Its been a while...

Whoops, I haven't posted much in ages! Lets have a general catchup with films seen at the cinema over the past couple of months. Here's some of my favourites.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (title spelt correctly by the way!

The audience seems pretty split on this one although that's probably standard for a Quentin Tarantino film. Most aged around 50+ will most likely dislike it and those younger will probably enjoy the ride and take elements with a 'pinch of salt'. It took a couple of viewings for me to really get the most out of it so those who have only saw it once (and didn't enjoy it) should really give it a second chance before making a final decision.

The film revolves around two stories, although both are quite separate they do meet at the end to accomplish the same conclusion.

The cast is fantastic, featuring a brilliant international mix of American, German, British and French actors, most of which I hadn't seen before on screen but hope to again in the future. The Gestapo Captain played by Christoph Waltz, gave the best performance in my opinion. He's going to be in the new Green Hornet movie, I'll look forward to that!

On my first viewing I did find it a bit too long but I really didn't appreciate the amount of work that had gone into it, as mentioned above my second viewing sorted out any doubts I had. My verdict, it's a great film and plays very differently to any other Tarantino film. He's maturing as both a screen writer and director.


HURT LOCKER - I went in to watch this with absolutely no preconceptions having heard practically nothing other than Guy Pearce (LA Confidential) starred in it and it had something to do with bomb disposal. It's sometimes best to watch films like this.

Well, Mr.Pearce was in it - for at most 5 minutes and the rest of the film was pretty much made up with a cast of unknown/lesser known actors. Please don't take that as a negative as it made the film feel far better than a typical big budget feature full with massive Hollywood egos, fighting for their screen time.

The film has a semi documentary style to it and is about a small bomb disposal team based in Iraq. It's sometimes terrifying how realistic it feels and really brings to light questions as to what are American and British troops are doing over there and if this campaign will ever achieve anything. It's well worth a watch.

It's great to see a female director (Kathryn Bigelow) taking on a gritty war film like this.


DISTRICT 9 - As mentioned in my blog below, this has got to be seen to be believed!

Set it South Africa, a ginormous alien mothership appears over Johannesburg carrying a race of dying creatures. Humans help move the aliens (nicknamed 'shrimp') into a refugee camp and the story takes place 20 years later in a segregated Johannesburg, not separated by colour but by species.

I don't really want to say too much more on this - it's just a great film! If you like sci-fi but fancy something different please watch this.

The cast is completely unknown to me, probably stars in their own right in South Africa. Like the other two films mentioned above, I really enjoy seeing non famous actors playing lead roles. They seem to have less of an ego and have more freedom to concentrate on their performance rather than performing to a standard expected of an established Hollywood actor. It obviously doesn't stay like this, the main character from District 9, Wikkus (Sharlto Copley) will be seen next playing Captain 'Howling Mad' Murdock in the A-Team reboot!


Here's some other great films I've recently seen and recommend;

ZOMBIE LAND (2009)
Awesome Zombie comedy featuring the best famous cameo!
UP (2009)
A lovely Pixar animation about the adventure of an old man and his floating house.
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS (2009)
Its absolutely insane but thoroughly enjoyable. Kids and adults of all ages should love it. Mr.T's provides his voice to one of the characters also (yay)!

Planet Terror (2007)

I won't pussyfoot around, Planet Terror is an absolutely awesome film and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes cheesy horror films, gore, guns, hot girls and did I mention it... gore!

Its infinitely better than Quentin Tarantino's boring and drawn out Death Proof (which to those who don't know was the other half of 'Grindhouse' - a feature film that contained two films bundled with four fake trailers, originally screened in its entirety in America).

Directed by Robert Rodriguez, this is probably one of the most entertaining films I've seen this year. I was laughing through most of the film, laughing at the ridiculous plot, the over exaggerated death scenes and characters such as the one played by Naveen Andrews (Sayid from Lost) who collects testicles and carries them around in a jar/carrier bag!

The female lead, Rose McGowan just looks stunning as Cherry Darling, the ex Go-Go dancer with ambitions of grandeur. As you can tell from the poster, Cherry looses her leg and has a machine gun in its place (introduced later in the film). This is simply fantastic and will be remembered in the future as a unique and iconic character.


The special effects are brilliant, well all the visuals are. Similar to Death Proof, this film has the same grainy/scratched look to it although it seems to work better here. The blood effects are some of the juciest I've seen, splattering everywhere. I'd like to think they used some old special effect styles instead of using just CGI, especially with FX veteran Tom Savini in the cast (he plays one of the cops).

This version of the film comes attached with one of the original, and probably best of the fake trailers - 'Machete' from the original Grindhouse (although Machete is now being made into a full length movie, can't wait to see that!).

Death Proof (2007)

Death Proof was originally one half of a two part feature known as Grindhouse in the US, paired with the Robert Rodriguez zombie film 'Planet Terror'. Unfortunately Grindhouse was a flop in the US. Could that be because the film was too long (just over three hours) for the average Joe to sit through or did the studio decide that they would make more money splitting the films into two, scrapping the whole 'grindhouse' idea (watching two films, back to back at the theatre)? I personally love the idea of the 'grindhouse' experience but unfortunately as I live in the UK I haven't got the choice, both films will be released separately.

Anyway, I could moan about the unfairness of being denied the chance to experience Grindhouse for ages so I'll put a cap on that for the moment.

With this version of Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has included extra footage unseen from the Grindhouse cut and apparently "made the movie it should have been", through his eyes.

Anyone unaware, this movie is a homage to the B-movie genre from the late 60's and 70's and has that certain low grade quality to it and was apparently shot using traditional techniques.

The film is about a stunt driver, called Stuntman Mike who has a thing for killing young women with his adapted stunt car. The car has been made 'death proof' (hence the title) with a roll cage and re-enforced shell. I really like the Stuntman Mike character (played by the excellent Kurt Russell) and the moments with him on screen are brilliant. He has a dirty great big scar across his face, drives that mean car and has a dark on screen presence. The driving scenes are really quite amazing and the crashes are really gruesome, in the best possible way!



Ok, this is where I'm going to be totally honest about what I thought, not that my opinion carries much weight!

I think its quite obvious what extra footage has been included in this version of Death Proof. If you strip down most of the dialog between the female characters this film would actually be pretty decent in my books but this is probably the area where the extra stuff was added. I found the dialog to be extremely boring and far too long, something which can probably be said for some of Tarantino's previous work. Yes, at the time dialog in his films such as Pulp Fiction was really different to what was around and it seemed pretty original. I recently re-watched Pulp Fiction and wanted to sleep through most of it. I really hate it when a character says something, makes a comment or statement then has to explain his or herself in great detail is a wise-ass style. Is that always necessary?

I really loved the way the film started with the dated looking ad's and the old grainy footage effect, that was great. But I was expecting the film to be set in this time period (late 60's - 70's), yeah - I know its a homage but does it work when its set in the current day with mobile phones and iPods but shot in an old style? I found the grainy effect on the film to be inconsistent throughout. It started off well, dipped in the middle and came back near the end. Oh yeah, am I the only person who thinks the whole "shooting a scene in black and white" has past the stage of being cool. It worked in some of his other films but really, is that necessary in all of them? The moment it turned black and white in Death Proof didn't make a scrap of difference to the plot, it was at no real interesting spot and felt like a waste of time. It did work incredibly well during the fight scene with the 'Crazy 88's' in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 though.

Tarantino has always been able to produce a really decent soundtrack for his previous films. They usually consist a great collection of relatively unknown but very "cool" tracks and I think with Death Proof he's achieved the same . I've had the soundtrack on CD since April this year and like most of it. I just think it was a shame that it wasn't integrated into the film better. The majority of the tracks will be heard during the bar scene on the jukebox.



Going back to Grindhouse - I'm sure Death Proof would have been a much better film trimmed down by 30 or 40 minutes and would have felt right for its genre. The film, together with Planet Terror and the specially made trailers (directed by Robert Rodriguez, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie) would have made the whole experience worth while.

To end on a positive, I really liked Kurt Russell's character, I loved the actual driving scenes and I thought the soundtrack was pretty good.