We've all been there; Browsing in Blockbuster, the HMV sale or the bargain-DVD section in Sainsbury's, and we come across a plastic case which gives us an involuntary tingle of excitement. Someone's made a sequel to that movie we like! How did this slip under our radar? Why wasn't this on at our local cinema? Why are we only hearing about this now? Well, there's only one way to answer that question; it involves spending the requisite £3 and usually ends with the question 'Why did this get made, never mind how?'.
The rules for selection are as follows: 1) The film needs to be a poorly received sequel to a generally successful film (so no crap sequels to crap originals, and no crap remakes of originals), 2) Films from longer series are fine, but the choice needs to be part two of that line, 3) I'm not intending to watch any of the associated part-ones as part of this run (whether I'm familiar with them or not), so there'll be extra pressure on the crap sequel to work on its own terms. So join me as I delve into some of the crappest, most unwarranted follow-ups of all time (hopefully with a couple of underrated, misunderstood gems thrown in).
How bad can it be, right? I mean, the original was good…
The general feeling: RT Score: 9% / IMDB Score: 4.0
This film was released in the same year as The Matrix. Think about that for a second. This straight-to-video prequel to From Dusk Till Dawn takes all the aspects which made the original movie a cult 90s classic (Tarantino's burgeoning popularity, Rodriguez's grindhouse film-making, a scorching rock/blues soundtrack, George Clooney when he was still a breakout star, Salma Hayek before she started doing Adam Sandler films, Harvey Keitel before he started doing insurance adverts) and uses precisely none of them to attempt to repeat the success.
The film opens like the turgid low-budget thriller it is, with an utterly needless elevator-scene in which Bruce Campbell (yes, that Bruce Campbell) is shown desperately praying that his 90-second cameo appearance will look better on his bank statement than it will on his CV. I suspect neither end of the bargain ended up as hoped. What follows in an unrelated heist movie which tries its damnedest to undo the work of its predecessor, in the fashion of a sequel-screenplay written by someone who's only heard about the original movie. Whereas most filmmakers use a handheld camera to give a sense of immersion and immediacy to the proceedings; here it looks like the production couldn't afford a dolly or a tripod.
Texas Blood Money has the air of a film made as an end-of-year college project with an array of obscure camera-shots and first person viewpoints; except it's one where the director has managed to persuade pawn shop guy from Pulp Fiction to take a starring role, and then pumped a load of surf-rock music into the first act to try and ride the wave of kitsch goodwill. But it's not only QT's masterwork which is mined for homages, with The Lost Boys, Psycho and apparently Lock Stock also falling within writer/director Scott Spiegel's creative radar.
And just to be clear, any non-comedy vampire film which puns upon the phrase "a quick bite" should, by law, see its perpetrating writer(s), cast and crew locked in a pen and attacked by a pack of rabid honey badgers.
Struggling with its connections to its cinematic forebear, the vampires in Texas Blood Money are inherently terrified of crucifixes (or apparently any two lines crossing at an approximate 90° angle), despite the original film going to great lengths to explain that it's not the crosses themselves, but the faithful who wield them which are the threat. Elsewhere we get a nod to the death of Michael Parks' Earl McGraw from FDTD, in the shape of his son James Parks playing Deputy McGraw and making the whole thing seem a lot more tawdry than it should do (although they mention Earl's killing, yet Danny Trejo's moody barman, Razor Eddie appears in this film, making it a prequel by what, ...hours?).
But when all else fails (and it does), it's good to know that the vampire bats in the FDTD universe can transform back into their human forms and be wearing their clothes, including their 1990s carpet-jackets. It also serves to remind me that I really must get round to playing the FPS adaptation which I bought on a whim back in the day and has acted as a shelfwarmer ever since (although I'm still too wary to go near the TV series).
Best line? Raymond Cruz's Jesus, watching a soft-porn flick on a cable channel in a grimy motel looks almost directly to camera and says "…this movie's very low quality.", with little-to-nothing in the way of self-awareness or irony.
Feeling far longer than its 84 minutes ever should, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money is a wretched turd of a film; an insult to the piece that inspired it and to all that could have been. If the #CrapSequels season needed a standard-bearer, this film would be the one.
I have. It was one of the worst nights of my life, exacerbated by some cans out out-of-date Budweiser.
And I watched it again. For you.
I have, and it's on-par with Pulp Fiction as being one of my all-time favourite films, ever.
Well, Texas Blood Money makes absolutely no attempt to explain what the fuck's going on, so probably, yeah.
Just the one: Danny Trejo (albeit reduced to a first-act appearance), who would go to the opening of a fridge as long as you told him his face would be on the poster.
No it's not, but they did it anyway.
Never watch this.
I didn't hear one, but there are two (TWO) boot-shots.
How come when "C.W." has been vampirised, he has the traditional bite-marks on his neck, but when he was attacked he had his head stuck through the iron bars of a security-gate, meaning that was the only part of his body NOT instantly accessible to his assailant? More to the point, why the living fuck is that even on my mind after watching this film?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Equalizer Cert: 15 / 132 mins / Dir. Antoine Fuqua
There are a few scenes in Antoine Fuqua's big-screen adaptation of The Equalizer which suggest that at one point this was going to be a dark and visceral thriller about a vigilante who also happens to be a borderline psychopath, and who uses his connections, experience and knowledge of the authorities to cover his tracks whilst protecting the innocent from crime and corruption. Then the suits got hold of it, wrote a Liam Neeson film and threw some money at Denzel Washington to play the lead as Neeson already had three films in production.
Sometimes, and irrespective of how much The Bad Men™ might deserve to get killed, Washington's Robert McCall drives in the knife / screwdriver / hand-drill / shard-of-mirror with the sort of blank-faced enthusiasm we've come to expect from a David Fincher film. Not with glee, and never with any other viable course of action present, but there's more than just efficiency to McCall's repertoire. Everything else in the film though, is sadly more pedestrian. The plot of 'blah blah widowed retired intelligence officer, blah blah Russian oligarch, blah blah young prostitute who forms a platonic bond with hero' is so tired that it's almost insulting to audiences. Denzel Washington sleepwalks his way through the film, one step away from becoming the Morgan Freeman of action-thrillers. Other 'good' characters in the film are used solely when actually required for the mechanics of the plot, meaning Chloë Grace Moretz doesn't get the screentime she needs for Alina to be effective, and Melissa Leo's cameo appearance is the deus ex machina of plot exposition.
If I sound like I'm being overly harsh, it's because I'm actually disappointed with how little effort the film puts forth. The original TV series ran for 88 episodes, and while it may not have been awarded a place in the all-time-greats, there has to have been more depth to it than this (doesn't there?). At 132 minutes, the film is far longer than it needs to be and feels it, too. There's some fun to be had, and it's engaging enough while it's playing, but there's a painful scarcity of new ideas, here.
The Equalizer isn't a 'bad' film, it's just nowhere near good enough.
But if you like your pantomime villains to twiddle their moustaches in oak-panelled offices, between ostentatiously slapping around sex-workers in their employ, whilst a righteous, silent do-gooder looks on disapprovingly thinking about what size hammer will be right for the job of fixing their attitudes… you may well enjoy this.
It's not an unfair assessment.
Not as much as the director would have liked, I'm sure.
Not nearly.
This is a £2.99 DVD parked by the tills when you're buying some beers for a night in, if ever there was one.
I won't.
I won't avoid it, but there's nothing calling me back.
There isn't, but the hospital scene does feature the 'Dr Davis, telephone please…' sample, and that's the next best thing, right?.
Are we really (seriously) expected to believe that an ex-intelligence officer would murder four people in a room immediately after leaving his fingerprints all over the skull ornaments on the desk and the office door he was playing with, not to mention the murder weapons themselves, and just expect to get away with it? Really, though?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Woody Allen's new film serves as the perfect lesson as to how subjective (not to mention divisive) his work can be, particularly as I wasn't overly enamoured with last year's Blue Jasmine. Set in 1928, Magic In The Moonlight sees Colin Firth star as Stanley Crawford, a rationalist debunker of parlour-occultists with a tidy sideline in stage-magic (under the disguise and pseudonym of Wei Ling Soo); essentially fooling the public with one hand whilst handing them the truth on a plate with the other. His character's justification of this is that the audiences at his shows know they're seeing illusions, whereas the mediums and spiritualists of the world are desperate to keep their fee-paying customers believing that what they're seeing is the truth. Stanley's world is gradually eased into turmoil when he is called upon to investigate the apparent skills of Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), a gifted medium and prognisticator, and he draws more and more blanks as she appears to display genuine psychic abilities. Worse still, these polar-opposites get on far, far better than either of them would have predicted…
So. I loved the film, and it's thanks in no small part to Colin Firth. His portrayal of a belligerent perfectionist is marvellous and does full justice to Woody Allen's acid script, with his facetiousness coming over in a way which even Allen himself would struggle to deliver. Sadly, Allen's direction of the British cast is nowhere near as naturalistic as his screenplay. The performers make it work, but things often feel exaggerated way past their comfortable levels. On top of this, the first act of the film in particular seems oddly rushed, full of unsmoked cigarettes and drinks set down undrunk, although Firth's finest character-building also occurs during this act.
Once the scene is set in the South of France and the story can relax to a more leisurely pace, Firth and Stone have a great, hesitant chemistry, and sharply comic turns are provided by Eileen Atkins, Hamish Linklater and Simon McBurney. While the film settles comfortably into the routine of an Art Deco inspired comedy, the main plot thread about Psychic Sophie was the hook for me, unerplayed to perfection by Stone, who seems oddly at home in the 1920s. This in fact is the key to the movie's main strength; all of Allen's characters look, act and feel like they belong there, so while the story twists, weaves and contorts is way through a restrained romantic comedy, I could at least believe in it for its 98 minutes. Which is all I ask of a film.
The in-film music (ie, the songs heard/played by the characters) works very well, but the film features the occasional classical piece overlaid, which can feel a little overblown given the delicate nature of the story. Oh, and speaking of music, the party-scene uses the same recording of The Charleston which used to head up episodes of The Gentleman's Review, leaving me waiting for the machine-gun to come in. Alas, I was disappointed. Woody Allen not a TGR fan, apparently.
Best exchange: "May I have your autograph?" - "Autographs are for mental defectives."
Magic In The Moonlight is a charming, sincere and witty love story for our cynical times which succeeds by not being set in our clinical times. Fussy and meticulous, but thoroughly charming, like a very sarcastic episode of Hustle, written by Agatha Christie.
Not really. By having to explain the plot, the trailer's cut far too fast for the lingering sarcasm of the humour to really work. Film > Trailer.
I did.
For me yes, although your mileage will vary and I know the critics are mixed over this one.
If you're a Woody Allen fan, cinema. For everyone else, this should be fine for renting when it's released.
Not really.
I will.
There isn't. It's like they've gone out of fashion, or something.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Riot Club (aka Posh)
Cert: 15 / 107 mins / Dir. Lone Scherfig
If you live in the UK, Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club (adapted from Laura Wade's Posh) needs little in the way of introduction. Set against a highly fictionalised (one would hope) version of the now infamous Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, the film explores power, privilege and influence in 21st century Britain. It's also about four years too late*1. While the film puts its ideas and arguments across passionately, they aren't particularly new, and they're all espoused in either bold text or capital letters as broadly-painted partisan characters hammer their points home pretty relentlessly.
But it's that energy which keeps the whole film afloat, captured by some magnificent performances (and chiefly by the members of the club itself). Max Irons plants his flag as the most interesting character in the film, Miles, and Sam Reid, Douglas Booth, Freddie Fox and Ben Schnetzer support ably with varying levels of smugness, entitlement and self-doubt. But it's Sam Claflin who steals the show as the dastardly Alistair, in a magnificent display of unrighteous ire which will have people shouting at him in the street for some time to come. Jessica Brown Findlay and Holliday Grainger fare a little less well as Rachel and Lauren respectively, with their roles being reduced to pretty much one opinion and/or facial expression. Admittedly, the film is told from the boys' point of view, but that's no reason to have such one-dimensional female characters, surely? (Natalie Dormer's Charlie falls into a similar trap, but has the getout clause of at least being an incidental character)
The film opens with a short period-segment showing the establishment of the club itself in 1776, which feels ironically anachronistic in a present-day film, and everything between the opening credits and the final scene in shiny-London looks like it's been filmed in Hogwarts. As is frequently the case with camerawork in Oxford*2, many shots have been tightly positioned to give the impression of a leafy, sandstoned, oak-panelled world which doesn't actually exist any more. Although in fairness, exactly the same thing can be said of the screenplay. It also feels a little unfinished with only Claflin's Alistair getting any kind of narrative closure, which seems unbalanced as the film had been more Miles' story until that point. I can see how the ending would be ideal for the stage-version, but I'm not convinced enough adaptation was put into the screen iteration.
The Riot Club's stage-roots could go some way to explaining why it often feels like a pantomime, but watch for the performances rather than the politics and there's much to enjoy.
For the most part, yes.
Not quite as much as was intended, I think.
I don't think it quite does.
It's already fairly televisual in places, so watching it at home will be fine, but catch it on Orange Wednesdays for the big screen.
Nope.
Probably.
There isn't.
An elitist institution in one of the world's oldest universities wouldn't get their super-exclusive hip flasks screen-printed though, would they? They'd have them engraved. Was the budget really that tight? Jeez, I know a guy who can get you a good deal on laser engraving, if you're struggling?
*1 The stage play the film is based on, Posh debuted in 2010, riding a lot closer to the zeitgeist, to be fair.
*2 Although filming also took place in Hertfordshire and Hampshire, but the same principles apply.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
