Gigantic. 0 Money Trains

The following is a guest review from my friend, Stephen Beckett.

* * *

As a guest reviewer of money train quality films I was honored to be invited to review a film I would love to describe a truly awful but can't bring myself to as it was a strangely watchable and endearing film. The film in question is 'Gigantic'.

The film's basic premise is, well this is the starting point of the problem, its not clear to define what it is. It's certainly a boy meets girl movies as there is a boy. He meets a girl. And as is the norm in such situations they fall in love etc so this might possibly be the main story line.

However, our boy is a young mattress sales man who longs to adopt a baby. But he doesn't just want to adopt any baby, a Chinese baby (no I wasn't on acid when I watched this film) and you might think Hallmark Channel would rub their hands with glee at the prospect of the heart wrenching trials and tribulations of trying to go through such an adoption. But no, in this case the adoption thing is more of a side theme bordering on a non-theme. It’s more just something that is used to demonstrate the oddballness of the main character.

Then there's the love interest, and it quite possible this is why I kept watching as it came in the form of Zooey Deschanel. She plays a girl called Happy who comes into the mattress shop to collect a mattress bought by her father and promptly falls asleep on the bed in the middle of the shop. No explanation why, no questions asked she just does, and our hero waits for her to wake up and love grows from there.

And what seems to be the common theme through all of the characters is that quality that many Woody Allen films seem to have in my mind. And this is that the characters seem to exist in their own right. They are not part of a film that needs to develop them, they are not trying to live up to a sterotype that their existence and purpose in the plot requires you to realize and buy in to. In fact it is almost as if the characters fundamental aloofness to the film and what might be realistic in the real world is the only purpose in them being there. They don't seem like the actors are struggling with a crap script or story-line that they are hoping will pick up. Instead you feel that the characters have already been fully developed somewhere else off set and then just left to mumble their way through an hour and a half to see if anything good comes out of it.

So what is the main theme of the film? What is its message? Why was it made? At by the end of the film I can't answer that. There were threads of stories in here, there were things that sort of catch the attention and imagination. But at the end of the day I found myself watching it until the end more to see which of these viens of interest might become the conclusion (and for the lovely Zooey Deschannel). And in the end it was none of them, but nor was there a twist in the tail to wow you. It just kind of ended.

Money train rating. I say it is on a par with Money Train. Watchable but ultimately you are left wondering why you watched it.

Inglourious Basterds. -3.0 Money Trains

That's right. Minus three. Inglourious Basterds is a big pile of steaming poo that left me feeling angry that I had wasted 2 and a half hours of my life, and angry that I didn't think to say to Sarah that I was going window shopping in the mall and she could call me when it was over.

So, what's the problem? Well, the German-hating thing is getting a bit old. Back in the 50s and 60s when WWII was still fresh in the mind and veterans were going to the movies, the all-German-soldiers-are-evil-Jew-hating-killing-machines stereotype had its place. But WWII kicked of 70 years ago. And honestly, (and this is going to be controversial), isn't it time the Jews moved on, especially considering their own track record in Palestine?

Right, that's the underlying politics dealt with. How about the plot? It was thin, to say the least. A bit like A Dirty Dozen, but carried off with less panache and skill. In fact, the plot was kind of hard to follow at times because of the dragging scenes where nothing much happened. Like the scene in the tavern that went for about 40 minutes (or it seemed that long), where everyone just gets killed. And so a character introduced the scene before is eliminated without achieving anything, either for his mission or the film.

Now the characters were caricatures, one and all, and I don't mind that at all, as it was intentional. But even a cast of caricature should surely having you rooting for at least one character. Even Collateral had you backing the taxi driver a little bit. But one dimensional characters are the least of this film's problems.

How about the humour? People in the cinema were laughing, and I honestly have no idea why. Was someone passing notes? Were they watching a different film? Or are they just so low on the evolutionary tree of life that violence gets them giggling? God, there one joke in the whole thing (the Basterds working out who spoke the best foreign language) and the rest was either obscene levels of violence or overly long conversations about nothing in particular where Tarrantino was obviously trying to build suspense and failing spectacularly (eg, the scene with the chick and the strudel).

Right, I'm about done here. But I have to say this: 4 people vanished. Or maybe I fell asleep.

It starts off with 8 Basterds and 1 leader - 9. They pick up the German guy - 10. They pick up the Pom - 11. Then the 2 German Basterds and the Pom buy the farm in the tavern - back to 8. Two more go down in the cinema - 6. Two are left in the final scene - 4. What happened to the others?

Actually, I don't give a crap. This film was just woeful. Give me Money Train any day of the week. Oh, and as for Tarrantino - he loves cinema, he loves paying homage to other films, everyone says he's a master craftsman. And yes, Pulp Fiction was good. Reservoir Dogs was great. But then he went down this in-joke, pay homage to everything avenue and the results have been pretentious and ultimately really boring. -3.0 MT

Collateral. 2.0 Money Trains

Collateral is better than Public Enemies because it is a colour-by-numbers thriller where character development is an optional extra. Also, it has a stronger narative. But like Public Enemies, it looks like it was shot on video in a few scenes too many.

It's still full of loopholes, though, and that makes it worth a laugh.

1. I've never seen a guy fall on a car from height in real life, but I've seen it in movies often enough, and I have a degree in engineering, so I'm pretty sure a 90kg man dropping four stories onto the 1 or 2mm steel of a car roof would cause some damage. Maybe buckle the columns, bend the roof, smash, rather than crack, the windshield. But apparently not. Apparently, you'll just dent the roof.

2. I'm also pretty sure than flipping a car over at 100kph will damage the occupants if they're not wearing seatbelts. Some cuts at least, if not broken limbs and nexts, internal injuries, etc etc. Ok, ok, suspend disbelief, or whatever you're meant to do. But when 90% of the film is set in a car, you'd think you could get these things a little more right.

3. And how come bad guys, who can group their shots within a square centimetre from across a crowded room and while moving cannot seem to hit the hero from 3 feet? That's getting a bit tired, I have to say. I'm not saying the hero should be gunned down in the second act, but how about thinking of a different situation he or she can get out of?

4. This film is LONG. (As is every Michael Mann film, actually.) It comes in at almost 2h, and could have been wrapped up nicely in more like 50 minutes. (Public Enemies could have ended about seven times before it was finally over.) How about a bit of efficiency?

All up, see Collateral if you're bored. It's not memorable though. 2.0MT

Public Enemies. 1.0 Money Trains

What the hell is it with Michael Mann? He makes a great film like Ali, and a load of utter crap like Public Enemies. Is he the American Guy Ritchie?

Now, I haven't seen all his films, but I did see Ali (excellent); Heat (booooooooooooooring); Collateral (see review); I missed Miami Vice but I heard that's a good thing; and now Public Enemies.

It's as if the film makers thought that putting a load of good actors into a film was enough to carry it without having to worry about a plot; character development; or cinematography. Let's look at those:

First, the actors and their characters. EVERYONE is in this, from Johnny Depp to Giovanni Ribisi to Leelee Sobieski to David Wenham, most of them playing bit parts. But not one of them has any character. Johhny Depp's John Dillinger is wooden and lifeless; his woman is a waste of space; Christian Bale's G-man is ... oh god, he was just crap. Everyone in this film was totally crap. There was not a single bit of character development or even enough acting to make you feel for anyone. Even when Dillinger's moll get's the good news about him, you feel nothing. Oh god, what a waste of time.

Plot: well, a bunch of guys go around robbing banks and getting shot. The cold-blooded killer side of Dillinger is kept out of the film to make him a bit of a hero, but, as per the character development comments above, you don't care either way. Look, there was plot. No cause and effect. No narrative running through the tale. At some point along the way, Pretty Boy Floyd asnd Baby Face Nelson are introduced, but you don't know why - they certainly don't add anything to the story. God, what a pile of crap.

Cinematography: you know it's bad when you notice it. It wasn't bad like Dolemite is bad: there were no boom mikes encroaching on shot, but the light was bad, as if it was shot in colour with a plan to convert to black and white. Either that, or it was filmed on video. Half the time it looked like it was shot in a 7-11, the light was so wrong. And if that wasn't enough of a problem, the film stock differed markedly between scenes, from super grainy to regular. In one scene (ONE scene), there are a few seconds when some original footage is spliced in (or it looks that way - they may have just used different stock again, mid way through the scene). Why the hell would you do that? If you do it throughout the film, no worries, but for a 2 second clip mid scene? Come on!!

Yep, this film is appalling. But it's better than Money Train. 1.0

Eagle Eye, 3.0 Money Trains

I quite liked Eagle Eye, I've got to say. It was entertaining, had car chases, high tech gadgetry, that sort of thing. But why is it that the underlying premise of intelligent-computer movies is always the same. Ie:

1. Computer is smart.

2. Computer realises people are doing the wrong thing and that, for the good of the world ("I, Robot"), or the country ("Eagle Eye"), some people need to die.

3. Man disagrees with an evidently vastly superior intellect and shuts down the computer because he has to be able to continue on his self destructive path.

There are variations on this, but it always boils down to: computers are bad and will get the better of us ("Fail-safe", "Terminator", "2001 - A Space Odyssey", "War Games", and a bunch more I can't recall), but we must prevail so we can continue on our path to destruction unaided.

The computer is right! In Eagle Eye, the reasoning was sound: the top 10 US officials should have been eliminated (although the means were a little Heath Robinson-esque) in the interests of national security.

As for the means of which I speak: let's look at what a computer can and can't do.

1. A computer cannot cause a mechanical failure in a high tension power cable such that the cable falls down and electrocutes a guy, especially as, with no CCTV, the computer can't see the guy. (And why does he run along the line of the cables, rather than sideways?)

2. A computer cannot kill a guy with a robotic arm designed to move hard discs from A to B. Why would anyone equip such an arm with a servo-motor that strong?

3. A military computer is unlikely to be linked up to every network in the country and so the all-pervasive access to electronic devices just won't happen in the first place.

4. Why get the guy to travel all the way across the country to the command centre to key in his voice print to unlock the go-codes on the evil mission? Why not just phone up and say "Steve, (or whatever his name is"), can you say the following...?"), and then feed that recording into the security system to unlock the codes? For that matter, why can't the oh-so-smart computer just fake the voice print?

5. I don't care if the guy is an identical twin. His biometric data will be different to his twin.

6. Smuggling the exploding crystal into the House of Reps on a necklace would surely be easier if the necklace was passed off as a gift to any old female punter, rather than engineering the whole elaborate thing of getting the chick across the country, too.

Oh, and 7: Changing traffic lights. We saw this in The Italian Job, too. People don't respond instantly to traffic light changes. Suddenly changing them red without the orange won't cause the flow of traffic to instantly change, and people won't blindly follow the lights and drive out into cross traffic because the light says Go.

But as I say, entertaining. 3MT.

AVP; Death Race; Pineapple Express; Transporter 3

The following films don't deserve a full review, and don't take themselves seriously enough for me to tear them to shreds, but I will include them here:

Alien Versus Predator: 1 MT

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

You know the plot, it's in the title. Everyone dies except the girl, like in so many disaster movies of late (except Deep Blue Sea). Black guys, the multi-millionaire funding the whole thing, the nerdy guy (Spud, from Trainspotting, in this case), the well-trained ex-millitary types, even the potential love interest. All dead. Hilarious film, great for a lazy weekend with the boys and a case of beer.

Death Race: 1 MT

Death Race is stupid. But it's meant to be. It never pretends to be anything but. The real mystery in it is why someone would remake a film with such a bad premise that sank into obscurity in the 70s. This will also sink into the obscurity that marks so many Jason Stratham films. It is, of course, about a race with a high mortality rate. Oh, and the usual thing with a future so bleak prisons are privately run money-making entertainment organisations. Like we haven't seen that before.

Pineapple Express: -3.5 MT

That's right, NEGATIVE 3.5. I had heard from several people that it was hilarious. And I'm not averse to stoner films: Dude, Where's My Car and the Harold and Kumar films have their moments. But for me, the best part of Pineapple Express, was going into the kitchen and doing the dishes. I didn't finish watching this pile of crap and never will.

Transporter 3: 2 MT

This scores a little higher than Death Race because Jason Stratham does some fight scenes in it which are pretty good, in that cartoon-violence, let's-only-attack-him-in-turn-so-he-can-deal-with-us-one-by-one kind of way. The plot is identical to the previous two: Frank (Stratham) has to drive someone from point A to point B, but it's not that easy. Luckily, he doesn't mess up his suit. (If he's so hung up on keeping his suit fresh, why does he wear his jacket driving?)

Dolemite. -4 Money Trains

There's an episode of Family Guy where Peter makes a film called Steel Vaginas, at the end of which Joe Swanson, the paraplegic, remarks: "Wow, that was the worst piece of crap I've ever seen. My ass is actually sore. My ass is actually sore."

I know how he feels. Dolemite is simply woeful. In fact, I've had a hard time rating it, as I can't decide whether it's worse than Storm. On the other hand, it is apparently a very famous Blaxploitation film, has been influential to rappers every since, and is full of pimpin' outfits, sleazy politicians, amusingly bad acting, and great lines like:

"I got your "boy" hangin', you no-business, born insecure, jock-jawed, motha fuckas!"

Dolomite is about a guy - a pimp and "underworld personality" (as Australian news services say) - who is released from jail to find out who is really causing all the crime in Ward 4 of LA. Or to stop a drug deal, or gun smuggling, or something. The police, it seems, are not up to the task, especially the two crooked cops who spend the movie trying to put Dolemite back in jail. 

The crime wave, it turns out, is due to Willie Green, another pimp and underworld personality, who is actually working for the Mayor (who does a disturbing nude scene). Of course, all the baddies want to kill Dolemite, but he is too stone-cold and his moves too fast, plus he is aided by Queen Bee's Karate Killers (high kicking hookers, to you and me): no-one can get near him. You dig?

(By stone-cold I mean wooden, and by fast I mean wooden. Just thought I'd clear that up.)

Dolemite (the movie) does away with several cinematic conventions. For starters, it ignores the convention that boom mikes should be kept out of shot, and reflectors should be held steady. It also does away with the convention that plot points should link up in some way or be cut, not left in leaving you wondering just what was the point of going down to the wharves to discover something about drug smuggling. 

Traditional methods of editing are also not part of this groundbreaking film, with characters often talking to the spot where the other guy no longer is (eg, the warden in the opening scene talking to Dolemite). And on the warden: what the hell? Since when do prison wardens decide whether a guy should be released to prove his innocence? Isn't there some kind of "court" system, and "legal process" for that? 

Then there's the whole fight sequence thing (think Star Trek. The original one), the acting thing (think Storm, or Prisoner (Cell Block H)) and for me, one of the highlights: the car chase.

I've never seen a car chase at 30kph before, and let me tell you, it's not very exciting. Even though they tried to borrow some ideas from Bullitt, the chase is just laughable - but no so obviously laughable to be comedy. It's more like they wanted, really wanted, to do a car chase but forgot to get permission and get the streets closed, and didn't know how to drive very well. 

So what's left: how about unexplained characters? Like the Hamburger Pimp, who Dolemite lets get high before offering up information, and then some hoods burst in and kill him anyway. What was that all about? Or the militant Reverend - still haven't worked out why he was in it. 

And finally, I have to mention the clothes. This had me laughing all the way through. When Dolemite first gets out of prison, he stips off and pimps up, with frilly shirts, big bow ties, and furry fedoras. (Then takes the clothes off again once his in the car and his hoes give him a warm welcome back to freedom.) The pimp-wear in this flick is hilarious, with lapels to the shoulders, collars about eight inches down the back, custard yellow suits with black piping, and capes. Yes, capes. In one scene, Dolemite wears not one, but two capes. But my favourite is the coat worn by the (good-guy) FBI man (also known as "the one who no-one knows until it's time") at the end. First, think plum plaid sports coat. Then take off the lapels, button it on the belly, and then cut out a square bib. Truly horrendous.

Back to the rating: as a film, it's unratable. It is that bad. The acting, the technical stuff, the plot: all appalling. But it does have some kind of entertainment value: the great lines ("That rat-soup eatin', insecure, honkey mutha-fucka!"), the hilarious clothes, and the baffling plot developments. All up, I've decided the entertainment + the poor quality = -4.0 Money Trains.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski, 562 pages)

Don't believe the hype or you, too, may be sucked into the lie that has made TSOES an "international best seller". Despite Oprah's Book Club recommendation and Stephen King saying he'll reread it, the truth is that this is an over-long, pointless and somewhat turgid tales that leaves you feeling cold.

The story is about young Edgar, only child in a family of dog breeders who is born mute. Why mute? I can only guess it's because Wroblewski couldn't be arsed writing dialog or using the " symbol. Edgar's muteness adds only annoyance to the story, plus an unhealthy detgree of unbelievability. But no matter, Wroblewski decided the little bastard was to be mute and that's all there is to it, pointless as the decision was.

Edgar lives an idlyic life raising dogs until Uncle Claude shows up. His father, Gar, and Claude fight a lot, Gar mysteriously dies, Edgar believes Claude was responsible but his mother, Trudy, shacks up with him nonetheless. After accidentally killing the vet (and father of the local cop), Edgar goes bush for a couple of months before returning for a showdown with Claude. And you ask yourself: Why? Why does Claude kill Gar? ops, gave it away!) Why did he even buy the poison in Korea in the 50s in the prologue in the first place? Why did Edgar go bush for so long? And why does it take 500 pages to cover this?

None of these critical plot points is explained, which is surprising when so many pages are given over to excrutiuating detail and plain drivel. The first 120 pages, for example, are taken up with family history and setting an idylic scene in which NOTHING HAPPENS.

In the end, the climatic showdown between boy and uncle turns out to be formulaic and the attempted heart-string puller of Edgar finally talking falls flat. And yet surprisingly this book was not too hard to read. Something made me keep turning the pages and I believe it was the belief that some of the questions raised would be answered.

They weren't. I wasted several hours of my life. Don't make the same mistake. 2/5

Rockandrolla - Zero Money Trains

If any doubt remained about the film making ability of Guy Ritchie, then Rockandrolla (Rockanrolla?) dispels it forever: Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells was either stolen or a total fluke and Guy Ritchie has no talent whatsoever.

Once again, here is a film about London gansters who get caught up in an intricate situation with lots of murder, violence, rhyming slang and characters drawn worse than a Scoobee Doo villain. (And named worse, too: One Two; Tank and others so bad I forget, but probably along the lines of Fingers, Septic, Bacon, and Pink Eye Johnny. Speaking of pink eye, see Knocked Up: great film!!)

The plot... well, I'm not sure there is one. Something about a stolen painting, with a subploit of ripping off Russian mafia, with another subplot of gay best friend, with another subplot of errant step son and another subplot of love interest. As usual, Ritchie tried to tie these together in such a way as to be "clever" but makes more of a mess with it than he did with Snatch, and so ties it together in such a way as to be "stupid", "unlikely", "ridiculous", "frankly annoying" and just plain "dumb".

In the end, Tom Wilkinson's villain gets his just desserts (earned for overacting worse than an Italian footballer); Thandy Newton's double crossing femme fatale has something bad happen to her (I was on a plane so that bit was cut); and the "heroes"; bad actors one and all... you know, I don't even remember what happened to them. They probably got shot or got away or something. Don't really care.

This film is APPALLING - do not watch it. It isn't even funny drunk. Guy Ritchie is the Joe Dolce of cinema.

Zero Money Trains.