Society has discovered how to make humanoid robots that look better than and act like the real thing (i.e. human) whilst being controlled by their operators elsewhere. Over time, humans stay at home in their apartments whilst they control their surrogate version out on the real world. Eventually small pockets of resistance form, and in these camps reside people that don’t want to use surrogates at all, to the point of destroying them.

The story picks up where two people are murdered via their surrogates, one of whom is related to the creator of the machines. Bruce Willis ends up trying to solve the first homicide in years not only by using his FBI issued surrogate, but also by having to leave the safety of his home.

Of course, it’s a good film, relying only slightly on the action segments. The story behind it is intriguing, especially since it’s plausibly not too far into the future that we may well see this happen for ourselves. You may argue that it’s happening now with MMORPGs, the gamer controlling an avatar instead of a robot, and this may well be food for thought.

I do have to admit, as soon as I got home I logged into World of Warcraft. Ahh, irony…

Dog Soldiers is a werewolf film, where some soldiers head to some randomly scary part of Scotland to do some military exercises. Sadly, werewolves are found to be in the area, and the squad, along with a random zoologist, have to survive the night before becoming either very furry or food…

Generally speaking, it’s quite a mediocre horror film. The acting of Sean Pertwee, Emma Cleasby and Liam Cunningham happens to be pretty good. The rest of it just seems to let them down.
For a start, we have a random zoologist that just “happens” to be in the area, whom turns into a semi-”Damsel In Distress” surrounded by her would-be protectors. This is cliché, and it doesn’t work in this setting.
Secondly, we have a scene where a soldier plays a game of Tug of War with a dog. Using the solder’s own intestines.

Yes, his own intestines.

Did we really need this? Whom thought this was a good idea!?
Thirdly, we seem to have stumbled upon the worst ever transformation into a werewolf ever. One guy feels unwell, hides under a table, claws the top of the table with his unchanged hand, the hand goes back under the table, then the table gets thrown out of the way by a suddenly standing and fully changed werewolf.
In the recent climate of special effects and technical wizardry, why exactly did this happen? I’m sure I’ve seen better and more visual versions on TV and older films…

Taking these three things along with others into account, watching Dog Soldiers with the family turns from a scary night into an unintentional comedy masterpiece.

Theory: Videogame movie starring beautiful women like Holly Valance, Devon Aoki and Jamie Pressly fighting each other on an island in an underground tournament whilst wearing skimpy clothing. And there’s an ulterior motive of the tournament, where the evil host wants to record all of the experts (in skimpy clothing) assembled’s fighting styles to sell to the highest bidder. And there’s volleyball. And skimpy outfits. It’ll be fun!

Practice: There is little or no reason to watch DOA: Dead or Alive except to stare at the stars covorting around in bikinis or otherwise (example – Valance coming out of a shower in a towel, then puts on her underwear in a fight scene). Indeed, the fights themselves seem a bit underwhelming and have the most tenuous of plotpoints.
If you’re watching it for the story, then you really need to get out more. It’s less story and more “excuses” for things to happen. Such as a fight on a boat against pirates. In swimwear. Or the oriental palace, leaving the clan by jumping over a wall which has a sheer cliff face on the other side, and whilst plummeting, allowing the oriental garb to tear away revealing modern clothing and an automatically opening hanglider. Or the volleyball being there just to fill up screentime with good looking women in skimpy outfits.

Is it a videogame movie? Yes.
Does it continue the trend of videogame movies? Yes.
Is it worth pointing out that the movie could be ignored except for the Holly Valance towel/underwear scene because for the most part the movie isn’t worth most people’s time unless they’re out to see women fighting, in skimpy outfits? Yes

I just had to go and see it…

Cloverfield is the name of a case file that the US Government had created, in an attempt to understand what happened in New York. The film is apparently a copy of one of the tapes within that file, found in the area near where a large monster caused trouble. The entire film goes from this viewpoint of an innocent bystander being near all of this action and risking their life to escape. It’s all from one tape, recording over most of one of the main character’s dates in the past, and therefore everything you see is from this cameraman/victim perspective. And the camera does get treated how it would be in a situation such as this. The camera gets used to view just-shot footage of what happened, there’s quick cuts where the camera is turned off to save battery or to avoid recording something too hurtful, but all of it seems real. Heck, the camera gets dropped, covered with dirt and suffers problems that a damaged camera would.

And that’s really as far as I want to go when describing the film. It’s something that you really should watch to understand how great it is. Granted, the story is incomplete compared to the usual terror romps that we are used to, but that does add to the effect of being like one of these people, that they know as little of what is going on as you do. There isn’t as much closure as I would want there to be.

I would highly recommend going to see this, except if you suffer from motion sickness (camera work, but it’s to be expected), in which case I would wait for the DVD (which, as we will probably expect, will contain lots of clues about what is going on). Aside from that, it is a good way to spend a few hours. It fits and to me at least beats the hype. It is a great film.

I want Cloverfield 2 now. Please?

Midweek DVD is now Midweek Movie. I can now talk about new films, not just old, obscure and obtuse films.

Thank you for reading.

However, it’s a Stephen Chow film…

Imagine, if you will, your average Kung Fu film. All of the fighting, the graceful flight of bodies in the air prior to impact, the intense battles requiring skill and years of dedication to get right. Got that in mind? Yes? Good.
Now, imagine the average cartoon short. A Bugs Bunny cartoon. Maybe Tom and Jerry. Something that has weird things that you don’t expect to really ever happen, for example a hammer falling onto a foot, and the foot suddenly turning into a large flat pancake. Thinking about that now?

Now, put both of them together. The kick-ass of Kung Fu, with the comic abilities and unrealism of a cartoon. You should end up with something like Kung Fu Hustle.

For example, you have the cartoon chase scene a la Road Runner. You have the Slum Queen’s husband that suffers a great fall from a building, landing face first, seconds later having a plant pot landing squarely on the back of his skull, and staying there. You have the throwing-knife attempts on the Slum Queen that backfires enormously. You have faces going through floors. Special effects that you can only call over the top, even for this type of film.

Add in some weird scripting and dubbing that is either very funny or a quote from somewhere else in popular culture (such as one of the slum resident’s death scene where he quotes Spiderman…), and you have a film that can hold my attention for a prolonged period of time.

So, Kung Fu Hustle. A film that doesn’t take itself seriously, yet still entertains.

“Kung Fu Hustle (Axe-Kickin’ Edition)” (Sony Pictures)

By the numbers it should be a decent action film, it had all the pieces you would expect from an action-drama-survival-horror film.
It had the build up before the plane, there was the introduction to most of the main characters that would survive the initial onslaught, it had passengers from every section of society that you can think of that would fly a plane in first class (The Paris Hilton Socialite Ripoff? Yep. The Suited English Businessman with High Stress Levels? Yes, although wearing a suit in Hawaii. The martial artist fighter? Dunno about that being normal…), you had the slow build-up to the release, the first battle, the defending, the attacking, the more defending, and so on. Yes, they tried everything, even getting Samuel L Jackson to star in it, but it didn’t stop it from being anything between mediocre and pathetic.

And yet… I like it…

Yes, I will readily admit to loving the film. It’s not the greatest film ever created, and it’s not the worst (close, but not quite), but there’s a certain feel towards watching it for the first time in a group setting that makes it go from bad to fantastic.
Watching it with the family, we could all see where the storyline was going to go, purely because it’s so obvious. (“Oh look, one pilot is going to check the wiring down a hatch in the cockpit, which happens to be dark, full of small cubbyholes that he must stick his hand into, and snakes. Since it’s the start of the incident and there are always 2 pilots on the plane, I cannot possibly think what’s going to happen next…”). We also laughed at the painful and blatantly obvious jokes/ways of death that happened (“Hey, he’s going to the toilet. I wonder what could possibly happen?”), and then just at bits of the storyline in general (We all cheered when the dog got “used”. We don’t like small yappy dogs that are kept in handbags).

By the end of the film, it was so bad and predictable, it came out the other side and back into greatness. We will probably watch it in the future again, but only in the very distant future, when we would have forgotten most of the storyline (…?), and even then watch only as a group.

Yes. It’s so bad, it’s good.

“Snakes on a Plane (Widescreen New Line Platinum Series)” (David R. Ellis)