Batman Begins

Why do all the films I review of late not have taglines? The nerve! Mostly I assumed it was because they were just episodes of Masters Of Horror, but Batman Begins? Why doesn't Batman Begins have a tagline that I can easily find? It surely had one so if anyone knows it, please let me know... Anyhow... Today's review is of...

Batman Begins

Batman Begins follows the life of Bruce Wayne, multi-millionaire whiner who's parents were both killed as a child (as he was a child, not them, the film isn't that bizarre) and as a result he turns himself into a scary looking crime fighting freak show. In this particular installment, he must do battle with the sinister Dr. Crane while also dealing with some inner turmoil or something.
Dr. Crane is a psyholagtrist though, and perhaps could have helped ol' Brucey with his problems, in another life... the irony!
This movie is a vast improvement for Batman, as a character. The previous films about the caped loony really failed to get to grips with the deep underlying psychotic behavior that really drives a man to get all dressed up in leather and leap around town scaring children.
This installment of Batman, however, truly gets to the darker side of the dark knight that we haven't really seen since Adam West portrayed him in 1966... Christian Bale does an excellent job of playing Bruce Wayne, but his portrayal of Batman is a little off.
Hey, did anyone notice that Batman is only one letter shy from Bateman?
Hows about I spend the rest of this review making ridiculous comparisons to American Psycho?
No?
Not even a little?
Not even just to make you imagine...

"I just wondered what the Joker's head would look like on a stick! haha!!"

Shit.
Alright then... moving on to the more crucial points of the film...

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...Michael Caine!
It seems you can't go anywhere these days without bumping into this lively cockney tosser! He's everywhere, from this film with Christian Bale to another film with Christian Bale!
I have to admit that I thought Alfred should have a slightly more upper class "I beg your pardon sir, but do you have any grey poupon?" sort of feel. I find it hard to imagine how this film was a success to any degree in America with all the jibberish he was spouting throughout! Once you get past the layers upon layers of Cockney Rhyming slang you can almost decipher some sort of sense, but that takes a while, believe me. Here's a little extract from the script. (translations in parentheses)

Alfred: Look, you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off, Batman.

Batman:Eh?

Alfred: Sorry matey, what oi meant ta say was you betta be gettin' down the "Nat King Cole" (Batpole) before the whole of "Washing Shitty" (Gotham City) is submerged under a ruddy great pile o' "Siberian Tiger Piss" (Persian tiger piss)

Batman: Alfred, I could kiss you.

Alfred: Now 'old on son! Just because you don't have your "Faithful Mule Dobbin" (Robin) don't mean you should be going all "Queer" (gay) on me! Now get out there before the "Texas 'Old Em Poker" (Joker) has turned everyone into "Members Of The Brotherhood Of Man" (zombies)

See? Indecipherable nonsense!
Anyhow, if you want a movie about heroism and bravery, go watch Spiderman 3, wimp! If you want a movie about... other stuff, like bats and Katie Holmes. Rent this!

Batman Begins get's a healthy 4/5!

Batman Begin's official site

Homecoming

I can't resist making an entry about this little piece of genius.
This is another episode of Masters Of Horror, a TV show where different horror directors get a shot at making a 1 hour episode, this time from director Joe Dante, who directed Gremlins and The Howling. Sounds awesome so far and only gets better!
It follows the political struggles of members of the Republican party as they try and get some president who's quite clearly George W. Bush into office for four more years. It takes completely blunt stabs at the back stabbing tactics and mis-informing that it is my, and apparently this film-makers, belief that the Republican party is guilty of.
Sounds ok so far, but this plot is missing something.
You guessed it, Zombies!
In a careless televised error, one of the republicans (the morale, likable one, who's the lead role) inadvertantly wishes all the dead from the war could come back.
His idea was that, hypothetically, they would come back and say how honoured they were to have fought and died for the cause! But he's way wrong, because they all come back as zombies who hate the current administartion and want to see it destroyed! Brilliant!
And how will they destroy it?!
Ripping off heads?!
Tearing out throats?!
Spreading the undead love like only a horde of corpses can do?!
No!
They're going to vote motherfucker!
This film is as brilliant as it is ridiculous!
If you like the political messages that are apparent thorughout such Zombie films as Romero's bunch, then you'll probably be amused by the way this one has absolutely no tact in it's blatant political messages throughout, mainly direct stabs at Bush and his misleading of the public and mishandling of the war in Iraq. Like we really needed it spelled out to us... nonetheless, this movie does it without tippy toeing around the subject! Pow!
It's a must-see and I'm going to give it 5/5 before quickly retracting that score and giving it a more honest, 4/5.
Here's a trailer, by gum!




IMDb Page For Homecoming

Incident on and Off a Mountain Road

"Incident On And Off A Mountain Road" isn't so much a movie as a TV movie.

And it isn't so much a TV movie as a TV series.

And it isn't so much a TV series as an episode of a TV series.

And it isn't so much "an" episode of "a" TV series as the first episode of the ongoing TV series Masters OF Horror, which involves a director who is acclaimed in the horror/thriller genre coming in with a very limited budget and time frame and making a 50 minute or so long movie.

The results, from what we've seen, are fairly respectable although the obvious limitations have the potential to hinder the writer/directors ability to tell a story and also means that the writer/director of each episode is probably going to choose to do a story that they don't think is going to work as a movie of their own... I think though, that these slight (They are slight, I'm not trying to bad-mouth the great directors, and John Carpenter (haha! just kidding John!), who've worked on these) format problems are more apparent in other episodes of the series and are not present in "Incident On And Off A Mountain Road". Don Coscarelli, who wrote and directed this particular episode, actually did a great job in using the shorter time frame he was given to make a film which could only have really worked in the time frame given, and probablyw ouldn't have in a full length film!

If you don't know Don (as I didn't) , he wrote, directed, co-directed, produced, starred in, did the voices for, operated the camera, animated and composed the score for Bubba Hotep! He also had a cameo.

This particluar movie/short/series/film/cartoon/bi-epic involved a young girl who found herself wishing for a better life and boy did she get it!
One stormy night as she's driving along a pleasant piece of road named "There ain't shit for 75 miles sucka!" she crashes into a stationary car (Women drivers, eh?! haha, just kidding John!) and subsequently ends up lost in the middle of the woods.



As so often happens in these situations she is chased by an unamed assailant who, judging by the snarling and drooling, would like her dead! The horror! The poor defenseless woman is quickly in over her head and ends up captured by the beast!
In captivity she is welcomed by some friendly drunk old man...

... who we quickly learn is a complete pratt.
The film does a generally good job of being a film where the lead character is a female who doesn't get walked all over and just screams all the way through, only to "somehow" defy the evil. She's believably tough in a way many films fail at portraying. Strike one for the feminists, eh John! haha!

Anyhow, from the episodes of Masters Of Horror I've seen so far this one is at least in my top 20! Good work guys! Less of the yapping next time, John! haha! just kidding!



I give "Incident On And Off A Mountain Road" 3/5!

Here's a genuine trailer, not liek those fake ones I sometimes post...




IMDB Page for Incident On And Off A Mountain Road

The Prestige The Illusionist!

Liked The Prestige but felt the magic tricks were a little too "realistic" and fathomable?

Then I suggest - The Illusionist!

Liked The Prestige but felt the accents were a bit too "genuine" and would rather have an American fake them?

Then I suggest - The Illusionist!

Liked The Prestige but felt like David Bowie shouldn't have been in it and Michael Caine's character should have been played by some guy who you vaguely recognise but can't quite put your finger on (as well as 90% of the rest of the cast)?

Then I suggest - The Illusionist!

Liked The Prestige but felt it lacked FANCY HOLLYWOOD EFFECTS?

Then I suggest - The Illusionist!

Liked The Prestige but couldn't stand seeing Hugh Jackman in a film with little-to-no slicing and dicing?

Then I suggest - The Illusionist!

Liked The Prestige but just weren't quite bored enough watching it?

Then I suggest - The Illusionist!

Here is a clip from - The Illusionist!



In spite of the accuracy of this review, I thought this movie was pretty good in many ways. I'd like to give it 3/5

It just wasn't as good as - The Prestige!



The Illusionist's Offical Website

The Prestige on DVD's website

The Wicker Man (2006)

It seems the world is full of remakes these days, everything from age old classic horror like the Hills Have Eyes to not-really-remake-so-much-as-a-new-version-of-a-character-that's-
already-been-in-a-bunch-of-films-but-it'll-sell-better-as-a-new-film-than-a-remake like Spiderman. I even hear that Al Gore remade his entire home from reconstituted toiler paper he stole from people's septic tanks. Love them or hate them, remakes are here to stay and not only that, many of them are outshadowing their original versions! Some are going way out there and making sequels that didn't exist in the original series... while others merely totter along the same plot as the original version with a slightly altered script and leave the audience with a feeling not disimalar to diarreah of the mind.
Fortunately this review is of one of the former...

The WICKER MAN

While Hollywood was busy wondering how to handle remaking the age-old classic Wicker Man, directed by Robin Hardy in 1973, without creating a major international incident with Great Britain for blaspheming and malicious degradation, Nicholas Cage stormed the offices of Millenium films and demanded they cast him in the lead role of whatever their next project was!
Unable to resist his southern charm (And his nice sized AK-47 he was brandishing) they accepted and cast him in the leading role of The Wicker Man.
This greatly dissapointed Edward Woodward who had been set to reprise his role as the bumbling virgin copper and bring his tally of acting roles to at least 2!



As you can see from this picture taken at the time, he was a bit miffed.

It is possibly because of this critical change in pace from the start that made The Wicker Man remake divulge so brilliantly from the original.
For those of you unfamiliar with the happenings in the Wicker Man, the plot goes something like this:
Bumbling British Bobby, Sergenat Howie, sets off to the island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl. He finds the island quite pleasant as it is filled with naked singing women having orgies all day and singing while girating vigourously against walls. Everything is peaceful and nice until the inevitable happens and he ends up burning to death along with a half a dozen chickens and a goat.
In the remake, Nicholas Cage refused to play any sort of "virgin" or "bumbling copper" and also refused to allow his character to be seen "anywhere near a god-damned motherfucking bi-plane, you British piece of shit!", so instead his character dons a leather jacket, motorcycle and a cigar and spends the first ten minutes of the film boasting about how much slack he has between his legs.

Instead of going to Summerisle to look for a missing girl, he's going there to stop a band of international drug lords from creating a chemical weapons plant that could wipe out the entire west coast of America.


"If you can't tell me where the plant is, I swear to God, I'll rip all of your god-damned mother-fucking pagan son-of-a-whore heads off with my teeth!"

Although many of the scenes are greatly "Nicolas Cage-ized", much of the plot remains the same. Cage's character, for example, is still out to end the corrupt and vaguely pagan ways that happen on Summerisle and the character named summerisle still exists although in this version Summerisle is a woman, the idea being that there could be a bit more of a love-hate-love relationship between Cage's character and Summerisle. Unfortunately for the film makers (and Nicolas Cage) Christopher Lee refused to let anyone else play the role and so the whole movie has Christopher Lee prancing about in high heels, speaking in a high pitched voice and hitting on Nicolas Cage.


I think I prefer sacrificing virgins WHILE boosting cars!

The scenes following the dramatic and (far far far) too long love scene between Cage and Lee are confusing to say the least. Here is just one such scene...



The rest of the film from this moment on takes a strange turn and before the audience gets a chance to comprehend anything the gigantic mechanised Wicker Man is taking down Tokyo with Nicolas Cage screaming for mercy, caged up inside it's head as he tries to halt the onslaught of Japanese fighter pilots scrambling to take down the enromous monstrosity!
Needless to say, it all works out in the end and a well placed poultry makes short work of the Wicker Man and leaves Cage free to return to Summerisle where he makes short work of all it's inhabitants...


"Wicker this!"

In conclusion, I give the Wicker Man remake 2/5

The Wicker Man's Official Website

Grindhouse - Planet Terror and Some Film By Quentin Tanartino

Grindhouse

This, for those of you who are unaware, is a double feature movie. The first half, Planet Terror, directed and written by Robert Rodriguez and the second half, Death Proof, by Quentin Tarantino. The film opens with a fake trailer for a film called Machete which kicks your ass! It stars Danny Trejo as a bad-ass Mexican immigrant who's all about killing many people with kick-ass weapons with a kick-ass bike and stuff...It's an obvious parody of Rodriguez's films and is done hilariously! You could maybe search for it online and maybe watch it. This one is hilarious from start to finish in my opinion and seems like it'd make an awesome Rodriguez film. Luckily for us, he's making it into one! Huzzah! Moving on... I think that was followed by the first feature: Planet Terror! This film was shot in a way that made it seem like a B-movie in every way except the effects are realistic, which gives it an odd new-old B-movie modernised feel. It's hilarious in how it pokes fun at itself and the whole genre all at the same time as being an awesome zombie-esque film. There's more guns and shooting and explosions than you can shake a stick at, and even the most ridiculous of events is met with such seriousness that the whole audience can't help but piss their panties from giggling so hard. So let's see. there's explsoions... there's guns... there's blood... there's zombie-esqueness... there's car crashes... there's boobies... what could be missing?! Bruce Willis, that's what! And he's right there and he's awesome and this whole movie kicks everyone's ass in a way I thought nothing ever could. From there, I believe we go to more fake trailers? I think next was something about werewolves and nazi ss troops and stuff. It was fairly random but just fell short of being hilarious (despite the part at the end of the trailer that I laughed harder than I've laughed at anything in my life about because I'm awesome). It was directed by Rob Zombie, and uhh... there isn't much to say about it without giving away the hilarious 'twist'! So I won't... Then there was the gripping thriller "Don't" which treaded on the fine line between making you want to tear the arms off your cinema seats from frustration and absolute hilarity. It starts off by being overly 'gripping' and tense and ends being loud and obnoxious. I spotted the guy from League Of Gentlemen in it too. It was pretty damn funny but compared to the other blood-and-guts themed trailers and movie before it, it stood out as being a little odd. It was directed by Edgar Wright though, what daya think about that motherfucker!? To conclude the fake trailer section we had a rather amusing spoof of the slasher genre by Eli Roth (Who, by the way, I think is a total asslicker) called Thanksgiving, a play on how many horror films take their names from holidays though I think it was hard for that fact to be conveyed in the trailer. This one is possibly the best trailer from the set, though 'Machete' either beats it or is a close second. It mocks a genre which is, I think, far better and easier to mock than the other trailers did (I dunno what Werewolf Nazi Bastard Zombie Fest SS whatever was spooofing though...)and I think that plays to it's advantage. Eli Roth managed to get a tally on my good side! As a writer I think Eli Roth stands out as being relatively awesome but as a director and a person I pretty much think he sucks ass... but I think he's still on the positive side of my rating bar after 'Thanksgiving' (And will probably remain there until I throw up watching Hostel: part II, and I won't be throwing up in disgust at the gore, it'll be because because it'll suck). In conclusion, I give Grindhouse 5/5 Oh, I forgot After Thanksgiving, Quentin Tarantino concluded this 3 hour blood, guts, guns n' explosions fest with an hour and a half of people sitting round talking. In conclusion, The end! Grindhousemovie.net

The Mangler

We watched this thing over t'internet because aparently you can do that these days! What will they come up with next... anyway, the film was called:

THE MANGLER!

and it was about...

A MANGLER!

If you're not entirely sure what a mangler is, it's aparently a huge machine that folds up sheets in industrial sized laundry places... I didn't know, and I wasn't sure how common a piece of knowledge it was...
Anyhoo... the basic plot is thus:

The Mangler machine down at Blue Ribbon laundry is out of control with the possession and the killing people.

THAT'S IT!

I'm not sure there's alot more to say about the plot really, and I don't want to give away any of the gripping plot twists and character development.
I will say though that the guy who played Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs does a damn good job of playing a drunk, angry cop. Also starring is good ol' Robert Englund who does a good job of playing a senile perverted old crazy guy... another chalk mark on his tally of fine roles!
Anyway, in spite of the poor plot and lack of a role played by Samuel L. Jackson, the actors in the film seem to tackle the fairly meaningless script with as much enthusiasm as seems to remain in their bones and it's only half-way through the film that you realise that Ted Levine's character probably wasn't in the script as a pissed off drunkard, but working on a film about the possesion of industrial machinery (not just the Mangler gets possessed, oh no!) probably drove him to alcoholism during production...

I give The Mangler 1/5... but I feel bad about it and feel that I'd like to give it more, if that counts for anything...

Incidentally the tagline (which is my subject line) refers to Tobe Hooper, who not only directed this classic cut but also... TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE! and Stephen King who wrote the short story it's based on as well as 5000 other books about something relatively harmless becoming an unspeakable nightmare.
The third "master of horror" is apparently Harry Alan Towers, who wrote... *Scans down IMDB page*... The Brides Of Fu Manchu!?
I feel he may have been slightly misplaced... or maybe I'm just a nobody who doesn't understand movies or the fact that The Mangler is actually one of the greatest film classics of our time! Or ALL time!
I'm so lame

still.

Here's a clip from:

THE MANGLER!

(May contain nuts... and "spoilers")

IMDB Page for The Mangler