Three Films Make A Post: Adventure lives forever.

Torque (2004): In 2004, the fast cars and macho men sub-genre was already big enough in mainstream cinema, the hipster impulse to do them ironically could not be supressed. To wit, Torque, as directed by Joseph Kahn, a film that spends the whole of its running time pointing out how stupid and lame it is, which indeed it is very much. As all films of this ilk, it never attempts to do anything but point out its own failures, never bothering to, just for example, not be stupid. That, I can’t help but assume, would take effort, whereas empty irony clearly does not. The end result is a film that will neither entertain an audience coming for a fast cars and macho men movie – because an un-ironic film of that genre would at the very least attempt to not be aggressively shite – nor one perhaps expecting an actual parody of the genre, which, again, would take effort this film just isn’t in the mood to make.

Van Helsing (2004): After realizing the error of my ways regarding Stephen Sommers’s Mummy movies, I had high hopes of recognizing Van Helsing as another film I had unfairly maligned. Well, I shouldn’t have worried my pretty little head, because Van Helsing is even worse than Torque above, foregoing the empty irony for some of the worst jokes in film history. As if the jokes weren’t painful enough, Sommers also manages to get a completely lifeless performance out of Hugh Jackman, pairing him up with the typically wooden Kate Beckinsale until a negative number of romantic sparks fly. Somehow, Sommers also lost the ability to stage fun and exciting action sequences, of pacing a movie, and of being rather clever while pretending to be really dumb. Because that’s clearly not bad enough, we also get Richard Roxburgh as the what I believe to be worst Dracula in movie history (porn Draculas not excepted)  giving a performance that’s so bad, the mind boggles what anyone involved was thinking (if anyone was indeed thinking and not just snorting coke).


Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1991): But let’s end this post on a movie that isn’t obnoxiously bad, Craig Baldwin’s collage pseudo-documentary that tells the horrible history of US “intervention” in various Latin American countries. The film avoids the preachiness as well as the dry didacticism that could come with this kid of topic by pretending to be a right-wing conspiracist screed telling the tale of the heroic US fight against evil aliens and their co-conspirators, hilariously imitating the tone of the looniest parts of conspiracy theorist thinking, obviously mostly setting it into picture via footage taken from older SF and horror movies, saying what it actually has to say by inversion. Which manages to make the film funny and inventive as well as informative; given my predilections, the particular footage the film uses adds to the enjoyment, of course.

Three Films Make A Post: Aliens Invade! Mankind fights back!

The Wolverine (2013): After the apocalypse of crap that was the first Wolverine movie, I didn't expect anything at all from James Mangold's sequel, so it was a rather pleasant surprise to find it to be a highly entertaining mix of action movie tropes, good-natured Japan clichés, appropriate comic book silliness, and even half-way poignant moments. Add to these points the production's decision to cast the Japanese characters with actual Japanese actors instead of any Asian looking guy or girl they could grab from the street, and the (for contemporary blockbuster cinema) surprising amount of time The Wolverine has for its female characters. The film has reached the point where Tao Okamoto and Rila Fukushima are actual female leads again, and not just the girls on screen to look pretty and motivate the lone hero.

And isn't it a fine thing too that the film's usually very lone hero actually needs a lot of help to get by, which the film treats as a strength and not as a weakness?

The World's End (2013): I think I've repeatedly gone on record as a big admirer of Edgar Wright, so it won't come as much of a surprise to anyone that I really, really like the last film in the thematic trilogy that started with Shaun of the Dead. Having said that, I also think it’s fortunate the film at hand is the final film in the thematic trilogy because it's hard not to see that things begin repeating themselves now, and it's probably good Wright is doing something probably quite different next with Ant-Man (as he did, to be fair, with Scott Pilgrim, a film many sad people seem to hate for reasons inexplicable to me). At this point, The World's End repeats Wright's favourite themes and character types on a still highly entertaining and clever level. It's also at its core probably Wright's saddest movie, though this is the kind of film that really isn't out to make its audience sad; the sadness is just there if you're of the temperament to see it.

Children of the Night (1991): Tony Randel's vampire horror comedy is a bit of a strange egg. Tonally, it rather undecidedly jumps from broad small town satire to gore to really stupid comedy to slightly less stupid comedy to grotesque semi body horror to dark fairy-tale and back again, putting quite a few moments of actual magic in between triteness, annoying stupidity and stupid fun. The permanent tonal shifts make it impossible to a) get a very good grip on the movie as a whole and b) to ever be as much drawn into the film's very weird world as one would wish. Still, there's as much to like as to hate in here, and this is the sort of small town horror movie whose true hero isn't one of its theoretical leads (Peter DeLuise and Ami Dolenz), nor Karen Black chewing scenery, but Garrett Morris as said small town's black town drunk. Which is to say, a film worth fighting through the unfunny moments for the actual surprises it contains.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,british movies,superheroes,sf,horror,comedy,in short,edgar wright,simon pegg,nick frost,peter deluise,karen black,ami dolenz,garrett morris,hugh jackman,james mangold,tao okamoto,rila fukushima

Three Films Make A Post: That's not the victim screaming - it's you!

The Fountain (2006): Take one part pretty good melodrama, one part utter, brain-curdling weirdness and one part horrible 70s airbrush poster art, and you pretty much have The Fountain. It's a film where earnest artistic ambition dances with kitsch so closely that nobody involved - surely not director/writer Darren Aronofsky and certainly not this writer - seems to be able to tell where one begins and the other ends anymore. It's certainly a film worth experiencing, but it's also a film to which the often misused description of "pretentious" fits perfectly, in that it just isn't as clever and profound as it pretends to be.

Can you really watch naked, bald, lotus-seated Hugh Jackman float through golden-ish space in a bubble and not giggle?

 

Death Journey (1976): I'd be glad if there were much of anything to giggle about in this Fred Williamson-directed part of the Jesse Crowder series of films (it might be the first one or the second - the Internet is divided, and I'm not going to watch the additional material about the production, because this thing has already stolen enough of my life), starring Williamson, and nobody else of consequence. A private eye carting a mafia bookkeeper willing to sing from LA to Chicago while the man's former bosses are doing their best to kill them may sound like the perfect set-up for a low budget action movie, especially with a guy like Williamson who always seems to have fun when doing anything physical in the lead role. Williamson the director, however, has no idea how to stage an action sequence interestingly or even just effectively, leading to a film so bland it would probably still be boring if half of it didn't consist of filler and scenes that go on much longer than they should. Even the soundtrack gives the impression of being a collection of outtakes from a a handful of other blaxploitation soundtracks.

On the positive side, there's only a sex scene realized so hilariously wrong-headed that Williamson and his partner seem to possess two or three heads each.

 

Ricco The Mean Machine (1973): Christopher Mitchum takes his dear time to take vengeance on the mafia boss who murdered his mafia boss father while Barbara Bouchet undresses or under-dresses to distract the parts of the audience receptive to her charms from the utter vacuum that is Chris. The sleaze for a good Italian crime movie is certainly there, sometimes in hilarious and embarrassing ways (turns out the best way to steal mafia money in a film that isn't supposed to be a comedy is to let Barbara Bouchet dance naked in front and on top of a car). From time to time, Tulio Demicheli's film breaks into fits of pretty nasty violence, but even then, Mitchum's complete lack of personality in his role as Hamlet's more boring brother undermines much of the emotional punch of those scenes. Not to speak of the scenes where the script wants him to act.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,italian movies,sf,melodrama,action,blaxploitation,eurocrime,darren aronofsky,hugh jackman,rachel weisz,fred williamson,christopher mitchum,barbara bouchet,in short