Vehicular Manslaughter

DVD Review: STEPHEN KING’S TRUCKS
18 – 95mins – 1997
Screenplay by: Brian Taggert
Based on the short story by: Stephen King
Directed by: Chris Thomson
Starring: Timothy Busfield, Brenda Bakke, Aidan Devine, Amy Stewart, Roman Podhora, Jay Brazeau, Rick Skene, William Hope, Brendan Fletcher
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It goes without saying that the genre of horror is all about the abnormal, the uncanny; therefore possessing inanimate objects with deranged sentience which gives them unnatural supremacy over their owners is a wickedly perverse concept – when done correctly. For every Childs Play there’s a Small Soldiers, where the transfer of intimidation to an inorganic object diminishes the threat from chilling to cheesy and it’s therefore played for laughs.

This inability to differentiate between these dissonant demeanors ultimately stalls Trucks before it even kicks into gear. What we are left to survey is a flat, po-faced low budget TV Movie from the 1990’s (although, rather tellingly, not released until 2000) about unmanned automobiles running down their drivers that wants to be taken seriously and evoke an eerie/dramatic tension, but the absurdity of the whole endeavour unintentionally invites laughter rather than screams.

Based, believe it or not, on a 1973 short story by master of horror Stephen King, Trucks is actually the second filmic adaptation of this peculiar work, which I can only assume works much better on the page than the screen: 1987’s tongue-in-cheek horror/comedy Maximum Overdrive was actually directed by the author (his first and last foray into that field) and despite universal derision, was perhaps the favourable tone to take, as the only thing genuinely horrific about Trucks is the fact that it ever got made.

Timothy The West Wing Busfield must have been desperate to take on this lazy movie modification, which sees him and a contingent of clueless rednecks become trapped in a dust-ball truck stop by the murderously demented four-wheelers. The trucks (endowed with sentience following a sketchy "toxic spill") joy ride around the gas station’s forecourt, taunting their two-legged adversaries, knocking down signs, honking their horns and flashing their lights at one another to communicate!! It's never really discovered why.

But that isn’t even the epitome of Trucks’ preposterousness: the HGV’s are foiled in their hostile demon-stration by a fatal flaw in their bodywork – without limbs they must still rely on humans to refill their tanks with fuel!! There’s more, still: in a cutaway completely isolated from the main narrative, a postman delivering the morning mail is set upon not by a dog, but a remote control toy truck which trips up the poor man and smashes his head into the curb until he’s dead! Well, at least he didn't have to endure all 95minutes...


In a CR@B Shell: Helmed by inferior drivers, a killer King story careens dangerously off-road and implodes into a lifeless pile of scrap. Steadfastly failing to acknowledge the absurdity in its outlandish sci-fi concept, Trucks plays everything so straight that you’re laughing at it rather than with it.
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Frosty Foes and Stem Fatales

Blu Review: BATMAN & ROBIN
PG – 128mins – 1997
Written by: Akiva Goldsman
Based on the characters created by: Bob Kane
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alica Silverstone, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Elle Macpherson, John Glover, Jeep Swenson
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Inspired by fellow movie review blogger Andy Buckle’s recent “Worst Film of All Time” post, in which 1997’s much maligned Batman & Robin claimed the dubious honour of pole position (check out the article HERE and why not stay for a nose around?), I decided it was high time I unwrapped the cellophane from my dust-collecting Blu-ray copy and gave the film which temporarily derailed the Bat-chise a belated re-watch.

I can remember seeing the film on the big screen when it was first released some 14 years ago and I must have enjoyed it (hey, I was only 13!) as I asked a relative to buy it for me – along with the rest of the series – on VHS that Christmas. I only re-bought personal favourite Batman Returns on DVD, but when I upgraded to Blu-ray, all four (and later six) live action Bat-flicks were high on my list of hi-def purchases. I can’t even claim that this clunker was a redundant disc within a box set: I purchased them all separately!

To give the Joel Schumacher-helmed flop its dues; it does look mighty fine in HD – but then the neon-hued megalithic Gotham sets are impressively vibrant creations; Tim Burton’s towering and intimidating gothic designs exaggerated to the verge of hyperbole. That, essentially, is Batman & Robin’s downfall: it is everything that worked in restrained measures in previous instalments ramped up to embarrassingly uninhibited levels.

Main adversary Mr Freeze (Schwarzenegger; granted top billing above the eponymous rodent), for example, isn’t just an eccentric villain with a score to settle, replete with a distinctive disguise and a sardonic sense of humour, oh no: he’s a flat out caricature of a maniacal madman with a clunky metallic suit, blue skin and an inability to speak without spouting the cheesiest ice-based puns known to man (“Ice to see you”, “You’re not sending me to the cooler”, “What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age!” – I could go on!).

Back in 1997, adult Bat-fans desperate for a new live action adventure were stunned into fury as they were pelted with over two hours of the naffest and least humorous “gags” this side of a farce – even the usually sombre protagonist (played awkwardly – for the first and last time – by ER heart-throb du jour Clooney) wasn’t immune to woeful wisecracks (“This is why Superman works alone”) and corny sight gags (the Bat-card, the rubber nipples) which pandered to a child’s mentality and left the hardcore legions out in the cold (oh god – now *I’m* doing it!).

If you were to look on Batman & Robin as a kid’s flick; it’s a madcap success, fusing the bright, the bold and the wacky into a comic-book world where mad scientists all look like Albert Einstein and dangerous chemicals come in vats with “VENOM” and a skull and cross bones printed on the front. That’s probably why I liked it at 13, but this is not what audiences were expecting – or wanting – from the tortured and tragic caped crusader who doesn’t have any super-powers but is impelled on the righteous path by brute vengeance.

If you go in prepared, it’s not *that* deplorable. Sure, it desecrates all over Tim Burton’s dark, stylised and unquestionably superior earlier instalments, but the fact that it is so unrelentingly frenzied does, in a way, make the madness more bearable: Batman & Robin knows it’s a tongue-in-cheek cartoon and it doesn’t even attempt to be anything else. Ultimate proof comes when O’Donnell’s Dick Grayson saves Silverstone’s Barbara Wilson from plummeting to her death after a superfluous high-rise motorbike race goes awry. The first words out of his mouth as they dangle perilously over the precipice? “So *this* is where you hang out?” Groan.

In the films defence, Akiva The Da Vinci Code Goldsman’s spirited plot is anything but lazy, endowing each member of the bulbous cast with a purpose and arc. Freeze wants to cure his cryogenically frozen bride from MacGregor’s syndrome, while an eco-friendly agenda blossoms behind Poison Ivy’s (Thurman; suitably sultry) green-fingered wrath. Ever loyal butler Alfred (Gough), meanwhile, is hiding his pain behind a staunch façade and his joy at being reunited with his secretly rebellious niece, while loathed sidekick Robin is sick and tired of living in the shadow of the Bat.

There’s certainly a lot going on for these people, yet still every shot is crammed to the hilt with blindingly effervescent lighting, grandiose buildings, pimped-up rides and an arsenal of Bat-toys which (handily) can foil anything Freeze and Ivy throw at the rubber-suited heroes (a heat ray to thaw ice? Check. Ice skates built into your boots? Check! Artificial lips to repel poison kisses? CHECK!). This optical assault is much to the detriment of any emotional narrative undertones, as even the most heart-wrenching drama (such as a dying Alfred’s reflections on a life serving the Wayne dynasty) is eclipsed by the bombastic and the ridiculous.


In a CR@B Shell: Viewed as a Saturday morning ‘toon for the under tens, Batman & Robin flies high as a cavalcade of camp comic book lunacy, but sat alongside Tim Burton’s dark knight-mares it’s a bat-shit, bird-brained embarrassment to the franchise which rightfully got sent straight to the cooler. Thank Gotham for Christopher Nolan!
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Rite or Wrong?

DVD Review: THE RITE
15 – 113mins – 2011
Screenplay by: Michael Petroni and Matt Baglio
Based on the book “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist” by Matt Baglio
Directed by: Mikael Håfström
Starring: Antony Hopkins , Colin O’Donoghue, Rutger Hauer, Alice Braga, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones
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An evocative – if hardly groundbreaking – exorcism thriller, The Rite’s possession of its audience is fatally weakened by the absolutely absurd PR claim that it is inspired by a true story. True, it was extracted and adapted from research into Vatican-sponsored exorcism seminars as covered in co-writer Matt Baglio’s 2005 non-fiction book (available HERE), but any hold on reality is soon undermined by a desire to shock n’ scare with stock supernatural conventions rehashed from every previous film of the same ilk (including last year's admirable The Last Exorcism, which I reviewed HERE).

A mid-credits addendum to the loose but proudly-stated assertion (slyly hidden away in the hope no-one will see it) even confesses that despite its inspiration, The Rite is a wholly fictional creation – in case you needed persuading that Baglio didn’t really witness actual cases of demonic possession in Rome!! Chances are we *may* have heard about it from every newsroom or Twitter-feed in the world if he did…

Away from the dubious marketing ploy, The Rite is an engaging enough beast: part philosophical conversation on conversion, part eerie chiller. There are flashes of horror as disillusioned doubter Michael Kovac (O’Donoghue) is invited to assist famed exorcist Father Lucas (Hopkins) in his demon-purging duties, but out-and-out scare-fest was never director Mikael 1408 Håfström’s intention (“Were you expecting head-spinning and pea soup?” Lucas enquires of a cynical Kovac).


In a CR@B Shell: An unsettlingly atmospheric character-centric supernatural account of faith versus logic in our sceptical scientific age. An engaging story and bold performance from Hopkins go some small way to making up for a dribbling pace and indefensible PR misstep.
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An Intimate Friendship

DVD Review: NO STRINGS ATTACHED
15 – 104mins – 2011
Written by: Elizabeth Meriwether
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell , Jake Johnson, Ludacris, Ophelia Lovibond, Greta Gerwig, Mindy Kaling, Cary Elwes
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As emotionally reserved lone wolf Dr. Emma Kurtzman, Natalie Portman plays a character on the opposite end of the personality spectrum to the fragile and clingy wallflower she played so masterfully (and won an Academy Award for) in Darren Aronofsky’s psychological ballet thriller Black Swan (read my rave review HERE).

But as frustrating as her distant, loveless outlook in No Strings Attached may be (she plays a shift-working nurse with no time for love who rejects all slivers of emotional attachment but is still up for the primal act of sack-jumping when the urge so strikes), Portman – along with amiable co-star Aston The Butterfly Effect Kutcher – manages to inject this “modern” story of sex-centric relationships with a surprising amount of charm.

I can’t abide the contemporary assumption that everyone living in the twenty-first century is so darn flippant about who they fuck, therefore I was initially concerned that Ivan Ghostbusters Reitman’s skewed rom-com-minus-the-rom would favour the raunchier aspect of this friends-with-benefits pairing over the deeper issue of why Emma is so adamant that her life is better off without love, but I was pleased that neither character was painted as an immoral whore who slept around with any Tom, Dick or Hairy (yes, that was a purposeful misspelling).

No Stings Attached mercifully took a more tender tact (outside of a few booty call montage sequences; but don’t expect anything too vulgar), and just to hammer home the point that romance still exists in this dishonest age, Kutcher’s Adam is the first to fall in love – see, men have feelings too! – while Emma continually spurns his advances outside the bedroom.

It’s a shame the plot becomes predictably twee as Emma’s heart belatedly beats to a passionate beat and everything ends far too happily in a nice neat idealistic Hollywood bow, but then there are an abundance of one dimensional cookie-cutter characters clichés outside of the likeable leads.


In a CR@B Shell: Inevitably optimistic climax aside, No Strings Attached is a surprising good-natured statement on the pros and cons of the modern view towards monogamy. It’s hard to see what more the upcoming Friends with Benefits (starring Portman’s Black Swan co-star Kunis) can contribute to this concept.
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School of C*cks

Cine Review: BAD TEACHER
15 – 92mins – 2011
Written by: Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch, Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins
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If you thought the high school students of American Pie were a puerile bunch of sex-obsessed wasters, then you haven’t met Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz); the most foul-mouthed, vain, materialistic, responsibility-dodging layabout at John Adams Middle School – and she’s a teacher!

“Shut the front door!”

Dumped by her prosperous fiancé for being a vacuous gold-digger, Elizabeth returns to the profession she despises to make ends meet, wherein she sticks on a continuous run of videos to amuse her pupils while she sets about winning over hot-bodied goody-goody substitute – and, most importantly for our Bad Teacher – heir to a wristwatch empire, Scott Delacorte (Diaz’s real-life ex Justin The Social Network Timberlake).

“I want to sit on his fac– Hiiiii!”

Problem is that Scott has fallen for over-zealous star teacher Amy Squirrel (Dinner for Schmucks’ Lucy Punch; as loopy as ever), while Elizabeth attracts the unwanted attention of grounded – but broke – gym teacher Russell Gettis (Gulliver’s Travels’ dopey Jason Segel). Certain that a boob job will win over minted Scott, Elizabeth undertakes all manner of back-handed and down-right illegal ventures to raise the necessary funds for the life-changing op.

While sniggersome in places (it’s the age-old juxtaposition of people of authority acting inappropriately against type), Bad Teacher isn’t quite the off-the-hook riot the trailer promised, while the mortification factor is understandable given that the writing duo are regular scribes on NBC’s squirm-fest The Office . But whereas Michael Scott’s misguided work-based shame was buffeted by heart, Elizabeth is curiously void of emotion or a moral compass.

Watching Diaz manipulate her peers while cruising through life smoking pot, snoozing in class and cursing at children does get rather old after an hour and a half, and only sarcastic Russell comes out of the film with a modicum of decency (even if he's hardly a prize catch); Amy’s career-minded determinism quickly shifts to envy and suspicion while sickening Scott is quite simply a douche.

While the third act game-changing revelation that producing a class of top grades in the state test will bag the triumphant teacher a hefty bonus does make Elizabeth change tack and buckle down, Scott’s plot arc soon fizzles out, hampered by a bizarre hole in the story which sees him decide without any form of hesitancy that it’s perfectly acceptable to dry hump Elizabeth on a school trip while his girlfriend is ill at home!! Was there a scene missing or did I blackout through a major decision? Either way, he’s still a douche.


In a CR@B Shell: Diaz’s one-dimensional Bad Teacher is rescued from crude humiliation by a faculty of kooky characters, but as funny as it is while it’s on, Jake Kasdan’s school comedy is as unmemorable as one of Elizabeth’s skive-easy lessons. This average effort barely scrapes a trio of ticks but must try harder.
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Solomon Cage

DVD Review: SEASON OF THE WITCH
15 – 98mins – 2011
Written by: Bragi F. Schut
Directed by: Dominic Sena
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Stephen Campbell Moore, Robert Sheehan, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham, Christopher Lee
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Despite receiving a near unanimous critical mauling upon its theatrical release back in January, I still found much to enjoy in this swashbuckling blend of medieval quest and supernatural horror from the director of Swordfish, based on a decade old spec script which shifted between studios a suspicious number of times before Relativity Media produced it as their first in-house venture.

The permeantly unenthused Nicolas Drive Angry 3D Cage and Ron Hellboy Perlman team up as aggrieved knights Behman and Felson who quit their dishonourable order and return from a Catholic crusade (read: bloody massacre) to find their homeland ravaged by the Black Death.

Arrested for being deserters, the pair are charged by a dying Cardinal (Christopher Lee; barely recognisable beneath grotesquely disfiguring make-up) to escort a girl accused of witchcraft (Claire Foy) to a remote monastery to "stand trial" (read: be exorcised) and – in doing so, they hope – rid the land of plague. Well, it sure beats rotting in a jail cell. Right?

Accompanied by a band of priests, alter boys, knights and rogues – including Misfits' affable screwball Robert Sheenan, who impresses on the big screen – Felson and Behman set off on their old school road trip, ever-fearful of the prospect of being in such close quarters to a witch. As they journey on through foreign lands and spooky forests, disagreements rage and numbers dwindle in mysterious circumstances, until the girl’s true form is finally revealed.

If you liked last year’s Soloman Kane, chances are you’ll like Season of the Witch, which could very well inhabit the same universe, so akin are they in themes and tone. While Season would have benefitted from an 18 rating and more unreserved horror (it was toned down in production to be more teen-friendly and, sadly, the home release doesn’t offer a bloodier Extended Cut), there is still much supernatural splendour on offer in this unrelenting escapade.

It’s a minor gripe, but the “twist” in the denouement barely qualifies as such (it’s an issue with semantics, really) and the ensuing battle betwixt good and evil is diminished by the foe being all too obviously a CGI creation. Nevertheless, this is still a decent enough – if frivolous – swords and sorcery romp in the style of a classic B-movie. Season of the Witch may have its detractors but it delivers well enough as a schlocky Saturday k-night rental.


In a CR@B Shell: Sure, it’s high concept fantasy fare which won’t win any awards, but this is no Uwe Boll disaster (and Perlman knows all about those… *cough*In The Name of the King*cough*). Switch off your brain, switch on Season of the Witch and be dazzled by the entertaining barrage of gallant and ghoulish goings on.
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Hell on Earth

Yeah, it's a loose, negligible link for a triumvirate of reviews for three vastly disparate films – but I needed a title and it kinda works so shuddupayourface!

DVD Review: DRIVE ANGRY
18 – 104mins – 2011

Anyone who complained that Ghost Rider was too child-friendly are granted a second opportunity to see Nicolas Cage play a bad-ass dead man who returns to our mortal coil, apprehends a stylish vehicle-of-choice and deals vengeance to the bad guys – this time with a no-holds-barred 18 rating! Ummm: yay...?

Drive Angry is clearly meant to be a ludicrous, outrageous, testosterone-pumped guilty pleasure. Director Patrick My Bloody Valentine Lussier clearly had high hopes that it would garner a cult status akin to old skool grindhouse B-movies, but it failed. Spectacularly. Probably because it was trying too frickin' hard.

Cage's Milton is out to stop the leader of a Satanic cult, Jonah King (an impressively loopy Billy Burke), from sacrificing his murdered daughter's kidnapped baby. Seriously. Along the way he picks up a hot passenger (Amber The Joneses Heard), shoots a bevy of enemies whilst shagging a barmaid and comes face-to-face with The Accountant (William Fichtner), a tricksy messenger who is hell-bent on dragging Milton back to the fiery depths from whence he escaped.

Maybe I wasn't drunk enough, but I found most of the outlandish gun-totting, van-rolling, flame-throwing set-pieces to be comically lame rather than jaw-droppingly spectacular; some even bordered on farcical. But then away from a 3D cinema screening, the visual effects were appallingly ropey for a film of this calibre - and this budget.

CR@B Rating: aaaaa

DVD Review: LONDON BOULEVARD
18 – 103mins – 2010

Adapted from the Ken Bruen novel and directed by first-time helmer William Monahan, this recent cockney gangster drama is a prime example of all guts, no glory. London Boulevard desperately wants to be taken seriously as a legitimate genre heavyweight, but it comes off as a contrived and overreaching pretender to the throne. Given the pedigree of talent both in front and behind the camera, it's a crying shame – Monahan's impressive CV includes screenplay credits for The Departed, Body of Lies and Kingdom of Heaven.

Colin Farrell plays Mitchel, recently released from prison and determined to go straight. He finds genuine work as a bodyguard for paparrazzi-fodder starlet Charlotte (Kiera Knightley), but his reputation amongst the law-dodging elite means everyone wants to work with him – even sadistic kingpin Gant (Ray Winstone), who you really don't want to mess with. Will Mitchel be able to turn his back on his former life and devote his attention to the alluring-but-emotionally-fragile actress, or will be get dragged back down into London's criminal underbelly?

Fundamentally, London Boulevard fails because so much is thrown at the screen but nothing sticks: too many subsidiary characters and seemingly weighty subplots saturate our affection to the point of indifference; big name stars (Eddie Marsan, Anna Friel) are scandalously wasted; the central love affair takes an age meandering in lukewarm chit-chat then leaps forward drastically in the space of a single scene; while cartoon-y mobster cliches are as ripe as the embarrassingly vulgar language and snatches of senseless brutality in this grimy presentation.

CR@B Rating: aaaaa


DVD Review: SANCTUM
15 – 104mins – 2011

When he isn't spending years perfecting box office gold, James Avatar Cameron is embracing his love of technology and underwater beauty with breathtaking oceanic documentaries such as Aliens of the Deep and Ghosts of the Abyss. So it's little surprise that he was only too happy to attach his name to this Australian cave diving drama which is based on true events.

Exploring a hither-to uncharted underground cave system in Papua New Guinea, a team of cave divers find their only escape route cut off by a freak tropical storm. Combating the rising sense of panic, the dwindling-but-determined expedition must traverse the treacherous underwater labyrinth in the hope of finding daylight before their supplies run out and they are trapped forever.

Comparisons to similarly-set claustrophobic creature features such as The Descent and The Cave are unavoidable, but Sanctum is a very real horror; and all the more effective for it. Narratively, its greatest strength is the fluctuating relationship between headstrong/heartless team leader Frank (Richard Roxburgh) and his uninterested son Josh (Russell Howard lookalike Rhys Wakefield), mainly because they are the only characters who are fleshed out, but if I'm being candid, the story pales next to the stunning location shots of nature at its most magnificent.

CR@B Rating: aaaaa