My Best Films

Deeper underground? Not exactly. Serviceable enough on its own terms, The Descent Part 2 fails to up the ante on Neil Marshall’s 2005 hit.

Comparisons to Aliens are misplaced, despite survivor Shauna Macdonald’s Sarah evoking the haunted, hardened Ripley of James Cameron’s ‘86 follow-up.

Where that film felt bigger and beefier than its predecessor, this plays like a virtual remake - only this time we already know what the bat-faced Crawlers look like, so it’s just a matter of waiting for them to strike.

Replacing Neil Marshall at the helm, Jon Harris delivers a steady string of shocks and puts his cast through their paces, caking them in blood, mud and worse

Some of the splatter is sensational - though frantic editing renders it occasionally hard to tell what the fuck just happened.

The film’s graphic gusto kept a packed FrightFest crowd cheering. Shame, though, that you could count the fresh ideas on the fingers of one blood-gushing stump.

Deeper underground? Not exactly. Serviceable enough on its own terms, The Descent Part 2 fails to up the ante on Neil Marshall’s 2005 hit.

Comparisons to Aliens are misplaced, despite survivor Shauna Macdonald’s Sarah evoking the haunted, hardened Ripley of James Cameron’s ‘86 follow-up.

Where that film felt bigger and beefier than its predecessor, this plays like a virtual remake - only this time we already know what the bat-faced Crawlers look like, so it’s just a matter of waiting for them to strike.

Replacing Neil Marshall at the helm, Jon Harris delivers a steady string of shocks and puts his cast through their paces, caking them in blood, mud and worse

Some of the splatter is sensational - though frantic editing renders it occasionally hard to tell what the fuck just happened.

The film’s graphic gusto kept a packed FrightFest crowd cheering. Shame, though, that you could count the fresh ideas on the fingers of one blood-gushing stump.

Introducing this year’s Mirrors: it played in the same Monday afternoon slot, it features a big Hollywood star and it isn’t very good.

Zellweger is a social worker who takes on a seemingly sickly-cute 10-year-old whose parents try to shove her in the cooker, only to discover Lillith (clue’s in the name…) is a little monster.

A couple of early scenes of child abuse (including the aforementioned oven shot) are promising although it’s patently obvious early on that butter certainly would melt in her mouth.

The Hangover’s Bradley Cooper co-stars as Zellweger’s love interest and a scene of hornets literally coming out of his ears is itchily effective, but the movie quickly becomes generic and silly, plodding to an anticlimax.

It’s hard to avoid comparisons with recently released Orphan, a movie that’s similarly derivative and daft, but Case 39 doesn’t even reach that movie’s mediocre bar. Oh dear.

Case 39 is directed by Christian Alvart, whose grim, gritty and painful thriller Antibodies showed at FrightFest a few years back – this is an enormously disappointing follow up - where Antibodies is more similar in style, and indeed quality, to the excellent Millennium, Case 39 is barely woth opening.

Introducing this year’s Mirrors: it played in the same Monday afternoon slot, it features a big Hollywood star and it isn’t very good.

Zellweger is a social worker who takes on a seemingly sickly-cute 10-year-old whose parents try to shove her in the cooker, only to discover Lillith (clue’s in the name…) is a little monster.

A couple of early scenes of child abuse (including the aforementioned oven shot) are promising although it’s patently obvious early on that butter certainly would melt in her mouth.

The Hangover’s Bradley Cooper co-stars as Zellweger’s love interest and a scene of hornets literally coming out of his ears is itchily effective, but the movie quickly becomes generic and silly, plodding to an anticlimax.

It’s hard to avoid comparisons with recently released Orphan, a movie that’s similarly derivative and daft, but Case 39 doesn’t even reach that movie’s mediocre bar. Oh dear.

Case 39 is directed by Christian Alvart, whose grim, gritty and painful thriller Antibodies showed at FrightFest a few years back – this is an enormously disappointing follow up - where Antibodies is more similar in style, and indeed quality, to the excellent Millennium, Case 39 is barely woth opening.

It must be sequel day in Hollywood as, never ones to let a money-earning franchise die, even after six years, Sony is attempting to gear up another Bad Boys film.

Well, the studio is trying to put a script together at least, hiring Peter Craig (who wrote The Town, which Ben Affleck will start directing next month) to bash out a first draft that will likely need a lot of spaces for the words "Michael makes things go ’splodey here".

What it doesn’t have yet is commitments from "Michael" - Bay, that is, producer Jerry Bruckheimer or stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

The executives will have to cut hefty deals to get everyone back, so they’ll be hoping to have something on paper to draw the team in again.

Apparently, they’re eager if the story’s right, so assuming Bay has time between small indie products (you know, the ones he keeps talking about between Transformers films) and giant robots, we may yet see another Bad Boys.

Well, at least Sandford’s Sgt Danny Butterman will be happy…

[Source: THR]

Another Bad Boys? Do you want it?

He’s been touting it for a while, but Sylvester Stallone has a greenlight to kick off work on a fifth Rambo outing.

With a script in hand that sees John Rambo battling human traffickers and drug lords to rescue a kidnapped girl near the Mexican border, and now the go-ahead from backers Millennium, Sly can start shooting early next year.

He’s already busy finishing up The Expendables, and plans to star and direct again, so so it looks like he’ll stay in training for another round of bloody violence…

[Source: Variety]

Another Rambo…. Is it a good thing?

While it would appear that the latest news about The Green Hornet - that it’s been shoved back from a July to a December release next year - is yet another bad omen, that’s not how Seth Rogen feels.

While the movie is definitely being pushed back on Sony’s schedule, it’s been widely assumed that the move is to give the filmmakers - including director Michel Gondry - more time to get the thing finished in post-production.

Especially since it has yet to start shooting.

Talking to HitFix, producer/writer/star Seth Rogen has gone on record to explain. "We’re both relieved and psyched about the change.  It gives more time for post, which would have been immensely rushed if we were to come out in the summer. 

"It also affords us more time to promote the film, (now we can go to Comic-Con with more than a car!) and ultimately is a great vote of confidence from the studio.  We got the same date that movies like I Am Legend and Avatar are getting, so we’re thrilled to be there."

So there you have it, folks - straight from the stoner horse’s mouth.

Now we just want this thing to be in production so everyone can stop worrying…

[Source: HitFix]

Still excited for the movie? Worried? Speak!

In one of the more surprising announcements to happen along for a while, the Walt Disney Company has just bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion.

While the full terms of the deal have not been announced, it gives the Mouse House ownership rights over more than 5,000 Marvel characters, including Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Thor and the X-Men.

But don’t go expecting things to change overnight, though - the studios that Marvel already has existing partnerships with (Sony for Spider-Man, Paramount for Iron Man, Thor and The Avengers) are staying in place until their contracts run out.

It does mean, however, that Disney will likely be distributing Marvel movies in the future - and giving the company its full marketing weight, similar to the DC/Warners deal.

And in a conference call to announce the big signing, Disney president Robert Iger mentioned that Marvel honchos had had excitable early meetings with John Lasseter, which might point to Pixar/Marvel collaborations down the line. Exciting stuff…

[Source: Variety]

There’s always one, and this year’s throw-down-the-gauntlet gut-churner was The Human Centipede, about an insane surgeon who kidnaps test subjects and grafts them into fleshy chain, mouth to anus.

It’s a truly horrific (and therefore inspired) concept, especially when you pause to think it through. That’s right: the first in the chain must ‘feed’ the second, and so forth, until the recycled waste finally comes out the far end.

As Stephen King says, there are three levels to horror: terror, horror, gross-out, and if you can’t achieve the first you go for the second, then the third - whatever it takes to punch out that reaction.

Interestingly, though, The Human Centipede is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Firstly, it is not, actually, nearly as vomit-inducing and the hype suggests. Far from being this year’s Irreversible, Martyrs or Inside, films that push boundaries, it is (relatively speaking) a rather tame affair.

Perhaps showing surprise restraint, certainly trusting that the concept takes things far enough all on its own, director Tom Six holds back from showing too much detail. Rather ridiculously, those in the human centipede are allowed to keep their underwear on, plus bandages, thus preserving some sort of modesty even when shuffling around the garden sucking arse.

Six would argue that it is to protect their scars - a quote on the poster proclaims the film ‘100% medically accurate’ (!) - but it’s really no different to watching Julia Roberts receive CPR with her bra still on in Flatliners.

Centipede is a black comedy, which is perhaps the most shocking thing about it. Those hoping for clinically delivered carnage of the sort Cronenberg or Haneke excel at will be sorely disappointed, as evidenced the moment we meet our arch villain, Dr Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser), leafing through photos of his three-dog. Six is more interested in eliciting wry sniggers than dry heaves.

Unfortunately, his movie is also not what it’s cracked up to be in terms of quality. Expected to be one of the stand-outs of FrightFest, it instead proved itself to be a slow-moving, repetitive affair that has nowhere left to go by the hour mark.

After all, once you’ve captured your subjects and done the science and they’re now shambling across the living room floor, fetching a newspaper like a centi-dog, the story’s done. The second half descends into formula as the cops come a-sniffing.

It also doesn’t help that Laser is something of a pantomime villain (and a knowing nod to the distinguished chain of mad movie scientists), all bulging eyes under dark glasses.

Still, The Human Centipede is one of those films you have to see just to say you have. The concept remains robust no matter how many times you poke at it and the film has several scenes (all in the first hour) that come close to delivering on it.

If it finally emerges a disappointment it’s because the hype machine is a far bigger beast than Six - at least until the planned sequel when the centipede will grow in length and Six, inevitably, will have to pull out all stops to exceed his original.

There’s always one, and this year’s throw-down-the-gauntlet gut-churner was The Human Centipede, about an insane surgeon who kidnaps test subjects and grafts them into fleshy chain, mouth to anus.

It’s a truly horrific (and therefore inspired) concept, especially when you pause to think it through. That’s right: the first in the chain must ‘feed’ the second, and so forth, until the recycled waste finally comes out the far end.

As Stephen King says, there are three levels to horror: terror, horror, gross-out, and if you can’t achieve the first you go for the second, then the third - whatever it takes to punch out that reaction.

Interestingly, though, The Human Centipede is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Firstly, it is not, actually, nearly as vomit-inducing and the hype suggests. Far from being this year’s Irreversible, Martyrs or Inside, films that push boundaries, it is (relatively speaking) a rather tame affair.

Perhaps showing surprise restraint, certainly trusting that the concept takes things far enough all on its own, director Tom Six holds back from showing too much detail. Rather ridiculously, those in the human centipede are allowed to keep their underwear on, plus bandages, thus preserving some sort of modesty even when shuffling around the garden sucking arse.

Six would argue that it is to protect their scars - a quote on the poster proclaims the film ‘100% medically accurate’ (!) - but it’s really no different to watching Julia Roberts receive CPR with her bra still on in Flatliners.

Centipede is a black comedy, which is perhaps the most shocking thing about it. Those hoping for clinically delivered carnage of the sort Cronenberg or Haneke excel at will be sorely disappointed, as evidenced the moment we meet our arch villain, Dr Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser), leafing through photos of his three-dog. Six is more interested in eliciting wry sniggers than dry heaves.

Unfortunately, his movie is also not what it’s cracked up to be in terms of quality. Expected to be one of the stand-outs of FrightFest, it instead proved itself to be a slow-moving, repetitive affair that has nowhere left to go by the hour mark.

After all, once you’ve captured your subjects and done the science and they’re now shambling across the living room floor, fetching a newspaper like a centi-dog, the story’s done. The second half descends into formula as the cops come a-sniffing.

It also doesn’t help that Laser is something of a pantomime villain (and a knowing nod to the distinguished chain of mad movie scientists), all bulging eyes under dark glasses.

Still, The Human Centipede is one of those films you have to see just to say you have. The concept remains robust no matter how many times you poke at it and the film has several scenes (all in the first hour) that come close to delivering on it.

If it finally emerges a disappointment it’s because the hype machine is a far bigger beast than Six - at least until the planned sequel when the centipede will grow in length and Six, inevitably, will have to pull out all stops to exceed his original.