Kings of the Road

“The Yanks have colonized our subconscious"

Bruno (Rudiger Vogler) is a Cinema projector repair man who travels from town to town along the West and East German border repairing old cinema projectors. One day while shaving by the side of a road, a man drives his car at high speed into a lake, gets out and walks over to Bruno. Bruno, not knowing what else to do laughs at the man and offers him some clean clothes. The man, Robert (Hanns Zischler) hitchhikes with Bruno from town to town beginning a strange and often uneasy friendship.

The film has several themes which jump out at you and are present throughout. The first is a love of cinema and anger at what has become of the small German cinema. Most of the cinemas that Bruno visits are either badly run, have been turned into porn theatres or are closed altogether. This is director Wim Wenders way of showing viewers what is happening to small cinemas. It is a problem which over thirty years later is still present in my own country. Occasionally Bruno will come across a small, old theatre run by an ex Nazi that is run with care and dedication. A place where old, noisy machines are used by artisan projectionists to show the great classics of the 50s and 60s but generally he deals with people who have no interest in film or it’s proper projection. This film is very much a love letter to film.

Kingdom of Heaven

"I once fought two days with an arrow through my testicle"

Ridley Scott directs an all star cast in a story about the Crusades and in particular the 12^th Century battles in which Muslims attempted to recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Christians. Balian (Orlando Bloom) is a blacksmith in rural France. A Knight (Liam Neeson) visits him and informs him that he is his father. After Balian kills a Priest who mocks his dead wife, Balian is given the chance to join the Crusades in the Middle East. While there he learns the ins and out of the Politics and Religion of the region and ends up in a prominent position in the defence of the Holy city of Jerusalem against a Muslim invasion.

This was the second Ridley Scott film I watched today having watched Alien for the first time this morning. Kingdom of Heaven is not anywhere near as good as that. The first thing I’ll say is that the sets looked sumptuous and were well dressed. The costume also looked good and the special effects were on the whole excellent, despite the odd dodgy shot. The acting was also generally quite good. Charisma vacuum Orlando Bloom was actually alright but still far from the screen presence that a role like this requires. He is joined by a fantastic cast which includes Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Sheen, Ghassan Massoud and an almost unrecognisable Edward Norton. Had I not looked at the cast beforehand I honestly wouldn’t have known he was in the film. Marton Csokas was a bit of a let down on the acting front.

Alien

"I got you, you son of a bitch!"

With Prometheus just a couple of weeks away I thought it was about time I filled one of the most unforgivable gaps in my film history and finally watch Alien. The crew of the Nostromo are in stasis on a return trip to Earth, carrying a cargo of mineral ore. They are awakened early by the ship’s computer as it has intercepted a transmission for a nearby planetoid. Upon investigation, crew member Kane (John Hurt) discovers what appear to be eggs inside an unidentified ship. A life form hatches out of one of the eggs and attaches itself to his face. Returning to the Nostromo the crew try to detach the creature from Kane’s face but with no success. A short time later the creature removes itself from Kane and the crew find it dead. While preparing to go back into stasis for the return to Earth something extraordinary happens that unleashes an even greater threat to the ship and the crew.

My first thoughts were that the Nostromo reminded me of so much I’ve seen already. It is obvious how much influence the film has had on subsequent science fiction. The living quarters reminded me of the film Moon and in just about every other scene I said to myself “That’s just like Red Dwarf”. Everything about the film’s design was excellent. The ship felt large and real and the creature design was incredible. Considering the film is now over thirty years old, the latex or prosthetics that were used looked really good. Even now. Obviously some aspects of the film have aged noticeably. The computers for instance look as old as they are. This isn’t a major problem though as anything older than about five years or without a touch screen looks aged.

Beastly

Never before has a film had such an apt title. Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is a rich, popular, good looking, arrogant cock hole who is running for some sort of Environmental Office thing at school. After constantly insulting fellow classmate and secret witch Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen) she puts a spell on him which makes him ugly. He has one year to make someone fall in love with him or he will stay ugly for life. Forced to live alone in a huge house which his father buys for him, he has only a maid (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and private tutor (Neil Patrick Harris) for company until he falls for ex classmate Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) and moves her into his house. Will she fall in love with him within the year, despite his disfigured face? Will he learn that there is more to life than looks?

Boxcar Bertha

Martin Scorsese’s second picture and the second in my Scorsese in Sequence feature is Boxcar Bertha. Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) is a young woman whose father dies in an aircraft accident. With no money and no home she travels around the Depression hit South aboard railway boxcars. Along the way she meets ‘Big’ Bill Shelly (David Carradine), a Union Man and suspected Communist. The two of them begin a relationship and along with Yankee, Rake Brown (Barry Primus) and ‘negro’, Von Morton (Bernie Casey) take to robbing trains as a means of surviving.

This is unlike most other Scorsese films. It is the only one to feature a woman in the central role and one of only a handful set outside of the East Coast. As a result it feels amongst the least Scorsese-esque of his films. The direction is fairly straightforward. There are no trademark long tracking shots, very little popular music and cutting is slow and traditional. One area in which Scorsese does stick to type is with Bertha’s moral ambiguity. At the beginning she is a sweet young girl but towards the end she is a woman who will do anything it takes to survive and appears to enjoy the wilder side of life. The film also contains Scorsese’s trademark violence, especially in an unexpectedly brutal final scene.

American Pie 2

"This one time, at Band Camp..."

Coming two years after the successful American Pie, American Pie 2 finds friends Jim, Finch, Oz, Kevin and Stifler coming to the end of their first year of college. Little seems to have changed for the group as they’re still battling to get laid. Some have been successful with this but others have not. After returning home they find life strange. Kevin talks to his older brother who suggests that they rent a beach house by the lake for the summer and throw a huge party to attract women. Meanwhile, Jim finds out that ‘the one who got away’, Nadia is going to stop by at the end of summer and searches out band geek Michelle to teach him the art of seducing and satisfying a woman.

As I mentioned in my review of American Pie, I used to love these movies. In 2001 an even larger group of friends than for the first went to our local two screen cinema to enjoy a second slice of pie. We were howling with laughter at the events we saw in front of us. Eleven years and about 6-7 viewings later and the film has definitely lost its edge. I hadn’t realised how few laughs there were in the film. It isn’t even as funny as the recent Amercian Reunion.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Successful LA defence attorney Mickey Haller (Matthew ‘Mahogany’ McConaughey)  lands a career case, the defence of a young millionaire playboy Louis Roulet (Ryan Philippe) who has been accused of attacking and beating high class prostitute Regina Campo (Margarita Levieva). Roulet claims his innocence and argues that he’s being set up. The film follows the case as twist follows twist, right up to the very end.

I’ve never been that into courtroom dramas (unless Fangshaw Standon is presiding/providing) but this one kept me interested for most of the time although to be honest I was never invested enough in the characters to really care which way the film came down on. I mainly kept with it just so I could find out at the end. After the initial twist, it is fairly obvious how things are going to go and it’s just a matter of how and when. Various side stories intertwine to create a deeper more complex story and this generally works well but Haller’s ex wife and child were only really there for one reason late on and felt a bit ignored. Calling the film The Lincoln Lawyer seemed like a bit of a stretch. Unless I’m missing something it is because Haller owns a Lincoln and drives from one place to another in it. I think he works in it once but it seems a bit flimsy to name an entire film after the car that the protagonist drives. The car didn’t play that big a role in the film.

American Reunion

"Check it out, Vagina Shark!"

Thirteen years after graduating high school, friends Jim (Jason Biggs), Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Stifler (Seann William Scott) all end up back in their home town of East Great Falls for their High School Reunion. The plot centres around Jim and Michelle’s (Alyson Hannigan) stuttering marriage and on Stifler’s inability to grow up. Apart from that there are numerous side stories regarding every main character including Jim’s Dad’s (Eugene Levy) loneliness after the death of his wife and various old feelings returning.

The whole cast of the original movie have returned and there are even cameos from the likes of The Sherminator and the Milf Guys. Most of the cameos are welcome and either bring closure to their story or a bit of humour but Shannon Elizabeth’s Nadia made a brief and unremarkable appearance. I especially enjoyed the Milf Guys small subplot and their closing dialogue.  The film has found a way to bring together all the pieces from the original trilogy and ties them off well. There are still some big surprises (“Milf! Milf!), some upsets and even a couple of new characters but the film is at its best when the guys are together being themselves and in particular one scene featuring Stifler and Jim’s Dad. It was also nice to see Stifler’s Mom (Jennifer Coolidge) and Jim’s Dad get some screen time together as they have been so successful in the past in many of Christopher Guest’s movies.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

"They're here! They're here! They've landed!"

It’s 1951 and an extraterrestrial flying saucer is tracked around the Earth before it lands in Washington. A spaceman, Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and a robot step out and are immediately shot by the US Army. After recovering very quickly, the spaceman asks a Presidential aid for permission to speak to all world leaders as he brings a vitally important message. His request is denied due to the political climate and he escapes and tries to study Earth’s inhabitants while staying at a Washington Guest House, becoming friendly with residents Helen (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray). The spaceman contacts a scientist (Sam Jaffe) and persuades him to gather the scientific community to listen to his warning. In order to get the attention of the world’s population, the Spaceman turns off all of the world’s electricity for thirty minutes.

This is very much a film of its time. Its overriding theme of Cold War tensions is now part of history and its religious themes have much less importance today. The fact that an alien has travelled millions of miles to warn humanity about its own as well as the Universe’s destruction must have been a major talking point back in 1951. The idea that the alien could also be viewed as Jesus takes the warning even further. The film delivers a stern but important message about what a threat we can be to ourselves. The fact that the film came just six years after the world’s most bloody war is no coincidence either.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil

A group of typical college students are on their way through the isolated West Virginian wilderness when they come across a couple of Red Necks. Afraid, they scarper and set up camp near a lake. The Red Necks, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) have recently bought an old cabin and are in the area to do some fishing and maintenance. That night the kids go skinny dipping and one of them (Katrina Bowden) falls in banging her head. Dale and Tucker come to her rescue and pull her aboard their boat. The other kids see this and believe she is being kidnapped and formulate a plan to get her back and enact their revenge.

The film is a nice twist and reverse of the classic kids in the woods surrounded by hillbillies film but is unfortunately usurped in its originality by The Cabin in the Woods. The idea itself is clever and interesting, it’s nice to have a look at the oftold story from the hillbilly perspective but after forty minutes I’d had enough. I laughed a couple of times in the opening minutes but overall found the film unfunny and boring. After the opening twist there is little else of interest and the plot becomes predictable and dull.