Thelma & Louise:
The final image - with which I'm sure you'll be very familiar with already - is one of those lasting cinematic moments that you'll probably see before you watch the movie. I've seen that moment countless times, and numerous parodies of it (such as on Robot Chicken), but I've only just gotten to the actual movie - and it's good. No wonder it has stood the test of time, it's ideal film school text, it's an essay in-itself about oft-termed girl power, and feminist empowerment, plus it's just a solid story. The eponymous ladies head off for a weekend away fishing, but a fateful stop at a bar leads to them going on-the-run from the law in a world run by men who are almost always idiots or bastards ... or charming bastards. It's quality popcorn sexual politics.
[REC] 2:
The original quickly got a name for itself - the first-person tale of a camera crew attending a routine emergency call with firemen, only to be dunked head first into a horrific battle against blood thirsty monsters in an apartment building. It was well crafted and frequently nerve shredding. The sequel on the other hand picks up immediately after the events of the first movie - from the perspective of a SWAT team charged with escorting a mysterious man inside so that he can carry out a, seemingly simple, task of getting a blood sample.
While the characterisation is a bit brief, and a bit blunt and simplistic (yet another panicky, shouty guy - Larra), yet the broad strokes approach gets you into the action swiftly (the entire reason to watch the movie). There's less tension this time around (but it's by no means missing), and a middle portion featuring the most annoying movie teenagers I've seen in years is nothing but pointless, aggravating filler ... but beyond that there's a nice twist to the monsters themselves, and a thrilling/creepy race to the finish line. If only they'd hacked out those beyond-stupid, totally-annoying, utterly-pointless, desperately-in-need-of-multiple-slaps, can't-wait-to-get-shot-of-them teenagers from the script in the first place!
Jackass 3.5:
It's off-cuts from Jackass 3D polished up to essentially double-dip on the fan base, but then again with that amount of extra content, you can't blame them for putting together a 'best of the rest' disc (which also features yet more out-takes and additional scenes). Fortunately it's decidedly better than the brief and mostly passable Jackass 2.5 (less talking, less rubbish, more entertainment), and it features some inventive nut-shots ... and who doesn't chuckle at a creative nut shot?!
Phenomena:
The last time there was a Dario Argento season on The Horror Channel, I missed this particular slice of bug-baiting curiousness (featuring a rather young Jennifer Connelly). The movie can't decide what sort of flick it wants to be, with a plot that lurches from one territory to the next, without fully realising any of them. A young girl (the daughter of an actor) is shipped off to a private girl's school in Switzerland, where she befriends an entomologist (Donald Pleasance, with a Scotch brogue on his tongue) who is cared for by a chimp ... oh, and she has a curious telepathic link with insects ... and there's a random murderer running around offing girls. It's not as visually exuberant as the likes of Suspiria, or as crisp as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, but it's decidedly better than the dull The Stendhal Syndrome (nice idea, poor execution). However, the sloppy plotting, lack of exploration of some ideas that are set-up well (only to be practically abandoned), and a third act reveal that makes little (if any) sense makes it a bit of a damp squib. Okay - not crap - but not particularly good either.
Tightrope:
Clint Eastwood is a New Orleans cop, and single father-of-two, who's tracking a vicious sex killer through the seedy streets of sin across the city. The psychological motivation is explored as much as a cop thriller from the 1980s with a big-name-star ever could - but by today's standards, it's a relative skimming of the surface. Not one of Eastwood's best, but certainly not his worst.
Showing posts with label rec. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rec. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Cloverfield...
Needless to say, I'm behind the bandwagon on this one, but then again that was entirely intentional. This is one of those movies that drowned in an absolute torrent of media blitz advertising and audience anticipation, mixed with a dressing of excessive hype.
Therefore, I stayed well clear of it - especially with Diary of the Dead coming soon after it, which I wanted to be my first POV-horror experience of 2008 (a year seemingly teeming with the blighters).
I find myself quite polarised by it, half of me digs it, and half of me is rather "meh" about the whole affair. It's set up as a piece of Department of Defence evidence (preceded by the massive Paramount logo). So surely, putting that DoD header on the front of the tape would involve editing - which leaves me wondering, why on earth wouldn't the government lacky cut the 15 minutes of not-that-interesting character stuff? It's got absolutely nothing to do with 'Cloverfield', nothing to do with monsters, or things exploding in anyone's faces.
Clearly it's there for our benefit - we the audience - but of course, this is one of the problems when it comes to POV horror flicks. Seemingly, only The Blair Witch Project has handled the style with the most precision and attention to realism.
What I'm getting at, is there are several instances where I just don't buy the supposed realism. The major set pieces (explosion, lady Liberty's head flying down the street etc) all involve heavy use of CGI, which not only feels smoother than real life, it doesn't look enough like real life when compared to the generally convincing POV footage surrounding these moments.
Even still there are certain times when the POV schtick feels kicked aside to specifically get in some narrative elements. I either thought 'why would anyone record this?' or 'well a tape doesn't do that'. A tape doesn't do what exactly? Well, from my experience with cameras, stopping and starting does not leave a few-second gap between what you just filmed and are now filming. If anything, the camera rewinds about 3 seconds. This of course means we get to see convenient snippets of the two leads to provide character development, but it's not realistic to video camera operation.
You should only see these clips whenever someone rewinds the tape to see something played back (which we don't see of course - unless it's [Rec.], where we actually saw the rewind, which makes absolutely no sense at all), and we do - but the other instances between only some of the 'in-camera edit points' doesn't make sense.
Also, there's a variety of sneaky, hidden edits. Again, you're fiddling with the realism of the POV style - such hidden cuts are really only seen when you're trying to create a sense of a superbly long take (think Rope, or Snake Eyes). Perhaps the average punter wouldn't notice, or care about such things, but as a filmmaker myself who's had many hours with a camera in his hand, these middle-fingers to the technicalities of POV realism just annoy the crap out of me.
Also - while the 'tape glitch' vibe is nowhere near as ridiculous as in either Diary of the Dead or [Rec.] (I've never seen a miniDV tape act like that - ever), it's not entirely missing. The ending, while remaining spoiler free, resorts to juggled patches of images, noises and colours in a way that's not true to the sort of camera the protagonists would have bought at their local Dixons (or where-ever).
Anyway, enough technical-rantings, the film itself - 6/10 stuff I'd have to say.
The over all spectacle is entertaining (even if certain parts seem a bit too daft ... two buildings ... nuff said), and most of the 'POV-panic' keeps you gripped and within-the-moment...but not always. Quippy lines of dialogue here-and-there seem misplaced, helicopters seem to fly way too close to fighter jet bombing runs, and the CGI beasty - while not completely over-exposed - doesn't convince once you've seen it all. Also, how could anyone not see a gigantic, many-many-storeys-tall monster, coming right at them. Just because the camera isn't pointing at it, doesn't mean those in front of it can't see what's behind 'us' (the camera).
Essentially, it's 9/11 with a monster. The times when the film works best is when it's riffing on the infamous terrorist attack, it feels real. It is gripping, and it takes something awful and helps digest it in a more palatable way, if that makes any sense. We in the West, or at least, those in Hollywood, digest disaster through TV and film. You take elements, and filter them out thin enough, so that the people en-mass can come to terms with something huge, one piece at a time.
Anyway, Cloverfield ... definitely worth watching (although those with motion sickness be warned) ... obviously, it doesn't live up to the intense amount of hype that was all around it, and at times it can be just stupid or unconvincing, at other times it can be almost entirely convincing and intense. At the very least it's a more interesting way to have a monster movie, especially after the 'meh-fest' that was the American version of Godzilla.
Therefore, I stayed well clear of it - especially with Diary of the Dead coming soon after it, which I wanted to be my first POV-horror experience of 2008 (a year seemingly teeming with the blighters).
I find myself quite polarised by it, half of me digs it, and half of me is rather "meh" about the whole affair. It's set up as a piece of Department of Defence evidence (preceded by the massive Paramount logo). So surely, putting that DoD header on the front of the tape would involve editing - which leaves me wondering, why on earth wouldn't the government lacky cut the 15 minutes of not-that-interesting character stuff? It's got absolutely nothing to do with 'Cloverfield', nothing to do with monsters, or things exploding in anyone's faces.
Clearly it's there for our benefit - we the audience - but of course, this is one of the problems when it comes to POV horror flicks. Seemingly, only The Blair Witch Project has handled the style with the most precision and attention to realism.
What I'm getting at, is there are several instances where I just don't buy the supposed realism. The major set pieces (explosion, lady Liberty's head flying down the street etc) all involve heavy use of CGI, which not only feels smoother than real life, it doesn't look enough like real life when compared to the generally convincing POV footage surrounding these moments.
Even still there are certain times when the POV schtick feels kicked aside to specifically get in some narrative elements. I either thought 'why would anyone record this?' or 'well a tape doesn't do that'. A tape doesn't do what exactly? Well, from my experience with cameras, stopping and starting does not leave a few-second gap between what you just filmed and are now filming. If anything, the camera rewinds about 3 seconds. This of course means we get to see convenient snippets of the two leads to provide character development, but it's not realistic to video camera operation.
You should only see these clips whenever someone rewinds the tape to see something played back (which we don't see of course - unless it's [Rec.], where we actually saw the rewind, which makes absolutely no sense at all), and we do - but the other instances between only some of the 'in-camera edit points' doesn't make sense.
Also, there's a variety of sneaky, hidden edits. Again, you're fiddling with the realism of the POV style - such hidden cuts are really only seen when you're trying to create a sense of a superbly long take (think Rope, or Snake Eyes). Perhaps the average punter wouldn't notice, or care about such things, but as a filmmaker myself who's had many hours with a camera in his hand, these middle-fingers to the technicalities of POV realism just annoy the crap out of me.
Also - while the 'tape glitch' vibe is nowhere near as ridiculous as in either Diary of the Dead or [Rec.] (I've never seen a miniDV tape act like that - ever), it's not entirely missing. The ending, while remaining spoiler free, resorts to juggled patches of images, noises and colours in a way that's not true to the sort of camera the protagonists would have bought at their local Dixons (or where-ever).
Anyway, enough technical-rantings, the film itself - 6/10 stuff I'd have to say.
The over all spectacle is entertaining (even if certain parts seem a bit too daft ... two buildings ... nuff said), and most of the 'POV-panic' keeps you gripped and within-the-moment...but not always. Quippy lines of dialogue here-and-there seem misplaced, helicopters seem to fly way too close to fighter jet bombing runs, and the CGI beasty - while not completely over-exposed - doesn't convince once you've seen it all. Also, how could anyone not see a gigantic, many-many-storeys-tall monster, coming right at them. Just because the camera isn't pointing at it, doesn't mean those in front of it can't see what's behind 'us' (the camera).
Essentially, it's 9/11 with a monster. The times when the film works best is when it's riffing on the infamous terrorist attack, it feels real. It is gripping, and it takes something awful and helps digest it in a more palatable way, if that makes any sense. We in the West, or at least, those in Hollywood, digest disaster through TV and film. You take elements, and filter them out thin enough, so that the people en-mass can come to terms with something huge, one piece at a time.
Anyway, Cloverfield ... definitely worth watching (although those with motion sickness be warned) ... obviously, it doesn't live up to the intense amount of hype that was all around it, and at times it can be just stupid or unconvincing, at other times it can be almost entirely convincing and intense. At the very least it's a more interesting way to have a monster movie, especially after the 'meh-fest' that was the American version of Godzilla.
Friday, 4 April 2008
[Rec.]
It seems that 2008 is the year of FPS scare-stories, what with the likes of Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, and the as-yet-unreleased-in-America The Zombie Diaries (released in the UK in 2007), and this is where [Rec.] comes in.
Basically, it's a bit like 28 Days Later in an apartment block ... and it's Spanish, although the Americans are already hammering out a remake, thus strengthening the stereotype that 'them thar Yanks don't like foreigners, cos their mooovies are stoopid and makes them's brains hurt'.
A shame really, because it's a tense, fast-paced horror thrill ride.
There are downsides though. At times some of the scares seem a bit forced, or indeed flat-out 'obviously coming' (to seasoned genre veterans). 'Oh the lights went out, let's put the spotlight on - oh of course - a zombie-thing screaming in close up right in my face'. Scares like that, are obvious and forced, while others are unexpected or are surrounded by a genuine sense of palpable tension. At times - particularly the final moments - you are just creeped right the hell out.
If you got especially wigged out by the bit in Blair Witch in the abandoned house, you'll be in familiarly damp undercrackers during the final minutes of this flick.
One other annoyance - at times the characters can be cliche-level stupid, or ultra-panicky-Petes. For some reason, these sort of movies never feature a law enforcer who commands respect and has an idea of how to control a situation, especially one involving quarantine. Also - for me anyway - the television reporter (who speaks at a million miles an hour, which makes for absolute subtitle-reading joy *sarcasm overload*), annoyed the crap out of me at times. You're trying to film secretly through an open window, within earshot of the authorities, so yes, keep pestering your cameraman really loudly by repeatedly asking him what's going on. How about you shut up and let him film!
Speaking of filming - the FPS angle - yet again, several instances of 'well that wouldn't really happen in real life'. Yet again - for one - the insistence on unrealistic tape glitches. When a tape goes from one thing to another, it just cuts straight to the next thing, not wiggly lines, no audio buzz, no visual fuzz - here though, that happens all the time. Also - for two - at times the audio goes all 'Saving Private Ryan' - which makes no sense, because knocking a mounted shotgun microphone won't have that effect, you'll get a loud bump and scuffle, or the sound will cut out completely - it won't sound like Tom Hanks having a moment of nervous breakdown on a Nazi-riddled beach!
And - for three - is this supposed to be one continuous tape (you get that impression, as the reporter says she doesn't want to waste tape) - however, it's okay to waste tape for moments that are obviously only there to provide some sort of narrative continuity. Again, in real life, you wouldn't bother filming your host strapping on microphones.
As a filmmaker myself, these sort of things bug the crap out of me. Oh yeah, and - for four - this is supposed to be a professional cameraman, yet he is insistent on zooming in and out almost constantly during action scenes, as well as wiggling the camera around like some scared little girl running away from Leatherface!
Regardless of these few annoyances, this flick is simply a must-watch for horror hounds. While not exceptionally original (especially considering the apparent flood of FPS flicks out there this year), and at times sporting cliched character actions, or forced jump scares, the over-all sense of tension, dread and being trapped makes this an affecting tale of horror. It certainly doesn't outstay it's welcome, at a mere 70 minutes it darts in, steals your sense of calm, and scarpers into the darkness again.
7/10
Basically, it's a bit like 28 Days Later in an apartment block ... and it's Spanish, although the Americans are already hammering out a remake, thus strengthening the stereotype that 'them thar Yanks don't like foreigners, cos their mooovies are stoopid and makes them's brains hurt'.
A shame really, because it's a tense, fast-paced horror thrill ride.
There are downsides though. At times some of the scares seem a bit forced, or indeed flat-out 'obviously coming' (to seasoned genre veterans). 'Oh the lights went out, let's put the spotlight on - oh of course - a zombie-thing screaming in close up right in my face'. Scares like that, are obvious and forced, while others are unexpected or are surrounded by a genuine sense of palpable tension. At times - particularly the final moments - you are just creeped right the hell out.
If you got especially wigged out by the bit in Blair Witch in the abandoned house, you'll be in familiarly damp undercrackers during the final minutes of this flick.
One other annoyance - at times the characters can be cliche-level stupid, or ultra-panicky-Petes. For some reason, these sort of movies never feature a law enforcer who commands respect and has an idea of how to control a situation, especially one involving quarantine. Also - for me anyway - the television reporter (who speaks at a million miles an hour, which makes for absolute subtitle-reading joy *sarcasm overload*), annoyed the crap out of me at times. You're trying to film secretly through an open window, within earshot of the authorities, so yes, keep pestering your cameraman really loudly by repeatedly asking him what's going on. How about you shut up and let him film!
Speaking of filming - the FPS angle - yet again, several instances of 'well that wouldn't really happen in real life'. Yet again - for one - the insistence on unrealistic tape glitches. When a tape goes from one thing to another, it just cuts straight to the next thing, not wiggly lines, no audio buzz, no visual fuzz - here though, that happens all the time. Also - for two - at times the audio goes all 'Saving Private Ryan' - which makes no sense, because knocking a mounted shotgun microphone won't have that effect, you'll get a loud bump and scuffle, or the sound will cut out completely - it won't sound like Tom Hanks having a moment of nervous breakdown on a Nazi-riddled beach!
And - for three - is this supposed to be one continuous tape (you get that impression, as the reporter says she doesn't want to waste tape) - however, it's okay to waste tape for moments that are obviously only there to provide some sort of narrative continuity. Again, in real life, you wouldn't bother filming your host strapping on microphones.
As a filmmaker myself, these sort of things bug the crap out of me. Oh yeah, and - for four - this is supposed to be a professional cameraman, yet he is insistent on zooming in and out almost constantly during action scenes, as well as wiggling the camera around like some scared little girl running away from Leatherface!
Regardless of these few annoyances, this flick is simply a must-watch for horror hounds. While not exceptionally original (especially considering the apparent flood of FPS flicks out there this year), and at times sporting cliched character actions, or forced jump scares, the over-all sense of tension, dread and being trapped makes this an affecting tale of horror. It certainly doesn't outstay it's welcome, at a mere 70 minutes it darts in, steals your sense of calm, and scarpers into the darkness again.
7/10
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