A whole bunch of reviews, read on.
I'll do TV stuff later.
FILM
A View To A Kill - I remember this being extremely poor and while it wasn't a total disaster, it's still pretty bad. Christopher Walken plays a very poor bad guy who tries to be manic but fails, Grace Jones plays the creepiest henchperson ever, a woman really shouldn't be able to hold a man over her head and Roger Moore is far too old to be playing Bond at this point. What's even funnier is that it feels like Roger Moore himself is barely in the film since he seems to replaced with a stuntman at every opportunity. The film plods along typically and manages to be just about watchable though the plot is a big fat cliche, even for it's time period. The one thing I did love though was the mine-set production design, comparable to the mine-set in
The Temple Of Doom and the use of Cháteau de Chantilly created a certain 'wow' factor though sadly, not enough to save it. Possibly the worst of the fourteen I've revisited so far.
Dark City (Director's Cut) -Last year I caught the theatrical version of this on DVD and again, this is a director's cut which improves on the original. The transfer was much better than the theatrical version and Alex Proyas has taken out the voiceover which sort of gave the game
away. Some of the acting is a little poor, Kiefer Sutherland's scientist character sounds like Stevie Kenarban with an additonal breath or two and Rufus Sewell seems to do nothing else besides stand and listen but Jennifer Connelly is as pretty as ever and Richard O'Brien knows exactly how to play creepy.
The film is a year older than
The Matrix (which re-used some of the sets from
Dark City)and for me, it looks much better, is always worthy of a re-watch and wasn't plagued by unforgettable (in a bad way) sequels. The visual effects are something else to write home about and look amazing, considering what has to be shown.
The film is visually inspired by German Expressionism, mainly
Nosferatu and
Metropolis which is obvious once you watch it but where better to borrow a look? In fact, as I was watching, I noticed many similarities between this and recent videogames such as
Bioshock which seemed to borrow locations, location titles and almost the stranger in a strange art deco land. The gothic feel doesn't seem simply tacked on either, I could almost imagine there being many different stories to tel
l in the same city.
This is probably the only film that could sit alongside
Blade Runner as a Sci-fi/noir but it doesn't quite reach the remarkability of that film though it certainly leaves a few images in your head. If you're at all interested in entirely new sci-fi fantasy worlds, this is one to put on some sort of list. Don't read up on it, just watch it.
Harry Brown - Michael Caine does
Gran Torino and the film stays entertaining throughout, even though some of it, especially the junkie scene, was pretty harsh to watch. Certainly worthwhile.
Martyrs - A tough french horror which is almost the anti-
Hostel, it has extended scenes of torture, none of which anyone will want to rewatch, ever. The story does have a good revenge throughline but ultimatly, I'm not sure what the film was supposed to be about or how it was supposed to make me feel and the director's interview confirmed that it isn't much more than a box of tricks really, which is disappointing since the film could have been much more resonant if it only had a little more thought put into it.
Paranormal Activity - (SPOILERS)The film that is apparently one of the scariest horror movies ever and I certainly was scared by the majority of it. Yes it was unsettling but all I could think of was the one droning noise that seemed to have been dragged and dropped into the edit. Personally, I'm not scared by lights going on and off in a hallway, I think it's too obvious to be scary. There were sections that I did think were well pulled off and I reckon that it's only my 'see it all before' attitude that stopped me from being scared. When Micah finds his wife outside, I was thinking it could have been really unsettling but it fell flat on it's face, for all the realism it tries to portray, still no character thinks to hit a lightswitch. The story plods along neatly enough but I thought it took far too long to get to anything at all creepy and even then, the tension was eased all too quickly.
There are a number of plotlines never tied up as well, the photograph, how Katie managed to become unpossessed
before being repossessed and why the hell Micah didn't think to set a camera up outside of the room as well, since most of the action seemed to take place outside of the room. Also, what spectre wants to put keys on the floor? Then again, it is a work of fiction.
The film was another lesson in how hype can be a bad thing for a film since I expected to have many sleepless nights afterwards. I didn't totally despise it, I would love to find out how some of it was shot (Katie being dragged from the room, the white paw prints) but I keep thinking it's an entirely unfulfilling film.
The Blair Witch Project set a bar 10 years ago and the only found-footage horror to be on par with it is
Rec and when I spoke with Ray on the shoot this week, I remembered how amazing it was and realised that I must rewatch it very soon.
Rec (a news crew are the camera carriers in this one) uses it's format much better and unlike
Paranormal Activity, or even
The Blair Witch Project, the daytime isn't filled with tears and the night time filled with a scare,
Rec is a constant onslaught. It also boasts in my mind one of the most intense closing sequences in any horror ever, which lasts at least 20 mins of
Rec's 72 minute running time.
I think
Paranormal Activity has arrived 10 years too late and the opening and closing credits don't make sense in a world where everyone is talking about how much it cost and director Oren Peli's next Area 51 project. At the dawn of (internet) time, an actual believablity could have been created.
For me, if you have never seen a horror movie, or you prefer to stay away from them, then of course this is going to be the scariest film ever in a world of dull remakes and repackages.
Paranormal Activity had a great closing 5 minutes and simply because the scariest moments are those at the end, I think this is the reason it is being remember for being as scary as it is. The scream from downstairs provided the only jump for me but I believed the action in the final shot was going to happen much earlier. And on that point, won't she only have a VERY sore head afterwards?
The 400 Blows - Andy called it a masterpiece and it may well be, but like
Citizen Kane, it has lost it's main strength, it's pioneering techniques, due to many films having "borrowed" them since. The film is actually fairly conventional by modern day standards and while sometimes on a Friday afternoon screening I'm fighting heavy eyelids, the film was gripping and even when it seemed to meander a little, I was still basking in the cinematography. A great film I'd watch again.
"Let me tell you something, you have not partied till you've partied
at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks."
Cameron Diaz
Little Clown stood out highest among the group, Melissa's Mail, The Golden Rule and Dust were pretty good, each being visual treats (I still love my tracking shot in Melissa's Mail). Suckerpunch came out far better than I had heard from others and it was nice to see a film I was part of, non-creatively, see finished.
