Film: Battle Los Angeles (Jonathan Liebesman, 2011)

In an ideal world, someone would have spoken out about Battle Los Angeles at the script stage. Not a single minute goes by without the use of a cliché and the cheese is layered on so thick the film has practically turned into a block of Stilton by the end. In this day and age, such heavy use of cliché is inexcusable and lazy, especially when it’s so on the nose.

The film is also exhausting. With nearly 2 solid hours of explosions and gunfire, I couldn’t help but think the movie was more an exercise in endurance than entertainment. Despite a couple of fairly decent set pieces during the first half, boredom set in by the second hour, with the movie never elevating itself above the boom, crash, bang, rat-a-tat-tat of the bog standard and repetitive battle scenes.

I felt like I was in the cinema for days.

2/5

Nic Cage-a-thon!

This weekend just gone I visited my good friend Mr David Camp (who's own website can be found here:) for a movie marathon of Nic cage movies. Here are some short, sharp reviews of the four films we ended up watching:


Face/Off (John Woo, 1997)

Cage becomes Travolta. Travolta becomes Cage. Everything blows up. Few survive.

4.5/5















The Rock (Michael Bay, 1995)

Cage is biochemist. Drives beige Volvo. Shoots stuff with Connery. Few Survive.

4/5















Bad Lieutenant: The Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

Cage does drugs. Cage does lots of drugs. Sees iguanas. Sees souls dancing. Is a definite bad lieutenant.

4/5














Con Air (Simon West, 1997)

Cage is convict. Cage foils attempted hijack of prison aircraft. Everything blows up. Few survive.

4/5

Book: Red Storm Rising (Tom Clancy, 1986)

Despite putting Red Storm Rising down some 200 pages toward the end, this review is not going to be entirely negative. On the contrary, there are a lot of good things to be said about it. The only book of Tom Clancy’s career not to be set in the Jack Ryan universe, it focuses on a fictional World War 3 scenario in which Russia initiates the taking over of oil refineries in the Persian Gulf after being victims of a devastating terrorist attack, terrorists who have blown up the largest of Russia’s own oil refineries.

The set up is terrific and is literally like nothing I’ve read in a techno thriller before. Set in 1986 (when the book was written), the conviction of its premise is terrifyingly believable. It also legitimately makes an argument for WW3 being a non-nuclear war and, despite there being great advances in technology since WW2, much of the war consists of tank battles and aerial dogfights.

Why then did I not finish it? Simply put: it blew its load early. Whilst the book itself is very well written (a given with Clancy) and the war itself is interesting enough, after the terrific set up, the narrative just meanders from one theatre of war to another repeatedly which, in turn, makes the book long winded (it’s 800 odd pages) and a bit dull. That in itself wouldn’t be too bad as my patience for reading is far greater than it used to be, but given how good the opening 200 pages were, it feels like such a let down.

Makes me worried for the truly massive Clancy works, such as The Sum of All Fears (1040 pages) and Executive Orders (1297 pages). Before I get to those, I intend to read a number of much shorter novels first.

3/5

Game: Dante's Inferno (Visceral Games, 2010)

For anyone who’s played the God of War series, Dante’s Inferno will most likely be met with cries of “Rip-Off”. So ashamedly does it utilise the Greek badass’ formula that you could actually be mistaken for thinking you were playing a legitimate spin off rather than an entirely separate game. The thing is, making a game so similar to God of War, as this proves, is not such a bad thing. True, it aint as good as its Playstation counterpart, but in basing a game on part 1 of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Visceral Games, the studio behind the Dead Space series, has fashioned a game that displays sickening imagination, whilst sticking surprisingly rigid to the main narrative of the original text.

It has flaws, not least in the latter half, where is seems the imagination wanes somewhat. For example: the 8th circle of hell (Fraud) consists only of ten consecutive battle arenas that must be completed before continuing, which is nowhere near as fulfilling as, say, the 3rd circle (Gluttony) in which the surroundings take on the guise of grotesquely misshapen body parts.

Yet despite being somewhat anticlimactic toward the end, it’s difficult to argue with a game that plays as well as this. As with all good hack ‘n’ slashers, you are able to pull off endlessly impressive moves with the simplest of commands and there is enough variety in the combat to keep the player on their toes. Sure, it’s God of War under a different name but, really, is that necessarily a bad thing?

4/5

Film: The Girl Who Played With Fire (Daniel Alfredson, 2009)

Whilst I have enjoyed the Millennium Trilogy in its literature form, so far I have found the movies underwhelming. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a film lauded by many, was nothing more than an upmarket episode of Murder She Wrote with graphic scenes of sexual violence thrown in for good measure. That's not to say it was bad, but I genuinely struggled to see the same film that Empire magazine had awarded a perfect 5 star score.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, the book, is a story that lends itself perfectly to chase thriller territory in the same vein as excellent movies like The Fugitive. Unfortunately, the movie fails to do this. Whilst obvious elements have been condensed for the sake of time, there is little tension found in the police investigation of the three murders in which Lisbeth Salander is the prime suspect. The overall conspiracy (which is fully explained in the final part, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest) also lacks the punch found in the novel. Plot reveals are spoken of but quickly brushed aside without dwelling on the ramifications and the climax, which takes up a good 100 pages of the book, plods along quickly with no tension or impact.

Where the novel is exciting, the movie bores. At least I know now that David Fincher, who is tentatively signed to remake the entire trilogy, will at least inject the required excitement that is strangely absent here.

2/5

Film: Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)

Make no mistake about it: Hostel is a very nasty film. Whilst movies like Saw and The Hills Have Eyes were more violent, it's the overall premise of Hostel, people paying to torture helpless backpackers, that disturbs. It also plays on this pre-packaged nastiness and delivers a film that is far less violent than you initially realise. Whilst there are moments that are truly horrid (the "yokey eye" bit springs to mind), a large portion of the violence takes place just off screen, point of fact: during one scene we hear the use of a drill on someone and see pieces of flesh stuck to the drill bit, but we do not see the drilling itself.

If you can muscle passed its grimy, exploitation aesthetic, Hostel, like most with a "dare-you-see-it" reputation, is a mixed bag overall. It's paced perfectly well but it's opening hour is more in the vein of American Pie than a torture porn flick and the script goes beyond childish. There is an immaturity that is at odds with the nastiness that eventually takes place, making it a film of two halves in which both halves jar badly with each other.

It sounds quite sick to say the film is saved by its brutality but it's true. Eli Roth is obviously more comfortable with the on-screen grue and the latter half of the movie is executed rather well (if you excuse the pun). The escape from danger motif builds genuine tension as the protagonist uses his wits to outsmart his captors. In his short directing career, it's this stuff that shows Roth is a perfectly competent director of tense horror.

It's a shame, then, that Hostel: Part II was so boring.

3/5

Film: Rango (Gore Verbinski, 2011)

I got to wondering yesterday, as I was on my way home from the cinema, as to whether Rango would exist at all if Chinatown had never been made. So alike are the plots (even their respective villains look the same) that a more apt title would be Chinatown With Animals. Then again, Who Framed Roger Rabbit also borrowed heavily from the 70's classic, thought not so brazenly, and when the end result is as entertaining as this, there's no major reason to complain. Its target audience wont even know what Chinatown is anyway.

One part off the wall cult piece, two parts conventional (kiddie) western, Rango has enough going for it to appease varying demographics. It's a kids film first and foremost but, like the movies from those guys at Pixar, it's peppered with adult references. There are also references aplenty to other movies that would generally go over and above the heads of the kids in the audience: a swarm of bats dive bomb our heroes to Ride of the Valkyrie as well as cameo appearances from Raul Duke and The Man With No Name (the latter in the guise of Clint Eastwood and oddly voiced by Timothy Olyphant).

Yet despite being a tad off kilter at times as well as becoming a little too formulaic toward the end, it rides along on in a legitimately charming fashion. It's a story that's been seen many times before but it's sweet and, at times, utterly hilarious. The voice acting is terrific with Johnny Depp and Isla Fisher as Rango and Bean respectively being stand-outs, but the town of Dirt is littered with memorable and humorous characters.

The animation could also stand up as some of the best in history. The leaps the medium has taken in the 16 years since Toy Story is just staggering.

4/5