There are several kinds of documentaries.  Some are made by “invisible” filmmakers, who simply tell the story.  Others are made by “visible” filmmakers, who tell the main story and also tell the story of “how we got the story.”  The Cove is one of the latter, simultaneously documenting the senseless slaughter of dolphins in a specific location in Japan (and extrapolating this to the mistreatment of dolphins and the exploitation of the oceans in general) and the story of how the film was secretly made.

The scenes of dolphins being killed until—literally—the waters in the titular cove are red with their blood are horrible and shocking, yet we’ve all seen similar footage of baby seals and other animals suffering painful deaths.  What makes The Cove so powerful is the manner in which the ridiculous justification and the mercenary basis for the slaughter are systematically exposed.  Dolphin shows and “swim with a dolphin adventures” are big business, so capturing live dolphins for sale is a lucrative endeavour.  The rejects, those dolphins not chosen for a life in captivity, are killed, their meat (which happens to be highly-toxic due to mercury levels) often mislabeled as whale and sold to unsuspecting consumers.

In an ironic twist, the dolphins’ champion is Ric O’Barry, who to some extent started the dolphin “fad” as the chief trainer for the “Flipper” television series in the 1960s.  Realising (too late for the dolphin “actors” who played Flipper) the injustice of keeping dolphins in captivity, O’Barry became an international gadfly and the bane of the Japanese town of Taiji, where the annual dolphin sale/slaughter occurs.  Through his efforts, filmmaker Louie Psihoyos was convinced to undertake the project.  A dedicated crew was assembled, an expedition to Taiji was mounted, and graphic video footage of the killing was obtained.

The Cove is advocacy filmmaking, no doubt.  The Japanese officials are given their chance to defend themselves, and do so, only to have every excuse and argument debunked.  The scene at the end of the movie when the Deputy Minister of Fisheries confidently asserts that a new “quick and painless” method of killing dolphins is in place, only to be confronted with video footage of the gory massacre, is priceless.

The Cove also contains superb scenes of dolphins as they should be viewed, speeding through the oceans, leaping into the air, “surfing” the waves.  To be honest, the dolphins’ beauty and intelligence is both a blessing and a curse:  there aren’t many “trained mackerel” shows around the world, and that makes these fish a little less subject to the type of exploitation their sleek, aquatic mammal companions have to endure.

Generally entertaining, but never goes “full Herzog.”  Clocking in just shy of two hours, The Bad Lieutenant (the official title of this film is The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, but let’s be succinct, shall we?) is a conventional police-drama for the first 45 minutes, begins to veer into weirdness shortly thereafter, but keeps its feet on terra firma for most of its length.  This isn’t necessarily a criticism, but the trailer and pre-release chatter suggested far more wackiness—phantom iguanas, “shoot him again, his soul is still dancing!” and so on—than Herzog delivers.  Indeed, right up to the last second I was waiting for some sort of outrageous twist or revelation that would subvert the illogical “happy ending.”

Although the title and credits suggest this is a remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992), a truly intense and gripping picture, the two films intersect in only the barest essentials—the protagonist is a drug-using, gambling-addicted corrupt police officer (but even here the movies diverge, since the “bad lieutenant” in the 2009 version started using drugs after incurring a job-related, heroic injury, so he’s introduced as a morally-decent person from the start).  Although the “plots” of the two films are, in the final estimation, only vehicles to explore the disintegration of the leading character’s life (and are thus not crucially important), Bad Lieutenant deals with the brutal rape of a nun in New York and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans revolves around the mass murder of a Senegalese drug dealer and his family in New Orleans.  One scene in Herzog’s film—bad cop Terence sexually harasses a young woman and her date as they exit a nightclub—echoes a notorious sequence in Ferrara’s movie, but otherwise the “remake” label is misapplied.  (As an aside, Herzog says he never saw Ferrara’s version, and Ferrara has fervently disavowed the new film)

The Bad Lieutenant benefits from strong performances overall.  Nicolas Cage gets most of the attention, naturally.  Hunched over, walking oddly, massaging his face, slurring his speech (sometimes he sounds like a stoned Jimmy Stewart!), alternately caring, polite, obnoxious, obsequious, crude, and blustering, Cage paints a nuanced portrait of a tormented soul.  The rest of the cast is also fine: Eva Mendes may look a bit like Carmen Electra, but she displays decent acting chops; Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif, Eugene Gratz, and Shea Whigham are also good, in different ways (representing an acting spectrum from naturalistic to hilariously mannered).

The New Orleans locations are fine and some of the music is “local,” but (contrary to some opinions I’ve read) I don’t get a real “Nawlins” flavour.  Maybe I wrongly expected more stereotypical Bourbon Street-Mardi Gras-jazz-Cajun trappings.  The photography, production design, and other technical-artistic aspects leave nothing to be desired.

In the final estimation, The Bad Lieutenant is entertaining (and didn’t seem overlong) but my expectations may have been too high.  It’s a decent drama (with some deliberate laughs) buoyed by excellent acting and a clever script, but it’s no Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

Remember those episodes of “Seinfeld” in which Jerry and George are pitching a television series about “nothing?”  Jim Jarmusch, with The Limits of Control, hasn’t quite reached that level of narrative emptiness, but his most recent film is a spare, abstract meditation on…life?  ”He who thinks he’s so great should visit the cemetary.  There he’ll see the world for what it is: a handful of dirt.”

An inscrutable Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé—who has a face which appears to be carved from some exotic wood) is hired by some people to do something.  He travels from Madrid to Sevilla, then to Almería (the arid landscape familiar to fans of 1960s spaghetti Westerns, although electricity-transmission towers and lines now intrude on the vistas), passed along from one eccentric contact to another, receiving coded messages (which he eats after reading) in matchboxes.  His mission accomplished, the Man moves on.

Despite the fact that The Limits of Control consists chiefly of the taciturn (to put it mildly) protagonist strolling down streets, sitting in cafes (always insisting on two cups of espresso), riding on trains, gazing at paintings, or reclining in bed staring at the ceiling, the film—for some odd reason—isn’t boring at all (well, the flamenco scene is slightly protracted, but other than that…).  There’s a kind of intriguing puzzle to be solved: where will he go next, who will he meet?  In fact, when his “assignment” is completed, the audience may even feel a bit let down—the journey was far more interesting than the destination.

The luminous photography by Christopher Doyle makes the Spanish locations seem fascinating, although in retrospect there are no particularly notable or distinctive places on-screen (in fact, The Limits of Control could easily be transposed to another country with little or no loss of meaning, the Spain we see here is simply a stand-in for “any country”).  Furthermore, while it’s clear numerous shots are deliberately composed to resemble paintings (not necessarily real, famous paintings—although several are referenced—but by this I mean the images are consciously artistic), this is aesthetically pleasing rather than an example of what I call “excessive pictorialism” in a film.

Jarmusch, like many filmmakers of his generation, uses filmic quotes and references; some of these are simply in-jokes (for example, De Bankolé plays a character called “Le Boxeur” in White Material, 2009, and in The Limits of Control the matchboxes containing his instructions are “Le Boxeur” brand), while others may be clues to the movie’s “meaning.”  There are overt film references: the Blonde mentions Hitchcock’s Suspicion, The Lady From Shanghai by Orson Welles, and describes a scene from Tarkovsky’s Stalker.  Guitar refers to a Finnish film based on “La Boheme,” a clear reference to Ari Kaurismaki’s 1992 feature.  There are also dialogue references to “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)  and “La vida no vale nada” (a Mexican song and film title).  The scene in which the Lone Man arrives by train at an isolated station in Almería is accompanied by spaghetti-Western style music, and probably is meant to evoke Once Upon a Time in the West (de Bankolé slightly resembles Woody Strode, to boot).  There are even some indirect movie allusions, such as the battered poster for “Un lugar solitario” which features the Blonde character menaced by clutching hands (the Lone Man sees this on a wall, seconds before the Blonde is abducted for real before his eyes), and a brief bit in which some Spanish children ask the Lone Man if he’s an “American gangster.”

The cast of The Limits of Control is peppered with “name” cameos (although some of the names might not be familiar to U.S. viewers): Bill Murray, Gael García Bernal, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, and the always-naked (seriously) Paz de la Huerta.  Aside from Murray—who plays his role amazingly straight—the others come on, do an eccentric and entertaining turn, and shuffle off, stage right.

The Limits of Control isn’t pretentious, really.  Indeed, a little more pretension might have mollified some of the reviewers, who have complained about a lack of “substance.”  Still, in this case, the style was enough for me.

A loving pastiche of 1970’s blaxploitation films, Black Dynamite only rarely ventures into The Naked Gun-style parody, preferring to allow “authentic” blaxploitation dialogue, themes, music, costumes and hairstyles to entertain the audience.  Even blatant comedy lines are spoken so earnestly that one has to listen carefully to discern the exaggeration (“Your momma would turn over in her grave if she were here to see this”).

Ironically, this very faithfulness to the films that inspired it may have be the commercial downfall of Black Dynamite, which has received a very limited theatrical release, possibly in an attempt to build word-of-mouth and establish it as a cult film in anticipation of the DVD (scheduled for next February).  Audiences unfamiliar with blaxploitation might be puzzled by the serious (deadly serious) demeanor of the performers, unsure if they’re supposed to be taking the proceedings seriously themselves.  Without an awareness of what came before—Shaft, Hell Up in Harlem, Black Belt Jones, and so on—the tribute being paid by Black Dynamite to this genre may pass unnoticed.

Michael Jai White, who also contributed to the script, could easily have been a major star of blaxploitation in the 1970s.  Handsome, muscular, wealthy (a visitor admires BD’s apartment, commenting, “Look at this place, there must be an 8-track player in every room!”), supremely self-confident, a devil with the ladies and a kung fu expert, former CIA agent Black Dynamite (that’s apparently his real name, since even his mother calls him that!) sets out to track down his brother’s murderers.  [In a gem of expositional flashback, he says “I am 18-year-old Black Dynamite and you are my 16-year-old brother!”]  With the help of his pals from the ‘hood, including Cream Corn and Bullhorn, Black Dynamite cleans out the drug dealers who are addicting young orphans to smack, uncovers a plot to shrink black male endowment via spiked malt liquor, and caps it all off with a bruising kung fu battle in the White House against President Nixon, who rather surprisingly turns out to be a martial arts expert himself.  Between these battles, Black Dynamite romances the lovely Gloria, among other “bitches” (a term he uses in a respectful manner, naturally).

Black Dynamite isn’t perfect, of course.  Although highly entertaining, a sequence on the island fortress of the Fiendish Doctor Wu (his official title, apparently), master of “kung fu treachery,” seems a bit out of place, and brief cameos by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln and “Captain Kangaroo Pimp” (I admit I laughed at that one) veer into The Naked Gun territory where—as I said above—Black Dynamite generally does not go.

But these and few other minor quibbles aside, Black Dynamite looks and sounds great—on a budget of under $3 million, hard to believe—and delivers solid entertainment, not only for those of us old enough to remember blaxploitation in its heyday, but for anyone else willing to slip into a 1970s frame of mind.  Return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear, a world of pimps, bitches, black militants, racist gangsters and corrupt cops, innocent school children, Afros, leisure suits, massive Cadillacs, and wakka-chikka guitars.   “Dyna-mite, Dyna-mite!”

“She Made My Blood Run Cold” (1957). Clayton Love singing with Ike Turner and his Orchestra. Sort of a “response” to “Fever,” the Peggy Lee hit.

Over-long but reasonably entertaining disaster epic.  No surprises, really, and there are plot holes large enough to drive an Ark through (you have to see the film to get that joke).  2012’s heavy reliance on CGI makes this seem a lot less urgent and real than old-school disaster movies like Earthquake or The Poseidon Adventure (a point also made by Chuck Wilson in the Village Voice).  When filmmakers can show anything on screen simply by creating images on a computer, a certain challenge is lost.  For goodness’ sake, they didn’t even have to build a model of the Washington Monument, it’s just pixels on a screen!

For those who like playing drinking games while watching films, take a drink every time there’s a shot of people fleeing (or driving, or flying) as disaster (flames, smoke, lava, water, rocks) relentlessly pursues them.  You’ll pass out before the running time (two hours and a half) has elapsed, trust me.  If you add a drink for every time a motor vehicle (car, RV, truck) defies gravity and leaps through the air to bridge a chasm, you won’t make it to the half-way point of the movie.

Although the film has a lot of “false tension”—we know the protagonists (John Cusack, Amanda Peet, et al.) aren’t going to die at any time until (possibly) the climax—the scenes of their battle for survival as the apocalypse arrives are fairly exciting.  The relationships between Cusack’s character and his estranged family are trite and predictable, but not offensively so, and there are a few other emotionally-valid moments.  2012 prefers to take a broad view and the scenes of mass destruction are remarkably bloodless, shot (or CGI-ed) from a distance so we only see buildings and landscape contort and collapse, with little or no indication of the mass loss of human life.

Still, audiences who go to see this know what to expect: thrills, special effects, excitement, things blowing up real good.  2012 delivers these in a relatively painless manner, and I can’t criticise the filmmakers for that.  I don’t like to feel ripped off or patronised or treated like a moron, and while this movie didn’t change my life, it wasn’t a waste of 2.5 hours (alright, maybe 30 minutes were a waste, but that’s a decent percentage of light-headed entertainment left over).

Excuse me?  Who thought this was a good idea?  I don’t mean the “alien abduction” plot, nor the “found/real” footage concept, and not even the (needlessly-flashy) “multiple screen” format.  I mean, who had the brainstorm to combine (fake) “documentary” footage and recreated scenes, often side-by-side? For goodness’ sake, choose one or the other!  A faux-documentary would be fine, and a dramatisation would be fine, but the juxtaposition of the false-real footage and the real-false footage is really, really pointless and distracting.  And unlike the multiple-screen gambit (which is simply a directorial conceit and/or a concession to modern, computer-savvy viewers perceived to have the attention span of a flea), the intermingling of two contrasting and contradictory types of footage just seems wrong-headed to me.

(Oh, and I can’t believe anyone believes the promotional materials and the ludicrous on-screen assertions that this is “real” or even “based on actual events.” But even if some were taken in by the hype, for those gullible souls a straight “documentary” or even a “mockumentary” would have seemed a more legitimate narrative structure, not this confused melange of not-quite-lookalikes parroting each other’s dialogue and actions.)

Anyway, my virulent dislike of the moronic formal aspects of the film aside, The Fourth Kind could have been a mildly entertaining spook show if it were cleaned up a bit.  Dr. Tyler, a psychiatrist in Nome, Alaska, discovers various patients have nearly identical memories of strange visitations in the night, memories which can be retrieved via hypnosis but are too terrible to describe.  Tyler appears to be another victim of the syndrome, which she ascribes to malevolent aliens (who masquerade as snowy owls, possibly indicating Harry Potter is also an abductee). Eventually, for some unexplained reason (maybe Tyler pissed off the aliens by investigating their nefarious nocturnal missions), the psychiatrist’s daughter is abducted…and this time, it’s for keeps! Why is this all happening, and why in Nome?  Perhaps, as the aliens told Homer Simpson: “We have reached the limits of what anal probing can teach us!”

The Fourth Kind delivers a lot of screaming and over-acting, jerky camera movement, loud rumbling noises, but no visible aliens (other than those damn creepy owls) and no narrative closure (but of course not, since this is a “real story,” haha).  Perhaps my statement above was erroneous, and the controversy over the “factual” nature of the movie is what has helped it make a reasonable amount of money in its first two weeks of release.  Shorn of this, it’s a slightly-scary mix of The Exorcist (the aliens even speak ancient “Sumerian,” which links them with The Exorcist, and Dr. Tyler’s first name is “Abigail”—and she’s called “Abby”—which links The Fourth Kind with the blaxploitation horror film Abby) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it’s nothing special.

As a former radio disc jockey myself, Pirate Radio brings back fond memories for me.  Of course, I didn’t work on a ship in the North Sea, and my radio tenure started half a dozen years after the era portrayed in this film, but I recognise the camaraderie, the pranks, the equipment (cart machines! turntables! potting down the mike!), and the music…ah, the music.  Yes, disc jockeys did dance around the studio, wave their arms as if “conducting” the songs, and sing along… (oh, but we had one big advantage—our radio station was co-ed!)

I’ll confess I saw the original, UK version of this movie (The Boat That Rocked) several months ago on DVD, but made an excursion with some old radio pals to see the U.S. theatrical release—cut by over 20 minutes, it’s still a lot of fun (to be frank, The Boat That Rocked got off to a slow start and was too long).  Perhaps my moments of delight, nostalgia and (I will confess) teary-eyed sentiment (at the climax, when listeners pull a Dunkirk and rescue the broadcasters, one boat bears a placard reading “We Heard You” and I did choke up, a little) are due more to my historical baggage, but I can’t distance myself from my past, can I?  It wasn’t a job, it was an adventure.

Yes, the film’s style is sometimes a bit too frantically music-videoish, and some of the characters seem awfully familiar (or stereotypical), but overall it’s a splendidly bright evocation of a particular time, place, and culture.  The performances are excellent, but I was especially entertained by Bill Nighy as the station manager, Rhys Ifans as the star dj, and Philip Seymour Hoffmann as his rival.  Even Tom Sturridge as the obligatory “youth interest” isn’t bad.  Kenneth Branagh (as a Hitler-esque politician) and Emma Thompson are caricatures, but not unpleasantly so.  The rest of the cast is fine: one empathises with them, even the politician’s dogsbody Twatt.

The production values are excellent, even rather epic at the conclusion.  And the music…ah, the music.  Every song a winner, as they say.

The Boat That Rocked didn’t do well in its UK release.  It remains to be seen if the truncated U.S. Pirate Radio improves on that.  Nonetheless—for me, anyway—this film was a joyous trip into the past.

The germ of a good idea (or should it be said, a good original short story, by Richard Matheson) is buried in The Box, the latest film directed by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko).  However, many viewers could be forgiven for thinking the idea is buried too deep inside an interesting but inscrutable and overlong movie which at times resembles an extended version of “The X Files.”

The idea that some “higher power” is testing humans by offering them one million dollars to simply “press a button”—thereby causing the death of “someone you don’t know”—is fraught with philosophical potential.  The Box adds a clever twist at the climax (which I won’t reveal, of course), that suggests this “higher power” is also rather devious and just a little perverse.

However, these moral ambiguities are—shockingly—not significantly developed in Kelly’s film.  The button on “the box” is pushed, and suddenly the movie turns into a byzantine conspiracy/sci-fi tale, with mysterious nosebleeds, synchronised staring (and walking, and standing), CGI effects, government agencies and agents, the whole shebang.  Yes, it’s all neatly explained towards the end of the film, but that’s not the point.  The point is…the ramifications of deliberately causing another’s death for one’s own monetary gain are glossed over, practically ignored (to say nothing of the possible parallels one could draw with modern warfare, where death is routinely visited on people from afar, the result of “buttons pushed” by men and women hundreds or thousands of miles away).

The Box has some effective, even touching moments: the sequence in which Norma’s husband Arthur presents her with a prosthetic appliance which allows her to walk and dance without pain for the first time in years, for example (and the finale has a certain dramatic power).  There are also some excellently composed shots and effects (Frank Langella’s half-face is superbly done).  But the film only obliquely deals with what should have been the intellectual and emotional core of the story, the decision to push the button and the results of that decision.

Two final points: Cameron Diaz and a number of other characters have rather exaggerated “Southern” accents, which seem a bit out of place for a movie set in Richmond, Virginia (although mostly shot, it appears, in Massachusetts).  Richard Kelly is a Virginia boy himself, so perhaps he knows best, but it struck a false note with me.  Also, The Box is a period piece, taking place in December 1976—for no discernable reason, as far as I can tell.  Yes, there is some blather about Mars probes and so on, but nothing goes on that couldn’t have also gone on in 2009 (and in fact, none of the costumes, etc., are especially “period” in appearance).

This isn’t a bad film.  It holds one’s attention, the mystery is engrossing enough, the performances are satisfactory.  However, The Box may be too understated for a mass audience, and yet falls short of really probing into the topic of morality that it ostensibly deals with.

Frank Randle and Arthur Lucan (Old Mother Riley) are two British comedians whose careers ended with their deaths in the 1950s, but who retain a certain cult following today, at least in the UK (and former outposts of the Empire).  Both Randle and Lucan were perhaps too “regional” to gain much international prominence—and their films, to be blunt, were cheaply made and hardly considered “respectable” entertainment even in their home countries.  Randle and Lucan’s screen personas were brash, eccentric, energetic, pugnacious, and unpredictable: get on the wrong side of Frank or Mother Riley and they’d fetch you a clout upside the head, they would!

Lucan achieved some notoriety outside the UK for several reasons.  First, his final film co-starred Bela Lugosi and received wider distribution overseas as a result. Second, Lucan was a female impersonator and this adds some “camp” value to his work.  Finally, most of Lucan’s movies—made cheaply but at least as part of the established British film industry—are still extant, while Randle appeared in only 10 films—at least one of which is no longer available—produced by a regional producer (the Mancunian Film Company, which shot its later movies—including Holidays With Pay—in its own Manchester studios).

Holidays With Pay is not an especially good introduction to Frank Randle’s shambling, anarchic, belligerent, lecherous screen persona.  He’s toned down and far too much screen time is given to his comedic co-stars Tessie O’Shea and Dan Young (both are amusing but Randle is the star, after all).  The picture also expends a lot of (wasted) effort on a romantic sub-plot, and Randle’s set-pieces are few and far between (his earlier “Somewhere” movies were crude but at least Randle had frequent opportunities for his comedy specialities).  The script of Holidays With Pay is episodic but the Mancunian Randle vehicles were all poorly plotted, with the “narrative” merely serving as a framework for Randle’s antics (interspersed with musical numbers and the lame romantic interludes).  John E. Blakeley, the head of Mancunian, also directs Holidays With Pay, if one can call “setting up a master shot and letting the camera run” direction (there are occasional, clumsily-inserted close-ups, which only serve to awkwardly draw attention to themselves for their rarity).

Two notes: Randle very briefly reprises his “old man” character (best known as the “Old Hiker,” but sometimes incarnated otherwise) as a ghost.  He also shows up in the final sequence with his teeth! (For the uninitiated, Randle generally went toothless on film, only occasionally inserting his dentures)

The basic story of the film concerns the Rogers family—father John, mother Pansy, John’s brother Phil, two daughters, and two vaguely-related others—who set out for their summer holiday in Blackpool, only to have their jalopy and trailer (“caravan” in the UK) break down.  They’re directed to a boarding house by friendly passerby Michael (who later courts the older Rogers daughter), but have to relocate (in the final sequence) to Michael’s “haunted” mansion (he’s got to stay there to keep his inheritance, but his greedy cousin is trying to scare him away).

This film may have been released on DVD in the UK (unofficially?), but footage appears to be missing (the running time is sometimes cited as 115 minutes but the existing print runs only 94 minutes; the Pier Pavilion “concert” sequence appears to be truncated—while “celebrated tenor” Josef Locke gets to sing a LONG “cowboy” song and the romantic leads do a song and dance number, Randle has little solo time here and a buildup to Tessie O’Shea playing her banjolele leads to….nothing). There are also signs of print damage and a few seconds of missing footage in other scenes.  Still, it’s better to have this than not.

What, then, are the virtues of Holidays With Pay?  Randle, O’Shea, and Young are seasoned troupers and interact well, and one wishes Somewhere in Politics (also 1948) would turn up, since it reunited Randle and O’Shea.  More importantly, Holidays With Pay serves as a fascinating time capsule of post-World War Two Britain (there are numerous references to food rationing, for example), specifically the resort city of Blackpool.  Randle had a long off-screen association with Blackpool and its entertainment “piers,” and the actuality footage of the performers seeing the sights and enjoying the holiday attractions (swimming, bicycle and horseback riding, dancing, etc.) is quite interesting.  Certainly, these scenes are marred by the sight of crowds of bystanders lining the streets to watch Randle, O’Shea, and Young cavort (in one shot, a man reaches out of the crowd to shake Randle’s hand!).  The fictional “spell” of the picture is shattered—the sequences seem more like newsreel footage—but I found the scenes all the more fascinating for that.  Watching a group do the “Hokey Pokey” in an open-air Blackpool pier dancehall is a revelation…of sorts.

Thus, the middle section of Holidays With Pay is a valuable look at post-war British holiday-making, maybe not wholly accurate or extremely detailed, but still interesting.  However, as a Frank Randle vehicle, the film is only average.  And if you’re not interested in Blackpool or post-war Britain, or Frank Randle or British comedians..no, it’s not possible there’s someone who’s not interested in any of those things!

Although I like horror movies, I can’t say I’m an avid consumer of the recent so-called “torture porn” (Hostel, Saw, etc.).  I wouldn’t deny anyone the right to make or watch it, but I’m simply not that interested in explicit gore (and I’m outright squeamish about some things, like eyeball-damage—literally, not metaphorically).

So I’m ambivalent (or perhaps “conflicted” is a better descriptor) about Saw VI. First things first: sequels which are virtually incomprehensible if one has not seen the preceding films (or movies which end inconclusively because a sequel is already guaranteed) get on my nerves.  I’m not singling out the Saw franchise, either, I’ve got similar problems with Harry Potter.  The Saw series, to its credit, seems to be an intricately-plotted group of movies, and aren’t simply Saw, followed by Saw II: The Revenge, Saw III: Saw Goes to New York, and Saw IV: Saw vs. Predator, and so on.  However, this narrative complexity also means Saw VI—if you’ve not seen the first five—presents the audience with the distinct impression of coming into the cinema late and leaving early.  You’re only got part of the story, and while the central core of the script is (more or less) “standalone,” much of the movie might just as well have been spoken in ancient Turkish and sub-titled in Amharic, that’s how cloudy the plot is.

The second point I’ll make does cut to the heart (get it?) of the “torture porn” genre, which I define as films containing graphic gore and violence as their raison d’etre, much as explicit sex scenes are the “meat” (excuse the pun) of “regular’ porn.  Honestly, only the opening sequence of Saw VI really qualifies as this type of gratuitious violence as far as I’m concerned.  The elaborate death-traps which constitute the bulk of the movie are vaguely clever and contain more “action” and (dare we say it) “characterisation” vs. bloody effects and horrified screaming (which, by the way, are about all there is to the opening scenes).  So I’d have to partially exonerate Saw VI from the “torture porn” accusation.

The third aspect of Saw VI which is disturbing but perhaps deliberately so—since it made me think—is the nature of the film’s “conflict.”  Saw VI basically (sub-plots and series-flashbacks aside) deals with insurance executive Easton, whose formula for denying claims and/or stripping coverage from long-time subscribers has indirectly resulted in the deaths of many people (although it saves his company huge sums of money).  Easton is captured by a disciple of Saw series protagonist John (now dead, although he appears in numerous flashbacks and videos).  To save his own life, Easton has to complete a number of tasks which require enduring pain and making moral judgements.  The way Saw VI is constructed, viewers sympathise with Easton despite his “villainous” nature, and develop a rooting interest in his survival.  This transference of allegiance to an unpleasant character is further enhanced by Easton’s gradual moral awakening—the stated purpose of John’s traps is, after all, to “educate” people (if they aren’t killed horribly, that is)—and also by “revealing” flaws in apparently innocent victims.  Of course, this all comes to naught in the nihilistic conclusion, as Easton successfully completes his tasks and seems to have been reborn as a decent human being, only to be brutally slain for an act he committed prior to his ordeal.  Thus, the hypocrisy of the entire premise is exposed.

Furthermore, by manipulating the audience’s impressions of some characters in a false manner—even “good” people are made to seem bad or selfish as they fight (or plead) for their lives, allegedly showing a rotten core in all humanity, although their desperation merely affirms John’s statement about man’s strong “will to live”—Saw VI deprives the audience of any sympathetic protagonist (or even supporting player).  Everyone—good and bad alike—is brutalised, injured, killed, abused.

Perhaps this kind of discussion is what the makers of the Saw films were aiming at.  Or maybe they just want to make a lot of money pandering to viewers who gleefully applaud the Rube Goldbergian death traps and the depiction of increasingly bizarre and graphic demises.

Saw VI is competently made, in the now-familiar “cut, zoom, flash and slash” style.  Some of the performances are quite good, while other actors seem to have been hired simply on the basis of how effectively they could die on screen.

I can’t recommend this, but I won’t condemn it either.  It made me think and any movie that accomplishes that Herculean task (ha!) deserves some credit.

Some science-fiction films are really other genres with a thin veneer of science-fiction overlaid.  You know, Westerns, war films, horror movies, action pictures, comedies…others are purer, perhaps not the distilled essence of science fiction, but films which couldn’t exist in another form, which couldn’t be transmogrified into something else by a change of setting and costume.  Moon is one of the latter. And a damn fine job of it, too, from first-time director Duncan Jones.

Not to give away the plot, but as you watch this film you’ll be reminded of 2001—A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Dark Star, Alien, Blade Runner, and perhaps a few other titles in the genre (Cronenberg’s The Fly, perhaps?  Outland?).   Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the sole human working on a privately-owned moonbase.  He oversees the automated mining operations, ably aided by artificially-intelligent robot GERTY.  Sam’s two weeks away from the end of his three-year contract, and is anxious to get back to Earth for a reunion with his wife and young daughter. Will anything go wrong before he departs?  (Obviously the answer is yes, or we don’t have a movie, do we?)

Moon is a mystery of sorts, but it’s also a bit of a meditation on what it means to be human.  What makes us what we are, after all?  Being a living organism?  A sentient being?  Capable of love and other emotions?  Moon doesn’t spend a lot of time in active navel-gazing, but it makes its point.  And even robots, it seems, can be noble.

Essentially a one-character film (or is it?), Moon is a showcase for Sam Rockwell. Let’s just say he handles a complex role effectively.  To discuss his performance further would be to spoil the surprises in store.

Technically, this is fine. Frankly, almost nothing that transpires on a movie screen any more shocks me, and I’ve given up saying “how did they do that?”  Again, to talk about a certain “effect” would be a spoiler, so I won’t.  The moonbase, the lunarscapes, the moon-rover vehicles, all top-notch but the purpose isn’t to awe an audience with the visuals, since in this case they merely support the story.

It’s hard to talk about Moon without revealing too much.  I wouldn’t say this is an enduring classic of cinematic art, but it’s a superior motion picture in many ways, and deserved a wider release than it got.  Although those who saw it in theatres were almost universally impressed, for some reason it saw only “limited” exposure in the USA, and is now available on DVD.  At least that’s something.

A really fine animated credits sequence put me in a good mood.  Then…oh no, not another film narrated by its youthful protagonist (a la Zombieland)!  Argh…but Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Apprentice actually turned out to be rather fun.  Stylish (a bit too flashy but not offensively so) and humorous, with some effective performances by the principals (although the cameos by Salma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, and Jane Krakowski didn’t do much for me), and—surprisingly—I didn’t feel as if I was too old to be watching this.

Darren Shan agrees to become the half-vampire assistant to vampire Crepsley in order to save the life of his best friend Steve (bitten by Crepsley’s colorful spider).  He takes up residence at the Cirque du Freak, and learns of the impending conflict between “vampires” (who drink blood but don’t kill their victims) and “vampanese” (who do kill people).  The jolly but sinister Mr. Tiny tries to foment open warfare between the undead factions, for reasons of his own, and enlists the bitter Steve as his champion.

I don’t particularly care for movies which set themselves up as the first of a franchise, but Cirque du Freak at least supplies a half-way resolution at the conclusion of the first installment.  (This is one of the similarities between this picture and the Harry Potter series, but I perceived some other, possibly coincidental points in common).  And at least no prior knowledge of the original books is assumed, although some of the characters who “flit” in and out of the movie (that’s a pun but you have to see the film to get it) have only a peripheral bearing on the plot of this one, so one assumes they’ll be more important in subsequent entries.

The photography and production design are excellent, and the effects work is satisfactory—the scene where Crepsley’s spider runs amok in Darren’s school is amusing fun, but some of the final battle is typical fake-looking CGI.  John C. Reilly, with his overgrown-baby face and high forehead, unfortunately resembles the title character of Blackenstein a bit too much, but he’s very good in the role of the acerbic but ultimately sympathetic vampire.  Chris Massoglia isn’t offensive as Darren (and he looks Ashton Kutcher-y, but I won’t hold that against him), while Michael Cerveris seems to be (effectively) channeling Sidney Greenstreet as Mr. Tiny.

Perhaps I’m becoming less jaded, but I had a rather good time watching Cirque du Freak. It didn’t change my life but it was a hundred or so minutes of escape from reality, and that isn’t such a bad thing.

“Sugar Bee”—upbeat, Cajun-flavoured track by Cleveland Crochet, 1961.

A suspenseful, scary little movie.  Not that original but well-made and genuinely spooky in parts.  The “found footage” motif is no longer a novelty (this was actually made in 2007 but the gimmick wasn’t new even then), the script falters a bit at times, and one of the two main characters gets a bit annoying, but overall this is a slick and fun Halloween treat.  Just last month I watched the legendary 1992 BBC faux-documentary “Ghostwatch,” and Paranormal Activity brought that to mind, high praise indeed.

Katie and Micah, “engaged to be engaged,” live together in a luxurious house in San Diego (she’s a college student, he’s an apparently-successful “day trader,” which dates the script a bit), but there’s a serpent in their Paradise: Katie’s been plagued by a supernatural stalker since the age of 8.  [Micah, rather churlishly, complains she didn’t inform him of this before they decide to move in together—way to be supportive of your girlfriend, jerk!]  Like most 21st-century males, Micah loves technology, and decides to video-record the paranormal activity, which consists mostly of thumps, bumps, and other minor-league poltergeist hijinks.

Things go from bad to worse, exacerbated by Micah’s initial scepticism and later arrogance about their uninvited guest.  A paranormal researcher can’t help: he’s a ghost specialist, and senses Katie’s being stalked by a demon (I suppose that also means they can’t call in the Ghostbusters, darn it).  Since the entity (hey, anyone remember The Entity, 1981?  Paranormal Activity resembles that movie, a bit, and also contains a clear homage to The Exorcist) is after Katie, moving out of their house won’t ditch the pest.  Looking for a happy ending?  Try Zombieland, you won’t find one here.

A proponent of the “things you don’t see are scarier than those shown” method, Paranormal Activity works up a strong head of supernatural-steam while showing only the odd shadow.  The audience will jump a couple of times, but mostly the film is content to build suspense and a steadily-growing and pervasive air of dread.

Essentially a two-character film (plus two supporting roles), Paranormal Activity benefits from strong performances, a crucial factor in its success.  Yes, Micah Sloat as “Micah” does sound a lot like Ray Romano, and is rather annoying, insensitive, and stubborn at times, but he’s a believable character for all that.  Katie Featherston has the larger role—Micah is “behind the camera” much of the time—and she’s rock solid, albeit a bit less hysterical than one might expect, given her ordeal.

Pre-release hype aside, this actually delivers.  Maybe it is a little too slickly directed and shot, perhaps Micah and Katie don’t quite react in a wholly realistic fashion (and that house! Day trading paid off back then, it seems), but Paranormal Activity is an enjoyable picture, the kind that has you nervously scanning every inch of the screen…afraid of what you might see.