CINEMA: Day Watch

For the uninitiated, Day Watch is the sequel to Night Watch, and the prequel to Dusk Watch, a fantasy set in modern Moscow about a battle that has raged for thousands of years between the forces of good and evil.In the first film Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Khabensky), a member of the Night Watch, set in motion a chain of events that has estranged his son Egor (Dima Martynov) and driven him into the clutches of the Dark Ones. Egor is a Great Other, and whichever side can command his soul, can tip the balance of power in their favour. But the Light Ones also have a potential Great One, Svetlana, played by Mariya Poroshina who, to complicate matters further, has fallen in love with Anton. Accused of murder by the Day Watch, and driven by his desire to win his son back, Anton begins searching for the Chalk of Fate, a piece of chalk that can rewrite destiny.

Director Timur Bekmambetov brought a whole new visionary concept to Russian cinemas with Night Watch and Day Watch but, in truth, neither film brings anything new to the big screen beyond its home borders. In many ways it’s Lord of the Rings crossed with Underworld, which would be no bad thing, but then they go and spoil it all with a few ‘lighter moments’, which are clunky and awkward and, in some cases, cringe-inducing and sit unhappily within this apocalyptic tale.

More of a marathon than a sprint, the film feels all of its 132 minutes and, when the action does arrive, it is a little patchy and uninvolving. And that’s the film’s trouble, it isn’t quite sure what it wants to be. It’s a juxtaposition, a film full of ideas that don’t gel, some good, some bad, and when you mix the good with the bad – and that’s not the ‘forces for’, either – you just end up with mediocre.

The special effects are excellent, however, and that’s no mean feat when you consider that 42 studios were involved in the process. Khabensky is engaging as Anton, although it’s a struggle to believe that he’s one of Night Watch’s premier Protector’s of Light. Bekmambetov wanted the members of Night Watch to look like ordinary people, and Anton does, but in doing so loses a little crediblity when called upon to battle the forces of evil.

Poroshina brings little to the screen, her expression remaining remarkably vacuous as she sleepwalks through the movie. The stand-out performance comes from Russian popstar Zhanna Friske as Alisa, the love interest of Zavulon (Viktor Verzhbitsky), who leads the Dark Ones. Quirky and interesting, hard yet vulnerable, Friske commands every scene she is in. On the downside, she has had a chart-topping hit with a song called La La La, but it would be churlish to hold that against her. There are some nice little touches too, especially the clever use of stylised subtitles to reflect the mood onscreen that are, thankfully, very easy to read.

The finale is spectacular but, ultimately, disappointing. What could have, and should have, been a really good film is merely good, but still go and see it, it’s amazing what you can do with a foil ball.     Paul Acres

DVD: The Last Sect

When one sees the name David Carradine attached to a movie it’s only natural to have low expectations. Unless Quentin Tarantino is involved. The ageing star of Kung Fu has paid the bills by exploiting the minor cache of his name in a vast array of cheap genre films since the 1970s. Consider Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror as an example. But The Last Sect stands head and shoulder above many.

Rather than the extended cameo role expected, Carradine is actually deserving of his leading man status in this film. While it’s clear he spent very little time working on the film, the makers certainly got their money’s worth. All his scenes in the first hour take place on a single set, in a series of cutaways from the main storyline. It’s a risk that pays off for the filmmaker. This is just one quirky facet to this intriguing B-movie that has far more to recommend it than its dire DVD artwork would suggest.

Conceptually it’s ridiculous, it’s about a sect of vampires running an internet dating service to entice victims who they then film on their own vampire website. Why? Good question. However, by stylishly muting the colours, emphasising reds, employing jump cuts and establishing an erotic but not gratuitous lesbian subtext, production designer turned director Jonathan Dueck really makes the most of his limited budget. Carradine, playing the legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing no less, is even persuaded to riff on his Kill Bill roll by playing the flute and delivering metaphorical monologues.

So what else is there to recommend this delightful Friday night feature? Well, beyond the marriage of eroticism and Tarantino imitation, there’s the brilliantly creepy Julian Richings. Cast against type as a skilled vampire hunter aiding the ageing Van Helsing, the prolific 51-year-old character actor gets into action in some brief but nicely choreographed martial arts moments.

Not quite as offbeat as you’d expect, The Last Sect is somewhat gripping. It’s borderline pretentious and certainly not a genre classic but for those with an interest in low budget and intertextual films it’s certainly worth 85 minutes of your time. Richard Hawes

Interested? Buy it here.

CINEMA: The Brave One

Jodie Foster has never been an actor to shy away from difficult or controversial roles and so it is with The Brave One, in which she plays a woman pushed over the edge into a hellish version of reality. She is Erica Bain, the successful radio presenter of a show called Street Walk, who is head over heels in love with fiancé David (Naveen Andrews), and enjoying her life. But her perfect world is shattered when she and David are brutally mugged. David does not survive and Erica herself is so broken and bruised by events the streets of New York she once loved so much become places of fear for her. She decides she must get a gun for self-protection and by doing so becomes caught up in a chain of events that see her emerge as some dark form of vigilante –preying on what she perceives are the bad guys and feeling herself invincible because she believes she is already dead inside. Ordinary New Yorkers are divided over whether the vigilante is a force for good, or a misguided madman, and one New York detective (Terrence Howard) is determined to find the vengeful killer, whoever they are.

It’s a dark movie both in looks and intent, with much of the action taking place at night. Foster does well to capture Erica’s inner turmoil and to make her transition from law-abiding, loving citizen to cold killer believable. And yet, there is something distant about the film, it never fully connects with its audience, so you always feel you are  removed from the pain or fear Erica experiences. This distance is on one hand a good thing – it means you are not invited to condone Erica’s actions – but it also means the film has less power and resonance than it could have had.

The Brave One is one film that may engage your brain, but ultimately won’t capture your heart.     Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Hot Rod

If you loved Dodgeball and Blades of Glory you may well find something to giggle at in Hot Rod, the tragedy to near-triumph tale of the world’s worst stuntman, Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg). Dressed in his homemade costume and doing ‘stunts’ on his trusty moped, Rod and his team of mates (Bill Hader, Danny McBride) vow to wow the local schoolkids. But when his rough and tumble stepfather Frank (Ian McShane) gets sick, Rod decides to stage his biggest stunt ever to raise money for the hospital bills.

You just know it’s all going to go pear-shaped as Rod tries to out-evil Evel Knievel by jumping over 15 buses. Hot Rod is not big and it’s certainly not clever, but it does have some very funny scenes as Rod, the accident-prone nerd, takes a series of spectacular pratfalls. Ian McShane plays it grotesque as Frank, who believes he can punch some sense into young Rod – and quite literally does so on numerous occasions. There are some great pastiches of films such as Rocky (complete with power rock soundtrack) as Rod prepares for his big day, and there’s even a happy ending of sorts – result!
Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Rocket Science

Here’s another film for all of life’s losers – hey guys (and gals) you may not make it to the top spot, but you’ll find your niche. Teenage Hal (Reece Daniel Thompson) may have a good mind, but it’s a bit difficult to let people know how witty he is when his stammer keeps getting in the way. Which makes it all the more surprising when high achiever Ginny (Anna Kendrick) approaches him to join the school debating team. Hal can hardly say hello, let alone master the super-fast speech technique needed for debating against the clock, but he decides to give it a go as he’s smitten with the forceful Ginny. From hereonin Hal’s life just gets weirder as he befriends the kid who lives across the road from Ginny (just so he can spy on her), keeps getting pushed around by his big brother (Vincent Piazza), gets drunk for the first time and finally meets the legendary Ben (Nicholas D’Agosto) who crashed out of the Debating Championships in explosive style the year before.

With a sweet-as-popsicle indie soundtrack and some superb performances this puts a new twist on the Heathers/Napoleon Dynamite school of teen angst misfit movies. What gives it its biting edge is a script that’s so acidic it sometimes makes you wince. It’s weird, surreal and loopy, but always utterly believable and anyone who has been through puberty will recognise the cringe-worthy awkwardness of the teen years as portrayed here.
Dee Pilgrim

DVD: The Pied Piper of Hutzovina

Early on in this film the motives of Eugene Hutz and his exploration of the music of his gypsy ancestors are thrown into question. Entering a garden in a rundown gypsy camp in Zakarpattia, Ukraine, this hip troubadour hands his guitar to an enquiring local. Although noticing a missing string, the man plucks, strums and slides with the ease and articulation of a teacher guiding a pupil. When asked where his guitar is by Hutz, he smiles and says: “I don’t have one. Guitars are too expensive.”

At that point, Hutz, an NME ‘cool list’ contender and frontman of New York-based gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, seems starkly out of place – his journey to play music with real gypsies no more than slumming it with talented, poor, forgotten people. However, the realisation that follows, as the man’s neighbours clamour round with an ensuing eruption of song and dance, is that Hutz’s journey is to learn, to discover the “gypsy root” and that he is celebratory, not threatened, when that involves unearthing superior talent to his own.

Hutz’s exuberance in gathering knowledge of Ukrainian folk music is welcomed with amused intrigue in the Carpathian region and his home town of Kiev. But in a devastating scene his self-styled gypsy hip-hop is rejected by the head of the Kiev Gypsy Theatre as a threat to their enduring tradition. In characteristic form, the musician muses on their immutable differences: “I come from a fucking punk rock background. I’m building my way back into the gypsy tradition.”

Throughout, the enamoured filmmaker Pavla Fleischer is one step behind Hutz. Apart from a mutual love of gypsy music, her main reason for following Hutz is amorous, though not reciprocal as Hutz is accompanied by his lover whom is never filmed. Fleischer’s increasingly concerned voiceovers about the enigmatic Hutz betray the carefree relationship depicted on camera and it becomes clear that if he is the pied piper, then she is one of the innocents of the fairytale, doomed in her uncontrollable urge to follow.

What is unfortunate is that this relationship of mutual appreciation on the edge of obsession is not sufficiently scrutinised. At the film’s close Fleischer sums up Hutz’s journey and naively attributes his working-class childhood as the reason for his musical driving force. What remains subtly overlooked is the director’s need to be around Hutz and her compulsion to follow. With this omitted, even moments as disarming as Hutz accompanying his grandmother through songs in his family’s tower block apartment cannot prevent the feeling that only half of the story has been told. Beren Neale

Buy it here, comrade.

CINEMA: Michael Clayton

Back in the late 1970s/early 1980s director Sydney Pollack made a string of thoughtful, intelligent movies with a slow burn (Absence Of Malice, The Electric Horseman), and so it seems fitting that he has a significant role here as a performer in another thoughtfully provocative movie that takes its time to tell its story.

He stars as Marty Bach, one partner in a high-powered law firm that employs Michael Clayton (George Clooney) to do its dirty work. If a mess has to be cleaned up, then Clayton handles it; if someone needs to keep his mouth shut, then he will ensure silence reigns. But when another partner, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), starts to spout off about dirty deeds concerning a chemical company represented by the firm, Clayton is uneasy. He has to deal with the new executive at the company, the steely Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), and something tells him all is not as it seems. Slowly, inevitably, he starts to peel back the layers of lies and conspiracy to reveal the truth – and what he finds chills him to the bone.

This is a dark, dignified, beautifully put together film that gets more intense as it slowly and purposefully paces to its conclusion. Although it does start out in a rather confusing series of seemingly disconnected scenes (it is not told in chronological order), as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place so the tension mounts. George Clooney is superb as the disillusioned Clayton who feels he has somehow let his life slip into a grey area and now sees an opportunity to redeem it. Equally good is Tom Wilkinson as Edens, a man whose troubled conscience sends him to the brink of madness. Then there’s Tilda Swinton, breathtaking as the company woman who will sacrifice everything for her job. The final confrontation between Clooney and Swinton is a masterclass in acting, a perfectly poised battle of brinkmanship to see who will hold their nerve. This is not a shoot-‘em-up adrenalin burst of a movie, but a richly detailed, measured observation of the human condition. Expect Oscar nominations. Dee Pilgrim

DVD: UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine

Almost as deranged as its monstrous star during the first act, shifting between intense, gory violence and sledgehammer comedy, UKM eventually becomes comfortable with its identity as a rou-teen horror.

With Michael Madsen earning above-the-title status by making regular appearances throughout, the narrative follows an unfortunate bunch of foolish army cadets played by obligatory unknowns expiring in a conventionally-paced fashion as the 80-minute mark gets closer and the credits finally roll. Shot almost entirely on cheap, characterless sets, which represent the corridors and rooms of a military research station our Breakfast Club ensemble bicker and bond. That is until they begin being torn apart by the monstrous super-soldier of the title. Or falling victim to the genetic material they’ve been injected with.

An isolated location, teenage victims, a mad scientist, head crushing, faces ripped off and gratuitous underwear scenes, this film has it all. But it’s everything you’ve seen a million times before done far better.

The most interesting thing about this film is that its director David Mitchell previously made a film called The Killing Machine back in 1994, and you know that now so save your money. This is one for die-hard fans of horror movies or Michael Madsen only. Richard Hawes

Buy UKM here mofo!

DVD: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

It is often said that the original is the best, and that remains true of the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Something strange is going on in the small, sunny Californian town of Santa Mira. People are behaving oddly, not quite themselves. With no one else to turn to, Dr Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is called upon to help. As Dr Bennell starts digging, he stumbles across the harrowing truth, that aliens have sent giant seed pods containing shape-shifting creatures to take over the world one unsuspecting person at a time. With the help of his lover Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), the couple try desperately to avoid the same fate as the rest of the townsfolk, while alerting an unsuspecting world to the growing threat.

Based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, this film has been interpreted as a commentary on McCarthyism as well as communism and, if you scratch away at the surface, it’s easy to understand why. However, take away the political undertones, and this is still a classic sci-fi horror, more than capable of standing on its own two legs. The fact that it’s shot in black and white adds to the eerie, claustrophobic feel. It harks back to a more vulnerable, more naïve time in man’s history when no one really knew what was out there.

Watching the aliens in the seed pods take on their human form, inflating like some life-sized rubber glove covered in soap suds, is hardly cutting-edge stuff by today’s standards, but at the same time, it fits perfectly within the historical context of this film.

McCarthy is perfectly cast as the increasingly desperate Dr Bennell, as we watch his previously idyllic existence, his life, slowly crumble around him. Wynter offers able support as Dr Bennell’s love interest as he struggles to protect her from the body snatchers while effecting their escape, and the as yet unknown Sam Pekinpah puts in a brief appearance as a meter reader.

There’s a colourised version of the film on the DVD, but watch the film the way God intended. After all, why spoil a good thing? Paul Acres

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is released on DVD on October 1. Buy it here.

CINEMA: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Was Adam Sandler born in the late 1880’s? Or has he been stuck in some cryogenic chamber for the last, oh say, 40-odd years? The only reason I ask is because his latest comedy contains the most flagrantly homophobic jokes (oops, look, someone’s dropped the soap in the men’s locker room – not once, but twice!) since a certain fat comic touted his pooftah gags round the North’s working-men’s clubs. In this case Sandler tries to subvert the usual ‘gay trying to stay in the closet but getting outed’ scenario, to a ‘straight men trying to jump into the closet’ one.

He and Kevin James play New York firemen who are just trying to make ends meet. Chuck (Sandler) owes Larry (Kevin James) his life after Larry saves him from a flame-grilled death. So, when the recently widowed Larry asks for his help, Chuck really can’t say no. But what Chuck is asking is that Larry and he pretend to be gay so they can enter into a ‘civic partnership’ – as this is the only way Chuck’s kids can get their hands on his life insurance if he dies.

This is a complicated scenario, not only because the two are obviously not gay, but also because ladies’ man Larry starts to fall for their attorney (Jessica Biel). From this point the gay jokes come thick and fast, with Chuck coming to appreciate his feminine side while the other guys at the fire station learn tolerance and understanding. The thing is, it’s at least 40 years out of date, tired and maybe worth a snigger in the school playground, although most ten year olds are more sophisticated than this.

Believe me, you have seen funnier Sandler comedies with better jokes and far more imaginative laughs. Dee Pilgrim