Ever Needed a Reason to Kick Drugs?

Evil Dead

Evil Dead is probably the most extreme anti drugs campaign that I have ever seen. The film follows a group of young’uns as they spend a few nights in a cabin in the woods in an attempt to help one of them get through going cold turkey from…. well…. I’m not sure so I’m going to go with…… ‘DRUGS’. Naturally they find an evil book of witch craft in the basement and of course read from it, because why not, releasing the forces of hell upon the cabin. A whole load of disgusting and gory scenes follow ending in *and don’t read further if you don’t want to spoil it* the drug addict surviving and all her friends and her brother being brutally murdered. So what did we learn? Drugs are bad. Being a drug abuser will result in the gruesome slaughter of your friends and family. It will result in being possessed via the privates by a tree and end in a fight to the death with hells most dangerous creatures.

So don’t do drugs!

Anyway once you get past the underlying message of the film, the film itself is pretty much everything you’d expect. It’s another remake that did not need to exist. It would have been easy to make a very similar film without calling it an Evil Dead remake, simply attaching that iconic title for me is a way of guaranteeing an audience and nothing more. It definitely does not stand up to the cult qualities of the original. However, it is a decent horror, in a sense that it’s creepy, disgusting and ‘jumpy’. It’s pure entertainment which is worth watching for horror fans but most probably a film that you will forget the minute it’s finished. The film does use a lot of similar effects to the original in a sense that it has zero CGI use (or at least minimal) which is interesting to see when looking at how far special effects have came since the 80s. That is a desperate attempt to find something interesting about the film I know but it really is as obvious and simple as you no doubt expect it to be.

If you are a big horror fan or if you really are struggling for a reason to chuck drugs then you might as well give this film a shot, otherwise, just avoid it.

Dave

Twitter: @DavidSAdamson

 

Oblivion

The End of the World Never Looked so Beautiful

Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion is a beautiful film. The films view on nature is inspiring. The landscapes depicted, as desolate as they may seem, only highlight the power, scale and beauty of the earth. The last Sci-Fi that I saw of this magnitude was Prometheus and although that also looked fantastic it failed to deliver in terms of narrative. So the question is, how does Oblivion?

The film has a number of twists and turns, a few of which are apparent in the trailer(!). I would say all of the twists bar perhaps one, are rather predictable. However this still doesn’t prevent my enjoyment of the film. The jist is this. Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) live on a destroyed earth, after a war with an unknown species called ‘Scavs’ leaves the planet and moon in ruins the remaining population of earth has moved to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Jack and Julia are assigned as the mop up squad on earth, maintaining robots that work to protect a large structure that absorbs energy from the ocean in order to provide that energy for the colonies of Titan. Jack begins to question his position in the role he has undertaken and shortly discovers that all is not as it seems.

The overall story arc of the film seems to have been done time and time again however there are smaller plot elements that make this story much more interesting. Its intertwining of twists often overlap each other making, at times, more questions arise. I read in an article that said it seems Kosinski presumes that the audience know as much about the narrative as he does making the story hard to follow and difficult to understand. I think this is rubbish. The film doesn’t spoon feed its audience and never directly tells the audience what they are supposed to understand through the visuals but for me this is great. It often makes you question your theories of what seems like a straight forward narrative. This is what I enjoyed about the film, although the narrative was predictable, Kosinski has thrown curve balls at the audience to deter them from what they think is happening.

The film most certainly looks amazing. It’s as though every shot is a money shot and is a prime example of how the often over used method of CGI can create superb and exhilarating settings for a film. There was never a moment when I questioned the landscape of the film, which in a Sci-Fi is integral. The costume and set design were both astounding although Jacks gun did remind me of the old SNES Super Scope and the soundtrack was emotional and exciting.

Oblivion is not a perfect film and I don’t think it will be for everyone, but it’s a great Sunday night watch, in a dark room with those speakers turned right up.

Dave

Twitter: @DavidSAdamson

AN UNUSUAL TAKE ON A HOLIDAY IN THE COUNTRY

Sightseers is a dark comedy and is the third feature from British director Ben Wheatley and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a film quite like it. The story follows two characters, Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram) as they embark on a tour of rural Britain discovering everything that the countryside has to offer. The trip soon turns sour after a tourist drops his Cornetto wrapper on the floor. This sparks a homicidal rampage from both Chris and Tina. They begin by reversing their caravan over the Cornetto man and from there they escalate their brutal yet hilarious string of murders.

The story feels like a series of episodes where you find yourself wondering who they will kill in this situation and how will they do it. The link between the killings is that Chris, who is a struggling to write, finds his muse in Tina who then decides that murder is Chris’s way of drawing inspiration. So she encourages Chris to kill. Tina also kills in a desperate attempt to get Chris to like her. This concept accompanied by the hilarious dialogue and ridiculous setting takes you on a journey that will have you laughing for days. The killings for Tina and Chris aren’t necessarily a big deal, more of an annoyance against the enjoyment of their holiday. Chris says after running down the Cornetto man that he (the Cornetto man) has “ruined” the tram museum for him.

It’s this kind of character interaction that brings such hilarity to the film. It reminds me of the work or Martin McDonagh on In Bruges or Seven Psychopaths. Although Tina and Chris are both murderers and generally very strange individuals you find yourself truly enjoying their company in the 88 minutes you spend with them.

This film has put Ben Wheatley on the map for me after I was beyond confused with his previous film Kill List. He is without a doubt a unique film maker, one of which we all need to look out for. Another thing I really like about him is that he is a British director making British films.

Dave

Follow on Twitter: @DavidSAdamson

Side Effects (Spoilers)

Side Effects (Dir. S. Soderbergh), unfortunately, feels like nothing more than that – an annoying, added portion of something you think may be good.

If you have watched Michael Clayton or The Constant Gardener, then you will be extremely let down by Side Effects, which struggles to live up to the aforementioned films level of ingenuity.

The substantially basic narrative is barely aided by a solid performance from Jude Law, playing the films protagonist, whilst the rest of the cast seem to be taking a medication that induces ‘wooden performances’. The films lead lady, Emily Taylor (played by Rooney Mara), is nothing more than a two dimensional role, even though the character (as do many other characters in the movie) has so much more room for manoeuvre but is let down by a poor narrative.

Side Effects gives the audience no emotional connection whatsoever to any character in the film. Let’s use The Constant Gardener as an example. With a similar plot, The Constant Gardener delivers a level of emotion because the films hero, Ralph Fiennes, is fighting to reveal a pharmaceutical companies exploitation of millions of Africans, and trying to stop drug testing that is killing them; he is fighting a good cause, and he is a likeable character. In Side Effects, Dr. Banks (Jude Law) is struggling to prove that Taylor did indeed consciously kill her own husband, and has framed it all on the drugs she was taking. As the film whirlwinds through his very brief, home made investigation, we are given tiny spits of scenes where the film strains to give some emotionality to the characters, but, instead, just leaves you frustrated. It doesn’t focus on how Banks has hit rock bottom in his life, losing everything, but instead, show you what the audience has already worked out half an hour before, that she murdered her husband for money.

Banks is a likeable character, but there is nothing more to him than that, he is just ‘Okay’.  What was needed was for more time to be spent focusing on him, instead of on Taylor (which is what the first half of the film does).

If the film had added an element of emotion into the story line, there might have been some connection, which could have lead to this film getting near a level of smart. But, unfortunately, it has wasted what could have been an interesting plot and leaves you with nearly two hours lost forever and £3.80 shy.

Ben

I don’t care if he was in High School Musical I like Zac Efron and I think this looks quite good!

Dave.

Check out the TV spot for Star Trek from the Super Bowl, this will be great. It gives me high hopes for the next Star Wars trilogy too.

Dave

So Christmas has passed and one of my many kindly received gifts was a small book called ‘The 101 Horror Movies You Must Watch Before You Die’. It’s basically exactly as it sounds, a long list of horror films recommended to audiences based on their popularity and influence on the genre. What’s great about it is that it gives you all the films in chronological order from 1919’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari to 2007’s The Orphanage and separates them into decades. Naturally; I jumped straight to the 80’s. Something about 80’s horror always appealed to me, American Werewolf in London and John Carpenter’s The Thing being my two favourite horrors of all time. I think it was the way they experimented with special effects during this era that had me fixated with it as a child.

Anyway, the first film in the 80’s section was Italian film maker Ruggero Deodato’s controversial film Cannibal Holocaust. I had heard about this film. I knew that it had been banned on its original release. I presumed it was probably going to pretty fucked up. Yet; I immediately got a hold of a copy and started to watch it. It would be an understatement to say that it shocked me.

At first I thought the film was just mindless violence and sexual violence because, well, it was. But I still didn’t turn it off. My book had recommended it so I was going to sit through it. Scene after scene passed by with people being killed and eaten and women being sexually assaulted, it was truly disturbing t watch. Then there was a scene where a man cuts open a musk rat. This scene was different. It looked different, felt different. The special effects seemed to be a step ahead of what I had seen in the film so far. Still I carried on watching. More people were eaten. More heads stuck on spikes. More bones made into necklaces.

Then there was another scene with an animal being killed. This time a large turtle/tortoise, I don’t know the difference. Again this was different; these scenes did not look fake. I couldn’t shake the thought of it so I grabbed my book. Having not read anything but the title of the film to avoid reading spoilers I began to read. It turns out the reason for the film being banned was not just for its disturbing subject matter. The animals killed in the film were all real live animals. This shocked me more than watching the film. The film suddenly became real. It pleased me to find out the director was put in prison for four years for the cruelty he showed towards the animals in the film.

Weeks on I still couldn’t shake the thought of Cannibal Holocaust from my head, the reason for this blog; I started to think whether or not, the film had succeeded in some way. Yes killing the animals in this film was brutal and wrong. But Deodato’s goal, like most film makers goal, was for his film to be noticed. It has certainly stuck with me. It made me think about the lengths people would go to in order to be successful and it kind of creeped me out a little.

Despite all this the film did have some redeeming qualities. Most of the second half of the film was in the style of the found footage movie. Very popular today and thought to have been pioneered by The Blair Witch Project in 1999, it again made me think. Maybe if Deodato hadn’t killed those animals and got his film banned, perhaps the film would have made it into the headlines for an entirely different reason to why it did and his career might not have gone down the shitter.

If you haven’t seen Cannibal Holocaust I’m not recommending it. Yet it is rather interesting in a slightly fucked up way. So for those of you who like stuff like that, you should definitely watch this.

Dave. @DavidSAdamson

Gangster Squad….. OR, The Untouchables for an Idiot Generation

Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad has an all star cast of old and new talent. Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone to name a few. All of which are a pleasure to watch on the big screen. This film has the potential to be astounding. For me though, it seems to fall short of what it could have been. I enjoyed it don’t get me wrong but throughout the film I found myself constantly waiting. Waiting for more. Waiting to see something original. Something new. I was left waiting even when the credits rolled.

At this point I thought why didn’t I just watch The Untouchables? The narrative is almost exactly the same. The premise at least. It was a dumbed down version of The Untouchables. The story follows Sgt John O’Mara as he puts together a team of odd ball police officers to take down crime lord Micky Cohen’s operations in the city of Los Angeles by destroying every aspect of his syndicate from the ground up. Very similar to The Untouchables. The team O’Mara assembles is made up of people with different specialities, the brains, the brawn etc. It’s all in all, very obvious. From the moment you meet characters in this team you know which ones will kick the bucket. Writers seem to use the same conventions over and over again to ‘humanise’ characters so that it means more to audiences when they are sent on “a vacation in a pine box”. It’s frustrating.

The film was very obvious from start to finish, it felt like they had taken the basic core premise from The Untouchables, added comic book like caricatures instead of characters and simplified the narrative, not to mention ploughing in as many slow motion shots and cheesy one liners as humanly possible into there such as “here comes santa clause!”. It’s almost as if Fleischer has remade The Untouchables twenty odd years down the line and dumbed it down for todays ‘all I want is explosions, boobs and swear words’ generation. My generation in fact, unfortunately. 2D characters and a predictable storyline with impressive special effects and fight scenes, for me doesn’t match up to a gripping narrative with complex characters. I suppose the difference is The Untouchables is a realistic thriller and Gangster Squad is an, at times, ultra violent action movie.

BUT as much as it was missing the same level of gripping narrative as its predecessor it seems to be very proud of its ultra ‘cool’ cinematography. With a concentration on slow motion in many action scenes it feels a lot like a Zach Snyder film, which I did enjoy in a sense that it felt like pure geek porn. The film looks great. The sets and costumes are amazing, truly capturing the era depicted and Sean Penn’s makeup had me mesmerised. It transformed his face and often made me forget I was watching Penn.

It’s an easy watch, easy to follow, exciting at times and makes that lifestyle look very desirable. But in terms of story…… It was obvious. So, I’m going to watch The Untouchables.

Dave

End of Watch

Hand held camera films seem to be the ‘in thing’ these days. The horror genre over uses it (Paranormal Activity, Rec, Day of the Dead, etc) and even the Monster movie has started to dabble with it (Cloverfield, District 9, Monsters). Now we are seeing it in drama, with David Ayer’s End of Watch. And it works brilliantly. The films LAPD setting is its McGuffin; the real story lies with the relationship between the two main characters, Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Peña). Not only is it aided by the hand held camera work, but the sensational acting of the two pulls the audience in to their brotherly bond.

However, the film’s mature understanding of the use of the camera means that they sometimes strive away from the ‘Cinema Verité’ effect and turn more conventional. This helps as nearly all the key points in the film have quick, violent and gritty scenes, meaning the audience does not miss a thing.

What I enjoy about Ayer films (most of all during End of Watch) is how he controls the narrative so tightly that we never get bored, we never get lost, and we always relate to the characters. The film focuses on the day to day lives of these two officers, but also shows the stories of some Hispanic and African-American gangsters. Three different stories, all inter-related, yet it never seems to get tangled up in its own narrative web.

Ayer doesn’t hold back in showing the audience the brutal side of the streets of Los Angeles. He grew up in South Central, LA, a notoriously rough neighbourhood, and his knowledge of the dark and monstrous criminal world has led his films to reflect that knowledge. End of Watch forces the audience to see some horrifying images; knives sticking out of people’s eyes, cut up bits of bodies, children tied up and gagged by their parents. But we watch, and we stare at these gruesome scenes because we are (at least for the duration of the film) living what Taylor and Zavala are living.

Ayer has written and directed a master piece here, Gyllenhaal and Peña have given unforgettable performances, and together with the narrative twists and turns, its unconventional camera style and plot structure, there is surely a contender, somewhere, for an Oscar nomination.

5/5

(Ben Iland)

The Master

I went to see The Master last night at the Empire Newcastle and just wanted to say how awesome I thought it was. It was great to see Joaquin Phoenix in a ‘traditional’ acting role again; it’s safe to say his performance gripped the entire theatre. Both Phoenix’s character Freddie and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character Lancaster Dodd were inspiring yet greatly flawed, and it was the relationship between the two of them that drove the story forward with such a pace. Not to say the supporting roles weren’t beautifully cast also, Amy Adams in particular was fantastic. Director Paul Thomas Anderson and Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr have a real eye for grace in their partnership and a great ambition to create fascinating cinematography. Anderson’s use of long, single take shots both heightened the drama in a number of scenes but yet again proved the casts commitment and talents. How Phoenix can hold a pose for that long without blinking is beyond me. The art direction in the film was stunning also, both costumes and set design capturing the 40s and 50s wonderfully. I definitely recommend you get down and see it immediately before it’s taken out of circulation by another million showings of Twilight. 

Dave.