Films of the year

And I haven't really seen enough movies this year, even with membership of our local arts picturehouse in Cambridge. Suffragette was an impressive and important movie. The Lady in the Van was bit cutesy although the performances were good. The Martian was enjoyable but only about as third as good as this simply splendid book, and they disappointed me by adding the Iron Man ending that is quite rightly ruled out in the book for good scientific reasons.

Marvel put out the Avengers Ultron movie and Ant Man and I can remember very little about them. By contrast Daredevil and Jessica Jones on Netflix were much more enjoyable and memorable for all the right reasons.

So that just leaves me with the four big blockbusters for the year. I had a good time at Spectre but the plot holes were huge and it was at least one set piece too long. I can't see Daniel Craig returning for a fifth go because this film ends with him hanging them up and choosing a life over a gun which was very refreshing.

Somehow Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation managed to out Bond Spectre and led the field in its use of practical effects and a splendid scene-stealing turn by Rebecca Ferguson. Strangely Tom Cruise managed to be less annoying that usual and it was all just terrific.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens also contained huge plot holes and moments of madness that made no sense but I didn't acre. It perfectly captured the magic of the original films and left me a very happy geek. I also was able to see it with my wife and kids, the first time we've gone to see a film together in years which was just as exciting. And when that music started I almost shed a tear.

But far and a way the best time to be had in a cinema this year was with Mad Max: Fury Road with Max himself almost reduced to a supporting character as Charlize Theron's Furiosa tore up the road and the screen. A movie where pretty much the first scene direction read cut to the chase, where former doctor George Miller threw everything at the screen and reminded us all how good action movies can be when we know it's actual stunt men doing this ridiculous stuff rather than those tedious bouncing CGI sprites. Best film of 2015 by several furious road miles.

Predator 2 - In town with some time to kill

Nobody ever deliberately sets out to make a bad movie, at least that's what the aphorism says, but back in the late 1980s they were trying fairly hard. The Predator sequel came out in 1990 and it's hot, sticky and very, very shouty.

Set in a slightly futuristic version of Los Angeles, where everyone seems to have powerful automatic weapons, Danny Glover is the rogue cop who strides through the chaos pissing everyone off along the way. His alpha dog performance inevitably attracts the attention of a visiting Predator and the scene is set for the inevitable final showdown. But first we need a lot of actors to show up and shout a lot, so bond villain Roberto Davi, Aliens star Bill Paxton, and the increasingly eccentric Gary Busey all get their moments of ranting and raving but it's all just so much sweat off Glover's back, or blood off the Predator's.

Bill Paxton stands out and earns his place in film trivia lore by becoming the only actor to have been killed on-screen by an Alien, a Predator, and a Terminator. Meanwhile Glover struggles through the mayhem and the nonsense about rival drug gangs before he arrives on the hidden spaceship for his battle with the big bad.

It's all complete nonsense, and rather loud and vaguely insulting nonsense at that. Somehow the sequel manages to have none of the cult charm of the original. Possibly the director Stephen Hopkins lacked the action film talents of John McTiernan in the first film. It's a terrific dud which only serves to remind me how big, brash and souless action films could be in the 80s and early 90s. One miserly Predator star or scar and on to third part of this box set. Can Adrian Brody's funny voice acting get anywhere near the magic of the original?

Alienating your audience

I should be doing other stuff. There is a lot of real world stuff going on but I need to get something off my chest (or out of it?). Last night I finally got to see Prometheus and complete my Alien marathon. The reviews were all fairly poor so my expectations were set very low and this film still managed to get below them.

The budget for this film was $130 million. Really? Couldn't they have spent some of that money on checking that the script made sense? I suppose with one of the writers from Lost we can expect some confusion. I watched every episode of Lost and that was a load of nonsense, and so is Prometheus.

For starters let us consider the shuttle medical pod that gets used in the ridiculous self administered surgery scene. Charlize Theron has her own shuttle/life-boat on the Prometheus with its own special medical pod, so why when Noomi Rapace tries to use it for an emergency caesarean does the computer state it is set for male procedures only? Are they trying to give us some sort of weird clue about Theron's character? Seeing as how she spends most of the movie wearing a skin tight bodysuit because, well because she can, there doesn't seem to be any doubt about her gender.

All the medicine in this film was terrible. Rapace performs her own emergency caesarean alien-ectomy and delivers a squid baby. She then pulls out the umbilical cord, but what was that attached to? You need to remove the placenta as well, Ms Rapace, or you're going to bleed to death. And another thing, let us assume that there is some good reason for wearing bandage boob wraps when in hyper-sleep but surely when you wake up you would put some more functional underwear on?

What do alien squid babies eat? There has always been a problem in the Alien franchise about how the beasties go from pretty small to enormous without apparently consuming anything, but this example is particularly extreme. Maybe it has been munching all the bandages they use for underwear while it has been in the medical pod.

But by far the biggest problem with Prometheus is that the highly paid, brain-box scientists act like such morons. The examples are too numerous to mention. It is left to Idris Elba and his fly-boy crew to act with a bit of sense, at least when he's not trying to do his own gender test on Charlize Theron.

This film is truly terrible, but you have probably seen it yourself by now and know that already. £130 million to make and takings in excess of $400 million. Meanwhile Dredd 3D cost £50 million and is currently struggling to make even half of that back. There is no justice.

At the time of writing life is being particularly unfair to someone I love so the fortunes of multi-million dollar Hollywood movies are mere trivia, but what rubbish trivia this is. Even the AVP films were better.

Predatory Instincts

My plan was to watch all of the Alien movies before setting off to see Prometheus. Some family business has meant that I haven't managed to see Ridley Scott's new film but I did watch Alien vs Predator and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.

 

These are two terrible films. The first one is just about watch-able and the lead female character is pretty good, but AVP Requiem is truly awful. Every possible action and horror film cliché is used, some of them several times. Characters wander off on their own, "bad" people get punished for their character flaws, while the good guys have some unresolved business which will lead to a neat pay-off at the end of the film. Heroes and villains spout terrible action film nonsense and both movies are devoid of any horror or tense moments.

The second film is slightly interesting as an exercise in film making. It starts out as a standard "teens under threat" slasher movie. Then about half way through the production team appear to have had a discussion about how good Aliens was and decided to remake it with their cardboard characters. Except without any of the wit, verve and slowly building tension that James Cameron added to the Alien franchise.

At least the monsters are mostly of the man in a suit variety as opposed to terrible, lightweight CGI sprites. Unfortunately that does lead to some odd moments when the tall and slender actors in the suits look rather ungainly and lumbering instead of the fast Aliens or powerful Predators they are playing. This could have been fixed with clever editing but even that is a disappointment.

Really, these two films are best avoided. Stick to the original Alien movies. Let us hope that Prometheus does not disappoint although early reports are not good.

Last Boredcast

Here's another bad movie review to liven things up. This is The Last Broadcast from 1998.

This is an extremely low budget movie of the found footage variety that pre-dated the Blair Witch Project, and may have influenced it. A team of paranormal investigators travel into the woods to research the legend of the Jersey Devil. Bad stuff occurs and years later a documentary film-maker tries to figure out what happened from their surviving videotape.

My copy of the DVD bears the tagline "Incredibly creepy. Don't see it alone." Personally I would amend that to "Incredibly boring. Don't watch it at all."

Now don't get me wrong I am a big fan of shows like Ghostwatch and I found the Blair Witch Project really quite scary, but this is dull as ditch-water. I don't normally spot twist endings but I saw this one coming a mile off, and it still makes no sense.

Terrible film. And if you don't believe me just send me the price of a stamp and it's yours. 0 out of 5 stars. A new low for bad movie bingo.

Outlandish Behaviour

Bad movie bingo is back! In amongst the 30 day SF challenge and my Big Finish reviews I found time to watch Outlander from 2008, directed by Howard McCain.

James Caviezel plays an alien bounty hunter called Johnny Alpha Kainan who crash lands in eighth century Norway and has to help a bunch of Vikings hunt down a deadly dragon beastie that has escaped from his space ship. John Hurt's in there as the Viking king, plus there's Sophia Myles as a tough Viking warrior maiden, and Ron Perlman plays a huge hammer wielding Viking called Wulf Gunnar (sorry).

Come on, if you're going to make a Strontium Dog movie have the guts to come out and say so. Honestly, 2000AD should sue. All it needed was a Gronk to turn up and I would have been content.

This was rubbish but vaguely enjoyable rubbish. If the leading man wasn't so gloomy all the time it would have helped, but on the whole not too bad. I wouldn't recommend spending more than £1.99 on it but if you have the popcorn this film will do the job.

Two beasts, no breasts, heads, shoulders, knees and toes roll. 3 out of 5 Joe Bob Briggs stars. Now if they had just called it Strontium Dog, or even Terror Tram they could have challenged Pierce for the title.

"Well it's hardly scientific but it's really quite terrific"

At last a worthy competitor for Pierce Brosnan's Deaths on a Train! Ghost Ship from 2002, not to be confused with Death Ship from 1980, or with the Goonies rip-off Ghost Ship from 1992.

A rough and ready salvage crew discover an abandoned and rusting cruise liner. They investigate and discover crates of gold bars. The most obviously fake gold bars I've seen in a film for a while but no matter they are hooked and the mayhem begins.

This was great! No cliche is left unturned. The crew are all instantly recognisable stereotypes, they say things like "Stick together" before immediately wandering off alone, and they break nearly all the rules of survival for horror movies. The only unpredictable aspect is guessing who will be picked off first and how. Gabriel Byrne plays the salvage crew's captain and must have wondered what film he had wandered into. Meanwhile Julianna Margulies from E.R. does her best as the tough action woman and inevitably becomes a genre final girl. And the villain of the piece turns out to be the person we suspected all along, the clue is in the character name.

This is a truly terrible film that deserves a Joe Bob star rating of 4 out of 5 stars. one beast, two breasts, heads roll, arms roll, in fact every major body part rolls. This goes into joint first place with Death Train. The secret to a good bad film title would appear to be first word something spooky, second word a mode of transportation. I look forward to a film called Terror Tram or Scary Scooter.

Incidentally the film poster above is very similar to a 2000AD cover used for the Leviathan series that I have annotated elsewhere. It is of course based on a famous art deco poster for an actual ocean liner.

Yawn Americans

I should be watching Space:1999 for British Invaders. It's a big show with lots of episodes to get through, but bad films keep getting in the way. The American, directed by Anton Corbijn and starring George Clooney.

Clooney is a semi-retired gunsmith/assassin drifting through Italy when he agrees to take on one last job and build a special gun for a mysterious female client. This is a strange and very dull film. Clooney divides his time between looking suspicious and looking pissed off. The life of a semi-retired gunsmith or assassin can't be terribly exiting even if he does get to sleep with a beautiful prostitute in a totally gratuitous and prolonged sex scene.

This is Corbijn's second film after Control, he is of course famous as rock photographer and at times The American does look like a sequence of still images more than a true moving picture. It also has two sequences that real stretch credulity. In the first Clooney visits an Italian car mechanic's garage and picks up some metal tubing, part of a gear box and a few steel washers. We then see him at his work bench apparently turning these odds and ends into an automatic rifle with a wooden stock and a huge silencer. It makes what the A-Team used to do with a garden hose and a few paint cans seem almost believable.

The other scene that doesn't make any sense at all does involve a major plot spoiler so if you don't want to know look away now, you have been warned.

OK, so it doesn't take a huge insight to work out that the target that the mysterious client wants the special gun for turns out be Clooney himself. It isn't explained why the "organisation" want him dead but let's play along with that for a moment. The bit that doesn't make sense is the scene in the middle of the film where Clooney meets the nameless hit-woman in a forest and gives her the gun for a test firing. She fires at a target and then asks Clooney to make some adjustments before final delivery. So what was she waiting for? She has a high powered rifle in her hands, and Clooney standing next to her in an isolated spot, so why doesn't she shoot him then instead of waiting until the complicated final scenes in a church parade through the streets of an Italian town? I suppose it is just possible that the mystery man that they both report to hasn't told her who her target will be at that point in the movie but still it does make the final twist seem a bit daft.

Anyway, this was just dull as dish-water. I need to find some good bad films soon. 1 out of 5 stars.
Now back to Space:1999 and those crimplene flared space uniforms.

Edged Out

My Lovefilm subscription delivered  another candidate for Bad Movie Bingo. Martin Campbell's big screen version of Edge of Darkness. To be honest I had forgotten this was on my list, I must have added it back when we covered the original BBC mini series from 1985 back in British Invaders 67 and 68. Martin Campbell directed that version as well.

OK, let's get the big issue out of the way first. Mel Gibson is, let's be charitable, a difficult human being with some unpleasant views. It feels uncomfortable to be supporting his career by even renting one of his films, but there is a long line of great art made by people who you wouldn't want to be in the same room as so let's put that to one side and look at the movie.

Gibson plays Tom Craven a Boston detective whose daughter is shot on his front door step and dies in his arms. Everyone assumes that the killer meant to shoot Gibson but his investigations lead him to discover the murky truth about her work, and then Ray Winstone shows up as a government spook to explain what's really happening. A bit like Joe Don Baker in the original Winstone has the louder and showier role although Gibson does get a lot more action scenes than Bob Peck had in the original, guess it's in his contract.

One of the things that was so good about the BBC original was Peck's portrayal of grief and I have to confess that Gibson does pretty well in that respect. They have kept the device of having him hear and see his dead daughter although he sees her as a child instead of the adult he has lost. These flashbacks or visions or whatever are quite moving, and his misery really comes across.

Overall this isn't really a bad movie, and it's a better translation of the original than I expected it to be. It doesn't have time for the slow build of the TV series so certain elements of the story have to be revealed faster, usually as a result of Gibson punching someone or pulling his gun. I came into expecting it to be a bad adaptation of a great BBC series and actually it wasn't all that terrible. I'd still suggest going back to the original but if you can cope with the idea of a Mel Gibson film this one is OK.

3 out of 5 Joe Bob stars for being neither fish not foul, not terribly bad bad or terribly good bad.

Howling, howling, howling, keep those doggies howling

Bad movie bingo now reaches a film that doesn't star Pierce Brosnan, Gerard Butler or Patrick Stewart! What can I have been thinking?

The Wolfman, directed by Joe Johnstone in 2010 and starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.

Actually this isn't too bad. It tries quite hard to re-create some of the atmosphere and tone of Universal studio and Hammer horrors and gets quite a bit right. Joe Johnstone made one of my favourite comic book movies, The Rocketeer, and he clearly loves the source material. Del Toro isn't too bad as Lawrence Talbot, he probably got the part because he looked and sounded like a wolfman in The Usual Suspects. Anthony Hopkins, on the other hand decides to chew the scenary (amongst other things) and to do an accent. What is is about actors doing regional English accents? They all sound rubbish. Do English actors doing American accents offend the ears of American audiences as well?

The only real problem with this film is that it relies so much on the source material that we know what is going to happen right from the start. We know the bite is coming, we know he will transform, and we can predict an ending involving the Wolfman, Emily Blunt and a silver bullet. The only thing that they can do different to the original is to increase the gore quotient, so we get lots of blood and body parts thrown at the screen. There is one rather fine sequence when the Wolfman rampages through Victorian London and overturns a bus with resulting chaos and mayhem. I suspect this is a knowing nod to a similar scene at the end of American Werewolf in London.

Anyway let me give this a true Joe Bob Briggs review: Three beasts, no breasts, heads roll, arms roll, legs roll. 3 out of 5 stars. Check it out!

But Death Train is still in the lead.

Own goal

Bad movie bingo has branched off, and this branch line follows Gerard Butler and curiously enough leads us back to Patrick Stewart. This is The Game of Their Lives a sports biopic about the 1950 USA world cup football team, or soccer as they call it in the film. That's the team that famously, or infamously, beat England 1-0 in the group stages. It was the only match they won but it shook things up a bit as England weren't supposed to get beaten in those days. These days, well we even struggle to overcome the mighty Montenegro (population 600,000 for anyone who's counting).

So we get lots of unknown young actors with brutal haircuts playing keen american soccer players who can't get on with each other, and then they do get on just in time for Gimli the Dwarf, sorry John Rhys Davies, to coach them into giant slayers, while Patrick Stewart reports the whole thing to an uncaring american public. And all set to that oodly-noodly clarinet music that composers seem to reach for whenever a film looks back at some days-gone-by vision of America.

Gerard Butler, who as a Scot must have loved sticking it to the auld enemy, trots out his american accent as the goalie. This was before his mega success in 300 and that DVD cover rather bigs up his role in this movie. He doesn't look like that at any point during the film. And the England flag is another red herring, the three lions are only in this film as the big baddies, captained by Gavin Rossdale as it happens.

Has a football film ever worked? It's easier to think of a good rugby movie than one about the beautiful game. The best I can think of is Bend it like Beckham and you could argue that's not really about football at all. And no, I haven't forgotten Escape to Victory, I'm just trying to.

Anyway, this isn't a bad film, it's just a terminally dull one. Mr Brosnan in Death Train still leads the pack by a long way. Better accents (just), more explosions, and a train!

1 out of 5 Joe Bob stars. Next up, the mark of the wolf!

Bad movie bingo strikes back

I was home alone again last night and so it was time to play bad movie bingo again. And it was Pierce Brosnan time again! In fact I am thinking of sticking with Brosnan for my bad movie nights, there is a fair selection. This time Amazon took my £2.79 and sent me Butterfly on a Wheel from 2007.

Also starring Gerard Butler one year after "This is Sparta!" and Maria Bello, after A History of Violence.

Meh. I know, I know we are supposed to stop using that internet expression of boredom and indifference but really ... Meh.

Butler and Bello have the perfect life, the perfect marriage and the perfect poppet of a child. Do you think that something might be going to change all that? You would be right. And that something comes along in the shape of Brosnan who kidnaps their daughter and plays a cat and mouse game with them over 24 hours. There are twists and turns and nothing is what it seems. It's almost like someone listened to Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime and thought the chorus might make a good movie pitch. "This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife. My God. What have I done?" (Yes I'm paraphrasing).

Brosnan playing a baddie is interesting I suppose, something he has done more of in recent years (Seraphim Falls, The Ghost) but here he is doing an accent. An "Oirish" accent, and would you believe he can't do a very good one? Stick to your normal voice, Pierce. Anything else is distracting.

Anyway, Pierce's terrible accent is not the problem with this film The problem is I just didn't care. None of the characters are likable, none of them. I didn't care what happened to any of them and because I didn't care all the twists and reverses were dull. Give us someone we can empathise with or don't bother at all.

One plus note: Nicholas Lea who played Krycek in the X-Files turned up briefly at the start and I got all excited but he doesn't stick around. Shame. If you get the choice between this and Death Train pick Death Train every time.

Meh. 1 out of 5 Joe Bob stars. Now on to Taffin

More deaths on more trains

Paul from the excellent TimeVault podcast has pointed out that there is a sequel to the terrible Death Watch. Pierce Brosnan stars in Night Watch. Sadly Amazon tells me that it is only available as a region 1 import for £14.99.

£14.99 ?! I don't think so, Mr Brosnan. I shall have to find another candidate for the next bad movie bingo night. All suggestions gratefully received.

Death on a Train

A few weeks ago I handed over 99p in a charity shop for bumper fun pack DVD set that consisted of four films: Strictly Ballroom (cheesy fun), Carry On, Doctor (Ooooh, Matron!), Human Traffic (haven't seen it) and ... (dramatic pause)... Alistair MacLean's Death Train. Or to be more precise, Death Train - based on an idea for a screenplay that Alistair MacLean once had that was then turned into a novel by Alastair MacNeil, who probably got the gig because his name sounded a bit like MacLean's.

Wikipedia tells me that Death Train was a 1993 made for TV movie. It starred (get this cast list) Pierce Brosnan (before he was Bond), Patrick Stewart (after he was Picard), Alexandra Paul (before Baywatch), Ted Levine (after Silence of the Lambs) and Christopher Lee! Well, with that line up how could you go wrong? So last weekend when I was home alone I popped it into the player and climbed on board the Death Train.

A disgruntled Russian general (Lee) wants to make Russia strong again by selling a couple of nuclear bombs to Iraq (I know, it doesn't make any sense to me either). One of the bombs is on (you guessed it) a train, and Patrick Stewart has to assemble his United Nations crime stoppers team to prevent Ted Levine from taking the bomb train across Europe and into Iraq. Rather than having some crack Navy Seals unit on hand he has to recruit a motorcycle racer who used to be in the SAS (Brosnan, of course), a desk jockey who was on the US olympic Biathlon team, (Paul) and a couple of Russian helicopter pilots, one cheerful and one who looks sinister and smokes a lot (guess which one turns out to be the mole).

The whole thing is quite atrocious in a so bad that it almost turns out to be good but then turns out to be rubbish way. It may have been a European co-production because some of the actors appear to be dubbed. Christopher Lee (God bless him) appears to have actually done his own lines in Russian. I don't know if he could already speak Russian but if he learnt his lines especially for this low budget disaster then that was above and beyond the call of duty. Meanwhile Pierce Brosnan, whose character was supposed to have gone to Eton, can't decide whether he's using his American Remington Steele accent, his British Bond accent or his natural Irish brogue.

No action movie cliche is left unturned. It even comes down to Brosnan defusing the bomb as it ticks towards zero and dealing with the cut the red wire or the blue wire dilemma. No surprises here, he cuts the opposite wire to the one that the bomb maker tells him over the radio - "Just an instinct." It's a good job that film bomb makers keep putting those coloured wires in there instead of just using all black wires. Speaking of the bomb maker it is quite nice to see John Abineri in there, he's known to British Invaders listeners for Red Dwarf, Survivors and Robin of Sherwood. And the UN physicist who debriefs him is played by a very young looking Clarke Peters, Lester "smooth" Freamon from the Wire.

There's nothing like being home alone with a beer and some fast food and a totally crappy movie. If you can get hold of a copy for 99p or less then I highly recommend it. I'm going to give it 4 out of 5 Joe Bob Briggs terrible movie stars. And I'm amazed to find that this was successful enough to spawn a sequel. I'm sort of tempted. Stay tuned, dear reader.