Archive for April, 2008

Watching the Detectives: Peter Lorre is Kentaro Moto in Mysterious Mr. Moto

By
Ian W
Published: April 10, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

This is the best film in the Moto series so far. Things start with a prison break from Devil’s Island, with Moto disguised as a prisoner in order to infiltrate the infamous League of Assassins. Post-prison break it’s of to London as Japan’s answer to Sherlock Holmes comes to the original’s home turf, with Moto frequenting a pub in Limehouse, where many a shady deal goes down.

Moto as usual is one step ahead of the crooks, and two ahead of the police, so the outcome is never in doubt but then the appeal of these quickies isn’t their intricate plotting, it’s Peter Lorre. There’s much fun to be had from Moto’s disguises (just as there was with Holmes) and Lorre’s German art critic at the films finale is guaranteed to raise a smile. Moto isn’t just a man of stealthy detective work, he gets stuck in when it comes to fights as well, with Harvey Parry, Lorre’s stunt double, throwing himself and others all over the place.

Add a western style barroom brawl and you’ve got a recipe for sixty minutes of fun. You’ll probably guess who the mysterious leader of the League is and you’ll certainly see how he’s going to come to a sticky end well before it happens but this works in the films favour this time as Mr. Moto dishes out some poetic justice.

Literally Speaking: To Kill a Mockingbird

By
Ian W
Published: April 9, 2008Posted in: Drama, Movie ReviewsTags:

Films that give us a child’s view of the world often seem to touch something in the audience, a little glimmer of the child that dwells within each of us I suppose. That innocent perspective often shows the so called ‘grown ups’ to be more thoughtless and uncaring as any child, they just have bigger feet to stomp when things don’t go their way. While it’s no guarantee of success, the idea of telling an adult story through the eyes of children has produced some classics, with both The Night of the Hunter and Stand by Me making the IMDb Top 250 (at 156 and 160 respectively). Also making that list (at 45) is To Kill a Mockingbird, a film which has some things in common with those already mentioned, namely it was based on a book and all features strong performances from the pint-sized cast members.

As Jem, Phillip Alford is at the point where he craves the freedom of adulthood but still has a boy’s sense of fun and adventure. He’ll question his father’s rules (he thinks he old enough to have a gun, Dad doesn’t agree) but he respects him. That Alford captures that so well is a big part of the films success.

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I Spy: Syriana

By
Ian W
Published: April 7, 2008Posted in: Drama, Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

Not really a spy movie as such, Syriana does feature a spy as one of its central characters. Bob Barnes, played by a bearded and slightly podgy George Clooney, is an aging C.I.A. operative with knowledge of Middle East affairs. When an assassination attempt on an Arab Prince goes awry Barnes is tortured, and when he’s turned loose he’s used as a scapegoat by the C.I.A. for the botched mission.

Now that may sound like a regular spy story but it’s just one strand of Syriana’s web of intrigue, that encompasses big business, terrorism and the Middle Eastern way of life. It’s a film packed full of political ideas, perhaps too full, there are so many strands here that it’s at times hard to keep track of them all. There are moments when you’re left a little bemused as to how such-and-such got to so-and-so and while it’s nice to have a film that doesn’t baby it’s audience, filling in everything they could possibly need to know about a character, the film jumps around so much that you may miss important information as you try and get your bearings.

Writer/director Stephen Gaghan won an Oscar for his Traffic script which had a similar multi-character storyline but for me it worked far better in the earlier film. Syriana feels far preachier than Traffic, concentrating as much on the message as on the story, rather than let one flow from the other. It’s a film that for all its depth still has clearly defined bad guys – the American oil companies, the C.I.A. (who, as one character observes, is just another multi-billion dollar business).

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SF & Fantasy Sunday: Highlander

By
Ian W
Published: April 7, 2008Posted in: Action, Fantasy, Movie ReviewsTags:

Highlander was a big success, less for box office business and more for starting a franchise that to date includes four live action sequels and one animated, plus two live action TV shows and a cartoon. So how does the original hold up after more than 20 years? Not too well, to be honest.

The casting was always a little suspect – Sean Connery I can accept as an Egyptian (via Spain) because…well he’s Sean and has that hypnotic quality real stars have which stops you asking “Why does that Egyptian (via Spain) sound like he comes from Edinburgh?” This quality isn’t shared by Christopher Lambert, not an actor who would leap to my mind were I looking for someone to play a Scot circa 1536. Lambert’s limited range saw him rapidly descend from starring roles in theatrical films to straight-to-video fare. In Highlander he fails to convince as a Scotsman or as an action hero, with the sword fights looking pedestrian by today’s standards and never remotely life threatening.

Roxanne Hart is even less impressive than Lambert, showing zero chemistry with the films star (despite the obligatory ‘80s sex scene) and almost as little personality. Thank god for Clancy Brown, who, as the villainous Kurgan, just about makes the film watchable. He may have no depth as a character but as a display of comic book style villainy it’s great fun. He’s funny, he’s nasty, he’s just so much more entertaining than Lambert’s Conner MacLeod.

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The Weekend Western: The Bounty Killer

By
Ian W
Published: April 6, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, WesternsTags:

This is a decent little spaghetti western from Eugenio Martín, who went on to make the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee monster-on-a-train flick, Horror Express. Rather than the usual wide open vistas the film concentrates on one settlement, too small to really be called a town. Luke Chilson, a bounty hunter is looking for an escaped bandit, José Gómez, and figures he’ll come calling on his sweetheart, Eden, who he believes helped him escape in the first place.

The townsfolk are less than happy to see Chilson, not only don’t they like the way he makes a living but they also see Gómez as something of a local hero, who’s been unfairly treated by the law. When Gómez shows up the locals help him get the upper hand, only to find he really is as evil as they’d been told. He brutally beats Chilson and ransacks the town and when he’s joined by his gang the people realise their only hope is to free the captive bounty hunter.

Martin’s film is high on atmosphere and short on action, but the build up is well handled, with the tension rising to the bullet filled dénouement. Richard Wyler isn’t a very charismatic lead but his performance is solid enough, and Chilson is a man of few words.

It’s in Gómez that the film has a genuine star turn, Tomas Milian once again showing what an entertaining villain he can be. Gómez is a much darker character than Cuchillo in The Big Gundown and Run, Man, Run but he’s far from a standard villain, there’s an element of self loathing about him, as he deliberately turns his friends in the town against him.

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Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting: SPL

By
Ian W
Published: April 6, 2008Posted in: Action, Martial Arts, Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

Director Wilson Yip seems to have fooled himself into thinking he’s made a serious crime movie along the lines of Infernal Affairs but beneath the films highly stylised look is a decidedly simple story. When Wong Po has the key witness in a case against him murdered, Detective Chan dedicates his remaining time on the force to bringing him down. With his time running out and Inspector Ma set to replace him he decides to frame Wong for murder. But how far will he go to make sure the case is airtight?

Simon Yam is good as Chan, although the story throws a little too much at the character (he’s got a brain tumour that’s killing him and a daughter he adopted from the witness Wong had murdered) instead of giving us a little more insight into what makes him tick. He clearly had a beef with Wong Po even before the witness is murdered but the script gives us no inkling as to why. Yam a great actor but he’s not given enough here to create a fully rounded character. His crack crime fighting team fair even worse, reduced to mere ciphers for the bad guys to pick off. Any attempts to make us care about them are so heavy handed that they almost have the opposite effect.

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The Friday Night Fright: Feast

By
Ian W
Published: April 5, 2008Posted in: Horror, Movie ReviewsTags:

This is the small-group-of-people-in-a-confined-space-trying-to-keep-the-monsters-out style horror movie that has an obvious appeal to those with a limited budget. We’ve seen it so often, in everything from Night of the Living Dead to Dog Soldiers, yet, if it’s backed up by a clever script and a director who knows what he’s doing, it can still be extremely effective.

The writing team of Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton know their horror movies and take great delight in turning the genre conventions upside down. To say too much would be to spoil the surprises, but it’s fair to say that very early in the film you’ll realise it’s not going to be easy to predict who will still be standing at the end of the film.

Director John Gulager manages to create plenty of tension and some cool action set pieces as well as showing a commendable talent for early Peter Jackson style gross out humour. He may have lacked for money but blood definitely isn’t in short supply.

The cast is made up of mostly unknowns with a few familiar faces here and there. Balthazar Getty, Henry Rollins, Jason Mewes and the director’s dad, Clu Gulager, are the familiar faces. Mewes isn’t around for long and Getty seems to be playing Charlie Sheen but Rollins is great fun playing against type as a gun hating coach who’s in the bar when the shit hits the fan. As for Clu Gulager, for a guy in his seventies he’s looking pretty good and it’s nice to see the old pro getting stuck in to the action.

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Comic Tales: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

By
Ian W
Published: April 4, 2008Posted in: Comic Book, Movie ReviewsTags:

With its big, special effects laden, action sequences it’s easy to dismiss The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as just another Hollywood blockbuster but look a little closer and you’ll see there’s a lot more going on here than initially meets the eye. There’s a political subtext that most reviewers missed on the films initial release, with the League formed by the world’s most powerful nation to search for The Phantom and his weapons of mass destruction only for the enemy to be revealed as someone far closer to home. M/Professor Moriarty is clearly an analogy to George W. Bush, just minus the Texas drawl, with James Robinson’s biting script offering a very negative view of the War on Terrorism.

Oh, who am I kidding? This is utter crap, the kind of film that gives comic book adaptations a bad name. Right from the start, with the introduction of Allan Quatermain in the aging but still virile form of Sean Connery, it’s clear that this is going to bear little relation to Alan Moore’s graphic novel. Gone is the drug addled has-been of the comic and in his place the athletic Sean, besting the villains in both hand-to-hand and armed combat.

Such deviances don’t make it a bad film though, what does is a script aimed at the under twelve’s. Why God only knows, because I doubt you’ll find many cinema going kids who know who Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray or Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr Edward Hyde are (even from Moore’s comic which hardly has much appeal for kids).

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Watching the Detectives: Kevin Costner is Eliot Ness in The Untouchables

By
Ian W
Published: April 3, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

Sometimes when a group of incredibly talented individuals join forces the end result can be less than the sum of its parts, but once in a while you get a film where everyone is performing at the top of their game. The Untouchables is just such a film.

Brian De Palma’s career had stalled after Scarface, with neither the Hitchcock-with-added-sex thriller Body Double nor mob comedy Wise Guys delivering the goods. With The Untouchables though he was back on form, his show stopping visual flourishes married to David Mamet’s intelligent script and compose- supreme Ennio Morricone’s score.

That he’s got a damn fine cast doesn’t do any harm either. Kevin Costner is a model of restraint as Ness, perhaps a little too much restraint, as he often seems coldly unemotional, but this was the film that propelled him onto the A list. Ness is a bit dull though, which invites those around him to steal the limelight.

Charles Martin Smith connects far better with the audience, with his accountant-to-shotgun-toting-treasury-agent transformation adding a touch of humour. Caught here between jobbing TV actor and stardom, Andy Garcia shows how he made the leap – the camera loves him and he loves the camera. He only gets two big moments, his characters introduction and his timely intervention at train station, but he makes the most of them, holding his own opposite an old pro like Sean Connery. He also gets a well written intro, which never hurts if you’re trying to make a name for yourself.

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Literally Speaking: Just Cause

By
Ian W
Published: April 1, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags: ,

To date John Katzenbach has had three of his books adapted for the big screen - The Mean Season (1985) Hart’s War (2002) and in the middle this legal/detective/serial killer thriller from 1995 (sadly no one has yet filmed The Traveller which is a book just crying out for the big screen). This is probably the best of the three and is a solid, if unexceptional, thriller.

The plot probably won’t keep you guessing to long, once you realise there’s a twist (and you will fairly early if you’ve seen more than a couple of these) it’s not a hard one to see coming, but it still manages to entertain. Sean Connery is as commanding as ever, although his liberal-do-gooder-lawyer, Paul Armstrong, is a little more restrained and intellectual than his usual characters, which makes for a pleasant change. If Sheriff Tanny Brown at first appears to be your typical corrupt cop Laurence Fishburne at least manages to add a little more depth, and reason, to him, with hardly anything to work with other than a short scene with his children.

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