Monday 28 December 2015

Favourite movies I watched in 2015 (That I hadn't seen before)

My 2015 list is going to be a bit different from most "year-in-review" lists, as I didn't manage to get to the cinema this year and I have a huge back-log of recently released movies on Bluray waiting for me here (like X-Men: Days of Future Past, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Cinderella, Snowpiercer, Kingman: The Secret Service..). Most of the movies I watched this year are either from last year, or older movies I've finally gotten around to viewing, but even though they might not be new, I did have some really amazing movie-experiences this year.

10. Edge of Tomorrow/ Live, Die, Repeat (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow was such a nice surprise, totally overlooked at the box-office, so it appeared on Netflix not long after its cinema-run, and ended up being one of the better sci-fi movies I watched this year. Tom Cruise really came out gunning with this awkward, arrogant, spineless, self-aware character, while Emily Blunt got to play a truly kick-ass warrior. I could have done without the romance and I didn't like the ending, but for a movie where I went in expecting nothing, I got a truly great experience in return.


9. Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014)
I had almost given up on the superhero genre, I'm just sick of the shiny, flashy, pretty-but-not-much-substance movies we've had lately, but the Winter Soldier single-handedly dragged me back in and invigorated my interest in the Marvel cinematic universe.
The distinct old spy-movie feel, the consistent use of practical effects and fight choreography and the darker feel and more extreme measures all combined to present a "dirtier" superhero movie and made Winter Soldier my favourite Avengers movie so far.

8. The Scorpion King (2002)
I basically bought the entire Mummy/Scorpion King franchise just to watch Ron Perlman in the Scorpion King 3, but The Scorpion King was such a fun surprise. The sound design is ludicrous and the story is basically non-existent, but the movie is so aware of its own campy nature, presenting an incredibly entertaining action-romp where at one point Dwayne Johnson pretends to be a guy's shadow before jumping out and stabbing him(!).
I love that Dwayne isn't afraid to look silly or be defeated, and it was so nice to see one of my favourite actors again - Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) - in a big role.

7. Standing Ovation (2010)/The Ice Pirates (1984)
In August I put on an afternoon movie to have on in the background, and ended up sitting there, mouth open, amazed and confused throughout the movie. Standing Ovation is a children's movie, a musical, a slap-stick comedy, a dark realistic family drama and a gangster movie all melded into one very inconsistently toned experience. I had no idea where the story was going, and it kept surprising me every scene transition. The ending is unfortunately full-on children's movie, but everything up to that was weird, confusing, funny and emotional.
I became very interested in this director's work, and have been catching up on more of his movies since. Not that impressed by Mannequin 2 or Mac and Me (though I thought it was better than most, probably), but Ice Pirates was another amazing gem; a comedy, science-fiction, pirate movie, some incredibly dark post-apocalypse elements and a weird "happy?" ending.
These elements combine into almost rapid-fire tonal changes - kidnapping and rape-alluding, industrial castration/brain-washing machines, murder of an entire robot family, slavery, food/water-shortage and serial-killers - wrapped in a lighthearted space-romp.
Neither Standing Ovation or Ice Pirates are very good quality-wise, but they introduced me to one of the most interesting directors I've seen in a while - Stewart Raffill, as well as being thoroughly entertaining, interesting experiences.

6. L'illusionniste/The Illusionist (2010)
Not to be confused with the Edwart Norton movie with the same name, the Illusionist is a bitter-sweet almost silent animated movie by the director of "Les triplettes de Belleville" about two people who sorely needed to communicate.
An ageing, forgotten French stage-magician meets a Scottish girl who believes in magic and we follow them through their ensuring combined adventures.
I found the ending to be both the end of their journey and a new start, and found the entire movie a beautiful, tragic and serene experience.

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Bit-size impressions: Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever

Okey.. Ballistic is about Sever (Lucy Liu), a rogue DOA trained-from-childhood agent who kidnaps the DOA leader's son (or possibly FBI leader? He commands DOA agents, but he has a FBI back-story, so..?) as revenge for his involvement in the bombing of her family, and Ecks (Antonio Banderas), a former FBI-agent who's called back to active duty to hunt Sever who he thinks has information about his not-really-at-all missing wife, and some missing nano-bots I thought were brain-control bots, but seemed to be internal assassination bots? And then enemies turn out to be friends and friends turn out to be enemies and the bad guy is married to Ecks wife and the kid might not be the bad guy's son, but is carrying a nano-bot, and, and..

I was trying! I was genuinely trying to pay attention to the plot, I gave this movie my full attention, but it's just. so. boring! It's like the movie is actively -trying- to make you disinterested.

The camera-work and cinematography feel like a tv-movie, the acting is non-existent, the pyrotechnics are all flash and no bang, the "action" is laughable, the editing is incompetent, the story is convoluted and overly-complicated... and I just put more into this review than anyone did during this production.


Towards the end of the movie Lucy Liu and a DOA hench-man throw down their weapons to have a martial-arts fight-off, and you just sit there baffled that the movie still thinks it can get away with a scene like that.

After sitting through one and a half hour of this nothingness I wasn't angry, I wasn't annoyed, I wasn't even disappointed, I literally felt nothing. I just went "well, that was boring, lets watch something else."

A 2002 full cinema-release action movie with Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas.

Do. Not. Watch.

Sunday 6 December 2015

Replicant and happy endings - a rant

First of all, this movie should've been called "Stockholm Syndrome the movie" or "How to be an abuser - a visual guide"...

Replicant is the story about Jake Riley, favourite detective of serial killer "Torch" (Van Damme), known for murdering single mothers and torching their bodies with the child still in the house. After failing to capture him one last time, Jake goes into retirement, but is picked up by a clandestine government agency who are planning to clone terrorists, and have cloned "Torch" to use him as a test subject.
The Replicant (he's never given a name) is telepathically connected with his murderous source, and Jake is tasked with activating the latent killer in the Replicant, any way possible.


The tag line on my Bluray "Think twice before you clone a killer" is just blatantly lying about where the story goes. Actually, cloning a killer works pretty well, though making it a much darker and more uncomfortable movie than I expected.

The intro is ludicrous; exposition, extremely fast cutting and jumping to our main plot after 5 minutes, never even -trying- to defend its idiotic set-up, while the end is even stupider than anticipated, ending on the most unrealistic happy ending you would never guess.


Everything in between features naive, newborn replicant Van Damme being abused, manipulated and scared by his "daddy" - the supposed hero of our story, and struggling family man (maybe. We could never figure out if he was related to the fellow police officer/mother he keeps visiting. The kid called him "uncle", he sends his mother to stay with her, and yet, in a deleted scene, they were making out. O.o)
Jake might not be doing it on purpose (we weren't sure), but the way he treats the Replicant is basically a blueprint for creating a dependent - he ignores the Replicant, is overly violent, blames him for any tiny mistake, and just when he's ripped all the footing out from under his feet, he shows him just a little bit of kindness. (Rinse and repeat)
It's depressing, uncomfortable and sad, but not bad. Van Damme absolutely shines in this role, and every time his "daddy" gets angry with him it is heart-breaking to watch.



It's just that nothing else supports the amazing performance and moral lesson presented by Van Damme's Replicant. His serial-murder version is not especially fleshed out or interestingly played, Michael Rooker as Jake just phones in his role, the dialogue is incredibly ham-fisted and likes hammering its points home (while not following up on them. At all) the one-liners are weak and the Van Damme/Van Damme fight scenes are not on the quality level they should have been.


There's a scene in the deleted scenes showing Jake going back to his whatever-their-relationship partner's house and receiving a drawing from her son - illustrating him standing over the beaten up replicant (he brought the replicant to her house, because of course he did, handcuffed him in the basement, son found him, offered him a snack, came running out from the basement, mouth bleeding. Jake went ballistic and savagely beat the replicant - turned out the kid had knocked heads with the dog) which I understand why they cut (it was part of a larger scene with family drama), but really wish they hadn't, because it would have been the -only- indication in the movie that Jake's behavior isn't okey.


I was assuming the movie would be either funny-bad or forgettable, but it's neither, solely because of that replicant performance. It is sad, touching, heart-breaking, infuriating and meaningful, and the movie insults everything it is, it could have been, and its viewers with a bullshit ending that ignores everything that's happened to give replicant Van Damme a girl friend.

About halfway through the movie serial killer Van Damme finds out about his clone and starts manipulating him to turn against Jake because they're "brothers", so I was expecting the movie to end with replicant Van Damme having to choose between his "daddy" and his "brother", killing serial killer Van Damme to save Jake.

It doesn't.

What I wanted to happen was after we'd dealt with serial killer Van Damme and everything is over we enter Jake's house at night, Jake is on the floor, dead, while replicant Van Damme is sitting in a corner, crying, covered in blood.

That definitely doesn't happen.


What happened to bad endings? When did we decide that all movies, no matter what age rating, how dark the story is or what the movie is about shall end on a happy note, ham-fistedly inserted or not?
Some times a dark ending is more meaningful, more poignant, more likely to make an impact, and yet I feel I haven't seen a bad ending in.. 15 years?
Give me my unhappy, terrifying, heart-breaking periods back!


This was a story about a new-born clone given the genetic make-up of a killer, reliving every bad thing that'd happened to the original, every murder he'd done and even being telepathically linked to the guy while he does his deeds - all the while being abused and hated by the first, and only human he's connected with, and we still felt this was the perfect set-up for a nurture over nature ending?

Thursday 3 December 2015

Transmorphers - More than meets the eye, but your eyes will hurt

I'll always prefer movies/creators that try to do way more than they have the capability to and therefore fail miserably, over movies that just couldn't be bothered trying more than the bare minimum (I'm looking at you Birdemic, the only movie (so far) I've ever rated a "1" on IMDB), and Transmorphers definitely falls into that first category.

This Asylum mockbuster, trying to look like Transformers (released the same year), is actually in the vein of Matrix/Cleopatra 2525 with elements from Demolition Man, Blade Runner, Star Wars, Terminator and Transformers (the animated ones), and some (inadvertent) social commentary.

- A hundred years after mankind blew up the skies to combat the rising army of robots, the remaining humans have been surviving under the earth, keeping a stale-mate by not engaging the robots, and prosecuting anyone who suggests fighting. Finally scientists think they have found a way to fight back, but the team sent out to test the new device were all slaughtered. Seeing no other option, the military defrosts known pro-war vigilante Warren Mitchell and his friend "Itchy" to launch a final, desperate attack at the robot overlords. But is there more to Mitchell than meets the eye?


The script is trying way, way too hard, with so many sub-plots and characters that it's hard to keep up (I only mentioned about half the plot threads in my summary), not to mention the amateur editing that rhythmically flashes "lightning bolts" at you and runs both the sound effects and the music over the voices when we're outside making it impossible to hear what anyone is saying (which unfortunately is almost half the movie), and yet, there's a certain charm to the whole thing.
While none of the plot elements are unique or new, the way the story is grafted together is pretty well done, and the lesbian sub-plot (from not having enough male lead actors) blends quite well with the futuristic, dystopian setting (though she is a really bad general). It just doesn't have time to develop any of the story threads since it's basically forcing 5 films into 1.


The ending is genuinely almost good, and Matthew Wolf as Mitchell is head and shoulders above Asylum's usual actor quality, while Griff Furst (Itchy), Sarah Hall (trooper), and Shaley Scott (crazy person, see above) all deliver quite entertaining performances.

If you can handle the headache-inducing flashing and the inept sound editing, and like different takes on known sci-fi plots, this asylum mock-up is actually worth a watch.



P.S - Leigh Scott, you can overlay the countdown over all the scenes, even when we switch to people/places where the countdown wouldn't be heard. We would understand that it's an editing choice to bring all the different plot elements together.