Film Review: The Hangover Part Two

Whilst I didn't mind the original Hangover movie, I didn't think it was as funny as everyone else seemed to at the time. I actually saw a review crowning it the "funniest movie of all time". That reviewer obviously hadn't seen Airplane. Or insert one of the thousands of other funnier films here.

But The Hangover was amusing, and original. Neither can be said for the sequel, which has to be one of the more shameless money making exercises of recent times.

Two years after the eventful bachelor party in Vegas, things have settled down for the 'Wolf Pack'. Stu (Ed Helms) is about to get married now, and is going to have the ceremony in Thailand. After a lot of convincing from Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu is persuaded to allow Alan (Zach Galifianakis) to come along, but once they hit Thailand they have another big night, resulting in another hangover and no memory of the night before.

Told you it was the same damn thing again? What was original about the first movie is obviously long gone, and just none of the humour worked for me. I could see where it was trying to be offensive (monkey smoking, full frontal shot of a ladyboy) but it all just seemed utterly puerile. And this is coming from someone who can dig offensive or immature stuff. But only if it's done correctly.

And the main plot isn't the only thing recycled. The deeply annoying Chow returns (played by the equally annoying Ken Jeong) for no real reason, other than to bring back someone recognizable from the first one to pacify the idiot public.

As the film nears it's end it goes into repetitive overdrive. Remember when Stu had his character building rant at his fiance in the first film? Same thing happens, but this time with his soon to be father-in-law. Remember when Mike Tyson showed up in the first one for no real reason? Guess who's back? For even less of a reason. And the "oh look here are some photos from the night" sequence to end the film? Oh hi, welcome back.

I can only assume that the filmmakers thought that a lot of the people who enjoyed the first film so much were absolute bone headed morons, because that's exactly who this sequel is aimed at. Just shovel the exact same film at the public, and watch them eat it up. And they did! I really do worry about the sort of person who enjoyed the sequel. I honestly think you could have put the first film on again and it would have prompted zero arguments.

I realise that there has to be some kind of similarity with the original, it has to involve some form of 'hangover', but there are plenty of ways they could have taken it, rather than just rehash the first film, but just in another country. It's such laziness, and insulting laziness at that.

Not even an appearance from Paul Giamatti can make things interesting, quite how he got involved in this is beyond me, but he does feature in the only scene that got a chuckle out of me though (the line "K as in knight", if anyone was wondering.)

I'm sure a third film in the series will be churned out in due course, but I can only hope that something different is attempted. Underneath all the failed jokes and performances (and that includes Galifianakis as the bumbling man-child Alan, even he wasn't that amusing) the talent is there. But it would take a hell of a lot to get me to watch it.

*
A dreadful humour desert. Trying to be offensive and just coming back like a 9 year old kid finding out about nob jokes, but on the big screen. A massive waste of time and talent, and almost the exact same film as the original. 

Film Review: The Killer Elite (2011)

It's funny how a trailer can make a film look like something completely different to what it is. The trailer for The Killer Elite portrayed a wham-bam Hollywood blockbuster, with it's quick editing and thumping 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' soundtrack, but in reality it's an early 1980's England set (mostly) action film based on a true story and while there's nothing wrong with that at all, after the exciting trailer, I was left slightly let down.

Jason Statham plays Danny, a former SAS agent whose mentor Hunter (Robert De Niro) has been taken captive. To secure Hunters freedom, Danny has to kill another 3 former SAS agents. As this is happening, an elite group of former SAS operatives is alerted, and dispatches their head enforcer, Spike (Clive Owen) to find out what's been going on, leading the inevitable face-off with Danny.

And what a face-off, just over 40 minutes into the film we are treated to a dream match of action stars, as Statham has a bruising battle with Owen, one of the many high octane moments in the film. Problem is, weighing in at nearly two hours long, the film does tend to drag in places.

But that isn't to say there's nothing to keep the viewer occupied. Statham, Owen and De Niro are all good in their roles, it's especially satisfying to see De Niro kick some ass throughout for some reason. Also entertaining was Dominic Purcell (from Prison Break) as one of Danny's colleagues, Davies. I had absolutely no idea Purcell was English, having only seen him in Prison Break, and he sports some heroic facial hair, even beating Owen's challenging mustache.

One cast member I was let down by was Danny's love interest Anne Frazier (Yvonne Strahovski), the character was so bland an non-dimensional, that anyone could have played it, which is quite the waste of a talented actress like Strahovski.

For Statham, it seems like another step up, working with the likes of De Niro (although I imagine some people regard it as a step down for De Niro...), but it's another solid Statham film, but like other period pieces he does like the Italian Job, he just seems frozen in time. Whether it's the 60's or the 80's he always looks Statham!

The Killer Elite (no relation to the 1975 film, by the way) is a solid enough slab of action entertainment, but it's slightly dingier and slowly paced than the epic trailer promised. Worth a watch for fans of the cast.

***
A slight let down, and about twenty minutes too long, but other than that, The Killer Elite is sufficient action film entertainment for anyone, and highlighted by a fantastic fight between the two hardnuts.

Film Review: 30 Minutes Or Less

After the success of director Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland, I was quite looking forward to his follow up, 30 Minutes Or Less, especially as it reunited him with Zombieland star Jesse Eisenberg, and also featured the brilliant Danny McBride. Sadly, I was disappointed.

Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery guy, who is kidnapped by two idiotic criminals, Dwayne and Travis (McBride and Nick Swardson) who attach a bomb to his chest, and order him to rob a bank for him, so they can pay for a hit on Dwayne's Father (Fred Ward.) Nick ropes in his best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) to help him make the big score at the bank.

The main problem with 30 Minutes Or Less is that it's not half as funny as it thinks it is. The amount of times I've seen the whole 'potty mouthed caper' in films now is ridiculous. I don't know if it's me getting old, but swearing every other word is only done by kids who have just discovered how to.

That's not to say the film doesn't have it's amusing moments. McBride, although he is playing the exact same character he ALWAYS plays, is good value at times, and Ansari has a few good comedy moments too. And there's a great car chase sequence set to the classic song 'The Heat Is On'. But other than that, not much hit the target for me.

Luckily, at least, the film is just over 80 minutes long so never really outstays its welcome, and because of that fact it's rarely dull, but it is just a immature throwaway jaunt.

Oddly, Fleischer's next movie is huge sounding period drama Gangster Squad, starring such serious names as Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte and Robert Patrick. Here's hoping he has better material to work with than he did here.

**
Occasionally amusing and exciting, but it's written like a bunch of kids found out how to swear at times, and it's nothing particularly original. Least it's nice and short though.

Film Review: 11-11-11

Seeing as yesterday was the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, I thought it only right that I watch the film of the same name, 11-11-11, the new film from Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw's 2-4, Repo! The Genetic Opera.) It's synopsis of bizarre events occurring on dates and times with the number 11 in sounded appealing, but in the end I was left rather bored by the film.

Joseph Crone (Timothy Gibbs) is an author struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife and child, when he is told that his dying Father doesn't have much time left, so he travels to Barcelona to visit him and his estranged brother Samuel (Michael Landes.)

Once there, Joseph discovers more and more evidence to support a mounting theory that recent events are all occurring at dates and times containing the number 11, all leading up to the upcoming 11th November 2011...

Usually this is the kind of thing that really interests me, as the film started discussing demonology and the number 11 in history and things like that, but I just failed to click with any of it, and found the whole thing a rather tedious chore, if I'm brutally honest.

That's not to say the film doesn't have it's moments. There's plenty of jump moments, and unsettling moments with demon faces lurking in the background, but the whole thing is for nothing as when the demons actual show up in full form at the end, it just looks like GWAR showed up for a gig. It just gets sillier and sillier after that.

There's nothing wrong with the acting of direction, and you may get more out of it than this reviewer did, but I found the whole thing to be quite uninspired.

*1/2
A harsher score than I first thought, but I really didn't get on with this. There's the odd unsettling moment, but things are quite dull, until the silly ending rears it's ugly head. The whole thing seems like a missed opportunity that for obvious reasons, won't get a do-over

Film Review: Trespass

Most filmmakers have peaks and troughs throughout their work, and no better example of this would be Joel Schumacer. The guy has directed some brilliant films like St. Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners and Falling Down. But on the flip side, he has also helmed Bad Company, The Number 23 and most horrifically of all, Batman and Robin.

His latest film, Trespass, starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman is sadly a film that definitely falls into the trough category. And not only is it a woeful film, it was a disaster of the most epic proportions. Costing $35,000,000 to make, it raked in a dire $24,094 in its first ten days in cinemas in the States, where it was then pulled out, only to surface on DVD a mere 8 days later (making it the quickest cinema to DVD wait ever.) It is an astounding example of a flop.

And the trouble didn't even start there. Cage decided he wanted to change roles near the start of the shoot, from the husband to a kidnapper, and filmmakers even went so far as to contact Liev Schreiber to take on the role, until Cage returned the next day...playing the husband again.

The husband Cage plays is Kyle Miller, whose business is diamonds. He's married to Sarah (Kidman) and they have a rebellious teenage daughter (Liana Liberato.) One evening, they become a victim of a home invasion, but as the evening goes on, secrets are revealed and their situation gets worse and worse.

The immediate problem is that I could under no circumstances buy Cage (who is looking very paunchy in the film) and Kidman as man and wife. I just couldn't make that stretch. And matters are made worse as ridiculous plot twist follows ridiculous plot twist. It resembles a particularly bad soap opera most of the time.

The performances are diabolical across the board, also. Cage you can expect, his recent output has been increasingly bizarre, but he just phones it in, there's not even a lot there to mock after a while, and I like mocking his inferior films.

Kidman just shrieks and screams her way through the film, and the kidnappers are all pretty terrible, with a' special' note for Jordano Spiro, who was embarrassingly bad as the deranged stripper female intruder Petal (Yeah, really.) It's truly a face palm performance there. The others? Well, I have to make the soap opera comparison again as that's the level of acting we are dealing with here.

Trespass seemed liked the longest 2 hours of my life, till I finally saw it was over and had only run 85 minutes. The whole thing is an amateurish, poorly acted, boring mess. Let's just hope Joel Schumacer gets another peak soon. And as for Cage? The films so bad, he refuses to watch the finished product. Let that be the warning to heed.

*
One of the worst films of the year. There's nothing worth recommending here. Even fans of mocking Nicolas Cage's OTT style and crazy wigs will get bored after the first half hour. Absolute dreck.

Death Of The Dead?

Out of all the different types of Horror movie that there are, zombie films have always been my favourite. Films like the groundbreaking '...of the Dead' films by George A. Romero showed that it didn't have to be all flesh munching carnage, a political or social commentary could be covered too, without compromising any zombie action.

And we all could have a laugh too, thanks to films like Return Of The Living Dead, and later films like Shaun Of The Dead and Zombieland (although I do contest that these aren't strictly zombie films, more comedies - and very good comedies at that - that happen to have zombies in them.)

But recently, nothing has inspired me. Romero's most recent picture, Survival Of The Dead was decidedly average to put it mildly, and before that Diary Of The Dead took several viewings for me to enjoy. And if the master of the sub-genre can't get it right, shouldn't everyone else take a step back?

The main reason I'm writing this piece is because of The Walking Dead. The first season started well enough, a solid story and some great zombie carnage, but things started to crumble near the end. But this second season for me has been so melodramatic and slow, I'm one episode away from throwing in the towel. It's akin to an episode of Eastenders, but with the undead showing up to eat some faces off now and again.

I'd waited so long for a zombie TV show to appear. And when it did, all it gave us was a cast that got more unlikable by the episode (I honestly didn't mind them at first, but now I can barely even stand to look at them) and storylines like "Where did the little girl vanish to?" and "Oh no this little kid got shot". Now, I can barely tolerate the main cast, but the kids who barely got any dialogue? And it's been dragged out for 3 episodes at the start of the season? Argh! And I'm not even mentioning the fact they don't even call them zombies!

But it's stuff like that, and the fact that no really good zombie film has come along recently (with the possible exception of French film La Horde, which was fun but totally unoriginal) that makes me wonder whether people should just take a very un-zombie like breath and...well, just not make any zombie films for a while?

This will never happen, of course. Not now. Zombies are up there with Justin Bieber and whoever is popular on X Factor this year in the cultural coolness stakes. Zombies are "in". Any scumbag lad can roll into his favourite club in fancy dress as a zombie, regardless of the fact that they have passed their creative high point.

Just one look on Google images for 'zombie', shows bunches of utter morons doing zombie flashmobs (possibly the worst thing to happen to civilization since World War II), artwork of people being zombies, or stills from 'ironic' zombie films and not a sign of any of the undead from Romero's films (nor anyone elses for that matter.)

And The Walking Dead, for all it's soap opera moments, and occasional zombies, is currently insanely popular, with a third season awarded, and other TV networks scrambling for ideas (such as a mooted Zombieland TV show at Fox, which will be shitcanned when the fad has passed) to jump on the bandwagon.

All we can do is just cling onto the fact that audiences are fickle. Today it's zombies, tomorrow it will be a different creature feature altogether. Maybe vampires!

No wait, the Twilight books have already ruined them, never mind.

Film Review: Tactical Force

Is it just me or is Steve Austin turning into THE action star of this generation? Whilst not exactly setting the world on fire at the cinemas (with The exception of stuff like The Expendables and The Longest Yard), he has been making consistently good action films ever since he stopped wrestling. And for some reason, and it was never intentional, I own all of them (yet to watch The Stranger, Damage or Knockout yet though.)

Yeah, not everyone may like stuff like The Condemned and Hunt To Kill, but I found them both to be fantastic little action films and great vehicles for the artist formerly known as 'Stone Cold'. Hell, he's even done a 'training a kid to fight' film in Knockout (or Born To Fight as it's known over here, review soon), but he's never stepped foot into Disney films, shoddy comedies or Uwe Boll films (Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel and Jason Statham I'm looking at you all respectively here.)

While the names above look and act the 'action hero' part most of the time (although I don't rate Diesel much), they have compromised their position with the sort of thing I mention above. Didn't work for Arnie, Sly, Bruce or Chuck, branching out, and the story remains the same still.

Tactical Force is the latest in quality (albeit low budget) action films that Austin is getting a real name for. He plays Tate, the captain of a SWAT team who are ordered to go on a training mission in a disused hangar after a brutal grocery store takedown. Unknown to the team, though, two rival gangs are having a large disagreement in the same hangar. Armed with nothing but blanks, and with no back-up, the team must battle their way out.

It's not the most original storyline, but I was hooked from the moment it started. Helpful, that was well as Austin the rest of his team contain familiar faces in Michael Jai White as Hunt, and Lexa Doig (Stargate) as Jannard. The team are immediately likable, and all the cheesy banter between them is totally plausible.

The film does feel like a Stargate reunion (not a fan personally), with Michael Shanks playing lead villain Demetrius, as well as cast members Steve Bacic and Adrian Holmes having also appeared in the show. UFC fighter Keith Jardine also features, and has quite the bruising brawl with Austin near the films end.

A problem I did have with the film, however, was the editing. Continual 'side swipes' with added sound effects were used throughout to change scene, and they did get quite annoying after a while. I guess I should be glad the films editors didn't find the 'star wipe' button.

Tactical Force, overall though, is a violent, fun blast which harkens back to the OTT days of 80s action movies, albeit on a much smaller budget. And as long as Steve Austin keeps making films like this - and his next two projects feature Danny Trejo and Dolph Lundgren - I'll be watching them.

***
While it never re-invents the wheel, Tactical Force is a high octane blast filled to the brim with cheesy one liners and some great action. Check it out.