The Guest (2014)

There have been a lot of movies in recent years that have tried, and often succeeded, recapturing the tone of films that many of us enjoyed during the boom period of home entertainment. Those VHS glory days, if you will, when more fun could be had delving in to the bargain bins than opting for one of the latest blockbuster titles. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have never tried to hide their many influences, especially with the great mix of old and new horror elements that they used to great effect in You're Next, but this is one step up from that film. Despite the slight polish to the technical work, you could stick a Cannon logo on the front of this thing and convince people that it was a gem from the '80s they'd somehow missed. And that's a ringing endorsement, in case you weren't sure.

Dan Stevens stars (and it's a star-making turn, let me tell you) as a young man who introduces himself as David to the Peterson family. He is visiting them because he fought alongside their son in combat overseas. The father (Leland Orser) is more suspicious than the mother (Sheila Kelley), the daughter (Maika Monroe) isn't really bothered by anything other than her own life, and the son (Brendan Meyer) has his own stuff going on, mainly trying to survive the bullie at his school. But it's not long until everyone starts to take notice of David. He's such a charming guy, and he gets things done. He seems too good to be true, which means that you just know things aren't going to stay happy and idyllic for long.

The Guest is ALMOST a perfect film, for me. Perhaps after one or two more viewings I actually won't be able to think of even the smallest criticism, which I'm even struggling with now, but I'll hold off temporarily. This film had me smiling throughout, and there were at least five sequences that had me grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

Barrett provides a lean script, but don't let that fool you into thinking he must have had an easy job. On the contrary, every character and motivation is nicely sketched out. One or two stretches aside, the logic stays within the universe that these people inhabit, the dialogue is cool without ever feeling too stylised, and the slim plot unfolds at a perfect pace. It also keeps you rooting for a main character who could just as easily be painted as an absolute, no moral grey area, outright villain of the piece.

Wingard helps. Utilising a supercool soundtrack that could have been plucked from the '80s, he takes the opportunity to support the content here with a bucketload of cool style. This is a gorgeous film, at times, yet the visuals never prove to be a distraction. They simply serve to highlight the tone of the film, one of playfulness and exuberance as both writer and director work to present a gently satiric love letter to the kind of action thrillers that used to be, and still often are, adored by film fans while being completely ignored by critics.

The whole thing wouldn't work as well as it does if it didn't have such a winning performance from Stevens at the centre of it all. I defy anyone to watch this film and not fall for his charms. If there's any justice in the world then Stevens has plenty of good roles still to come, and deservedly so. Monroe and Meyer are both almost as good, with the latter especially touching as he finds a much-needed friend in the stranger that has entered his home. Orser and Kelley do fine work, Joel David Moore has a small, fun, role, and Lance Reddick is a major badass named Major Carver.

The Guest, in case you hadn't quite got the gist of what I was trying to say, is a film to get your blood pumping and even make you want to punch the air a few times. In short, it's the kind of film that they don't seem to make any more. Except for the fact that they do. And when they're as good as this one I can only hope for more in this vein.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Guest-Blu-ray-DVD-DIGITAL-HD/dp/B00NO834N0/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1418073523&sr=1-1&keywords=the+guest

Start your year off right. Buy my e-book, that has almost every review I've written over the past 5 years. It's very reasonably priced for the sheer amount of content.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

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As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

This review is going here because, well, I wanted to start off the new year with a smile on my face.

As simple as it is gut-bustingly funny, Dodgeball is a near-perfect mix of great one-liners and physical comedy, populated by a cast all playing to their strengths and directed with sharp focus on moving from one comedy beat to the next.

Vince Vaughn plays Peter La Fleur, owner of Average Joe's gym. La Fleur is a nice guy, but a terrible businessman. When he's given a very short time in which to come up with a very large sum of money it looks like Average Joe's is about to close. Which is good news for White Goodman (Ben Stiller), the narcissistic, dense, mean owner of Globo-Gym (slogan: "We're better than you, and we know it").
There may, however, be a way to raise the money and save Average Joe's. Yep, you guessed it. Dodgeball. There's a big tournament about to happen, and the prize money is just the exact amount that La Fleur needs to save the gym.

Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who would score another big comedy hit almost ten years later with We're The Millers, this is very much a love or hate movie, and I love it. In fact, it's one of those movies that I love so much that I just hope many of my friends also love it, otherwise I start to question their taste, and then question the basis of our friendship, and then question by questioning manner, and then just collapse into a heap of paranoia and low self-esteem.

Vaughn is a fast-talking average Joe (almost literally, in this case), Stiller is the angry idiot, Justin Long is a good-hearted klutz, Stephen Root is someone who builds and builds up his anger until he explodes, Joel David Moore is a socially awkward bundle of nerves and, well, I guess you get the picture. What I'm emphasising here with my description of each character is that this is not a film to watch if you do not like any of these actors doing their usual stuff. Christine Taylor is very good as the attractive young woman who La Fleur takes a shine to, Rip Torn is hilarious as a violent dodgeball coach, and there are great cameos from the likes of David Hasslehoff, William Shatner, Hank Azaria, Lance Armstrong (although his cameo isn't as funny now as it once was) and even Chuck Norris. Gary Cole and Jason Bateman are to commentators with distinctly different styles, and Missi Pyle is the most dangerous woman in the world with a dodgeball.

Is it a modern comedy classic? Most people would probably say that it isn't, but Dodgeball has a better laugh-per-minute ratio than almost any other comedy I can think of since the turn of the 21st century. It's the perfect blend of clever and dumb, with an extra sprinkling of . . . . . . . . even more dumb, and I certainly rank it up there with many other comedy greats. It might not be perfect, but it comes close.

And the sequence that pops up during the end credits may not be big or clever, but it's yet another moment that makes me burst out laughing, ensuring that the smile stays on my face for some time after the movie has finished.

9/10

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Chillerama (2011)

Chillerama is an anthology movie mixing a little bit of horror with plenty of comedy and plenty of that old grindhouse/drive-in cinema style. We've seen plenty movies in this vein recently - Grindhouse seemed to lead the resurgence but I'm happy as long as we keep getting fun flicks like Black Dynamite, Machete and Hobo With A Shotgun - but for every film that takes care to emulate the style and still throw some great content onscreen we seem to get one or two that just use the trappings to excuse a low budget that could have been put to better use. Or something that just misfires like Nude Nuns With Big Guns. Chillerama really falls in between the two extremes and, like many other anthology movies, it's a mix of good and bad.

The basic wraparound premise involves a bunch of folk going along to enjoy themselves at the last night of their local drive-in cinema. But there's danger between the cars as well as on the big screen and in between each story segment we catch up with the action as a strange condition develops amongst the cinema patrons.
But what's the cinema actually showing on this final night? Well, first up we have "Wadzilla" (written and directed by Adam Rifkin), the demented tale of a man (also played by Adam Rifkin) with such a low sperm count that he only tends to produce one at a time. When he receives medication to strengthen that sperm there are unexpected side effects and it's not long before one giant monster sperm is destroying New York City. The second tale is "I Was A Teenage Werebear" (written and directed by Tim Sullivan), another demented tale but this time all about sexuality, acceptance and teenage angst. And then it's on to "The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein", the segment written and directed by Adam Green and worth bonus points for the title alone. The fact that it's about Adolf Hitler (played by Joel David Moore) trying to make a giant monster that will help him win the war guarantees fun. There's the promise of "Deathication" but it proves to be just a tease as we then get carried away into the finale of the ongoing "Zom-B-Movie" (written and directed by Joe Lynch).

With the talent involved behind the camera and a cast that includes an eclectic mix of Richard Riehle, Joel David Moore, Ray Wise, Lin Shaye, Eric Roberts, Ron Jeremy (?!?), AJ Bowen, Sean Paul Lockhart, Anton Troy, Kristina Klebe, Kane Hodder, Kaili Thorne, Briana Mackay, Corey Jones . . . . . . . . well, you can't say that those involved didn't give things a good try.

Sadly, while some of the humour works and a lot of the madness is impressively outrageous, there's a lot here that doesn't hit the mark. A lot of references are scattered throughout the movie but a lot of lines of dialogue are also spoken by cine-literate characters who rarely seem to use their own words (or, at least, that's how it feels). "Wadzilla" is a lot of fun but it's almost too over the top compared to the beginning of the movie and suffers because the tone hasn't been set for it. "I Was A Teenage Werebear", I'm very sad to say, is the weakest segment. It has some fun referencing the likes of Rebel Without A Cause and Grease but the treatment of the material is coarse and too heavy-handed in a way that ends up being off-putting. Camp material can be absolutely great entertainment, especially delivered by someone like the great John Waters (for example), but Tim Sullivan doesn't get it right. Which is a shame, as I like Tim Sullivan. Redemption comes in the second half of the movie, however, with both "The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein" and "Zom-B-Movie" making up for plenty. There are still mis-steps, and the fact that the film clocks in at about the two hour mark doesn't help at all, but the fun is in full swing and viewers are completely accustomed to the vibe of the film by the halfway point.

So it's nowhere near as good as many other movies I could mention (and, indeed, already have) but it's nowhere near as bad as the very worst you can watch either. Which makes it decidedly average.

5/10.

http://www.amazon.com/Chillerama-Unrated-Richard-Riehle/dp/B005G02LD8