Home Alone: The Holiday Heist (2012)

AKA Home Alone 5.

For anyone interested, here are my reviews of Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Home Alone 3 and Home Alone 4. You can buy them all in this handy 4-pack.

Yes, there have now been FIVE Home Alone films. Five. Let that fact sink in, bearing in mind how many fans are still clamouring for one sequel to Dredd.

Christian Martyn plays the young lad who is about to be left home alone, sort of, this time around. He plays Finn Baxter, a boy who quickly becomes convinced that the new home he has moved into is haunted. It's not. What it is, however, is home to a secret stash secreted away many years earlier by a famous bootlegger. That stash includes a painting that some robbers (Malcolm McDowell, Debi Mazar and Eddie Steeples) want to get their hands on. The robbers think that the house will be empty on the night that they plan to raid it, not knowing that the parents have gone off to a party, leaving Finn in the care of his older sister (Jodelle Ferland). And that sister has managed to get herself trapped in the very room that the robbers are most interested in gaining access to. It's up to Finn to deter them, with only household items and his own ingenuity to help.

I'm not sure if I really enjoyed this movie because it was actually a decent movie or simply because it was such a HUGE step up from the dire Home Alone 4, one of the worst viewing experiences I've had in my life (and I try never to exaggerate such things). I'm going to opt for the former option, but people should consider the latter while reading my review.

First off, this film benefits from a decent cast. McDowell, Mazar and Steeples are fairly decent names to get involved with this thing, and they all show a willingness to humiliate themselves for the sake of a few laughs. Everyone has at least one decent comedy moment, but it's Mazar who gets the worst of it, although one hairdo gag seems to make no sense (which doesn't make it any less amusing). Ferland will be recognised by horror fans who already saw her in a variety of movies, including Silent Hill, The Tall Man and The Cabin In The Woods, to name just a few of her impressive list of credits that she's already amassed. She does okay here, although everyone is orbiting around Martyn as he transforms from scared kid into defender of the home. While not overflowing with charm and charisma, and suffering slightly in a montage moment that veers into smug territory, young Martyn isn't too bad in the central role.

The booby traps are good fun, the script by Aaron Ginsburg and Wade McIntyre provides all of the information required to set up the shenanigans, and the direction from Peter Hewitt is perfectly serviceable. The biggest downside of the film is the fact that it seems to take almost an hour before we get to the fun finale. That's similar to every other film in the series, but you feel it more in the later sequels because the rest of the material just never manages to be as fresh or funny as it was the first time around, whereas watching criminals get their cartoon-inspired comeuppance is almost always good fun.

I hope that it's now time to end this franchise, although I'd be lying if I said that I wouldn't watch a sixth instalment.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Alone-Holiday-Malcolm-Mcdowell/dp/B00ECGIL9K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418245060&sr=8-1&keywords=home+alone+5

Sci-Fi September: Space Truckers (1996)

Ahem, any fans of Stuart Gordon may also like to check out this lengthy interview HERE.

From the wonderfully demented mind of Stuart Gordon comes this wonderfully demented sci-fi film, boosted by a great cast and a few fun ideas that help to overcome the relatively low budget and occasional-not-so-special effects. The emphasis here is on entertainment rather than any final polishing, and that's just fine with me.

Dennis Hopper plays John Canyon, a space trucker with a fairly reliable, albeit slow, rig. He's a bit behind schedule when he drops off a load of square pigs (for your square meals) and ends up arguing over his fee due to him from company man Keller (George Wendt). One fight later, John ends up having to get away in a hurry. He's joined by the lovely Cindy (Debi Mazar) and a lad who has just passed his test for the trucking life, Mike Pucci (Stephen Dorff). He also has a new cargo, which is supposed to be a whole load of sex dolls . . . . . . . . . . but that's highly doubtful, considering the built-in security protecting it. And did I mention that Charles Dance plays a semi-cyborg psychopath?

Written by Ted Mann, adapting a story that he and director Gordon came up with, Space Truckers is a loving mix of old sci-fi romps - the kind of stuff with bright colours and killer robots - and the blue collar approach to a life spent in space that came along in the 1970s (most notably, I guess, in Alien).

Hopper is great in the lead role, grumpy and set in his ways but not without the sense to see what's right under his nose at times, while Dorff is enjoyable wide-eyed and innocent, and Mazar is tough and cute. Dance is a semi-cyborg psychopath, which I may have already mentioned, and I'll be damned if I didn't love seeing every minute of his over the top performance. Other names in the cast include Sandra Dickinson, Vernon Wells, and Mr. Wendt. Everyone seems to be having a blast, which transfers to the audience.

Gordon directs with his usual steady hand. I'm a fan of the man, having seen how he can make the most of every dollar on every movie that he makes, and this is even more interesting to watch when placed in amongst his filmography. In a way, it seems far removed from most of his other movies (although he has, of course, done relatively straight sci-fi with Fortress and Robot Jox), but it's also absolutely in line with the sensibilities shown in almost everything that he's done. There are some dark moments, there's plenty of humour, and Barbara Crampton graces the film with her lovely presence, in a brief cameo role. There are deadly robo-aliens and other trappings of the genre, of course, but it's almost impressive to see just how far Gordon can shape the material to his own ends.

I'm not sure if others will enjoy this movie as much as I did, but I hope that some people at least give it a viewing. It's certainly not dull, even if you only decide to watch it for that Charles Dance performance.

7/10

Price-wise, Region 2 is the way to go - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Truckers-DVD-Dennis-Hopper/dp/B00030ERYC/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1409730107&sr=1-1&keywords=space+truckers

So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993)

AKA the Mike Myers movie that many people forget about because he's not being Wayne or Austin Powers or Shrek.

So I Married An Axe Murderer seemed to come and go without much fuss back in 1993. I'm not sure if it was considered a flop at the time, but it certainly didn't set the box office alight. That's a shame because this is a very enjoyable comedy with some great characters, a decent cast and a constant supply of decent chuckles.

Myers stars as Charlie Mackenzie, a man obviously afraid of commitment. His friend, Tony (Anthony LaPaglia), can testify to this and tries to get Charlie to see the error of his ways, to no avail. Charlie comes up with all kinds of reasons to explain why his ex-girlfriends became ex-girlfriends (one was a kleptomaniac, one smelled of soup). Circumstances change for the better when he meets Harriet (Nancy Travis). As the relationship blossoms, Charlie tries to put his usual behaviour behind him, but when he reads up about a killer named "Mrs. X", a murderous bride who has been killing her husbands on their honeymoon, he starts to wonder if the lady he loves might not have a very dark and dangerous side. And as he tries to dispel his worries, more and more circumstantial evidence starts piling up.

Well, well, well, I did not realise the negativity surrounding this movie until researching how it was received before writing this review. This seems to be a mixture of people wanting to take Myers down a peg or two after the huge success of Wayne's World and the star also starting to slip into the bad habits that would develop in later years (his penchant for playing multiple characters, in particular, also known nowadays as "doing a Murphy"). Writer Robbie Fox was understandably a bit miffed when it was claimed that the script was changed so much that he should consider a "story by" and co-screenplay credit. Mind you, Neil Mullarkey ended up getting no credit, despite working on a lot of the content. Director Thomas Schlamme found the shoot difficult, but also praised Myers for his total commitment (how ironic, considering the theme of the movie).

Whatever the mood behind the scenes, all that matters to viewers is what ended up being caught on camera and I think that So I Married An Axe Murderer is a fine little comedy. The script, by whoever you want to give the credit to, is full of amusing one-liners and great exchanges and Schlamme moves everything along nicely, helped by a typically upbeat selection of pop songs.

The cast have a lot of fun. Myers isn't at his most comfortable playing someone who is so "normal" but he gets to make up for that in the scenes in which he plays his own father, Stuart, a hilariously stereotypical Scotsman who spends a lot of the movie insulting his other son (Matt Doherty) for having an oversized "heid". Brenda Fricker is also very good as May Mackenzie, Charlie's mother who often gets carried away in the company of Anthony LaPaglia. Speaking of LaPaglia, he's just fine, whether he's asking his boss (Alan Arkin) to be more like a movie police captain or whether he's trying to commandeer a vehicle from a reluctant member of the public (Charles Grodin). Nancy Travis is very good in the role of Harriet (she's a lot better here than she was in those Three Men & A Baby/Little Lady movies). The cast also includes Amanda Plummer having a lot of fun and very small roles for Phil Hartman and Debi Mazar, all are great.

I don't expect too many people to wholeheartedly agree with me on this one, but I hope that at least some people enjoy themselves with a film that, in my opinion, was given some unfairly harsh treatment upon its initial release.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Married-Murderer-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B00171EEAI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1359910468&sr=8-2