Mini-Review - Stalker (1979 - Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)

If you appreciate and get this film (as many people seem to) then that's all well and good. For me it was two and a half hours of people wandering around in fields, stopping for a long chat about existential type stuff that for me was virtually indecipherable, and then having another little wander around. And then another little chat.

Some beautiful visuals made it watchable, but despite the massive presence of fog it was strangely lacking in atmosphere. This is my first Tarkovsky film and I'm not that keen. When I'm after my slow ponderous film fix I think I'll stick with a bit of Werner Herzog.

4/10

evlkeith

Review - Not of This Earth (1957 - Dir. Roger Corman)

I haven't done very well trying to watch all of the films mentioned in F. Paul Wilson's 'Nightworld' but I'm going to try and rectify that in the coming months. So here we go with Roger Corman's Not of This Earth.

An alien agent from the planet Davana (sounds like a seventies variety act) comes down to Earth and cases the joint. He's after blood you see - aren't they always - and he uses his wily alien ways to kill unfortunates, nick their blood and performs his dastardly experiments. He enlists the help of a petty thief Jeremy and a nurse called Nadine (the saucy old devil). In fact, he pays the nurse to live in his house to "take care of him". 

I decided in true 'Nightworld' fashion to watch this at night and I'm glad that I did, much of the atmosphere would probably have been lost in a bright sunlit room. The film was made on an obviously shoestring budget but it still manages to impart a sense of dread. To turn Paul Birch into an alien, all the special effects fellows did was slap some white contacts into his eyes. Which you don't see for the majority of the film due to his Peters and Lee glasses. He is made even more alien by his Jedi mind tricks where he talks directly into people's minds. Again this is cheaply done by a bit of dubbing in post production. All simple things but, along with his performance it's pretty convincing stuff.

The music helps with the whole atmosphere thing. It is fairly typical of fifties sci-fi B-movies but it does the job very nicely. It all feels distinctly creepy and made me think that I was watching something that actually happened in 1956 and this was just a Crimewatch style reconstruction.

The story plods along in a standard kind of way. It's obvious where it's going from early on and I can't say that there's anything that memorable. Unless you count a doctor being attacked by an umbrella creature as memorable. Mmm, maybe. But the story does its job. 

As you may have guessed the special effects are poor, especially on the umbrella creature, but this also extends to the sets. One sliding door that features prominently doesn't so much slide as judder along a bit as it's pushed by some behind the scenes chain-smoking technician. It all adds to the charm, I suppose.

There was a remake of this made in 1988 as a result of a wager. Someone bet the director that he couldn't make it on the same budget (allowing for inflation) and in the same time frame as the original. This sounds quite interesting you may think, until you hear that the director was Jim Wynorski. Oh dear. On the positive side it starred ex adult specialist film starlet Traci Lords. Okay, it still sounds really bad.

Not of This Earth makes a change from the usual alien invasion stories we get nowadays. It's a lot simpler and a lot quieter experience. Yet it's surprisingly chilling at times. A good late Friday night film.
4/10
evlkeith

Review - Dead Space (1991 - Dir. Fred Gallo)

I'll tell you now: Marc Singer is out of the cup. Jennifer Connelly has got it sewn up and she only got 5/10 for The Hulk. Dead Space (nothing to do with the games) is a very poor film that homages to within an inch of its sad and sorry existence.

All it says on the IMDb summary is, "A deadly virus attacks the crew of a Saturn space station." Yep, that's about it. Oh as long as by 'virus' you actually mean 'alien'. And that is 'alien' in the sense of Alien and Aliens. The virus idea is virtually non-existent in the film; despite it being a mixture of every known disease, everyone quite happily walks around without hazmat suits or even face masks. In fact, their high level protection against this virulent virus is to "keep away" from it. So it's an alien then.

It thieves blatantly from the Alien franchise. But even then it does so in a tedious fashion. An android gets torn in half. Amazingly, it's not a patch on the shot from Aliens. It's so blatant that it nicks a complete line from the same film. As time goes on the alien, I mean virus, becomes quite large, a bit like the alien queen perhaps. But whereas the proper queen charges around scrapping with Ripley and chasing Newt through ducts in a manner befitting Scooby Doo, this virus quite spectacularly stands still for a bit. Well, for a while really. It's not the most mobile of creatures.

Marc Singer does nothing to liven up the proceedings; in general he wanders around aimlessly shooting. That about sums up his performance. At least he would have been able to buy himself a chip butty from his wage packet. As long as he cadged a quid off his mum.

Is this film recommendable to anyone? Maybe. There is one small subset of society that may benefit from watching this turgid piece of poop: blue spandex fetishists. Even then they could fast forward to a couple of scenes where some ladies get a bit frisky in said garments, and forget the rest. Even lovers of futuristic ear rings shouldn't bother; the best they can manage here are some curly telephone cables. Pathetic.

The only thing that Dead Space has going for it is the most prolonged bout of a creature being stabbed by a dart committed to celluloid and some waking up acting to rival Grandpa Walton. Avoid at all costs.
1/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Blue Spandex Babes VI.

Review - Surrogates (2009 - Dir. Jonathan Mostow)

After David Warbeck's pretty feeble attempt at goal with The Ark of the Sun God, Radha Mitchell goes on the counter offensive with Surrogates. Now, I hadn't heard of this one when it came up on my Random-Film-Selector but it's got Radha Mitchell in it (obviously) and Bruce Willis who's normally good for entertainment value. So let's give it a whirl.

Willis stars as Greer, a hard-nosed FBI agent on the trail of, well, not much really. There's not that much crime going on. Pretty much everyone is living their life through a surrogate, a robot that is linked to them via a mind control device. So they get to lie in the comfort of their own homes, while their surrogate goes out into the world and does their job, cuts the lawn and irons their pants. This is all experienced by the user but in a safe environment. If the surrogate is destroyed in a hilarious meat grinder incident then a new one is purchased and Bob's your uncle. Crime is at an all time low until two surrogates are found with their eyes fried. Worryingly their users are dead too. Ooh la la. Greer, with his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell), gets on the case sharpish.

Recently I reviewed Loups=Garous and ranted about mobile phones a bit. I was rather happy that a film had come along that agreed with my moderately extreme views. Then along comes another. Surrogates is a thinly veiled attempt at having a dig at technology in general, mobiles, Facebook etc. Basically, it posits the view that a large proportion of people live their life vicariously through technology and rarely connect in real-life with other people. At one point Greer (as himself rather than his surrogate) suggests to his wife's surrogate that they should have a holiday. Without their surrogates. She disagrees and thinks he's an idiot. Substitute a mobile phone with internet access for surrogate and you get a situation that has probably been played out in quite a few homes. 

The point at which I deviate from the film is in a question that it poses: if you could destroy all surrogates, would you? The film has its own answer but I think that technology addiction is not the real problem, just a symptom, and by destroying them the underlying problem would still be present. Another symptom is the hell-hole Starbucks. Not just the hell-hole Starbucks, I'm using them as a representative of high-priced luxury items (Hollister goods, Minis and Marks and Spencer ready made mash would also fit into this category). As for what I consider to be the real problem, well in true mathematician style I've given you a couple of clues and now I'm going to let you try to work that out for yourself. Anyway, I digress.

So Surrogates hates mobiles and Facebook, but what else has it got going for it? Surprisingly, not much. Willis spends half of the film as an unemotional surrogate and when he finally emerges as his human self, he's still not at his charismatic best. Mitchell is treated even worse. She's a surrogate for the entire film apart from a tiny shot of her as a human. She's completely wasted. Not good for her FA Cup chances.

Just as the acting performances feel lifeless and plasticky, the visuals are equally as unnerving. If you imagine watching a film almost entirely set in the uncanny valley then Surrogates comes pretty close. I was creeped out for the most part by the surrogates with their airbrushed perfect skin. It's not a pleasant film to watch. When Willis finally gets his proper stubble and slightly craggy appearance out, it's a breath of fresh air. Also the action sequences where the surrogates leap about like superheroes look so fake that they're laughable.

Maybe the whole point of Surrogates is that this vision of the future is unnerving, yet entirely possible. It still doesn't make it a good film to watch. I though David Warbeck had fluffed it, only get a 3/10 rating for his effort in the FA Cup of Actors but he's still in the fight. In fact, he faces a replay with Radha Mitchell after the rest of the first round matches.
3/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Loups=Garous, I, Robot.

Review - Alien vs. Ninja (2010 - Dir. Seiji Chiba)

You may be intensely sceptical when I tell you that this is quite a good film despite being very low of budget and mainly set in a forest. I would be too, especially since it suffers from the same syndrome as the recently reviewed Almost Human. As soon as the first few seconds were over I knew that it could only get 7/10 tops due to its low quality camerawork and acting. Whereas Almost Human took itself far too seriously and was far too dull, Alien vs. Ninja is creative and fun.

Yamata, Jinnai and Nezumi are a merry band of ninjas. When a strange meteor crashes into the ground they decide to investigate. They team up with some more ninjas led by the lovely Rin (who possesses - at least according to her ninja armour - extremely well separated lady lumps). The meteor contains an alien that causes havok and scatters body parts left, right and centre. It's a tad more brutal than the aliens that we know and love. And a tad more stupid.

Aliens had the Queen alien. Alien 3 had the dog alien. And Alien vs. Ninjas has the demented dolphin alien. If you need any proof that this film is having a laugh, have a look at the creature design below:

I almost immediately warmed to this film. It took me a few minutes to put my finger on what it was about it that I liked. Then it came to me: it feels like anime. If you imagine all the characters being hand drawn then everything falls into place. It's like Naruto with a Flipper inspired alien ripping everyone to shreds. The humour is very similar to Naruto but again with a darker edge. 

In some films I moan about low quality effects (both practical and CGI) but here they are a positive. The alien bounces around like it's had a cocktail of smarties, speed and moonshine. Whereas Ridley Scott tried to disguise the 'bloke in a suit' aspect of his alien, here the rubber suit is often seen in all its glory and they couldn't care less. Power Rangers has better costumes. But it all adds to the charm. At one point a character has their eye pecked out by a crow. The crow is brought to life by the complicated method of someone holding an inanimate model crow and repeatedly pecking around the actor's eye area. It made me laugh rather a lot.

There are a few scenes of exposition where things slow slightly, but in general, it rattles along at a fair pace. For a 15 rated film it is surprisingly graphic. Probably because of the stupid tone it gets away with it easily. The gore flies around readily and the sword fights are surprisingly good too. With a running time of 80 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome. Plus it finishes with a suitable action film climax, involving a battle, a TJ Hooker moment where the lead characters walk away arm in arm laughing, and the obligatory final twist that sets up a sequel.

This only cost me £1.33. Given the title, I didn't have high hopes. I really enjoyed it though - apart from the back stories in the middle - and would recommend it to anyone who can bear to watch a film with that stupid a title. 
6/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Naruto, Split Second, Ninja Scroll.

Review - Dark City (1998 - Dir. Alex Proyas)

I was trying to decide on a suitably great film to celebrate our second birthday and I remembered a reference to Dark City on Karl Kaefer's blog Xsmarkthespot. I also thought back to the first time I saw the film, at the Showcase Cinema in Peterborough, and how I was really impressed by it and in particular one moment of subwoofer pleasantness (I'll come back to that later). There were some imperfections, such as an introductory narration that told you that "the butler did it", but that's all been sorted out in the Director's Cut, which I'll review here.

Now the film plays as it was intended, as a mystery. A mister (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bath, and due to being in the water for a good long while, he suffers from severe prune feet. In top quality noir thriller style he has no memory. As he starts to piece together the clues he begins to suspect that me may have previously partaken in a spot of murdering. But who are these shady figures that seem to be lurking around... The clues all fall into place over the course of the film and everything is revealed (well almost).

Dark City is visually stunning, even now. The lighting used would have suited a black and white film with deep dark shadows and harsh highlights. In fact, I dodged about with the colour setting on my telly and watched it in monochromatic-o-vision. For the most part, it still looked great, and better than the colour version at points. So good that I found it a little disconcerting when I switched back to colour. (Similarly The Mist is brilliant in black and white but that was purposely shot that way.)

The gorgeous Jennifer Connelly - soon to be seen in an upcoming season - plays the man's wife and she participates in my favourite moment of the film. Yep, it's the subwoofer moment. She sings a version of 'Sway' accompanied by some  gravel voiced blues guys. The double bass sounds so deep and powerful. I've never quite got it to sound the same as the first time I heard it in that Peterborough cinema but it's still pretty impressive. Play it loud.

Music plays a large part in the proceedings with a large proportion of the film scored. It propels the viewer through the film towards the final climax, paralleling the main character's plight as he tries to unravel the mystery despite being constantly pursued.

Patrick Tatopoulos is one of my favourite designers having worked on Silent Hill, I, Robot and The Cave (okay, maybe The Cave is not the best example). But I think that he was at the top of his game for Dark City. The titular city is indeed dark, and gloomy, and murky, and possibly a bit stinky. The buildings are taken from a number of different time periods and places making it hard to pin down exactly where the city originates from. The city's underworld - in a nifty reversal of Metropolis - is possibly his best work. See for yourself in this explanatory screen shot.

One of the themes the film deals with is where the human soul resides. Is it in memories? If I were to be given the memories of a dancer would my viewpoint on dancers change instantly. Or would I still hate them. The thought of me suddenly appearing as a professional over-acter on 'Stricly Come Dancing' almost gives me an aneurysm so hopefully if someone does changes my memories I'll still be me.

I've tried hard to not give away any of the plot because if you haven't seen this it is well worth your while. The Director's Cut takes away the film-beginner stabilisers and lets you discover the film for yourself without being treated like an idiot. It has a  satisfying ending and the only downside for me is the inclusion of William Hurt who despite being okay in this, never totally convinces me. A worthy film for a birthday celebration.
9/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Blade Runner, Metropolis, Somewhere in the Night.

Review - Split Second (1992 - Tony Maylam)

I love the Wikipedia entry for Split Second. Reception - The movie gained a lot of criticism. Box Office - The movie was not a box office success. Perfect obscurendure fodder then.

And it's pretty good fun. Stone (Rutger Hauer) is a hard-nosed cop whose partner was, funnily enough, killed by a serial killer. He's paired up with Oxford graduate and serial killer expert Detective Dick Durkin (Neil Duncan). Funnily enough they don't get on. Worryingly, the serial killer likes eating the victims' hearts, has a rather larger mouth-span and a lederhosen fetish. Okay, maybe the last one's made up but who knows what kind of deviant practices these murderers get up to in their 'me' time.

Yep, it's all a bit cliched but the cast make up for it by not taking the material too seriously. One scene where Durkin sees the serial killer and subsequently feels the need for some larger guns is memorable, as is the interplay between Stone and Durkin as they discuss the case in a fairly frenzied fashion whilst cigar sharing and being followed by the bemused, but brilliantly named, police chief Thrasher (Alun Armstrong). The comic timing is spot on and the two leads ham it up like no-one's business. The only cast member to let the side down is Pete Postlethwaite who doesn't convince in the slightest as an antagonistic cop. I don't know what it is about him but I've never liked him in anything. (It was a treat to see the inclusion of one cast member though: The Shend from the popular music combo The Very Things.)

The creature is sensibly kept in the dark for most of the running time and only properly seen in the end sequence. Designed and built by Stephen Norrington (Blade), it is clearly derivative of the Giger designed Alien but then, so are most screen monsters post 1979. It's pretty effective as it charges about and flashes past the screen.

I'm not sure whether Split Second had a troubled production but the end sequence is credited to director Ian Sharp. The section fits in nicely and I wouldn't have realised if it wasn't for his credit. Maybe the producers/studio weren't happy with the original ending and had a bit of a tiff with Tony Maylam. If you know anything about what happened let us know.

So, for a film that was criticised and didn't make back its budget, it's surprisingly good. Go into it expecting Rutger Hauer in prime pork scratchings mode and you'll probably have a laugh. It's worth it for the smoke filled cinematography so beloved of the era and the conversations between the two cops about Durkin's sex-life.
5/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Monolith, Dark Angel, Crossworlds.