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thedullwoodexperiment

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Tag Archives: Meteorite

Monthly Roundup – August 2016

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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A Perfect Day, Aid workers, Animation, Benicio Del Toro, Blue Sky, Curt Siodmak, Denis Leary, Drama, Espionage, EVP, Fedja Stukan, Fernando León de Aranoa, Galen T. Chu, Harrison Gilbertson, Haunt, Haunted house, Horror, Ice Age: Collision Course, Ione Skye, Jacki Weaver, Jean Byron, John Leguizamo, Ken Hughes, King Donovan, Liana Liberato, Little Red Monkey, Mac Carter, Mélanie Thierry, Meteorite, Mike Thurmeier, Morello Curse, Murder, Nuclear scientists, Olga Kurylenko, Queen Latifah, Ray Romano, Review, Richard Carlson, Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Sci-fi, Scrat, Simon Pegg, Spaceship, Sylva Langova, The Balkans, The Fifties, The Magnetic Monster, Thriller, Tim Robbins

The Magnetic Monster (1953) / D: Curt Siodmak / 76m

Cast: Richard Carlson, King Donovan, Jean Byron, Harry Ellerbe, Leo Britt, Leonard Mudie, Byron Foulger, Michael Fox

The Magnetic Monster

Rating: 6/10 – a sample of selenium, bombarded with alpha waves, becomes a lethal danger to mankind as it develops exponentially – and only the A-Men from the Office of Scientific Investigation can stop it; an exposition heavy sci-fi thriller that takes time out for (stranger) domestic interludes involving Carlson and Bryan, The Magnetic Monster packs a lot in to its relatively short running time and is unexpectedly entertaining for all its techno-speak and overly serious demeanour.

Haunt (2014) / D: Mac Carter / 86m

Cast: Harrison Gilbertson, Liana Liberato, Ione Skye, Jacki Weaver, Brian Wimmer, Danielle Chuchran, Ella Harris, Carl Hadra

Haunt

Rating: 3/10 – a family move into a house where tragedy struck the previous owners, and the son (Gilbertson), along with abused neighbour Sam (Liberato), discovers that the place is haunted by a vengeful spectre; muddled, confused and scare-free, Haunt aims for unsettling and frightening but misses by a mile thanks to weak plotting, a jumbled storyline, stock characters, absentee direction, and an overbearing score (and that’s without mentioning the performances, particularly Weaver’s – which is dreadful).

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) / D: Mike Thurmeier, Galen T. Chu / 94m

Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg, Keke Palmer, Adam Devine, Wanda Sykes, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Jennifer Lopez, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jessie J, Nick Offerman, Chris Wedge

Ice Age Collision Course

Rating: 5/10 – while Scrat does his best to keep his acorn safe aboard a spaceship, his actions lead to a massive meteorite heading for Earth, which in turn leads to Manny (Romano) and the usual gang having to formulate a plan to avoid the extinction of them all; while the series can still manage to sprinkle a handful of inspired visual gags throughout each entry (and this is no different), the law of diminishing returns is having a savage effect on the storylines, with this outing proving less than inspired, and leaving the characters teetering on the edge of becoming their own caricatures.

Little Red Monkey (1955) / D: Ken Hughes / 71m

aka The Case of the Red Monkey

Cast: Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Sylva Langova, Colin Gordon, Donald Bisset, John King-Kelly, Bernard Rebel, Arnold Marlé, John Horsley

Little Red Monkey

Rating: 7/10 – when several nuclear scientists are murdered, and the culprit appears to be a little red monkey, Scotland Yard and a visiting US State Department agent have to make sure that defecting Professor Leon Dushenko (Marlé) doesn’t end up dead as well; an agreeable, fast-paced thriller, Little Red Monkey mixes international espionage, early Cold War paranoia, romance, and intrigue to good effect, and thanks to the script by Hughes and James Eastwood, has a discreet Hitchcockian vibe that benefits it tremendously.

A Perfect Day (2015) / D: Fernando León de Aranoa / 106m

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins, Olga Kurylenko, Mélanie Thierry, Fedja Stukan, Eldar Residovic, Sergi López

A Perfect Day

Rating: 7/10 – a group of aid workers in the war-torn Balkans try to have a dead body removed from a well that provides drinking water, and are met by every type of obstruction possible – bureaucratic, cultural, and just plain bizarre; A Perfect Day‘s very good cast can’t mitigate against the episodic nature of the story, or de Aranoa’s offhand treatment of some of the minor characters, but otherwise this is a pointed, unsentimental look at the quieter horrors that war can throw up, and when it wants to be, uses black humour as a trenchant counterpoint to all the tragedy.

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For One Week Only: Unnecessary Sequels – 6. S. Darko (2009)

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Briana Evigan, Chris Fisher, Conejo Springs, Daveigh Chase, Donnie Darko, Drama, End of the world, For One Week Only, Iraq Jack, Jackson Rathbone, James Lafferty, Meteorite, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, Thriller

Introduction

Cult movies are often beloved by their admirers beyond all other movies – passionately, fiercely, and with little truck for anyone or anything that tarnishes that movie’s reputation or their belief in it. Tell a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) that anyone who attends a midnight screening in costume is a few sexual peccadilloes short of an orgy, and you’re likely to be slapped round the face with a posing pouch. But cult movies, by the nature of their fans’ love for them, will often attract producers with an eye to making a quick buck by exploiting said fans’ love and affection. Here’s one such movie, apparently made with the best of intentions but which in practice proved to be as far from those intentions as it’s possible to get.

S. Darko (2009) / D: Chris Fisher / 103m

S. Darko

Cast: Daveigh Chase, Briana Evigan, Jackson Rathbone, James Lafferty, Ed Westwick, Matthew Davis, John Hawkes, Bret Roberts, Elizabeth Berkley

By now – unless they’re trapped somewhere in the Fragmentary Universe – fans of Donnie Darko (2001) will have realised or heard that S. Darko is a less than satisfactory follow up to Richard Kelly’s surreal mindbender of a movie. With zero involvement from Kelly himself (not even a “good luck guys!”), this independently made sequel was created with the intention of taking place in “a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality”. Watching the movie, one thing is abundantly clear: neither director Chris Fisher nor screenwriter Nathan Atkins has any real idea of the world that Kelly created for Donnie Darko, or more importantly, the elements that made it all work.

The worst idea they have is to focus on Donnie’s younger sister, Samantha (Chase), as if by using one of Kelly’s original characters (and persuading the original actress to return to the role) it will lend their movie a degree of legitimacy it otherwise wouldn’t have. That this doesn’t work is evidenced by the way in which the character is treated. Samantha has run away from home, aged seventeen, with her best friend Corey (Evigan). When their car breaks down in Utah, the two friends accept a lift into the nearest town, Conejo Springs. Once there, Samantha finds herself sleepwalking; in this state she sees a future version of herself talking to a disturbed man nicknamed Iraq Jack (Lafferty). She tells him that the world will end in a few days’ time on July 4th.

S. Darko - scene3

Aside from passing on these messages, Samantha tends to wander aimlessly around town bumping into various locals and being treated like a bystander in her own storyline. She does get involved in the mystery of a missing child but it’s a subplot that, like large portions of the movie, hasn’t been thought through enough, and it feels like a distraction from the larger story. References to Donnie are made but Samantha’s reactions are muted, as if both Atkins and Chase don’t really know how to articulate her feelings over what happened to him at the end of Donnie Darko. What the script does do however, is saddle both the character (and the unfortunate Chase) with little motivation and even less development, preferring instead to treat Samantha in a callous (and careless) manner not once but twice (you’ll know how when you see the movie – not that you should, of course).

S. Darko - scene1

Atkins’ script is further muddled by its end of the world plotting, incoherent notions of time travel, secondary characters such as creepy bride of Jesus Trudy Kavanagh (Berkley), and inclusion of local nerd Jeremy (Rathbone) who develops a nasty looking rash that remains unexplained and immaterial to the narrative. There are further problems that Atkins can’t overcome, but the main one is his inability to craft dialogue that sounds like a real human being would say it. Here’s just one deathless exchange, between Samantha and local bad boy Randy (Westwick):

Samantha: I didn’t tell you something before. My brother died too. I was ten. Ever since that day, nothing’s ever been the same.

Randy: Never will be. We can’t change that.

Samantha: Think it’ll ever get easier?

Randy: Probably get worse.

Samantha: Maybe it’s up to us.

Randy: No.

Samantha: Wake up, start over?

Randy: I wish I could believe that. We have the same holes in our hearts, you and me.

That exchanges like that one are delivered with such po-faced sincerity makes it almost impossible to take the movie seriously. It’s like watching a teen movie where the leads are trying to make sense of relationship issues rather than fathom the mystery they’re all involved in. The plot – such as it is – is developed in fits and starts, and in such a haphazard manner that when it’s all wrapped up neatly (and with the cinematic equivalent of a bow on top), the viewer who’s managed to reach the end will be wondering what the previous ninety-five minutes were all about (or for).

S. Darko - scene2

Fisher may well be a fan of Kelly’s (emphasis on the) original movie, and he and Atkins may have set out to make a companion piece to that movie, but they show their complete lack of understanding of what made Donnie Darko such an extraordinary experience at every turn. Even on its own merits the movie struggles to perform effectively, with Fisher failing to inject any tension into the material, and leaving scenes feeling listless and uninvolving. The spirit of the original is missing entirely, as is the sense of mystery and chaos just beyond the veil of everyday life. And anyone waiting to see Frank put in an appearance, be prepared for disappointment; here his presence is entirely symbolic.

Rating: 3/10 – while using time lapse shots of clouds as indications of a portentous enigma may work in some movies, in S. Darko it merely serves to remind viewers of just how devoid of purpose and originality the movie really is; jumbled and unnecessary, it’s a movie that doesn’t even try hard enough to match its predecessor for subtlety or thought-provoking drama.

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SuperBob (2015)

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Brett Goldstein, Catherine Tate, Comedy, Documentary, Jon Drever, Laura Haddock, Meteorite, Natalia Tena, Peckham, Review, Romance, Romantic comedy, Ruth Sheen, Short movie, Superhero, Superpowers, US Senator, WMD

SuperBob

D: Jon Drever / 82m

Cast: Brett Goldstein, Natalia Tena, Catherine Tate, Laura Haddock, Ruth Sheen, David Harewood, Ricky Grover, Christian Contreras, Martin McDougall

First brought to life in a three-minute short in 2009, SuperBob has been expanded to feature length movie proportions, and where some shorts should always remain as they are, here the team of writer/director Drever and writer/star Goldstein have spent the intervening years wisely avoiding the pitfalls of “going large”, and have crafted a low budget British superhero movie that is really a sweet-natured romantic comedy.

Bob (Goldstein) is a postman whose dull, ordinary life is changed forever when he’s struck by a meteorite in the middle of a park in Peckham. Quickly claimed by the British Ministry of Defence as their primary asset in emergency situations, and regarded by the jealous Americans as an uncontrollable weapon, Bob is given into the care of MoD bigwig Theresa (Tate), who manages his missions and oversees his private life as well. He has his own (completely unnecessary) security guard, Barry (Grover), and a cleaner, Dorris (Tena) who is from Colombia.

Six years on from being struck by the meteorite, Theresa decides it’s about time that the public see that Bob is actually pretty normal. She hires a documentary film crew to interview Bob and follow him around. Through this device we discover that Bob is a lonely, socially awkward man who has the support (of most) of his local community, but who is yearning to be loved. He is about to go on a date with local librarian June (Haddock) when Theresa hijacks him for a publicity shoot with US Senator Jackson (McDougall). Torn between wanting to go on his date and his sense of duty to the MoD, Bob’s hesitation is made harder to resolve by Dorris’s telling him he should say No more often.

Right about now viewers will probably be expecting SuperBob to become the tale of an affable, easily-swayed superhero who learns to stand up for himself and becomes his own man. And you’d be right. But it’s the way in which he achieves all this that makes the movie so charming and enjoyable. For instead of having Bob flex his muscles and take on hordes of special ops soldiers as they try to bring him back in line, Bob’s search for true love and someone “to shine his shoes with” (an unusual but lovely line retained from the short), takes centre stage.

SuperBob - scene

There’ll be no prizes for guessing just who it is that Bob realises he’s in love with, nor given that he’s inadvertently called her a whore earlier in the movie, that they’ll still end up together. But even though SuperBob follows the dictates of romantic comedies with enthusiasm, it does so with a freshness and a charm (yes, it’s that word again – it’s hard to avoid) that paints a wide grin on the viewer’s face and dares them to wipe it off. There’s a scene at the care home where Bob’s mother, Pat (Sheen), resides that is so simply and yet so effectively done that its very simplicity is to be applauded. Make no mistake, this may be a superhero movie on the surface, but underneath that enticing facade, this is a movie that is one of the most effortlessly romantic comedies of this or any other recent year.

It’s also deceptively and continuously funny, with Bob’s shy, awkward personality proving a winner in the Wildly Inappropriate Public Speaking category (his idea of congratulating a couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary is both cringeworthy and hilarious at the same time). And like all the best socially awkward people, Bob often gets things completely and utterly wrong, like the local gospel choir he joins each week; he’s so pleased when their rehearsal ends early, his crestfallen face when he hears them start up again – though entirely predictable – is still a cause for sadness and mirth in equal measure. It’s at moments like these, when Bob’s naturally optimistic disposition is dented that Goldstein is at his most effective, his smiling features slackening for a few seconds, his disappointment registering for just a moment until he regains a grip on that positive attitude. (And this is without mentioning some great visual gags.)

Drever orchestrates it all with a simplicity that matches the needs of the script, and he is very adept at ringing out the pathos of Bob’s situation without resorting to overstating it. He’s helped by a terrific performance by Goldstein that is best exemplified by the moment when Bob finds himself ordered away from the scene of a bad traffic accident (Theresa insists he only goes on MoD-sanctioned missions). It’s the movie’s most dramatic scene, and could have felt out-of-place, but Drever uses it to show the frustration that we would all feel in such circumstances, and the devastating effect it has on Bob.

SuperBob - scene2

Tate provides solid support in the role of overbearing beauracrat Theresa, relishing her tough-as-nails personality and commitment to keeping Bob as a British asset. Tena is abrasive and vulnerable as Dorris, while Haddock goes from playfully besotted to hopelessly obsessive in the space of a few minutes. Sheen portrays Bob’s embarrassing mother with a twinkle in her eye, and Harewood pops up throughout as a newscaster following the story of Bob’s (UN sanctioned) day off. And there’s a great little cameo from the comedian Joe Wilkinson who is probably the person least impressed by Bob’s powers.

The movie does have its flaws, but most of them are entirely forgivable, such as a few of Bob’s means-well utterances that are too contrived to work properly. The idea that Bob is being followed around by a documentary film crew soon becomes hit and miss due to the needs of the script, and the whole subplot involving US fears that Bob is uncontrollable seems shoehorned in to add some drama to the proceedings, but it’s not really needed. And the tight budget means that the visuals don’t always look as sharp as they need to. But again, these are minor problems in a movie that has so much going on that works, that it seems churlish to mention them.

Rating: 8/10 – an unabashed gem of a movie, SuperBob is a delight from start to finish, and features a great romantic thread that anchors the movie and its characters with formidable ease; a superhero movie with a tremendous difference then, and one that can be highly recommended as a refreshing antidote to the bloated offerings available elsewhere.

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