Sharknado!!

Sharknado.  The title alone was enough to send a buzz around the world.  Does it live up to the hype?  Absolutely.  This movie is so bad it's good.  It's hilarious.  Do not watch alone though, it's much better with a group of friends and a big dose of sarcastic comments.

Sharknado is the latest production in a long line of Z grade, low budget, straight to DVD movies from "The Asylum".  The Asylum is an American movie studio which realised back in 2007 that it could make more money from capitalising on cheap knock-offs of big budget studio productions than it could from making cheap movies with their own original ideas.  And very proud of it!  They zip between these similarly named knock offs and making their own 'original' horror films such as Sharknado, Mega Piranha, 2 Headed Shark Attack.  According to that scion of accuracy Wikipedia, the budgets for each movie are less than $1,000,000 (a sliver of most Hollywood independent films let alone the mega-blockbuster) and the scripts are usually knocked up in 4 to 6 weeks with pre-production times of a few weeks and actual filming taking a few weeks.  That's extremely short.  And it really shows!

The ridiculous premise to the film is that, due to some bad weather (I think anyway), a huge pack of sharks have moved in close to the California coast.  Then they are picked up by a storm and deposited into various land-locked areas of Hollywood thanks to various far-fetched water borne methods.  The culmination of which is a tornado containing multiple sharks.  The word ridiculous doesn't go far enough to describe the ways these sharks get where they're trying to go.

The main character in the film is Fin Shepard, played by Iain Ziering (annoying Steve from Beverly Hills 90210).  He owns a bar right on the beach, whose chief bartender is a kick-ass chick who happens to be in love with him but Fin's too dumb to notice.  Fin decides that he has to take her, his Aussie mate Baz and old mate George on a mission to 'rescue' Fin's daughter, son and ex-wife from the sharky emergency about to hit their inland Hollywood Hills home.  Fin's ex-wife is played by Tara Reid (still best known for American Pie) and she shows absolutely no acting skills whatsoever in this, her big comeback film.

The movie is a series of battles with the sharks, connected by Fin, Nova, Baz and George travelling around and trying to save everyone, because Fin is like the biggest hero ever, he's so heroic duuuude.  One of the most ludicrous scenes occurs where he spots a school bus trapped in rising flood waters, which appear to get lower and lower as the rescue progresses, taking several minutes in the movie but would actually take several hours in reality.  The continuity in this movie is absolutely non-existent, and I am still yet to figure out whether this is deliberate to be funny, or accidental because of the short production times and low budgets.  Regardless of which reason, it makes for rich pickings for your own sarcastic commentary. One minute there's a hurricane, the next it's sunny and blue skies, then we get a graphic of rain on a camera which is unrelated to anything.

I spent a large amount of the running time saying "Why would they do this" or "Why would that happen" which tells you that the script has a few problems.  But I thoroughly enjoyed it and got a huge amount of laughs from it.  Some movies are just plain bad, but this one definitely makes it into the so bad it's good category.  I wish to thank my friends B & W for taping this off Foxtel and inviting us over for a Sharknado party, which really made my week.  Highly recommended for a fun night in!  Hopefully the already in production sequel "Sharknado 2: The Second One" - I kid you not - will be out really soon and keep up the same low standards.

DVD Review - X-Men First Class

As my movie going has been slowed down by festive season tomfoolery, here is a DVD review for your pleasure.

X-Men First Class absolutely lives up to its title even though that's not what it meant.  First class.  This series really needed a top quality prequel, and it got it.  During the X-Men trilogy you understood that Professor X and Magneto had been friends in their younger days before becoming arch enemies on the front of mutant vs human relations.  However, what I, and I'm sure many others, have wondered is how did they go from being close friends to enemies?  What could have gone so wrong when they should be on the same side?  Well this film will very satisfactorily answer that question.

The first thing the producers did right was the choice of director.  Matthew Vaughn has had a short but stellar directing career.  On a percentage basis of how many of their movies I thought were excellent, I'd have to say Mr Vaugh gets 100% from me so far.  Layer Cake (low key UK crim caper), Stardust (fairytale action with De Niro in a dress gets my vote), Kick Ass (no need to explain) and now X-Men.  He handles this really well, giving it a fantastic 60s setting and smooth action scenes.

The second thing they did right was casting James McAvoy as Charles Xavier (future Professor X) and Michael Fassbender as Erik Lenssher (future Magneto).  Both actors are very skilled and not distracting because they aren't big stars despite being in some pretty good movies before.  They have great chemistry and McAvoy is particularly good as X, it's so fun to see him as a ladies man in his younger days.

The third thing they did right was not mess up the story. The discovery of mutants, the genesis of the establishment of a mutant force by the government to combat the Russian nuclear threat (which soon turns out to be the wrong enemy with a wild mutant Kevin Bacon running amok trying to dominate the world), and the training of the young mutants into their powers prove to be storylines that are both thought provoking and hugely entertaining.

The two young actors playing the future Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and The Beast (Nicholas Hoult) are especially good as well, bringing a bit of playful romance into the story.  These insights into the younger versions of the characters you know so well are great and nothing that they do doesn't fit with the later movies.  A few knowing winks to the future are thrown in as well.

The whole thing was just a very classy action movie, I found it captured my attention the whole team and was really fun.  Definitely see this if you are a fan of the X-Men characters or movies (you don't have to have seen the previous trilogy at all but it might make it a little more enjoyable if you did).