No.213 : The Goob (2014)

The Goob at the IMDb

Oh a teenage coming of age film? That’ll be nice. Oh wait, British? Miserable it is then.

‘The Goob’ of the title is a 16 year old lad who has just finished school in rural Norfolk. He leaves the school bus for the last time and enters a world of, well not very much really.

Goob rides his moped to meet a bloke who I think was his Dad. He has a laugh and borrows some clothes having left the school bus in his pants - must be an English thing. He heads to the grim transport café where his mother works and then out to the banger racing with his brother and Mum’s new man Gene. Gene wins the race and goes home for some special attention from Goob’s mother. Goob and his brother sneak in and steal the keys for the stock car and head out for a joyride. Gene soon catches up and, following a crash, Goob’s brother is left in comedy traction.

Reasonably enough, Gene isn’t happy and has Goob work in his fields where the pumpkin harvest is due. Gene buses in a load of Eastern European field workers and, as the days of toil in the field goes by, Goob’s attention is drawn to a pretty young girl. Meanwhile a new camp employee has joined also and Gene ‘s wandering eye moves on to waitress Hannah Spearitt and to Goob’s object of desire.

Will anything happen or is this just a long hot summer slice of life?

I had concerns about this film from the off having noticed it was funded by the BBC and the BFI - worthiness was quickly confirmed and we were treated to 84 minutes of country living in the company of a bunch of chavs. Sadly it was more ‘bubonic’ than ‘bucolic’. Fair enough it was probably true and realistic, but not all stories need to be told.

The standout was Sean Harris, who graduated from this to be the baddie in the last two ‘Mission Impossible’ films. Maybe less worthy, but far more enjoyable. He exudes a quite menace and to be honest I was a bit disappointed that his character wasn’t as mental as his malevolent presence suggested.

I felt Liam Walpole in the title role was a bit limited and engaging. Quietness was his thing, but he failed to instill any sense of character with me. I preferred his campy friend, who looked lucky to get out alive after doing a dance number in Gene’s wife’s dress. It was a shame we didn’t see more of Hannah Spearritt as the downtrodden waitress Mary, but she was decent in her limited screen time.

Overall not much happened. I was awaiting a big revelation, a murder or some crazy twist but instead all I got was some people picking stuff in a field and lots of shouting at low rent barbecues. I’m sure these films are seen as important historical documents but for me, you need to add a wee bit of entertainment or narrative into the mix to make a viewing more than just a worthy pursuit.

It looked nice and the long hot summer was well realised, I just needed more to happen and for there to be a third act. Or a second.

THE Tag Line : North Norfolk’s Best Pumpkin Mix 51%

No.212 : The Harvest (2013)

The Harvest (2013) at the IMDb

Not so much foreshadowing about that poster as much as ‘this is how it ends’! Oh well, with one surprise out of the way let’s have a look at what else this decent thriller can offer.

The film opens with a boy going down after being struck by a ball at a pee-wee baseball match. He is saved by surgeon Samantha Morton, who we presume to be a good sort and worthy of a solid clapping on a Thursday night. We further sympathise with her when we learn that her son Andy is confined to a wheelchair due to an unspecified ailment.

His Dad, blog favourite Michael Shannon, manages to get him black market medicine from a pharmaceuticals rep who he is also boffing on the side. Andy‘s pitiful existence of watching the corn grow outside his window is enhanced with the arrival of Maryann, a 14 year old who has moved into the neighbourhood with her grandparents following the death of her parents.

She chances across Andy and is soon climbing into his bedroom and getting up to those usual teenage games of building scarecrows and sneaking around the house. Samantha is very protective of Andy to the extent she gets totally mental with any interference with his rehabilitation. Maryann gets grounded by her grandfather Peter Fonda, but a revelation in the basement leads to her taking even greater chances.

What is going on in the secret household and will ‘the harvest’ be a lovely big pile of potatoes - or something more sinister?

I liked this film despite some of the crazy leaps in logic that were needed to propel the plot. I liked the young Maryann, who was very Nancy Drew, but I have no idea her motivation for creeping into sick teen’s bedrooms and for digging about for clues when ostensibly there was nothing going on. Maybe she just though Mum’s overacting was hiding something.

Samantha Morton didn’t quite ring true as the mad mother with her outbursts seeming a bit of a stretch.I was hoping for more from her in the last third but she just faded away. Shannon was his usual good value but was a bit underused. He was clearly meant to be in Morton’s shadow but I could have done with a bit more of his trademark mania. His arc wasn’t that well defined with his actions at the conclusion not really being merited, given his years of devotion to the cause.

The two kids did well, with Andy played by Charlie Tahan who later becomes Wyatt in ‘Ozark’ and Natasha Calis was good value as Maryann, and certainly better than she was in her last sighting in ‘When Calls the Heart’.

The film kept me guessing for the most part and I liked the big twist at the end. The make up seemed a bit off with both Fonda and Shannon looking decidedly orange in several scenes - maybe the harvest was of fake tan.

Nit picking aside this was an enjoyably mystery thriller with just a smidgen of horror thrown in for good measure.

THE Tag Line : Pick of the Crop!  73%

No.211 : The Gift (2000)

The Gift at the IMDb

We finish our Keanu year 2000 triumvirate with ‘The Gift’ following ‘The Replacements’ and ‘The Watcher’. To say this is the best of the three is like saying Alec is the best Baldwin brother actor - it’s not really a competition.

This has quality written all over it with a top cast, cracking director in Sam Raimi and even Billy Bob Thornton showing up as co-writer. 

Cate Blanchett stars and gets a before the title credit which seemed strange so early in her career, but having seen the film you can see why - she is in nearly every scene and gives a cracking performance. She plays Annie, a young widow with three boys who possesses a psychic gift. She doles out readings to locals, such as beaten wife Hilary Swank who is married to the brutal Keanu. Keanu is a total bastard and blames Annie for his marriage problems rather than his philandering and wife punching powers.

Annie’s kids are playing up and on a visit to the principal Greg Kinnear she meets his fiancée, Katie Holmes. Katie has learned of Annie’s gift and asks if she sees anything in her and Greg’s future. She says she doesn’t, but we get a flash of Katie’s scabby and wet feet and know that things don’t bode well for her. Into the mix we also get Giovanni Ribisi’s slightly slow mechanic and Bill Lumbergh as the sleazy town prosecutor.

The action ramps up when Katie goes missing and, after a few days, they call in Annie for some clues. Police chief J Jonah Jamieson is sceptical, but less so when Katie’s body is fished out of Keanu’s pond, following Annie’s tip. 

After a court case, where Annie is branded a witch, Keanu goes down but Annie’s visions keep on coming. She knows that Keanu didn’t kill Katie, but who did?

This was a great film that was well told and edited with lots of clues peppered throughout. You have at least four solid suspects for the murder, and although I guessed correctly, any of the others would have been just as likely.

Blanchett does well as the wise women and I liked how she inhabited her visions while the past played out. The solid cast all did well apart from maybe Ribisi who was a bit too ‘Of Mice and Men’ for my liking. Word was that Billy Bob was asked to play the part, but I can see why he refused as it may have been a bit too close to ‘Slingblade’ for comfort.

I liked how Keanu was set up as the villain, but even after his conviction which saw Annie freed from his abuse, she still fought for the truth. Keanu was good as the bad guy and looked powerful when dishing out the lady beatings. Down the cast I liked Katie Holmes as the slutty Jessica and I wish we’d seen more of Bill Lumbergh’s pants down prosecutor.

The pacing and direction was excellent and I liked the final twist that gave an even more spooky and satisfying end to an entertaining film. Overall a cracking supernatural offering that will leave an impression.

THE Tag Line : Give Yourself the Gift of The Gift   -  80%

No.210 : The Victim (2011)

The Victim at the IMDb

Michael Biehn, who you’ll know as Hick from ‘Aliens’, wrote directed and starred in this offering, which I thought was terrible, but on reading up on it that may have been the intention.

Filmed in 15 days the film is Biehn’s attempt at a grind house film and although it doesn’t hit all the marks, it was good fun as a piece of disposable trash. At the start a ‘Based on True Events’ caption came up. Having seen the film that seemed an outrageous claim, especially as you’d ask who’s telling the story?, but a rewind showed that the word ‘Not’ flashed briefly in front of the caption. I was glad to have watched it thinking it to be a true story as every unlikely twist made it seem even more outrageous.

The film opens with a nice POV walk in the woods…what’s this we find? A cute kitten? Some pixies? No it’s a man doing a hooker doggy style over a tree stump. She’s not being raped but not particularly enjoying it either. Her committed lover doesn’t like her lack of engagement in his dirty talk so he breaks her neck.

We then cut to Biehn getting his shopping and his trip home. This drive takes forever and it is either to demonstrate how far out into the woods he lives or to pad the run time which only amounts to 82 minutes in total. He barely gets his coat off when a woman in hooker gear appears at his door, begging for his help. He’s a bit of a hermit, but a gullible one too, so he lets her in and lets her tell her tale in flashback.

She tells him that she and her friend went to party with two policemen friends in the woods. The friend is the one from the opening scene, so we know it doesn’t end well. Anyway the murderous policeman calls his friend to help with the body whilst the door knocking lady is getting down to business and amazingly he goes! The lady overhears their plans for her and flees, ending up at Biehn’s cabin.

Soon the two renegade cops are at the door and Biehn manages to shoo them away. The lady, Annie, who is a stripper, refuses to call the cops as this goes way to the top - the murderer is in line to be Chief of Police so she suggest they go and look for her friend’s body. Amazing Biehn agrees and after not finding it, the stripper and the aged hermit have gratuitous sex in many positions. Annie was played by Biehn’s real life wife so fair play to him for sharing. The murderer cop breaks in to the love shack, but is subdued and tortured into a confession. The happy couple then go to the promised location of the body but Biehn and Annie get captured buy the cop‘s accomplice. 

Who will escape next and who will survive? - and what relevance are those serial killer reports we keep hearing?

This was a cheaply made effort that had some risible acting and dialogue but to be honest I quite enjoyed its honest rubbishness. Biehn shouts a lot, presumably because he has been watching the daily rushes. His wife was a terrible actress and I can only assume she got the job because of two things - that she was his wife and was punctual.

The ‘happier times’ flashbacks were pointless but good fun as the two stripper friends tried on a variety of skimpy costumes and watched seemingly irrelevant news reports.

The two cops lacked any menace or personality but to be fair they were given all of the worst lines of dialogue and the most ridiculous situations to try and make believable.

The violence was quite graphic with one head smashing particularly gruesome - at least his face healed up in time for the burial! Lot’s of clichés were in attendance such as the dirt thrown in the face during a fight. Old and hackneyed or a grindhouse tribute? You decide! 

I did like that the ‘victim’ of the title wasn’t the dead stripper but the idea that “you take life by the balls; don’t be the victim”. Fair enough, but coming from the murderer it can hardly be seen as sage advice.

It was clearly not a film to be taken too seriously which was just as well as it made no logical sense whatsoever. It was competently made for the most part, so it’s not on a par with ‘The Room’ but you will have to go far to see a more trashy and ridiculous offering than ‘The Victim’

The Tag Line : If You Go Down to the Woods Today…   51%

No.209 : The Raven (1963)

The Raven (1963) at the IMDb

We already saw a version of ‘The Raven’ but despite both being about the Poe poem this is a completely different kettle of fish than the John Cusack version.

This one from 1963 has a lot to recommend it with Roger Corman directing and the writing by Richard Matheson who also gave us the ‘Omega Man’ book ‘I am Legend’. The cast is also stellar with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and even a young Jack Nicholson all hamming it up. It would be impossible for the film to be as good as the sum of its parts but it’s still plenty of fun.

We open with a 16th century Price reciting the Poe poem ‘The Raven’ - just forget it wasn’t written until 300 odd years later. He plays a magician who has fun creating a large neon raven with his fingers before he is interrupted by a tap, tap tapping on his window. He is surprised to find a raven trying to get in and is even more surprised when it starts talking like Peter Lorre. The bird explains it is the victim of an enchantment and it needs Price’s help to restore himself to his human form.

Price agrees to help and after mixing up a potion Lorre is largely restored to his normal self, albeit with the feathers still in place. They need more potion but are lacking the vital ingredient of dead man’s hair - luckily Price has a handy source in the shape of his dead dad in the family crypt. He gets his lock but is surprised when his departed daddy tells him to ‘beware’. Price is a bit spooked and even more so when Lorre tells him that Price’s dead wife Lenore has been seen in the castle of local mystery man Boris Karloff. He checks that Lenore’s rotting body is still in place, and it is, but he worries that Karloff may have her soul.

The pair resolve to visit the old mystic and take along Price’s daughter and Lorre’s son, Jack Nicholson, for good measure. The coach ride takes an age but eventually they are at Castle Karloff (it’s only a model). Will our troupe solve the mystery of Lenore? Who is the best at throwing bolts out of their fingers and how many times can they squeeze ‘nevermore’ into the script?

I quite enjoyed this film despite it being nothing like what I expected. I went in expecting Gothic horror but instead got camp comedy for my troubles. It wasn’t an out and out laugh fest, but the mirth out scored the horror by five to one. Price was his usual, reliable self and good value as the aged magician. Lorre was good fun as the raven and as the duplicitous Dr Bedlo. Karloff was marvellously hammy as Dr Scarabus and a young Nicholson did OK as the son, but I’m not sure why he was wearing a Robin Hood costume throughout.

The action largely took place on a couple of sets, but there was enough going on to keep my interest. I liked the magicians’ duel with Price shooting green beams from his fingers whilst Karloff’s were blue - C’mon Boris!

Bits of Poe’s poem were laced throughout the script, but it certainly wasn’t a rigid adaptation of the source material, with Lenore for one taking a radically different character arc. At only 86 minutes the film doesn’t outstay its welcome and it was good fun to see an array of stars at different ends of their career trajectories.

A real historical treasure trove that, whilst never a classic, is well worth a look.

The Tag Line : Beam Me Up!  69%

No.208 : The Invasion (2007)

The Invasion at the IMDb

I had always avoided this film despite its top notch cast and sci-fi plot, mainly because of its stinky reputation. Seemingly the first cut was so terrible the director got the boot and the ‘V for Vendetta’ team of the Wachowskis and director James McTeigue were drafted in to salvage something from the project. I don’t know how bad the original was, but the revised offering was certainly a dud, so it must have been completely dire.

We open in the middle of the drama with psychiatrist Nicole eating a load of pills and drinking some Mountain Dew - we’ve all been there. We flashback to the space shuttle ‘Patriot’ blowing up on re-entry. The debris left has a bacterial residue on it and Kidman’s ex-husband Jeremy Northam gets cut by a piece when handed it by a pesky kid. His new wife, who used to be married to Axe off ‘Billions’ is a right cow when he complains of feeling unwell and rightly never seen again in the rest of the film. Northam has a bad night and is soon a full on snotty husk.

Meanwhile, Kidman’s kid is out for Halloween and, after her son’s friend gets bitten by a dog, she finds what looks like a bit of skin in his candy bag - I used to just get nuts and a tangerine. She takes this to her friend (but he’d like to be more) Daniel Craig who sends it on to virologist Jeffrey Wright who has some immediate computer graphics and techno babble set up to reveal that this pathogen is taking over people and to explain the plot for slow people.

It was probably lost in the re-edit but the diagnosis came with indecent haste as does the vaccine. I suppose we are all experts in viruses now, not so much in 2007! They also come up with some advice which was basically just plot points for us to remember, such as you can’t go to sleep and you can’t display emotions, lest the infected sniff you out.

Jeffrey has a secure lab set up but Kidman can’t leave her precocious kid behind as he may be immune to the virus and hold the key to a cure. That, and he’s so darn cute. Craig, in full puppy dog mode follows her about and soon they are back in the pharmacy where we started the film. Can our heroes avoid the infection and will the world be cured? And what will happen in the film?

This was a total clunker, but I did stay until the end and it was unintentionally funny in places. The film is yet another take on ‘The Bodysnatchers’ with the allegory switched from McCarthyism to our generally switched off and ‘don’t care’ society. It was done with a leaden hand with all the infected standing and staring whilst our heroes tried to look flat and uninteresting - job done! In places it was a lot like the far better ‘The World’s End’ but not as funny or engaging.

It started off being a bit creepy,but soon descended into farce as hordes of infected were around every corner with he ambition of puking into your mouth. The ending and the solution was so pat and unconvincing that it put me in mind of another Kidman clunker ‘The Stepford Wives’ where everything was sorted, literally at he push of a button.

Kidman did OK with limited material in a role that basically just saw her running around a lot. Daniel Craig, in his last role before becoming James Bond, was terrible in a nothing part. He has a half mullet, half feather cut haircut and basically just goo-goo eyes Kidman throughout. It was funny when he ‘turned’ as there was no discernible difference.

The massive edits and reshoots were obvious with big leaps in the plot and internal logic appearing without comment. It went from ‘Oh I may have the flu’ to the city being overrun. It was possibly not as bad as I anticipated but it was still pretty bad. In a world full of contagion and indeed body snatching films this is one invasion that’s easy to resist.

THE Tag Line : Evade the Invasion - 52%

No.207 : The Watcher (2000)

The Watcher at the IMDb

Keanu Reeves is credited with three films in 2000 and all of them are the Definite Article! We have already had a look at The Replacements and, having seen ‘The Watcher’, I’m betting the upcoming ‘The Gift’ is the pick of that year’s litter. ‘The Watcher’ is certainly looking like the runt, a view that’s echoed by Keanu who has disowned it.

The film is essentially a cat and mouse homicide drama that pits Red Reddington against Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan. Red is an FBI investigator who is burnt out. He has an untidy apartment and only one orange in his fridge. He used to work L.A. but after his lady friend died in a fire and he failed to catch a serial killer he moved to Chicago to live off disability. That’s not much of a plot so let’s have the serial killer follow him and taunt him with a new set of killings - bodacious!

We get to hear Red’s profile of the killer set against Keanu in action. The idea is that he watches his targets for ages, knowing their every move, before strangling them with piano wire. We know he’s a force to be reckoned with as we’ve already seen him dancing on his own in slow motion.

Red sees a psychiatrist in the shape of a dowdy Marisa Tomei, and neglects to open his post. This turns out to be a mistake as he misses a special offer from Reader’s Digest. No wait, photos from the killer. Bored waiting to get caught, Keanu sends Red photos of his next victim and gives him until 9pm to trace the girl or else she’s history. ‘The Watcher’ has picked out quiet, lonely woman with cats as his victims and the first two peg it before anyone realises who they are. A searing indictment on our selfish society there.

Keanu gets bolder and starts trailing Red before he inevitably kidnaps Marisa and invites his rival to a big warehouse showdown. Who will survive? Will anyone watch ‘The Watcher’ and enjoy it? Doubtful.

This was an awful film that was like a sub-par episode of ‘Criminal Minds’. The police detection was terrible and largely amounted to berating people in the streets and stuffing flyers in their faces. Keanu was no better as the most character free serial killer ever committed to film. You could tell his heart wasn’t in it but that’s no excuse for this lamentable showing.

The director tried to use every trick in the book to jazz things up with flashbacks, POV shots, slow motion and out of focus shots all thrown into a mix that produced a big pile of crap.

There was no tension at all and the big finale was like 50% off day at the CGI shop. I will give the film credit for at least killing the baddie and showing the body - something ambiguous and a ‘The End…?’ caption would probably have ended me.

No one came out of this looking good with even poor old Zedmore off Ghostbusters drafted in to play an ineffective police chief who hands out assignments to any dope head who walks in his door.

There were a few unintentionally funny moments but not enough to rescue this stinker. Overall a complete mess with no thrills or surprises to speak of and some needlessly nasty kills to boot. All in all not worth a watch.

THE Tag Line : ‘Don’t Watch The Watcher’ 44%

No.206 : The Interview (2014)

The Interview (2104) at the IMDb

There are a few ‘The Interview’ films out there, hence the year in the title bar. This one is easily the most famous and, when it came out in 2014, it could probably have laid claim to be the most famous ‘Definitive article’ film of all time. That’s why we didn’t review it then. Now that the dust has settled I watched it again and to be fair it still held up. Not sure if it still merits the hype driven 8/10 I gave it then, but I certainly enjoyed it second time around.

The familiar pairing of James Franco and Seth Rogan play a TV host and producer respectively. Franco’s talk show is a ratings hit with stars like Eninem, Rob Lowe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt all lining up to tell their tawdry tales and humiliate themselves. Fair play to them all for having a good old laugh at themselves. Despite the show’s success however, Rogan is unfulfilled and craves the respect of his peers in the mainstream news channels.

Opportunity knocks when a tabloid reveals that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s favourite TV show, along with ’The Big Bang Theory’, is Franco’s. They offer the despot an interview on the show and after a funny trip to China for Rogan, the meeting is set up in North Korea. The CIA however want a piece of the action. Mesmerised by  Lizzy Caplan’s cleavage Franco agrees to their plan to kill Kim by way of a poisoned handshake.

Soon the lads are in Korea and, despite a setback when a guard eats the poison which is disguised as chewing gum, the two have a meeting with the big man who turns out to be that bloke off ‘Veep’. Franco is initially taken with Kim who likes drugs, girls and swearing just like him. He swears off the plot and ditches the replacement poison before learning not all is what it seems.

Will the interview go ahead and will our guys get out alive? Will they stick to the script and is Kim’s love of Katie Perry just a front?

Along with ‘This is the End’ I’d say this is my favourite of the Rogan/Franco films. I don’t like the stoner stuff and this was a bit more measured in its humour. There were some scenes that went a bit far - the fingers getting bitten off for a start, but overall it was well paced and, whilst not believable, it was good fun and made some sort of sense.

It was no surprise that Kim was portrayed as a playboy but the guy from Veep was good value as the war-mongering psycho who liked puppies and boobs. Rogan was probably the better of the main pair with some funny scenes with the hot North Korean lady soldier. Franco seemed a bit erratic, being a complete doofus in places yet having some sharp insights in others.

The CIA angle was mostly well done although it was stretching credibility how switched on their operation was. It seemed unlikely that our Hollywood luvvies would buy into a murder plot so readily, but it worked well, with the 'will they won’t they' aspect keeping me guessing despite having seen the film only a few years back.

That’s not to say it was forgettable; there was just a lot going on, and I could see my having a different favourite scenes when I watch it again in five year’s time.

The ending was a bit pat, but it was well earned with some big laughs and decent stunts along the way.

THE Tag Line : Interview Gets the Job Done 76%

No.205 : The Informers (2008)

The Informers at the IMDb

Based on a book by Bret Easton Ellis and boasting a stellar cast, I had high hopes for ‘The Informers’ but alas it was a bit of a mess, although a mess with a couple of decent ideas and scenes.

The film is set in L.A. in 1983. We open with a great looking party with everyone wearing neon and looking like escapees from the set of ‘Miami Vice’. The dreamy feelgood vibe lasts for all of two minutes as one attendee wanders out into the road and bleeds to death in his friend’s arms after being hit by a car.

The incident has a greater or lesser effect on a wide range of characters, and we follow seven separate stories, some of which intertwine, and others which barely reference the event at all.

I won’t go into intimate details of the plot as that would take all of the 100 minute run time to map out. The main events were a love triangle between Billy Bob Thornton , his wife (Kim Basinger) and the TV anchor he’s having an affair with played by Winona Ryder.

We also meet an English band who are jetting in for some concerts and to shoot a video. They are managed by a barely seen Rhys Ifans and have a lead singer who is a total nonce. There is also a plot involving a hotel worker whose uncle, Mickey Rourke, comes to stay and gets him involved in a kidnap plot, and a group of teens who all sleep with each other, often at the same time.

The hedonistic and seamy lifestyles we look in on slowly start to unravel and  as they play out we have to wonder if we really care what happens to these privileged and hedonistic assholes.

As you can imagine, there is a lot going on here and it’s a difficult balancing act to keep all of the balls in the air, and it's one the director fails to manage. The main love triangle plot was dull whereas I could have done with a lot more about the kidnapping. Chris Izzak and his son looked like they had fun in Hawaii but I missed the point and the rock star plot didn’t go anywhere.

I think that this was supposed to be an essay on 80’s culture and excess but it just came across as a bunch of rich folk with too much time on their hands. I guess the ‘informers’ of the title is a suggestion that they are each informing us of a flawed element of society. That, or it was just a load of good looking people having sex and taking drugs?

Reading the details of this production, I see that it suffered in the edit with a vampire plot from the book excised from the movie. That’s a shame as the film could have done with an extra element, supernatural or otherwise, to take it away from the self-indulgent mess that we ended up with.

There is a star name in nearly every scene but Thornton and Basinger were well off their Oscar form and only dear Amber Heard appeared to put everything into her role. I wouldn’t write it off as a complete waste of time, but the film certainly represents a wasted opportunity.

THE Tag Line :The 80’s Without the Fun  53%

No.204 : The In-Laws (1979)

The In-Laws at the IMDb

Columbo and Alan Arkin team up for this screwball comedy, which I thought was dire but seems to be quite well regarded - go figure!

The film starts with an overly elaborate bank robbery as a bunch of hooded men grab a bank truck with a big magnet and lift it over a fence where they cut the doors off to get at the loot. They disregard the cash for some metal plates, which I correctly guessed where engravings for bill printing. Go me. It’s not clear why the mint are driving the valuable plates around some back streets but there you go.

A robber takes the plates on a long journey as the titles run and ends up with Columbo. The robber says he needs the agreed $1.5 million paid by tomorrow. Columbo says that this may present a problem as his son is soon to be married and he has to meet the in-laws - that’s the name of the film!

Alan Arkin plays the other half of this odd couple as a buttoned down dentist who yells too much. The two families meet and Columbo tells tall tales  before hiding one of the plates in Arkin’s basement.

He then shows up at Arkin’s dental office and ropes him into a scheme where the remaining plates are removed from his safe under the noses of some heavies. I wasn’t clear why he split the plates up or why he left them somewhere where he couldn’t get at them but you have to go with it. Arkin manages to recover the plates but doesn’t appreciate being shot at, and his wife is unhappy too as she found the other one and called in the cops.

At this point I wasn’t clear if Columbo was a crook or a CIA operative as he claimed. He gets disavowed by his handler Ed Begley Jnr, but that may be a bluff too. Anyway, before the wedding the two guys have innumerable and intolerable adventures where they fly to Honduras in a racist airline ‘Wong Airways’ before trying to offload the goods to a tiresome dictator. Will they survive? What is the plot? And will they make the wedding on time?

You’ll probably have gathered that I didn’t enjoy this one too much and to be honest the only smirk the film earned from me was the dictator’s new flag for his country that has a big pair of knockers on it. I know lowbrow humour wins the day, but I didn’t enjoy the farce or wackiness that permeated throughout the film.

I normally like Alan Arkin, but as a shouty and neurotic dentist he was no fun and Columbo was no better as the man of mystery I couldn’t get interested in. At times the comedy was so on the nose I could barely watch, with the dictator’s hand puppet and silly voice just plain embarrassing.

The plot was sketchy at best and really just served to put our heroes into funny situations. The idea that the plates will be used to destabilise the economy was fair enough but why not just take out the baddies with some carpet bombing, rather than have an overlong and unfunny caper to achieve the same result? Oh, so you can have a film?, I see.

The set pieces were poor with an overlong car chase that inevitably resulted in the demise of some fruit, and another sequence where they kept circling with the baddies in their cars -’Again?’ says Arkin at the fifth repetition - I’m afraid so Alan.

The high praise lavished on this film tells you that it must appeal to someone, but it wasn’t me. The capers were too contrived and the characters lacked anything that made me give a toss.

THE Tag Line : As Fun as a Visit to Your In-Laws -  50%

No.203 : The Judge (2014)

The Judge at the IMDb

Alas this isn’t another film about Judge Dredd, but an overlong court room drama starting Robert Downey Jnr and Robert Duvall, who we recently saw in the more enjoyable The Outfit.

Downey plays Hank, a slick lawyer who will defend any client no matter how sleazy. He earns the big bucks and has a cute daughter, but his marriage has failed and he is estranged from his family. As a big case is about to close and just as Hank moves in for the kill, he gets a call to advise that his mother has died. The court adjourns and Hank heads back to his sleepy Indiana birthplace for the funeral.

He drives in a new truck, that looks for all the world as product placement, before meeting up with his two brothers, including a fat Vincent D’Onofrio, and his father Duvall, who was the town’s judge for 40 odd years. Hank has a drink and a squeeze with an attractive barmaid before meeting up with his old flame Vera Farmiga who you’ll know from ‘Up in the Air’. We learn that Hank went out to a concert one night and never came back, but fortunately Vera is most forgiving.

Hank gets a lift from Vera ,after falling off his bike, and he meets her daughter who just happens to be the barmaid he had kissyface with. She’s on break from law school and there is a brief suggestion that Hank may be her father.

Meanwhile damage is found to the front of Duvall’s car and he’s charged with killing a man by knocking him off his bike. It turns out the victim was a criminal whom Duvall had treated leniently but had gone onto kill a young girl. Duvall can’t remember the hit and run and is suffering from cancer and early onset dementia. Hank agrees to defend his Dad with the aid of Dax Shepard’s idiot lawyer, and they are soon up against Billy Bob Thornton, who has a score to settle against Hank.

Will the old man go down? Well what happens is…Objection! Watch it yourself or you can guess. You’ll probably get it right!

This was a decent effort but at 140 minutes it was too long. A lot of time was spend charting Duvall’s demise and to be honest I don’t need to see him shitting himself and getting showered down. It may have been a touching moment of weakness for a proud man, but I’d have been happy with a tell don’t show scenario here.

Hank’s journey was predictable as he started to see both sides of an argument to the extent that he was pondering taking over the judge’s chair at the end. The courtroom scenes were decent as the unbreakable case was slowly picked apart. There was too much of ’Objection your honour’ and too much latitude given when they started yelling out random stuff with the judge happy to see where it went.

The conclusion was balanced to some degree, with everyone winning but also losing, and with justice seeming to be served. Downey did his usual good show but if he donned the Iron Man armour half way though you wouldn’t be surprised. I could have done with more of Dax in his David Pleat suit, and it was a shame he didn’t get enough to do to earn ‘Employee of the Month’ this time around.
The will they won’t they love story didn’t go anywhere and the lovely Vera seemed a bit desperate.

There was some growth, some reconciliation and some redemption but alas too little editing. Trim an hour and you’d have a neat 90 minute drama rather than this meandering and bloated soap opera.

THE Tag Line : You are Judged to be Too Long!  67%

No.202 : The Gangster (1947)

The Gangster at the IMDb

Those poor saps at the ‘W’ Movie Blog just endured a film from 1946:  'Whistle Stop Review'

Nothing so ancient here at the progressive Definitive Article Blog - this one’s from 1947.

We open with some narration as was the style back then. Our anti-hero Shubunka tells us he runs the seafront and has nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to fear. That’ll change! He has a fancy apartment and a big scar on his face - no worries though, as in close ups you can see it’s clearly stuck on. The nature of his rackets isn’t clear but it looks like protection although it’s probably drugs and hookers, but they aren’t allowed to say.

He works one soda fountain with Jammey, who is scared that toughs are moving in on some of their locations. Eye watering damage estimated at $120 has been caused and Jammey is worried that Shabs has taken his eye off the ball as he has nice things and a showgirl girlfriend. He certainly has a point, as we see the dead eyed Shabs throw furs and jewellery at the mostly disinterested but wonderfully named Nancy Starr.

Shabs doesn’t trust Nancy and after she tells a tall tale about a sick baby he tails her to a meeting with an agent. She’s clearly scared of our man but likes the stuff, thank you very much.

Elsewhere in the soda fountain, which must double as a soap opera, one chap plans to woo an older lady called Olga whilst another is in danger of losing his shirt to the bookies. The cashier has contempt for Shabs and some toughs are at the door looking to smash the place up!

Temperatures start to rise when Shabs agrees to an ill advised trip to the beach. It’s so hot he has to unbutton his suit jacket and he gets shaken down by a couple of great caricature gangsters. He again suspects Nancy has given their location away and has to try and bargain with the toughs. He ends up in front of the winnable kingpin, Cornell who tells him he’s taking over. Shabs plans to flee town with Nancy and come back to reclaim what’s his with some hired muscle. But who can he trust? Nancy? Jammey? Anyone?

This was quality entertainment that has plenty of unintentional laughs and a good take on issues like morality and honour. Shabs was clearly a shit, but he was our shit and Barry Sullivan did well to make us care a wee bit about such a horrible character. To be fair you never saw Shabs beating anyone up, with all his violence implied in his steely gaze and hand clenching. Clearly he wasn’t shy about letting folk have it, but at the end he was moaning that he wasn’t nasty enough to stay on top.

The ‘B’ and ‘C’ plots were similar in that the characters struggled with their own vices, be they women or gambling. Neither turned out well so the moral of the story was don’t do anything that could remotely be considered as fun.

I liked Belita as the femme fatale Nancy who got to sing a song but appeared to forget half of the words. She was a right cow throughout and it was funny when her betrayal was rewarded with hee-haw.

There were a lot of good character actors on show, and although everyone was smart and wore a tie and hat, there was a nice air of malevolence around a lot of them.

Things panned out as you’d probably guess but it was a fun visit to the seamy side of town, where life is cheap and the dames don’t put out, even when you’ve spent $7.80 on them.

THE Tag Line : Crime Doesn’t Pay - For Long  : 75%

No.201 : The Reivers (1969)

The Reivers at the IMDb

It’s 1905 and a time for narration. Burgess Meredith tells anyone who’s listening about his idyllic childhood and the four days that ‘parted him from his youth’. The narration is overlaid with footage of some sunny days and of lots of naked young boys frolicking about in the water. One to delete off your hard drive before you take your laptop into PC World then!

Our hero is Lucius a ginger haired 11 year old who is Meredith in his youth. It’s a big day in their small town as the first car to appear there is arriving by train. Local roustabout Boon (Steve McQueen) is most excited and brings along a rose to put in the car’s handy flower holder. The car is owned by Lucius’ Grandfather, known locally as ‘The Boss’. Boon’s role isn’t clear but he washes the car and appears to have free use of it. He shows it off to his black friend Ned who only goes and steals it. Bit of stereotyping there, and Ned can only be grateful that the police aren’t as trigger happy as they are today.

After some mild fighting the two are before the judge who puts a $100 bond on each to ensure their good behaviour. Of course the scofflaws pay no attention and when The Boss is away at a funeral they take the car and head for a big whorehouse in Memphis, where Boon’s girlfriend earns her living. At first it’s only Lucius and Boon on the trip, but Ned stows along for too, discovered just in time to get covered in mud, in a scene that looked like more fun to be in than to watch.

At the most sedate whorehouse you’ll ever see, complete with buttoned up ladies, Lucius gets in a fight and Boon tries to get some loving. His girlfriend is looking at a career change and Ned, who is more trouble than he’s worth, trades the car for a race horse. The trio must win a race with the new horse to get the car back - it‘s almost that they are just inventing scrapes so they can get out of them.

Can they achieve this feat with a slow horse and with novice jockey Lucius? I’d bet on that!

This was a strange film which was 70% Disney schmaltz and halcyon days reminiscing and 30% full on racism and violence. It didn’t hold well together and it was quite jarring when, after a nice bit of driving along and missing out on mild peril someone comes along with talk of lynching’s and ‘n-word’ this and ‘n word’ that. Fair enough the South had plenty of racism going on but choose your genre - child growing up or string them up, you can’t mix ‘Mississippi Burning’ with ‘Hopscotch Girl’.

I didn’t like Steve McQueen much in this - we was obviously the big star but everyone was loving him with there being no evidence at all that they should. He wanders about in his stolen car with a shit eating grin and can do no wrong. As a protagonist he offered nothing and his relationship with the unhappy hooker didn’t ring true at all.

Mitch Vogel as Lucius was no better with his teary tantrums even more annoying than his good manners and wisdom. It was a lot to have to carry the majority of the picture on his shoulders and he struggled with the emotional scenes. He did well in the racing parts, but only because he’s been replaced by a stuntman a foot taller and wider.

Based on a book by William Faulkner you can see they were trying to show a slice of life from more innocent times but the mix was off and the adventures are dull and lacking any real excitement. The big horse race at the end gets run twice and looks daft as they have Giant haystacks playing the fallow youth and doesn’t offer any surprises anyway.

The settings and cinematography were good but this looked like a vanity project for McQueen that forgot to add the vital ingredients of character and plot.

THE Tag Line : Reivers and Weep 52%

No.200 : The Quarry (2020)

The Quarry at the IMDb

This film has a clever title; it’s not just about someone being on the hunt for their quarry, but bits of it are set in a quarry too!

A priest is driving along an empty Texas road, whilst hammering the communion wine, when he sees a body lying by side of the street. He helps the man into his car and we see that it’s Nucky’s brother off ‘Boardwalk Empire’. The two don’t say much but the priest buys his new friend dinner whilst still swigging the wine.

He stops at a quarry - huge mistake - to sober up before heading into town. The two argue and the priest gets killed after being bashed on the head with a bottle. Our drifter cuts his hand and bandages it with the dead man’s shirt before hiding the body in a frankly piss-poor grave.

He rifles through the priest’s effects and learns that he is to take over as pastor in the small town nearby. Short of anything better to do he heads into town and parks his van at the lodgings next to the church and assumes the dead man’s identity. He meets housekeeper Celia who tells his to get his stuff out the van lest it all be stolen but he lays down for an early night instead. Next morning he finds his van emptied with even the wheels missing. Well, he was warned.

He contacts police chief Van Arlen who just happens to be bedding the pretty Mexican housekeeper. He makes some enquires and soon some local youths are fingered for the robbery. They turn out to be the housekeepers cousins - small world!

Having taken on the pastor’s identity our man is obliged to give sermons and, before you know it, he’s a smash hit offering both baptisms and funerals. Trouble awaits however as the priest’s body is found and the cousins know the drifter is not all he seems. They however get fingered for the crime due to the priest's bloody clothes being found in their home after their van heist. Van Arlen isn't convinced about the town's new pastor however and some clues may save the cousin from the noose. Will the correct person pay for the murder and will the wheels get back on the van quicker than they fell from this production?

This film was a real wasted opportunity with a ‘Boardwalk Empire’ cast reunion pissed away on a lacklustre offering that meandered along, with a go nowhere script and character development that didn’t make sense. The first half hour was good, and I was looking forward to the noose tightening as the drifter’s story fell apart. The whole ‘flowers in the quarry’ angle didn’t make sense nor did the murder confession or the eventual finale.

We didn’t get much in the way of back-story to the drifter’s character so his struggles didn’t resonate and his moments of clarity seemed at odds with what we knew of him. You could tell he was conflicted, what with the dead priest showing up and telling him off, but his mumbly performance in court and the denouement in the boat didn’t ring true at all. Michael Shannon did his usual shouty starey bit but he was wasted here, mostly reacting rather than doing. There was no detective angle with things like the missing wanted poster and shirt sleeve bandage not being followed through.

I get that our man was on a path to redemption and salvation, or at least that was the intent, but in reality he was just a murdering scumbag who was not very good at covering his trail. I wanted to like this film, as it had good ingredients, but alas it fell well short of the sum of its parts.

THE Tag Line - Quarry Digs Self Into Hole 54%

No.199 : The Call (2013)

The Call at the IMDb

Halle Berry stars in this 2013 thriller as a 911 call handler who takes ’the call’.

She has big hair and is at the top of her game in ‘the hive’ where all emergency calls for Los Angeles are dealt with. One night she takes a call from a girl experiencing a home invasion. Halle tries to keep her safe but makes a rookie mistake when she calls her back after being disconnected, alerting the bad guy to the victim’s location. Halle tries to talk him out of it but instead hears his soon to be catchphrase ‘It’s already done’.

Despite support from her bitch supervisor and her policeman boyfriend of ‘When the Bough Breaks’ Halle reacts badly and when we catch up with her 3 months later she has moved to a training role. She seems a bit full of herself to me, but is soon dragged back to the headset when a colleague can’t handle an abduction case and Halle takes it on. We have already seen the girl get abducted and she awakens in the boot of a car.

Strangely the bad guy never took his victim’s phone, but luckily for him the phone is a burner that can’t be traced. Halle talks her through a number of tricks that may help her be found or identify her location. The bad guy is very poor and keeps offering his troublesome charge last chances as she keeps messing up his beat up Toyota - at least that paint she dripped over it miraculously disappeared!

The villain upgrades his ride when he takes out do-gooder Christopher Molisanti off ‘The Sopranos’ - nice that he reformed ; too bad it didn’t work out well for him. Slowly the net starts to close in on the bad guy but Halle is told to go home. Fat chance, I’m the star! Halle manages to track the baddie to his underground Culture Club torture dungeon but we have a few reversals ahead of us before the credits roll and things are sorted out!

I didn’t expect much from this film due to its limited sounding premise but it was good fun and kept me interested to the end. The straightforward scenario was enlivened by lots of fast cuts and wrong foots with some innovative twists and surprises thrown in along side some hip graphics and split screens.

No nonsense Halle was good, especially when she cracked through her tough exterior to end up talking astrology and offering movie dates to her caller. Abigail Breslin was less convincing as the abductee and I couldn’t make out a lot of her dialogue through her emotional delivery. She did look fetching in her blue bra throughout act three however.

The bad guy wasn’t too menacing although they did try to give him some back-story to flesh his character out. As a serial abductor he wasn’t very good and I imagine in the real world he wouldn’t escape capture for five minutes.

The dungeon scenes went on a bit log and it beggared belief that Halle’s character would abide by horror movie convention and let her man up off the canvas twice. Stab him in the neck many times, don’t turn your back on him!

The final conclusion was plain daft and had more than a bit of ‘girl power’ about it. It’s not one to take too seriously but if you like a throwaway thriller with a few decent set pieces you could do worse than to answer ‘The Call’.

THE Tag Line : Take the Call  73%

No.198 : The Whistleblower (2010)

The Whistleblower at the IMDb

Rachel Weisz stars in this bio-pic of Kathryn Bolcovac, the titular whistleblower who stood up for the trafficked women she found when working for the UN in post war Bosnia in 1999.

The films opens with two Ukrainian girls chatting in, I presume, Ukrainian. There are no subtitles and for a minute I thought I had a dud DVD, but you do manage to get an idea what’s going on. Basically one has gone to an agency and is getting her photo taken - huge red flag!

Weisz is a policewoman in Nebraska who is trying to get a transfer. She has lost a custody battle with her husband and needs to move if she is to keep in contact with her kids. The answer to her problems looks like it has arrived in the shape of a 6 month, $100k contract to work in Bosnia, following the end of the war. Her role is one of peacekeeper so she can’t always get involved in the seedy activities she sees going on.

After managing to prosecute the first case of domestic abuse in years she is spotted by boss woman Vanessa Redgrave, who gets her a promotion to head of female affairs. Meanwhile we see the Ukrainian girl from the start who is now a sex worker in a grotty bar. She and Weisz’ paths cross and, after finding a lot of Polaroids showing that UN workers are involved in all aspects of the trade, Rachel resolves to clean things up.

It’s not an easy task however, as all UN workers have diplomatic immunity and the powers that be have a desire to keep things quiet, lest the lucrative government contracts be pulled. She has brief help from Dr Strange and from David Strathearn at internal affairs, but her plans for justice are thwarted at every turn.

How far will Weisz go to save the girls and can the broken system be fixed?

This was a worthy and informative film, but one you would be hard pressed to enjoy. The treatment of women throughout is terrible with some of the extras from ‘Taken’ regularly delivering savage beatings to some dead-eyed girls. This means a lot of the film is women screaming and, although it’s doubtlessly realistic, I was worried the neighbours might call the cops on me.

Weisz is great in the lead and you can tell she is passionate about the subject of human trafficking. She doesn’t have any make up on and is usually in fatigues so you can’t say she’s in it for the glamour.

It was a clever device to follow the Ukrainian girl throughout so that we have a familiar face to empathise with. I was less keen on the several scenes where all the dialogue was in a foreign language and we had to guess what was going on.

The top level cast was mostly good, although Dr Strange and Davos Seaworth only had a couple of brief scenes each. To be fair, this film dates from 2010 so both were still early in their, soon to be stellar, careers.

The film used a largely blue and grey palette and the general mood was one of oppression and decay. It certainly suited the subject matter but, along with the brutal subject matter, it only underlined what a depressing experience this film could be for some.

I did enjoy it, and although the captions at the end said that the problem wasn’t fixed it was good to celebrate one woman’s efforts to write the horrible wrongs being perpetuated by those who were sent as saviours.

THE Tag Line : As Harrowing As It Should Be!   72%