Film Review - Biggles (1986)

Biggles is based off the long running series of Books and stars Alex Hyde-White as Alex Ferguson, an American who finds himself travelling through a hole in time to World War 1 in 1917 where he meets the famous British pilot James "Biggles" Bigglesworth (Neil Dickson) but this won't be the only time the two will cross paths.

It's hard to know where to begin when describing this movie as quite frankly it just doesn't work at all, none of it really seems to pop and it feels two separate movies that have been pasted together to try and make a cohesive whole and as a result neither really stands out.

I mean all of the 1980's scenes are boring to watch with some not very funny comedy for the most part and the scenes in World War 1 which while they're quite good don't get much of a chance to shine for as soon as you get into those scenes and the story inside them ZAP! right back to the modern day stuff.

But the real problem with this movie is that Biggles himself doesn't feel like the star of his own movie, instead he feels like a supporting player to Ferguson as a lot of the film's main events revolve a lot more around him than around Biggles himself whose name is in the fucking title, I really wish the filmmakers had had the courage of their convictions and had made a proper Biggles movie.

And indeed that was the original idea for this movie, it was going to be a proper Biggles movie in the style of Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as being closer to the original books and that's what the aforementioned WW1 scenes give you the taste/promise of but the huge success of Back to the Future led to the shoehorning in of the time travel storyline which doesn't work at all and as a result you finish watching the movie feeling both cheated and angry which is how I felt.

However there are a couple of things I did like about this movie, the first of those as I said above are those scenes in WW1, they feel authentic, they're exciting to watch and they make you think "This is what I want from this movie" not pathetic jokes about Celebrity Dinners which have references to Schwarzenegger and Eastwood in them, give me a fucking break guys I don't want any of that in this movie, I want the good vs. evil, exciting adventure, aerial dogfights and brave heroes risking it all for Queen and Country.

The second is the film's theme song "Do You Want to be a Hero" by Jon Anderson which sadly is not used as effectively as it should be and the last thing is the performance by Peter Cushing as a retired British Colonel who brings some gravitas to the modern day scenes and delivers a very good performance but sadly he too feels underused which is a real shame as this would be his last ever role in a feature film.

So in closing, Biggles is not a film I enjoyed very much, it has a time travel storyline that feels shoehorned in, storylines and performances that are underused and underdeveloped and a general feeling of a film that is not only suffering an identity crisis but also feels like a missed opportunity in places, all involved should've either made a proper Biggles movie or not bothered at all, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Following the events of the first Hunger Games film, this sequel finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) back in her home District but her actions have inspired humanity to fight back, something she witnesses during her victor's tour but hearts on fire carry strong desires and rage deep within where no pain (No Pain) can be found.

I went into Catching Fire with very mixed expectations as I was not a huge fan of the first film in the series but an attractive preview plus my own adoration of Jennifer Lawrence pushed me over the edge to go and give this film a look despite being constantly reminded of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man.

But those fears are now unfounded in fact as I really enjoyed this 2nd film in the series and would rate it much higher than I would the first one, everything in this movie feels more refined, the world feels less showy as it did in the first film and the actors feel a lot more comfortable in their roles.

The first one I have to mention is Lawrence herself, she is completely captivating this time around even though I thought she was pretty good last time but here she holds your attention the entire time she's on screen and there are times where I just wanted to give her a cuddle and reassure her that it will all be okay, I also thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman was very good as well in his role and I also liked Donald Sutherland who has a much larger role here than he did in the first film though there were times where I couldn't help but think of his role on the Simpsons where he was the curator of the Jebediah Springfield Museum.

I do however have one complaint and that is that the film is a little too long, a good 10-15 minutes could've been cut out of this film and you would not have missed them all that much, I'm getting a little fed up with movies that go to a 2 and a half hour length for no good reason, what is wrong with a big film being 90-130 minutes long, anything beyond that just feels a waste of screen time as far as I'm concerned.

So yeah despite that one quibble I quite liked Catching Fire and would happily recommend it for all Hearts on Fire who might say to themselves "Katniss, KATNISS, KATNISSSSSS" beforehand, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010)

Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary made by Don Hahn and Peter Schneider that chronicles the rebirth of Walt Disney Pictures as a viable fighting force in animated movies once again in the 80's and 90's, movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin which became huge hits and changed the face of animated films as people saw them, but the road to success is never an easy one to travel.

As someone who loves going to animated movies at the cinema, I absolutely adored this documentary, it has a fantastic array of archival footage (the doco plays out in the exact same way the Senna documentary did in that it only has the voices of the participants and the footage from the time playing over it) as well as a wide array of people who worked there during that period from Hahn and Schneider to former chief Jeffrey Katzenberg to veteran directors John Musker and Ron Clements and down to the animators like Glen Keane.

Each and everyone involved has a fascinating story to tell and the doco also shows that while the films on the outside were enormously successful with theme park rides, huge ticket sales, glowing reviews from critics (Siskel and Ebert's reviews show up a couple of times) and high awards prestige, the inside story was anything but with the tragedy of losing Howard Ashman to AIDS, the fighting between the executives over the credit of their success and the eventual disintegration that led to the near 20 years of failure until 2010's Tangled signalled a new age of success for Disney once again.

There is however one complaint I have and that is I wished the doco had covered more of the production on Aladdin which would've made the doco about 10 minutes longer as Mermaid, Beauty and the Lion King are covered pretty well but Aladdin only gets a bit of a look in, I have no doubt that this is to do with what happened regarding Robin Williams and the deal that was made for him to voice the Genie and what happened afterwards, a bit of a shame but understandable at the same time.

But apart from that very minor quibble, this is a fantastic documentary that is a must see for any animation film fan out there or hell just film fans in general, 5 out of 5.

And Now, Why I Adore the CBS/Fox Video Collection

In the last of these remembrances of Australian VHS Brands, I take a look at what is arguably my favorite one of them all.

And that is the CBS/Fox Video Collection.

My fondness for this particular brand like the Village Roadshow brand started from my early years and a copy of "Give my Regards to Broad Street" which starred and was written by Paul McCartney and also starred our own Bryan Brown.

But it actually wasn't the film itself that took my attention it was one of the previews before it that did the job and it was for Return of the Jedi as the preview they used to promote it on their releases was the re release trailer from 1985 that started with the streaks of entering into Hyperspace and as a young child that image stayed with me.

A few years now pass and it's 1995 or thereabouts and I find myself in my Pop's house going through his video collection one afternoon and I found a couple of CBS/Fox tapes in it.

The two tapes he had from the CBS/Fox Video Collection were "Romancing the Stone" and "Revenge of the Nerds" and they grew on me there and then due to the lettering on the front label of the tape as well as the warning label on the top sticker as well as the small engraving of the logo on the top of the tape itself (CBS/Fox releases from that era have them so if you have one be sure to look for it, it's not hard to find.)

Needless to say I thought to myself "I wonder if either of these tapes will have that trailer with the streaks at the start on them" and I put both of them in the machine and sadly it wasn't either of them but the experience of those is still powerfully imprinted in my memory today from the background that looked like tiles you would get for your kitchen floor that had the typed out blue font for the warning at the start to the logo that came bursting onto the screen with the fanfare blaring (which I'm sure scared a few of us as young kids.)

And then came the announcement of "And Now, More Previews from the CBS/Fox Video Collection" and the letters came forging and at first you didn't quite know what they were and then you saw the word "Previews" come flying onto the screen and it was flashed up like it was flashlights in a city somewhere, it felt like an experience plus my Pop's lounge room was the right size to make that experience feel more real to you plus at the end of both of those tapes there was another warning and then a reprise of the logo which reminded you to rewind the tape before returning it to your video library.

A couple of years pass once more and it is 1997 and I was taken to the video shop to hire The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as I had now become a big fan of the Star Wars trilogy and I was really keen to see Jedi again as well as Empire for the first time as I hadn't seen it prior to then and when I opened up the case to Jedi I saw that it looked a lot like the two tapes my Pop had and sadly all I could see was the after film previews as the beginning of the tape was too far damaged to be able to watch and that included the start of the film, it wasn't until I found a copy to keep 11 years later did I learn what previews were in front of it needless to say I was a bit disappointed.

That year also KFC ran a special Johnny Quest promotion with their kids meal and one of the prizes you got was 3 free rentals of Family and Children films from the video shop it was 1 each week, this would become my introduction to the later CBS/Fox releases that the yellow and blue colored spines on them plus the ad for those just before the film started.

But lastly, my last memory of the CBS/Fox Video collection comes from the year 2000 and I find myself in my local video store and I see this image of Kurt Russell almost sticking out in front of me so I take a look at it and it's of Big Trouble in Little China which was one of their releases, needless to say when I got the chance I rented it as well as Mario Party 2 for the N64 and I enjoyed both at the time and 9 years later a copy of the CBS/Fox release of Big Trouble became mine to own.

And so, I wrap up this look back at my favorite VHS brands in Australia, it's been great to be able to share these memories with those that read them as they represent an era of films that I really love and hopefully for any Aussies reading this or any of the others, it brings back some memories of your own.

Please rewind this cassette before returning it to your Video Library.

Film Review - The Counselor (2013)

The Counselor is directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy and the story concerns the Counselor (Michael Fassbender) who proposes to his girlfriend Laura (Penelope Cruz) and who takes a job that could net him 20 million dollars, a job that could also go horribly wrong.

I was intrigued by the Counselor based off the previews I saw for the film as it looked like a dark and exciting film that I could find myself getting into, the addition of Fassbender being in the film had tipped the scales to the point where I decided to go and see the film, did it deliver the goods?

Sadly not as this film for me was a complete and total disaster, how much so, let thee count the ways:

The first reason is that the film's storyline is all over the place, scenes feel like they were pasted together from a longer edit of the film without any of the context to back them up, characterization feels very inconsistent, at times they're plotting and at other times they're sitting around drinking wine and admiring the pet Cheetahs they have and then there's the one scene where it literally feels like Ben Kenobi from Star Wars saying over it "She's had a great Disturbance in the Force, as if one single voice cried out in terror and was suddenly silenced, she fears something terrible has happened."

The second reason is that the actors themselves are a near complete bore to watch, most of the time it just feels like a bunch of A list stars indulging themselves in excess and privilege without any heart attached to it, Cruz is simply wasted in her role, Pitt does very little apart from look handsome in a Texas suit and Hat and Bardem continues his OTT acting from Skyfall.

But the real sin here is the utter waste of Fassbender, one of our finest actors at the moment and not even he can redeem this film as he just comes across as a complete bore and I just sat there thinking "How the fuck can you make Michael Fassbender boring, it just doesn't make any sense" as all he does basically is scowl, cry and recite his lines in a monotone voice, hopefully he reminds us with his next film that he truly is talented and that this is an unfortunate bump in the road of a very stellar career so far.

And the third reason is the horrible attitude the film displays at times, the first of those is the infamous Car scene hinted at in the preview which I just found to be disgusting and the other is the near complete lack of personality in the female characters, each of them are either:

A) Wearing jewellery that is just over sized to the point it looks like they're wearing a miniature jewellery store in their fingers and miniature chandeliers in their ears

B) Wearing clothing and heels that make them look like trophy women who marry only for money and not for love

and C) Just there mainly to act as a plot device and then be cast out when they're no longer needed.

I really thought we were better than this but obviously I was wrong.

There is however one thing I did like about the film and that was Diaz, she basically takes the film and runs away with it with her daring and calculating performance that seems to have found the right tone for the film whereas the other actors do not, thinking they need to be ACT-ING instead so they can be nominated for awards, give me a fucking break.

And so to wrap this up, I was not a fan of the Counselor, it was a mess story wise, boring performance wise and at times just horrible and disgusting, avoid this one at all costs as for me it's one of the year's worst films, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - Prisoners (2013)

Prisoners stars Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover, a small time repair man who heads to his neighbour's house to celebrate Thanksgiving when his young daughter and her friend go missing, Keller gets very determined to find her, no matter the cost.

It's hard to know where to begin when talking about this movie as in all honesty, I mainly thought it was just okay, nothing great but nothing all that terrible either, Jackman is sensational in his role and you believe fully his quest to find his lost daughter though at times his scenes where he gets angry made me think of when he was playing Wolverine, Jake Gyllenhall is also very good in his role and is a nice calming counterpoint to Jackman's increasing anger in frustration and I thought Viola Davis was very good as well in her small role.

But the film as a whole felt to me like a well worn path in terms of thrillers, the three key films it reminded me a lot of were River's Edge, Misery and the Silence of the Lambs and those three films I felt were superior to this film as to me the dark tones of Edge, the Abduction theme of Misery and the overall cold look of Lambs sort of began to blend together for me with the twist here being the children being kidnapped instead of the adults.

Those three other films were superior to this film in another way: They're not 2 and a half hours long, each of them is about 90 minutes to 2 hours long and for me Prisoners is simply too long for its own good and could've done with a good 20 minutes chopped from its running time, I'm kind of getting annoyed with films going over the 2 hour and 10 minute mark and while some films like the Place Beyond the Pines justified it, this film does not.

And so to wrap up, while I thought Prisoners was well made and has good performances, it also had an all too familiar feel for me and was simply too long and it's a bit of a shame as I like dark themed movies but this one missed the mark, 2 out of 5.