Sunday 31 March 2013

31/03/13 Phase IV (1974)

ANTS! The ants are coming!

Nuclear desert ants (somehow) become anti-human mini-bastards with an understanding of complex engineering.

Considering most of the people who they target are tedious-bearded dullards, I'm on the side of the ants.

Go ants!!!

Also, the ants act surprisingly well, the humans struggle a little.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/
3.5/10


Perkin.

31/03/13 Night Patrol (1984)

I would love to type a wordy, in-depth analysis of this film and why it disappointed us, but it doesn't deserve it as it was so shit.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087795/
1/10



Perkin.



 

31/03/13 Top Secret (1984)

Yeah, that one. Very silly.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088286/
6.5/10

Perkin.


31/03/13 Purgatory (1999)

Silly but enjoyable rubbish about a bunch of western outlaws who bimble into a town where other, dead, outlaws are seeking redemption/awaiting judgement. We're not talking The Unforgiven, but it's fun enough.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158131/
5.7/10



Perkin.



30/03/13 The Brain (1988)

A terrible film about a big brain.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094794/
3/10

A film called The Brain, starring a big brain.


Told you. Although it looks more like a scrotum/walnut hybrid.


'Blood Bear', not a great commercial success for Mattel.


"He's smelt the bacon! Drive! Drive! Drive!"


Early ipods: cumbersome.


Perkin.







29/03/13 Chopper (2000)

Eric Bana does an excellent job of playing Chopper Read. Apparently the film was very close to the book it was based on. The book was written by Read. He obviously seems to consider himself a loveable rogue, a cheeky scamp who's made some mistakes. I imagine everyone who's met him considers him to be a fat, violent wanker covered in shit biro tattoos.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221073/
6.5/10


Perkin.

Friday 29 March 2013

28/03/2013 52 Pick-Up (1986)

Roy Scheider does not hunt a killer shark but instead gets blackmailed by three men who threaten to ruin his wife's political career by revealing that he is a dirty shagger (odd, that's usually the role of the politician...).  It's entertaining enough but nothing special and the ending is predictable.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090567/?ref_=sr_1

5/10


Podd

27/03/2013 Spiders (2013)

A flawless piece of cinematic beauty. Well, no.  It is actually one of those rare terrible films whose badness make it compelling and entertaining. Evil space spiders arrive on Earth and hilarity, sorry I mean terror, ensues.

As a straight up film - 3/10
For unintentional humour and so-bad-it's-good factor: 9/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659216/?ref_=sr_1


Podd

27/03/2013 Sightseers (2012)

We are fans of Ben Wheatley's Kill List and Down Terrace so were looking forward to this.  However, Wheatley just directed and the material was written by the two leads.  Unfortunately it shows and although watchable it did not quite live up to expectation.  That said, there are some good lines and humorous moments, it just lacked a bit of edge.

7/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2023690/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Podd

Tuesday 26 March 2013

24/03/13 Kill List (2011)

We wanted to see this again after buying the DVD recently, so it was good of Channel 4 to put it on TV, thus saving us the effort of unwrapping the disc and watching it without adverts. Our DVD for director Ben Wheatley's third film, Sightseers arrived yesterday so hopefully we'll watch that this week as we're fans of his previous two flicks. (Although his TV show, The Wrong Door was a right barrel of helmet)

This is a horror/thriller with supernatural undertones about two former soldiers who now work as hitmen, having left the army after an unspecified event going wrong in eastern Europe. They are hired by some wealthy, shadowy affulent types who offer them top dollar to kill the names on a list given to them. Take a guess where the title comes from. There are hints dotted through the film that the plot is tied in with Arthurian legend, some of which are very casual and a second viewing helps pick up on them.

Michael Smiley (has possibly the best surname ever*) and Neil Maskell play the hitmen and are both flippin' excellent, as is MyAnna Buring who plays Maskell's wife and looks stunningly beautiful in every shot. Which is a bit spazzy to point out, but she probably flushes away better genes every morning than what composites most of the mutants I encounter day-to-day.

The end has divided opinion greatly, I think it works but you'll have to decide for yourself. Well, I'm not your nan, make up your own mind.

Although Nan Plop would be a good name for a blog.

Anyway, watch it, it's great.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788391/
9/10

*Actually, this guy has the best surname ever: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0125405/


Perkin.

24/03/13 Stand Off (2011)

Irish film about a young fella who's a bit of a twat and gets in a pickle when he botches a robbery to pay off gambling debts. Brendan Fraser plays a pointless, token American and Colm Meany is possibly not sure he's even in films any more.

Pleasant enough but completely forgettable.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545328/
5/10


Perkin.


Sunday 24 March 2013

23/03/13 Germ (2013)

obviously zombie films are fucking rubbish as, y'know, they're zombie films. However they can be immensely entertaining. According to IMDB this one cost $500,000 to make.

Fuck all, by film standards, but it's twenty times better than many films that cost ten times as much. So bollocks to it all.

Well worth a rental/purchase.

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1495776/
7/10

"Last one to the house is a twat!"


Take that, you lemon bastard!


"Innocent lemons? Noooooooo!!!"


"Sweet extras! Sat-nav, power steering, ABS, CD player, dead child... Result"


"Talk to the leaf, 'cos the face ain't listenin'"


"Leonard you cock!"


This looks like me when I do my sex dance. Sadly true.


"This shoe looks funny" *Sexist joke of the week.*



Perkin.









23/03/13 Mark Thomas: Sex, Filth And Religion (1995)

When the written history of our times is gazed upon by our descendants, people will wonder why this man wasn't our leader.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479805/
10/10


Perkin.


Saturday 23 March 2013

23/03/13 Django Unchained (2012)

Tarantino's a bit of a moon-faced twat, isn't he?

Anyway, shit music, fun film, good German.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/
7/10


Perkin.

22/03/13 23 Minutes To Sunrise (2012)

A number of different people, mostly unknown to each other, find themselves in a 24hr diner during the quiet hours of a Wednesday night, each pair of people have a story to tell, conflict, uncertainty, crime and all the other things that people eating lunch at 4am are normally dealing with.

The central conversation is taking place between Eric Robert's lightly Mestophelian character and a young woman. What does he have that she wants? Where has the diner's chef seen him before? Am I a total arsehole for writing 'Mestophelian'?

Some of the acting struggles a little but it's a low budget film and none of it is actually 'bad' by any means. Fun little film that tells its story well and fucks off before it gets boring.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2009402/
7/10


Perkin.



21/03/13 The Collingswood Story (2002)

A woman in her early twenties moves a few hundred miles away from her boyfriend so they decide to talk, almost continuously, through steam-era webcams. It's her birthday so instead of getting arseholed on cider and falling asleep on a kebab, she uses the webcam to get her fortune read, on the boyfriend's suggestion, by a webcam psychic. I guess the realistic bit where he spends hours asking her to do stuff with fruit and her boobs while he watches was cut in the edit.

Anyway, things take a turn for the spooky during the fortune reading and the film slowly, creepily turns into BlairWitch.com. 

Even though the internet communication scenes in the film are only ten years old, it already looks very dated, however as a found footage effort it works and does the eerie stuff well.

Ain't got a fuckin' scooby what's going on at the end though.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328720/
7/10



Perkin.

20/03/13 Eve's Bayou (1997)

Ubiquitous L. Jackson plays Dr Batiste. He has a hat and some daughters. He lives in a small town in Louisiana. He enjoys dipping his thermometer into the women of the town behind his wife's back. Eventually it all goes a bit bollock shaped. The few remaining women in the town who aren't shagging Jackson appear to be psychic.

It's actually pretty good, it benefits from the twin novelties of being a 'black' film set in the south in the past that isn't about race, and having a child actor who we didn't continuously want to drop-kick over a shed.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119080/
7/10



Perkin.


Wednesday 20 March 2013

19/03/13 Love Bite (2012)


Described on the production company's website as a 'sex comedy/horror'. It's pretty much bloodless and no one shags. A few of the jokes hit the mark well, but otherwise it's a massive cake of shit.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2027154/
3/10


Perkin.

17/03/13 A Resurrection (2013)

Kid dies then comes back to kill other kids in revenge. Michael Clarke Duncan spends one of his last roles standing in doorways. Bit better than expected.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1817276/
6/10


Perkin.

Sunday 17 March 2013

16/03/2013 The Tourist Trap (1979)

Seems the "group of students/young people are nabbed by a weirdo in a remote area" genre has been going for longer than you realise.  In a completely Scooby Doo plot, the proprietor of a disused museum has the power to control his collection of creepy mannequins and enjoys some murdering on the side.

Would have been genuinely scary to see this as a kid but as an adult it was mostly meh, with the trapped people often behaving in unrealistic/exceptionally stupid ways.  Mr Rum Bugger also seems to have the power of teleportation as well as telekinesis.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080040/?ref_=sr_1

4/10

"The pain is excruciation"


Bolan immediately regretted agreeing to the comeback tour 


This isn't from the film, we really have Tanya Roberts tied up in our basement


Aside from the interest in murder and kidnap, clearly some other issues need addressing


Happy hour, Croydon Wetherspoons



Podd

Saturday 16 March 2013

15/03/13 The Hot Potato (2011)

Sort of crime film set in 1969 involving some fairly clueless folk trying to sell some uranium to some shady types.

Ray Winstone (surprisingly not the potato of the title) plays Mickey Lockup, a cockney fellow whose young mate, Eddy Pieandmash somehow manages to find a box containing the carelessly misplaced nuclear material. Through a convoluted turn of events, they find themselves, along with Winstone's unexpectedly good looking real life daughter and a German cliché (prob called Hans Hitlerwurst), bouncing all over Europe trying to flog the uranium to an increasingly daft series of characters.

The second half of the film, with lots of double crosses and people not being who they claim, gets a bit too knotted in its own story and left us a little bored by the end. Having said that, the acting's good, some of the lines are funny and the period detail is impressive. Apple'n pears, daahn the market, Chas and Dave etc.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1641252/
5/10


Not a potato.

Perkin.


14/03/2013 Moon (2009)

Bit of a slow burner thinky film with no explosions, car chases, love stories, sociopaths in inexplicably elaborate lairs, vampires, aliens, tits, guns, gore, wizard schools, giant blue space Smurfs or slow motion so if you're a bit of a fuckwit you probably won't like it.

Without saying too much Sam Rockwell is an astronaut working on the Moon when the isolation starts to get to him.  Is all as it seems? (That'll be a no, then)

8/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

Podd


14/03/13 Community (2012)

Nothing to do with the once good, now shit TV show of the same name. This is a film about a pair of amateur film makers who decide to investigate some myths surrounding a near-derelict housing estate in some anonymous area of Britain. Probably the south as many people seem to have RADA/Essex combo accents.

It starts off well, with Blair Witch style vox pop interviews with local folk before arriving at the estate and meeting some of the residents. They're a predictable bunch of poorly dressed, unwashed cliches, all of whom seem to be in cult-like thrall to a character named 'Aunty'. It turns out that Aunty is the world's least convincing tranny and keeps the residents of the estate under his control by supplying them with a highly addictive, very potent weed.

Because we all know that everyone on British council estates are grubby, workshy drug addicts with an unusual fondness for burly men in dresses. Apart from the majority, in real life, who are decent, frequently hard working people, unfortunate enough to be on the bottom of the social-economic ladder. I'm not going to spout off like some Guardian columnist bell-end and claim they're all saintly, social housing will always have a higher than average percentage of 'problem' people, but they're still in the minority of residents, and we're living in times when the government, press and opinion formers of this country are laying the blame for society's ills at the wrong end of the economic scale and punishing them unjustly for it.

What I'm basically saying is: fuck lazy stereotyping of poor people. It pisses me off, and it makes for lazy, unimaginative film writing.

So, to summarise the film: Starts well, turns shit, stays shit, ends.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2087720/
3.5/10


Bricks, doors and a word.


"Darling! I love what you've done with the place!"


Gazing upon Croydon, our heroes absorbed its beauty.


"Are you ready for me, Joel?"


Noel Fielding: wanker.


Perkin.





Wednesday 13 March 2013

12/03/2013 The Last Supper (1995)

Enjoyable and fairly obscure film about a group of leftie Guardian reader types who decide to make the world a better place by bumping off rightwing nutbags. It all goes a bit wrong of course.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/

8/10

Podd

11/03/2013 Comedown (2012)

Film about rum goings on in an abandoned tower block.  It starts ok but quickly becomes tedious. The "heroes" are dislikeable and the villain improbable. Meh.

4/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1376168/?ref_=sr_1

Podd

Sunday 10 March 2013

10/03/13 The Groove Tube (1974)

Supposedly this is a satirical parody of mid-'70s yank TV. In actuality it's a fucking awful series of piss-poor sketches that were surely as fucking unfunny then as they are now. Awful.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071583/
1/10



Perkin


10/03/13 Soylent Green (1973)

People biscuits.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/
5/10


Perkin

09/03/13 Nightbreed (1990)

Many years ago my brother came home with a copy of a book called The Nightbreed Chronicles. The book's a companion piece to the film, Nightbreed. The book was a beautifully shot, photo heavy, behind the scenes look at the film and, even better, had biographies of many of the fabulous creatures/monsters that feature in it. I was gagging to see the film after repeatedly reading the book.

The story (based on Clive Barker's excellent novella, Cabal) is about a chap called Boone who is something of a troubled misfit, he has reoccurring dreams that beckon him to a semi-mythical place called Midian where The Nightbreed live, left alone by the outside world and away from those who would do them harm. The 'Breed are a large collection of monsters, freaks and the unwanted. The Tribes of The Moon as they poetically call themselves.

Unfortunately, Boone's shrink is a rather dubious fella named Decker who's hobbies include psychiatry, tennis and murdering families. Although I'm not sure about the tennis bit.
Decker decides to frame Boone for the muder-y stuff, making poor Booney believe he is the one responsible for the slaughtering of families and he is blacking out the vile deeds from his memory. This prompts Boone to go on the run and seek out the refuge of Midian. He finds it, but is told he doesn't belong and is an 'innocent'. He discovers Deckers true nature, as Decker himself learns of Midian's existence which leads up to a confrontation at the gates of Midian between the creatures and the humans.

When this was released it suffered from heavy cuts to Barker's intended film, was promoted as something entirely different to what it actually is and received a heavy, grossly unfair critical bollocking.

Still, as I've always said, fuck professional critics. I find too many of them to be gutless careerists afraid to champion genuine creativity in favour of maintaining the status-quo, spoon-feeding us beige opinion on films created only for profit. Why have art when you can have money, eh?

Nightbreed is a brilliant, twisted film. The overt, obvious metaphor is the common one of man being the greatest 'monster' of all (Decker) and that we, humans, will always fear and eventually destroy those that are different to us, even when they mean us no harm.

Excitingly, lots of extra footage, long thought lost, was recently rediscovered and has been shaped into 'The Cabal Cut' which is much closer to Barker's intended film and has spent the last year or two being played at film festivals and one-off screenings around the world. The intention is to snowball enough interest to get this fuller version released onto disc. I flippin' hope it succeeds as I'm gagging to see it. There's a petition you can sign, as well as lots of Cabal Cut back story at the website http://www.occupymidian.com/ You should be a good egg and go and sign the petition. Ta.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100260/
9/10

That's the title, in case you'd forgotten from just now.


Not exactly a children's film. Unless they're really odd kids.


"The first rule of Tie Club is: We don't talk about Tie Club."
"The second rule of Tie Club is: wear a tie."


Whilst napping in the straw, Boone had his 'Riverdance dream' again.


This is Peloquin. He's in the film. He's fucking ace!


Singles night in Croydon: Disappointing.


Would. In that 'sexy hedgehog' kinda way.


Looks like a VW pendant. Probable Beastie Boys fan.


Anal suprise! #Viz, Up The Arse Corner#


"I love this wallpaper!" *points*


"Fries? Aah, go on then."


Baphomet. He's, like, boss of the Nightbreed. I bet they all have nicknames for him behind his back. Like "Jazz Hands" and "Glowstick".


This is how most babies look to me.


Croydon, yesterday.



Perkin.