Spaceballs

First, a confession: I love this film. I'm not a huge Mel Brooks fan. I didn't like Blazing Saddles, but I giggled like a schoolgirl at Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but that might have been Cary Elwes. He's fantastic in anything I've ever seen him in: The Princess Bride, Hot Shots!, he's even been in The X-Files!. Why hasn't he won an Oscar yet?

For me, this is the ultimate parody film. Brooks takes everything to exactly the right level of over the top. The spaceship that keeps coming and coming over the camera, the radar operator, jokes about the size of the ship, combing the desert, the Spaceballs merchandise, Dark Helmet playing with his dolls, Princess Vespa with the gun, John Hurt's cameo, ludicrous speed!

The ludicrous speed and the abandon ship scenes are among my favourite.

As usual, I bought this on DVD and then some git brought out the Special Edition, knowing about my refusal to buy the same film twice1.

I was very disappointed that whatever channel I saw this on last night had butchered it so badly. The cuts were harshly done and quite obvious. I can understand why the first part of the line 'F***, even in the future nothing works.', but why was John Hurt's chestburster scene cut? It's hilarious and not even remotely gory by today's standards.

Score: B++ Because it keeps getting better and better with each viewing. There are so many great lines, it's really hard to choose just one, so I'll give you the start of my favourite sequence.

OQ:
Who made this man a gunner?
I did sir, he's my cousin.

Fun Trivia: George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic constructed the lightsabers for the film. An uncredited Julie Pitkanen does the voice of the Self-Destruct Countdown and does an able Majel Barrett impression. She was the film's script supervisor, in fact appears to have been a script supervisor on all of Brooks' films. One of the ships parked at the diner is the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. 1 I am so mad about the 'Ultimate James Bond Collection' because I already own the entire lot. But there's two rays of sunshine there: 1. They may be ultimate, but the packaging sure ain't. Falls apart easily. And 2. It's only a matter of time before the 'Definitive' version comes out that trumps the ultimate.

Armageddon

What a pile of tosh this was. Excellent! I love bad movies. Well, most of them.

Only a very forgiving person can really enjoy this movie. You have to forgive the dodgy physics, which are almost as dodgy as those in 'The Core.'¹ You have to forgive the dodgy acting, which is almost as dodgy as that in 'The Core.' And you have to forgive it for having Ben Affleck in it, which is just dodgy².

Plot: There isn't one. It may have gotten lost during production, perhaps written on a restaurant napkin. Or it may have seen Ben's Unholy Acting TalentTM and run away to hide.

Stand-in plot: Giant rock spotted, heading for Earth. NASA has loads of strategies for dealing with this sort of problem, the trouble is they all require at least a year's advance warning. And they've got fourteen days. Brief pause for a change of trousers and someone comes up with the solution: Nuclear weapons!!

Now, this movie illustrated the whole thing about movie studios copying each other's plots to an insane degree. Their reason is that movie scrips come in, get looked at and shelved and then made years later, so the Red Planet / Mission to Mars thing happened because someone decided that the year 2000 was going to be all about Mars, so the Mars stories were dusted off and made into full scripts. This can mean that two scripts are written which are both based on the same original pitch made to the studio.

Armageddon was the first time I can remember audiences turning around to the studios and saying: B*****ks. You're clearly ripping off each other's ideas³.

There's a lot of Hollywood hidden code in this movie. For example:

Plot device: Retro-jets that hold the crew and the vehicle down on the asteroid and 'simulate' gravity
Translation: We couldn't afford to use wire-work and the subsequent air-brushing to remove the wires.

Plot device: Someone's got to stay on the asteroid to blow it up.
Translation: Quick! Distract the audience from the fact that a nuclear bomb can't generate that much delta-v inside the rock!

Plot device: Paris get nuked (huzzah!)
Translation: Well, we're not going to destroy an American city, are we?

Score: You're having a laugh, aren't you?

OQ: 'Colonel William Sharp, United States Air Force ma'am. Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I've ever met.'

OOQ: Huuurqh!! <--------the sound of me retching.

¹ Never EVER watch 'The Core' because it will be four hours of your life you'll never get back. Two hours wasted watching the movie, and two hours wasted ranting about how crap it is.
² I've heard it said that Ben's lack of acting ability is made up by his good looks, which is why he's popular with the ladies. Well, I'm sorry, but my gib isn't cut that way, so I don't know what you're on about.
³ For legal reasons, I'm required to state that this is In My Honest Opinion (IMHO) and does not reflect anyone's opinion.

Miami Vice

It's never a good sign if you can spot a plothole from a trailer, I thought as I saw a trailer for Snakes on a Plane. Surely, you'd just fly to lower altitude, blow open a door and turn off the cabin heating. The cold blooded snakes would freeze to death, I thought, before adding 'And don't call me Shirley.'

I feel a blog entry coming....

So, on to the film. I wasn't sure what it was about this film, but right from the start, it just felt hincky. It wasn't until the end credits rolled that I realised there weren't any opening credits. None at all! Which was a bit bizarre.

One of my friends had already commented that Crockett and Tubbs¹ don't talk to each other much, because they are good friends who've been together for years and they don't have to talk all the time. It's not a buddy movie, and I appreciate that. Michael Mann is doing something that's breaking away from the mainstream. What dialogue there is tends to be full of slang and acronyms which you either get or you don't. Perhaps if I'd seen this when it was a TV series, I would understand it better. But I was too ickle to watch when it was on TV and if the TV series had as much shooting, swearing and shagging, I'd have ended up like Ainsley from my school, and that ain't pretty².

And this leads it to the main problem. I spent so much time trying to understand what Crockett and Tubbs were saying, that I didn't really feel anything for any of the characters. I'm a guy, I can't think and feel at the same time³. My brain doesn't work like that.

The film itself is fantastically shot, a real eye to detail from the director there. One thing that had been mentioned to me prior to seeing this is the attempt to capture the real chaos of a gun fight, and I think Mann succeeds in this. Everyone in the audience winced during one or two moments in that fight.

But in many ways, I felt the same way leaving this film, as I did with Lost in Translation. A beautiful film, but no discernible plot. The only difference was Translation made me feel just as claustrophobic as the characters, which is why it ranks highly with me.

There were two gratuitous male butt shots, which I frankly didn't need to see, but these are compensated for with gratuitous female nudity, which was embarrassing because I was with a friend.

And I'm worried that there will be a new category at the next Oscars. Best Supporting Mullet. First Tom Hanks, now Colin Farrell. I swear, if the mullet makes a come back, I'm going to shoot myself. Some things deserve to die, and they're all from the eighties⁴.

Score: C+

OQ: There really aren't any, it's not that sort of film.

¹Anyone else getting a mental image of that woman from the League of Gentlemen? 'Are you local?'
² A short, spotty, sex obsessed ten year old boy. And he was ginger. Every time he opened his mouth, out poured a stream of the most offensive, depraved language you've ever heard. Sort of like Tourettes, except it was ALL THE TIME.
³ Similarly ladies, never try talking to your man when he's, how can I put this?....On the job. Because no man has enough blood to run both organs at the same time.
⁴Especially Timmy Mallet.

Moonraker

Why? Why did I watch this? It was on ITV4 or something last night. I mean, why? It's not like I don't have every single Bond film ever made, including the "non-canon" Never Say Never Again. It's like a compulsion, or something. I was half watching while I explored a Quantum Leap website I'd just found. By the way, I now have a new mobile phone ring tone....

I missed the opening sequence with the shuttle being stolen, but I think I now know where Bryan Singer got the idea for his shuttle sequence for Superman Returns. Hmm....

This film was accused, rather unfairly I believe, with jumping on the Star Wars bandwagon and changing the setting to space. But this isn't really fair. Not that it isn't true, clearly it is. But it's unfair because everyone was jumping on the Star Wars bandwagon. Lucas' creation was responsible for the resurrection of Star Trek, great parodies like Spaceballs and plenty of other films that would never have been made otherwise. Some of them were highly experimental, but they helped push the envelope. Hell, Star Wars is pretty much single handedly responsible for the modern special effects industry, because one man refused to believe that certain effects were "beyond the range of what's currently possible."

Anyway, this film has the best name for a Bond girl in my opinion, but maybe that's just the way my mind works. The usual high jinx, fabulous stunts and locations and the lack of a Bond car made up for by the introduction of the short lived Bond boat. Add in the return of Jaws and you've got one of my favourite Bond films.

This is the Bond film with the best line ever. See the OQ.

Best Bond Bits:
Bond falling out of the airplane without a parachute.
The Bond boat.
The pheasant hunt.
The cable car sequence.
The overly elaborate Bond death traps.

Score: B

OQ: 'I think he's attempting re-entry, sir.'

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Isn't it always the way? You buy your single ticket online, resigned to go and see a movie on your lonesome, destined to spend two hours in a dark cinema trying not to think that Miss Right might be passing by the building right now...

And then your friends totally surprise you by inviting you to a different showing as a group day out! So I went back to my website, only to find the tickets are non-refundable.

Grrr.

Weeell, I'd wanted to see this movie since I saw the first trailer. And once I saw the second trailer, I really wanted to see this movie.

The men in the group were a bit worried at the rather high female-to-male ratio in the audience. 'Psst! It's a chick flick!' I whispered urgently, only to be ignored by Grant who was playing with his i-Pod and showing Kirsty the video of "The Internet is for Pron¹"

Oh, by the way: top tip. never ever put Skittles into ice-cream as a sprinkling topping. Those buggers turn nasty when they get cold.

The movie does start in a bit of a clichéd way. Kinda cheesy soundtrack and fly-by shots of Manhattan, and a by-the-numbers bank heist thwarted by G-Girl. But I think this is a red herring, designed to deliberately throw the viewer off guard. It quickly steps into telephone booth, dons it's regular, everyday clothing, and goes back to it's job at a major metropolitan newspaper. And it's off! Matt Saunders meets G-Girl's mild mannered alter-ego on the subway, chats her up and she ends up breaking his bed. But in a good way. Luke Wilson does snivelling coward pretty convincingly, but then he's got reason to be scared. Uma Thurman is very good as the psycho ex-girlfriend. The tagline of this movie is "He broke her heart. She broke his everything." Boy howdy!

I think we all owe Anna Farris a big apology. She's a far better actress than I gave her credit for. Not that I would cast her in the re-re-re-re-remake of Pride and Prejudice, but when it comes to comedy: that girl has got it nailed!

Eddie Izzard turns up, and does subtle menacing in a comedy rather well. Not over the top or anything. And Rainn Wilson plays the sex obsessed best friend very well. Hey, is he related to Luke at all?

Score: B- Because it's a great film, I had a laugh with some mates, but Miss Right didn't show up. Must have been delayed on the train, or something...

OQ: 'I WARNED YOU MATT SAUNDERS!!!!'

¹I've misspelt that word on purpose.

V For Vendetta - A Play.com Warning

Yeeeeeee-ouch!

That, the noise that your intrepid reporter in the field made while opening his parcel, as he gave himself a paper cut. Under His Fingernail!

Agh, ooh %&@£! Oh you %&$%@#! $%#@ $%#@ity %$&#! Ooh, that smarts!

It was pretty much my own fault. Too much of a rush to get this open and in the DVD player. Was it worth it? Hell yes! I really love this film. It's built around a conspiracy and a question, and while you may spot the conspiracy quite early on, it's still wonderful to watch it all fall into place, like a domino rally. The question is one of the things that I find most interesting. Is a man who kills and bombs in retaliation against a government a terrorist, if the government he seeks to overthrow is itself corrupt and fascist and guilty of much worse sins?

My favourite quote was, is, and ever shall be: "No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I will no longer be standing, because if I am you will all be dead before you've reloaded."

But this film and a few others make me sad. It's yet another film that I initially saw knowing absolutely nothing about the source material, and I really enjoyed it. I felt the same way after watching Serenity (I watched Firefly afterwards). Makes me realise there must be hundreds and thousands of good stories out there in various formats that I haven't enjoyed and don't have time to go and find out about. Ach well. That's what reincarnation's for.

One word of warning: Buy the special edition, as the special features on the standard disc consists of the making of documentary, and that's it. No photos, no trailers, nothing. And the making of doesn't have a Hugo Weaving interview, which was disappointing.

Score: A++ for the film C+ for the special features.

OQ: I'll leave you with another cracking bit of dialogue from the film

Evey Hammond: 'Who are you? '
V: 'Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask. '
Evey Hammond: 'Well I can see that. '
V: 'Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation, I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. '