*Contains spoilers*
I'm not a big fan of slasher flicks, but the family wanted to watch this one and so I went along with it for the company.
Wolf Creek was, to me, both a surprising turnaround of the stale old genre norms, yet also a depressing trudge right through all the things that I don't enjoy about "slasher" movies.
Filmed by an Indie group on a low budget, it was nice for once to see that the "Shakycam" effect is foregone for more conventional filming.
The plot concerns the ill-fated adventure of three young people (2 girls and a guy) travelling through the Australian outback.
The acting from everyone involved in the film is quite impressive, though the film gets off to a slow start and I found myself getting restless during the intro 30 minutes or so, where the obligatory scenes of young people having "crazy" parties were thrown in. Since that sort of thing seems to be in every slasher flick ever, I was straight to thinking "Ah, this movie is going to be a pile of turd, no surprises there."
However, things took a turn for the better upon the group's first arrival at an isolated petrol station. The male of the group, Ben, is intimidated by some burly rough-looking men in a conversation that's genuinely tense. Eventually he is bailed out by the "weird over-friendly local", who actually turns out to be the most normal person there - he tells the leader of the men to stop "acting like a dickhead".
Impressed by the atmosphere in the scene, I equally enjoyed it when the villain of the film turned up. Oozing a strange charm and easy sense of humour at first, John Jarratt is great as the terrifying Mick Taylor.
After offering to help out the group with their broken down car, he takes them back to his place of residence (an old mining outpost) and sits around a campfire with the trio.
Mick is a drifting hunter in the outback, moving from place to place. Despite being tough and rough, he seems warm and welcoming to the party. After some lengthy scenes in which we get a glimpse of his superfically friendly personality, he slowly shows his true colours.
Taking offence at one of Ben's "Crocodile Dundee" jokes, he stares at him for an excessive length of time, mouth open slightly, and we start to realise that he's clearly not as friendly as he seems.
It's not long before he drugs them and has them tied up, at his mercy.
And this is where the film took a huge nosedive for me, sadly. The rest of the film is pretty much torture-porn of the nastiest kind.
It's one thing to create a tense and disturbing atmosphere, but the film goes further. It creates that atmosphere, but it seems to stop being entertainment in the process. The effect is more akin to watching a horrific car crash in slow motion.
Take, for example, the scene where Mick apparently rapes a member of the trio. He then takes great delight in taunting the girl, telling her in the most unpleasant ways how he will horribly kill her and so on.
This is not an uncommon sort of thing in horror films...and I expect the most twisted killers out there probably do act like that in reality. But even so, Wolf Creek focuses on this particular scene for what feels like about 15 minutes.
And I did not enjoy that time a bit - it was less like an atmosphere was being manipulated by the director, and more like a prolonged and unpleasantly "indulgent" trip into something that I have no desire to experience. "Exploitation film" is a phrase which comes to mind.
This continues throughout the film, with the two women of the group being subjected to absolutely horrendous things that I won't bother with here. And the film also sacrifices itself to an irritating horror cliche: when given the completely obvious chance of easily killing the main antagonist, the heroines don't take it.
By far the most excessive scene has to be the "head on a stick" scene. Mick essentially ends the life of a main character by severing their spine with a knife, rendering them paralysed from the neck down and completely open to any further torture he'd like to inflict.
When I saw that scene, I just thought "What the fuck? What's the point of this movie, other than "enjoying" watching some poor souls get horribly sliced up in ways I don't even want to imagine?"
The male lead does disappointingly little once the horror begins - instead it feels like watching 1.5 hours of women in the most unpleasant distress imaginable.
John Jarratt's character felt truly promising at the outset, when he is at his most disarmingly "nice", and I had high hopes for the film. He's undoubtedly a very talented actor to make such a blunt and horrible role something you can study with interest.
However, he was let down completely with the material. I don't mind gore in horror films, I don't even mind psychological horror (in fact I enjoy it).
What I don't enjoy watching is an entire feature length which essentially features people put in an inescapable, hopeless situation, then delights in showing their brutal violation with the worst kind of sadistic, directorial glee that revels in every pitiful moment of suffering on screen.
I'll give it two stars purely for Jarratt's acting and the scenes before the "horror" begins, because those elements were enjoyable.
[*][*] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Showing posts with label Movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movie. Show all posts
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Movie Review: 300
Given that I usually enjoy the "titanic ancient battle" genre in general, I should technically love this film.
Why do I not, then?
The best I can describe it is that someone offers you a delicious steak sandwich. You bite into it and the bread is soft and fluffy, but the meat feels and tastes alarmingly like wet cardboard liberated from a tramp's living quarters.
300 is the wet cardboard of ancient battle movies. It's just bland, dull, predictable, brainless and above all fake. To sum this up, let me break it down into sections.
Presentation
The presentation is my least favourite part of the film - I don't think a single shot in the film was captured without the aid of CGI, if not completely constructed by CGI. It just sucks.
Even the scenes in which Leonidas (Gerard Butler) strides around Sparta all look like they were created completely by a computer. The simplest sets look like they've been airbrushed and edited and CGI'd to within an inch of their lives as opposed to being built of something real.
We see valleys, seas, hills, trees, all with lense effects and filters and virtual graphics. Even the Spartans themselves are created apparently out of a plastic mould, all walking around with the same chiselled granite torsos.
I wonder how much CGI was performed on the main cast too. One unintentionally hilarious moment, I paused because something didn't seem quite right about the lighting on the few characters stood in the foreground.
When I looked closer, their heads seemed to be shaded in differently to their perfect physiques. It was like a competently performed photoshop, but one that looks stupid nonetheless.
This is to ignore the dreadful battle scenes and the Persian hordes. If the Spartans come out of plastic moulds, the Persians must come off of a freaking mass production line.
There are about 3 types of Persian soldier in this film: Masked Man With Turban, Masked Man Without Turban and Immortals (Masked Men In Dark Clothing).
These faceless antagonists run at the Spartans like sausages leaping into a meat grinder. They exist merely to be eviscerated in slow-mo, fast-mo, in-between-mo and collapse in ridiculous sprays of unconvincing blood.
Now I'm aware that the film is hardly meant to go for realism (seeing as it depicts oracles as monsters and delights in other similar silliness), but the fight scenes are really a highlight of the CGI bullcrap.
Remember how I said Gladiator looked real, because the effects are real? Here is the opposite.
Typical combat scene: Identikit Persian #45409 charges in, gets hit by sword, does a 360 degrees backflip with CGI blood going everywhere (the "blood" is all perfectly spherical and never hits the ground, even when about 40 guys are beings stabbed) and then makes a landing that would be shunned at the Olympics.
Making every combat scene in a whole movie boring is actually quite an impressive feat, so I salute the effects team there. Perhaps if the film wasn't structured entirely around fighting it would be forgivable, but since that's the selling point AND the narrative of the film, having crap action sequences is quite embarrassing.
If you love films where not a single shot actually looks plausible in any way, you'll love this picture.
Story
So this movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel "300". If you've watched Sin City, you might be lured into thinking that 300 would have similar levels of weirdness and complexity. Sadly not.
No, this film is all about MANLY BELLOWING and MANLY SHOUTING and MANLINESS and MANLINESS THAT'S A BIT HOMOSEXUAL and not a lot else.
"Spartan" is used as a replacement for the word "badass", and is overused so much ("He kept his Spartan reserve", "We are Spartans!") that it's quite comical.
The Persian army is not elaborated on in any detail besides how evil they are. Which increases with every scene. Apparently the Persians don't just execute men, they execute them with obese disfigured guys with huge blades for arms. And they have pseudo-zombies as troops. Riiiiiight.
Sometimes the film tries to pretend that it's a little clever and knows about tactics. Leonidas repeatedly mentions the importance of a good Phalanx formation. This is then followed by the battle scene showing Spartans just wading in with no order at all, somehow striking down 4000 Persians each with a flick of the wrist because the script demands it.
Unlike in Gladiator, where the death of major characters feels sad and poignant, I found myself not giving a hoot about Leonidas' fate, or the fate of his men, because they're all such airheaded macho stereotypes that you could just replace them all with Arnold Schwarznegger. About the most deep exploration of emotions in this film is a closeup of someone's eyes...that's it.
The rest of the movie boils down to a silly, predictable tale of senate conspiracy, like a low-rent rip off of Roman politics. Oh, and boobs. We get to see boobs several times, but somehow even these have suspicious hints of CGI about them and fail to be interesting.
Overall rating: 2/5
When your film is about fighting and passion but fails at both, you know that you've done something wrong somewhere along the line.
[*][*][ ][ ][ ]
Why do I not, then?
The best I can describe it is that someone offers you a delicious steak sandwich. You bite into it and the bread is soft and fluffy, but the meat feels and tastes alarmingly like wet cardboard liberated from a tramp's living quarters.
300 is the wet cardboard of ancient battle movies. It's just bland, dull, predictable, brainless and above all fake. To sum this up, let me break it down into sections.
Presentation
The presentation is my least favourite part of the film - I don't think a single shot in the film was captured without the aid of CGI, if not completely constructed by CGI. It just sucks.
Even the scenes in which Leonidas (Gerard Butler) strides around Sparta all look like they were created completely by a computer. The simplest sets look like they've been airbrushed and edited and CGI'd to within an inch of their lives as opposed to being built of something real.
We see valleys, seas, hills, trees, all with lense effects and filters and virtual graphics. Even the Spartans themselves are created apparently out of a plastic mould, all walking around with the same chiselled granite torsos.
I wonder how much CGI was performed on the main cast too. One unintentionally hilarious moment, I paused because something didn't seem quite right about the lighting on the few characters stood in the foreground.
When I looked closer, their heads seemed to be shaded in differently to their perfect physiques. It was like a competently performed photoshop, but one that looks stupid nonetheless.
This is to ignore the dreadful battle scenes and the Persian hordes. If the Spartans come out of plastic moulds, the Persians must come off of a freaking mass production line.
There are about 3 types of Persian soldier in this film: Masked Man With Turban, Masked Man Without Turban and Immortals (Masked Men In Dark Clothing).
These faceless antagonists run at the Spartans like sausages leaping into a meat grinder. They exist merely to be eviscerated in slow-mo, fast-mo, in-between-mo and collapse in ridiculous sprays of unconvincing blood.
Now I'm aware that the film is hardly meant to go for realism (seeing as it depicts oracles as monsters and delights in other similar silliness), but the fight scenes are really a highlight of the CGI bullcrap.
Remember how I said Gladiator looked real, because the effects are real? Here is the opposite.
Typical combat scene: Identikit Persian #45409 charges in, gets hit by sword, does a 360 degrees backflip with CGI blood going everywhere (the "blood" is all perfectly spherical and never hits the ground, even when about 40 guys are beings stabbed) and then makes a landing that would be shunned at the Olympics.
Making every combat scene in a whole movie boring is actually quite an impressive feat, so I salute the effects team there. Perhaps if the film wasn't structured entirely around fighting it would be forgivable, but since that's the selling point AND the narrative of the film, having crap action sequences is quite embarrassing.
If you love films where not a single shot actually looks plausible in any way, you'll love this picture.
Story
So this movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel "300". If you've watched Sin City, you might be lured into thinking that 300 would have similar levels of weirdness and complexity. Sadly not.
No, this film is all about MANLY BELLOWING and MANLY SHOUTING and MANLINESS and MANLINESS THAT'S A BIT HOMOSEXUAL and not a lot else.
"Spartan" is used as a replacement for the word "badass", and is overused so much ("He kept his Spartan reserve", "We are Spartans!") that it's quite comical.
The Persian army is not elaborated on in any detail besides how evil they are. Which increases with every scene. Apparently the Persians don't just execute men, they execute them with obese disfigured guys with huge blades for arms. And they have pseudo-zombies as troops. Riiiiiight.
Sometimes the film tries to pretend that it's a little clever and knows about tactics. Leonidas repeatedly mentions the importance of a good Phalanx formation. This is then followed by the battle scene showing Spartans just wading in with no order at all, somehow striking down 4000 Persians each with a flick of the wrist because the script demands it.
Unlike in Gladiator, where the death of major characters feels sad and poignant, I found myself not giving a hoot about Leonidas' fate, or the fate of his men, because they're all such airheaded macho stereotypes that you could just replace them all with Arnold Schwarznegger. About the most deep exploration of emotions in this film is a closeup of someone's eyes...that's it.
The rest of the movie boils down to a silly, predictable tale of senate conspiracy, like a low-rent rip off of Roman politics. Oh, and boobs. We get to see boobs several times, but somehow even these have suspicious hints of CGI about them and fail to be interesting.
Overall rating: 2/5
When your film is about fighting and passion but fails at both, you know that you've done something wrong somewhere along the line.
[*][*][ ][ ][ ]
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Great Movie Scenes: Fargo, the "TV Scene"
*This highlight contains spoilers for the movie Fargo*
So I reviewed Fargo a few days back and rewatched it yesterday to see if I picked up on anything new. I did.
Somehow I totally missed a really brilliant scene that I think emphasises just how hot the Coens are on details that are easy to miss. It's only around a minute long, but that minute conveys so much.
Right after an amusing interlude in which cop Marge Gunderson interviews two dim-witted prostitutes, the scene cuts to a zoomed out shot of a snowy shack. Inside Gaear and Carl are waiting with the kidnapped Jean for a ransom call.
Even from the location shot we can hear Buscemi's Carl muttering insults at the TV set in the cabin. As the film's wonderfully calm soundtrack plays in the background, the camera moves inside.
From there the view passes from Carl banging the TV and becoming increasingly infuriated, back to Gaear (who is sitting silently, almost as if catatonic) and then on to Jean, who is also quiet but breathing quickly as though scared, a bag over her head.
These shots repeat themselves, zooming in further on each character slightly. As the scene progresses, Carl's lamentations grow more desperate.
"There's nothin' to do!" he cries helplessly. "F**kin' TV won't even...come on, baby! Plug me inta the ozone! F**kin' shit box!"
All through the scene the background music proceeds with contradictory gentleness, building in volume as the camera finally begins zooming in on the malfunctioning TV screen. As we zoom in, Carl's profanity gets worse and worse until he is apparently screaming at the TV in an uncontrollable rage ("F**K! F**K!!").
The TV suddenly gets a picture and the music and yelling stops immediately - a beetle in a nature documentary scuttles around, and the view zooms out to show that the TV is located in the room of Marge, who is happily cuddling up to her husband.
The first time I saw the scene, I really, really laughed. Buscemi's ability to make his character so ludicrously irate over such a trivial affair is really convincing. Stormare's Gaear is so zoned out and disinterested that he highlights this really well.
Then I got to thinking - other than for the amusement factor, why was this scene included? Why was the music chosen for this scene?
The music is a haunting violin piece that plays recurringly throughout the film. Here it contradicts Carl's screaming and at the same time invites us to speculate a higher purpose to the events shown.
Then I realised - the scene is actually very significant in determining the moral compass of the story and comments on the personalities of the characters. In that 40 seconds to a minute, this small scene sums up everything that makes the movie great.
Buscemi's character throughout the film becomes increasingly violent, erratic and uncaring. Not only does this scene foreshadow his eventual fate and the disintegration of any humanity he had, it also throws light on the state of his life and Marge's quote at the end of the film (see the review).
Carl's life is so empty and futile that he just loses it if he can't watch TV. He isolates himself from what he seems to crave (company) by picking a silent brute for a partner and gagging his hostage. He sleeps with call girls throughout the film, apparently unable and unwilling to emotionally commit to a woman. In a way, I think he's perhaps one of the most tragic characters in the story, he's just so pathetic.
Gaear, meanwhile, is (to quote Ebert), a "sullen slug". He'd be just as happy with the TV broken as fixed. He's happy not to talk to anyone. If you annoy him, he's happy to kill you. We can't even imagine what he'd want to spend the ransom money on, because he doesn't even seem to have a shred of human normality in his being. He doesn't have a life at all.
Both of them ignore Jean completely in this scene, showing the fundamental selfishness and lack of empathy they both have for other human beings. It is also, interestingly, the first and only time we see Jean after the kidnapping and before Gaear callously kills her off-screen.
As for what's on the screen - a beetle in Marge's house, on a nature show. Carl cannot pick the reception for this programme up. Does that suggest that his actions are fundamentally against the natural way of things? I think they certainly highlight another disconnect between people like Carl and Gaear and "functioning" society.
The narrator explains that the beetle is "carrying a worm back to it's nest", a striking parallel with the kidnapping which I think is meant to encourage this train of thought.
Marge by contrast is happy simply being with her husband, and eventually decides she is going to sleep. She has no need for the TV, or the material desires that it represents.
Ironically, the guy who gets to watch the TV in the end is the disinterested Gaear.
That so much inferrence can be put into a single minute of film is pretty remarkable.
Great film, great scene. Here's the YouTube recording:
So I reviewed Fargo a few days back and rewatched it yesterday to see if I picked up on anything new. I did.
Somehow I totally missed a really brilliant scene that I think emphasises just how hot the Coens are on details that are easy to miss. It's only around a minute long, but that minute conveys so much.
Right after an amusing interlude in which cop Marge Gunderson interviews two dim-witted prostitutes, the scene cuts to a zoomed out shot of a snowy shack. Inside Gaear and Carl are waiting with the kidnapped Jean for a ransom call.
Even from the location shot we can hear Buscemi's Carl muttering insults at the TV set in the cabin. As the film's wonderfully calm soundtrack plays in the background, the camera moves inside.
From there the view passes from Carl banging the TV and becoming increasingly infuriated, back to Gaear (who is sitting silently, almost as if catatonic) and then on to Jean, who is also quiet but breathing quickly as though scared, a bag over her head.
These shots repeat themselves, zooming in further on each character slightly. As the scene progresses, Carl's lamentations grow more desperate.
"There's nothin' to do!" he cries helplessly. "F**kin' TV won't even...come on, baby! Plug me inta the ozone! F**kin' shit box!"
All through the scene the background music proceeds with contradictory gentleness, building in volume as the camera finally begins zooming in on the malfunctioning TV screen. As we zoom in, Carl's profanity gets worse and worse until he is apparently screaming at the TV in an uncontrollable rage ("F**K! F**K!!").
The TV suddenly gets a picture and the music and yelling stops immediately - a beetle in a nature documentary scuttles around, and the view zooms out to show that the TV is located in the room of Marge, who is happily cuddling up to her husband.
The first time I saw the scene, I really, really laughed. Buscemi's ability to make his character so ludicrously irate over such a trivial affair is really convincing. Stormare's Gaear is so zoned out and disinterested that he highlights this really well.
Then I got to thinking - other than for the amusement factor, why was this scene included? Why was the music chosen for this scene?
The music is a haunting violin piece that plays recurringly throughout the film. Here it contradicts Carl's screaming and at the same time invites us to speculate a higher purpose to the events shown.
Then I realised - the scene is actually very significant in determining the moral compass of the story and comments on the personalities of the characters. In that 40 seconds to a minute, this small scene sums up everything that makes the movie great.
Buscemi's character throughout the film becomes increasingly violent, erratic and uncaring. Not only does this scene foreshadow his eventual fate and the disintegration of any humanity he had, it also throws light on the state of his life and Marge's quote at the end of the film (see the review).
Carl's life is so empty and futile that he just loses it if he can't watch TV. He isolates himself from what he seems to crave (company) by picking a silent brute for a partner and gagging his hostage. He sleeps with call girls throughout the film, apparently unable and unwilling to emotionally commit to a woman. In a way, I think he's perhaps one of the most tragic characters in the story, he's just so pathetic.
Gaear, meanwhile, is (to quote Ebert), a "sullen slug". He'd be just as happy with the TV broken as fixed. He's happy not to talk to anyone. If you annoy him, he's happy to kill you. We can't even imagine what he'd want to spend the ransom money on, because he doesn't even seem to have a shred of human normality in his being. He doesn't have a life at all.
Both of them ignore Jean completely in this scene, showing the fundamental selfishness and lack of empathy they both have for other human beings. It is also, interestingly, the first and only time we see Jean after the kidnapping and before Gaear callously kills her off-screen.
As for what's on the screen - a beetle in Marge's house, on a nature show. Carl cannot pick the reception for this programme up. Does that suggest that his actions are fundamentally against the natural way of things? I think they certainly highlight another disconnect between people like Carl and Gaear and "functioning" society.
The narrator explains that the beetle is "carrying a worm back to it's nest", a striking parallel with the kidnapping which I think is meant to encourage this train of thought.
Marge by contrast is happy simply being with her husband, and eventually decides she is going to sleep. She has no need for the TV, or the material desires that it represents.
Ironically, the guy who gets to watch the TV in the end is the disinterested Gaear.
That so much inferrence can be put into a single minute of film is pretty remarkable.
Great film, great scene. Here's the YouTube recording:
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Movie Review: Fargo
So, yet another review ( I will really have to get back to Blood Bowl soon!) and yet another "Coen brothers" movie.
Fargo is quite similar in terms of themes to No Country For Old Men, yet also reminds me of a Shakespearian play in terms of the tragedies that seem to befall practically every character in the story.
Just like NCFOM it focuses on a merciless, senseless evil in a traditionally laid-back, moral rural setting and the impact such an invasion of darkness has on the casual observer.
Similarly, Fargo also has elements of dark comedy. I'd say it goes further than NCFOM in that regard (which is more thrillery all around) and goes into the territory of all out black comedy in places.
One point, in which a character screams incredulously "I got f**kin' SHOT! I got f**kin' shot IN THE FACE!" made me burst out laughing. It's peculiar that I can't pin down exactly why that scene is so funny, but the delivery and the context of the line (as well as the response of the other party) just showcases the edge on things perfectly. The events that unfold are so outrageously grim at points and so extreme that the instinct they grab hold of is the instinct to laugh.
The cast of this film are universally fantastic in their roles. Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi deserve a special mention as characters Gaear Grimsrud and Carl respectively. The two are a great double act.
Carl is cowardly, anger-prone, nervous, loserish criminal and yet is more human than his partner. He can't seem to stop talking. We sense there is a shred of
humanity in him despite his unpleasant nature, particularly after the first death on screen.
Gaear Grimsrud has no such human spark. He hardly ever speaks throughout the film (much to Carl's annoyance) unless it's to make a threat or deliver a statement matter-of-factly.
He's a heavily built, intimidating man, yet also gives the impression that he is somewhat mentally slow - a brute in every sense of the word. Below this exterior there lies mystery.
His name doesn't sound American. Unlike Carl, he hardly ever begins yelling or getting angry - he simply kills people who anger him instead. He's like Anton Chigurh if he was obsessed with pancakes, less intelligent and a lot less professional.
He doesn't approach that almost metaphysical level of evil, but he has an animalistic, brutal simplicity that makes him a great villain.
Buscemi's character morphs throughout the picture. He starts off slimy, unpleasant and yet more eloquent than his partner, then slowly shifts towards losing that spark himself. In a way he seems to mingle with Gaear's personality - he loses any morals he may have had, while Gaear ends the film the more coldly rational of the two.
The plot itself is interesting. It's impossible to go into detail without spoiling it, but it concerns a car salesman named Jerry (William H. Macy) trying to prop up his financial situation by having his own wife kidnapped. Needless to say his hiring of Carl and Gaear to carry the task out is very ill-advised, and the whole plan quickly goes awry. It's hard to say who is more pathetic - Jerry or the criminals.
There are many parallels in the story between seemingly unrelated characters that show up in many different sub-plots, another nice trait of the film.
Following a trail of corpses and carnage is Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a pregnant cop in Brainerd, Minnesota (the setting for much of the story) who tries to fathom the situation unfolding before her. She, as Tommy Lee Jones in NCFOM, has a great line near the end of the film that provides some redemption for all that we see before.
So Fargo is a strange beast. It's a crime film, a comedy film and a strangely poignant tale all rolled into one. There is a brilliant irony to the story too that you will only get once you see it.
I'll leave you with one of Marge's quotes: "[It was all] for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well...I just don't understand it."
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJUvPZI3Cr4
Fargo is quite similar in terms of themes to No Country For Old Men, yet also reminds me of a Shakespearian play in terms of the tragedies that seem to befall practically every character in the story.
Just like NCFOM it focuses on a merciless, senseless evil in a traditionally laid-back, moral rural setting and the impact such an invasion of darkness has on the casual observer.
Similarly, Fargo also has elements of dark comedy. I'd say it goes further than NCFOM in that regard (which is more thrillery all around) and goes into the territory of all out black comedy in places.
One point, in which a character screams incredulously "I got f**kin' SHOT! I got f**kin' shot IN THE FACE!" made me burst out laughing. It's peculiar that I can't pin down exactly why that scene is so funny, but the delivery and the context of the line (as well as the response of the other party) just showcases the edge on things perfectly. The events that unfold are so outrageously grim at points and so extreme that the instinct they grab hold of is the instinct to laugh.
The cast of this film are universally fantastic in their roles. Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi deserve a special mention as characters Gaear Grimsrud and Carl respectively. The two are a great double act.
Carl is cowardly, anger-prone, nervous, loserish criminal and yet is more human than his partner. He can't seem to stop talking. We sense there is a shred of
humanity in him despite his unpleasant nature, particularly after the first death on screen.
Gaear Grimsrud has no such human spark. He hardly ever speaks throughout the film (much to Carl's annoyance) unless it's to make a threat or deliver a statement matter-of-factly.
He's a heavily built, intimidating man, yet also gives the impression that he is somewhat mentally slow - a brute in every sense of the word. Below this exterior there lies mystery.
His name doesn't sound American. Unlike Carl, he hardly ever begins yelling or getting angry - he simply kills people who anger him instead. He's like Anton Chigurh if he was obsessed with pancakes, less intelligent and a lot less professional.
He doesn't approach that almost metaphysical level of evil, but he has an animalistic, brutal simplicity that makes him a great villain.
Buscemi's character morphs throughout the picture. He starts off slimy, unpleasant and yet more eloquent than his partner, then slowly shifts towards losing that spark himself. In a way he seems to mingle with Gaear's personality - he loses any morals he may have had, while Gaear ends the film the more coldly rational of the two.
The plot itself is interesting. It's impossible to go into detail without spoiling it, but it concerns a car salesman named Jerry (William H. Macy) trying to prop up his financial situation by having his own wife kidnapped. Needless to say his hiring of Carl and Gaear to carry the task out is very ill-advised, and the whole plan quickly goes awry. It's hard to say who is more pathetic - Jerry or the criminals.
There are many parallels in the story between seemingly unrelated characters that show up in many different sub-plots, another nice trait of the film.
Following a trail of corpses and carnage is Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a pregnant cop in Brainerd, Minnesota (the setting for much of the story) who tries to fathom the situation unfolding before her. She, as Tommy Lee Jones in NCFOM, has a great line near the end of the film that provides some redemption for all that we see before.
So Fargo is a strange beast. It's a crime film, a comedy film and a strangely poignant tale all rolled into one. There is a brilliant irony to the story too that you will only get once you see it.
I'll leave you with one of Marge's quotes: "[It was all] for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well...I just don't understand it."
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJUvPZI3Cr4
Monday, 7 February 2011
Movie Review: No Country For Old Men
No Country For Old Men is pretty close to being a "perfect" Thriller.
The movie, set in 1980, focuses on the convergence of the lives of 3 men in Texas. The story focuses on the escalating violence and immorality associated with propagation of the heroin trade at the time and contrasts it with "the old times".
One man is Llewyn Moss (Josh Brolin), an everyman character from humble origins who one day happens upon a drugs deal gone wrong in the middle of the desert. He encounters a dying dealer who begs for water - Moss doesn't have any, and instead checks to see if anyone else survived the incident.
Eventually he finds the last dealer dead under a distant tree. Next to him is a case containing $2 million.
Moss takes the money home, where he has an attack of conscience and goes back to the scene to give water to the dying man. This act of kindness ultimately gets him embroiled in a terrifying chase.
The second man is experienced Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a man who has been Sheriff since he was 25. Early in the film, he narrates his confusion on how the world seems to be changing, quoting an example of a very callous murderer he recently brought to justice.
He mentions with fondness how the "old timers" never had to carry guns on their belts - something that has changed enormously in recent years in his mind.
He has several excellent monologues in this vein which really sum up parts of the film nicely.
The third man is the enigmatic Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chirgurh is the character that really steals the show.
He is the hitman contracted by one of the drug factions to find the money taken from the deal (inside the case, unknown to Moss at first, a tracking device is hidden). Chigurh has an implaceable accent and is clearly not from Texas.
He is a completely merciless psychotic who is very, very good at his job. While he is undoubtedly unhinged, the most disturbing thing about the character is how efficiently and intelligently he carries out his murders.
After accepting the contract, he promptly decides to simply take the money for himself instead of returning it to his clients - and then he executes them calmly with a handgun before leaving the scene.
Chigurh also has his own twisted philosophy on life. He is obsessed with fate, and throughout the film we see several scenes in which he apparently decides whether or not to take the life of a character with a coin toss.
Take this pitch-perfect scene in which Chigurh is apparently antagonised by the small talk of a petrol station clerk:
Throughout the film, he becomes an almost supernatural force, silently killing anyone who he feels like.
His unusual choice of weaponry reflects his demented personality - at one point he fires at Moss indiscriminately (killing an innocent in the process) with a silenced machine gun. Many of his other killings are carried out with a silenced shotgun, a gun which mirrors his quiet-spoken but brutal personality perfectly.
Most creepy of all, however, is the "oxygen tank" an ill-fated policeman notes that he carries with him. It is a captive bolt gun which fires a pressurised cylinder used to kill cattle. Chigurh uses it to break the door locks of his victims with a sudden, soft hiss...and is not against using it against people either.
I've deliberately avoided plot details as discussing them too much ruins the film. Hopefully I have illuminated the characters (Chigurh especially) who are really fantastic.
The film is quite violent and I'm surprised it achieved a 15 certificate rating. Swearing is actually pretty low throughout the film.
Final Word:
If you want a Thriller with a real punch that raises a lot of questions by the end, No Country For Old Men is for you.
The plot will unfold in ways that you honestly can't predict.
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
The movie, set in 1980, focuses on the convergence of the lives of 3 men in Texas. The story focuses on the escalating violence and immorality associated with propagation of the heroin trade at the time and contrasts it with "the old times".
One man is Llewyn Moss (Josh Brolin), an everyman character from humble origins who one day happens upon a drugs deal gone wrong in the middle of the desert. He encounters a dying dealer who begs for water - Moss doesn't have any, and instead checks to see if anyone else survived the incident.
Eventually he finds the last dealer dead under a distant tree. Next to him is a case containing $2 million.
Moss takes the money home, where he has an attack of conscience and goes back to the scene to give water to the dying man. This act of kindness ultimately gets him embroiled in a terrifying chase.
The second man is experienced Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a man who has been Sheriff since he was 25. Early in the film, he narrates his confusion on how the world seems to be changing, quoting an example of a very callous murderer he recently brought to justice.
He mentions with fondness how the "old timers" never had to carry guns on their belts - something that has changed enormously in recent years in his mind.
He has several excellent monologues in this vein which really sum up parts of the film nicely.
The third man is the enigmatic Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chirgurh is the character that really steals the show.
He is the hitman contracted by one of the drug factions to find the money taken from the deal (inside the case, unknown to Moss at first, a tracking device is hidden). Chigurh has an implaceable accent and is clearly not from Texas.
He is a completely merciless psychotic who is very, very good at his job. While he is undoubtedly unhinged, the most disturbing thing about the character is how efficiently and intelligently he carries out his murders.
After accepting the contract, he promptly decides to simply take the money for himself instead of returning it to his clients - and then he executes them calmly with a handgun before leaving the scene.
Chigurh also has his own twisted philosophy on life. He is obsessed with fate, and throughout the film we see several scenes in which he apparently decides whether or not to take the life of a character with a coin toss.
Take this pitch-perfect scene in which Chigurh is apparently antagonised by the small talk of a petrol station clerk:
Throughout the film, he becomes an almost supernatural force, silently killing anyone who he feels like.
His unusual choice of weaponry reflects his demented personality - at one point he fires at Moss indiscriminately (killing an innocent in the process) with a silenced machine gun. Many of his other killings are carried out with a silenced shotgun, a gun which mirrors his quiet-spoken but brutal personality perfectly.
Most creepy of all, however, is the "oxygen tank" an ill-fated policeman notes that he carries with him. It is a captive bolt gun which fires a pressurised cylinder used to kill cattle. Chigurh uses it to break the door locks of his victims with a sudden, soft hiss...and is not against using it against people either.
I've deliberately avoided plot details as discussing them too much ruins the film. Hopefully I have illuminated the characters (Chigurh especially) who are really fantastic.
The film is quite violent and I'm surprised it achieved a 15 certificate rating. Swearing is actually pretty low throughout the film.
Final Word:
If you want a Thriller with a real punch that raises a lot of questions by the end, No Country For Old Men is for you.
The plot will unfold in ways that you honestly can't predict.
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
Saturday, 29 January 2011
A Look at Taxi Driver
So I watched Scorsese's Taxi Driver last night and I think it is now on my list of favourite films.
There are two reasons I like it so much:
1. Travis Bickle is likely to be the most complicated protagonist I've seen in a film.
2. The cinematography actually contributes a lot of foreshadowing and metaphors to the plot of the film.
I think I've seen the film around 3-4 times now and yet I still notice new things each time. It also doesn't seem to be in any kind of genre - it's simply the inner dialogue of a lonely (and eventually disturbed) man who is actually presented in a way much easier to empathise with than any of the "normal" characters until his complete mental "snap".
Bickle is a 26 year old Vietnam Veteran. Next to nothing is mentioned of his career as a soldier (merely the fact that he was one) but throughout the film it is gradually revealed that the experience quite possibly had a profoundly damaging effect on his mind.
Not only this, but he admits himself that he feels immensely isolated from society. He mentions that he has felt alone his whole life (whether his "whole life" includes before his war experiences or not is ambiguous) and frequently refers to normal society as "them", the people who apparently don't care about him or have any interest in his existence.
One of the strangest aspects of Travis' character is that he is more moral at core (and also seemingly more intelligent) than many of the people he socialises with and observes, despite the fact that he also engages in sleazy practices that would befit someone of lesser morals.
By night he spends all his time driving people around in the roughest city districts (and he rapidly develops a disgust, even a hatred, for his fares) and yet by day he sits in run-down theatres watching pornography. Yet he doesn't seem to watch it because he enjoys it at all, but because his life is so directionless and other cab drivers suggested he do it.
Before entering one theatre he makes a polite attempt to engage with the girl behind the till, but is brushed off. He loathes the films but has a morbid fascination with them, like a moth drawn to a flame.
There is a definite parallel between his observation of the dirty pictures and the people he drives around and how he despises both. This is highlighted once he becomes particularly disturbed and is shown sitting in a cinema, this time pointing his fingers at the "actors" on the screen as if to shoot them.
Furthermore, he repeatedly makes statements such as "Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum from the streets.", foreshadowing his violent killing spree at the end of the film (which doesn't impact the "scum" much at all) but also showing again this hatred of what he sees in humanity all around him.
A very interesting aspect of Bickle is also his apparent racist views that he doesn't even realise he has - in fact, his actions suggest that he is fairly tolerant of other people. At one point he narrates that he picks up any passengers, regardless of who they are or their race. He also says that many other cab drivers don't pick up black people, but he is not like them.
Except, he doesn't say "black people", he uses a racially offensive term without even realising. Later in the film, the camera takes several very disorientating and apparently out of place angles when he looks at "stereotypical" racial minorities - even at one point another cab driver who he frequently socialises with. The camera follows their movement for an excessive time, as though Travis is staring or confused.
Many of these stereotypes are figures of the sleaze he sees (pimps, etc.) but all of them are racially different to Travis. Does seeing someone that looks different to him just particularly highlight his feelings of isolation, or does he also have deep rooted racist tendencies that he doesn't even know about? It's never fully explained.
I mentioned the cinematography, and there are several shots in the film that really stand out. There is obviously the above "staring effect", which is used several times to transport us into Bickle's confusion.
My personal favourite is from the scene in which Travis is making a pitiful attempt to reconcile with a girl he likes (Betsy, who he eventually decides "is just like them...cold and unfeeling") via payphone. It's almost painful listening to him being rejected yet again...and then suddenly, half-way through the call, the camera moves sideways to focus on a long, empty hallway.
Travis continues speaking off-screen, and the shot just stares down that hallway, as though his whole life is now stretching in one direction only. At the end of the hall is a single door to the street, back to the sleaze he wants to escape from and the violent conclusion of the film.
Other particularly noticable techniques are used during Travis' demented ramblings towards the end of the film. While obsessively growling the entrance to his enraged rant ("Listen you f**kers, you screwheads..") he turns towards a mirror slowly and then suddenly a frame skips, as though there was a mistake in the filming and we see him perform the exact same movement again and repeat the line.
It creates a very disturbing effect, sort of like a cog in Bickle's mind slipped mid-way through the sentence.
Other shots are more standard, but still very powerful. The use of mirrors as Bickle prepares to go on his violent spree are prominent - he points the guns directly at the camera (and from the mirror, also himself) and smirks in a fashion that is truly creepy.
All in all, while I've avoided plot details quite a bit here, I think it's a film that's worth seeing if you haven't. It's very disturbing in places and very open to interpretation, much more than some recent films.
Even the existence of the ending is ambiguous, what recent film can make that claim of its plot?
There are two reasons I like it so much:
1. Travis Bickle is likely to be the most complicated protagonist I've seen in a film.
2. The cinematography actually contributes a lot of foreshadowing and metaphors to the plot of the film.
I think I've seen the film around 3-4 times now and yet I still notice new things each time. It also doesn't seem to be in any kind of genre - it's simply the inner dialogue of a lonely (and eventually disturbed) man who is actually presented in a way much easier to empathise with than any of the "normal" characters until his complete mental "snap".
Bickle is a 26 year old Vietnam Veteran. Next to nothing is mentioned of his career as a soldier (merely the fact that he was one) but throughout the film it is gradually revealed that the experience quite possibly had a profoundly damaging effect on his mind.
Not only this, but he admits himself that he feels immensely isolated from society. He mentions that he has felt alone his whole life (whether his "whole life" includes before his war experiences or not is ambiguous) and frequently refers to normal society as "them", the people who apparently don't care about him or have any interest in his existence.
One of the strangest aspects of Travis' character is that he is more moral at core (and also seemingly more intelligent) than many of the people he socialises with and observes, despite the fact that he also engages in sleazy practices that would befit someone of lesser morals.
By night he spends all his time driving people around in the roughest city districts (and he rapidly develops a disgust, even a hatred, for his fares) and yet by day he sits in run-down theatres watching pornography. Yet he doesn't seem to watch it because he enjoys it at all, but because his life is so directionless and other cab drivers suggested he do it.
Before entering one theatre he makes a polite attempt to engage with the girl behind the till, but is brushed off. He loathes the films but has a morbid fascination with them, like a moth drawn to a flame.
There is a definite parallel between his observation of the dirty pictures and the people he drives around and how he despises both. This is highlighted once he becomes particularly disturbed and is shown sitting in a cinema, this time pointing his fingers at the "actors" on the screen as if to shoot them.
Furthermore, he repeatedly makes statements such as "Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum from the streets.", foreshadowing his violent killing spree at the end of the film (which doesn't impact the "scum" much at all) but also showing again this hatred of what he sees in humanity all around him.
A very interesting aspect of Bickle is also his apparent racist views that he doesn't even realise he has - in fact, his actions suggest that he is fairly tolerant of other people. At one point he narrates that he picks up any passengers, regardless of who they are or their race. He also says that many other cab drivers don't pick up black people, but he is not like them.
Except, he doesn't say "black people", he uses a racially offensive term without even realising. Later in the film, the camera takes several very disorientating and apparently out of place angles when he looks at "stereotypical" racial minorities - even at one point another cab driver who he frequently socialises with. The camera follows their movement for an excessive time, as though Travis is staring or confused.
Many of these stereotypes are figures of the sleaze he sees (pimps, etc.) but all of them are racially different to Travis. Does seeing someone that looks different to him just particularly highlight his feelings of isolation, or does he also have deep rooted racist tendencies that he doesn't even know about? It's never fully explained.
I mentioned the cinematography, and there are several shots in the film that really stand out. There is obviously the above "staring effect", which is used several times to transport us into Bickle's confusion.
My personal favourite is from the scene in which Travis is making a pitiful attempt to reconcile with a girl he likes (Betsy, who he eventually decides "is just like them...cold and unfeeling") via payphone. It's almost painful listening to him being rejected yet again...and then suddenly, half-way through the call, the camera moves sideways to focus on a long, empty hallway.
Travis continues speaking off-screen, and the shot just stares down that hallway, as though his whole life is now stretching in one direction only. At the end of the hall is a single door to the street, back to the sleaze he wants to escape from and the violent conclusion of the film.
Other particularly noticable techniques are used during Travis' demented ramblings towards the end of the film. While obsessively growling the entrance to his enraged rant ("Listen you f**kers, you screwheads..") he turns towards a mirror slowly and then suddenly a frame skips, as though there was a mistake in the filming and we see him perform the exact same movement again and repeat the line.
It creates a very disturbing effect, sort of like a cog in Bickle's mind slipped mid-way through the sentence.
Other shots are more standard, but still very powerful. The use of mirrors as Bickle prepares to go on his violent spree are prominent - he points the guns directly at the camera (and from the mirror, also himself) and smirks in a fashion that is truly creepy.
All in all, while I've avoided plot details quite a bit here, I think it's a film that's worth seeing if you haven't. It's very disturbing in places and very open to interpretation, much more than some recent films.
Even the existence of the ending is ambiguous, what recent film can make that claim of its plot?
Monday, 13 December 2010
Movie Review: Gladiator
I fancied watching an old favourite film of mine recently: Gladiator.
Having first watched it 10 years ago, I remember thinking how wonderful the battle sequences looked, and how perfect the ending to the film was.
10 years on, I have to say my feelings haven't changed. In fact, I think they've grown stronger.
The Action and Aesthetics
You know how every second film in recent years seems to have CGI for the hell of it? One of the most refreshing elements of Gladiator is that Director Ridley Scott knows when to use CGI (the awe-inspiring huge battle sequences) and when to scale back on the technology and use live action filmed with real stunt men (the up-close action sequences).
The difference is immediately noticable. Watch "300", a far inferior film in my opinion, and look at all of the battle sequences closely as they happen.
You'll notice immediately that when King Leonidas is slicing and dicing enemy troops, all the blood present is in bizarre diamond shapes, obviously computer generated, and never settles on the ground. This is combined with all the enemies on screen being CGI too (the whole enemy army was made of "man in mask" clones who don't cast shadows?!) and some really ridiculous CGI stunts (hurling a full grown man over your head with a shield bash?...Riiight-o!).
Then watch Gladiator. The actors are gritty and realistic, the fights look believable and have a concussive impact to them. The effects, particularly the blood and dust effects, were obviously performed using squibs and real machinery - and they look fantastic.
In this new(er) age of obsession with computer generated pixel men falling over with crappy over-the-top animations, it's a breath of fresh air to see real horses and men performing stunts.
The difference in budget between these two films? $30 million. Gladiator had a $100 million budget, 300 had a $70 million budget. Yet Scott extracts immense value from that pretty small gap in budget and makes a far more believable picture.
The Story
The story is at heart a revenge story. However, it touches on many themes: greed, lust for power, deception and the moral ambiguity of war. The film is also a really interesting look at Roman society.
Despite some minor factual errors that history buffs will spot immediately (such as the rather dubious fighting tactics of the Roman Legions shown), the film doesn't often compromise accuracy needlessly - aside from the clearly fictional elements of the story, that is.
One of my favourite qualities in the film is how it's themes are universal and unpolitical: good and evil, the triumph of the human spirit against all odds.
Like Touching the Void and The Shawshank Redemption, the film gives us a really splendid glance into not only the darkest pits of despair, but also the brilliant highs of being a human being. Despite a bittersweet ending that almost always gets the throat choking up, Gladiator finishes on an up note.
Acting across the board is top notch. Russell Crowe is excellent as the grizzled, valiant Maximus, Djimon Hounsou provides a calm balance in the form of his friend Juba and Oliver Reed, Joaquin Phoenix and Connie Nielson are all top notch.
Ralf Moller deserves a special mention for his performance as Hagen, a huge Germanic barbarian who looks more like a shaved bear than a man.
Final Word
Unlike Braveheart, a "similar" film (which I loathe!), Gladiator isn't interested in distorting events of history or making sweeping moral generalisations and passing it off as "real". Instead it uses a loose framework of history to weave a compelling fictional story.
And it does it successfully with every crashing sword, roaring chariot, hushed whisper and epic orchestral score.
Speaking of music, this film's soundtrack is also sublime - just listening to it is enough to provoke shivers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8v2TUQomZU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCevpO18t4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAOTSO9ioZk
Overall, Gladiator is like a hybrid of what made old "epic" films great, combined with modern ideas and techniques, all mixed together with the heart of a good old morality play.
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
Having first watched it 10 years ago, I remember thinking how wonderful the battle sequences looked, and how perfect the ending to the film was.
10 years on, I have to say my feelings haven't changed. In fact, I think they've grown stronger.
The Action and Aesthetics
You know how every second film in recent years seems to have CGI for the hell of it? One of the most refreshing elements of Gladiator is that Director Ridley Scott knows when to use CGI (the awe-inspiring huge battle sequences) and when to scale back on the technology and use live action filmed with real stunt men (the up-close action sequences).
The difference is immediately noticable. Watch "300", a far inferior film in my opinion, and look at all of the battle sequences closely as they happen.
You'll notice immediately that when King Leonidas is slicing and dicing enemy troops, all the blood present is in bizarre diamond shapes, obviously computer generated, and never settles on the ground. This is combined with all the enemies on screen being CGI too (the whole enemy army was made of "man in mask" clones who don't cast shadows?!) and some really ridiculous CGI stunts (hurling a full grown man over your head with a shield bash?...Riiight-o!).
Then watch Gladiator. The actors are gritty and realistic, the fights look believable and have a concussive impact to them. The effects, particularly the blood and dust effects, were obviously performed using squibs and real machinery - and they look fantastic.
In this new(er) age of obsession with computer generated pixel men falling over with crappy over-the-top animations, it's a breath of fresh air to see real horses and men performing stunts.
The difference in budget between these two films? $30 million. Gladiator had a $100 million budget, 300 had a $70 million budget. Yet Scott extracts immense value from that pretty small gap in budget and makes a far more believable picture.
The Story
The story is at heart a revenge story. However, it touches on many themes: greed, lust for power, deception and the moral ambiguity of war. The film is also a really interesting look at Roman society.
Despite some minor factual errors that history buffs will spot immediately (such as the rather dubious fighting tactics of the Roman Legions shown), the film doesn't often compromise accuracy needlessly - aside from the clearly fictional elements of the story, that is.
One of my favourite qualities in the film is how it's themes are universal and unpolitical: good and evil, the triumph of the human spirit against all odds.
Like Touching the Void and The Shawshank Redemption, the film gives us a really splendid glance into not only the darkest pits of despair, but also the brilliant highs of being a human being. Despite a bittersweet ending that almost always gets the throat choking up, Gladiator finishes on an up note.
Acting across the board is top notch. Russell Crowe is excellent as the grizzled, valiant Maximus, Djimon Hounsou provides a calm balance in the form of his friend Juba and Oliver Reed, Joaquin Phoenix and Connie Nielson are all top notch.
Ralf Moller deserves a special mention for his performance as Hagen, a huge Germanic barbarian who looks more like a shaved bear than a man.
Final Word
Unlike Braveheart, a "similar" film (which I loathe!), Gladiator isn't interested in distorting events of history or making sweeping moral generalisations and passing it off as "real". Instead it uses a loose framework of history to weave a compelling fictional story.
And it does it successfully with every crashing sword, roaring chariot, hushed whisper and epic orchestral score.
Speaking of music, this film's soundtrack is also sublime - just listening to it is enough to provoke shivers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8v2TUQomZU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCevpO18t4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAOTSO9ioZk
Overall, Gladiator is like a hybrid of what made old "epic" films great, combined with modern ideas and techniques, all mixed together with the heart of a good old morality play.
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Movie Review: Touching the Void
Put simply, Touching the Void tells one of the most incredible stories you're ever likely to hear - doubly so because it's true.
It's a movie-slash-documentary recreation of a real-life disasterous mountain climb in Peru, undertaken by two British adventurers in the mid twenties.
The two guys, Joe and Simon, along with their support man Richard (who remained back at camp) return to intersperse the on-screen action with interviews about their thoughts and feelings throughout the events in the film.
I may as well reveal the events - the film delivers the story in such a simple but spectacular fashion that knowing "what happens" doesn't do anything to change what you'll feel when you see it. You will still be amazed by the survivors' retelling of events.
We know both Joe and Simon survived, because obviously they give us the interviews. What we can't get until they explain is the ordeal they went through, and the enormous impact that has on the human body and spirit.
After successfully reaching the summit, the two begin their descent. Joe, moving first but blinded by a snow storm, slips down the side of a vertical drop and breaks his leg.
That sounds painful enough, but Joe recalls that his shin bone had splintered, and actually grated right over the top of his knee. Simon refused to leave his friend to die despite their lack of supplies, and the two slowly and painfully began threading down the mountain.
Such a drastic event is only the beginning of their troubles. In the next scene, Joe slides too far over a cliff edge. Unable to hear or see him, Simon didn't know how far the drop was and couldn't do anything to help. Stuck for hours in a wind chill factor of "around -80", Simon felt the snow under him giving way, and eventually cut the rope to save both of them from falling.
Quite what you must feel after slicing away your friend's lifeline I don't know. That's not the end. Joe survives the 150 foot fall into a dark, hellish crevasse. He then goes on to escape his icy prison by lowering himself deeper into it.
Without food or water and completely alone he nonetheless crawled and hopped across around 5 miles of cliff-ridden snow and rocklands to safety over the next 4 days. His leg was so agonisingly painful he was nearly blacking out with every movement. Unsurprisingly, he was completely delirious by the end of his journey.
The cinematography is superb, great landscape shots. The recreation is well filmed, and the story itself I must admit had me close to tears by the end. That a man can endure so much is almost more surreal than most fiction.
Final word:
Highly recommended, a truly excellent film.
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
It's a movie-slash-documentary recreation of a real-life disasterous mountain climb in Peru, undertaken by two British adventurers in the mid twenties.
The two guys, Joe and Simon, along with their support man Richard (who remained back at camp) return to intersperse the on-screen action with interviews about their thoughts and feelings throughout the events in the film.
I may as well reveal the events - the film delivers the story in such a simple but spectacular fashion that knowing "what happens" doesn't do anything to change what you'll feel when you see it. You will still be amazed by the survivors' retelling of events.
We know both Joe and Simon survived, because obviously they give us the interviews. What we can't get until they explain is the ordeal they went through, and the enormous impact that has on the human body and spirit.
After successfully reaching the summit, the two begin their descent. Joe, moving first but blinded by a snow storm, slips down the side of a vertical drop and breaks his leg.
That sounds painful enough, but Joe recalls that his shin bone had splintered, and actually grated right over the top of his knee. Simon refused to leave his friend to die despite their lack of supplies, and the two slowly and painfully began threading down the mountain.
Such a drastic event is only the beginning of their troubles. In the next scene, Joe slides too far over a cliff edge. Unable to hear or see him, Simon didn't know how far the drop was and couldn't do anything to help. Stuck for hours in a wind chill factor of "around -80", Simon felt the snow under him giving way, and eventually cut the rope to save both of them from falling.
Quite what you must feel after slicing away your friend's lifeline I don't know. That's not the end. Joe survives the 150 foot fall into a dark, hellish crevasse. He then goes on to escape his icy prison by lowering himself deeper into it.
Without food or water and completely alone he nonetheless crawled and hopped across around 5 miles of cliff-ridden snow and rocklands to safety over the next 4 days. His leg was so agonisingly painful he was nearly blacking out with every movement. Unsurprisingly, he was completely delirious by the end of his journey.
The cinematography is superb, great landscape shots. The recreation is well filmed, and the story itself I must admit had me close to tears by the end. That a man can endure so much is almost more surreal than most fiction.
Final word:
Highly recommended, a truly excellent film.
5/5.
[*][*][*][*][*]
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Movie Review: Harry Brown
*May contain spoilers*
Harry Brown is a weird film. That's about the best way to describe it.
It starts out like a hard-hitting realistic drama, and then morphs about halfway through into a vengeance-fuelled killing spree that seems lifted from the pages of a comic book.
Similarly, the film flits between chillingly accurate portrayals of British 'hoods', and an apparent alternate universe Britain where total anarchy reigns.
Whether the film is in one mood or not, at any given point it is very, very dark indeed. It has an almost unique quality to be bleak from beginning to end.
Harry Brown is a reaction to increasing street crime and yob culture in Britain, but it does not offer any solutions. Perhaps that is what the film intends - there are no easy solutions. Even the main protaganist seems to become slowly consumed by the hellish things that happen in his home area throughout the film.
First of all, the film gets off to an intimidating start. Opening scenes of the film are very powerful, and had me hooked to the screen immediately. Filmed on a mobile phone, they depict a gang of hooded youths initiating a new member to their gang. They shove drugs in his mouth and force him to smoke them for an extended time, and then with the spine-chilling words "This is how we roll", someone hands him a loaded pistol.
The next scene shows the same group roaring around on mopeds from a passenger perspective. They harass pedestrians and eventually begin firing their weapons, ending with the 'accidental' murder of a woman walking her young son in the park.
As they flee the scene, they crash violently into a truck at a junction. Fade to black.
Wow. The filmography during these first scenes is gritty, frenzied and pretty disturbing in itself, which is quite an accomplishment as usually I moan about such camerawork making me nauseous.
From there on we meet Harry Brown (who is in bed listening to news of the killing on the radio. Pretty neat linking trick there). Played by Michael Caine (an actor who varies very much in his work, but he's definitely solid here), Brown is an ageing ex-Marine previously posted in Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles.
Caine conveys the loneliness of Brown's life wonderfully. Brown goes through a morning routine of sitting at his kitchen table, silently drinking tea, eating his breakfast, and then visiting his comatose elderly wife at the hospital.
In the evenings, he plays chess with a friend named Leonard (David Bradley, who you will immediately recognise as Filch from the Harry Potter films), the only person who seems to be there for him.
In between these activites, the estate he lives on is constantly plagued by violent, replusive young criminals who care nothing about the police or the law. Leonard in particular is constantly victimised.
It doesn't take long for things to quickly spiral downwards, and at around halfway into the film a broken Brown tools himself up and warms up the old military training.
Sean Harris puts in a notable performance as a drug-addled pimp-slash-gun dealer. His husky, hoarse voice and absolute lack of morals make him one of the most menacing and watchable characters to appear (however briefly) in the film.
The "twist" at the end of the film was not to my liking (it felt a little like it was added on for the sake of it) and the film steadily gets more ludicrous as it progresses.
My biggest issue, strangely enough, is with Harry's very first killing. The police don't realise he's the vigilante until right at the end, but I saw a glaring error immediately. Harry gets ambushed by a knife-wielding mugger, and when the guy goes to stab him, he instinctively turns the knife back on him without thinking, stabbing him in the heart.
The guy dies and Harry shuffles off home, destroying his clothes and wiping up the blood in a shock.
However, surely his prints would be all over the knife? Game over. Except not in movies :\
Final Word:
The villains (aside from Harris anyway) are sadly one dimensional. They spout the foulest language imaginable and do some very repulsive things.
The scenes in which the villains work best is in those in which Harry simply observes them from a distance harrassing and terrorising others- behaviour which is carried off with horrifying authenticity.
Intense verbal abuse of a female police officer was perhaps the most disturbing thing in the film, coupled with sexual abuse of a gang member by a drug dealer. Both were pretty shocking, though the second scene felt more exploitative, as if it had been included purely to shock.
The movie is also pretty violent, and there are several rather nasty uses of gore throughout. Overall I'd say the swearing is definitely the worst thing though. Expect to hear the "mother of all swears" multiple times.
My 'favourite' scene was probably when Harry confides in a dying criminal one of his most upsetting memories of the Troubles, that he never told to anyone else before, not even Leonard or his wife. A member of his unit was shot in a similar way to the criminal, and Harry recalls that they couldn't call in a medic to help him, and instead watched him die.
After Harry has finished speaking, there's a very short but poignant moment before Harry finishes him off where the weakened scumbag seems almost to finally realise what a wretched human being he's been...but far, far too late.
Similarly, that little window gives a perfect insight into just how much Harry has become like those he crusades against with his use of extreme violence - and there definitely lies the most interesting part of the film.
3/5
[*][*][*][ ][ ]
Harry Brown is a weird film. That's about the best way to describe it.
It starts out like a hard-hitting realistic drama, and then morphs about halfway through into a vengeance-fuelled killing spree that seems lifted from the pages of a comic book.
Similarly, the film flits between chillingly accurate portrayals of British 'hoods', and an apparent alternate universe Britain where total anarchy reigns.
Whether the film is in one mood or not, at any given point it is very, very dark indeed. It has an almost unique quality to be bleak from beginning to end.
Harry Brown is a reaction to increasing street crime and yob culture in Britain, but it does not offer any solutions. Perhaps that is what the film intends - there are no easy solutions. Even the main protaganist seems to become slowly consumed by the hellish things that happen in his home area throughout the film.
First of all, the film gets off to an intimidating start. Opening scenes of the film are very powerful, and had me hooked to the screen immediately. Filmed on a mobile phone, they depict a gang of hooded youths initiating a new member to their gang. They shove drugs in his mouth and force him to smoke them for an extended time, and then with the spine-chilling words "This is how we roll", someone hands him a loaded pistol.
The next scene shows the same group roaring around on mopeds from a passenger perspective. They harass pedestrians and eventually begin firing their weapons, ending with the 'accidental' murder of a woman walking her young son in the park.
As they flee the scene, they crash violently into a truck at a junction. Fade to black.
Wow. The filmography during these first scenes is gritty, frenzied and pretty disturbing in itself, which is quite an accomplishment as usually I moan about such camerawork making me nauseous.
From there on we meet Harry Brown (who is in bed listening to news of the killing on the radio. Pretty neat linking trick there). Played by Michael Caine (an actor who varies very much in his work, but he's definitely solid here), Brown is an ageing ex-Marine previously posted in Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles.
Caine conveys the loneliness of Brown's life wonderfully. Brown goes through a morning routine of sitting at his kitchen table, silently drinking tea, eating his breakfast, and then visiting his comatose elderly wife at the hospital.
In the evenings, he plays chess with a friend named Leonard (David Bradley, who you will immediately recognise as Filch from the Harry Potter films), the only person who seems to be there for him.
In between these activites, the estate he lives on is constantly plagued by violent, replusive young criminals who care nothing about the police or the law. Leonard in particular is constantly victimised.
It doesn't take long for things to quickly spiral downwards, and at around halfway into the film a broken Brown tools himself up and warms up the old military training.
Sean Harris puts in a notable performance as a drug-addled pimp-slash-gun dealer. His husky, hoarse voice and absolute lack of morals make him one of the most menacing and watchable characters to appear (however briefly) in the film.
The "twist" at the end of the film was not to my liking (it felt a little like it was added on for the sake of it) and the film steadily gets more ludicrous as it progresses.
My biggest issue, strangely enough, is with Harry's very first killing. The police don't realise he's the vigilante until right at the end, but I saw a glaring error immediately. Harry gets ambushed by a knife-wielding mugger, and when the guy goes to stab him, he instinctively turns the knife back on him without thinking, stabbing him in the heart.
The guy dies and Harry shuffles off home, destroying his clothes and wiping up the blood in a shock.
However, surely his prints would be all over the knife? Game over. Except not in movies :\
Final Word:
The villains (aside from Harris anyway) are sadly one dimensional. They spout the foulest language imaginable and do some very repulsive things.
The scenes in which the villains work best is in those in which Harry simply observes them from a distance harrassing and terrorising others- behaviour which is carried off with horrifying authenticity.
Intense verbal abuse of a female police officer was perhaps the most disturbing thing in the film, coupled with sexual abuse of a gang member by a drug dealer. Both were pretty shocking, though the second scene felt more exploitative, as if it had been included purely to shock.
The movie is also pretty violent, and there are several rather nasty uses of gore throughout. Overall I'd say the swearing is definitely the worst thing though. Expect to hear the "mother of all swears" multiple times.
My 'favourite' scene was probably when Harry confides in a dying criminal one of his most upsetting memories of the Troubles, that he never told to anyone else before, not even Leonard or his wife. A member of his unit was shot in a similar way to the criminal, and Harry recalls that they couldn't call in a medic to help him, and instead watched him die.
After Harry has finished speaking, there's a very short but poignant moment before Harry finishes him off where the weakened scumbag seems almost to finally realise what a wretched human being he's been...but far, far too late.
Similarly, that little window gives a perfect insight into just how much Harry has become like those he crusades against with his use of extreme violence - and there definitely lies the most interesting part of the film.
3/5
[*][*][*][ ][ ]
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Movie Review and Analysis: Full Metal Jacket
Yes, not the Bourne Identity still. I know. I'll watch it soon!
*This review contains spoilers*
Full Metal Jacket is a film that, despite famous lines of dialogue and the impressive performance of R. Lee Ermey, I only recently got around to seeing.
Let me say this now - I thought The Shining, also directed by Kubrick, was a good horror film. It is.
Even so Full Metal Jacket is an even more effective horror film despite being a different genre altogether. It has to be one of the most openly anti-war films I have seen.
The first half or so of the film centres on some green US Marine Corp recruits being trained up for deployment in the ongoing Vietnam War.
R. Lee Ermey plays Sergeant Hartman, a tough, intimidating and yet generally fair Drill Sergeant. Kubrick apparently allowed Ermey to improvise his lines, something which he almost never allowed his actors to do. It was a wise move - the ad-lib nature of the lines (many of which are profanity filled and repulsive) allows Ermey's performance to shine given his real background as a drill instructor. The actors actually look scared and uncertain the minute he opens his mouth.
There are many moments of dark humour in the first half of the film, most often through Ermey's creative put-downs of his recruits. These are interspersed with some profoundly disturbing scenes, most of which centre around Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), or as Hartman calls him, "Gomer Pyle".
Lawrence is an unfit and mentally slow recruit who has an almost childlike innocent demeanour. Hartman's relentless abuse of him during numerous failed training drills, and the other recruits' bitter (and even violent) resentment towards his ineptitude is shocking but captivating.
Other main characters include Joker (Matthew Modine) and Cowboy (Arliss Howard), who form a friendship while at the barracks.
Joker attempts to help Lawrence with aspects of the training that he struggles with (even helping him dress smartly), but slowly becomes exasperated. After one particularly bad foul-up in which Lawrence gets the entire group punished, he is gagged and then beaten with bars of soap in the middle of the night by his fellow recruits.
Joker eventually caves into the frustration along with the others, and joins in the beating of the helpless Lawrence. One of the most haunting shots of the film shows Cowboy, the only recruit not to join in, lying in his bunk and covering his ears to drown out Lawrence's cries.
Ironically this harsh kind of treatment transforms Lawrence into a model soldier, and he becomes one of the best in the unit at the various discipline drills. Then Joker notices that he is holding conversations with his rifle in private.
From there things get worse and worse, eventaully building to a tense crescendo. In the dead of night, the unhinged Lawrence loads his rifle with live ammunition. Joker walks into a shower room to find him screaming drill commands and shouldering the gun. Horrified, Joker is powerless to calm him down.
Hartman wakes up and attempts to defuse the situation, but his ultimate lack of emotional understanding proves fatal. Lawrence shoots him dead when he begins to shout orders at him. Grinning uncontrollably, he considers killing Joker too, but eventually sits down on a toilet seat.
Before the stunned Joker can do anything Lawrence lifts the rifle and promptly commits suicide - an act which brings the first half of the film to a chilling conclusion.
How close is a "model marine" to a psychopath in a system which encourages loss of emotion and dehumanisation? The film makes a powerful and uncomfortable argument that the line is very blurred indeed.
Is the system of mentally breaking recruits to form new soldiers as inhumane and cruel as war itself? Or even worse?
The second half of the film covers the actual war, in which Joker is assigned a journalistic role. He frequently writes semi-propaganda stories for army media to appease his superiors.
A lot of reviews I've read rate FMJ highly, but state that the film loses cohesion after the first half. Here I agree, but I don't think it's to the detriment of the film.
The rest of the movie has a kind of organised chaos about it. We move rapidly from location to location with Joker, again culminating at the end of the film in a prolonged tension-laden scene. We see fleeting pieces of the war with Joker's eyes and start to build up our opinions as he does.
This half of the film is of course home the infamous comic relief scene with "Da Nang Hooker", which popularised the whole "me so horny" thing that you still hear occasionally today.
The film throws us another interesting scene here. On the way to his next assignment (which coincidentally causes him to run into Cowboy's squad) he flies in a helicopter.
The door gunner, firing the machinegun at enemy troops, repeats almost constantly under his breath:
"Get some. Get some. Get some, get some. Get some. Get some."
Apparently unaware he is even muttering it, the camera pans round to reveal that he is actually gunning down civilians below indiscrimately. Joker notices this, and asks the soldier incredulously how he can shoot women and children.
The gunner boasts of his kill count (157 people and around 50 water buffalo, apparently equivalent in his view) and explains that shooting women and children is easy. "You just don't lead 'em so much."
This scene is never laid to rest, which is partly what makes it so uncomfortable. Joker doesn't respond, we never see any kind of conclusion to such a dark moment, the film simply moves on.
It's hard to sum all of the characters up, but easily one of the most prominent from here on is "Animal Mother" (Adam Baldwin), a heavy-machinegun toting soldier in Cowboy's squad. He is renowned for being brave and aggressive while under fire, and we see numerous times that he is.
However, he is simultaneously cold and emotionally hollow, his feelings apparently burnt away by the fighting. When Joker questions his motives for what he does, he explains that all that matters is "winning". Being right doesn't matter, and it was never about that. His whole motivation comes from surviving the next battle, and the prostitutes they all frequent afterwards.
From then on Joker finds himself in the thick of combat (and is widely criticised by his peers for having never killed anyone before). This all changes in the final act of the film.
Cowboy is forced to lead the squad after the previous leader is killed by a booby trap. Eventually the squad advances through an urban area, where a deadly sniper picks off several more squad members. Animal Mother suppresses the sniper and leads the squad forward.
Cowboy himself is sniped and wounded while answering the radio. His last words echo weakly from training: "I can hack it." The others can do nothing to help him but whisper words of encouragement, and he bleeds to death.
Finally they settle on killing the sniper as payback. They sneak into the building and Joker is the first to encounter him - or more precisely her. The sniper is a young girl dressed in a dusty uniform. Joker's gun jams as he goes to fire on her, and he cowers behind a pillar as she shoots at him.
Eventually she is gunned down by Joker's friend, who tastelessly whoops with joy as she lays dying on the ground. The Marines gather around her and she starts whispering something.
Eventually Joker's friend stops cheering, everything becomes silent and someone asks what she's saying.
"She's praying." Joker says. Animal Mother reasons to leave her "for the rats", but Joker insists that they must put her out of her misery.
She begins quietly begging them to kill her, and AM tells Joker that he'll let her die quickly - but only if Joker himself does the deed, and so gets his first kill.
Joker hesistates for a long time, grimacing and staring at the floor, but eventually he pulls the trigger. No-one speaks for a while, and then everyone but Joker begins whooping and cheering again, who just stares down at the corpse pale-faced and vacant eyed.
The closing scene of the film shows the soldiers marching across the landscape and singing, and Joker narrates that he "is in a world of shit, yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid."
This very ambiguous statement is all we get in way of closure, and it works perfectly. Has Joker found some kind of meaning in the horrors he has witnessed? Is that what his last quote refers to? Or has he finally lost his grip on humanity, like so many other characters in the film?
The "world of shit" quote is particularly interesting. Early in the film, Hartman informs the Marines that "No Marine dies without permission", because doing so lands them in "a world of shit".
One of the last things that the mentally broken Lawrence says to Joker in his final scene, is that he is "in a world....of shit."
Does Joker's use of the term imply that he has also lost that "spark" that makes us people? Or has he become stronger, having overcome that initial shock, and understood what Lawrence meant in his final moments?
Final Word:
So this has been a long review/analysis, and I could rattle on more (I won't fortunately ;) ) but FMJ is a film that really gets you thinking. Every few moments something comes along that really feels masterfully planned and executed, and the whole film drips with themes.
The ending, and scenes such as the soap beating generate a kind of emotional reaction that movies so regularly fail to nail. That alone makes FMJ more disturbing than any horror film and many times more poignant than lots of other films in the same genre.
If you want to see an occasionally amusing, frequently chilling film which has a hefty layer of meaning on top, I highly recommend this film. Just make sure you're suitably hardened for the harsher bits before you turn it on.
5/5
[*][*][*][*][*]
*This review contains spoilers*
Full Metal Jacket is a film that, despite famous lines of dialogue and the impressive performance of R. Lee Ermey, I only recently got around to seeing.
Let me say this now - I thought The Shining, also directed by Kubrick, was a good horror film. It is.
Even so Full Metal Jacket is an even more effective horror film despite being a different genre altogether. It has to be one of the most openly anti-war films I have seen.
The first half or so of the film centres on some green US Marine Corp recruits being trained up for deployment in the ongoing Vietnam War.
R. Lee Ermey plays Sergeant Hartman, a tough, intimidating and yet generally fair Drill Sergeant. Kubrick apparently allowed Ermey to improvise his lines, something which he almost never allowed his actors to do. It was a wise move - the ad-lib nature of the lines (many of which are profanity filled and repulsive) allows Ermey's performance to shine given his real background as a drill instructor. The actors actually look scared and uncertain the minute he opens his mouth.
That's SERGEANT R. Lee Ermey, you scum-sucking waste of space!
There are many moments of dark humour in the first half of the film, most often through Ermey's creative put-downs of his recruits. These are interspersed with some profoundly disturbing scenes, most of which centre around Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), or as Hartman calls him, "Gomer Pyle".
Lawrence is an unfit and mentally slow recruit who has an almost childlike innocent demeanour. Hartman's relentless abuse of him during numerous failed training drills, and the other recruits' bitter (and even violent) resentment towards his ineptitude is shocking but captivating.
Other main characters include Joker (Matthew Modine) and Cowboy (Arliss Howard), who form a friendship while at the barracks.
Joker
Joker attempts to help Lawrence with aspects of the training that he struggles with (even helping him dress smartly), but slowly becomes exasperated. After one particularly bad foul-up in which Lawrence gets the entire group punished, he is gagged and then beaten with bars of soap in the middle of the night by his fellow recruits.
Joker eventually caves into the frustration along with the others, and joins in the beating of the helpless Lawrence. One of the most haunting shots of the film shows Cowboy, the only recruit not to join in, lying in his bunk and covering his ears to drown out Lawrence's cries.
Ironically this harsh kind of treatment transforms Lawrence into a model soldier, and he becomes one of the best in the unit at the various discipline drills. Then Joker notices that he is holding conversations with his rifle in private.
From there things get worse and worse, eventaully building to a tense crescendo. In the dead of night, the unhinged Lawrence loads his rifle with live ammunition. Joker walks into a shower room to find him screaming drill commands and shouldering the gun. Horrified, Joker is powerless to calm him down.
Hartman wakes up and attempts to defuse the situation, but his ultimate lack of emotional understanding proves fatal. Lawrence shoots him dead when he begins to shout orders at him. Grinning uncontrollably, he considers killing Joker too, but eventually sits down on a toilet seat.
Before the stunned Joker can do anything Lawrence lifts the rifle and promptly commits suicide - an act which brings the first half of the film to a chilling conclusion.
Lawrence, mid break-down
How close is a "model marine" to a psychopath in a system which encourages loss of emotion and dehumanisation? The film makes a powerful and uncomfortable argument that the line is very blurred indeed.
Is the system of mentally breaking recruits to form new soldiers as inhumane and cruel as war itself? Or even worse?
The second half of the film covers the actual war, in which Joker is assigned a journalistic role. He frequently writes semi-propaganda stories for army media to appease his superiors.
A lot of reviews I've read rate FMJ highly, but state that the film loses cohesion after the first half. Here I agree, but I don't think it's to the detriment of the film.
The rest of the movie has a kind of organised chaos about it. We move rapidly from location to location with Joker, again culminating at the end of the film in a prolonged tension-laden scene. We see fleeting pieces of the war with Joker's eyes and start to build up our opinions as he does.
This half of the film is of course home the infamous comic relief scene with "Da Nang Hooker", which popularised the whole "me so horny" thing that you still hear occasionally today.
The film throws us another interesting scene here. On the way to his next assignment (which coincidentally causes him to run into Cowboy's squad) he flies in a helicopter.
The door gunner, firing the machinegun at enemy troops, repeats almost constantly under his breath:
"Get some. Get some. Get some, get some. Get some. Get some."
Apparently unaware he is even muttering it, the camera pans round to reveal that he is actually gunning down civilians below indiscrimately. Joker notices this, and asks the soldier incredulously how he can shoot women and children.
The gunner boasts of his kill count (157 people and around 50 water buffalo, apparently equivalent in his view) and explains that shooting women and children is easy. "You just don't lead 'em so much."
This scene is never laid to rest, which is partly what makes it so uncomfortable. Joker doesn't respond, we never see any kind of conclusion to such a dark moment, the film simply moves on.
It's hard to sum all of the characters up, but easily one of the most prominent from here on is "Animal Mother" (Adam Baldwin), a heavy-machinegun toting soldier in Cowboy's squad. He is renowned for being brave and aggressive while under fire, and we see numerous times that he is.
However, he is simultaneously cold and emotionally hollow, his feelings apparently burnt away by the fighting. When Joker questions his motives for what he does, he explains that all that matters is "winning". Being right doesn't matter, and it was never about that. His whole motivation comes from surviving the next battle, and the prostitutes they all frequent afterwards.
Animal Mother in a tough situation
From then on Joker finds himself in the thick of combat (and is widely criticised by his peers for having never killed anyone before). This all changes in the final act of the film.
Cowboy is forced to lead the squad after the previous leader is killed by a booby trap. Eventually the squad advances through an urban area, where a deadly sniper picks off several more squad members. Animal Mother suppresses the sniper and leads the squad forward.
Cowboy himself is sniped and wounded while answering the radio. His last words echo weakly from training: "I can hack it." The others can do nothing to help him but whisper words of encouragement, and he bleeds to death.
Finally they settle on killing the sniper as payback. They sneak into the building and Joker is the first to encounter him - or more precisely her. The sniper is a young girl dressed in a dusty uniform. Joker's gun jams as he goes to fire on her, and he cowers behind a pillar as she shoots at him.
Eventually she is gunned down by Joker's friend, who tastelessly whoops with joy as she lays dying on the ground. The Marines gather around her and she starts whispering something.
Eventually Joker's friend stops cheering, everything becomes silent and someone asks what she's saying.
"She's praying." Joker says. Animal Mother reasons to leave her "for the rats", but Joker insists that they must put her out of her misery.
She begins quietly begging them to kill her, and AM tells Joker that he'll let her die quickly - but only if Joker himself does the deed, and so gets his first kill.
Joker hesistates for a long time, grimacing and staring at the floor, but eventually he pulls the trigger. No-one speaks for a while, and then everyone but Joker begins whooping and cheering again, who just stares down at the corpse pale-faced and vacant eyed.
The closing scene of the film shows the soldiers marching across the landscape and singing, and Joker narrates that he "is in a world of shit, yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid."
This very ambiguous statement is all we get in way of closure, and it works perfectly. Has Joker found some kind of meaning in the horrors he has witnessed? Is that what his last quote refers to? Or has he finally lost his grip on humanity, like so many other characters in the film?
The "world of shit" quote is particularly interesting. Early in the film, Hartman informs the Marines that "No Marine dies without permission", because doing so lands them in "a world of shit".
One of the last things that the mentally broken Lawrence says to Joker in his final scene, is that he is "in a world....of shit."
Does Joker's use of the term imply that he has also lost that "spark" that makes us people? Or has he become stronger, having overcome that initial shock, and understood what Lawrence meant in his final moments?
Final Word:
So this has been a long review/analysis, and I could rattle on more (I won't fortunately ;) ) but FMJ is a film that really gets you thinking. Every few moments something comes along that really feels masterfully planned and executed, and the whole film drips with themes.
The ending, and scenes such as the soap beating generate a kind of emotional reaction that movies so regularly fail to nail. That alone makes FMJ more disturbing than any horror film and many times more poignant than lots of other films in the same genre.
If you want to see an occasionally amusing, frequently chilling film which has a hefty layer of meaning on top, I highly recommend this film. Just make sure you're suitably hardened for the harsher bits before you turn it on.
5/5
[*][*][*][*][*]
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Movie Review: Orphan
*This review contains spoilers*
"There's something wrong with Esther." is the tagline for this film, and it certainly isn't lying.
Unfortunately though, Orphan is one of the most frustrating films I've watched in recent times. It's a textbook example of how needless cheap scares and shoehorned cliches can derail a decent thriller.
Peter Sarsgaad and Vera Farmiga play a kind and well-off couple who have a nice house and lovable kids. Their life is shaken when they lose their third child before birth. They decide, after much deliberation, to adopt a child. That child is Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman).
Esther is something of a child prodigy. She's polite, mature, intelligent and is very good at art. She also has some rather bizarre personality traits, and her history is dogged by a series of tragic accidents.
I found the first half or so of Orphan very watchable. It was surprisingly smart for a "horror" film, and reminded me more of a thriller. The characters were likable and believable. As the story progresses, we learn things about them not easily guessed (Farmiga's character used to have an alcohol problem, for example).
Interesting characters who develop? A dubious antagonist? Unreliable viewpoints? Good film so far.
Sadly though, the film is filled with these little nuggets that seem forced in from the scripts of other, lesser films.
It's kind of like someone in Hollywood watched the film, then said "Nah, this won't appeal to the market enough. Throw some cheap-ass scares in and change the ending."
So, the character building and interesting build-up is then interspersed with some of the most ludicrous "make-u-jump" scenes I've seen in a film. Think of it, and it's in the film. Kids laughing suddenly (at deafening volume), things banging, sudden unusually aggressive hugs, that sort of crap.
It just feels so unneccesary and cheapens the whole movie. It's like eating lobster and having a guy run up and bellow in your ear at random intervals.
Even worse, I didn't actually jump at any of the "sudden" bits (and I haven't done in any film for some time now). That makes it feel even more redundant.
Then I mentioned it felt like the ending was changed. Well, yeah. The film does well to avoid cliches until about 50-75% of the way through, and then they start sprouting like ugly mushrooms.
Cops taking a millenia to arrive when needed? Check. Main character dying through very dubious judgement? Check. Antagonist refusing to be killed off? Check
It really is sad to see what felt like such a promising film take a nosedive, and all because it tries to up the "horror" side of things while ditching what made it interesting in the first place.
Final Word:
Orphan oozes a kind of sneaky, devious charm until around halfway through. Then it tries to escalate things higher and higher until it has nowhere to go but cheesy horror film territory. Disappointing.
3/5.
[*] [*] [*] [ ] [ ]
"There's something wrong with Esther." is the tagline for this film, and it certainly isn't lying.
Unfortunately though, Orphan is one of the most frustrating films I've watched in recent times. It's a textbook example of how needless cheap scares and shoehorned cliches can derail a decent thriller.
Peter Sarsgaad and Vera Farmiga play a kind and well-off couple who have a nice house and lovable kids. Their life is shaken when they lose their third child before birth. They decide, after much deliberation, to adopt a child. That child is Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman).
Esther is something of a child prodigy. She's polite, mature, intelligent and is very good at art. She also has some rather bizarre personality traits, and her history is dogged by a series of tragic accidents.
I found the first half or so of Orphan very watchable. It was surprisingly smart for a "horror" film, and reminded me more of a thriller. The characters were likable and believable. As the story progresses, we learn things about them not easily guessed (Farmiga's character used to have an alcohol problem, for example).
Interesting characters who develop? A dubious antagonist? Unreliable viewpoints? Good film so far.
Sadly though, the film is filled with these little nuggets that seem forced in from the scripts of other, lesser films.
It's kind of like someone in Hollywood watched the film, then said "Nah, this won't appeal to the market enough. Throw some cheap-ass scares in and change the ending."
So, the character building and interesting build-up is then interspersed with some of the most ludicrous "make-u-jump" scenes I've seen in a film. Think of it, and it's in the film. Kids laughing suddenly (at deafening volume), things banging, sudden unusually aggressive hugs, that sort of crap.
It just feels so unneccesary and cheapens the whole movie. It's like eating lobster and having a guy run up and bellow in your ear at random intervals.
Even worse, I didn't actually jump at any of the "sudden" bits (and I haven't done in any film for some time now). That makes it feel even more redundant.
Then I mentioned it felt like the ending was changed. Well, yeah. The film does well to avoid cliches until about 50-75% of the way through, and then they start sprouting like ugly mushrooms.
Cops taking a millenia to arrive when needed? Check. Main character dying through very dubious judgement? Check. Antagonist refusing to be killed off? Check
It really is sad to see what felt like such a promising film take a nosedive, and all because it tries to up the "horror" side of things while ditching what made it interesting in the first place.
Final Word:
Orphan oozes a kind of sneaky, devious charm until around halfway through. Then it tries to escalate things higher and higher until it has nowhere to go but cheesy horror film territory. Disappointing.
3/5.
[*] [*] [*] [ ] [ ]
Monday, 11 October 2010
Movie Review: Casino Royale
Weren't expecting that, were you?!
Since unfortunately I didn't manage to see The Bourne Identity this weekend, I decided to have a look at the "old new" Bond film.
Now, while I found the original James Bond movies entertaining as a kid, as an adult I find them dated and tedious.
Yes, Roger Moore and Sean Connery game some reasonable performances, but the content was formulaic and sometimes rather insulting, especially in the oldest ones.
*Old Bond film rant starts here*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bond is some kind of superhuman being in all of them who is ridiculously excellent at everything. Villains are always genius madmen who nonetheless are too stupid to just shoot Bond, and insist, every single film, in putting him into "escapable situation X".
The other bad guys are always great at murdering anyone but Bond, and then they suddenly become incompetent morons who can't shoot straight. Ebert's review of Casino Royale also nailed something I find annoying in most films: when was the last time in an action film, if ever, that the main character was killed by a machinegun?
It's strange movie logic that comes up again and again - machineguns aimed by baddies make sparks fly everywhere, but are otherwise utterly useless against a hero. On the other hand, a simple pistol in the hands of a hero becomes some kind of 100% accurate railgun that can kill 10 people in 5 seconds. Sigh.
Then there are the women, perhaps the most irritating part of old Bond films. They're always named after some kind of lame double entendre (which fortunately I never cottoned on to as a kid, aside from thinking the names were "weird".)
Holly Goodhead, Pussy Galore, Mary Goodnight, Honey Rider.
I mean, the second one in particular isn't even a vaguely realistic name, and it's pretty graphic. Quite why the films are seen as harmless for kids when the characters are practically named "Ivanta Shagyu" I don't know >_>
Then there's how they behave. I forget which film it is, possibly The Man With The Golden Gun, but the girl helps James fight the baddies. She's insultingly stupid and inept, hopping around and squealing "Oh James, I don't know what to do! Which button do I press?!" when the only button is a giant red one.
Plus there are also several Bond films with cringeworthy lines towards racial minorities. I'm don't like how Britain is so PC-obsessed now days, but even so some of the Bond films definitely class as being in the "exploitation" genre.
So, old Bond films: The villains are idiots, Bond is some kind of superman, henchmen are useless, black and asian people are stereotyped completely and all girls are sex objects with IQs of about 10. Nice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Rant end*
The following review may contain some spoilers.
Fortunately, Casino Royale is a departure from 99% of the crap in the old films.
The main antagonist isn't a bald maniac with a base on the moon, but a slimy, desperate banker who provides large scale investments for terrorists.
The "Bond girl" (Eva Green) displays refreshing intelligence and saves Bond's life on several occasions.
Q, the gadget guy, and Moneypenny are both missing. Instead there is just M (Judi Dench), Bond's boss. Dench puts in a characteristically decent performance. This cuts down quite considerably on the cheesy humour typically associated with the "Bond formula".
Bond (Daniel Craig) is very competent at his job, but is also ruthless and emotionally cold, something that intentionally makes him quite unlikable in several scenes. While still intelligent and sharp-witted, he is a more realistic character than in any of the old films. He is a human being with strengths and flaws rather than a man made of steel.
In one scene he seduces and manipulates a target's wife purely to gain information - she is murdered as a result. As the body is bagged up and removed from a beach, M and Bond stare at it.
When M speaks her voice is sad, almost disgusted. "I would ask you to remain emotionally detached, but that's not really your problem, is it, Bond?"
Bond doesn't seem to feel a twinge of guilt. "No."
This more mature character development is a shining example of how the film differs from its predecessors, in which I couldn't imagine a scene anywhere near as stark or chilling.
Even the action has had an overhaul. While the scenes are familar: fights in speeding vehicles, fights in stairwells, car chases, they also soak up the new visceral feel. Bond frequently ends struggles blood-smeared, beaten and exhausted, but his enemies end up even worse. No longer are fights your usual Bond case of Big Evil Man With Cheesy Advantage versus Man In Sharp Suit.
Sebastien Foucan, one of the big names of parkour, makes a cameo in a very impressive chase scene.
Mixed in with all this are casino scenes that manage to milk every last drop of tension from the turning over of two cards, and an end which results in the villain's demise in a far more satisfactory and creepy way than any over-the-top cartoony death ever could.
Final Word:
Casino Royale is in a different world to the Bond films before it, and I highly recommend watching it even if you typically dislike old Bond cliches.
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
5/5
Since unfortunately I didn't manage to see The Bourne Identity this weekend, I decided to have a look at the "old new" Bond film.
Now, while I found the original James Bond movies entertaining as a kid, as an adult I find them dated and tedious.
Yes, Roger Moore and Sean Connery game some reasonable performances, but the content was formulaic and sometimes rather insulting, especially in the oldest ones.
*Old Bond film rant starts here*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bond is some kind of superhuman being in all of them who is ridiculously excellent at everything. Villains are always genius madmen who nonetheless are too stupid to just shoot Bond, and insist, every single film, in putting him into "escapable situation X".
The other bad guys are always great at murdering anyone but Bond, and then they suddenly become incompetent morons who can't shoot straight. Ebert's review of Casino Royale also nailed something I find annoying in most films: when was the last time in an action film, if ever, that the main character was killed by a machinegun?
It's strange movie logic that comes up again and again - machineguns aimed by baddies make sparks fly everywhere, but are otherwise utterly useless against a hero. On the other hand, a simple pistol in the hands of a hero becomes some kind of 100% accurate railgun that can kill 10 people in 5 seconds. Sigh.
Then there are the women, perhaps the most irritating part of old Bond films. They're always named after some kind of lame double entendre (which fortunately I never cottoned on to as a kid, aside from thinking the names were "weird".)
Holly Goodhead, Pussy Galore, Mary Goodnight, Honey Rider.
I mean, the second one in particular isn't even a vaguely realistic name, and it's pretty graphic. Quite why the films are seen as harmless for kids when the characters are practically named "Ivanta Shagyu" I don't know >_>
Then there's how they behave. I forget which film it is, possibly The Man With The Golden Gun, but the girl helps James fight the baddies. She's insultingly stupid and inept, hopping around and squealing "Oh James, I don't know what to do! Which button do I press?!" when the only button is a giant red one.
Plus there are also several Bond films with cringeworthy lines towards racial minorities. I'm don't like how Britain is so PC-obsessed now days, but even so some of the Bond films definitely class as being in the "exploitation" genre.
So, old Bond films: The villains are idiots, Bond is some kind of superman, henchmen are useless, black and asian people are stereotyped completely and all girls are sex objects with IQs of about 10. Nice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Rant end*
The following review may contain some spoilers.
Fortunately, Casino Royale is a departure from 99% of the crap in the old films.
The main antagonist isn't a bald maniac with a base on the moon, but a slimy, desperate banker who provides large scale investments for terrorists.
The "Bond girl" (Eva Green) displays refreshing intelligence and saves Bond's life on several occasions.
Q, the gadget guy, and Moneypenny are both missing. Instead there is just M (Judi Dench), Bond's boss. Dench puts in a characteristically decent performance. This cuts down quite considerably on the cheesy humour typically associated with the "Bond formula".
Bond (Daniel Craig) is very competent at his job, but is also ruthless and emotionally cold, something that intentionally makes him quite unlikable in several scenes. While still intelligent and sharp-witted, he is a more realistic character than in any of the old films. He is a human being with strengths and flaws rather than a man made of steel.
In one scene he seduces and manipulates a target's wife purely to gain information - she is murdered as a result. As the body is bagged up and removed from a beach, M and Bond stare at it.
When M speaks her voice is sad, almost disgusted. "I would ask you to remain emotionally detached, but that's not really your problem, is it, Bond?"
Bond doesn't seem to feel a twinge of guilt. "No."
This more mature character development is a shining example of how the film differs from its predecessors, in which I couldn't imagine a scene anywhere near as stark or chilling.
Even the action has had an overhaul. While the scenes are familar: fights in speeding vehicles, fights in stairwells, car chases, they also soak up the new visceral feel. Bond frequently ends struggles blood-smeared, beaten and exhausted, but his enemies end up even worse. No longer are fights your usual Bond case of Big Evil Man With Cheesy Advantage versus Man In Sharp Suit.
Sebastien Foucan, one of the big names of parkour, makes a cameo in a very impressive chase scene.
Mixed in with all this are casino scenes that manage to milk every last drop of tension from the turning over of two cards, and an end which results in the villain's demise in a far more satisfactory and creepy way than any over-the-top cartoony death ever could.
Final Word:
Casino Royale is in a different world to the Bond films before it, and I highly recommend watching it even if you typically dislike old Bond cliches.
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
5/5
Friday, 8 October 2010
Coming Soon: The Bourne Identity Review
This evening I hope to sit down with The Bourne Identity, a bowl of noodles and/or a beer and write a review for it, work permitting. If not, maybe this rather redundant blog post will jog my memory!
Friday, 1 October 2010
Movie review: The Day After Tomorrow
After enjoying Collateral in my last review, it makes sense that it couldn't last and I've now seen a film I loathe!
I have seen The Day After Tomorrow perhaps 4-5 times. This is not out of choice, but because (for perplexing reasons I can't fathom) it is on TV about every 2 weeks. Nothing else is on when it's on either.
Let's get one thing straight from the start: I am not "trendy" when it comes to Global Warming, which is what this film claims to be about.
(Global Warming rant here. If you want to skip, move down second dashed line!)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I accept there is a problem, yes, and I believe we should closely monitor it. I also believe mankind should attempt to be eco-friendly as much as is possible while maintaining efficiency.
However, I don't believe this scaremongering crap that has been so popular lately - that we are going to be the "tipping point" with our CO2 emissions.
Why? Well, when one huge-arse volcano can erupt at any time and totally dwarf the CO2 emissions of the entire Human race, I tend to think this talk of Human tipping points is ludicrous. Include underwater volcanos we don't even know about and the fact that geysers are always spewing crap out (plus the gases emitted when tectonic plates shift) and we start to look less and less significant.
Scientific evidence for this "human factor" theory is also weak, and this is what really annoys me. Take the leaked emails from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which announced that "[we] must suppress the level of change" - I.E. no significant evidence to point to human-caused climate change, but the Unit wanted to cover it up. That's great ethical science right there!
There is a cult-like mentality (ingrained in many self-righteous individuals I have met personally) that we are killing the planet with CO2, and the science is being bent to fulfill this political agenda. Science is there to present an empirical, quantitative truth, but sadly with GW that one goal seems to be obfuscated completely.
The way half of this stuff is presented is really more like religious zeal than factual evidence.
The Government loves these types of smug fanatics and this kind of perversion of science. Up taxes, and people actually agree with it! Perfect!
This is all compounded by the fearmongering adverts put out by the government and climate change groups. I remember seeing one recently aimed at children, which announced that "scientists" (got to love generalisation) have told everyone that we're all going to get screwed soon by it. Then we see images of animals and people drowning, and kids crying.
Another I saw showed a tearful young girl being teleported to an arid desert, and then being nearly killed by huge tidal waves. Then a stark voice boomed out about CO2 emissions. What scientific references did the ad make use of? None, naturally. Just a whole load of fear-spreading bull.
Now, one of the most "GW-active" people I know pretty much sums up the whole mentality. He owned 8 phones at one point recently, and must change to a new phone model once every couple of months. He also owned two laptops and a desktop computer.
I presently have one laptop, one desktop, and one cheap phone. According to this guy, I was a "materialist". I almost choked laughing! Similarly, he announced on his FB that "flying is immoral", strangely after he broke up with his overseas partner, who he was previously flying out to every 5-6 months.
I haven't been on a plane for about 8 years.
Yet this guy is THE Eco-Warrior™. It's amazing, simply incredible...but he sees himself as some kind of enlightened saviour of the planet, and naturally is a great big fan of the more baseless scaremongering ads and campaigns.
He has no idea of the science, as demonstrated in his poor reasoning over energy efficiency and countless other eco-related areas, but hey, he's a GW crusader, so logic and hypocrisy be damned!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Review resumed)
Well, basically TDAT layers on the GW theme thick. Chokingly thick. The protaganist is a super-enlightened scientist who suddenly realises the world will end due to climate change in a couple of days.
Naturally the politicians are all idiots and refuse to listen, and the film just keeps piling on the smug lecturing. "If only they had listened earlier!" is a common expression, often followed by a saddened headshake or a melodramatic kneading of the forehead.
Yes, we're stupid for not subscribing to the CO2 tipping point craze. We get it. We don't need any more patronising bollocks, thank you very much. Oh wait, we're going to get it anyway. Cheers!
Anyway, the film goes through every disaster movie cliche in the book. Tsunamis, ice storms (which somehow freeze low-flying military helicopters but not the protaganist's car. He must have an Eco-Warrior™ Shield. I wonder how much CO2 it takes to keep that thing rocking) and all other sorts of stuff.
Everyone except the Enlightened Few act like brainless tossers and generally die. There is a "brave sacrifice by cutting my climbing rope" scene that you see in every film ever to feature climbing ropes.
There are some truly laughable scenes, such as when a group of survivors successfully outrun a skyscraper-sized tsunami, or (my personal favourite) when they run away from the weather!
That's right, the building they're in freezes behind them amd they run away from the ice as it materialises in seconds behind them. Futhermore, they "shut out" this bizarre demonic freezing agent by shutting a door.
Ell-Oh-Ell.
So yeah, cliched, stale disaster movie with syrupy coverings of very biased Global Warming preachiness, this is one of the most tiresome films I have seen for a while.
Final Word:
Plot is gusty with heavy showers of smug. Extremely dangerous conditions, do not stay indoors, leave the house if neccessary!
1/5.
[*] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Also, because it's perfect (and you suffered my rant):
Watch 'til the end for big lols ;)
I have seen The Day After Tomorrow perhaps 4-5 times. This is not out of choice, but because (for perplexing reasons I can't fathom) it is on TV about every 2 weeks. Nothing else is on when it's on either.
Let's get one thing straight from the start: I am not "trendy" when it comes to Global Warming, which is what this film claims to be about.
(Global Warming rant here. If you want to skip, move down second dashed line!)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I accept there is a problem, yes, and I believe we should closely monitor it. I also believe mankind should attempt to be eco-friendly as much as is possible while maintaining efficiency.
However, I don't believe this scaremongering crap that has been so popular lately - that we are going to be the "tipping point" with our CO2 emissions.
Why? Well, when one huge-arse volcano can erupt at any time and totally dwarf the CO2 emissions of the entire Human race, I tend to think this talk of Human tipping points is ludicrous. Include underwater volcanos we don't even know about and the fact that geysers are always spewing crap out (plus the gases emitted when tectonic plates shift) and we start to look less and less significant.
Scientific evidence for this "human factor" theory is also weak, and this is what really annoys me. Take the leaked emails from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which announced that "[we] must suppress the level of change" - I.E. no significant evidence to point to human-caused climate change, but the Unit wanted to cover it up. That's great ethical science right there!
There is a cult-like mentality (ingrained in many self-righteous individuals I have met personally) that we are killing the planet with CO2, and the science is being bent to fulfill this political agenda. Science is there to present an empirical, quantitative truth, but sadly with GW that one goal seems to be obfuscated completely.
The way half of this stuff is presented is really more like religious zeal than factual evidence.
The Government loves these types of smug fanatics and this kind of perversion of science. Up taxes, and people actually agree with it! Perfect!
This is all compounded by the fearmongering adverts put out by the government and climate change groups. I remember seeing one recently aimed at children, which announced that "scientists" (got to love generalisation) have told everyone that we're all going to get screwed soon by it. Then we see images of animals and people drowning, and kids crying.
Another I saw showed a tearful young girl being teleported to an arid desert, and then being nearly killed by huge tidal waves. Then a stark voice boomed out about CO2 emissions. What scientific references did the ad make use of? None, naturally. Just a whole load of fear-spreading bull.
Now, one of the most "GW-active" people I know pretty much sums up the whole mentality. He owned 8 phones at one point recently, and must change to a new phone model once every couple of months. He also owned two laptops and a desktop computer.
I presently have one laptop, one desktop, and one cheap phone. According to this guy, I was a "materialist". I almost choked laughing! Similarly, he announced on his FB that "flying is immoral", strangely after he broke up with his overseas partner, who he was previously flying out to every 5-6 months.
I haven't been on a plane for about 8 years.
Yet this guy is THE Eco-Warrior™. It's amazing, simply incredible...but he sees himself as some kind of enlightened saviour of the planet, and naturally is a great big fan of the more baseless scaremongering ads and campaigns.
He has no idea of the science, as demonstrated in his poor reasoning over energy efficiency and countless other eco-related areas, but hey, he's a GW crusader, so logic and hypocrisy be damned!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Review resumed)
Well, basically TDAT layers on the GW theme thick. Chokingly thick. The protaganist is a super-enlightened scientist who suddenly realises the world will end due to climate change in a couple of days.
Naturally the politicians are all idiots and refuse to listen, and the film just keeps piling on the smug lecturing. "If only they had listened earlier!" is a common expression, often followed by a saddened headshake or a melodramatic kneading of the forehead.
Yes, we're stupid for not subscribing to the CO2 tipping point craze. We get it. We don't need any more patronising bollocks, thank you very much. Oh wait, we're going to get it anyway. Cheers!
Anyway, the film goes through every disaster movie cliche in the book. Tsunamis, ice storms (which somehow freeze low-flying military helicopters but not the protaganist's car. He must have an Eco-Warrior™ Shield. I wonder how much CO2 it takes to keep that thing rocking) and all other sorts of stuff.
Everyone except the Enlightened Few act like brainless tossers and generally die. There is a "brave sacrifice by cutting my climbing rope" scene that you see in every film ever to feature climbing ropes.
There are some truly laughable scenes, such as when a group of survivors successfully outrun a skyscraper-sized tsunami, or (my personal favourite) when they run away from the weather!
That's right, the building they're in freezes behind them amd they run away from the ice as it materialises in seconds behind them. Futhermore, they "shut out" this bizarre demonic freezing agent by shutting a door.
Ell-Oh-Ell.
So yeah, cliched, stale disaster movie with syrupy coverings of very biased Global Warming preachiness, this is one of the most tiresome films I have seen for a while.
Final Word:
Plot is gusty with heavy showers of smug. Extremely dangerous conditions, do not stay indoors, leave the house if neccessary!
1/5.
[*] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Also, because it's perfect (and you suffered my rant):
Watch 'til the end for big lols ;)
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Movie Review: Collateral
*This review contains some minor spoilers*
There are two ingredients I've noticed are almost always present in good Thriller films, and I think they're the fundamental difference between a Thriller and an Action film - theme and tension.
Action films are a genre that I personally find tedious and stale the great majority of the time. Musclebound stars making tiresome quips as they mow down Faceless Baddie #79451 get me frowning. Even more so when the plot can usually be summed up in three words. Man gets revenge. Man kills things. Manmade gratuitous explosions.
That's all old tat. So back to Thrillers and themes.
To use an example: No Country For Old Men, a thriller that holds a fond place in my heart, has themes which encompass greed, guilt, the breakdown of social morals and fate. These themes combine with a terrifying use of tension to create an edge-of-seat experience. Guns don't fire every five seconds, but when they do it almost always means a character we care about is in dire peril.
Collateral is a similar film, in that although it does have action-filled scenes, it also cranks up the tension, and focuses on characterisation far more than gunfire and explosions.
Set in L.A., the plot primarily features cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), who has been planning for a long time to start his own Limousine business, but somehow has never got around to it. Early in the film he meets a high-profile lawyer named Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) when she rides in the back of his cab.
It's clear the two like each other, but unlike many films, where vulgar lines start getting hurled around immediately, the scene comes across as pretty natural and realistic. The two simply chat and get on well. Max starts to become a character we can empathise with, due to both a good script and an admirable performance from Foxx.
Annie leaves him with her card and departs. The next fare Max has is a strange man named Vincent (Tom Cruise), who dresses in a sharp suit, but sports a messy stubbled look. He is friendly, but also cynical of human nature.
He tells a story of a man dying on the LA metro, and his corpse only being noticed six hours later despite passengers sitting next to him in all that time. This theme of social apathy and urban dehumanisation continues throughout the film, even influencing the plot at several key points.
It soon turns out that Vincent is a hired killer, and a good one at that. I'm not usually a huge fan of Tom Cruise, but here he plays Vincent perfectly. He is both disturbingly cold and yet endearingly animated at the same time, striking a mix between likable intelligence and frightening ruthlessness.
Vincent offers Max $600 to drive him to several different spots around the city. Max drops him off at an apartment first, and then is horrified when a body suddenly lands on top of the taxi from a window above.
Vincent is quite calm, and forces Max at gunpoint to clean the taxi and stow the corpse in the boot of the car.
From there on the film proceeds at a menacing but measured pace, with Max strongarmed into taking Vincent to the rest of his victims. Following the trail of bodies is LAPD officer Fanning (Mark Ruffalo), who believes members of the FBI are wrong to suspect Max as the murderer.
Between killings Vincent and Max talk to each other in the car, and gradually more is revealed about both. Unexpected and very tense scenes occur. One has the police pulling over the taxi for its broken windscreen.
Another has the duo meeting a jazz club owner (Barry Shabaka Henley) and having an intriguing (and very sad) conversation.
In a particularly good scene, Max is required to pose as Vincent to Vincent's criminal client Felix (Javier Bardem). He explains they've never met him in person before, and so Max can take his place if he can improvise well enough. If not, they'll probably kill him. Either way Vincent is able to sit safely outside in the car.
Javier Bardem is a very skilled actor. In No Country For Old Men, he put in an iconic performance as the unstoppable psychotic Anton Chigurh.
Here, in his portrayal of the laid back but intimidating Felix, he switches instantly from friendly chit-chat to weighting every word with solid malice.
There are two ingredients I've noticed are almost always present in good Thriller films, and I think they're the fundamental difference between a Thriller and an Action film - theme and tension.
Action films are a genre that I personally find tedious and stale the great majority of the time. Musclebound stars making tiresome quips as they mow down Faceless Baddie #79451 get me frowning. Even more so when the plot can usually be summed up in three words. Man gets revenge. Man kills things. Manmade gratuitous explosions.
That's all old tat. So back to Thrillers and themes.
To use an example: No Country For Old Men, a thriller that holds a fond place in my heart, has themes which encompass greed, guilt, the breakdown of social morals and fate. These themes combine with a terrifying use of tension to create an edge-of-seat experience. Guns don't fire every five seconds, but when they do it almost always means a character we care about is in dire peril.
Collateral is a similar film, in that although it does have action-filled scenes, it also cranks up the tension, and focuses on characterisation far more than gunfire and explosions.
Don't make him angry
Set in L.A., the plot primarily features cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), who has been planning for a long time to start his own Limousine business, but somehow has never got around to it. Early in the film he meets a high-profile lawyer named Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) when she rides in the back of his cab.
It's clear the two like each other, but unlike many films, where vulgar lines start getting hurled around immediately, the scene comes across as pretty natural and realistic. The two simply chat and get on well. Max starts to become a character we can empathise with, due to both a good script and an admirable performance from Foxx.
Annie leaves him with her card and departs. The next fare Max has is a strange man named Vincent (Tom Cruise), who dresses in a sharp suit, but sports a messy stubbled look. He is friendly, but also cynical of human nature.
He tells a story of a man dying on the LA metro, and his corpse only being noticed six hours later despite passengers sitting next to him in all that time. This theme of social apathy and urban dehumanisation continues throughout the film, even influencing the plot at several key points.
It soon turns out that Vincent is a hired killer, and a good one at that. I'm not usually a huge fan of Tom Cruise, but here he plays Vincent perfectly. He is both disturbingly cold and yet endearingly animated at the same time, striking a mix between likable intelligence and frightening ruthlessness.
Vincent offers Max $600 to drive him to several different spots around the city. Max drops him off at an apartment first, and then is horrified when a body suddenly lands on top of the taxi from a window above.
Vincent is quite calm, and forces Max at gunpoint to clean the taxi and stow the corpse in the boot of the car.
From there on the film proceeds at a menacing but measured pace, with Max strongarmed into taking Vincent to the rest of his victims. Following the trail of bodies is LAPD officer Fanning (Mark Ruffalo), who believes members of the FBI are wrong to suspect Max as the murderer.
Between killings Vincent and Max talk to each other in the car, and gradually more is revealed about both. Unexpected and very tense scenes occur. One has the police pulling over the taxi for its broken windscreen.
Another has the duo meeting a jazz club owner (Barry Shabaka Henley) and having an intriguing (and very sad) conversation.
In a particularly good scene, Max is required to pose as Vincent to Vincent's criminal client Felix (Javier Bardem). He explains they've never met him in person before, and so Max can take his place if he can improvise well enough. If not, they'll probably kill him. Either way Vincent is able to sit safely outside in the car.
Javier Bardem is a very skilled actor. In No Country For Old Men, he put in an iconic performance as the unstoppable psychotic Anton Chigurh.
Here, in his portrayal of the laid back but intimidating Felix, he switches instantly from friendly chit-chat to weighting every word with solid malice.
"If Santa Claus were to make a list...and [his assistant] were to lose it...how f***ing furious do you think Santa Claus would be?"
From there on the film ploughs ahead, with several surprising twists. The film manages to remain firmly in the realm of plausibility. There is a car crash not followed by an explosion, something which stunned me.
In fact, I don't think the film contains any explosions, and it's a very refreshing change indeed.
Vincent is one of the most interesting movie 'villains' I have seen in a recent film. His rationalisation of his job ("Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, in a speck on one in a blink. That's us, lost in space.") raises some very interesting questions on morality. Does morality even exist in a purely atheist, scientific outlook on life, or is Vincent simply a sociopath? Why does it matter, ultimately?
The ending is a final release of the tension throughout the movie, and neatly sums up the themes in the film as things seem to go full-circle.
Final Word:
I went into Collateral expecting your typical crappy explosion fest, but left with a satisfied smile on my face. The film balances action with a fresh cast of characters and a plot that really does introduce some interesting questions. Performances all around are solid.
I'm going to give the film 5 stars, not because it is perfect (no film is), but because it is a very entertaining piece of cinema.
One thing I noticed throughout the film was the pleasing lack of swearing. F-bombs are dropped, but they are not generally used in casual conversation, and not to anywhere near the level I've seen in other films recently. It's amazing how much more impact they have when they're not coming out of someone's mouth every two seconds. Definitely a plus.
One thing I noticed throughout the film was the pleasing lack of swearing. F-bombs are dropped, but they are not generally used in casual conversation, and not to anywhere near the level I've seen in other films recently. It's amazing how much more impact they have when they're not coming out of someone's mouth every two seconds. Definitely a plus.
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
5/5
Friday, 17 September 2010
Review and Analysis: 28 Days Later
*Contains spoilers*
As a Brit horror film, and one with some interesting concepts at that, 28 Days Later is a movie I want to lavish with praise.
Unfortunately, it's a good film in parts, but it can never seem to fully scramble over that wall to solid, consistent quality. It comes close to having some really poignant and creepy moments, and then shoots itself in the foot with some really bizarre and crippling plot and logic flaws.
It's a significant step above films like The Hills Have Eyes, which don't even try to pretend that they're not rehashing old cliches, yet it gets stuck in third gear somewhere along the way.
This film was one of the (if not THE) first to feature "fast zombies". As if being set upon by hordes of shambling zombies wasn't bad enough, 28 DL features living humans infected with a virus that is like Rabies on crack. Victims generally become very violent and sprint around screaming. On top of that, even a droplet of infected blood is enough to convert you. These are all ideas that crank up the creepiness in a genre that generally sticks to the beaten track. Good start!
Let's continue through the plot.
Things look promising as the main character, Jim, wakes after a traffic accident...only to find the hospital he is in is completely empty. There are many haunting shots of Jim wandering around London, which is equally deserted, an apocolyptic event apparently occuring 28 days before he awoke.
Of course it is gradually revealed that the Rage virus (freed from lab animals in the intro) has decimated the UK in that time.
Here is my first minor niggling logic irritation. Maybe the military cleared some of the corpses away before they got overrun, but how come there are only about three dead people on all of London's streets? Why are the motorways almost TOTALLY empty in this film? Surely there would be some kind of mass panic, and they would be jammed with cars and bodies?
I can overlook that though, because the imagery is intriguing. Fair enough, artistic liberty and all that.
Soon Jim startles a bunch of Infected, and meets up with Serena and Mark, two other survivors who are apparently geared up for fighting. They save his hide. Serena seems cold and efficient, Mark is a little warmer to Jim.
They go see Jim's parents the next day, and find that they died relatively peacefully, commiting suicide by pills some time ago.
Infected break into the house and attack Mark, who Serena mercilessly kills with a big knife before he even starts changing. It's left ambiguous as to whether he was actually infected, or she was just being paranoid, but presumably it's the former.
Moving on, Serena and Jim are chased into an abandoned apartment block, where they meet Frank and his daughter, Hannah.
Now, this is logic flaw number 2, and it's harder to pass this off as artistic license instead of poor writing/horror cliche. Frank fends off the Infected by defending the stairs of the apartment as Serena and Jim go into the flat.
Frank competently holds them off. He's wearing full police riot gear and has a baton. Sensible man! My goodness, did I just praise a horror character for being clever? What madness is this?
Of course, good things can't last. When the gang decides that they are running out of food and must leave the apartment, Frank leaves wearing a T-Shirt, and doesn't bother to take the baton either. Double-you-tee-eff.
It's about this point that the film goes into the second half, and I find my previous 4-star plus opinion wavering considerably as the writing starts to go a little nuts.
Firstly, we have the gang driving up to a road. There are two routes - one through a pitch-black tunnel, and one through a safer route. They decide to take the tunnel, because it is faster. Okay, it's not sensible, but at least there is an explanation. They enter the tunnel with grim looks of determination.
Then, driivng through the tunnel, and bouncing over bits of wrecked cars, they start laughing. Yes, you read that right. Laughing. Why, I don't know. Presumably it was meant to be that kind of "relief" laughter, juxtaposed with the tension before the scene.
Unfortunately they didn't really carry that off, because I was left totally confused as to why they were all laughing like morons as they drove over wrecked cars and corpses. Regardless, they idiotically wreck their tyres while doing this and have to get new transport. They also get attacked in the tunnel. Totally didn't see that coming.
Now, from here on Frank gets infected, shares a quick speech to his daughter, and is then shot to death by the military. He gets infected in a stupid way - shouting at a bird eating a corpse, which then drips blood into his eye as it moves off.
I'd be terrified of being infected in that situation, so you could count me cautious of blood and dead bodies. In this film though, running over to corpses and aggravating feasting birds is the clever thing to do.
Here is where the final act really plummets off a cliff. Any subtlety the film has is abandoned now, and we learn the soldiers were just luring survivors to exploit them rather than help them. The Major in charge explains: "I promised them women!"
Yes, that's correct. The soldiers have been fighting for less than a full month, and they have become insane women-craving lunatics with insatiable libido. WTF.
Since Brit soldiers have been fighting in Afghanistan for 8 years without developing a tendency to hump anything that moves, I really don't understand why in this film apparently it makes sense for trained men to go nuts in 28 days.
Of course, the Major, with all his years of army experience, doesn't just tell his men to stop acting like dicks, he promises them women. Sighface.
Needless to say there is much gratuitous violence, the soldiers die, and the gang escapes Britain. The end.
Final Word:
A really intriguing first and second act is sadly ruined as it falls into the realm of stupid plot devices in the second half. The film attempts to show that "Man is the real villain", but instead totally discredits the tension and atmosphere built earlier in the film.
My one tip to horror movie developers - don't cheat. What I mean is, if Frank had worn the riot armour for the second half of the movie, but been killed anyway, that would have been cool. It would have preserved the atmosphere and made sense.
The fact such an apparently important item suddenly disappears just to make the group more vulnerable in later scenes takes an axe to everything that makes a horror film good.
Rating: 3 out of 5
[*] [*] [*] [ ] [ ]
As a Brit horror film, and one with some interesting concepts at that, 28 Days Later is a movie I want to lavish with praise.
Unfortunately, it's a good film in parts, but it can never seem to fully scramble over that wall to solid, consistent quality. It comes close to having some really poignant and creepy moments, and then shoots itself in the foot with some really bizarre and crippling plot and logic flaws.
It's a significant step above films like The Hills Have Eyes, which don't even try to pretend that they're not rehashing old cliches, yet it gets stuck in third gear somewhere along the way.
This film was one of the (if not THE) first to feature "fast zombies". As if being set upon by hordes of shambling zombies wasn't bad enough, 28 DL features living humans infected with a virus that is like Rabies on crack. Victims generally become very violent and sprint around screaming. On top of that, even a droplet of infected blood is enough to convert you. These are all ideas that crank up the creepiness in a genre that generally sticks to the beaten track. Good start!
Let's continue through the plot.
Things look promising as the main character, Jim, wakes after a traffic accident...only to find the hospital he is in is completely empty. There are many haunting shots of Jim wandering around London, which is equally deserted, an apocolyptic event apparently occuring 28 days before he awoke.
Of course it is gradually revealed that the Rage virus (freed from lab animals in the intro) has decimated the UK in that time.
Here is my first minor niggling logic irritation. Maybe the military cleared some of the corpses away before they got overrun, but how come there are only about three dead people on all of London's streets? Why are the motorways almost TOTALLY empty in this film? Surely there would be some kind of mass panic, and they would be jammed with cars and bodies?
I can overlook that though, because the imagery is intriguing. Fair enough, artistic liberty and all that.
Soon Jim startles a bunch of Infected, and meets up with Serena and Mark, two other survivors who are apparently geared up for fighting. They save his hide. Serena seems cold and efficient, Mark is a little warmer to Jim.
They go see Jim's parents the next day, and find that they died relatively peacefully, commiting suicide by pills some time ago.
Infected break into the house and attack Mark, who Serena mercilessly kills with a big knife before he even starts changing. It's left ambiguous as to whether he was actually infected, or she was just being paranoid, but presumably it's the former.
Moving on, Serena and Jim are chased into an abandoned apartment block, where they meet Frank and his daughter, Hannah.
Now, this is logic flaw number 2, and it's harder to pass this off as artistic license instead of poor writing/horror cliche. Frank fends off the Infected by defending the stairs of the apartment as Serena and Jim go into the flat.
Frank competently holds them off. He's wearing full police riot gear and has a baton. Sensible man! My goodness, did I just praise a horror character for being clever? What madness is this?
Of course, good things can't last. When the gang decides that they are running out of food and must leave the apartment, Frank leaves wearing a T-Shirt, and doesn't bother to take the baton either. Double-you-tee-eff.
It's about this point that the film goes into the second half, and I find my previous 4-star plus opinion wavering considerably as the writing starts to go a little nuts.
Firstly, we have the gang driving up to a road. There are two routes - one through a pitch-black tunnel, and one through a safer route. They decide to take the tunnel, because it is faster. Okay, it's not sensible, but at least there is an explanation. They enter the tunnel with grim looks of determination.
Then, driivng through the tunnel, and bouncing over bits of wrecked cars, they start laughing. Yes, you read that right. Laughing. Why, I don't know. Presumably it was meant to be that kind of "relief" laughter, juxtaposed with the tension before the scene.
Unfortunately they didn't really carry that off, because I was left totally confused as to why they were all laughing like morons as they drove over wrecked cars and corpses. Regardless, they idiotically wreck their tyres while doing this and have to get new transport. They also get attacked in the tunnel. Totally didn't see that coming.
Now, from here on Frank gets infected, shares a quick speech to his daughter, and is then shot to death by the military. He gets infected in a stupid way - shouting at a bird eating a corpse, which then drips blood into his eye as it moves off.
I'd be terrified of being infected in that situation, so you could count me cautious of blood and dead bodies. In this film though, running over to corpses and aggravating feasting birds is the clever thing to do.
Here is where the final act really plummets off a cliff. Any subtlety the film has is abandoned now, and we learn the soldiers were just luring survivors to exploit them rather than help them. The Major in charge explains: "I promised them women!"
Yes, that's correct. The soldiers have been fighting for less than a full month, and they have become insane women-craving lunatics with insatiable libido. WTF.
Since Brit soldiers have been fighting in Afghanistan for 8 years without developing a tendency to hump anything that moves, I really don't understand why in this film apparently it makes sense for trained men to go nuts in 28 days.
Of course, the Major, with all his years of army experience, doesn't just tell his men to stop acting like dicks, he promises them women. Sighface.
Needless to say there is much gratuitous violence, the soldiers die, and the gang escapes Britain. The end.
Final Word:
A really intriguing first and second act is sadly ruined as it falls into the realm of stupid plot devices in the second half. The film attempts to show that "Man is the real villain", but instead totally discredits the tension and atmosphere built earlier in the film.
My one tip to horror movie developers - don't cheat. What I mean is, if Frank had worn the riot armour for the second half of the movie, but been killed anyway, that would have been cool. It would have preserved the atmosphere and made sense.
The fact such an apparently important item suddenly disappears just to make the group more vulnerable in later scenes takes an axe to everything that makes a horror film good.
Rating: 3 out of 5
[*] [*] [*] [ ] [ ]
Monday, 23 August 2010
Review: The Hills Have Eyes
So nothing else was on TV last night and I watched this from around halfway to the end.
Unfortunately the film had two things that always drive me crazy in horror films - psycho mutant hillbillies and utterly dumb characters.
Mutant hillbillies actually rank lower on my originality scale than zombies. At least zombies are menacing and their origins are generally not explained. Their properties and actions can be changed to suit a different type of story.
Mutant hillbillies are even more predictable - you just know that they'll live in some crappy shack, and they'll eat tourists, etc. etc.What's worse is they seem to be in about a third of all recent horror films.
Now, at about halfway in the film looked like it had some promise. Then the characters suddenly went into full-on idiot mode.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me pose some questions and see what you would pick in a mutant hillbilly situation, compared to the characters in this film.
Question 1: A group of mutants have kidnapped your baby and killed most of your family. You eventually find the kid, guarded by a bald, nasty looking woman in a chair. You have a baseball bat. Do you:
A: Sneak up behind the murderous kidnapper and beat her to death before sneaking out with the baby?
B: Sneak to the baby, pick her up (leaving you unable to use the bat), and then try to sneak out?
Question 2: You have a pistol with one magazine left. An unarmed crazy bloke is running towards you. Do you:
A: Take careful aim and shoot the guy dead?
B: Run away screaming while firing all of your bullets inaccurately over your shoulder?
Question 3: You are fighting a huge guy with a big axe. Eventually you stab him with the broken remains of your bat. Do you:
A: Keep hitting him with anything nearby until he's dead?
B: Stare for thirty seconds while he slowly pulls the splinters out and then starts walking towards you?
Question 4: A hillbilly comes very close to killing you in a fist fight, leaving you badly injured. You grab a shotgun when he's distracted, hit him three times in the face, and then shoot him twice in the chest. Do you:
A: Walk over to the body, pump the rest of your shells into it, and then throw it off of the nearby cliff for good measure?
B: Walk over to the body, smile, drop the loaded shotgun next to it, and then act horrified when he gets up and grabs it?
C: Wish someone in Hollywood could come up with a single original idea and stop watching shit like this?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you answered A to the questions you're a normal, sensible human being. If you answered B you've got a guaranteed place in the movie making business, and would be agreat infuriating horror protaganist.
If you answered A to all of them and then C on Q4 as well, I am very much in agreement with you.
Final Rating:
I'm giving this film 1/5 for descending into the land of extremely lame cliche.
[*] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Unfortunately the film had two things that always drive me crazy in horror films - psycho mutant hillbillies and utterly dumb characters.
Mutant hillbillies actually rank lower on my originality scale than zombies. At least zombies are menacing and their origins are generally not explained. Their properties and actions can be changed to suit a different type of story.
Mutant hillbillies are even more predictable - you just know that they'll live in some crappy shack, and they'll eat tourists, etc. etc.What's worse is they seem to be in about a third of all recent horror films.
Now, at about halfway in the film looked like it had some promise. Then the characters suddenly went into full-on idiot mode.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me pose some questions and see what you would pick in a mutant hillbilly situation, compared to the characters in this film.
Question 1: A group of mutants have kidnapped your baby and killed most of your family. You eventually find the kid, guarded by a bald, nasty looking woman in a chair. You have a baseball bat. Do you:
A: Sneak up behind the murderous kidnapper and beat her to death before sneaking out with the baby?
B: Sneak to the baby, pick her up (leaving you unable to use the bat), and then try to sneak out?
Question 2: You have a pistol with one magazine left. An unarmed crazy bloke is running towards you. Do you:
A: Take careful aim and shoot the guy dead?
B: Run away screaming while firing all of your bullets inaccurately over your shoulder?
Question 3: You are fighting a huge guy with a big axe. Eventually you stab him with the broken remains of your bat. Do you:
A: Keep hitting him with anything nearby until he's dead?
B: Stare for thirty seconds while he slowly pulls the splinters out and then starts walking towards you?
Question 4: A hillbilly comes very close to killing you in a fist fight, leaving you badly injured. You grab a shotgun when he's distracted, hit him three times in the face, and then shoot him twice in the chest. Do you:
A: Walk over to the body, pump the rest of your shells into it, and then throw it off of the nearby cliff for good measure?
B: Walk over to the body, smile, drop the loaded shotgun next to it, and then act horrified when he gets up and grabs it?
C: Wish someone in Hollywood could come up with a single original idea and stop watching shit like this?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you answered A to the questions you're a normal, sensible human being. If you answered B you've got a guaranteed place in the movie making business, and would be a
If you answered A to all of them and then C on Q4 as well, I am very much in agreement with you.
Final Rating:
I'm giving this film 1/5 for descending into the land of extremely lame cliche.
[*] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
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