DelBongo Reviews

Don't You Forget About Me (I) (2009 Video)

Horrendous. Truly, and thoroughly

[1/10 · 4 October 2010]

This film left me genuinely torn, but only with regards to how vicious and spiteful this review was going to be. I've decided to allow the review to precisely reflect the way that the film in question made me feel.

For the record, I do fully understand that the filmmakers - having made the unforgivable idiot's error of beginning a documentary without their centrepiece in place - must have felt that they had to do something with the footage that they'd shot. The problem is that all of their footage, without one single exception, is entirely bereft of pop cultural worth.

The interviews - which make up for a depressingly slim amount of the total running time - are about as deep and interesting as a puddle of day-old dog urine. It goes without saying that the likes of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and Matthew Broderick don't appear here, but the actors who do take part aren't actually asked anything of note. You can envisage this crew of filmmakers putting exactly the same questions to Judd Nelson and Andrew McCarthy that they do to a band of young schoolchildren at one point. "So like, why is John Hughes so great?"

Nobody has the answer. The inarticulate buffoons behind the camera try to answer it themselves during one utterly toe-curling sequence (that takes place in a twilight-tinged field) but if that moment of abject horror isn't to your taste, then believe me - every single other interview is quite indescribably boring. John Hughes was a genius. John Hughes meant the world to everyone. John Hughes spoke to teenagers like nobody ever has, before or since. Yes, we get the picture. So what else you got?

What else they got is footage of themselves; and an apparently endless supply of it at that. What makes this fact so thoroughly appalling is that the film stops being about John Hughes after about five minutes. This isn't a film about him - it's a film about them. And these people think they're funny. They think they're cute. They think they're wise. Not only are they none of the above, they also collectively believed that eighty-odd minutes of their inane potterings would somehow make for acceptable entertainment for the paying public. I only have three words for them: how dare you.

As a fan of John Hughes, the fact that a documentary pertaining to be "about" the great man features such a disarming lack of insight and investigation is absolutely shocking. This is nothing more than a poorly-shot travelogue about a group of deeply uninteresting people making trite and stupid observations for the entirety of the running time.

I paid to have the DVD imported, so I'm sure that the ten-watt bulbs who were responsible for this production are probably laughing their heads off right now. But then again, I literally just made my money back via a re-sale on eBay. In a very, very small way, I just bucked a stupid system to make it work for me. John Hughes would have been proud.

The Informers (2008)

Claptrap

[1/10 · 9 December 2009]

The Informers really is an unusual kind of terrible, but there is actually a very real possibility that it is a misunderstood work of unparalleled directorial ingenuity. The off-kilter overdubbing, the soft focus camera-work, the trite youth-gone-wild bullsh*t dialogue, the nihilistic soft-core group sex - its all exactly like a DTV Zalman King production, and nothing quite sums up the rank, dilapidated sleaziness of the early 1980s than a DTV Zalman King. If Gregor Jordan's career ends up warranting serious critical reappraisals in the future, then this is going to be the gleaming, once-misinterpreted jewel in some chancer's festival retrospective.

But from here, its just appalling. The good actors involved are coasting (Billy Bob Thornton in particular looks as if he's performing from the vantage point of a prozac coma) and the bad actors are left to use their questionable skills to turn every other scene into full-tilt soap opera. The screenplay (co-authored, surprisingly, by Brett Easton Ellis himself) is completely unaware of itself, and so tiresomely arch and condescending that it feels, again, like a product of the 1980's rather than some kind of commentary of it.

Reeling off a plot synopsis would be beyond pointless, as it consists of little more than a series of unconnected, uninteresting things happening to some deeply unlikeable people. Everyone appears to be operating under the assumption that this is a satire, but the funniest thing about it is the sheer inappropriateness of the supposedly suckerpunch coda. No prizes.

American Psycho aside, if you want a to see Ellis' rather one-note universe rendered shrewdly on screen, you should really check out Roger Avary's severely underrated Rules Of Attraction.

Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee (2009)

Le Donk

[6/10 · 26 November 2009]

Shane Meadows has earned an incomparable amount of slack over the course of his 13 year career, and although this takes an even bigger cut than last year's well observed but insubstantial Somers Town, its an enjoyable watch.

And although real life Nottingham rapper Scorzayzee gets top billing, this is basically the Paddy Considine show, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Its dramatically underpowered and about as edgy as an episode of Last Of The Summer Wine, but its short and peppy and there are quite a few laughs in it.

But no 71 minute film should really be allowed to have four heedless musical montages in it.

And I'd have been monumentally p*ssed off if I'd have paid to see it in a cinema.

Colin (2008)

Colin

[2/10 · 11 November 2009]

All of the recent coverage of this film in the mainstream print press has inspired the expectation in many (myself very much included) that it has somehow transcended its origins as a film that cost 40 quid to make. It hasn't.

Looking exactly as you'd expect a £40 zombie movie to look (replete with a complete disregard for cinematography, alarmingly hammy acting and plenty of unconvincing, off- colour bloodletting) Colin is an extraordinarily hard slog. This is particularly true of its opening half hour, which is almost totally bereft of dialogue and filled with way too many ugly and aimless shots that last at least four or five times longer than they need to, without any justification.

Despite the odd moderately impressive exterior shot, Colin's "story" is one constructed around the constant need to justify the shooting locations - which are all, for the vast majority of the time, someone's drab and under-lit living room. The finale, which bucks this trend by taking place in someone's garden, is five utterly exhausting minutes of ketchup, shaky-cam and non-stop shouting; the sheer, belligerent pointlessness of which angered me so much that I almost flung a shoe through my TV.

Spades of kudos must go to the enterprising young sprouts who clearly worked like dogs to get this film made, and I'm thrilled to live in an age where filmmakers of this level can get their work seen and distributed nationally on DVD, but to be brutally honest this is film-making of an extremely sloppy vintage, and the complete lack of plot renders it monumentally, deadeningly boring.

A friend of mine remarked that he'd rather sit down in front of a decade's worth of his neighbour's holiday videos than sit through Colin again.

Ditto.

Saxon (2007)

Saxon

[7/10 · 18 June 2009]

Saxon's press notes boast of its adherence to, and playfulness with, the rules and conventions of the great American westerns, but it is a very pleasant surprise to observe just how subtle and shrewd those genre nods are.

The plot is appropriately simple: Eddie (Sean Harris) returns home to the grim, ghostly Saxon housing estate after both a brief spell in prison, and a visit from a sadistic loan shark. With his one functioning eyeball on the line, Eddie tries to make a fast buck by interacting with a succession of the estate's most volatile misfits, in an attempt to track down a minor local celebrity who has inexplicably vanished.

It is an irrefutable oddity for sure, but the plot's fiendish momentum does exert a palpable grip, and for a film shot for almost nothing, it looks outstanding; composed entirely of wide- angled hand-held shots, it comes off (visually, at least) like a collaboration between Luc Besson and Andrew Bujalski. But the ominous, whacked-out aura is all its own.

This is simply perfect if you're in the mood for some impeccably crafted weird.

Winter Soldier (1972)

Masterpiece

[10/10 · 18 June 2009]

This stunning documentary, long unavailable, is totally and utterly essential.

Its a beautifully simple collage of the interviews that were conducted at the 'Winter Soldier' hearings in Michigan in April of 1971, where soldiers who'd recently returned from serving in Vietnam stepped forward to recount atrocities committed both by themselves, and their brothers in arms.

Many moments, such as when a young former interrogation officer awkwardly laughs to himself (as he lists the absurdly lengthy number of implements that he'd used to torture captured Vietnamese civilians) are stark reminders that the battles in Vietnam were fought largely by indoctrinated children.

Even without the completely uncommon insight and candor of these testimonies, this would still make for an indispensable historical document. Heroic and bold as these men were in coming forward, it is still very difficult to stomach the standing ovation that some of them receive after imparting their stories. It made me, perhaps for the first time, relieved that the 1960's hippy spirit had died out.

This is a film likely to leave you shaken and thoroughly furious, but it really should qualify as required viewing for just about everyone.

Notorious (2009)

No, No, No

[3/10 · 18 June 2009]

This film reminded me of The Sopranos, and not in a good way.

David Chase's seminal mob opera only ever put its foot wrong twice, the most jarring and inexplicable instance of which took place in its fourth season, when Junior Soprano went on trial for his life. Rather than pursue this riveting (and pivotal) plot line, the writers instead chose to completely ignore it, focusing instead on Bobby Baccalieri's constant whimpering over his recently deceased wife's frozen pasta dish.

When something of genuine interest happens in Notorious - for example that first, mysterious assassination attempt on Tupac Shakur that ignited the whole East Coast/West Coast feud in the first place, and ended up leading to the deaths of both Tupac and Christopher Wallace - the film treats it as just another bit of plot to plod through. Why exactly was Tupac so convinced that he was sold out by his own people? Did he alone nurture his subsequent affiliation with Suge Knight? And was Lil' Kim's transformation from prim office drone into sex-obsessed, vampish diva really as banal as it appears here?

None of these questions are even fleetingly addressed by the film's screenwriters, who are far more interested in depicting Wallace's turbulent love life to zero compelling dramatic avail. These sequences (including a brain-frazzlingly clichéd groupie indescretion in a hotel room) are so toothless and bruisingly manipulative that the only real comparison to be made is with a network TV movie.

The storytelling, in both structure and content, is simplistic and trite. But more fundamentally, as a biopic; as something designed to celebrate its subject and educate the uninitiated on the intricacies of their life and work; the film is almost entirely worthless. The reliance on meat-and-potatoes genre plotting, coupled with the lifeless musical performances (an area in which a film like this should soar, surely) result in a film that appears to have been designed only to satisfy the whims and demands of those involved, leaving Wallace's questionable status as a giant in his field as the preserve of the easily persuaded and previously converted only.

And the final twenty minutes, in which Wallace's posthumous cultural identity is broadly painted as being akin to that of a latter day saint, quite frankly made me feel like throwing up.

On that score, much as with any other, Notorious is crass, calculating and compromised.

The Children (2008)

Appalling

[2/10 · 12 May 2009]

A ridiculously unambitious British horror quickie aimed squarely at the international DVD market, so if you go in expecting subtlety, nuanced acting or coherence, you're having a laugh.

The most interesting thing here is Paul Andrew Williams' laughable 'story by' credit. After the excremental misfire of The Cottage and now this creatively deficient waste of time, the unjustly lauded filmmaker behind one of this decade's most absurdly overrated debuts appears to be making a play for a homecoming appearance at his local dole office.

The conceit is basically non-existent. An anodyne coffee advertisement quickly morphs into a veritable smash-and-grab of putrid genre clichés that are thrown furiously at the screen in the vague belief that nobody will notice the appalling lack of plot, narrative or suspense. People shout and scream, people die, and not one second of it makes any sense. I rolled my eyes so much during this film that I technically saw more of my ceiling.

The highpoint is definitely Eva Birthistle. She isn't much of an actress, but she is massively easy on the eye - a delectable hybrid of Alice Evans and a young Geri Halliwell. A mighty fine piece of ass, to be sure.

Any critic who resorts to deliberating over female eye candy is truly a desperate one, but then this is a truly desperate movie.

The more discerning moviegoer would do well to note that it was executive produced by Nick Love, which says more than words ever could.

Crank: High Voltage (2009)

Where Is My Strawberry Tart?

[7/10 · 17 April 2009]

Crank 2: High Voltage practically begs to be passionately loathed by absolutely everyone, with the notable exception of antisocial teenage boys. Its rank, nihilistic tone is relentless and exhausting. The misogyny is benchmark horrendous. The acts of violence are brutal, frequent and often blatantly homoerotic. Its flippant. Its homophobic. Its vulgar. And it feels as much seething contempt for its own narrative coherence as it does for its few prominent female characters.

But there is something bracingly brilliant about it. Films this fearlessly unhinged simply do not get made any more, and thirty years ago this would've played, late at night, to packed houses for years on end, perhaps aptly bundled with the likes of John Water's Pink Flamingoes.

One fact that was suggested by the first Crank is set heroically in stone barely five minutes into its sequel - that directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor appear to be completely obsessed with pornography. There is a truly jaw-dropping amount of flesh on constant display, and the film's only female speaking parts belong to a prostitute and a stripper. This lends the film an air of uncomfortable, almost lavatorial sleaziness, until a bunch of actual porn stars turn up in the middle of a scene, starring as a bunch of disgruntled porn stars striking for better pay. Although it hardly passes as satire, it does seem like a sly dig in the direction of the producers that populate the Hollywood mainstream, who'd surely relish the opportunity to make films like this if only the bastard machine would let them. Balls-out exploitation it may be, but if any film lives up to cinema's ancient adage of providing its audience with relentless sex and violence, its this one.

The second half of the film is where it really flies, and chooses to disregard not only its own plot, but any care for the patience or expectations of its audience. It goes, essentially, mad. And for something that was clearly deranged in the first place, it'd be foolish for me not to offer up the only advice that will enable you to see exactly what I mean.

Go and see it.

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

Unenlightening

[4/10 · 27 March 2009]

This is another one of those worryingly fashionable and prominent documentaries that offers plentiful sound-bites set to almost non-stop music, but precious little insight. Like that terribly overrated skateboarding flick Dogtown And Z-Boys, this is a barrage of information that you didn't care to know, delivered by people sometimes visibly salivating at the prospect of recounting a story that isn't really worth telling.

Many of these subjects are so rigorously determined to mythologize this period of Aussie film-making, that they end up telling tales that make them look like a smirking misanthropy collective. Wasn't it funny when that actress nearly drowned, just because some schmuck of a director couldn't get the shot that he wanted? How about when Henry Silva, an actor petrified of heights, almost p*ssed himself with fear because a camera crew took him 70ft off the ground without warning him? And that Etc sequence in Patrick? They considered giving the actor real shock therapy! What lovable rogues! What tw*ts.

Stir in the endless shrugging off of numerous instances of casual racism and misogyny, and you're left with a pretty empty document of little genuine significance.

There are a handful of interesting, level-headed contributors (one of them being an uncharacteristically restrained Quentin Tarantino) but there is no form, structure or analysis of any cultural impact that this movement may have had. Which is a shame, because such analysis may have justified the film's existence.

There may well be valuable things to say about this subject, but it'll take a much more ambitious director to do it.

The Wackness (2008)

The Wackness

[4/10 · 13 March 2009]

This is one of those shambolic American indie debuts that has its head stuck in the clouds. Its only currency is pointless, insight-free nostalgia and quirky behaviour. Plot devices and character traits that qualify as fundamentally idiotic are too numerous to mention.

Ben Kingsley's performance is reasonably enjoyable, but the lead profoundly misunderstands the character that he's playing, and the director is too busy getting shots of Forrest Gump posters or people playing on Game Boys to notice.

It isn't wise or deft about anything, and it only comes to life when it draws attention to itself and is at its most pointless. Its also irritating and a little bit stupid.

The making-of on the DVD revealed a couple of things; that writer/director Jonathan Levine is an insufferable, airheaded douchebag, and that everyone involved in the making of the film thought that they were making a comedy, which was news to me.

Wackness indeed.

Joe (1970)

A Fascinating Mess

[4/10 · 22 January 2009]

Joe was first released in the US in the summer of 1970. Despite respectable notices, reasonable box office and an Oscar nom, it vanished shortly afterwards and remained forgotten about throughout the 1980's, before being enthusiastically reappraised, somewhat unjustly, in the US in the late 90's. Thanks to this lengthy unavailability, its reputation has gone on to see it placed (inexplicably) alongside the likes of Michael Winner's original Death Wish. Although revenge is a theme, a film about vigilantism this most definitely is not.

The plot isn't worth synopsizing. Its a flabby, hammy and bizarrely stagey ramble about an accidental murder and the unlikely relationship that blossoms out of it. That relationship and the largely class-based quirks of its two leads are exaggerated into ridiculous caricature; these two, and their situation, bear absolutely no relation to reality.

Almost everything about the film is cantankerous and begrudgingly antiquated, which makes the whole thing completely fascinating. Hippies are depicted as snide and exclusive misanthropes, hard drugs either make you sleep or dance around maniacally with lipstick on your face, and most young women are prepared to have sex with strangers in exchange for marijuana at the drop of a fly. Its very much a film of the 60's rather than the 70's, so why some industry luminaries have begun to include it in retrospective conversations about the beginnings of the Hollywood New Wave is a complete mystery. Martin Scorcese of all people even got involved, though probably only to give a nod to the dank, lavatorial hues of the grim urban cinematography, which almost certainly influenced Taxi Driver four years later. But Joe seems very much like a furious tirade against the likes of Easy Rider and Bonnie And Clyde, rather than a continuation of that same insurgent cinematic ethos.

It isn't a film of any real artistic significance - despite Joe's incontinent fury at everything in his world, it remains a story about absolutely nothing - but its value as a cultural museum piece is unprecedented. Shot on and around the streets of New York City during the darkest hours of the Vietnam war, and at a time when America (and, significantly, its cinema) was being revolutionized to the horror of the old guard, the film ends up, in its own completely oblivious and accidental way, saying more about that period of history than numerous infinitely superior movies that directly endeavored to capture it.

But as a film? Despite a really surprising and effective shock ending, this is basically a Michael Winner film, but not as well made. How does that tickle your fancy? ** Incidentally, if you are, like me, a fan of spotting arbitrary background lookalikes, then check out Harold Steptoe at 1:22:11 in the hippy art gallery.

RocknRolla (2008)

Guilty

[6/10 · 21 January 2009]

Pleasures really do not come any guiltier than this. Guy Ritchie's latest is crass, nihilistic, shambolic, desperate, self-indulgent, and fundamentally pointless.... and also pretty irresistible as a bit of mindless entertainment.

Bits of it are lame, bits of it are reprehensible, but none of it is boring. It rattles along so briskly that there's little time to stare into the many gaping plot holes, the obligatory eclectic soundtrack impresses, and although it doesn't deserve them, it features an exceptional ensemble cast all turning in excellent performances.

But it isn't all fun and games. First up, a shockingly abhorrent sequence that depicts a brutal, senseless stabbing outside a nightclub is tastelessly sexed-up to feel like both a music video, and an utterly perverse paean to maverick heroism. Secondly, the denouement is fantastically offensive; a prime example of the kind of infantile, moronic machismo that Guy Ritchie's fiercest detractors have always had a field day with. A depressive artist decides to kick his musical career to the curb in order to focus on the far more noble and righteous career of slapping people for a living?

Aside from those two instances of bewildering twattery (of that stupefying vintage that only Guy Ritchie can provide) this is really quite good, and marks a significant return to non-horrific form.

Mum & Dad (2008)

Garbage

[1/10 · 21 January 2009]

So soon after the invigorating adrenaline rush of James Watkins' utterly fantastic Eden Lake last year, quick as a flash and bang on time, here arriveth the comedown.

Mum and Dad aspires to be Mike Leigh's Hostel, but it looks and feels like a bottom-rung Eastenders episode by way of Roland Joffe's Captivity, and is somehow at least five times as dumb and disposable as that sounds. In short, it amounts to eighty-odd minutes of aggrieved yelling braided into several totally asinine moments of bloody, lavatorial sleaze.

It isn't even momentarily frightening, suspenseful or inventive, and for a flick so proudly and loudly "inspired" by the murders of Fred and Rosemary West, the complete lack of taste, insight and tonal composure is unforgivable.

The story behind the film's funding and production is fascinating however, and well worth investigating online. The most revealing fact derived from the whole saga is that the director was forced to write and shoot almost half an hour's worth of extra material at the last minute because the film ran so short. The most depressing fact is that you'll have absolutely no idea which footage is which.

Bad acting, bad direction, bad plotting, bad effects, bad dialogue.....This whole sorry enterprise is marginally less worthwhile than ejaculating into a lacerated human organ.

And certainly less enjoyable.

Cloverfield (2008)

Cloverfield

[7/10 · 13 November 2008]

If you're a misanthrope or a pedant (ideally both, obviously) then prepare to have a field day with this one.

A steadily decreasing number of impossibly pretty and wealthy New York twenty-somethings scramble around Manhatten island as it is briskly destroyed both by a gigantic, unseen creature of some kind, and the US military, who are trying to kill it. There's a very rough through-line involving a missing ex-girlfriend, but as far as story goes, thats your lot.

The film's premise and plot are all riddled with more holes than you'd find in a very productive tea-bag factory; the central conceit - that the entire movie is composed of home video footage shot by a civilian luddite - is visually and conceptually inconsistent; and if the story's decision to focus on a set of characters who are almost profoundly unlikeable is the injury, then a light smattering of utterly diabolical acting is the insult.

But you simply can't argue with populist film-making this effective. The shocks pull no punches and hit home every time, the aura of suspense and expectation is ferocious and beautifully maintained, the effects are outstanding, and at barely 70 minutes minus credits, it is as tight as a duck's sphincter.

Love it, hate it, relentlessly rip the pish out of it... just make sure you watch it.

Eden Lake (2008)

Fantastique

[9/10 · 13 November 2008]

This gruelling, invigorating, sensational tour de force is an instant classic. It takes most of its cues from the much-revered smash-mouth genre prototypes of the 1970's; its whole-hog relentlessness, its shrewd, methodical plotting; both are pure, vintage Wes Craven, and praise doesn't come much higher than that.

It's a thoroughly old-school experience from beginning to end. The much-discussed topicality turns out to be nothing more than simple provocation, and the whole thing is shamelessly, rigorously manipulative, in that brilliant way that horror films used to be. When I wasn't squirming in my seat, I was trying to stop myself from yelling at the screen (a process that I like to refer to as "decision derision") which is the kind of impassioned, joyous impulse that I haven't succumbed to in a cinema in years.

But make no mistake, this is ferociously, unflinchingly hardcore. It is frequently nasty in ways that go straight for the gut, and bears no relation to the f*ckwitted idiocy that Hollywood now regularly churns out disguised as something challenging or extreme. If you thought that Hostel was tough, think twice before buying a ticket.

Eden Lake may not have the rich subtext or cultural significance of Craven's seminal 1970's output, but it does unmistakably have that same raw cynicism, energy and sense of purpose.

This is easily the finest pure horror movie since Switchblade Romance, and is absolutely not to be missed.

REC (2007)

Rec

[4/10 · 5 November 2008]

Although it is somewhat smarter and more skillfully made than most of what currently passes for horror cinema in Hollywood, Rec is still just more of the same tired old moves. Its premise is shrewd and its duration admirably brief, but there is nothing here that you haven't seen before.

The opening few minutes feature a young reporter looking at the rather uneventful lives of some fireman living part-time inside an urban Spanish fire station, and between interviews she is quick to express her utter boredom to her cameraman; a perception that the audience is clearly supposed to share. The bitter irony is that these sequences are so well paced, so rigidly researched and authentic, that they are ten times more interesting than everything that happens afterwards, when the camera begins to shake ceaselessly and people begin to scream rather a lot.

The plot has a nice John Carpenter-ish conspiracy bent about it that sadly turns out to go nowhere, and the virus, clearly inspired by the one created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 Days Later, is clumsy. That relentless, animalistic implacability is replaced here by a quaint, vacant semi-consciousness. These infected folk often pause for dramatic effect in darkened hallways, and in one hilarious (unintentional?) instance, turn to pose for the camera just before chomping into someone's neck.

If all this relentless nihilism and verite violence is new to you, you may well find enough here to enjoy. Everyone else is very likely to get bored long before these 85 minutes are up.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007)

In Search Of A Midnight P*ss

[2/10 · 25 October 2008]

Judging by the cover of the UK DVD, quite a few respected (and not so respected) professional film critics got rather excited by this film on its cinematic release. I can only conclude that it either appeared in an extraordinarily lacklustre week, or that the screening's accompanying press kits came equipped with pre-loaded crack pipes.

This is a rom-com that features no rom and no com. It is essentially a film about a young couple walking and talking for ninety minutes, and it embodies all that is rotten about US indie cinema. None of its characters ring true for even one second, and they're all played broadly and nauseatingly by cocksure and vacant amateurs. Its observations about boy/girl relationships are all profoundly idiotic, and the complete dearth of imagination is most acutely signified by the two leads; boy is a struggling, misanthropic screenwriter; girl is an out-of-work actress, and kooky to the power of ten.

The worst scene involves a fundamentally pointless discussion about Frank Warren's ongoing community art project Postsecret. Completely bereft of wit, purpose or worthwhile perspective, its like overhearing two air-heads yapping in a pub, and would feel like padding if padding wasn't already the solitary order of the day.

The only amusing moments feature in the opening minute of the film, which is an unctuous montage featuring numerous young couples sucking face alongside a portentous voice-over. Rather than hire actual lovers to perform in these scenes, director Alex Holdridge inexplicably appears to have hired unacquainted actors instead. The boys go for it with genuine gusto, but the girls all appear rigid and borderline frightened; one lady in particular looks as if she's about to reach for her handbag so that she can mace her assailant in the face.

That sequence is about as funny, and real, as this imprudent dirge gets.

Death Race (2008)

Death Faece

[1/10 · 28 September 2008]

This is the cinematic equivalent of staring at a fruit machine for two hours.

It is also almost impossible to critique. It follows a pretty rank formula; a scene or two of hackneyed, pungent gorgonzola take place off the track, followed by a sequence of headache-inducing eyescrewery taking place on it. And Repeat. Repeat. REPEAT.

Those race sequences really do represent a new low for contemporary Hollywood movie-making. When shots aren't cut into spastic, nonsensical visual slaps that last less than a second, the camera is quaking violently and zooming in and out furiously, as if being controlled by a well-caffeinated mute, trying desperately to let the director on the other end of the monitor know that his testicles have just caught fire.

At one point, following what appears to have been a gigantic car accident, Joan Allen (Joan Allen!) turns to a colleague and bellows, "What the hell just happened!?"

You tell me, love.

Diary of the Dead (2007)

Romero's Weakest Link

[3/10 · 14 August 2008]

When the budgetary breakdown of George Romero's latest was leaked online before the film was barely out of pre-production, the internet was briefly ablaze with thousands of hardened cineastes collectively desponding. Hollywood's money men have spent the best part of the past decade financing every two-bit commercial and music video dolt in their attempts at running an entire cinematic genre through the mud. So when one of that genre's few living legends emerges in a rare bout of productivity, why isn't he even able to raise enough dough to shoot his new baby on celluloid?

I know who I'm siding with. Although Land Of The Dead, Romero's previous (and unusually recent) foray back into undead Pittsburgh curbed the satire and upped the action, it made for a very pleasing entertainment that was still a cut way above Hollywood's artistically fruitless genre competition. If Romero's hardcore fanbase were unhappy with that film, then God only knows what they make of this one.

Because this is the real deal; a George Romero movie that could have been made by just about anyone. The satire is completely absent, unless you count some curmudgeonly sermonizing about the elemental inhumanity of the Youtube generation, which I didn't. The zombie death sequences, so frequently a source of real invention and wit, have been replaced almost entirely by digitised bullets to the head. The tough, single-minded oddballs that normally frequent these flicks have been replaced by affluent teens: not, as you'd expect, for the purposes of making some kind of venomous social statement, but merely in the interests of ensuring solid box office.

These are the only signs that you're even watching the work of Pittsburgh's finest; there is one very brief flash of outlandish humour when a mute, dynamite-wielding Amish gentleman briefly appears; the ending is quite outrageously pessimistic; and the director's peerless gift for casting utterly appalling actors in the lead roles is, amazingly, more in effect here than it ever has been.

This is just an anodyne, simplistic and ugly road movie, and a film that, rather tragically, has almost nothing to recommend it.

Donkey Punch (2008)

Donkey Pish

[3/10 · 9 July 2008]

I can't remember the last time that a movie squandered as much goodwill in such a short space of time as this one does. The first half is genuinely terrific, as six lairy, sexed-up twenty-somethings flirt, take drugs and confabulate on a yacht anchored off the coast of an unnamed Spanish island. Its like Hollyoaks as directed by Larry Clark, and it is totally gripping.

But as soon as the titular incident occurs (and the titular incident really does occur; just in case anyone else suspected that the title was merely a jocular come-on) the plot suddenly helter skelters straight into a brick wall; turning into the kind of dated, tiresome trash that isn't only shockingly predictable, but also entirely unaware of its own predictability. The film's twists are broadly apparent a full ten minutes before they occur on screen, which makes for an experience that isn't only boring, but also deeply and repeatedly annoying.

This is one of those thrillers in which every cast member gets a turn playing the volatile psychopath, purely because the script can't get around the fact that the previous character to go loopy has just been safely locked in a cupboard.

It never once stops being faultlessly directed - debutant Oliver Blackburn coaxes some really outstanding performances from his young cast, and there are a couple of devilish moments of genuine suspense and black comedy - but these jiffys are like a tiny number of slowly deflating rubber dinghies sinking into a gigantic ocean of generic pish.

People merely looking for explicit sex will be very well served, but the violence and gore is surprisingly tame for something that's being marketed as a plasma-stained killfest.

A very brief, but nevertheless apt and effective homage to Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm aside (a film so infinitely superior that I feel guilty for even having mentioned it here) this is just a shoddy, witless bore of a film.

And it all started so well.

Wanted (2008)

WANTED! A Competent Movie Please

[3/10 · 25 June 2008]

Hollywood's apparent fascination with Russian 'Nightwatch' helmer Timur Bekmambetov should (good box office notwithstanding) be efficiently assassinated by this stupid, boring, derivative, inept and mean-spirited mess.

James McAvoy plays Neo (sorry, Wesley) a shmucky everyman who, whilst shopping for his anxiety meds at a local pharmacy, bumps into Angelina Jolie a.k.a Trinity (or Fox, if you prefer) who joins him for a pointless special effects sequence en route to an introduction with Morpheus, played by Morgan Freeman, and who, for argument's sake, we'll refer to by the name he's given in the film: Sloane.

You get the idea. This is, put simply, the pauper's Matrix. It wouldn't make for particularly interesting reading for me to recount just how many similarities there are between the two films (it'd fill several hundred pages of double-sided A4, for a start) but the overall difference in tone is mildly fascinating.

It wasn't hard to empathize with Neo in the earlier film; the Wachowski brothers clearly relished and nurtured the sense of wonder and excitement of his journey, making the film's stratospherical success easy to understand. In Wanted, after taking a plot-unbalancing length of time to establish McAvoy as an ordinary joe who is, "...a loser. Just like you..." (a sentiment that the film keeps repeating) it then turns him, after his lengthy 'training' sessions (which amount to nothing more than him being repeatedly beaten, and no, I am not making this up) into an arrogant, belligerent a**hole.

The film pukes its cards on the table most succinctly with its final line of dialogue. After narrating his character's transformation for us over a sequence featuring yet another bloody, slow-motion head shot, McAvoy turns to the camera and says, "What the f**k have you done lately?" which, I'm happy to report, resulted in a smattering of mild applause at the screening I attended; not for the dialogue, but for the truly estimable chap who screamed "F**K OFF!!!" at the screen as the credits began to roll.

All of this wouldn't matter if the film was any good at all, but it ain't. The action sequences are murky and unimaginative. The actors are given absolutely nothing to do; Morgan Freeman, in particular, appears to be barely alive during his few brief scenes. Its derivative, its stupid, its condescending and its boring. Boy... is it boring!

This is the best approximation of a turkey that you're gonna see before Thanksgiving. Chow down at your own risk.

Halloween (2007)

Black is not a colour, folks

[1/10 · 8 May 2008]

Classic movie monster Michael Myers as pointlessly 're-imagined' by a petulant imbecile.

There isn't one iota of suspense in the whole wretched thing, and Myer's new (absurdly simplistic) character embellishments could quite easily have been dreamt up by a five year old under general anesthetic. By pretentiously attempting an all-out character study instead of a straight homage or remake, Rob Zombie has ended up cluelessly violating several fundamental rules of the horror genre, thus devolving Michael Myers into a psychopath with less chill factor than a mildly irate Michael Palin brandishing a foam rubber mallet.

When the depressing truth that a drooling simpleton like Rob Zombie can maintain a career in Hollywood is finally the butt of droll jokes rather than the painful industry death knell of today, people may be capable of watching this stupid, stupid, stupid hunk of bunkum and having a laugh at it. Viewed today, with its lurid, lingering death scenes, its complete disregard for cinematic artistry and craft, and its unbelievably, catastrophically, seismically dumb script, it is akin to an agonizing brain assault.

But gawping at Zombie's unbelievable stupidity only goes so far. When he shoots the brutal gang rape of a helpless female mental patient from the leery, almost jocular perspective of the rapists rather than their prey, it becomes almost impossible to stomach his hoity-toity claims that he's some kind of subversive artist rather than a mildly perverted misanthrope. After the rape, Michael Myers escapes from the institution and from thereon in, murders absolutely everyone that he meets, with one exception: the rape victim. Why? Empathy for a fellow asylum inmate? Something Oedipal? Nah, its because the MPAA would've slapped the film with an NC-17 rating in the States and kids wouldn't have been able to see it. What an artist!

I watched this film from beginning to end in a constant state of funereal head-shake-o- vision.

John Carpenter's original film was a masterpiece. This is merely one hundred and six infantile, sordid and sleazy minutes of absolutely nothing. I couldn't have disliked it more.

Sugarhouse (2007)

Coulda

[5/10 · 15 February 2008]

So, so tempting to paraphrase the legendary two-word review of Spinal Tap's "Shark Sandwich" here, but such an arch dismissal does something of a disservice to what could have been a strong, idiosyncratic movie.

Anyway, this half-baked bunch of Sh*thouse is actually one of the strongest post-Lock Stock crime capers yet, which is praise so faint that these very words are vanishing from my screen as I type them. Once you put aside the fact that the film's mere existence is thoroughly depressing (at this rate, that bone-chilling term 'post-Lock Stock' is going to outlive influenza) you are free to admire its considerable directorial panache, some large stretches of very strong writing, and, most graciously, the way that it goes out of its way to discern itself from its infantile genre brethren.

It is an odd and very stagey three-hand chamber piece, featuring lead characters whose dynamic fundamentally doesn't make any sense. A sketchy, homeless crackhead (Walters, way, way OTT) lures a dead-eyed businessman (the ever tedious Steven Macintosh) to an abandoned warehouse in central London (which, rather helpfully, has running water and electricity) in order to sell him a stolen handgun. A deranged, skin-headed drug dealer (Serkis, in a performance clearly discernible from outer space) enters the mix shortly afterwards, after discovering that the weapon in question is the very same one that had been pinched from his bathroom the night before.

After a gripping opening, this very early instant is precisely where logic runs and hurls itself out of the nearest window. This is one of those movies that simply wouldn't exist without its main character's constantly inane and illogical behaviour. The calamitous trio's entire encounter is one gigantic assemblage of excellent reasons for each of them to leave the warehouse and never return, but none of them choose to. The tables are turned frequently but to no dramatic avail; in one scene, Walters plans to shoot Macintosh and run away with his money, and in the next he's cowering, gun in hand, in a toilet cubicle whilst Macintoff struts around on the other side of it cursing noisily. And as for the resilient, smirking bond that suddenly (and I do mean suddenly) forms between them in the finale? I've seen richer and more plausible moments of emotional heft in the Naked Gun flicks.

Although large chunks of the dialogue are authentic and peppy, playwright Dominic Leyton often tries to invoke profundity and gravitas via some very silly shortcuts. The most extraordinary example of this involves Walters having a very brief, tearful rant about the intricacies of the British class system, which manages to single-handedly convince our businessmen friend not to buy the gun from him at all. Why? Because guns is bad, blud. Its a scene so misjudged and absurd that you can't help feeling terribly sorry for the actors, who all rather admirably treat the material like Chekov.

These characters are all utterly shameless archetypes (Serkis is a volatile psychopath that dotes on his family; Macintosh the privileged white wimp, in over his head; and Walters' brash demeanor masks, quelle surprise, a heart of purest gold) but the whole notion of having actual characters in a film of this type, routine or not, is something of a novelty.

So yes, this is basically yet another shallow, stupid mockney slap 'em up. But despite the relentless implausibility of it all, if it had just relinquished the pretentious and simplistic posturing, it'd be easily recommendable to fans of this sort of thing as a lazy Sunday afternoon rental.

It is, at least, stylish and occasionally interesting.

Rise of the Footsoldier (2007)

Mug

[2/10 · 4 January 2008]

Are Nick Love's movies too fackin' cerebral for ya? Then get straight dahn Blockbuster and get yourself some of this. And I ain't even avvin' a bubble, ya mug.

This film is allegedly based on the same true events that inspired the surprisingly respectable and proficient Sean Bean gangster flick Essex Boys, but such information suggests that this is going to have some kind of tenuous link to the real world. Not so. This is a loathsome, plot less and titanically mean-spirited cartoon that is so offensive and so depressing that it calls to mind nothing less than Meir Zarchi's evergreen vulgarity barometer I Spit On Your Grave.

Overlong and aimless, the flick just ambles briskly along, taking frequent pause to go off on random, inconsequential tangents, all of which culminate in either gratuitous sex or gratuitous violence, occasionally played for repugnant laughs that'll have most audiences continuously scraping their jaws off the floor.

It is completely impossible to overstate just how grotesquely pornographic the violence is, even when compared to the other specimens from this illustrious cinematic sub-genre. People are endlessly having their faces smashed in with bricks, their heads bludgeoned with metal poles, their backsides penetrated with blunt knives, often in glorious slow-motion, and even more often perpetrated by our lovably roguish hero. In 'is world, you gotta 'it em ard innit? Or else they don't respect ya, yeah?

Other highlights include... Our "hero" forming an impromptu posse of about ten strangers on a subway train, who take on (and end up beating into retreat) a tribe of around two hundred machete-wielding maniacs; our "hero" romancing, marrying and fathering the children of two posh, angelic and smitten beauties a few months apart; and our "hero" being accosted by a random blonde who nonchalantly begs for permission to fellate him.

And as if the swelling, disease-of-the-week string syrup on the soundtrack wasn't bad enough, the flick even has the audacity to go all Rashomon on us in the third act, pretentiously recounting a plot event repeatedly for no reason other than to garishly bask in the glory of another dozen senseless killings. And who the hell cares anyway? All that plot stuff just gets in the way of the gore. But fear not; after a couple of very brief minutes featuring three men swearing at each other in a Range Rover, the plasma is right back to flying around like jism in an apocalyptic gusher gangbang.

So, in short, its just like all those other recent British hooligan movies, only worse; it is manifestly the unbridled, most peerlessly idiotic, most misogynistic masturbation delusion of the thickest teenage fantasist in all of fackin' England.

Oh, and the actors are all so universally unconvincing that they make Elijah Wood in Green Street look like Lenny McLean.

Trust me. You need this movie like you need a brick-shaped dent in your bonce.