The week in brief (11 - 17 March 2013)

Normally, I start off proceedings by dishing out my coveted 'Pick of the Week' trophy. None of the producers of those films have collected these trophies - I have a whole bag of them at home, just waiting for their rightful owners to come and collect them... Anyway, this week, no-one gets a trophy. I'm casting a disapproving stare in the general direction of filmmakers behind the following pictures:

Logan's Run (1976): 4/10
V/H/S (2012): 6/10
Parker (2013): 5/10


The best of a pretty bad bunch was V/H/S, an anthology of found footage horror shorts from various directors. Each of the shorts purports to be a real video tape in which one or more of the protagonists meets a grisly end. The stories cover a variety of horror subgenres, including an encounter with some kind of succubus type creature (Amateur Night), a send up of slasher movies (Tuesday the 17th) and a haunted house/ Satanic cult scenario (10/31/98).  My favourite segment, "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger" chronicles a series of live Web chats between a girl and her boyfriend, with the girl attempting to persuade him that supernatural intruders have been creeping into her flat at night. One of the benefits of this form of horror movie is that you rarely get the chance to get settled or used to a particular villain, so the potential for consistent scares is higher than with a 'normal' horror film.  However, I found that although there were some genuinely scary moments, most of the characters involved in the shorts, from the horrible frat boys in Amateur Night, to the idiotic college students in Tuesday the 17th, were either insufferable or just really boring.  V/H/S is a real mixed bag, and not entirely successful. Still, at least it held my interest for a couple of hours, so it's better than the next two films in this week's round up.

At the very bottom of the pile this week was Logan's Run, a '70s sci-fi flick which is now really showing its age. What's particularly frustrating is that the movie is based on quite an interesting premise, yet isn't able to build upon it. It's set in the year 2274, in a futuristic city whose inhabitants live a joyful and hedonistic life until they reach the age of 30. At this point, the fun has to end, and they are vapourised in a ritual known as 'the Carousel', though the belief amongst the cityfolk is that this process enables them to be 'renewed' in the form of a newborn baby. Logan 5 (Michael York) works as a 'Sandman', which is to say that he guards the city, preventing anyone nearing the age of 30 from escaping before they meet their final judgment. However, after he's tasked with a top secret mission - finding and destroying a base for escapees known as "The Sanctuary" - he's required to pose as a runner, and in order to do so, he seeks the help of Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter), an idealistic young woman. As he goes on the run with her, he finds himself accepting her ideas and questioning the preconceived ideas of the society in which he lives... Anyway, all of this is fine up to a point, but there are a number of massive, glaring plotholes that are revealed as the story progresses. For example (big spoilers ahead) - at the very end of the film, Logan has turned against his former employers, and decides to bring down the government of the city. In order to do this, his grand plan is to re-enter the city, shout some slogans about the Carousel being "a lie", and hope eveyone immediately changes their mind. Though this doesn't work and he's immediately captured by another group of Sandmen, his plan pays off anyway. During his interrogation by the computer which runs the city, he succeeds in confusing it, and for no apparent reason, the whole city just immediately blows up! It's as if the screenwriter came up with the initial concept, but had no idea about how to follow through with a decent story. That's not the only problem with the movie. The sets, costumes and special effects look very dated now, Michael York is rather hammy as the eponymous hero and the second half of the movie feels both drawn out (our heroes spend about half an hour having a boring conversation with an old man, born free in the outside World) and anticlimatic. Pretty poor.

Finally, we come to Parker, the latest vehicle for cockney hardman Jason Statham. He plays Parker, a professional thief who is doublecrossed by his partners in crime after a successful heist - and left for dead at the side of the road. Of course, old Parker isn't going to take this lying down, so he decides to take revenge against those who have wronged him. Now, if the plot had been as straightforward as the explanation I've set out above, I think this could have been a pretty decent picture. I'm not a huge fan of Statham, but he's effective as an action hero, and had the movie been a simple matter of: "1. Parker is wronged; 2. Parker gets revenge; 3. The End", I think it would have worked  (that's basically the plot of Payback, which isn't a bad film).  Unfortunately, in order to pad out the running time, we take a lengthy and tedious detour in which Parker dons a Cowboy hat and a bad Texan accent and slowly and laboriously stakes out the movements of his former partners as they plan a new job in Florida. This section of the film seems to have been sponsored by the Tourist Board for Palm Beach, as it consists of a number of guided tours of the many fabulous mansions of the area, together with various speeches on the fantastic lives of high society folk in the area. Jennifer Lopez makes an appearance as an estate agent who helps out Parker, but her character doesn't make much of an impression, and could easily have been jettisoned without much of an adjustment to the story. I suppose I wasn't really expecting great things from this picture and ultimately, it was only slightly worse than I had anticipated.

Kirk's Quote of the Week

Fight Club (1999)

"Tyler Durden: If you could fight anyone, who would you fight?
Narrator: Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner."

The week in brief (14 - 20 May)

Lots to report on in this post - I think this is the most films I've seen in a week since my Horror Week back in November last year. The (lengthy) list of films I've seen over the last seven days is as follows:

March of the Penguins (2005): 7/10
Final Destination 4 (The Final Destination) (2009) 7/10
Dark Shadows (2012): 6/10
Kung Fu Hustle (2004): 6/10
The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008): 6/10
Groundhog Day (1993): 10/10
Fight Club (1999): 9/10
Final Destination 5 (2011): 7/10
Neds (2010): 7/10
Sarah's Key (2010): 8/10
Hanna (2011): 9/10
The Fighter (2010): 8/10
Kaboom (2010): 2/10
Rabbit Hole (2010): 7/10
The Sting (1973): 8/10
Big (1988): 8/10
The Raid (2011): 9/10

My award for movie of the week has to go to Groundhog Day - it's funny, it's touching, it's sweet and it features an absolutely brilliant lead performance from Bill Murray. I must have seen the film about 6 or 7 times, but it's still fantastic. It even manages the astonishing feat of making Andie MacDowell seem likeable. Other films which I rewatched over the past 7 days and thoroughly enjoyed include Fight Club, Hanna (just as great as the last time I saw it), Big, The Sting and The Fighter.

Of the films I saw for the first time this week, one stood out in particular: Sarah's Key, a recent French film which takes a look back at the terrible fate that befell the Jewish residents of Paris during the Second World War. It's a heartbreakingly sad, but really well made film that really made me think about how I might have reacted to a Nazi occupation of my city, had I been alive back in the 1940s. (Edit: I wrote the above before I saw The Raid on Sunday evening. It's a brilliant Indonesian action/ martial arts flick, with some of the most astonishing fight scenes I've seen on film for a very long time. It's just come out in the UK and is definitely worth checking out.)

In other news, I seem to have developed some sort of Stockholm syndrome in relation to the Final Destination films. After absolutely slating the second one, and just about tolerating the third movie, I found myself having a whale of a time watching the fourth and fifth instalments in the series. I suppose the trick is to look past the sometimes terrible acting and the repetitive plotting, and just enjoy the films for the wildly over the top death scenes. It's kind of like watching the old BBC series 999, only without Michael Buerke popping up to offer a grave warning about engaging in the kind of dangerous activities which lead to accidents.

There was only one film which I really didn't like this week, but it was an absolute stinker. I'm generally quite generous with my marks out of ten, and rarely give a movie a mark below a 5, but in the instance of Gregg Araki's Kaboom, I'm quite happy to make an exception. It's an amateurish, sloppy mess, full of obnoxious, self regarding characters and a plot that makes no sense whatsoever. In my opinion, it's a massive step back for Araki as a follow up to the brilliant Mysterious Skin. In fact, I'm only awarding it 2 marks out of 10 because I like Juno Temple.

(By the way, in case you haven't seen it, I've put together another top ten list this week - this time on my favourite Stanley Kubrick movies).

Kirk's Quote of the Week:

Election (1999):

"Jim McAllister:  Larry, we're not electing the fucking Pope here. Just tell me who won."