Ianmcane Reviews

Self/less (2015)

A Superior Sci-Fi Action Thriller

[9/10 · 27 September 2021]

I'm quite surprised at the fairly average rating this has, I really don't understand what there is to dislike about this film. Firstly, they played it serious, which was a massive and much-welcomed surprise, as I went into this with pretty low expectations, anticipating hammy, over-the-top 'Face/Off' sort of fare. Well, this certainly subverted my expectations. Sure, the core concept was never really explained 'scientifically' but does it really need to be? This is science fiction!!

What I loved about this film was that all the reactions, emotions and interactions seemed plausible and believable. Characters acted like real people and the two leads did a fabulous job, in particular the increasingly-impressive Ryan Reynolds who seems to be maturing into a fine actor.

Another thing that impressed me was the terrific action, which was skilfully delivered with a keen attention to detail. It's the little things that catch my attention sometimes, such as the gun falling from Ryan Reynolds' character's hand during a shootout, rendering him almost defenceless. Also in the same scene where he rammed a car and their bumpers got jammed together, therefore creating a new and unexpected problem. It really elevates a film when you can clearly see that the filmmakers have thought through these details. Massive credit to the director whom I wasn't familiar with before this.

Anyway I don't want to spoil this too much, I highly recommend it and although it did drag a tiny bit towards the final act it rewards the viewer with a satisfying emotional pay-off which was genuinely affecting.

9/10 for me and a deserving entry into the archive of intelligent, thoughtful Sci-Fi.

They Live (1988)

Decent Concept, Terrible Execution

[3/10 · 10 July 2021]

A lot of the gushing reviews of this film seem to concentrate almost entirely on 'its message and its relevance'. Ok, the core concept - a homeless man finds a pair of sunglasses which allow him to see an alien species living amongst us and sending out subliminal messages to control us - is reasonably intriguing, if not exactly spectacularly original. I can imagine how this may of been better received in the Reagan-era 1980s however the idea of an elite class using the media to condition and control the masses hardly makes for groundbreaking stuff reviewing this here in 2021.

Aside from that, pretty much everything else about this B-movie sci-fi actioner is dismal. The characters are flat, the acting is wooden, the direction is all over the place and the dialogue is bizarre and only funny in an "Oh my God this is so bad" sort of way. If this was genuinely supposed to be an attempt at satire then John Carpenter fell flat on his face. Good satire is delivered with a knowing wink which both the filmmakers and the audience are aware of and can share the joke. I was just confused most of the time watching this film. My partner actually said out loud "What the Hell is going on?!!" during the fight scene between Rod Piper and Keith David. Why did it last so long? Why was it so excessively violent? Why did both men walk away practically unscathed when in reality they'd both be in hospital afterwards? Ok I know it's an 80s action scene but come on, even the various Arnie vehicles of the 1980s were more believable than this and that's saying something!

I give this 3 out of 10, purely because I'm sure worse films exist, I rate Keith David as an actor and he was the only talent in this, and as I said the core concept is reasonably interesting. I seriously wouldn't waste your time on this though unless you have a fetish for really bad cult films.

6 Days (I) (2017)

Solid Action-Thriller That Deserves More Recognition

[8/10 · 12 May 2021]

There's sometimes a tendency to over-intellectualise films but ultimately it comes down to enjoyability - does it entertain or not? I found "6 Days" to be compelling, interesting and tense, and although I was vaguely familiar with the story and knew the outcome, I was still gripped watching it unfold.

The cast was professional and put in good performances, appropriately depicting the sort of characters you'd expect to be involved in this type of high-stakes situation. Some people have complained about Abbie Cornish and her weird attempt and a 1980s news reporter accent - it was a little odd but didn't bother me that much. I really enjoyed the scenes with the SAS - they are never over-mystified or dramatised to the Hollywood-actioner level - just a stoic and detailed depiction of a group of highly trained and motivated soldiers. The scene for example where the team leader is studying and memorising the photos of everyone inside the building and the police officer comments that he'll hurt his eyes if he stares at it any longer. The SAS leader replies: "I don't want to shoot the wrong person". It's an obvious sentiment however it's a detail that you don't usually think about. In general the training and preparation of the SAS was impressive and fun to watch. Seeing them build full-scale mock-ups of the embassy and practicing over and over again until they got their times and tactics right makes the viewer appreciate them as real people who train diligently, rather than depicting them as some sort of superheroes who just waltz in and save the day.

The character development was a little thin on the ground however there were a lot of angles to cover and I think the director did an admirable job to include the crucial events and characters and build the tension in a satisfying manner, all while keeping the runtime to just over 90 minutes. I'm sick of all these 3 hour vanity projects that seem to be in fashion lately.

The Prestige (2006)

Thoroughly flaccid

[3/10 · 5 October 2020]

What is it with the hero-worshipping of Christopher Nolan? Directors are often criticised for style-over-substance and in a weird way Nolan's films suffer the opposite - he's so committed to delivering his convoluted plots, twists and big reveals that he forgets about all the other elements that make a film work. 'The Prestige' is an exceptionally boring, long film populated by dull, unlikeable characters. I don't mind Christian Bale but he was really poor in this, not at all helped by the textbook cockney accent which, whilst good for an (unintentional) laugh at times, really grated on me and felt so disconnected to the character he was portraying. It was as if someone had dubbed a Bob Hoskins voiceover on his parts. Hugh Jackman should stick to action/comic-book films, he's not great at drama and has about three facial expressions. Scarlet Johansson is the same. Her attempt at an English accent rivalled Christian Bale's character for cringe factor. She kept oscillating between Received Pronunciation and Cockney, and occasionally slipped back into American English. The dialect coach must of been tearing their hair out. There was just so much bad acting and unrealistic dialogue in this film that I found it difficult to care about the characters or what was going on. In the scene where Hugh Jackman got shot and then conveniently delivered a load of exposition just before dying was straight out of the Cartoon Villain Death Scene Handbook™. I swear I was covering my mouth to contain the laughter. Just ridiculous. Anyway like most of Christopher Nolan's films the ending draws you back in and did elicit a bit of intrigue but I was so far gone by that point I just didn't care enough. A thoroughly flaccid affair.

3 out of 10.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Absolute bore-fest

[3/10 · 8 January 2020]

Ugh. Unless you're particularly interested in this era of history (and even then) this film is painfully boring. The acting was woeful, the characters shallow, and the golden lighting blinding my eyes in every goddamn scene would have you believe that the entire decade of the 1940s occurred during the sunrise/sunset hours.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

Absolute garbage

[3/10 · 15 September 2019]

The Tarantino fanboys must be smoking acid-dipped doobies to give this bore-fest so many 10/10 reviews. Pointless, meandering, and incredibly self-indulgent. I really couldn't care less about how 'meta' this is; it's a film about films made for students of film (and QT himself) however the reality is that absolutely nothing of interest happens for at least 1.5hrs and i literally nearly fell asleep at one point. Tarantino seemingly believes his own hype these days and judging by the comments on here he can do no wrong. Well he just did by making one of the most soporific and disjointed pieces of crap I've ever been unfortunate enough to suffer. Have a word with yourself, Quentin.

Avatar (2009)

Absolutely zero substance

[4/10 · 21 December 2009]

I simply cannot believe how over-zealous the users of this site are. Actually i can. It was exactly the same for There Will be Blood and every other hyped film there has been recently. Some of the adjectives used to describe Avatar beggar belief: 'The Best Movie of All Time' 'A Masterpiece' 'Mesmorising, Spellbinding, Extraordinary!'. I really do wish i could agree. I was looking forward to this as much as most and i'm a huge fan of Cameron's previous work.

Avatar, however, is a massive disappointment, and i'm convinced once the hype surrounding the technology and CGI dies down people will realise that. It really is a reflection of the times that people can be so suckered in by fancy visuals and things blowing up. Please, for a moment, look at the merits of this film, CGI aside, and you'll see that they are pretty much on par with a hundred previous sci-fi b-movies/TV-series. The story is completely derivative, the action unrealistic, the dialogue.....oh God, don't get me started. James Cameron has obviously been spending far too much time with George Lucas. The dialogue is atrocious and painfully clichéd. There is no convincing character development at all. I can barely remember any of their names let alone have any sort of affinity with them. Sam Worthington is a waste of space. I don't know what this Hollywood fixation is with him, but he was terrible in Terminator Salvation and he is terrible in this. The cartoon, morally-vacant human 'baddies' are an insult to intelligence and unbelievable at every turn. The entire plot is 100% predictable. Of course we knew the humans weren't go to win. Of course not. Not with their space-travelling, cryo-genetic-using, high-tech weaponary-toting mentality. They didn't understand the forest, man. Please. This is almost as laughable as Return of the Jedi. And the lame efforts to instill some sort of sentimentality and moral message through the use of poorly-written pseudo-spiritual crap just made me cringe. I wasn't even that impressed with the character design. Cameron has basically taken Native American Indians and Antipodean Aborigines and turned them blue. They have similar attire, ride 'horses', shoot arrows etc etc. It was just all too familiar.

Avatar may well be a technological breakthrough, and i look forward to others who take the technology on and remember to actually pair it with an original and compelling story, but for now though, this film is a bulging case of style over substance if ever there has been one.

I miss Aliens. Now that was a convincing movie.

4/10

Terminator Salvation (2009)

Oh deary me.

[6/10 · 12 June 2009]

What a silly, silly movie. I wouldn't say i'm disappointed as after reading many reviews prior to seeing the film, i had a good idea of what to expect. But i have to say that at no point were these expectations exceeded. Terminator Salvation is a typical modern-day Hollywood blockbuster; lots of slick action sequences and good-looking young actors with little or no plot to back it up. I find it bemusing that so much money can be spent producing a major film and yet so little be invested in a good screenplay writer! What the hell. The amount of times i shook my head and despaired at how stupid this plot is beggars belief. When i first heard a 4th installment of the Terminator franchise was being worked on - and having seen a few sequence shots - i applauded the spin on the chase-premise and eagerly anticipated a serious futuristic war film. Sadly, T4 is way too dumb, unrealistic and lacking in atmosphere to ever fulfill this. Please tell me someone else wondered how John Connor manages to get back to his feet after being slugged in the chest by a T-800, thrown distance into metal bulkheads etc etc without breaking almost all the bones in his body??? Jesus Christ. How can anyone write this into a script and not think people will question it??? And how come Marcus, albeit in pretty impressive fashion, kicks some human butt in an early scene (but still conventionally) and then later (after we've discovered he's in fact a cyborg) is seen throwing T-800's around??? Why didn't he just use his prosthetic arms to crush the humans earlier??? Why was he struggling with them and how come his punches didn't rip the jaws off of the rednecks he was chinning??? STUPID!! Nobody has even thought about it! OK we'll just forget that bit 'cause he looked human then, but now we know he's a machine he can throw other machines around which probably weigh a metric tonne or something. Idiots. And one more major complaint: i was just about buying all the action stuff in the first half hour until the 100ft super-terminator shows up and starts picking people up and firing laser bolts. Yeah, OK, so we're supposed to believe that in just 9 years time (genius of Skynet or not) we can conceive a machine of that engineering complexity??? McG obviously watched Transformers a few too many times. Ridiculous.

Oh OK at times it's a fun ride but that's it, nothing more. It's just impossible not to compare the 3rd and 4th films to the 1st & 2nd and wonder if Hollywood is actually capable of producing a blockbuster with an intelligent f**king script. We're not impressed by shiny things blowing up anymore. Any film with some money behind it can do that. Think up something realistic and innovative before you continue to ruin classic stories again.

6 out of 10 just for some decent action sequences and occasionally reasonable acting, and a bit of nostalgia thrown in.

Cloverfield (2008)

Dozer-field

[2/10 · 13 October 2008]

Oh God, what a joke! This was a joke, right?

No, sadly it wasn't. If it was, and the film-makers had fully-embraced it as a 'monster- spoof' then maybe the complete lack of any discernible, feasible and intelligent plot could be forgiven and we could just get on with laughing at it. They could of perhaps even have woven in some funny jokes and stuff. But no, no, this is for real. This is a real 'woooooh, scary' monster thriller, devastatingly and terrifyingly immersing you in the action through the ingenious (and completely original) decision to film it entirely on handy-cam.

The plot begins at a............oh who cares anyway. Seriously, this excuse for a plot is beyond stupid and i can't even be bothered to go over all the gaping holes and logic failures that litter this rubbish. Just read any of the 1-star reviews on this site; they pretty much sum it up, if you're really interested.

So here's my two stars. One for the feeble attempt to assemble some sort of plot to carry this tripe, together with the cast and their half-hearted acting (all forming one single, shiny star) and the second for the technically well-executed CGI effects.

Right, i'm off to find that nuclear-resistant, reinforced-titanium poly-alloy, fission-powered, night-vision-enabled super-handy-cam, and give the makers of this film a bloody good thrashing with it until they realise that we don't want to know what the conclusion was and that making 'Cloverfield 2: They Have Found Us Again' would be a really, really monstrous idea.

Mr. Brooks (2007)

Captivating

[8/10 · 23 February 2008]

I had no expectations of this movie, but my gosh - what a gem! Barry Evans' psychological thriller sees Kevin Costner going against type a full 180 degrees playing Earl Brooks - surely one of cinema's greatest anti-heroes. It's a slightly alarming realisation, but i have to concede that by the last third of this film i was rooting for the bad guy - endeared to Costner's character and clinging onto the hope that he could recover from his 'addiction' and live a normal life. Of course, Brooks is dangerous and deeply troubled - his portrayal as a brilliant, compulsive and methodical psychopath is expertly performed by Costner - however there is also something unerringly normal about his character too. He is successful, revered by his peers, and has a loving family which brings both familiar joys and domestic troubles. In fact, i can't recall a serial killer movie based around SUCH an ordinary central figure. His explosions of violence are certainly a compulsion, but they are premeditated, meticulously planned, calm and controlled. It's almost as if he's just going about his business in the most professional and efficient way possible; a contract killer who's only bounty is a duty to fulfill his morbid indulgence.

All along you know it's wrong though. That's the genius of this movie. That's the sobering cold truth it douses you down with: nobody wants to accept that a serial killer can be a normal human being. Nobody wants to associate with him. Is the crack addict who robs an old lady and leaves her for dead any better? What is the nature of addiction? Whatever the answers, Mr. Brooks is hugely thought-provoking and for that reason alone it's commendable. Throw in superb acting from Costner, his nemesis Detective Atwood (played by Demi Moore) and the rest of the supporting cast, some well-executed action sequences, and an oh-so-satisfying sting in the tail, and you have all the makings of a top thriller.

Mr. Brooks gets in your head, permeates your logic bubble and twists your preconceptions. Surely the finest take on the serial killer genre for a long time.

8/10

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Strange, bewildering and over-hyped

[6/10 · 16 February 2008]

People, please! The 18th greatest film of all-time? are you serious??! It seems to me that almost everyone has been sucked into the hype surrounding Daniel Day-Lewis' 'performance of the decade' which is, admittedly, at times captivating and menacing, but also at other times horribly over-acted (see the cringe-worthy baptism scene and pointless ending). If this is a film about one man's descent into mental illness and moral collapse, then director Paul Thomas Anderson has made a terrible hash of it. If not, then could someone please explain what the plot of this film is? It seems to me to be a disjointed assembly of loosely-connected events that do nothing to progress the story-telling process or enhance the viewer's association with the characters. And what about the characters? We have Day-Lewis' charming, ruthless and unstable Daniel Plainview, and......that's about it. The only other notable member of the 'supporting cast' was the corrupt preacher Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano. However other than serving as a frequent annoyance to Plainview - who inevitably dispatches of him - i failed to decipher the relevance of their relationship. Plainview's son, H.W. became a complete nonentity after his accident and no effort was made to develop or explain father and son's deteriorating relationship. In fact, no real effort was made to explain Plainview's personal deterioration either, leaving me with a total sense of disaffection with everyone and anyone in the film.

There Will Be Blood is slow-paced, no doubt about that - the opening scenes are dialogue-less for about 30 minutes and i regularly found myself urging the next scene, desperately vying for the picture to burst into life. It never did, and ends with a gratuitous and meaningless clash between Plainview and Eli Sunday which left everyone i was with unsatisfied and confused - where had this masterpiece gone? did i just miss the film of the decade? No, because it never was and never will be.

I'll concede, the film contains some meticulous set-detail, and the cinematography is beautifully precise. Even the score, which i believe some people have criticised, i found to be interesting and suspenseful. It's just that the suspense is never fulfilled, interest never ignited.

In the end, There Will Be Blood and the hype surrounding it, comes crashing down like Plainview's first oil derrick.

6/10

Casualties of War (1989)

Important moral dilemma

[6/10 · 13 February 2008]

Brian De Palma's Casualties of War is one-part Vietnam commentary, one-part moral dilemma. The film manages to illustrate the horrors of war with some visceral visual effects, and the same time also pose the crucial question; how would you react in the situation in which Eriksson finds himself? The setting largely plays second fiddle to the moral question posed - this is not a film about the politics of the Vietnam War - and it is around this that much of the film is centred. The isolated environment of a long-distance mission in a small squad raises, and accentuates, the issues of peer pressure and moral-abandonment perfectly. This is undoubtedly the film's strongest point and greatest message.

Surprisingly, i found some of the performances and dialogue a little disappointing. The character of Sgt. Tony Meserve, played by Sean Penn, was particularly bemusing. Clearly intending to portray a kind of brilliant but sociopathic soldier, he came across more handicapped half-wit and it truly stretched my limits of believability to convince me that this man was put in charge of an infantry unit. A very disjointed performance by Penn indeed. Michael J Fox's character Eriksson, suffered a little from the sometimes overly-sentimental script which at times seemed thoroughly incongruous with the sobering environment and moody score. It's harsh to typecast Fox, but his virtues-of-steel persona didn't come off too well for me and i couldn't help but see his usual, jovial self lurking just beneath the facade.

A heavy, but watchable war movie, handled with skill by De Palma but with a flawed screenplay and some lacklustre performances.

6/10.

K-PAX (2001)

Magical, emotive, thought-provoking...

[9/10 · 4 December 2006]

I instantly connected with this film and enjoyed it massively on every level. I was interested to see what the general opinion was and after reading the first few comments there's not really much more to say that hasn't been said already. I'm a huge Spacey fan and he didn't disappoint here with another excellent performance which demonstrated great emotional range. This film had me questioning truly fundamental, societal and existential questions for a good while after it had finished and how often can you really say that about a film? If you enjoy fascinating and thought-provoking film-making then i can't recommend this highly enough.

Brilliant.

Borat (2006)

Worst 'film' i've seen for a long time.

[3/10 · 1 December 2006]

I am bewildered by the high score this film has received. I can only assume that half the voters are pre-pubescents for whom the sight of a guy with a 'funny' eastern European accent making endless vulgar comments is amusing. Worryingly though, the film is an 18 so i can only assume that half the voters have the mentality of a pre-pubescent. This film is not funny. There is nothing clever, or witty or inventive about the 'humour' in this extended TV sketch. Yes, admittedly i have managed a giggle or two when watching the TV incarnation of Borat. After 5 minutes of this feature-length offering however, i quickly realised how thin this joke was going to spread over an hour and a half. How long are you going to think 'I like sex. Is nice' is funny??? About twice is the answer. The plot is no more than a token gesture created as a vehicle for the various pasted-together scenes. The naked man-wrestling scene was just ridiculous. It was crude for the sake of being crude and any half-wit could've come up with the concept. Why would i want to pay to watch that??? I left the cinema feeling that the only thing i had taken from this film was the fact that it highlighted how religiously- brainwashed many Americans are and how despicable some of the people in the film were. Quite sad really considering this was supposed to be a comedy.

I feel stupid for ever being talked into going to see this rubbish.