Film 007 - Hot Fuzz

(2007, colour, 121 mins)

Director - Edgar Wright

Starring - Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton

I thought it was nice and ironic that "film 007" in my mission stars Timothy Dalton, a former James Bond. You know, because of the 007, and... you know... meh, stop spoiling my fun.

The Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright writing combination is one that has yet to disappoint for me. Both series of Spaced were hilarious and Shaun Of The Dead was a great tribute to a genre dear to my heart. With Hot Fuzz, Pegg and Wright attempted to do to action movies what Shaun did to horror, and they pull it off with style.

Pegg plays Nick Angel, a top cop who's sent to a dull village in the middle of nowhere so he doesn't make his teammates in the city look bad. It soon becomes clear though that despite the sleepy, boring image the town suggests, there are criminal goings-on afoot. It's up to Angel (along with his assigned partner played by the awesome Nick Frost) to find out what's going on.

Pegg is supported by a fantastic cast of British actors including the aforementioned Timothy Dalton, who's fantastic as the evil Somerfield manager. There are also some fun cameos from the likes of Steven Coogan, Martin Freeman and Bill Bailey which all add to the daft "we're just having a laugh here" nature of the film.

Simply put, Hot Fuzz is a terrific film. The more you watch it the more you spot (there are loads of tiny references that you might miss first time around, such as the street named Norris Avenue, a clear tribute to Chuck Norris), and the script is hilarious from start to finish. Highly recommended.

4.5 out of 5

Film 006 - Prime Time

(1977, colour, 75 mins)

Director – Bradley R Swirnoff

Starring – George Furth

Now here’s one I’m sure that nobody else will be featuring in their blog! Prime Time (also known under the alternative titles American Raspberry and Funny America) is basically a collection of spoof commercials and TV shows all tied together under a pretty simple plot: someone somewhere has taken over the TV airwaves and is broadcasting dodgy programmes and commercials, leading the public to go a bit mental and the president to decide to take action.

In reality, it’s a bit of a rubbish plot, especially when you consider that in all it must take up around 5 minutes of the film’s total run time. The rest is taken up with the sketches. There’s no YouTube video under this review, and there’s a reason for that: not a single clip was suitable for all audiences.

I know some films try to offend, but considering this was filmed in the ‘70s, a time when the words “political” and “correctness” had yet to be used together, they could get away with a lot more. A HELL of a lot more. Simply put, if you’re anything other than a white male atheist, you’re going to get offended here. Blacks, the handicapped, women, homosexuals, Christians, Muslims, paedophiles, pro-choicers, fat people and South Africans all get mocked here (among others, believe it or not), and while some of it does still sort of work comedy-wise, a hell of a lot of it is just so out-of-date now that it’s only offensive and nothing else.

There are a few moments that, despite being shocking, did make me chuckle because they were so silly: a key sketch for me was the news report about the couple who spend thousands of dollars on legal fees to get the abortion law changed from a limit of 24 weeks to 5 years, so they could get rid of their badly-behaved four-year old son. When the abortionist arrives and leaves with the boy in a cage, with the news reporter happily saying “the ironic twist is that tomorrow was Johnny’s fifth birthday”, I couldn’t help but smile in disbelief at how they managed to get away with it.

The fact is, this really isn’t worth hunting down unless you’re desperate to see something pretty offensive. It’s a very rare movie and is only readily available on DVD as part of the Drive-In Movie Classics 50-movie box set (which, incidentally, I do recommend since it’s region-free and has 50 really crappy (and therefore fun) movies for less than a tenner on Amazon New & Used). There are a few laughs to be had, but it’s really only interesting on a “there was more free speech back then” level.

2 out of 5

Film 005 - The Godfather Part II

(1974, colour, 200 mins)

Director – Francis Ford Coppola

Starring – Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton

It’s been widely claimed that The Godfather Part II is one of the few exceptions to the “sequels are worse than the original film” rule, along with the likes of Terminator 2 and (arguably) Aliens. Indeed, I’d go along with this: not only is it a worthy follow-up to a fantastic Italian gangster movie, it’s simply a true masterpiece in drama, plot and pacing.

The film clocks in at just under three and a half hours in length, but unlike the lengthy Fellowship Of The Ring (reviewed earlier this week) there’s a decent reason for it here: it’s effectively two films in one.

The movie jumps back and forth between two stories: as well as the expected continuation of the first movie’s story, with Michael Corleone (an intense Al Pacino) taking over the family business after the death of his father Vito, there’s also a sort of prequel storyline involving numerous flashbacks showing how Vito came to end up in New York and the story of his rise from Sicilian immigrant to “the Godfather”.

With Vito dead, Marlon Brando doesn’t star in the film, and while that may have seemed to some like suicide for the success of the film (after all, his much-imitated accent from the first film is the stuff of legend), his absence is more than made up for with the introduction of Robert De Niro, playing the young Vito in the flashback scenes. Speaking almost entirely in Italian throughout the whole film, De Niro’s performance is so impressive that he ended up taking the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (making him one of only four people to win an Oscar for playing a mainly foreign language role).

If you’ve not seen the original film, the sequel is certainly not recommended: the film assumes you know who everyone is and makes no attempts to get you up to speed. You’re expected to know that Michael Corleone is in charge now, you’re expected to know that De Niro’s meant to be a young version of Brando’s character and you’re expected to know who all the other main characters from the first movie are.

If you have seen the original however, The Godfather Part II is a fantastic follow-up that continues the excellent storyline and matches (and even exceeds at some points) the quality of its predecessor.

5 out of 5

Film 004 - Premonition

(2007, colour, 96 mins)

Director – Mennan Yapo

Starring – Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon

Premonition is a clever film for stupid people. Much like the Director's Cut version of Donnie Darko, it tries too hard to make sure the audience knows what's going on. The difference is that while Donnie Darko was quite "out there" and the explanation would have been welcome to some, Premonition's plot is so straightforward you'll probably have worked out what's going on long before Sandra Bullock's character does.

Bullock plays a housewife who is informed by a police officer that her husband died in a car crash the previous day. Obviously distraught at this news, she tells her two young daughters what has happened and invites her mum over to stay with her for the night. When she wakes up the next morning, her husband is alive again and making breakfast in the house. Passing off the day before as a bad dream, all is well again until the next morning when she comes downstairs and finds everyone ready to attend her husband's funeral.

It soon becomes clear that Bullock's character is living out the days in her week in a random order: one day it's Thursday, the next it's the Monday before, the next it's the following Saturday. This means that some days her husband's dead, the next he's alive. On some days her daughter has unexplainable scars on her face (with Bullock yet to experience the day in which she got those scars), on other days she's fine.

This much is pretty clear to work out throughout the film, as there are plenty of telltale signs – you often hear people mentioning what day it is and it's not in order, you see Bullock checking a phone book and noticing a page ripped out then on another day you see her ripping the page out – so by the time she comes to the "shocking" realisation that the days are occurring in a random order (and then takes out a big sheet of paper and literally spells it out for the audience when she writes down the correct order in which everything happened), you've already come to that conclusion yourself. It's a twist that you already knew about.

This would have been forgivable however had the film made sense, but the sad fact is that there are more questions than answers by the time the closing credits roll. Some of these are simply gaping plot holes (halfway through the film we found out that Bullock is committed to a hospital on the last day of the week and accused of causing her daughter’s scars, then the doctor tells the police officer that she came to see him about her husband’s death the day before it happened and therefore her behaviour was suspicious, yet this whole scene is completely forgotten about by the end of the movie), whereas others are just silly mistakes (the girl gets the scars while her dad’s still alive, yet when Bullock tells the girls that he’s died (as seen at the start of the movie), she has no scars. Then when it comes to the funeral, the scars are back).

It’s a shame because had it been executed flawlessly it could have been an extremely clever film. As it is, it insults our intelligence half of the time (by revealing “twists” we’ve already worked out ages ago), and insults its own the rest of the time (due to the silly continuity mistakes).

Give this a watch if it ends up on the telly but be ready to get annoyed with it by the end.

2 out of 5

Film 003 - I Am Legend

(2007, colour, 101 mins)

Director – Francis Lawrence

Starring – Will Smith, a dog, loads of CGI people with dodgy jaws

Let's face it: Will Smith is at his best when he's starring in big-budget action blockbusters. Men In Black, Independence Day, I Robot, the Bad Boys films... hell, even Wild Wild West. His latest, I Am Legend, is based on the classic sci-fi novel of the same name and sees him taking on the role of Robert Neville, a doctor stranded in New York three days after a huge virus outbreak wipes out most of the city and transforms the remaining residents into cannibalistic mutants.

These mutants are actually the least impressive part of the movie for me: their faces look like fleshier versions of the androids in I Robot and when they scream with rage (as happens at least once every five minutes), their jaws drop needlessly low and they end up resembling the main villain in The Mummy (1999).

That said, I Am Legend is a pretty atmospheric and well-paced film, despite the fact that for most of the first part of the movie all you're really watching is a man with a dog driving round an empty New York. Once Smith encounters the "daywalkers" things start to pick up a bit, but it's all generic horror movie fare as he first finds himself wandering through a pitch black house infested with them, and later ends up slowly trying to escape with a wounded leg as the sun goes down and they close in on him (they are harmed by exposure to sunlight).

I Am Legend follows a load of typical movie clichés and it's pretty predictable throughout. If a film has a doctor trying to find a cure for a virus and all through the film he keeps trying new treatments, getting more and more frustrated as the film progresses, it should be pretty obvious that he'll find the cure just as he needs it the most. If zombie films usually involve one friend turning into a zombie, and the main character of this film only has one friend, it should be obvious what's going to happen. And if he keeps having flashbacks recalling his attempt to get his wife and child out of New York before the military seals off the city, you should really be expecting that eventually you're going to get the flashback that shows it didn't quite go as planned.

You may be getting the impression that I didn't like I Am Legend: far from it. It looks fantastic, the soundtrack is amazing and Smith's acting is excellent throughout. As long as you can put up with the pretty generic storyline and the rubbish CGI Mummy-monsters then you're in for a treat.

3 out of 5

Film 002 - The Cannonball Run

(1981, colour, 95 mins)

Director: Hal Neeham

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Jackie Chan, Farrah Fawcett, Dom DeLuise

I don't really know why I decided to watch this, but I saw it lying around among my dad's DVDs and remembered I loved the Smokey And The Bandit films when I was younger. Since this has the same director and the same sort of action, and cosidering I love the'70s and '80s I thought I'd give it a bash.

It’s strange how some old films are just as enjoyable today as they were when they were first released, whereas others just feel completely out-of-date now. So for every 70s and 80s classic like Full Metal Jacket or The Exorcist that still continues to attract new followers and fans every day, there are others that simply don’t have the impact they did back when they were first released.

One such film is The Cannonball Run. In the early ‘80s it was a great success, with a huge cast of celebrities and loads of inside jokes, but today many of the references would fly over people’s heads and some of the celebrities wouldn’t be recognised.

That’s not to say it’s not still a good film, however. The Cannonball Run is a comedy based on a series of real-life illegal road races that saw people competing to get from one side of America to the other in the quickest time possible. The film follows a number of individuals entering the Cannonball in a race to get to California and win a huge cash prize. Think the Gumball 3000 rally crossed with Wacky Races and you’ve got a rough idea.

The setting is basically an excuse to stick loads of actors in loads of different cars and give them a daft gimmick to both add to the wackiness and make it trickier to guess who’ll win. Each team of characters have their own gimmick that they’re using to try to get to the finish line without too much hassle. You’ve got Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise in a stolen ambulance (so they can drive through towns with the siren on and not get stopped by the cops), to Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr as fake priests (after all, which policeman would book a priest?), to Roger Moore as a Jewish man who pretends he’s Roger Moore, the film’s nothing short of daft. There’s even a young Jackie Chan in his first American movie, as a Japanese (for some reason) competitor with a supercar loaded with hi-tech gizmos.

Although many of the jokes are a bit out-of-date now, there are still some fun stunts and car chases (and it’s all real, none of that CGI rubbish), and despite the awful soundtrack and the gaping huge plothole at the end of the film*, it’s still worth a watch if you have an appreciation for late ‘70s / early ‘80s chase films like Smokey And The Bandit.

3 out of 5

Movie Clip:
While waiting for a bridge to open, the Cannonballers get into a fight with a gang of bikers.

"Getcha Head In The Game!"

I've noticed a disturbing theme in the recommendations made by the members of my magazine's forum. Allow me to quote some of them here:

"but what if this was to happen... day 365: Chris has now watched every film in the world....except for High School Musical 0_o i know it wouldnt but it would be funny...fail or watch high school musical, which would you chose" - c1a2w3t4

"I trust you will be watching both High School Musicals." - Deku Scrub142

"Happy Feet, Street Fighter: The Movie (The live action one), Shark Boy and Lava Girl, Shrek 3, Bambi, Super Mario Bros. Movie, High School Musical 1 and 2" - Narutosaiyan

"chris writing an abusive reveiw of high school musical would be awesome (if your willing to put yourself through the torture)" - dark_hunter

Seriously guys, what the hell? How badly do you want me to suffer? :-)

Here's the deal. If I get 20 comments on this entry, asking me to review High School Musical, I will buy (or rent) it and review it. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. So spread the word, tell your friends and get people commenting here - I'll get more people reading my blog and you'll get the review it seems you want me to write. Even if I have to sit through a damn Disney musical.

Film 001 - The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (Extended Edition)

(2001, colour, 208 mins)

Director – Peter Jackson

Starring – Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm

I planned on watching a quick film today to get the mission off to a fairly easy start. Ironically, my dad decided that today would be the day he finally started watching the extended DVD versions of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy (something he’s been meaning to do for a few years now). So I figured “meh, why not”. At least pretty much every other film I watch this year will be shorter.

There have been some pretty big gambles made throughout the history of film. Some ended up being financially successful – George Lucas’s new Star Wars trilogy springs to mind – whereas for others the risk of a big budget didn’t pay off: stand up, Waterworld.

But for New Line Cinema to let Peter Jackson, a director with no real blockbuster hits at that point, take a huge budget ($500 million dollars including publicity and marketing) and film a nine-hour long trilogy of movies back-to-back – not to mention the fact that the films were based on one of the most well-respected works of modern fiction ever – was one hell of a huge gamble.

Thankfully, it paid off.

The Fellowship Of The Ring is the complete opposite of your typical action-packed, 90-minute “popcorn film”. Clocking in at around three hours in length (with an extra half an hour on top of that if you’re watching the extended DVD version I watched), the pace is slower than a snail going through mud and there’s very little action throughout the whole of the film, with only one major sword fight. Yet despite this, the film doesn’t actually drag.

It’s strange, because had this been any other film with any other director I’d probably be saying that it was incredibly dull and asking the likes of “how many wide overhead shots of a group of people walking on a mountain do we need”. Yet for this film, somehow, it doesn’t matter. In choosing his native New Zealand as the shooting location, Jackson has given the world of Middle Earth an amazing backdrop and every one of those wide shots – dull as a two-watt bulb in other films – look amazing. This film is screaming out for the HD treatment.

In terms of the other components of the film, there can be no complaints. The acting is absolutely spot-on from everyone involved, with the possible exception of Billy Boyd who just seems out of place with his accent. While I do love hearing a Scottish accent in a film (it brings out the patriot in me), it just doesn’t work in this fantasy setting. How come all the other Hobbits in Hobbiton have decent “Farmer Giles” accents, whereas one single Hobbit sounds like he’s just turned up from the west end of Glasgow? Had Boyd tried a similar accent to that of his Hobbit mates then it’d have made his character more believable. As it was, every time he spoke I just kept thinking that he was a Scottish actor rather than a Hobbit.

Thankfully, Boyd’s accent is the only thing in that film that was unwelcome to my ears. The film has a fantastic orchestral score that really tugs on the heartstrings at just the right moments.

Although the other two films in the trilogy are better due to the introduction of Gollum and huge battle scenes, The Fellowship Of The Ring is still a fantastic film, even if all that really happens throughout the three and a half hours is a lad getting a ring, being told to destroy it, getting chummy with some bigger guys, heading out then splitting up to go on two different adventures that don’t actually happen yet. In the grand scheme of things, it’s only a prologue: you couldn’t just watch this film on its own and be satisfied at the ending. But what a prologue it is.

4 out of 5