Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) Dir: J. Lee Thompson

It's the last of the original 'Apes' movies, and clearly the worst.

The plot:
Caesar, ostensible leader of the intelligent apes, has a dream. He wishes for the human 'animals' and the apes to live in peace and harmony. Trouble is, not all of his kind agrees with and, sure as chimps throw faeces at unsuspecting members of the public, factions begin to be forged.
One gorilla in particular (whose name escapes me) begins to threaten the stability, and it's not long before Caesar must decide whether to stand and fight or let his dream fall into tatters.

Low budget by this stage, this doesn't really have a whole lot going for it.
Gone are the super-animated facial features of the first couple of movies, the ape costumes, and masks in particular, now redolent of the kind of thing you'd hire from a novelty shop for a Halloween party.
Roddy McDowell, somewhat surprisingly, reprises his role as Caesar (he must have needed the cash) and does his best with some substandard material, but this was a project way beyond redemption.
The only vague positive here is that the script does tenuously hang on to the political allegory, with Caesar in full on Martin Luther King mode, which is fine but, unfortunately, you can't spin gold from navel fluff.
Deeply flawed, primarily by lack of budget, this is something of a damp squib for the series to end on.
Shame.

2 out of 5

Four Lions (2010) Chris Morris

Some controversy upon initial release, this comes from the wonderfully deviant, darkly demented mind of Chris Morris, he of Brasseye, The Day Today and Nathan Barley fame.
A British comedy about the extremist elements of the Islamic community, set in Sheffield?
That can't be any good, surely?

The plot:
3 young Asian Muslim men, and one older, white Muslim convert are hatching a plan. Instead of sitting back and allowing the infidels to continue in their sinful ways, why not strike back at the heart of British society?
Why not invoke fear in an already nervous population?
Only trouble is, they are utterly incompetent. Whether it's firing rocket launchers facing the wrong way, falling over a wall and accidentally blowing up a sheep, or dancing with the foxy next door neighbour whilst surrounded by all the bomb-making gear, if they can find a way to mess things up they probably will.
After some umming and arring, they select both target and method: Suicide bomb attacks at the London Marathon.

Sounds like a right barrel of laughs, and no mistake. And right there lies the problem.
It ain't funny.
Sure, it has its moment and occasionally raises a wry smile, but not consistently, and certainly not often enough.
As for the storyline, whilst decent at its core, the goofball antics of the characters quickly becomes irritating, and all too often veers over into Keystone Cops style bickering and head slapping.
And what about the message of the movie? Surely the only purpose of making a satirical comedy is to make a point, and here all I got from it was that all Pakistani men are fanatical religious crazies and bumbling imbeciles.
And I really don't think that was the point.
As a self-confessed Morris fan-boy, I must say I was a tad disappointed.

3 out of 5

Cypher (2002) Dir: Vincenzo Natali

NOTE: Known as Brainstorm in some territories.

What would happen if the James Bond and Matrix franchises collided?
Well, something a bit like this, I suspect.

The plot:
Set in an indeterminate time period, an office worker is tired of the tedium in his life. Middle of the road, mid-salary, middling prospects, his life takes a sudden turn for the unexpected when, almost unbidden, he is plunged headlong into the murky world of corporate espionage. Daunted but determined, he dutifully carries out his instructions, attending mind-numbing seminars about cheese and sewage and skirting boards, he 'activates' a device in his pocket; a listening device.
Slowly getting to grips with his new life, another unforeseen happening: Lucy Liu appears and tells him that the espionage he is conducting is in fact a lie, that the transmitter device doesn't even do anything and that he is a pawn in a game he doesn't even know is being played.
What's a man to do?

Part espionage movie, part sci-fi, the mood here is quite out there. With a trippy-dippy soundtrack, odd camera angles and awkward, stilted conversations on screen for the most part, this does its very best to unsettle the viewer, and it certainly achieves it.
The performance of Jeremy Northam as male lead Morgan Sullivan is rock solid, perfectly capturing the bewilderment of his predicament.
Relatively unknown, this one may have been a bit too deep for the multiplexes, which is a shame as it stands head and shoulders above ninety nine percent of the guff out there.
Genuinely hard to find a flaw.

5 out of 5

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) Dir: Guy Ritchie

There was a time when the very mention of the name Guy Ritchie sent all genuine cinephiles running to the hills, screaming themselves hoarse, whether through gales of laughter or genuine, gushing, trauma-induced tears.
Then, a funny thing happened: he released a movie that people actually seemed to like when Sherlock Holmes hit the screens in 2009.
Could he pull off the same improbable thing twice?

The plot:
Everyones favourite vaguely demented, flawed genius super-sleuth is back, this time on the trail of arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty, played with genuine menace-filled glee by the sinister-faced Jared Harris.
The journey, inevitably, is a long and rocky one, that takes in fights on moving trains, Stephen Fry's buttocks and more knockabout violence than you could shake a mid-period Bond movie at.

And, blow me down with a jeweller's eye-glass, it's only really ruddy good fun.
I mean, really, ruddy good fun.
It's pap, of course it is, but pap's OK when it is delivered with a glint in the eye and the occasional knowing wink at the viewer.
Downey Jr. simply owns the role of Holmes, a buzzing ball of nervous, semi-sane energy, whilst Jude Law foregoes his comedy Cockney cum Aussie attempt at a British accent from Contagion (a curious blind spot for an actor who is, you know, British an' all) in favour of the more traditional tones of The Queen's English.
Clocking in over the two hour mark, usually that is a stretch of my horror '85 minutes, no more' blunted patience, but this passed in the blink of an eye and, truly, if it had lasted another twenty minutes I would not have complained.
Massively entertaining, this is the first Blockbuster of the festive season and, by all that is Christly, it's a damn fine start.

4 out of 5

Knowing (2009) Dir: Alex Proyas

A sci-fi movie starring Nicholas 'Equus' Cage.
Got to be good, right?

The plot:
Cage plays Alan Strang, a young man with a religious and pathological fascination with horses. Strang, you see, is a zoophile, though his proclivities are not sexually based, rather a tactile compulsion he finds so overpowering that, one day, to ensure the horses do not run away, he blinds them. Seven horses in all, one after the other; Strang sneaks up on the wretched beasts, penknife cupped in sweaty palm, jabbing the weapon into the eyes of the docile animals with a speed and level of savagery that renders them powerless.
Hang on.
No, sorry, got it all wrong.
I'm talking about the Peter Schaffer play.
Let's reset:
Cage plays John Koestler, a teacher and deep thinker (Cage. Right?!?). John's son brings home something from school; a sheet of paper, taken from a time capsule unearthed fifty years after the pupils at his school buried it and, on the paper, a sequence of numbers, apparently random.
Through a moment of genuine logical insanity, John spots that the numbers appear to be a series of dates and, after a quick dose of Googling, he discovers that each date is significant as a tragedy took place that day, involving the loss of many lives and, shock horror, the sequence of numbers also predict the precise figure of fatalities.
How could this be?
How could a pupil, fifty years prior, have predicted the dates and death tolls of so many horrific incidents and, more pressingly, how can John prevent the tragedies the numbers predict are yet to come.

Directed by Alex 'The Crow, Dark City' Proyas, I had reasonably high hopes going into this.
Yeah, it would be a special effects splurge and, yeah, Equus can't act his way out of a revolving door, but the pedigree of the man at the helm seemed a good omen.
Boy, was I wrong.
Blatantly silly in ways that are genuinely offensive to the viewer - I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, but I expect to be treated like a growed up - this is a movie that absolutely depends upon the gullibility, naivety and general stupidity of the viewer.
What's that?
Equus braying on about sequences of numbers?
And how did he spot it?
Because of a coffee stain?
Shut it, Mr. Ed. Get back in the stable where you belong lest I turn you into glue and food for things with sharper teeth than yours....
What's that?
Aliens, you say, communicating across the stars to teach humanity, and to save those worthy of saving?
I fucking warned you, Trigger. Take that. And that. And that. That'll teach you to have such spindly legs. Try and escape now, you pointy-eared little prick.
What am I doing?
I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing.
I've cut you on your flank and led a trail of sugar from the wound to an ant's nest.
Now we'll see who's laughing.
Stay down, you fucking worthless animal.
With lashings of 'family values' and sentimentalising, if this one doesn't have you spraying geysers of vomit across the room by the end, Linda Blair style, frankly, there's something wrong with you.
And the ending?
Clit-licking Jesus.
The ending.
With a schmaltz factor that even Spielberg couldn't tolerate, the icky-sticky-dickyness of a father's love for his son will send anyone sentient into paroxysms of exquisite agony as it goes on and on and on and on.
One of the worst movies I have seen in quite some time, I was left a quivering, raging mess of boiling hatred by the end of it.
Utter, utter shit.

1 out of 5

Don't you just love this two month hiatus from the blockbuster shite that Hollywood generally hurls at the screen?
Don't you?
Eh?
Well we do down here at Smell the Cult HQ and, though it may be drawing to a close for the time being, there was still time for one last hurrah.

The plot:
A young woman, celebrating gaining a place at the prestigious MIT, heads home after a party a little worse for wear. When a radio broadcast announces that a new planet is visible in the night sky, her astronomer's brain kicks in and, briefly, her attention turns heavenward, away from the road. Drink-addled, she loses control, and ploughs into a stationary vehicle, killing wife and child within, leaving the widower in a coma.
Imprisoned, she is released some four years later, the world now come to terms with the new planet in the sky, though still intrigued, as it appears to be an exact replica of Earth.
Desperate to gain some form of redemption, through a MacGuffin of reasonably huge proportions, the young woman gains the trust and friendship of the man whom she made a widower and, slowly, tenderly, over time, she begins to make amends.

Sounds like a right load of old wiffle, I'll grant you, but this is handled with such a gentleness of touch it's hard not to be enthralled. Mixing indie stylings with the sense of the epic majesty of our cosmos, this manages to at once warm the cockles and inspire awe at our insignificance.
With a genuinely beautiful relationship as the core of the story, in many ways this is reminiscent of last years excellent, excellent Monsters: the central, fantastical premise simply serving as a backdrop over which can be draped the actual decoration of the real storyline.
Heartwarming in a way that so little cinema manages to be, the soulless purveyors of rom-coms could do well to take a look at both the performances and the construct of the emotional narrative, here, and learn a thing or two about genuine human interaction.
There really aren't enough superlatives to describe this so
I'll stop.
Now.

5 out of 5

Giallo (2009) Dir: Dario Argento

Dario Argento on very familiar ground here.
For those not in the know, here's how it is: Giallo is Italian for yellow. It is also the term used to describe a very specific type of cinema. Giallo movies have a few common ingredients:
A mysterious killer, usually sporting black leather gloves and with a penchant for some close quarters knife butchery.
A police investigation.
Set-piece style slayings, usually accompanied by music from either The Goblins, Tangerine Dream or, occasionally, a spot of NWOBHM (prime era Motorhead or Iron Maiden).
One of the finest exponents of the art is, of course, Dario Argento, who stepped from the world of film criticism to start making the blasted things for himself, allegedly dismayed at the paucity of genuine quality. Interestingly, he also has a close association with Sergio Leone, having worked in part on some Spaghetti Westerns.
With undisputed Giallo classics like Opera, Tenebre, Suspiria and Phenomena under his belt, this should surely be like slipping on a tight, black, leather glove just before plunging a knife into someone's throat.
Right?

The plot:
Adrien Brody wanders around Torino sporting a truly dreadful mullet, nostrils flaring, looking vaguely bewildered by his surroundings. See, a woman has been murdered, and her sister has been sent to him looking for assistance.
As it happens, he does know a thing or two, despite his attempts at gormlessness, and soon they are on the trail of a sick and sadistic killer known only as Yellow.
Yellow. Get it? The film is called Giallo.
And that's yellow in Italian.
And the genre is also known as Giallo.
Aren't they ever so bloody clever?

It's ok, folks.
I can't say more than that.
Brody is frankly ludicrous in the lead role, which is unusual. He's an Oscar nominee, for God's sake, so he's got some chops but, here, he just seems out of his depth. Genuinely, like he doesn't have a bloody clue what's going on.
Argento occasionally gives us a taste of his directorial flair but, for the most part, the atmosphere here relies far too heavily on the washed out, green and brown style grunginess of the more recent slew of torture porn offerings, from the likes of Eli Roth and Danny Bousman.
For Argento completists this is a must watch, of course, but newbie's, stay away from it like the proverbial alien anal probe.

5 out of 10

Dream House (2011) Dir: Jim Sheridan

Ghost stories are ten a penny.
Haunted house stories are almost as common.
So could this one really stand out from the pack?

The plot:
A family move into a new home and all seems well. The kids don't like it too much but, you know, they're just kids so fuck them, right?
Soon, as predictable as rain on the morning of a wash day, weird things start to happen:
A sinister figure watching them through the window.
Footprints left in the snowfall.
Strange interest from local goth types.
When the man of the house, Will Atenton, hears rumour of a grisly murder in the home, he tries to keep it to himself but, inevitably, the lady wife finds out. None too impressed, she and the young girls begin to feel even more unsettled, to the point that Will decides he has to do something about it. Heading to the Mental Institute that now apparently houses the man responsible for the murders, Will doesn't know what he will find when he gets there, nor could he predict the terrible consequences of his discovery.

Ninety minutes, dead on, just as it should be, this cracks along at a fair old clip. With no time for much in the way of preamble, we're straight into it, here, and that's no bad thing.
Daniel Craig is in fine form, by turns angry and desperate and intense, and always those piercing blue eyes staring out of the screen, demanding your attention.
And he's ripped, too. By jove, he's got quite the physique.
Though fairly tame in terms of the terror levels, still this is intriguing, playing more as a psychological chiller than an all out creepfest, and it works just fine as it is. No need for gore, no need for blood, when the oddness of the situation will do very nicely, thank you.
With reluctance, I will make reference to a killer twist about halfway through. Reluctant because some bleat and bemoan when told there is a twist at all, but that's as far as I'll go.
Won't change the world, won't stick in your head too long, but for the duration this certainly entertained.
Liked it.

4 out of 5

The Thing (2011) Dir: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Well, just back from The Thing '11 and, sad to report, it was fucking dreadful.
Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.
Where Carpenter's remake original (sic) was all about a gradual sense of creeping menace, paranoia and escalating levels of insanity, as bodies split apart and spider's legs sprouted from human heads before scuttling along the floor, this one is about as subtle as a friction burn.
See, we have the prelude (about ten minutes), then the 'getting the new bods to Antarctica' bit (about ten minutes), then the monster emerges, and everything goes fucking nuts. The volume cranks up to 12, people shout and scream a lot, a CGI monster wibbles about on screen a bit.
Then it ends.
Talking of the monster, gone are the super-cool prosthetics and stretchy rubber nastiness, to be replaced with pixel perfect graphics, that dreaded lack of gravity and the overriding sense that it's not really there.
Seriously, it looks shit.
The cast are as bland as potato flavour crisps and the whole experience was so crushingly dull I fell asleep several times, only to be awoken by a crashing thump of music as something 'scary' took place and, frankly, I'd preferred to have stayed asleep.
The only moment of pleasure came as the end credits rolled, and not for the obvious gag factor, but because it was at this point that Carpenter's majestic score kicked in, and the set-up for the opening sequences in the 80's version was played out.
Other than that, a total waste of space.
Bloody awful.

2 out of 5

Second in Command (2006) Dir: Simon Fellows

There are few things that quicken the pulse of a red-blooded, red meat munching, testosterone fuelled, pussy-pounding ultra male more than a new Jean Claude Van Damme movie appearing on the V+ hard drive.

The plot:
The movie starts with a gaggle of twats sitting at a bar, discussing the imminent arrival of 'the hardest man they've ever met.'
Who could it be?
Yes, it's Long Cord Man Slamme.
See, Long Cord is a Special Forces type, eager for some fighting, so he's headed into this country, a none-specific Eastern Communist kind of place with Islamic overtones - think Chechnya, but with less of a sense of humour.
As it happens, the very day after he appears, the local militia stage an uprising and, before you know it, Man Slamme, the country's ex-president, and a bunch of assorted perishables are holed up in the US Embassy, awaiting rescue by either the US forces, or the army still loyal to the president.
Will they be able to withstand the militia's onslaught?
And, crucially, will they be able to understand a single word Man Slamme is saying?

It's utter nonsense. Of course it is, but you know that going in.
The plot is derisory.
The acting atrocious.
The script laughably poor.
Even the lip-synching is about as precise as a really substandard edition of Swedish Erotica, but who gives a fuck?
It's got Long Cord Man Slamme in it, and that's all anybody cares about.
He may be knocking on in years, but he is still a glorious sight in full flow. Sure, he can't pirouette with the same frequency as before, but he's still got some chops: this motherfucker moves like a panther on occasion.
With marks deducted for the lack of the requisite buttock shot - age related again, I suspect, but I reckon he'd still look joyous with a soft filter and a decent application of boy-oils - this is certainly latter period Man Slamme, but that don't make it wrong.
A terrible film, really.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4 out of 5