A little while ago I reviewed the Total Recall remake. It was terrible. This has been a habit of quite a number of remakes where, at best, they can be described as decent, and most often, an offence to the original work. A lot of the time this is because a remake has been made of a great work that not only didn’t need remaking but also the end product would often miss the point. See Total Recall. And from one Verhoeven classic to another comes the remake of RoboCop. I’ve watched this trailer a couple of times and I’m not sure what top make of it. Clearly it’s toned down. Violence at the level of the original just isn’t a thing these days. But this trailer also appears to show signs that the director might just have an angle to play this film from. It appears RoboCop is aware that he is Murphy right from the start. What difference does that make tot he character’s journey? Is his story going to be about him accepting the change? Will he reject it and fight back against the people that made him? What will others think? Does he view himself as a monster? Is this actually Robo-Frankenstein’s Monster? Lots of questions that you can ask yourself by watching the trailer after the jump.

I’m not sure I like the black armour. It’s a bit too Mass Effect-y. But that’s the fashion these days. With a PG-13 cert this will likely be way more neutered than I’d like, plus there’s a serious super hero vibe to this. Getting blown up in an explosion doesn’t exactly parallel the suffering for our sins that Murphy went through in the original. Also, what’s the deal with the human hand? Apparently in the film it’s a PR thing. A human hand to shake and all that. But really? Does it have greater significance? I dunno. I at least think this has to be better than Total Recall’s remake, right? Hey, did you know there’s plans to remake Starship Troopers too. yeah…

It has been some time since I last picked a film at random to review on here. I’ve gotten into the habit of planning what films to cover next in advance. Since I stopped using Lovefilm I’ve not been receiving random films so I have been plotting what to review next, hence the slowdown in new reviews. Although that is equally because I’ve finally started watching Breaking Bad. Annnnyway, tonight I sat in front of Netflix’ somewhat limited selection of films and eventually stumbled upon Three Amigos. A film I haven’t seen for something like 20 years. Did my rose tinted glasses hold out over the course of reviewing one of my favourite childhood films? Click the link to find out.

Three Amigos tells one of those stories that anyone familiar with the “heroes come to save a troubled town trope” will feel right at home. In the film a trio of men are called upon to save a small Mexican village from the infamous El Guapo (Alfonso Arau). The trouble is, these three men are not heroes. At least not in the traditional bandit killing sense. No, they are The Three Amigos, recently unemployed stars of stage and screen. They are called upon by the village of Santo Poco by a woman named Carmen (Patrice Martinez) who sees the amigos’ good deeds in a local silent cinema and mistakes them for being actual, real crime fighters. At first the Three Amigos, Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) think they have been invited to the town to put on a show and earn a bit of money. When they realise El Guapo’s men are not firing some blanks and Carmen is kidnapped the Amigos need to decide if it’s worth risking their life to be real heroes or if they should just head back to Hollywood.

The story has been done many times, with Three Amigos adding the spin that the heroes are not actual heroes. You could easily view Three Amigos as a spin on films such as Seven Samurai and Shlolay. I’d argue that Sholay is actually a fairly strong influence with regards to the inclusion of songs and a similarly charismatic bandit villain. Since Three Amigos a few films have played with this fake heroes trope, such as Galaxy Quest and A Bug’s Life (Itself influenced by Seven Samurai). Now, I realise I’m making it seem like Three Amigos is some magnificent film that carries with it a lot of filmic tradition and influence. It is certainly no masterpiece but it is clear that the basic concept had worked before and, with this film’s spin, has worked since. The idea of three perceived heroes learning to become actual heroes is a trope worth revisiting due, in part, to it’s innate inspirational qualities it can convey to any audience. The “you can succeed if you really try” story.

Time to negotiate I think.

On its own ground Three Amigos does what it sets out to do, that being, to be a traditional story told with a twist and with a strong focus on being fun. It isn’t as absurdist as many of Steve Martin’s films prior to this feature, although it does have its moments, but it is an enjoyable film. Personally, I feel not enough films are focused on being fun. They try to be edgy. They aim for kids but do that thing where they try to slip in adult jokes to keep the parents happy, failing to realise that good humour crosses all boundaries. Or, worst of all, they conform to a template and deliver something overly familiar. Whilst Three Amigos relies on a trope it also features singing horses, Randy Newman songs (he also voices a singing bush) and three dim witted leads that are written smart enough to each be dim witted in their own ways but also capable of showing hidden strengths and talents when needed.

Watching it for the first time in about 20 years tonight I was surprised to find how well it held up. It may not be the comedic genius of, say, The Man With Two Brains or LA Story, but many of it’s jokes hit home solidly. A few even took me by surprise as I had forgotten them after all this time. The line “Maybe we could go for a walk and you could kiss me on the veranda” followed by Dusty’s reply of “The lips would be fine” is simple play on words brilliance. These days the line would have gone “Maybe we could go for a walk and you could kiss me on the veranda” to which Seth Rogan would say “Damn lady, you’re pretty filthy huh? Alright, I can kiss on the veranda. I’ll kiss you on the veranda so hard”… also both characters would be smoking pot and someone would fall over at which point another character would point out that someone just fell over. Do I sound cynical?

Totes not a set, honest.

The film is shot with John Landis’ usual functional but well put together flair… if that can be called flair. I like Landis, but he’s not massively adventurous as a director. True story, bumped into him once at a comic con, literally bumped into him. Wasn’t sure what to say because my mind went blank and the only John Landis film I could think of was the segment he did of The Twilight Zone Movie where people died and he got taken to court. Figured it was best to keep quiet there. One thing he does do very well here is shoot the scenery. He makes sure that, as often as possible, the mills and surrounding plains are always shot to lend weight to the idea that the Amigos are a long way from Hollywood. He frames the mountains in the background with as much importance as the actors saying their lines.

In the end Three Amigos has held up quite well. At the time it got a number of negative reviews purely because it wasn’t as anarchic as a lot of Steve Martin’s work at this time. Maybe this film was the first sign of him slowing down a little. Personally, I think he shot all the funny he had in him our on LA Story and didn’t know where to go from there. I’ll maybe allow a pass for Bowfinger, as it’s not too bad, but I give no quarter for Cheaper By The Dozen or those Pink Panther films. If anything, watching Three Amigos tonight has encouraged me to look over some other films I’ve not seen for a while. Maybe I’ll consider a nostalgia season on here… although that wouldn’t be drastically different to normal for me. I did review Every Bond film after all and they’re nostalgic as it gets for me. Maybe though, you could consider looking back at a film you’ve not seen foe decades to see if it still holds up. Some films age badly as times change but some films age like a fine wine and can, upon drinking their fruity goodness, remind you of a time when punchlines were more than swears and characters falling over.

Dear reader, you may not know this about me but I loves me some RoboCop. This is because I was born in the 80s and, therefore, find it genetically impossible to dislike RoboCop. I am, of course, referring only to the original film. There is reason for this. Almost everything else RoboCop related that has ever been made kinda stunk. RoboCop 2 is meh to decent at best but other than that… well, RoboCop 3, the animated series, the TV series… all pants. That Robocop game made in about 2003 for the PS2? Bollocks. The RoboCop cereal… probably doesn’t exist… but if it did it would taste like shoes. And yet, whenever I see something new based on RoboCop come along I decide to go in with an open mind. I want good RoboCop. There can be good RoboCop stuff made after the original film. I know there can. The NES and Spectrum games were great, as was RoboCop Vs Terminator. The Comics were pretty cool also. Oh, and there’s that Sideshow Collectibles figure… Jesus that figure is beautiful. So, can you guess what this weekend’s dump is all about? Click the link to find out.

It’s about the RoboCop remake trailer. That’s what it is about. I think that was pretty obvious. Has everyone had a chance to watch the remake trailer? If yo haven’t I’ll post it right after this paragraph. Naturally I’m trying to stay optimistic about this. But I’ve been burned before. Hell, I even distinctly remember optimistic for the Total Recall remake trailer. If you’re unsure what I feel about the finished product click here for the review. If you don’t feel like clicking that, firstly, fuck you, secondly, It was balls. I’m kidding about the fuck you by the way. I’m sure you have your reasons. Anyway, here’s the trailer. Digest it and we shall discuss. Well, I’ll type things and if you want you can write something in the comments below.

So, I should probably do positives and negatives of this trailer. Let’s start with the positives. The silver suit looks pretty cool. It’s basically a streamlined version of the original suit. Modernised and all that. Future Detroit looks a mess, as it should. He’s aware that he is Murphy from the start which could open up some potential new ideas story wise to ensure the film isn’t just a retread. It has Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman. The director (Jose Padilha) is a pretty solid director capable of implementing actual character into action films. RoboCop’s voice is all robot like and stuff. So yeah, there’s a few things to be positive about. Maybe there will be more in the whole films… cos it may need them to overcome the issues it could easily have. Let us begin.

I’ll be honest. I’m not gonna be surprised if ED-209 shoots somebody more than is needed when he looks like that.

PG-13, 12A or whatever the equivalent is around the world… this is not a good sign. I’ve never been one to say a film needs to be ultra violent to be good. I also wouldn’t say that a film series established on violence needs to stay that way. A good story is a good story regardless of how much blood there is. Some stories need it though. Could you imagine The Evil Dead without gore? That would not work at all. There’s something about the violence of Verhoeven’s RoboCop that is intrinsic to accepting the universe the film is set in. It slots in perfectly next to a hero that is, by definition, a little bit silly.

Without the gore RoboCop isn’t the force of destruction he can be. He isn’t dishing out the sort of brutal law the harsh crime filled world he lives in demands. You can’t tell us the criminals of Detroit are all the worst of the worst if they aren’t shown being as vicious and violent as we’ve been told they are. Show don’t tell remember. RoboCop 2 actually has very little blood in it. RoboCop 3 has next to none. The series had none, RoboCop didn’t even shoot people. When you’re up against the most dangerous weapon wielding psychopaths the world has to offer and you’re armed with exactly what would be needed to take them out do you shoot the leg off a wardrobe to trap the villain or do you paint that wardrobe red with his brain matter? If you were RoboCop of course. This all leads me to the second gripe.

Murphy is injured, not killed, by an bomb attached to his car. What to look at first? The lack of death and resurrection or the passive nature of that sort of attack. Let’s go with the latter. The criminals of Detroit are meant to be terrifying. They aren’t scared of the police and they aren’t scared to get their hands dirty. I assume in the early part of the film Murphy makes an enemy of a crime syndicate. What kind of criminals, keeping in mind that they are figuratively in charge of Detroit, would use a bomb to do their work? They aren’t scared of being caught. They want to make an example of Murphy, surely? So why not walk up to his house, murder him in public and probably take out Murphy’s family too? That’s how Clarence would have done it. Instead they set up a bomb and hide hoping no-one finds out. And it doesn’t even kill Murphy so…

Gone is the Jesus metaphor. To be fair, that may be a good thing these days. Everyone is doing Jesus metaphors. Even Man of Steel got in on it despite the fact that Superman’s origin is based on the story of Moses. So without the Jesus allegory thing, what will be in it’s place. I’ve mused that they could go down a Frankenstein’s monster route, the presence Gary Oldman as a scientist, a role that doesn’t appear to be a small one, may lend weight to that. What if the people reject RoboCop? Call him an abomination. Murphy’s pride of his duty to the law leads him to want to prove he can still be the officer they need which in turn leads him to finding out about corruption at OCP. All this while being hunted down by the mistrusting public and criminal underworld? Nah, fuck it. The film will be about a dude breaks free of his societal role to fights “The Man” instead.

Samuel L Jackson is in it. Do we still get excited for him appearing in a film? I mean, I like the guy but man, he’s in everything and plays the same guy every time. Well, except for in Django Unchained. He was admittedly marvellous in that. But here, it feels like they just figured they needed Samuel L Jackson in the film so they shined the SLJ signal, he turned up and they shot some stuff in front of a green screen and called it a day. Maybe I’m a cynic but I just feel like 90% of the time he’s only in a film because they could get him and, with that in mind, who can’t get Samuel L Jackson? He provided his voice for something called Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey. What is that? I have no idea. But he did a voice for it. Sam Jackson lends his voice and skills to things no-one has heard of. It has Chris Pine, James Earl Jones, and actual moon man Neil Armstrong providing voices, amongst many others, and no-one has hear of it. I’m getting off track. Basically, Samuel L Jackson will likely add nothing to this.

The right hand is exposed. It’s an aesthetic thing for sure, but really… why? Apparently in the film they say it’s to give him a human contact point with the public. A PR move so when he meets someone they can shake a human hand. I suppose this could be part of a larger world of OCP marketing led decisions that happen in the film. They do paint the suit black after all. Or maybe that’s just an odd design choice someone thought would be clever. It could be used symbolically though. The exposed right hand being a sign of his position between humanity and being a machine. Between being a human and being the literal right hand of God, his God being his creators at OCP. He’s holding onto his humanity, his face is fully exposed often in the trailer. Maybe the hand is lost and by the end he accepts what he is, gets a new Robot hand, ditches the black paint job passed onto him by his lords at OCP and embraces free will to defy his Gods. Murphy doesn’t die so maybe he’s in limbo between Heaven/Hell and Earth. Could that be too much to expect from a film like this?

Who stole my glove?

Ultimately there is potential for this to surprise. I can actually see it being possible to make RoboCop a full blown action movie… although I would like some blood please. The trouble I think myself, and many others, will have is the precedent set by similar remakes/reboots. Total Recall was pish. A Nightmare on Elm Street a was misguided mess. Terminator Salvation was meant to create a new series of Terminator films set in the war. It was fucking awful. Now they’re planning sequels and remakes. Peter Jackson’s King Kong was way too long and was too in love with it’s effects to truly convey it’s actual story. All that said, it is possible for a remake to be good. Zach Snyder and James Gunn’s Dawn of the Dead is a ballsy no nonsense piece of action horror. Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone took a decent gangster flick from the 30s and made one of the greatest crime films/Greek tragedies of cinematic history. My next film review, coming tonight is of a remake. A very good remake. So, before we totally write of RoboCop 2014 let us remember, sometimes it is possible to successfully resurrect the dead. It just takes more than plonking them in a shiny new suit and putting modern bells and whistles on it. Right now RoboCop is looking like something I’d buy for a dollar. I’d like it to be good enough to pay more for though.

This is going to become a habit methinks. I’m referring to me having reviewed an original film and then, later on, it’s remake. Did so with Total Recall already, here I am with Evil Dead and RoboCop is a few months away. Not to mention I’ve been planning on covering Oldboy at some point. I guess that’s just the times we live in. Everything needs to be remade. Studios want to have guaranteed returns and they feel the best way to accomplish that is to take a well known name and repackage it for the modern generation. It works too. I can’t tell you how many times I’d get a customer in my HMV days asking for a film and the conversation would go like this… “’Ave you got (insert film here)?” to which I reply “The original or the remake” and to which they stare blankly because they didn’t know the film was a remake at all because they suck at knowing stuff. Often they’d reply with “the original” at which point I take them to the original film and then they start the blank stares. Anyway, most remakes suck or miss the point. Occasionally they’re good. What about the Evil Dead? I hear none of you cry. Click the link to find out.

The original Sam Raimi directed Evil Dead is some thing of a legend. A legend that may be a little stronger here in the UK than the US due to it’s connection to the whole video nasty witch hunt that happened during the 80s, which I’ve written about a number of times on here. So picture me as a youngster wanting to see the grisliest, most violent films I can find. I grew up in the wake of the video nasty period and was actually raised by my mother to dislike the likes of Mary Whitehouse. God bless ya Mum. So I saw Evil Dead at a young age. It’s a film I’ve lived with for a large portion of my life. I love Raimi’s Evil Dead for all it’s insanity drenched in gore style. I love it for it’s comic touches and it’s determination to give you all it has. I love it cos… and God help me for sounding like Harry Knowles here (giggle)… but I love it cos it’s fucking cool!

Evil Dead 2014 is fucking cool. There, I said it. It may not have the humour of the original, but that humour was partly a by product of the campy, low budget nature of the original flick, but my God does it deliver. The story is fairly similar. A group of young guys and gals head up to a cabin in the woods (always a solid move) for the weekend. They’re goal is to get David Allen’s (Shiloh Fernandez) sister Mia (Jane Levy) to go cold turkey on her drug habit. They’re joined by their friends, a schoolteacher called Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), a Nurse called Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and David’s girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore). They soon discover they have a pest problem in the form of a load of dead cats in their basement and… a book. A book made of some very flesh like leather. When the smartest guy in the group decides to be a dumbass and reads a prayer from the book out loud spooky goings on start taking place, beginning with Mia losing her damn mind. At first the group put Mia’s erratic behaviour down to her withdrawal symptoms. They seem to be a little more convinced that there’s more to this when the bloody starts flowing though.

It’s OK, I get that look a lot.

So the story hits the same basic progression as the original film. You’d expect that from a remake. What you may not expect is that, despite the usual horror movie idiot plot elements, the character’s actually have personalities, depth, inter connected relationships and a general all round maturity to not feel like we’re watching absolute idiots. You can always argue the negatives of the idiot plot, the times when a character should run out the door rather than go into the basement, but it matters when they have a reason to make a bad decision. They go into the basement because Mia is there. They want to help her and they want to believe this is all just her going mad. When crazy shit starts going down they can’t just run because they can’t leave Mia, they have to find a way to stop all the horror. They can’t take Mia with them either because whatever is haunting them in the cabin has them trapped there. There is reason for them to make bad decisions because all the good ones that the flight part of your brain will scream are not the right ones.

One thing I like with the film is that it works as a remake and as an introduction to the series. This could be the first time this has ever happened at the cabin but the presence of a certain car suggest this may even be a sequel. You could logically think that at some point after the events of Evil Dead 2 David and Mia’s parents brought the cabin and fixed it up. Would have been a lot of work, to be fair… what with all the inter-dimensional portal damage and blood, but weirder things have happened there. Plus it would have had to have been moved to another state… but… whatever. The film does tread over a fair bit of the same ground but when it comes to the gory moments direct Fede Alverez does his best to either come up with new ideas or present you with twists on the old ones.

Be careful with that knife. You’ll have your eye out.

I say gory “moments”… I should be saying gory “whole second half of the film”. This is not a film for the light headed that’s for sure. Fede gives us dismemberment, puncture wounds and pure cringe inducing moments of pain. He also provides some of the goriest scenes in years, especially the finale. I won’t spoil it but man… just man. He flips the body horror from stuff that makes us squirm to pure visceral nastiness with such ease that you’d think he had years of experience doing this. He hasn’t at all. This is his first feature film having only directed a handful of short films beforehand. His eye for detail and his apparent knowledge of how to get under the viewers skin is very apparent here.

A tip of the hat must be made to the film’s effects crew. They did an incredible job using every practical film making technique they could to bring this vision of horror to life. There is barely a hint of computer effects here. When they are employed they are used for composites and wire or blood pumping tube removal only. This is horror fan heaven. There’s tongue splitting, arm removal and all sorts of gory delights to be had, all carried out in camera with minimal digital trickery. It really makes an actual difference when the blood spurting out of an arm being sawed through with an electric knife is splatting directly in the poor actress’ face all in the same shot. The effect looks real because it practically is real. I often wonder how amazing films could look now if studios didn’t get so obsessed with digital effects. This film was made for $17 million and you get every penny of that on screen. When it got to the film’s final acts I actually felt a little sorry for the actor’s involved when I started working over how many days that sequence probably took to shot and just how much corn syrup was probably sprayed about the place.

Obligatory “you’ve got red on you” caption.

One thing the film does effortlessly is pay tribute to the previous entries in the series via the odd nod or wink. None of this is obtrusive, such as the slightly painful references made to Wrath of Khan and other Star Trek moments in Star Trek Into Darkness. This isn’t the in your face “look at what we put here!” style of referencing. This is simple suggestions and call backs, many of which may pass over even die hard Evil Dead fans. David is dressed like Ash helping indicate that he has the Ash role in this film. David gives Mia a necklace similar to the one Ash gave Linda in the original. These are all unobtrusive and certainly more subtle than Spock shouting “KHHHAAAAANNNN!!!”. God that scene was horrible.

Evil Dead may well be one of the great horror remakes. Remaking horror films is nothing new at all. We all like a different person to tell us a tale of terror from time to time. It’s the equivalent of a story being told around the camp fire being passed from generation to generation. If this is the only version of Evil Dead kids today are sneaking copies of into their house to watch when their parents aren’t around I will be happy with that. I mean, they should see the original, of course, but this film provides the same visceral thrills the original did for me as a kid. What separates this form of gore from the Saw franchise is that it has characters, it has quality dripping from every flesh wound and it’s clearly made with actual love and care. This version of Evil Dead is really fucking cool.

It’s been a bit of a slow news week for films. Nothing especially interesting has happened. Jurassic Park 4 was renamed Jurassic World. An image of Godzilla from next years remake leaked online. Justin Bieber is playing Robin… or maybe not. If that film is based on The Dark Knight Returns would that mean he’s playing a female Robin? Cos I could believe that. Two screenshots of the Need For Speed film starring Aaron Paul (bitch) were released that show no cars or the any sign of the purported return to 60s style car chase movie themes. Was there anything else..? Well, I suppose it was announced that Jack Black is going to be starring in a Goosebumps film. Yup, that’s happening. Apparently he’ll be playing an author who’s characters come to life. So Monkeybone then, sorta. I don’t think I could write an entire blog post about that. Although… you know, Jack Black sure is doing a lot of crappy films these days. And they’re almost always awful. Hey, Jack Black… What the hell happened man?

Jack Black is one of those guys that rose to fame at exactly the right moment in his life. In a short space of time he scored a breakout role in High Fidelity, stealing the show along the way. He released a genuinely funny and excellent comedy rock/acoustic metal album with his musical partner in crime Kyle Gass. He also had a hit comedy in Shallow Hal… which is a fucking awful film. But it was a hit. With those three roles/performances he had gained comedy cred, musical cred and mainstream success. But he didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Say what you want about the man but he worked his arse off and paid his dues to get to where he was at that point. He didn’t get flung into the mainstream because of how sexually appealing he looked in a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts… although many would claim he does. No, he worked his way there.

Try to think of the earliest film you saw Jack Black in. Some would say High Fidelity or Shallow Hal. Many may remember him in Enemy of the State (decent film BTW) and The Jackal. Some may even remember him as being the only good thing about The Neverending Story III. Fun fact: Jack Black was in The Fall Guy. A series which many people have forgotten about today and in about 2 years will remember as a film starring The Rock. There’s also an advert for Pitfall on the Atari 2600 from around then that he’s in. You skip to the 90s and look over his imdb page and you’ll realise that he’s in a hell of a lot of films that you’ve seen, albeit, in small roles. Waterworld, Mars Attacks, Cradle Will Rock, The Cable Guy and Demolition Man all feature a little JB action. Not to mention the cinematic classics that are Airborne and Bio-Dome. He was even in Northern Exposure and The X-Files on TV along with a short lived Tenacious D show, which is excellent by the way. What I’m saying is Jack Black earned his place as a star.

As many websites will have likely reminded you this week, School of Rock is 10 years old. There’s one of those facts that reminds you how fast time flies. School of Rock is a damn fine film and manages to float that line between the two audiences that Jack Black is most loved by. Fans of his swear filled music and kids. He has a lot of pre-teen fans. Kids love him, and not just because he helps them find octagons. They love him because he has a child like sense of fun and wonderment in how he carries and delivers his jokes. He doesn’t just hit his line at the right time. He puts a little bit of playful flair on his delivery. It’s not so much what he says but how he says it. I’m not saying he’s anywhere near the comedic skill of say, Steve Martin in the 80s or Louis CK now, but he knows how to get that laugh and understands that sometimes you’ve just got to enjoy it and, most of all, mean it.

It’s pretty clear that when you see Jack Black in front of an audience he craves and eats up the adulation. It’s what he lives for and no audience will shower you with laughs and cheers like kids will. Gradually, as his career moves on, he appears in less and less serious or more adult centric films. This could partly be because the film market is aiming younger these days in general, but, I think it’s the lack of praise he gets for his serious roles that does it. He’s actually a pretty skilled serious actor. He’s no Brando, but he holds his own well in films such as Margot at the Wedding and The Holiday. He certainly doesn’t harm those films. There’s the occasional role over the last few years that feel like proper Jack Black roles, such as in Tropic Thunder or his excellent voice work in Brutal Legend. But he was a supporting role in Tropic Thunder and Brutal Legend failed to earn the sales that the average Double Fine game deserve.

See, what’s not serious about that?

Add to this that the Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, Nacho Libre and Be Kind Rewind all failed to find a wider audience whilst Shark Tale and Kung Fu Panda likely brought him at least 1 half diet half regular coke (he’s trying to lose some of the weight). If you were Jack where would you have started pushing your career.. It seems where Jack is most successful is in the supporting role, but he’s a guy that clearly craves the centre stage. He’s provided the voice of Po from Kung Fu Panda many times over now, even in the video shorts Dreamworks love to take onto their dvds. He loves the role cos kids love Po. Thank God Kung Fu Panda took off and not Shark Tale. He’s recording dialogue for Kung Fu Panda 3 now. Yes, there’s a third film coming.

Did you know Jack Black was recently in a film with Steve Martin and John Cleese? Think about that. Two of the biggest stars of comedy of all time are in a film together along with Jack Black and Owen Wilson and no-one saw it. It cost $41 million to make and took $7 million. If that was released 10 years ago it probably would have been huge. He was also in a film called Bernie, which did quite well for it’s very low budget, but didn’t get wide promotion and I am yet to see a copy of here in the UK. It got very good reviews too, many noting Jack Black’s performance as standing out. And yet Gulliver’s Travels, a film that practically spits in the face of the original stories and is critically derided, made $237 million and continues to sell on dvd. What’s a Jack Black to do? He works his arse off in a film and it fails to find an audience. He appears in something that is way outside the realms of his adult audience and it succeeds spectacularly.

I honestly don’t think Jack Black minds doing these kids films all the time. As I mentioned, I reckon he enjoys making kids laugh. Have you ever seen his appearance on Sesame Street where he’s looking for an octagon? He is lapping that up no end. In a way you’ve gotta respect that he’s able to pick out the roles he enjoys. I can’t help but feel that we’re missing his full potential though. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I want the sweary Jack Black back. I want him to make a few adult comedies, or at least some films that work on both levels such as School of Rock and eventually I want someone to dare to shout out some praise for his dramatic talents. The trouble is that I can’t help but feel that, gradually, he’s just going to move further and further away from his adult audience because them kids, they love them some Kung Fu Panda and they don’t sit there critiquing his every move. There’s a hint of rebellion in him still, just look at the cover of the last Tenacious D album for example. But will he ever be given the chance to be a lead in an R rated comedy again? It seems less and less likely. And that’s a shame.

But herein lies the magic of cinema. We still have High Fidelity. We still have his show stealing in Orange County. We still have School of Rock and that amazing first Tenacious D album. His films that failed to gain their audience on a wider scale, such as Bernie and Be Kind Rewind still exist on dvd and blu-ray and various digital stores. Whilst the Jack Black I know and love may be moving into a territory that I cannot follow… cos fuck see a Goosebumps movie… I know that I can always play those films and listen to that music whenever I want. In film actors may change and shift their focus, but if they ever made anything you loved it will always exist. Now, what do I need to do to get Brutal Legend 2 made?

Trawling the UK Netflix for films worth watching is generally a fruitless endeavour, packed as it is with straight to DVD sci-fi and horror and films everyone has seen a million times before. Whilst working my way through it’s various genre categories I found a cult 80s film that I had never seen before. It wasn’t Princess Bride though, which is a shame, because people will not stop telling me how I should have seen that by now. Sorry, but my film watching youth was different to yours. The cult film I saw in amongst all the cyborg based films was, in fact, Weird Al Yankovic’s UHF. To many of my US readers this is a cult film that they grew up with. Here in the UK it was released straight to video and promptly went out of print. It’s only really been available in recent years with the advent of digital streaming and download services such as Netflix. Naturally I had to watch it. Click the link for my thoughts on what the hell I just watched.

UHF (which stands for Ultra High Frequency – as in the TV signal) Follows the exploits of a constant daydreamer, and serial loser of jobs, George Newman (Weird Al himself). After losing his, and his friend Bob’s (David Bowe) job George feels he’s hit rock bottom and just wishes he could find a career where he could put his over-active imagination to good use. When his uncle wins the deed to a bankrupt TV station called Channel 8 in a poker game he gives control of the station to George so he can have one last chance of making something of himself. Things go slowly at first but when George puts his bizarre janitor Stanley (Michael Richards) on TV suddenly everything changes. Before long the station is a ratings winner and George has incurred the wrath of rival network manager RJ Fletcher (Kevin McCarthy), who isn’t too keen on being shown up by some curly haired weirdo. A televisual war ensues and George has to set up a telethon to save the station when RJ begins closing in on a deal to buy Channel 8 TV and turn it into a car park.

See that? The rubbing his cheek motion. Details man!

Seems like a pretty standard comedy plot there, and for the most part UHF is pretty standard. Except for one aspect, Weird Al Yankovic. This is his humour in the film format. The film opens with a Raiders of the Lost Ark Parody, that’s full of tiny details just to show the love, which instantly throws you off of what you’re expecting. Over the course of the film there’s a parody of Status Quo’s Money for Nothing that instead tells the story of the Beverly Hillbillies, there’s a wheel of fish (Red snapper… veeeery tasty!.. I knew that line already) and to add to this weirdness there’s an extended Rambo parody sequence at the end. One thing I’ve always liked with Weird Al is that the stuff he parodies isn’t out of spite or an attempt to show up someone else’s work. His devil is in his details which all goes to show why when Weird Al does a parody it has a better effect than, say, dropping a cow on Iron Man because Iron Man is a thing. It’s a shame what this sort of parody has become in recent years.

The film itself goes for the laughs per minute rule of thumb by chucking every gag you can imagine, and this being Weird Al, a whole load you likely didn’t. Many fall flat on their face, which is a shame because this sort of comedy ruled the 80s. You kind of go in expecting a lot of the oddball humour to hit the mark most of the time. That said, there are a few moments of brilliance here and there and the film doesn’t stop being fun. The cult status of the film can also be traced to a few films and internet projects around today. There’s a tone running through UHF that you’ll recognise in things such as Nostalgia Critic and Angry Videogame Nerd. Hardly high art, I’ll agree, but it shows that some people get what made this humour work. The line delivery of Weird Al himself is very similar to the way many internet video makers today deliver their lines. In turn Al’s slightly cartoonish tone mimics works from the likes of the Marx Brothers and Mel Brooks.

Al’s short sightedness was a bit of a hindrance in combat.

There’s not really a massive amount that can be said about UHF. It’s a curio of the 80s. A film largely forgotten by the mainstream but loved by fans of Weird Al. It features a few faces you’ll recognise today, such as Michael Richards and Fran Drescher as Channel 8′s receptionist turned reporter Pamela. The film was never going to win awards for its direction, score or writing. UHF is just a film made to be fun, pure and simple. Part of me would like to see Weird Al make another film someday, as he’s certainly not lost his comedic touch. But that sort of film would likely have to be crowd funded or very low budget to even have a chance of being made. So, UHF… it’s fun and silly and you may like it. It may even become a cult favourite of yours if you can dare to be stupid enough to enjoy it.

Choosing what to cover first on Horror week was a little tricky. Other than Halloween 3 on October 31st I hadn’t set out a schedule. I don’t like to think too far ahead. Brings me out in hives. Eventually I decided that if I was going to start Horror Week with a bang I may as well go with the most bat-shit insane of the 5 films I’ll be reviewing over the coming week. When it comes to insanity on film you don’t get much more insanityer than Dario Argento. To call him an unconventional director would be a slight understatement. They guy always has, and always will, live in a cinematic world of his own. The sort of world where a serial killer can be hunted down by a wheelchair bound biologist with a Chimp for a nurse and a 14 year old girl with the psychic power to communicate with insects. And that’s Phenomena ladies and gents! Click the link for the review!

As I just blew your mind grapes with, the plot to Phenomena is a little out there. In full it’s about a girl named Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) who’s been sent to boarding school is Switzerland. Soon after arriving she find herself sleepwalking and narrowly avoiding being killed. I turns out young girls in this town have been getting murdered all the time and Jennifer’s psychic ability is causing her to sleepwalk when the killer is on the prowl. She meets a biologist specialising in insects named John McGregor (Donald Pleasence) who believes Jennifer may be able to communicate with his insects, specifically a breed that just love the taste of rotting flesh. Which is handy because no-one knows where the bodies of the missing girls are. See, the 14 year old girl is gonna go find the bodies with the help of her insect pals. Obviously everyone at the school thinks she’s mental and want her locked up. Will Jennifer find the killer before she’s put into a padded cell? Probably, you should watch to find out.

Phenomena could easily be written off by some as an odd 80s horror movie that was probably made by a crew whilst drunk. This may be partially true. But, that would likely mean you’re unfamiliar with the auteur that is Dario Argento. His films exist in a world that is just to the left of ours where hokey scenarios can be played 100% straight and Donald Pleasence can have a chimp for a nurse and you just accept it. There’s always a strange otherworldly tone to his films that is likely the effect of Argento coming from the world of Giallo cinema. Giallo is like the Italian version of American pulp novels but way more interested in fantastical situations and eroticism. Nothing in Italian horror is normal and the fact Argento got to bring some of that to English speaking audiences is really quite amazing and brilliant.

I used to be able to do that with my hair too.

What some people fail to see is that an Argento film represents as much of himself as Miyazaki or Tim Burton films represent themselves today. Jennifer tells a story of how her mother abandoned her family at Christmas, a story that actually happened to Argento. He’s always had a love of breaking glass, reusing it in many of his films. He revels in the technical trickery capable on film, often using some clever tricks to show grotesque violence with the actor’s face in shot long before CGI made these effects a breeze. He’s a stylist first and foremost but, especially during the 70s and 80s, his films never forgot to tell a story. A really bizarre story.

Phenomena may not sell everyone with it’s production quality but you can tell the people working on this put their hearts into making everything work. So while almost all the dialogue has been dubbed in ADR and that the performances regularly come across as more wooden than a matchstick model of a tree you still will feel the love. Jennifer Connelly is especially catatonic in this film. To be fair this was one of her first films and similar arguments could be made against her performance in Labyrinth. Yeah that’s right, I insinuated that Labyrinth may not be perfect! Donald Pleasence, meanwhile, starts off with some sort of Scottish accent and quickly gets bored of that, settling into a kindly old man voice instead, possibly out of boredom. I do like to imagine that he got up to all sorts of hijinks with his new chimpanzee friend on the set though. And yet, despite the poorly delivered dialogue and the oddly structured conversations, you just kind of accept them because they just fit the world we’ve been drawn into.

Yup, that’s a literal deadpool she’s in.

Musically the film is as schizophrenic as you’d expect a film about a girl that talks to bees to be. The soundtrack features a mixture of typical 80s horror synth from Goblin and, in his début, Simon Boswell. Goblin is the master of synth based horror scores and lengthy Prog Rock albums. If you’ve seen an Italian horror from this period you’re probably familiar with their work. At other points in the film, usually during quite slow scenes, Argento makes the odd choice to just play some heavy metal. And why not? In one scene were seeing a dead body being wheeled out, people are looking on in shock and Jennifer runs away scared… all set to Motorhead’s Locomotive, which is not a sad song at all. Iron Maiden, Andi Sex Gang and Frankie Goes To Hollywood all crop up in the film’s soundtrack at some point just to add to the oddness.

So whilst Phenomena isn’t a technical marvel of a film, whilst it has a script that sounds like it was written by someone for whom English was a second language (which it was) and whilst the performances and music is just plain strange… Phenomena still rocks. The high level of creativity and the giving of zero shits that this film displays are truly admirable. The plot is insane. The scenarios regularly come out of left field. Despite everything the film is enjoyable, memorable and, at times, kind of brilliant. It’s not Argento’s best work, that’s a hard debate to settle, but it is a film that you just have to see in order to witness something that would never exist today. Argento always gave you everything he could back at this point of his career. His love for horror and the fantastical shine through, in much the same way as it does for Guillermo Del Toro today. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where a director’s passions lie, but in Phenomena you can see that it’s entirely in the love of the film.

First things first, no this isn’t a review for the remake starring Chloe Grace “only teenage girl in Hollywood” Moretz. Not my fault they went and released that remake the same week as my HORROR WEEK review was due. Blame the studios. I would go see the remake but… ehhhhh… why bother? The original is a work of art and I intend to tell you all just why in this review. So, click the link below and I’ll tell you why Carrie is such a superb piece of horror.

So, spoilers, Carrie is a film about a girl ( Carrie, of course, played by Sissy Spacek) with telekinetic powers that loses her shit at the prom after getting covered in pig’s blood and kills a bunch of people. That’s the basic way of summing it up by telling you the premise and that bit you know because it’s engrained into the modern horror mythos. What the film is actually about is the coming of age of a sheltered girl who gradually learns to build her won confidence when she starts to realise what her power can do. A girl discovering who she is and making choices for herself but isn’t yet strong enough to fight external forces that could damage her growth forever. The powers she gains are a manifestation of her growing power as a woman, but are tied so tightly to her fragile emotions that they could easily become dangerous.

Brian De Palma directed Carrie with his usual mixture of romantic Hollywood cinema and modern pop art. The result is a film that pay homage to classical camera work and technique but, occasionally out of nowhere, mixes this up with the odd stylistic touch that wouldn’t be out of place in a music video. For example, there’s one scene where a few of the male characters are buying tuxedos for the prom, mid conversation the film suddenly speeds up to the final moments of the scene. It’s as if De Palma felt the scene was going on longer than needed and just hit fast forward. Here is is making a fairly large scale production film and he’s experimenting with editing like that. In other scenes he’ll lead a shot on for an extended period to show the set up of the trap at the prom, or he’ll splice in a split screen effect either show multiple, near comic book style, angles on the events. This is mixture of stylistic techniques is the mark of a director who understands his history of cinema but is desperate to make a mark for himself. Carrie shows some of his best directorial work in my opinion.

Not the most exciting screenshot, I’ll agree. But scenes like this are key to the film’s story.

Carrie was the first book written by Stephen King and also the first adapted to film. It was certainly a key part of his being put on the map of horror writers. Shame he’s a bit of a hack now. Yeah I said it. That sad the principle themes of Carrie are beautifully constructed. From the very first 2 scenes we’ve learned everything we need to about Carrie and can sympathise with her. We understand that she is in a period of growth as a woman. As the film moves on we learn of her abusive and highly religious mother. We learn that Carrie just wants to fit in but is constantly told she is freak. A few characters take sympathy on her. Her gym teacher Mrs Collins (Betty Buckley) attempts to help her accept that she’s not different and just needs to mature while a classmate, Sue Snell (Amy Irving) gives up her place at the prom by asking her boyfriend Tommy (William Katt) to take Carrie in order to help her fit in.

The fact these characters are not saved by Carries rage is key to understanding the tragedy of her character. If the pigs blood had never been dropped on Carrie by Chris and Billy (Nancy Allen and John Travolta) Carrie may have grown to become a strong woman capable of using her power for good. That is always clear in your mind as you see how happy she is at the prom, as she finally begins to come out of her shell, only to have it all ruined by a girl with a grudge. It could be said that Carrie represents the idea that a woman is a ticking time bomb of untapped insanity ready to go off at the slightest push, but really the rage just represents her mental stability crumbling after years of abuse. Not the sudden explosion of rage the ticking time bomb metaphor would suggest, but rather the slow build to a mental collapse at a time of fragile imbalance.

religious symbolism and foreshadowing!

What really makes the film still stand up well today is that every single second has been treated with full conviction to make it the best film the cast and crew could make. The story is treated in a serious manner. The performances are all solid, particularly Spacek who should be and actress deserving of required viewing by young actors today. She hammers it home that it isn’t enough for the other characters to just say Carrie is strange, the actress in the role has to sell Carrie’s fragility with every fibre of her being. A technique I’m not feeling from Chloe Grace Moretz in the trailers and clips I’ve seen of the remake. It’s a lesson a lot of actors and directors need to understand these days. The Twilight films are probably the worst example of modern films ignorance to performance selling the alleged character.

It’s strange that what Carrie does for horror has only managed to be absorbed in imagery and style rather than successful depiction of thematics in recent years. So many are concerned with immortalising a single image of to put on their DVD case that they forget that the build to that image has to pay compliment it in the first place. Carrie does making it clear how fragile a person she is, gradually building the idea that she could break free of the abuse wrought on her by her mother, which in turn can make you hope she foils Chris and Billy’s plan… but then it’s all torn down in a moment. The image of Carrie covered in blood as the building around her burns and the iconography it represents are earned by the preceding 80 minutes of film. De Palma is a master of building a film scene by scene. While you could argue that not many actual events happen along the way, not a single scene is wasted. Ever scene helps create the possibilities of what Carrie could be and it’s all down to the vindictive actions of one girl, beyond the control of Carrie or anyone else that wished her well, that the tragedy of the final scenes can play out. Carrie is, without a doubt, one of the greatest works of horror ever made.

So I happily admit to having a bit of a thing for classical Japanese cinema these days. Been trying to spread out the reviews so this doesn’t become Japanese Cinema Dump but it’s nearly Halloween and I felt like reviewing what is generally considered the precursor to the J-Horror genre. This film was recommended to me by Mark Cousins, director of The Story Of Film and, most recently, Here Be Dragons. I asked him to recommend either this or Kuroneko, and Onibaba was his pick. So, was his recommendation a good one? You’ll have to click the link below to find out I guess. Although he did feature this film in The Story Of Film so… yeah… it’s pretty good.

This review will contain spoilers. To discuss the film’s horror aspects makes spoilers a requirement I’m afraid.

Onibaba is set in Nanboku-Cho period of Japan, that’s late 14th century to those of us that don’t know what all these Japanese periods are. The story follows a older and a younger woman who have no given name in the film, who live amongst a seemingly never ending field of reeds. The poverty they are left in due to the war has led them to killing wounded soldiers and selling their armour and belongings for food. When a soldier named Hachi (Kei Sato) returns from the war with news that the older woman’s son, the younger woman’s husband, has died the two women are left facing the possibility of never escaping this poverty. The Younger Woman (Jitsuko Yoshimura) begins an affair with Hachi which soon creates tension with the Older Woman (Noboku Otawa). The Older Woman sets out to drive a wedge between them fearing that the Younger Woman will leave her. Eventually she meets a samurai wearing a Oni (Demon) mask and leads him to his death. She then begins to use the Oni mask to scare the Younger Woman out of her affair.

For the most part Onibaba is a period drama that explores erotic desire, commercialism and emotional dependency. For a film made in 1964 in Japan the film has an incredible amount of female nudity and sex, all done without any sensationalism but whilst also being aware that the audience may be watching for that reason. By which I mean there’s a lot of lingering shots. The commercialism is explored by the need to use whatever means the two women can to keep themselves afloat, the boundaries they’ll cross in order to allow themselves to get by. The emotional dependency is brought up with the Older Woman’s need of the Younger Woman as she feels she will not survive without her. Meanwhile the Younger Woman needs Hachi as she is now a widow and he’s the only male nearby. She may fall for him but she’s sleeping with him as much out of desperation as love. She feels she’ll be alone forever now that her husband is dead, and whilst Hachi may not be ideal, he’s there for her.

It’s kinda tough to find good shots from this film that don’t have boobs in them.

The horror aspect come later though. In the film’s second half the Older Woman uses the Oni mask mentioned earlier to terrify the Younger Woman after filling her head with Buddhist tales of sinners going to purgatory. The film itself is based on a Buddhist tale. The mask itself fills in for the role of judgement for sins. When the Older Woman tries to remove it from the dead Samurai’s corpse she struggles initially. His face is covered in burns and scars. This comes to afflict the Older Woman as the mask becomes stuck to her face. I should probably tell you that I’m explaining most of the film here. I’ll put a warning up top somewhere. The way the mask comes to symbolise punishment for the crimes committed is quite a regular feature amongst all horror, but particularly Japanese horror. The evil forces in a lot of Japanese horror usually have some sort of tragic moral story behind their current condition. In many ways Onibaba is a film about one such tragic tale that would be told to scare children in the following centuries.

There’s an element of Noh Theatre to the use of the mask and how it is shot. Often unique camera angles are employed to depict the emotional state of the wearer, in much the same way as a Noh Theatre performer will tilt and angle their head for a similar effect. At times the mask can look angered, fearful and sorrowful with just the smallest change in the shot set up and lighting. When the mask comes into the film, suddenly, the feel of the film begins to shift from a classical Japanese aesthetic to something more heavily stylised. The film does happen to exist at a tipping point of Japanese cinema between the popularity of these two conflicting stylistic methods of direction.

Like, really hard…

The director, Kaneto Shindo, sets the film within an endless sea of reeds that serve a story purpose, to allow the women to commit their crimes, whilst also representing being lost within an inescapable environment. The reeds surround and confine them. There’s no landmarks apart from a river. A hole the women use to dispose of their victims is easily hidden amongst the reeds and its near invisible nature plays a central role in the plot. Shindo takes every chance he can to just show you the reeds swaying in the wind, often up close but many shots showing the vastness of their reach helping to enhance the feeling of isolation.

Onibaba is a superb film deserving of being in every film students educational materials. There’s much to learn about Japanese cinema, tradition and thematics in this one film alone. It’s a historical drama that swerves into horror effortlessly without once compromising the sheer quality. The film has a cult status these days, along with Shindo’s companion piece Kuroneko. It deserves so much more. If my words do give you the desire to hunt this work down then I suggest either the Eureka (If in the UK) published version. The restoration is incredible and a strong argument for the beauty of black & white film. I’m not sure if there has been a US blu ray release but Criterion had released it on DVD, so get that if you must. A stunning work. Thanks Mark!

So Marvel thought it would be hilarious to release Thor The Dark World right in the middle of my Horror Week. Good going Marvel! Why not screw everything up for me as much as you can? Like that time you released The Avengers just as I was about to do my traditional joke review for The Film Dump’s 1st birthday. I’m sure they’ll find a way to screw up the Godzilla season I’m planning. Jerks. Yup, Marvel have it in for me, clearly. So, Thor The Dark World is out in the UK and I just got back from seeing it. So here’s my review… right in the middle of Horror Week. Click the link.

Thor 2 Electric Boogaloo starts in the exact way I hate films to start. Voice over of mystical goings on while we watch a battle and are introduced to our main villain as a device of motivation rather than a character with thoughts and feelings. We’re told that the Dark Elf Lord Malekith had possession a weapon called the Aether which he intended to use to return the 9 realms of the universe back to darkness, or something. He fails, of course, and then goes into hiding. No history to him, nothing about who he is, he just wants to turn the lights out. Over the course of the film we discover exactly nothing else about him. On the one hand the single minded villain can be a powerful driving force in a film, on the other it can be a waste of a perfectly fine actor who has nothing to chew on. So, off to a bad start. Also, the opening scenes make it look like they stored the Aether inside the Thor logo.

Thankfully the monomaniacal villain isn’t too much of an issue. He’s there to keep the good guys on their toes and provide the epic showdowns these films need. When Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) manages to send herself through a portaly thing and accidentally go and fill herself up with a load of that Aether stuff the story proper kicks off. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes to take her to Asgard to see if they can get this wobbly red death/plot device out of her body but, little do they know, that Malekith has awoken from his slumber and is headed their way to collect his weapon. From here on it’s all the usual story of action and adventure with lots of punching and destruction. The norm for these superhero films now. As Thor kicks off his plot to stop Malekith, which naturally involves putting Jane in danger and freeing his teenage girl panty wetting half brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and at this point the film proper can start. An hour in.

This one’s for the ladies.

I sound a little harsh on Thor 2 Thor Harder, but, it’s actually a very enjoyable piece of nonsense. Director Alan Taylor, the visionary mind behind… nothing much… handles the adventure well enough. He doesn’t appear to have much in the way of visual flair but he makes up for it by keeping character interactions interesting, by making sure the action is well paced and staged and, most importantly, keeping the humour coming. I cannot stress how important the humour in to a Thor film. Kenneth Brannagh clearly understood it when making the first film, Taylor understands it here. Without the steady stream of humour 2 Thor 2 Thorious would be a chore to work through. Of all the marvel movie heroes Thor is the one in the most danger of turning into a po-faced mess due to the extreme levels of theatrical language used and the slightly ridiculous nature of every Asgardian’s wardrobe. It’s like they have no casual wear. As a result Kat Dennings’ Darcy has a much larger role. This goes along with Stellen Skarsgard playing up a more comedic role than his previous 2 appearances. There’s also a brief, but surely UK centric, cameo from Chris O’Dowd who is actually instrumental in saving the entire universe.

One odd absence from the film is the complete lack of anything Shield related. Not even when floating objects and portals are discovered in London do they turn up. The Metropolitan police do though. Maybe they’re agents of Shield? Considering the TV series is running along now and that they’ve not been shy about filming all over the world you would have thought there could have been at least one brief appearance. I’m sure the events that do happen in London will get brought up on the show but considering how much of a focus the internal workings of Shield has on the next Captain America film you would have thought there would have been some sort of appearance by them here.

The film focuses heavily on the themes of family and class structure. Which is strange considering the film is primarily about things getting smacked with a hammer. Thor wants to be with Jane, Odin thinks that’s silly because she’ll be all LOL dead soon and stuff. I mean as in humans don’t live as long as Asgardians. Like 100 years compared to their 5000. I’m guessing Odin has never heard of flings. Besides, he married Rene Russo, she’s gotta be a few thousand years younger than him. On top of that we have Thor and Loki and their will they won’t they romance. I was reading those interactions correctly right? Thor can’t trust Loki, he’s maliciously compelled to stab people in the back, often for real, but dammit they care about each other. There’s a fair bit more to the family mess than that but to discuss it would be to enter into spoiler territory. It’s all handled well enough though.

Isn’t this the end to X-Men 3?

Generally performances across the entire film are standard fair with no one really elevating the film beyond what it is, a big flashy adventure. It’s kind of a shame really because Tom Hiddleston did such an amazing job of stealing the show in the first film. Here, he’s just kind of going through the motions a little. There’s one scene in particular where Thor, Loki and Jane are making their escape in a Dark Elf ship and Loki is constantly taunting Thor’s piloting skills. Every single one of these taunts is delivered as if they were thought up by Tom on the spot with no chance to think of something better. Maybe he thought it was rehearsal. That scene even manages to waste a lot of this apparent sibling bickering one telling us exactly what we just saw. It’s a misstep but man does it stick out. Possibly one of the most cringe worthy scenes on attempted humour since someone told George Lucas that people would laugh at Jar Jar Binks.

Overall Thor Back 2 Tha Hood is a very enjoyable action romp. Yes I said romp. It has it’s fair share of flaws but at least it isn’t taking on too many plot threads and fumbling them all over the place. At least it is staying true to the character. At least it isn’t so concerned with getting the characters into situations for the sake of action that it forgets that there needs to be some sort of driving force putting them there. Thor The Dark World is one of the better action films this summer and, thankfully for the fans, doesn’t include anything that’s going to upset them like Trevor did. I didn’t see the 3D version but I’ll assume it’s poorly handled like all the Marvel film’s 3D has been so far. Be sure to sit through the credits as there is 2 additional scenes, one of which is (SPOILERS) teasing something beyond even the next Avengers film and was directed by one Mr James Gunn, which me being a nerd I noticed right away. So, Thor 2… erm… The Desolation of Smeg?.. It’s quite good.

It’s a Halloween tradition here at Film Dump towers… well, my house… to watch a Halloween film on Halloween. It’s not the most original of traditions. Since starting The Film Dump I have taken upon myself to review the entire Halloween franchise, one film at a time, one film per year. At this rate I’ll be done in 2020. That’s provided they don’t make any more. This may not have been my best idea. Tonight is the third Halloween in The Film Dump’s existence and, as such, I must now review the anomaly that is Halloween 3: Season of the Witch! Again, not my greatest idea. Click the link for my words what are about this film.

When John Carpenter came to make Halloween 3 he had a bit of a daring plan for the series. That idea was to ditch the villain that had become iconic after the success of the first two features, that being Michael Myers. He instead had the thought to turn the Halloween films into an anthology series with each film telling a different Halloween themed story. The first two were about the Boogeyman, this film is about witchcraft, and the theoretical fourth film would have been a ghost story. We never got that fourth film. Halloween 3 is the reason why Michael Myers did return for part 4. That’s not to say that Halloween 3 is entirely awful though.

Now, do I go into spoilers to explain this films story? Or do I just give the premise… See Halloween 3 is one of those films where I can give you the premise and you’ll go “oh cool”. It sounds like a pretty typical horror movie set up. A man arrives at a hospital clutching a Halloween mask claiming someone is going to kill them all. Later that night he is killed by a mysterious man who promptly sets himself on fire. Dr Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins) forgets what his profession is to team up with/shag the hell out of the victim’s daughter Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) to uncover just who was behind the murder and why he would not let go of that mask. They head to a town called Santa Mira where the masks are being made to uncover the truth. Sod it, I’m spoiling this bitch.

Losing your temper over the phone is hilarious to me.

So… spoilers… duh.

Turns out the masks are being made by The Old Man from RoboCop, except he’s now called Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), who runs a factory that seems to make nothing but these 3 Halloween masks. Mysterious stuff is afoot though as it appears the entire town is under his control. And here’s where we lose people… See… Cochran is planning to send a TV signal out in an advert for his masks at 9PM on Halloween night which will kill every child wearing the mask and, wait for it, cause them to spawn a load of bugs and snakes. All this is enforced by Cochran’s army of robot men that have been killing anyone who steps out of line. He is able to complete this evil melding of witchcraft and technological evil thanks to the use of one of the giant big old rocks from Stonehenge. Yes, a Stonehenge magic stone is the power behind all this evil. If only our heroes had a triple decker bologna sandwich. Why does he plan to do this? I have no idea, he literally says “does it really matter?” to which I said “yes when your plan is that batshit insane!”.

So at what point did the films story lose you? Was it the murdering of kids? The robot men? The Stonehenge frigging magic stone? For me it was the robots. I get the appeal of mixing sci-fi with magic but come on. Why robot men? They aren’t magic robot men powered by some demonic nonsense. They’re just robotic men. Granted a few years later The Old Man would take another stab at robot men that worked a bit better, so maybe he was onto something. If you’re going to combine sci-fi and magic do it with a little mysticism, not just by grabbing two disparate elements and chucking them together. Even George Lucas understood that… I think. The prequels raise a lot of questions for me regarding his storytelling abilities.

OK, so let’s say we go along with this weirdness and just watch the film for entertainment value. That can’t be too hard, right? Well, yes and no. on one level the film is pretty watchable as a B-Movie horror. It has a number of John Carpenter-esque traits despite not being directed by him. He and long time collaborator Debra Hill take writing and producing credits on this film, along with Carpenter’s musical credit. On the whole it’s fairly well shot for the most part. It features a number of small nods to the earlier films, the first film is being shown on TV before Cochran’s Evil advert is due to show for example. The story may nosedive but it manages to at least stay tonally consistent. I did have to question the romance element between a 47 year old Tom Atkins and a 22 year old Stacey Nelkin… It actually comes across a little, shall we say, troublesome. Apparently all the time the good Doctor needs to work his magic is two brief meetings and one short road trip. No flirting, no cute meet moments or any hint of romance. Not to mention that her father has just died and Challis seems to drink a lot and has a problematic ex-wife. So yeah, it’s all a bit weird.

This leads exactly where you think it’s leading.

Stacey is probably the most consistently decent aspect of the film. She has that exact 80s starlet look, all wide eyed, small faced and giant haired. While her role isn’t exactly a challenging one she appears to have approached it with a serious mindset to not ham it up, possibly realising how much a well received horror movie can do for a young actresses career. Dan O’Herlihy is clearly hamming things up, and likely having a whale of a time being such a gloriously silly bad guy. Once Cochran has stopped hiding his villainous ways O’Herlihy straight up plays him as the guffawing, scenery chewing, embodiment of evil he only could be. If the script couldn’t be bothered to explain his motives why should the actor bother giving the director anything more than pure camp? The Raul Julia in Street Fighter approach to acting then. Tom Atkins is Tom Atkins. Watch anything he’s in. That’s how he is here. Except for maybe the sexual predator part.

Gore wise Halloween 3 doesn’t do too bad a job. Whilst it’s certainly not got a massive body count we do get a pretty cool decapitation and, if you’re watching the uncut version, a few extra gruesome images. Also, the fact that children are in danger and we actually see one of the kids die in a pretty nasty way is, well, quite daring. There’s rarely a need to show a horrific death for a child, unless it’s hilarious of course, but without showing one the full danger for the final scenes probably wouldn’t register. The main effect that mask has had to be shown and you needed to hammer home that it would be children in danger so they just about justify it.

You wanna get that looked at luv.

Overall Halloween 3 manges to, at times, work fairly well. Mostly though, it’s utter bollocks. The story is makes no effort to explain it’s reasoning in the final 40 minutes or so and because of that you’ll likely lose all interest as the film winds to a close. There are sections of the film where maybe a little too much focus is put on the investigation rather than making any attempt to either build dread or provide a scare. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is a nice experiment and probably the reason why most slasher movie franchises are too scared to step outside their comfort zones. Maybe it would have been interesting to see the Halloween ghost story John Carpenter had planned. Although, after this film failed we got Christine, Starman and Big Trouble In Little China… so I’m OK with never seeing his 4th Halloween.

Zombies are pretty much everywhere now. It seems that about 10 years ago a few zombie films turned up around the same time, some sort of critical mass was achieved, and since then it’s been impossible to escape the buggers. Partly because they run now, but also because it’s every company’s lazy idea of making a quick cheap buck. A zombie film practically writes itself. People are holed up some and zombies are coming for them. A zombie comic can give a writer like Robert Kirkman a medium to explore the nature of civility and the extremes people will go to in a long form format, and also become crazy rich of TV and merchandise deals. Zombie games allow developers to minimise A.I. scripts and provide the player with the context to shoot whatever they like. Most zombie related materials these days are pretty bottom of the barrel tripe. Those that excel, such as The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later and The Last of Us do so because they don’t just look at zombies as a chance to show some gore. They see the zombie setting as a chance to hold a mirror up to ourselves in the kind of blunt, uncomplicated way that seems to be required these days. They do this all because of one man and the groundwork he laid in three fantastic zombie films. I end this zombie week with, possibly, his masterpiece, Day of the Dead. Click the link for braaaaains.

Day of the Dead follows a small group of survivors, possibly some of the last left in the world, who are stationed in an old underground military base. A certifiably mad doctor named Logan (Richard Liberty) has been experimenting on the undead attempting to find a way to make them less of a threat through rehabilitation. His research is greatly opposed by a stir crazy military group, who had been sent to oversee the research, led by the quite insane Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) who wishes to shut them down and leave the base behind, possibly after killing anyone he doesn’t like. Such as those that aren’t as insane as he is. Caught in the middle of the two groups is Dr Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille) who has been pushed into a position of intermediary. She struggles to keep the group from falling to pieces, killing each other whilst completing the research. Along with this her partner Private Miguel (Anthony Dileo Jr) is slowly losing his mind from stress, the resident pilot and communications team members seem to take a stance of getting involved and Sarah is suffering from nightmares due to the traumas she has encountered. Seems she has a lot on her plate. Sure hope nothing zombie related happens that could cause trouble/disembowelment.

Romero had intended for this Of The Dead film to be his Gone With The Wind, as in a story of wide scope and scale. Due to wanting his film to not go through the usual ratings process the films budget was slashed and the budget halved. This didn’t stop him from producing a complexly layered horror film though. The scope of the storytelling, the relationships of the characters and the situations they’re in are all wonderfully complex and very well crafted. Sarah’s life is one that is constantly under threat from the marauding zombies above ground, to her research in the lab to the militant Rhodes that frequently threatens her with violence to get his way. The way the groups conflict with each other is a masterclass in telling this kind of “collapse of society” story.

Similar thing happens to Jennifer Connelly I hear.

At the centre of this story is a zombie called Bub (Sherman Howard) who is the star subject of Dr Logan. Bub shows signs of remembering his past life, remembering what objects such as razors and books were for. We learn that he may have had a military past as he salute Rhodes and shows signs of understanding weaponry. Most importantly, he doesn’t crave the flesh of the living because Logan has managed to find a way to suppress Bub’s base instincts. What Logan has been doing turns out to be yet another source of tension, another parallel for the collapse of humanity. Bub represents the building of a new society and, other than a few characters, he’s depicted as being one of the most civilised in the story. He shows that communication can be key to maintaining order. Some argue that he breaks a lot of zombie rules, but that ignores two facts. Zombies are shown to have memories in Dawn of the Dead and, George A Romero can do whatever he wants with zombies.

Whilst the dramatic tension is what holds any good zombie film together, you really came for some good old fashioned blood and gore. The film features Tom Savini showing just what he’s capable of with the right tools at his disposal and, as such, features some of the most creative and brilliantly violent deaths in horror movie history. There’s spilled guts, twitching severed herds and some lovely flesh ripping bites. An effect he appears to have perfected in this film involves having a actor ripped limb from limb entirely in one shot. No clever cuts to hide the trickery. Certainly no digital effects to remove body parts, the film pre-dates that technology by some way. Just good old fashioned ingenuity and enough blood to cover any potentially rough patches. A personal favourite of mine is when a character’s head is torn from his neck as his face is still moving with screams of terror. It’s an effects achieved with a lot of clever little amalgamations of techniques that combine to create the sort of effect that sticks in your mind.

You want to get that looked at.

This isn’t to say that the film is about gory deaths. The vast majority of gory moments happen in the final 15 minutes. The core of the film is entirely in it’s character drama in much the same way as The Walking Dead TV series is. Only with a lot less avoiding eye contact and English men playing Americans. The fact the film maintains your attention with ease for the majority of the run time with barely any zombie attacks shows just how good Romero can be at times. Like many horror directors, not every film he makes is a masterpiece, but when he gets it right, he really gets it right. I will always maintain the Dawn of the Dead is the best in his zombie film series but would not argue with anyone that said the same of Day of the Dead. Of course, if you say Diary or Survival are the best, I’ll tear your frigging eyes out.

Day of the Dead picks up it’s theme of societal breakdown brought on by a breakdown in communication ad runs with it through it’s full 100 minute run time. It’s takes a $3.5 million dollar budget and presents you with a film that looks like it was made for many times that. The effects alone feel like the work of a large scale studio production. Even for effects made in 1985 they still hold up today, although they could do with a little less of Romero’s light everything method of shooting. Romero proved with his initial three zombie films that he was capable of addressing strong themes whilst satisfying the gore and horror fans. Day of the Dead is an example of his skill at it’s most focused. It may not have quite as much to say as Dawn of the Dead but it handles the drama and the escalation of tension so well that Day of the Dead becomes his most accessible and expertly crafted of the original trilogy.

Here’s a film I’ve been wanting to cover for a long time. Watchmen is a film that had been in development for nearly 20 years by the time Zack Snyder was able to bring it to the silver screen. In the past directors such as Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass and Terry Gilliam had all made attempts to get this film made. Gilliam even termed the comic it is based on as unfilmable. If you’ve ever read the comic you’d probably agree. The story is thick with dialogue, richly layered with subtext and has some of the strongest character writing of the 20th century. I say with no intended hyperbole that Alan Moore is one of the greatest writers of modern times and Watchmen is his work at its most complex and creatively brilliant. When I first read the comic about 15 years ago I tried to envision what a film would be like. I just could not see it. I figured that Watchmen would be better suited to a 6-8 hour TV series, but then the budget would be ridiculous. I went to see this film in the cinema on release day expecting the worst, after all… there’s been a long line of terrible adaptations of Alan Moore’s work beforehand. Click the link to find out what I think of Watchmen.

Watchmen (the film) is as close to a masterpiece as Zack Snyder is ever going to get. There, I said it. The guy has his skills and he excelled them with this work. I honestly cannot contemplate a world where Zack Snyder directs a better film than Watchmen. It’s not a masterpiece in the same sense as Tokyo Story or Chinatown are masterpieces, it’s just a masterpiece on his terms. When I was watching the director’s cut version of the film last night for the first time in ages I was struck by just how vividly shot, constructed and assembled the film is. This is an instance where a director had a very clear vision and a passion for what he was making and he did everything he could to make the absolute best film possible. I guess I should make an attempt to explain to anyone not in the know what Watchmen is about. Oh boy.

Watchmen begins with a murder. An ageing former hero known to the world as The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is throw from his apartment window and winds up a human bean juice stain on the pavement below. The mystery of who killed him leads the normally quite sane and super well adjusted “hero” Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) to conclude that someone is out to kill masks. Masks being the term for crime fighting vigilantes in this alternate 1985. At this point in this version of history the cold war never ended, Nixon is still in power and the doomsday clock, a figurative countdown to mankind’s destruction, is set at 5 minutes to midnight. Another former hero named Adrian Veidt, or Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) to his fans, is an entrepreneur and all round super genius determined to solve the cold war crisis by making resources irrelevant with a free infinite power source he is developing. He is developing this with the one man in the world who actually has genuine, real life powers, and is possibly the only reason the Russians haven’t attacked, Jon Osterman, otherwise known as Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup). Dr Manhattan was created due to an accident with an intrinsic field generator that resulted in him being able to manipulate all matter and perceive his entire existence at once, all except a period of time coming soon which has him troubled.

He can also make himself real big.

Rorschach is hoping to enlist the help of another retired hero named Nite Owl/Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson) but he’s comfortable living his retired life. Years before the film starts Nixon had passed a bill that outlawed costumed crime fighters. Some, such as Dan, took this as a chance to live in anonymity. Rorschach never stopped. His devotion to justice, or at least his form of justice, leads to his desire to find out who killed The Comedian. As the story moves along we do not follow what you’d expect to be the path of your regular superhero film. This isn’t a film about stopping an obvious evil, at least not at first. The film is about who these people are that wear these costumes and fight crime. What motivates them, be it the need to fight injustice, because they can, because they want to save the world, because it’s the only way they can get off… or because it’s all one big joke to them. The film also tackles what it means to the world when there is an actual, near God like superhuman living among them. For a Zack Snyder film that is a hell of a lot of narrative weight to carry.

Snyder isn’t known for his skill to tackle… well, themes… at all. I mean, he’ll pretend he is but generally his films are just eye candy. I’ve always found him to be worryingly inconsistent over the year. His Dawn of the Dead remake is a visceral and occasionally brilliant slice of action horror, although I feel a lot of it’s wit comes from James Gunn’s script. That owl film… Legends of the Guardians or something, that was a solid kids film that had a handful of missteps… and I cannot fully endorse any film with Owl City on the soundtrack. 300 is mindless but does have some very interesting subtext regarding masculinity bubbling underneath. Man of Steel was visually impressive but a pretty mediocre film all round. Sucker Punch… terrible, plain old fashioned terrible. Watchmen is Zack Snyder managing to pull off all the stuff he does well, the masculinity and semi sexual subtext, the visually appealing art direction and the skill for creating what can only be described as a comic book art style. All of these factors are handled as well, or better than he ever has over his career.

Flame on bitches… was not a line said in this scene.

What holds this film up and prevents it from being the sort of mindless nonsense Snyder is so well known for is the very strongly constructed script by David Hayter and Alex Tse. Hayter is a certified nerd who understands comics and the characters contained within better than many working in Hollywood. He had previously scribed the first 2 X-Men films. He was also The Guyver and Solid Snake so… He’s pretty awesome. His screenplay was actually described by Alan Moore himself, a man who doesn’t want his name attached to any films based on his work, as being the closest anyone could get to recreating the comic on film. When Alex Tse was brought on board a number of changes were made, the film was returned to a cold war setting and a sub-plot concerning an energy crisis was added, but this is largely Hayter’s work.

Within the film’s 3 hour runtime most of the elements that make up the rich tapestry that is Watchmen the comic are translated across well. Some people take issue with the film’s conclusion, as it changes a number of elements, but the outcome is still the same and the alternative would have required a lot of pace destroying additional scenes. Despite being largely devoted to giving us character based storytelling, not the usual focus on a film about superheroes, the pacing rarely feels as if it is faltering. Effectively the story, which is told over a period of 40 years with flashbacks to earlier generations of heroes which included the Comedian and the original Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), is split up into episodes. There’s no title cards but each segment is clearly devoted to one or two characters after the initial set up. At the Comedian’s funeral, for example, we see scenes from his life remembered by various former heroes attending the event. This gives us a chance to learn who the Comedian was and who our main cast are by their reactions to his actions. It’s through these scenes that we learn of what motivates Ozymandias, that Nite Owl has a idealistic view of crime fighting, we also see what role he played in Vietnam alongside Dr Manhattan and in the process learn of Manhattan’s dwindling compassion towards humanity. Later flashbacks reveal incidences in The Comedian’s life that show just how unsavoury a character he was. His relationship to the first Silk Spectre being a strong sticking point with her daughter Laurie (Malin Ackerman) who took up the mantle of Silk Spectre in the 70s.

So this pic was on a desktop wallpaper site called fr.wallpaper.net… This is an attempted rape scene. Hmmm

Whilst it is fair to say that these flashbacks can occasionally result in a stuttering of the film’s pacing, especially as a number happen with 20 minutes of the film’s start, they all enrich the universe and characters in a way that never makes them feel like a waste of time. One surprising element of the film is Snyder’s eye for satire. I really wouldn’t have expected it of him but he seems to know how to play up certain scenes to provoke a wry smile. Particularly the post hero action sexy escapades of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. A lot of this was in the comics but Snyder clearly understood what they meant to the story and how a little moment of humour is what you need from time to time to remind you that you’re watching a story about men who dress up in tights.

The opening montage conveys this especially well with various moments from the history of this world and how they parallel ours. This montage is set to Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as we see heroes hanging with David Bowie and Mick Jagger at the height of their stardom. We see the downfall of the original heroes, known as the Minutemen. We see historical events shifted a little into this reality. The montage is shot in slow motion which gradually increases in speed until it hits a normal pace as the timeline reaches the film’s setting of 1985. This sequence does an admirable job of getting you into the frame of mind needed for the dark, violent and structurally complex film that lies ahead.

Snyder’s visual style is al over Watchmen. Some may see that as a bad thing, what with his love of chroma key, virtual sets and excessive slow motion. Luckily Watchmen uses a lot more actual sets with only the exteriors of of two locations being largely virtual. There’s a lot of computer generated imagery, some of which doesn’t work such as the usual culprit that is CGI blood, but generally the look and feel has a lot more of a textural and tangible feel than anything he’s made other than Dawn of the Dead. He utilises his favourite slow motion from time to time but, thankfully, not to the degree 300 and Sucker Punch did. It’s really only used to highlight a few comic book poses here and there. What really adds to the films rich visuals is the set design. It has to be among some of the best displayed on this sort of film in years. The amount of detail in the Comedian’s apartment at the film’s open is incredible in itself. There’s tiny details such as pictures of the original Silk Spectre, fertility statues, copies of Hustler, along with expensive items of luxury brought off the back of less than scrupulous work he’s done for the government. To look over the set in detail would likely tell you everything about The Comedian. Which is what a great set will do.

The cast do a fine job of carrying their roles. Patrick Wilson is spot on as the awkward and idealistic Dan Dreiberg. Jeffrey Dean Morgan appears to effortlessly play the most charming arsehole to have ever existed. Jackie Earle Haley gained a lot of praise for his portrayal of Rorscach, which actually creeped me out a little on first viewing because, and I’m not lying, that voice was exactly what I would have in my head when reading the comic book. Turns out it was the voice Alan Moore had too, which I discovered when I saw him reading pages of Watchmen on BBC 2′s the Culture Show. Personally I feel as if Billy Crudup deserves more praise for his work as Dr Manhattan. He performed the role on set wearing a mo-cap suit fitted with masses of blue lights so he would give off the otherworldly glow described in the comics. He plays the role with such a serene calm in his voice, an almost total lack of emotion, but keep an eye on his expressions because they tell the true story. The Dr Manhattan effect is a genuinely ground breaking piece of work that is handled with more nuance that even Smeagol in Lord of the Rings.

In the end Watchmen isn’t a film that everyone will connect with. It’s long, the story is told in a near anthology like structure with its constant zipping back and forth through time and there is actually quite little action for what the film would appear to be to most people. What it is though is a careful study of who a hero can be, or would be. What makes up these people. How a world could be effected by a man with superhuman power. There’s a lot to take in but every moment of Watchmen is committed to adding layer upon layer of depth to this world. Yes, you could argue that the murder mystery element gets shoved out of the main focus at times, but in its place is something equally as interesting. It seems strange and wrong to say this, but somehow Zack Snyder was able to do what Gilliam, Aronofsky and Greengrass were unable to, he was able to make the unfilmable film… and do it well.

In recent weeks a number of rumours had been swirling around the internet. I should clarify, seeing as the internet is made up of at east 30% rumours) that these rumours are to do with the release date of Star Wars Episode VII. Many have questions if it would be ready for the previously touted Summer 2015 release date. This has been fuelled by announcements of JJ Abrams and Lawrence “The reason Empire Strikes Back was so good” Kasdan rewriting the script and the fact that they’re still running highly publicised casting calls. Earlier this week the announcement came that That Star Wars Episode VII would be released on December 18th 2015. Which, the eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed isn’t summer. The more nerdy of you may have also noticed, this is the day Duncan Jones’ Warcraft film comes out. Uh oh!

“Why uh oh?”, you may ask. That’s a good question if you’re one of those normal people who don’t care too much about either of these worlds of wonder created many moons ago. If you are a nerd, like me, though, well… that’s a really stupid question. You should know what this means. This means that the Warcraft film is likely to get trampled under the weight of the juggernaut that is Star Wars Episode VII. Or is it?

You see, Star Wars isn’t in the shape it was prior to the release of The Phantom Menace. Some younger folk out there may have a hard time believing this, but there was a time when people spoke highly of George Lucas and his treatment of the Star Wars universe he had created… well, created with the help of a bunch of clever chaps that never get the credit they deserve. Since the prequel trilogy came along and crapped all over our dreams Star Wars has gone through somewhat of a lull. There was a Star Wars animated film released in 2008 that only grossed $68 million worldwide. Sure, it’s not a major film but keep in mind that this is Star Wars and animated films are big business with kids. The Star Wars Old Republic MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) was promoted to high heaven, and within a year it was being turned into a free to play game as subscribers deserted it. Many left as soon as their 1 month free trial was up. This was a game people were clamouring for and they deserted it.

Stop grinning. This is all your fault you petulant little shit.

Having the Star Wars logo on your product does not guarantee success these days. That said, the hype for Episode VII is going to be huge. Hopefully it’ll reach the heights of hypertude that was going around before The Phantom Menace was released. I was working at a Toys R Us store back then, don’t judge me, and was put in charge of running and maintaining the Star Wars aisle. Which was actually 2 aisles of nothing but Star Wars merch. Someone came in on the midnight launch, a few days before the film’s release, and paid close to £1000 for a replica of Princess Amidala’s ridiculous dress. Could you imagine that happening in a post Phantom Menace world?

Whilst Star Wars went through some what of a decline in popularity with adults, it’s managed to maintain its core child audience, another fantasy series was building its audience. That being Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. There had been a couple of Warcraft games prior to the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace and it had managed to build a solid cult fan base. This wasn’t a series that burst into superstardom from it’s beginning like Star Wars had in 1977. In 2004 Blizzard released World of Warcraft, a MMORPG that managed to pull in so many players that soon every games publisher was scrambling to get their own online RPG out there. Star Wars the Old Republic borrows extremely heavily from the World of Warcraft template which, to be fair, Blizzard had borrowed from Everquest. The fact remains, though, that World of Warcraft was a bit of a pop culture explosion during the first few years of its life. Not on the scale of Star Wars when it was first released, but then again nothing is. But I think an argument could be made that Warcraft’s popularity in recent years has been exceptionally strong.

Warcraft film concept art yo!

That all said, Warcraft still is not as culturally relevant as Star Wars and that means that the film adaptation will have an uphill struggle come December 18th. What we’re going to see is two juggernaut franchises on film the same day directed by people that have a passion for the history and background of the license they’re handling. JJ Abrams has demonstrated time and time again that he is obsessed with the Spielberg style of science fiction and his recent Star Trek films felt a hell of a lot like high octane Star Wars films. Meanwhile you only have to follow Duncan Jones on Twitter to see he’s a total videogame nerd, especially for Blizzard’s games. Hell, I even exchanged emails with him once as he was having trouble getting Diablo 3 to install on launch day. As everyone was.

What Warcraft has going for it is that, for the series, this will be the first time it has been on a cinema screen. No fantasy looks like Warcraft fantasy… well, provided you casually ignore Warhammer like I just did. But Warhammer has never been on a cinema screen either. There’s a colour and vibrancy to the world of Warcraft (pun intended) that’s never really been done in fantasy films before, except for Legend somewhat. Looking at the concept art and the fact that Duncan Jones revealed that some of the swords they’re making are as big as a human could possibly hold I have quite high hopes that the look of World of Warcraft will be translated to this film quite accurately.

Here’s some film people sat in front of some more Warcraft movie concept art.

Of the two directors Abrams is the more well established, but Jones has proven in his two features that he can tell a story with a skill that may eventually put him on an upper level. Abrams has not done that yet. I’ll take Jones’ Moon over anything Abrams has directed so far. That said, Abrams is just the man for Star Wars. He revels in the romanticism and adventure required of a Star Wars film, plus I highly doubt there will be any extended scenes of trade route discussion. At this weekend’s Blizzcon panel Jones said that the script he had when he joined the project, likely the one Sam Raimi was due to shoot with, was very human centric and painted the Alliance as the clear heroes. The fact Jones has dumped this story in favour of one that features hero characters from both the Alliance and the Horde shows that he understands that Warcraft is about more then traditional good versus evil. It’s about heroes from all sides fighting for what they wish to defend with their motives being what either creates conflict or brings them together. The Horde aren’t evil as such, but they’re painted that way due to the actions of it’s leaders and the fragile alliances that were forged due to the dangers the races had faced over the years.

All in all this is going to be a real interesting clash. Both films will appeal to similar markets. Star Wars is Sci-fi fantasy and, as such, is very much within the fandom of the nerd. Warcraft is fantasy that does involve a few sci-fi elements and is entrenched in the minds of (currently) 7.7million subscribers and lord knows how many lapsed players. It will also be appearing around a year after the final film in The Hobbit trilogy which will leave it in a position to pick up a large number of fantasy fans looking for something new. Will Warcraft make more money than Star Wars? Lord no. Likely be default Star Wars will be heading towards one of the largest BO takings of all time, something that was likely a strong factor in moving its release date to December 18th. Will Warcraft be crushed under the weight of the Jedi though? I really hope not. It has the setting, style and certainly the director to ensure that this film could end up being a spectacle worth seeing. Maybe even twice.

People liked Darth Maul right? Maybe he’ll be back as a man with robot legs! Nah, that would be stupid.

Star Wars has so many advantages going into this, especially as sci-fi is a stronger genre with casual movie goers. But this isn’t 1999 when everyone was gearing up to see the birth of Darth Vader. This is a post 2005 world where Darth Vader just yelled “NOOOOOOOO!” in an overly awkward fashion and people left the cinema for a third time questioning why they loved the original trilogy. Warcraft hasn’t had an embarrassing moment such as that yet, despite introducing Pandas as a playable race. Also, up yours, I like my Panda. We don’t know what state World of Warcraft will be in come Christmas 2015 but with a new expansion, new character models and 2 games featuring characters from that world (of Warcraft) on the way it may be in a position to take a sizeable chunk of business away from the house of mouse owned Star Wars. Hopefully Warcraft will be a tank rather than tank… do you see what I did there? I was showing hope that it would hold it’s ground like a character playing a tank role in the game would.

Yes, I could have easily split this into two separate reviews and got me a few more ad hits, but that just ain’t how I roll. These two films come together as one complete whole and tell a story that is fully contained within these two parts and the comic it is based on. No, there isn’t a comic called The Dark knight Strikes Again. That never happened. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns is a comic that fans have wanted to see adapted for years. Apparently Warner entertained the idea in the process of reinventing Batman for cinema audiences after the travesty that was Batman & Robin. It would have been a tough one to pull off seeing as it is among the most brutal Batman stories worthy of adapting. What you’d need is a medium that can get away with a little more and a fan base willing to buy. And that’s where Bruce Timm and his pals at Warner Animation come in. Click the link for my review.

Over the last few years Bruce Timm has kept all his Warner Animation pals employed, after the cancellation of Justice League Unlimited and with it the DC Animated Universe, by producing animated films based off a number of famous DC comics. I’ve previously reviewed the excellent Under The Red Hood and the nearly as good Year One, both based on excellent Batman comics. I intend to review Justice League New Frontier at some point too. They’ve made a large number of these animated adaptations and have built up a solid little fan base with them. And quiet rightly too. When they announced they were making The Dark Knight Returns I got more than a little excited. It was one of the first Batman collected editions I read as a child. Yes, I was allowed comics like this. I wondered how they would fit it into their usual 75-80 minute run time so when they announced it would, in fact, be two films I could start to see where this was going. They were going to treat this with the utmost respect and keep as much of the comic in as possible. I had intended to review these as part of the Batman season I did last year but was unable to acquire both parts in time. Recently Zack Snyder placed this comic as an influence on the upcoming Batman Vs Superman film. Before going into depth with this review I should say, there’s no way he’s adapting much of this.

Nice iconic Batman image recreated in the film.

The Dark Knight Returns is set late on in Bruce Wayne’s life. It’s been 10 years since he was last fighting crime as Batman (RoboCop) after some deal was struck that effectively prevented all the heroes from continuing their careers, with the exception of Superman (Mark Valley) who became the President’s personal WMD for the ongoing war with the Soviets. Crime is running rampant throughout Gotham thanks to the lack of a Batman and the rise of a gang of mutants. The first half of this two part film concentrates on the mutant gang, Batman’s return to duty, the fate of Harvey Dent (Wade Williams) and the eventual hiring of a new Robin in Carrie Kelley (Ariel Winter). The second half is focused on the return of The Joker (Michael Emmerson) and the President ordering Superman to take care of that pesky Batman, with lethal force if needed. This being a Frank Miller story the tome is moody, dark and a little extra moody with toppings of violence and death. Perfect for little kids then.

The animation in these films is of an extremely high standard. Warner Animation have been known to use the occasional odd art style or to reduce the fluidity of their animation. Neither of those issues are present here. The art style is a rough approximation of the designs from Frank Miller’s comic, although tweaked to suit the needs of the medium. The actual fluidity is near exceptional levels. At times it reminds me of some of the best that comes out of Japan’s top animation studios. The way they’ve brought life to the still panels of the source material is especially effective. A sequence where Batman uses the smoke pellets he’s dropped to hide his movements is a stand out sequence as it highlights these brief moments as the bat takes down his targets one at a time. Each time a moment from the comic is recreated it isn’t done in a way as to replicate the actual image, but more so, create a new image that represents the original.

That’s a bulky Batman. I like!

In a similar regard the story isn’t told in exactly the same order or with the same hopping back and forth between current events and television stations such as the comic version did. All of these moments are here but they’re kept as separate scenes in order to minimise confusion. The way you read and take in a comic is very different from the way in which you view and digest a film. In a sense this telling of The Dark Knight Returns is more direct and is structured a lot more like a pair of stories. The mid point of the film is essentially the start of book three of the comic, but a handful of events that take place during book three happen in the first part of this film. This lends the film a logical end point for the first half and a nice clean kicking off point for the second.

Much like the last film I reviewed (Watchmen) The Dark knight Returns is an exploration of the inner workings of the mind of a superhero. Early in the film we see that Bruce is looking for a thrill in his life to replace what he got from fighting crime. He takes part in racing events, ignoring his own safety, and even challenges a pair of mutant thugs to try to mug him. We see the way the characters of the DC Universe have changed since the last 10 years which adds further levels to this exploration. Harvey has been given a new face, which he plays along with and acts cured, only to reveal that the scars are too deep. Essentially this shows Harvey Dent as a true reflection of who Bruce Wayne/Batman is, more so than the usual Batman/Joker dynamic most people lean on. The Joker is catatonic in Arkham Home for the Emotionally Troubled, a result of having no reason to go on without his one true love. Superman has become the representation of the American way of life, he even stands with a foot perched on a rock with an eagle on his arm at one point. In his role as the official hero of The White House he has been fighting wars for the U.S. and probably kills more people that even The Joker does. Many people hate this depiction of Superman, I can see why, but at the time he was portrayed as this holier than thou presence who’d take on the role of this invincible force enemies of the U.S. should be scared of. He is being used in the same way as Dr. Manhattan was in Vietnam in Watchmen.

You’ll have someone’s eye out with that.

It has to be said that taking such a complexly written comic as The Dark Knight Returns and translating it to 2 75-80 minute films can’t have been an easy task. It’s hard to describe the way the comic reads in comparison to watching the film play out. Not many comics have the same vibe as a Frank Miller work. Some directors will go down a heavily stylised route, such as Snyder with 300 and Rodriguez with Sin City. This animated adaptation essentially presents a cleaner, yet by no means less brutal, depiction of Miller’s future Gotham. It can’t go into the extra detail that the comic did but that’s not to say they haven’t done an exceptional job with the time limit they had. It’s a situation similar to Watchmen’s where the time and pace required to do a 100% faithful adaptation is just not practical in a film. As it stands, both parts of The Dark Knight Returns are amongst the top tier of the DC animated films. Having read the original comics will not have been necessary to still get everything you could out of this. But I’d suggest reading it anyway. Because if you haven’t you’re really missing out. Now, remember, there is no Dark Knight Strikes Again.

I’ve written about Kickstarter before on this here blog-thing. Most recently it was regarding the (Justifiably ill fated) Uwe Boll Kickstarter to help him make Postal 2. Thanks for not backing that by the way. This week the lovely folks at Arrow Films, who have been doing a stellar job of keeping cult cinema alive in the form of excellent DVD and Blu-ray releases here in the UK, launched a Kickstarter to restore the prints of Walerian Borowczyk’s Goto, Island of Love. This is a film based Kickstarter done right that also could open the door for something magical to happen. Click the link for magic.

Goto is the first live action film made by Borowczyk after years of producing some ground breaking animated work. The film follows a man named Grozo (Guy Saint-Jean) living on an island cut off from the mainland by an earthquake. He intends to work his way through the island of Goto’s social structures by completing a number of menial tasks in the hopes of winning the heart of Glossia (Ligia Branice-Borowczyk), the wife of the Island’s dictator. Goto is a very well regarded film, especially amongst other film makers. Terry Gilliam cites the film and it’s director as being one of his strongest influences. If you look at Borowczyk’s animation, such as Les Astronautes, work you’ll see why. You can back the project on it’s Kickstarter page right here.

I’ll admit to not being as familiar with Borowczyk’s work as I am, say, Svankmejer or Bunuel, but that is not entirely what this article is about. Yes, I’m here asking for you to consider contributing to the Goto Kickstarter as this is a project worth supporting. It’s certainly a hell of a lot more deserving of attention than that bloody Uwe Boll one. Seriously, can’t stand that guy. What I’d like to discuss, though, are the reasons a Kickstarter like this has to exist.

The title was originally prefaced with “do not pass..”

You may have seen over the years the phrase digitally remastered or restored on the front of a film purchase. Earliest I remember owning were the digital restorations of the original Star Wars Trilogy, prior to the special editions. At that point I had only seen Star Wars in 4:3 ration on TV in all it’s grainy glory. These restorations looked amazing to me, even on the VHS format. I still own them by the way, what with it still being the best way to watch Star Wars. That’s me pretending to be elitist of course. I prefer to just shut my eyes during the special edition parts of my Star Wars blu-rays. The restoration of older films is an important venture but initially it was only really practical for the biggest blockbusters to receive. Eventually the procedure got cheaper and smaller films were able to receive restorations too, which was becoming an important step in presenting the image as best was possible back in the early days of DVD.

The process has undoubtedly gotten cheaper but for a company such as Arrow to be able to fund the restoration process they need to be sure they won’t be left out of pocket. It would be amazing if any film could just be restored to a 4K quality and chucked out on blu-ray but if the film is as much of a cult work at Goto is they’d have to question if it’s possible to make this money back. Arrow are not a charity, and even organisations such as the BFI (which is a charity) would have to take similar concerns into account. This is where the Kickstarter comes in as a great way of helping films such as Goto get the restoration they need. Not just so people can buy them on blu-ray now, but to ensure that their image and audio quality is preserved for suture generations of film fans to view.

This reminds me of a blindfold match between Jake the Snake Roberts and The Mountie.

By running this Kickstarter not only is Arrow figuring exactly what demand there can be for this film and they’re getting the help of the fans themselves to preserve them. You can help save a film from degrading to the point of being unwatchable. It also allows them to open their business up to a worldwide audience, which will, of course, allow a higher chance of getting the film’s restoration complete. A couple of years ago the BFI did a similar campaign to restore the surviving 9 Hitchcock silent films, which I ran a short piece about on this site back then. I’ll link a video showing the excellent results of that restoration after this paragraph. I’ve bugged Arrow for some time to grab the rights to Sholay to give it a similar restoration. That’s a film that deserves to be kept in the best quality possible and the current DVD release from Eros isn’t cutting it. But there are many more works dating back to the earliest days of film that could also benefit from being restored. If this Kickstarter is a success, which it really looks like it will be, hopefully this will be the path to take.

It’s believed that up to 90% of American made silent films have been lost due to lack of care and the highly flammable nature of early film stock. Just think about how many possible gems of inspiration could have been gleaned from those lost films. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan Of Arc’s original presentation was thought to be a lost film for decades. Complete reels of the film were discovered in 1981 and thanks to a restoration under Eureka’s Masters of Cinema that incredible film is now available for you to watch looking better than it ever has. It’s a film that would never have a huge mainstream demand for it’s release, it’s a film that film historians, makers and lovers will see as required viewing though. And here comes a real problem, at what point can we decide that one particular work is worth the monetary expense of saving?

Truth is that we can’t. Film should be preserved for future generations. Just because a great work isn’t widely known doesn’t mean it deserves to be restored any less than, let’s say, Casablanca. I should note that Casablanca’s restoration is one of the best I have ever seen. It looks like a brand new film that was made to look retro. It would be near impossible to restore every film ever made, the nature of film stock itself means that eventually all film will decay. But any chance to keep these films from vanishing, such as Arrow’s Kickstarter project, should be embraced by us, the fans of film. Most people rarely stray outside of films made in their lifetime, but those of us that do discover a world of cinema that can show us things no amount of digital photography, shaky cam and computer generated imagery today can give us. The fact you can walk into a store and buy a fully restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin is a wonderful thing.

Watch this bloody film!

So, I’ll close with this. Supporting Goto, Island of Love’s Kickstarter for it’s restoration is a project that is exceptionally worthy of your attention. Even if you’re unable to back it yourself you could share it with others and maybe someone else who has a love for film can. If this Kickstarter works maybe it’ll encourage companies such as Eureka, BFI and Eros, who all specialise in classical and cult cinema will follow suit with their more obscure works. Maybe even Sholay… cos it really needs it. Well, I need it.

I may have mentioned this before but Troll 2 is pretty much some kind of work of cinematic genius. By “some kind of” I mean somewhere between Manos Hands of Fate and Citizen Kane. I’m not sure exactly where it sits, but it is clearly between those two films. Best Worst Movie follows the cult fandom of Troll 2 that has built over the course of nearly 2 decades after it’s initial release. The film explores why Troll 2 is so adored and how that adoration has effected the lives of the cast and the film’s director Claudio Fragasso. Quite brilliantly this documentary is directed by possibly the best person for the job, star of Troll 2, Michael Stephenson. Click the link for my totally unbiased review of Best Worst Movie!

So yeah, I love Troll 2. It’s a film first introduced to me around 10 or so years ago by an old work friend of mine. You can read my review of Troll 2 here. It would be quite hard of me to be 100% objective in this review, it is, after all, pretty much about the sort of fan I have become. As explained by some of the fans featured in the film, to explain what makes troll 2 such a perfectly awful film is hard. You can tell people how Joshua stops his family from eating the green food, how belt buckles need tightening and shout “OH MY GAAAAAAAWWWWWD!” at the top of your lungs to someone not in the know all day. Whatever you do won’t have the same result as just sitting them down and making them watch it. To watch Troll 2 is to love Troll 2. To love Troll 2 is to be one of the fans Best Worst Movie is about.

A large amount of the film is spent following Dentist by day George Hardy, the father from troll 2, as he splits his time between his work at his practice in Alabama and the Troll 2 screening and convention circuit. George is an a walking bundle of energy who loves the chance to be in the limelight. Thankfully he’s not a jerk with his attention seeking. He clearly gets why people love Troll 2 so much. He gets that they enjoy it because of how terrible it is and because as much as it falls apart it is constantly giving its viewer pure entertainment. That is George Hardy. The entertainment part, not the falling apart… part. He’s a healthy guy who absorbs all the love for the silly little film he was in and in return he shows an unending supply of hospitality to his fans. You just can’t piss on that hospitality. George is the crux of this film, and while an interesting documentary could have been made purely about the cult of Troll 2, without George it would have been missing a key component. Someone heeds to be having fun with this subject and George is that guy.

He is not imprest

Throughout the film we see other members of Troll 2′s cast, many of whom follow George on the screenings circuit. Most of them clearly get the appeal too and are willing to enjoy whatever level of stardom they have earned in the eyes of their fans. They may not be proud of being in the film, Connie Young still doesn’t put Troll 2 on her resume, but they’re willing to take in the adulation while it lasts. That said, it’s hard to tell if Claudio Fragasso quite understands it’s cult status in the same way as his former cast do. You can see that he likes that people care about the film, even when they laugh at the parts he didn’t intend to be funny, but he also appears to believe that he made a genuinely great work of cinema. But oh man… he may not think it’s as good as actress Margo Prey does.

About halfway through the film George and Michael visit Margo, who still lives in the same house she did in 1989 when they were filming. This sequence strikes home the fact that these people are not actual famous stars because of this film. Their lives haven’t been filled with follow up roles and they now live in a world of obscurity. Margo says she’s stopped auditioning for roles in recent years to take care of her mother. Margo appears to have become a fragile, shy woman who is completely unaware of the stardom she holds for Troll 2 fans. She also thinks that Troll 2 is genuinely on the same level as Casablanca. Margo is clearly in a bit of a tough spot in life, although she does take the time to re-enact the row your boat scene. A scene like this elevates Best Worst Move from being a silly little documentary about an odd element of stardom into being something with heart, tragedy and a message that not many people benefit from infamy.

nosnehpets leahcim is Michael Stephenson spelt backwards?

Best Worst Movie is a fun but also thoughtful look at the fandom even the (alleged) worst film ever made can generate. We see how lives have been touched by the love the film has received since it was taken back by the fans. The film doesn’t forget to show the negative side of this though. I mentioned Margo, but we also see a disastrous trip to a UK convention which puts into perspective just how underground this film actually is in the grand scheme of things. A similar reception is met at a US horror convention where George idly wanders around, as no-one is visiting the Troll 2 booth, talking to the stars of the Nightmare on Elm Street films and even (off camera) talks to Neil Marshall with no idea who any of these people are. Best Worst Movie is a great companion piece to Troll 2. I’d say you could happily enjoy it without having seen Troll 2, but that would suggest that I think it’s OK that you haven’t see Troll 2. Seriously, watch it.

Last night the BBC celebrated Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary by showing one of them big old multiple doctor storylines like in the old days. OK, so only one previous Doctor actually appeared and the other was kind of introduced just for this story… but they had the photoshopped faces and a few clips of the other Doctors. That kinda counts. Anyway, not the point. The Day of the Doctor was a fun little mini movie thing and it got me thinking about something that I’ve often pondered, is it too late for there to be a Doctor Who movie? Click the link for my words about this.

Many moons ago, when Doctor Who was still in his infancy… well as much as William Hartnell’s Doctor had an infancy, there was two Doctor Who cinematic films produced by the BBC. They starred Peter Cushing as the Doctor, where he was an elderly grandfather that just so happened to have a time machine, and the stories were loosely based on episodes of the Hartnell era show. They’re decent little films, even if you do have to throw Doctor Who continuity out the window. Which, to be fair, they’ve done on the series on an almost weekly basis. Or have they? I suppose continuity is just a big timey wimey thing really. Regardless, they’re fun little adventures that existed at a point in time where the show was this little science fiction thing on TV and the films were viewed as entirely separate entities. Cross format branding didn’t really exist for shows like this back then. They got away with having a different Doctor and back story because it wasn’t really much of a concern to fans back then.

In the late 80s the BBC axed Doctor Who and plans were put in place to reboot the whole thing as a feature film series. This was before reboots were a thing though. Although not long before the TV series Reboot was a thing. Loved that show. Totally irrelevant though… where was I? Oh yes! The movie that never happened. See Amblin Entertainment and Steven Spielberg wanted to make a big screen Doctor Who film and there was a lot of work put into it’s creation. There’s even a video of a test reel they made depicting what their Daleks would have looked like floating about out there. Their Daleks didn’t look like real Daleks though. So that never came to fruition. Eventually, well in 1996, the BBC teamed up with Fox Television to make a Doctor Who TV movie in an attempt to reboot the franchise. Sylvester McCoy returned as the Doctor, was promptly killed and regenerated into Pal McGann. It’s a bit of a ropey TV film but that’s not McGann’s fault at all. He was actually really quite good as the Doctor.

After the TV film failed to restart the franchise the Doctor resided in limbo for a number of years, only appearing in radio plays and comics, until eventually the BBC brought back Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. The show has been a huge success over the past 8 years, but it’s that huge success that makes me wonder what to do with a film. Could you start from scratch and do a Doctor Who origin story? That’s certainly what a film studio would like to do as it would allow you to introduce the wider audience they’re aiming for to the various concepts and scenarios of the series but also to start from scratch with none of that 50 years worth of storyline baggage. But at the same time the current Doctor Who series has a strong fan following that would want to see the series continued on a big screen adventure.

The trouble with just bringing the current Doctor, soon to be Peter Capaldi, to a cinema screen is this; the series doesn’t have enough fans to make the expense of a full feature film on a Hollywood scale profitable. No matter how popular the TV show is you’d need a much larger fan base to walk into the cinemas. Some may say I’m talking nonsense here but there is precedent for this. Star Trek has always been a successful show and it’s first film did decent money. Not a single one of the Star Trek films before the 2009 reboot had made more than £150 million worldwide. Even adjusted for inflation the most successful was the first film with $260 million. These films were all made on much smaller budgets than the sort big sci-fi blockbusters demand these days. The X-Files film took more money than any pre-reboot Star Trek and that’s often regarded as a failure. Now, can you imagine a studio willing to spend the sort of money the average blockbuster costs when they have pre-existing evidence that the core audience of a show isn’t enough to pull in the money they’d need?

Seriously, what is that?

They’d want to start from scratch and likely present Doctor Who in a more action focused approach similar to that of the Star trek reboot films, both of which have made more money than any previous Star Trek film. Although it is worth noting that those two films also cost more than any previous Star trek film. Still, a wider audience saw them and that’s the point. Doctor Who isn’t bigger than Star Trek has been. Now the trouble comes with what do you do to make sure that fans of the series, which would probably be on going if a feature film was made, don’t feel abandoned?

You could take the Star Trek route and do the whole alternate universe thing. Tell the Doctor’s origin and have some event happen that makes it split apart from the universe that the Doctor exists in in the series. Now you could introduce regenerations later in the film series and not be tied to recreating the Doctors that have existed in the series as it’s all alternate dimensiony now. But then comes the issue that the series would be running in parallel to the films, not being tied to them, and looking decidedly cheaper. And that’s where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D can come in as a reference point.

This Doctor be mad pimpin’ yo!

Agents of Shield (I’m not typing that acronym out each time) looks cheap compared to the Marvel Universe films it surrounds. There’s no getting away from it. Fans are clamouring to see the show expand the cinematic universe somewhat by introducing more characters and villains from the comics. So far we’ve had the guy that eventually becomes Graviton. Fun fact, no-one gives a shit about Graviton. Now if a big Doctor Who film series existed would the TV show audiences be happy with the cheaper looking versions of the creatures and effects? It’s already been said before that the BBC spends so much on Doctor Who that they rely entirely on merch sales to justify it. They even cancelled the behind the scenes show because they were desperate to save any money they could.

So that leaves one choice. If a film reboot happened, and it was making money, could the BBC justify keeping the weekly show running? They wouldn’t, would they? Why spend a load of money making a TV show that barely returns a profit when they can split the costs with a big Hollywood studio and make a few hundred million off each film and further millions off of merch and distribution rights to a handful of films. Plus, with Peter Capaldi, we’re at the point where you could, logically, end Doctor Who by saying this is his last regeneration. It is the 13th after all, and the 50th anniversary special did a few things to suggest it could be.

The Doctor’s new assistants were a right bunch of arse licking ballbags.

This is all my theoretical ramblings though. Fact is that a couple of years ago there was talk of a Doctor Who film being made for next year. That’s clearly not happening but I’m sure the plans are still being worked on. Stephen Moffat has said that if a film did happen it would star the current TV Doctor. Well that would just lead to the Agents of Shield budget issue again. Plus how many young new fans can you pull in when your current Doctor is a 50 plus year old man who’s most well known previous work isn’t for kids at all. Although I would like it if The Thick of It was added into Doctor Who canon.

I could be horribly wrong though. Occasionally you do get works that manage to break the mould and succeed beyond the audience you’d think they’d be able to pull in. People thought Iron Man would flop before it was released. Iron Man as a character was very much in the far reaches of Marvel’s B-list heroes in the mainstream. Most would have no idea who he was. You can bet that was the case for the vast majority of people who went to see the first film. And now we’re heading towards a second Avengers film and there’s a full blown Marvel Universe that’s gradually becoming as large as the comics. That’s a big deal. That’s nearly Star Wars big when you think about the production scale of this Marvel universe.

Doctor?

Maybe a Doctor Who film starring Doctor Capaldi would do well and maybe fans would be happy to take in the TV series. It’s unlikely Capaldi would get to be such a big star that he’d abandon the series for films. Although they’d have to start thinking about big screen appeal for future Doctors. They’d probably have to introduce big name stars to play supporting roles in the films too. But then that would lead to stars that would be too big to appear on TV. Some actors still think like that unfortunately despite the success channels like HBO have with A-list actors. In the end a Doctor Who film will need to be one hell of a complicated balancing act to pull off well, but isn’t that what every episode of the show is? Every episode relies on an extraordinary series of events leading to a big flashy, and often near nonsensical, conclusions. But it always seems to work out well in the end. There’s many routes that could be taken to a Doctor Who film, picking the right one must be giving a fair number of headaches to their franchise key holders right now. Glad I don’t have to think about it.

Apart from here, where all I did was think about it and write my thoughts down. And also every time I think about how I’d do a Doctor Who film. Which is quite often. Now I’m thinking about that again.

Because my finger is always on the pulse of teenage literature I’m here to review the Hunger Games! That only just came out, right? No? It was over a year ago? oh…What’s Catching Fire? Maybe you should put it out then. OK, so maybe my finger isn’t entirely on the pulse of what the kids are watching these days. So I’m a little behind on getting to The Hunger Games. What did I think of it though? You don’t care? Oh… Well, it’s after the link. Would be nice if you at least read a little of the review.

Hunger Games is the story of Battle Royale but with pretty American people. Just getting that out the way early on. To be fair there’s more to it than that. In a nutshell, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in a place called District 12 in a dystopian future where a are in the past had lead to a capitol state ruling over 12 smaller, and decidedly less well off districts, of which 12 is amongst the poorest. Every year an event called The Hunger Games is held by the Capitol wherein 24 youths between the age of 12 and 18 are randomly selected, one boy and one girl from each district, to fight to the death in a televised battle royale. Sorry, that was unavoidable. Anyway, the winning district gets food or something, maybe… I’m not actually sure. The winner will be famous I guess. I’m sure that means a lot to a teenager who’s just been forced to kill. What they win isn’t important, what is important is that the winner represents the slight bit of hope for a better life that the Capitol is willing to allow the 12 districts to have in order to keep them under their oppressive thumb.

It would be far too easy to just write this film off as a clone of Battle Royale, which I admit I kind of did at the start of that last paragraph… Suzanne Collins, the author of the Books The Hunger Games is based on, claims to have never heard of Battle Royale before turning in the books to her publisher. Never mind that the books have a quite unusual appendix in the back where she describes where her influences for story came from. Nah, that totally wasn’t added as damage control. Fact is this shares a few too many similarities for me to say there’s no way she didn’t know. The themes of a society in fear of it’s people, the use of children as a metaphor for corruption of youth by violent entertainment culture, the use of a video that presents the games as being something to aspire to be in, random weapons presented to the players as the battle begins. There’s just a bit too much. But, in The Hunger Games defence, it actually adds a number of themes that flesh out the idea Battle Royale presented.

Hard to depict people as poor when they have such kick-ass home theatres.

Religion is a strong theme running through the film where the Capitol is utilising various controlling techniques over the 12 districts to keep them in check. The people in the Capitol are depicted to the outside world as being affluent and desirable, the message being that if you follow their rules and do as they say maybe your district could be that wealthy. The use of a small amount of hope as a carrot dangled in front of the starving people. Further to this Katniss is depicted by the story as being a defiant, symbol of rebellion for the people of the districts. She only pro-actively kills twice during the games, once in self defence and once out of mercy for an enemy. She performs an act of self-sacrifice to enter the games in place of her younger sister. Then there’s Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who is pretty much Jesus. He provides a loaf of bread for a starving Katniss in a flashback. He’s injured and recovers in a cave to emerge healed a few days later. He becomes the face of District 12 by embracing the people early on. All this without striking a single crucifix pose, which I’m really getting tired of seeing in action films recently.

Other themes spread throughout the film include the quite clear allegory of the 1% commanding 99% of the wealth with the Capitol and it’s subordinate districts, all of which provide for the Capitol. District 12 is a coal mining community, literally the fuel of the Capitols fires. Katniss herself represents a much more rounded and feminist view of a female character. It’s genuinely refreshing to see a female lead in a film that isn’t dependant on a male character, that stands up entirely for herself and, most importantly, is pro-active and never a damsel. The romance subplot between her and Peeta is instigated by him due to his held back affections for her, which she rejects, and it’s left a little open as to whether or not the romance they do display during the games themselves is real or for the camera.

Do you think these are the bad guys.

I haven’t read the books (other then that little bit I saw in the back about Collins’ influences) so I have no idea where it is heading with the sequels. I assume that Katniss becomes a symbol of rebellion for the Districts to fight back. In one scene she displays sympathy and despair at the death of another younger entrant. Her sign of respect leads to a riot in that contestants home District. I assume that there would also be some help from within as Katniss has developed a friendship with her mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and her stylist, yes stylist, Cinna (Lenny Kravitz). They show a belief in her that is genuine and Haymitch is clearly troubled by The Hunger Games themselves. This could lead to an interesting arc of stories about a government being afraid of their people. Hopefully it does this without turning Katniss into a woman dependant on a male character to achieve her goals.

On a technical level the film conveys these themes fairly well, if somewhat blatantly. That said, it’s a hell of a lot more than most films aimed at teenagers even bother to think of conveying and as such I’d have to recommend it. But I have an issue with another technical aspect. I really dislike the way this film is shot and a few of the story elements. For a start even the most relaxed of scene is shot via hand-held cameras and what appears to be post production camera shake. This is distracting as feck. I’ve spoken about this before, the trend of using what directors keep erroneously calling a documentary style. It has to stop. This isn’t a documentary and most documentary cameramen would be offended that you’d suggest that they can’t hold a camera still. Shaking the camera reminds us, the viewer, that we are watching a film as we become conscious of each tiny movement it makes. This breaks immersion and damages the dramatic potential of the film. Also, I fear for the decline in tripod sales this trend must be creating.

Just thought, what if in the future that’s the equivalent of flipping the bird?

When it comes to story issues I have to bring up the lack of focus on the trauma the act of killing would have on a teenager. Yes, there is a villainous group amongst the contestants who have been raised to compete. The antagonist characters should have no hesitation in their violence, that’s fair. But not once is the idea of a morally good character being forced to kill brought up. Katniss’ first direct kill is in self defence and at the same time another character she has bonded with is killed. This leave now room for her to react to what she has done. She cries a couple of scenes later but as the last event was a scene of her leaving flowers around a corpse and her raising her hand in respect to the district that had lost this crying is now a scene of grief for the child killed and not about her loss of innocence caused by her being forced to kill. You can’t just ignore that trauma. An earlier scene sees her dropping a hive of poisonous bees on the antagonist group, one of the girls dies from the stings. This wasn’t a direct kill by Katniss in the sense that she was looking to scare the group away, but she displays no trauma at causing this death, albeit indirectly.

The Hunger Games is, what I would call, a success of a film. It isn’t in the higher tiers of what a film can be by any sense, but it least tries and aspires to be great. So many films will fill their runtime with events and convoluted plot that they forget to try to convey themes and character. Hunger Games does both with competence, which easily puts it above the usual dross. I went into this expecting to be bored by a bloodless teen fiction that put way too much focus on romance and idealisation. Instead I got a well put together allegory for the degradation of entertainment and society and the dangerous effect this can have on a cultures’ acceptance of extremes of violence. It also had quite a bit of blood for a film that, in the US at least, is a PG-13. The version available most readily in the UK is that cut which is a 15 cert here. A very soft 15, but at least it’s not cut to hell. It has balls to depict the death of multiple children, something most films are terrified of. So, you could do a lot worse than watching The Hunger Games. You could also watch Battle Royale though, cos that film is superb.

Back in the year 1997 Barry Sonnenfeld got together with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to give them kids of the 90s a little sci-fi fun in the form of Men In Black. Based on the Lowell Cunningham comic it told the story of a New York cop recruited by a secret organisation tasked with policing alien life on Earth. The film was a lot of fun, partly in thanks to slightly 80s attitude of asking the audience to just go along for the ridiculous ride. It didn’t take itself too seriously and so it managed to elevate itself above potential stupidity. A fine and enjoyable film. Its sequel was bollocks, far too concerned with showing zany and wacky aliens then telling an actual story. I was not planning on seeing Men in Black 3 partly because of how disappointing the second film was and this feeling that it existed to push Will Smith and sideline Tommy Lee Jones, cos he’s all old and stuff and Will Smith really needs a hit film. Last night there wasn’t much on TV and I was after a film to watch. Men in Black 3 was starting in a few minutes so I figured “what the hell”. Men in Black 3 is a good film. Click the jump for reasons.

In Men in Black 3 Agent J (Will Smith) has been struggling, after 14 years of being his partner, to get Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) to open up a little. He can tell something happened in K’s past but isn’t sure what. When he comes in to the MiB headquarters to find that not only is K not there, but he has been dead for 40 years, J realises that something may be wrong with that old space time continuum. Also, he has a craving for chocolate milk, which obviously confirms that fear. J travels back in time to stop a recently escaped alien named Boris (Jermaine Clement) from killing K in 1969 and at the same time he’ll probably learn some lessons about his partner’s past and what made him the cranky curmudgeon he is today.

Men in Black 3 manages a fine job of keeping the focus on the characters, their relationships and those tiny details that help gel a film world together. For a start the story is clearly focused on exploring the relationship between J and K, even if it does involve J saving K from a different life again. The second film barely delved into what made J and K tick, instead making it a race to return K to action to restore the status quo of the previous film. Here J feels he is ready to find out what happened in K’s past but can’t get anything from him. After K is wiped from history the process of J going back in time gives him that opportunity to get to know K before he got so grumpy and allows the film to actually explore their relationship. Josh Brolin plays the younger version of K in 1969 and does an incredible job of mimicking the performance style of Tommy Lee Jones but whilst putting a little more warmth into the act. Brolin is a damn fine actor and has proven his range many times over and his craft comes through here with the occasional fleeting smile and subtle moment of emotion, a trait the old K would rarely allow himself to be seen doing.

See how the essence of Tommy Lee Jones is on display here.

Production quality is up to a high standard, which you’d expect with a budget of $225,000,000. Not sure it’s all up on the screen, a few of the composites and CGI effects look a little out-dated, but in general everything looks fine. Sonnenfeld has always had a good eye for a stylish shot that doesn’t distract from the scene in question, likely due to his work as a DoP. On aspect of the design which is subtle, but very welcome, is how the aliens in 1969 look much more retro, all glass fish-bowl helmets and foam tubing. It helps differentiate the eras and ties nicely into that element of the Men in Black series where those little ideas you’ve had about aliens over the years are probably true. Rick Baker is back doing his practical effects work when it comes to the alien make-up which just helps add to selling the film’s world. Many of the aliens are covered in big dollops of computer generated trickery though and it does tend to stick out. That said, Jermaine Clement is barely recognisable behind the make-up job used to turn him into Boris the Animal and he does a fine job of selling the character with a decidedly alien approach to pronunciation and the blending of accents.

The film also manages to feel fresh by jettisoning a number of characters from the previous films, such as Rip Torn’s Agent Z and that talking Pug, although some have blink and you’ll miss them cameos. This allows a group of new characters to be shown off, primarily Agent O played by the lovely Emma Thompson in the present and the equally lovely Alice Eve in the past. Agent O plays a role of possible love interest for K in the past and also another potential reason for his miserly demeanour. Another new character is a fourth dimensional being called Griffen (Michael Stuhlbarg) who manages to be that rare (for modern films) form of comic relief that doesn’t grate or annoy and also isn’t a horrible racial stereotype. He actually brings a little heart and Zen to the film with his discussions of what is, was and could be. Both these characters are infinitely more likeable than a talking dog or whatever those little spindly alien things were in the last two films. This is because they are characters and not punchlines. More films should realise this.

His rhymes be bottomless.

A lot of the strengths this entry has over the previous film can likely be put down to the long gestation period the film’s production went through. The film’s plot was originally suggested to Sonnenfeld by Will Smith during the filming of Men in Black 2. Years of difficulties between the studio, Sony Pictures, and Sonnenfeld likely helped lead to the much more well rounded core story. The screenplay was written by Etan Cohen who may not have built up a resume of entirely great works but has, on occasion, shown signs of real quality, as seen in Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder. The film is undoubtedly a Sonnenfeld story though as it’s filled with a focus on a dysfunctional family group (as in the father-son relationship between J and K) set within an unusual world. He’s never been a particularly thought provoking director but when it comes to fun adventures he does nail it quite often. We just won’t mention Wild Wild West or RV.

Men in Black 3 managed to be a fair bit more enjoyable than I maybe went in expecting it to be. I can’t quite figure out how it cost so much to make, maybe it was money spent on all the feather dusters needed to keep the MiB headquarters looking all pristine. It’s not a particularly bold film either. But it shows a lot of restraint compared to many blockbuster films these days. A repercussion of K’s death is the invasion of Earth, made possible due to K never establishing a defence grid around the Earth. This is barely shown in the present scenes which is a smart move. A big alien invasion plot would have distracted from the character elements at the core of the story. All we needed to see was that that threat existed and would be a cost of a potential failure by J. So whilst this film isn’t going to blow your mind grapes to pieces it should at least entertain and provide you with a satisfying character focused story that manages to understand that the appeal of Men In Black isn’t so much the weird aliens as it is the predicaments and interactions the two leads get tangled up in. Worth a watch, even if you disliked the second film.