KenLiversausage Reviews

Spectre (I) (2015)

Bond by numbers. Negative numbers.

[3/10 · 31 October 2015]

I wanted to like Spectre. I really did. And for five minutes I thought I was going to.

But after the exhilaration of the clever 'real time' tracking shot of Daniel Craig seemingly risking life and limb on top of a row of dusty Mexican buildings gives way to a farcical CGI-ridden stunt that would have been laughably implausible in an Avengers movie, this limp witless farrago simply bored me.

I think Monica Bellucci was in it, but maybe I yawned or blinked during her microscopically short appearance.

I think there was a plot, threadbare as a miser's carpet, but God only knows what it was. Something about information-hogging, Blofeld as some evil version of Google, with a couple of lazy nods to Orwell. (Seriously, nothing happens in Spectre. I mean absolutely nothing whatsoever. Characters appear and disappear at random, like subatomic particles popping in and out of existence via quantum tunnelling.)

I think the guy who was so brilliantly chilling in Inglourious Basterds played the bad guy, but I could be wrong. Maybe it was his identical twin brother, who was so upset his dad was nice to an orphan who got placed with him by the German social services he decided to launch an evil plot to ruin his reputation. Doing a pretty good job.

I think there was a car chase, although I'm not sure a sedate travelogue through a Rome more deserted than an English seaside town in the depths of a nuclear winter really qualifies as a car chase.

I think there was a competition on X Factor to write and perform a Bond theme song.

I think you can kill people by squeezing their eyeballs.

I think all bombs still have a red digital counter on them. (Ironic, huh?!)

I think that's enough of my life wasted writing about this lazy excuse of a Bond movie.

A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

Walking in the shadows of Chandler and Hammett

[8/10 · 24 September 2014]

Lawrence Block has proved himself a worthy successor to the holy trinity of American crime novelists, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett and James M Cain. Block's Matt Scudder almost inevitably shares a number of qualities and characteristics with his antecedents Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade - both namechecked here in AWATT; but while he's certainly no Bogart, Liam Neeson proves himself more than worthy of the task of at last bringing Block's anti-hero detective to the screen (let's ignore Jeff Bridges' misfire in 8 Million Ways to Die - everyone else did).

In AWATT, writer-director Scott Frank, erasing - for good, one hopes - the aberrant stain on his CV that was Marley and Me, delivers a dark, bleak thriller whose fuse burns too slowly for the peanut-brained generation MTV, but which will prove richly satisfying to grown-up noir movie fans.

The supporting cast is uniformly excellent. I'll never be able to watch re-runs of Downton Abbey in quite the same light after seeing Dan Stevens' transformative turn here as a bereaved and vengeful drug dealer. And we'll surely be seeing a lot more of 'Astro' Brian Bradley, who has instantly become indispensable as Scudder's informal sidekick TJ.

Admittedly the plot is as straightforward as Chandler's were complex. But as Chandler himself ultimately showed, plot can and perhaps should be secondary to character, atmosphere and style in this genre - qualities A Walk Among the Tombstones has in (Sam) spades. Indeed, where AWATT really scores is in its pervading aura of menace, of gloom, of doom even. Adam Sandler it ain't, and thank the Lord - and Scott Frank, the movie's producers and its studio backers - for that.

So the psychos' motivation is never spelled out? That's good, I say. The scariest kind of bad guys are often the ones with zero back-story - evil needs no explanation or justification; it just is.

Block purists might query the faithfulness of Scott Frank's adaptation of the source novel - the ending sexes up Scudder's action-hero credentials, for obvious commercial reasons. (Read the full Scudder canon and you'll be surprised - and not a tad frustrated - at how low-key the endings can be.) But for this hardcore Lawrence Block fan at least, A Walk Among the Tombstones is about as much as I could have hoped for from an industry now largely geared up to produce CGI-drenched pabulum. Not a great movie, but a very good one.

Blended (2014)

Pure blend cinematic effluent

[1/10 · 26 May 2014]

Adam Sandler has made a career out of smearing excrement onto celluloid. Inexplicably, quite a lot of people have paid money to view the results. (Mind you, we do live in a world in which Kim Kardashian is famous.)

I daresay a few people will pay money to see Sandler's latest effort - although nobody's going to be fooled by the laughably fake early reviews here. In fact, there are a lot more laughs to be had reading the ludicrous ten-star reviews - "I laughed so much my head fell off" etc - than there are in the movie itself. But then again, there are always more laughs to be had ladling cold sick over oneself than there are in an Adam Sandler 'comedy', and this is no exception.

And crikey o reilly, what a stupid title. Bleeargh.

Midsomer Murders: The Killings of Copenhagen (2014) Season 16, Episode 5

The slow death of a once excellent series

[15 February 2014]

SPOILER ALERT (although you could easily guess the ending anyway ...)

Midsomer Murders used to be good. But ever since rubber-faced clown Neil Dudgeon and his stupid dog took over from the legendary ex-Bergerac, John Nettles, the series has been on a slow but inexorable decline.

The formula grows ever more hackneyed, the plots grow ever more farcical, the characters ever more caricatured, the political correctness that blew up in ex-producer Brian True-May's face a few years ago ever more intrusive.

There is a guaranteed, cast iron method for determining who the killer is in Midsomer Murders these days. It is always, without fail, the least likely suspect. Always. That shifty looking character with the criminal record - it's never him; that cuckolded wife with a drink problem - its never her. It's always some seemingly sweet, kind, 'normal' character who appears in just enough of the action for you not to feel totally cheated when they're unmasked at the end.

This episode, although given some spark by the addition of the female Danish detectives from The Killing and Borgen, was depressingly true to the formula: ostensibly normal middle-aged woman turns out to be murderous psychopath with a chemistry professor's knowledge of poisons (there must be a shop selling bulk discounted poison in Badger's Drift or somewhere, it's so rife in Midsomer) - supernaturally fast-acting poisons at that. Miscast guest star - in this case Goodness Gracious Me's Sanjeev Bhaskar - overacts in ridiculous role as duplicitous chef, and is just saved from a horrible death by last minute intervention of the bobbies.

Let's just shine a spotlight on Sanjeev's near demise shall we? He almost meets his maker by being fed into the industrial oven of the factory where he and the female Dr Harold Shipman work, on a conveyor belt. We see him lying face down on the conveyor belt with his hands tied behind his back. From the expression on his face you'd think he's just about to undergo a back rub or something, so unafraid does he appear. (If you were about to be burned alive I suspect you'd be a sweating, gibbering, pants-wetting wreck. Not Sanjeev.) And then when Mrs Lecter hits the button to start the conveyor belt and send him to his fiery demise, he does - absolutely nothing. A three-month old baby could have done a better job of simply rolling off the conveyor belt and hence cheating the hangman, but Sanjeev simply lies there gurning. Pathetic. This sort of unbelievable nonsense eliminates what little trace of suspense lingers in the climax.

One bright spot in an otherwise moribund series is Gwilym Lee as DS Charlie Nelson. At least he brings credibility to his role. The rest of the cast come across like they're acting in a local am-dram production for the amusement of their families and mates.

Come back Bergerac, all is forgiven.

The New York Ripper (1982)

James Ferman was right. God help us.

[1/10 · 24 September 2012]

Lucio Fulci's films – at least the ones I've seen – never make much sense. That's fine when you're dealing with a fantasy subject like zombies. But in a would-be 'proper' whodunnit thriller such as The New York Ripper, plausibility is important if the thriller element is to work, and hence if the film as a whole is to work.

Unfortunately, old Lucio and scriptwriter Dardano Sacchetti fail to grasp even this most basic tenet of the thriller genre. The 'plot', such as it is, is ludicrous, and the murderer even more so. As most of you will know, he's basically a psychotic version of Keith Harris minus Orville, ie he quacks like a duck when he's slitting women's throats, or gutting them like deer, or scoring their naked bodies oh so slowly and precisely with a razor blade.

Which kind of makes you wonder what the point of this odious little film is. It isn't in the least bit thrilling, as it's quite obvious who the killer is from about four minutes in. Oh yeah, I know what the point of it is. The point of The New York Ripper is to showcase the graphic and sadistic murder of scantily clad or naked young women.

Apparently chief British censor James Ferman was so outraged by The New York Ripper when it was screened for the BBFC back in the day, that he ordered all prints of it to be escorted from the country immediately, like it was a load of toxic nuclear waste that might infect people by osmosis if they even so much as went near it. And much as it pains me so say it, he kind of had a point.

Because this is a deeply repellent film. It has no redeeming features whatsoever. It is badly made, badly acted, the special effects are rubbish, the plot is rubbish, the whole film is rubbish on every level. And of course, it features a series of highly graphic, pointless, sadistic and truly misogynistic murders. I should imagine Ian Brady would have liked The New York Ripper, but I cannot imagine any normal, sane person finding anything to enjoy in this piece of nasty trash.

I don't believe in banning films, but if any film ought to be banned this is it. At least Fulci's zombie films are entertaining. The New York Ripper is about as entertaining as a hernia. And Fulci's zombie films, despite being replete with gore, are so silly and over the top that the gore is never offensive. There is a long and (fairly) honourable tradition of 'splatter' movies, and the Italians have long been in the vanguard. But with NYR Fulci drags that splendid reputation through the mud.

As a long-time fan of horror movies, I confess I watched this movie on YouTube out of sheer curiosity. I now wish I hadn't. It made me feel dirty, ashamed even. Maybe that was the point, I don't know. But call me old fashioned, aren't films supposed to entertain in some way? There's nothing remotely entertaining, nothing remotely artistic about NYR. It's just sick, plain and simple. The people who made it are sick, and anyone who 'enjoys' it is sick, and quite possibly a danger to society.

Writing about another horror film, a reviewer said "to sicken and disgust is about as artistic as picking your nose in public". Preach it brother.

*****

One deeply depressing footnote. According to what somebody has posted here, the US version of NYR "cuts out some sex scenes to avoid an X rating, but all the violence is intact". So the good old MPAA think its wrong to show women having sex, but fine to show them being tortured and murdered. What is wrong with the world?

Killer Joe (2011)

Most people will not 'get' Killer Joe ...

[24 June 2012]

It's a comedy. A very very black indeed comedy, but a comedy nonetheless. I laughed a lot.

I also squirmed a lot too. For Killer Joe is one of the most uncomfortable films I have sat through in a very long time.

Friedkin and his superlative ensemble cast suck you so deeply into the dead-end lives of the protagonists that, as the friend I saw the film with remarked, you forget that you are watching a movie.

Of course, Friedkin is a past master of cinema verite. As he explained in the Q&A session which followed the screening I attended at the NFT in London, he believes his job as a director is to take a good script, cast it really well, and then create an atmosphere in which the actors can express themselves. I think he achieves that in Killer Joe. Whether you like the result will depend on whether you 'enjoy' watching people with little education, little money and little hope slowly and inexorably destroying themselves.

Friedkin himself said, only half jokingly, that we weren't supposed to 'enjoy' the movie. And while he's probably sort of right, there is much to admire in it. Caleb Deschanel's photography is immaculate. The slow-burn narrative gradually draws you in. All the cast are good, and Thomas Haden Church as the bemused but essentially decent father, Matthew McConaughey as the eponymous lawman turned assassin and Juno Temple as his Lolita are all outstanding.

Temple, daughter of British filmmaker and chronicler of the Sex Pistols Julien Temple, was 22 when she made Killer Joe, but she plays about 13 or 14. (Her exact age is never given, although it is implied that Joe at least thinks of her as being 12.) Which makes the seduction scene involving her and Joe deeply disturbing.

As for Matthew McConaughey, the handsome rom-com star, well, he is a revelation. I suspect at least some sections of his fanbase will be alienated, if not nauseated, by some of his antics in Killer Joe. The Wedding Planner it ain't.

At the end of the Q&A session Friedkin told a joke about an actor playing Hamlet being constantly booed by the audience, who eventually turned on them with the remonstration, "don't blame me, I didn't write this s**t". Bad Boy Billy then gestured at the curtained screen behind him and echoed the punchline about the film we had just watched.

Killer Joe - offensive s**t or neo-noir masterpiece? You decide.

Battleship (2012)

Makes Independence Day look like The Seventh Seal

[1/10 · 21 April 2012]

The people are not that easily hoodwinked. If you are a thirteen-year-old girl with the attention span of a gnat, you might just be able to sit through this so-called 'movie'. (For which read extended advertisement for a children's board game, laced with sledgehammer product placement for a bunch of other stuff teenage kids like.) If you can stop yourself laughing at the bare-faced effrontery of it long enough, I suggest you read the 10 star reviews of Battleship before shelling out your hard-earned green for it. I would guess that approximately eighty percent have been written by studio plants. The other 20% by the aforesaid teenage girls with gnat-like attention spans.

The corporate infantilism of Hollywood continues pell-mell. Well done Peter Berg. Well done George Lucas.

Burke and Hare (2010)

Unworthy of (most of) the talent behind it

[3/10 · 18 September 2011]

Cards on the table: I think An American Werewolf in London is one of the funniest scary movies ever; one of the greatest black comedies ever; indeed, one of the greatest movies ever. Which is the main reason I found this limp, lame attempt at black comedy horror such a clunking disappointment.

Burke and Hare just isn't funny. Neither is it properly 'black' or scary. What it is is boring and offensive in roughly equal measure – the former of which is quite an achievement, considering the sensational subject matter. The real Burke and Hare were by all accounts two of the most unpleasant characters you'd ever hope not to meet. They murdered 17 people, many of whom were old or infirm, for money. And I for one fail to see the humour in that.

Don't get me wrong. I love a good horror comedy. I can handle as many buckets of Kensington gore as the make-up man can mix up. My personal list of favourite horror comedies would include Brain Dead; Basket Case; Reanimator, The Evil Dead; Shaun of the Dead; Theatre of Blood and Dr Terror's House of Horrors. But all those movies had wit, style and characterisation – elements sadly lacking in Burke and Hare.

Now there have been lots of films about real-life serial killers, some good, some bad, some terrible. But I'm honestly struggling to think of a single one where the filmmakers actually held up the murders and their victims as objects of ridicule, played their deaths for cheap laughs (or no laughs, in this case). Just because Burke and Hare's crimes were committed a long time ago doesn't make them legitimate subjects for comedy, in my opinion.

True, the movie boasts a fabulous cast. But as plenty of other reviewers have pointed out, they're all decidedly unScottish, and most of them are given nothing to say or do that makes you want to watch them. Or worse, make you care a jot about what happens to them. What Landis has forgotten, and his writers sadly never seem to have known in the first place, is that comedy, even – especially, in fact – black comedy, requires empathy from the viewer to be successful. The reason that we come away from Withnail and I feeling both elated and dejected is because we've really gotten to know those two out-of-work actors, and when they part by the bedraggled wolves in rainy Regents Park at the end, well, it's heartbreaking.

I can't tell you how I felt at the end of Burke and Hare, because my wife and I switched over less than half way through and watched Million Pound Drop Live instead. And if that isn't the crowning indictment of any movie, I don't know what is.

The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

Bizarre aberration from one of Hammer's leading lights

[3/10 · 13 July 2009]

There are only two even half-good reasons to watch this limp, atypical version of the Frankenstein story. And both of them can be found inside – just – Kate O'Mara's blouse.

It's rubbish, pure and simple, all the more surprisingly so considering a) it was written and directed by Jimmy Sangster, one of the half dozen most important names in the history of Hammer films; and b) it has an absolutely top-notch cast: as well as Ralph Bates (who Hammer were grooming to take over Peter Cushing's mantle; never happened) we get uber-Hammer babe Veronica Carlson, the aforementioned Miss O'Mara – as gorgeous, pouting and shapely a starlet as ever graced a Hammer flick (she can't act for toffee, but who cares?) – the criminally underrated and underused Jon Finch, and the brilliant Dennis Price.

Sangster's screenplay is weak. It tries hard to be funny, but succeeds only in being puerile. And his direction is workmanlike at best. There is little real action, certainly not the sort of action you expect from a Hammer Frankenstein movie. The gore quotient is minimal, and the naked bazooka count zero – odd, considering female nudity was Hammer's big USP in the early 70s, and Sangster's only other directorial effort for Hammer, Lust for a Vampire, was replete with a multitude of heaving bosoms. (Apparently Kate O'Mara refused to appear topless, which makes you wonder how she got the part in the first place, but never mind.) Most of the DIY brain surgery takes place off screen, and the monster, played by muscleman and soon-to-be Darth Vader David Prowse, is about as frightening as an ice cream cone. He's supposedly been stitched together in the usual way, from assorted local unfortunates, but for some reason he has the body of a Greek god. The only concession to his patchwork creation is stitching scars that look like they've been drawn on with lipstick.

The plot isn't worth outlining – Sangster clearly didn't spend much time on it, so neither will I – and there are some annoyingly stupid bits of business which mean that the film doesn't work, even on its own jokey level. (For example, the monster isn't strong enough to pull his shackles out of the wall, but he makes matchwood out of a solid oak door.) Unless you're a Hammer completist I'd give this one a miss. If it does happen to come your way, as it did mine, on satellite TV late one night, try and stay awake for Kate O'Mara's appearance in a see-through nightie, then switch off. (She gets killed off soon after anyway. Probably died of shame.)

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

"Murder, Jessica! Ghastly, horrible, obscene murder!"

[10/10 · 15 March 2009]

Make no mistake, Dracula AD1972 is a work of genius. OK, the Hammer purists - of which I myself used to be one - don't like it, and compared to, say, Horror of Dracula it is all rather silly. But the bottom line is that it's one of the most enjoyable horror films ever made. It's just so much fun!.

The dialogue is brilliant ("Yeah, tell us about the blood, Johnny,"; "Murder, Jessica - ghastly, horrible, obscene murder!"). It has Cushing and Lee together, for the penultimate time (the last, 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula', is dross). The prologue is really atmospheric and authentic. The modern day stuff, while certainly cheesy, is actually very funny in places (all the bits at the party with the Stoneground, for example), and the scenes in and around St Botolphs are really quite creepy. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack rocks!

I really like Michael Coles' Inspector Murray, and Christopher Neame's Johnny Alucard is one of the best performances in a Hammer film ever (although his death scene is a bit pants). And of course, it goes without saying that Caroline Munro is utterly gorgeous.

AD72 is flawed, no doubt. There are big holes in the plot, some resulting from savage last-minute editing (eg of the scene where Jessica's boyfriend gets offed, which was cut late on, leaving him lying inexplicably dead in the graveyard), and surely Lawrence Van Helsing is Jessica's great-great-grandfather, not, as she says when she sees his gravestone, her great-grandfather? But the real reason this film is such a splendid entry in Hammer's Dracula canon is presence of the gentleman of horror, dear old Peter Cushing. Don't you just wish you had a grandfather like Lorrimer Van Helsing?! Cushing never sinks into parodying or ridiculing the material, as, say, Vincent Price would have done. He plays it straight, and gives it a dignity it would certainly otherwise have lacked. I know Christopher Lee thought it was a bad idea bringing Dracula into the modern day, but he still banked the cheque, didn't he?

Requiescat in pace ultima!!!

Corruption (1968)

Someone's been at Peter Cushing's pituitary glands ...

[6/10 · 21 February 2008]

Corruption (or Laser Killer, as it is known on the continent) is a distinctly odd little film. Although it looks very dated, and the level of on-screen gore is mild in comparison to today's horror fare, it is nevertheless a disturbing work - not least because it features the gentleman - gentle man, indeed - of horror, the legendary Peter Cushing - behaving unspeakably.

What on earth was dear old Peter thinking when he signed up for the role of bonkers surgeon John Rowan, who ends up murdering his way to a "cure" for his disfigured girlfriend? (What, for that matter, was he doing with the girlfriend in the first place? He's almost 30 years older than her, and a stuffed shirt compared to her hedonistic party animal. But I digress ...) I won't bother going into the subtleties of the plot - mainly because there aren't any (the story is pretty much as old as horror movies themselves). And I won't mention the god-awful 60s would-be psychedelic jazz soundtrack, which is a) rubbish, b) horribly incongruous - a funky accompaniment to sadism, and c) really annoying; so much so, in fact, that it almost ruins the film. Neither will I dwell on the extraordinary antics of the low-rent, English seaside version of the Manson family who turn up at the end to torment Cushing and his fiancé (David Lodge's performance is simply indescribable).

But what I will do is ask how director Robert Hartford-Davies ever managed to persuade the infallibly polite, kind, nay saintly Peter Cushing to butcher a topless prostitute and then wipe his bloodied hands on her exposed breasts before hacking off her head. Peter as Dr Frankenstein, yes. But Peter the sex murderer? No way, Pedro. I just can't understand it. Admittedly this scene only appears in the European version of the film - there wasn't a cat in hell's chance of the BBFC letting such explicit nastiness through uncensored in 1968 - but that's not the point. The point is that Peter did it.

According to one biographer, Peter thought the script was very good (which it isn't, to be honest). But it is still the most amazingly out of character bit of acting you're ever likely to see. It makes Julie Andrews showing her bazookas in SOB seem distinctly normal in comparison.

There is a tacky cop-out ending which was presumably included in a vain attempt to atone for the sordidness that preceded it, but it doesn't work. You come away from Corruption with a slightly foul taste in your mouth, shaking your head in incomprehension that it was ever made. Bizarre in the extreme.

Beowulf (2007)

Glorious 3D treat requiring little brain engagement

[9/10 · 18 November 2007]

This movie is a lot of fun. In 3D. I suspect its impact will be considerably diminished in 2D, so I urge anyone who wants to see it to seek out the 3D version. There are lots of beautifully constructed tracking shots where the camera glides and swirls forward, back up and down, and trees, rocks, arrows, dragons or whatever slip past the edges of the frame, and this effect is stunning in 3D. In fact, all the action scenes are stunning in 3D, particularly the climactic battle with a top-notch, fire belching monster of a dragon.

The plot isn't much to write home about (although there's just a hint of a theological debate about the way Christianity has displaced the old mythic religions, which made me think for about 5 seconds). The acting is variable - Robin Wright-Penn is fine, but about as sexy as a paper cup, Hopkins is his usual reliable self, Ray Winstone is suitably heroic as the heroic, self-aggrandising Beowulf, and Crispin Glover is just brilliant as Grendel. Grendel is a lovely creation, oozing slime and blood, and wracked with pain.

But who cares about all that. This is not a scholarly work, it's entertainment. And my wife and I were as royally entertained as the kids surrounding us in the cinema (and we're both 40-somethings). Leave your serious head (and any timid youngsters) at home, and go and have fun.

Passenger 57 (1992)

Absolute rubbish

[1/10 · 25 October 2006]

As I write Wesley Snipes is being indicted for alleged tax fraud. Well, they got the charge a bit wrong - it's us the audience who've been defrauded by this limp, lame excuse for an action movie. Although Snipes himself is adequate in the lead, the rest of the acting is humdrum at best, and, in the case of Liz Hurley, dire. (Will somebody please tell me why that woman is regarded as a "celebrity"? To paraphrase Walter Matthau, I have more talent in my smallest f*rt than she has in her entire body.) The storyline is so thin it must have been written on a post-it note, the script is terrible, the characters cardboard cutouts who'd look underwritten in a toddler's pop-up book.

As for the improbabilities of plot. Don't even start to go there.

This film has one redeeming quality. It's very short. So short, in fact, that you're actually pleasantly surprised when it ends. Surely that can't be it, you muse for a moment, after Snipes has dispatched the chief bad guy (a Brit, naturally - because of course all bad guys are British in Hollywood). But yes, in an act of euthanasia for which the producers should be highly commended, its life support system is switched off and this turkey is given the quick death it so richly deserves. Come back Arnie, all is forgiven.

Soldier Blue (1970)

Controversy For the Sake of Box Office

[2/10 · 13 September 2005]

Soldier Blue is a movie with pretensions: pretensions to be some sort of profound statement on man's inhumanity to man, on the white man's exploitation of and brutality towards indigenous peoples; a biting, unflinching and sardonic commentary on the horrors of Vietnam. Well, sorry, but it fails miserably to be any of those things. What Soldier Blue actually is is pernicious, trite, badly made, dishonest rubbish.

Another reviewer here hit the nail on the head in saying that it appears to be a hybrid of two entirely different movies. What it is basically is a lame, clichéd, poorly acted "odd couple" romance - Strauss and Bergen overcoming their prejudices about the other's lifestyle and falling in love (ah, bless) - bookended by two sickening massacres which wouldn't have been out of place in a Lucio Fulci splatter flick.

There is no excuse for the repulsive, prurient, gore-drenched climax, in which cute little native American children are variously shot, sliced, dismembered and impaled in loving and graphic close-up, and large-breasted native American women are molested, raped and strung up - no excuse, that is, except box office. (The massacre itself, whilst repulsive in its misplaced intention, is very badly staged and shot; a bunch of actors lying around with bright red paint smeared on them, intercut with a few special-effects sequences of beheading/dismemberment - dismemberments, incidentally, which utilised real amputees in their filming. Now that's what I call exploitation.)

Forget all the pap you've heard (including the ludicrous commentaries that begin and end the movie) about this being a "protest", an indictment of American brutality towards the native peoples. This film doesn't give a stuff about the plight of the Cheyenne; had it done so it would have featured some involving native American characters, would have led us to get to know and to care about the nameless, faceless innocents who get slaughtered at the climax. Instead what we get is the silly white bread romance of Bergen and Strauss (lousy actors both, in this at least), with plenty of blood, guts and severed heads thrown in to attract the curious.

Which is a terrible shame, because there is a movie to be made about the Sand Creek massacre, about all of the real life massacres the US (and Britain, and all so-called "civilised" nations) have participated in over the centuries (Iraq?). this just isn't that movie.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

What did we do to deserve this?

[1/10 · 13 June 2005]

When you see somebody - an adult, not a child, mind you - eulogising about this movie, raving that it's the "greatest" or "best" film they've ever seen, you know the sun is genuinely setting on the human race. We're not evolving, we're regressing. If you truly believe that ROTS is the finest story ever committed to celluloid then you have my sincere pity; I cannot imagine how bad must be all the other movies you may have sat through.

George Lucas once showed considerable promise as a filmmaker. Apparently he said that The Wild Bunch was the greatest film ever when it came out, so he obviously recognised and appreciated film genius in others, at least. Then he got lucky with his competent, fun but pretty much ho-hum western-in-space in 1977 and promptly had every atom of cinematic talent surgically removed from his brain. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi I can just about forgive him for (smart move handing the megaphone to a proper director, George) but there is no excuse whatsoever for the three vapid, brainless and breathtakingly badly written "prequels". Oh, sorry, there is one: bucks; oodles and oodles of lovely green lolly.

ROTS is not the worst film ever made, not by miles. (Look no further than Howard the Duck for starters.) It has some fun sfx and, well, some fun sfx. But the greatest film ever made? Come on, guys, get a life. Read a book, do something, but get a life.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Last rites for a once great franchise

[5/10 · 14 February 2005]

The legendary Mr. Lee's last outing for dear old Hammer Studios in his red contact lenses and silk-lined cape. And what a sorry end to what was once one of the real jewels of British cinema, the Hammer horror franchise.

While there are one or two glimmers of the style and talent that put Hammer at the top of the tree in the 50s and 60s, this awkward hybrid of espionage thriller and supernatural horror never really gets off the ground. Lee has so little screen time he could probably sue the filmmakers under the Trade's Descriptions Act - "The Satanic Rites of a Bunch of Other People You Don't Give a Stuff About, not the Famous Vampire Count You Were Hoping For" might be a more accurate title.

What irks me about this film is not just that it represents a cheap, slipshod ending to the Hammer Dracula cycle, but that it's not even true to the spirit of those wonderful originals. What few thrills there are derive mostly from some motorcycle stunts and a bit of fashionable nudity. Lee might as well have phoned in his part, and poor old Peter Cushing, still reeling from the death of his beloved wife Helen, walks through what little action he's given like a refugee from Plague of the Zombies.

And as for the ending, well, there used to be a well-defined mythology in these movies, a vampiric rulebook that everybody abided by. Bram Stoker made most of it up in the first place, but once they'd put their spin on it, the Hammer boys generally stuck to it: garlic, stakes, holy water, silver bullets, running water, all that stuff we'd all rely on to dispatch the bloodsucking nobleman if he ever started licking his lips in our bedrooms. But suddenly, out of nowhere, there's this new lethal substance, something else that can do for a vampire - the King of the Vampires even. And what is it? A hawthorn tree. Yes, you heard right; Dracula, immortal, super-powerful, supreme monster that he is, curls up his pointy toe-nailed tootsies and shuffles off this mortal coil because he gets his cape caught in a bloody hawthorn tree. Ho hum. (Mind you, they can give you a nasty scratch can those hawthorn trees.)

Clearly Hammer had seen the writing on the wall splattered there by Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist, but although it tried, it simply couldn't adapt. The truth is that the classical Hammer ethos doesn't really translate to the modern idiom. The films were very much of their time, and the times, as Mr. Dylan so helpfully reminds us, they are a changin'.

So charge your glasses with the best of British blood, leave this one in the rental store and check out something from the golden era of Hammer. Contrary to one of the film's many misleading alternative titles, Dracula is not alive and well and living in London. He's dead. And Hammer buried him.

Dead Babies (2000)

Boring, pretentious pap

[1/10 · 19 May 2004]

Suffice to say that - despite the odd ludicrous panegyric to his soi disant "abilities" posted here - the director of this inept, odious tosh hasn't made a film since. Well that is excellent news as far as I'm concerned.

Dead Babies has all of the bile of its creator, but lacks the wit and technical proficiency that make Martin Amis the novelist readable.

When will the British film industry wake up and realise that if it wants to regain the status it once had it should stop producing rubbish like this and make something real people will actually want to watch?

Avoid like the plague.

Theater of Blood (1973)

Buckets of early seventies blood; plenty of ham.

[8/10 · 4 May 2004]

Let's face it, Vincent Price was a ham actor, thus there are several levels of irony at work in this minor seventies gem. Price's Lionheart is a ham actor who really gets to let rip with his mini performances of Shakespeare; is this Price satirising himself, or simply him finding a role that perfectly suits his talents? Don't get me wrong, I like Price and all those Corman/Poe adaptations he did way back when, but in my opinion Peter Cushing was a far superior actor. Cushing invested every role he played with a dignity the parts often did not merit, and never sent up his characters/material.

As for Theatre of Blood, well, it's good, but not great. The plot is lifted directly from The Abominable Doctor Phibes, only with added implausibilty. Obviously one is meant to suspend one's disbelief (just reading the list of character names signals where the movie's tongue is, very firmly inside its cheek), but I for one like my horror movies to pass a very basic reality check: we have no trouble with the notion that zombies or werewolves exist, for example, but we hate it when people act stupidly or illogically when confronted by them. (I digress, but has anyone seen Wes Craven's execrable Shocker? Now there's a film which doesn't even play by the stupid rules it created for itself. Total rubbish.)

Collateral Damage (2002)

Gung-ho "patriotic" tosh.

[2/10 · 24 February 2004]

Arnie may be a naturalised American citizen (who displays his patriotic credentials by drinking from a Stars and Stripes mug here), but such are the limits of his acting talent - inversely proportional to the size of his muscles, I'd guess - he still hasn't been able to shake that guttural Teutonic accent. Still, it helped out in this piece of flag-waving schmaltz, in which he feigns being a German engineer in order to infiltrate a Colombian terrorist/drug baron's stronghold to seek revenge for the murder of his wife and kid.

This film is rubbish. Whichever bright Hollywood spark pulled it for re-editing post 9/11 should have had the courage of his convictions and abandoned it lock, stock and barrel. The movie's feeble attempts at political contextualisation are an insult to the real victims of terrorism, and Arnie's even feebler attempts at evoking grief equally so. There's quite an irony in that the revenge motivation underpinning the ludicrous storyline illustrates in microcosm "President" George W. Bush's own campaign against the perceived phantom "axis of terror". As in End of Days, Arnie affects the conscience he misplaced in Predator, Commando, Red Heat and all those other gunfests earlier in his career, but it just doesn't wash. The bad guy - and gal - still get taken out with sadistic relish, a disgraceful pandering to the basest audience instincts.

Read some of the approving comments posted here and weep: for Arnie, for the movies, for democracy.

Double X: The Name of the Game (1992)

At last, one of the mythical Double X fans breaks cover

[1/10 · 6 February 2004]

I'm so happy, a beast I had always believed to be entirely mythical, like the centaur or the Loch Ness Monster, has given us positive proof of its existence. It's a miracle - there really is a fan of Double X the Name of the Game in the universe, and he appears to go by the name of "Dave". The mystery deepens, however, as "Dave" is clearly not from planet earth. No human being could ever have written the review Dave wrote, not even with his tongue buried in his cheek.

This "film" - for it is barely deserving of that moniker - is so utterly, totally, atrociously, egregiously, mind-bogglingly dreadful it is astounding it ever got made, let alone broadcast. I saw it on one of its rare outings late at night in the UK on Sky Movies 692 or somewhere equally obscure, and I have to conclude that it was a programming accident that allowed it onto the air. Not even the numpties who schedule endless rounds of garbage on the second-string Sky channels could possibly have thought anybody - and I mean anybody - would sit through this pile of unadulterated effluent.

Writer/director Shani S Grewal - whoever he may be - should be barred from ever picking up a camera or pen ever again for inflicting this celluloid silage heap on us.

I am absolutely amazed that anybody has bothered to vote on this film at all, and shocked into a death-like paralysis that a few people have given it a rating of 10! 10!! Even if one of them was Mr. Grewal himself, and "Dave" is another, that still leaves at least some other certifiable loonies out there. Please, if you were one of them, explain yourself. Was it some kind of sick joke?

Simon Ward and William Katt? Well, they were well on their way to has-been status when this film was made. But Bernard Hill? Bernard "Yosser Hughes" Hill? Bernard "King Theoden" Hill? Bernard old bean, you really should be ashamed of yourself.

The Beyond (1981)

Astonishingly incoherent - literally "beyond" understanding

[7 January 2004]

Let's get this nice and sparkling clear shall we? The Beyond makes no sense whatsoever, and is as incoherent narrative-wise as any movie this side of Cat in the Brain (directed by guess who?). The 64,000 dollar question is, was the incoherency deliberate, a sort of Lovecraftian attempt to recreate the mood and atmosphere of nightmare; or was it simply down to the fact that Fulci can't tell a story properly? The jury is out, and judging by the spread of opinion here, will remain so.

IMHO, The Beyond is grossly overrated. Whatever one's thoughts about the narrative - or lack of it - the execution of this film is very shoddy: the acting is wooden, photography amateurish, production design cheap and lazy. Of course, what counts about movies of this genre is the gore effects, but The Beyond simply doesn't deliver even here: a couple of the SFX set pieces are effectively bloody (the canine throat-ripping, the kid getting her head blown apart), but others, such as the execrable spider scene, are laughable rubbish. Tom Savini's gore effects for Dawn of the Dead, made around the same time, are in a different league.

Even Fulci's trademark "eyeball trauma" scenes are crap, especially the head-on-nail sequence. For a start, there is a stupid POV shot, taken from the victim's perspective just before her head is forced back onto the nail, in which an eye-shaped mask has been placed over the camera; then, in the money shot itself of the head getting spiked, the nail - a nail, remember, which is sharp enough to penetrate the back of a person's skull - pushes the eyeball out of its socket, rather than skewering through it!

As for the climax, in which numerous slow-moving (and I mean slow-moving; these guys couldn't catch an arthritic tortoise) zombies are repeatedly blasted by the hero, well, it's a joke, pure and simple. Dimwit David Warbeck, as has been pointed out elsewhere here, shoots a number of would-be flesh munchers in the chest and guts, to no effect (other than the detonation of squibbed bloodbags under their clothes), before finally dropping them with a head shot. He then persists with this two-useless-shots-to-the-torso-followed-by-the-coup-de-grace-to-the-noggin strategy until he runs out of bullets. (Which takes forever, by the way. Where did he get that miraculous self-loading revolver, I wonder?)

The Beyond is worth watching, for the chilling and nihilistic end shot alone, but it is nothing like as profound or interesting (or gory) as its reputation suggests. A little bit like Fulci himself: the self-styled "Godfather of Gore", God bless him, was basically a hack director who worked in film for years entirely without distinction, until one day, like Herschell Gordon Lewis before him, he happened to tap in to the inexplicable but innate human desire to watch people getting hacked, chopped, sliced, boiled, rotted, munched and blasted to death as graphically as possible, and spent the rest of his life milking it with ever-diminishing returns. Oh well, it takes all sorts.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Good, but not great

[3 November 2003]

Watched this again the other day, probably 10 years since I'd last watched it, and sadly its appeal seems faded. I note from some other posts here that a lot of Butch's fans are perplexed as to why this film hasn't really been elevated to the western pantheon. Well, IMHO Butch is far too slick, glib even, to compare to a genuine masterpiece such as The Wild Bunch. Bunch was filmed and released almost contemporaneously with Butch, but despite the similarity of source material (Butch's gang was called The Wild Bunch) any comparison between the two movies is pointlessly invidious: Bunch is profound, lyrical, challenging, complex; Butch is witty and well-made, but it's unashamedly a star vehicle. There's just no depth here. Plus the ending's a total cop-out.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Typical saccharine pap from Spielberg

[3/10 · 23 October 2003]

The greatest war movie ever? Come on, folks, who are you trying to kid. While SPR is certainly a technical tour de force, in emotional, spiritual, historical and narrative terms it stinks, for the same reason most of Spielberg's films (with the exception of Schindler's List, marvellous) stink: the man has no vision, and little or no artistic integrity. (Why else does he churn out rubbish like Jurassic Park II? I'll tell you why - money.)

SPR is dishonest, silly and trite, an insult to the men who died in the real D-Day landings. The story premise, as others here have pointed out, is risible, the framing device unnecessary and stupidly sentimental. How anybody over the age of 9 can rate this film higher than genuine masterpieces such as Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front or Cross of Iron is beyond me. Still, a lot of people who visit this site think Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are the greatest films ever made, which probably explains something.

Watch the first 20 minutes, and then switch off. Pants.

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Simply awful; about as funny as a hernia operation

[1/10 · 23 October 2003]

Jim Carrey was one of the first diagnosed sufferers of ANTS (Absolutely No Talent Syndrome, a disease that exploded onto the Hollywood scene the day Sylvester Stallone got famous and has been devastating the community ever since), but this movie is bad even for him. In fact it's so bad it's almost worth watching. On second thoughts no it isn't.

The Dumb and Dumber here really ought to be the writer/director brothers who are responsible for this pile of unadulterated bat guano. Who gives the Farrellys money to make movies, and why aren't they heavily sedated in secure accommodation?

The Medusa Touch (1978)

Not the best Burton, but enough to be getting on with

[23 October 2003]

Some people here have pointed out that Burton overacts in this interesting little movie. Well, they're right, but he's positively wooden here compared to his histrionics in Exorcist II The Heretic.

Burton was a superb actor, with the best speaking voice this side of Lee Marvin, who squandered his enormous talent on a string of second-rate movies and an awful lot of whisky. But don't let that put you off watching The Medusa Touch, a thought-provoking, and thoughtful thriller that poses some uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil, and man's place in a world seemingly abandoned by God. Intelligent stuff - but watch out for the polystyrene masonry bouncing around at the climax!