Force of Evil (1948)

Posted on November 15, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #92
Abraham Polonsky | 75 mins | TV | PG / PG

Force of Evil comes well recommended, with places on several 1,000 Best Movies lists and inclusion both on They Shoot Pictures…’s 250 Quintessential Noir Films and in the US National Film Registry, not to mention a full 5/5 in Paul Duncan’s consistently handy Pocket Essential Film Noir. But it didn’t work for me.

To be blunt, I found it dull. The romance subplot feels tacked on and implausible, the main gambling plot is often poorly explained. I never felt properly attached to any of the characters — it doesn’t help that the lead is half-villainous, but then that’s worked fine elsewhere — and as the plot rumbles confusingly on I cared less and less, which made it tough to sit through. I was struggling to play catch up too often; in some films this can be part of the point, a virtue, but I didn’t feel like it was deliberate here. It doesn’t help that some events are virtually glossed over — worst of all, the death of a major character, which occurs off-screen and with little explanation.

IMDb notes that the film was cut by 10 minutes to be shown in a double-bill and this is now the only version that survives, which may explain some of these oversights. Despite my complaints, there are good moments, particularly a couple of short sequences that are beautifully directed and edited, but they’re few and far between and to me feel like they belong in a better film.

Duncan’s analysis (Force of Evil is one of seven noirs treated to an extended segment in his book) suggests a more complex reading of the film than I took from it, explaining much as symbolic or metaphorical. Considering I didn’t engage with the film, I’m tempted to see Duncan’s reading as a way of rationalising things that either aren’t there or were flawed, but the film’s wider critical acceptance suggests he may well be right.

Force of Evil has, as I noted at the beginning, come to be “recognized as a masterpiece of the film noir genre” (to quote Wikipedia’s handy summation), so I can’t help but feel I’ve missed something. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve underrated a film — or, indeed, a film noir — only to reassess my opinion with further hindsight. And yet, for that awareness, I can’t imagine ever looking back on this one with increased fondness. Sadly, the only force I experienced was boredom.

The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)

Posted on November 5, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #102
Mark Dindal | 75 mins | TV (HD) | U / G

Disney’s 40th (canonical) animated film had a very troubled production, which, from what I can tell, turned it from a derivative riff on The Prince and the Pauper into this load of tosh.

The ‘hero’ — the titular emperor, Kuzco — is thoroughly irritating, and we have to suffer him in voiceover narration as well as on screen. OK, the film’s aware he’s irritating, that’s the point, and he has a Journey that leads him to become Good and Nice and all that moral palaver; but so does, say, the Beast, but that film doesn’t try to force him on us as the central identifiable character. New Groove has a Belle-equivalent pre-installed — moral family-man villager Pacha, the ‘buddy’ in this ‘buddy movie’ — and perhaps if the story had followed him it would have more success in the likability stakes.

The villains, by comparison, are a delight. The problem is, while we ‘love to hate’ the likes of Scar or Gaston, here we just ‘like’ scientific ex-advisor Yzma and her nice-but-dim henchman Kronk. It’s hard to hate them when they’re somewhat wronged and more pleasant to spend time with than the supposed hero. It’s not that I wanted them to succeed in killing Kuzco, more that I didn’t care whether they did or not.

There’s one song, and it’s not particularly good. Not that a Disney film has to be a musical but, well, most are, and it’s not as if the rest of the film is strong enough to support their absence. Much like Hercules, I’d always perceived this to have a nasty squared-off animation style. In reality it doesn’t suffer from that too much, and again looked nice and crisp in HD. I usually ignore image quality when it comes to reviews — not that I don’t care, but in these reviews I’m aiming to look at the content of the film rather than the particular copy I watched — but HD has such noticeable benefits for animation (when done well).

There are some good bits tucked away — like the sequence at the diner, or a lot of Kronk’s stuff (it’s easy to see why he was chosen to lead the straight-to-DVD sequel), or a good chunk of the climax — but there’s not enough to make up for the rest.

Somehow, it holds a decent score on both viewer-rated IMDb and critic-rated Rotten Tomatoes. This surprised me for two reasons: one, I thought it had gone down badly; and two, it deserved to go down badly. No pleasant surprises here — The Emperor’s New Groove is as weak and irritating as the title.

The Emperor’s New Groove featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2010, which can be read in full here.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007)

Posted on August 30, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #89
David L. Cunningham | 95 mins | TV (HD) | 12 / PG

Harry Potter has a lot to answer for. By taking a successful children’s book and turning it into a billion-dollar film franchise, Warner Bros inadvertently suggested everyone else try the same with every kids’ book series they could get their hands on. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass, Inkheart, Twilight — for better or worse, it’s all Potter’s fault.

And so, of course, is the awkwardly titled The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, allegedly based on Susan Cooper’s five-volume fantasy series, The Dark is Rising, and specifically the second novel, The Dark is Rising. Changes from book to screen abound, however, though I’m no authority to list them — I’ve only read the first book, and that was many years ago — but there’s no sign of an Arthurian influence or Cornish setting (things I’m informed the books are concerned with). In fact, it’s specifically set near London, because, of course, Britain is only London; and the lead character is changed to an ex-pat American, because, of course, Americans would never go to see a fantasy movie starring a British kid.

Fan-baiting changes aren’t the only things wrong with the film, though. For much of the first half I was almost considering a scene-by-scene account of the irritations and weaknesses, but that would mean watching it again. So, for a few of the problems: the dialogue is frequently clunky, either with stock fantasy phrasing or plain old implausible utterances; the acting is variable, in particular the irritating children, but even Christopher Eccleston fails to do much decent with his villain role; the story is ill thought out, with conflicting or logic-less motivations and a quest structure that requires no skill (the titular Seeker has to find six ‘signs’ — i.e. little magic MacGuffins — a task which seems to involve waiting around until one falls into his hands, sometimes literally); Cunningham’s direction is over enthusiastic, throwing in jaunty angles and varied film speeds like it’s been outlawed to use a straight shot at 24 frames per second.

It’s also almost entirely devoid of humour, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but doesn’t exactly help. About the best joke is that the Rider’s primary disguise amongst regular folk is a doctor, and he’s played by Chris Eccleston, who had just been The Doctor.

And if I’m nitpicking, that poster is pretty thoroughly unrepresentative. The guy on the top left isn’t even in it (they cut a whole character, I presume that’s him), while the two flanking our hero at the bottom are also minor roles; and, anyway (spoilers!) are both bad guys. Sort of. A bit. Well, look, they’re not even close to being as much of a trio as that poster implies. At any point.

Yet for all that, it’s not all bad. The film is actually awash with great (or potentially great) moments, sequences and ideas. Considering how weak other parts are, it’s easy to assume the good bits must have occurred by accident, or be left-overs from the novel. Equally, as most occur in the film’s second half, the damage has already been done. They also don’t negate the fact that exciting or inventive action scenes don’t make up for a plot that leaves them bereft of character development, emotion, or truly genuine thrills.

If you’re a fan of the books, I imagine you already know to stay well clear. For the rest of us, The Dark is Rising might be worth a single watch for the sake of a handful of these appreciable scenes, but after suffering through the objectionable performances and pondering the unsatisfying storytelling, you’ll wish they’d found their way into a movie that was more deserving.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2010, which can be read in full here.

Final Destination 3 (2006)

Posted on August 17, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #83
James Wong | 89 mins | TV (HD) | 15 / R

Never mind Death, it’s another force entirely that the makers of Final Destination need to worry about. The law of diminishing returns, to be precise, and it strikes the series hard in its third instalment.

The setup’s the same as the first two: teenager has premonition of an accident, kicks up a screaming fuss, a bunch of people are saved, the accident happens killing others — usually including some we assumed would be saved — and then Death begins to pick them off one by one. The twist this time (it’s a sequel, of course there’s a twist) is that the last photo taken of someone before they die includes a clue to their death, and our hero just so happened to be snapping away at everyone for the yearbook…

Unfortunately, this time out, no one can seem to make the concept work. FD2 was a very direct sequel, bringing back surviving characters (well, character) and building on the concepts — primarily, everyone who was saved in Film 2 had been saved before by encountering a Film 1 survivor post-plane crash. What it also did was add an element of fun to the thriller plot. We know they’re all going to die, we know it’s a mystical force, but it played around with how it would happen, with the ludicrously OTT setups that led to their death. It made it funny.

Final Destination 3 attempts most of this, but doesn’t succeed. We’ve got a wholly new set of characters, all of them high schoolers, losing the faintly interesting age diversity introduced in the second film. None of them are built up beyond the most surface of elements — the bimbos, the jock, the goths, the irritating one — and turn up one by one in order to die in a creative fashion.

Even the two leads we follow from victim to victim lack character, despite being given the whole film to develop some. Ryan Merrimen starts out as an irritating, stereotypical, loudmouth jerk, only to instantly discover a Surprising Sensitive Side when he survives because, well, the audience need to feel sympathetic towards him now. As the unwitting prophet, Mary Elisabeth Winstead, soon to be seen as the ultimate object of geeky desire in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, is a wet blanket, filling the film with mopery about failing to save everyone. I suppose, when compared to her aloof hipster role in Pilgrim, it at least shows she has range. Her character is supposedly a control freak, a fact we’re battered around the head with thanks to painful expository dialogue, but that thread goes nowhere.

So what of The Point of a Final Destination film: the deaths? Some are moderately inventive, and one or two even provoked a crumb of the intended amusement, but somehow it didn’t click as it was clearly intended to (i.e. more with the humour of the second than the fear of the first). Even the most appropriate deaths — like the bimbos being burnt alive in sunbeds — somehow fails to generate the required level of interest. It may be that they’re just not ridiculously complicated enough. They’re implausible, certainly, but… not implausible enough. By the end, the lack of creativity is just disappointing.

As for the big opening — the poster-filling roller coaster crash — well, it follows in the footsteps of the second film more than the first. That is to say, in the first the plane just blew up (more or less), while in the second we were treated to an array of fanciful deaths in the extended pile-up sequence. You might expect the ‘coaster to just derail, but oh no: it goes back and forth, splits in half, people fly out, get hit by bits of track, fall onto spikes, fall… out… Maybe I was just in a bad mood or something but, like the rest of the deaths, it somehow didn’t work, didn’t fulfil the visceral need it was tilting at. I’d rather it had just derailed, plummeted to the ground — maybe exploding into an unrealistic fireball — and been done with.

Plus, having set up the whole photos-predict-deaths thing, it’s barely used. Most of the pictures are kept out of sight for as long as possible, and only a couple offer reasonably discernible clues to the character’s fate. The others are either blatant — such as the one where a gun’s being pointed at her head (it’s actually a nail gun that does her in, but that hardly qualifies as a twist) — or too meaningless — being half-blinded by a camera flash apparently equates to a firework hitting you in the face, or something.

With its third entry, the Final Destination series nosedives in quality. The first was an entertaining high-concept horror-thriller; the second more of the same but with a ludicrously humorous bent; the third tries its hardest to do both, but fails miserably to pull off either. No wonder they were intending to scrap the series until the fourth’s miraculous box office turnaround.

Talking of the fourth, I hear it’s even worse. Perversely, I almost can’t wait to find out how.

Guess Who (2005)

Posted on July 8, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #66
Kevin Rodney Sullivan | 101 mins | TV | 12 / PG-13

Readers may remember that I opened my Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner review with a joke about how the film might be ruined if its premise was being made today. Cue reactions along the lines of ho ho ho, wouldn’t it be dreadful, thank God that’s not happened, etc.

Except, as was helpfully pointed out to me on Twitter, it has.

Here, the situation is reversed: nice black girl brings home white guy to meet parents. White guy isn’t Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler, as I suggested, but Ashton Kutcher, who more or less falls into the same category. The family being visited is still rich, albeit black, but rather than Sidney Poitier’s Surprisingly Respectable black man, Kutcher is a recently-jobless white man. I’m sure there’s some further table-turning to be read into this, but, look, it’s a film starring Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher — it’s not going to be a race relations paean, is it?

Indeed, Guess Who is pretty much what you’d expect it to be. The plot isn’t a direct copy of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, preferring to take the gist of the concept and a few of the story beats and surround them with a bunch of Funny Situations. I won’t bother you with details; suffice to say, the film does manage the odd laugh or smile, increasingly so as it goes on (though this may be because I was getting increasingly inebriated, it’s a tough call). The ending is suitably lovey-dovey, sentimental, and, I think many would add, hogwash. Should you be a sucker for a (modern-style) rom-com it may well be up your street; most viewers need not apply.

Mac and Kutcher play the roles they always play— No, actually, in fairness, I can’t say that: I think I’ve only seen Mac in the three Ocean’s films and I can’t think of anything I’ve seen Kutcher in (was he in The Butterfly Effect, or was that someone else equally interchangeable?) So, they play the roles I’ve always assumed they play, which is at least as bad. Zoe Saldana, on the other hand, seems to have a magic ability to raise the quality of almost every scene she’s in — even Mac and, to a higher level, Kutcher benefit from her skills to inject some genuine emotion into a film otherwise dependent on familiar or predictable gags.

The race debate is cursory. Maybe that’s a good thing — one could argue it shouldn’t be allowed to be relevant today, even if it still is — but occasionally there’s the sense that the filmmakers are actually trying to do more with the issue. Suffice to say, they don’t succeed. The gap is filled with additional comic interludes and mishandled subplots — in the latter camp, Kutcher’s hunt for a new job, and issues with the father who abandoned him — but they do little to make up for it. They’re certainly not a direct replacement, but nor do they offer an adequate alternative, particularly as they go begging for any kind of relevant point.

One scene, in which Mac goads Kutcher into telling racist black jokes at the dinner table, comes close to tackling the awkwardness of the issue. It’s ceaselessly predictable, naturally, but it also makes overtures at the issue of whether these jokes are funny, racist, or both. Most of the rest, however, is “father doesn’t approve of daughter’s boyfriend” schtick that has nothing to do with race. It’s as recognisable from TV sitcoms — Friends did it with Bruce Willis, for just the first example that comes to mind — as it is from movies. Again, maybe ignoring the race factor here is a good thing; but if you’re going to foreground it in your concept and promotion, you ought to be dealing with it, not using it as a way in to familiar sequences.

Though it takes a while to settle in, Guess Who does seem to improve as it goes on. Even though it more or less abandons the race issue, and many of the setups are familiar, it has its moments. Still, it never hits comedic heights, and doesn’t even attempt serious dramatic ones, and it’s not even close to being a patch on the original. The pros aren’t enough to make the film worth your time, but at least they stop it being a total disaster.

Guess Who is on Film4 tomorrow, Friday 9th, at 6:55pm.
The inspiration for this, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, is on BBC Two tomorrow (Sunday 3rd August 2014) at 2:40pm.

Righteous Kill (2008)

Posted on May 16, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #46
Jon Avnet | 101 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / R

You remember Righteous Kill, right? It’s the film that reunited De Niro and Pacino, only the second time they’d appeared on screen together. And while the first, Heat, offered just one scintillating scene, Righteous Kill presented them as a police partnership — loads of scenes together! For a certain generation of film fans — several generations, probably — this just screams potential.

And what you’ll also remember is that it got slated. Thoroughly. Its Tomatometer is a measly 20%, and if you narrow that to ‘Top Critics’ — i.e. people/magazines that can usually be relied upon — it drops to a shockingly low 9%. It’s hard to find a good word said about it anywhere, although the pull quotes on Rotten Tomatoes are worth reading just to see Sky News’ contribution: in a field of quotes bursting with negative words, Tim Evans tries to assert not only that “it’s an effective whodunnit but — more importantly — it poses refined, complex questions about how the law operates in a so-called civilised society.”

Critics can be wrong, of course. It’s all a matter of opinion, and all that. But this time, they’re really not.

So what’s wrong with Righteous Kill? Well, it’s dull. Properly dull — not slow, not measured, not leisurely — just dull. Director Jon Avnet tries to spice things up occasionally with some swishy camerawork or editing, apparently forgetting he’s lensing a procedural thriller about a pair of 60-something cops and not Miami Vice 2. Suffice to say, it doesn’t work; if anything, it makes it worse.

The plot is confused in its telling. Events appear to jump around with random flashbacks and forwards, but it’s actually mostly linear… except the scenes so disconnected that you’re left trying to work out what’s happening at what point even when it’s just happening in order. Screenwriter Russell Gewirtz was previously responsible for penning Inside Man, where a little of this kind of playing worked. Perhaps it’s Avnet’s fault, then; perhaps Gewirtz is a one hit wonder.

The film plays like a procedural/whodunnit as the cops try to work out who the serial killer might be. Except we know who it is from early on. Except Avnet muddles things so much that we’re not sure we know after all. Is this going to a be twist, just really badly hidden? No, it isn’t. So why not just own up to it and do a proper howcatchem, or psychological study, or whatever? Well, there is a twist, actually. But by the time we’ve worked out that we’re meant to know who the killer is all along, anyone passingly film literate will be beginning to realise there will be a twist — too many hoops are being jumped through in some scenes to cover up something we’re being explicitly told in others.

I’m trying not to give too much away here — goodness knows why, because I heartily recommend you never waste your time on this. Even if you can forgive the boringly convoluted plot, there’s nothing else to latch on to. The film’s at its best when focusing on the De Niro/Pacino pairing, granting us the occasional good scene. Or just line — every little helps. But there’s not enough of that and too much of the dross. Other characters come and go with near-random irregularity, subplots are abandoned, or if they were resolved I missed it, and there are so many clichés you wish the DVD came with a spotters’ guide — at least ticking them off would give you something to do.

There are good elements buried here, or at least passable ones. The twist, for example, could work beautifully if it had been executed better. Which is slightly ironic, because one gets the feeling many other choices in the story and direction were dictated by needing to make that reversal work. “Oops.”

Righteous Kill, then, is messy and largely dull, with the odd bit that makes you not totally regret giving it some time. Perhaps with the right team the good parts could’ve been marshalled into something broadly effective. In fact, I’m certain they could be, because there’s proof that at least the premise can work: it’s a TV series called Dexter. Watch that instead, it’s immeasurably better.

Righteous Kill featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2010, which can be read in full here.

Elektra (2005)

Posted on April 14, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #19
Rob Bowman | 93 mins | TV (HD) | 12 / PG-13

I think that — along with SFX magazine — I may be the only person in the world who quite liked the Daredevil movie (which reminds me that I still need to see the (supposedly better) director’s cut). This sequel/spin-off received even poorer reviews than its progenitor however, which means even I have spent the last five years (and 25 days, to be precise) not bothering to watch it. But when something’s available for free on TV, and in HD at that… well, it’d be rude to refuse. Though a little bit of me wishes I had.

So it goes without saying that most of Elektra’s reviews were right. The plot starts out as sub-Leon assassin nonsense, before turning into sub-X-Men superhero nonsense. The connection to Daredevil is actually minimal: vague flashbacks show Elektra being brought back to life, but the only signifier that this was the same death she suffered in Daredevil is the costume she wears. Said outfit has changed here, as she reverts (occasionally) to a bright red get-up that’s slightly more reminiscent of the comics. “It builds the legend,” she semi-explains. What legend? And how can said legend be built if everyone who sees her in it is promptly killed?

But beyond such surface modifications, the film adopts a different tone entirely. Daredevil took place in an almost-real version of the Marvel universe — ‘real’ if you could accept Matt Murdock’s amazing gymnastic abilities and whatnot were possible, anyway. Elektra starts off in this kind of world, but quickly there’s talk of mystical powers that bring back the dead and let you see a teeny bit into the future, shortly before some baddies explode in puffs of green smoke and some more baddies are revealed to have full-on superpowers. Where did these come from? No idea. The film offers no explanation, be it mutant gene or radioactive exposure or plain old training, instead just assuming viewers will accept that this is the real world… oh, but some people have these cool powers.

The plot is slight, early on padded with childhood flashbacks that the climax pretends to solve but really offers no adequate explanation for. Again. Characters die and we’re meant to care, only no one bothered to make them characters rather than plot-furtherers. Others do things that are almost logical, but not quite. One senses a couple more rewrites might have improved some of this, but then it might’ve been ‘improved’ by adding more explanatory dialogue and no one wants that — there are already enough clanging infodumps here, never mind the generally low standard of the rest. The less said about the performances the better. Terence Stamp plays at being blind quite well. Moving on…

The action sequences aren’t up to much either, their brevity and over reliance on slow-mo belying a too-small budget. Or maybe the budget was fine and they just blew it all on CGI, because that at least looks quite good. If they’d managed to produce something worthy of our attention here there might at least be a reason to keep watching, but the weak action is just icing on the cake of the clichéd story and bland characters. Director Rob Bowman claims he made an R-rated film which he was forced to cut to PG-13, the implication being that neutered the whole thing. Maybe that’s where all the action went, though on the evidence of what’s left I’m not sure I believe him.

That said, IMDb informs me that Elektra also has a director’s cut, though at just a three-minute increase it sounds nothing like as fundamental as Daredevil’s. And I do still want to see the Daredevil director’s cut, even if I should find that, after seven years, I no longer like the film; but I think it’s safe to say that Elektra’s definitely won’t be worth the hassle.

Elektra featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2010, which can be read in full here.

Saw V (2008)

Posted on March 28, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #34
David Hackl | 91 mins | TV | 18 / R

And so the never-ending Saw franchise trundles on to its fifth part. Indeed, Saw Part 5 might be a more apt moniker for this film: it picks up directly from the end of Saw IV — which, you may remember, took place concurrently with Saw III, ultimately appending about 30 seconds to that film’s climax. Even if you wanted to start your Saw viewing here, you wouldn’t have a hope of following what’s going on.

For a large part, Saw V’s plot is an exercise in retconning. For the uninitiated, “retcon” is short for “retroactive continuity”, essentially the act of adding something to a previous story in a series that changes its meaning or one’s perspective on it or what have you. I believe the term was coined in relation to comics, a medium that commonly has to explain why a dead character’s sudden resurrection really made sense all along, honest. Saw V’s retcon, then, is to demonstrate that Detective Hoffman was Jigsaw’s accomplice throughout all the previous Saw movies, not just the ones that actually featured him. This means yet more flashbacks, which as you may remember were the blight of Saws III and IV.

But what Saw V suffers in backstory it makes up for with simplicity. Whereas IV was convoluted to the point of dullness, Hoffman’s involvement is quite easily depicted. A working knowledge of the preceding films is essential, true, but with that in hand one can actually follow the story easily this time. Indeed, one might even argue it’s too easy: Hoffman’s involvement is so straightforward that the amount of time devoted to it pushes into the realms of the pointless, while the present-time ‘thriller’ thread (where Special Agent Strahm figures it all out) serves barely any function. The film includes the usual standalone game alongside this, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

One of the franchise’s Big Things has always been the last-minute twist. Signalled by the Saw theme beginning to play and emphasised with an explosion of very brief flashbacks to earlier in the film, the twist shows us what we’ve missed all along and turns the story on its head. The first film had a great one, the second’s was pretty clever, the third had a mixture of good and bad, while the fourth’s got muddled by the rest of the film. Here, we get the music, and the flashbacks, but I swear there wasn’t a single twist among them. Most of the plot was as obvious as it appeared, while what I suppose was meant as a twist in the final room just seemed obvious — I’m sure the viewer is too familiar with Jigsaw’s methods by now to fall for something as simple as that (unlike Strahm, it would seem).

And even after all that retconning and whatnot, it’s clear that the series’ ongoing story is far from over. It’s not just the existence of (at least) two more films that tells us this, nor even a proper cliffhanger (this time, there isn’t one), but a handful of blatantly unresolved plot points. It’s an annoying habit of perennial Saw screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to drop in an element that they have no intention of using in this film, but exists purely to pay off something in the next. This time it’s a box delivered to Jigsaw’s ex-wife. Goodness knows what’s in it; hopefully Saw VI reveals all.

Alongside the incessant arc there’s the usual standalone ‘game’, presumably retained to both guarantee the gore content and hold the interest of anyone dragged along to see the film who hadn’t bothered with preceding instalments. This one isn’t bad but, relegated to a subplot alongside the Hoffman palaver, it’s little more than a sketchily-drawn short film. Some of the traps are inventive, dodging the torture porn levels of gore displayed in III and the gratuitous medical gore of both III and IV without skimping on the blood and guts (literally. Twice.) In fact, it’s this side of the film that holds a bigger and better twist than the highlighted arc plot one, though some viewers may miss its significance as it goes so unheralded. (Arguably this ease with which it might be missed says something about how significant it is; equally, perhaps I’m assuming a lack of intelligence on the part of Saw’s regular audience by implying they would miss it.)

And so Saw lives to fight another day. In some respects this entry is an up-tick in form after the convoluted fourth entry; conversely, it’s perhaps over-simplified, definitely over-reliant on its prequels, and lacks any meat on its plot’s bones — Hoffman assisted Jigsaw, this is how, and that’s all the film has to say. And you know, I can be a bit of wuss when it comes to horror films, but this one isn’t scary in the slightest; gory, unquestionably, but even the jump-scares didn’t make me jump.

Sometimes I feel the Saw series deserves congratulating for trying to be as much a thriller as a gore-fest, for having an on-going plot across all the films rather than just providing standalone identikit Jigsaw-games each entry. Other times, I think I’d quite like the latter, as both the third and fifth films have left me wishing for more of the original story and less of the arc plot. And still other times, it seems a waste of time to be thinking so much about Saw.

Once again I watched the Unrated/Extreme extended cut of Saw V, and once again the differences are numerous but minimal. A thorough list of additions and alterations can be found here, though there’s a briefer overview here.

Doctor Faustus (1967)

Posted on March 23, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #23
Richard Burton & Nevill Coghill | 92 mins | DVD | PG

Despite the numerous film versions of the Faust story, this is the only one that adapts Christopher Marlowe’s A-level-favourite 1588 play. It’s a shame, then, that it’s heavily edited from the original text and, despite also being a filmed version of the Oxford University Dramatic Society’s 1966 stage production, has clearly been inappropriately chosen as a vehicle for then-couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Burton plays a suitably reverent version of Faustus, though is never less than able to convey his varied moods, from confidence, often underscored with insecurity, to repentant regret, to childish tomfoolery. Stuck with numerous long speeches, however, there are occasions when his delivery — and consequently the film — slip briefly into insomnia-curing monotony.

Meanwhile, the play’s lack of a significant female role makes Elizabeth Taylor’s presence rather unusual. Marlowe’s text has been tweaked to allow Taylor to crop up frequently as ‘Helen of Troy’. As well as appearing in original scenes that feature Helen, co-writers/directors Burton and Nevill Coghill have inserted her into any scene that would allow it. Such casting across several inconsequential roles, some not even in the original text, effectively creates a new character. Perhaps this adds an extra dimension to Faustus and his goals — attempting to imply a romantic angle — but it comes across as a desperate and unwarranted attempt to make this a Burton/Taylor film.

Elsewhere, Burton and Coghill’s vision of Faustus is stylistically reminiscent of a Gothic Hammer Horror, which is either wholly inappropriate or an ingenious genre mash-up — after all, such a genre-mashing trick has been pulled many a time with Shakespeare over the years. There are repulsively horrific corpses, a harem of naked ladies, an array of special effects, plus a medieval-styled gothic atmosphere to all the sets and costumes, though the scene where Faustus mucks about with the Pope feels more Carry On. Using inanimate objects in the roles of the Good and Evil Angels — respectively, a statue of Christ and a skull — is a small but inspired touch.

These aside, there’s a surprising emphasis on special effects: a skeleton that turns into a rotting corpse (click the link at your own discretion); skulls that pour imagined gold and pearls from their mouths; cuckold horns that retreat into nothing; and so on. One might think this is purely to buoy up the Elizabethan language for a wider audience, and one isn’t necessarily wrong, but considering Elizabethan theatre-goers enjoyed their gory effects as much as modern audiences clearly do, their inclusion isn’t incongruous. There’s certainly some visually impressive stuff on show, much of it suitably horrific — one often wonders about the PG certificate.

An even greater deviation than the effects is how much has been cut out — in a word, loads. Most of the comic scenes are gone (some of their humour wouldn’t translate today, making those a wise excision, but others are missed), and much of what Faustus does during his 24 extra years on Earth is missing too. Some of the cut scenes are among the most easily-enjoyed parts of the play, though would certainly lighten the tone. Perhaps they just didn’t have any money left for the further special effects required. The trims extend as far as the final scene, which also loses some of the play’s best bits. It’s unlikely anyone unfamiliar with the play would notice the omissions (having not read it for a good few years there weren’t many I missed), but returning to the text after seeing the film I realised how disappointing some of the cuts were.

Perhaps they were designed to focus the film more closely on the Faustus/Mephistopheles relationship, perhaps just to heighten the presence of Helen by losing scenes she couldn’t have been shoehorned into; but in the process it both loses some of the best material and destroys any hope the film had of being a definitive filmed version of the play. Ultimately, such oversights proved to be the final straw for the film’s already-tenuous grip on a three-star rating.

Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)

Posted on March 19, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #33
Phil Claydon | 86 mins | download | 15 / R

Pre-release hype pegged Lesbian Vampire Killers as the next Shaun of the Dead, a knowing horror spoof/homage destined for cult greatness. Reality showed us something different; a film so lambasted by critics and such a flop at the box office that they actually resorted to giving it away (as a digital download from iTunes just after Christmas). Like most of the country, I consequently ignored LVK on release, but free is free and so here I am.

In retrospect, I wonder if part of the film’s publicly-thorough critical drubbing was down to expectation: from the title and blatant Hammer Horror references, critics and viewers presumed they were set for a Shaun of the Dead-style ready-made-cult-classic horror homage. Instead, it takes widely recognised Hammer tropes and aims the rest of its content at a Nuts-reading audience. I’m not saying the film would’ve been better reviewed if critics had been expecting something more akin to what they were ultimately given, just that it wouldn’t’ve come in for such a public flogging.

Unfortunately, even with corrected expectations, the film fails to deliver on its twin promises of raunch and horror. Aside from a couple of brief surgically-enhanced medieval boobs, a flash of knickers and the odd girl-on-girl kiss, the film’s sexy content is non-existent. Said Nuts audience would certainly get more from their weekly wank mag; this is mostly 12A-level. The horror, meanwhile, is reduced to well-signposted jump scares — and even then few enough to count on one hand — and the odd bit of comical decapitation/melting with holy water/axes in the head. To be fair, this is meant to be more comedy than horror, and in this sense a few such moments succeed passably.

The humour itself is variable. A couple of half-decent jokes are scattered throughout, though a raft of predictable, familiar and vulgar ones threaten to overwhelm them. The opening goes on too long, emphasised rather than alleviated by Phil Claydon’s hyper over-direction. The film only approaches lift off once Gavin and Smithy… er, Jimmy and… no, still can’t remember… Anyway, it’s not until Horne and Corden finally arrive in the village of Cragwich that the plot begins to get moving, everything before it serving only to boost the running time to feature length (just), initiate subplots that are either disregarded immediately (Corden’s child-punching clown job) or disregarded as an inconvenience later (Horne’s on-again-off-again girlfriend), and provide an array of over-familiar suburban-sitcom situations.

Indeed, consistency is not the film’s strong point. Everyone makes a big fuss about the vampires and how hard they are to kill, yet every one is dispatched with ease, the level of threat never allowed to even attempt an increase before there’s white goo splurting everywhere (that’s what happens when they die, incidentally, not someone’s reaction to the lesbianism). The climax is a mere extension of this, substituting a rising scale of action for running around avoiding the easy killing bit. Any good will amassed in the middle — and there may be a tiny bit — is dismissed in boredom.

But Lesbian Vampire Killers isn’t all bad. If you can wade through jokes about a sword with a cock-like handle (not funny the first time, never mind the eighth), or a demon with a name that sounds a little like dildo (it’s a measure of the film’s intelligence that no one ever points out it sounds like dildo, they just leave that for the audience to spot), or any of the countless other inane attempts at being funny, you may come across the odd moment that makes you chuckle. Maybe. I probably enjoyed it (some of it, at least) more than I should admit.

And yet, for film fans Lesbian Vampire Killers is a wasted opportunity: even with its existing plot, more skilled hands could have shaped it into a horror tribute/spoof destined for enduring cult popularity. Instead, the MTV-born screenwriting partnership of Stewart Williams and Paul Hupfield shot for the lowest-common-denominator lad’s-mag-buying audience, though quite what they made of the classic horror reference points that do remain is anyone’s guess. If we’re talking about expectations (and, clearly, I am), Lesbian Vampire Killers did somewhat defy mine — though as I was expecting it to be one of the worst comedies I’d ever seen, that might not be saying much.

Nonetheless, it’s as good a rule as any that if you pay money to read Nuts, you’ll probably enjoy this; if you just browse Nuts’ website (for whatever reason — I hear they have jokes and football and stuff too), you might like it; otherwise, you’d probably be better off watching Shaun of the Dead again.

Lesbian Vampire Killers is on Sky Movies Premiere tonight at midnight, and every night until Thursday 25th March at either midnight (Friday to Monday) or 10pm (Tuesday to Thursday).

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