Schmuck-4

Many of my fellow VFX nerds would appraise "Heroes and Villains: Attila the Hun" on the basis of its success in terms of bedroom-level special effects. But "Attila" goes one better -- its story is truly engrossing and well-directed, and the quick-turnaround visual effects (about 1.6 shots per day, if the statistics are to be believed) are more than adequate to serve the narrative.

This, then, is the triumph of its director, Gareth Edwards. Here is a man who knows not only how visual effects work, but who also knows how to direct a compelling narrative. In both realms, there are shortcuts to be taken, but there are also ground rules to be observed; Edwards observes the latter element of both.

In doing so he succeeds in making a quality piece of narrative/documentary television which leaves the rest of us nerds in his dust.

A short that brings horror comedy to an all-new, tongue-in-cheek level, "The Adventure" tells the story of a retired couple who experience a strange encounter on a quiet, forested road.

Director Mike Brune is not afraid to have his camera linger for long periods on the scene. It's a refreshingly classic technique not practised very often these days -- there's something reminiscent of The Shining with its use in this film. With the rest of the cinema audience, I teetered between amusement at the absurdity of the situation and a kind of foreboding feeling: there's some strange sense of malevolence in this film, a sensation of danger and violence being mere moments away.

The perfectly-delivered comic dialogue is the icing on the cake. If Donald Barthelme had been a filmmaker, he would have made something like this. It's definitely worth a look; at the time of writing, it's playing at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival.

For some unfathomable reason I always thought I'd enjoy seeing this movie. And I wasn't disappointed... at least not for the first, oh, 20 seconds or so. Sadly, it all went downhill from there.

Stephen King's flair as a writer makes up for his lack of filmmaking talent. The terrible acting, amateurish directing, cheesy 70s-style zooms and godawful dialogue in this movie almost made me feel physically ill. The only redeeming feature to "Maximum Overdrive" is that it made for a good short story.

Don't bother seeing this turkey.

Showcasing the talents of -- among others -- director of photography Jarret Gahan, "Lesbo-A-Go-Go" is a 1960s period piece which must be seen to be believed. It could be described as "Less Than Zero" without the 80s panache, and with a measurable degree of Australian wit... though it possesses an intriguing undercurrent of macabre cynicism.

All in all, solid viewing. I look forward to the future projects of the creative team behind Lesbo.

"Komodo" cries out with the anguished screams of wasted potential. Its flaws mostly smother its virtues. The acting is reasonably solid, with the exception of (among others) the film's useless villain, a tacked-on character whose accent which wanders clumsily from Cockney to Australian and back again. The special effects are the film's true strength, although in some scenes they seem poorly composited into the scene -- their ambient shadows are not colour-matched as well as they deserve to be.

Essentially, the problem with the movie is its lousy script, and Michael Lantieri's somewhat mechanical, dispassionate efforts as a director. I'm glad this guy gave up directing after "Komodo", because visual effects are clearly his forte.

As an aside, the locations are somewhat interesting for a Brisbane native -- I spotted the Cape Moreton lighthouse from Moreton Island, as well as the dodgy Brisbane suburb of Wynnum. The "street" scene was all too obviously an outdoor set, however. And what's a cop car with Georgia license plates doing in North Carolina? It wouldn't have jurisdiction there.

Four stars out of ten. Pity it wasn't better.

ME, MYSELF & IRENE stars Jim Carrey as a non-confrontational milquetoast highway patrolman who develops a split personality who goes out of his way to provoke confrontations. To complicate things, he's on the run with a young blonde who is targeted by some sort of deadly conspiracy. The plot doesn't make a huge amount of sense. To be completely honest, I'm not a huge fan of the Farrelly brothers; to me, there's more to humour than just grossing people out, though that may be considered blasphemy in light of most late 90s mainstream comedies. Granted, it did have its amusing characters (such as Carrey's three super-intelligent homeboy sons) and its amusing situations (Carrey's two personalities start beating each other up at a train station), but it tended to drag in the middle of the film, and let's face it: anybody can do gross-out humour, but not everybody can show the mastery of wit and timing that separates true comedic genius from the likes of the Farrelly brothers. I'm not saying it was an entirely bad film, but is it just me, or are we dwelling on a genre of comedy that wasn't all that funny to begin with? Two and a half stars out of four.

Why hardly anybody seems to appreciate this film anymore is without doubt one of the greatest mysteries of our time. I'm truly perplexed. Roger Ebert seems to be the only critic to at least half-realise how truly funny, entertaining and brilliant a film THE GOLDEN CHILD really is.

Without doubt it's one of Eddie Murphy's finer films; it's impossible to not have a good time while watching this movie... his one-liners keep coming thick and fast, and if you can't find humour and fun in this movie, then surely your heart is made of stone. Visually, its cinematography is executed very well, the special effects are fantastic (except in one poorly executed shot where Charles Dance turns into a rat) and the theme tune has a strange kind of catchiness to it.

Don't be prejudiced against this movie, just because everybody else is. People are so easily swayed by popular opinion these days that true cinematic gems like THE GOLDEN CHILD are forgotten. Four stars out of four. Long live 80s movies!

Dear oh dear. At first I was excited at the prospect of this film; the ghost-movie genre is one of my favourites, and Jan De Bont has directed some pretty good movies, if my memory serves me correctly. But then again... maybe it doesn't. THE HAUNTING tells the tale of a group of research subjects who are recruited by a psychologist undertaking a study about fear, who spend several nights in a spooky old mansion. For a scary movie, this is particularly dull. The architecture of the mansion is breathtaking, and so is the architecture of Catherine Zeta-Jones, but no other aspect of the film seems to have had any thought spared for it whatsoever, with the possible exception of Jerry Goldsmith's score (which still isn't a scratch on his work for POLTERGEIST). The script seems to be vying for an Oscar for Largest Number Of Predictable Clichés. I found myself just wishing it would end. And for another thing, the special effects are so obviously computerised that the actors seem to be haunted by a bored computer animator rather than a malevolent nineteenth-century ghost. It's so sad that Hollywood spends so much money to churn out trash like this. I should have been opening my mouth to scream, not yawn. One and a half stars out of four.

Starring Andrew McCarthy, MANNEQUIN is a bit of a contrast to the usual higher-budget movies he starred in in the mid to late 80s like ST ELMO'S FIRE, LESS THAN ZERO and WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S; it turned out to be a cheerfully low-grade romantic comedy in which he plays the part of an artistically gifted guy who can't hold down a job but whose luck changes when he is hired by an unsuccessful department store and falls in love with a mannequin who is the incarnation of a fun-loving four-thousand-year-old Egyptian princess.

Somehow it all manages to stay together and be an entertaining, amusing movie; it's not rocket science but it sure passes the time. I've always been kind of charmed by the comedic premise of being alone at night in a department store. McCarthy's gay friend Hollywood is a hilarious character, and probably one of the first gay characters in a movie to be portrayed as likeable. "Proctor" from the POLICE ACADEMY series also stars as a dim-witted security guard determined to wage a war against McCarthy. Favourite quote: when his girlfriend points out that he's lost his job, he replies, "I didn't lose my job, I still know where it is! Some other guy's got it, that's all." Three stars out of four.

THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS started off fine, with a good soundtrack, stylish production values and the always appealing Michael J Fox as a country boy from Kansas who heads out to the Big Apple to start his career and also finds his dream girl (Helen Slater). I was particularly amused by one of the opening scenes in which he's in a New York phonebooth having a conversation with his mother as a nearby liquor store is robbed and a gunfight between criminals and police ensues. "It's just 'Miami Vice'," he assures his mother, crouching on the floor as bullets shatter the glass and Plymouth squad cars screech to a halt right next to the phonebooth. "They, uh, just trashed the Ferrari."

75% of this film worked really well. It's just a shame that the ending was such a letdown; the movie stumbled in an overlong, confusing scene in which numerous characters run around a mansion at night with the very ill-fitting "Oh Yeah" playing in the background. Nothing against the song of course; it's a brilliant song, but what exactly has it got to do with some people in nightshirts sneaking around? And the film's conclusion has a false, self-congratulatory, they-all-lived-happily-ever-after feel to it which just doesn't do justice to everything else that's been set up so far. A good movie, but it could have been so much better. Two and a half stars out of four.

For a Stanley Kubrick film, this one is very different to his earlier works, at least those that I've seen. It's disappointing to say that this final stroke is probably his worst film. Not to say that it's all bad, but it pales in comparison to films such as THE SHINING, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and DR STRANGELOVE. EYES WIDE SHUT tells the story of a married couple living in New York City who are experiencing some marital trauma. The husband, played by Tom Cruise, goes on a strange tour of the sexual underground of NYC, and although he never actually has sex with anyone but his wife, he becomes entangled with some bizarre cult populated by solemn figures in black cloaks, hoods and masks. We never get to find out much about this cult, but maybe that's a part of the film's alluring sense of the mysterious. It seems to represent a break away from the mundane drudgery of everyday life, and a risky dabble in the occult. But unfortunately it's nothing special; by far the most skilfully directed scene was the one in which Cruise infiltrates the cult and bears witness to their eerie and somewhat disturbing rituals, but the rest of the film had a somewhat plodding pace. Kidman's acting left much to be desired; even in scenes when she was supposed to be sober she had a habit of talking very slowly. Quite a mild film when compared to Kubrick's other works. Still quite entertaining and, as it were, a break away from the mundane drudgery of everyday Hollywood movies, and a risky dabble in more unusual films. Two and a half stars out of four.

DAYLIGHT. A clichéd, tired mess of a movie starring Sylvester Stallone as a limo driver who gets caught with a bunch of other motorists in the Jersey tunnel when some trucks carrying toxic waste explode. It was pretty brainless although I was quite impressed with the sets - they had a somewhat archaic quality, especially those giant ventilation fans. That was about it, unfortunately. It was a very predictable movie which for the most part showed us things we've seen in countless other 90s disaster flicks. One and a half stars out of four.

This movie is an involving drama which follows three close friends -- Blair (Jami Gertz), Julian (Robert Downey Jr), and Clay (Andrew McCarthy) -- who live, grow up and party together in Hollywood in the late 80s. The main focus of this movie is on Julian's uncontrollable crack addiction and its destructive effects on himself as well as his friends and family. But the movie is much more than this: it is a stylish, well-acted and skillfully directed film which stands out from its counterparts, both modern and old. It is also helped along by a cool soundtrack.

It's a pity that, in the drug-crazed 90s, we seem to have forgotten about the cautionary tale told by LESS THAN ZERO. If you don't believe me, bear in mind that there are three times as many heroin users worldwide in 1999 than there were in 1989. I have seen no other film which portrays the reality of drugs in such a truthful and straightforward light, and it's a tragedy that LESS THAN ZERO is passed off for mere 80s melodrama when it has such an important and valuable underlying message. A solid, thought-provoking film; I give it *** out of ****.

The fact that this dreadful series, a barren spin-off of John Hughes' classic 1985 teen comedy WEIRD SCIENCE, was ever given the green light is a testament to how in the 90s, people in the TV industry will do anything to make a buck.

It surprises me that a once-great director of Hughes' calibre would even permit this to be made. The acting in this show is nightmarish; original, interesting characters from the movie are reduced to two-dimensional caricatures; the scripts are horribly plodding and clumsy; and the name WEIRD SCIENCE is put to shame. It is a complete misrepresentation of the 80s. Thank God they've stopped making it.

Let's just hope they don't make a series out of PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, another Hughes masterpiece.

I watched and thoroughly enjoyed this classic film and was appalled to see the scathing remarks my fellow Internet users wrote about WEIRD SCIENCE. Their main criticisms of this film seemed to be based on the fact that it is a 1980s movie and therefore must be completely irrelevant and trashy, fourteen years later.

What?!?

Just because something is old, is it automatically defunct? Is anything from the 80s defined as crap, solely because it is from the 80s?

Well, I'd better go and throw myself off a bridge or something, because I was born in 1980 and therefore I must be Past My Use-By Date, and perhaps No Longer Of Any Relevance To This Glorious Decade.

But seriously folks. I realise that the 90s is a very anger-oriented decade, and people like to hate anything that isn't from the 90s just because it's fashionable to do so. But that just isn't what the art of film-making is about. Film-making is about being on the cutting edge, indeed, but it is also about respecting fine traditions laid down (gasp) in the past, even (shock, horror) in the 80s. Many 90s films, in their attempts to be avant-garde and completely different to everything from the past, just end up going overboard and get tripped up by their own self-conscious sensationalism.

But I digress. This film may indeed contain music and fashions that are different to the somewhat ridiculous contemporary 90s equivalents. But don't judge a book by its cover. Beneath the very 80s exterior lies a brilliantly funny movie, with themes and ideas that are just as relevant today as they were in the 1980s. And the special effects still look good today; they don't have that oh-so-clichéd 90s computer-generated tackiness. And what other film have you ever seen that involves a grand piano being launched from a chimney and landing on a summer-house? I give this film a solid *** and a half out of ****. And remember, what goes around comes around: People in 2013 will be laughing their heads off at the bad fashions, horrid music and corny special effects from the movies of 1999. The 80s have a certain timelessness, however, evident in such great movies as this one.

Without a doubt this film sums up the 80s; a feel-good movie with a great soundtrack and jaw-dropping stunts -- like that shot in the opening chase sequence with the bus doing a powerslide. And of course, Eddie Murphy's hilariously funny one-liners serve as a comic contrast to the violence and profanity. Why can't they make movies like this anymore?