There's some serious coincidence stuff going on here as I literally just googled Craig Fairbrass before looking at this page (real literally, if I go back in my browser it's the page before). Just looking to see if this looks like him as much as I think it does. I used the body and headsculpt for my 1/6 WW2 British Para.
A crikey coincidence indeed, but I must confess that Fairbrass doesn't leap out at me when I look at Pte Norman.
Wingwomen. A French action flick in which the protagonists are... female! The trailer looked fun, and despite my years of practice, I got bitten again. It's not good. It's supposed to be about a small, elite team of special-oppers doing that 'one more job' before the retirement that their employers don't want them to have. Yes, that plot again. It looks good, and the cast are (if I'm allowed to say it these days) attractive, and star/director Melanie Laurent tries hard to keep it cool and funny. But it's all over the place and just... odd, with some things just not making sense, it not being funny, the action being indifferent at best, the acting variable, and the 'one last job' forgotten about for much of the running time. They also talk a lot - about being dumped, and giving it all up to have babies. So it appears to be an action film by, featuring, and for women, I couldn't tell. One sequence, which qualifies for worst film scene of the year, involves a bunch of baddies being shot in the street, but not before two of the team dress up and dance, embarrassingly and badly, in front of them, for no logical reason. And the ending completely fizzles out. It's woeful. An action film by people who didn't have a clue what they were doing. On Netflix.
Unleashed (but my DVD of it is called Danny the Dog). A distinctly odd action flick. First of all, one scene sees Morgan Freeman and Jet Li popping into the local Spar to play with melons; I mean, where else are you going to see that? Bob Hoskins plays baddy Uncle Bart. Lots of decent fights (though the wire work is a little obvious in a few of them). The lovely Kerry Condon. And all set and filmed in Glasgow, but you won't hear a Scottish accent anywhere in it - not even in the local Spar. Entertaining, but odd. Netflix.
Robocop (1987). What's there to say about this one. Been watching the superb RoboDoc documentary and playing the new RoboCop Rogue City game which put me in a mood to rewatch this. Just as good today as it was when it first came out. Quite a thought provoking film wrapped up in ultra violence. This would never get made today.
The Killer (Netflix). I had level expectations – it’s the old ‘assassin in trouble after botched job’ chestnut. But it’s also one of the best in the genre. Fassbender’s icy, entirely amoral, Smiths-fan assassin makes his robot in the Alien franchise look positively cuddly. Be aware though that it isn’t standard Hollywood fare. i.e. it isn’t a predictable, cheesy bang-bang fest. It’s slow, with much voiceover work, making it more like a ‘how to be an assassin’ procedural at times. There is however a blisteringly good one-on-one fight along the way. And Tilda Swinton excels, but then again she usually does.
The Creator. A great-looking sci-fi actionfest, most of which doesn’t match up to the visuals. It’s in the future of course, and a massive, Avengers-style orbital weapon platform drifts, mostly over Asia, blitzing settlements of AI things – because America has declared all AI bad, and is at war with it. But when they hear rumours about an AI superweapon that can destroy their floaty big gun, they send after it their very best ever fighting force – yup, a squad of marines! The marines resemble Cameron’s squad of space morons from Aliens, except their knuckles drag slightly above the ground, not along it. And that’s not the first classic that the makers threw into the blender – Blade Runner, The Terminator and even Apocalypse Now are fairly evident, for three.
The story doesn’t always make sense. The whole of the US of A is represented by one general, one captain, and some underlings. There’s nothing about the state of world relations that would have to exist in order for the events of this film to happen; it just doesn’t ring true. Technology that invents the mind-bogglingly vast, gravity-defying weapons ship also employs walking bombs that are oil drums on stilts, and run slowly, don’t make much of a bang and are subsequently about 10% as effective as a normal tank. They don’t make any sense at all – but they do look good. The tanks, by the way, are literally the size of villages, and are allowed to trundle over Asia without retaliation from any human forces that live there.
On the plus side, it looks great, often employing a grainy lo-fi look, and the effects are up to scratch. Performances are adequate at best, some of the script will make you cringe, but on the whole, if you have a yearning for some big sci-fi spectacle with lots of shit blowing up, fill yer boots!
Good news ! This has been on my watchlist for a while.
Pity it's an actioner though, as I was hoping for more cerebral (like Contact perhaps).
Blade II. Didn't remember a lot about this (other than half of Bros being the big bad) as I think I've only seen it once or twice before, unlike Blade which I must have watched 7 or 8 times. Pretty decent, and I was surprised to see it was Norman Reedus playing Blade's assistant, Ron Perlman is along for the ride, as is Donny Yen and Cat from Red Dwarf. It's very dark, and as this is the first time I've seen it on any screen capable of showing proper black contrast, I wonder if that contributed to my enjoyment.
Yeah, Blade II is great fun (less said about part 3 the better).
