Crazy Love (2005)

Wow, I never realised having a crippling, debilitating mental illness could be so much fun!

Crazy Love is a 2005 film starring Reiko Aylesworth and Bruno Campos and directed by Ellie Kanner.

My opening line there refers to Bruno Campos’ character, Michael, who is said to suffer from severe paranoid delusions due to schizophrenia and has been institutionalised for much of his adult life. In this film, he is portrayed as a loveable prankster who is quite charming and harmless as long as he remembers to take a little pink tablet every day. He hangs out in a psych ward with some other cuckoos who are little more than derivative cardboard cut-outs. They sit around watching Groundhog Day and taking bets on what disorders newcomers are suffering from.

The film starts and ends quite well. What’s in between is cliché-riddled, sappy horseshit. The story is about Letty (Reiko Aylesworth) a well-intentioned but highly strung school teacher who seems to have a mild case of obsessive-compulsive-disorder (she labels all her kitchen products, sorts her underwear by colour and sets 3 different alarm clocks in the morning). She has come up with a fun way to help kids learn maths which leads to a stressful meeting with the school administrator, and on top of that she has to host her divorced parents for dinner (with her father bringing his new wife). Well all this stress is bound to tip Letty over the edge, and does so in spectacular fashion during my favourite scene in the movie that I refer to as “The Olive Meltdown”. This is a great scene – I like the way the lighting and subtle music is combined with increasingly frantic camera movements to build the tension until finally Letty breaks and begins hurling jars of olives at people.

Letty’s mental state is not helped by her narcisstic and condescending partner. And this creates the film’s first sticking point for me. You see, the relationship between Letty and her fiancé would have been so much better if the writer hadn’t made her fiancé such a colossal dipshit. He’s just not believable. He’s such an inconsiderate prick that he crosses the line from character to comical.

Anyway, after the meltdown Letty awakes in the above mentioned psych ward and unfortunately until it finally picks up at the end, the majority of the film is predictable shit. If I’d known all it would take to ‘find myself’ would be to chuck a few condiments at a security guard and hang out with a bunch of fruit loops in a mental hospital that seems to see patients masquerading as doctors as just a harmless bit of fun, well fuck me I’d be the most well-adjusted person on the planet.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on this film but it's just too...I don't know...'self helpy'. Michael and Letty are just two lost souls who find each other over sneaky pizza and cigarettes in the linen closet. The film just never steps outside its comfort zone. And I really have trouble imagining the writer has ever known anyone with a serious mental illness – the subject is just never given the gravity it deserves even for a lightweight rom com. Michael’s character is the worst example, he’s said to suffer severe psychotic breaks from reality but seems to just get a bit paranoid if he forgets to take his meds. And as I said before, the other patients at the facility are just assortments of caricatures taken from other movies set in mental hospitals. I almost expected one of them to break out a Simpsons-esque: “Actually, I’m just here voluntarily.”

The film does pick up at the end. I liked that it doesn't go for a ‘happily ever after’ ending – Michael and Letty accept that they will not work as a couple and go their separate ways. I like that the film decided ultimately to be about Letty’s happiness and I liked that she decided she didn’t need her fiancé or Michael in order to find that happiness. It's far from the worst way I can think to spend 100 minutes, but it's further from the best.

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

A poor man’s Luke Skywalker jets around space in a giant cow recruiting a rag-tag bunch of pilots to help him defend his planet from John Saxon who wants to blow it up for no apparent reason! Excellent!

Battle Beyond the Stars is a 1980 sci fi film directed by Jimmy T Murakami and starring Richard Thomas, Robert Vaughn and John Saxon.

Let’s start with the premise, which is not only flimsy, but hilariously moronic. Our villain, such as he is, is Sador played by John Saxon. He suffers from some bizarre affliction that makes him lose limbs, which he replaces by chopping off other people’s limbs and grafting them onto his stumps. Anyway, needless to say Sador is a bit of a narcissist, and so over-confident that he shows up at planets he plans to vaporise and very helpfully informs them that he plans to return in a week to vaporise them, giving them the perfect opportunity to, oh I don’t know, mount a defence?? He’s got to be the most considerate villain I’ve ever seen. It’s like showing up on someone’s doorstep and announcing you have copied their keys and plan to return in a week to rob them, then being miffed when you show up a week later and the locks have been changed.

Not wasting any time, the peace loving inhabitants of…some peaceful planet I can’t recall the name of enlist their own Luke Skywalker, Shad (Richard Thomas) to save them. He takes to the skies in the weirdest spaceship I’ve ever seen – I’ve never quite been able to figure out what it is, but to me it looks like a giant brown cow with tits.

Roger Corman was undoubtedly the king of B-grade films. That’s not an insult, by the way. He had a great knack for taking whatever the latest blockbuster was, and making a really cheap knock off of it (like 1993’s Carnosaur – arguably a better movie than the one it’s knocking off - Jurassic Park. I don’t recall any scene in Jurassic Park that was even a shade as entertaining as watching some Leftie vegans tie themselves to logging equipment only to be devoured by rubber dinosaurs). In this case, the blockbuster was Star Wars. So he took the idea of The Magnificent Seven (itself based on Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai) and made a B-grade sci fi film out of it.

Shad’s first port of call is to go visit a scientist on a space station who might be able to provide help. Unbeknownst to him the ageing scientist has gone a bit loopy and is now just a head attached to a Dalek-style robotic body. The costuming is so cheap it’s hilariously obvious it’s just an old guy sitting in a plastic bucket, but that’s part of the film’s charm. Anyway, I like that the scientist becomes fixated on keeping Shad prisoner on the space station to bang his daughter because – God love him – he wants grandkids. I like that she’s so horny and desperate she falls for Shad after he mumbles some bad pick up lines about ‘wind’ and goes trekking off after him when he escapes. He is a damn good citizen though, I’ll give him that. If it was me faced with the choice between criss-crossing the galaxy in a sass-talking giant cow or staying aboard a comfy space station to repeatedly bang a hot blonde, I think Shad’s people would be doomed.

Anyway, Shad proceeds to recruit an assortment of characters to round out the ‘seven’, all of whom are surprisingly memorable. The most interesting, I think, is ‘Nestor’ – a kind of collective consciousness whereby whatever happens to one is experienced by the rest (that would save hundreds on the weekly alcohol budget). But they are all pretty cool. Probably my favourite is the lizard guy who hates Sador (his planet apparently didn’t take Sador’s advanced notice seriously) and shrieks a delightfully obnoxious war cry at every available opportunity. He has these two sidekicks called the ‘Kelvins’ whose only way of communicating is through degrees of heat (get it? ‘Kelvins’?) and this makes for one of the films many odd moments of humour when the other characters use the Kelvins to cook hot dogs.

The one member of the rag tag bunch who is supposed to be the coolest actually winds up being the least interesting. It’s Robert Vaughn basically reprising his role from The Magnificent Seven. He plays a mercenary who is apparently so wanted throughout the galaxy that he’s unable to spend any of his ill-gotten riches so he just sits in a chair and broods. He comes along for the ride but doesn’t really do anything other than occasionally remind all the others about how tough he is.

Of course it’d be remiss of me not to mention Sybil Danning as the Amazonian warrior woman with an inferiority complex due to the fact that she’s small. Her coping mechanism is admirable though – she just wears tight-fitting outfits that emphasise her enormous breasts. Nice.

Anyway. Our seven heroes return to Shad’s homeworld just in time to launch the heroically suicidal defence against Sador and his wannabe-Death Star (hey, it destroys planets and I forget what it’s called) so we get lots of blue-screen effects and ping-ping laser sounds. They also use some kind of Dune-like audio warfare to sink trenches to prepare for the ground assault. Why Sador sees the need for a ground assault when he has a laser than can vaporise planets is never explained but just adds to the film’s enjoyable loopiness. I guess he just gets a kick out of the hands-on approach. But it does afford me one of my favourite moments in the film – when the Kelvins take out a tank by standing in front of it and turning their heat up to maximum – burning themselves out like light bulbs in the process. My heart always breaks for the little guys.

In true sci fi style our outnumbered and outgunned heroes manage to save the day and destroy Sador and his minions. The peace loving Shad finds his inner warrior, gets the girl, and saves the entire planet. Not a bad way to spend 90 minutes.

The Wraith (1986)

A stranger arrives in a small Arizona town and sets his sights on local girl Keri. The same day a mysterious black turbo shows up to take on Keri’s insane stalker Packard Walsh’s gang of drag racers who terrorise local drivers and force them to race for pink slips. Is there a connection?

The Wraith is a 1986 film directed by Mike Marvin and starring Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes, Sherilyn Fenn, Randy Quaid and Clint Howard.

The stranger is Jake Kesey, who bears an uncanny resemblance to murdered teen Jamie Hankins (who mysteriously disappeared one night while getting his gear off with Keri (Fenn)). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the stranger is the Wraith, a spirit back from the netherworld to wreak vengeance on Packard and his gang for murdering him and subjecting Keri to Packard’s unwanted and psychotically creepy advances (Packard’s idea of a romantic gesture is slicing open his palm with a pocketknife and pronouncing he and Keri ‘blood lovers’ – I guess he tried flowers once and it didn’t end well).

Packard and his ‘gang’ (I use the term loosely – explanation below) control the small Arizona backwater. This is sort of implied rather than obvious – it’s not really clear why he and his boys are so threatening, other than it being necessary for the plot. Whatever.

Anyway, I guess gang members in small desert towns are in short supply, because Packard’s ‘road pirates’ are a fairly lacklustre bunch. First into the meat grinder is Oggie, who seems to think mid-riff tops, black fingerless gloves and kimonos constitute a tough guy wardrobe. For such a camp villain he has a fairly nice car though – a 1986 Daytona Turbo Z.

Speaking of Oggie’s car, for a gang of drag racers their rides leave a bit to be desired. From Minty’s Trans Am with an entirely decorative supercharger (watch the air intakes as he revs the engine – they don’t move), to Packard’s ‘style-over-substance’ Corvette (the speedometer only goes up to 70MPH). Then there’s the fact that they all seem to think shifting gears in cars with automatic transmissions somehow makes them go faster. I’m surprised they ever had, as Rughead (Clint Howard) says: ‘the edge’ over any other street racers. Although having said that, the first drag race we see pits Packard’s Corvette against a stock 1987 Daytona, so maybe the competition doesn’t exactly warrant forking out hard-earned cash for twin-turbos.

All that is topped by the fact we find out that Packard likes his burgers with ‘mayo and thousand island dressing’. Packard should be a lot more concerned than he seems to be about the risk of being sent to prison – with a lunch order like that, there’d be guys lining up to shank him.

The comic relief is provided by the Skank/Gutterboy duo, one a glue-sniffing punk, the other a jumpy moron. I mention them only because Gutterboy delivers what has to be the greatest offhand remark in the history of movies. If you’ve seen the film you know the comment I mean. If you haven’t, there’s no way I’m going to spoil it here.

On the case is Randy Quaid as the Sheriff, Loomis. He gets to deliver some great insults and all his deputies seemed to be named “Murphy”. I’m still not sure which one is actually Murphy because Loomis calls one guy Murphy early in the film, then during a chase one of the deputies pursuing the Wraith car is referred to as Murphy, then in that same scene you see the first Murphy leaning over a car with a shotgun (yes, I’ve seen this movie way too many times).

The film’s cult status was unknown to me until I purchased the special edition DVD to replace the cheapie I had. In a lot of ways the film’s making-of and history is more interesting than the film itself. The Wraith was almost single-handedly responsible for a complete overhaul of the way films like this were made, due to the extremely unfortunate death of Assistant Cameraman Bruce Ingram when a camera truck rolled off one of the winding Arizona mountain roads the car chases were filmed on. It’s also the reason director Mike Marvin, who does an adequate job, was pretty much never heard of again. Having a crew member die on one of your shoots doesn’t look good on a resume. The methods used here, while making the car race scenes actually quite thrilling, were an accident waiting to happen.

What also cemented the film’s cult status was the infamous Dodge/Chrysler M4S Turbo featured as ‘the Wraith car’ the film revolves around. It’s lovingly filmed – and with good reason – it’s a fabulous-looking vehicle. And a technical wonder too, sporting a 4-cylinder supercharged engine that could apparently do 0-100kph in 4.1 seconds. That was equal to the acceleration of a Lamborghini of the same era.

Watching the film now, the limited budget is on fine display. Limited money for extras means the entire town seems to be populated by cops and teenagers. Even when a car rolls in spectacular fashion on a main street, no one seems to poke their heads out of any windows to take a look. It’s clear, and pretty understandable, that the bulk of the film’s finance went toward the cars they race and smash up at every opportunity. This is the days before CGI and digital enhancement, so the car stunts were filmed at fairly high speeds and the explosive conclusion to the first one still makes me raise my eyebrows in appreciation every time.

My favourite stunt though is not one of the main ones. It’s the small moment with the roadblock, just after the Wraith car has done away with Minty (fake supercharger guy) and the sheriff’s deputies think they’ve got the black turbo cornered. The whole sequence is done really well, but I love the bit where the Wraith car simply smashes through the roadblock and skids to a stop for a moment, before accelerating away. I like that after he’s just obliterated two police cars he’s not in any great hurry to get away.

Another thing to touch on, obviously, is the soundtrack. I say ‘obviously’ because the soundtrack features so prominently in the film that even the DVD cover lists the songs (by 80’s stalwarts like Motley Crue and Robert Palmer) as one of the film’s chief selling points. As you can imagine, besides the one requisite love song, the rest are pumpin’ 80’s rock ballads. As a child of that decade a lot of the tracks were familiar to me even when revisiting the film as an adult. I was pleasantly taken back, to the strains of Ozzie Osbourne, to a time when music was more about the hair, and there’s something to be said for the unapologetically egotistical lyrics of a lot of 80’s rock. This was the era before Kurt and Eddie ushered rock into its ‘brooding teenager’ phase. To accompany the tunes, there’s actually a score hiding in there that is not half bad. Blink and you’ll miss it though.

Anyway, I realise I’ve gotten to the tail end of this thing and haven’t even mentioned the main actor. That’s because he actually has very little screen time. The Wraith features prominently. Charlie Sheen does not. Depending on your tastes that’s either a selling point, or a deal breaker. Sheen pretty much sleepwalks through his few scenes anyway and, bizarrely, during the scene where he gets it on with Sherilyn Fenn, I swear it’s a body double standing in for Sheen (look at the hair – it’s a lighter shade, and a completely different cut).

I’ll end with my favourite character in the film – burger boy Billy Hankins, the brother of Keri’s murdered boyfriend Jamie. For starters, he’s the only person in the entire town who has the balls to stand up to Packard and his gang (even though he gets his ass kicked for doing so, he doesn’t have a badge to hide behind like Loomis, so he gets my respect). And given the town’s other citizens, he’s a pretty decent contender for bachelor of the year in this burg. He also has a remarkably poignant moment at the end of the film when he realises the Wraith is actually his brother.

There are loads of better ways to spend 90 minutes but if you’re a fan of car films (or for some bizarre reason you are interested in Charlie Sheen’s back catalogue) the Wraith is well worth a look.

Reanimator

A story of forbidden love, life and death, and how to peel someone's head like an orange.

Reanimator is a 1986 horror film based on a HP Lovecraft short story, directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott.

A classic gem of B-grade schlock horror, Reanimator is one of the best examples of the genre and stands the test of time remarkably well.

Med student Dan Cain (Abbott) advertises for a roommate, only to have the mysterious Dr Herbert West (Combs) answer the ad. Despite Dan’s girlfriend Megan’s (Barbara Crampton) objections, Dan is persuaded by the wad of cash West shows up with.

Megan objects for good reason – no sooner has West stepped through the front door, he asks to see the basement, and after seeing it, says “yes, this will do nicely!” I’ve interviewed a lot of house mates, and I can safely say anyone getting excited by a basement would immediately be scratched off the ‘maybe’ list.

West has come to town to study death at Miskatonic Medical Hospital. Dan doesn’t really like death. This is evident by his stubborn attempts to revive someone at the start of the film. So when West declares he’s ‘beaten’ death, Dan is understandably intrigued. You just know the two are going to get along, that it’s all going to end badly, and that it’s going to be ridiculously awesome.

Not one to do things by halves, West demonstrates his victory over mortality by reanimating Dan’s cat. Twice.  Not only does the unfortunate feline die once, West injects it with his glowing green reanimator juice only to have it go nuts and try to kill him. So he kills it again and then reanimates it a second time to prove to Dan that his serum works. This movie is extremely messed up.

Director Stuart Gordon wisely keeps the film brisk and steers it way off into ‘absurd’ territory, thus keeping the emphasis on humour. Lovecraft intended his short story to be a bizarre parody of Frankenstein, so it makes sense that this adaptation aims to be humorous. Whether you find it so or not depends on your sense of humour. Personally, I just can’t go past a film that features a severed head going down on a woman. That’s right up my alley.

The film is undoubtedly demented, even by today’s standards. But it’s not nearly as bizarre as it could have been – they left out the bit from the short story where a giant reanimated black guy shows up at their front door gnawing on a baby’s arm. That’s probably a bit much, even for me.

Anyway, West thinks big, and requires ‘fresh’ specimens to conduct his experiments on. In fact one of the film’s best moments for me is the way he complains that a corpse they used wasn’t fresh enough. The way he slithers the word "fresh" is just fantastically unhinged.

This insatiable need for fresh corpses of course leads him to the hospital morgue and into trouble. Because while his serum works, the subjects return from death a little bit worse for wear.

One of the most bizarre and funny bits in the film is where the Dean (Megan’s dad) is reanimated, but no-one except Dan and West know he’s a reanimated corpse, so they just figure he’s gone crazy. This leads to a scene with a zombie in a strait-jacket confined to a padded cell. Again, right up my alley.

No discussion of this film would be complete without mentioning David Gale who plays West’s nemesis Dr Hill and who spends half the film carrying around his own head. Gale brings a weirdly Shakespearean gravitas to this bizarre role and his slimy demeanour throughout the film, particular his unwanted attention towards Megan, is just a joy to behold. He’s deliciously evil and makes a superb villain.

This also brings up another favourite moment of mine – Dan’s weird description of Dr Hill’s obsession with Megan– he tells West that Dr Hill has a file on her, filled with hair clippings and other things, and that he thinks Dr Hill has projected “some sort of psychotic need” onto her. I love West’s reaction to this; it’s sort of bemused condescension. Really, Jeffrey Combs is an extremely underrated actor.

Stuart Gordon ignores the links to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, and I think that’s a good thing. It would have made the story needlessly complicated. As it stands, we’re just left with the notion that reanimating dead people is probably not the greatest idea and that death is inevitable and we shouldn’t play God. Works for me. This is 90 minutes very well spent.

Avatar

An mining company’s plans to bring a prosperous economy, schooling and employment to the inhabitants of a distant world are hampered by a delusional war veteran and his love for a giant blue chick who cries a lot.

Avatar is a 2009 sci fi film directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana's CGI tears, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver.

When I was a kid I used to make this milkshake-type thing by combining every chocolate substance I could find with some milk. I used to throw it all in a giant glass – chocolate syrup, milo, powdered hot chocolate, chocolate ice cream, even sometimes chocolate milk. Then I’d stir it up, often with great difficulty because by then it had ceased to be a liquid and turned into a kind of extremely sugary sludge, and drink it. It’s a wonder I made it to high school. I did it because at the time, it seemed like a great idea. Combining every single delicious thing I could think of seemed like the best way to enjoy them all. Moderation was not something I understood the concept of.

In Avatar, James Cameron takes all the great concepts from his other films, which were fantastic and thought-provoking in moderation throughout The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and combines them all into one giant sugary sludge of a film that is so bogged down in ridiculous pseudo-moralising it forgets to be entertaining and becomes irritating. Yeah Jim, I know that you hate that America bombs other countries back to the stone age on a whim. But if you want me to be anti-violence, show me someone being smashed over the head with a sledgehammer. If you smash me over the head with it, the only result will be that I'll hate you.

And if you want to make some kind of allegorical statement about a US administration that coined the phrase “we will fight terror with terror”, maybe have your villain use a phrase other than “we will fight terror with terror.”

I am making a joke there, but I am also being serious. In the theatre I saw this film in, that moment, which should have been thought-provoking, elicited a mix of chuckles and groans.

Anyway. Quite often in movies, I cheer for the bad guys. I can’t help myself. Villains are often way cooler than the heroes. Avatar was no exception. When the evil corporation sends in the giant helicopter things to blow up the blue dorks’ sacred tree, all I could think was ‘this is gonna be sweet’, while absently humming Ride of the Valkyries. The bad guys are led by a scenery-chewing military stereotype who calmly sips coffee while dishing out the pain. He has cool scars and a Texas drawl. Seriously, the guy is hard to dislike. The giant blue dorks are led by some shaman-chick and are some weird cross between every single Native American character you’ve seen in Dances with Wolves and Last of the Mohicans, and a hippy commune from a 60’s documentary. They sit around in circles moaning about nature and their rallying for war is supposed to be very poignant but because they are giant lanky blue aliens dressed like Mohawk Indians it just ends up being comical.

I am sounding like I hate this movie. I don’t, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I just enjoy it for the wrong reasons. I enjoy the pyrotechnics when the Naavi are blown off the face of the planet. I enjoy Giovanni Ribisi’s character (he’s basically Avatar's Carter Burke – the corporate sleaze ball you’re supposed to hate), especially his ability to say the word ‘Unobtainium’ while keeping a straight face.

And I really enjoy the film’s first twenty minutes or so. The whole shuttle trip down to the planet, over the massive mine and into the military base. And Sam Worthington wheeling across the tarmac and passing the giant mining truck with arrows embedded harmlessly in its thick tyres is a beautifully subtle moment that speaks volumes.

It’s just a shame that’s where the subtlety ends. These days, as a relatively mature adult I realise that throwing a lot of sugary shit into a glass doesn’t actually end up tasting very good. I wish James Cameron had realised the same thing.

Braveheart (1995)

Mel Gibson moons some English guys, stares dreamily off into space for three hours and instils so much courage in Brendan Gleeson he takes on the British army with a rubber axe!

Braveheart is a 1995 epic directed by Mel Gibson and starring Mel Gibson, Mel Gibson, Mel Gibson and Mel Gibson.

The vast majority of criticism I hear about Braveheart is that it’s ‘historically inaccurate’. I’m certainly critical of a few things about this film, but that’s not one of them. If I want historical accuracy, I’ll watch a documentary. I watch movies to be entertained. In this regard, Braveheart is a huge success.

Yet, this movie is one of those odd films that seems like the greatest thing ever when you first see it but when you revisit it you begin to pick up on how uncool a lot of it is. For instance I’d forgotten what a Mel Gibson love-fest it is. This is hilarious given that he actually directed it. He claims he was under duress – that the studio basically strong-armed him into starring in it himself or they’d pull the financing. Well, maybe so Mel. But then how do you explain the long, lingering close ups of…your own face!

And a helicopter shot of yourself bounding up a mountainside while an orchestral score swells and booms doesn’t really scream “ensemble picture”. This scene is supposed to be heroic and inspiring but instead it’s just incredibly silly. Particularly the fact that the rest of the Scottish rebels are nowhere to be found. So, William Wallace was just fond of taking solo jogs? Did he need some time alone? You’d think with food scarce he’d want to conserve his energy rather than dashing up hillsides to do nothing more than stare off into the sunset.

I don’t mind Mel Gibson. Sure, he’s basically Mel Gibson in everything he’s ever starred in, but he has charisma and a definite screen presence. It’s not hard to understand why he was a huge box-office draw for so long. So yeah, I’m a Mel Gibson fan, even after he went batshit crazy.

So it’s an odd paradox for me that this film starts to go downhill as soon as he appears in it. There’s a long prologue depicting William Wallace as a young boy (a sort of superhero ‘origin story’ if you will), written to give you an idea of how he became the rebel leader we see later. For me this is the best part of the film. This, and any scene with Angus McFadyen as Robert the Bruce. I believe it was he, and not actually William Wallace, who is known as the “Braveheart” in Scottish history. His story is far more interesting and I could have done with a movie about him, with Wallace either a peripheral character or not in it at all.

Anyway, Mel shows up and the first thing that’s distracting is his hair. It’s too clean. It always looks like he just took to it with Pantene and a blow dryer. Plus he plays Wallace like some kind of medieval superhero. His character arc is more a character flat line. He shows up and he’s awesome at everything – sex, strategy, diplomacy, and kicking in heads. As the film goes on, he remains awesome. Then at the end, yep, he’s still awesome.

Okay, I’m being hard on the guy. For a debut directorial effort, the film was ambitious to say the least. For the most part, it’s superbly made. The battle scenes, aside from a few continuity errors, are great. They must have been a logistical nightmare to shoot. Massive CGI battles were still a few years away in 1995, so all the soldiers here are real, and all the blood spatters are practical effects.

My favourite scene is where Robert the Bruce confronts his father, the leprous would be king of Scotland, after betraying Wallace at Falkirk. McFadyen is a superb actor, and his line delivery and emotion during this scene is just pitch perfect. He plays the tortured leader perfectly; a man torn between loyalty to what he knows is right, and duty to his country and father.

I also really like Sophie Marceau. She’s stunning, and has the most epic braid in the history of cinema. Her slutty friend is also really awesome – I love her line about Englishmen not knowing what a tongue is for.

Patrick McGoohan is also brilliant as the English King Edward “The Longshanks”. He is so slimy he practically slides rather than walks. The character would be a ludicrous caricature in the hands of a lesser actor, but McGoohan pulls it off nicely.

Steven the mad Irishman is also a favourite character. What I love about him is his unswerving loyalty to Wallace. I like that he and Hamish go to Wallace’s execution, risking their own lives but determined to stay with their friend to the bitter end.

I also get a kick out of Hamish’s dad, but not the classic scene where he punches the guy out after the wound cauterization. No, I prefer the bit where he laughs at his own son getting clocked in the head with a rock.

I guess my biggest gripe with this film is that it’s way too black and white. There’s no ambiguity. It’s the good Scots versus the evil English. The film would have been far more interesting with more grey areas. As it is, it’s an enjoyable big budget battle film and rewatchable simply for the final scene – the “I can’t believe they missed that” glaring error of a burly Brendan Gleeson charging towards the camera carrying an axe with a blade so rubbery it flaps like a flag in a breeze. Priceless.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Zombies pop in to the Crossroads mall for a spot of Saturday afternoon shopping but are hampered by the pesky bunch of humans holed up inside.

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 remake of the 1978 Romero zombie film of the same name, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phifer.

In 2004 Zack Snyder did the seemingly impossible – directed a remake that was as good, if not better, than the film it’s based on. The success of Dawn of the Dead is due in no small part to Snyder’s graphic novel-like visual style, and the fact he simply based his remake on George A Romero’s original, rather than attempting to do a scene-by-scene re-creation.

From the brilliantly tense opening sequence (capped by the inspired music choice of Johnny Cash’s When the Man Comes Around), to the nail-biting conclusion as the heroes smash their way out of the mall in souped-up courtesy shuttles, everything about the film just works.

I love the way Snyder implies the chaos is worldwide through a series of news flashes played during the opening titles. Through a mixture of quick cuts of zombies mauling people and stock news footage of riots and natural disasters, we get a sense that the world is doomed before the story focuses entirely on our survivors in the mall. The breakdown of authority is handled nicely by showing secret service guys overrun while ushering the President to a helicopter outside the White House.

The nods to the original Romero trilogy are subtle and brilliant – like the TV news helicopter and the van crashing into the gas station, and of course make up guru Tom Savini’s cameo as the TV Sheriff and Ken Foree looking decidedly creepy as a TV preacher. But the departures are where the film truly shines.

I like the departure from the slow, shuffling Romero zombies to the frantic sprinting zombies. It gives the scenes immediacy and ups the scare factor considerably. It was a bold move by Snyder, and paid off in spades given it’s now become an accepted part of the whole zombie genre. There’s also the zombie plague being more virus-like rather than supernatural, which works well and leads to nice, tense uncertainty among the characters as they are not entirely sure who among the dead will rise, and who will stay down.

The other part of the film that could have been sink but winds up swimming laps is the memorable characters and great cast. Sarah Polley is a great ‘everywoman’ hero as nurse Ana and Ving Rhames is fantastic as the cop, Kenneth. Medium-guy and the others are also great, my favourite is CJ (Michael Kelly) the mall security guard. At first he is a complete tosser, but redeems himself admirably as the film goes on. He gets some of the film’s best lines (“I’ll kill each and every one of you to stay alive.”) and arguably the film’s best death scene.

Another inspired departure from the original is the inclusion of Andy, the gun store owner across the parking lot. I love his relationship with Ving Rhames, the white board communication, and the wrong-but-oh-so-funny celebrity zombie game they play. It’s one of the film’s best moments.
While the big set pieces are wonderfully staged and brilliantly executed, I love the film’s quieter moments. One of my favourites is when Sarah Polley goes to get medical supplies from a closet, and while she has a moment alone, quietly breaks down and cries. It’s superbly acted and a wonderful character moment, the fact she pulls herself together before returning to the group is great and speaks volumes about her character – she maintains the illusion of strength for the benefit of the group at first, but it’s nice that as the film goes on, her strength grows. She’s easily the film’s best (or at least most well-rounded) character.

Another small moment that always makes me laugh is Medium-guy wandering through the sports store and the fact he decides a freakin polo mallet is a better weapon than a crowbar. Yeah…um swapping gauge steel for a piece of balsa wood? Makes a lot of sense.

Of course no good horror film would be complete without a character you ‘love to hate’, and that role is filled by the incredibly obnoxious Steve (played brilliantly by Modern Family’s Ty Burrell). From the moment he enters frame you can’t wait to see what grisly end they have in store for him. He’s a smarmy prick and lets everyone know it. He immediately condescends to everyone in the group, while making himself right at home with a huge grin you just want to slap off his face. And what’s more he’s the only member of the group who still gets laid while in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. And he spends the entire time Patrick Bateman-style – filming himself with a camcorder. God I wanted him dead.

The other character I really enjoyed was Bart, one of the other mall security guards. He doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but what a colossal whack-job. At first he seems quite stupid and harmless (the moment where he slings his gun holster on over his underwear is hilarious, made more so by CJ’s reaction to it), but his true colours show in a couple of key moments – firstly his oblivious and woefully disrespectful comments about banging the chick from Dairy Queen, then his remark about ‘someone should show her how to use it’ (referring to Ana’s mouth). But most telling is his reaction to ‘Ben Cosine’. He has a quietly callous disregard for the ‘twitcher’ in the fountain - a former colleague of his. These moments show what he’s really made of – he’s a sociopath. His end cannot come soon enough, and it’s satisfyingly gruesome.

In a lot of ways, zombie apocalypse stories feature a bit of ‘wish-fulfilment’ – the characters are suddenly freed from all societal constraints and personal responsibilities. These films ask us the audience to ponder: ‘what would you do?’ No more bills to pay, no more boring jobs to attend, no more saving for a rainy day or having to behave responsibly to avoid offending people or going to jail. Dawn of the Dead covers this in a brilliant montage (set to a fantastic Richard Cheese cover of Disturbed’s Down with the Sickness) that sees characters’ indulging in the various pursuits the mall offers. It’s not quite what I’d do (find the nearest pharmacy, a couch and a big screen television) but it’s an entertaining scene.

Of course the other cool thing about Romero’s original and this version is the commentary on humanity as a whole – that while facing a zombie apocalypse outside the confines of the mall, the survivors within cannot help but squabble and fight amongst themselves. This ranges from petty jealousy and drama (one character teasing another for becoming attached to a dog) to murder – Mekhi Phifer’s character Andre blowing a woman away because she executes his pregnant zombie wife.

For a directorial debut, Dawn of the Dead is an impressive first entry in what has gone on to become a mixed bag of offerings from Snyder. He seems to be at his best when adapting works as opposed to his hit and miss original efforts.

I’m not a huge fan of the original. I’m in the ranks of Romero fans who regard Day of the Dead as the best of the original trilogy. The original is too long and hasn’t aged well, but in other ways as well, this film outclasses it. Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead stands at the forefront of a small number of horror remakes that are actually worth watching, and practically alone in being worth watching more than once.