servo-9 Reviews

The Alamo (2004)

A very good film

[8/10 · 26 September 2006]

I am sick of people denigrating films like this. It seems that the average audience member these days is offended by anything that requires a bit of thought. They dismiss characters with any complexity as either cases of "bad acting" or "bad scripting".

I enjoyed The Alamo very much, and my only regret is that the finished version is not longer. I found it absorbing and very satisfying to watch.

Another very fine film, Alexander, got a similar reaction from "critics" and mainstream viewers.

Meanwhile, the simplistic likes of "The Patriot" and "Kingdom of Heaven" are considered to be perfectly fine.

Death Flash (1986)

Crap with capital C, R, A and P

[1/10 · 7 March 2003]

I'm glad there is documentary proof on IMDB that someone else has seen this film. It's so incredibly bad that I have wondered for years if I just dreamt it all. It's hard to see how Zarindast, reputation for woeful movies notwithstanding, could have really been playing this straight. It works as a comedy, being not a million miles from Naked Gun territory at times, but as anything else it is a monstrosity.

Cliche follows misfired stunt follows non-actor cameo follows cliche, etc, etc, ad nauseum, as the incoherent plot stumbles to a violent conclusion.

Structurally, it plays like two unrelated episodes of a very bad TV show. I saw it on Sky Movies in Ireland around 1992, and it was billed as "A cop goes undercover against the Mob", or some such, but the film seems to have nothing at all to do with the Mob. Instead, it seems to be about the kidnap of two glamour models by a bunch of bumbling idiots with machine guns.

The best bit is when our hero zooms across a car park on a motorbike, trying to prevent the bad guys from escaping in a helicopter. They must have done it in one take, because the helicopter has to hover for ages to give our hero time to reach it and then attain a tenable position on the leg things underneath the fuselage. The helicopter rises to an altitude of a couple of hundred feet. The bad guy in the passenger seat just sits there, hands on knees, looking at our hero, apparently unperturbed, until our hero reaches up and throws him to his death. Cuts then to a long shot of a dummy falling from a chopper.

Mysteries from Beyond Earth (1975)

stranger than the mysteries it deals with

[1/10 · 22 May 2000]

This was shown on some American channel several years ago as part of its "100% Weird" series of movies. Essentially its an ineptly assembled assortment of various topics related to the "Unexplained" including UFOs, Black Masses, and (I don't remember specifically, but how could it not?) the Loch Ness Monster.

It begins with a quotation of the opening lines of HG Wells' War of the Worlds spoken over what seems to be some footage of the special effects from Plan 9 from Outer Space. Things fail to pick up thereafter.

I'm Alan Partridge (1997–2002)

It's very malty.

[28 April 1999]

I'm Alan Partridge is probably the most perfect comedic creation of the Nineties. There isn't a single slack moment in the entire 6 episodes. In contrast to Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge, many of the minor characters are as funny as Alan himself, e.g. Michael the Linton Travel Tavern handyman, the estate agent, regional disc jockey Dave Clifton, Alan's number one fan Jed Maxwell, the fitted kitchen man. Father Ted writers Linehan and Matthews appear in episode 5 as executives from RTE.

Hardcase and Fist (1989)

appalling

[1/10 · 15 February 1999]

This film is atrocious, even by the abysmal standards of Tony Zarindast. Hardcase and Fist are two crimefighters with very different styles - Hardcase is a gun-toting, maverick-yet-somehow-by-the-book white cop, while Fist is an enigmatic, inscrutable Chinese martial arts expert who eschews the use of firearms in line with the best traditions of movie cliche. They learn to respect each other's strength and virtue after the usual initial mutual suspicion. The two team up to defeat some implausibly incompetent, classically Zarindastesque bad guys who have kidnapped somebody, or something like that.

Watch out for the brilliantly choreographed gunfight towards the end of the movie when our heroes attack the bad guys' "base" (a bunch of rundown shacks in the middle of some waste ground). It runs thus: Hardcase walks along blithely, gun in hand; single bad guy jumps out from behind a building and shoots twice; misses; Hardcase shoots once; kills bad guy; repeat about 15 times as Hardcase draws closer to whatever the hell it is he's looking for. Best moment: the climactic car chase, which begins with Hardcase in a small car pursuing the chief bad guy, who is driving a station wagon. In the middle of the action, with no explanation offered, the bad guy is suddenly in the small car, and Hardcase is in the station wagon. The chase ends with the bad guy crashing his car into a small river. He emerges from the car on fire, wades through the water to the shore, and promptly burns to death (in slow motion). The awfulness of this movie is so complete, so perfect in every respect, that Tony Zarindast may well be the greatest comedic genius of our time.

The Master (1984)

Lovably lame

[3/10 · 8 February 1999]

Lee van Cleef and Timothy van Patten make lovably lame main characters in this silly "movie" spliced together from two episodes of a 1980's TV series. David MacCallum shows up as an extremely unthreatening international terrorist/kidnapper, and George Lazenby is a cut-price secret agent whose tuxedo seems to be surgically attached to his skin. We're expected to believe that elderly Lee is capable of executing acrobatic somersaults and climbing sheer walls. Tim registers mild annoyance when his mentor and best friend Lee appears to have been buried in a shallow grave.