Author: Alton Williams

Machete ***½

In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino came together to write and direct Grindhouse, a sort of passion project for the two and a film that could perhaps be viewed as quite a bold experiment on their part. You see, Grindhouse was not just a film, it was a loving homage to and an attempt to recreate the experience of the 80s exploitation double feature with which the term ‘grindhouse’ has become synonymous.
Grindhouse (referring to a downtown movie theatre in disrepair since its glory days as a movie palace known for “grinding out” non-stop double-bill programs of B-movies) was presented as one full-length feature comprised of two individual films helmed separately by each director as well as four fake movie trailers, three of which were written and directed by other prominent filmmakers including Eli Roth, Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie. The two films themselves were Robert Rodriguez’s super gory zombie horror Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s car fuelled revenge thriller Death Proof while the fake trailers came in the form of horrors Thanksgiving, Don’t, Werewolf Women of the SS and, most famously, actioner Machete. Grindhouse was a colossal failure at the US box office; people simply did not get what Rodriguez and Tarantino were trying to accomplish, many cinemagoers allegedly walking out after Planet Terror finished because they didn’t realise there even was a double bill and subsequently the film was divided up for international release, the two films being released independently of one another without the fake trailers, aside from Machete that is – and it is for that one trailer that Grindhouse has become most famous. Their double feature experiment may have been something of a disaster commercially but there was certainly enough interest in the fake Machete trailer for Robert Rodriguez to think that making it into a real movie might be a good idea. Hence, we have what is probably the first ever case of a film trailer preceding the inception of the film itself. Machete the movie comprises of footage that had originally been shot for the trailer but obviously that alone was not enough and Rodriguez has had to film around this footage in order to turn it into a full length feature, and to match the tongue in cheek style of the film he had delivered a cast line up every bit as out there, with Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan and Don Johnson joining a cast that also includes Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez in addition to Rodriguez regulars Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin and Daryl Sabara. Machete has certainly been preceded by a considerable amount of hype but does the film actually live up to the trailer that inspired it?

Machete (Danny Trejo) is one of the best federales in Mexico and always get the bad guys but all this changes when his family is murdered and he is left for dead by Mexican drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal). Three years later he is hiding out in Texas and trying to forget his tormented past but soon finds that his past has caught up with him after he accepts an offer by ruthless businessman Booth (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate corrupt US Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a hardliner on immigration policy whose potential election to office and association with Mexican hating vigilante Von Jackson (Don Johnson) threatens the futures of all Mexican illegal immigrants in Texas. Machete soon discovers that he has been set up in an elaborate plan to get the Senator elected to office and that the person behind everything is Torrez. With the authorities after him, he must go off the grid to both survive and deal with those who have framed him, ‘crossing paths’ with Booth’s wife June (Alicia Marek) and daughter April (Lindsay Lohan) and getting help along the way from taco-slinging revolutionary Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), sympathetic immigration agent Sartana Rivera (Jessica Alba) and padre Cortez (Cheech Marin), a priest who is great with blessings but better with a gun. What starts out as a personal mission soon becomes something so much more as he finds himself becoming the figurehead of a massive revolution in which Mexican illegal immigrants go to all out war with Jackson’s vigilante army, a war from which only one side can emerge victorious.

Just as was the case with Grindhouse, I strongly suspect that not everyone will really get Machete. This is a film made with a very specific target audience in mind and if you fall into this target audience you will likely find much to enjoy; others on the other hand will probably fail to see what all the fuss is about. If the aim here was to recreate the 80s exploitation movie experience then it’s fair to say that the film is a success. Packed full of gratuitous violence and nudity, this is one very bloodthirsty film – suffice to say squeamish viewers should steer well clear – and never shies away from showing the red stuff and then some. That said, however, as gory as the film is – and it is very gory – the film never disgusts as much as it might, never dwelling too much on the infliction of pain and injury and generally not coming across as sadistic in its depictions of brutal acts, much of the violence being very tongue in cheek – case in point a scene where Machete pulls out a man’s intestine and uses it as a bungee rope (the human intestine is 60 feet long you know). As with pretty much everything here the gore is very over the top and largely played for laughs, this film proving very funny…if you are in the target audience, so funny in fact that it may just cut through your sides in the same way that Machete’s machete cuts through bad guys left, right and centre. The action sequences aren’t just extremely violent of course but also great fun, being every bit as over the top as the blood that flows in them, the highlight being the epic climax – Machete riding in on a gatling gun mounted motorbike (a shot right out of the trailer) really symbolises everything this film is about – even if the final swordfight between Machete and Torrez proves rather underwhelming, Steven Seagal sadly not delivering many of his trademark martial moves here. The tongue in cheek style also flows in the writing, the dialogue being packed full of cheesy one-liners and innuendos – “What’s this long hard thing” a girl says, to which Machete replies “My machete” – and the story being right out of the 80s action movie mould of storytelling, stretching believability all the way. While perhaps proving a bit more complicated than you might expect, the plot is generally pretty slight but for the purpose at hand it proves quite sufficient. As you might expect from the cast line up that is present here, the acting isn’t all that great but the cast members mostly do the job they need to. If you can look past Steven Seagal’s dodgy Mexican accent and the seemingly ironic casting of Lindsay Lohan, you can see that Danny Trejo really doesn’t need to make any pretence – he really is the tough guy – Michelle Rodriguez does the tough girl thing very well, Don Johnson, Jeff Fahey and Robert De Niro make for rather amusing baddies and effects legend Tom Savini makes a cameo appearance as hitman for hire Osiris Amanpour. As long as it is taken in the sense that is intended to be – OTT tongue in cheek gleeful fun – Machete is a film that will prove very enjoyable. As a loving homage to the 80s exploitation movie it is hard to fault it but as a movie on its own terms it falls considerably short of perfection, what worked so well as a trailer feeling perhaps a bit stretched out at feature length, the film sadly not fully living up to the hype. As long as you don’t take it seriously, it is certainly an enjoyable throwback to 80s exploitation movies but you may not be too bothered about the sequel jokingly hinted at in the closing credits – “Machete will return in Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again – which actually looks like it may become a reality. So, if subtlety is what you look for in a film then it is quite obvious that Machete is not the film for you but if what you crave is an over the top blood soaked gore drenched action film that will cut through your sides like a machete chopping through bad guy after bad guy you may just be in movie heaven. I f****d with the wrong Mexican and while I didn’t love it I did rather enjoy it.

————————————————————————————————————————————
Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

Other Side of the Game ***½

London based crime movies are ten a penny in the British film industry and films featuring characters who are drug dealers are every bit as common so coming up with anything even remotely original in the genre is hardly an easy thing to achieve.
Every now and then, though, such a thing does happen and it isn’t necessarily some big name filmmaker that pulls it off. For instance, while currently on release London Boulevard, which boasts quite a few big names, is stinking up cinema screens across the country, upstart filmmakers Sav Akyüz and Lajaune Lincoln – whose 35mm graduation film, Splitwigs (the title of which has become the name of their production company), provided them with the springboard to produce several more short films and who have both directed music videos and developed several feature length scripts – have both written and directed Other Side of the Game, a crime drama that actually does manage to bring something new to the fold. Made for just £18,000 (a mere fraction of what London Boulevard likely cost to make) and shot on location in London, ‘Other Side of the Game’ first screened at the 2010 Raindance Film Festival under the Kodak Young Talent banner and isn’t being awarded a cinema release, instead premiering online.

Small time drug dealer Tony Cole (Simon Paul Sutton) is seeking a fresh start and a better future. Although Tony, in tandem with best friend Steve (Ben ‘Doc Brown’ Smith), has fallen into drug-dealing as a route to an easy income, spending the last decade of his life supplying cocaine to the capital’s moneyed elite, he has ambitions to set up his own business and thereby legitimise himself, he believes, in the eyes of his well-to-do girlfriend Claudia (Ayse Tezel). But not only are Tony’s plans afforded cold reception from those who view him as little more than a drug pusher, a shock event also puts his life in danger – forcing him to sink deeper into a sordid underworld in a desperate attempt escape his fate. Finding himself accused of both theft and murder he is left with just 12 hours to come up with the cash to save his skin.

One of the key things that sets Other Side of the Game apart from so many other crime dramas is in the way it portrays a very different side to the world of drug dealing than what we are used to seeing. The principal characters here are not your average lowlife drug dealers and certainly don’t conform to the typical stereotypes of such characters. Rather they come across more like everyday guys, Tony seeming honest and decent and genuinely not wanting to do what he does while Steve is perhaps a more willing criminal but still not coming across as a completely bad individual. Some might criticise the representation of drug dealers as not so bad people and it could be questioned whether or not such a portrayal is actually realistic but from a filmic context such a portrayal makes for more interesting characters and consequently a more interesting story. The fact that the film starts at the end meaning that we know exactly where events are headed also gives us a differing perspective on the story as it happens, which also proves very interesting. The writing here is of a pretty good standard, the dialogue not especially memorable but certainly authentic sounding and the plot being very interesting – up to a point. About 40 minutes in the story takes a slight turn towards the predictable and the moment gangsters enter the picture the story becomes somewhat less interesting and more obvious. This isn’t to say that the film ceases to be engaging but certainly that much of what distinguishes the film earlier on is lost. This move towards more familiar territory detracts from the film a bit but not enough to diminish the quality of writing that is on display, both Sav Akyüz and Lajaune Lincoln showing themselves to be quite accomplished screenwriters. They are also very accomplished at the practical side of filmmaking as well, here delivering some very effective visuals. Despite it appearing as though the film was shot on video – the entire image is always in focus – a format that can create very dull looking imagery, many of the shortcomings of video are not evident here, instead the video look proving rather effective. The visuals here are never dull looking, Akyüz and Lincoln crafting numerous striking shots that are well framed and feature good composition as well delivering some very fine looking cinematography that takes bland everyday environments – the film focuses on less recognisable parts of London – and makes them quite visually appealing. Credit for the overall film can’t just go to Akyüz and Lincoln themselves, though, but also the cast. The acting here is of a pretty good standard, the cast including in addition to those aforementioned the suitably sinister Emile Jansen as gangster boss Frank and Bill Fellows as corrupt cop Dempsey. The real standout among the cast is Simon Paul Sutton whose performance makes us genuinely believe that Tony is a decent guy and almost come to actually care about him as a character, something that makes his turn to the nasty side towards the end quite harrowing in some ways. We see that he is being driven by desperation but the fact that the character turns bad is a shame nonetheless and the emotion that Sutton puts into the role makes the character completely convincing all the way. So, Other Side of the Game is a very strong debut for Sav Akyüz and Lajaune Lincoln. It is a film that shows them to be very capable as both writers and directors and one that does (to an extent) provide a fresh angle on a very familiar theme. Sure, it has its flaws but when such a small film as this can so completely own a big film like London Boulevard it really does show true filmmaking talent. If you want to see what a good London crime movie looks like check this out when it premieres online.

————————————————————————————————————————————

Other Side of the Game premieres on VOD platforms at Indie Movies Online on December 7th 2010. The Indie Movies Online website can be viewed here:
http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/

————————————————————————————————————————————

Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

Megamind 3D ****
Megamind 2D ***½

Following up Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me, DreamWorks Animation’s Megamind is this year’s second supervillain themed animated movie, the manner in which the two films have come very close together seemingly duplicating DreamWorks’ past rivalry with fellow animation studio Pixar which saw both Antz and A Bug’s Life released in close proximity to one another as well as Shark Tale and Finding Nemo.
Somewhat unlike those films, however, there is a much more notable difference between Despicable Me and Megamind – whereas Despicable Me was seemingly cut from the James Bond mould of supervillainy, Megamind is instead cut from the superhero mould for the supervillain instead. Despite coming many years after it, it also seems quite apparent that Megamind is DreamWorks’ attempt at copying Pixar’s The Incredibles, the film being sold on the notion that it that will provide a fresh spin on the superhero movie, as exemplified by the posters’ bold notion that “the superhero movie will never be the same”. With the emphasis not on the superhero of the piece for once but rather the supervillain, the premise for Megamind is certainly one with the potential for a significant level of originality, even if the idea that the supervillain ends up switching sides also offers potential to move back into more familiar territory. With the potential to go either way in terms of both originality and perhaps even quality – trailers have hardly the funniest for a DreamWorks movie – does Megamind prove to be incredible as it is so clearly trying to be or does it perhaps even end up as a mega failure?

Born on a distant planet and sent to Earth as a baby, Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrell) has grown up to be the most brilliant super-villain the world has ever known. Unfortunately, he’s also the least successful. Over the years, Megamind, along with his Minion (voiced by David Cross), has tried to conquer Metro City in every imaginable way. But each attempt has ended in failure thanks to the caped superhero known as Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt). Megamind has also failed to frighten – or in any way impress – vivacious reporter Roxanne Ritchi (voiced by Tina Fey). That is, until the day Megamind actually defeats Metro Man with one of his botched evil plans. But with his once nemesis gone and his purpose in life seemingly lost he grows tired of existence – after all, what is the point in being evil if there is no hero to foil your plans? So, Megamind comes up with the idea of creating a new superhero to help restore purpose to his life. Unfortunately, he doesn’t count on two things – firstly that his newly created hero, Roxanne’s lovesick cameraman Hal (voiced by Jonah Hill) who comes to be known as Titan, decides being a hero is for losers and that being a bad guy is where it’s at and secondly that, as he finds himself falling in love with Roxanne, he may not want to be evil after all. With Titan being a supervillain who’s for real and no hero in sight, who’s going to save the city this time? Could it be time for Megamind to become one of the good guys?

It is clear that Megamind is trying very hard to be DreamWorks’ answer to The Incredibles but if you go into the film expecting it to actually achieve this lofty goal you will be very disappointed. Whereas The Incredibles was a smart and hilarious film that provides a witty deconstruction of the superhero genre, Megamind fails to break any new ground and, despite what it professes to do in its marketing, in no way redefines the superhero movie. This is not to say that the film doesn’t have its strengths, however. In visual terms, the film boasts the usual high standard of animation that we have come to expect from DreamWorks features and together with the 3D it really amazes. The added dimension really brings to life the spectacularly realized metropolis of Metro City while superhero flight scenes and super-powered fight sequences are made all the more exciting when viewed in 3D. We get some almost gimmicky use of the extra dimension on occasions, with popcorn flying towards us and a robotic arm extending outwards, but the gimmick isn’t taken to the extreme of overkill and it is in fact the more subtle examples of 3D that really impress. The 3D world we see on the screen is dazzling but it is not because stuff is being thrown at us, rather because it truly is a three dimensional world. Pay close attention and you will notice that every little detail of what we see on the screen is presented in three dimensions, from Megamind’s array of cool (and some silly) supervillain gadgets, weapons and vehicles to the most tiny of details such as individual blades of grass. This is a highly textured and detailed world where the 3D really adds something of value to the movie – it was made for 3D and really should be viewed in the format for maximum impact. There is also some attempt made to incorporate 3D into more dialogue heavy sequences and while it is considerably less effective here, kudos must be give to the filmmakers to trying it. There is no denying that this film has plenty to offer in terms of spectacle but in other areas it proves considerably less successful. The depth that the 3D adds to the visuals is sadly absent in the story, the plot not being especially original even as it sort of does something that hasn’t really been done before and the only character who is close to being sufficiently developed is Megamind himself – and he is quite well developed, given a childhood back-story and made into a character who is sympathetic despite being a ‘bad guy’. The writing is what prevents the film from being truly incredible with the dialogue being far from super and consequently the voice cast being robbed of much to say that is actually memorable. This is not to diminish the contributions of the cast, though, as pretty much everyone does a decent job but the only ones who come close to standing out are the appropriately silly Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt, who injects pure charisma into the character of Metro Man. Sadly, the film is also a bit underwhelming in the humour department. In stark contrast to the smart, postmodern style humour of The Incredibles, the humour here is much more basic, almost of the slapstick variety and surprisingly even forgoing the pop culture references that often feature in DreamWorks movies. Consequently, there aren’t really any belly laughs to be had from watching this film, although there are certainly enough laughs to make it an enjoyable moviegoing experience nonetheless. Suffice to say, this is a film that kids will love and adults will get some enjoyment out of but, unlike the works of Pixar, is unlikely to really appeal to a multi-generational audience. The Incredibles this film most definitely isn’t then but Megamind nonetheless proves to be a very enjoyable family film that is certainly worth checking out.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)