Milano Calibro 9 (Fernando Di Leo, 1972) Blu-Ray Review

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“Society makes its criminals suffer and after that it ignores them.” Fernando Di Leo's crime flick gets off to an explosive start as, to the energetic sounds of prog rock, a package containing a large quantity of cash is transferred from one person to another amidst the autumnal streets and neon-lit subways of Milan, only for the real package to get switched with a fake somewhere along the line. The carriers are braced one-by-one in increasingly violent fashion – heads smashed into vases, faces slashed with straight razors – but to no avail; the money has vanished. So now, according to the rules of this vicious gang, they must be taken care of – by blowing them all up with dynamite! Now that's how you start a movie...

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"Kung Fury" - rogue cops, laser raptors, and who else but those damn Nazis?

Okay, so I'm a little late to the party on this one, but with so much on the World Wide Web vying for your attention - and with the vast spread of 'clickbait' headlines hovering above wasteful nonsense that never delivers and is only there to 'generate hits' - sometimes you can overlook a good thing.

Sometimes you can overlook a great thing - like Kung Fury - a thirty minute short film from David Sandberg and Laser Unicorns Productions that crams in more neo-1980s fun than you can shake the entire decade at. In the words of the filmmakers themselves: "Kung Fury is an over-the-top 80’s action comedy that was crowd funded through Kickstarter. It features Kung Fury, a Kung Fu renegade cop who travels back in time to kill his Nemesis, Hitler. The film features nazis, dinosaurs, vikings and cheesy one-liners."



The full version of the film is freely available to watch on YouTube HERE.

It was sitting on my 'Watch Later' list for a couple of months, and when I finally got around to viewing it I thought to myself "Why on earth have I waited this long to watch this?!" - so in case you're not one of the 19.8 million hits that this fantastically crazy short film has received GO AND WATCH THIS NOW!

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Double Bill Mini Musings: Undead Nazis and Crime Fighting Geezers...

Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead:
What's it about?
Picking up exactly where the first movie left off, Martin finds himself suspected of murdering his friends at the same time as having to contend with the General Herzog's growing army of zombie Nazis ... and as if that wasn't enough, now he's got Herzog's arm sewn to his body!
Who would I recognise in it?
Vegar Hoel, Martin Starr, Orjan Gamst, Ingrid Haas.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
"The sequel you did Nazi coming" ... if you enjoyed the over-the-top gore antics of Tommy Wirkola's breakout horror comedy you can expect more of the same in this more expansive sequel. It's arguably about five-to-ten minutes too long, but the increased scope adds spectacle. Do you want to see undead Nazis do battle with undead Russians? Look no further. Not only widening its scope in terms of scale, Dead Snow 2 seeks to attract a broader audience by including three American zombie fighters (while maintaining its Norwegian heritage). Packed with plenty of gore-ific gags (think Peter Jackson's Braindead, or Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2) and a bonkers attitude, Dead Snow 2 gives you everything you enjoyed about the first movie, but successfully builds upon it to serve up a heartier meal. Good.

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Super Bitch (Massimo Dallamano, 1973) DVD Review

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“We've got a job that needs a specialist.” The 1970s were a dangerous time in Italy. Sometimes dubbed 'the Years of Lead', and rocked by the likes of the Red Brigade, tough criminal actions begot tough police responses. It was from this raging inferno that the 'poliziotteschi' genre was born, featuring hard-boiled coppers akin to Dirty Harry and his ilk, but with a uniquely Italian swagger to them and their violent actions. These Euro cop flicks thrived alongside the scintillating violence of the more enduring gialli movement, with thrills and excesses to match. Massimo Dallamano finely crafted a superb giallo in the form of What Have You Done To Solange? and mixed the trappings of those gory murder mysteries with the poliziotteschi in What Have They Done To Your Daughters?, but with Super Bitch – aka Blue Movie Blackmail – it was all about crooked cops and drug smuggling.

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Triple Bill Mini Musings: Cretins and Coppers...

Return to Nuke Em High Volume 1:
What's it about?
The latest 'Tromasterpiece' from director Lloyd Kaufman which returns to the titular high school where these days it's genetically modified food, rather than nuclear waste, that's turning goody-two-shoes students into punked-out cretins.
Who would I recognise in it?
Lloyd Kaufman and some other familiar faces from the Troma entourage.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
The main problem with Volume 1 is just that - it's half a movie - there is no real three act arc over the duration of the first film, and so it all cuts off just as things are really beginning to escalate. We'll have to wait until Volume 2 to see the chaos unfold and for the story to be resolved, but for now it's frustrating to just get what is essentially half of a three hour movie. On the plus side, recent Troma flicks have boasted higher production values while maintaining their over-the-top independent spirit and style. Not for the faint-hearted or easily offended, it's a screaming-mad, dial-up-to-eleven, full-frontal assault of bad taste, nudity, gore, and Kevin The Wonder Duck. Not their best - mostly due to cutting us off half-way-through - but far, far, far from their worst. An enjoyably tasteless Troma romp. Good.

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Double Bill Mini-Cine-Musings: The Other Guys in Town...

The Other Guys:
Solidly funny and entertaining throughout, it was far more engaging than Kevin Smith's unfortunately underwhelming (if only he'd written the script) Cop Out from earlier in the year. Wahlberg continues to prove he's at his best working in an ensemble with an impressive sense of downtrodden comedic timing, and for an action comedy there's actually some very decent action set pieces throughout. There's a lot of praise heaped on Talladega Nights, but personally found this an easier flick to enjoy over the aforementioned flick which was, to me, a bit too indulgent and which felt - at times - like an alternate-takes reel.

The Town:
I don't understand the Ben Affleck hate that's out there with some people, but once again he's proven himself to be a more-than-competent director with this authentically Boston-set crime thriller. You know how the major pieces of the puzzle are going to slot together in advance, but certain pieces are less easy to predict. The action sequences (essentially one heist per act) are genuinely tense and well constructed, and it was an easier watch than Affleck's other Boston-bound directorial effort Gone Baby Gone. Now though it would be good to see Affleck tackle a subject that has nothing to do with Boston - he does the Boston thing very well and very authentically - but it'd be good to see him explore some different turf with his next outing.

Triple Bill Mini Musings: Beverly Hills Cop Trilogy...

Beverly Hills Cop:
Until the other day I had never seen any of these movies, but now I've seen them all. The first flick is a fun slice of 1980s action comedy - there's a sense of something big starting to it all, Murphy's career, the Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer juggernaut, and the theme tune that overloaded a million keyboards. A bit tame by today's standards both in terms of comedy and action, but even coming to it fresh so many years after it was released, it's a good fun time.

Beverly Hills Cop 2:
The same as the first, but everything's bigger. Respective careers were sky rocketing, the action is tougher and punchier, the comedy is a bit broader, and Judge Reinhold is properly used this time around. Another good fun time.

Beverly Hills Cop 3:
Good God, what the hell is this shit?! The thing with sequels is that there is an established style and approach to the franchise - a film like Die Hard 4 lives up to the established vibe, but BHC3 takes the formula and sucks all the style and intelligence out of it. The opening action sequence flips wildly from stupid 'comedy' (the two blokes dancing at the camera) to sudden-gear-change 'drama' when Foley's boss gets killed.

The park ride action sequence is pointless, the key criminals are boring and toothless, that stupid gigantic gun (with a microwave and CD player attached) is beyond inappropriately dumb, the constant call backs to the previous two movies feel tacked on at best, and halting at worst (e.g. Serj turning up for useless exposition about the art gallery and setting up the key chain flash bomb and the aforementioned huge-and-stupid gun), and generally speaking it just feels cringe worthy.

You can sense Murphy's career beginning to stall and go into self-parody and dim-witted mugging-to-camera ... the fat suits aren't far away at this point. Reinhold is relegated to pointless side character territory (a shame considering his entertaining turn in the second movie) and everything just feels like one big disaster. It's cheesy - in a bad way - it's boring, dull, unfunny and the action lacks any sense of punch.

I'd only heard bad things about BHC3, so my sights were set very low - but even that wasn't low enough. A truly awful movie. If we ever get a fourth movie I do hope they fully recognise just how piss poor the third one was.

Cop Out...

Limping into UK cinemas long after its February premiere across the pond, us Brits finally got our mits on Kevin Smith's latest offering (albeit he wasn't the writer, just the director). I have to say I was a bit disappointed by it ... there was an air of 'most of the best bits are in the red band trailer' about it, which is a shame, but then again there are a range of other jokes that serve you well throughout (the monocle gag really tickled out funny bone).

Plot-wise though, the film feels a bit threadbare. Side characters are more often than not relegated to two or (if they're lucky) three minor scenes, and the central conceit (a baseball card) feels a bit flimsy.

I enjoyed myself, don't get me wrong, but Cop Out felt like it was cut-short. The script felt it had been forcedly diluted, and the running time felt like it had been forcedly trimmed and trimmed and trimmed. A couple less side characters, a stronger central conceit, and a few more full-on guffaws would have been really nice and taken everything up a couple of notches.

Seeing Cop Out was a fun time, especially on a sweltering Sunday (providing us with much needed darkness and air conditioning), and I'll naturally check it out again ... it's just that it felt like a light snack rather than a full meal. In terms of Kevin Smith's career it's a good step up on the ladder, he's been able to try out new things and new territory and direct a feature script that wasn't his own ... but I do wonder about what the movie would have been like if Smith himself had penned it.

A good time, but sadly not great.