saugoof Reviews

The Killing Fields (1984)

A great story that deserved better

[6/10 · 27 April 2018]

The story of the Cambodian genocide is one that has practically no parallels in terms of sheer brutality and the impact it has had on a country. And yet this is pretty much the only film that had some sort of widespread reach in the western world. It's a real pity that it wasn't a better film.

I did see the movie when it came out originally and while I didn't think it was a brilliant film at the time, it got me interested enough in the subject to read up on in it. Including Dith Pran's book which the film is based upon. Having re-watched it now for the first time in decades and with a lot more background knowledge, the film is full of very big flaws.

One of the driving forces for this film is meant to be the friendship between Dith Pran and Sidney Schanberg, but for the first half of the movie, Sidney treats Pran like a low-level employee and there's no real warmth on screen between them. It's only when Pran is forced to leave the French embassy where they've been hiding out and gets sent to a Khmer Rouge labour camp that suddenly this great friendship is highlighted, even though there was little evidence of it shown beforehand.

The second half of the movie, with Sidney back in the US and Dith Pran left behind in Cambodia is where the film somewhat hits its stride. That said, reading about his actual experiences, the film feels almost tame in comparison. Roland Joffe also missed a chance of making a bigger impact here by deciding to not use subtitles for any of the Khmer dialog throughout the movie. This means that the second half where it's almost exclusively featuring Cambodians has to work on a visual level for viewers who don't understand the dialog. That means many of the scenes are over-simplified and make them feel less realistic than they should have been.

Likely the decision to not use subtitles also means that Dith Pran's time in the killing fields was shortened so much in the movie that it feels like it lasted a couple of weeks rather than the four years it really was.

The by far worst aspect of this movie though is the music! I'm sorry but as much respect as I have for Mike Oldfield, he absolutely cannot write movie scores. The music here is so completely out of place and distracting, it ruins all the otherwise great scenes. A perfect example of that is when Pran, Schanberg and a couple of other journalists get captured by Khmer Rouge troops and held hostage in an abandoned Coke factory. What would have been an incredibly tense set of scenes gets absolutely ruined by the music that sounds like it would be better placed in an episode of Gumby. It's so distracting, it almost makes it comical.

This is by no means a terrible film. But a few relatively minor changes could have easily made this a great film.

Mute (II) (2018)

Surprised at the low scores here

[7/10 · 11 March 2018]

I'm really surprised by the low scores and bad reviews this movie gets here. Granted, this movie is not perfect. It is complex, quite slow, not all that easy to follow and its basic plot is nothing world-shattering. But it is also executed very well, visually stunning, has great performances, creates a very unique world and is intriguing throughout.

The main story is about a technophobe bartender, mute after a boating accident when he was a kid, who is trying to find his missing girlfriend. The futuristic Berlin, setting of the movie, is very reminiscent of Blade Runner Los Angeles. It is almost permanently night time, populated by highly eccentric people from all corners of the world and everyone appears to be involved in a criminal scheme of one type or another.

There are basically no good characters, just varying shades of grey, probably one of the reasons for the bad scores this movie gets. The few nice people here do bad things, the bad people have some redeeming qualities, even the ones that look on the surface like cartoon villains.

This is the sort of film that you basically have to watch more than once, it is not easy to keep track of what is happening and much of it may not make sense on first viewing. But it is far, far better than the low IMDB score would suggest.

Dear White People (2017–2021)

Ignore the IMDb reviews

[8/10 · 27 June 2017]

Reading the reviews of this show here on IMDb, it's clear that a troll army has set its sights on it. The same people who love to throw terms like "Snowflake" around are not exactly thick-skinned.

Ignore them, this show is far better than they'd want to make you believe. I'm only six episodes in so far but there have been a few absolutely terrific episodes. I was a bit Luke-warm after the first episode which centred on Sam who probably comes closest to being a bit of a stereotypical and poorly written character. Although she is revealed to have a lot more depth and complexity in later episodes. But that first episode left me intrigued enough to keep watching. Episode two then got me totally hooked. This one centred on Lionel, the nerdish journalist who is a far more interesting character. Subsequent episodes brought out the rest of the ensemble and even characters who appear horrendously shallow at first, like Troy, Coco or Reggie show a surprising depth when given more of a stage.

Each episode centres on a different main character and they all end up revealing personalities that are not at all like we had first assumed. There is some terrific writing here which generally overcomes the occasional hackneyed set-ups.

My only criticism is that every single person here looks impossibly beautiful, is model-styled and wears clothes that would send the average millionaire bankrupt. That's not what college looks like.

We Are Young. We Are Strong. (2014)

Highly relevant but sadly disappointing film

[5/10 · 17 February 2017]

Minor spoilers

"We are young, we are strong" is the fictionalised retelling of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of 1992. It does this from three angles, a group of right-wing kids, a family of Vietnamese immigrants and a local politician. Most of the focus being on group of kids. While it shows the kids and the Vietnamese family as diverse and complex characters, it is far less successful with the local politician who ends up as little more than a story-telling device.

The film makes a good fist at detailing the path the kids take on their way to becoming rioters but ultimately ends up being so much less than it could have been. The problem is not that there are basically no likable characters in the film, the problem really is that there are no interesting characters that would actually make us care much about what they do. Almost every character in the film is infected by this peculiar German film trope of playing their roles as "brooding, quiet, contemplative". Jonas Nay, so excellent in "Deutschland 83", here comes across as just disinterested which makes his actions at the end of the movie when he becomes one of the principal instigators in the riots all the more puzzling.

I had also a bit of a problem with this movie and the roles that women play in it. The only female role of substance was Lien (Trang Le Hong) a character who was rebelling as much against her environment as she was against her own family. Other female roles were little more than token love interests to spur divisions between the main male characters. There was no background on any of them, no motivation shown, they were "just around".

The lone standout in the film is Joel Basman who plays Robbie. A character who starts out as somewhat likable, even though he is a deranged hothead who bullies his friends. But after being on the receiving end of violence at the hands of one of his gang he ends up an even worse person. He is probably the only character that we end up caring about, even if we never like him.

The biggest problem with the film is that it barely gives any hints or background behind the riots. It only illustrates how a bunch of kids who start out as violent misfits end up, pushed on by some neo-Nazis, into throwing molotov cocktails. It never shows how they became those violent misfits in the first place and barely gives any reasons (spurious as they may have been) into what triggered the riots started in the first place. In particular, it completely leaves out one of the biggest culprits in the whole sorry saga, the local media who are shown here throughout as simply reporting rather than being some of the key instigators that they were. It also leaves open a lot of questions that I would have loved to see answered, such as why the police were pulled out at what seemed like the most critical point.

As relevant as this film is, it ultimately is just not that interesting.

BoJack Horseman: Fish Out of Water (2016) Season 3, Episode 4

A truly original episode

[10/10 · 22 November 2016]

Coming up with something completely original is never easy, but this episode of BoJack Horseman is really unlike any other in the series or anything else I've seen for that matter, and it's brilliant! I won't dwell much on the specifics here because, had I read a description of it, I probably wouldn't have been interested in seeing it.

BoJack Horseman has always been a show where the creators have a lot of fun with the whole concept of a world where intelligent animals coexist with humans. This episode really makes the most of this environment as BoJack attends an underwater film festival where his movie "Secretariat" is being shown. The "Underwater Film Festival" naturally is in an underwater city in the pacific ocean and the underwater world is one aspect that really makes this episode special. There is so much going on in the background, it's even more impossible to get it all in on a first viewing than with other episodes. Little touches like cars driving on the left, alcohol patches, or how what seemed like an insignificant joke about the thumbs up gesture ends up hilarious by getting re-used in several different contexts.

The character of BoJack Horseman has really come into his own too. Initially through the first part of season 1 it seemed a bit like this was going to be yet another "I used to be famous" type of story, but the character has developed into so much more. This really shines through when he's attempting to return a lost baby and tries to make things right with Kelsey Jannings whom he got fired as director of Secretariat.

A truly beautiful episode that I had to watch again right away!

The Iron Lady (2011)

So much less than it could have been.

[3/10 · 31 October 2013]

It's impossible to watch a movie about Margaret Thatcher with a completely open mind. She was such a divisive person that anyone old enough to at least remember her years as Britain's PM will have a ready-made opinion of her. So with that in mind I have to declare my bias and say that I thought she was an absolute monster. This meant that I expected that I would hate the film too. Well I did hate it but not for reasons I expected.

There are a number of problems with this film, but the biggest is that it's just not very interesting. Yes, I absolutely hated Thatcher, more than any other politician I can think of. But even with that, a film about her life should have made for the fascinating story that I'm sure it was. It's just that the film doesn't show it. I wanted to find out how she became the person that she was, what the key events in her life were, what her influences were, what drove her. The film only ever hints at these. For example her entire university period is covered in a 20 second scene of opening a letter and declaring "I got into Oxford!". And that's the last you get of university or her professional career outside of politics.

As for her political career, the major touchstones are all there but just briefly run through. The miners strike, Falklands war, Brighton Hotel bombing, poll tax, being dumped by the party, etc. It's all there but there is nothing revelatory about any of them. They are just shown here to tick the boxes.

What is given major airtime though is present day Thatcher as she comes to terms with Dennis Thatcher's death and the loss of power. In these parts she is shown as a fairly tragic figure. The problem is that this is really not particularly interesting.

The other issue I have is with the film's absence of politics. Oddly for a film about Margaret Thatcher, the film goes to lengths to sit on the fence. It has brief parts of cheering for the underdog as she breaks through the boy's club of the 60's and 70's British conservative party and politics in general, and it also shows her as absolutely incapable of accepting advice and as being very cold-hearted, but that's as far as it goes in painting here in either a good or bad light. As much as I despised her, I would even have preferred a film that turned her into a hero instead. Anything else than this attempt at having it both ways. It tries so hard to not offend either side that it ends up offending both.

Now for the good parts. Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent! "Meryl Streep nails it" has become almost a cliché but she absolutely does. She just shows again that she's head and shoulders above anyone else in the business and I reckon this is her finest role today. Similarly the often underrated Jim Broadbent is fantastic as Dennis Thatcher, pretty much the only sympathetic role in the film. Another point needs to be made about make-up, for which this film won a well-deserved Oscar. The subtle transformations throughout the movie as it traces a fairly long time-line is incredible.

Prey of the Jaguar (1996 Video)

No cliché left untouched

[1/10 · 5 September 2008]

Wow this was bad! This really felt like a McBain movie from the Simpsons. The basic plot premise in a few words, a special operations cop working for some shadowy government organisation puts a bad-ass drug dealer behind bars, and in the process killing his son and dad. The drug dealer, who for reasons unknown has an English accent despite having a Spanish name, breaks out of prison 8 years later and goes after our hero who has since retired. He's also been in witness relocation and managed to get himself a family that is too perfect for words. Bad guy drug dealer finds him, kills his wife and kid, then kills him, only our hero doesn't die and is out for revenge.

This is a cheaply made, entirely predictable, badly directed movie that features some of the worst acting ever put straight to video. The scenes where Maxwell Caulfield laments his killed family are so bad they end up being hilarious. There is no revenge movie cliché that is left out here. Let's see : - bad guy kills hero's family - check - hero's wife is pregnant when she's killed - check - hero is retired and just wants to be left alone, until they come after him - check - hero is killed, only he doesn't die - check - shadowy government organisation - check - the bad guy sports an accent - check - lots of easily disposable henchmen - check - ancient Chinese martial arts teacher - check

I feel sorry for Linda Blair for ending up in trash like this. Here she plays a cop who, unlike the rest of the police, is supportive of our vigilante hero. The entire film feels like it's a set up for a series of movies with Linda Blair playing Commissioner Gordon to Maxwell Caulfield's Batman. Pray that they failed!

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Very cool!

[5 November 2004]

I first saw this movie shortly after it was released at a friends place. He was really into horror movies and had loads of videos but for some reason this one always stuck in my mind. I finally got to see it again some 26 years later and I can definitely see why I remembered it. This is far better than your average b-movie horror fare. While it definitely looks cheap in parts (i.e. much of the zombie makeup), overall it actually looks a lot better than what it's budget would have let you expect. But what really lifts this above the rest is the plot and director George Romero's skill. The four leads are quite well developed which is important here since virtually all dialog in the movie is between these four characters. Although all four leads were relatively new to film acting at the time, and it shows somewhat.

There were quite a few scenes in here that I instantly remembered on seeing it again. The rednecks shooting zombies for sport, running through the mall while zombies stumble all around and the bikie gang at the end virtually toying with the zombies. That last one also ads an entirely new element to zombie movies where you almost feel sorry for them.

Another element that really serves this movie well is that it's got a lot of humour. Large parts of it are not particularly scary and except for a few scenes it's not all that gruesome, compared to a lot of horror movies. But it more than makes up for this with humour. Not the over the top humour of, say a "Scary Movie", it's much more subtle than that and is never driven home with a sledgehammer. But scenes like the zombies returning to the mall after their death because "this place was important to them" or the way that the four survivors gradually turn their warehouse part into a modern 70's luxury pad is absolutely hilarious.

I've not actually seen any of the other Romero movies, nor the remake of this but it definitely made me want to see all of them now.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Bourne, Jason Bourne

[28 August 2004]

I've never read any of the books, nor did I see the original 70's version of "The Bourne Identity" so my take on the first movie and this sequel is from a fairly fresh approach. That said, the actual plot is not exactly groundbreaking. An agent with amnesia that has the good guys and the bad guys after him sounds like standard Hollywood fare. What sets this apart though is that the script is far cleverer than your average spy thriller. It kept well clear of most of the very obvious film cliches. This was much more than just a couple of links between car chases and explosions and it was quite light on plot holes.

So I'll divide this into good and bad things about the movie. For the bad; Why did they need to frame Bourne when they were going to kill him anyway? Also, other people have mentioned the shaky camera. This does in part make the movie more realistic and ads another layer of action, but it made me physically ill too. And finally, the CIA appears to have ridiculously easy access to European police forces and things like security cameras or police information. I hope that's just artistic licence rather than reality....

So much for the bad parts, what was good about the movie; The story felt quite believable, for a Hollywood movie anyway. It didn't have outlandish explosions and the character's actions seemed logical and straight forward. You have to suspend your disbelief somewhat for the Jason Bourne character's abilities, but other than a couple of situations where he relied on being able to, well, punch his way out of a situation he basically did the most logical thing that most people in a situation like this would probably do. There is only one situation where he has to rely on another person performing a certain task at a very specific time, in this case making a call to the CIA superiors, that is so prevalent in other movies. Matt Damon makes an unlikely action hero but is perfect for this type of role and handles the it well. The biggest plus in the movie was its used of locations. Not just is it far more interesting to see a film taking place in cities like Berlin, Naples or Moscow but it also stayed very true to those locations. When Jason Bourne arrives in Moscow by train from Berlin he gets off at the real train station in Moscow for example, even though he seems to get there quite fast. I've done that trip once and it took me 25 hours.

So overall it was a very good action movie, although I'd still rank it slightly behind the first movie.

A Pure Formality (1994)

A masterpiece

[10/10 · 6 August 2002]

Film making does not get much better than this. This combines clever writing with great cinematography and fantastic acting. Without giving away too much of the story, Gerard Depardieu plays Onoff, a burnt out writer who finds himself at a country police station in the middle of the night in a big storm. He is being interrogated by Roman Polanski for a murder. However, this plot is just a framework of something bigger which I'm not going to give away here. The whole film takes place in one night and virtually the entire movie is shot within the police station.

There are a lot of things that aren't initially clear in the movie and this is definitely one that rewards repeated viewings. The ending is unexpected but after knowing how it finishes, watching the movie again really helps you pick up things that will make a lot more sense than on first viewing. This all makes it sound like a complex movie to watch, which is true to some point. However what makes this so rewarding is that even if you don't realise everything that is going on here, it still is fascinating to watch.

The cinematography is excellent and gives the movie a really claustrophobic feel. The attention to detail is quite breathtaking too, there is nothing that goes on that hasn't got some relevance to the story and much of it is not really obvious on the first viewing. The writing is very clever and I'm sure it was an inspiration for movies like "The Sixth Sense".

All this is good by itself, but the two things that really lift the movie above any number of other great movies is the acting and the use of language. Depardieu has made some stinkers in his time, which isn't surprising considering his workload. But that doesn't change that he can be one of the finest actors around. He's certainly not afraid to come across as a very ugly man here, physically and emotionally. But while great acting can be expected of him, the real revelation is Roman Polanski. He doesn't act in a lot of movies these days, in fact the only other movie I've ever seen him in was "The Fearless Vampire Killers". He plays the Inspector who admires Onoff but nevertheless has to interrogate him. The exchanges between him and Depardieu are an absolute pleasure to watch. Polanski speaks surprisingly good French and although Depardieu gets the better lines, as he would since he's a writer, Polanski is the smarter person and ultimately outwits him.

The acting, and indeed the entire film, has a bit of a theatrical feel about it. One the one hand you could almost say that it's bad acting since it never feels like you're watching anyone else than Polanski and Depardieu on screen. But they deliver their lines so well and work of each other so well that this is totally inconsequential. The other thing I have mentioned before is the use of language, this film is full of memorable lines and not a word is wasted. This is probably the closest I have seen films come to pure poetry on screen.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

mmhkay....

[8/10 · 24 July 2002]

Future generations will divide the world into people who love South Park and those who hate it. Obviously no one who hates the TV show will like the movie. Those that like the series are in for a treat though. Parker/Stone have been given a lot more freedom here than they have on TV and it shows. The opening 20 minutes with Terrance and Phillip's movie "Asses of Fire" is hugely over the top, even for South Park standards. It's also one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a movie.

The writing is very good, and many of the incidental characters have a lot more depth than in most live action movies. This shows particularly in characters like the Canadian Ambassador (in fact every Canadian), Saddam Hussein or the mole, one of the funniest characters ever created. Although after that initial opening burst the movie seems to run out of steam a bit, it does pick up again towards the end. Like the later TV episodes it also starts getting a bit preachy in parts and tries to hammer home its point a bit obvious, although this doesn't really take over as much here. Basically it rallies against blind censorship of people who rather see laws implemented than looking after their own kids. In a predictable move, this ended up being the exact scenario when the movie was released.

The movie is actually an improvement on the TV show and meant that watching the series was for ever after a bit of a let down. There are so many great ideas hidden in this film, like Saddam & Satan, Bill Gates, making the movie a musical or the hip hop remix of Terrance & Phillip's song. Two negative points, Chef is criminally underused and this movie has to be just about the shortest feature ever released.

Kudos to Channel 9 for showing the un-edited version.

Dirty Deeds (2002)

Finally David Caesar makes a good film

[7/10 · 18 July 2002]

It took a couple of attempts but finally David Caesar has come up with something watchable. Dirty Deeds is set in 1969 Kings Cross where Barry Ryan (Bryan Brown) runs a crooked scheme siphoning off a large percentage of pokie machine winnings. Other than the occasional tussle with competition this runs well for him when the US Mafia decides to get in on the scheme and send Sal (Felix Williamson) and Tony (John Goodman) to either buy or muscle their way in.

Barry's nephew Darcy (Sam Worthington), having just returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam is recruited straight away by Barry to, amongst other things, look after his mistress Margaret (Kestie Morassi). Before long they show a lot more interest in each other than Barry anticipated.

The two mafia characters, Sal and Tony are very different characters. While Sal is more of a shoot first, ask later type, Tony is a bit older and not particularly happy with what he's done with his life. Neither really trusts the other and are not sure what the other is really up to.

The film looks far bigger, budget wise, than anything David Caesar has done before and is far more entertaining to boot. It shows 1969 Sydney as a mix between Hicksville and happening place. There's a lot of fun to be had with 60's fashion, particularly some of the wallpapers and room decors are worth the price of the movie ticket alone.

Bryan Brown basically plays a similar character to most he's played so far, although here he is truly in mean mode. He plays his character very well and is well and truly the films centre piece. His character is superficially a bit similar to his Pando character from "Two Hands" but here he is much more scheming and the contrast from his family persona to the crook persona is not as pronounced.

Sam Neill has a minor role as a corrupt cop who can walk into a crime scene where Barry and Darcy are dragging away two people they killed and pronounce it a "murder suicide". He plays very much against character and is all the better for it.

There's a bit of a running joke on the fact that no one in 60's Australia knows what Pizza is which I found a bit hard to believe. There were lots of Italian immigrants there by that time anyway. But then I'm not old enough to remember that.

This is a very enjoyable film and one where for once I truly didn't know which way it would end. That's achieved without even making the ending full of surprises and twists.

Little Voice (1998)

A real surprise

[8/10 · 4 May 2002]

There have been quite a few movies set in economically depressed northern England recently, like Billy Elliot, Brassed off or The Full Monty and this one sits in neatly with those. This movie is also a real surprise packet though. I can't say I expected much from a movie about someone who sings show tunes but this was a rather pleasing affair. Jane Horrocks is best known as the airheaded Bubble on Absolutely Fabulous. Here she plays an entirely different character as the painfully shy LV who grows up singing along to her dad's show tunes records in her bedroom.

Living at home with a totally overbearing mother, she hardly leaves her bedroom when one day Ray Say (Michael Caine), one of her mum's one night stands hears her singing. He is intent on making her a star for not entirely selfless reasons. This however is not as simple as booking her gigs and getting publicity. Much more is involved in actually getting LV to sing on stage. Ray may not have many talents but he can smooth talk and so eventually gets her to agree.

There are some very good performances in this movie, particularly from Michael Caine as the initially well meaning manager who very quickly becomes a ratbag when he gets the first inklings of becoming big with LV's act. Michael Caine has done his fair share of real stinkers but when he's good he's better than most. Then there's Jane Horrocks performance as LV which may not be that outstanding acting wise but her singing is truly amazing here. The standout performance though comes from Jim Broadbent as Mister Boo, the owner of the nightclub where LV performs. He tells really bad jokes, introduces even worse acts and and wears horrid clothes. This was a bit reminiscent of Alexei Sayle's Bobby Chariot character but Jim Broadbent doesn't look down on this character. Instead he makes him quite likeable. Brenda Blethyn is good as well as LV's mum who wears way too much make up and is LOUD in every sense. It would have taken a bit of courage to play a character that is despicable in every sense like this.

This story was written around Jane Horrocks talent of impersonating singers like Shirley Bassey, Marylin Monroe or Judy Garland and while this may not be to everyone's taste, it comes of remarkably well here.

Ali (2001)

Good but not great

[6/10 · 3 March 2002]

This movie has been hyped up a fair bit pre-release and while I generally dismiss that, this one had me going to the cinema with fairly high expectations. It didn't really live up to that in the end. Nothing in the movie really grabbed me and the whole thing felt a bit like a tele movie to me. There were a number of problems with it, biggest of all was Will Smith as the lead. That's not saying he can't act, he was great in "Six degrees of separation" but the problem was that he's too well known. He had the mannerism and talk of Ali well down but throughout the movie I never had the impression that I was watching Muhammed Ali, it always felt like Will Smith playing Ali. A lesser known actor would have been a wiser choice, even if that would have meant a much smaller box office return. He did bulk up for the role quite a bit but it still didn't look heavy weight size. This is especially telling at the weigh-in for the Ali-Frazier fight at the start. Frazier looks absolutely huge compared to Ali but only weighs in at 8 pounds more. Another problem were the actual fights. Much of the movie had been filmed with handheld cameras to give it a bit of a documentary feel which succeeds reasonably well. But that all gets destroyed when, during the fights, music and slow motion is used to highlight various telling moments or the approaching end of the fight. That, combined with knowing beforehand who was going to win really took the excitement out of it for me.

Finally another problem I had with the movie, and I suspect that a lot of people outside the US or under the age of 40 will have the same problem, was that a lot of details about Ali's life are assumed to be public knowledge in the movie. I found the way it skipped over what seemed to be vital information rather confusing.

Michael Mann is generally overrated as a director. Although Ali is in style quite different to his previous movies that looked to be stuck in the 80's. Good to see Ali honoured for his social stance as well. Though I couldn't help thinking that if Will Smith today, for example, refused to be drafted to bomb Afghanis he'd be just as hated as Ali was then.

6/10

Reefer Madness (1936)

That's pretty swell...

[3/10 · 25 January 2002]

I doubt that anyone still takes this movie seriously these days but it's funny seeing how people went paranoid about pot in the 30's. There are lots of wildly exaggerated or plain wrong comments and accusations in it. Best among them are that pot is more dangerous than Heroin, it will make you violent and eventually incurably insane.

The film details how smoking pot changes the lives of a couple of all-american teenagers. In fact, they're so clean cut, nice to their parents and just plain perfect that you're actually happy when their lives turn bad. On the way there we see some really funny overacting and the way that middle America thought people behaved after smoking pot. A single puff immediately has you in hysterics, after a couple of minutes it's down to pre-marital sex (hey, that's enough to get me hooked!), followed by a violent paranoia and finally of course, insanity.

The film is fairly standard propaganda stuff and follows the three important propaganda ingredients to a T. It's badly acted, exaggerated in hammering home a couple of points and frightening the uninformed about the fact that no one is safe from this great danger. It is however fairly lengthy for a propaganda movie and it's not as ridiculous as I expected. Although there are some really funny scenes that rightly make this a classic.

Assault on Death Mountain (1999 TV Movie)

Hoo boy, this is bad

[1/10 · 14 January 2002]

Hulk saves the world, yet again. Like all of Hulk Hogans movies this is in the so bad it's good category. Naturally I wouldn't say that to his face. The one thing that stops this movie from excelling in that category though is that it has quite a few really revolting bits in it. For example, the fact that every single baddie of the two unconnected plots is a foreigner and every one of the morally good people is American.

There's little point in pointing out odd behaviour by the characters or plot inconsistencies in a movie like this, but I will anyway. In the first plot, which really is just a filler because they didn't manage to pad out the 2nd plot to last for more than an hour, the good guys need to rescue a little girl who's been kidnapped by her Austrian dad from his American wife. The Austrian turns out to be majorly wealthy, but a foreigner so he deserves all that he gets, like having about 15 of his life guards shot while Hulk and the team rescue the little girl. A bit over the top or what? This plot also serves the film makers with an excellent opportunity to show as much cleavage as possible. This is achieved by having Shannon Tweed, disguised as a guest, sneak into the exclusive party the little girl's dad is holding at his estate. She gets to wear a necklace with a camera hidden inside so her necklace and of course her cleavage are shown in close up's a number of times. Pure genius.

A common trait for really bad movies like this is the way Mister Evil's henchmen are disposed off. Naturally they're positioned all over the building but one single punch ALWAYS knocks them out cold, never to return to action for the rest of the movie. Unless of course there's a fight scene needed, then the baddies get hit over and over again before they finally get knocked out. Similarly, the baddies can fire machine gun rounds after rounds at the good guys without a single hit while the good guys need one single shot to dispose of entire armies. Unless the baddie has had a bit of screen time, then he'll be much harder to kill. Also, like in all bad action movies, either the number one or number two baddie will be totally cruel and evil when he's got the good guy tied up but will become a shivering coward once the roles are reversed.

I don't know, I'm probably not who this movie is marketed at (I shudder to think of the target audience) but I'd find it much more interesting if the baddies actually had a reason to be evil. They're always evil for no reason which makes them cartoon characters. But then, every single character in this movie is a cartoon character.

So, in conclusion. Good for a chuckle but not really a truly good, bad film.

Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

As much fun as an ingrown toenail

[2/10 · 29 December 2001]

I can't think of too many sequels that are nearly as good as the original. The list gets even smaller for sequels that topped the original. Now Blues Brothers 2000 is horribly bad, even for a sequel. It does serve as a good example of doing a sequel by numbers. First, it needs to have everything that made the original famous. Let's see, huge car chase, check. A great band that can't get a gig, check. Lots of ticked off people in pursuit of the band, check.

Second requirement, the sequel's plot must only deviate slightly from the original. The film "succeeds" here admirably with most of the best remembered jokes and character traits of the original repeated in ever so slightly modified form.

Like most sequels, this movie has no artistic merit whatsoever. It is strictly a cash-in only affair. John Landis hasn't had a success for some time and Dan Aykroyd hasn't had more than supporting roles for a while either. What they've done here however is production line fodder which, ironically for a movie about a blues band, has no soul in it at all.

Obviously this movie doesn't have John Belushi in it which means that one thing that made the first movie great, the interplay between him and Dan Aykroyd is missing here. Now I have a soft spot for John Goodman but it just doesn't work here. At least John Landis and Aykroyd didn't replace John with Jim Belushi, perish the thought. But then they decided to add two additional Blues Brothers, a police officer who during the movie discovers the blues and most annoyingly an 11 year old Blues Brother kid. Someone must have looked at the "Sitcom 101" manual and found in chapter 1, entitled "Kids are cute" the instruction that kids who do adult things are always cute and bring laughs. Well, just like in sitcoms, this turns out to be truly stomach turning.

The really sad thing about this movie is that it hammered home how far in front Hollywood puts making money instead of making great movies.

Traffic (2000)

Alright

[7/10 · 25 December 2001]

Traffic is a pretty good, though somewhat overrated film. It portrays the ridiculous War on Drugs that US (and occasionally other) politicians run in a grab for cheap votes. The movie is quite ambitious in that it tries to show three different angles to the story. There's the side of the Mexican cop played by Benicio Del Toro who has to fight against corruption as well as drug smuggling. Then there's the two US cops played by Don Cheadle and the sublime Luis Guzman, who go after importers on the other side of the border in San Diego. Finally there's Michael Douglas as the newly appointed head of the DEA.

The three stories are filmed in distinctly different colour schemes to make an easy distinction that becomes more distracting than anything else. Thus, the head of the DEA story is drenched in blue tones and the Mexican shots are all covered in yellow but the whole thing becomes gimmicky very quickly and the film would have been better without it.

What makes the film good is that it generally strays from the obvious path and instead shows that there are no easy solutions. As long as there's a profit in it people will always push drugs and no amount of manpower or moralistic high ground is going to change that.

Where it loses it somewhat is when it tries to hammer home some points with a few cheap shots. There's the head of the DEA who has a bit of a drinking problem himself for one. Even worse is his daughter who becomes a junkie in a badly executed "we try to fight a global war while we can't even control what's going on at home" point. This is really underdeveloped and badly done. Erika Christensen who plays Michael Douglas's daughter goes from the upper class nice girl who occasionally does dope on campus to a drug addict who runs away and prostitutes herself for dope within a couple of days. This is a bad lapse into the "one sniff and you're hooked for life" cliche that is behind a lot of the War on Drugs policy.

Another lapse of taste is the ending which I won't give away here, other than to say that it's an obvious test audience ending. I'm certain that after an initial test screening a couple of hicks requested a more upbeat ending that really spoils an otherwise good film now.

Unlike a lot of US movies, particularly ones dealing with drugs and pushers the characters are quite well developed and Steven Soderbergh avoids painting them in simple black and white. His direction is quite good apart from the above mentioned points. There are a lot of different characters and plots in this movie but these are woven together quite neatly. The film also never looses it's fast pace and despite it's length is very entertaining to watch. As a point on the war on drugs Bill Hicks summed it up much quicker a couple of years earlier though, "It means that there's a war and that people on drugs are winning it".

Hackers (1995)

Oh Dear...

[3/10 · 25 December 2001]

Crikey, this was bad!

I can see how this movie got started in a Hollywood meeting: "We need to have a youth hit" "Well, teenagers like computers, I read something about computer hackers in the paper" "Cool, we'll throw in a love story"

This would be as much research as they put into it. I can suspend my disbelief quite a bit but there are enough impossibilities and technical errors to make Plan 9 from outer space look like a documentary.

It doesn't end there though. The plot is a rehash of dozens of other movies and the "new kid at school gets the girl in the end" story has been done more times than I had hot dinners. Besides, what are a bunch of people who look mostly well past 20 doing in high school?

One thing about it though, it's entertaining to watch. In a large part due to it being in the "So bad, it's funny" class.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

No No No

[2/10 · 22 December 2001]

This movie starts and ends with shots of the American flag which points to one of its biggest problems. It purports to be an anti war film but this rubbish. While it may show the horrors of war in graphic detail, it ultimately is a celebration of militarism and heroism. Sure, heroism doesn't mean it's a pro-war movie but this movie goes beyond that. It's little surprise that the military are among the biggest fans of this movie. It may not celebrate war as a something good, but then, I can't think of any film that does outside of propaganda movies. If you want an anti war movie that shows heroism and mateship without celebrating the military, watch "All Quiet on the Western Front".

It does follow the standard American war movie characterisation rather faithfully. The Germans are universally evil, other nations are either non-existent, villains or locals who get saved by the Americans. Well in this case it is not that far from the truth, without the Americans the war would have gone on much longer than it did and the Germans were villains. But all these facts are distorted and stereotyped in a bad way here. For example, the only German with a sizeable speaking role turns out to be a total coward and backstabber who repays the Americans who saved his life by shooting them.

There are a couple of good points to the movie though. It does deviate somewhat from the standard US heroic movies in that it shows that Americans committed war crimes too, like shooting soldiers who had already surrendered. There are also some quite powerful scenes that are as good as any Spielberg has done. Best among them is the scene where a father in a French village tries to pass his daughter to one of the soldiers to save her. This single scene can probably verify this movie's claim to show the horrors of war somewhat. The landing in the Normandy is good, although somewhat overrated. I wasn't there so I can't comment on the realism but it felt like this was close to what it was really like.

Many people were upset that the movie only shows Americans fighting the Germans, but for once, this is not really a valid argument since the various armies fought in different areas and would have had very little contact amongst each other.

The movie really goes downhill towards the end though when the troop actually find Ryan. Instead of being glad to be out of this hell, he wants to stay there to help out his comrades. Very anti war indeed. This is where the movie turns totally Hollywood and looses all claim it may have had to a somewhat realistic portrayal. A number of people had died already in trying to find Ryan and his decision to stay there costs another couple of people their lifes yet the movie makes him a total hero for it. Steven Spielberg is capable of making great movies, this isn't one of them.

The acting is not particularly good and leaves out no cliches. Tom Hanks was actually nominated for an Academy Award for a role that Pee Wee Herman could have played better.

Finally, the salutation scene in the end is totally stomach churning.

Magnolia (1999)

Wow!

[10/10 · 21 December 2001]

Boogie Nights was a fantastic film but this leaves it for dead. There's a lot to compare the two movies though. By pure chance, when I got home from the cinema from watching Magnolia, my housemate had rented Boogie Nights so I saw both films the same day. For a start, a lot of the actors appear in both movies, but most striking is the way all the different characters and their stories are woven into one piece. Another similarity is the way each character is developed. You can sense that P.T. Anderson had great affection for each one of them. These characters are developed far better than the standard black and white characters that Hollywood likes to churn out. Every detail sits, like the fact that William H. Macy as the former quiz show champ wears dreadful 80's clothes that illustrate that he's well beyond his peak.

The acting is magnificent too, William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are outstanding like in every movie they are in. Hoffman even gets a chance to play a sympathetic character for once. Even non-actors like Tom Cruise put in a great performance. Never thought I'd say this... Best of all for me was John Reilly who played Reed Rothchild in Boogie Nights. He is in an entirely different role as an LAPD Police Officer here. When he gets into a shootout you can tell that he's not just scared of death, but rather there's a real sense you get that he thinks that he still has much to live for. The scene is so well played that I can't even think of any good way to describe it.

I haven't quite figured out what the frogs were doing in the movie but I'll get to that sooner or later.

This film restored my faith in the American movie industry.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Great

[10/10 · 18 December 2001]

I first saw this movie as a kid when I snuck up to watch it on TV while I should have been in bed. It scared the pants off me like no other movie has since. I only realised, when I saw it years later that it's actually a comedy. It is certainly no run of the mill comedy though. There are virtually no punchline jokes, but the few that are there are some of the funniest ever in movies. The real appeal of this movie lies in its subtle comedy though, a lot of which is not immediately apparent. I must have seen this a dozen times and it still gets funnier with each repeat viewing.

Roman Polanski was reportedly annoyed with the studio editing of the movie so he had his acting credit removed from it. If he hated a movie this good, I'd love to see what his version looked like.

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

True character development

[10/10 · 16 December 2001]

This movie really shows up Hollywood on how to make a truly riveting movie. Unlike their standard fare, there are no black and white characters here, even though the movie deals with a horrible murder. This movie manages to evoke sympathy for the victim as well as the perpetrators of the crime. It's based on a true story that shook New Zealand in the 50's about two teenage girls, Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme, who kill Pauline's mother.

The acting is some of the best I've seen. A lot of well deserved praise has been heaped on Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet as Pauline and Juliet, but my standout was Sarah Peirse as Honora Parker, who portrays the role of Pauline's mother beautifully. She gives the character just the right amount of desperation and despair as she completely runs out of ideas about what to do with Pauline.

The visuals are stunning too, this movie is incredibly beautiful to look at. Particularly when the girls escape to their fantasy world, a world where knights and kings rule and the clay figurines that they model throughout the movie come to live.

Hard to believe that this is the same Peter Jackson who made trashy (but incredibly good fun) movies like Bad Taste and Braindead or the Michael J. Fox vehicle The Frighteners.

Heavenly Creatures got an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay which is a real shame, because it means that enough people at the academy saw it but it still didn't receive enough votes to get either one of the nominations it would have deserved. Certainly the best actress for either Lynskey or Winslet, best supporting actress for Peirse as well as direction and film for Jackson would have been well deserved.

It remains one of my all time favourite movies.

Death in Brunswick (1990)

Great

[9/10 · 16 December 2001]

This is a great and inventive comedy. Although it does follow some tried and true paths, most of it is refreshingly new. There are even some great send up scenes of established movie cliches in it, the fight scene in the stairwell is a classic.

It's a very Australian, even a very Melbourne movie. It catches the look and characters of Brunswick rather well. I don't know what director John Ruane did to convince Sam Neill to be a part of this small movie but it was certainly worth it, he fits the character perfectly

Best of all though, this has John Clarke in it. He could read the phone book and it'd great comedy.

John Ruane hasn't really followed up on the promise of this movie yet, although last year's made for TV, "The love of Lionels life" was a step in the right direction.

Rocky IV (1985)

Idiotic Flag Waving at its worst

[1/10 · 15 December 2001]

Sylvester Stallone has done his fair share of ridiculous movies but this one takes the cake. The fact that it was shot during the cold war isn't really a valid excuse for the horribly stereotyped Russians. The entire Russian population seems to consist of people totally devoid of emotion with their sole reason for existence being to humiliate Americans. Even the country itself is stereotyped in that 80's American way where every shot inside the Soviet Union has to be in mid winter. Naturally Mister Balboa and his crew arrive there during a snow storm.

The fight scenes are as badly cliched as the the rest of the movie. I'm not too interested in boxing but even I know that punches don't sound like that, and no one gets hit as heavily and over such a long period of time as Dolph and Sly get during their bout and actually live. Of course the fight follows the "our hero gets badly beaten but then rises to beat the baddie and win over the crowd" cliche. No excuses for giving away the ending here, someone with the IQ of Rambo could see this one coming.

Dolph Lundgren is meant to play the robotic Russian fighting machine and as such has to play no emotion except to follow his programmed routine of hate for his enemies. This suits his acting abilities well. He does get one of the best lines in the movie, and virtually his only line when he introduces himself to Rocky in the ring with "I must break you!"

The little plot that the movie has is padded out with sequences of bad 80's music that play like music videos. The movie is quite laughable in some places but the constant flag waving does get a bit much so this movie is not even in the "so bad it's funny" category. On top of that there's Sylvester's speech in the end where he brings out the American inside every Russian that's truly stomach turning.

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