The Tournament (2009)

Every 7 years the greatest assassins on the planet come together in a competition where the winner walks away with a pile of cash. It’s unlikely the best assassins would risk their lives in such a pursuit, or that killers could so blatantly run around a city causing such destruction, but it’s best to ignore these negative thoughts. The Tournament is a variation on the last person standing movies like Enter the Dragon, but it has guns. Lots of guns.

The competition is orchestrated by Liam Cunningham (Blood The Last Vampire, Dog Soldiers) and the entrants include…

Ving Rhames (Day Of The Dead, The People Under The Stairs)

Kelly Hu (Stiletto, The Scorpion King)

Sebastien Foucan (the founder of Parkour with David Belle)

Scott Adkins (The Shepherd Border Patrol, X-Men Origins Wolverine)

Ian Somerhalder (Lost, Vampire Diaries)

...and a reluctant Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later, The World Is Not Enough).

Middlesborough, England is the scene for the battle and the town is shot up, buildings are destroyed, cars explode, and innocents are butchered as killers kill and the rich bet on the outcome.

There is a subplot involving previous winner Rhames and why he is back but that, thankfully, doesn’t hinder the action and violence. Rhames is a great heavy. Kelly gets to unleash her martial arts skills more than usual, and that is a good. Foucan is a very smooth mover as leaps from building to building. And Adkins is a wonderful, wonderful fighter. As hitman movies go, it’s up there with Shoot Em Up as a great example, unlike the awful Wanted.

Like a Tiger...

Sometimes we do follow the news, even if it is only when celebrities embarrass themselves. Is Tiger Woods going to become the new Hugh Grant? (Without the good hair of course.)

2012 (2009)

From the desk of Mister J…

I finally saw 2012 last night and, honestly, it wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. I mean, certainly it’s an effects film and, sure, those effects are over the top...but isn't that what we want from an end of the world disaster film?? I certainly don't want to imply it was good though, that would be pushing it.

Gamer (2009)

Michael C Hall (Dexter) goes all Bill Gates creating software the world can’t live without. First it is Society, where actors rent out their bodies to be manipulated by other people in a freakier version of Second Life.

Then there is Slayers, where prisoners on death row are controlled by players at home and sent in to a war zone / First Person Shooter to kill or be killed.

If the convicts survive 30 encounters, they are given their freedom. Does that sound similar to Running Man?

Kable (Gerard Butler from 300, Watchmen Tales of The Black Freighter) is the star of the game and is nearing 30 matches, but he escapes to rescue his wife (Amber Valetta from Transporter 2 and magazine covers everywhere) and prove his innocence. Does it sound like Running Man now?

The writers/directors (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) made Crank High Voltage and must have used up all their clever ideas in that, because this is just Running Man in new packaging and little else. Another waste of a good cast. Look our for video game references and a cameo from the guys from Psych.

Fabulous Sebastian’s Top 5 of 2009

Better Off Ted - A crazy, rapid fire sitcom that explores American big business practices at the fictional Veridian Dynamics. Do you want to turn a pumpkin into a Weapon of Mass Destruction? Veridian can do that. Portia De Rossi follows up her wonderful work on Arrested Development with another extreme character.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus - A film that is more than a catchy title. A prehistoric shark and octopus are unfrozen and have to battle not just each other, but eighties pop sensation Debbie Gibson and hunky Lorenzo Lamas. Lamas steals the movie (from a shark that attacks airplanes) with his deadpan delivery (and dangerous ponytail).

Star Trek - The Star Trek franchise has been even a hit and miss affair. JJ Abrams makes it work because he knows the secret ingredient for success - James T Kirk. Chris Pine channels William Shatner to bring the swagger back to science fiction.

No Heroics - The British make a super hero series that may be the complete opposite to Heroes. In the best British tradition, the heroes rarely leave the pub. Their superpowers are sometimes questionable, like their motives.

Tokyo Gore Police - The title does not fully prepare you for the violence, body modifications, and twisted sexuality of this Japanese movie.

Mister J's Top 5 of 2009

Well, another year is almost over... so without further ado, here's my top 5 for the year...

5. Dead Snow - Sam Raimi meets sensible Scandinavian knitwear. Subtitles for the "arty" crowd, and Nazi zombies fighting guys with chainsaws and axes for the less discerning amongst us. Remember, If you are in the mountains of Norway and you find a box of WW2 German trinkets and gold, don't touch them, otherwise zombie Nazis will hunt you down and kill you.

4. Movies on the Sci-Fi Channel - They all are so wonderful, it's hard to pick a favourite, but I'd imagine Aztec Rex ( which stars Steve Sanders from Beverley Hills 90210 as the Spanish explorer Cortez arriving in Mexico to find the locals worshiping a t-rex from their badly designed 3 foot-tall concrete altars ) is going to be hard to top.

3. New Zealand's Next Top Model - It may be the accents ( and the "butchinuss" ), it may be the low budgets ( I think African nations have Top Model shows with higher budgets ), it may be the hosts ( who appear the only people in the NZ fashion world who actually do NO work )... but watching these girls, fresh off the farm, mangling vowels, and bitching about their jandals fast became this years guilty pleasure.

2. Hulk Hogan's press conference - The press conference for Hulk Hogan's Australian tour was a thing of media manipulation and beauty. Hogan and his adversary face off, with Ric Flair belittling and bloodying the elephantine Hogan. The media goes into a frenzy covering it, giving it much time and space, as they try to wittily doubt its believability. Unfortunately, Hogan himself dampens the mood for us all by later saying that he hadn't meant to fall off the stage, and how much that hurt... condemning all of us who had the tickets to the show, with the knowledge, he wasn't leaving his feet again ( even for a crap ) for the remainder of his stay in the country.

1. Amy Winehouse and her breast augmentation - There are many things in this world Amy Winehouse did not need more of this year... alcohol, drugs, hair, controversy... boobs... but, like the trooper she is, in 2009, the divine Miss W decided to have more of all of these things anyway. Don't you just love her??

Silent Night, Deadly Night

Merry Xmas to you all, from DVD Purgatory.

Edges Of Darkness (2009)

The cover of this DVD is very inviting, in a Tomb Raider meets Resident Evil kind of way. Who doesn’t like a grrl with a gun? Especially if they are killing zombies. Wasn’t that the entire basis of Sarah Palin’s presidential campaign? (The gun part, not the zombie part)

The movie itself involves an America overrun with zombies and follows the lives of some of the survivors. As if the zombie menace isn’t enough, there are also vampires, a parasitic machine vine, the Antichrist, and the priests trying to stop the impending apocalypse. With all those stories going on, it’s a shame none of them are interesting.

Dying Breed (2008)

A woman takes some friends on an expedition (including Leigh Whannell, from Saw) to the secluded forests of Tasmania to find the extinct Tasmanian Tiger and her missing sister. What the group finds are cannibal hillbillies descended from an escape convict.

I said it with Rogue and I say it again, it’s great that Australia is making horror films, but they don’t need to be as slow and unimaginative as this. We’ve seen this scenario a hundred times and it would be hard to find a version duller than Dying Breed, although Welcome To The Jungle is a contender.

Ultraman

The Prisoner Miniseries (2009)

The competition for worst remake (sorry, re-imagining) continues with a new front runner. The 1960’s Prisoner was an innovative, surreal, philosophical, and influential series about a man (Patrick McGoohan) who finds himself in The Village. The series was about many things including, possibly, the fight of the individual against conformity, or maybe it was all about an internal struggle. It doesn’t matter, part of the timeless appeal of the original series is its esoteric nature.

The new version once again throws a man (James Caviezel) in a mysterious village where everyone has a number rather than a name, but this time it is not the model of obedience and submission of the original, but a place where everyone seems unhappy. In the original, The Prisoner was the only rebel, in the new version, all are potential rebels. In fact, all the elements that made the original so unique and challenging and inspiring are gone. What is left is muddled story of a man who doesn’t know why he is where he is. Not even Ian McKellen can save it. It makes me want to track down The Nowhere Man and rewatch it.

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Nicolas Cage (Knowing, Ghost Rider) continues to make bad movies. Are American actors so desperate to go to Thailand on a paid holiday they will make anything that is offered to them? Michael Madsen (Hell Ride, Tooth And Nail) did it for Croc, but is Cage really that desperate for money? The movie is a remake of the 1999 Thai movie by the same directors (Pang Brothers) and ends up as by-the-numbers story of an assassin who decides he doesn’t want to do the job he is paid to do. Cage’s dodgy hair has more life than the script. Obligatory Thai dance bar included.

District 13 (aka Banlieue 13) (2004)

Jean Luc Besson has given us The Fifth Element, Leon (The Professional), La Femme Nikita, Taken, and The Transporter, discovering he wrote this French movie made it essential viewing.

In the near future, Paris is divided from social decay and District 13 is a walled off slum full of drugs and gangs. A missing bomb means the government has to send in one of its officers, Cyril Raffaelli, into the area to recover it. Inside a gang has kidnapped the sister of David Belle, and he has to return their missing drugs in exchange for his sister’s life.

The story is derivative and the characters cliched but, in the tradition of many good action films with the same problem (eg Ong Bak), the physical talent of the actors and cinematography compensates. Rafaelli is brimming with martial arts skills and Belle is one of the originators of Parkour (and he is a super smooth mover). Put the two of them together with a bunch of seedy gangsters with guns, some social commentary, and a secret government agenda, and the film moves along quite nicely.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarentino gives us his take on World War 2. This includes Brad Pitt leading the Basterds (a group of soldiers who lurk around France scarring, killing, and scalping Nazis), Christoph Waltz as the Jew Hunter (a German with a talent for finding Jews), and Mélanie Laurent as a Jew on the run (and hiding in plain sight). The characters come together as plots to kill Hitler unfold.

Inglourious Basterds has a good plot, good characters, and a good ending, but it suffers from Tarentino’s usual problem, his dialogue. The script is full of conversations that are long and not as clever as Tarentino thinks. Basterds is a very long two and half hours, rather than the punchy one and a half hours it should be.