SUSPIRIA / ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS (aka ZOMBIE aka ZOMBI 2)

A couple of weeks ago I went to the movies to see a double bill of Suspiria and Zombie Flesh Eaters (aka Zombie aka Zombi 2) at one of my favourite places in Melbourne – the awesome Astor Theatre. I hadn't seen either movie so it was pretty cool to go see both on the big screen, and too good of a double bill to pass up.

First up was horror maestro (and his being Italian I feel that it’s an appropriate use of the word) Dario Argento’s most renowned work, Suspiria. Telling the story of Suzy Bannion, who goes to study at a prestigious German dance academy, only to soon discover the school is run by a coven of occult practicing witches. Although looking a bit dated in places, Suspiria was generally successful in creating a rather unsettling mood. The famous Goblin soundtrack and Argento’s use of bizarre sets in vivid colours, lent an uneasy vibe to the proceedings. The effects and shocks hold up very well and it executed (pun intended) a corking set piece within the first 5 or 10 minutes or so. Addressing its criticisms, it certainly WAS a bit slow and muddled in places, but it was certainly an enjoyable watch. The set pieces were very well done and the disturbing Goblin soundtrack was well worthy of its reputation and played a huge part in creating the disconcerting mood of the film. Its general all round creepiness wins out in the end for me though.

Lucio Fulci’s notorious Zombie Flesh Eaters was up next and was generally a lot of fun. Banned in the UK throughout the 80’s as a ‘video nasty’ (alongside the utterly peerless The Evil Dead and the dismal Driller Killer to name but a couple) it ain't winning any plaudits for its bad dubbing but it is an enjoyably hammy gorefest that’s mostly worthy of its fandom. Although large parts of it involved a lot of wandering about and terrible expository dialogue in order to pad out the movie around 3 or 4 action scenes. The scene in the airport departure lounge where they discuss the length of their flight(!!) was, for example, totally unnecessary! So although it felt at times like they were filling space around the set pieces - what set pieces they were!

The story involves the discovery of a zombie on board an abandoned yacht in New York and the subsequent search by the yacht owners daughter and a British journalist, for her father’s whereabouts. Their search takes them to a mysterious Caribbean island. Needless to say the island is discovered to be in the grip of a zombie epidemic and chaos ensues.

In contrast to the rest of the film the major action scenes were handled with an invention and sophistication that was unfortunately lacking elsewhere. The famous zombie vs shark sequence was surprisingly well handled. The infamous eyeball v splinter interface was a grisly delight. TOTALLY gross, but REALLY well done; and the zombies climbing from the earth, smothered in worms, featuring zombie POV shots as the soil slides from view were highly entertaining. It also featured a pretty good atmospheric soundtrack during the zombie sequences. Overall it was a heap of gory pleasure and well worth seeing if like me, you’ve never had the chance to see it before.

So to conclude, both Suspiria and Zombie were very enjoyable, and there are certainly worse ways to spend a Monday evening than educating yourself on classic Italian horror.

Cool Zombie Flesh Eaters posters by Jock, via Mondo (again!)

TOTAL RECALL

I recently came across this footage of the mighty Noothgrush playing in front of a ‘Kuato Lives’ banner, and it reminded me that I had not seen Paul Verhoeven’s ultraviolent Mars-terpiece in a long time. It was due a rewatch. It really does hold up magnificently for a film that is now 20 years old but I really can’t go into this review the way I want to without it being pretty spoiler-y. So if you’ve not seen Total Recall please drop what you’re doing and go see it immediately, and THEN come back and read this.

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Douglas Quaid, an everyday workaday Joe who has an overwhelming fascination with Mars. The Mars of this future is a dystopian mining colony ruled over with an iron fist by corporate moneybags Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox); fighting a brutal war of attrition against an underground resistance movement lead by the mysterious Kuato. Quaid is nonetheless fascinated by its barren red landscape and rumours of alien technology, so when his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) puts the kibosh on his plans to travel there, he opts for the next best thing in getting some fabricated memories of a Mars trip from the Rekall company. He opts for an adventure package where he plays a spy on a mission to the red planet. Unfortunately the implant process goes wrong and it is discovered that Quaid has already had fake memories implanted. This leads him on a dangerous journey to Mars to recover his own identity and help overthrow the ruthless Cohaagen. But is this all reality or the product of a botched memory implant? The movie plays it uncertain all the way through.

Schwarzenegger is great in his last real hard action role (Terminator 2 was ahead of him still, but this was the last of the real senselessly violent action movies that built his early career – Commando, Predator, Red Heat et al). Ronny Cox plays another corporate bastard villain, just like his menacing turn as Dick Jones in Robocop. He’s a great actor and shares bad guy duties with chief henchman, Richter, played by Michael Ironside who chews the scenery with a seething intensity, and gets his comeuppance in the most memorable scene of the movie.  I also noticed, fact fans, that the cast includes Dean Norris a.k.a. Walt’s brother in law Hank from Breaking Bad, playing mutant resistance fighter Tony!

The dvd commentary with Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger is a lot of fun. I confess at this stage I have not sat through all of it, but I put it on for some key scenes as I was intrigued to get their take on what was going on. The film is deliberately ambiguous, but on the talk track Verhoeven states outright that although he purposely filmed the movie to be interpreted either way, he intended for it to all be a dream after Quaid first goes to Rekall. He spells it out - “from this moment on it’s all a dream” - and it’s great to hear them both discuss their experiences and theories on what is a very entertaining commentary. By addressing the ambiguity of the storyline in the commentary it feels like Verhoeven is letting you in on a secret. The dream aspect is not overt in the movie but the filmmaker’s intent is explicit in the commentary. He talks about the scene with Dr Edgemar from Rekall – even admitting the audience will be wanting the story to be ‘real’ and rooting for Arnie. But it’s not! I guess that highlights why the film is great. Verhoeven knows what he’s doing, knows what the film is about, knows what it is that the audience will be thinking and what they want from the film, and he subverts that. He knows we will be rooting for Arnie as the hero of a conventional action flick, and he gives us that; but at the same time if you look closely the clues are all there to show it is merely a delusion playing itself out in Quaid’s mind. But even if you decide to take Total Recall at face value (admittedly a few of the commentary explanations for it being a dream fall a little flat) then that’s ok too by Verhoeven. He’s not too pompous to allow the audience to take it as a straight up action film and provides plenty of good reasons for you to do so.

It is graphically violent. When people get shot the bullets pulp them; Martian police officers get lifted off their feet by gun fire; Arnie skewers a guy in the face with a metal pole; civilians get used as human shields; and the piece de resistance is Richter’s grim elevator demise. If Arnie tussles with a group of bad guys, then every fight scene ends with a visceral aerial shot of the thugs lying in a grisly pool of blood.

For the most part, all of its tech is either perfectly believable or actually starting to appear. Looking at it now the only things that seem outdated are the size of the viewscreens and use of keyboards in the shopping mall scene – who in 1980’s Hollywood could have envisaged flat screens, touch screens and iPads?

Some of the effects, such as the landscapes and spaceships are starting to look a little bit dated, but considering the age of the movie, are really not too bad at all. Most of the other effects – disguises and gore and mutants - still look fantastic in 2011. Rob Bottin (The Thing)’s work strongly putting that young upstart CGI in its place.

Verhoeven used a lot of the same crew that he used on Robocop, a movie that would make for a perfect double bill with Total Recall, and at the risk of sounding like an old fart, they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Nowadays it seems all futuristic sci fi has to be explained and their universes have to be put in context by being compared to ours in some way. Whereas in the 70s and 80s you would be just presented with some bizarro future world which the filmmaker just plonked you right in the middle of, and you just had to accept it and discover it as the movie goes along. Total Recall is successful with this and its future is not too far off our own so we don’t have to make too big of a leap.

I would love to see Verhoeven back in Hollywood making movies like this again. After helming such fantastically violent sci-fi as Total Recall, Robocop and Starship Troopers, it’s a proper shame that he hasn’t made a film of its like in years. I want to see more intelligent, violent and above all else ENTERTAINING science fiction from this man (although, let’s not mention Hollow Man at this stage, because that laboured clunker ruins my whole point!).

In conclusion, Total Recall is the last of its kind. A gratuitously brutal 80’s action flick (that technically came out in the 90s) and sci-fi mindfuck all rolled into one. One of Arnie’s last hurrahs before turning his hand to shitty family comedy, dubious right wing politics and tabloid disgrace.  It brims with invention and excitement, from story to effects to direction and it just flat out rules. Hard.

IMDB: Total Recall  

 

supercool Mondo poster from 2009 (above) by Tyler Stout. 

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.

Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) gets and unexpected surprise at dinner with his wife, and finds himself suddenly in the midst of divorce. Whilst drowning his sorrows in a local bar, ladies man Jacob (Ryan Gosling) takes pity on him and teaches him some tricks of the trade in order to build up his confidence and get him back on the horse, as it were.

Cal does well, but despite it all, is determined to win back his wife, both for himself and to prove to his son, Robbie, that soulmates exist. If it sounds pretty corny… well, it is! But it is nevertheless still a decent two hours at the movies. It pretty much did exactly what I expected of it and its success rests entirely on its cast. With a different set of actors in place it would more than likely have been a duffer. But charismatic performances from Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling, aided and abetted by the ubiquitous Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei and many others make for a flick that starts to exceed the sum of its parts.

It’s not going to change your life, and it is most definitely overlong. But there are some funny moments along the way and it is an enjoyable if thoroughly undemanding 2 hours. (NOTE: from here on in, there are some mild spoilers!)

However, there are some minus points earned. The ending, for starters, is dreadful! Make no mistake, it is turgid, saccharine, vomit inducing dreck. I’m not averse to a happy ending in the slightest, but the horrible graduation ceremony finale of this movie was just completely and utterly cringeworthy.

Additionally I really am not sure what sort of message it was trying to convey when it essentially boils down to approval of some very creepy stalker behaviour.  By making Robbie a hopeless romantic, persistent in the face of total discouragement, and the declaration that he is making the object of his affection uncomfortable, it seems to be treading on some very very thin ice in regards to the meaning of the word “No”. You might think that such a light and breezy film as this should not be scrutinised by cold hard reality, and perhaps that is true; but this is a mainstream Hollywood film and by having Jessica (Analeigh Tipton) reward Robbie at the end with some racy pictures, it seems that the filmmakers are flat out condoning some exceedingly unsavoury behaviour.

More often than not, that ought to be enough to direct this film straight to the bin. But overall this film wins through on the strength of its principle cast. There are some great moments - Cal’s awkward first encounter with Marisa Tomei’s unhinged primary school teacher; Gosling’s tutoring of his protégé, a couple of genuinely funny one liners and a really rather well executed and unpredictable story twist. At the end of it, although there were certainly elements that I strongly disliked, I mostly walked away having had a decently enjoyable couple of hours in the movies. It’s Saturday night date fodder, and that’s not such a bad thing sometimes.

IMDB: Crazy Stupid Love

THE TOUGHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

Mr T’s 1984 made for TV vehicle holds some very fond childhood memories for me, so when chancing upon it for five Australian dollar-y-doos in cult video shop, I really had no choice but to shell out and see if it held up to my rose tinted, halcyon day, jumpers for goalposts memories of youth.

The grim reality of these things is that once again it seems like I paid good money to give my childhood a right pasting. Much like watching repeats of Knight Rider or MacGuyver – you suddenly realise that they were pretty ruddy awful and so long as there are a few explosions and a dumbass one liner, you could pretty much please any kid in the 1980’s….actually scratch that - those are the things I’m STILL looking for in a movie, but it’s the preachy moralising that my brain seemed to have erased from history’s annals. MacGuyver in particular, has not weathered well in the storms of age. His overt mullet-y moralising is too much to bear at 8am when I’m eating my toast and trying to come to terms with the world before me. There are of course a few exceptions to the rule. The real stone cold classics of 1980’s television still stand tall over their peers. The A Team and Magnum P.I. for example, both hold up magnificently

As an aside I am still outright, genuinely OFFENDED that some shitty make up advert used the Magnum P.I. theme to advertise their nonsense. It should be a criminal offense. It’s almost as bad as when the 118 telephone company used the A Team theme on their adverts. I was coming home from work on the bus one day and some ignorant pre pubescent lout referred to the A Team theme as ‘the 118 music’. And did his parents correct him of this artless, ill informed gaffe? No they did not; And therefore it must have been a conscious effort on their part, to raise their child as a cretin; and that ladies and gentlemen is the World that you and I are living in at this very moment.  Please feel free to take a second to wallow in the abject horror of that thought.

Now… on to The Toughest Man In The World. Mr T stars as the fantastically named Bruise Brubaker. Ex Vietman Vet, Security Guard and Youth Worker. He helps kids at a local youth club, carries a torch for a hot young lawyer and tries to hide his secret shame of adult illiteracy. It soon transpires that the local Youth Club is to be shut down, and the only way to raise the funds to save it is for Bruise to win the Toughest Man In The World competition. Cue a bunch of Rocky rip –off training montages as Bruise trains hard in order to compete and beat the reigning champion, and villain of the piece, the stupendously named Tanker Weams!! Now my aged memory was clearly playing tricks on me when I sat down to watch this, as about half way through when Bruise competes in the Toughest man HEATS (note: not the actual finals), there is a triumphant sequence that I would have SWORN was the finale of the movie! Ah well they do say the mind is the first thing to go, and rather that than the bladder.

The Toughest Man competition itself is a weird sort of weightlifting and obstacle course combo that looks quite generic to the sophisticated, new millennium, post-Krypton Factor and Gladiators sensibilities of the likes of you and I; but back in those heady days of 1984 it must have looked like the ultimate of all tests. Anyway Bruise wins and therefore has the right to take on the aforementioned Tanker Weams. The movie then descends into some gangster shenanigans as Bruise tries to extricate one of the youth clubs bad (but good at heart) kids from the clutches of the local mob. It all ends with a big warehouse fight where Bruise defeats Tanker. But surely, this being a warehouse fight and all, this defeat would be unofficial. Bruise would not win the prize money for duffing up Tanker in a dodgy Chicago warehouse. Not unless TheToughest Man In The World contest wanted its public to lose all respect for it as in institution. I mean what about ticket sales and merchandising for a start. Imagine all the excited kids who turn up to the arena on the day, only to be told that unbeknownst to them Bruise had already won the title in an unscheduled downtown smackdown. I really don’t think they thought this through properly!

In any case, as you may be able to tell, this movie is not without its charm. Some fond memories did indeed flood back, and for an unashamed A Team and Mr T fan, this is worth a watch. Let’s face it, it was probably better left to my memories, and it clearly is not the movie I remembered it to be. The A Team, and Mr T in particular, was my ABSOLUTE favourite as a kid. And frankly I’m still as big of a Mr T fan now as I was when I was 8 years old so I’m gonna let all that slide!

IMDB – The Toughest Man In The World

SUPER (M.I.F.F.)

My final film seen at this years M.I.F.F. festival turned out to be the pick of the bunch. Super is 96 minutes of 100% joy. James Gunn’s violent, funny, blackly comic affair delivers on all counts and then some.

Super is the story of Frank (Rainn Wilson), a mildly depressed diner chef, who loses his wife (a recovering addict, played by Liv Tyler) to a shady drug dealing strip club owner (Kevin Bacon). In order to save her and in the midst of his depression Frank decides, with the help of his friend Libby, to become a masked Superhero vigilante. The premise will of course draw comparisons to Kick Ass, but let me assure you that right off the bat, Super is the vastly superior movie. The World it inhabits is our reality. There is no fantasy Gotham-like world here. This is the World outside your door right now.  When the Crimson Bolt hits somebody in the face with a pipe wrench, you know that they feel it!  The movie is flat out hilarious, and punctuated by bouts of sudden and brutal violence; so it is by turn riotously funny and grimly violent.  It has it all, basically.

From the moment it kicks off with a GLORIOUS, kinetic, animated credits sequence, you know that you’re in for a wild ride. It never lets up and left me striding out of the cinema with a grin a mile wide and blabbering like an excited kid.

Super was written and directed by James Gunn, who made the criminally underrated Slither. Slither was for all intents and purposes a fairly shameless ‘homage’ to Night of the Creeps, as alien space slugs invaded the Earth and took control of its inhabitants; but it worked in much the same way as Super does by delivering on both the horror and comedy aspects and managing the tone so it didn’t veer too heavily in one direction.

Cast wise, it couldn’t get any better. Quality all round.  Rainn Wilson, who most will know as Dwight from The Office, is superb. Ellen Page as Libby/Boltie is incredible. Together they lynchpin this movie into complete awesomeness.  Kevin Bacon turns in a suitably slimey performance as the villan, Jock. Bubbles from The Wire is in it! Nathan Fillion shows up as God bothering television superhero, The Holy Avenger (and is fantastic as always); and Michael Rooker plays an intimidating henchman, as only Michael Rooker can (I wonder if Michael Rooker is that intimidating in real life? Something about his movies always makes me think that he must be!)

I really don’t want to say too much more about what happens in this film, lest it diminish some of the outright DELIGHT this film dishes out. Super never really lapses into genre predictability and there are some real unpredictable surprises in store for those of you that get on board with it. Suffice to say the sight of a man in a home made costume, delivering vigilante justice, one brutal pipe wrench beating at a time is a joy to behold.

Super is the kind of movie that makes you want to rush out and tell everyone how great it was. And if they let me decide the Oscar winners this year, Super will win everything (I’ll even find a way to give it best documentary and best foreign film!).

It would be an absolute fucking epic tragedy if this film ends up living in the shadow of Kick Ass or falling into underrated obscurity like Slither. Go see this film, then make your friends go watch it, and then make THEIR friends go watch it.

On the MIFF rating system I attempted to give this film 10 stars out of 5, but mathematical convention prevented me from doing so. Therefore I had to rate it 5 stars out of 5.

IMDB: Super

THE FUTURE (M.I.F.F.)

Miranda July’s follow up to the delightful ‘Me You and Everyone We Know’, turned out to be a wretchedly irritating glimpse into the first world problems of a complete dickhead.

As fair warning, I’m not going to have any qualms about spoilers in this review, on account of the fact you can’t spoil a turd, and I’ll be doing you favour by saving you the anguish of having to sit through it.

Pending their imminent adoption of a cat and thus signalling, you know, adult responsibility and shit, Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) start having a mid 30’s crisis and decide to both quit their jobs and stop going on facebook for 5 minutes so they can spend their days doing awkward, pretentious dance routines and go do volunteer work selling trees respectively. Then, somewhere along the line, out of the blue Sophie decides to start an affair with a bloke she met over the phone. She moves in with him, yet continues to be the most pretentiously annoying human being on Planet Earth. There follows a downright bizarre set of sequences where, amongst other things and for no discernible reason,  the man’s daughter buries herself up to her neck in a hole she dug in the garden (!!); and then later on Sophie climbs inside an oversized t-shirt and proceeds to prat about doing a stupid dance.  Oh and did I mention that the whole thing is narrated by the cat they were due to adopt? Childishly voiced by Miranda July, it’s cloying, saccharine monologues will likely cause the viewer to exhibit feelings of annoyance and irritated rage.

Miranda July’s whole ‘I’m a wacky and unusual creative’ schtick wears real thin, real fast, and her character is just a deeply dislikeable arsehole. I am still unsure as to whether the audience is supposed to be rooting for her character or not, but I really can’t see any reasoning as to why they should. By the time ending trundled into site I was beyond caring about anyone in this movie and was more annoyed with the fact I just wasted 20 bucks on watching such monumental drivel.

So just to be clear, I flat out DESPISED this film.

On the MIFF rating system I gave this film 1 star out of 5, but I would have given it zero if I had been able to.

IMDB: The Future

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (M.I.F.F.)

Despite it’s superb premise, and the presence of the frankly wonderful Rutger Hauer in the lead role, Hobo With A Shotgun failed to deliver. The ‘high concept’ storyline revolves around Rutger Hauer’s Hobo of the title, exacting bloody revenge on the lawless criminals of the city and underworld boss The Drake.

Unfortunately Hobo With A Shotgun just didn’t work. Not even as being an enjoyable piece of nonsense. Rutger Hauer has many entrants in his back catalogue that qualify as enjoyable trash – not least the SUPERB Blind Fury, and the entertaining Salute of the Jugger – but Hobo just couldn’t manage it. It looked good; like 80’s video trash. Reminiscent of Street Trash for example, in both acting ability and aesthetic. Some nice touches were in there – I can’t help but feel when the villains put manhole covers around the necks of their victims, it was a cheeky nod to Rutger Hauer’s 90’s action classic, Wedlock – and there was a spirited 5 or 10 minutes in the middle where the Hobo takes up his vigilante crusade and it seemed like things might fall into place.

But despite the gore and the look of the movie, it felt mean spirited. It was nasty, and perhaps that was the intent, but it ended up meaning that there really was no fun at all to be had here.

It felt contrived. Like the dialogue was intentionally terrible. One part in particular, where the Hobo is talking about bears, was excruciating. The script felt like it had been written precisely for hipsters with terrible moustaches and oversized brogues to laugh at ironically.

Most unforgivably of all, it was toweringly unfunny. I’ve nothing against crude or juvenile humour. In fact I positively celebrate it. But just being crude or juvenile does not necessarily make you funny; and that’s the case here. It was a total laugh vacuum.

On the MIFF rating system I gave this film 1 star out of 5. Hobo with a SHITgun.

IMDB: Hobo With A Shotgun

NORWEGIAN WOOD (M.I.F.F.)

A soulful, beautifully filmed, slow burn, based on the Haruki Murakami’s acclaimed novel. Norwegian Wood tells the story of Watanabe and his love for two girls. One, Naoko, a troubled, fragile spirit from his youth; back in his life and still unable to come to terms with a tragedy that haunts them both; and the other, Midori, an intriguing new love.

It has indeed been a very long time since I read the book, so comparison was hard. What I can say was that the film was excellent.  Fully transporting you back to the 60’s, with gorgeous scenery in the Japanese countryside, and it’s captivating storyline, it paints a tragic portrait of grief and love. Nonetheless, I found myself riveted as the story is unfurled.

Sad but ultimately rewarding.

On the MIFF rating system I gave this film 4 stars out of 5.

IMDB: Norwegian Wood

SUBMARINE (M.I.F.F.)

This was the first Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) movie of the season for me. Having been rejected for their film blog reviews project courtesy of a rather patronising email that misspelled the word 'calibre', I had considered not mentioning MIFF in this review. You might even say that I was a bit... ahem... 'MIFFed' about it!  Nonetheless, as you can see from my opening gambit here, I have opted to be the bigger man. Chalk one up for personal growth.

Submarine is the tale of  Oliver growing up in a small town in Wales, charting his forays into first love, and his attempts to scupper his mother’s plans to meet up with an old flame. Sounds like a barrel of laughs right? Well it is in fact extremely funny. Beautifully shot and very well made by The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade (his first feature as a director), it successfully juggles both the comedic and serious tone of the film to get the right balance between humour and melodrama. Similar in a way to how Bunny and the Bull managed to be simultaneously side achingly funny yet also rather touching.

Submarine is narrated from the perspective of central character Oliver, oftentimes with his opinion that his life is a movie. This device had the potential to be a bit trite if mishandled, but this film is so well made and charming across the board that it succeeds triumphantly. Also, unless I am much mistaken, it is a pretty common adolescent fantasy to believe your life is actually a movie. But please all the psychiatrists who read this blog, feel free to correct me.*

The cast is excellent all round, with charisma and likeability in spades. Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige in the lead roles, turn in charming and hugely entertaining performances. Paddy Considine’s character verged on being a bit too silly, but got away with it by virtue of his great comedic turn and the colossal goodwill that this movie conjures.

Noah Taylor was superb. The perfect study of mild mannered melancholy. The sequence about his former job as an Open University TV presenter (“he was an uncomfortable screen presence”) had me bellowing with laughter. And Sally Hawkins was fantastic as Oliver's  highly strung mother, Jill.

I LOVED the shit out of this movie. Submarine is a fantastically enjoyable movie all round. This could quite conceivably be the film of the festival, if not the year, for me.

On the MIFF rating system I gave this film 5 stars out of 5.

IMDB: Submarine

* Incidentally I would imagine there are many psychiatrists who would use this blog in a professional capacity in order to study the long term effects of Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull induced trauma. How can a normal, well adjusted man in his early 30’s, 3 years after the fact, still suffer cold sweats, despondency and crippling Indiana Jones related nightmares? The only peace coming in those 2 to 3 seconds after one wakes up in the morning and having the firm conviction that the fourth movie was all a dream. It was another bad dream – Indiana Jones didn’t fight aliens; it was another bad dream – Indiana Jones didn’t survive a nuclear blast; it was another bad dream – they didn’t use Sean Connery’s IMDB headshot as a family portrait when discussing his death; it was another bad dream – Mutt didn’t swordfight a badly accented Cate Blanchett on top of a FUCKING CGI JEEP!. Excuse me, I need to go have a lie down.

TRANSFORMERS : DARK OF THE MOON

Look here it is, Michael Bay somehow manages to simultaneously represent both the worst and best of cinema with his movies. When he gets it wrong you get lumbered with miserable arse gravy like Armageddon. When he gets it right you get presented with rousing, over the top, bombastic nonsense like The Rock that’s just impossible to dislike. When he’s on form he makes cinema fun. He makes the kind of films that multiplex’s love, and the kind of movies that those who consider their taste to be more refined, love to hate (but secretly love also, and try and make themselves feel a bit better by calling them ‘guilty pleasures’). The first two Transformers movies are total ‘guilty pleasures’ for me! You know what you’re getting with his movies though. Explosions, slo-mo military fetishization and plot holes you could drive a Hum Vee through (provided that Hum Vee is racing at 100mph down a hill in San Franciso, smashing up traffic and destroying trams). Therefore it seems a bit lame to lambast one of his films for being poorly acted, having a shit plot and not providing you with a single likeable character. But damnit that’s what ended up bugging me about Transformers : Dark Of The Moon.

Before we go any further let’s start with the plot, such as it is. A crashed Autobot ship is discovered on the moon and it turns out the moon landings were a cover up for an investigation of the crash site. Soon enough the Decepticons show up and all hell breaks loose as they try to use a ‘space bridge’ to bring Cybertron into Earth’s orbit. Meanwhile Sam Witwicky is living in Washington with a new girlfriend and trying to find a job. So in essence, it’s just a load of old ‘make it up as we go along’ shit; inventing one endless Autobot plot device / ‘mcguffin’ after the other, to try and paper over the cracks and ghastly chasms in continuity between the 3 movies.

Is it unfair to expect a bit more from a film like this?  Is it stupid to want a bit of characterisation and decent acting? Or should I just sit back and just enjoy the robot fighting?

Now I know there’s a lot of folk gots issue with Shia LaBoeuf, but I have to say I have always found him to be perfectly likable and fine. Playing the ‘everyman’ seems to be his stock in trade and it suits him. Hell, I didn’t even dislike him in Indiana Jones and Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (car top sword fighting and ‘Tarzan’ swinging aside) and at least he had the stones enough to apologise for it. But man, is he ever dislikeable in this movie. The first half of it is gruelling. Sam Witwicky is just totally whiny and unlikeable and a bit of an all around cunt. I mainly just wanted him to get killed!

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley plays Sam’s new girlfriend Carly. How bad do you think a dim, plummy, English, model turned actress making her debut in a Michael Bay film is going to be? Yes, you’re right. She is THAT bad! She hardly defies expectation but she is still simply bloody awful. She makes Megan Fox look like Oscar material.

Other cast members fare no better. I once read an interview with John Turturro where he talked about turning down a part in The Sopranos, as he looked down his nose at it and spoke as if was beneath him. But just LOOK at what he’s doing now! He returns once again, with his sole undertaking being to stink the movie up! He’s not the only fine actor to have fallen from grace here either. Remember when John Malkovich being in a film used to be a sign of quality? No, me neither. It was sooo long ago. He appears here as Sam’s orange-tanned boss, play fighting with Autobots for comedy pratfalls. The man chronically embarrasses himself. It’s a real shame, is what it is.

Frances McDormand, of all people, shows up as the head of the NSA. McDormand couldn’t turn in a bad performance if she tried. It is simply impossible for her to be anything other than awesome. Leonard Nimoy appears too as the voice of Sentinal Prime and I can’t bring myself to say a bad word about him either. He could have done the whole thing reciting his ‘Ballad of Bilbo Baggins’ and I would still love him.

Alan Tyduk turns up for a bit as Turturro’s bodyguard, and yet another good actor is wasted in a dumbfuck comedy sidekick role, as the whole thing threatens to go completely off the rails and go belly up in a big fat bloated mess.

But then the Decepticons attack Chicago! And Boy Howdy, Bay delivers on the set pieces. In 3D, Bay has slowed down the action, so you have Autobots and Decepticons and flying shrapnel floating tantalisingly above your head in the cinema. It allows you to finally comprehend what the bloody hell is going on in his massively complex robot scraps. And it works so much better for it. There’s a great sequence where Sam is riding in Bumblebee, and Bumblebee transforms from robot, to car, and back to robot while Sam is inside! The fighting has a great clarity when it is slowed down and the assault on the Chicago cityscape is thrilling in its grandiose destruction.

It was fantastic also, to see the appearance of Shockwave! Now when I was but a young lad I used to read Transformers comic rabidly, and on one life defining day I opened the new issue whilst standing in Salmon’s Newsagent, to discover they had printed a letter I had written to them! My enquiring 8 year old mind had written demanding to know how Shockwave could have beaten Megatron in a fight for leadership of the Decepticons, if Megatron was the acknowledged ‘strongest Decepticon’. The answer, of course, was that Megatron had at the time been poisoned by Shockwave with a corrosive fuel allowing Shockwave to narrowly win the fight (this, incidentally, is why Transformers BELONGS TO ME, and not Michael Bay!). Thusly when I first clapped eyes on the mighty Shockwave in this movie there was a total party in my pants. He was awesome.

The action was exactly what you want from this. Total Bay-hem. The building attack sequence with a gigantic Decepticon worm, and the giddy, flight suit set piece were a lot of fun. There is enjoyment to be had here, especially in the second half. Overall though I feel Transformers 3 was decent, but the worst of the three. It had better action, but worse acting. The slow-mo 3D robot beat downs were rather grand in towering Imax 3D, but still, the law of diminishing returns always applies.

IMDB: Transformers : Dark Of The Moon

SUPER 8

JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg's Super 8 has been touted around as Stand by Me meets The Goonies meets E.T. via everything else in between, and whilst those movies would seem to be disparate poles apart on the face of it, the reality is that this mash up works really rather well indeed. Super 8 is a great fun adventure ride with a soft, sympathetic centre.

I'll be frank straight off the bat though, I'm no fan of JJ Abrams whatsoever. Cloverfield was fun I admit, but he didn't direct it. His Mission Impossible 3 was boring, I couldn't give a rat's ass about dismal shit like Lost, and his Star Trek reboot (although I have warmed to it on secondary viewings) was a Star Trek movie made for people that don't like Star Trek (i.e. bad to the point of being offensive).  Spielberg on the other hand is a different kettle of fish. He’s very easy to knock and take pot shots at, but the geezer knows his onions, and the day I badmouth the man responsible for Raiders of the Lost Ark is the day them pigs start flying! So yes the creative forces behind this have many varying, different degrees of quality between them.

After a poignant opening, we meet Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), son of a small town policeman trying to deal with the premature death of his mother in a tragic work accident. 4 months on from the tragedy and he's being recruited by his movie obsessed best buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) to help him complete a Super 8 zombie movie over the school holidays in order to eventually enter it in a competition; getting all their mates on board including new friend Alice (Elle Fanning). Alice is the daughter of the man Joe's father holds responsible for his wife's death and so both father's are dead set against their friendship.  The kids set to work making their movie anyway, filming after school and in the evenings. One evening they all head off to the train tracks to film a new scene and it at this point the film diverges from one genre to the other. I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't curious to see this film without the extraterrestrial aspects. On it's own as a coming of age tale this could indeed have been very interesting and is clearly where all the Stand By Me comparisons are coming from. Nonetheless the alien element is cracking fun and the film is not diminished by it. It's just different, and takes the film off on quite a tangent.

At the train track filming the kids witness a spectacular train crash. In a stunning set piece, carriages are flung far and wide, things explode, and ultimately a rather aggressive alien is unleashed. In the aftermath of the crash they find their school science teacher has a long held secret regarding some top secret government work, and gradually strange things start happening in town. Generators and microwaves and car engines are all stolen and every single dog in the area runs away!

Now from this point on the film is not perfect, but it is above all else a lot of fun. In particular the design of the alien is very uninspired. Looking like a mix of something from Men In Black, and a Transformer it's poorly rendered cgi means the creature leaves little to no impression on the viewer. The anchor of the film is left to be the kids and their friendship, and fortunately this gets us through! That's not to give the impression that everything involving the alien is bad though. There are some cracking set pieces, from the train crash to a bus attack to a suburban war zone; and once the alien was unleashed we feel more like we're in a Spielberg film. There's some classic Spielberg-ian show and tell going on. Show you everything but tell you nothing. A cherry picker scene amongst the tree tops (with an unseen force the other side of the trees being very reminiscent of some Jurassic Park velociraptor interfaces); or the gas station incident with the local sheriff, both straight out of Spielberg’s big book of classics.

There is much fun to be had with Super 8. I saw it on a grim, wintery Friday afternoon. At a loose end with the afternoon off work, Super 8 was the perfect way to spend the time.

Super 8? More like Super Great!

IMDB: Super 8

SNOWTOWN

Snowtown is the story of notorious Australian serial killer John Bunting and his accomplices, who in the 1990’s murdered 11 people in and around Adelaide, dumping their remains in the eponymous town of the title. It is a brutal and tough film to watch. A grim ordeal in places, but worthwhile overall if you can stomach being in the company of some callous and wretched specimens of humanity.

The film as been accused of being lacking in judgement of its abhorrent central characters, but their actions speak for themselves in some pretty harrowing scenes of torture and murder. While it’s true that the film does have a certain air of detachment, it is not manipulative in the way a Hollywood serial killer movie might be. The filmmakers take up a distanced vantage point for sure, but there won’t be a single person watching this who could take away anything other than revulsion from Bunting’s deeds. The film’s skill is in this detachment. You are complicit in a way - forced to witness the crimes in the same way that Jamie Vlassakis initially is, as he is drawn in to Bunting’s deluded and sickening world.

Make no mistake though, this film does not ask you to sympathise with any of these people. Instead it attempts to show how these crimes could occur. John Bunting is portrayed as a charismatic ‘bloke next door’, popular in the neighbourhood and a father figure to Jamie Vlassakis (excellently played by Lucas Pittaway in his debut role) and his brothers. It’s a chilling turn by Daniel Henshall, who deserves all the plaudits he’s is currently receiving. But even so this charisma masks the true nature of a violent killer, as a warped sense of vigilante justice paves the way for evermore disturbing and escalating homicides.

There is very little by way of expository dialogue. There are no characters rattling off unrealistic summaries of events, and this further lends itself to the feeling of the viewer as eyewitness. Whilst this is an interesting and admirable approach, it is also where Snowtown does falter. Whilst I do always appreciate a filmmaker crediting his/her audience with enough intelligence not to have to spell everything out, Snowtown’s sparseness of exposition leads to some confusing and often muddled elements. As a non-Australian, largely unfamiliar with the crimes of John Bunting and his accomplices, I did lose my way on more than one occasion particularly surrounding the identities of some of the peripheral characters.

Nevertheless, it is resoundingly worth watching, if wholly unpleasant as an experience. It has a seedy, washed out look that helps drag you into the claustrophobic confines of the murder scenes, and the unpleasant mire of the protagonists. As you observe the depths to which human beings can sink, you’re not asked to like it, merely to witness it. While Snowtown is an excellently made and beautifully shot movie, it is not likely to be one that welcomes repeated viewings.

IMDB: Snowtown

THE ART OF DREW STRUZAN

Ok, here’s a bit of change for this review. It’s not a film this time around, but instead it’s a book. A book about the art of the colossally talented Drew Struzan. A man whose work is so indelibly a part of classics such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future etc, that it would have just been downright wrong if I had not reviewed it. You may think that you don’t know who Drew Struzan is, but let’s rest assured you almost certainly do! You will have seen his work adorning the posters of many of your favourite (and least favourite – Police Academy 4 anyone?!) movies over the years whether you’ve realised it or not.

It would be fair to say that I have been a big fan for many years, and that running the risk of being a gushing fan boy is a bit of a danger with this review. I don’t have enough superlatives to throw at it. I remember vividly, as a kid, STARING at my poster for Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade which hung above my bed and trying to work out if the picture was a photo or a painting. On close examination I noticed the small signature and upon the realisation that this had been PAINTED by a human being my mind was blown!

So here we have in one lovingly presented tome, a collection of Drew Struzan’s masterworks. Running the gamut of a rich and interesting career - in fact, it was only through reading this that I learned he has recently retired. The book is a treat. It is crucially also a great READ! Each piece of work selected for the book has an interesting tale to go along with it. It’s fun indeed to learn that Steve Guttenburg is a big Drew Struzan fan and collector of his work, or that Michael J Fox was thrilled to meet him when they worked on the Back to The Future trilogy. No surprise to learn that Guillermo Del Toro is a fan but nonetheless great to read about how he has the painting for Hellboy hanging in his house.

It kicks off in fine style with an introduction by Struzan’s friend and colleague, the esteemed Frank Darabont. It is fantastic. Darabont pulls no punches when it comes to his assessment of the decline in movie poster quality. It is a cantankerous, profanity laden foreword and benefits hugely from a large dose of the truth and a liberal useage of the word ‘douchebag’. Darabont laments the loss of artists like Struzan. He gives a good piece of his mind as to why movie posters these days are pathetic and, as he puts it, little more than a bunch of floating heads.

The book is presented chronologically and as the years pass, more and more of the passages reflect the fact that Drew’s stunning artwork was used less and less. It’s sad to read, but presents a fascinating, if demoralising insight into the processes of both artist and studio. There is some truly awe inspiring artwork in the latter passages of the book which barely ever saw the light of day. Take for example, the amazing poster for Hellboy. I always ALWAYS wondered why Drew Struzan’s art was never used. Particularly since the Region 1 dvd teases you by using it on the inside booklet. It is magnificent. The greater shame is that the actual poster ‘art’ in the UK (and I hesitate to call it art after reading Frank Darabont’s introduction) was just downright wretched. For my money the poster they used to promote Hellboy ranks as one of the worst movie posters I’ve ever seen. Apparently it was completely a studio marketing decision and not even Guillermo Del Toro, who as a fan of Struzan had commissioned him in the first place, could get the final say on using his painting!

A shame then also, that despite a sweet anecdote about how George Lucas was awed to meet Drew Struzan and was a huge fan, that the covers for all of the most recent Star Wars releases have eschewed Drew’s monumental artwork in favour of yet more photoshopped heads! At least Lucas (or more likely Spielberg) used his artwork for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. At the end of it all, Struzan’s poster was the only worthwhile thing to come out of that whole enterprise. The actual reading of this book therefore, is bittersweet. It’s full of many many fun stories but also, latterly, the charting of his disillusionment and disappointment with the industry, and what it seems was ultimately the reason behind his retirement.

It remains best to focus on the positives, of which there are many.  For any fan of Drew Struzan, or any fan of the iconic movies to which he has lent his name this book is an absolute must. For any kid that stared at one of his movie posters trying to get his brain to comprehend if he was looking at a painting or a photo. For anyone with even a passing interest in the art of the movie poster or movies in general, the book is joy. Sit back and just marvel at what an extraordinary talent this man is.

http://www.drewstruzan.com/

 

 

SKYLINE

I first noted Skyline, because I read that the effects house had ditched Battle:Los Angeles in favour of working on this. It got my interest, and so I sought it out. Directed by the Brothers Strause, Skyline is much like their previous movie Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem – it is hugely flawed, but not irredeemably so.

The story revolves around  Jarrod and Elaine who arrive in Los Angles to visit old friend Terry on his birthday (Turk from Scrubs, playing Turk from Scrubs). At around 4am these brightly blue, luminescent rays descend from the skies and strike LA at various points over the city. The protagonists swiftly realise it is the beginning of an alien invasion, and have to find a way out of their predicament. With little success, they find themselves confined in their apartment building by the horrors outside.

The problem with Skyline is in its complete and utter lack of any originality. Clearly, unique thought was at a premium in the scripwriter’s house as it plays like a shopping list of derivative sci fi. From The Mist to The Matrix, by way of Independence Day, Cloverfield and District 9, there’s a lot of other people’s ideas on show.

Additionally, one thing I really hate about bad creature features and horror movies is when the villain or monster stops doing whatever it is that makes them fearsome in the first place (there is mild spoiler ahead). For example, they set the aliens up from the start as being able to kill people very easily – with either their mind control rays or fearsome tentacles – so how is it then that a human being is able to wail on one with his bare fists in a big alien vs person punch up? Why doesn’t it just shoot a tentacle at him and kill him? Lame.

However as I mentioned above, although flawed it is not without merit. The effects are great and there are a couple of really cracking set pieces. A chase through the building courtyard and an E.B.E. assault atop the roof provide robust thrills aplenty.

Additionally the alien design MUST have been drawing inspiration (pun intended) from Mike Mignola and John Arcudi’s B.P.R.D. series, in particular the apocalyptic scenes from the Black Flame storyline, as they look to be riffing heavily on the frog design (see picture). This is however a compliment as they look grubbily realistic. The extraterrestrials look great and the effects are largely impressive and cool.


Actor wise, we have the likeable Donald Faison, as mentioned.  As well as Eric Balfour who is better known as being the weasel-y guy from Six Feet Under and one of the people who thought that remaking the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a good idea (note: it WASN’T).

Another of the main four is played by Brittany Daniel - one half of the Sweet Valley High tv series twins, of yore. The kind of Californian aryan surfette that you heretofore probably thought existed only in Charlie Sheen’s mind. She was actually pretty good and one of the better actors in this thing.

Ultimately though, the film is marred by the wretchedly abysmal ending that rips off District 9 so badly they ought to be ASHAMED. At the very least they ought to give Neill Blomkamp a writing credit! There is no explanation for what happens at the finale AT ALL, feeling like the movie finished without a proper end and leaving you wondering aloud about what the fuck just happened. It’s lazy and cheap and kind of insulting. What a drag.

What really makes it all a big fat shame is that Skyline was self financed by the Strause Brothers. It’s an admirable approach and sounds much like the way in which the criminally underrated Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow was conceived. But whereas Sky Captain was a lovingly seasoned homage to the likes of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movie serials, Skyline scoffs too much off the plate of its forbears. To go to such great lengths and means of making the film in this way should be applauded, but I just wish that the story had been there to back it up.

Despite all this, and some dodgy acting, the effects are top notch and mean that it does remain mostly watchable. Even while it’s shameless pilfering of better sci-fi is brazenly shoved in front of you, it has just enough enjoyable moments in it to make it worth a watch. And given time, it could even become a guilty pleasure.

IMDB: Skyline

BLACK SWAN

When I initially walked out of the cinema, I really wasn’t sure what to make of this. There were aspects of this bleak ride that I loved, coupled with a less tangible element that didn’t sit right for some reason. However the movie definitely stayed with me over the proceeding days and the more I think back on it and ponder it, the more I think it really was rather good.

The story focuses on ballet dancer Nina Sayers. Technically gifted yet emotionally stunted, she lives at home with her domineering mother and dedicates every waking hour to perfecting her craft. Her mother’s suffocating presence is revealed to be the result of both her vicarious desire for Nina’s career and Nina’s own troubled, self harming past. After years of dedication, she finally gets her big break as the lead in the company’s newest production of Swan Lake, but as she struggles with the part of the eponymous Black Swan the pressure begins to mount on her already brittle psyche.

I am still unsure about Aronovsky as a director (thankfully his Robocop reboot has been shelved), and the beginnings of the movie did nothing dissuade my misgivings. It was all shaky cam and ridiculously hard close-ups, which I hope was employed to signify Nina’s edgy, ill at ease personality, rather than as a stylistic choice. If the former, then I think I can eventually get on board with it; but if the latter, then it was just flat out annoying.

There were moments where the dialogue was risible - Thomas’s homework instruction to Nina, that she go home and engage in a spot of onanism felt like it came straight out of a Shannon Tweed movie. Although in fairness I would say that was a blip, because for the most part the acting was uniformly excellent. To be honest if Vincent Cassell and Natalie Portman have ever been anything less than great, then I’ve yet to see it. In the light of it’s Oscar glory, whatever else you might say about this film, you can’t deny that Natalie Portman is sensational, making Nina’s fragility utterly sympathetic and centring the movie with a crucial believability.

Mila Kunis, quite aside from being totally swoonsville, was also excellent as Nina’s friend/rival Lily. You’re never meant to be quite sure of her motives or if she is genuine or not. And at it’s core it’s this ambiguity throughout the main body of the film that makes Black Swan an interesting watch.

It's dark and tormented, and ultimately that's what won through for me.

IMDB: Black Swan

SHIT PASS

Ok, well first of all my feelings of shame at having sat through this tofurkey, make me feel like I need to justify why I went to see this in the first place! Basically it was playing at a Drive-In and we were caught up in the excitement of the Drive-In movie experience. We wanted a light hearted flick that we wouldn’t have to concentrate on too much. And boy did we ever get that.

Additionally it had allegedly been reviewed in a local paper as moving beyond its clichéd premise. And it is at this point that I should point out that the story was as utterly hackneyed as is possible to get. At no point whatsoever did it even dare to suggest it might move away from its thoroughly leaden and predictable direction

I should point out also, that I am a fan of the Farrelly Brothers masterpiece – Dumb and Dumber. I am also fond of There’s Something About Mary. But their early promise has curdled in the intervening years and here we are left with this wretched affront to cinema.

The plot – such as it is – involves Owen Wilson and his odious best friend receiving a ‘week off’ from their respective marriages in order to try and seduce women and supposedly get all of their letching out of their system. Cue two tedious hours of shittery, with lots of awful ‘the difference between men and women’ type humour, the likes of which you would ordinarily see spewing from the fat mouth of the worst kind of ‘Saturday-night-on-ITV’ comedian. The kind of lowest common denominator mirth that appeals to divs because ‘hey my wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend does that too! It’s so true”. You get the picture. Then, after the movie is done insulting you with the worst kind of Michael McIntyre jokes, it devolves into some utterly saccharine ‘we love our wives after all’ bullshit and you sit there feeling nauseous because you just wasted 10 dollars and a valuable part of your 30’s, that are just whizzing by at light speed, and can ill afford to be wasted on dreck like this.

In the spirit of full disclosure I should admit that it was not entirely unfunny. There were one or two amusing moments – such as Owen Wilson’s cack handed attempt at a chat-up line. The movie also ends with a superb Stephen Merchant sequence which I won’t say anything about lest I spoil the only pleasure this movie has to offer. My advice, if you MUST go see this, is just pop in at the end and watch the last 2 minutes.

Talking of Stephen Merchant, whilst it is indeed nice to see him getting some recognition, he is well and truly slumming it here. And what’s more, he’s not the only one. Owen Wilson co-wrote Rushmore for goodness sake! The same man who is partly responsible for the peerless The Royal Tenenbaums also starred in this piece of shit. Just let your brain process that one for a second, and try not to implode.

Also worthy of note is the presence of Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm, which on the face of it, ought to be dynamite having him in a Farrelly Brothers movie. Disappointingly he is given nothing to do and after a while you just plain forget he’s in it.

Finally we come to Jason Sudeikis as the sidekick/best friend character. I have no idea who he is. Never seen him in anything before, but IMDB reliably informs me that he was in 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live. Frankly he is a disaster. He simply does not have the charisma to pull it off. Where he should be at least slightly sympathetic in order to get you board for his crude gags, he is merely obnoxious.  One hundred percent dislikeable and he never gets back on track.

You can tell how appalling it is going to be by the movie poster. In Drew Struzan’s book (which I hope to review here imminently) he laments the loss of the movie poster as a piece of artwork, replaced as it has been, by a series of floating heads put together by a suit with Photoshop. The poster to Hall Pass is the embodiment of this argument. I mean just LOOK at it! Look at how little effort or thought has been put into this poster. I mean it is just absolute fucking NOTHING. And lo, so is the movie.

Ultimately I don’t suppose you can criticise a film for doing pretty much what you expect of it. But you can certainly criticise all the jerkweeds who conspired to have it made in the first place. The fact that this film can be made at all boggles the mind and if you’ve ever seen Idiocracy then you will know the World has just moved one step closer to seeing ‘Ass’ actually get made!

IMDB: Hall Pass

STREET TRASH

 Another slice of 80’s trash horror that I was very keen to see. I mean what’s not to like about the premise: liquor store owner discovers box of cheap booze called Viper in the basement, sells it to tramps, tramps drink it, tramps melt. On top of all that, check out the fantastic t-shirt design (from Fright Rags), below.

All signs point to awesome.



How had I not seen this before? Well as child there was many a coveted movie staring down at me from the shelves of Flickers video store that I was unable to rent due to overly responsible parenting. C.H.U.D. springs to mind immediately (and is next on my list of 80’s horror to watch!), and at the time of Street Trash’s release in 1987 I would have been 11 years old. I doubt I would have been allowed to watch it, bearing in mind I was not allowed to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when it came out at the cinema because of the bit where Mola Ram pulls a geezer's heart out of his chest. I had to go see popular-youth-fad-cash-in flick BMX Bandits instead (which incidentally was rather good, and my brother actually watched it every single day for an entire year when we had it on video). But I digress, I was refused rental of Die Hard 2: Die Harder when I was but mere months shy of my 15th birthday and it would therefore have been a complete no hoper attempting to rent this.

So here we are. The year is 2011. How will Street Trash hold up when viewed through my cynical new millennial eyeballs? The answer, unfortunately, as is often the case with these things, was that it was a bit of a disappointment.

For starters, the main problem is that not many people actually melt! Which is a bit of drag considering that’s the main draw of the film. Don’t get me wrong, when folk do actually come a cropper at the end of a bottle of Viper, it’s undoubtedly a lot of gloopy fun. The yuppie who walks under a fire escape and meets a sticky end via a faceful of liquidised tramp, is a particular highlight of the movie. But because the main meltings are left to bookend the story, we are left with a very limp middle. In fact it’s just plain boring. Focussing on unsympathetic main characters, an annoying cop and a bizarre villain in the shape of homeless Vietnam vet, Bronson.

It is without a doubt, exceptionally badly acted across the board, which in and of itself is not always so bad. Often with a movie like this it is the nature of the beast. However Street Trash suffers with it because the middle part of the film doesn’t have much of any interest going on, drifting on more than one occasion into general incoherence. In the same way that many movies today have every single minute plot detail SPELLED OUT for the thickos, it seems a fair few 80's flicks were the polar opposite in their need for a tad more exposition.

The thing that really spoils Street Trash though is that it sports a disturbing line in casual misogyny. Be it the supposedly ‘humorous’ sexual bullying from a fat man, or some necrophilia in the aftermath of a rape/murder, played for comedic effect (no lie!) and telegraphed by some jaunty bassoon music!!! It’s very dodgy indeed, and what I’m sure was probably intended as some sort of bad taste, boundary pushing outrage/humour manages to fail on just about every level, leaving a pretty sour taste and coming across as generally nasty which is tonally out of whack with the rest of the film.

As for the good points, well it started well, and excluding the points made above, it ended well also. There were some great, fun, melting effects and the final scenes with Bronson actually showcased some skill, imagination and ability on behalf of the film makers!

I think the other thing to bear in mind when revisiting or (re)discovering these movies is what I am going to call ‘Reanimator Syndrome’. There is likely to be nothing to top Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna  masterpiece of black humour and sensational gore. Reanimator is pure glorious excess. The nadir of the genre, and the benchmark against which all splatter and gore must, in my opinion, be judged. You may say Braindead, and I would strongly argue that it is not a patch on Reanimator, and you might say The Evil Dead, and I would have to concede you have a point and that is also a worthy yardstick. But the point I am making is that if Reanimator is a majestic, throbbing boner of a movie, then Street Trash is pure erectile dysfunction.

File under: 'glad I've seen but would not watch again'.

IMDB: Street Trash

PIRANHA

Ok so Alexandre Aja’s take on Joe Dante’s 1978 ‘classic’ Piranha arrived in glorious 3 Dimensions, with a sterling cast, but after the disappointment of Aja’s last directorial outing, Mirrors, the question was “does it deliver?”. And the answer is “Yes…in spades”

Casting ones mind back to my very first introductory post to this blog, in October 2009, one might notice my comment bestowing a high approval rating on Alexandre Aja, ranking him alongside other such luminaries as Carpenter and Raimi. An upstart for sure, with only a handful of films under his belt, but what films they are, sir. For my money Alexandre Aja is a properly exciting horror filmmaker. Enthusiastic in the way that all great nerds-come filmmakers need to be, and possessed of the ability to make some truly brutal and shocking cinema. The scares in his movies are not cheap, loud, noisy whizbangs, but skilfully crafted moments of tension punctuated by sudden and graphic violence. Switchblade Romance was an eye opener. A gruelling assault on the viewer, with its international title - High Tension (a.k.a.Haute Tension) - being thoroughly apt. The Hills Have Eyes laughed in the face of the principle that all horror remakes and sequels suffer from the law of diminishing returns. It was a truly worthwhile remake. Unfairly pigeonholed alongside such total and unmitigated shit like Hostel, and all that ‘torture porn’ nonsense, it could easily be overlooked were it not for the fact it is an uncompromisingly brutal, violent and scary horror film. So yes, despite the slight misstep with the aforementioned Mirrors, it would be safe to say I am big fan of Monsieur Aja.

But Piranha was a bit of an unknown quantity. I confess that despite also being a big fan of Joe Dante, I have never seen the original Piranha in its entirety. Coupled with the fact that the Piranha effects in the trailer looked far from the finished article, and I admit there was some scepticism creeping in before I sat down and watched this.

I should not, however, have worried. Piranha is just total glorious trash in the best possible sense of it all. I am a big, big fan of the 'creature runs amok' genre, be it Lake Placid, Alligator, Jaws, the Godzilla movies, Digby The Biggest Dog in the World or even Cloverfield. That stuff is like catnip to me. I cannot resist.  And Piranha is thusly a worthy addition to the oeuvre. The plot is slight – earthquake awakens prehistoric Piranhas. Piranhas eat tourists. Local cop must stop them. But frankly who cares about the plot? This is a chance to see every horror movie excess taken up to eleven. Be it nudity or gore, it’s all here and it’s all gloriously O.T.T.

Fun cameos abound from Richard Dreyfuss, Eli Roth (whom I despise, yet it’s undeniably fun seeing him get his comeuppance), and CHRISTOPHER LLOYD - hamming it up and channelling the spirit of Doc Brown in a manic turn as a local pet shop owner.  To clarify, Christopher Lloyd can do no wrong in my eyes. But where has he been? I’ve not seen him in a movie for ages and it is another of Piranha’s many plus points to have him lending his kinetic, hyperactive presence to the proceedings.

There is also a great irony, which I only realised after the movie had ended, where Richard Dreyfuss’ character more or less recreates a famous scene he was in from Jaws, but in reverse!

I also do not believe that there is another actor working today who can play an utter douchebag as well as Jerry O’Connell. The man just oozes fuckwittery, and has the kind of face that must act like a magnet for punches. He is every American Jock and British Reebok wearing, up-for-a-fight town centre Saturday night pisshead you’ve ever seen in your life, all rolled up into one oily cunt of a human being. It is almost unthinkable to reconcile the fact that he once plied his trade as the fat kid in Stand By Me or as the goody two shoes Quinn Mallory in the excellent, but underrated sci fi series Sliders, with the fact his bread and butter nowadays is playing a shitheel.

Some weight is lent to the yarn by having a bit of quality in there. Elizabeth Shue and Ving Rhames are on board as the hero cops and both are great. Nobody in the film plays it like it’s beneath them, or that they are slumming it, and bit parts are filled out with quality b-movie actors like Dina Meyer; And perhaps most shockingly of all, beyond even any of the gory set pieces Aja can set up, is that Kelly Brook is NOT terrible!

The movie succeeds on all fronts. The set pieces and the gore are grisly and the special effects hold up even in 2D. It’s a movie designed as exploitation – exploitation of nudity and gore, and also of technology. It exists to take advantage of the 3D and show it off in the most base and tasteless ways possible. In case you’re mistaking that oxymoron for a criticism, then rest heartily assured that it is not. It is solid gold trash!  Low brow fun of the HIGHEST order. My only regret is that I did not catch this in 3D at the movies. If there is any possibility for you to see this flick in 3D then I would highly recommend it, because as good as it was, in 3D it would have been amazing.

IMDB: Piranha