5 stars

Green Zone

My mouth is open because I am intense

dir: Paul Greengrass

2010

Mocking things is easy. Real easy.

Fun, too.

It’s also lazy. The easiest and laziest goddamn thing any reviewer had to say about this flick was that, given the participation of the director, shaky-cam cinematographer and lead actor, it’s essentially a Bourne flick without the Jason Bourne character.

These reviews just write themselves, don’t they?

It’s not an insult that carried a lot of weight, because this was in truth more of a fictionalised rendering of actual events, being the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the lies, damned lies and statistics used as the casus belli, or justification for the war itself.

The problem is that a) what they’re referring to, with such seriousness, no-one really gives a fuck about any more, and b) it’s attached to a plot so implausible and uninteresting that I’m not sure if it really justifies its existence independent of the premise.

Rating:

5 stars

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Bodyguards and Assassins (Shi yue wei cheng)

The Party is Good the Party is Great, I surrender my will
as of this date

dir: Teddy Chen

Sometimes, movies, and indeed film reviews, ask a lot of you. They demand that you know a little bit about something in order for you to either give a fuck about what you’re watching / reading, or that you have some idea of what’s going on in order for it to make some sense.

What I’m talking about, in this instance, is not a knowledge of relevant history, contemporary or ancient. Nor is it a demand for understanding of the incredible history of one of the longest continuous civilisations on the planet, being the Chinese.

No, what is demanded in this context is a deep/superficial knowledge of just how much the Chinese, and Hong Kong, film industries, desperately need to pacify and placate their Communist / Totalitarian / Capitalist masters by popping out propagandistic swill occasionally.

You yourself might have heard about the real life person called Dr Sun Yat-Sen, who sought to unify China and cast off the shackles of their Manchu masters, but it’s even more relevant to know why a flick such as this depends on knowing that: Sun Yat-Sen was one of those initially ‘unpersonned’ persons, to use the Orwellian phrase, that the Communists initially reviled as a tool of foreign backsliding imperialism, but then reclaimed. It’s even more illuminating to realise that the fucker has fuck all to do with this flick, except for some crucial lines delivered by an eerily waxwork replica of the man.

Rating:

5 stars

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5580 reads

Ninja Assassin

This Assassin will Ninja you! No, wait, the ninja will assassin you?
Could be it's a tad tautological

dir: James McTeigue

Wow. I haven’t seen a flick with as many meaty chunks flying around since the last time I took a trip to a slaughterhouse, or perhaps Easter Sunday lunch at my parent’s place. There’s substantially less mooing going on here, but all the same, the majority of the people who appear onscreen are here only to end up as chunks of meat on the floor for our entertainment.

That is what we are, after all. Maybe there’s something depressing about seeing visual (and entirely computer generated) representations of the essential meatiness of our bodies. Rendered down into our component parts, everything we were and ever will be, annihilated like that, well, it’s pretty confronting.

At least for a while. This decidedly substandard action movie opens with a bunch of yakuza thugs exploding into discrete piles o’chunks, at the hands, blades and shurikens of unseen, shadowy assassins. In other words, there must be murderous ninjas afoot!

The heyday of the ninja flick was definitely the 80s. At no other time has there been as much of a market for the endless permutations of the magically murderous character, which is why we had, for an all too brief, halcyon period, a stream of ninja related action flicks. For reasons I haven’t expended and won’t expend brain power on, the ninja sub-genre appealed to American audiences, leading to this procession of flicks starring obviously non-Japanese people as experts in ninjitsu, and the art of assassination and deception. Not for nothing did men like Franco Nero and Michael Dudikoff become household names.

What do you mean, they didn’t? Surely almost everyone in Christendom and Buddhisdom, for that matter, watched everything from Enter the Ninja to Silent Assassin to American Ninja 5: The Re-ninja-ing? They didn’t? Well, what were they busy doing, building treehouses, setting off bottle rockets or building crystal meth labs instead?

I don’t know if I’m at all glad that they’re bringing this genre back again. Like Michael Jackson, it had its time and place, and probably doesn’t merit resurrection. It feels uncomfortably like coming home and finding your significant other in flagrante delicto which Chuck Norris. Tell me seeing him on his hands and knees with someone else in deep up to their elbow wouldn’t be the most retro yet disturbing thing you ever saw in your life.

Rating:

5 stars

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4998 reads

The Hangover

I swear we're funnier in real life, officer

dir: Todd Phillips

2009

This flick, being a comedy, being set in Vegas, is by its nature the laziest goddamn movie you could possibly imagine. Studios love setting comedies in Vegas because all the work is already done for them. They don’t have to think up anything creative, new or original, at all.

I mean, why would you want to? Thinking is just sooooo tiring. It smacks of effort.

If you haven’t seen this, even you can probably guess most of the settings and most of the things that happen, without watching it. Try it out, see how you go. Maybe your version will be slightly more interesting than the actual version.

It was massively successful though, so what the hell do I know. This movie spoke to millions of people. Presumably males, but millions of them all the same.

Really, though, I’m struggling to remember anything that was funny about it at all. There’s scene after scene that approaches perhaps the level of being amusing, and then fades away before satisfying even basic needs.

But then, it is exactly what it claims to be. It never pretended to be anything more than a lowbrow comedy centring around a bachelor party in Las Vegas, where a bunch of dicks act dickish and try to get back to their town in one piece. It’s pretty much an American rite of passage, right up there with losing your virginity and shooting a gun for the first time, preferably at the same time.

The truly original part of this story is that it’s about a bunch of guys who end up having a crazy Bachelor Party kind of night, but they can’t remember it and they lose the groom, in a Dude, Where’s My Car kind of fashion. So they have to follow a trail of vomited-on bread crumbs to find their stuff and the groom, who, for all they know, has been sold into white slavery and is now the chattel of some odious sheik. Dance, pretty white boy, he’ll say, dance for me or it’s the chop for you.

Rating:

5 stars

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3849 reads

Batman Begins

dir: Christopher Nolan
[img_assist|nid=46|title=I know I look silly, but I'm ever so scary|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=300|height=300]
I have to say, I’m starting to get sick of all this superhero shit. The names and stars change, the settings and villains, but it’s the same shit in a different bucket every time a new one comes out.

With fairly low expectations I ventured onward and upward to check this out, being mindful of the exuberant reviews that paint this as being the bestest superhero flick ever made. I have to say, I just can’t see what they’re seeing. To me Batman Begins is just another generic superhero film, only slightly lamer than the others that have been coming out lately.

Sure, it’s better than the other four movies directed by old spookykid Tim Burton and uberhack Joel Schumacher, but they were pretty crappy anyway. Batman & Robin was the acknowledged nadir of the franchise, but for my money it was just as lame and cringeworthy as any of the other flicks.

Rating:

5 stars

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3336 reads

Matrix: Revolutions

dir: The Wachowski Brothers
[img_assist|nid=1022|title=Maybe one more punch will do the trick|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=450|height=306]
Wow. I mean, honestly, wow. This is a perfect picture. Actually, it's a picture perfect example of how even when people have a guaranteed hit on their hands, all the money in the world, complete creative control and the freedom to do whatever they want, people, in this being case the Wachowski Brothers, can still find a way to fuck things up seven ways from Sunday. And not in that
good way that your girlfriends like so much.

Rating:

5 stars

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3783 reads

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Grunt grunt grunt grunt grunt

dir: Marcus Nispel

2011

Honestly, I’m capable of being objective. I can be. Seriously.

I know you don’t believe me, but at the very least you might accept that I think it’s true.

It’s important to have perspective on various issues, be it elements of one’s own life, or the world in general. It’s especially handy when you’re trying to sift through the detritus of modern life as represented by pop culture and the world of sub-par art known as The Movies.

Having said that, let me now say this regarding the original film Conan the Barbarian that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and came out in 1982: It’s one of the single greatest movies of all time. It decapitates Citizen Kane, dismembers Lawrence of Arabia and rips the bloody, pulsing tongue out of Bridge Over the River Kwai.

It’s not only a great film, it’s one of the greatest achievements our species has ever been responsible for, up there with the pyramids, landing on the moon, and g strings.

You might laugh, or giggle a girlish titter and think, “Oh ho ho, how fucking funny. He must mean it ironically, or that it’s a camp classic, or he’s saying it as a set up for some punchline. I won’t get fooled again by his shenanigans.”

Well, you’d be wrong if that’s what you thought. And I don’t like saying stuff like that to you, the blessed and admired reader. I like keeping you onside, amused, well-disposed. Agreeable, even. The reason being, when I eventually ask for help smuggling out funds from Nigeria, I hope the request won’t fall on the deafest of ears.

No, I’m deadly serious: Conan the Barbarian is truly a great flick. Great music by Basil Polidouris, great physical presence in the lead role, great villain, great action, great dialogue, great witch fucking, great orgy scene mixed with cannibalism, great atmosphere, great everything. I can’t stress that enough: I’m serious. I’ve been around long enough, and been on the tubes of the internets long enough to know how meaningless saying all of this shit ultimately is, because it’s ridiculous to assert to other people that some subjective experience of yours should be a universally superb experience for everyone else.

Rating:

5 stars

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3732 reads

Twilight Saga: Eclipse

This stuff really is beyond parody, mostly because it's a
parody of the human capacity for junk tolerance already

dir: David Slade

2010

And the shit keeps on rolling out…

Wow, has it really only been a year since the last Twilight movie? Surely our years and entire lives are now structured around the release of new instalments in this rightly labelled saga? And it is a saga indeed. Epic, if you will, in proportions, length, width, girth, and in precious emotions.

Big emotions. Huge emotions. Bigger than anything you’ve ever snored through in your entire life!

See there’s a girl called Bella (Kristen Stewart) and every boy’s in love with her, because she’s so wonderful, despite not doing, saying or thinking a single interesting thing in her life. She does nothing, thinks nothing, imagines nothing, nothings nothing. She’s such a nothing that four books are devoted to her. Who ever said there was presence in absence was thinking squarely of Bella Swan and Kristen Stewart’s non-acting abilities.

Perversely, not only is she irresistible to every boy in school, but even the vampire and werewolf set think she’s all kinds of awesome. Yes, vampires and werewolves exist in this world, and their only reason for existing is to reassure Bella that she’s the best. The werewolves, however, are American Indian young dudes with shaved chests who run around half-naked until they transform, whenever they feel like it, or get angry, or get horny, into giant dogs.

Rating:

5 stars

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3700 reads

Stalker

Staring at the cover from the Criterion Collection is better than
watching the goddamn film

dir: Andrei Tarkovsky

1979

As a self-appointed film wanker, one who’s studied some elements of film history and criticism of the art form, but who hasn’t earned any formal qualifications or work experience in the field or any real credible basis for one’s pretentions, it’s often hard for me to justify my own status. Sure, I think I’ve got something relevant/amusing to say about films, mostly only because I love ‘em, and when you love something, whether it’s individual films or films in general, you might, like I do, feel like that gives you licence to inflict your opinions upon the rest of the world.

The hardest thing for me to justify is not my lack of knowledge of the kinds of things that send professional film critic and theory types into paroxysmic orgasms, but the fact that quite often I just can’t muster any appreciation of them.

In other words, yeah, so I’ve seen Citizen Kane a few times, but, honestly, put that Rosebud shit to bed, it’s had its day already.

Long intro: short point. I’ll acknowledge that I know who the Russian directorial ‘master’ Andrei Tarkovsky is, and what his films are, and that he was a master of crafting what he and many other film wankers consider some of the finest films known to man. But for the fucking life of me it doesn’t translate into my being able to enjoy watching most of his flicks.

Stalker was the last of the films in a Tarkovsky collection I bought a few years ago, last chronologically in the set as well as the last I finished watching. It’s taken me no less than about a dozen tries to get through the goddamn flick. My biggest problem is that, just as with his other alleged masterpiece, Solaris, watching any of the sequences in this flick, especially any time when the camera slowly zooms in on nothing happening, or when it painstakingly, agonisingly pans from left to right or back again, it knocks me the fuck out. I don’t mean it makes me feel a tad sleepy, I mean it knocks me out like a handful of Ambien. Day or night, ragged or rested, certain of his flicks put me into a narcotised state from which it’s not safe for me to operate motor vehicles or heavy machinery for a day afterwards. Even using the phone is not a good idea. You’ll be slurring like you’ve been drinking cough syrup all day.

Rating:

5 stars

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4121 reads

Myth, The

dir: Stanley Tong
[img_assist|nid=1129|title=It's not as good as it looks. No, wait, it's exactly as good as it looks|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=336|height=480]
Jackie Chan films are, by and large, pretty silly. The Myth is even sillier than most, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely unentertaining. Is there such a word? That’s it, I’m copywriting it.

Who cares, either way. The Myth is a silly but not unentertaining film about two guys in two different time periods played by Jackie. Let’s fact it, even Jackie’s best films are pretty silly. And here, paired with the same director who made Rumble in the Bronx and the appalling First Strike, this flick happily resides somewhere in the middle.

I love Jackie Chan. It’s impossible not to love him. Anyone who doesn’t love him barely retain the tattered remnants of a soul that makes them human. He’s just so lovable, like puppies, like cute little babies, like panda cubs.

That’s not the same thing as saying that a) he’s a great actor, or b) most of his films are good. Most of his films are crap. Really, really crap. So crap that they make you want to gouge your eyes out and those of the people sitting next to you. And the longer his career has gone on, the more crap his films have generally become. Of course, he’s been in 97 movies, so it’s not surprising that most of them are shite.

Rating:

5 stars

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5052 reads

5 stars

Green Zone

Bodyguards and Assassins (Shi yue wei cheng)

Ninja Assassin

The Hangover

Batman Begins

Matrix: Revolutions

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Stalker

Myth, The

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