All Hail The Hawkmeister!

When certain mega-budget blockbusters crash and burn spectacularly with critics and bat the box office, the naive movie fan in me hopes that these beleaguered films will find a health respect from a sizable cult audience in the years to come. Alas, it is rarely the case as Howard The Duck, The Adventures Of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Hudson Hawk remain pretty much unloved. A pity since all three, especially the later are original and quirky adventure films with humour and imagination to spare.

Hudson Hawk was a vanity project for rising action megastar Bruce Willis in the early 90's derived from a character he co-created with Robert Kraft when fannying around with some jazz jamming bullcrap. Its barking plot has a reformed ex-thief being cohered into stealing some of Leonard Da Vinci's finest works for a world domination plot. The story is irrelevant next to the film's priority of stuffing the running time with as many weird situations, comedy set pieces and bizarro characters as it can possible accommodate. So on top of cappuccino craving Eddie Hawkins (Willis), you've got his deathproof partner Danny Aiello, the dolphin talking undercover nun Andie MacDowell, corrupt CIA chief James Coburn and his trio of chocolate codenamed operatives which include a mute David Caruso, the persuasive Mafia boss Frank Stallone, and scene stealers Richard E Grant and Sandra Bernhard as eccentric, megalomaniac corporation owners. The humour is wildly irreverent, and often absurd in a loony tunes, cartoony kind of way and even veers into musical territory with reditions of old time swing numbers like Swingin' On A Star.

Tonally it's a bit of a mess, not knowing whether it wants to be a Tom & Jerry cartoon, an ingenious caper movie or a hard-nosed 90's action movie complete with ill-fitting, R-rated profanity. But it does give Hudson Hawk a flavor that has never been repeated in cinema, either before or after, and for that we are truly grateful.

Harry Potter & The Shit Your Pants Scary Lady

Since the production company of Hammer Films has been resurrected a couple of years ago they've managed to produce two strong movies with the solid The Resident and the splendid Let Me In remake. With their third release they've started embracing the period horror roots with The Woman In Black, a ghost story set 100 years ago, with unsolved deaths, restless spirits, oddly behaving residents of remote villages and a jolly splendid, spooky, deserted mansion house.

The production feels contemporary but still looks pleasingly period authentic, it's tensely edited and classily told, the acting is fine (including a restrained and largely non-verbal performance from the often stiff Danial Radcliff) and the mystery satisfying...although the ending is somewhat obvious. Great stuff which leads Hammer in the right direction if they are ever to re-embrace their roots doing period, blood soaked Dracula adaptations.

A Hard Boiled Movie For A PG-13 World

Let's be clear about this, John Woo's Hard Boiled is one of the greatest action films ever made. I started to hear about Woo's genre reinventing films like The Killer and A Better Tomorrow from UK film magazines and when the chance to catch his latest at the local Art House Cinema, I jumped at the chance. I was a giggling wreck.
The two handed gun play was cool, the balletic, poetically paced editing jaw dropping and the unmatched, slow-motion gun play electrifying. And the ultra-violence, eclipsing western culture's controversial Rambo bodycount and carnage in its opening shootout alone, was music to my eyeballs.

Chow Yun-Fat's toothpick chewing, ultra cool Tequila is a legend, plain and simple. Only a man of his superior movie star charm could pull off a character so cocky and arrogant and make him the guy you want to cheer for. The rest of the cast do their best to keep up but this is Fat's show.

But this film is all about the action. The secret is the over the top, fantasy gun play. The shoot outs are played out like in the imagination of a 7 year old kid; everything occurs in a slowed down version of reality where guns don't require reloading, bullets can be anticipated and dodged, all bullet hits to the good guys are merely inconvenient flesh wounds and impact wounds occur with all the ferocity of a liquid crimson Hiroshima blast.

Hard Boiled may not be the greatest action film in the world (Die Hard has that distinction in my book) but it may very well have the best action IN a film. And for an action fan, that's quite a profound statement to make.

We're Following His Leadah!

Could Blue Thunder be the most 80's movie ever made? Think about it. John Badham, of Short Circuit / War Games fame, directs with his trademark crowd-pleasing efficiency, there's a great electo-synth score courtesy of Arthur B Rubinstein, it's part buddy movie (48 Hrs, Lethal Weapon) with the teaming of Roy Scheider rebellious veteran cop and Daniel Stern's eager rookie, it prominently features a high tech super vehicle (Knight Rider, Airwolf) and it has a lead character traumatised by the Vietnam War (Firefox, First Blood).

And it's also brilliant. This is fast paced, stylish action thriller with tons of memorable characters (Warren Oates gruff police chief and Candy Clark's spunky girlfriend Kate), iconic scenes (Schneider using his wrist-watch to check his sanity) and a gloriously slimy turn from Malcom McDowell as the movies antagonist ("Catch you later!") It being a Badham film, things go a bit bullshit in the final act as airforce jets fire missiles into an non-evacuated metropolis (to be repeated in Die Hard 4.0) but it's so slick you just get caught up in the action. Brilliant.

It's ATwister, It's A Twister!!!

After the monumental Speed, director Jan De Bont wisely chose Twister as his follow up allowing for him to employ many of the tricks that made the Keanu Reeves blockbuster work on his new venture. Therefore Michael Critchton's script gets an uncredited Joss Whedon re-write allowing for a tough and cynical lead female (Helen Hunt), a instinctive and charismatic male hero (legend Bill Paxton) and a witty, misfit bunch of supporting characters. Like Speed, Twister uses a similar structure of ever escalating set pieces (five, one for each tornado) that ramps up the destruction and tension as the film progresses, only this time the Twister represents the whirlwind relationship of the leads.

There's a stunning Marc Mancina score, vast American heartland locations, rich photography, a decent selection of soundtrack songs and some great stuntwork on show. Best of all, De Bont ratchets up the fast, low travelling helicopter shots that translate to an audience the feeling of pure exhilaration. The more he does it (and he does it a lot) the more exciting and involving stormchasers quest becomes. In fact, his trademark helicopter shots are so effective that he scuppered his own career when he dumped them for insipid CGI-fest The Haunting. The twat.

The Vengeance Of Nicholas Cage's Flaming Noggin'

I'm not the greatest fan of the first Ghost Rider film. For a film that is both a super hero adventure AND a dark, twisted supernatural horror story, the original production team opted to go with a family friendly, brightly coloured, comic book yarn. The results felt like a watered down, missed opportunity that was only enlivened with Nicholas Cage's inspired performance as Johnny Blaze.

For the sequel, the direction has been turned over to Crank's masters of disaster Neveldine and Taylor who recognise that to make Ghost Rider work as a cinematic concept you have to embrace to wacky, nutty concept. Although Ghost Rider Spirit Of Vengeance is still a PG-13 film, it looks and feels like an R-Rated action/horror/thriller. The stark eastern European landscapes are more edgy than the safe cityscapes of the first film, the hand held camerawork make the audience feel less as ease and the imagery is more raw and textured.

Aside from the expected visual inventiveness of the directors most of the films success comes down to The Rider himself. Nicholas Cage doubles down on his bonkers portrayal from part 1 and gets to play Ghost Rider himself this time (rather than a nameless stuntman), meaning the flame skulled one is off his tits on Cageness. Secondly, the costume design and effects used to realise Ghost Rider are far more effective this time, making him feel a realistic and scary supernatural presence.

Of course the more bonkers approach may put off more mainstream audiences while the camerawork, photography and locations occasionally lend the film a cheap vibe (at least until the ace effects bling things up). But it's these very things that gives this superior sequel its distinct visual signature. There's a moment which sums up Spirit Of Vengeance you may have seen at the end of its trailer which show what it's like when Ghost Rider has to take a piss. In the movie, as he's urinating, he turns to camera and grins signalling to the audience the irreverent, cheeky direction the franchise is heading in. Of course, if you're in on the joke, that is the moment the movie will connect with you directly....and that's just fine with me.

You'd Be A Muppet To Miss The Muppets

I love the Muppets having grown up on Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock in my youth. That childish adoration has turned into a confident adult appreciation of Kermit and co upon seeing A Muppet Christmas Carol in the early 90’s when I realised the screening was packed full of like minded grown ups with very silly brains.

Their latest excursion, The Muppets, pretty much follows the modern trend of doing a combined reboot and sequel, essentially reinventing the Muppets for a new generation while acknowledging their past history. Jason Segal, Amy Adams and new Muppet Walter are the viewpoint from which the movie is told from but there familiar Muppet cast of Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie and company are very much the centre of proceedings.

It has a great, inoffensive family friendly tone that is interwoven by the superior comic timing and post-modern irreverence that has consistently drawn an adult audience to the childish puppet premise. The film is full of surprises including a bunch of crowd pleasing cameos, huge song and dance numbers, Hollywood in-jokes and even a character arc for Animal.

If there's a downside it's that The Muppet Show itself, which takes up the last third of the movie practically stalls the films plot and isn't as entertaining as the scenes that preceded it, but this is only a minor complaint for a film which successfully reintroduces the likes of Gonzo and Rizzo to a new generation.