Hulk reviews

Angry Man update -

20 years ago I was contributing SF reviews to Starburst (#168, August 1992, has my coverage of C.J. Cherryh's Heavy Time and Hellburner), for a 'Bookshelf' column edited by David Howe.

This month, my HULK book (from David and Steve's indie press Telos) is reviewed on the Starburst website...

"it's a fascinating film... one which Tony Lee dissects in admirable detail...
Hulk is very serious film criticism, with Lee tackling the film's symbology, literary references and subtext...
Lee's enthusiasm is infectious. Ardent haters of the film won't be argued with, but go in with an open mind and you may find yourself convinced by his writing. Admittedly, I was sympathetic to Lee's cause to begin with, but I found myself looking at certain scenes in a different light...
Hulk is a well-written, deftly researched, intelligent and thoughtful book on one of the most misunderstood and under-appreciated comicbook movies of our time."
8/10

Of course, I'm quite pleased with that one.

HULK is also reviewed on SF CrowsNest: "You will come out of this book better informed by the author’s enthusiasm", and Sci-Fi Bulletin: "an interesting defence of an often-derided movie... take the DVD off the shelf and give it a re-watch with fresh eyes" (7/10).

Anytime movies

A spectacularly successful time for genre cinema, the 1980s began with the likes of Altered States, Flash Gordon, and Scanners. The decade gave us three classic genre movies in 1982: Blade Runner, Carpenter’s The Thing, and Videodrome - all of which, for me, rank highly in a list of the very best pictures of all time. But there were many other favourites made in the 1980s: offbeat movies that are always watchable, and are well worth repeat viewings. They provide seemingly endless fun and I simply never get bored of seeing them again and again. They are ‘anytime movies’. They are problem solving choices when I cannot decide what else to watch.

They are resistant to easy pigeonholing or any strict categorisation. They are usually combinations of adventure, comedy, romance, and music, with plenty of action. They cannot easily be defined as one particular genre because they mix together sci-fi and fantasy or horror elements, blending themes and tropes without becoming bland. As they are made with plenty of good humour, all of these movies have memorable and quotable dialogue, which is part of what ensures their cult status.      

Each of these anytime movies is uniquely entertaining, and manages the clever trick of creating its own little universe for the screen. A great many other genre works also create unique worlds that are instantly engrossing, but anytime movies deliver some wonderful amusement and they never fail to be enjoyable viewing, no matter what sort of mood I am in at the time. They may not always be groundbreaking in their originality, and often draw upon an impressive variety of sources for inspiration, but they are all rule-breakers, shattering typical cinematic conventions and storytelling traditions with a subversive edginess or satirical intentions. Here’s a listing of my top five anytime movies…  

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai:
Across The Eighth Dimension (1984)

Director: W.D. Richter

A comic-book pop culture masterpiece that’s partly inspired by Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze (1975), and Invaders From Mars (1953), this stars Peter Weller as scientist and hero Buckaroo, whose fantastic ‘Team Banzai’ (played by Jeff Goldblum, Clancy Brown, and Lewis Smith) are fighting against a race of weird aliens, Lectroids from Planet 10, led by Dr Lizardo (John Lithgow). It’s fast-moving and wildly imaginative, and set in a world of half-reality where “Nothing is ever what it seems, but everything is exactly what it is.”     

Big Trouble In Little China (1986)

See my review on VideoVista archive.

Director: John Carpenter 

Heathers (1989)

Director: Michael Lehmann

Slick black comedy about a couple of teenagers on a killing spree, this is a witty spoof attacking everything wrong with modern American society and culture. Although it’s centred on a doomed high school, the murderous misadventures of new girl Veronica (Winona Ryder), and the psycho antics of her eager accomplice J.D. (Christian Slater in a career-defining performance) make this a darkly amusing treat. Although school movies by John Hughes, such as The Breakfast Club (1985), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), have lost their charm over the last 25 years, Lehmann’s more acerbic flick-knife satire has kept its edge.      

Repo Man (1984)

(my review)

Director: Alex Cox

Streets Of Fire (1984)  

Director: Walter Hill

Billed as ‘a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy’, this remixes 1950s biker movies and ‘cowboy cliché’ dialogue with glossy pop video aesthetics for an urban rescue thriller. Ultra–stylised, visually impressive, and full of musical energy, with songs by Jim Steinman and Dan Hartman in an eclectic Ry Cooder score, this features Diane Lane as the kidnapped rock singer, Michael Paré as the laconic hero, and Willem Dafoe as the chief bad guy.

   

Thor

In production and due for release in 2011, The Mighty Thor directed by Kenneth Branagh, sounds promising for another Marvel comic adaptation - despite worries about whether anyone can refine mythology involving a pantheon of Norse gods into a contemporary fantasy scenario that will entertain a mainstream audience. Asgardian epics worked just fine on four-colour pages, but can the peculiar content of Thor comics be transferred to genre cinema in compelling style without becoming (endearingly?) silly or, even worse, embarrassingly stupid or unforgivably pretentious?    

The challenges of archaic language used in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's comicbook series have reportedly been avoided by the film's writers (at risk of upsetting the purist element of Thor fandom!) by opting for today’s colloquial English - but hopefully not vagaries of ‘Amglish’ (from which the phrase ‘oh my god’ acquires some new Americanism of cringe-worthy potential!), and this curiously ignores all the possibilities that are offered by tapping into Branagh’s experience at making films out of Shakespeare's texts.

Amongst many other pitfalls to be evaded, principal casting of some puny humans (not as mere templates for CGI creations, presumably) as various Norse deities has a rather amusing ‘international’ flavour, so far…

• Australian Chris Hemsworth (Kirk’s dad in Star Trek) plays thunder god Thor
• Welshman Anthony Hopkins could make a worthy all-father as Odin
• Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård is likely to be good as Silvig
• Irish beefcake Ray Stevenson (vigilante Frank Castle in Punisher: War Zone) is cast as Volstagg   
• English–as–Eton, Tom Hiddleston comes from TV acting, for prime villainy of Loki
• Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano is – intriguingly – assigned the role of Hogan 
• Californian Rene Russo portrays Frigga (no jokes, please)
• Another American actress, Jaimie Alexander (from slasher movie Rest Stop) plays Sif, consort of Thor
• Israel-born actress Natalie Portman, interestingly, plays nurse Jane Foster 

In the comics, Jane was assistant of Dr Don Blake, the mortal who transforms into Thor, but it’s unclear, at time of writing this, whether the character of disabled medic Blake appears in this film or not. Other geeky questions and concerns include: will they keep iconic features of the comic like Thor’s magic hammer (with unpronounceable name ‘Mjöllnir’), or will he just get a battleaxe? If the film’s plot follows that familiar tale about Odin’s punishment of Thor with exile to Earth, will the storyline lapse into cliché as yet another example of tedious father–and–son reconciliation themes which infect nearly all Hollywood products nowadays? 

Like both Iron Man films, and forthcoming Captain America remake ('First Avenger…' reportedly stars Chris Evans, from Fantastic Four movies), Thor is part of build-up to Joss Whedon’s mooted 'Avengers' epic (we can only hope that it follows revisionist trend established by Ultimates comics, not the Avengers' 1960s' origin story), in prep for 2012. Ah, that’s a year of apocalypse, right? Verily not…

Best films of the decade

2000 to 2009 was the decade of great superhero films and epic trilogies, and sometimes those grand trilogies were comicbook movies... Admittedly, I have a strong bias towards SF and fantasy cinema, but – simply put – that’s the kind of stuff that appeals to me the most, so I usually rate genre films more highly than anything else. Favouritism aside, I think all these should be regarded as key films of early 21st century cinema.

Hulk (2003) director: Ang Lee
Getting a filmmaker who’s best known for serious art–house dramas to helm a highly commercial blockbuster was a daring move. However, the risks paid off, handsomely, resulting in the very best film of the last ten years. What Lee created is the first sober epic of superhero cinema, rich in mutated genre themes and supremely iconic images – derived, in part, from the very same influential mythological and literary sources which had obviously inspired the comicbook original Hulk’s creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, back in 1962. Honestly, this masterpiece blending of SF adventure and monster-movie remains far superior in every way to unnecessary sequel/ unfortunate remake/ somewhat unsightly franchise-reboot, The Incredible Hulk (2008) – which I did enjoy, of course, but still think is nothing to get excited about if compared to Lee’s instant classic.

The Dark Knight (2008) director: Christopher Nolan
Building on his success with Batman Begins (2005), gifted auteur Nolan delivers the goods with this exhilarating and tightly orchestrated action thriller. A mix of superbly performed characters and livewire confrontations between terrorist-psycho the Joker (Heath Ledger, aiming for legendary status), and Christian Bale’s thuggishly dynamic masked crusader, this eclipses Bond and Bourne, and it presents the new benchmark in superhero cinema, wholly intended for a mature audience, with intense drama of such power that Zack Synder’s flawed Watchmen (2009) could not hope to match it.

Black Hawk Down (2001) director: Ridley Scott
The battle of Mogadishu in 1993 gets a vivid big–screen treatment from a filmmaker at the height of his technical and creative powers. Here’s a horror story of a mission going tragically wrong. It shows what happens when professional soldiers confront a warlord’s vast militia forces, as tactical advantage is lost, and thoroughly outflanked American troops are besieged by Somali belligerence and ferocity. Gritty and messy scenes of modern warfare are unnervingly mixed with a traditional sort of gung-ho US Rangers action, epitomised by Tom Sizemore’s battalion commander, striding purposely through sundry guerrilla strikes in urban mayhem, a fearless portrait of unflinchingly single-minded heroism, staring into the face of so much sudden death and wanton destruction. It’s one of the greatest war films ever made.

Hellboy (2004) director: Guillermo Del Toro
Much as I admire Del Toro’s Spanish fantasy productions – Devil’s Backbone (2001), and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – I prefer the accomplished mix of quirky humour and uncanny action that distinguishes Hellboy from the rest of recent superhero cinema, although Timur Bekmambetov’s hugely appealing and imaginative Russian offerings, Night Watch (2004), and Day Watch (2007), explore similar generic territories. For Hellboy, the director continues the good work that he put into Blade II (2002), adds doomed romance to existing secret agency and darkly weird otherness tropes, and so this comics-based adventure delivers more levels of madcap fun and winning pathos than either of those equally lighthearted – but much less interesting – Fantastic Four (2005/ 2007) super–team movies. It’s rather saddening to note, however, that sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) proved to be a bit of a letdown.

Mulholland Drive (2001) director: David Lynch
Classification resistant and impossible to pigeonhole, this mystery about murder and identity on the borders of sanity abandons reason but not hope, in a convoluted story that hinges on Lynch’s apparent fascination with Jungian psych, effortlessly blending dreams with harsh realities. The artistic filmmaker’s ingenuity is utterly beguiling, as paired female characters switch from emotional transparency to morally opaque in a realm charting the mechanics of creating films and the overpowering quest for bright mesmerising images, whether the director intends visuals to be revelatory or illusory.

Pulse (aka: Kairo, 2001) director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
And so to Asian films... Many were seen, few are chosen... My shortlist had Grudges, Rings, and other ghost chillers galore, but this SF apocalypse shines through murky shadows and creaky slasher plots with its creepy virtual viral menace, emerging from a realm of cyber hell where spooks might lurk behind every PC screen. It’s the end of the world and nothing’s fine. Avoid the pointless and feeble US remake. Escapism in cinema is always welcome, but confrontation (with or without topical issues) is more intriguing.

Adaptation (2002) director: Spike Jonze
With a brilliant dual–role for Nicolas Cage, and an excellent supporting cast (not to mention Brian Cox as story-maven Robert McKee!), this offbeat deconstruction and dissection of screenwriting and the nature of movies is bursting with searing pathos for profoundly creative struggles that never succumbs to entirely maudlin sentiment or gentle whimsy, but freely explores various modes of documentary realism, bizarre fantasy and - shockingly - almost everything in between! This is essential viewing for any fans of innovative cinema.

Requiem For A Dream (2000) director: Darren Aronofsky
Some films are unforgettable. This one is not usually classified as genre horror, and yet that’s exactly what this scary, downright weird and crushingly depressing drama, about the psychological and physical dangers of addiction, really is. Horror without a pause, bloated with grisly scenes of intense human suffering, amidst socio-economic depravity in a devastatingly bleak emotional landslide of startlingly evocative images.

Martyrs (2008) director: Pascal Laugier
The choice pick from the recent batch of extraordinarily good French shockers (which include Switchblade Romance, Them, Frontiers, and Inside), this serves a maelstrom of electrifying violence, anguish, inhumanity and ultimate misery that makes all those sordid little ‘torture porn’ flicks look rather tame and quite silly. Watch in dismay. See it right through to its bitter surprise-ending for the revelation of a new level in radical horror cinema.

The Lord Of The Rings (2001-3) director: Peter Jackson
I had to include a trilogy in this listing and, because Pirates Of The Caribbean movies were so uneven, and the otherwise laudable X-Men set ended with a disappointment, this ambitious adaptation of Tolkien fits the bill. An undeniably spectacular epic with tremendously good production values, it is flawed and curiously uneven in the pacing of both its narrative and overlong journey, but many sequences offer stunning fantasy entertainment. Taken as a whole, the scale and visual brilliance of this unpretentious saga established new standards of technical proficiency and won critical acclaim for a milestone work of popular cinema. I liked all three extended editions on DVD.

Journeys

The 13th issue of Midnight Street magazine includes my overview article about several films based on Jules Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.

My reviews include the well-known 1959 adaptation, the Spanish production Viaje al Centro de la Tierra, the recent 3D version, and TV stuff.

This is the last printed issue of Midnight Street, but the 'journeys into darkness' will continue with electronic publication as PDF download. For more info and news about subscriptions or submissions, visit the publisher's website at www.midnightstreet.co.uk.

VideoVista new look

Quite pleased with update for VideoVista monthly webzine, using a fresh page template.

December's issue has great retrospective articles on Hollywood before the Hays code (by Gary Couzens), and German expressionist cinema (by Jonathan McCalmont), both of which include top 10 listings of relevant films.

In the main reviews section, there's two different opinions about Star Trek.

IZ #224 reviewed

Excerpt from a review of Interzone #224

My favorite non-fiction section would have to be the movie and TV reviews by Nick Lowe and Tony Lee. Both are phenomenal at making reviews entertaining. They’re not just reviews, but little stories told through criticism. Both Lowe and Lee have unique review styles and I had a lot of fun reading through their biting remarks. I can’t say this is true of any other review section in any magazine. I rarely read the reviews in Realms of Fantasy or Analog (or any others I happen to get from time to time), but I know that I will always go to this section first when reading Interzone.

Read the full review at Fantasy & SciFi Lovin' News & Reviews.

VideoVista changes

Working on a fresh page template for monthly webzine, VideoVista.

Here's a test image for the new logo...
A work of art or too hideous for words?