NSFW: Not Safe For Work (2014)

This is a film which I backed in my early kickstarter adventures.  In due time the digital download turned up, I grabbed it, and then it lay forgotten on my hard disk for the best part of a year.

Elenore makes her living as a camgirl; posting sensual and nude photos of herself online for paying subscribers.  She also provides occasional video updates about her life - which proves a useful tool for dropping some exposition into the narrative.

Said exposition involves Elenore's two lovers.  The first of these is Dee, a career woman who wants to take the next step with their relationship.  Dee and Elenore seem to have been together for some time.  Long enough at least that when Elenore talks to her viewers about Dee, she assumes they're familiar with her.

The second lover is Eugene; a married man with whom Elenore is having a series of casual sexual encounters, each of which explores a particular kind of fetish (female domination, costume play of various kinds, and so on).

Elenore and Eugene's sexual games dominate a large portion of the first half of the film.  Given the subject there's quite a lot of nudity, though most of the scenes are (deliberately, I think) kind of awkward and comical and not very erotic.  It's only as the two start of them start to share emotional as well as physical intimacy that the awkwardness diminishes.

While Elenore and Dee seem to remain stuck in a holding pattern, Elenore and Eugene begin to become closer, spending more and more time together (and notably, proportionately less and less time having sex).  Sooner or later the two of them will have to deal with the way their relationship is changing and what it means to the other people in their romantic lives.

I've given NSFW a 'not recommended' not because it is a badly made film.  It's technically proficient, decently acted, and is a good deal more thoughtful than its title and abundant nudity might suggest.  It's more a case that I think the potential audience would be small.  Still, if you think a mildly melancholic rumination on physical and emotional intimacy might be your kind of thing - and you're not the sort to be easily shocked, or to mind a lack of easy answers - then this might be for you.

UFO (1970)

I was born a little too late to see Space: 1999 when it originally aired, but I saw models, still shots and comic books from the show as a young 'un and thought it looked awesome.  Mostly because at that age I thought anything with spaceship was cool, and it had some particularly neat-looking ones.  Alas, when the show finally became available on DVD, I was rather disappointed: its efforts to be cerebral were mostly just boring.

All of which is relevant to this review mainly because Space: 1999 was the show born out of the decision not to proceed with UFO: 1999, which would have been a direct sequel to UFO, set approximately 20 years later.  Many of the sets for the cancelled show had already been built and creator Gerry Anderson (of Thunderbirds fame) simply re-purposed them.

The concept of UFO is that in 1970 the governments of the Earth get incontrovertible proof that aliens are visiting our planet to kill or abduct human beings.  Over the next ten years they establish a secret organisation - SHADO (pronounced "shadow") - to fight the alien menace.  SHADO's resources include a moon base, a trio of space interceptors, and submarines capable of launching aircraft ... as well as some of the goofiest uniforms you have ever seen.

No, really.

Really, really.

The early episodes of the show have a pretty strong "cold war vs aliens" vibe to them, with the agents of SHADO forced to operate in secret against an enemy whose motives and methods they don't really understand.  The human characters are often forced to weigh their personal beliefs and desires against the needs of the clandestine organisation for which they work.  This part of the show also sneaks in a lot of non-verbal world building about the then-future 1980s: the UK is shown to have switched to driving on the right, for instance - while in flashbacks they still drive on the left - and wigs have become a common accessory for men and women alike.

Alas, those early episodes are definitely the best part of the show: those later in the production schedule tend to suffer from the same not-as-clever-as-they-think-they-are script issues that would later plague Space: 1999.  Also, given that this show was not intended to progress beyond the 26 episodes here, it lacks any real sense of development or conclusion (the show was beset with production problems, which may have contributed to this).

Overall, on the strength of its gonzo costuming, intriguing - if wholly inaccurate - vision of the 'future', and strong early episodes, I'm going to give UFO a qualified recommendation.  If you're a science fiction fan, it's worth a look.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)

Signs of the apocalypse: somebody deciding "you know, what the world needs is an extended director's cut of a Uwe Boll film".

Of course, that somebody was probably Uwe Boll.

Clocking in at a weighty 155 minutes - 28 more than the original release, though what the new footage is, I couldn't say - this film is loosely (very, very, very loosely) based on the fantasy computer game Dungeon Siege. By which I mean that it uses some of the place names, a couple of character names (including that the protagonist is known simply as "Farmer"), and the Krugs, which are the game's totally-not-Orcs. The game's plot and more idiosyncratic elements of its setting, such as the steampunk goblins, are jettisoned.

Jason Statham plays ... well, Jason Statham ... but his character's name is the aforementioned Farmer. When his home is attacked by the Krugs he sets out to save his wife and son from the invaders, and becomes embroiled in a sprawling fantasy travelogue quest involving wizards (of course), a king (it is in the title, after all), vine-swinging not-elves, random ninjas, and plenty of moments that suggest Herr Boll really liked Peter Jackson's Return of the King.

So look, this is a rubbish film, but it's a rubbish film that I rather enjoyed. For one things it's as close to a real movie as Boll's ever made. For another, it's helped by a surprisingly strong cast: there's Statham obviously, and also Ron Perlman, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies and Ray Liotta all in major roles. Plus we have Matthew Lillard as totally-not-Wyrmtongue. There's also more minor parts for Kristanna Loken as Tarzan Galadriel, and Burt Reynolds as King Just Here for the Paycheque.

Above and beyond all this, there's a kind of unselfconscious "kitchen-sink fantasy" feel to the movie. There's long lost princes and overwrought dialogue and women putting on armour to prove themselves to their families and excessive amounts of travelling and brief encounters with plot-token minor characters and "epic" battle scenes and goofy weapons and you better believe there's some riding of horses through forests, brother. I even cracked a smile at the blatant "Eowyn and the Witch King" knock-off that they did.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys mocking would-be fantasy epics, you might well like this as much as I did.  Otherwise you should probably avoid it.

The Bloody Brood (1959)

I admit to being pleasantly surprised by this low budget Canadian offering, which features an early performance from Peter Falk of Columbo fame.

Falk plays Nico, a character far removed from the detective who was his most famous role.  Nico's a hard-bitten gangster who has infiltrated a group of beatniks in order to more easily peddle illicit drugs.  One day while hanging out in a bar with several of these 'friends', Nico witnesses an elderly man suffer a heart attack.

The men Nico is with fancy themselves artists and philosophers, and the malevolent mobster finds it pretty easy to convince them that they're witnessing one of the most dramatic moments in life - 'a real death scene' - and should not intervene.

After the old man dies, Nico finds himself hungry to relive the moment, and sets out to persuade the more weak-willed of his circle that taking a life would be a powerful artistic statement and give 'meaning' to the death of their victim.

Said victim is a 17-year old messenger boy who brings a telegram to the apartment where Nico is holding an illicit party in the owner's absence.  Niso figures this is someone whose death shouldn't attract much attention and even if it does, how would anyone trace it back to them?  They aren't registered at the address and have no apparent motive to kill the kid even if they were.

Of course it wouldn't be much of a story line if Nico just killed someone and got away with it, and it turns out the dead boy had an older brother who will not rest until he finds the people responsible.

With a solid cast - perhaps unsurprisingly, Falk is particularly good - and an engaging if relatively slight story, this was an enjoyable way to spend a smidgen over an hour.  Probably not a film that will stick with you for a long time after you watch it, but one I found engaging while it was on.

Carmilla, Season 2 (2015)

Although it changed many of the details, and completely re-wrote the ending, the first season of Carmilla nonetheless used the plot of Sheridan Le Fanu's book as its basic framework: a cabal of vampires attempts to sacrifice young woman but their intended victim is more resourceful than they expect.  Season two, on the other hand, is all new material.  So how does the show handle the transition from adaptation to original work?

Well, with mixed success, to be honest.  There are plenty of elements that work: the supporting cast remain excellent, and there are some genuinely funny exchanges of dialogue, for example.  The progression of Laura and Carmilla's relationship - both forward and backward during the course of the season - is also pretty well-handled as the two of them find that their very different temperaments and ideals make it hard to be a couple.

On the flip side, I felt like the overall season arc did not hang together as well as in the first season.  For one thing, the main plot is less personal to the characters (though still potentially as fatal).  More importantly though, I think it has too many players at work, and they change alliances and allegiances with a rapidity that is doubtless intended to be exciting but instead came off to me as being rather overdone.  The show's tendency to say "really exciting thing is happening outside!" and then not show you it (because of the budgetary requirements to do so, no doubt) is also even more pronounced in this season than the last.

So overall it's a mixed bag, but it gets a qualified recommendation from me because at the end of the day, I still want to see a third season so we can find out what happens next.

Foodfight! (2012)

The next time you make a bad decision, take comfort from this fact: unless you are Lawrence Kasanoff, you did not spend 13 years and $45 million on this misconceived, malformed mess of a movie.

I imagine that Foodfight! is what you might get if you decided to mash together Toy Story and Yellow Submarine ... and then hired Rob Schneider to write and animate it.  Insulting ethnic stereotypes? Check.  Double-entendres so crude they don't really merit the word 'double'?  Check.  Lazy pastiches of far, far better movies?  Check and check again.

Obviously this is not a good film.  In point of fact, it's a terrible one.  A movie so bad that as you watch it you genuinely find yourself wondering "How did this happen?  How did a group of professionals spend year after year working on this drek and not see how awful it is?".

But then, at least for some people, there comes a point in the picture where some kind of Stockholm Syndrome sets in - probably around the ketchup artillery scene - and you can almost see how the film-makers deluded themselves about their project.  You can almost see the satirical edge they were going for; almost see the madcap energy they were trying to capture.

The key word there of course is "almost".  You don't actually see any of these things because the movie fails to deliver them.  Just like it fails to deliver funny jokes, characters who aren't animated like they're having a seizure, or a heroine who doesn't have cold, dead eyes.

The plot?  Oh, it's some malarkey about marketing icons of various well known brands (or more accurately - and ironically, given the plot - thinly veiled pastiches of same) fighting off  the evil Brand X when it tries to take over their supermarket.  Trust me, you'll be far too busy coping with the Nazi iconography, wildly inappropriate-for-the-target-audience content, and bizarre physical tics of the characters to care about the plot any more than the film-makers did.

Wildly, stupendously awful.

Forty-five million dollars.

The Tribe, Season 2 (1999)

At the end of the first season of The Tribe, the Mallrats set out to find an antidote for the virus that has killed all the adults and now seems to be mutating into a form that is dangerous even for those under the age of 18.  They lose two of their own in the process, but they soon gain new members, and even succeed in their quest.  The way in which they achieve this success is hysterically implausible, but never mind: virus defeated!

Having control of the antidote brings the Mallrats a lot of power in the city.  It also causes dissension between those who want to make themselves wealthy by selling it to the other tribes, and those who want to share it freely.  The former group are most vocally led by Ebony, who is the former leader of the most dangerous tribe in the city, and who makes no secret of her intention to become leader of the Mallrats now that she has joined them.  Much of the first half of the season is given over to her machinations and schemes.

However the tribe - the city as a whole, in fact - faces a much more dangerous threat than Ebony.  A new movement known as 'the Chosen', who preach a doctrine of 'power and chaos', intend to take over.  They play a minor role from the beginning of the season, but in its second half, they are the clearly established as the major antagonists.

I feel like this season of the show definitely profits from having more clear 'arc' story lines, and it also ties them together quite nicely at times.  For instance, Ebony's schemes in the first half of the season lead the other Mallrats to fear and distrust her, which the Chosen are able to exploit for their own ends.  The much more prominent role for Ebony herself - she's in season one but not to anywhere near the same extent - is also a point in the show's favour.  She's a fun antagonist/ally.

On the other hand, the Chosen storyline also suffers from some pretty obvious issues: their plans are way more complicated and contrived than they need to be, for one thing, and are reliant on a lot of idiot-ball holding by the Mallrats (plus the rest of the city tribes) on the other.

Overall, it remains a show that feels like it has more ambition than ability in some areas, while also being a program that could use a little more ambition in other areas.  Unless you're somehow not getting enough YA dystopia in your life - hard to imagine given how many such shows and movies are currently around - you can skip it.