Midnight Meat Train is a 2007 horror movie based on a short story by Clive Barker (of Hellraiser fame/Jericho if you're a nerd).
It stars that annoying guy from the Wedding Crashers, the one that's going to marry Rachel McAdams. It also stars the woman who isn't Shannon from Lost but is in Wristcutters, and some bad TV shows. Most importantly, it stars the Juggernaut himself, Vinnie Jones.
It is about a young photographer who is trying to impress an art critic after she informs him his photos don't capture the 'heart of the city'. After photographing the mugging of a model, he starts to notice links between his photographs and unsolved missing persons cases. He delves deeper into investigating the links and ends up uncovering a spate of grizzly murders on the train.
The film is SHIT. Like, proper shit. It starts promisingly, adding touches of melodrama to the tension. The characters aren't too obnoxious, although their actions later in the film make absolutely no sense.
That is a phrase I'd use to describe this movie. 'Absolutely no sense'. It's based on Barker's short story, which apparently explains the reasoning behind certain plot points better, but falling short of owning a copy, I used the IMDB FAQ on the films profile.
I'm gonna ruin it for you, as I imagine no-one will even have heard of it, never mind have the chance to see it.
What happens is, Vinnie Jones kills people on this train, and takes the train underground to an abandoned station where the people are butchered and fed to zombie like monsters. This is sprung out of nowhere in the film, to the point of laughter. In the short story, it is explained that throughout history and the evolution of man, we have learned that we cannot survive without said monsters, so we have agreed to feed them human flesh in order for them to not rampage and savage on the surface of the earth. Still ridiculous, but at least it's explained a BIT better. In the film, the photographer realises that the disappearences are linked to a butcher (played by the man VJ) all the way back through history (although only span American history, the world only apparently began when America was founded).
The film contains some rather brutal scenes for our viewing pleasure, but the CGI is rather appalling so they are, too, laughable. They include eyes being smashed out of skulls, and bodies being butchered.
Don't see it, it's a waste of time, but was rant-worthy.
What the fuck did I just watch? And what was the point in it?
More importantly, why did I feel the need to turn it off after 55 minutes?
Burn After Reading is the newest film by the Coen brothers. Notorius for their black comedy, of sorts, this film falls down at the hurdle that their previous films have hopped so majestically...being funny. Not funny haha funny, but quirky funny, odd funny. Often the dialogue doesn't carry the film, much like Tarantino, and certain conversation are more about builing rapport with the characters than actually moving the film forward. Their dialogue is often witty, intelligent and littered with farse, but much of the banter in BAR is more Farrelly Brothers than Coen Brothers. Coen's films also feature heavy North-By-Northwest misunderstandings, and mistaken identies. This film contains them, but I'd like to see something fresh. You can see from the outset what is going to happen.
The gist of the film is that a team member at a gym finds the memoirs of an ex-CIA analyst, and mistakes it for classified government information. Then the spiral downwards brings death, divorce and dramatic irony.
Burn After Reading takes 40 minutes before anything happens. I HATE Tilda Swinton in this film, she is two-dimensional, predictable and a terrible actress. Brad Pitt has his turn as a Brad Pitt Idiot, and he is good at playing an idiot, but this is bad. And not bad ghetto bad, but bad Lindsay Lohan bad. I'd expect it from a SNL sketch, but to scatter it through an whole film is just...dire. George Clooney plays an adulterous, OCD and allergy ridden ex-Homeland Security agent, who probably gives the only good male performance in the film. Frances McDormand is excellent, she's a treat and gives everything you want and expect from a Coen Brothers performance.
I've decided to watch the rest of the film, and it does get a little better. The paranoia increases and the film climaxes well, but it doesn't stop it from being predictable.
This film is a DVD collection addition, IF you have all the other Coen movies, because it'd be a shame to break the collection. It's nothing but a dissappointment.
p.s. if you giggle at Brad Pitt, be guilty.
I've just finished watching Mirrors, the most recent effort of Alexandre Aja, director of the fantastic Hills Have Eyes remake and the flawed, but cool as fuck, Switchblade Romance. It stars Keifer Sutherland, Amy Smart, and a whole bunch of people I've never heard of.
The one problem, and only problem is, Mirrors is a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. It reminded me of so many films throughout, some good, some bad. Mainly it reminded me of the fantastic wave of late 90's/early 00's films that I watched as a 13/14 year old that freaked the shit out of me, such as Thirteen Ghosts, and House On Haunted Hill. But, sadly, at times it reminded me of The Number 23, with a manic man trying to convince his family that he's not really crazy, but 'the mirrors are trying to get him', just like Jim Carrey and his bit number.
It ticks all the boxes when it comes to freaking people out. It has an abandoned building which was formerly a hospital. It has scary kids. It has demonic hands trying to escape from behind walls. And it has pigeons. When I mentioned scary kids, it should not surprise you it is a remake of a Korean movie.
It opens with a rather disgustingly graphic murder sequence, and then lulls you into a safe zone with Keifer and his torn family. It then throws the most intensely graphic display of gore that I've seen since the eyeball-cutting in Hostel. This bit makes Saw look like the Moomins. It's fantastic, it throws a curveball right at the audience, and really REALLY keeps your attention.
The film slows down again, in the 'Number 23' type section of investigation, and reminds me in parts of Robert Thorn's plight in The Omen (which I know The Number 23 should also remind me of, but Jim Carrey's acting was dire, where as Keifer's is good and Peck-like: Arrogant, yet broken)
Having gone from Hostel to The Omen, the final sequences that overlap, showing Keifer's fight, and simultaneously that of his wife Amy, are a mixture of ghost movie and straight up horror. They are atmospheric and tense, if not a little obvious, but still really good.
I'd reccomend watching it if you've enjoyed and missed the 'mental asylum' movies such as HOHH and Thir13en Ghosts (to give it it's proper name), or if you fancy seeing something with enough spooks to keep you going, enough gore to make you wince, and enough talking to kiss a lass through. Or if you fancy a wee spook.
Hello stranger. It's good to be back.
I haven't blogged since I returned to the country, so I have a few films to talk about.
Firstly, as it is freshest in my head, Saw V/5/Five. YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW IT ENDS (pssst...yes you will). I will spoil Saw 1/2/3/4 in this so if you haven't seen the, I don't recommend reading them
I'm a defender of the Saw franchise, they've taken a battering off the critics so far. Yes, the acting is terrible; Yes, the scripts are terrible. BUT...a huge BUT...the twists are great! They're entertaining, as are the torture devices. Jigsaw created the US torture porn market, and it has died down to an extent, but the Saw franchise is still booming.
Sadly, I feel I can no longer defend the franchise. Firstly, the advertising campaign. Using the tagline 'you won't believe how it ends' is ridiculous, especially when the whole concept of the film is to sit through flawed garbage, then get twisted, and forget how bad the film was and how good the twist was when you walk out.
Saw V is a 'best of' compilation of the Saw's so far. It jumps back and forward in time, as expected since Jigsaw is dead but the actors name is in the credits, with Straham still hunting the Jigsaw and Hoffman the new Jigsaw, now Amanda is no more. The story is good, the 'strangers in a room like Saw 2' part of the film is reasonable, mainly as it is the only opportunity to stick in new torture devices, some of which are awesome, others are pretty shoddy and flawed.
Maybe it's just my brain being 5 years older, and much more wiser to the world of horror, but since the first Saw, and up until the third one, they have been getting more and more obvious. Saw 4 changed that, it added a whole new slant to the film sequencing and timeline and the twist was fantastic. I came out of that film wholly impressed. But Saw 5 cuts back to the obvious, so much, in fact, that you can work it out far too early. They have done a Derren Brown and put in vocal clues to the twist throughout the film, but really have overdone it and you end up totally believing how it will end. The first last sequences, mind, are fucking brutal, the hardest scenes to watch for gory reasons in the series so far.
All I can say is, if you are a fan of the Saw movies, definately go and see it. It does add to the canon of Saw in many a way, has some great tortures for the gore fans, and will, I hope, definately benefit next halloween when Saw VI comes out. If you haven't seen them, obviously avoid at all costs. The numbers don't work like Halloween, or other horror series, you need to see the first 4 in order to get anything out of the film. At LEAST see the 2, 3 and 4, as Saw 1 doesn't really shine too hard on this film as it has in the last 2.
Reet, another film time..
I can't talk much about this film as it has been about 4 weeks since I watched it, but all I can say is WATCH ME. The film I refer to, of course, is The Fall. It's a 2006 (I think, i'm writing without the aid of imdb) drama/fantasy/comedy about a 1920's Hollywood stuntman who takes a fall and ends up in a hospital. Inside, he meets a young orphan girl, and befriends her, so he can tell her a majestic and fantastic story about revenge. But his ideas turn sinister and dark.
The fantasy sequences in the film are some of the best I've seen outside of J-Movies. It has the epic feel of Hero, or Golden Flower, and uses the same pallette as the two. It's rich in colour, foregrounds and characters stand so prominintly out from the background, which is often wide desert or large greenery. It's a beautiful piece of cinema in that respect. It delves into Oz, in that it's characters are all enhanced and romantic versions of people that we meet in the real world.
The real scenes in the film are hilarious, the orphan girls struggles through conversation in broken English, to the point of cutesiness. The characters we meet outside of our protagonists are all light, but incredibly relevant to the story. The light meets the dark in integral points and make for a fantastic up and down ride.
It does get dark in the end, to the point of tears, but as you'd expect, laughter is interspersed (sp?) within.
If you have seen The Fountain, or the Wizard of Oz, see this for similar reasons, enjoy it as epic fantasy-meets-real world. If you were wowed by the cinematography of Hero, then watch this and have your socks blown off again and again.
Final film to talk about...Get Smart.
Get Smart is a James Bond spoof. No more, no less. But spoofs are funny. (Sorry, CAN be funny. Let's not ignore the 'Movie' series still going. Superhero/Epic etc, they can all fuck off, although I did laugh a few times during Epic Movie)
BUT ANYWAY. Get Smart really is a good pastiche of the Bond movies. It splices Moore's quips with Lazenby's appallingness in many a good way. The gadgetry is hilarious, and the support cast (with Masi Oka in, and groundhog day, Ghostbustin ass Bill Murray) stands it's ground. It made me laugh A LOT, for about 40 minutes, but then does the staple 'Oh we've actually turned INTO a spy movie now' but, where the jokes stop, the kissing begins, and the film can be turned off.
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is really good in this film, I'm really starting to appreciate him as an actor. He can be funny, but then the eyebrows come into play and he gets all serious, and, lets not forget, good. Anne Hathway is a waif, but hot, so I let her off in this film. Steve Carrell is HILARIOUS for, as I've said, 40 minutes, then turns serious so gets crap. Bill Murray is a tree, I'll say no more.
I'd see Get Smart, as I've said before, if you're babysitting. Kid's find this absolutely genius, with or without seeing a Bond movie. I'd also say that use growned-ups should watch it, but only if you fancy it, I'm not saying rush out and buy it or anything.
Penelope is a 2007 fantasy film about a pig-girl. That's the long and short of it. Nothing original, nothing special.
2007 saw the release of Stardust, a fucking amazing fantasy film with a stunning cast that was really really REALLY good. Penelope came a bit later, riding off James McAvoy's Atonement wave.
It stars Christina Ricci as Penelope, who is a pig due to an ancient curse put on her family. James McAvoy stars as her 'love interest', and he's pretty good in this film. It's got 'that dwarf' Peter Dinklage in, the very same one that's the dwarf in everything. He's the new Warwick Davis. He's funny in it as well.
The film kinda relies on one thing, and that's Penelope's hideous pig face. You didn't see it in the trailer, so that made you want to see how hideous it is. Sorry to ruin it, but it's not. It's not that bad. As soon as you see it you think 'Plastic Surgery would help' so they stick in a bit about how it can't be operated on. It is so 'hideous' that people run away and are scared for life by it, but IT'S NOT THAT BAD. It makes the film fall flat on it's face.
The film has some funny moments, Russell Brand is good in it. It also has Reece Witherspoon in it, and she's just too cute for words. It's got some pretty funny moments in it as well, but it tends to repeat them quite a lot.
Watch it with a small niece or nephew, or any young child, or just watch Stardust cos it's a banger.
I know you are a dead, but you made some banging movies, and you even went a bit mad and shot at people, but I can forgive you for that. What I cannot forgive you for is Soylent Green.
Soylent Green is a 1973 sci-fi movie about a dsytopian future in which the population has grown out of control. Vegetables and meat are rare, and the people are fed on rations of wafers made of vegetable extracts by the Soylent Company. They release new Soylent Green, made from the last remnants of life in the sea, the plankton.
Charlton Heston gives another good turn as Robert Thorn, a fantastically classic tragic hero (that's a spoiler to anyone who studied english at any level), but the film is lacking one major thing. A plot.
Thorn is a NYPD detective, assigned to a murder case which he believes is an assasination covered up as burglary gone bad. He, along with his 'book' (the 2020 term for intelligent person), begin to uncover a deep mystery behind the senator's connection with the murder. Soon the case is closed but Thorn is unsatisfied and continues to investigateon his own time. All the while he meets plenty beautiful women, who have become so scarce they are all prostitutes that belong in certain houses, giving them the delightfully nickname: "furniture".
If you've ever seen my t-shirt with all the spoilers on, you'll probably have read what happens in the end. Also if you've ever seen anything with 'top 100 movies quotes', or 'top 100 sci-fi movies' you'll know the end. Otherwise, the film is so boring and pointless it's not really worth watching to find out, just go read my t-shirt.
There is a particularly poignant scene in which Roth succumbs to euthanasia (known as going home) but it sharp turns into Charlton Heston punching people, the only thing that actually seems to happen in this movie. Outside of it's one memorable line, it is a bland attempt at science fiction cinema. 2001:A Space Odyssey was 5 years earlier, so this film has no excuse for it's shoddy attempts at futuristic scenery and technology.
Don't bother watching this, just wait until its on Channel 4's 'Top Something-or-other' and see the best bits.
It's not a remake, it's not a sequel, and it's not based on a Japanese one. Old school American horror.
Posted by alansdeepbathThe above title is the tagline for Hatchet, a 2007 horror movie by fledgling director Adam Green (No, not the Mouldy Peaches bloke).
It tells the horror-style legendary tale of Victor Crowley (played by Kane Hodder, god of horror, aka Jason) haunting the swamps of Louisianna. Insert teenage males, hot girls, and thick elderly folk to make this a horror movie.
40 minutes in, having read reviews, I was genuinelly stumped as to how it made positive top 10 lists, won awards (granted at horror festivals) and had multiple sell-out screenings. All in Europe, I might add, it was denied an American release due to gore. (To quote Adam Green as to why it finally got released in the US: "Someone can only get hit with a hatchet a certain number of times. It was thirteen times that he got chopped before; now it’s three")
It starts appallingly, with a few funny one-liners from the quirky black friend of the emo boy who's just split up with his girlfriend so reckons a ghost tour might help (You know, that staple archetype in horror movies). It has plenty tits to count as American horror, as J-horror has too many scary little girls in to warrant the presenting of baps. I feel I should complain about the obvious characters, but the acting isn't all that bad, not as bad as some general release horrors *cough*Jessica Alba*cough*. Deon Richmond, of Scream and 'I'm the token black guy at this party' in Not Another Teen Movie, puts in a really good performance, and Tamara Feldmen plays the outsider girl that doesn't get topless rather well.
Now lets talk about what I was watching it for, the brutal murders. They are all AWESOME. There are some staple sharp-impliment-to-the-bonce deaths but some absolutely outstanding ideas for how to kill people. I won't ruin them as I expect anyone reading this who likes horror to go out and watch this. (It's reasonably easy to get on torrent, but it's not the uncut version). Some had me absolutely cringing and turning away from the screen, the special effects were tremendous at times, and the make-up was rather gory.
It totally turns itself around once the killings start happening, it cuts the topless/punchy dialogue bullshit and starts getting pretty scary, pretty gruesome, and everything you'd want in a horror. And the beginning is long-winded, but it has enough decent gags, and boobs, to keep you watching (watch for Marcus's response to Ben claiming the boat trip is fun, I was crying laughing).
Hatchet; Old School American Horror, it is; the best horror I've seen in ages, it is not.
I haven't reviewed [REC] but I couldn't do it justice. WATCH IT.
Will Ferrell has made the same film again.
Nothing funny happens, apart from one or two sentences in which Will says 'OH SUCK A HORSE DICK' and you laugh, because it is funny, but not original.
Step Brothers is about John C Reilly and Will Ferrell become step brothers, and hating each other and then liking each other, and then hating each other, and then liking each other, and repeat. It creates some more 'man-child' set pieces for Will Ferrell to swear or fart in, some of which are funny. There are some slapstick moments that also made me laugh, but they are few and far between. There are several pop-culture references that are used in clever ways (mostly in a rap sequence) and are funny.
Will Ferrell and John Reillys partnership is good, but not funny enough to hold a movie. Talladega Nights really isn't very good at all. Will Ferrell needs a support cast to make you realise that he isn't the funniest one in the film, like Steve Carrell in Anchorman, and Napoleon Dynamite in Blades of Glory.
One particular sequence of scenes in which Will Ferrell is seeing a therapist, in which he talks about being a man-child. Surely if he can write about it in a film, he can move away from it. I've mentioned Stranger Than Fiction in the past, and it was good to see Will Ferrell outside of his usual peers, but he still played an imbecile.
In short, I giggled, and lol'd a few times, but it's still on the 'meh' list.
I watched a movie last night that has almost as many plot holes as Gothika. It's a spanish thriller called 'La Habitación de Fermat', or Fermat's Room in English.
It is the story of four maths geniuses who solve a riddle sent to them and get invited to an evening of mathematic exploration, where they are told they are going to solve one of the world's greatest enigmas. They soon find out they are being killed, as the room is shrinking, and will continue to shrink unless they answer riddles that are sent to them via text message. I first read about it in Empire about 2 or 3 months ago, and I immediately started looking for it, as it sounded rather good. How wrong I was! And BEWARE: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
The four people in the room consist of an old man contemplating suicide, a young boy genius, a sexy girl who you don't learn anything about, and an inventor. Turns out, SURPRISE SURPRISE, they are all connected in some ways, and some are even connected to the man they are invited there by, who calls himself Fermat.
I'm gonna rant a bit, and I might ruin the film, so please just don't read if you think you might enjoy the film (ie you're Sloth from the Goonies, or a 12 year old who hasn't seen a David Fincher movie yet),
The connections include the following:
- The girl and boy genius used to be a couple, and they start making out pretty fast, but refuse to acknowledge each other or say their real names.
- The girl and the old man go to crazy chess parties on boats together after meeting on the internet
- The inventor ran over Fermat's daughter and he believes thats why he's being killed.
- The boy and the old man are connected as they both solved Goldbach's Conjecture, only the boy genius was lying and sabotaged his presentation on it, which the girl earlier admits to sabotaging, but he says it was he himself so PLOT HOLE.
I still reckon it's worth a watch, it is good in parts, and the riddles are fun to solve, just ignore it's attempts at intelligence (kinda like Cube). The sexy lady is also easy on the eye. It probably won't get a cinematic release over here, it's nearly a year old, but it might pop up in your local arthouse at some point.
