cheekysausage Reviews

Surveillance (I) (2008)

Close but no cigar.

[26 December 2020]

Jennifer Lynch tries a bit too hard to follow in her father's footsteps with 'Surveillance' - a decent enough thriller but one that is reliant on the audience believing that two hungover traffic cops would relieve the boredom of a quiet shift in the middle of nowhere by shooting out the tyres of passing vehicles then terrorising the occupants.

This, then, sets the stage for a story that largely unfolds in the local police station as two FBI agents arrive to investigate a spate of killings in the area, including three of the passengers left stranded by the actions of the two cops - one of whom is also killed in the aftermath. The cop in question's partner is one of three survivors, the others being a coke head in her late 20s and a sweet little girl around 10 years old.

As the survivors are questioned by the two FBI agents it becomes clear that the only one telling the truth is the little girl. So focussed on the survivors does the audience become that the twist - when it comes - is entirely unexpected even though there were clues there all along if we'd only noticed. This wrong-footing of the audience is the main strength of the film. On to the weaknesses then...

The performances of the two cops are completely over-the-top in a Nicolas Cage-type way. Unfortunately, the role they are asked to play doesn't allow for a more nuanced performance. The opposite is the case of the young girl and the female coke head, who, despite having seen their loved ones killed in front of their eyes, are fairly relaxed about the entire affair. The coke head in particular comes across as mildly inconvenienced by the events rather than traumatised.

As mentioned previously, the big reveal, when it comes, is unexpected and works well. What works less well, however, is transformation of the two FBI agents who go from being entirely plausible to moustache-twirling stage villains in the blink of an eye.

A 'less is more approach' - not only in the ending but throughout - would have benefitted the film as a whole but, in her eagerness to be seen as her father's daughter, the director has tried to give her audience what it expects rather that what it deserves, making it a decent film rather than a great one.

Monsters: Dark Continent (2014)

Don't believe the hate.

[25 December 2020]

It's difficult to understand the number of one and two star reviews for this film. I can understand why anyone expecting to see a Cloverfield or Godzilla might feel disappointed but some of the hate directed towards it - 'badly acted', terribly directed', etc - is over-the-top and completely unjustified.

Personally, I think the film looks great, was competently directed and featured some great performances across the board. Admittedly, the aliens are almost irrelevant but that shouldn't detract from what is a solid war movie.

Ma (I) (2019)

No classic but good fun nevertheless

[19 August 2019]

The one star reviews of 'Ma' are completely over-the-top. Sure, it has its plot holes and is a bit predictable in places but, take it for what it is - a tongue-in-cheek horror - and there is plenty of fun to be had.

Octavia Spencer does a more than passable Annie Wilkes impression and succeeds in making you feel sympathy for her even though she's completely unhinged. This is helped, of course, by the fact that the teenagers she brings into her home are, by and large, pretty disrespectful towards her from the outset even though she is initially fairly charitable towards them.

The script shamelessly borrows from the far superior 'Misery' and, to a lesser degree, 'Carrie' which suggests that the screenwriter is a big Stephen King fan. I'm sure he he would claim this was meant as a 'homage' to King but, unfortunately, it came across as a lack of originality.

All in all, however, I still found it entertaining enough and wouldn't dissuade anyone from watching it.

Drunk Parents (2019)

Baldwin and Hayek should sack their agents

[26 April 2019]

As a screenwriter myself I know how difficult it is to get anything produced let alone a movie. It is all the more mystifying then that something as awful as this ever saw the light of day. What is even more of a mystery is how two actors of Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek's stature were persuaded to sign up for it in the first place. I can only guess at their motives but I suspect they were doing it as a favour to the director or one of the producers. If not, both should sack their agents immediately.

The leads do their best to navigate their way through what is a painfully unfunny script but, ultimately, this will probably go down as the low point of their careers. It's a real shame as Baldwin in particular has turned in some great performances over the years - his cameo in Glengarry Glen Ross being one of my personal favourites. He and Hayek will no doubt bounce back from this but the director and co-writer, Fred Wolf - a former stand-up, unbelievably - may struggle to put this stinker behind him.

Subject 36 (2017)

So bad even Ed Wood would disown it

[15 February 2019]

Ignore the other two reviews, Subject 36 must qualify as one of the worst films ever made. The script is bad, the direction inept and the performances embarrassingly halfhearted.

The only thing to admire here is the filmmaker's commitment to bringing it to the screen. Unfortunately, it is so poor that it is unlikely to further the career of anyone involved.

By all means give it a watch but don't say you weren't warned.

Knock Knock (I) (2015)

knock knock who cares?

[6 December 2017]

In a nutshell… Keanu Reeves answers the door to two cute girls in the middle of the night and, pretty much against his will, he ends up having sex with them. The two girls are not what they seem, however, and reveal they are only in their mid-teens. Although they practically raped him, this makes Keanu a paedophile in their book. Deciding to take revenge on him, they torture him, smash up his house and attempt to destroy his marriage before revealing they aren't teenagers at all - this is what they do for kicks. The end.

No kidding -that's the plot!

Eli Roth proves with this film that it's not what you know, it's who you know. The average 4.9 IMDb rating is overly-generous in my opinion as there isn't one aspect of the film that is any good - the script stinks, the direction stinks and the performances are embarrassingly bad, especially Keanu who hits a new all-time low with a performance that is more wooden than a totem pole.

If I tell you that the most entertaining thing about it was the occasional glimpses of 'Monkey' - a cute little French Bulldog - then you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Watch it if you must but don't say you weren't warned.

Run for Your Wife (2012)

A farce... in every sense of the word

[23 June 2017]

Ray Cooney is, I'm sure, a thoroughly decent guy. That said, he should be publicly flogged for inflicting this desperately unfunny attempt at comedy on the cinema-going public.

Based on his own play which ran for several years in London, the material is tired and dated with no apparent attempt to drag it into the 21st Century. From the opening credits, it is clear that he has no talent for direction, even with the assistance of co-director John Luton whose only previous directing credit was a 'video' made 11 years earlier. Why two inexperienced directors were paired together on this is beyond me but the end result is not so much a car crash as a full-blown motorway pile-up.

Danny Dyer is box office poison anyway but put him alongside former breakfast TV presenter Denise Van Outen and ex-Girl's Aloud singer Sarah Harding and you have the shakiest foundations upon which to build a movie. The film also includes an embarrassingly bad supporting role from Neil Morrisey and numerous cameos from just about everyone who was anyone in British television back in the '70s. Norman Wisdom at least had the good sense to die before he could be offered a role. Several of those who took part may wish they had followed his lead.

The film begins with some rapid-fire vignettes of Danny Dyer at work in a ham-fisted attempt to portray him as an all-round decent bloke and thereby excuse the fact he is a bigamist. In a cringe-making opening sequence we see a bag lady (a heavily-disguised Judi Dench) being mugged by two youths who conveniently drag her out of a quiet lane to mug her in view of witnesses which include our hero. Why anyone would be mugging a bag lady in the first place is beyond me but let's not dwell on that too long. In the course of rescuing her, our hero is sideswiped by a misplaced swing of her handbag and is concussed, waking up later in hospital. Now the fun really starts... I wish.

From this point on what we get is a frantic farce with everyone running back and forth from one location to another, shouting at the top of their voices and mugging for the camera at every opportunity. Oh, I almost forgot - Danny Dyer's character stands on a rake at one point and it springs up and strikes him on the head. Tragically, that's about as sophisticated as the whole thing gets.

The final word should go to Ray Cooney himself who appears in an uncredited cameo delivering the rather ironic line: "You think this is funny?"

The Veil (I) (2016)

A promising premise that, ultimately, fails to deliver.

[21 January 2016]

25 years (not 30 as the synopsis claims) after the mass suicide of a quasi-religious cult led by the charismatic Jim Jacobs, the sole survivor, Sarah (Lily Rabe) reluctantly agrees to revisit the remote house/church where the tragic events unfolded, accompanied by a documentary film crew led by Maggie (Jessica Alba).

It soon transpires that Alba's character has a personal agenda for making the film - her father was the FBI man who led a raid on the cult's HQ and, for reasons I won't go into, subsequently committed suicide. Her desire to get to the bottom of what drove her father to kill himself is mirrored by Sarah's need to understand why she alone survived the mass suicide. Throw in some decent, naturalistic acting and we're off to a good start. Sadly, this is where things start to go south.

On their first night at the house, one of the crew is so terrified by something he's seen that he takes off in their van and is discovered dead behind the wheel having apparently driven at speed into a tree. Rather than pack up there and then, Maggie insists on seeing the project through to its conclusion and, at this point, we descend into standard, seen-it-all-before horror.

Despite the fact that they have set up camp at what is effectively a major crime scene there are several film reels lying around that steadily reveal what Jacobs (Thomas Jane) and his acolytes were up to in the weeks leading up to their deaths. Why they were never removed as evidence is left unexplained as it would get in the way of the story. As the remaining crew go through the tapes one-by-one we discover that Jacobs was a foaming at the mouth, Waco-level wacko who was inducing his own death and subsequently being brought back to life after penetrating the three 'veils' of some higher consciousness, apparently represented by the three nails that held Jesus to the cross.

As each of the tapes is viewed Maggie's crew is picked off one-by-one until only Maggie and Sarah are left. At this point we realise that Sarah isn't quite what she first appeared and has lured Maggie and her crew to the house so that the spirits of Jacobs and his acolytes could take their revenge on Maggie for her father's sins and also give them a new 'host' body allowing them to return to earth in human form and execute their plan of building an army of immortals to take over the world. So much for the plot.

Technically, the film is well-enough executed with the mood and atmosphere creepy enough to keep you on edge as you await each shock moment. The acting is solid with the exception of Thomas Jane who, by the end of it, comes across like Billy Graham on crystal meth. He's a better actor than this and any blame for his caricature of a performance should be aimed at the director rather than Jane himself. The stand-out performer, in my opinion, was Lily Rabe who, as she did in American Horror Story, effortlessly moves from vulnerable to outright creepy with equal believability. Strangely enough, Jessica Alba - the lead - turns in such a low-key performance that she seemed to get lost in the proceedings for long periods of time. So much so that it was easy to forget that this was supposed to be Maggie's story.

In an overcrowded genre, it's difficult to bring anything new to the table. When I read the premise I had high hopes for The Veil but it's rapid descent into the formulaic was disappointing. That said, it had its moments and would by no means be the worst horror film I've ever seen.

Heist (III) (2015)

So-so action flick that doesn't equal the sum of its parts

[13 December 2015]

As action movies go, this wouldn't be the worst I've ever seen but any film with Robert De Niro and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the cast should really be delivering something significantly more worthwhile.

The plot is pretty a formulaic cops and robbers movie that ticks most of the boxes it should. Where it falls apart is at the end when a ridiculous 'twist' is revealed that relies on the lead character anticipating that 1) the robbery will go wrong. 2) the getaway driver will abandon he and his partners-in-crime and 3) the shoot-out with the casino's security people will last just long enough for them to hijack a bus that is leaving its stop (I won't say why it's crucial that they hijack this particular bus but it is). It's complete nonsense and shows little respect for the audience. Note to writer and director: we don't all check our brains out at the door when we go to see a movie.

Hostages (2013–2014)

Poorly executed conspiracy thriller

[8 January 2015]

Having seen Hostages billed as 'an edge-of-your-seat conspiracy thriller' I sat down to watch it with my hopes high. Sadly, it was a major disappointment and by the end of the series I was screaming at my television.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly who is to blame. The basic premise is intriguing, if more than a little far-fetched, but the execution is lazy and treats the audience like idiots. Whether it is down to poor writing or bad editing it's hard to say but time and time again we had characters acting in a logic-defying manner purely to get us from one scene to another and constantly (and conveniently) jumping to the right conclusion as and when required.

Another huge problem is that there simply isn't enough material to last 15 episodes and so we had what was essentially variations on the same scenes playing out over and over again. Ellen does so many U-turns in the course of the show her head must have been spinning by the end. I know mine was.

I'm a fan of Toni Collette but, to be honest, she looked hopelessly out of her depth in this and didn't phone in her performance so much as text it. If ever you need someone who can stare in disbelief for fifteen hours straight, she's your gal. Stick to comedy in future, Toni. Dylan McDermot was equally one-dimensional as the rogue FBI agent - his expressions covering the entire range of emotions from angry to irritated. Again, not his finest hour.

There will be many who were able to check their brains at the door and enjoy Hostages for what it is but, having seen what can be achieved in television thanks to shows like The Wire, Deadwood and Breaking Bad, I prefer my television to treat me with a little respect.

Extraterrestrial (2014)

Cloe Encounters Of The Dawson's Creek Kind

[25 October 2014]

Written and directed by 'The Vicious Brothers' (seriously?), 'Extraterrestial' is about as inspired and original as its title. Despite some decent moments and one genuinely shocking curve ball, the film, on the whole, was pretty poor.

The good stuff, i.e., the tense, creepy stuff the audience wants to see, is padded out with a cheesy romantic subplot boasting some of the worst dialogue I've heard. In fact, the dialogue, throughout was uniformly poor.

The performances from its largely unknown cast ranged from awful to mediocre. One character in particular, Seth, ends every other sentence with the word 'muthafucker' and delivers his lines at a similar decibel level to a jumbo jet taking off. The instant he appears in the film, you find yourself longing for the moment he'll be killed off.

The romantic subplot, as I've mentioned above, belonged in an episode of some angst-ridden teen drama. It's been thrown into the mix in an attempt to try and make us care about these people but is done so badly that you find yourself laughing at them when you're meant to be rooting for them.

The ending is particularly awful. Our couple, having been abducted, is released by their alien captors when they are discovered in each others arms, resigned to their fate. They wake up in a field and set off to look for help only to be gunned down by the US military who are tying up any loose ends as they attempt to cover up the UFO crash that took place in the area. As our lovers lie dying, the girl reaches into her pocket for the unwanted engagement ring her boyfriend presented her with earlier in the film. She places it in his hand so that he, with his dying breath, can slip it onto her finger. As he does they are finished off with a bullet to the head and thrown into a pit. They just happen to land in a spooning position, with the boyfriend's arm draped lovingly across the girl's body. Thankfully, a couple of grunts with flamethrowers torch them before they can rise from the grave singing 'My Heart Will Go On'.

The Harvest (I) (2006)

Nine minutes wasted

[9 January 2007]

I've watched this film three times now and I'm still trying to figure out what the hell it was about. Too many film makers believe that the rules that apply to feature-length movies can be abandoned when it comes to making shorts. This film doesn't entertain and if it has a point to make it is extremely well hidden. As for the performances - can anyone tell me what part of the world Kate Dickie's character is supposed to be from? At times she sounds Ukrainian then, at others, Orcadian. Kate is without doubt a fine actress as she showed in Red Road but it has to be said that the writers and director of this rubbish did her no favours whatsoever.

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

I'm sorry, but...

[15 November 2006]

.. this film was dreadful. It could have been one of the great conspiracy thrillers but instead it turned out to be a woodenly preformed, shoddily directed and poorly scripted piece of commercial pap that treats its audience like morons. Rarely have I seen a film with so much expositional dialogue (one of the great screen writing no-nos) in it. The 'mysterious' clues and riddles which were ludicrously simple to decipher in the book (none of the three supposedly great intellects in the book could work out that Newton's orb was the apple that fell on his head? Please!) were, if anything, spelled out even more. The dialogue was stilted and unintentionally funny with audience members at the screening I attended laughing at moments intended as high drama. I believe this was also the case at its premiere in Cannes where they know a thing or two about movies. Ron Howard, a director I have great respect for, got it wrong on just about every level, most notably by resorting to the same visual gimmickry he employed in A Beautiful Mind in an attempt to make sure everyone got what was going on. Don't worry, Ron, we got it alright - you made sure of that! All in all, this is one of those films all involved will look back on and wonder what might've been. The major movie disappointment of the year.