Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Seth MacFarlane, Mila Kunis, Joel McHale, Giovanni Ribisi
Synopsis: 8-year-old John makes a Christmas wish for his teddy to come to life and it comes true. The two become best friends as they grow up, but the slacker lifestyle they develop comes to threaten the now-adult John’s relationship with his girlfriend.
‘The comedy of the year!’ screeched all manner of reviews when Ted arrived on our screens last year. Audiences apparently agreed, making the tale about the friendship between a slacker and his foul-mouthed, pot-smoking teddy bear the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.
The first live-action effort by Family Guy’s Seth McFarlane, there’s no denying the film’s ambition, and the plaudits it earned surely played a major role in winning him the Oscars gig.
Directed, produced and written (alongside his Family Guy co-writers) by MacFarlane (who also provided motion-capture for the bear’s movements), Ted aims to be crass, politically incorrect, and above all, very funny. However, it’s only a partial success. It certainly ticks the first two boxes, but only hits the third intermittently.
GORDON’S ALIVE? Eh, just barely
MacFarlane always reminds me of a high school class clown. Some of his stuff is funny, but at other times the desperation for attention becomes wearing. Some of Ted’s one-liners are good and, like Family Guy, the funnier stuff often seems to come from random silliness – the coked-up star of 80s disaster Flash Gordon convincing himself that an Asian neighbour is actually Ming the Merciless; the random conversation between Mark Wahlberg’s protagonist John Bennett and his boss about how knowing Tom Skerritt is a measure of success, etc – and Patrick Stewart’s bookending narration is funny too. There are some great cameos as well, with one wordless appearance from a Hollywood A-lister proving a particular highlight.
Marky Mark almost certainly had weirder threesomes in the early 90s
The gross-out stuff, however, feels tired and unimaginative, and at times the script relies on swearing for the sake of swearing. Comedy films don’t necessarily need to hang together as a narrative, but Ted does go to the pains of establishing a dramatic storyline – the strain John’s friendship with Ted puts on his relationship with his girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis), but then only pursues it in the most half-hearted fashion. It doesn’t help that the trope of the career girl struggling with a man who won’t grow up has been done to death. My problem with Family Guy has always been that it apes The Simpsons while totally lacking that show’s heart. Ted seems to try to rectify that failing but doesn’t quite know how to.
Neither does the film especially give us much cause to root for John, given he’s a man-child who always puts himself first and won’t accept responsibility for anything. Wahlberg is part of the problem. It’s a tough gig, acting alongside a greenscreened stuffed toy, but he fails to imbue Bennett with any pathos. It’s another example of Wahlberg, such a great support player in films like The Departed and The Other Guys, proving leading man poison. Kunis meanwhile, plays the same character she pretty much always plays (ironically, given Family Guy is perhaps the one thing in which she does play somewhat against type), but still manages to be the one sympathetic character in the movie.
The support cast has its moments. Joel McHale provides a slightly sleazier version of his Community sctick, while Giovanni Ribisi and young Aedin Mincks, as a creepy father and son desperate to steal Ted for themselves, act as a good foil for the bear’s zingers.
Overall, Ted probably does rank as one of the funnier films of recent years, but that isn’t saying a huge amount. It certainly isn’t a masterpiece, nor is it a patch on the likes of Anchorman, Airplane! Or This is Spinal Tap. If Ted is the benchmark, then it only serves as further evidence that Hollywood has forgotten how to do comedy.
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Don Cheadle
Synopsis: Traumatised from the events of Avengers Assemble, Tony Stark finds himself having to contend with the twin threat of terrorist the Mandarin and old rival Aldrich Killian.
Iron Man can be a tough character to like. A rich, arrogant, playboy alcoholic with daddy issues should, on paper, be a tough sell as a hero. Similarly, the character’s portrayal by Robert Downey Jr, displaying the smug, winking, self-loving archness that made such a chore of the Sherlock Holmes franchise, could have been unbearable.
It’s perhaps a surprise therefore (to me at least) that the series has been, for the most part, such a triumph. The hugely entertaining first instalment in 2008 was, admittedly, followed by an abhorrent mess of a sequel in which Tony Stark engaged full-on, raging douchebag mode while effortlessly defeating some decidedly second-rate adversaries. That misstep was rectified by The Avengers though, and hopes were therefore high for ol’ shellhead’s third solo outing.
The stakes were high for Marvel on Iron Man 3. As the first movie of the studio’s much-vaunted Phase Two, following The Avengers’ earth-conquering success, a bomb could strangle the whole project at birth. That’s presumably why they went for the as-yet unintroduced big guns from the comics: Stark’s arch-nemesis the Mandarin, and the famous and well-received Extremis storyline.
We’re introduced to the powerful but volatile virus known as Extremis at the film’s dawn of the millennium opening, as Stark attempts to bed its creator, scientist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall). The virus can help plants to regenerate their leaves – but is also prone to making them burst into flames. Also at the same New Year’s Eve party is disabled, nerdy Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a man desperate to do business with Stark but who Tony blows off in order to hook up with Hansen.
It’s quite a shock, therefore, when Killian shows up 14 years later at Stark Towers, able-bodied and looking like a million dollars, singing the praises of Extremis, which can now, it seems, be used to heal humans (provided they don’t explode first). Stark, meanwhile, is struggling to sleep after falling through that wormhole at the end of Avengers Assemble. Worse, a terrorist nutjob has started hijacking television signals in order to threaten America and show videos of his latest atrocities.
Eiffel 65’s Blue minions were originally tipped to be Loki’s invasion force in The Avengers
Shane Black always seemed a smart choice to direct, given his reputation for delivering whip-smart dialogue and the success of his previous collaboration with Downey Jr, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. He’s a writer/director who revels in surprises, and sets the tone for the film by unexpectedly introducing the opening credits to Eiffel 65’s techno-cheese ‘classic’ Blue. Ticking all the superhero movie boxes while delivering flourishes of his own, he expertly marries genuine jeopardy with the series’ trademark light tone. Yes, there are some darker moments – Tony’s life is left in ruins when first his best friend Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau, out of the director’s chair and loving it, if that waistline is anything to go by) is seriously injured by the Mandarin’s goons, then his home is destroyed by a jarring helicopter assault. But the loss, tension and vengeance on display as he attempts to get his life back and save his true love Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), are punctuated by plenty of genuinely funny wisecracks.Black again brings out the best in Downey Jr, and Stark is back to his winning, roguishly likeable best. The high stakes make it impossible not to sympathise with our man, but he also brings an appealing spikiness to proceedings with his acid tongue. Whether bantering with Potts and buddy War Machine (Don Cheadle’s Captain Rhodes, now rebranded Iron Patriot) or verbally duelling with assorted henchmen (another Black hallmark), the dialogue is never less than razor-sharp. Even when he briefly takes on a child sidekick, which could so easily be a fatal blow to other films of the genre, Black and Downey Jr (and Black’s co-scripter Drew Pearce) manage give their relationship a welcome dose of sour to offset the sweetness.
The ‘FF’ stands for ‘Freedom Fries’
It’s a film of precious few missteps, without a bad performance in sight. You know what you’re getting from the regulars – Downey, Paltrow, Cheadle etc – who are all comfortable with the set-up and each other by this point; but as I’ve said before, superhero movies live or die by their villains, and the evildoers here are first rate. Guy Pearce is excellent as Killich, smarmy yet always dangerous, driven as much by petty revenge as megalomaniacal ambition and totally remorseless. His arc, from suicidal dweeb to a fire-breathing destroyer commanding an army of Extremis-fuelled combustible killing machines, is realised very strongly.
James Badge Dale, as Killich’s chief henchman Eric Savin (Coldblood in the comics) hasn’t received nearly the credit he deserves. A twinkly-eyed, smirking badass, he gets to dispense almost as many one-liners as Stark as he ruthlessly carries out his master’s bidding, the regenerative treatment rendering him near-indestructible (and owing a fair bit to The Terminator).
Much has been made of Stark spending so much time outside of the iron suit, but unlike, say, Batman or Spiderman, a little of the man in the can goes a long way. Having what is in effect a human transformer clanking into things every 10 minutes or so can get very old very quickly – something Black himself acknowledged. Instead, the director gives us a similar vibe to the classic action movies of the late 80s and early 90s he penned, as Tony takes out reams of bad guys using only his ingenuity, like a MacGyver made of flesh and bone, rather than spruce.
Sir Ben Kingsley is currently recording The Chronic III with Dr Dre.
The major talking point of Iron Man 3, of course, is the way it uses the Mandarin. Without delving too far into spoiler territory, there’s quite the bait and switch involved with Ben Kingsley’s villain, who is set up as one archetype but ends up as something else entirely. How outraged you are when the sting in the tail is delivered depends on how big a fan of the comics you are. There, the Mandarin has always been Iron Man’s arch-nemesis. He was originally supposed to be the villain in the first film, and many Marvel fanatics were salivating at the prospect of him finally being unleashed in this instalment. It’s easy in that context to understand the disappointment expressed in some quarters. It’s certainly a brave move, although in many ways, whether intentional or otherwise, it also represents the Marvel cinematic universe’s first ‘f**k you’ to the fanboys, and that is a dangerous game to play.Not that this reflects in any way on Kingsley, who is nothing short of superb. In the past, roles like this have brought out the worst in the knight of the realm (see Thunderbirds, Species, etc. Or rather, don’t.), but he doesn’t miss a beat in portraying all sides of the character’s changing role. He’s terrifying in early scenes as the ‘educator’ seeking to teach the West a bloody lesson, and the themes of manipulation of the media and technology are teased out well.
The only real flaws, and there aren’t that many, are the same ones that affect most of Marvel’s output – namely that it’s a touch long and slightly cluttered. Again certain characters and sub-plots don’t get room to breathe, with Hall and Miguel Ferrer, as the Vice-President, being especially short-changed. A couple of the action scenes still drag as well, despite Black’s best intentions.
Overall though it’s a smart, enjoyable addition to the canon that does pretty much everything it should, and is rounded out by a satisfying, intriguing ending that raises plenty of questions for the future.
For some there will be no coming back from the Mandarin controversy, but while I can see their point to an extent, the film stands up regardless, and maybe those complaining should follow the advice Tony gives to young Harley: “No need to be a p*ssy about it”…
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Sarah York, Hal Delrich, Betsy Baker
Synopsis: Five friends on vacation in a cabin in the woods happen upon a cursed book, inadvertently releasing a centuries-old evil that seeks to possess and destroy them in increasingly gloopy fashion…
Few films have as devoted and rabid a cult following as The Evil Dead. It started Sam Raimi’s journey from comic book geek to Spiderman director; immortalised Bruce Campbell; and even indirectly gave us the Coen brothers. What’s more, as the original ‘cabin in the woods’ flick, it spawned countless imitators (including its own sequel) and earned its place in horror lore.
Ash (Campbell), girlfriend Shelly and their friends are already creeped out by the dilapidated cabin they’ve hired when they stumble across a book seemingly made of skin in the basement. When they play a recording of the previous incumbent reading from what they learn is the ancient Sumerian ‘Book of the Dead’, they unleash from its slumber a demonic force that seemingly controls the entire woodland surrounding them. One by one, the friends are attacked and possessed in an increasingly OTT shower of blood, milk and plasticine.
Perhaps the one good thing to come from Hollywood’s beyond-cynical remake fetish is that it gives you a chance to revisit the original, and this year’s Evil Dead remake affords the chance to reappraise Raimi’s 1981 opus. How does it hold up 30 years on?
Don’t you open that trapdoooooor….
Given that the film was famously made for just $90,000, it’s remarkable how strong the effects are. Raimi deployed some hugely innovative shooting methods to capture things like the POV shot of the evil itself (Campbell was permanently scarred by one such shot that required a camera being ridden towards him at speed on a bike to give the mother of all extreme close ups), while the demon transformations are similarly inventive given the lack of resources. Even Halloween masks and (dangerously) basic make-up can be frightening, as the suitably horrible rotten monsters in The Evil Dead illustrate.The creatures themselves are genuinely scary at times – and there’s always something very sinister about the evil and dangerous speaking in a childlike, singy-songy voice, which happens throughout. Maybe this was what got meddlesome old crone Mary Whitehouse’s back up in the UK to the extent that she put it at the top of her ‘video nasty’ list, even going so far as to show it to the Thatcher Government and successfully getting the VHS banned. Admittedly, the, erm, ‘unexpected’ tree rape scene probably didn’t help either. Nevertheless, it seems laughable today that a film as over the top and cartoonish in its depictions of violence and horror could find itself outlawed in numerous countries.By all accounts the shoot was an unhappy one. The Tennessee cabin was apparently legitimately creepy and had to house the entire cast and crew throughout production, which soon saw tensions arise, while Raimi saw fit to torture his stars, believing that the emotions and horror would seem all the more powerful if the actors were genuinely miserable. This was a view shared by produced Rob Tapert, who declared that if an actor bled during a scene it made him “feel like I got my money’s worth”. One actress cut her feet to shreds during a barefoot run in the woods; Campbell’s various injuries were poked with a stick by Raimi to keep him limping.
Still a better read than Russell Brand’s ‘My Booky Wook’
Evil Dead marked the start of Campbell’s journey as Ash, the world’s unluckiest man, and though he’s more stoic in the first instalment than his cooler, wackier portrayals in the sequels, as the traumatised but resourceful protagonist he makes a refreshing change from the traditional screaming ‘final girl’. I’ll cut to the chase though. The Evil Dead just doesn’t do a lot for me. It’s alright. It’s watchable. Raimi and co did an absolutely phenomenal job on such a non-existent budget. But I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s become a cinematic sacred cow (with a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but the story is just too thin. I understand that you don’t expect a great script or performances on this kind of microbudget, DIY production, but at the same time the combination of cartoonish slapstick violence (stemming from Raimi’s love of the Three Stooges) and total lack of character development makes it impossible to care about anyone involved, and even in a tongue in cheek horror, it’s imperative you have some kind of connection to the characters.The whole film seems to be just a procession of possession, gory smackdown, burial, repeat, and that gets old pretty quickly. When it’s good it’s great, loud, messy, an assault on the senses. But the novelty soon wears off. The higher-end of the many imitators it spawned do the same thing better, most notably Peter Jackson’s Braindead.
Raimi is a genius, but I can barely muster more than a ‘meh’ for The Evil Dead. Thankfully however, the franchise would get ‘groovier’…
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer, Liz White
Synopsis: A young lawyer’s attempts to manage the estate of a recently deceased woman in a sleepy East Anglian town are obstructed by the locals, fearful that her mansion is haunted by the spirit of her wronged sister. The more time the young man spends there, the more it seems they may be right…
Heeeeeeeere’s Harry
Since it rose from the crypt six years ago, the revived Hammer Studios has played things fairly safe. Wake Wood was a brazen rip off of Pet Sematary; Let Me In was a remake; and The Woman In Black is an adaptation of a well-loved novel. However, the one thing the three films have in common (generously overlooking 2011 poor relation The Resident) is the very reason why the house of horror’s rebirth is a welcome one. They are all positively dripping with that key ingredient of the truly scary movie – atmosphere. I’d not actually read the Woman in Black, and apparently there are a number of notable differences between this version and Susan Hill’s source novel. Though published in 1983, Hill’s tale is set in the Victorian age and is in the tradition of the classic ghost stories of MR James. It’s not made clear if this adaptation is set during the same period (there are a suspicious number of cars for Victorian times), but many of its tropes are horror standards. Daniel Radcliffe’s grieving widower Arthur Kipps, a lawyer desperate to provide for his young son, takes a job in isolated, rural eastern England. His arrival is greeted with fear and hostility by the inhabitants, who are curiously anxious to keep him away from the house he has come to work at – home to the late Mrs Drablow. It transpires that the natives are afraid he will rouse the spirit of Drablow’s sister (the titular Woman in Black), driven to suicide after her own child was taken from her and then killed in an accident. They believe she haunts the entire town, exacting a terrible revenge by luring its infants to their own grisly fate like a murderous Pied Piper of Hamelin. Kipps dismisses the talk as provincial superstition. But then children start dying…The Woman in Black is scary. Oh Holy God is it scary. I went into it cockily believing it would be a lightweight, horror-with-stabilisers affair aimed at a younger audience, given its 12A rating and the presence of Harry Potter himself in the lead role. As a lifelong horror fan of nearly 30 years, there was surely nothing in this that could faze me. I was left to reflect on this hubris later that night as I struggled to sleep, cowering at the shadows I was convinced were creeping up my bedroom wall.
Jason?
The film eschews (for the most part) gore and jump shocks for good, old-fashioned, slow-burn chills. Its scares are not especially original – objects in the background suddenly start to move, creepy dolls stare out from rooms, faces appear at windows, unoccupied chairs start to rock – but they’re all very effectively realised by the team of director James Watkins and Kick Ass and X-Men scribe Jane Goldman, who create the classic creeping sense of dread that the best ghost stories need. The malevolent apparition herself, when first glimpsed, is appropriately terrifying, a half-rotting, malicious grin on her face throughout. She’s a bit overly CG’d towards the end, but you can’t have everything.
The Woman’s only previous showbiz experience was as an Ozzy Osbourne tribute act
There’s an argument that the story itself perhaps takes a bit of a back-seat to the scares – the imagery and atmosphere are what grab you more than anything, and at times the film is guilty of simply connecting the dots between the spooky set pieces. It’s a bit like being on a ghost train in that respect; the best example of this is the sheer relentlessness of Kipps’ experience when he spends the night at the Drablow house, bouncing from apparition to apparition, a scene that manages somehow to be intense, daft and deliriously entertaining all at the same time.
Initially it’s hard to take Radcliffe seriously as an adult, let alone a widower and single parent, and at times he still seems to be playing a young, sulky sixth former. Ultimately though he does carry the film pretty well. Ciaran Hinds, as one of the few friendly faces in the village, is reliable enough in a Basil Exposition-type role, even if he does look slightly bored by it all. Janet McTeer, playing his wife, is much livelier (and decidedly creepy in her own right) as a mother driven mad by the death of her own child. Everyone else though is pretty much your 2D, “your sort ain’t welcome round ‘ere” English yokel.
All in all I was surprised by just how bleak, dark and frightening The Woman in Black turned out to be, and I remain stunned that it received a 12A rating. Had I seen this as a pre-teen I would surely have soiled myself. And a horror film can receive no higher praise than that. Probably.
Starring: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodvine, Brian Glover
Synopsis: After surviving an apparent animal attack while travelling in England, an American student is plagued by dreams and visions warning him that by the next full moon he himself will turn into the same kind of creature that attacked him – a werewolf…
Successfully walking the line between horror and comedy is notoriously tricky – just ask the makers of the Scary Movie franchise, who seemed to give up on both about halfway through the first one. There are precious few examples out there of films that get the balance right and manage to be genuinely funny and genuinely scary. An American Werewolf in London, however, is the undisputed king of the genre.
Jon Landis was in the zone in the early 1980s. After the success of The Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and the Blues Brothers, he was finally able to cobble together enough money to make his passion project. As a young man working as an assistant director on Kelly’s Heroes’ Yugoslavian shoot in the 1960s, Landis had happened across an elaborate gypsy funeral ceremony in which the body was wrapped in garlic and buried feet first, supposedly to prevent the deceased from returning to life. Fascinated by the concept of the undead, the budding director bashed out the script for what would become American Werewolf – but it would stay untouched for over a decade, as everyone from financiers to actors struggled to get their head around the idea, dismissing it as “too funny to be scary and too scary to be funny”.
Dead and loving it
Even when he was able to get the movie financed, various bigwigs were still confused, trying to get Landis to cast Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in the lead roles and marketing the film as a continuation of the bawdy, SNL-flavoured comedies with which the director had made his name. An early tagline proclaimed: ‘From the director of Animal House comes a different kind of animal…’, but that meant many cinemagoers drawn to the film were unprepared for just how grisly and frightening it proved to be. AAWIL tells the story of David Kessler (John Naughton), a young American travelling through Europe with his friend Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne). Travelling through the Yorkshire moors, they’re warned by the locals to “beware the moon” and stay on the road after dark. Failing to heed this advice, they’re attacked by what seems to be a huge, dog-like creature that kills Jack and wounds David. Waking up in a London hospital weeks later, he’s visited by his dead friend, who tells him they were attacked by a werewolf and that he must take his own life before he too transforms into a beast and goes on a bloody rampage. But David doesn’t believe what the visions tell him until it’s too late…The film is Landis’ baby but, as many have commented over the years, the real star is makeup artist Rick Baker. The genuinely shocking monsters he creates – and the gory havoc they wreak – are in large part what makes the film so memorable. Baker’s effects were so memorable that they earned him the first ever Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling (he would win a further six – a record that still stands). The incredible transformation scene is what’s often remembered, but the mangled bodies of the werewolf’s undead victims are just as eye-popping, not to mention the Nazi demons of the film’s most surprising (and frightening) scene – one of David’s pre-transformation nightmares. By all accounts being involved in Baker’s creations wasn’t any fun – Naughton recalls him offering his apologies and condolences to him on learning he’d been cast, warning him of the painfully long process in store for him, while Dunne would become increasingly depressed on being greeted by an all too realistic vision of what he’d look like as a mutilated corpse – but the results are astonishing.
You know what they say about men with big feet. Yep, they’re, erm, probably werewolves
The laughs arise from the jarring collisions of different worlds. This is most notable in the paradoxical sight of the chewed up victims continuing to chat away reasonably cheerfully after their gruesome demise. In particular, Jack retains a remarkably sunny disposition and positive outlook despite turning up in increasingly shocking states of decomposition. Then there’s the culture clash between the gruff Yorkshiremen in the ominously monikered Slaughtered Lamb pub (including a standout Brian Glover, whose schtick was always good value) and the moneyed young New Yorkers in their midst, and the friction of the UK’s own north/south divide when John Woodvine’s plummy London doctor, disturbed by David’s condition, travels up to the scene of the crime. Further fractures are evident in the soundtracking of some of the more violent and/or emotional moments to upbeat, moon related pop songs, like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising, and the climactic doo-wop version of Blue Moon by The Marcels.Roger Ebert’s view that the film seems unfinished is not entirely without validity, but it’s one of those films where the imperfections make you love it all the more. There’s a sense at times of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks (Vampires! Nazis! Wolves! Zombies!), while the dialogue feels a bit stilted at times – though Naughton and Griffin have good chemistry together, and Jenny Agutter. as the nurse who falls for David, turns in arguably the film’s best performance.
Pictured: Foreshadowing
Introducing American Werewolf to my girlfriend and sister (I’m from Stoke-On-Trent so you’ll just have to take my word for it that those are two different people), they were shocked that the relationship between Agutter’s Alex and Kessler wasn’t the central plot point – which just goes to show how much the Teen Wolf remake and Twilight have to answer for in neutering our classic movie monsters.
AAWIL is one of the best horrors ever and one of my all-time favourite films. Landis realised his vision brilliantly he and Baker have become genre legends. Demonstrating those horror chops also landed Landis a gig helming Michael Jackson’s Thriller video – thus earning him the chance to direct another misunderstood, creepy creature prone to dramatic transformations…
Random Movie Guy 