The Monkey King (2014)

For those up on their Chinese mythology (or fans of the old Japanese TV show, Monkey!), the basic story of The Monkey King is a familiar one, although this latest big screen adaptation adds a few flourishes and twists to the traditional tale.

At its heart though, it's a straight-forward morality play about a naive and egotistical animal spirit, Sun Wukong aka Monkey King (Donnie Yen), being tricked into helping the evil forces of the Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok) get through the Gates Of Heaven and attempt a coup against the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat).

Kam-Yuen Szeto and Edmond Wong's script is very clever, giving the well-known tale a fresh coat of paint rather than a total overhaul.

For instance, I liked the introduction of the low-key romance between the Monkey King and Silver Fox (Xia Zi Tong), that added an extra layer to explaining his willingness to go along with the Bull Demon King, and unlike many Western films this sub-plot doesn't slow the phenomenal pacing of the main story.

Although The Monkey King is two hours long, it moves along like a bullet train, but where it falls down is the rather inconsistent quality of its special effects.

While the blend of "people-in-costumes" creatures and CGI gives the movie a certain charm - the 'costume creatures', for instance, evoke memories of the old Monkey! TV show... and Power Rangers - the computer graphics lurch from breath-taking to appalling.

Rather oddly, for me, the equally unpredictable subtitles on my Thai-import DVD didn't hamper my enjoyment of the movie.

Some lengthy dialogue scenes merited no sub-titles (particularly, for some reason, when Sun Wukong was speaking) and at other times screeds of text would race across the screen at migraine-inducing speed.

And yet, the plot was still easy to follow. Yes, I might have missed some moments of witty (or profound) dialogue, but the visual storytelling was so spot on that I still felt as though I had my finger on the film's pulse.

That's not to say it's simplistic. This is an Asian fantasy after all, so there are some insane segues and moments of mind-baffling surreality that trigger 2001: A Space Odyssey flashbacks, but you watch enough of these movies and you learn to just go with it.

Interestingly, The Monkey King serves as a prequel to the better known story of Monkey and Tripitaka's 'Journey To The West'; we just get a teasing glimpse of young Tripitaka in the closing moments.

The Adventures Of Hercules II (1985)

Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.

In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.

This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.

Sonia Viviani

To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.

The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).

It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).

This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.

Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.

Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.

Milly Carlucci

After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.

On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).

The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.

Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.

Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!

Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.

And the patchy nature of the bonkers plot.

Space Movies (and A TV Show) Based on Real Science

Most space movies look amazing — but not all of them get the science right.

In this video, we’re looking at nine movies (and one very special series) that actually do — or at least try their best.

Dr. Strange (1978)

With the official Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration of Doctor Strange now well established and part of the general public's consciousness (thanks, in large part, to casting Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Sorcerer Supreme),  I thought it was time to set the Wayback Machine to the 1970s and fall under the spell of the original Dr. Strange movie.

As ever, this 1978 TV movie needs to be considered on its own merits, taking into account the budgetary and technological restrictions of its time.

The Ditko-verse

Five hundred-year-old sorceress Morgan LeFey (Jessica Walter) is tasked by her nameless, demonic master (a giant, mist-enshrouded puppet, voiced by David Hooks) to slay Earth's current sorcerer supreme, Thomas Lindmer (John Mills... yes, THE John Mills) within an arbitrary timeframe of three days. I suspect he's supposed to be Dormammu.

The legendary Arthurian villianness has been hanging around the "higher levels of the Astral plane", a set clearly influenced by the iconic artwork of Dr. Strange comic book artist Steve Ditko. This opening sequence gave me hope that the film would be treating its source material with some respect.

Morgan's scheme involves mind-controlling beautiful student Clea Lake (Eddie Benton aka Anne-Marie Martin) to push Lindmer off a bridge.

Lindmer survives, but Clea is traumatised by the event and ends up in hospital under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), who wears his father's ring that bears the same symbol as seen on Lindmer's window and on a painting in his Sanctum Sanctorum.

Strange finds himself drawn to Clea and Lindmer offers to help out in her treatment, convincing Strange to come to his home where he sends the doctor off on an astral voyage to save Clea's soul.

Astral Tripping

This 2001-style, kaleidoscopic light-show - complete with a phantom horseman in the form of the demon Balzaroth (voiced by The Addams Family's Ted Cassidy) - is the visual highlight of the film, being surprisingly imaginative and trippy despite the limitations of '70s TV special effects.

After this, Strange declares he doesn't want anything more to do with Lindmer's magic, but Morgan isn't listening and after bitch-slapping Lindmer's chum Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) and then seemingly doing the same to the old man, she turns her attention to Stephen Strange.

It turns out that Morgan has a bit of a cougar-thing going and wants to use her womanly wiles (which apparently haven't seen much action during her centuries in The Dark Dimension) to seduce the good doctor. He, of course, is having none of this - as his eyes are focussed on Clea.

Dr. Strange is quite a dialogue-heavy piece, but still manages to break this up with some flashy light shows and demonic summonings, so that even in the many hospital scenes the pace never sags too badly.

However, things go bizarrely off the rails in the film's denouement - presumably these were meant as plot hooks if this pilot spawned a TV show - when Clea and Strange repeat (almost verbatim) a conversation they had earlier in the film, but neither notice, and then neither seem that perturbed by Morgan popping up on TV as a self-help guru!

There are a lot of changes from the source material in Dr. Strange, most of which I can understand for the sake of brevity, such as stripping out Strange's adventures in Tibet and making him a psychiatrist rather than a surgeon to tie him in to Clea's sub-plot.

What were they thinking?

It's a bit of a shame that in removing the Eastern aspects of Strange's backstory (thus explaining why Lindmer becomes Strange's mentor, rather than The Ancient One - who, confusingly, makes a vocal appearance during Strange's transformation sequence) they also decided to Westernise Wong and change Clea to a normal human being.

But I guess they didn't want to overload a mainstream audience with too much extraneous weirdness in a 90-minute television show about dimension-hopping sorcerers battling demons for the fate of humanity.

The worst change though is the inexplicable reworking of the classic Dr Strange look into a kitsch superhero costume with a bizarre starburst on the front.

Thankfully this only appears briefly towards the end of the film, after Morgan has magically dressed him in robes that do a far better job of emulating his comic book look.

Overall, Dr. Strange - as you would expect - is a product of its time. A bit slow in parts and very cheesy, but with some great touches along the way that suggest the people behind it had ambitious plans should it have been picked up to run as a series.

It was clearly going to be a very different superhero show to The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America that were making similar, difficult, transitions from the comic book page to the television screen at that time.

Annihilation (2018)

Three years ago, something alien crash landed in an isolated, swampy, region of southern America, creating an expanding field of energy known as The Shimmer.

While the government has been able to keep this classified so far, every expedition sent inside to investigate has failed to return.

That is, until special forces operative Kane (Oscar Isaac), the husband of biologist Lena (Natalie Portman), suddenly appears back at their house.

He is unable to tell her anything about where he has been, and quickly falls ill.

As they are being rushed to hospital, the government swoops in and Lena and her dying husband are taken to the Southern Reach, a top secret scientific outpost monitoring the growth of The Shimmer.

In an effort to help save her husband - and understand what happened to him - Lena agrees to accompany a new team venturing into the strange phenomenon.

As they enter, they quickly begin to grasp the extent of the mutative effects of the alien field, not just on the landscape and wildlife, but on themselves.

Released on Netflix today, Annihilation deserves a place amongst the rarefied Lovecraftian horrors of In The Mouth Of Madness, Event Horizon, The Thing et al that encapsulate the style and feel of HP Lovecraft's work without actually being based directly on anything he wrote.

That said, in part, it feels like an updated spin on the Lovecraft classic Colour Out Of Space, with a side order of 2001: A Space Odyssey for flavouring.

Written and directed by Alex Garland - adapted from the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's critically-acclaimed Southern Reach Trilogy - Annihilation initially unfolds beautifully, dazzling with its blend of disorientating sci-fi and atmospheric horror.

From the get-go, it's obvious that this is not a horror film for everyone, it's a slow burn, not relying on jump scares, but rather on the audience imagining themselves in that predicament, as everything they think is true begins to unravel.

However, where the film disappoints is its climactic "kill it with fire" resolution to the unearthly situation, rather than anything more cerebral as one might have hoped after the build-up.

Although blurred - and missing - time is a factor within The Shimmer, towards the climax of Annihilation it's clear that the story has a pacing issue.

While it may not have been able to attract the big name stars, I came away from this eagerly-anticipated film thinking that it would have worked better as, say, a six-part mini-series.

That way we could have been drawn in to, and experienced, the strange goings-on of The Shimmer on a deeper level.

So, while I say it deserves to be counted amongst those other legendary Lovecraftian horror movies, Annihilation is sadly the 'also ran' of the group.

It feels as though Garland couldn't decide whether to go full gonzo - as the set-up deserves - or play it safe with a more commercial horror flick, and in the end settled on something that was a bit of both and a lot of neither.

Shark Exorcist (2014)

Let's be honest for a moment: in our time, Paul and I have watched a lot of shit films.

But Shark Exorcist takes this to a new low.

I'd bought the DVD for Paul's birthday, in March, as a joke present. It had both "shark" and "exorcist" in the title, so surely it was a film we needed to see.

Without even watching it, Paul had loaned it to a mate who - after viewing it - had decided to take it to Cash Converters before I foolishly suggested to Paul that it might be a good candidate for one of our horror film nights.

Paul and I finally sat down to watch it one weekend in 2017... and are both still reeling from the psychological trauma of the experience.

To put it politely, it makes The Asylum's output look like Alfred Hitchcock or Werner Herzog; it is unbelievably poor. Really, really, really awful.

Shark Exorcist gives Camp Blood a run for its money for the title of worst film ever to pollute our viewing history.

Possibly produced on a dare, or a student film that has escaped into the wild, 2014's Shark Exorcist was clearly made by someone who has never studied how a film actually works.

The movie's full of scenes that start too early and then run on for too long; extended sequences where the filmmakers were clearly unable to record the actor's speaking, so we get to watch a lot of miming and pointing; a script that tears up the basic concept of a three-act story (or any form of coherent narrative); and not one but two painfully redundant post-credits scenes.

This is before we even consider the universally abysmal level of acting, not helped by the fact that several of the actresses look noticeably bored or simply don't want to be there any more.

As well as lacking a protagonist (even the titular exorcist is only in a handful of scenes), what passes for a story in Shark Exorcist is risible nonsense, all over the place, and totally confused.

There's an evil nun who sacrifices someone to Satan... or a demonic shark. Which lives in a lake.

It's a crappy CGI shark that looks like it was designed on a ZX81 by the work experience kid during his lunch break.

Then a year later three women visit the lake and one, Ali (Angela Kerecz) gets bitten by the shark (her wound looks like she was eating a hot dog and spilled ketchup on her thigh).

She goes to hospital, but then miraculously recovers from her life-threatening ketchup spill... because she's now possessed by the demon shark (or is a wereshark?).

The girl starts attacking random people (maybe she shapechanges into the shark, maybe she summons it, the film isn't clear on this topic).

Unfortunately, she makes the mistake of killing the brother of a priest (Bobby Kerecz - husband of the actress playing Ali), who then tracks her down and decides to exorcise her (even though he admits he isn't a trained exorcist).

There's a ridiculously comical exorcism scene, which features the best line in the movie: "You're going to need a bigger cross!"

After which things get even weirder. The priest becomes possessed and bites another woman, but then the demon shark drops out of a portal in the sky (WTF?), and what passes for a story goes totally off the rails.

There's an assortment of oddities in and around all this, such as the "ghost hunting" TV show that's tracking the demon shark, some wannabe witches in a nearby churchyard, a sorority initiation (where something happens off-camera that's never addressed), a bizarre and prolonged sequence of a perv spying on a woman sunbathing (in the most miserable conditions), the return of the killer nun etc

If you enjoy bad movies then this is hilarious, and we were laughing out loud for large portions of its blissfully short 71-minute duration, but there are also moments of mind boggling bewilderment where you have no clue what's going on (and I don't mean in a trippy 2001: A Space Odyssey way).

Now, I'm worried that I'm making it sound better than it is. Trust me. Shark Exorcist is dire. As I write this, it has a rating of 1.4 (out of 10) on IMDB, from 2,100 reviews. Camp Blood has a 3.1 rating, from 1,300 reviews.

I also think Sharxorcist would have been a better name.

Oh, and there was also (somehow) a sequel, Shark Exorcist 2: Unholy Waters (which we haven't seen... yet):

Moonfall (2022)

When the Moon suddenly shifts from its orbit and enters a death spiral towards Earth, mankind's only hope rests with washed-up, disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (The Conjuring's Patrick Wilson), NASA executive Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), and conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (Game of Thrones' John Bradley).

It turns out the problem is caused by an alien A.I. entity buried deep beneath the lunar surface, and only by defeating this can the Moon return to its normal trajectory.

In the midst of global chaos, with the support of a collapsing government, our heroes manage to salvage an old space shuttle from a museum for their 'Hail Mary' mission.

Moonfall is glorious nonsense, a 1950's "bad science" B-movie (or a ropey Asylum mockbuster) brought to life with the best 21st Century special effects money can buy and writ across a grand canvas.

It should come as no surprise to learn that this modern masterpiece is the work of writer/director Roland Emmerich, the creator of such wonderful comfort movies as The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, and 2012.

Emmerich definitely draws on these earlier works to inspire the non-stop action that drives the plot forward with a breathless momentum, but the  final act goes full-on Ancient Aliens-meets-The Matrix-and-2001: A Space Odyssey.

While all the weird science stuff is unfolding in space, there's a B-plot on Earth involving Harper's delinquent son, Sonny (Charlie Plummer), Fowler's young kid Jimmy (Zayn Maloney), and au pair Michelle (Kelly Yu) racing across disintegrating landscapes to find shelter from the impending apocalypse.

I'll be honest, initially, I thought I could have done without this "human interest" sub-plot, however along the way it boasted a lot of Emmerich's recurring tropes and was all the better for it. 

But it was the bonkers main storyline that truly made the whole two-hour film worthwhile.

The film knows it's totally over-the-top and ridiculous, but I love the fact that Emmerich has ensured that the script and cast take the subject matter seriously, never allowing it to lapse into easy parody.

While there are a handful of laugh-out-loud one-liners, the entire cast deserve all the awards for delivering their lines with a straight face.

Moonfall isn't Oscar bait, but then it was never intended to be. This is pure, adrenalin-fuelled entertainment of the highest calibre.

Thank the heavens for Roland Emmerich, continuing to make these epic, standalone, sci-fi disaster popcorn blockbusters.

As much as I enjoy franchise movies and earnest art films, every so often the old brain needs to kick back and relax with something that demands little beyond our simple attention and delivers a visual treat that's just plain and simple fun.

Ad Astra (2019)

When, late in the 21st Century, the Earth is bombarded by disruptive electronic waves seemingly emanating from Neptune , the U.S. Space Command contacts unflappable astronaut Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt).

It turns out his legendary father, Dr Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) disappeared in that area decades ago.

He had been leading an expedition to the edge of the solar system in pursuit of proof of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

SpaceCom reveals to Roy that they believe his father is actually alive and they want him to travel to Mars to send a message to where they think his father's craft is, to try and find out what is going on.

However, upon reaching Mars, Roy discovers that the story he grew up believing about his father's heroism might not be the truth, and darker things are afoot.

Very quickly, the cineliterate will realise that Ad Astra is Apocalypse Now in space.

Roy's journey into the heart of darkness of space is a a series of vignettes, random encounters (to borrow a gaming phrase) with people and incidents that echo Willard's journey into Cambodia (there are no tigers in space, but there are experimental primates).

This connection is heightened by Roy's inner monologue and, later, the playing of random excerpts from Clifford's log, when he's seeking to justify his actions.

As the film strives to present a realistic view of space travel (more Gravity or The Right Stuff than Firefly or Star Wars), this throws up some bizarre incongruities along the way, like the moon buggy chase with gun-totting space pirates and the utterly preposterous sequence when Roy "breaks in" to a launching rocket.

Ad Astra could also have benefited from more time with Clifford in its last act, giving Tommy Lee Jones a chance to go full Marlon Brando and start mumbling about "the horror, the horror".

Conversely, the whole sub-plot about the "power surges from space" hitting the Earth felt, ultimately, redundant.

Even though it served as the inciting incident that sent Roy off on his melancholic solar quest to find the father he had long thought dead, it added a level of confusion to the story that just wasn't really needed.

Especially when it seemed, in the end, the problem was essentially solved by flicking a switch.

There are also inevitable 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes from Ad Astra and the Chekhov's Gun feeling that there's going to be a big twist, or some major surprise, in the final act.

Spoilers: that there isn't actually plays to the hard science message of the story, and I'm not one to quibble over what a film isn't about as writer-director James Gray and co-writer Ethan Gross clearly had a point they wanted to make about man's place in the cosmos.

And they made it. I'm just not sure how well they made it.