colin-mcarthur Reviews

Mutant Chronicles (2008)

Lord Of The Rings... In the future... With less walking. And story.

[6/10 · 13 July 2008]

I watched this film because Ron Perlman's in it and i'm always buoyed by seeing a man who looks like a gorilla act so well. I had no idea it's based on some kind of role-playing franchise, and frankly, i'm glad i didn't. To be honest i probably wouldn't have watched it if i did. After having just sat through it, i thought i should add a positive review because well, i liked it. I was a good film. The Mutant Chronicles did kind of remind me of Lord Of The Rings (bite your lips fanboys) because it got the plot out of the way pretty early on and the rest of the film was essentially spent trying to achieve the one valiant act that will save the day/world. Whereas LOTR is spread out over nine hours of character development (boy howdy are they noble, eh?) and beautiful scenery, The Mutant Chronicles chooses the less trodden path of gunfire, disposable characters and mutants. The film takes place in 2127 in a dystopian future where two of the four corporations who run the world accidentally let loose an ancient evil into the world. Cue some wacky bloodthirsty mutants overrunning the general population and generally being a nuisance. As the rich survivors escape to Mars, a small group of nihilistic ass-kickers and religious nuts travel to the centre of the Earth to stop the catastrophe, showcasing an amazingly short grieving process along the way. Just about every location is computer generated. Rather well i thought, though i know there are those who strongly disagree. The shortcomings of the CGI are helped along by a very dark look and feel with a fairly monochrome palette being preferred with the exceptions of some reds and blues (think Sin City). The Mutant Chronicles may well be a minor stylistic triumph, not letting itself get bogged down in plot, character development and all that important stuff. It seems as though the film makers settled on making it a pretty cool movie. And it is.

Hot Rod (2007)

A Triumph Over American Comedy Trends

[7/10 · 5 November 2007]

I watched Hot Rod for the same reasons i've watched any of the generic American comedies that Hollywood seems to churn out. Because i had nothing better to do, i didn't want to have to think and i expected to be very mildly amused. I was very pleasantly surprised when Hot Rod turned out to have a bit of heart. This movie seems to occupy a middle point between the fairly predictable but fun Blades of Glory and the rather more charming and oddball Napoleon Dynamite. Most recent American comedies seem to function like early Tom Cruise films : Take a vocation and run with it. Blades of Glory had the fairly ridiculous world of figure skating to draw from, and i guess you can't really go wrong with a grown man in lycra on ice skates, but it's humour relied heavily on that. Hot Rod is a film about a (pretty terrible) young stuntman who's objective is to raise enough money to save his dying step-dad by means of a life saving operation. His underlying reason for doing so, however, is because he wants to earn his respect by beating him in a fight. This little quirk and more are what make Hot Rod a little more satisfying than other films in its genre, and, despite some rather obvious jokes and a criminally underused Will Arnett, it's well worth watching.