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Reviews
Versus (2000)
A film to love for all the wrong reasons
Unpretentious is a good word to describe this movie. If you want flesh eating zombies, gore, fantasy martial arts, explosions and shootouts, all slickly presented and delivered with a tongue in cheek sense of humour, and not too much story to get in the way of the action then this film delivers with a bloody splat.
I saw this film on a double bill with Tetsuro Takeuchi's WILD ZERO, entitled Splat Japan!, and had the crowd cheering and applauding all the way through.
Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000)
Funny TV sketch, painfully dragged out to feature length
This film started promisingly, and for about the first 35 minutes was full of riotously funny humour - but then, it appears that the scriptwriters just ran out of the ideas - So what did they do? They just repeated the same old ones over and over and over again to the point of tedium, where you can see the jokes long before they arrive.
A pretty girl walks past Kevin and Perry - and you just wait for one of them to get an erection for the hundredth time - the same joke was done better in Waynes World (schhhhwing!). A few laughs are saved for the last 5 minutes or so, but this just looked like a what would have been funny as a 30 minute TV show, padded and stretched into a movie.
In the UK, this film has been rated '15', which is a shame as a sizeable proportion of the audience that would most likely appreciate the schoolboy humour is too young to see it at the cinema - They'll probably catch it on TV sooner or later, which is where this film belongs.
The Doom Generation (1995)
Good wholesome fun for the whole family
This film starts off like a typical US indie teen film, but it doesn't take long to realise that we're in for an unusual, unpredictable, and at times downright bizarre ride.
Each introduction of a new character into the film is almost always superceeded by their messy demise, in wildly OTT and darkly satirical ways, that would be more at home in a violent video game, or an Italian splatter movie.
THE DOOM GENERATION is at times hilarious, whilst at other times its bleakness leaves you wondering.
Knock Off (1998)
Switch your brain off and enjoy!
I went to the cinema to see EXISTENZ, but my train was late, so when I got there, this was the only film that hadn't yet started - so I went into the cinema having no clue as to what to expect...
Film snobs will probably turn their noses up at this film - but I thoroughly enjoyed it - and that's coming from someone who usually hates Van Damme films!
Whilst the recent Hollywood movies directed by or starring the leading names from Hong Kong cinema - John Woo, Ringo Lam, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat, have been rather inept, watered down KNOCK OFF's of their oriental predecessors - this film works as it is still, in essence a Hong Kong Action movie, - just one that happens to feature a largely Western cast.
It has little of the usual Van Damme hallmarks - with far less emphasis on the usual high circular kicks, and low sliding punches - the action scenes instead work on brilliant cinematography, good use of slow motion, and post martial-arts gunfighting. It's no THE KILLER by a long shot, but still a competent action movie, and perhaps the first Hollywood film to successfully marry the US and Oriental styles of movie action.
The plot is rather daft, and at times rather confusing - whilst this does let the film down - the alternative would have been to let too much story get in the way of what is primarily an action film.
If you're looking for a film to get out the Oscars for, then you'll be solely disappointed - but KNOCK OFF is an entertaining film to unwind in front of after a busy day. 7/10
Simon