Long Time Dead (2002)

Some days I remember the younger me as an idiot. That is true in many different ways (and the younger me can be the me of decades ago or the me from the last time I drank alcohol), but I am sometimes reminded of it unexpectedly. Take Long Time Dead, for example. This is a British horror film I was looking forward to revisiting, having enjoyed it on VHS when it was first released and remembering it fondly over the intervening years. I believe I have probably mentioned it whenever people have asked for lesser-known horror gems. So getting to rewatch it was a treat. Then I remembered that the younger me was an idiot. Long Time Dead is not good.

Directed by Marcus Adams, someone with only a small selection of features interspersed throughout the many music videos he has helmed, Long Time Dead has a decent, and simple, idea at the heart of it. A group of relatively young and carefree people play around with a home-made ouija set-up (using an upturned glass and letters written on pieces of paper) and unleash something supernatural and dangerous. The problems start with the mix of annoying characters, but things get worse when the writers, and it took about four people to write this thing, decide to complicate their story by making the leads suspect that the killer entity could be a djinn.

Joe Absolom, Marsha Thomason, Lara Belmont, Melanie Gutteridge, James Hillier, Alec Newman, Lukas Haas, and Mel Raido make up the core group, with Absolom, looking to move from TV into movies, given what feels like the central role, but jostling alongside Thomason and Newman as the film-makers shift focus and spend the runtime turning what should have been a lean and entertaining horror into something that feels baggy and loose, and occasionally even laughable.

I am not going to name all of the writers, none of them have the biggest filmographies worth exploring, but the script certainly feels like too many chefs spoiling the broth. There are a couple of great moments - one highlight, although it may not sound as good written down here, shows the exterior of a house where some lights are being turned on by someone fearing for their life, only to see them being turned off again - but they are very few and far between. And even when the script is working well, the dark visuals can make it hard to enjoy what should be a nice bit of tension.

There’s one great death scene, as entertaining as it is preposterous and illogical, but everything becomes tiresome by the time the third act starts to play out. Revelations don’t feel surprising, repeated sequences of characters being stalked just become boring, and there’s nobody who feels worth really rooting for. 

Is it unwatchably awful? No. It’s just not worth your time. It clocks in at just over the 90-minute mark, which is a plus, but it feels like it runs longer than that. I still like that central idea though. Someone should take it, strip away all the fat, work with a better visual palette, and give us a much better end result.

3/10

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Leap Of Faith (1992)

While this isn't the first non-comedic performance from Steve Martin, Leap Of Faith was the first serious film that I saw him in and the first time that I realised there was more to the man than just his wild and crazy comedy. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that a) the film was very good and b) Martin was just as good while not mugging for the laughs.

The film is all about a fake faith healer named Jonas Nightengale (Steve Martin), who ends up having to kill time in a small town when one of his vehicles needs repaired. Always one to make the best of a bad situation, Jonas gets his people to set up the tent and start spreading the word. He knows that he can still make a fair bit of money off the locals, it might just take more effort than usual. The people aren't exactly rolling in money or good luck, as the local Sheriff (Liam Neeson) emphasises to Jonas and his colleague, Jane Larson (Debra Winger). As Jonas starts to work from his usual bag of tricks things start to happen that may prove that the trickster is being tricked or, even worse, that he's about to meet a "genuine article."

Directed by Richard Pearce and written by Janus Cercone, Leap Of Faith is solid when it comes to both the script and execution of the material, but Martin is the big draw. During the opening sequence of the film, showing his character attempting to avoid a ticket being issued (by an officer played by Troy Evans), things are not that impressive. It quickly establishes the main character and the mood of the whole thing, but Martin doesn't seem to be right for the role. That all changes, however, when he gets onto the main stage and starts working a big crowd. He slips on his role like a bright suit, dancing and shouting, responding to information being fed to him via earpiece, tricking people into thinking that he can be the person to save them from their troubles. It's grandstanding theatrics and Martin does it with the air of the assured performer that he is.

The rest of the cast give him great support, especially Winger as the number two of the operation. Meat Loaf, M. C. Gainey and Philip Seymour Hoffman have small roles as part of the crew, and do well enough, while Lolita Davidovich is a good antidote to all of the "suckers" as a local cynic just wanting to keep her crippled brother (Lukas Haas) away from anything that can grind down his spirit. Liam Neeson is sweet and swoonsome, judging by the reaction of some females, in the role of Will Braverman, the unsubtly-monikered Sheriff doing his best for the people in his town.

Leap Of Faith walks a nice path through a very grey area. It doesn't make any big assumptions about religion and people who choose to live their lives by faith, it doesn't even paint Nightengale and his crew as outright baddies. What it does is pose the interesting question: "if a fraud can make enough impact on people to create some positive change then does that mean that they're no longer a fraud, or does it even matter as long as the desired outcome is achieved?"

Jonas Nightengale admits that he's not the real deal, but he argues that he puts on a good show. A show that people can choose to pay for or not.

Leap Of Faith isn't unmissable, but it tries most of the time to put on a good show. I think it succeeds.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leap-Faith-DVD-Steve-Martin/dp/B0002GZACU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1374755327&sr=8-3&keywords=leap+of+faith

Mars Attacks! (1996)

Mars Attacks! is a crazy sci-fi comedy based on a series of popular trading cards. It's quite a slight film, as you'd expect from such source material, but it's also very funny in places and full of great homages to sci-fi films of yesteryear. Jonathan Gems was the man who put a script together for the alien antics while Tim Burton was in place to direct the madness.

The plot is summed up by the title. That's it. Really. What the alien invasion premise does is allow Burton to deliver a number of amusing, and often visually striking, vignettes to the audience, be it a herd of flaming cattle or a number of warped experiments taking place on a spaceship. Many of the moments in the movie are inspired directly by images on the trading cards, but there are still a few characters allowed to develop in between the set-pieces. Jack Nicholson plays the President Of The United States, with Glenn Close playing his wife and Natalie Portman the fed up daughter. Jack Nicholson also plays a man setting up the business deal of his life. Annette Bening is the woman in his life, trying to keep her spirit positive while surrounded by the corrupting, garish influence of Las Vegas. Michael J. Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker are two very different TV personalities, Pierce Brosnan is a scientist optimistic about the aliens and Rod Steiger is a not so optimistic general. Jim Brown wants to get back to his family, Martin Short wants to use his position as Presidential advisor to get with women and Lukas Haas wants, well, very little as he's the generally content sort.

As you might expect from a movie based on a series of trading cards, Mars Attacks! is more a series of amusing vignettes loosely strung together than an entirely flowing, coherent movie. It's anarchic and fun in a way that may put many people off, but I happen to like anarchic and fun. Think of some Ed Wood movie fused with any cartoon that featured Marvin The Martian and you're close enough.

Tim Burton is in his comfort zone, the film certainly feels as if he was left to his own devices and he has fun bringing the vibrant, retro imagery to life. The handling of the material is affectionate, the handling of the cast less so as they're killed off or experimented upon with not even a second thought for A-list status or billing order. As well as those already mentioned, all of them admirably going along with every preposterous moment, there are appearances from Jack Black, Pam Grier, Danny DeVito, Christina Applegate, Lisa Marie and Tom Jones. Yes, THAT Tom Jones. Playing himself, amusingly enough.

If you grew up with imagery of flying saucers that were actually saucer shaped, little green men who flew around the universe looking for people to menace with their ray guns and sci-fi b-movies that were as colourful and inventive as they were, oftentimes, cheap and cheerful then this is the movie for you. It recalls all of those elements with love and then uses them for lots of silly gags. Whether or not you actually enjoy the gags is another thing entirely, but you will enjoy plenty of imagery reminding you of aliens as envisioned in decades gone by.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mars-Attacks-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B003IHVKR4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1365138034&sr=8-2&keywords=mars+attacks