Films! Films! Films.

Yes, films. A recap of the vast barrel of cinematic shite that I have periodically bobbed for shit apples in this past year.



Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth (back to back)
I thought I'd start with something "credible", given the filmic depths I shall be plumbing. Both are exceptionally fine films and I can see why Pan's Labyrinth will get such acclaim, but really, it isn't a patch on the earlier film. Devil's Backbone has a finesse, subtlety and quietly affecting demeanour that no amount of sledgehammer bad guys and fancy prosthetic suits can compensate for. Also, it has about fourteen outstanding child performances to Pan's Labyrinth's one.

It also has a man who looks a bit like Kenny Rogers in it, and that's always a winner.

So, yeah. Pan's Labyrinth good, Devil's Backbone quite significantly better (seeing as DB is one of my favourite films ever, PL was always going to have to go some to surpass it in my list of favourite Guillermo del Toro films. As it is, it only manages to make fourth. Yes, behind two of the Blade films and one of the Mimics). Devil's Backbone can pretty much almost make me cry every time I watch it, Pan's Labyrinth is never likely to threaten anything anywhere near it. Also, DB should have won about a gillion awards for it's use of colour alone.


Feast.
Proof that, against all the odds, there is an actual point to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. I know, it stunned me too. They aren't in it, thankfully (Ben Affleck has a square head and cannot act, Matt Damon has a squarish head and in my head does nothing but shout "MATT DAMON" when on screen these days, thanks to Team America: World Police). No, it's their Project Greenlight Project Initiative Plan to Save the World (or whatever it's called). It produced at least one good film (it may have produced more, I don't really know. Or care)!

Sort of Tremors Extreme. Only without the giant worms, or Kevin Bacon. Or the long preamble. And with huge amounts of added gore. And genuine actual made me laugh funny bits that were actually funny (whilst not spoiling the film). So not much like Tremors at all really, except in having a vaguely comparable central tenet. Conventions? All present and correct. Adhered to? Are they fuck. In the best possible way.

Short, immensely good fun, wildly gory and generally quite ace.


Population 436
Shit. In film form. Has Fred Durst in it. He's the best thing (tiny midget rock boy can actually act! A bit). Still a massive shit cake covered in shit sprinkles and shit sauce. Not good enough for Channel 5. Shit. A waste of my life. Completely shit. Made me feel sorry for Fred Durst, because now no one will find out that he can act (a bit). Because the film is shit, and no one should ever watch it, ever. So gargantuanly shit it made me pine for Underworld Evolution. The two aren't in anyway comparable, unless you want to compare a slightly shit film with a completely fuckingly stupidly ignorantly pointlessly shit film. Which Population 436 is. Shit.

Shit.

It does however have Jeremy Jesus "Joe" Sisto in it, and the only mildly intriguing aspect of the film is wondering why Joe has aged a bit and is wandering around being confused, angry, and shit at acting.


Nightwatch and Daywatch (back to back)
I already loved Nightwatch (all the proof in the world of why Americans should no longer be allowed to make any films involving the supernatural. It should be left to the Japanese, the Koreans and the Russians), so I was a tiny bit disappointed to find that I loved Daywatch slightly less. Only a tiny bit, mind. It's the little touches that make the difference, such as when the security guard is watching the football match on his little television, his team score a goal, he jumps up in excitement and kisses the poster of his football team on the wall behind him, and the tiny little picture of the player looks disgusted and wipes the kiss off. They're both very silly of course, but in an endearing way.


Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (back to back)
The first one is the only watchable adaptation of a game I can think of (Doom doesn't count. It has its moments, but they made a pig's arse of it by conflating all the games and having too much of the crappy third one. If they'd done it more like the actual, proper Doom, it might have been good. As it was, it stunk like a four month old sprout casserole. WHY HAS DEXTER FLETCHER GOT NO LEGS? WHY IS THAT HAIRDRESSER MAN FROM CUTTING IT BABBLING ABOUT GOD? But I digress). Needlessly, nastily and uncomfortably gruesome on at least two occasions. Milla Jovovich quite randomly exhibits her minge to the world and generally mooches about looking pretty. The end. Better than it has any right to be (the film, not Milla's minge. I'm not casting groinal aspersions). I like it (I'm still talking about the film) and I don't care. Even if I hated it I would have been glad it had been made just to watch the inarticulate and poorly spelt outrage expressed by the computer game fanboys on IMDB. IT ISN'T A PIXEL PERFECT RENDITION OF THE ENTIRE GAME LIKE WHAT I PLAYED, I IS GONNA BOMB THE STUDIO INNIT. Twats.

Oh dear, the second one. I like Resident Evil the game. I quite like Castlevania the game. However, I just hope that the Castlevania film is finished before the next Resident Evil film, because then Paul WS Anderson will have made enough shit in a row for me to be allowed to hope that the next Resident Evil film will be bearable. Who keeps giving money to Paul WS Anderson to make films? Who keeps thinking it's a good idea to risk ruining a perfectly decent idea by letting him write/produce/direct/go anywhere near the film? Did they learn nothing from Alien Vs. Predator? Did they learn nothing at all? It's quite bizarre. I quite liked Event Horizon, then he was shit. I quite liked Resident Evil, then he was shit. I wish he would piss off, to be quite honest. RE Apocalypse wasn't perhaps as bad as some of the depths that PWSA is capable of plumbing but, whilst it did pick up over the second half, it was still an exercise in blandness. I was left with a strange yearning to shout at Sienna Guillory until she stood up straight, and then feed her to a zombie dog, the irritating bint. And whilst keeping her minge under wraps, Milla does exhibit her tits to the world for little apparent reason. I say tits, I mean unfeasibly gargantuan nipples. You could hang a duffle coat off them (if you were a proper weirdo).


Underworld and Underworld Evolution (back to back)
Oh dear. Kate (as adorable as she is. There are people for whom watching her larking about in leather with permanently furrowed brow for hours would be the entire point of the film) really isn't anywhere near fierce enough to be a scary vampire "death dealer". "Oh, I say, you really should behave. I'm a really quite fearsome person I'll have you know. Please stop, you're being ever so naughty and I fear I may be compelled to be really quite harsh with you. Shall I instruct the maid to fetch some tea?" Actual script excerpt, that. Or it may as well be. The second one is actually much better, which I found unusual (after the dismality of the first one, I feared for my sanity when embarking on Evolution). And, on the massively plus side, Kate doesn't put on an incredibly awful accent, unlike in ...


Van Helsing
Van Shitsing. It seemed to last a month, and every second was filled with Hugh Peahead Jackman shaped agony. Kate looked lovely though (despite sounding like a retarded Irish/South African hybrid).


Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
So rubbish that I wanted to bomb Narnia. NOT EVERYONE WORE THE SAME HAT IN THE 1940s. BEAVERS ARE NOT CAB DRIVERS. Not even in Canada, Joe. Absolutely fucking awful.


Night Skies
So rubbish I went voluntarily blind and deaf. THE WORLD DOESN'T NEED ANOTHER ALIEN ABDUCTION SHITATHON. FUCK OFF. It's not out until next year, so there is still time to save yourselves. *timely edit* I think it's out now, so if you didn't read this elsewhere and save yourself, it may well be too late. Soz *end timely edit*


Dawn of the Dead
The new version. Didn't disturb as much as it did when I saw it at the cinema. I had trouble sleeping for ages that time. Sarah Polley wanders around looking vacant, as is usual for Sarah Polley (possibly in an endearing fashion, I can never decide. Regardless, she looks permanently ripped to the tits on heroin). The music is the best bit, I reckon, especially the slightly incongruous songs. Still not convinced by the sprinting zomboids, it detracts a little something from the point of them I think. Sympathy, that's it. They become far too active, far too intentionally threatening, and it removes the sense of helplessness from them, undermining the idea that it isn't their fault and that they are being driven by something more insidious - much like their pre-zomboid selves at the mall, which is the point. Still, it manages to keep the consumerism critique of the original, and Ving Rhames is awesome playing Ving Rhames (like he always does). And it has the obligatory Tom Savini cameo.


Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick (back to back)
Why do I do this to myself? I don't mind the first one, apart from the fact that Vin can't speak properly "mumble rumble mumble mumble rumble I've got giantism mumble". Speak clearly, tosspot. I have to have the volume so loud to hear what he's saying that I go deaf the minute anyone else speaks. I made it two thirds of the way through Chronicles before giving up and having to resist the strong urge to poo in an envelope and post it to Vin and the people who made the film, to see how they like it.


Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
Laughed my tits off. In a good way. Yes it's childish, but it knows it's childish. Kyle is just splendidly endearing enough to counter balance Jack and his over the top-ness. Meatloaf! Dio! Ben Stiller dressed as Dio in a Dio wig! Dave Grohl as the Devil! Great songs (I may be in a minority on this part, but I don't care)!
Who can resist the Devil singing "Check this riff it's fucking tasty" during the rock-off? Or KG's cheerily sung "he's gonna rape me if we do not blow doors down!"? I know I can't! But I bet millions can.


The Rocky Horror Picture Show
For the gillionth time. Disregarding the annoying hordes of over obsessive fanboys, it's still a mightily enjoyable film. And Lee/Hero still looks like Riff Raff. Und I did.


Dragon
I managed ten minutes before the dreadful attempts at "acting" hurt my brain. Sorry, film. Actually, no, I'm not sorry, you deserved it.


Severance
Danny Dyer is one of the world's most irritating cockheads. But he is surprisingly bearable in a pleasantly diverting film. Best bit? When the over keen employee cooks the pie he "finds" in what they think is the lodge they're meant to be going to for a team-bonding thing (it isn't, of course). That in itself isn't particularly good (oh look, it's someone else's pie, it has a human tooth in it blah blah), it's the little exchange when he indignantly defends his actions of cooking a pie he found "but I cooked it for the full hour!" "an hour? Did it have instructions?" "No, but it's pie". You had to be there.


Heaven's Soldiers
Mighty fine little Korean film about a near future, newly united Korea. They've developed a nuke, but now have to hand it over to the US because they aren't allowed to keep it. None of them are particularly happy about this, but the North Korean contingent have gone a stage further and hatched a secret plan to steal the nuke. They try to escape with it, the others give pursuit, all very normal so far. Then a comet (which passes over once every 433 years) passes and contrives to send them back to 1572. Cue lots of culture clashes, trying to find out how to get back and so forth, with the added complication of being thrown together with someone who they know goes on to become the great Korean general Lee Soon-Shin (who saved Korea from a Japanese invasion). Hugely entertaining. The funny bits are very funny, the battle sequences have you on the edge of your seat, you end up becoming very attached to the displaced soldiers and the somewhat unlikely looking future saviour of a nation, the fragile nature of a reuniting of Korea is a subtle undercurrent and you learn a bit of Korean history to boot. Wonderful.


Saw II
I didn't mind Saw, but the second one appeared to be made by a group of enthusiastic molluscs who hadn't seen the first and anyway just wanted to make a really shit film where people got stabbed up, badly.


Saw III
Better than the second one, not as good as the first. Managed to be both infuriatingly confusing and simplistically patronising - no mean feat. Didn't have a clue what was going on for about an hour, then spent the following half hour sitting through a torturously tedious overexplanation of what had been happening. Here's an idea - why not just make a good film (like the first one) where you are a little bit confused for a while, then it all becomes crashingly clear in a brief moment of revelation? Well? WELL? I bet the new one isn't very good, either.


Daredevil
The only thing I can bring my brain to formulate with regards to Daredevil is how I was fascinated throughout by Ben Affleck's curious approximation of the human action of running. He appeared to be impersonating Graham Norton stuck in treacle whilst wearing lead boots (although to be impersonating it, it would imply that such footage existed. And, if it did/does, then it would make a better film than Daredevil).



Believe it or not, those are probably the highlights