Million Dollar Baby

I had avoided watching this film, for no reason that I can now think of. This ignorance, though, helped make the movie much more powerful for me than if I'd known the plot in advance. Yes, I knew that it was about Clint Eastwood's character training Hilary Swank's female boxer, but this is only the skeleton upon which the drama is built. Like every sports film, we inevitably have to sit through a training montage, watch an amateur attempt to perform like a professional, and have the plot revolve around what happens in the arena. However, this movie surpasses a lot of these clichés so that it is a point of contention whether to call it a 'sports film' at all. Hilary Swank is brilliant and believable as Maggie Fitzgerald, and she won an Oscar for her efforts. I was a little disappointed by Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, who seemed fairly lacklustre (and actually hard to hear they spoke in such gravelly voices, as if they trying to out-do each other), although one of them won an Oscar too. It could be said that the film is nastily contrived to produce tears, or that the voice over is unnecessary and sentimental, but these are arguable flaws. It is undoubtedly a powerful drama, played fairly straight, and days later it will catch you again, and make you pause for thought. If that isn't a sign of a good film, I don't like good films.

Alien: Resurrection

Seeing as I'd watched Alien 3 recently, I thought it was a good opportunity to watch the fourth film in the quadrilogy again (the correct word is actually 'tetralogy', but no one uses that). I've actually always liked this film, although when you compare it to the first two movies, and ask whether it successfully continues the franchise, you have to be disappointed. They are really scraping the barrel here. Ripley (along with the aliens) is quite conveniently resurrected. Her character bears almost no resemblance to the interesting figure of the first two films, though. She is now 'part alien'. There is no longer any attempt to slowly introduce the aliens, to terrify us with them again. Instead, the film gives us a series of fairly gruesome and complicated deaths, but we've pretty much seen it all before. There's only so many ways an alien can sneak up on someone and kill them. This film was written by Joss Whedon and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, however, which must account for the bits of originality that are here, and the sense of humour involved. There is a slightly annoying comic book look to the film, which I can assume comes from Jeunet. Watch out for the underwater scene, which is about as contrived as you can get, trying desperately to show us the aliens in a new light. This film is good fun, despite some bad acting by Winona Ryder, but when you compare it to its predecessors, which inevitably you have to, you can't help but feel that this was an empty exercise.

Leprechaun

A film from the early 1990s to consider today. Not exactly a classic, but it has generated some sort of cult, incredibly spawning five sequels, perhaps because it marks the first film performance by Jennifer Aniston, although we can't give all of the credit to her. It is a terrible movie by most standards, but we have to see past that if we want to understand why some people like it. There's no doubt that it's funny, for instance. It's in fact so funny that you have to categorise this as a 'comedy-horror', rather than a 'horror'. You can't take the Leprechaun seriously for more than about two minutes of this movie, and it's not helped by the bad acting. They could've held back his appearance to build up a bit of tension. Aside from one scene with a pogo stick, he's not frightening at all. His almost OCD-like compulsion to clean shoes is hilarious. Overall, there is little to no character development. Everything is rushed through from one action scene to the text, with a hashed attempt at mythology trying to mesh it all together. The only answer to the conundrum of its popularity is that people must like it because it's so bad, and because Aniston is attractive (and pre-nose job). For a true masterpiece in the 'comedy-horror' genre, you have to see Tremors.