I am, you know. No, no of course I'm not really. I'm just regurgitating bits of Grant Hart. Well, his lyrics, at any rate (from when he decided it would be a good idea to have a band, call it Nova Mob, and employ a ludicrously rudimentary drummer, instead of doing the sensible thing and playing all the instruments himself like he did on the first solo thing), I haven't cooked and eaten him. That would be horrible. Imagine that. Me cooking and eating Grant Hart. I might get addicted to the residual traces of heroin or something. Outrageous.
Anyway, having shamed myself defending Kingmaker, I thought I better do something else. Couldn't decide what - a sPazTune is a significant time investment, but I haven't seen any films recently (my shit film downloading and watching volumes have fallen off a cliff this year, no fun anymore). I've done waffling and being musically semi-serious (explicitly, I mean. I know it annoyingly creeps into the sPazTunes & sPazAmps. I try to keep it out, but sometimes there is no denying the pompous outpourings their egress). So, we'll have some old film news (if I've done it before, tough. Ram it up your rusty sheriff badges and stop complaining) and then I'll do a sPazTune. Worst of every world!
The Mist
Was quite good, for a bit. On balance though, this review will fall into the "I've watched The Mist, now you don't have to" category. So if you're bothered by spoilers then a) don't read and b) stop being a dick and reading other people's accounts of watching films that you don't want to know things about. What are you, fucking retarded? What do you expect? Do you expect everyone to just express vaguely qualitative statements with no supporting evidence and hide any details in fluffy little spoiler tags? Get a grip. And watch better films, retard.
So yeah. First half hour or whatever was good. Ooh, strange mist! Ooh, soldiers! Doing odd things! Ooh, normal life, turned slightly to the side! Ooh, man panicking, shouting vague warnings, in the daylight, in a shop! Ooh, things getting slightly odder, mist closing in, strange creatures! Disbelief! Panic! Ooh, Thomas Jane can't act!
And then. Oh, and then. Shitty CGI. Issue of mine, that. Half-assed actual effects I don't mind - they allow the suspension of disbelief to continue more easily somehow, after all, we all know it's pretend. But CGI? Done badly, it jars in a really odd way. For some reason, my suspension of disbelief facilities work better with someone swiping convincingly at a badly realised actual thing than swiping utterly unconvincingly at a tremendously realised virtual thing. Why this should be, I don't know. Good CGI I like (very much enjoyed Cloverfield, against all my better instincts), bad CGI irks in a very particular way.
Worse was the ending (or more actually, the remainder of the film after the opening "normal world" bit). Not the brutality of the ending (he shoots everyone excepts himself, including his son. Don't complain that I've ruined it, we've been through this. HE SHOOTS HIS SON. PROBABLY IN THE HEAD). That's kinda cool, in a really severe, almost unexpected way. No, it's the way the troop-carriers trundle past shortly after, carrying all the god-bothering freaks to safety, with a lingering close up on one of the smug god-nuts looking at him (Thomas Jane), gazing on his despair, whilst being transported to happy non alien dimension based death. That's no death by alien dimension things, rather than death by any other means than that, terribly phrased I know. It turns the point of the film into "go on, believe in the nutty old testament god. Don't bother with caring for each other, or being helpful, oh no. Just go bonkers, sacrifice people with a giant knife, get giddy about it, do nothing else other than stab people and cheer, you'll be fine". Because that's what the film says. To me. And that's all that matters here, cementheads. Marcia Gay-Harden (hurr) even gets to die in a big Christ-like pose, even though she's a big god-nutter who advocates the ritual stabbing-up of random people. Tsk.
I case you missed it it, at the end of the film The Mist, Thomas Jane SHOOTS HIS OWN SON, POSSIBLY IN THE HEAD. BRUCE WILLIS IS A GHOST. IT'S KEVIN SPACEY, HE'S NOT REALLY A CRIPPLE. PEARL HARBOR IS SHIT.
In related other news, Cloverfield is quite good, as is No Country for Old Men (even though he only says "Friendo" once). Quite liked Hellboy 2, can't be fussed writing more than that about any of them, which is either faint praise or faint damns, I'm not sure. Probably won't do a sPazTune, that all depends on how bored I get in the next five minutes.
T'ra and that.
Showing posts with label film review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film review. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Friday, 28 December 2007
You Are Not Legend
I've watched some more films! This involved an ill advised jaunt through the film I Am Legend, but don't worry fans of enjoyable cinema - I also watched some good things as well. So, yes, ladies, gentlemen and animals I give you ... the films I have watched.
I Am Legend
No, you are NOT legend, William. Actually, that's a bit harsh on The Fresh Smith, I doubt it's all his fault *quick shufty at imdb* no, you are NOT legend Francis Lawrence (director of the turgidity), Mark Protosevich (co-writer and defiler of narrative) and Akiva Goldsman (co-writer and similar enemy of intelligence). Be warned - there will be a spoiling element to this unappreciative exploration of cinematic flaccidity. I won't be concealing it in any way, because if you cannot control your eyes or dare to skim read my lovingly crafted and remarkably informative entries on this receptacle of cranial wonder then, to be frank, you deserve to have it ruined for you. Thinking about it, it's more a case of doing you a favour than spoiling anything in this instance. I'd be saving you precious time, time you can spend on more productive and enjoyable pursuits than watching I Am Legend. Such as jamming your big toe in a dirty grid, or starting a swingers' circle with Michelle McManus and Ali Bongo.
The stupid, ignorant film entirely failed to engage, interest or excite at any point at all. But no! What of the trumpeted, vaunted and heralded eerie emptiness of Manhattan? Empty, certainly. Empty of just about everything, including point, purpose and ability to convince. Predictably feeling-free and devoid of soul or reality, as is generally the case when unconvincing and surprisingly obvious CG is relied on so heavily that it is squashed fatter than Mrs. Meatloaf on a thursday night. Christ, if you're going to make such a big deal about it, I would think that you should perhaps spend a little more time, effort (and probably money) on it and try to make it look a little less fake. The animals-at-loose-in-urban-America bit was done more convincingly in Twelve Monkeys and, in technology and hype terms, that may as well have been daubed on a cave wall in France by Les Neanderthales.
Poor The Will Prince. He doesn't do half bad, really. He plays his strong suit throughout - you know the one, the gruff, manly, soft at heart, friendly rugged-with-rounded-edges family man (the one he does in most films - and why not, he's bloody good at it) - and, when the film lets him, he impresses. Occasionally, he puts in a little turn that is genuinely classy, emotional and engaging - and then the film's overbearing leaden lumpenness drags him back into its morass of mediocrity. He should damn well fucking sue the film for turning an attempt at a career-defining performance into Tom Hanks Lite. And then he should be severely reprimanded for putting his name to the godforsaken attempt at a script in the first place.
But no! The creatures! The creatures! Surely, won't somebody think of the creatures?!? Okay. My thought is that they are shit on a very unappealing stick. Again, criminally obviously CG rendered, thus separating them from any vestige of reality, menace, or meaningful presence or existence. They are also one of the key representations of how the film gets matters so universe-threateningly, horrendously, motherfuckingly wrong. WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Three times in the forty years or so they've made this film, and this is the first one to get it so arse-shreddingly, tit-grindingly WRONG. WRONG.
W.R.O.N.G. with a capital everything.
Not Right. Incorrect. Premise-dissipatingly so. The book and, to differing degrees, the previous two incarnations (Omega Man with the noted gun nut Charlton Heston, and The Last Man on Earth with the noted thing of wonder and global treasure Vincent Price) all have a particular point to make, a point that is the whole point and indeed basis of the story. Y'know, like, the thing that makes the book and films exist. THE FUCKING POINT. The one missed by I Am Legend to a degree not seen since [insert thing that was expected to easily hit the target] missed by [insert largest distance imaginable by which one thing could miss another] and ended up hitting [insert thing that is the furthest conceivable distance from the intended target].
Here comes the spoiler bit [/l'oreal].
Bruce Willis was a ghost! Sorry, wrong spoiler. The creatures, see. An increasing intelligence is hinted at, but a greater emphasis is placed upon a growing menace to The Fresh Robert of Bel Neville. Crude, inhuman, vicious (increasingly so) - they remain steadfastly the enemy of humanity, the humanity that endures in Robert Neville and his mighty crusade to save it from itself. Their intelligence manifests itself in cruelty and brutality, not in society or co-operation - it becomes Jazzy Neville Vs. the Most Brutish Night Seeker. But, as I may have hinted at earlier, THAT IS NOT THE FUCKING BIG BASTARD SHAGGING POINT.
It's not about saving the world, see. It's not about finding a cure. It's about realisation. Big Bad Bob Neville's realisation that he's got it wrong. He's no longer trying to save civilization, mankind - he's now the outsider. He's the monster, and the "others" are the society, the civilization. He's their nemesis, boogeyman, thing of terror. He's destroying, rather than saving. He is, indeed, legend, anachronistically so. Not because he invents the cure and saves the fluffy puppies and children, but because he is legend to the "others", the sort of legend that comes when your children are asleep and kills your family. So, when the lady comes with the portentous ending voiceover declaring Robert Neville to be legend for giving his life to defend the cure, I wanted to re-engineer the measles virus and destroy the world. And laugh in a dastardly way whilst I did, inflicting it first upon those responsible for the narrative mutilation. A thought-provoking, bleak yet moving, interesting and gripping theme is reinvented as Independence Day with an ickle dog. Actually, that's mean to Independence Day - that manages to cloak some nice satire in a publicly appealing gung-ho, GO USA set of threads. This is more the Littlest Hobo without the moral, excitement, or natty theme tune. It is patronising to children and pretends to appeal to grown-ups. Vincent Price and a bunch of Italian film-making dudes got a lot closer to the mark, and even the noted rifle-fondler extraordinaire Charlton Heston managed a lot better. I won't even mention the fantastically gaping plot holes.
SO FUCKING WRONG IT RUINED MY BRAIN.
Thus ends the spoiling bits.
There's Nothing Out There
Infinitely more enjoyable than I Am Legend, as is having shingles of the eyes. Fun, knowing, witty and articulate homage to horror film cliches. With tits. Lots of them. Scream before Wes Craven had the idea of ripping it off and making Scream. Piss off Wes Craven. Amusingly post-modern without taking itself seriously (which seems to be the odd hallmark of self-professed post-modern cultural items), a fun film, and cruelly overlooked when it comes to the appreciation of eighties horror - perhaps because it was released in 1990, but you get the idea. Night of the Creeps gets all the plaudits in the convention-toying stakes and this gets ignored. Night of the Creeps certainly deserves the plaudits, but it really should share them with There's Nothing Out There. Stupid, selfish films.
Monster Club
One of those portmanteau films, which means you can watch it and also keep all your papers and pens and things in it. I first saw this when I was ten. I wasn't ready for such things and it terrified me senseless (well, the last story in it did). I haven't watched it since and only now do I feel ready to face the fear that made me sleep entirely under the covers with pyjamas and a dressing gown on with the window closed in summer. Why I thought that would help, I cannot remember. It has Vincent Price! Donald Pleasance! John Carradine! Geoffrey Bayldon! Lesley Dunlop! B.A. Robertson! It's directed by Roy Ward Baker - a stamp of a certain quality to a certain type of person. Well, it turns out that the last story still unsettles me a little. Not like it did all that time ago, of course. That would be faintly ridiculous. But a little. Poor woman out of May to December. And, as much as the first story is a solid little traditional vignette, I think I may have ruined it for myself by getting it into my head that the whistling Shadmock looks quite a lot like Roger Lloyd-Pack. Ah well. Quality (of a certain, particular kind) throughout, with added Vincent Price-ness.
Creepshow 2
Another collection of vignettes, one that I prefer to the first in the series. Not much to choose between them really, but they both edge out Tales From the Crypt without a hint of a doubt. Fun with the obligatory Stephen King cameo (he plays a stupid trucker. No, that isn't a typo). Creaky, slow-moving Red Wooden Indian Death! Killer oil slick that looks suspiciously like a tarpaulin with twigs on! The hitchhiker that will not die! Some tits! Directed by George A. Romero! It's alright, I guess!
Deathproof
Shitproof. Except it isn't, and a load of shit seeped in, especially in the excruciatingly dire second half. Blow it out of your arse, Tarantino, and don't return until you've finish, wiped your bum and realised what a terrible error of film making you have made.
Planet Terror
WHOA THERE! Much, much, much, much better than its much more lauded neighbour in the Grindhouse. Both films are loving in their attention to the detail of their sources, the difference is that Lord Bobert of Bobdrigues turns his into a fun, camp, gory barrel of excited laughmonkeys and Quentin makes a big puddle of self-indulgent cinematic wank (Kurt Russell is excused, he's quite marvelous for most of it , especially in the first half).
So there you have it. It would have been a lengthier list (watched half of Atonement, for example - promising so far), but I've been distracted by the arrival of a collection of "This is Tom Jones" shows from the end of the sixties. Well, they were actually from Amazon (they didn't arrive in a time machine), but you get my drift. As the actress said to the snowman. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Also I can't shake the nagging feeling that I've forgotten some. If I have, then it is probably with good reason.
Hasta la next time cinema cementheads.
I Am Legend
No, you are NOT legend, William. Actually, that's a bit harsh on The Fresh Smith, I doubt it's all his fault *quick shufty at imdb* no, you are NOT legend Francis Lawrence (director of the turgidity), Mark Protosevich (co-writer and defiler of narrative) and Akiva Goldsman (co-writer and similar enemy of intelligence). Be warned - there will be a spoiling element to this unappreciative exploration of cinematic flaccidity. I won't be concealing it in any way, because if you cannot control your eyes or dare to skim read my lovingly crafted and remarkably informative entries on this receptacle of cranial wonder then, to be frank, you deserve to have it ruined for you. Thinking about it, it's more a case of doing you a favour than spoiling anything in this instance. I'd be saving you precious time, time you can spend on more productive and enjoyable pursuits than watching I Am Legend. Such as jamming your big toe in a dirty grid, or starting a swingers' circle with Michelle McManus and Ali Bongo.
The stupid, ignorant film entirely failed to engage, interest or excite at any point at all. But no! What of the trumpeted, vaunted and heralded eerie emptiness of Manhattan? Empty, certainly. Empty of just about everything, including point, purpose and ability to convince. Predictably feeling-free and devoid of soul or reality, as is generally the case when unconvincing and surprisingly obvious CG is relied on so heavily that it is squashed fatter than Mrs. Meatloaf on a thursday night. Christ, if you're going to make such a big deal about it, I would think that you should perhaps spend a little more time, effort (and probably money) on it and try to make it look a little less fake. The animals-at-loose-in-urban-America bit was done more convincingly in Twelve Monkeys and, in technology and hype terms, that may as well have been daubed on a cave wall in France by Les Neanderthales.
Poor The Will Prince. He doesn't do half bad, really. He plays his strong suit throughout - you know the one, the gruff, manly, soft at heart, friendly rugged-with-rounded-edges family man (the one he does in most films - and why not, he's bloody good at it) - and, when the film lets him, he impresses. Occasionally, he puts in a little turn that is genuinely classy, emotional and engaging - and then the film's overbearing leaden lumpenness drags him back into its morass of mediocrity. He should damn well fucking sue the film for turning an attempt at a career-defining performance into Tom Hanks Lite. And then he should be severely reprimanded for putting his name to the godforsaken attempt at a script in the first place.
But no! The creatures! The creatures! Surely, won't somebody think of the creatures?!? Okay. My thought is that they are shit on a very unappealing stick. Again, criminally obviously CG rendered, thus separating them from any vestige of reality, menace, or meaningful presence or existence. They are also one of the key representations of how the film gets matters so universe-threateningly, horrendously, motherfuckingly wrong. WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Three times in the forty years or so they've made this film, and this is the first one to get it so arse-shreddingly, tit-grindingly WRONG. WRONG.
W.R.O.N.G. with a capital everything.
Not Right. Incorrect. Premise-dissipatingly so. The book and, to differing degrees, the previous two incarnations (Omega Man with the noted gun nut Charlton Heston, and The Last Man on Earth with the noted thing of wonder and global treasure Vincent Price) all have a particular point to make, a point that is the whole point and indeed basis of the story. Y'know, like, the thing that makes the book and films exist. THE FUCKING POINT. The one missed by I Am Legend to a degree not seen since [insert thing that was expected to easily hit the target] missed by [insert largest distance imaginable by which one thing could miss another] and ended up hitting [insert thing that is the furthest conceivable distance from the intended target].
Here comes the spoiler bit [/l'oreal].
Bruce Willis was a ghost! Sorry, wrong spoiler. The creatures, see. An increasing intelligence is hinted at, but a greater emphasis is placed upon a growing menace to The Fresh Robert of Bel Neville. Crude, inhuman, vicious (increasingly so) - they remain steadfastly the enemy of humanity, the humanity that endures in Robert Neville and his mighty crusade to save it from itself. Their intelligence manifests itself in cruelty and brutality, not in society or co-operation - it becomes Jazzy Neville Vs. the Most Brutish Night Seeker. But, as I may have hinted at earlier, THAT IS NOT THE FUCKING BIG BASTARD SHAGGING POINT.
It's not about saving the world, see. It's not about finding a cure. It's about realisation. Big Bad Bob Neville's realisation that he's got it wrong. He's no longer trying to save civilization, mankind - he's now the outsider. He's the monster, and the "others" are the society, the civilization. He's their nemesis, boogeyman, thing of terror. He's destroying, rather than saving. He is, indeed, legend, anachronistically so. Not because he invents the cure and saves the fluffy puppies and children, but because he is legend to the "others", the sort of legend that comes when your children are asleep and kills your family. So, when the lady comes with the portentous ending voiceover declaring Robert Neville to be legend for giving his life to defend the cure, I wanted to re-engineer the measles virus and destroy the world. And laugh in a dastardly way whilst I did, inflicting it first upon those responsible for the narrative mutilation. A thought-provoking, bleak yet moving, interesting and gripping theme is reinvented as Independence Day with an ickle dog. Actually, that's mean to Independence Day - that manages to cloak some nice satire in a publicly appealing gung-ho, GO USA set of threads. This is more the Littlest Hobo without the moral, excitement, or natty theme tune. It is patronising to children and pretends to appeal to grown-ups. Vincent Price and a bunch of Italian film-making dudes got a lot closer to the mark, and even the noted rifle-fondler extraordinaire Charlton Heston managed a lot better. I won't even mention the fantastically gaping plot holes.
SO FUCKING WRONG IT RUINED MY BRAIN.
Thus ends the spoiling bits.
There's Nothing Out There
Infinitely more enjoyable than I Am Legend, as is having shingles of the eyes. Fun, knowing, witty and articulate homage to horror film cliches. With tits. Lots of them. Scream before Wes Craven had the idea of ripping it off and making Scream. Piss off Wes Craven. Amusingly post-modern without taking itself seriously (which seems to be the odd hallmark of self-professed post-modern cultural items), a fun film, and cruelly overlooked when it comes to the appreciation of eighties horror - perhaps because it was released in 1990, but you get the idea. Night of the Creeps gets all the plaudits in the convention-toying stakes and this gets ignored. Night of the Creeps certainly deserves the plaudits, but it really should share them with There's Nothing Out There. Stupid, selfish films.
Monster Club
One of those portmanteau films, which means you can watch it and also keep all your papers and pens and things in it. I first saw this when I was ten. I wasn't ready for such things and it terrified me senseless (well, the last story in it did). I haven't watched it since and only now do I feel ready to face the fear that made me sleep entirely under the covers with pyjamas and a dressing gown on with the window closed in summer. Why I thought that would help, I cannot remember. It has Vincent Price! Donald Pleasance! John Carradine! Geoffrey Bayldon! Lesley Dunlop! B.A. Robertson! It's directed by Roy Ward Baker - a stamp of a certain quality to a certain type of person. Well, it turns out that the last story still unsettles me a little. Not like it did all that time ago, of course. That would be faintly ridiculous. But a little. Poor woman out of May to December. And, as much as the first story is a solid little traditional vignette, I think I may have ruined it for myself by getting it into my head that the whistling Shadmock looks quite a lot like Roger Lloyd-Pack. Ah well. Quality (of a certain, particular kind) throughout, with added Vincent Price-ness.
Creepshow 2
Another collection of vignettes, one that I prefer to the first in the series. Not much to choose between them really, but they both edge out Tales From the Crypt without a hint of a doubt. Fun with the obligatory Stephen King cameo (he plays a stupid trucker. No, that isn't a typo). Creaky, slow-moving Red Wooden Indian Death! Killer oil slick that looks suspiciously like a tarpaulin with twigs on! The hitchhiker that will not die! Some tits! Directed by George A. Romero! It's alright, I guess!
Deathproof
Shitproof. Except it isn't, and a load of shit seeped in, especially in the excruciatingly dire second half. Blow it out of your arse, Tarantino, and don't return until you've finish, wiped your bum and realised what a terrible error of film making you have made.
Planet Terror
WHOA THERE! Much, much, much, much better than its much more lauded neighbour in the Grindhouse. Both films are loving in their attention to the detail of their sources, the difference is that Lord Bobert of Bobdrigues turns his into a fun, camp, gory barrel of excited laughmonkeys and Quentin makes a big puddle of self-indulgent cinematic wank (Kurt Russell is excused, he's quite marvelous for most of it , especially in the first half).
So there you have it. It would have been a lengthier list (watched half of Atonement, for example - promising so far), but I've been distracted by the arrival of a collection of "This is Tom Jones" shows from the end of the sixties. Well, they were actually from Amazon (they didn't arrive in a time machine), but you get my drift. As the actress said to the snowman. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Also I can't shake the nagging feeling that I've forgotten some. If I have, then it is probably with good reason.
Hasta la next time cinema cementheads.
Sunday, 21 October 2007
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
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
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