also has a sort of backwards Psycho feel to it. Perhaps this is a little overdone, but the actor responsible for really hamming it up does an absolutely brilliant job. Another thing perhaps a little overdone is the Hitchcock style violin music. It goes a bit over the top. Plus towards the end, the screaming goes to rather annoying levels too.
I kept referring to "the ending" earlier, which was perhaps a little misleading. There's a rather neat moment after the film appears to be over where yet another crazy thing happens. It doesn't seem to entirely make sense and it's that ambiguity that is explored in the sequel. If it wasn't for this bizarre secondary ending, one of the most important horror icons might never have come about.
In the end, the first ever "Friday the 13th" movie showed a lot of promise, but it's actually difficult to work out why it has become such a classic. Having seen some of the sequels, I think I might actually argue that it is the appeal of the mythology that has kept the series going rather than simply the merits of the original movie. As much as I liked the final act of "Friday the 13th" it doesn't quite make up for the randomness of some of plot and some of the poor acting. But this had some good elements and was probably more good than bad overall.
C+
Friday The 13th - Part II (1981)
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Okay, now THIS surprised me. I had wondered how this was going to follow up from the last movie and any mentions of the figure "Jason" seemed to make absolutely no sense bearing in mind what we had seen (or perhaps more importantly hadn't seen) so far. The whole way that Jason is shoehorned in makes absolutely no sense, yet strangely by the end I was buying into it. There's a great moment in the final act that makes it all work.
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On the downside, the film begins with a long drawn-out mash up of scenes from the first film. While I thought this sort of mash up was done pretty well at the beginning of "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" it certainly isn't here.
Anyway, two things that are improved in this film by comparison to the original. There's a clearer narrative and the acting is better. Both these elements made the film much more enjoyable for me than the original. There's also the same tense feeling as we found in the first film. This is still a proper horror film (and yes, you can take that comment as foreshadowing of my opinion of the other films I've seen in this franchise).
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The various deaths get a little more inventive this time around, but this is in terms of the way they are built up and filmed, not just in terms of what actually happens to the victims. The re-appearance of the random nutcase from the first movie warning campers that "there's a death curse" was remarkably welcome considering how irritating I found him in the previous film.
Though the very final ending of the film was a little sudden, I finished this movie feeling very satisfied. This could very easily have been dismissed as "just another sequel" and its a testament to the quality of this follow-up and the inventive way it builds up a whole new mythology from the ending of the first film that the franchise managed to many other successful follow-ups. I certainly don't think the next film would have been able to become the most financially successful sequel asides from "Freddy Vs Jason" on just the 3D novelty alone. Heck, it seems unlikely they'd have spent the money on a 3D sequel if it wasn't for the success of "Friday the 13th - Part II".
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This was a good solid film and I actually preferred it to the original overall. It's not better in every respect. Judging the final acts of both movies alongside one another, the first movie was probably better. However, a film needs to work for the entire running time, not the final 15 minutes and in terms of keeping my attention throughout, this sequel is the better of the two.
B-
Friday The 13th - Part III (or 3D) (1982)
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Oh my goodness. Well needless to say watching a 3D film in 2D is always going to be problematic. Just in the opening scene we have long drawn-out shots of sheets blowing out at us, we have a pole pointed out at us, we have the camera focussed in on foreground cans on the coffee table and we have a TV aerial being adjusted so that it points out at us.
Prior to that, this film decides not to begin with a mash-up of the first two films but instead starts with just the brilliant climactic scene of Part II. A pretty good choice I feel, as this nicely gets us caught up on what is going on and ready to begin.
Eventually we come to be introduced to the brand new campers, only this time there's no real indication that the place has a long history of murders in spite of the pretty massive death toll in the previous installment. The only indicator is the appearance of a brand new madman warning the campers that they're all going to die. It was pretty annoying having this newcomer act suspiciously like the previous madman, particularly since he appears to be sleeping in the middle of the road in the woods. - But he manages to hold out a detached eyeball to the camera in a very big "helloooo to those watching this in 3D" way. Not quite as daft however, as the yoyo later on.
The characters aren't entirely flat, but essentially the most interesting character decision is the inclusion of a geek who likes to dress up in horror costumes. Unfortunately the way he keeps trying to scare people by pretending to be a murderer or a victim ends up feeling rather contrived, but worse still, he's just so ridiculously whiney. And when his reaction to a girl's matter-of-fact, but pretty polite, refusal after he basically begs her to sleep with him is "bitch" I pretty much lost any respect for his character.
Anyway, sorry if this acts as a spoiler, but anyone who has seen ANY promotions for pretty much anything related to Friday the 13th has almost certainly seen the big hockey mask. As such, I don't think it's unfair to reveal that this is the first film where that element is introduced. It actually comes from the geeky character's little box of tricks. This film also appears to suddenly make the big baddie shaved bald, which wasn't the case in the previous film.
Still, while the previous film was keen to keep the baddie's face mostly under wraps, this one quickly seems to have him desperate to take it off and show his face. Towards the end we even have him wandering around unmasked and waving at a remaining camper.
The final ending seems to try to mirror the final ending of the first movie and I suppose it deserves some credit for trying something new. In the end though, it feels far too half-hearted. Attempting to resurrect the other baddie character from the first movie (I'm avoiding spoilers as best I can here) turned out to be a bad idea, particularly when done this cheesily with extremely poor effects.
Leading up to the ending, the whole run around just had me bored. There's just nothing terribly interesting about it.
This is not a good film. It could have been worse, but not much.
D-
Friday The 13th - The Final Chapter (1984)
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I was very nearly excited about this one. Crispin Glover (the dad from "Back To The Future") and Corey Feldman (Billy's friend in "Gremlins" and one of the neighbours in "The 'Burbs") are both starring in this, which seemed like a good sign. (Recognisable actors? Really?) And admittedly there does seem to be a real subplot with the characters in this one. Sadly not a terribly good one, in spite of a brilliant performance from Crispin Glover. The biggest problem is that the whole side-plot with the- well, not even campers, just people who've turned up around the lake- is that it jars with the whole main premise of the film of a supernatural murderer coming to kill them. They don't seem to know much about the murders and even the locals (who in the first movie seemed to be all upset about the whole place) don't seem to know much about it either.
The beginning is, apparently (haven't seen it yet) rather similar to the film "Halloween II". The new addition to this film is a full recognition that the bad guy is especially difficult to kill. (This was becoming increasingly obvious, but I think in the fourth installment, it was probably worth making explicit.) But before the film even begins we have yet another "previously on Friday the 13th section" to start things off. Only this time it is AWESOME! I mean seriously, they use a round-the-campfire spooky story about the main baddie (yeah, I'm sure everyone knows his name. I've mentioned it once, but I'm trying really hard to avoid spoilers) that gets told to the campers in "Friday the 13th - Part II", only intercut with some of the best death scenes so far. Interestingly, most of those clips seem to come from Part II (because Part II is awesome). So yeah, I'd actually say that the clipshow at the start is the best part of this so-called "Final Chapter".
We start this film with the title in front a big image of the hockey mask partially sliced in the top right corner. If nothing else, this film tidied up the franchise mythology just with this intro and opening titles sequence. Thankfully that also included reverting back to a more typically horror-style soundtrack with violins instead of the synthy disco-esque soundtrack of Part III. This also carries on the ooh-ooh-ooh-ack-ack-ack-ick-ick-ick background noises which are so indicative of this franchise.
The brother of one of the previous victims turns up claiming to be an expert and trying to destroy the baddie once and for all. If he was some kind of badass that could have worked pretty well, but he really wasn't terribly impressive overall. In the final scenes we have an interesting decision to have the baddie get genuinely hurt moreso than in previous installments and, finally, there's a little more concern and scepticism when faced with his motionless body. Watching the baddie studying a gaping wound between his fingers with curiosity is probably one of the better parts of the film and here we have one by far the most interesting version of his unmasked face.
Unfortunately overall the film is a mess, the pacing is all over the place, and the final "twist" makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. (One of the characters changes their appearance and says to the main baddie "remember, remember". If anyone can explain what they were trying to do in a way that makes sense then I'll be really impressed. It's basically a throwback to the ending of "Part II" only without any clear sense of the logic behind it.) In spite of the title suggesting that this is the final entry, "The Final Chapter" finishes with a very clear new
direction for the franchise. However, as I understand it, this isn't taken advantage of in the fifth film anyway.
And let's not forget to mention that "Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter" actually features some of the worst misogyny of the entire series. Now misogyny is actually a pretty common element in the franchise, but "The Final Chapter" does it worse than ever. While in "Part III" the skinny dipping takes place entirely offscreen, in The Final Chapter they insist on showing all the women getting naked. Is this relevant to the plot? Simply no, not at all. This isn't a scene where the characters are at risk and the character development in the scene is minimal. When one of the men competing for the women says "well this isn't fair, you got the hot one" that apparently makes him seem really endearing. (What???)
But perhaps the element that made me realise how ridiculous the misogyny was is where the camera introduces the scene with a double buttshot of two women and then instantly transfers us to the faces.... of two men. It's like the movie is saying, here's what is important about these two and here's what is important about these other two. Ugh!
A few talented actors and a clear increase in production values cannot save this mess. There are some good elements, but they are crowded out by a convoluted story of early teenage sexual experiences and a poorly judged "creepy" ending.
D+
Some final observations...
I'm looking forward to part 6, but asides from that I'm not expecting much until the notoriously cheesy "Jason Goes To Hell" (part 9). A entertaining Filmsack podcast means that I'm at least looking forward to the schlock elements of that film.
This could be a difficult slog or lowered expectations could help to improve my opinion of these films. However, the strong recommendations for "The Final Chapter" by the Now Playing podcasters has left me rather downhearted.
A rather odd thing for me is the way the Now Playing podcasters talk about certain people "deserving" to be killed in the movies. Naturally none of the characters really "deserves" to die and I've not really had the impression that the murderer is really looking much further than whether someone is in the Crystal Lake area and whether they look like they might be planning to have sex at some point. (And even then there are extremely clear exceptions.) Far from the deaths being predictable it seems to be pretty much a free-for-all for the murderer, making any talk of "deserved" deaths into a bit of shambles by my perspective.
I'm optimistic about the rest of the series. Just the realisation that a series that (thanks to "Scream") I always thought I would find thoroughly unpleasant and unbearable is actually pretty cool has made this little project worthwhile. :)
(Cross posted to Halloween Candy)
Before I begin....
To help to keep perspective through watching these films, I'm listening to the Now Playing podcast after each one. Their podcasts can be pretty entertaining, but they always involve in-depth plot spoilers. This will hopefully ensure that I don't miss out important details in my reviews. What I've seen already, however, is how many of the (normally) three hosts recommended each film in the series. Combining that with the relative imdb and rotten tomatoes scores, I know have a rough estimate of which films I should expect to find relatively good and which ones I should just expect to spend my time snarking.
The estimates are as follows:
Expected to be good - 1,6,FVJ,(4?)
Expected to be alright - 2,9,10
Expected to be awful - 3,5,8,(7?,9?)
My opinion has already veered quite notably from these expectations, as you'll see...
Friday The 13th (1980)
It was interesting watching this. It doesn't have a particularly good narrative structure and the characters are mostly characterless. Still, it does set up some horror movie staples. The townsfolk are worried for cheery campers going to what they locally refer to as "Camp Blood", the local police officer is judgemental of teenagers instantly presuming they will be getting into trouble and doing drugs, the film takes some cues from Hitchcock through its use of music, and there's also an interesting use of long takes where the camera follows (or stalks) the characters. That last element is probably not at all original, but it seems to be most obviously drawing from the opening scene of "Halloween".
The director admits to taking inspiration from "Halloween". "Friday the 13th" is, to some extent, building on the way the victims in "Halloween" inevitably seemed to be anyone who had sex. (I won't explain how that works here, because it is related to the ending. Even the annoying spoiler at the beginning of the movie Scream probably isn't enough to work this one out.)
Anyway, the actual events of the movie move forward fairly slowly with some of the events being pretty random. Still, there's a sort of "whodunnit" mystery building up throughout the film. It really made me resent the spoiler from "Scream" which took the fun out of it. The characters might not always act particularly logically (if you have to stop a strip poker game part way through, you CAN put your clothes back on when you go out into the pouring rain), but we do get a sense of what sort of people they are (as a group perhaps, if not as individuals).
Still, the real ace-in-the-hole for this film was the ending. The reveal comes a bit out of left field, but once it does things get pretty crazy very quickly. I was reminded very much of the over-the-top ending of "Halloween" (being very vague - the bit with the gravestone on the bed), but "Friday the 13th" also has a sort of backwards Psycho feel to it. Perhaps this is a little overdone, but the actor responsible for really hamming it up does an absolutely brilliant job. Another thing perhaps a little overdone is the Hitchcock style violin music. It goes a bit over the top. Plus towards the end, the screaming goes to rather annoying levels too.
I kept referring to "the ending" earlier, which was perhaps a little misleading. There's a rather neat moment after the film appears to be over where yet another crazy thing happens. It doesn't seem to entirely make sense and it's that ambiguity that is explored in the sequel. If it wasn't for this bizarre secondary ending, one of the most important horror icons might never have come about.
In the end, the first ever "Friday the 13th" movie showed a lot of promise, but it's actually difficult to work out why it has become such a classic. Having seen some of the sequels, I think I might actually argue that it is the appeal of the mythology that has kept the series going rather than simply the merits of the original movie. As much as I liked the final act of "Friday the 13th" it doesn't quite make up for the randomness of some of plot and some of the poor acting. But this had some good elements and was probably more good than bad overall.
C+
Friday The 13th - Part II (1981)
Okay, now THIS surprised me. I had wondered how this was going to follow up from the last movie and any mentions of the figure "Jason" seemed to make absolutely no sense bearing in mind what we had seen (or perhaps more importantly hadn't seen) so far. The whole way that Jason is shoehorned in makes absolutely no sense, yet strangely by the end I was buying into it. There's a great moment in the final act that makes it all work.
On the downside, the film begins with a long drawn-out mash up of scenes from the first film. While I thought this sort of mash up was done pretty well at the beginning of "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" it certainly isn't here.
Anyway, two things that are improved in this film by comparison to the original. There's a clearer narrative and the acting is better. Both these elements made the film much more enjoyable for me than the original. There's also the same tense feeling as we found in the first film. This is still a proper horror film (and yes, you can take that comment as foreshadowing of my opinion of the other films I've seen in this franchise).
The various deaths get a little more inventive this time around, but this is in terms of the way they are built up and filmed, not just in terms of what actually happens to the victims. The re-appearance of the random nutcase from the first movie warning campers that "there's a death curse" was remarkably welcome considering how irritating I found him in the previous film.
Though the very final ending of the film was a little sudden, I finished this movie feeling very satisfied. This could very easily have been dismissed as "just another sequel" and its a testament to the quality of this follow-up and the inventive way it builds up a whole new mythology from the ending of the first film that the franchise managed to many other successful follow-ups. I certainly don't think the next film would have been able to become the most financially successful sequel asides from "Freddy Vs Jason" on just the 3D novelty alone. Heck, it seems unlikely they'd have spent the money on a 3D sequel if it wasn't for the success of "Friday the 13th - Part II".
This was a good solid film and I actually preferred it to the original overall. It's not better in every respect. Judging the final acts of both movies alongside one another, the first movie was probably better. However, a film needs to work for the entire running time, not the final 15 minutes and in terms of keeping my attention throughout, this sequel is the better of the two.
B-
Friday The 13th - Part III (or 3D) (1982)
Oh my goodness. Well needless to say watching a 3D film in 2D is always going to be problematic. Just in the opening scene we have long drawn-out shots of sheets blowing out at us, we have a pole pointed out at us, we have the camera focussed in on foreground cans on the coffee table and we have a TV aerial being adjusted so that it points out at us.
Prior to that, this film decides not to begin with a mash-up of the first two films but instead starts with just the brilliant climactic scene of Part II. A pretty good choice I feel, as this nicely gets us caught up on what is going on and ready to begin.
Eventually we come to be introduced to the brand new campers, only this time there's no real indication that the place has a long history of murders in spite of the pretty massive death toll in the previous installment. The only indicator is the appearance of a brand new madman warning the campers that they're all going to die. It was pretty annoying having this newcomer act suspiciously like the previous madman, particularly since he appears to be sleeping in the middle of the road in the woods. - But he manages to hold out a detached eyeball to the camera in a very big "helloooo to those watching this in 3D" way. Not quite as daft however, as the yoyo later on.
The characters aren't entirely flat, but essentially the most interesting character decision is the inclusion of a geek who likes to dress up in horror costumes. Unfortunately the way he keeps trying to scare people by pretending to be a murderer or a victim ends up feeling rather contrived, but worse still, he's just so ridiculously whiney. And when his reaction to a girl's matter-of-fact, but pretty polite, refusal after he basically begs her to sleep with him is "bitch" I pretty much lost any respect for his character.
Anyway, sorry if this acts as a spoiler, but anyone who has seen ANY promotions for pretty much anything related to Friday the 13th has almost certainly seen the big hockey mask. As such, I don't think it's unfair to reveal that this is the first film where that element is introduced. It actually comes from the geeky character's little box of tricks. This film also appears to suddenly make the big baddie shaved bald, which wasn't the case in the previous film.
Still, while the previous film was keen to keep the baddie's face mostly under wraps, this one quickly seems to have him desperate to take it off and show his face. Towards the end we even have him wandering around unmasked and waving at a remaining camper.
The final ending seems to try to mirror the final ending of the first movie and I suppose it deserves some credit for trying something new. In the end though, it feels far too half-hearted. Attempting to resurrect the other baddie character from the first movie (I'm avoiding spoilers as best I can here) turned out to be a bad idea, particularly when done this cheesily with extremely poor effects.
Leading up to the ending, the whole run around just had me bored. There's just nothing terribly interesting about it.
This is not a good film. It could have been worse, but not much.
D-
Friday The 13th - The Final Chapter (1984)
I was very nearly excited about this one. Crispin Glover (the dad from "Back To The Future") and Corey Feldman (Billy's friend in "Gremlins" and one of the neighbours in "The 'Burbs") are both starring in this, which seemed like a good sign. (Recognisable actors? Really?) And admittedly there does seem to be a real subplot with the characters in this one. Sadly not a terribly good one, in spite of a brilliant performance from Crispin Glover. The biggest problem is that the whole side-plot with the- well, not even campers, just people who've turned up around the lake- is that it jars with the whole main premise of the film of a supernatural murderer coming to kill them. They don't seem to know much about the murders and even the locals (who in the first movie seemed to be all upset about the whole place) don't seem to know much about it either.
The beginning is, apparently (haven't seen it yet) rather similar to the film "Halloween II". The new addition to this film is a full recognition that the bad guy is especially difficult to kill. (This was becoming increasingly obvious, but I think in the fourth installment, it was probably worth making explicit.) But before the film even begins we have yet another "previously on Friday the 13th section" to start things off. Only this time it is AWESOME! I mean seriously, they use a round-the-campfire spooky story about the main baddie (yeah, I'm sure everyone knows his name. I've mentioned it once, but I'm trying really hard to avoid spoilers) that gets told to the campers in "Friday the 13th - Part II", only intercut with some of the best death scenes so far. Interestingly, most of those clips seem to come from Part II (because Part II is awesome). So yeah, I'd actually say that the clipshow at the start is the best part of this so-called "Final Chapter".
We start this film with the title in front a big image of the hockey mask partially sliced in the top right corner. If nothing else, this film tidied up the franchise mythology just with this intro and opening titles sequence. Thankfully that also included reverting back to a more typically horror-style soundtrack with violins instead of the synthy disco-esque soundtrack of Part III. This also carries on the ooh-ooh-ooh-ack-ack-ack-ick-ick-ick background noises which are so indicative of this franchise.
The brother of one of the previous victims turns up claiming to be an expert and trying to destroy the baddie once and for all. If he was some kind of badass that could have worked pretty well, but he really wasn't terribly impressive overall. In the final scenes we have an interesting decision to have the baddie get genuinely hurt moreso than in previous installments and, finally, there's a little more concern and scepticism when faced with his motionless body. Watching the baddie studying a gaping wound between his fingers with curiosity is probably one of the better parts of the film and here we have one by far the most interesting version of his unmasked face.
Unfortunately overall the film is a mess, the pacing is all over the place, and the final "twist" makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. (One of the characters changes their appearance and says to the main baddie "remember, remember". If anyone can explain what they were trying to do in a way that makes sense then I'll be really impressed. It's basically a throwback to the ending of "Part II" only without any clear sense of the logic behind it.) In spite of the title suggesting that this is the final entry, "The Final Chapter" finishes with a very clear new
direction for the franchise. However, as I understand it, this isn't taken advantage of in the fifth film anyway.
And let's not forget to mention that "Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter" actually features some of the worst misogyny of the entire series. Now misogyny is actually a pretty common element in the franchise, but "The Final Chapter" does it worse than ever. While in "Part III" the skinny dipping takes place entirely offscreen, in The Final Chapter they insist on showing all the women getting naked. Is this relevant to the plot? Simply no, not at all. This isn't a scene where the characters are at risk and the character development in the scene is minimal. When one of the men competing for the women says "well this isn't fair, you got the hot one" that apparently makes him seem really endearing. (What???)
But perhaps the element that made me realise how ridiculous the misogyny was is where the camera introduces the scene with a double buttshot of two women and then instantly transfers us to the faces.... of two men. It's like the movie is saying, here's what is important about these two and here's what is important about these other two. Ugh!
A few talented actors and a clear increase in production values cannot save this mess. There are some good elements, but they are crowded out by a convoluted story of early teenage sexual experiences and a poorly judged "creepy" ending.
D+
Some final observations...
I'm looking forward to part 6, but asides from that I'm not expecting much until the notoriously cheesy "Jason Goes To Hell" (part 9). A entertaining Filmsack podcast means that I'm at least looking forward to the schlock elements of that film.
This could be a difficult slog or lowered expectations could help to improve my opinion of these films. However, the strong recommendations for "The Final Chapter" by the Now Playing podcasters has left me rather downhearted.
A rather odd thing for me is the way the Now Playing podcasters talk about certain people "deserving" to be killed in the movies. Naturally none of the characters really "deserves" to die and I've not really had the impression that the murderer is really looking much further than whether someone is in the Crystal Lake area and whether they look like they might be planning to have sex at some point. (And even then there are extremely clear exceptions.) Far from the deaths being predictable it seems to be pretty much a free-for-all for the murderer, making any talk of "deserved" deaths into a bit of shambles by my perspective.
I'm optimistic about the rest of the series. Just the realisation that a series that (thanks to "Scream") I always thought I would find thoroughly unpleasant and unbearable is actually pretty cool has made this little project worthwhile. :)
(Cross posted to Halloween Candy)
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"I guess Jesus was down at the mill forgiving all the drunks. Who knew?"
Warrior (2011)
Tom Hardy vs... that other guy. I'd heard this described as two small generic stories glued together to make a full feature. Certainly I think it makes sense to consider the story of each of the two brother protagonists separately when critiquing this film.
Tom Hardy is a stoic badass. He's like Snake Plissken without the eyepatch and with more awesome ass-kicking skills. The opening scene features him confronting his ex-alcholic dad, giving the dad a (well-deserved) hard time over his past mistakes and finally confessing that he preferred his father as a drunk than as a washed-up figure begging for forgiveness.
Meanwhile the other guy... (yeah, I'll check imdb later) is a teacher. This is clearly going to cause problems for me personally because I actually know something about teaching. He's an ex-MMA fighter who decided to go into a less dangerous profession, so naturally at some point during his MMA days he was getting a degree in physics and at some point after his MMA days he was taking a teacher training course to teach physics in school. Yeah, obviously. Sorry what?
In case anyone missed the sarcasm, my problem is that the script seems to suggest that teaching was a job that he quickly moved into in order to pay the bills when he gave up MMA fighting in favour of family life. But teaching isn't an easy career to just pick up.
Anyway, with the bills mounting up it looks like he and his wife are going to lose their house. This problem is not helped by a financial advisor at the bank whose top tip was apparently to remortgage the house three times. (Seriously, you didn't ever question this advice?) The wife doesn't want our joint-protagonist, brother of Tom Hardy's character, to go back into MMA fighting because if he gets a major injury they could lose everything. (Sensible lady.) But MMA fighting pays better than getting a part time job as a bouncer (which was always going to be so very practical seeing as teachers have so much free time), so rather than selling up and moving to a more affordable place, there's apparently no choice but to take part in the biggest MMA contest and try to take on some of the best talent in the business in spite of having been teaching physics rather than training in MMA for several years now....
After this teacher takes up a small MMA fight the Principle of the school takes one look at our joint protagonist's facial bruising the next day and says "I want to see you in my office". Is this because he's worried about whether the teacher was assaulted and/or mugged? Is it because he wants to know the teacher's side of the story? No, apparently he knows already. How? Well um... he never says. But you know, bruising on a teacher's face... What else could it be but an amateur MMA match? Duh! (It's made very clear that the Principle had no idea that our joint-protagonist teacher with money troubles was an ex-MMA fighter.)
Are teachers taking part in martial arts matches going against school rules? Apparently so. In fact rather than asking our teacher if he can run extra-curricular classes to share his sports knowledge with pupils at the school, our joint-protagonist is suspended indefinitely. Perhaps I'm out of touch with the American school system, but this whole plotline strikes me as utterly ludicrous.
The bigger problem with this side of the story is that it isn't that interesting, particularly by comparison with Tom Hardy's ex-military nihilistic daddy-issues stoic and stocky juggernaut. Tom Hardy is the one that spends the time with the father, he's the one that stirs up real emotions and he's the one with the more nuanced and conflicted storyline. That said, the whole "war hero" element of Tom hardy's storyline feels a little bit twee, but it just about works.
I couldn't help but feel that Tom Hardy's teacher-with-money-problems brother would have been better off as a side character. Tom Hardy's storyline felt like the real heart of the film. Still, perhaps that's my penchant for darker storytelling showing, since I couldn't help but feel that the filmmakers were expecting me to see it the other way around. While the physics teacher brother is pretty much an open book, Tom Hardy is the onion slowly peeling to give us a teary glimpse at the layers beneath. I think the intention was that we identify with the more open character and gradually come to know the contrasting enigmatic character. If that's the case, I think perhaps they shouldn't have set up the story by using Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte in the opening scene and perhaps they needed to make his physics-teacher brother rather less flat.
This is a well produced movie which knows how to pull on the heart strings and to keep the pace. Even though the story revolves around a series of fight scenes (in the second half at least) it still feels like the story is central to all of it. That said, the big montage sequence had me groaning a little bit. Unfortunately, only one of the brothers really caught my interest, making the scenes with the other brother feel like filler. I think there was another film in here that I could have really been impressed by, but in the end I cannot help but compare this to last year's "The Fighter" which really managed to make me care about everyone and which had characters who felt real. In terms of quality "The Fighter" is in a whole other league, while "Warrior" is, at best, trashy entertainment.
This was fun enough, but missing something overall.
C+
P.S. Oh, and the brother who isn't played by Tom Hardy is played by Joel Edgerton. He played a relatively important part in "Animal Kingdom", he was a fairly bland protagonist in "Kinky Boots", and that's about all I remember seeing him in.
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Win Win, Killer Elite and The Ides Of March - Movie Reviews!!!
Win Win (2011)
In a recent post I looked at which movies (if only looking at non-documentaries with a reasonable number of reviews counted) would be the top ten of each year according to Rotten Tomatoes. I was surprised to see this film featuring prominently on the list for 2011. I didn't remember hearing particularly good things about it, but the acting talent was a definite draw. I love Paul Giamatti and in this film his wife is played by Amy Ryan (who I mainly know from "The Wire") who is also great.
Unfortunately, while an actor can elevate a work, if the scriptwriter(s) and director don't have the material and the vision for them to work with, the actors are irrelevant. In the case of Win Win the scriptwriter and director are both the same person; Thomas McCarthy. McCarthy does a great job playing a journalist in The Wire, but I hadn't seen any of his previous writer-director credits (The Visitor and The Station Agent).
Now, it's all too easy for me to forget to give a reasonable basic synopsis in my reviews and to rush into all the opinionated ranting. I'm not sure I even mentioned in my last review that Warrior is about two brothers with an alcoholic father who've long been estranged for each other who both decide to compete in an MMA tournament. I was rather quicker to start gushing about Tom Hardy's performance and ranting against pretty much everything else in the film. Well this time I have an excuse. The first thing I need to make clear to you is that I didn't know what kind of film this was until after it was over and I'm still not convinced I'm sure.
You see, apparently this is a comedy. I did not laugh. Now, not laughing isn't always a sign that something isn't a comedy. It could be a bad comedy or in other cases it could just not be the sort of humour which requires you to burst into fits of laughter every few seconds. I don't think everyone was in stitches all the way through "A Serious Man" and "Submarine" like I was, but if they weren't laughing at they would still be able to appreciate that those films were comedies. The problem is that I didn't just 'not laugh'. I actually don't think Win Win is a comedy and if it is, I actually think that counts against it quite harshly because one of the elements of possible intended humour that I picked up on and ignored while watching would actually be homophobic if they were genuinely be being played for laughs.
Okay so, with that, let's get some context in here. Paul Giamatti is, to some extent, playing his stock character. He's a middle aged guy worrying about his future, jogging because he doesn't want a heart attack and struggling with a somewhat unrewarding job with somewhat less than helpful co-workers. He's running a small failing law firm catering to the elderly and one day he finds the opportunity to make some extra money from one of his richer clients through crooked means. The client is about to be declared legally unfit to take care of himself or make his own decisions and without family members available to look after him, the state will put him in a home. Giamatti sneakily offers to be a guardian to the client and look after him at home and then takes him straight to the care home and uses the cheques he receives compensating him for looking after the client to help with his money problems.
So if this is a comedy, it's a black comedy right? My favourite kind. This ought to be right up my alley.... Only I didn't get the joke. I can actually see now how in the hands of the Coens or directors like that, this could have worked really well. The law firm has a boiler that is making an odd noise and we are informed towards the beginning that if they don't replace it, it could explode. The noise of the boiler gets louder and louder throughout the film, but it never really feels terribly important. It doesn't lead to Giamatti getting into trouble or to any even potentially embarrassing scenarios. It's just there in the background. It's completely lacking in drama and simply serves to remind us of Giamatti's money problems.
I found this to be a rather mushy sentimental drama rather than a black comedy and I think the problem might be partially that the film never really makes us feel like anything is at stake. Giamatti spends most of the film comfortably cashing his cheques and the way the issue is brought back doesn't exactly feel like a big problem.
So if the film doesn't focus on the dodgy cheque-cashing, what does it focus on? Well the movie needs some way to draw attention to Giamatti's fraud (eventually) and the only reason Giamatti is acting as the old man's guardian is because his daughter cannot be located. So does the daughter come back? No, her son does. Her son is found sitting outside the old man's house (which is empty because the old man is in a home) and they find themselves looking after this boy (because Giamatti's wife ends up on insisting on it because she's quirky. - Is she a comedy character?). To make things even more contrived, the boy is an excellent wrestler and every week between running a desperate failing legal firm, Giamatti coaches children in wrestling. This boy is going to help his young person's amateur wrestling team become genuinely competitive. (Is the level of contrivance part of the humour?)
Anyway, the boy hates his mother and so through his character it's made clear that she mustn't be allowed to be the old man's guardian. But at the same time leaving the old man in a home and cashing cheques is morally wrong! DILEMMA! I couldn't care less about any of this and this whole issue only really becomes an issue towards the end of the film because we've spent half the movie worrying about this teenage wrestling team. I would note though, that my first thought when the boy's mother shows up was that she was far too young to play the part. Her son is supposed to be about 15 and she looked about 25. As it turns out she's played by Melanie Lynskey (Kate Winslet's co-star in Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures") and she's about 35. Some have pointed out that she's supposed to have just come out of rehab yet she looks really clean cut and tidy. I'd say firstly that the rehab is clearly supposed to have worked and secondly that her character would be particularly keen on making everyone think that if she wants to get guardianship over her father. The only way we can tell that she's unsuited for the role is from her wrestler son.
So, now that I've pretty much let the film's own plot damn it for the most part, let's get back to the charge of homophobia shall we? There's a friend of Giamatti who has just had a horrible break-up with his wife and is constantly spying on her to see who she is cheating on him with (though they are actually getting divorced), but for some odd reason there seem to be constant suggestions that this friend is gay. Okay, in view of his marriage he's probably bisexual, but the suggestions are always about his possible attraction to other men: Paul Giamatti in particular. Paul Giamatti seems to be having a stroke at one point and his friend instantly jumps on to him in view to 'warm him up' and the two of them are discovered by some other hikers while they are in this position. Okay okay, cheap laugh, move on... But that's not the end of it. Rather uncomfortably we have a point where Paul Giamatti is bending over and, seemingly from the perspective of the friend, the camera stares at Giamatti's backside. There's even a possible suggestion that the friend is invigorated by seeing the teenage boys wrestling. This whole aspect of his character could easily be removed without making any difference to the plot. I don't think the gay community will mind terribly if we remove latent gay urges from a character when they sometimes seem to be hebephilic and are being played for laughs.
Of course, if we are removing aspects from the plot because they aren't funny, we may as well not even start watching the film. As a drama it's mushy, boring, contrived and lacking in any kind of payoff. As a comedy it is joyless, ill-judged and homophobic.
Just steer clear of this one, okay?
E-
P.S. Ooooh missed out yet another thing to rant about. The BLATANT product placement. Look, I love the Nintendo Wii okay? However, when two characters break up their conversation as follows, it's daft:
Giamatti: *distracted from conversation* "Is that a Wii?"
Closet gay friend: "Yeah, it's Wii Golf."
Giamatti: "Brilliant." *goes back to previous unrelated conversation*
- WHAT???!?
Killer Elite (2011)
Jason Statham is always good for an enjoyable time, right? Well not necessarily. The last movie I reviewed with The Stafe was "Blitz", which had him teaming up with a gay Paddy Considine to track down a cop killer. It had made-for-TV cop drama written all over it and I was completely non-plussed by the experience. However, admittedly Statham's brutal antics were the highlight of that otherwise unrewarding film. Blitz had 46% of RT and Killer Elite has 26%. But the trailer involved Jason Statham fighting someone while tied to a chair, so this might still be a mindless fun Statham movie, right?
Actually, this is more than just a mindless Statham flick. It's a pretty decent film in general. While the trailer stuck together the action sequences, the main focus is actually the plot. Here's what the tagline should have been... "Jason Statham VS the SAS". Jason Statham is given an unenviable job by some middle eastern oil barons interested in returning to the good graces of their tribe from which they have been exiled. Using some leverage against Statham, they persuade him to take up the reigns after he had retired from being a hitman. His job is not only to track down and murder some particular SAS guys who are believed to be responsible for possible war crimes (at least according to the Omani exiles), but also to retrieve confessions from them. This is pretty tough ordeal.
There's a suggestion in the film that this could be real life, but it's pretty clear that it's probably made up. The whole thing is based on a book called "The Feather Men" written by an ex-SAS member who claims it is all true. In the film, the Feather Men are a kind of secret society made up of ex-SAS members who look for SAS members' interests but are also involved in illegal financial activities. Clive Owen acts as their men-on-the-ground doing their dirty work. As such, when he realises that SAS members are being picked off by assassins trying to make the deaths look like accidents he goes in to investigate.
In the end, the plot isn't really all that complicated so when it starts trying to pretend that it's getting complicated at the end that doesn't exactly work in its favour. Still, this is a solidly good fun action movie. It feels a bit like a heist movie because, while the central team (led by The Stafe) aren't after money, it often feels like their team is attempting to do the impossible. Not every scene is set up as well as it could be, but you know what? I had a GREAT time watching this.
B-
The Ides Of March (2011)
George Clooney plays the ultimate liberal politician. He supports the aims of the Occupy movement, he thinks the constitution should matter and religion should be irrelevant, he supports gay marriage and so it goes on. So naturally there's going to be a catch...
Meanwhile Ryan Gosling is hardcore fan of the Cloonster and is working hard as Clooney's spin doctor, not because its his job, but because he believes in the man. However, things start to go wrong for him when Paul Giamatti, the campaign leader for the opposition, asks him to have a private meeting. Apparently an ordinary spin doctor even agreeing to a secret meeting with the head campaigner for the opposition is a really scandalous thing. (The head of Ryan Gosling's team is played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and he'd nomally be the one to have or approve meetings with the opposition team.) During this meeting Giamatti claims that the opposition have the whole race in the bag and that a senator Clooney hopes to receive an endorsement from is somehow in their pocket. Giamatti finishes by offering Gosling the option of switching sides. Gosling rejects the whole suggestion and views the whole thing as a trick.
Eventually Gosling reveals that he had the meeting, but not until after Seymour Hoffman has already let slip the game plan to the dodgy senator. All that stuff which Gosling is being shouted at for in the trailer? It's all because he had one meeting with the opposition where he told them where they could stick it and didn't reveal possible lies about a senator until it was too late. That's it.
Meanwhile he ends up having an affair with one of the interns. She makes very clear what she wants and is in total control of the situation, but when her campaign mobile rings (everyone in the team has been given one) Gosling mistakes it for his. He realises that the call comes straight from Clooney and that there is no reason why an intern would receive a call from the election candidate at 3 in the morning. The intern reveals that she was sexually harassed into sleeping with Clooney a short while back and she's currently trying to get him to pay for an abortion for her.
I didn't really feel like I bought into any of this and it seemed pretty clear to me that the while the movie clearly wanted me to think Ryan Gosling was a morally questionable figure, I couldn't really work out why. In interviews where they explained how the political system is somewhat rigged and the successful candidates are chosen by money, I thought they might have a rather more interesting story to tell. In the end, it felt like a rather unrealistic scenario littered with well-worn cliches. An atheist candidate? No way. Sleeping with interns? That old trope? Whatever... Heck, if they focussed the film on Clooney and made us care about HIM before dropping the bomb about the intern I might have cared. But trying to make out Gosling as the bad guy for having a secret meeting? I couldn't understand why I was supposed to care, nor why anyone else would care.
At one stage a journalist claims the fact that he had the meeting has been leaked to her and tries to blackmail him for some other information. What exactly was she going to print? "One member of the campaign team was invited to a meeting with the opposition, offered a job with them and flatly turned it down." Oh my goodness what a scandal!
I'm pretty sure there's some really interesting drama involved in politics, but I wasn't feeling it here. Try "In The Loop" instead. The scandals feel far more realistic in spite of it being an over-the-top comedy.
E+
Also, if you missed it click here for my recent review of "Warrior".
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"The Host" teaser trailer looks.... good?
I've heard a lot of negative comments about this. Now actually when you look at the synopsis for the book, I can understand why you might be negative about it. However, just looking at the teaser I think this looks fantastic.
One of my favourite classic horror movies is "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The remake in the late seventies is pretty good too and Robert Rodriguez' teen comedy "The Faculty" which deals with the same subject is also pretty good. The subject matter of John Carpenter's "The Thing" has a similar theme. It's just a trend within sci-fi that really appeals to me. However, the gist of these stories always tends to be the same.
What really intrigues me about this trailer is that this actually appears to be like a sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers rather than a re-telling. Of course, the problem is that Stephanie Meyer might not have the imagination to follow-on successfully from one of the greatest science fiction stories of all time. Still, the teaser trailer does it's job very well in making me excited about what COULD be even if the final product disappoints.
The director Andrew Niccol is responsible for "In Time" (which I haven't seen yet, but really wasn't received well by critics), but his previous directing work includes Gattaca and Lord of War (and in both cases he wrote the screenplays) and he also wrote the script for "The Truman Show". If anyone can adapt Stephanie Meyer's sci-fi novel in an interesting way, surely it's got to be him? Still, I'm not sure how they are going to convey the interaction between a not-quite-as-dormant-as-expected mind and its influence on a controlling alien host. The basic gist of the love story (um...) sounds pretty much unfilmable. But then again, all the more reason to be excited if it works (I guess...)
For now, I'm giving this the benefit of the doubt. I may well change my mind when a longer trailer comes out (and they start trying to convey the love story elements), but until then I am really excited about "The Host" and will happily enjoy considering the potential this project has.
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