Murder on the Orient Express (2017): PC Poirot and the Diversity Train of Tolerance

What is cinema in 2017? Okay, straight talking now, cinema in 2017, in western countries, and I’m talking that multiplex down the road, and the turdfests that they show, is 100% diversity programming, and when I say ‘diversity’ I mean anti-white, anti-male, anti-western propaganda, produced by liberals, directed by liberals, acted by liberals, for liberals.

Like the good little Globalists/Communists that they are, the world-view of the moviemakers is completely unambiguous, and very, very clear. Here how it goes:

Straight white men (the blonder the better) are the enemy, and so must be demonised at every opportunity. Masculine young ‘empowered’ females with black boyfriends are the future. Islam is a religion of peace. Christianity is evil, and lastly, and most importantly, nation states must be demolished, because nation states (white countries only, obviously) represent the white male patriarchy, of racist, sexist, Islamaphobic, intolerant, hateful, straight white men.

As a straight white man myself, the cinema therefore has nothing to offer me, other than lacerating self-hatred, and accusations of racism, sexism, and being a terrible person because of my politically inconvenient race and gender.

So, bearing all of this in mind, and not being particularly inclined towards self-hatred, I don’t go to the cinema, usually.

Oh dear, what happened to Poirot?

Last night I made an exception, because my mother wanted to see a movie, and so, because Tuesday nights are half price night, and because I wanted to make my mum happy, I decided to go. Was it as bad as I expected it to be? Was the movie full of social justice, and liberal virtue signalling about how not racist and sexist they all are? Were my assumptions confirmed?

Yes, of course they were. It’s a movie. It’s 2017. It’s what they do. To expect anything else would be unrealistic. You go to the cinema, and you know what you’re going to get.

Okay then, onto the movie, and it could have been any movie, but the one that I decided to see (because it was the movie my mum wanted to see) was called ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’ I know the plot, know the characters, know what happens, and I also know that they won’t be able to help themselves.

Kenneth Branagh is in charge, the director, and star, and as old Ken is a luvvie lefty (obviously) virtue signalling about tolerance and diversity is a certainty. There will be no surprises here. You are going to get a new ‘interpretation’ of the old story, and that new interpretation means social justice and ‘diversified’ characters (which is code-word for less white characters, obviously) so here we go, let’s see how far they go with it.

First off, Poirot doesn’t look like Poirot anymore. He’s got a ridiculous moustache, but not the right kind of ridiculous moustache. This moustache is grey, and bushy, and ostentatiously hipsterish. Kenneth’s Poirot isn’t a quirky little Belgium. He’s a domineering peacock hipster, constantly on the lookout for any small incident of non-PC intolerant behaviour. This ain’t Poirot. It’s lefty bore, daaaarling boy, wine sipping, Guardian reading, soyboy Kenneth. Hey Ken, how's Spacey doing? Oh, we can't talk about him anymore, can we?

I see director, not detective in the new Poirot. I see the Metrosexual City. I see the prat. I see the virtuously lonely white hipster, itechnology, a job in PR, advertising, transgender bathrooms, city-bubble consensus from the offices of an all-female, all white, diversity is our strength Huffington Post echo chamber of cat lady future loneliness. I see the city. The dead, meaningless, diversified, sniffing from the fumes of what once was great, ruined cityscapes of Europe, another movie that feeds from the glory of the past, farted out for the eight people in the cinema showing where I sat, the poison fumes of 2017, liberals, liberals, liberals.

From the cultural ruins of modern day Europe, our progressive movie scoots back to the 1930's with a pretentious Poirot solving a mysterious case involving a Jew, Muslim, and a Christian. Oh, religious conflict? A movie where real world issues are being explored honestly, and bravely? No, don’t be silly. This is a modern lefty movie. You already know who the bad guy is, don’t you?

So how are we going to navigate through the religious conflicts in Jerusalem, and find a convenient scapegoat that will leave all religions off the hook, and confirm (what we already know) that diversity is a strength after all? Easy, my friend. Pick the white man, any white man will do, blame him, it’s always him, that rotter. Religious conflict? Don’t be silly. Blame the WASP. All religions can co-exist, even in Jerusalem. In the modern toxic-city of liberal consensus, and trucks of peace, we all get along.

So, nothing religious going on here at all, let’s move on, it’s the white guy to blame, as it always is, and always will be, at least in cinema today, if not the real world, not that the two things have anything in common whatsoever.

From solving the Jerusalem issue, hipster Poirot jumps on-board the famous train (which is shot in perpetual darkness, thus wasting the impressive interiors that my mum was looking forward to seeing on the big screen) and the well-known plot unfolds, and unravels into predictable lefty tiresomeness.

Working class white male villain (the enemy of the left)

Johnny Depp is the villain, and he plays him as a rough and ready working-class man, the very kind of commoner so feared by hipster Ken and his darlings of the theatre. Middle-class, city-dwelling, university Marxists always fear the genuine working-classes, so to have working class Johnny playing the villain makes a lot of sense. This is the kind of man they really fear, in the real world, outside of their twitter block bubble of self-congratulatory virtue. This is the Donald Trump voter. This is the Brexiteer. This is the straight, white, working class man. This is their enemy. This is the man they want to murder, and this is the man they want to replace with ‘diversity.’

I suppose I should mention the black guy now, shouldn't I? Okay then. So there was a black guy in the movie. Did he appear in the original novel by Agatha Christie, I hear you ask. Of course he bloody well didn't, is the answer. So how is he going to be portrayed? How do you think? There’s nothing unpredictable here. He’s black, he’s in a movie, don’t worry, he’s not going to be the bad guy.

Nope the black guy is a brave, self-sacrificing, courageous, erudite, charming, wonderful man, and he’s as English as Winston Churchill. Oh, and he's race-mixing with the character played by Daisy Ridley, that boyish girl who’s doing the same race-mixing thing in the new social justice Star Wars franchise. Hey Daisy, how come so many of your on-screen relationships are with black guys, but in the real world you are dating a fellow white, English actor? Come on girl, think of the social justice message you are portraying in your roles, and commit to the bit in your real life, otherwise it might just look like you are the vehicle of a message that you don’t really believe in yourself.

Away from reality, and back on the lib-train, one of the characters addresses this race mixing directly, blending her white and red wine, and declaring virtuously, ‘I prefer Rosa anyway.’ The message is clear. You shall be blended, such is the way of the modern progressive left, where diversity means consensus, no white, no black, no colours at all, just blended neutral corporate friendly colours that have as much meaning as a Pepsi advert. Diversity compels you to agree. Ignore Muhammad Ali and his blue and red bird analogy.

You’re not racist, are you?

Daisy = Lib Director's Dream Girl (a progressive man in a dress)

And so I yawn, and start to notice that Poirot, with his non-Poirot look, isn’t acting like Poirot either. He’s looking at an old photograph of some simpering lass, and getting in touch with his emotions, doubting himself, and looking at the photograph, pleading for ghostly guidance from a girl not yet in her mid twenties. What is it with old liberal men and their belief that great wisdom resides in the minds of pretty white girls who have yet to experience anything of life at all? It’s weird, cucky, and silly, but I see it all the time. Here’s the truth. Pretty young girls are not exactly the font of great wisdom. Sorry Ken, but wisdom and pretty female faces don’t exactly align in the real world. I've met lots of pretty young girls, but a wise and pretty young girl? Nope, I’m yet to meet one, and though I live in hope, I’m not exactly holding my breath and waiting for one to show up.

With simpering cuck Poirot getting in touch with his feelings, the plot goes down the usual route, with a couple of dramatic scenes added to make it seem more interesting than it is, before a final denouement where the suspects are lined up on a last supper table. The hipster detective reveals who done it, and then proceeds to let the guilty parties get away with it, walking off to take on the next case with barely a care in the world.

Hang on, that’s not how it usually ends, is it? Nope, but this is a newer version, with a Poirot who is not Poirot, and added feelings, and a fog of relativism and nihilistic grey emptiness.

Right and wrong? Paying for your crime? Who cares? Rules, facts, law, morality, all dissipate in the liberal fog of feelings and getting in touch with the wisdom of a pretty feminine face. This is the brave new world of the progressive matriarchal welfare state, and the only thing that matters is how you feel, no morals, no order, no justice, just the feels, race-mixing, white-guilt, a hipster moustache, and the leftist establishment’s fear of the white, working-class man.

So, that’s it. My yearly visit to the cinema, one and done, that’s it for me. Will I be watching the new Star Wars movie with Daisy doing her race-mixing thing again? Nah, I think I’ll give that one a miss. She doesn't believe in it. Not really, not in the real world, and neither do I.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens SUCKS (Sorry, but it does)

Spoiler Free Movie Review: Star Wars-The Force Awakens: Banging my head against a wall

Directed by: J. J. Abrams
Written by: Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams & Michael Arndt
Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver & Harrison Ford
Distributed by: Walt Disney
Release Date: 14th December 2015


Sometimes, no scratch that. I’ll start again.

Most of the time I feel like I am living in a parallel reality. I’m here, but not really here, if you know what I mean. I walk around you, but I’m not really a part of you. I’m outside, a bit off, a bit odd, watch out for me. I’m the strange one.

A very weak villain

Being the (accidentally) strange person that I am, I get to be the sole, lonely witness to things that ‘normal’ people cannot see. But, and here’s the worse bit. I refuse to keep my delusional visions to myself. I go onto the Internet, and here I am now, and I spew my bile everywhere. I’m a terrible person. I really am.

I’m an eternally loud mouthed, unpopular and opinionated person, and I spend my life shouting about the things that only I can see. It’s a frustrating life. I point out what is in front of me, things that are invisible to almost everybody else on the planet (there are exceptions) and in doing so I become the bad guy. I’m the villain. Stick a helmet on me and call me Darth, but there’s no redemption scene for this guy.

Why can’t I just go along to get along? Why can’t I stick my head in the horse manure and pretend that I’m sniffing roses? I don’t know. There must be something wrong with me. I’m weird. I’m dangerous. I say things that people don’t want to hear, and so, once again, here I go, saying things about the new bloody Star Wars movie. It’s very likely that you are going to hate this review, so read with caution. Here I go again- RANT TIME.

Here’s how I felt as I left the cinema after sitting through the seeming eternity that is the new Star Wars movie. My ass was sore, my head hurt with the inanity of it, I was still struggling to detect some semblance of plot, and feminism was pouring out of my ears. I felt a stinging desire to scream, 'I’ve just witnessed the birth of a turd, don’t call a nurse, call a bloody plumber.’ And then I tune down, out of my own reality, back into the realm of ‘the norm’ and I listen to the voices of the people around me, the other cinema-goers, and horror to end all horrors, they bloody well loved it.

Agggghhh, my head is going to implode.

Here’s how the movie goes, and there will be NO SPOILERS here. It begins with a burst of optimism, fast paced action stuff, and excitement, excitement, excitement. It then settles down and you begin to realise that this is going to be a movie all about the feelings, the characters, a dollop of nostalgia and the not so subtle neoliberal bludgeoning of third wave feminism.

It's all about the girl..

Have you seen the Hunger Games? If so, you know how it goes. The young girl is the most important part of the movie, she’s tough, independent, brave, strong, MASCULINE, the future of humanity, blah, blah, blah. In this movie the young girl is the best mechanic, the best pilot, the best fighter, the best light sabre fighter (even though she has no training) and she generally makes all of the men look like fools as she dances circles around them.

The villain looks great, but is basically a wuss. His motivations for evil are skin deep, and he seems to exist purely as a punching bag for the female lead. That’s it. That’s all you are getting as far as character depth in this movie. All of the rest of them (Han Solo included) exist to serve the main protagonist, the Hunger Games perfect girl.

As for the plot, there is no plot. It’s cobbled together, parts of the first (good) movie and a bit of a search for Spock thing going on that they almost forget about until the very end. The special effects look like they cost a lot of money, and the soundtrack likewise, but when you search for the heart of the movie you’ll come up with nothing, because it has no heart. It has nothing to say about the world of 2015, and worst of all, it’s not even trying to.

So what is it trying to do? It’s trying for nostalgia, humour, and excitement, fun and umm, more nostalgia I guess. It has some amusing moments. The cinemagoers laugh at the bits that they are supposed to laugh at, and it’s very loud and has lots of explosions. But if you dare look deeper (as many will refuse to do) what you will find is a lack of ideas, and a lack of connection to post 9/11 concerns.

...and nostalgia.

The villains look like Nazi’s. They line up like they are at Nuremberg rally in 1935 where they listen to the crazed ranting speech of their authoritarian leader. But this is not real world contemporary evil. There is no discernible ideology behind the evil that they do. They are evil because they are ‘the dark-side.’ That’s as deep as things get. They are cartoon evil, distanced from all of the contemporary concerns (neoliberalism, multiculturalism, tolerance, diversity, political correctness, statism, the rise of the social justice clown, endless foreign wars based on lies, enslavement to private banks, immigration and Sunni Islam) that plague our real world.

Look at that bracketed list. These are the issues that need to be addressed in the world of 2015. Will you see any of them being addressed in this movie? No, because it is a movie for juvenile adults that still want to be kids, and bringing any of that reality into their movie would make them feel uncomfortable, so out it goes. There will be no reality here. This movie is ‘awesome,’ it’s Star Wars.

They look cool, but their role is limited.

The counter arguments to this review will be that is was fun, exciting, entertaining, funny, for children, and there was a ‘cool’ moment that was a bit shocking, and upsetting. I found ‘the moment’ to fall flat, mainly because I was expecting it to happen, and secondly because by the point in the movie when it did take place, I had long lost interest in anything that was happening. I will give the movie credit though. It was a big safe blockbuster movie. It will make lots of money for Disney. Most people will love it, and I recognise that I am certainly not ‘most people.’ It wasn’t made for me. I can sod off. That’s fair. I accept that.

Let’s finish off this review before I waste any more brain cells on it. Perhaps the worst thing that I can say about it is that is has KILLED any remaining interest that I had in the Star Wars franchise. I loved Star Wars as a kid, but I guess I’m not a kid anymore, so it’s gone for me now. There will be another movie, and I will not be watching.

What else is there to say? A lot of people will love this stinky egg of a movie, and they will suck in its toxic vapours until they are puking all over the floor in delirious delight. As for me, I’ll be walking around the vomit, avoiding the puking fanboys and retreating back into my own safe space called reality. Goodbye Star Wars. Thanks for the memories, but I’m all grown-up now.


Rating: 4/10 (Starts strong, settles into a comfortable Space-Nazi, one-liners, explosions, jokes, nostalgic routine, becomes all about the perfect female lead, loses all semblance of plot and concludes with a familiar bang, and a nostalgic plea to watch the next movie.)

Movie review: The World’s End- Empty Nostalgia for the Loser Generation

Written by: Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg.

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman.

Release Date: July 2013

Box Office: $46.1



Simon Pegg is Hollywood diet body gaunt, he looks wealthy, his new hair must have cost him a fortune, but is Nicholas Cage bad. Nick Frost, his old buddy, is still Humpty Dumpty rotund, an everyman foil to the overachieving Pegg machine. That Office bloke is here as well. He plays the same character that he always plays, with the wide-eyed facial tics and air of bemused exasperation that has served him so well during his entire acting career.

Mocking nostalgia, whilst making money out of nostalgia.

The plot is perfunctory and involves some boring middle-aged gits and their pathetic old mate (Simon Pegg) going on a final pub-crawl around a sleepy English town. The movie sags as the boring old men sit in pub chatting about the past. Pegg is wacky, but the rest of the cast look bored and not into it at all.

Imagine a group of tired middle-aged salesmen having a chat in a pub with a ‘wacky’ 1990’s character trying to get a reaction out of them. That’s the first third of the movie. It then gets purposefully silly as some ridiculous alien robots are introduced into the narrative. They had to appear, as nothing else was happening. The movie then descends into fight scenes with aliens exploding into blue goo, lots of running around, and sight-gags involving Simon Pegg falling over fences, as he tends to do in all of his other movies. Hey, isn’t this the same plot as Shaun of the Dead?

Yeah, it’s Shaun of the Dead 2, just like the first movie, but with an added sense of overwhelming sadness and nostalgic regret. The narrative is unsure of itself, it sags, it’s overwritten, it’s dull and it lacks a strong new idea to give everything a sense of urgency and life. The attempt is to criticise nostalgia, whilst making money from nostalgia. The contradiction comes across as hypocrisy, as the movie is nothing if not painfully, apologetically self-aware. As it concludes you can feel the producers panic as they realise that their theme of an invading alien population might be misconstrued as an attack on the open borders mass immigration policy that is turning the UK into a segregated nation of warring tribal communities. It doesn’t want to do anything that might upset the neo-liberal corporate consensus of cultural genocide of indigenous European culture, so it shoehorns in a politically correct ending to appease the almighty god of cultural diversity. Nice one lads. I think you got away with it.

Here comes the forward rolls and fights in a pub.

It’s all very sad, to see the cool of the past, regurgitated with diminishing returns. What you have in this movie is a nostalgic unit shifter aimed at a generation that gave us Tony Blair, the Iraq war, Police state surveillance, lies and corruption. It’s a generation that paved the way for what we have now. A crumbling western civilisation, being looted by a political class of neo-liberal lunatics with an enslaved population losing itself in I-Phones, fantasy, gambling, sports, celebrities, nostalgia and anything that helps to distract their minds from the painful reality that surrounds their everyday waking lives.

I left ‘The World’s End’ with my mind very much on waking concerns. There was no distraction from painful reality here. It left me with a familiar feeling of sad emptiness and regret that you always get from indulging in corporate sponsored nostalgia. What was new and cool has become old and lame, and try as you might, you cannot reinvent what is now gone. The World’s End is an old man sitting in a pub, alone, thinking about the good old days, unable to recreate them. He’s alive, but lost in a dead past. He’s out of time, and his cool old friends are married/buried (as Kurt said) in the suburbs.

The old man looks pathetic, but then reality kicks in and you realise that Simon Pegg is a Hollywood career actor. He appears in Star Trek. He’s a star. There’s no austerity for him. He escaped the UK. He did very well for himself. He might be playing the sad old man in the pub, but that sad old man, drinking alone, stuck in the past, wrapped up in useless nostalgia, he’s not Simon Pegg. That pathetic old man is the 1990’s generation, the defeated, retreated viewers of this movie.

I loved these guys in 'Spaced.'

We cannot recapture a lost feeling. We cannot live off of the fumes of the past. It’s dead, gone, we need to move on, and we need to deal with the reality that is now. If we stay in the nostalgic past we are the suckers, because we are the people paying for the nostalgic movie that does not resonate with concerns of today. The actors are doing very well, don’t worry about them. They’ll go home to big houses and careers, we’ll go home to debt caged routines and dreams of the days when our world still had possibilities.

Simon Pegg is a winner, just like he always was. These days he’s selling nostalgia to losers, a winner, milking the failures that make up his audience of ageing fanboys, a well he can drain before going back to making irrelevant movies in Hollywood with unfunny American actors. Why then does he still go through the old UK routine, with diminishing returns, when he can stay in Hollywood making nonsense movies for the big US market? Who knows? Perhaps he just needs to sure up his UK fanbase every now and then? I think that’s probably it.

I don’t want to be reminded of a useless past. Pegg portrays a loser in these movies, but he’s no loser. The audience fanboys stuck in useless 90’s nostalgia are the losers, he panders to them, he pretends to be them, and why not? He’s a winner, and winners always portray themselves as losers in order to gain favour with their audience. I don’t want to be a loser. I don’t want to be stuck in the past. The 1990’s created what we have now. I live now, not then, I want to talk about now. I want to move on.  I have no desire to live in the useless, dirty old past. I want to live today. I want to talk about today. I want to do something about today. Today is all we have. The past is a graveyard, an overgrown nowhere land of sad-eyed nostalgic losers. I don’t want to go there. I have to move on.


Rating: 4/10 (The movie is nostalgia aimed at UK males who grew up in the 1990’s. I grew up during that time period, and loved ‘Spaced’ so I’m in the target demographic, but all it did for me was to leave me feeling empty and depressed)

Dreams of a Life (2011)- Movie Review in Prose: Who were the presents for?

Directed by: Carol Morley
Written by: Carol Morley
Starring:         Zawe Ashton
Distributor:     Dogwoof Pictures
Released:       16th December 2011 (UK)
Length:           95 minutes
Language: English
Box office: £187,513


'Dreams of a Life is a 2011 drama-documentary film, released by Dogwoof Pictures, directed by Carol Morley and starring Zawe Ashton.'

'It tells the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, whose body was found in January 2006 decomposing in her bedsit in Wood Green, North London, after she apparently died unnoticed in December 2003, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents with her TV still switched on.'

'The film interviews various friends, acquaintances and former partners to try to tell the story of Joyce, who is played in reconstructions by Ashton.' (Info from Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_of_a_Life


REVIEW:

A sad tale, looking for reasons behind the lonely death of a pretty girl, it was three years before anybody noticed, and I watch, judging everybody, forgetting about the editing decisions, the manipulation that is documentary, the lady never attached, the jobs, relationships, began, but never progressing.

I can relate.

She died alone, surrounded by Christmas presents: Who were the presents for? Her family, perhaps? Four sisters, and her father, do not appear in the documentary. Just work-friends that laugh at her being a cleaning lady before she died, poverty stripping her dignity, they are middle-class, and laugh at the image of her scrubbing floors, ha ha, work ‘mates’ do not care, a truth, it disturbs.

Two boyfriends interviewed. One with career/status rejected her. Other boyfriend is the ordinary man, not exciting, she rejected him, he still cries, the first boyfriend doesn't particular care, he's moved on and his life is fine.

Her isolation part choice, part failure.

Documentary pushes the idea of bad boyfriend abuse, it doesn’t stick, fails to convince. This is about personal choices, and a failure to connect, to plan for the future.

I do not see a victim here, just great sadness, a sadness at the heart of the towns, cities, routines and business that makes up our lives. Nothing extraordinary, it's the mundanity of life where real horror exists. A wave, a smile, fading into head down, scurry, a life off the rails, falling apart, sitting on a park bench, a face so pretty, now forgotten.

Documentary ends with a sad zoom of her face in the crowd, at a Nelson Mandella speech, it works well as an explosive documentary technique, she appears disinterested, apathetic, unmoved. An interesting lady, not into race politics or hero-worship. I probably would have liked her, but the lingering memory of the piece, a question remains: Who were the presents for?


Rating: 7/10 (The lack of input from surviving family members makes it all a bit speculative and contrived, but 'Dreams of a Life' is emotionally engaging, and worth watching as a social commentary piece about urban isolation and a failure to connect)

Movie review: Mr Holmes- Painful Truth or a Happy Lie?

Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Ian McKellen

Release Dates:
19 June 2015 (United Kingdom)
17 July 2015 (United States)

Rating: PG



First off, this movie is nowhere near as good as Gods and Monsters. Secondly, it doesn’t quite succeed in humanising the human calculator, Sherlock Holmes.

The plot is centred on the final case of the great detective, a case that ends in failure, leading him to retire to the country, and to take up a new life as a full-time Beekeeper. The case is explored in flashback with Holmes battling old age and memory loss in order to retell a story that he feels was inaccurately recorded by Dr. Watson.

The problem with this mystery case is that it happens very late in his career, and is not exactly exceptional in and by itself, so it feels more like a narrative plot device rather than the epiphany that would lead Holmes to completely re-evaluate his entire life. I didn’t quite believe in it, even though I really wanted to.

Great actor, mediocre script

When you don’t believe in a major plot point the movie has lost you, and the magic fades. It’s like seeing a magician put the card up his sleeve. You see the trick, and when it’s not a very good one you end up resenting the magician himself.

The emotional core of the movie is about a human calculator finally learning how to empathise and emotionally connect with his fellow human beings, and it should explode with repressed emotion finally being unleashed, but don’t expect any of that in Mr. Holmes.

There are moments of drama, of panic, of brief situational peril, but the emotional core is missing. There is no lost love, no unrequited relationships and no flashbacks where a teary eyed Holmes regrets the lack of physical or emotional attachments in his life. The human calculator does learn how to feel, but at 93 years of age, it feels way, way too late, and the moment of revelation, when it comes, is entirely underwhelming.

‘Mr. Holmes’ is ‘Gods and Monsters’ minus the emotional turmoil, sadness, despair and lack of redemption. It’s a happy lie version of an original movie about painful truth. Director Bill Condon has re-visited his seventeen-year-old masterpiece, and decided that it was a bit too truthful, and way too depressing. With ‘Mr. Holmes’ he has used the same narrative blueprint (confused old man with regrets, housekeeper, young confidant, flashbacks) and released a happier version of that exhilarating and emotionally draining triumph of a movie.

It will be interesting to see how cinema- goers react to this happier version of that far superior movie. I felt a tangible sense of disappointment in the auditorium as I made my way out of the cinema. A happy lie might be nice, but it’s a lie nonetheless. Cinema is at it’s best when you feel like you have been exposed to truth, no matter how unpleasant or uncomfortable that truth might be. Truth will hurt, but if given the choice between painful truth and a happy lie, I’ll happily choose painful truth every single time.


Rating: 6/10 (A happier version of a much better movie)

Movie review: Avengers: Age of Ultron- Explosions, One-liners and a Lack of Substance

Directed by: Joss Whedon
Produced by: Kevin Feige
Written by: Joss Whedon
Studio: Disney
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johannson, Samuel. L Jackson
UK Release Date: April 13th 2015
US Release Date: 1st May 2015


The first five minutes or so of this movie felt like a computer game with Captain America stuck on bike mode, dashing through the forest whilst fighting off WW2 villains in a Bavarian forest setting. There was something a bit off with it though. The special effects weren’t very impressive at all, and it looked a bit cheap and unconvincing.

Too many characters, all speaking in one-liners

I decided to give the movie the benefit of the doubt and expected it to suddenly grind to a halt, with a reveal that the bad special effects were actually a dream sequence, or some other contrived movie making false beginning. After the silly special effects were over the movie would then begin proper, right?

No.

That didn’t happen.

What did happen was a continuation of the bad computer generated special effects and childish superhero characters engaging in endless quips, puns and one-liners designed to get comic book fans to say ‘cool’ or ‘awesome.’ It wasn’t a good, entertaining, or even remotely pleasurable viewing experience for me. I really enjoyed the first Avengers movie, and Captain America: Winter Soldier was even better, but Avengers: Age of Ultron lacked a strong central plot idea, and was a dud from the very beginning.

The whole movie felt very flat to me. It came across as a lifeless unit-shifter of a product, using the good will generated by previous movies, and not putting the effort in to be a good movie on it’s own merit. It was a chore of a movie to sit through, with explosions and one-liners scattered across a barren wasteland of a plot and with the sinking sense that they’ve run out of ideas on this one.

Silly battle scene that came across like a computer game

The emotional heart of the movie involved Hulk and Black Widow having a tepid, passion-free romance, and Hawkeye boring cinemagoers with his dull wife and even duller kids. That Hulk/Widow romance was beauty and the beast, but with not enough time spent on it to make you care, and the attention paid to Hawkeye and his family just made you think that he was going to be killed off in the finale of the movie. I won’t spoil what happens to him (you won’t really care anyway), but all it did for me was to drag out the movie, adding an added element of dull quietude to the mess of explosions and one-liners.

The overall dullness, lack of central themes and stilted, too cool for school dialogue meant that I couldn’t relate to anything that was going on in the movie. It was fake, silly and childish, and I couldn’t care less about ANY of the characters. The dialogue was in love with it’s own forced cleverness. It was too self-aware, too self referential, too comic book geek culture obsessed. It annoyed me immensely, and came across like a middle aged comic book fan putting words into the mouths of his favourite comic book characters, not real people having a chat.

The villain of the movie, a computer generated twit called Ultron, was camp, confused, occasionally silly and not particularly threatening. He lacked depth or motive, wanting to kill off the entire human race because humanity sucks, or something like that. Don’t worry though. The Avengers were there to foil his evil plans, cue explosions, cute dialogue and boring bits featuring Hawkeye chatting to his wife. That’s the movie, and that’s all you are getting if you buy a ticket to go and see it.

Crud villain 

The entire Marvel movie franchise has been put in severe jeopardy by this awful, plodding bore of a movie, and I left the cinema feeling disappointed, frustrated, fed up and embarrassed that I’d spent my time and money on something so lacking in ideas and substance.

It left me with the same empty feeling you get after a trip to a fast-food chain ‘restaurant.’ You turn up, order the least unhealthy thing on the menu, have a deeply unsatisfying meal and leave feeling like you shouldn’t have bothered going there in the first place. That’s how I felt after watching Avengers: Age of Ultron. There was something deeply unsatisfying and plastic about the entire experience, and it left me with no desire to return and experience anything on the ‘Marvel’ menu ever again.

Avengers: Age of Ultron has already taken up way too much of my time, so I will finish the review here and end my suffering. No more thinking about this dud of a movie, off it goes, never to be spoken of again. It’s plastic, tasteless and deserves nothing but the bin, so in the bin it goes.


Rating: 2/10 (A very bad movie that has damaged the entire Marvel movie franchise)

Planet Terror: A bad review of a movie that I couldn’t be bothered to watch.

Released:  April 2007

Directors/Producers: Quentin and his mate Rob

Stars: Josh Brolin, Bruce Willis and Rose McGowan

For more info on this cinematic masterpiece (if you care) Click link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Terror



I tried. I really did, but I could only make it into the twentieth minute of this movie before I was so bored that I couldn’t stand watching another second of it.

I know that the politically correct feminist liberal geek crowd (who hate me anyway) will dismiss everything that I say about this movie, but what can I do? I try things out, but if they completely and utterly suck how do you expect me to react?

Ho-hum

Am I supposed to waste two plus hours of my life and squirm, yawn and sleep throughout the entire movie? Am I supposed to treat it like a bloody film school project and write an essay about it? What’s the point?

You might not believe this about me, but I actually have a completely worthless BA in film studies from some crappy UK university, so I know all about sitting through boring movies in order to write essays about them. Battleship Potemkin and the stupid bloody steps anyone? Anybody up for a marathon session of Hitchcock analysis focused on his creepy obsession with blondes and his seagull metaphors? Thought not. I’ve been there, and let me tell you this sad truth- the boredom factor that comes with analysing what has already been analysed to death is only matched by the abyss inducing pointlessness of it all.

Anyway, talking about useless film degrees and yawning middle-class students, let’s get back to the world of Quentin. Twenty minutes of fake grainy movie, deliberately bad acting, testicles being crushed up and a crying stripper is too much for me in 2014. I can’t even be bothered to talk about Quentin film student boy and his references to references to references. Yes, we know, he liked crappy old movies from the 70’s. Yes Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were really cool when they first came out, much like Fatty Smith and his Clerks stuff. I’m boring myself now by even referencing these things, and that’s the problem. It’s just references to dead things, references to a dead past, there’s no connection to what is happening now.

I noticed that one of the characters in Planet Terror was doing something on the Internet. It looked weird, out of place, like the director had stuck it in there by mistake. It was like seeing a digital watch in a movie about Roman gladiators. It takes you out of the moment, you remember it’s just a silly movie, and the magic is gone. I thought this was set in the 70’s? Oh, it’s not? Why does it look like it was set in the 70’s then? This is confusing, and silly, and worthless, and why am I wasting my time here?

There was something painfully fake about the movie as well, and yes I know it’s supposed to be fake, but where’s the enjoyment in watching gross out scenes and bad acting, but all done with a Hollywood budget of millions of wasted dollars?  There’s something depressing and grotesque about the whole vanity project, because that’s what it is, a vanity project from an already comfortably successful man.

I like Bruce

The whole feel of the project was just too jarringly inane for me to enjoy. If I were some kind of stumbling comatose old drunk, then perhaps it would be watchable, but I don’t drink. Why the Hell would I want to watch a purposefully bad homage to low budget movies that some guy has overly romanticised from the distance of his uninteresting suburban childhood?

I’ve heard that Tarrantino is going to retire after his next movie and I don’t blame him. He must have a big mountain of cash by now, so why stay on the stage when you have run out of material, when you have nothing left to say? I give him credit for that; at least he knows that it’s time to go.

But as for Planet Terror, I can’t sit through this movie. It made me so sad to see Bruce Willis in it. Oh dear, that’s not cool, or retro, or whatever, it’s just sad. I don’t want to watch something that is just going to make me feel sad, and not a good sad in a Bambi or Bicycle Thief kind of way, just sad in a politician lying to get us into their latest corporate war kind of way.

I warned you that this would be a bad review, and I wasn’t lying was I? And yes I know that Robert Rodriguez was credited as director, but this movie has Quentin’s sweaty paw prints all over it. And yes I know that this review was terrible. I give myself a lazy and low 2:2 for it. I’m sorry, but I can’t put the effort in to actually watch, and then do a proper movie review of something as pointless as Planet Terror. There’s no fun to be had here, no fun at all.

Movie rating: N/A 

Movie review: The Babadook- Terrifyingly real

Movie trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVxOrUjX-bc

Official website:
Www.discoverthebabadook.com

Dir: Jennifer Kent. Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight, Benjamin Winspear, Carmel Johnson. 15 cert, 95 min.

UK release date: October 24th 2014



The Babadook is an old-fashioned psychological horror movie, with modern technology largely shut out, thus creating a claustrophobic, isolated environment where a bereaved mother and her young son attempt to come to terms with the loss of her husband and his father.

It is a movie that could have been set in 1950, as the ubiquitous surveillance devices stuck to the side of temples are missing and Internet/social media is rejected early on. The mother declares it bad for the child, and that’s the first and last we hear of it. What we are left with is a very quiet house, a busy uncaring world, and a mother and child slowly going insane through lack of connectivity, empathy and the dominance of unresolved grief in their lives.

Isolation and grief

The Babadook itself is a creature that feeds on the isolation, grief and unresolved trauma that dominates the family’s life. The mother, rummaging around her old book shelves to find a new bedtime story for her little boy finds a mysterious book titled, ‘Mr Babadook.’ She reads it to him, slowly discovering that this is no ordinary bedtime story book. She stops reading before the end, but it’s too late. The creature has been given a doorway. He’s in, and for the rest of the movie he makes their lives a living Hell. All is explained, in a subtle way, at the end of the movie, it makes sense, and you leave the cinema feeling satisfied.

This is one of those movies that literally screams quality from the very beginning. It’s shot beautifully, with painstaking attention to detail, but it’s not forced, pretentious and trying to be something that it’s not. Have you ever experienced one of those up their own backsides Hollywood movies that are obvious Oscar bait for some middle-aged big name actor? I have, and they are blooding irritating beyond belief. This isn’t one of those movies. It looks great, sounds great, is unsettling, creepy and scary and it has huge emotional resonance as well.

Terrifying

The acting is exceptional. A bad child actor would have ruined the movie, but the seven year-old kid (Noah Wieseman) in this movie is amazingly good. Surprisingly good really, in that he comes across like a normal, slightly disturbed child. He’s not a Hollywood kid; he’s just a kid. And his mother, she is amazing. The range of emotions she goes through, pouring out onto the screen the torments of her soul, it really is an outstanding performance. I usually ignore the Oscars, but if ever an actress deserves an Oscar, it’s Essie Davis for her performance in this movie.

This would be an easy 10/10 movie for me, if not for the one issue I referenced in my opening couple of paragraphs. I understand why it distances itself from the contemporary issues that are destroying the sense of freedom and democracy in the west. It made the choice to isolate the small family, thus itensifying the sense of isolation and claustrophobia. That choice made the movie what it was, but why not have a couple of nods to what is going on in the world today? Perhaps it wasn’t possible? Perhaps the state surveillance issues of today had to be ignored to make the movie as effective as it was? That’s probably true, but even so, to get a perfect score from this reviewer you have to give me some acknowledgement that you are aware, and engaging with the issues that are dominating our times. It was a great movie, but it didn’t really say anything about the world as it is today.

Apart from that one issue, the movie is a world removed from what I usually experience at the cinema. Genuinely unsettling, emotionally engaging, beautifully shot, with tremendous use of sound and with outstanding performances from the two leads. The Babadook is a superior piece of cinema and the best horror movie since that I’ve seen since ‘Let the Right One In’ in 2008. If you’re going to the cinema any time soon, this is the movie that you’ll want to see.

Rating: 9/10

Movie review: Elysium (2013)- Kill yourself to prove you’re not a racist

Although the film's story is set in 2154, Blomkamp has stated that it is a comment on the contemporary human condition. "Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future," the director has said, "No, no, no. This isn't science fiction. This is today. This is now."

****Spoilers in review****

It took me a while, but I got there in the end and finally worked out that this movie wasn’t actually about the new world order but about liberal America’s attitudes towards immigration. To be more precise, it was about the Texas-Mexico border.

Matt Damon's liberal hero protecting poor innocent Mexicans

I was a bit slow on this one, but the clues were there all along. Why were all of the poor victims speaking Spanish? Why was Matt Damon the only white guy in the movie who wasn’t a villain? Why was the main villain speaking with a South African accent? Why was Elysium a big ‘lone star’ in space?

Yeah, I know I’m slow. So this was about Mexican people wanting to get citizenship in the United States, and how it’s really unfair and that the borders should be wide open so everybody can jump on the socialist bandwagon and into the loving arms of big brother government.

Here’s a spoiler alert. At the end of the movie all of the evil white people die, the Spanish speaking heroes are all made legal citizens of Elysium, and that’s it, end credits. Just how big is this Elysium then? Is there going to be room for everyone up there on that space station? How is this going to work resources wise? I guess we’ll never know, because the happy ending is just legalising everybody, and that’s paradise I guess. Big cheer for all of the heroic Spanish-speaking people, all the whites are dead, and everything is perfect now.

Errr, what? You don’t like that?  Sorry, but that’s the movie you’re getting here. Don’t you realise that we need to open our borders to all of the third world starving millions and only then will world peace and harmony be achieved. If you disagree, then you are racist.

Oh, this is a movie review isn’t it? So, the acting and what-not. The main racist South African villain was charismaticaly evil. Matt Damon did what he could with a largely unbelievable character, and Jodie Foster was mostly on autopilot playing a two dimensional evil politician. The plot had some nice twists, the special effects were great and there was a good fight scene at the end and a pretty emotional scene where the white man officially killed himself for the betterment of the human race.

Evil white racists

Matt Damon's character was self centred and unlikeable throughout most of the movie, but he was white, and I’m guess they’re trying to make a point here. Damon was nice to his Spanish mate, but his job was building brutal police robots, and when given the chance to act like a decent human being and help the little girl of the supposed love of his life he couldn’t be bothered and made a run for it instead. The movie really lost me at that point as I started to dislike the Matt Damon character, and he was at the centre of everthing that was happening. His selfish character didn’t make sense to me, and he came across as more of a vehicle for the plot than anything resembled a real human being.

What were they doing here? Oh yeah, I get it. White people are sociopathic racists who only care about themselves, so even though Damon was the main protagonist he couldn’t be portrayed as a good man until the end of the movie when he proved he wasn’t a racist by killing himself for the betterment of the Mexican people. Hey, that’s the white liberal dream, right? Killing yourself to prove you are not a racist. Great message for a movie that one. My only question is what the Hell did Matt Damon think he was doing here? Oh yeah, he’s a self-hating feminist liberal type isn’t he? I can just see him chuckling it up with Bill Maher and Jon Stewart now as he plays a game of who’s the most politically correct sap in town. What a bunch of twits.

Well, I hope you are feeling very happy with yourself now Matt. Extra liberal brownie points for you my son. Back to the mansion eh, just like all of the other evil white guys who live in luxury. You do realise that you’re living in Elysium right now, don’t you Matt? Just like me actually. I live in Elysium as well. All of us white people are loaded didn’t you know?  Now I’ve finished this review I’m going to kick back in my huge mansion, take a swim in my big outdoor swimming pool, and then do random racist things before I sign off for the day in my big luxury bedroom with my blonde haired supermodel girlfriend. I tell you what, it’s great being a rich white guy, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. They’ll never stop us, never I tell ya, ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Rating: 4/10 

Horror movie review: The Woman in Black- Decent movie, but it’s got Harry Potter in it

Released: February 2012
Website: http://www.hammerfilms.com/ourwork/3/the-woman-in-black

Here’s another movie that I kept bumping into in the supermarket at a bargain price, but waited to see on television because yes, I’m a cheap git when it comes to watching movies. The simple truth of the matter is that most movies these days aren’t even worth a few quid. They’re mostly stooooopid crap with special effects, re-makes and franchise money-makers that aren’t worth my time or money.

The Woman in Black is a movie that people will see for two reasons, the first (and main reason) is because Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe is in it. The second reason is that it’s made under the ‘Hammer Horror’ banner, and for old horror buffs people like myself that still means something.

I didn’t pay for this movie because I’m not really that enamoured with Daniel Radcliffe as an actor. I’ve seen him do a couple of things, including the child’s book, and I’ve never been that impressed. To me he is the perfect embodiment of masculinity in the UK post 2001. A wimpy, personality free blank slate of a child-man who looks like he’s waiting for a bus, has lost his iphone, and thus doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s one of those guys who you assume is gay, because everything about him screams politically correct and soft. Is he actually gay? He’s a feminist liberal atheist Richard Dawkins fan, so frankly, he might as well be. I’m sure if he’s not fashionably gay then he feels terribly guilty about it.

Onto the actual movie then, this is supposed to be a review after all and not a rant about the sorry state of masculinity in the UK today.  It looks absolutely gorgeous, and everything about it screams old-fashioned Hammer horror. The plot is centred on a glorious gothic haunted mansion, set right in the middle of a moor. The house (which is the star of the show) is haunted by a BOO, oh no I’ve crapped my pants ghost who is making the local children kill themselves because she’s upset about the death of her son.  Radcliffe is playing a Jonathan Harker in Dracula type character, sent there on business, but soon finding himself at the centre of spooky proceedings.

There was one moment in the movie that really made me jump out of my skin and for that one reason alone I’m knocking out this review. The plot was predictable, even right up to the end with a twist that didn’t exactly surprise anybody, well except for the character that it happened to. The supporting cast was pretty decent, and far better than Radcliffe himself, the sullen and apathetic elephant in the middle of the movie, distracting from what was an atmospheric and effective old-school horror movie, that offers a couple of decent scares for particularly jumpy audiences.

Oh God, Radcliffe was bad in this one. There he stood, an awkward boy-man, completely unconvincing in his role of a recently bereaved widower worried about his now motherless young son. He carried the same expression of myopic indifference and blank faced mild discomfort throughout the entire movie. Was he drunk? Was he stoned? Perhaps he’s just not very good at portraying adult characters? He was awful in this. Combining a complete lack of physicality with an unnerving ability to make me not give a crap about anything that happened to him. He was a boy dressed up as a man, awkwardly stuck in the middle of a decent horror movie, giving absolutely nothing to it, whilst a cast of far more interesting co-stars did their best to inject some personality into proceedings.

After seeing Radcliffe in this, a couple of Harry Potter movies and some pile of junk on television about a doctor, or something, I’ll be going out of my way to avoid anything that he’s in, in the future.

Perhaps his Harry Potter wealth is enough, and he’ll retire from movie acting early and spend his time reading books about a Godless universe, and feeling guilty about the feminist liberal issues that are Rockefeller designed to turn grown men into jelly-fish? Or he could work in the theatre and learn how to act? I hear he’s doing that, so perhaps he’s aware of his shortcomings and is trying to improve himself? If so, then I applaud his efforts. I don’t hate the bloke. I’m just not a fan. That’s all. I want him to read and to learn, and to evolve. I used to think that Richard Dawkins had some wisdom as well, but I kept reading, and I changed my mind about those childish ideas. Hopefully Radcliffe will do the same. Dawkins is a trap, and lots of young people fall into it.

This was a good movie, containing one big crap my pants moment that forced me to write this review, but my initial reservations about the casting of Radcliffe as the main protagonist were pretty much spot on. The Woman in Black might be a Hammer horror movie, but its got Harry bloody Potter in it, and although not completely sinking the movie, he does very little to enhance it, other than getting some Harry Potter fans to spend their parent’s money on it. I hear they’re making this into a franchise. Let’s hope Radcliffe has no involvement in it, because he almost ruined this movie for me. With his expressionless blank face it’s amazing to me that he’s an actor at all. Then again, a lot of things are surprising to me now. In the land of the mediocre, the most mediocre of them all is King.
Rating: 6/10

Movie Review: Troll Hunter- Not quite as exciting as you might think

Released: October 2010

Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollhunter

*****Spoilers in review*****

Troll Hunter is one of those movies that I kept seeing in the supermarket, and a couple of times I was almost tempted into buying it. Mainly because of the cool looking 3D front cover, but also because I knew it was a foreign language movie, and as an old film student I’m particularly tempted by any movie that’s not in the English language.

Anyway, for one reason or another I didn’t buy the movie. I probably had too many comics to read and review or something like that. Yes, my life really is that dull. But give it time and eventually I’ll find just about every supermarket movie played late at night on Film4, and such was the case with this one. Now that I’ve actually seen it would it have bothered me to spend about £7 on it? Yeah, probably. I’d pay about £2 for it and be happy, but nothing more than that.

The movie has a few problems, and they all come from the script. It’s one of those ‘found footage’ movies that everybody is getting fed up of now. You know the type? Blair Witch shaky camera, documentary realism and a group of overly frightened, snotty nosed young adults.

In this particular movie the snotty kids are clandestinely filming what they think is a bear poacher, who very quickly turns out to be the one and only Norwegian Troll hunter. This Indiana Jones (Sr.) character is a Government Park Ranger of sorts whose job is to keep control of the native Troll population. He’s a bit like somebody working for the department of wildlife who has to cull a few rabid foxes/badgers every now and then. The only difference really is that he has to take care of giant Trolls, oh and not tell anybody about it, but that doesn’t appear to stop him happily spilling the beans about his Troll hunting activities on camera.

Yeah, it’s pretty stupid, and it makes zero sense that the government would employ ONE elderly man in a battered old Land Rover to take care of roaming Giants in the countryside. You’d think they’d have the army and airforce on the job, wouldn’t you? But no, one old bloke will do apparently.

And how come in this Internet age of every bugger having a camera on them there’s no photographs of these far from reclusive Trolls on the Internet? It’s not like they are very good at hiding or anything. They certainly ain’t no Bigfoot, Nessie or Abominable Snowman.  All the camera crew has to do is go out into the woods and they have the stupid Trolls all around them. They are as big as a house, and roar like a boy racer revving up at the traffic lights. You couldn’t miss them if you tried to.

Despite the slap your forehead stupidity of it all, the main problem I had with the movie was it’s lack of drama and suspense. Far too early on the Trolls are seen in close-up, slap bang in the middle of the screen, and even on night-vision camera, just so you can see absolutely every contour, angle and dimple on their big flabby arses. That to me was a completely inexplicable decision for the director to make. You have one thing going for you. One thing that will keep the audience glued to the screen. That being, what do the Trolls look like? Tease us. Show us a shadow, a blurred arm, a brief glimpse of something that could, or could not be a Troll. That’s the art of film-making, manipulating the audience, not sticking everything on a slab and poking it with a stick so many times that the audience begins to nod off or check their mobile phones.

This movie could have kept me mesmerised to the very end, but the director decided that he didn’t want to play it that way. No, he was going to turn what should have been a thrilling monster drama into a dull wildlife documentary, and that’s what he did. The rest of the movie is just a camera crew of dull student types following a previously taciturn, now chatty bloke around the country as he tells them every single thing they could possibly want to know about Trolls. Amazingly, he makes them sound quite dull. It’s like he’s talking about squirrels.

A ‘found footage’ movie about Trolls shouldn’t be this dull, but it really is very blah. There simply aren’t the characters, personalities, conflicts or dramas to sustain it all. There are couple of promising sub-plots (one that could have been interesting was whether or not Trolls hated Muslims as much as they hated Christians) but they are never fully developed, probably consigned to the cutting room floor, and the movie just kind of splutters to an end.

You’d think that Trolls would be scary, exciting, exotic and dangerous, wouldn’t you? But no, in this movie they’re just giant rabid pests who are easily controlled by one elderly man and his flashlight. I’ll include a couple of photographs of the Trolls themselves alongside this review, as the special effects were the only good thing about the movie. The Trolls looked great, but they were wasted. They were seen far too early and far too often, and all of the potential thrills, suspense and drama that the movie could, and should have offered, ended up being replaced by what amounted to a cinematic version of a yawning squirrel in a suburban back garden. What’s that you say? It was supposed to be a comedy? How come I didn’t laugh at any of it then? It wasn’t funny, at all. It was boring, very, very boring.
Rating: 3/10

Movie review: Hobo with a Shotgun- Rutger Hauer slumming it

Stars: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth.
Director: Jason Eisener
Released: January 2011
Website: http://www.magnetreleasing.com/hobowithashotgun/
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_with_a_Shotgun

What am I doing reviewing one of those silly exploitation flicks that glorify bad 1970’s cinema, whilst ignoring all of the important issues of the times in which we are actually living? I know what I’m going to get so why bother? Why put myself through the agony? It would be like buying a Marvel comic where a team of dumb ass government agents fly around the world like super aerobicised morons, saving the world from ‘evil,’ whilst ignoring all of the obvious evil emanating from the country that they’re actually living in, and then wasting my time even further by writing a critical review about how stupid it all is. A total waste of time, right? And that’s why I don’t review Marvel comics anymore. Why waste my time by stating the obvious? So why am I reviewing a blood and guts torture movie made by middle class media students? I already know what I’ll get, so what’s the point?  I’ll explain myself.

First off, I didn’t pay for the movie. I recorded it, late night, on a horror movie channel, and later on when I was half dozing after a night shift of work I had it on in the background, determining to give it five minutes of my time before deleting it, and never thinking about it ever again.

So I gave it five minutes, and to my immense surprise, ended up watching the entire movie. The main reason was the lead, Rutger Hauer, or the blonde villain from Blade Runner, and the second reason was that the villains were convincing in that they got off on their evil acts, and I wanted to hang around to see them get their comeuppance at the conclusion of the movie, which of course they did.

The movie looks awful when it’s shot outside, where the film-makers don’t have the budget to make it look like anything other than a cheaply shot, low budget video nasty. Shooting in what appears to be a nice middle class suburb doesn’t help either. There’s no sense of danger, no threat. It just looks like a bunch of actors messing around outside their Mom’s house.

The cast of extras are particularly awful in this movie, in that they look like comfortable middle class media students, all just happy to be there, having a great time and trying to get their trendy goateed faces on the camera. That’s not good. They are supposed to be beaten down and corrupted victims of a psychopathic gangster who controls the town, not soft suburbanites who haven’t had a day’s hardship in their entire lives.

It looks a lot better when the action is shot inside, as the lighting is much easier to control and they go for an overly stylised, almost trippy look that has a sense of dirt and grime that the outside shots cannot match. This makes me question the decisions made by the director. If the outside, daylight shots look bad, why use them at all? Shoot it at night, and hide it.

Rutger Hauer is mostly decent in his role of the vigilante who fights back against the corrupt gangsters and cops that are controlling the city, and some of his lines are well written and memorable. I also liked the main female lead and her relationship with Hauer was convincing and touching. The best villain was Slick, a particularly weasly, wimpy, sadistic, nasty piece of work. A spoilt daddy’s boy, who gets off on abusing his power, it’s very satisfying when he gets what he deserves near the end of the movie.

I disliked the close-up, graphic violence that the movie often times revelled in, and thought a lot of it was a bit over the top, a bit unnecessary, particularly the scene where Slick takes a saw to the neck of the female lead. That was nasty, and it didn’t add anything to the movie. You don’t have to show that kind of thing, and when you do so it just shows a lack of imagination. Some of the blood bag splatters were pretty unconvincing as well. Is it supposed to be fake or gross? This movie did both, and I didn’t like either approach.

As the end credits rolled I was largely glad that I didn’t delete this movie after the first five minutes. Some of it looked awfully cheap, and I disliked the unnecessarily graphic, over the top violence, but some of it worked really well. My lasting image is of a scene where Rutger Hauer talks to a ward of new-born babies in a hospital. It looked great, and the dialogue really had some power to it as well. I’d recommend you hang in there with this movie, give it a chance and keep watching until the ending where the bad guys get what they deserve. Some of the dialogue is really well written, and there are a couple of decent performances in there as well. I could have done without all of the blood and torture scenes, but there’s a good movie lurking in there somewhere. Rating: 6.5/10