Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Kermit The Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Animal
STATLER: “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were reciting some sort of important plot point.”
WALDORF: “I hope so. Otherwise I would’ve bored half the audience half to death.”
STATLER: “You mean half the audience is still alive?”
I’ve been a huge fan of the Muppets ever since I was really young. As I grew and managed to get hold of more and more Muppets stuff I managed to grit my teeth and ignore the worst parts of Muppet history Muppets In Space, the early laugh-free Saturday Night Live stuff) and focus on the classics – The Muppets Christmas Carol, The Muppets Take Manhattan and, of course, The Muppet Show itself.
Walter is the newest Muppet. And he's pretty awesome.
The Muppets have been out of the public eye for so long however that when I heard another movie was on the way I felt excitement and trepidation in equal measure. Would this be the long-awaited return of the Muppets I’ve been hoping for for years, or would it be an anachronistic, out-of-date embarrassment that would sound the death knell for my beloved puppets? Thankfully, the answer is the former, and by some distance.
The Muppets tells the story of Walter, a young puppet who lives with his brother Gary (Jason Segel). Walter is the world’s biggest Muppet fan, so when Gary and his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) ask him to travel to Hollywood with him he jumps at the chance to visit the hallowed Muppet Studios. Continue reading “The Muppets (2011) review”→
Starring: Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, LL Cool J, James Woods
“Life’s a game of inches, so is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half-second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fuckin’ difference between winning and losing.” (Tony D’Amato, Any Given Sunday)
Take one of the greatest actors in the world, team him up with one of the greatest directors in the world, throw in an amazing supporting cast and set it all on an American football field. The result is Any Given Sunday, one of the finest sports films ever made.
"I'm going to win this staring contest, you goddamned schmuck"
Pacino plays Tony D’Amato, an aging coach who’s trying to lead his team, the Miami Sharks, to glory one last time. Standing in his way are Christina Pagniacci (Diaz), the daughter of the team’s late owner (and Tony’s friend) who doesn’t believe in tradition and wants to move the team to another city, and the team’s doctor (Woods), who’s been giving players illegal injections to keep them playing, despite the risks to their health.
Tony’s players have their own issues, too. His quarterback (Quaid) is also feeling the pangs of old age and fears his career is coming to an end, his wide receiver (LL Cool J) is annoyed he’s not being thrown the ball enough and believes it could affect his sponsorship contracts, and the rock in his defence (played by real-life American footballer Lawrence Taylor) has injured his neck and is one bad tackle away from permanent paralysis at best, death at worst. Continue reading “Any Given Sunday (1999) review”→
Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B Jordan
“There’s this thing, right, it’s called the apex predator. And basically what this is, is the strongest animal in the ecosystem, right? And as human beings, we’re considered the apex predator but only because smaller animals can’t feed on us because of weapons and stuff, right? A lion does not feel guilty when it kills a gazelle, right? You do not feel guilty when you squash a fly. And I think that means something.” (Andrew, Chronicle)
Andrew is not a cheery chappy. His mum is dying, his alcoholic dad beats him and he’s got no friends. His only solace is a video camera that he uses to film his life and document the various goings-on around him. In short, things could be going better.
The three leads work well together and are very convincing chums
One night at a party Andrew’s cousin Matt and Steve Montgomery – a popular kid running for school president – ask Andrew to come with them to film a huge hole they’ve found in the woods. While investigating the hole the trio fall in and end up in a cave, where they find a huge glowing structure. Some weird shit goes down and the camera glitches out and breaks, switching off.
We rejoin them a short while later after the three teens have somehow managed to leave the cave. Things are different though – they now have super powers. At first they’re able to simply move objects with their mind, but as they flex their telekinesis “muscles” and are able to move progressively larger objects, things get a little more serious and Andrew starts toying with the idea of using his powers to punish the society that shunned him. Continue reading “Chronicle (2012)”→
“Of course [you don’t believe in Santa Claus], that’s ridiculous, it’s one man flying all over the world, dropping presents out of chimneys, that’s ridiculous. But one man hearing everybody murmur to him at the same time… that I get.” (Bill Maher, Religulous)
Bill Maher is no stranger to controversy, but in Religilous he tries to take it to the next level by discussing, criticising and mocking every religion he can think of, usually to the faces of those deeply involved with said religions.
For the record, I’m a part-time Catholic. I was raised Catholic, went to a Catholic school, used to go to chapel on a weekly basis and consider myself Catholic. That said, I’m not the greatest Catholic in the world. I don’t go to chapel anymore and I pick and choose which of the Bible’s rules I live my life by because society has changed a lot since then – if slavery was okay 100 years ago and it isn’t now, what’s to say the stuff we were being taught 2000 years ago is still valid? Continue reading “Religulous (2008)”→
Starring: George Hardy, Michael Stephenson, Margo Prey, Connie Young
“You compare our movie to a Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart movie and it fits in. Because our movie was all about people and the experiences those people are experiencing. Just as Casablanca and those movies are about people and the experiences they are experiencing.” (Margo Prey, Best Worst Movie)
Let’s not beat about the bush here – I review an awful lot of shite on this site. That’s what makes it fun. The worse a movie is, the more I generally enjoy watching it. As a film that many regard as the worst ever made, then, Troll 2 is a film that holds a special place in my heart.
The New Kids On The Block reunion wasn't a very pretty sight
Most of us don’t take the time, however, to consider the people who starred in these films, or those who directed or wrote them. How do these people feel when they read the countless reviews ripping their hard work to shreds? How does it affect your confidence when, 20 years down the line, people are still calling your film a bucket of dogshit or saying you shouldn’t even be cast in a primary school play? These are the questions that Best Worst Movie attempts to answer. Continue reading “Best Worst Movie (2009)”→
Starring: Warrior, Vince McMahon, Bobby Heenan, Ted DiBiase, Hulk Hogan, Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross, Bruce Pritchard, Chris Jericho
“History tells us, Hogan, that a man’s legacy is built from the premise that within his life, the moments lived, once lived, become a piece of his history. Somehow, you have conveniently, even eloquently misplaced pieces of your history. In the one time, epical battle between us, Hogan, you were the quintessential influence of what was good, great, and heroic. But different than you may remember, and albeit you may have beaten myths, legends, giants, and other great men, you never, never beat a warrior. And certainly not the ultimate one.” (Warrior, The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior)
Even though I’m a self-confessed wrestling fan, I haven’t stuck anything wrestling-related on TWABM yet and I’m not sure I will again, at least not unless I come across another DVD as ridiculous as The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior. While a lot of wrestling these days could be considered “a bit mental”, that’s more or less par for the course and talking about it on here regularly would be like talking about camels on That Was A Bit Humpy – it sort of goes without saying.
It's hard to believe but it turns out this guy was a bit of a nutter
If that camel was to suddenly start talking about another camel who pissed it off 20 years ago though, and went out of its way to assassinate its character in every way imaginable, then we’d have something worth talking about, and this DVD does exactly that. Except it’s about a wrestler, not a camel. Look, just forget I ever mentioned camels, that was a terrible idea.
Anyone my age (late 20’s) who was into WWF when they were younger doesn’t need an explanation of who the Ultimate Warrior was. He was easily the most intense and energetic of the WWF superstars, and though we never really understood what he was going on about or even enjoyed his matches much – even as a kid when everything was exciting – his crazy facepaint, sheer power and endless energy made him a fan favourite. Behind the scenes though, it turns out he was a few turnbuckles short of a squared circle. Continue reading “The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior (2005)”→
CHIHIRO – “How did you know my name was Chihiro?” HAKU – “I have known you since you were very small.”
Young Chihiro isn’t happy. Her parents have decided that it’s time to up sticks move house, and she’s upset that she won’t get to see her friends any more. On the way to their new home however, Chihiro’s dad takes a wrong turning and the family come across a mysterious tunnel. On the other side they find what appears to be an abandoned theme park.
Smelling something nice, Chihiro’s dad finds a stall filled with delicious food, which he and Chihiro’s mum start wolfing down. Chihiro wanders off and finds a boy called Haku who warns her to leave before it gets dark, but it’s too late – by the time she gets back to her parents, they’ve turned into pigs. Suddenly the once-abandoned theme park becomes a village filled with spirits and otherworldly creatures. It’s up to Chihiro to find out what’s going on and turn her parents back into humans again.
That awkward moment when a person comes on a train and sits right next to you even though there are free seats
Spirited Away is the twelfth film released by Studio Ghibli, the iconic Japanese animation studio responsible for such delights as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle. Studio Ghibli is to Japanese cinema what Disney is to western cinema and Spirited Away is a key example of this, as it’s without a doubt one of the greatest animated movies ever made. Indeed, on the year of its release in the US, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, beating out the likes of Lilo & Stitch and Ice Age. Continue reading “Spirited Away (2001)”→
Starring: Reed Birney, Sheree Wilson, Bruce Campbell
RENALDO – “I’ve never seen you here before. I like that in a woman.” WOMAN – “You’re cute.” RENALDO – “Heh, keep talking baby. Maybe you’ll tell me something I don’t know.”
As far as unknown movies by popular filmmakers go, Crimewave is a double whammy of forgotten history. To many a film directed by Sam Raimi and written by the Coen Brothers would be a match made in heaven, but in fact it already happened with Crimewave. So why has a film with such a pedigree been lost in time, all but vanished after 26 years? Because Raimi and co-producer Bruce Campbell despised it.
The plan sounded great at first. After the huge success of The Evil Dead, young filmmaker Raimi decided that Crimewave was to be his next film. As with Evil Dead he rounded up all his friends – actor Bruce Campbell, editor Kaye Davis, composer Joe DoLuca, but this time he signed a deal with a big film studio so he wouldn’t have to worry about a budget anymore.
"Who, him? Oh, he's just my incredibly shiny brother"
Eventually the studio muscled in and made changes Raimi wasn’t happy with – they kicked out Davis and DoLuca and replaced them with staff of their own choosing, and Bruce Campbell was removed from the lead role, a move that pissed off Raimi immensely. What’s more, the two lead actors brought in by the studio were, according to Campbell in his autobiography years later, “coke-nosed weirdo nutjobs”. The result was a film that Raimi and Campbell don’t like to talk about any more.
It’s a shame really, because Crimewave isn’t actually that bad. It’s got an interesting style, with ’40s-style characters, cars and interiors set against a story involving a security camera business in 1980s Detroit. It’s continually messing with your head as you try to place it in the right era, until you realise it isn’t supposed to have one.
You can add your own favourite dodgy curry joke here if you want
The plot may seem complex (it’s the Coens after all) but it’s actually pretty easy to follow since it crams in all the story in the first 15 minutes or so. In brief: a co-owner of a security firm realises his partner is selling the business to a sleazy heel called Renaldo (Campbell), so he hires two goons to kill him. After a mix-up the goons kill the co-owner too, then go after his wife who was spying on them from across the street. Meanwhile, a hopeless nerd (Birney) is trying to chat up a beautiful woman (Wilson) but she’s after the heel who’s buying the company.
In reality, all that is just an excuse for loads of ridiculous slapstick comedy that will be familiar to anyone who remembers the sillier scenes from The Evil Dead. While a lot of the acting is of a fairly low standard and some of the special effects are hokey at best, there are plenty of clever and funny moments here to have you smiling a few times throughout. One fantastic scene in particular has a woman being chased into the security shop and through the “safest hallway in the world”, which soon becomes a surreal ballet of colours and doors. Here, watch it for yourself and tell me this isn’t an amazing scene:
While I’ve already said that the performances are a little shaky, there’s one very obvious exception to this in the form of the magnificent Bruce Campbell. Bruce was originally supposed to be playing the lead role of the nerdy guy who becomes the hero and given his similar role in The Evil Dead it would have been a perfect fit. Ultimately though that pesky studio replaced him with someone else, leaving Raimi to put Campbell in a smaller role, that of the heel. Despite this, Campbell still manages to steal the show as a hilariously arrogant arsehole.
Crimewave is a difficult film to find (I bought a Hong Kong DVD of it about six years ago), and overall it’s not worth spending a lot of time or money trying to get it. If you get the chance to watch it though I’d recommend you do so, because while it’s nowhere near the quality of Raimi’s other films like Evil Dead or Spider-Man, or the Coens’ later projects such as Fargo and The Big Lebowski, it’s still got enough glimmers of genius to make it worthwhile to an extent.
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum
HAMMOND – “All major theme parks have had delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!” MALCOLM – “But John, if the Pirates Of The Caribbean breaks down the pirates don’t eat the tourists.”
My childhood memories of Jurassic Park are a mixture of peaceful moments involving brachiosaurs and a triceratops, and loud noises played over a bright lime green colour.
You see, when it first hit cinemas in 1993 I was ten years old and I, my mum, my dad and my dinosaur-mad brother went to see it. Signs at the cinema warned that, although Jurassic Park was rated PG, there were some scary scenes that would be unsuitable for young children.
Anyone seeing us go into the cinema would think my seven-year-old brother was a potential problem, but in fact the opposite was the case.
“Look at the side of that car, my dear. I’m very proud of the sides of my cars. I do hope nothing happens to my cars, in particular the sides. I can’t stress how important the sides of my cars are.”
For want of a better phrase, I was a bit of a pussy when I was younger, whereas at the tender age of seven my brother loved A Nightmare On Elm Street, Child’s Play and the like.
That’s why, when the T-Rex attacked the jeeps in the pouring rain and ate the annoying lawyer, or when the Dilophosaur spat on the double-crossing Dennis Nedry and attacked him in his car, or when the raptors were chasing Tim and Lex in the kitchen, I never saw those scenes – I only heard them, with my lime green t-shirt pulled over my face in fear.
Despite this fear I still loved Jurassic Park, and the majority of 1993 and 1994 was spent playing with the toys (remember the ones that roared when you moved their hand, and the Dino Damage ones that had chunks of flesh you could pull off?), playing the video games (the Mega Drive one let you play as the raptor) and re-watching the VHS over and over again, the smaller telly and lower volume providing me with a safer environment to watch the dodgier scenes. It was a part of my childhood and now, aged 28, I still love it.
“Well, that’s the sides fucked”
For the sake of procedure I feel obliged to explain the story of Jurassic Park, this being a review and all, though you really should know it by now.
Eccentric Scottish billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has opened up a theme park in a remote tropical island, a theme park that features real life dinosaurs he’s managed to clone using the DNA extracted from blood found in fossilised mosquitoes.
Excited about his park, he invites some guests – palaeontologist Alan Grant (Neill), palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler (Dern), theorist Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) and the aforementioned annoying lawyer – to see the park before it opens and get their expert opinions. Oh, and he’s invited his two grandchildren too, because things definitely won’t go tits-up.
“It’s a fossilised penis. It must have fallen out of my pocket when we were being chased”
After a while, things go tits-up and, thanks to some underhand subterfuge from park IT nerd Dennis Nedry, the electric fences around the park go down, leaving the dinosaurs free to run riot and do what they feel like. And, somewhat unsurprisingly, what they feel like doing is munching on humans.
It’s up to the gang (who are scattered around the island) to regroup and get the fuck out of Dodge before a raptor puts them between two slices of bread.
Even watching it eighteen years later on Blu-ray, Jurassic Park still looks sensational. There are one or two moments where the CGI now looks ever so slightly dated (most notably the scene with the brachiosaurs where everyone sees the dinosaurs for the first time), but the fact that all of the dinosaur effects are still infinitely more convincing than the tripe churned out today – I’m looking at you Dinoshark, Lockjaw and Mega Piranha – just shows what an incredible achievement this film’s special effects were at the time on computer hardware that nowadays would be, if you’ll pardon the pun, prehistoric.
“When you told me we were going to meet your horny friend this wasn’t what I had in mind. But hey, every hole’s a goal”
It’s just a perfect film that works on so many levels for all ages. Children get a kick out of seeing people interact with dinosaurs – something we’ve all wanted to do at some point – while adults can appreciate the arguments the characters have over the ethical and moral implications of cloning and disrupting the laws of natural selection by bringing back extinct animals, topics that are still strikingly relevant almost two decades later.
If you’ve never seen Jurassic Park, I feel like crying right in your face then whipping my head left and right so the tears slap across your inexperienced eyes. It’s simply an essential film that everyone with any sense of wonder or imagination has to see.
At the time it was released it was a revelation in filmmaking and its use of CGI changed the way movies were created, while these days it’s become a demonstration that even though its special effects DNA has been cloned and misusedsomanytimes since, when used properly it can make for some of the most spectacular cinema ever seen.
WHERE CAN I GET IT?
Jurassic Park was recently released in a lovely Blu-ray trilogy boxset. UK peeps can get it by clicking here or get the DVD trilogy by clicking here. If you’re a Yankee Doodle Dandy you can get the US Blu-ray trilogy here or the DVD trilogy here.
Starring: Jules & Gedeon Naudet, the Fire Department of New York, the citizens of New York City
“When I came back that day to the firehouse, one firefighter came to me and he said, ‘You know, yesterday you had one brother. Today, you have fifty.'” (Jules Naudet, 9/11)
On 11 September 2001 I had a lie-in. I was moving to Edinburgh in a matter of days and was enjoying all my home comforts for as long as I possibly could, and that included my comfy bed. I woke up to my dad standing over me, trying to nudge me awake. “Chris,” he said urgently, “come on downstairs and see the telly. Two planes have flown into the World Trade Center”. Then he ran downstairs to keep watching. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I have to confess I thought to myself: “What the hell is the World Trade Center?”
Some of the early scenes feature ominous shots like this one
It was a thought that, with ten years of history behind it, seems like the stupidest thing any human being could ever muster in their mind. But I was a naive 18-year-old back then and, having never been to New York or been interested in the world of finance, I had no reason to have been familiar with the Twin Towers. Still, my dad seemed interested in it for some reason, and he’d never woken me up to see the news before, so I stumbled downstairs to see what the big deal was. And then, like the rest of the world, I sat dumbstruck in front of the television for the rest of the day.
I feel I should defend my decision to review 9/11 on this site. Given my usual tongue-in-cheek review style, the site’s heavy focus on cult and horror films and the slew of cheesy schlock posters decorating the site’s edges – not to mention the site’s name – it may seem incredibly disrespectful to review such a serious documentary, one about an atrocious terrorist attack in which almost 3000 people died.
This footage was one of the only shots of the first plane crash
I have three reasons for reviewing 9/11 today. Firstly, as I write this it’s 11 September 2011, ten years to the day after the original attacks. Secondly, despite the quirky nature of most of the films I review, That Was A Bit Mental has a pretty wide-ranging criteria for films that qualify for inclusion in the site. Quite simply, any film that features something out of the ordinary is considered for TWABM, and to say the events of 9/11 were ‘out of the ordinary’ is perhaps the ultimate understatement. Finally, 9/11 is a fantastic documentary and the one that best illustrates the atrocities committed that day by far.
Originally, this was a documentary about firefighting. French brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet wanted to make a film following a rookie fireman as he joins a New York fire department and learns the ropes, tackles his first fire and the like. To be fair, from the first ten or fifteen minutes of footage (which take place in the months preceding September 11) it looked like it was going to be a fairly shit documentary.
The footage inside the WTC is unsettling
The rookie they were following, Tony, was a “white cloud” – a term used for firefighters who never get big fires while they’re on duty. Every time Tony was working, the fires weren’t happening. As one of the Naudets says, they had a good film about cooking – much of the footage involved the firefighters making dinner at the station – but a pretty bad one about firefighting. And then September 11 came.
That morning, the department got a report of a suspected gas leak – a fairly straightforward incident with no real danger. One of the brothers went with a small group to practice his filming while they checked it out, and while he filmed them he heard a noise above him. Pointing the camera upward, he unwittingly became one of the only people in the world to catch footage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center.
The brother in the streets was even closer than this when the first building collapsed
What follows is a remarkable take on the events of that day, split into two stories. One follows the aforementioned brother as he follows the small team of firefighters to the WTC (they were the first team to arrive there that day), showing remarkable footage from inside the tower as the emergency services try to plan an unplannable rescue. The other follows the other brother who, upon hearing the news of the first attack, goes out onto the streets to document the mood there and ends up getting caught among the carnage as the towers collapse.
The only thing I don’t like about 9/11 is the talking head sections, where the firefighters chat about what happened. One firefighter in particular, James Hanlon (who used to be an actor before joining the FDNY), doesn’t come across as sincere and his ‘interview’ sections are clearly pre-written, dramatic statements that seem a little showy and don’t really suit the honest, raw tone of the rest of the film.
Hanlon’s ill-suited showboating aside, 9/11 is immensely powerful. Look, I don’t usually advocate this sort of thing, but here’s a link to the whole bloody thing. The DVD is out of print now, and buying it second-hand won’t raise money for the 9/11 charities like it did when it was originally on sale nine years ago. So here’s the whole thing. It’s an hour and 45 minutes long. Just watch it. It does a much better job of explaining the feelings of 9/11 in that time than I, or anyone else, could ever hope to in a million words of text.
Director: James Bobin
or get the DVD trilogy 
. If you’re a Yankee Doodle Dandy you can get the US Blu-ray trilogy 
or the DVD trilogy 
.
That Was A Bit Mental 