Category Archives: Fantasy

May 19 2025
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Art, Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

The original, before Freddy was slapped on plastic lunch boxes – so the popular maxim goes. 

No shortage of invention from Wes Craven in this and for even his slasher tripe he usually has a theme or two worth exploring or something on his mind, subtext channeling his psychological preoccupations of the time. On this occasion he is a prurient fellow, teenage kicks punished by a scarred lad with knives for fingers, and in dire need of a personal shopper (that sweatshirt).

The movie is mainly just a laugh, and the set pieces are there to be admired for their ingenuity. Scary? Nah, human behaviour at bus stops is scary. The self-scan in Aldi is scary. The fact that Phil Neville garnered 59 England caps = scary. 

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Dec 27 2024
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Art, Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Clash of the Titans (1981).

Forever synonymous with Medusa, the terror of a million childhoods. 

For this alone, Clash of the Titans (1981) is a work of iconography. It does, though, have a bit more to it than this terrifying batshit gargoyle (or whatever) with a barnet of vipers, something you’d find hammered in a weekend taxi queue, honking of kebab and drenched in voddy & Coke. Or maybe I’ve spent too many hours in the seedier parts of Scotland.

One can appreciate it as the Ray Harryhausen Show, a highlight reel of his charming delights. The cast, too, are having a right laugh, all of them very much aware they’re slumming it in a bloated porker of a production made 30 years too late. Stupid, cheesy, unabashedly so, the movie is a big clunking mess and all the better for it. 

It’s good rubbish – it’s fun.

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Mar 11 2024
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Art, Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Technology, Uncategorized

Last Action Hero (1993).

It’s okay if all over the place with a jarringly inconsistent tone – too violent but not violent enough, it’s half a kids’ movie, half Lethal Weapon, which doesn’t work. Maybe they should have just stuck with the one genre or infused it with more magic, the escapism of the movie theatre and all that.

Spot the cameo helps pass the two-hour running time, and it has its moments when you think it could be relaxing into a movie that goes somewhere. But it doesn’t.

It’s stupid. But it’s not stupid-stupid. At least you get two Arnies for the price of one in this hit-and-miss deconstruction of action cinema. 

Good poster.

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Sep 22 2023
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Art, Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Technology

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). This is what cinema boils down to. And it’s ….

A behemoth chimp with an affinity for sign language. It wouldn’t be the first time for such a revelation – Koko.

It’s quite average in a pleasing fashion compared with most of the shite you see from these Multiverse/Monsterverse/Whatever worlds. What remains is the excruciating dialogue.

A non-character/cardboard hiree offers an observation regarding a life-changing vignette and a lad (usually a lad) retorts by saying the glaringly obvious.

It goes like this:

“It’s an easy mission, a kid could do it.”

“I hate kids.”

That’s the nature of these loopy exchanges, the gems from the writing room. There is no reason for anyone to spiel stuff like this, but they still do. It’s all confusing.

Just have folk in these flicks not speak, and present them reacting all flummoxed to stomping monsters merely through facial tics.

Good stuff in it: the voice of Lance Reddick (beautiful), and a monkey fighting a lizard on an aircraft carrier was absolutely insane in its realisation.

Is that it?

Watch it for 45 mins and then have a nap.

You won’t remember this film.

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Jan 30 2023
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Art, Fantasy, Film, Music

Love, Death & Robots.

Sonnie’s Edge from season one of Love, Death & Robots, a truly spellbinding visual feast. This was something else. And I don’t just mean the Glaswegian ring announcer. Animation done right.

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Jan 29 2023
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Art, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Music

Game of Thrones season four.

This bloke, he knows:

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Jan 09 2023
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Art, Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Sleepy Hollow (1999).

This has quite the cast, and even Depp is tolerable, an actor who has always vexed me. The highlight from the crowd of mostly lauded thespians has to be Casper Van Dien doing a great impression of a bad actor – therefore playing himself. It’s funny because he’s in on the joke.

In this bizarre wee hamlet, the cinematography, art direction, costumes, and music run riot in a stunning visual and aural feast. However, it’s a hokey story not really worthy of the running time, and it sadly gets tiresome, its convoluted conspiracy trappings a bore. It defines Burton, a bloke always badly in need of a decent screenwriter. An unbridled love for Hammer horror will only take you so far.

Still, it’s all worth it in the end just to see Christopher Walken’s chiselled teeth.

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Jul 23 2022
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Architecture, Art, Cinema, Crime, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Batman (2022).

The definite article annoys me. I don’t like it. At all. Anyway, the movie:

It’s all very well designed and shot. The music choices, from Nirvana to what sounds like a variation of ‘The Imperial March’ from The Empire Strikes Back (1980), are inspired, and a car chase respectfully lifted/stolen from To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) works as well as anything in the Batman canon.

You get to see the lad actually doing detective work, and the role of that nefarious news media we all know, think we need, and varyingly hate is given proper weight in the narrative. It drags a wee bit towards the end, but that’s to be expected with this fare. It’s … interesting. Not bad at all.

And Andy Serkis is a fabulous actor. He’ll most likely be canonised for Gollum and a raging gorilla, but he’s just as good as a human. Most actors are garbage yet succeed because of market forces. The bloke with the Gollum voice needs a leading role. 

If Seagal can make it, Gollum can. 

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Jan 23 2021
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Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Willow (1988). Why did I ever like this?

Another gem from yesteryear best stayed away from, Willow (1988) is embarrassing at times. There’s so much wrong going on, from a village of midgets to Val Kilmer in a dress to the ropy special effects to the overbearing James Horner score which he’s regurgitated for decades. It’s so lethargically paced, badly scripted and ultimately derivative that I’m even questioning the sanity of … myself for once thinking it a decent way to spend two hours.

The characters are some of the most thinly drawn I’ve seen, and so too is the realm or kingdom they inhabit. It’s just lakes and hills and a few castles. Boring. Shockingly, it’s a PG-certificated film. I find this rather beguiling as the violence on display is way too much for the little ones (kids, not midgets). There is one thing to recommend, though: Val Kilmer briefly metamorphoses into a pig.

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Dec 10 2020
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Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is a slog.

Saw this for the first time in decades and bloody hell is it dull. It’s just so boring, which I find rather mental because it’s about UFOs and all that, and Spielberg is a master craftsman. It’s shot here like a TV movie, its depiction of suburbia painfully tedious. Even when the weird-looking critters arrive at the end it’s underwhelming. The only curiosity to be found is the casual appearance of François Truffaut, who is eminently more interesting than those around him.

Something else bothered me about it. It’s so naive, with government agencies portrayed as even being benevolent. What a weird decision, this just after the twin calamities of Watergate and the American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Never watching it again and I do not understand why it’s lauded.

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