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Soulmate (2013)
Hello, I'm a ghost! Look at my white face! Awfully sorry for scaring you back there!
To be honest, Soulmate is a semi-decent film, in an escapist-fantasy-about-vulnerable-woman-who-meets- unattainable-man sort of way, but what it's not by any stretch of the imagination, is a horror film. And it's this fact that kind of makes it a victim of its own construction; the slow build of the first third (which is both effectively creepy and unsettling) ends up working against the film by setting a tone that the leads the big "reveal" and it's fallout to seem utterly silly and laughable. It's literally like Emily Bronte started a ghost story, and then it was picked up and finished by an aspiring self published YA author who's done too much Twilight fan fiction. What starts with one set of audience promises, just dives into a Gothic soap opera which aside from being a crippling disappointment, I found impossible to take seriously. If the film had launched straight in with the "reveal" (which it could easily have done without losing anything in terms of the narrative), I think it would have set a bar it could have sustained and been a reasonably engaging fantasy drama. As it stands, though it's just a very disjointed and untraditional ghost story that pulls in two directions and doesn't really succeed in getting anywhere in either.
Lord of Tears (2013)
Acting - 0 Owlman - 1
The only thing horrific about this film is the lead actor. This is unquestionably the worst performance I've EVER seen, in any medium. Just excruciating. Why was he cast? How? And it's not as if the cast as is poor, in fact the quality of the support, (especially Lexy Hulme who was wonderfully warm and quirky and mesmerising) makes Douglas's performance all the more painful. The film's one-way chemistry was so cringe inducing I actually felt like writing to his co-star to apologise. The fact that he even struggles to portray an attraction to the genuinely endearing performance of a pretty girl, is even more damning.
But the massive problem it creates, is that because of the nature of the film, a terrible central performance isn't something you can just overlook. The film is designed to be a haunting, dread fuelled tale about an entity with an owl's head, but all the creepy cinematography, sound design and unsettling visuals in the world are worthless against a lead actor who fundamentally cannot sell any of it to an audience. Trust me, I desperately wanted to love this film, but thanks in whole to the terrible lead, it's nothing more than a huge waste of some really great elements. By all means ignore this review and give it a go, but within ten minutes I guarantee you'll be in total agreement.
Cosmopolis (2012)
The film that film was NOT invented for
An artsy film about an exec riding across town in a limo bumping into various characters who all deliver unbelievably pretentious dialog like authors breaking the fourth wall. Total self important twoddle trying to dress itself up as something relevant and smart but succeeding only in making you want to demand your money back, with damages. It was neither compelling, smart, sympathetic or vaguely interesting. It was a cringe inducing stab at highbrow garbage that might have worked better as a theatre production for people who find value in deciphering clunky exposition and who shower with delight in the vomitous spray of purple prosed dialog. Unquestionably the worst and least productive two hours of Cronenberg's life, including the summation of all time he spent on the lavatory in the last month.
Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (2012)
This is not a review, it's a WARNING
Found footage films, lets face it, they're much more miss than hit, but some of these films don't even get loaded into the chamber, and this is where you'll find Lost Coast tapes. I feel duty bound to WARN you not to watch this film because I have just wasted a precious hour and twenty five minutes of my life on this large roll of celluloid lavatory paper and whilst I have lost that time forever, I feel that it's not too late to save you. Yes YOU, fan of found footage films; because even you, with your love of Troll Hunter, and Rec and VHS, may be thinking 'OOoh this has a 4.1 rating on IMDb, it's in the zone where it MIGHT appeal to me as a fan of this type of stuff' must say NO. Yes it's a found footage film, but remember that "found footage", just means just that. What you have to ask yourself is: "found footage of what?" Well, I'll tell you - an hour and 25 minutes of PEOPLE. People talking, people driving, people arguing, people behaving irritatingly and nonsensically, people providing painful exposition, people pointing at stuff with torches, people running around in the dark, and people breathing rapidly in that way that actors always try to act 'out of breath'. OH what was that? A tree. Oh what was that?!? A very very distant flash of what possibly might have been a hairy extremity. OK yeah, but hold on because RIGHT over here I'll show you a BIGFOOT!! Here it comes, ready? Really ready?? OoOoh a shiny thing over there in the corner! Let me just go into the dark for a bit and investigate that. This is like 90 minutes of pass the parcel and when you get to the end, you realise your parents forgot to stick a present inside.
I figure if ONE person reads this review and opts out of watching this abysmal pointless junk, then I have done humanity a service.... Please, don't even be curious about this one, don't give it the satisfaction of doing a large Bigfoot sized poo all your expectations. If you hear about a twist, or are indeed even faintly curious about it, it makes NO sense and will annoy you even more. If you wanna ignore my words like the grizzled drunken harbinger that everyone always ignores in a horror film, then please for the love of God at least forward this rubbish to the 1 hour 15 mark and watch it from there. Then at least I can be safe in the knowledge that I've saved you 80 minutes of your life. You are very welcome my film watching friends.
Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan (2012)
The pinnacle of bad
The Angels take Manhattan is a fitting end to the first part of Rory and Amy - series 7. Sorry, did I say "Rory and Amy – series 7"? I of course, meant "Doctor Who –series 7". But it's an easy mistake to make given that these long-standing companions have not only outstayed their welcome like party guests unable to take the hint of constant yawns and watch checking, but have bizarrely become something of a fixation for script writers. In fact for their farewell episode, battling the weeping angels in New York under the direction of yet another New Who bad penny, River Song - the good Doctor has been pushed so far onto the sidelines that you can't help but wonder Who's show you're actually watching (pun intended).
The Angels take Manhattan is the pinnacle of everything bad about the show's current incarnation. The slow start swiftly gives way to a rattling pace, jumping left right and centre amidst a bombardment of babbly explanations on the run as the characters attempt to keep up with their fifty minute deadline. Meanwhile Moffat this time decides to use Weeping Angels in an alternate universe (anyone spot the Detroit Lions winning the Superbowl on the New York Times front cover?) to once again pointedly weave a tale about time being fixed and strange, cause and effect and paradoxes. Once more, the story delves into its wonderful box of gadgets and props marked 'Deus Ex Machina' to provide a veritable treasure trove of things to get them through every potential writing wall they run into.
This all begins with the book that Song has written outlining the progression of events for the entire story. Even the Doctor himself admits he has no idea how or why such a thing came to be in his pocket at the start of the episode. "How does anything get there?" he muses, "I've given up asking". Of course we could tell him that Moffat stuck it there, but that would really only draw attention to the fact that between the gadgets, the props, the Ponds, and his "wife", the Doctor has become nothing more than a frenetic narrative pinball, pinging around, rarely even knowing what's going on or how to deal with it.
"Where is he?" he asks of Rory, pacing backwards and forwards as River consults her immensely convenient and wholly inexplicable 'RORY FINDER' gadget that can apparently locate Rorys that have been lost in space but not in time. And thankfully the professor has all the answers, and the answers that she doesn't have, Amy does - sparing the poor befuddled TimeLord from wracking his brains over the secret code evidently exposed through the book's chapter titles. And let's not forget the good old sonic screwdriver. A device that once upon at time only used sonic energy to open locks and cut through things, but now has the ability to do absolutely everything in the entire universe, including: 'Determining how tightly your hand is being held by a statue'.
And so, after having been pinged about for another 50 minutes reacting to narrative events and being directed by better informed, wiser, and more decisive companions, we arrive at the story's dramatic climax where of course the Doctor saves the day. Oh no, hang on, he doesn't, it's RORY that saves the day by single-handedly working out how to employ the paradox to destroy the Angels whilst the Doctor is presumably tackling a very tricky winding staircase. Oh and lets not forget that love too plays a part, yes; the power of the immense love that drives both Rory and Amy to take this leap of faith for each other; a love so powerful that it exists only when it is forcibly rammed into these recurring situations in the complete absence of any genuine chemistry, performance, endearment or for the most part, script. Do we really buy into such self sacrifice purely because Moffat makes his ensemble puppets say the right words at climactic dramatic moments? Not personally.
And so the Doctor comes skidding along at the eleventh hour like a dramatic bystander to witness the net result of what everyone else has managed to achieve in his absence and you start thinking, 'why was he even in this episode?' For my money this is probably the ultimate "useless Doctor" story and the pinnacle of the evolution of this formulaic writing that's led to the character being utterly lost amidst a recurring cast of frankly,extremely dull and predictable characters. The Doctor is no longer the centre of his stories, no longer a scientific genius, no longer the cynical, clever, disconnected, inventive, dangerous, yet benevolent Timelord. He's become the goofy companion of his own tales.
I sincerely hope that now the Ponds have finally said their farewells is that we can get some kind of return to the character's roots, and form, and a rediscovering of the genre that's made it such a massive hit for 50 years.
Oh, on the plus side, Smith does a great job with what he's given, and the weeping angels are as scary as ever in this
Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987)
fantastic!
All the hype is really true. Rock 'n' roll nightmare, aka 'The Edge Of Hell' really is the greatest, most unintentionally hilarious horror film you will ever see. Whichever dingy second hand basement store bins you have to trawl through, or seedy lowlifes you have to bribe - you simply must own this film! The awful editing, and the bad sound dubbing are just the beginning. The amount of time, effort and attention to detail that went into this film is staggering... I'm sure it must have been narrowly overlooked for Oscars.
If special effects don't bowl you over, then the acting surely will. It boasts a fantastic cast, my particular favourite of which is a guy called 'Stig'. He's the band's awful drummer, and comes from England, or maybe New Zealand, or is it South Africa? Ah who knows, but whatever that attempt at an accent is it's completely hilarious. Stig is one of the main characters though and integral to the plot when he suddenly becomes an American after he meets a woman in his bathroom who turns into an old man dribbling tomato paste. Then he becomes a fantastic drummer, hears about a lake, and a hand comes out of his stomach. Confused?? Yep, well so was I... The dialogue is just fantastic.. From the hysterically awful 'Piano bed' conversation to the many great one-liners like 'I'm sure Phil's not dead or anything or he would have called..'.
The suspense is built up masterfully with techniques like: getting one of the actresses to waggle her hand behind the bedroom curtains, and having the mighty Mr Thor carelessly but obviously throw his pen to one side and bend down to pick it up as some bizarre rubber monster thing flies over his head. And the end... talk about one of THE greatest moments in cinematic history.
This is the one film in the entire world that everyone simply MUST own, it is just so incredibly funny, awful and hugely entertaining that you'll be watching it at least once a month. So if you can find it, then get it immediately! You'll have a rare opportunity to own both the worst film in the entire world and one of the greatest films in the entire world in one box!