Change Your Image
truehammer
Reviews
Bronson (2008)
Explosive Art
Bronson is a film based on real events about Charlie Bronson who changed his name to the star of Death Wish during his brief bare-knuckled boxing stint, the notorious British criminal who has spent all but four of his 36 years in prison so far in solitary confinement. Bronson was born Michael Peterson and grew up in Luton with lower-middle class parents who rather bizarrely didn't abuse him in any way. If ever a man seemed a natural born monster it's Peterson, there is no rhyme nor reason to his behaviour, he claims his ambition is to 'be a someone' but sadly he has no talent bar a rock hard body and a fearlessness in violent conflict.
After an armed robbery on a post office which gained him the incredible sum of £26.18 in 1974, Bronson aged 22 was given a seven year sentence. Since then Bronson's resume for violence has grown and grown, along with his sentence. It includes wounding with intent, wounding, criminal damage, grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment, blackmail and threatening to kill although tellingly he has never actually killed anyone, despite trying to strangle a paedophile to death in Broadmoor.
Bronson's brief stretch on the outside probably reveals more about him than any of his time inside. It becomes clear that he simply doesn't know how to function in the real world, he becomes confused and frightened when faced by the difficulties of adult life, the simplicity of prison appeals to him and soon he is back inside after another ridiculous robbery. Inside he is a living legend and a truly feared man, he doesn't have to do anything except drawing and fighting, two things he excels at. Bronson also seems to have masochistic tendencies, he enjoys being punished, often when things are looking up for him he becomes his most restless and unpredictable. His attacks come quickly and with no warning, his favourite prison pastime is to kidnap a screw or prisoner, terrify them with his bizarre behaviour and make nonsensical demands to the governor before stripping naked, greasing himself up and seeing how many guards he can take out before he is beaten himself and thrown back in solitary.
Whether or not Bronson is insane is debatable, he certainly isn't like other humans but does that make him crazy, who really knows? How any man can live that kind of existence is baffling. Tom Hardy is sensational as Bronson, his best performance so far and has a bright future ahead of him, he really captures Bronson's frightening personality, charm and sense of humour as Bronson although terrifying is a very funny man, perhaps his only redeeming feature. It is an explosive performance in every sense of the word and with a lesser actor the film might not have been half as good, occasionally Hardy delivers a monologue on stage to a hidden audience (ourselves as he sees us) deluding himself that we are cheering his psychotic rages as if he is a genuine hero.
I definitely rate this movie highly but be warned this may be a little to artsy for your tastes, if you're expecting a beat-em-up action movie you may walk away disappointed, this delves into the world of something a little different than the norm and can be quite disturbing, particularly during the mental hospital scenes and the ending. The film reminds me of two others in particular: A Clockwork Orange and Chopper. The director clearly takes inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's classic and the style is not dissimilar, both are highly disturbing and difficult to watch and have vicious protagonists you cannot take your eyes from. The similarity to Chopper is that Bronson and Chopper Read seem to suffer from a similar infliction of character and are both real people. These movies are also highly recommended.
Finally I have heard people say this this movie glamorises violence, absolute nonsense, if I ever saw a movie that made me want to stay far away from prison it is Bronson. He is a man to be pitied and feared, not admired and the movie shows just that.
8/10
Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Playstation Classic Revisited
I remember having the demo for Metal Gear Solid before it came out and playing it over and over again desperately waiting for it to be released so I could buy it and see what happened next, I was about ten or eleven at the time. Eventually I did get it and I wasn't disappointed. Although this wasn't the first game focused on stealth on the Playstation, I believe that honour goes to Tenchu, this certainly was the game that broke the mould with action gaming. Unlike previous shoot-em-ups that saw you kill 500 henchmen a level without breaking sweat this took the genre in an entirely new direction, it was much more true to life, if you were seen by a henchman in the game, it often meant you would soon be dead and forced to continue with your final rank ever decreasing. Enemy soldiers would hunt you down in a pack and a few well placed bullets would put you down for good, escaping and hiding rather than taking them head on was the usual course of action.
That might make you think it sounds a bit boring but on the contrary it only made sneaking up and ruthlessly dispatching your AI victims all the more satisfying. By far my favourite way of killing an enemy soldier was getting him in a chokehold and proceeding to snap his neck like a twig. Anyway.... if extreme violence isn't your thing (I saw far too many Arnold Swarzenegger movies as a kid) then you can just sneak your way through the game and apart from certain instances where you are forced into fighting you may avoid killing enemies for long stretches, it really depends on how sadistic you're feeling on that particular day.
The story of the game is that an elite black ops unit of the US Army called FOXHOUND has gone rogue and taken over a nuclear weapons facility on a remote island of the Alaskan coast named Shadow Moses. They have taken the DARPA chief Donald Anderson and President of Armstech Kenneth Baker hostage. The FOXHOUND rebels, led by Liquid Snake, want one thing: The remains of Big Boss, a legendary soldier who was killed some years ago or they will use a nuclear bomb. Seems a very drastic measure to obtain a corpse eh? So the former commander of FOXHOUND Roy Campbell practically forces Solid Snake, a legendary soldier and former member of FOXHOUND himself out of retirement to rescue the hostages and see if the terrorists have the ability to launch a nuclear strike. Snake isn't very happy and he's going to let Liquid know it. This is all what you learn at the start of the game, needless to say, you slowly begin to work out what is really going on and there are some real twists and turns that you wont see coming as the story reaches its climax.
The rebel members of FOXHOUND are the game's bosses and they are all very memorable and all would be possible final bosses for lesser games. Sniper Wolf the war orphan, brought up on a battlefield who became one of the worlds leading marksmen (or women), Psycho Mantis, the badly burned psychic (he's one of the most memorable video game enemies ever) all have interesting and even understandable back stories that explains their lust for violence. Some are pretty tricky to beat but once you learn the routine for beating them, usually it's a rinse and repeat technique that wins it for you, it's not too difficult. In fact that is one of my main gripes of the game, it's quite easy to beat apart from perhaps the final boss, but again once you know the technique needed to win, it isn't a problem.
Looking back there are far less enemy soldiers than I remember, you can literally cruise through the game avoiding confrontations which wasn't possible in the sequel MGS2 and prequel MGS3. The game wont take you long to beat, around ten hours first time perhaps but once you realise just how easy it is and skip out the huge cutscenes you'll probably half that. And that is a point that should be made, the cutscenes are often and long, which gives you the feeling you're in a movie but can become tiresome if your playing through it again, the twists and turns will keep you watching first time round though, you can skip them but I wouldn't recommend it, you wont know what the hell is going on otherwise. The game has its fair share of Hollywood clichés but it has a pretty poignant message too, that often there is no bad guy, just two different opinions, two different sides of the coin, just because you are on one side doesn't mean you are the hero. Life isn't as black and white as it is shown in the movies and that's touched on here.
There are two possible endings, and both provide you with a different unlockable, which gives you incentive to go through it again but three times will probably be more than enough for most. So overall it's a very entertaining game, the graphics are dated (obviously) but you can forgive that as it's so entertaining and the gameplay is very fun. If you haven't played it, do, the old classics can often keep you even more enthralled than new releases.
9/10
Peep Show (2003)
The Best Sitcom You've Never Seen
'Peep Show' is a British sitcom written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, starring comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who work alongside each other in different projects in a similar fashion to other British comedy duos such as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The show follows two men who share a flat together, Mark Corrigan (Mitchell) and Jeremy Osbourne (Webb).
The shows comedy is very dark and cringeworthy and contains themes regarding sex and drugs so it's definitely not for kids but its a very guilty pleasure for everybody else. What sets this apart from similar awkward situation comedies is that the show is constantly shot from the characters' point of view, whether it be the two main characters or supporting characters and we can hear Mark and Jez' thoughts. This is a truly brilliant innovation and lifts this high above most other sitcoms, especially as the two leads are highly insecure and conniving, a lot of the time they say things only for you to hear their conflicting true thoughts and its absolutely hilarious, they often talk themselves into bizarre and embarrassing situations.
Mark and Jez seem very different but they fit together well. Mark is a semi-successful, middle-class loan manager who owns the flat he lives in with Jeremy, while he seems sensible and cautious on the outside he is actually quite impulsive and occasionally talks himself into erratic behaviour he later regrets. He is highly neurotic and worries about anything, even socialising with other humans which doesn't come easily to him, he researches subjects he has no interest in just to fit in with the crowd and endures activities others enjoy. Strangely though you can identify with him and feel sorry for him, he is essentially a good person but often makes stupid mistakes in an effort to make himself look 'normal'.
Jez on the other hand is far more out-going and sexually promiscuous, unemployed throughout most of the series he claims to be 'in the music industry' although his band is going nowhere and he appears to be deluded into thinking fame and fortune is waiting to come to him without him making any effort. He is Mark's only real friend but is often spiteful and malicious and seems to be constantly holding Mark back, the reason for this however seems to be Jez' fear of losing Mark rather than him actually disliking him, when things are at their lowest he always sticks by Mark and the selfishness disappears showing he isn't a completely nasty character. Jez is also a recreational drug user and is often seen hungover or on a 'downer', there are indications to Jez having bisexual tendencies as well although he often represses those feelings.
The first series starts with Mark and Jez both single with Jez having just ended a longterm relationship with his girlfriend Big Suze to move in with his old pal Mark. While Mark pursues work colleague Sophie Chapman (Olivia Colman) somewhat obsessively, Jez begins seeing an attractive American with a hippy attitude, Nancy (Rachel Blanchard).
The supporting cast in Peep Show are as strong as the leads, in particular Jez' friend and bandmate Super Hans (Matt King), a walking chemistry set who never met a pill he didn't pop or a pipe he didn't toke, every sentence that leaves Super Hans' mouth is an instant classic quote, a lesser show would miss such a great character but this doesn't due to its high quality and leaves him on the sidelines to great effect. Paterson Joseph plays Mark's boss Alan Johnson, supremely confident he comes across as the black James Bond, cool, calm and collected at all times. Finally Neil Fitzmaurice plays Jeff Heaney, Mark's nemesis and love rival to Sophie, he is a bully who torments Mark with sarcastic comments to put him down in front of others. Other minor characters come and go but these three really add a lot to the show.
Over the course of the six series, nothing really gets any better for Mark and Jez and they are destined to spend the rest of their life together wallowing in mediocrity, stumbling from one excruciating situation to the next. Quite how this truly great masterpiece of a sitcom hasn't caught on is beyond me, perhaps due to its much darker theme than shows like The Office and the fact its been shifted to a late slot on Channel 4 it's been overlooked and while that's criminal it just means those of us who do know about it can enjoy it all the more, because it's our little secret. For me its the best sitcom of the last decade and that's saying something.
Extras (2005)
Merchant & Gervais still have it
'Extras' is a sitcom written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant who had previously collaborated on the award winning 'The Office'. The show carried on over two series and followed Andy Millman, a movie extra trying to make it into the big time, the only problem is hes forty, overweight and not blessed with Johnny Depp's looks.
In the first series it follows Andy desperately trying to get a line to move a notch up the showbiz ladder although hes currently on the bottom rung. The humour is dark and a satire on the real extras business which is very shallow and humiliating, the style is changed completely from The Office and Gervais plays a different character, David Brent was arrogant but pitiful, Andy Millman is a nicer person and more relatable but still pitiful in his own right.
The gimmick of each episode is they have one or more celebrity appearing or cameoing in a 'twisted' version of themselves, usually highly self-deprecating, either they are rude, arrogant, ignorant, liars, racist, not entirely sane or a combination of all of them. Without a shadow of a doubt the best cameo of the first series is Les Dennis, the way he laughs at his own horrible situation where he was humiliated by his wife who has arguably gone onto bigger things (totally undeserved, she is completely talentless) is admirable. Other highlights include Ben Stillers appearance where he plays a tyrannical director, Ross Kemp's confrontation with Vinnie Jones, Kate Winslet's phone sex scene and Patrick Stewart. The only disappointment really was Samuel L Jackson, they just didn't have any funny dialogue for him.
Andy is very sarcastic and thats where much of the shows humour comes from, he can be very witty and quick on his feet but occasionally inexplicably talks himself into a hole and continues digging way past a man as intelligent and glib as he sometimes appears to be should allow himself to get which is one of my problems with Extras, Andy Millman just isn't very consistent as a character. His best friend Maggie Jacobs is another problem, sometimes to great comic effect, Andy uses her to try and make himself look good like when he tries to impress a new neighbour he fancies and asks Maggie to pretend to be a fan and ask for his autograph, inevitably she messes it up and makes Andy look stupid with cringeworthy results. The problem isn't Maggie's characters fault as she is written stupid but Andy continually puts Maggie in a situation where she is bound to make him look bad and he never seems to learn which again is inconsistent with his character. It gets to the stage where when he asks Maggie to do something to make him look good you're literally waiting for her to mess up and after a while it isn't funny just irritating. Also sometimes Maggie can be deliberately malicious towards Andy, she enjoys joining in when Andy is being humiliated and even laughs at him, she never seems to stick up for him which I found disappointing.
Extras two best characters in my eyes are the recurring agent Darren Lamb and Shaun Williamson or 'Barry off Eastenders' as he is usually called, who along with Andy is a client of Darren's, the only other client of Darren's it seems for he is surely the worst agent in the business. His CV for Andy sounds more like a charity appeal than a list of achievements and he even questions potential employers judgement for trying to hirer Andy. His part-time weekend job at the Carphone Warehouse just about sums him up. His sidekick Barry, who seems in even worse dire straits than Andy is desperate for work and quotes Shakespeare (horribly) on queue. These two are genuinely hilarious and deserve credit for some of the funniest moments in the show. Merchant probably doesn't get as much credit as Gervais does but those that listened to 'The Ricky Gervais Show' on xfm can attest that Merchant can actually be funnier than Gervais, his quick one liners are brilliant. Karl Pilkington deserves a mention as well, many of his quotes are ripped straight from The Ricky Gervais Show into Extras.
The second series follows Andy's rise to relative fame, except not for the great art he would have hoped and leads to more embarrassing situations featuring more celebrity guests who vary in their ability to send themselves up to comic effect. Overall this was a very funny show with some classic comedy moments but I'm glad it ended when it did, on a high in the hour-long special after the second series, which was in my opinion the funniest and certainly the most moving of the lot which was a good way to bow out. Probably not quite as funny and groundbreaking as The Office this is a very good second crack which can occasionally be disappointing after a major debut success.
8/10
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
One of the greatest black comedies ever made
Stanley Kubrick was a man before his time, his movies resonate years after he made them, particularly regarding A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey but although 'Dr. Strangelove' is also a film which has aged well and could apply to the ongoing global conflicts of today it must have been a much more terrifying prospect so shortly after the Cold War when the US and Russia were flexing their atomic muscle and appeared to be on the brink of all out nuclear warfare. Dr. Strangelove is a parody of that situation and a political and military satire.
The movie started out as a novel, 'Red Alert' by Peter George which Kubrick intended to adapt into a serious feature film closely following the book which was a drama/thriller rather than a comedy, however whilst writing the screenplay Kubrick found much of a story about two nations threatening to wipe each other off the planet so ludicrous the scenes were almost unintentionally funny. So he decided to tweak it into a black comedy which intentionally went out of its way to highlight how ridiculous the situation was.
In the film's plot an army general named Ripper (played brilliantly deadpan by Sterling Hayden) has lost his marbles and gone rogue, making use of the ill-advised 'Plan R' which has been created for the possibility that Washington is bombed and the country's leaders are killed allowing a lower ranked military commander to order a nuclear counter-strike. However Ripper has 'exceeded his authority' and gone ahead regardless.
The film mostly takes place in just three sets: Ripper's office where he's passively holding a British RAF exchange officer Lionel Mandrake hostage, a B-52 plane which has been sent on orders from Ripper to drop the bomb in Russia and 'The War Room' in The Pentagon, where the President Merkin Muffley is in conference with the country's leaders, including General Buck Turgidson (George C Scott), who's ideas include just starting an all-out offensive on Russia that will destroy 90% of their nuclear capability and will only result in 10-20 million killed, tops. Muffley is informed by Soviet Premier Dmitri that if the planes drop an atomic bomb on Russia it will set off a 'doomsday device' which will destroy every man, woman and pigeon on the face of the earth. The rest of the movie follows the inept leaders trying to figure out ways to avoid the nuclear Armageddon that awaits.
Peter Sellars plays three roles, the British RAF officer Mandrake, President Muffley and the films most eccentric character (and he has plenty of competition) Dr. Strangelove, from whom the title gets its name. All three are completely different and each played to perfection by Sellars. Mandrake is upper-class and terribly polite, his obvious discomfort with the insane Ripper is hilarious as Ripper tries to explain his theory of how the 'Commies' are trying to impurify his 'precious bodily fluids' by sabotaging the drinking water. Some of the punchlines are thrown out so deadpan by Ripper that if you're not concentrating properly on what he's saying you might miss the joke, which might be a problem for those without much of an attention span.
Muffley is a mostly seriously character although his extended monologue with the drunk Russian Premier (not heard) is one of the funniest bits of the film as they try to each convince each other how sorry they are. Turgidson plays off him well as the big kid who is finally getting to play war for real, apparently Scott was upset Kubrick was pushing him to overact but it certainly works in the context of the film.
Finally Dr. Strangelove himself, who provides some of the most obvious laughs and although in only two scenes is probably the most memorable character in the film. He is a former Nazi scientist who specialises in armed warfare, confined to a wheelchair he seems to have a bizarre case of 'alien hand syndrome' which causes him to occasionally give a Nazi salute during a moment of excitement, only for him to wrestle it under control with his other hand. He also calls the president 'Mein Fuhrer' mistakenly.
This is a brilliant satire and although not obviously funny it makes you laugh in a slightly disturbing way, like this is how we're all gonna die one day so lets have a good laugh about it while we're still here. Sellars should have won an Oscar here for me, I'm not certain who won it that year but they couldn't have done a better job than he did, he was given a free-reign by Kubrick and much of his dialogue is ad-libbed and its noticeable in some of the funnier moments where he appears to just come up with something hilarious on the spot, if you are extra observant you will notice fellow cast members struggling to hold in their laughter. George C Scott also shows his incredible talent which was later fully exploited in 'Patton'. As a self-confessed Kubrick fan, this isn't quite my favourite of his but its up there and one of the best black comedies you'll ever see.
10/10
The Cable Guy (1996)
Carrey Carries Cable Guy
I will start this off by saying I'm not Jim Carrey's biggest fan, I liked the Ace Ventura films, Liar Liar and The Mask as a kid but as I've got older I realised they were pretty poor films really. I thought Dumb and Dumber was funny but I'm not a huge fan of that type of comedy, Bruce Almighty was rather average and the less said about Batman & Robin the better.
However I loved Cable Guy which is why I find it so odd others don't. Carrey is superb and carries the film almost single-handedly producing some genuinely classic comic scenes including the 'Dont You Want Somebody to Love' karaoke scene, the beating of Owen Wilson in the toilets by Carrey dressed as some kind of Freddie Mercury lookalike and everyone's favourite, the truly hilarious 'Porno Password' scene. The best for me though is the dream scene where he is trying to bang down Broderick's front door which is as disturbing as it is hysterical. Matthew Broderick wasn't as bad as some critics made out but its Carrey's film all the way, hes only been better in The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and perhaps Man on the Moon.
This is also my favourite Ben Stiller directed film to date, he took a gamble with what could have been a flop (it wasn't it actually made a substantial profit despite critics suggesting otherwise) but his bravery paid off, I'd like to see him do another dark comedy but he seems to have settled into making your average run-off-the mill type comedies in the Farrelly brothers mold which I think he should leave with them as they seem to have nailed the genre down, although this isn't necessarily a bad thing I did enjoy Zoolander and I've heard Tropic Thunder is good.
Still I hope Stiller has another shot at this type of film, I just hope the unfairly poor reviews haven't put him off. Also I hope Carrey starts taking some more daring roles, he has so much talent that he could be winning all types of awards including an Oscar but he is quickly being typecast as little more than a slapstick comic, which sadly he could end up being remembered as.