#104: CLAYFACE

 

STARRING: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan. Screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. Directed by James Watkins. Budget $44 million. Running time 108 minutes.

Hang on, didn't the makers of Clayface get the memo? Did no one tell them that these sort of films have to be as shit as Blue Beetle, Shazam, Wonder Woman 1984, Morbius, Madame Webb or god forbid John Kraven The Hunter? What were they thinking? Because against all expectations this was actually rather good! A horror-based origin story for Clayface, a pretty ludicrous Bat Man villain who has the ability to morph into anybody.

The plot sees stupidly handsome and wholesome Gotham actor, Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) horrifically disfigured and mutilated by crime lord Markos Szabo (David Dencik) after Matt sleeps with Szabo's girlfriend Mia Torrez (Joana Ribeiro). A rigged courtcase sees his life and reputation further ruined as he loses his agent, his mansion, his wealth and his future. A series of terrible botched surgeries only make matters worse and before long Matt's back in living in his old Gotham City slum apartment with only cockroaches the sizes of fists for friends. Then one day he stumbles across a magazine article about Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) a pioneering doctor experimenting with nanite technology to rebuild damaged tissue. The initial treatment is a huge success and Matt briefly regains his fame, but when his body starts to reject the nanites, he does the only thing anyone in his position would do, he overdoses on Corr's only stock of the stuff and is cured. It turns out the nanites react to his mental state of mind and when that slowly begins to unravel the true extent of his new found abilities are revealed. And it's not long before Matt is off on a murderous revenge spree against all those who wronged him. And that's about it for the plot.

This was a surprisingly enjoyable and well made horror romp, with good performances, some truly gross-out special effects and some good and grizzly deaths. It didn't outstay its welcome, it didn't have too many plot holes and the whole thing had a fiesty, grim feel to it. Most satisfying, surprisingly so.

8/10

#103: GHOSTS: THE POSSESSION OF BUTTON HOUSE

 

STARRING: Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lolly Adefope, Mathew Bayanton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond, Scott Ellis Watson,. Written by Mathew Baynoton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond. Directed by Simon Hynd. Running time 97 minutes.

There's a great tradition of British Sitcoms getting movies and changing the situation, so for example, Porridge took Fletcher and Godber out of Slade prison, in Are You Being Served, the staff of Grace Brothers went off on holiday to Costa Plonker and in Holiday on the Buses, Stan and Jack lost their jobs as bus drivers to become bus drivers for a holiday camp, surely the most perfect example of a busman's holiday? Modern times saw The Inbetweeners, Absolutely Fabulous and Bad Education all leave their 'situations' for pastures green, and now to that august group can be added, Ghosts: The Possession of Button House. More or less.

The plot set just nine months after the events of the very last episode of the TV show, sees Button House in sad disrepair, the developer's dream of converting the run-down house into a hotel and golf resort seemingly abandoned, much to the chargin of the ghosts. Things go from bad to worse when a group of eco activities turn up taking up residence in the woods and demanding that the hotel/golf course plan be cancelled for good forcing the ghosts to take action. Convinced that only Alison and Mike can help the Ghosts are offered an opportunity to seek their help when a gang of teenagers break into Button house one night to hold a seance resulting in Julian (Simon Farnaby) possessing the body of teenage orphan called Jack (Scott Ellis Watson) and at last the Ghosts have found a way to leave the confines of Button House! What follows is a glorious delightful, charming and lovely comedy that never fails to cause mirth in its wake as first Julian and then the other ghosts all find a way to escape the house to aid in the mission. A mission made much desperate when it's revealed one of the eco warriors is actually an professional arsonist with orders to burn down the house so a corrupt politician can build an airfield. Then there's just the matter of Alison and Mike being accused of child kidnappers and a massive police hunt to contend with.

Some films don't need to be analysed or discussed to the Nth degree and can just be watched and enjoyed as they are, undissected and such is the case with this wonderful little gem of a movie. With a good natured soul, a seemingly endless supply of jolly japes and gags and offering no cringey afterlife lessons, no fake American sentimentality just a bigger canvas to play for the cast of ghosts, who are also the writers of this splendid little British comedy that wouldn't be out of place in an afternoon of Ealing Comedies. 

8/10

     

#102: DIGGER

 

STARRING: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons. Screenplay by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolas Giacobone and Sabina Berman. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Budget $180 million. Running time 129 minutes. 

Digger, Digger, Digger. You magnificent, outrageous, deranged, bi-polar bastard. You teased and played with my emotions for over two hours, you had me loving you, delighted by your outlandish antics, then bewildered by your coquettish teasing, then frustrated and then ultimately bemused and emotionally sated by your final trick. 

I can't really synopsise this without spoiling it for you, kind and lovely reader. So, in broad strokes, tycoon Digger (Tom Cruise) the richest man in the world, beloved by President Compson, (John Goodman) and his entourage of lackys and boot lickers who agree with everything he says and demands. Digger is an elderly oil man, like his daddy and his daddy's daddy before him. He's utterly greed obsessed and orientated, he knows everything about everything, he's always right and if he's wrong it's someone else's mistake. He lives in a magnificent and insanely opulent stately home, which might be in Scotland, or not. The only object of love in his life is Maggie, his, barely alive,  30 year-old cat, who he spoon feeds with tinned fish from the tip of his pinky fingernail. We meet him as he awakens on the worst day of his life, indeed the worst day of the entire world's life as we're about to discover. You see, Digger's men are drilling for oil in Greenland and pulling out a million barrels of oil out of it every day, that is until a huge undersea pocket of methane gas explodes severing an ice shelf the size of Maryland and sending it careering  towards Norway. Rather than warning the world, Digger warns the President and initiates an information firewall which scrubs any mention of the impending disaster from the internet. Then despite the advice of Digger's Environmental safety officer, Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) the President, who's dying from 'arsehole cancer', decides to do nothing, hoping the berg will somehow avoid Northern Europe and instead head-off into the Atlantic Ocean where it'll melt. But it doesn't, instead it, the iceberg, smashes into Northern Europe causing a huge tidal wave that floods Europe causing the worst environmental disaster of all times. And then the shit really hits the fan. 

And that's the plot, without spoiling anything.

Although, there's more at play here and the film pulls the rug on you in the most unexpected way and reveals itself to be something altogether different. For a while there was a rumour that this was a musical, well rest assured, kind reader, it most certainly isn't a musical, but it is playing a trick that will either ultimately win you over or utterly alienate you. For me, I was mostly won over, but also a little disappointed because it left me with more questions than answers.

For the first 30 minutes I was utterly onboard for this remarkable film, it was funny, intense, and Tom Cruise was simply mesmerising! He's in every scene and goddam can that boy act! Weighed down by kilos of make-up and an old-man fat suit, Cruise dominates this film, but not to the detriment of the other actors. Likewise the acting from everybody is top notch, John Goodman channeling little-handed Donald Dump. Riz Ahmed, the only nice character in the whole thing, Sandra Huller playing Digger's daughter and right down to the lowliest bit part character, and yet there's something strange going on, the actors all 'act', and don't seem to mind if we notice. Although there are clues littered throughout as to what the bigger picture here might be. 

Then there's soundtrack that grates and niggles with its strangely discordant tonal sounds, which helps to enhance the experience. Alejandro G. Iñárritu directs this with vision and guile, he has a vision and he knows what he wants to say and boy does he say it. I've only seen two of his other films, The Revenant, which I found hard work and deeply exhausting and Birdman which I loved, in fact, this shares a lot of the same DNA with that. 

Most of the reviews for this film berate it for its gargantuan budget of $180 million, with reviewers complaining that it shouldn't have cost that much, that somehow that's obscene. Well, I disagree them, where were those wanky little tossers when the likes of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Tedium with it's budget of $387 million, or Glad He Ate Her Too at $310 million, or Jurassic World: Deterioration with $465 million, when those clunking, awful films waddled our way, now that's obscene.

This is a film that is impossible to promote or market properly without spoiling it, it's a film that's at one point a grim environmental warning, the next a broad satirical farce, then a comedy and a disaster movie. It's a film I started off loving, delighted and enthralled by both Cruise and Goodman and the outrageousness of the it all, but then my delight dipped dramatically, mostly thanks to the reveal, before I found myself slowly regaining my love for it. Overall, it's fantastically well made, it's well written and it looks great but it's too long and that 'twist' is hard work and it's really going to polarise the audience; in fact already has. In the States its opening weekend haul was just $8 million dollars, so that's already sealed its fate as one of the biggest flops of the year. Also, I don't think audiences are quite ready yet for old man Cruise with his potbelly and receding hairline. 

I would suggest that much like Blade Runner, The Thing, Brazil and many other wonderfully misunderstood films this will ultimately come to be seen as something really rather special in years to come. It's a film I find myself still thinking about a week later and when I talk to people about it I realise it resonated with me far more than I at first realised. Part black comedy, part political satire, part environmental warning and part post apocalyptic science fiction disaster film.

For me this started out as a strong 8/10, but when the 'twist' arrives, the film lost its momentum and dipped to a 6. But, then it started to win me back, thanks to its vision, style, its direction, its passion and ultimately its sheer audacity. You'll never see another film like this, a film so unique and challenging and it ended up scoring, what's sure to be a hotly contended 8/10.

#101: CASINO ROYALE (2006)

 

STARRING: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Simon Abkarian, Caterina Murino and Jesper Christensen. Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis. Produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Music by David Arnold. Directed by Martin Campbell. Running time: 144 minutes. Budget $150 million. Worldwide box office haul $606 million. Originally released in 2006.

The 21st official Eon Production movie in the franchise, the first to feature Daniel Craig as James Bond, the third adaptation of the original source book after the 1967 movie production starring Woody Allen and David Niven and the original TV movie, which featured Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond - an American P.I. working in Las Vegas - and the second movie to be directed by Martin Campbell. This also heralded in the most financially successful period of Bond movie franchise with the Craig era generating a staggering worldwide box office haul of over $3,957 billion. Casino Royale held the record for highest grossing Bond film until the release of Skyfall six years later, which shattered the record with takings of over a billion dollars.

With a new Bond, Eon decided to something new with the franchise and present him as if he was new to the world of the Double O and just starting out his career as a hired killer for the British Government. Eon decided to bring back Martin Campbell to handle the direction as he'd also launched the Pierce Bronson era back in 1995 with Goldeneye the 17th in the Bond series.

The film sees Bond, pre-credits confirm his status as a Double-O agent by killing two targets before teaming up with MI6 accountant Vespa (Eva Green) and heading off to play poker against international terrorist banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), his mission is to bankrupt Le Chiffre, who's using his customers money to bankroll the game. Naturally the film's far more complicated than that, but I'm guessing you've probably already seen this and if you haven't then stop reading this and get yourself down to your nearest Cineworld to see it! It's an absolute hoot and one of the best of the series.

Seen writ large on the big screen gives you a chance to thoroughly enjoy one of the best James Bond films of the series. Daniel Craig is superb in the role, his steely blue eyes nail you to your seat, everything he does is sharp and angry, every move, even the smallest of actions and it gives his performance a power and edge. The dialogue sparks, with not a single cliche or soundbite spoken, you can see, or hear, this has been polished to within an inch of its life, as witnessed by the conversation between him and the excellent Eva Green on the train where he admits his lamb has been skewered and that he sympathises. A Bond film needs a strong villain, and Mads Mikkelsen is simply superb, bringing real threat and menace to the role, that wicker chair torture sequence is brilliant. But what makes this film so good is that we see Bond working as a detective, investigating a series of clues that lead him from a fantastic Parkour race through an African building site to a breath-taking airport chase through Miami airport, he's not just an action man, he's cunning, clever and to see him working like this is the true joy of the film.

I've watched each and every Bond film multiple times and this one ranks as one of my absolute favourites, and I'm not afraid to admit that Daniel Craig is my joint Number One favourite Bond actor alongside Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

A magnificent masterpiece. 10/10

 

#100: FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD A.K.A. FRANKENSTEIN VS BARAGON

 

STARRING: Nick Adams, Kumi Mizuno and Tadao Takashima. Screenplay by Takeshi Kimura. Story by Reuben Bercovitch and Jerry Soh. Based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Directed by Ishiro Honda. Running time 89 minutes. Originally released in 1965

As long suffering readers of this blog will know I am a committed and passionate Godzilla fan, damn I love him and the reason for that is this, Frankenstein Conquers the World, or as it's also known, Frankenstein Vs. Baragon. I first fell in love with this movie thanks to one picture featured in  Alan G. Frank's fantastic book, Horror Movies published by Octopus in 1974. I was 11 when I was given it one Christmas and this single image utterly captivated my young imagination and introduced me to the worlds of giant monsters or Kaiju as I later learned they were called and ultimately to Godzilla, who was only mentioned but not shown in the book. When back in August of this year the Barbican announced that Frankenstein Conquers the World was being screened, for the first time in the UK - EV-VER!, as part of their superb Kaiju: All Out Monster Attack season, I couldn't resist. I have been waiting 51 years to see it and my expectations could not have been higher. 

The story starts at the tail end of the war in Europe, when Nazis storm Frankenstein's castle and steal the still-beating heart of his monster and then set off, by submarine to Japan, where they hand it over a waiting Japanese submarine who then transport the chest containing the organ to a research hospital in Hiroshima, on the very day the American drops the world's first atomic bomb. Decades later, research scienitist (Nick Adams) and his attractive assistant (Kumi Mizuno) find a huge fore-headed feral 'waif' feeding off domestic pets and befriend him, alerting the media and shackling him up in a cage. He promptly grows to gigantic proportions and escapes his cage to rampage through the streets of a superb scale model Tokyo before heading off into the wilderness. BUT he's not the only huge monster on the loose, there's also a bat-eared, horn-nosed burrowing beastie by the name of Baragon wrecking havoc too, he's much more destructive and seemingly oblivious to the human lives he ends, not so old Frankie who, despite his rage and size seems to go out of his way not to injure humans, although they don't seem to see the lengths he's going to. Through an amazing series of circumstances these two behemoths finally knock heads in the forests outside Tokyo triggering a massive forest fire and so begins a fight to the death. And that's the plot to this awesome, wonderful, ridiculous and utterly silly film. 

Featuring some genuinely superb model work of Tokyo, the obligatory strange plot jumps and devices only ever seen in Japanese movies, a funky soundtrack mixed with bombastic orchestration, and wonderful 60s fashions and designs. But be warned, this was a deadly serious Toho monster movie, which thanks to its 1960s sensibilities render the film exceedingly funny to today's 'cinema savy post millennial crowd'. The cast, lead by American Nick Adams (who would go on to perfect the pulling up your trousers by the belt school of acting) spends his time in this, pouring chemicals into bottles while frowning, staring into a microscope, while frowning, dating his attractive assistant, while frowning and wearing small hats at a jaunty angle, while frowning. Mostly famous for acting along James Dean and of being Elvis Presley's 'best' friend, Adams went off to Japan to make three movies for Toho, of which Frankenstein was his first, his second and my personal favourite was the Godzilla starring Invasion of The Astro-Monster, and his third and final film Killing Bottle all for Toho and he's simply wonderful in all three, mostly because his American style of acting is in complete contrast to the pantomine of his Japanese co-stars and as such he stands out like a huge wonderful sore thumb, his own over-acting in delightful contrast to his co-stars exaggerated acting styles, imagine a Am-Dram Indiana Jones without the whip.

What made this so wonderful wasn't the American version of the film, which featured a truncated conclusion that ends with a dead Baragon being lifted up triumphantly above his head by Frankie before being thrown into a fiery pit that suddenly opens up at the base of a nearby volcano, before Franky too falls into the inferno seemingly dying in the process.

In complete contrast, the Japanese version ended so spectacularly different and wholly unexpected that I wager you'd not be able to guess what it was in a million years. You see, this time round, after Frankenstein has picked up the dead body of Baragon and hurdled him into the pit of fire that opened up at the base of the volcano a new blood-curdling shriek of rage cries out and Frankenstein turns round to watch as a gigantic octopus lumbers into view and proceeds to launch an all-out, unprovoked, attack on our Frankie. The two tussle violently, with Frank helpfully wrapping the monsters limbs around himself before he's finally pulled off the clifftop and into the sea below far below where the octopus, now in his element, finally overwhelms the giant boy and drags him below the surface to seemingly drown. 

And it's this arrival of this new monster, introduced literally in the final 5 minutes of the film which elevated this from a rather mediocre 2nd tier monster movie barely worthy of a 7/10 into something quite sublime. With no explanation, no introduction, just a shriek and a bang - a new monstrous, un-named, multi-limbed aquatic kaiju just attacks our hero and kills him. The audience who had politely clapped through the Americanized version ending just erupted in sheer delight, and the cheering, laughter and clapping and I among them, thus elevating this to be nothing short of a stone cold classic. 

8/10

#99: THE MATRIX

 

STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Annie Moss, Hugo Weaving and Joe Pantoliano. Written and directed by The Wachowskis. Produced by Joel Silver. Budget $63 million. Worldwide Box office $473.3 million. Running time 136 minutes. Originally released in 1999.

Originally released in the same year as my daughter was born, this and her are both 27 years old, and both seem to be timeless classics who just get better with age. I've seen it (the film, not my daughter) dozens of times and it never gets old (unlike my daughter who is actually getting older), in fact I saw it (once again the film) on the big screen just two years ago when it was re-released for its 25th Anniversary, whereas I saw my daughter, Lydia just a few weeks ago when she popped round to visit. I love this film, and her, and seeing it, the film, on the big screen was a pure delight, as is seeing my daughter. Love you Lyds. XXX

The story sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) find out he's not in Kansas anymore but in an AI generated CGI world when enigmatic Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and leather-clad ass-kicker and mistresses of the Bullet Time, Trinity (Carrie-Annie Moss), break him out of his dreamworld where he's lived his life as a human battery, and wake him up in in the 'real world' – a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland so he can eat porridge and do battle with a human-hating computer programme called Mr. Smith, played by Hugo Weaving, that is once he's learned kung-fu. 

What follows is a masterclass in how to do high-concept science fiction fantastically well. That, mixed with genre-defining special effects, some superb fight choreography, a clever script and a kickass soundtrack to boot! The effects, particularly 'bullet-time', which were ground breaking, moved the benchmark and heralded a new era of action tropes and beats for generations to come. This film is filled with iconic action scenes, the brilliant opening with Trinity beating up the coopers, or Neo and Trinity's police raid, just outstanding, as is the final fight between Smith and Neo. Shot through with a sickly green light for the world of The Matrix, each world has its own grungy future noir feel. It's hard to remember now the cinematic and cultural impact The Matrix had on the world back in the day, but it was the hands down the film of the year. Indeed I think it's fair to say it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Blade Runner in terms of its cultural significance and resonance.

Alas if only this had been left as a 'one and done' movie, but sadly Hollywood smelt dollars, and so unleashed upon the world, not one but two more movies with rapidly declining artistic merit and box office takings as both frantically tried to rebottle lightning but failed. With huge budgets compared to the originator, both sequels groaned under the weight of OTT action scenes and ludicrous special effects that flooded the Uncanny Valley and became quite repetitive and, dare I say, boring, I mean the awful CGI Burley Brawl between Neo and the infinite number of Agent Smiths, just looked stupid. The first sequel Matrix Reloaded did fantastic business but the second one, Revolutions underperformed taking less than the original, and the fourth movie released 18 years later, Matrix Resurrections, crashed and burned spectacularly earning $40 million less than it's $190 million budget. That said, the four film franchise still took over $1,793,712,515 billion dollars worldwide off of a combined budget of $553 million. 

Anyway, this got re-released to celebrate the 30th birthday of Cineworld, well that and the lack of new material, which has seen cinemas releasing a record number of classic movies and long may that trend continue, as it's an utter delight getting to revisit so many classic and 'old' films at the cinema writ large as nature intended.

Now, enough Shilly-shallying, it's time to take the red pill and escape The Matrix. 

10/10  

#98: HOPE

 

STARRING: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Jung Ho-yeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender. Written and directed by Na Hong-Jin. Budget $46 million. Running time 156 minutes.

When the sherif of a rural reason of South Korea, including the coastal town of Hope, gets a call about a mutilated cow it sets off crazy battle for survival across the town into the neighbouring forest for not just the sherif, but his second-in-command and several local hunters when a relentless, seemingly unstoppable monster goes on the motherfucking rampage and just downright massacres the entire town! But that's just the beginning of what's about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting world and audience. 

Bloody hell, but Korean films are wack. This is three films in one and at the end, the first of a proposed trilogy. It's long, and loses momentum between the action beats and there's a lot of chat as characters bicker, argue and generally talk too much. There are far too many characters and the film jumps from one focal point to the next with each scene. One of the main characters owns plot armour so powerful he's able to survive utterly insane amounts of damage with nary a blink, like being thrown through trees and falling from the height of 40 or 50 ft with only a light case of winding.

There are many scenes of chases as the monsters, there's more than one, chase nearly every human we meet in endless scenes of carnage and gore. An infinite supply of guns are used in every scene, despite the fact the monsters seem impervious to them, until it's required they're not. 

Presented in three major sections, the first in the town of Hope is exhilerating! The streets of devastation and carnage is genuinely unsettling and the sherif's fight for survival is fantastic! This sequence is both funny and gory and you'll find yourself laughing with it thanks to some very choice dialogue. The second sequence in the forest as a group of friends and hunters stumble across a crashed alien spacecraft is a visually and audio battering assault that shows us the monsters in all their glory and begins to paint a picture of what's going on. The final sequence is perhaps the weakest and most repetitive and features a death so shocking surprising that the audience I saw this actually gasped in surprise. It's also this portion that laid the ground work and filled in the blanks of what's actually going on and, well, it's a tad disappointing, left as we are with not so much a cliffhanger, but an end of part one. 

There's a fantastic film here if only the writer director Na Hong-Jin had been able to cut this back from it's 2 1/2 hour running time down to something more reasonable like 90 minutes, because there's a lot of filler here, which judging from the walk-outs tried the patience of the audience. 

I'm beginning to realise that I truly love the cinema of the Far East, there's a quality to Japanese and Korean films that I find truly satisfying, they're filled with tropes and dialouge and action beats I'm not used to, which keeps me guessing and on my toes, and that's deeply satisfying. The effects are mostly very impressive, but it's the practical scenes of destruction that really elevate this. And the cast of ordinary Joes and Joans make a welcome from the muscle bound lugs of Hollywood. There's also a satisfying lack of girl bosses saving the day to stick out like a sore thumb, what we have instead is a strong female character in the shape of the sherif's second-in-command who fights just as well and defiantly as the men. 

Anyway, it's a gory, frenzied demented ride, which despite suffering from being far too long was nevertheless utterly saved by the spectacular opening section set in the destroyed town of Hope.

8/10