SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

Guy Ritchie’s follow up to 2009’s, hugely enjoyable Holmes escapade, is timed interestingly (coincidentally?) to arrive at almost exactly the same time as the BBC’s second series of Sherlock. Both movie and TV series are resoundingly enjoyable, both fun and interesting in their different interpretations; and this second outing for the Downey Jr / Law partnership is well worth a look.

Downey Jr’s Holmes is a Victorian action hero. If you read that on paper you would think it conceptually brainless, yet it carries itself with enough charm, panache and haughty swagger that you get fully on board with it.

This time around Holmes is tasked with facing off against his greatest adversary. A man whom in the intervening period since the last movie, Holmes has discovered is the focal point for virtually every dastardly crime going. Played by Mad Men’s Jared Harris, Professor James Moriarty is a magnificent bastard. In a superbly villainous turn, the greatest crime on show is his threat to run off with the movie. Some further inspired casting sees Stephen Fry appearing as Mycroft Holmes, providing comic relief and starched shirt pomposity in equal measure.

As the adventure takes them from a train bound for Brighton (woo!), to dense German forests, to the Swiss Alp finale, Robert Downey Jr and Jude law instill enough fun chemistry in it to make a jolly fun ride. Ritchie too, handles it all well despite threatening to overegg the slo-mo at times. It follows on well from the first movie and overall it’s a good, fun caper.

IMDB: Sherlock Holmes : A Game of Shadows

REVIEW OF 2011

Ok so it’s time for the old annual review of the year here at Reel Important. The following thirteen films are my favourites from 2011. I couldn’t narrow it down to a Top 10, and the rough order of preference is likely to fluctuate at any given moment. Anyhow, these here are this year’s best to my reckoning. A couple of these have not had reviews on the blog yet, but are likely to follow.

1.    Super
2.    Submarine
3.    True Grit
4.    13 Assassins (a.k.a. Jûsan-nin no shikaku)
5.    Tucker & Dale Vs Evil
6.    Melancholia
7.    Super 8
8.    Beginners
9.    X-Men: First Class
10.    The Trip
11.    Attack The Block
12.    Captain America
13.    Thor

1. Super

James Gunn’s fantastically violent and hilarious vigilante / superhero movie. Left me grinning like an idiot and wanting to watch it all over again the minute I stepped outside the cinema.

2. Submarine

Richard Ayoade’s sublime directorial debut. A hugely enjoyable and funny coming of age story, set in 1980’s Wales. Wonderful stuff.

3. True Grit

Although technically a 2010 release, the Coen Brothers stunning western hit Australian shores in January so qualifies for the 2011 list.  A mesmerising central performance from Hailee Steinfeld either side of the excellent Jeff Bridges and the outstanding Matt Damon made this absolutely riveting stuff. It is nigh-on perfection.

4. 13 Assassins (a.k.a. Jûsan-nin no shikaku)
Takashi Miike’s awesome samurai scrap sees the eponymous 13 Assassins sent on a suicide mission to kill a brutal feudal warlord. Thrillingly exciting and joyously violent, Mr Miike considers it a ‘family film’. Despite what he says, don’t take your Nan to see it.

5. Tucker & Dale Vs Evil

Fantastic, funny twist on the college-kids-attacked-by-hillbillies genre. Slipped under the radar of most, yet deserves to be seen by all. Review to follow.

6. Melancholia

Lars Von Trier’s polarising, 2 hour-plus study of a woman with chronic depression, set against the backdrop of catastrophic global annihilation. Dunst, Gainsbourg and Sutherland were all incredible in this movie and I loved it. Review to follow, hopefully.

7. Super 8

JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg channel Stand By Me, Close Encounters and E.T. and come up with a charming, heartfelt coming of age/creature feature medley.

8. Beginners

Endearing comedic drama following Ewan McGregor embarking on a new relationship in the aftermath of his father’s recent death. Warmed the cockles and tugged the heartstrings without being too saccharine.

9. X-Men: First Class

Rollicking good fun origin story; shifting the excitement meter back into territory last seen in X-Men 2, and helping aid the suppression of X-Men 3 and Wolverine memories.
(I still have a review of this that’s only about ¼ completed. I hope it sees the light of day in 2012)

10. The Trip

BBC TV series pared down to feature length. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon traverse the Lake District in a 4x4, eating in posh restaurants and trying to outdo each other’s Michael Caine impressions (sounds like an Alan Partridge TV pitch!). Gently hilarious. It made me miss the U.K.

11. Attack The Block

Joe Cornish of Adam & Joe fame directs his debut movie, as a bunch of London kids defend their estate from alien attack. Played out as more serious sci-fi than broad comedy, and with a set of principal characters that are largely hard to like, it defied some expectations and garnered some not undeserved comparisons to early John Carpenter.

12. Captain America

Marvel geared itself up for the Avengers with a nifty, Red Skull smashing, WWII winning, origin story spectacle that laid off any distasteful patriotism in favour submarine punching heroics and 1940’s ‘derring-do’!

13. Thor

Flash Gordon-lite as Hemsworth, Hopkins, Skarsgard and Portman make a fine fist of one of Marvel’s less appealing heroes. It’s no Iron Man, but it is another splendidly entertaining entry in the Marvel canon. (Another half finished review lurks, unpublished, on this blog.)

Honourable mentions:

I enjoyed the slow burn adaptation of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood; Snowtown, although very good indeed, just failed to make my list on account of the fact it is so grim I can’t imagine when I would want to sit down and watch it again; Natalie Portman going berserk in Darren Aranovsky’s Black Swan was certainly of note; The Inbetweeners Movie was a fitting swansong, although let’s be quite clear that the whole thing has run its course now; and Rise of the Planet of the Apes soothed away the pain of Tim Burton’s ill conceived remake.

Other films I enjoyed from 2010, too late to make it on to last year's list, included Alexandre Aja’s grisly Piranha reboot; Emma Stone comedy vehicle Easy A, replete with Stanley Tucci scene-stealing; and Sally Hawkins proving that it is flat out impossible for her to make bad film, with the warmly enjoyable Made In Dagenham.

Worst: The Future

I’m not sure that I can properly convey, within the confines of the English language, just quite how much I despised The Future. Having been utterly revolted by it at M.I.F.F. this year, the reviews upon its general release seemed to be largely positive, thereby proving beyond any doubt that people have absolutely no taste whatsoever. It is the nuclear bomb of cinema – humanity wishes it could be uninvented because we are stuck with it and it’s ruining lives. A strong, strong contender for being quite possibly the worst film I have ever seen (bearing in mind that I HAVE seen Crash).

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