Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead (2014)

28 Days Later, Mad Max, Bad Taste, The Paul Hogan Show, The 'A' Team and everyone's favourite book of the bible. Hilarious, bloody and ingenious.

An OckZomCom!

Letterboxd Review

The Void (2016)

A Lovecraftian Assault on Precinct 13.

Letterboxd Review

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The corpse of the age of Aquarius is butchered and barbecued. Perfect in every way.

Ellie said "s'alright". Kids!

Letterboxd Review

Predator (1987)

What more could you ask from a jungle-based action sci-fi movie? Schwarzenegger, guns, explosions, blood, guts, booby traps, testosterone overload, quotable dialogue and one-liners, a beautiful woman, magic mud, bombastic score, Jesse Ventura packing a minigun, an alien with a weird crabface and luminous blood. Perfect!

Minus half a star for killing Jesse way too early.

Letterboxd Review

This is England '90 (2015)

This whole sequence has been like looking at my life, my friends, my music, my politics, my misdemeanours, fuckups and triumphs. In turns, hilarious and deeply moving. Ken Loach for Generation-X. Woody is a legend!

Letterboxd Review

The Long Good Friday (1980)

Alongside Get Carter, this is the dog's bollocks of British gangster films and a veritable who's who of several decades worth of UK film and TV.

"The Mafia? I've shit 'em!"

Letterboxd Review

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

Steve G was right, this was really good!

Letterboxd Review

Frank Herbert’s Dune (2000)

A complex story of politics, religion, mysticism, treachery, revenge, prophesy and revolution. Sci-Fi Fantasy on a grand scale.

Dune is my second favourite sci-fi book after Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" but while this miniseries sticks closer to the source than David Lynch's film, the production values don't do it any favours, with poor effects and a second-rate cast.

The performances are all over the place; P.H. Moriarty as Gurney Halleck is terrible, Baron Harkonnen, Feyd and the Beast do not instil any sort of terror. Paul is played pretty well by Alec Newman, starting off as an arrogant, petulant child before becoming the devotion inspiring Mahdi. It's been a few years since I read the book but I'm sure some of the dialogue was "modernised" and didn't seem to have the elegant and archaic language of the book.

Effects-wise: the Shai-Hulud were okay and you got a good feel for their huge scale but it's best to ignore the shoddy green-screen work. The ornithopters didn't look anything like what I thought an ornithopter should look like.

The costumes and set-dressing, although cheap-looking, had that ostentatious Machiavellian/Borgia/Renaissance/Age of Enlightenment feel that runs throughout the book. I loved the fascistic Samurai look that they gave the Harkonnen and disguised Sardaukar shock troops. However, the stillsuits were baggy and pretty poor (David Lynch made a much better go of them). The Spacing Guild members with their pointy hats seem influenced by the cover of the old paperback I read as a child.

The Petra styled desert sietches with stone furniture and hanging plants contrast well with the ostentatious Imperial and Harkonnen sets. The Islamic and Christian references from the book are present and correct and Paul has a real T.E. Lawrence feel to him.

Would I recommend it to someone new to Dune? Although this adaptation is far less confusing than Lynch's Dune I'd still say you should read the book first as the story is complex (just look at how many names and titles Paul has: Paul Atreides, Muad'Dib, Usul, Mahdi, Kwisatz Haderach) and the miniseries is very long (4:39 hours).

Note that the Australian Umbrella blu-ray has hard-coded French subtitles for the infrequent Bene Gesserit dialogue. English subs do not exist for these brief sections :(

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable, if flawed, miniseries.

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Letterboxd Review

Doctor Strange (2016)

Benedict is rather good as a wizardly ego-maniacal otter surgeon with a god complex.

Letterboxd Review

American Pie (1999)

A virginity losing romp in the grand tradition of Lemon Popsicle and Porkies. Unfortunately, the sequels dispense with the sweet innocence and focus on the smut.

"Say my name, bitch!"

Letterboxd Review

Terry Pratchett: Back in Black (2017)

Excellent. Loved Dennis Pennis as Pratchett. Many tears were shed.

Letterboxd Review

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Loved Ben Kingsley as Trevor the drug-addled Mandarin.

Letterboxd Review

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)

Jodorowsky's Dune may not have been Frank Herbert's Dune but I would have loved to have seen it and this is as close as we'll ever get. I just wonder what Denis Villeneuve's vision will be? All I can say is, that the book is great enough to cope with any adaptation (if you haven't read it, you should) and I'm very excited! After all, it's not like the book will just disappear in a puff of smoke :)

Letterboxd Review

Spectre (2015)

James Bond's year zero, which started in Skyfall and ends in Spectre, is a beautiful, post-Bourne restart of the franchise that removes the silliness (that bloody invisible car and that stupid inflatable jacket, which would have suited Jeremy Clarkson more than Bond), adds a large dose of grit and brings back the cool. Bond is Bond again rather than someone's smarmy Dad. I can seriously see them heading back to the books and maybe the next film will be 'Live and Let Die', apparently the first Bond story chronologically after 'Casino Royale'. Not quite up there with Skyfall, but damned close. Good stuff.

Letterboxd Review

Demons (1985)

Zero plot, terrible dialogue, terrific effects, impressively gory, the fastest demon apocalypse ever and the most 80s of 1980s horror films. One of the few films where 80s heavy metal doesn't seem out of place (but Go West? Really?). The scene of the demons coming up the stairs with their eyes glowing is justly iconic and thank heavens for crashed helicopters with compressed air grappling guns!

A VHS favourite of mine back in the day and still more fun than a bad, Italian Michael Dudikoff look-a-like can shake a katana at.

Letterboxd Review

London Spy (2015)

I don't know what I loved more; Ben Whishaw, Edward Holcroft, Jim Broadbent or Jim Broadbent's beautiful house and car. Bloody good stuff! Minus a star for Adrian Lester, who I've never been fond of and the crappy, elegiac pop music in the final and slightly corny scene.

Letterboxd Review

Rolling Thunder (1977)

A hard Rane's gonna fall.. boom-tish!

William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Luke Askew, Dabney Coleman and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. What more do you want?

Letterboxd Review

Hell on Earth: The Desecration & Resurrection of The Devils (2002)

I don't think I'll ever shift the image of Lovejoy's Tinker (Dudley Sutton) warming actresses goose-pimpled tits with a hairdryer out of my head.

For those wondering, there are short clips of the 'Rape of Christ' and 'Charred Bone' scenes on the 2-disc BFI DVD but they are not shown in their entirety thanks to the restrictions imposed on the release by Warner Brothers. As far as I know, apart from bootlegs and youtube clips taken from VHS recordings of the original Channel 4 airing of 'Hell on Earth' there is currently no way to see these excised scenes.

A bloody good documentary on an excellent film but both critic Alexander Walker and Warner Brothers are Grade-A dicks.

The world without Ken Russell and Derek Jarman is a little more dull and pedestrian :(

Letterboxd Review

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Marvel's answer to the collateral damage of DC's 'Man of Steel' and 'Batman v. Superman'.

That airport fight scene was so much fun!

Letterboxd Review

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

"But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you." -- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince [Chapter XX]

I used 'Star Trek Beyond' to test my new Sony Bravia 4K 55" TV, Denon 7.2 amp (still using 5.1 speakers) and Yamaha subwoofer. I can now consign my extremely old Pioneer 5.1 system to the dusty attic of forgotten gizmos as the film looked and sounded great!

Death by Rock? Really? Ridiculous fun!

Letterboxd Review