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Smells Like a Gun Crazy Carry On

After 11 years in the making and countless production problems, Jim Groom’s love letter to classic film noir finally gets delivered. Of course, there are problems with it; the dubbing can grate, some of the external scenes expose technical issues and the acting is patchy, but these are merely limitations of an extremely low-budget. Despite these constraints, Room 36 is still a delicious slice of hard boiled thriller, and one that refuses to simply ape American movies, adding in wry British farce and rough London grit to deliver a cine-literate pastiche of genre conventions.

The plot of Room 36 sounds like something out of Blame it on the Bellboy – in a seedy Paddington hotel, a randy salesman waits for a prostitute and, in the next room, a hitman waits for a contact. An accident changes room 38 to read 36 so does hilarity ensue? Not quite, murder and mayhem follow instead. Welcome to director Jim Groom’s off-kilter homage to old crime movies, a sort of retro-fitted world where errors and mistaken identity lead, much like a Coen Brothers movie (think Fargo), down a dark, bloody road.

The hitman is simply known as Conner (Herzberg), supposedly at the hotel to exchange money for a piece of microfilm supplied by a government insider – Miss Woods (Booroff). It’s never clear exactly what the microfilm contains, although it has something to do with the election of the next Prime Minister, so in true Hitchcockian style it is merely an object various parties desire. But Conner is also there to dispose of Miss Woods herself, something she realises when she discovers the dead prostitute stuffed under his bed.

Though the film is shot in stark black & white the characters…

Continued on The Smell of Napalm

Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s savage take on the use of child soldiers in Africa’s violent and bloody revolutions is one of the most compelling films the continent has ever produced. Based partly on the 1999 – 2003 conflict in Liberia, it’s set in an unnamed country where a ragtag rebellion is trying to overthrow the government. At the heart of the chaos is 14-year-old Johnny Mad Dog (Christopher Minie) who leads a ‘platoon’ of wild boys through a constant barrage of gunfights, rape and executions. Sauvaire’s approach is one of pseudo-documentary, his camera racing to keep-up with the drug-charged gang who think themselves righteous and bulletproof.

The film evokes the work of Kubrick; the freedom to commit grotesque acts reminds us of the unrepentant droogs of A Clockwork Orange while the dehumanization of war builds on Full Metal Jacket, but with children in the firing…

Continued on Film & Festivals

One of Africa’s most controversial films, Flame was even seized by police during editing due to its incendiary nature. It was eventually released in 1996 to controversy that still exists today because of its portrayal of female fighters in Zimbabwe’s civil war during the 70s. The film itself is fiction but British-born director Ingrid Sinclair based it on years of research and interviews with the woman who fought in the revolution but still go unrecognised as heroes.

The story follows two friends - Florence (Marian Kunonga) and Nyasha (Ulla Mahaka) – who abandon their village life in favour of fighting for their freedom but they quickly realise that war is brutal and unglamorous. Nyasha is renamed Liberty and uses her skills as a writer to distance herself from the frontline while Florence becomes Flame, a brave warrior but one abused by her superiors. She’s raped and becomes pregnant, forced to become a mother while trying to fight for independence.

Flame is both intimate and inspiring as Sinclair follows the pair’s friendship through the hardships of war and into the decades that followed in which men were called heroes but the women still oppressed. Kunonga’s performance is powerful, refusing to be the victim while also honouring all the women who fought and died for Zimbabwe as Flame is both maternal and fearless. Sinclair’s film is a testament to those that gave their lives to their country but also demands that the government acknowledge them properly. In the film’s final scene, Florence and Nyasha can only watch the all-male Hero’s Day celebrations on TV. Despite what they’ve gone through their struggle still continues.

Released in 2008, From a Whisper marks the 10-year anniversary of the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya by Islamic terrorists which killed over 250 people and injured thousands. Like many of the 9/11 movies that have been released, it looks at several characters before and after the atrocity, tracing unrelated lives that would become forever intertwined thanks to a single, devastating event.

Director Wanuri Kahiu’s central character is Tamani (Corine Onyango), an angry teenage girl whose mother was never found after the attack and her relationship with her father is distant and strained. An intelligence officer (played by Ken Ambani) tries to help her come to terms with her grief while also dealing with his own. Through flashbacks we learn that his lifelong friend was involved in the bombing and how this put his own Muslim beliefs to the ultimate test.

Kahiu’s production values are incredibly high and the film is tense and realistic. The bombing itself is stark and shocking, combining documentary footage with shots of Kahiu’s characters caught up in the chaos. The film went on to win 5 African Movie Academy Awards in Nigeria, including Best Director and Best Picture, and is a powerful story that’s universal to many in the world who now have to deal with terrorism as part of modern life. The Kenya bombing may be little known to those outside Africa and Kahiu gives it the attention it deserves.

Last month I had the cool job of writing a few reviews for a new DVD price comparison web site called DVD Box Sets. The idea itself is nothing new but the site is fun and simple to use thanks to web designer Greg Findley’s crisp, clear design and concentrating on just the box set side of the DVD market means it doesn’t get bogged down. Box sets are always going to appeal to gift hunters and film/TV completists and this site simply directs them to the cheapest place to buy what they’re after. But what I found unique about the site is that they run independent and critical reviews, not just the usual marketing blurb you’d expect to find on a price comparison site. So it encourages the buyer to make an informed choice, not just based on price but also on what they’re getting for their money and whether it’s really worth it.

Below are some of the reviews I wrote so please check ‘em out… and then buy something…

Red Dwarf Anniversary Edition
Alfred Hitchcock Box Set
The IT Crowd Series 1 - 3
Lost Seasons 1 – 5
Madagascar
The Office: An American Workplace Series 1 – 3
Fawlty Towers
The River Cottage Collection
The X-Files
Dad’s Army
Battlestar Galactica
Stargate Atlantis Series 1 - 5
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Seasons 1 – 4
Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law Seasons 1 – 3
Scrubs Series 1 - 7

Smells Like the Decade Ends with a Big Blue Bang

Look! Stuff! Happening! Constantly! More stuff! Spaceships! Big monsters! Weird blobs floating! Ash drifting in the background! Mech Warriors! Stuff! This is essentially Avatar. In 3-D. For 160 minutes. I walked away with a headache (although that could have been down to the closing Leona Lewis song) but suitably amazed at what James Cameron had achieved. These are the best CG effects in the history of the world, ever. It’s just not terribly original, with bucketfuls of cheesy dialogue about loving Mother Nature – forget the Smurfs, it’s more like a Captain Planet origin story. It’s a spectacular blockbuster but District 9 essentially did the same with a lot more heart.

The trouble with movies like Avatar is that reviews start to sound like they’re talking about videogames. Story and character have been at the centre of filmmaking for decades but in the age of motion capture, 3-D and eye-bleeding CGI the sheer spectacle has become an element in its own right. So, like game reviews break their subject down into visual/technical accomplishment versus playability and originality, we must do the same with Avatar, a movie destined to become renowned for demonstrating the wondrous possibilities of computerized filmmaking but little else.

Avatar’s been in the making since James Cameron’s last feature film Titanic in 1997. The ‘king of the world’ has been busy completely revolutionising digital effects, even creating real-time motion capture technology that allowed him to shoot a scene with actors and then move the camera and objects within that scene wherever he wanted, effectively reshooting it long after the actors had left, or ‘playing God’ as some would say. The result is truly breathtaking. Avatar is set on the world of Pandora – a completely realised living and breathing planet with its own eco system, startling creatures and alien tribes – everything moves, everything is there for a reason.

I’ll say it again, it’s breathtaking. Pandora makes Gollum look like a kid’s flipbook animation. …

Continued on The Smell of Napalm

It’s tough being a sci-fi comedy series. Even the mighty Red Dwarf only managed to cling onto a TV spot thanks to a devoted fan-base. Channels have since tried to recapture Dwarf’s audience with decidedly mixed results, namely the strained Hyperdrive which didn’t exactly blast off into the stratosphere. Vying for attention around a similar time as Hyperdrive (2006/2007) was Andrew Dymond’s Starhyke, a Star Trek spoof starring fan favourite Claudia Christian (Babylon 5) but with more British sensibilities. The show never aired but this didn’t deter Dymond and Lightworx Media from producing an entire series of 6 episodes. Now the series-that-never-was is available on DVD, in all its endearing, yet painfully flawed, glory.

If you check out Starhyke’s official site then you’ll see that Dymond has gone to great lengths to come up with a backstory for the show’s universe. Sadly, little of this makes it to the screen giving the series a very haphazard feel. The pilot episode, Disordered, begins in 3034, in a universe where human’s have suppressed their emotions and are on the verge of wiping out the last alien race of the galaxy. But the Reptids counter-strike by sending a ship back in time to the Earth of the 21st century where they plan to detonate a weapon that will reawaken human emotion. The Dreadnaught Nemesis is tasked with going back in time to stop them but is hit with a smaller version of the weapon so the crew must deal with their new, heightened emotions while hunting the Reptids.

Dymond’s main aim is to put some sex appeal back into sci-fi. The crew of the Nemesis will be familiar to fans of The Next Generation – there’s an android, a warrior, a brilliant engineer – but Dymond flips the stuffiness of Star Trek’s ordered and boring Enterprise by having the characters suddenly injected with feelings. Now they’re angry, crying, horny… mostly horny. Although Dymond’s premise is intriguing and allows for a few dramatic moments, including one where they all realise how horrible they’ve been to other races, the show very quickly descends into Benny Hill territory with nurses in short skirts and tired double entendres.

What’s first noticeable is that the Bridge of the Nemesis is mainly made up of women. Hot women who are soon all cleavage and legs. Obviously, the main selling point of the show is Christian as Captain Belinda Blowhard, who, let’s face it, is in a different league to Kate Mulgrew’s very prim Janeway, but they’ve travelled back to the 21st century, not the 1960s. In a later episode, Plug and Play, some of them get jobs in a strip club, yes, a strip club, which is a pretty handy way of getting Rachel Grant (as the aptly named Wu Oof) to show off her assets.

The men don’t come off any better and are aloof and unlikeable. Commander Cropper (Brad Gorton) is supposedly the dashing male of the group but is deeply uncharismatic, yet all the women fancy him, fighting for his attention. For some reason, Chief Engineer Sally Popyatopov (Stephanie Jory) lusts after him the…

Continued on Sci-Fi London

The Welsh coastal town of Aberystwyth might be a quiet, unassuming place but, as horror films have taught us, nothing is ever what it seems. It may boast picture postcard scenery and historic forts but when the Abertoir Horror Festival opens its doors, it’s a place haunted by tales of bloody murder.

In November, Abertoir marked its fourth birthday and, thanks to funding from the Film Agency for Wales, director Gaz Bailey was able to screen over 20 films as well as masterclasses and macabre performances from the Grand Guignol Laboratory. Although the line-up included big releases such as The Descent 2, Abertoir is not just about the future of horror, it is about exploring its roots in film and beyond, and for many the big treat was the festival’s opening feature – a chance to see the rarest of the rare – Michael Mann’s The Keep (1983).

It has become an Abertoir tradition to kick off with a cult movie and The Keep is the Holy Grail. Unreleased on DVD, it is often talked about but little seen, and film fans are always on the lookout for a worn-out VHS copy in a bargain bin. It’d be logical to assume that to get an original 35mm print Bailey must have taken on a diabolical series of challenges, each more fiendish that the last… Not quite: ‘I didn’t think we had a hope in hell,’ he said, ‘but Paramount had a print and just sent it over. I was really quite surprised! We want to make use of our Welsh-ness and The Keep was ideal’.

Filmed up the road in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, in-between the mountains of Snowdonia, The Keep was notoriously dogged by problems that led…

Continued on Electric Sheep Magazine

Two career pickpockets (Rene Liu and Infernal Affairs’ Andy Lau) get caught up in a cat and mouse game aboard a train when Liu decides she wants to protect a naive country bumpkin (Wang Baoqiang) and his money to make up some karma. Once the train gets moving so does the pace as Lau battles against a rival gang with crafty tricks and heavy metaphors about wolves and lambs.

Director Feng Xiaogang went on to make The Banquet and Assembly after this 2004 blockbuster and you can see where…

Continued on Combat Magazine

Smells Like a Classic Has Landed

It’s frustrating when films like Moon come along. After all the hype it received this year at Edinburgh, Sundance, Tribeca etc it looked like a must see film. It is, but I’m only finding out now because it’s just come out on DVD. Could I see it at my local multiplex? No, only Transformers 2. Moon is one of the best films of the year, and one of the greatest sci-fi trips since Solaris. It’s lovingly made, with a great respect for the genre, and full of heavy themes all swirling round perfectly realised performances from Sam Rockwell in a dual role.

Sci-fi dominated the summer – there was plenty of Star Trekking, Terminating and Transforming going on - but, although fun, the films were somewhat hollow. With big, slick effects and frequent explosions, modern sci-fi has lost some of its charm, the ability to say ‘what if’ and explore the impact of theories and possibilities on the human soul. Thankfully, in amongst the noise, there are films out there still doing that, such as Duncan Jones’ Moon.

Receiving a limited release earlier this year, Moon is handcrafted for fans of proper science fiction. It’s retro but modern, big on ideas but intimately handled. Those who yearn for the 70s desperation of Silent Running or Alien will feel right at home in Moon’s isolated setting and cold, corporate dystopia. Those who admired the vision of Kubrick’s 2001 get a similarly realistic and rich experience, but without Kubrick’s detachment as Jones combines conceptual ideas with very human and engaging characters.

Obviously Moon is set on the Moon, where a lonely astronaut, Sam Bell (Rockwell), looks after harvesters that send energy back to Earth. Coming to the end of a 3 year contract, Sam is only weeks away from going home. With no live feed from Earth, he’s survived on occasional taped messages from his wife and…

Continued on The Smell of Napalm