World War Z (2013)

Zombies are not my usual cup of tea, but I have enough male friends who have put time and effort into refining their own ‘zombie plans’ to have half-formed one myself. What seems to bring these semi-regular discussions to a close, usually without resolution, is disagreement on the capabilities of the zombies we would be battling. One used to be able to out-run the things as they dragged useless limbs behind them at a snail’s pace, but apparently that is no longer the case. Why the nature of this potentially imminent undead foe should have changed, just because a few films have decided to up the anti, is not a question I feel like asking; mostly because I would have to listen to the response.

Not being particularly inclined to discuss them, I have no great desire to watch films about them. An exception I will make is Zombieland, which is humourous enough for me to enjoy, zombies-and-all. It also provides me with ready made rules for surviving any similar apocalypse so that I don’t have to think of them myself. Thus I am spared from succumbing to a terrible zombie death by a simple failure to ‘check the backseat’ or by forgetting to employ the ‘double-tap’.

Despite a general dislike for the genre, I went to see World War Z at the cinema, and found it was really rather good. That’s not to say I enjoyed it all – I don’t go for panic-attack inducing films all that much, which is why any horror I watch tends to lean to the gory or creepy (Saw, Let the Right One In), rather than the jumpy. World War Z definitely makes you jump, and the luxury of 3D makes the jumps that much bigger.

What World War Z did manage, was to make me believe that this is what might actually happen, were such a horrific disease to develop (it seems always to be caused by a disease these days). Everything’s fine one minute and then boom! Zombies everywhere. These were particularly fast acting zombies mind, 12 seconds from bite to zombie and full sprinting ability. That doesn’t take long to spread. It shows military responses and emergency roof-top evacuations; loss of cities or even whole countries to the evil undead enemy. Survival seems to be down to a combination of not just what you know, but who you know. So I’m dead then.

World War Z primarily follows Brad Pitt and his family as they attempt to leave a hugely congested and increasingly zombie-ridden city and get to safety. As an ex-UN employee Pitt naturally ends up the hero, flying around the world to discover the source of the zombie disease, and attempting to find a cure. Thus we see zombie battles in many different environments which removed any of the tedious repetition that is almost a certainty with a theme so simple yet repeated so many times. That said, the standard supermarket scene with looting and fending off rampant zombies is very much present.

Both the highlight, and for me the least enjoyable scene, is the end where Pitt the hero deliberately faces the zombies head on, in the final push for that elusive cure. Quietly sneaking past zombie after zombie with very little in the way of protection or weaponry you want to hold your breath to prevent any noise from revealing his presence to the unsuspecting zombies that surround him. When I say it was the least enjoyable, I just mean for me. It’s amazing; I’m just of a nervous disposition apparently. During this time we see some good zombie close-ups and can study their mannerisms. Once dormant (if deprived of humans for a while), there’s a lot of twitching and shuddering and moping about, rather than the full attacking sprint that we see during the rest of the film. It’s creepy and terrifying, but hugely fascinating and for that reason too you’re willing them to remain dormant and unaware of a healthy human’s presence.

From this, I assume they can’t smell. I don’t know if that’s a tactic commonly used by zombies – the ability to smell healthy people but I suppose that would put pain to any chance of sneaking past. Let’s hope it’s not something I ever have to consider.

The only drawback was a slight comic aspect to the twitching (if you choose to see it), which reminded me of the guy in the Rowntree’s Rip’ems advert – the one dressed up as the blue bird. Unfortunately that advert was played in the cinema just before the film, otherwise maybe I wouldn’t have made the connection.

Django Unchained (2012)

You know what you’re getting yourself in for when you watch Tarantino. There’s mostly a lot of ridiculously amazing violence, a fantastic soundtrack, and a less than linear story. That’s also pretty much what you get with Django Unchained.

Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave in the pre-Civil War deep South, is unexpectedly bought and freed by German ex-dentist Dr Shultz (Christoph Waltz). Shultz needs his help to kill three brothers, wanted dead or alive by state authorities, and so claim their bounty.  Realising they make a good team, Schultz and Django spend the winter together bounty hunting with glorious style. Django is, of course, a natural with a gun and soon can imagine a future when he will have enough money to do whatever he wants with his life.

What he wants is to find and rescue his wife Broomhilda, whom he was separated from by evil plantation owners after they tried to run away together. Rumour has it that she’s now at Candie Land – one of the largest plantations in the area, owned by the mean and ruthless Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Candie spends a large portion of his time and his wealth buying and selling ‘mandingo’ fighters – black slaves who fight to the death for the entertainment and gambling pleasures of rich white men. Django and Shultz, realising that they’ll never manage to persuade Candie to sell Broomhilda if they ask directly, pretend to be interested in buying themselves a mandigo fighter, with the hopes of casually buying the pretty German-speaking slave as well while they’re there.

There are so many positive things that I want to say about this film, beginning with just how cool Jamie Foxx is. I realise now that I’ve never actually seen him in anything, although I first heard of him because of Ray and how awesome that’s supposed to be, and heard his name mentioned every now and again in connection with various films that I’ll never watch (Miami Vice, Valentine’s Day, Horrible Bosses). I think he’s brilliant.

The sleekness, cleverness, and overly-elaborateness of the bounty hunting plans by Shultz is also a joy to behold. Even if things go wrong, he remains calm and cool and just deals with it, with undeniable style. I know I’ve ranted on before about watching a smooth plan just work well and how good that is to see.

Leo. I will always love Leo, and I would like to make completely clear that this is not because of some silly teenage girl crush based on Titanic and Romeo and Juliet. That boy can act. Despite being nominated a few times, he’s never won an Oscar, or apparently any other important award, but surely has deserved some for some of his roles. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape being a prime example. He’s awesome in this too, and very nicely dressed as well.

Samuel L. Jackson. He’s so good!

The violence. It’s brilliant, and (mostly) comically OTT. There are a few moments with the brutality of the white slave-drivers where you really have to brace yourself for what you’re watching or look away if you really can’t take it, but I hope that these small parts don’t put anyone of seeing it. It’s worth it, even if it is uncomfortable.

The only bad thing that I can possibly say about this is Tarantino felt the need to appear in it, as he so often does. He managed to resist for both Kill Bill films, so why start again? He cannot act, and he’s very annoying, but never mind eh?

Overall – this film is gob-smacking, cool, and everyone in the world should watch it. Unless you really really don’t like violence – then you probably won’t like it.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

My initial assessment: the animation scares the crap out of me. It’s too good – as much as you kind of get used to it, it’s very strange to see the voice actors’ facial expressions appear on an animated character; all very impressive but highly unsettling.

I feel like I should come to review The Secret of the Unicorn with a thorough knowledge of all of the Tintin stories. I certainly read them growing up and also watched the animated series. I really love Tintin yet here I sit and I’m not actually sure I can fully remember any of the mysteries all the way through. Possibly a sizeable portion of my Tintin-reading has been attempting to battle through the various French copies we had lying around the house; lots of beginnings, but many many failures to get further than just a few pages in.

It turns out then, that me and my family are just Tintin groupies – complete with t-shirts, artwork, and various other bits of ‘merch’. I shall rectify this by reading all of the Tintin books by the time the next film comes out (or at least start them).

There’s no point in talking about the plot. It is what it is – apparently a mish-mash of a few stories together. There’re so many that there’s no worry about wasting them so why not take the best bits of several? It’s a nice little mystery and sets everything up neatly – we meet Captain Haddock for the first time and learn that he’s a little bit of a drunk. We hear ‘thundering typhoons!’ and ‘blistering barnacles!’ a suitable number of times and we see just enough of Thompson and Thompson. I have no problem with any of that. What I do have a problem with is the 3D.

Now, I didn’t watch The Secret of the Unicorn in 3D. It’s a year since it was out in the cinema so I, naturally, watched it at home on my TV. So a lot of effort has gone into making this film look amazing in 3D with the swooping camera angles and zippy market scenes but all of that was lost on me, and will be on everyone for ever unless you’re very posh and own a 3D TV. What remained were very glaring attempts at wowing a cinema audience and that, along with the high quality animation, made the whole thing feel a lot like a video game - specifically like Unchartered 2. You could actually split the film up into different levels on the game as you’re watching it – flying the plane, driving the car down the very busy road, being Snowy in the bit with the cows. That reminds me, Snowy is horribly under-utilised.

So if the 3D let the film down a bit (ironic really), it was completely raised up again by the voices. Maybe it’s a nice contrast given that I’d saw Skyfall for the second time the night before but I think Daniel Craig makes a very good bad-guy. He should really do that more often! Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do Thompson and Thompson very well (although you can’t really tell it’s them) and the king of crazy-good animation Andy Serkis was always going to be fantastic as Captain Haddock. I thought Jamie Bell as Tintin was only OK though, which is a shame given that he hasn’t done much of note since Billy Elliot (I must remember to watch The Eagle).

With possibly the most shameless and blatant sequel set-up I’ve ever seen (and that includes the second Pirates film) there’s a confidence with The Secret of the Unicorn that only someone with Spielberg’s ego could manage. Being of such a different style to the original comics they couldn’t really rely on hardcore Tintin fans to love it, and if it had fallen on its face and no sequel happened they would have looked frankly ridiculous. As it is, Peter Jackson is directing Tintin 2 so they’re ok, and I think it has a fighting chance of being a good film in its own right. There’ll need to be a lot of reminders of the plot though or it’ll be one of those franchises where you really need to watch the first film before embarking on any of the others. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.

I hope the title will be less misleading in the second film. I was terribly disappointed by the dearth of unicorns in this one.

Skyfall (2012)

You cannot review James Bond. It is awesome and unreviewable.

Instead I will list some things that are awesome about James Bond (Skyfall in particular):
- It's British
- Daniel Craig
- Judi Dench
- Javier Bardem (I'd forgotten how much I like him and he's very cool in Skyfall!)
- The Bond-girls
- The chases
- The martinis
- The music
- It's Bond

The End.

Looper (2012)

The basic idea of Looper is reasonably easy to grasp. Time-travel is invented at some point in the future and then immediately outlawed. It’s used by gangsters of the future to dispose of their unwanted bodies, by sending people back in time to be killed by loopers – men hand-picked to be hit-men. Being a looper is well-paid and seemingly quite glamorous, but it comes with the rather large caveat that the loopers themselves will be killed off in 30 years’ time. But that apparently appeals to the live fast – die young type, and they don’t seem short of recruits.

The problem is, when in 30 years you’re sent back in time to be killed, you’re killed by yourself. The killing of your future self is known as ‘closing your loop’ and comes with a lot of money and freedom to live the rest of your life as you see fit. As long as you actually kill your future self, and don’t let them go – it all goes wrong for you if you do that!

And that’s where it gets complicated. Suddenly we end up with multiple versions of the same character, and multiple versions of events in time running in parallel. Even after serious thought and lots of discussion, these different strands still don’t seem to link together very well. I’m still not properly sure what happened or how certain people know certain things or even what order things happen in.

So if you want to watch this film I can only recommend one thing – don’t think too much! If you don’t think too much, and you just accept what’s going on as it's presented to you, Looper really is a very enjoyable film. Some bits are better than others, for example there’s a rather shabby time-sequence-montage-thing in the middle, but there is a fantastic, horrifying, amazing part reasonably early on where a future person’s body is changing in front of their eyes to reflect what’s currently happening to their younger self. A bit of a head fuck but oh so fascinating.

Another impressive thing about the film is how they managed to get Joseph Gordon-Levitt to look like a young Bruce Willis. The two men are completely different in every possible visual characteristic, but with a little bit of prosthetic make-up and a very good side-ways smirk by Gordon-Levitt it works – its magic!

The first third of this film is brilliant, and sets itself up to be an epic, but it all just falls away after that. From the first time you go ‘hang on – what?’ it gradually loses your interest, and instead of just being able to absorb it, too much of your brain is trying to un-pick problems and reorganise time. Reorganising time is exhausting.

Watch it, definitely watch it. But don’t think too much!

Baise-Moi (2000)

Under the guise of a film about female sexual empowerment Baise-Moi is really just an excuse for numerous gratuitous scenes of sex and violence. Excellent start. It’s in French, which takes any annoying American whiney element out of it. Even better. I don’t know about you but this was enough to sell it to me. A brief outline of the plot placed this film firmly on my ‘to watch – soon’ list.

Baise-Moi follows two young women, Nadine and Manu, as they travel through France on a sex-fuelled and thoroughly violent road-trip. After a chance meeting, their mutual hatred for the world and everything in it leads them to kill, first for money, then for fun and finally just for the hell of it. There’re a lot of guns, and a lot of blood, and a lot of sex.

Apparently my theme this week is ‘Is it a film or is it porn?’ - not hugely surprising for me but apparently this is my second film of the week to include the use of real hardcore sex scenes. Starring two real-life porn-stars Karen Bach and Raffaëla Anderson, Baise-Moi does not shy away from anything. There are scenes here which wouldn’t look too out of place in any proper porn film, and perhaps their inclusion is enough for some people to automatically class this as pornography – there has to be a line somewhere. For me though, this is definitely not porn. The music’s different. Or the lighting. Or the language… something. Something is there that definitely makes these scenes acceptable (if graphic) parts of film. Integral parts too as, at least in my opinion, anything softer would be at odds with the level of violence in the film. And toning down both the sex and the violence would render the whole film largely pointless. These women are angry and bored and drug-fuelled, and who wants to see a half-hearted, only mildly irritated with the world, semi-rampage?

For all this film promised (I had heard very good things about it), I found the beginning a little dull. It’s not hugely relevant, and the promised ‘violent gang-rape’ at the beginning was frankly a let down. In a very short film (only 78 minutes) they seem to waste a long time setting the scene. I forgot this after a while though, and was soon drawn into the plot. The film builds gradually, consistently and my opinion of it only improved as it went on. I did however start wondering how they were going to let it finish. Would they get caught? Would they make it over the French border? Would they both die in a massive gun-fight with the police a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? I wasn’t sure any of these would satisfy me and I hate it when good films are ruined by terrible endings (blaming things on aliens being the worst cop-out ending ever). Never fear though, it’s all good and while the ending is abrupt, it felt fitting for a film with such momentum.