Good Bloody Morning

Today, I felt a strange urge. My mind kept wandering to the three hundred dollars in my drawer, saved up for complete and utter self-indulgence. I was, basically, wanting to shop. Buy some entertainment. A book, a trade paperback, a game, a movie, whatever would result in a good time.

I failed.

I did try my best. I slid the money into my wallet and waved for a cab. It was a rare case of a woman driver. In case you’re wondering, she drove just fine. She, however, was from the breed of cab drivers who suffer from ISTFU (Incapacity of Shutting The Fuck Up) syndrome. I don’t mind conversation, much to the contrary, but as a firm believer in common sense, I like it to be about something at least vaguely interesting. This woman’s imagination, however, did not stretch past traffic conditions. “I drove this boy the other day…” and what? You were stopped by the police? Caught in the middle of a shootout? Attacked by dinosaurs? “… and we got stuck in traffic for a good time.” Ah. Wow. How utterly uncommon for a cab driver.

Also, she overestimated my hearing, since she spoke in a barely audible volume most of the time. I pretended I was understanding every word by chuckling occasionally and hoping she wasn’t rambling about her dead mother or something.

We finally got to the sodding shopping centre. The fare was R$8,00 (roughly U$4,00). Feeling an unusual wish to do good by my fellow human being, I said in a benevolent tone, “Let’s round it up to ten bucks”.

And she said, “Nah, I got change here” and gave me two bucks.

I decided she was too stupid to deserve the two extra bucks, so I agreed and left the cab; I entered the shopping centre and decided to stop by the game store right on the first floor.

The overpricing in Brazil makes you wonder if the people responsible understand Math at all, because it’s too depressing to consider they might simply be A-Level pricks. The PS3 games range from a hundred bucks (yes, in dollars) to a hundred and fifty. And there was absolutely nothing worth buying for this price — Killzone 2 might, but it hasn’t been released yet.

I decided to see if the game store on the above floor had better prices — but it was even worse. Just as a test, I surveyed the PS2 section and grabbed a game called “Street Fighter – Anniversary Edition”. It brought the classics Street Fighter 2 and 3 in one package — two old games any person with basic computer knowledge can emulate on their PC. “As a matter of curiosity,” I said to the employee, “How much does this cost?”. He checked and replied: “Ninety dollars.”

Very uncomfortable silence.

“How much?” I asked, trying to hold back the incredulity in my voice.

“Ninety dollars,” he repeated without the slightest hint of shame.

I left the place empty-handed, kept going upstairs and reached a book store. I thought it would be an opportune time to hunt down Warren Ellis’ “Crooked Little Vein” novel — which wasn’t translated to Portuguese, but they should have an imported version for an acceptable price. On the original language, without any money having gone into nationalising it — how much could it cost?

However, the book store’s system was down and the employees were trying to kick it into starting. While I waited for them to do that, I randomly surveyed the book shelves.

I still cannot understand what a number of perfectly excellent comic books like “Planetary” were doing in the “RPG” section.

I tried finding “Crooked Little Vein” on my own. A sign said the shelves were organised by the author’s surname in alphabetic order.

Were they bollocks. So when the system was finally working, I asked an employee for help. After slowly spelling him the title of the book and the author’s name, he told me the book wasn’t available — except for order. But I wasn’t listening. My eyes were gaping at the book’s price on the computer screen.

A hundred and ten dollars.

A HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS.

And to add insult to enormous bloody injury, the bastard said the order would take at least ELEVEN WEEKS. And he said all this with a deadpan expression, as matter-of-factly as possible.

Before leaving, I noted the shelves weren’t organised alphabetically. Which he confirmed firmly, in a “and we’re going to do fuck all about that” tone. I also noted the comic books were in the “RPG” section. Same answer. I briefly fantasized about my fist penetrating his eyeball, but didn’t let that through my innocent facial expression.

So I left the store, ate some spaghetti for lunch (nothing went wrong in this bit, thankfully) and, defeated, descended the stairs to the first floor. On the way, I noticed a bit of a depressing sight.

Two escalators, one next to the other, one level with one another, both leading to the same floor — and both going up. I hated humanity in silence as I made my way across the entire second floor to a proper couple of escalators, one of them going down as it was supposed to.

Determined to try my best, I went to another book store on the way home. Now, understand, this was a BOOK STORE. The previous one also sold DVDs. This one was a motherfucking BOOK STORE. Nothing but books. Just books. ONLY. BOOKS.

Not only they didn’t have “Crooked Little Vein”, they also practically had no comics.

I made my way home on foot under searing heat, fantasizing about any person that went past me being shot, stabbed, drowned, hanged, thrown off a cliff, a combination of all of those and also raped by a bear.

A feeling that got even worse when I got home and checked the price of “Crooked Little Vein” on amazon.com.

Sixteen fucking dollars.

I hate this country.

Medicine

Grudge

Rorschach

Academy Awards Night

I’ll be commenting live on Twitter.

I’ll try to gather everything here later.

Movie Review – Punisher: War Zone

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450314/

When it comes to Hollywood, it seems that the simpler the concept, the more they fuck up. There’s been six movies about a man who dresses up as a giant bat and fights villains like a penguin-like crime boss or a murderer who dresses up as a clown — and out of those six movies, only the two directed by Joel Schumacher aren’t above average (in fact, are as far below the average as the center of the planet is from the top of the Everest).

And then we’ve got a vigilante who is simply in a constant state of anger and kills criminals because criminals killed his family.

Period.

And Hollywood has consistently failed to get him right, even though recently Garth Ennis did on the comics with his phenomenal “Punisher Max” series. And even basing the movie on those comics has resulted in yet another failure.

First, we had the 1989 Punisher, who was played by Dolph Lundgren. I could go on, but it’s unecessary. Dolph Lundgren.

Then, in 2004, Thomas Jane did a good job as Frank Castle but the script and the direction failed by not only choosing Tampa for a location instead of New York City, but by having poor dialogue and badly-chosen characters — who worked well on Ennis’ comics but not in the film.

And finally, after two movies that were practically a manual on how not to make a Punisher film, director Lexi Alexander and screenwriters Nick Santora, Kurt Sutter, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (the latter two wrote the exceptional “Iron Man”) started working on a new movie with Ray Stevenson, famous as Titus Pullo from the HBO series “Rome” (which I have not yet watched). This time, it looked like it was going to work. A seemingly dedicated director, two writers from “Iron Man”, another two from acclaimed TV shows like “Prison Break” and “The Wire”, two movies’ worth of experience so they wouldn’t make the same mistakes…

… and the result is another failure, if still the best Punisher movie yet.

Screenwriter Kurt Sutter left the project (which is why he’s uncredited) claiming they had decided to make a superhero movie instead of a crime drama. He was absolutely correct. Very loosely based on the comic series — I mean, on the characters of the comic series “Punisher Max”, the plot is about Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, accidentally killing an undercover FBI agent. Feeling guilty, he decides to retire — but while he tries to make up for the man’s widow and orphan, Billy Russoti, aka Jigsaw, gets an army together to kill the vigilante, who ruined his face – hence his nickname.

Sounds like a down-to-earth plot, correct? Sadly, the creative team failed to understand the Punisher at all — even the 2004 movie portrayed his methods better. Let’s describe the first action scene, shall we?

A group of mob bosses are having dinner. The lights go out. The Punisher appears on the middle of the table, lighting a red flare. Very good theatrics, but I don’t think surrounding yourself with armed mob bosses is good combat strategy. Luckily, the mob bosses seem to be idiots, since they just sit there while the Punisher calmly walks up to capo-de-tutti-capi Massimo Cesare and cuts his entire head off with a single slice of his combat knife — since the creative team of this film apparently believes it’s easy to cut a man’s head clean off. With a knife, no less.

The Punisher then proceeds to wrestle with Cesare’s wife, who was the only person at a table with ARMED MEN to pull a gun — so he breaks her neck while everyone gasps, still not understanding that he plans to kill them ALL. The lights return for some reason and now the Punisher is in the middle of a room surrounded by men who finally drew their weapons. So what does he do? He climbs on a chandelier, hangs upside down from it with two sub-machineguns and spins while shooting at the army of wiseguys that enters the room.

…

Let me repeat this.

He climbs on a chandelier, hangs upside down from it with two sub-machineguns and spins while shooting at the army of wiseguys that enters the room. And the funniest thing? He doesn’t miss a single one, because hanging upside-down is seemingly very good for one’s accuracy. And the wiseguys, of course, are unable of hitting a stationary target in the middle of a dining room. An upside-down stationary target.

And incredibly, the movie isn’t a disaster, because it manages to be more entertaining than the two previous Punisher films combined. Despite the preposterousness, the action scenes are well-edited and surprisingly violent — Lexi Alexander does not subscribe to the Tony Scott style of directing, which consists of putting the camera inside a blender and hoping it will capture some interesting footage. The violence is the source of some great dark humor that would probably make Ennis proud — although I suspect it’s the only thing that would make Ennis proud in this film.

For no good artistic reason (but pretty good financial ones), the screenwriters decided to use the names and likenesses of Ennis’ characters in “Punisher: War Zone” — however, their film versions are very shallow versions of their interesting original selves. Maginty is a drug addict and parkour artist, Soap is a complete idiot but not in a fun way, Budiansky is the typical by-the-book cop who wants to do the right thing, Pittsy is an actually quite calm right-hand-man while Ink is an eager kid. All of these characters could have used completely new names, but instead, the creative team decided to waste them in deluxe cameos, so the fans would go “look, it’s from the comic!”.

Then we’ve got the cringe-worthy acting. The scenery-chewing award goes to Dominic West, an absolutely horrendous Jigsaw. Resorting to cliches, like grabbing his girlfriend by the neck because she touched his precious hair just to show how evil he is, he’s unable of speaking his lines without twisting his face in ten different versions of scowling. Being covered in make-up does not improve his work. Colin Salmon is pathetic as Budiansky, insisting on looking badass or rolling his eyes whenever the law is bent. Julie Benz can’t do much with her limited widow, and Doug Hutchinson refuses to add any depth to Loony Bin Jim and simply scowls at everything looking psychotic. The rest of the supporting cast follows the same line.

Ray Stevenson manages to hold his ground as Frank Castle, but Thomas Jane remains the best interpreter of the character so far, because Stevenson is forced by the creative team to smile sometimes and, well, to hang upside down from a chandelier. Marlon fucking Brando would have a hard time with this Frank Castle. His costume does not help either, since this version of the character thinks it’s effective to be covered head to toes in heavy body armor that makes him look like a reject from the game “Gears of War”.

With so much bad dialogue, irregular direction and poor characterization, how is “Punisher: Warzone” the best Punisher film yet?

One of the main reasons is the stupendous cinematography — if this was a better movie, it could actually be nominated for an academy award in this aspect. The frames are incredibly well-composed and the colours are strong and oppressive– usually yellow, red, orange, green and other “pure” tones dominate the visuals, creating an interesting New York City. Despite some poor frames chosen by Lexi Alexander (the low angle showing the Punisher on the chandelier — and in slow motion), the cinematography is pure eye-candy from beggining to end. There’s always something interesting to look at.

The aforementioned action scenes might be preposterous, but always easy to follow and there are some truly excellent moments, like the fantastic camera movement that shows a wall between the Punisher and an army of wiseguys — and the Punisher’s tactic to clear the room is great. I also applaud the violence, which is more than appropriate, despite Alexander resorting to some very gratuitous moments like a guy on a toilet having his head randomly blown away. However, the scene Castle casually kills an unarmed man with a shotgun, startling Budiansky, is one of the best scenes of the film.

Also, despite some poor choices, Alexander does not lose track of the narrative — it might be weak, but she keeps her eye on the ball. I particularly like the scene where Micro predicts that Castle will come back to his doorstep just seconds after leaving — he even counts “three, two, one…”. And this movie, to my utter surprise, has some of the best dramatic moments in the Punisher series.

No, seriously. I was baffled myself.

The scene where The Punisher watches the widow’s child playing with the toys of his deceased kids is poignant and doesn’t resort to any cliches or exaggerations. And when faced with a choice between the lives of two friends, in the film’s climax, Castle makes the choice the Castle from the comics would no doubt make.

But this is counter-balanced by Castle’s slight smile when he destroys Jigsaw’s face (The Punisher isn’t interested in torturing his enemies, just in killing them – also, he doesn’t smile) and his poor combat methods, which makes it ridiculous how he manages to kill armies of wiseguys and remain mostly intact.

And finally, the movie actually seems to PRAISE Castle.

Yes, he might kill horrible criminals, but he is also a VERY sick man — an ambiguity the film doesn’t seem interested in acknowledging — and even the characters come to AGREE with his methods toward the end, saying he’s “one of the good guys”. And if Castle had said “No I’m not” and walked away, this ambiguity would have been recognized and enriched the film. However, he doesn’t. And we’re left with the impression The Punisher is somehow the “solution” to crime.

Despite being very flawed, “Punisher: War Zone” is a surprisingly entertaining, visceral film with beautiful cinematography, excellent technical aspects and some moments that make it worth watching. But it is far from the cinematic potential a character like The Punisher has, and it pointlessly wastes many good characters created by Garth Ennis or improved by him in some way.

Movie Review – Coraline (non-3D version)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327597/

Violence and strong imagery can be suggested implicitly; “Coraline” does this so well it manages to be creepier and scarier than most of Hollywood’s horror output. It’s a terror film for every age — it doesn’t insult anyone’s intelligence. It’s absolutely freaking charming in its spookiness, visual design and imagination. It already starts with a doll having its buttons (representing her eyes) taken off her face, and her “mouth” ripped open — an image with an obvious violent undertone, but nothing more serious than a simple object being meddled with.

Coraline is a whiny young girl, but she has a reason: having just moved to a house she dislikes and with parents who are grumpily immersed in their work, she has nobody to talk to but her strange neighbor, a kid brilliantly called Whyborne, two eccentric old ladies and an old, overweight acrobat . Trying desperately to find something to do, Coraline discovers a door that leads to the same house — only its inhabitants are happy, successful versions of the people from the real house. Her father and mother, especially, are loving and caring. Another difference is that all of them have buttons instead of eyes. That’s when Coraline finds out that, in order to be able to stay in the house forever, she needs to sew the buttons to her own eyes – literally.

Written and directed by Henry Selick (no, not Tim freaking Burton), the director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (no, it wasn’t directed by Tim freaking Burton, for crying it loud), based on the book by Neil Gaiman, “Coraline” is a creepy film. With a mostly greyish cinematography, it strongly portrays the poor girl’s loneliness while, at the same time, showing signs of her selfish, attention-craving behaviour. The art direction, which is motherloving phenomenal, also contributes to this with the house she lives in, which is empty and devoid of life (especially her furniture-deprived bedroom), and the character design – her mother and father both have bags under their tired eyes and slouched stances. The acrobat has a prominent, hairy belly and the two eccentric old ladies, a collection of dogs — stuffed dead dogs that they didn’t have the heart to bury (this leads to one of the darkest and funniest jokes in the film, when one of the old ladies is sewing a pair of wings). To make things worse, they’re both weird-looking – one is fat and rugged, the other has freaking huge breasts.

However, the other world is completely different. Colorful and magical, it’s no wonder Coraline is enchanted by it – everyone wants to make her happy there. They seem to have no other goal, even personal ones — something Coraline, in her selfish young mind, fails to notice. But this world gradually reveals itself something entirely different, and this is where the art direction truly shines (the visual of the “other mother” is quite an image).

Full of suggestive scenes, this film is at the same time innocent and cruel – and extracts humour from this attitude, with cannons that fire cotton candy and nearly-nude women who turn out to be wearing costumes of nearly nude women (I could hear the parents gasping in the theatre, than being guiltily relieved when they see they’re just costumes — a touch of genius from the film). The movie acknowledges its obvious Lewis Carroll influence through the black cat that is capable of moving between worlds, as the legend says they do.

If the visuals and the art direction alone are imaginative and brilliant (not to mention the exceptional soundtrack), the same can be said of the animation achieved via the charming stop-motion technique. The characters have appropriate facial expressions and their movement reflects their mood and personality. Henry Selick added some digital touches to it, but nothing that outshines the animation at all. Wisely, however, he does not rely on the animators alone, choosing beautifully-composed camera angles — and the camera isn’t static, either; like the characters, it moves around as well (which is not easy to do in stop-motion).

Selick has no trouble with Neil Gaiman’s wittily dark sense of humour either, adapting it to film smoothly – the aforementioned stuffed dogs, the old woman’s humongous breasts, Whyborne’s name — it all creates an enchanting universe and easily made me care about those characters — which is vital to make the film tense.

And it is. While filmmakers like Eli Roth seem to believe the more blood on the screen, the scariest it’ll be, Selick and Gaiman know that tension is created by putting a character we care about in a seemingly unsolvable, dangerous situation — which is what happens to poor Coraline. In “Hostel”, I couldn’t seriously give two poos about the protagonist being trapped in a torture chamber — but I certainly hoped that Coraline could escape from that faux-wonderland and go back to her monotonous, but undeniably real life.

As for the cast, which includes the talented Dakota Fanning — I can’t say, because this is a “kiddie film” and therefore dubbed in Portuguese. I have to say the Portuguese voiceovers surprised me — they are even worse than I thought they would be. Fortunately, that didn’t come even close to ruining the film.

“Oh, but IS ‘Coraline’ a kiddie film indeed? I hear it’s quite scary for kids…” It’s scary for everyone. What’s wrong with that? Don’t kids love being scared? Aren’t fairy tales quite scary? Isn’t Red Riding Hood’s grandmother eaten by a huge wolf? And that is in the re-told, “sanitized” version of the tale, which is originally far, far worse and more gruesome.

No, “Coraline” is a terrific film. It’s imaginative, fun and charming in a delightfully spooky way. It’s an adventure that any person can enjoy. Its imagery, however strong and whatever it implies, is implicit; like the swearwords in this review. So take your kids, take your own butt as well and have some fun.

Movie Review – W.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1175491

What an interesting idea for a dark sitcom: a complete hillbilly moron somehow becomes president of the most powerful nation in the world and proceeds to fuck up repeatedly for staggeringly long eight years, causing the deaths of thousands of people — four thousand of them, his own people.

“W.” is a movie that rubs hard in our face that this actually fucking happened.

Directed by a back-to-form Oliver Stone (after the historical and narrative mess that was “Alexander” – and I haven’t watched “World Trade Center”) and written by Stanley Weiser, the movie portrays the personality of George W. Bush Jr., from his young and irresponsible years to his old and… still irresponsible years as president of the USA, featuring the team that surrounded him and manipulated him like a puppet throughout his two terms. Instead of doing what most filmmakers would do — which is to simplify the monumental fuck-up that his presidency was by blaming it all on Jr., Weiser and Stone, wisely and bravely, decide to show Bush as a well-meaning, but chronically dumb and reckless playboy who couldn’t tell North from South with the help of a GPS and a guy pointing the way.

In fact, many have said “W.” is a surprisingly “sympathetic” view of Bush — which leads me to believe these people are blind. The entire film is buried in irony, from the soundtrack that mocks Bush’s decisions and motivations, to his famous mispronunciations and infamous quotes (“Is our children learning?”), to the quick shot where Condoleeza Rice helps him find Iraq on a map. Bush isn’t, and never was, the anti-Christ, and the creative team knows that. The blame is carefully distributed to the members of Bush’s team in an accurate manner.

Colin Powell, for example, initially goes against the Iraq War, unable to understand what good is there in attacking a country that represents no threat and that had nothing to do with nine-eleven — until cowering before his colleagues and going along with the plan. Rumsfeld is seen a conservative, simple-minded bastard who doesn’t seem to think before speaking and when he does, never has anything deep to say. Condoleeza Rice is an ass-kisser and Karl Rove, the “wordsman” who does his best to tailor Bush’s speeches into something that makes him sound like he’s got something resembling a brain within his skull.

And there’s Dick Cheney, undoubtedly the moving force behind all those dickheads — the smartest of the bunch and the worst of them all. Always seen in silence, as if planning something, or speaking in a seductive, clear manner, he easily convinces that batch of jerks the vantage point that Iraq represents (oil, of course). Played by the brilliant Richard Dreyfuss without a single hint of exaggeration, it’s painful to see how he looks down at Bush while allowing him to believe he’s the one making the decisions, not a stupid puppet.

Speaking of painful, to see Brad Pitt being nominated to an academy award for a personality-deprived Forrest-Gump-aging-backwards character and Josh Brolin being ignored for this phenomenal performance is simply depressing. Yes, Brolin got nominated as supporting actor for “Milk”, but that doesn’t cut it. I tried, just as a test, to keep in mind that I was watching an actor play George Bush, not George Bush himself. But I couldn’t. It was like watching Jr. himself, with his accent, and his walk and his stupid, stupid eyes. Brolin becomes Bush for the duration of the movie and never lets go of the illusion. A performance I dare call perfect.

The rest of the cast manages to keep up with Brolin, though. The excellent James Cromwell, despite not looking much like George Bush I, is comfortable in the role. Toby Jones is an impeccable Karl Rove, Thandie Newton is appropriate as Condoleeza Rice and Scott Glenn is a fittingly pathetic Rumsfeld. Ellen Burstyn shines as Barbara Bush and Elizabeth Banks, although limited by the lack of depth of her character (Laura Bush), does well. Everyone in the cast keeps the ball rolling, not letting Brolin take the spotlight, which results in a very powerful sense of immersion — the feeling of actually being a witness to the real-life versions of these pricks discussing their next fuck-up.

Oliver Stone goes for a discreet, but energetic direction, rarely allowing us to notice his hand at work — and when he does, it’s hard not to admire his narrative choices — like the brilliant moment when he focuses on Bush from a low angle and a circular lamp in the ceiling forms what looks like an angel’s halo above the man’s head, in one of the most sarcastic frame compositions in the film. With competent editing and pacing, Stone portrays Bush’s gaffes as funny and depressing at the same time — and when music plays during a scene, it’s either mocking the ex-president — or emphasizing his failure as a human being, in a way that makes you think, “How did this guy ever make it to that job?”. Not to mention the awkward, poignant moment Bush meets the injured soldiers back from Iraq and we catch but a glimpse of the war’s expensive human cost.

There’s a particularly intelligent symbolism as well — occasionally, Stone will cut to a dreamlike moment showing Bush in the middle of an empty baseball stadium, smiling as he’s applauded by thousands of invisible people, in an effective metaphor of his desire to be loved. And the way Stone uses this metaphor in the very end of the film is merciless and couldn’t be more appropriate.

With good technical values, wit and pacing, “W.” is a film that entertained me and provoked me while I watched it but, after it was over, all I could think was…

How the fuck did this actually happen?

But it did.

Movie Review – Darkman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099365/

Before Sam Raimi reached stardom with Spider-Man 1 and 2 (Third film? What third film? There’s no third film. Shut up.), he directed “B” movies — “Evil Dead”, despite its microscopic budget, turned out to be a much scarier production than most of the “A” stuff Hollywood put out. “Darkman”, however, has no intention to be more than it is — a staggeringly cheesy comic book film that’s not even based on a real comic book (long story involving copyright).

Peyton Westlake — okay, pause. I feel I have to stress this is a funny name for Portuguese speakers, since “Peyton” sounds similar to “peitos” — which means “boobies” — so I get extra cheesiness. Anyway, Peyton Westlake (hahaha) is a scientist who is trying to crack the secret to make his lab-created skin cells last more than 99 minutes (hahaha). He comes into possession of important papers belonging to his future wife. Right when he finds out the cells do not deteriorate in the dark for some utterly arbitrary reason, a group of thugs after the papers kick the living shit out of Peyton — so hard that it reminded me of Nordberg in “The Naked Gun”. But the thugs, not satisfied with destroying Peyton’s lab, scarring him, crippling him and killing his best friend, decide to blow everything up as well. Peyton hilariously survives the explosion — his good looks, however, don’t.

Having had his nerves destroyed by the doctors so he could stand the pain, this somehow gives him extra strength — MUCH extra strength –, psychosis, a bad temper and the awesome power of speaking clearly with no lips and half his face missing. Determined to get his revenge, Peyton (hahaha) mounts his own lab with wreckage from his previous lab (which apparently wasn’t very damaged by the monumental explosion) and starts building masks of his enemies with his skin cell technology — only when exposed to light, the masks last just 99 minutes. He also tries building a mask of himself pre-explosion so he can see his would-be-future-wife without making her flee from his horrible figure.

If subtlety was a person, Sam Raimi would be hitting it with a sledgehammer for the entire duration of this film. Every emotional moment is portrayed by yelling, screaming, bellowing and yelling more. Forcing then-unknown Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand to act with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old on cocaine, Raimi does not allow a single scene to go by without an elaborate camera movement or a scene with heavy editing, superimposing an image over the other — especially when he wants to portray Peyton’s meltdowns.

However, this coma-inducing amount of cheesiness seems to be exactly Raimi’s intention — to avoid subtlety at all costs and make heavy use of exaggeration to create an intense (and very funny) experience. He succeeds — “Darkman” is a film that holds your attention and makes you laugh either at the horrible acting, the pitiful use of blue screen or the abominable editing. The villain is, of course, COMPLETELY evil and with no redeeming factors whatsoever, the henchmen have the IQ of your average broomstick and Peyton’s psychosis doesn’t seem to interfere with his intelligence, since he manages to plan his moves well when he’s not screaming.

The action scenes are, as you would expect, nuts. They have the occasional good stuntwork and one or other memorable moment, but they’re plagued by the weak special effects. Raimi also seems decided not to show any violence — even thought the protagonist’s face (or lack of it) is visible most of the time, hypocritically. However, Raimi does show hints of the energy and craftsmanship that would later show in the Spider-Man Trilog — eeer, in the Spider-Man films. The two films. The first two and only films.

Not much else to say, really. With actually competent cinematography, make-up and a remarkably exaggerated soundtrack by Danny Elfman, “Darkman” is cheesy fun. The good kind of bad film.

Happy Birthday, Warren Ellis

Well, look who’s turned 41 (or 104, according to himself). Warren Ellis, the writer of comics like Transmetropolitan, Orbiter and other masterpieces. May he have many years of good writing and hating the Welsh.