Obscuriosities

So, it's been denied a rating by the BBFC. *shrug* So what? What did you expect? The director Tom Six (a wonderfully charming and witty Dutch gentleman) has been claiming (threatening?) that his vision for the Centi-Sequel would make his début effort look like My Little Pony. When you're trying to top a film that is known as one of the sickest of all time, where do you go? You go deeper, you go darker. You go to places that the BBFC don't like you to tread. They are claiming that the film is likely to "risk potential harm... even if confined to adults". That's right, there are theatrical images on a screen that when combined with sounds and music risk potential harm to you, an adult viewer. Is anyone swallowing this? As a fan of horror, I'm all for keeping it out of the hands of children. So rate the film an 18, hell, rate it an R18. Make me go to a sex shop to buy it, under the counter in a brown paper bag if possible, I'd be well up for that. By refu...

The Hangover Part Deux suffers from the same problem as every sequel to every small, indy film that hits big at the box office; It's basically a cash-grab by the studios, trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle. This means that a lot of the heart, and earnest energy of the first film is lost in favour of the swagger of a filmmaker that knows they're making a hit regardless of what ends up on screen. It is fortunate for us then that director Todd Philips has used his carte blanche to push the boat out and make a movie that is ambitious, but adheres to the same 'whodunit' structure of the first film. This time around, the set pieces are bigger, the performances are broader and the comedy is blacker. There are some solid laughs and the plot is actually a lot smarter than it has any right to be. I was pretty much grinning or cringing throughout the entire running time (especially during the end credits which, again were the highlight of the film for me). Overall I wou...

I think I might be a closet Michael Bay fan. I was so deep in the closet I didn't even know I was in the closet. I didn't even know the closet existed. Now I suddenly find myself very aware of said closet and my location therein. Here is Bay's filmography as director from IMDB: 2011 Transformers: Dark of the Moon ( post-production ) 2009 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen * 2007 Transformers ** 2005 The Island ** 2003 Bad Boys II ** 2001 Pearl Harbor 1998 Armageddon 1996 The Rock *** 1995 Bad Boys A '*' means I've seen the film and a '**' means I saw it and enjoyed it. A '***' means I think it's genuine classic. That's four out of five that I liked. One that I think is a goddamn classic of the whole goddamn action genre. I'm having all these weird feelings I've never felt before. I thought I was just experimenting, having fun. But I always...

Lots of stuff to get through so let's get to it! Thor - Action/CG clunky. - Performances way OTT but mostly good. - Visually luscious. - Tough to follow for a Thor newbie. - Average. Playing Columbine - Fascinating look at controversial video games and the 'are games art?' question. Hanna - Great action. - Great score. - Fun performances playing on the fairytale theme. - One or two of the characters annoying as all hell. Portal 2 - Not a movie but incredible nonetheless. - Great story, characters and acting. - Challenging puzzles with great 'aha!' moments. - The ending is like a (figurative) layer-cake. With each successive layer being sweeter and more surprising than the last. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - This film is very close to my heart - Criminally underrated - Hilarious - Bizarre - Touching - Visually sumptuous Priest 3D - Pretty 'meh' vampire movie - Post-apocalyptic western styling quite good - Everything else quite bad Misfits - Fun superhe...

Scre4m I said to a few people that this film is to me, what Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was to Star Wars fans. I loved the first three movies as a kid, and I've been waiting over a decade for a new instalment to the franchise. The question is; as an adult, will I be impressed with the flashy pod-racing sequences or will I find it all to be a bit Jar-Jar? Thankfully Scream 4 lives up to its name and is a proper Scream movie, giving us more of what was fun about the first three. It takes pot-shots at remakes and long running franchises and turns the snark up to eleven. It even parodies the concept of the meta horror movie (in a brilliant opening sequence that had me grinning from ear to ear) a concept that the first Scream pioneered, so I guess that makes this movie meta meta horror? I thought the movie missed a trick in that there was 10 years of horror tropes that it could have played off, but ignored (J-Horror and 'Torture Porn' spring to mind). Instead the film chose ...

Just some bullet point style thoughts on the movies I've watched this last week. Sucker Punch There is a huge amount of fun to be had with this film as long as you keep in mind that Zack Snyder is a visualist, not a storyteller. I feel his style works better within the framework of another's script, but as the logical apogee of the current generation Project A-Ko/Call Of Duty inspired film-makers I think the movie works. An interesting thesis could probably be written about filmmakers being inspired by the pop culture of their youth. I'm thinking Speilberg/Lucas being inspired by early film serials and creating Indiana Jones, Tarantino and Rodriguez being inspired by 70s exploitation and creating the likes of Desperado and Death Proof and now we have the new crop of up-and-comers like Snyder and Wright who are inspired by anime and videogames of the 80s and 90s and come up with things like Sucker Punch and Scott Pilgrim. In ten years time are we going to see mo...

In an attempt to save some money I have decided to make a concerted effort to tackle my massive stack of unwatched DVDs instead of just buying new ones all the time, some of which I have had in my collection for years! So, the first film I decided to pop in was Park Chan-Wook's 'Lady Vengeance'. A film that has been sitting unwatched on my shelf for about 6 years now. The story follows our heroine as she is released from prison after 13 years after being wrongly convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a young child. It soon becomes apparent that she knows who the real perpetrator is, and has been plotting her revenge throughout her sentence... If there is one word to describe this film it's this; bleak. There are no flashes of dark humour here that have been present in the director's previous works, nor is there any let up from reminders that we are dealing with child-killers here and all the horrific connotations that brings. I can admire the film-making on displ...