No.165 : Wild Bill (1995)

Wild Bill at the IMDb

You know, it’s lucky they make a wild west film every five minutes or we’d be in real danger of forgetting these guys, who in reality were a bunch of hard drinking’ hard shaggin’ murdering cow pokes. But it’s as near as America has to a history so let’s have a look at the 42nd re-invention of Wild Bill Hickok.

This film has a really excellent cast with recognisable names all down the credits. For me, that sounds a warning as the film is more likely to be stars raiding the dressing up box than anything even close to entertainment. I know that sounds like starting with a conclusion but that’s only because the film started it.

We open in black and white with Wild Bill’s funeral. We get a slightly reverential commentary from John Hurt as the Englishman abroad, a role later filled and bettered by Saul Rubinek in ‘Unforgiven’. Hurt then goes back into colour to paint a picture of the man and the legend.

We meet Jeff Bridges as Wild Bill enjoying a few captioned ‘greatest hits’ as he shoots up the old west while playing cards, drinking whisky and smoking opium. We then catch up with in his present day as he starts losing his sight and coming to the attention of various young guns keen to make their name by shooting the great man.

Bill settles in Deadwood and is soon pumping Calamity Jane and avoiding the attentions of his bastard son who has hooked up with Kelly Bundy, who looks quite fetching in her bustier. The narrative, as it is, is really more ‘scenes from a life’ rather than a decent story, and while that’s true of most bio-pics, this one has been so well mined before that there’s not a lot to surprise or thrill.

The Old West as shown here is a bit too clean, with the gun fighters, such as the wheel chair bound Bruce Dern, a bit to noble to be real. I’d imagine that the ‘Deadwood’ TV series with its bushwhackers and road agents to be a lot more realistic than these tales of people being called out for a duel. They also have the cleanest looking whores you’ll ever see.

I thought Jeff Bridges did his usual stand up job, but I wasn’t really convinced that he was a complicated nineteenth century gunslinger. It wasn’t helped by some ill-advised opening sequences where he kill a slew of men for touching his hat, which made the film seem like a comedy from the start.

The production values are pretty high with a recognisable cast of some standing and the usual old west sets and stick on moustaches. I just felt the whole film had a ‘TV Movie’ aesthetic with the wobbly camera and flashbacks to black and white serving only to highlight the limited scope of the whole affair.

With a life so well documented getting the bio-pic focus you really have to bring something new to the party and when all you come up with the ‘greatest hits’ it’s no surprise that this western is largely forgotten. It’s not particularly bad but nothing special and with an unsympathetic character at the forefront you’ll quickly wonder why you bothered.

Best Bit : Bill shares his bath water
‘W’ Rating 14/23

No.164 : Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

Where the Wild Things Are at the IMDb

The classic children’s book is brought to the screen by Director Spike Jonze with mostly positive results.

The film opens with Max, a young boy who is loud and annoying, running around screaming. I started watching this film on a plane and the head phones were off straight away. Still the Quest is a demanding beast so on I soldiered as Max ran about making a pest of himself to his lovely mother Catherine Keener and to her slobbish boy friend Mark Ruffalo. Max has clearly got no friends, and has to resort to attacking passing neighbours with snow balls to get any attention.

Pretty soon Mom has had enough and after yelling at Max he runs away from home in his natty wolf boy costume. At this point the film slips from reality into fantasy as we follow Max’s adventures in a far away land conjured up by his annoying brain. After a boat trip he finds himself washed up on a remote beach that looks suspiciously like that one which always shows up in ‘Star Trek’. Max soon encounters the inhabitants of the island, a lumbering crew of ‘Wild Things’ that look like a faded reunion show for ‘The Banana Splits’.

The beasts resemble stuffed toys but rather than be a fearsome crew they are all pretty nice and are voiced by celebrities. The Tony Soprano character is at first keen to eat Max but when the lad develops a bit of spirit and declares himself king, the monsters soon agree to his rule. Not all is well however as the characters of the beasts resemble the moods of Max and that’s never going to end well.

After an overlong dirt ball fight some of the monsters get hurt while others start to doubt the wisdom of their ’king’. Max himself realises what a difficult job being a leader is and how his Mom maybe isn’t so bad after all. Can max get home before the local nonce finds his secret hidey hole and will he be a bit nicer to his Mom following his experiences?

This is a strange kind of film. It’s based on a book for 5-7 year olds but seems to be trying to tells us grown ups about our lost innocence and imaginations, through the medium of muppet. The film opened badly with 20 odd minutes of screaming and it looked like Canadian public access TV, with its rocky cameras and no expense spent sets.

It does get better when we reach Monster Isle and I was quite impressed by the monsters. The suits are great and although the expressions were realised digitally you can’t see the joins. One thing that was a bit jarring was having the cartoon monsters from the book lifted straight out and placed in a real environment. In the book the cartoon monsters lived in a cartoon forest and didn’t look quite so unnatural.

I fully appreciate that we are dealing with a young boys fantasy here, and that was well shown when one monster got an arm yanked off and saw dust came out. He’s obviously playing with a big toy box here and although the lessons were a bit in your face there were still a few laughs along the way.

I did find the voice acting somewhat distracting with the celebrities kind of stealing the limelight form the excellent costumes. The film runs a fairly compact 90 minutes and although it’s not a patch on the book there is enough care and attention to detail on show to make this a journey worth taking.

W Rating 16/23
Best Bit : “Hide in me”

No.163 : Wrong Side of Town (2010)

Wrong Side of Town at the IMDb

You’d have thought an action flick starring a couple of wrestlers would have swept the board at the Oscars but as always it’s not who you know it’s who you blow.

In truth the only reason to watch this film is for the laughably bad acting and dialogue but I’m sure there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Hmmm, let’s see sticking your willy in a blender for one and then …

No neck midget wrestler Rob Van Dam takes the lead as Bobby a simple family man who is living the suburban dream. The fact that he’s got a cissy pony tail and more tats than a council estate isn’t mentioned. He meets his new neighbour, a bookish black fellow, and despite our hero looking the front man for a BNP rally he quickly agrees to a night out on the town. Bobby has some reservations as the club is on the ‘wrong side of town’ but goes along anyway.

Despite the club being the hot spot in town Bobby gets in with his t-shirt on and settled down to dinner in the least convincing restaurant you’ll ever see. As he predicted things soon kick off when Bobby’s wife gets molested by a dickwad on drugs. Bob saves the day but the bad guy falls on his own knife setting our hero against the miscreant’s father.


Despite his obvious innocence Bob is quickly on the run, well waddle, against a lacklustre army of deadbeat gang bangers and an unconvincing bent cop. The journey home is peppered with low-rent bust ups as Bobby does his best at kicking some face. Once home he discovers his daughter has been kidnapped by Mr Big and he has to set off on his Harley with his shades on at 2 am with only some other WWF guy to help.

This is a real comedy classic and if it wasn’t being played straight you’d think it a masterpiece. I know you can’t expect a lot in a film starring Rob Van Dam in the acting stakes but this is really cringe making stuff. Rob is actually only dreadful in the lead as a black ops guy with more muscles than a sea food restaurant. He doesn’t even master the basics like remembering to limp after he’s been shot in the leg and the emotional scenes with the daughter will make you wince and snigger in equal measure.

You’d imagine that when you have wrestlers in the main roles you’d get them a bit of support in the cast but no! Seth, the main villain, is played by possibly the worst actor you’ll ever see. He heads a gang of baldies that are as menacing as the Teletubbies. His maniacal rantings and burst of anger come across as mild annoyance and his henchmen, including a mute black man in sun glasses, beggar belief.

The action scenes are really poor and amount to a few people getting kicked in the balls. Obviously wrestling moves don’t translate to street fighting, what with the lack of folding chairs and all, so all our muscle bound main man can manage is a couple of bitch slaps.

The whole thing wraps up pretty neatly in the course of one night and hopefully that’ll also cover the span of the careers of all those involved.

Best Bit : Rob Hits the Strip Joint
‘W’ Rating 11/23

No.162 : Whiteout (2009)

Whiteout at the IMDb

It’s kind of hard to motivate yourself to watch a film like ‘Whiteout’ in the midst of the coldest winter in memory but alas ‘Couples Retreat’ doesn’t start with a ‘W’.

The film had the dreaded ‘DVD Premiere’ tag which seems strange as it’s a perfectly decent thriller with high production values. Maybe it couldn’t find a spot at the multi plexes due to the dominance of ‘St Trinians 2 : The legend of Fritton’s Gold’.

The film opens in 1957 with a Russian plane struggling through a winter’s storm to an unknown destination. The pilot and co-pilot chat in subtitles and it’s clear that a plan is afoot. The co-pilot goes into the cargo hold and plies his passengers with vodka before trying to shoot them all. The plan is pretty poor, as is that of the passengers who start machine gunning everything including the pilot. Luckily the plane manages to land itself leaving the secret cargo intact and stuck in the ice of the South Pole.

As you’d expect things soon melt into the present day where we meet US marshal Carrie (Kate Beckinsale) who suffers from sepia flashback fever. She does her best to warm things up by stripping off for a shower but that’s pretty much your lot as it’s all mittens and no muff from here on in.

The base is closing down for the winter with the bad weather set to descend in 72 hours. It’s poor timing therefore that lets the pilot with the best eyesight in history spot a body on a remote glacier. Our able copper is soon on her way helped by Tom Skerritt’s crusty doctor and a mysterious man from the UN who is keen to avoid Antarctica’s first murder getting out of hand.

After some implausible deductions our heroine is soon checking out a remote Russian base only to be attacked by a nutter with an ice axe. She manages to get away with the loss of only a few digits and soon she’s found the source of all the trouble - it’s that downed Ruskie plane - knew it was there for a reason.

With the bodies stacking up and the weather closing in can Kate solve the mystery of the Black Tragic Box?

This is a perfectly decent thriller that looks good and has some exciting set pieces. That said I fear it’s memory will be lost like snow off a dyke. It is well made and well acted it’s just nothing that special or different.

The settings are great and the weather is always a threat. When Kate is having an ice axe fight in the snow you wouldn’t guess that it’s the door handle that will score the most points. The sense of isolation is also well worked as is the lack of help when the shit inevitably hits the fan.

Kate Beckinsale does quite will with a thinly drawn character who is transparent from the off. She’s obviously on this remote detail due to some incident in the past and we get frequent flashback clues to the deadly event. The problem is that you’ll guess the whole story from the first flashback so when you finally get the big reveal towards the end it’s a total anti climax.

The mystery element is OK although the various schemes to secure the illicit cargo seem unnecessarily complicated - old Tom Skerritt could of achieved the same aim with a well zipped up soap bag! The big fight in the blizzard towards the end was poorly executed however as you has three people in parkas and goggles scrapping in a snow storm - as you’d guess it was kinda hard to make out what was happening!

All in all ‘Whiteout’ was a decent thriller and had enough going on in it’s 100 minutes to keep me interested. Just a pity that the thrills and chills were so widely spaced that they may be digging for 50 years to unearth it once it’s done the rounds.


Best Bit : Kate Gets Fingered
‘W’ Rating : 14/23

No.161 : Whip It (2009)

Whip It at the IMDb

After the ‘girl power’ frenzy that was ‘While She Was Out’ I approached this film with some misgivings seeing as it was written by a lady and directed by Drew Barrymore. As you’d suspect the ‘go girl’ element is high and all the male characters are thinly drawn but it was a pleasant, if slightly familiar distraction.

Ellen Page, late of ‘Juno’ stars as a student and part time waitress who is under the thumb of her overbearing mother who thinks that her two daughters should follow in her footsteps and enter beauty pageants. Clearly our girl is more of a free spirit and after finding a flyer for an all girl roller derby match she decides to go along with her friend to see if there are any ‘cute guys’.

Of course there are and before we know it our little shrew is trying out for the team and having awkward soppy moments with a louche dude who has a band and interesting hair. The roller derby team , ‘The Hurl Scouts’ dress like mobile hookers and generally slap each other about a lot - no wonder there is no shortage of guys. The teams plays against the same five teams and we soon meet the baddie team ‘The Holly Rollers’ and their evil leader played by Juliette Lewis, reprising her bad girl routine from ‘Starsky & Hutch’.

Despite falling over a lot at the trials and looking about twelve our heroine gets on the team after lying about her age. Meanwhile romance is blossoming with the douche bag and he even gets to see her lacy bra and a souvenir in her ‘Stryper’ t-shirt. The roller derby team are usually last but with their new star player they soon start rising up the league.

Before we know it it’s time for all the clichés to set in with the championship game and the mother / daughter beauty pageant taking place the same night. Who will she choose? Will they win and what event? Has the dick weed boyfriend given away her t-shirt? It’s all so immaterial you might find yourself caring.

I actually quite liked this film although I’d be hard pressed to say why. But let’s try.

For one the sport was quite fun. I’d heard of but never seen a roller derby and it looks pretty gruesome. I wasn’t totally sold on the action scenes but they had the standard device of a funny commentator to explain things to the slow people. The team was your usual mix of sassy characters with a smart quip and some bonding never far away. At least the skirts where short and the school girl blouses tight.

The directing by Drew Barrymore was OK but I’d like to have seen a bit of the fat trimmed as nearly two hours for a formulaic rites of passage / sports film is a bit too long. There were a couple of good scenes with the one in the swimming pool nice and touching without being too letchy about a 17 year old.

The cast were all pretty good with Ellen Page almost convincing as a hell cat skater. At one point she does a tiny jump over one person and everyone is like ‘whoa Evel Kinevil here’ although not very convincingly. Barrymore couldn’t resist a small role in the team too but she was looking a bit long in the tooth for the short skirt and coloured hair - more like someone’s granny who forgot her pills.

Over all the film was a forgettable bit of fluff. It did have some indie sensibilities and was almost a hybrid of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and ‘Rollerball’ but not enough to spark the imagination or get me pulling on my skates.

As Devo didn’t say Whip It - Quite Good.

Best Bit : I’m wearing my best bra
‘W’ Rating 15/23

No.160 : Weekend With The Babysitter (1970)

Weekend With the Babysitter at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity from 1970 that garnered a frankly woeful 1.4/10 at the IMDb. It’s a hard film to categorise - it’s a sort of soft porn, action thriller fantasy with a bit of education and stoner wisdom thrown in for good measure.

We open with scenes of a young girl on a moped inter cut with some action at the border. The customs are shown to be doing a bang up job and although that seems incongruous with the carefree girl all will become clear soon. Or not, depends if you can stay the course really.

Anyway our hot chick arrives at her destination and we find that she’s the titular babysitter - but there’s been a mix up! The wife is indeed going out but not with the husband who is staying in. As he waves the wife off he tells the girl to stay so he can pay her for her time. The dirty bastard.

The pair settle down on the sofa and the girl starts reading a script that the chap, who is a director, is due to film next week. The girl laughs at how crummy the script is (oh the irony!) and tells him that the kids don’t talk like that. To prove her point she takes him out to meet her skuzzy friends.

Meanwhile, we learn that the wife has a drug problem and is visiting her dealer. They want paid and all she can offer is a loan of her husband’s boat which could bypass the customs problems we witnessed earlier. They take her along on the smuggling trip and after doping her up make her indulge in some lesbian sex for no other reason, it would seem, other than to secure an ‘X’ certificate for this tame offering.

Back at the house the husband is flat on his back after the night on the tiles but the girl stays over to make him breakfast and take him to the speedway, like you do. After lots of unnecessary shots of screaming bikes and babysitter nudity he realises that his wife is missing and commandeers a friend’s plane to search for her. Once spotted he rallies his new biker chums to intercept the bad guys and save the wife. Will lives be lost and will our man take his junkie wife back over the nubile babysitter?

This is quite a funny film if you don’t take it too seriously. The two leads are awful with the silver haired director as convincing as a hat stand. We’ve no idea what the baby sitter’s motivation is in seducing the old timer but fair play to him seeing as this was before the time of Viagra. The sex scenes are pretty tame although I did like how one ended with a cut to an anchor splashing into the water!

The kids all get a say and one boy’s assertion that not all bikers were bad was proven when they intercept the bad guys and destroy their drugs rather than toking up themselves. The twangy early 70’s soundtrack is a bit of a distraction but if ever a film was of its time this is it.

It’s certainly not as bad as the low scoring suggests but by no means a classic either. For your money you do get a fair bit of nudity, some cringingly bad sex scenes and dialogue you wouldn’t hear in a porno - so a wise investment all round then!

Best Bit : Pilot calling the control tower and asking them to call a biker bar for help

‘W’ Rating 11/23

No.159 : Walk Hard : The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

Walk Hard at the IMDb

Well we’re back after a long pause while we fought for our entitlement of Arts Council funding. It not what you know it’s who you blow in this game! We can’t guarantee the same level of ‘W’ movie immersion as you’re used to but the occasional ‘W’ will certainly keep the wwwolf from the door.

First up in this tranche of ‘W’ wonderment is a real treat that is certainly at the pinnacle of the spoof genre, one that is often disparaged by this forum and several lesser ones too.

As you could probably guess from the title this is a comedy retread of the Johnny Cash bio-pic ‘Walk the Line’ but don’t confuse it with the likes of ‘Teen Movie’ and shite like that, this is a fully rounded picture that walks a similar line but picks off plenty of laughs along the way.

We open with the child Dewey who is growing up on a mid-western farm with his prodigy brother. After an ill advised, but surprisingly deadly, machete fight his brother is killed leaving his Dad stating ‘the wrong boy died’ throughout the film, even after Dewey has made his name.

The child actor is quickly replaced by John C McGinley who takes over the role when Dewey is just 14 and towers over the teens of his high school band. His career quickly blossoms and soon he’s on the road with Elvis and being introduced to ever more potent drugs by his long term band mates.

Like Cash, Dewey has his ups and downs and after a few falls secures his own cheesy 1970’s TV series and a succession of trophy wives. He also emulates Johnny by having one woman colouring his life and Dewey is lucky enough to have Jenna Fischer on his arm, presumably when ‘The Office’ was shut.

As the film nears it’s climax we are returned to the opening frames where a contemplative Cox was silently recounting his life before going on stage for one last time. Can Dewey still put on a great show after endless nights of booze, drugs and women?

I have been accused in the past of liking spoof musicals a bit too much, and in truth I’ll take ‘The Rutles’ over ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ anytime, but this film is far more enjoyable than Joaquin Phoenix wrestling with his emotions and acting ability any day.

The songs like ‘Walk Hard’ and ‘Guilty As Charged’ are excellent and Reilly does a great job as the hapless lead. The laughs are frequent and layered throughout the film and at no point does it sag. There is plenty of swearing and nudity to keep the interest levels high and the cast, including plenty of well known cameos, is universally great.

As you will probably have gathered this film is a true return to form for the ‘W’ quest and has certainly got the juices flowing again. Give it a look - run, don’t walk to the video shop. Or download it, I don’t care.

Best Bit : Lyall Lovett has it large
‘W’ Rating : 20/23