Star Wars Episode I: The Phatom Menace

Okay I’m sure you’ve read thousands, if not tens of thousands of poor reviews/rants about this film but if ever a movie deserved to be mentioned on this site, its Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

 

Now before I start picking it apart, we’re going to take a little trip.  It’s Summer 1999 and around the world, kids and teenagers, as well as more than a few adults, are buzzing with excitement.  There’s a new Star Wars movie coming out and it’s going to be great.  It ought to be since the teaser trailers were out six months earlier complete with Yoda’s hilarious monologue.  Ever since then kids have been jokingly quoting it, businesses have been wondering how much they’re going to lose from workers having sick days and a few of the more dedicated fans have been planning their trips camping outside the local cinema so they can be among the first to see it.

 

All the newspapers have been covering it while every sci-fi magazine on the shelf is running a special edition; the Star Wars magazine (in the UK at least) even comes with four different covers to choose from.  Yes it’s going to be a great summer.  Except, as we all know now, it was anything but.

 

The film came out, people went to watch and then realised they were disappointed.  Why?  Well for starters this was a Star Wars movie waiting to happen.  By that I mean that the flaws in the writing, which are barely evident in the original trilogy, due to both the types of story being told and Darth Vader, are exposed here because the story barely exists.  Worse, given the next two films after this, Episode I is little more than an intro movie telling us who the characters are.  Not too bad for an opening thirty minutes or an hour, but an entire movie just to introduce people?

 

However, to summarise the plot the evil Trade Federation (often referred to simply as the Federation, in what must be a dig at the far superior, Enterprise aside, Star Trek franchise) has decided to get around disquiet over its tax-dodging by blockading the world of Naboo.  Backed by Darth Sidious, who is obviously Emperor Palpatine, the Trade Federation invades with a droid army easily conquering the pacifist and somewhat boring Naboo. 

 

However a couple of Jedi, Qui-Gonn Jinn (Liam Neeson – big star 1) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor – big star 2 - doing a decent impression of Alec Guinness) were sent by Chancellor Valorum (Terence Stamp – big star 3) to negotiate and try and save Queen Amidala’s bacon (Natalie Portman – big star 4) along with her considerable wardrobe.  They manage that but not before they fall in with Jar Jar Binks (Public enemy number 1 that year) and the only character the film should actually have killed off.  While his part in the following films becomes smaller and smaller, he was still thought to be funny when this film was being made.

 

Anyway, after lightsabering their way off Naboo they end up on Tatooine where they met the future Darth Vader, who’s just an irritating nine-year old you’d like Vader to force choke.  Of course that won’t happen and we have to put up with the annoying twerp for the rest of the film. 

 

By this point you may have stopped watching to do something more interesting like cleaning your bathroom.  Well stick with it a bit longer since the pod race is actually quite interesting.  Once it’s finished though, feel free to turn off this film so can pour some harpic down your loo.  Once they’ve left Naboo, after a brief tussle with the much-underused Darth Maul, they head to Coruscant, a planet covered entirely by a city in a concept that’s hardly original.  We then get to see the fantastic action of a no confidence vote on Chancellor Valorum’s leadership (exit Terence Stamp) before listening to Yoda’s monologue (which is nowhere near as funny when it doesn’t have Vader music backing it up).

 

Anyway Queen Amidala has grown bored or simply run out of new clothes to wear, so she decides go back to Naboo to reclaim her extended wardrobe from the Trade Federation.  Unfortunately Star Wars has never done Cabaret so we don’t get to see a drag act, which might have made this film something near mere rubbish rather than total crap.

 

Back in the Jedi Chamber Yoda and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson rounding off the film’s famous five) tell Qui-Gonn that he can’t train Anakin, but he takes the boy back to Naboo anyway.  Once they land the find the Gungans (Jar Jar’s equally annoying people) who unable to feed them to giant unconvincing CGI fish like they tried near the beginning of the film, decide to help the Queen.

 

Cue the big battle with the droid army replaying the Conquistadores vs Aztecs battle by kicking the Gungan army’s organic ass.  However this lets the Queen and the Jedi infiltrate the palace to rescue her wardrobes.  After a bit of a stand-off they manage this while Anakin accidentally sends himself up to fight a space battle and manages to send a couple of Proton Torpedoes into the droid control ship’s reactor, destroying it and deactivating the droid army. 

 

The Jedi however have been lured away by Darth Maul and in a scene that makes little sense, both he and Qui-Gonn are killed.  Afterwards Obi-wan tells Yoda that Qui-Gonn asked him to train Anakin and he’ll honour this request even if the council disapproves.  Yoda, like any modern politician, caves and in a move he’ll spend two decades regretting on Dagobah, agrees to let Obi-Wan train Anakin.

 

After Qui-Gonn’s body is burnt, watched over by the now Chancellor Palpatine, Yoda and Mace Windu talk about how they are always two with the Sith.  Once that’s done we see a victory celebration where the Gungan leader shouts ‘Peace’ in a way that compares to what Neville Chamberlain said in 1938.  The film ends, the credits roll and you begin to figure out how you can get your money back.

 

When the film came out reactions were mixed, but even compared to the two films that follow, this is a bad film and since they were at best, a pale reflection of the original trilogy that should tell you how bad this film is.  In fact, to underline how bad this film is, I’m going to finish with this.  Don’t watch the film, just watch the trailer instead and skip ahead to Episode II.  You won’t be missing anything.

 

Really the problem, besides the writing, is that this film is a prequel.  Like all prequels you already know what’s going to happen so unless you’re focusing on a very specific part of the story, the prequel becomes little more than eye candy.  Here that eye candy is sour and never more so than the point where Darth Maul whips out his fancy double-edged lightsaber, which however cool it may be, is not something we ever saw in the original trilogy, so why is it in this film since it’s set 32 years before the original?

 

Furthermore while Darth Vader’s backstory was only hinted at in the original trilogy, it retained an element of mystique that made Vader a much more interesting and menacing character.  Explaining it in detail never made any sense.  Had George Lucas gone for something bolder like setting Episode I during the Knights of the Old Republic period, four thousand years before the original trilogy we would have possibly received a much better product as a result.

 

Only he didn’t and we didn’t and Episode I remains an appalling example of hubris in the film industry, though far from the only one.  Still I’m going to be blunt.  The overall rating for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a straight zero.

 

P.S. Sorry again about the weird lines between the paragraphs.

 

Moonraker

First a quick note; I have no idea why those strange lines are appearing between paragraphs but I’d rather publish this on the blog even if I have to put up with them, but all the same I’m sorry about them.

 

Anyway Ian Fleming’s Moonraker is a fantastic novel where a psychotic Nazi called Hugo Von Der Drache poses as Hugo Drax, a wealthy businessman developing Britain’s first nuclear missile.  Over the course of the book Bond comes to realise that Drax plans to use the missile to destroy London.  In the end though, Bond saves the day, but not for the Dutch.  When the nuke explodes in the middle of the North sea, they get radioactively flooded.

 

Anyway flash forward twenty-four years or so and the eleventh Bond film comes out under the same title.  Hugo Drax has gone from being German to French and is employing O after she’s decided being Sir Stephen’s slave isn’t for her.  Unsurprisingly that turns out to be a bad decision and she ends up being killed by Dobermans after falling for Bond’s charms.

 

Not that this seems to bother Bond much as he jets about from Italy, (where he travels around Venice in an inflatable amphibious Gondola), to Brazil (where young women are happy to spend time alone with much older men) trying to find out why someone stole a shuttle from the back of an RAF Boeing.  After killing a Chinese bloke he ends up fighting his old mate Jaws, who sadly is treated as a comic villain rather than the terrifying figure he is in The Spy Who Loved Me.  Finally after a bit of messing about over Brazil with a cable car and some evil paramedics, Bond and his American bird, Goodhead, who naturally works for the CIA end up in Space.

 

At this point the film loses any credibility as it goes full Star Wars meets 2001 style, complete with astronauts firing lasers at each other and a flying wheel space station.  Drax decides he’s the Messiah with an Aryan Noah’s Ark.  Everyone who isn’t white, blond and perfect is going to be sterilised.

 

This ends when Bond teams up with Jaws, in a way Quint never could, and they take down Drax together, the Frenchman ending up in space going where no Frenchman has ever gone before (sorry but I couldn’t resist that one).

 

Ultimately this is easily the worst of the Bond films, taking the cockiness and escapist absurdity of the Moore era beyond the absurd to something that is trying to be something it never should be, namely a spy and science fiction film.  Still The Spy Who Loved Me had an underwater city and two thermonuclear explosions in it.  No wonder then that For Your Eyes Only is a much more low tech, and grittier affair. 

 

Watch Moonraker if you’re in the mood for some crap that is good for background noise, or if you’re watching all twenty-three Bonds in order.  Otherwise go out and buy the book.  It’s miles better and so I’m going to give Moonraker a meagre minus one out of five. 

 

On a more personal note, last year I spent a night in Stratford Upon Avon at the wonderful Moonraker House, a bed and breakfast run by Ruth and Morris Ohaka.  Bond themed, it makes for a fantastic place to sleep and the Full English is wonderful

Tank Girl

I'm almost reluctant to include this film, but I've seen it enough times to know it's never going to be considered a masterpiece, so I feel that warrants its inclusion in the films reviewed by this blog.

Anyone who's read the comic series by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett will be hard pressed to recognise their innovation in this film, despite the repeated use of cartoons and artwork in various scenes.  This is because the sheer stark raving bonkers barely understandable storylines found in the comics are simply missing in a film that is essentially a watered down version turned into a standard rebel with bad attitude and lack of dress sense taking on evil organisation perpetuating dystopia storyline.

Essentially the plot is that in 2022 a comet smashed into the Earth laying everything waste and ensuring that water becomes a scarce commodity over which people are willing to fight.  Eleven years later the evil Water & Power have got most of the water but keep getting attacked by the rippers, half-man, half-kangaroo guerillas who don't use guns but have nasty claws to do the job instead, hence the name rippers.

Tank Girl meanwhile is trying to rescue either her little sister or a friend or whatever the hell the little girl is from Water & Power.  Throw in Naomi Watts as Jet Girl without the craziness of that character and our little band of heroes is correct.  In the end, after a whacked out brothel scene that is actually half decent until Tank Girl decides to sing some Cole Porter, our heroes raid Water & Power, save Sam and kill the bad guy before releasing all the water for everyone to enjoy for free.

However this is a site about films so bad, their good, and with scenes that include impromptu Kangaroo poetry, ultra sofcore porn and bad French, this film has become something of a cult classic that remains worth watching every now and then when you want either a cheap laugh or some decent background noise (its good for either).

The real reason to watch this film though, is that it stars Malcolm Mcdowell as the sinister Kesley.  This is Mcdowell at his very best and Kesley is a villain in the best Mcdowellesque tradition.  Imagine Alexander De Large with actual power and a sharp suit and you have Kesley, a man who combines sadism and charm in every gesture, not to mention knows the best use for a straightjacket and freezer.  Overall I'll give this one minus three out of five, if only because I've watched it so often and because it stars Malcolm Mcdowell.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus

I saw this film on the shelf at Tesco's one day and just had to buy it.  Taking the idea of the now extinct Megaladon, commonly believed to have been a much larger, whale hunting ancestor of today's Great White Shark and adding in a massive Octopus capable of taking down Oil Rigs, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is simply a monster movie set in the ocean.

Featuring Debbie Gibson, the plot of the film is that millions of years ago the Mega Shark and Giant Octopus of the title were so caught up in the act of biting/strangling each other to death that they ignored the ice that was settling around them and ended up being deep frozen.  Fast forward to the modern day and the U.S. Navy is secretly testing a banned sonar system that sends a nearby pod of whales stark raving bonkers so they bash themselves against the ice.  This breaks the ice down enough for the two creatures to be released before going on to wreak havoc on the world.

What follows is a catalogue of hilarity as the Shark and the Octopus between take down a battleship, a destroyer, an F-18, a jumbo jet (the Shark deserves a gold medal for the high jump on this one), a couple of submarines and in one truly fantastic, side splittingly funny triumph of CGI, the Shark bites the Golden Gate bridge in half.

Add into this some truly bad acting from people who probably realised their film careers aren't going to take off anytime soon, along with repeated use of the exact same shot (admittedly it's a low budget film) and you have a film that is the perfect way to end a bad day because no matter what's on your mind, watching this film will make you forget everything else.

Overall I'm going to give this film a very good minus four out of five and recommend that if you see it in your local supermarket that you put in your basket.  You won't regret it, too much.

Mega Python vs Gatoroid

The plot of this film is quite simple.  Debbie Gibson plays an environmentalist who decides to steal a bunch of poisonous snakes into the Everglaides, where somehow they grow to somewhat larger proportions and start eating people and alligators.  Then someone called Tiffany, who plays a Sheriff, is a co-producer on the film and somehow manages to spend the entire film with her cleavage on display, issues some snake hunting permits which ends up getting her fiance killed.

Her response is to feed chickens injected with growth inducing steroids to Alligaotrs.  These grow to monstrous proportions, complete with nice shot of cell division, before laying a load of eggs.  Some of the eggs are eaten by the snakes which grow just as big.  The two species fight each other before teaming up to eat Humans.

Meanwhile an Indian guy shows up, who is a herpetologist and an expert in explosives, a distinctiviely unusual combination for his CV, who keeps telling Tiffany to call out the National Guard.  She doesn't and ends up getting into a brilliant bitchy catfight with Debbie Gibson, which involves food being thrown, Debbie Gibson's face in a pie and cream in Tiffany's cleavage before they fall into a nearby lake.

The snakes and gators show up in the middle of a fundraising shindig to save an estuary.  The Indian tells everyone who has a weapon, which just happens to be everyone at the party, even the waiter, to start shooting.  It doesn't stop them getting eaten though, after which the snakes and gators take on Miami, blowing up petrol stations, eating trains and popping blimps complete with a giant snake looking like a runaway balloon.  Unfortunately at this point the actress who was the sweet old lady neighbour of Lynette's in Desperate Housewives and is playing a cop in this film, gets eaten by a snake (note to scriptwriters; don't kill off sweet old ladies near the end of films).

After that the Indian guy, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson get in a crop duster so they can spray pherromones to lure the snakes and gators back to a cave Debbie Gibson's going to blow up.  This doens't quite work since a snake nicks the plane causing it to crash and Tiffany has to lure them away from a nuclear reactor in a hotwired car while the Indian guy uses a gun to free himself from the plane.

Tiffany manages to get back to the cave where Debbie Gibson is trapped between some baby gators and their momma.  Tiffany manages to save Debbie by driving a car with a fuelbomb down Momma's throat before the two of them end up hiding in a container full of explosives.  Meanwhile the Indian has taken out some gators trying to eat him by blowing up the plane and its leaky fuel supply, before being picked up by a helicopter.  He arrives in time to save Debbie Gibson but Tiffany is eaten by a gator while Debbie Gibson falls into a lake, screams 'I'm alive! I'm alive!' before being bitten in two by a snake's head.  A year later the Indian opens the estuary, makes a speech commerating both women even though they were the ones that caused the problem.

Ultimately this film, like Megashark, relies on bad acting, bad cgi, bad script and the idea that not only does stupidity pay but there's a reason for haivng the doctrine of contributory negligence in English law to pull off what is an incredibly enjoyable and hilarious film.  With the tagline, 'screaming, scratching, biting...  and that's just the girls' on the cover of the DVD, you know this isn't a film that takes itself too seriously, which given that there's a character called Justin Regina in the film as well as the line, 'you're gonna die smiling', is definitely a good thing.  Given that I paid a mere three quid for it, I'll happily recommend it as one to buy and give it a rating of minus five out of five, even if the sweet old lady neighbour of Lynettes does get eaten.

Weather Wars

You know a film is going to be bad when the blurb on the back doesn't even match what's in the film.  The back of the DVD cover says a supergenius creates a machine to control the weather only for the machine to go all HAL on him so he's gotta to figure out how to outsmart it.  Sadly this isn't the case.  Instead the supergenius is working as a cop in Washington D.C. and its his stark raving bonkers daddy who having been denied funding for a machine to control the weather, uses it to wreak revenge on those who denied him funding.

Cue varous D.C. monuments being destroyed by lightning storms, tornadoes and blood rain while the supergenius, his brother and what I think is his girlfriend, who was Daddy's intern in a strictly scientific sense, try to stop their daddy from killing any more people.  Not that it helps them to save the daughter of Senator Aldritch, who's now at the top of daddy's hitlist.

After this we get some emotional angst where the brother writes about what's going on under the aegis of Senator Aldritch.  Girlfriend tells supergenius she prefers guys into guns and interior design to his brother.  Supergenius wants nothing to do with Daddy, while Brother wants to try and save him and get girlfriend to fall in love with him, not Supergenius.  At this point I switched off and started watching something called Domination street, which is a fictional series about a Dominatrix and her everyday life.

Anyway back to the film, Daddy decides to set off some sort of superstorm using the electric grid to create electromagnetic waves while quoting the Bible and Shakespeare.  He then takes out the Air and Space Museum (I've been there; it's worth a visit) using lots and lots of hailstones.  A news reporter gets caught out in it but still manages a quick report.  Nice to see she has dedication.  By this point in the film anything famous in Washington has gone to pot and the Senator gets very mad and shouts at Supergenius and his pals

After this Brother goes off to find Daddy who's decided to hit poor old Washington with a snowstorm and dropping tempratures.  Supergenius comes up with some maths to divert the storm's path so it's over water in a scene that's not only full of technobabble but also enough fancy symbols to make you wonder why Supergenius was hiding away as a cop.  News Reporter meanwhile is about to get caught out by the storm but then her role's a cameo one so who cares?  

Supergenius decides to send some tornadoes the way of Daddy, who's been found by Brother and is now arguing it out with Daddy who makes him the Lord Vader Father and Son can rule together offer while some missiles are sent towards Chesapeake Bay.  They go off in what looks like a nuclear detonation which diverts the storm.  Twisters are meanwhile wrecking the powerplant Daddy's been holed up in, sending poor old Daddy over the side of a ledge though Brother is able to pull him out.  The Senator calls off the twisters and gets interviewed by News Reporter.  Supergenius and Girlfriend mourn Daddy and Brother, but the last scene shows the brother who appears to have gone over to the dark side which might come up in the hopefully never to be made sequel.

This one is not a good bad film, it's just bad.  The script's lousy, the News Reporter might as well not be there, the only decent acting is from the Senator and Colonel Neilson, both of whom have way to small a role in what is trying to be a family fun disaster movie.  So it only gets a measly minus two out of five.  One to avoid if possible.

Star Trek V The Final Frontier

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

In terms of quality, Star Trek films tend to be a mixed bunch.  Some are fantastic films, others are the kind that you play when you want background noise while you do something more useful such as reading existenalist philosphy.  The first four films fall into the former category with each one providing a good combination of pace, action, storyline and character arcs.  When they came to number five though, it's almost as if they just couldn't be bothered with quality control.

Star Trek V is notable for two things.  The first is William Shatner was the director, the second is is one of the few times Star Trek has ever commented on Christianity.  Indeed the lack of Christian, or notably religious characters, outside of the series Deep Space Nine, has tended to be one of the defining aspects of Star Trek.  In this film however, not only does it play a central role, but Kirk and co get to meet God.  Well not exactly, but more on that later.

The film starts with some poor sod tending holes in the ground on a godforsaken world called Nimbus III.  Here he meets some chap on horseback who takes away his pain and asks him to join his quest.  The chap is then revealed to be a Vulcan, before the movie cuts to the opening credits complete with the same music used in Star Trek the Motion Picture.  One of the other notable aspects of this film is how mcuh was reused with the corridors and transporter room being a plant straight out of Star Trek The Next Generation.  Anyway once the credits are over and done with we see Kirk climbing up a mountain, only to fall off when he gets spooked by Spock.  Fortunately for both realism and the film, Spock's wearing jet boots (never to be seen again in any form after this movie) and grabs Kirk just both he gets plastic surgery courtesy of slamming into the ground.  After this McCoy has a go at them both before feeding them Whisky flavoured beans.

Cut back to Nimbus III and a cute looking Romulan shows up to cheer up David Warner and Charles Cooper who've been stuck on the stupidly named planet of galactic peace for twenty years and have taken to smoking and drinking.  She's followed shortly there after by the Vulcan and his now army of followers who take Warner, Cooper and cute Romulan hostage before issuing his demands.  Kirk and co are sent out aboard the barely functioning Enterprise A to deal with the Vulcan, who Spock seems to know.

Meanwhile a naughty Klingon called Klaa, having just blown up Pioneer 10, decides to set course for Nimbus III so he can take on the Federation.  The fact that it's Kirk he'll be facing comes as a bonus.  Kirk however, attacks the planet with a raiding party that involves Uhura doing a mature strip-tease/dance of the two feather dusters (it's the 23rd century after all!) before attacking Paradise City on unicorns (yes, the horses have horns) and after shooting most of the people there, Kirk is attacked by a three-breasted catwoman (Total Recall's a better choice if that's what you're looking for) before having phasers and disruptors pointed at him by the hostages.

Now captured, Kirk and Spock find out the Vulcan is Sybok, Spock's half brother.  After nearly getting blown up by Klaa while returning to the Enterprise, Sulu manages to crash the shuttle and everyone gets knocked about.  Kirk and Sybok have a fight, where Sybok beats the crap out of Kirk, before Spock aims a gun at Sybok but doesn't shoot.  Kirk, Spock and McCoy end up in the brig which is apparently escape proof.  Spock tells Kirk just who Sybok is, before Scotty tells them to Stand Back in morse code and blows down the wall.  He then tells them how to send a message to Starfleet Command because Kirk is still a little unsure of the internal geography of his own ship and when they thank says 'I know this ship like the back of my hand'.  He then walks into a bulkhead and knocks himself out.  Kirk and McCoy start climbing up a ladder in a disused turbolift shaft, before Spock shows up with the jet boots.  Sulu meanwhile, having been brainwashed along with Uhura (now reclothed) and Chekhov, has found the unconscious Scotty and sent zealots running around the ship looking for our furtive trio.

When he finds them, Kirk tells Spock to hit the boosters which sends them shooting up the decks of the Enterprise, past Deck 52 twice, all the way to the improbably numbered Deck 78 (the mighty Enterprise D in TNG, a much bigger ship, only managed 42 decks) and from there they head into the nice looking observation lounge (complete with mock ship's wheel) to send off a distress signal.  This is picked up by Klaa and his bird, who does have nice looking muscles, and they decide to follow.  Sybok has found Kirk and co by this point and after doing his 'let go of your pain' trick for Spock and McCoy, takes the Enterprise through the Great Barrier, an energy field around the centre of the galaxy.  Passing through it they find not a super massive black hole but a planet without a star shrouded in blue energy.  

Kirk and co go to the bridge, where Sybok gives them back the ship before the four of them head down to the planet in a shuttle, blue energy fields clearly being completely harmless to Humans and Vulcans.  Once down there they find God, who turns out not to be so much the almighty as a malevolent alien imprisioned there for thousands of years.  As proof that he isn't God, he lightning zaps Kirk and Spock before being distracted by Sybok and killed with a Photon Torpedo!  Only he isn't dead just released and chases Kirk, Spock and McCoy back to the now useless shuttle.  Scotty is able to beam up Spock and McCoy only for the Enterprise to get torpedoed by Klaa before Kirk can be brought up.  

While Spock is using Cooper to negotiate with Klaa, Kirk is being chased by the evil alien and ends up legging it along a rocky hill.  When he reaches the top the Klingons pop up, disruptor blast the alien into oblivion before training their guns on Kirk.  'So it's me you want you Klingon Bastards?  What are you waiting for?' he screams at them before being beamed aboard.  Here two Klingons take him to the bridge, where Klaa apologises to Kirk for attacking the Enterprise.  Kirk's 'what the?' expression perfectly sums just how wrong this film can get, but the next moment Cooper introduces him to their new gunner.  The chair swivels round and there's Spock.  Kirk's so happy he goes to hug him, prompting Spock to say, 'please Captain, not in front of the Klingons'.  Afterwards they all leave together and have a nice drink to celebrate the fact the Klingons didn't blow the Enterprise up before the film ends with Kirk, Spock and McCoy singing around a campfire.

Thus, is the laughable saga of the fifth film, which unsurprisingly was a commercial faliure back in 1989 when it was released and time hasn't done much to improve on that.  I suppose as this was the first Star Trek film I can remember seeing, I've got a soft spot for it, plus the cover artwork on the video was awesome so it's not all bad.  Having watched this film numerous times, it's not all bad and provides quite an entertaining yarn, more because of its faults than in spite of them.  Therefore I'll give Star Trek V a decent minus three out of five because it's half decent but takes itself too seriously to get a higher rating.  One to watch if you're bored late at night or have watched the first four and are looking to see the next six.

Star War Episode II: Attack of the Clones

I don't know why, but I have something of a softspot for this film.  This is probably because on the day I went to see it I'd done a four hour exam and could have watched the stupidest, most pathetic excuse for a film imaginable and still enjoyed it.  However Star Wars Episode II is what I went to see.

Back in November 1998 there was great excitement, because whenever you went to the Cinema you got to see a preview of Episode I.  It looked great and although every kid in Britain was taking the mick out of Yoda for his 'Hate leads to Suffering' monologue, we didn't care.  This was going to be our generation's Star Wars and we couldn't wait.  Then Episode I came out and though the third highest grossing movie of 1999, nothing could hide the fact that it was a god awful film.  Compared to the original trilogy this wasn't so much a case of not being in the same league, but not even ten leagues below.  The film had no plot beyond serving as an introduction movie which basically said here are the characters we want you to get excited about.  Apart from the Pod Race, the film is good for little more than background noise and for that reason I won't be giving it a review.

However, enough deviation, onto Episode II.  When I first saw the trailers for the film, it didn't look as if it would be any better.  Then the Sci-Fi channel started showing the music video over and over around April 2002 and it actually managed to make the film look half decent, so I figured I'd go and see it.  Now I'm assuming a fair part of the English speaking world has seen this film, so I'll provide only a brief summary of the plot.

Ten years have passed since the events of Episode I and Anakin Skywalker has gone from precocious brat to annoying teenager, though the Force prevents him from getting Acne.  Anyway Anakin spends a fair bit of the film whining and bitching about the fact that Obi-Wan doesn't seem to trust him and is holding him back and blah blah blah.  Throw in the fact that Count Dooku (played by Christopher Lee, rather than Daffy Duck which might have been more appropriate given the name) is trying to kill Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman doing her best to imitate Princess Leia's strange hairstyles as well as providing a good reason why she'd have her head shaved in V for Vendetta) while poor old Palpatine is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes but still has to wait another three years for his grand finale of enslaving the galaxy, is dealing with some sepratists wanting to break away from the public.

Anyway after a hovercar chase and a lot of CGI action scenes, Anakin, detailed to protect the senator takes her to Tattoine in time to see his mum die and then kill a load of Sandpeople while Obi-Wan gets himself captured on Geonosis, followed shortly thereafter by Anakin and Amidala when they try to rescue him.  Palpatine uses the crisis as an excuse to tell Jar Jar Binks (thankfully given a much smaller role in this film than the last one) to give him fancy powers and create a grand army of clones to fight the sepratists.

Samuel L Jackson, completel with novelty purple lightsaber, takes a bunch of Jedi to Geonosis in time to save our moronic trio before Yoda shows up with the clones and brings a whole new meaning to the idea of a mean, green fighting machine.  After a big battle with lots of CGI soldiers and what look like six-legged baby AT-ATs, Anakin and Obi-Wan fight Dooku, but since the latter fought the Three Musketeers back when he was French and the galaxy far far away and a long time ago was still ten or so years in the future, he easily beats the two of them, taking Anakin's arm off for good measure.

But before he can escape, Yoda shows up and doing his best Bruce Lee impersonation (everyone in the cinema burst out laughing at that point), he proceeds to jump around the cave they're all in to show he's had his Weetabix that morning while fighting with Dooku, before the latter makes good his escape with the old falling pillar trick.  Yoda stops it from crushing Anakin and Obi-wan before grabbing his stick and hobbling along.  Sadly there are no Olympic drug testers demanding a urine sample from the little guy at this point.  The film then ends with a bunch of Star Destroyers taking off from Coruscant and Anakin and Amidala getting married before the credits start rolling.

So what does this film have to recommend it?  Well for starters there's the fact that it's not as bad as Episode I and actually comes with a script where the writers bothered to include a proper storyline which has some nice set pieces.  Then of course there's the big battle at the end of the film, which is something Star Wars does pretty well and this one has it all.  Huge armies charging into battle, massiver laser beams firing at ships, fantastic dust clouds as ships crash to the surface and a nice little personal dimension to the battle.

A review I read in The Independent when the film came out said Episode II was really a film for kids and kids would love it.  Maybe they do, but Adults will be thinking its not as good as the first three, which it isn't, not by a long way.  But as an action sci-fi film it delivers enough to be worth watching if you're looking to just relax on the sofa one evening or if you want a modern film that looks a little retro in places, which Episode II with its satelite dish laser beams, smoking rockets and Octopus droids manages in quantites to make any lover of the old Flash Gordon serials a bit teary eyed.

Overall I'm going to be a little generous and give this film minus four out of five because even though I don't think this is a particualrly good film, I've watched it that many times that I still like it and of course, it's better than Episode I.  In fact if you're new to the Star Wars saga and I know at least one person who's never seen any of the Star Wars films, then start with Episode II because it really is the first part of Darth Vader's story and with that, I shall end this review.

Rage

A guy I met at a local munch event lent me this film on the premise that it was pretty nasty.  Well it is, but not because it takes a hard stomach to watch it.  You see the plot is simple.  Like a lot of other horror films of the 'lets torture teenagers' genre, it starts off with something nasty.  In this case a young couple are being tortured by a mad scientist whose suppossed to be Russian, but looks decidely Mexican, kind of like if Ricardo Montalban had been asked to play Stalin (that would have been a good film by the way).

After the man in the couple is turned into a blood crazed zombie creature, he escapes but not before the Mexican/Russian Mad scientist is bitten.  More on that later.  Anyway blood crazed zombie creature only gets so far before dying, upon which its corpse is eaten by Vultures.  The Vultures then turn into mutant birds and go around killing everything they can.  Meanwhile some stupid teenagers in a winnebago are having a fight over who sleeps with who when they crash, surprise surprise.  Shortly after they're attacked by the Vultures and a black guy is killed.  This is followed by another being devoured by mutant leeches before the remaining three end up hiding in the mad scientist's shack.

After being attacked by another zombie creature and with the male somehow surviving being electrocuted, they are captured by the mad scientist, who promptly experiments on the women.  Then we're given nasty backstory about how the mad scientist just wanted to cure cancer but saw his experiments given to Western corporations so they could profit from treatments.  Mad Scientist ends up imprisoned in a madhouse before escaping and heading to America to try and make the corporations see sense.  

When he can't, he resorts to terrorismn and extortion which doesn't get him anywhere because the Vultures throw a wrench in his plans.  Long haired hippie man somehow manages to get a gun and get free but after a lot of shooting, punching, stabbing and whatnot, Mad Scientist beats him to death with a dead vulture before telling the last teenager she will become the Eve of a new Human Race because he's become a God.  Sadly at this point Long haired Hippie cuts off his head and then nearly gets strangled by Mad Scientist's headless body before the last teenager cuts his head in two.

Overall I'm going to give this stupid film a minus three out of five simply because there's too much CGI and the plot didn't have me pissing myself with fear.  This latter point is really something of a gripe I have with Horror films in general; they make me laugh too much.  Seriously Doctor Who is scarier and that's meant for kids.  Who knows perhaps the only way I'm going to scare myself is by writing something of my own...

Olympus has Fallen

Yes, I'm reviewing a mainstream film but Olympus has Fallen is so bad that it deserves to be on this site. While a lot of you may already know a bit about the film, I'll still provide a basic summary of the plot. First though I'll just explain how I came to be watching this film; until next week at least, there really is nothing good on, so it was a choice for me and my girlfriend of Morgan freeman sans hair with goggles or Morgan Freeman with hair as well as a suit and tie. Having been told the plot to the first Morgan Freeman film (Oblivion) by a friend neither of us were really interested in Tom Cruise clones fighting intergalactic conspiracies orchestrated by the Vietnamese New Year so we went with Olympus has fallen.

The title takes its name from the codeword 'Olympus' used by the secret service to describe the White House, which in this film becomes the torched and very gloomy house. Opening with a what happened earlier we see Gerard Butler playing Mike Banning, chief bodyguard to President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and good mates to the extent that they box together before going to fundraisers. Then in a demonstration of why you should never drive in a blizzard the presidential car skids on an icy bridge and while Mike pulls his buddy to safety, Mrs President goes plunging, car and all, into an icy lake below. Exit her, oh and Mike and Asher's friendship.

A year and a half later Mike works for the Treasury doing a desk job to show he's an all rounded guy who's as good with spreadsheets as he is with security details. Needless to say he hates it and wants back in guarding Asher, who hates him. Fortunately for Mike this is an America increasingly uncertain of itself and what it is capable of so when some Koreans (possibly North Koreans but here known as the Korean United Front to provide ambiguity) storm the White House in an impressive display of wanton violence, Mike can come to the rescue when everyone else is killed.

Cue a good hour and a half of death, destruction and mayhem that is completely let down by gratituitous profanity from well, everybody, and a stupid subplot about an American traitor (played by Dylan McDermott from American horror story) that ends up being resolved in an equally stupid fashion (having been stabbed by Mike, the traitor, called Forbes, rediscovers his patriotism and after telling Mike where Asher is, let's Mike kill him).

Another subplot, because the main plot is how many Koreans can Gerard Butler kill single-handedly, concerns Cerebus, a failsafe option to destroy nukes after they've been launched, which only three people have the code to. This happen to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Defence Secretary and the President, all of whom give up the codes, the first two on Presidential orders, the last one, off screen (which again lets the film down. Sorry but if you're going to show the underlings being tortured; you show the big cheese being beaten around as well). Once this happens we get a kind of Deus Ex Machina where Mike just manages to input an abort code with three seconds to spare. That last act begged the question; if you have a deactivation code, a failsafe to a failsafe if you will, why isn't there one to change the codes remotely if all three people who have a code are captured by enemy agents. Oh wait that would mean the plot would have no basis at all.

This film could have been a good political thriller but ends up being little more than propaganda so blatant Sergei Eisenstein could have made this film, only more's the pity that he didn't, since such a film would have been infinitely more enjoyable. Instead we are served a film where anyone is fair game for assassination or torture, the female Defence Secretary being kicked and punched repeatedly, to the point where she must have suffered major damage to her internal organs, before finally being half stripped and made to walk, at gunpoint, out of what is left of the White House's front door. If that last scene doesn't have Feminist groups up in arms about the glorification of violence against women, I'll be genuinely flabbergasted with surprise, because I hated watching it.

So does this film have any redeeming features? Well sort of; first there's Aaron Eckhart, who makes such a decent stab at playing a President held hostage, that really he should have been the only non-Korean in the film. Heck if this film had done an Air Force One and featured Mt Eckhart's president retaking his own house while bonding with his kid then my review would have been praising it. Maybe in the remake.

The second is Rick Yune (from Die Another Day and the first Fast and Furious film) who plays Kang, a zealot who manages to be both completely evil and yet completely charming in the tradition of the best Bond villians. He too would have made my version of the film and again, if it had been just him versus Mr Eckhart then this would have been a very good film. Finally there is an amazing plethora of military hardware on display to wet the appetite of any action movie geek. However that's really the tip of another problem with this film; it relies too much on such action to underpin a plot that stretches incredulity so far that we might have to add another 'N' to plug the resulting gap.

Olympus has fallen is the sort of film an actor signs up to when they need money or a much boosted profile because no one bothered to make a film that will genuinely raise a career from obscurity to A-list status. Instead we have a gorefest where torture is so commonplace that the film almost seems to be calling it acceptable and where the main premise, that the President's life is in danger doesn't stand up to the facts. Namely, if the Speaker of the House is made Acting President, surely that means the previous incumbent no longer holds the job, and is therefore, to put it brutally, expendable.

Going back to my earlier point about Cerebus, it makes more sense to secure the country and its interests first and put those of one man second, even if he is the President. When Morgan Freeman shouts at Mike that 'we're talking about the President of the United States', Mike turns around (figuratively speaking) and points out, that Morgan Freeman is now the President. Let's just repeat that; Morgan Freeman is now the President. In which case, Aaron Eckhart's character is expendable and there's no reason to pull forces out of South Korea and the surrounding seas. Such a development however would undermine the idea being communicated, and punctuated by excessive brutality, in this film. Namely, that one man can make a difference.

Such an idea is at the heart of the American story, but if this film tries to talk it up, it also manages to talk it down. Yes, Gerard Butler saves the day, but he shouldn't have to when the President is no longer being held hostage in a bunker but ends up being Morgan Freeman in a command centre. Once that transposition has taken place, the country should be safe (because I'm fairly certain the U.S. military has safeguards backing up safeguards backing up safeguards when it comes to protecting things like the President and Nuclear Weapons) so Mike could have gone to find his doctor wife instead of showing off why he doesn't need to start collecting his pension just yet.

Except Mike does because Gerard Butler is a co-producer on this movie, ensuring it really is a too long CV to show off his talents as an actor. Unfortunately Mr Butler's scriptwriter lets him down and ensures that only Mr Eckhart and Mr Yune are shown as good actors. Sorry, but when something like that happens, its time to consider less involvement in the production side of the films you're starring in. And with that I'm going to sign off with a damming indictment of minus one out of five and say that if you're thinking of seeing this film, don't bother.