‘You beautiful idiot!’: Pound Shop Flix does The Martian War

Alright Party People?

That’s right, as promised, here is the post on The Asylum’s The Martian themed Mockbuster The Martian War. Called ‘Martian Land’ in America -a better title, for reasons I will note in the conclusion- this film farted onto the straight-to-DVD scene in America on October 6th 2020; a mere four days after the release of The Martian. Besides the Orange colouring/ Large fishbowl helmet of the DVD sleeve design, the only real thing the film seems to share with The Martian is a setting on the planet Mars. They might be pushing their luck in other ways, but no-one could accuse The Asylum of ripping off the script of the Matt Damon flick. Which is a shame, because it almost certainly would have been better if they did.

That’s right folks, surprising no-one, TMW is a bad, bad film. Not unwatchable you understand, in fact (ranking spoiler alert), I’d probably watch it before watching previous Pound Shop Flix Dark Crimes or Malice in Wonderland. It has a semblance of a plot and characters who, while not exactly three dimensional, are not completely objectionable. But its pretty bloody boring. I first suspected i was in for a somewhat dull ride when I noticed the disc read ‘PG’- Parental Guidance. In the world of schlocky cinema, most truly crappy flix have the decency to try and hide their essential rubbishness behind a good deal of sex and violence. See for instance, another of The Asylum’s output: The Coed and the Zombie Stoner. Or don’t. Probably don’t. So the fact that this film was supposedly safe for kids, made me think we might be in for a dull and bad, rather than amusingly-bad, time. This was not helped by the opening monologue, which gave an overview of how humans came to Mars; we screwed up Earth so bad with climate change we had to leave and colonise Mars. This kind of opening narration needs a certain gravitas to sell the idea. It lacked it, unfortunately. Between the lack of any interesting music, boring (probably stock) footage of rockets taking off, and neither the writing or its delivery having any feeling of weight, this came across as more ‘Geography Teacher’ than Morgan Freeman.

From there, things don’t ever really improve. I’m not going to go at them too hard for the science because 1) I’m no scientist myself and 2) Obviously accuracy was not the aim here. But safe to say, even a layman such as I can tell that the science does not hold up. What science you ask? Well…
The story revolves around a kind of Mega-storm, kicked off by the eruption of a long dormant Martian Volcano. Humanity has been terraforming Mars to make it more habitable, and in doing so have raised the temperature enough to re-activate this Volcano. The Mega-storm begins, and is large enough to threaten all life on Mars-which, at least in the script, appears to be largely limited to ‘Mars New York’ and ‘Mars Los Angeles’.* You see, storms are normal, and the domes over the major cities normally protect them. But this storm is too big! Why? How? Who fucking cares? Not the script! Anyway, this then leads to a team of an Arrogant Scientist, his Scientist ex-Wife, her capable, manly-yet-tender new lover and their child trying to ‘kill’ the storm using electro-magnetic fields. The storm is dangerous, it disrupts their efforts and a Military Officer -whose rank and jurisdiction are never made clear- keeps trying to stop them. One of them dies. Another ancillary character dies. They win in the end. Despite this storm threatening to kill everyone on Mars (which we are led to believe is large number of people), we don’t often see anyone outside of the small speaking cast.** As such, the family drama elements are far easier to buy into than the scale or stakes of the storm. Shame the characters are too thin for us to really care about!

Speaking of characters, it should be said that the acting in this film is actually…okay. It’s not going to have troubled any award shows, and it does sometimes feel stiff, like people reading lines rather than characters expressing feelings. BUT, none of it is genuinely awful. The actors put more effort into making this nonsense work than they needed to. Indeed, it’s almost disappointing, from the viewers point of view; none of the acting is in so-bad-its-good territory- there are no Troll 2 moments here. It’s just not great. But given the weightless dialogue they’re given, and the fact that they have to do things like LITERALLY PRETEND TO USE A SCREEN THAT’S NOT THERE, they do okay.

In this scene, Arianna Afsar has to pretend to be tapping away at a screen outside of the viewer’s eye. We are never shown the screen and it doesn’t actually appear to exist as part of the set! She’s tapping a table, in other words.

So, far, so boring. The film is bad, the actors try their best. The films poor production quality (due to a tiny budget of under one million dollars) is betrayed in almost every aspect. But the true sign of this is in the set design and the CGI. If you were drunk enough, it is probably here you’d find some joy in this film! From the very beginning, the set looks closer to an 80s/ 90s Sci-fi TV show than a film. It’s full of nondescript wires and a few blinking lights, and the actors stand on gantries and in front of crates that are very obviously a set, rather than a believable facility or ship. It actually reminds me of old episodes of BBC comedy Red Dwarf . And while I love Red Dwarf, no-one should be aiming to match 90’s BBC TV production quality in a 2015 feature film.

But perhaps the very worst example of all this is in the scene where a ‘crowd’ ‘runs’ out of a tunnel and away from the storm. I attempted to get a screen grab of it but it doesn’t do justice to how bad it looks in motion. It’s very obviously a group of people running superimposed upon an image. I played games on my Playstation 1 that had more convincing CGI sequences.

Overall then, a bad film. But not in a fun way! The Martian War features cheap set design, no interesting hooks or twists and, interestingly, absolutely no War. The actors and actresses give it a go, but can’t lift a dull, nonsensical script or bring this above the level of the cheap cash grab that it is. Watch The Martian instead, or one of The Asylums’ more overtly schlocky flix. The science in Sharknado probably holds up better. Oh and one last point: two characters (Ellie (Arianna Afsar) and Ida (Chloe Farnworth)) share a lesbian relationship. They are both young and conventionally pretty. I wish it was a sign of progress but honestly, it feels more like a bit of cheap tokenism and/ or baiting straight male viewers. The characters don’t have the depth to make the relationship interesting or feel at all real and the relationship is entirely unexplored. The closest we get is Ida fainting and Ellie exclaiming at her: ‘You beautiful idiot’! My theory is further bolstered by the camerawork in one scene which begins with a lingering shot of one of the Chloe Farnworth’s figure. If you’re not going to be B-Movie outrageous OR flesh out characters, then don’t do this!

Boo, hiss.

Best performance: The Imaginary Ipad

Worst Offence: Tie between the ‘PG’ rating and the ending, where they just stopped filming as they ran out of money.

Elevator Pitch: *Snorts cocaine off of a copy of The Martian*

1 Star!: *

-Tom

*When Futurama came up with ‘New New York’ it was meant to be a joke guys… This is just lazy as hell!

**There are only 13 speaking parts.

You can’t keep a good blog down. Or this one I guess. POUND SHOP FLIX IS BACK!!!

Alright party people?

This blog was last updated on 22/10/20, with a post writing about GI Joe: A Real American Hero: The Movie- that’s nearly a year ago! After that- as I had always tried to warn was a possibility- the well ran dry and I stopped posting. I wanted some free time back, and kept missing deadline for posting updates, so I let it all slide quietly into the night.

But since then, a yearning has grown in me; you might say a desire, nay, a NEED. Like Bruce Banner I find something inside me yearns to be free. While he had his unstoppable green rage monster, I have something far more frightening. A desperate need to mock sub-par cinematic efforts!!!
Also there’s a pandemic and I’m out of work…
So here we are!

Sarcasm aside, I’m glad to be back, and I hope you, dear reader, will enjoy the posts I have in store. I’ve already picked up a handful of films, and will surely secure more when the need arises/ the mood takes me. However, as the news never stops reminding us, we live in unprecedented times, and I think this resurgence of blogging requires a bit of a soft reset. I’m keeping my FILM RANKINGS as they were, but Pound Shop Flicks is going to have to be a spiritual, rather than literal, name for the time being. I don’t often go past pound shops at the moment, and it feels irresponsible to make special trips to pick up DVDs for this blog. As such I will be buying films from other sources like Ebay and CEX’s website. Also, while I’ll try to maintain the impulse/ semi-random nature of my choices, not having a shelf-ful of stuff in front of me makes this a little harder, so it may be that I end up picking up films I’ve heard of before, or even searching for particular ones. But rest assured, I promise to try and make them stinkers.

This brings me now, to my first pick: THE MARTIAN WAR :

Let me tell you reader: This is the Good Shit. The Martian War (TMW) is a direct to DVD film – called ‘Martian Land’ in America- produced by an independent American film company called ‘The Asylum’. You might have heard of ‘Mockbusters’- films which attempt to befuddle consumers via presentation into thinking they are actually different films entirely. The Asylum are the daddies of Mockbusters* and TMW appears to be a prime example. TMW, as you can see above/ below, is ripping off The Martian, the Matt Damon flick from 2015 where he goes to Mars and which got nominated for 7 Oscars. The Asylum’s business model seems to be thus: try and turn a profit by keeping the films low budget (usually under a Million dollars) and making them look just enough like particular popular Hollywood films to fool people into buying them.

I won’t lie to you, stumbling upon this film in CEX pleased me greatly. This kind of nonsense is what I started this blog for. In fact, I could write about ONLY films made by ‘The Asylum’ and it would keep me going a while. For whatever its worth, the plot doesn’t appear to bare much relation to that of The Martian, except in that, ‘The Human Race Can’t Go Home’ (to Earth), and The Martian is chiefly about Matt Damon trying to go home (to Earth). The film stars Alan Pietruszewski, Lane Townsend and Jennifer Dorogi. I shall be watching and posting about this by 31/08/2020. Count on it!

Until then my friends, here’s some links to stuff you might find interesting!:

A piece on the Satanic Panic that enveloped Dungeons and Dragons in absurd controversy and produced some beautiful cinematic drek: https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/dungeons-and-dragons/cinema-movies-dd/

Bill and Ted 3 is coming a looks like good fun. Check out the Trailers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hAL7emClFM

See you soon!

-Tom

*And are the people behind Sharknado

GI Joe: A Real American Hero: The Movie: The Blog Post

Good day blog browsers and hagiographers of the hokey! Apologies for the lateness on this one. Welcome to another bonus post on the Pound Shop Flix blog, this time devoted to the animated cartoon feature length special: GI Joe: A Real American Hero: The Movie.
Those of you who read the blog a few weeks back will remember I tackled the modern, live action take on the world of GI JOE. It was, I felt mostly devoid of the charm and fun of good GI Joe product. GI Joe: A Real American Hero: The Movie (GIJ:ARAH:TM) on the other hand has that shit in spades. Its campy, colourful and silly–in fact it’s almost too much…

Consider how you might watch the 1966 Batman series for its knowing barminess, or how you might watch one of the lesser 80s Arnie films with your tongue wedged in your cheek; appreciating it despite (or perhaps BECAUSE of) the fact that you, intelligent and sexy reader, know it to be absurd? That is how you should approach GIJ:ARAH:TM. In truth, I don’t know if you’ll get anything out of this film if you don’t already like GI Joe, or have an affection for this kind of 80s cartoon. But if you do, it’s a bit of a treat.
The plot follows the Joes and the villainous COBRA tussling over custody of the Broadcast Energy Transmitter (BET); a nonsense thingymajig which can supposedly solve the worlds energy crisis, or in the wrong hands, destroy humanity. Standard enough GI Joe fare. But this is a feature length movie dammit!

So yes, the film goes above and beyond what you might expect from an episode of the cartoon series. There are so many ideas in this movie. The Joes are all here, along with a band of new recruits, Lt. Falcon: a screw up trying to make good- whose also Joe leader Duke’s half-brother- is central, Sgt Slaughter (the wrestler who also appeared in the cartoon as an animated version of himself) and his Renegades appear too. On the other side there’s Cobra-La: The ancient hidden civilisation of snake people who created Cobra Commander and now have an arsenal of fungal warheads which will devolve humanity back to the status of apes with the help of the BET. It’s just a runaway train of wacky ideas.

Sgt Slaughter: Wrestler, Action Figure, Hunk.

Indeed this onslaught of deranged creative fury presents something of a problem for the audience, in that anyone NOT familiar with these ideas BEFORE coming into the film would likely feel pretty lost. For the kids it’s aimed at though it’s loud, fun and broad enough in it’s character strokes to be entertaining. And for grown-ups like me who should know better, it’s a wildly over-the-top dive into a time before our post-modern, ironic gaze exposed the sheer absurdity of this sort of thing.

Plus Burgess Meredith, The Penguin from the 1966 Batman show plays the villain, which is tremendous.

One final point, this film had an exceedingly high number of flashes/ flashing lights in it. If you’re epileptic I would exercise caution with it. They probably wouldn’t make it like this were it released today.

3 stars! *** (But more like 2 if you’re not a GI Joe fan).

I’ll be back with another post this week to set up this week’s film, in a return to the blogs normal format.

-Tom

Rub some funk on it: Pound Shop Flix watches Evolution (2001)

Hey guys, apologies on being a day late, but here we are! I sat down and watched Evolution a couple of days ago, a film I tracked down for three reasons: 1) I remember the cartoon. 2)It has Julianne Moore in it. 3) I knew it would come cheap and I had £2 on a CEX voucher.

The film was pretty much exactly how I imagined it, only with more jokes about the rectums of various creatures. I knew it was going to be sub-ghostbusters and not really that good, but expected some cheesy fun. And yeah, that’s what I got. I actually enjoyed this film more than I expected to though, with it’s four leads being engaging and enjoyable to watch (if written somewhat one- dimensionally) and the CGI aliens are actually pretty creative! So without further ado let’s get this bonus blog under way!

Evolution initially follows two school science teachers in Arizona who stumble upon Alien life. Said life quickly grows exponentially out of control and the pesky ol’ government step in- leading to a team of the two teachers, one federal scientist and a teenage wannabe firefighter coming together to stop the still-growing aliens through hijinks and spunk.

These four leads are Ira (David Duchovny, Biology teacher and former leading light of American science who screwed up); Harry (Geology teacher whose real love is coaching the school Women’s Volleyball Team, played by Orlando Jones); Allison (Federal Scientist in charge of containing the Aliens, oddly prone to pratfalls and played by Julianne Moore); and Wayne (Wannabe Fireman and cocksure teen played by Sean William Scott).

Let’s start with what’s good:

The film genuinely did engage me and I was never bored. I think this should, at least in part, be attributed to the way that the Alien threat is framed as being ever-growing and spiraling way out of control. There’s a sense that the characters don’t have a lot of time to work with and there are no wasted scenes; the plot moves along quickly, without feeling rushed. So even though this is pretty by the numbers action-comedy for a firmly audience, its never allowed to sag and so its flaws don’t have time to bother you all that much.

Next up, the leads are all good. I understand now why David Duchovny was, like, THE leading man for a while. He’s handsome and funny in a kind of lethargic, effortless way. Orland Jones lands a lot of actual laughs in this film- even if is character is oddly creepy and playing to stereotypes. Sean William Scott plays a version of the same character he always plays- cocksure, crass but significantly more likeable than his character Stiffler from the American Pie series. And finally Julianne Moore is great, lifting a nothing role of ‘sexy scientist who pratfalls all the time in case the male viewers get intimidated by her intelligence’ into feeling like an actual human being.

Julianne Moore as a firefighter is THE AESTHETIC

Finally, there is a moment where Harry tackles a girl out of the clutches of a shrieking, flying alien which is easily the best and also most ridiculous stunt in the whole film that I enjoyed a lot. Can’t find a gif of it so here’s the next best thing:

Imagine Jeff Hardy is hanging from an alien bird creature and Edge is Orlando Jones and you’re pretty much there.

Now, onto the not so good stuff:

The film is family-friendly action/ comedy popcorn stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but its also only really a middling example of said archetype. It doesn’t teach any interesting lessons, have any real emotional weight or even excite on the level of a really good example. The CGI is good but a lot of the actual action is pretty pedestrian. There are some good jokes, but there are just as many bad ones and none of them are belly-busters. I can’t imagine many people seeing this film and going back to it again very often. It’s okay, but everything it does is done better elsewhere. If you’re an adult you’re probably better off watching Ghostbusters, which the film apes, and if you’re a child/ watching with a child, you’d be better off with something like E.T.

The other major issue I have with it is how dated a lot of the humour is. This is not entirely the film’s fault- I can hardly blame it for the passage of time and the fact that things change. But even allowing for this there is some gross stuff in here about Harry showering with his Women’s (Girls, more accurately) Volleyball Team and how he thinks Allison probably just needs a ‘good humping’ to unwind a bit. Indeed most of this bollocks is foisted on Orlando Jones’s shoulders- the fact that Harry is still basically likeable is a testament to his charisma (to be fair he does get to say ‘Rub some Funk on it’ in relation to Wayne’s singing, which is hilarious). Additionally, there are a straight-up Freudian number of arse/ rectum jokes in this film; to the point that even the climax revolves around one. It’s not the end of the world, but it is lazy.

All in all this film is alright. A surprisingly enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half, but not one you’ll be recommending to your mates.

2 stars!

-Tom

Update: 08/10/2019

Heads up bloggerionos! I apologise for the radio silence last week, I had an exceptionally busy weekend and am likely to have one next weekend too! Fortunately I prepared for such an eventuality. I won’t be doing a regular blog for last week or this one. BUT I do have a couple of films I’ve been meaning to watch, so we’ll do a bonus one for last week which I’ll post tomorrow, and I’ll do the same next week. Should be able to return to normalcy the week after!

For now though, have some links to some interesting stuff:

-I’ve used Roger Ebert’s work as research for this blog in the past and mentioned his reviews of the films in question in multiple posts. I came upon this article recently which contains Ebert’s thoughts on some films he really didn’t like- there are some devastating takedowns on here of the sort a humble amateur such as I can only dream. He’s so funny in fact that I will forgive him insulting my beloved Spice Girls: http://mentalfloss.com/article/76485/35-movies-roger-ebert-really-hated

– Honourary blog affiliate/ older brother of mine James linked me to this the other day. Zeroville is a James Franco directorial/ starring film released recently after years in limbo. The Guardian calls it ‘staggeringly incompetent’ and The Independent ‘unbearably smug’. Smug? James Franco? Surely not… https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/26/james-franco-zeroville-review-worst-film-2019. If I can stomach it -in light of the accusations against Franco- this one may end up on the blog in a few years- if it should still be going!

-Finally I beg you to watch this trailer: https://www.twisted-pair-film.com/trailer/ And if you should want some context, here it is: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/07/your-brain-will-attempt-to-flee-your-body-watching.html

That’s all folks! (For now)

-Tom

Throw Me a Bone!: Pound Shop Flix Watches ‘Monkeybone’

Within the last year, I don’t remember exactly when, my friend Dan and I sat down to watch a Japanese film called ‘Getting Any’. Seemingly pitched as a sex comedy about a guy who can’t seem to get laid, what actually unfolds is a 110 minute film where the protagonist tries to rob a bank, joins the Yakuza, is briefly invisible, becomes a Cronenberg-referenced ‘fly-man’ and is foiled by a stadium sized pile dung. It is gleefully stupid for the sake of being gleefully stupid and is carried by its own ridiculous momentum- one-upping madness of the previous scene at every turn.

If a Hollywood executive tried to remake Getting Any?, I imagine it might turn out like Monkeybone. Monkeybone is stuck between a desire to be freewheeling, trippy and ridiculous whilst also trying to maintain some kind of coherent plot based around a love story between protagonist Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser) and his girlfriend Julie (Bridget Fonda). In trying to do both things, it achieves neither very well.

As I noted in the sneak-peek for this weeks post, this film is based (as I understand it VERY loosely) upon a graphic novel called Dark Town. The film follows cartoonist Stu who, on the evening he intends to propose to his girlfriend, is sent into a coma by a car crash. During this coma, Stu ends up in a place called ‘Downtown’, a Burton-esque land of horrifying creatures, Bull-headed barmen, Piano playing Elephants, Rose McGowan as a sexy cat, and Stu’s own cartoon creation ‘Monkeybone’ (voiced by John Tuturo). The character of Monkeybone (as well as much of Downtown (I think)) is animated by stop-motion and is impressive to look at. The simian is written, however, as a selfish, horny troublemaker who works against Stu. Downtown at first seems to be imaginary, but appears to be able to affect the real world. It is never really explained why or how this place exists; but then almost nothing in this film is given adequate explanation. Monkeybone escapes Downtown, takes control of Stu’s body and proceeds to cause mayhem and ruin his relationship. Stu escapes with the help of Death (Whoopi Goldberg, in a pleasing bit of stunt-casting,) and seizes control of things back from Monkeybone in a series of events too convoluted to recount. But let me make one thing very clear: this film is exceedingly odd.

Not only is there the trippy wonderland of Downtown, but even the sections of the story which occur in the real world are truly, sensationally odd. As Monkeybone within Stu’s body, Brendan Fraser puts in a performance of wild-eyed intensity rarely seen outside of Nicolas Cage, giving his absolute all to a physical and vocal performance of a script that just does not deserve it. He is equalled in the final 30 minutes of the film by Christopher Kattan who plays Stu-stuck-within-a-dead-gymnasts-body. The body’s neck is broken and is beginning to decompose and if there’s a better performance of a man’s consciousness-stuck-inside-another-man’s-corpse-who-has-to-run-about-despite-abroken-neck, then I haven’t seen it. Indeed any enjoyment that can be had from watching this film is found in these two performances, the imaginative visuals of Downtown and the few times that the jokes in the script lean into the mania of the film and its plotting. Regrettably these times are outnumbered by weak dick jokes, fart jokes and jokes that are LITERALLY ABOUT MONKEY SEX.

On the other end of things, trying to keep the serious end/ executive-mandated love story ticking over things are basically just left to Bridget Fonda, who gives it a damn good go. Her acting here is good, and she makes a paper-thin character sympathetic. But how the viewer is expected to ho from laughing at monkey fart jokes to weeping with a grieving widow is beyond me. None of it hangs together, and the film barrels to the plot like it’s got somewhere else it should be.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this film fails. The plot is completely ludicrous and moves to fast to give itself any breathing room. The script is largely dated 90’s lowbrow humour. It’s willfully strange whilst trying to fit into a conventional Hollywood narrative structure. I think, basically, it tries to do too much with too flimsy a central core- no emotions, no motivations beyond ‘I love my girlfriend’- and too few good jokes. I wouldn’t recommend sitting down too watch this film, but I almost wish more people I new would, so that I could talk to someone about just what the hell I just watched.

Everyday we move further away from god’s light

Interestingly, Rose McGowan think this film could have been saved: https://www.indiewire.com/2016/08/rose-mcgowan-monkeybone-instagram-henry-selick-1201720974/ . If she’s right, and the keeping on of Director Henry Selick would have resulted in a film more on the level of Nightmare before Christmas, or Coraline rather than something clogged up with all the live-action/ romance plot bollocks that we got instead, this could all have been different. However, it would still be based around a phallicly-challenged simian puppet so…yeah.

Best Performance: Christopher Kattan as a reanimated corpse. Genuinely funny physical comedy.

Worst Offence: Making us watch Brendan Fraser get horny to Monkeys having sex on TV

Elevator Pitch: What if we took a curious, otherworldly indie comic and… wait for it… made it about a horny puppet monkey instead?

2 stars!:

-Tom

Sneak Peek 24/09/2019

This weeks’ film represents a ‘Pound Shop Flick’ in its purest form. I’ve never heard of it, it looks dreadful, and I’m sure come Sunday I will be slotting it in with the one and two star entries on the rankings list.

The film in question stars Brendan Fraser and Bridget Fonda and uses stop motion animation to bring a major plot point/ character to life. It came out in 2001 but clearly has some hangovers from the 90’s in both its’ presentation and, judging by promises of ‘racy’ humour (almost certainly actually meaning bawdy and/or sexist horseplay), its attitudes.

Interestingly it was also adapted from a graphic novel called Dark Town. The film whoever seems to share little of the same tone as the GN, and the writer of Dark TOwn has more or less disowned this film.

Any of this ring a bell? Comment if so. For now though, here’s a pictorial tease:

What does BrenFra look so perturbed about? Tune in Sunday to find out…

Until then though, some stuff I think is interesting:

-So I wouldn’t normally recommend single songs or performances, but I stumbled upon this the other day and it’s really something. It’s late soul singer Charles Bradley doing Black Sabbath’s ‘Changes’ live and it’s extraordinary. Be prepared to FEEL though, as Bradley sings in memory of his late mother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfaOf70M4xs

-Any of you even a little familiar with millennial rap culture will likely have come across the story of Tekashi 6ix9ine, the Brooklyn rapper who recently testified in court as a witness against alleged members of the ‘Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods’ gang. The rapper had featured them in his videos and sought to be linked with them, although was apparently never an actual ‘initiated’ member. It’s an interesting case, but more interesting is the part it plays in a broader story of rap lyrics and videos being used as admissible evidence of the musician’s character. This is arguably a pretty slippery slope to start upon. 6ix9ine doesn’t strike me as entirely without sin, but musicians and artists of all types play characters in their work all the time; no-one tried to lock Alice Cooper up for being a serial killer, and while Johnny Cash did do time, it wasn’t for shooting a man in Reno. Anyway the New Yorker talks about it quite eloquently here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-controversial-use-of-rap-lyrics-as-evidence

-Finally, this nonsense: https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/pig/67598/nicolas-cage-truffle-hunter-film-pig-news

Until Sunday folks,

-Tom

Yo Joe? Dear God No: Pound Shop Flix and ‘GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra’

That’s right readers, this week it’s the turn of that 80’s cartoon/ toy franchise that never really made it in the U.K, but nonetheless made it to Hollywood 20-ish years later. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a live-action version of the franchise in a similar mold to that of the Michael Bay Transformers movies, released hot on the heels of Transformers 2 in 2009.

I mentioned in the sneak peek that I have an affection for the franchise. So in the interest of full disclosure (and as an excuse to talk about it) I feel I should let you in on my feelings.* G.I. Joe- despite being a cynical attempt to pry money from the hands of parents ad their toy-buyin’ cartoon watchin’ kids crossed with a weird U.S paramilitary theme- is great. The toys and their nicknames like ‘Quick-Kick’, ‘Lowlight’ and ‘Snow Job’ (not a joke) were a huge success, the comics were (and somehow continue to be) better than they had any right to be, giving readers a kind of long-form military soap opera with larger than life characters and genuine excitement. GI Joe ries above it’s cash-grabbing origins to actually present the world with largely good cartoons, toys and comics. Though I’ve only recently got into old school Transformers, GI Joe has been an enthusiasm of mine for going on 5 or 6 years. So to conclude this little segue, I likely come to this live action adaptation with a little more franchise knowledge than the average U.K cinema-goer, but also with more specific desires of what I wanted from it.

Apparently this gif is from the 80s cartoon. I could have looked up the context, but honestly sometimes art just speaks for itself, y’know?

Spoilers ho!

So in truth my expectations with this film were pretty tempered. I knew it wasn’t going to be the film I wanted it to be, and my intial research on other write-ups of the film had suggested that it wasn’t really very good even taken purely on its own merits. I’ll start with a quick summary of the plot and then talk about what I think worked, and what didn’t .So GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (‘GIJTROF’ hence) follows ‘Duke’ (Channing Tatum) and his buddy ‘Ripcord’ (Marlon Wayans) as special forces soldiers who quickly find themselves wrapped up in a tussle between multi-national paramilitary strike force G.I Joe and the nefarious arms dealer James McCullen (Christopher Ecclestone). Joining GI Joe after a training montage, the pair then work with their fellow ‘Joes’ Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Breaker (Saïd Taghmaoui) and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) to try and stop the arms dealer releasing nano-bot warheads on the world. Along the way they realise that one of McCullen’s co-conspirators is Duke’s ex fiance Ana (Sienna Miller), now known by the far more villainous ‘The Baroness’. Essentially the plot plays out through a number of extended actions scenes: fights, chases in a variety of vehicles, and shootouts. Eventually the immediate plan is thwarted by the destruction of the warheads and the reawakening of the love between Duke and Ana; but a new threat to world peace/ sequel set-up seems to loom.

The film then relies heavily on action sequences to provide the excitement of the film. This is just as well as they are easily its greatest strength. It all looks pretty good and is shot pretty sleekly. There is even some flair and invention in the fight scenes, with Heavy Duty’s use of grenades a particular highlight.

Heavy Duty: Explosion Artist and character who looks most like an actual 80’s action figure.

Indeed my only real complaint about the action is that their was sometimes TOO much going on. But you know who the goodies and baddies are, so the broad strokes are easy to follow. Additionally, they clearly spent a lot of money on this film because the cgi is ever present and by-and-large pretty damn good. There are nano-bots, space-ship looking aircraft, ‘Iron Man’ style combat suits and a magic homing crossbow (it’s not magic but it might as well be).

While the humour is not all excellent, genuine moments of levity are provided thanks to class clown Marlon Wayans, who (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) actually puts in one of the better performances here. The film has another ace in Christopher Ecclestone, an appropriately bond-villain esque arms dealer with a sort of Sean Connery inflection. The character’s only really let down by the scripting, the writers seemingly believing that an international, 21st Century arms dealer would riddle his musings with faux-quaint Scottish/ British idioms such as: ‘Ahhh, my lady of the lake’. Then there is Saïd Taghmaou, who as Breaker puts in the films best performanes. He’s the only one who seems to realise his character can have colour and, well, character without hamming it up like a hog at an orgy…

And that brings us to my criticisms. I like Channing Tatum, he’s a good actor these days, especially when allowed to show his funny side. However, he is Not Very Good in this film, mistaking maintaining an accent and mumbling his lines for character work. This isn’t helped by a script that makes him bland white protagonist #6578, but yeah his performance doesn’t work for me here. That said it’s not so bad as to derail things; just not good enough to lift them.

Expanding a little on the above, a lot of the dialogue and writing in this film is pretty crap. Some of it is just lifeless, and some of it is really awful. The plot is basically fine- they weren’t aiming for Shakespeare here- but none of the characters are believeable, and some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy. The worst I can recall of the top of my head is some of the lines they feed Scarlett in the first half of the film, a woman who -get this- reads books: ‘Love is not quantifiable and therefore does not exist’. ‘My father trained me to always win’. I’m paraphrasing with these quotes but the actual lines are pretty close. They seem to have wanted to create a smart, well-read soldier in Scarlett, but have written her like a robotic Dr Spock; like they’ve never actually met a person who was smart. Fortunately this stuff is forgotten when the action starts and Scarlett is basically just another soldier. I feel like I moan about the writing in these flix every week, maybe its something films think they can scrimp on? Or maybe film-making has reached a point where studios have the money to make basically anything LOOK good, but not actually BE good. Anyway…

The real issue with this films is one of tone. Firstly its charmless. Apart from a couple of decent jokes from Ripcord, all the characters sound like they’re trying to be witty and failing, but more than this there’s no real sense of fun. When you have characters like Snake Eyes: The Caucasian Ninja Who Never Speaks you either have to go for a mostly serious tone and absolutely nail it, or lean into the camp side of it. This film goes largely for the former ad doesn’t really succeed. Moreover I’m not sure whether they wanted to make this a kid’s film, as the dumb dialogue and heavily signposted character decisions suggest, or one for an older crowd, as the surprising violence**,6 or 7 curses or Sienna Miller’s not-infrequently-present cleavage*** seem to suggest. I don’t think the filmmakers really knew either.

Overall then this film wasn’t terrible. More or less on par with Salt in terms of watchability. But as a franchise GI Joe is capable of rising above it’s cash-grabbing origins; this film sadly does not reach those heights.

2 stars!: **

Best Performance: Saïd Taghmaoui

Worst Offence: Scarlett’s early characterisation

Elevator Pitch: ‘Hey remember GI Joes, they were great right? Well what if we took away the fun stuff and added Boobs and Swearing? Y’now, for the kids!’

Until next time readers,

-Tom

*My therapist will be proud!

**For example: there’s 2 or 3 fights between Snake Eyes and evil ninja Storm Shadow (Byung-Hun Lee) as children via flashback (they were trained by the same master, it’s a whole Thing) where these two child actors look like they’re properly kicking the crap out of each other

***As you see on the poster at the start of this post, one of the taglines of this film was genuinely ‘Evil Never Looked So Good’- simply because The Baroness was present.

Sneak and/or Peek 17/09/2019:

Hey guys, another week is upon us. Does not time race by?

I’m looking forward to what I’ll be watching this week. Salt was watchable enough, but this week’s film has a prior emotional investment for me. I’m either going to like it more than it likely deserves; or get annoyed at it for not doing the source material justice…

That’s right this week we’ll be discussing an adaptation of a pretty well known geeky IP. The best known arm of said IP is likely the 80’s cartoon or the accompanying toys- though the brand has graced comic books, later T.V reboots and of course, films. You’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what I’m alluding to at this point, but let me hit you with this- the film is NOT directed by Michael Bay (thank god). Any guesses?

While you’re chewing that over, let me say I’ve updated the Film Rankings page with Salt‘s ranking, slotting it in under Snakes On A Plane but above Hard Rain.

Until the weekend rolls around then, here’s a couple things I thought were interesting- maybe you will too:

–Ad Astra appears to be reviewing well so far: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/ad-astra-review-brad-pitt-ruth-negga-tommy-lee-jones-james-gray-trailer-a9081986.html

-Not having the time to review bad telly AS WELL as bad films, I’ll have to let these guys tell you about The I-Land: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/09/the-i-land-netflix-spoilers-ending-explained.html

That’s all from me folks. See you in a few!

-Tom

Angelina Jolie: The original Salt Bae

Welcome back film fans and connoisseurs of crap, to the Pound Shop Flix blog. This week, as I’m sure anyone who read the sneak peek and can remember 2010 guessed, we’re taking a look at Salt, a film starring Angelina Jolie as superspy Evelyn Salt. Now, as mentioned in the sneak peek this week, I have a memory of Salt being reviewed pretty poorly by Empire Magazine back when I subscribed to it as a young wannabe film buff. In truth however my research for this week has painted a somewhat different picture: the review on Empire’ website gives it 3-stars.

Now 3 stars does not equate to an excellent film. But it’s not quite the kind of stinker, or even misfire that this blog is based around. This apparent disparity between my memory and the truth leads me to conclude that one of two things must have happened: either I misremembered the content of the review, possibly even mixing it up with The Tourist; or at the age of 17, I was an even more pretentious than I am now, and considered a 3-star film to be a failure. Regrettably, either is possible.

All of this of course is mere context reader, an insight into why I picked up Salt expecting good (bad) things. It is time now to discuss what I actually got. Major spoilers ahead!

Angelina Jolie is. It says at the top. Duh.

Let me begin by saying that I like spy films. I don’t really know why. Ideologically, the idea of rooting for government sanctioned killers wrestling with the opposing government sanctioned killers of ‘enemy’ nations to promote Western interest is increasingly nauseating as we move through the 21st century. I think it was the bold, ridiculous camp of Kingsmen– and in turn the camp of Roger Moore era spies which is pastiches- which first interested me. It was this, reruns of The Saint, and the mostly pretty good Daniel Craig Bond films which I think brought me around to genre. Salt is less camp and more serious fare- if undoubtedly OTT in places. However I’m afraid Salt never really earns its self-seriousness. The dialogue is as cliche as they come, varying from damned obvious to ‘this-sounds-cool-even-if-it-makes-no-sense’. This wouldn’t be such an issue if the motivations of the characters made any sense, or the moments which were supposed to carry emotional weight did so. I can’t really put my finger on exactly why emotional moments and important lines don’t really land properly. I think perhaps if the film focused more on the context of what was going on; why people are doing what they’re doing, why they feel how the feel and so forth, it would work a lot better. But background and relationships are given to us all to briefly- the most we get is a quick flashback, but sometimes we get as little as one line.

The action is mostly pretty passable, with some cool or inventive moments in places. It’s all style and no substance though, with blows landing with little impact and stunts seeming pretty improbable- yet somehow also not that exciting?

One thing Salt has going for it is its cast. Not one packed with huge names, but rather full of reliable sort-of household names and character actors who give a dodgy script a decent go. Liev Screiber plays the main, surprise, antagonist, being revealed as a traitor towards the end of the film. I’ve always thought quite highly of Schreiber. As much as anything else he’s able to give off a presence; a sense of menace or authority (or both) depending on the role he’s playing. This film is no exception. Opposite Schreiber as the good, but by the book, counter intelligence man is Chiewetel Ejiofor. Ejiofor has really come into his own with the sort of roles he deserves in the last few years. In a similar, though different, way to Schreiber, Ejiofor gives off an air of utter competence which makes him believable in almost any serious role thanks to his deep voice and measured delivery. I think its is these qualities that likely secured him the role as Scar in the recent CGI remake of The Lion King. He perhaps lacks a little of this trademark presence in Salt, though this is largely down to the script rather than the actor. Amusingly, Andre Braugher- likely best known these days to many of us as Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Captain Raymond Holt- is in this film playing the Secretary of Defence; exactly the kind of serious authoritative role he sends up in B99.

Most important among the cast though is Angelina Jolie: Jolie was one of the most reliable pair of hands for this kind of fare during this films’ period, more or less guaranteeing a decent leading performance regardless of the quality of the script. She was (and likely still is) dynamic, expressive and striking. She gives us a performance with pathos and grit- or at least as much as the film allows. That she plays an arse-kicking female spy is great; but know, dear reader, that this comes at a price in 2010. She still finds herself doing things like covering a surveillance camera by removing her panties and placing them atop it. They don’t teach that shit in spy school.

The film is full of twists which do keep the viewer guessing and on their toes, but which don’t really feel very logical. All in all the film shows sparks of imagination in places and isn’t incompetent- it just feels rushed and underdeveloped. Not great, but not the worst. I am thus genuinely flummoxed by the fact that Roger Ebert gave this 4/4. These things are subjective I guess! But full marks strikes me as too generous. Indeed you may remember I was concerned in this weeks’ sneak peek that I might be wrong about this film, that it might be better than I was expecting: the good news is I was right all along. The bad news is I was right all along

2 stars!: **

-Tom