Category: Film Review

Attraction (2017)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2h and 12m, rated 5.6 by 14,121 cinematizens. 

Genre: SyFy; Species: First Contact.

DNA: Russia. 

Verdict: Thoughtful.

Tagline: Oops!  

The aliens may have superior technology but when a fuse blows, well it blows, and the next thing you know a gigantic space ship is cartwheeling down the street in central Moscow, leaving a path of death and destruction behind.  Was the pilot under the influence of vodka?  What now? Indeed, a good question.  

As per the script of It Came from Outer Space (1953), and we even see the name of lead from that film on a poster early on, the aliens just want to change the fuse and go home in time for the big game. Problem is, no fuses.  Inspired by Qantas, UFO management has decreed no spare parts be carried to cut costs.  

How do the locals react? That is the main focus of the film.  Of course, the army is much in evidence, and politicians posture – at a far safer distance than the troops.  But stop right there. The usual stereotypes from The Arrival (1996) or Arrival (2016) have the week off.

The army officer is cautious and the troops are disciplined, and he advises patience, after all we shot it down.* While one politician pontificates for the camera, the minister is no hurry to make a mistake. Putin is too busy grooming Trump, so he delegates a minister to deal with the aliens to ensure deniability.    

No doubt the reluctance immediately to launch into shoot ‘em up has put off many raters. (There is a sequel where this thirst is quenched.)

We see reactions among students, soldiers, citizens whose family and friends were killed in the crash, and more, but no churchman.  Of all the unscrupulous charlatans, you’d think they would be well represented, but no.  

The cinematography is superb, as are the effects and CGI, as is the acting, especially from the the thirty-year-olds playing high school students.  No irony intended, because they do it well.  Best of all, no brilliant geniuses, that lazy cliché of far too many screenwriters who project their own wishful thinking in that trope.

Nonetheless, several of my well-worn complaints apply. It is far too long. The similarity of the lover boy and alien is confusing.  Why does the alien sport designer face fuzz, after all, and why did he shed the impenetrable armour? Early on not quite sure how the armour clad alien communicated with the colonel. What was the point about water?  Why didn’t the alien(s) remain in the indestructible ship? Nor how Pauline escaped from the peril of the crumbling apartment building.  How did they get into the hospital?  The transfusion, well….  Loose ends, there are many.  

Still far more intelligent and insightful than the Hollywood block busters of this ilk.  Right up to the explosion of violence in the last 30-minutes when it descends to the arrested development of La La Land.  

*The blown fuse took out the stealth cloak, and once revealed, the Red Air Force shot the indestructible (?) UFO down and it crashed in middle of Moscow, but no where near the Kremlin.  Too bad.  

Le dernier combat (1983)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h 29m, rated 6.7 by 6643 cinematizens.

Genre: Post apocalypse.

DNA: France.

Verdict: A quiet version of Mad Max.

Tagline: Sshh.

Man roams around a destroyed world of office buildings, defiled apartments, crashed American cars, pursued by four or five other men. Nary a word is spoken, nor is there a tendentious narration so de rigour in Hollywood to explain and blame the situation on the audience. It just is.  

He flees on his Leonardo da Vinci homemade airplane to other, equally desolate parts.  

Meanwhile we meet the Doctor hold up in his clinic fending off a lone Barbarian at the gate.  Man and Doctor unite against Barbarian, but, well, he is a Barbarian and subdues them, but Man escapes.  

Yes, in a bow to Hollywood conventions there is a woman to fight over, in fact, two of them, but they have but five minutes of plot time. Most of the time director Luc Besson, before he surrendered to Hollywood, shows that a little can be a lot.  (A long way from Valerian where a lot is a little.)

It makes no sense but moves at brisk pace, and hangs together, almost.  Only two words are spoken. Correction, only one word is spoken but it is spoken twice. ‘Bonjour.’  

I watched this from my private collection via Plex in a hotel room in Canowindra (look it up).  

Blue Desert (2013) Deserto Azul 

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 34m, rated 7.4 (!) by 52 cinematizens.  

DNA: Brazil.

Genre: Boring.

Verdict: Nothing comes from nothing.  

Tagline: Is this all there is?

A movie about the purpose of life and the meaning of human existence, modestly declaimed the writer and the director.  

With that pretension stated, what follows is an indulgent account of the angst of an adolescent posturing this way and that. In case it was all too deep for the viewer some scenes are repeated two or three times, and there is a narrative to guide the dull wits like me.  

He is a poor little rich boy who seems to have no responsibilities or ambitions.  He meets or perhaps dreams of a man even more useless than he is, painting the Atacama Desert blue.

It takes place in the Jetsons’ Brasilia, and is gorgeously photographed, preferable to turn the sound down and the subtitles off and watch the moving pictures.  

Malice in Wonderland (2009)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 27m, rated 5.8 by 3,400 cinematizens.

Genre: Fantasy; Species: Alice.

DNA: Geordie.

Verdict: It’s all about time.  

Tagline:  Go girl! 

Late at night the amnesiac Alice hitches a ride in Whitey’s (who is late, late) black London cab and nothing is quite the same again.  In a series of skits she and he meet contemporary updates of the Mad Hatter, Tweedlee and (very) -dum(b), Caterpillarman, Dormouse, The Cheshire Cat, The Walrus, and, of course, the Red Queen.  A few genders are bent along the way.

Alice moves things along by ingesting every illegal substance these creatures purvey in the struggle to regain her memory. She is the missing daughter of zillionaire Lewis Dodgson who offers a colossal reward for her return, and that lucre sets off even more scoundrels in pursuit to relieve Whitey of this fare.  

Fun follows. Lots of it. 

***

It makes no sense but it is a mile-a-minute with some engaging players like the Gardening Girl in the looking glass. Alice ends where she began and there is a charming resolution.

It seems there is species of Alice films.  All manner of them from Disney to anti-Disney from the silent era to today in many languages.  One review lists 33 without any claim to being comprehensive.  By the way, this title has also had many iterations.

Star Wreck in the Pirkinning (2005) 

IMDB meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 43m, rated 6.5 by 6,000 cinemtizens.  

DNA: Finland.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: A parody with laughs.

Tagline: ‘Deploy Windows 95!’  

Travelling by accident from the far future back to the 21st Century Earth, no one believes Captain when says he is from the distant future.  He’ll show them!  He sets about conquering Earth so he can save it from destruction.  Yes, he is a megalomaniac.  

When the going gets tough, the tough use the ultimate weapon: Windows 95!  It will destroy anything! 

***

This is a fan mash up of Star Trek, and it worked well enough to keep me watching.  There are others segments of different lengths. Click on.

Any Questions for Ben (2012)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1hr and 54m, rated 5.6 by 1,800 cinematizens.  

DNA: Strine.

Genre: Neither Rom nor Com.

Verdict: Oh hum. 

Tagline: Is that all there was?

The tale of a poor little rich boy who has everything (money, cars, women, booze – who could ask for more?) and, yet, wants more.  

The best scene comes with the end-credits when our now reformed hero is leaving the country.  If you can endure the preceding drivel, stay tuned long enough to the see that.  

***

Overall it views like a Melbourne Tourist Board production of bright and beautiful young people basking in the hedonistic sun and fun (alcohol and sex) day in and night out in bleak city.  

It is accompanied by a deafening soundtrack that combines demolition work with peak hour traffic. 

In all it was about 1h and 54m too long.  

Witch Hunt (1994)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m (it felt longer), rated at 5.5 by 1,800 (drug-addled) cinematizens. 

Genre: Noir fantasy.  

DNA: Hollywood. 

Verdict: Skip it.

Tagline:  The tortoise outpaced it.

Intended as a sequel to Cast a Deadly Spell it suffices to demonstrate the superiority of that film to this one. Yikes.

This was watching cement dry, and wishing a dog would run through it to break up the monotony.  

The original pitch idea would have been interesting but the execution was execrable.  What idea?  Set in early 1950s Hollywood the unscrupulous Senator Joseph McCarthy campaigns against, not communism in La La Land, but magic. (See Cast a Deadly Spell.) He is so unscrupulous that he plans to burn witches alive at his campaign rallies.  (That might have seemed far fetched in 1994, but it is now all too easy to imagine this will appeal to the planners of the next Republican convention.)

I won’t labour the threadbare production values.  The non-sequiturs. The dead ends.  I will mention that a dead bored Dennis Hopper mouths his lines in a monotone, with frequent glances at his watch.  

There were some good moments, but too few for redemption.  The late Julian Sand as the Irish villain was a delight, perfectly polite and never threatening, yet menacing all the same.  Hypolyta Kropokin was a dignified witch who seemed to forget her hexography at the crucial moment.  And the female lead had a poignant backstory that emerged at the end, without any fit to the plot, such as it was, in which she got to act.  There was also a corker of a special effect at the Drive-In Theatre. In short, it has moments, but these dots did not connect up into a whole.

Out There (1995)

IMDB meta-data is runtime of 1h and 38m, rated 5.3 by 537 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: USA.

Verdict: Trailer trash prevails.

Tagline: The truth is out there. 

One-hit wonder photographer collects old cameras and occasionally they have film in them, which he develops, invariably family snaps.  After a particularly bad day, for diversion he buys a Box Brownie from a yard sale, a camera of no interest but a salve to his bruised ego on the day, and, yes, it has film in it, and, yes, he develops it, and…..these are not family snaps.  

The Brownie film, conveniently dated to August 1969, shows, yep, an alien abduction of two good ole boys who were out deer hunting in the primeval forest dark and deep. Conscientiously, the snapper tries to interest the Air Force in investigating, but Project Blue Book, which was never a book and not blue, has been closed.  No budget for checking every cockeyed hysterical claim. Then he tries selling them to a news agency executive who laughs them off as fakes.  

Fakes they may be but strange things start happening around him, and off he goes with the now grown-up daughter of one of the supposed abductees who never did return home.  The plot is a Möbius strip that keeps returning to the point of origin, until…!  

There are many smiles and few laughs along the way, and some star turns by some stars, including a caricature of Jean-Paul Sartre, and Tiffany Case. (See the full cast list.)  

Unpretentious, unassuming, diverting, and sharp with an appealing cast and some complicated plotting.  Moreover, it has a nice story about — believe it or not, Ripley! — Richard Nixon. 

Pedants corner: yes, I know why it was called blue.  Do you?

Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 36m, rated 6.4 by 4,900 cinematizens.

Genre: Noir plus.

DNA: Hollywood and Vine.

Verdict: I ate it with a spoon!

Tagline: It’s magic!

LA 1948 where the latest trend, everyone is doing it, is magic.  That is MAGIC. It’s the newest technology of the day activated by a snap of the fingers or an incantation. Most of it, most of the time is white magic, little conveniences, but where there is white…there is also black. Very.

Gumshoe Gus Grissom is on the case, using the nom de noir Phil Lovecraft.  And what a case it is, the recovery of an overdue book purloined from Croesus.  Phil may not be sharpest number in the phone book, but he is clean and honest.  

Clean? He doesn’t use magic! That puts him in the same minority today that eschews mobile phones and scanners: as they are technophobes so he is a magicophobe.  That makes him the right man to recover this book of the dark arts, because he won’t be tempted to use it.

Off he goes with his $40 a day and gas money, encountering a unicorn and, even more rare in Hollywood, a virgin.  Everyone is up to no good apart from his landlady Hippolyte Kropotkin.  That name, like many others draws on the Mythos of H P Lovecraft for the cognoscenti.  

The screenplay has gaps but the direction is confident and brisk to keep things moving, and move they do.  Part tribute like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and part pastiche like Chinatown, and wholly original.  Recommended to all Noiristas. 

Pedant’s corner: yes, yes I know about Prince Kropotkin. I read his book Mutual Aid. Bet you haven’t.