Change Your Image
Weird Al
Reviews
Battlestar Galactica (2004)
Fantastically compelling DRAMA
Let's get one thing straight off the bat: I'm no sci-fi detractor. I have a big soft spot for the genre and once a year help run a major convention, so I'm not just a West Wing fan seeing the show from one angle (as some seem to suggest). Secondly, I love sci-fi but IMO the original BG was atrocious infantile rubbish. I detest some of the shallow artless crap the genre passes off as entertainment (that includes most of your output Mr Lucas, except ESB). Most of the old BSG's defenders are are looking at the thing with rose tinted spectacles because the new series isn't the simple updating they hoped for. Now then, I think the new BSG is the most compelling piece of drama on TV today. It IS drama first though and sci-fi second so all the Trekkies and Babylon 5 fans might have some adjusting to do. There have been many complaints about the lack of action, the prominence of political intrigue etc etc and while we can all debate whether that's good or not, IMO the attention to this kind of plot detail is one of the show's major strengths. There are failings of course - I find the constant overuse of zooms a little irritating, the use of 'frak' is just plain silly and very rarely yes I'd like to see the occasional big bust-up...but these really are small things. Sure there are other small details you could pick at to do the show down such as the styling of the technology as has been mentioned - e.g. no cordless phones and the silly octagonal thing - but they are just that: stylistic choices that are incongruous and may grate on first contact but then we use a faculty called SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF to move beyond that and enjoy the drama. The show of course isn't sci-fi in a traditional TV sense - it's not about exploring new worlds or encountering an array of weird (yet oddly humanoid) alien races, it's most definitely a straight drama using a science fiction setting. To my mind some of the very best sci-fi does this (much of Philip K Dick's work for example) and in that regard the series sits in very illustrious company indeed. Even those sci-fi fans who're unable to get past the show's various supposed hurdles must surely accept that a science fiction program that brings in massive audience numbers can only be a good thing. If nothing else, folks who wouldn't normally give shows/films with sci-fi settings a chance might now change their position. More viewers = more productions green-lighted = more stuff for fans of all persuasions.
Hei tai yang: Nan Jing da tu sha (1995)
Important subject worthy of a better treatment
Having seen men Behind the Sun I guess I hoped for an evolution in style & technique to match the larger scale of this movie. I was also quite interested to see someone make a hard-hitting fact-based fictionalised account of what happened during this most notorious of Japanese atrocities, but this is not it. This plays like a bottom-to-mid tier European Nazi exploitation movie from the 70s - e.g. SS Experiment Camp etc (perhaps more like Deported Women of the Special Section actually). Granted it has a greater scope and more people running around, but it resorts to the same cheap and cheerless device of lots of hapless non-actors limply falling over to the sound of ridiculously fake gunshots, spiced up with the occasional poorly executed 'shock' sequence. The admittedly horrible documentary footage is roughly spliced in between scenes so hackneyed that even these real images are robbed of much of their power. Watch channel 4's 'The Holocaust' (aired recently (still running?), as of 1 No 2006) for a genuinely disturbing documentary on the evils of war (featuring excellent in-context use of actual footage). This is the type of treatment the horror of Nanjing deserves, not this hackneyed exploitation garbage (a better executed exploitation movie minus the disrespectful use of stock footage would have been fine, but again this is not even a very good exploitation movie). Rating: 3 (5 as exploitation, 1 as a treatment of the subject).
Ling (1999)
What IS all the fuss about?
I had high hopes for this film. What I left with at the end was bitter disappointment. While admittedly there are one or two thoroughly creepy moments, overall I found the picture fairly dull and the 'big surprise' all too predictable. The appearance of probably the most common motif in the Japanese horror tradition had me groaning out loud. I can only assume that those who raved about this film have seen little else by way of Japanese horror cinema. Ring is certainly not the new dawn in horror cinema that it was mooted to be. Audition was far, far superior...see that instead (better still, watch one after the other and compare notes). 5/10
Dog Soldiers (2002)
Funny, bloody and hugely entertaining
Werewolf movies are enjoying something of a renaissance it seems. Unlike recent entries into the genre, Dog Soldiers is a straight down the line werewolf movie - it's not trying to be clever, not trying to mix genres and not trying to be stylistically distinguished. It's just out to entertain - and to my mind at least succeeds on all fronts. With the right amount of thrills, self parody and plain laugh out loud silliness (disembowelment hasn't been this funny since Braindead), it deserves to roundly trounce the stagnant fayre we're usually force-fed by Hollywood. Enjoy (we certainly did!).