Category Archives: DVD

Hitman

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I haven’t played the game on which this movie is based (Hitman!) but I have heard horror stories about how amoral it is and hence bad for society.  The game, I’m led to believe, covers the actions of Agent 47 (the hitman in question) born into the role and carrying out hits for cash.  The movie of the same name is an action film which adds some plot and dilema.  It is, as most movies about assassins turn out to be, a story of assassins finally realising what they’re doing isn’t really actually nice, but feeling their only recourse is to kill their way out of the problem and in that respect doesn’t bring anything new to the genre.  However there’s still scope within that basic premise to deliver something interesting or entertaining.  How many times have we watched the same spy story (spy is abandoned by his agency when they think he’s gone bad and fights to prove himself to be innocent) or the same cop buddy story?

Our hero takes on a job and is subsequently set up, the rest of the film covers his actions to exact revenge, understand what happened, and rescue the girl (there’s always a girl).  Playing foil to the assassin is an InterPol inspector who’s been tracking him for three years.  The short interplay between these two characters does add some depth, and while the female involvement is predictable and insulting (oh no, another woman needs saving from an abusive and sadistic world leader) it provides the only shallow-comic moments in the entire film.

The action sequences are pretty staid, and acting is pretty hollow, although how much range do you need to play a deadly assassin?  The camera work and scenery is pretty nice though.  What saves the movie from being a total dud is that it’s actually quite interesting.  I wanted to see where it went, mostly because of how the movie opens (I won’t spoil it), and that kept me going until the end, and while I saw the little twist coming it still made me grin.

There are some interesting edits, and I’m assuming quite a bit of footage ended up on the floor, we move quickly from one a scene at one point to a meeting with a CIA agent which doesn’t seem to have any back story at all, but when you’re expecting something to be terrible, it’s easier to be forgiving about stuff like that.

Hitman is a passable action movie, and while it’s essentially derivative tripe, it’s derivative tripe which entertains and keeps you amused for 90 minutes.  It scores just over 6 on IMDB, and I’d probably rate it around 5, not terrible, not good, just ok.

There is one thing I have to rant about though.  Have you seen the game or the trailers for the movie?  The hitmen belong to a secret organisation, totally clandestine.  So they ensure their hitmen blend in, by making them all totally bald and tattooing barcodes on the back of their heads about a fucking inch high.  Our assassin is a ghost, blending in everywhere, except everywhere he goes he stands out like a thug in a china store because he’s bald and has a bar code tattooed into his head.  Come on!  I can suspend disbelief but when no one raises an eyebrow, and when no one knows what any of these assassins looks like, I just had to pretend it was a dream.

Otherwise – worth watching for fans of the game and people who like action movies for what they are.

Stripes – Special Edition

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We watched Stripes at the weekend, one of the cheap DVD’s we bought recently.  Sure I’ve seen it before, but it’s a classic and I wanted my own copy.  While the box just says Stripes, the DVD itself has Stripes Special Edition printed on it, and sure enough, it’s got some stuff I’ve never seen before.

Since I haven’t seen this in the cinema, I can’t really tell if the extra stuff is what they normally cut from the TV version or if it was stuff that really never made it into the theatrical release.  Either way, it was interesting, but didn’t really add a whole lot to the movie.

This is a classic Bill Murray / Harold Ramis / Ivan Reitman film, detailing the story of a pair of near-dropouts who join the army.  Hilarity ensues as they stumble their way through basic training, form tight bonds with thier fellow servicemen and become deep friends of their drill sergeant (kind of).  It’s really a film of two halves, once they complete their basic training the film turns into a kind of spies-like-us pre-cursor and our heroes need to head into enemy territory to save their comrades.

It’s enjoyable, although I think it has lost its edge a little over time.  Worth owning on DVD, worth seeing if you’ve never seen it before, and definately worth seeing if you wonder where the Police Acadamy series of films drew their inspiration.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

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Forgetting Sarah MarshallNormally I avoid romantic comedies, not because they’re stupid or dumb or only for girls, but because I find too many of them predicated on confusion and misunderstanding.  I really don’t enjoy those as the basis for a story, sure they’re present in most stories, just about all comedies and plenty of life experiences, but when they are the sole basis for a story about relationships I get annoyed.

I think it’s lazy film making to write a story of boy and girl meet, boy makes assumptions about girl, relationship develops, truth emerges, boy and girl split up for stupid reasons, comedy ensues, boy and girl work it out and get back together.  Because I find the parts of movies where two people are mistaken about some basic truth and that confusion causes conflict between them annoying, I really don’t cope well when the entire movie is built around it, and I’ve seen too many romantic comedies built on that exact foundation.  Yeh sure it’s a generalisation, sometimes I laugh at comedies built on confusion and I can deal with it, but when there are so many movies to watch I don’t usually take the risk.

Then a friend of ours said I had to watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall because it was just awesome and amazing.  I’d already been pondering how unfair my movie watching preferences were for Grete – do we want action with guns or action with swords tonight (or teen comedies from 1985).  On top of that, I caught the last third of Knocked Up a while back and laughed pretty hard, so I promised Grete I’d watch more comedy with her.  Forgetting Sarah Marshall seemed like a good place to start.

First and foremost, this is not a romantic comedy based on confusion or misunderstanding, there’s one tiny moment where we thought it was about to descend into that and then gloriously it didn’t (it turned into a bit of a blow job joke instead).   Sure, we have the standard ‘thing goes wrong and we have to stop being together’ moment and then the ‘we realise we’re being stupid and get back together’ section, but they feel natural and organic and amusing.

At the outset our main man is dumped by his long term and famous TV star girl friend (one Sarah Marshall) and the film centres on his attempts to pick himself up and forget her.  It’s a small cast and I’m a huge fan of small casts, and the dialogue is sharp and interesting.  While the overall story arc is actually pretty obvious the twists and turns are interesting and there’s a couple of sweet moments I wasn’t expecting.

Despite my reservations, I quite liked Russel Brand.  The rest of the cast was pretty good and I especially liked Mila Kunis.  Kristen Bell was the weakest of the crew I felt (Sarah Marshall), but it may be because of the role and how Sarah has to be portrayed.

I have to say it wasn’t as outrageously funny as I’d been led to believe, and while I certainly laughed out loud a few times, it was more of a general smirk and chuckle kind of film for me.

Despite that minor quibble, it was an enjoyable film, with some truly touching moments next to some truly funny scenes, and I was left feeling pretty happy by the end.  Note, there are a couple of scenes of full frontal male nudity, so make sure you’re not eating or drinking anything you might not be able to get out of the carpet if you’re easily surprised.

Weird Science

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Imagine the year is 1985, Ronald Reagan is starting his second term of office in the US, Coca Cola release New Coke, Live Aid raises £150 million, the Amiga personal computer is launched by Commodore, the NES is released in America, Calvin and Hobbes debuts in 35 news papers and Windows 1.0 is released by Microsoft.

In that year, two nerds steal enough computing power to turn a toy doll into Lisa, spawn a generation of ever hopeful adolescent teens and give a generation of young men a set of images they’ll never forget.

Weird Science is a nerds-come-good comedy written and directed by John Hughes and released in 1985.  Clearly I’ve seen it before, many times, but it’s been a little while since I last saw it and I really wanted to own  copy.  We bought it on DVD recently and watched it last night and I thought I’d let you know how it stood up.  The answer surprisingly is pretty well.  It’s funny, entertaining and charming in its own way.  It’s a teen movie with teen themes and teen quality over-acting.  It’s oddly innocent compared to similar movies of the last five years, but despite that it still manages to be reasonably current (nerds being bullied is a perennial theme I guess).  Watching it these days it’s entirely clear it was filmed in the 80’s, because the hair and shoulder pads probably needed trailers of their own.  It didn’t have the long periods of belly laughing that maybe current comedies can evoke, but it’s entirely possible that’s because I’ve seen it so often.  We certainly did laugh and it certainly entertained us for the entire running time.

At the time it was probably considered terribly risqué, these days next to American Pie and Road Trip it’s totally tame, but the comedy is still there, the story interesting, the pace good and there are some truly funny moments.  Well worth watching again if you’ve not seen it for a long time, and I would encourage anyone who’s never seen it before to give it a go.