Quadruple Bill Mini Musings: February 2011...

Daybreakers:
Didn't fancy it last year in the cinema, but it was a decent watch on Sky Movies. The most impressive thing about the movie was the ideas proposed by the script - a society in which humans are an endangered species after vampires have taken over the world. The issues of blood supply running low, of capturing and harvesting humans for blood, of blood rationing, of vampire canibalism, and a near-future world that runs exclusively in a nocturnal fashion.

That was all very impressive and interesting, but it's somewhat skimped on in a 90 minute movie that has to hit certain basic plot points along the way to bash through the action. If it didn't have any thought put into it, it would have been a rather dull and generic action movie, but with the inclusion of a relatively complex society it was elevated to much better fare. It's just a shame it wasn't a much more thoughtful two hour movie that really explored the socio-political themes in far greater depth.


Stripes:
Having recently seen Meatballs, I understood certain references in shows like Family Guy - and once again with Stripes it's the same deal. It's not amazingly funny, and I'm not of the generation that would have been teenagers when this flick came out, however Bill Murray's comedy is timeless - and it's worth seeing just for that alone - plus you get earlier work from the likes of Ramis, Candy, and Reitman.


Coogan's Bluff:
It's an "offbeat police drama" - according to the Electronic Programme Guide - and I only watched it because of Clint Eastwood. I didn't much care for it, to be honest. There are some nice dialogue moments (such as Clint's Arizona Sheriff Coogan dealing with a New York cab driver), but it's not particularly dramatic, or exciting, or all that interesting. Plus the sexual politics are very out-of-date by today's standards ... so it hasn't aged especially well in that respect.


Piranha 3D (Blu-Ray):
I wasn't particularly interested in seeing this in the cinema - not least because of the jacked-up price of a 3D cinema ticket - and for the same amount of cash I was able to get the Blu-Ray, which features the movie in 2D as well as both Stereoscopic and Anaglyph 3D. I don't have a 3D telly, but if I knew someone who had one sometime in the future I could watch it over at their place.

As it is though I watched the flick in good old 2D - with a skim-through afterwards in Anaglyph 3D, which, let's be honest, hasn't improved as a technology in the slightest. Even in a darkened room the 3D effect was minimal at best, and just gave me sore eyes with the red/blue glasses. Perhaps the Stereoscopic version works better, but Anaglyph 3D - for sure - is still rubbish. In fact you can practically watch the Anaglyph 3D version without the glasses on as most of the time the layers are so close together there's barely any noticeable difference.

In 2D however it was an enjoyable, 1980s throwback-style romp. It's the sort of flick in which a CGI piranha regurgitates a bitten-off and half-eaten male member into the camera lens ... which pretty much sums up the approach this flick has to the subject matter at hand. It's not meant to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination, it's not supposed to be scary either - it's supposed to be lurid, funny, gross-out, and just a bloody good chuckle.

Richard Dreyfuss cameos as "a version of his Matt Hooper character from Jaws" at the very beginning, and indeed Christopher Lloyd resurrects his crowd-pleasing wild scientist schtick as a fish-fascinated pet shop owner. From the outset the flick is drenched in gore, nudity, and silliness - this is a movie custom made for six-pack home viewing with some buddies.

It licks along at a fair old pace too (the deleted scenes clearly being cut to keep the flick under 90 minutes, as they're mostly pretty good scenes in themselves), so it never outstays its welcome, and it all builds towards an end-of-second-act orgy of boobs, blood and gruesome gore at a marina party. It's an audacious, over-the-top, gag-a-second drag race through as many naked bodies and half-devoured limbs, torsos, and faces as possible - in no uncertain terms, KNB FX have royally out-done themselves on this flick. The gore is copious, entertaining, and endlessly creative - so you gore hounds are most definitely catered for here. In fact, it's the ideal teenage movie - chock full of sex, violence, and general daftness - I really enjoyed it as a 20-something, and I would have likewise enjoyed the hell out of it as a teenager.

Apparently a sequel is in the works, and if it's as good as this flick - one of the handful of worthwhile horror remakes out there (including The Hills Have Eyes, also directed by Alexandre Aja) - then I'll be there with bells on.

Octuple Bill Mini Musings: August/September 2010...

Up:
I'm a big fan of Pixar (even if I didn't care for Cars or Ratatouille), but it's taken me a while to get around to this. The first half an hour is flawless, and yes, minute 10 is utterly, utterly heart breaking and it establishes a thread that runs throughout the rest of the movie ... but the second and third acts are a bit of a mixed bag. It's beautiful looking like all Pixar movies, there's a great sense of physical humour like all Pixar movies, and there's a real heart to it all - also like all Pixar movies.

But there's just something missing from the central threat portion of the script. Everything works nicely (frequently fantastically), but I wasn't as impressed by it as I was with WALL.E - and as impressed as I'm sure I will be when I finally see Toy Story 3.

Meatballs:
It's weird how many comedies from the 80s were really about the key performers than a range of gags, and being that it's only rated 12 it's all quite gentle stuff ... and really it's not very interesting. The only reason to watch it is Bill Murry doing what he does best (although it's an earlier performance and he's not fully off-the-leash here) ... and that "Are You Ready for the Summer" song (butchered by a bunch of tone-deaf children) is like rusty nails scraped down the side of a chalk board.

Pirahna 2: The Spawning:
I've still not seen the first movie, and I've not seen the recent Aja remake yet (but I will at some point), but this sequel to the Dante original was on and being that it was James Cameron's first flick I was intrigued. Bloody nora it's dull, and it barely makes a lick of sense ... clearly more a career move than anything else, and who's to blame Cameron? The dude went on to make hugely successful classic after hugely successful classic.

American Grindhouse:
A documentary all about grindhouse cinema from the days of Edison all the way to the present day. There's far more to the genre than what you might initially think, so if you've got an interest in this type of cinematic treat, this doc is well worth a look for a great overview.

The Final Destination:
I recently saw the third movie for the first time and while it was a bit naff, the death sequences were still decent and enough of the characters were still likeable and switched-on enough to bother watching. This fourth film in the franchise has neither. The characters are painfully dull, moronic, unsympathetic and switched-off, and the plot's no better. It hits enough standard beats to vaguely hold itself together but it's dull as ditch water and offers absolutely nothing new to the franchise. Nothing advances from the other three, so it's yet another group of people trying to figure out what's going on (while the viewer has known since the first bloody movie!) until one-by-one they've all been bumped off by an oddly more-hands-on-than-is-appropriate-to-the-franchise-gimmick that is Death. Avoid it. Just avoid the hell out of it.

Churchill: The Hollywood Years:
There's been a lot of talk about the end of the UK Film Council recently (from both sides), but this dreadfully dull and ill-considered and torturous 90 minutes of goodness-knows-what is a great example of how not to make a British movie. Like The Final Destination, avoid the hell out of this crap.

Fast & Furious:
Aside from a couple of genuinely tense action sequences, it's really quite boring. The first movie was what it was and it did it well. I never bothered with the second or third movies and this fourth entry may be the best of the three sequels, but it's just a load of old cobblers. This record played well, once, many years ago and that was that. It's time in the spotlight was brief, yet it keeps lumbering on far beyond it's one-movie prime.

The Mechanik:
Dolph Lundgren. That's the only reason to watch this relatively cheap Euro-actioner. The plot is simple, but kind of simple in a boring way, unlike simple in a good way - such as with The Expendables - and the editing is all over the place, it really does prove to be a confusing distraction throughout. Moments are missed, the choice of shots isn't ruthlessly efficient enough, there are too many 'driving/walking around looking pensive' moments weighing down the whole movie and it doesn't make much sense either. Light on action and light on substance, the only reason to see it is the star himself - hopefully he's learning from these entries as he makes each new film he directs too as he's clearly an intelligent and passionate dude, but yeah, this flick isn't much cop.