Splatter Matters

Let's face it, nobody watches horror film franchises for the ingenious story telling...not even the Scream or Saw movies. There's only on reason that the Elm Street or Friday the 13th series have endured as long as they have; the kills. Horror fans watch these movies for the inventiveness of the brutal killings and the liberal application of gore and ,if we're lucky, maybe some expertly staged suspense to keep us entertained until we bust our load.

Final Destination 5 fits that bill perfectly. The plot is tedious in the extreme going absolutely nowhere a 5 year old couldn't anticipate, the dialogue cheesy and the young cast woodenly shuffling to and from their marks. If we applied the regular rules of film critique, FD5 would be firmly labeled blandly unwatchable.

But then there are the kills and the kills are glorious. The disaster sequence, which precedes each entry this time takes place on a collapsing Suspension Bridge and is littered with blackly comic deaths, a full dose of dramatic tension and some epic, first rate effects. Then, as fate or death inevitably catches up with the cast, they're dispatched in some gleefully gory and imaginative ways, my favorite being the bone-crunching gymnastic demise. It's the best franchise entry since the second film, retaining some of that flicks darkly knowing humour as it messes with audience expectations regarding just how the poor bastards are gonna buy it. It doesn't skimp on the prosthetic gore either providing Fangoria magazine with opportunities for centre spreads for the next twelve months plus it's got a clever and unexpected twist to wrap the film, and potentially the franchise, up perfectly.

If you love franchise horror, you'll love it. If you prefer 'story' and 'acting' alongside your carnage, seek entertainment elsewhere.

For A Fistful Of Dollars...You'll Get A Good Probing

There’s two reasons why Jon ‘Iron Man’ Favreau’s latest blockbuster, Cowboys & Aliens, has been met with indifference at the box office and by the critic’s community. One reason is understandable, but which I do not agree with, and with the other reason, they have a point.

1/ First off, audience expectations are not met from a film carrying the title Cowboys & Aliens. With that moniker, you’d expect a knowing, contemporary exploitation flick…a ‘B’ movie in tone, if not in production values. But director Favreau plays it dead straight. This is a western, through and through, with the science fiction aspects of the plot sprinkled on top. It’s shot (gorgeously I might add) like a serious western, is deliberately paced like a serious western and uses humour sparsely like a serious western. In fact, plot wise, this is a version of The Searchers, substituting aliens for Native American Indians. If you go into the film expecting a wacky mash up of Blazing Saddles and Critters you’re in for one hell of a disappointment. If you, like me, go in and take the film at face value…it’s a solid adventure film told in a way that’s respectful to the genres it’s melding.

2/ The other issue is the lack of surprising elements in the plot. Cowboys & Aliens does exactly what it says on the tin. It takes all the familiar tropes of the western genre (gunslinger/man-with-no-name, Indian ceremonies, bar room brawls, cutthroat bandits, lynch mobs and ruthless cattle barons) and mixes them with staples from the alien invasion genre (abductions and experimentation, stealing the earth’s resources, strange lights in the sky and relocating vehicles from the sea to landlocked farmland), but it doesn’t add anything new to the equation. If it wasn’t for some superb, but obvious contemporary CGI, from ILM you’d be mistaken if the story dated from the mid-90’s Independence Day period.

Aside from that the casting is top rate. Daniel Craig brings the same intense masculinity to Jake that he does to James Bond (he’s a hard, hard man), Harrison Ford has found his groove and is never happier than when playing a curmudgeonly anti-hero as he does here, and Olivia Wilde is an enigmatic and beguiling presence. Other great character actors like Clancy Brown and Sam Rockwell have their moments to shine but the script isn’t geared towards an ensemble cast or deep, meaningful dialogue…even if it tries once in a while.

Well made, thoroughly enjoyable (if you go without expectations), but lacking in any boundary pushing story or visuals, Cowboys & Aliens is worth saddling up for.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Minkeys

Who would have thought that Studio Fuck-up Factory Twentieth Century Fox would produce not one, but two of the best films of summer 2011. After the critical success of X-Men First Class Fox have done it again with their contemporary reboot Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes which is essentially a remake of 1972’s Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes.

It’s thought provoking, dealing with social issues of slavery, morality, the class system, and the tried and tested formula man screwing with nature…all of which is common in the previous Apes movies. It cleverly updates the familiar Apes franchise story elements like astronauts, mankind engineering it’s own demise, ape leader Caesar’s origin and Simian religion into something much more recognizable and relevant to todays audiences. The story is relatively small in scale sticking to four key locations for the bulk of it’s running time which explains it’s relatively slender $93 million production cost. What it doesn’t explain is how WETA provided some of the most extraordinary and convincing effects ever to grace a movie screen at such a small cost. It’s not like they skimped either as the climactic San Fransisco ape rampage is massive and the CGI ape characters are prominent throughout the running time.

As expected the CGI minkeys, lead by the brilliant Andy (give the man an Oscar now) Serkis out act the charisma-less human thespians like James Franco and Freida Pinto, although predictably John Lithgow holds his own. It’s Serkis as Caesar who is the film’s main character, and not the humans, that goes through the big character changes as he realises that life as a second class citizen is not acceptable to him.

The director, whose previous film was The Escapist, gives us another variation on ‘prison’ life (of a sort) and delivers a film that’s unfussy yet cinematic. And the action, again superbly realised by WETA, is utterly nail biting as the revolting (as in revolution) minkeys strategically make their escape via the Golden Gate Bridge. Forget the crappy Tim Burton version, this Apes is a lean, mean simian fighting machine.

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Minkeys

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes is the forth film in the original Planet Of The Apes Saga. Released in 1972 it’s the story of chimpanzee Caesar, who has travelled 2000 years back in time from an age when apes rule the earth. After 20 years of hiding his higher monkey intelligence from contemporary human society (1991 in Apes story mythology) Caeser is enslaved, outed and is provoked into leading a simian revolution that will eventually engulf the planet.

Conquest is very much a product of it’s time In terms of the grey photography, concrete urban locations, tuneless but bombastic score, spartan futuristic production design and moody, cinematic direction…complete with crash zooms. But it is a smart examination of institutionalised slavery in a modern social environment and it’s telling is greatly aided by the performances of Roddy McDowell as Caesar and Ricardo Montalban.

Frankly Captain, I'm Exhausted!

The Captains is a rather self congratulary documentary from William Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have been played lead captains in the various incarnations of Star Trek. It’s all rather ‘luvey’ with the actors patting themselves, and each other, on the back for a good job done and it’s all accompanied by a pretentious piano jazz score. In terms of content it runs out of steam in the penultimate act as The Shat interview Star Trek 6 legend Christopher Plummer and swans around a convention seeking adulation, but thankfully returns to focus for the end.

It’s nice to see each of the actors out of uniform, and in most cases we’re given an insight into the real personality of the actors involved; Scott Bakula is a guy-next-door kind of bloke while Patrick Stewart visibly regrets the impact his obsessive work had on his family. There’s some interesting facts that emerge such as the fact Chris Pine’s acting father played the Police Chief in the 1970’s show CHiPs. But the most eye opening, jaw dropping moments belong to Deep Space Nine Captain Avery Brooks; he’s mad. To quote Lethal Weapon he’s ‘Out there on Pluto, man!’ Avery Brooks is away with the fairys to such a degree I had to fast-forward my way through his interview footage with pure embarrassment. Now that takes some doing.

Super Great Super Eight

JJ Abrams proved he was a capable director with the pilot episode of Lost. He then graduated to the big screen with Mission Impossible III, which was appropriately cinematic in many sequences, but it betrayed Abrams’ TV roots by coming across like an episode of his show Alias at times. He finally proved himself with the stunning 2009 Star Trek reboot which confirmed him as an A-list talent. But the question remained, was Abrams a genuine force to be reckoned with or was Trek a one-off, flash in the pan?

His latest, Super 8, ably demonstrates Abram’s is here to stay. It’s clearly a love letter to the films he grew up with as a child, particularly those of Steven Spielberg (also a producer on Super 8), and those movies that inspired him to become a film maker. E.T. is the primary frame of reference as it centres around a lonely boy from a broken family whose life is forever changed thanks to an encounter with an alien life form who’s just trying to get home. But there’s other pop culture references throughout from The Thing, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Invaders From Mars to even more obscure references like Alice In Wonderland (Ellie Fanning’s Alice escapes into the wonderland of film-making from her drunk of a father) and Pinocchio (when you wish upon a star). But Super 8 is less E.T. and more of a cross between a monster/horror movie and a kids, coming-of-age adventure like Stand By Me, The Goonies and The Monster Squad.

For such a great film, there’s been a lot of criticism levelled at it…some of it justified, some of it not. For example, it’s argued that the kids drama seems awkwardly shoehorned into the creature feature aspect of the plot. While it’s true that the drama heavy first half is superior to the monster-centric second, the story is deftly structured so that both parts feel like a cohesive whole. It’s argued that the character of the monster is ill-defined, that it’s killer tendencies rob it of any sympathy, and that it’s 21st century ‘Cloverfield’ design clashes with the 1970’s aesthetic that Abrams is going for. Well, if the monster seems to lack weight and screen time it’s because he’s a macguffin, just like Eric Bana’s Nero was in Star Trek, designed to motivate the characters and reflect their suffering. Yes, the monster is definitely a badass killer, but it is redeemed following it’s empathic encounter with Joe, and goes on to kill no more. Like the kids Joe and Alice in the movie, the poor blighter just wants to be understood.

Then there’s the argument that it’s Alice, not Joe, that should be the primary protagonist. And I agree with this to a point. Thematically it makes more sense to move Alice into a more primary role as her story mirrors that of the creature more than that of Joe. Also, her relationship with her father is more volatile than that of Joe with his, so it would make the film more dramatic to have Alice’s stronger story arc dominate. Apart from his loneliness stemming from the loss of his mother, Joe is a remarkably calm and remarkably un-tormented teen who is seemingly able to provide the un-judgemental understanding to others that he craves so much. Therefore his story arc isn’t as strong as it might have been. In a film that is truly, genuinely gripping, exciting and powerfully moving, it’s only a minor gripe, but it’s something that could have propelled Super 8 into the leagues of E.T. which is superior thanks to it’s simpler, more streamlined plotting.

Technically Super 8 is flawless. The photography by Larry Fong is superlatative, being grainy, realistic, with dynamic lens flares and vibrant, rich colours. It reminds me of legendary cinematographer Dean Cundy whose brilliant early work on John Carpenter films allowed him to top my go-to lighting guy list. Michael Giacchino who supplies the score, once again knocks it out of the ball park (following his distinctive old-school work on Star Trek, Let Me In and Cars 2) with a soundtrack that evokes old school John Williams.

The kids are particularly well cast with the stand outs being Joel Courtney who plays hero Joe, and Ellie Fanning (sister of Dakota and just as big an acting freak) who is just as emotive in Super 8 as her character is in the film-within-a-film “The Case”. It’s an unusually emotional adventure movie for a film released in this decade, and has been accused of being overtly manipulative. However, despite a lump-in-the-throat climax, Super 8 never descends into the saccharine coated schmaltz that represents the worst excesses of Spielberg (eg, The Twilight Zone Movie or Hook). Best of all though, Abrams directs the living crap out of this, recalling the best of Zemekis, Spielberg and Dante with it’s sweeping cameras, inventive camera moves and accessible character based drama. It’s fantastic to see a good old fashioned adventure for kids with an unashamed agenda for keeping the drama to the fore and grounded in reality. Super 8 isn’t quite perfection, put it’s not far off and delivers one of the most satisfying cinema experiences of the year.

August Pick N Mix - Part 1

A Hangover spoof with Dolph Ludgren...

Shark Hangover from Dolph Lundgren

A Cowboy's & Aliens spoof with director Jon Favreau...



A link to the website, Gary Busey Goes To War...HERE.



A missing scene from season one of LOST proving it's creators had a grand plan all along...



And finally this outstanding music video incorporating footage from Planet Of The Apes...