Accents are cringe
World building is distractingly awful; wikipedia history mashed with cartoonish social issues and stupidity
I cannot see why it is so highly rated
Reviews
44 Reviews
Iron Sky
(2012)
Very funny film hits well above its budget
26 May 2012
I was really intrigued by this film when I first heard its premise (thanks to Mark Kermode a film reviewer with an excellent show on BBC Radio Five Live) but it seemed to experience some difficulty get distribution in the UK and I feared it was going to end up going straight to DVD. Then the distributors announced a one day screening at a limited number cinemas across the UK. This has been expanded and it looks like it will get a wider release than just one day. It is also out on Bluray / DVD Monday 28 May.
Two American astronauts land on the dark side of the Moon with two missions: a publicity stunt to help get the President re-elected and to hunt for Helium-3, an isotope of Helium that is rare on Earth but could used to fuel fusion reactors. They discover a large Helium-3 mine and soldiers in Nazi uniform appear out of nowhere, shoot one dead and capture the second one. It turns out that in 1945 a group of Nazis made their way to the moon where they have been mining it for the resources to build an invasion fleet to enable them to return to Earth and conquer it. This is all very impressive stuff. The only problem seems to be that they don't have the computing power
The astronaut they captured James Washington (Christopher Kirby) is just a famous supermodel and does not know anything about any planned invasion. They are astonished to see that he is black since most of them are too young to have been to Earth so have never seen a black man before and think he has some sort of skin disease. When their top scientist Dr Richter examines Washington's mobile phone and finds it has a more powerful processor by many orders of magnitude than their entire base the MondFührer Kurtzfleisch (Udo Kier) sends his second in command Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) back to Earth with Washington to get more phones so they can all finally return to Earth as conquering heroes. This task will be far from simple since they are up against cynical power hungry leaders of modern nations and especially the Sarah Palin lookalike (but definitely not her) US President (Stephanie Paul) and her sociopathic publicist McLennan (Kym Jackson).
I really enjoyed this film. It is not only pretty funny it also looks really good. There is a lot of CGI used but it is never out-of-place and it's all very well designed and it's clear that a lot of time and thought has clearly gone into it. I cannot think of any point where this film showed that it had a very low-budget. The look the film looks like it been based on films such as Mars Attacks! or even Earth Vs The Flying Saucers and elements of steam punk where archaic technology has been designed to carry out advanced functions normally done by modern There's a lot of broad satire on modern politics especially from the scenes at the World Council with petty bickering between the representatives of different nation but there's also the culture clash humour which was sometimes nice and subtle with really good use of the Chaplin film The Great Dictator that assumes a familiarity with the film to work. The cast are all great but I really fell hard for the big evil Nazi Klaus Adler played with some gusto by Götz Otto. I should also mention Adler's girlfriend Renate Richter (Julia Dietze) who plays an idealistic Nazi schoolteacher who really believes the Nazis are a peaceful party. I know humour is very subjective but I really enjoyed this a lot more than other many films with bigger budgets and better known casts.
Two American astronauts land on the dark side of the Moon with two missions: a publicity stunt to help get the President re-elected and to hunt for Helium-3, an isotope of Helium that is rare on Earth but could used to fuel fusion reactors. They discover a large Helium-3 mine and soldiers in Nazi uniform appear out of nowhere, shoot one dead and capture the second one. It turns out that in 1945 a group of Nazis made their way to the moon where they have been mining it for the resources to build an invasion fleet to enable them to return to Earth and conquer it. This is all very impressive stuff. The only problem seems to be that they don't have the computing power
The astronaut they captured James Washington (Christopher Kirby) is just a famous supermodel and does not know anything about any planned invasion. They are astonished to see that he is black since most of them are too young to have been to Earth so have never seen a black man before and think he has some sort of skin disease. When their top scientist Dr Richter examines Washington's mobile phone and finds it has a more powerful processor by many orders of magnitude than their entire base the MondFührer Kurtzfleisch (Udo Kier) sends his second in command Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) back to Earth with Washington to get more phones so they can all finally return to Earth as conquering heroes. This task will be far from simple since they are up against cynical power hungry leaders of modern nations and especially the Sarah Palin lookalike (but definitely not her) US President (Stephanie Paul) and her sociopathic publicist McLennan (Kym Jackson).
I really enjoyed this film. It is not only pretty funny it also looks really good. There is a lot of CGI used but it is never out-of-place and it's all very well designed and it's clear that a lot of time and thought has clearly gone into it. I cannot think of any point where this film showed that it had a very low-budget. The look the film looks like it been based on films such as Mars Attacks! or even Earth Vs The Flying Saucers and elements of steam punk where archaic technology has been designed to carry out advanced functions normally done by modern There's a lot of broad satire on modern politics especially from the scenes at the World Council with petty bickering between the representatives of different nation but there's also the culture clash humour which was sometimes nice and subtle with really good use of the Chaplin film The Great Dictator that assumes a familiarity with the film to work. The cast are all great but I really fell hard for the big evil Nazi Klaus Adler played with some gusto by Götz Otto. I should also mention Adler's girlfriend Renate Richter (Julia Dietze) who plays an idealistic Nazi schoolteacher who really believes the Nazis are a peaceful party. I know humour is very subjective but I really enjoyed this a lot more than other many films with bigger budgets and better known casts.
The Raven
(I) (2012)
Mystery thriller romp with a pulpy comic book feel.
9 March 2012
Warning: Spoilers
This film is story set during the last few days in the life of Edgar Allen Poe. Poe (John Cusack) is a penniless drunk (with a pet raccoon for some reason), depending on money he gets from The Baltimore Times for writing acerbic reviews of other writers' work to keep him in the booze. Emily (Alice Eve) the woman he loves is difficult to reach because her father Colonel Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) has a very understandable dislike of Poe so they have sneak around behind his back.
The police are investigating two brutal murders of a mother and her 12- year-old daughter in a locked room. Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) notices the parallels between these murders and the Poe story Murders in the Rue Morgue so he sends a squad of policemen out to bring Poe in for questioning. Although Fields doesn't believe Poe is responsible for the murders he is definitely connected to them.
There's a second murder this time based on the story The Pit and The Pendulum and this is a pretty gory killing as you can imagine if you are aware of the story (if you are not I'll just say the pendulum has an enormous blade on the end of it). The victim this time is a writer at The Baltimore Times who wrote highly negative reviews of Poe's stories. A crimson mask found on body is a message from the killer to Poe and the police about where he will strike next. The killer is playing a game with them and when the life of his beloved Emily is threatened Poe is forced to play the killer's game.
This was an entertaining mystery thriller and I did like the inclusion of Poe's stories in this film. The setting felt authentic enough and there was no anachronistic steam punk stuff going on like so many other alternative history stories. The cast are reasonable enough, especially Brendan Gleeson, but they don't really get too much development. I don't have any doubt that Cusack's performance bore very little resemblance to the real Edgar Allen Poe but it was fun and over the top and similar to Robert Downey Juniors's take on Sherlock Holmes. Anyone expecting dark melancholia and madness will probably not like this film but for people only passingly familiar with Poe it is a mystery thriller romp with a pulpy comic book feel.
Rating 7/10
The police are investigating two brutal murders of a mother and her 12- year-old daughter in a locked room. Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) notices the parallels between these murders and the Poe story Murders in the Rue Morgue so he sends a squad of policemen out to bring Poe in for questioning. Although Fields doesn't believe Poe is responsible for the murders he is definitely connected to them.
There's a second murder this time based on the story The Pit and The Pendulum and this is a pretty gory killing as you can imagine if you are aware of the story (if you are not I'll just say the pendulum has an enormous blade on the end of it). The victim this time is a writer at The Baltimore Times who wrote highly negative reviews of Poe's stories. A crimson mask found on body is a message from the killer to Poe and the police about where he will strike next. The killer is playing a game with them and when the life of his beloved Emily is threatened Poe is forced to play the killer's game.
This was an entertaining mystery thriller and I did like the inclusion of Poe's stories in this film. The setting felt authentic enough and there was no anachronistic steam punk stuff going on like so many other alternative history stories. The cast are reasonable enough, especially Brendan Gleeson, but they don't really get too much development. I don't have any doubt that Cusack's performance bore very little resemblance to the real Edgar Allen Poe but it was fun and over the top and similar to Robert Downey Juniors's take on Sherlock Holmes. Anyone expecting dark melancholia and madness will probably not like this film but for people only passingly familiar with Poe it is a mystery thriller romp with a pulpy comic book feel.
Rating 7/10
Hellraiser: Revelations
(2011)
Rushed and it looks like it
22 November 2011
A ninth Hellraiser film is not a surprise but its not something to look forward to either. There had been all sots of noises recently of a re- make in the works but now that seems to have stalled. I'm not sure how it works but there is this thing that Dimension Films would have lost their rights to the franchise if they didn't make another film. This give them a reasonable excuse for them churning out this one.
The film opens with camcorder footage of two teenage boys Steven (Nick Eversman) and Nico (Jay Gillespie) getting ready for a trip to Mexico. This camcorder footage was very worrying and I was afraid that it was going to go down the road of the present craze for "found footage" films. This is becomes an even bigger problem when the films cuts to a camcorder recorded scene of Nico opening a Lament puzzle and Pinhead appearing. In camcorder footage this does not appear eerie and otherworldly but like guy dressed in a Pinhead costume. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Pinhead is not played by by Doug Bradley but by another actor (Stephan Smith Collins) who is physically very different. I felt that any chance of inducing a willing suspension of disbelief is strongly challenged by this scene
It turns out that the camcorder footage is being watched by Steven's mother Sarah (Devon Sorvari). Steven and Nico have gone missing and the police have returned Steven's belongings to her. Sarah gets interrupted by her husband Dr Ross Craven (Steven Brand) who seems to be long line of screen psychiatrists who have apparently no empathy. He tells her the Bradleys are here. Their daughter Emma is having a hard time with her brother going missing and can't get why they don't want to talk about it.
I can't get why they don't want to talk about it either, especially when it turns out that the Bradleys are Nico's parents Kate (Sanny Van Heteren) and Peter (Sebastien Roberts). Emma slopes off to her mother's room and finds the camera in Steve's bag. She starts watching and this takes us to a more complete flashback of what happened to the boys. We see them get very drunk and Steve chats up a young Mexican girl in the bar. Next we see Nico and the girl having rough sex in the toilet while Steve's whines and pukes up in the sink. Afterwards Nico really wants to leave in a hurry. The girl is dead and Nico is scared of Mexican jail even though he claims it was an accident.
Emma stops watching deeply upset because she's supposed to be in a relationship with Nico. Then she finds the Lament puzzle in Steven's bag. She confronts her parents about being kept in the dark but it's really just shouting at them and then she storms off to sit by herself at the pool, playing with the puzzle box. Before she starts solving it Steven appears, exhausted and covered in blood mumbling about someone coming for him.
This film not only appears rushed, it was rushed. Although the story is pretty faithful to the tone of original the special effects are not nearly as well done and they don't quite capture its atmosphere. The script has some really clunky dialogue for the actors who just don't deliver it very convincingly. The Cenobites were okay especially Pinhead Junior but people will not be happy about Pinhead being played by someone who is not Doug Bradley who gave the role a quiet intensity which was the reason the character became so iconic. I doubt that even if it had Been Doug Bradley playing the part that the film would have been any better since his presence didn't save Hellworld or Hell on Earth.
If you have never seen a Hellraiser film this is not a good introduction to the series. It is just as gory and violent as the others and has scenes of sex and nudity
Rating 5/10
The film opens with camcorder footage of two teenage boys Steven (Nick Eversman) and Nico (Jay Gillespie) getting ready for a trip to Mexico. This camcorder footage was very worrying and I was afraid that it was going to go down the road of the present craze for "found footage" films. This is becomes an even bigger problem when the films cuts to a camcorder recorded scene of Nico opening a Lament puzzle and Pinhead appearing. In camcorder footage this does not appear eerie and otherworldly but like guy dressed in a Pinhead costume. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Pinhead is not played by by Doug Bradley but by another actor (Stephan Smith Collins) who is physically very different. I felt that any chance of inducing a willing suspension of disbelief is strongly challenged by this scene
It turns out that the camcorder footage is being watched by Steven's mother Sarah (Devon Sorvari). Steven and Nico have gone missing and the police have returned Steven's belongings to her. Sarah gets interrupted by her husband Dr Ross Craven (Steven Brand) who seems to be long line of screen psychiatrists who have apparently no empathy. He tells her the Bradleys are here. Their daughter Emma is having a hard time with her brother going missing and can't get why they don't want to talk about it.
I can't get why they don't want to talk about it either, especially when it turns out that the Bradleys are Nico's parents Kate (Sanny Van Heteren) and Peter (Sebastien Roberts). Emma slopes off to her mother's room and finds the camera in Steve's bag. She starts watching and this takes us to a more complete flashback of what happened to the boys. We see them get very drunk and Steve chats up a young Mexican girl in the bar. Next we see Nico and the girl having rough sex in the toilet while Steve's whines and pukes up in the sink. Afterwards Nico really wants to leave in a hurry. The girl is dead and Nico is scared of Mexican jail even though he claims it was an accident.
Emma stops watching deeply upset because she's supposed to be in a relationship with Nico. Then she finds the Lament puzzle in Steven's bag. She confronts her parents about being kept in the dark but it's really just shouting at them and then she storms off to sit by herself at the pool, playing with the puzzle box. Before she starts solving it Steven appears, exhausted and covered in blood mumbling about someone coming for him.
This film not only appears rushed, it was rushed. Although the story is pretty faithful to the tone of original the special effects are not nearly as well done and they don't quite capture its atmosphere. The script has some really clunky dialogue for the actors who just don't deliver it very convincingly. The Cenobites were okay especially Pinhead Junior but people will not be happy about Pinhead being played by someone who is not Doug Bradley who gave the role a quiet intensity which was the reason the character became so iconic. I doubt that even if it had Been Doug Bradley playing the part that the film would have been any better since his presence didn't save Hellworld or Hell on Earth.
If you have never seen a Hellraiser film this is not a good introduction to the series. It is just as gory and violent as the others and has scenes of sex and nudity
Rating 5/10
Dark House
(2009)
Dark Haunted House on a Hill
6 September 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Three young girls are riding their bikes through their neighbourhood and they stop at the gate of house of Janet Garrode (Diane Salinger). Two of the girls think it is creepy, but the third girl knows it is just a foster home. To prove there's nothing to fear she goes right up to door and goes in. The children are all dead, lying in pools of blood everywhere.She hears a sound from the kitchen and goes through to see Garrode standing at the sink with her hands down the waste disposal unit with blades grinding her hands away until she dies from blood loss. The girl hears a noise from the pantry and looks through the key hole and sees an eye looking back at her, she screams and turns to run but slips in puddle of blood and knocks herself out as she falls.
We flash forward 14 years to the present. Acting student Claire (Meghan Ory) wakes from a nightmare. She discusses her nightmares with her psychiatrist who raises the subject of her traumatic childhood experiences in the Garrode house. He asks if she has visited the house, but Claire says she too afraid. The psychiatrist just leaves it at that, no suggestion that he visit the house with her.
At her acting class they are all doing an acting exercise when they are interrupted by Wilston Rey (Jeffrey Combs), a horror house creator who makes a big entrance and offers them jobs at his latest horror attraction acting as performers. They all act a bit snooty at this offer but then he mentions that it is at the Garrode house. He needs actors in a hurry because he is giving a special preview of the house to two journalists. Claire right away sees her chance to visit the Garrode house in the company of her friends and talks her classmates into taking the jobs.
Her classmates are the standard pack of shallow stereotypes of horror film victims: Ariel (Bevin Prince) is blonde, attractive and a bitch, who's jealous of Claire; Rudy (Matt Cohen) is hunky but bit of a dick, and he fancies Claire; Eldon (Danso Gordon) is the black guy and is also cultured and nerdy and may as well have a bullseye on his forehead; Lily (Shelly Cole) is the goth girl who mopes about whining; Bruce (Ryan Melander) is the immature joker.
At the Garrode house Rey introduces the actors to head usher Moreton (Scott Whyte) and Samantha (Meghan Maureen McDonough) the designer and takes them around the house and introduces them to the magical holograms that seem to have been created by technology stolen by Weyoun from Starfleet and brought back in time through some sort of temporal anomaly*. They are suitably impressed by the technology that is being run by Harris the whingeing nerd that Rey keeps locked in the basement. While they are being shown the computer centre Claire sees the ghostly image of the dead foster children gathered around the furnace in the corner of the basement.
After the tour they are sent to get ready for the journalists' preview. In her room Claire has a vision in the dressing table mirror of Garrode brutally punishing a little boy and is shocked out of her vision when Garrode turns to look directly at her and shouts "What are you looking at?"
Once they are ready Rey gives them a flowery, well-rehearsed pep talk on the philosophy and art of scaring people. Meanwhile Garrode's spirit somehow invades the computer system with a lot of cheesy graphics and a lot wild-haired manic laughter from Garrode. This scene is just rubbish and it is not creepy or horrific at all. Harris is killed when a monitor blows up in his face.
Claire is in charge of taking the journalists around the house with Moreton accompanying them. Moreton leads them to the Corridor of Blood and a holographic wraith with long fingernails lurches toward and him stabs him in the chest. To his shock he realises he really has been stabbed and he dies. Claire almost believes it was real but when she looks back and his body is gone she is convinced it was all an act and she continues the tour
The film continues with Garrode using the holograms to kill everyone of one at time. This would have been quite good but it all happens in a rush and there is really more of a mad dash that a build-up of tension.
I like Jeffrey Combs and I did his like his performance as Walston Rey which calls for really over the top hammy showman. Diane Sallinger is really scary as the psycho religious nut with her shock of unkempt red hair. The rest of the cast are passable. What I wasn't too keen on was the script itself . Most of the characters are barely written at all. Why did Samantha have to be a predatory lesbian? It didn't really make difference to the story except to irritate so I am curious. There is a twist of sorts at the end but it is so meaningless and inconsequential I wonder why they bothered. The effects were okay if a bit obviously CGI but that dumb cheap-looking computer possession scene was poor. It's all right but not really scary apart from couple of jump scares
*These are references to the Star Trek Deep Space Nine where Jeffrey Combs played an alien called Weyoun.
Rating 6/10
We flash forward 14 years to the present. Acting student Claire (Meghan Ory) wakes from a nightmare. She discusses her nightmares with her psychiatrist who raises the subject of her traumatic childhood experiences in the Garrode house. He asks if she has visited the house, but Claire says she too afraid. The psychiatrist just leaves it at that, no suggestion that he visit the house with her.
At her acting class they are all doing an acting exercise when they are interrupted by Wilston Rey (Jeffrey Combs), a horror house creator who makes a big entrance and offers them jobs at his latest horror attraction acting as performers. They all act a bit snooty at this offer but then he mentions that it is at the Garrode house. He needs actors in a hurry because he is giving a special preview of the house to two journalists. Claire right away sees her chance to visit the Garrode house in the company of her friends and talks her classmates into taking the jobs.
Her classmates are the standard pack of shallow stereotypes of horror film victims: Ariel (Bevin Prince) is blonde, attractive and a bitch, who's jealous of Claire; Rudy (Matt Cohen) is hunky but bit of a dick, and he fancies Claire; Eldon (Danso Gordon) is the black guy and is also cultured and nerdy and may as well have a bullseye on his forehead; Lily (Shelly Cole) is the goth girl who mopes about whining; Bruce (Ryan Melander) is the immature joker.
At the Garrode house Rey introduces the actors to head usher Moreton (Scott Whyte) and Samantha (Meghan Maureen McDonough) the designer and takes them around the house and introduces them to the magical holograms that seem to have been created by technology stolen by Weyoun from Starfleet and brought back in time through some sort of temporal anomaly*. They are suitably impressed by the technology that is being run by Harris the whingeing nerd that Rey keeps locked in the basement. While they are being shown the computer centre Claire sees the ghostly image of the dead foster children gathered around the furnace in the corner of the basement.
After the tour they are sent to get ready for the journalists' preview. In her room Claire has a vision in the dressing table mirror of Garrode brutally punishing a little boy and is shocked out of her vision when Garrode turns to look directly at her and shouts "What are you looking at?"
Once they are ready Rey gives them a flowery, well-rehearsed pep talk on the philosophy and art of scaring people. Meanwhile Garrode's spirit somehow invades the computer system with a lot of cheesy graphics and a lot wild-haired manic laughter from Garrode. This scene is just rubbish and it is not creepy or horrific at all. Harris is killed when a monitor blows up in his face.
Claire is in charge of taking the journalists around the house with Moreton accompanying them. Moreton leads them to the Corridor of Blood and a holographic wraith with long fingernails lurches toward and him stabs him in the chest. To his shock he realises he really has been stabbed and he dies. Claire almost believes it was real but when she looks back and his body is gone she is convinced it was all an act and she continues the tour
The film continues with Garrode using the holograms to kill everyone of one at time. This would have been quite good but it all happens in a rush and there is really more of a mad dash that a build-up of tension.
I like Jeffrey Combs and I did his like his performance as Walston Rey which calls for really over the top hammy showman. Diane Sallinger is really scary as the psycho religious nut with her shock of unkempt red hair. The rest of the cast are passable. What I wasn't too keen on was the script itself . Most of the characters are barely written at all. Why did Samantha have to be a predatory lesbian? It didn't really make difference to the story except to irritate so I am curious. There is a twist of sorts at the end but it is so meaningless and inconsequential I wonder why they bothered. The effects were okay if a bit obviously CGI but that dumb cheap-looking computer possession scene was poor. It's all right but not really scary apart from couple of jump scares
*These are references to the Star Trek Deep Space Nine where Jeffrey Combs played an alien called Weyoun.
Rating 6/10
Hanna
(2011)
Entertaining spy thriller
4 September 2011
Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) lives alone with her father Erik Heller ( Eric Bana) in an isolated cabin in Finland. He has trained her to hunt and to defend herself and raised her to be the perfect assassin, always prepared for danger. He gives her a full book-based education and teaches her to speak many languages. Although he tells her about things like music and fairy tales he does not let her hear any. He also makes her rehearse a fake biography as a cover story.
He has prepared her all her life for a mission, to kill CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) and as soon as she thinks she is ready he gives her a transmitter that will alert the CIA of their location. Hanna activates the transmitter and prepares for the CIA's arrival. Heller arranges to rendezvous with Hanna in Berlin and leaves.
Armed agents surround the cabin and after a small token amount of lethal resistance Hanna is captured and taken to a base to be interrogated. Wiegler watches the interview remotely as they tell Hanna they want to know where Heller is. The agency is particularly worried that he has a lot of secrets that they don't want divulged. Hanna won't talk except to repeat her cover story and demand that Marissa Wiegler comes to talk to her in person.
Wiegler is shocked to hear Hanna use her name but she knows something is wrong and sends a decoy agent wearing a red-haired wig to match Wiegler's physical description and coaches her remotely through an earpiece. It seems to be going smoothly with Hanna showing signs of grief and hugging the decoy for comfort. Wiegler orders the agent to break contact and abort but it's too late as Hanna snaps the decoy's neck then uses her body as a bullet shield to escape the interview room. Hanna evades her pursuers and escapes the base, only then finds out it is underground in the middle of the Moroccan desert.
Hanna walks through the desert until she meets a young English girl Sophie and her younger brother Miles who are travelling with their parents. Sophie talks a lot but listens very little. Their parents are middle-class hippy types Rachel (Olivia Williams) and Sebastian (Jason Flemyng) who patronisingly approve of her father's confidence in allowing Hanna to travel alone. She reveals that her mother is dead and Rachel asks how she died. "Three bullets," Hanna blankly replies.
Hanna is may be well educated in the facts about the world but she has no experience of how the things she heard about work or look or sound and as her shockingly plain talk a dinner revealed she has no experience of dealing with people. When she is shown her room at first she is fascinated by all the electrical appliances but it soon leads to a sensory overload and she suffers a panic attack.
Wiegler has ordered her agents concentrate on catching Heller. To go after Hanna she hires Isaacs (Tom Hollander), owner of the Safari trans-gender nightclub. We get the impression that Isaacs likes little girls in all the wrong ways. He is soon on the trail of Hanna with two skinhead henchman
This film is a really good spy thriller but it's more than that. Hanna seems drawn to the English family perhaps because she had none of that life herself. Heller's mission to kill Wiegler is all she has been prepared for and she has no idea who she is other than that. Young Saoirse Ronan is really great in the role of Hanna and I never knew Tom Hollander had that evil sleaziness in him to play the part of Isaacs. There is a fair bit of on-screen killing but not too much . But it is the implied killings that happen off-screen that are somewhat more disturbing.
Rating 7/10
He has prepared her all her life for a mission, to kill CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) and as soon as she thinks she is ready he gives her a transmitter that will alert the CIA of their location. Hanna activates the transmitter and prepares for the CIA's arrival. Heller arranges to rendezvous with Hanna in Berlin and leaves.
Armed agents surround the cabin and after a small token amount of lethal resistance Hanna is captured and taken to a base to be interrogated. Wiegler watches the interview remotely as they tell Hanna they want to know where Heller is. The agency is particularly worried that he has a lot of secrets that they don't want divulged. Hanna won't talk except to repeat her cover story and demand that Marissa Wiegler comes to talk to her in person.
Wiegler is shocked to hear Hanna use her name but she knows something is wrong and sends a decoy agent wearing a red-haired wig to match Wiegler's physical description and coaches her remotely through an earpiece. It seems to be going smoothly with Hanna showing signs of grief and hugging the decoy for comfort. Wiegler orders the agent to break contact and abort but it's too late as Hanna snaps the decoy's neck then uses her body as a bullet shield to escape the interview room. Hanna evades her pursuers and escapes the base, only then finds out it is underground in the middle of the Moroccan desert.
Hanna walks through the desert until she meets a young English girl Sophie and her younger brother Miles who are travelling with their parents. Sophie talks a lot but listens very little. Their parents are middle-class hippy types Rachel (Olivia Williams) and Sebastian (Jason Flemyng) who patronisingly approve of her father's confidence in allowing Hanna to travel alone. She reveals that her mother is dead and Rachel asks how she died. "Three bullets," Hanna blankly replies.
Hanna is may be well educated in the facts about the world but she has no experience of how the things she heard about work or look or sound and as her shockingly plain talk a dinner revealed she has no experience of dealing with people. When she is shown her room at first she is fascinated by all the electrical appliances but it soon leads to a sensory overload and she suffers a panic attack.
Wiegler has ordered her agents concentrate on catching Heller. To go after Hanna she hires Isaacs (Tom Hollander), owner of the Safari trans-gender nightclub. We get the impression that Isaacs likes little girls in all the wrong ways. He is soon on the trail of Hanna with two skinhead henchman
This film is a really good spy thriller but it's more than that. Hanna seems drawn to the English family perhaps because she had none of that life herself. Heller's mission to kill Wiegler is all she has been prepared for and she has no idea who she is other than that. Young Saoirse Ronan is really great in the role of Hanna and I never knew Tom Hollander had that evil sleaziness in him to play the part of Isaacs. There is a fair bit of on-screen killing but not too much . But it is the implied killings that happen off-screen that are somewhat more disturbing.
Rating 7/10
Repo Man
(1984)
I have seen this so many times and it still gets me laughing
28 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Otto (Emilio Estevez) is a suburban punk whose sucky life gets even suckier when he gets kicked out of his job, finds out is parents have given all his college fund away to a TV evangelist and his girlfriend screws his best friend, all in one night. Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) asks him for favour, to drive his "wife's" car out of the neighbourhood. Back at the repo company car lot Otto discovers he's been tricked by Bud the repo man into helping him take someone's car. They offer him a job and after one more night back with his old sucky life Otto takes the job.
Bud takes great pleasure in teaching young Otto about being a repo man and teaches him what he calls the repo man code. After snorting speed with Bud then racing the rival repo men the Rodriguez Brothers in the LA river Otto really thinks being a repo man is just "so intense" Bud replies "The life of a repo man is always intense." Later when Otto is riding with Lite (Sy Richardson) it's pretty clear Bud's rules don't mean anything to Lite
The film feels like a series of sketches of Otto out with Bud or Lite or on his own, repossessing cars from people who have not been keeping up payments on them. There's not much in the way of plot except in the form of a crazy scientist J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris ) driving across America to California with something deadly and radioactive the trunk of his car a '64 Chevy Malibu who is being followed a squad of blond-haired agents led by the one-armed Agent Rogersz (Susan Barnes). Dr Parnell had been stopped by a motorcycle highway patrol cop who was warned not to look in the trunk and he looked in trunk and vanished with flash of light and a scream, leaving just a pair of smoking boots behind. Rogersz explains to the sheriff, "It happens sometimes, people just explode. Natural causes."
Otto comes across this plot line when he sees a young woman Leila (Olivia Barash) running down the street, so he hits on her and offers her a lift. She is hiding from the blonde-haired agents and tells Otto she is part of group who are trying tell the world the truth about aliens and they have a scientist (Parnell) who has smuggled the bodies of dead aliens out of a secret research base in New Mexico. She shows Otto picture of them but they look stupid and not very convincing (apparently they are water-filled condoms wearing grass-skirts). They get to headquarters of her group, the United Fruitcake Outlet. As Leila is about to leave Otto acts like a dick which causes Leila to change her mind and they get back in the car and have sex.
Back at the repo company they get word in about a bounty of $20,000 on a '64 Chevy Malibu, a lot of money for such an old piece of junk. Soon all the repo men in LA are on the look out for the car.
Running through the film on a crime spree are Otto's former pals Duke (Dick Rude) and Archie (Miguel Sandoval) and his ex-girlfriend Debbi (Jennifer Balgobin). Everywhere that Bud and Otto go to buy beer is being robbed or has just been robbed by them. Duke's rallying cry is "let's do some crimes." and Archie keeps singing the tune of Ride of the Valkyries as they run from one crime to the next
Otto seems to keep finding himself in weird conversations with various kooks. Miller (Tracey Walter) works at the repo company where his only job seems to be tending a barrel of fire. As Otto burns rubbish from one of cars he lifted, Miller tell him his theory of UFOs, alien abductions, time machines and plates of shrimp. That conversation is weird enough but later Otto finds himself in the passenger seat of the Chevy Malibu while Dr Parnell raves about the lies told about the dangers of radiation and how liberating lobotomies are.
This film is just so full of great moments and funny characters and quotable lines. There a few little sly bits of cultural commentary woven into the film. Otto's parents are clearly a pair hippie stoners yet they're watching a right-wing televangelist and giving him all their money. Punks gets it too from the sheer idiocy of Duke and his crime gang and especially Duke's last words. This film really seems to divide opinion and some just don't get it. I think I'm supposed to say something broadly insulting, a sort of put down of those don't think Repo Man is hilarious but I don't think I need to since not being able to enjoy the humour in this film is a pretty harsh punishment in itself and there is no reason to mock the afflicted.
Rating 9/10
Bud takes great pleasure in teaching young Otto about being a repo man and teaches him what he calls the repo man code. After snorting speed with Bud then racing the rival repo men the Rodriguez Brothers in the LA river Otto really thinks being a repo man is just "so intense" Bud replies "The life of a repo man is always intense." Later when Otto is riding with Lite (Sy Richardson) it's pretty clear Bud's rules don't mean anything to Lite
The film feels like a series of sketches of Otto out with Bud or Lite or on his own, repossessing cars from people who have not been keeping up payments on them. There's not much in the way of plot except in the form of a crazy scientist J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris ) driving across America to California with something deadly and radioactive the trunk of his car a '64 Chevy Malibu who is being followed a squad of blond-haired agents led by the one-armed Agent Rogersz (Susan Barnes). Dr Parnell had been stopped by a motorcycle highway patrol cop who was warned not to look in the trunk and he looked in trunk and vanished with flash of light and a scream, leaving just a pair of smoking boots behind. Rogersz explains to the sheriff, "It happens sometimes, people just explode. Natural causes."
Otto comes across this plot line when he sees a young woman Leila (Olivia Barash) running down the street, so he hits on her and offers her a lift. She is hiding from the blonde-haired agents and tells Otto she is part of group who are trying tell the world the truth about aliens and they have a scientist (Parnell) who has smuggled the bodies of dead aliens out of a secret research base in New Mexico. She shows Otto picture of them but they look stupid and not very convincing (apparently they are water-filled condoms wearing grass-skirts). They get to headquarters of her group, the United Fruitcake Outlet. As Leila is about to leave Otto acts like a dick which causes Leila to change her mind and they get back in the car and have sex.
Back at the repo company they get word in about a bounty of $20,000 on a '64 Chevy Malibu, a lot of money for such an old piece of junk. Soon all the repo men in LA are on the look out for the car.
Running through the film on a crime spree are Otto's former pals Duke (Dick Rude) and Archie (Miguel Sandoval) and his ex-girlfriend Debbi (Jennifer Balgobin). Everywhere that Bud and Otto go to buy beer is being robbed or has just been robbed by them. Duke's rallying cry is "let's do some crimes." and Archie keeps singing the tune of Ride of the Valkyries as they run from one crime to the next
Otto seems to keep finding himself in weird conversations with various kooks. Miller (Tracey Walter) works at the repo company where his only job seems to be tending a barrel of fire. As Otto burns rubbish from one of cars he lifted, Miller tell him his theory of UFOs, alien abductions, time machines and plates of shrimp. That conversation is weird enough but later Otto finds himself in the passenger seat of the Chevy Malibu while Dr Parnell raves about the lies told about the dangers of radiation and how liberating lobotomies are.
This film is just so full of great moments and funny characters and quotable lines. There a few little sly bits of cultural commentary woven into the film. Otto's parents are clearly a pair hippie stoners yet they're watching a right-wing televangelist and giving him all their money. Punks gets it too from the sheer idiocy of Duke and his crime gang and especially Duke's last words. This film really seems to divide opinion and some just don't get it. I think I'm supposed to say something broadly insulting, a sort of put down of those don't think Repo Man is hilarious but I don't think I need to since not being able to enjoy the humour in this film is a pretty harsh punishment in itself and there is no reason to mock the afflicted.
Rating 9/10
Deja Vu
(2006)
Never mind the science just give it more cowbell
21 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Writers just love getting their hands on an excuse to do a time travel story. This shallow tale wades out into the murky waters but rarely immerses itself fully in the potential scientific and philosophical implications of what the characters claim they are doing. The result is a story that only works if you go with it and just accept things happen for narrative reasons and the magic time travel device is just there to do whatever needs it needs to do to accomplish that
ATF Agent Doug Carlin is this film's identity of the standard Denzel Washington investigator savant character, so he's a no-nonsense clear thinker with Sherlock Holmes' observational skills and deductive reasoning abilities. A ferry full of sailors blows up while it crosses the Mississippi at New Orléans on Mardi Gras. Doug is one of several investigators on the scene. He gets spotted by FBI agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) who is impressed by his cool investigator skills so he recruits him to a super secret squad who have a magic time traveling spying machine that can give them a God's eye view of anything anywhere within the range of the machine but it can only see what happening 4 days 6 hours into the past, no earlier and no later. It has something to do with Einstein's rosy bridge according Dr Alexander Denny (Adam Goldberg) the scientist who accidentally tore a hole in the universe. It is two-way but it takes a lot of energy to send mass through it and it kills animals going through it (or crushes them into a tiny massively dense points of unspecific matter). You can probably see how this will go, but for now they use it to spy on people to see any sign of someone who might want to blow a bunch.. sorry, blow-up a bunch of sailors. They want Doug to use his unique abilities to tell them where to point their magic cameras. Doug has info on the dead body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) who was found in the river but had died before the ferry explosion from the same type of burns as the victims on the ferry. The car bomb that blew up the ferry was also in her van so Doug has them spy on her (you can see why they needed Doug's amazing deductive skills here).
Doug had the hots for Claire when she was a crispy-fried corpse so obviously he falls for her when he sees her walking and breathing (and showering) in the past. But Doug's really not satisfied which watching what happened in the past, he wants to change it. He sends a message back for himself but his partner Larry picks it up instead so rather than dying on the ferry Larry gets shot and his body is fed to the alligators. To get there was a pretty amazing, and very stupid, car chase with Doug following in the bomber in the present day as the bomber drives to his base in the past, using a portable helmet version of the big magic box. Now they know the bomber is Carrol Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel) who is one of those paranoid nuts engaged in a personal war with the American Government. He is arrested and the FBI are happy with lone maniac story so they shut down the magic box.
No film would be happy with story that ending like that and we already have the rest all set up so inevitably Doug is going to back in time, rescue the girl, get the bad guy and save the day. At this point there is plenty of hints that this not the first time, lots of little clues that another version of Doug had already tried and failed to change events at least once before (or three times according this time-line from Wikipedia). I have to say this plot is clearly driven by the director's desire to tell the story his way with little attention to logic or stopping to explain itself to anyone thinking "Wait a minute , what " There is something exhilarating about being along for the ride on Tony Scott film and despite my snarky tone I did enjoy this one.
Rating 6/10
ATF Agent Doug Carlin is this film's identity of the standard Denzel Washington investigator savant character, so he's a no-nonsense clear thinker with Sherlock Holmes' observational skills and deductive reasoning abilities. A ferry full of sailors blows up while it crosses the Mississippi at New Orléans on Mardi Gras. Doug is one of several investigators on the scene. He gets spotted by FBI agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) who is impressed by his cool investigator skills so he recruits him to a super secret squad who have a magic time traveling spying machine that can give them a God's eye view of anything anywhere within the range of the machine but it can only see what happening 4 days 6 hours into the past, no earlier and no later. It has something to do with Einstein's rosy bridge according Dr Alexander Denny (Adam Goldberg) the scientist who accidentally tore a hole in the universe. It is two-way but it takes a lot of energy to send mass through it and it kills animals going through it (or crushes them into a tiny massively dense points of unspecific matter). You can probably see how this will go, but for now they use it to spy on people to see any sign of someone who might want to blow a bunch.. sorry, blow-up a bunch of sailors. They want Doug to use his unique abilities to tell them where to point their magic cameras. Doug has info on the dead body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) who was found in the river but had died before the ferry explosion from the same type of burns as the victims on the ferry. The car bomb that blew up the ferry was also in her van so Doug has them spy on her (you can see why they needed Doug's amazing deductive skills here).
Doug had the hots for Claire when she was a crispy-fried corpse so obviously he falls for her when he sees her walking and breathing (and showering) in the past. But Doug's really not satisfied which watching what happened in the past, he wants to change it. He sends a message back for himself but his partner Larry picks it up instead so rather than dying on the ferry Larry gets shot and his body is fed to the alligators. To get there was a pretty amazing, and very stupid, car chase with Doug following in the bomber in the present day as the bomber drives to his base in the past, using a portable helmet version of the big magic box. Now they know the bomber is Carrol Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel) who is one of those paranoid nuts engaged in a personal war with the American Government. He is arrested and the FBI are happy with lone maniac story so they shut down the magic box.
No film would be happy with story that ending like that and we already have the rest all set up so inevitably Doug is going to back in time, rescue the girl, get the bad guy and save the day. At this point there is plenty of hints that this not the first time, lots of little clues that another version of Doug had already tried and failed to change events at least once before (or three times according this time-line from Wikipedia). I have to say this plot is clearly driven by the director's desire to tell the story his way with little attention to logic or stopping to explain itself to anyone thinking "Wait a minute , what " There is something exhilarating about being along for the ride on Tony Scott film and despite my snarky tone I did enjoy this one.
Rating 6/10
Fright Night
(1985)
I love films from the 80s
20 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I'm probably going to go and see the remake of this film in the next couple of weeks so I dug this out for a little refresher. This was Tom Holland's directorial début and it is still an entertaining comedy vampire film now even if some of the effects have dated poorly.
Charlie Brewster(William Ragsdale) is a teenager making out with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse). Amy is just getting warmed up when Charlie gets distracted by men carrying a coffin into the empty house next door. This really pisses off Amy and she leaves. Charlie's mother tells him that they have a new neighbour Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon).
Next day when Charlie gets home from school he sees a beautiful scantily dressed woman going into their neighbour's house. Later on that night while Charlie snoozes through old movies on TV he is awakened by the sound of screams from next door. At school the following day Amy is trying apologise for leaving but Charlie gets distracted by a news story on TV about the women he saw going next door being found dead. Amy gets angry about being ignored again and smashes a bagel into Charlie's face then storms off. His friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) is in hysterics at this. Geoffreys really has a weird persona and he uses it to pretty good effect in this film.
Charlie is poking around the house when he gets disturbed by Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), Jerry's house-mate and runs off. Later that night Charlie is watching Fright Night, the only show he ever watches, and he falls asleep again. When he wakes he sees a beautiful woman stripping at the window next door. Behind her is Dandridge who opens his mouth to reveal a set of vampire fangs poised to bite down the woman's throat. He must have heard Charlie because he looks right out at him then smiles and pulls down his blinds. Charlie panics, wakes his mother then goes out and hides in the bushes where he sees Billy dumping a body-sized bin bag in the back of a car. He tries to tell his mother but she thinks he must have been dreaming. Charlie faces a huge problem trying convince anyone since the truth sounds just like fiction.
After he fails to get Amy to believe him he decides to try the police but without mentioning vampires. A police detective goes to Dandriges's house but Billy manages to fob the cop off and when Charlie is forced to say what he knows to try to get the cop to investigate further he just ends up looking crazy, meaning he can't turn to the cops again. He goes to ask Ed for help and Ed is offended that Charlie thinks Ed is crazy enough to believe vampires are real He also doesn't like Charlie using his nickname Evil Ed. Ed does help with little bits of vampire lore but I wonder how helpful he was since Charlie watches these films every night and must be as familiar with the vampire rules as Ed. Maybe Charlie was just desperate to find someone to believe him.
One rule that Ed mentioned is never invite a vampire into your house so, of course, when Charlie gets back from Ed's Jerry is sitting the living room, invited in by Charlie's mother. I like the way that Dandrige threatens Charlie in front of his mother in this scene and Charlie's mother remains oblivious and thinks he's just making small talk. That night Jerry pays a more intimate visit to Charlie in his room and openly threatens him with dire consequences if doesn't stop snooping and telling people that he is a vampire.
The situation is getting very serious so Charlie heads to the TV studio that transmits Fright Night and begs for Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), the host of the show, to help him but Vincent thinks he is joking or insane and drives away. Charlie now realises how alone he is and makes preparations to kill Dandrige on his own. Amy and Ed call round and are deeply worried about his mental condition with all his talk about killing Dandrige. They try to put him off the idea and when that fails they get him to agree to wait until they return with help. They go to Vincent's house and ask for his help with convincing Charlie that he's wrong. They want him to convince Charlie that Jerry is just human by adopting his vampire hunter persona and performing a fake vampire test on Dandrige. Vincent arranges the test with Dandrige not realising that Dandrige is making sure the test really is a fake. Charlie trusts them but is worried about what Dandrige is going to do to them when his vampirism is revealed. In Dandrige's house Dandrige charms his guests and gently pokes fun at the idea of vampires. He passes Vincent's fake test leaving poor Charlie looking more isolated and completely crazy. But Vincent gets the glimpse of the truth in the mirror of a prop cigarette case.
This film is easily seen as just a throwaway popcorn flick and it is good one, but there is quite a good use of cultural blindness to isolate the genre savvy Charlie so that even when he's with people who love him he's totally on his own against Dandrige almost right up to the end. Chris Sarandon is perfect as Dandrige, easily switching the charm on and off as required. The late Roddy McDowall is also great as the washed-up actor Peter Vincent reduced to hosting a campy late night horror show, but the main credit has to go William Ragsdale who is excellent playing Charlie going crazy from being the only who knows the truth.
Rating 8/10
Charlie Brewster(William Ragsdale) is a teenager making out with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse). Amy is just getting warmed up when Charlie gets distracted by men carrying a coffin into the empty house next door. This really pisses off Amy and she leaves. Charlie's mother tells him that they have a new neighbour Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon).
Next day when Charlie gets home from school he sees a beautiful scantily dressed woman going into their neighbour's house. Later on that night while Charlie snoozes through old movies on TV he is awakened by the sound of screams from next door. At school the following day Amy is trying apologise for leaving but Charlie gets distracted by a news story on TV about the women he saw going next door being found dead. Amy gets angry about being ignored again and smashes a bagel into Charlie's face then storms off. His friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) is in hysterics at this. Geoffreys really has a weird persona and he uses it to pretty good effect in this film.
Charlie is poking around the house when he gets disturbed by Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), Jerry's house-mate and runs off. Later that night Charlie is watching Fright Night, the only show he ever watches, and he falls asleep again. When he wakes he sees a beautiful woman stripping at the window next door. Behind her is Dandridge who opens his mouth to reveal a set of vampire fangs poised to bite down the woman's throat. He must have heard Charlie because he looks right out at him then smiles and pulls down his blinds. Charlie panics, wakes his mother then goes out and hides in the bushes where he sees Billy dumping a body-sized bin bag in the back of a car. He tries to tell his mother but she thinks he must have been dreaming. Charlie faces a huge problem trying convince anyone since the truth sounds just like fiction.
After he fails to get Amy to believe him he decides to try the police but without mentioning vampires. A police detective goes to Dandriges's house but Billy manages to fob the cop off and when Charlie is forced to say what he knows to try to get the cop to investigate further he just ends up looking crazy, meaning he can't turn to the cops again. He goes to ask Ed for help and Ed is offended that Charlie thinks Ed is crazy enough to believe vampires are real He also doesn't like Charlie using his nickname Evil Ed. Ed does help with little bits of vampire lore but I wonder how helpful he was since Charlie watches these films every night and must be as familiar with the vampire rules as Ed. Maybe Charlie was just desperate to find someone to believe him.
One rule that Ed mentioned is never invite a vampire into your house so, of course, when Charlie gets back from Ed's Jerry is sitting the living room, invited in by Charlie's mother. I like the way that Dandrige threatens Charlie in front of his mother in this scene and Charlie's mother remains oblivious and thinks he's just making small talk. That night Jerry pays a more intimate visit to Charlie in his room and openly threatens him with dire consequences if doesn't stop snooping and telling people that he is a vampire.
The situation is getting very serious so Charlie heads to the TV studio that transmits Fright Night and begs for Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), the host of the show, to help him but Vincent thinks he is joking or insane and drives away. Charlie now realises how alone he is and makes preparations to kill Dandrige on his own. Amy and Ed call round and are deeply worried about his mental condition with all his talk about killing Dandrige. They try to put him off the idea and when that fails they get him to agree to wait until they return with help. They go to Vincent's house and ask for his help with convincing Charlie that he's wrong. They want him to convince Charlie that Jerry is just human by adopting his vampire hunter persona and performing a fake vampire test on Dandrige. Vincent arranges the test with Dandrige not realising that Dandrige is making sure the test really is a fake. Charlie trusts them but is worried about what Dandrige is going to do to them when his vampirism is revealed. In Dandrige's house Dandrige charms his guests and gently pokes fun at the idea of vampires. He passes Vincent's fake test leaving poor Charlie looking more isolated and completely crazy. But Vincent gets the glimpse of the truth in the mirror of a prop cigarette case.
This film is easily seen as just a throwaway popcorn flick and it is good one, but there is quite a good use of cultural blindness to isolate the genre savvy Charlie so that even when he's with people who love him he's totally on his own against Dandrige almost right up to the end. Chris Sarandon is perfect as Dandrige, easily switching the charm on and off as required. The late Roddy McDowall is also great as the washed-up actor Peter Vincent reduced to hosting a campy late night horror show, but the main credit has to go William Ragsdale who is excellent playing Charlie going crazy from being the only who knows the truth.
Rating 8/10
Disappointing
20 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
The Cult of Cthulhu are searching for part of a relic which is the key that will raise their master from his watery tomb and free him to rule the Earth. The Council of Cthulhu possess the other half of the relic and to stop the cult they send Professor Lake (Edmund Lupinski) of Miskatonic University to take the relic to the last descendant of H. P. Lovecraft and prevent the Cult from raising Cthulhu. This descendant is Jeff Philips (Kyle Davis) who works in a boring job in a cubicle in an office with his comic-book geek friend Charlie (Devin McGinn) and wishes there was more to life.
When Jeff and Charlie get home to their apartment they find Professor Lake standing there. He tries to tell them about the Cult of Cthulhu but Jeff doesn't believe any of it. Charlie on the other hand knows far too much about it and goes into a comic-illustrated history of Cthulhu and his war with the Elder Ones. Jeff does not think this makes the story any more credible, but Lake agrees that Charlie's story is true but incomplete. He reveals that Lovecraft was disguising truth as fiction and that he seemed to have a natural immunity to the madness inducing powers of Cthulhu and his General Starspawn (Ethan Wilde). The Council of Cthulhu think that this immunity has been passed down to Jeff making him the only person who can tackle Starspawn and stop the end of human civilisation. Lake's story is interrupted when the cult get to the apartment on the trail of the relic and Lake tells Jeff and Charlie to go and he gives the relic to Jeff. Lake then pulls out a large hammer on a chain with a harpoon at the other end from his bag and starts fighting off cult creatures to give Jeff and Charlie time to escape until Starspawn comes in and kills him.
Jeff and Charlie have to fight off a creature with a lamprey-like sucker mouth that fixes itself to their car window. They manage to do this with just a tire iron and then they drive off. Charlie suggests that they go see a guy they went to school with who knows all about Lovecraft. Paul (Barak Hardley) is another geek who lives with his foul-mouthed grandmother. He doesn't believe their story at first but is convinced when he sees the eyes of the relic glowing and he wants in on the adventure. He has a map from a comic-book to a Captain Olaf (Gregg Lawrence) who has told stories of his encounters with spawn of Cthulhu, the Deep Ones who live in the ocean. Starspawn has called up these Deep Ones to help him to get the relic. They come ashore next to a beach party and we see and hear them slaughtering everyone from inside a tent where a woman lies cowering in fear.
Jeff, Paul and Charlie have to get to Captain Olaf who lives in the middle of the desert to see if he has any idea how to defeat Starspawn and the Cult of Cthulhu
A comedy based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft has potential but this was disappointing. It has a very low-budget so it really has very little in the way of effects though some of it was pretty good for the money spent. I wasn't too put off by the large amount of dysfunctional geek comedy the film has. I think I was mainly let-down by how lame the bad guys really turned out to be. Maybe they should have spread a little more madness around because apart from the Deep Ones they didn't seem any more dangerous than any bunch of mooks. And the Deep Ones had a great build-up but after their initial killing spree they were a bit crap. Lovecraft wrote about cosmic horror but there really wasn't much sign of that here. It does show some promise and if they had decent budget they may have delivered something a bit better.
Rating 6/10
When Jeff and Charlie get home to their apartment they find Professor Lake standing there. He tries to tell them about the Cult of Cthulhu but Jeff doesn't believe any of it. Charlie on the other hand knows far too much about it and goes into a comic-illustrated history of Cthulhu and his war with the Elder Ones. Jeff does not think this makes the story any more credible, but Lake agrees that Charlie's story is true but incomplete. He reveals that Lovecraft was disguising truth as fiction and that he seemed to have a natural immunity to the madness inducing powers of Cthulhu and his General Starspawn (Ethan Wilde). The Council of Cthulhu think that this immunity has been passed down to Jeff making him the only person who can tackle Starspawn and stop the end of human civilisation. Lake's story is interrupted when the cult get to the apartment on the trail of the relic and Lake tells Jeff and Charlie to go and he gives the relic to Jeff. Lake then pulls out a large hammer on a chain with a harpoon at the other end from his bag and starts fighting off cult creatures to give Jeff and Charlie time to escape until Starspawn comes in and kills him.
Jeff and Charlie have to fight off a creature with a lamprey-like sucker mouth that fixes itself to their car window. They manage to do this with just a tire iron and then they drive off. Charlie suggests that they go see a guy they went to school with who knows all about Lovecraft. Paul (Barak Hardley) is another geek who lives with his foul-mouthed grandmother. He doesn't believe their story at first but is convinced when he sees the eyes of the relic glowing and he wants in on the adventure. He has a map from a comic-book to a Captain Olaf (Gregg Lawrence) who has told stories of his encounters with spawn of Cthulhu, the Deep Ones who live in the ocean. Starspawn has called up these Deep Ones to help him to get the relic. They come ashore next to a beach party and we see and hear them slaughtering everyone from inside a tent where a woman lies cowering in fear.
Jeff, Paul and Charlie have to get to Captain Olaf who lives in the middle of the desert to see if he has any idea how to defeat Starspawn and the Cult of Cthulhu
A comedy based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft has potential but this was disappointing. It has a very low-budget so it really has very little in the way of effects though some of it was pretty good for the money spent. I wasn't too put off by the large amount of dysfunctional geek comedy the film has. I think I was mainly let-down by how lame the bad guys really turned out to be. Maybe they should have spread a little more madness around because apart from the Deep Ones they didn't seem any more dangerous than any bunch of mooks. And the Deep Ones had a great build-up but after their initial killing spree they were a bit crap. Lovecraft wrote about cosmic horror but there really wasn't much sign of that here. It does show some promise and if they had decent budget they may have delivered something a bit better.
Rating 6/10
Seconds Apart
(2011)
Twins of Evil
19 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This was one of the features in the 2011 After Dark Horrorfest and I've just got round to watching it now. I tend to buy DVDs on a whim and often end up getting distracted and forgetting about them.
Seth (Gary Entin) and Jonah (Edmund Entin) Trimble are twin brothers born less than a minute apart. At a teenage party a group jocks blow their brains out in an oddly persistent game of Russsian Roulette, while Seth and Jonah hang out in background filming it. Detective Lampkin (Orlando Jones) senses something is really off about the scene especially the absence of any witnesses to the boys killing themselves in a house full of people partying. Seth and Jonah watch their video of the deaths eager to illicit an emotional reaction in themselves, some sign of feeling of empathy with their victims. They somehow caused the deaths as part of what they call The Project using their unspecified mental abilities. When they get ready for bed they perform their ablutions in perfect synchronicity, which really enhances their creepiness, especially when they go to sleep facing each other in the same bed.
Lampkin goes the Catholic school that the dead boys attended and tells the headmaster he wants to interview the pupils to see if any of them have any idea what happened at the party. He raises the possibility that the deaths were not suicide and that they were made look that way to cover up murders. He interviews a girl, Katie who is very nervous and withdrawn. She says she's glad the jocks are dead. Lampkin guesses at relationship gone bad with one of the dead boys which Katie confirms. She then mentions someone making a film and we get a flashback to Katie having sex with one of the boys in a locker-room while Seth and Jonah stand beside them and record it on video. She seems unsure of what is happening and we get the impression that the scene is another part of the twins' Project. I don't know how much of that she told Lampkin but it seems to be this that put him onto Seth and Jonah's trail.
Jonah meets new girl Eve (Samantha Droke) who insists on Jonah's help to find her class. Lampkin interviews Seth about the deaths, deliberately keeping the twins apart to trap and split them and trap them in a lie. While he's away Eve and Jonah chat together in the canteen. Lampkin tricks Seth into confirming the existence of the video. The boys appear in the headmaster Father Zinselmeyer's (Marc Macaulay) office. Using their mental powers they force him to tell who spoke to Lampkin and after Zinselmeyer tells them about Katie Seth leaves the priest to kill himself.
Lampkin really has his work cut out for him trying to prove that the spate of suicides are actually psychic murders, an idea no-one takes seriously but he is aided by the split between the brothers caused by Jonah's growing relationship with Eve
I enjoyed this film. It's not brilliant or even particularly original but the story did keep me watching to see how it is resolved. The film does not make it clear what mental powers the boys possess but it does gradually reveal that they are very powerful telepaths and telekinetics. Although there is some gore it is minimal and necessary for the story and it good to see the use of old style effects. The Catholic high school setting seemed a lot more authentic to me than many other high schools in other films.
Rating 6/10
Seth (Gary Entin) and Jonah (Edmund Entin) Trimble are twin brothers born less than a minute apart. At a teenage party a group jocks blow their brains out in an oddly persistent game of Russsian Roulette, while Seth and Jonah hang out in background filming it. Detective Lampkin (Orlando Jones) senses something is really off about the scene especially the absence of any witnesses to the boys killing themselves in a house full of people partying. Seth and Jonah watch their video of the deaths eager to illicit an emotional reaction in themselves, some sign of feeling of empathy with their victims. They somehow caused the deaths as part of what they call The Project using their unspecified mental abilities. When they get ready for bed they perform their ablutions in perfect synchronicity, which really enhances their creepiness, especially when they go to sleep facing each other in the same bed.
Lampkin goes the Catholic school that the dead boys attended and tells the headmaster he wants to interview the pupils to see if any of them have any idea what happened at the party. He raises the possibility that the deaths were not suicide and that they were made look that way to cover up murders. He interviews a girl, Katie who is very nervous and withdrawn. She says she's glad the jocks are dead. Lampkin guesses at relationship gone bad with one of the dead boys which Katie confirms. She then mentions someone making a film and we get a flashback to Katie having sex with one of the boys in a locker-room while Seth and Jonah stand beside them and record it on video. She seems unsure of what is happening and we get the impression that the scene is another part of the twins' Project. I don't know how much of that she told Lampkin but it seems to be this that put him onto Seth and Jonah's trail.
Jonah meets new girl Eve (Samantha Droke) who insists on Jonah's help to find her class. Lampkin interviews Seth about the deaths, deliberately keeping the twins apart to trap and split them and trap them in a lie. While he's away Eve and Jonah chat together in the canteen. Lampkin tricks Seth into confirming the existence of the video. The boys appear in the headmaster Father Zinselmeyer's (Marc Macaulay) office. Using their mental powers they force him to tell who spoke to Lampkin and after Zinselmeyer tells them about Katie Seth leaves the priest to kill himself.
Lampkin really has his work cut out for him trying to prove that the spate of suicides are actually psychic murders, an idea no-one takes seriously but he is aided by the split between the brothers caused by Jonah's growing relationship with Eve
I enjoyed this film. It's not brilliant or even particularly original but the story did keep me watching to see how it is resolved. The film does not make it clear what mental powers the boys possess but it does gradually reveal that they are very powerful telepaths and telekinetics. Although there is some gore it is minimal and necessary for the story and it good to see the use of old style effects. The Catholic high school setting seemed a lot more authentic to me than many other high schools in other films.
Rating 6/10
Long Live Caesar
13 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Will Rodman (James Franco) is working on revolutionary new drug treatment for Alzheimer's disease which is delivered by a genetically engineered virus. When testing his treatment on chimpanzees he finds that the treatment not only boosts the growth of brain cells it boost their intelligence. While presenting his case to the Gen Sys board to get approval to start human testing his biggest success called Bright Eyes goes crazy, apparently for no reason, and is shot dead in the board room. The project is shut down immediately and Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) the company director gives orders for all the chimps to be killed. The chimp keeper Robert Franklin (Tyler Labine) then discovers Bright Eyes was not crazy, she was protecting her baby that she had in secret in her cage. He asks Rodman to take care of the chimp rather than destroy it like he had to with the others.
At home Rodman's father Charles (John Lithgow) is suffering from Alzheimer's giving Rodman a deep personal stake in the progress of research .As he and his father take care of Caesar it become clear that Rodman's treatment has been passed to him genetically from his mother and Caesar is brighter than human children of the same age.
Charles' condition deteriorates and Rodman becomes desperate so he injects his father with some samples he stole from his laboratory. At first the treatment seems to work but later Charles immune system develops antibodies to the virus used to deliver the treatment and his condition relapses worse than ever .
Rodman tells Jacobs about using the treatment on his father and says he needs to research changing the virus to increase its virulence. Jacobs agrees and they get more chimps to restart testing right away.
Meanwhile Caesar is growing and becoming more curious about the world and his own place in it. He learns about fear and hatred from Rodman's next door neighbour Hunsiker (David Hewlett) who attacks one day when he is out looking at the Hunsiker kids' bikes. He also notices that he is never let loose in public and that he is always kept on a leash just like pet dogs
After an incident when Caesar attacks Hunsiker, he is taken away and placed in a primate sanctuary. This is were the film really shifts gears and it feels like a prison escape film. The place is run by John Landon (Brian Cox) who just leaves his son Dodge (Tom Felton) to mistreat and abuse the apes. Caesar has to face down the dominant chimp in the group and after being beat down gets he sympathy from friendly old circus-raised Oran-utan who can sign. As he learns how human treat apes he forms a plan to lead all the apes to freedom.
I thought that first this a great film in its own right. It really does a great job of using the story as a vehicle for questioning the use of primates in drug research by making the apes sentient creatures we feel empathy with. Credit for that has to go to both the special effects teams and the motion capture actors who created the very convincing apes. There was kid in the cinema cheering for the apes at the big climax on the Golden Gate Bridge and I know how he felt.
As part of the larger franchise it does work as prequel to the original Planet of Apes but it reboots the whole time loop thing out of existence which is probably just as well. The end begs for a sequel and going by the reviews and early box office it probably will happen.
Rating 8/10
At home Rodman's father Charles (John Lithgow) is suffering from Alzheimer's giving Rodman a deep personal stake in the progress of research .As he and his father take care of Caesar it become clear that Rodman's treatment has been passed to him genetically from his mother and Caesar is brighter than human children of the same age.
Charles' condition deteriorates and Rodman becomes desperate so he injects his father with some samples he stole from his laboratory. At first the treatment seems to work but later Charles immune system develops antibodies to the virus used to deliver the treatment and his condition relapses worse than ever .
Rodman tells Jacobs about using the treatment on his father and says he needs to research changing the virus to increase its virulence. Jacobs agrees and they get more chimps to restart testing right away.
Meanwhile Caesar is growing and becoming more curious about the world and his own place in it. He learns about fear and hatred from Rodman's next door neighbour Hunsiker (David Hewlett) who attacks one day when he is out looking at the Hunsiker kids' bikes. He also notices that he is never let loose in public and that he is always kept on a leash just like pet dogs
After an incident when Caesar attacks Hunsiker, he is taken away and placed in a primate sanctuary. This is were the film really shifts gears and it feels like a prison escape film. The place is run by John Landon (Brian Cox) who just leaves his son Dodge (Tom Felton) to mistreat and abuse the apes. Caesar has to face down the dominant chimp in the group and after being beat down gets he sympathy from friendly old circus-raised Oran-utan who can sign. As he learns how human treat apes he forms a plan to lead all the apes to freedom.
I thought that first this a great film in its own right. It really does a great job of using the story as a vehicle for questioning the use of primates in drug research by making the apes sentient creatures we feel empathy with. Credit for that has to go to both the special effects teams and the motion capture actors who created the very convincing apes. There was kid in the cinema cheering for the apes at the big climax on the Golden Gate Bridge and I know how he felt.
As part of the larger franchise it does work as prequel to the original Planet of Apes but it reboots the whole time loop thing out of existence which is probably just as well. The end begs for a sequel and going by the reviews and early box office it probably will happen.
Rating 8/10
The Rig
(2010)
mediocre creature feature
11 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
On an oils rig out at sea a young inexperienced roughneck Colin ( Dan Benson) is operating a remote camera while they place the drill on the sea floor and open a vent but something pushed at the drill and then the camera is attacked and goes dead. Then we cut to Colin bitching to his brother Freddy (Stacey Hinnen) about getting sent off the rig as an approaching storm means non-essential crew are being evacuated. This dull scene of family BS and childish hissy fit is a bad sign for this film. Colin leaves for the mainland to go and sulk in his room or something. So now we have the skeleton crew on the rig isolated from any hope rescue while the rig is hit by a storm. We In the control room there is a Scottish guy with a red beard called Wallace and young smart-ass called Andrew. Jim (William Forsythe) the guy in charge of the rig is there making sure that they're getting ready for the storm. His daughter Carey (Serah D'Laine) appears and doesn't do much other than be there. I really could n't figure what her job was and why she was so important that she had to stay. Freddy is down under the rig with a Puerto Rican woman Rodriguez examining the wreckage of the remote vehicle and camera that was destroyed at the start and they find a long serrated claw. There's a small crisis with the drill's compressor that has been left running by Earl after the drilling stopped. He's there with Dobbs who heroically takes the blame when Jim calls wanting to know what's going on. Earl goes into the compressor control room to switch it off when he hears a noise then suddenly he's a smear of blood on the window. Most of the rest crew gather in the galley including the creepy ex- special forces Faulkner and a cook who thinks he's working in a restaurant. Turns out that Dobbs is sagging Carey and everyone knows about it including her father. He comes down to the galley because the compressor is still on and Earl is missing so he sends the crew off to search for him but apart from the blood in the compressor room there's no sign of him. Now we've been round the crew each of them starts getting picked by the strange creature which seems to be a small hunched humanoid creature with giant teeth and claws. Of course just because a crew-member has gone missing is probably dead that's no reason not to have fun. Dobbs and Carey get smooch in Carey's quarters while Freddy and Rodriguez get at it in the shower in the gym. I found this film to be about SyFy channel level. It really just boils to an unexplained creature running loose killing a bunch people trapped with it, this time on an oil rig. The dramatic padding it had with various relationships was not really convincing.
Rating 5/10
Rating 5/10
The Dead and the Damned
(2011 Video)
Cheap mediocre cash in
9 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This is a very cheesy film that seems to have had a name change to cash on in on the Cowboys and Aliens summer blockbuster release. It was originally called the Dead and the Damned but I think the name change suits this low-budget zombie film
We meet our hero right in the middle of a gunfight that looks as convincing as any Wild West Show. Our hero is bounty hunter Mortimer (David A. Lockhart) and he is desperate for cash ( I have to confess that Mortimer's soft high voice did cause a giggle when I first heard it). The clerk paying him for delivering his latest catch tells him about a large bounty for an Indian (Rick Mora) who has been accused of rape and murder is wanted alive. The authorities know where he is but other bounty hunters who went after him never came back.
Mortimer heads to Jamestown, a prospecting town in the California mountains. There he finds out where the Indian is and then our hero buys a woman called Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery) from a sleazy guy selling women on the street. So far and no sign of zombies but that changes soon.
We next see a women washing herself topless outside and Jebediah is leering at her from behind some bushes. He gets caught when his father calls for help with something he has just dug up. It is a strange spherical rock with slits in its side and a glowing green core. They load it on a wheelbarrow and wheel it to Jamestown. Once the whole town has gathered round to look at the rock Jebediah's father starts whacking it with shovel. Green spores pour out of the slits and covers everyone gathered around. Naturally it is these spores which turn people into mindless flesh-eating zombies.
Meanwhile Mortimer and Rhiannon get the top of the mountain and look down on an amazing sea of cloud stretching out below them. Mortimer ties Rhiannon to a stake in the ground as bait for the Indian, while he hides in a tree and plays with his gun before going to sleep. But the Indian is not the sex mad crazy we'd been led to believe and he sneaks down, steals the bullets from the gun of the sleeping dweeb and cuts Rhiannon free with his axe. After a fist fight which Mortimer only wins by pulling a dinky little girly Derringer from his boot the Indian gets captured.
You can guess that it's not too long before they all have to work together when they discover that woods are full of zombies. One thing the two men don't do very well is keeping the unarmed Rhiannon safe from harm and every time Rhiannon is left on her own she gets attacked by a zombie. Mortimer may express guilt about putting her in danger but that doesn't mean he does anything useful about it. There is one part were they get back to Jamestown and they make themselves safe inside the saloon because the windows have been boarded up. While that is true they seem to neglect that the saloon has saloon doors which don't do much to stop zombies. There's a German bounty hunter prowling around the area too but he does nothing useful and his character just seemed pointless.
The film is not totally terrible but it is full of lazy clichés. It's watchable if you think you can bear another low-budget zombie film.
Rating 5/10
We meet our hero right in the middle of a gunfight that looks as convincing as any Wild West Show. Our hero is bounty hunter Mortimer (David A. Lockhart) and he is desperate for cash ( I have to confess that Mortimer's soft high voice did cause a giggle when I first heard it). The clerk paying him for delivering his latest catch tells him about a large bounty for an Indian (Rick Mora) who has been accused of rape and murder is wanted alive. The authorities know where he is but other bounty hunters who went after him never came back.
Mortimer heads to Jamestown, a prospecting town in the California mountains. There he finds out where the Indian is and then our hero buys a woman called Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery) from a sleazy guy selling women on the street. So far and no sign of zombies but that changes soon.
We next see a women washing herself topless outside and Jebediah is leering at her from behind some bushes. He gets caught when his father calls for help with something he has just dug up. It is a strange spherical rock with slits in its side and a glowing green core. They load it on a wheelbarrow and wheel it to Jamestown. Once the whole town has gathered round to look at the rock Jebediah's father starts whacking it with shovel. Green spores pour out of the slits and covers everyone gathered around. Naturally it is these spores which turn people into mindless flesh-eating zombies.
Meanwhile Mortimer and Rhiannon get the top of the mountain and look down on an amazing sea of cloud stretching out below them. Mortimer ties Rhiannon to a stake in the ground as bait for the Indian, while he hides in a tree and plays with his gun before going to sleep. But the Indian is not the sex mad crazy we'd been led to believe and he sneaks down, steals the bullets from the gun of the sleeping dweeb and cuts Rhiannon free with his axe. After a fist fight which Mortimer only wins by pulling a dinky little girly Derringer from his boot the Indian gets captured.
You can guess that it's not too long before they all have to work together when they discover that woods are full of zombies. One thing the two men don't do very well is keeping the unarmed Rhiannon safe from harm and every time Rhiannon is left on her own she gets attacked by a zombie. Mortimer may express guilt about putting her in danger but that doesn't mean he does anything useful about it. There is one part were they get back to Jamestown and they make themselves safe inside the saloon because the windows have been boarded up. While that is true they seem to neglect that the saloon has saloon doors which don't do much to stop zombies. There's a German bounty hunter prowling around the area too but he does nothing useful and his character just seemed pointless.
The film is not totally terrible but it is full of lazy clichés. It's watchable if you think you can bear another low-budget zombie film.
Rating 5/10
Stake Land
(2010)
Great drama that left me wanting more
7 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Martin (Connor Paolo) travels with Mister (Nick Damici) across an American landscape devastated by a vampire plague. Government has fallen, the cites are infested and the survivors are left to defend themselves against the bestial vampires that come out every night. Teenage Martin was living with his parents when the plague started and his father was trying to get his truck fixed to get them away from the vampires but one comes into the garage while Martin is outside kills his family, Mister appears and kills the vampire then takes Martin along with him, sure the boy will not survive alone. They travel north away from the worse affected areas and take time out so that Mister can train Martin how to fight vampires. North is a place called New Eden that is supposed to be vampire free. The vampires in this film are like those from I Am Legend attacking with no sign of intelligence, they just attack like wild animals. Mot nights they have to find themselves a secure place but they also sometimes stay at small towns that successfully barricaded themselves against the vampires existing on the economics of bartering essential supplies where there is still some elements of normalcy. Between these places the countryside is dangerous and not just vampires on the road they see a nun (Kelly McGillis) being chased by two men and Mister kills both of them. They take the Sister with them since there really nowhere safe for her to go. As they travel they hear a cult preacher on the radio preaching about the vampires being sent from God. They call themselves the Brotherhood and seem to determined to make things much worse for everyone attacking barricades to allow vampires to invade the fragile sanctuaries of civilisation still left. Worse for Mister is that one of he men he killed rescuing the Sister is the son of their leader Jebediah Loven (Michael Cerveris) This is a great film thanks to the believable performances from the leads and script that keeps a tight focus on Martin's story without wandering off into subplots. The narrow focus means we only gets hints of a bigger picture which is a good way of leaving it open for a sequel, as is the open ending. I think it draws the viewer into the story when you know as much the characters do and have to stick with them to find out more. It is a vampire film but there's no glamour to these ones so the Twihards can bog off and the rest of us can relax and enjoy it.
Rating 8/10
Rating 8/10
The Landlord
(I) (2009)
Cheesy and not very funny or scary
6 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Tyler (Derek Dziak) has a problem renting out the apartment in his house because two man-eating demons, green-skinned Rabisu and his master the dog-faced Lamashtu, live in his house and they not only eat all the tenants they do it too quickly for Tyler to collect any rent from them. Two police detectives Lopez and Rosen are also on his case over the large number of his tenants who have gone missing. He complains about this to his sister Amy (Michelle Courvais) who owns the building and pays Tyler to take care of it for her. Amy is a cop who has done a deal with some local ghouls to take care of any criminal scum for her and bring her their money and drugs. She is also having an affair with her partner Warren. Amy just hands Tyler more money leaving him to take of his problems A young woman called Donna (Erin Myers) comes to town desperate for place to stay She wants two things, a divorce and an abortion. After trying to check in to a hotel she finds out about the apartment that's available. She goes to see the apartment and liking the apartment and the price she moves in right away, not noticing Lamashtu sniffing at her hungrily. Tyler likes Donna and really doesn't want her to be eaten by the demons so tries to find a way to stop the demons. Meanwhile Amy is having problem of her own with the ghouls becoming angry and rebellious after she kills one of them when brings her a bag money and drugs covered in gore in public in front of café full of people This film has a tiny budget which means they don't have any real actors in the cast. Donna, Tyler and Amy are okay but the rest of the are pretty bad and the demons are very hammy. The story is fairly interesting and the script has a few funny lines but the lines get very poor delivery so a lot fall flat. It just about works but to get through the film you'd have to be tolerant of the bad acting. The huge teeth the ghouls have to wear would put a lot of pressure on competent actors so they can be forgiven some the difficulties they have delivering their lines. The computer effects are what you'd expect from film with this low a budget.
Super
(I) (2010)
Goofy and disturbing
6 August 2011
Frank D'Arbo (Rainn Wilson) is devastated when his wife Sarah(Liv Tyler) leaves him for Jacques (Kevin Bacon) a big-time crook and drug dealer. Sarah met Frank at the diner where they both worked when she was recovering from drug addiction and they fall in love in and get married. Frank is happy and in love but as time goes on Sarah goes back on drugs and he she meets Jacques. Frank is broken. He desperately tries to get Sarah back from Jacques by jumping onto Jacques' car and begging but Jacques' goons beat him up. A combination of grief, vivid hallucinations and a very cheesy, preachy TV show about a Christian superhero called the Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) convinces Frank that has been chosen for special mission by God. He goes to a comic book store to buy Holy Avenger comics and meets Libby (Ellen Page) who works there. It is Libby who puts the idea in his head of a normal person putting on a costume and taking a stand against evil. Frank creates his Crimson Bolt costume but after his first failed attempt to fight crime he figures he needs a weapon. He chooses to arm himself with a wrench which is a pretty effective weapon against a number of unarmed petty crooks, perverts and queue jumpers This gets into the news and Libby figures out who he is. Libby is an enormous comic book geek and is very excited about the Crimson Bolt and wants to join him fighting crime as his sidekick. She creates her own costume and calls herself Boltie. The level of violence increases dramatically. Libby is insanely brutal and almost kills one guy because she think he might have keyed her friend's car. When she rescues Frank from two of Jacques' goons she gloats over their injuries laughing manically at them. Frank realises they need better weapons and some protection to take on Jacques and rescue Sarah so they go for a shopping montage to a gun store. After a bit of DIY bomb-making Frank lies down for a rest but Libby, dressed in her costume, jumps onto him and sexually assaults him like the insane little cosplay freak that she is. Afterwards he runs to the toilet to throw up and he sees Sarah's face in the bowl of puke. This vision drives Frank to get going to Jacques place to rescue her. The film is fairly light and goofy up to this point despite all the terrible injuries they inflicted on people, but in the climactic battle the mood take a much darker more serious turn. It would difficult not to see the similarities between this film and Kick Ass but comparisons are pointless because they are different films. Kick Ass is a normal nerdy boy trying to emulate the comic book fantasy world he loves and that film is a comic-book inspired action adventure while Crimson Bolt is a fragile man who cannot cope with his wife leaving him and so he retreats into a world of dangerous delusion, thinking he can be superhero and solve all his problems by hitting people with a wrench. The film somehow manages to keep you on Frank's side even though he doesn't just attack violent criminals but anyone who makes him angry and he seems to suffering some untreated psychiatric disorder. The violence is much more realistic in Super with none of the martial arts wire-work that got used in Kick Ass. (which is a great film in its own right).
Rating 7/10
Rating 7/10
Hobo with a Shotgun
(2011)
Rutger Hauer is brilliant in this sleazy homage to Grindhouse films
4 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Rutger Hauer plays a nameless hobo who rolls into town on the back a train. It becomes clear very quickly that this town is the scummiest dirtiest sleaze pit anywhere. The place is run by a psychopathic gangster Drake (Brian Downey) and his two evil little brats Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan. Drake runs the place by fear which he causes by public executions which the public are forced to watch at gunpoint. He does this to his brother near the start of the film, a drain cover is fixed around his neck and he is dropped in to a drain in road so just his head is above the road then a barbed wire noose is tied around his neck and attached to Drakes car, Slick drives the car off at top speed and off pops the head followed by a fountain of blood from the body. The hobo watches all this quietly.
Inside Drake's club the hobo sees some other hobos killed by punks for kicks in fairground dodgem rides. Everywhere is casual brutality. Abby (Molly Dunsworth) is working as a whore in the club and she tries to stop Slick picking on a teenage kid. The hobo notices her and afterwards when Slick approaches her for sex he hobo decides to follow them as they go out into the alley. Lucky he did because there is a goon is waiting with a bin bag to drag Abby away in car but the hobo beats up the two guys with his walking stick then he drags Slick off to the police station. He demands to see the police chief (Jeremy Akerman) who comes out and talks to him. The hobo wants know what the police are doing about Drake and the others. He sympathises with the hobo, wishes he could do more but it turns out the police chief is Drake's little bitch. Slick and Ivan appear together and they cut deep scars into the hobo's chest then the cops throw him the dumpster outside the station.
He staggers through the streets then spots Abby being harassed by a cop. When Abby sees how badly cut he is she takes him back to her apartment to get cleaned up and rested.They talk about how the hobo thinks Abby should be teacher. Then they talk about bears until the hobo falls into a drunken sleep.
Next day he chews broke glass to earn money from a freak with a camera. He goes to pawn shop to buy lawnmower but three masked thieves come in with guns & knives and demand money by threatening to kill a woman and her baby. The hobo sees a shotgun for sale at the same price as the lawnmower. Moments later we have three very dead thieves.
Now we get a bloody montage as the hobo sets about cleaning up the town with his shotgun. The camera freak is first, shot in the guts and forced to eat his video tape. A Pedo Santa gets it then a pair of rapist coke- heads gets it and as the scum start dying the hobo becomes a hero to local people with positive stories about him on the local TV News.
Drake gets Slick to get really nasty against the hobo and what comes next is really nasty. He takes a flame-thrower to a school-bus full of kids. As the story is reported on the local TV news an ice skate blade slams the newsreader in the back and Drake, Slick and Ivan talk to the camera. They boast about burning up the kids on the bus with one of the bodies held up to the camera and they threaten to kill all the other kids in town if the people watching don't start killing all the homeless.
This all builds to an amazing climax that gets weirder still with pair of armoured killers in motorbikes who call themselves The Plague and who fight octopuses?? I just loved this film. The colour is really intense and grainy which complements the nightmarish feel of the film. There is a lot graphic gore which you'll get from the description above and they are really pretty good gore effects all done the old-fashioned way without CGI. Rutger Hauer is just perfect as the hobo. At times looking he's scared and vulnerable then later he's blowing his troubles away with his shotgun. The best bit has to be when he is ranting in despair at the babies in a maternity hospital
I'm sure others will hate this film passionately but for me it's a 10/10.
Inside Drake's club the hobo sees some other hobos killed by punks for kicks in fairground dodgem rides. Everywhere is casual brutality. Abby (Molly Dunsworth) is working as a whore in the club and she tries to stop Slick picking on a teenage kid. The hobo notices her and afterwards when Slick approaches her for sex he hobo decides to follow them as they go out into the alley. Lucky he did because there is a goon is waiting with a bin bag to drag Abby away in car but the hobo beats up the two guys with his walking stick then he drags Slick off to the police station. He demands to see the police chief (Jeremy Akerman) who comes out and talks to him. The hobo wants know what the police are doing about Drake and the others. He sympathises with the hobo, wishes he could do more but it turns out the police chief is Drake's little bitch. Slick and Ivan appear together and they cut deep scars into the hobo's chest then the cops throw him the dumpster outside the station.
He staggers through the streets then spots Abby being harassed by a cop. When Abby sees how badly cut he is she takes him back to her apartment to get cleaned up and rested.They talk about how the hobo thinks Abby should be teacher. Then they talk about bears until the hobo falls into a drunken sleep.
Next day he chews broke glass to earn money from a freak with a camera. He goes to pawn shop to buy lawnmower but three masked thieves come in with guns & knives and demand money by threatening to kill a woman and her baby. The hobo sees a shotgun for sale at the same price as the lawnmower. Moments later we have three very dead thieves.
Now we get a bloody montage as the hobo sets about cleaning up the town with his shotgun. The camera freak is first, shot in the guts and forced to eat his video tape. A Pedo Santa gets it then a pair of rapist coke- heads gets it and as the scum start dying the hobo becomes a hero to local people with positive stories about him on the local TV News.
Drake gets Slick to get really nasty against the hobo and what comes next is really nasty. He takes a flame-thrower to a school-bus full of kids. As the story is reported on the local TV news an ice skate blade slams the newsreader in the back and Drake, Slick and Ivan talk to the camera. They boast about burning up the kids on the bus with one of the bodies held up to the camera and they threaten to kill all the other kids in town if the people watching don't start killing all the homeless.
This all builds to an amazing climax that gets weirder still with pair of armoured killers in motorbikes who call themselves The Plague and who fight octopuses?? I just loved this film. The colour is really intense and grainy which complements the nightmarish feel of the film. There is a lot graphic gore which you'll get from the description above and they are really pretty good gore effects all done the old-fashioned way without CGI. Rutger Hauer is just perfect as the hobo. At times looking he's scared and vulnerable then later he's blowing his troubles away with his shotgun. The best bit has to be when he is ranting in despair at the babies in a maternity hospital
I'm sure others will hate this film passionately but for me it's a 10/10.
After all the build up the Avengers better be amazing
3 August 2011
Steve Rogers (Chris Evans in a really weird-looking body swap CGI) is a weedy little guy who desperately wants to join his buddies in the army fighting against the Nazis during the Second World War. Unfortunately he's just not fit enough. After trying several times and being rejected as medically unfit he is spotted by a scientist Dr Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who is impressed by his relentlessness. He has him recruited to a special scientific division under the command of Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) in the care of sexy English agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Rogers is picked for a pioneering experiment to create a super soldier. Using a mixture of Erskine's super-soldier serum and technology provided by Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) (Iron Man Tony Stark's father) weedy CGI Rogers turn into a big beautiful pumped-up Chris Evans.
Erskine is German but he fled from Germany when his super-soldier experiments there went badly wrong and transformed the Nazi Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) into the megalomaniacal Red Skull. Red Skull is determined to take over the world for himself and to do this he acquires the Cosmic Cube an artifact left by Norse 'gods' which his pet scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) uses to create weapons. He also forms his own fanatically loyal army of followers called Hydra.
To prevent the Americans destroying his advantage Red Skull sends an agent to kill Dr Erskine and destroy his experiments. He manages to kill Erskine but is too late to destroy the experiment. However without Erskine the super-soldier experiment is abandoned.
Rogers is recruited to front a publicity campaign for war bonds, touring the country with dancing-girls in a cheesy Captain America costume. But it is not enough for Rogers and he wants to get involved in the fighting. When he hears that Red Skull has captured a large number of allied troops including his childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Rogers goes behind enemy lines alone to the Hydra base and rescues almost 400 troops, including Bucky.
The story continues with Rogers being equipped with a leather Captain America costume, being given his iconic shield and hand-picking a squad of men to go around Europe wrecking Hydra's bases and trying to stop Red Skull's plans to dominate the world by destroying huge chunks of it.
This is film is a fine lead in to next year's Avengers film and it really does a great job of setting up Cap's back story. The wartime setting was pretty well done and I wouldn't have minded seeing another Captain America film set back in that time but I doubt that will happen very soon. Red Skull was a bit of a one-note villain and his only motivation seems to be that he is mad and evil (which just like the comic-book character I suppose). It may not as good as Iron Man but it is better than Thor and the Incredible Hulk and has raised the stakes for The Avengers . After all this build up that film had better be spectacular
Rating 7/10
Erskine is German but he fled from Germany when his super-soldier experiments there went badly wrong and transformed the Nazi Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) into the megalomaniacal Red Skull. Red Skull is determined to take over the world for himself and to do this he acquires the Cosmic Cube an artifact left by Norse 'gods' which his pet scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) uses to create weapons. He also forms his own fanatically loyal army of followers called Hydra.
To prevent the Americans destroying his advantage Red Skull sends an agent to kill Dr Erskine and destroy his experiments. He manages to kill Erskine but is too late to destroy the experiment. However without Erskine the super-soldier experiment is abandoned.
Rogers is recruited to front a publicity campaign for war bonds, touring the country with dancing-girls in a cheesy Captain America costume. But it is not enough for Rogers and he wants to get involved in the fighting. When he hears that Red Skull has captured a large number of allied troops including his childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Rogers goes behind enemy lines alone to the Hydra base and rescues almost 400 troops, including Bucky.
The story continues with Rogers being equipped with a leather Captain America costume, being given his iconic shield and hand-picking a squad of men to go around Europe wrecking Hydra's bases and trying to stop Red Skull's plans to dominate the world by destroying huge chunks of it.
This is film is a fine lead in to next year's Avengers film and it really does a great job of setting up Cap's back story. The wartime setting was pretty well done and I wouldn't have minded seeing another Captain America film set back in that time but I doubt that will happen very soon. Red Skull was a bit of a one-note villain and his only motivation seems to be that he is mad and evil (which just like the comic-book character I suppose). It may not as good as Iron Man but it is better than Thor and the Incredible Hulk and has raised the stakes for The Avengers . After all this build up that film had better be spectacular
Rating 7/10
The Devil's Rock
(2011)
Enjoyable film but a bit too much talk
3 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Second World War, two Kiwi troops are sent to the German occupied Channel island of Forau to blow up a big gun as a diversion. from the real D-Day invasion plans. After a tense time getting past land-mines on the beach Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hall) and Sergeant Joe Tane (Karlos Drinkwater) make it to the gun with little problem and get to work planting explosives. They hear terrible screams from inside the German fortification and investigate further. They find all the German soldiers dead, brutally slaughtered and their bodies are torn apart. Suddenly a German officer appears and shoots Tane dead and captures Grogan.
When Grogan come round his he is tortured by the officer Colonel Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) who want Grogan to tell him about the Allies' invasion plans but Grogan tell him northing. The scream start up again making Meyer very nervous . He scoops up a bucket full of gore from the bodies lying around and leaves to feed whatever is screaming. When returns Grogan demands to know what is going on.. Grogan escapes and chase Meyer through the tunnels of the fortification.
He come to room with magic symbols on the floor and a grimoire full of spells on conjuring demons. And chained to the wall is a woman (Gina Varela)who looks just like his dead wife. She begs Grogan to free her but just then Meyer then enters the room, shoots Grogan in the leg and shoots the woman in the head He explain that the woman is a demon that they conjured to use as a weapon against the allies. She can look like whoever she wants to different people including people that they love. She is not dead and indeed she comes back to life soon after. Meyer proves she is a demon by tossing severed leg down at her and she transforms into a horned demon.
Meyer tells Grogan that he needs his help to send the demon back to hell and if Grogan assists him he will turn himself into the allies and give him all the information he has about the German plans. The two men must put aside their mutual hatred and work together to defeat the demon and escape.
This film has fairly low budget but it does make very good of what money it had, with very authentic sets and realistic looking gore all over the place. The only problem for me is that the film seems to take place when most of the action is already over and instead of on screen action there is a lot of the characters talking to each other – it is almost like this film is the third act of story padded out to a feature film length.
The acting is great especially from Matthew Sutherland and Craig Hall. Overall the film is okay but a bit long of the dialogue and short on the action.
Rating 6/10
When Grogan come round his he is tortured by the officer Colonel Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) who want Grogan to tell him about the Allies' invasion plans but Grogan tell him northing. The scream start up again making Meyer very nervous . He scoops up a bucket full of gore from the bodies lying around and leaves to feed whatever is screaming. When returns Grogan demands to know what is going on.. Grogan escapes and chase Meyer through the tunnels of the fortification.
He come to room with magic symbols on the floor and a grimoire full of spells on conjuring demons. And chained to the wall is a woman (Gina Varela)who looks just like his dead wife. She begs Grogan to free her but just then Meyer then enters the room, shoots Grogan in the leg and shoots the woman in the head He explain that the woman is a demon that they conjured to use as a weapon against the allies. She can look like whoever she wants to different people including people that they love. She is not dead and indeed she comes back to life soon after. Meyer proves she is a demon by tossing severed leg down at her and she transforms into a horned demon.
Meyer tells Grogan that he needs his help to send the demon back to hell and if Grogan assists him he will turn himself into the allies and give him all the information he has about the German plans. The two men must put aside their mutual hatred and work together to defeat the demon and escape.
This film has fairly low budget but it does make very good of what money it had, with very authentic sets and realistic looking gore all over the place. The only problem for me is that the film seems to take place when most of the action is already over and instead of on screen action there is a lot of the characters talking to each other – it is almost like this film is the third act of story padded out to a feature film length.
The acting is great especially from Matthew Sutherland and Craig Hall. Overall the film is okay but a bit long of the dialogue and short on the action.
Rating 6/10
Evil Calls: The Raven
(2002)
The quite a good in there but I think it got abducted by the Blair Witch
2 August 2011
The Legend of Harrow Woods (also called Evil Calls)
This is an artsy film with very little plot. It is also non-linear and I don't think making sense was important to the writer-director. So now you have more warning than I got when I picked up the DVD. The box lists some the actors who appear in it such as Rik Mayall, Norman Wisdom, Jason Donovan and Robin Askwith. It is true they are in the film but none of them are main characters except for perhaps Jason Donovan.
There are two stories being told throughout the film. One is the story of the Internetters - a bunch irritating spoilt brats who have this thing where they go to haunted places and investigate them on the birthday of one the club's members Gary (Jason Donovan) and Karl Richard Waters) run a website for the club. Gary has found out about a story of a family who have disappeared in Harrow Woods in New England ( yeah sure New England). The area has a legend that the area was cursed by a witch when they executed her there. So the Internetters are going to Harrows Woods with a bunch hand-held cameras to investigate, like a posh brat version of the Scooby Gang. The whole thing is getting streamed live on their website.
One of the group, Anna is psychic and she keep getting flashes of the family that disappeared. Through Anna's visions we learn more of that second story (and enjoy it more, leaving it each time with regret). George Carney, his wife Vivienne and their two kids go the woods with George's brother Vincent (Robin Askwith.).George thinks Vivienne and Vincent are having an affair and this fear is manifested in a series of identical interactions with three different toilet attendants. The first is Norman Wisdom looking very old and frail. The next one is Rik Mayall in full Alan B'stard mode and the third is a woman in a mask naked under her suit jacket in a toilet full of naked women wearing blindfolds.
This film really tried very hard to be weird with horrible images flashing by. The visions of the Carney family seems to be from a different film with a decent cast and a strong David Lynch vibe and its all shot on real film which has been processed to look old and decayed.
But this reasonably interesting film has been cut up and grafted into a badly acted shaky-cam Blair Witch copy. There only seems be two actors among the Internetters, Karl and Gary. The rest of them are very poor. They are also all very similar looking and a lot action is in the dark so its difficult to see what's going on. It did not help things when Eileen Daly appeared as another psychic called Victoria which giving the film a cheesy ham attack.
The 3D was one thing that seemed to work out. It was dark and often hallucinatory and in those scenes it worked out nicely.
I cannot recommend this film to anyone I know since I think they will all hate it . I didn't hate it but I don't imagine seeking it out to watch again. It has some female nudity and a small amount of gore (not counting the gallons of red liquid splashing about all over the place
Rating 5/10
This is an artsy film with very little plot. It is also non-linear and I don't think making sense was important to the writer-director. So now you have more warning than I got when I picked up the DVD. The box lists some the actors who appear in it such as Rik Mayall, Norman Wisdom, Jason Donovan and Robin Askwith. It is true they are in the film but none of them are main characters except for perhaps Jason Donovan.
There are two stories being told throughout the film. One is the story of the Internetters - a bunch irritating spoilt brats who have this thing where they go to haunted places and investigate them on the birthday of one the club's members Gary (Jason Donovan) and Karl Richard Waters) run a website for the club. Gary has found out about a story of a family who have disappeared in Harrow Woods in New England ( yeah sure New England). The area has a legend that the area was cursed by a witch when they executed her there. So the Internetters are going to Harrows Woods with a bunch hand-held cameras to investigate, like a posh brat version of the Scooby Gang. The whole thing is getting streamed live on their website.
One of the group, Anna is psychic and she keep getting flashes of the family that disappeared. Through Anna's visions we learn more of that second story (and enjoy it more, leaving it each time with regret). George Carney, his wife Vivienne and their two kids go the woods with George's brother Vincent (Robin Askwith.).George thinks Vivienne and Vincent are having an affair and this fear is manifested in a series of identical interactions with three different toilet attendants. The first is Norman Wisdom looking very old and frail. The next one is Rik Mayall in full Alan B'stard mode and the third is a woman in a mask naked under her suit jacket in a toilet full of naked women wearing blindfolds.
This film really tried very hard to be weird with horrible images flashing by. The visions of the Carney family seems to be from a different film with a decent cast and a strong David Lynch vibe and its all shot on real film which has been processed to look old and decayed.
But this reasonably interesting film has been cut up and grafted into a badly acted shaky-cam Blair Witch copy. There only seems be two actors among the Internetters, Karl and Gary. The rest of them are very poor. They are also all very similar looking and a lot action is in the dark so its difficult to see what's going on. It did not help things when Eileen Daly appeared as another psychic called Victoria which giving the film a cheesy ham attack.
The 3D was one thing that seemed to work out. It was dark and often hallucinatory and in those scenes it worked out nicely.
I cannot recommend this film to anyone I know since I think they will all hate it . I didn't hate it but I don't imagine seeking it out to watch again. It has some female nudity and a small amount of gore (not counting the gallons of red liquid splashing about all over the place
Rating 5/10
Limitless
(I) (2011)
Drugs Are Good Mmmkay
1 August 2011
Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is standing on a penthouse balcony with killers losing in on him and he's about to throw himself off. We'll clearly come back to this scene later. We flash back to Eddie as a scruffy loser who can't write and leeches off his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) to get by. Everything changes when he takes drug given to him by his ex-wife's brother Vernon. NZT-48 is a brain enhancing drug that improves reflexes, memory, concentration and heightens his senses and makes the camera lose its blue filter. Buzzing on the drug, he cleans up his apartment and gets to work writing his book all through the rest of the night. The following morning he is back to normal but now has large chunk of his book written.
Eddie goes to Vernon's apartment to get more of the drug. He seems oblivious to fact that Vernon looks rough and roughed-up. Vernon knows he's after more NZT-48 but first he make Eddie go a few errands for him. When Eddie gets back Vernon is dead with a bullet in his brain and the apartment has been ransacked. He calls the police to report the murder then desperately hunts for the drug . Luckily Eddie finds a large stash of the drug with a pile of money and pockets both as the police arrive.
We then get a montage of Eddie being smart, competent and popular, hanging with around loose women in exotic locations and driving fast cars. He wants to be rich and powerful and can't make money fast enough so he turns to a dodgy Russian moneylender ( I thought the drug was supposed you smart). With that money he really starts getting into his stride, making large amounts on the stock-market. This brings to him to attention of rich powerful people, such as Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) the boss of a energy company who is really impressed with Eddie's ideas and arranges another meeting the following day ( I wonder if his humourless no-nonsense persona is a side effect of growing up with that hilarious name).
Eddie starts seeing the downside of NZT-48 – his supply is starting to run low and he getting withdrawal symptoms and he hasn't even found out who makes it. He has blackouts where he may have killed a woman. He blows it big time at his meeting with Van Loon. The Russian moneylender has also got a taste for the drug ( thanks to Eddie forgetting to pay him his money – that must the 'Smart' drug at work again) and he's on Eddie's back for more. Whoever killed Vernon is now after him too. And the blue filter is back on the camera
I did enjoy watching this film but it didn't really go anywhere that was too surprising and the ending was just a cheat. For someone who is apparently limitless his ambition seem so restrained and conventional. It seems that drug turns off the part of the brain that stops people being arrogant megalomaniacs. The mention of the "humans only use 10% of their brain" nonsense is just a lot of rubbish and really wasn't needed for the plot all. Google is a good friend to writers doing research and a terrible foe to all those that just can't be bothered. Bradley Cooper was okay as Eddie but then I didn't like Eddie as either arrogant selfish genius or a self-pitying loser. Robert De Niro was great especially the scene where he's giving Eddie a real dressing down. Anna Friel is in the film as Eddie's ex-wife Melissa which is really not a big part. She does okay with what she given to do.
Rating 6/10
Eddie goes to Vernon's apartment to get more of the drug. He seems oblivious to fact that Vernon looks rough and roughed-up. Vernon knows he's after more NZT-48 but first he make Eddie go a few errands for him. When Eddie gets back Vernon is dead with a bullet in his brain and the apartment has been ransacked. He calls the police to report the murder then desperately hunts for the drug . Luckily Eddie finds a large stash of the drug with a pile of money and pockets both as the police arrive.
We then get a montage of Eddie being smart, competent and popular, hanging with around loose women in exotic locations and driving fast cars. He wants to be rich and powerful and can't make money fast enough so he turns to a dodgy Russian moneylender ( I thought the drug was supposed you smart). With that money he really starts getting into his stride, making large amounts on the stock-market. This brings to him to attention of rich powerful people, such as Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) the boss of a energy company who is really impressed with Eddie's ideas and arranges another meeting the following day ( I wonder if his humourless no-nonsense persona is a side effect of growing up with that hilarious name).
Eddie starts seeing the downside of NZT-48 – his supply is starting to run low and he getting withdrawal symptoms and he hasn't even found out who makes it. He has blackouts where he may have killed a woman. He blows it big time at his meeting with Van Loon. The Russian moneylender has also got a taste for the drug ( thanks to Eddie forgetting to pay him his money – that must the 'Smart' drug at work again) and he's on Eddie's back for more. Whoever killed Vernon is now after him too. And the blue filter is back on the camera
I did enjoy watching this film but it didn't really go anywhere that was too surprising and the ending was just a cheat. For someone who is apparently limitless his ambition seem so restrained and conventional. It seems that drug turns off the part of the brain that stops people being arrogant megalomaniacs. The mention of the "humans only use 10% of their brain" nonsense is just a lot of rubbish and really wasn't needed for the plot all. Google is a good friend to writers doing research and a terrible foe to all those that just can't be bothered. Bradley Cooper was okay as Eddie but then I didn't like Eddie as either arrogant selfish genius or a self-pitying loser. Robert De Niro was great especially the scene where he's giving Eddie a real dressing down. Anna Friel is in the film as Eddie's ex-wife Melissa which is really not a big part. She does okay with what she given to do.
Rating 6/10
Unknown
(I) (2011)
Implausible but entertaining
31 July 2011
Dr Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and wife Elizabeth (January Jones) arrive in Berlin for an important biotechnology conference. When they get to their hotel Harris realises he has left a briefcase at the airport. He gets into another taxi back to airport but there is an accident and the taxi goes off a bridge into the river. The driver Gina (Diane Kruger) rescues the unconscious Harris and he wakes from a coma four days later in a hospital.
He heads to the hotel where he and his wife were supposed to be staying, the same hotel where the biotechnology summit is taking place. He is wondering why his wife hasn't been looking for him. When he gets there he finds it difficult to get past security without ID until he see his wife. The security man takes him to see her and verify his story but she denies knowing him and she indicates a totally different man is her husband Dr Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn). He escapes being jailed by claiming he must still be confused after his coma and showing them a card from his doctor.
Harris starts to doubt his sanity so starts searching for help figuring out what is going on. First he looks for Gina, the taxi driver, who saved him but when he finds her she is afraid to say anything to the authorities because she is an illegal immigrant from Bosnia. Next he heads to the University where Dr Bressler (Sebastian Koch) works. This is the scientist who is holding the biotechnology conference, funded by a controversial progressive Middle-Eastern Prince Shada. Everywhere that Bressler goes he brings his two creepy twin teenage daughters with him. It turns out that Harris 2.0 is already there with Bressler. Harris tries to prove he is the genuine one by recounting memories of his talks with Bressler but Harris 2.0 manages to recall the same memories word for word simultaneously. Harris now believes that he is mad and may not be the genuine Martin Harris.
This all leads right to a big twisty revelation at the end that I had better keep quiet about but when I saw the twist it made me totally recall an older film. Even mentioning that other film would be such a spoiler. It all involves car chases, Bruno Ganz as an old Stasi agent working as a private investigator, assassins called Smith and Jones, Frank Langella, that briefcase he left at the airport and Gina the pretty taxi driver. Just to remind us we're in Germany we had big foaming barrels of beer all over one of the car chases. I thought it was all fairly implausible but it is still good entertainment. The action moves fast enough to avoid asking too many questions such as, did that passport really claim Harris was born in 1964?
Rating 6/10
He heads to the hotel where he and his wife were supposed to be staying, the same hotel where the biotechnology summit is taking place. He is wondering why his wife hasn't been looking for him. When he gets there he finds it difficult to get past security without ID until he see his wife. The security man takes him to see her and verify his story but she denies knowing him and she indicates a totally different man is her husband Dr Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn). He escapes being jailed by claiming he must still be confused after his coma and showing them a card from his doctor.
Harris starts to doubt his sanity so starts searching for help figuring out what is going on. First he looks for Gina, the taxi driver, who saved him but when he finds her she is afraid to say anything to the authorities because she is an illegal immigrant from Bosnia. Next he heads to the University where Dr Bressler (Sebastian Koch) works. This is the scientist who is holding the biotechnology conference, funded by a controversial progressive Middle-Eastern Prince Shada. Everywhere that Bressler goes he brings his two creepy twin teenage daughters with him. It turns out that Harris 2.0 is already there with Bressler. Harris tries to prove he is the genuine one by recounting memories of his talks with Bressler but Harris 2.0 manages to recall the same memories word for word simultaneously. Harris now believes that he is mad and may not be the genuine Martin Harris.
This all leads right to a big twisty revelation at the end that I had better keep quiet about but when I saw the twist it made me totally recall an older film. Even mentioning that other film would be such a spoiler. It all involves car chases, Bruno Ganz as an old Stasi agent working as a private investigator, assassins called Smith and Jones, Frank Langella, that briefcase he left at the airport and Gina the pretty taxi driver. Just to remind us we're in Germany we had big foaming barrels of beer all over one of the car chases. I thought it was all fairly implausible but it is still good entertainment. The action moves fast enough to avoid asking too many questions such as, did that passport really claim Harris was born in 1964?
Rating 6/10
Unstoppable
(2010)
Daytime TV disaster movie with a bigger budget
30 July 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Unstoppable In a rail yard in Pennsylvania a total idiot called Dewey (Ethan Suplee who plays Earl's brother Randy in My Name is Earl) screws up badly while driving a massive freight train No.777. This train is full of dangerous cargo so Dewey naturally enough doesn't bother connecting the air brakes then jumps off the train to change points. The train speeds off without him. Disaster looms but the scale is not quite grasped as they think the train is coasting without power We learn a bit about rookie conductor Will (Chris Pine) and experienced driver Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington). Union and company politics means Frank faces enforced retirement to make way for younger cheaper workers such as Will Colson (and of course Dewey). Will screws up by attaching five too many cars to the train but Frank keeps going instead of going back and detaching the other cars. Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) the yard master gets her chief welder Ned Oldham along with Dewey and another idiot Gilleece to try and intercept the train at a siding. That's when they realise the train is not coasting but is going full throttle and will very likely go off the rails in a heavily populated area, mostly likely into a large fuel dump in the town of Stanton just positioned right under a large S-bend in an elevated section of the track and seemingly designed to result in maximum carnage. Before that we have a train that is full of school kids on a special train safety awareness trip and their train is heading straight for 777. The tension builds as precious little angels sing stupid rail safety songs and the driver turns into a siding and narrowly avoids blood and death for himself and all the little brats. When 777 obliterates a horse box the media soon take an interest. Police and media helicopters buzz around the train and the company vice- president of train operations Oscar Galvin takes charge of trying to stop 777. His mad plan is getting a little train to push it from the front to slow it down enough for a helicopter to smash an ex-marine on a rope into the window of the drivers cabin. As you'd expect hitting the runaway train with a smashed up marine on rope does very little to slow it down very much. And for extra fun the little train that couldn't derails in a ball of flames and a dead driver. After Franks and Will's train has a close encounter with 777 (thanks to the five extra cars) Frank comes up with a plan a little less psychotic than Galvin's. After Galvin fails yet again with a plan to derail the train in a little town it's all up to Frank and Will to stop 777. I really liked the action scenes and the use of the news clips was quite well done - nice way to build up the tension by having it done by rolling news coverage. I suppose they had to get in all that character stuff as well but I wasn't too interested in that. At first I thought Chris Pine was some sort of kiddie stalker but don't worry, it's just his kid and he's separated from his wife, gun - threats - restraining order blah blah blah. Chris Pine didn't really convince me of any of that stuff at all. Fortunately he is okay at the action scenes.
Rating 6/10
Rating 6/10
The Devil's Rain
(1975)
Just not cheesy enough to be fun
18 July 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Here's a mouldy oldie from deep in the cheese vault. I haven't seen this for many years since I saw it on TV sometime in the 80s (I remember a time when old horror films were regularly shown on TV). This review will have spoilers
Mrs Preston (Ida Lupino) is worried that her husband is missing and so her son Mark Preston (William Shatner) goes to confront the Satanist sorcerer Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) who has kidnapped his father in an attempt force the Preston family to return a book to him stolen from him by one of their ancestors who betrayed Corbis. This book has the signatures of all those whose souls he has captured but he can't return to Hell with the souls until he has the book. Preston challenges Corbis to battle of faith which he loses and so he too is captured by Corbis.
It is now up to a team made up psychic investigator Tom Preston (Tom Skerrit), his wife Julie (Joan Prather) and Dr Sam Richard (Eddie Albert) to confront Corbis and try to rescue Tom's family from Corbis's clutches. Their first attempt fails and Julie is captured to used in their next ceremony. Tom and Dr Richard discover a jar full souls in torment, The Devil's Rain. Just as Corbis's ceremony reaches its peak Dr Richard confronts Corbis and smashes the jar, unleashing the Devil's Rain on the cultists. There is then a long drawn out scene where the whole cult melts.
This is not very entertaining film. It is quite amusing to see Shatner earnestly hamming his way through the opening scenes in the film and I was giggling quite a lot at Shatner's rewrite of the Lord's prayer as he battled for his faith. But then the film switches to an unfamiliar group of characters who are now the main protagonists and the early part of the film seems to have been demoted to an extended prologue. I don't know if this why the film just fails to build up any sense of tension but certainly didn't help. The big melt scene at the end is not only long and unpleasant to look at, it is a major anti-climax.
Rating 4/10
Mrs Preston (Ida Lupino) is worried that her husband is missing and so her son Mark Preston (William Shatner) goes to confront the Satanist sorcerer Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) who has kidnapped his father in an attempt force the Preston family to return a book to him stolen from him by one of their ancestors who betrayed Corbis. This book has the signatures of all those whose souls he has captured but he can't return to Hell with the souls until he has the book. Preston challenges Corbis to battle of faith which he loses and so he too is captured by Corbis.
It is now up to a team made up psychic investigator Tom Preston (Tom Skerrit), his wife Julie (Joan Prather) and Dr Sam Richard (Eddie Albert) to confront Corbis and try to rescue Tom's family from Corbis's clutches. Their first attempt fails and Julie is captured to used in their next ceremony. Tom and Dr Richard discover a jar full souls in torment, The Devil's Rain. Just as Corbis's ceremony reaches its peak Dr Richard confronts Corbis and smashes the jar, unleashing the Devil's Rain on the cultists. There is then a long drawn out scene where the whole cult melts.
This is not very entertaining film. It is quite amusing to see Shatner earnestly hamming his way through the opening scenes in the film and I was giggling quite a lot at Shatner's rewrite of the Lord's prayer as he battled for his faith. But then the film switches to an unfamiliar group of characters who are now the main protagonists and the early part of the film seems to have been demoted to an extended prologue. I don't know if this why the film just fails to build up any sense of tension but certainly didn't help. The big melt scene at the end is not only long and unpleasant to look at, it is a major anti-climax.
Rating 4/10
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