No.230 : The Blob (1958)

 

The Blob at the IMDb

Every one loves Steve McQueen, but what about this early offering for ‘Steven McQueen’? Well I can tell you it’s dreadful and Steve rightly dropped the ‘N’ to avoid association with this turkey. To be fair it would probably never have seen light after its initial release if it wasn’t for the appearance of the star man who was 'a getting on a bit' 28 when the film was made.

Steven plays ‘Steve’ a high school kid out on a no nonsense date with his stuffy girlfriend. They see a meteor land and go to have a look. Meanwhile the object has already been found by a hill billy farmer who pokes it with a broom handle. Huge mistake as a blob of jelly affixes itself to his arm. He goes running about in the road and is picked up by Steve who administers the time honoured cure of putting a jacket over him.

They head into town and dump the old coot with a doctor who summons his nurse to help. Soon the two are absorbed by the blob which is gaining size and a reddish colour. Steve meanwhile wastes ten minutes facing off some dudes who want a drag race but eventually he realises the blob is a threat to the town and starts to annoy the police. He narrowly escapes its blobby clutches when hiding out in a meat freezer (remember that for later!) before the blob heads to a movie theatre for some people popcorn.

After some off screen horror the police and the fire department show up, but Steve, his date, a cute kid and some Italian stereotypes are trapped in a diner which is now enveloped in the massive blob. Can they be saved and can this red menace be defeated?

This was a laughable piece of nonsense, but it was also boring and badly acted. The special effects were very poor with the blob being either shown in forced perspective or in a form of animation that Walt Disney’s dog could have bettered.

McQueen shows none of the charisma he’s later known for and looks too skinny and old for the high school hero role. He isn’t helped much by a uniformly dreadful cast who look like they have been pulled off the street to deliver their stilted dialogue.

I’m not sure if there was a metaphor in place here - the red menace was a bit on the nose and it was hardly a clever ‘body snatchers’ type analogy. Basically what you get is people screaming and being absorbed off screen. At one point the police chief says ‘it must have killed at least 50 or 60 people’  thanks very much for the zero we saw - even the dog escaping wasn’t shown, and only mentioned.

I was surprised the film was in colour, but apart from that it was just as dreadful as I’d imagined and I just wish I’d kept avoiding it. You may get some jollies laughing at the rubbish special effects and some early McQueen embarrassment, but I’d advise that you avoid ‘The Blob’ - not to avoid absorption but to avoid boredom.

THE Tag Line : Bad Job Blob  32%

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 the 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 the 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.183 : The Objective (2008)

The Objective at the IMDb

Box office Mojo gives this film’s domestic gross as $95. Having watched it, that seems about a hundred bucks more than it’s worth.

We open with a portentous voiceover which is never a good sign. CIA Agent Keynes tells us that 3 days after 9/11 mysterious signals were detected in the Afghan desert and he’s been sent to investigate. He meets up with the usual rag tag of soldiers who accompany him on the mission.

The briefing takes all of a couple of minutes as he explains they are going to get a statement from a holy man. The mission starts off OK as they visit some locals and hand out some candy. They gain a guide in the form of Abdul and head off to the mountains, where the holy man is hanging out.

Almost immediately they are attacked in an ambush and lose a soldier. They kill a few terrorists but their bodies mysteriously disappear. The fire fight takes out their jeep and most of their water supply and things predictably go downhill from here.

Keynes stays aloof from the men and is constantly peering at his thermal image camera. They witness some strange lights and before long their numbers are whittled down as men are vaporised by an invisible enemy.

Eventually Keynes comes clean to his rapidly depleting crew - they are trying to track an ancient and terrible force that took care of some British troops in the first Afghan war and which was documented by Alexander the Great. Unfortunately for us it’s not exciting aliens or monsters but some lights that form a triangle - excitement she wrote!

With further loses to dehydration and desertion, Keynes is on his own but he finds an oasis in the desert. Just as he has hope of recovery, his camera picks up a new image - will this be death or salvation?

I didn’t enjoy much about this film apart from the great Moroccan locations that doubled for the slightly more hostile Afghanistan. The acting was uniformly terrible with the lead being the most wooden turn since Pinocchio. The voice over was pretentious with philosophical gubbins being trotted out at every turn. The usual men on a mission clichés were all present and correct as was the standard ‘unit depleting one at a time‘ narrative.

The end, and indeed the whole film, didn’t make a lick of sense and I was really none the wiser about what was going on as the credits rolled. It could have been interesting given the location and overarching ideas in play, but the execution was awful and compounded by a terrible script and lamentable acting.

The Tag Line : Your Objective : Give this a miss! 23%

No.172 : The Martian (2015)

The Martian at the IMDb

As my regular reader will attest we’re not fans of the tent pole film here at the Definitive Article Movie Blog. We avoid the obvious and search out the niche films that you’ve never hear of, or have no interest in ever seeking out. We don’t deal in absolutes however, so I thought we’d have a look at ‘The Martian’ which has become my favourite Definite Article film.

Quiet at the back! We’ve never covered ‘The Shining’ or ‘The Warriors’ and on a Google search on the highest profile IMDb film that we’ve reviewed, the result the passable but hardly stellar ‘The Impossible’; so why ‘The Martian’? Well, it’s just so damn good and immersive. I must have watched it about four times and every time I’ve been suckered in early on, on E4+1 or similar and stayed for the duration. It’s like ‘Clear and Present Danger’ in that its structure demands you watch for just another five minutes, and another and another and before you know it, two hours have passed, and your pizza has dried up.

The film is based on Andy Weir’s book which I read and enjoyed having watched the film. The book is superior in that it delves deeper into the science and avoids the large gaps that the film inevitably has to, to ensure a two hour run time. The film is however a triumph in translating the book and in making the science accessible. I just hope that one day they release a ten hour version of the film so that all the tiny details can be explored.

Anyway, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, a botanist astronaut who is accidentally left behind on Mars after he’s thought dead when a storm causes his crew to evacuate in a hurry. He survives though after his blood and an aerial spike block the hole that stabbed him through his health monitor and caused his crew to think him dead. His quandary is that he has no way to contact NASA and it will be four years before a rescue mission can be sent, and he only has food for one. His resolution is to science the shit out of things and he proceeds to do so in a variety of plausible if slightly fortunate ventures, that include salvaging the ancient Pathfinder equipment that is luckily close by.

That’s not to say its an easy ride, as the harvesting of a crop of potatoes takes the best part of an hour with every success well earned and enjoyed by the audience. Meanwhile back on earth a cavalcade of celebrities, including Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig, try to came up with a way to bring our man home against a soundtrack of disco favourites.

Towards the end the progress is on fast forward somewhat with Watney’s 3600 mile journey to the new launch site and his trip back to earth covered with indecent haste. I imagine the editor must have had a nightmare though, as the early work in setting the challenges had to be offset with the eventual payoffs.

I liked the NASA stuff with the internal politics and budget concerns as much a threat as Martian storms and potato blight. Some bits were a bit on the nose with Donald Glover’s explaining a slingshot to NASA bigwigs seeming somewhat unlikely - I’ve heard of them and I’ve only seen Star Trek. Director Ridley Scott was obviously aware of the need to keep his audience informed and for that reason I can accept the conceit.

I always enjoy the crew of the Hermes scenes the most with the camaraderie and the unquestioning sacrifice for a lost colleague the kind of stuff that always gives me the gulps. Who knows in the real world if they would risk the lives of many and spend the billions of dollars to give one man another what? 50 odd years at most? I’m glad they did in the film - the scenes of the crew being reunited and the world gasping as one were excellent, and as big a ‘oh yeah’ as when Rocky Balboa chopped the big Russian down.

Well done ‘The Martian’ your definitive crown is well earned.

THE Tag Line : A Mars for 581 days will help you work,rest and make a good film  -  90%

No.156 : The Terminator (1984) (Watchalong)

The Terminator at the IMDb

We don’t often cover well known films here at the Definite Article blog but I recently saw ‘Terminator : Dark Fate’ and wondered how the original held up. Rather than go over the well worn plot let’s have a watch along and see what we remember and what we pick up with the benefit of hindsight.

The film opens with a desolate Los Angeles 2027. I remember being impressed with this as a 14 year old but now the HK’s (Hunter Killers) look jerky and on wires. It’s clearly model work with the advances of HD TV showing up the cheap effects for what they are. You do get the tank going over a load of skulls which looks pretty good, so good in fact that it’s used in every subsequent film.

Arnie appears in a flash and does some flashing of his own as his tight buns are on display for all to see. He meets up with some hoods including a young Bill Paxton (or is it Pullman?) who all get suitably beaten up and stripped of their tough guy clothes.

Elsewhere Michael Biehn appears with a thud in a scene later nicked by the ‘Mr Bean’ TV show. He has a harder time finding gear and ends up with some smelly tramp trousers that he wears throughout the film. He gets the girl too, so don’t knock the smelly strides.

We meet Sarah Connor who has a terrible moped and is an even worse waitress. She has a hot date lined up but this soon gets cancelled - It’s James Cameron on the ansafone! - so she heads out to the cinema to leave her brunette friend Ginger alone with her boyfriend. Say goodbye Ginger!

Arnie has been busy clearing up the other Sarah Connors and soon zeros in on ours. I liked the ‘Tech Noir’ night club with it’s futuristic vibe that looks so dated now. The revellers look like they are on a Duran Duran video shoot and it costs a massive $4.50 to get in. There are other, now failed, future nods throughout the film like a radio ad for Laser Discs - might be worth a few quid on eBay I guess.

Arnie tracks his quarry by way of the phone book - you’d think that coming back from 2027 he’d have Google Maps built in but I guess there was no wi-fi in 1984! There is a funny scene in a gun shop with Dick Miller rubbing his hands at Arnie’s massive list of purchases - sadly he only gets a bullet, and it’s one of his own. Arnie nearly gives himself away asking for a plasma rifle - do your research cyborg!

We get the now classic ‘if you want to live come with me’ line as Reece hooks up with Sarah and they start the chase with Arnie that lasts the rest of the film. The pacing is good and the 100 minutes flies along - probably because you are anticipating the next good bit having seen it 20 times before.

Reece eventually convinces Sarah that he’s a soldier from the future and that she’s the mother of the resistance leader. Wonder how many times that line has worked for seedy men in the years since? Reece and Sarah get it on and Reece reveals himself to be a boobs man. She’s told not to ask who her son’s father is but you’d have to be a house plant not to guess it’s Reece who’s doing the old ‘impregnate them then die to get out of child maintenance’ routine.

The two make up a pile of pipe bombs using some household ingredients. I wonder if that’s where the Unabomber got his recipes? It dates the film a bit when a bloodied guy in a trench coat can buy up a shop’s full supply of ammonia and moth balls and not have Homeland Security immediately on his ass.

Arnie shows up having mimicked Sarah’s mother - a trick we’ll see again and again in the franchise. I liked that the dog remembered to bark when Arnie left. Small things like this and Kyle having the bite make up on his hand in later scenes showed a good eye for detail.

The pipe bombs prove mostly rubbish as they just  explode in a big puff of smoke, but the climatic chase is well done and it was fun to see Arnie get flattened by a big truck after driving over a toy one himself near the start of the film.

Arnie gets exploded but comes back as a skeleton and then as a torso. His persistence is admirable but it’s not as great as the franchise’s which insists on making the same film over and over.

There were shortcomings here but it was made on the cheap and as an original offering it is the best of the bunch. ‘T2 : Judgement Day’ is better as a standalone film but it covers virtually the same plot points as this verbatim.

The Arnie model work looks really fake as do a lot of the miniature scenes - water and flames always give away the small scale. It’s hard to be harsh though as this set the template for every sci-film made since. ‘Terminator Dark Fate’ was decent but it was just another rehash of this.

The acting was OK apart from Arnie who was just himself. It did beg the question that if the Terminator can mimic any voice why has it got ‘Hard to understand Austrian’ as it’s default?

Still good stuff and well worth a re-re-visit.

THE Tag Line - You’ll Be Back (Again) 80%

No.114 : The Colony (2013)

The Colony at the IMDb

 If you thought ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ lacked some mutant cannibals then this could be this film for you.

It is the future and it’s very cold. “The snow started and then didn’t stop” says the ominous voiceover - not sure how that would work but only the tops of street lights are peeking through the snow and no one has had their milk delivered for ages. We learn that most people are dead apart from small colonies living underground.

They manage to grow plants from their seed bank and have some rabbits but things are deteriorating fast. The rabbits have stopped shagging and Bill Paxton is on security detail. A recent flu bug killed 20 of the survivors and sniffles are now a near capital offence. Kindly leader Laurence Fishbourne puts anyone with a runny nose into quarantine and if they don’t get better they can have a bullet or a long walk into the icy wastes. Mentalist Bill prefers a bullet only prescription.

The colony keep in touch with other sites but Colony 5 have gone offline. Laurence takes a few men to check things out and warns Bill not to shoot anyone. The arduous trek across the frozen wastes takes about five minutes and fortunately for the budget Colony 5’s base looks an awful lot like Laurence’s Colony 7. No one answers the door and our heroes sneak in to take a look. They find loads of dead bodies and predictably one survivor who has gone a bit loopy.

A dig about finds a handy stash of dynamite as well as a recording of a transmission that suggests a thaw may be on the way. Sadly their luck runs out as they find a charnel house of mutant cannibals in the kitchen who are scoffing the colony’s former residents. After losing a few men Laurence and the young good looking one escape but with the cannibals in hot pursuit. Will they make it home and will what awaits them be worse than what they have fled? Will the climate reboot and will our heroes' values hold against a big man with pointy teeth?

This was a decent enough effort if you can overlook the thin plot and thinner characters. There is the usual gubbins about climate change but if you take this film as a portentous warning about what the future holds you are probably the kind of person who gets nutritional advice from Michael Moore. Essentially the whole film can be summarised as ‘group disturbs nest of cannibals and then gets chased home by them’. Not so much a movie plot as a game of tag.

The film does try to commentate on the human condition with the dehumanised Bill a foreshadow of the even more brutal cannibals. Towards the end when the gloves are off even those who seemed ‘normal’ end up chopping heads with a salad slicer. The gore is low key with the butcher house scene the worst although even that was so broad as to negate its impact. Fair enough cannibals can be sinister but these were the full leg waving chompers sitting amongst fires and piles of dismembered bodies. Subtle it is not!

Despite a low budget, that involved a series of endless tunnels which looked like a tribute to ‘Dr Who’, it was fast paced enough to keep me interested and the loss of a star after an hour signalled either a brave director or that the last few bucks had run out.

At a trim 90 minutes the film didn’t outstay its welcome and despite their ridiculousness I quite enjoyed the OTT troupe of permanently hungry people eaters.

THE Tag Line - Needs Heating Up  64%

No.60 - Dredd (3D) (2012)

Dredd at the IMDb

The Definite Article Movie Blog gets dusted off for one last dance, to cast its gaze over ‘Dredd’. OK it doesn’t have a ‘The’ but there’s not much more definite than Dredd, and frankly unlike the great man we feel rules are there to be broken.

Most of the reviews you read of ‘Dredd’ will offer comparisons to the 1995 shambles ‘Judge Dredd’ starring Sylvester Stallone. This took a couple of core ideas from the comic hero and added some flying motorbikes, kissing and, lamentably, Rob Schneider. The new Dredd is so far removed from the first attempt that, apart from the helmet, you wouldn’t recognise it. ‘Dredd’ 2012 is a visceral, hardboiled thriller where the wise cracks are dead pan and the violence bone crunchingly realistic.
The film opens with Judge Dredd on patrol, in pursuit of some drugged up perps who are creating carnage on the roads. Any idea of comic book violence is quickly dispensed as a pedestrian and then the perps are dispatched in eye watering fashion. Make no mistake, the ‘18’ certificate is justified and the splatter is all the worse for being in eye-popping 3D.

The film proper opens as Dredd is summoned to a meeting with the Chief Judge and assigned a rookie to assess. The rookie, Anderson, has mutant psychic abilities and is viewed as a potential asset to the struggling department, but has fallen short of the Academy of Law’s pass standard. Dredd is charged with assessing the rookie’s capabilities and is immediately unimpressed with his charge’s potential. He rhymes off the problems the city faces with the depleted Judge force only capable of handling 6% of reported crimes.

Given a free hand to chose their first call Anderson picks a triple homicide at the Peach Trees Block - Huge mistake! This block is the domain of Ma-Ma, the crime boss in charge of ‘Slo-Mo’, a new drug sweeping the city that lets the user experience reality at 1% of real time. The Judges arrive to assess the crime scene but Ma-Ma is ahead of the game and with the help of a cyber-eyed hacker locks down the building and tasks her addicted inhabitants with the job of dispatching the law enforcers.
With no back up available Dredd and Anderson have to stay alive and try to knock the evil drug lord from her perch at the top of the block - 200 floors away. Can they survive the battle against the criminals and other forces sent against them? Will the rookie save the day and will Dredd’s helmet stay untouched for the duration?

As a near life long fan of 2000ad and Judge Dredd the development of this film has been high on my anticipation last for nigh on two years, and I’m amazed to say that it managed to live up to my expectations.

Firstly, Karl Urban is excellent as Dredd. His voice is pretty much how I’ve imagined Dredd to sound for 25 years and his lip curls and jaw acting are fantastic. His delivery is on the right side of caricature and although he doesn’t engage us with much empathy we’re never in doubt that he is a devoted and single minded servant of the law. His character arc isn’t great but frankly I wouldn’t want him to learn about himself in the course of the film - his resolve is unbreakable, just how it should be.

The rookie Anderson was played by Olivia Thirlby and again, she was excellent. Many fans, myself included, feel Anderson is a bit touchy feely but here her vulnerabilities added to the character and in truth it’s really her film by way of character development. Her building of confidence as the film progresses is expertly judged and believable.

Of the three main characters, the villain, Ma-Ma is the weakest. I wasn’t convinced that she had the drive or charisma to lead legions of cannon fodder gangsters and her powers were limited to looking a bit thoughtful. Given the down to earth reality of the film this wasn’t a major problem, but a memorable and frightening bad guy would have made for a better spectacle overall.

Much as been said of the contemporary look of this sci-fi thriller and it’s true that some of the vehicles look more 1990 than 2090. There is however plenty of good tech such as Dredd’s wrist com and weaponry, and the new, set against the old, does highlight the divisions in the future society.
The film runs a lean 96 minutes and although I spent too long looking for the in-jokes and references I didn’t feel it flagged at all. I did have some minor quibbles with the appearance of bent Judges which harked back to the Stallone film and undermined the Justice Department as an elite force, but these were negligible.

On balance though, the film is a triumph with amazing 3D effects and a body count to well justify the ‘18’ certificate. Not for the squeamish or art house lovers but ‘Dredd’ is pure escapist enjoyment that will see repeat viewings from me and hopefully many others.

THE Tag Line : Dreddfully Good 89%

No.51 : The Core (2003)

The Core at the IMDb

Some people will tell you the ‘The Core’ is a lot of far fetched hokum, but I checked it out and it never actually claimed to be a documentary. It’s one of those films that always seem to be on and no matter were you stumble in to it you always hang about to the end. At least until the black guy does his noble sacrifice at any rate.

Anyway the world is in danger. People with pacemakers are falling over and pigeons are going mental in Trafalgar Square. The cause is unknown but dashing boffin Aaron Eckhart has an idea about the electro magnetic field breaking down. He consults with celebrity big head scientist Stanley Tucci who agrees that things look grim. They talk to the dad out of ‘Six Feet Under’ who has been promoted to head of the army and they set about saving the day.

They meet up with a black guy in the desert and effectively steal all his stuff. The plan is to journey to the planet’s core, to kick start the lava and save the day. They enlist Hilary Swank’s unfeasibly young and beautiful NASA pilot and a couple of other guys who are so destined to be cannon fodder that they may as well have been wearing red shirts.

After a couple of big surface disasters, the kind that dominate the trailer, the mission is on. They dive into the sea in their tunnelling machine and are soon travelling through special effects that are markedly poorer than those of ‘Inner Space', which is at least a decade older. As you’d expect there are bumps along the way, the kind that demand the crew get out and stretch their legs and allow for a noble sacrifice or two, no three - four!

I’ve seen ‘The Core’ five times easy and I’m always seduced by its cheesy charms. It’s light weight fun and despite more techno babble than a year of ‘Star Trek’ they still manage to make the implausible totally unbelievable. In the scene where they exit the craft, despite thousands of pounds of pressure, throwaway lines like “at least our suits are holding” without any reason why take you so far away from the premise that you may as well be watching an old man feeding his dog if you wanted scientific exposition. But we never came to learn - we came to see noble speeches and shit getting blown up.

I know landmark destruction is the ‘money shot’ in this kind of film but it beggars belief that the three points of the planet, that’s 70% water by the way, that the phenomena chooses to strike are Trafalgar Square, Rome are the Golden Gate Bridge. What’s the chances of that happening then? In fact if I was living near a landmark and saw a Hollywood film crew I’d be heading for the hills.

The characters are all likable and it’s rare to see Swank or Eckhart is a less than enjoyable film. Tucci delivers well as the up his arse scientist who may turn out nice in the end. His black polo neck and smoking habit were a bit much - they should just have given him a moustache to twirl and be done with it.

The destruction and technology effects were all well done with the microwaving of San Francisco and the frying of Rome both well executed. Less good was the travel though the Earth which looked like a lot of bubbles.

The plot was patently ridiculous with so many holes that you could turn a double decker bus over in them. It is of course moot to moan about the lack of decompression illness when you are talking about a metal tube fixing the planet but that’s half the fun of high concept nonsense like this.

If you’ve managed to miss ‘The Core’ on its endless repeat Film 4 showings you should have a look - the most fun scoffing you’ll have watching a disaster movie. Apart from ‘2012’.

THE Tag Line - No Bore Core Gets Decent Score - 70%

No.7 : The X-Files (1998)

The X-Files at the IMDb

Before we start, a quick word for all our pedant followers. Yes it’s a definite article and yes it’s two words. People may say oh that really called ‘The X-Files Movie’ or ‘X-Files : Fight the Future’, but they’re wrong, don’t listen to them. The dash doesn’t makes it less of a word either - you get an X-Box and G-force they’re still definitive items!

Anyway let’s have a look at the big screen spin off for the popular TV show. Such films are usually a bit crappy and a cash in , obviously ’Holiday On The Buses’ excepted, but this is a pretty fair offering and was certainly a lot better than I remembered it.

The film opens with some icy cave men running through the snow in what is now Texas. They find a cave but as you’d probably guess an alien is living there and they all get in a big fight. The cave men show some mettle and one survives after killing the alien in a stabbing frenzy. We fast forward to present day Texas when the cave is found by a group of kids when one falls in. The alien has been lying dormant and its tarry bloody infects a boy and his firemen rescuers.

We then meet up with Mulder and Scully on a routine FBI job. The X-Files has been disbanded and we the viewer are soon wondering if we’ve been sold a fast one. The agents are looking for a bomb in a government building and getting no where fast. Mulder playing his usually reliable hunches has a look in a building nearby and after failing to get a soda succeeds in finding the bomb. Luckily the bomb has a helpful countdown timer and the bomb disposal dude is on the scene with five minutes to spare. Unfortunately his union mandated five minute break has just started and he has to sit and watch as the clock counts down and the building explodes.

The Feds want a scapegoat for the blast and for the deaths of a boy and three fireman - remember them from the last paragraph? After thorough grilling Mulder hits a bar but is interrupted by Martin Landau of ‘ Space 1999’ who has parked his Eagle to tell him the blast was a deliberate ploy to conceal evidence. With this nugget of info Mulder is on the case and after rousing Scully for a quick autopsy they soon start to unravel the conspiracy which eventually leads to a showdown in Antarctica and some solid revelations for once.

I really enjoyed my first look at ‘The X-Files’ since 1998 and was surprised how much was explained. I used to enjoy the TV show but went off it as it seemed to spin out the storylines to an intolerable degree. Here you get the whole set up and resolution inside two hours saving you at least 70 over the TV box set.

The film does exist in the same continuity as the TV show and fits in between seasons. The ‘Colonisation’ storyline is brought to the fore and we learn a lot of things that had previously only been alluded to. We get a lot of scenes with the bad guys conspiring in a ‘Pentabulate’ style meeting room as well as The Cigarette Smoking Man clocking up the air miles as he tries to stay ahead of the tenacious ‘tecs.

My main gripe would be that a lot is crammed in, maybe too much. Great characters like Skinner and The Lone Gunmen merit only brief cameos and some of the exposition is practically read out for you lest you fail to keep up. The denouement in Antarctica is well played although there are a few MCGuffins thrown in to let Mulder find Scully in a spaceship as big as the ones in ‘V’ with just as many ready meal humans to choose from.

If you think of this as a ‘Greatest Hits’ from the TV show you won’t be disappointed and you even get a couple of ‘shits’ for your trouble too - ooh dangerous. The production values and effects are pretty good and I was glad that a few cats were let out of their long term bags - the fate of Mulder’s sister for one.

As a standalone film I think this succeeds and it also goes a long way to keep the fans happy too.

THE Definitive Tag Line - X Hits the Spot 76%