So Bad it's Good

In a recent fit, Mr Coffee and I hired out a whole lot of DVDs from the DVD store. This is what we've hired lately:

Die Hard 3 (Die Hard With a Vengeance)
Die Hard 4 (Live Free or Die Hard)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Equilibrium
Epidemic
The Bank Job
The Black Balloon
American Gangster
The Painted Veil
Wanted
Gone Baby Gone

We've watched them all except Gone Baby Gone.

There were some pretty good ones there, suh as Die Hard 4, The Bank Job, The Black Balloon, American Gangster and The Painted Veil. I also thought One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was pretty good except I much prefer the book and also the DVD shop's version had some flaws so the DVD "crackled" and paused at some poignant moments which rather ruined the movie for us (why don't they clean the DVDs more often?).

I liked The Painted Veil better than Mr Coffee did - I guess it's a romance and that's something I prefer - I ear the book has a slightly different tone (written by W. Somerset Maugham) and I wouldn't mind reading it to see how it differs.

However, in the BAD category:

Epidemic - this one was so boring Mr Coffee and I watched a bit of it and we didn't even bother finishing it. It looked like it was trying to be so smart it forgot to be interesting. Now, I don't mind a movie that has a clever or philosophical or poignant message - but remember, you're a work of art, a piece of entertainment too, you've got to give us a reason to watch you. You're not a set text for high school or Uni. And even the set texts are best when they are appealingly written.

Equilibrium and Wanted fell into the "So Bad it's Good" category.

Though I think the prize for that category goes to Wanted.

Both were watchable action movies and kind of funny because they're so unbelievable.

Equilibrium is a sci-fi with Christian Bale which is like 1984 crossed with The Matrix - a world dominated by a Father Figure where having emotions is illegal, and everyone who feels is killed. Then Bale, who is one of the official killers, starts to feel and joins the subversive rebels.

The storyline is weird, but the action scenes are hilarious - like Bale coming into a room armed with two pistols, and is attacked by about 16 men wearing full armour armed with machine guns and who have back up. He avoids their fire by a series of slick martial arts style jumping and tumbling and back flips while slaughtering them gun-kata style using his pistols and slickly reloading them in a synchronised manner. He's wearing a white suit. When he's done, he walks through the body of corpses. His suit is uncreased, and there's not a bead of sweat or drop of blood on him.

Wanted is even more weird, with a fighting style involving stylised knife fights, jumping through windows, looms that spin out fate, an office worker with nervous attacks who has never been trained but who has inherent instincts to know how to shoot the wings of a fly, and bullets that can curve around objects to hit their targets.

These two are good for a laugh!

Often I get scared in violent films - I must admit, I'm one of those people, if I see someone's hand getting chopped off in a film I instinctively grab my own hand protectively because I can almost feel it (Even though I know it's fake - well at least I hope it is. Mr Coffee has derided some films for using what looks too obviously like plastic dummies to beat up or burn in scenes but I'm glad for the reassurance they don't really burn the actors, even an extra! I think that would be very cruel! "Being an extra for a day" would take on a whole new meaning!). However in these films most of the violenced was so fake an silly - curving bullets, etc that it was impossible to really take it seriously enough to relate and feel it - yes, even scaredy-cat me!