Troll Hunter

When a film comes out in the 'found footage' mould, one expects certain things. Primarily that it will be a horror, and that there will be plenty of shaky footage of not all that much with glimpses of whatever it is that's meant to be frightening us before a final big reveal. Well, chuck all that out the window. 'Troll Hunter' is a 'found footage' film that eschews the conventions of that genre. It's a black comedy in which a group of film students have recorded their time spent with Hans. Hans has a secret, he is employed by Norway's secret TSS (Troll Security Service) to hunt and keep control of that nation's native troll population. Hans is bored of his 'shitty job' and so allows the students to film him at work.

The students are initially highly skeptical of what Hans is leading them into, but on their first trip into the woods they encounter a massive three-headed troll. A troll that Hans tricks into the open and kills with artificial sunlight. The initial encounter with the troll comes across as standard handheld 'real life footage' stuff as the cameraman runs terrified through the woods with his night vision on. From there on though the film rapidly re-organises itself as a black comedy. Though the troll is undoubtedly a terrifying creature, the encounter with it is treated in a fairly slapstick way. From Hans' unlaboured attitude towards his own extremely dangerous work to the Polish contractors who turn up with a dead Croatian bear to plant as cover for the damage done, everything's just a little bit silly.

There are moments when the film almost pauses as either the sound girl or presenter look into the camera to share their incredulity at what's happening with the audience. Yet more evidence that 'Troll Hunter' is intented as a bleak comedy. A good amount of mileage is made out of references to Troll folk lore (they can smell Christians and seem to spend a lot of time under bridges) as well as the deadpan humour of Hans and his troll-hunting antics. In spite of the apparent low budget, the troll CGI is fine for this kind of film. In fact, all the trolls looking a little bit silly probably helps the comedy roll along.

As long as you're happy for this to be a dark comedy rather than a full-on horror in the Cloverfield / Blair Witch mould then you should enjoy it. I had to go to the cinema at 10:15pm to see it, since they're still showing The Inbetweeners at all other hours just now. There was literally no-one else in there so I don't think it'll be around for very long.

A Lonely Place to Die - Scotland apparently

So normally these days I go and take a punt on films on Wednesday. What with the Orange Wednesdays offer and all. Last Wednesday though I was being all geeky at home, so I went to see 'A Lonely Place to Die' on Tuesday instead. Luckily Odeon have got an offer going at the minute where you can get 40% off (almost) all tickets at any time simply by printing out a voucher from their website. Kerching! £5.39 for a cinema ticket? It's like being a student all over again!

6 people were in Odeon's 6:30 showing of 'A Lonely Place to Die' (two of whom seemed intent on having a conversation throughout until asked to desist), a poor showing for an interesting British-made horror genre flick starring Mellisa George. George was in 'Triangle' and has apparently been in a lot of TV. I'm informed that she nearly landed the part of Lara Croft, and so I assume she has been teetering on the edge of breaking through as a big star for some time. Here she plays Alison, a climber and hill-walker who is out with a group of friends to scale some of the heights of Northwest Scotland. We start out perched on the side of a cliff-face, which Alison and her friend have a near miss on when one of them falls before being saved. The camera pans around the beautiful yet harsh wilderness of the remote Highlands, it's being made obvious right from the start that nature is the enemy here.

Or is it? The plot moves along very quickly as the walkers (after a bunch of stodgy 'getting to know you' scenes) discover an Eastern European girl buried in a box in the ground. Very quickly the film shifts pace, as Alison and her friends realise someone must have done this and that they're probably nearby.

"A Lonely Place to Die" has a number of nice shifts like this. Firstly when it switches from 'nature is the enemy' to 'people are chasing us', and then again when it moves from a rural to an urban environment and introduces a gangster element. There are a good number of deaths, blood and guts and all the kind of stuff you should expect from this kind of film. Overall a solid film in a genre that I've enjoyed a lot over the years.

127 Hours - That's more than 5 days!

Not since 'Touching the Void' has a dramatisation of real-life adventuring sounded so incredible. '127 Hours' is the true story of Aron (imdb spelling) Ralston - played by James Franco - and his incredible 127 hour long ordeal being trapped out in the desert-like conditions of the western plains of the USA. Aron is what we might call a 'free spirit'. We see him setting out by himself on his bike into the great dry rocky plains setting himself a target time to beat, hiking off into the great unknown and showing a pair of female travellers a 'short cut' that involves a death-defying fall into an underground lake - not the kind of guy who pays much attention to health and safety. He's the sort of person you're likely to meet eventually if you spend any length of time travelling away from major tourist traps.

Eventually Aron's bravery gets the better of him when he stumbles into a narrow ravine and gets his arm trapped under a large rock. Everything he tries to do to move the rock fails; he cannot lift, chip away at or budge it at all. The film now provides a claustrophobic view into the terror, hopelessness and despair of Aron's captivity in this ravine - where sunshine comes for only 15 minutes each morning. We see his initial incredulity at being trapped by the natural world he so loves, then his practical organisation of all his equipment, food and water, before finally his slow slide into madness as he looses hope for his survival. Aron's eventual escape (this is not a spoiler - since it's information that was put around quite liberally when the film came out) is accomplished by cutting off his own arm. The scene in which this happens is very distressing, and happens after a trippy dream sequence that paints Aron's experiences as a spiritual journey in which he re-assess his own life.

This is a Danny Boyle film, which means that there's plenty of frantic camera work with running closeups and cameras being put in weird places. Inside James Franco's arm being the oddest camera position with the bottom of his water bottle a close second.

My understanding is that the events pictured in the film are very close to what happened to Aron in real life. If this really is the case then he obviously underwent some kind of revelatory experience while trapped under that rock. He starts out blaming the natural world for his predicament, but then slowly realises that his own stupidity in underestimating nature has led him to dig his own grave. Once he accepts blame on to himself he finally realises that it is not this rock trapping him, but his arm. Only then is he able to take the ultimate step and relieve himself of his own limb.

Despite knowing exactly what's going to happen right from the very start (or perhaps because of it), '127 Hours' is terrifying in putting a microscope up to a nightmare scenario. Part thriller, part spiritual awakening - it's an excellent film.

Rango

My housemate Rich had this on DVD the other day. It's a cartoon in which Johnny Depp stars as the voice of Rango, a chameleon who ends up the sheriff of the wild west town of Dirt after he finds himself stuck there in the middle of a drought.

Sounds all a little weird, but it gets weirder. Our hero Rango starts his journey off by falling out the back of a car and nearly being run over by desert traffic. He then meets a part-run-over armadillo who tells him to head into the desert to find himself / complete his journey / insert stock spiritual phrase here. Then there's loads of psychedelia.

This is a stylish fantasy that pays a homage to Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns and relies heavily on American Indian spiritualism to create a mystical backdrop for the story. Problem is though that it tries to be too many things without really succeeding at any of them. There's a little adult humour, some slapstick for the kids and a heavy dose of spiritualism - but these parts never fit together into a whole.

For most of the film I wasn't really sure what the central narrative was, it only focused on the drought in 'Dirt' as the main story after a lot of flapping around with inconsequential stuff that I think was meant to distract kids.

Perhaps it was a mistake to watch the director's cut (I did suggest we watch the theatrical version - but my housemates 'knew better') as a lot of this stuff was probably taken out of the theatrical release. It ended up being way too long for what it was, it's the best part of 100 minutes for what amounts to no more than a cartoon chameleon flapping his way through banter with frontier animals.

I was kind of hoping I'd missed the point and that in fact had some deeper meaning rather than the spiritualism being a total mess. But checking IMDB drew me a big fat blank.

Four Lions - she's got a beard

They showed this on Channel 4 last weekend. I reviewed it when it came out but I thought I'd share one of its funniest scenes:



Reviews of Rango and 127 Hours coming up at somepoint soon if work isn't too busy this week...

Bridesmaids

With the whole of the nation going mad for the Inbetweeners movie, I joined a small group of my friends on Wednesday last week to see 'Bridesmaids'. It's been out for quite a long time now, so I was surprised to see that the cinema was probably about 20% full. Maybe loads of people had turned up for The Inbetweeners only to have it be sold out in their faces. I might watch the TV series of Inbetweeners one of these days to see what all the fuss is about. As far as I can tell it's a bunch of shameless crudity, which means I'll probably like it.

Bridesmaids is a comedy. Billed as a sort of female version of 'The Hangover' it stars Kristen Wiig (IMDB insists there's a double-'i' in her surname - she played the Christian weirdo in 'Paul') as Annie, a woman who appears to have failed at life. Her small bakery went bankrupt, she sleeps with an idiot, lives with George Dawes, drives a rust-bucket and - to cap it all - her best friend Lillian is marrying into a rich family. Lillian asks Annie to be her maid of honour at the wedding, a choice that rankles with Lillian's new upper class chum Helen (Rose Byrne). Can you see where the central conflict in this movie's going to be?

Cue comedy. We get some David Brent-esque one-upmanship between Annie and Helen as they each try to prove themselves Lillian's best friend, then some ultra-crudity and toilet humour (shitting yourself in a wedding dress for instance). This isn't exactly typical of what is on the surface a bit of a girlie film; but of course 'Bridesmaids' isn't a girlie film, it's a gross-out comedy with the usual male roles all replaced by women.

And it works. I don't know if it was just the novelty of seeing girls in this genre of film being crude and discussing poo without being pre-occupied by boyfriends, but it's very funny. The ending does slide back slightly into territory normally occupied by female-dominated films about relationships, but overall that kind of slushy stuff is well-avoided in favour of crudity. Nice.