Rush (2013) - Ron Howard

Motorsport and Hollywood have never been the best of friends. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to get them together, but every single film has failed to capture the excitement that any racing fan will tell you lies at the heart of the sport. The big problem is that Hollywood seems to feel that the idea of some bloke hurtling around a race track in a flimsy car loaded with highly flammable fuel isn’t quite interesting enough. So usually a love story or some other old cliché that worked in other films is bolted on, while all the things that make motor racing so watchable in the first place - team politics, strategies, the various personalities of the drivers are quietly let go.

The best (and I use that word in the widest most general sense) racing film ever made is John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966). It’s a real stinker of a film, staring a pudgy James Garner as an American Formula One driver making a comeback. Awful film, utter rubbish with two huge exceptions. The racing footage is superb, and there’s a raft of cameos by most of the world’s greatest drivers including Jack Brabham, Jimmy Clark, Juan Manuel Fangio and for me the best of the bunch, the none more English Graham Hill. If that’s the best then just image what the others are like.

So with that in mind my expectations for a Ron Howard film about the 1976 Formula 1 World Championship battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt were low. Extremely low. But it’s an absolute triumph, not only a great film about motor racing, but also a superb drama about obsession and rivalry. Not just that though it also manages to ask why would anyone do anything as crazy and dangerous as motor racing, and provide resonable answers to boot.

I’m not going to go into what happens during the film, since if you don’t already know, you don't need me to spoil it for you. I’ll just say that you really don’t need to know or love Formula One to get the most out of this, in much the same way you don’t need to be into sharks or swimming to enjoy Jaws. However if you do know your Balestre's from your Ecclestone's then there's lots of goodies in here for you.

So why does this work where Grand Prix, Le Mans, Days of Thunder and Driven all failed so badly? Well for starters it’s scripted by Peter Morgan who of course wrote the aces screenplays for The Queen and The Damned United as well as Frost/Nixon for director Ron Howard. It’s a good tight script that sticks closely to the facts and events of that ’76 season. Next up are the two main actors who not only look the part but manage to act it too. Chris Hemsworth as the cocksure James Hunt and Daniel Brühl as the intense perfectionist Niki Lauda. Both are totally convincing, even if at times the brushstrokes on screen are a little broad, sometimes in order to cram as much into a reasonable running time you need to simplify things. The third reason for me loving this film so much has to go to Danny Boyle’s regular cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who goes all out and gives the film a look somewhere between the frantic hyper editing and multiple camera set ups of a modern film, and a world seen through Timothy Leary’s 60s specs. So business as usual for ADM then. Visually it’s one of the most sumptuous films I’ve seen for a while, and yet despite using every modern trick in the book, it still manages to convince as a period piece. As such, Rush begs to be seen at the cinema, the sound alone is astounding with the cars screaming around the circuits to a suitably propulsive Hans Zimmer score.

I really can’t recommend this film enough, it does everything it promises and more. Who would have thought Ron Howard would have it in him? That he would have the savvy to not take the easy way out and pile on the melodrama, to have the faith to stick with the truth. The fact that he has made a film as good as this makes me feel that I’ve misjudged him badly in the past. Having said that though, there is nothing in his filmography that I would ever want to return to ever again. Except this, which I’m sure I will watch again and again and again.

The Squeeze (1977) - Michael Apted

The Squeeze is one of those diamonds of 70s British cinema just begging to be unearthed and rediscovered. On paper the plot sounds like something you’ve seen a hundred times before, nothing special in fact. Nasty types kidnap a wife (Carol White) and daughter, but the husband (Edward Fox) decides rather than coughing up the ransom he’d rather team up with his wife’s previous husband (Stacey Keach) and try and sort it out that way. Problem is that despite being ex-police, Keach is an alky and really not up to the task of sorting anything out other than ordering a drop of Sherry to steady his nerves.

As I say on paper it’s nothing special, but director Michael Apted brings a hell of a lot to it. Apted was already an old hand at shooting from the hip having worked in TV for years, most famously on the Up series. So The Squeeze massively benefits from his style of shooting on location rather than being set bound, plus the cameras are mainly hand-held rather than dolly mounted, all of which injects a fair amount of energy into what ends up on the screen. Then there’s the fact that The Squeeze is British, not just British but post Sweeney British. It’s a sweaty nylon shirt stuck to the faux leather seat of a British Leyland car, bags of rubbish in the streets and boarded up houses type of film. More than that though The Squeeze is aces because of it’s cast. Keach is actually a real find, I’m not sure if he was overdubbed (it doesn’t look that way) or if he could actually manage a decent accent - either way he sounds genuine enough, and is convincing as a soak. So much so that you can almost smell his stale breath at points. Edward Fox is his usual fantastic self, looking at all times as if he’s trodden in dog shit, his face fixed in a perma-scowl. Both he and Keach’s introductions are superb, Fox bursts into Keach’s home demanding to see his wife and for once has a real air of menace about him. Whereas Keach is introduced stumbling along through a London Underground station and eventually takes a nasty tumble down an escalator.

Just as good are the supporting cast, Carol White who had shone as the lead in two key Ken Loach films (Cathy Come Home & Poor Cow) is so very, very good. It’s a tough role, involving plenty of crying and nudity but she does a bang up job. Then there’s David Hemmings playing totally against character as one of the main villains. What at first feels like a huge piece of miscasting quickly reveals itself to be a bit of a masterstroke. Same goes for Freddie Starr as Teddy, in his only attempt at serious acting he plays a light fingered Scouser who helps Keach out throughout the film. It shouldn’t work, but Starr is actually pretty good and manages to reign in any urge to do his usual shtick. Add to that Alan Ford in his first screen role and you're onto a winner. I should also give a quick shout out to the Johnny Harris score which is a blinder, it's never been made available but two of the tracks appear on his genuis album - Movements. It's up there with the best of Roy Budd's scores. That good.

What little plot there is revolves around Keach and Fox squabbling, and Starr trying to keep Keach off the sauce long enough to rescue his ex. It’s grim, and not very action packed by todays standards but it is very dramatic and strangely earthy. Which is something that British crime films seem to lack nowadays, in the rush to look glossy and try and compete with the fluff that fills our multiplexes from across the pond we’ve forgotten about the things that made our crime films unique. It’s there in Get Carter, both of the Sweeney movies, Villain, The Long Good Friday, Robbery and a whole stack of other films. It’s that ordinariness mixed in with the criminal aspect, scenes used to take place inside a boozer rather than a club. Maybe I’m just being overly nostalgic for the past but it’s definitely something I miss in British crime films, which when done well can hold their own against anything Hollywoodland cares to throw at us.

This is a bit of a pain to get hold of, having not had a DVD release despite being owned by Warners. Hopefully someday this will be rectified, but until then just do what you have to do to see this. You won't regret it.

The Purge (2013) - James DeMonaco

In the nearly future, America has managed to get its crime and unemployment down to a record low. How? By having a yearly purge whereby for one continual 12 hour period all crime is allowed. The emergency sevices get to stay home and put their feet up for the duration. There are certain rules worked into this notion, mainly so that no nutter can set off a nuclear device and claim it as part of the festivities. If you can buy into that idea then you might quite enjoy The Purge. Now as far as I can tell film wise this could have gone in two very different directions, depending very much on the budget. It could have been a Tom Cruise actioner with Tom battling his way across a ravaged cityscape in order to save his daughter who for some reason or other is outside when the purge begins. He’d be a cop who'd lost his wife to some street scum in an earlier purge, and had pledged her never to kill anyone during the blah blah blah. Which of course would be a bit yawnsome, and fairly pedestrian Hollywood fare.

Luckily we end up with the second option, smaller budget, less star power but a film that only has one writer credit, and in one of those moments that sets the heart racing, that writer is also the director. So far so good. James DeMonaco’s script centers around one family and one location. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is a top salesman for a home security firm, home security obviously being big business in a day and age when it’s possible that your neighbour can legally take your head off with a machete because your dog barks too loud. Now let’s just say James is doing aright, he can afford enough high tech stuff to make sure that his family - wife Mary (Lena Headey) and two kids Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane) - can ride out purge night without any trouble. Except that would make for a very boring film, so when a guy runs down their street screaming for help little Max decides to let him in. He’s not just an ordinary guy though, he’s black! A black man loose in white suburbia, you can see where it’s going already can’t you? The shit hits the fan when an angry mob turn up at the Sandin’s front door and demand the guy be sent out to them so they can kill him. It’s a moral quandary. The Sandin family are given two options, send him out and be spared, or hold onto him and the mob will break in and kill them all.

It’s not really anything you haven’t seen before, especially if you grew up with John Carpenter films such as Assault on Precinct 13, the remake of which had a screenplay by none other than (drum role) James DeMonaco. The Purge is set up more as a moral dilemma film than an all out action siege thing though, and for the first third works fairly well. DeMonaco is no great shakes as a director, he’s not awful but he’s not very interesting either. Luckily his two leads are top notch and felt believable as a couple. The kids are just generic American white teeth and good hair kids. In other words - boring. DeMonaco piles on things that you know are going to come into play during the last third of the film, the son has a medical condition, the neighbours are jealous etcetera.

Around the half way point The Purge turnes a corner and becomes quite ordinary, lots of shooting and all the typical tropes you’d expect from a bad home invasion film. The ethics of killing people is adressed throughout the film, but not in a very good way. Which is a shame since it could have been a taught little film, maybe not quite up to the standard of Ils, but something more along the lines of Cherry Tree Lane. In the end though, you won’t care what happens. Once the bullets start flying your brain will start to wander. Worth watching once, if you’re bored and have nothing better to watch. But how often does that happen?

The Satan Bug (1965) - John Sturges

I love a good cold war conspiracy style thriller, especially when there’s a chance that whole populations could be wiped out due to some evil genius. The 60s was full of these sort of things particularly after the ’62 Cuba missile crisis and the rise of a certain Mr. Bond. So with all that in mind I thought The Satan Bug would be right up my street. It is after all the film John Sturges decided to make straight after The Great Escape, which is a film that I have watched at least once a year or so for as long as I can remember. So it couldn’t be bad could it?

Well surprisingly for a film that would describe itself as a thriller it lacks quite a bit in the thrills department. In fact I’d go one further and say it was actually dull. A bit on the boring side. It has it’s moments, but could have done with being trimmed a little to bring the running time down to a lean 90 minutes, rather than the flabby two hours it is now. The thing is there’s a good film in there but for some reason it just didn’t find its way onto the screen.

The plot is quite simple, a deadly man made virus (The Satan Bug) is stolen from a secret American military base and our hero Lee Barrett (George Maharis) has to figure out the who, the why and the how and get the germ weapon back before it is used to wipe out the entire planet! Will he manage it? Will he figure everything out? Of course he will since this is from the time before that golden Hollywood era of downbeat endings, Vietnam hadn’t really hit Americans as a huge catastrophe yet and Nixon was still a few years off of souring Americans on politics forever. So why doesn’t it work then?

Well for starters there is a really uncomfortable mix between really drab sets, all muted colours and no set dressing and the gorgeous location footage from the Californian deserts. Which clashes like an episode of Columbo and a John Ford western. The acting matches the sets, drab and by the numbers, the lines are spoken but they never convinced me they were being uttered by humans. Worse than that though is the total lack of any sort of tension. It’s explained to us just how deadly this virus is, but at no point does it ever feel like anything other than a clear liquid in a bottle. People bark orders to each other down phones, cars tail other cars, heads are scratched and questions answered but it all just feels so pedestrian. It’s also a fairly confusing plot, with characters previously thought dead turning out to be not quite ready to be buried, and then there’s a 'Clay Shaw is Clay Bertrand' bit of subterfuge that makes you feel like you might have to rewatch the film again from the start, just to see if you could spot what was coming. Except like I said earlier it’s far too dull for that.

Which is odd since Sturges is one of the great journeyman directors of this period, he made good solid E X C I T I N G films. It’s like his heart just wasn’t in this. Which is a shame. The Jerry Goldsmith score is a gem though, sounding like a precursor to his Planet of the Apes score but with added synth blasts. It’s almost watching the film for this alone. Almost.

Escape From L.A. (1996) - John Carpenter

The eight year old me was obsessed with Han Solo, so much so that all I wanted to do when I grew up was hang with a Wookie and say cool things like 'boring conversation anyway' and 'droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose.' Punk may well have changed the cultural landscape for the kids aged fourteen and over in '77, but for us pre-teens the watershed moment was catching George Lucas' third feature film at the cinema. There’d be no more playing war in the school playground after that, for the next decade it was Star Wars and Star Wars only. There were always grumblings about who would play what character and so forth, but ultimately whoever I was supposed to be playing would immediately fade as soon as we started. I was Han Solo, as I suspect were loads of other kids that had been told to be a stormtrooper instead of the guy who’d made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

That all changed one morning at Upminster train station back in the summer of ’81. As I ascended the stairs towards the exit I caught sight of a poster for Escape From New York. Kurt Russell’s head was floating above the New York skyline with helicopters flying all about it. It was at that exact moment that my loyalties towards Han fell away and my new obsession with the unknown fizzog in front of me began. Han may well have had a cape and thought Tauntaun’s smelt bad on the outside, but this new fella had an eyepatch and the best grimace on his face I’d ever seen. Plus he was called Snake Plissken. How fucking cool was that? Snake. Plissken.

I was way too young to actually go to the cinema and see Escape From New York though, and it would be years before I managed to rent a VHS copy of it. Despite the fact that over the years I'd built up massive expectations for it, it didn’t disappoint. From that opening synth line of the score all the way through to Snake’s kiss off at the end, for the teenage me it was total perfection. Writer/director John Carpenter was at the top of his game back then and his films with Kurt Russell were amongst the best things he ever did. The Russell & Carpenter partnership is up there for me with those great actor/director teams like Eastwood & Siegel or Mifune & Kurosawa. So with all that rambling prologue in mind you can imagine how excited I was when it turned out that Kurt and John were going to make another film together, and not just any film but a sequel to Escape From New York.

I saw Escape From L.A. on it’s opening week. I was disappointed. It was shit. I never watched it again… Until now. Me and a couple of John Carpenter fans were nattering away about some new pictures of John and Kurt posted on Facebook, and the conversation turned to Escape From L.A., and for the first time since ’96 I had a huge hankering to watch it. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? Maybe I’d had such high expectations first time ‘round that I’d been too harsh on it? Possibly? Maybe?

Well as it turns out Escape From L.A. is still an absolutely abysmal film. Shockingly so at times. The bulk of the problem has to be laid at John Carpenter’s feet, since the biggest stumbling block with the film is that it all just feels so damn lazy. Just like all the worst sequels this basically rehashes the plot of the original. So we get the ticking time bomb plot device, Snake having to retrieve something from no mans land and all the rest of it. The thing is Escape from L.A. was made fifteen years after the original, and if you’re going to wait that long to follow up your film you’d better have a damn good reason for doing so in the first place. Don't make something that feels like a cheapo thrown together straight to DVD release. The effects in this film are probably the worst I’ve seen in a major studio film from this period, worse than original Playstation graphics with multiple shots that look unfinished and then some. Maybe the money ran out? It sure looks that way.

On the plus side Kurt Russell is on top form and does the business as Snake, it’s a character that he can easily breathe life into and his growly sub Harry Callahan delivery always works. The rest of the cast range from okay (Stacy Keach, Cliff Robertson) to miscast (Steve Buscemi) to downright shite. Yes Pam Grier and Peter Fonda I’m talking about you. Fonda in particular is wince inducingly awful, cranking up his old hippie dude persona to nauseating effect. Most of the major touchstones of the original are present but in a lesser form, for example the fight to the death arena scene now involves shooting hoops on a basketball court. I kid you not. That’s how bad this is. The only thing that redeems Escape from L.A. a little for me are its last ten minutes which are as good as the original film.

So as far as I’m concerned I’ll hopefully never have the urge to watch this again. It’s awful, and made even worse by the fact that John Carpenter has it in him to put things together on screen in a way that few others can manage. I still hold out some hope that someone will knock up a script that will bring Carpenter and Russell back together, Carpenter would make an ideal choice for a decent comic book adaptaion for instance and Kurt Russell can do no wrong (don't mention Soldier that wasn't his fault all right). Let’s face it, they could never make anything worse than Escape From L.A. Could they?

Skyfall (2012) - Sam Mendes

Bond is back. And about bloody time too. What with all the trouble with MGM (the co-owners of the Bond brand) almost going belly up, it felt at times that there was more chance of seeing Welles’ version of The Magnificent Ambersons than ever seeing Bond at the cinema again. Then there was the awful muddled Quantum of Solace which was still lingering in the memory reminding everyone just how bad Bond could be. Skyfall had a lot to live up to. It accomplishes just that though, and then some. Mendes has managed to reignite the Bond franchise and make it feel like something worth getting excited about again. Which is not bad when you consider the series is almost old enough to get a bus pass now.

So right from the off we get what is possibly the most exciting pre-credit sequence in a Bond film ever, a chase scene that propels along at a super rapid pace. From cars to motorbikes, to motorbikes on rooftops and finally to that old chestnut a fight on a moving train. With a digger and some VW Beetle's. Mendes lays waste to any fear that the director behind American Beauty might not have the chops for action within these first few minutes.

For the first time in 20 years we have a title song that sounds like it belongs over those gorgeous opening images too. While we're talking about Bond music, David Arnold’s attempts at bolting traditional orchestral flourish to synth modernism which worked about as well as it did for Marvin Hamlisch’s frankly laughable score for The Spy Who Loved Me, have been dropped along with Arnold, in favour of Mende’s composer of choice Thomas Newman. Like so much else in Skyfall it’s totally the correct decision.

There’s no need to go into the story here since it’s Bond. He’s still a British spy with a license to kill on the heels of a bad guy that will find that out by the end of the film. Some things have to stay the same don’t they? There is a plot point that is lifted straight from Marvel’s Avengers film, but I’m certain it must be pure coincidence. As in the previous Bond benchmark - Casino Royale (no not the original, silly) it’s far more personal this time round. World domination isn’t on the table, and there are no Ken Adam inspired villains liars either. Noughties Bond has to be different, there's no more jumping in the sack with anything with a pulse for example. The need to jet around the world isn’t so important now either since travel is cheaper than it was during the Connery/Moore days. So Turkey and Shanghai are the exotic locales for the first half of Skyfall, while London and the Scottish Highlands are used to perfection for the second.

Being the 50th anniversary film there are nods aplenty to the 22 films that preceded it. Not in Die Another Days awful hanging of old props around Q’s workplace, no it’s a little more subtle this time. There are all sorts of things for the viewer to spot, so I won’t spoil anything by listing them here. My favourites though were the Live and Let Die and On Her Majesty's Secret Service moments. Another thing I got a kick out of was when Bond is served his favorite drink, we see it being prepared but we don’t hear him say the immortal line. As I said it's all a bit subtle.

As was already known Daniel Craig is Bond perfection, but for this film he’s flanked by some of the best actors around. Dame Judi returns as M and gets more to do in this film than all her other Bond films put together. Then there’s Ralph Fiennes and Naomie Harris as MI6 types, both manage to play about with their stereotypes and have great (and this is a term I hate using, but I will anyway) character arcs. Albert Finney turns up towards the end of the film and gets the best line of all for his effort. Then there’s Javier Bardem as the naughty type who Bond is trying to defeat. Bond films are only ever as good as their villains, think back to Jonathan Pryce in Tomorrow Never Dies if you don’t believe me. The past has seen some real corkers - Charles Grey, Donald Pleasence and Telly Savalas being the three that immediately come to mind. Well Bardem is up there with them. He gives his character a depth and despite some proper looney moments manages to keep him on the right side of parody. His entrance is reminiscent of that great Omar Sharif intro in Lawrence of Arabia, and let's face it if you're going to borrow then you should always borrow from the best.

There are some problems with Skyfall, it’s a little overlong for instance and there are some typically Bond lapses of logic at times. But the overall film is so good that you can forgive it almost anything. Where does Bond go from here? Well seasoned Bond watchers will know that every time the series gets a re-boot the first film is always dark and gritty. After that the one liners creep in along with the silly gadgets. So in three films time we should have Daniel Craig swinging from a tree shouting like Tarzan. God help us.

The Game (1997) - David Fincher

I saw The Game when it first hit British cinemas back in October ’97. As it turns out it was one of the last films I saw before moving to Sweden, but that’s neither here nor there so forget that bit. Truth be told I found it underwhelming and since then have only caught bits of it on TV. Which is weird since like so many others I love David Fincher, and up until 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had this film earmarked as easily his worst. So I was quite excited to sit down all these years later and watch it again with fresh eyes. And you know what, it holds up pretty well, so much so that it made me wonder why I’d given it such a wide berth for so long. Well at least that’s what I thought until the last ten minutes, then it all came flooding back to me - like a drowning man's memories - just what the problem with The Game is.

Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is a riff on Gordon Gekko, an investment banker who seems to have no pleasures in life beyond his work. Which is much the same as his late father, who ended it all on his 48th birthday by jumping to his death. Van Orton is totally alone, cocooned in the world he’s built around himself. His brother Conrad (Sean Penn) is the polar opposite and seems to have done enough living/finding himself/experimentation (man) for the both of them. For Nics 48th birthday Conny gives him a gift certificate for a company called CRS. The ever cautious Nic ponders about using it for a while before finally giving in and taking the plunge. He contacts CRS, takes the tests, asks the questions (what is CRS, what do they do?) and really only receives one answer; CRS creates games, games which are individually tailored to each client. However later Nicolas is told he didn’t pass the test, so his game won’t happen. Or will it…

What follows is every bit as visually rich as you’d expect from Fincher who was still on a roll from the much lauded Se7en. For the first two hours it's a top notch thriller, thundering along with all the energy of an Indiana Jones film, never giving the audience the opportunity to digest what’s going on and more importantly question and pick holes in what they’ve just seen. Which is totally essential for this type of film. It's always one step ahead of the audience and keeps you guessing throughout the whole running time.

The acting on display in The Game is as good as any of Fincher's visual flurries. Michael Douglas (who’s in every scene of the film), is particularly on fire. It reminded me that I actually really like him and that on a good day he’s up there with any of his Hollywood peers. He manages to go from arse Gekko to humble bum in under two hours very convincingly. In between he gets to give his acting chops a good workout. The supporting cast (i.e. - everyone else) are all top notch too, be it a reigned in Penn or the full on James Rebhorn or the underused Deborah Kara Unger.

What I noticed this time around that the younger me missed was just how much this film is a nod towards films and film making in general. So we get Van Orton plunging into the San Francisco Bay (Vertigo), an overflowing toilet (The Conversation) and a stiff exchange of words between Van Orton and a desk clerk which recalls Jack and Delbert Grady in The Shining, to name but three. Then there’s the fact that it’s really as much a black comedy as a thriller. Which I wasn’t expecting first time ‘round.

Then there’s the whole pulling the curtain back - as Van Orton says at one point, in reference to The Wizard of Oz, see those pesky film quotes keep on coming. Hell even the canteen scene at the end is lifted wholesale from Blazing Saddles. Deborah Kara Unger gets a great moment at the end where she makes it crystal clear for the audience that the whole film has been Brechtian in style, and that the game was actually being played on us the audience and not Nicolas Van Orton.

Ah yes the end. Well it’s still the films big problem for me, just as it was all those years ago when I first saw it. It’s just not good enough, it’s like a bad punchline to a well told joke. You see you can have dodgy sections in films, but you can never have a bad ending. That’s the bit people remember as they walk out of the cinema. It’s been the downfall of many an otherwise great film. Which is a shame since this is a really really solid film for the first two hours. However it’s that ending, it just does not work, and no matter how good the rest of it is, the chases, the wonderful one liners, Michael Douglas losing his shit and looking as stressed as you’ll ever see him, even seeing Nicolas Van Orton rising from the dead - reborn in a white suit doesn’t save the film from that ending. Shame.

Storage 24 (2012) - Johannes Roberts

We Brits have a long history with that often maligned film genre - Science Fiction. Don't laugh it's true. From the crew on the original Star Wars films (and director of Return of the Jedi), through to classics such as The Man Who Fell to Earth, Alien, Blade Runner, 2001, Brazil and Things to Come we've always had a strong pedigree for intelligent Sci-Fi. Lately we've had Danny Boyle knocking out a half decent effort with Sunshine, and Joe Cornish writing and directing one of last years best films - Attack the Block. Let's just leave Prometheus out of this for now shall we?

So it's always interesting for me when a new Brit Sci-Fi flick hits the multiplexes, and I almost always end up giving them a whirl. Storage 24 was written by and stars Noel Clarke, who let's not forget wrote the still excellent Kidulthood. A plane crashes in central London, causing half of London to be locked down (oh yes I know my military jargon). Meanwhile Charlie (Noel Clarke) and best mate Mark are on their way to the titular storage facility to pick up Charlie's possessions after his recent split with girlfriend Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes). Upon arriving it turns out Shelley is also there along with two friends (Nikki and Chris). Sparks fly and conversations get heated but they all need to learn to get along since (drum roll, here comes the high concept bit), they are locked in the warehouse with… an alien. And said alien is a bit miffed.

It's a reworking (or direct steal depending on how nice you're being) of Alien. Except without the defined characters, twists, stunning cinematography, genuine hands over the face scares or any of the other things that make Alien the landmark film that it is. What they have managed to half inch is the idea of being trapped in a confined space with an extra terrestrial, and having a set that consists of lots of corridors. Corridors that you can get your cast to run up and down for most of the films duration in fact.

I wasn't impressed I have to say. The script is one of those scribbled on a fag packet jobs, it's full of holes and is also just so bloody unoriginal. The effects were nasty in the wrong way, the cast felt like they were waiting for the lunch bell and the direction was both uninspired and flat. All in all well worth giving a miss, go and see Dredd instead. You'll thank me in the long run I promise.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) - Sam Peckinpah

Pretty much the last of Peckinpah's essential films, this nearly western from '74 is famous for Peckinpah having final cut, making it one of the few films that was released the way the man intended. Just like Orson Welles before him, producers and studios loved to chop about Sam's films. Thankfully a fair few of his greatest flicks are now back to the way Sam entended them to be. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia has always been just the way Peckinpah envisioned it though.

In some Mexican backwater local gigolo Alfredo Garcia has managed to get the local mob boss's daughter up the spout. So being a typical mob boss he demands Garcia's head, with a huge cash sum for whomever manages the task. Peckinpah regular Warren Oates plays ivory tinkler Bennie, who thanks to his girlfriend having recently had a bit on the side with Alfredo happens to know what no one else does - that Garcia has just shuffled off this mortal coil. So off he sets, girlfriend in tow to decapitate the corpse and earn enough money to quit the rat race for good.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia scores instant points with me for being so unique, I can't think of another film that is like this. It's part road movie (but then again maybe not, since how many road movies end up where they began?), and part gutter romance. The whole story feels like it could have been ripped straight from the grooves of Dylan's '76 album - Desire. Everyone in the film looks like they could do with a hot bath and a bowl of soup. Oates' Bennie is a throwback to the sort of character Bogart would have inhabited back in the 40's, in fact the film has a distinct touch of the John Huston's about it. Oates makes Bennie totally believable despite the fact that he's on one of cinema's strangest journeys. He starts off being a loveable rogue type but ends about as far away from that as you can get, without it ever feeling forced. I guess it's that old adage about having a good script and good actors being half the battle. It would be hard to imagine Steve McQueen (another Peckinpah regular) as Bennie for instance. In fact I'm hard pressed to think of anyone other than Warren Oates in this role since he made it so much his own, in much the same way that Nicholson did with R.P. McMurphy. Peckinpah peppers the rest of the film with a cast of unknowns (to me anyway), Isela Vega as Bennie's woman Elita is the only person who comes close to the amount of screen time allowed Oates. It's very much him and Peckinpah that dominate the film. Plus we never even get to see the title character.

Every town looks really run down, but once we're out on the road we get to see the real beauty of Mexico, it looks totally lush. Normally road movies make quite a big deal out of their cars, think of Sailor's '66 Ford Thunderbird in Wild at Heart, or Bullitt's 1968 mustang fastback. Not here though, the cars in this film look shittier than any you have seen on screen before. Welcome to planet Peckinpah. Now if the perma-sweaty people or bloody action scenes aren't enough to let you know that you're watching a Peckinpah film, then the editing surely is. It's that great thing he does during action scenes, slowing the action down and filming it from multiple cameras so that you can see exactly what happens. Even his dodgier later films have these great moments.

That's not to say that this is only blood and gore slo-mo action, because the best moments in the film also happen to be the tenderest. My favourite is the five minutes we spend with Bennie and his gal making plans for the future under a tree in deepest Mexico, although the wonderful little scene in a shower comes a very close second. Of course being Peckinpah we get two girls having their clothes ripped off (one of them even gets a busted arm thrown in for free), and Kris Kristofferson attempting to rape Elita.

From the moment Bennie desecrates Garcia's grave things tumble downhill fast for him, and anyone with even just a basic knowledge of Peckinpah will know how the film has to end. It's structured in such a way that scenes mirror each other. Using the digging up of Alfredo Garcia's grave as the cutting off point. Once the grave has been opened the film essentially runs backwards, repeating each scene until it finishes right where it began. Things change so much for Bennie during his mission/journey (his whole life philosophy alters), which means the same set up takes on a different hue, such as that shower scene, or the meeting between the heavies and Bennie in their hotel room. It's a perfect structure in that way, something I'd first noticed in a Melville film.

I don't think 'bloody' Sam gets the props he deserves because of the controversy surrounding many of his films, coupled with the fact that he managed to overshadow them by being such a larger than life figure. If you love the man then you've seen this numerous times already and probably have drinking games to go with it. If you're not up to snuff with yr Peckinpah films however then this is as good a place as any to start. Be warned though, you'll want to see everything Peckinpah made after watching this. Yep even Convoy.

Hulk (2003) - Ang Lee

Even after seeing this film three or four times it still doesn't quite work for me. Back in 2003 not having a typical Hollywood lacky at the helm of a comic book adaptation was almost unheard of. Letting Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer have their way with Spiderman and X-Men respectively changed all that though. Ushering in what we have now - decent comic book adaptations by decent directors. Of course it doesn't always work out, just look at Catwoman and to a lesser degree Ang Lee's Hulk.

Lee does a decent job of setting up Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) as a science nerd who not only wouldn't hurt a fly, but probably couldn't. Banner's back story is well handled, although quite how he ends up with the Hollywood cliché (way hot science babe) of Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) is never really broached. However Bana & Connelly are believable as a couple and have decent enough on screen chemistry. Sam Elliott plays Betty's father, and is as much of a joy to watch here as he ever is. He's by far and away the most convincing actor in the whole film for me. Less believable is Nick Nolte as Banner the elder, who sets the whole story in motion by experimenting on himself and passing his mutant genes on to his son. Nolte is about as OTT as I've ever seen him. I'm sure he's just doing what was asked of him, but his character doesn't gel with the rest of the cast, it feels like he belongs in an earlier version of the script, but somehow managed to wangle his way through the various drafts without being rewritten. Every time he's on screen I get dragged away from any of the drama that is attempting to be built.

Talking of being dragged out of the film, Lee does an amazing job at editing Hulk to look like a Marvel comic book, sometimes the camera pulls back and reveals a comic style two page spread, before moving across and landing on a frame and continuing the story. Other times whole backgrounds fall away leaving one character who then has another background dumped in behind them. In short just like Edgar Wrights genius adaptation of Scott Pilgrim he constantly reminds you of the films comic book roots. However unlike Scott Pilgrim, it begins to wear thin after a while, Ang overuses these flashy editing techniques during the dramatic first half of the film. It's this segment that feels most like obvious Ang Lee territory, containing the family drama that he normally handles so well. However as I wrote earlier he fumbles the ball during this section. Which along with Hulk being about as flabby as Val Kilmer on an eating spree, is probably the biggest problem with the film.

So strangely enough the bit of the film that works best is when CGI Hulk is off and running in the desert, brawling with various tanks and helicopters, running along canyon walls and jumping miles into the air. Hulk smash, me like. Having the Danny Elfman by numbers score drop out and documentary style whip pans and crash zooms, make this section really effective. Sadly it's about the only section that really works for me. Much was made about the Hulk himself being totally CGI, it really felt at the time like the film was going live or die by how 'believable' he would be. Now of course he's a great big green guy who trashes anything in his path, believability should probably never have been an issue, since there wasn't a chance on earth that he would look real.

Maybe I should point out that I've never been a huge fan of The Hulk, be it the Lou Ferrigno TV version or the original comics. He's just a little too one dimensional and frankly a bit of a bore. Hulk turned out to be a box office flop, and for the follow up the producers went all out action with the rather lackluster The Incredible Hulk. Which when I saw it at the time (oh c'mon it's Edward Norton back when that actually meant something), bored the tits off me. So how mad is it that watching Hulk and not enjoying it makes me want to see the follow up that I enjoyed even less? Sometimes it's hard being a film geek.

For Your Eyes Only (1981) - John Glen

 

Unlike the previous Bond film (Moonraker), I didn't see this at the cinema. Instead I saw it for the first time in that most 80's fashion - a pirate VHS copy. Of course it was awful quality and I think it was that that always made me think of this as one of the lesser Bonds. That along with the fact there aren't any gadgets, no journeys into space, no gigantic hideout built on a Pinewood sound stage by Ken Adam, no Jaws, in fact this feels more like it should have been Moore's Bond debut. It's something that happens all the time with the Bond franchise, as each successive film gets sillier and sillier they reach the point where they need to dial everything back. It's normally these films that work best, Casino Royale, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Living Daylights for example.

The story itself revolves around the need for Bond to get his hands on some chunky piece of kit called an ATAC. Being the 80's those damn Ruskies are after it too, and that's about it storywise. Of course this being Bond the story really takes a back seat while we zoom off around the globe for reasons that aren't always that apparent. It all holds up surprisingly well and if anything improves with age. Julian Glover is aces as Kristatos the main baddie, and I would have liked Topol more if he would just stop gobbing nuts everywhere. The Bond girl (Carole Bouquet) is about as wooden as it gets, which is odd when you consider that she was so wonderful in Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire. There's also the blink and you'll miss it film debut of Charles Dance, and one of the funniest and tackiest pre credit sequences ever. Director Glen really lacks the sparkle of earlier Bond directors and as with all his Bond films turns in a workmanlike effort, the scenes that shine are the ones with the most action, all the rest of it feels a little flat in places. There are moments when the action has been visibly sped up, and the underwater sequences with the principle actors look woeful.

However as I said it's actually one of the better Bonds, far superior to either Moonraker or Octopussy which were made either side of this. Special shout out to Bill Conti for one of the most embarrassing Bond scores ever, it's slick, brass laden and overflowing with synths, massive pianos and wah wah guitars, which sounds appealing on paper but when it's all put together it sounds thin and all a bit 70's porn. I love it, but it's horrific to listen to. Kind of like the title song by Sheena Easton I guess.

Anyway you don't need me to tell you about an old Bond film, just about everyone on the planet has seen this at least seven times. It's Roger Moore so there are one liners to roll your eyes at, uncomfortable moments when he bashes lips with girls a third of his age but best of all there is Moore's darkest moment - when he punts a car off of a cliff. By far the best bit of the film that, and maybe my favourite Moore Bond moment ever.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) - John Carpenter

I was never a fan of this back when it first came out. Simply put it's one of those films that can't decide what it wants to be, is it a parody of martial arts flicks, a comedy, a horror or a gung ho 80s actioner? The truth is it's all of the above duking it out in a film that's madder than Ghostbusters and Weird Science. Over the years though it's grown on me like cancer cells on a 40 a dayers lungs. It's hard not to be drawn in by Kurt Russell who despite not being the greatest actor in the world, has a charisma and twinkle in his eye that kind of says 'it just a bit of fun, chill the fuck out'.

In fact it's Russell that has pulled me back time and time again to this film, as a nipper he was the reason I wanted a mullet. If I could have worn my faded denims tucked into knee length boots, believe me I would have. So while Rocky Rambo and Arnohlt were the bigger stars it was Kurt Russell or rather Snake Plissken that every kid of a certain age wanted to be. I have a nasty feeling I even wore an eye patch for a while.

Carpenter on the other hand was really on the slide by the time he filmed this. It began with turning out a couple of average (for him) films - Christine and Starman, and wouldn't really let up with a few exceptions (Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness), for the rest of his career. It's a shame, but at least with this film you get the feeling he was having fun. I think that might have been my biggest problem with it all those years ago. Russell's character Jack Burton is played for laughs and my teen brain couldn't handle that, I just wanted Plissken to go in there and do his thing. Over the years though I've really grown to love this film, mainly because I watch it as an out and out comedy, which is what it works best as.

The actual story is pure twaddle, some old guff about some Chinese curse that can only be lifted by marrying a girl with green eyes. Cue lots of daft set pieces and some of the greatest hammy voice over-acting since Donald Pleasence played Blofeld. It's all as daft as a lorry, but if you give in to it and go with it it's a riot. Great sets too, the rubber faced monster that can't move it's mouth and the flying eye head thing are pretty ropey though. It all just about hangs together. For years this was the worst of the Carpenter/Russell collaborations, but then that all changed in '96 though with Escape From L.A. But that's another story.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - Steven Spielberg

 

What with all the hooha surrounding the production and eventual release of this film, I found myself not being too bothered one way or the other about seeing it. So I let it slide past me at the cinema, and later found myself shaking my head at the on line reviews that screamed bad things about ALIENS, and CGI monkeys and all the rest of it. It all sounded about as much fun as being hit round the face with a used nappy.

Of course the world has turned several revolutions since we last saw that hat or heard that music, we're now in the fifties, both the decade and Indy's age (well give or take ten years). Nazi's are long forgotten and we're well into the Reds under the bed era. The story is some old gubbins about crystal skulls (you worked that out already from the title didn't you?), lost South American cities and UFO's, oh and (cough cough) Indy's son. Of course all of that is just an excuse for huge set pieces involving everybody's favourite whip slinging, wise cracking OAP archaeologist. It follows the same structure as the films that have gone before it, James Bond style opening action, then onto the school where all the exposition is gotten out of the way before Indy heads off on his globe trotting adventure. It's worked in all the previous films, so why change it? Likewise the pacing in this installment is superfast, it nips along at great speed, never giving the viewer time to pick holes in the plot. So when the dodgy CGI monkeys do turn up, they are gone before they have time to ruin the film.

In fact it's the use of CGI that I'd gripe on about most after a few Guinnesses down the pub I imagine. But that's because I love the old matte paintings and models of the original trilogy. But times change and so do film techniques, and let's face it the kids that this is aimed at aren't going to get all excited by claymation are they? So updating the look is fair enough. I really do wonder why people didn't enjoy this more though, maybe they expect too much while I expect too little from a film like this. It's true that neither Spielberg or Ford are at the top of their game anymore, but they can both knock out stuff like this easily enough. The rest of the cast is secondary to the action, so you may well have Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone and John Hurt but none of them do anything more than what is required. To be honest how could they do any more than that in this sort of film?

There are plenty of things I didn't like about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull such as the sub plot with his son, those monkeys or the opening Paramount logo dissolve. Then there are moments where belief has to be asked to step outside while the scene plays out, such as when Indy manages to survive an atomic explosion by climbing into a fridge. Still none of the above was able to dampen the film for me, and let's face it if you want realism watch Nil By Mouth, if you want heroes who are as good with the quips as they are with their fists then you could do much worse than this. So much worse.

Centurion (2010) - Neil Marshall

After his last flawed effort it's good to see Marshall back on track with this film. His usual array of obsessions are all present, people fighting against the odds, the great outdoors and each other being the main themes that appear throughout his work. That and gore, great big buckets of the stuff. The story is pretty simple. Set in them olden days, a group of Roman soldiers find themselves in the middle of Scotland. The locals don't like them and chase is on, a race to the English border. Will the Scots catch them, how will the Romans fare stripped of their weapons and in uncharted territory? You know the sort of thing. The Scots even have blue paint on their faces, essential for any post Braveheart film about the savages living north of Newcastle.

I actually quite enjoy the 'on the run' genre of films. The first I remember seeing was The Warriors and ever since then I've loved 'em. From Naked Prey through to Apocalypto they are simple exciting films. Which is maybe why Marshall's effort holds up well, he sticks to the rules, the biggest of which is keep the momentum moving forwards. In other words don't stop in too many places, otherwise you run (pardon the pun) the risk of becoming a different genre, that of the road movie. And that wouldn't do would it?

So it's all nonsense of course, the whys and wherefores being mere dressing and nothing for you to worry your pretty little heads about. Were there black legionnaires back then, or is that just an excuse to give us more of a mixed bag of characters? Michael Fassbender heads up our gang of lads, he's all muscles and pent up sexual tension, under him are a cast of blokes that if you've been watching British films during the past few years, you should recognise with the minimum of fuss. Riz Ahmed being the best of the bunch, Noel Clarke the worst. There's plenty of shirts off running through the highlands shouting and grunting style action. Let's face it you can't do much better than Scotland if you are looking for dramatic locations, it's one of the things that is going to push this film above other similar films for me. The other thing this film has going for it is the sheer bloody violence on display, there's all your usual arms and legs being hacked off, but Centurion takes it up a notch to almost Romero like levels of nastiness. Heads lopped in half, more cut throats than I care to count and that's just the start of it. So something for everyone it would seem, half naked blokes for the ladies and lashing of man blood for the guys. Cough cough.

I'm a big fan of films doing what they are supposed to do, and that's why I thought this was fine. It's nothing you haven't seen before, there isn't any real depth to any of the characters either. But in a film like this I don't want that, I just want to enjoy my ninety minutes and see if the person I think is going to die first does (they didn't by the way). The film whips by as quick as a Glaswegian joy rider, it felt like there were places where possible story strands have fallen onto the cutting room floor, in order to keep the pace of the film up. Which is all par for the course with films like this. If you can get past the awful sub Superman opening credits, and not have too high expectations then you'll enjoy this too. A test I always give myself after seeing a film is to ask myself two questions;- 1. Would I watch this again? 2. Would I pick it up on DVD for a fiver? My answers for Centurion were both yes.

The Terminator (1984) - James Cameron

Being eleven when this was first shown in cinemas, meant that I didn't have a chance in hell of seeing it until it landed in my front room on clunky old VHS years later. So nostalgia being what it is, I couldn't turn down the chance to finally see this on the big screen almost thirty years later. Now some films get better and better with each passing year, not this one though. What was once inspired, smart and exciting is now a bit tatty looking. Sure the concept is still great, the whole time travel paradox is always fun when done well. Providing not only a reason to return to the film, but also the chance for little kids like myself to natter about it in the playground until the cows come home.

Can there actually be anyone out there who doesn't know the plot of this film? Just in case there is, here it (briefly) is. In the future, after that old dystopian sci fi staple a nuclear war, machines are at war with the human race. A cyborg (the terminator of the title) is sent back in time to present day 1984, to kill one Sarah Connor, a waitress having a permanent bad hair day. Why kill her? Well the thing is she will at some point in the future give birth to the guy who will lead the human resistance. Pretty neat huh? The humans manage to send someone back in time too, to try and protect Sarah against her would be killer.

As I say as a concept it's great, and back then this film was the bees knees for me. There was so little decent science fiction in the early eighties, it was all aimed at kids. For more adult themed films you had John Carpenter, a handful of rental titles (Blade Runner, Soylent Green and um The Omega Man) and that was about it. So when The Terminator rolled up I was on board straight away. So what's changed? Well for one it looks shoddy, proper low budget, which it wasn't. The effects (with the exception of Stan Winston's actual T-101) all look quaint at best. It's all rubber guns, bad dummies, acting that is less than convincing and dialogue that is unintentionally humourous. Cameron directs with a heavy hand, leaving no room for the film to breathe. So nothing new there then.

More than all that though is the fact that T2 manages to make the original redundant. T2 does everything that The Terminator does, but better. This film still has a certain charm and it's very much of it's time, there's future Cameron players Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen and Michael Biehn all of whom are wonderful. Then there's the future Mrs Cameron herself Linda Hamilton, to be fair this isn't her finest hour, and like Arnie she'd be much better in the sequel.

As I sat in the cinema I kept thinking that what was my generations Matrix, is now nothing more than a cult film. The film that kickstarted a franchise that no one really wants anymore. Perhaps it would be fairer to compare it to Planet of the Apes in that way. Before I sign off on this I have to mention Brad Fiedel's soundtrack, which sounds like it wanted to be as cool as Carpenter's scores from this era, but actually ends up sounding like an instrumental version of early Human League. Oh and I'd give anything not to have to see the sex scene in this film ever again. Top tip for budding film makers, if you are going to have a sex scene in your film, never add music. Never ever ever. It will always end up being utter rubbish at best, porn at worst.

Die Hard 4.0 (2007) - Len Wiseman

Back in 2007 when this had it's theatrical run I decided that maybe a forth Die Hard film a full twelve years on from the last one, wasn't really something I needed in my life. For some reason this week I got chatting to someone at work about it, and he said it was actually pretty good. If by good he meant as over the top as any Michael Bay movie (the camera work in this film being just as fidgety as Bay's), then he was spot on. If you think you know what the Die Hard films are about then think again, this one is even dafter than Die Harder, and that's saying something. Think cars flying up in the air and taking out a helicopter, then think of someone jumping out of said helicopter onto a truck and walking away. Daft doesn't begin to do this justice. The world has turned a few times since last we met John McClane. Schwarzenegger went all political on us, presidents came and went, but more importantly (for this film at any rate) we've had 9/11 and 24. The plot for DH4 feels like it was torn straight from the pages of the later, while the former hangs around in the background.

Technorists have brought the east coast of the States to a standstill, led by one of the most uncharismatic villains ever (Timothy Olyphant) to hit town. Armed with only a handful of henchmen (evil of course), enough computer jargon to make Bill Gates run and hide and some laptops, they plan to bring the country to a standstill and half inch Americas cash via some far fetched mcguffin. Olyphant is reminiscent of Ed Harris' character in The Rock, insomuch as he used to be a good guy and is only doing this out of love for Uncle Sam. It'll make sense once you've seen it, I promise. Grizzly old Brooce, who seems more like a 21st century Harry Callahan than the fluffy haired wise cracking cop of yesteryear, only has 2 hours to fix things and save the free world. The story also feels like a cross between the first and third Die Hard films. The naughty nasty baddies (boo hiss) are terrorists on the outside but at heart just plain old thieves, while McClane gets to team up with someone well outside of his poker circle, this time a young computer hacker. Cue lots of genertion gap jokes and of course by the end of the whole shebang there is a mutual respect between the two, the nerdy hacker even manages to shoot his first bad guy. Yippie-Ki-Yay MotherFucker.

Or Yippie-Ki-Yay Mother…! If you watch the version I saw. Which had both the language and violence toned down, so even though it was full of people being shot there was no blood. All that in order to get a Parental Guidance rating in the US. Like the blood and swearing would be all that you would want to shield your child from. Still there you go, I don't have kids so who am I to say what they should and shouldn't watch? This is a very different beast from that first Die Hard though. That film is still one of the benchmarks against which action films are judged. So whereas back in '88 McClane was a semi believable type in a dirty vest, running about in a world firmly grounded in reality (kind of), now we find him living in some bizarre alternative reality, where he can jump on and off of an in flight jet fighters wings, roll out of fast moving cars and crash out of fourth storey windows all the while receiving nowt more than another nick on his face. Hmm.

DH4 doesn't stick entirely to the action genre rules (a good thing), there are little things like how the bad guys are all caucasian and speak in a variety of languages, while the head of White House security (or whatever his position was) is Arabic looking. Did you see what they did there? Very post 9/11, huh. I liked that. The story begins straight away and the audience isn't given the whole plot up front, instead they have to piece it together as the movie progresses. I ended up watching this twice in two days, purely because I wanted to see if it was any better once I had the story in my head (it was).  There are some nice nods to the previous films in here too, such as naming an FBI agent Johnson, McClane nattering away to himself about what a bad idea all this is and explaining how he overcame his fear of flying and all that, which should be more than enough to keep the fanboys happy. Talking of which it was a shock to see Kevin Smith turn up as WAR10CK, I thought he was pretty darn good, getting some decent lines and doing well in a cliched role.

Something I didn't like was the poor introductions for the lead characters, that and the the myriad of not only plot holes but just plain oddness. Things like why was it when all the gas was rerouted back to the power station it was on fire? There were hundreds of these stupid little questions raised in my head all the way through the film. Every time one arrived I just kept thinking it's a dumb ass action flick, stop being so hard on it and go with it. But those things still bug me. So apart from being dafter than a village idiots AGM this wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I can't see me watching it again any time soon, but it has made me want to revist the original three films. Which can't be bad, can it? With the news that Die Hard 5 is in the pipeline, surely Bruce must be 'too old for this shit' now?

Born to Fight (2004) - Panna Rittikrai

Me and my friend Neil Queen have started this thing of suggesting one film a month to each other, it has to be a film that each thinks the other should have seen, but hasn't. We kicked off as we meant to go on by starting with two titles each. Be bold we thought, after all life isn't worth living if you don't live on the edge is it? My two for him were The Red Shoes & Le Trou, for me he chose Enter the Void and this. After watching this I'm starting to feel like maybe I got the short straw.

To say this film is daft would be an understatement. But we'll get back to that in a mo, first let's have a run through just what this hour and a half is about. Well let's see, Born to Fight is a Thai film which kicks off with a massive action scene as two undercover cops try to bring down a drug lord called General Yang. All they really manage to do though is hurt loads of stuntmen and destroy a rather unconvincing shanty town. If you've seen Police Story, or even to a lesser extent Bad Boys 2 then you've seen this set piece filmed better. It's one of those action films that owes a huge debt to the over the top madness of Reagan era action fluff, mixed with a huge dollop of Jackie Chan. This opening scene for example, our two cops are chasing two huge lorries through some deserted wasteland, now for some reason one of the cops (Daew) decides that it would be best for him to clamber over the top of one of these speeding trucks. Don't ask me why, since like so much in this film there is no logic, other than the chance to film a few bone breaking stunts. So there he is on top of the trailer when all of a sudden there are loads of Thai baddies shooting at him. Where did they come from, and how did they know he was up there? As I said logic and this film weren't really getting along too well during filming. I shudder to think just how many injuries were caused during the shooting of this scene.

Anyway back to our story, Daew manages to arrest Yang but not before Yang blows up Daew's partner. Oh do keep up. So Daew is more than a little miffed about said partner dying, so what does he do? Turn to alcohol, bit of Clancy Eccles and some doobage, throw himself into his work? No of course not, he goes off to some poor village in the middle of nowhere, with his sister and some athletes to distribute soft toys and blankets to the needy. Well you do don't you? But hang on what happens next? Well it turns out that by pure coincidence General Yang's men have decided to take the very same village hostage, demanding their evil genius's release by the following morning or there'll be hell to pay. As far as storylines go it is pretty fucking bad. Think Die Hard in a crappy village set, with smaller action and loads of old women running around screaming. To be honest it's not even as good as that. Oh yeah and there is a nuke aimed at Bangkok, for the life of me I can't remember why, and for most of the film it is forgotten about. It's only when you think the film is about to wrap itself up and you can go and make a cup of tea and maybe rescue the day by watching something decent, that the nuke turns up again. Will it get launched? Of course it won't, except after a mad bit of kicking and punching (this film's one saving grace are some of the fight scenes) it does get launched. Don't worry though for some unexplained reason it goes through Bangkok and then explodes out at sea. So that's alright then.

As I said some of the fight scenes were good, and who could ever not want to see a one legged man giving it some to a bad guy? There were a few moments that had me laughing enough to worry my cats, an old man running worse than Roger Moore straight towards the camera, some chap spending the last third of the film running through action scene after action scene in slow motion with a Thai flag. Little girl beating up nasty man, that never fails does it? What else? Well there are loads and loads of plot holes, but to be honest it's not the sort of film where you should be too worried about things like that. The same goes for the direction and look of the film, I don't know maybe I take this stuff too seriously but I always wonder why the camera moves when it does. For instance why start with the camera on the ground and then rapidly have it crane up to the heavens only to cut away to a shot at eye level, back to the crane shot on it's way down now, then a close up of someones face then, well you get the picture. It's a mess, it wants to be Michael Bay but ends up being a cheapo version of McG. Oh God I hated this film, it was alright for a while, but I tire of things quickly if they fail to grab my attention. Whenever I've seen something I always ask myself if I would watch it again, or if I saw it on DVD for a ching (that's a fiver to you and me) would I buy it? See if you can guess what my answers to those questions are for this film. Enter the Void had better be good.

Tron: Legacy (2010) - Joseph Kosinski

I'm old enough to have seen the original Tron at the cinema as a film mad nine year old. Back then it ticked pretty much every box for me, since all I required was something that zipped along at a reasonable speed and looked great (and in the era of Pac Man Tron really did look the balls). I had no real interest in story lines or heaven forbid story arcs, or any of that other stuff that makes films so watchable for me now. In fact in later years having rewatched so many of those beloved films of my pre-teens, I have wondered if I even understood what was going on up on the screen. Somehow I doubt it. I liked seeing Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood kicking the bad guys arse, all the rest of it was padding until they did it again I'm guessing. Anyway when Tron came out on DVD I got all excited having not seen it for almost twenty years. Settling down to watch it I was kind of shocked just how poor the film was, and just how great it looked. I haven't ever bothered watching it again since then, some things are better left in the past. So cut to the here and now, and Tron is being heralded as having predicted everything from the internet to just about anything else involving digital technology. Which quite frankly it didn't, what it did do (or at least tried to) was harness the potential of computer graphics in films. And that's pretty much it.

So here we are almost thirty years after the original with a much belated sequel playing at our multiplexes. In 3D no less. Now I'm not going to bang on about 3D and how little respect I have for it as a revolution in film culture, well not too much. Let's just see how it goes shall we? I approached watching Tron: Legacy with more than a little caution and without massive expectations. All I wanted was some good looking excitement, if it had a decent story too, well that would be a bonus, but not necessarily something I expected.

I'll say upfront that it didn't really cut the mustard for me. I don't really want to go into what the whole film was about, not for fear of spoiling anything for people that haven't seen it, but more for the fact that beyond it being a father and son story there wasn't much else going on. Sure there are plenty of gobbledygook phrases and terminology bandied about to try and pretend that some deep thought has gone into the script, look Jeff Bridges is all zen and everything, but it's all nonsense, the story is pitiful.

The film starts with a disclaimer that not all of the film is in 3D which was a bit of a downer. However it soon becomes clear that the real world is presented (mainly) in 2D, and the digital world in the 'much heightened 3D everything looks weird and fake but were in a computer so it makes sense' style. Which does make sense, and for the most part works well. What doesn't work is any sort of emotional relationship between any of the characters on screen. Bridges plays Kevin Flynn (aforementioned father) and Clu (a digital version of himself in the digital world), Flynn is a flimsy 2D character, when he meets his son for the first time in twenty years there is no massive emotional scene, we just get the back story of what happened to him. It's all a little odd since as I said earlier the whole crux of the film is this whole father son thing.

Still where it does work is the glorious eye candy that is literally thrown at us from the screen. I wouldn't say it's particularly well directed (set pieces would have benefited immensely from a master shot just to give us a clue of where we are), but it does look lush. It also sounds great, the soundtrack by Daft Punk really comes alive when heard at maximum volume in a cinema. Their cameo in the film was the only moment that made me feel any twinge of excitement. Which is a bit of a worry, since if there is one area that Tron: Legacy should deliver it's excitement. The little ten year old chappie that I sat next to, calmly munched away on his popcorn throughout the film. I kept waiting for him to go mental from the sheer rush of coolness he must be feeling via his 3D glasses, but we might as well have both been watching Cocoon: The Return.

The acting in Tron: Legacy is woeful, Bridges seemed to be on autopilot and the much talked about digital version of a young Jeff wouldn't fool my cats, especially on a big screen where his lifeless eyes are so huge you can't help but see that he's not human. Michael Sheen admittedly has some fun mixing together Ziggy Stardust and Alex Delarge, he's very over the top and incredibly camp. In other words perfect for this film. Shame this ended up being my first cinema trip of 2011, still it could have been worse, as the trailers I saw before the film (Green Lantern, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Fighter) all proved.

Kick-Ass (2010) - Matthew Vaughn

Damn I wish I'd seen this before Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, since both are flip sides of the same coin. They share more than a few traits since both were directed by Brits, both were based on comic books and were released in 2010. But that's where the similarities end, since compared to Scott Pilgrim (and as lazy as comparisons go, I think this is a valid one), this film doesn't do half as well.

Ever wondered what the world would be like if the average schnook could became a superhero? Nah me neither. But let's pretend you have harboured thoughts about how things would be, if one of the guys or gals at work donned a cape and spent their evenings righting wrongs, and battling the forces of evil instead of sitting in front of the idiot box. Well if that was the case then this is the film for you. Possibly.

You see the thing is, it's a funny idea and if it was aimed at kids it might have worked. But Kick-Ass is far too violent and bloody for me, there is some humour in there but not much. Which is odd since it doesn't seem to take itself very seriously. Good things about Kick-Ass, well top of the list would be Nic Cage at his mad bastard best, all crazy tics and pitch shifting vocals. When you need someone to just go that little bit further, Nic's your man. Like Kinski before him he's always watchable, even if he does only appear in films that I wouldn't touch with yours. What else? Well I liked the home made ill fitting costumes, um, and that's about it really.

Sadly it's easier to run through what I didn't like than what I did. Well as I said I thought it was too bloody for a start, the sets looked like the old backlot Universal ones that would crop up on the A-Team and other shoddy TV no no's. They looked proper fake, really badly dressed too. I didn't find anything funny, was I supposed to? I didn't really think the action scenes were exciting either, bland, seen it all before was my humble opinion. When you start checking to see how long is left of a film then you know something isn't working. Maybe it just wasn't aimed at me. As for Matthew Vaughn, he is such a pedestrian director, every stupid little cliché he could crib from some other film was present here. The worst of them all being the continual cutting away to a high angle shot of the city at night. Awful, awful, awful. So lacking in originality. If there is such a thing as the language of cinema then Vaughn must be mute. Still any film that manages to shoe horn in a Sparks track and a reference to John Woo can't be all bad, and despite how the above reads I didn't think it was terrible, just not my cup of tea. I can't imagine ever sitting down to watch it again either. Ho hum.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) - Edgar Wright

Wow, let me kick this off by saying that despite reservations that I wouldn't like this, I came away thinking it was pretty neat. I don't read comics or play computer games anymore, which is more down to the fact that I have other things to do, than thinking it's childish or anything like that. So I was thinking that this film wasn't aimed at me at all, since I hadn't even heard of Scott Pilgrim until it was announced as Edgar Wright's next film. Edgar Wright I have heard of, and despite the fact that I think he's a bit of a goon, and far too full of himself, he has done enough to make me at least interested in anything he decides to direct. Spaced was great and at the time felt like a much needed shot in the arm for British comedy. Not only was it funny but it looked so bloody sexy, next up was Shaun of the Dead, which gave Wright the chance to really go for it in terms of style and for the most part it worked. Hot Fuzz was such a bloated effort I'm amazed that any of the humour made it through, it was overlong, over complicated and had about four endings too many.

So with the above in mind you can imagine why I wasn't all that bothered about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I probably would never have bothered seeing it either had it not been for the fact that a few people (Daniel Bergman take a bow), who's taste in film I really trust told me that I would like it. So for those who are like me and have never been touched by the world of Scott Pilgrim fear not, for despite all the visual madness (oh and there is plenty of that, more of which later), the film is about the baggage people carry around with them from relationship to relationship. Something everyone who is old enough to see this can relate to.

Visually this is out there, but in a good way, it doesn't burn your eyes or leave you reaching for the painkillers. I don't think there has been a term coined for this style of film making yet. It's the equivalent to film what post rock is to music. Post Cinema just sounds well wrong, so hopefully someone bigger and brighter than me will name this genre at some point. But you know the sort of thing I'm talking about, Oliver Stone really went for it with Natural Born Killers and Fincher ran with it on Fight Club to a degree, but Wright really cranks it up a notch with Scott Pilgrim. It's very kinetic, perfect for a generation weaned on fast cut late eighties fluff, those who have the language of computer games firmly lodged in their underused brains. But the visuals are just the dressing, the actual theme running through the film is that of ex girlfriends/boyfriends and all that.

So the basic plot of the film is this, Scott Pilgrim regular geek, plays bass in a band with two other geeks, meets a girl (Ramona Flowers) falls for her, and as happens in these situations she has a past that our hero should be happy to not know about, but unfortunately (for him) he can't help but be curious about her exes. And so since this tale is not tied to the real world but rather that of the comic it's based on, Scott has to battle Ramona's seven exes. Now this is where I thought I would tire of the film, since the idea of having a least seven fight scenes to get through was not something that made me punch the air and cry 'HELL YEAH'. This is where Wright's real skill as a director comes into play though, since he was able to make each fight scene different from the previous one, and at the same time wring comedy from them and move the plot forwards. In this way I'd say his closest peer is Stephen Chow (the genius behind both Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle), in terms of both style and the way they both have no qualms about pushing things just that little too far. The best thing is the evenness of the film, most films like this tend to wilt a little around the hour mark, the humour dries up as the real drama of the film comes to the fore. Not here though, right the way up to the last frame I was laughing and just couldn't wait to watch this again. So this ends up as one of the best films of the year for me. Which is quite strange, but that's life innit?