No.250 : We Still Kill the Old Way (2014)

We Still Kill the Old Way at the IMDb

 Here’s some fun in the shape of a British set ‘em up and knock ‘em down revenge thriller. It’s knowingly rubbish and peppered with a lot of ‘I thought they were dead?’ type stars, but it’s good fun and no doubt a bit of wish fulfilment for the Daily Mail set who long for the days when criminals looked after the community - Gawd bless ‘em!

The film opens with two drivers heading to different destinations. A beardy Ian ‘The Saint’ Ogilvy is in Spain while some yoofs are on their way to rob someone’s flat. Ogilvy is a retired East End criminal and living the good life in Spain. Meanwhile Aaron and his ‘E2’ crew are terrorizing Ogilvy’s old manor - noising up pensioners and single mums alike.

Aaron also shows his charms with the ladies by bedding a posh girl before taking photos of her and robbing her house. She’s not easily put off however and when Aaron suggests a second date down a dark alley she eagerly accepts. Huge mistake! - Aaaron’s plan is to ‘introduce’ her to his crew. What he doesn’t bank on however is that Steven Berkoff is dining nearby and takes on the feral rabble to save the girl. He gets killed for his trouble but we learn that he’s Ogilvy’s brother and soon the Saint is back in town and looking for revenge.

He gets together his old crew including James Cosmo off those bank adverts and DI Burnside off ‘The Bill’. What follows is a predictable hunting down of the bad guys by the slightly less bad guys until order is restored and the streets are safe for honest folk once again.

I quite liked this film but the pay off didn’t live up to the build up. Ogilvy was good as the O.C.D. Ritchie although I’m not sure he really caught the menace needed for a lethal old school gangster. He was likable and charismatic though, and it was hard not to take to his character. His henchmen weren’t as good, although they did have less to do. He was backed up by Lysette Anthony, who was almost unrecognisable, playing the woman from the neighbourhood who missed the good old days of knife fights and protection rackets. Her part was bolstered by her technology skills which enabled Ogilvy to track his quarry.

All the while the police investigation rumbled on with Alison Doody (off ‘Taffin’) playing the D.C. who respected the old school methods, especially those employed by Ogilvy, when her daughter turns out to be the one being abused by the baddies. The feral yoof were a bit too shouty to be menacing and did that side on gun grip that is so annoying. I guess they were painted this way to show their ineptitude against our ‘heroes’.

I was hoping for more once the battle lines were drawn but there were too few killings and the muddled shoot out at the hospital was somewhat disappointing. The final scene suggested a sequel could be in the offing and I certainly would be up for another slice of this ‘New Tricks’ for Bad Slags.

Best Bit : “Detective Constable? You should take out the ‘Detective’ and the ‘able’.
‘W’ Rating 15/23

No.249 : We Are Still Here (2015)

We Are Still Here at the IMDb

It’s winter 1979 and a middle age couple are heading towards their new Massachusetts home. We learn that they have recently lost their only son and the house, that they have bought cheaply, represents a new start. We know from the off that the house is a bit creepy and very beige, but the early signs of trouble are the usual false starts like a ball bouncing down the stairs and a broken photo frame.

They are soon greeted by a pair of neighbours with the man, Dave, strangely saying the house has not had fresh souls for 30 years while his wife presses a note into the woman’s hand telling her to get out of the house - she was unaware that her curtains were that bad.

They get around to unpacking and doing up the house but the sense of unease continues until an electrician, brought in to investigate a over hot basement, gets fried for his trouble. The suggested terror motif is quickly dispatched as he is confronted and Cajun cooked by some smoky figures with bright eyes. The couple aren’t put off - possibly because they got out of paying the electrician’s bill - but invite over a couple of relatives and their son and his girlfriend to visit.

The couple who are written off as ‘hippies’ have experience of the supernatural and the hope is that they can cleanse the house of the evil spirits and presumably the Kentucky fried electrician in the basement. The two couples head off to the local restaurant where they are made about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool by the locals who know the secrets of the house, I'll be bound! Meanwhile the son and his girlfriend let themselves into the empty house and pay for pilfering the Scotch by being carved up by the evil house dwellers. This pair are effectively fodder as the monsters tidy up after themselves and these atrocities are left unknown to our heroes who assume they’ve just been stood up. Nice that the monsters were keen to keep their security deposit intact!

The hippy couple start their efforts to clear the house of the unwelcome visitors but they are about as effective as a fart against a tornado. Whilst the man hippy is eating his sock and poking himself in the eye the townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands - if our heroes escape the evil in the house will descend on the town, so they head over to help the cinder people - huge mistake. Who will survive? And why didn’t they just burn the house down years ago rather than let it kill a bunch of folk every 30 years?

I liked this haunted house horror despite it’s threadbare plot and OTT violence. The 1970’s setting was well realised with the leads sporting no end of stylish turtle necks and double knits. The actors did a decent job as looking shocked a lot and no one was scared of getting their hands dirty, as more claret was spilled than in a winery explosion.

The premise was a bit weak with the burned bodies of a wronged family showing up every 30 years in need of a fresh family to feast on. There was no reason offered for this timescale or what they were after - nourishment? revenge? A straight to DVD horror? Who knows?

The twin baddies of the monsters and the compliant townsfolk were well done, although it was more for laughs at the end when the locals showed up to help and ended up as the main course themselves. The crackling and smoking family of basement dwellers were well done and exuded some real menace.

The ending was pretty satisfying and I liked the end credits sequence that featured a lot of local newspapers recounting the horrors that had occurred over the life of the house.

I don’t think this film was particularly scary but there were plenty of gruesome kills and a nice air of unease throughout. Definitely one to check out.

Best Bit : ‘We’ll help…aaarrrrghh!’
‘W’ rating 19/23

No.248 : We Are Monster (2014)

We Are Monster at the IMDb

Uplifting family fun now as we enjoy a knockabout British romp set in a young offenders institution. Actually, scratch that - this is one of the nastiest and most depressing films you’ll ever see. It could be claimed to be a drama documentary profiling a shocking case of murder and institutional ineptitude but it’s just a horrible watch that offers nothing in the way or answers or, God forbid, entertainment.

The film opens at its inevitable conclusion with a blood soaked youth being bundled out of his cell as he stands over his bloodied victim. There is no explanation but we are then shuttled back a few weeks so that we can understand how we got here. To be honest they could have covered the ground in two minutes - mental racist kills Asian cell mate. Still if they’d went that way we wouldn’t have had the full 90 minutes of nihilistic fun and racial slurs.

The subject of the film, which is ‘based on a true story’, is Robert a self tattooed racist who has been in the system for years. He is in for threatening a call centre worker and seems off balance from the start. Before long he starts talking with himself - literally as his nasty persona takes form as himself whom only he can see. This leads to lots of scene where he is egging himself on to greater and greater feats of nastiness whilst the P.O.V.s of other prisoners show him to be talking to an empty seat.

The prison officers, who include Clem Fandango, aren’t much use and aren’t shy of a bit of casual racism themselves. They put Robert in a cell with Asian youth Zahid who is in for stealing razor blades - before long he’s going to wish he went with a beard! Zahid tried to be friendly but backs off when Robert gets more aggressive and introverted. Zahid is due to be released in a few days so resolves to keep his head down.

Robert meanwhile starts to delve into his past and tries to rationalise his situation. The film does the same with an abusive childhood and faults in the system the reason for Robert’s mental state. Some of these scenes were well done with his brown underpants wearing father beating him up as a child for wetting the bed. The film isn’t too apologist for Robert’s ultimate act but you do get the sense that they are showing him to be a victim too.

As the film moves towards its inevitable climax we are left to wonder what could have been done differently and what have we learned. Should we have watched that Adam Sandler comedy instead? Maybe!

This is an impossible film to like with its endless racist rants and unsubtle swipes at authority and society. They was an effort to explain Robert’s actions but that veered away from his own responsibility and while he was broken by the system he’s still a murdering scumbag with no redeeming features.

The film was hung on the central performance of Leeshon Alexander as Robert and he did OK with a difficult dual role. As ‘normal’ Robert he was too starey and manic and as his alter ego he was annoying and shouty. He did have difficult material to work with though, as he was spouting a lot of garbage that even the KKK would see as a tad extreme.

The closing captions of the film lay all the blame at the authorities’ door, and of course there were shortcomings, but to make apologies for the central scumbag didn’t sit right and you have to wonder about the point of the whole enterprise. The film’s vibe was hateful throughout and all I came away with was a grubby feeling for having watched the whole grim spectacle.

Best Bit - No I can’t hear you Clem Fandango
‘W’ Rating - 8/23

No.247 : War Pigs (2015)

War Pigs at the IMDb

It’s very easy to slag off a straight to DVD film starring a bunch of Z-list actors…so let’s do that then!

The film is a bit of an ‘Inglorious Basterds’ rip off with a rag tag group of WW2 soldiers sent on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. Here the similarities end however as instead of Brad Pitt and Chrisoph Waltz you get a blink and you’ll miss him appearance from Mickey Rourke and Luke Goss out of ‘Bros’ in the lead. What they didn’t spend on acting talent they also didn’t spend on sets or locations with sunny America standing in for what should be a mud splattered and freezing Europe.

The film opens with Captain Luke leading his troops on a patrol. Bad judgement or intelligence leads him into a nest of Germans and everyone gets killed apart from our hero. He is carpeted by his C/O, a ridiculous looking Mickey Rourke, whose ‘eccentric Major’ doesn’t disguise the fact that he must be the only officer on the Western Front with extensive plastic surgery and a cowboy hat. He delivers his lines in his celebrated slurry fashion and tells Luke that he’s up for a court martial unless he can lead a mission into enemy territory.

Luke may be torn up at the loss of his men, or because he’s read the rest of the script, but he agrees to the mission with the promise that his court martial will go away if he makes it back. We get the idea that Mickey may have another agenda and is being all enigmatic so imagine the disappointment at the end when we learn he totally doesn’t and is just (badly) acting that way.

Luke heads off to meet his new unit the notorious ‘War Pigs’. These are the toughest troops in the army and earned their name by, er, getting down in the dirt. Again I thought this was going to be a big reveal near the end but that’s really how they came by their name. The troops are meant to be your usual bunch of misfits but they all came across as really dull. Except maybe for Dolph Lundgren who shows up as a French Foreign Legion solider who is assigned to the unit for reasons unknown.

After a long padding sequence where the guys are put through extensive training (don’t they know there’s a war on?!) they get their orders - to investigate reports of a giant German artillery gun 10 miles behind enemy lines. That doesn’t seem very far especially at this stage of the war and given they have pissed away weeks in training, but never mind, this climax will be great!

The War Pigs show their greatness by mostly getting captured right away and it’s down to Luke to save the captured troops, find the gun and squeeze out a tear before the all too welcome end credits.

I quite enjoyed this terrible film, as a guilty pleasure you understand. It failed on almost every level with no characters to speak of, very little peril and dialogue that will make you cringe. Luke is a horrible actor and didn’t convince one iota as the troubled captain. He seems a nice enough bloke but saying ‘Soldier’ in every sentence doesn’t convey authority nor did he seem believable as an action hero taking down three Jerries in a fist fight.

He was better than Rourke however, who gets a laughable front and centre slot on the poster for his five minute’s work. His Frankenstein face and white cowboy hat made him look ridiculous and he conveyed all the menace of Sylvester Stallone’s mother.

The baddies were very poor too, with the one who was charged with the predictable old Gestapo torturer role as scary as a My Little Pony. The big threat of the super gun (it’s only a model) was nothing of the kind and dispatched with such ease you wonder why they didn’t issue our guys with pea-shooters instead.

The climax, which included a seemingly heroic death for Lundgren reversed, suggested a sequel could be possible - dear God no! I’d rather fight the Germans myself!

Best Bit - Luke goes Mano-a-mano-a-mano-a-mano.
‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.246 : W.M.D (2013)

W.M.D. at the IMDb

You won’t of heard of this film, and I bet it doesn’t grace the C.V.s of its principals, but it’s out there and I sat through the whole 80 crappy minutes of it.

The film opens with a trio of soldiers walking is a desert which is supposed to be Iraq but looks suspiciously like California. One of them steps on a mine and after five minutes of chat they engineer a way to free him without the device going off. This scene has nothing to do with the rest of the film so it must have been shot to bump up the film’s run time or to show why our men may be damaged having served in a war zone. Or maybe they found an extra $5 in the budget and fancied a day out?

Anyway the film proper opens at a Baghdad military base on Thanksgiving, where the President is coming to visit. He isn’t named but he is dressed up like George W. Bush and references are made to his father also being President so if it’s not him it’s a pretty unoriginal new character!

The President makes a few glib jokes before a soldier pulls a gun and takes the President hostage. Unfortunately the fat and bomber jacket wearing ‘Secret Service Agents’ aren’t really on the ball and soon the President and four soldiers are holed up in the kitchen where the majority of the film takes place. The five are soon joined by a lady reporter and a cameraman and so begins a drawn out conversation where the rights and wrongs of the Gulf War are explored. If that sounds a bit dry, then that’s because it is.

The leader of the kidnappers, Garrison, is large and overbearing. As well as a loud, annoying and devoid of acting skills. He also has a semi-reluctant lady soldier with him as well as a dull one and a shouty random one. Like ‘The Rock’, from where much of the film is lifted, a rescue operation goes on whilst the President is interrogated and tortured by the soldiers who want answers for the motivations behind going to war and why their friends have been killed.

Will the President be saved and what sin will the media put on the events?

I really disliked this film and it was hard to see it through. It’s agenda was clear from the start and it was almost like liberal wish fulfillment with a Bush clone being made to atone for his sins. He gets his face fried, shoes thrown at him and is water boarded and you could almost hear the long haired liberals high fiving each other off camera. Take that Republicans!

The film closed with the tired old staple of various news outlets spinning the story as a Muslim atrocity while the stock ticker on screen shows share prices rising. It wasn’t subtle and definitely not objective. It was also very low budget, poorly acted and had no redeeming features whatsoever. One to avoid!

Best Bit : ‘How do you like your face cooked?’
‘W’ Rating - 2/23

No.245 : What Richard Did (2012)

What Richard Did at the IMDb

 If you regard knowing ‘What Richard Did’ as a spoiler, walk away now as it would be hard to discuss the film without mentioning the pivotal event. You’d probably guess anyway - it’s hardly going be that he cheated at Scrabble or something.

This is an Irish film from 2012 with an unknown cast and an almost drama-documentary approach to the storytelling. The characters all chat over each other and there is very little in the way of music, but you are drawn in and the film makes you feel like an onlooker to actual events.

The titular Richard is a young Irish rugby player. He has rich parents who own a beach house and he is the leader of his group of pals. They all look up to him and we see him carrying out good deeds such as taking a youngster under his wing and helping a girl on the verge of being date raped. These philanthropic traits are however seen in a different light later on when his skills at lying as used for less worthy goals and he is also seen to have weaknesses of his own.

The first half hour of the film is taken up with Richard and his friends heading to the beach house having bought a cargo of beer. You wonder what the point of it all is, as it trundles along with meandering scenes and largely pointless dialogue. It does well at setting the tension levels however as you are keen to know what it is that he did and when he’s going to do it - it’s Itchy and Scratchy heading to the fireworks  factory all over again!

Although handsome, fit and a friend to all we gradually get the idea that Richard maybe isn’t all he’s cracked up to with throwaway comments about people’s accents and bulimics suggesting he may be more of a dick than we initially thought. Things come to a head when he jealously sits at a party watching his new girlfriend chat to friends including a former boyfriend, and team mate of Richard, Conor.

After brooding outside the party for a while Richard confronts Conor and the two fight. After Conor gets a beating from Richard with the aid of his rugby mates, Richard gives him a final kick to the head before heading home. The next morning they learn that Conor has died of his injuries and the remainder of the film deals with the fallout. Will Richard come clean to the police or will he try to escape the consequences of his actions?

I enjoyed this moral drama and, although slightly ambiguous in its ending, I’m sure that the seeds peppered throughout the film pointed towards Richard’s character flaws dictating his final response. Although hanging on one event and decision the 85 minute film didn’t seem padded with a lot of effort put into the character development that ensured the subsequent revelations were well earned.

There were lots of scenes that ended abruptly or seemed to have little relevance but the compound effect of these was to make you feel like a voyeur peeping into the lives of others. The acting was top notch and Jack Reynor did a good job as Richard, making him likable but objectionable all at once.

At the end I don’t think there was much in the way of ambiguity and you could level accusations against the film of not having much to say. It is however an intense character piece and a great example of someone being built up and then slowly dismantled by his flaws.

‘W’ Rating 17/23
Best bit : Going for the 3 points!

No.244 : Watchers (1988)

Watchers at the IMDb

 If you are in the market for an 80’s monster film with big hair and a super intelligent dog then ‘Watchers’ may just be what you are looking for. It’s based on a book by Dean Koontz (at least I think that’s how he spells his name) and I’m guessing it is pretty far removed from the source material as no one does much watching nor are any of the protagonists called ‘watchers’. Still I watched it (worse luck) so let’s see what we saw.

The film stars a mulleted Corey Haim who has a BMX and a hot girlfriend. They get all kissy face in a barn but before you know it she’s been kidnapped and a large monster is on the prowl. We learn from Secret Service Agent Michael Ironside (hair loss at critical levels) that an experiment has escaped from a local lab and it is on a killing spree. It doesn’t like eyes or mirrors so you have to wonder if it is having a bad hair day itself. In fact it is looking for its fellow escapee, a super smart dog. Ironside also warns that there were three experiments at the lab!

The super smart dog shows up at Corey’s house and he christens it ‘Fur face’. The dog understands English and is soon fetching hot dogs, playing Scrabble and writing computer messages with a pencil in it’s mouth. Obviously these things are impossible with paws so fortunately its handiwork happens off camera. While Corey is bonding with the dog, partly by sleeping in the nude with it under his covers, the monster is on the rampage. Various bit parts get chomped and have their eyes removed in scenes a bit too graphic for a film with a smart dog and BMX interest.

Ironside realises that Corey is his best chance to catch up with the monster and dog and soon gets as brutal as the monster - are his ties to the lab more than he is letting on or did he just find the wig shop closed? As everyone converges on a remote shack the scene is set for a titanic battle where the real monster will be unmasked and the fires will be terrifying - well there is a lot of hairspray about.

This was a right old pile of crap but it was funny and dated enough to keep me watching. Not in an ironic way where I laughed at the hairstyles and bad acting…Ok in  exactly that way.

The feeble plot doesn’t have enough to sustain a 90 minute film so subplots and disposable characters are thrown in such as Jason Priestley’s BMX gang who are dispatched in merciless fashion by the monster who clearly had enough of their terribleness - at least Piggy almost made it. The monster itself was a slow reveal with hairy arms and the odd toothy yell all we were treated to. They should maybe have kept it ambiguous as the 'terrifying creature' turned out to be the same costume as the one from‘Bigfoot and the Hendersons’.

The acting, admittedly with terrible material, was shocking with Michael Ironside doing his best to be a hard as nails baddie whilst trying to stop dazzling us all with his bald head and spouting his menace free dialogue. At one point his partner says “This is pretty ridiculous, don’t you think?” Sir, you are correct!

Best Bit : Michael’s big reveal
‘W’ Rating 11/23

No.243 : World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen (2015)

World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen at the IMDb

Towards the end of this British ‘found footage’ horror one of the soon to be scoffed characters does an earnest piece to camera. “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever experienced” he says. Well, he’s half right - it certainly was shit!

Of course, with a title like this one you can’t expect much and it certainly delivers nothing at all, except for a series of predictable jerky encounters with some out of focus and anachronistic solder zombies.

Still I’m getting ahead of myself - let’s do the plot - that should cover a sentence! The film opens with some captions and stock footage about the Battle of the Somme - neat way to pad the already skinny 75 minute run time. We learn that a distinguished documentary film maker (who seemingly works out of a Transit van with a bunch of amateurs) has gone missing and what follows is cut from footage that was later found. So far so very predictable.

The characters have none to speak of and they all bitch about each other and argue pointlessly to either build up the tension or to disguise the fact that there is no script and that the zombie extras have only been paid for 20 minutes. The shoot is interrupted when mysterious figures appear in the background and a ‘French’ passer-by advises that it is ‘tres dangerous’ to be in the area.

There are plenty of false starts before the expert starts pulling on a chain that was next to a lake. This reveals a skeleton which belongs to a soldier from an African regiment who practiced bringing the dead back to life. He has a handy amulet in his stomach which the expert pockets, oblivious to its deadly powers! In no time flat the crew is besieged by resurrected soldiers from the Somme battlefield who strangely seem to be wearing World War 2 uniforms. They also have a taste for flesh which is unexplained apart from that’s what zombies do, I guess.

Some of the cast get chomped and another lot find an abandoned, but curiously well stocked, bunker and plot their salvation. Some handy 100 year old dynamite may help their fight and if they can rebury the skeleton (which wasn’t buried in the first place), maybe the dead will rest again. Can’t fault logic like that!

This was a shocker of a film and in no way is that a compliment. For starters I’ll bet the whole thing was filmed in England with one stuck on number plate and a dreadful ‘local’ the only nods to the actual location of the Somme battlefield. To be fair there is no way rubbish like this would get permission to film there, and if that’s the case you have to wonder about the inclusion of old footage of real and dead soldiers from the time. Regular readers will know PC isn’t my thing but real dead soldiers being used to set the scene for this tosh was plain disrespectful.

The acting was ghastly, as was the script which I don’t doubt was improvised throughout. The jerky cameras were vomit inducing and the added crackles and interference offered only annoyance, not authenticity. Very little was done in the was of explaining the zombies’ motivation or the fact that after 100 years the only decay they exhibited was that pasty face make up that students do at Halloween.

The only scares were of the usual ‘jump out’ variety allied to a screech on the soundtrack which wore thin the first time, never mind the fifth.

OK it’s hokey garbage with no pretense at great art or even competent movie making, but this was an embarrassment to all concerned not to mention an affront to common decency in general.

Best Bit - Head gets pulled off
‘W’ Rating 3/23

No.241 : When Trumpets Fade (1998)

When Trumpets Fade at the IMDb

‘TV Movie’ is often a solid pointer to the quality you can expect from a film but this HBO production was impressive in terms of its cast, scale and effects.

The film is book-ended with scenes of soldiers carrying an injured comrade from the battle field. In between the horrors of the Hurtgen Forest campaign are explored through the eyes of Manning, played by Ron Eldard - he was the nice one in ‘Drop Dead Fred’.

Manning is a lowly private who cares only for surviving the war. His platoon has been decimated and he is carrying his fallen comrade Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) on his back. We know it’s a pointless gesture as Donovan has what looks like a pink jellyfish stuck on the side of his head and soon Manning has to make a terrible choice.

Back at base his commanders recognize his battlefield skills - basically staying alive - and promote him to Sergeant in charge of a group of new recruits. Manning drills them mercilessly hoping to keep both them and himself alive. Things come to a head when he is charged with capturing a bridge with the promise of a medical discharge if he’s successful. Will he win his discharge at any cost and will a battlefield promise hold any weight anyway?

I wasn’t expecting much from this 90 minute TV movie but it delivered on almost all fronts. There were a lot of familiar clichés and some sections were virtual retreads of the episode of ‘Band of Brothers’ that covered the same engagement. Of course if you have a flamethrower it has to explode and there were a couple of inventive scenes such as the walk through the mine field which kept things interesting.

The cast was excellent although some big named players such as Timothy Olyphant were in virtual ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ roles. It was also a waste to have Bobby Carnivale in the cast and have him as an officer’s assistant rather than some murderous gung-go maverick that we know he does so well.

Ron Eldard was OK in the lead but I wasn’t totally buying his fragile mental state and his self preservation bit was incongruous with his actions when helping out his platoon. I guess he’s a mixed up character but it’s hard to pull for someone when you don’t know where their motivations lie.

For a TV film there is a fuck load of swearing and some of the deaths and dismemberments were up there on the ‘Private Ryan’ scale of gory. The battle scenes were well executed with a well drilled cast of dozens doing well in a fantastically realised battlefield full of debris and body parts.

I don’t think the film had an awful lot new to say about the horrors of war, and as a character study it was lacking too, but overall this was an enjoyable spectacle and well worth a look.

Best Bit : Bridge Offensive
‘W’ Rating 17/23

No.240 : When Calls the Heart (2013)

When Calls the Heart at the IMDb

 You might think that it is hard to still come up with quality entries for the ‘W’ movie Blog after a torturous trail of 239 and counting but don’t believe it - it’s been a slog since we hit double figures! That is not to say that today’s film was scraping the barrel somewhat, more like scraped through the barrel and burrowed down 10 miles through to the Earth’s core!

‘When Calls the Heart’ is a Hallmark film so you can guarantee from the off there will be no sex or violence. Let’s watch it anyway! The annoying daughter who can’t act off the ‘Taken’ films stars in this as an annoying daughter who can’t act - the girl’s got range!

The film is set in olden days America where not an inch of flesh is shown and all the people of colour are on the staff. They try for  high end look but it’s more ‘Downton Shabby’ than ‘Abbey’. Everyone affects a high pitch posh voice which is annoying, as it is fake. Our heroine, Elizabeth, is a newly qualified teacher and looking onward to getting her first job. Her parents are keen for her to go to a prestigious college with Cherie Lunghi doing her best upper class twit bit as Mom.

Elizabeth is offered a top job but the sleazy recruiting agent, Mr Higgins, implies that he expects some favours for granting the post. Dirty bastard, although given the credentials of the film he’s probably just after some laundry being done. Elizabeth is distraught when her refusal to put out leads her to be offered a post in the Wild West. She is torn at first but soon finds her Aunt’s diary which details her own career as a Wild West school teacher.

The remainder of the film jumps back and forth with the diary extracts acted out by ‘Taken’ daughter wearing a blonde wig while her present day travails have her in a black wig; like I say the girl has range! The film plods on as blonde Elizabeth tries to teach the kids and weakly fend off the advances of Stephen ‘Arrow' Amell, while black hair Elizabeth endures the hazardous journey west with her Mountie protector. Things get near to a conclusion on both fronts when it’s revealed the movie is a precursor to a TV series where all the plot threads will go to die - well I’m not watching that so I’ll just assume they all die of the plague!

You can’t really find fault with a film like this as it was clear from the off what sort of gentle peril we will encounter. Things were perhaps best illustrated when black haired Elizabeth’s stagecoach gets held up by the most polite and respectful road agents you could imagine. None of them said ‘motherfucker’ and they didn’t even try to touch the hem of her ankle length dress - ‘Deadwood’ this was not.

You could see some old ladies lapping this up with barely registering scares such as a wolf ‘attack’ followed by a three mouse home invasion. On the romance front it was hard to pick between the past and present candidates both of whom were more wooden than the old homestead.

Knowing now that it was destined to be a serial it was apparent that little mysteries were being seeded throughout such as the fate of the Aunt and why her diary was hidden in the safe. I’m thinking illegal abortions but given the films trajectory it’s more likely she missed ten minutes of church.

The acting was uniformly dreadful with the fish out of water elements, when our girl had to rough it, the worst - putting mashed potato on your face and telling tales of bed wetting are hardly the stuff of legend.

You may see worse gentle and harmless fayre but I doubt it!

‘W’ Rating 5/23
Best Bit : “I piss the bed too”

No.239 : What Now (2015)

What Now at the IMDb

The other night I watched ‘Deep Impact’ and it was funny to see how the fledgling internet was shown with the marvels of search engines a wonder to all. That film was from 1997 and has dated poorly, but not as poorly as ‘What Now’ will have in the next 20 minutes - and it was made in 2015!

I suppose the producers would say that it captures the zeitgeist of the moment but when a film is hung entirely on online dating apps you can tells it’s not going to get a place in the National Archives. To be honest, it has dated already with Ashley Madison talked about as a going concern. Someone also references Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ so there’s another zinger for the folks in 2525!

The film concerns five LA single blokes who are trying for love online. They mostly work in a strip joint so you think there would be the odd woman there but they are ore interested in the ‘swipe right’ kind of ladies. They are presented as a mixed bag of personalities and types but they come across as assholes to a man.

The lead is DJ who works as the strip joint DJ - imaginative naming there. He’s in his 30s and keen for love but for some reason for a guy in the music and stripping businesses he’s a bit shy. He confides in his friends who are all similarly unattached and unsuccessful with the women. After a night of swiping hundreds of ladies they get no matches and decide something has to change.

Sadly the film has no ambition to rehabilitate its characters so one shaves his head and they take new profile pics before broadening their search beyond Hollywood and hey presto - dates! They all take the first girl available with predictably mixed results. One gets an S&M loving MILF while another gets one who is clearly mental as she’s a vegan and spots him as a jock.

Meanwhile a group of girls are also on the dating hunt and rating our men. Can love be found and will our men’s’ shallow approach pay dividends or will they need to see woman beyond a 2-D image to find true love and happiness?

This was a gawd awful mess of a film but I have to confess its terribleness was strangely compelling and I stayed through to the end to see what facile fates our heroes were granted. The old standard of the macho man inadvertently dating a transsexual was rolled out along with many other dating nightmares no doubt designed to get the hen nights cackling at the men’s inadequacy.

To be fair there are plenty of nightmare woman too from the socially responsible nightmare to the moody goth ; but they are all caricatures except for the lovely girl who balks at our hero’s strip show job but we hope to see back to give us all a hope of dating redemption!

The acting is terrible and you get the impression the whole affair was done with favours and cameos from the director’s softball team. One chap ‘Richard’ has the worst English accent you’ll ever hear and the rest have all the charming small talk and chemistry of an SS guard. For some reason Ice-T  shows up as himself and you can only imagine he walked onto the wrong set and earned a credit as a result.

It’s certainly not a film to track down, or even one to watch if you have put off the ironing for a couple of days, but if you are semi conscious and it shows up late night I wouldn’t say you have to turn it off. Fainter praise than that I don’t have.

Best Bit : The worst (at acting) English rock group ever.
‘W’ Rating : 7/23

No.237 : What We Did On Our Holiday (2014)

What We Did On Our Holiday at the IMDb

 If you like films about bickering couples (and who doesn’t?) this may well be the one for you.

Tenth Doctor David Tennant takes his family on a journey through time and space - well, it happens over a couple of days and they go to Scotland - where marital and family differences are all played out around the celebrations of his father’s (Billy Connolly’s) birthday.

Tennant is married to Rosamund Pike and rather than thank the Good Lord he spends all his time fighting with her - to be fair e never really got over Billie Piper. The pair live in London with their three stage school kids and have a daunting trip ahead of them to the Scottish Highlands where his brother (Ben Miller) and father live.

Ben is a total asshole who bullies his son and values his money over everything else. Bet he learns a lesson soon! He also has the worst Scottish accent you can imagine and it must have been that Alexander Armstrong was busy that weekend.

The family gather and we start to learn some home truths including some infidelity and that Billy has cancer. The innocent kids give away a lot of the family secrets to which wise old Billy dispenses increasingly annoying homilies, as he tries to protect them from the fractious family difficulties.

As the day of the day of the big birthaday party arrives an event occurs that leads all of the family to reevaluate their values and relationships. Yes, I’m afraid it’s that dull!

This was a largely inoffensive film but one that became increasingly annoying as it progressed. The characters were all thinly drawn and I didn’t really care why they were bickering never mind hope that they could become reconciled. The kids all did their best but there were a lot of fluffed lines and the wisdom of their innocence quickly became a real niggle.

The pivotal scene after an hour was as mawkish as it was unlikely - some of the impromptu building work carried out would have stumped Brunel!

It was a good cast with a lot of familiar faces popping up for five minutes but they were largely underused with shouting and yelling taking centre stage over any attempts at wit or charm.

The film was written and directed by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton of ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ fame and it’s a shame they produced such an anodyne and forgetful comedy rather than take a few chances, as we’d expect from them. It’s definitely not one to hate but just a twee and forgettable bit of fluff with nothing really to say and no laughs offered either.

Best Bit : No Osprey? Let’s paint one on the film!
‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.236 : When Night is Falling (1995)

When Night Is Falling at the IMDb

Softcore lesbian action now - well it can’t all be Werewolves and Winters! This is a strange film to categorise - there is something there for those seeking mild titillation but it is also a love story and maybe a bit of wish fulfilment for those with their preferences nailed inside the closet.

The film sets its cards of the table from the start with two naked ladies cavorting underwater to some dreamy music as the titles roll. We don’t know who they are but it is probably just letting everyone know early doors what to expect and to double bolt the door  in case of unexpected visitors.

Our heroine, Camille, teaches myths at a buttoned down seminary college. She wears bland and unsexy clothing and even drives a grey Volvo - they may be trying to suggest she’s not much of a risk taker! She has a partner, who had the fish tank blown up on him in the first ‘Mission Impossible’ film, and the two hope to wed soon. He is out of town on business a lot but they hope to secure a job together at the college where they can work closely together teaching wholesome values to all the students.

Hopefully Camille is better at teaching than looking after her dog as it escapes from her home and is later found dead in an alley. She is suitably upset but bungs its body in the fridge and heads off to the laundrette. At this point she is so stuffy she wears a buttoned up cardigan to do her laundry, but still manages to catch the eye of Petra who gives her arm a suggestive rub when she hears of the dog’s demise. Camille is aghast and runs home, but we suspect she was a bit tempted to know her touchy friend a bit better.

Later on she discovers that she has switched laundry bags with Petra, but luckily she has her card so that they can exchange their smalls - oldest excuse in the book! Before the undie exchange can take place however, Camille and her partner Martin have an important interview with the stuffy college elders. Strangely Camille dresses from Petra’s laundry bag and chooses a top which has her knockers practically hanging out. It’s therefore surprising that the interview goes badly!

Camille then goes to exchange her clothes with Petra and discovers that she works in one of those S&M circuses that we’re always hearing about. Petra again tries it on but a weakening Camille says no once again. A clearly torn Camille must choose between her safe but dull partner and a life with a travelling circus with a hot and sexy lady lover. What will she do? Check the poster if you need a hint…

I quite liked this film and not for the reasons you are no doubt imagining. If you were looking for sexy thrills this tame effort with lipstick lesbians would hardly get you motoring, but it was quite touching and almost innocent in it’s attitudes towards lesbian love, which they make out as forbidden fruit rather than an accepted state of being. Still it was made in 1995.

The look of the film is strange; it looks like one of those Hallmark films with a fuzzy focus and a single camera - cheap in other words. They did try to mix it up however with a hang-gliding class shoehorned in for no other reason to run that old ‘I’m never doing it’ before a sharp cut to them soaring in the sky routine. I think even my talents at missing metaphor failed here as her taking a chance at one thing, which she enjoyed, may have been a foreshadowing to something else?

I did feel sorry for the boyfriend who had no chance when the sexy Petra came on the scene. He was given a gentle landing with the promise of some romance in the pipeline for himself, but over all he was reduced to being a peeping Tom squinting into a circus wagon - we’ve all been there!

The agenda was clear from the start and whilst no one was jeering the fledgling lovers all the stuffed shirts who represented society were suitably outraged. If the film was trying for controversy it failed however, as you ended up thinking ‘good for them’ rather than society was doomed.

The sex scenes were few and not too graphic and although 27 year old Camille’s change in allegiance wasn’t believable it was better than the ‘dead’ dog and the circus ringmaster who had all the showmanship of John Major.

Overall a fun and heart-warming distraction which rose above its budget limitations to produce something worthwhile and memorable.

Best Bit : Oh I’ve hurt my knee - better take all your clothes off…

‘W’ Rating 16/23

No.233 : Wing Commander (1999)

Wing Commander at the IMDb

 Films based on video games are invariably great so this should be a lot of fun…

Oh well, let’s have a look anyway. This 1999 film is based on a video game series I haven’t played but it has a pretty strong cast and has some decent special effects so hopefully it won’t be a total waste of time.

The film is set in ‘Earth Year 2654’ and opens with JFK’s speech about the benefits of space exploration before giving us a potted history of the future leading up to the ‘present day’ where mankind is engaged in a war with the Kolrathi, strange cat like beings who have shinier spaceships than us. An initial skirmish goes badly when the bad guys knock out one of our ships and steal a navigation computer that will allow them to find Earth.

The field command, lead by David ‘Poirot’ Suchet and David Warner (for once not a baddie) have to get some intel to a remote station and the only vessel capable of getting there ahead of the aliens is the lowly ‘Dilligent’ crewed by Fred out of the Scooby Doo films and strangely Shaggy as well. This pre-dated Scooby by a couple of years so someone must have thought they had chemistry together or maybe there was just a lazy casting agent with some Tip-pex.

Anyway our men get the orders delivered and join up as pilots in Saffron Burrow’s fighter squad. She’s the ‘Wing Commander’ of the title which is strange as she isn’t the focus of the film and isn’t in it too much, but a franchise is a franchise I guess! There are a few bits of conflict, mainly about Fred’s ancestry and Shaggy’s recklessness but the remainder of the film is a cat and mouse chase with the bad guys as our heroes try and save Earth whilst trotting out as many sci-fi clichés as possible.

This is a really poor film that demands a lot of the viewer who is willing to stay the course. It is hard to be invested in any of the characters who are all thinly drawn with arcs so dismal that they look a lot like straight lines. The hero Fred faces challenges as he has a ‘Pilgrim’ mother - this is an untrusted alien race and his heritage allows lots of prejudice and conflict - bit like Misters Worf and Spock really. That’s a bit unfair given Worf came later but it’s just such a familiar sci-fi trope that it is hard to get interested. He even has an ancient amulet - a bit like Lone Star off ‘Spaceballs’!

The action scenes are reasonably well done with 3-D space well rendered and the dangers quite real. The problem is that one battle lurches into another and it’s hard to keep the energy and indeed interest up. I started to lose track of what wormhole was what and where we were in relation to the eventual victory, which was never in doubt. There really just was nothing to get invested in and despite some noble sacrifices and heartbreaking losses it showed its video game roots with immediate respawns of near identical characters taking up the slack.

It wasn’t downright terrible but it just lumbered along and given the bad guys would have been laughed off a 1970’s ‘Dr Who’ episode for being unconvincing it’s no surprise that the inevitable victory was tinged with so much ‘so what?’.

It’s a shame a good cast wasn’t better utilised and I got the feeling several of them had ten minutes on set to secure their pay cheques and places on the credits to make it look a more worth endeavour than it actually was. Forgettable cookie cutter stuff.

Best Bit : First space battle was good - fourth replay less so.
‘W’ Score 8/23

No.230 : Wicked Little Things (2006)

Wicked Little Things at the IMDb

 Child abuse and retribution now - it’s like Operation Yew tree : The Movie!

The film opens with scenes young kids being forced to work down a mine as the credits roll past. You might think they would be no good at digging coal but their presence is qualified by someone looking for a small kid to squeeze into a narrow fissure to lay some dynamite. This would seem an exceptional task and you’d think some Irish navvies would be better suited to the whole mining game. Still, if you go that route you miss out on the hole ‘Village of the Damned’ vibe later on.

We soon jump to the present day and a young Mum and her two daughters are heading out into the sticks. They stop at a grocery store and get warned off by the less than convincing shop keeper but they plough on regardless. All those missing person signs are no doubt just some local colour. We learn the lady is a widow and the family are moving into her husband’s remote ancestral home. The house is a total crap hole and has all the usual features of slamming doors and things that go aaarrrggghhh! in the night.

The youngest daughter Emma, played by a 10 year old Chloë Grace Moretz - Hit Girl from ‘Kick Ass’ - adapts best and soon makes a friend whom the Mum assumes to be her latest imaginary chum. The older daughter hooks up with some local youths and is getting her tonsils tickled in no time fast. Things don’t stay happy for long however, as the acting talent free neighbour shows up to warn of the dark forces in the woods. The family dismiss him as a nutter, but we the viewer witness him leaving a pig out for a horde of carnivorous children to scoff.

The family also have issues with the local landowner who wants them off the property so he can build a luxury resort, but evidence is the cellar suggests he may have inherited money earned off the blood of others.

As night falls, Hit Girl goes missing and an ill advised trip to the old mine leads to a confrontation with a horde of spade wielding, pasty faced psychopaths in matching hats. Can the family be saved and the cursed lifted?

I quite enjoyed this predictable slice of horror hokum. There was no real mystery going on - we knew it was killer kids from the start and so it panned out. No effort was made to explain the reason for their continued existence although that ‘in the woods’ staple of animal carcasses hanging from the trees was trotted out. To be fair they did look a bit sinister in the misty forest with each dressed like Damien in the first ‘Omen’ film - nice of the slave driver mine owners to get them all matching hats!

There were the usual couple of unearned scares and a ridiculous scene where a man is killed on an upper floor and all those below let the blood drip down all over their faces for no apparent reason. There was a decent bit of menace and a couple of grisly kills but nothing too imaginative or horrific.

The main cast were fine but the kook in the woods character was terrible and he was more of a mystery as to how he got cast than mysterious.

There were no real surprises offered and no new ground tread. If you catch this on a dark Halloween night you might get the odd scare but for the most part it was as scary as a 8 year old’s birthday party which is scary enough for me!

Best Bit : There’s strange things goin’ on in them woods!
‘W’ Score - 14/23

No.229 : Wake in Fright (1971)

Wake in Fright at the IMDb

Also known by the less ‘W’ friendly name ‘Outback’ this Australian film from 1971 (same as me!) is an unsettling experience which is hard to recommend but equally an affecting and memorable experience.

The film opens with a young teacher dismissing his class for the Christmas holidays. He’s clearly keen to get away but manages to grab one beer before catching the train to the nearest city, ‘The Yabba’. Our hero, John, has one night to spend in The Yabba before catching a flight to Sydney to meet up with his girlfriend, whom we only ever see in an idealised beach flashback.

John checks into cheap lodgings and pays his $4 rent in advance as well as a $1 deposit on the key - he’ll be grateful for that later! As the internet has yet to be invented John ventures out to a local bar where he meets several of the colourful locals, all of whom are suspicious of anyone who doesn’t like a drink. A tentative connection to the local police chief earns him several beers and soon he is as roaring drunk as the rest of the patrons.

He gets shown the local gambling den which involves hoards of men betting on how two spun coins will fall. Reluctant at first John enjoys some early luck and has soon made a fat pile of cash which he takes back to his room in triumph. As all gamblers know however, it’s never enough and he ponders over how one more successful bet could buy him out his hated teaching job in the outback.

As you will probably guess things don’t go well and after chasing his losses John is left flat broke, without money or his airline ticket. Given his penurious state John has to rely on the charity of the local barflies and is soon drinking heavily in their remote shacks. Donald Pleasance does a great turn as a dipsomaniac doctor and the posh mum from ‘Just Good friends’ is free with her charms as one of the men’s bored and slutty daughter.

As the party progresses John gets more and more ‘native’ and is soon knee deep in blood as the drunken men go on a late night kangaroo hunt. Can John pull back from the brink or is he lost forever in a downward spiral of beer and kangaroo meat? Will his last dollar and gifted gun be his redemption or a fast track to the afterlife?

I really liked this film despite my copy being somewhat ropey. Seemingly the film was lost and only recently restored - looks like I saw a ‘before’ version! This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as the bleached out colours perfectly depicted the heat and grime in every scene.

The film is probably uncomfortable viewing for Australians as, to a man, they are seen as drunken bullies and thugs. After shooting up the local kangaroo population they then set about destroying the only pub in miles - sacrilege! I’m sure a lot of commentary is intended towards the Australian male psyche and drinking culture, but in truth they are a horrible lot and I was only sorry the kangaroos didn’t take a couple of them with them.

You will probably have heard that the kangaroo killings were brutal and indeed they were. To be fair though, the scene was only about five minutes long and in mitigation they did eat what they killed. That said the man wrestling a kangaroo to death is uncomfortable viewing in anyone’s book, despite the disclaimer at the end that all kills were carried out by professional hunters during a sanctioned cull.

The twist towards the end was well done with the finale maybe a wee bit predictable but none the worse for that. Hopefully the teacher doesn’t have to complete a ‘What I did on my holidays’ essay too!

All in all this has to be essential viewing for anyone with an interest in cinema and although not enjoyable as such, it is definitely one that will live with you long after the last kangaroo burger has been digested.

Best Bit : Donald gets a bit fresh
‘W’ Score 21/23

No.228 : Warning Shot (1967)

Warning Shot at the IMDb

David Janssen leads a stellar cast in this 1967 police drama. Technically it should be called ‘No Warning Shot’ but let’s save the nit picking until after the plot summary.

Janssen plays Sergeant Tom Valens who is on a stake out with his partner as the film opens. They are supposedly looking for a psycho killer but they should probably be after the man with the rogue smoke machine instead. They discuss how foggy it is but it looks more like bonfire night. Janssen spots a suspicious character who runs when challenged. Our man soon has him cornered but when the felon moves to draw a gun Janssen shots first sending him into the swimming pool of the apartment complex.

So far so good, but wait? An ID check shows the shot man to be a doctor who was visiting an elderly patient and more worryingly there is no gun. Things quickly spiral downwards for Janssen as he is suspended and the public want his head - this is well demonstrated with interviews with placard wielding protesters some of whom suggest white policemen may get an easier ride - glad things have changed since the 1960’s!

Criminal charges are soon brought and, unwilling to accept a plea, Janssen tries to unravel the life of his victim to see if he really is the good man all seem to think he is. Whilst this is going on he also has to deal with him impending divorce from the lovely Joan Collins - can things get any worse?!

The investigation is well done with a few red herrings thrown in such as woman killed in the same apartment complex due to an illegal abortion which turns out to be unconnected to our case. Other angles include a nutty old lady with a penchant for dog toys, a playboy pilot and a young Stefanie Powers who lacks her ‘Hart to Hart’ hair but still brightens up the screen.

The pieces slowly fall together but who can be trusted and where is that darn gun?

I liked this gritty crime drama. There was no sex or swearing but it was a seamy slice of LA life with some decent brutality thrown in for good measure. The simple premise was laid out at the start and although the film’s sympathies clearly lie with Janssen, the pivotal scene at the start is shot in such a way that we, the audience, aren’t sure if the gun ever really existed.

The detection was good although the resolution was a little bit improbable for my liking. Janssen was a compelling lead and although not that sympathetic, his tough guy with values won me over. He also gets smoochy with Joan Collins but casts her away when she’s half out of her dress - that man has strength! The cast also has Ed Begley, Sam Wanamaker, Walter Pidgeon and  Lillian Gish - Lillian Gish this film is not!

Things do play out as you’d expect but I was wrong footed a couple of times and the pace and drama kept me interested throughout. Well worth checking out.

Best Bit : Joan shows a bra strap!  ‘W’ Score : 18/23

No.227 : When Time Ran Out… (1980)

When Time Ran Out at the IMDb

If you thought spoof disaster movies started with ‘Airplane’ you should check out this turkey that predated it by a few weeks in 1980. It is laughably bad and all the more so for having some Hollywood heavyweights playing it straight. It’s from disaster maker and cookie cutter extraordinaire Irwin Allen and you could play bingo with it, checking off clichés as the film plods along.

Paul Newman stars as an oil driller. For some reasons he’s doing this on a volcanic island next to a luxury hotel. Not even that, he’s actually drilling for oil in the volcano’s ‘dormant’ crater. Can you guess what goes wrong kids?

Before be get to the lamentable action we are first introduced to the cavalcade of stars who are wheeled in with their improbable back stories. The best is Burgess Meredith who is a renowned, but retired, tight rope walker. What a waste of time telling us that, there's no way will that be relevant! We also meet a slightly haggard Jacqueline Bisset and a bored Barbara Carrera, both of whom are after Paul Newman’s affections. You also get William Holden as the gruff hotel owner and some guy as his hot headed son - I can only assume Richard Chamberlain was engaged elsewhere. Other luminaries include Red Buttons, Mr Miyagi off ‘The Karate Kid’, who was unintelligible, and Ernest Borgnine who plays ‘Tom Conti’ he was rubbish ; didn’t mention ‘Rummikub’ once!

The action gets under way when the drillers hit oil two minutes after Paul Newman arrives. They are understandably happy but this soon dissipates when Paul tells them all to pack up. He’s worried the oil strike may reactivate the dormant volcano. Why he didn’t think of this before they set up all the drills wasn’t explored. Anyway, his greedy men, who have families to feed, insist on keeping the well open and Paul reluctantly agrees. Huge mistake!

With indecent haste the volcano goes nuclear and sets off special effects of literary pathetic proportions. There is a massive tsunami which involves some extras getting a bucket of water thrown over them and an earthquake that puts a medium sized gash in the road. Of course this is a disaster movie so that vital staple, panicky idiots, hove into view and storm the helicopter in a laugh a moment scene that eventually sees a poor model give up its life.

This volcano has attitude though and soon it is raining fireballs down on the hotel - not much of a neighbour but what a critic! It has good aim though and gets a direct hit on Tom Conti, sorry Borgnine. He spends the rest of the film swathed in bandages so he may have sneaked off set early, having bribed someone to take his place.

With chaos all around Newman takes charge. He tells the folk in the fancy hotel that they’ll need to move but gets shouted down due to his lack of success in keeping his oil workers safe - which is fair enough really. Newman manages to get a few of the principals to go with him on a perilous mission to cross the island to safety via a large and unconvincing studio set. Safety beckons just over a rickety bridge but who will survive? And when it is down to a single beam will all hope be lost or does anyone have a special talent that may come in handy? Especially if there is a finely crafted and balanced pole nearby…

This film was so relentlessly rubbish that I actually quite enjoyed it. It was so by the numbers the must have crossed out ‘boat’ and ‘building’ on their one script and stuck in ‘volcano’ instead. Why the hotel guests never went with the ‘A’ list star beggared belief. That said their final fate was worth the admission price alone!

Newman looked embarrassed throughout and did nothing to get us involved with his character. He was a reckless love cheat and a poor negotiator and to top it all was wearing large Cuban heels. The rest of the cast were as bad with pass marks being awarded to no one apart from the hotel guests who bravely tried to leave the film in the helicopter.

The special effects were dreadful with a science fair volcano occasionally spouting some smoke the height of the pyrotechnics. They did invest a lot in the bridge which served in the interminable finale. For some reason the thick planks kept snapping despite no sign of fire of singeing on them - must be those dramatic licence planks we’ve all heard about. It was however a highlight when the tight rope walker stepped up, but only after a few bit parts took a dive into the lava below.

I hadn’t heard of this film until it turned up in one of my ‘W’ trawls and rightfully so - it was poorly made, had terrible acting and was only a couple of gags short of beating ‘Airplane!’ to the punch.

Best Bit - If only I could find a pole - Oh here’s one!
7/23

No.225 - We Are the Freaks (2013)

We Are The Freaks at the IMDb

You get a lot of unheard of British films showing up on Netflix - it’s almost like they found a big skip of them behind a closed down Blockbuster store. I’ve watched a few and they are invariably rubbish - check out ‘Full English Breakfast’ if you want a prime example. Most of these films concern what Alan Partridge would term ‘Bad Slags’ with gangsters and football hooligans taking centre stage at a performance no one is watching. Except me.

‘We Are the Freaks’ doesn’t bode well with its poster showing a gaggle of yoof in front of the Union flag which has largely been hijacked by those promoting racism and intolerance. On that front it surprised me - there was no real violence and not much swearing - unfortunately there wasn’t much else either.

The film opens with Jamie Blackley doing narration whilst his character Jack walks down the street. You quickly see that the film will be somewhat subversive when he says he hates voice-overs and stock footage just as they show stock footage of Margaret Thatcher. Bit of politics and self deprecation there! He also draws a gun and shoots a Goth but it’s alright he’s only fantasising. He’s a frustrated wannabe writer stuck in a dead end job and his flights of fancy take him out of his dull existence.

He has similarly disenfranchised friends in the shape of Chunks, who has stolen his brother's Porsche, and Parsons who is in a relationship with the funny looking secretary off ‘Life’s Too Short’. The lads plan a big night out and, after scoring some drugs from Tyres out of ‘Spaced’, they crash a posh party hosted by the parents of Jack’s fantasy love who we know is too good for him as she’s always playing musical instruments when we see her - classy, you understand.

As you’d expect the night doesn’t go to plan with the three lads separating to have their own adventure. There are all pretty low key with one stealing a flag, one busting his banjo string whist having pretty sedate sex and the third wondering if he should open an envelope - it’s certainly not from the Academy Awards Committee I can tell you!

This is an obviously low budget affair so you can forgive some of its shortcomings, but not enough happens to justify even its skinny 74 minutes run time. The first ten minutes were promising but it soon descended into a predictable ‘one wild night’ story that wasn’t particularly wild or memorable. No one had a story arc to speak of and it came across as just a bunch or random stuff that happened and that’s it.

The only memorable scene was Tyres taking down some neds in a kebab shop and possibly Warwick Davis’ secretary riding a young man to destruction with her party frock on. The two leads have been on ‘Skins’ which I’m not familiar with but at least they had the man who liked strawberry jam out of ‘Sex Lives of the Potato Men’ to keep me somewhat amused.

Overall this looked like a film school project bolstered by a couple of familiar faces from the D list. It wasn’t terrible but it also had nothing whatsoever to recommend it.

Best Bit : Kebab Shop Kafuffle  ‘W’ Rating 9/23

No.223 : Wild Horses (2015)

Wild Horses at the IMDb

 Robert Duvall wrote, directed and starred in this contemporary western and had his wife cast in the lead - so is this a showcase for his undoubted skills or a dull vanity project that merits its IMDb score of 4/10?

Duvall plays an ageing Texan rancher who bears the weight of secrets of the past. His gay son’s lover disappeared 15 years previously and a new lady Texas Ranger is keen to reopen the case. What she unearths starts other family skeletons to be rattled from the closet and something has to give.

The film opens in flashback and we’re not clear how the boy died, only that Duvall was there at the time. An undercurrent runs throughout the film that he may have been killed die to redneck intolerances to homosexuality but they seemed keen to skirt round the issue with only passing references to James Franco’s character being gay, and there weren’t any love scenes for him or discussions on his situation. It did shine through that Duvall was the screenwriter as it almost seemed like an old fashioned ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ when the film was crying out for the prejudices to be explored. Still he did duff up some homophobes in a bar, so that’s all right then.

Duvall’s wife Luciana isn’t convincing as the no-nonsense Ranger who smells a Duvall shaped rat and sets her sights on him. English clearly isn’t her first language and her delivery is one note and emotion free. She does get a couple of action scenes, including a low rent car chase, but her part is thin. Her deductions don’t always ring true, but to be fair she says hello to Duvall and straight away he has the hit men on her - not exactly the subtle approach!

Other plot threads that get exposed but not necessarily resolved include corrupt policeman who are dealing drugs with border crossing Mexicans and the paternity of their Mexican looking friend who has lived with them for years but definitely not the result of Duvall getting jiggy with the staff.

The cast was impressive but they get nothing much to do. Josh Hartnett is wasted as the second son and I find it hard to remember any meaningful scene he took part in. The usually good James Franco has nothing to work with in what should have been a good and conflicted character. He seemed nonplussed at his boyfriend disappearing and his reaction at the eventual resolution was muted at best.

I didn’t buy into the dialogue either with lots of improbably moving and articulate speeches being utter by characters who were meant to be red necks or 'good old boy' type farmhands. Duvall talks real slow, as is his way, but he lacked the gravitas and deep rooted resentment that his character was supposed to demonstrate.

Overall this was a wasted opportunity. They had a great cast and locations and a potentially interesting plot, but what was delivered was a flat and wordy borefest that I’ve largely forgotten already.

‘W’ Score - 10/23
Best Bit - Rednecks don’t read the script and start a bar fight