After 11 years in the making and countless production problems, Jim Groom’s love letter to classic film noir finally gets delivered. Of course, there are problems with it; the dubbing can grate, some of the external scenes expose technical issues and the acting is patchy, but these are merely limitations of an extremely low-budget. Despite these constraints, Room 36 is still a delicious slice of hard boiled thriller, and one that refuses to simply ape American movies, adding in wry British farce and rough London grit to deliver a cine-literate pastiche of genre conventions.

The plot of Room 36 sounds like something out of Blame it on the Bellboy – in a seedy Paddington hotel, a randy salesman waits for a prostitute and, in the next room, a hitman waits for a contact. An accident changes room 38 to read 36 so does hilarity ensue? Not quite, murder and mayhem follow instead. Welcome to director Jim Groom’s off-kilter homage to old crime movies, a sort of retro-fitted world where errors and mistaken identity lead, much like a Coen Brothers movie (think Fargo), down a dark, bloody road.

The hitman is simply known as Conner (Herzberg), supposedly at the hotel to exchange money for a piece of microfilm supplied by a government insider – Miss Woods (Booroff). It’s never clear exactly what the microfilm contains, although it has something to do with the election of the next Prime Minister, so in true Hitchcockian style it is merely an object various parties desire. But Conner is also there to dispose of Miss Woods herself, something she realises when she discovers the dead prostitute stuffed under his bed.

Though the film is shot in stark black & white the characters themselves are varying shades of grey. Like all good noirs there’re no heroes or villains, just those out for themselves. While Herzberg looks the chiselled Bogart type he plays Conner as a mumbling, brutish thug, a stone-cold killer who you certainly don’t want to meet down a London back alley. By contrast, Miss Woods is quick-witted but still hampered by greed, right up until the bloody finale where no-one gets away clean.

Groom has fun with the supporting cast – an array of letches and tarts that are the twisted cousins of the Carry On world and Scantori especially excels as the morose salesman with a lingerie fetish. Most of them get some sort of comeuppance as Groom’s cat and mouse between Conner and Miss Woods within the confines of the hotel gets more and more violent.

The film is most confident when inside the rooms themselves. The crew built two rooms and a corridor so Groom made the most of the sets by shooting from all sorts of angles to create a sense of desperate claustrophobia. Outside things are a bit more shaky. A pub brawl isn’t a visceral as it should be given the other more ‘intimate’ acts of violence and other scenes seem expositional and rushed.

It’s clear that Room 36 has been a labour of love for Groom and his crew. Over a decade in the making and with very little money it was always going to be a challenge to get a genre movie like this made in the UK, but here it is, a testament to independent filmmaking and proof that anything is possible. There are moments where cracks appear – the Sin City influenced use of red to highlight blood and one whole scene is bizarrely in full colour – but Room 36 is still an exciting piece of work. Rarely is a film so stripped-down but still has tension you can chew on.

The film evokes the work of Kubrick; the freedom to commit grotesque acts reminds us of the unrepentant droogs of A Clockwork Orange while the dehumanization of war builds on Full Metal Jacket, but with children in the firing line. There’s never any real character exploration, there’s rarely a chance as the rebel leaders fire-up the boys with cocaine and chants like “Don’t want to die? Don’t be born”, but Sauvaire still keeps a sense of childishness buried deep within each of them – some wear fancy dress and Mad Dog himself is a fan of Chuck Norris.

In a parallel story a young girl, Laokole (Daisy Victoria Vandy), tries to save her disabled father from the rebel attacks. In brief moments she awakens some sort of compassion in Mad Dog but ultimately this is a film about the horrors of war – wars that rage right now in Africa – and how the biggest losers are always going to be the children caught up in it. Sauvaire captures their hopelessness, their manipulation, with unnerving accuracy and doesn’t shy away from the sickening reality of what any human being, child or not, is capable of doing.

The story follows two friends - Florence (Marian Kunonga) and Nyasha (Ulla Mahaka) – who abandon their village life in favour of fighting for their freedom but they quickly realise that war is brutal and unglamorous. Nyasha is renamed Liberty and uses her skills as a writer to distance herself from the frontline while Florence becomes Flame, a brave warrior but one abused by her superiors. She’s raped and becomes pregnant, forced to become a mother while trying to fight for independence.

Flame is both intimate and inspiring as Sinclair follows the pair’s friendship through the hardships of war and into the decades that followed in which men were called heroes but the women still oppressed. Kunonga’s performance is powerful, refusing to be the victim while also honouring all the women who fought and died for Zimbabwe as Flame is both maternal and fearless. Sinclair’s film is a testament to those that gave their lives to their country but also demands that the government acknowledge them properly. In the film’s final scene, Florence and Nyasha can only watch the all-male Hero’s Day celebrations on TV. Despite what they’ve gone through their struggle still continues.

Director Wanuri Kahiu’s central character is Tamani (Corine Onyango), an angry teenage girl whose mother was never found after the attack and her relationship with her father is distant and strained. An intelligence officer (played by Ken Ambani) tries to help her come to terms with her grief while also dealing with his own. Through flashbacks we learn that his lifelong friend was involved in the bombing and how this put his own Muslim beliefs to the ultimate test.

Kahiu’s production values are incredibly high and the film is tense and realistic. The bombing itself is stark and shocking, combining documentary footage with shots of Kahiu’s characters caught up in the chaos. The film went on to win 5 African Movie Academy Awards in Nigeria, including Best Director and Best Picture, and is a powerful story that’s universal to many in the world who now have to deal with terrorism as part of modern life. The Kenya bombing may be little known to those outside Africa and Kahiu gives it the attention it deserves.

Below are some of the reviews I wrote so please check ‘em out… and then buy something…

Red Dwarf Anniversary Edition
Alfred Hitchcock Box Set
The IT Crowd Series 1 - 3
Lost Seasons 1 – 5
Madagascar
The Office: An American Workplace Series 1 – 3
Fawlty Towers
The River Cottage Collection
The X-Files
Dad’s Army
Battlestar Galactica
Stargate Atlantis Series 1 - 5
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Seasons 1 – 4
Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law Seasons 1 – 3
Scrubs Series 1 - 7

Look! Stuff! Happening! Constantly! More stuff! Spaceships! Big monsters! Weird blobs floating! Ash drifting in the background! Mech Warriors! Stuff! This is essentially Avatar. In 3-D. For 160 minutes. I walked away with a headache (although that could have been down to the closing Leona Lewis song) but suitably amazed at what James Cameron had achieved. These are the best CG effects in the history of the world, ever. It’s just not terribly original, with bucketfuls of cheesy dialogue about loving Mother Nature – forget the Smurfs, it’s more like a Captain Planet origin story. It’s a spectacular blockbuster but District 9 essentially did the same with a lot more heart.

The trouble with movies like Avatar is that reviews start to sound like they’re talking about videogames. Story and character have been at the centre of filmmaking for decades but in the age of motion capture, 3-D and eye-bleeding CGI the sheer spectacle has become an element in its own right. So, like game reviews break their subject down into visual/technical accomplishment versus playability and originality, we must do the same with Avatar, a movie destined to become renowned for demonstrating the wondrous possibilities of computerized filmmaking but little else.

Avatar’s been in the making since James Cameron’s last feature film Titanic in 1997. The ‘king of the world’ has been busy completely revolutionising digital effects, even creating real-time motion capture technology that allowed him to shoot a scene with actors and then move the camera and objects within that scene wherever he wanted, effectively reshooting it long after the actors had left, or ‘playing God’ as some would say. The result is truly breathtaking. Avatar is set on the world of Pandora – a completely realised living and breathing planet with its own eco system, startling creatures and alien tribes – everything moves, everything is there for a reason.

I’ll say it again, it’s breathtaking. Pandora makes Gollum look like a kid’s flipbook animation. Even though the movie is 60/40 CG versus live-action, you simply cannot tell the difference between them. The indigenous alien tribes that inhabit Pandora, the blue-skinned Na’vi, are a tremendous achievement, looking eerily like the actors that play them and containing all the emotional weight of a physical performance.

You see, I’ve already spent most of the review banging on about how great everything looks and haven’t even mentioned the story. Jake (Worthington) is a disabled ex-marine who winds up on Pandora where a big bad mining corporation want what’s under the Na’vi’s home. Jake is given an avatar he can control, a Na’vi body with elements of human DNA, so he can get friendly with the Na’vi and try to convince them to move on. If you’ve seen Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai you can guess what happens next, the meat-headed yank ‘goes native’ and opts to help the Na’vi stand-up to their oppressors.

There’s plenty of heavy-handed allegory in there, from Native Americans, to Vietnam, up to Iraq, as Cameron paints, with very broad strokes, his criticism of US foreign policy in a story that sympathises with an occupied people. This is all very worthy, especially in a unashamedly mainstream movie like this, but Cameron isn’t exactly coming up with anything new and the plot is painfully predictable – Jake falls for Neytiri (Saldana) who teaches him the Na’vi ways, Jake learns their culture and how they’re at one with nature, Jake rebels against his orders.

The supporting cast are also incredibly contrived, boiling the whole thing down into military might versus scientific empathy; Weaver is the maternal mother figure, Ribisi is the uncaring company man, Rodriguez the tough-talking female marine – it’s essentially an Aliens character reunion. But come the absolutely jaw-dropping final battle it won’t matter much because Cameron will have already melted your brain in the blockbuster to end all blockbusters. Yes, computer effects won’t be the same again but a unique, compelling story is still the biggest challenge, no matter how many processors you’ve got working on it.

If you check out Starhyke’s official site then you’ll see that Dymond has gone to great lengths to come up with a backstory for the show’s universe. Sadly, little of this makes it to the screen giving the series a very haphazard feel. The pilot episode, Disordered, begins in 3034, in a universe where human’s have suppressed their emotions and are on the verge of wiping out the last alien race of the galaxy. But the Reptids counter-strike by sending a ship back in time to the Earth of the 21st century where they plan to detonate a weapon that will reawaken human emotion. The Dreadnaught Nemesis is tasked with going back in time to stop them but is hit with a smaller version of the weapon so the crew must deal with their new, heightened emotions while hunting the Reptids.

Dymond’s main aim is to put some sex appeal back into sci-fi. The crew of the Nemesis will be familiar to fans of The Next Generation – there’s an android, a warrior, a brilliant engineer – but Dymond flips the stuffiness of Star Trek’s ordered and boring Enterprise by having the characters suddenly injected with feelings. Now they’re angry, crying, horny… mostly horny. Although Dymond’s premise is intriguing and allows for a few dramatic moments, including one where they all realise how horrible they’ve been to other races, the show very quickly descends into Benny Hill territory with nurses in short skirts and tired double entendres.

What’s first noticeable is that the Bridge of the Nemesis is mainly made up of women. Hot women who are soon all cleavage and legs. Obviously, the main selling point of the show is Christian as Captain Belinda Blowhard, who, let’s face it, is in a different league to Kate Mulgrew’s very prim Janeway, but they’ve travelled back to the 21st century, not the 1960s. In a later episode, Plug and Play, some of them get jobs in a strip club, yes, a strip club, which is a pretty handy way of getting Rachel Grant (as the aptly named Wu Oof) to show off her assets.

The men don’t come off any better and are aloof and unlikeable. Commander Cropper (Brad Gorton) is supposedly the dashing male of the group but is deeply uncharismatic, yet all the women fancy him, fighting for his attention. For some reason, Chief Engineer Sally Popyatopov (Stephanie Jory) lusts after him the most while on her quest to lose her virginity but this is sub-plot is never really explored. Meanwhile, the ship’s Doctor (Jeremy Bulloch, Star Wars’ Boba Fett) stares at his nurses bending over while experimenting with a very enjoyable new substance called alcohol.

All of this might be more acceptable if the show either a) had a story or b) was funny. Seven of Nine had sex appeal but she was also a character who had to deal with certain issues and obstacles. In Starhyke there is little in the way of character development, except they get more sex-crazed with each episode, and the plots themselves revolve around getting a random signal from somewhere and trying to track down a Reptid, preferably where not many clothes are needed. There’re hints of an actual plot involving the ship’s Hologram (Gene Foad) but this seems like an afterthought.

Many of the episodes feel like a first draft, especially Kill Jill which actually features some of the show’s better action sequences. As a real-life martial artist, Grant is given the opportunity to face-off with accomplished stunt woman Cecily Fay but the fight itself is pointless. They just get given the disc they wanted after an incoherent scene with a slightly bemused Sir Patrick Moore. Only in the final episode, Lock, Choc and Flying Hogs, does Dymond really get a story cooking as the Hologram’s plan is properly developed.

When it comes to gags, Starhyke mixes so-so Matrix and 2001 references with old fashioned wink wink nudge nudges. “I’m not getting it,” exclaims Blowhard while watching a dodgy video. “Neither am I but I intend to!” says Sally, bah-bum tsch. There are some clever moments in there, there’s a visual Mars Attacks joke that’s very amusing, but you spend most of the time waiting for a stern matron to appear and tell everyone off. It wouldn’t be surprising if the show was originally titled Carry On Up Uranus.

On the plus side, Dymond has done a fantastic job with the special effects and on a very low-budget created some incredibly detailed computer models. The starship dog fights are of a very high calibre and the show certainly demonstrates Dymond’s talents as a visual director. The acting is also top-notch despite the very thin material and fans of Christian will certainly get a kick out of her trying something different. Her comedic timing is perfect and she puts in an authoritative yet empathic performance with very little to go on. But the real star is Suanne Braun (as Dotty, the schizophrenic half-computer, half-human) who has fun mixing up expressions and accents.

Should the series have made it to TV? No. The episodes are too slapdash and the comedy is best left in the past, but the fact Dymond has put together a whole TV series without any backing is still a commendable achievement. Starhyke at least looks highly professional and there is a premise buried in there that makes fun of sci-fi shows that take themselves far too seriously. But, sadly, it’s another casualty for the growing tried-but-failed list of sci-fi comedies.

In November, Abertoir marked its fourth birthday and, thanks to funding from the Film Agency for Wales, director Gaz Bailey was able to screen over 20 films as well as masterclasses and macabre performances from the Grand Guignol Laboratory. Although the line-up included big releases such as The Descent 2, Abertoir is not just about the future of horror, it is about exploring its roots in film and beyond, and for many the big treat was the festival’s opening feature – a chance to see the rarest of the rare – Michael Mann’s The Keep (1983).

It has become an Abertoir tradition to kick off with a cult movie and The Keep is the Holy Grail. Unreleased on DVD, it is often talked about but little seen, and film fans are always on the lookout for a worn-out VHS copy in a bargain bin. It’d be logical to assume that to get an original 35mm print Bailey must have taken on a diabolical series of challenges, each more fiendish that the last… Not quite: ‘I didn’t think we had a hope in hell,’ he said, ‘but Paramount had a print and just sent it over. I was really quite surprised! We want to make use of our Welsh-ness and The Keep was ideal’.

Filmed up the road in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, in-between the mountains of Snowdonia, The Keep was notoriously dogged by problems that led to many of the team involved disowning the film. Mann based it on F Paul Wilson’s book, and the author hated the director’s interpretation, which removed the Gothic vampirism and replaced it with cosmic expressionism.

The Keep was also controversial in its use of Nazis as central characters, but this is partly because viewers often erroneously remember the film as sympathetic to them. Set in 1941, when the German army was at the height of its power, it follows a platoon sent to guard a Romanian keep. But within lies a malevolent force that feeds on their evil, growing stronger as it destroys them. The force itself is a mirror of Nazism, reflecting its corrupting power back at those who wield it.

Mann went on to make Manhunter (1986), in which he further explored atmospheric horror, and later Heat (1995) and The Insider (1999), which are much more grounded in the real world. The Keep is his most experimental work, a supernatural fairy tale to be experienced rather than understood. The studio rejected his original three-hour cut, and the plot makes little sense as a result, but Mann’s approach is wonderfully trippy, letting the otherworldly, often imposing, score from electronic musicians Tangerine Dream drive the story.

The difficulty Mann had making the film drove him back to TV for Miami Vice and Abertoir’s screening offered a tantalising look at a very different side of a great filmmaker, who may well be one of horror’s greatest losses. Like all good films of the genre, The Keep is heavy on emotion and atmosphere, centring on epic themes about good and evil that still resonate.

Director Feng Xiaogang went on to make The Banquet and Assembly after this 2004 blockbuster and you can see where he began employing the melodramatic ‘worthiness’ found in his work. It’s a stunningly shot movie despite the limited location but Xiaogang doesn’t have the lightness of touch to make it as fun as it should be. The sleight of hand showdowns are also pointlessly over the top thanks to some computer ‘enhancement’ and Baoqiang becomes so superfluous he’s asleep for most of the second half.

Action Rating: 2/5
Film Rating: 3/5

If you liked this try: Sparrow, The Sting, Xiao Wu

It’s frustrating when films like Moon come along. After all the hype it received this year at Edinburgh, Sundance, Tribeca etc it looked like a must see film. It is, but I’m only finding out now because it’s just come out on DVD. Could I see it at my local multiplex? No, only Transformers 2. Moon is one of the best films of the year, and one of the greatest sci-fi trips since Solaris. It’s lovingly made, with a great respect for the genre, and full of heavy themes all swirling round perfectly realised performances from Sam Rockwell in a dual role.

Sci-fi dominated the summer – there was plenty of Star Trekking, Terminating and Transforming going on - but, although fun, the films were somewhat hollow. With big, slick effects and frequent explosions, modern sci-fi has lost some of its charm, the ability to say ‘what if’ and explore the impact of theories and possibilities on the human soul. Thankfully, in amongst the noise, there are films out there still doing that, such as Duncan Jones’ Moon.

Receiving a limited release earlier this year, Moon is handcrafted for fans of proper science fiction. It’s retro but modern, big on ideas but intimately handled. Those who yearn for the 70s desperation of Silent Running or Alien will feel right at home in Moon’s isolated setting and cold, corporate dystopia. Those who admired the vision of Kubrick’s 2001 get a similarly realistic and rich experience, but without Kubrick’s detachment as Jones combines conceptual ideas with very human and engaging characters.

Obviously Moon is set on the Moon, where a lonely astronaut, Sam Bell (Rockwell), looks after harvesters that send energy back to Earth. Coming to the end of a 3 year contract, Sam is only weeks away from going home. With no live feed from Earth, he’s survived on occasional taped messages from his wife and daughter and dry banter with the base’s computer GERTY (perfectly voiced by Spacey). Needless to say, Sam’s mind is going a bit loopy.

After an accident, Sam wakes up in the infirmary but something’s different. He ventures outside and finds a wounded man… himself. It’s not a spoiler to say the film is about cloning. The story is very matter-of-fact about it and Jones keeps things very clear and linear. When compared to a more trippy movie like Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris remake – which shares a suspenseful, quirky feel – Moon isn’t about playing with what’s real and what isn’t, instead examining the relationship between the two Sams and what they’ll do before the corporation’s ‘rescue’ team arrives.

Hanging out with two Sam Rockwells is a masterclass, not just in special effects, but in acting and character development. It’s all summed up nicely in a scene where the two play ping-pong. The shot is seamless as they rally back and forth but it also highlights the differences between the new and 3 year versions of Sam; the latter is tired and mellow, the other cocky and competitive. Through these exchanges we get a sense of Sam’s life before the contract and how the Moon has changed him, all the time Rockwell’s easy charm helping the audience engage with the character(s).

From the lived-in feel of the base to the intricate model-shots of the harvesters, Jones achieves a sense of reality that just isn’t there in computer effects and it’s all anchored by an original, well-told story. The bad guy isn’t even the computer as you would expect and, defying cliché, GERTY is simple and endearing, just wanting the best for Sam. The fact there is no real enemy is Moon’s greatest success, letting Jones convey the isolation of being away from Earth where it’s easy to forget about humanity itself. Such grand themes so carefully explored make Moon an instant sci-fi classic.