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Note the steady decline of Shyamalan’s career as he disappears up his own ass.

Nobody can deny he started off well, wowing us with the supernatural Sixth Sense; A film that revolutionised the horror genre with careful plotting and a shock twist. Sure, everybody knows the twist by now, but like the first time you saw the CGI dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, it still lives in your imagination.

He followed it up with his superhero movie, Unbreakable. A highly imaginative tale of an everyday blue-collar Joe discovering he’s actually an invulnerable hero. It wasn’t on par with Sixth sense, but a worthy film in its own right. Again, we had the rug pulled out from under us with his de rigueur shock twist.

His third film was Alien Invasion fest, Signs. An ex-priest and his brother protect themselves and two kids from some malevolent ET’s. Played out like the original ‘Night of the Living Dead’ with information drip-fed to us through the media instead of first hand, it drew the audience right into the family’s predicament. Despite the mile-wide plot hole that everybody knows about, Signs was still thoroughly entertaining fun. There was another convincing twist at the end of this one as the Ex-priest finds his faith once more.

The Village was a step down for the much-loved director, but not a bad film by any standard. A group of medieval villagers are beset on all borders by strange monsters that come in the night. But, all is not as it seems when one of their members in tragically stabbed and a poor little blind girl must venture into the forbidden zone to seek help. A couple of decent twists here too, but by now they were getting easier to predict.

Oh, now we fall straight through the surface of banality into the depths of all-out movie blasphemy.
Lady in the Water was based on a bed-time story M. Night used to tell his kids. His ego had obviously inflated to gargantuan measures, if he thought audiences would be impressed by this film. The storyline is erratic to put it mildly. It jumps from one scene to the next like an autistic kid’s conversation. Brief Synopsis: A quiet guy finds a beautiful girl down his toilet and tries to rescue her from a dog out of Ang Lee’s Hulk movie; A Total waste of Celluloid.

This summer saw him try to claw back his fan base with apocalyptic Sci-fi thriller, The Happening. I’ll let you read my review on that one to find out why he failed.

We all know it the latest summer blockbuster comes out and you go onto the imdb to find out what the world at large made of it. No matter what you will always find the following phrases used ‘Another CGI crap fest’, ‘CGI is cheating’, ‘Way too much CGI’ etc. I always find these comments bizarre to say the least as when I grew up with ghost busters, Indiana Jones and the like I scarcely remember people slating any effects driven movie as ‘Another Optical Effects crap fest’. So why does CGI evoke such a power full and mostly negative response from movie goers?

Let’s go back to were CGI kicked off namely 2 movies are responsible for launching the CGI revolution – Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. When both were released we all had our jaws hitting the floor realising that now film makers could come up with the visions they had in their heads. We had great spectacular effects driven summer movies in the following years ID4 being the most noteworthy. The technology was giving us more spectacle as the directors played with it like a young boy with his first action man. As CGI driven movies drove more and more towards the tail end of the 90’s then the grumbling started it was quiet at first with Titanic but even the most ardent CGI despiser knew that simply there was no way Mr Cameron could have fleshed out his epic love story without it. And then in 1999 the real fall-out began.

The reason for the fall-out? Star Wars: The Phantom Menace the fans howled that George Lucas’ very liberal use of CGI was to blame for the film’s poor quality. But I use Episode I as the prime example of the current hatred of CGI for one thing you can not deny is that Episode I looks fucking amazing the special effects work is second to none. What let it down are bad directing, wooden acting and a poor script. What had happened was that people who love movies now got so caught up in the realism of effects that when the main ingredients are lacking they hit out at the ‘new kid’ in this case the new SFX technology. See what had grown up with Star Wars and when you look at it narrative wise it’s pretty weak. What made it so legendary were its effects and its look and editing. Flash forward to the 90’s and people expect to see the best effects so real they could touch them so when the script is not up to measure the audience lashes out at the most visible thing, the effects.

What has happened is now that limited directors such as Lucas, Emerich and the like who before had to improvise now have a blank cheque to fill the screen with as much as they can. When we complain about overuse of CGI we are half correct, but CGI is the effect not the cause of so many disappointing blockbusters. What are ruining the summer blockbuster are unoriginal ideas dressed up the emperor’s pulling clothes of CGI. SO next tie when that hyped up movie arrives and your unsatisfied spit venom at the writers and directors.

The Quantum of Solace teaser trailer posted today.

The Happening

Following on from the abomination that was ‘Lady on the Water’, M. Night Shyamalan brings us The Happening. Can the master of movie twists salvage his reputation or does he continue to slip into obscurity?

First off we’re expected to suspend our disbelief long enough to accept Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo as geeky high school teachers. A tall order, as we’re used to seeing them as gangsters and hard men. If you can get over that hurdle, then you can concentrate on the plot.

Some sort of airborne chemical is making people commit suicide. The problem spreads, but only as far as North East America. The desperate survivors try to flee the infected zone and work out the cause of the outbreak along the way. Lucky for Mark Wahlberg, there is a radio for him stare open-mouthed at every hundred yards.

Initially it is thought to be Terrorists. And you’ll wish it was, as the real reason is far harder to accept. It doesn’t come as a twist revelation like most of Shyamalan’s films, so I can’t spoil it by telling you. The trees and the grass are communicating and they’ve decided that the land is too densely populated by humans, so they’re thinning the crowds.

Yes, you read right. The trees and the grass are making people commit suicide.

When people criticisized The Village for not being all that good, Shyamalan came to its defense by telling us it’s all about the Iraq war and living in fear. Well, I can already hear him say, “Oh, The Happening is a warning about Mother Nature getting it’s revenge. Global warming. Blah. Blah…”

Fair enough, he wants to use his movies to relay an important message. But he could have at least made it entertaining.

The James Bond films always made a point of mentioning the film’s title during the proceedings. “The Happening” is said so many times in this film, you’re left wondering if Shyamalan has a child’s vocabulary. I can’t wait to see the Youtube edit of this film.

The only reason I’m gifting this film any points is the sheer comedy value of some of the suicides. The best one being the guy who turns on the lawnmower and lies underneath.

I’m sorry if this review is laced with vitriol, but it feels good to get it out my system.

Verdict 2/10
The Crappening: Shyamalan’s films sink further into a swamp of his own Bullshit.

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In a first for our humble blog I have been given the privilege of reviewing a movie that has not been released anywhere yet. This is Aberdeen director Mark Stirton’s follow up to his brilliantly inventive Sci-Fi/Horror from 2006, The Planet. If you have watched the planet the actors will be very familiar with Patrick Wight as Andy the owner of an Aberdeen Removal company Andy removals who is assisted by Ronnie (Scott Ironside).

The film starts with Andy and Ronnie on their way to do a simple job for the day but things start going wrong when they accidentally run some-one over as their journey across Aberdeenshire continues they keep knocking off more and more innocents in freakish and hilarious circumstances. So a movie like this is dependant on the 2 leads and boy do they put on a show. Scott and Patrick have an amazing chemistry and the insults and arguments flow so naturally between them it is a joy to watch.

Now some people may point to the fact that being in Doric most people won’t follow it but on the contrary the doric adds to it and in any other dialect some the arguments would not sound anywhere near as funny as they do. This movie is a joy to watch and there are so many scenes that stand out if i was to describe them to you I would end up just writing out the whole script.

The direction is once again superb and they have made a stunning job of filming Aberdeen and the surrounding area it is refreshing to see that not all Scottish cities in movies are not slums with junkies and alcoholics living in poverty.

This is not just a good low budget Scottish movie, or a good Scottish movie it is an Excellent movie . It ranks for me as one of the funniest things I have ever watched in my life you will be laughing so loud all the through this film that you may need a defib if it gets too much for you. As Scottish movies goes this sets new , dizzying heights for the film industry here showing what can be done with hard work. Mark and Company we salute you !

Verdict 10/10

Brilliant, just brilliant. A riotous, hilarious comedy that deserves every success coming its way.

Adulthood

Noel Clarke wrote and starred in Kidultood, but here he takes a turn at directing too. But can the 32 year old talent cope with such a heavy responsibility?

The film starts 6 years after the end of Kidulthood, with Sam Peel(Clarke) being released from prison. If you’ve seen Kidulthood, you’ll know that he brutally murdered the character Trife. Now, it seems, someone is out for revenge. Sam must fight his way to the truth even though all he wants is peace.

He visits his past friends and enemies and tries to make amends. Even visiting Trife’s closest friends who might wish him harm. He teams up with Lexi(Scarlett Alice Johnson), who has problems of her own, to track down Trife’s friend Jay, who they believe is trying to kill him.

The plot gets a bit messy after that. Featuring flashbacks to Sam’s prison time. Introducing characters for one scene then never seeing them again. Jay’s friends, the gangsters, seem superfluous to the plot. Lexi’s traumatic retelling of her rape seems forced, as though they were trying to be as controversial as they could.
You can tell there are some good ideas at work, but throwing them together and hoping they stick isn’t the way to make a film.

Despite some of the negative aspects, it is entertaining. The plotline where the gangsters try to get Sam’s brother to kill him is well-thought out and captivating. It’s only at the last minute that Sam is saved by showing his face.

There was one glaring plot-hole for me though. It kept popping back into my mind. If Sam is in jail alongside Trife’s uncle, how come the Uncle didn’t recognise him right from the start?

It’s not as good as the first film which had a better flow to it. Clarke’s direction is a bit cagey sometimes. He speeds up an altercation to the point where the lads look like they’re break dancing.

Verdict 6/10
Not a complete right off, but not a step forward either.

Do you fancy watching something a little bit different? Then do not worry we here at Fightrunner have the answer. Check out our forgotten classics series of reviews for great movies that slipped under the radar. Give it a go and add something unique to your DVD collection…