TITLE & REVIEW
David Arquette (
Scream
) and Sid Haig (
The Devil's Rejects
) are a pair of cut-throats in the wild west.
They accidentally desecrate a Native American burial ground.
Eleven days later a stranger arrives at a small town nearby,
and that night the natives abduct some townsfolk.
The Sheriff (Kurt Russell - Escape From New York ) sets out with a small posse - his backup deputy, an Indian-fighter (Matthew Fox - Lost ) and a crippled cowboy (Patrick Wilson - Watchmen ). Hopalong wants his wife back. She looks like a young Erika Christensen - yes, he has managed to marry a woman about half his age, and he does not want to lose her.
This film is not racist against Native Americans because the villains are not a recognised tribe or nation. Instead they are Troglodytes - the Native American equivalent of the inbred hillbillies in movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre .
The film's cast is first-rate, but the actual production values are quite low. The cinematography is flawed - in several shots the central character is off-centre. The first time, this seems to be a deliberate attempt to create suspense. However, because it happens more than once the result is that the movie just seems sloppy and amateurish.
This is not nearly as garish and vulgar as the trailer suggests.
However,
Baz Luhrman
has delivered (quite predictably) a celebration of style over substance.
F Scott Fitzgerald's slim novella has been padded out to a massive running time of 143 minutes
- nearly an hour longer than it needs to be.
We are given unnecessary bookend scenes featuring the narrator, Nick Caraway (Tobey Maguire -
Spiderman
), as well as an unnecessary voice-over narration that betrays the story-teller's maxim of
Show, don't tell.
Caraway tells us of his bestest buddy, Jay Gatsby, who he met in the 1920s while living on Long Island, New York. Leonardo DeCaprio ( Man in the Iron Mask ) is excellent as Gatsby, which makes him almost out of place in this extravaganza. He seems reminiscent of his portrayal of Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004), with greater nuance than this film deserves.
The plot thickens with illicit sexcapades and bootlegging gangsters. Long lost love rears her head, and tragedy looms on the horizon. But this is basically a melodrama at best - too serious to be a comedy, too lacking in jeopardy to be a thriller, it is a group of people hanging out amid the incredible luxury of the pre-Wall Street Crash era.
The title character (Josh Brolin -
Hail Caesar
) is a mutilated Confederate war veteran who now survives as a bounty hunter.
He earns enough money to rent time with the local tart with a heart (
Megan Fox
).
President US Grant hires Hex to take on deranged Confederate General John Malkovich ( Being John Malkovich ) and his Oirish henchman Michael Fassbender ( Haywire ). Naturally, Hex has a personal grudge against them for killing his wife.
The plot is basically Wild Wild West with a couple of changes. The Buffalo Soldier is now a Confederate turncoat, and the relationship between the General and the Southern Plantation-Owner ( Hunger Games ) is reversed. However, the core storyline is pretty much the same. No gigantic mechanical spider, however.
Tarzan (
True Blood
) has married Jane (
Margot Robbie
), moved to London and retired.
He is convinced to return to the jungles of the Congo by Belgian emmisary Christoph Waltz
and American Ambassador Samuel L Jackson.
Waltz and Jackman last worked together in Django Unchained,
where they played against type and delivered incredible performances.
Here, Waltz is just another villain (
Spectre, Green Hornet
) and Jackson is basically Major Marcus from
Hateful Eight
.
Tarzan visits some old friends in the Congo, along with Jane (a feisty damsel in distress) and Jackman (the Murtagh - getting to old for this shit). Despite it being the 1880s he discovers some mistreatments of natives that were in reality uncovered by Sir Roger Casement decades later, just before the First World War. The natives have been enslaved because Belgium is bankrupt and cannot afford to pay them. The reason it is broke is because the Congo's precious gem-stones are hoarded by a cannibal king (Djimon Hounsou - Guardians of the Galaxy ) who has a blood-feud against Tarzan.
The villain's plan for the gems is to hire an army of twenty thousand mercenaries and build fifty forts, each with four hundred men to garrison it. To be fair, the country is full of boat-eating hippos, man-eating crocodiles and flesh-eating cannibals. And these are only the monsters we see on-screen! Perhaps such an army would be a good thing, to protect innocent people from the horrors.
This film is obviously based on the story of James Maybrick,
supposed author of the so-called Diary of Jack the Ripper.
A young woman (
Elizabeth Cooke
) is arrested and accused of murdering her husband.
However, her case turns out to be linked to a serial killer's murder spree.
A Police Detective (Bill Nighy - Shaun Of The Dead ) and his constable (Daniel Mays - Rogue One ) are assigned to catch the serial killer. If they can prove that the dead man is the killer, then the wife will be given grounds for appeal.
This was written by Jane Goldman , who has delivered a series of great films in the past. This is adapted from a novel, and is unfortunately the worst thing she has done. The disturbing Feminist undertone is the worst thing since Sherlock Homes: The Undead Bride .
Tonto (Johnny Depp blacked up to play a Native American version of Captain Jack Sparrow from
Pirates of the Carribean
) narrates a story set in the wild west.
A pacifist lawyer (Armie Hammer -
The man From UNCLE
) arrives in a small town, and falls foul of Villainous William Fichtner (
Invasion
) is almost unrecognisable disguised as Barry Pepper's character in the far superior
True Grit (2010)
. Ironically, Pepper himself appears in the film -
as a George Armstrong Custer lookalike sent to put down a suspected Comanche uprising.
Hammer dons the persona of the Lone Ranger and teams up with Tonto. The heroes are aided by the cliched tart with the heart of gold - a one-legged Madame ( Helena Bonham Carter ). The plot involves a slave mine (like in Zorro ) used to finance the villain's evil plot. The climax involves the continental meet-up at Promontory point (like in Wild, Wild West ), and a battle aboard a CGI steam-train (see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ).
This is based on a novel by
Daphne Du Maurier
and set in England during the late Victorian era.
The protagonist (Sam Clafin - ) invites the title character ( Rachel Weitz ) to come and stay with him. Unfortunately he begins to suspect that she means to do him harm.
The suporting cast includes Iain Glenn ( Game of Thrones ).
Baltimore, 1849.
Someone murders two women, in a locked room.
The scene resembles the murders described in Poe's story
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
. Police Detective Fields (Luke Evans -
Dracula Untold
) tries to turn this into a police procedural,
but the literary nature of the killings mean he needs a celebrity guest to help.
Nearby, Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack - Hot Tub Time Machine ) himself is busy drinking himself to death. Well, he would if he could because he is flat broke. He also wants to marry Alice Eve , daughter of the rich and powerful Brendan Gleason ( Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ).
The killer starts bumping off a series of nobodies, in manners based on Poe's macabre stories. Naturally, the damsel in distress is buried alive and Poe himself is challenged to save her while the whole Police Force is baffled.
This never manages to evoke the thrills of Se7en , which has a similar plot but is much better handled. Theatre of Blood manages a light-hearted take on the serial killer spree, while this effort merely lumbers it with half-hearted period piece cosmetics.
Leonardo DiCaprio (
Man In The Iron Mask
) is guide to a group of fur-trappers in the remote borderlands
of the Northwest Louisiana Purchase in the early 19th Century.
Leo gets injured, and left with his
Inception
co-star Tom Hardy (who is channelling Waingrow from Heat - not a good sign).
Hardy's companion is a young Jim Bridger,
who later became a famous Mountain Man in his own right.
This is all quite revisionist and politically correct. The Native Americans are portrayed as innocent, compared to the villainous French-Canadians.
With a running length of almost three hours this is Oscars fodder. Lots of scenery and mood, little dialogue and (most critically for the Hollywood mainstream) NO CAR CHASE mean that it is stuck firmly in the arthouse genre.
Darren Aronofsky
, visionary genius of art-house films like
The Fountain
, is really slumming it here.
This effort strays quite badly from the Biblical story,
While retaining enough of the original fairy tale to offend atheists too.
This reviewer was expecting a terrible Biblical epic like something by
Cecil B. DeMille
, but this film is dreadful on an entirely greater scale!
Noah (Russell Crowe - Robin Hood ) and Jennifer Connolly are breeding a cult of inbred cannibalistic cave-men - like in The Hills Have Eyes . Okay, we do not see cannibalism on-screen, but they do not eat the flesh of beasts so they must eat the flesh of men instead. It tastes like pork ... but it is not pork, so it is kosher. They have three sons (including Logan Lerman - Percy Jackson ) and recruit Emma Watson , who is barren.
Noah has weird dreams, like something out of a Darren Aronofsky Movie. He seeks out his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins - Silence of the Lambs ), who helps explain the prophecy. The Creator will exterminate the entire human race, but Noah must save the cuddly critters. They team up with some fallen angels (think of the stone monster in Galaxy Quest ) who do the heavy lifting in the ark's construction.
There is a subplot concerning the King of Men (Ray Winstone - Beowulf ). Yes, Beowulf wants to save the human race from the vengeful Creator. Noah, on the other hand, is a genocidal madman. For whom should the audience cheer? This subplot could be dispensed with entirely, without any real change to the film.
The main issue of the film is Noah's intent to exterminate humanity. He is so intent that when Emma gets pregnant, he wants to murder her offspring if it is female.
This is technically a non-Biblical epic.
Like
Ben Hur
, it is based on a novel about a Biblical era.
However, instead of staying with the Bible's fantastical
and supernatural version of events,
this story sticks to actual proven historical facts.
Even considering this movie was made in the early 1950s,
it has a very modern-day atheistic feel to it.
The protagonist lives in Thebes, capital of Egypt, in the thirteenth century BCE (Before the Common Era). When the new Pharoah, Akenaton, replaces the country's polytheistic religion with a monotheistic one, the country falls into uproad. This religion seems more trouble than it is worth, with its worship of the sun-god and the use of the cross-like Ankh as a symbol. The protagonist and his slave (Peter Ustinov - Spartacus ) are exiled for angering the Pharoah.
While exiled, the Stranger in a Strange Land earns a living as a wandering physician to the idle rich. When he heals the Hittite Commander (Michael Ansara - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ), he discovers that the Hittites plan to invade Egypt. The real problem is that Hittites are mass-producing iron weapons while the Egyptian army only has copper swords. Yes, this is an extension of the Broca Divide - but between the Bronze and Iron ages instead of Stone and Bronze.
The protagonist returns to his homeland, in order to save the place from invasion by the Hittites. The good news is that General Horemheb (Victor Mature - Samson and Delilah ) now commands the Imperial forces. The bad news is that Pharoh Akenaton displays a lack of leadership. As a result, the country is in dire straits. Now the protagonist is drawn into office politics.
This movie covers the same ground as The Ten Commandments , but came out two years earlier. However, the religious epic with Charlton Heston is remembered as a classic of the decade while this earlier piece is a long-forgotten masterpiece. So why did Twentieth Century Fox bother to produce an athiest film? Well, the final Act chickens out like The Robe - the protagonist defects to the Xian side, and starts to worship the monotheistic deity himself. A disappointing ending to such a refreshingly original film. Still, it is to be expected when one considers that it was made in the era of Joe McCarthy.
This is a massive technicolour epic from the 1950s, directed by
Cecil B. DeMille
. Based on a series of Bronze Age fairy tales,
it is not exactly free from embellishment.
The story starts with a star appearing in the sky to symbolise the birth of a Chosen One.
In response, the King orders the death of all newborn Hebrew babies.
Yes, this is deliberately intended to evoke parallels with Jesus of Nazareth himself.
The baby, raised as the son of the king's daughter, grows up to be Moses (Charlton Heston - Planet of the Apes (1968) ). His rival is Rameses (Yul Brynner - Westworld (1971) ), who Moses believes is his younger brother.
Moses is victorious as General in an off-screen battle against the Ethiopians. The next item on the Egyptian agenda is the Hebrew slaves, who are building a city under the command of the head overseer (Edward G Robinson - Soylent Green (1971) ) and the Master Builder (Vincent Price - The Abominable Dr Phibes ). Moses decides that starving the slaves to death is a bad idea, so he gives them free food and one day of rest every week. In the modern day that would be regarded as Communism by the Religious Right, but back in the McCarthyite era the future president of the NRA got away with it.
This was directed by
Ridley Scott
, and is a follow-up to his Crusader epic
Kingdom Of Heaven
. It is basically a rehash of
The Ten Commandments
, the famous technicolour epic by
Cecil B. DeMille
. The filming style has been updated,
but the storyline is basically unchanged from the Bible.
The main difference seems to be that instead of a staff,
Moses in this version carries a sword.
Yes, it is more of an attempt at a big-budget action blockbuster
than a straight-up Biblical epic.
The Sci-Fi movie 10,000 BC explains that the pyramids were built by cave-men with the aid of wooly mammoths, because they had been enslaved by the last survivors of Atlantis. That film has about as much historical accuracy as this one does.
Moses (Christian Bale - Batman Begins ) is raised at the court of the Pharoh, along with his jealous cousin Rameses (Joel Edgerton - Midnight Special ). They keep the Hebrews in a state of slavery. Eventually a Rabbi (Ben Kingsley - A Sound Of Thunder ) reveals the truth - Moses is a secret Hebrew!
Moses gets exiled, and helps some prostitutes persecute local shepherds. Presumably they want to extort cheap wool so they can work as seamstresses. Then he falls and gets a concussion, which brings on a halucination of a burning bush. A creepy little boy tells him that he should look after his own people, which is basically divinely-inspired racial segregation. He takes the suggestion to heart, and heads back to Egypt so he can stir up trouble.
Moses trains the Hebrews to use guerrilla tactics, because they are not strong enough to attack the Pharoh's army in open battle. However, he chooses to hit civilian targets. His theory is that the Egyptian people will force Rameses to capitulate. Of course, if his own terror gang cannot fight the army then the unarmed civilians have no chance. Also, if he destroys the food supply then what will his own people have to eat?
Rameses holds fast against Moses' terrorism. Eventually the Egyptians are hit with a series of apparently magical plagues. Well, it has only taken four hundred years of slavery for the sky-pixie to intervene. One of Pharoh's advisors (Ewan Bremner - Wonder Woman ) comes up with an explanation that approximates modern scientific theory on the inspiration for the Bible tale. Of course, this character is portrayed as an idiot. Likewise, the Egyptian Priestess ( Indira Varna ) is unsuccessful.
When the tenth and final plague hits, we are left with no doubt that the cause is supernatural. This is not really a genre-shift, because everyone familiar with western culture knows the story. However, this sets up the climactic crossing of the Red Sea.
This is full of propaganda passed off as history, like
Braveheart (1995)
.
Samson (Taylor James - ) and his brother mess around as jokey heist artists, in scenes reminiscent of the start of The Scorpion King . Their tribe is oppressed by their neighbours, the Philistines, but Samson has superhuman strength so he can do what he likes.
Our hero wants to marry a Philistine girl. His mother ( Lindsay Wagner ) and father (Rutger Hauer - Blade Runner ) disaprove. After all, they are the master-race. Likewise, the Philistine Prince does what he can do to disrupt things.
Samson, supposedly a hero, goes on a kill-crazy rampage. He even sets the crops on fire, which would leave the entire population - including women and children - to suffer death by starvation. In other words, a blatant act of ethnic cleansing. This leads on to a wonderful illustration of an anthopological phenomenon called the Broca Divide. What happens when the barbarian meets the civilised man? We watch as a bare-chested cave-man armed only with a makeshift club takes on an entire army equipped with iron weapons and helmets. More than that, he defeats them with relative ease.
The Philistine king (Billy Zane - Titanic (1997) ) is remarkably forgiving. His good will is wasted on the so-called hero.
Samson (Victor Mature -
The Egyptian
) is the champion of the Tribe of Dan.
He intends to win the hand in marriage of a beautiful blonde Philistine woman (
Angela Lansbury
). He himself is targeted by the woman's brunette sister, Delilah (
Hedy Lamarr
).
Princess Salome (
Rita Hayward
), step-daughter of King Herod Antipas,
has lived as a VIP guest in Rome.
Now she gets sent home,
on the same ship as a Roman officer named Claudius (Stewart Granger -
).
John the Baptist is stirring up trouble. The King, Salome's step-father, is a very forgiving man. He espouses principles similar to freedom of speech, and separation of Church and State. In all fairness, John would not be so gracious if the positions were reversed.
The Queen, Salome's mother, plots to get rid of the turbulent preacher. After all, he has publicly accused her of adultery - and under religious law, that would be punished with death by stoning.
The climax takes place in Herod's palace. In the throne room, Salome performs the dance of the seven veils. Beneath her, in the dungeon level, Claudius tries to save the Baptist while the Queen's executioner seeks to take the man's head.
What makes this version different from the Biblical one is the attempt to redeem the title character and make her a heroine to the Xian cause. Her dance is portrayed as a distraction to help the Baptist escape, not as a seduction intended to induce his demise. Ths problem is that the heroic Claudius and his men so clearly out-match the villainous executioner that the Baptist's inevitable martyrdom comes across as unlikely.
Mary (
Rooney Mara
) does not have a dragon tattoo, but still rejects her customary role in society.
She joins up with a wandering faith-healer named Jesus (Joaquin Phoenix -
Joker (2019)
) and his best buddy Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor -
Serenity (2005)
).
They wander a wilderness that is practically post-apocalyptic. The movie has the visual emptiness of the Mad Max series combined with the slowness of The Road . Strangely, it was filmed in Italy rather than North Africa.
Since this is told from Mary's perspective, a lot seems to be missed out. While Last Temptation of Christ was filled with events and spectacles, this seems very empty in comparison.
This is set in a dusty Middle Eastern country ruled by a military dictatorship.
Joshua (Cliff Curtis -
Fear the Walking Dead
) is a beardy Bin Laden type who lives in a desert and preaches revolution.
The Powers That Be round him up and nail him to a tree.
However, his body mysteriously goes missing ...
This film has incredible potential. Uncle Bully from Once Were Warriors is the undead ruler of a cult of blood-drinking fanatics. Heroic soldiers Joseph Feinnes ( American Horror Story: Asylum ) and Tom Felton ( Harry Potter ) must hunt him down before he goes on a kill-crazy rampage. What could possibly go wrong?
Realistically, this is a modern-day attempt at a Biblical epic. The truth is that Proof destroys Faith, because Faith is merely blind hope.
A Roman Tribune (Richard Burton -
Dr Faustus
) gains the interest of
Jean Simmons
- but this earns the emnity of Caligula, heir to the Emperor's throne.
In revenge, Caligula has him sent to serve in a distant garrison town named Jerusalem.
He takes with him his new Greek slave, Demetrius (Victor Mature -
The Egyptian
), who becomes overly interested in local politics.
Mature had previously played the male lead in
Samson and Delilah (1949)
, and now he plays a
Spartacus
type character.
Pilate (Michael Rennie - The Day The Earth Stood Still ) puts a death sentence on the leader of a cult of blood-drinking fanatics. The heroic Tribune has the honour of performing the crucifixion. Unfortunately the dead man's cloak curses the hero with nightmares, and the sleep deprivation drives him to the brink of insanity. This may have inspired a story in an Amicus Horror Anthology , which features a vampire's cloak that lives on human blood.
The Emperor Tiberius realises that the blood-drinking cult may eventually spread, and undermine the peaceful Empire that allows trade from the North Sea to North Africa He sends the near-insane Tribune undercover, to find and destroy the robe - and the cultists who keep it as a relic.
Our hero becomes corrupted, and leads the cultists against Rome. Yes, this movie is from the primitive era when superstition was glorified, and placed above science or progress. However, the hypocrisy is quite obvious. This is a swords-and-sandals action movie, so while the cultists claim to be peaceful they are actually quite violent.
This starts with the climax of the previous movie.
The Roman Emperor, Caligula, is paranoid about the Xians.
His uncle, Claudius, keeps favour with him
by explaining the Xians have no fear of death
simply because they are brainwashed into believing in life after death.
Neither of them realises what Constantine later understood:
that this makes the cultists the ultimate expendables
who can be sent on suicide missions.
Meanwhile, Claudius's wife Messalina (
Susan Hayward
) plots to take the throne.
Peter (Michael Rennie - The Day The Earth Stood Still ), codenamed The Fisherman, runs the secret Xian cult that lurks in the catacombs. He leaves the magic robe, object of the cult's idolotrous worship, in the hands of Demetrius (Victor Mature - The Robe ). Rather than keep it in a secret hiding place, Demetrius carries it around with him.
The good news is that Demetrius was given his freedom. The bad news is that he did not bother to get this in writing so he has no proof of his status when he gets himself arrested. Luckily he is enslaved as a gladiator, to be trained by Strabo (Ernest Borgnine - The Black Hole ). The owner of the Gladiatorial school is ... Claudius himself.
Demetrius is picked to fight in the arena. They are expected to fight to the death, although this is a special display for the Emperor's birthday so it might be the exception rather than the rule. Demetrius refuses to kill his new friend Glycon (William Marshall - Star Trek: TOS ), so Caligula throws him to the tigers. The result is much better than Mature's infamously bad fight in Samson and Delilah (1949) when he faces a stuffed lion.
Messalina discovers Demetrius is an Xian, while she is a priestess of Isis. When he resists her seduction attempts, she messes with him. He is supposed to be a pacifist, so she gives his girlfriend Lucia ( Debra Paget ) to the other gladiators. The so-called pacifist hero is a bloodthirsty killer when his love interest is involved. Yes, he is a complete hypocrite. However, this wins Demetrius a job in the Praetoria Guard.
This is more than just a regular Biblical storyline. It also has a good take on the political subplot, with the Emperor descending into madness and forgetting how dependent he is on the Praetorian Guards.
Barabbas (Anthony Quinn -
) was sentenced to be crucified beside Jesus of Nazareth,
but was freed by Pontius Pilate at the request of the crowd.
This story takes up where the Bible left off.
He ends up in Rome,
which is convenient because it was evidently shot in Italy
on the Cinecitta back-lot.
Barabbas is sentanced to fight in the Coliseum,
where faces off against his arch-enemy -
the villainous Torvald (Jack Palance -
Hawk The Slayer
).
Barabbas is a psychological mess, since he wants to be a good Xian but he has no idea how to do this. Unlike Demetrius he has no compunction against killing someone, and he is happy to help out when Nero burns Rome. Luckily, help is at hand in the form of the Apostle, St Peter (Harry Andrews - Equs (1977) ), and his follower Lucius (Ernest Borgnine - ).
This was directed by Richard Fleisher , adapted from a novel by Swedish Pulitzer Prize Winning writer Par Lagerkvist. This literary origin explains why the title character has such depth - especially when compared to other Italian scroll-and-sandal epics of the era.
This is a black and white RKO movie
that has many of the standard tropes of the Biblical/swords-and-sandals genre.
More than that, a few of the cast pop up in later epics like
Spartacus (1960)
.
This is set in 161CE, in the reign of the Emperor Antoninus. Androcles (Alan Young - The Time Machine (2002) ), a Roman tailor who is also an Xian, goes on the run with his nagging shrewish wife. While saving a wild lion which has a thorn in its paw, he gets caught and thrown in with other Xian slaves.
Since the original fable is so short, this film has massive amounts of padding. Androcles himself is merely the comic relief, while the other Xian slaves take over with their own subplots. Lavinia ( Jean Simmons ), a beautiful upper middle-class woman, catches the eye of the Roman Captain (Victor Mature - Samson and Delilah ). The Xian recruiter (Robert Newton - Long John Silver ) is a beast of a man who struggles against his own rage, and always tries to turn the other cheek.
Naturally, the Third Act of the story has the Xians taken to the arena for execution. To make things more exciting, the Emperor has them forced to fight his gladiators.
This film has the usual moralising of its genre. Perhaps what puts it slightly above the rest is its refusal to entirely condemn the Pagan Romans. Nor are the Xians entirely absolved of their wrongdoings.
Young Victorian gentleman Dorian Gray (Ben Barnes -
Prince Caspian
) befriends Basil (Ben Chaplin - Birthday Girl)
and Henry (Colin Firth - Bridget Jones).
Basil paints Dorian's portrait, and Henry teaches Dorian the pleasures of the flesh.
But Basil's painting is cursed -
as Dorian becomes more and more corrupted by Henry,
the portrait bears the marks of his sins.
Dorian himself remains as youthful and unchanged as a vampire.
After Dorian takes a 25-year tour of the world, he returns to discover that Henry has a Suffragette daughter ( Rebecca Hall ). But Dorian's shame over his magical portrait of sin is so great that he will kill to protect the secret.
This was adapted from the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde . How ironic that Dorian's so-called sins seem to be mere induldgence in non-vanilla sex, when Wilde himself was famously convicted of homosexuality. More recently, the character of Dorian Gray was used as one of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .
Dracula (Luke Evans -
The Hobbit
) is a Transylvanian warlord who wants to protect his land from invasion by the Ottoman Empire.
Some of that land may look familiar from
Game of Thrones
, as does Dracula’s son (Ned Stark’s youngest, Art Parkinson).
The predominance of pasty pale Northern Irish faces in the Sultan’s army
is explained by having them as Jannisaries, white men enslaved as children by the Turks.
Dracula is a great swordsman, trained as a Jannisary (during his time as a Royal hostage) and skilled enough to take out several of the Sultan’s best men single-handedly. However, this is not enough. He makes an offer to a murderous vampire (Charles Dance - Game of Thrones ). Drac will have temporary vamp powers for 72 hours, and as long as he does not drink human blood in that time his humanity will return.
Naturally, things go wrong. Drac has to abandon his plan, and falls to darkness. However, he still manages to be the hero of the piece.
The movie is set up for a modern-day sequel, thanks to some Lost -Type exposition about an eternal battle between good and evil.
Elizabeth Moss
, best known as the title character in gender role-reversal
The Handmaid's Tale
, now appears as a battered wife.
Well, not battered as such – the husband is just a narcissistic control-freak,
like the mother in Candy (2006).
After the protagonist makes her escape, she hides out with her friend – police detective James Lanier (Aldis Hodge - Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) ). After a couple of weeks, they get word that the abusive husband killed himself. Then, a few days later, strange things start to happen around the house.
The protagonist insists that her husband somehow faked his death, and has managed to turn himself invisible in order to harrass her. Lanier and the other cops find it easier to believe that she is slowly going insane. The third option, which is never even mentioned out loud, is that a supenatural force like a ghost might be involved.
So what is this - a psychological thriller about a woman slowly losing her mind, or a scifi monster movie named after the villain? Well, one of the trailer clips gives away the secret. But the movie is a tight, well-made thriller that delivers what it promises.
This is a mediocre action movie.
It has had a lot of negative reviews, but is really not worse than average.
Tom Cruise is in his fifties, but he plays a US military recon operator who in reality would probably be at most in his thirties. The female love interest is in her thirties, but Hollywood usually uses the half-his-age-plus-seven ratio. Cruise's character is not a standard by-the book military type, but an anachronic adventurer. If he had to be compared with a character in The Mummy (1999) , the best comparison would be Benny the grave-robber.
Cruise, his comedy sidekick (Jake Johnston from New Girl) and love interest find the Mummy's tomb. The General (Courtney B Vance - ) has the coffin flown from Iraq all the way to England, a trip of two thousand miles without a stop-off or any apparent refueling.
Back in London, there is a secret agency run by Doctor Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe - Robin Hood (2010) ). They are the ones trying to control the magical super-villains of the world. Their plan is to capture the Mummy before she can raise a zombie army and conquer London.
The idea of a secret agency run by a super-villain has many problems. Jekyll's evil alter-ego, Mister Hyde, predictably appears. He is mainly recognisable because he has a working-class mockney accent. At least he is not completely overblown, like the version in the somewhat similar League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .
This was meant to be the first episode in Universal Studio's Dark Universe Franchise. Presumably they intended to do yet another Dracula reboot, rather than just tie in to Dracula Untold , which was left open-ended for a sequel that never happened.
The movie starts with Daniel Radcliffe (
Harry Potter
) doing scut-work in a circus back in the good old days.
Just like Robert Pattinson did in Water for Elephants, of course.
This time the wicked ringmaster is Daniel Mays (
Rogue One
).
Our hunchbacked hero is liberated by Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy - X-Men: First Class ), who names him Igor and recruits him as a lab assistant. Together they attempt to raise the dead.
The duo come to the attention of a police detective (Andrew Scott) who has the skills of Sherlock Holmes. Ironically, the actor is most easily recognised from his role as Moriarty in the BBC show Sherlock. However, he does have a villainous streak because he is a religious fundamentalist who believes that science (or at least Frankenstein's particular field of interest) is evil.
Frankenstein's father is Charles Dance, who also played a mentor figure in Dracula Untold . Perhaps he is meant to be the same character in both movies, thus linking them and putting them in the same universe. After all, Universal Studios has more recently launched its new Dark Universe with its disasterous effort The Mummy (2017) .
Someone returns to their childhood home to attend a funeral,
and discovers that much has changed in the years they were away.
This is the basic plot for literature novels,
but in this case we get a Hammer-style Werewolf story set in the 1890s.
Benicio Del Toro ( Licence To Kill ) is the hero. His mother was Spanish and he spent his entire adult life in America, which conveniently explains how he became the most unlikely English Gentleman. When the hero gets word of his brother's death he returns to stay in the family mansion with his father (Anthony Hopkins - Silence of the Lambs ), faithful Sikh manservant Singh (Art Malik - Living Daylights ) and the dead brother's fiance ( Emily Blunt ).
The brother is only one of a string of mutilated corpses. Inspector Abeline of Scotland Yard (Hugo Weaving - The Matrix, Lord of the Rings ) pays a visit. The main suspect is the protagonist himself, of course. And since the curse can be spread by a bite ...
Zeus, King of the Gods, sets Hercules (Lou Ferrigno -
The Incredible Hulk
) loose on Earth.
Some Rebel gods set King Minos free,
but he double-crosses them and tries to take over the Universe.
Hercules wanders around in his loincloth, accompanied by a couple of women in leotards. He has to save them repeatedly from human sacrifice by a variety of monsters and cultists.
This is a low-budget Swords and Sandals effort from 1985. It is so cheap that it makes Red Sonya look like Conan the Barbarian . One particular low point is the scene that rips off the Clash of the Titans (1980) sequence where Perseus is stalked by Medusa.
This film is a confused mess.
It is adapted from a graphic novel,
so it may have started with some decent source material,
but evidently director
Brett Ratner
has filled it with clichéd action movie claptrap.
The premise is excellent - Hercules (The Rock - Doom ) cheats to make himself look superhuman. He actually has a team of helpers, including Ian McShane ( His Dark Materials ) and Rufus Sewell ( The Knight’s Tale ). But Ratner (related to Gerald?) makes Herc so super-strong he can TKO five men with a single swing of his club, or punch a beefy man ten feet through the air. It is like the cheesy intro to Scorpion King (only using his nephew instead of his brother).
The actual quest turns into a lot of plot clichés too - the hero’s personal grudge (the death of his wife and children) and the predictable plot non-twists. There are actually two named female speaking parts (a princess and an amazon warrior), but it does not pass the Bechdel test.
In typical Hollywood fashion,
this came out at around the same time as another blockbuster with a similar theme.
This one was directed by
Renny Harlin
, and the main difference between this and the
Brett Ratner
version is that this one lacks any big star names in the cast.
This starts with a city sacked, like the climax of Troy . A Princess ( Roxanne McKee ) is captured by the villain. She becomes a mother, and names her baby son Hercules.
Hercules grows up to be Kellan Lutz ( Expendables 3 ). He gets sent off on a mission with Liam McIntyre ( Spartacus ), but they end up getting enslaved. Now they must fight as gladiators, until they get the chance to return home and overthrow the dictator.
