Chopping Mall
Chopping Mall was my first blog, which I started way back in 2009. It was dedicated exlcusively to ridiculous and terrible films, which I watched a lot of back then. (So much time, so little work!)
I’ve resuced the posts from oblivion, to be preserved here for …uh… whatever.
It’s a pretty clunky process getting them out of blogspot (XML export, eww) and into here, so there may be a few formatting issues.
Summer 2009 Round-up.
‘Enjoy Summer 2009 at the cinema’, instructs the video. But summer’s the season of big, brash, balls-out, CGI-heavy, plot-light, no-brain blockbusters. Isn’t it?
Well, yes. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Whilst I’m not suggesting you should throw out all concern for substance and actually watch Transformers 2, a season of dumb, noisy and occasionally epic films can sometimes be more than a little fun.
So, here’s a round-up of my summer at the cinema; some good, some average and some dull as hell.
First up, Brüno. It’s a while now since I saw Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat-but-different cringe-along. I remember laughing a lot, yes, but being inclined to agree with most of the reviews I read at the time; Brüno is very funny, but it suffers from using a paint-by-numbers template all too obviously. In Borat, a flimsy plot took a naïve foreigner to America, with funny conversations showing some Americans to be pretty astonishingly racist at times. In Brüno, er…. a flimsy plot takes a naïve foreigner to America etc etc. There are some genius moments - Paula Abdul (who?) sitting on a Mexican whilst talking about her humanitarian concerns is brilliant and the swinger’s party is pretty unbelievable – but I’m struggling to remember the scenes already, which is never a good sign.
X-men origins: Woverine. Good fun but completely forgettable. The motorbike-into-the-helicopter scene is cool but this is cinema-froth. Tasty, but froth all the same.
One of the best films of the summer, to my mind, was the wonderful Coraline. A lot of noise has been made about 3D revolutions this year, loved by some, dismissed by others, but Coraline justifies the hype single-handedly. The 3D was fun, there was lots of it, but it was never the main show. The main show was the bonkers world of button-eyed crazies that spilled from the screen. This is one of very few of this summer’s films that I would go and see again without hesitation.
Next up, Public Enemies. I’m puzzled by this one. I thought I enjoyed it a lot; it had Johnny Depp performing outlandish gangster moves – bank robberies and prison breaks - with lawman Christian Bale in hot pursuit. Looking back at it, though, I don’t feel overly keen to see it again. I think I’m forced to damn it with faint praise and admit that it was (merely) a good film. It was good; better by far than most of what I watched this summer but… a little short of the major leagues. I think I’d rent it, but I won’t be rushing out to buy it.
I also certainly have no intention of buying the latest instalment in the Harry Potter series, HP and the Half Blood Prince. Much like the Wolverine film, it looked brilliant and the action bits were exciting (the zombie-ish creatures emerging from the lake in the cave were wonderful) but there was noticeably less action; the film was way too long and –for large parts, at least – numbingly tedious. I won’t even be renting this one…
That just leaves me with a two; Inglourious Basterds and Funny People. I’m not going to review Inglourious Basterds – I think it deserves a full review and I need to see it again – look out for it sometime soon. As for Funny People? How Seth Rogen was wasted in such an excruciatingly dull film is beyond me. Did anyone let him see the script beforehand? There were some good bits to pick out; the relationship between Seth and his housemates is hilarious (though sadly doesn’t get the screen time it merits) and the footage of the stand-ups actually doing stand-up is suitably funny. But the rest? The rest is dire. I can’t really work out what they were trying to do. Whole chunks of the film tread a line between being a comedy and a drama about Adam Sandler’s relationship with his ex-girlfriend… but I just don’t care. Sandler isn’t a sympathetic character, nor is his ex, nor is his ex’s husband. We’re left with three boring, self-centred characters not being funny. This leaves Seth Rogen as the easily the stand-out best character but any attempt to drag the film into being half-way decent is an uphill battle. Put simply, it’s crap.
So, that was summer. Here we are in September with Autumn coming soon. Of the ‘Summer 2009’ list I still want to see Broken Embraces and District 9 (tomorrow!) but then it’ll be time for a new season of film.
Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (Gojira VS Supesugojira )
Chopping Mall Video: Watch SpaceGodzilla arrive on Earth and bully poor little baby Godzilla. See below or CLICK HERE! [Video deleted by request from Toho (Godzilla copyright owners). You’d have thought a single teaser scene, linking to a positive review would be free marketing for them, right? No, as we move into 2010, it seems big money studios are still too technology-illiterate to imagine the internet might actually help them]
Since I’ve been writing this blog, I tend to watch films with half a mind towards writing them up here. When I’m watching films on my laptop – most of the time – I’m also on the look-out for screenshots, just a handful of images that I can represent the film with. Most of the time this means that, every now and then, I’ll press the screen capture button during a particularly impressive scene, leaving me with a few shots at the end that I can pick and choose between.
When I’m watching a really good film however, I often forget to do this. It’s easy to get so caught up in a good story that suddenly it’s the end of the film and there’re no screenshots. This is a pain of course, as I have to go back and scan through for important scenes or interesting shots.
At the opposite extreme, there are some films where I end up with thousands of screenshots. There are clearly two reasons for this. Either the film has some really impressive visuals (where impressive can mean beautiful, unusual or just downright bizarre) or the film has a ‘plot’ so paper-thin and dull that looking at the pretty pictures and tapping F9 is far more engaging. Sometimes both reasons can be true.
Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla is both interesting in terms of visuals and entirely dull in terms of plot.
Yep, that’s more or less the only conclusion possible.
Ok, basic plot, such as it is: the army wants to kill Godzilla. They build Moguera, a giant robot (somewhere between MechaGodzilla and Transformers) to do so. Before they do, SpaceGodzilla arrives on Earth. SpaceGodzilla is an alien mutation of Godzilla’s DNA and has arrived on Earth intent on destruction. They all fight a bit.
There are good bits: baby Godzilla is funny as anything and the bonkers lady who hallucinates Mothra comes out with some wonderful lines. She also manages to lift the bed she’s strapped to a couple of feet into the air using her mind, and then explains “it’s telekinesis – I’ve never tried it before”. Must be beginner’s luck, I guess.
Mothra-hallucinating lady tries to see into Godzilla’s head…
Moguera, in all his shiny metal transformers-esque beauty.
The film has been savaged in on-line reviews by Godzilla-philes, who pick out series inconsistencies (BabyGodzilla looks different than in previous films, Godzilla’s atomic breath is the wrong colour, etc.). As should be patently obvious by now, I know nothing much about the Godzilla series: my criticism is that the film is dull.
It’s roughly split into thirds. The first third is all about the characters. It’s dull, but forgivably so; we’re being introduced to people who’ll be important to the plot, right? The next third is easily the best. SpaceGodzilla and Moguera fight in space, SpaceGodzilla arrives on Earth and bullies baby Godzilla (see the video!), SpaceGodzilla turns on Tokyo. The final third though, is rubbish. The three-way battle is long, slow and very boring; the destruction is fun, but for a climactic scene it drags on endlessly. I’d stopped caring long before the end.
I suspect, as with so many films of dubious quality, this one would be a whole lot better if watched whilst tackling a quantity of beer (or drink of choice…).
To close, I’ll quote the important moral of the film, one as relevant today as it was in 1994 (if not more so): “If the universe is polluted, another space monster will arrive pretty soon. [SpaceGodzilla] was a warning to mankind”
Chopping Mall Video: Watch SpaceGodzilla arrive on Earth and bully poor little baby Godzilla. See below or CLICK HERE! [Video deleted by request from Toho (Godzilla copyright owners). You’d have thought a single teaser scene, linking to a positive review would be free marketing for them, right? No, as we move into 2010, it seems big money studios are still too technology-illiterateto imagine the internet might actually help them]
Deathsport
Right, let’s start with what I knew about this film before I started. It stars (the late, great) David Carradine. It’s called Deathsport. If that wasn’t enough to make me want to watch, what more could I want? Could I cross my fingers and hope that, on top of those two, pretty convincing selling points, that it was produced by Roger Corman and set in a semi-medieval dystopian future? If I had done, I would’ve been in luck.
The film is also brilliant. Brilliant in the way that only a really crappy film made in 1978 can be. Brilliant in the way that most people fail to notice how brilliant it is and dismiss it as rubbish (2.7/10 rating on imdb? How are people SO dumb?). Brilliant in the way that only a film featuring David Carradine, wielding a perspex sword and battling motorcycle-mounted baddies can be.
From the off, you know you’re in for a treat. A narrated intro kindly informs us that, since the neutron wars (!), people only live in the cities, leaving the wild and barren countryside (think Star Wars’ Tatooine with a few more bushes) to the “dreaded mutant cannibals” (more on them later) and the Range-Guides. These folk are basically wandering Jedi-cum-gypsies, ultra-talented warrior nomads. Peaceful when left alone but capable of fighting when necessary.
Mr Carradine in his prison cell.
Sadly, bonkers Lord Zirpola of the city, has decided, in an effort to increase the popularity of his war, to design a new fighting machine and perform a public demonstration of it with a handful of captured Range-Guides as victims. This is where DeathSport comes in: DeathSport has replaced the death penalty for the statesmen of the city, instead of going to prison, criminals fight for their freedom a la Roman gladiators. For a special edition of his DeathSport however, Lord Zirpola has given all of his criminals one of his new DeathMachines with which to attack and kill the captured Range-Guides (Carradine and Claudia Jennings).
The DeathMachines are motorbikes. They’re motorbikes. Nothing particularly fancy, just motorbikes.
Carradine and Claudia Jennings plan their next move
AIEEEE! DEATH MACHINES! … Or motorbikes as they’re more commonly known.
Needless to say, Carradine and Jennings, as ultra-warriors with their perspex swords (basically low-rent lightsabres…) are pretty nifty and don’t fall victim to the er…. DeathMachine motorbikes, nick a couple and ride away…
And here’s where the problem comes. The best action scene, the DeathSport of the title, is all over and done with just 40 minutes through the 82min run time. What feels like something of a climactic battle comes just half-way through. What follows is a long sections of really very dull motorbike journeys through open scrub land, the occasional fight but almost no interesting action, almost no dialogue and almost no fun.
It hots up again towards the end, with some wonderful pyrotechnics, a little action with the dreaded cannibal mutants (Tusken Raiders from Star Wars?) and a fantastic perspex-sword battle, but the middle section is just too boring. It’s almost as if they simply couldn’t face releasing a 55 minute long film (the good bits) and just whacked in 25 minutes of solid plot-less boredom. Which is a great shame really, as it spoils an otherwise pretty damn good film.
In all, it’s good fun. Maybe watch the first 45 minutes, then go get a drink and some snacks and be ready to settle down for the last bit? It plays as a kind of meeting point of Death Racers and Star Wars and finally answers the question that has been on everyone’s lips: What would StarWars have been like if David Carradine had got Mark Hamill’s role and George Lucas had been born as Roger Corman?
The answer is DeathSport.
Perspex-sword wielding wannabe Jedis.
Ebira, Horror of the Deep / Godzilla Vs The Sea Monster
Now with added VIDEO. See below! ChoppingMall brings you handpicked scenes from reviewed films!
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Now, I can’t pretend to know a lot about Godzilla. Nor, for that matter, Japanese cinema in general. Or even Asian cinema. In fact, as far-east film culture goes, I am mostly ignorant. This has always seemed a shame - I know I should really make more of an effort - but for once I was thankful of the fact; my ignorance of the Gojira/Godzilla series meant that I was entirely unprepared for what this 1966 film threw at me.
Oh sure, I knew what Godzilla was. Big monster, yeah? Scaly equivalent to King Kong, yeah? Breathing fire, making noise and bashing things, yeah? Whilst those might all be true, I wasn’t expecting quite the level of bonkers fun that Godzilla offered.
From some of the most sublimely ridiculous dialogue ever encountered to a long battle between Godzilla and crab-lobster-monster Ebira that mostly involved chucking a rock backwards and forwards between each other, the film is 90 minutes of well-paced, self-consciously silly, mega-monster fun.
I don’t really need to describe this in any further detail: just go and watch it. It has Godzilla reawakened by lightning a la Frankenstein, a nuclear bomb and a massive lobster. And some wonderful puppetry. What’s not to like?
UPDATE:
ChoppingMall brings you more! Here is a specially selected scene from this film, available to watch on the Chopping Mall YouTube channel. Expect lots more from other films to come!
Boa Vs Python
First off, I should make it very clear that this is a brilliant film. Not just good, but brilliant. It’s fast-paced, full of action and exactly the right length. After all, who wouldn’t be keen off a ninety minute serving of CIA vs Hunters vs massive Boa Constrictor vs massive Python?
It’s dumb, it’s brash, it’s action packed, it’s everything it sets out to be.
Basic plot as follows (not that it really matters…), dumb rich hunter orders a massive snake delivered to America, dumb rich hunter rounds up his mates to go hunt it, massive snake escapes, CIA get involved, CIA er… decide to use another snake to help them get the first snake, people get snaked, smakes fight.
The hunters are the most obvious team you could imagine; we have arrogant rich man, his girlfriend who doesn’t wear many clothes, silent broody killer, brash macho man who hits on rich-man’s lady, snake-fodder old man and a bumbling father-son duo. Their inclusion is a little odd; rich-man is supposed to have rounded up the cream of the hunting crop, others who really enjoy killing big animals but the father-son pair are simply too stupid to have been included. Sadly, their comic-relief is not particularly comic…
On the CIA side we have Agent Sharpe, as well as hired-team Monica, the tech-expert (or pretty lady #2), and Emmett the snake-expert. Monica’s inclusion is clearly only really for experience; her stated role as tech-queen is hardly convincing. She fits cameras and GPS tracking devices to the second big snake (yeah…) but these hardly seem to work and she spends more of her time bashing the portable screen she carries and complaining that it doesn’t work. This hardly matters really, however, as twenty minutes later she puts it down and forgets all about it. Only to remember a moment later after it’s submerged in an underground reservoir. Whoops! How silly.
The CIA operatives themselves are equally useless. The first group of four (presumedly highly-trained) soliders desert Agent Sharpe and go off to play snake capturing heroics on their own. They die. Later on, CIA operatives allow their freshly captured bad-guy to escape their base (in an armoured car, no less) when they are distracted watching footage of the snakes. Are they really this dumb? Yes, it seems, they are. This is confirmed only seconds later when we discover that the CIA have managed to miss a nearby rave whilst securing a five-mile exclusion zone. Again: whoops!
None of these things though is a problem. This film is simply too much fun to hold such trivial complaints against it. I challenge anyone who watches it not to enjoy it.
