The last movie you saw was . .

[fenris]

Re-watched Barb Wire on the Sci-Fi channel last night. It's a movie I've always rather liked, despite some glaring flaws. The film's biggest liability is actually it's leading actress - not only does Pamela Anderson give a rigidly one-note performance (she barely emotes, even when her character discovers her brother's dead body) but the movie was shot during that period in her career when she was so plastered in make-up and hair spray that she almost looked like a female impersonator.

That aside, I think Barb Wire is a better-than-average near-future action flick. It certainly spends more time establishing and fleshing out the world that it's characters inhabit than most movies of that sub-genre (there are some nice subtle touches, such as sections of Steel Harbour being under UN protection, and the American currency becoming so devalued that Barb always insists on being paid in black market Canadian dollars). With some slight tweaking it could exist in the same continuity as the Snake Plisken films.

[fenris]

Have just seen The Dark Knight, and while there's no denying that it's a long, drawn out film (two and a half hours) you certainly get your money's worth. This is a multi-layered, multi-eventful movie with enough plot for three films and even some genuinely surprising twists. However, all the various concurrent and/or overlapping storylines mean that The Dark Knight lacks the clear linear structure of Batman Begins. There's also surprisingly little action per se, with the main setpiece - a lengthy chase involving several police cars, a paddy wagon, and a couple of large trucks - unfortunately not as kinetic or impressive as the keynote Batmobile sequence in the previous film.

The main talking point of The Dark Knight is of course Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker, and while it's a powerhouse performance it's not The Joker as I've always imagined him. But hey - that's my problem. And there's no denying that The Joker's schemes and how they cause Gotham to descend into panic and chaos are very true to the original comics.

While I enjoyed The Dark Knight and consider it a worthy sequel, I still regard Batman Begins as the better film. Regarding the future of the franchise, my main concern is that director Christopher Nolan has used up the four best villains in the Batman mythos (Scarecrow, Ra's Al Ghul, The Joker and Two-Face) in the first two movies. True, Bats still has a sizable rogues gallery to plunder, but most of them (for example, Catwoman, the Riddler, the Penguin) are ultimately just thieves and common criminals armed with gimmicks that would either look silly transplanted into Nolan's 'real' world' setting, or would have be changed beyond recognition (in which case, you might as well invent wholly original characters instead). Other notable enemies, such as Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, would be too outrageous to work in a realistic concept. In my opinion (for what it's worth) the best villain for a third film would be Harley Quinn, introduced as a mad disciple of The Joker. Or alternatively, pit Batman against another direct opposite, in the form of The Wrath.

[fenris]

Prompted by an article about Streets of Fire in last month's Death Ray magazine, I dusted off my DVD of the film and watched it two nights ago. It was directed by Walter Hill, a film-maker whom I feel has been bizarrely overlooked and disregarded by movie fans, despite being responsible for many entertaining & impressive films from the mid-Seventies until the early Nineties. Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, 48HRS, Southern Comfort, Red Heat, Another 48HRS and Trespass were all directed by Hill.

It's particularly intriguing to contrast and compare Hill's movies with those of John Carpenter, who also started directing in the mid-Seventies. The films of both men are heavily influenced by the themes explored in the Western genre. Carpenter has openly stated that he is inspired by the Westerns of Howard Hawks, while Hill is clearly more of a John Ford man. Hill has actually made several Westerns (such as The Long Riders and Wild Bill), while Carpenter has applied Western motifs to the modern-day settings of many of his sci-fi and horror movies (Carpenter has also written two Western scripts - Blood River and El Diablo - that were filmed by other directors).

It's often said by critics and film buffs that The Warriors was Hill's Fordian take on Assault on Precinct 13 - Carpenter's updated remake of Hawks' Rio Bravo. If so, then Streets of Fire could be regarded as Hill's reaction to Carpenter's Escape from New York.

[fenris]

Watched Bloodrayne on DVD a couple of days ago. I've never seen the computer game on which it's based, so the reported discrepancies between the film's storyline and the game's original mythos (which fans of the game have been very vocal about) didn't bother me, and instead I just viewed the movie as a separate entity. While I can't honestly say that Bloodrayne is anything special, it's certainly not the complete disaster that it's supposed to be. There's no denying that several of the main actors are woefully miscast - Michael Madsen being the prime example - and there are some bizarre and distracting cameos from Michael Pare (whom I swear hasn't aged a day in the twenty five years since Streets of Fire), Billy Zane and Meat Loaf. But I still found Bloodrayne to be considerably more entertaining than Van Helsing, the film it most resembles. In fact it's only slightly inferior to the similarly themed Underworld movies. Am looking forward to Bloodrayne 2, which is set in the Old West and has Nastasha Malthe taking over the title role from Kristanna Loken.

[fenris]

And yesterday I saw The Strangers, which is very reminiscent of last year's Vacancy (it's also apparently quite similar to the recent French film Ils - aka Them - but I've not seen it, so can't comment). While undeniably well made and quite tense in places, it ultimately emerges as an example of more style than substance. The plot can be accurately described in a single short sentence - 'young couple in isolated house are terrorised by three masked intruders' - and as a result the narrative is so threadbare that even with the film's brief running time of barely an hour and a quarter, it starts to drag towards the end. There's also a lengthy scene (Liv Tyler seeking refuge in a closet) that seemingly only exists in order to pay homage to Halloween (1978), and like Michael Myers in that film, the titular characters in The Strangers have no apparent motive for their attack (Michael's actions were only given an explanation in the Halloween sequels). However, while in Halloween the unfathomable nature of Michael's lethal behaviour was perfectly in keeping with the near-supernatural qualities of the character, in The Strangers such randomness is just frustrating and makes the whole film rather pointless.

[fenris]

Feb 26, 2008 19:13:49 GMT fenris said:

Much better was WAZ, which I saw list night. Most critics have described it as belonging to the torture porn sub-genre, and admittedly the killer in WAZ – pausing before hammering a jagged two inch nail underneath a bound victim’s fingernail - declares “There will be pain”, echoing Jigsaw’s promise of “There will be blood” in Saw II. But WAZ owes a much bigger debt to such cerebral serial killer thrillers as Se7en and Russell Mulcahy’s Resurrection.
I enjoyed WAZ immensely, and it’s stands proudly alongside American Nightmare (2002), Reeker (2005) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007) as one of my favourite horror movies of the decade.

Having seen WAZ (aka W Delta Z and retitled The Killing Gene in America) at the cinema in February this year and throughly enjoying it, yesterday I bought it on DVD and watched it last night. I actually appreciated it even more on a second viewing. It's relentlessly dark, uncompromisingly bleak, has great performances and direction, and boasts a truly formidable and frighteningly intelligent villain. My favourite film of the year so far (with Doomsday in second place).

[fenris]

Was in Milton Keynes yesterday for Collectormania, and while I was there I went to the cinema at Xscape and watched Death Race, directed by Paul Anderson. I've always been somewhat mystified by Anderson - he's clearly talented, certainly knows how to direct, can string an action sequence together with ease, and his films usually contain all the necessary ingredients to be highly enjoyable... but those ingredients never seem to gel together, and the result is that Anderson's movies are always disappointing and forgettable.
Death Race is another example. It's mildly entertaining while you're actually watching it, but it's completely disposable. There's no characterisation to speak of, and the plot merely consists of people racing around a track in heavily armoured vehicles, shooting at each other. It's been less than twenty four hours since I watched it, and I'm already struggling to remember much about it. If you're looking for a noisy popcorn movie and nothing more, look no further. But you'd be better off watching the 1970s film of which Death Race is a loose remake - the satirical Death Race 2000, which despite it's B movie cheapness is a much superior movie.


And this morning I watched Extreme Ops (2002), having recorded it when Channel 4 screened it in the early hours of the morning last week.
Hollywood has always been quick to react to new trends if it believes it can make money from them, and at the beginning of the current decade the movie studios responded to the increasing high profile of so-called 'extreme sports' by using them as the basis of a short-lived wave of action movies. Of course, the film executives failed to take into account that those interested in extreme sports are far more likely to be taking part in them, attending such events, or watching TV/internet coverage of them, instead of going to see movies in which actors pretend to take part in them. So while xXx (starring Vin Diesel) was successful enough to secure a sequel, Extreme Ops failed to make an impression at the box office, and the notion of extreme sport action movies died out as quickly as it had begun.
Extreme Ops (which was filmed under the title The Extremists, but swiftly retitled before release due to the events of 9/11) is an international co-production with an appropriately international cast of American, British and central European actors. The storyline has a film crew, together with a pair of snowboarders and a female gold medal-winning downhill skier, traveling to an unnamed European ski resort off-season, to shoot footage for an advertising campaign. Unfortunately, a wanted Serbian war criminal is using the isolated resort as a temporary hideout, and the film crew eventually find themselves fleeing down the mountainside with the Serbian and his men in determined pursuit.
However, that particular plot development doesn't occur until two-thirds of the way through the movie, so for the first hour we merely see the film crew, snowboarders and the skier hanging about in the empty resort, occasionally filming on the slopes, and bonding over bottles of beer while relaxing in a hot tub.
It sounds deadly dull, and considering that the characterisations in the script are tissue-thin, it should be. But due to the efforts of the talented cast, these irresponsible risk-takers (the snowboarders and most of the film crew are die-hard adrenalin junkies) come across as surprisingly likable. As a result, despite being routine in practically every aspect, Extreme Ops is a remarkably engaging movie.

[fenris]

Saw Eagle Eye yesterday and really enjoyed it. It's far from original, and contains heavy elements of WarGames, Enemy of the State, The Net, Die Hard 4.0 and a half-forgotten Charlie Sheen thriller called The Shadow Conspiracy (to name just a few) in it's cinematic DNA. But the action scenes are top-notch and it rattles along at a fair old lick. It's almost single-handedly restored my lapsed faith in Hollywood action blockbusters.

[fenris]

One of the things I love about the Zone Horror channel is that they often screen impressive, recently-made, low budget independent movies that have (for whatever reason) failed to obtain a DVD release in the UK. Case in point: last night they showed Penny Dreadful (2006), a wonderful film starring Rachel Miner as Penny, a young woman who's had a phobia about cars ever since surviving the childhood road accident in which both her parents were killed. Her therapist (Mimi Rogers, always welcome) suggests a road trip to the remote stretch of highway where the incident occurred. Poor Penny soon finds herself trapped inside her therapist's wrecked vehicle with a dead body for company, miles from anywhere on a freezing cold night, with a hooded psychopath lurking outside in the darkness, tormenting her.

This is a wonderfully suspenseful, well written & directed movie, with a tour-de-force performance from Miner. She spends almost the entire film either terrified, having panic attacks and hyperventilating, hallucinating, having one-sided conversations with the corpse, and even babbling semi-coherently to herself. The script also impresses by addressing the realities of being trapped in an enclosed space for several hours (which most films would either ignore or forget), with Penny having to matter-of-factly pee into a cup. Towards the end of the movie, pushed way past her breaking point, the young girl is eyeing the bottle of sleeping pills she's carrying and contemplating suicide.

Penny Dreadful reminded me of several recent movies, such as Reeker (which by coincidence was also shown last night on Film Four), Rest Stop, Black Cadillac, Dead End and Wind Chill. It's as good as any of those films, and better than some of them. Highly recommended.

[fenris]

Earlier this week I travelled to Milton Keynes to see Scar, which is being screened at the cinema in the Xscape complex. It's a 3D movie, and unfortunately the plastic 3D specs that the cinema staff give you pinched and rubbed against my nose and ears. And as I already wear glasses, I had to wear the 3D specs under my normal ones, with the combined weight of both of them pressing down on the bridge of my nose. As a result I ended up with a headache, not helped by the fact that I already had a headcold. By the time I left the cinema I felt quite ill.

Instead of adding to the movie-going experience, I personally found the 3D effects achieved the exact opposite: instead of being drawn into the film by the story and the characters, the 3D effects kept taking me out of the movie. They constantly reminded me that what I was seeing was artificial, and instead of concentrating on what was happening on screen, I found myself repeatedly thinking instead about the technical aspects of shooting the movie.

It didn't help that Scar wasn't that good a film anyway. For the first hour of it's running time, it's a competent but unremarkable slasher flick, with a good performance from genre regular Angela Bettis. But in the last half-hour it becomes just another torture-porn movie. Now I'm not particularly squeamish and I've nothing against gory films, but I dislike the torture-porn sub-genre simply because I consider it to be lazy film-making that displays a near-complete lack of imagination. Story, motive and characterisation are thrown away in exchange for watching helpless, screaming people having terrible things done to them. Ho-hum. The torture scenes in Scar are also worryingly sexist, in that while the killer torments and victimises both men and women, the torture inflicted on the male captives always occurs off-screen and only the aftermath is seen, while the suffering of the female victims takes place on-camera, at length, for our viewing pleasure. Yuck.

[fenris]

Saw Max Payne last night. I've never played the computer game it's based on, so I approached it afresh, without any preconceptions. It's a very confused movie. I got the impression that everybody involved couldn't quite decide what type of film they wanted to make. Is it a gritty urban cop drama? A violent revenge thriller? A big-budget action flick? A special effects showpiece? A political/conspiracy soapbox about the War on Terror? Max Payne tries to be all these things, and ultimately falls between several stools.

That said, I didn't dislike it. If nothing else, it's nice to have Mila Kunis (who I've been a fan of since seeing her in American Psycho 2) as the female lead in a major studio movie. But due to it's multi-headed nature, I'd hestitate before actually recommending Max Payne to anyone.

[DreamDangerously]

I watched Atonement on DVD a couple of days back. Awful awful awful. Even James McAvoy and Romola Garai couldn't save it. Ikea Knightly was just terrible and the whole thing was terribly stilted, terribly affected and a bit soulless.

I've also watched Knocked Up which was the biggest pile of self indulgent frat boy misogynistic arse gravy I've had the misfortune to witness. I don't get the obession of coupling beautiful women with Seth Rogan and I don't get Judd Apatow's supposed genius...I don't.
Tripe!

Considerably worthier on my blockbuster list have been Zodiac, the amazing documentary Born into Brothels about an inspiring photography project with the children of India's brothels and The Painted Veil - which I started out loathing and ended up completely invested in and blubbing in to my hankies.

[DreamDangerously]

Superbad.

Most apt name....ever.

More self-indulgent pseudo-mysogyinistic bulldung from the Apatow stable. It's too full of backslapping cameos and appearances and this weird obsession with the really repellant guy suddenly getting with a hot girl who finds him attractive and funny.

I find the attitude towards women in these movies really suspect and upsetting as well. I'm not delusional about hollywood by any stretch of the imagination but this is seriously testosterone tinted.

About the best thing in the film is Michael Cera and although he's affable in this, he's eminantly better served by the brilliant Juno, which is a film that shows just how purile and badly written crap like Superbad and Knocked up really are.

[fenris]

Saw The Spirit yesterday. Based on an influential American comic strip, the movie is directed by comic book writer and artist turned film-maker Frank Miller. It boasts the same CGI/green screen backgrounds, over-stylised design and one-note characterisations as Miller’s previous co-directed effort, Sin City. But while that earlier film benefited from strong storylines, The Spirit is hampered by a tissue-thin narrative and some of the cast members either phoning in their performances, or overacting wildly in an attempt to inject some life into the underwritten material. Also, several characters from the original comic strip have been shoehorned into the story for no reason, other than Miller apparently just wanting to include them (belly-dancing femme fatale Plaster of Paris being the most obvious example).

That said, instead of merely adopting a gritty, hard-boiled noir-ish approach, Miller deserves credit for including some of the humour and goofiness of the original strip. I particularly liked the running joke (faithful to the character as portrayed in the comics) of The Spirit practically falling in love with every woman he meets. And I enjoyed the sequence in which the hero finds himself clinging to the side of a skyscraper with his trousers around his ankles, trying to get to safety while being watched and mocked by a large crowd (including a group of giggling girls) that has gathered below.

Ultimately however, The Spirit is all style and very little substance. But if nothing else, it does treat us to the sight of Scarlett Johansson in a SS officer’s uniform – which is enough to bring out the Max Mosley in all of us.

[DreamDangerously]

ugh...I find any cinematic fetishising of the SS really distasteful. I'm by no means a prude but given that the SS were responsible for the worst race and hate crimes and the management of the death camps it leaves a pretty foul taste in my mouth.

Theres a fine line between allegedly showing 'powerful' women and essentially just turning them in to dress up fetish dolls (It's a problem I had with Sin City as well) no matter how intelligent/ruthless/amoral etc the character supposedly is.