Ten Short Film Reviews 9

Happy New Year Y'all.

Well, one year blogging (on Blogger since April) and a total of 69 posts. I'd like to be as prolific next year, hopefully I'll manage at least one post a week. Here's to 2011...

My Name Is Bruce - 2007, Bruce Campbell
Fast forward through the god-awful first five minutes until you see Bruce appear and then the rest of this Bruce Campbell-athon isn't bad if you take it for what it is; an homage to all things BC. I've watched and enjoyed The Evil Dead films and had assumed that Bruce wasn't capable of much more than the Heroic Lead Spoof that he made his own. He's also good in Bubba Ho Tep, but he's still just doing a comedy Elvis impersonation. This thing about My Name Is Bruce is that it's one of those 'Self conscious B movies made in the spirit of a B movie' that have become popular with the advent of straight-to-DVD. These films tend to be fun, but lack the spark that made the Evil Dead films (and a few other gems) so good. They often have a lead actor (sometimes an entire cast) trying to be Bruce Campbell and failing. So in My Name Is Bruce, the big man himself proves that he actually is the greatest modern B movie actor around, and as easy as he makes it look, it's impossible to imitate.

Red Scoprion - 1989, Joseph Zito
On the back of Ivan Drago, Dolph Lundgren played another monotone Russian badass, this time he got to fire large weapons Rambo style. Dolph plays a Spetsnaz soldier send into an unnamed African country to help fight off a native rebellion against the oppressive and generic Communist foreign power. Lots of 80's action film themes are present: anti-communism, anti-apartheid, helicopter gunship, ultimate killing machine goes native, Little Richard (the very same Little Richard song 'Long Tall Sally' used in Predator) and angry Americans who know what's really going on. It's all very generic but there are some almost touching scenes where Dolph walks though the desert with a bushman. It's strange but compelling to watch a huge hulking young Nordic dude walking around with a tiny, shrivelled old African fellow.

Dolph had some kind of 'celebrity' boxing match with the Russian guy from Predators.

Inferno - 1999, John G. Avildsen
Probably Jean-Claude Van Damme's most charming straight to DVD. After an embarrassing opening scene (the old ‘Ride Out Into The Desert To End It All With A Gun And a Bottle Of Jack’ routine) Danny Trejo gives JCVD a foot massage and sings to him (seriously). And then when they've finished bonding, Jean-Claude rides into town to kick ass, reveal his own ass, then kick some more ass. As is often the case it's the ensemble cast that lifts this above most crappy action films.

Screamers - 1995, Christian Duguay
Sci Fi B movie loosely based on the Phillip K. Dick novel 'The Second Variety' and starring Robocop himself Peter Weller. Some nice pre digital creature effects along with some early CGI which of course looks very quaint now. They clearly had some money to spend, although it still looks kind of cheap, mainly due to the small cast and some lousy sets. Slightly better than 'Soldier', the other film supposedly set in the Blade Runner universe.

Young Americans - 1993, Danny Cannon
Danny Cannon's debut doesn't quite live up to the exiting synopsis: Harvey Keitel plays an American cop who travels to London to apprehend a gangster (Viggo Mortensen) who has formed a new gang of sociopath teenagers trying to imitate American culture. Harvey and Viggo are good, as is a very young Thandie Newton, but it's nothing special.

Paprika – 2006, Satoshi Kon
Take a pinch each of Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Metropolis (not the Fitz version) and mix it all in with an impenetrable plot and you wind up with what might seem like a cynical attempt to make an internationally successful Japanese animated film. If you’ve seen any of the above you’ll know that the plot isn’t what’s important in these films, it’s the concept, the philosophy, the feeling. But this one is so poorly explained and so unoriginal that the climactic spectacle fails to have any resonance.
Basically it’s about dreams. Controlling dreams, interacting with them, living them, and then watching them back on screen. I’m not certain but either this film or the novel it’s based on must have had some influence on Christopher Nolan when he came up with the idea for Inception, the similarities are too great for it not too be the case. So Paprika, as an almost incomprehensible film about films and dreams, serves as a testament to how good a film Inception is.

The Hurt Locker - 2008, Kathryn Bigelow
Six Oscars! It's good, but it's no better that all the other post-Iraq Invasion films. The Green Zone is an unhealthy fantasy, The Kingdom goes all Rambo at the end, Siriana isn't as clever as it thinks it is, neither is Body Of Lies. Hurt Locker is just as good (average?) and equally unremarkable.

Déjà vu - 2006, Tony Scott
Not quite as good as Tony and Denzel's previous collaboration Man On Fire but still better than I expected. It's a bit like Surrogates in that once you accept the main concept, it's an exiting if predictable thriller. It features the best car chase I've seen in a while as well.

Last Action Hero - 1993, John McTiernan
As regular readers of It's Been A Long Time General will know, I'm a big fan of John McTiernan, particularly his second work as a director, Predator. After Predator and Die Hard and Hunt For The Red October, McTeirnen took on Last Action Hero. Other than perhaps Walter Hill there was no other director more suited to spoof the Action genre. McTiernan, who spent his pre cinema days directing theatre productions, never took himself too seriously when it came to the macho films that became his forte. This may be the reason he did such a good job, he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. LAH was a bit of a dud financially and critically and so almost inevitably has become a ‘cult classic’. As a ‘spoof’ it shouldn’t be compared to Airplane, The Naked Gun or Hot Shots. Those films were written by seasoned comedy writers and excellent as they are, stuck to a blueprint laid out by the The Kentucky Fried Movie: absolute deadpan, always. LAH is far more daring. Schwarzenegger, the biggest movie star in the world at the time (of all time?) played himself and spoofed his own on screen image. Shane Black who wrote Lethal Weapon had a hand in writing it, spoofing his own work just like McTiernen. In a sense LAH is too similar to the films it parodies; clever premise, good first couple of acts, disappointing climax. It’s a wonder this film wasn’t a lesson to Hollywood to stop making this mistake again and again (Hancock anyone?)

Zombieland – 2009, Ruben Fleischer
Is Zombieland the best zombie film ever? Maybe. I suppose that George’s original Dawn of The Dead is the best. Not only did it start off the whole ‘zombies take over the world’ genre which struck a chord with so many cinema goers, but it’s a zombie film with far more intelligence than almost any that has come since. So that makes Zombieland the best zombie film since, by a mile. Even though it’s a comedy it gets all the things about the zombie apocalypse right that almost every other zombie film gets wrong; useless wankers will not make it. There are only four characters in Zombieland (if we choose not to include Bill Murray, which is almost unforgivable but bare with me), only four because almost everyone else is dead. As the film’s main protagonist and narrator explains, the only people who survive the Zom-pocalypse are those who are very very careful (scared), and those who are very very good at taking out Zombies. There are no idiots like those found in other Zombie films; wandering around dark, empty houses calling out ‘is there anybody there’ or any other such annoying wankers. The next series of The Walking Dead could benefit greatly from heeding such lessons.