Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

Posted on October 31, 2014 by badblokebob

aka Tucker & Dale vs. Evil *

2014 #83
Eli Craig | 85 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | Canada & USA / English | 15 / R

Riffing on the “evil hillbillies” horror sub-genre, a pair of simple country folk on a fishin’ holiday encounter a gang of college kids who, through a series of unfortunate coincidences, mistake them for murderous psychos — and decide to fight back.

Essentially a one-joke premise, it succeeds by exploiting every possible angle. Unlike some horror comedies, it’s light on scares, but the trope spoofing means it works best for a genre-aware crowd (it’d play well in a double-bill with Cabin in the Woods). Nonetheless, there’s enough heart and gruesome laughs to broaden the appeal to those less familiar with sub-genre intricacies.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long. You’ve just read one.

* Punctuation matters, people. ^

Dark Shadows (2012)

Posted on September 16, 2014 by badblokebob

Director Tim Burton’s most recent live-action movie is an adaptation of a 1960s soap opera… albeit one featuring vampires, witches, ghosts and sundry other supernatural goings-on. You wouldn’t get that on EastEnders (more’s the pity).

In the mid 18th Century, the Collins family leaves Liverpool for the New World, setting up a successful fishing empire and their own town, Collinsport. The son Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has a fling with the maid, Angelique (Eva Green), before laying his affections on Josette (Bella Heathcote). Little does he know, Angelique is a witch, who kills Josette, turns Barnabas into a vampire, and goads the townsfolk into burying him alive. As you do.

Fastforward 200 years to 1972, where young Victoria Winters (also Heathcote) arrives in Collinsport to become governess for the still-surviving Collins family’s youngest. The fishing business is failing, the mansion crumbling, and the family (Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Gully McGrath, plus live-in psychologist Helena Bonham Carter and handyman Jackie Earle Haley) are a collection of odd-sorts. Then Barnabas’ coffin is dug up, resurrecting him, and… Oh, look, I’m basically telling you the whole movie now. It’s quite hard to provide a summary of the introduction to the plot, because there’s actually rather a lot going on.

Early on, it works. The first 20 to 30 minutes offer a serviceable prologue and an engaging introduction to most of the characters. It’s funny, it’s occasionally spooky, there’s a good deal of promise for a marginally-more-serious Addams Family-cum-Edward Scissorhands fantasy (I did say “marginally”). All in all, it’s a skilful and cohesive opening, if nonetheless a little Burton-by-numbers. Sadly, the film doesn’t seem to know where to go with it after that.

The story is hard to summarise because it feels like someone tried to cut a year’s worth of a soap into a movie. There are more characters than the film knows what to do with, meaning we get major developments that come literally out of nowhere, plots that are explained rather than seen, others that are introduced only to be wrapped up, and the nagging sense that a lot of material has been deleted.

Standing out from that crowd are Eva Green, who chews the scenery with aplomb, and Bella Heathcote, who grabs her chance to shine among an otherwise starry but phoning-it-in cast. Depp trots out the latest variation on his white-facepainted-weirdo Burton staple; Pfeiffer seems to wish she was back in Stardust or Hairspray; Moretz almost undermines her rising-star status (and is a little too jailbait-y to boot); Jonny Lee Miller battles his American accent almost as much as his character’s lack of purpose; and Helena Bonham Carter is in it as well, obviously.

It’s a tonal grab bag: at times it seems to be a knowing spoof of daytime soaps, at others pushing for drama almost with a straight face; it’s sometimes deliberately and successfully comedic, at others straining too hard for a desperate laugh; it has a strain of bizarre sexuality that may be aiming at comic but is frequently just uncomfortable. This scrappiness leads to the most cardinal sin of any entertainment: it ends up a bit boring; and, in its out-of-the-blue big-battle climax, crushingly derivative.

Burton has spent almost a decade picking projects that are glaringly obvious choices for him. Perhaps it’s a reaction to Planet of the Apes’ failure; perhaps he’s just as predictable as the “Burton-esque” labelling these projects would likely have received under a different director. Whatever, it seems to have led to an artistically-criminal level of laziness — and I say laziness rather than ineptitude because, for all the project’s predictability, some almost-inspired moments do shine through. Just not often enough.

Sightseers (2012)

Posted on August 30, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #52
Ben Wheatley | 85 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | UK / English | 15

“He’s not a person Tina, he’s a Daily Mail reader.”

Like The Trip, only with quaint museums instead of restaurants and murder instead of impressions, the third feature from director Ben Wheatley is succinctly described as “a black comedy”. That’s a severe understatement: it’s dark; the kind of dark you might experience on a moonless night in the middle of nowhere if you popped on a blindfold made of lead.

A distinctly odd, rambling experience, it unquestionably won’t be to everyone’s taste — to most people’s, even — but if you are on its wavelength, it’s hilarious and brilliant.

Adorable dog, too.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long. You’ve just read one.

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

Posted on August 23, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #27
Ken Russell | 90 mins | TV | 16:9 | UK / English | 18 / R

The Lair of the White Worm looks cheap, has a ridiculous story, overacted characters and overcooked dialogue, and by all rights should be a disaster. And maybe it is… but I don’t think so. In the right frame of mind, at any rate, it’s a whale of a time.

Perhaps it’s “so bad it’s good”, but I’m also not sure of that — I think perhaps director Ken Russell and his ensemble (which includes Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant [both of whom have now played the Twelfth Doctor] and Amanda Donohue) knew they were creating the ludicrous. There’s an indefinable charm that a hundred slicker, objectively more accomplished, films just can’t match.

To be frank, the whole thing’s pretty much worth it just for the following monologue, delivered by Donohue’s priestess-type:

Now, if you’re sitting comfortably, I shall tell you why you must not be afraid to die. To die so that the god may live is a privilege, Kevin, and if you know anything at all about history, you will know that human sacrifice is as old as Dionin himself, whose every death is a rebirth into a god ever mightier!

[doorbell rings]

Shit.

If you don’t really understand why that’s so good, The Lair of the White Worm isn’t for you. If it clicks, however, then this is a forgotten minor gem.

Night of the Big Heat (1967)

Posted on July 25, 2014 by badblokebob

aka Island of the Burning Damned / Island of the Burning Doomed

2014 #48
Terence Fisher | 90 mins | DVD | 16:9 | UK / English | 15

These days largely sold as a horror movie (the old Collector’s Edition DVD is branded as part of a “Masters of Horror” series), probably thanks to its cast (Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), director (Terence Fisher, of many a Hammer Horror, including five with Cushing and Lee), and rating (an X originally, a 15 now), Night of the Big Heat is not really anything of the sort. Well, maybe a little; but you’re more likely to get scared by a contemporaneous episode of Doctor Who.

Based on a novel by John Lymington (a pseudonym for John Newton Chance, who under a different name again wrote some of the Sexton Blake detective stories), Night of the Big Heat concerns the island of Fara (in real life an uninhabited Orkney Island, here a fairly busy place where everyone has a very English accent) undergoing a heatwave while the rest of the UK endures a cold winter. The locals soon (well, eventually) come to realise that something is afoot… something not of this world…

Opting for slow-burn tension rather than alien invasion excitement, the film takes rather a while to get to the point, attempting to distract us with a subplot about the sudden appearance of the pub landlord’s former mistress, who gets the already hot-and-bothered islanders hotter and bothereder. On the audio commentary, co-writers Pip and Jane Baker talk about how you had to sneak in and dash through such character/romantic subplots, because the audience wanted to get to the sci-fi stuff — which rather begs the question, why put it in at all? (Incidentally, according to Pip Baker on the audio commentary, the pair were brought in to redraft because the original screenplay’s dialogue was “unsayable”. Anyone familiar with their ’80s work on Doctor Who, and their associated reputation, will find that highly ironic.) However, when the sci-fi stuff does roll in it’s a bit of a damp squib, leaving the scenes relating to the affair, whether it will be discovered, and what various characters do about their various feelings, as some of the more unique and interesting elements.

The sci-fi does border on offering the same, but can’t pay it off. There’s an interesting concept about aliens transporting themselves through radio frequencies and satellite communications, apparently a new idea at the time because higher frequencies were only just being discovered. Sadly, it’s not very well developed. They invade through radio waves, but then somehow manifest as weird blob-things? And they feed off light/heat/energy, so the solution at the end is to… blow them up? Because explosions don’t have a lot of light, heat and energy. In the end, they seem to be defeated by it suddenly raining. Why does it suddenly rain? How does that stop them? We’ll never know, because the film stops with a thud as soon as that happens. Won’t more of these aliens follow in the future? We’re not told.

Even if it doesn’t make sense, as a bit of B-movie tosh it has its moments, even if the most memorable tend to involve Jane Merrow in either a wet bikini or rubbing ice over her chest. All round there’s a good evocation of it being uncomfortably hot, which considering it was shot in February and March is a real achievement. During night shoots the cast had to suck ice to stop their breath being visible, while running around in wet clothing to look like they were drenched in sweat. Poor sods. Said night scenes are a mess of genuine and atmospheric nighttime shooting, alongside the kind of day-for-night filming where everything’s extremely dark except for the sky, and also the kind of day-for-night filming where it’s day and… um… shh!

The appeal of Night of the Big Heat now is firmly with fans of not only the genre, but this particular era of it. It’s not so bad as to be enjoyably laughable, not so atmospheric that it can trump the lapses in logic, not so scary as to merit its rating (which was actually awarded for an attempted rape, by-the-by). It does have its moments, though, so people who are fans of ’60s British SF may find it a minor, passing enjoyment.

Night of the Big Heat is released on Blu-ray from Monday, 28th July. Probably. I mean, they’ve rescheduled it half a dozen times, so who knows?

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape (2010)

Posted on July 16, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #60
Jake West | 71 mins | DVD | 16:9 | UK / English | 18*

Originally produced for the 2010 FrightFest film festival, horror director Jake West’s feature-length documentary with the unwieldy title explores the ‘video nasty’ scare that gripped early-VHS-era Britain. Starting with a primer on the birth of home video, and what it was like to watch movies in those days (because, ladies and gents, we’ve now reached a point where even fans of that (second-)most adults-only of genres, the gory horror flick, are young enough to not recall a time before DVD), West uses archive news clips and a wide array of new talking head interviews to take the story from the UK’s first video recorders in 1978, through a newspaper-led panic, up to the infamous Video Recordings Act of 1984, which irrevocably (thus far, anyway) changed the face of home entertainment releasing in the UK.

In terms of documentary filmmaking, this is not a flashy affair — as I said, archive clips and talking heads. But this is a gripping story — horrifying in its own way, ironically enough — and West and producer Marc Morris have a double whammy of quality components with which to tell it: well researched and selected clips and cuttings, which include key interviews from news and opinion programmes of the time; alongside new interviews with people from both sides of the debate. These include those who campaigned at the time, both anti- and pro-censorship, as well as those who said nothing and perhaps regret it; and now-famous fans who lived through the era and have since gone on to prominent positions — filmmakers and journalists, primarily. It’s this array of informed opinion that makes the film such captivating, essential viewing.

Focusing on the scare rather than the films embroiled in it makes this less a “horror documentary” and more a social history/pop culture one, though the liberal use of extreme clips from the movies in question shuts out anyone without a hardened stomach. (If you did want more on the films themselves, the DVD set that contains the documentary — Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide — includes 7½ hours of special features discussing all 72 ‘official’ video nasties alongside their trailers.) There’s room for little asides amongst the main narrative, though. One of the highlights is the story of an interviewee who was invited on to Sky News in the wake of the James Bulger murder and asked if the film many were holding responsible, Child’s Play 3, should not be available on video… at which juncture he pointed out to the interviewer that it was currently showing on Sky Movies.

One of many fascinating aspects of the documentary is learning how little defence was given to the movies or, more potently, the idea that we shouldn’t be censoring media. It’s the Guardian’s own film critic from that time who highlights that certain papers should have been mounting some kind of defence, or at least counterpoint, but simply didn’t. He explains that they actually found the films a bit extreme and shocking too, which is why they didn’t step in, but — as he says — that’s besides the point: they should have been arguing against censorship; and it was that lack of an intelligent counterargument (or a paucity of one) that helped the ridiculous views take hold and the ill-thought legislation sweep through.

There was some counterargument, however, which leads us to the film’s best interviewee, and surely a new hero to many: Martin Baker. Baker was one of a few (certainly the first, and for a time the only) critical/intellectual-type voices to speak out in defence of the films that were outraging so many. He’s to be commended not only for his valiant defence of, essentially, free speech at a time when his views were immensely unpopular; but also because he remains one of the most lucid and fascinating commenters in the documentary. He makes the clearest points about the need to not forget both what happened and how it was allowed to happen, lest it occur again.

In a film overloaded with memorable points and sequences, two of the best come near the end. One is the aforementioned, a series of points (including Baker’s) about how the public must learn because politicians won’t. Very true, and surely the main take-away point of the film. Just before that, however, there’s a piece of vintage news footage. Over shots of innocent children in a playground, a reporter tells us that the potential long-term effects of children watching video nasties are not yet known — the implication being we should be terrified that they’ll all grow up either emotionally scarred or to become mass murders. What follows is a near-montage showing successful filmmakers and journalists of today attributing their entire careers to video nasties; and it only scrapes the surface of the tip of the iceberg of those, too.

For those of us not alive or aware during the period in question, it’s a massively informative film. Indeed, even for those who remember it well, this may offer a level of insight and explanation that was absent at the time. It’s important for film fans of all stripes, not just gore hounds, because the legislation passed in response to video nasties still dictates so much of modern British film releasing. And beyond even that, everyone has something to learn from the story of how mass government-sponsored censorship — to a level that, at some points, is reminiscent of Nazism or Stalinist Russia — was not only allowed, but encouraged, in such recent history. Indeed, such issues very much still play out today — after all, this is a country that has recently enacted ludicrous, ineffectual rules that force ISPs to attempt to censor what we can and can’t see on the internet, and just yesterday rushed through anti-privacy legislation without proper debate. Sad to say, many of the valuable lessons of the ‘video nasties’ brouhaha — lessons made explicit with superb clarity in Jake West’s excellent documentary — have not been heeded.

A new sequel documentary, Video Nasties: Draconian Days, is released on DVD as part of Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide: Part Two this week.

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Violence placed 10th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2014, which can be read in full here.

* Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape isn’t actually listed on the BBFC websites, suggesting the makers decided that, as a documentary, it was Exempt. However, the rest of the DVD set on which it is available is rated 18 and, thanks to all the included clips, that’s certainly the appropriate category for the documentary. ^

Ghost Rider (2007)

Posted on June 12, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #45
Mark Steven Johnson | 101 mins | TV | 1.78:1 | USA & Australia / English | 12* / PG-13

Nicolas Cage fulfils his long-held wish of playing a comic book hero in this peculiar effort from the writer-director of Daredevil.

The MacGuffin storyline feels ripped from Constantine, but here executed via a screenplay written in Dairylea on a block of Stilton, shot on Camembert film with Cheddar cameras. Add a villain who looks like a Twilight reject, cheap CGI, DOA humour, and the bizarre centralising of disposable subplot-level romantic antics, and you get a result that’s not repugnant, but just a bit odd. A few surprisingly inspired moments, plus the farcicality of its blatant cheesiness, rescue it from vapidity.

Ghost Rider featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2014, which can be read in full here.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

* The UK theatrical release was passed at 12A with cuts to “Johnny’s face disintegrating into the Ghost Rider during his initial transformation”. The DVD is uncut but a 15. No idea which version gets shown on TV. ^

Solomon Kane (2009)

Posted on May 1, 2014 by badblokebob

The year 1600: British ship’s captain Solomon Kane is not a nice man, a mite too fond of pillagin’ and killin’ and quite possibly other not-nice things ending in —in’. That is until he has a run in with the Devil’s Reaper. Hell has claimed his soul, and its time to collect. Solomon does not plan on being collected, renouncing his former life and trying to hide at a monastery in England. But as a gang of possessed men lay waste to the countryside, burning its towns and enslaving its people, will Solomon be able to stick to his newfound pacifism? Yeah, we all know the answer to that…

Star of a series of pulp fantasy stories and poems by Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, this version of Solomon Kane is inspired by those works rather than adapted from them. It’s an origin story, showing how Solomon came to be the man he is in Howard’s tales, though you’d be forgiven for missing that: writer-director (and lifelong fan) Bassett has managed to construct a story that feels entirely complete in itself, not mere setup for future adventures. Even though the ending is ready for the planned-but-unlikely sequels, it’s open for, rather than expectant of, them; a pleasing oddity in today’s franchise-driven blockbuster landscape.

The style is a fantasy-horror mash-up, recalling everything from the 1982 Conan to Witchfinder General, and plenty more besides. That’s not to say its a rip-off of those movies, or even some kind of cobbled-together reference-fest, but rather that its roots and inspirations — the previous works it aligns itself with — are discernible for those familiar with them. There’s some creepy creatures and sequences, no doubt thanks to Bassett’s previous directing horror movies, but also a more-than-requisite amount of swordfighting and the like — all told, Kane is more period action-adventure (with demons) than period horror.

Nonetheless, some viewers have found the pacing off. It’s true that after a big opening action scene the story slows down for a time, and that later on events become a tad episodic, but I think this gives the film more of a unique flavour than your usual action-adventure flick, where the action sequences are carefully designed to build in scale and are methodically spaced throughout the running time. The way Bassett plays things allows more time for character and mood to grow, and while his screenplay doesn’t always excel at uncovering those things, a first-rate cast brings the necessary.

In the titular role, James Purefoy is best as snarling action hero rather than when tormented and penitent… but that might just be because all-action Kane is more fun. Indeed, the less-nice version we meet in the opening sequence is perhaps the best of all. On his solo audio commentary, Bassett says that everyone on the crew fell in love with that incarnation, and suggests there might be room for a prequel starring the pre-heroic version of the character. If we’re not getting sequels then we’re certainly not getting that, but Kane’s anti-hero antics do promise entertainment value. (I’ve read that Kane isn’t actually all that nice in Howard’s original stories — perhaps, contrary to the film’s “origin story” aims, more like the movie’s opening version? The film has given me a desire to check out the original works, though I don’t know when I’ll get round to it.)

In support there’s the likes of Pete Postlethwaite, Alice Krige and Max von Sydow, all of whom bring instant heft to roles that need it. I don’t mean to say the screenplay doesn’t contain it, but the shorthand the actors bring with them certainly does favours. Cameo-sized appearances by Mackenzie Crook and Jason Flemyng are also effective, and watch out for a pre-Game of Thrones appearance by Rory McCann, aka The Hound.

Although made for a relatively tight budget on a swift schedule, every technical element sings. Dan Laustsen’s cinematography is gorgeous, whether it be the golden hues of an African throne room, the cold blue-whites of an English winter, or the muddy browns and rainy greys of later sections. I’m sure there’s a lot of digital grading involved in all this, but does it really matter how something was achieved when it’s achieved so well?

Full marks too for Ricky Eyre’s production design, David Baxa’s art direction and Lee Gordon’s set decoration. I don’t want this to read like the credits scroll, but the work done on the sets and locations is phenomenal and those responsible deserve the praise. Their work wouldn’t look out of place in something as crazily budgeted as The Hobbit — and hurrah to them for actually building it, whereas the majority of Jackson’s Middle-earth locales now seem to be CGI.

My praise also extends to those responsible for the film’s location shooting. Shot in the Czech Republic, for once that genuinely looks like Britain. OK, the style of some buildings give the game away occasionally (in particular the monastery), but until I read different, I just assumed the fields, forest and coastline had been found in our real South West, on the moors or what have you.

Further kudos to those responsible for the fight choreography (so good that even a deleted sequence (included on the Blu-ray) is better than many films can manage), for make-up, for creature design, for costumes, for the CGI… Rare is the element that lets this movie down. Indeed, my one real gripe is a final-act monster that seems to be beyond the scope of the filmmakers — between slightly jerky animation and a flatly limited choice of camera angles, it literally looks like a modern video game cutscene. Considering the excellent effects in the rest of the film (the opening sequence is a highlight in this regard, particularly the flaming sword that begins to melt Kane’s own), it’s a shame. That said, it’s not bad CGI, just not top-notch. If that’s the biggest complaint, there’s nothing to worry about.

Also, it’s permanently raining. Which looks great. Whoever was in charge of rain did a fab job.

At the end of the day, Solomon Kane is a period fantasy action-adventure, something which doesn’t seem to be everyone’s taste — it has relatively weak scores on the likes of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes (though, in the context of how this kind of movie often performs in those arenas, they’re far from awful). For my money, however, it’s a great little film. It looks beautiful, it renders the tone of pulp fantasy brilliantly, its action sequences are exciting (so many swordfights! Heaven!) and its creepy bits unnerving. It may not be ‘trash’ elevated to art — it’s not a Tarantino movie — but it is pulp fiction treated with due reverence.

The UK TV premiere of Solomon Kane is on Film4 tonight at 9pm.

The Box (2009)

Posted on April 8, 2014 by badblokebob

The writer-director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales applies that same schtick to a combined adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button (previously adapted into an ’80s Twilight Zone episode), and the life story of his parents.

It’s almost Christmas, 1976, when a mysterious package is left on the doorstep of teacher Norma (Cameron Diaz) and her NASA employee husband Arthur (James Marsden). It contains a box with a button, and that afternoon Arlington Steward (Frank Langella, with a chunk of his face missing thanks to CGI) visits to explain what it means: if they press the button, someone they don’t know will die, and Norma and Arthur will receive $1 million cash; or they can not press it, and nothing happens. They have just 24 hours to decide.

It’s an intriguing “what would you do?” premise, which Matheson apparently lifted from a psychology class discussion scenario. I believe that’s about the extent of the short story too, which is all of six pages long — not exactly feature-length. Kelly has bulked it up by expanding the characters, who are now based on his parents to an almost freakish degree, and a massive back-end extension (the short story accounts for 30 to 40 minutes of the two-hour film) that heads deep into the same “what the…?” territory that he mined in his previous directorial efforts.

In the case of the former, Kelly’s dad really did work at NASA, his mum really was a teacher, and she really did have a foot disability, for which Mr Kelly Sr. and his NASA chums really did engineer a kind of prosthetic to help her resultant limp. What a nice tribute to his supportive parents and their devotion to one another, eh? At the start, perhaps, but by the end of the film you may be wondering what the writer-director’s subconscious wants to do to his ma and pa…

As for what that plot entails… I shan’t spoil it. Suffice to say it’s better explained than the ending of Donnie Darko and infinitely more comprehensible than Southland Tales, even though mysteries and questions remain. That’s fine in my book (I loved Donnie Darko), but the story that leads to said inconclusions isn’t all that. To boil it down, it takes a story that was fine at its short length, and attempts to add all kinds of explanations and expansions that just feel needless. It’s B-movie schlocky.

In fact, The Box is at its best when it almost embraces that genre side. There are some fantastically creepy sequences; genuinely discomforting lo-fi scares. They’re not inherently undermined by the plodding dramatic sections or the kooky sci-fi wobbly bits (or even the bizarre, oddly dated, slightly uncomfortable thematic reading suggested by who always presses the button), but they leave the unnerving parts to function as isolated instances of quality horror moviemaking rather than a consistent mood or tone.

What could function well as an indie-level thriller is further undermined by abundant, therefore costly, CGI. Whether that’s Langella’s facial disfigurement (what could’ve been make-up is actually a complex array of tracking dots, green face-paint, motion-control cameras, and so on; all used merely to place him in simple dialogue scenes), or wide shots of ’70s Virginia, with a computer-adjusted skyline, computer-animated cars, and computer-painted snow. It’s not that the effects work is poor (though don’t look too closely at those cars), but that it screams “this must be special effects!” when you don’t want such distractions.

For all that can actually be ignored, Diaz’s performance sadly can’t be missed. On the evidence of this, she should stick to the lowest-common-denominator comedies and comedy-action movies that made her the one-time highest-paid Hollywood actress (she may still be for all I know, but films like this aren’t the reason why). Maybe it’s not her fault, maybe it’s the inconsistent and inexplicable Southern accent she’s been landed with. The only reason for it is that Kelly’s mother has one, but the only favour it does Diaz is as an excuse for her generally poor acting. At least the rest of the cast are up to scratch — in fact Marsden, who I can only recall as stick-in-the-mud Cyclops in the first three X-Men movies, is practically a revelation.

The Box should have been a film we all discussed for years to come, its “what would you do”-ness providing an Indecent Proposal for the 21st Century (as other reviewers have suggested). Sadly the water is muddied by a series of crazy twists and out-there revelations, which sometimes pay off in atmospheric individual sequences, but overall feel… wrong. With Donnie Darko Kelly showed an overabundance of promise. He’s still not fulfilled it, but does present moments of brilliance that suggest we shouldn’t give up hope yet, and which render The Box at least watchable. For that, my score errs on the side of generosity.

The UK TV premiere of The Box is tonight at 11:20pm on BBC One.

World War Z: Extended Action Cut (2013)

Posted on March 21, 2014 by badblokebob

In the weeks leading up to its theatrical release, it was already known that World War Z was going to be an almighty flop. An unscrupulous movie studio had taken a cult novel and thrown away everything but the title, alienating its existing fanbase. They’d spent a fortune making a movie in a traditionally R-rated genre that, if released at R, could never make its money back, and if released at PG-13 would never attract an audience. Then they reshot the entire third act, pushing the budget through the roof and ensuring the resultant film would get critically mauled. A fanbase snubbed, an impossibly huge budget, a genre/rating disconnect, and unavoidably poor reviews to come — World War Z was going to flop, and it was going to flop hard.

Then it came out, and became the highest-grossing film to star Movie Star™ Brad Pitt, and the highest-grossing original film of Summer 2013, and made nearly triple its budget worldwide, and even got fairly good reviews. Maybe I was reading the wrong sources in the run up to its release, or maybe it really was that rarest of things, perhaps even unique: a movie hype-resurrection that was less zombie and more phoenix.

The film sees Pitt’s retired UN investigator called back to duty when a rapidly-spreading plague, which turns people into zombie-like rabid creatures, breaks out around the globe. With his family in tow, he escapes an over-run Philadelphia and ends up with what’s left of the US population on a small fleet of ships, before jetting off around the world on a hunt for answers and, hopefully, a vaccine. Cue large-scale action sequences as director Marc Forster aims for an apocalyptic sci-fi/action epic rather than the zombie genre’s usual stomping ground of claustrophobic supernatural scares.

That, at least, is something different. The first half-hour races through stuff we’ve seen time and again: zombie attacks, humans turning on humans as they loot supermarkets, etc. Here the zombies are of the 28 Days Later-style speedy variety, all the better for creating blockbuster action sequences, such as a huge chase through crowded streets, or a running fight up the stairways of an apartment building. This is where the PG-13 certificate shows through (even though this cut is technically unrated in the US, the fact both versions received a 15 over here is telling): there’s little focus on violence or gore; which is fine, but won’t satisfy the more blood-hungry genre fans.

It’s after this that things, as noted, turn from claustrophobic to post-apocalyptic. The storyline feels moderately fresh, showing us the global scope of such an outbreak, rather than how a global event impacts a small group of people. I believe this is the closest the film gets to the spirit of the novel (which I’ve not read, so take that comparison with a pinch of salt). However, what’s new to the zombie genre isn’t necessarily new in any other respect, and by the time we get to Jerusalem and the characters are again being chased through crowded streets, it begins to feel a tad repetitive. Some of the sequences work well though, particularly a zombie outbreak on a passenger plane.

The re-shot final act is a breath of fresh air. Apparently the originally-filmed version was yet another epic battle, which has been switched for a more tense creep around a semi-abandoned research facility in… Wales. Yep, a big budget Hollywood action movie climaxes in the middle-of-nowhere in Wales. I quite like that. It’s a Wales populated by a Londoner, a Scotsman and a Spaniard, but still. I say “more tense” because this is far from the most nail-biting zombie film you could see. The finale is a nice change of pace, and does work as a climax in spite of the bombast that precedes it, but these are zombies as teen-friendly action movie menace, not adult scare-inducers, so don’t except to feel much fear or surprise.

As to the extended cut, it adds only about seven minutes… but there are 121 differences. I can’t even be bothered to read that properly, never mind recount it. There seem to be myriad tiny extensions to all the action sequences, many of them literally lasting a fraction of a second — someone watched this really closely! I can only presume this is actually the original cut, which was then trimmed for the sake of the MPAA to create a theatrical version, because who would consciously go back to add so many little bits? Some are even described as “very unnecessary extension”s by that summary. Other moments do expand on character, though in a subtle fashion (looks like the attempted rape of our hero’s wife, and the murder of one of the wannabe rapists, previously got the snip), or do add to the gore — clearly, it’s too much for a PG-13, but certainly within the realms of a 15. I can’t imagine any of it makes a great deal of difference to the overall experience, however.

Generally, World War Z is a competently entertaining blockbuster. It moves pleasingly fast, with characters quickly and lightly sketched rather than lingered on — not to everyone’s taste, and I imagine some will find it emotionally cold in the way so many recent spectacle movies are. There’s perhaps room for more, particularly from Daniella Kertesz’s Israeli soldier, who is nonetheless somehow the film’s most appealing character; but I don’t think it was the filmmakers’ aim to make us feel the characters’ plight, but instead to show the scope of a worldwide disaster. It does that pretty well, even if the occasionally-CGI zombies prove to be an I Am Legend-style plasticky distraction, especially when coupled with impossible swooping camera shots — it’s better and more effective in the sections where there’s a grittier feel to the camerawork and practical zombie make-up.

As it lacks the social subtext or extreme gore that the two branches of zombie fandom most value, I don’t think WWZ will find an enduring place in genre-fans’ hearts. As an epic summer action blockbuster, however, it largely passes muster.

World War Z is on Sky Movies Premiere this week, starting today at 4pm and 8pm. It’s also available on Now TV, where the running time suggests it’s the extended cut.

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Category Archives: Horror