If you've ever had the fortune of reading a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the novelist behind the likes of Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, you'll know that attempting to envision the writer's nihilistic style and sketchy characters for the cinema screen is a monumental task. It takes a master director like David Fincher to make something truly wonderful, as he did with 1999's Fight Club, and to understand that simply plucking the best scenes from the book, stringing them together, and hoping it'll somehow flow, simply won't work. Choke, based on Palahniuk's 2001 novel, is written and directed by Clark Gregg, the actor now best known as Agent Coulson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and TV's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It's a commendable effort, and Gregg certainly gives it his all, but Choke is all over the place, and is ultimately forced to hack the complex novel into a collection of vignettes that don't really fit together.
Our protagonist is Victor Mancini, a sex addict and theme park employee whose ultimate goal seems to be to piss off anybody he comes across. His only friend is chronic masturbator Denny (Brad William Henke), a fellow underachiever who is almost saintly when compared to Victor. To his credit, Victor pays frequent visits to his hospitalised mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), although she doesn't recognise him, so Victor spends much of the time pretending to be somebody else or trying to bang any of the many nurses in the ward. If Victor wasn't already loathsome enough, he earns some extra cash on the side by pretending to choke on food at restaurants. The con is that a good Samaritan will perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on the blue-in-the-face stranger, and when the airwaves are clear and the food flies across the room, they will feel responsible for the person they have just saved. As a result, Victor frequently receives cheques from his saviours. In anybody else's hands, Victor would be too much of a scumbag to bear for 90 minutes, but he's played by Sam Rockwell, and the great underappreciated character actor somehow makes him sympathetic.
If Choke sounds like a mess, it's because that's precisely what it is. Along with everything else going on, Victor finds some comfort from the chaos in his life in the form of nurse Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), who comes up with her own theory about Victor's birth when Ida reveals that there's something she hasn't told him. Despite the haphazard nature of the story, Gregg just about pulls it off by getting the very best out of his actors. Rockwell and Huston are fantastic, but that's to be expected. Henke, an actor I don't think I've seen in anything else before, gets a lot of laughs out of his loveable schlub, and is so good that it often feels like his character has the more interesting story to tell. Macdonald is charming as the nurse with her own unique approach to dealing with the strung-out relative of one of her patients, and Gregg himself, in a smaller role as Victor's brown-nosing colleague, is responsible for some of the film's funniest moments. But in the end, that's all that Choke is: a collection of funny moments. It certainly captures the idiosyncratic tone of the novel, but doesn't quite know how to fit it all the pieces together.
In a few decades, cinema-goers will look back and dub these times the golden age of superhero movies. Of course, they are still going strong, but 2008 was the year it all really kicked off, with three key movies in the genre, two of which helped kick off Marvel's Cinematic Universe. The year saw one of the very best superhero films, The Dark Knight, although for a comic book adaptation it keeps its feet very much grounded. Nolan's movie will always be loved, and so it should, but elsewhere Marvel were planning on doing something never before achieved by a major studio: to truly bring a comic-book universe to life. Iron Man came first, and was a bigger hit than anybody expected, propelling Robert Downey Jr. from a risk with heavy personal baggage to one of the highest paid actors in the business. This was followed up by The Incredible Hulk, a film now with a reputation as Marvel's runt of the litter. Yet, despite the fact that Edward Norton was eventually replaced by Mark Ruffalo as mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner, the black sheep label is incredibly unfair.
The origin of Banner and his alter-ego the Incredible Hulk was attempted back in 2003 by acclaimed director Ang Lee, and while his desire to literally bring the panels of a comic-book to life was admirable, Hulk was an absolute bore, failing to add any dimension to its central character and struggling to bring the Jade Giant convincingly to life with special effects that simply weren't advanced enough at the time. Director Louis Leterrier's 2008 semi-reboot sort-of accepts Lee's introduction, and starts its life with Banner already living with the unexpected effects of his exposure to gamma radiation. Hiding out in Brazil away from the clutches of General 'Thunderbolt' Ross (William Hurt), Banner is searching for a cure, spending his downtime working in a bottle factory and keeping his heart-rate below 200 beats per minute to keep the angry brute inside of him at bay. Ross views Banner and his powers as property of the U.S. government, and wants him captured in order to harness his abilities to create an army of unstoppable soldiers.
It's a simple premise, but one that compliments the character. Ang Lee tried to find deeper themes in Banner's story, but it just didn't work, and when Hulk finally smashed, it either came far too late or was shot in darkness. It doesn't take long for the transformation to take place in Leterrier's movie, and when notorious Royal Marine Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) shows up with his army pals, the special effects don't disappoint (although they are dated by today's standards), allowing Hulk to smash and batter with coherency. It isn't all brainless action however. When Bruce inevitably leaves his hideaway to return home, he reconnects with his former flame Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), who also happens to be the General's daughter and dating nice guy Leonard (Ty Burrell). It's here Banner hopes to connect with his contact 'Mr. Blue' and cure his affliction, while side-stepping various attacks by General Ross and an increasingly powered-up Blonsky. While I prefer Ruffalo, Norton is an excellent Bruce Banner, and it's fun to wonder what could have been had he stayed in the role, although it's difficult to imagine him trading quips with Chris Hemsworth on an alien planet. The Marvel universe seemed to go on ignoring its existence before Hurt's Ross turned up again 8 years later in Captain America: Civil War, but its importance in the creation of this now-massive world shouldn't be underestimated. I still remember the goose-pimples as Tony Stark swaggered into that mid-credit sequence.
When an animated family film unexpectedly strikes a chord with its young audience and develops into an unexpected hit, as was the case with 2005's Madagascar, the most common problem faced with the inevitable sequel is where to take its collection of rag-tag anthropomorphic heroes next. The original's premise was relocating a bunch of animal characters who had been raised in a New York zoo to be adored by the paying customers to the less-welcoming island of Madagascar. It was a promising idea, but the film fell flat thanks to some blocky animation and a lack of imagination and jokes. With the first sequel, returning directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath have pulled the same trick again, only this time dumping its hapless entourage onto the brutal plains of Africa, with Hollywood again apparently forgetting that Africa is a continent, not a country.
After the adventure on Madagascar, zoo animals Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Melman (David Schwimmer), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) and a small group of militaristic penguins have fixed the crashed plane and are readying to fly back home. Also joined by unhinged lemur King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), they crash again in Africa after running out of fuel, and eventually find themselves at a watering hole, where they are overjoyed to discover more of their own species. Alex also reunites with his mother (Sherri Shepherd) and father Zuma (Bernie Mac), with the latter the alpha of his herd. While the others are each given roles in their animal society, Alex must prove himself to be worthy of his position of heir and title of 'King of New York', while fellow lion Makunga (Alec Baldwin) waits eagerly to take control.
It's a very similar route taken by Ice Age and their increasingly tedious sequels. When the big idea has been used up, simply introduce a long-lost family member and give the comic relief side-kicks their own meandering side-stories. Melman, due to his hypochondria, becomes the village's witch-doctor; Marty struggles to stand out in a herd that looks and talks in the exact same way as he does; and Gloria is courted by a douchebag while she misses the true love right in front of her eyes. The only relief on offer is when the penguins are on screen, and their extreme competency with any given task and frequent bashing of an annoying old lady never fails to raise a chuckle. When they're not the focus, we are stuck with the incredibly uninteresting Alex and a bunch of generic life lessons for the kids watching. If you were content with the little charm of the first Madagascar, then chances are you'll find something to like her. For the rest of us, this is a slow trudge through familiar ground chocked full with broad slapstick prat-falls.
I must have seen Kung Fu Panda, either in its entirety or snippets here and there, over 20 times since its release in 2008. While its relatively simple tale of an underdog who has been laughed at throughout his entire life learning to fulfil his unexplored potential is nothing new, it remains effortlessly entertaining and the kind of film you can catch halfway through and still enjoy what it has to offer. Although the title promises plenty of fat jokes, and there are certainly plenty, the film goes beyond simply appealing to kids with sight gags by working in Chinese mysticism, some wonderful voice acting, and stunning animation that would only get better and more ambitious as the series went on.
Clumsy panda Po (Jack Black) lives in the Valley of Peace, a scenic ancient land in China overlooked by the Jade Palace, home to the legendary kung fu masters. While he dreams of joining the Furious Five - a gang of ass-kicking kung fu specialists consisting of Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Cross) - Po spends his days making (and eating) noodles with his father Mr. Ping (James Hong). When he spectacularly enters the Palace during the choosing of the 'Dragon Warrior', Po finds himself picked out by the wise old Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) as the one to stop the evil Tai Lung (Ian McShane), an escaped snow leopard seeking revenge on Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and his Furious Five.
Taking inspiration from the Chinese kung-fu movies of the 1970's as well as American geek culture, Kung Fu Panda works both as a physical comedy and an action spectacular. Although the characters frequently defy the laws of physics and seem incapable of getting hurt, the action scenes are well choreographed and exciting, with McShane voicing his role with whisker-twirling relish. There are also hints at backstories and questions raised about Po's past (why on Earth is his father a goose?), and the film is wise enough to leave the answers to future instalments and trusting in its simple introductory tale of a misfit finally finding a home. While the majority of the Five don't really find a moment to shine individually, Hoffman lends a certain gravitas to his tragic backstory and relationship with the deadly Tai Lung. The pratfalls will entertain the kids and the gentler moments will no doubt charm the adults, something that Dreamworks generally fails to do with its animated efforts, so it's no doubt that the series remains the jewel in it's crown.
In 1962, the Burmese government was overthrown in a coup by the socialist military, who maintained control of the country until 2011. During this time, Burma deteriorated into poverty, while any protests or statements made against the ruling government were quickly crushed through intimidation, torture, outlandishly long jail sentences and executions. In 1988, a series of marches, rallies and protests now known as the 8888 Uprising were brought to a bloody end as the military killed 3,000 civilians in the streets.
With the media controlled by the state and a ban on any footage leaving the country, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) has trained its journalists to work as guerrilla cameraman, working in the shadows to capture any acts of oppression or revolution. They work as a network but rarely meet, communicating using mobile phones and internet chatrooms, and frequently putting themselves at great personal risk. Being captured could mean death, with our narrator, known as 'Joshua', having his footage wiped early on by secret police and being forced into exile. Clever reconstructions of Joshua receiving updates on a new uprising now known as the Saffron Revolution, led by the Buddhist monks, forms a tense narrative.
The footage captured by the DVB is astonishing, with the action taking place right before your eyes. It is also, at times, incredibly intimate. Early on, the monks distrust the DVB, suspecting they are secret police. When the cameramen are attacked by plain-clothes military, the monks protect them and trust is immediately solidified. You are instantly swept up by the protesters elation and feel their incredible sense of hope, so it's absolutely shattering to see it all torn away. Director Anders Ostergaard weaves the footage together expertly, and the film is wholly deserving of its Best Documentary nomination at the Academy Awards in 2010 (and probably deserved to win). It's as close as you could get to being on the streets of a country under a crushing regime, and the results are frustrating and terrifying.
Directed by: Anders Østergaard
Country: Denmark/Sweden/Norway/UK/USA/Germany/Netherlands/Israel/Spain/Belgium/Canada
Despite the obvious smuttiness of the title, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is one of writer/director Kevin Smith's sweetest, and most formulaic, films to date. Pushing it's 'R' rating to the limit with its combination of sexual innuendo, crude profanity and skin-on-skin action, Seth Rogen's cuddly and beardy Zack and Elizabeth Banks's bubbly and adorably inept Miri - life-long friends sharing a frozen Pittsburg appartment - are a particularly cutesy couple, and the slow realisation of their love for one another provides a nice and oddly believable romance.
Having not paid their utility bills in months due to sheer bone idleness and Zack's weakness for making ridiculous online purchases, Zack and Miri are cut off and are left to huddle next to a home-made indoor fire in their overcoats. Whilst attending their high school reunion, Miri hopes to bump uglies with her former crush, Bobby Long (Brandon Routh), but discovers that he is now gay and in a relationship with gay porn star Brandon (Justin Long - a porn name if I ever heard one). Impressed with Brandon's success, Zack suggests to Miri that they make their own porn movie in the hope of making enough money to have the lights switched back on.
At its best, Zack and Miri is very funny, with Craig Robinson's deadpan Delaney, Zack's co-worker who helps fund the project, providing the majority of the films most humorous moments. When it really should be the anti-When Harry Met Sally (1989), it misses a trick by following the rom-com gospel to a tee. Although it certainly doesn't shy away from the porn (Jason Mewes and Traci Lords get to enjoy most of that), its little more than a veil for a traditional "it was you all along!" romance. Still, even though it doesn't reach the heights of Smith's best works like Clerks (1994) and Chasing Amy (1997), there are plenty of laughs to be had for the casual audience and Smith cultists alike.
On the morning of August 7th, 1972, in New York, something occurred that brought shock and exhilaration to the city's inhabitants. Eccentric French acrobat Philippe Petit wire-walked between the two towers of the World Trade Centre, as onlookers watched in awe and the police waited patiently at either side. Not only did he walk between the towers without safety precautions, but he also tip-toed gleefully back and forth, beckoned for the helpless police to come and catch him, and even found time to have a lie down in the process. With Robert Zemeckis's The Walk currently in cinemas, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt starring as Petit, it seemed a perfect time to re-visit James Marsh's miraculous documentary Man on Wire.
After encountering Petit on a radio show, what struck director Marsh so much about the story is how the meticulous planning that went into this highly illegal act and the round-up of Petit's assisting crew resembled that of a heist movie. With thrilling reconstructions, cleverly played out with silhouettes and shadows, we witness the intense research that went into making this extremely dangerous stunt feasible and safe, the various undercover operations done in plain sight to gather visual information on the building, and of course, the job itself. At one point, Petit and a colleague hide from wandering security officers under a plastic tarp for what feels like an eternity. Ever wondered how they got the wire over that tremendous drop? Well, now you'll know, and it's probably not how you thought.
The central spectacle aside, Man on Wire is very much about Petit himself. Narcissist, egotist, attention-seeker - he is of course all of these things (what great performers aren't?) - but he is also highly intelligent, charismatic, and uses beautiful language when he talks. From a young age, he dreamt of walking in the clouds, and his early life was neatly synchronised with the construction of the World Trade Centre, to which he kept close tabs on over the years. Dazzling crowds with a unicycle and slight of hand tricks, Petit trained for his ultimate goal by walking between towers at Notre Dame Cathedral and Sydney Harbour Bridge. But the World Trade Centre remained an almost mythical entity to Petit, something that was built for him and something he was born to conquer.
Anyone who suffers from a fear of heights may perhaps want to avoid the film. While his climactic walk in New York is shown only with still photographs (no video footage was taken from the top), his previous walks are caught in all their vertigo-inducing glory. Yet these stunts aren't designed to terrify, and although they certainly forced my heart into my mouth, they create an almost transcendent sense of wonder. When recollecting the World Trade Centre walk, many of Petit's accomplices break down in tears. This was a truly special thing - a man literally walking in the clouds - and it is something that can never be done again. It's also fitting that the 9/11 attacks are not mentioned in the movie, as this is as a much a love-letter to the memory of the twin towers as it is to the human spirit of Philippe Petit.
'Iron' Mike Tyson is a man mainly defined by his media portrayals and the various controversial incidents that plagued his boxing career and his life post-retirement, such as biting Evander Holyfield's ear during a hot-tempered slugging session, and his conviction for the rape of Desiree Washington. James Toback's documentary makes no attempt to give both sides of the story, but instead focuses the camera on Tyson himself, slumped in a chair at his home, and let him tell his own story. It becomes clear from the get-go that the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history is a man plagued by demons, stemming from his troubled childhood.
Early on, Tyson describes an incident where he was beaten up by a larger bully and was unable to fight back, and another that saw one his pigeons killed in front of him for no reason at all. This childhood trauma could have left him shaken, but it instead turned him into a man terrified at the thought of humiliation, and determined that it never happens again. After some petty crime landed him in prison, he began to fight, and his potential prowess saw him eventually in the hands of Cus D'Amato, a man Tyson clearly loved and respected with every fibre of his being. D'Amato helped turn Tyson into a beast of a man, lightning-fast and ferociously strong, capable of beating an opponent before he even stepped into the ring.
After he won the belt, Tyson's life became hedonistic; full of drugs, orgies and violence. He describes achieving worldwide stardom at the age of 20 as a blessing and a curse, and the people - or "leeches" - who immediately surrounded him as leading him down a dark path (he calls Don King a "reptilian motherfucker,"). He also calls himself a leech for letting himself get sucked in, and frequently recognises his own flaws. Speaking with his famous high-pitched lisp, he comes across as a humble man; his monologues are mumbled and full of mispronunciations, but occasionally eloquent. His lust for women, mental instability, violent temperament and fear of fear itself explains his actions, but Tyson never attempts to use them as an excuse. We don't need another side of the story, as he dresses himself down better than anyone else can, helping Tyson to become a very human portrayal of a man often thought of as a monster.
It seems strange to think that this was considered a big gamble back in 2008, when Marvel Studios finally began putting into place the ensemble of superhero films that would lead to the fantastically entertaining The Avengers. They hired a relatively rookie director in Jon Favreau who, up to this point, had made the shoddy Made (2001), Will Ferrell vehicle Elf (2003) and kiddie-flick Zathura (2005), and cast Robert Downey Jr., an actor that was still trying to piece together his career after years of drug and alcohol abuse. After all, Iron Man is basically a story about a rich genius who fights crime in a flying metal suit, and had it not being given the necessary thought and care, this could have been a disaster. Thankfully, it's anything but, thanks to Downey Jr.'s infectious performance, a razor-sharp screenplay by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, and Favreau's confident direction.
Weapons manufacturer and playboy Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) travels to Afghanistan with his good friend Lt. Colonel Rhodes (Terrence Howard) to show off his new weapon of mass destruction, the Jericho. He is ambushed and taken hostage by a terrorist group that call themselves the Ten Rings, who seriously wound Stark, causing shrapnel to lodge dangerously close to his heart. An electromagnet is developed by fellow captive Yinsen (Shaun Toub) to keep the shrapnel away from his heart, and the two are forced to build the Jericho from parts of Stark's stolen weapons. He instead builds a prototype metal suit, which he uses to all but destroy the terrorist group and escape back to America. After calling a press conference where he announces that Stark Industries will cease war profiteering, Stark builds his Iron Man suit with the help of his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Seeing stocks falling and the potential collapse of the company, Stark's business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) wants the technology for himself.
The main problem that faces most superhero origin films is having to combine the protagonist's development into the hero of the title with a villain capable of giving the hero a genuine threat to face, as well as blending them together to form one cohesive storyline. Marvel in particular have had trouble with their super-villains, with only Thor's multi-dimensional Loki, played with a thespian quality by Tom Hiddleston, proving successful. Iron Man suffers here too, only it seems almost irrelevant. Obadiah Stane does eventually don a gigantic metal suit for a big showdown at the climax, but Stane's menace comes from his corporate greed, offering only slight hints at what goes on in the big, bald dome of his, while coming across as a trusted friend to Stark.
It is Stark's personal development that takes centre stage, and it's a true joy to watch it. At first, he is cocky, smarmy, and filthy-rich, and after he gets a wake-up call, he is still cocky, smarmy and filthy-rich. Only now he understands the devastation his weapons program is inflicting of thousands of innocents, who up until now, Stark has casually viewed through the safety of his television. In the wrong hands, Stark could have been a disaster, apparently caring little for the ramifications of his actions, buying priceless works of art he'll never see just because he can. Downey Jr. injects the same energy he's been putting into his characters throughout his entire career - fast-talking and wise-cracking, almost comically narcissistic. But Downey Jr. is best at giving his characters an underlying sense of damage beneath the cocky exterior, perhaps a reflection on his long-standing problems in real-life, and this helps give Stark an undeniable depth, and therefore making him effortlessly fascinating to watch.
Iron Man is most entertaining when showing Stark at work - bashing various parts together, interacting with his robots and his house computer Jarvis (voiced by Paul Bettany), and testing his newly acquired powers. His first flying trial has him hovering uncomfortably and struggling for complete control, destroying his hoard of expensive super cars in the process. It's a funny, exciting scene, rounded off with "yeah, I can fly". It's rare for a superhero film to be so successful in portraying the development of its character, whether having to experience a mutation, an experiment gone wrong, or facing childhood fears, this proves that simply building a metal super-suit is far more entertaining. This is still Marvel's best pre-Avengers effort, including it's vastly inferior sequel, and Tony Stark was the best to watch amongst the massive ensemble when the giant ego's finally came together. But that's all down to the care given to this film, which is quite simply a massive hoot.
In an age where mainstream action heroes could do with a little one-on-one time with a psychiatrist, this hugely successful French-American crossover brings back the ethics of a Seagal or Stallone - break an arm in three places first, ask questions later. Whereas now I can look back at the 1980's action genre with a semi guilt-ridden smirk and amuse myself at the questionable politics, Taken takes itself very seriously, trying to disguise it's straight-to-DVD credentials as something cleaner, more 'topical'. The topic is people trafficking, but there are too many stubbly, tattooed foreign bad guys to torture and kill for it to become anything profound. He just wants his daughter back.
Forced into retirement from the CIA to be closer to his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) earns his money from security jobs with his fellow retirees. His ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is now shacked up with her millionaire husband, and announces that Kim wants to travel to Paris with her fellow 17 year old friend. Mills, having seen the evil in the world due to his job, opposes the trip, but eventually agrees under some strict guidelines. Naturally, upon arrival, Kim and her friend are kidnapped while Kim is on the phone to her father, who takes various clues from the phone call to aid him on his quest to get her back.
This was my second viewing of Taken, as I felt like I needed to watch it again after being perplexed by the almost universal praise this received from audiences. I was amazed the first time around at the sheer audacity of the film's racial stereotypes, and the shake-the-camera-a-lot approach to the action scenes. The second time, I enjoyed it a lot more - but as a comedy. There is simply too many plot-holes and general laziness for it to be taken remotely seriously, and the now infamous phone call scene spouting some classic lines. When talking to the kidnapper - "if you're looking for a ransom, I can tell you I don't have any money. But what I do have are a particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career." It's almost too bad to comprehend.
What confused me most is the message behind this movie, as it seems that Mills' overprotective, almost racist (in context of his views of any countries outside of America) father is proven to be correct when Kim gets kidnapped by some sleazy French people. Yes, yes I know this was made by French people, but even they are portrayed in a stereotypical manner, with Mills' police contact, um, Jean-Claude (Olivier Rabourdin), looking like he's stepped straight out of a Jean-Luc Godard movie and is looking for his baguette, beret and necklace of onions. Then there's the sleazy Albanians, smoking cigarettes in string vests, and the sleazy Middle-Easterners, including a grossly fat sheikh who looks like he's wandered off the set of The Thief of Bagdad. Of course the Americans aren't sleazy, just spoilt and bullying.
How this is so highly-praised is beyond me, as every aspect of the film is awful. I could understand people warming to it's cheddar-caked charm and quotable script ("this is not the time for dick-measuring!"), but other reviews I've read on IMDb take this film seriously, as if it was some kind of stepping-stone in action cinema. Well it's not, it's a steaming pile of unoriginal turd, returning to an oh-so-simple tale of revenge set in the modern-world of continental tension and American interference. A minor plus-point is Neeson, who gets through this surprisingly unscathed, given the bilge he has to work with, and manages to re-invent himself as an action star (he went on to star in The Grey and Taken 2 - both 2012). But I think I've finally understood the moral of this story, and it's one I can agree with - don't go to France.
By the start of the 21st century, horror cinema had exhausted the post-modernist referencing of films such as the Scream trilogy (1996 - 2000), or simply settled on a variety of remakes of the ghostly, modernist narratives from Japan (Ringu (1998) for example). After the last decade of the 20th century, which was signified with largely bland cinema, and a political climate focused on the perpetration of sexual deviance, the financial boom of the '90's was still to be revealed as a fallacy, but this extension of capital greed would create an event that would change everything. The attack on the twin towers in New York in 2001, led to a political and media climate of fear. From this fear, the machinations of our political elite were exposed (it was also the first significant decade that unregulated Internet discussion became widespread), with the manufacture of torture on the island prison of Guantanamo Bay. The climate of fear, and the perpetration of US foreign policy on suspected terrorists would inevitably be reflected in cinema - specifically the horror genre.
This trend, set by films such as Saw (2004) and particularly Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) and their sequels, the sub-genre was defined by the journalistic term "torture porn" (or gorenography), and was focused on physical mutilation, torment and bodily endurance. French filmmaker and screenwriter Pascal Laugier took this very conceited concept and managed to create a disturbing, and potentially politically motivated, and gender specific narrative of institutional abuse. After a prologue involving a young girl being manipulated and abused by an unidentified institution, the film portrays an appealing family breakfast, which is quickly intruded upon. A young woman, Lucie (Mylene Jampanoi), bursts into the family property gunning down the 2 point 4 unit. Once she is joined by Anna (Morjana Alaoui), the significance of the murders becomes apparent. This seemingly idyllic family unit hides a dark secret, and these two young women had escaped from their tortuous captors 15 years previously.
Whilst the first part of the film focuses on the revenge of the abused girls, the film alters both thematically and changes the protagonist/spectator relationship. A trick used by Hitchcock in Psycho (1960) when the leading lady, Janet Leigh, is killed off, the audience's identity is with the unstable Lucie. Anna's apparent devotion to Lucie extends to the clean up in the slaughter house. If the first half of the film could be read as a simplistic revenge narrative, with hints of almost delusional character hysteria, then the second part, focused on Anna, forms an incredibly moving and disturbing descent into human suffering and endurance. The secrets that the house hold is tantamount to serious, institutional experimentation.
Before Lucie leaves the film, she is haunted by a twisted and deformed person, the apparition of a girl who attacked her when she was young. But as the house is explored further, the extent of the experiment is revealed. Whilst the perpetrators have moved from their original location, their activities as torturers have moved with them. A basement is set up for the purposes of systematic violence. What becomes apparent is that the experiments perpetrated on young girls is formed by an elite society, looking for answers to fundamental philosophical questions about existence. It is this secretive elite that is reflective of the elitist society that rules the global masses. This society (or global institutions) pursue these transcendental answers with disregard of the masses that they torture. Anna's endurance and levels of abuse, can be transcended if strong enough, but why would we sacrifice our personal narrative to offer information to our institutions? Like the suspected terrorist held at Guantanamo, can any extracted information be effectively useful.
As Hostel portrayed the "other" (that is the foreigner of America) as twisted, and not civilised like the predominant culture, Martyrs portrays the dominant politics of American foreign policy (and the axis of evil simplification of terrorism), as damaging and personally tragic. It is certainly the most interesting of the "torture porn" films that I have seen, but could easily be interpreted as incredibly misogynist. The elitist "society" group within the film focuses its attentions on women only - the gender whose susceptibility to the experiment is historically "easier", but then, the middle-eastern terrorist would be portrayed in the media as women haters. The male interpretation of their religion places the female as second class, and many of the well publicised "suicide bombers" were women.
A damning indictment of the 21st century's fearsome political climate, but also a thrilling, scary, and often disturbing film. It offers interesting twists, and some gory asides of violence and mutilation, with breathless verisimilitude. The last twenty minutes or so shift in tone, and the audience is witness the full extent of the torture experiment. With the climactic allusions towards Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and references to Hellraiser (1987), it is more rewarding than the average gore film of its ilk. As of November 2010, an American "remake" was announced, but here's hoping that by the time the undoubtedly false starts in production of an English language project, will be completely abandoned. Basically, here's hoping that this torture trend will dissipate, and completely disappear. But than again, will the political and social extremities of our current political milieu be changed before the horror genre trend?
After the little teaser at the end of Batman Begins (2005) which saw Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) show Batman (Christian Bale) a Joker card, signalling a new criminal in town, Christopher Nolan faced the task of bringing one of the most colourful and charismatic, and downright evil and psychopathic, villains in comic-book history to the screen. The role would always be Jack Nicholson's, who brought an eccentric performance in Tim Burton's original Batman (1989), but Nolan had a different take in mind. He was to go back to the roots of the Joker to find what really made him tick. Then he cast Heath Ledger, and the rest was history.
After Batman set out to inspire others to rise up against crime in the first film, Gotham City has a new 'white knight' in the shape of new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) who faces the challenge of taking down mob kingpin Maroni (Eric Roberts). Chinese accountant Lau (Chin Han) informs Maroni and his crew he has hidden the money they have been laundering through his banks as Dent and Lt. Gordon come down on them. Fleeing to China, Batman uses unorthodox means to bring him to back for questioning. Meanwhile, the psychotic Joker (Ledger), who has been stealing the mobs money, convinces them to employ him to kill Batman, and sets about causing anarchy across the city, promising to kill someone every day until Batman reveals his true identity.
Summing up the film's plot in a few sentences does not do The Dark Knight justice. Nolan has not made a superhero film here, instead he has created a colossal crime story that has more in common with Michael Mann's Heat (1995) than anything produced by Marvel in recent years. It's quite astonishing how he has managed to pack so much plot and incident into its 140 minute running time without ever losing focus, and keeping the film packed with exceptional set-pieces. If Begins felt slightly amateurish at times in terms of action cinema, Nolan has strutted into this film and given us clear and crisp scenes of bone-crunching fighting, as Batman carves his way through henchmen.
Yet the film will always be remembered for one thing, and that is Heath Ledger's Joker. His casting raised eyebrows at the time, wondering if the fuzzy-haired pretty boy from teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) could take the mantle from Jack Nicholson and bring such a wild character into Nolan's grounded Batman universe. He answered his critics with aplomb, creating a now iconic character that will remain possibly the greatest villain ever created in cinema. His red smile has been replaced by large swollen scars, his green hair is greasy and badly maintained, his make-up patched with sweat, and his clothes tatty. "Gotham City deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm gonna give it to them," he says as he sets alight a stack of cash almost double his height. This is a Joker that cares about nothing but anarchy, having no ultimate purpose or goal.
Although the Joker steals the show, this is still Batman's film, with Nolan this time drawing on the similarities between the two characters. They are both freaks and outcasts, as the Joker points out, yet where Batman is fighting a seemingly ill-fated battle against a Gotham that has descended into chaos, the Joker embraces his place in the world as an outsider. In one exceptional scene, Batman interrogates him in a police cell, losing his code and battering the truth out of the Joker. Although Bale's ridiculous gravel-voiced Dark Knight will be parodied, Bale is again outstanding, switching between Patrick Bateman-esque arrogance as he puts on his playboy mask, and the tortured soul, watching his love Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes) fall in love with Harvey Dent as he sacrifices himself for the sake of the city.
The supporting cast are solid and reliable as ever, with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman bringing some real weight to the film. Aaron Eckhart, an actor I've felt has gone unappreciated for years after seeing him in the excellent In The Company of Men (1997), is a revelation as Dent. He is a man the city put their hopes into and is determined to make a difference, but the Joker's mayhem tests his sanity and his sense of justice, turning him into the twisted Two-Face (a role made ridiculous by Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever (1995)).
I watched this again for what must be the sixth time, and the first time I've seen it for some time, and was possibly blown away even more than any other viewing. Perhaps this time I was able to grasp the sheer scope and vision of Nolan's world, with he and his brother's screenplay being just as sharp as anything else that year, and the action scenes (which employ minimal CGI) simply explosive. But it is Ledger, ultimately, that will linger in the mind long after the credits roll, from his disappearing pencil magic trick, to his final monologue, his performance is beyond words, and wholly deserved his posthumous Academy Award. I highly doubt The Dark Knight Rises (2012) will surpass this film, but how could it? This is, after all, the greatest superhero film ever made, and I would assume will ever be.
Punk high school teacher Rainer Wagner (Jurgen Vogel) draws autocracy in project week, and decides to teach his students about dictatorship and how Nazi Germany manipulated the population. He encourages his students to create a club, that they later name 'The Wave', that promotes equality. He establishes himself as their leader and dictator by demanding the students stand up when they are to speak, and refer to him as Herr Wagner rather than Rainer, and also re-arranges the seating by placing the children with good grades with those who are underachieving. Soon enough, the students become heavily involved in the project, creating a logo and holding members-only parties and rallies, and Rainer finds his grip slipping on his students, as The Wave starts to spiral out of control.
Inspired by history teacher Ron Jones' 1967 social experiment called The Third Wave, the film portrays how the masses can easily be manipulated into group thinking, in modern Germany who think the idea of history repeating itself as ridiculous. What starts out as an innocent club soon turns into a fascist regime, with non-members being victimised and segregated, in an obvious parallel to the way the S.S. used threatening tactics to anyone they believe to be against the Nazi Party. The film is very intriguing in this sense, in the same way as Oliver Hirschbiegel's thrilling Das Experiment (2001) showed how we can be tricked into playing social roles, but I felt the film went a bit too far towards the end and became somewhat unbelievable. But the performances are solid (especially by Vogel) and the film is well-scripted and moves at a fast pace, so it is a pity it loses its grip at the climax. A solid film that should be watched by anyone interested in social and political thinking.
There have been precious few true innovators of Gay Cinema (if you can really call it that). Sure, great directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pedro Almodovar were/are openly gay and can boast an impressive back catalogue of films, but few have tackled the portrayal and attitudes towards homosexuality with such an eagerness than Britain's own Derek Jarman. Derek is a loving recollection of Jarman's life and work, spoken by Jarman himself, intertwined with visuals and poetry by Jarman's muse, Tilda Swinton.
I have only seen one of his films - his most popular, 1986's excellent Caravaggio - which puts me in a slightly awkward position in reviewing this documentary, having relatively little experience of his art. But after viewing it, although it runs at a slight 75 minutes, I feel prepared to tackle his films with more insight into his thinking. He discusses his childhood growing up with a military father and a free-spirited mother in Middlesex, and then his artistic awakening at the Slade School of Art, where he fell in with many radical artists that help mould his own output. His first film, Sebastiane (1976) caused a massive stir in its open depiction of homosexual desire, featuring highly erotic, slow-motion of scenes of love-making (and an erection!).
Jarman would fall in love with the punk movement, and directed many 8mm shorts and low-budget, sometimes avant-garde features, as well as music videos for the likes of The Smiths and Pet Shop Boys. But it would be his activity in Gay Rights activism that many of his friends and colleagues appreciate and love him for, which is clear from the words of Swinton. She remembers him in melancholy voice-over tinged with sadness and longing, as Jarman died of AIDS-related illness in 1994. During his final years, he was losing his sight and health, which led to him making Blue (1993), a film consisting solely of blue imagery as Jarman narrates. Derek is an insightful and constantly informative documentary, which can be enjoyed by Jarman fans and newcomers alike, showing Jarman as an extremely likeable yet truly under-appreciated film-maker.
After the massive success of the hugely over-rated debut feature, The Sixth Sense (1999), M. Night Shyamalan could only really go one way. The series of films that he produced over the years have always been absolutely reliant on a twist, or put simply, one single idea, that the film's entire narrative is hinged upon. In his first the lead character was dead, in Unbreakable (2000), the lead was an unwitting superhero, in The Village (2004), it was the media signifiers of the war on terror. In essence the films were quite interesting. However, as films they were largely dull, pretentious drivel. I never actually saw Lady in the Water (2006), so I am unable to comment on the film he directed before this atrociously titled, The Happening.
The film begins with a series of vignettes showing various New Yorker's stopping their movements, and randomly committing suicide. One scene has workmen jumping from the room of a tall building - the director sorely missing out on the opportunity to have The Weather Girls' It's Raining Men playing on a radio, or even with non-diegesis. So, what about that old Shyamalan twist that has become so ubiquitous to 21st cinema thus far? The plants did it! The plants are attacking the entire eastern seaboard of North America, and a struggling couple, Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Alma (Zooey Deschanel) have been given a friends child Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) to take to safety after her father, John Leguizamo, - who willingly manages to slit his wrists, successfully ejecting himself from this awful film - goes off in search of the mother.
Shyamanlan proudly highlights his involvement in his films, with his credits for writing, producing and directing, and his career path would seem to indicate that he combats outside forces in their making. If this is the case, I would state that for his careers sake, he should absolutely make other peoples scripts. For me, I don't really care, having never really liked any of his films. It would appear that the gravitas of the attention he received after The Sixth Sense, (being hailed as the new Spielberg; the wunderkind status in the media) clearly have hindered his films. And as I watched Wahlberg and Deschanel, zombie-like in their delivery of some very poor "relationship" dialogue, and the pathetic narrative of plant spores evolving to drive humans to suicide as a defence, I wondered to myself: Why on earth is this man still making movies? We should relegate him to television reality shows: When Botany Goes Mad!
Known for his own brand of body horror, usually involving forms of parasite and their symbiotic relationship with mostly male protagonists, Frank Henenlotter has not directed a feature film since 1992's Basket Case 3, a sequel to his excellent debut feature Basket Case (1982). Whilst his previous work focused on male stories of addictions and afflictions largely involving strange parasites, detached, mutated brothers, and one creating and manipulating using substance addiction, Bad Biology's focus is on a young woman, Jennifer (Charlee Danielson), who has a very unique affliction that she has learnt to control.
Jennifer has an incredible amount of clitoris's, and is overly sexual. Her biology is also accelerated which leads to her giving birth to malformed premature babies two hours after having sex. Her main goal in life is to feed this high sexuality, but psychologically she really wants love, but her deformities hold this back. This is until, of course, she stumbles on a reclusive man who suffers from an equally weird affliction, and a penis that has it's own consciousness.
It is typical Henenlotter, with the right amount of gross-out horror involving mutant cocks and gruesome, deaths. His brand of body horror (unlike David Cronenberg's style) has an abundance of spot on humour. Bad Biology is not his greatest film by a long shot, but it does pass by quickly, and is often very fun. OK, so the special effects are completely silly, and seems not to have progressed since his original Basket Case, but the stop-motion, detached phallus, eating though walls, is still repulsively amusing.
In an unknown African country, Johnny Mad Dog (Christophe Minie), possibly 14-15 years old, leads a group of young child militia. After the successful infiltration of a TV station, who they believe support the President, they march on to try and capture the capital city. They rape, murder and destroy their way through the city, with scant regard for the cause they're fighting for or the cities inhabitants. Meanwhile, Laokole (Daisy Victoria Vandy), a young girl around Johnny's age, tries to survive with her younger brother and her wounded, legless father.
Shot with a documentary-like realism, director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire employed an unknown cast, many of which are actual former child soldiers. We are shown in detail how they are taken from their families and have hatred drilled into them by their colonel, who spouts his motto "you don't want to die, don't be born." It's a savage story set in a savage landscape, and, in the central storyline, we are not allowed the comfort of having any sympathetic characters. There are moments of black comedy - at the beginning we see one of the soldiers loot a victims house and put on a wedding dress, which he wears for the majority of the film, and No Good Advice (Dagbeth Tweh) steals a pig from a victim and stubbornly struggles to carry it on his shoulders. They are clever devices that make the film all the more terrifying and almost unbelievable.
The cast are superb to the point where I often forgot I was watching a film, and instead was watching a beautifully filmed documentary. As Johnny, Minie is dead-eyed and stoic, with only fleeting glimpses of a heart beating beneath his cold exterior. He is simply doing what he has been brought up believing, that what he and his crew are doing is revolutionary. They have scant regard for their own lives, being convinced from a young age that bullets won't hurt them, and their bodies jacked-up with alcohol and cocaine. As the credits roll, the sound of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit seems a strange and ill-fitting choice, but it does not stop Johnny Mad Dog from being a powerful expose of a world that is almost alien to the West.
Our protagonist is Victor Mancini, a sex addict and theme park employee whose ultimate goal seems to be to piss off anybody he comes across. His only friend is chronic masturbator Denny (Brad William Henke), a fellow underachiever who is almost saintly when compared to Victor. To his credit, Victor pays frequent visits to his hospitalised mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), although she doesn't recognise him, so Victor spends much of the time pretending to be somebody else or trying to bang any of the many nurses in the ward. If Victor wasn't already loathsome enough, he earns some extra cash on the side by pretending to choke on food at restaurants. The con is that a good Samaritan will perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on the blue-in-the-face stranger, and when the airwaves are clear and the food flies across the room, they will feel responsible for the person they have just saved. As a result, Victor frequently receives cheques from his saviours. In anybody else's hands, Victor would be too much of a scumbag to bear for 90 minutes, but he's played by Sam Rockwell, and the great underappreciated character actor somehow makes him sympathetic.
