Quantum of Solace (2008)

 "Bond, if you could avoid killing every possible lead, it would be appreciated."

Finally I've caught up in my Bond marathon. I saw this film at the cinema in 2008, but I haven't seen anything since. All things Bond from this point forward are new territory for me. 

As for this one, though... it surprised me. Oh, I'm not saying it's one of the better Bond films because it certainly isn't. It deserves praise for it's non-excessive run time, but it has flaws. The many action set pieces are entertaining but don't come remotely close to equalling those of Casino Royale. Olga Kurylenko impresses as Camille, a character with depth who earns Bond's respect, while Gemma Arterton is also good as Strawberry Fields(!) who, as tradition dictates, falls for Bond, but ends up dying with a touch of the grand guignol. And yet...

The villain, the plot, the scheme- to engineer a coup in Bolivia and profit from control of the nation's water- lacks a certain excitement. Bond is cut loose from MI6 and on the run, albeit with M's role being ambiguous.. but how many times have we seen this? Compared to its predecessor, this film ends up seeming lacklustre by comparison.

And yet...none of that makes it a bad film, just a flawed one. And, on this second viewing,hot on the heels of seeing Casino Royale, I can see what they may have been trying to do. Yes, Daniel Craig's Bond lacks the flippant charm of his predecessors, but the character has depth. The fim sees him working through his feelings about Vesper, finally forgiving her (and himself), as urged by Matheson's dying words, and we end with him finally getting revenge.

And, across both films together, a shadowy organisation is set up- no spoilers, please, but perhaps SPECTRE?

All of this may well be going somewhere. If so, this film may be more quietly impressive than it appears on first glance.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

 "The desert is merciless. It takes everything from you."

It's up in the air, at this point, whether I'm going to blog the Clone Wars series, as there are over a hundred bloody episodes. Eek. But it seemed worthwhile to have a look at the initial TV film and experience Ahsoka's first appearance, having only known her from the recent live action stuff on Disney Plus.

All the same, I rather enjoyed this. I'm not sure I liked the rather odd animation style, but this was a nice little bit of fanwank to pass the time. You could tell the voice actors were different- although kudos for getting both Samuel L Jackson and Christopher Lee- but for the most part they were quite convincing.

The story, a sinister attempt at diplomatic skulduggery on the part of Count Dooku to use Jabba the Hutt's bizarrely cute son as a pawn against the Republic, is rather good, though. So is the nuanced characterisation of Anakin Skywalker which, if anything, is better than anything we see onscreen during the prequels. But, of course, the main reason for watching this is to meet a very young, enthusiastic, rather awesome Ahsoka as she becomes Anakin's apprentice against his will and, rather ttouchingly, a genuine bond starts to fall. This rather pivotal bit of characterisation is handled very well indeed.

I also enjoyed the campest Hutt in history, and the comedic incompetence of the separatist droids that is, quite rightly, played for laughs. This probably shouldn't be seen as any more than what it is, but I rather enjoyed it.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

 "Tokyo Police Corporation will give us more plentiful lives..."

Two years after the delightfully depraved Machine Girl, Yoshihiro Nishimura returns with this hilariously blood-soaked masterpiece of an over-the-top gore fest that has a point to it, as dystopias often do.

The film is making no attempt to hide the strong influence of RoboCop- we even have similar delightfully twisted TV adverts- in its Tokyo of the near future where the privatised police force have the silhouette of samurai and are a law unto themselves. There's a lot of savage satire of modern Japan, from corporate culture to sexual harrassment on the bullet train.

There's a lot of grand guignol here. The gore is neither realistic nor intended to be, which actually makes the film feel in less bad taste and less challenging for the squeamish, but there's no denying that it's over the top and pretty much as far as you can go. This future Tokyo is plagued by mutant "engineers", who, when wounded, sprout grotesque mutations from the injured body part... and yes, we see these for all sorts of body parts. Yes, including those ones.

The film is cleverer than it may seem, though. As soon as we get the Key Man's big, over-the-top supervillain origin story we're reminded that he's just a distraction, and that the true enemy is unaccountable power in the shape of police privitisation and corruption. The hero, Ruka, is an honest, good cop, but by the end of the film we realise she's the only police officer in the city who isn't corrupt and sadistic. In hindsight, the fact that the police chief keeps a limbless, disfigured gimp girl as a slave may offer a bit of a clue that these may not be the good guys.

This film is a masterpiece, as metatextual as it is gory, with the script cleverly making explicit that the final scenes are literally Ruka vs. a sequence of end of level bosses. This film very much is the gore fest of reputation, but it's so much more than that.

Martyrs (2008)

 "It's so easy to create a victim, young lady. So easy."

I'd be amazed if there was a more disturbing film than this in all of existence. Immediately after watching it I, being quite hardcore, had an experience I'd never before undergone in all of my forty-five years. I felt... not sick, there was no prospect of vomiting, buty something analogous to it. I went into a cold sweat. All this from the profound sense of existential dread by which I, an atheist with stoic and existentialist philosophical sympathies (although, of course Marcus Aurelius would obviously beat Jean-Paul Sartre in a fight), was overwhelmed with. It was a profoundly cathartic and satisfing experience. No other film has ever done that to me.

I shall say as little as possible about the plot: existential dread is a dish best served cold. I shall say that, yes, there's a lot of gore in this film, but the gore is not there to give us a distasteful voyeuristic pleasure. It is necessary. It is instrumental. It exists in order to hammer home (literally, at one point) the hard philosophical subtext that is fare more horrific, for all its abstractness, than any of the hard-to-watch gore.

The film pulls no punches. It brutally exposes the cruelties of life, the absurdity of mortality, the inevitability of suffering and the certainty of death. And yet the final, devastating revelation may, perhaps, contain a kernel of hope. As Existentialists know, in a meaningless universe, we are free to create our own meaning. And there can be no greater freedom.

The acting, the direction, the visual storytelling and especially the storytelling are exquisite, whatever else one may think. This film, despite being truly great in my view, is not one I can honestly recommend to any but the most hardy soul.

The Machine Girl (2008)

 "Well? How do you like my drill bra?"

This  is, quite obviously, a B movie: the premise is a girl avenging her younger brother against murderous bullies linked to the Yakuza, lots of rather eccellent grand guignol gore happening, and, er, her arm being chopped off and replaced with a machine gun which she can somehow mentally control.As you do.

This is, essentially, B movie heaven. Our heroine, never changing from her sailor girl uniform for the benefit of you chaps who enjoy that sort of thing, is first introducedin a gloriouly gory vignette before we flash back twelve months and discover how sge came to be the avenging cyborg that she is.

One thing is certain: any decent owner of a garage would nbe able to equipo any girl with a machine gun for an arm. Drill bras are definitely a thing. Chainsaws really do work like that. 

The plot is gloroiusly and knowingly silly. This is the goriest film I've ever probably seen in my life, but the gore- with its many sprays of CGI blood- is cartoonish enough to amuse all but the most squeamish.

Then there's the awful CGI shurikens, but they're part of the charm, as are the Yakuza and ninjas. This very gory film is almost stereotypically Japanese. The gory revenge set pieces are brilliant.

If you don't love this film, you're wrong. That is all.

Valkyrie (2008)

“We have to show the world that not all of us are like him.”

This is an extremely exciting, entertaining and dramatic film full of tension and suspense as (in spite of inevitably knowing that the plot doesn’t succeed) we follow through the workings of the plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 by Count Claus Von Stauffenberg, Ludwig Beck and various other members of the German (in many cases Prussian) conservative establishment who feel that Hitler and Nazism have gone too far.

And the result is gripping. This is a film that had me on the edge of the seat. In a sense it could hardly have been otherwise, as the historical events are pretty bloody cinematic in the first place. But the whole thing is well executed. Yes, Tom Cruise is pretty wooden, but there’s a magnificent cast of mainly British character actors, with Bill Nighy standing out in particular, but we also get Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard in a straight role, Danny Webb, Ian McNiece, Tom Hollander and more. As a Hollywood war film with loads of suspense the film certainly succeeds.

And yet... does the film not whitewash Von Stauffenberg, Beck and the other members of the plot? Historians seem to disagree on Von Stauffenberg’s views- was he an anti-Semite but one who felt that the Holocsust was going too far? He was certainly no liberal, or democrat; he believed in German dominance over Poland; and he wanted a Germany with its 1914 borders plus Germany and the Sudetenland. This is, perhaps, the best we could have expected given where the Overton window was in Nazi Germany, but it’s a shame these shades of grey were washed over and the plotters were portrayed simply as heroes. They deserve respect and remembrance for what they did, but they fought for Nazi Germany. I think I shall let Roger Bartlett from The Great Escape have the last word here:

“Look, sir, you talk about the High Command and the Luftwaffe, and then you talk about the Gestapo and the SS. To me, they're the same! We're fighting the bloody lot! There's only one way to put it, sir: they are the common enemies of everyone who believes in freedom. If the High Command didn't approve of Hitler, then why didn't they throw him out?”

The July 1944 plot was too little, too late.

Mamma Mia! (2008)

“Nurse! Donkey testicles, quickly!"

Ok, I suppose after the last few years I can't quite say I don't like musicals. No, I'll never be a huge fan of show tunes, but the genre is much broader than that. But anyone who knows me will know that, open-minded to all sorts of delightfully weird music that I am, I have pretty much zero tolerance for chart pop, which is cynical, depressing, exploitative, unlistenable and vile. So why do I like Abba?

Well, Abba are the poster girls and boys of a more innocent time, when "pop" encompassed a broader range than today's horrible world of girl bands and boy bands, wankers like Cowell and his fellow amoral svengalis, and horribly compressed, autotuned, incredibly narrow "music" that no longer appeals to ordinary people. But Abba? They wrote their on songs, played their own instruments, hurt no one. It was a very different world.

Hence the joyous stage show, and this rather fun film with its inexplicable number of stars. I mean, Meryl Streep? She's incredibly classy, garlanded with Oscars, appears only in the most serious films, is pretty much America's answer to Dame Maggie Smith... yet she deigns to appear in a bit of fun like this. And no, she most certainly cannot sing. But, frankly, who cares? She's giving it a go, as is Pierce Brosnan, whose singing looks good only next to hers.

The plot, bizarrely, with its farcical moments and rigid structure, only needs a bit of crossdressing to look suspiciously like a Shakespeare comedy. But this kind of structure works, and the plot is very cleverly woven around the songs and, while there is conflict and drama, things always remain suitably light and fluffy. A delight.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

“I just don't like getting old!

This is an odd film, only loosely based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which it's based, which takes its central conceit- a man who is born old and lives life backwards- almost as an incidental detail at times and feels just as much, if not more so, a chronicle of the short twentieth century from 1918 to 2004.

The non-linear narrative is clever, as a dying Daisy has her daughter read Benjamin's diary to her as Hurricane Katrina approaches. Thus we have two perhaps unreliable narrators, gaps, different pints of view, a narrative which is never coded as neutral or omniscient. The fairytale quality is constant, from the haunting tale of the blind clockmaker who makes a clock to bring back his dead son to the reading aloud in the present day. Brad Pitt is an ok star, f an inevitable one for a David Fincher film, with Cate Blanchett outshining him a little.

Inevitably there's a picaresque quality, and the sense that the framing of the film, as a tragic love story between Benjamin and Daisy, is just one complex way of looking at that big, complex thing that is life. There's a rather interesting sequence in which Ben, narrating, details a huge number of ordinary human actions from various different Parisians that cause Daisy to be hit by a car and her ballet career to end. And yet, later, it turns out that Caroline was never aware of her mother's illustrious career. We lead multiple lives, all of us.

A thoughtful and philosophical film, then, if an odd one. But one that has, I think, a lot to say beneath its surface.

The Punisher: War Zone (2008)

"Who punishes you?"

The first Punisher film was, well, a load of late '80s tat with Dolph Lundgren, but fun for that very reason. The second one was, well, shite. This is, in spite of a decent but workmanlike script, elevated by the stylish direction and talented cast into something special.

The script is pretty good, f not great, and gives us Microchip- Wayne Knight is superb- and Jigsaw himself- Dominic West is transcendentally good. The film lives and breathes through its excellent direction; camera angles, framing, use of light are all a cut above what one might expect and Lexi Alexander shows an understanding of how to make an action film work narratively. And then there’s Norn Iron’s very own Ray Stevenson: unlike either Dolph Lundgren or Thomas Jane, he IS Frank Castle, playing the stubborn stoicism of the character while hinting just enough at the pathos beneath.

All this is applied to a pretty par-for-the-course action film plot, but one that allows the central character breathe and one that explores the natural consequences of his actions as he murders an undercover operative. The film emphasises with the Punisher but, importantly, respects his motives without pretending he’s a good guy. Ultimately, though, this is a well-made action film that respects the source material and is cast well. Unexpectedly good.

Doomsday (2008)

“In the land of the infected, the immune man is king."

 This s easily the greatest Scottish post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie with mediaeval knights and steam locomotives ever made. Bar none.

Yes, the start is perhaps a bit ropey, very exposition-heavy and quite blatantly nothing but exposition, exposition, exposition as it gives us a backstory of a Scotland (well, Britain north of a reconstituted Hadrian's Wall- that would be just south of Wallsend's high street, a bizarre way to think of Mrs Llamastrangler's home town) quarantined because of a nasty virus, causing the British government to abandon and brutalise people in ways that probably mean Nicola Sturgeon died crying "I told you so" although, to be fair, the PM's Glaswegian functionary is just as evil to Londoners later.

But then it gets good. Really good, proper B movie fun. Proper Mad Max aesthetics and car chases, cannibalism, Molotov cocktails, glorious ultraviolence, Siouxie and the Banshees, loads of gore, not a lot of sentimentality in spite of  Major Eden's potentially tear-jerking backstory, and Malcolm McDowell holding forth speechifying splendidly in a mediaeval castle, presiding over a medieval society. In the twenty-first century. This is top B-movie stuff. And very well-directed too. There are Roman echoes, with Hadrian's Wall and some of the Mad Max lot evoking painted Picts.

The cast is superb, from Sean Pertwee's horrible end to David O'Hara's cynical baddie to the ever- sublime Malcolm McDowell, but the badass Rhona Mitra holds it all together. A film most definitely worth watching.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

"You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry..."

Well, that was a bit disappointing. It wasn't awful, not quite; I'm glad they didn't just do the bloody origin. But, I mean, come on- Edward Norton has no bloody charisma. And, in spite of lots of CGI action, the direction just isn't that exciting.

I mean, it's nice to hear the telly theme tune as incidental music. It's nice to see a CGI Abomination. It's nice to see a sort of origin for Samuel Sterns becoming the Leader but with literally no climax; the actual cinematic equivalent of bad sex.

I suppose the treatment of the origin during the opening titles is neat and, as with Iron Man, it doesn't bother with any of that secret identity nonsense; everyone knows Bruce is the Hulk, so has to wander the western hemisphere like it's the '70s. Plus Liv Tyler, Tim Roth and William Hurt are all ok.

But, CGI spectacle aside, this film is boring. A good Hulk film needs a charismatic lead actor, and Edward Norton is no Mark Ruffalo. And no, a cameo from Lou Ferrigno doesn't make it right.

So the second ever Marvel film is a proper misstep. It's not surprising how little influence this film has had on what came after. Eminently skippable.

Iron Man (2008)

“I’m just not the hero type. Clearly.”

 Obviously I've seen this film before. It's just that it was before the blog, and I didn't blog the two sequels at the time because I hadn't blogged the originals- incidentally, that's why I haven't yet blogged Captain America: Civil War. But now it's catch up time.

This is, of course, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film. The fact that it was awesome has a lot to answer for. But awesome it is, largely because it's a solidly executed, scripted and realised action film. But there's more. To begin with, here's a triumphant piece of casting at its centre. This is the film that resurrected the career of ex-junkie Robert Downey Jr, returning him to A list status by giving him the role of Tony Stark, the part he was born to play.

It's also a rare example of a film making the correct choice in doing the origin story- usually a bad move for a superhero film, But Iron Man's origin is not too long-winded, full of action, and easily updated from Vietnam to Afghanistan. But mostly it's about Downey's perfect Tony Stark, the superb rock soundtrack, the solid storytelling. But it's more than that. This is a carefully constructed start to a cinematic universe, with SHIELD subtly introduced with Agent Coulson and, in the first MCU post-credits sequence, Nick Fury. And then there are the little things- Pepper, played by a major star; Happy; "Ten Rings", Jeff Bridges as an authentic Obadiah Stane. This is easily the best Marvel film up to this point- still one of the best- and the harbinger of great things to come.#

All this, and Stan as Hugh Hefner...

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

"Dr. Manning, suck my ectoplasmic schwanztucker!"

It’s unusual to see the combination of auteur director and a Hollywood comic book blockbuster, but the first Hellboy film gave us that with Guillermo Del Toro. Now, though, we have a sequel, without anything like the need for exposition, and it feels as though Del Toro has been released by the success of the previous film from the studio’s constraints and can truly put his stamp on the film.

This is clear from the start, with a John Hurt-narrated flashback from what looks rather like Middle Earth is done in the style of a Tool video, and is the first of the film’s countless visual triumphs, ranging from “tooth fairies” to a psychopathic beanstalk. All this is sufficiently done with sufficient awesomeness that you barely notice the main baddie is played by... Luke Goss from Bros. Yes indeed.

It’s not all visual awesomeness, though; solid plotting, superb characterisation and splendid central performances from Ron Perlman and Selma Blair are also essential ingredients as, bizarrely, is the comedy German accent provided by none other than Seth MacFarlane. Similarly awesome is the psychogeography in which, beneath the surface of New York's boroughs, there lurk troll markets and other such things. This evokes Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, China Mieville and, indeed, points towards Doctor Who's Face the Raven but, more to the point, is awesome to see being handled by Del Toro.

There's a moral here; be brave, get a good director and let them do whatever the hell they want.

Frost/Nixon (2008)

”Hello, good evening and welcome!”

“I don’t actually say that...”

For all that Ron Howard is an unflashy director his style certainly works, and his work on bringing this excellent Peter Morgan stage play to cinema is the perfect example. Oh, its stage origins are certainly very obvious, but there’s nothing wrong with that. What matters is the extraordinary performances, with Michael Sheen once again perfectly inhabiting a real figure in the form of David Frost as we know he can, but just as much with the equally sublime Frank Langella, who may not look or sound like Nixon but, for the length of the film, simply is him.

The script is of course superb, bizarre though it is to see everyone’s least favourite BBC director general John Birt as a character in a film. The four interviews are treated and shown as though they were rounds in a boxing match; this film is the Rocky of political interviewing, always reminding us of Frost’s apolitical nature and light entertainment background. It makes for gripping viewing, with high stakes for everyone, and the time just flies by while watching. We see Frost genuinely struggle and Nixon’s confession, when it comes, feels both earned and deeply powerful. The film is a triumph.

Perhaps the true centre of the film, though, is Nixon’s drunken phone call to Frost and the huge chip on his shoulder about his class background that is revealed. Nixon was a fascinating man, a character of Shakespearean depths and an ambiguous legacy, certainly tragic, an introvert in an extroverted profession and, beneath it all, a human being. Sheen may be superb in playing the mannerisms of a talented but uncomplicated man, but Langella deserves real credit for conveying such fathomless depths.

The Dark Knight (2008)

"Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person?"

I may have changed my mind about this film a bit. I first saw it about eight years ago (in Los Angeles!) and my impressions were that it worked well as a film but not so well as a part of the Batman myth is, being more interested in pursuing the then-contemporary themes of terrorism, civil liberties (which are, don't get me wrong, important) and surveillance, hence the rather. crowbarred-in scene with Batman and Lucius Fox monitoring the people of Gotham on a bunch of monitors.

That's still, I think, a concern. But eight years on it seems not to loom so large, and the film seems a much better experience. Heath Ledger is a magnificent Joker, intelligent in his madness and articulate in his pursuit of chaos. It's perhaps a very idiosyncratic take on the character, but just about close enough to the original. Again it's a complex plot, weaving the tragedy of Harvey Dent into a tale of how the Joker grows from minor sideshow beside the important work of going after the mob to existential threat to Gotham itself. All this and we find time for a trip to Hong Kong just to find a mob boss. A lot gets packed into these Christopher Nolan Batman films.

It's odd to see Maggie Gyllenhaal as the recast Rachel, but she does a splendid job. Christian Bale is adequate as always and Gary Oldman was still born to play Jim Gordon. Aaron Eckhart and Michael Caine are superb but, yeah, the film belongs to Ledger. It would even if he hadn't died so shortly afterwards. He's the James Dean of our generation, but it would be much better if instead of that he was still around.

I enjoyed the film this time around, and felt as though it respected the characters rather better than I previously thought. Behind all the spectacle there's some real depth to a film that really seems to have divided the fan from the general viewer..

Wanted (2008)

"This is me. Taking back control."

Grr. Don't talk to me about "taking back control". I'll be glad to see the back of 2016.

I watched this film at the suggestion of Mrs Llamastrangler as she hates it and wanted me to administer a good spanking in my blog. The things we do for love, eh? This is the most awful film I've seen since The Black Knight, and that's saying something.

Actually I suspect that the original comic book (which I haven't read) is likely to have been quite good; there's nothing wrong with the intrinsic concept of a beaten down, cuckolded office drone finding out that he's connected to a rather cool secret society of assassins and at last gets to be cool. The twist is pretty effective, too, and, in fact, I don't think the script is the problem at all here.

No; it's the awful direction from the enfant terrible of Central Asia, a man who comes with a certain reputation and from whom I expected better. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with an ever-moving camera or even with the things that happen with bullets in this film, but here it's just style over substance. The curved trajectories of the bullets (er, yes) and the  over-use of the same CGI tricks give an impression of style over substance, of a strongly emphasised visual style which doesn't actually mean anything and gets in the way of both the characters and the story. The visual style isn't just annoying; it's actually a barrier.

Also, it's noticeable that Angelina Jolie's character, Fox, is there only to look cool and spout exposition rather than have a character as such or, indeed, a first name, which is a shame. Still, at least we get Nine Inch Nails on the soundtrack and the performances are good. It's just st that the direction has to spoil everything and turn a film that could have been something into... this.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008)

"I'll be bored to death by sheep and hobbits!"

Yes, you guessed correctly; I watched this with Mrs Llamastrangler, being a 39 year old man who doesn't usually watch films aimed at teenage girls. But this was an entertaining and diverting film which held my attention throughout, however illegal I may think it should be to be that young. And it's weird seeing QI's very own Alan Davies as a father figure.

It's a standard plot for a film aimed at teenage girls, really, but I enjoyed the fact that it's set in,of all places, Eastbourne. I also enjoyed the fact that the PE teacher is Osgood from Doctor Who, and the very deliberately obvious animatronic cat. It's fair to say this isn't the sort of film I'd probably choose to watch, but it's well-acted, shot and written for its audience and even I enjoyed it.

One-Eyed Monster (2008)

"Circumcise it to oblivion with an axe!"

It had to happen: a slasher movie where a bunch of people making a porn film (including a certain Ron Jeremy, who is apparently famous in that world) are slowly attacked and killed by, er, a disembodied penis. Yes, quite. I'm not exactly saying it's good, but the WTF factor keeps you watching to the end.

There's not much more to add in the sense of things I'd normally mention, really. I suppose I should say that Amber Benson off of Buffy, while ostensibly the star, doesn't get much to do, but that sort of comment feels irrelevant to a film like this.

We get Ron Jeremy dying because the alien steals his huge cock. We get a machine designed to simulate celebrity vaginas for the gentleman's pleasure. We get an old man who encountered such a floating homicidal or is in Vietnam. The black guy lives!

Er, yes. This film defies criticism, but it rewards your ghoulish curiosity by keeping you agog and incredulous. See what you think...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

"You're not my father!!!"

Harrison Ford has aged nineteen years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so it's 1957. McCarthyism, rock 'n' roll, "I like Ike", flying saucers, Indy having the Fonz for a son. Yep, it's the '50s, all right. And it's a good and entertaining film with a nicely twisty-turny plot. Except... is it just me who thinks Cold War Russians just aren't the baddies that the Nazis were?

The film also suffers from the fact that Denholm Elliott is dead and Sean Connery has retired, leaving Ford and Karen Allen as the only characters from earlier film, although John Hurt and Ray Winstone ably fill the British-character-actor-shaped hole. Cate Blanchett is a good baddie, the locations and set pieces are great, and even Shia LaBeouf is mostly acceptable. It's nice to have a film in this series that deals with El Dorado and the mysterious cities of gold (a phrase that puts the theme tune to a certain '80s cartoon in my head!!!). And it's an enjoyable tour of '50s tropes, with the artifacts this time being alien in nature (Erich Von Daniken a decade and a half early) and even a nuclear test befitting the Atomic Age. It's a shame Indy will eventually get cancer.

But something stops this film from being great instead of just very good. Perhaps it's a lack of polish to the dialogue but I rather suspect it's the lack of Nazis..

Saw V (2008)

"They're connected. So in the end all of the pieces will fit together."

Veteran readers of this blog will recall that I blogged the first four of these films four years ago, and rather enjoyed the intricate plotting and clever final reveals that these films have always had. But I always had my qualms, being of a somewhat liberal bent, as to whether John Kramer's brutal attitude to law and order was endorsed by the authorial voice. I finally stopped watching, though, after the gore went a little too far. I'm not very squeamish, but I have my limits.

Still, it's time to return to the final few films in the series, starting with this one: I hate to leave a job unfinished. And it's a good 'un; the plotting is as intricate and superb as ever, with a cruel twist at the end in which Strahm not only dies horribly but is framed for Hoffman's crimes. It was surprisingly good to get back into this series of films; the familiar Twisted Pictures logo put a huge smile on my face.

We begin with a typical torture puzzle from Jigsaw, the details of which, I think, we shall draw a veil over. The difference, of course, is that he does what's required and dies anyway, as it is Hoffman, not Kramer, who is in charge. Crucially, those who, like myself, see absolutely no moral difference between Hoffman and Kramer. They're just different types of psychopath.

Strahm, the poor bloke, is certainly warned from the start not to enquire further, but he is certainly the good guy here. Sadly, though, he's no match for the late, evil, clever Jigsaw, whose control over his intricate plans, and indeed his wife, extend well beyond death. He reminds me very much, I think, of Ian Brady. It seems absurd that the films can continue on and on after the demise of the central character, but they do, and it never feels silly.

Mark Hoffman, meanwhile, is praised and promoted, the smug bastard. At least we know, even at this point, that he will eventually get his brutal comeuppance. We see flashbacks to his first meeting with Kramer, and everything is neatly retconned for him to have been Jigsaw's accomplice all the time. There is a discussion about "ethics" between these two evil men, as Kramer is under delusions that he is somehow less evil; he rages against a "corrupt legal system that puts murderers back on the streets" but, rather revealingly, conspicuously fails to give a monkeys about the wrongfully convicted.

The film centres around an intricate, sadistic trap for a group of people involved in corruption surrounding a building that proved to be a death trap, one if whom is Julie Benz from Angel. It's a clever sequence, in which it is their failure to work together, as intended, which dooms them; the Saw franchise is back on form.

I must say that Strahm's eventual death is needlessly horrific, but this is bloody good. I hope this standard can be kept up.