Hellboy (2004)

"Plus, you're nine. You're not old enough to be giving me advice!"

I cannot applaud highly enough the excellent decision to give a big Hollywood comic book blockbuster like Hellboy to art film maestro Guillermo Del Toro to direct; in his hands the film looks gorgeous, atmospheric, stylised, perfect. So much so, in fact, that it threatens to elevate a somewhat so-so script into excellence.

The basic concept isn't very original beyond the character of Hellboy himself: occult Nazis are all very Indiana Jones while the monsters look suspiciously Lovecraftian. Nor is the concept of a secret government agency gratifyingly original and, indeed, Professor Broom and his super powered team of mutants look awfully like the X-Men. But the story, and characters, are nevertheless worth following.

You don't need you to tell me how magnificent John Hurt is, but Ron Peelman is also magnificent, and the cast as a whole has nary a weak link. And the ending is particularly effective, as Myers fulfils his destiny as the virtuous Gakahad-type hero while Hellboy proves that not only can he use his free will to be a hero in spite of being a demon, but also gets the girl.

This film hasn't got an original bone in its body. But dammit, it's fun.

Kick-Ass (2010)

"How do I get hold of you?"

"You just contact the mayor's office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock."

This is a brilliant, quotable, comics-literate film, adapted by Jane Goldman from the graphic novel by Mark Millar and, er, I like to think of myself as comics-literate- I mean, I've read most things by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller when we all thought he was good, Garth Ennis etc, but I haven't read much by Mark Millar. I'm impressed, though.

It's a witty and knowing look at the super hero trope from a writer who knows these tropes. It's also highly metatextual and you know how I love that sort of thing; I particularly adored the bit where Dave points out that we shouldn't assume he survived just because he's the narrator. And Mindy. Mindy is the coolest thing ever, and possibly the finest exponent of extreme swearing in cinematic history. Yes, we could finally have the first genuinely brilliant film since Leaving Las Vegas that Nicolas Cage (brilliantly cast) has appeared in.

The concept is brilliant: what if someone in the real world tried to be a superhero, without powers and where punches do actual damage and stabs mean extensive hospital treatment? This is done with wit and charismatic performances, making a film that whizzes by most enjoyably. And a bloke even explodes in a microwave at one point.

The Fourth Kind (2009)

“I am God!”

Er, you know how I was confessing in my last blog post that I’d never seen The Exorcist? Well, this is the point where I really can’t avoid confessing to not having seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind either. Please don’t tell anyone; they might take my movie reviewing licence off me. If it’s any consolation then I’m fully prepared to bang on a bit about the effect of The X-Files in reviving all this UFO stuff in both pop culture and conspiracy theories, and how this sort of thing all feels a bit ‘90s by now.

Still, this is a good film, which has been unfairly criticised. The film isn’t actually making claims about real UFO’s: the incident in this film was made up and was never claimed as truth by anyone outside of the film. This film isn’t doing anything substantially different from what Orson Welles did with The War of the Worlds in 1938. It’s cleverly done, with a carefully maintained distinction between a documentary style “reality” and the “reconstruction”, taking up most of the film, which is shot more like a conventional drama. Most major characters are therefore played by two actors, one of whom is much better looking than the other. Clever.

The plot is easy to follow while at the same time being multi-layered and gloriously metatextual. SPOILER ALERT, but the twist at the end, that we may or may not have an unreliable narrator, shakes everything up unexpectedly at the end. The backstory is the usual Erik Von Daniken / Graham Hancock stuff, with a lot about Sumerians and hints towards those old theories about Utnapishtim from The Epic of Gilgamesh being an alien, all of which is familiar enough to need not much exposition so we can get on with the suspense.

This film is utterly terrifying. You will never think of owls in the same way again. Best of all is the way that we never quite see the aliens, or learn more than hints about them and what they want. This isn’t just cheaper but also far more frightening than would have been achieved by actually showing them or fleshing out a backstory. Everything is perfectly pitched to generate just the right level of paranoia.

A few observations: most of the cast were unknowns, but I recognised Corey Johnson from his appearance in Doctor Who. This is the only film I know of to have been set in Alaska, which seems in itself to be a strange, and alien landscape where people must commute to work by private plane: think of the carbon emissions!

And the dialogue over the end credits is possibly the most evil ending to a film in the entire history of cinema.

Doctor Who: Dalek

“You would make a good Dalek.”



Blimey. It’s been ages since my last review. And they probably won’t be all too frequent until the New Year, after which I’ll really get going. Anyway…

We’ve established the new format, with a story in the far future, a story in the past, some present day alien invasion hi-jinks, and a lot of rather clever and knowing deconstruction of the series and its tropes. Here, this time from Rob Shearman, we get what feels like our first “regular” story now that the format has been set up, but also one which develops the Time War stuff and the season’s arc.

The Doctor and Rose land in a museum of alien artifacts somewhere beneath Utah in 2012, where they find among other things the arm of a Slitheen and the head of a Revenge era Cyberman. Which would presumably be from the 29th century, but best not to dwell on such things. Anyway, they’re soon caught and taken to the museum’s owner, amoral tycoon Henry Van Statten. Van Statten is a fantastic villain, casually wiping the memories of people who annoy him and casually leaving them as homeless junkies on a street somewhere. He also owns the Internet, apparently, and also seems to somehow choose the President of the USA.

Van Statten has managed to capture a real alien creature, which he calls a “Metaltron”. This is of course a Dalek, and the moment the Doctor realises what else is in the room with him is, ahem, fantastic. Eccleston plays this very intensely indeed, and we soon discover that not only is this the last Dalek, but it was the Daleks the Time Lords were fighting against in the Time War. The Dalek and the Doctor are each the last of their kind, and both prisoners of Van Statten. This is a very different way of presenting a Dalek- not only is there only one, in a position of apparent vulnerability, but the whole Time War angle makes us look at them afresh.

Meanwhile, Rose goes off with Adam, Van Statten’s annoying underling, a character I couldn’t look at for more than two seconds without the word “Hollyoaks” occurring to me. This is not a good thing.

Adam spends his time cataloguing Van Statten’s artefacts, which automatically puts him in a lesser position to Rose, who’s experiencing the wonders of the universe in a rather better way than he is. She’s also better than him morally; Adam is willingly working for someone who’s more than a bit dodgy and doesn’t seem too concerned about the Dalek being tortured. But Rose is horrified, sympathising with the Dalek. They have a bit of a chat, and then Rose puts her hand on its dome. Oops. This is the sort of psychological Dalek cleverness we haven’t seen since the days of David Whitaker. I like it.

Even better, the Dalek then goes on to demonstrate exactly how cool it is, using its sucker to kill its former torturer Simmons (so that’s what they’re for!), downloading the whole Internet, and turning its mid-section right round to shoot behind it. And right through this the gun makes the same sound it used top in the ‘80s. This Dalek is pretty damn impressive. If I didn’t know better I’d suspect they were going all out to show just how scary a single Dalek is just so they can really freak us out by showing hordes upon hordes of them at the end of the season. Of course, it probably won’t happen.

We get the obligatory stairs scene, of course; it may not be doing anything Remembrance of the Daleks hasn’t already done, but it’s no less cool for that. And I loved the cold inhuman efficiency of the Dalek activating the sprinkler system and simply electrocuting everyone. This is Dalek behaviour circa The Daleks’ Master Plan.

The Dalek conversation with the Doctor is just as good, getting to the heart of the Daleks and the Doctor’s relationship with them. Without orders the Dalek doesn’t know what to do, so it simply intends to revert to its default behaviour and just kill everyone. But the Doctor’s outburst (“Why don’t you just die?”) raises some uncomfortable parallels.

Rose ends up trapped behind the closing door with the Dalek, seemingly doomed. This has particular resonance after Jackie demanded of the Doctor last episode whether her daughter was safe. Naturally, the Doctor takes this out on Van Statten, a total git who’s entirely deserving of the abuse, but the terrible guilt he feels is obvious. There’s quite a lot going on between this scene between Van Statten and Goddard, too, as power gradually drains away from the one to the other. Van Statten’s authority suddenly means nothing.

Of course Rose is alive, and has “contaminated” the Dalek with her humanity, not something which would be welcome to an absolute racial supremacist. And once we, the audience, know that, we get a bit of comic relief with the Doctor (“Broken. Broken. Hairdryer.”) And then the Dalek goes sunbathing. What else?

The ending is most satisfying indeed. Rose forces the Doctor to face what his survivor’s guilt has done to him as he’s the one pointing the gun at the Dalek, not vice versa. But then, on the other hand, Rose is made to be complicit in the Dalek’s suicide. In other news, Van Statten gets his comeuppance as Goddard takes over and wipes his memory. Finally, the obligatory Time War conversation finishes things off, as the Doctor confirms to Rose that he’s definitely the last of his people as it “feels like there’s no one.”



Well, that’s just got to be another 5/5, which means this season so far is doing really rather well. I’ll score a story less that 5/5 at some point, honest!