Machete Kills – film review

If the first Machete was the illegitimate love-child of a fake trailer carrying a surprisingly sincere and strong message about immigration from the side of the immigrants, then Machete Kills is its crazed half-brother wandering from town to town never really achieving anything but having a blast in the process.

In a way this outing has unwittingly (or wittingly… who knows) become a prime example of the sort of so-bad-it’s-good movie experience that the whole Grindhouse “event” was meant to be paying homage to {but not actually being}. Machete 1 played it relatively straight (wherein lay most of its humour). however Machete Kills absolutely does not in any way shape or form. And that’s not such a good thing.

Worryingly, the film borders on (and perhaps even crosses over into) Austin Powers/Hot Shots territory on too many occasions and sanitises much of the sexual content that was dealt with so gratuitously in Machete 1. There are no nude women pulling mobile phones out of their vaginas or incestuous mother/daughter poolside romps here. In fact, apart from the odd swear word and suspiciously heightened cartoonish blood and guts, you could almost mistake this for a rejected Spy Kids outing (none of which I’ve seen, but I get the funny feeling I'm watching something similar).

It’s quite short at 103 minutes (compared to a Michael Bay or Gore Verbinski snooze-fest) but feels longer, to the point where I actually had to check the back of the DVD box at one stage to see how long I had to wait until I could go to bed. Which is a sad state of affairs.

This film tests your loyalty but also rewards it. It seems to be trying so hard to make you hate it, but you can’t because all the things that made you love Machete 1 are still here (albeit embarrassingly sanitised): the blood, the babes, the bazookas and the babes. But unnecessarily thrown into the mix are protracted scenes of exposition and flashbacks spliced with convoluted and recurring plot strands and characters that don’t add anything to the experience.

We don’t need to know, we don’t want to know and, most importantly, we don’t have time to know.

There’s a bomb to defuse. Or something.

Get on with it, indeed.

Danny Trejo's limitations as an actor are woefully revealed by a script that simply gives him far too much to say. He's more effective as the strong, silent type, especially with that beautifully grizzled face that says more than ten pages of dialogue ever could. Bizarrely, his character has become somewhat cowardly since we last met him, but like the secret formula to most television sitcoms, it’s not the title character that’s interesting, it’s the entourage of weirdos they just can’t seem to shake off and who inadvertently end up taking over the whole show. I think the official Hollywood term for this is “Cybill-itis”. But this time around the roll-call of has-beens isn’t quite so interesting and neither are the newcomers (Carlos Estévez is no Charlie Sheen). Dissociative identity disorder-suffering bad guy/good guy/naïve pawn Marcos Mendez played by Demián Bichir is embarrassingly irritating (was he meant to be? I hope not) and you can’t help but feel sorry for Mel Gibson for stooping to this level; he’s not in this to be ironic like Robert De Niro (although De Niro does seem to be putting his career into a nose dive on purpose just to annoy everyone) – he actually NEEDS the work now.

I still like Mel, though.

Who can hate that face?

Oh yeah... everyone.

So, gone is the where-do-I-know-them-from sideshow novelty aspect, effective political satire/activism and shocking level of sex and violence of the first film, and arrived has the watered-down, confused, silly shenanigans that we were all sort of expecting in the first place but didn’t realise we didn’t want or need.

I think you can call this a mixed review.

I just hope that Machete Kills Again… In Space turns out to be less bad-Bond-film and ALL MACHETE.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) – film review

I found the mixed reaction to An Unexpected Journey a little surprising as, to me, it came across as a lot more faithful to the tone of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work than Peter Jackson’s own Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Even though I really liked LotR, what bothered me about Jackson’s treatment of it was that great wads of story were left out in favour of endless and tiresome action set pieces. Moments that originally may only have taken up a paragraph’s worth of material in Tolkien’s prose. So, with the decision to expand The Hobbit into three films instead of two, Jackson is proving that, had he had the chance to make nine LotR films, they probably would have been a lot more satisfying to the Tolkien purists.

Basically, The Hobbit feels like how LotR should have felt – like a travelogue. A sprawling collection of notes about a journey and the peoples encountered on that journey, with the odd sprinkling of peril thrown in.

The Desolation of Smaug starts off how I thought AUJ should have started off: with Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield meeting at The Prancing Pony for the first time. However, the decision to move it to the second film does provide the audience with a reminder of what’s going on and why. A clever device, for sure, but it still feels a little strange tacked on to the start of this episode.

The first quarter or third of the film was enough of a mess to make me fear I was about to experience a repeat of the The Two Towers, but once the scenes with Beorn are out of the way, the film hits its stride perfectly. Boern is basically The Hobbit’s answer to Tom Bombadil from LotR, in that he’s a confusing character who doesn’t serve much purpose to the overall thrust of the story.

And a character who’s just bloody hard to bring to life on the screen.

The spider attack in Mirkwood forest made me turn away, just as I thought it would. Luckily, and I use that term very loosely, my failing eyesight cut out a lot of the really yucky stuff. The barrel riding sequence defied my bored expectations and won me over completely, providing a staggering rollercoaster ride of a chase without dragging its heals.

The mean elven king Thraduil, played with glee by Lee Pace, was marvellously devilish, and the addition of Evangeline Lilly as the spunky Tauriel to “girl-up” the testosterone-heavy cast was a brilliant choice. Luke Evans’ Bard is understandably given more to do on film, considering the key role he will be playing in the third film, and Evans carries the weight well. Such beefing up of the characters and plot is entirely justified, considering the very slender series of events and characterisations that appear in the actual book.

I was surprised to find Jackson and his team pinching amiably, but most likely unconsciously, from both Alien 3 and Ninja Scroll when it came to the dwarves tackling Smaug the dragon. I have no problem with this. The whole final section was a pleasant surprise of an adventure, that added yet more meat to a very raw bone.

I was expecting more of Martin Freeman in this one, but he’s yet again sidelined in what has now officially become The Richard Armitage Show. That’s not to say Freeman isn’t good, he just has a lot more to do that to say. This makes his character crucial but lacking the memorable lines and humour that the dwarf pack are blessed with. In fact, Bilbo is painted with much darker shades, now that he’s become a Ring Bearer, unaware of the trouble he’s found himself in until it’s too late. He’s a tragic figure here, even more so than Frodo, in that Bilbo has no idea what’s happening to him, whereas Frodo will.

So, yes, after an unassuming start, the film rises to the perfect pitch that An Unexpected Journey managed and gives those who felt Jackson raced through Lord of the Rings something to savour at last.

If you’re a true Tolkien fan, then ignore any negative or mixed reviews you may read from those who simply don’t get it.

You’ll love it.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) – film review

Seemingly inspired more by the sincere splatter genre than the “in it for the money” Grindhouse exploitation industry, Hobo with a Shotgun builds on its original basic revenge-thriller fake trailer into something greater and quite unexpected.

As with the best of the splatter output, Hobo with a Shotgun is a horror movie for people who don’t like scares, but instead enjoy the OTT thrills and chills of ridiculous amounts of fake blood and theatrical amputations. It’s not offensive, it’s just a live action cartoon for adults.

Amongst its many influences are to be found ingredients from Evil Dead 2, Braindead, and Tokyo Gore Police liberally folded into the mix, as well as nods to classic anime, with The Plague duo being reminiscent of the apparently-indestructible Gold and Silver team from Osamu Dezaki’s 1983 Golgo 13: The Professional.

If you’re wanting to look deeper into the film’s subtext, then you could also see this as an unofficial prequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, with Rutger Hauer’s disillusioned replicant, Roy Batty, arriving at the Westworld-like twentieth century-themed Hope Town, where violence and corruption are acted out for the pleasure of the masses. It is here, in Hope Town, where Batty meets Blade Runner’s Priss for the first time, in the form of Molly Dunsworth’s hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold “Abby”.

But maybe that’s just me imagining things.

Director Jason Eisner manages to keep control of a visually off-the-rails production, doing what the exploitation films he pays tribute to often fail to do, which is to be not boring. Although he surely couldn’t have pulled off such a laudable feat without the touching, played-for-straight performances of Hauer and Dunsworth, along with an inventive crew of special effects artists.

My above theory, that Hope Town is really a theme park for bloody entertainment, is my only way to explain the one area where the film slightly lets itself down, which is in the performances of its villains. They certainly don’t play it straight. I imagine that they too are replicants, programmed to act like people in 2019 believe people acted like a few decades previously. At least I hope that’s the reason. This can also help to explain some of the heightened scenes of horror and rampant amorality that pass by the in-film general public, without them doing much about it. In particular, one scene involving a packed school bus and a flame thrower.

But whichever way you look at it, Hobo with a Shotgun stands as a monument to harmless bad taste and Rutger Hauer’s undiminished status as both an A and B-movie icon. He gives a tour-de-force performance that warms the heart. As well as the adrenaline gland. I can only theorise that, had he not been onboard, this would not have been as great as it is.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Jack the Giant Slayer – film review

It’s a dirty job to be mean about something that tries so hard, with barely a shred of cynicism, to be as good natured and entertaining as Jack The Giant Slayer, but I guess somebody has to do it.

Opening with a fairytale reading so similar to the Hellboy: The Golden Army prologue that it borders on plagiaristic, Jack The Giant Slayer accidentally sucks the joy out of a timeless kids fable by trying to infuse it with darker and more complex elements – elements it didn’t really need and elements you didn’t really want, so by the time you realise you’re being fed lumpy and unnecessary exposition you’ve probably already missed it.

Hands up anyone who remembers what they were told in the first ten minutes. No? Yeah, me neither.

Well, strangely enough, after this failed attempt to beef up the Jack and the Beanstalk mythology the film descends into fey medieval pantomime territory with all the style and sophistication of a  second rate BBC television miniseries. Tents? Check. Flags? Check. Chickens? Check. Fire breathing entertainer in a bustling market place? Check.

Yet while permitting such worryingly old-hat production design clichés director Bryan Singer also seems to be suffering from Peter Jackson Fever (a real medical condition in Hollywood), therefore most of the dialogue has had to be dubbed-over in the Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR) stage so as to suck the spontaneity out of all its performances and every shot that opens a new scene has to swoop in on a crane – preferably over a babbling brook or a conveniently placed piece of set dressing.

But beyond the slightly distracting nods to dear old P.J. a strong visual signature is noticeably lacking. Singer has never had the most consistent or striking visual style, in fact I’m doubtful I could pick one of his films out of a line-up, but you can usually tell that he tries hard to add some flare to proceedings, whether or not he succeeds.

Jack The Giant Slayer is an example of when he doesn’t.

As mentioned above the overall look of the film is pretty flat in a low-budget TV production sense, as are the special effects that even a video game developer might send back with detailed notes for improvement; but elsewhere the writing is beyond abysmal and not helped by the bad ADR work and the film’s two lifeless leads (Nicholas Hoult and Eleanor Tomlinson) who both look and sound as though they could do with a hot meal to boost their energy levels and pad out their walking-skeleton physiques.

Fear not, though, as aid comes in the form of the film’s supporting players, in particular Ewan McGreggor as a pompous knight who seems always on the verge of anachronistically shouting out “chocks away!”, Ian McShane who’s just great in everything and the far too marginalised for anybody’s liking chameleonic appearance of the wonderful Stanley Tucci.

But whether or not you can digest the stilted dialogue, the occasional wooden performance or the added plot mechanics you’ll still end up grooving along to the basic beats of the classic Jack and the Beanstalk fable with added gross-out humour and gratuity-free action sequences (the final castle siege is mercifully less Battle of the Pelennor Fields and more Diet Helms Deep).

So by failing in its intention to be weighty and edgier than its roots require Jack The Giant Slayer can’t help but be a simple and fun bit of fluff that only lets itself down with some excruciating dialogue, a wet pair of lovebirds and the lack of a strong creative vision.

Basically you won’t be bored, but you’ll want to plug your ears up about five times a scene.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows – film review

Although Guy Ritchie’s first Sherlock Holmes installment was wearyingly clichéd in its plotting the charismatic diversionary tactics of Robert Downey Jr in the title role; Philippe Rousselot’s lush cinematography; Sarah Greenwood’s immersive production design; and James Herbert’s snappy editing made it a fabulously enjoyable treat for the senses, if perhaps not for the brain.

A Game Of Shadows, however, is a vicious assault on the senses and has even less to offer the brain. Even worse is that it doesn’t even offer us the simple thrill of a troubled but dashing Sherlock Holmes solving a complex mystery in Victorian London. No. As for reasons beyond comprehension it turns into a dull and torturously bombastic euro-thriller – a James Bond in tweed, if you will.

Gone is the richly colourful photography; instead the whole look of the film is drowned in horribly muted blues and lifeless greys that render everything that happens unpleasant to look at. Even Hans Zimmer’s vibrantly traditional score from the first film has been replaced by the sort of overbearing musical onslaught we thought he’d left behind in the 90s.

So where did it all go wrong?

I’m not sure, but the move from 1.85:1 aspect ratio to 2.40:1 doesn’t help in providing visual continuity or the intimate humour from the first film. This one feels distant, detached and cold. Strange, really, considering the main visual creative team is the same.

So, adding to this step down in audio/visual quality some forgettable actors, characters, plot devices and action sequences things aren’t looking great at all for A Game Of Shadows.

But within the mess, somewhere, is a much better film. The midsection lost my attention so completely that by the end I neither knew nor cared what was happening (not because it was complicated but because it was boring), however the start and end were enjoyable and only served to make me lament what might have been. Could the midsection be trimmed down to its bare plot essentials? Could Hans Zimmer replace his score with something more in keeping with what he gave us in the first instalment? Could someone tweak the colour grading digitally to brighten the tone and give it the vibrancy of its predecessor?

If there’s a third instalment I sincerely hope the producers realise where they went wrong with A Game Of Shadows and pull the series back into a more fun, lean and colourful line.

This one simply gets it wrong.

Desperate Hours (1990) – film review

I haven’t seen this film since probably I was a teenager, but it’s amazing how much of it (certain shots and camera moves in particular) that I remember from back then in great detail. I was also quite nervous about coming back to it, mainly due to my concern that, being older and wiser now, I’d simply hate it.

How wrong I was.

I’m a little guilt-ridden for having never seen the 1955 William Wyler directed original and still cherishing what critics usually tend to dismiss and history, it seems, has done likewise; but as a fan of overwrought, over-the-top and over confident curiosities I can’t help but find this remake mesmerising.

After the disaster of Heaven’s Gate reminded the world why directors need to shoot the odd close-up, Michael Cimino had some work to do to regain the confidence of a film industry he almost single-handedly tore down. What emerged was Year of the Dragon, The Sicilian and Desperate Hours – three smaller scale films that condensed Cimino’s fondness for visual flair, epic scale and theatrical acting into enjoyable but sadly forgotten gems.

Even though I’ve got a sincere soft spot for this tale of a group of violent criminals on the run taking a bickering family hostage, I’d warn anyone approaching it for the first time to leave their sensible hats at the door, because it’s a film riddled with ham-fisted dialogue, unconvincing characters, bizarre coincidences and gaping plot holes that beggar belief, but in the same breath entertain mercilessly.

If you can find a reason why Mickey Rourke decides to hole-up in suburbia for the night instead of safely hiding under a bridge in the countryside somewhere, or why Lindsay Crouse is so wonderfully bolshy and bad tempered all throughout the film, or why the police back in 1990 had all the intelligence and subtlety of a piano falling down a flight of stairs then you’re much smarter than me.

But amidst the harmless stupidity, extreme violence and high suspense there are elegant and poignant pauses of peace and natural beauty shot with grace by cinematographer Douglas Milsome, moments that really set it apart from the rest. The thundering orchestral score by David Mansfield racks up the tension from start to finish but also knows when to back off to give the audience a breather. The editing by Christopher Rouse compliments Cimino’s direction admirably, cutting off all the fat and keeping this a lean piece of suspenseful cinema without a single unnecessary frame left on screen.

I’d recommend watching this as part of a triple bill along with Martin Scorcese’s Cape Fear remake and Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct for a great night of shameless, ridiculous cinema that’ll make you lament for the lost art of using camera tracks instead of steadycams.

Best bit: Anthony Hopkins literally taking out the trash.

Sadly we’ve not had a film from Cimino since 1996’s The Sunchaser and I’ve got a terrible feeling we never will… but that won’t stop me from hoping.

Come on, Michael, pull one last masterpiece out of the bag!

Sheffield Pride 2013

I went to my first ever Pride event yesterday, which took place in Sheffield city centre. They’d had others in the past, but never in such a public space, which is probably why I’d been reluctant to go. I mean, it just doesn’t seem very proud being hidden away in some dingy suburban park where nobody can see you being proud.

Isn’t visibility the whole point of these things? The answer is “yes”.

I went with my girlfriend and two lesbian friends, who are partners, and we had an absolute blast! It was way too hot, at least for my liking, but fortunately it did mean that there were loads of lush topless lads for me to ogle. This did not make my girlfriend nervous at all.

Much.

There was a series of stalls in Barker’s Pool, a square in front of the city hall, that opened for business early on in the day. It received a lot of attention and the stalls seemed to have a diverse range of things to check out. Sadly, none of these things interested me. I did enjoy the fact that the council had rigged the square’s fountains to spout pink water, which was a very nice touch indeed.

Later in the afternoon, there was a lively parade from the square through the student/boutique-laden Devonshire Quarter to the popular Devonshire Green events space, where there was live music for the rest of the day.

We joined in with the parade, much to my shy hesitation, and had the local and national news take pictures and video footage of us. If you can spot us somewhere on television or online, then please do let me know. I’m the fat one wearing a black baseball cap, a folded-up white blind cane, and waving a rainbow flag. Don’t worry, I’m sure I was the only person waving a rainbow flag.

Ha! As if.

We didn’t stay for the later music event, mostly due to it being just so hot, which I sort-of regret now. It was one of the very rare occasions where I actually fancied a dance. My inhibitions had completely dissipated by that point, thanks to a glorious natural high.

I really enjoyed showing my face and having a laugh with friends, especially amongst such a lovely, colourful, and caring group of people. It really felt great being part of something that brought so many people together. It was also nice to see parents bringing along their children to join in with the festivities, as it made the whole thing feel even more chilled-out and progressive.

Hatred is learned, not born with.

Whether it did to other people or not, for me it really felt like a landmark event for the Sheffield LGBT community. And for me as a proud bisexual male.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

2026 UPDATE: My girlfriend and I eventually split up in 2016, due to me also coming out as transgender, which she found too difficult to come to terms with. She tragically passed away in 2022 from heart failure, although we remained close friends until the end. I miss her very much. She was my soulmate. Our two lesbian friends also split up, although I am still in daily contact with one of them. Sadly, she now lives too far away for us to regularly meet and gossip, but the image of her warm smile is always in my heart.