Double Bill Mini Musings: Smith's Weird Whimsy, and Near-Future Chaos...

Tusk:
What's it about?
A snarky podcaster heads to Canada to interview a viral video sensation, only to end up in the home of one Mr Howard How - a curious old man, confined to a wheelchair and a solitary life - who has many interesting stories to tell. However, the old man's fixation on the mighty walrus takes a sinister and creepy turn.
Who would I recognise in it?
Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Johnny Depp.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Birthed from an episode of Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier's "SModcast" podcast, in which they extrapolated a bizarre Gumtree advert into a horror film idea, Tusk is very much the product of Smith's new found invigoration for filmmaking. The idea went from a detailed and marijuana-induced giggle to a full-blown film in a matter of months, which affords this strange outing from the writer/director of Clerks et al a sense of immediacy. Low budget and high concept - a maniac seeks to turn his latest victim into the perfect walrus - it's an out-there experience that's as disturbing as it is bewildering.

Crammed-full with in-jokes that attentive SModcast network fans will appreciate, Tusk's immediacy also presents some problems. There are some structural issues that might have benefited from a little extra work - the Guy LaPointe scenes are heartily entertaining, but necessitate a sudden change of gear and shift in focus - but might more time for script tweaks have robbed the film of some of it's vim and vigour? The cast all seem to be having an absolute blast, and undoubtedly stealing the whole show - similar to the case of Smith's previous film Red State - is Michael Parks, who explores the various recesses of his deeply disturbed Mr How. Featuring some wacky - and quease-inducing - practical effects work from Robert Kurtzman, Kevin Smith's latest piece of whimsy is a curious beast. It is a film that has divided its audience, and will continue to do so, but - much like Justin Long's game performance - will haunt your thoughts for a long while. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for The Purge: Anarchy...

Double Bill Mini Musings: Big Guns and Grotesque Bets...

The Expendables 3:
What's it about?
Barney Ross and his gang of Expendables take on an old enemy from their past, but to do so they need to add some new blood to their line up.
Who would I recognise in it?
Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Davi.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Even in its "extended/uncut" form the violence is conspicuously bloodless, and yet the body count is sky high. This second sequel isn't lacking in action - and certainly not in the half hour climax - but you can't help but shake the feeling that it's somewhat compromised. In chasing a younger demographic in the frustrating PG-13 rating (the UK rating system is much more varied and forgiving), the violence has had the sharp edges smoothed off. People still get blitzed in every which way you could possibly think of, but that extra punch seen in the first movie is missing. Even with the new (and young) additions - of which Ronda Rousey reigns supreme - to the cast, was it truly worth annoying your core target audience by chasing the tween dollar? However, that sticking issue aside, if you enjoyed the other movies you'll enjoy this one too - it's a no-brainer...

Click "READ MORE" below to continue this review and see some brutal bets...

Double Bill Mini Musings: Iron Men & Iron Bars...

Iron Man 3
What's it about?
If you don't know about Iron Man by now, then where have you been? Tony Stark/Iron Man comes unstuck when international terrorist The Mandarin starts causing global chaos while the 'extremis' biological development only makes things worse.
Who would I recognise in it?
Robert Downey Jr, Gweneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, James Badge Dale, William Sadler, Paul Bettany, Miguel Ferrer.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Better than the second, not as good as the first. In spite of few plot holes and story jumps, the script is breezy and sassy enough to make this a hell of a fun ride. Director and Co-Writer Shane Black works his sardonic magic - a summer blockbuster that's set at Christmas, a precocious kid side-kick, innumerable withering put-downs, and an audience-splitting 180 degree blindsiding reveal, all make this a thoroughly enjoyable time. Some might gripe that 'there's not enough Iron Man in it', but there's plenty of iron-fisted mayhem come the finale. Focusing more on Tony Stark this time around makes things more personal and ties up some loose character ends - Iron Man 3 is, after all, the beginning of 'Marvel Phase II' after the billion-dollar juggernaut that was The Avengers. Much better that they play with the formula somewhat rather than just stick rigidly to the same old tricks we've seen before. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for sleazy reform...

Triple Bill Mini Musings: Arse-kicking, Exploitation & Exploration...

Taken 2:
What's it about?
Revenge-fuelled sequel to the original Liam Neeson arse-kicker about a man with a particular set of skills suffering the consequences of his rampage of violence from the first movie, which was all predicated on rescuing his daughter from traffickers.
Who would I recognise in it?
Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Jansen, Rade Serbedzija, Jon Gries, Leland Orser.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
I'd heard some pretty bad things about it so I went in expecting the worst, but was pleasantly surprised in general. It's definitely not as good as the original, which was a surprisingly good and rather brutal action flick filled with memorable moments, but the sequel isn't a huge let down either. That said, with the filmmakers aiming for a PG-13 release in the states (which was further trimmed for a piss-weak 12A in the UK), it all feels like a soft scoop version of what came before - necks and bones are broken soundlessly, blood has been digitally removed or desaturated, and the extremely dark and sinister undertones of the original are mostly absent. There's a harder cut that was released on home video, but annoyingly the version shown on Sky Movies was the watered down cut of the flick. Director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, and Colombiana, both of which were lacklustre affairs) has put out a good-looking movie, even if the fight scenes become a tad jumbled with shaky cam fast cuts, but it's a hard act to follow the original film's Pierre Morel (District 13). See it in the uncut form, and expect a drop in quality, and without the spine-tingling moments of the original, and you'll see a serviceable follow-up - not great, not awful. Alright.

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Total Recall (2012) mini-musing...

What's it about?
Len "Die Hard 4.0" Wiseman's action-fest sci-fi that is part remake of the 1990 movie of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and part re-telling of the source text by Philip K. Dick ("We Can Remember It For You Wholesale") about an apparently average worker drone who wants something more from life, and seeks implanted memories from Rekall, only to discover he's actually the leader of a resistance movement.
Who would I recognise in it?
Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston and others.

Click "READ MORE" below to see if it was any good...

The Divide (2011) - movie review...

What's it about?
A brutal post-apocalyptic thriller in which a group of survivors hide in the shelter beneath their building, and begin to succumb to the pressures and psychosis of the situation.
Who would I recognise in it?
Michael Biehn, Lauren German, Milo Ventimiglia, Ashton Holmes, Rosanna Arquette.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
From the director of Frontiers (which I haven't seen), and Hitman (which I saw, and thought was thoroughly "meh" at best), didn't instill a huge amount of confidence in me, but after watching the gritty trailer - and, much to my excitement, discovering that Michael Biehn was in this flick - I figured I'd give it a punt on the basis of those two elements in its favour.

Launching with the bombs already being unleashed upon the city of New York, it's clear from the get-go that the film is in an awful hurry to get somewhere - something that doesn't particularly work in the film's favour when, a quarter of an hour in, a bunch of hazmat-suited, gun-toting goons bust in, kidnap the only child in the group, and take her ... an action that is explained with barely a shred of reason, even during a brief excursion outside of the shelter's door minutes later. It makes for a curious screenwriting decision which ultimately proves more of a distraction, than the haunting mystery writers Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean were probably intending it to be.

With that distraction aside however, the film is able to get stuck into the meat - the story of how these everyday people descend into violent madness within the confines of this bomb shelter. This is both the strongest and weakest part of the movie - the scant characterisation and back stories afforded to the cast of characters is at worst nearly non-existent, but at best it provides Michael Biehn as Mickey the building manager, to really sink his teeth into a gently drawn character. Mickey was once a fireman, but the horrors of 9/11 changed him forever into a man who is slowly killing himself after losing not only his men, but his family - these discoveries are made with a pleasing sense of subtlety that gels perfectly with Biehn's powerful performance that is absolutely the most distinct highlight of the entire flick; the man deserves many more meaty roles such as this.

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Double Bill Mini Musings: Trying out a formula...

Bug:
What's it about?
A waitress gets drawn into the paranoid world of a drifter, who is convinced there are insects growing in his blood, in William Friedkin's film adaptation of the stage play.
Who would I recognise in it?
Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Set almost entirely within the confines of a run-down motel room, the creeping sense of paranoia becomes extremely convincing. You're not sure whether Shannon's drifter really is crazy, or if he really is telling the truth. It's stylishly put together, features moments of bloody violence in the second half, and boasts spectacular performances - a scene where they try to piece together the apparent conspiracy is chillingly convincing in its sheer delusion. Great.

Click below to read about The Inglorious Bastards...

Fright (Peter Collinson, 1971) - movie review...

Having not heard of it before, I chanced upon this classic slice of British scares on The Horror Channel last week, and was immediately drawn to it as it starred Susan George (most widely known as Amy Sumner in Sam Peckinpah's superb Straw Dogs - which was also produced in 1971).



Susan George plays Amanda, a babysitter hired by Helen and Jim Lloyd (Honor "Pussy Galore" Blackman, and George "Minder" Cole respectively) to look after their son Tara (played by the director's own son) as they go out for the night to celebrate an 'anniversary of sorts'. Cue lots of nicely composed, almost voyeuristic, shots of Amanda making herself at home - a rustic old building of dark wood and haunted memories - all-the-while being stalked from outside by an unknown figure. Already a bit jumpy, she's none-too-pleased when her suitor Chris (Dennis "The Sweeney" Waterman) turns up and starts telling her a tale of how Jim isn't Helen's actual husband ... as it turns out, the real husband went barmy and tried to kill Helen and her son - and he's just gone and broken out of the mental institution he was locked up in!



So far, so famliar right? Well to be fair this film pre-dates the slasher boom (that really kicked off in 1974 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Black Christmas, but which can be traced back to the likes of 1971's Bay of Blood and 1960's Psycho) and even forms an early template for many of the common structural elements for many horror flicks to come. Sexy babysitter who's adverse to keeping her top done up? Check. Creepy old house? Check. Escaped lunatic hellbent on murder? Check. Nutjob's Doctor who tries the stop the madness? Check. Indeed, you wonder if Ty West was familiar with this film before he made his excellent 1980s homage The House of the Devil in 2009 (which admittedly goes for satanism rather than an escaped nutjob), but even more acutely you could ask the same question of John Carpenter and Bob Clark in that respect, but no matter.

Watching this film 41 years later it's easy to consider it old hat and predictable retrospectively - but if you ignore that and enjoy it as an old school dose of British horror, then it still works very well indeed. There are far scarier movies from the period (for example the downright chilling The Wicker Man), but fans of creepy old houses, the stiff upper lip of the British middle class on film, and the gorgeous and attention-grabbing Susan George, will be well catered for here.

However it's not just a simple fright film - Tudor Gates' script has some nice touches of thematic depth - Amanda is a student of theoretical child psychology and the like, so naturally her night of terror sees her thrown into the deep end of real world mental anguish. Indeed - not to spoil it, mind - there's a nice little moment to tie this plot thread up at the end of the flick which illustrates some deeper thought at play in the script; and even in 1971 the police were being painted as drowning in bureaucratic incompetence. Speaking of which, fans of the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses will spot a young Roger Lloyd-Pack (Trigger) as one of the policemen in the climactic sequence.



So in summary, Fright is an atmospheric old school slice of British Lion/Fantale Films horror that will appeal to fans of an era defined by Hammer Horror, Susan George, and babysitters terrorised in creepy old houses. 41 years on it's not the nerve-shredder that it once might have been, but it is well served by a healthy dose of nostalgia, a solid script, tight direction, and a great sense of visual flair (both in Ian Wilson's cinematography and Raymond Poulton's editing - which pleasingly seems to take a little inspiration from 1969's Easy Rider). If this sounds like your kind of flick, then I recommend you check it out.