Hot Fuzz - Action has never been so much fun

'Hot Fuzz' is one of those - rarest of - films which not only spans numerous genres, but is also enjoyable to many different demographics.  It's easy to say that 'action' films are a 'male dominated' niche and 'Hot Fuzz' certainly has plenty of action contained within.  In fact... it may ever have more shoot-outs and set-pieces than your average straight-to-DVD B-movie with an once well-known muscled leading man at the helm.  However, why 'Hot Fuzz' succeeds on so many levels is because you don't have to be a fan of action movies to appreciate it, largely because of its humour.  Yes, it's also a comedy.  And a 'buddy-cop' film.  And has large moments of character development and, dare I say drama as well. 

Because of this, I can see it almost appealing to any adult of any age.  I won't say 'fun for all the family' as, because of its 'adult language' it probably wouldn't be suitable for youngsters.  However, if you don't mind the odd swear word, then join London's best police officer (Simon Pegg) who is, in fact, so good at his job that his superiors decide to transfer him to a sleepy little country town because he's making all the other officers look bad by catching too many criminals.

Naturally, the move makes him a little uncomfortable, being used to dealing with drug dealers and murderers and now forced to - effectively - rescue cats from tall trees.  However, the local 'bobby' (Nick Frost) is on hand to 'acclimatise' him to his new life.  But, as fate would have it, this idyllic little town soon shows it's hiding some dark secrets which need the pair to investigate.

I'm not going to go into the plot any further as it's a film that you really do need to see to enjoy.  The village is also home to plenty of colourful characters, all of which add to the story and bring their best performances to the table.  You may have also seen the Pegg/Frost collaborations 'Shaun of the Dead, The World's End' and 'Paul,' so you'll probably know the type of film you're going to get here - a genuinely funny film which lovingly pokes fun at a genre the film-makers clearly hold in high regard.

9/10 almost as perfect as The Godfather

Suburbicon - Who knows what this was meant to be

First of all, let me say that I really enjoyed George Clooney's style of directing in 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' and who doesn't enjoy the writing of the Coen brothers?  Then combine these elements with A-listers like Matt Damon, Oscar Isaacs and Julianne Moore and how can this possibly fail?  It did.  Spectacularly.

Perhaps the reason it bombed was that it had too many good elements (if that's even possible).  For a start it has no idea what it wants to be.  In the first act it introduces plot threads that really don't relate to the central theme of a couple getting mixed up with some shady characters and a plot involving murder and misinformation.  Plus there's the fact that it's set in the 1950s (I think - could be 60s!), but, either way, there's not an awful lot of point in setting it here.  It could be set today not really effect the main storyline at all.  Nice sets though.  Just not really necessary.

In the film Matt Damon is married to Julianne Moore.  Or should I say he's married to ONE Julianne Moore.  The other is her sister - which took me a little while to actually figure out if they were the same person or not!  However, no matter how many Julianne Moores you have on display, the fact remains that there's no likable character.  A child is - technically - the person you should root for and you will do.  However, he can't really carry the film in terms of good vs bad.  Oscar Isaacs isn't in it enough and, when he does make an appearance he does steal every moment he's on screen.

'Suburbicon' is billed as a 'black comedy.' I don't recall laughing once.  I couldn't 'get' the humour (if there is any to begin with!) and I do enjoy a slice of darker humour.  It's a murder drama/thriller that tries to be too many things at once.  You could take out so much of this and leave - probably - quite a tight little story that would have been enjoyable to watch.  Does the phrase 'Too many cooks...' apply here?

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back

Millennium - Good premise.  So-so execution

I'd never heard of 'Millennium' and have only just got round to watching it.  That's probably because it seems to have been a bit forgotten in terms of classic/cult eighties sci-fi films.  And that's a shame, because it has many good moments that deserve a little more love.

It's about an air-crash investigator (Kris Kristofferson) who discovers that there's more than meets the eye going on when he finds what could well be an 'alien' device among the ruins of a downed plane.  He looks into this and we find that it wasn't in fact extraterrestrials who are meddling in our aviation, but people from the future.

Now, I'd got about a quarter of the way into this film and I was really enjoying it, wondering why it wasn't more popular than it was.  It's well shot, well acted, the premise is interesting and, best of all, when we do see the 'future-world' it's pretty cool.  However, just as I was really getting into it, the story slowed to practically as stand-still and (thanks to its time travel narrative) - literally - went over old ground and spent a fair portion of the film telling us something that we already had seen, only in a longer, more pointless version.

Granted, it picks up again towards the end and, talking of the final act, the ending does leave a little bit up to your own interpretation, so if you like your stories totally cleared-up then you could be a bit disappointed.

This was a shame, as if this middle segment could have been reworked, then the whole film would have benefited (and possibly found its way to a wider, more appreciative/mainstream audience).  I'd probably recommend it now to people who like cheesy, eighties 'Dr Who-esque' sci-fi, as I have a strange feeling that our favourite Time Lord may even have copied a few elements displayed here.

Special mention to the android who was almost as sarcastic as 'K-2SO' from 'Rogue One.'

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights

Ready Player One - A future family favourite

Growing up in the eighties, there were plenty of movies which I watched with my friends and an assortment of parents.  These began at the cinema and gradually found their way to the small screen where we continued to enjoy them on those lazy Sunday afternoons we all had during our childhoods.  Now, several years later we look back on those films with a sense of nostalgia.  Now we can see they're not perfect, but we love them anyway.

'Ready Player One' is like that and, perhaps more importantly, will be like that.  As an adult, I can say that it's far from a perfect film, but there are undoubtedly millions of youngsters all over the world who would disagree with me and tell you that it's the best film ever made.  And it probably is to them.  To me, it's a fun little outing that I enjoyed, despite its flaws.

Stephen Spielberg is possibly also enjoying this resurgence of nostalgia, as he seems to have gone back to his hey-day and given us a family-friendly adventure-romp with a more modern day spin.  It's set in a broken world where the population practically lives in a virtual reality-style world called 'The Oasis.' It's basically like the internet meets VR.  However, one large corporation wants total dominance over this cyber world and will stop at nothing to achieve this.  Lucky we have some plucky youngsters on hand to thwart these terrible 'suits.'

The VR world naturally lends itself to some fantastic visuals and, for once, it's impossible to complain about the overuse of computer-effects because 75% of the movie is set inside a computer simulation.  The youth of today will enjoy watching their peers 'stick it to the man,' but there's also plenty of things to enjoy for us 'oldies.' This film possibly contains the most 'pop culture' references from yesteryear since that episode of South Park called 'Imaginationland.' You can't go more than thirty seconds without spotting a reference to things you loved from the seventies, eighties and nineties. 

The young cast do well.  Sometimes, when a film rests heavily on inexperienced actors' shoulders, it can sometimes fail, but I didn't find any of them annoying.  The only flaw I really saw was that it's a bit drawn out in some places.  I would have cut about ten minutes out of the middle section and then massively edited the ending by about fifteen minutes (it's one of those films that has - what you think is - an ending, only for it to start up again.  And again).

But that's a minor gripe.  I will be buying it on DVD and doing my best to spot yet even more references to my childhood (watch various YouTube videos to find out the full list of everything in there), but I may skip the odd chapter here and there - especially towards the end!)

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one

Colossal – Strangely addictive

The term ‘car-crash’ normally means something that’s really bad and yet you can’t bring yourself to look away.  I think it would be a little unfair to refer to ‘Colossal’ as a ‘car-crash’ of a film, because it’s not bad at all, in fact, it’s rather touching and uplifting, but I certainly couldn’t stop myself from watching, even though I have to confess I’m not entirely sure of the point.

Thinking about it, I do wonder how commercially successful it was because I can’t really think of the target audience it was supposed to be aimed at.  If you’ve seen any of the marketing material surrounding it, you may well have spotted the prominent monsters crashing through major world cities.  In the light of the ‘Pacific Rim’ movies you may well be expecting an action blockbuster, but you would be well off the mark with that one.  Also, prominently featured in the film’s posters is its star Anne Hathaway smiling and looking a little bit kookie.  This almost makes the film come across as a happy-go-lucky comedy, maybe with a romantic element contained within?  Again, well wrong.

In fact, it’s almost hard to explain about the film’s plot without giving too much away.  Anne Hathaway plays a struggling alcoholic who gets caught up in a much larger matter (pun intended) regarding giant monsters crashing through a city on the other side of the world.  How are these two situations connected?  Well, you’ll have to watch the film to find out.

I will say that the film doesn’t give a clear and cut explanation to everything it’s presented the audience with, but it gives you enough to allow you to fill in the blanks yourself with (film) logic.  What you get is actually a drama about an alcoholic struggling with her demons and those around her that wish to either help or hinder her.  Yes, there are also giant monsters in there, too.

As long as you expect drama first and sci-fi second, you should enjoy it.  There’s not much here in the way of humour or action, so certainly don’t hold out for anything that remotely resembles ‘Pacific Rim.’ As I said, I don’t know who the target audience for this is, only that I enjoyed it and found that I was definitely rooting for Anne Hathaway’s character and found her a flawed, yet endearing hero.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that

Pacific Rim: Uprising – Junior mechs

I was a massive fan of the first ‘Pacific Rim’ film.  It was loud, dumb and yet strangely well-shot for an out and out B-movie (something to do with its very-talented director, Guillermo Del Toro).  It had its flaws, but it was still enormous fun.  So my hopes were high for ‘part II.’ However, the reviews came in and they weren’t overly-positive.  And yet, my hopes remained high.  I shouldn’t have got excited.

The original told the tale of a breach in the ocean floor which allowed giant monsters to enter our world.  The humans’ response was to – believe it or not – create giant robots to beat them into submission (please ignore the fact that our military apparently couldn’t defeat the monsters on their own, but never mind).  Part II starts showing the devastation caused by the battles along coastal cities.  A young girl (no more than 13?) has lived all her life among the ruins and has – somehow – managed to scavenge enough parts to build herself a fully-functional giant robot.  She can pilot this on her own and out manoeuvre full-trained soldiers in their own mechs.

This all occurs within about the first ten minutes and I found this whole situation just a little hard to suspend my disbelief for.  Unfortunately, this small nugget of the plot basically sums up the entire film.  I could spend quite a long time listing one totally unbelievable plot point after the next.  I know the whole story is over-the-top, but the fact that it turns out that soldiers are no longer used to pilot the robots; instead a bunch of kids are trained up.  Why?  Who knows.  You just have a teen-kid movie where they fight in robots and has one unbelievable story element after the next.

It’s not all bad.  John Boyega is very watchable as the lead.  It’s just who’s around him that brings the whole thing down.  The film does its best to expand on the original idea and, for that, it succeeds.  Plus the battles are as fun (and the final fight is truly awesome!).  However, my main gripe is that just this film is probably going to be appreciated more by youngsters than hardened cynical cinema veterans such as myself.  I’m sure I’d have loved this if I was a twelve-year-old boy and then gone out and bought the toy.  Oh, yeah, that girl’s ‘build-your-own-robot’ is annoyingly cute and looks a bit like ‘Bumblebee’ from the ‘Transformers’ franchise.  I think they want you to not just watch the film, but also buy the toys.  I won’t be doing that.  And, if Part III does get made (maybe) I’ll wait for this one to appear on Netflix.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights

Twins – It shouldn’t work (but it totally does!)

‘Twins’ is probably the film that first proved that ‘Hollywood action hardmen’ COULD do comedy.  Before this it was unheard of that someone as well-known for ‘action’ could ever try and be funny.  However, ‘Twins’ proves that the right actors, meeting with the right script, can produce something that stands the test of time.

The premise is simple (if only a little far-fetched) that a *ahem* ‘perfect’ man (Arnold Schwarzenegger) grows up on a tropical island, to discover that he actually has a long-lost twin brother back in mainland USA (Danny DeVito).  Therefore, our – unusually naive – Arnie heads to LA to find him.

I first saw this film when I was a kid and loved it then, simply because I was a massive fan of Schwarzenegger and this was the first of his films I was legally allowed to see in the cinema.  However, now I’m older (and I can almost quote the film word for word), I can appreciate it on a new level.  It really is ‘perfectly written.’

There’s never a moment of the script that feels dragged out, or could be left on the cutting room floor.  Every second either moves the plot on, establishes character, or is simply very funny.  Arnie proves that he can do more than just beat people up (although he still cracks the odd skull or two here) and plays ‘the straight man’ brilliantly to DeVito’s zany comic character.

‘Twins’ stands up today as it did back then.  You don’t need to be a huge fan of Arnie’s to  appreciate this.  You only need a sense of humour.  It’s a comedy that doesn’t rely on gross or crude humour and it’s not topical, which helps it stay as enjoyable today as it was back then.  Maybe it was ‘lightning in a bottle’ as many other ‘action heroes’ have tried their hand at comedy since (including Schwarzenegger/DeVito again in the ill-fated ‘Junior’) and it was never half as good as this.

There are few films today that can be described so genuinely as ‘fun for all the family.’ But, while we still have all these ‘blasts from the past,’ who cares?

10/10 The Monty Python Knights of Camelot are currently looking for this