Hextuple Bill Mini (and Cine) Musings: Speed, Money, Sand, Aliens, Action, and Gore...

Fast Five:
The original movie was a pretty decent flick. I never bothered with the second or third movies, the fourth movie left me cold when the action wasn't punching, and the fifth ... well, it's actually bloody good fun. Realism is out the window in favour of big cars, big guys, and bigger action. Set in Rio, this fifth instalment brings practically every familiar face from the franchise into one huge spectacular - so characterisation, which was never a big issue in the franchise, is naturally surface-deep pretty much all the way through.

What does keep the movie bashing along at a bloody good whack though, is the action. Justin Lin clearly knows how to deliver plenty of bang for your buck, and in a movie where everything is ridiculously massive (including franchise newbie Dwayne Johnson who resembles a gun-toting mountain driving around in a glacier-sized uber 4x4) things get crazy in a big bad way. Seemingly inspired in-part by the Rio-set levels in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (a ballsy action extravaganza of a videogame), it's insanity from beginning to end with genuinely spiffing action which makes up for any drawbacks. Big, dumb fun defined.


Arthur:
The remake is upon us, weirdly at a time of financial restraint in the era of Deficit Reduction, so naturally the original with Dudley Moore was going to be trotted out. If it wasn't for Moore, who is a charmingly useless multi-multi-multi-millionaire-to-be old soak, it wouldn't be particularly interesting.


Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time:
In need of another Pirates of the Carribean (even though a fourth is on its way, no doubt ready to inspire two more sequels in-turn), Bruckheimer & Co make a big budget videogame adaptation starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a Persian Prince from the streets who gets mixed up with Gemma Arterton and a special dagger from the Gods which can turn back time. Clash of the Titans (2010) was complete and utter bollocks, a dreary old mess, but fortunately Sands of Time has decent action and a fairly decent script - notably in some nice banter between the two leads in the first half. It's no Pirates in terms of rogue charm and romp-factor, but it's not a total slouch either.


Dreamcatcher:
I do enjoy a Stephen King adaptation, even if the quality varies wildly, however this tale of four telepathic buddies getting mixed up in some alien invasion - that involves butt-born worms that inspire plenty of gas in their hosts - quickly rolls downhill from intriguing, to poorly realised. It feels off-kilter with a decidedly uneven tone and some underwhelming performances. I recall hearing pretty mixed reviews of it back when it originally came out, and now I know why. The Mist was far, far, far better.


Tango & Cash:
I'd never seen this slab of late-80s action until just the other day, and I don't know what's taken me so long. Aside from a couple of moments that are either too-comical or too-cheesy (cross-dressing, and a hokey bullet-proof van), it's a bloody good laugh - the humour and acerbic banter between Stallone and Russell being the key to the flick's charm. The style, fun, and good helping of explosive action help the movie sidestep any flaws along the way.


Saw VI:
The increasingly convoluted, nonsensical, and grusomely violent 'torture porn' (how I dislike that term) franchise hasn't been any good since part 3, but part 6 - which I've only just gotten around to - is easily the best out of parts 4, 5 and 6. There's a solid premise at the heart of the plot - revolving around the company that provided (and redacted) Jigsaw's health insurance. The opening is, however, weak - and a handful of side characters are annoyingly underwritten/just plain stupid - but it moves with a swift old pace and is, mercifully, not as pointless and incomprehensible as the previous two entries ... but it's still far removed from the low budget shocker that established an increasingly cliched and repetitive franchise. The first movie was actually bloody good, so it's a shame that this factory-line approach to the sequels has sullied the quality and importance of the original.

SAW V...

Yes - it has taken me ages to get around to musing on this flick - but never mind, because here comes some muse-juice.

Saw V, basically it's an entire film made simply to explain what the fuck happened in Saw IV, and why the fuck that Hoffman dude - who looked pretty much identical to that Strahm guy - decided to come over all Jigsaw's New Apprentice. As Amanda got the Alan Sugar treatment for not paying attention to "the rules", and simply made torture devices to do nothing but kill, she was out of the game.

There's a similar strand connected to this Hoffman dude, but it's all pretty up in the air to be honest. Why bother investing the time and effort into believing what's happened when it'll just be re-explained in the next movie or two?

I thought the original Saw was a genuinely interesting and fresh slice of low budget indie horror ... then Saw II happened (resulting from a non-Saw script that was so similar to the franchise in question here, they just said "oh fuck it, just make that the next Saw movie instead") which was decidedly "meh" ... then Saw III came along, and I thought tidied it all up quite nicely. I would have ideally left it there - Jigsaw dies, Amanda dies, that nurse dies, the dude dies and the kid is left in that room - a suitably bleak, but final ending to the franchise.

Then they simply had to blunder in with the abominable Saw IV, in which they thought "oh bugger, we've practically killed off every single character except for one or two 'background artists' who had a couple of lines - let's make them the new focus of the movie!" ... so we ended up with that SWAT guy, who suddenly decides to overstep his official duties and come over all Inspector Gadget - minus the gadgets, humour, dog, niece, but with all the dopey barging forward.

I bet he wishes he had a ruff-talking dog and a super-smart crime-fighting niece watching his back though, because like many of the characters in the Saw franchise, they don't pay a blind bit of notice to "the rules" - a factor especially galling in Saw IV and now Saw V. You'd have thought that, mostly being detectives, they'd detect the key to surviving a Jigsaw "test" - do what he says, listen carefully to the message (although admittedly, you don't have to listen that carefully to get the underlying message).

At this stage it's become a franchise centred around torturing bastards and testing career-obsessed people in possession of one-tracked-minds.

Saw V is no different - you've got the ludicrous amount of time-line-bothering back-and-forth, a protagonist that doesn't pay attention to "the rules", a bunch of daft twists, more evidence of how Jigsaw seemingly possessed the ability to foresee the future as clear as crystal (explained limply by saying 'if you can predict human behaviour, then you'll do alright in this game sunshine') and of course - lashings of gore.

Now, as a gore-hound, the effects are eye-saucering ... although the sheer volume of nastiness, rather than Savini-style spectacle and magic, becomes swiftly hard-to-swallow, especially when you realise that there's yet more Saw films to come ... a sixth for sure.

Like I suggested earlier, it should have ended at Saw III, nuff said ... but oh no, they've gotta keep blundering on, making the franchise stray into intensely preposterous territory and further and further away from it's indie roots of intrigue and shock.

Saw V didn't shock me. I did grimace a couple of times - but then again, if you don't grimace at some poor bastard's forearm bursting through his flesh with squishy sound effects, then you simply aren't human and nobody in their right mind would want to meet you down a dark alley. Was Saw V any better than Saw IV? Probably, because it explained (mostly) what the fuck Saw IV was supposed to all be about.

The franchise really has become an industry unto itself (with spiralling production costs, and diminishing returns) ... a cookie cutter industry. Take the "Hello Zepp" theme tune, whack it on the audio track, give the cameraman some speed and some assorted hallucinatory drugs so he can flap around all over the latest trap like an ADD-addled hamster, have the writers take another kind of drug that lends itself to developing vast plot twists that could rival the daftest conspiracies bandied about by morons on "teh intarwebz" for head-scratched "eh?"-ness ... ... *gasp* ... ... then get an editor who also acts like a drug-addled rodent, and some CGI whizz-kid to splash a bit of digital-gore about to help turn the whole film into a frenetic lump of chaos in post production.

And new to the method with Saw V, add a bunch of distracting oval patches of post-production work where you've had to lighten the image up because you've suddenly realised the image is too dark, when really, you should have just left it alone.

So in summary (about time too), Saw V ... well I guess it's better than Saw IV, but that movie was utter shite, so it's not saying much really is it? Well, see you in a few months for some chit-chat about Saw VI, I guess...*sigh*

Mum & Dad...

Low budget Brit-horror, the British Texas Chainsaw Massacre as those behind the flick tout it, and you can see why. A ram-shackle band of a 'family' inflicting untold horrors upon their captives, while the filmmakers completely shred the rosy image the vast majority of the viewing public have when "family" springs to mind ... or indeed "Mum & Dad" ... which is quite possibly at the heart of why this flick fucks with your head.

Just saying the title immediately sparks your brain into thinking that you're on about your own parents, when in fact you're talking about the fictional "Mum & Dad" in this "micro budget" horror (the words of Microwave, one the groups behind it, not me - £100,000 to me is a shedload of cash).

Anyway - fucked up this movie most definitely is, and it's not always from what you see - it's often what you see suggests. At the peak of this mountain of creep-inducing familial slaying is 'what' is upstairs ... when you think beyond what you're simply seeing in those moments, and a bit deeper (as the result of a few words), you can't help but screw yourself up into a ball making a variety of disturbed and/or disgusted noises.

It's low budget, it has a story, it sits amidst a group of horror movie peers which have always sat high above the rest of the genre - and indeed the many of today's offerings. Hostel as a franchise was never that good (I maintain that the two movies could have been merged into one script, and that that on film would have been worthwhile) ... and SAW, as a franchise, farted out like a released baloon when #4 came along (#1 and #3 good, #2 meh, #4 shite, #5 I haven't even seen yet).

It doesn't hang around either at a slim 85 minutes, but it's a must-see for proper horror fans seeking something much more than another trap-obsessed torture film with either little to say, or such a preposterously convoluted plot you just can't be arsed.

And for those who saw High Tension (aka Switchblade Romance) and thought it was messed up when the dude shags that severed head ... well, take that general idea ... and just make it more disturbed. Yep, that's one of the multitude of reasons why "Mum & Dad" is highly recommended to all horror-heads.

The Strangers...

Took me a while to get around to this one, but I finally got around to it. In a world of ever-increasing splatter dished out by an impossibly-forward/backward/upside-down-thinking cancerous engineer (Saw 4 was almost entirely crap, and Saw 5 is no doubt of a similar pong), it's a pleasant surprise to find that the old art of suspense remains out there somewhere.

Admittedly there occasionally is a reliance on 'shock bangs', which are an incredibly cheap way to scare your audience (the cinema equivalent of your mate yelping "BOO!" at you from behind the sofa). However, there is also that slow, creeping sense of dread (kind of like living under a Labour government) that isn't used nearly as much in the mainstream as I'd like.

The flick isn't quick to please, it crawls along at it's own pace thank you very much, and quite masterfully cranks up the tension and worry of that which is not understood - namely, what the fuck are these masked nutters here for? "Because you were home", as the trailer chillingly mutters.

This sense of dread aside, the film does begin to crawl too much once it's gotten going. Do these masked freaks do much else but disappear from sight and creep around houses? A dash more propulsion in the second act could have helped solve this droop. Strange really, the film is a mix of two types of slow pacing - the good, and the bad.

I can't see this going down well with the moronic, gore-hungry-and-nothing-else-will-do folks who consider SAW 4 to be a superb slice of terror, but for those who like their horror genre varied, there'll be some meat to chew on here.

Two effed up flicks...

Teeth:

It's just one of those fucked up movies, and obviously you freak out with eek-eyed shock everytime a male member gets lopped off - but then again, all such members get severed as a result of some form of sexual violence, disrespect or just plain old perviness.

Otherwise, I wasn't particularly fussed by the rest of the movie at all, and ended up skimming a magazine at the same time between the shock parts of the movie. Basically that's it, I found it to be generally "meh/alright" with moments of intense "WTF" mixed in.

Funny Games:

Finally got around to checking this one out, and yet again another fucked up film. Mind you, there's barely any violence on screen. Apparently the director is harping on at we the viewer because we should be ashamed of ourselves for watching movies like SAW and Rambo.

Ugh - roll eyes time - fair play you could say, but I think all movies have a purpose (whether it's worth while or not is a per-movie assessment though).

For example, Rambo is a great film and the greatest slice of old school, hardcore action blokery since the 1980s. Yes, it's exceptionally violent and gory - but importantly, you're shocked when said violence is descended upon the innocent, and then you're cheering when it's dished back out against the vile, scum-sucking military junta who conduct themselves in an excessively sickening manner. Plus, it does highlight the Burmese plight while at the same time providing action entertainment - what's wrong with that?

As for SAW, it was the set-up that hooked me in first of all, and then the twisting of the story. The gore in the first one is present, but far from excessive (so I'd say anyway), and it was the plight the character's faced that captured my attention - and indeed the twist had me slack-jawed and WTF-ing for a good while after the end credits. SAW II, which was based on a non-SAW script, wasn't cracked up to much. A naff story and often cringe-inducing gore gags didn't leave a good impression, but then SAW III - with it's back-tracking plot and better story - redelivered the goods. Mind you, the gore gags were far more gruesome than the first film ... and it becomes less about entertainment, than shock cinema survival.

Then came SAW IV ... which was a total load of garbage, no doubt SAW V and indeed VI will continue in the same vein as IV.

But anyway - Funny Games, which is what I'm supposed to be on about. Superb performances throughout by all involved, and as a result the simple story often keeps you gripped (even if at times the pacing felt a bit sluggish at certain points). That said, some of the quieter moments - like trying to raise the alarm seemingly after the worst is over - feels real and honest, and indeed the off-screen violence does up the power of the action, but then again so does using a target that is rarely used in film (you'll see what I mean about half way through).

So a generally impressive film, but I do object to the eye-roll-inducing, somewhat holier-than-thou preaching regarding on-screen violence ... I mean, chill out - you're making a fictional movie, sheesh.

Also - I'd much rather have mankind work out their inner turmoil, violence, hatred and all other nasty goings on in a safe medium - such as videogames, or film - rather than do what the vast minority do and take it out on real people, on the real streets and in the real homes of our real, actual world.

The first long-arse blog of 2008...

Well, we're firmly into 2008 now and I figured I'd knock up the first big post of the year with a kind of seasonal round up, although I mostly just indulged and watched DVDs, but still...

One thing is for certain, now armed with a new digital photo camera, I have been taking pictures of all sorts of things around the house. I'm particularly transfixed by close ups...I guess it's my background in art coming back through this device which has enabled it in a more quick & easy way. Plus it makes making graphics for my own short films easier.

But the holidays are for lazing about, and yes I certainly relished the opportunity. It was a DVD marathon alright, so I guess I'll give a quick run down of my viewings (or indeed re-viewings):

Superbad - even better than the first time I saw it now that I'm familiar enough with it to quote-as-it-goes, so-to-speak. Seth Rogen & Co are unquestionably comedic masters. Bring on Pineapple Express!

Alien, Aliens, Alien3 - I got all hot & bothered to get the Ultimate Edition DVDs for them, and I now appreciate them even more than I did, especially the first and third (Aliens is one of my absolute all-time faves). Alien is a masterpiece and Ridley Scott is a genius. Alien3 is a troubled gem with an air of greater things, thanks to David Fincher.

Long Way Down - not as good as Long Way Round, because LWR was just perfect, but still a bloody good adventure to admire and inspire. Bring on Long Way Up!

The A-Team: Season 4 - the majority of the episodes are actually rather good, though the celebrity guest episodes are just pandering, but the show over all has improved at this stage in it's life. Still awesome.

28 Weeks Later - I once scoffed at it, assuming it'd be a cheap and nasty money-spinner trash sequel, but it actually turned out to be equally as good as the original film. It even had a good story to match the visuals!

Spider-Man 3 - wordier than I remember it in the cinema, but still a great romp with a story to boot. Leaving it at three would be no crime, and Sam Raimi could do with returning to his roots for a laugh with his mate Bruce.

Halloween 2007 - having seen the work print, the unrated director's cut is much tighter. Not perfect and not as good as the original (obviously), but is a proper remake - not "name rape" like the new versions of "Dawn of the Dead" (Yawn04) or "Day of the Dead" (Day of the Remake -aka- Day of the Flying Bulgarian Vegetarian Zombies -aka- Careers of the Dead). Michael Myers is at last scary again!

Ricky Gervais: Fame - the least of his stand ups, still mostly funny but nowhere near the quality of the Extras Christmas Special, which was just superb.

I Am Legend - not complete trash, but the infected a bit gash and the final third is a bit cack-handed. At times though it's rather spiffy, and Will Smith actually gets to act instead of wink at the audience. The Omega Man was better though.

SAW IV - least of the series. A convoluted re-hash of the earlier films with a shite continuation of Jigsaw's work. The impact of the first film has long since worn off, and the suitably twisty script of SAW III has been snubbed. Surely it's all downhill for the two coming back-to-back sequels?

American Gangster - not Ridley Scott's best film by far, nor Denzel's. It's not shite, not by a long shot, but I've certainly seen the 'rise & fall of a criminal figure' story several times before, and at times done better I feel. To me it didn't have a strong enough Ridley vibe, to be honest.

This Is Spinal Tap - yes I've only just gotten around to it. Didn't laugh uncontrollably, but appreciated it nonetheless. I guess it just doesn't resonate with me personally as much as it does with others, but regardless I can appreciate it's quality.

Jackass 2.5 - it sucks that the Vito/Lambo tooth yank was excised. The deleted Wildboyz footage is hit & miss, but the rest is decent enough. Hopefully the DVD will plump it up a bit more and provide some more laughs, once it's in stock anyway, I'm still waiting for it.

...

So a well appreciated couple of weeks to lounge around and eat it was, although the wickedly harsh spot of indigestion I got a few nights after Xmas Day sucked big style...now though, the decorations have been cruelly yanked out of my life and stored away for the ass-end of 2008 ... this of course means that I've returned to writing.

For the past few days I've been busy refining the second act of my comedy script, which I'll just refer to as "GenPro" (a short nickname of the full, working title). Next up - planning out and then actually doing the third act...and of course, after that it'll be onto one of two horror scripts I've got percolating in the old noggin.

And there you have it, the first beast-sized blog of 2008!

The post-Halloween round up - part 2...

Additionally I checked out "SAW IV", which from the off I felt was unnecessary. To be honest it was tied up nicely at the end of the third film, but they've found a way to keep it all going (albeit a bit of a naff one, just find a new apprentice in pretty much the same way as before).

I am a huge fan of the original "SAW", it was fresh, unique and the ending left my jaw on the floor (although not hacked off in a pool of blood thankfully). The follow-up however, I didn't really like. The premise wasn't as good, the characters were cut and paste bastards - whore, junkie, whiny little bitch teenager, panicky white collar worker, school-of-hard-knocks black guy and so forth. No wonder it wasn't as good, it was based on Bousman's own script for a completely different film, and James Wan did not have a hand in the script (only Leigh Whannel). However, those two chaps did have their hands in the script for "SAW III", which produced a much better film than "SAW II" I feel, the ciclical nature of the film - treading alternate and unseen angles of plot from the first two films - was what I enjoyed most ... and yes, rotted-pig-slush-device-thing was the grossest thing I've seen for a long time.

As for "SAW IV", with damn near everybody from the previous three films slaughtered - including the main man himself - you just think, what's the point? Sooner or later everyone is going to die, even if they do escape a trap, they'll just be brought back and continue to not think outside of their own boxes so they'll just get hacked up again. With the first three, particularly the first and to a lesser extent the third, you actually cared and wanted people to escape their fates (I could have barely given a thrupny toss about those in part two, bar Donnie Wahlberg).

Another gripe is the sheer scale of the tricks, devices and so on. The scale of the devices is getting a bit silly now, particularly the main set piece in this fourth outing. It's just too big, too flashy and too designed. The great thing about the first film was it was just some grotty old bogs in a grotty old tiled room and the premise of their predicament was fairly simple, yet still terrifying and horrific.

Inevitably this was going to happen to the franchise, everytime you show a bit more and get a bit more outlandish, you have to go further the next time...but can't you just make it more mentally torturous than visually icky? 100 ick units and 0 mental units (to use a bizarre equation I've just cobbled together) is nowhere near as good as 50 ick units and 50 mental units.

The sheer thought of the predicament in the first "SAW", plus the adequate (and at the time actually fairly extreme) gore was an ideal combination. No doubt this won't be the case for "SAW V" or "VI" (which are to be shot back-to-back apparently - not a good sign, most back-to-backs usually suck, and this late in the day as well - have they not seen "Return of the Living Dead 4 & 5"?!)

But to end on a higher note, what I did enjoy about "SAW IV" was the continued way the franchise circles around the same area of events and characters, minor parts from earlier films become main parts (with varied success), and events flash back to earlier events as well as parallel events. You could say that the "SAW" franchise is the new "Friday the 13th" franchise for the 2000's, but in terms of horror in general, at least this franchise seeks to link the films together with at least some depth and complexity.

I appreciate what they're doing with the franchise immensely, but they really need to look back at the first film and regain control over themselves before it gets completely ludicrous and out-of-hand. The best way to make a good sequel is to properly understand the films that preceded it, rather than the cliche of "bigger this, this and this".