Reviews

To say I've been looking forward to seeing this film would be an understatement - I've been a fan of Judge Dredd since I was ten (that's going on three decades now) and to this day I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the (terrible) Stallone movie of 1995. So I'm both happy and relieved to say that - speaking as both a fan and as a film-goer - the new adaptation is pretty damn awesome. In fact, it might just be the Judge Dredd movie I've been waiting three quarters of my life to see.

Like the recent versions of James Bond and Batman, the film takes the "gritty real life" approach to adapting the source material. The looming futuristic backdrop of Mega-City One has been dialled back into a sort of urban post-apocalyptic "present colliding with the future" kind of deal. Instead of the fascist police state of the comic, the city is presented as an ongoing "state of emergency" scenario, where the surviving population are crammed together into an urban jungle that's ill-equipped to house them all, and crime and anarchy are part of the daily grind. The Judges themselves aren't so much an all-powerful regime as a sort of provisional peacekeeping force, barely holding back the chaos (at one point Dredd says that they only manage to respond to six per cent of the crimes committed in the city, and it's implied that they have to choose their battles). It's not the Mega-City One from the comics, but it feels like an earlier, grimier version of it, and in the context of the film it works.

I'll admit that I wasn't entirely happy with the 21st-century look of the city at first, but once they get into the Peach Trees block - where most of the action takes place - all my doubts were dispelled. A 200-storey tower block with 75,000 residents crammed together in slum conditions, most of them unemployed and/or criminals, with a murderous criminal kingpin running things from the top floor - that is SO Mega-City One.

As for the cast – I will go on record and say that Karl Urban pretty much IS Judge Dredd. Urban is a long-time fan of the comic, and it shows in his performance (he reportedly only agreed to play Dredd if he kept the helmet on throughout - which he does). He manages to hit all the right notes while still making the character his own, and brings across the imposing authority mixed with a wry sense of black humour that's iconic of Dredd. You're two-thirds of the way through the film before he brings out the catchphrase "I am the Law," but when he finally says it, you goddamn believe it.

His sidekick Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) is a departure from the source material in a few ways. She's played as the nervous rookie with hidden strengths, as opposed to the tough wisecracking maverick she always was in the comic, and her psychic abilities are presented as a rare mutation and even something of a stigma (it's apparent that this version of Justice Department doesn't have a "Psi Division"). But like the setting itself, you get the impression that this is just a younger, less "tempered" version of Anderson, one who's on her way to becoming the character we know. Her arc in the movie is basically "rookie dropped into the thick of it who discovers her inner badass" and, once again, it works in the context of the film.

It's not a movie for the squeamish - it's bloody as hell, and not only does it not flinch away from the violence, it goes as far as shoving it in your face. When a movie features three men being skinned alive and thrown from the top of a building in the first ten minutes, you know you're not watching a PG-13. One trick the film pulls on you is using graphic violence in a stylish way that makes it seem less gratuitous than it is.

Finally, the 3D. I'm not a fan of "Real 3D" - in most of the (very few) 3D films I've seen it's basically a pointless, tacked-on gimmick that distracts from the movie experience rather than enhancing it. But I can say (with great ambivalence) that this movie might have softened me up on the issue. Dredd 3D actually USES the 3D to its full advantage, creating spectacular action moments in slo-mo closeup where you can almost smell the smoke and feel the blood hitting you in the face. I won't say that it's changed my mind on the gimmicky nature of the format, but it should hopefully serve as a wake-up call to filmmakers by showing what 3D can do if it's handled properly.

All up, this movie does Dredd justice (rimshot) while making the material its own, which is all you can ask of a good adaptation. If you're a Dredd fan you'll probably love it, and if you're not it's still a mighty good sci-fi action flick. There were several moments that had the whole theatre breaking out in applause, and walking out the door I wanted to turn right around and go watch it again. I think that speaks for itself.

In fact, I have only one gripe about this film: Dredd never addresses anyone as "creep".

Oh, well.

I rented this DVD partly because it's a thriller (and I'm really into those at the moment) and partly because it's an independent New Zealand film that I hadn't heard of before. Hidden did the film festival circuit last year and won several international awards (including Best Feature at the Harlem International Film Festival, the Rebelfest Director's Award and the FAIF Best Director Award) before its limited local release last February, but it's on DVD that most of New Zealanders will get to know it. Tim McLachlan (the film's writer, director and producer) is pretty much an unknown even in his native country (although he was Ian McKellan's stunt double in Lord of the Rings) but if there's any justice in the world he'll be making a name for himself from this debut.

I'll admit that I was a little put off by the premise – a group of teenage camp leaders go out into the bush to play hide & seek one afternoon, and scary stuff starts happening to them in the woods. Scary stuff happening to teenagers in the bush is a fairly well-trodden plot for New Zealand thrillers (the best example being the classic Bridge To Nowhere back in the 80s), not to mention for horror/thrillers in general, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Besides, playing hide & seek in the bush is something that just about every New Zealand kid/teenager's done at some point, so it kind of speaks to the national psyche. Crawling through wet "cutty grass" with mud smeared all up your pants, trying to keep out of sight and wishing you'd worn a darker jumper, itching from a dozen mozzie bites and hoping you don't sit on a tree weta… This is the stuff that Kiwi childhoods are made of, and when you see an unlucky movie character slide down a wet bank and land in the creek you know exactly how he feels.

I'll also admit that the film doesn't start off terribly well. You're about ten minutes in before you hear a single line of dialogue, and the first twenty minutes or so seems to consist mainly of people running around and hiding in the bush (actually, there's a great deal of that throughout the movie). There are approximately a dozen main characters to get to know, which isn't easy when all they're doing is chasing each other through the undergrowth and climbing up trees. There's a lot of stylish camera work (most of it done very simply with home-made wooden rigs and clever editing – watch the "Behind The Scenes" featurette for a lesson in independent film-making) and a generally creepy overtone, but not a lot in the way of plot or character development for the first half hour or so.

But be patient with the slow start and and stick it out, because it gets a lot better. As the film goes on, you start to realise that you ARE slowly getting to know the characters (and starting to care about them) simply by their behaviour and their reactions to each other. The film gives up its secrets slowly as you observe the characters and solve their little mysteries. Why does Carlos seem to hate Mark, and why is Brooke so edgy around the both of them? What happened to Imogen when she was a little girl? Why is Isabelle so morbidly obsessed with the graveyard? Why does Mark keep hearing his dead grandfather's voice as he goes deeper and deeper into the woods? And how are they all connected to Emily, a little girl who drowned in the creek years ago and whose ghost is now rumoured to haunt the camp? There's an air of mystery surrounding them all, and McLachlan trusts his audience enough to let us solve it all for ourselves rather than hitting us over the head with each plot point. For example, there's a rather well-turned sub-plot involving one of the girls and the creepy caretaker, which relies on the audience's assumptions - and society's suspicious nature - to provide the necessary tension and resolution.

The payoff comes in the final ten minutes or so – this is one of those movies where everything suddenly falls into place in one scene. The "surprise" at the end isn't terribly original – though it pays to remember that this film was shot in 2001 and spent three-and-a-half years in troublesome post-production before being released, so it's kind of coming in after its time. Besides, the twist is managed covincingly enough – and with enough respect for the audience's intelligence – that it still packs a pretty good punch. This is especially true for a New Zealand audience, as the film's climax is almost certainly based on an unfortunate event in our recent history. I won't say any more, but you'll know what I mean when you watch it.

For a movie that was shot in the bush on a shoestring budget with a film student cast who doubled as crew, this is a surprisingly slick and powerful little thriller which proves once again that imagination, talent and Kiwi ingenuity is worth more than all the digital orcs and giant monkeys in the world. Not only will it give you the jitters, but you'll probably shed a tear or two by the end. Highly recommended.

The fourth instalment in George Romero's "The Dead" series isn't bad, but it ain't exactly good either.

Let's start with the premise. Zombies have taken over the world, and the last living humans live in walled city and raid small ghost towns for supplies. Very Richard Matheson, but still a good plot for a zombie flick. Unfortunately, they didn't make it terribly believable. The city's population is divided into the rich who live a life of luxury in elegant skyscrapers, and the poor who live in a rundown slum. Okay - Richard Matheson meets Karl Marx. All very well for that social commentary Romero loves so much, but I didn't buy it. With most of the population (un)dead and resources so limited that they have to send bands of road warriors out to knock over abandoned mini-marts, the rich get to wear designer suits, eat in swanky restaurants and shop in a luxurious mall?

Then there's the zombies. This movie revolves (partially) around the premise that the Dead have begun to evolve, form intelligence and communicate with each other. No problems there, aside from the fact that if they became intelligent they, um, wouldn't really be "zombies" any more (I believe the essence of a zombie is the lack of intellect and free will - basically, a body without a soul). Anyway, this allows Romero to take the old "Who are the real monsters?" theme that he handled so subtly in the previous films, and shove it in the audiences' face by showing various examples of human mistreatment of the Dead. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but it was definitely overdone.

But my real problem with the zombies in this film was the costumes. Was it really necessary to have "theme zombies" - eg Zombie Mechanic, Zombie Butcher, Zombie Hockey Player, Zombie Cheerleader (with pom-poms), and so on? It just made the whole thing a little too silly for me. I was waiting for Zombie Cowboy, Zombie Traffic Cop and Zombie Construction Worker to show up and lead the undead horde in a performance of "YMCA".

Still, there's a lot of good stuff too. Action and gory deaths abound (as in any good zombie flick), there are interesting characters aplenty, the cast do their job well enough (I personally can't stand John Leguizamo, especially when he tries to play tough guys, but that's my problem), and the story is watchable enough. I just didn't think it was up to the standard that a modern zombie film should be, especially from the director who invented the genre. Best I can give it is a 6.

Shortly before this movie came out, my older sister (who works as a medical receptionist) had a patient in the office who turned out to be a "Browncoat" - OE, a fan of the Joss Whedon sci-fi show Firefly and its movie spin off Serenity. I'm not sure how the topic came up while he was booking a doctor's appointment, but he spent about thirty minutes pummelling her disinterested ears with an enthusiastic rant about the sheer genius of the show, its vast superiority to Star Trek, Babylon 5 and every other sci-fi show ever made, and the appalling injustice of its cancellation after only 15 episodes (which, he reasoned, was due to the superior IQ of the audience who refused to buy into the merchandising). Um... right.

While I'm a fan of the show myself, I've never been anywhere near that level of frenetic enthusiasm. After seeing the movie yesterday, though, I may be getting close. To put it as succinctly as I can, this movie kicks ass.

For the uninitiated (like my sister) it's a sci-fi/western set 500 years from now, when humanity has spread out and terraformed a couple of hundred "new Earths" to live on. Some are wealthy and hi-tech, others are little more than frontier towns on barren wilderness planets. The whole show's run by your typical friendly dictatorship called the Alliance, who took over after a one-sided war a few years back.

Enter Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a war veteran (on the losing side) who's found a new niche as captain of the cargo ship Serenity. Along with his crew of rag-tag misfits, he takes whatever legitimate jobs he can get and does a fair bit of stealing and smuggling on the side. Coming along for the ride are fugitive doctor Simon Tam (Sean Maher), who's a wanted man after rescuing his teenage sister River (Summer Glau) from an Alliance facility where she was being genetically engineered into some sort of psychic assassin. The Alliance naturally wants her back - not only because she's such a valuable experiment, but also because she happens to have some very dirty government secrets buried somewhere in her pretty little head.

While Simon and River's story was merely a recurring sub-plot in the TV series, it takes center stage in the movie. A deceptively charming government enforcer known only as the Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is hot on River's trail and will do anything to get her back, which is very bad news for anyone who gets in his way. This makes life even more difficult than usual for Mal and his crew, as they try to keep one step ahead of the Operative and try to figure out exactly what's inside River's head. This leads them to take a haphazard and dangerous journey all over Alliance space and beyond - into the territory of a sub-human cannibal horde known as the Reavers, where the really dirty secret lies...

Naturally, the movie's a lot bigger and louder than the show but still delivers in terms of storyline and that witty Whedon dialogue. There's a lot more action (and some fairly gory violence) to be had - to risk a spoiler, the scene where River puts her ingrained combat skills to the test against a room full of psychotic Reavers has been added to my list of Coolest Fight Scenes Ever. There's also big fat doses of comedy, drama and some moments which will jump out and slap you, especially if you're familiar with the show.

All the original actors are present, although a couple of them inevitably become little more than bit parts. You don't have to be familiar with the show to enjoy the movie - a friend of mine who's a Firefly virgin said he didn't have much trouble following it - but there are a couple of moments where the story gets a bit disjointed or where a bit more background might have helped. I also found the ending a bit on the corny side, but it still wraps things up nicely while leaving them open for a possible sequel (or another season?).

Loved it. Seeing it again. 'Nuff said.

I'll start by stating the obvious - if you're thirty or over, then the first thing to go through your mind while watching this film will be: "Didn't I see this when it was called Logan's Run?" While a comparison to Michael Anderson's 1976 classic is inevitable (and it borrows a fair bit from Blade Runner and The Clonus Horror as well) The Island still stands up as a decent enough movie in its own right... well, kind of.

In the year 2019 (why are these movies always set in 2019?) the "survivors" of a global plague live in an enclosed city environment where everything is carefully monitored and controlled... for their own good, naturally. It's the kind of society where everyone dresses the same, everyone has a mindless job that they don't understand (you inject the chemicals into the tubes, but where do the tubes go?) the state tells you what to wear, what to eat and who to talk to, and your toilet analyzes your pee to tell you when you're eating too much salt. Your only hope for a better life is to win a state-controlled lottery in which the winners are selected to go to the Island - the last uncontaminated environment on Earth, where the lucky winners can live in a tropical paradise, romping on the beach, swimming in the ocean and breeding like rabbits to repopulate the Earth. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, there's a reason for that...

The feaces hits the oscillator when two inhabitants of the city - Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) figure out that the whole thing is an elaborate sham. The city is a fake environment underneath a hospital complex, its inhabitants are clones of people living out in the real world, and those who win the lottery sure as hell aren't going to a tropical paradise...

It's certainly not original (I kept half-expecting McGregor to run through the city screaming "Soylent Green is people!!!") but it's entertaining enough. McGregor does a nice job of portraying both the perplexed clone and his smarmy cell donor (with two different accents, which was a nice bit of attention to detail) and Scarlett Johansson is... well, incredibly hot, but she can act as well. More good stuff comes from Sean Bean as the arrogant doctor running the show, Ethan Phillips (anybody remember Benson?) as Lincoln's geeky workmate, and Steve Buscemi as, er... Steve Buscemi. I personally think it should win the gong for Original Score, and some of the imagery is mind-blowing, especially in the dream sequence at the start. It does have a big problem in that most of the middle of the film is an extended noisy chase sequence, which drags on way too long and gets kind of boring - it's not a good thing when your mind starts wandering in the middle of a film. There are also a few niggling plot holes (especially near the end) and the conclusion of the film leaves a few too many questions unanswered.

All round, though, it's not a bad flick. It's just that... it's been done.

As I write this review, I've just finished mailing an invoice to Ridley Scott. That man just cost me $15 and 145 minutes of my life, and I want them back. This overlong, pretentious and grindingly boring "historical epic" came dangerously close to being the second movie that I've ever walked out of. To give you an indication of just how bad it is, the first movie I ever walked out of was the godawful martial arts fiasco The Perfect Weapon back in 1991.

We begin in France in the late twelfth century, one hundred years after Jerusalem fell to the Christians. An old crusading knight (Liam Neeson) comes back from the Holy Land to find his illegitimate blacksmith son Balian (Orlando Bloom) and talk him into coming to Jerusalem. Having lost his wife to suicide, Balian agrees to make the journey in the belief that asking God's forgiveness in the holy city will spare her soul from Hell. Although the fact that he's also wanted for killing the village priest probably plays a part in his decision.

My advice: Enjoy the "priest-killing" scene. It's the only remotely interesting moment in the entire film.

Travelling back to the Holy Land with dear old dad, Balian learns a bit about swordplay and knighthood along the way. He's also privy to pearls of wisdom from a succession of people including his father, a couple of priests and even the leprous king of Jerusalem. Clichéd and forgettable profundities such as "By the decisions you make every day you will be a good man or not" and "A king may move a man, but the soul belongs to the man" dominate the first half of the film. I half-expected a wrinkled green midget to shuffle up to Balian and tell him "Beware fear, anger and aggression - the Dark Side are they." In fact this might have been appropriate, since everyone from the king down seems to treat Balian like some kind of Chosen One, expected to single-handedly save the Kingdom of Heaven when he's spent his entire life making horseshoes.

Eventually, Balian becomes a knight and inherits his father's title and land when the old boy karks it from a battle wound. He is given command of an army (despite the fact that he's only been in one battle - which he lost) and promises to protect the peace between Christian and Muslim. In fact the movie goes on at great length about brotherhood between the two faiths, even when they're hacking each other's limbs off. Hearing Muslims praying on a beach, Balian reaches the startling and meaningful conclusion: "Their prayers sound like ours!" Does the movie make a good point about religion here? Yes. Do we need it rammed down our throats with a stick? No thank you.

Of course, all this is contrary to the war-mongering efforts of sneering bad guy Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas) of the Knights Templar (plot point: anyone wearing a white tunic with a red cross on it is bloodthirsty and evil) who considers Balian a "Muslim-lover" and an "enemy of Christendom". Having thus proved himself to be the politically correct good guy, Balian wastes no time in screwing Lusignan's wife while her husband's out slaughtering innocent Muslims.

Surprisingly, even the sex scene is dull.

Things get slightly less tedious when leprosy finally bumps off the king, Lusignan takes the throne and immediately starts the war against the Muslims he's been gagging for. Balian advises him to fortify Jerusalem rather than ride out for a scrap in the desert, but - foolishly ignoring the tactical advice of the blacksmith with the 0/1 record - Lusignan goes off anyway and leaves him to defend the city alone. Balian immediately knights every man within shouting distance and makes a few flowery pre-battle speeches which are badly-written and (thanks to Bloom) even more badly-delivered. The scene is thus set for the film's climactic siege, which manages to be unbearably tedious even though it borrows heavily from Helm's Deep and the Siege of Gondor. Maybe some oliphaunts would have livened things up.

Honestly, I can't say enough bad things about this movie. It travels at the speed of an arthritic tortoise, tries to be deep but comes out preachy and self-righteous, paints Christians as inept bigots and Muslims as pious defenders of their faith (can't there be a few of both on either side?) and somehow manages to bore you to tears even with enormous battle scenes and a kazillion dollars worth of special effects. Oh, and Orlando Bloom as a leading man - I think that speaks for itself.

Speaking about the movie on The Late Show recently, Bloom attempted to enlighten the world as to the remarkable parallels between the medieval Crusades and the modern War on Terror. I always enjoy it when movie stars try to pass themselves off as political commentators, don't you?

The sequel to Resident Evil - in which a group of scientists and special forces get trapped in a giant underground facility overrun with zombies and mutants - is pretty much what you'd expect. After being captured by the Umbrella Corporation at the end of the first film, almost-sole-survivor Milla Jovovich (the only supermodel in the world who you can take seriously as an action heroine) wakes up in an abandoned laboratory in Raccoon City to find that the zombie-animating "t-virus" has spread to the surface. Half the city are already zombified and killing the other half, and Umbrella Corporation has sealed off the city limits and is planning to "sanitise" the area. Hooking up with a rag-tag group of survivors, Jovovich makes a deal with a rogue Umbrella scientist who promises to get them out of town as long as they rescue his missing daughter who's hiding somewhere in the ruins. Meanwhile Umbrella has its own plans for the lovely Miss Milla, involving a seven-foot armour-clad mutant called the Nemesis who's using the infested city as a training ground. Much shooting/fighting/exploding ensues, and - just like in the first film - the mysterious cliffhanger ending leaves things wide open for another sequel.

Probably because it's based on a Japanese video game, this movie isn't afraid to embrace the clichés that Hollywood's spent the last decade or so trying to avoid. Lurching zombies, machine gun-toting monsters, smarmy suit-wearing villains, hard-as-nails soldiers and a wisecracking streetwise black dude are all essential ingredients, as well as not one but TWO sexy ass-kicking heroines. While Jovovich rides in to save the day on a motorcycle and carries so many guns it's a wonder she doesn't fall over, Sienna Guillory (as tough bitch cop Jill Valentine) has the dubious honour of performing various athletic action sequences in a miniskirt and boob tube. Am I complaining? Hell no.

To be honest, it's really quite refreshing to see a movie like this in this day and age. Like the timelessly cheesy horror/action flicks of John Carpenter, the Resident Evil franchise throws realism and political correctness to the wind and just has fun pitting Pretty Girls With Big Guns against Ugly Monsters With Big Teeth. Be honest - unless you're a metrosexual poseur or a card-carrying member of the PC Police, you probably love this stuff as much as I do.

I just don't get it, I really don't.

There's all kinds of things wrong with this movie. The plot is fairly nonsensical, the story is disjointed, the early scenes are dragged out interminably before anything really interesting happens, a lot of the dialogue is cheesy and inane, and the the Morlocks look like they were designed by a senile makeup artist left over from the original series of Lost In Space.

So why the hell did I love it so much? Let's break it down.

1) The special effects are very very good. The time travel sequences are worth the price of admission alone, especially during the lengthy journey from the early 21st century to the year 800,000. It's a shame Guy Pearce was unconscious for most of the trip, because he really would have enjoyed the scenery.

2) The music is also excellent, especially the haunting Eloi theme that plays through much of the second half. George Lucas must be kicking himself that he didn't hire the same composer to do the Ewok music in Return of the Jedi, although even that wouldn't have saved the unbearably stupid concept of a race of stone age teddy bears who can defeat a crack army of armoured, gun-toting soldiers by hitting them with sticks and rocks. But I digress.

3) The re-invention of the Eloi as a tribe of noble primitives was a good move, since a race of futuristic Aryans in togas would have A) been terribly dated and corny, and B)ensured the arrival of James T Kirk in search of an easy lay.

By the way, I really want to live in that "cliff village" of theirs, even if rolling out of bed in the middle of the night would be instantly fatal.

4) Samantha Mumba is a babe, plain and simple. Not only that, but she also provides one of the better performances in the movie. I've read some damning comments about the acting ability of the divine Miss Mumba, which I don't really understand. Presumably it's because her subtle, thoughtful, and believable performance is such a stark contrast to the shameless overacting of Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons and Orlando Jones. All three are brilliant actors, to be sure, but they don't half ham it up in this flick.

Well, alright, Irons hams it up in EVERY flick.

As a side note, casting Mumba's real-life sibling Omero as her character's younger brother was a stroke of genius. Not only does it make their relationship believable, but the boy's a better actor than many people twice as old and five times as famous as him. And his hairdo is frickin' awesome.

All in all, what should have been a really bad movie turned out to be one of the most entertaining flicks I've watched in a long time. And not just because of Samantha Mumba in skimpy clothing, although that obviously didn't hurt matters.