The remake of Death Race opens with the eerily real text “2012. The US economy has collapsed”. Who would have thunk it? Team Jason Statham up with P.W.S Anderson and they become the cinematic equivalent of Nostradamus. This film has a prescient nature up there with the work of George Orwell. At the very least its a sign of our times, at middling Stath and Pretty Wank Scriptwriter are the harbingers of a doom that may be just round the corner. But before we get there lets enjoy some cars and shit.
Our very own Jason Statham (yes we own the rights to him being British as we are) is Jensen Ames, a former Nascar racer who is framed for the murder of his wife and sent to the toughest prison in the world. Coincidentally, or not, they have races at this prison where you can win your freedom. All you have to do is kill everyone else and win 5 races. But when our Stath realises that I wrote ‘coincidentally, or not’ a couple of sentences ago he begins to question why he’s been brought to this particular prison. Once the penny drops, angry Stath want revenge.
Before hurting my soul by saying that Death Race is immensely enjoyable, despite its shallow nature, I just want to return to more amazing predictions that this crystal ball film makes. First there is a riot scene at the start which looks strangely like the Republican convention footage of that fat hippy getting hit with bikes. Secondly Joan Allen (as the head of the prison) is playing a bulldog with lipstick who runs the world (well the world we inhabit). And she’s evangelical. And looks quite hot in a suit. Death Race is what will happen if you silly Americans don’t vote in Obama! And we can’t keep loaning you Jason to save the day.
So, yeah, I enjoyed this. The stuntwork over CGI was commendable. Its funny, gory, exciting. Each actor nails their role from Jase to Lovejoy and in particular Gov Palin, sorry, Ms. Allen. As it features the four elements of a lads film (guns, violence, cars, women in skimpy clothing) it has to be dumber than a bag of hammers. The offshoot of this is no Nuts or Zoo readers head is going to explode once some plot is introduced. Which is a shame. But going back to the predictions stuff, don’t worry too much about this all coming true, because it does take the dystopian element a bit too far. In one harrowing scene Stereophonics are playing on the radio. Surely by 2012 we would have put a stop to this kind of thing. For the sake of humanity.
I’m not one to suck my own cock to completion, sorry, I mean, I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, but I like to think I know a thing or two about movies. So when the trailers for Appaloosa turned up I was pretty shaken to the core that a movie directed by and starring Ed Harris, with support from Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons and Renee Zellweger could skip me by so easily. While its a Western a few months off of Oscar season (therefore not thought of as up to much by the studio) I’d still have expected a small amount of prior knowledge, but here I sit trousers round my ankles, sporting a silly look on my face.
To aid other movie fans that may not now bupkis about Appaloosa its about a couple of hired guns, Ed “Supporting role” Harris (as wannabe sheriff Virgil Cole) and his buddy Viggo “Looks like my friend Steve” Mortensen (playing his deputy Everitt Hitch). The pair are enlisted by the folk of Appaloosa to protect them from big bad Jeremy “I met a man with seven wives” Irons. Renee “No eyes in her name or face” Zellweger turns up for a bit of subplot as she tries to boff everyone in town. Its a small town but, still. Ho.
Its a bit of a shame this film is so under the radar because it ain’t half bad. Not a revisionist Western like say Unforgiven or Dances With Wolves, its more of a typical old fashioned one like last years remake of 3:10 to Yuma containing that rare thing in PC times, bad injuns that wanna rapes white womens. Its got its own town whore in the shape of Renee (although she ain’t a typical whore) and enough hands waverig over guns to keep any redneck happy for a couple a hours.
At times it feels a bit like everyone is having a bit of a dress up (due mainly to the flat direction) and playing at cowboys and ho’s. This makes the theatrical nature of the piece far outway the cinematic experience but thanks to some great banter between the History of Violence co-stars it becomes an enjoyable hark back to the good old days, where Westerns were about the good guy with an edge kicking seven shades of shite out of the bad guy. Yee and indeeed Haw!
Early on in Righteous Kill Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino’s characters are likened to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Now its not a bad comparison for the actors as they were quite possibly the two most influential people in their field for a good portion of the 60′s and 70′s, just like the moptops. But as I tried desperately to look for more links all I could come up with is, like John Lennon, DeNiro has done fuck all of worth lately. At least John has an excuse.
Taking the lead (quite wrongly considering the above statement), DeNiro is Turk a long in the tooth detective with serious anger problems who spends most of his workday running around calling people “Mutts” as if its the most offensive term imaginable. The sober Ying to DeNiros raging Yang is Rooster (Pacino), a calm, collected detective who will do anything for his partner. When murders start edging ever closer to the two detectives door, suspicion is cast on everyone including the Heat duo.
Even sans the ridiculous character names, Righteous Kill is a very, very silly film. While for most of its running time its just a run of the mill cop movie waste of time sterotype it has a really, really stupid ending that I’m not just calling stupid because I was too stupid to get. I don’t get twists ever (bar The Village which I got after three seconds, the ‘no date’ gave it away), I’m constantly falling for the red herring and you know what I’m happy in my ignorance. It is indeed bliss. But just because I didn’t get the twist does not mean that after I left the auditorium I wasn’t standing there berating the fact that it just doesn’t work.
The main draw of Vito and Michael sharing more than just a coffee pays off surprisingly well for the opening third of the movie. But annoyingly soon after that you remember that while the two sure can act they couldn’t tell a dud script from a hit if each page was lamenated in plastic turds. Cliche after cliche is hurled at the screen with an amazing amount of direspect for the audience even before the ridiculously unimpressive twist. Sure William Goldman once said “Nobody Knows Anything” in reference to how a film will turn out, which almost clears the two main actors but I think the words ‘Directed by Jon Avnet’ will, from now on, be a crystal clear clue.
Damn it must be hard work being a parent. As the child grows they’re bound to resent you. If you stay away working for their upbringing they’ll hate you for it. If you divorce there’s the danger of them favouring their new rich father. They might even become U2 fans. They might want to leave the safety of the good ol’ USA and go to Europe. And then, then they will definitely get kidnapped by sex traffickers and face drug addiction and death. Definitely.
I think it best to let Liam Neeson’s pissed off Daddy Bryan explain what will happen if you snatch his 17-year old daughter. Thanks to a fair few years in the field of torturing foreigners he has, “…a very particular set of skills. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.” Damn skippy he will.
The first twenty minutes feature a piss-yer-pants funny overly paranoid Liam telling his daughter not to go to Paris. Evil, evil, Paris. And when this brillaintly surreal premise that if you leave America you will get fucked, gets ino full swing the movie becomes one of the best/worst most enjoyable/most offensively ignorant fims of the year. No wonder 80% of Americans don’t have passports. Justified xenophobia with lines such as “My job made me aware!” are delivered with such tongue removed from mouth that you’ll either scream with laughter or scream with disgust.
Me, I was well on the side of laughter. Every time Holly Valance’s singer turns up the film goes up a notch on the ludicrous-ometer. Thats either because the idea of someone wanted to assassinate her is ridiculous or her reappearance at the end in the ‘look everything is okay after all’ ending is so far removed from reality it might as well have UFO’s flying out of her butt. The fact that sex trafficking is the theme of the film makes the laughter dy up occasionally but its not long before Johnny foreigner is being dealt a healthy dose of justice American style by Bryan. Featuring the worst kind of ‘don’t you dare leave the country’ sensationalism Taken is a terrible, terrible movie that I implore you to watch.
I’ve been crying a lot lately. Yeah, I know. Imagine that big beardy face (although you have to replace the brown hair for blonde and the beard is noticeably shorter) pissing tears from the eyeballs. Well whilst watching Wall-E, I’ve been having a good cry. Whilst reading the double whammy of The Time Travellers Wife and The Lovely Bones, I’ve been having a good cry. Listening to Joni Mitchell, having a good cry. Surely a movie about a childs view of the Holocaust was bound to open the tear ducts. Surely?
8-year old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the son of a high ranking Nazi official (David Thewlis). When his family moves from Berlin to a house in the country overlooking an unnamed concentration camp, Bruno gets lonely. Banned from venturing to the back of the house where he may come into contact with the imprisoned Jews, Bruno does just that. There he makes friends with Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a boy the same age, with the same childhood interests, just sitting on the wrong side of the fence.
You can see a million films about the Holocaust and yet every shot of a malnourished, fragile body dressed in black and white stripes or chimney billowing smoke will still send a shiver down your spine. Using a childs eyes to shoot this vicious hatred is a novel approach but not without its faults. The biggest fault of all is the shifting of focus from one of histories greatest atrocities to the trials and tribulations of just one child. Yes, the ending is a kicker of the highest order but the way the film is put together makes the sympathy lie only with one instead of the millions. Young and old alike.
The ‘innocence lost’ strand of the film is never fully acknowledged, for Bruno doesn’t get to see what his father is capable of, until he experiences it too late. Instead it is left to Vera Farmiga, as the mother, who gets to voice the horrors in a sadly underwritten role. As for the clipped British tones instead of thick badly spoken German accents its certainly preferable, but why not subtitle the dialogue if authenticity is as high on the agenda as it seems to be? Its all these things that make The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas too flawed to belong in the company of truly great, not movies, but lessons about the hatred of one group for another. And they’re also the reasons I didn’t well up, even once.
If I was a lesbian…No wait I mean a feminist. If I was a feminist I’d be absolutley…actually lets go back to that first one. If I was a lesbian I would be…no…okay I’ll save it for another time. So, If I was a feminist I’d be so infuriantingly pissed off with Hollywood. The Women is a rare beast in that it features nothing but women (even supporting cast and extras are female). Finally a chance to say something important, something of interest. No, okay, shoes and how shit men are it is then.
What The Women would like to be is a story of the deteriaration of a marriage from the female perspective. What The Women turns out to be is a cheap Sex and the City rip off that features the main associative one (Meg Ryan), the male one (Annette Benning), the hippy one (Debra Messing) and the black lesbian one (Jada Pinkett Smith) all worrying about what other people think of them and how their lives revolve around having cock. Except in the case of the black lesbian one, i.e the interesting one. But she gets no screen time so fuck her.
All these women do is look each other up and down, despising each others very souls because they may have handbags that clash with their shoes. Or maybe someone has had some bad plastic surgery (heaven forbid anyone who grows old in this land) that they can laugh at. What could be mistaken for diatribes about superficiality aren’t, because each and everyone one of them is scourning the other if they so much look at a sandwich or wear sweatpants.
Another reason these jibes don’t work is that Meg looks like she’s had facial reconstructive surgery performed by the Joker. I’m not one for fucking about on your spouse but I think if Harry saw what they’d done to Sally even he might stray from the coup. That or hang himself with electrical tape. As for the cameos from Bette Midler and Carrie Fisher its enough to make you vote for Sarah Palin such is the weakness of the silver screen women. Carrie, I thought you were a lesbian and a feminist. And a script doctor! Hope selling your sex down the river was worth it Leia.
After 135 movies I would have expected more of a titter, a chortle or a good hearty laugh. In Bruges had a fair few giggles but it was never really an out-and-out chuckle fest. Wall-E was more adventure than comedy (although Presto, the short before, tickled the funny bone like no other Pixar). As for the real ‘comedies’ of the year most have fallen flatter than a Jim Davidson gig at a Mosque. Thank Holy Allah for Pineapple Express then.
In the great tradition of movies about people getting high and then shit happening (see Cheech and Chong, Harold and Kumar) we have Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) a process server who enjoys ‘hits from the bong’, and his dealer Saul Silver (James Franco) getting high before, you guessed it, shit hapens. The shit in this instance is Dale witnessing the murder of a rival drug dealer by Ted Jones (Gary Cole). When Dale drops his joint full of Pineapple Express, an easily traceable brand of herb, he and his pharmacist have to go on the run. Something easier to do when not as high as the Northern Star.
I don’t say it lightly that this is one of the funniest films of the year. And it would have to be because the story blows. Straight out of a bad 80′s movie the film jumps from one stupid scene to the next with absolutely no regard for plot logic or cohesion. But who the hell cares when it contains some of the best dialogue of the year and a performance in James Franco that makes me believe he could actually play the Buckley biopic. Not based on this role you understand its just he now has that wonderful actorly thing called ‘range’. I don’t want a thousand angry Jeff fans saying he weren’t no stoner because then I’d have to counter-act by saying ‘did you really mean to use a double negative’ and the argument would just go on and on…
Anyway, Franco is probably the most adorable drug dealer ever (certainly nicer than the ones who hang out outside my house), all puppy dog eyes and ‘aw shucks’ looks. That his Saul and Dale aren’t actually friends at the start of the film gives a new take on the ‘friends get high’ genre and helps the film in its weaker moments. One thing you might not be expecting though is the high level of violence on screen. Its all funny and silly but coming on the back of a double bill of Eden Lake it did lead me to wince even at the comical Daewoo death. Thankfully the ‘violence can be funny’ spirit took over and as the credits rolled the closest film to compare it to seemed to be Pulp Fiction. High praise for High Times Readers.
If anyone ever wants to know the difference between British and American movies, Eden Lake and E.T. would be good examples to cite. While the later has kids on BMX’s trying desperately to help a cute alien back to his homeworld, the former has kids on BMX’s torturing and trying to kill a middle class couple for the minor crime of asking them to turn their music down and keep control of their dog. Welcome to Broken Britain. Daily Mail readers beware, Eden Lake is a middle class nightmare.
As any good social horror does Eden Lake starts with a lovely, perfect couple getting out of their comfort zone. Complete with Chelsea tractor and satnav, Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (Michael Fassbender) travel to an abandoned quarry where Steve plans to pop the question. Plans go a little wry when half the cast of This Is England turn up and kick off. Events spiral out of control in a sometimes believable sometimes not way, but the end result is terrifying none-the-less.
In fact the believeability of it all was something I had to question just to get me to sleep at night, which means job done in horror terms. Thankfully I found some loopholes that I won’t go into here (remember I only give away the ending to shit films) and managed to sleep reasonably soundly. The fact that my nocturnal nature was nearly disturbed at all is thanks to superb performances all round, with extra kudos to Jack O’Connell as the chief hood. The interplay between the main couple is also ridiculously strong and makes the fear all the more effective because of it.
Yet another bonus the film gains is that when the focus shifts from the couple on the run to the peer pressure tension within the group the film gets even better. I’m not convinced that I’d put it quite up as high as Irreversible in the ‘classic I’ll never watch again’ category, but I would say it gets a place in the ‘very, very good film I’ll never watch again’ section. Sadly even after watching the film I still have a bit of a problem with the title. My alternatives are Boys wiv the Hoods, The Hood, The Chavs and the Ugly, or just simply BMX Bastards. Send your titles to the usual address…
I can’t rip Hollywood nearly half as well as Hollywood can rip itself. As many references as I make to “obnoxious, appaling, deathwank” or “enjoying snuff movies of my family more than their output” it’ll never be as biting as say The Player or Swimming With Sharks. Which is why I was looking forward to Ben Stillers latest with a degree of enthusiasm usually reserved for an episode of The Wire or Christmas DinDins with the family. Well, the biting satire and the black Robert Downey Jr.
When the filming of a huge budgeted war movie looks like losing its way due to the actors bad temperament, british director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) sends his actors into the jungle. While there, the actors, including beyond his best years action star Tug Speedman (Ben Stiller), method man Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr) and flatulence comedy king Jeff Portney (Jack Black) stumble across some real life villains. Using only there Rada training to help them the boys must survive the real horror of war. By farting and playing spastics.
Tropic Thunder opens with 5 minutes of the funniest cinema of the year. 2 fake adverts and 3 fake trailers that looks set to pave the way for something inventive, clever and even boundary pushing. What follows is the same jokes repeated ad naeseum for nearly 2 hours. The main flaw is in the under-development of the characters. Stiller is just Zoolander as an actor, Black is Chris Farley or John Belushi (i.e. the person Jack would have become if we didn’t live in a post modern age) which leaves Kirk as the only interesting character. And as much as Bob Jr. plays the ‘not Russell Crowe’ thesp superbly he’s not given nearly enough screen time to help the audience get over the fact that ‘hey, that Downey is playing a black guy!’.
A lenghty speech about the dangers of playing a ‘full retard’ is a much needed highpoint and Tom Cruises potty mouthed ‘not Paramount boss’ is a chuckle to begin with but once the credits roll the film resorts to said actor dancing in a moronic fashion for 5 minutes. Finally its the scene where the actors convince Tug to join them in their journey home because his shit movies changed their lives that you realise Josie and The Pussycats was more satirical. If The Player was Hollwood kicking seven shades of shit out of itself, Tropic Thunder is a really lame self inflected wedgie.
Bloody Cage. I don’t care who your Uncle is, stop remaking other peoples movies. Not content with Gone in Sixty Seconds, The Wicker Man, Family Man (It’s as close to Its A Wonderful Life as you’ll get without Jimmy rising from the grave to take revenge) he’s also been sniffing around Oldboy and as I type he’s going all Keitel in an updated Bad Lieutenant. In the meantime we have his latest re-vision/vanity project the story of a deaf, mute assasin. Except in Hollywood you get paid more for each line you say so that clever hook of deaf mutery goes out of the window and Cage is just simply a hitman with a Leon complex.
Instead of reading this synopsis you could just go watch Leon. It is my all time most favourite bestest film ever and I really haven’t praised it enough on this site. Suffice to say the plot covers many of the same routes, hitman grows a heart, takes on protege, forgets the rules he needs to live by, etc,etc. The main difference being in Bangkok Dangerous the ‘love’ interest and the protege are two seperate characters. The love interest being, you guessed it, a deaf, mute girl who works in a pharmacy. Well, you may not have guessed the pharmacy bit.
One of the most enjoyable things about hitmen movies is you don’t know where the central characters moral compass is pointing. Yeah they go around murdering folks, usually for cash, but 9 times out of 10 they come across as pretty damn likeable people (bar that Oswald guy, he sucked). Within two seconds of Cage growing his big red fluffy heart he may have worn a big, pink, badge saying “I’m a good guy now!”. John Cusack was a more morally ambiguous hitman in Grosse Pointe Blank. And he was Lloyd Dobler once. The nicest movie character ever.
Bar one pretty cool underwater assasination the film reeks of blandness and apart from the bad wig and gruff voice Cage is just going through the motions. Which seems strange when you consider if you’re remaking someone elses work you should really have a vested interest in how it all turns out. Surely thats why you turn up in the first place, to make something as good if not better than before? So my theory is this. Cage is remaking good films badly so people go check out the original. A Thai film about a deaf mute assasin? I’m up for that.
