Birdman (2014)

Fresh, innovative, groundbreaking,unique are just a few of the words I could use to describe this film - it's a one-off. Birdman is the story of a washed-up middle aged actor who used to play a super hero character called 'Birdman'. Riggan (Michael Keaton), takes us on his roller coaster ride back to the top of the business and to make a amends with his estranged family.

The first thing that hits you right from the start is the cinematography - it's amazing! At first I just thought I was watching a single take long scene, a set-piece to set the film off, but then it just seamlessly continued, not only giving the film its uniques one-take feel, but also succeeding in doing something very few directors would have even attempted. In the entire two hours of the film, there must have been five transitions, tops.

The plot is very funny as Michael Keaton and Edward Norton clash throughout the film. Norton plays an ego maniac actor who is cast in Keaton's new play, and they can't stand each other. Keaton has to put up with Norton's antics because the play is his last chance to save his career. Emma Stone plays Keaton's troubled daughter who supports him along the way, but is at the same time a little embarrassed by him. You get an authentic feel of a fast paced and hectic backstage theater atmosphere, created by the one-shot filming. Not only that, but the sets are very well designed -- from the brightly colored neon lit stage sets and busy corridors, to the dingy dressing rooms -- everything has a fresh, vibrant, metropolitan feel.

The chaotic atmosphere in which he works matches Keaton's state of mind during most of the film. He's looks like he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown most of the time, and he every so often disappears into one of his little daydreams where he takes on the superpowers of his 'Birdman' character, and goes for a fly around New York. The scene when he is locked out of the theater and ends up walking around New York in his y-fronts, had me in stitches. Not only is Birdman a wacky comedy and a cinematic marvel, but it also has some complex and subtle undertones as well. A lot has also been said about the ending -- which I think was a very clever metaphorical and ambiguous scene -- which will have you asking the question: is he flying or is he dead?

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Get Hard (2015)

It's films like this that are ensuring the demise of the comedy.To start with, I don't think Will Ferrell is funny at all. He is one of the new breed of American comedians whose sense of humor and comedic style seems to completely escape me. The new style I'm talking about is present in most American sit-coms, The Big Bang Theory is a perfect example. Obliviously Americans and Brits have differing sense of humor, because our TV show have always been different, but as far as films go there used to be really funny America films; the 80's and 90's where the golden years, and produced some real classics.

This new breed of comedy films are badly scripted and the humour is completely reliant upon completely contrived and extremely unlikely scenarios; everything has to be taken to the extreme just to produce a reaction. I want to go back to the eighties style, with a well-scripted, subtle, and altogether more effective style of comedy - the films of the late John Hughes are a perfect example.

As far as Get Hard is concerned, Will Ferrell is just annoying throughout and the plot is ridiculous. As a millionaire banker who is accused of fraud, he has been given 10 years in prison, and 30 days to prepare before he goes to the slammer. So, he employs the services of a car washer who works in the basement of his office building. The basis for which is the usual racial stereotypes that are strew throughout the film. He transforms his mansion into a prison and learns how to fight... And under the presumption that he will be sexually assaulted in prison, he goes to a gay bar and asks a man if he can suck his appendage. The subsequent toilet scene is just sickening rubbish, typical of these kinds of comedies. Most of the film is the same old ridiculous scenarios and extreme reactions to practically nothing. There are a few laughs along the way, but not many, and I think this will be the last Will Farrell film I will watch. This tripe has put me off watching comedies altogether to be honest.

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Dead Snow (2009)

This low budget Norwegian zombie flick shouldn't really work, but it does. Filled with every single horror movie cliche and trope, it's one of those films that are ridiculous in a good way. The story revolve around a group of medical students on holiday in the remotest part of the Norwegian wilderness they could find.

The characters are the biggest cliche of all, from the deadlocked women who looks like a predator, the quintessential attractive blondes, to the fat film geek guy - who is the source of many a horror movie reference during the film.

After the unlikely group settle in, the not so unlikely drunken party starts, a party which is soon interrupted by a knock of the door of the cabin...The knock is the local weirdo with a scary tail to tell. The man proceeds to tell the group about the legend of a lost Nazi battalion whose evil presence remains on the mountain.

Well it doesn't take long before the man's fears are realized, and the group soon start dropping like flies, and it drops to a few remaining to survivors to face the ravenous army of Nazi zombies. The group of remaining characters, one resembling Ash from Evil Dead, with an amputated arm and chainsaw combo, dispense with the zombie horde in more and more over-the-top and super gory ways.

The special effects are pretty convincing for such a low budget indie film, and each zombie death is more original and mega gory  than the next. Dead Snow is good old-fashioned comedy horror fun. A little indie gem which is up there among the best comedy horrors that I've seen.

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Dead End (2003)

On Christmas Eve Frank Harrington (Ray Wise) is driving  his family to his in-laws for Christmas and decides to take a shortcut. Things soon start to go wrong, as the road they are on seems neverending and they are terrorized by the ghost of a young woman.

The film is described as a 'horror thriller' on its IMDb page, but to me it seemed more like a comedy, mainly due to the hilarious antics of Frank Harrington himself. With constant over-the-top reactions and wise cracks, Ray Wise is hilarious in this film. With his dum daughter, annoying son in-law and crazy wife nagging him all the way, he soon starts to crack up.

The family members soon start disappearing one by one, and the last you see of them are their faces stuck to the back window of a mysterious black hurse which drives past them in part of some morbid death ritual.

The film feels like a horror version of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. By the way they are set up, even the scares seem like they are meant to be funny rather than scary. Dead End isn't to be taken seriously as a horror, even if that was what the director intended.

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Tremors (1990)

Tremors is a classic B-movie monster movie, and one of my all-time favourite films. Set in a small Nevada town called perfection, the film mostly revolves around to local handymen, Valentine McGee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward). The two soon realize that the residents of the small are not alone in the baron dessert valley, when they discover a giant thirty-foot-long underground worm.

Ward and Bacon suit their characters perfectly, Ward being the grumpy old red-neck and Bacon the cocky young cowboy wannabe. My favorite character, however, has always been Burt Gummer (Micheal Gross). A local gun enthusiast who had previously been mocked by the towns folk for his lifestyle, soon becomes their lifeline. My favorite scene of the whole film is the one when one of the Graboids breaks into Burt's basement, and he, and his wife Heather kill it with a hail of bullets from their sizable gun collection, with Burt eventually finishing the creature off with two blast of his Elephant Gun.

Broke into the wrong wreck room....

The practical special effects in the film were groundbreaking at the time and still look convincing to this day. You won't see any CGI in this film, which is a refreshing change, there's nothing like good honest practical effects. The only film that I can really compare it to in terms of practical effects is The Thing (1982). 

The film is a mix of comedy, monster movie, and western. - an unlikely mix of genres that works perfectly in this case. The comedy in the film comes from Val and Earls constant wisecracking, and also the over-the-top reactions and statements of the crazy gun-nut Burt. As well as comedy, the film has some genuine 'make you jump' moments - which are well-timed and put together. Everything happens at a brisk pace, maintaining the tension throughout - hence the 90 minute running time. 

Tremors is a quick, fun, action comedy horror, which has cemented its place as one the best monster movies ever made (in my opinion).

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Arachnophibia (1990)

As an arachnophobe myself this film always used to give the creeps. I'd always be looking around checking for spiders in the house after watching it.

Starring Jeff Daniels as a doctor who moves from the city to a small country town to take a job as the towns doctor. Soon after his arrival he learns that one of the locals was recently killed during a south American rain Forrest expedition, and the body has been returned home for the funeral - accompanied by a nasty hitchhiker.

The spider soon starts reproducing, and its offspring start killing the towns folk. After an elderly resident is killed, an exterminator is called in - Delbert McClintock (John Goodman).

Delbert is a comic relief of the film. He's a bubbling oaf who sees himself  as some kind of insect expert. He is soon accompanied by a professor and his assistant, who together try to prevent the spread of the infestation, and the search for the spider's nest. The film is a fun comedy creature flick, with colorful characters and a solid script.

The death scenes are really creepy and involve the spiders entering the bodies and draining the blood of their victims, and the biggest of the spiders is huge and give me the chills.

The only weakness in the film is the acting from some of the minor characters, and the special effects are looking a bit dated now. That said, Arachnophobia is a classic, and will remain one of my all time favorite b-movie horrors.

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Big Ass Spider (2013)

Compared to the recent b-movie horrors released in the last few years - Big Ass Spider! is one of the better ones, with half decent CGI and some pretty good laughs along the way.

The film starts with a scene of apocalypse, with a gigantic spider destroying skyscrapers in downtown L.A. The only thing that stands in the way of the city being destroyed is Alex Mathis, an exterminator played by Greg "Heroes" Grunberg. After the premonition of destruction scene at the start, the film really starts when Alex Mathis is bitten by a spider while on a job. He's goes to the nearby hospital and has an injection of  anti-venom. Just as he is leaving the hospital, the fire alarm goes off..

The alarm was raised by a pathologist who claims to have been attacked by a huge spider that hatched out of corpse he was working on., Alex is called upon to hunt down the spider.

It soon becomes apparent that this is no ordinary spider, and the military soon arrive to quarantine the hospital. The spider gets bigger and bigger with the more people that it kills and soon escapes the hospital, and goes on a rampage around L.A, followed closely along the way by Alex Mathis and a security guard he met at the hospital.

During his attempt to kill the spider Alex meets an attractive blonde army Sergent - in fact all the women in this film are attractive and have big tits . The death scenes mostly evolve scantly clad women being crushed by the spider. The rest of the film is made up of: swimsuit models running about screaming with their tits bouncing around and cheesy one-liners are what make this film so ridiculous but at the same time so entertaining.

Big Ass Spider! is probably the best b-movie horror of the last five years. A quick popcorn action comedy that shouldn't be taken too seriously. 

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V/H/S 2 (2013)

Unlike previous horror anthologies like Creepshow and Trick 'r Treat ,V/H/S 2 fails to deliver on what was a good idea.

Found footage films are usually cheap, low budget affairs, and must be done right to have the desired affect; not many films have achieved this, with the exception of  REC, REC 2, The Blair Witch Project, and The Last Broadcast. V/H/S 2  takes found footage and anthology horror and puts the two together. The result is the horror equivalent of  "You've Been Framed".

The film is basically made up of four found footage shorts, the of which is a tale about a man who has an experimental eye implant that makes him see ghosts, which is all shot in the first person perspective of his eye implant. The hole thing feels like you're playing a survival horror video game, the ghosts look like the ghosts in games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill. The digital interference that keeps cutting into the display of his implant video, is cheap and video game looking. The film just follows him around his house trying to get away from the comically bad looking ghosts that aren't scary at all. Its just a really silly and boring film.

The second film is basically like a bad episode of  The Walking Dead, in which a man (conveniently wearing a helmet cam) sets out on a bike ride through the woods, and is suddenly attacked by a pack of zombies.  To cut a long story short,  he gets bitten, becomes a zombie, and runs around the woods infecting unsuspecting bikers and hikers before taking part in a blood bath at a camp site, where he and the pack of zombie tear apart a group of people celebrating a birthday party. Its all predictable, boring, and some of the acting is truly zombies-like.

This third film is about a team of journalists who go into a monastery school of some kind which is run by mad man. It turns out the loon and his followers are all devil worshipers, and intend to kill all of the journalists, besides a pregnant one, who they intend to use as a sacrifice so the devil.

I quite liked this one. Its the best episode in the film. The special effects were "ok" with some truly stomach churning moments. When the devil eventually surfaces and is let loose from the monastery, he takes chase after the only surviving journalist. When he finally catches up with him, the devil himself looks like a cheap donkey costume with horns on the head, its really comical. Overall though, this one wasn't bad at all.

The final short film, is set in a lake side house in which a group of middle-class teenagers are having a sleepover/party. The camera work is done by one of the kids as they document their exploits. They start playing pranks on each other during the night. During one such prank, a bright light suddenly engulfs the house -- coming from the direction of the lake. The house starts shacking, the lights flicker off, and then suddenly aliens with extremely long fingers burst into the house, and start terrorizing the group of teens. The aliens don't probe the idiot teens, but instead display their staggering ineptitude when it comes to kidnapping. They are within two feet of all of the group many times, but instead of grabbing or fingering them, they lightly stroke them and dance like homos. In the end no one gets fingered, the aliens go away and book some dancing lessons.

At the end of the day, V/H/S/2 is three poorly made low budget short films and one passable one. I hope the current surge of found footage films ends with this terrible example, because the fad is wearing a little thin. Don't be in a rush to see this one.

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American Psycho (2000)

Adapted from the dark and brilliant book of the same name, American Psycho is an ironic, dark, and dam right hilarious social satire.

Its central character, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), is a yuppie of 27 in Wall Street in 1986, obsessed with status symbols, self-confessedly as empty of feeling as his gleaming desk top is of honest labour.
He escorts us through his morning agenda of toilet ablutions, bathroom anointment and wardrobe adornments as if man were the sum of his beauty products.

Feeling alienated by his yuppie lifestyle, he embarks on a psychopathic killing spree: murdering colleges, homeless people, animals, and prostitutes.


His wall-flush stainless-steel refrigerator is stocked with a human head, for snacks. Before he teasingly deliberates whether to use chainsaw or nail-gun on his female victims, he treats them to an extended criticism of the CD he feels suits his slaughterous mood. Phil Collins comes off best.

The social satire and subtle critique of the yuppie culture is apparent throughout. Everyone looks the same--perfectly groomed, nice haircuts and expensive suits. They share one interest --money--and that's all they care about. Everyone is having an affair, and getting up all sorts of debauchery in private, but in public they are all respectable, well educated, pillars of society.

However, the facade of respectability is beginning to slip for Patrick Bateman. A detective begins to investigate the disappearance of the college he chopped up with an axe, and his secretory becomes concerned about his erratic behavior.

In the end though, no one suspects him of anything, even after he confesses to his lawyer. Even the detective seems to respect him, and at no point suspects him of foul-play. As far a society is concerned, Patrick Bateman remains a respectable business man. If the film proves anything, its that money talks.

 

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