Film Reviews
Who Ass-Kicks The Kick-Ass?
- 23 Apr 10
Early on in Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of the Mark Millar graphic novel of the same name, Aaron Johnson - playing the eponymous wannabe teenage superhero - details his masturbatory habits. Anything can set him off, no matter how high-minded his original intentions. Even a National Geographic-style photo of bare-breasted African tribeswomen is enough to get him dropping trou and making both himself and shareholders in Kleenex worldwide that bit happier. It's a sadly apt metaphor for a film that squanders every inch of its ample potential: any time he comes close to an interesting idea, rather than explore it fully Vaughn loses all self-control, retreating instead into gratuitous ultra-violence, witless profanity and fanboy wish-fulfilment. The film appears to be positioning itself as a tongue-in-cheek cross between Alan Moore's Watchmen and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. Instead, it undermines itself as fatally as Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation, and ends up just another Xbox nerd's wank fantasy.
Thirst
- 10 Feb 10
A vampire film from the director of Oldboy is not what you'd expect from any of those words.
Fairly or not, both Park Chan-Wook movies and vampire movies carry certain expectations. Park is, of course, most famous for his 'Vengeance Trilogy' - Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance - a collective fever dream of deliriously stylish baroque revenge schemes, filled with hammer fights, eye-gouging and, in one instance, a scene that gives horrendous new meaning to the old line about a queue at an execution. Vampire movies, though tamed of late by Twilight and its ilk, by definition run on blood. Thirst, then, billed as Park Chan-Wook's vampire movie, would seem to give the Korean provocateur license to run riot, dousing the screen in creative blood-letting whilst restoring a sense of tragic grandeur to the genre. Which he does. In a way. But Thirst is defiantly not the film the words 'Park Chan-Wook's vampire movie' might lead fans to expect.
Crack-ing (Half Nelson)
- 21 Apr 07
It might take a decidedly non-judgemental stance on the issue, but American indie Half Nelson could never be accused of glamorising drug use. From the opening shot of crack-head teacher Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) waking up with his hand down his pants on the grubby floor of his apartment, there’s never any suggestion that it’s anything more than a habit, a destructive pattern that has to be broken. Where Trainspotting made injecting heroin look like the coolest pastime in the world, however briefly (y’know, before the infant fatality and the cold turkey and the HIV), Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s debut film reserves its ardour for something else entirely: education. Half Nelson doesn’t just make teaching history to deprived inner city kids using your own unique methods whilst strung out on crack look like a viable career path - it makes it look like the only job worth doing.
Ghost Rider
- 06 Mar 07
Hot Fuzz
- 19 Feb 07
I have a lot of love for "Shaun of the Dead". It was easily the best British comedy since "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in 1975, and the best British horror since "The Wicker Man", in 1973. Given that "Hot Fuzz" comes from the same creative team, my hopes were pretty high, and allowing for the lack of zombies (which improve everything, except for family picnics and blind dates) "Hot Fuzz" was no disappointment: The best British comedy since "Shaun of the Dead" in 2004 and the best British cop movie ever!