Sony have been hyping up this trailer all week like it was the biggest event of the year. Good for them. I suppose they need to make sure people are hyped for the second Totes Amaze-balls Spider-Dude film after the first one disappointed many. I enjoyed the first film, although pointed out just how much of it was pointless and merely repeating stories we’ve seen already. Where the film really got into its swing (badum-tish) was when it was focused on Spider-Man himself, something Andrew Garfield pulled off well. So, after the jump is the first trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Tell me what you think in the comments, or something.

Now, something interesting about this trailer… There really isn’t much Electro is there. Why do I get the feelign that Electro has been a bit of a misdirect to take our attention off the Green Goblin, who’s clearly in the film predominantly. This trailer even focuses mostly on Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) who seems to be putting on a very evil voice. And what is that at around the 1:15 mark? Do I spy vulture wings and Doctor Octopus’ tentacle arms? Why yes I do. Here’s a thing that’s instantly struck me. How would Spider-Man not know he’s under surveillance? Surely his Spider sense would tingle just a little? Anyway, seems like a fun action romp, if a little over crowded with villainy. We’ll see when the film is released next summer.

For one of them British people like me it’s kind of insane for me to consider the idea that Battle Royale was not available in a home release form in the U.S. until 2012. It is entirely understandable though what with the alarming frequency of school shootings that have happened over the years, something that is, thankfully, very rare in the UK. We don’t have a history of violent gun crime amongst teenagers and maybe the thought of Battle Royale, a film that revolves around teenagers forced to kill each other off, struck too much of a nerve with U.S. distributors and the mess of an organisation that is the MPAA. So I understand that, as most of my views come from the U.S. there is a good chance that whoever reads this may not have seen Battle Royale. There may be some spoilers ahead, but please do read on, because Battle Royale is a film that needs to be seen as it is one of the most important works of cinema since the turn of the century. Click the link below.

The future of Battle Royale is a bleak one. Youth crime and delinquency is at an all time high and it appears that adults are powerless to do much about it. So a law was drafted whereby, once a year, a class of students is drawn at random to take part in an event called Battle Royale, where friends are forced to fight each over to the death over the course of 3 days. If there are no winners at the end of those 3 days all students will be killed by the explosive collars around their neck. Class 3-B are nominated by their teacher Kitano (“Beat” Takeshi Kitano) and are selected for the program. Over the course of the 3 days two of the students, Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nakagawa (Tatsuya Fujiwara and Aki Maeda respectively) decide they don’t want to be part of the games and strive to find a way out whilst also confronting the horrors of how easily friends can turn on each other. Cue lots of melodrama and violent murders.

The film’s director, Kinji Fukasaku, from an early age held a great dislike of adults. This was due to an incident in a factory, where he worked, during World War 2 coming under attack leading to himself and his classmates having to dispose of the bodies of their friends. At this point he realised that the Japanese Government was lying to them about the war. At the age of 70, when he made Battle Royale, you can tell that that aspect of his life has not fully passed, as it probably shouldn’t. Throughout the film there is an element of distrust between the adults and the children brought on by Kitano’s decision to nominate the class for the Battle Royale. But this distrust exists before that event. Part of the reason Kitano nominated them is due to all but one of the children skipping his classes and an incident where he is slashed by a student named Nobu (Yukihiro Kotani), an act he couldn’t take any action against the student for. There is a cycle of adults failing students, students failing the adults and a system failing both at play. An impotent society of adults which has in turn created a delinquent society of children for which both groups blame the other.

Why isn’t this woman in more stuff?

This leads to a powerful message that it is the responsibility of adults and the governing bodies they form to ensure that they do not fail the younger generation. And just like in real life the adults will often find anything to blame rather than themselves. Think about how a teenager can shoot a number of classmates at a school and the media jumps on the idea of videogames being to blame rather than anything their parents may have done to foster a mentally unstable child. As a result of the actions of adults the children of class 3-B become the sadistic and insane murderers the adults had pictured them as being. The adults create the violence.

Through this you’re constantly reminded that the majority of the children are not that bad. Only 2 of them actively hunt to kill, with the rest killing out of paranoia or self defence. One of these students is Kazuo Kiriyama (Masanobu Ando) had volunteered for the Battle Royale purely for the thrills of killing as many people as he can. He is the actual product of the sort of broken youth the adults fear most of all. The other student is Mitsuko (Ko Shibasaki) who takes on a predatory role by using her looks to entice the male teenagers to their deaths. As a small child her mother had attempted to sell her to a paedophile which led to Mitsuko pushing him down some stairs to his death. As a teenager, we learn in flashbacks, she is considered one of the popular students but is aware that she is too damaged to fit in. Another corrupted youth who becomes a determined killer to rid herself of the students she has secretly despised.

I suppose that’s one way to get a class to be quiet.

On the flip-side of those two characters is Shuya and Noriko. Shuya has been recovering from the suicide of his father prior to the Battle Royale. He was a popular student at the school, so much so that it seems half the girls had a crush on him. Whilst he is represented as the film’s hero character, alongside another volunteer named Kawada (Taro Yamamoto) who was the winner of a previous game, Shuya isn’t the representation of goodness and hope. That falls to Noriko. She is the only student Kitano liked, he treated her as a surrogate daughter for his own that has nothing but hatred for him. She is an incorruptible and constantly hopeful girl. I kind of have to wonder if she was named Noriko on purpose as a reference to Ozu’s Noriko trilogy of films where the Noriko character is very similar to this film’s Noriko. Her continual belief in the good in everyone is a very specific trait for two characters of the same name to have. Probably not though.

Whilst criticism has been laid at The Hunger Games for effectively having the same formula, albeit very Westernised, you could easily label similar criticism at Battle Royale. It is, after all, one part Lord of the Flies and one part Running Man after all. The idea of people being forced to fight to the death is hardly new, as is the imagery of children being corrupted by the actions of adults and being driven to violence. These are themes that should be explored often though. Not enough is made of the responsibility we have to future generations in film. Everything is very much of the now without thinking of consequence. Battle Royale is about negative consequence but is also about the hope that eventually the victims of negative actions will be able to stand up and fight back for a better way of life. The last image of the film is the word “Run!”, a word that could have positive or negative connotations, but is certainly mean tin a positive manner here.

You’ve got red on you.

You could write essays regarding the influence and effect that Battle Royale has had on modern culture. It has a level of iconography that not many films get to share. You can see it’s influence in the many violence amongst youth films that have sprung up over the last 13 years, such as Kick-Ass. The resurgence of arena deathmatch films such as The Condemned and Smoking Aces. Marvel even did a comic series called Avengers Arena which was essentially a Marvel Universe remake of Battle Royale. Quentin Tarantino has described it as his favourite film made since he started making films. He almost had a cameo in the second Battle Royale as the U.S. President. There’s even small nods and winks to Battle Royale in Shaun of the Dead and Juno, of all places. The film has been ingrained on the minds of many directors coming through in the last decade and will likely influence more to come.

So, if you found Hunger Games to be lacking teeth, which is a fair argument, maybe you should see Battle Royale. In doing so you may find yourself a little shaken as this film pulls no punches. It will fill your head with imagery you won’t soon, or maybe ever, forget. It’ll make you ask yourself how you would react in such a situation more so than The Hunger Games ever could. Best of all though, it’ll stay with you for years and leave you feeling strongly that you have just seen an actual cinematic work of art that just so happens to feature the violent deaths of a full classroom of children. That’s a horror that should always be avoided, but happens all to often around the world. Maybe it’ll make you question why these things happen. Which is good, because that’s what art does.

Earlier this week I was thinking that I’d write this weekend’s Weekend Dump with the subject being that Amazing Spider-Man 2 trailer. Then I figured that the trailer wasn’t really worth talking about more than I had already. Which was not much. Instead I decided to stick with the subject of comics, more specifically comics that should be made into films. Or more precisely, comics I’d like to see turned into films. Some of these are comics that, at some point, have been in the production pipeline in either a film or television format, but the key feature is that none of them have actually made it to film. And that just won’t do. Sort it out Hollywood! Click the jump for my lazily planned out list.

As usual with my crappy lists, this is in no particular order. That said, I will be numbering them because it’s fun to mess with people like that. This won’t include an individual stories from within a particular character’s comic series if that character has been on film. So no Batman, Superman or Spider-Man comics. Although if I did allow them Year One, All-Star Superman and Kraven’s Last Hunt. This also means no Judge Dredd in The Cursed Earth, even though I want to see that turned into a film more than any other comic ever. Anyway, without further time wasting here’s my list!

No.5: Preacher

Preacher has one of those back-stories to it that you could easily disregard as student grade wank. A priest by the name of Jesse Custer has the spirit of a supernatural being called Genesis living inside him. Genesis was born from the unholy union between and angel and a demon. This creature is the living embodiment of both pure good and evil and, upon becoming possessed, Jesse decides to make it his goal to travel across America to literally find God. You see, ever since the creation of Genesis God has kind of abandoned his post as divine ruler of all things. On his travels he is joined by his ex-girlfriend Tulip and an Irish vampire named Cassidy. All a little bit silly, especially when you consider that Custer seeks knowledge from an apparition in the form of John Wayne. It’s also really very cool.

The comic is essentially a modern Western crossed with a road movie with heavy religious symbolism, as was the trend in the 90s when Garth Ennis first launched the series. There’s plenty of reasons why this hasn’t been made yet. The comic is dark, violent and liberal with it’s attitudes towards taste and decency. There has been attempts to launch it as a film and a TV series over the years but none have ever come to fruition. The latest attempt is being headed up by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, of all people, who are planning to shoot a pilot for AMC, likely as a show to chuck alongside The Walking Dead. If it comes into being, and a full series is produced then that will be great, although I can’t help but think that AMC’s aversion to nudity and their habit of taking the less troublesome route, as they have done with The Walking Dead a number of times, could lead to a version of Preacher that’s lacking some of it’s bite.

No.D: Fables

If you’ve played the recent Tell-tale Games produced game The Wolf Among Us you’ll already be familiar with Fables. Also, if you’ve seen Grimm you will likely think the premise of Fables is a little familiar. Keep in mind that Fables came first and was, at one point, in development by the studio that makes Grimm. In Fables a district of New York has been hidden from the regular populace with a magical seal. Within this seal is a place called Fabletown where characters from old fables and fairy-tales live out their days. Stories regularly flip between characters and genres but often focus on Snow White, now divorced from Prince Charming, and Bigby, The Big Bad Wolf, who has reformed and gained a human form. He’s also the town’s Sheriff. Any fables unable to blend in with regular humans, or Mundanes as they’re called, are sent to live in a place called The Farm. Quite an interesting concept with plenty of storytelling potential.

The comics strength comes from it’s twisting of traditional characters and stories and presenting them in the confines of a gritty, just to the left or real, setting. You can easily see the potential of this as a film. I’d imagine if a film did happen it would either focus on Bigby and Snow White or take on a format similar to that of Sin City by being a series of short stories, each with a distinct style and tone. The TV series potential is also obvious, although I suspect we’d end up with a show that maintains one tone continuously with certain characters being the focus all the time, rather than switching away from the main cast to tell side stories as the comic does. Either way Fables would be a visually interesting sight to behold with its mixture of humanoid characters mixing with anthropomorphic characters such as the Three Little Pigs and Chicken Little. It would require a pretty hefty budget to fully realise and likely would have to be toned down enough for younger audiences, but I could certainly see Fables working on film.

No.3: Lost At Sea

Yeah, I’m getting all indie comic on you here. There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Lost At Sea. It’s a comic published by Bryan Lee O’Malley before he went and blew everyone’s collective minds with the awesomeness of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. It is also one of my favourite comics. The story follows a quiet girl named Raleigh as she joins a few classmates on a road trip. She’s not really friends with them but they’ve always seemed nice. Along the way back the group she’s with attempt to get to know her better while stopping at a motel. They learn that she believes that her mother sold her soul to Satan in exchange for career success and that is why she cannot connect with other people her age. She also believes that her soul is living inside a cat she has seen wandering around the Motel, which she remembers may have been where her mother sold her soul. The group then spend the night trying to catch the cat to see if it does have Raleigh’s soul within it and in the process bond over the experience.

Despite how I have described this there is 0 supernatural elements to this. As you read you’ll come to realise that this is merely Raleigh attempting to explain away her social awkwardness because she can’t believe that her inability to connect with others is just a normal part of growing up. At the same time elements of her story suggest that maybe she had visited this motel with her mother and something may have happened that she blocked from her mind. In my interpretation it was something pretty bad, but I am probably drawing conclusions that are not there. What the comic feels like is the middle act of a dramatic film. We’re dropped right in at the start of the road trip and when they leave the motel the story ends. What matters is the arc of this story, which is the bonding of a group of people in an attempt to help Raleigh not feel so aimless in the world. But you could easily attach a pre and prologue to the story where we learn more about her before the trip and follow her as she confronts her mother over her memories. Elements are left hanging at the end of the comic on purpose, because at the age of 18 Raleigh herself doesn’t have the answers. Regardless of how the story plays out what you have a poignant, beautifully told story that I’d love to see get exposed to a wider audience as it serves as a great counter-point to the external conflict of Scott Pilgrim.

No.B: Blankets

Here’s my second comic pick that features no violence or dark content! Blankets is a biographical comic written and drawn by Craig Thompson. It tells the story of his youth as a teenager and into his early twenties as he falls in love for the first time and how his feelings and urges for the girl conflict with his strict Christian up bringing. Craig wrote the comic as his way of telling his parents that he was no longer a Christian, which seems like a hell of a lot of work for what could have been done with one phone call. I’m glad he wrote Blankets though because I considering one of my favourite comics that often trades places with Watchmen as my favourite of all time.

What would make Blankets a great film is that it tells a story that many people can relate to, regardless of religion. It is about finding a conflict in your beliefs and your desires. You want something but you’re worried you could lose part of yourself in the process due to some aspect of your life pushing against the thing you desire. Simple enough story really. The religious aspects would likely mean it would be a hard sell in the U.S. as they do not seem to keen on films that end with the main character realising that religion may not be for him, but that also means this is a story that deserves to be told. Throughout the comic Craig’s relationships with his parents, his girlfriend Raina and his brother Philip are the focus of the narrative. His brother is a strong part of the story as they share a bond in their drawings and the flights of fancy their minds would create. As they get older they drift apart a little, which parallels his gradual drifting from Christianity, telling a story of change and growth of character in the journey to adulthood. Blankets would, of all the comics I’m listing here, be the easiest to develop into a film.

No.1: Black Hole

Have you ever read Black Hole? It’s an incredible comic by Charles Burns and it boggles my mind that it has never been turned into a film. It also makes a lot of sense because the comic contains a whole tonne of sex and nudity and we all know how much the MPAA is scared of that. The story concerns a group of teenagers in a fictional version of the 1970s where a sexually transmitted disease is being spread around that causes people to have physical mutations. Unfortunately these aren’t the sort of mutations that give you metal skin or bone claws that pop out of your fists. They’re more of the variety of facial growths, tails and in one case an extra mouth with a mind of it’s own on a character’s throat. The characters all experience different repercussions of contracting the disease, some hide in the woods out of fear, some attempt to cover their mutations. One character willingly gets himself infected because he finds a girl irresistible.

The filmic potential of this comic is obvious to anyone that has read it. Charles Burns evokes a tone and imagery that can be directly compared to the works of Davids Lynch and Cronenberg. The comic is black and white with an emphasis on black. Mutations remind you of the body horror of Videodrome whilst Burn’s trademark dream sequences will remind you of the broken narratives and symbolic images used by Lynch. David Fincher has attempted to make the film in the past but was met with resistance due to the potential content. It would certainly be an 18 certificate in the UK, probably NC-17 in the US. That film production has been in limbo for some time, although some recent rumours suggested Fincher may be pursuing it again. Hopefully he is because if he proved anything with his version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo it’s that the studios are happy to let him make whatever he wants with whatever content he wants.

So that’s my list of comics I’d like to see turned into films. Almost any story can be adapted to film, despite what Alan Moore will have you believe, and I’d be happy to see some of these get the treatment they deserve. Of course there’s plenty of other comics that would make for cool films. The only reason I didn’t include Y: The Last man is because I believe that would work far better as a TV series than it ever could as a film. What this list, I hope, proves is that there’s more to comics than superheroes and many of these non-superhero centric stories should have their chance to shine on film, and in the process be exposed to an audience that would likely never have picked up the comics. Story-telling has always been about passing a tale from one generation to the next. The mediums change the but core of the stories is what we can pass on. Remember, if you don’t believe non-superhero comics can make good films, I’d kindly point you towards American Splendor, Oldboy and The Road To Perdition. Now, hows about sharing your picks in the comments?

Here’s the Godzilla 2014 trailer featuring Godzilla and a bunch of actors who play second fiddle to Godzilla. The trailer doesn’t show much Godzilla, but it does set the mood pretty well. So click the link for Godzilla.

Nice use of music from 2001 at the start. Also, Kick-Ass doesn’t look much like Kick-Ass any more. I don’t have much to add for this trailer. It look very good. Certainly a hell of a lot better than the 1998 Godzilla film. Tell me what you think in the comments yo!

I decided last night to make an effort to review an Adam Sandler film. This is because friends of mine have suggested I do this in the hopes that I rip into Jack & Jill. Naww, I ain’t doing that. If I’m gonna watch an Adam Sandler film I’m going to watch one that’s actually worth seeing. A film that leaves you wondering one question. Why the hell can’t he be like that all the time? Punch-drunk love it is then. Click the link below.

Punch-drunk Love is an Adam Sandler film set in a real world and made for the sake of art. What this means is that Sandler plays his usually emotionally crippled, basically good but prone to self destructive behaviour type of character, in this case upstart businessman Barry Egan. But Barry isn’t played for laughs. He doesn’t spend the film mocking anyone that isn’t Adam Sandler. He recognises he has a problem and, most importantly, wants to solve it. To add to the typical Sandler film formula he has a love interest in the form of Lena (Emily Watson) who, as is the rule of Sandler films, is inexplicably attracted to him. Except her attraction is gradually explained through her identifying as someone that needs love and that she she feels a connection to, likely because of emotional problems she herself has experienced.

Punch-drunk Love is effectively an attempt by director Paul Thomas Anderson to take the tropes that Sandler had already been using and relying on by 2002 and approaches them with the mindset of actually tackling the themes that Adam Sandler films will often only touch upon or fully overlook. If you main character is emotionally damaged and prone to bursts of anger it not only needs to be confronted but then explored. It seems the trend for modern comedies to take a serious subject matter and exploit it for buffoonery. Although I suppose it’s better than having Mickey Rooney playing a buck toothed Japanese man. What matters is what we’re seeing here is something within Sandler’s comfort zone but treated with a level of respect that has never been afforded to any characters in 90% of his other films.

hnnnngggg… this shot… so perfect.

The core of the story is even ripped from a regular Sandler comedy. His attempts to pursue a relationship with Lena, which he didn’t instigate due to crippling anxiety, is complicated by… and bear with me here… an attempt to scam him out of his money by a man running a phone sex line that Barry had called a few nights previously. See, pure Sandler. This antagonistic side of the film parallels the trends of many modern comedies to have one mistake or action the protagonist makes spiral constantly out of control beyond the logical point of reason. Here it is played a lot like the sort of odd sub-plots you’d get from a Coen Brothers film, in the hands of Happy Madison productions it probably would have resulted in a fat person falling over in literal shit while Sandler laughed at them. Punch-drunk love plays it as a motivating force for Barry to take control of his life and his emotions. The sequence of scenes where Barry actually makes steps to confront the man behind the chat line (A furniture salesman named Dean played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) reach euphoric levels of brilliance due tot he fact that, unlike a standard Sandler film, we’re actually emotionally invested by this point and want to see Barry get his life under control.

Normally at this point in the review I’d focus in on the lead performance, the trouble is that watching this film has given me an idea for my Weekend Dump this week. In that piece I’ll go into detail regarding Sandler as a performer but here I’ll say this. Adam Sandler gives, easily, his greatest performance. It’s amazing to think it but it turns out that little Nicky is capable of being a nuanced, multi-layered and occasionally quite dark character actor. He controls the film with a performance that is supported by strong appearances from Emily Watson and Mary Lynn Rajskub.

Gotta keep them Clavicles loose for proper Harmonium playing.

Paul Thomas Anderson does his usual thing of framing every shot like a painting, which is how it should be in upper tier film making. The first few scenes of the film, where Barry first meets Lena and contemplates a Harmonium left at the end of the street his warehouse is located on. The Harmonium becomes a symbol of calm for Barry, regularly he plays with it to help stop his anger from boiling over. It’s one thing in his life he can control, even fixing it with duct tape to enable him to keep using it. How this small piano like instrument gradually becomes a symbol of Barry giving up his need for concentrated control, due to new found contentment, is beautifully handled. Anderson is among the top level of modern directors. I feel like he’s one of the few to have achieved a high level of success that is entirely deserved. He understands symbolism, character and conflict better than almost any other director working at their height today.

Punch-drunk Love is absolutely a film you should watch. In 90 minutes it conveys more emotion and intricate character lead storytelling than the majority of films released these days. The film is 11 years old now and Adam Sandler seems to have forgotten that he once gave a performance that could be described as exemplary. A performance that could have been career redefining. It seems he learned nothing from this film though and has been on a steady run of starring in just terrible, awful, insipid alleged comedies for the last decade, with the possible exceptions of Funny People and Reign Over Me. Whilst I would say there are more remarkable Paul Thomas Anderson films, it would be unfair to say that Punch-drunk Love is anything less than a remarkable work.

This has been an interesting week for my brain when it comes to films. Three things happened that got my brain thinking once combined together. First was the very sad news of the passing of actual, genuine, legend of cinema Peter O’Toole. Second was the bizarre story of Shia LaBeouf not having a clue what plagiarism is. The third thing was watching an Adam Sandler film where, in a rare break of professional character, he quite clearly gave a shit. So this all got me thinking. What has happened over the years to make some of the more recent stars just not seem to give a crap about what they’re doing? Why was there a certain level of class and integrity with actors of Peter O’Toole’s generation that is greatly lacking today?

So, let’s recap in full just what Shia LaBeouf went and did like a fucking idiot this week. Sorry to swear but I feel that it’s needed to convey just how much of a moron he has been. A short while back Shia LaBeouf decided that, seeing as he’s not needed in the Transformers film any more… not that he ever was… he was going to strike out and prove just how much of a real actor he was. This required getting all naked for a Sigur Ros music video, because art. Allegedly sending a homemade, but very tastefully lit, sex tape to Lars Von Trier in order to win a role in Nymphomaniac. Lastly he thought he’d do that thing that makes all actors instantly more respected, he directed a short film. See, you have to direct to be respected as an actor. Either that or it means you get a Directors Guild club card that gets you into all the bottomless parties in LA. Unfortunately for Shia, he was far too overworked with all his not being in many films now to actually come up with an original idea for a film. Instead he just copied a Daniel Clowes comic.

Earlier this week Shia LaBeouf posted a shot film to his website that he had made, which had also been shown at Cannes to rave reviews by the way. This film is called Howard Cantour.com and it is about a film critic contemplating a review he is due to write about a film by a director he once adored the work of. A few years back Daniel Clowes wrote a comic called Justin M. Damiano, a film about a web critic discussing the art of film criticism. The copying of the Clowes comic is exceptionally obvious from the start, and while LaBeouf’s film does begin to deviate the set up, shots and even most of the dialogue in the first scene are taken straight from the Justin M. Damiano. After the news broke/Shia’s bullshit was called out on he decided to come clean and admit fault with the following series of tweets collected together here as follows:

Image selected to maximise douche-ness

“Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work. In my excitement and naiveté as an amateur film-maker, I got lost in the creative process and neglected to follow proper accreditation. I’m embarrassed that I failed to credit @danielclowes for his original graphic novella Justin M. Damiano, which served as my inspiration. I was truly moved by his piece of work & I knew that it would make a poignant & relevant short. I apologize to all who assumed I wrote it. I deeply regret the manner in which these events have unfolded and want @danielclowes to know that I have a great respect for his work. I fucked up.”

It’s good to admit to ones mistakes. Wonder where LaBeouf will copy paste his next apology from then. Oh yes, he plagiarised his apology for plagiarism, specifically this part.

“Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.”

Which is very similar to an answer provided to the question “Why did Picasso say “good artists copy but great artists steal”?” The copied apology being taken from a user called Lili, complete with an emphasis on the word “IS”.

“Merely copying isn’t particularly creative work, though it’s useful as training and practice. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.”

Awww shi-it son, you got caught!

After reading this and seeing a few Twitter users pointing out that he had stolen the apology too I had to wonder just what the hell was going through his mind. It’s one thing to reference a work you love with a line of dialogue or a shot made to match, it’s another thing entirely to just copy near verbatim. Even Tarantino knows the difference. It led me to thinking if Shia LaBeouf is the kind of person who gives a single solitary shit about being the artist he so craves to be. Upon doing a little research for this I discovered that not only is he apparently copying apologies from Yahoo Answers but some of Shia LaBeouf’s own self published comic books (Let’s Fucking Party and Stale N Mate) have allegedly been copying elements from Charles Burkowski’s Assault and Benoit Duteurtre’s The Little Girl and the Cigarette. Hey, at least he’s well read.

Considering LaBeouf has a history of being a self entitled little brat, regularly getting arrested and causing trouble in public, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his school homework was copied too. Also, I don’t care about his growing up poor sob story. He’s stated his motivations for acting was because he had met another child actor and wanted to have things like that kid did. He’s motivated by greed and appears to have no concept of ownership or self responsibility.

Shut your mouth Shia, please.

Shia LaBeouf is 27 years old. At the age of 27 Peter O’Toole had performed on the theatrical stage for many years, earning a degree of respect for his skill, and was a few years away from playing T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. Peter O’Toole raised a decent amount of hell in his younger days, his first wife claims he mentally abused her due to his alcoholism, but he performed like a star and was well regarded amongst friends. Over the years his work was as varied as any actor could hope for, ranging from dramatic epics to playing Zaltar in Supergirl. He was never embarrassed by his sillier roles as he saw it all as part of the fun of the privileged job he worked within. Shia, BTW, opening says he feels the Transformers films suck and appears to have seen them as a necessary stepping stone to make himself seem like one of them real actors. Shame he isn’t a particularly remarkable actor.

What I’m getting at is, that whilst there’s always going to be stories of actors doing really, really stupid stuff the actors of the past at least made up, partially, for their shenanigans by being good at their jobs. Often if an actor was too much trouble and wasn’t good enough they’d be pushed to the wayside as others rose to take they’re spots. The cream rises to the top. These days though moronic schlock and idiotic tropes have become the main driving force of the film industry, and so, having someone who’s not particularly good in their lead roles isn’t a prerequisite for a a films success. It used to be that people went to see a film for not just the spectacle but for the stars. Now the spectacle is all there is and studios are able to spin massive franchises off the backs of relatively poor and unknown (read: cheap) actors content in the knowledge that even if the leads suck people will go to see all the explosions. You know, like in the Transformers films.

Art.

Peter O’Toole may not have been a star when he starred in Lawrence of Arabia but he made people stand up and pay attention to him. It led to the film being a fixture of cinemas for years, and Oscar nomination for O’Toole and a steady stream of re-releases in recent years. This is all because not only is the film stunning to look at but the cast hold your attention throughout with their skill. That is what makes a classic film and what helps and actor become a legend. No-one is going to be reminiscing about how great Transformer (the film, I should stress) was in 50 years. Hell, give it ten years and it’ll be rebooted with another easily replaceable star anyway. Shia’s star will fade unless he does something to sort himself out. By this I mean stop causing trouble, stop stealing peoples work and start trying to give a shit about what he does.

This all brings me to Adam Sandler and my question of do actors even care any more. When Sandler broke through it was with silly but fun comedies such as Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer. Neither are remarkable films, or even remarkable comedies, but they’re entertaining enough. At some point he decided to set up his own production company called Happy Madison Productions. The company logo features Sandler’s now deceased father Stanley Sandler. The name is taken from a combination of two Sandler films, the aforementioned Happy Gilmore and the quite awful Billy Madison. The company name seems to represent where Sandler has come from and how happy he is to carry his work with him wherever he goes. The companies output seems to show how much Sandler wants to keep himself and his friends Rob Schneider and Kevin James in work whilst they live off money earned from obscene amounts of product placement. Their first film was Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.

Just cos Mickey Rooney did it doesn’t mean you can. YOU HAVE BARELY AN OUNCE OF HIS TALENT! Also, racist.

I mentioned in my review of the excellent, nay… exemplary, Punch-drunk Love that Sandler is an incredibly capable actor. I’d honestly say that if he can put out a performance on the level he does in that film on a regular basis he’d probably be in line for some major awards. But I don’t think that will ever happen because, based on his most recent string of films, Sandler has fully given all the shits and now has a grand total of 0 to give. Films like Grown Ups, That’s My Boy and Jack & Jill just show a continual lack of care for film. They show that he thinks his fans are stupid/loyal enough that he doesn’t have to worry about anything resembling quality. He doesn’t even need to star in his films as releases such as Zookeeper (which wasn’t based on the great DS game) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop have proven. He can take the exact mould he makes any of his terrible comedies from and just chuck one of his friends and about 55 products to place in front of the camera, pay someone to shout action, and call it a day. Well, after he’s been to the bank to check how much money he has siphoned from the pockets of anyone willing to pay for this nonsense.

That’s not to say everything Happy Madison productions has put out has been entirely awful. They also produced Reign Over me and Funny People. The two other films where Sandler does acting. Also, I’ve been told his remake of The Longest Yard is actually quite good. I’ve never seen it though. Also, people tell me that they think Deuce Bigalow is good, so fuck people and their opinions. Even mine. It seems there is a rule that for every actual attempt at film making at this production company at least 3 films of the quality of The Master of Disguise or Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star must be made. With lots of adverts shoehorned in. The level of plain not trying is incredible and it seems to represent everything of the character of Sandler himself. He doesn’t try, his production company doesn’t try and his audience don’t ask for anything more… so why should he try?

Douche.

The difference for me with Sandler when compared to LaBeouf, who equally seem to have no interest in being good at what they do, is that Sandler could do better. Very clearly he could do better. Also, Sandler seems to stay out of trouble and avoids coming across as a full blown…. hmm, douche?… Chode?… I’m gonna go with irritating little chungus. On the flip-side I can tell that when LaBeouf is in a dramatic role he is at least trying, he’s just not that great. The commonality is that neither actor/producer/director, and whatever pretentious way you care to write the word “artist”, they both display signs of not caring about how they’re represented, about the example they set to fans who may wish to follow in their footsteps and about producing work that they can be proud of and other, such as fictional film critic Justin M. Damiano can be proud of them for creating.

At the end of the day the job of an actor is to entertain, to show us emotions we recognise from experience. To convey characters and situations we’d like to know or, maybe not want to ever be involved in. They have young fans and so should consider how they represent themselves as they will hold influence over the development of those fan’s minds, as would society as a whole. Let’s face it, people in general just don’t care as much any more about integrity or quality. Films, music and entertainment are seen as disposable and as things that shouldn’t tax our minds, which is extremely dangerous to the development of art.

You’re on thin ice Rogen. One wrong move and you’ll be Sandler.

I’ve picked Sandler and LaBeouf out as prime examples of this modern decline in care but they are not alone. Look at the films of Paul WS Anderson and Brett Ratner and you’ll see largely lazily made film with little care for story, character or even whispering the idea of a thematic premise. Look at actors such as Milla Jovovich who seems to have just reclined into the role of being that woman from the terrible Resident Evil films now. She’s capable of being quite decent too, but clearly wants to go for repeating the same role over and over because she knows she’ll maintain a level of fame and earn a level of money she’s comfortable with.

There’s many actors and directors that clearly do give all the shits they have into every film they make or star in. Some are rewarded well for their efforts. Some are crushed under the weight of the latest Happy Madison style comedy or big budget mindless action flick and are pushed further to the fringes. The trouble is that true quality seems to be a risk now and so the easy and fully market researched route is the norm. It’s too early to say if some of this generations great films and performances will have the legs that David Lean and Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence of Arabia has. I have to wonder if the seeming lack of demand on the general public’s part for higher expectations will lead us to just not care about great works enough to carry them with us through life. Ask yourself what films you’ll take with you through life, I’d imagine you’d pick some great works, some films that you tie to a memory and maybe something you just enjoy. I’d also guess that a lot of those films will at least appear to involve artists trying their best and giving a shit. If you have any Happy Madison films in that list then please stop watching films. You’re making things worse.

Most of the time I plan out what films I’ll be reviewing on here. As a result I’ll only watch films that I plan to review. Sometimes I just watch a random film due to circumstance. Then I have to write a review of that film because that’s the rules around here. This is one of those times. As a lad I had seen both the Rescuers films multiple times over. I still own them both on VHS. I sat down to watch the Rescuers Down Under the other day with little memory of the film itself, but it’s odd how your brain works, because a few minutes into watching this I found I remembered the whole blooming thing. Good job it didn’t suck! Click the link for my review.

The Rescuers Down Under holds three notable firsts for Disney. It is the first direct sequel to a Disney Classic animated film, it is the first 100% digitally animated film and also marks the first collaboration between Disney and Pixar. Think about that, there was a time when Disney didn’t churn out sequels to any film they can and also a time when they could survive without Pixar propping them up. That said Disney didn’t exactly have a string of hits one after the other in the 80s. The Rescuers Down Under could be seen as part of their turn around but really that was all down to The Little Mermaid the year before, and more-so, Beauty and the Beast a year later. Due to being sandwiched between those two behemoths of the Disney Classic catalogue The Rescuers Down Under has always been somewhat overlooked. It’s a shame really because, whilst it isn’t a full blown classic, it is a fine and enjoyable family film.

The film follows a young boy named Cody (Adam Ryen) who, like Penny from the first film, is able to talk to animals like young Dr Doolittle would have. The Rex Harrison one, not the Eddie Murphy one. I dislike that Eddie Murphy film. Although the Harrison one wasn’t great either. Where was I? After going out on one of his adventures he meets a giant golden Eagle that has been caught in a trap. Cody frees the bird and is given a golden feather as a gift. Later a poacher by the name of Percival C McLeach (George C Scott) comes across Cody after the child falls into one of his traps. He notes the feather as belonging to this giant Eagle and kidnaps Cody in order to get him to reveal the Eagles whereabouts. His kidnapping leads to his animal friends to call upon the help of the Rescue Aid Society, an organisation of animals that help those in need be they animal or human. This leads to field mice Bernard (Bob Newhart) and Ms Bianca (Eva Gabor) to be sent via Albatross to Australia to rescue the boy and keep McLeach from the Golden Eagle.

Don’t looks so chuffed kid. You’re probably gonna be her kid’s dinner tonight.

It’s a pretty straight forward Disney film set up allowing for plenty of potential to provide crazy animal character laughs, basic themes of animal conservation and, most importantly, that troubling issue of knowing when yo propose to the girl you love. Yes, there’s a romance sub-plot between the two lead mice brewing throughout this film, which is complicated by the pair meeting Jake (Tristan Roberts), an adventurous action mouse that has set his eyes on Ms Bianca. Due to Cody’s capture this love triangle is really all the film has going on story wise for a large portion of its runtime. That said the scenarios, such as a very classically staged comedy skit involving McLeach, his pet Goanna Joanna (Frank Welker) and a dozen eggs, prove to be enough to keep the entertainment factor up at a point where the film could have easily sagged.

Whilst Cody is captured he makes a few attempts to escape with the help of a number of animals also in confinement by McLeach. This leads to a few fun scenarios, mostly involving a neurotic Frill-necked Lizard named Frank (William Robson). But ultimately these films don’t show much other than Cody not being willing to sit back and do nothing. He doesn’t actually escape either. McLeach lets him go in the hope he’ll lead him to the Eagle’s nest, which is the event that leads The Rescuers themselves to finally meet Cody. So what has really happened is not much of anything until the third act can get under way. Again, it’s a good job the scenes themselves are entertaining enough as they are.

Three more victims of Disney’s no trouser policy.

To be fair to the film it’s only major issues are with it’s plotting and pacing, it takes nearly 20 minutes before we even get to meet The Rescuers themselves, for example. There’s also no mention of why Cody can talk to animals, a presumption made that you will have seen the first film is clearly being made. None of the animals seem surprised so why should we? To add to that a number of plot threads are left a little loose by the films end, particularly the lack of a reuniting between Cody and his mother, who by the films end believes him to be dead. What the film excels at is how it fully utilised the animation techniques Disney had embraced to create some genuinely excellent sequences. The animation is silky smooth and still holds up well today. The computer generated scenery in the Miyazaki inspired flying sequences do look ropey by today’s standards but they’re not used for every single shot and are unobtrusive. There is also a sequence towards the film’s finale set on and under a caterpillar tracked truck driven by McLeach which proves to be another showcase of how well the Disney animation team had embraced the new technology at their fingertips.

Whilst the film lacks the songs and and fairytale qualities usually associated with Disney Classics it does manage to present charming characters, fun scenarios and some beautiful animation. It is certainly a hell of a lot better than the straight to video Disney sequels we got bombarded with in its wake. Hey, did you know there’s a sequel to planes being made? Yeah… thanks Disney. The Rescuers Down Under failed at the box office upon its release which apparently led to Disney’s aversion to releasing sequels in the cinema. To be fair though, it was released on the same day as Home Alone. It was always going to suffer. Shame the Rescue Aid Society couldn’t have been called in to… I dunno… push the release date back or something. Can they do that? I’m not sure if it’s within their power. Anyway, The Rescuers Down Under, it’s actually pretty decent.

After realising that the Rescuers Down Under was squashed at the box office by Home Alone I thought it would be good to follow up my last review with that particular Christmas treat. That plan was soon squashed worse that The Rescuers potential financial success when it turned out that not a single TV channel in the UK was showing Home Alone on Christmas Day. There was Home Alone 2 and, apparently, there’s a 5th film now, but not the original entry in the series. So the hunt was on at the 23rd of this month to find a suitable replacement Christmas film. Man the choice was dire this year. Even Die Hard was missing from the Christmas schedule. Thankfully I managed to find a channel showing The Nightmare Before Christmas, and here we are. Click the link below.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a seasonal marketers wet dream. Not only is it a creative Christmas film but it can also fully cover Halloween. 3 months of DVD sales man! In this film, for those silly enough to have never seen this, the lord of Halloween, Pumpkin King Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon), has grown weary of the holiday season he presides over. On a nightly wander he discovers a forest with a number of doorways that lead to various other holiday themed towns. After taking a tumble into the world of Christmas Town Jack in enthralled by the wonder of the perpetually cheerful and wondrous world. So much so that he plans to take it over to see if he can figure out what makes Christmas so special. His friend Sally (Catherine O’Hara), the stitched together creation of Dr Finklestein (William Hickey), has a premonition that Jack’s Christmas will go terribly wrong. Unfortunately nothing will stop jack in his plan to spread his own version of Christmas cheer.

You can probably guess how well Jack’s Christmas goes, but God bless him for trying. What helps make this story really work is that Jack doesn’t have an ounce of malice in his plan. He isn’t taking Christmas over to spread fear, his intention is to merely experience the wonders that Santa spreads to the people of our world and in turn help him figure out what he feels is missing from Halloween. In a typical Tim Burton style the characters may be grotesque but they’re not entirely evil. Some are a little evil, but they all support jack and want to see him succeed. Granted, Jack does ask three kids to kidnap Santa for him so he can have the night off, but he is doing it out of kindness so it’s OK.

Wonder how many of Jack’s limbs snapped off during animation.

Whilst the film has Tim Burton’s stamp all over it the film was directed by Henry Selick. If you’ve seen Selick’s work you’ll know that he shares a similar love for the dark and twisted, so the fit works out very well here. Apparently Burton spent all of 8 days at the studio during production. It was his story originally though and he did work closely with Danny Elfman on creating the many brilliant songs featured in the film. Regardless of who worked on what the look, texture of the characters and the entire audio design is exemplary. I’d say only Laika has managed to exceed this film in terms of quality stop motion animation since. Every single element of the film work in perfect harmony with the other. Of particular note is the design of the three worlds the film is set in. Halloween town is pure German Expressionism with touches of Gothic art, Christmas town heavily influenced by Whoville from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas book and the human world is shown to have a more normalised architecture that sits between the others. These three disparate styles help enrich the beauty of the film and give it the visual flair that Henry Selick and Tim Burton are known for.

One thing I love about the film is that, whilst it is almost entirely told in the form of song, none of them are painful, cheesy Christmas tunes. They’re all story driving and fit within the tone and temperament of the story at whatever place it appears. Whilst it may not have spawned any songs that are weaved into the fibres of culture like many Disney songs do, they are memorable in their own twisted little way. I hadn’t watched the film for about 15 years but realised I still remembered the lyrics to This is Halloween at the film’s open. Danny Elfman sits in for Chris Sarandon on the Jack Skellington vocal duties and, to be honest, you’d be hard pressed to tell. I’ll state this without a hint of humour or jest, despite his use of certain common themes, Danny Elfman is one of the best musical talents to have worked on film in the last 30 years. I’d love to hear him handle some more musicals as he has a real skill for creating effortlessly intricate and rich songs.

People won’t notice. They look identical.

This film appears slap bang in the middle of Tim Burton’s actual good period of film making. Yes, there was a time when he wasn’t a shameless husk of a creative mind and didn’t feel the need to fill his films with themes of father issues. There was a time where just the basic idea of a Burton film was enough to create something brilliant. This film comes just between the brilliantly dark batman Returns and, what I consider to be, his masterpiece Ed Wood. He has directed two stop motion films since passing the duties on this one to Selick, but neither are quite as magical as The Nightmare Before Christmas.

It is near essential that you introduce this excellent Halloween/Christmas film to any children you may have collected and/or produced over the years. I’m a firm believer that a good kid’s film should scare as much as it spellbinds and enthrals and The Nightmare Before Christmas strikes that balance as perfectly as I could expect. It provides genuine humour, heart and all those twisted little moments that put grins on our faces. So, if you follow my Christmas movie recommendations from the last few years you can now add The Nightmare Before Christmas to Scrooged and Die Hard as essential family viewing at this time of year. Especially the last one. Kids fecking love Die Hard.

So WordPress does this stats thing each year to show how your blog was viewed and whatnot. Here’s The Film Dump’s review of 2013. A bit slower than last year but I think that’s partly down to Google image search changing how it finds pictures. Turned out that whenever someone looked at a pick in image search previously it would load the website in the background and deliver a hit to the site. When that changed my views dropped by two thirds, which was shocking. At least now I have a more accurate view of how often the site is looked at though. Anyway, happy new year and all that. Got a film season planned to start fairly soonish. Just gotta collect up all the films first. There’s a lot of them. Click the jump to see the report.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 48,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 18 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

So I was perusing Netflix to find something to watch last night when I see in my Twitter feed that Film Crit Hulk has reviewed Dhoom 3. Dhoom 3 is currently doing a crazy amount of business in India and around the world. Obviously, it being a Bollywood film, there’s been pretty much zero coverage by mainstream western media. The film is out in the UK but the nearest cinema to me showing it is a fair old journey away and I’m quite broke right now. So how’s about I review the Bollywood film that was setting the theatres alight earlier this year before Dhoom 3 came out, and more importantly happens to be available on the UK Netflix. That film is the Shah Rukh Khan starring Chennai Express and after the link is words what do make up this review.

If you’ve read my review of the Indian cinematic classic Sholay you’ll know that I have a lot of love for Bollywood. Also a high tolerance of the harshly conflicting tones that many Bollywood films contain. These films are often all things to all people. The Bollywood industry has, over many years, perfected the art of making films that can be farcical comedies, over the top action films, melodramatic romances and musicals all in the space of a few hours whilst still maintaining character and storytelling as a core component of the film. If all those aspects work you’ll often have a film which will blow your mind grapes to pieces at the sheer joy-splosion you just witnessed. If one of those aspects fails then usually you will still enjoy the film if the other parts manage to match, and beat, expectations. This is usually because the films will switch up tones and genres as it progresses with frequency. But, if a film decides to stick with one tone for too long, and that tone doesn’t work… well, you may have a problem. Chennai Express comes dangerously close to having this problem.

In the first hour or so of Chennai Express the film maintains a strongly farcical slapstick comedy tone. This is complete with Looney Tunes sound effects and over-plotted comedic sequences. The film tells the story of Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) who, at the age of 40, believes he hasn’t had a chance to live his life yet. He’s lived under the roof of his Grandparents running their sweet shop and never been able to attract a woman that will take this confectioner seriously. To be fair, he is a detestable klutz. Very early one he pretty much says that he can’t wait for his Grandfather to die so he may go live his life. When his Grandfather does die, just as he was about to experience his 100th birthday, Rahul is tasked with taking his ashes to Rameswaram to send them out to see he sets up a plan with his friends to go to Goa and let the ashes go there, figuring it won’t make a difference because the water will eventually reach Rameswaran. He lies to his Grandmother about this and, as part of his plan, gets on the Chennai Express train so she believes his is carrying out his Grandfather’s last wish. His plan is to jump off at the next station and head off to Goa. Remember, this is all presented with slapstick comedy.

Ahh, the ancient Indian love stare.

When he reaches the next station Rahul realises he’s left the ashes on the train. He runs back to get them and just as he’s planning to get off, and also as the train starts to depart, a girl comes running for the train. In a scene that parodies a sequence from a 1995 Shah Rukh Khan film called Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Rahul reaches out to pull her on board, making sure to joke that he’s done that before. He then kindly helps 4 increasingly large gentlemen on board too. Unfortunately these gentle men are her to kidnap the girl and take her back to her father in southern India, and now Rahul is stuck on the train with them. For the proceeding 50 minutes (this is all in the first 10 minutes by the way) we have a series of comedic sequences as the girl, Meena (Deepika Padukone) tries to convince her father that she wishes to marry Rahul. Her father is a crime lord in the south and has plans to marry Meena off to the leader of another crime gang in order for him to gain more power. Rahul doesn’t speak the Tamil dialect of the people in the south and so we now have large amounts of fish out of water comedy to deal with as he frequently gets himself into all kinds of trouble by generally being an over confident idiot. Remember, this man is 40 years old.

This first hour is troublesome as it constantly plays for laughs against the seriousness of the situations. Now this isn’t just a little comedy, this is constant Three Stooges style silliness through all these sequences. And not the real Three Stooges. The Farrelly Brother’s Three Stooges. What especially doesn’t help is that Shah Rukh Khan is not a gifted comedic actor. He’s a superb action, romance or dramatic actor, but this sort of comedy is not his strong point. It’s like he’s seen a early Jim Carrey film and decided he can out-zany him despite having no idea how. As you watch all this cringe inducing “comedy” you’re reminded of what promise the film’s opening shot gave you. The film starts with a stylised, Breaking Bad-esque, through the floor shot which tilts and pans up and around to a beaten and bloody Rahul as a massive group of thugs come running at him. Rahul is armed with a shovel and he swings it right at the screen, which is promptly cut to black. This promise reminds you that there is something else to come. Just over an hour in we get our first taste of the something else, and holy mother of Gawd is it awesome.

There is no reality where this will end up well.

Rahul and Meena make their escape from the Tamil village which promptly initiates one of the most awesome, stunt filled car chases you could imagine. I’m pretty much convinced a few stuntmen died making this sequence. The action is like a hybrid of classic chase, stylised Hollywood sequences and stunts ripped straight from 70s Ozplotation film. Most importantly, and so much unlike any recent Hollywood counterparts, you can see what is happening. It is also incredibly colourful. The sequence comes out of nowhere so quickly and is so spectacular that in the space of a few minutes you’re rolling your jaw up off the floor and politely asking the film to give you more.

From this point on the film gradually tones the comedy down, although it never fully goes away, and the character interactions are focused more on the potential for romance between Rahul and Meena. This leads to a series of well staged and memorable sequences as our two leads struggle with who they are. Meena is from a bad family but doesn’t want to be the bad girl used as a pawn in a power struggle by her father. Rahul was raised in comfort, albeit without his parents who died when he was young, but he constantly makes poor decisions in his life due to his cowardice and desire he has to live his life on his terms. Both characters want to be their own people and gradually they come to feel that they could do this together. There is all of one scene in the first hour that has the slightest hint of the characters sharing any charm, as they sing in Hindi to communicate without her father’s Tamil speaking goons listening in. After that car chase the film constantly provides these moments that the earlier part of the film was so sorely lacking.

In the second half there’s a number of story moments and character interactions from the first that gradually get recalled and layered with the charm that was missing the first time around. The centrepiece of the romance scenes is a ritual in a village the two leads must complete to maintain their ruse as a run away married couple. The sequence involved Rahul carrying Meena up 300 stairs to a temple. They are the only couple to complete the task and in doing so Rahul proves just how determined he can be, Meena sees he may be an actual potential love match for herself and the romance element finally hits it’s full stride in a near euphoric way. This is the sort of scene Shah Rukh Khan has always been best at. The heroic drama and romance all worked into one scene where his perfectly quaffed hair reminds you constantly of just how dashing he can be. Errr, if you were a young lady I imagine.

As you’d expect there are musical numbers, including a cameo song by Bollywood actress Priyamani. They have a strong pop and dance influence behind them, as is often the case in modern Hindi films. They aren’t so frequent that they distract but I would have gladly taken 15-20 minutes off that first hour and replaced it with a few extra songs. The film has moments of being shot very well, which are then undermined by the occasional shoddy digital backdrop. Which is strange because there’s quite a bit of very well done digital effects in the film, especially whilst the leads are still on the Chennai Express train itself.

Despite the struggle that is the first hour, Chennai Express explodes into something far, far, more enjoyable once it passes its comedic hump. The second half is almost non-stop fist pumping fun with only a handful of moments that fail to gel. I can accept, though, that my issues with the comedy could very much be a cultural issue. Slapstick, almost cartoon like humour is very popular in India and many parts of Asia. I’ve seen Thai comedies where the cartoon sound effects almost drown out the cast’s performances. By the time Chennai Express is over you will be sure that you have just watched a fun, satisfying film. Its grating clash of story and tone will make the first hour a bit of a slog to get through but, believe me, it is worth the effort. If Rahul was a younger character I’d suggest the film was about a man giving up his immaturity to embrace more heroic, masculine, ideals. But he is 40 and so I just can’t excuse how silly the comedy was in the first hour when compared to the more rounded tone of the second. Don’t let that put you off watching this film and embracing Bollywood cinema though. There’s some excellent films out there waiting to be discovered by a new audience and, hopefully, the success of films such as this and Dhoom 3 will help expose this wonderful realm of cinema to more people, such as yourself.

Ugh, hate long titles. I have this kinda steadfast rule that I won’t abbreviate titles, no acronyms either. It’s always bugged me. Guess I’ll just have to avoid referring to the film’s name during the course of the review. So, who asked for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film? Wasn’t me. Someone must have. Regardless of who asked here it is. Before you click the link below for my full review try answering the following question. When has an unnecessary sequel, such as this, ever been good?

I ask the previous question for one reason. Because as I was writing that previous paragraph I wanted to make a comparison, you know the sort, “will this be the X of the Y or the A of the B”. I honestly couldn’t think of a good sequel to a series that had already reached a natural conclusion. No one asked for Troll 3 (yes it exists). No-one asked for Best of the Best 3. No-one asked for Police Academy’s 4-7 that’s for sure. Note one thing of those 3 film series. None of them were huge blockbusters. Police Academy comes close but if you look at the money made by it you’d wonder why they ever kept going. The difference here is that the Pirates of the Caribbean films, despite being critically patchy, had made a staggering amount of money across the 3 previous films. Which I guess answers my first question, who asked for this?

In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (dammit) Jack Sparrow (Jonny Depp) is after the fountain of youth. So is a load of other guys. Penelope Cruz (Penelope Cruz’s pregnancy bump) is dressed as Jack Sparrow and tells people to join her so the real Jack is all like “you wot luv?”, and then he joins her on her boat. Which is actually Blackbeard’s (Lovejoy), cos he wants the fountain of youth too. Now Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is an admiral or something for the King (Pie in the Sky) and he’s after the fountain but maybe not really. They go to an island and mermaids happen. Also there is some handsome vicar (?) or something. He fancies the mermaid girl (Some skinny lass) they capture for her tears cos romance.

As wooden as their surroundings.

So, you may be able to guess by this point that I don’t rate the film too highly. It could be because I thought the sequels to the magnificent first film were kinda awful, and thus their stank has carried over to this. It could be because I’m a bitter twisted old cynic. It could be because the film is poorly written, created via tick boxes, contains a horribly ironic plot and also directed with the energy narcoleptic that falls asleep whenever Jonny Depp acts weird. Could be any of those reasons that I find this film to be some kind of dross.

So, where should we start? How about I swerve you by going over the film’s positives. Jonny Depp seems bored playing Jack Sparrow. Balls! That didn’t go well. OK, so the film looks like all the money spent on it (A figure ranging between $150 and $250 million according to Wikipedia) has been put up on the screen. Well most of it. $55.5 million of it went into Depp’s pocket. There’s a scene early on where we gradually see Jack Sparrow’s thought process as he’s planning his escape from custody. That was nice. Later on he claims to just make it up as he goes along though, which undermines that moment. There’s scenes which could be described as containing “exciting” action. These scenes are often drawn out and lacking in direction… so… yeah. Exciting if you really don’t care about narrative I guess. I tried to not give a shit but I’m not Shia LeBeouf so I was unable to give that little amount of shits.

Yeah, totally needed to film this in Hawaii. the film wasn’t just a big holiday for everyone.

Well, that positivity focused paragraph went well. Let us move on. Approximately 60% of the dialogue in the first half of the film is expository. What this means is rather than dialogue driving the characters on, or us learning about who they are, or involving them discovering new information along side the audience, we instead have information spoon fed to us like the morons that we are. Right after Jack “rescues” Gibbs from being put to death instead of any charming repartee we instead get Gibbs flat out asking Jack about the fountain of youth map and any information he knows. This pattern continues on and on. When Jack confronts Penelope Cruz he’s asking her about the rituals for the fountain. When we meet Barbossa he’s telling us how he came to be under the employ of the King rather than us seeing that happen. This trend continues onto the film’s second half in a lesser extent but it is replaced by forced romance between a cleric and a mermaid we don’t care about. Seriously, I challenge anyone to care about them at all. Will and… err, what’s her face… Elizabeth, they are not.

That romance deserves a little focus. Well, I mean, it doesn’t… but it’s kinda awful so I guess I have to. So around 30 minutes into the film Jack has arrived aboard the Queen Ann’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s voodoo powered pirate ship. He sees a guy tied to a mast and asks why he is there. Apparently he’s there for talking about God and trying to save Blackbeard’s soul. About 20 minutes later we see him again as he is freed. He says one line about not joining sides. A while after that he suddenly seems to be a main character. We’re now nearly an hour into the film and all we know about this guy is that he’s some sort of cleric. Eventually the pirates capture a mermaid because they need a single tear from her for magic reasons. At this point the cleric (I can’t remember his name, gimmie a mo… Philip… huh. No surname.) decides to be all nice to the mermaid because she needs someone to help her not die. Now Philip is in love with her because mermaids are kinda seductive, so that’s not real love. Also, because mermaids are things and not people, plus she’s kinda enslaved to the pirates at this point, Philip, being the whitest and most well spoken of the group, decides to give her a name. He doesn’t ask her her name, he just decides she’s called Syrena. The pirates pretend to kill Phil, which doesn’t make the mermaid cry, but when he comes back (cos he was only poisoned) she cries a single tear of joy. She loved him already you see, but now she thinks he fooled her. Later he comes back to her where she was left tied up and he frees her and then they swim away. Philip is all good and stuff and the mermaid is a face for him to eventually kiss. That is the entirety of their romance. This all takes place over the course of a few hours. Ugh.

Swordy pointy 3D shot moment.

Can’t believe it took such a long paragraph to explain all that. This is the trouble though. The romance is a series of events with no signs of chemistry or sexual tension. It’s things happening because there needs to be a romance and Penelope Cruz’s character is too deceitful to be a solid romance character for Jack Sparrow. Now there could have been a dichotomy between Jack and Penelope Cruz (Her character is called Angelica by the way, I just don’t care though) where they don’t know if they can allow themselves to trust each other with their feelings, sorry Jack I meant stirrings. Instead they just flip flop from being aligned to not being aligned with little reason other than her daddy, Blackbeard, being more important to her. Little is made of the potential tragedy of a love interest that is devoted to a destructive father to the point where she’ll sacrifice any potential love for him. Jack makes a handful of attempts to sway her away from Blackbeard’s grasp, even being willing to put himself in danger for her, but very soon everything has reverted to the same cycle of love hate with no actual development. Again, the film is more concerned with things happening than actual development of character or story.

This all comes down to the film’s central issue. Jack Sparrow isn’t a main protagonist. He’s a protagonist, sure, but he’s also comic relief and serves the purpose in the first film of being the character that can do the things Will could not. As the first film progressed Will learned to be a hero and to win the heart of Elizabeth. Jack has no straight man character to play off of here. No-one is his foil, no-one is his opposite. He’s too self centred a character to ever be a true heroic character, he’s more of the reluctant hero. Whilst he will commit to heroic situations it’s often when no other path is possible or when the result of the action will directly benefit him. I’m not saying Jack is a bad character, but he is a deeply flawed person and only works when placed next to another character with opposing flaws. Here’s a slightly harsh analogy. Remember when Real Ghostbusters was an awesome cartoon and everyone loved Slimer? Remember the Slimer solo cartoon? Yeah, it was terrible, because Slimer is not the main character. Same thing here.

Can’t believe a film would have been improved by the presence of Orlando Bloom.

That horrible irony I mentioned regarding the film’s plot from earlier is basically this. The Pirates of the Caribbean series is living way past it’s natural life. The film involves a search for the fountain of youth. In the film when a person uses the fountain of youth another must sacrifice their remaining life for the other. This film has sacrificed the life of Will and Elizabeth, by removing any normal characters for the audience to follow, in order to preserve the life of Jack Sparrow. This is because without Jack the film series goes nowhere. What Rob Marshall and everyone involved seemed to have forgotten is that without the opposite of jack Sparrow you have a withered husk of a film that is missing the heart needed to keep on. Eventually the series will die because of this. Well, you’d think it would but this film took over $1billion worldwide, so I guess quality isn’t a concern for most people now. Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides is a soulless shambling mess of a movie that could have been saved with a few carefully thought out changes. Instead it’s a bloated, over produced piece of design by market research that fails to leave any sort of decent impression. Somehow, it is the worst in the series.

Oh man, where do I begin with this film? Some of you may be aware of The Story of Ricky. Mostly aware you’d be aware of its infamy as being one of the most gloriously brutal and violent films of its kind. To be honest, that’s likely all you’d be aware of. The film is pretty much a wafer thin story hanging on the tendons of a recently severed/exploded arm. Follow the link below and allow me to explain why that is all Riki-Oh needs.

Riki-Oh (Fan-Siu Wong) is a young chap chucked into a privatised prison in the dystopian future of 2001 where violence is the law and the wardens, along with their selected prisoners, can administer said law as much as they like. Which is handy cos you want a film sold on its gratuitous violence to have a little of it here and there. Riki, who is in prison for murder, has a strong sense of honour and justice which he preaches with the power of his fists whenever wrong is done. Wrong is done in the prison (opium farming, murder and the sorts) and so Riki decides to stand up for the weaker prisons to fight the established system. Basically there are bad guys and Riki beats the shit out of them and then a violence happens and there is bloods. Lost of bloods.

There is literally nothing at all to the film’s story beyond Riki fighting the Warden’s goons beyond a flashback or two explaining where his supernatural abilities come from and how he ended up in prison. The film follows this simple progression from start to finish. Bad thing happens to someone else. Riki fights and kills a guy. Flashback. Bad thing happens to Riki. Riki breaks free and fights and kills a guy. This cycle goes around 6-7 times in the course of the film’s 91 minute runtime and, well, that’s all it needed to do.

He’s got a lot of guts… get it?

I do appreciate a simple film. These days film makers seem to confuse the amount of stuff happening in the film with depth and thematics. Riki has only the basic level of plot events but each one stands up as a memorable scene that will likely have you laughing or cheering. Maybe even both at once. I’m not saying the film has any depth at all. I suppose there’s a message of a good man not giving up in the face of adversity, but who cares about that? Riki just punched a guys jaw off. If you read my review of Ultraviolet, a insipidly terrible mess of a film, you’ll recall that 24 hours after watching it I had forgotten massive parts of the film because it just had that little effect on me. 24 hours after watching Story of Ricky I could probably replay the entire film in my mind, scene for scene, exploding body part for exploding body part, and still enjoy it just as much.

Yes, Story of Ricky is one of THOSE films. Much like Troll 2, Ninja Terminator and Miami Connection (which you may notice I have never reviewed… odd that.) Story of Ricky is a confounding mess of poor film making, abysmal story telling and hokey acting, and yet, it is an incredible amount of fun. You feel the passion to replicate the original Japanese Manga comic any way they could on the limited budget they had each time a very, very, rubber dummy is used for a gore effect. You can see in the conviction of Fan-Siu Wong’s performance that he is giving all the shits he can about this role. You can tell that when the blood is spurting from a wound that the effects crew knew that they needed to pump out more because, dammit, it ain’t a 90s Manga adaptation unless the blood fills 90% of the screen. This is film making driven by the passion and love of producing entertainment and by Lord Keldor does it succeed.

I can’t tell how they did it.

It would be pointless for me to even try to convince you of the objective quality of Story of Ricky. You already know if this is the sort of film that you would enjoy. If you have difficulty enjoying films of its type then first, You’re clearly missing a soul and/or funny bone, get that looked at, and secondly, you’ll probably not want to watch Story of Ricky anyway. Which would be a shame. When modern cinemas are filling with films that seem to lack creative passion or show no signs of being their own distinct work, lacking any kind of unique qualities, a film like Story of Ricky can remind you that there is always something you could actually enjoy watching instead. Something you can laugh at with your friends. Watch multiple times over because there’s always someone else you need to show it to. A film you can share. Have you ever honestly grabbed a friend and said “Oh my God you just have to watch this movie it’s amazing!” at which point you put on a copy of G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. No, no you haven’t. Because that film is just plain rubbish and is nearly entirely forgettable. Watch the sequel though cos that knows what camp fun is.

I kind of wish I had saved this review for one of my milestones. I like my milestone reviews to be films that I absolutely feel everyone should see just for the purpose of expanding their scope of what kind of films they could be watching. Usually they’re what people call “good-bad” movies. There is a reason for this. Because only a good-bad movie will let you realise just how much more enjoyable film can be. Why watch a bad-bad movie and have a horrible and potentially entirely forgettable time when you could watch a film you’ll cherish. A film that is the cinematic equivalent of The Little Train That Could. Plus, if you’re a student of film, what the hell could you learn from Ultraviolet? At least Story of Ricky has the decency to make it clear that maybe using rubber dolls for close ups isn’t great if your dolls look like they came from a joke shop. So, Story of Ricky, watch it. It’s bloody good fun.

As I have mentioned before, I always have my finger on the pulse of modern culture. Because of this I recently watched an obscure TV show none of you have ever heard of called Firefly. Yep, it’s a show none of you know about and because of that you’d be totally unaware of the equally obscure film made a couple of years after the shows demise. You don’t know about this stuff because you’re, like, nowhere near as cool and in tune with the fringes of pop culture as I am. So shut up and let me tell you why Serenity is a great film. Also, you should watch Firefly too. Cos if you’re the sort of person who’s waited nearly 12 years to finally watch the show you’re probably an idiot or something. I mean, I would have watched it sooner but I’m so “cool” and “with it” that I just had way too much other stuff to watch. What’s your excuse. Click the link for my words about this film called Serenity.

Right, I’m done being a stuck up, know-it-all turd now. But I’m afraid, for those that genuinely haven’t watched Firefly, I must get you all up to speed. The TV series Firefly was written and produced by Joss Whedon in 2002. It was film set on the frontier of space 500 years in the future and followed the crew of a Firefly class spaceship named Serenity captained by Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion). The show fused wild west adventure with a science fiction setting and had a strong focus on character interplay and subversion of expectations. Because of it’s sheer quality, of which there was an over abundance, it managed to gain itself a very strong cult following. Unfortunately that following wasn’t big enough for the executives at FOX, who had been against the direction of the show from the start, and after 11 episodes Firefly was cancelled with 3 episodes left, at the time, unaired. Joss Whedon wasn’t happy with this at all. He managed to meet a Universal Studios executive called Mary Parent and, after showing her the series, she signed Whedon up to produce a film, giving him the chance to tie up loose ends and provide some semblance of closure for the fans. Serenity is that film and, man, it pays off.

I was exceptionally late to the Firefly party. When it was on in the UK it was shoved away at stupid’o'clock at night and I just ended up missing it. Last week I decided I’d finally get around to watching the show having only ever seen a few minutes of one episode, which turned out to be the pilot episode funnily enough. Firefly had me hooked from the start. It’s mixture of science fiction and Western clicked with me right away. Mixing old an new styles is hardly a new thing, people love that steampunk stuff for example, but Firefly was wholly committed to its Wild West tone and had the writing to help it get past what could have been a simple gimmick. Over the course of the 14 episodes you got to know the crew very well and by the end they were more fully developed than most shows manage over the course of multiple series. By its end you could see the threads of where the over-aching story involving the crew was headed so when it suddenly ended with no climatic finale you were left with a sense of actual lose. This leaves Serenity in a very difficult position.

I can think of more comfortable was to spend an evening.

Taking a show that hadn’t managed to pull in the ratings required of it’s scope and attempting to make a feature film that would, hopefully, be seen by a much wider audience brings with it a very serious challenge. How do you take all the plot points and character backgrounds established over 14 episodes of a show and condense them into a film in a manner that anyone can just jump right into. There really is only one way. The dreaded exposition dump. Whedon isn’t an idiot though. He’s a master at efficient storytelling and as such he manages to get everything you’re required to know out of the way in a total of 5 scenes whilst creating intrigue for new viewers and informing you of the all the principle character roles.

These 5 scenes are almost entirely exposition but they’re crafted in way that doesn’t reek too strongly of spoon feeding the audience its diet of information. We get a short opening dialogue for the back-story of the Alliance, a conglomerate of nations out to control all of human populated space. We see a dream of a young River Tam (Summer Glau) who then wakes in a lab being experimented on. Her brother Simon (Sean Maher – recently seen in Eastenders!) is posing as an Alliance official and he quickly breaks River from her captors. We then see that this escape is a holographic recording (introducing you to Whedon’s trademark subversions of expectations). A man known only as The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) explains how dangerous River is, to the Alliance at least. Her head is full of secrets you see. Also she’s psychic and may also have been turned into a super assassin. We then transition to the Serenity where, in one extended scene, we are given a tour of the ship as captain Mal interacts with each character. This scene is probably the most important as far as getting the film to click with new viewers. Without it you wouldn’t have any idea of the roles of the crew members, their personalities or what kind of life they lead until later in the film. This one scene is incredibly efficient storytelling and a strong sign of just how good the film is likely to be.

Mal looking a little perplexed isn’t an uncommon look for him.

Once this exposition dump is completed the film rockets along with a pace that’s decidedly faster than the Firefly series. This suits the scope of the film well as Serenity is focused on dealing with the two biggest threads the series left incomplete. What happened to River when she was being experimented on by the Alliance and who are the Reavers. In the series the Reavers are often mentioned but very rarely seen. They’re described as men who looked into the blackness of the edge of space and came back damaged. They’re basically the Firefly universes equivalent of irrationally insane and violent bandits of the wild west. Considering the show would usually drip feed you revelations as it progressed the speed and clarity at which those elements are presented here is quite startling, but very necessary. Without any idea if the film would be successful enough to get a sequel Whedon really had to ensure that Serenity delivered on some of the closure lost by the show’s cancellation.

Production wise a number of the computer generated effects do stick out as being a little second rate. Considering this epic space western was done for a budget smaller than most big name actor’s pay cheques I’d say they did quite a good job. The Serenity set, rebuilt entirely for the film, is highlight of the film. The entire ship was built as one self contained set and that previously mentioned single shot scene goes some way to showing off just how greatly designed it is. Early in the film there is a high speed chase between Mal and his crews floating transport and a Reaver shuttle. The whole sequence is frantic, well cut together and mirrors the sort of stagecoach chases of a Western adventure film. In the series shots in space were always depicted with no sound effects at all. This is maintained here in all but one scene. That scene is a huge space battle set piece between an Alliance fleet and a large number of Reaver ships that were chasing Serenity. It’s a little disappointing that they opted to include bombastic sound effects in this scene, which would have been very unique if presented entirely in silence, but it’s likely a choice based on casual audience expectations. It feels like a compromise but not one too damaging to the film itself.

Best character in the show as far as I’m concerned. I may marry her or something. Cos I’m a nerd like that.

Serenity is a very efficiently written film that, with the exception of the required opening exposition dump, at no point treats the audience as idiots. Nothing is explained multiple times over. Dialogue is written to be concise and, once in full swing, takes the time to ensure that every character is given their moments to progress and enrich their arcs and personalities. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Operative is an interesting take on the calm, ruthless assassin character, under no illusions that he is anything other than evil. Despite his honesty regarding his moral standing he isn’t presented as a scenery chewing spotlight hog. He’s a quiet, understated, villain that almost comes across as charming by the end. Hell, he’d probably be an interesting addition to the Firefly crew if he wasn’t so gorram evil.

Overall Serenity is a fine film that has only a few minor issues. Those issues would likely be compounded if you haven’t seen the series though. Despite its best efforts there’s a fair amount of background that would help enhance your enjoyment of the film if you had seen the series first that would be lacking for anyone joining here. Firefly was a show that often relied on you genuinely caring about the lives of the crew and Serenity isn’t much different. A great job is done conveying each character’s standing a role but some of the films more emotional moments would be lacking if you haven’t already experienced why the characters are the way they are. For fans of Firefly though, Serenity is a great send off and an excellent piece of sci-fi far more deserving of being viewed than a large amount of similar films in recent years.

So I pretty much have no plan for what to write this week. I’ve made The Weekend Dump a semi regular posting here where I rant or discuss something going on in film recently. Some weeks there’s something quite interesting going on. Some weeks there’s bugger all. This week we had the nominations for the Academy Awards. I would write a thing about them but I am way under qualified what with my lack of funds dictating that I don’t get to go see new films too often. I actually only saw 13 films that were released during 2013. That’s why my last review was for Story of Ricky. Lack of funds. As I can’t comment on the Oscars, and not much big has happened in film news, this weekend’s dump is going to be me rambling about a few different film related stuffs. This may also because I had nothing planned. Also, I have a headache. Click the link below to see how much of a disaster this turns out to be.

Now a lack of preparation on my part is incredibly unprofessional. But I’m not getting paid for this so I think I can get away with being a little bit slack. Besides, at least I’m not doing another list post. Now that would be lazy film jurnalizum.

You know where this is going.

Way.

1: What’s going on with all these superhero movies and stuff?

It has become pretty clear recently that the blockbuster side of the industry has been completely taken over by superhero movies. With the odd exception, pretty much every major summer release seem to be based on a comic or something else that can easily be classed as comic book-esque. Last summer we had Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, The Wolverine, Thor 2: Electric Boogaloo. Couple them with a Star Trek film that was pretty much intense-shouty-explosion the movie and you’ve got a big gash load of similarly action focused stories centred on people who are beyond the norm. But why is this?

There’s a belief that in times of depression people look to aspirational and traditionally heroic figures for their stories. They also consume a lot more porn. Good for them. This usually coincides with periods of political instability, war and financial ruin. Things that are usually going on around the world all the time but occasionally seem to coincide and align to form a morale destroying shit-storm of gloom for the general populace. Kinda like we’ve been experiencing the last few years. As a result of this our films are showing heroes that never fail. Who are born great. Who save the world, get the girl and revered by all that bear witness to their fabulous facial hair and barrel chests.

Hngggggh…

Now, surely, as human beans we should be better than this. We should realise that we’re lapping up films studios have pushed to be presented a certain way because their research has told them that in this political climate these types of films would play best. Maybe we are aware. Maybe we don’t care. Maybe the change in the types of films we watch every generation, usually driven by the world around us and then reflected in our art, are accepted by our brains as just another change of pace. Think back 10-15 years ago. Think of the sort of blockbusters we had before films like X-Men and Spider-man kickstarted the whole superhero trend. Our blockbuster films were about normal people caught up in huge life changing events that often left the world in a state of disrepair.

In Jurassic Park a group of people go for a fun time at a theme park and everyone dies. No-one is saved other than the few that escape. In Independence Day all the major cities of the world are wiped out and regular, non-superpowered people, had to save the day. Granted, they had president Bill Pullman on their side, who’s only one step less cool than my President on Saints Row 4, but he’s still just a regular dude. Also, my President in Saints Row 4 has super powers. And wears no trousers. The 1998 Godzilla film, as awful as it was… which I’ll get to in a few months, featured regular guys going up against a giant lizard that likely killed a few thousand people on its rampage.

You fucking suck 1998 Godzilla.

Now you may hit back at me with films like Fast and the Furious and Hunger Games. Fair enough, they are regular people, but they’re also impossibly buff highly skilled in pretty much everything they could be, and seemingly never put a foot wrong. Can you look at Vin Diesel and tell me he’s the same sort of hero character as Jeff Goldblum or Sam Neill? Now compare how John McClane is represented in the first 3 Die Hards to how he’s portrayed now. I could honestly write a whole Weekend Dump on that subject. In hindsight, that probably would have been a good idea. Anyway, in the first 3 Die Hards John makes mistakes, he gets injured and he relates to the everyday man. In the last 2 he swings about on harrier jump jets and falls through multiple stories of building surviving the whole time. He’s not improvising an escape or running through glass. He’s launching cars at helicopters and coming out of the film with a slightly dirty face.

To me this means that we’ve lost the characters from our films. The blockbusters are simpler in their character development and are presenting us with less relatable heroes so we switch off and just enjoy the colours. That’s not to say decent characters can’t be taken from comics, but that’s not what we’re going to get. Last time someone presented us with richly detailed and flawed comic book heroes we got Watchmen and hardly anyone went to see it. A little effort was made with Tony Stark and his anxiety attacks in Iron Man 3 but he still spent the majority of the film doing incredible things thanks to his superior brain and massive bank account. I’ve always wanted to see someone do a Batman or Green Arrow film where, in this world, the hero has nothing. Keep the basic origins the same but have Bruce be broke. Give him a few close people he would want to keep safe but he doesn’t have the means to rely on toys. Only his drive and determination. In a lot of ways Kick-Ass tried to do this. It didn’t do it too badly. Maybe we’d have more interesting comic book films if people were willing to tweak the characters beyond the idealised designs of the 1940s.

2: Shia LeBeouf is still an idiot who doesn’t give a shit.

Recently Shia LeBeouf plagiarised a great comic artist and writer named Daniel Clowes. He then plagiarised his apology and large portions of an email interview with Bleeding Cool. He’s now stated that it was all part of a performance art piece with a apparent meta-modernist (Whatever that means) called Luke Turner and Training Day screenwriter David Ayer. This is all kinds of pathetic. He’s basically trying to excuse himself from his multiple acts of theft, because that’s what it is, artistic theft, by using the blanket umbrella excuse of his douchbaggery being art.

Mr LeBeouf, you wouldn’t know art if it slapped you in your face. Unless of course that art was a life model decoy of yourself at which point you’d see that the artist had stolen your appearance and thus recognised it as being art. At which point I’m sure you’d contact your lawyers because you clearly don’t understand what it means to an artist to have his work stolen and copied wholesale. It is an offensive and entirely dickish thing to do. You facade of faux intellectualism does not give you a free pass to do what you want. And no, being in a Lars Von Trier film doesn’t count as a pass either.

That was a short rant. Not much more needs to be said about Shia LeBeouf and I’d prefer it if, in the future, we complied with his statement of “not being famous anymore” and just ignored his entire existence. It’s for the best.

3: RoboCop looks like utter shite.

Yes, what have you done? You should feel bad.

I tried to be optimistic about the RoboCop remake when the first trailer was released. You can go back and read my thing all about that if you like. I don’t mind. Back then I optimistically hoped they’d be attempting to tell some sort of man trapped in a machine or Frankenstein’s monster story and retain the religious elements whilst updating RoboCop for the modern age. Instead we appear to have a super guy in a black suit. He jumps, he flips he does all sorts of crazy stunts and in no way looks or appears to be a man with machine parts. Yes, technology will always improve to allow for swifter robotic movement, but a key part of the character of RoboCop, and for us buying entirely into the situation, is that he at least somewhat behaves like a robot. I present the following clip as evidence of how overblown this film will be.

I rest my case.

Hey, at least it has Michael Keaton in it. That guy is one good actor person. Greatly under rated. Looks like he’s giving zero shits here, as is Gary Oldman, but whatever. They know what film they’re in. I’ll say this, Joel Kinnerman sure does have that generic blank slate personality required of our aspiration avatars.

4: I’m tired. It’s time for bed.

So as we edge towards midnight here in the UK I gradually reach the point where this can no longer be considered a Weekend Dump and, as such, I must stop and post this bloody thing. I realise my superhero rant was longer than the others but it was the more interesting subject for me. The reason for that is simple. It concerned the narrative and quality of a film, which is always going to be infinitely more interesting than Shia LeBeouf or a remake of RoboCop. Good night all. Maybe next time I’ll plan something proper out. Sometimes it’s good to just put random thoughts out there though. So maybe I’ll do this again.

I do like reviewing films aimed at children. They exist as this area of film making that can vary wildly in tone, technique and thematics from one film to the next that it almost seems that any subject could be touched upon. A problem comes up though that when you tackle certain subjects in a children’s film a film maker has to be careful regarding what you can and can’t show. You can do film suitable for kids that tells them it’s OK to be different but you can’t outright have the film say that it’s OK to be gay, for example. Most young kids aren’t ready to tackle a subject like that. So you use other thematics to send the same message. Paranorman is a film that isn’t satisfied with passing just one tough message. It is a film that intends to stick with a child into adulthood by not hiding its subject matter, its themes or by pulling any punches. In many ways it is one of the most daring kid’s films in some time. Click the link for me not glossing over stuff for you.

Paranorman follows an 11 year old child, conveniently for the title’s sake, called Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who’s a little different from other children his age. Much like that creepy kid from Sixth Sense Norman can see ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts. Fortunately for me he doesn’t send shivers up my spine like Haley Joel Osment did. Unfortunately for Norman he scares the bejeebus out of most of his town. He’s shunned and bullied by pretty much every kid at his school. They even move out of his way in fear. Norman is a very kind hearted, good willed child but his insistence of his ability has led everyone to believe he’s weird and more than a little crazy. Even his father (played by Jeff Garlin) thinks Norman isn’t right in the head. His mother (Leslie Mann) just hopes that it’s Norman’s way of dealing with the death of his Grandmother (Elaine Stritch), with whom he talks to every day. One day he is told by a local loon Mr Prenderghast (John Goodman) that Norman must stop a witches curse from enveloping the town in evil things. This task was Prenderghast’s before but he seems to be coming down with a severe case of death. Naturally, nothing goes quite to plan, and Norman has to set out to make things right with the unwilling help of his sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) and his new best friend Neil (Tucker Albrizzi). They’re joined by Neil’s brother Mitch (Casey Affleck) and school bully Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Many ghoulish hijinks ensue.

Paranorman excels in many areas, so yes, this will be one of my gushing glowing reviews. I personally love a kid’s film that doesn’t treat it’s audience like they’re precious little creatures that need to be protected. Paranorman confronts death right from the start. It travels with death through it’s 90 minute runtime and comes to terms with death by the closing minutes. The story hinges on a murder of a someone believed to be a witch 300 years ago, an event the town seems to celebrate and see as a defining moment in it’s history. The town is littered with horror themed shops, there’s a statue of a witch in the centre of town and the town’s children put on a school play re-enacting the burning of the witch every year. For most films like this dealing with death would be enough of a theme. Paranorman isn’t satisfied with just that.

Grandma doesn’t smell as much as she used to. More slime though.

The secondary theme regards the effects of being different from others and finding where you belong. The way this is shown really doesn’t hold back. Norman’s journey to school shows him greeting every ghost he sees, followed by the town’s people reacting to him as if he is something to be feared. I’ve mentioned his treatment at school, this is smartly paralleled with the character of Neil who receives a similar level of bullying due to being overweight. This instantly creates a more relatable connection between Norman’s feelings of being alienated by others and those of a character with a physical problem that anyone can recognise. It’s an effective way of helping a child connect the dots and may even allow any that have bullied before think about those actions as they have already empathised with the main character by this point. They see that what’s happening to Norman is not far removed from how a child being bullied at their school would feel.

A few years back Laika made the beautifully animated Coraline, which was directed by Henry Selick. Coraline similarly made any effort it could to not talk down to children regarding its themes. Paranorman goes way beyond that quite often tip toes into territories often only reserved for adult humour. There’s many a joke that really do work on two levels. Laika understand that children today will understand the occasional rude joke. They never overstep the mark but they certainly creep right next to what could be considered the limits of decency you could have in a film for children. In some ways it reminds me of the sort of humour and content films like The Goonies had in the 80s.

Animation is as impeccable as Laika have become known for over the last few years. This was the first film where they used 3D colour printers to create all the pieces needed during the animation process for replacement animation, the act of replacing body parts for each frame such as the face and hands. The benefit of this was that they were able to produce all the parts they’d need to animate far quicker, already coloured, and as such were able to provide a little extra fluidity over the normal stop frame animation techniques. The overall effect of their animation is akin to that mouse circus sequence in Coraline but for the full 90s minutes. It is that mesmerising. The craftsmanship of Paranorman is such that you can feel just how much they cared about this story as something other than a product to put kids in cinema seats. There’s more soul and energy in this film than anything else being made by the biggest animation studios.

This picture would be so different with the Brazzers logo in the corner.

With the dark subject matter and the occasional close to the edge joke this may be an animated films some parents would like to watch first before showing to their little ones. Not because it’s too dark or rude, as such, but more because it is so unapologetic regarding how it presents its themes that some younger children may not be ready for it just yet. That said, they may well still love the film as it plays very well as a goofy, scary adventure too. A good kid’s film should scare them a little anyway.

You could pick the odd fault with Paranorman here and there, the film has near tunnel vision regarding it’s plot progression during the second act with less time being spent on character interaction and internal conflict. But this is all brought home in a final act that doesn’t let anything come loose and is as tightly written as the opening portion of the film. It is also where the majority of the film’s gut punches are kept as this is where the film really brings home the darker aspects of the story. When the film is finished you will likely be left with a feeling that you just saw something that hasn’t been tainted by the hands of a marketing department, or a toy manufacturer or any sort of attempt to be “cool” with “the kids”. Paranorman is it’s own beast and, much like where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr Fox, it deserves to be in any child’s growing film collection.

Blah blah blah sportsball. Blah blah blah summer movies. Blah blah blah Captain America. Click the link below.

Pretty cool trailer. I like how it seems to be mostly set in the daytime. That’s oddly rare now. Usually in a big flashy film such as this the action always takes place at night, in the rain or with lots of clouds. This seems to mostly be clear skies. Well, except for that helicarrier that’s falling out of it. But other than that, clear skies.

There’s some sort of sports thing on tonight. Dunno why people are watching that when there’s a load of new film trailers being released. Always seems to be around this time of year that a load fo trailers get put out at once. Odd that. Anyway, click the link below for the newest Amazing Spider-man 2 trailer!

So, them seemingly ad-libbed funny bits? Kinda frigging cringe-worthy right? I may have been drunk when watching the first film but didn’t Aunt May know he was Spider-man by the end? I can’t remember. That film was OK, not brilliant. Did it’s job. A job that was already done years ago, but it did it anyway. If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing twice I suppose. Anyway, comment on this trailer below or something.

Ghostbusters is one of those films that I grew up with. I’d bet that any child of the 80s grew up watching the Ghostbusters film, the animated series and playing with the toys. Pretty sure every child of the 80s can be prompted to sing the theme tune at the drop of the hat. They’ll also answer without hesitation to the question… “is this true?” with “yes, it’s true, this man has no dick”.What? You expected a different question? That would have been too obvious. You know what else will be obvious? Where my views of the film lie. Click the link to not be surprised.

So yeah, Ghostbusters is pretty much one of my favourite films of all time. If not THE favourite. That doesn’t mean I think it is the best. That dubious honour goes to various films depending on my current mood. One thing is always certain though, whatever my mood, whenever it may be, I am always ready to watch Ghostbusters again. Very few films give my that giddy feeling of pure fun and enjoyment like this. As a kid it was between this and Labyrinth as to which film I could watch over and over… well, maybe RoboCop and Lethal Weapon too. In recent years I’d add the first Pirates of the Caribbean film and Scott Pilgrim vs The World to that list. But other than those 5 other films there aren’t many others I can watch at a moments notice and be totally invested in. Regardless, Ghostbusters is always at the top of that list.

For those of you that where born after the 80s and had terrible parents, here’s the basic synopsis of Ghostbusters. Three Parapsychologist loose their placement at a New York university due to their lack of results regarding the finding of ghosts and other such “research” they’ve been working on. This comes just after witnessing a free floating full torso apparition at a library. A decision is made to go into business for themselves in the pursuit of capturing and containing ghosts as a sort of fourth emergency service. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) get off to a rough start but are soon met by Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) who has the rather unique problem of her fridge being home to a Sumerian dog like demigod. Well, I mean, unique for Manhattan Island. We got them fridge dogs all over the UK. This demigod is set to bring about the end of days and it’s up to the Ghostbusters to stop it whilst also dealing with a particularly troublesome EPA agent and the huge influx of work they’re receiving as the paranormal activity swells across New York.

Great fart in an elevator gag coming up.

Whilst the film can be accused of being guilty of leaving some of the characters with practically no development, Egon, Winston (Ernie Hudson) and Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) are all very one note, the core of the film is the interplay between Peter and Dana and Peter and Ray. Essentially Peter Venkman is the centre of this films universe, and quite rightly so. His interactions with both Ray and Dana are full of intricacies and nuance that reveal him to be more than the con artist dressed as a parapsychologist you’re introduced to at the start. It would have been very easy for him to be written as a mean character but very early on you’ll see how, despite taking advantage of his friend Ray, he is basically good. Peter pursues Dana as a love interest, in his own unique slightly slimy way, but isn’t so corrupt as to take advantage of her when she’s possessed by a fairly horny demon. Horny in the quivering loins sense, not the horns on head sense. Peter is essentially a cynical, occasional jerk who manages to be likeable regardless of how he acts. This is down to Bill Murray’s charisma which was bursting at the seams at this point in his career. Couple this with his surrounding, and talented, cast and you have what is a showcase of Bill’s talents in a role that was originally not meant for him. He owns every second he is on the screen.

It’s the charisma of Murray’s Venkman and the quality of the rest of the cast which manages to grip you from the start by tickling your funny bones, providing honest and fun interactions and also managing to act as a buffer for the strange, ghostly occurrences going on around New York. The ghosts of Ghostbusters are never just people floating around. The free floating full torso apparition at the films opening sequence mutates into a terrifying monstrosity upon being disturbed. The ghosts are designed to be genuinely otherworldly with characteristics that inform you of their personalities upon a first look. When you see the green floating stomach that is Slimer you can tell that he’s one greedy ghost. The effects work on these ghosts are beginning to really show their age now but not so much that it’ll take you out of the film. Other than some clear masking on certain super-imposed effects it’s really just a case of the technology being out dated now. This will not hinder your enjoyment one bit though.

You can’t talk about Ghostbusters without discussing the soundtrack. Ray Parker Jr gives his greatest performance with the Oscar nominated hit “Ghostbusters”. That one song likely set him up for life and then some. God knows nothing else he ever did contributed as much. Along with that is a number of classic soul songs that just feel right for the time. It may be an aspect of the film that dates it to the mid 80s, and usually I can’t stand dating a film with music, but it all fits with the films mixture of grounded comedy and spectacular supernatural events. It fits by being so perfectly of the time that it stops being just the music playing over a scene but becomes a part of the film’s setting itself. This is a soundtrack that was picked perfectly to represent New York of the 80s. Before all that rap stuff started coming along and spoiling my fun. It should be noted that the Ghostbusters theme lost it’s Best Original Song award to Prince’s Purple Rain, the only song that year that was more 80s.

He’s a sailor. All we gotta do is get him laid.

I’ve always held the screenplay of Ghostbusters in high regard, although how it all comes together on film would not have worked if it wasn’t for the specific talents involved. Only Ivan Reitman and the collective minds of the cast and crew could have gotten away with giving us a finale involving a 50ft tall walking marshmallow man and it not feeling out of place or goofy. Well, it’s a little goofy, but 100% awesome. Reitman hasn’t quite come close to besting this film and when you watch it you can feel why that is the case. Ghostbusters truly feels like a project made by people who all care to the fullest that they possibly can. The film oozes fun and charm to go along with it’s effects and spectacle. I love the screenplay for being so tightly crafted, yet with freedom for the improvisational skills of the cast. It introduces Winston at the exact moment we need a surrogate audience member to view the bizarre happenings through. I often will use it as an example of the perfect 3 act structure in terms of it’s pacing and laser precision timing.

So as you can tell I like Ghostbusters a lot. It cheers me up when I’m down. It’s like a movie based friend that I know will never leave me, or some hippy shit like that. If you have kids and you haven’t made them watch Ghostbusters then you’re doing child rearing wrong and should probably start over. Also, make them watch Labyrinth. Also, why haven’t I reviewed Labyrinth on here. Doubly also, make them watch RoboCop. Cos kids have to learn about violence sooner of later and it may as well be from a robot man. So yeah, Ghostbusters… It’s a really good film.

Oh remakes. How you do test my patience. On the one hand I can totally understand why you’d remake a film, we’ve been doing it from the early days of cinema and the retelling of stories is merely part of human nature. We pass stories on from one generation to the next making changes to suit the times. If we didn’t update and change stories then The Bible wouldn’t be so darned popular. A while back I reviewed the Total Recall remake and, along with trashing the ever loving hell out of it, I surmised that it was an example of a remake that got pretty much everything wrong, not just in the retelling of the story but in just basic film making. Some remakes can be great, The Magnificent Seven for example. So where does RoboCop sit, quality wise, if Magnificent Seven is a great remake and Total Recall is fucking awful? Click the link for my review, why don’t ya?

Much like the original film RoboCop is about a police officer named Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnerman) who, upon pissing off the wrong criminal drug lords, ends up near death. Military weapons manufacturer and robotics company Omnicorp (A subsidiary of OCP) is looking to bring it’s robotic troopers from policing the world overseas to the streets of the United States. Unfortunately for Omnicorp CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) a bill is currently present stopping him from allowing robots to do all that policing work on US soil. Yep, it’s OK overseas in those dirty foreign countries but the people won’t have none of their freedoms effected by robots at home, no sir. I mean, if they had robot police officers then US citizens would be no different then them terrorist infested Middle Eastern countries. By the way, I’m doing a satire there, which is what the film does too. Yes, they remembered to include satire. Anyway, Murphy is a vegetable so his wife, whilst all emotionally distressed, agrees to have his body put into a machine so Omnicorp can get a human brain behind their robot cops. Then stuff happens for the following 90 minutes.

Now I’d often argue that a good way to do a remake is to take the original premise and spin a new story, not to just retread every footstep the original made. RoboCop doesn’t retread the steps of the original. It does, however, replace the direct action, the sharp satire and strong thematics with 1 hour of little RoboCop action, a basic understanding of satire and only pays lip service to thematic elements. The first hour of the film feels oddly plodding, despite there being plenty going on. The trouble is that whilst we’re getting a lot of character building scenes we’re not getting what the film is intending to deliver. Most of the first hour is spent with Murphy trying to come to terms with what he is now. With boardroom meetings that only serve to remind us what sort of characters the heads of Omnicorp are. Gary Oldman’s Dr Dennett Norton has an arc going on through this section of the film, as he is asked to keep doing increasingly morally dubious things to achieve his bosses goals, but that is about all that is interesting.

They never show him transforming into KITT for some reason.

The fact Murphy is aware of what he is from the start does allow for the story to delve into ideas of identity a little, although the pay off for this is incredibly predictable. I’m sure you can already guess that the goal of Murphy’s character arc is to prove that man is stronger than machine. That you can’t program a computer chip powerful enough to prevent human emotion from winning out. Occasionally this approach is effective. When they dope him up to get him through his first public appearance you can feel the loss of self as he walks past his wife and child without looking at them. This is a little undermined by him being pretty awesome when on drugs by arresting a guy in a packed crowd instantly. Kinda odd message to send. Not troublesome though. Where his arc hits the most problems is how flatly it is conveyed in the film’s second half. For a while he’s practically a drone, not the man controlling the machine Omnicorp had presented him as. His desire to solve his own attempted murder wins out though and he goes on a rampage of robo-policing to solve that mystery. That’s all done in about 20 minutes and we’re given very little gradual development or any sign of a character within his shell beyond how focused and angry he has become. None of the gradual cracking of the technological armour that you’d expect. Hilariously, for me at least, they go as far as to suggest that his soul is breaking the code and restoring his dopamine levels. Convenient way of saying “we can’t figure out a good scientific answer so, fuck it, souls, right?”.

The film opens with Samuel L Jackson presenting a TV show called The Novak Report, a thinly veiled jab at the sort of bias, overly patriotic news coverage we expect from the US here in the UK. I dunno why it’s called The Novak Report though, cos that’s clearly Samuel L Jackson being himself and wearing a wig. This show crops up a number of times to represent the state of the world and public opinion on RoboCop and Omnicorp. Whilst these scenes do display an understanding that satire was a very important part of the original film’s world the fact that this is the only example of this satire in the film leads The Novak Report to come across more like the ramblings of a mad man given a stage. In the original film the disturbingly skewed news reports were buffered by adverts for equally disturbing products. This showed the presentation of the news as being a symptom of the world the film was set within. Without those adverts that is lost. Very little effort is made to show us what this future version of the US is like. We get what they’re views are of the outside world at the film’s open, being that the US appears to be policing everywhere and is paranoid with a fear of their safety. This is very timely to our world today to be fair, but it lacks the extra elements of satire needed to fully sell this world to us. At the same time the only signs that crime is a problem in Detroit is the fact that there are corrupt cops on the force, which is such a common trope it’s pretty much a staple of any film involving the police now.

The what have I become pose. At least he doesn’t verbalise that.

I’ve been quite hard on RoboCop in this review so far but it’s mostly due to missed marks. To the film’s merit it is at least trying to be more than a blindly dumb action film. From watching the trailers you’d think RoboCop had superpowers with all the fast moving action shown. A man weighing over a tonne should not be able to leap and swing all over the place like a Mexican jumping bean strapped to Jiminy Cricket. Thankfully that only happens a couple of times. Mostly RoboCop moves like he did in the original film, just a lot faster. I can accept faster targeting and body motions in this update. Launching a bike through a window nearly 10ft in the air and proceeding to swing around a bunch of ED-209s is a little trickier for me to reconcile with. That all said the action is handled fairly well and has a strong kinetic pace to it, which is to be accepted from Jose Padilha based on Elite Squad. Also, one sequence is set to Hocus Pocus by Focus and that’s pretty much one of my favourite songs of all time.. so… good job Jose.

So RoboCop does manage to miss the mark by some way. But by how much? Well, it isn’t Total Recall remake bad, not by a long way. It’s actually a pretty solid film that appears to have had its heart in the right place but has been fumbled greatly in the execution. At best I’d say it was an above average piece of Sci-fi action that doesn’t treat you like a total buffoon but isn’t clever enough in its use of character and themes to rise above the basic requirements of a what could be considered a good film. A few moments are little cringe worthy, Revealing what remains of Murphy just feels like a scene lifted from a corny low budget 90s film trying to be dark and edgy, for example. Also, in one scene… and I shit ye not here… Murphy tracks down a local criminal who is, according to his HUD “totally stoned”. All that said, you could do far, far worse than this film. At least it isn’t offensive to every fibre of my being like Total Recall was. At least it isn’t the worst RoboCop film. And no, I won’t review the worst RoboCop film. I’m not even sure I can get through it a second time.

For the last few weeks I have pretty much abandoned the plan I had to up the importance level of the films I did review. I had decided to focus more on the cinematic masterpieces and artistically unique/interesting. Today will not be the day that I change that. I’m carrying right along with the big silly fantasy and sci-fi nonsense with Dylan Dog: Dead of Night starring the George Lazenby of Superman films, Brandon Routh. Maybe soon I’ll cover a more important film. I make no promises though. That said, I’ll be doing the Godzilla films soon so… well, the first is important… that counts, right? Click the link below.

Dylan Dog is based on the Italian comic series (by Tiziano Sclavi) of the same name about a paranormal investigator who works to help the undead population of London. In the comics Dylan is an idiosyncratic and extremely self aware oddball who lives with his friend Groucho, a man who believes he actually is Groucho Marx. In this film Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) is a formal paranormal investigator living in New Orleans with he friend Marcus (Sam Huntington) and together they work as private investigators. Now, there’s a few changes to the premise here but a number of elements remain the same. Dylan’s wife Cassandra is dead, as she was in the comics, which is the reason for Dylan’s withdrawal from his paranormal investigation duties. The setting and his partner may be vastly different but for an adaptation this isn’t too much of a misstep. Obviously getting the rights to use Groucho Marx image would have been tricky, and likely wasn’t even considered, and the change in setting is understandable as this is being adapted for US audiences. The film begins to veer wildly away from the comics in terms of it’s tone and content though.

In the comics Dylan is impossibly eccentric. His doorbell screams. He refuses to use a computer, instead writing all correspondence with an quill and inkpot. In the film Dylan has a few eccentric touches, his black jacket, red shirt and blue jeans ensemble remain, but he’s largely played straight. The comics have a dark, melancholic tone whilst the film is more of a horror adventure with a black humour tone running through it that veers away from the surrealism of the comics. The tonal shift does suit the film that has been made though. Dylan’s partner Marcus is soon killed off and later returns as a zombie. This does allow for an introduction to the zombie characters, who are really just rotting versions of us, but he really just serves as being a comedic relief for Routh’s deadpan Dylan.

Standard paranormal investigator paraphernalia.

The exceptionally deadpan nature of Routh’s delivery is a fairly substantial part of the problems with this film. Routh is not incapable of comedy. He’s actually pretty excellent at being the comedic fool but it appears that here he was told to play it straight all the time. As a result he’s so concerned with maintaining a tone that his delivery of the more jokey lines, especially during his narration, often fall flat. It’s a shame because Routh is not a bad actor. He has that knack of working in smaller inflections to his performance that similar actors will often miss. Just watch him playing bumbling Clark Kent in Superman Returns or his little looks and motions as Todd Ingram in Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I’m not saying he’s Marlon Brando, but he’s not clueless to his craft. If his character had been allowed to have been depicted as being more quick witted, prone to odd turns of phrase and given a few more obvious quirks the character of Marcus could have been toned down a little to create a tonal equilibrium that the film lacks.

Dylan is brought out of retirement by Elizabeth (Anita Briem) who’s father was recently murdered in an unusual manner. That being a large bite from a werewolf. Obviously this can’t just be a film about finding a killer werewolf, that’s not enough these days. This has to also involve drug peddling vampires, the previously mentioned zombies, a super zombie and an ancient demonic creature. In the right hands this amount of variety of character groups can be managed well enough, Monster Squad being a fine example. Here the film is so concerned with jumping about between each group and the various sides of their world that the plot progression comes under risk of being lost. For me there was quite a few moments where it was. This is because we’ll have a scene where Dylan realises that who he should go to next but then the story goes elsewhere and we pick up with Dylan later. There’s also Marcus’ sub-plot involving him coming to terms with his new zombie status, even joining a zombie support group within which, in the space of the first few minutes of the meeting, he has a revelation that zombies can be heroes despite the insistence of the group that they’re all cowards.

Almost every location appears to get used at least twice, sometimes for near similar purposes, which leads to the film having a problem with it’s forward momentum. When we’ve already seen the vampire nightclub and seen how they sell their blood as a drug, which is all narrated by Dylan, do we need another scene later where he goes back there and explains how they sell their drugs again? Whilst he is at the club we learn exactly what he did that led to him quitting the paranormal investigation business. Two scenes later that revelation is repeated at his apartment. There are various narrative problems throughout the film like these. It shows a little bit of an ineptitude in storytelling from Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer. Based on their previous writing credits I’d say that’s pretty much the norm. If you need anymore evidence of their lack of understanding of storytelling the finale not only involves a deus ex machina but it’s not ironic or played for laughs and neither Dylan or Marcus have any part in saving the day. A protagonist is meant to put into action the events that lead to saving the day. A protagonist must be proactive. The extent of Dylan’s proactivity in the final scenes consists of him proactivly placing his face in front of the villain’s fists. This is a shame because throughout the rest of the film Dylan is strongly focused on defeating the villain. The reason for the lack of proactivity is literally because the writer’s penned the final scenes without giving Dylan any sort of plan.

There is a lack of a defined villain in this film. This is one of 3-4.

The bigger shame, perhaps, is that this film could have been so close to being something quite fun. Maybe even special. The world is a rich one that is dense with a variety of characters and small details that could have been an excellent foundation for a much better film. The world reminds me a lot of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. An influence from the Hellboy films must have been in director Kevin Munroe’s mind. This is the only live action film Munroe has made. It’s actually the first project he’s directed that wasn’t created inside a computer having previously worked on the TMNT animated film, which also had narrative issues, and a mostly forgotten video game called Freaky Fliers. His use of colour and camera cranes shows a mind that thinks outside the realms of standard cinematic visuals. Whilst the film does look colourful and texture, it has quite a few moments where it feels a lot like a fairly high budget TV show. It actually looked a lot like shows such as Arrow to me.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is a missed opportunity then. It is deeply flawed and, at times, an unmitigated failure at what it is attempting. But there is also a few glimmers of actual quality. The world, the majority of the camera work and the few moments where Routh gets to show a little personality are all moments that remind you of the potential quality film this could have been. There is another film based on the Dylan Dog world called Dellamorte Dellamore, or Cemetery Man in the US. It doesn’t feature the Dylan Dog character though. I’ve never seen it but the promise of the universe does make me think I’ll have to correct that son. There is a good story in this world somewhere, I just suspect that it may be confined to the comic books and not the films.