Bashing The Monkey

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With the exception of that time that I was working in a pub during some bloke's Stag night and I thought we'd just been raided by the police, I can honestly say that I have never seen a stripper in my life. However I imagine that they probably share a slight similarity with monster movies, in that 90% of what they do is a tease before revealing everything for the final 10%. So with a monster movie, you get a shot of a foot, then a silhouette, and then maybe a close up of an eye. Finally, and at the point that a stripper would be popping out her titty-boom-booms, you'll get the full body shot of the creature before it's swiftly destroyed with an A-bomb. Kong: Skull Island however spunks its wad up the wall before the opening title has even come up as during its first five minutes we essentially see Kong in all of his glory. In many ways, this is one of the more brilliant aspects of the movie because we're now left wondering where is left to go? If a stripper walks into a pub by opening the door with her already exposed peachy wah-wah's then what the hell is her show actually going to be? Well, in the case of Skull Island, what follows is an all-out orgy of weird creatures, adventure, and action. If a stripper were to follow the logic of this movie then I can only imagine that she'd leave the pub in a police van having turned the venue into a scene from fucking Caligula.

I Think We're Alone Now

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You know how everybody loves surprises? Well a few months ago I was unexpectedly treated to a meal that despite actually being a surprise itself subsequently resulted in a little surprise of its own. It caused me to shit my entire stomach out as a liquid. I took pills to try to calm the constant flow of anal-pissing but this just left me with the opposite problem. I didn't do a single crap for the next eight straight days. I mean, that's not normal, is it? I started to genuinely worry that I was eventually going to expand, contract, and then explode like a dying sun of stink-juice. Shortly after this the world was sucker-punched in the tits by the release of a trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane. "What the fuck is this?!" we all thought. In a world of fat internet nerds with a need for pop-culture gossip to help endure the reload time between tossing off, it's almost impossible to keep things a complete secret. And yet here we are. Eight years on from the release of Cloverfield, some sort of movie had been completely made without anybody suspecting a thing. The real question therefore was what kind of surprise would this new movie be? A nice one like that lovely meal that I was treated to.. or a not-so-nice-one like the next day of being battered to death by the back-door trots?

Why Are You All Wet, Baby?

Sometimes having a twist at the end of a film is a great idea; Who'd have thought it was the cripple? They were they same person all along? So Sarah Jessica Parker wasn't a horse? Twists are clever little devices that make a film seem smarter and change the context of everything. The trick to a good twist is to therefore allow the film to stand up to repeat viewings with the audience’s fresher perspective. A good example of this would be Christopher Nolan’s Memento in which we find out who has been giving Lenny the duff information regarding John G.

When the culprit is revealed, it is both shocking, logical and character building. Although if you're going to give dodgy facts, why hint towards killing John G? If it was me, I'd tattoo clues like ‘fired as editor from the Daily Mirror’, ‘name P. Morgan’, ‘face like a lesbian toad that's been moulded onto a fresh poo’.

However, in the same way as having a cock shaped like a pigs tail, a twist at the end isn't always a nice surprise. A bad example would be finding out that Bruce Willis was a ghost all along. I know we were all impressed by that the first time around but the more you watch The 6^th Sense the stupider it seems. For a start, if he is dead then how did he find out about the kid’s need for a psychologist and why was the kid not seeing a real psychologist too? And secondly, how did he not notice that since being shot by the nudist nutter, nobody has spoken one word to him. If I was Bruce Willis and I walked the streets for more than two minutes without someone shouting, “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker” then it'd seem only logical I was as dead as a turd. In fact, I think the only person who shouldn't assume they're alive when ignored for so long is Tarantino and that's only because he seems to not shut the fuck up long enough to allow anybody else a word in edge ways.

Shutter Island is the fourth film to be directed by Scorsese and star DiCaprio who since 2002 seems to have been prescribed like methadone to wean him off heavy doses of DeNiro. The story begins in 1954 with DiCaprio's Teddy Daniels heading towards a large prison island which unfortunately doesn't mean he's on his jollies to Australia. Instead he's about to investigate a mental asylum for a prisoner who has allegedly escaped their cell and disappeared. In charge of this island is the chameleonic Ben Kingsley who is once again physically unrecognisable. This time Sir Ben has cunningly taken on the guise of a bald man with a large nose and a little goatee beard.

As Teddy investigates the island he starts to suspect there is a larger conspiracy at play. It seems that each clue he uncovers points to the Asylum actually being a cover for holocaust-like experimentations. This is a theory which seems to be confirmed in Teddy's mind by the appearance of acting legend Max Von Sydow. Personally I think the most suspicious thing about Sydow is that he hasn't aged a fucking day since about 1973. However, what grabs Teddy's attention is that he speaks with a German accent and.. so.. therefore, must be a Nazi. To be fair whenever we meet a German, that is what we all think isn't it? Even if I was talking to the German humanitarian of the year as they received a pre-death saint hood, I'd still be picturing them with a toothbrush moustache and a swastika arm patch.

It's not that I think all Germans are Nazis but that I can't help but associate the two. In fact the last time I met a German the first thing I did was wave in a manner which I couldn't help but think accidentally looked like a Nazi salute. Meanwhile my friend tried to impress them by speaking the German phrase, “Arbeit macht frei”. In English that means, “Work sets you free” which, as he realised too late, was the slogan above the gates to Auschwitz. I guess we just kept putting our foot in it which is a little bit different to Teddy who seems to want Sydow to be condemned at the Nuremberg trial for simply having a bit of an accent.

Teddy however has a genuine excuse for his more violent out bursts of racism having witnessed first hand the atrocities of a concentration camp. In fact, it's Teddy’s flashbacks and hallucinations which prove to be the most interesting aspects of the film. Not only is he traumatised by his experiences of World War 2 he is also haunted by the memory of his now dead partner. Once again Michelle Williams pops up as a pain in the arse wife having perfected the role of rent-a-frump in both Brokeback Mountain and Blue Valentine. This also makes her the first of two dead wives to haunt DiCaprio's subconscious after Marion Cotillard wouldn't fuck off in Inception. I guess this just proves that it's true when Louis C.K. says that, “Women are non-violent but they will shit inside of your heart”.

In all honesty, everything about Shutter Island is great. It's a well made throw away B-movie with great acting, a suitably gloomy mood and a cool 1950's Hitchcock kind of look to it. It sort of exists in that little genre somewhere between thriller and horror. On the one hand it's a mystery movie and on the other it's set in an asylum where Ted Levine is a prison guard. You know if Silence of the Lambs’  Buffalo Bill is one of the sane ones then the inmates must be pretty fucking mental. There is in fact one scene in which the power goes down and they are all released from their cells. It's a bit like that scene in Jurassic Park but instead of dinosaurs running around, it’s people who like to paint pictures with shit and masturbate to their granny’s knickers.

If there's one thing that could make or break this film it is the inevitable twist at the end. For anyone who hasn't seen this movie then I'm about to ruin it for you so please stop reading. Seriously if you haven't seen Shutter Island and you're still here then just fuck off! What kind of cunt happily ruins a film for themselves? If you're up to this sentence and have never seen Shutter Island then I officially hate you. I bet you're the kind of cunt who goes hunting for their Christmas presents and can't keep a secret. Well, I've got a secret for you, your Mum has AIDs and she caught it from slipping your granddad’s warty cock up her arse. The twist is that not only did she love every second of it but your granddad caught AIDs from you when he cradle-fucked you as a baby.

…

For those who have seen the film, then of course that above paragraph doesn't apply to you. I'm sure your mothers have never even slept with your granddads, let alone been sodomised by them. Anywho, so as it turns out, Teddy has been a crazy all along and Sir Ben has given him the freedom of the grounds to live out his detective fantasy. Now… is it just me or is that also a little bit mental? I mean, where did Sir Ben learn his managerial skills? When I was in school, the headmaster asked me to pick a half eaten hardboiled egg out of a play-ground grid with my bare hands. Just that act alone made me want to tell the cunt to get fucked and do it himself. So how Sir Ben managed to convince his staff to free one of their violent inmates, allow him to run around in a frenzy and suspect them all to be Nazis I'll never know. As Teddy first arrives at the island he say's, “You seem a little on edge Marshall”. I'm not fucking surprised he's on edge. There's a freak running around inventing a holocaust conspiracy and the boss has clearly gone fucking nuts too. If I worked on that island, I'd have the unions so far up Sir Ben's arse that they were wearing him like a Gandhi condom.

In a way, the twist doesn't really work because it's just so stupid. However the film still survives its repeat viewing simply because the characters are so strong. It's also worth it just for the moment Sir Ben randomly asks Teddy, “Why are you all wet, baby?” I'm not sure about that sexy bald beast but where I'm from that's an awfully personal question to ask a psycho with a gun. For more of Sir Ben's randomness, fans may want to check out Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Not only does that include him sharply turning his head like a fucking meerkat on acid but he also shouts, “Quickly” with a tone that can only come from a man about four seconds away from shitting his pants.

For any other director, this film might be like a day off from work. With its B-movie sensibilities, it could easily be cheap and not worth a repeat, however Scorsese shows as much care and craftsmanship here as when he's making films in which Jo Pesci explodes into fits of what doctors call ‘violent cunt syndrome’ (VCS). Yes it's a little bit silly but it's also good fun. Even when the story might be a little bit unbelievable, the emotions of the characters are convincingly legitimate. The film ends with DiCaprio heading for a lobotomy. If this was Leo with his brain then I'm assuming his character in the sequel will be intellectually on par with the Leo who thought Titanic would end up being a decent movie. Despite the twist, which says more about Sir Ben's judgement than Teddy's sanity, this film is still worth a watch. It might not be up there with Raging Bull but it's good to see Scorsese isn't resting on his laurels in quite the same way that his former muse De Niro is. If you've got a spare few hours and want to see film featuring another one of DiCaprio's disastrous on-screen marriages, then this is the film for you.

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Need For Speed!

Once upon a time, the Wachowskis told us to imagine that there is no spoon. Easy enough to do with a piece of cutlery I suppose but a lot harder to apply to the Matrix Sequels. I know that there are great scenes in Reloaded and Revolutions, but let's face it, they do slightly ruin the original a bit. In the first one, we hear all about the mysterious Zion. In the second, we're shown it to be a plastic looking disco cave complete with a bunch of semi naked gimps dancing like tits to bloody Barbie Girl or whatever.

The whole fucking rave is cheesier than a tramps foreskin and if that's what we're fighting for, then fuck it, plug me back in. I'd rather be a happy fucking battery than part of that jigging crowd of twonks. By expanding on the world of the original and making it look shit, you're basically giving wrong answers to questions that made the first film great. It's like getting to finger Angelina Jolie and finding a huge pair of hairy testicles down her knickers. On face value she still looks great but secretly you can't help but be thinking about what bollocks is under the surface.

Following The Matrix franchise however, the siblings have so far only done one other movie. Speed Racer is their 2008 follow up and tells the story of a young racing driver who must choose to either join a corrupt sponsorship or remain independent and come under attack from them. Filmed almost completely on green screen, the film looks like a living cartoon and uses more colours than actually exist in the world. After just a few minutes, you start to wonder if the bright red is the colour on screen or simply evidence that your eyes have started to bleed. I think that watching this whilst high could genuinely cause brain-bubbles followed by schizophrenia and a lifetime of gormless dribbling.

When it came out, for some reason the critics decided to give it a bit of a slating. Just because it's a little bit crap, two star reviews where being hurled at it like an angry retard throwing shit at a mirror. I mean- it's not the best film in the world, but it's not bad. Beyond the look of the film, the cast is also really likeable with Emile Hirsch whose head is two sizes too big for him, John Goodman looking like he's had a stroke, Christina Ricci sporting that season's anorexic look and Roger Allam doing an impression of Tim Curry inside Gilderoy Lockhart's skin.

The plot, for what it is, unfortunately suffers from Matrix Sequel Syndrome in that it's way too fucking complicated. We're watching what looks like a live action version of Mario Kart with a comedy chimp in a hat, but the story is a convoluted mess of sports corruption, the stock market and industrial takeovers. The look and humour of the film is clearly aiming for a young audience but the story is like watching a cross between Wall Street and Days of Thunder whilst on magic mushrooms.

Also, like The Matrix Sequels, it's way too fucking long. Again, if it's a kids film, it really shouldn't go on for much more than 90mins. This however drags itself out for around 2 hours and 15 minutes , the same time it takes a 2 legged dog to find a safe place to shit, without it getting matted into its fur. At that running time, most kids will have hit puberty and grown their first pube before the credits start rolling. Annoyingly, there are just a few too many long, misplaced scenes which play out a bit like watching a pantomime with a serious business meeting. Kind of like going to watch Jack and the Beanstalk and spending half an hour watching Jack haggle for the beans based on the current magical fruit exchange rate. You end up not giving a single shit.

Despite all that however, I do still really like it simply because I find it to be genuinely sweet and good hearted. Financial bullshit aside, it's about a family who love each other and are just doing their best to stick together. You could get rid of all the 'Gordon Gecko' greed-is-good shite, and in all honesty I'd probably like it even more. In fact the bits that get me the most are the stuff involving the death of 'Speeds' older brother 'Rex' and how the family deal with it. Contrary to its bubblegum exterior everyone in the “Racer” family play their parts completely straight with some fairly heavy things going on. Not only is 'Pop' mourning the loss of his son, he also has to deal with the fact that the last time they spoke he told him that if he leaves now then he can never come back. The only thing to slightly spoil this scene is that before 'Rex' steps through the door you half expect Goodman to shout, 'Over the line' and pull a gun on him.

The stuff between 'Speed' and his parents are, in my opinion, genuinely touching with John Goodman and Susan Sarandon doing more than just turning up for the money. If I've got any other niggle regarding these scenes it's simply that I find Sarandon to be a bit of a hypocrite whenever she's giving driving advice. I'm not being funny, but the last time I saw that ginger gilf in charge of a car, she drove it off a fucking cliff. I haven't actually seen Thelma and Louise but I'm assuming it's about the incompetence of woman drivers and so if I was 'Speed' I'd tell her to shut the fuck up and keep her shitty, suicidal advice to herself. Go find your headscarf and wear it in another room, bitch.

The other interesting character here is 'Racer X' who has, in my humble opinion, a genuinely touching backstory. He looks a bit like if X-men's 'Cyclops' decided he was into visiting dungeons and wearing bondage and is, I guess, this films equivalent of 'Morpheus'. He's dependable, honourable, cool, and in all honesty, the spine of the movie. If there is any reason to revisit this film, other than seeing Christina Ricci's general face and body, it's to watch him knowing exactly what you find out at the end. It's not exactly a 'we're the same person, he's a ghost and it was the cripple all along' kind of affair, but it certainly adds a bit of weight to the movie.

The Wachowskis are important film-makers and this forgettable CG acid trip is one example of why. It might be a bit crap, but at least it is original and not stuffed up its own arse with pretentiousness- like The Matrix Sequels were. The directors also deserve credit for making a film that couldn't be any more different to The Matrix if they had tried. It's so different in fact, that it's a bit like Spielberg following War Horse with a pornographic slasher film or if Michael Bay followed up Transformers 3 with- well, just any good film would do. It'll be nobody's favourite movie, but I recommend it simply because of how refreshingly un-cynical it is. Maybe Speed Racer's plot is a bit confusing, but seems as most people can't even work out what gender Larry/Lana Wachowski is, the fact that we understand as much as we do should be appreciated. Regardless of whether Lana's knob is between her legs or in a jam-jar on the mantle, I don't care. As long as they keep making films as individual as Speed Racer and The Matrix, then I'll be happy.

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