G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (2009) - Stephen Sommers

Okay, quick plot summary. Weapons manufacturer wants to take over the world. A team of soldiers specially trained in various skills, and powered by super-suits need to stop him or else blah blah, blah blah blah blah. It took me about a minute and a half to write this paragraph. Probably a lot longer than it took Stephen Sommers to come up with the plot for G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra.

Well done, Sommers, you’ve done it again. After The Mummy films, and Van Helsing, you’ve created a film of such unrelenting stupidity that every single moment of watching it made me want to tear out my eyes in merciless rage. I know the argument can be made that GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra doesn’t take itself too seriously. But to hell with that. The film is packed to the brim with clichés. Not just script clichés, but also directorial clichés. It’s like Sommers got a bunch of action films and bookmarked shots from them that he could rip off. And if you don’t see the ‘twist’ ending coming from pretty much the first half hour, then you’ve obviously nodded off and slept through the entire sorry film.



The special effects are inexcusably shoddy. The acting is at best cringe-worthy, at worst ham-fistedly pedestrian. Even from the likes of Dennis Quaid, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Christopher Eccleston. And I think the United Nations needs to put through a resolution stopping any Wayans brother from ever appearing in front or behind a camera again. For the good of humanity. Add to this that over half the running time of the film was spent in pointless flash-back and you’ve got absolutely no redeeming quality anywhere in the film. It’s insultingly dumb and unforgivably bad.

1/10

SOUTHLAND TALES (2006) - Richard Kelly

When I first saw Donnie Darko way back in 2001, I was, like many other people, pretty blown away by it. It had all the right elements, and appealed to that dark, lonely side my of us have when trying to figure out who we are. So I eagrely awaited Richard Kelly’s Director’s Cut version. Which I bought upon release, watched once, and vowed never to watch again. Kelly had managed to completely suck all that was great out of the theatrical cut of the film. It was dreadful. So I was a little wary when Southland Tales came out. Through a series of unfortunate events, and warnings from friends, I never got to see the film. Until now. I was kind of hoping it’d turn out to be good. When you have certain expectations from a film, sometimes you can be pleasantly, or otherwise... surprised...

It’s July 2008, three years after a number of nuclear attacks on the United States. The US is at war, the draft has been reinstated and most of the country is a police state. A new substance called Fluid Karma has been developed to replace the need for fossil fuels. However, Fluid Karma and it’s application has caused a rift in the space-time continuum that threatens to destroy the world. Meanwhile, an amnesia-stricken actor named Boxer Santaros and his new girlfriend, porn-star Krysta Kapowski have developed a film script that begins to mirror events in Santaros’ real life. And police office Roland Taverner is really a neo-marxist impersonating his own twin brother in order to use Santaros as leverage for the neo-marxist plans to blackmail Santaros’ Republican senator father in law.



Sounds complicated? Yeah, it is. It’s also one of the most pointless, muddled, incoherent and needlessly dull films I’ve ever sat through. It’s mind-numbingly idiotic. If you read about films, you’ll have heard about Southland Tales’ adventure at Cannes. How it was booed, and some even went so far as to say it was probably the worst film ever to compete at the festival. That was before the film was cut by Kelly himself in order to make it less lumbering and more accessible. And THIS is what he was left with?! In some sado-masochistic way, I’d love to see what the original cut was like. Thought I really don’t think I could put myself through this film ever again.

The film attempts to satirise the course that the US was headed down directly after the attack on the World Trade Centre. The increase in security and the clamp-down on liberties of the average citizen. However, Kelly’s ham-fisted attempt at subtlety goes nowhere fast. His vision of the near-future (which is now actually the past) looks nowhere near believable. Visually, it’s pretty close to Paul Verhoven’s future in Starship Troopers, but where as that film’s satire fit in with the aesthetic of the film and was actually funny, Kelly’s vision (especially with the bafflingly dour narration by Justin Timberlake) is a mess of ideas that don’t gell.

The script... good christ, the script is a disaster. Most of the actors clearly don’t have a clue what their characters are babbling on about. The characters themselves are a mish-mash of cliches, and cardboard-cutouts that are neither believable nor edgy, nor funny. Events unfold in a way that either leaves you confused, or without caring an iota about what happens. And then, in the middle of the mess, Justin Timberlake’s Pilot Abilene bursts into a drunken mime of The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done, which makes for one of the most infuriatingly ill-judged and pointless scenes of recent cinema history. It’s up there with the emo-strut scene from Spiderman 3.



The actors. To be honest, you’re not going to really give a shit what their performances are like. You’re too busy writhing in agony at the sound of the dialogue to worry about how it’s delivered. I actually felt sorry for Seann William Scott, Dwayne Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Clearly they saw Kelly as some sort of visionary genius and leapt on board thinking that it didn’t matter if they didn’t understand the script, Kelly knows what he’s doing. Nope. He didn’t. And the performances are ground-breakingly bad. But I really don’t think it’s the actors’ fault. The characters are just so poorly written.

Kelly’s a director who got sweapt up in his own hype. He attempts to out-Lynch David Lynch and instead falls spectacularly flat on his face. His writing is an incoherent mess of biblical proportions and his direction is pedestrian and in no way innovative. At certain points in the film, I wondered if Kelly had ever even seen a film before making Southland Tales. The film didn’t kill his career, but in an age where people like Roland Emmerich, Stephen Sommers and Brett Ratner still have careers, that’s not really all that surprising. I should have listened to the warnings. Don’t make the mistake I did. Southland Tales is unwatchable.

Oh, and there’s a scene in which two cars have sex through their exhausts. I shit you not.


1/10

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009) - Michael Bay

Heh heh heh. Hee hee hee. Ya know, there’s a part of me that is secretly relishing the prospect of writing what I’m about to write. I’m excited at the catharsis I’ll feel having vented about Michael Bay’s latest piece of cinematic art. Because for the last twelve hours... minus the few hours sleep I got... I have stewed slowly. I’ve allowed what I witnessed last night to seep slowly into my brain, and I’ve attempted to arrange the images and sounds into an understandable and comprehensible series of sequences so that I can give Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen the review it deserves.

Okay, it’s been two years since Optimus Prime and his little human buddy Sam Witwicky (having still not changed his name by deed poll) defeated Megatron and the Decepticons. Sam is now ready to head off to college. He will be leaving behind his parents, girlfriend Mikaela, and best buddy and Autobot, Bumblebee. However, once Sam hits the campus, things go wrong. It seems the Decepticons are searching for Megatron’s body in order to resurrect him. It turns out Megatron is only second in command to another Decepticon, The Fallen, who wants to return to Earth (he was here at the dawn of civilisation.... don’t ask) to destroy our sun in order to get the power to give birth to more Decepticons.... Queue explosions and all manner of utter bollocks for two and a half bloody hours.



There is so much that is wrong with Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, that it’s difficult to know where to start. I’m not that easily offended by movies. Admittedly, I actively seek out the films that create controversy and make people walk out of theatres. It’s not that I enjoy being repulsed. Though there is some sick fascination with the depth to which some directors stoop in order to shock. Take Martyrs or Cannibal Holocaust as examples. They’re both pretty reprehensible films. But they’re made for a specific type of viewer and don’t in any way try to be entertainment for the masses. What I absolutely object to, however, is a director who is so low-brow, he makes Rob Schneider look like the 21st Century’s Lawrence Olivier. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is the freak bastard child that would emerge if Nuts magazine got absolutely twisted drunk and had sex with Top Gear and a military recruitment video. Michael Bay is the sick voyeuristic neighbour filming it all to jerk off to later.

The film is incredibly misogynistic. There are three female characters in the film. Bay treats them with all the subtlety and depth of a slap-happy pimp. When not filming Magan Fox as is she’s in the opening few scenes of a hard-core porno, he’s getting up-skirt shots of some other starlet or treating Sam’s mother with sneering disdain for her kooky antics. Were he able to get away with it, I’d imagine Bay would have had Sam’s father go Ray Winstone on her ass and beat her into the ground a la Nil By Mouth... although with swooping camera moves and slow motion impacts. All Megan Fox has to do for the entire film is wear a low-cut top, keep a permanent pout on her face and occasionally run awkwardly from an explosion. Which, thankfully for her, encompasses the entirety of her talents. She is a dreadful actress. And I’m pretty sure she was born without a soul. Whenever the camera stared, nay, leered into her unquestionably beautiful eyes, you can’t quite help but feel there’s a deep, gaping, black void of humanity staring back. I don’t know whether that’s Bay’s work, or Fox herself, but it was somewhat unnerving.



Then there’s the xenophobia. Good christ, there’s plenty of that. Bay has made some sort of deal with the US military, because the last hour of the film is just an army recruitment video shot, again, as explosion porno. Planes, tanks, trucks, guns, missiles, aircraft carriers, high-tech weaponry are all wheeled out and fired at the enemy, who, for the record, are completely ineffectual against humans. I mean, THEY’RE GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS. Yet none of them are capable of defeating a small platoon of squishy humans with guns that fire tiny bullets. Anyway, all this ordnance is fired at the Decepticons in the last battle, which takes place in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. And as a consequence, pyramids and thousands of years of history are wiped out and reduced to dust. And do the Yanks care? Not a jot. Bay may as well have gone the final step and had one of the GI Joes prance to the top of the crumbled remains of the pyramids and jam an American flag into place. In one spectacularly ‘look how stupid Johnny Foreigner is’ moment, Sam and his pals try to cross the Jordan-Egypt border. It is here that they encounter Johnny foreigner’s army, which has a midget in charge. Yup, a midget. I thought crossing borders was a difficult thing in today’s political climate. But apparently shouting ‘NEW YORK’ in an American accent gains you access to any country. Stupid foreign army. Trey Parker and Matt Stone parodied this attitude in Team America World Police. But Bay obviously doesn’t get parody or irony and took that film as a serious appraisal of American Foreign Policy.

The special effects are spectacular. There’s no denying that. Hundreds of millions of dollars were pumped into the film and it shows. The team at ILM and Digital Domain are top-notch and you can feel the heat in every explosion. But special effects should be there to help tell a story. Not be the centre-piece that the story is written around. And that is how this film feels. The story is all over the place. Every few minutes, everybody has to stop to explain to one-another what’s going on. When that’s not happening, logic is thrown out the window. One scene takes place in the Smithsonian Air And Space Museum. The characters crash through a wall, and are in the desert. The wall was obviously some sort of portal through space-time, because the last time I checked, the Smithsonian is in the middle of Washington DC. A FUCKING CITY. It’s this utter contempt for the intelligence of the audience that I really have a problem with.



The problems with the film are innumerable. It’s indefensibly bad. The script is a bloody mess of confusing decisions, illogical situations and ludicrous events that defy reality; I know it’s a film about giant robots, but when a man rings an aircraft carrier and gets them to use a top-secret experimental weapon without any question of authority, chain of command or procedure, you’re going too far from reality. The acting is terrible. It’s really shocking to see John Turturro slumming it so badly. The guy was a darling of the Coen Brothers. What the fuck is he doing in this crap?
There’s also the question of the Autobot twins, two of the most ill-conceived and insulting sidekicks since Jar Jar Binks. Every moment of their screen-time sucks out a bit of your soul. They aren’t funny. They’re cringeworthy. Shame of the writers for creating them, shame on the designers for making them look like they do. Shame on all involved.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is a film made by idiotic scumbags for the entertainment of imbeciles. If you think two small dogs fucking is hilarious, then this film right up your alley. And for that, fuck you. It is the intellectual equivalent of a home movies television show. It’s a lads’ magazine filmed for the big screen. It’s like climbing into the mind of a hyperactive thirteen year old boy who’s been sitting at his Playstation for too long. I don’t object to a bit of entertainment for entertainment’s sake. But I do think that this kind of film sums up exactly what’s wrong with the industry. It’s a prime example of what happens when film companies aim to squeeze as much money out of the audience’s pocket as possible. The executives at Dreamworks and Paramount may as well drop to their knees and start giving blow-jobs for pennies. Because there is infinitely more dignity in that than having your name attached to this film. And I’m an idiot for spending money I worked for on this shit.
Fuck you Michael Bay. Fuck you Dreamworks Pictures. Fuck you audience around me who laughed at all the incredibly unfunny jokes and stared slack-jawed at the shiney things and ‘splosions. Fuck you universe for allowing this film to happen.

Oh, and just before I forget... Decepticon testicles... Fuck you, Michael Bay.


1/10

ANGELS & DEMONS (2009) - Ron Howard

The Da Vinci Code was a massive global success. It was one of those books that comes along every so often and you couldn’t help but see people everywhere reading it. I read it myself, eager to see what the big deal was. It was entertaining enough, but ultimately throw-away pulp trash. The film version of the book, released in 2006 was set to be huge. But it was pretty much a mess of a film and while doing good box-office, was pretty much a critical flop. Angels & Demons, the prequel (although filmed as a sequel) is released this year, reteaming director Ron Howard with Tom Hanks as Indiana Jones with no balls, Robert Langdon. The book is seen by many as far better than The Da Vinci Code. Does the film follow suit?

No. It does not. It’s a fucking mess. It is a film so incredibly stupid and ridiculous that I actually felt like somewhere, Ron Howard was laughing at me for being duped into seeing it. In fact, he’s probably laughing at the world. As is Brian Grazer, his producer. Because they are making a shed load of cash from one of the dumbest, idiotic and insulting films I’ve ever seen. It takes place just after the death of the Pope, and while the new Pope is being decided by a bunch of cardinals during what is known within the church as Pope-Idol. Just before Pope-Idol, a particle of anti-matter is knicked from the Large Hadron Collider (I shit you not). This plot point, not in the book, is a blatant attempt to make things up-to-date. The Higgs boson particle has the ability to reduce Vatican City to a smouldering hole. The Illuminati, long thought to have been wiped out by the Church have kidnapped the four Pope-Idol finalists and are holding all and sundry to ransom. Only Robert Langdon, a personality vacuum in human form can stop the Illuminati and help the new Pope take his place as King of the Catholics.



To start off, the plot of the film ranges from snore-inducingly boring to laugh-out-loud hilarious. One of the major complaints that emerged after The Da Vinci Code was released was that everyone stood around explaining things to each other. It proved to be surprisingly boring. Ron Howard took these issues on board, and fair dues, he did ramp things up for this film. Instead of standing around explaining things, now everybody runs around explaining things. Oh yes, by making people both move and talk, the action has been ramped up a billion percent.

However, the first half of the film remains overwhelmingly dull. Robert Langdon, a man of non-action wanders from church to church staring at statues that, and I am not exaggerating here, point in the direction of the next clue. He is literally following a series of really nicely sculpted signposts. The dialogue ranges from boring exposition to dull history lessons, to incredibly clunky lines like ‘GET ME A MAP WITH ALL ROME’S CHURCHES ON IT!’ Tom Hanks, whom I like as an actor is essentially just a face to pull in the crowds. His Langdon is nothing more than a book with a stupid hair-cut. He has all the personality of a damp sock and the daring of a petrified field mouse. In one spectacularly action-free moment, Langdon watches while the main villain kills two policemen. Instead of doing something to save the second policeman, he stands and watches as the killer stalks the cop and very slowly kills him. I was half expecting Hanks to pull up a chair, grab some pasta and enjoy the proceedings.



Joining Langdon on his quest to kill suspense is Vittoria Vetra a sexy and unbelievable scientist who wants her particle back. She is absolutely inconsequential to the plot aside from the fact that her character is also incompetent. She needs to get the particle chamber back before the battery powering it fails, resulting in a matter-anti-matter explosion that will kill millions. Had she brought a spare battery, things would have been a lot easier on all.

But by far the highlight of the film is Ewan McGreggor as Oirish priest, Camerlengo Patrick McKenna. McGreggor provides the comic relief of the film as he stumbles over the script with an accent which is ludicrously bad. From what I’ve seen of McGreggor on The Long Way Round, he seems like a genuinely likeable and nice guy. He does good work for charity. But by Christ, the guy is a shockingly awful actor. Aside from a pretty decent performance in Trainspotting, where he was none-the-less overshadowed by a far stronger supporting cast, he really hasn’t delivered one outstanding role. And Angels & Demons ranks up there with his worst.

As with all action films, the second half of Angels & Demons is where things kick into overdrive. And it’s at this point where logic, believability and reality are ritually burned at the stake. At this point, proceedings become so incredibly stupid that I thought I’d passed out from boredom, hit my head and was seeing things that weren’t there. I’m strongly tempted to spoil the high-point of this carnival of the absurd, but I really wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. I am just sorry I can’t be there with you to hear the guffaws of laughter that will inevitably ensue. It was with no amount of surprise, that during the credits, I saw David Koepp’s name. From the guy who brought you Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. You should begin to know what to expect. And, like that film, the main character stands aside and watches everyone else do the work. It would be no surprise if it emerged that Koepp did little writing but took credit for a team of other writers’ work.



Angels & Demons is insultingly bad. Twists and turns are performed with all the ineptitude of a bad slight-of-hand artist. It attempts to distract you with one thing while setting up a twist. But if you take a second to actually think about things, you know exactly where proceedings are going. Apart from that bit I mentioned above. Nobody could see that coming. Set-ups are blatantly sign-posted and pay-offs are subsequently dull and predictable. Characters gleefully (if not literally) announce ‘listen, I have this ability. If it comes in handy at some point, you know where I am’ making plot points as subtle as a Fox News Anchor. It’s really lowest, lowest-common denominator stuff.

Many claim Angels & Demons is a better story and film than The Da Vinci Code. I disagree. While The Da Vinci Code was dull, silly and stupid, at least it wasn’t mind-bogglingly stupid. After watching Angels & Demons, you feel like someone has beaten you with a hammer of idiocy. It’s going to be hard to top this for the worst film of 2009. And it’s still only May.


1/10

PATHOLOGY (2008) - Marc Schoelermann

Okay, I’ve seen some truly awful films in my time. A great many of these awful films are horror or psychological thriller movies. It just goes with the territory. The genre is open to criticism of all sorts due to the fantastical scenarios horror and psychological thrillers can bring about. And so, this month we have Pathology, a film so unbearably bad, there were moments I wanted to tear my arm off and throw it at the screen.

This monumentally awful piece of shit is about Ted Grey, a hotshot young doctor who begins his internship in a prestigious Pathology program. There, he is noticed by a group of interns who introduce Grey to a world of sex, drugs and murder. The interns play a game where they each try to commit the perfect, undetectable murder. But as Grey involves himself in these games, he finds himself losing grip on his life and reality. His life begins to spiral out of control.



Right, now that the summary is over, I find myself wondering where to start with how utterly awful this film is. The writers, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor did a pretty good job with their previous effort, Crank. Crank was over the top, completely ridiculous and as such, surprisingly entertaining. However, Pathology shares Crank’s ridiculousness, but not it’s entertainment value. The premise of Pathology is quite interesting. Can someone who excels in detecting methods of death create the undetectable death? Pretty good. Where it all falls apart is that the premise is backed up with a screenplay that is riddled with massive plot holes, abhorrent characters and a protagonist so unsympathetic as to make me wish he’d suffered a long and painful death himself.

Not one of the characters in this film is either realistic or entertaining. Ted Grey, played by Milo Ventimiglia is one of the most hateful characters I’ve ever had the misfortune of watching for two hours. This guy turns from a clean-cut super student to a morally corrupt serial killer in, literally, the length of a short car ride. It’s one of the stupidest character developments the screen has offered, and Ventimiglia’s performance is as bad as his character’s writing. Maybe it’s because Heroes is fantastical and it distracts from the acting, but if this is a fine example of Ventimiglia’s acting ability, then we wont be seeing him around for very long. When truly awful things happen to his character, Ventimiglia seems unfased. In one particularly ridiculous moment, Grey must perform an autopsy on someone close to him who has been murdered. Rather than it being a poignant and emotional moment, it is instead laughably stupid.



Grey’s antagonist in this case, is Dr. Jake Gallo, also a young intern in the Pathology program. His character is a ridiculous cliché of the brilliant psycho who’s out of control, on the edge, and shouldn’t be messed with. But really, all this character needs is a good slapping and to be told to behave. There’s nothing menacing about him, and he actually comes off like the kind of guy you’d bully in school because he’s such a little shit. Michael Weston, who was brilliant in one of the best episodes of Six Feet Under, hams it up to ninety, which really doesn’t help matters since his character is so utterly stupid in the first place.

The rest of the cast is made up of arrogant young twenty-somethings and the occasional middle-aged actor who make little to no impact on proceedings. The direction, by Marc Schoelermann is pretty awful to say the least. But it’s the script, the foundations of the film which is the biggest downfall. It tries to mix blood and violence with sex to give it an ‘edge.’ In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the script was sold with the line ‘a couple of interns cut people up and have sex in front of the corpses.’ Because literally, this is all that happens for the majority of the film. It’s really that bad. The writing is astonishingly bad, the acting is mind-numbingly awful to the point of being laugh-out loud hysterical at the wrong moments, and the direction is, to put it as simply as possible, crap. Everyone involved should take a long, hard look at their career choice and perhaps consider starting afresh as, I dunno, one of those human sign posts. One of the worst films I’ve ever seen.


1/10

10,000 B.C. (2008) - Roland Emmerich

Roland Emmerich has somehow forged a career making a particular type of movie. They’re heavy on special effects and light on story. For the most part, his movies range from silly to absolutely ludicrous. His latest movie, 10,000 B.C. marks an all-time low for Emmerich in not only the reality stakes, but the quality stakes too. It’s a strange film to watch because, while it’s absolutely appalling, it’s laughably stupid too, so you will find yourself in hysterics during the film.

The implausibility begins, a little over 12,008 years ago in some unnamed land. A tribe of mammoth hunters are facing tough times. The mammoths they rely on for food have become scarce and times are tough. However, not all is lost as the resident loon reveals a prophecy that tells of a warrior and his blue-eyed woman will lead their people to a new age. Years later and the kid is grown up and goes on his mammoth hunt. Through a remarkable amount of luck, he fells a mammoth and becomes the bearer of the white spear, an impractical ceremonial weapon that makes the bearer the leader of the tribe. But D’Leh cant handle the pressure and packs the leadership in. The tribe is attacked by another tribe and Evolet, the blue-eye girl and some other tribesmen are carried off. And so D’Leh and some of his fellow villagers head off to get their people back.



Okay, I know it’s a film that is wrought with historical inaccuracies. And many films are like this. And things like historical inaccuracies never really bother me. Hell, even dodgy special effects can be forgiven if the story is strong. What is a real issue though, is plausibility. And plausibility is completely thrown out the window in 10,000 B.C. It’s so implausible that at times I was struggling to contain my guffaws of laughter. At one point, the main characters cross from a frozen tundra to a tropical jungle and then to a desert in a matter of days. The landscape changes dramatically, giving the impression that we’re witnessing months of travel only to have one of the characters proclaim ‘we’ve been walking for days!’ Characters are mortally wounded only to heal overnight and be back bounding across the plains the very next day. It’s moments like these that expose the film’s ludicrous script.

In another particularly ridiculous moment, the main character shows a ridiculously amount of stupidity by freeing the sabre-toothed tiger from the film Ice Age from certain death, only to have the tiger take-off without attacking him and even turning up later on to save D’Leh from something that wasn’t assured death and then disappear again for no reason. It’s just another symptom of the problems with 10,000B.C. Nothing makes any sense. Steve Strait plays D’Leh, the ‘world’s first hero,’ and the main character in the film. His problem is he is completely devoid of any charisma or personality. At one point, he gives a speech to a number of different tribes to unite them as a force to take on the bad guys. The speech is laughably devoid of anything resembling inspiration, and the twenty or thirty men he gives the speech to are anything more than a rabble of trouble makers. Braveheart, this is not.



D’Leh’s woman, Evolet, played by Camilla Belle makes no impact. And Cliff Curtis, who deserves better, is inconsequential as tribal leader Tic’Tic. Although this character does seem to have Wolverine-like healing powers, at the point of death at one point and fully healed the following day. I know the X-Men films say Wolverine’s age is indeterminable, but I doubt he’s over 12,000 years old! The main bad guy is a stereotypical evil doer at one point, only to expose himself as a physically weak man obsessed with getting a sniff of female anatomy at another. In fact, the only reason he seems to have achieved his status as the leader of the baddies is that he has an electronically-enhanced voice. It’s baffling to understand why he has this Darth Vader-like vocal enhancement other than laziness on the part of the script writers.

In fact, the laziness of the writing is apparent throughout the entire film. Gaping plot holes are glossed over and ignored in a shocking display of disregard for the audience’s intelligence. But then this kind of thing is prevalent in all of Emmerich’s films. From the Apple-computer interface with alien technology in the reprehensibly jingoistic Independence Day to the completely implausible ice storm in The Day After Tomorrow, Emmerich’s films are wrought with plot holes that take the piss out the audience. 10,000 B.C. continues this trend, but ups the ante to the nth degree. I find it hard to comprehend how the final cut was viewed by anyone involved and they didn’t balk at what they were witnessing. This film is astonishingly bad. It’ll be hard to find a film in 2008 that will be worse. The only reason I’m even giving this film a 1 is that no film deserves a 0. It’s a complete work and some people did put some effort into it. Otherwise, this is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

10,000 B.C.? 10,000 B.S.


1/10

HOSTEL: PART II (2007) - Eli Roth

The phrase 'torture porn' is fast becoming one of the buzz phrases in the movie industry. The movie Saw was the first of this type of sub-genre horror movies to be labeled with this term, and since it's release, a whole slew of similar movies have arrived in the cinema. Some people claim that these films offer nothing but something for gore fans to get all warm and gooey inside about. It is claimed the fans 'get off' on seeing people tortured and murdered in all manner of inventive ways. To be honest, I don't think this really happens. 'Torture porn' really has no bearing on me what so ever. It doesn't bug me at all. What DOES bug me however, are badly written, dull as dishwater, juvenile films that make me want to tear out my eyes in sheer boredom. And Eli Roth's Hostel: Part Two is a prime example of this type of movie.



The plot, if that's what you can call it, sees three American cliches back-packing across Europe. Where as Hostel was all about the boys, the sequel is reserved for the ladies. We have the bitchy, mean slutty type. The boring, diary-loving nerdy type, and the sensible girl who just screams out 'protagonist' at us. Honestly, anyone who has even a scant knowledge of storytelling is going to predict who's going to buy it and who's going to survive, so I'm ruining nothing. The girls start off in Italy in a life-drawing class, for some reason, where the model (who's tits we've just seen, but hey, that's a horror movie standard, so that isn't a complaint) shows an interest in the drawings done by Beth (sensible girl). The girls board a train, only to find the model on the train too. She invites the girls to a spa in Slovakia, and the girls agree to go. There, they are secretly auctioned off to two American guys, and some randomer who turns up for one death scene. We see the American guys (one gung-ho, one not so sure, just to keep the cliches going) arrive in Slovakia and gear up for their torture-murder experience. And so begins the blood-letting.



Okay, I will admit, I have, in the past, sat through and enjoyed my fair share of splatter-fest movies. I've witnessed the infamous splinter to the eye scene of Zombie Flesh Eaters (or plain old Zombie 2 to the Yanks!). I've seen Cannibal Holocaust (which did in fact, make me squirm quite a bit). So when it comes to a bit of gore, I'm no new-comer. Blood, guts, brains, whatever, bring em on. And Hostel: Part II does indeed have blood in it. But other than that, there's nothing here. Director Eli Roth has a bigger budget to play around with in this movie. Everything is shot with a very slick sheen. However, the film is just dreadfully dull. There is absolutely no tension whatsoever throughout the film. Honestly, I've felt more tension waiting for a bus. Nothing seems to happen for ages, and then when we get to the guts (pun intended) of the film, it ends. It's almost as if the last third of the script was accidentally deleted from Roth's script, but they went ahead and filmed anyway. And to be honest, when it comes to the blood-letting, apart from one completely ridiculous, pointless, and over the top scene, there's not going to be much here for the gore-hound. I really was expecting more.

What's going on with the horror genre? It's a genre that can deliver some of the most visceral and exciting cinematic experiences in the medium. Yet this is what we're offered? There is nothing scary or even interesting about these types of films. Even if it truly is the filmmakers' intention to make the viewer squirm, there's more uncomfortable viewing on the Discovery Channel. I will admit, there are a few modern horror films worth a damn. Greg Mclean's Wolf Creek was a very successful film in that it was very, very uncomfortable viewing. But Hostel: Part II just doesn't even come close.
If you're looking for a really uncomfortable, blood and guts type film to make you nauseous, go rent something by Umberto Lenzi or Lucio Fulci. Seriously, get your hands on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (NOT THE REMAKE, THE 1974 ORIGINAL) and see what real tension is. Otherwise, avoid Hostel: Part II. It's just a boring, juvenile, irritating waste of time.

1/10

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (2007) - Gore Vebinski

There are a lot of mysteries in this world. Who shot JFK... Did Atlantis exist... and how the hell has the Pirates of the Caribbean garnered so much praise from so many people. I remember walking into a cinema in Brisbane while on holiday way back in 2003 and watching the first movie of this franchise. While mildly entertained by Depp and Rush, I found the whole experience rather tedious. The sequel, Dead Man's Chest was one of the most infuriating film experiences I've ever had to sit through. It was a deplorable mess of a film with characters I despised and a story line that was as logical as Paris Hilton's 'celebrity' status. And now I have witnessed the final film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End starts of with a sub-Return of the Jedi opening where the 'heroes' have to infiltrate a villain's HQ and get something from him. We have Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) go see Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) about a map to Davy Jones' Locker so they can go retrieve Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Meanwhile, the East Indian Trading Company have teamed up with Davy Jones himself (Bill Nighy) in order to eradicate pirate kind from the world. The heroes go get Jack, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) ends up with Davy Jones and his ilk, the heroes go to Shipwreck Cove for an assembly of the Pirate 'brethren' and everyone meets up for the obligatory final battle. That is the story boiled down to it's very basic elements.



Firstly, writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio must be congratulated. They have managed to create the most absurdly overrated trilogy of all time. The first movie was bad. But it was just bad. It was just a basic story with some impressive special effects. Then they wrote Dead Man's Chest, which introduced a whole slew of storylines and a load of new characters, each with their own plot. It was a terrible, terrible film, but as with most trilogies, the second films almost always tend to be the most difficult to pull off, and thus end up being the weakest (The Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part II being the exceptions). So it was up to At World's End to tie up loose ends. And here in lies a huge problem. There are so many storylines going on in this film that the majority of the film is spent in exposition. For almost 2 hours, everybody stands around explaining the plot to each other. And for an audience, this is incredibly boring. Adventure films of this kind rely on set-pieces. And yet, the writers have stripped this film of ANY set pieces. There is so much story going on that there is no room for anything exciting to happen and by the time the final confrontation comes along, I found myself not caring what was going to happen and just glad the end was in sight.

And now for the characters. Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack. How this character has become so popular is beyond me. Depp is probably the greatest actor of his generation, yet when playing the dreadlocked drunken coward, he is producing the single worst performance of his illustrious career. And yes, I'm including A Nightmare on Elm Street in that list. Here, he continues his limp-wristed, stumbling, slurring Keith Richards imitation to infuriating lengths, still being a character who exalts cowardice and treachery. For the first forty minutes of this boring epic, Depp is nowhere to be seen, yet once he arrives on screen (with about 20 other Depps at the same time), he immediately becomes annoying. There is no depth to Depp in this film. Yet this may be his last turn as Captain Jack, and this is a great thing. Maybe now Depp can return to doing proper performances in decent films.

And then we have Keira Knightly. For the first two movies, she played the damsel in distress. The first movie saw her scream her way through the whole affair while gushing over her pretty-boy blue collar boyfriend, Will Turner. In the second movie, she became a back-stabbing wench, unable to decide between a drunken letch or a girly RADA graduate. In this movie, they try to pass her off as a pirate. In fact, at one point, she becomes the Pirate King, which I guess would make Will Turner the Pirate Queen. Which is quite fitting as Orlando Bloom is so much of a girl in these movies. Knightly tries to pull off being tough, to the point where she has to deliver a rabble-rousing Braveheart style 'they can take our lives, but not our freedom' speech. Yet she cannot drop the lah-de-dah accent. It is yet another plot contrivance that the crowd listening to her isn't reduced to a giggling mess at this appalling attempt at leadership.

And yet Knightly is not the worst actor in the movie. Oh no. Let us not forget Orlando Bloom. Bloom is, without a doubt, the single worst A-List actor working today. In fact, he is so bad, that I am no longer going to waste any time going on about how utterly devoid of acting talent he is.

Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy return as Captain Barbossa and Davy Jones, respectively. To be honest, while I was watching Dead Man's Chest, I noted that the film was really missing something in the absence of Captain Barbossa. When the character did return, I lost patience at how utter stupid a plot contrivance it was. Rush is the only actor in the trilogy who is somewhat believable at being a pirate. But when he's surrounded by such shitty characters, he just gets lost in the mess. Bill Nighy, as Davy Jones, is actually the only interesting thing about these movies. For an actor who is lost under a face full of CGI, he pulls off the film's only notable performance. While Davy Jones' character history and motivations are still a complete mess, Nighy manages to bring enough menace and pain to a character who is essentially a man with an octopus for a head.
The rest of the cast are just the usual mix of cliched adventure stereotypes. You have the grizzled first mate; the idiotic comic relief characters; a stereotypical animal side-kick and a couple of stiff British villains. Truly uninspired writing there, Elliott and Rossio.



Something must be said for the special effects. If there's one thing you cannot fault this film for, it's the visual impact it has.The folks at ILM really are top of their game, and here they prove that. The technical side of the special effects is faultless, and Davy Jones' crew are quite marvelous to look at. Yet, at the same time, there is nothing new about them. In fact, other than more and more plot lines, there is nothing new about this movie at all. The special effects, while technically perfect, have all been seen before. Director Gore Verbinski sure seems to be able to show us shiny CGI, but when it comes to drama and spectacle, he falls flat. The big final battle between the pirates and the East Indian Trading Company builds to the point where you think there's going to be a massive, massive sea battle, but in the end, it's just down to two ships. Every other ship is reduced to being onlookers. It's a build-up that never delivers.

At this point, I've lost interest in saying much more about this series of films. I had a very sneaky suspicion that Gore Verbinski might pull it out of the bag for this movie. Dead Man's Chest was a mess, but it had the difficult task of bridging two movies. This was the chance the director had to pull off quite a coup. Instead, we're left with yet another incoherent, sloppy mess of a film. A film bogged down by an unnecessarily weighty script, characters whose motivations make no sense, performances that are for the most part appalling and a final battle that is absolutely anti-climactic. I really hoped that this would be the end of this rubbish saga. Yet the closing moments leave the film open for another piece of shit sequel. And that, is a sorry state of affairs. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (or At Wit's End) is one of the worst films of the year.

1/10