While August and September drifted through my existence without so much of a peep about how much people are resorting to tactics last seen in the Planet of the Apes movies in terms of succeeding in moving up the corporate ladder, there was of course the opportunity to laugh at various cinematic masterpieces, even when it’s inappropriate.

Here are three examples of such movies witnessed during the time of, well, August and September. Sorry, it appears the mastery of the English language has once again escaped me, which doesn’t bode well for the following;

Incontinent Barristers

Given the fact that the cinematic world got a hard-on when Pulp Fiction set in World War 2 (not II, it wasn’t pronounced WW eye-eye), it’s not hard to see why we all didn’t want to watch this.

The facts that Bradley The Pitt has actually acted very well in some films in recent memory, thus raising him up beyond masturbation material for women and gay men alike and this film was coming from Quincy Tarantella, the man behind some quite remarkable films, in which Mich…sorry Samuel Jackson played the same guy over and over and yet it was still cool.

Enter this lovely film about a group of jolly upset people, all wanting to have a good talking to a certain Hitler fella with the dodgy little tash on his head, to see if he would be convinced to stop the war and also have a long sleep from which he wouldn’t wake up from.

And that’s about it really.

Seriously, that’s pretty much it, save the numerous Jimmy Hill / Bruce Forsyth chin pulling by Bradley at all times he was on camera while murdering the English language with such a bad accent, at times he could have been speaking in Welsh and made more sense.

There were some truly funny parts in the film, such as….err….that bit when they had some guy’s name flash up with groovy music after some Germans had a bit of a rough time at the hands of the group called the “Basterds” with the bad spelling. Little tiny bits of back story here and there filled up for the rest of the group, who basically disappeared from screen altogether.

Where did they go?

Hell I tell you, I was rooting for the only character worth even keeping my eyes on the screen, The Jewel Hunter (no, not something to do with Indiana Jones), played by someone who frankly was one of the best on-screen bad guys in recent years.

The entire first portion of the film with said Mr. Hunter talking to the Frenchman with the three daughters in English and French without even blinking an eye, knowing there were naughty people hiding there from the Germans, was basically the best part of the entire film, and of course, gave us the blonde lady who sought revenge later on, which let’s be fair, she was niiiiiiiiiice. The plans they all put in place to get rid of Hitler at a film premiere with a German War Hero was kind of ok.

There were other parts where tension was created, but then it just all went out the window, along with any pretense of following what happened in history. What happened at the end with the whole cinema bit was borderline f**ked up. I’m not even going to spoil it.

District 9 and a half (S**t joke done by the naked gun movies but I went there anyway)

This was an interesting concept from the first trailer I saw, by coincidence, it was just before watching the Ingrowing Toenails film featured above. It had everything from aliens, robots and some explosions. Case closed, excellent film. That’s it.

Ah damn, of course, we can’t just say a film is excellent based on a kick-ass trailer with aliens, robots and explosions. Otherwise both Transformers movies would be put above any play by Shakesphere, instead of being the cock-flop inducing comas they became. We even know the only reason possible to watch is to see Megan Fox run slow-motion with boobs flying everywhere except in my face….err….anyway.

District 9 came up silently like Jack the Ripper would have done if not for CCTV. But unlike said naughty man, this was not an unwelcome advance.

Filmed as a documentary with a group of messed up South Africans, let’s be fair that at least remains true in real life (waits for workmates to throw bricks at me) so we then see that extended into a situation involving f**king prawns (and the accent that goes with it suggesting this South African came from Liverpool or Wales, or just needed to clear his nose) that came from the freezer out of Iceland to land squarely over Johannesburg, thus creating a situation where people are jolly annoyed at having refugees in their backyard.

Surely that has never happened before here on Earth with other people being refugees and not being welcome? Ding Ding Ding, we have our theme for the movie!

But something happens, the guy with the Liverpudlian accent who name is only slightly more daft; Wikus van der Merwe takes center stage gets sprayed with some stuff and then it all goes a bit wrong for Dear Wikus, losing pretty much everything thanks to Photoshop and the news channels.

Cue many scenes of desperation and hardship, ending up with trusting the very prawns that he regarded as scum at the start of all this.

What we witness as the cinema-goers that we are, is actually a bizarre, albeit forced partnership based all on survival leading to many questions being left at the end, just after a wonderful battle with fancy alien toys starting from a fella who eats aliens to gain their power and is interested to eat our friend Wikus for the same reason.

That border lines a spoiler of course, but surely the rest of this text, if not all the other countless blogs, programmes and magazines in the world also talking about this film would not have convinced you to see this, then surely some comments about the acting may prompt you.

It was actually very good. the guy playing Wikus van der Merwe (That name just confuses me, why not be called Jeff?) I really thought was a prick, only interested in self and looking good for the camera, which as that was how he was meant to do it, he did it on the button.

The entire cast, including the prawns were believable, the effects were more than spot on and as it goes, this is one of the best films of the year, worthy of more plaudits than the World War 2 film above got.

And with that we will now end our entry on films with Hymn number 562:

Zombieland

Just look at the picture above. Just look at it. Take in what is going on in that picture above. Woody holding a baseball bat, about to hit a zombie, while another guy from Superbad skids away. I’m not even going to type further waffle without showing another picture;

Look at what is going on now, in the same setting as before, a supermarket. Woody is once again at it, but this time, we have a banjo in play. A banjo. A banjo that was used at the beginning of the scene to attract any hidden zombies out of hiding.

Those two pictures alone should the reason why you have to see this. Don’t get me wrong, with the name Zombieland for this movie, you’re certainly not going to get Patrick Stewart going after his whale. What you are going to get are some of the best set-ups ever in a Zombie comedy this side of Shawn of the Dead.

Quite a statement to make, but let’s be fair, there hasn’t been any real zombie comedies since then either, just some remakes here and there which turned out to be crap.

Of course, zombie films are not for all in the first place. They are creatures which disgust most people, the mindless savages humanity may become if the thinkable would actually happen. I say thinkable because these films never go away, the disaster which ends everything which we seem to have about every 5 minutes.

So bugger it, as long as it’s going to happen, let’s make it funny. And to be more than fair, Zombieland actually does it. There are some terrifying moments to be sure, as I was acting like a complete wimp during these bits, as the gore was quite graphic when it’s there, but when the brilliant set-pieces are set off, you really enjoy it a bit too much.

The range of weapons are just a joy, the ways in which we are presented with a number of rules for surviving the apocalypse in the beginning, in which rule 1) Cardio means I’m dead to be sure if it would happen, and the slow motion of a zombie stripper chasing a paying customer is well, something you don’t quickly forget.

Chuck in Woody Hardman, playing a hard man not to be f**ked with, having a ball killing the zombies, the geek who just wants naughty and two it seems very smart girls, one of which is the required love interest or marriageable women to bring home to the folks as it was put to us, and you pretty much have an entertaining movie.

The main spoiler has been done to death (yes got the oldest zombie joke in the book on here) everywhere else, suffice it to say, you have to watch it, not just read about it to understand. So I’m not going to write about it except to say it was very funny.

The ending was a little cheesy, but still fantastic. When I wasn’t shaken by classic horror moments, I was letting my bowels go for quite a lot of the film. There were some slow bits, but it’s not all going to be pure gold all the way through. Compared to some of the other awful trash released this year, this actually does rate above them too.

The End.
And so we come to the end of yet another long post, so far tripling the number of posts over September. It does take some time to get back into the swing of creative content-bashing, and well, at least two out of the three came out on the postive side, so at least my bitterness hasn’t got the better of me just yet. Or will it?

Ooh the excitement, can you just imagine what could come out if I decide to focus on any recent events such as Superman winning the Nobel peace prize for just turning up? Find out after this break….