Review: Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

Pirates! feels awfully short and a little wasteful on the characters, but it is an entertaining piratical romp.


The Pirate Captain, as he is known, is perhaps the least threatening and likeable terror-of-the-seas, and when he is laughed at for competing in the Pirate of the Year Awards he sets off to prove himself! His quest involves Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, a plotting monkey and the Captain's own overly plump parrot.

There's a very British feel about The Pirates! which I found refreshing; I liked the choice of music, mostly pop and indie songs, and while the humour was classic 'Ardman Animation.
The film's narrative meat comes from the Pirate Captain's lack of infamy and his bid to reclaim unsavoury respect again. This is novel for a pirate film; a pirate being "pardoned" by the Queen of England becoming a death sentence for the pirate's honour. 
There are some nice ideas involved, and praise to 'Ardman for going back to clay animation (no more Flushed Away, please!) giving it a jolly vibe. The animation of the pirate ship was funny, hard to believe, but true.

The negatives are purely due to the film being very short, and not substantial enough. While I greatly appreciate shorter films in this day and age, Pirates! didn't give all of the characters (and a decent voice cast!) quite enough time. For example, I'm sure Salma Hayek's character got maybe three lines?


Still, its a fun little romp. Harmless and nice to look at, probably good for a rental.

Additional Marshmallows: Also praise 'Ardman Animation for giving one of the pirate crew a Blue Peter badge on his hat for the entire film. Classic.

Review: Battle Royale (Batoru Rowaiaru)

You all knew this was coming, in the wake of The Hunger Games I figured it best to revisit what most people regard that book/movie's biggest inspiration.
Battle Royale is one of the top ten highest grossing films in Japan, and is also based off a book, it also follows a sadistic blood sport invented by adults to kill off a disrespectful youth culture.
A class of forty high school age students are abducted while on a school trip and brought to an isolated island, and are immediately told that only one of them can survive the next few days; they are required to kill each other and are each given a basic supplies and a random weapon.

While BR is far from a perfect movie, it has a simple structure compared to Hunger Games; children are given weapons and asked to kill each other. End. They aren't trained up, instead they must rely on their own knowledge and family backgrounds to help them survive; some are computer literate and they try to hack the game's system, for example. Others, helpless and innocent, are killed off immediately or commit suicide rather than fight.
But when a truly psychotic "transfer student" is in the mix, the odds of any children surviving is significantly reduced.

The antagonists of this movie aren't as flamboyant as The Capitol, but their school teacher's game feels more secure; each child has an exploding collar on, and the island is divided into zones which he can allocate as "danger zones", linger too long in a danger zone, and the collar explodes.
And of course, there's a lot of gore and killing in Battle Royale. Most of the forty children are exclusively killed off, weapons including scythes, pistols, submachine guns, shotguns and cross-bows. Not everyone gets offensive weapons however.


The Hunger Games does have a better role model than any of BR's characters however, and in light of today's lack of strong female role models, that does make the film stand out somewhat. But what makes Battle Royale more appealing to me is simply how these victims are just children, they have no training to make them equals. We can relate more to them, or at least to the terrible plight they find themselves in, they also show different ways of surviving and how forming into groups in this situation would not work!


Would I own Battle Royale or Hunger Games? Probably not... But it is an interesting compare and contrast, and BR for me feels more visceral, violent and true to the ethics of a "blood sport".

Review: Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus

This film has a blooper reel, seriously? This film IS a blooper reel!


I'm pretty sure most people who have any desire to see The Asylum's first "big hit" have done so already, but for those like me still getting around to it, here's another review.
So experimental sonar equipment frees two prehistoric monstrosities from a glacier, and it is up to American and Japanese oceanic scientists to save the entire ecosystem from destruction.

I have to admit I am impressed... at how MSvsGO was actually worse than I had expected! Easily worse than Asylum's Sherlock Holmes (though perhaps more... uhm... faithful to the material?) this film is your generic monster movie, but it doesn't even match most B-movies in quality! The acting is atrocious, that's a given, but most glaringly bad is the editing, which tries to give the viewer seizures with constantly flashing white during "action" scenes.
Yeah, the action scenes too are pretty horrible, reusing so much footage that the already predictable storyline becomes increasingly dull. You can't shoot footage of a warship idle at sea and pretend its firing cannons, it would only be less convincing if you had a kid beside you shouting "blam-blam!" instead.

The movie is utter trash. Yet it has a cult following and many versus monster movies have been made since. It does have one scene (which I had seen before) near the beginning which was hilarious and made the rest of the film totally defunct; there's no way you can top this.


Recommended only for very, very late night viewings with as many friends as possible! Otherwise, you will probably regret wasting your time.

Additional Marshmallows: After watching that Youtube clip and taking away all you need from this movie, check out this entertaining scientific look at Mega Shark! 

Review: The Hunger Games

I'm afraid to say it, but The Hunger Games left me starved of intrigue and commitment.


Jumping on the Lord of the Rings > Harry Potter > Twilight bandwagon, the film is based off a series of popular books (that I hadn't heard of until the film arrived) and follows a young girl sent into an arena of death against other children for the entertainment of a tyrannical, self-obsessed higher society.
Sounds pretty grim right? Unfortunately The Hunger Games feels terribly insecure, lacking self confidence in what it can and cannot show to a 12A / PG-13 audience, and decides to meander around and waste excessive amounts of time.
This is not the worst crime however, since it was expected, the worst flaw with the film is its lack of confidence in explaining itself. The plot literally makes stuff up continuously, like a child improvising a story: "Oh, oh, now we have fireballs that appear out of nowhere! Now they make these huge monsters appear with magic! Now they get help from the outside cos they're the main characters!" What the heck is any of this?? I didn't understand how it was happening as none of it was explained, great plot-holes loomed constantly, and with a run time of two hours and twenty, you'd think they would get around to some exposition!

The film also has some of the stupidest villains I've seen in a long time. We are talking 1980s cartoon villains. Not so much how they look, I dug that (even though The Fifth Element's designs by Jean-Paul Gaultier did it so much better) but how their entire society was hinged on a massive flaw i.e. The Hunger Games. Gladiatorial combat is no new concept, but it is particularly stupid when the dominant masters train up the helpless, angry majority. A majority prone to riots. Not just that, but thinking giving these poor people "hope" is a good idea? Hm, let's see: hope + training + wilderness survival (thanks to being shunned and native to the wilderness) + hero worship via Hunger Games = bad, stupid, retarded idea. Not to mention our heroes in this story trump them at their own game in such a ridiculously easy fashion, means they are completely useless as antagonists!


Anyway, I've gone on about the flaws... since there are a lot... The pros, well, I do like the concept (despite it being terribly implemented here) and the "Capitol" high society characters had some funny lines from time to time, and leading star Jennifer Lawrence was convincing as a young but strong female role model.

I'm sorry, but The Hunger Games strikes me as a "for the fans" production, I was disorientated by the insane camera work in the fight scenes (it made Transformers and Batman Begins feel like cruise holidays) and disconnected by the shallow explanations.

Review: Catch-22

I'm having a hard time writing this review, as I think I'm in the minority who simply didn't get what the hype is all about?


Catch-22 is a 1970s war satirical comedy, created by the director behind The Graduate and based off the book by the same name. It follows a soldier who wishes to be declared insane so he can leave the military and escape the unjust chain of command, but the "catch" to this is that you have to be insane to fly into battle. To leave you must be insane, but to be insane you have to fight.


The film is a lot more than this however. Captain Yossarian is plagued by memories of a young officer killed in action, while everyone else around him seem utterly crazy themselves; from selling everyone's parachutes, to having men sliced in half, or even impersonating dead men.
I get satire, I really like Black Adder Goes Forth for example, but I was not expecting Catch-22's backwards, upside down, totally non-linear story structure. It disconnected me from the characters, and from most of the humour; I had no idea what was meant to be funny half the time, I think the first time I laughed was forty minutes in with Orson Welles character arriving on the scene!

I will say though, seeing real live World War Two machinery and aircraft taking off and flying was pretty amazing, and I won't say I didn't find several parts goofily funny. I certainly "got" the messages being thrown at me, but I simply couldn't engage with the choppy narrative structure. I've not read the book... I hear it is similarly "crazy".

Perhaps one should read the book first, or watch the film twice!

Review: Season of the Witch

Okay so "Nicolas Cage movie" is a genre of its own and perhaps I shouldn't have expected much from Season of the Witch... but really, this was the best they could do?

I like Nicolas Cage, in a nonsensical way, I also like Ron Perlman who's alongside him, and they are playing two outcast knights of the Church given the task of escorting a witch so she can stand trial. But is this woman really a witch? Is her innocence merely a façade of evil?
Yes.
The problem with this movie is that there's opportunity for character morality and development. We have five men escorting a woman who may, or may not, be evil and the cause behind the Black Plague. While there's disagreements, no one ever sides with her (not even Cage's character, who tries to kill her several times!) mostly they agree she cannot be trusted. It is made worse by the film opening with witches clearly turning evil and murdering people, removing almost all sense of doubt the film might try and establish later.
The film eventually runs out of this "padding" and has its climax with silly winged demons incinerating people, zombie priests and the line "We are going to need more holy water." Yep, I suppose the Plague wasn't caused by witches so much as demons of the Underworld.


There isn't much going for it, I'm sure actors like Perlman and Cage could have better chemistry than this. While I enjoyed Sorcerer's Apprentice because it was silly, Season of the Witch just feels predictable. Heck, even Black Death was better than this.


So yes, the combo of Perlman and Cage doesn't work as well as it should here, the plot is transparent and the climax uninspired. I'd look elsewhere!

Review: The Conversation

From legendary writer/director Francis Ford Coppola comes a morose and quiet thriller about an introverted but brilliant surveillance operative who finds himself looking too deeply into the sensitive case he is monitoring.

Gene Hackman excellently portrays Harry Caul, an undercover agent who bugs communications, records and monitors members of the public, a man who let's his career dominate all aspects of his life. As such, he is socially recluse and awkward, unable to express himself as his mind prefers to race with the recorded conversations of others rather than his own.
Paranoia plays heavily in the film also; Harry's expertise makes him wary of sharing any and all information with anyone, no matter how small. While this complete lack of feedback makes the film incredibly slow paced, Hackman's subtly and body language sell the image of a man tormented by his own talents.
While the story focuses around Harry's increasing fear for the lives of the individuals he his spying on, Coppola maintains a neutral pace, scarcely giving away many details until the end. Many may find the film critically flawed in its lack of information, but it is unique in its silent, drawn out scenes; making even the slightest sound become critical - as is Harry's profession - in turn adding great contrast whenever Harry's lively friends are around him.


Made me think of Hitchcock's Rear Window, only with sound rather than visuals. It is incredibly slow and likely not for everyone, but I enjoyed it as an example of subtle film-making... not much of that nowadays.