A Quiet Place

         

'A Quiet Place' follows a family going about their lives after some creatures turned up that are attracted by the slightest sound... sometimes. The cold open features a kid dying, so I liked the film immediately. The daughter annoyed me though, and the parents were both a bit too unassertive and not forward thinking enough (the radio doesn't count, I'm talking just setting yourself up so that you can live in such a way as to not be in constant danger). Also they're not only Christians, but the sort of Christians that sit around and pray before eating, so, eh.

The film benefits from a highly limited cast and plenty of open-ended questions about the world and the creatures (I assume they're either alien or came from some subterranean area like those bat things in 'The Silence', which was a similar thing but shitter and with bat things).

     
 
              

There are one or two inconsistencies that bothered me, however. What's running all the electricity? a generator, right? You'd need one of those even if you were using solar or wind I'm pretty sure, and what about when bulbs die? That popping sound can be loud. Why did the mum get pregnant? It's been over a year since these creatures turned up, surely they all know that she's just committing suicide with that? I mean babies cry you know, and even if she gets lucky and it's stillborn, I doubt she'd be able to give birth without so much as a whimper. How come it's okay to listen to music and to the radio on headphones? At one point a hanging light creaks and none of them seem to care, why not? How come there are still birds around, and even raccoons?! Surely all large animals and most insects would be extinct by now?

I stopped noting inconsistencies about 20 minutes in, but basically the rules for what the creatures can and can't detect are vague and change constantly and it annoyed me. I realise I'm being very nit picky here but... HEY, why not just light a big fire? They'd all just run into it. Or, if they're not that dumb, set off a car alarm or something and then sit around a few metres away and shoot arrows at them while they're swarming the car? That could work.

I like the very limited use of music, and the heavy silence of all the shots from the deaf girl's point of view. The general quiet of the film obviously lends itself to jump scares very well, so if you're giving it your full attention it's likely to be effectively startling at times. Overall the tone of the film is great, and is complemented by the creature design and the performance of the actors.

Each round of danger does feel increasingly staged, though. All the characters are dumb enough to make mistakes and attract the creatures, but then are pretty great at getting out of the tight spots they keep finding themselves in. I was half expecting different characters to just keep spiking their feet on that nail, or getting clothing caught on it. I'd have loved it if the movie ended with one of the creatures stepping on it and freaking out.

Wait, why dont they just live by the fucking waterfall? Move to the beach!

           

A Quiet Place: 48.6

         

Survival of the Dead

               

For the last film in Romero's dead series, he seems to have given up on getting any kind of meaningful insight across. That's a bonus, as far as I'm concerned, as the last film stank and the one before was too blatant and silly. This one is silly too, but it's not trying to be anything more than a fairly light-hearted zombie western about two old guys with grudges and a band of ex-military survivors lead by a Hugh Jackman lookalike.

                

              

The imaginative zombie dispatching is dwindling at this point, and the editing (one of the strongest elements of his classics) has become bland and formulaic. You can tell that nothing about this is an independent picture any more. Romero never suited mainstream Hollywood, he was at his best telling off the cuff stories that took a lot of feeling from their location and grew into cohesion in the editing.

I liked this one more than 'Diary of the Dead', but not quite as much as 'Land of the Dead'. While I hated the clunky commentary of that film, I did like the setting and general concept. This film was far more run of the mill, and while it was watchable, it was often comically uninspired.

           

Survival of the Dead: 33.2

Screamers

                 

An unoriginal B style low budget sci-fi that's occasionally fun. We know what we're in for with 'Screamers' when it opens with the classic explanatory text crawl. It feels like it was made at least ten years too late - I think this movie belongs in the 80's with a smaller budget and a larger quantity of tongue in cheek. 

It has a slightly overcomplicated background, but basically the Earth has collonies all over the place, and one of them is on some planet with a precious fuel in the ground. When you mine it radiation or something comes out, so they refused to, so a big war started between the inhabitants of that planet and the corporation that owns the mines. The corporation bombs the guys on the planet and the guys on the planet make these tunnelling robots to kill people, who end up improving themselves to the point of looking like people.

               

                     

There's lots of other background information, most of which is given to us via the long exposition dialogue chunks dispersed throughout, but that's already more than you need to know. All you really need to know is that there are evil replicants everywhere. A green marine acts as an audience surrogate, and with his arrival comes awhole lot of extra information that I felt was basically unnecessary. It was at this point that I started to see how odd the pacing of this movie was. It both starts and ends haltingly, in several steps with stretches of filler in between. As it ends we get a lot of false final showdowns, but at that point it felt unintentionally awkward rather than an intended surprise.

The dialogue is terribly cheesy and the characters are simplistic, but it was a fun story and I liked the design of the bare robots (there was one short scene of a stop motion one that I thought was fantastic, but sadly they only used it once). There are no big twists, other than the realisation that random people are robots. I found the kid mildly creepy though (the phrase “can I come with you?” quickly becomes disturbing), and I enjoyed the scene when they were burning and shooting a horde of them.

                     

Screamers: 35.9

Oblivion

                  

'Oblivion' is a good looking, high budget sci-fi that is nonetheless a dull rehash of countless tropes.

          

            

I like the pace. It took its time to set the scene and didn't rely on continuous action. Tom Cruise obviously has a lot of name recognition, but other than that I think he brought very little to the movie. I don't have strong feelings either way for Cruise; he's usually quite good at choosing roles that he works in, but he's a bit bland in this. He's in plenty of great films, but I don't love them for him, if you know what I mean. The characters are all pretty boring, actually, but they're all meant to be either brain washed clones or bunker-bound survivors, so it's understandable.

It feels like it was doing its best to be a proper sci-fi, in a very corporate Hollywood kind of a way. It was perfectly watchable, and I appreciate that someone was trying, but the movie doesn't have enough of a sense of self. It would have benefited from being someone's vision, rather than seemingly the product of a boardroom. 

It was obvious that there was going to be some kind of a big twist. It almost felt like a throwback at times - not in style, but in plot at least. If you've seen a few of these sorts of films you'll see the twist coming, and it makes the resolution as much of a bleak bummer as any classic sci-fi. Good pacing, beautifully shot, and well produced. It's far from original, but it's definitely watchable.

                       

Oblivion: 47.7

Battlefield Earth

                       

John Travolta stars in one of the dumbest science fiction films I've ever seen. It's the future, and humanity has been taken over by aliens who are mining Earth's gold, for some reason. Humans have been pushed back into the stone age, despite living around so much shit that is still around - like cars, old courses, whole cities, working guns and planes, etc. 

The aliens seem to have some kind of corporate structure, but at the same time they're very primal and remind me of Uruk hai but dumber. I don't know how they've mastered space travel, or even structured society, as none of them seem to do what the others say, and on all levels of command they're slacking off of betraying one another all the time. Everyone in this film are idiots, basically, which is one of the major problems (that and the terrible concept execution, the hammy acting/dialogue, and the poor casting). 

                   

                   

John Travolta's character is an alien with a convoluted plan to steal gold and then get a raise, and get to leave Earth, or fire his boss and get to leave Earth. I don't know, I tuned out. He wants to leave Earth, and he's going to secretly mine extra gold to do something for reasons possibly but not necessarily connected to the leaving Earth thing. 

So that's the antagonist. The protagonist is a male human who gets made more clever by Travolta's alien machine so that he can mine gold, I think. Then he goes to a library and figures out how to fly planes. Then other things happen, but I've left the room. There are also other characters. 

I don't think you'd enjoy this movie unless you appriciate ones that are so bad they're good. I liked it for this, as the entire thing is played straight, and the few moments of intended comedy are delightfully cringey. Watched as an actual cohesive story though (or gods forbid a sci-fi film) it doesn't even begin to hold up.

                          

Battlefield Earth: 7.5

Land of the Dead

              

So Romero skipped the 90's and went straight to the shitty naughties. Yep, it's the worst decade ever (until the next decade, which is now the worst decade ever (and if it's not the teens for you at the time of reading, I'm sure whatever decade you're currently inhabiting is currently the worst decade ever)), and now it's full of zombies and rich people who live in a big tower. 

I should get the fact that I really like this concept out of the way early - I really like this concept. The actual world building and execution in general is sub-par in this film, but if I were to just describe the world, it would sound pretty cool. It's basically '28 Weeks Later', except it's not London, and the rest of the world (I assume) has been taken over. '28 Weeks Later' did it better.

                  

                   

The rich people live in a tower while the lower classes live down below, and have to scavenge for the rich people. The commentary didn't really work. It was far more obvious than in previous films, and it was too shallow. There was no real reason why a monitary system would work in such a small society (and if it did, why it would be out of the control of the heavy hitting guys with the tanks and guns and in the control of the suits who don't appear to actually do anything other than give orders). The society is so small that they would be much more likely to have a bartering system. 

I've never been a huge fan of smart zombies either, though it's interesting how Romero's sympathy seems to swing further over to the undead's side as we make our way further through his movies. There were still plenty of fun scenes (the bit where the zombie pulls a belly button ring out of a girl and then spits it out was a highlight) but the characters were bland and forgettable and the plot was about as predictable as it could get.

                    

Land of the Dead: 33.6

Day of the Dead

                 

You know, I think I actually liked this more than the second one. I'm a big fan of bunkers - Not just in film, in any fiction really. Like space ships or jails, they're secluded. You can get some decent character work in there, and there's plenty room for some mystery apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic happenings up top. So I like this film almost despite the script problems and the 80's campy elements that are starting to feel tacked on (a warning of things to come for this franchise). 

There are a few military and science people left in a bunker in Florida, post-zombie victory event. That's all the set-up you need here, and there was a lot of potential. The script needed work though, and everyone was shouting at each other a little too much for my liking. The whole smart zombie thing was alright, but I don't think it was necessary and it started to mess up the universe as far as I'm concerned I'd have just had Frankenstein do fucked up shit and not get anywhere with it. Then there's a little more sympathy for the army guys when they kill him, right? But I guess grey is bad. Anyway, I like my zombies classic. No flipping around and predator mouth shit, no climbing up big walls in piles like ants, I was even skeptical of the fast zombies in '28 Days Later' - but obviously Boyle made it work for that. 

             

              

The characters are all a little too black and white too. I'd like to have seen a slower burn where we see things working at first and then crumble, where we can understand where each character is coming from. A proper tragedy, basically. I understand that this would have been boring to many zombie fans though, so fair enough. 

             

               

The action is spaced out more than you might expect, but it's decent and the effects work is brilliant. I can't really over sell it - it's the perfect mix of disgustingly gory and unrealistic that'll ensure you're both laughing at it and trying not to throw up. People's skin is apparently made of plastic bag material in Romero's universe, and we get to see zombies tear through it a hell of a lot towards the end of this jaunt. 

I get that it's totally under the winds of my own bias that I prefer this to 'Dawn of the Dead' (and obviously 'Night of the Living Dead is a classic too timeless for anything in this genre to get close to), but I just love the whole bunker thing so much. I even liked that aspect of the 'Resident Evil' series, though there was little else to enjoy there (I root for the Umbrella corporation, rather than the random red haired lady who's trying to kill all of them - and so kill the last bastion of civilisation. Seriously, does no one else read those films like that? I'm complaining about it now because I doubt I'll ever bother reviewing them (how many are there now, fifteen?)). The characters were sometimes cheesy, but no more cheesy than the ones in the last one. I actually felt I connected with them slightly more, despite the lacking script. 

If you're doing a Romero marathon stop here. I warned ya.

               

Day of the Dead: 76.1

Mad Max: Fury Road

               

                    

It's difficult for me to say this, but I like this one more than 'The Road Warrior'. Not a whole lot more, but on a series so bent of explosions and chase scenes, a modern film that's effectively a two hour long explosion-filled chase scene using real explosions, stuntmen, and a cacophony of special effects will win out against my old favourite. 

This has some of the best action I've ever seen in a film. The cars were all great (though it hurt to see his Interceptor get trashed as soon as the movie began) and there's too much awesome stunt work to list individually. Suffice to say that the action elements were all exemplary and were shot beautifully.

            

            

Even the big bad was better fleshed out than his predecessors (who were visually great, but lacked much depth). The fairytale quality to the legend of Max continues, and we have a further step up from 'Thunderdome', with this film featuring a huge castle like structure complete with knights, damsels in distress, and hordes of mutant peasantry. Max comes into all this, and characteristically just wants out. But of course the very empathy that distances himself from this world's villains forces him to help some people out, and so we have conflict that goes beyond merely trying to escape selfishly.

            

                   

This is standard stuff for the Max films, and I'm glad to see that we came back to it here, and that this film didn't try to re-do his origin story or something. I don't care that it's not Gibson; Max is a bit like Bond, in that the legend is bigger than the man himself. 

The few detriments I can think of are basically just about scale. We're going even more outlandish here, which works fine for me in this universe, but with this comes a feeling of Hollywood, where each good character's death comes with a big cinema moment. In 'Road Warrior' several of the main good guys die almost immediately after the main chase starts, and not a huge deal is made of it. This film is more traditionally cinematic, with main characters mattering more in it's fiction. This is what comes with a production shift to America and an inflated budget though, and it's not a huge deal. It certainly didn't annoy me during viewing, and on the flip side we get this beautiful cinematography, with every shot looking like a painting, each practical explosion looking oily and real, and every surface covered with grit and flaking paint.

              

Mad Max: Fury Road: 78.7

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

                 

One kid was fine, but this is a little kid-heavy for me. Everyone's favourite anti-Semite is back in the third Max movie in the trilogy, which starts fairly strong, fumbles in the second act, but finishes on form.

Other than the kid thing, my main problem with this one is that he doesn't have his car. Instead of those camels he could have had his car, and had his car stolen by plane dude (played by Spence again, though this is apparently a totally different character), then stolen it back for the final chase scene at the end. Whatever though, it's fine. We see a little post-apocalyptic town here, which is run by Tina Turner, so that's good. But then we spend the entire second act watching Max shout at kids, and I get bored enough to start making lasagne while I'm watching.

         

               

The lasagne is put on hold as Max and the kids (I heard that their story was originally going to be a 'Lord of the Flies' film, which needed more padding) sneak back into Turnerland to steal a car, or steal food, or steal the little smart guy, or something. Oh yeah at this point Max has been banished, and Tina has little smart guy imprisoned to run the pig shit factory that runs the place, so as they escape on an old train she gives chase with a horde of your classic spiky cars. This is another great chase scene, with plenty of jumping about between vehicles and explosions and whatnot. Then Max ends up sacrificing himself so that the kids can escape with Bruce Spence, but Tina spares his life out of... newfound respect? She's a cool chick, maybe she's just seen the other 'Mad Max' movies.

The first and third act are let down by the second, which slows to a crawl and feels like an entirely different film. The presence of so many kids also cutesy ups the rest of the film very slightly. It's kind of like having Han Solo and Chewie running about fighting storm troopers, but then there are also all these bear things running about too, and none of them are dying for some reason...

Still pretty great, but I think this is the weakest Max film I've seen. The usual gritty elements are still there though, and they're great.

               

                

Oh! I never even mentiond what Thunderdome is! Yeah, it's just this big dome where people kill each other, it's not a huge deal and just serves as the finale for the first act. I'm not sure why the film was titled this (yes I do, it's to distract from all the kids), a more accurate one would be 'Mad Max: The Lost Children'. Also, those shots of post-apocalyptic Sydney right at the end are beautifully haunting.

                

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome: 60.5

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

                    

Mad Max 2 is like 'Mad Max' but with more awesome. The apocalypse happened, and now Max is bumming around in his car surviving off scraps and siphoning petrol from wrecks.

This is how I see Max. An ever wandering hero, ageless and to some extent nameless - The Road Warrior. A sort of Hercules for the post-apocalyptic world. Someone who never brags or tells his own stories, but who features in the legends of others just by being caught up in events that are bigger than himself and doing his best to help out.

                 

                

This film finds our hero on the search for petrol (which is effectively being worshipped at this point) when he comes across a working nodding donkey that's had a fort constructed around it.

At first he wants in, then he wants out alive, as he gets roped into helping the inhabitants battle the gang sieging them.

There are some wonderfully executed chase scenes in this film - the best in the original trilogy, I'd say. The acting is also pretty solid, with great support work from Bruce Spence. All of the vehicles and props are such a huge step up from the previous film though. This is where the extra budget went (it's more than octupled since the last film), and it helps bring this world to life. The villains were perfect too, embodying the classic villain traits from these sorts of things (strength, mania and deviousness) in separate characters.

I like that the story was told from someone else's point of view though (as is the next one) as this continues the Mad Max mythology. The first film was an origin story that was decidedly his own, but now the legend of him continues from the perspective of others.

                 

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior: 76.4

Pandorum

                      

I feel similarly about 'Pandorum' as I do about 'Event Horizon'; they're good concepts, and I love sci-fi, but they just don't really work as movies. It's difficult to put my finger on exactly what I think didn't work. Maybe it was that the character reasoning often doesn't quite make sense, or that a lot of the movie seems like pointless running around. Maybe it's that while there was a fairly meaty background story to get into, we were never really allowed to because of the relentless jump scares and running. Maybe it was the essentially derivative plot (though to be fair it's difficult to do make a satisfying sci-fi plot that hasn't sort of been done somewhere else is one form or another - I have personal experience of this). Whatever it is, the movie doesn't fully work - but there were plenty of good points too.

                

                       

The acting for one, which I thought was fairly fantastic overall. The central cast certainly held up, and honestly I think they deserved more attention from the cameras. The sets were also fine, if nothing new. The waking from cryo scene was particularly good, and really made me feel confined. The rest of the film brings this feeling back several more times fairly effectively. The actual plot was something of a hodgepodge of sci-fi tropes, but was a gripping enough mystery to keep my attention.

The creature effects on the Morlocks were eh, to be honest. I mean they were fine, but they weren't very scary. Nothing in this film was, come to think of it, which could be seen as a bit of a problem. The atmosphere was often nicely gripping though, though the remorseless tension may tire viewers out rather than keep them enthralled. The movie simply doesn't pause for air often enough.

The final twist/s were quite nicely done, though the actual ending came off as limp. I'd suggest watching this if you're a big sci-fi fan, and a fan of this kind of Alien-esque movie in particular. Otherwise don't bother. It was better than I thought it would be though, given the low scores it got elsewhere. Possibly an underrated movie.

                         

Pandorum: 39.8

The Matrix

  

One of the first times I'm aware of where the gravity defying battles of Hong Kong movies have moved across the pond into western cinema (not the Atlantic - that other, bigger, pond). Added to this is an intriguing Descartes-esque  premise, some fairly ground breaking effects, and a lot of gunfire. I'm not completely in love with this movie (as I remember several people my age to be a few years ago) but for blatant, unrelenting violence it's one of the best out there.

It does little else though, which is curious given the frankly great story set-up of having our entire existence as being a computer program (though a debate I often engaged in was weather we are currently living in the Matrix, and the film is set in the present, or if we are living in the real world and we haven't built the robots that will eventually take over the planet yet, and the film is set in the future). There are plenty of cool shots, and a few interesting villains, but after the initial revelation there is little more philosophical exploration.

The philosophy itself has been heavily lauded since the movies release, but it's far from original (perhaps original for a Hollywood movie?), and is quite heavily dumbed down to the extent that at times it feels shallow.

  

  

There is something to be said for the style of the movie, it takes a similar shadowy leather-clothed route that other things like 'Blade' were making popular at the time. It may not be as original a wardrobe as some claim it to be, but 'The Matrix' pulls it off better than any other movie I've seen since.

Of course the long jackets and dark glasses go very well with the piles of automatics and the exploding masonry, and the action sequences really are world class. To this day no other movie has done done a slo-mo gunfight as well as 'The Matrix', though many have tried, and this movie started a (often questionable) trend of unending gun battles interspersed with the odd cheesy line of dialogue. The scene in the tower block at the end, with the tile pillars and the explosions, is one of my favourites of the movie, and is probably what I'd show you if you were to ask "so what's 'The Matrix' like, anyway?"

Sadly all this crazy action has a detrimental effect on the characters. They are all pretty flat, the acting is often wooden, and the love story is so forced that I didn't even really clock it the first time I saw the movie.

The shots are amazing though - just concentrate on them. The action is superb, and the villains are cool (for appearance alone, Agent Smith is one of my favourite antagonists). 'The Matrix' is a little weak at points, but many couldn't care less (OK I just realised that I haven't ranted about this yet - "could care less" - what the hell is that!? I get that there are differences between American and everywhere else English, but this one really is pointless. If you're saying "I couldn't care less" (the right way to say it) you're saying that there is no possible way that you could care less about the subject - that there is nothing more insignificant than it, in your opinion. If you're saying "I could care less" you're saying that there is less caring that you could possibly do! You might not care almost at all, or you might care about it a lot, but you could care less. It's probably litterally true, as I'm sure that most people care even less about something that isn't the development of characters in 'The Matrix', but stating that isn't really making much of a point about how little it may matter to you - in fact, if anything, it's kind of implying the opposite). Overall, a very influential and exciting action movie.

  

The Matrix: 78.8

Warm Bodies

   

A pretty basic zombie apocalypse situation here, with the major difference (Major Difference) being that one of the leads is a zombie, and it's a rom-com. I've just realised that at the time of writing this will be the first review to which I'll be affixing a "rom-com" tag, but far from the first "zombie" tag that I'll have used. That definitely says something about my taste in movies - but then I don't think I ever said these things would be unbiased.

So we start with the zombie guy, and it's a strong start. Really quite funny, and in a different way to 'Shawn of the Dead', which is the best zombie-comedy of all time. Despite the new angle though, it's still not as great as some others like 'Zombieland', which will themselves forever be in 'Shawn of the Dead's shadow. As many comedies do, it goes downhill in it's second half, and we end up with the most cutesy/positive ending that I've ever seen in a zombie movie (I mean, what is this, 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'?)

   

  

The survivors are nothing new, and their camp is super duper cliche, but that's alright. Most of the interest is on the zombie side of things. I like that they eat brains to experience living memories, and they're all essentially addicted to it. That they eventually turn into faster, mummified zombies is a little on the nose, and the effects leave something to be desired, but at least they make for an extra level of depth.

The love story at the movie's core is alright, I guess. They are both fair actors and the writing is often pretty good (his thoughts are some of the best lines of the film. His body language is great too, and I liked all the scenes with him and her in the plane, where she's teaching him to drive and telling him not to shrug.

The zombie rules of this universe are a little wonky though. How come they only run sometimes? At the start he barely mouths a single word, but soon he's exchanging several with his best friend (and this is before his friend stopped eating humans too, so it can't be because he's becoming more alive). I doubt many care about these little bumps though, and the movie is good overall.

Warm Bodies: 46.7