Moon - On DVD now

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell a Luna Industries employee coming to the end of a three year contract as the lone employee mining on the moon. His only companion in his lonely existence is the computer GERTY (voiced by Spacey), and sporadic messages from earth as there is no direct communication link available.

One day Sam is involved in an accident whilst mining and awakes after a few days to find GERTY caring for him. This leads to a discovery that will change Sam’s life and affect the chances of him returning to his wife and child on earth.

What starts as a low key si-fi movie with the base visually echoing the Nostromo from Alien, and with a sole occupant talking to his plants and looking forward to returning home turns into something completely else entirely. Rockwell is great as Sam, the man desperate to finish his contract and fulfill his duties. His performance is low key but powerful and more than holds the film together. What starts as a study of loneliness twists and turns to an unexpected conclusion. The disembodied computer voice has parallels with HAL from 2001, but that is where the comparison ends – you expect GERTY to become the sinister protagonist but there is something a lot more ominous threatening Sam’s existence.

Its very good film and well worth a look, there is a really slow build up and then after the accident you, as the audience, are left largely bewildered until the larger picture is revealed. It also keeps you thinking long after the end titles have rolled.

Director – Duncan Jones

Cast:
Sam Rockwell – Sam Bell
Kevin Spacey (voice only) - Gerty

For the official website click here

Not Quite Hollywood - – On DVD now

The story of the rise of Ozploitation an era in which Australian cinema exploded with low budget films, which centred around sex, violence, horror and road movies. The film covers mainly the 70’s to the mid 80’s and details the rise of the low budget filmmakers whos film making paralleled that of US and European cinema at the time.

Firstly don’t watch this documentary if your of a sensitive disposition, there’s far too many tits, arse, blood, gore, splatter and car crashes in this film which Im sure would offend some, whereas if you’re a fan of the cheap low budget 70’s movies and want to see a best of compilation from the land of Oz – then this film is your bag!

Taken with the spirit in which the film was made it’s funny and also an interesting in how the Ozzie filmmakers went for the maximum shock for the minimum budget. Its fascinating to have a snapshot of films before health and safety took over, a look at how the actors and stunt men took life and limb into the maverick directors hands – its amazing people lived to tell the tale.

It’s a good picture of the time, funny at times, amusing but not necessarily very enlightening although it celebrates a lost genre of filmmaking.

Director – Mark Hartley

Cast:

Phillip Adams – Himself
Glory Annen – Herself
Briony Behets – Herself
Steve Bisley – Himself
Jamie Blanks – Himself

Click here for official website

The Hangover – On DVD now

Three guys wake up in a Las Vegas hotel suite with a tiger and a baby, none of them can remember the stag do the night before and none of them can remember where the groom is so begins a frantic search through Vegas for clues to their wild night on the town and to find the missing groom.

This film is a rare and precious thing it has a cast of relative unknowns and a stag do in Vegas with bad consequences is not a new idea but it is really funny and it works really well. The three stag do survivors are also great characters each quite individual and yes the story does involve a wedding chapel, gangsters, gambling and a precious convertible car but the script is so tight it doesn’t become a cliché. In fact I found myself laughing out loud as the nights antics are uncovered piece by piece.

Very highly recommended, one of the funniest films I have seen for some time.

Director – Todd Phillips

Cast:

Bradley Cooper – Phil Wenneck
Ed Helms – Stu Price
Zach Galifianakis – Alan Garner
Justin Bartha – Doug Billings

Click here for official website

Terminator Salvation - out on DVD now

Following on from the three previous Terminator films, Salvation finds us in 2018 amidst the ‘battle of the machines’ that was predicted in the first film. We are with John Conner (Bale) as he leads a group of human resistance fighters against the HK’s (Hunter Killers) and Terminators.

In this version of the Terminator Connor is joined by the mysterious Marcus Wright (Worthington) a man who has no memory of the Terminators and Kyle Reese (Yelchin) the man Connor must send back to 1984 to become his father (are you still following?).

Visually the film looks great, there are new and old versions of Terminators and enough machines to at times make the film look like a Transformers movie, I did think though that the humans although relatively scruffy still looked too clean and kept especially the character of Kate Conner – Johns wife, who looks like she has just stepped from a beauty salon (even when performing surgery in the field!).

Overall though the Terminators look good although I was a little disappointed that there were no new robots and the film stuck to the traditional ‘Arnie’ T800 shape.
So much for the look of the film what is really important, especially as this film will be judged against the classic T1 & T2 is the script and this for me was where the film really was at its weakest. I found the film confusing. There were gaping holes in the script and it was also so full of lucky coincidences it verged on the comical, which is a real shame. Some areas in the film were rushed and others seemed to be included for no apparent reason and you could see the plot coming from a mile off.

The most interesting thing for me was seeing the next big action hero Sam Worthington who is now starring in Avatar and next year he will be in the lead role in the remake of Clash of the Titans. He played his role adequately – well as much as the cheesy script allowed, and someone please give Christian Bale throat lozenge’s!

Overall disappointing – the film franchise definitely has taken a downward turn.

Director – McG

Cast:

Christian Bale – John Connor
Sam Worthington – Marcus Wright
Moon Bloodgood – Blair Williams
Helena Bonham Carter – Dr Serena Kogan
Anton Yelchin – Kyle Reese

Click here for official website

Religulous – On DVD now

Religulous is American comedian Bill Maher’s documentary about his search for the reasons for faith. Maher interviews Muslims, Jews and Christians Mormons, scientists and even a Vatican astrologer to try to understand why people have faith. He visits a Creationist museum, which shows dinosaurs and humans living together, and even the Holy Land theme park in Florida where they enact recreations of Jesus being crucified on an hourly basis!

I hadn’t come across Mahar before but had heard that this documentary was good and it was. Mahar seems to hold no questions back in his search for the reason why so many people believe in improbable stories with such devotion they steer their lives accordingly and some even are willing to die for their faith.

I think your enjoyment of this documentary will depend on your view on religion, if you are a believer then I would suggest that this film isn’t for you (even though it wouldn’t be a bad thing to watch it), but if your like me a non believer then Mahers totally inappropriate questions and the facts that he presents prove to be really enjoyable.

Faith is a really strange subject, particularly if you haven’t got it, you don’t understand it and cannot understand why people are so fanatical about it. Maher counters the quotes from the Bible he receives from his interviewees with other less well known biblical facts that turn arguments around. He meets a man who claims to be the second coming, a man who claims his homosexuality was ‘cured’ by religion, scientists and even American truckers who attend a roadside church. It makes for interesting viewing, not more so for the people who have become very very wealthy from other peoples faith. Interestingly one of the most down to earth interviewees is an ex Vatican astrologer.

Its an interesting and funny film, Maher also just about pulls off the tricky task of questioning peoples deep faith and exposing the frailties in their beliefs while maintaining a easy manner and a good sense of humour – watch it if your not going to be insulted!

Director – Larry Charles

Cast:

Bill Mahar – Himself

Click here for official website

Cronos - On DVD

A film from the archives of the new ‘King’ of spinning of adult twisted fairy tales Del Toro’s early film Cronos doesn’t disappoint, and shows all of the imagination, thought and psyche that brought us Pan’s Labyrinth and the soon to be (but not soon enough) The Hobbit.

A short introduction shows us an alchemist in the 1500’s who invents the key to eternal life; the Cronos device. The story then switches to modern times when Jesus Gris (Luppi) a dealer in antiques accidentally uncovers the Cronos deivce. Gris lives with his younger wife and devoted granddaughter Aurora (Shanath). Gris accidentally activates the Cronos, which changes the course of his life forever, not least because the wealthy De la Guardia (Brook) and his psychotic hench-man and nephew Angel (Perlman) are after the Cronos, and its secrets, as well.

I saw Mark Kermode recently blog about vampire movies, due to the recent Twilight, True Blood and Halloween spate of films. books and television programmes about our blood-sucking friends. He recommended two films, one of which I had seen – Let The Right One In (which is reviewed here) and the other was Cronos, which although I love Del Toros work I had never seen. A fact, of course, you can see I have rectified.

The film is moody and atmospheric; the story is simple, and yet not so simple; there is a rich, powerful, sickly, man who desires eternal life he’s read the secrets he knows what he needs to do but he cannot find the Cronos that he needs. On the other hand there is the innocent that stumbles onto the Cronos and accidentally unleashes its power.

Del Toro yet again puts a spin on a familiar story – that of the vampire. Its not sexy, its not desire lead it’s a quest for deep thirst done in a controlled and restrained way, and that makes it different from a lot of other genre blood sucking films. Guis is a family man, devoted and loved, confused and yet still in control of himself despite the changes he undertakes. More strikingly for me was the silent brooding and scary Aurora, a girl who accepts, colludes and bares mute witness to all of the horror that surrounds her. She is devoted to her grandfather no matter what – it’s a great twist to an accepted story line.

Although defined as low budget, this film doesn’t look like it, it is sometimes sparse but it’s in keeping with the feel and mood of the movie. Its well worth watching, it gives a different spin on the vampire mythology and although I love the traditional stuff there’s always room for something else, especially something of this quality.

Director – Guillermo Del Toro

Cast:

Federico Luppi – Jesus Gris
Ron Perlman – Angel de la Guardia
Claudio Brook – De la Guardia
Maragarita Isabel – Mercedes
Tamara Shanath – Aurora

Year One - Out on DVD Now

The director of the classic Ground Hog Day has joined together with Jack Black to bring to film a comedy inhabited with biblical characters.

Zed (Black) and his friend Oh (Cera) are banished from their Stone Age village, after Zed eats fruit from the forbidden tree and this leads to a series of adventures in which they encounter biblical characters like Cain & Abel and Abraham and they travel to Sodom. In Sodom they try to free the love of their lives that have been enslaved where they are hampered by a priest and Cain.

I like Jack Black, I like most of his previous films, I like him when he’s at his crazy best this, though, is a film where his humour falls flat. Partly I feel he’s not allowed free rein other times he is hampered by a plodding and flat script. I didn’t laugh out loud once; I might have managed a smile at a couple of points but for a film that’s supposed to be a comedy that’s not a shinning endorsement.

Black plays a ‘zany’ tubby caveman whereas Cera plays an intellectual, sensitive caveman, so why when both actors should be very comfortable with their characters does this film not work. Firstly for me the film doesn’t flow its more of a series of sketches in which Zed & Oh walk through, its like someone said ‘lets get a scene with Abraham, how can we write him in and who can we get to play him’, without any consideration as to how this will fit in with a script. Also am I really supposed to find biblical characters funny?

There is also a emphasis on gross out humour in this movie, there are lots of poo jokes, puke jokes, willy jokes etc etc its not that I’m offended by them its just that they are used over and over again and not to good effect. Year One is like a carry on movie although not as good.

Very disappointing.

Director – Harold Ramis

Cast:

Jack Black – Zed
Michael Cera – Oh
Oliver Platt – High Priest
David Cross – Cain
Christopher Mintz-Plasse – Isaac

Click here for official website