Anybody revelling in the recent revival of the epic fantasy flick and expecting similar repercussions with The Golden Compass will be pretty unnerved by the shoddy results on display here.
While we, at first, put down our relentless fidgeting, itching, scratching and belching to poor seating arrangement, we quickly came to realise that it wasn't the chair causing our discomfort, it was this strange, manky moving cinematic sludge glaring before us.
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat. Or to be more accurate in this day and age, they're probably getting bird flu.
Nevertheless, it's not only the geese that are getting fat. All over Hollywood, producers and powerful studio executives gorge themselves after another year of profit. Once more the Hollywood Scrooges have cashed in on Christmas and generally taken a big shit on Tiny Tim. If we consider the Hollywood films that have been placed under the Christmas tree this year we'll find such shoddy gifts and returnable items as Fred Claus, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and The Perfect Holiday.
Yet one film released this Christmas stands out as the star on top of the tree, The Kite Runner. The seventh film from the gifted Marc Forster, director of Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and Stranger than Fiction to name a few. The Kite Runner is a story of friendship, taking a stand and the circularity of life. It tells the tale of Afghan refugee Amir, played by Scottish born Khalid Abdalla who featured in United 93. The story comes from Khaled Hosseini's best-selling book, with the screenplay by David Benioff who also worked with Forster on Stay. The film is a pretty accurate conversion of the book, although some information is changed and excluded as you may expect.
When being asked what we were going to the cinema to see by various members of our friends and family the reply was simply "The Nines," to which we'd be greeted by confused expressions and this exchange: “The What?” “It’s got Ryan Reynolds in it,” “Who?”
Ryan Reynolds' career has hardly taken off and with Van Wilder, Blade Trinity and The Amityville Horror remake under his belt it's not hard to see why. The man clearly needs a hit and with a back catalogue of romantic leads and action men personas that he flexes his shiny forehead into, it’s surprising that we’ve come out of The Nines thinking this low budget indie flick might be the thing to thrust him into superstardom.
This whimsical postmodern Disney offering marks a return to the bogus 'fish out of water' cycle, cemented in hammy 80s comedies like Splash!, Earth Girls Are Easy, Crocodile Dundee and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and 90s sequels Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Babe: Pig In The City.
In all those films, indigenous, naive characters are taken out of their usual environments and thrust into the (typically American) city for hokey comic effect. And so if you ever wanted to sadistically slap some sense into the sickly sweet, sugar-coated 'happy ever after' fairytale princess from Disney, and place her in the mean, competitive clutches of the 'real' world, then look no further than Disney's own Enchanted.
Before entering the cinema to watch Knocked Up, we were slightly unsure about how to prejudge this film. It was almost like a double edged sword. Countless trailers and critics reviews have dubbed this one of the funniest comedies of the year.
This comment always pisses us off - it's only August! We’re sure September, October and November have equally hilarious things to offer. But not December - that month is renowned for being full of shit Tim Allen Christmas cash-in films. So, the comedy of the year, we had to bear this in mind. Writer and director of Knocked Up is Judd Apatow was responsible for 2005’s 40 Year Old Virgin - a pretty decent film milking laughs at the expense of some American oddball whose cherry was surely getting quite mouldy. So, Apatow is back with another sex-based comedy film. Alarm bells started ringing; could this all be regurgitated from his previous film and presented in a different way?
A cleaned-up digital print for the 1980 true story of Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro), a Bronx bruiser who boxed his way to professional stardom, then lost everything to debilitating paranoia and a shocking inability to stop slapping everyone he knew.
Frequently voted as The Greatest Film of All Time by those with such little imagination they can’t find the beauty in Darby O’Gill and the Little People, director Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull is gorgeously shot in monochrome hues and is never less than a fascinating journey.
God, this is rubbish.
Let's face it: any movie which leaves you almost nostalgic for Eli Roth's original Hostel has got some serious issues. As turgid, juvenile and derivative as the first instalment was, this rushed-out follow up makes Part One look like it had Fellini on camera and David Mamet on scripting duties.
The story? Well, we'll cobble together what pieces we can find. Basically Hostel Part II is just a retread of the first film, in which a group of spoilt American students get tricked into staying at a resort which doubles up as a handy torture chamber - a place where rich people pay extortionate amounts of money for the pleasure of sticking power tools into screaming backpackers. The 'twist' this time around, however, is that our protagonists are exclusively female - meaning that Roth can play that all-important misogyny card to his heart's content.
It’s a well known fact that old people are absolutely fucking useless and generally get in everybody’s way. If they're not all whining about how winter is too cold then they're whining about how summer is too hot. You can’t bloody win.
Hollywood usually spews out more young actors and actresses quicker then X Factor produces one hit wonders. Not a day goes by without some new starlet popping up, leaving us scratching our heads while we try to work out who they are. However, the older generation is still lurking around like a bad rash, and they’ve all come together to make Wild Hogs - a film about riding motorbikes.
An American critic once remarked of David Lynch's Lost Highway: "for the first 15 minutes, it's the greatest film ever made. Why watch the rest?"
In a sense this could be applied to Sunshine - the new high-concept science fiction movie in which Cillian Murphy's team of intrepid astronauts set out on a mission to reignite the sun and save our 'dying planet'. Not that this ranks as one of the greatest cinematic achievements ever - hell, it's not even director Danny Boyle's best film - but Sunshine does suffer from one of the most disproportionately bad third acts in recent movie-memory. We're not going to dish out any spoilers here… but there's a definite Event Horizon feel to things by the time the credits roll.
Because hecklerspray is growing quicker then an obese child in a chip show, people are beginning to be kind to us and other us stuff for free which is always a plus in our books. Sometimes we also get invited to watch stuff which isn’t even out!
This week we weren’t quite whisked off in a limo to a glitzy premiere, but instead to a screening in a rough-looking cinema with other journalists who didn’t take kindly to us immaturely flicking popcorn at them. As you’ll know, 300 is currently riding high at the top of the US box office and has done so since its release. The same is expected here in the UK now it's finally out over here. But is it worth the hype?
There’s something of a British theme this time around, folks, what with two of the major releases over the next seven days having a distinctly Anglo-Saxon twist to them.
No, wait. Come back. There’s nothing to be scared of. Because - and believe us, hecklerspray has already scanned the heavens for signs of flying little piggies - these British films are actually quite good. Yes, the fart-lingering stench of The Full Monty and Snatch may have taken a temporary reprieve …
Under the starlight cover of darkness a secret press screening for the big screen version of The League of Gentleman has taken place.
No doubt all the lucky viewers were sworn to secrecy, but there’s always one that lets something slip.
The most fantastically bizarre bit of TV comedy in the last ten years has recieved the fat budget movie treatment. Apart from a smidgen of digital tinkering (let’s hope the new Doctor Who visual effects department aren’t involved), it’s all finished and ready to ship.
So, are we talking Bean or Brian here? Ladies, Gentleman and Dave, it’s time to find out…
