No.40 : The Shootist (1976)

The Shootist at the IMDb

This turned out to be John Wayne’s last film and fittingly he plays an aged gun slinger trying to live out his last days as the old west gives way to new fangled inventions and values.

Wayne plays JB Brooks a notorious killing machine who returns home to Carson City for a check up at Jimmy Stewart’s medical practice. After checking his trap door a grim diagnosis is given - he has cancer and a matter of days to live. After being given a bottle of dope by the Doc, Wayne heads off for some digs and manages to find a bed at Lauren Bacall’s B&B.

Becall is your stereotyped western widow with lots of huffing and disapproval of our man’s antics and language. She has an impressionable son in the shape of Ron Howard and quickly worries that the boy’s idolisation of Wayne can’t lead to anything good. Despite of his hopes of lying low, Wayne’s presence hasn’t gone unnoticed and pretty soon every man and his dog is at the door trying to turn a buck off his notoriety.

After booting out a newspaper man and biographer Wayne soon sorts out other conmen in the shape of the undertaker and Scatman Crothers’ horse trader. He realises that other less soft people may be on their way to settle some old scores and readies himself for one last show down. After shooting two night time assassins and wrecking the guest house, all of Becall’s other tenants move out leaving our happy trio a few days together before the inevitable blood bath. As the brigands descend on the town will Wayne get his wish of a quiet death or will he go down all guns blazing?

Most of what I’d heard about this film wasn’t true - Wayne didn’t have cancer throughout shooting (he did die of cancer 3 years later) and the film wasn’t specifically written for him as a swan song to a career in westerns - he was seemingly fifth choice for the lead. This misinformation sits well with the film however which deals with the difference between the legend and the man. Despite the locals all living in fear of Wayne, he is in reality a scared old man waiting to die.

The film opens in black and white with clips of old Wayne films showing him (and his character here) as a young man before dissolving into colour for the present day. The sets are well done with things like the horse drawn trolley car a good indicator that the wild west days are falling away. The film is set in the week following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the ‘end of an era’ feel permeates throughout.

Wayne has never been a favourite of mine but he does well in this role, showing just enough humility beneath his gruff exterior. It was fun to see him paired up with James Stewart although the latter’s performance is little more than a cameo followed by a wordless appearance at the end. Becall is good value as the spirited widow although I didn’t really buy the transformation in her affections for the potty mouthed hell raiser.

Ron Howard was OK as the impressionable lad although you are still thinking ‘Happy Days’ throughout. He didn’t ring true when he was swigging the booze but when he was doing his ‘can I mister, can I?’ routine he was fine. Of the bit parts John Carradine hammed it up big style as the undertaker and Scatman was good fun as the horse trader with an early eye for celebrity memorabilia.

The film runs a pretty straight narrative and there are no real surprises. It is good fun however and great to see some genuine Hollywood legends strut their stuff for one last time. The gun play and action is a bit low key but the characters are great and it’s well worth shooting down the DVD shop for. Or just download it - I don’t care.

THE Tag Line : Bang, Bang - I’m Dead 75%

No.39 : The Penthouse (2010)

The Penthouse at the IMDb

The Penthouse is a dire effort that amazingly seems to have been inspired by the equally desperate ‘Wild Roomies’ (which our sister Blog covered : http://100wmovies.blogspot.com/2008/08/no47-wild-roomies.html ) right down to the promising a lot, but delivering nothing poster.

The film opens with a reality show nearing its conclusion. This tired formula takes the guise of a show where the winning contestant gets to live in the penthouse apartment where the show is filmed. The last two are our hero Tyler and a dizzy blonde who doesn’t care who wins as they are in love and will live together anyway. Predictably Tyler wins and dumps the blonde, choosing to move his friends in instead.

As you’d imagine the friends are a mismatched lot but have something in common in all being about 30, good looking and white - bet this one broke all records at the Harlem multiplex! The friends include an introverted writer who has a dysfunctional relationship and anther douche bag who wants to be a nurse to get some flange.

Initially things go well with a couple of racy parties but soon we have to address some issues, as you do. The writer has writer’s block and is being presurised by his father in law, Ed Begley Jnr, to commit to his daughter and provide some offspring. Why he wants this dickwad to contaminate his gene pool is anyone’s guess but our man isn’t up for it anyway. He’s got his eye on Tyler’s sister who was once an ugly duckling but has now blossomed into a pretty lady. The pair are perfect for each other but only we the viewer can see it - well until the last ten minutes at any rate.

Tyler’s life of debauchery and instant fame are starting to take a toll and the film attempts to document the downside of fame while he sucks beer off the plastic tits of two models - er, job done. His erstwhile girlfriend shows up at his book signing and pretty soon he starts to realise that the trappings of fame are no match for true love .

The third plot strand is barely worth a mention but the nurse guy ends up boning the pretty doctor he answers to in a revelation I totally missed the point of.

This is a totally pointless exercise in a film. The three males leads are all awful actors and terrible characters. Two are beer swilling boors while the third is a sensitive nerd just waiting to blossom when he finds the right girl. What lessons or development we are meant to be getting here is totally lost in the random script and in the total lack of development for all concerned.

The trials of half a dozen beautiful white yuppies living in a luxurious apartment is clearly a valid one, but only if you flushed your brain down the toilet. Not one of the cast convinces and at no point does your dial shift from ‘asshole’ for any of the leads.

The reality TV bubble burst a long time ago and if this 2010 production thought it could add a foot note to the phenomena it’s clearly mistaken. Virtually all the film is sent inside the titular abode, which is fair enough, but the whole production looks like it was completed in an afternoon for some student film project. The director does try to add some flair by using several cut shots of wind up toys but sadly these serve only to highlight the desperate acting of those of the non-clockwork variety.

As you’d have gathered ‘The Penthouse’ wasn’t quite ‘top of the block’ for me and frankly if they hadn’t invested in those gyrating topless dancers we could have been looking at a new record low score.

THE Tag Line : More Pavement Than Penthouse 21%

No.38 : The Matador (2005)

The Matador at the IMDb

Pierce Brosnan tries to shed his James Bond image with a role as a hard drinking, hard shagging assassin with indifferent results.

Brosnan basically plays an exaggerated version of Bond but with an oh so important moustache. He kills various business and political figures without a second thought through his handler, The Library Detective off ‘Seinfeld’. He enjoys his mojiotos, which is useful seeing as the whole film was filmed in Mexico City despite the various clumsy graphics that pop up denoting different cities around the world.

His world is coming apart however and after a botched hit he starts to wonder if he’s next on the hit list. Meanwhile businessman Greg Kinnear has problems of his own as his important business deal is about to go down the pan. He’s also in mouring for his dead son and his relationship with wife, Hope Davis , is showing the strain.

Our two heroes paths collide and after a bonding session at a bullfight they have decisions to make. The film then jumps six months into the future as Brosnan turns up at Kinnear’s snowy Denver home. He’s on the run from his handlers and looking for a return favour. Did he do Kinnear a turn to get his pivotal business deal through and can the favour be returned to save Brosnan’s ever shakier, but still pumping ass?

On first looks this film seems a bit slight. Essentially it’s a two way show between two middle aged men with crisisies in their business and family lives. Obviously the hit man angle spices things up a bit but given we get to see only a couple of actual hits this isn’t really going to win the film pass marks. Brosnan does his best to go against type and parades quite happily in his pants and cow boy boots while getting it on doggy style with several ladies.

His character is quite fun although not entirely believable. Someone so erratic and flamboyant wouldn’t last five minutes without gaining the attentions of the authorities but you tend to overlook this when you sign up for the fun ride the film offers. Kinnear on the other hand does his usual shtick of being the slightly off kilter everyman and is an able foil to Brosnan. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad Greg Kinnear film and he does his usual solid work here.

The film really hits its stride after the bullfight and the two protagonists are pulled from their lives and have to rely on each other. The final scenes and acts are off camera and we’re left to wonder who did what to whom.

The film is a pretty tight 90 minutes and although not a lot happens it does offer two good performances in a shady world with plenty of dark laughs along the way. I’d maybe have liked a bit more action and less chat but Brosnan was good fun and the script was witty and peppered with enough lovely ladies to keep things humming along.

It’s maybe not a classic that’ll live long in the memory but as an exercise in exorcising Bond’s sharp one liners and off screen sexual acrobatics it’s well worth a look.

THE Tag Line : No Bull - Matador Worth Seeing

No.37 : The Squeeze (1987)

The Squeeze at the IMDb

Let’s get a bit obscure now on The Definite Article Movie list with this clunker comedy from 1987 which stars Michael Keaton. Keaton was only two years away from his star turns in ‘Batman’ and ‘Pacific Heights’ so it’s just as well the producers of those hits missed out on this effort which is short on laughs, drama and basically anything that makes a film worth watching. And look at that poster too! - Was Bin Laden a secret fan?!

Keaton plays the poorly defined Harry who is a loser hustler one minute and creator of pretty impressive dinosaurs made out of TVs the next. He has a strangely motivated sidekick in Joe Pantolianio who seems to get nothing from the relationship other than a loss of his cash and occasional beating. Maybe I missed the gay subtext? Well it is the 80’s you can’t judge by the haircuts and loud, baggy shirts.

The film opens with our likely lads executing the poorest card hustle you’ve ever seen, unless you watched ‘Big Deal’ like I did. As our heroes make good their escape Keaton’s ex-wife is trying to post a package twice as big as the mail box. Maybe they shrunk overnight or she’d never posted anything before, but it was never going in, Love.

On getting back home she finds her cat chowing down on a finger and sussing that the game was up she runs off to enlist Keaton’s help. He is strangely agreeable to this despite her debt collector being on his back for unpaid maintenance. After recovering the box and determining it to be a big magnet Keaton hooks up with the debt collector lady to try and work out why the mysterious Frenchman and his goons need the box back before the lottery is drawn.

This isn’t that bad a film, it’s just nothing special and I defy you to remember one thing about it in a month’s time, apart from the massive triceratops made out of TV sets. Keaton plays his usual mulleted, maniacal self which I always find a bit tiresome. He does OK with a weak script and poor character definition but it’s hard to care for a shiftless loser trying to con a fast buck.

Pantoliano gets very little to do and given this was the guy who played Ralphie in ‘The Sopranos’ that was a waste. Speaking of waists Meat Loaf also shows up as a henchman and despite having one of the strongest voices in rock he plays a mute who only gets one line when he’s been stabbed with the Empire State Building - well a model of it at any rate.

The love interest is provided by Rae Dong Chong who sets feminism back 20 years by falling for the alimony dodging Keaton 10 minutes after meeting him. The chemistry isn’t there at all and the devices that bring them together, like a mutual love of ‘Raw Hide’, seem strained at best.

The plot is wafer thin and involves the magnetising of lottery balls to swindle the jackpot. The draw, which is naturally held on the deck of an aircraft carrier, has scandalously low security which lets our cast manipulate the result and shoot off rockets like no one cares who gets the $55 million.

To pick plot holes in the flimsy narrative would be as hard as getting sand in your ass crack at the beach and frankly less fun. It’s not edgy or offensive with there being no sex or swearing to juice things up and without that you’re left with a largely disinterested cast running around for a 100 minutes before the hero has to decide between the money and the girl. ‘The Squeeze’? Puleeze!

THE Tag Line : Lottery Swindle Flick Is A Lot Of Balls 46%

No.36 : The Box (2009)

The Box at the IMDb

It’s 1976 and the Voyager space probes have been launched. Cameron Diaz is married to Cyclops out of ‘X-Men’ and is about to get a delivery. The couple find a box on their door step with a message saying that the delivery man will call the next day - maybe the sender hadn’t put enough stamps on it.

The next day the box delivery man arrives in the shape of Richard Nixon himself, Frank Langella, complete with a CGI covered half face. He tells the couple in a matter of fact fashion that if they press the button on the device inside the box someone they don’t know will die and they’ll get a million bucks. Rather than just smack the button down and demand the cash they have a restless night pondering the dilemma before Cameron presses the button. Huge mistake.

Frank returns to collect his box and delivers the cash. As he leaves he tells them the box will now go to someone else who will be made the same offer - the implication being that Cameron and Cyclops may be the victims of a future button press. Understandably upset they try to weasel out of the deal but are undone at every turn as the box distribution people have confederates on every corner - usually identified by a bleeding nose.

Things start getting a bit weird as legions of seemingly mind controlled people start chasing Cyclops around a library before he is sent home via a big block of water. Meanwhile we see some panicked souls at Langley who know that Frank was killed by lightening shortly after the Voyager probe took off, before being returned to life. They now know that he is in the box and money distribution business but to what end?

Slowly we start to gather the threads together and learn that the whole box set up is a test by persons unknown to gauge the moral value of society and of humanity in general. With Frank back at Cameron’s house he offers an impossible dilemma and the identity of the unknown person who must die in exchange for the cash may not be so unfamiliar after all.

When I saw the first half hour of this film I was wondering why it was called the ‘The Box’ rather than ‘The Button’. As the film progresses however you realise that the button isn’t important and that the box referred to isn’t the container but the restrictions by which we live our lives. At first the dilemma seems a no brainer but then the film cleverly wrong foots you to the point where you think any button pressing would definitely be a bad thing.

I liked the general air of menace and unease that permeates through the film and the idea that everyone is in on this massive conspiracy was a fun if slightly unoriginal one. The first hour of the movie is like a 70s melodrama with a ‘what would you do?’ type narrative before it heads off into totally unexpected places. The CGI of the suspended blocks of water look a bit out of place in the beige 70’s setting but are unnerving and sinister all the same.

The film doesn’t fully explain what was afoot or the motivations behind those involved but I liked that it made you think and subverted your original expectations.

The three leads all do serviceable turns with Diaz possibly the weakest with her varying Southern drawl. I liked how her character was fleshed out with stories of how she lost her toes and it was a brave move to take on an offbeat film like this complete with unflattering fashions. Langella exuded quiet menace throughout and James Marsden did OK with a limited role that mostly involved looking a bit confused.

I’d imagine a lot of Saturday night cinema audience would have left ‘The Box’ with a ‘WTF’ attitude but I enjoyed it’s weirdness and thought provoking subject matter. It was maybe a bit long at two hours but over all it’s well worth taking delivery of ‘The Box’.

THE Tag Line : Box Tops! 78%

No.35 : The Rocketeer (1991)

The Rocketeer at the IMDb

I had pretty good memories of ‘The Rocketeer’ but was slightly wrong footed from the start when the ‘Disney’ logo came up - surely the House of Mouse have done nothing that appeals to anyone over 10 years old? ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’ excepted, of course.

Well there is certainly no sex, drug taking swearing or nudity but seeing as it’s an old fashioned adventure romp it manages to navigate past these shortcomings and remain an enjoyable offering.

The film is set just before the second World War with Nazis, spies and saboteurs all over the shop. We open with a young pilot testing a new aircraft when he happens upon an FBI chase and cops a bullet in the engine for his troubles. He manages to get the plane back to the airstrip just as the Feds and the gangsters arrive, causing his already stricken craft to blow up. One gangster manages to hide his loot before being arrested and our man and his chirpy mechanic Alan Arkin are left to count the cost.

The airfield owner tells them they’ll have to break out their old clown plane to entertain the air show crowds but as they dust the old bird off they find what the gangster has left behind - a super duper jet pack, designed and build by Howard Hughes. Seeing its potential worth, our men decide to make a few bucks off the machine before handing it back; but elsewhere more nefarious plans are afoot.

Paulie out of ‘Goodfellas’ has been employed by Timothy Dalton’s dashing but traitorous actor to get the jet pack for his Nazi pals. He kidnaps the Rocketeer’s girl Jennifer Connelly and it’s up to our guys to get into lots of situations that could benefit from having a jet pack to save the day. With the plan exposed Dalton makes off with Connelly and her zeppelins, sorry in a zeppelin , with the Rocketeer in hot pursuit. You’ll pretty much guess the rest.

If you ask most people they’ll wax lyrical about ‘The Rocketeer’ and rightly so ; there’s a lot to like. For a start the cast is spot on with the slightly slow but oh so dashing Bill Campbell in the lead. It’s a shame he’s not gone onto greater things but he did at least get a decent gig in Ricky Gervais’ ‘Ghost Town’ a couple of years back. Connelly is good fun too especially as she spends most of the film in a low cut ball gown. Timothy Dalton is great as the moustache twirling bad guy reportedly based on Errol Flynn and Alan Arkin is his always likable self as the cheery mechanic.

The plot is pretty basic with all the action basically happening over a day and a night. He finds the thing, leans to fly it and then saves the day in it. I’m not saying he should have had a love scene with it too, it just seems a bit straightforward in terms of plot direction. The end scenes with the Zeppelin were a good idea as up to that bit the only use of the rocket pack seemed to be a means of getting somewhere quickly.

There is no sense of danger in the film and despite a Rondo Hatton-esque unkillable bad guy most of the deaths occur off screen and those that don’t have a comic element to them. The sets and costumes are great and the whole thing is evocative of a more innocent time in both the movies and the world in general.

If you think the plot is a bit slight or you think things fall together a bit too easily you may be right, but for the most part I’d say ‘shut up I’m trying to watch this nice film again - Jennifer’s dress surely can’t stand the strain this time around?!’.


THE Tag Line : Strap It On And Brace Yourself 73%

No.34 : The Firm (2009)

The Firm at the IMDb

Nah, not the Tom Cruise one, this is more like Cockney Wanker : The Movie - only with more sportswear.

Nick love directs this remake of the original TV film that starred Gary Oldman. Rather than update the story it remains set in the 1980’s and has nothing of interest to say whatsoever. It does have wall to wall 80’s hits though so at least the soundtrack isn’t a total loss.

The ‘firm’ is a gang of football hooligans who travel the country looking for fights with rival gangs. The film open with a couple of fresh faced yoofs trying to have it large in some crappy nightclub. Some tit wearing shorts gets their attention and after he head buts their leader they become very impressed indeed. The shorts wearer is Bex the leader of the local firm.

The lads crap their pants when they learn who they challenged and are forced into a grovelling apology at the pub. Not one to bear a grudge Bex invites our hero, Dom, along on their next away day. Predictably this ends with a big scrap with the locals, and the impressionable Dom becomes seduced by the patter and sports wear.

He quickly ditches his friends to follow the hooligans and starts to mimic Bex’s speech and dress. He eventually realises that Bex is in fact a nutter and despite his normal job and home life his new hero is destined to get them all a big smack. As the final battle with the rival Yeti’s crew looms large Dom has to question the choices he’s made and whether there is any way to escape.

This is a dreadful and nasty film that has nothing to redeem it apart from ‘Mega Hits of the 80s’ playing in the background throughout. The original ‘The Firm’ was laden with social commentary and rapier sharp dialogue - this effort is a bunch of wankers wearing tracksuits and calling each other ‘cants’ all the time.

It is of course aimed straight at its target market of arseholes and neds and I’m sure all the nostalgia isn’t there by accident. You can just imagine the big laughs coming from Neanderthals every time waffle trousers or tie pin chains get a look in. The clothes are ridiculous and not very authentic. Of course your scum wore tracksuits but in this everything was too shiny and brand new - even after the scraps.

The fights themselves, on which the whole film hangs, were poorly handled with a shaky camera and sharp cuts making up for real action and excitement. Most of the fights were just goading and running away. This may be realistic but it just came over as a lot of fannies jumping around to ‘Tainted Love’.

The characters were awful too with our hero Dom the worst of the bunch. We’re meant to buy that he’s been seduced by the world of violence and the charismatic Bex but he just looks like a puppy stuck in a gay love story. His attempts to make the patois sound authentic are laughable and it has to be the most cringe worthy performance in many years.

Bex is a bit better but lacks Gary Oldman’s quiet menace, whereas Yeti is amazingly miscast - he’s not even got white hair - the clue was in his name Mr Casting Director. It was nice to see the lovely Camille Coduri off ‘Dr Who’ as Mum but alas she had even less to work with than she did in ‘Nuns On the Run’.

I’m not sure what message the film was trying to convey and I think it really just served as a dumbed down remake for the enjoyment of the scumbags involved in the real fights who are probably out of the clink by now. It did show what and empty and vacuous life these people live but only by being empty and vacuous itself. A nasty, hateful film that is as much fun to watch as a Stanley knife is to chew on.

THE Tag Line : Firm Softens The Head 35%

No.33 : The Majestic (2001)

The Majestic at the IMDb

Jim Carrey stars in this bloated pile of sentimental crap that sucks up two and a half hours of your life and leaves you feeling that bit stupider for having fallen for its obvious pitfalls. But it starts with a ‘The’ so at least I’ve got an excuse.

The file opens with Carrey’s 1950s Hollywood screenwriter agreeing to all the mental changes to his script suggested by the studio. This shows he has no integrity but he has a sexy broad on his arm and a nice set of wheels so who’s to worry? His first film gets a decent reception and things are looking good until a teenage indiscretion brings him to the attention of the Committee for Un-American Activities . With his next flick cancelled he hits the bottle and goes for a drive - HUGE mistake.

A well trained opossum, which for some reason is crossing the middle of a long bridge, causes him to lose control and crash into the water. He washes up in a small town and as you’d guess the bump on the head has caused total amnesia - the movie kind, not the massive head trauma kind that most accidents accidentally cause.

He’s found by Brookes out of ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and taken into town where he’s recognised as a long lost son of the town feared dead in World War Two. Carrey doesn’t know who he is but is soon cosying up to the dead man’s squeeze and Martin Landau, the local cinema owner father of the dead boy. Months soon pass and the father and not son start to bond as they do up the titular picture house.

Meanwhile the nasty commie chasers are on our man’s tail and when his car washes up they close the net and bring him back to LA to face the music. Will his now restored memory reignite his asshole persona or will his months with the simple towns people colour his outlook and give him some of the spirit and courage of his assumed dead soldier’s character? Go on, two guesses!

I didn’t fancy this film when it came out, thinking it would be some sentimental twaddle about the goodness of small town America and a love letter to a bygone age. As with all presumptions it turned out that I was correct. The film is directed by Frank Darabont and on this evidence he should stick to Stephen King penned prison stories. The emotional music cues and overlong heartfelt speeches are all present and correct, but outside the prison environment they seem a bit unnecessary and overbearing.

Carrey’s character arc is really thin, as is that of the towns folk who go from love to hate to big love in 20 minutes. The cast is pretty good with a lot of familiar faces popping up such as the guy from Kruger Industrial Smoothage and Bob Balaban playing his usual weasely character. The story, as it is, is too slight, with the miraculous and selective amnesia which turns on and off as the story requires a plot device too far.

The film is book ended with scenes of Carrey discussing changes to a proposed film plot and you could argue that the whole thing is meant to be a fantasy of a better time that never really existed. I’m not buying that, and saw the whole things as lazy, sentimental schmaltz.

There were a couple of positives such as Bruce Campbell showing up in Carrey’s ‘B’ flick as well as Indiana Jones’ golden idol but for the most part this was just an idle jab at the commie witch hunts 50 years too late. Running at 150 minutes I’d be surprised if you take a trip to ‘The Majestic’ dear reader especially when you realise it’s got enough plot for the first hour at most. Basically when Martin Landau shuts off so should you!

THE Tag Line : Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pish 53%

No.32 : The Club (1980)

The Club at the IMDb

Here’s an oldie but a goodie from 1980. I saw this a few times on late night BBC2 and it always raised a smile so let’s see if it still hits the mark or whether its ‘Goliath Awaits’ all over again.

‘The Club’ is Collingwood, an Australian Rules Football team that’s living on its former glories. In a bid to get back to the top they sign Jeff for what is seemingly a high figure of A$120,000. The rest of the team quickly take against him when he plays a stinker and soon the manager and the board are at each other’s throats.

With Jeff on the dope and giving up on football the chairman is forced out after hitting a stripper and the rest of the board scheme to get the manager out. With a fearsome new manager lined up the guys come together to try and win the championship and save the manager and the spirit of the club.

‘The Club’ started life as a stage play and that’s pretty clear when you see how many scenes simply involve the characters all talking and mostly fighting with each other. Some films like this can be a bit dull but like ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ this fair crackles along with great characters and brilliant dialogue.

The Aussie Rules sport itself isn’t explained at all and it’s not always clear who’s doing what and who’s winning. That said the game scenes are excellent and obviously filmed in front of a real 100,000+ crowd - they must have laid on free beer.

The best character for me is the scheming Jock played by Frank Wilson who’s a petty and conniving old git. He does have all the best lines however and a great scene with Jeff where after being plied with drugs fully takes in his star’s confession of incest, a gullibleness that later comes back to haunt him.

The rest of the cast are great too with perennial Aussie star Jack Thompson taking centre stage as the volatile coach who tries to hang onto the club’s traditions as the money men start to take over. I also like the slimy chairman played by Graham Kennedy who slowly loses power to the plotters on the board.

If I had a criticism I felt that Jeff’s transformation from pariah to saviour was a bit sudden but I suppose they argue that the coming together was to face a common enemy. The ending itself was a bit rushed with the players agreeing to knuckle down one minute and then playing in the championship match literally a minute later.

The film gave a great sense of the passing of the guard and the transition from aplayer who played for the jersey giving way to the ones with dollar signs in their eyes. Scenes of the club’s glory days were skilfully recreated and the action was always running at full pelt.

I’m sure ‘The Club’ will resonate soundly with anyone who’s ever sat on a committee or board and dealt with all the petty self interests that stop anything actually getting done. All in all it’s a funny, all action sports movie with great characters and a great script.

THE Tag Line : Join The Club 77%

No.31 : The Crop (2004)

The Crop at the IMDb

We’re having a short season of Aussie films that are definite articles, have four letters in that definite article and they begin with ‘C’. As you may guess this will be a slightly short season and certainly one with variable quality.

We open with ‘The Crop’ which seems to be a bit of a mystery title, well it is if you use the IMDb for your information. ‘The Crop’ is listed as a futuristic film about a man in a car crash. I must of missed that bit as ‘The Crop’ I saw, which has the same cast, is about a lot of Aussie slobs growing dope. The other film described sounds like far more fun that this pile of crap however.

That said ‘The Crop’ sounds OK from the synopsis point of view, with it having the simple story of a strip club owner trying to get out of debt by growing drugs. I think I can spot the reason for his woes from the off however, as he appears to run the only strip joint on the planet that has a full live band and strippers who seem reluctant to take their tops off. Well ‘Blues Brothers 2000’ had the same idea but that got burnt down by the Russians for being shit. The club, not the film.

When you have a strip club owner / drug dealer as your protagonist you’d think that the producers would seek out a sympathetic and likable lead. It seems strange therefore that they went for an unlikable fat tit instead. Our man has troubles with his tit free titty bar and has the strange moral compunction to let his girls keep their pants on while his rivals go for the full value show.

Added to his troubles are a needy girlfriend and a pair of dozy stereotyped cops on the take. As a means to get out of his financial hole our hero decides to rent a remote farm and grow drugs. So far so morally wrong but let’s go with it, it might be fun with a few lessons learned along the way. Sadly, no. The drugs are seized by bent coppers as soon as they are grown and our man’s partner in crime is nicked. Strangely the cops let the drugs be stolen back and there is an endless chain of events while the drugs are intercepted, treated, stolen, sold etc. etc. We are left to wonder if our sleazy hero will get the cash to save him from the cops and loan sharks or will he get his just desserts in the form of 20 years hard labour.


This is a really terrible film with nothing to redeem it at all. It’s billed as a comedy but there are no laughs at all, as a bunch of nasty characters scrabble about in the dirt for a few bucks. The script is totally witless with the character bypassed lead with the unfeasible pretty girlfriend the least likable front man you’ll ever see. I don’t know if we’re meant to be cheering him on, but I for one was hoping the shot gun blast had taken his head off rather than predictably sprayed him with ketchup.

To flesh out the running time a couple of sub plots are thrown in involving stoners and someone else’s clingy girlfriend - laugh? You never will. The production seemed reasonably well financed with a half decent car crash near the end, but when you can see the stage hands pushing the kangaroo on set you know you aren’t dealing with the next Spielberg here.


I know I come across as a bit moral here and to be honest I don’t like drugs or films that make them seem like comedy currency. I’m not a total wet blanket and enjoy films like the Harold and Kumar adventures, but what they did was make drugs seem ridiculous and funny. This film makes them out to be an economic escape route and totally unfunny. A nasty, negative piece of rubbish that you’d need a pound of reefer to stay the course with. Man.

THE Tag Line : The Crap Is A Failed Harvest 23%