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DEATH RACE 2000 - REVIEW

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What do you get when you cross Mad Max with The Cannonball Run , Wacky Races and Rollerball ? I'll tell you what: the best thing ever! AKA: Death Race 2000 . In the dystopian future of... the year 2000, a super-violent race takes place between nutty drivers in silly costumes and goofy-ass cars during which you're expected to score points through multiple hit-and-runs. It's a cruel, messed-up world where the US President approves of and promotes a mindless, murderous sport, where euthanasia is performed by wheeling patients onto the road and waiting for Sylvester Stallone to run them over in a knife-wielding car and where David Carradine walks around in tight, leather overalls, a mask and a cape under the name Frankenstein. Sorry Grand Theft Auto but you've got nothing on this one. Here's a cult 70's flick which doesn't stop being bonkers from start to finish. It's a cartoon and it knows it, occasionally going off into Wile E. Coyote tange

HEROES: SEASON 2 - REVIEW

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After the way Season 1 left things (messy), you could forgive this follow-up season to struggle for a bit before fixing things and getting started. Unfortunately, Season 2's brand new ideas fail to rise above what the whole season is essentially about: filling up those plotholes. Ironically, in the process, new plotholes are introduced and the new stuff mostly fails to gel convincingly with the old stuff to the point where a lot of episodes bring something up that's quite interesting only to cover it all up by the end of it. Take the whole Harvey Two-Face Nathan Petrelli thing, or the potential death of Noah Bennet as foreseen in one of Isaac Mendez's lost paintings, or even Mohinder possibly turning to the dark side: all subplots with potential but none of them really know where they're going and none of them really delivers. Like Season 1, this is very much a season of two halves. Except here it's much shorter. For one half we're mostly concerned with

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA - REVIEW

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Man the critics were rough on this one... Now I'm one of the first to bash whatever new tired kid-friendly animated flicks come out these days: Madagascar 3 , Ice Age 4 , The Lorax ... not for me. That said, there are the occasional ones that slip through the cracks and actually end up being pretty good ( ParaNorman , The Pirates ). Hotel Transylvania I found to be in-between. On the one hand you've got its gorgeous animation, its clever premise, its fun winks to old horror movies, its colorful characters and on the other you have... ...the singing. Actually you have an Adam Sandler Dracula RAP. I'll let that sink in. ... Theeeere it is. Ok, so that sounds like hell but trust me: Hotel Transylvania is worth a go. For one thing it's a lot of fun. It's pretty darn relentless and certainly never wastes any of its time: it's fast, punchy and nuts going for a Tex Avery-style random toon-craziness we haven't seen achieved quite this well sinc

COSMOPOLIS - REVIEW

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Here's one I was really looking forward to. When you're a fan of David Cronenberg's stranger works, seeing him make relatively straight-forward films like History Of Violence or A Dangerous Method is always a bit disappointing. No matter how good those movies are, you just want the guy to go all out Videodrome -style, blow-up some heads or just put messed-up images in your head (the birth dream sequence from The Fly , anyone?). I guess the director's style had to mature at some point but personally, with the exception of Eastern Promises , I haven't truly been impressed by the director's work since eXistenZ . And I still haven't. Cosmopolis has received mixed reviews thusfar with some praising its daring, mostly limo-set plot and message, while others calling it "shallow" and "self-indulgent"... because it is. Frankly, this is not a good movie. And I don't say that because I didn't get it, quite the opposite, Cosmo

ALIEN 3 - REVIEW

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Watching this third Alien film after a re-watch of Alien Resurrection certainly offered a contrast. Where one was somewhat reminiscent of Ridley Scott's original vision, the other felt more like a fun, if stupid, cartoon. It is quite a big leap between Alien 3 and Resurrection so lets see how the Alien Trilogy ended before it... began again. From the offset, Alien 3 stylistically pays homage to the first Alien with it's white/greenish tones and clinical feel rather than the bluey, sweaty look of Aliens . We are led to believe that this will be a back-to-basics outing with a focus more on atmosphere and subtle horror with less action but more impact. To a certain extent, this proves to be an accurate assessment: Alien 3 most definitely approaches the horror aspect of the franchise the way Scott went about it. You get several scenes where something thoroughly unpleasant is going on, whether it's gory surgery or an autopsy, and we mostly see the event through the charac

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT - REVIEW

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For a Monty Python fan, the idea of a musical celebrating one of the iconic comedy group's finest achievements ( Monty Python And The Holy Grail ) was nothing short of spamgasmic. Nudge nudge...? In many ways, the marriage of Monty Python and musicals is a perfect one: the tackiness of some musicals crossed with The Pythons' bad taste humour promising a bit of a match made in heaven. That said, I'm not convinced that Holy Grail was the right musical to do. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Spamalot . As silly as it was, there was a lot of good stuff there and it really was complete,  glorious escapism: entertaining nonsense the whole way through. But even then I must admit that it is one hell of a hit-and-miss effort. The way I feel about it is that the best songs come from Eric Idle poking fun at Broadway musicals and most of the Holy Grail stuff falls flat either due to it being so familiar or it just not really working on stage. Sure hearing the Camelot song i

COSMOPOLIS - TEASER TRAILER

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Can it be that the old, nutty, genius David Cronenberg we all knew and loved... is back? lol I like the dinosaur!

eXistenZ - REVIEW

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And I thought I'd seen every messed-up David Cronenberg film around... Settling down to newer, tamer efforts like A Dangerous Method with the misguided belief that "It's better than no David Cronenberg film, right?..." while in fact secretly pining for another Scanners , Videodrome or even Dead Ringers . Then eXistenZ is lent to me and I'm sitting there, expecting a kind of fast-paced Gatacca meets The Matrix type sci-fi thriller. That would have been fun enough but... Oh man... This is true, CLASSIC Cronenberg. Complete with gore, f***ed-up genius imagery, super creative concepts and disturbed individuals by the thousands. Where do I even start with this?! You've got this new game being tested called "eXistenZ" which is meant to be extremely realistic. Its controllers are basically living slabs of flesh with ombilical cords which plug into an anus in your back. Are you following? Good. Along the way, Jude Law tries his hand at an Ame

A DANGEROUS METHOD - REVIEW

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Ever since Spider , we've seen a very different David Cronenberg at work. A slightly more mature Cronenberg perhaps? Or just more grounded? After all, this is the guy who turned Jeff Goldblum into a fly, put a gun inside James Woods' chest, cloned Jeremy Irons and exploded heads on a whim! A film about Freud and Jung hardly comes across as the man's most daring venture. That said, some of his later, non-sci-fi/horror projects have made their mark: from the quietly unsettling gloom of Spider to Viggo Mortensen's towering performance in Eastern Promises , Cronenberg has proven he can still make an impact. I just miss those exploding heads... This time, Mortensen is once again given a meaty role as none other than Sigmund Freud whom, despite being something of a secondary character, certainly stands out as the film's Joker. He is joined by a terrific Michael Fassbender (Jung) and a... (we'll get to that) Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, Jung's troubl

THE GAME - REVIEW

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How I missed a film like The Game all these years is beyond me. Ok, I'll admit I rarely flock to Michael Douglas movies but this is one of the good ones. Douglas plays a cold, wealthy financier whose brother's (Sean Penn) birthday present turns out to be one hell of a mind-f***. What follows is a thrilling descent into madness and although the ending doesn't exactly live up to the incredible build-up preceding it, it's all about the ride and David Fincher proves just how brilliant he is at keeping his viewers on the edge of their seat right up until the very last shot. This is a film which does remarkably well when it comes to keeping the viewer guessing throughout whilst always being one step ahead. By the end, Michael Douglas may be understandably emotionally devastated but we're left still expecting one more trick up the movie's sleeve. Like a final mega-twist or something. This doesn't really happen but like I said: it's all about the ride. And

DUNE - REVIEW

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Adapting Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel Dune was never going to be easy. So what better choice to direct the epic undertaking but David Lynch, a filmmaker known at the time for directing a weird-ass little movie about a screaming human baby tadpole and something about a guy with elephant-like facial features... Surely THE man for the job. Now I'm not saying that picking Lynch to direct was a mistake, after all, who knew that Tim ' Pee-Wee's Big Adventure ' Burton could pull off Batman ? But if what the studios wanted was some kind of really commercial trilogy or a fast-paced, Star Wars -style action flick then they couldn't have made a weirder choice. But I, for one, am happy they made it. I freakin' love Dune! Now I know it's hardly regarded as Lynch's best work and it's never really listed along with the best novel-to-movie adaptations ever but... it's Dune! By David Lynch! Tell me how that's not all kinds of awesome. Oh

DEER TWIN PEAKS...

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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - REVIEW

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The original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a film I expected a lot from. Overhyped upon its release, it was really being pushed as THE next must-see thriller series. Bourne was done, Bond and Ethan Hunt were on their gap years: this was the sexy European fix we needed. What we got was a cross between a TV movie-style investigation, a classic whodunit and a sexy, modern, kickass thriller. It hardly blew me away but it worked and although I was no fan I acknowledged it was well made and was a good example of the genre. Now David Fincher is in as director for the remake and the likes of Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgard make up the cool US cast. The result? It's the same. Well, more or less the same. You've got a swanky Placebo-style music video to get you started as a kind of dark, modern, gooey Bond opening title sequence complete with fire, Led Zepellin AND hornets. Not sure how useful that really was but I enjoyed it: it was

TWIN PEAKS SEASON 1 - REVIEW

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I remember first hearing that David Lynch had made a TV series. It was crazy clown time. I couldn't wait to check it out. So here we are, 2011, and finally I have allowed myself to sit through the whole first season of Twin Peaks . Was it worth the wait? Oh yes. That Twin Peaks only lasted two seasons is both shocking and unsurprising. Sure it was great but how long could a soap opera satire about dreams, lumber... oh and one little murder last for longer than more accessible shows like Sabrina The Teenage Witch ? Oh 90's, you complicated mistress you... The Twin Peaks Pilot episode gets the show on the road in a dramatic yet positively gloomy way with Kyle McLachlan's jolly detective, strong contender for best guy ever, only popping by about halfway through. The show revolves around the murder of high school student Laura Palmer, it's a whodunit where the usual CSI rules do not apply. It's a show in which birds, coconuts and logs often hold more eviden

THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE - REVIEW

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Well, it took me 11 years but finally I sat through the entirety of Disney's The Emperor's New Groove. A film so odd-looking that it even alienated me at the time. I loved Mulan but the trailers for this one just seemed...weird and I really didn't feel like sitting through an hour and a half of a scary llama screaming around. It's a shame really, I'm sure I would have loved it. It's 11 years later and now I know who Patrick Warburton and David Spade are and I'm cool with llamas in general, I felt it was time to pay The Emperor a little visit. Interestingly, the humour in this one is much more goofy than I could have imagined: think the Looney Tunes crossed with the Genie from Aladdin . Pretty wacky stuff. You've got a random story with an off-beat setting, no gimmicky big stars and a dislikable character at the heart of it all and yet this is one strangely accessible, fun ride with David Spade at his best, a great villainess, a gloriously dense h

HELL RIDE - REVIEW

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Although there never was a fake trailer for this one, Hell Ride is indeed a worthy addition to Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse . After zombie movies, Mexploitation films ( Machete ) and car chase movies we get this biker flick which comes with QT regulars Michael Madsen and David Carradine but with added Dennis Hopper and Vinnie Jones. *squee* The result? Nothing sensational but it fits very nicely in between Planet Terror and Death Proof in that it contains the overblown silliness of Robert Rodriguez films and the style, dialogs and cool of QT's films. Of course, this being made by Larry Bishop it never achieves the highs of both directors but it makes a fair attempt nonetheless. Somewhat underrated, yes Hell Ride is big, lumbering, confused and dumb but...hello? That's the point. It's a 70's style biker flick! Of course you need lots of ladies in hot pants, gratuitous nudity, unmotivated biking, a trippy magic mushrooms scene and nonsensical dialogs!

SCANNERS - REVIEW

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Only David Cronenberg could make us take exploding heads seriously. Not to mention make the out-there concept of mind scanning believable! Then again, out there is kind of Cronenberg's whole deal. After all this is the guy behind such wacko creations as Crash and Videodrome . If anything, Scanners is one of his most straight-forward ventures. Scanners is sci-fi/horror done right: from the tense, unsettling opening scene to the final bloody showdown, this is a ride through a dark and disturbing near future that's hard to forget. Michael Ironside is particularly good as the demented, powerful vilain Stephen Lack's somewhat bland scanner is up against and The Prisoner 's Patrick McGoohan offers fine support as the doctor who trains him. Overall, Scanners is an atmospheric, often chilling sci-fi story with some welcome gore and impressive special effects. One of Cronenberg's best.

EVIL TOONS - REVIEW

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From the director of Invisible Dad and Invisible Mom comes a supernatural horror/comedy starring David Carradine, Dick Miller ( Gremlins ) and a whole bunch of porn stars and strippers. Truly this is recipe for cinematic success. As bums and boobs are thrown at us whenever there's a lull, what we get otherwise is an admittedly so-bad-it's-funny ride complete with some of the worst acting you're likely to witness and one fatal flaw: only ONE evil toon! I know that with all the rubbish a film like Evil Toons has to offer, lines like "Are you the guy with the phone?" for example, I shouldn't be picky about one thing in particular but... I'm sorry, I am. You've got something terrible and the only thing the poor, defenceless victims watching it are waiting for (besides breasts) are toons, evil ones! And all we get is some poorly animated raping demon dog thing for like 5 minutes? How dare you, sir! Worth a look only to see David Carradine c