No.73 : The Veteran (2011)

The Veteran at the IMDB

What a rip off ; there was nobody healing animals at all throughout this film!

What we get is a kind of ‘Harry Brown’ meets ‘The Bourne Identity’ as a soldier returns from Afghanistan to his sink estate home to find it under the control of drug lords. Our man isn’t intimidated and smacks a few around. The local kingpin is impressed and offers him work which he refuses, despite the veiled threats of 'choosing sides'.

Meanwhile, a meeting with other ex-soldiers gives him the chance to get back to some kind of work, running black ops for a shady intelligence outfit, as you do. All the while we realise he is on the edge, with subtle clues like him constantly punching walls giving away his inner torment.

His first operation goes well as he uncovers a back street bomb factory but he soon gets in deep as he befriends a possible double agent woman and engages with his always shouting boss, Brian Cox. He slowly realises that his two worlds are not so far apart and that and it’s going to take a lot of shooting to clean up the estate and stop a possible terrorist outrage.

I didn’t really take to this film from the off. The grim sink estate setting and washed out colour palette did nothing to draw me in and the lead lacks any sympathy or charisma whatsoever. The feral yoof were well realised but it never really touched upon why they are being furnished with Uzi 9mms by the shady intel community. They is some blather about ‘GOD’ - Guns, Oil and drugs but why the poweres that be would align themselves with some foul mouthed youth isn’t addressed.

 I think the director was trying to set a sense of disconnectedness with our hero’s action scenes being so random that we weren’t sure if it was real or fantasy. This is maybe burrowing too deep, as at the end of the day it was a mish mash of a plot tail-ended by some crowd pleasing vermin control.

It is hard to be too tough on a film that clearly has a shoe-string budget but if the script had been more rounded and clear there would be a decent film to be had here. Brian Cox looks like he did his couple of scenes in a day, despite his high billing and although you might recognise a couple of faces the names will escape you.

The blood soaked finale was out of step with the rest of the film and you have to wonder if they thought- ‘Sod it let’s have a big shoot out’. The action was well choreographed and the hardware impressive. The finale with its hints towards a damned future was seen a mile off and it’s just a shame things ended with so many plot threads left hanging.

THE Tag Line : Call a Vet - this needs shooting  56%

No.72 : The Cave (2005)

The Cave at IMDb

If you’d asked me to write a short review of The Cave without having seen it I’d have guessed something along the lines of ‘a group of kids gets stuck in a cave and get picked off one by one by monsters’. And having seem the film that potted review would have been uncannily accurate!

It is however better than you’d expect and certainly worth more than the 4.9 currently awarded to it by the IMDb. It is predictable, offering little in the way or innovation or surprise but there was enough to keep me engaged to the end and dare I say it - ready for more?

We open “30 years ago in Cold War Romania” to find a group of men heading up a mountain pass. They are driving a big armoured personnel carrier but their motivation isn’t clear. At first I thought they were mercenaries or looters but it seems they were just potholers looking for a cave . Strange choice of wheels though and why bring along an explosives expert? The explosives expert is nothing of the kind and manages to blow up the small church the cave entrance is supposedly hidden in, as well as the surrounding mountains. The hapless gang fall into the titular cave never to be seen again - or will they?

Of course these nitwits failed to observe even the basic rules of horror films - they weren’t nearly sexy enough and they ignored a big skull and crossbones on the floor. Still, 30 years in a cave will fix them!

We flash forward 30 years and a far sexier group of college kids are seeking some thrills. They have heard of the legendary Rumanian cave and manage to find the entrance in five minutes. They have loads of high tech gear including sonar emitters and camera equipment and surely they are prepared for anything. Hmmm.

They set up camp and plot out their next 12 days of exploration. They find an albino mole and the voice of exposition says that things evolve quickly and differently underground - remember that for later! In no time flat there is a cave-in and our people are trapped - and they’re not alone!

Minor cast members are picked off and we learn that the monsters stalking them are the potholers of 30 years back, who have evolved into extras from ‘Aliens’ that can fly too - they weren’t lying about that rapid evolution! Using improbable logic the surviving lady determines a parasite is invading host bodies and turning them into the monsters they encounter. The metamorphosis initially takes the shape of them wearing snake eye contact lenses but for how long can they fight before they turn for good? Can anyone escape and should they even try, given the nature of the parasite?

Despite misgivings I enjoyed ‘The Cave’ - I was anticipating a lot of shouting in the dark but the cave was remarkably well lit something that didn’t seem to surprise our heroes and frankly it was a welcome sop to the viewer. The monsters were a familiar mix of teeth and slime but pretty vicious and persistent. Some of the attacks were marred with too many fast cuts and it was hard to see what was happening - whether this was to emphasise panic or a depleted budget I don’t know.

The cast were all young and fit apart from the craggy professor -and he got dispatched early. The only familiar name to me in the cast was Lena ‘Ma-Ma’ Headey and she gave a good showing despite the far-fetched subject matter.

At a tight 90 minutes the film kept a good pace with new monsters appearing to thwart each plan of escape - wasn’t expecting that flying one at all! A lot of throwaway nonsense but entertaining throwaway nonsense and well worth a look.

THE Tag Line -  Cave a Near Rave! 68%

No.71 : The Swarm (1978)

The Swarm at IMDb

The 1970s saw a spate of disaster movies, but none can be more disastrous than ‘The Swarm’.

Producer Irwin Allen attempted to use his tried and tested formula of having a heap of famous faces running around and getting killed but sadly he got stung on this outing.

The film opens with a special forces unit advancing on an underground base. The first five minutes is a dialogue free as the tension is ratcheted up - what will they find? Eventually they descend to find, as you’d expect, bodies everywhere. The cause is unclear but soon Michael Caine resplendent in green turtle neck and safari suit falls out a cupboard and offers some much needed exposition.

Cain plays Brad an entomologist who was tracking some bees and decided to have a look in case they visited the secret base. Of course they did but that didn’t explain how Caine could Waltz in while the special forces team had to use Ids and key codes.

Blustery General Richard Widmark splutters in disbelief but soon the president has given Caine a free pass to combat the threat. He calls in reinforcements in the shape of ‘bad boy’ bee man Richard Chamberlain and Katharine Ross who inexplicably falls for Caine and his turtle neck.

Hopefully things will not escalate, but wait! The local town is having a flower festival just as the bees move in! After an initial skirmish were a family get stung to death the surviving boy plots his revenge with petrol bombs - HUGE mistake. The pissed off bees immediately head to the flower festival to sting the crap out of anyone they find - and their stings are the slow motion kind - surely the worst of all?

After a laughable attack on a toy train set, that sees the deaths of both Fred MacMurray and Olivia de Havilland, Michael deploys his poison pellets. Widmark’s plan to gas the lot was shouted down by Caine who gave a triumphant speech in praise of the good old American bee. But alas the bees are too smart to eat the poison - they prefer poignant lollypops held by vunerable kiddies.

Back at base, Henry Fonda the crippled poisons guru, is injecting himself with venom to try and discover an antidote - better watch out or laughable bee hallucinations will bee coming your way! With the swarm heading to a nuclear plant and then onto Houston how many more deaths will Caine’s vidi-printer report before they realise a big pot of jam would solve the problem just fine?

This is a truly dreadful film with performances and dialogue that have to be seen to be believed. The bee attack effects are OK in close up but apart from that the model work and slow motion deaths are the worst you will see.

The main culprit is Caine, who although just in it for the paycheque, is never worse than the quick to anger but still loveable bee specialist who has a taste for sunflower seeds. Next up is Fonda who was shameful as the crippled Doc who takes the venom to save the day. If they were playing for laughs it’d have been no less believable.

Down the cast we get Katharine Ross who despite being high up in the military goes all girly for Caine and his orange van. Also good for a chortle is Dr Kildare who keeps a straight face while asking a nuclear power station manager “Have you made any provision against an attack of killer bees?”.

I know this review may make it sound like a bit of fun but beware it’s two and a half hours of cringe making shite that I had to watch in chunks, lest I go and stick my head in a beehive myself.

Best Bit : “Those are my poison pellets goddamn it ” 31%

No.70 : The Keep (1983)

The Keep at IMDb

Nazis and the occult are well worn bedfellows in the movies with largely forgettable results. I’d never seen the 1983 effort ‘The Keep’ before, but it was better than I anticipated, though not by much.

The film opens with Jurgen Prochnow leading a group of German soldiers to a castle in a remote part of Romania. The war has yet to touch this area and he’s happy to be given this backwater job rather than a place on the Russian front. His men however are less thankful and use the soft posting as grounds to scare the locals and pillage what they can from ‘the keep’ - basically the prison bit of the castle.

The men soon disregard their ‘no looting’ orders and pry silver crosses from the brickwork. One cross stays stubborn, and when forced it brings a full stone block from the wall with it. This new gap opens into a massive chamber, which is well realised as the camera pulls back to reveal its scale. The new opening awakes something that has lain dormant in the keep and it wastes no time in getting out and frying its liberators.

Jurgen and a typically nasty SS man start an investigation into the deaths and to an inscription they find painted on the wall. They determine the best man to answer the questions they have is Ian McKellan who is presently languishing in a concentration camp. In the very next scene he’s at the keep with his daughter and translating doom for all. Meanwhile Scott Glenn awakens in Greece to a bad case of glowing eyes and heads towards the keep himself.

McKellan manages to make contact with the monster and is told that if he can remove an artefact from the keep the beast will no longer be anchored there and will rid the world of Nazis. To demonstrate his power he makes McKellan go all Benjamin Button and the old man sheds 40 years in seconds. He initially keeps his wheelchair though - possibly worried that it’ll affect his benefits.

Glenn by now has shown up and after boffing McKellan’s daughter gets shot up by the SS man, revealing green blood. He falls into a pit but no doubt he’ll still have a part to play. With all the Keep based Nazis dead, including Jurgen and Gabriel Byrne in a funny haircut, McKellan makes for the door with the monster restricting device. Should his quest to rid the world of Nazis be achieved at any cost or are some prices too high to pay?

If you don’t take it seriously ‘The Keep’ is a lot of fun. Seemingly director Michael Mann disowned the film after his 3 hour cut was halved but I think in this case the studio called it right. 90 minutes of crappy dialogue and ropey special effects is fine, but 3 hours would be taking the piss.

The whole film has an 80s aesthetic from the daughter’s big hair to the totally inappropriate synth soundtrack from Tangerine Dream. The effects, as they are, are mostly post-production additions of light and lasers and frankly they make ‘Flash Gordon’ look like ‘Avatar’. The same reversing smoke effect is used frequently but you wished they’d used it more when the monster is full revealed - he looks like one of those ‘Slam Man’ training dummies.

McKellan does OK with his preposterous dialogue and he seems to be enjoying himself, hamming it up for all he’s worth. His ‘old man’ make up is rubbish and it’s no surprise when he’s ‘transformed’ into his younger self. Glenn’s role is underwritten and I imagine a lot of his character development was lost in the edit. He basically gets the bright eyes, shags McKellan’s daughter , gets shot and then saves the day. A good day’s work you may think, but he seems totally anonymous when mysterious was being sought.

‘The Keep’ is no classic but good fun and fast moving, and well worth a look.

THE Tag Line : One to Keep (as a guilty pleasure) 70%

No.69 : The Expatriate (2012)

The Expatriate at the IMDb

Aaron Eckhart takes the title role in this by the numbers Euro-Thriller.

He plays Ben, a single Dad working in Brussels who is employed as a security tester. He shows his bosses ways to disable various locks which is immediately relevant as we’ve already witnessed a robbery during which a safety deposit box, which has just the kind of lock he’s been working on, gets nicked.

We see he has a mouthy daughter but he a good man, evidenced by the fact that he buys the black security guard at his office a coffee. His seemingly humdrum life starts to dismantle when he questions whether his company owns the patents of the locks he is breaking.

When he arrives the next day his office has disappeared in a scene reminiscent of ‘Moonraker’, ‘Capricorn One’ and virtually every ‘paranoia’ thriller you could mention. It gets worse when he discovers his cash, emails and employment history has been scrubbed. Fortunately his annoying daughter’s peanut allergy necessitates a visit to the E.R. which saves him from meeting the hit men who have dispatched his co-workers.

Aaron goes on the run with his daughter in tow and after a low rent car smash he realises that he can trust no one. Slowly the pair start to piece together the conspiracy which predictably involves Black-Ops C.I.A. agents and an evil corporation that sounds like ‘Haliburton’ which is managed by a Rupert Murdoch look-alike.

As you’d expect there are spooks on every corner and the daughter realises that dad didn’t get those face kicking and bomb making skills by doing his alleged dull government job. After plenty of running around Belgium the secret documents that may save the day are secured but the daughter held is hostage - can Aaron get the girl back and sort out the bad guys?

I didn’t read any reviews or indeed had heard of this film before my viewing but I’m sure every one starts with ‘Bourne knockoff’. It’s a distinction hard to avoid seeing as it basically copies every facet of that franchise. In both we have an unsettling conspiracy with ‘the trust no one’ vibe throughout - even the nice coffee liking security man is in on it! We also have a ‘Treadstone’ -esque black ops group with dozens of cannon fodder grunts. Where Bourne has amnesia we have the device of the tag along daughter to reveal Aaron’s talents and we also have the character of the girl on the bad guys’ side who helps out too.

If you’d seen the film in isolation you’d probably quite like it ;but the usually winning Eckhart appears to have left his charisma behind at customs. The action is OK but the genre’s cuts heavy approach is present and correct in its often confusing jerky motion. The budget must have been small however, with not much expense evident when the baddie’s car breaks a tinfoil barrier before slowly rolling down a hill .

The daughter was largely used as a means of peril and explanation - “Do you want to know what daddy did in the C.I.A.?” Unsurprisingly she saves the day several times reminding me of the niece out of ‘Inspector Gadget’ in the annoying stakes.

The film gets a bit unnecessarily complex in the middle and it seems like they are trying to make a dull script a bit more sophisticated by adding layers to the puzzle. If you can get over that and just wait out the predictable plot points you’ll have an average slice of workmanlike spy fodder that passes the time, leaving nothing memorable in its wake..

THE Tag Line : Jason, are you using that script?  61%

No.68 : The Apparition (2012)

The Apparition at IMDb

My in-depth research for this film showed that it appeared on several ‘Worst of 2012’ lists. Not one to be swayed by lesser critics I sat down with an open mind, but have it say it really is a pile of crap.

We open with a couple of captions detailing ‘The Charles Experiment’ where a bunch of 70s types tried some table tapping to contact the other side of the spirit world. They are armed with the worst portrait you’ll ever see and some shaky camera work that would shame a porno. This group, who look like a bunch of Open University lecturers, get a bit of table shake for their money and this encourages a bunch of present day students to recreate the experiment.

An unseen camera man is bossed about by Draco off Harry Potter and the experiment goes well - a bit too well, as you’d probably guess.

We cut to a pleasant young couple; he’s installing home entertainment systems while she works at a vet. They are house-sitting for her mother in a new development and as expected things start to go a bit creepy. Well if a dirty counter top and some mould fit your definition of ‘creepy’ that is. Things start to escalate however, with the house seemingly haunted and having a penchant for killing the neighbour’s dog.

The girl starts nosing about her boyfriend’s stuff and finds that he was in fact the camera man from the opening scenes. The extended cut of the footage reveals that a girl participant was sucked through a wall never to be seen again - except in the boyfriend’s photos.

It transpires that the boyfriend rather than the house is being haunted, although it does get a bit muddled at this point. Why is the spirit targeting the girl who had no involvement in the table tapping? Something to do with the strength of will or something - once you submit to the bogeyman, that’s it.

They reenlist Draco and after lots of techo-gubbins they clean the house of all spirits including the one who crawls out of the tumble dryer in a scene laughingly reminiscent of ‘The Ring’. Of course they haven’t and soon the beer swilling Draco is off to the other side. The hapless pair run to Draco’s house where he has a ghost proof chamber - alas it’s as much use as a cock flavoured lollypop and soon it’s down to just the girl.

With her strong spirit no doubt she’ll stand up to the ghoul and not just get groped in a strip mall camping store? Oh wait…

This film is a total mess from the off and its own saving grace is that it runs for only 70 minutes excluding credits. The premise ‘Once you believe you die’ is never mentioned and I can only imagine that plot strand ended up on the cutting room floor - either that or they had the idea once shooting finished and though ‘Let’s just use it anyway’. Indeed that poster is spoiler heaven as it depicts the final seconds of the film.

The main couple are likable enough but a bit bland and far too modest for this ‘B’ movie fodder. Indeed the shower scene, which serves only to leave the soap a bit darker, would make a ‘Wash and Go’ commercial seem seedy in comparison.

The motivation of the spirit was never touched on and he’d no back-story that we were advised of. Nonsense about him ‘growing smarter’ with each kill was tacked on and to be honest given the smarts of his victims he’s still years away from qualifying as a moron.

If this was a film school project you’d jeer but as a major studio release it’s a total embarrassment. Probably worth a look for that alone!

THE Tag Line :  Apparently pish? Confirmed  27%