Annihilation Earth

I like to think I’m an intelligent man. Nothing special you understand, but I can tackle a Sudoku and dent the cryptic crossword.

It also means I can follow most films. Sure, I might not understand every last nuance or layer of subtext, but I can generally follow the broad sweep of plot and theme.

Or at least, that’s what I thought. But after watching Annihilation Earth (2009), I’d absolutely not a scoobie what was going on.

Normally, I wouldn’t even bother to try and make sense of such a mangled cinematic experience. However, my obligations as a reviewer for a micro-genre film blog require me to at least attempt a brief synopsis. So here goes….

In the near future, the world’s energy crisis is about to be solved. A global network of Hadron Colliders are about to come online to provide the planet with all the clean energy it could ever need.

Happily, though, this is a disaster movie and not a promo video for the environmental movement. So predictably, there’s a fly or two in the ointment.

First, there’s the regulation-issue shady politician (Marina Sirtis) leading a high-level conspiracy to stop the technology being shared. And –  try not to fall off your chair from shock – but would you believe there’s also  a terrorist who’s hell-bent on blowing up the super-colliders? The film never  troubles itself to cast any light on the motivations of these shadowy characters, leaving the viewer clueless as to why anything is happening.

At first, I was going to quibble this point but, given how buttock-clenchingly poor the motivations of most movie villains are (remember the goon in Olympus Has Fallen who cited ‘Globalisation. Wall Street.’ as the trigger points for his traitorous actions?) that a dignified silence might well be the best option.

After the terrorist blows up one of the colliders, the whole power-generating network becomes dangerously unstable, threatening to destroy the entire world. Only a top scientist, played by Luke Goss – the distressed Levis-wearing, Grolsch bottle top-bothering former singer from Eighties pop moppets Bros – can stop the annihilation of the earth.

Goss and his team don protective suits to shield
themselves from the fallout from of a dire script

Now, if this sounds straightforward, it’s only because I’ve left out the guff where the Earth’s magnetic poles switch, earthquakes shake cities to the ground, and everyone faces the prospect of disappearing into the void when a black hole forms. Oh, and that’s not to mention the ‘doomsday equation’: some sort of mathematical flaw in the colliders that means oblivion was inevitable from the moment the damn things were turned on.

The effect of all this woeful incoherence is to leave the viewer caring not so much whether the world will end, but simply when the film will.

Perhaps embarrassed by its failure to make any sense, the film hastily gets on with the main disaster movie business of blowing stuff up – which entertainingly includes half of France. (Hollywood’s long-standing grudge against the cheese-eating surrender monkeys is a gift that keeps on giving).

Inevitably, amid such widespread destruction, the film-makers gamely throw in a chopper fireball to keep our flagging interests from waning.

The rotor-related mayhem occurs when Goss and a small team of scientists fly in to investigate the site where the first collider blew up. Conforming to disaster movie type, the helicopter develops a mechanical problem at the worst possible moment and plummets from the sky. Crashing to the ground where, it lies broken and smashed for a moment before exploding.

Artistic merit

The crash is decently staged. There are lots of shaky camera shots from within the helicopter as the pilot battles for control.

The explosion though, is a dull CGI affair. It makes me wonder if, like the pre-programmed rhythm settings on a cheap keyboard, there’s a default ‘explosion’ setting that comes with all CGI software. If so (and straining the analogy to its breaking point), this conflagration had a definite ‘bossanova’ feel to it – cheesy and predictable.

Exploding helicopter innovation

I’ve wracked my brains and genuinely can’t come up with anything. Not a bean.

Do passengers survive?

Naturally, main guy Goss and his team of scientists manage to scramble from the chopper’s wreckage and survive. But oh no! The pilot’s trapped in the cockpit.

With the helicopter about to explode, Goss tries to free the unfortunate aviator. However, realising that the chopper is only seconds away from fiery oblivion the pilot nods wordlessly at Goss, giving permission to abandon the rescue effort and save himself.

It’s meant to be a moving moment of self-sacrifice, but plays more like the actor simply lost all enthusiasm for being associated with Annihilation Earth any longer. I know exactly how he feels.

Positives

If the thought of a former boy-band lip-synch specialist as one of the world’s top scientists seems unlikely enough, the rest of Luke Goss’ scientific team is made up of silicone and collagen-enhanced dolly birds.

Still, science must be exhausting work. In no time at all, our lady professors are stripping down to their vests for no discernible reason. Cue much cleavage-focussed camera activity.

Later when one of the bimbos dies, she makes her final wheezing breaths look and sound suspiciously like an orgasm – which, in retrospect, may offer a clue as to the nature of her previous cinematic outings.

Negatives

Curiously, in this American made-for-TV production, all the leads are British. Perhaps wisely, given he often struggled to convincingly lip-synch songs with only two lines in them, Goss is permitted to retain his standard Cock-er-nee accent. Colin Salmon, on the other hand, tries to disguise the clipped diction of his RADA-trained baritone with an accent that can only be described as ‘generic American’. By someone who’s plainly British.

Meanwhile, Marina Sirtis (Star Trek: The Next Generation) appears to be aiming for a Southern Belle twang. Unsurprisingly though, it keeps chaotically switching on and off, as if someone behind her was twiddling a giant knob and desperately trying to find the correct vocal setting. Edifying, it is not.

Favourite quote

In a film where the script is made up entirely of deathless dialogue, no line epitomises the profound lack of danger or excitement better than: “David - we have to get back to Geneva.”

Interesting fact

In his Eighties pop heyday, Luke Goss once sang: ‘When Will I Be Famous?’ Not any time soon, if this piece of prime cinematic merde has anything to do with it.

Review by: Jafo

Arctic Predator

It would be very easy to confuse Arctic Predator (2010) with The Thing, but be assured they are very different films. While one’s about a shape-shifting creature that’s defrosted by scientists in the arctic, the other is about scientists who accidentally defrost a shape-shifting…. oh, never mind.

Make no mistake though, there are notable and crucial differences between the two films. For example, one film’s called Arctic Predator and the other is titled The Thing. It’s possible there may even be other differences but, overcome with a sense of déjà vu, you’ll probably find them hard to spot.

In Kurt Russell’s role, we now have former TV Superman actor Dean Cain, whose career seemingly went up, up and away at some point in the early Noughties. He’s leading a mission to find the wreck of an old sailing ship, which mysteriously sank in the Arctic nearly 200 years ago.

Inevitably, when they find and defrost the vessel they also thaw out the titular Arctic Predator. As the newly unleashed creature starts killing off the small team one-by-one, Cain must stop the monster before everyone is put permanently on ice.

So far, so similar, you might think. However, it would be unfair to accuse this film of doing a straight rip-off of The Thing, if only because it would appear that plundering just one suspense classic wasn’t quite enough for the movie’s ‘creative’ team.

How so? Well, just as you’re getting used to watching a flaccid re-run of Kurt Russell’s classic, up pops the homicidal ice monster – which looks uncannily like yon dreadlocked Predator chappie who gave Arnold Schwarzenegger so much trouble all those years ago.

In essence, you’re watching the movie equivalent of a ‘ringer’ car – a wonky, barely-operating whole made up from distended bits of other blockbuster vehicles.

Dean Cain and definitely not Kurt Russell

Although largely bankrupt in terms of ideas and budget (just get a load of that Atari-level CGI), the film’s penurious approach does promote a strange strain of originality.

So, when they need a device to carefully defrost the delicate, centuries old artefacts from the sunken ship, a heat gun – yes, the standard type generally used for stripping paint – is pressed into service as if it were a sophisticated piece of scientific equipment.

There’s also a glorious scene where, after an impromptu amputation, someone cauterises the gaping wound using an iron. Yes, an iron. (Apparently, you can find the ‘wound-cauterising’ setting just between nylon and cotton steam.

Sadly, such moments of low-fi inspiration don’t stretch to the helicopter explosion which is the dictionary definition of routine.

Looking to escape the arctic base one of the team flies out in a helicopter during a violent storm. As he’s about to take off, the pilot is stabbed by our icy hunter but still manages to fly the chopper a short distance away from the facility. Alas, all too quickly he succumbs to his injuries so the whirlybird crashes to the ground and explodes.

Artistic merit

Risible. The ‘explosion’ is a yellowy CGI smear that the director chooses wisely not to linger over.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None. We’ve already seen helicopters explode in the Arctic. Funnily enough, in The Thing.

Positives

Amid a veritable tsunami of rank cliché and banal rip-off, there is actually one genuinely good idea fighting to be noticed. It turns out the sailing ship that Cain searches for was captained by his distant relative, so there is a nice story arc about his life paralleling that of his forefather.

To avoid plot spoilers I won‘t go into specifics, but this idea goes off in a potentially interesting and dark direction at the end.

Negatives

As a veteran viewer of low-budget, made for cable productions, I’m well used to hearing actors deliver execrable dialogue – but the Arctic Predator script is a whole new kind of bad. In fact, it’s not so much bad as just plain wrong. Let’s look at the prosecution’s ‘Exhibit A’, which occurs when the crew eventually realise they’re facing a homicidal ice monster.

“We got ourselves a situation here.”

[With panicked expression] “I’d say ‘situation’ underlines it.”

For pity’s sake. It doesn’t ‘underline’ anything; it ‘understates’ the situation. Shakespeare, this ain’t.

Favourite quote

There’s a glorious lack of empathy in this brief exchange:

“Where’s the doc?”

“He sacrificed himself.”

[Immediately] “Did his plan work?”

The concern for the poor, departed doc is touching.

Favourite helicopter-related quote

“Make no mistake, we’re flying out of here on this chopper.” (Unfortunately, as action movie genre rules state, the inverse of any emphatic statement given by a minor character must turn out to be true.)

Interesting fact

Having grumbled through this review about how Arctic Predator is a rip-off of The Thing, it’s only fair to acknowledge that John Carpenter was also reinventing an earlier film, The Thing From Another World (1951).

However, whereas Carpenter was clearly producing a remake and bringing his own ideas to the film, Arctic Predator settles for nothing more than lazy plagiarism.

Review by: Jafo

The Guardian

With the Oscar-laden Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner made a big splash in the Hollywood pond. Then over the next few years he surfed a tidal wave of critical and commercial success, until nearly sinking his career (and an whole studio) with watery disaster epic Waterworld.

With that film’s title now a cautionary byword for excess and folly – a kind of Heaven’s Gate, with gills – you’d have thought Tinseltown producers would be wary of bankrolling any project that placed Kevin anywhere near so much as a bucket of water, never mind an entire ocean of the stuff.

But, proving the wisdom of William Goldman’s warning that Hollywood is a town where ‘nobody knows anything’, incredibly someone decided to chuck $70m at The Guardian (2006), a tale of heroism on the high seas.

Big Kev plays Randall, a legendary rescue swimmer with the US coastguard. Haunted by the death of his friend during a dangerous rescue (a staple of these movies – see Sly Stallone in Cliffhanger’s opening scene), he’s forced to take a gig at the coastguard training school whilst he regains his sea-rescuing mojo.

At the school, Kevin has to whip a class of new recruits into shape – including cocky high-school swim champ Ashton Kutcher, who is similarly hamstrung by personal tragedy. Can both men let go of the grief that’s holding them back? Can they achieve their coastguard dreams? Does a bear answer the call of nature in the woods?

Costner: treading water

The answer, of course, is ‘yes‘. However, we must first sit through an extended hard-training montage and an equally punishing (for the viewer, at least) cathartic scene where Costner and Kutch, lips a-trembling, share their hokum stories of inner pain. There won’t be a dry eye in the house after this scene: certainly, I nearly drowned crying with laughter.

As he recently demonstrated in Man Of Steel, Costner was born to play these humble mentor roles. With his slow hokey drawl, folksy wisdom and solid Joe persona, he’s in many ways the natural heir to James Stewart – even if here he isn’t required to do anything more demanding, in acting terms, than tread water.

Kutcher though, as the arrogant ingenue, is plainly not waving, but drowning. While he might have been comfortable playing second fiddle to an older, more established actor in his marriage, it’s a role he visibly struggles with onscreen.

Still, despite the achingly predictable plot arc and familiar array of cardboard cut-out characters, the two big sea rescues that bookend the film are excitingly staged by veteran director Andrew Davis (Under Siege, The Fugitive). And, while the almost two and a half hours run-time is over generous, this is a slickly made and harmlessly enjoyable piece of work.

The sure directorial touch is evident in The Guardian’s opening action set-piece, where you don’t need the weather eye of an old sea captain to forecast there’s an explosion brewing for the featured helicopter.

Amid a massive storm, the Kev’ster is flown out to help the crew of a cargo ship which has started to sink. Kevin dives into the sea to help the sailors who’ve abandoned ship. Just before they can be winched to safety in the helicopter, a huge wave flings a piece of wreckage from the stricken ship into its tail rotor.

Kutcher: not waving but drowning

Out of control, the chopper spins around before crashing into the sea and exploding. In a macabre final twist, the sinking helicopter wreckage pulls the man who was about to be winched to safety beneath the waves and towards a watery grave.

Artistic merit

As the centrepiece of the film’s big opening sequence, the helicopter explosion is effectively and dramatically staged. As the fatally damaged helicopter spins towards its doom we see the panic and chaos within the helicopter, as the alarms sound and the pilots battle with the controls.

While one of water’s more notable properties is an ability to extinguish flames, this is conveniently ignored and the chopper explodes like a kerosene soaked tinderbox upon impact with the sea.

Exploding helicopter innovation

There’s nothing particularly innovative here. Helicopters have met watery demises in other, earlier, films such as The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and Piranha 2.

Do passengers survive?

Costner, obviously, survives. As does Kev’s buddy, but only so that he can then die a short while later in Costner’s arms and provide him with the hefty emotional baggage he carries throughout the rest of the film.

Positives

If you’ve seen Waterworld, you’ll be relieved to know there are no scenes involving Costner drinking his own wee in this film.

Negatives

During the training school sequences, it feels as if someone has switched channels to a promotional film for the coastguard.

I can’t help suspecting there was an awful lot of co-operation with the actual US Coastguard in the making of this film, and the price of all that access to locations and equipment was a slavishly drooling portrayal of the service.

Favourite line

Throughout the film, Costner dispenses little epithets of sage advice. One though, rather misses the mark and shows that the coastguard’s gain is counter-terrorism’s loss: “Sometimes you got to shoot a hostage.”

Review by: Jafo

Land Of The Free

Jeff Speakman. It’s not a name to quicken the pulse or thrill the imagination. It’s not a name to inspire derring-do or strike fear into an enemy‘s heart. And it’s certainly not a name with which to pursue a career in martial arts cinema.

Incredibly, one man sought to defy the odds. One brave, lone wolf dared to throw off the shackles of a monicker which spoke less of face-pummelling prowess and more of middle management tedium, soporific sales conferences and quarterly reporting. Inevitably, that remarkable man was named Jeff Speakman.

For those unfamiliar with his oeuvre (and let’s be frank, we’re talking big numbers there), ‘The Speak’ was a second tier action star who ploughed a yeoman-like straight-to-video furrow during the Nineties. But by the end of that decade, the dim lustre of Jeff’s star was fading and so he found himself in Land Of The Free (1998) a project which, ironically, freed him from the prospect of having a future career.

In the film Jeff plays Frank Jennings, campaign manager for a smarmy politician played with self-satisfied smugness by the high priest of preening narcissism, William Shatner. It’s worse than that, he’s over-acting, Jim.

Predictably, the schmaltzy patriotism of Shatner’s public image is merely a façade behind which lurks a crazed right-wing lunatic with secret links to a bunch of extreme ultra-nationalists hell bent on seizing control of the country. (Remember, this was made before George Bush Jr and the Tea Party, so such an idea might well have seemed fantastical and frightening at the time.)

After Jeff stumbles on the conspiracy, the story becomes a race against time - can Speakman reveal the truth to the world before Shatner’s militia goons silence him?

Jeff Speakman exuding danger, or possibly not 

At this point, new initiates to Speakman might be picturing our hero as a chiselled colossus who, like his VHS-era peers, was all ripped abs, taut biceps, and bulging pecs. But even a cursory glance quickly dispels any such notion.

I’m not saying Jeff’s overweight, but the only thing bulging in this movie is his waistline, and the only things in danger of being ripped are the buttons on his tautly-fastened shirt. In fact, other than DTV-era Steven Seagal or Big Lol Fishburne in Matrix Revolutions, we can confidently surmise no other martial arts guru has had to strap themselves into karate pyjamas of such tent-like dimensions.

Curiously for a socky-choppy violent thriller, there’s a distinct lack of any sense of danger in Land of the Free, and that’s largely due to Jeff’s friendly, placid, almost bovine demeanour. His sappy face, coupled with such a well-upholstered physique, makes him look less like an action star and more like the ‘dad’ figure in some middling TV sitcom about suburban family life. Say what you like about Big Steve Seagal’s acting skills, at least he always looked as if he’d like to kick somebody in the face, if only his girdle wasn’t so tight.

Still, Speakman’s unthreatening and un-athletic appearance serves one useful purpose. Given his opponent in the film’s climatic, mano et mano showdown is the 67-year old Shatner (hairpiece and corset in place), our roly-poly hero’s lack of physical presence at least makes the bout seem slightly less one-sided and ridiculous. But only slightly, mind.

And, while we’re talking of predictable outcomes, it will doubtless come as no surprise that the helicopter featured in this film meets a sudden and explosive end.

William Shatner the high priest of preening narcissism

The crucial scene comes near the end of the film. Tracking Shatner to his ranch, Speakman tries to stop him once and for all. Shatner tries to escape in a helicopter, but Jeff – displaying an improbable agility – leaps onto the helicopter’s runner.

Unsurprisingly, with Speakman’s considerable girth dangling beneath it, the chopper struggles to gain altitude. Speakman plants a timed explosive on the aircraft, but Shatner spots the device and both men leap to safety before the helicopter explodes.

Artistic merit

In a film which rarely misses an opportunity to underwhelm, the helicopter explosion is effectively staged. A realistic looking chopper is destroyed and the fireball fills the screen with a delicious liquid hue of reds and oranges.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Slow motion footage of the helicopter exploding - check. Repeated slow-mo playbacks of the explosion from multiple angles - check. Wreckage crashing to the ground in dramatic fashion - check. A shot of the hero silhouetted against burning debris - check. Yes, it’s fair to say that this film breaks no new ground in the art of exploding helicopters.

Still, while there’s no effort at innovation, at least the director delivers every staple of the helicopter explosion genre with gusto. It might not be original, but it sure is satisfying.

Do passengers survive?

Speakman survives having briefly been a passenger of sorts. Shatner though, only enjoys a temporary stay of execution before he boldly goes where many villains have gone before.

Positives

Given that Speakman has been trying to help put a swivel-eyed loon into elected office, it’s fair to say our boy isn‘t the sharpest tool in the box. This may help to explain a scene where Jeff hacks into Shatner’s computer to find his secret plans.

How will he break into the password protected files you ask? Will Jeff use a hitherto unknown expertise in cryptography? Or some whizzy, algorithm-crunching gizmo that’ll make the computer spill its secrets?

No. Jeff’s plan involves nothing more complicated than simply guessing the password. And what inspired guesses they are. Top of our boy’s list are ‘predator’, ‘deceit’ and ‘conquest’. What about trying ‘crazed neo-Nazi nutcase’ Jeff? The safety of the free world couldn’t be in better hands.

Negatives

Perhaps embarrassed by its attempts at high-tech, techno-thriller chicanery, the Land Of The Free quickly heads for the safety of that reliable action movie genre trope, the car chase. But this poses a problem: how to freshen this hoariest of movie clichés?

The answer here is commendably simple and involves nothing more complicated than putting a sofa on top of one car and a canoe on another. It’s certainly never been done before, if only because everyone else thought it a terrible idea.

Favourite quote

An FBI agent tries to reassure Speakman about his safety: “Trust me, the witness protection programme works.”

With half the film remaining, the hollowness of this promise makes a deafening echo.

Interesting fact

Made at the tail end of the Clinton administration, Land Of The Free serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of a right wing loony coming to power. Two years later, George Bush Jr was elected President.

Review by: Jafo

World War Z

Perhaps World War Zzzzzzzz... would have been a better title.

After countless re-writes (and even re-shoots), this lumbering, re-animated corpse of a film has finally shuffled onto our cinema screens. And what an odd beast it is. Ostensibly based on Max Brook’s acclaimed novel about a zombie apocalypse, it’s a sprawling mess.

As often happens in Hollywood, the film’s producers paid a fortune for the book rights then ripped the innards out of the story. In place of the novel’s interesting reportage approach, they put soupy tosh in which ‘ex UN worker’ Brad Pitt travels the world to find the source of a global zombie pandemic. Then cures it. Single-handedly.

The film kicks off with downtown Philadelphia being over-run by a rapid zombie onslaught. It’s all impressively hectic, and the zombies themselves are super-fast and scarcely seen as individuals. More often, there’s just a sudden blur across the screen as some punter is whacked to the ground.

The director’s signature shot, though, is of a swirling mass of zombies climbing over each other either to push over a bus or summit a giant wall. It’s a bold idea, but the obvious downside is that the zombies couldn’t look more CGI if they had ‘Industrial Light and Magic’ stamped on their foreheads.

Brad narrowly escapes with his straight-from-central-casting family – the weepy wife, older asthmatic kid who needs an inhaler and, yes, even ‘cute’ younger kid who refuses to leave a zombie-marauded flat without her soft toy. Unquestionably, the film would have been more bearable if they’d all been chewed up in the first scene. Useless as characters, they might have at least made a decent meal.

As it is, they stick around like mould for the first half of the film, eating up scenes and adding nothing. It’s just one of many mistakes.

Traditionally, zombies make a variety of moaning noises, but so piss-poor is the script of World War Z that most of the pained groaning comes from the auditorium. Lazy writing prevails. So Brad, supposedly a veteran of war zones, leaves his mobile on while creeping through zombie territory. Do you think it goes off? Well, d’uh.

And when our buff hero enters a locked glass room, there’s a special cut-shot showing him leave his weapon outside. Cripes, maybe now he’ll get trapped inside when the zombie shows up. Even the most knuckle-dragging viewer is beyond such flabby plot-manoeuvring these days, and even the zombies look embarrassed.

The boy Pitt also suffers rather too obviously from leading-man-jinx syndrome. He drives through Philly and it’s suddenly over-run by zombies. He jets off to South Korea and actually causes an attack. (That pesky mobile.) Then he arrives in Israel where, yippee, they’ve built a big wall and everyone’s safe. But no sooner has he done some leonine pouting than here come the zombies and virtually everyone else dies. It’s tempting to think that had they just locked him in a cupboard at the outset, none of this might have happened.

Just over eighty minutes in – and there’s no delicate way to put this – the movie pretty much drops off a cliff. Having hitherto spanned the globe with hugely expensive, thousand extras-featuring setpieces, the ‘action’ suddenly moves to a single, internal ‘medical laboratory’ set – and stays there.

The reason for this sudden stomping on the budget brakes has been exhaustively documented across the internet. In a nutshell, the film’s producers had to scrap the entire original third act (a zombie showdown in Moscow that cost £100 million) after disastrous preview screenings. The snag was, by that time they only had about 33 quid left. And thus the final act.

Here’s what happens. Brad escapes from Jerusalem in a passenger plane and gets a radio message ordering him to head for the one place on earth where mankind can still be saved: Wales. Yes, you did just read that. And don’t worry if you laughed, because so did most of the audience.

Inevitably, zombies have clambered aboard in club class so the plane crash lands in the middle of nowhere, in Wales. (Sorry, that’s a tautology.) Natch, everyone dies in the crash except Brad and a saucy Israeli soldier. Impressively, given that their brief – literally – is to locate ‘a medical facility outside Cardiff’, they find it in no time.

From then on, all you have is Brad and half a dozen British thesps in a Seventies-looking studio set – the sort where the walls wobble if you bang against them. It’s like Doctor Who and Casualty had a one-night stand, and this is the ugly baby. The Brits all look a bit dazed to be in the presence of Hollywood royalty. Brad himself looks like he wants to cry.

The ‘plot’ for this strand is that a potential cure lies in a cut-off wing of the lab populated by a dozen extras-I-mean-zombies. But guess what? These ones don’t move at the speed of sound. That would obviously mean more cameras, snappy editing – more cost, basically – so these ones just loll about in the traditional manner. ‘They’re dormant,’ explains one of the Brits, looking every bit as confused as the audience.

And so follows a Scooby Doo-style mission to reach the cure, with every cliché crammed in – squeaky doors, crawling under windows, ‘almost’ dropping things – all patently calculated to just while away the minutes. And when these zombies do finally start chasing our heroes, there’s no blur-across-the-screen swiftness, just the laboured jogging of forty-something extras trying to run with their arms stretched out without falling over.

The whole segment is a disaster and, in Exploding Helicopter’s experience, literally unprecedented. For context, imagine the final third of Man of Steel taking place in a library; or Lord of the Rings’ climactic battle based entirely in a hobbit hut. It’s all so giddily wrong that the cinema audience were howling with laughter.

In a final twist of the budget knife, the last scene shows Brad reuniting with his family in ‘Nova Scotia’, which couldn’t look more obviously like Wales if there’d been a male choir singing ‘How green is my valley’ in the background. Holding daffodils.

Fortunately, the helicopter crash scene was filmed before the money ran out – otherwise, it may well have featured a Fisher Price toy on a string. What actually happens is this: as literally hundreds of CGI zombies scale a high wall, one military chopper decides that – rather than just shoot from a distance – it’d be better to swoop down really low so they can all hop aboard. The undead hordes obligingly clamber on, and the weighed-down machine first spins then drops to the ground, exploding.

Artistic merit

Nil. What remains is only the memory of how chunkily yet another ‘calamity’ has been constructed from nothing.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The idea – having a chopper weighed down by marauding zombies – is pretty good, but this scene loses massive points for blatantly manufacturing unnecessary danger. Also, the whole episode comes across as a flash-edited barrage of soupy-looking CGI figures. It never remotely feels like you’re watching actual zombies on an actual helicopter.

Do passengers survive?

Given that all those hanging on to the outside are already dead, this is largely an academic point. Presumably the crew die in the explosion or face the horrifying alternative of being eaten alive by an unconvincing special effect. Oh, the shame.

Positives

The most terrifying moment of the entire movie occurs in the first few seconds, when – among the faux news footage clips – Piers Morgan makes a cameo as himself, The sight of his bloated, self-satisfied features in widescreen is truly horrible to behold.

Negatives

This may well be the first bloodless zombie film. So desperate was the studio to secure a PG-13 rating that nothing remotely nasty is allowed to happen onscreen. Which is something of an achievement, when you consider it’s a film about almost the entire population of the Earth rending each other limb from limb with their teeth.

So when Brad brings down a wrench on a fallen zombie, you see nothing but Brad’s head and shoulders. And when he chops off a woman's hand to stop a bite infection spreading, all you see is her worried face. George Romero, this isn’t.

Favourite quote

“We’ve lost the east coast. China is dark.”
No global disaster movie would be complete without a grizzled general gravely muttering this sort of cod-military nonsense.

Interesting fact

The film – with its powerless director, unrealistic schedule and hacked-to-pieces script – has become a symbol of how Hollywood messes up movies. The huge volume of online journalism about the botched job of making the film is far more entertaining than the finished product.

Review by: Chopper

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast review of World War Z. Listen via iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, Podomatic or YourListen.

Samurai Commando Mission 1549

Time travel, a sophisticated modern day army, and the warring Samurai hordes of 16th century Japan. With these golden ingredients, Samurai Commando Mission 1549 (2005) doesn’t have any difficulty keeping your attention.

What's more, the film wastes no time in getting to the action immediately and we’re straight into the thick of things before the titles even appear.

We start with a helicopter flying in to join up with a small military force of tanks and soldiers that are engaged in a mysterious experiment. Something goes awry, and the troops are enveloped in a shimmering cloud and disappear from the 21st century.

After re-materialising in some lovely unspoilt greenery, a couple of unsuspecting soldiers decide to get a bit of fresh air top-side from their tanks. They’ve barely had a moment to get a lungful of air before their chests are pierced with arrows. Roll credits.

Back in the present day, the authorities work out what went wrong with their experiment. They were attempting to create a solar radiation shield to prevent it interfering with the electronics on all their high-tech weaponry. Basically, factor 50 sun block for military vehicles. Unfortunately, the experiment was only a partial success. True the force were shielded from the harmful effects of the Sun, but only by being sent over 500 years into the past.

Anyway, the army decide it might be quite a good idea to go and retrieve the soldiers and their well-respected Colonel, Matoba, from the 16th century. And with good reason - present day Japan is slowly disappearing, they presume due to the ‘butterfly effect’ of the Colonel‘s sudden presence in the past.

To do this, they enlist the help of a samurai warrior who’s been accidentally brought forward in time (Shichibei), and a reluctant former soldier (Kashima), who is enjoying a moderately successful career running a restaurant. By happy coincidence Kashima happens to know the Colonel, and is the only person to have ever bested his military tactics. I wonder if that might become useful...

Under strict orders to rescue the Colonel’s troops, the experiment is recreated and the rescue force is sent back in time. On arrival they use a helicopter to scout out the area and it quickly becomes the first of two chopper fireballs to grace the 16th century skies.

Spotting the rogue Colonel’s castle base, the helicopter flies in for a closer look. Unfortunately, the vintage castle’s defences been given a 21st century upgrade in the shape of surface-to-air missiles. The chopper evades the first but the second hits it sweetly, instantly engulfing the chopper in fire. The rest of the would-be rescuers are quickly captured by the combined forces of the Colonel's soldiers and the army of samurai warriors he‘s enlisted.

After so much breathless action it’s time for some exposition, so Colonel Matoba provides a handy précis for confused viewers. Having unexpectedly arrived in 1549 Matoba had briefly considered the ‘butterfly effect’. But like a jittery lepidopterophobic trapped in a butterfly farm, he decided to hell with that and deployed his army's full array of weaponry to swat the hordes of samurai surrounding his men.

Naturally, this taste of power was enough to send Matoba into full megalomaniac Bond villain mode. He‘s now plotting to use a nuclear device to erupt Mt Fuji, wiping out Japan so that he can rebuild it from scratch using his advanced technology. And, of course, telling everyone about how he can't be stopped.

The rescue mission is now a race against time so, with the fate of Japan hanging in the balance, our heroes escape from the castle to set up a final confrontation. Happily, this includes another chopper fireball.

Each force has one cobra chopper remaining. And if the first was a bit understated, the second is more of a CGI treat. With his castle under siege, Matoba's chopper reappears into the action. But Kashima's lot are well-prepared and use their own missile to shoot the chopper down as it approaches.

The helicopter lurches out-of-control and collides with an oil refinery that Matoba built at his base. This triggers a cascade of explosions which signal that the end of the film is has arrived.

Despite a highly dubious plot, the film just about hangs together and is mercifully under 90 minutes.

Artistic merit 

The first explosion, zero. The second though sees the explosion engulf the anachronistic Japanese military base, with catastrophic effects.

Number of exploding helicopters

Two out of a possible three is an impressive strike rate.

Exploding helicopter innovation

It's unusual to see one exploding helicopter in the 16th century, let alone two.

Positives

It certainly isn't slow paced. Prior to this film, director Masaaki Tezuka had mainly been involved on Godzilla films, and he wastes no time getting into the action. The film also looks the part and Takeshi Shimizu was named Best Art Director at the 2005 Asia-Pacific Film Festival. The big scene in which "The Castle" is comprehensively obliterated is a highlight - a case of no winners this week on Takeshi's Castle.

Negatives

It seemed a quite obvious error that the rescue team sent back didn't significantly outnumber the party that had 'gone rogue'. What sort of thinking suggested that one helicopter would be fine against two? No wonder Colonel Matoba wanted to create a new future if this was the quality of strategic thinking from the Japanese military's best and brightest.

Favourite quote

"Over-confidence leads Japan into WW2 only to suffer a cruel defeat...I will change all that. I will build a nation that 21st century citizens can be truly proud of. I do not intend on dying for a people who have long forgotten how to defend themselves!"

Interesting fact 

The film was based on a 1979 Japanese film, GI Samurai, and also resulted in a 4-episode mini series with a similar storyline.

In 2013, we are apparently approaching a solar maximum. No word on whether the UK military is going to send the SAS back to compete in the War of the Roses.

Review by: Joseph Clift

Man Of Steel

It’s perhaps fitting that a movie about a man made of steel should also feature a leaden script, tinny direction and mechanical acting. But that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.

Sad to report, Man of Steel (2013) follows the template of many recent hero movies: fairly bright opening section, dull second act weighed down by exposition and wind-baggery, then a seemingly endless parade of CGI bollocks for the climactic battle.

It’s a pity, because things do start well. The opening sequence on Krypton looks fabulous. Russell Crowe, playing Superman’s Dad, shows why – despite his appalling, mobile-flinging habits – they keep on writing the cheques. Wisely eschewing the freaky ‘Yorksh-Irish’ accent he attempted for Robin Hood, he successfully adopts a vintage, plummy English and brings a certain gravitas to the role.

Once we reach Earth, there are some cute scenes as young Clark’s powers (X-ray vision, laser eyes) make themselves suddenly apparent at school. But predictably, since we all now live in a post-Twilight world, tweenie Kent sees having superpowers through a prism of adolescent angst and largely sulks like Kristen Stewart with a heavy period.

When Henry Cavill is finally established as the main man, it’s like director Zack Snyder has hung out a banner saying: all characterisation ends here. Our hero is a big, blank wall. And things take a further dip when Lois Lane (Amy Adams) hits the scene.

As any fule kno, the playful chemistry between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder pretty much made the original two Superman movies, but here there’s just a vacuum. Every 15 minutes or so, the odd couple are implausibly plonked next to each other so they can go a bit puppy-eyed, but there’s no context, no sense of spark, in fact no actual time for them to make any connection. No sooner do they start mumbling than BOOM…here comes another setpiece!

Their inevitable locking of lips at the end is the least successful cinematic kiss since Andie MacDowell – the Helen Keller of modern acting – had her rain-soaked smooch with Hugh Grant at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral. (“Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed.” she chirruped. Well, you wouldn’t. You’re basically made of wood.)

Kevin Costner: Man Of Stolid

Director Zack Snyder throws a few big names into the mix in a vain attempt to add substance. Kevin Costner (look under ‘stolid’ in the dictionary and you’ll see him) puts in a stolid performance as Pa Kent. Big Lol Fishburne gamely cameos as the Daily Planet editor, both acting up and breathing in. But neither of them make much of an impression.

Michael Shannon (playing General Zod) has little to do but scowl and spit like a panto dame. And given he’s usually picking up a truck or punching through a building when he speaks, for a good 50 per cent of the time that’s not actually him you’re looking at. Only Snyder would hire one of America’s finest character actors then use a crap CGI version for half his lines.

In fact, Snyder’s boundless fascination with CGI is a big part of why this movie stinks so badly. It was fine for stuff like 300 and Sucker Punch, which were essentially computer games that somehow found their way into a cinema.

But now that he’s finally got the huge budget, the real actors, the opportunity to make a truly memorable film, what does he do? Piss CGI all over everything. He’s like the ugly single bloke who, finally finding a girlfriend, still keeps running home to dry-hump his trusty blow-up doll. It’s all he knows.

And talking of solitary pleasures that we’re all a little ashamed of, there is at least the helicopter scene to enjoy. Superman is in a small, desert town fighting Zod’s hench-baddies – the woman and the big thug. Big thug throws a truck that bashes the back rotors off a chopper, but Super Henry catches the falling pilot as it explodes. Then a second chopper gets hit. Things look potentially explosive for a moment! But, no. This one is carrying a senior army guy who has quite a few lines, so it naturally hits the floor with a soft bump with just a few rotor blades snapping off.

Artistic merit

Precious little. The whole scene is heavy with Snyder’s usual rat-a-tat editing style, and blurred images flash before the viewer at fit-inducing speed. This is clearly meant to convey a sense of frenzied excitement but, as always with such scenes, it’s merely trying to disguise the fact that most CGI still isn’t very convincing.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Having an artfully thrown truck ripping the arse-end off a chopper isn’t a bad idea, but the second crash is just dull. Perhaps it’s time to call a moratorium on the whole damaged-helicopter-teetering-slowly-to-the-ground-and-remaining-intact device (which only ever happens when named characters are on board). It’s getting sorely overplayed now.

Positives

Amy Adams: arriving again for no good reason

One of the chief joys of any Snyder movie is always the unintentional laugh. In Man of Steel, it chiefly comes from the growing improbability of Superman’s encounters with Lois. Having constructed a movie that is basically a series of huge action set pieces (no Superman Returns-style navel-gazing here), there are few natural-looking ways for Superman to bump into his lady. But hey, who needs natural?

Snyder simply plonks Lois bang in the middle of successive scenes with an admirable disregard for continuity or verisimilitude. (For example, when Supes finds the Fortress of Solitude, who do you think also happens to have popped by?)

Still, the best is saved till last. After the climactic Superman-Zod slamdown, which totals most of an entire city (we’re talking collapsing skyscrapers and square miles of battle-blasted wasteland here) she just pops up out of nowhere in time for a snog. How? From where? A strong suspicion has to be that Snyder had reasoned (correctly) that, by this point, no-one would much care.

Negatives

Hollywood rule #1: Cute dogs don't die

Kevin Costner’s death scene is so hackneyed and abysmal, it prompted a horrible sound in the auditorium as three hundred people spontaneously heaved and then had to swallow a little bit of sick. A huge twister is approaching, so the Kent family leave their car and race for cover under a bridge. But oh, no – they’ve forgotten the dog!

Despite the fact that Clark – even without his powers – is much younger and faster, Big Kev insists on lumbering back over to successfully free the dog (Hollywood Rule Number One: Cute dogs don’t die). But then, d’oh! He gets his foot stuck in the car, in a manner that only ever occurs in movies when danger is approaching. (Seriously, how does one get a foot ‘trapped’ in a space that can comfortably accommodate three people?)

What a dilemma! Clark can save Pops, but only by revealing his powers. As Clark ‘emotes’ helplessly, Dad looks at him with what can only be called a stolid earnestness and somberly shakes his head. Then is consumed by the raging twister.

Don’t you see? Dad had to die to preserve Clark’s secret. Or perhaps Clark could have just jogged over to the car much earlier and freed the dog without wrapping his leg up in a seat belt, while there was still plenty of time. What utter cock.

Interesting fact

Yards of press coverage has focussed on Henry Cavill’s punishing exercise regime for the role, but poor Henry here shows the thin line between incredibly buff and bodybuilder freakish. Put simply, he has actual muscle tits. In one early scene, when – wearing a scruffy beard – he bounds topless across the screen, breasts heaving, he looks like no-one more than Kenny Everett playing Cupid Stunt. Though obviously, it’s all done in the best possible taste.

Review by: Chopper