Over the course of a career spanning over 50 years, writer, director and producer John Carpenter has been responsible for some of the most memorable and iconic horror/thriller movies ever made. The likes of Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York and The Thing have cemented his status as a genre icon, up there with the likes of George A. Romero and Wes Craven as one of America's finest horror visionaries. His legacy cannot be damaged, although it appeared that Carpenter was trying his best to sully his own reputation between 1996 and 2001 with three utter stinkers. First came Escape from L.A. and that surfing scene, and then the underwhelming Vampires, which wasted a perfectly game James Woods in what was an instantly forgettable and generic undead actioner. Then people thought he had lost the plot completely when he produced Ghosts of Mars, one of the worst movies to be released in 2001.
Over a century into the future, Mars is undergoing terraforming, and a matriarchal society of humans have settled on the red planet in the hope of better opportunities. Life is far from peaceful however, and crime is rife in the various remote mining communities. A crew of police officers including Lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) are tasked with transporting notorious prisoner (and the amusingly named) Desolation Williams (Ice Cube) to stand trial for a spate of gruesome murders he is accused of. When they arrive in town, the place is deserted, and it doesn't take long until they stumble on a number of mutilated dead bodies hanging from the ceiling in macabre fashion. Ballard and the rest of the group, which is also made up of rapey Sergeant Jericho (Jason Statham) and token lesbian Braddock (Pam Grier), split up to investigate further and locate Desolation. As they plough on, they learn of an alien force with the ability to possess humans and no love for their planet's new colonisers.
Anyone who was alive and watching movies in the late 1990s will know that Mars is no place to visit unless you wish to be set upon by a gruesome native. Ghosts of Mars is no different, but the film never feels terribly sure of what the threat actually is. Carpenter throws just about everything at the screen: ghosts, zombies, steampunk rovers, blood, guts, and even some train action. It's a muddle of ideas taken from far better films, including some of Carpenter's very own. It's Assault on Precinct 13 meets The Thing, with a sprinkling of The Fog, but without any of their style, thrills or flair. When the characters stop aiming at each other and have a chat, the dialogue is clunky and fuelled by exposition. Henstridge tries her best with a role that could champion equality if the film didn't insist she takes her clothes off, and the usually reliable Ice Cube and Statham fail to squeeze any life of their stock characters, who never rise above foul-mouthed ghetto survivor and smug sleazebag, respectively. It's a horror show from start to finish, but not the kind you would expect from Carpenter. The years haven't been kind either, reducing Ghosts of Mars to SY-FY Channel-level drivel.
With the sheer volume of teen sex comedies being released in the wake of unexpected smash-hit American Pie in 1999, Wet Hot American Summer flew way under my radar in 2001 and didn't come to my attention until Netflix announced that they were releasing a prequel series in 2015. It was a strange time when the likes of Chris Klein and Breckin Meyer threatened to become movie stars, but near enough all of the cast of Wet Hot American Summer have since established themselves as movie stars or famous faces in the comedy circuit and are still going strong. The film, directed by Role Models' David Wain, has also gone on to garner a cult following, thanks to its gleefully absurd sense of humour, anarchic storytelling approach, and 1980's setting.
Set on the final day of summer camp in 1981, Wet Hot American Summer tells its 'story' in the form of vignettes, with most of the characters looking to get their end away one way or another. There's Beth (Janeane Garofalo), the camp's director who finds herself inexplicably attracted to shy astrophysics assistant professor Henry (David Hyde Pierce). Coop (played by co-writer Michael Showalter) has the hots for fellow counsellor Katie (Marguerite Moreau), but her attention is taken up by her rebellious and obnoxious boyfriend, camp badass Andy (Paul Rudd). Other characters include Gail (Molly Shannon), the heartbroken crafts teacher, Gene (Christopher Meloni), the intense Vietnam veteran who has a habit of accidentally revealing his bizarre sexual habits mid-conversation, Victor (Ken Marino), who must run miles back to camp if he hopes to get laid, and Susie (Amy Poehler) and Ben (Bradley Cooper), the seemingly picture-postcard couple who aim put on the greatest talent show the camp has ever seen.
Most people's enjoyment of Wet Hot American Summer will hinge upon their willingness to accept the film's goofiness. It's a gag-a-minute: some jokes land, but most don't. It works best when at its most silly, like the sight of Marino struggling to jump over a tiny roll of hay in the road on his quest to lose his virginity, in a gag that brings Father Ted to mind, or Garofalo's one-hour trip into town that quickly descends into crack-smoking, granny-robbing depravity. But the film leans on the charm of its ensemble to get by, and with the sheer volume talent on show (Meloni and Rudd have never been funnier), it works well up to a point. As a nostalgia piece, it lovingly nails the era long before the likes of Stranger Things and It, and the result is a hybrid of Meatballs, Porky's and Friday the 13th. It's main problem is that it's lampooning something which isn't quite ridiculous enough to make fun of, so rather than a clever parody, it often resembles yet another entry in the teen sexy comedy wave that was thankfully dying out by 2002. Still, I understand the appeal and the cult following, but it feels like I'm slightly too late for the party.
Sleepless, or to give the film its original Italian title, Non ho sonno, was a commercial success in its native country and marked the return of legendary director Dario Argento to the giallo sub-genre after a long hiatus. Essentially a slasher at heart, Sleepless does see the return of the director's popular trademarks, making this a formulaic and unsurprising serial killer movie elevated by some stylish camerawork and a thumping, energetic score. Taking place decades after Turin was left shaking following a series of killings known as 'The Dwarf Murders', it was assumed that the killer was dead after its main suspect disappeared and the crimes came to an abrupt halt. Yet when people (women) start to turn up dead in the same style as those committed back in 1983, it would seem that the one responsible is back and thirsty for more bloodshed.
A young boy, Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), witnesses the horrific murder of his mother. The lead investigator, Moretti (Max von Sydow), promises the shell-shocked youth that he will catch the killer if it takes him the rest of his life. Fast-forward seventeen years later, and the case of The Dwarf Murders remains officially unsolved. Paying the bills by working as a waiter in restaurant, Giacomo, now living in Rome, is pulled back to Turin when his friend offers him a place to stay as the murders start to pile up. With the police clueless and familiar with the notorious murders years before, they turn to the now-retired Moretti for assistance, but his memory has deteriorated so much that he remembers little about the case. Reminded of his promise, Moretti hooks up with Giacomo in an attempt to solve the murders themselves. Is giallo novelist Vincenzo de Fabritiis, the dwarf who emerged as the prime suspect before seemingly passing away, actually alive and eager to finish the job?
With sightings of a little person made at almost every murder scene, it appears that the answer is yes. But like most of the greatest gialli, Argento's script (co-written by Franco Ferrini and Carlo Lucarelli) throws in more red-herrings than you can count and will leave you guessing until the very end. With a running time of just shy of 2 hours, Sleepless is overlong, and doesn't offer enough in the way of originality to justify the slog. It may just catch you off guard though, as Argento throws in a set-piece on an empty train with only a potential victim, a conductor and the unseen killer on board, which ranks as some of the greatest work he's ever done. With the return of Goblin on the soundtrack, the movie often feels like a return to form for the Italian filmmaker, but slasher tropes dominate while the giallo nods often feel like a side-note. This means that there is perhaps more than just a hint of misogyny, and the narrative is repetitive in nature. Still, it was the best work he had done since 1987's Opera, until he regressed again into a series of movies that varied between the mediocre to the downright terrible.
It became apparent rather quickly during my first viewing of The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997 that even an old master like Steven Spielberg was lacking ideas for the follow-up to his 1993 smash. So it comes as no surprise that director Joe Johnston, whose most popular work back in 2001 consisted of mediocre fare like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1989) and Jumanji (1995), failed to squeeze any life out of the extinct prehistoric monsters on show. Even the writing talents of Oscar-winners Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor - who co-scripted with Peter Buchman - struggle to bring any dimension to the film's ensemble of disposable characters.
When their son Eric (Trevor Morgan) goes missing while para-sailing near to the dino-infested island of Isla Sorna, his wealthy parents Paul (William H. Macy) and Amanda (Tea Leoni) look to launching their own rescue mission. As their guide, they approach Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), one of the survivors from the events of Jurassic Park, to whom they offer a big pay-cheque and the promise that their plane will not touch ground. Paul and Amanda have some explaining to do when they inevitably land on the island and are soon running for their lives from a hungry spinosaurus. The velociraptors have also become more intelligent, learning to vocally communicate with each other, and do not respond nicely when Grant's assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola) steals one of their eggs.
It's no surprise that the franchise stagnated for 14 years following this third instalment. Little more than a re-hash of the first two movies - characters scream, run, get eaten, and make stupid decisions, while the true stars, the dinosaurs themselves, still impress. There's little pity to be had for the characters as we are urged to accept that Paul and Amanda would let their young son adventure near to an island now famously inhabited by ravenous monsters, and then ignore every piece of advice offered to them by the expert they employed. Even Sam Neill sleepwalks his lines and fails to bring any life to Dr. Grant. It all just seems like a pointless exercise, like everyone involved were simply seeking a nice pay day, and any ethical questions raised in the first two films are ignored in favour of somehow squeezing in yet another dinosaur attack.
With Freddy Vs. Jason still stuck in development hell, Friday the 13th producer and creator Sean S. Cunningham wanted to ensure that audiences didn't forget about the monster in the hockey mask and gave us a tenth entry, coming 8 years after the previous film. With the last two instalments attempting to change the formula (getting him out of Camp Crystal Lake and then turning him into a body-jumping ghoul from Hell) and becoming two of the most hated entries into the franchise in the process, Jason X faced a battle to bring the well-worn slasher genre to a modern audience. Well, all gore-seeking teenagers love space, right?
When the title is a film's cleverest attribute, you know it's in trouble. In the near-future, Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is imprisoned in Camp Crystal Lake's research facility, where a bunch of silly scientists (including David Cronenberg) look to transport him to another location in order to carry out further research. Naturally, Jason breaks free and kills everyone, just before being frozen along with the sexy doctor Rowan (Lexa Doig). They are discovered almost 500 years later by a group of explorers from Earth II, who take the two corpses aboard their ship, bringing Rowan back to life using advanced science. With Jason now established as a supernatural being who cannot be killed, he is soon alive and kicking and butchering the annoying crew one by one.
With the post-modern horror boom still in full swing thanks to Scream (1997), Jason X plays mainly for laughs. Clearly made with the series' fans in mind, it features various winks at the audience and just may have worked had the script, actors and production values been anything other than abominable. Bad special effects can have its charms, but Jason X looks like a mid-shelf TV show most of the time, with the only inspired effect coming from a poor female doctor who has her face frozen with liquid nitrogen and then smashed to pieces on a work surface (one of the best Jason killings in the entire franchise). Rather than being funny, it feels symbolic of what a parody of itself the series has become. The fans will surely disagree, but the Friday the 13th films have never been good, and Jason X is the poorest of them all. It may not tell us how to kill Jason once and for all, but it demonstrates how to kill a franchise.
Never in a million years would I, sitting in the cinema (with my mum and stepfather, oddly enough) back in 2001, think that the auto-porn I had just witnessed would kick-start a hugely successful franchise due it's seventh instalment next year in 2015. Not that I didn't enjoy the 90 minutes of homoerotic machismo, endless gear-stick changes, scantily-clad gyrators and a cameo by Ja Rule - I actually found it highly entertaining in a Point Break (1991) sort-of-way - it's just that how much of an audience can a film about cars draw? Lots, it would seem.
Undercover L.A.P.D. officer Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) is assigned to infiltrate a gang of street-racers led by the notorious Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) after a series of high-speed truck hijackings using pimped-out Honda Civics. A highly competent driver himself, Brian uses his skills to befriend Dominic, while falling for his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). After saving Dominic from the police, Brian earns his respect but not that of his crew, and when Dominic proves himself generous and loyal to those who offer him the same, Brian must choose between protecting his new friend and arresting the criminal he has been assigned to bring down.
The Fast and the Furious' script is often bad enough to make your ears bleed. This is a film where words of wisdom are offered in the form of "it's not how you stand by your car, it's how you race your car,". But it's delivers on what the title promises, and the action scenes are well-staged and it's nice to see real metal bend and break in an increasingly CGI-reliant marketplace. It's loud and often crude, but the two leads of obvious limited acting range prove likeable and actually generate some chemistry. It's difficult to say where the franchise will go after the sad death of Paul Walker last year, but this first instalment was a fun, if brainless, start.
There is a line from Alexander Payne's 2004 masterpiece Sideways, in which Paul Giamatti's lonely and depressed Miles describes his lack of purpose in the world as feeling like "a smudge of excrement on a tissue, surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage," that has always stuck with me. It's a beautiful, poetic line he attributes to the work of Charles Bukowski, although I don't think it was, which perfectly encapsulates his feelings of emptiness. During my viewing of Black Knight, it occurred to me that this line also sums up the cinematic career of Martin Lawrence, black stereotype extraordinaire.
His belief-beggaringly successful TV career made graduated into movies in the late 1990's, and cinema was forced to endure his mixture of prat-falling and tough-guy gun-totin', to which he was convincing at neither. But perhaps I'm being unfair to Lawrence as, after all, Black Knight was written, financed, cast, produced and directed by a whole host of people. all of whom should hang their heads in shame. It is a generic time-travel, culture-clash story in which theme-park layabout Jamal (Lawrence) is transported back to Medieval England, where he faces a corrupt king (Kevin Conway) and his douchebag enforcer (Vincent Regan).
Never mind the complete disregard for anything resembling historical accuracy, offensively stereotypical black characters, the dirt-cheap production design, and the baffling sight of Tom Wilkinson (who, to quote my step-dad, must have been short of a few bob), it's the comedy void that we are thrown head first into that makes Black Knight a truly torturous experience. Clearly the writers think that a shout of "holler!" or the sight of a bunch of white people trying to dance is an acceptable substitute for comedy. An unforgivable experience.
With billions upon billions of pounds in revenue generated from book sales, film adaptations and all other mediums, and with the hysteria surrounding the series now all but gone, it seemed the perfect time to re-visit the Harry Potter film franchise. I'll state outright that I'm a fan of the books: they are hardly ground-breaking pieces of literature, but they are a meticulously crafted and widely imaginative set of novels, maturing with it's progression and with the age of it's characters and readers. The movie adaptations were consistently average, fiercely loyal to J.K. Rowling's prose but always somewhat lacking in substance.
Shut away in the cupboard under the stairs by his adoptive parents (Richard Griffiths and Fiona Shaw), 11 year-old Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) lives an unhappy life. But there's something different about him, as he learns when he talks to a snake at a zoo and makes the protective glass disappear, causing his vile cousin Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling) to fall into the tank. His life changes when he is invited to enroll at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The invitations are burned by the Dursleys, and they go to great lengths to stop him going to a place that will teach him magic, until he is rescued by a hairy giant named Reubus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane).
When introduced into the magical world with Hagrid, Harry learns that he is famous. His parents were killed by an evil wizard named Lord Voldemort (generally referred to as You-Know-Who), but Harry survived the attack, seemingly killing Voldemort and inflicting Harry with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. When he gets to Hogwarts, he is befriended by the bumbling Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and the precocious Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), and the three are quickly embroiled in a plot involving murdered unicorns, a mysterious artefact known as the philosopher's stone, and a giant three-headed dog.
Philosopher's Stone is almost defiantly faithful to the books. Sure, lines are altered here, and minor characters are snipped out there, but this is as close as literally 'bringing a book to life' gets. Yet while this works in it's favour in terms of visualising Rowling's creations, it doesn't even try to develop any ideas of it's own that would have only worked in a visual medium. Much of Rowling's silly and charming sense of humour is lost in simply filming whatever happens on the pages. One of the main criticism's I have for the books is that a lot of the major characters are little more than archetypes, so a lot rested on the three young leads' shoulders in making us interested enough to stick with them.
Sadly, two of the three fall rather flat, with only the gurning and hang-dog Rupert Grint showing a natural gift for appearing on the big screen. Potter is a simple enough character anyway, at least he is at this point of the story, shy, naive but brave, but Radcliffe gives an incredibly one-note performance, encapsulated in the scene in which he discovers he can perform magic. "I'm a... wizard?" he says, lacking anything resembling a facial expression. Watson also struggles to bring much likeability to her self-satisfied bookworm, her eyebrows constantly rising and falling as she struggles to perform her lines with any conviction.
For the rest of the cast, director Chris Columbus has rounded up a smorgasbord of British and Irish talent, a collection of well-trained thespians who steal the entire film from it's leads. Richard Harris plays Professor Dumbledore, Hogwarts' headmaster, Maggie Smith is Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor, the house Harry is chosen for, Alan Rickman is Professor Snape, Harry's greasy-haired Potions teacher, and John Hurt makes a small appearance as a wand-maker. Coltrane probably steals the film as the beast-loving grounds-keeper Hagrid. It's an amazing line-up that would consistently grow both in talent and in numbers as the films progressed.
Ultimately, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a success, weaving an interesting enough story about the possible return of the dark lord Voldemort, with Harry's wide-eyed introduction to the world of hocus pocus. John Williams' Oscar-nominated and now widely recognisable score captures some of the giddy movie magic of early Spielberg, and the attention to detail is often remarkable. But like the book, it ultimately suffers from being too kid-friendly, spoon-feeding lessons in morality without giving much for adults to chew on. It's little more than a well-told children's story, something that would change as the novels became darker and more complex, but at this point, it's a gentle introduction to a captivating world.
Ron Jeremy is adored by thousands, possibly millions, of fans. All of them have inevitably at one point in their lives caught a glimpse of a fat man with a hairy back, ridiculous moustache and gigantic penis making noisy love to a big-breasted woman. His everyman looks and charismatic 'acting' style gave hope to even the most grotesque of horny males, standing out amongst an array of muscular, polished male porn stars. The sheer volume of his output (he claims to have made over 1,500 movies) all but guarantees that he's in at least one of those VHS tapes you find under your dad's bed as a teenager. But there's something quite tragic beneath all the frat house appearances and self-parodying movie cameos, and it's all the sadder that this documentary doesn't really dig deep enough.
Porn Star takes an episodic approach, each focusing on different aspects and episodes of Ron's life. We also get talking-head interviews from the likes of Jenna Jameson and the amusing Larry Flynt, all offering their own anecdotes and insights to the man nicknamed 'The Hedgehog'. It's all light-hearted and loosely structured, but the movie fails to really get a grasp of its subject, preferring to lovingly mock him or to allow others to tell his story. Ron never seems to stop working, attending anything he's invited to and keeping a giant book of contacts that looks like gibberish to anyone apart from him. And it's this somewhat naive drive to achieve mainstream respectability that makes him a tragic character, something the film could have explored in more depth. But ultimately, Porn Star is just a bit of a drag, never managing to capture the energy and tacky razzle-dazzle of the glory days of porn.
Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) is a slow-witted fashion model who is known for his 'Blue Steel' look, and has dominated the industry for years. When the new kid on the block, Hansel (Owen Wilson), starts taking the attention away from Zoolander, and journalist Matilda (Stiller's wife Christine Taylor) writes a mocking piece on him, Zoolander considers retirement. He travels back home to work in the coal pits with his father (Jon Voight) and brothers (Vince Vaughn and Judah Friedlander) but they reject him due to his fashion antics and general uselessness in the pits. Meanwhile, fashion giant Jacobim Mugatu (Will Ferrell) is coming up with a plan to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and feels that Zoolander is just stupid enough to be the hit-man.
I've never really been a fan of the work of Stiller and his usual troupe. While his films are generally entertaining, I just don't find them that funny. Zoolander, though not exactly a classic, is possibly his best, being frequently funny, silly, and most important of all, fun. For all it's prat-falls and ridiculous costumes, it is actually a pretty damn accurate send-up of the fashion industry. Many a time I've been forced to sit through the likes of America's Next Top Model andwhatever new shit Gok Wan has come up with (I detest that man with every fabric of my being), and it is really this ridiculous.
The cleverist moment of the film is when Mugatu announces his new fashion show, called Derelicte, spinning fashion out of the bums and hobo's that roam the streets. It's just the type of pretentious and shallow thing that happens in fashion all the time, taking its influences from the unfortunate and putting it's own naive and clueless fingers all over it. Anyway, that's enough about my hatred for the fashion industry, now for the actual film.
Zoolander has the thing that seems to missing from Stiller's usual films, which is sweetness. As gay as that sounds, it helps elevate the likes of Judd Apatow's films above others, and helps you actually care about the film rather than it being played just for laughs. Tropic Thunder (2008)and Dogeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)certainly tried, and ultimately failed. Although Zoolander is a shallow idiot, he is certainly loveable. And as Hansel, the always-watchable Owen Wilson is just a dim-witted. When the two settle their rivalry and team up, there is plenty of chemistry. Watching them both giggle like children when talking about bulimia is a scene where if handled badly, could have been uncomfortable, but the scene is possibly the funniest in the film.
Yes, it follows the same path as many other a comedy, and some of the jokes fail to hit the mark. But it's fun, entertaining, and features a handful of solid comedy performances. And, as ever, Will Ferrell steals the show as a manically over-the-top designer.
Aggressive and highly-intellectual skinhead Danny (Ryan Gosling) enjoys spending his time getting into trouble and beating up the local Jewish population, whilst proudly displaying his swastika-branded t-shirt. Only Danny has a secret, one that if revealed to his gang of like-minded hoodlums would land him in hot water and would probably lead to his murder - he was born and raised a Jew. Falling in with respected racist and anti-Semite Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane), he is forced to put his violent behaviour behind him in order to spread the hate in an intellectual way. As his hatred for the Jewish community increases, so does his guilt, and so begins a long and confused path for Danny.
I'd heard great things about this film, but I found myself disappointed as the opening scene played out in front of me, which sees Danny frighten a young Jew on a train before violently attacking him in the street. I thought this was going to be another Romper Stomper (1992)and American History X (1998) inspired neo-Nazi film that would offer nothing new. Yet as the film went on, and Ryan Gosling shows why he is probably the most talented young actor working in film today, I was completely engrossed. Danny's character is so fascinating and conflicted that he drives the entire film. There are no cliches here. One of the key scenes in the film is when Danny sits down with a journalist to talk about the Jewish problem. He is asked why he hates the Jews. Danny comes up with an unconvincing argument about the ways Jews like to have sex. He simply does not know why. And when he is confronted by the same journalist about if he himself is a Jew, Danny holds a gun to the journalists head and threatens that if he were to print that information, he will kill himself. Danny has more hatred for himself than for anything else. Fascinating stuff.
Over a century into the future, Mars is undergoing terraforming, and a matriarchal society of humans have settled on the red planet in the hope of better opportunities. Life is far from peaceful however, and crime is rife in the various remote mining communities. A crew of police officers including Lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) are tasked with transporting notorious prisoner (and the amusingly named) Desolation Williams (Ice Cube) to stand trial for a spate of gruesome murders he is accused of. When they arrive in town, the place is deserted, and it doesn't take long until they stumble on a number of mutilated dead bodies hanging from the ceiling in macabre fashion. Ballard and the rest of the group, which is also made up of rapey Sergeant Jericho (Jason Statham) and token lesbian Braddock (Pam Grier), split up to investigate further and locate Desolation. As they plough on, they learn of an alien force with the ability to possess humans and no love for their planet's new colonisers.
