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.226 : Why Stop Now? (2012)

Why Stop Now? at the IMDb

There’s no question mark on this movie’s poster but it appears on the title card at the end, and that’s good enough for us!

That poster is all wrong - it also contains the sub-title ‘A funny thing happened on the way to rehab’ and that’s patently false advertising!

Jesse Eisenberg plays Eli, a piano playing prodigy who looks after his drug addled mother while battling with demons of his own. The film opens with his arriving at an important audition for a select school with a cut hand. His teacher tries to calm him down from his hyper state and we are taken back a day to see how we arrived at this situation.

Things start at a teenage party where we witness Jesse’s social awkwardness amongst his peers and especially girls. He manages to impress with some virtuoso piano playing before spewing up - you hardly ever get that with Richard Clayderman! He has some chat with a girl who clearly likes him before heading off home to his demanding mother.

Mum is due to check into rehab the next day and Jesse sees this as a way to get her off his hands so that he can start a new life at his fancy school. Things fall apart however when Mum’s pee tests positive for nothing meaning she can’t get the state sponsored care she needs. A nurse tells her that if she can get high and ‘fail’ the drugs test she can get into the facility and Jesse can get on with his plans.

From here things start to fall apart in a predictable manner. Mother and son try to buy drugs but the dealers are out of stock. Jesse’s command of Spanish allows a deal to be set up but can the drugs be sourced, the mother committed , the girl won and audition passed?

This was an OK ‘one crazy day’ type film but I never felt invested in Jesse’s frantic and random character. I got that he was at least as mixed up as his Mom but it was hard to care when his annoying mannerisms and selfish behaviour were all that we were offered. There was a degree of redemption reached but he still came across as a dick who was making bad choices. I mean who would agree to go and broker a drug deal for some random and dangerous dealers?

That said the dealers were very nice and would no doubt be chased out of business in five minutes in the real world. One was the ‘Sheeeeit’ guy from ‘The Wire’ and he didn’t even do his line! Melissa Leo was pretty good as the hippy Mom but the potential girl friend was as wet as an otter’s pocket and clearly not worth the effort.

The piano playing was good and having the final scenes set amongst a Revolutionary War re-enactment added a bit of colour, but over all this was a bit dull with no laughs at all. Why Stop Now? Because we all got bored after half an hour!

‘W’ Score 14/23
Best Bit - Party Puking Recital

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.220 - Wolfcop (2014)

Wolfcop at the IMDb

I wasn't expecting much from ‘Wolfcop’ and in that regard at least I wasn't disappointed.

It certainly does what it says on the tin in that it has a cop who is also a wolf - what surprised me was that the cop/wolf actually kept up with its law enforcement duties. Can’t fault the commitment to the job there, Officer.

Our hero is Lou, played with scuzzy understatement by Leo Fafard, who is an under-performing policeman in a small town. He’s an alcoholic and ignores various small crimes such as vandalism as he makes his way to the police station. He has his boss on his back but has an able co-worker in Tina, who wins the employee of the month prize every time.

The towns is in the midst of a mayoral election and the annual ‘Hunt and Drink’ day is coming up. Lou does as little work as possible and spends his day getting drunk with a barmaid and his loser pal. Things change however when he wakes up with a pentangle carved into his chest and he is unable to shave due to immediate hair regrowth. He scratches his hairy chin and remembers flashes of creeps in monk habits carving the pentangle on him whilst another chap is scarified.

We soon learn that the victim is a candidate for mayor giving the incumbent no challengers to returning to the office and the excuse to cancel the Hunt and Drink day which coincides with a solar eclipse which strangely happenes every 32 years. Lou does some research and learns that by having a sacrifice a group of shape shifters can regenerate for another 32 years if they drink the blood of a werewolf during the eclipse. You can't argue with science like that!

Lou confides in his friend who locks him in a cell to witness the transformation and unusually Lou, despite a wolfy appearance, decides to put on his uniform and modify his police car before going on patrol. As the full moon  and eclipse move closer Lou has to keep a watch on who are his friends and who are the shape shifters. Can the curse be broken and will Lou find redemption after years of mourning his dead father?

This is a strange sort of film - It doesn't take itself seriously and there is a lot of gore but it is also played for laughs as well as drama. Just when you think it’s going down a familiar path Lou gets out his angle grinder in full werewolf mode and starts to customise his patrol car with big ‘W’s - possibly in tribute to this blog, it isn't clear.

The shifts in tone are a bit jarring but if you are watching a film called ‘Wolfcop’ you can hardly complain. The special effects were half decent with plenty of glycerine used for the transformation scene. There are also a couple of gruesome deaths and I especially likes a skull revealing ‘face off’ moment.

At a trim 79 minutes the film doesn't outstay its welcome but by the same measure you aren't baying for more. The thin plot played out satisfactorily and the cast mostly did well with some preposterous dialogue. The exception would be the bad guy leader who had a tear tattoo and no menace whatsoever.

I'm not inclined to hunt down the sequel promised in the credits but there are worse ways of spending an hour or so on Netflix.

Best Bit : face off in the corner
‘W’ Score 15/23

No. 138 : What Doesn’t Kill You (2008)

What Doesn't Kill You at the IMDb

Here’s a film that’s familiar on many levels but still offers enough nuggets of interest to garner pass marks. It opens with a botched armoured car robbery with an off duty policeman interfering with the sloppily planned job. Ethan Hawke pulls off his mask and strides towards the have a go hero with his gun blazing. Before we find out the outcome of the shoot out we dissolve to the past and learn that this is one of those films where we’ll have to watch for 90 minutes just to get back to the starting point.

Hawke and ‘W’ thread friend Mark Ruffalo are a pair of tearaways who grow up on the tough streets of Boston. We see them as teenagers running errands for the local Irish villain and then 15 years later, still doing the same petty crimes. They try to branch out on their own but an early heist involving dodgy TVs sees them sent down for five years.

Ruffalo eventually makes his parole but Hawke gets an extra six months for bashing a nonce. Our man finds it tough on the outside and soon the nuns and the gas board are looking for their overdue cash. With jobs hard to come by Ruffalo struggles with staying away from petty crime and the bottle. With breaking point reached Hawke gets out and suggests that the end to their trouble can be found with one last big job. With the stick up fast approaching we have to guess who’ll be on the crew and whether it’ll be successful.

We’ve seen most of this stuff before with films like ‘The Departed’ and ‘The Boondock Saints’ heavy influences here. The two leads are excellent and I thought Hawke in particular was very reminiscent of his recent outing in ‘Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead’. This film isn’t as good as that one but that’s obvious seeing that it doesn’t have Philip Seymour Hoffman or Marisa Tomei displaying her charms. We do get Amanda Peet as Ruffalo’s wife but all she does is moan a lot.

The idea that the two protagonists are on a road that has no exits is, again, a well worn one but they could have jazzed it up somewhat as they were basically saying that if you can only get a crappy job you may as well rob banks. The bad guys lacked a bit of menace and while I’m sure their casual threats delivered from their cosy bar was meant to be reminiscent of ‘The Sopranos’ they served only to show their shortcomings next to that series.

I did like the interplay between the two leads with some of their capers such as dognapping clearly played for laughs. Ruffalo was a bit too anguished as the tormented family man trying to do the right thing but overall I cared a bit so something was right. The ending delivered a rather unearned surprised and my usually favoured ‘what happened next’ captions seemed somewhat out of place here, reminding us that it was a movie rather than a gritty drama.

Despite the various nits the film is better than average but not as good as any of the other stuff I’ve compared it to in the review. So there you have it, if the faint praise doesn’t kill you it’ll only make you stronger.

Best Bit : Nonce Gets His Dues
‘W’ Rating 15/23