I have moved on...

Hello. After some frequent updating my blogging slowed to a standstill over the summer. Rather than keep up this blog at a slower pace, I moved to another site that isn't effected by that google bug thing that makes viewing blogger difficult if not impossible for some folks

The new blog 'Last 5 Films' is here

http://last5films.weebly.com/index.html

and the format is self explanitary. No need to sign up to anything to comment either, so swing by and tell me what you think.

Thanks for reading,

Turner

Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds – 2009, Quentin Tarantino

I remember begrudgingly accepting that Inglorious Basterds was a good film upon its release a couple of years ago. I went into the cinema with an open mind after all the hype that comes with ‘The New Tarantino’ but there were a few things that put me off at the very start, Firstly there’s the three opening titles fonts. I had forgotten all about them, and watching it again in DVD, they weren’t quite so annoying but they’re still unnecessary and out of place (I wonder if Quentin regrets it now).

You remember, it starts out like this



then changes to this



then through out the film it's like this



apart from this bit



It’s a minor thing to moan about, and they only detract from all the good bits a little. Bastards is a self conscious ‘genre’ film like every film Quentin has made since Jackie Brown (I’d say the Jackie Brown and everything before are unselfconscious genre films, not to suggest that Quentin didn’t make genre films on purpose, he just never used to wear it like a badge of honour) And such films are idiosyncratic enough through the use of unorthodox sound and fast-cut flashbacks and such things, without resorting to crazy ‘look at me’ on screen text, which should really be far less obtrusive (in my old fashioned opinion).

The other thing that grated the first time I watched Inglorious Basterds was harder to put my finger on. I think I had begun to tire of what I perceived as smugness. Basically, Quentin’s dialogue isn’t as good as he thinks it is, and in Kill Bill and Death Proof, there are long talky bits that everyone gets bored of. The problem with Kill Bill and Death Proof is that the long sections of dialogue are an indulgence, serving no dramatic purpose, whereas in Inglorious Bastards, the conversations create the tension. Each of these films is full of peril, but because of the setting in occupied France, the peril the Basterds are put in is far more affecting.

Inglorious Basterds captures the politeness of 40’s Europe and contrasts it with the barbarism of the Nazis in a way that almost no other WWII film does (and I’ve seen a few). The characters are experts in polite conversation. They are very pleasant company, yet war and ideology force them to do despicable things. The long, occasionally one-sided conversations that take place emphasise this contradiction and create a very real sense of unease.

I suppose the reason I may have missed this first time round is because Inglorious Basterds slightly uneven. Half the scenes are tense, the other half are funny (the great Christoph Waltz is present in both varieties). Any cinemagoer will more likely remember the funny bits of a film rather that the perilous bits. Watching it again I think that the balance between drama and comedy, tragedy and farce, is pretty much perfect, further emphasising the contradiction of wartime Europe.

So belated congratulations are in order Mr Tarantino. I think the only bad thing about Inglorious Basterds is Brad Pitt. I hope that Michael K Williams gets the part in Django Unchained rather than Will Smith.

And what did you learn today?

Way back in early 2010 I started to write a review of Schindler’s List but ended up with a brief stream-of-consciousness blog about WWII films in general. I think I was trying to make the same observations about the atrocities of that period that Richey Edwards made far more eloquently in the song The Intense Humming of Evil.

Richey’s notes from the Holy Bible Tour Book read:

The Intense Humming Of Evil"/"Mausoleum:
"Brother/sister songs. Visited Dachau and Hiroshima. What reflections should be for everyone. Otherwise we're all Edward Scissorhands Avon Lady. Winners dictate history. Holocaust one of the few examples where even truth is being questioned. Revisionist historians. Danger of Schindler's List - Portrayal of merely flawed man. Never question our own past - myth of Churchill. "An individual death means little - millions must mean something?"

Schindler’s List is the obvious example of a big Hollywood Movie dramatising the holocaust, but since then (and since Richey’s disappearance) there have been others. I always felt a little uncomfortable watching the WWII veterans speak at the beginning of Band of Brothers, and I always wondered how they reacted to watching their experiences recreated on screen. Was it really like that? I’d believe them if they said it was.

So anyway, here is a clip-heavy and probably too long animated short about films about the Second World War.

Ten Short Film Reviews Eleven

Glen-Gary Glen Ross – 1992, James Foley
aka ‘Death of a Fucking Salesman’ aka ‘Famous Actors Swearing At Each Other’.
Based on a play and packed with an all male cast of stellar actors giving incredible performances. You may have stumbled upon the famous scene where Alec Baldwin rips into Jack Lemon, Ed Harris and Alan Akrin on Youtube but if you haven’t, rather than watch it in isolation I’d recommend watching the whole thing. Put it on your lists.

Marathon Man – 1976, John Schlesinger
I was expecting to be underwhelmed but this one is actually quite good. I was disappointed by The French Connection and The Conversation and even slightly let down by Mean Streets, so I though this 70s thriller would turn out to fail to live up to the hype. Dustin Hoffman delivers his typical style of character; all sincere vulnerability that comes across as charming (clearly a great inspiration for Jason Schwartzman, I’ve been watching Bored To Death recently, it’s the best thing on telly I reckon). The tense drama of the story combined with Hoffman’s youthful whimsy is what makes this one well worth a watch.

Undisputed – 2002, Walter Hill
I wasn’t expecting greatness but I was still disappointed by Undisputed. I’m a big fan of Walter Hill, not just his films but his attitude to film making. ‘Every film I’ve done has been a Western’ he famously said, and he’s right: The Driver, The Warriors, 48 Hours, Red Heat, and Last Man Standing are my faves. Walter also made more than his share of absolute duds, and though Undisputed isn’t a complete train wreck, it’s not so good. It’s a boxing drama set in a prison with Ving Rhames playing a Mike Tyson inspired character sent down for a sexual assault he vehemently denies. Once he’s banged-up the film becomes a predictable prison yard yarn with bent screws and screwy cons. If only Undisputed had been made in the 70s it might have had the same charm as many of Walter’s other films. As it is the story and characters are as stale as the ubiquitous and poorly compiled hip hop soundtrack. Sadly, Ving proves himself to be no more than a competent supporting actor unable to carry a lead, even when sharing the screen with a more wooden than usual Wesley Snipes.

Hard Eight – 1996, Paul Thomas Anderson
An unknown Gem.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature debut is excellently written with an excellent cast. John C. Reilly does very well in a non comedic role which makes it seem even stranger that he’s appeared in so many sub-par comedies. I suppose he was just best buds with Will Ferrell when he was at his peak of popularity. Quite similar to The Cooler, maybe slightly better? It’s a tightly made film, there’s nothing that might be unnecessary, dramatic but never excessive.

American Splendour – 2003, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
I had this DVD on my shelf for a year before I finally got round to watching it. I saw it at the cinema way back and remembered it was good, but I’d forgotten how good.
Paul Giamatti is amazing, and although he makes it seem like no other actor could have played Harvey Pekar, Harvey’s life and personality would make any film about him compelling. Pekar was the original loveable loser. Years ago I saw the documentary about Robert Crumb, who is equally interesting but far less endearing (coz he’s a massive perv). The directors of Splendour have worked together on a few films since that are all probably worth checking out.

Porco Rosso – 1992, Hayao Miyazaki
Far from the best of Miyazaki’s films but still excellent. It’s about an Italian fighter pilot at the turn of the (last) century who has been turned into a pig. Typically imaginative with familiar character design. No real environmentalist undertone this time, but a smattering of anti-fascist sentiment. Of all the Miyazaki films it’s the least ambitious in terms of scale and animation, it was followed by the almost epic Princess Mononoke which is every bit as good as Spirited Away in my opinion.

Happy Together – 1997, Wong Kar-Wai
Another dreamy tale from Wong Kar-Wai. I just read my previous post on a couple of films of his and on his style in general. I think I was a little harsh, especially now that I’ve watched a few Andrei Tarkovsky films. There’s a big difference between the free flowing, illusory beauty of Wong’s films and the bare tedium of Andrei’s. Happy together a very simple story about two lovers who try to escape to a better place, and end up realising that they really need to escape from each other. Visually, it’s probably a huge influence on scores of young cinematographers, and like most of Wong’s film it stars The World’s Finest Actor Tony Leung.

Coraline – 2009, Henry Selick
Stunning stop-motion animation from the guy who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. I’m a big fan of stop motion and animation in general and this film is a real marvel. The story and the characters are slightly lacking, but then again it is a film for kids. Any thinness to the plot is more than made up for by the quality of the animation, and the more I find out about how it was made, the more in awe I am of the talented people who made it. It actually looks too good to be true in parts, and though there are clearly some digital effects, the character and the sets all exist in real life.



Planet Terror - 2007, Robert Rodriguez
Grind House marks the beginning of a kind of low in the history of cinema that hasn’t quite passed, but the disappointment of Machete could bring the ‘self conscious exploitation genre’ to an end. Neither Planet Terror nor Death Proof are completely awful, but both of them appear to have skipped a very important stage of pre-production; the script review. Normally (as is my understanding of the Hollywood Studio film making process) a script will be assessed and rewritten, maybe even eventually being written by committee, until the shooting script is ‘locked’. Often the good films closely resemble the original draft (Predator, Lethal Weapon) and the not so good ones end up as something completely different (Alien 3, Last Action Hero, although I like both). The Weinstein Company was so smitten with Tarantino and his mate Richard Rodriquez that they let them go off and do whatever they wanted to do, when really there should have been more input from other writers and producers. All style and little substance with some ideas that weren’t as good as they seemed when they thought of them. It lacks the soul of the films that inspired it.

Gangster No1 – 2000 – Paul McGuigan
Crappy British Gangster Film No 72.
Paul Bettany is in danger of becoming the new Clive Owen. He’s not quite so uncharismatic and boring, but he does the same ‘see how refreshingly understated I am’ thing. Luckily he seems to have found a niche that suits his talents; action-horrors steeped with Christian mysticism. I though Legion was OK and the new one about the futuristic vampire hunting monks or whatever looks fun.
Gangster No1 is just more over indulged cockney turd. Malcolm McDowell plays Bettany’s character as an old man, and delivers completely the opposite type of performance, chewing the scenery like crazy. It’s almost embarrassing to watch. Are there any British actors who aren’t overrated?

Splice

Splice – 2009, Vincenzo Natali

Genetic engineering goes horribly wrong in tense sci-fi horror. Sounds unoriginal and uninteresting, so it’s no surprise that even with a promising international trailer (‘Embed disabled by request’. Lame) Splice went by quite unnoticed.

The premise of Splice isn’t anything new; ambitious scientist take an experiment in ‘gene splicing’ too far and it’s all aboard to The Island of Dr Moreau, but this time it’s well written enough to rise above the usual B-Movie status.

The protagonists are scientists and lovers Adrian ‘Oscar Curse’ Brody and Sarah ‘been in loads of films but you still won’t recognise her’ Polley. At first they come across as un-likable, annoyingly cool, hip young scientist prodigy ‘nerds’. They live in a cool apartment surrounded by cool Japanese art and stuff and even in the lab they wear expensive and stylish clobber. As with all modern day would-be Frankensteins, their geeky ambition in the face of corporate pressure leads then to stay up late and, via Science Montage, isolate that elusive genome or whatever. And so what if we use human DNA, we’ll just destroy the embryo after a few cell divisions right?

Wrong. A monster is created. It starts out as the freaky rabbit thing from the clip and quickly grows into a super fast, super strong, almost human being. Things progress slightly predictably, but the lead characters are given enough subtly revealed background history to flesh them out and make their rash behaviour believable. Adrian and Sarah aren’t just crazy scientists, they progress from enthusiastic creators to unwilling custodians to loving parents to jealous lovers, all within a well paced 100 minutes.

The creature effects are well designed and executed and the director achieves just the right mix of suspense, gore, shocks and sexual tension that are vital to any horror (although it’s not a Horror horror if you know what I mean). About half way through the action relocates from the laboratory setting to the familiar creepy barn near the creepy woods, which seems a little lazy and clichéd but it makes sense to the plot and probably helped keep the budget modest. It’s cheaper to film things happening in the dark after all.

Good stuff all round, as good as my other favourite under the radar sci-fi film from 2009, Surrogates.

I was pleased to hear that Mr Natali is going to take the reigns of the long awaited Neuromancer adaptation.

European Crime Drama

Baise-Moi - 2000, Virginie Despartes & Coralie Trinh Thi

More should be done to warn the public about overrated films in order to save them the time and embarrassment of watching them. If I’d known before hand that ‘Baise-Moi’ is French for ‘Fuck Me’ I’d have known to avoid it. Baise-Moi became famous, or ‘notorious’, when the French censors tried to ban it and prevent its release unless heavily edited. This caused a certain amount of uproar amongst a few Frenchies who must have been fans of the book that the film was based on. ‘How can it be that in modern France, a film is banned just because it shows graphic sex and violence?’ was the argument the protestors put forward, disgusted at the idea of ‘the establishment’ censoring a film that didn’t feature anything that hadn’t been done before. An independent film representing the cutting edge of French cinema, self consciously continuing the spirit of Reservoir Dogs (according to what the author/director said in the special feature I watched on the DVD), and fighting against the American Hollywood Bullshit.

Of course the reason the French censors wanted to ban Baise-Moi is because , as Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona might put it, c’est un sac de merde. I doubt a French cinema censor is going to be bothered about watching hardcore porn in a film, or badly executed bloody violence (due to bad direction rather than the low budget). But if a film consists primarily of sex, violence and sexual violence, and there is no artistic merit to any of it, a censor might understandably feel that it is in no-ones interest to watch it.

It seems to me that everyone involved in the banning of Baise-Moi got it wrong. In trying to best fulfil their role of serving the public interest, the censors brought fame and notoriety to a film that no one should watch (as always happens when a film is banned. When will those censors learn?). Those who spoke out in favour of the film misinterpreted the reason for Baise-Moi’s initial censorship. It wasn’t prudish Puritanism that caused the French film authorities to ban Baise-Moi, it was defence of French cinema as a whole. There are a thousand incredible French films out there which are increasingly finding the international audience they deserve, and Baise-Moi lets the side down. By banning it the censors were doing the world a favour.

Inevitably the censors backed down, and even more inevitably the uncut DVD release appeared with enough quotes on the back from journalists who should know better to dupe the public into making Baise-Moi a home video hit.

The first twenty minutes or so aren’t actually that bad. The film has clearly been made on a shoe string with one camera and some amateur actors (and an amateur director?), but there is a grittiness to the opening scenes that is very promising. The two protagonists are introduced as women permanently down on their luck, victims of the small world they live in. Crime, drugs, rape and prostitution are part of their lives and for a long time they’ve accepted it. But things come to a head for the women individually, and when by chance they meet, it’s time for the main body of the story to begin, dragging the film down with it.

The two initially sympathetic French sluts embark on a road trip that becomes an orgy of sex and violence, more boring the more it tries to shock us. The rest of the film involves the women encountering a series of one dimensional male characters who will either get their cock out or suffer a gory death. That’s no exaggeration; almost every man in the film is either fucked or murdered. Maybe I missed some subtle commentary in this reversal of typical genre roles in such films, but I was too bored to pay close enough attention.

One of the things that I found so off-putting about Baise-Moi was the hardcore porn scenes. Of course I’ve seen loads of porn, but at the risk of revealing too much about myself, I find porn very boring when I’m not watching it ‘in anger’. The first close-up shot of a blow job occurring is a bit unexpected, but from then on it just gets tedious. The difference between sex and porn is that sex is between Person A and Person B, porn takes place between Person A, Person B and Camera Operator C. It’s carried out as a performance, not an act of pleasure. Un-simulated sex is always more shocking (and arousing perhaps) in mainstream cinema than ‘look what we’re doing’ porn. The directors and cast of Baise-Moi were too either too dumb or too keen to shock to notice this. Being unsophisticated is not a cinematic crime, and it can even be an asset to a film, but Baise-Moi takes itself far too seriously to get away with such poor film making decisions. Basically, it’s a bag of shit.




Pusher – 1996, Nicholas Winding Refn

The poster (or at least the UK DVD cover) of Danish crime thriller Pusher is very misleading. At no point does the main character Frank played by Kim Bodnia ‘dual-wield’. In fact there are very few shots fired in the film which is still refreshing a whole fifteen years later. At the time Pusher must have been a revelation; America had Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the UK had Lock Stock and France had La Haine, then up pops Pusher, grittier and more realistic than them all. One hand held camera used throughout, filmed on location in Copenhagen, no sets from what I could tell, and with an excellent cast throughout, not a single dud between them. It also stars the sexiest Dane going, Mads Mikkleson.





There’s nothing cool about the main guy in Pusher. He’s a slightly inept drug dealer and he’s in a lot of trouble. From the picture on the DVD case and the description on the back; ‘Frank has two days to get loads of money before gangsters come to get him etc’ I was expecting to get something more like a violent version of Run Lola Run. Like Run Lola Run, the events in Pusher are propelled by the activities of an inept drug dealer in debt to some bad men. Unlike Run Lola Run, out main character is still a sympathetic guy despite his obvious failings and all the silly mistakes he makes.

Though the direction and the lead performance Pusher achieves a very believable characterisation; we can believe that this guy would fuck up the way he does. This is a very important part of what makes a film ‘very good’ and it’s often overlooked. Consider John Travolta’s character from Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega. Half way through the film (I think, it's been a while since I watched it, too long in fact) he goes to take a dump while waiting for Bruce Willis to get home, and leaves his Uzi on the kitchen counter. Bruce comes home while Vic is in the can, picks up the piece and kills the hit man with his own gun when he opens the bathroom door. Ridiculous as the whole situation is, Travolta’s character is well enough defined by this point in the film for this scenario to be acceptable. We can believe that Vic would screw up like this so we’re not annoyed by his death, in fact it seems fitting.

Pusher is the same in this respect, and this is why Pusher is not a bag of shit.

Sucker Punch

MINOR SPOILER ALERT – I’m not going to ruin it for you, but if you really don’t want to know what happens to the doe-eyed sex dolls of Sucker Punch, watch it before you read.

Sucker Punch – 2011, Zack Snyder

So what’s the deal with Sucker Punch? The title and the premise and the trailers don’t really explain much, which is no bad thing, it’s nice to go into a film without knowing what to expect (beyond hot babes shooting big guns).

The deal is thus -
Snyder and his old lady have though up a collection of ambitious action set-pieces based upon pop culture violence. The list reads like a clichéd internet comic:

1. Giant Samurai Monsters With Miniguns
2. Nazi Robot Zombies
3. World War Two meets Lord Of The Rings with Dragons
4. erm...not sure what to do now...Pirate Monkey Ninjas would be silly...lets just do a disappointing rehash of the climax of Batman Begins (you know, with the train) and mix in a little I, Robot action.

The premise which serves to set up all the mayhem is explained in what is basically a series of music videos. The opening sequence is actually very good. Without any dialogue it is established that the main character’s mother has died, leaving her and her little sister all the money. (Step?) Daddy isn’t happy, so he kills the younger girl and frames the older blonder girl for the murder. Poor little blond girl is then sent off to a creepy asylum for insane (insanely sexy?) young ladies. Evil Daddy makes a deal with Evil Chief Orderly to have the girl lobotomised in order to prevent her ever talking about what really happened to her sister. They have this conversation within earshot of the blonde girl, setting up her descent into fantasy and her attempt to escape.

Then there’s another music video sequence (Bjork this time) as we take a tour of the asylum and meet the staff who will later be recast as the bad guys in the upcoming fantasy. In her mind the pretty blond girl replaces the harrowing asylum with an illusion; her own little world where she can carry out her escape. Naturally, she replaces the asylum with a burlesque house. She and the other girls are no longer inmates but captive exotic dancers, with an ever present air of forced prostitution loitering off screen. The pretty blond is henceforth known as Babydoll, forever scantily clad and lusty eyed, fighting for freedom with her fit mates: Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie and Amber.




Blondie, Amber, Babydoll, Sweet Pea then Rocket...I think.
Hmm... the one on the right in the picture below is not one of the characters in the picture above(?). But you get the idea.



To escape they need to nick a load of symbolic items, and the only way they can do that is if Babydoll creates a distraction by doing a sexy dance. The sexy dances are represented by crazy, violent action fantasies. Got that? OK.

Never have huge, carefully constructed action sequences been so boring. There are a couple of reasons why Sucker Punch fails to deliver the promised knockout blow. Firstly, all peril is removed from the action sequences for the sake of a cheap gag; during the stand off between the tiny blond Babydoll and the first Giant Samurai the tension is broken when the Samurai kicks her square in the face and sends her flying through the air and through a wall (ha, didn’t see that coming). But then the delicate little thing stands up without a scratch on her! So it is established that in these fantasy fight scenes, the main characters are invulnerable, and any peril goes out the window before the action really starts.

Secondly, Sucker Punch draws us down into two layers of fantasy, neither of which clearly relate to what is happening in the real world. We jump into the burlesque house dream world from which we drop down into the action sequence fantasy layer (difficult not to make it sound like Inception but it isn’t) and don’t refer back to reality again until the very end, so most of film is spent in a kind of peril-less limbo where the audience is left wondering if it’s all just a dream. Are the girls ever in any danger at all? Nothing compromises emotional involvement better that confusion.

Sucker Punch aught to be mindless fun, and on the surface it is, but somewhat annoyingly it’s clear that Snyder is trying to do something clever. The best thing to do is take Sucker Punch at face value.

Who’s the real sucker? I am, for paying £12.40 to watch it in the IMAX. But I was drunk.

Stay Hungry

Stay Hungry – 1976, Bob Rafelson

Did you know Schwarzenegger won a Golden Globe?
Hard to believe, but having seen his uniquely humble performance in Stay Hungry, I can dig it. By this point in his career Arnold had been in a couple of films where he either said nothing or was entirely dubbed, but in this forgotten gem he holds his own along side a young Jeff Bridges.

I stuck this on my LoveFilm list for the sake of Schwarzenegger completionism but I was pleasantly surprised. Jeff plays a young blue blooded Alabamian who’s got time and money to spare, Arnold plays...a bodybuilder. Not exactly a stretch, but watching him in this film it’s amazing to see him play an intelligent and sensitive young hulk, revelling in the hospitality of the Deep South, opposite Bridges’ equally young yet jaded local.

Jeff and Arnold were only born a couple of years apart and from this scene it’s like they could have been brothers (if one of the brothers had become Mr Universe).



‘You can’t grow without burning’. Truer words never spoken. Sally Field is also in this as the love interest that the two studs are kind of fighting over.

The guys who make Family Guy clearly don’t think much of her, but she never looked better than here. Little know actor R G Armstrong gives an excellent performance as the strange gym owner ‘Thor’. You’ll recognise Armstrong as General Phillips from Predator:



The film ends in drama and farce as Thor’s self destructive tendencies come to a head amid a comedy shambles typical of films of this period. This is a serious film, but it has the same joyful vibe as films like Smokey and The Bandit and Every Which Way But Loose, the poster for which I feature purely for it’s awesomeness:

Ten Short Film Reviews Ten

Dogville – 2003, Lars von Trier
It’s not perfect but it’s very good. I would even go so far as to say it’s ‘important’. I’ve not seen any of Lars’ other work but his challenging, unconventional films (often made in trilogies) put him in the same bracket as Andrei Tarkovsky, Wong Kar-Wai, Ingmar Bergman and any other ‘Greats’ you care to mention.
Dogville is famously filmed on a bare stage with the walls of the houses marked out on the floor. Nicole Kidman turns up one day, on the run from the mob, cautiously accepting the shelter the townsfolk cautiously offer. The morality tale that plays out is one of the most compelling stories I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a radical idea and it works very well, so well that the minor flaws are emphasised: the cast is full of exceptional talent but they all underplay their characters too much, the digital effects are simple but still obtrusive, it’s too long, and I don’t like the narration. The end credits are inspired.

Legion – 2010, Scott Stewart
I’m a bit fan of all the ‘War between Heaven and Hell’ stuff, in particular the Prophecy films and the comic Preacher. Legion is a nice edition to the genre which plays out the Final Battle on a very small scale, but it’s entertaining enough with some nice creature effects. Not quite as good as Constantine, which is a film with few fans, but I like it.

Spawn – 1997, Mark A. Z. Dippe
Who? Spawn? Oh yeah, the comic. Todd McFarlane’s forgotten work. I’ve not read the comic (who has?) but the story of the Spawn franchise is quite interesting. McFarlane was (and maybe still is) a very talented and driven writer and artist who wanted to create an iconic superhero to rival Batman and Superman. The result was Spawn, which can perhaps be interpreted as a pop culture metaphor for the 90’s, but I’ll leave that to someone else.
The film adaptation of Spawn was incredibly ambitious. Made a couple of years before The Matrix/Spiderman/The Fellowship of The Ring, it is probably quite an important film in the evolution of digital effects. The GCI in Spawn is very uneven, a result of two different companies creating different sequences. Some bits are very disappointing even for 1997, while others CGI shots still look passable today. The make up is very good too, John Leguizamo is unrecognisable and brilliant as the fat clown and without him Spawn wouldn’t be worth watching. Michael Jai White plays Spawn and does as good a job as necessary from behind his make up. Martin Sheen makes a fool of himself as the villain in what I can only assume to be a deliberate attempt to make the rest of the cast look good.

Battlefield Earth – 2000, Roger Christian
Oh my! It really is the worst film ever made. The third line of Battlefield Earth is ‘Nooooooooo!’ and it’s down hill from there. The direction and editing is very heavy handed, the director worked on the Star Wars films, and he’s clearly trying to do his own version (some of the music sounds like it may actually be from Star Wars). The alien bad guys are like a hybrid of Klingons and Ferengi in platform boots, and Travolta’s performance as the big bad guy is bizarre in its awfulness, although he was clearly having a lot of fun doing it. I suppose that it is quite fun to watch though, as every two minutes there’s another ‘What were they thinking?’ moment.

Soylent Green – 1973, Richard Fleischer
One of those films that’s quite famous, but nobody knows why, everyone’s heard the phrase ‘Soylent Green is people!’. It was made five years after the original Planet of The Apes and a couple of years after The Omega Man (based on I Am Legend), so Heston was getting a bit typecast in Sci Fi films. But it’s to his credit that he took these roles so seriously. Soylent Green isn’t particularly amazing but it was a mainstream 70s Hollywood film that had a definite social message about the disparity and injustices between the very rich and the very poor. In the 80’s Heston went on to become a bit of a paranoid nut-job and figure head for bigotry, but in the 60’s he campaigned for civil rights. It’s seems strange that he became so caught up in all the ‘white majority oppression’ bullshit, but for a time at least his heart was in the right place, and his decision to make Soylent Green is evidence.

Starman – 1984, John Carpenter
One of John Carpenters lesser known films, it’s a very pleasant tale about an alien being who comes to earth from the stars to learn about the human race, specifically 80’s sweetheart Karen Allen. Geoff Bridges performance as the child like alien gets a bit annoying sometimes but it’s not a bad film.

Dreamscape – 1984, Joseph Ruben
Somewhere between The Dead Zone and In The Mouth of Madness, and nothing like Indiana Jones despite what the poster suggests.



Poor mans Harrison Ford, Dennis Quiad plays a young man who squanders his physic talents down at the racetrack and in the singles bars until Mac von Sydow recruits his and teaches him to invade people s dreams. Some nice stop motion in the dream sequences and a suitably creepy turn by the always reliable David Patrick Kelly, and even Norm from Cheers pops up.

Croupier – 1997, Mike Hodges
Clive Owen is absolutely without charisma. Croupier has some value as historical documentation of life in England in the 90’s. It looks shitter than I remember.

Renaissance – 2006, Christian Volckman
French animated sci-fi noir.



Nice that they tried something so original, but it doesn’t quite work. Clearly made with a limited budget; it looks like they used off-the-shelf character software rather than creating there own, which is a good way to save money, but it takes away any emotional weight from the characters if they all look like mannequins.

Unknown – 2011, Jaume Collet-Serra
SPOILER ALERT (but you weren’t going to watch it anyway were you?)
I feel a little bit guilty about having watched this at the cinema recently. There are lots of films out there worth watching right now but I ended up going to watch this with some of the guys from work. I should put my foot down. Anyway...
Unknown is a bit boring, It follows in the footsteps of many other ‘European Action Thrillers’ from the last ten years: Set in a famous European city, lots of local colour and culture to try and make the film rise above the mediocrity of the plot, exciting but incredibly long car chase etc.
This one’s set in Berlin and covers the familiar ground of ‘Secret Agent loses his memory and mistakes his cover story for his real life’ a la Total Recall. The plot is stretched out over 90 minutes, then the big mystery is revealed, but there are still 20 minutes left at this point, so we descend into one of the most compulsorily climaxes to a film I’ve seen in a long time. “What’s that? You want a big action sequence at the end? Oh, all right then” Cue exploding hotel. Unbelievably and annoyingly Liam Neeson’s character loses his memory after banging his head, them at the end he gets another bump on the noggin, and all his secret-agent-close-quarters-combat-training suddenly comes back to him. Surly no one would consider employing the ‘two bump amnesia rule’ in this day and age?
This film is basically a result of the success of Taken, but it was the simplicity of Taken that made it work so well. Unknown trys too hard to be clever, and ends up compromising its own integrity.

The Social Network

The Social Network - 2010, David Fincher

Sky Atlantic

I’ve not been watching many movies recently because I’ve been Sky+ing so much on Sky Atlantic, here’s what I’ve been watching.

Broadwalk Empire
I feel as though I have reached a kind of TV series watching state of nirvana. After having seen all of The Sopranos and The Wire and The Shield, I know how to watch a series from the beginning; how to be patient, how to recognise when I should remember something. I think the writers may have had the previous viewing experiences of the audience in mind as some characters are killed of far more abruptly that I expected, so it’s not as though we can predict everything.

Five episodes in, Broadwalk Empire is picking up the pace. I actually think that the pilot directed by Martin Scorsese isn’t as good as the rest of the series so far. I’ve watched episode 1 twice now and it seems a bit too whimsical. It features a very Scorsese-esque ‘murder and body discovery montage to period music’ which I think was unnecessary.

Excellent as the series is, I think it’s slightly uneven. All the external shots on the titular boardwalk are created with CGI to recreate 1920s Atlantic City, these sequences all have a kind of dream like quality which doesn’t sit well with the internal shots which are filmed in incredibly detailed studios. I’m often reminded of the dream sequences from the Sopranos, like the one where Tony is talking to the fish which has Pussy’s voice.

I’m nitpicking though, coz it’s ace.

Treme
From the braniacs behind The Wire, and how. Only two episodes in it’s still not clear where this is going, but as a Wire vet I know that when all the story lines come together it’s going to be awesome.

I’m glad I went to the effort of watching Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts (two would have done) also on Sky Atlantic which documents Hurricane Katrina and the resulting floods. Now that I’m an expert on Katrina and New Orleans, I smugly know the background of the characters and their circumstances better than the average Treme viewer (and isn’t that the point of HBO drama; to feel clever for watching it?)

There is one very annoying character – the DJ guy who keeps fucking up- but otherwise they’re all good, and many are based on real people. One of the characters is played by a Katrina Survivor who appears in When The Levees Broke, as does Wendell Pierce, who’s family lived in New Orleans. Walter is in it too.

Blue Bloods
Hmm...difficult to recommend this one. Blue Bloods sits somewhere between The Shield and all that CSI style bullshit. The episodes are very formulaic: Nasty crime (but not too nasty) takes place, Donnie Wahlberg’s detective character is assigned to investigate, he calls on the help of his district attorney sister and Police Commissioner father to help, in a moment of desperation he gets all Vick Mackey on some guy who he knows did it, but can’t prove it. Then at the end of the episode the whole family of cops gets together over Sunday dinner and debates the morality and legality of how they solved this week’s case. Somewhere in there is an ongoing plot about police corruption. Tom Selleck looks like a walking advertisement for Just for Men.

The Sopranos
It gets better every time.

Battle Star Galactica
I quite like it. I never watched any episodes when it was new but I can understand the appeal. Family friendly Sci Fi drama, some poorly conceived characters but the way the Cylons have been re-imagined is good, and every other episode has a good plot. Future Star Trek series (please) would learn a lot from this. Sky Atlantic is also showing Voyager from the start. I remember liking it first time round but I’ve caught a couple of the early ones and it’s not as good as I remember.

Six Feet Under
I watched the first three series or so when they were on Channel 4 ten years ago(!), much better than I remember. I remember being quite disturbed by the idea of Charlotte Light and Dark back when I was 18.

So,

After years of snobbishly claiming to not really watch TV, I have found myself watching at least 6 programs religiously. But it’s OK, because there are loads of other TV-addicts who consider themselves quasi-intellectuals watching exactly the same stuff. But for how long? It’s only free for six months y’all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/jan/05/sky-atlantic-mad-men-treme

By the way, is anyone watching Outcasts? It seems like something I might dig, but it’s on the BBC, so I dismiss it as being a nice idea but poorly made, mainly due to a lack of script editing by completely un-savvy producers, who stay in their jobs because they’re mates with the right people, and having only produced state funded television for their whole careers are incapable of creating a contemporary drama that is anywhere near as good as foreign commercial offerings.
Rant Rant Rant, But seriously, even when the great Charlie Brooker was given free reign to write a zombie series for Channel 4/E4 it still went a bit wrong. Why can’t we get it right over here? Maybe because UK TV producers/directors/writes don’t work well with each other?

Dead Set had one writer and one director for all five episodes. Over at HBO teams of many writers and directors and script editors and producers ensure that the best ideas/characters/plotlines are kept and the rest voted out.

There’s nothing new about this. Everyone cottoned on years ago when Friends was the most popular show on telly and no one in the UK could write a sitcom anywhere near as popular or consistent.

Shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

True Grit

True Grit – 2010, Joel and Ethen Coen

If you’re into the whole brevity thing, True Grit can be summed up thus; Another great Coen Brothers Film.

Maybe we’re being spoilt by Joel and Ethan. Twenty years of excellent films, some may argue without exception. Who else can boast that kind of record? Wes Anderson had better pick up the pace if he is to be as prolific and successful.

Initial reports that the Coens were making a Western were met with slight surprise in some quarters. ‘A Western? Who makes Westerns nowadays?’ Not many people, and when they do it often result in embarrassing box office failure for the big names involved, eh Mr Costner. But it should be no surprise that the Coens are branching out into genres. What else are they going to do? Make the same darkly comic noir with a convoluted plot involving blackmail and murder? They must be bored of that by now.

And of course the modern Western isn’t the same as the classic Western. Somewhere between Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven, Westerns became costume dramas; all historically accurate and filthy looking. The period western allows the Coens to take their penchant for wordy, articulate, unselfconscious dialogue and apply it to a setting where it might not seem so out of place. Although for the first time ever when watching a Ceon film, I felt that the dialogue got a bit tiresome by the end, especially when Josh Brolin’s moronic character also started employing far too many words in his few lines.

True Grit is very good, just like all the other Coen films, and because they are all so good, any bits that aren’t so good tend to stick out. The weak link in this one is Josh Brolin (who doesn’t deserve equal billing to Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon). His role is just about big enough to support those who argue that he’s one of the most overrated actors out there. Fortunately the role played by Robert Duval in the 1969 version is played here by the vastly underrated Barry Pepper (excellent in 25th Hour and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, worthy of forgiveness for Battlefield Earth). All the supporting characters are as well cast as ever, and Hailee Stenfeld is good, but maybe not deserving of every best actress nomination going.

As for Bridges, I love the guy, though I suppose it’s all because of The Dude. As I peruse his Wikipedia entry I’m reminded of how few of his films I’ve seen. Other than ‘Labowski’ I’m only familiar with Starman, K-Pax, Tron, Iron Man the King Kong remake he was in...time for a dedicated Bridges-athon.

What next for the Coen Brothers?
Space Opera starring Liam Neeson?
Period Spy Drama starring Ralph Fiennes?
Renaissance era Farce starring Ben Kingsly?
(yes I have been watching Schindler’s List)

The Mechanic

The Mechanic – 2011, Simon West

Normally I can watch any film without feeling the need to justify the reason for watching it, but The Mechanic is currently in cinemas, I didn't just Sky+ it like all the other mediocre action films I watch. So I'll just explain how come I ended up watching The Mechanic at the Odeon when there are loads of other films on release right now, in particular all the Oscar contenders; The King's Speech, 127 Hours, The Fighter et all.

My Tuesday evening was planned thus:
4.15pm - meeting with mortgage advisor (65% Loan-To-Value! Gee, no thanks.)
7.00pm - play dodgeball (sport of Kings)

So I had two hours to kill from 5 till 7 and after carefully examining the show times of all the cinemas in Manchester city centre, only The Mechanic was on during the time available to me. It’s a remake of a 1972 Michael Winner film starring Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent, the lead roles now played by Jason Statham and Ben Foster.





The plot may have been original in ’72, but now it’s just an expectable pastiche of action movie standards; Statham is a clinical assassin who works for some shadowy organisation, his contact in the company is an old friend played by an established actor (in this case Donald Sutherland) whose ten minutes of time on screen is an attempt to add credibility to a lacklustre screenplay. As soon as Sutherland appears on screen it’s obvious he’s going to die, and that Statham will probably kill him, and that he’ll find out the truth later and regret killing his friend and mentor and head off to extract bloody revenge. I predicted a John Woo style ending with the good guy sailing away on the yacht he has always dreamed of owning but it didn’t quite finish like that. Also, unusually for a Statham film, there was no car chase.

Englishman Simon West (director of Con Air) seems more concerned with creating something technically polished and at the very least credible than he does with shooting exiting action. I’ve seen a lot of action films me, and in my opinion the good ones fall into one of two categories, which for the sake of this post I will call ‘Die Hards’ and ‘Hard Boileds’

‘Die Hards’ are good films that just happen to be action films, Die Hard being the most prominent example. I include such greats as Predator 1 and 2, Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens and Under Siege (among many others).

‘Hard Boileds’ are films that are kind of ridiculous and technically not that good, but the spectacle makes them rise above all the other crap action films. I don’t mean these films are ‘so bad they’re good’, I mean they are entertaining enough to be considered good. Hard Boiled, Commando, all the Rambo films and almost every Jackie Chan film made between 1978 and 1995 are good examples.

The Mechanic is not a good action film by either definition, but it had a reported budget of $40 million and stars one of the few ‘bankable’ action stars going. I for one am proud of our Jason, he’s out there kicking ass in big American movies, but the question The Mechanic prompts me to ask is ‘How long before Jason Statham goes straight-to-DVD?’ To try and predict let us examine the careers of Seagal and Van Damme.

Steven Seagal
Born – 1952
First Lead role in a cinematic release – 1988 (age 36), Above The Law
Highest grossing film to date – 1992 (age 40), Under Siege ($156 million including international gross)
First successive Straight-to-DVD – 2003(age 51), Out For A Kill

Jean-Claude Van Damme
Born – 1960
First Lead role in a cinematic release – 1988 (age 28), Bloodsport
Highest grossing film to date – 1994 (age 34), Timecop (over $100 million including international gross)
First successive Straight-to-DVD - 2001 (age 41), The Order

Jason Statham
Born – 1967
First major lead role in a cinematic release – 2002 (age 35), The Transporter
Highest grossing film to date – 2008 (age 41), The Transporter 3 (over $100 million including international gross and DVD sales)
First successive Straight-to-DVD – 2017 (age 50), The Transporter 5

Looks like Statham’s career is most like big Steve’s, which means Jason has another six years or so of action in him. Realistically though, Jason will probably stay in cinemas for years to come playing non-bad-ass characters in romantic comedies and heist/caper movies.

Nice one Jase.

Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky is one of those film makers you may never have heard of, but he attracts a lot of admiration from certain quarters:

(cut and paste from Wikipedia)

Notable film director Ingmar Bergman said of Tarkovsky:
"Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream."

I recently endured a Tarkovsky-athon, watching (in chronological order) Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979) over the course of four days. The Mirror is a modest 100 minutes, the other two weigh in at over 160 minutes each (both are an hour too long).

To discuss the plots of these films is almost missing the point or so it seems. Two of them are adaptations of sci-fi novels (something I’m very keen on) but they meander away from the plot and into the realms of ‘The Tarkovskyeqsue’. If Andrei was concerned with holding his audience’s interest, his films wouldn’t be arduous journeys into tedium; I doubt a 90 minute version of Solaris was ever going to win the Prix Spécial du Jury.

Ingmar summed up what Tarkovsky was all about, but from what I gather Bergman and Tarkovsky were each other’s biggest fans. So while the above quote summarises what Andrei was trying to achieve, it’s another question as to whether his efforts were really as good as many a po-faced film critic would have you believe.

This brief clip from the beginning of The Mirror and it shows what Tarkovsky was capable of (I wouldn't agree with whoever posted that video about it being the best sequence ever shot).



Pure atmosphere, but from there the films goes nowhere, slowly. There’s another similar shot at the end, Solaris and Stalker are also book-ended with equally compelling sequences, and all three films are peppered with flashes of genius. But the problem is, for all the dream like imagery and ‘new language’ and glimpses of what may well be the true nature of film, this truth is betrayed by the pondering trite that makes up the bulk of the films.

Tarkovsky is an example of the film-maker who rejected the cinema. He was fully aware that his films were not easily enjoyed. Watching a cast of miserable characters waffle on about the meaning of love (Solaris), life (The Mirror) or desire (Stalker) is not remotely cinematic, it’s not even entertaining. From the three films I’ve seen Andrei was either a poor director of actors; everyone is giving the same morbid, brooding performance, or he was deliberately trying to make the same film again and again. Andrei loved an excessively philosophical, world weary protagonist, but none of them are ever as sympathetic as he thinks they are. The titular Stalker in particular goes through a prolonged crisis of conscience and by the end of the film questions the very worth and meaning of his own life, but by this point no one in the audience will give a govno.

The one thing I did take away from this experience was a desire to read Solaris and Roadside Picnic (the basis for Stalker).

Incidentally, I recently watched the 2002 version of Solaris directed by Steven Sodenbergh which I thought was very good.

Black Swan

Black Swan – 2010, Darren Aronofsky

The most impressive thing about Black Swan is the simplicity. It’s a story about a dancer who is given the lead in Swan Lake, her big break, and the pressure she is put under causes her to come apart at the seams. The conceptual aspect of the film drawn from Swan Lake is as important as the plot itself.

Is Black Swan a masterpiece? I don’t think so, but watching it made me wonder about what it takes to make a masterpiece, and how long a film has to be around before people start declaring it one. Maybe it’s like canonisation; you have to wait for five years after the director’s death before proceedings may begin.

I suppose that every masterpiece is greater than the sum of its parts, and that’s what prevents Black Swan from being one. Everything about it is close to spectacular; the performances are stellar, the production design is top notch (although I thought the black-and-white motif was overused), and the cinematography and camera work are also very good (although some of it was a bit too shaky in parts). But even with all this, it never seems to rise above mere technical excellence.

Black Swan will doubtless be compared to The Red Shoes, but there are 60 years between the two films so I don’t think that’s fair, and besides, The Red Shoes probably has more in common with that other recognised classic Singin’ In The Rain (hmm...now there’s a double feature).

Barbara Hershey is particularly good as Portman’s overbearing mother. Her presence reminded me of another film she stars in; The Stunt Man, also about paranoia (and sleeping with the director). Vincent Cassel’s performance gets smothered by everyone else, but I think the reason I wasn’t so impressed with him in this film is because he’s so good in everything else I’ve seen him in, and he often plays much bigger, stronger characters than the one he plays here. Perhaps he deliberately toned it down (or was directed to do so) in order not to distract the audience from Portman’s delicate and repressed little flower.

It’s an excellent film and well worth a watch. It builds well to a satisfying and dramatic ending, which is something that pleases me more and more as I work my way though so many ‘classic’ films of yore.

Here is a more detailed review than mine (and some nice posters).

Chroma Key The Hard Way

After a month of sporadic filming and one mammoth editing session yesterday: Episode 2 – Robocop.



After the experience of making my first animated short I was slightly more ambitious with the second, specifically with my extended use of chroma keying aka green screen. I had grand ideas for the opening shot, and it took a lot more time and effort that I intended to make it work, as this ‘Making of’ shows:



(I can’t even spell ‘chroma’ correctly)

Hopefully the next episode will be less laborious. I find that actually animating the figures isn’t too tricky, it’s setting up the shot and the lighting that takes time. Using a green screen takes away a lot of that trouble and when done right allows the figures to be placed in a background that looks more real that the one behind them. As I get to grips with the software I’m using I’ll pay more attention to all the visual effects that are possible. I could probably do a lot more to improve the ambient light in post production, but I think the animation has an amateurish charm the way it is.

Creating professional looking video effects is literally child’s play in this day and age, as the young ‘Katsuhono’ proves:



There are a lot people making of impressive stop motion out there, but few of them are more than just showcases for their creator’s skills (and their lovely new Transformers toys). Narrative and story are still most important keys of all.

Naughty Adaptations

As in ‘Film Adaptations made in the ‘Noughties’: 2000 to 2009’.

For as long as there have been films there have been adaptations. One of the first real ‘productions’, the 14 minute 1902 French silent film A Trip to The Moon, was loosely based on popular science fiction of the time.

Purists may baulk but I like the version with the goofy narration:



Fast forward to 1999 and The Matrix, which also drew heavily from contemporary science fiction to create something new, something that also showed other film makers (and would-be film makers) of the age what could be done using new technology in imaginative new ways. Comparing the Matrix to A Trip to The Moon is rather tenuous. The way cinema has progressed since The Matrix can’t be weighed against what happened over the decade since 1902. Way back then the language of cinema had to be written and discovered as film makers went along; continuity, reverse angles, point-of-view and all the rest of it were created for the first time in the creative dawn of the cinematic revolution.

But in my opinion the Matrix is one of the most important modern films because it showed a new generation that special effects and imagination could create something fascinating, believable and appealing. There are lots of films made in the five to ten years before the Matrix that made use of the emerging GSI techniques: Armageddon, the American Godzilla, Jurassic Park, The Fifth Element and Independence Day to name but a few. The Matrix stands head and shoulders above these films because it was the first to really show that with new technology, anything was now possible (I wonder if that’s how audiences felt in 1902?). The public appetite for effects heavy film had returned, all that was needed was the vision.

The Matrix is an anomaly because it’s an original screenplay. I’ve blogged before about how it borrowed liberally from other sources but it is not based entirely on any one work. Post-Matrix Hollywood was keen to build on the Wachowski Brother’s success. The will was there to put the digital talent available to use in order to revitalise the summer/holiday-season blockbuster. The only problem was the lack of original material. What followed was a decade of big budget action adaptation spectaculars. Comic books were mined first, followed by video games and the occasional book series. Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings films had been in development for years but the success of the Matrix probably helped things along, ditto Harry Potter.

Lengthier than intended introduction aside, I take a look at a few examples of adaptations from the second half of the last decade: (there are a hundred others I could mention, I just happen to have watched these ones quite recently, all of them effects heavy fantasies)

Aeon Flux – 2005, Karyn Kusama
Oh dear. It’s a huge shame for a number of reasons, none more than fact that the original Aeon Flux animations were incredible. I remember watching them on BBC 2 back in what I consider to be a special time in the history of the channel. If I may reminisce; there was a time when 6pm on weekdays meant only one thing: BBC2. Aeon Flux, The Fresh Prince of Bell Air, The Tick, Buffy, Sliders and of course, Star Trek. Good Lord it was good. I seem to remember that it was the arrival of The Simpsons on BBC 2 that was the beginning of the end.
Anyway, Aeon Flux was awesome and prime fodder for a live action adaptation. Charlize Theron was at her most bankable, the source material was associated with MTV so a film could rely on being promoted through all the right channels, and the budget was ample. So what went wrong? Too much attention to detail perhaps? The props and the sets and the locations are all amazing, they just don’t look anything like the cartoon. The cartoon was dirty looking and subversive, profound even. The film was highly polished, a completely different vision. It didn’t help that the story and characters were all rubbish. As the man behind the original Peter Chung said ‘I was unhappy when I read the script four years ago; seeing it projected larger than life in a crowded theatre made me feel helpless, humiliated and sad’
The failure of this adaptation didn’t put a stop to the big budget movie adaptation trend, thankfully, but it did ensure that adaptations made in the following years had smaller budgets, and some of them were clearly better for it.

Silent Hill – 2006, Christpohe Gans
I like Silent Hill a lot. It’s faithful to the video game on a number of levels, as well as being a well structured film. Anyone who’s played any of the Silent Hill games will know that it’s all about the atmosphere; wandering around a creepy town in the fog bumping into hellish demons. The movie captures this well. It also does a good job of being a video game adaptation in the sense that it’s structured episodically, like the levels of a game: get to the town, get to the school, get to the hotel, get to the church, get to the hospital. Simple but effective, with a satisfyingly gory ending. My only criticism is one instance where a character looks a bit too much like their video game counterpart:



In a video game you can get away with a blonde crop-haired cop who wanders around in tight leather pants, but not so much in a film. Laurie Holden was a well cast though.

30 Days of Night – 2007, David Slade
This one is similar to Silent Hill but it’s not quite as good as it’s far more formulaic as horror films go, the creatures are well designed but strangely inconsistent. It also takes the ‘less is more’ approach a bit far. It builds and builds but doesn’t really go anywhere, then the ending’s a bit of a let down. Quite good on the whole though.

Speed Racer – 2008, Andy and Larry Wachowski
They should have known better than to spend $120 million on a film version of Speed Racer. With the release of the new Tron film there’s been a lot of talk along the lines of ‘Why make a new Tron film? Who cares about Tron anyway?’ The same could (and should) have been said about Speed Racer.
But...Speed Racer is a guilty pleasure of mine. It should be called LSD Racer. This is just about the trippiest kids film ever. Imagine playing with toy cars inside a rainbow. It’s bonkers. Never before or since has so much money been spent on such a weak, contrived, confused plot. It makes Avatar look like The Shawshank Redemption. This is a difficult one to recommend but if the opportunity comes along, give it a go. It’s pure imagination. If I ever have kids, I’ll happily put a copy of Speed Racer on the DVD shelf along with all the Miyazaki films I’ll force them to watch. Speed Racer gives me hope for the inevitable Yellow Submarine remake.

Watchmen 2009, Zack Snyder
The comic-book adaptation genre is well established now, and in amongst the dross, the OKs and the Quite-Goods there have been a few definite peaks: Sin City, 300 and Watchmen. Watchmen does have it’s flaws; Mathew Goode is miscast as Ozymandias (and I was never crazy about Billy Cruddup...in fact when I think about it, other than Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian all the main cast are bad choices) and the ending is all wrong. I don’t mean because it’s missing the Giant Squid Monster, the movie plot makes more sense and was a good idea, I mean the little things anyone who’d read the comic would notice and be annoyed by.
However, on the whole it’s good, for the simple reason that they took what was on the pages of the comic book and put it on screen. The colours, the costumes, the setting, all are faithful to what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created back in 1986. The people behind the Watchmen film were brave enough stick to the comic and not change what didn’t need to be changed.