Film review: PROMETHEUS (spoilers)

Poster by BLT Communications

Just in case you missed it right up there in the blog post title, this will be a SPOILER filled review of Ridley Scott's Prometheus. 
That covered, we can move on. 

And yes, hello. Welcome back. It's nice to come back and write about movies again and what better one to kick back in with than the highly anticipated prequel/side-quel/whatever to Alien? Lets get down to it shall we? Brass tacks as it were. Prometheus, celebrated director Sir Ridley Scott's return to the petered out Alien franchise, is really rather stupid. 

Yep. Stupid. For a film nominally about the search for the beginnings of human life, helmed by one of the smartest and visually interesting directors still working, Prometheus is monumentally bone-headed. The script, by Damon Lindelof from a draft by Jon Spaihts, is riddled with plot-holes and peopled by barely sketched and needlessly contradictory characters who blunder about and occasionally find themselves running into barely explored themes.

I barely even know where to start with talking about this. Before I saw Prometheus, I'd heard chatter that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. But still, I went in with my high hopes. Slightly dampened, but still. C'mon, right? This was Ridley Scott returning to Alien territory. Alien is still the best all of the various Alien films and sequels; much like the horrific xenomorph that stalks the corridors and ducts of the Nostromo it's a sleek, fierce and deadly film. There's no fat on Alien's bones and it is still a remarkable, frightening film. Prometheus has no idea what it is. It tries for drama, dread, thrills, deep questions and more and comes up short on all accounts.

Let's start with the characters. The ship Prometheus is peopled with a huge array of extraneous barely seen characters who are summarily beaten and chewed and killed to absolutely zero effect. They're barely there as cannon fodder. Our main characters fare little better. Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw is a barely defined muddle of a generic "scientist". At various points she is an archaeologist, astronomer, xenobiologist and more. Oh, and she's also vaguely religious too. 'Cos science and religion y'know, man? Woah. Her partner/husband is even less well defined, seemingly only to serve to get infected with the space-worms they find and then knock up Rapace with an alien space baby. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Whatever.

Similarly wasted are Rafe Spall and Sean Harris as a stupid biologist and oh-he's-a-geologist? respectively. Spall is a nerdy biologist who, at his first sight of a (dead) alien body decides he wants to scarper back to the ship. But, after he and Harris get lost (again, stupid stupid plot-hole. Harris is the geologist for fuck's sake! Not to mention there's a big ol' holographic map back on the ship detailing all of the explored caves and where everyone is. And they all have nifty gadgets on their suits that provide them with co-ordinates. It is unforgivably bad writing that they get lost) and they find some mutated-alien goo worms that look exactly like penis eels with vaginas for faces, Spall wants to give it a cuddle. Freaked out by a long-dead alien but totally ok with a living alien creature.

Coming out slightly better off are Charlize Theron as the calculating boss, Meredith Vickers and Idris Elba as the charming, working-class pilot Janek. But they're not really given enough to do and the film would have benefited from focussing on them more. In fact, I would have much rather followed Theron's icy corporate type than Rapace's poorly defined scientist; she's a better character and Theron is a markedly better actor. Oh, right - and Guy Pearce shows up in old-man make-up as an elderly Peter Weyland 'cos... there are no old actors in Hollywood? And he's Theron's dad - which is just thrown out there arbitrarily and entirely un-revelatory.

It's Michael Fassbender, as the android David, who really comes out the best. Fassbender's performance is great from beginning to end; some of the best stuff is in the first 20 minutes and is just David hanging out, shooting hoops, watching (and cos-playing as) Lawrence of Arabia during the crew's cryo-sleep. He's fascinating to watch and you get the feeling Fassbender has been tricked into thinking he's in a much better film than he actually is.

Almost ironically, David is the most human of all of the characters. He really is more relatable than any of these other dunderheads. Upon discovering alien life - honest-to-gods proof or alien life and civilisations, not to mention being the things they had set out to find in the first place - there is almost uniformity in how the crew reacts: meh. Dead or not, this marks the most significant discovery in human history and no-one really gives a shit. Because Scott wants to hurry up and get to trying to scare you.

This seems like a lot of bitching, and a lot of bitching at surface details at that. Apologies but it's just, the more I've been thinking about it, the more pissed off and disappointed it's making me.  This could have been, and really should have been, something more. Something larger than any of the Alien films, grappling as it does with the very beginnings of mankind. There was the chance for Prometheus to be an elegant, moving science-fiction film with some great terror thrown in. But  Scott obviously no longer even cares about things like story, characters and themes. He's all about the visuals. And, to bring in some positivity, the visuals in Prometheus are suitably staggering. They are images of strange, otherworldy beauty; vast alien landscapes (some right here on Earth) that stretch to the stars. But now, much like his brother Tony, Sir Scott only seems to give a damn about how it all looks. 

It just, aaggh! It's all so monumentally stupid. The second scene of the film has Rapace and her partner man finding a series of cave paintings on the Isle of Skye in Scotland - except the cave paintings are lifted directly from the Chauvet cave already and recently explored by Werner Herzog in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Sure, your average movie-goer will probably skip right over that but to me it is a perfect example of the lack of ambition inherent to the film. Scott and Lindelof aren't interested in exploring questions any further than just asking the questions. And by asking the questions, I mean they have characters, at various times, asking these questions directly.

Prometheus is a visual marvel, I cannot call attention away from that. It looks absolutely phenomenal - quite possibly the best looking film of the year. But there's nothing really going on underneath that. The film is all surface, desperately pretending to have hidden depths but failing to engage in any meaningful way. It doesn't hold a candle to the original beast and Alien still stands tall as the greatest of them all. 

As a bonus: I think I've solved the riddle of Prometheus. In the film, the Engineer's (the space jockey creators of human life) are killed off some 2,000 years ago, just before they're readying to wipe out life on earth. And the question is asked (often but, again, barely explored): why? I think I have the answer. What happened 2,000 odd years ago in human history? Why, Jesus Christ of course. The Engineers got wind of this and that's where the decision came from. King of the Jews? Can't be having with that! The Engineers are inter-galactic anti-Semites. YOU'RE WELCOME.

IN APPRECIATION OF... ROBOCOP

"Come quietly or there will be... trouble."

I love RoboCop. No, that's not quite right. I unashamedly and unreservedly fuckin' love everything about the film RoboCop. I love the violence, the humour, Peter Weller, the 80's futurism, its subversiveness, RoboCop's MASSIVE gun, Miguel Ferrer, ED-209, ED-209 squealing, exploding Emil, Kurtwood Smith, Paul Verhoeven's balls, RoboCOP POV, "I'd buy that for a dollar!" and just damned everything.

The first time I ever watched Paul Verhoeven's muscular vision of a dystopian future, RoboCop, was on VHS, recorded off the telly. It was a, somewhat random, double-feature with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and those two films were my introduction to cinematic violence. While I was perhaps too young for RoboCop (the memory of my exact age has become dimmed with increasing age) I thrilled to it. The violence, while not disturbing me as much as the heart extraction in Temple of Doom, was certainly extreme. And I was far too young and immature to fully grasp the larger themes that Verhoeven was interested in. But something of them trickled through; something of the twisted humour, the rather anti-authoritarian and anti-corporate stance.

In the years since I have become a fan of Paul Verhoeven. The man has had his fair share of Hollywood stinkers - Hollow Man, Showgirls - but his standout films - Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Black Book - have been works of demented, uncompromising genius. 1987's RoboCop was the director's first major Hollywood work and is typical of his style and carries many of his cinematic quirks and obsessions; a propensity for gruesome violence, distrustful of corporate/government institutions and greed, science-fiction and a frank openness to sex and sexuality. Don't forget, this is a man who grew up in the Netherlands during the time of Nazi occupation and was surrounded by destruction and death for some of his most formative years.

But he melds, combines, synthesis these ideas and themes with a thrilling cinematic action-film. It has been stated that Verhoeven saw the character of RoboCop as a Christ-like figure; the shotgun blasts to officer Murphy's hands and arms representing the stigmata, while the shot to the head represents the Crown of Thorns. Murphy is then, of course, reborn. I love that a Verhoeven vision of Christ is a cyborg law enforcer carrying a massive Beretta in his leg. Or, more specifically, Verhoeven's vision of an American Christ - when words and turning the other cheek fails... BLAM! BLAM! BOOM!

Let's not forget that RoboCop is not solely a creation of Paul Verhoeven. In point of fact he initially rejected the script by Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner. Neither of them have written anything particularly decent since (Neumeier also wrote Verhoeven's hilarious and splattery Starship Troopers) but with RoboCop they managed to capture something of the zeitgeist.

In fact, I very much doubt if a film like RoboCop as it currently exists would be able to be made in today's Hollywood system. Past the surface details of the explosions and production design, RoboCop is a film brimming with ideas, subtext and thematic explorations. It's the kind of intelligent, yet still thrilling popcorn-entertainment, science-fiction that Hollywood doesn't really do anymore. That ground seems to be covered by lower budget films like Primer, District 9 and Monsters. 2010's Inception probably came the closest to a big-budget but still intelligent science-fiction film in recent years. But compare Nolan's dry, well-constructed intelligence and entertainment to Verhoeven's gory, funny, pop-infused, slyly subversive ride. To me, there's no contest. I know which film I'd prefer to watch over and over again.

From RoboCop, there have been any number of other works spinning out from the original film; a couple of sequels, a TV series, cartoons, video-games and  comic-books. He's faced off against Aliens, the Terminator and probably Rocky Balbooa. I'm quite happy to say I've not seen, read or played any of these. RoboCop remains, to me, a singular experience. Even if RoboCop 3 promised a RoboCop with a jetpack. The design of RoboCop, for all the arguments and near-fisticuffs that went into it, is iconic. The man behind the creation of that suit, the Rick Baker trained Rob Bottin, and Verhoeven by all reports clashed constantly, at one point almost coming to blows. Of course, none of that really matters; the proof of their work is up there on screen: RoboCop. A character so iconic, there was a movement to erect a statue to him in Detroit and who, bestride a unicorn with a very strong back, became a popular internet meme in 2008.

There is, as there always is, talk of a remake floating around. It's talk that has been in the ether for a number of years now. At one point it looked increasingly likely that Darren Arronofsky was going to be the one to bring it on home. And he would have been one of the few directors I actually would have trusted to do something interesting with the material. Like him or not, Aronofsky always has something to say in his films. However, he walked and it seemed as if RoboCop 2.0 would either fall by the wayside or be picked up by some hacky hack with nothing interesting to say like McG, Scott Derrickson or Len Wiseman. Instead, the current man attached is Brazilian director Jose Padilha. After seeing his Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within I'm a little happier about the remake. Elite Squad II was a solidly entertaining genre film, with a lot to say and an effective way of saying it. Could RoboCop be Padilha's RoboCop? Padilha has stated his film will explore more of what it means to be a man turned into a machine; Padilha is aiming for something more philosophical and less political it seems.

Approaching RoboCop as an overtly political film and statement is an interesting exercise and the comparisons to Neumeier and Verhoeven's Starship Troopers are readily apparent. Both men are on the political left; both liberals, yet both of these films can be seen as fascist and right-leaning. I instead see them as poking fun at these sorts of ideas, approaching them in a tongue-and-cheek manner. It's a delicate balancing act and Neumeier and Verhoeven just manage it. The use of fake news broadcasts, commercials (the 6000 SUX and Nuke 'Em boardgame) serve to set-up the wider world in amongst some truly absurd humour. Essentially, they're setting up an incorporated, fascist world and undercutting it at the same time.

But let's not forget: RoboCop is fun. A hell of a lot of fun in fact. When I watch it nowadays, I'm more aware of the ideas and themes going on in the film - RoboCop as a Christ-like figure or as a man struggling to regain his humanity; the send up of the "greed is good" mentality; the film even serves as a template for the modern superhero origin story. But there's a part of me that will always be that boy thrilling to the imperfect, B-movie, iconic, violent, funny, low-brow and deliriously glorious RoboCop. I hope to experience it on the big screen one day.

Part man. Part machine. All cop. Yer damn right.

Further watching:

RoboKid - the cutest little cyborg-crimefighter around. With a signed photo from RoboCop himself, Peter Weller.

Total Recall - Verhoeven's adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short-story We Can Remeber it For You Wholesale starring Arnie, Sharon Stone and a chick with three tits. Another insane & pulpy sci-fi ride with some larger questions lurking just below the surface. "Get your ass to Mars!"

Starship Troopers - the first Verhoeven film I saw in a cinema and one that is hilarious, explosive and fantastically bone-headed at times. Casper van Dien and Denise Richards are no great thespians but Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Ironside are a lot fun. "D'you wanna live forever?!"

Black Book - Verhoeven's first film back in his native Netherlands since his move to Hollywood. An epic, moving and just downright stunning film about one Jewish woman's attempts to survive during the Nazi occupation.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension - the Peter Weller starring cult classic that really is quite mad. Description doesn't really quite do it justice. "I've been ionized, but I'm okay now."

Elite Squad and Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within - RoboCop remake director Jose Padilha's first two feature films; excellent action films with a political message of their own. 

FANTASTIC FEST: DAY EIGHT: FINAL FEST: REQUIEM

I consoled myself with a "Michael Jackson" cupcake
- chocolate with cream-cheese icing.
Soon afterwards I sunk into a sugar coma.

So this is it. The end of the journey. This was my final day of Fantastic Fest and it would end, not with a bang, but with a whimper. With no sort of announcement that I could find anywhere the 1:00pm screening of The Loved Ones was pulled and a 12:45pm repeat screening of the award-winning Bullhead playing instead. What this meant, then, is that the ticket queue opened 15 minutes earlier than I thought it would. Meaning when I actually logged on to book my tickets EVERYTHING (that I hadn't already seen) was Sold Out, including a repeat screening of the popular A Boy and His Samurai. I was well pissed off. This was the final day of Fantastic Fest and I was going to spend it NOT watching movies?! Well that's not how I wanted to finish things. So, I was going to have try my luck with standby tickets and hope against hope I'd make it in to something.

Well, lucky I was at my motel catching up with some writing and had twitter open - the folks at Fantastic Fest opened up a second screen for Morgan Spurlock's Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope and I managed to score a ticket. Watching Comic-Con, a documentary on the annual San Diego Comic-Con, with a Fantastic Fest audience was pretty frakking great. The doco is no snide look at the world of geeks and their passion, but rather follows geeks on their way to Con for various reasons: there's two guys hoping to get work in comic-books, hauling their portfolios around the Con taking alll criticism on the chin. There's the obsessive toy collector who simply must get the new Galactus toy and that's all he's there for (thankfully, this is a very short segment). There's the cute couple who met at the previous year's Con and the guy's efforts to propose to her at the Kevin Smith Q&A. There's the owner of Mile High Comics - the largest retailer of comic-books in America - and who helps provide an insight into the diminishing "Comic" aspect of Comic-Con. And then there's the costume designer who works out of her garage with a small team making incredible, professional-level costumes from Mass Effect 2 who is there to enter the Masquerade and hopefullly score some work from it. These stories are intercut with talking head interviews; some are fellow Comic-Con attendees but the majority are, for lack of a better term, celebrity geeks: the likes of Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, Harry Knowles (also a producer on the film), Stan Lee, Paul Dini, Matt Fraction, Seth Green, Guillermo del Toro and more. The documentary is, in fact, something of a celebration of all things geek and is a light look at the defining place of fandom in popular culture now and how the Con has become so diversified with it's pop culture the comic-book section of it is the smallest part. But it does go to show that what some of these fans create with passion, talent and hardwork is nothing short of phenomenal. Comic-Con is a movie I can't wait to see on DVD, as I hope there are oodles and oodles of more interviews - with the regular Con attendees and the "geek gods" - and seeing it with the Fantastic Fest crowd was an enormous amount of fun. 


And that's it. That's the end of my first Fantastic Fest. I'm glad I got to something on the final day and I'm pleased it was something as enjoyable as Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope. I missed the Closing Night party due to my continuing sickness but I know for a fact this will not be my only Fantastic Fest. And heck, I want to get to San Diego now too.

FANTASTIC FEST: DAY SEVEN

Jo's - where I get coffee every morning

This is it, the penultimate day of the Fest. And my first film of the day is the bonafide classic (and never-before-seen by me) An American Werewolf in London. I assume everyone who really wanted to see the film were lucky enough to nab tickets to the earlier screening with the Rick Baker Q&A as the theatre was all but empty for this screening. An American Werewolf was fucking fantastic and I'm psyched I got to see it on the big screen. I was surprised by the streak of humour throughout but seeing as how it was directed by John Landis (the guy behind one of my all-time favourite comedies, The Blues Brothers) I shouldn't have been. The relationship between David and his buddy Jack is quickly and gracefully established; these guys have the easy chemistry of old friends. And then of course they don't keep to the roads and are attacked on the moors. The creature effects by Baker are astonishing work and he and Landis are really working together to build the best effect possible, Landis often cutting away to something mundane but still surprising. Also, Nazi demons! Crazy.

Taking a chance with my next screening I opted for The Devil's Business, a film I knew almost nothing about. An unmitigated bore is what I turned out to be watching. Two English gangster cliches arrive at a house to lie in wait to whack someone. Things start getting a little spooky but the action consisted chiefly of these two blokes nattering away at one another. Despite writer/director Sean Hogan's best efforts there was no tension, horror or surprises to this film. It felt cheap, derivative and talky. It may have been a half-decent idea for a short film, but stretched out to feature length it (and I) suffer for it.

As my preferred option of Summerland was, once again, sold out I took another chance on my selection and chose the late-confirmation Love. This was billed as something of an experimental sci-fi film, part of a larger work by band Angels & Airwaves (from ex-Blink 182 frontman Tom Delonge). It begins in the American Civil War with a young soldier sent off to see and catalogue some strange sight many miles away. It then cuts to the ISS in the near future, staffed by lone astronaut Capt. Lee Miller. The majority of the film is then taken up with Miller isolated and slowly going insane, as all communication is cut off. The last few minutes then go all 2001 on your head. I can definitely see what everyone involved was going for, aiming to tackle some big themes, but it does become tedious and feels a lot longer than it actually is. 2001: A Space Odyssey becomes a transcendent piece of cinema but Love, though it tries, cannot reach these stunning heights. I'm still unsure how the Civil War ties in to it all as well. But they did apparently get a lot of right with regards to the ISS - the spirit of at least, if not the absolute details.

Rounding out my day was the final selection from the Hong Kong genre vault. Unfortunately, I can't really talk about it as the distributor is one of those crazy, kooky types who doesn't actually want the film screened anywhere. I will say this though: it was truly awesome and Grady Hendrix as the host for these events is a firecracker of excitement and knowledge and the Q&A with him afterwards was hilarious and informative. 

There was the second Secret Screening tonight as well, at midnight. Again, it was a sellout and the security surrounding it as intense: all electronic devices had to be turned in and attendees had to pass through a metal detector. What was the film in the end? Paranormal Activity 3. Woop-de-doo. I'm sure the folks enjoyed it but not really my cup of tea. And again, I had to skip a night of drunken revelry at the Highball (with a prom theme) as I was feeling really, really fuckin' sick. 

One day to go.

FANTASTIC FEST: DAY SIX

The storm clouds a-gather.

Fuck yes. After my two film day yesterday, today was packed with awesomeness. PACKED. I got to one of my most anticipated films at the Fest: Nacho Vigalondo's Extraterrestrial! HUZZAH! I have spent the entire day watching movies. I am exhausted, a little sickly, sore and I feel fuckin' FANTASTIC. Let's kick this shit off. 

The first film of my packed day was the night-club set French thriller Sleepless Night. It's a tight film, chronicling one corrupt cop's fight to rescue his son from drug dealers he stole from. Things are kept taut throughout, as the corrupt cop has to deal with the drug dealer and his crew, the buyer, his equally corrupt partner, an Internal Affairs investigator and one honest cop. They all collide in a massive and packed nightclub over the course of one night. It's an economical thriller that sets up a goal for the protagonist and then goes about placing obstructions and complications in front of him - and keeps on throwing them at him. It manages to make you feel some sympathy towards this corrupt jerk of a cop - mainly due to the unbelievable amount of violence and pain he has to go through to get his son back.

Next up was an interesting Korean take on individuals with superpowers, Haunters. It's a much smaller film than I initially thought it would be, focusing on two individuals with extra-normal abilities who are as opposite as is possible. the one-legged Cho-In has had a brutal childhood, moreso after his parents discover his freakish ability to control anyone he can see. His father tries to kill him but instead ends up dead himself and Cho-In on his own. 20 years later, he's alone and living from hotel to hotel and taking money from loan offices to live. Kyu-Nam works at a scrap-metal yard with his two best friends, Bubba from Ghana and Al from Turkey. After miraculously surviving being hit by a truck, he's fired from his job but gains employment at a loan office. And that's when Cho-In and Kyu-Nam come into conflict; Kyu-Nam is the only person that Cho-In cannot control. This is the set up for the rest of the film as Kyu-Nam takes it upon himself to stop Cho-In and their conflict escalates further and further with Kyu-Nam's amazing ability to heal and Cho-In's ruthless control of people. It works, for the most part, although the tone veers wildly from serious & creepy to cheesy and humorous.

After Haunters, and Day Six of the Fest, I was really feeling the fatigue. I felt like I'd hit a wall - my brain was sludgey and sparking off in random directions, my limbs felt heavy and I just wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep. But I've got three films to go! Also, it rained briefly. I love the smell of rain on hot concrete. I loaded up on caffeine and sugar and headed into my next screening.

Director Nacho Vigalondo answers questions
from Ain't it Cool News honcho (and Fantastic
Fest co-founder) Harry Knowles

Finally. This is one of the films I have been hanging out for all Fest and could not be happier I was getting into: Nacho Vigalondo's Extraterrestrial. This is the follow-up film to his debut Timecrimes, which blew me away a little bit when I caught it at the NZIFF a couple of years ago. But Extraterrestrial is an entirely different film to that, while still feeling like a Nacho Vigalondo film. Where Timecrimes was very serious and complex, Extraterrestrial is a rom-com... that just happens to unfold while a giant UFO hovers over Madrid. It pretty much all takes place in and around one apartment as Julio and Julia wake-up after a particularly drunken one-night stand together. They've been passed out for the entire day and soon notice something's wrong: there's no-one around anywhere and all cellphone and TV reception is cut off. Oh hey, that's why - there's a ruddy great flying saucer hanging out over downtown! Things become even more complicated for Julio and Julia when Angel, Julia's neighbour who carries an obsessive torch for her, and Carlos, Julia's boyfriend, show up. There are lies and fast-talking in an effort to cover things up and they spiral out of control, just like in a typical rom-com. The film is carried largely by it's charm, both from director Vigalondo and the two leads: Michelle Jenner as Julia and Julian Villagran as Julio (he also took out Best Actor at the Fantastic Fest Awards). Extraterrestrial is a very different film to Timecrimes but still not what you'd expect. I'm looking forward to seeing it again and what Vigalondo brings out next.

Actor, producer & Elijah Wood ass-kicker Dominic
Monaghan chats to Hitfix.com's Drew McWeeny

Careening straight from the Q&A with Nacho and Knowles I headed straight into the Dominic Monaghan starring (and produced) post-apocalyptic film The Day. Another film set almost entirely in one location, The Day finds five survivors of the unnamed apocalypse holed up in an abandoned farmhouse. However, all is not as it seems and they're soon under attack by bloodthirsty (quite literally) cannibals. It's a very low budget affair, and it unfortunately shows in some pretty terrible digital blood FX. I kind of hope this type of thing is in an "unfinished" stage and with the film having been recently picked up for distribution by WWE (yes, the wrestling guys) they can go back and touch this stuff up. The Day is ok, everyone involved obviously believing in the project in one way or another though the script could have perhaps been tighter, with some pretty obvious attempts at increasing the tension standing out. Although I appreciated that we are all but dropped into this post-apocalyptic landscape with no explanation given as to the mass-extinction event that led us here; for these types of films, I don't believe the reason behind the existing world is necessary or all that important. They're about survival and what people are ultimately willing to do to survive. The ass-kicking Ashley Bell is the odd-one-out in this otherwise tight group, carrying around a history she'd rather not reveal or revisit. It's a noble effort, especially with such a low budget and for being shot in 13 days, but it needed a little more tightening and cleaning up to really hit home.

After The Day I'm feeling a little post-apocalyptic myself. I'm definitely getting sick. I can feel it - exhaustion, throat closing up... but dammit! I'm not going to let a little thing like that stop me! No, I've still got the midnight show of Zombie Ass to go! Noboru Iguchi's Zombie Ass is exactly the type of film I would only expect to find at Fantastic Fest. This is a bizarre horror sci-fi comedy fetish film about five young people coming across a village infested with zombie-alien-parasite-butt-worms. Heroine Megumi lost her younger sister Ai when she committed suicide after being bullied at school; since then Megumi has studied karate continuously and is still getting over her guilt. Heading off on a camping trip with a bizarre collection of friends in an effort to out-run her guilt, they stumble upon the weirdest zombie infestation ever filmed. Iguchi indulges his obvious love for the female bottom (as he put it: "I love ass") and poop and fart jokes. This is a schlock Japanese exploitation flick, with Iguchi championing his own fetishes and wicked sense of humour, carried through with a crazy digital score and outrageous over-the-top, well, everything. I have to say, I enjoyed Zombie Ass, just for the fact that it is so out there and very much for a particular audience. A singular film.

FANTASTIC FEST: DAY FIVE

Post-card painted on a wall. Just because.

Wow. This was my smallest day at the Fest to date. By the time I managed to get through the online ticketing queue system, most sessions were sold-out, let alone the ones I wanted to get to. So, no Juan of the Dead or A Boy and His Samurai (which won the coveted Audience Choice Award at the Fantastic Fest Awards) for me. Even the Animated Short film programme was sold out! So I was absolutely unable to get into the two big events today - The Fantastic Fest Awards and the Fantastic Feud and only got to two, two, films. 

The first of those movies was Clown, an outrageously hilarious comedy from Denmark. And just like New Kids Turbo this is a movie based on a popular TV show. Frank and Casper are heading off on a canoe trip, to get away from their girlfriends and to undertake "Tour de Pussy" down the river. Casper is the smooth-talking, ultra-cool guy with the great house and Frank is, well, a bit of a schmuck. He's not that good looking, or much of a snappy dresser. He and his girlfriend Marie have been asked to look after Marie's nephew Bo, while her brother is on his honeymoon. And Frank has just found out she's preganant, though she's doubtful about his father potential. So of course, he kidnaps Bo and brings him on the canoe trip to Casper frustration and anger. Things gro from bad to worse and even more worse. Clown is a comedy that pushes right up against the line of acceptability and often does a silly little dance over it. There are very smart choices made with the characters and story, every joke or set-up not merely being outrageously hilarious but also adding to the overall picture. With comedy, especially one using already well established characters, it can be hard to travel - whether it be national differences in terms of humour or "inside" jokes it can be difficult to get it over to a new audience. Clown suffers none of those problems. It's smart, taboo-pushing and, most importantly, funny. I can only wonder if the TV show is as out there.

If there simply must be a Robocop remake (and it seems ever more likely), Jose Padilha is one of the directors I would trust with it. His Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within is a cry against corruption in Brasil, masquerading as cop-action genre fare. I'll own up straight away: I haven't seen the first Elite Squad but then you don't really need to to enjoy this sequel. This is a muscular, violence soaked film with plenty of smarts hidden away there. Lt. Colonel Nascimento is the head of BOPE, the shoot-first ask questions later Elite unit of the police. Diogo Fraga is a noted human rights campaigner, often railing against the conditions in prison and the violence of BOPE. These are two men on opposing sides of an ideological divide that are in constant conflict (Fraga even marrying Nascimento's ex-wife), but have more in common than they would have ever thought. Nascimento, for all his badass attitude, is a man who believes in justice. Cartels of drug dealers and the usual street level criminals are not the targets here; instead the targets are far more dangerous men: those in elected office whose pockets swell with the money of the poor. It's a tight film, with fascinating characters at the centre of it all and is not afraid to show the ugly side of Rio. Padilha is a man with a lot to say about his country; a man who is rightfully angered at the corruption he sees around him and that comes across in ever frame.


Even though it was a smaller day of films for me, it was still an awesome day. Clown was easily the funniest film I've seen in a long time and Elite Squad II had a lot to recommend it. Perhaps it was a good thing to have something of a rest day? Nah. I would've preferred to see more! More! Bring on tomorrow!

FANTASTIC FEST: DAY FOUR

Film geeks await their next screening

Day Four of Fantastic Fest marks the half-way point. Already?! Wow. Scary to think I left reality behind a scant four days ago and will have to return to it in four more. I don't know that I want to. Why the hell can't I keep watching 3 or more movies a day?

One of the more interesting challenges here in Austin has been, as a Wellington caffeine snob, getting my fix of java. Finding it isn't too much of a problem - Jo's Coffee is less than a minute from my room and they serve up pretty good coffee (though if I'm needing a coffee between screenings at the Alamo my only choice is the drive-thru-servicing Starbucks. I've relented once and it was awful - weak and atomically hot). It's the drinking it in the heat. Hot coffee on a day so hot I can feel the sweat pooling in my shoes? Only in an air-conditioned cafe thanks!

My day at the Fest began with the film talked of as Switzerland's first horror, Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps. But first, a quick word on the pre-show. When you walk into a theatre at the Alamo, as I think I've previously mentioned, there are no ads but instead a pre-show collection of random clips and trash trailers. It just so happened that one of the best of these played before Sennentuntschi; an 80's instructional guide to the more common carvings found on a Satanic sacrifice. Presented by a bald guy with glasses, mustache and loud shirt and with random pink lighting it was a bizarre pleasure. As for Sennentuntschi I'm not really sure as to how much of a "horror" film it really is - there are some horrific scenes and images but it's almost more of a mystery film than a horror. Set in a small village high up in the Alps, it begins in the present day with the discovery of three skeletons by a girl and her mother out collecting mushrooms. Once the police arrive, the mother begins the story from 1975 when she was a little girl herself. From there, the film essentially plays out in two parallel timelines in 1975. During the funeral for a priest who had mysteriously hung himself, a dirty and barely clothed girl appears from nowhere and promptly collapses. She is mute and is taken in by the local policeman plod, Reusch despite the villagers superstitious suspicions. Playing out at the same time, but set days before, the same young girl appears to three men at a farm even higher in the Alps. They believe her to be the Sennentuntschi: a demon gifted to them in an absinthe soaked haze. The truth, of course, is something more than that and the fun to be had is in the teasing out of the mystery and the way the film plays with the concepts of local myths, legends and the mob mentality of a village. 

Moving on from death in the mountains, I had the unexpected surprise of Headhunters. This is a film that was not on my initial list of ones to see, but after hearing some positive things out of the earlier screening I decided to give it a shot. I was thoroughly entertained. This Norwegian black comedy is about Roger Brown - he's 1.68m tall, has a statuesque Nordic beauty for a wife and lives in a house far beyond his means. As he earns barely enough to cover his expenses at his day job as a recruitment specialist - he's constantly feeling like he has to over-compensate for his height - he moonlights as an art-thief. He's meticulous in his methods (replacing the stolen works with forgeries) and uses the interview process at his day job to gather information for his thefts. But even with his second job he's needing more money. And that's when he's introduced to a prime target - a man with a painting worth tens of millions. Except this is a guy you really don't want to fuck with and it all ends up going horribly, horribly wrong for poor Roger. He starts the movie as an insufferable little jerk and there is a kind of perverse pleasure to be had in watching this guy get put through the ringer. The script by Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg, from the novel by Jo Nesbo, is tight and just keeps on at a constantly building pace. Headhunters is fun, engaging and inventive; pretty much everything you want from a night out at the movies.

From the black comedy of Norway to the out of control, un-PC comedy of the Netherlands and New Kids Turbo. The New Kids started out as a series of web-videos, before becoming a TV series and, now, a movie. It's fantastically over-the-top and ridiculous, with five delinquent central characters replete with mullets and mustaches. All five end up fired from their jobs, and with their unemployment benefits cut off, make the pronouncement to not pay for anything anymore. These guys are obviously having a lot of fun and have a love for extreme physical violence for comedic effect. If you're easily offended by... anything really, then I wouldn't recommend New Kids Turbo as they take a kind of anarchistic glee in stomping all over political correctness. The film ends up just building and building, growing ever more over-the-top and ridiculous. I don't know how well the comedy, with it's heavy reliance on surprise, would work in a second viewing but New Kids Turbo was a riotous ride around with five sympathetic jerks who enjoy calling everyone they come across a cunt.

Wrapping up my Day Four (no midnight screening or Chaos Reigns Karaoke for me tonight - I'm feeling like I have a cold starting up that needs to be fought down. Die cold die! [Read that as English or German]) I seated myself for the first of four secret Hong Kong action films. Given an enthusiastic introduction by a man in a bright pink suit from the NY Asian Film Festival (who's name escapes me right now, sorry), this was one of many films recently saved from having their prints destroyed by a going-out-of-business distributor. For our viewing pleasure we had one of the earliest films to be directed by action-choreographer extraordinaire Yuen Wo Ping: The Dreadnought. Even after watching the film I have no idea what the title has to do with anything that happens on screen, but ok. A violent criminal, The White Tiger, is on the run and winds up in a small town. Mousey has a laundry business he runs with his sister, and he's something of a coward preferring to run away than fight and collect debts owed to them. Mousey's friend Leung Foon is a pupil of the old and still spry master Wong Fei-Huang. I'd just like to point that the actor playing Fei-Huang, Tak-Hing Kwan, was nearing 80 at this point but he displays more moves than most young action stars today. The Dreadnought is one of those great kung-fu films where everyone seems to know kung-fu of some sort and the plot is merely a means to getting to the next fight scene. These are all inventive, often moving as more of a dance than a fight, with a couple of standouts being a showdown between a Chinese Dragon and a Golden Lion, and a theatrical showdown in the town opera house. A hell of a lot of fun, with a better sense of fight choreography and geography than pretty much any Hollywood actioner you'll see in the cinema these guys are the real deal. I'm hoping I have time in my schedule for the other surprise Hong Kong films.

And that's Day Four ladies and gentlemen. Only at Fantastic Fest: Swiss horror, Norwegian black comedy, Dutch gutter comedy and classic Hong Kong action.

FANTASTIC FEST: DAY TWO

From Mondo Tees: Fantasticness

Oh boy, I did NOT want to wake up this morning. I've been having a little trouble sleeping (I, once again, blame the heat) and so picked up some sleeping pills yesterday to help knock me out. They did at that, but damn if they weren't still in effect when I had to wake up 5-and-a-half hours later. Anyway, fighting past the grogginess I was logged on to the Fantastic Fest ticket website in time to miss getting tickets for A Boy and His Samurai, Sennentuntschi and Extraterrestrial (all films on my list to bloody well see). But that's the great thing about Fantastic Fest - there just other awesome films to see! A Boy and His Samurai and The Yellow Sea were both sold out for the first lot of screenings today, meaning Milocrorze, A Love Story was all but empty; which is a damned shame as it is a candy-coloured pop explosion head-trip on your eyeballs. I don't even know where to begin... Well, ok. Ovreneli Vreneligare is a bright-orange haired moppet, with pink tartan pants and a green argyle sweater. One day while in the park he meets the Great Milocrorze and falls hopelessly in love. When she abandons him, he has to cover the hole in his heart with a pot lid. And then we move swiftly on to Besson Kumagai, a misogynistic Male Youth Counsellor, prone to breaking out into dance. The tale of one-eyed samurai Tamon and his search for his kidnapped love is the last, and longest, of the three. Milocrorze is a weird, heady concoction and is one of those films that only comes along every once in a while.

Invasion of Alien Bikini is another film from South Korea but way, way, way down the budget scale - in fact it was reportedly made for less than $5,000.00 USD. But that makes it no less insane and inventive, even if the majority of it takes place in one room. It really just drops you in the middle of everything, not wasting time on explaining a hell of a whole lot (except for some really obvious exposition) when it all kicks off. A man in a bright yellow jacket and wearing a fake mustache has taken it upon himself to patrol the city streets. After hearing a cry for help, he saves a young woman from three attackers and takes her back to his place to recover. There follows lots of talking, some flirting and Jenga. Then things get really weird... It's all played quite knowingly and with a fair amount of talent getting the most out of the measly budget, even if it does drag out with a truly bizarre ending that I'm not sure I understood.

After these two, I had a fair amount of time to kill before my next screening and so headed back to the motel. I have really loved walking down some of these suburban streets - there are some amazing homes, all with their own touch of individuality. Like the place that has, for it's front gate, a front door doorframe and all. Or the many places that have strings of lights on the porch. Or the many squirrels or an opossum. I wouldn't see great stuff like this if I was always driving everywhere.

On the way back to the Alamo, I hit up The Mighty Cone for dinner - another diner trailer, just up from my motel on South Congress. The eponymous cones are like burritos but, well, cones. They don't fry their food but "deep saute" - even the avocado! Anyways YUM. And again, walking back to the Alamo I got to watch an amazing sunset. The sky out here just seems... bigger oddly enough.

The final film for the day was the Belgian farm-noir Bullhead. The centre of the film is Matthias Schoenaerts' Jacky Vanmarsenille. Jacky is a monster of a man, lumbering around pumped full of testosterone and who-knows what other hormones. He's a tragic character though, with a deep trauma in the past that still defines him. The film delves into the illegal use of hormones in the Belgian meat market and makes excellent use of the language barriers within the country (between the French speaking Walloons and the Dutch speaking Flemish). It's a slow film, director Michael Roskam really taking his time setting everything up and playing out. It doesn't build to a slow burn though and perhaps takes too long to play out. But the character of Jacky, as played by Schoenaerts, is a fascinating and quietly devastating one.

FANTASTIC FEST: A PREVIEW

Holy shit. It's almost time for Fantastic Fest. That has sure come around fast. The kick-off is now a week away - which means I'm out of a job in a couple of days.

Wait, what?

Yeah, let me clarify that. To be able to go to Fantastic Fest this year, something I have been hoping to do for years and that was determined to do this year, I had to quit my job. Basically the choice came down to: stay at my job, where I have been for the last 5 years and have been trying to leave since I got here as it really isn’t what I want my career to be, or take the plunge; just up and hand in my notice and do something I’ve always wanted to do, even if it means I fall flat on my face.

The full line-up of films for Fantastic Fest have been announced - there's a frankly staggering amount of films on offer for the week. There's some old stuff, some new stuff. Some of the films, such as Melancholia, KNUCKLE and Snowtown I've already managed to catch at the New Zealand International Film Festival which frees me up to see other films when they're on.

I’m currently wrapping up my films from the NZIFF (yes, still), mainly for my own sake at this point. Come the Fantastic Fest though, what I will be offering here will be somewhat different. Yes, I’ll be trying to bring you reviews of the films I see, as I see them but I’ll also be giving you my experiences of the Fest; the insanity, the drunkenness, the head exploding.

Now here is but a selection, a taste, a peek around the velvet curtain at some of the outrageous, awesome and all around crazy films I'm excited to see at this year's Fest:

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

"Keep to the roads." A simple warning, but one that is not heeded by two Americans backpacking across the Yorkshire Moors. Now, they must learn to follow a new warning, "Beware the moon."

A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI

From the director of festival faves Fish Story and Golden Slumber, the ultimate time travelling, father-son, samurai pastry chef, food movie ever made.

COMICON

Follow the stories of five different fans as they prepare for and then consume or are consumed by the largest gathering of nerds in the universe: Comicon

COMIN' AT YA! 3D

The lethally unbelievable visual assault that kicked off the '80s 3D Boom returns in a state of the art digital restoration. Equal parts western and rollercoaster, COMIN' AT YA pulls out every stop to entertain you. If the modern wave of 3D were as fun as COMIN' AT YA, the motion picture industry would have nothing to worry about.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL

A man wakes in a strange apartment after a long night of drinking. When his unfamiliar bedmate tries to usher him out, they both discover that spaceships are hovering over Madrid.

INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI

An ultra-stylized, super-cheap action/comedy/sci-fi/bikini flick will be the best under $5000 film you’ll see all year.

JULIA X

Super sexy serial killer Kevin Sorbo (in 3D!) gets a nasty surprise when his latest potential victim puts up an unexpected fight.

KARATE ROBO ZABORGAR

Happy 70’s crimefighters: a boy and his motorcycle-transforming, karate-fighting robot… only the kid’s grown up now and is pushing 50.

A LONELY PLACE TO DIE

This back-to-basics, bullshit-free modern take on the survival genre features a violent Russian child in a cage, gun-toting maniacs, and a cat-and-mouse chase across lawless, rural Scotland.

THE LOVED ONES

Girl likes boy. Girl asks boy to the prom but boy says no. Girl kidnaps boy and tortures him worse than one can possibly imagine. THE LOVED ONES is PRETTY IN PINK meets MISERY, but worse; much, much worse.

MANBORG

Part man, part robot, all killing machine! Only the awesome power of the MANBORG can drive the demon hordes back to hell!

SENNENTUNTSCHI

The residents of a small village in the Swiss Alps start to distrust their local police officer after he decides to shelter a mysterious young woman who arrived directly after the death of a priest.

YAKUZA WEAPON

Ten years after starring in VERSUS, former street fighter-turned actor/director Tak Sakaguchi is back with this mondo trasho flick about a yakuza with a machine gun arm and a rocket launcher leg.

ZOMBIE

Lucio Fulci's extreme masterpiece of post-Romero corpse mania is back in a gorgeous digital restoration.


And friends, that’s just the films. There’s more that goes on at Fantastic Fest that I’ve only ever heard bits and pieces about. There are the Fantastic Arcade events with independent video-games, developers and panel discussions. There’s an annual debate/boxing match, with Fantastic Fest founder Tim League taking on the undefeated bare-knuckle champion from KNUCKLE, James Quinn McDonagh himself! There's the karaoke (mmm... will I ever be that drunk?) and the Fantastic Fest closing night party. This year's theme? Superheroes. 


Oh yeah.

28.07: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

Just one of many cool alternate posters

Joe Johnston’s addition to the Marvel Movieverse is a rock ‘em, sock ‘em action film that is easily one of the best (so far). Captain America is all sorts of fun with noble good-guys, evil villains, a cracking adventure story and real character moments.

Chris Evans is Steve Rogers, a skinny sickly little guy desperate to serve his country during World War II. That fact alone, that they chose to go period with this film speaks volumes to me, about how much the filmmakers (or, yes, Marvel Studios) understand the character. Rogers, who has tried to enlist 5 times, is spotted by Stanley Tucci's Dr. Erskine and selected for a radical new experiment: to be the first of the new Super Soldiers. Of course, there's Hugo Weaving as the Eeeeeeeevil Herr Schimdt/Red Skull who simply won't allow that to be and so, just as the American scientists are celebrating the successful birth of the future Dr. Erskine is assassinated and his Super Soldier serum destroyed. Thus, Steve Rogers is the one and only Super Soldier: Captain America!

After a quick detour as a USO show attraction, Cap is in Europe rescuing captured soldiers (including his childhood buddy James "Bucky" Barnes) and hunting down the Red Skull's dark-science labs and Hydra minions, including Toby Jones' evil genius, Arnim Zola. These missions with the Howling Commandos (who are, sadly, never named as such. The characters are in fact never named) leave plenty of room for more adventures from WWII to be shown. There are neat little nods and tie-ins to the wider Marvel Movieverse – the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube from the Hall of Odin connecting in to Thor and Tony Stark's equally genius daddy Howard bringing in Iron Man- that never overwhelm this particular adventure or character.

Johnston and his team (cast and crew) get so very much right about the film and character; from the palette of the 40's to the retro-futuristic sci-fi to the unwinking all-around good-guyness of Cap. The whole film is unashamedly unironic. When I first heard of the decision to put Cap in the USO show, I was a little dismayed. It seemed like they didn't really know who Cap was. But the way they carry it off here, with a greedy Senator and breaking out the well-known costume, it helps give the otherwise arcless Steve Rogers a few great character moments and decisions. Chris Evans is perfect as Cap and never loses sight of the small, skinny Steve Rogers. He manages to carry off the “Aw shucks” moments with charisma, never feeling forced or ironic. Hugo Weaving impersonates Wernor Herzog for one of the all-time great Marvel villains; he is a full-tilt unrepentant psychopathic villain. Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones give so much more to their small characters, they help lift the whole film. Tucci gives Erskine a real, flawed, brilliant and gentle humanity while Jones, being a man with a self-confessed lack of humour, shows off his razor-sharp comic timing. I've never seen Hayley Atwell in anything before, but her Agent Peggy Carter, a British agent on loan to the project, is wonderful and more than a match for all the macho-ness around her. Her and Steve's growing relationship is the heart of the film and is so well drawn and played out with such effectiveness there's a real kick in the guts come the end - even for me, who knew what was coming.

There are a few minor quibbles I had with the film. Some of the effects, especially the green-screen stuff, is really not great. But even this, oddly enough, adds to the charm of the film. And the really important effects work, to make the huge Chris Evans a scrawny shrimp, is done pretty perfect. And though the inclusion of Marvel bad-guy organisation Hydra (or HYDRA) as a dark-science cult loyal to the Red Skull is cool, I would have dearly loved to see Cap punching some Nazis in the face. And it's small things like this, small missed opportunities, that are the only real faults with the story. For one thing, I wanted more! More of Cap and the Howling Commandos, more of Cap and Bucky fighting evil together. But wanting more is a very good criticism to have of a film.

Joe Johnston is perfect for this sort of rock 'em sock 'em two-fisted action. There are obvious parallels with his The Rocketeer and his work on Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's a decent enough director, not one of the greats by any stretch, but one who generally knows his way around a story and a film. And the whole team behind really "get" what Captain America is all about - not flag-waving jingoism and blind patriotism, but standing up for those ideals that helped shape America (before it all went to hell in the 70's). And they get the man, Steve Rogers, right and manage to never cross in to cheesey or winking and nudging territory. Captain America is all sorts of fun and I can't wait to see it again.

N.B. Stan Lee once again does a cameo – though, for once, he was not involved in the creation of Captain America. That was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

14.07: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART TWO

It has been a common theme in some of my recent posts, and I'd like to take the opportunity to talk a little more about it here: the audience experience and watching a film with a switched-on audience. Before watching Part Two of The Deathly Hallows on the Thursday we re-watched Part One at the Embassy on the Wednesday. What a crowd to see it with - the vast majority of them there for the double show (seeing Part Two at midnight) and dressed to the Potter-nines. The majority of costumes looked home-made, with more than a hint of inventiveness. This is the crowd I wished I'd seen the film with; the true die-hard fans whooping it up and having a fun time. Making it all an experience.

The Deathly Hallows Part Two marks the end of a rather unique series in the history of cinema. After 8 films over 10 years, its phenomenal to think that (bar the death of Richard Harris) they have not only managed to keep the core cast but the quality of the films has never tailed off. I think, at this point, it's rather unfair to just write them off as "kid's films" - yes the first few Harry Potter films are aimed at the kidlings, but the series has grown up with it's audience. Not only becoming "darker", but maturing. But if you've never seen a Potter film before, you'll be completely out of your depth here.

After the death of Dobby and Voldemort nicking the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's grave at the end of Part One, Part Two wastes nary a scratch of time in ramping up the quest for the Horcruxes. Harry, Ron and Hermione give up the camping and instead bust into Gringott's bank, free a dragon and make their way back to Hogwarts. The majority of the film (the final two-thirds I guesstimate) takes place in and around Hogwarts as Harry makes himself known, the staff and students rebel against Voldemort, Voldemort attacks and all magical hell breaks loose. And comparing the huge final battle here to the one that takes place in Transformers !!!, director David Yates comes out favourably. He keeps a sense of geography in the action and relates it all back to the characters and where they stand. And despite the huge cast of characters good and bad, Yates (and screenwriter Steve Kloves) allow each and every one of them a moment (at least) to shine, to make an impression. True, sometimes these moments can feel far too fleeting and feeling like a headlong rush towards the end, but within the larger context they all add up (especially the deaths of favoured characters). And the cast take these moments and completely own them: Warwick Davis as Griphook or Julie Walters as Mrs. Weasley or Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall or Alan Rickman's fantastic Severus Snape and more; the cast is an embarrassment of English acting riches. Compare that to Bay's dizzyingly confusing assault on Chicago with the indistinguishable characters running here, there and everywhere for barely discernible reasons.

It's a further wonder that, in the midst of all the ending and emotion and deaths, there are moments of real humour; often dry but never distracting. No-one does understatement quite like the English*. Frankly, in this day and studio age the entire film is a wonder. That the three young leads have grown into their roles and, while not being amazing thesps by any stretch, all give something more to them. Yates has really grown as a director since Order of the Phoenix. For a big summer blockbuster it is quite brave in its themes, most notably that love will win the day. Harry is the (literally) self-sacrificing hero, who doesn't dispatch bad guys with a witty quip or a cold heart. He only wants to protect his loved ones, and they him. It is because Harry loves and is loved that he defeats Voldemort, not because he is the more powerful or resourceful.

The Deathly Hallows Part Two is a fitting send-off for the boy wizard. Not for the uninitiated, this is an epic conclusion to a huge film series that has, literally, spanned a generation. I still remember reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in one sitting, and then watching the film as I was crammed right at the top of the Embassy Theatre (pre-renovation). I still favour The Prisoner of Azkaban of the films - you can't go wrong with Gary Oldman - but look forward to sitting down and revisiting them all again. It isn't often something like this is tied up emotionally, thematically and character-wise with such success as this, so I can but hope for more film series/franchises to wrap up half as well.

* and yes, I recognise the possible irony of that being an overstatement.

04.07: INDEPENDENCE DAY

You have no idea what a joy it is to have just written that title; that I was able to go to a see a cinema and see ID4 again. And on the 4th of July no less! Independence Day is one of the great big dumb event movies, an all-out destruction fest that was the first of director Roland Emmerich's many similar films. To top it all off, this was screening at the Roxy Cinema - Wellington's newest cinema, opened in the suburbs of Miramar with some powerful people behind it. The cinema was worth the trip alone - hands down the most beautiful cinema I've ever had the pleasure of being in. Stunning, stunning work with an impeccable attention to detail.

Uh, right, what? Oh, yeah. Independence Day. What a hoot. It was everything I remembered - Jeff Goldblum, explosions, 90's tech, an unrecognisable Brent "Data" Spiner, mass devastation and plucky heroism. As we have seen in recent years, these wham-bam fun but not stupid types of blockbusters can be hard to pull off. Emmerich managed to do so here. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum are both bundles of wonderful charisma and charm that help carry the film through the mega-destruction.

Of course, everyone's seen Independence Day before, right? The world gets definitive proof that we are not alone in the universe when a bunch of ETs in big-ass spaceships show up. The landing craft burning their way through the atmosphere are suitably impressive in a biblical way: skies on fire, the Apocalypse coming and not a damned thing anyone can do about it. Oh-ho! But the alien Apocalypse didn't count on a nerdy Jewish computer genius and a hot-shot African-American fighter pilot teaming up (as well as the President and a drunk ex-fighter pilot from the Gulf War)! Emmerich manages to corral a large cast of characters and character types around all the explosions and end-of-the-world shenanigans. 

It's a gloriously cheesy, distinctly American blockbuster. Sure, it's not the smartest piece of cinema around, but it is actually decent amounts of fun. And, of course, it was helped by having a small(er than expected) but enthusiastic crowd, cheering and clapping along to the KA-BOOMs and "Welcome to Earth!" quotes. I love the times when I get to experience a film like this with a crowd that gets it.

01.07: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

Before I start talking about Michael Bay's latest robo smash-'em-up let's take it back a bit. Growing up, the original Transformers cartoon was my favourite TV show by far. I raced home from school every day to watch, enthralled as these alien robots warred with each other. Sure, there was Thundercats, Voltron and G. I. Joe too but they couldn't hope to compare. It helped the Transformer toys were , in fact, two toys in one. Three even, if you count them as being a puzzle as well as a robot and car/plane/boat/whatever. The original Orson Welles (and, yes, Leonard Nimoy) starring original Transformers movie was a seminal movie for my kid-self. I recognise the fact that it was out to sell me more toys, but damn if I didn't enjoy the hell out of it anyway. To give you an idea of the pop culture space this series was taking up in my brain, a live-action Transformers movie was the first movie I can ever remember wanting to make (I was 8 and was thinking of having huge, remote-controlled robots for the Transformers).

So. Transformers. I know 'em, but I'm not a precious geek about 'em. And Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon is courting the old-school Transformer fans like myself as none of the previous films have. There are various call-back to the original series: the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, the Ark, the Space Bridge and even Optimus Prime's transforming trailer. It's a shame they couldn't have focused on the story instead.

The film begins with the reveal that the entire space race of the 1960's was in fact a race to retrieve a Transfomer ship, crashed on the moon. That's a cool place to start, even if it is another tortured reveal of unnecessary Transformer mythos and is crow-barred into the existing continuity. In the present, the Autobots discover the existence of this crashed Transformer ship and, lucky day, happen to have a space shuttle of their own standing by. Sentinel Prime, an old Autobot leader and the last great hope for ending the war, is found and brought back to Earth. He's the guy who invented the Space Bridge - basically a teleportation array. The long and short of it: Decepticons get a hold of it and invade Earth from the moon (wait, what? Where the hell were those guys?! they've just been hanging out on the moon for the last two movies? And no-one's seen them before?!). The rest of the story can be summed up thus:

For all of the talk, from various people involved, Dark of the Moon is not a huge improvement over Revenge of the Fallen. Yes, it is better than that sorry excuse for a film but Dark of the Moon still carries the baggage of the Fallen and suffers from a lot of the same afflictions. Once again, there is an over abundance of, and over reliance on, pointless "comedy" relief characters. John Malkovich is obviously picking up a pay cheque here because his crazy boss character could be cut from the film entirely, with no loss (only improvement) to the story. Ken Jeong's crazy paranoid guy is grating and, once again, the Witwicky's make an appearance. While these two were a welcome surprise in the first Transformers, they serve no purpose here and the humour just falls thuddingly flat. On top of all this, Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger once again add torturous Transformer backstory and secret history. Is it too much to ask that the Decepticons formulate a new plan instead of re-using ideas from their Cybertron days?

Bay knows his way around an action scene but, as with Revenge of the Fallen, the rhythm and pacing is off. The confrontation between Sam and Starscream is a perfect encapsulation of this: what could have been an awesome take-down of a Decepticon by a resourceful human just keeps going and going and going. And Bay's depiction of the violence is brutal and callous. Hundreds, if not thousands, of humans die - crushed in cars or disintegrated by lasers. And no-one, least of all the heroic Autobots, seem to give a damn. Optimus Prime, the leader of the peaceful Autobots, is a cold-hearted motherfucker. He purposely lets Chicago fall to prove to the humans how much they need the Autobots.

The rhythm of the entire film feels off - a lot of stuff just happens, with no gradual build towards it. I will, however, say that the cut from the beginning of the invasion to the complete devastation of Chicago is an intriguing move - Bay deciding to not cram in another action scene? It also helps to give a sense of how fast this invasion becomes an occupation. With the first Transformers, every Transformer was given at least a small moment of character. By now Bay has introduced so many that even the old favourites have become indistinguishable; I felt more when the cartoon Ironhide died in The Transformers Movie than when the character died here. In addition to all the alien robot action (and introducing new Transfomers again) we have returning cast members Tyrese, John Turturro and Josh Duhamel. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley tags in for Megan Fox and acquits herself rather well amongst the action and testosterone. And, Jeong and Malkovich aside, the other newcomers (Frances McDormand and Alan Tudyk) manage to do much with the little they are given. Patrick Dempsey is actually rather watchable as the smary, snivelling Decepticon collaborator, even if his character continues to make baffling decisions. But yes, it is rather overstuffed. Overstuffed with characters, coincidences and story.

Gods, I've really given this a blasting haven't I? And I actually enjoyed it! A number of the action sequences are thrilling and fun - Duhamel and his flying squirrel squadron a particular stand-out - and Bay has a better handle on the geography of a large action scene than in Fallen. Perhaps my opinion of the film would even be improved had I seen it with a more engaged/Transfomer-fan heavy audience. Dark of the Moon is a big, crazy film and those are always more fun with an engaged and cheering audience - there were no guys dressed in home-made cardboard costumes this time. I don't know where this leaves the Transformers as a franchise (likely in good shape - they've made a stack of money off this film already) but Dark of the Moon is not quite a heroic return to the goofy, explosive fun of the first Transformers.

08.06: SUPER 8

My friends and I have been making our own short films since we were, about oh, 14. While we weren’t using 8mm film stock, we were using VHS-C and, later, 8mm videotape. Editing was done in camera, or with two VCRs before we got access to some school Macs. The results were… well, about what you’d expect from a group of young, inexperienced genre lovers. I think those early films of ours contain an equal share of great and cringe-worthy moments. But the passion and fun is always there.

I say all this so you can have an idea of the frame of reference I approach a film like Super 8 with. Super 8 is the latest from geek-tease filmmaker JJ Abrams, and features a group of young teenage friends making a movie in 1979. One of the boys, our hero Joe Lamb, has just lost his mother in an industrial accident. He and his dad, Deputy Lamb, don’t really understand one another; Lamb Snr. doesn’t understand his son’s interest in monster make-up and horror & sci-fi films and is none too keen on him spending the summer making a zombie movie. The director of the zombie flick is Joe’s best friend Charles, a demanding kid who hassles and wrangles the others into the movie. There’s also the young pyro Cary, star Martin and general gopher Preston. Into this mix of young males, Charles brings in Alice Dainard to play the wife in his movie, to cram in an emotional core. Alice’s drunken dad was sorta kinda responsible for the death of Joe’s mum; he was too drunk to turn up for work, so she took his shift. Despite this, Joe and Alice share a connection. I can see a fair amount of me and my friends in this young group of filmmakers, though they’re obviously heightened. There’s the joy of hanging out together, all making a movie because you just love hanging out together and making movies. And it’s when they’re all together, shooting a scene at midnight at an old train station that HOLYSHIT BIG TRAIN CRASH EXPLOSION KABOOM POW CRASH BOOM PAH!

That train crash you’ve seen in the trailers? Well, this is nothing like what you’ve seen in the advertising – in a very, very good way. And it signals a hard right turn for the film – it’s here that Super 8 changes from a late-70's set coming-of-age film to a late-70's set coming-of-age film with a whacking great alien monster marauding through it. And while keeping back the images of the alien in the advertising is understandable, Abrams keeps obscuring it throughout the actual film, which only serves to become distracting. I can see what he's going for - a Jaws-like effect - but there's no big reveal, no huge Ohmygods moment so it doesn't really work. The creature in fact looks like a smaller cousin of the Cloverfield city-stomper; that is, not particularly memorable. Perhaps Abrams is envisioning Super 8 as being in the same shared universe as Cloverfield – but why?

In any case, the alien is not the star of the show nor the focus of the tale. The kids are. And the young actors making up the group of film-making friends are mostly great and hit that same sort of chemistry that made hanging out with the Goonies such fun. Joel Courtney as Joe is quite the young find managing to carry the emotional centre of the film superbly. And Elle Fanning (yes, younger sister of Dakota) is outright fantastic as Alice. Abrams peppers the adult characters with fine character actors like Kyle Chandler, Dan Castellaneta, Ron Eldard and Michael Hitchcock.

For Abrams' first original feature film (after two TV show adaptations) this is a solidly entertaining adventure. While the alien will never enter the hallowed halls of classic movie monsters, Abrams has otherwise made a cracking film; I could, in fact, have just watched this as a coming-of-age tale without the alien altogether. I'd be interested in seeing what Abrams can do away from the relative safety of genre films; this is the man who created Felicity after all. It feels like Super 8 is a step in that direction with the sci-fi element being Frankensteined on, but only a step.

There is an obvious Spielbergian quality to the film; Abrams is directly referencing and calling back to the early films of Spielberg. Which is not to say Super 8 is some sort of slavish homage (Superman Returns); this is still through Abrams' lens: instead of an absent father, there is a struggling father. And where Spielberg’s “kids” movies took place in the time period in which they were made, Abrams has gone back to the time period of his own childhood; the time when Spielberg was making these films. Does Abrams think there is no innocence anymore? Are kids today too interconnected via technology? Or, is it just a little bit of nostalgia and a call back to his childhood? I think it must be a little from all of those.

What Abrams doesn't manage to take from Spielberg though, is his elegance. Spielberg's films, for all their whiz-bang special effects, always have a real heart at the centre of them with everything intertwining and leading to the emotional pay off come the end. Abrams goes for the big metaphor, but doesn't quite pull it off; it doesn't quite all come together. But the man knows how to shoot a scene, and really goes to town (so to speak) with the destruction visited upon the small town. If only he weren't so enamoured with the lens flares. My gods, the lens flares. It's a stylistic tic we could do without, thanks. In Star Trek they were similarly omnipresent, but at least they made sense within the context of the film: the Enterprise was bright and shiny and new and decked out like an Apple product. I thought perhaps they might be the sort of lens flares caught on a cheap super 8 camera. Nope. It's just a thing he does now.

Lens flare aside, Super 8 is a surprisingly entertaining film. Yes, it harkens back to similar films of yesteryear either produced or directed by the Beard and it does so with nostalgia and respect while being it's own beast. I can't help but be reminded of my own times being covered in fake blood/covering others in fake blood and having a helluva great time doing so. I thought it an interesting dichotomy though that this is a movie about kids working with film (the super 8 of the title), but was projected digitally.