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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Just one word for you... Epic.
Having never been aware of the Scott Pilgrim comic, I went into this film with no particular expectations. I was aware, from the trailers, that this was to be no ordinary teen rom-com.
And boy, was I swept away by what I discovered. For anybody who ever fantasised a life in a video game, or imagined their own mundane life retold in a comic book, then this is pure fantasy. Scott Pilgrim, the man, is a 22 year old slacker and bass player in "Sex Bob-Omb". He fall for Ramona Flowers, new girl in town and Amazon delivery girl, who appears in dreams as a result of using subspace highways through his brain... sorry, what? Yeah, you heard me. And if that's not weird enough for you - and certainly something you wouldn't see in Dawson's Creek - then how about Ramona's League of Evil Exes, whom our hero has to defeat before he can win her affections?
This film is a mix of genres, so really only Edgar Wright was the man to direct, and he does it brilliantly, injecting all the visual flair he demonstrated in Spaced over a decade ago, to bring Scott and his world to life, in a dazzling array of breathtaking fights, special effects and razor sharp wit.
As I mentioned before, it's pure fantasy, so any notion you may have of keeping it real, you may want to leave outside the theatre, because you won't need it here. The fights - and there are plenty - are the stuff of pure fanboy dreams. Girls fighting with ENORMOUS hammers, 64 hit combos in mid-air, or flaming swords coming from nowhere, all brought to the screen with frenetic editing and the best soundtrack heard all year; all the while punctuated with visual and audio references to video games, which ties a bow on this marvel of a film.
The characters are superbly horrible to each other, the story is insane but always strangely familiar, and the action is incredible.
And there are so many "WTF" moments in this film.
In a word - Epic.
Predators (2010)
A Much Better Addition to the Predator Franchise.
I tend to notice that my reviews are never so popular, because I tend to pick the films apart. You will be pleased to know, if you have read one of my previous reviews, that I actually liked this film.
And here's why.
It's a better film than the god-awful Alien versus Predator offerings of late. It's better than Predator 2, which even holds a special little place in my heart.
A grab bag of nasty crime and/or military types, and one scaredy-cat doctor, are inexplicably plucked from the Earth and dropped onto an alien jungle planet. It soon dawns on them that they are now a part of a deadly game of cat and mouse; the prey for a race of evil alien predators.
What I like about this is the way it slowly, but never too slowly, feeds you the scenario. First, Adrien Brody drops to the jungle floor, then we meet the others, then they investigate and come to realise where they are, and why.
It never goes too far in terms of gratuitous horror or gore, in fact it spares us the sight of the Predator alien until quite some way in. The casting choices are good. Good, solid character types with some good on-screen interaction, which give the feel of the type of sci-fi horror of the 1980s.
The music is exciting and very animated, with such a great sense of adventure and danger.
The unexpected (if you've not seen the trailer) appearance of Laurence Fishburne is probably my only gripe with this film. He exists in this film only as a device for some exposition, and to throw a spanner in the efforts of our team.
There is one twist which, while it makes total sense in the context of the film if you watch it, is pleasantly unexpected, and proves that perhaps the real monsters in this film may not be the Predators.
All in all, a good solid sequel and a breath of fresh air for something which has become all too turgid and very nasty of late.
The A-Team (2010)
This Plan Did Not Come Together.
My main problem with The A-Team movie is that it did not respect the ideals of the original. I know, I know, it's been a long time since the TV show, and times have changed along with attitudes, but this could have easily been a film about any group of renegade soldiers. It just wasn't specific, in tone or plot, to the source material.
The conceit behind The A-Team in the 1980s was unmistakable. Bunch of ex-soldiers go around the country, righting wrongs on behalf of those who need help. In a VAN. The film makers here just about waved goodbye to the original source material in the first act, when the iconic van (some would argue to be the 'fifth' member of the A-Team), the pride and joy of B.A Baracus, is unceremoniously pancaked, never to be seen again.
This dashed my hopes for a decent movie remake as quickly as once did Thunderbirds in 2004.
I was assured in the TV series that the A-Team were above killing people to get their points across. Threats of violence were more their style. They were the venerable protectors of the oppressed, the downtrodden, for they were themselves downtrodden and oppressed, betrayed by the government they had been so loyal to. Never did I see them behave as they do in this movie: Killers who pull off elaborate heists.
There are no decent character arcs. Face is a one-dimensional womaniser, who doesn't even nod to Dirk Benedict's suave original character, by looking like he fell out of a garbage heap. ALL THE TIME. Hannibal is far to brutal, and too confident in himself, even when the team are looking beaten. Murdoch was entertainingly insane, but far too uneven. I found it hard to watch him. It seemed to me the one thing they did to remind you who he was, was to slap a baseball cap on him at every opportunity.
B.A is the one character with some sort of an arc, though in itself it is more of a full circle. Having spent the first act in a bloody and violent battle, he has resolved, during his time in prison, to read the works of Ghandi, and vow never to kill. This to me, looked like the explanation for why the A-Team preferred not to kill. But no. Instead it serves as a convenient point in the film to run out the clock for another half hour. There is actually a scene in which he has a gun pointed right at the bad guy. All he has to do is kill him. But he can't. Instead, the movie drags along, and he agonises about his ridiculous vow. What does Hannibal do in return? Does he understand? Does he respect his comrades wishes? No! Instead he uses Ghandi's words against B.A, and persuades him to believe that killing is OK. Which he does. He Tombstones the scrawny bad guy to a neck breaking death at the last minute in a most convenient moment. Oh, and just in case you didn't realise that "B.A is back!" it's spelled out all nice and visually for you - in a freshly shaved mohawk on his glittering bonce.
Like I said. Not the A-Team I knew. Not The A-Team at all, right? Argue that it is a remake, all you like, but ultimately, this was intended to be an homage at least, to the old favourite. If they wanted to take it in a different, bloodier, darker direction, then they should have changed the names, and the title, and tried to make an original film about it. Too many times have I seen films "based upon" established source material, and instead it's an attempt to pass off a horrid script as something viable. (I'm looking at you, Lost in Space/Thunderbirds/Shaft)
The device of "let's run through the plot of what we're gonna do whilst simultaneously flashing forward to the action as we explain things" was nice and effective. Maybe at least, for the first "Plan". But as each little scheme they pulled off was presented in the same way, even by the (awful special effects laden) climactic scenes, it grew tiresome, and insulting. Let the film progress naturally. We'll probably still get it without too much exposition.
In summary, had this film not been called The A-Team, or had characters named Face, Hannibal, Murdoch and B.A Baracus, it would not have been so crushingly disappointing, and though the action was entertaining enough, it could have been any movie. Tacking the name The A-Team onto it seemed to me, to be a cynical money spinner.
However, A mess, by any other name, is still a mess.
Kick-Ass (2010)
Turgid, Humourless, and Soulless.
So, for some time now, Jane Goldman has been the writer du jour for movies of the last five years, not surprisingly to great acclaim from her celebrity husband Jonathan Ross. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us) she has not turned out an original work of her own, but has turned other people's ideas and stories (Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee for example) into screen-friendly fare. So far, so run-of-the-mill.
Now it appears Mrs. Ross, teamed up with Matthew "Layer Cake" Vaughan to really strike out on their own, and produce something they can call theirs and no one else's.
They're welcome to it. If They want to take credit for films they haven't really written, then they can sure take the blame for this.
Was this film supposed to be funny? Because I sure as hell didn't laugh. Well, maybe once. When our eponymous character would rather be discovered naked in an alleyway than in his pseudo-costume. And that was about how I felt at this time. If anyone had called me and asked "Watcha doin'" I'd probably lie, and say, "getting ass-raped by a gang of chavs", rather than admit I was wasting my time with this.
It's not without it's merits, however few and poorly executed. The idea of real people taking up the cape of the "superhero" is maybe not new, but is still an intriguing angle. It's somewhere in the Watchmen vein, crossed with dirty sex comedy. But it's played all wrong. The laughs are not played for laughs ("funny" deaths not funny and played down), and it's impossible to care for a single character, because, with the exception of one, they are all flawed, terrible people.
Nic Cage's Big Daddy is an insidious corrupter of his child, Hit-Girl. While this is addressed as an issue in the film, he learns nothing from it. Neither does Hit Girl. She continues to kill and kill and swear and kill. Also, does anyone remember the old "1001" cleaner adverts on UK TV, in which some kind of pseudo-Batman arrives at a spillage? That's Big Daddy's costume. I swear to God it is.
By the Way, Goldman and Vaughan - Having a 10 year old kid say "C**T" in a film is not edgy, clever film making. It's just pathetic and crass.
There's much I could say about this film. It has no heart, not moral, there's not much of a character arc for our hero, Kick-Ass. In fact, his decision to pack it all in and lead a normal life, after realising he's going to die if he carries on, is probably the smartest thing he does in the whole film. However, he goes straight back in, and learns nothing from his time as a vigilante.
The villain is one dimensional, his son "Red Mist" is just a scared, selfish spoiled kid who wants to play dress up, and uses his crime lord father's predicament to get the resources to. He very sharply turns into super-villain with no warning and no decent cause to.
Simply put - If this were a loaf of bread, it would have the right ingredients for a good recipe, but it's just not ready to come out of the oven. More pre-production work was needed to turn out a better story, flesh out characters better, Big Daddy excepted, the violence toned down a fraction and the appalling language from children erased. Then, this could have been quite a competitive film.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
QT shows he can make a good film, but not yet a BRILLIANT one.
I went into the cinema with fairly low expectations for this film. Given the disappointing previous efforts of Quentin Tarantino, namely Death Proof and Kill Bill, I was resigned to seeing another drawn out, pretentious and muddled film.
Based on what I had experienced in the last three films, I was expecting a horribly jumbled mess of genres, homages and pastiches, or an overlong and suspense-free violence-fest. And I fully expected that ten seconds into the film. I rolled my eyes at the spaghetti western music and the old-time fashion of the opening credits. Music resembling that of Kill Bill, and an opening credits sequence reminiscent of Jackie Brown. Oh dear... I know this is QT's trademark way of starting films. Unfortunately many of his so-called 'trademarks' are borrowed from other, older movies. At this point I was hoping that was all it was: just a routine title sequence. The scene that followed was make-or-break for me. An SS Colonel charmingly and politely, with just the right amount of underlying menace, questions a rural French dairy farmer about a Jewish family. This is ultimately a setup to introduce the two main characters, who will have the biggest connection between each other than any of the other characters in the remainder of the film. I have to say that this scene succeeded in reassuring me that this might just be a return to form for QT. The quiet, reserved and superbly played out scene is shot through with a lot of quiet menace. Perhaps it is because one character is a Nazi Colonel, and anyone born in the last eighty years knows what Nazis are capable of. But in my opinion, it is because the Colonel is played so brilliantly, we know there is a hidden agenda. This guy knows more than he pretends to, and the scene is just waiting to spring it upon us. When it does, it is before the scene outstays its welcome. Much of the film involves creating tension by the implication that one character is sitting on a fact or a revelation which other characters may not suspect, or at least hope they don't know. This had to be my favourite element of this film. Most of the rest we have seen before. Bloodbaths, unusual characters, unusual character traits (a US soldier who takes pleasure in using a baseball bat to dispatch his Nazi foes is particularly dark, as is the mission to collect the scalps of every Nazi soldier killed) are all familiar ground covered on previous QT outings. The quirkiness is new, however. Sometimes it appears to be a spoof, what with the comical Adolf Hitler, who is played as bumbling and forgetful. But it's Hitler, he was evil, so it's okay. The homages to exploitation flicks are still there, but kept to a discreet and welcome minimum. There is very little in the way of genre-swapping, or at least it seems not to do so, perhaps because the whole film is shot through with the same dark humour, that holds it all together. Most moments of comedy are counterpointed by an act of brutal violence, and sometimes vice versa. The overall verdict of this film is that is a more even, better executed effort than the previous films of the last five years. It feels more like an early QT film, and as such, makes for better viewing. There is no doubt that the film is supposed to be viewed light heartedly, but I can't help thinking that it could so easily have done well as a more serious flick. That in mind, I still liked the direction this film went in. A welcome cameo from Mike Myers in prosthetic makeup served to remind the audience that this is, after all, a comedy. All of QT's films are flavoured with a natural comedy, to reflect the comedy of life as well of it's seriousness, but this is his most overtly comical film to date. And it's a good thing, too, because without this, it would be exactly like any film QT has directed, pre-Kill Bill. Ultimately, it's a peak on the chart of QT's output quality, though it's plotted on a chart that has been descending since 2004. This is the kind of film we remember QT doing in the nineties, with a few tweaks. We're not looking at a new Pulp Fiction, however it's not Death Proof either.
Invasion Earth: The Aliens Are Here (1988)
Gosh... I really don't know what to say.
I was after the BBC DVD of Invasion: Earth, that really rather good mini series, but somehow received this terrible dross in the mail. I never suspected for a minute it would be a serious horror film; yet neither did I suspect it would be this tragically incoherent mess. There are theoretically good ideas: The now-irrelevant commentary on the human condition of wasting time in movie theatres, could have been a good basis for exploration, but it is hokey and poorly executed. The various pastiches of sci-fi horrors of the B movie days, while obviously a good idea on paper, are also horribly done. This is probably given that the low budget prevented any good material. But in the face of a low budget, most films of this ilk would have some truly clever dialogue, but not in this movie. The only redeeming feature comes from that which the film makers didn't even accomplish themselves. That is, to say, the clips of the B movie films of the bygone era of cinema, are a fun nostalgia trip. Unfortunately, you'll find yourself being irritatingly interrupted from watching classic moments from films such as Them, and The Blob, by the amateurish and childish plot.
AVOID LIKE SWINE FLU.
Asylum Night (2004)
Silly and fun. Enjoy with friends.
Firstly, you have to look past the below par acting, the lack of production values and silly storyline, and then you'll be ready to appreciate what this film has to offer.
I saw this on the Horror Channel, and while at first I was a little disappointed to find it was not a full-blown production, but something resembling a feature length student project, I soon warmed to it. The gore is well executed and nicely over the top. In the absence of decent gore effects, doing it over the top is better. The story is run of the mill, but is carried out playfully, albeit by a cast who don't seem to deliver the lines with much conviction. There is humour a plenty, some involving poo. Although not the inspired wit of fellow Brit flick "Shaun of the Dead", it's still entertaining nonetheless. Think one notch down from Dog Soldiers, with clunkier effects.
If it's serious body-shock horror you're looking for, give this one a wide berth. If you like to see a brainless 90 or so minutes of silly gore, poo and scenes involving running through corridors, this is a great film. I recommend for a drunk night in with your buddies, so you can have a good laugh.