Saturday 30 March 2013

#91 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987) (Colin)


Regular readers of my blog will know that I like to start by going slightly off topic and this blog is no exception. Actually I'm going to start with a bombshell and its a doozy! Whilst researching for this movie, (yes I research and yes you would have thought I'd be more accurate then), I discovered that Superman is played by Christopher Reeve. I've been calling him Christopher Reeves for 30 odd years. So there you go, Christopher Reeves real name is Christopher Reeve. Who'd a thought it?

Oh, and in the 50's TV series, Superman was played by George Reeves. Which I never got wrong. So that's OK then. Me wondering if they were related looks a bit silly now, but that's my issue, not yours.

Anyway, back to the blog and at #91 on our list, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.

Come to think off it is it Cliff Richard or Cliff Richards?


In 1983, after completion of Superman III, everyone involved in the production pretty much thought, 'that's it', and why not? After all, the first 3 films were a big commercial success. Superman, the original film, is a classic and a great re-imagining of the origins. Superman II was fantastic, although to paraphrase 'Family Guy', 'Did you just throw cellophane at me? What's that all about, that's like mildly inconvenienced me!'. Superman III had it's critics, not least Reeve himself, but I liked the comedy and the fact it was not taking itself too seriously. Also Richard Pryor is just damn good, period!

So if the producers of the original trilogy, Alexander and Ilya Salkind, were thinking to themselves, 'we've done all we can do here', then I think few would have disagreed.  A great original and 2 not so shabby sequels under their belt, the decision not to tarnish the franchise would have been sound. Unfortunately, money has an annoying way of changing things.

Canon Films and Warner thought that the Salkinds were missing a great money making opportunity to carry on cashing in on the Superman name and so made an offer to buy the rights, which they accepted. Licence in hand, all they then needed to do was convince a reluctant Reeve to reprise the role. Our old friend money changed his mind and with the promise of co-writing the script and backing for a solo project, Reeve dusted off his cape and enormous specs and agreed. The rest of the cast quickly followed.

Almost immediately into production, the studio cut the budget!  They were currently supporting 30 other projects and so had spread themselves very thinly.  I would like to say that this had no effect on the movie and that the director and producers managed to work around this.  I would like to say it but I would be lying as it so clearly did and what was produced was a diluted shadow of its former self.

In an earlier blog, I mentioned the annoying trend of movies from the 80's to use eco issues for their storylines.  During this period, nuclear threats and the Cold War were also used ad nauseum.  Red Dawn, FirefoxRocky IV, ('If he dies, he dies!') and many others all had and so Superman IV decided to jump on this already very crowded bandwagon.



The films gets off to it's very familiar start.  John Williams music blasts out, the usual font and styling of the opening of the other movies is used and you feel that you are in a nice warm safe place and about to enjoy another 90 minutes of superhero action.  Maybe this is why by the end of the movie you feel so let down, because by the mid way point, you realise the gig is up and this is a far poorer product than previously.  (In fact the opening titles tells us that this is a Furie film.  How right they were as you do feel like performing an act of irrational violence throughout).

We start with Clark going back to his hometown, Smallville and back to the farm he grew up on.  Obviously Clark being a very busy Superman, has completely forgotten about the spaceship he originally came to earth in and re-discovers it hidden beneath a trap door in a barn.  Within is a glowly thing which Clark is told he must use only once and then the spaceship dies and disappears.  By which point I'm thinking lucky spaceship getting to leave the movie so quickly.  Clark puts his glowy thing away and we are, off course, meant to forget this has happened and to act surprised when it is used later in the movie.  Clark then bumps into an old family friend who then embark on the traditional, 'Clark is a bit clumsy and slow, but when people's back are turned, he can do the same task but with superhuman strength and speed', gag.

This time it is the turn of Clark playing baseball and the old family friend pitches the ball to Clark which off course Clark swipes and misses.  Ha ha ha, he so clumsy.  Then, after the old family friend, (who I am sure has a name, but I can't be arsed to look it up), drives off, Clark picks up the ball, tosses it in the air and then smashes it out of the earth's orbit, where it narrowly misses Chris Waddles 1990 penalty shot.  Ha ha ha, but really he so strong.  I guess this makes the film nice and familiar again, but really, it has been done to death and better and could have been left out.


We then have couple of sub plots happening.  Lex Luthor, (again, played by Gene Hackman, who really looks like he doesn't want to be there.  I suspect, however, our old mate wonga has made an appearance), is broken out of prison by his nephew Lenny, (played by Two and a Half Men's Jon Cryer.  At this point, I must apologies to Cryer as I said that in Two and a Half Men, he plays the most pointless, humourless character I have ever seen. He actually plays the 2nd worst, Lenny being the new champ.).  This involves a 'hilarious' radio controlled car, (real car, not toy), in which the prison guards get trapped, driven off a cliff, explode and then crawl out dusting themselves down like they have just stepped into an episode of The 'A' Team.

Men!

The other sub plot is the Daily Planet has been bought by a tabloid owner who now wants to take this quality newspaper and turn it into a red top rag.  Actually, the Daily Planet being a quality paper is something I dispute as it only seems to only report stories about Superman.  It's like the world outside of Metropolis does not exist.  Now for me, this sort of inward looking and failing to acknowledge the outside world from an American newspaper is just too far fetched and out there for me to comprehend.  Oh, hang on, wait......

With every 'plot' for the movie set in place the main plot is revealed, the Nuclear arms race.  The American government announces they are going to step up their Nuclear defense systems.  This is in response to the Russians doing something or other, but the end result is a kid, called Jeremy, decides that Superman should step in and get rid of all the nuclear weapons and so writes him a letter asking so.  A reluctant Superman at first does not reply to Jeremy, prompting the Daily Planet to run the headline, 'Superman Says Drop Dead To Kid'.  Now I must admit the kid is annoying, but I think this is a tad harsh.

Superman then has a moral dilemma of does he or does he help.  Apparently he is not supposed to interfere in Human life, (erm, but has he not preciously done that for the last 75 years?), so he consults the world's largest magic 8 ball, The Fortress of Solitude, as to what he should do.  The elders, (or whatever they're called), seem about as interested as Hackman and say, 'yeah, why not' and so Superman collects all the nuclear weapons in a giant space net and hurls them into space.  And the earth is saved and this was a very short film.  Oh no, unfortunately it carries on.


Lex Luthor who is not only a criminal genius but now also a geneticist, comes up with a plan to create a superhuman from Superman's DNA, a nuclear weapon and the sun.  In the Metropolis museum, a strand of Superman's hair is in a glass case and is hanging and supporting a 1,000lb weight.  OK, so this I get, sort off, in that Superman is strong, so his hair is strong and can support a heavy load.  However, Luthor then proceeds to steal the strand of hair by cutting it free with a Wilkinson's bolt cutter.  It looks frankly as sharp as the Kardashians at a pub quiz.  But steal it, he does, as well as a nuclear weapon, which he puts the hair into and then fires the weapon.  Superman, stops the weapon and throws it into the sun and from this a new superhuman is born....Nuclear Man!  Ahem.

Nuclear Man, who has the special power of growing his fingernails, looks like an 80's wrestler.  I think he looks like Lex Lugor, but I realise this could get confusing, so I'll call him Nuclear Manicure instead.  Nuclear Manicure is played by Mark Pillow, (actually maybe it should be Nuclear Manure?), but is voiced by Hackman.  This suggests to me that Pillow was not a great actor and that this was hastily done to rescue the character.  Pillow however is not a 'bad' baddie and can gurn and look menacing enough whilst wearing tight pants to be a convincing super villain.  The problem is rather with the actual character itself.  It really is naff, unimaginative and sort of done in Superman III when Superman faced an evil version of himself.  There were, originally, 2 nuclear mans but 1 was cut from the final film.  I suppose that at least means we didn't get disappointed twice.

So it then plods along to a good vs evil ending.  Superman gets scratched by Nuclear Man, (oh, the bitch) and ends up getting radiation poisoning.  Luckily the glowy thing we had all forgotten about cures him.  Which is handy as almost immediately he is called on to save The Daily Planet's new owner's daughter, Lacy, (Mariel Hemingway), who gets kidnapped by Nuclear Man.  This leads me to one of the films most glaring errors in which Nuclear Man takes Lacy into space and the lack of atmosphere / oxygen / breathable substance does not seem to affect our Lacy and she carries on breathing quite happily.  (The lack of atmosphere is off course apparent throughout the whole movie, so she was probably used to it by then).

Does Superman defeat Nuclear Man and save the day.  Well off course he does and after popping Lex Luthor back in prison, he heads off the UN Headquarters, (Milton Keynes) and makes a resounding speech about how we should all love each other or something and then, to my relief, the credits roll.

Back up Colin, is the UN Headquarters in Milton Keynes?  I thought it was in New York.  You are right Colin, it is in New York and this brings me to the conclusion of why this movie just did not work and I briefly mentioned it earlier.  The films budget was slashed and so they cut corners and it shows...... badly.  Rather than getting a permit to film outside the UN Headquarters in New York, which they could have done as a lot of the movie was filmed in New York, they decided to use some industrial estate in Milton Keynes as the 'perfect' backdrop.  Why?  Because it was a hell of a lot cheaper.  But why do it?  Why not just move the speech to somewhere else in New York or even at the Daily Planet's headquarters.  At least we would know that he is still in New York and clearly not in the freezing drizzle of a grey trading estate in England.


Locations were cut and so were the special effects.  Superman's flying, which actually looked pretty good in the first film some 9 years earlier, looks bloody awful.  He has a permanent blue hue around him from the blue screen effects.  Superman remains in sharp focus, whereas the background is blurry and moves erratically.  I would like to say, well it was 1987 and effects weren't as good back then, but that's bollocks.  Star Trek TNG had started in the same year, with less budget and looked a million times better.  Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Blade Runner all were 80's movies, all had decent special effects and all were wayyyyy better than this movie, (yes, some of the effects have aged in these movies, but seriously, watch some of this film and I think you would agree that some B movies had better effects).

At no point, though, is the lack of money more evident than in the closing fighting scenes between Superman and Nuclear Man on the moon.  First problem, the wires are so painfully evident that they might as well have come with a large neon sign with 'WIRES' and a large arrow.  It really is poor and I remember looking so carefully at the first 3 movies for them and not seeing them once.  Then bang, they are right in your face.  Lastly is the effect for 'space' itself which is very clearly a big black curtain.  I say very clearly because you can see the damn thing ruffling and moving!  What should have been a climatic finale to a cinematic experience ends up looking cheaper than the effects on 'Button Moon'.  Honestly a baked bean can and a funnel would have have been like CGI to these guys.

And that is the problem, there was simply no money in the end to make it and quite frankly they should have abandoned the project.  The first 3 films were good and they should have just let these stand alone in this version of the franchise.  However, the desire for a quick buck blinded everyone involved and even after it was so painfully clear that what was being created was simply not good enough, they all ploughed on.  At the end of the day, no-one, not even Superman could have saved this movie.......







Wednesday 20 March 2013

#91 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (Wes)



#91 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Firstly I should point out that I’m a massive comic book geek, so you’d think that this movie would be right up my alley. Unfortunately I absolutely HATE Superman. Sure he’s had his moments, the first Superman movie and the death of Superman storyline being the two best. I enjoyed Superman 2 (but only because General Zod was awesome), Smallville and even The New Adventures of Superman TV show (although that was mostly due to Teri Hatcher). But as a Superhero he’s too invulnerable, he has too many powers. Writers have always struggled to come up with decent stories for him and this film is a perfect example of that.
After Superman (Christopher Reeve) rescues a Soviet space mission (whilst somehow knowing how to speak Russian), Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet. He finds out that a tycoon has taken over the newspaper and is trying to turn it into a sensationalist rag (much like The Daily Mail). Then the news breaks that the USA and the Soviet Union have failed in a peace summit and that the USA are ensuring to be first in the arms race, so a schoolboy writes to Superman asking him to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Being conflicted about what he should do, Superman consults his Kryptonian elders in the Fortress of Solitude and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). Eventually Superman decides to destroy all the missiles and collects them up and hurls them into the sun. While this is happening Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is broken out of prison by his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer) and together they steal a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum. Using this they make a genetic gloop that when attached to a missile that Superman throws into the sun, somehow creates the new villain Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), whose only weakness is that he becomes useless when there is no sun to power him. Nuclear Man and Superman fight and I long for X-ray vision to see if there’s anything more to this plot.

Once again we have a dreadful plot that just doesn’t excite in the way a superhero movie should. From a little research, I found out that about 45 minutes was actually cut from this movie after the test screenings that may have tied up some of the plot holes. Of course it may have just left me to get angrier and angrier as nothing much happened for a further three quarters of an hour, and I should probably be really thankful for this (I was).
Of course there are moments when Superman has to save the day, but these are just tired and formulaic. Stopping a runaway subway train, plugging a volcano and preventing the Statue of Liberty from being dropped on New York. Wait, no. Metropolis. That’s it. That’s the city that this is based in. It even had its name in a caption at the bottom of the screen when New York was first shown. No, wait, when Metropolis was first shown…..

Worst of all the disaster saves, involves Superman repairing the Great Wall of China with telekinesis, this seriously has to be seen to believe how bad it is, so I found it on YouTube for you all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfwHe0NqVvY . He also uses this power to save some people that Nuclear Man makes float for some reason, since when was Superman able to do this? Doesn’t he have enough superpowers as it is? Absolute tripe.
This movie has some absolutely baffling moments in its story too. Not least is the moment where Nuclear Man decides to kidnap Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway - granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway) and fly her into space. Now this would possibly make sense if he was trying to kill her by freezing her to death or suffocating her, but it seems that all the alcohol that Ernest Hemingway drank was passed onto her genetically and she was wearing the most effective beer jacket ever made. Also it seems to give her the ability to breathe in space.
 
So here comes one of the biggest problems with Superman, and something I just can’t get over... Why can nobody spot that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person? This has bugged me throughout all the movies and the comics and really is just a terrible plot hole.

Superman’s disguise is wearing glasses and pretending to be weak and clumsy. That’s it. Some of the comedy moments in this film where Clark shows how weak he is involve him not being able to lift weights or hit a baseball. Despite having grown up on a farm, where people would naturally think somebody (of quite a big build) would have at least a moderate strength. Seriously, he works at a major newspaper, none of the investigative journalists there can make the connection that he’s always missing from work whenever Superman is missing? The people that The Daily Planet hires make the writers of The Sun look like Joseph Pulitzer.

To further confuse people that Clark and Superman aren’t the same people, a sort of love interest for Clark is introduced, Lacy. Well she likes him, he bumbles his way around her in a way that makes you wish for the first time ever that you was watching a Hugh Grant film. Of course Superman’s love interest is still Lois, who seems to remember and forget about Superman’s identity on the same regularity that I “forget” that it’s my round when I go to the bar.
But surprisingly Superman isn’t the actual problem with this film, Reeves plays him pretty much the same as he did in previous movies, and he’s watchable. The worst part in this movie is Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man. Not helped by one of the worst costumes a villain has ever had to wear. He looks like somebody doing a really bad cosplay of an 80’s wrestler, complete with a god awful cock rock mullet (in fact when he is “born”, he looks like somebody had set Sting on fire and told him to look moody). He’s acting is pretty much on par with most muscle bound 80s actors, but he just doesn’t have the screen presence that helped others have a lasting career. In fact an inanimate carbon rod would have made more of an impression on me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfTgxrxL9ug

On of the weirdest things about Nuclear Man is his Superpower to grow his fingernails slightly. I guess this could really come in use next time Luthor’s back really itches, or when he just can’t reach a coin that’s fallen under a vending machine…
The rest of the cast look like they’re only really there for the paycheck. Gene Hackman, once great as Lex Luthor, now just drifts through the movie doing as little as he can, whilst Margot Kidder lives up to her name as we all try to work out who she’s kidding still trying to convince us that her heart is in playing Lois Lane.

It doesn’t help this movie that it had its budget slashed just before it was filmed. Of course this doesn’t excuse the script or acting, but it affected the special effects in a big way. The green screen effects, which this movie relies heavily on, are just awful. Superman’s flying scene’s are without a doubt the worst seen in any of his movies. Milton Keynes doubles as Metropolis with the cunning use of fire hydrants and the special effects team behind The Land That Time Forgot seem to have been in charge of making the models used to show the destruction that Nuclear Man caused.
At least this movie did one good thing, and that was kill off the Superman movie franchise for a while. Unfortunately like most superheroes it did come back to life with Superman Returns, but as bad as that movie was, it was still The Empire Strikes Back compared to this. It would be wrong to say this is the worst superhero movie ever made, but it’s definitely in the top ten of them.

Monday 18 March 2013

#92 I Know Who Killed Me (2007) (Colin)

Before I begin, I notice that Wes put a Spoiler Alert into his blog and I think that is a very good idea.  After all, for some completely crazy reason, you may decide to watch this movie and I, in no way, want to spoil your enjoyment.  Therefore, I too shall begin with a disclaimer.

*Spoiler Alert*

This blog does contain spoilers for the movie I Know Who Killed Me, therefore if you do not want to find out that Aubrey's piano teacher is the killer or that Aubrey and Dakota are in fact Stigmatic Twins, then please do not read on any further.  Thank you.

Excellent, I think that's covered me, for those of you left I shall begin my blog for #92 on our list and starring Lindsay Lohan, I Know Who Killed Me, (2007).



Not so long ago, Lindsay Lohan was 'A' List hot property.  This was largely due to the huge commercial success she enjoyed with Disney.  These were largely remakes or films that had bought into a franchise, but nevertheless they earned Lohan and Disney mega bucks and were hugely popular.  I, personally, was not a fan of such films as Parent Trap, (1998), Freaky Friday, (2003) (There is nothing wrong with the Jodie Foster version) and Herbie Does Blow.  Actually that last one may be in my head, but does link nicely to the fact that unfortunately for Lohan alcohol and drugs were to ultimately lead to her downfall.

After Pluto turned whistle blower and admitted to Walt Disney that Lohan had bought some 'good shit' from Goofy, Lohan found work increasingly hard to come by and spent a lot of 2006 / 2007, when this film was produced and screened in and out of rehab.  It is because of this that I can perhaps forgive Lohan for even thinking about taking on this film.  I suspect at the time she could not afford to be choosy.  I do think though that once clean, Lohan would have woken up in a cold sweat, (similar to when Father Jack sobered up in Father Ted), and shouted 'I can't believe I did that fecking film'!



I Know Who Killed Me is part 'Whodunnit' and part 'Can you work out what the twist is going to be?'.  Although in my opinion it should by a 'Whydidtheymakeit'.  The plot centres around the 'perfect' student, Aubrey, (Lohan) who is kidnapped and tortured, (by the piano teacher, but I haven't told you that) and is found by the side of the road, mutilated and suffering 'memory lost', (this is because they find Dakota, (again played by Lohan) and not Aubrey), but remember, I have not told you this and please act surprised when this is revealed by the film.

So who kidnapped and tortured Aubrey is the Whodunnit and has Aubrey really lost her memory or is this someone who just looks like her, is the can you work out what the twist part is.  The rest is just filler aimed at throwing you off the scent, (it doesn't) and showing off the director's cinematography skills, (which are non-existent).

Let's begin with the director, Chris Sivertson.  If you look him up on IMDb you will see that he has not directed much and from this movie you can probably work out why.  He simply is not very good at it.  Wes has already compared Sivertson with M. Night Shyamalan, in the sense that Sivertson obviously watched The Sixth Sense, (1999), and thought I can make a film like that, (I only wished he had said that out loud so that someone could have heard him, said, 'Erm, no you really can't' and we could all have been spared 1h 41mins of tripe).  Whilst I try to avoid repeating Wes' blog in this case it is very hard not too, because the comparisons between the 2 directors and these films is almost unavoidable and it is because of the use of colour.

The SUBTLE use of colour, (sorry I don't mean to shout but SUBTLE is an important word here), in movies can really lift it to the next level.  In The Sixth Sense, the colour red is used sparingly, it's intention to hint or nod to the audience that the ghost world and real world are crossing over.  So good is it's use that it is not unusual for people to miss it or not fully realise it is going on.  So good is the film that once they are told they watch it a second or third time, keeping a closer eye out for it.

For me, no film has used colour to greater effect that in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993).  Filmed in black and white, the use of the colour red is very obvious and deliberately so.  I defy the most hardened of people not to be upset or uncomfortable by the colour red, (I will not go into it here, but if you have not seen this movie, (or indeed The Sixth Sense), I highly recommend you do.  They are both truly brilliant movies).

So as I have mentioned, (although I will deny), Aubrey and Dakota are in fact Stigmatic twins, but we are not meant to know this, (but we do).  Using all the skills he learnt at Film Weekend School, Silverton decides to give us a double treat and we get the use of not one but two colours.  Blue is used to give readers a little clue when Lohan is Aubrey and Red when Lohan is playing Dakota.  So, dear reader, how subtle did Silverton do this?  Is there a flash of blue when Aubrey rushes past the screen?  Do we perhaps glimpse a bit of blue out of shot, maybe reflected on a shop window?  Well, not quite.

I decided to jot down all the props and items coloured blue, (because don't forget, Silverton thinks you are so thick and he is so clever that you need help to work out what is going on) and I will now list the blue items which appear in the first 18 minutes of the film and which subtly give you a clue that at this moment in the movie, Lohan is playing Aubrey, (at which point my wrist began to feel like an 18 year old watching the late night Channel 5 movie and so I had to give up!).  They are:-

Tea shirt, Jeans, Folder, iPod, Rose, Writing on first murdered girls missing poster, Classroom walls, floor, Rubber gloves on boyfriend, and the cops, blanket on first murdered girl, shirt on Dr typing up the autopsy, morgue, pick up truck, Aubrey's car, Football team, cheerleaders outfits, colours of the crowd, woolly hat, police car lights, woolly gloves, fan with painted blue face, scarf, movie poster, Aubrey's gag, underwear, painting's in Aubrey's house, vase, cat collar, house walls, glass shards and all instruments of torture on the tray, yes all of them!  For Dakota, it's much the same but everything magically turns red!


                                                        Blue                                     Red

The DVD actually comes with 2 sledgehammers, one blue and one red and whenever Aubrey is on screen a blue icon appears in the bottom right hand corner and you must smash yourself in the face with the blue sledgehammer.  Unlike Silverton, I think you guys can work what to do when Dakota is on screen.  Just for added help though, on the DVD director's commentary, Silverton shouts through a megaphone "AUBREY BLUE, DAKOTA RED" throughout the movie.  I really wish he would stop skirting around the subject and just tell us what he means.

Bless him though, Silverton does try to throw us the occasional curve ball.  When Dakota wakes up in hospital after having her arm and leg amputated, the hospital room is blue.  But the scene ends with a red dissolve and basically the film screaming, "It's not Aubrey!".  He also tries to be clever, for example, when Dakota is in a police car the colour of the sirens, (blue and red), alternating turn Lohan blue then red, blue then red.  Is she Aubrey, is she Dakota, is she Aubrey, is she Dakota?  Alright Silverton, stop, I get it, even a Media Studies student gets it!

I must admit though, I do think I have finally worked out why he makes it so obvious when Lohan is Aubrey and when she is Dakota.  Bascially Lohan plays both parts exactly the same, (shit) and aside for a bit of swearing from Dakota and no potty mouth from Aubrey, it is Lohan's lack of acting range which actually confuses the viewer into whether or not she is Aubrey or Dakota and nothing at all to do with the use of colour.

And this is another of the films problems, Lohan, I am afraid, is just not that strong an actor.  The earlier success she enjoyed with Disney films were not exactly taxing roles.  In fact, having to play a stripper is probably not exactly a taxing role, but, as Elizabeth Burkley will tell you, mess it up and it's career over.  Lohan apparently took pole dancing lessons for this role, but it was money wasted as she is about as erotic as watching beige dry.

The only part more unbelievable than Lohan's stripper acting was her prosthetic hand.  Like Lohan the prosthetic hand she is given after having her hand amputated, takes on 2 roles.  One so good that Luke Skywalker has placed an order for half a dozen, (ie, they do not bother pretending it is a prosthetic hand and so the hand just appears au naturel!).  The other is so clearly just a flesh coloured marigold glove that Chubbs from Happy Gilmore would laugh at how proposterous it looks!



Lohan's sex scene is unintentionally funny too, (sorry boys, she keeps the girls under wraps).  Dakota shags Aubrey's boyfriend, (surely this is wrong?), whilst Aubrey's mum is downstairs and she hilariously starts cleaning the kitchen and bashing pans around to cover the sex noise.  It's funny because the sex scene appears to have been done in the style of a funny non speaking part from an 80's film such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Seriously if you do watch this film, (really, after reading this?), then play 'Oh Yeah' by Yello and you will get exactly what I mean.  Bow Bow, chickedy, chickedy ahhhhh!

Finally I must mention the piss poor 'Whodunnit' element of the movie.  Really the murderer can only be 1 of 3 characters.  The boyfriend, (no, it is so painfully clear early on that it is not and the film never really tries to convince you otherwise), the father, (who half an hour from the end suddenly becomes a bit shady after it was revealed he 'bought' Aubrey from his drugged up neighbour and 'abandoned' Dakota, leading her to live the unhappy life she does), but again, no and no because any generic 'Whodunnit' has the character sudden turning twist which tries to put you off the scent, (but has been used to death now).  Which only leaves the piano teacher who is so clearly pissed off at the very beginning and who is not mentioned at all for the next 90 minutes, that it can only ever be and without a shadow of a doubt will only ever be, him.  (For suspense I will not confirm or deny it is.  It is).

The thing that annoys me most about the film though is the title of the film, I Know Who Killed Me.  Not missing a trick, the powerhouse director that is Chris Sivertson, (he should really team up with the acting powerhouse, Tom Arnold), gets Dakota to actually say this just before she merrily goes on and solves the crime.  So what is the issue?  No one bloody kills her.  Either of her.  Even if Dakota is saying it trying to be clever, (ie Aubrey is dead, we all think she's Aubrey don't we?  I mean if only he had used colour to help us), Aubrey is not bloody dead either.  And Dakota knows this because, as she has worked out, she is a Stigmatic twin and as she has not died, Aubrey is probably alive too!  So no Dakota, you do not know who killed you, you should have said, 'I Know Who Has Taken My Stigmatic Twin, Tortured Her and Buried Her Alive', which if you had been paying attention was the Piano Teacher and we all knew that after 5 minutes.

It's funny that it's the incorrect use of the film title which is the thing that most annoyed me, but it did.  Instead of Lohan proclaiming, 'I Know Who Killed Me', she really should have said 'I Know Who Killed My Career'.  And I don't need bloody subtle colour clues to work out this one, it was Chris Sivertson.



Sunday 3 March 2013

#92 I Know Who Killed Me (Wes)


I Know Who Killed Me

Let me just start this review off with a warning: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. However the spoilers that it contains are for different movies, the fact is that if you can’t spot the plot twists in this movie, then you’re either colour blind or the one person that watched From Dusk Til Dawn and was surprised when everyone turned out to be vampires. 

I Know Who Killed Me is based around the disappearance of Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan), a goody two shoes type girl, who goes missing on a night out with friends and is subsequently seen being tortured on a table by an unknown serial killer. Some time later a driver discovers a severely injured woman (She’s missing a hand and half a leg) by the side of the road, who later claims to be a stripper called Dakota Moss (Lindsay Lohan) who has no idea who Aubrey is, even though she looks EXACTLY like her. But Dakota has the same DNA as Aubrey, and detectives find a story that Aubrey had written about a stripper called Dakota. Aubrey’s doctors put it down to Post Traumatic Stress, and Dakota moves into Aubrey’s room, whilst her parents and the police wait for her memory to return. Dakota becomes convinced that Aubrey is her identical twin sister and sets out to find the killer before Aubrey is murdered.



The tagline to this movie was “If you think you know the secret… Think twice”. This is possibly the worst tagline ever due to the fact that if you can’t spot the secret then you probably couldn’t work out that the planet Charlton Heston was on was Earth all along (even though for some reason they now put the Statue of Liberty on the DVD cover – but that’s a rant for a different time). 

The director (Chris Sivertson) clearly watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense and thought what a brilliant idea the use of colour was for hinting at the upcoming twist. However, unlike Shyamalan, Sivertson doesn’t believe in the old adage “less is more” and saturates nearly every scene in it. So when Aubrey is onscreen everything is filmed with blue lighting and is littered with blue props, and when Dakota is onscreen everything is red. I’m actually surprised that Sivertson didn’t make Lohan wear tops with a giant A or D on to indicate which person we were watching (like the twins in the 80s animated show Pigeon Street).
  


At this point if you can’t actually tell they are two separate people, then you may have to finally accept the fact that you’ll never be able to join Scooby Doo’s gang. However, if you can guess who the killer is, then they may reconsider, as it is pretty much all a Scooby Doo ending (here’s a hint – it wasn’t Mr Wickles, like it was in the Scooby Doo episode What A Night For A Knight).

So now we all know that Lohan plays two people, there is a very worrying point I want to make here. This is the second time she has played twins, the first time being the Disney movie The Parent Trap. That means that, including Lohan herself, there are at least THREE people on this planet who think we need another Lindsay Lohan! Going by her acting standards in this movie, then that really isn’t a good idea (the only other film I’ve ever seen her in is Machete).


Apparently she even took pole dancing lessons to make her performance as Dakota more authentic. To me, that seems like a massive waste of time. Personally I couldn’t tell as I was watching her crappy performance through a red haze of rage (or possibly that was the crappy lighting choices of the director) and I’m sure the target audience for that scene would be watching it through squinted eyes anyway.

I'm pretty sure this film featured Lohan's first sex scene too. Unfortunately for any teenage boys reading this, Lohan does keep her bra on throughout. Which, bearing in mind this is Dakota's scene, seems strangely out of character. A stripper who gets coy whilst having sex whilst her "mother" is downstairs banging pots and pans and trying to ignore the sex noises? Of course this is a stripper who is also seducing her twin sisters boyfriend. But nobody brings this up at any point later, so it's all ok.



Which brings me on nicely to my next point. It's not entirely fair to blame Lohan for this lousy movie, she can only work with the script that’s been given to her, and that is where so many of this films problems lie. This is Jeff Hammond’s only writing credit, so perhaps the name of this movie is actually a self-prophesied reference to his crappy script writing skills. The plot is absolutely absurd, pretty much on a par with the water intolerant aliens in Signs invading a planet that is mostly water covered and where water falls from the sky on a regular basis. 


The fact that twins, who were separated at birth, have some sort of psychic link between them that causes one to suffer the same physical injuries as the other is just beyond silly. Dakota’s fingers fall off as Aubrey is tortured (and right in the middle of a pole dance too, talk about inconvenient), and she tries in vain to sew them back on. That’s right, they are stigmatic twins. I can only assume that neither of them had any accidents in their life ever and were completely unaware of this. Much the same I suppose as Luke Skywalker being completely unaware that Darth Vader is really his father.



One thing you may have noticed in this review is that I haven’t mentioned any of the other actors in this movie. Again this is a problem with the script. Characters seem to appear and disappear as quickly as an X-Factor winners career. Those that do appear for more than five minutes actually make Lohan’s performance look good. Halfway through this car crash of a movie I was hoping that one of the characters that would appear next would be Bobby Ewing taking a shower and this would all be a bad dream.

Seriously if you want to watch a psychological horror movie with a great twist then try Don’t Look Now, or even Saw (if you also want the torture aspect), just avoid this one.

Rosebud… *drops snowglobe*