Aeon Flux - Probably not as bad as you've heard

'Aeon Flux is the worst movie ever made.' So said pretty much every critic back in 2005 when it was first released.  Therefore it bombed and was pretty much forgotten about.  Yes, it's hardly going to be mentioned in the same breath as 'The Godfather' and 'Empire Strikes Back,' but it's definitely not as bad as many made out and you can get some enjoyment out of it... if you're in the right mindset.

It was based on some sort of MTV show (I didn't watch it) about a futuristic society that has survived the apocalypse and is now living under a - borderline fascist - regime in the last city on Earth.  However, those nasties in charge are constantly being harassed by a band of resistance fighters, including Charlize Theron's 'Aeon Flux' - who is a lycra-clad assassin who may just win the war for the good guys.

There's the typical futuristic city setting, which isn't bad - even the computer-generated moments are just about passible.  Then you have the action and the shootouts etc that are associated with the genre.  So what went wrong?  Rumour has it the film was supposed to be much longer and was majorly trimmed down in the edit suite to a more fast-paced hour and thirty-one minutes.  Sadly, this appeared to take with it many of the slower moments which helped explain what was going on and the film's biggest criticism is that it's a bit of a mess for losing this extra footage.

Believe it or not, 'Aeon Flux' isn't just about getting Charlize Theron in lycra.  The movie does deal with a few interesting and weighty concepts.  However, they could probably have been fleshed-out far more than the enforced run-time has allowed.

If you're expecting Theron to turn in a performance that rivals her Oscar-winning turn in 'Monster' then you're way off.  Here, she just plays the typical tough girl who just so happens to be stunningly attractive.  She's functional in what she does as gives the best she can under the circumstances.  The rest of the cast can also be best described as 'functional.' However, despite its flaws, I still can't bring myself to hate it.  Yes, it's no masterpiece, but if you're in the mood to simply sit down and watch Charlize gun her way through plenty of henchmen in a futuristic setting and you don't want to think too deeply about the hows and whys of it all, then look no further.  Just don't ask me what's the deal with the 'merged' A and E of the title.  Is that even a letter?

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

The Mask - Still great after all this time

I haven’t watched ‘The Mask’ for years and I was actually wondering how well it would stand up after over twenty years.  Back in 1995 Jim Carrey was Hollywood’s (comedy) golden child.  Everything he touched was Box Office dynamite.  However, since then, his offerings have been a little more hit and miss (don’t get me started on ‘Dumb and Dumber To!’), but I’m pleased to say that The Mask still shows off his manic persona and comedy timings.

I have a feeling ‘The Mask’ was based on a comic book, but I haven’t read it!  Therefore, I can’t really say how well it’s transferred across to the big screen.  Although I can say that it works.  Carrey plays a – depressingly average – guy who’s too nice for his own good.  Everyone takes advantage of him and his life is pretty awful.  Naturally, when he finds a mysterious wooden mask that when worn transforms him into a green-faced superhero, he chooses to fight crime, protect the weak and generally stand up for justice.  Or rather he kind of considers all those options.  He mainly just uses his new powers to get back at all those people who have wronged him and do his best to woo the – then unknown – Cameron Diaz.

Yes, the story is hardly original and, if you’ve seen any of Marvel’s latest offerings, it’s pretty much identical to every other superhero film, i.e. man gets superpowers, man fights crime, defeats villain and gets girl.  But, don’t let any small lack of originality put you off.  It’s not there to be a great work of art with deep and meaningful prose and character arcs.  It’s there to entertain, utilising Carrey’s full repartee to the max.

The manic jokes come thick and fast.  Normally, the best films are ‘team efforts’ when the cast all play their parts.  Not here.  Here it’s just Carrey, Carrey, Carrey.  He steals every scene and created a thousand new catch phrases in the process.

It’s a fun film and it should be enjoyed by everyone.  It’s simple enough to be understood and enjoyed by children and it’s just dark enough to appeal to adults. 

100% prime Carrey (and Cameron Diaz is pretty good, too).

9/10 almost as perfect as The Godfather

Battle of Britain - A great snapshot of a dark time

‘The Battle of Britain’ is, unsurprisingly, about the period during the Second World War before the Americans joined and Britain was generally under air siege from the Nazis.  I’ll say now that I thoroughly enjoyed the film and was surprised at some of the negativity towards it.  From what I can gather, people believe that the film isn’t ‘historically accurate,’ as it doesn’t give enough mention to all the other (primarily Commonwealth) countries’ pilots who also lost their lives in the fight.

To be fair, they may have a point.  Yes, the film *almost* makes it look like only British pilots fought (with the odd fleeting scene with a handful of Polish airmen).  But, in order to do every nation justice, the film would have to last weeks in order to give every airman enough screen time.

During the end credits, we’re treated to a poignant text reminded of the ‘official’ statistics, showing just how many other nationalities helped Britain out (and it’s probably more than you think!). However, if you really want to get the most out of this film, you’ll just have to accept that it’s the Brits who the story really focuses on.

And there are some pretty big names on the bill.  No one bigger than Michael  Caine, Robert Shaw and Edward Fox to name but a few.  Others are there largely to be cameos, but everyone plays their part.

It’s hard to built too much of a story around an event that actually happened.  If you start trying to focus on adding a ‘traditional’ narrative, you sometimes have to forgo telling things as they happened.  The ‘story’ has already happened.  The writers couldn’t really tell it any differently.  As with many war films, events have had to be ‘condensed’ in order to fit with the narrative they give it.

‘The Battle of Britain’ may have the odd narrative flaw or character that isn’t as developed as the audience feel s they should have been, but any film like this isn’t supposed to be ‘character-driven.’ It’s about a period of time where hundreds of innocent people were dying daily (and that’s not even counting the airmen who were doing their best to defend the civilian population).

When the aerial dogfights come, they’re pretty spectacular.  The film-makers restored many vintage planes and brought them back up to be air-worthy.  Just because there aren’t any computer-generated effects here, doesn’t mean that the special effects aren’t impressive.

 

If you’re looking for a story driven film, you may want to try somewhere else.  If you want a totally historically-accurate depiction of the era, then read a history book.  However, if you’re happy with a film which generally gives you an idea just how scary it was to fight (and often) die in the air defending your country, try this.  Those who fell don’t deserve to be forgotten, however they’re remembered.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one

Scavengers - Like Dr Who, but without the appeal

Oh, dear... where to begin. ‘Scavengers’ is a case of something trying to be more than it actually is. The special effects are pretty blatantly computer-generated which doesn’t help, but, if it had a decent story or something, I’ll wager that most science fiction fans could forgive it its shortcomings.

Basically, you have a good ship and a bad ship, both vying for the same salvage in deep space. How do we know which ship is good and which ship is bad? Because both a equally as close to the precise definition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as you could get – making them both pretty clichéd. The ‘good’ ship has nice, attractive, kind people who live in a brightly-lit ship with white walls. The ‘bad’ spaceship is filled with creepy, gothic-looking people who only want to kill people (and the walls of their ship are black and dimly-lit).

The ‘story’ (for what it is) is just bouncing back from one ship to the other while they try to fight over the salvage (which is worth something... by the way). And it’s not just the effects that are a bit shoddy. The script is pretty tired and the actors don’t seem to have enough enthusiasm in them to lift the dialogue above its mediocre roots.

It has a real ‘made for TV’ feel to it. It’s not the worst movie ever made, but it’s far from being the best. If you like you sci-fi a little sparse on the sets and effects department, watch Dr Who – it also has a story and reasonable actors.

3/10 Jabba the Hutt wipes himself down with this film

Layer Cake - A middle class Guy Ritchie film

Yes, Britain is famous for its classic and gritty gangster films (but then it’s also got its fair share of pretty mundane and forgettable ones, too).  Guy Ritchie made his name showing us the exploits of his working class (anti) heroes and, for a while, it seemed like every film was about the ‘rougher’ element from London.  Then came Layer Cake.  And, briefly, Ritchie’s name was associated with it.  You can see why.  It does share certain traits of one of his films – gangsters, multiple plotlines and characters and, of course, the violence and double crossing. 

But, once you start watching it, you soon see that it’s not just a poor clone, but something all of its own entirely.  A pre-Bond Daniel Craig stars as the main character (of whom we deliberately never learn his name!) who is a class A drugs dealer, only not the type to hang round on dodgy street corners.  He just produces the stuff for others to supply and snort, therefore he can tell himself (and us, the audience) that he’s more of a respectable type of criminal.

And, he’s so respectable, that he’s basically thinking of quitting the whole business (now that he’s made his millions of course).  Sadly, a very large spanner is thrown in his works when the local kingpin decides to utilise his services to find the missing daughter of a colleague.  Now, this hardly fits in with Craig’s usual skillsets, but then that’s the point.  It’s all a bit too out of the blue to be above board.  And, what follows is a chain reaction that leads to the afore-mentioned violence and double crossing.

It’s one of those films that you can’t really have on in the background.  You’ll need to watch it.  There are numerous characters who you’ll need to keep track of so you can follow who’s working for who and therefore who’s about to stab who in the back.  If you like your ‘Richie-style’ films then you should love this.  Daniel Craig is excellent in the lead role (better than he is in Bond in my humble opinion) and the supporting cast all play their parts well.  You’ll only get the one chance to watch it through without knowing what’s going to happen and I advice you sit down and spend some time getting to grips with it.

Plus it’s got a great soundtrack and Sienna Miller in – arguably – her finest role to date (*rolls eyes*).

9/10 almost as perfect as The Godfather

Reeker - An old story, reasonably well done

Nothing new in five American teenagers going on a road trip and falling foul of [insert you monster or redneck family of choice here]. However, every once in a while a film comes along that tells a tried and tested story, but with enough flair to make it just that little bit more memorable.

`Reeker' tells the story of five American teenagers going on a road trip and falling foul of... do you really need to know? If you watch the sort of film where these beautiful kids keep getting killed off by one monster/cannibal after the next, it doesn't matter who's doing the deed, only that it's entertaining. And Reeker is entertaining, just.

First of all, for a low budget flick, the gore is nicely done. There are also some vaguely humorous moments to lighten the mood. Secondly, the killer is nicely done and moves in a genuinely creepy way (possibly a distant cousin of the `Peeper' in Jeepers Creepers).

However, where Reeker falls down is that, although the film may be nice and well done, there's nothing particularly new here - not enough to really set it up as a classic. There's still the old `have sex and die' cliché, plus the "I'll be right back" (and die) cliché, followed by the attempted twist in the tale cliché. And, once the clichés start coming, what charm the film has starts to dwindle.

You'll probably have guessed which characters live and die within the first few minutes of meeting them - they're all pretty stereotypical, so there's not too much in the way of suspension.

Basically, if you like the sound of Reeker (and that type of movie in general), you could certainly do worse than this. I didn't feel like I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching it, but I'm not sure I could be bothered to sit through it again, simply because I have a dozen better versions of this movie in my DVD collection already.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights

The Avengers - The 90's mightiest heroes

I guess there are two ways of looking at 1998's 'The Avengers' film (and, yes, it has NOTHING to do with the Marvel brand that would dominate the Box Office a decade later).  You can either believe everything you've heard about it, or just keep an open mind and go with the flow.

It's a remake of a British 1960s spy show about a male and female secret agent, generally saving the world with gadgets and an assortment of witty quips.  The studio had high hopes for the big budget adaptation and cast two major stars (Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman) in the lead.  However, close to release it became clear (from 'critics,' anyway) that the movie wasn't that good and its release date got put forward while they did reshoots, or re-edits etc, trimming the run-time dramatically.  When it did hit theatres, basically everyone hated it, claiming it was a 'mess' and it now lives on only in top ten lists of movies that bombed hard.

Yet, saying all that, I quite enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it then and I enjoy watching it on DVD every so often.  No, I'm not saying it's perfect (or even that good!), but I'm saying there's enough there to keep me entertained for an hour and a half.

For a start there's Sean Connery as the bad guy, who's threatening to control the world's weather and force countries to 'purchase' their weather directly from him.  Therefore, Fiennes and Thurman must stop him.  Yes, it's kind of like a Bond film plot and you can expect the regular punch-ups and car chases that come with the genre.

What you also get are some truly surreal scenes which don't make a lot of sense.  Now, these could be written just to add to the film's 'kooky' feel, or it could be because the other scenes that explain them were left on the cutting room floor, therefore leaving these scenes' meaning up to our imagination.

People also remarked on 'how little chemistry' there was between Fiennes and Thurman.  I can see their point.  However, it's worth noting that they were supposed to be playing cold and unflappable characters lifted from yesteryear when this kind of acting/social interaction was more common.  It's a case where the film tried to copy the source material and succeeded - only a little too well for its own good.

Like I say, 'The Avengers' is just about as far from perfect as you'll ever get, but it's not the car crash you've probably heard it is.  And, if you're in the mood for a spy movie that's a little bit different and has a mute Eddie Izzard, a gun-totting Granny and a swarm of robot bees, then give this one a go.  And I didn't even mentioned the giant teddy bear costumes.

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