The Faculty (1998)

Needing a palate cleanser after Invasion of the Pod People, I decided to fire up a good "Body Snatchers-esque" film.  You didn't get the review right away since it is a DVD I have seen before.  But now Saturday has rolled around, and I can tell you that The Faculty is great fun.

This Robert Rodriguez-helmed film has a crazy good cast.  Don't take my word for it: go look at the IMDB page and goggle.  Coupled with a smart and genre-savvy script from Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, the film's an entertaining romp.

Herrington High is your typical movie high school.  Jocks rule the roost and the teachers are a dysfunctional and disillusioned group on the whole.  Things are about to change, however.  As they do when an insidious alien parasite is taking over everyone in a position of power.

Stumbling into this overworldly menace come six high school students: most are outcasts or misfits, ranging from persecuted nerd Casey to rebel without a cause Zeke and new student Marybeth Louise Hutchinson (never just 'Marybeth').

One of the things I like about the film is that the characters' actions feel relatively plausible given the crazy situation they find themselves in.  They try to enlist help, acknowledge the parallels with popular media (including Invasion of the Body Snatchers itself), and act to protect themselves as best they can in the circumstances.  They mess up from time to time, but never in a way that makes you scream with frustration at how stupid they are (which is definitely a welcome change from Invasion of the Pod People, where the protagonist was criminally stupid).

If you enjoy a bit of science fiction with mild horror themes, and are young enough to remember the feelings of isolation and disassociation that are common among teenagers, then you should check this out: it's a smart and clever little film.

Shoot 'Em Up (2007)

I first became aware of this film about five years ago, when a work colleague at the time mentioned this "terrible" DVD she'd watched on the weekend.  I took that as a challenge, and borrowed the film from her.

On the following day...

Me: "You did realise it was a send-up, right?".
Her: "Oh ... I wondered if it was supposed to be funny or serious."
Me: "He stabs a guy in the head with a carrot."

The carrot killing happens about three minutes in, by the by, and is probably the 10th or 11th clear sign that this is not a film that is meant to be taken seriously.

A guy sitting at a bus stop sees a hitman chasing down a pregnant woman.  He intervenes and kills the assassin, then the dozens of other goons that come running in later.  In between massacring bad guys by the truckloads, he helps the woman deliver her child.  Alas, she dies shortly afterward, courtesy of the hitmen's leader (played with manic glee by Paul Giamatti).

Our hero - he calls himself "Smith" - takes the child to a prostitute who specialises in nursing fetishes (i.e. she is lactating).  The bad guys are hot on his tail though, and soon, he and his lady friend and the bub are on the run once more.

This is a hugely silly and over the top film, from the deaths by vegetables to the monotone one liners to skydiving gunfights.  If you watch it in the manner it is intended, it's huge fun - or at least I found it to be - but if you like your action a bit less gonzo or your humour in any way more sophisticated than "how can we top the last ridiculous set piece now?", then you probably won't enjoy it.

Evil Brain from Outer Space (1964)

I initially mis-typed the title of this film as Evil Bran from Outer Space, which is a movie I would now like to see.  I mean, the tag-lines write themselves: "Let's get roughage!" or "Do you have the fibre to withstand this alien terror?"

Alas, what we actually get is a Starman movie.  Only instead of being cobbled together from two episodes of the Japanese serial Super Giant, this one is cobbled together from three.  Three standalone episodes at that (the others were made from two-parters), so it is even more disjointed and random than usual.

On the plus side, it's the last of the Starman movies in this set.  So we won't again have to endure his overstuffed codpiece or the interminable fight scenes that the show loves so much (especially bad in this movie since they have three episodes' worth to inflict on us).

The plot: evil alien brain tries to take over the Earth.  The Peace Council of the Emerald Planet sends Starman to protect it.  Since it's hard to engage in badly-staged fisticuffs with a disembodied opponent, the brain has a horde of mutant servitors.  Most of these, conveniently enough "are disguised as human beings".  Which has the dual benefits of saving the production company money and us from too much of this:

Anyway, Starman battles evil-doers, interacts with the inevitable "cute" children (one benefit of merging three episodes is that only one set of kids get used, so they're a comparatively small part of the film this time) and saves the day.

Unless you're desperate to learn what Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers would have been like if it was made fifty-odd years ago, you can skip it.

Invasion of the Pod People (2007)

If you're the kind of person who actually reads this blog, you won't need me to point out the Invasion of the Body Snatchers connection here.  And indeed, this is a "mockbuster" from The Asylum, who run a presumably successful business based on making cheap knock-offs of high profile films.  In this case it was Nicole Kidman's The Invasion.  Which makes this one of several Asylum films based on blockbusters that - financially, anyway - were anything but.

Even by The Asylum's low standards, this is a poorly made film.  I'm used to often wooden acting and poor FX, but the dialogue in this is sometimes near inaudible.  I'm willing to forgive technical flaws like that in a film like Pathogen, since it was made by a 12 year old.  In a movie that IMDB estimates costs $750,000, it's a lot less excusable.

This version of the basic Body Snatchers formula transfers the 'action' to a modelling agency, where agent Melissa notices a change in the behaviour of the people around them after they receive gifts of strange-looking plants.

Said plants are literally lumps of raw ginger stuck into pots, by the way.  They don't even bother to paint them or stick weird growths on them or anything.

Part of the horror of the Body Snatchers is that the aliens exhibit an absence of fear, anger or hatred, presenting an almost tempting vision of peaceful coexistence for those who "join" them.  This film seems to be eschewing that when it starts: instead the pod people replacements exhibit opposite personalities: nasty people turn nice, and vice versa.  They also exhibit supercharged sexuality, leading to a rather tacky lesbian orgy scene.

The whole "opposites" thing gets dropped later, with the usual "join us and live a better life" thing being trotted out.  Though maybe in this case the attraction is supposed to be the supposedly sexy times.  Who knows?  There's not much indication the writers do, as the script lurches to its lackluster conclusion.

In addition to uneven acting, pandering script and inaudible sound, the film suffers from a protagonist who is so willfully stupid you'll probably be cheering for the alien invaders by the time the movie ends.  One to avoid unless you really love terrible mockbusters.

Eternal Evil (1985)

The idea at the core of this film actually has the potential to be pretty creepy, but that potential is squandered by the clumsy and obvious way it is revealed, and by the fact that it happens way too early.  You spend the rest of the film waiting for the cast to catch up with what has now been obvious for over 30 minutes.

Originally titled The Blue Man, and re-named later to make the horror themes more obvious to potential viewers, this is the story of a disillusioned film-maker whose career has sunk to directing commercials after the failure of his films.  Searching for something to give him meaning in his life, he meets a 'new age' woman who encourages him to try astral projection.  He'd flirted with the concept earlier in life but not really pursued it.  Now, he throws himself into it more fully, and soon finds himself undergoing vivid out of body experiences.

If only the people around him wouldn't keep dropping dead.  A friend, his father-in-law ... it's certainly enough to get the police interested him, though they are at a loss to explain how he might make someone's heart burst from the inside.

But when people keep dying around you, it's natural that you start to worry you might be responsible.  Are there deadly side-effects to these astral journeys he has been undertaking, or is something more sinister afoot?  Since the answer to that question is the movie's only real point of note, I'll not reveal exactly what's going on.  Suffice it to say that I wish the idea had been used in a better film.

Ultimately, this film is a bit too static, and just not tense enough to pass muster.  The main emotion it inspires is frustration as you wait for the plot to finally get the characters to the climax you've known was coming for a good half hour.

Once Upon A Time in China 3 (1993)

Despite this DVD set billing itself as the Once Upon A Time in China "Trilogy", there are actually six films in all.  These are the only three that I own, though, so it's effectively a culmination of the series for me.

So how is it? Well, honestly ... exhausting.  I like martial arts action, but - with a few welcome exceptions for the continuing romance between lead characters Wong Fei-Hung and Peony - this is pretty much bell to bell fight scenes.

Now don't get me wrong: the fight scenes are well-staged and pretty inventive.  There's an ongoing theme of Lion Dance combined with Kung Fu that adds lots of colour and props to many of the fights, for instance.  And a fight where Wong Fei-Hung has his shoes greased in oil that's also quite clever.  But for my tastes, they went on a bit too long, and there were just too many of them.

The plot has the dowager empress declare a kung fu competition, in the hope a display of martial prowess will invigorate the nation against the encroachment of foreigners.  Now Wong Fei-Hung himself has little interest in the competition - he thinks it's frivolous to fight for money or fame.  But many other martial artists don't share his opinion, and we'll soon meet the nefarious Chiu, who will stop at nothing to win.  Chiu will be our primary villain, though not the only one - there's a need for evil foreigners, after all.  The Once Upon A Time in China films definitely have a measure of political content to them.

I liked that this includes a satisfying progression of the relationship between Wong and Peony, and some of the action sequences are very impressive.  But unless you're a committed fan of the wire fu genre, you can safely give it a miss.

Battleship (2012)

I decided to celebrate the first day where I'm not actually scheduled to write a review by ... well, by watching my favourite film of 2012 and writing a review of it :)

At least one critic would tell you that my enjoyment of this film indicates that I am part of the "less demanding audience", but I don't think that's at all accurate.  Battleship is certainly a film with a very specific aesthetic, and its mix of weapons grade hokum and undiluted testosterone will not appeal to all viewers, but it's a movie that commits 100% to its own premise (however silly that premise might be), and for that I salute and applaud it.  Too many films make 'safe' choices.  This one is not afraid to be gonzo.

It's not that the film has a particularly original arc, you understand: Alex Hopper is a hot-headed and impetuous young man with little direction in his life.  His drunken antics one night compel his brother to force him into the navy: where Hopper's hot-headed and impetuous nature soon has him on the verge of being cashiered.

Fortunately for his career - and his chances of marrying the admiral's daughter - Earth's about to be invaded by aliens, and Hopper will end up leading the battle against them.

So yeah, nothing especially innovative.  Where Battleship is out of the ordinary is the wholehearted way it leaps into the story.  This is a film where it is not enough to have a montage.  It's gotta have a montage that runs for the entire run time of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck".  It's a movie that goes to significant lengths to have a naval battle play out like an actual game of Hasbro's "Battleship".

This is not to say that there aren't some subtler things at work in the script.  I won't spoil anything, but let's just say that there are a couple of interpretations to how events on screen play out, and the movie never definitively establishes which is true (apparently the novelisation lacks this ambiguity, but I've not read it).

Ultimately this is a BIG, (perhaps not-so-)dumb action film with a commitment to being as over the top as it can be in terms of the action and humour it portrays.  It's not going to be to all tastes, but my word I have a great time watching it.