IMDB Bottom 100: Number 17 - United Passions

Number 17: United Passions (2014)

I have been looking forward to this one.

Ever since I first looked at the list of the films, this was the one that jumped out. As a big football fan, it was inevitable I’d have to watch this film at some point. A film made for $30 million but returned just $607 at the box office. A film that star Tim Roth described as ‘a crap movie I did for the money.’

In part a FIFA biopic, in others a biopic of one Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter. At time of writing, Mr Blatter is up to his eyeballs in allegations of corruption, receiving illegal payments and new charges coming seemingly every day. If you’re reading this in the future, he may be sitting in a prison cell right now or he may have got away scot-free (though personally, my money is on the former).

I’ll fill in the early part of the movie but if you want to know, 56:34 is when Blatter comes into it.

It starts in 1904, with the coming together of the heads of various football variations across the world to form a global governing body of football. An invitation to join is given to the English FA but as the inventors of the game, they turn up their noses at the chance to join this little organisation. The English are probably the closest this film has to villains, being portrayed as arrogant, snobbish, racist and sexist. Which to be fair, may well have been true of the gentlemen in question.

The group is formed anyway, taking the name ‘Federation of International Football Associations’ (it is implied the ‘Football Association’ part of the name was a deliberate slight against the English FA). It is actually interesting to see throughout the film how FIFA grew from one small room in Paris to the vast, lavish headquarters it now has in Zurich.

Skip on a few years and we meet now President of FIFA, Jules Rimet played by Gerard Depardieu. This covers the period between 1924-1950. It starts with Rimet’s attempts to launch the first World Cup tournament in Uruguay. They present it as fairly straightforward here but in reality it was fairly shambolic with countries withdrawing (only 13 out of 24 invited took part) and stadiums barely finished on time. Heck that would make for a film of itself.

It’s a success but FIFA is still considered a small time organisation at this point and limps along. Tensions rise throughout the Thirties between Rimet and the Italian and German delegates as real world politics threaten to tear the world apart.

Skip forward to 1942, and they tell what is known in football folklore as the ‘Death Match’. It’s the story of a Ukranian youth side in Kiev who played a team of German soldiers. They were supposed to lose the game but ended up winning the game 5-3 to the delight of the watching crowd. The Ukranian players were believed to have been executed soon after. Much of this is now believed to be myth but what is true is that it showed the power sport can have as an inspiration for an oppressed people. On a lighter note, it was the inspiration for Escape to Victory (though that is actually a more brutal film than many remember. Irish international Kevin O’Callaghan deliberately breaking his own arm anyone?).

Happier times come with the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. This is Rimet’s last World Cup as FIFA president, though he still has time to thank the English for ‘joining our little organisation’. Which is a nice call back to an earlier conversation. Or at least it would be if Rimet had actually been present for that conversation.

And this is where the film should have ended. This should have been the film, the life of Jules Rimet, the visionary who launched a tournament nobody thought would succeed, ending in front of a crowd of over 100,000 people at the Macarena stadium in Brazil with millions more following the game around the globe. It’s a shame about everything that follows, as the first half of this film is actually really good.

There is a bit of filler until we reach the year 1974, when we have our main event. Enter Sepp Blatter (Tim Roth) and the film becomes his vanity piece.

The FIFA president is now Joao Havelange, Blatter’s mentor and a man some believe to have been even more corrupt. He’s played by Sam Neill, who speaks with a Brazilian-Portuguese accent whenever he remembers to.

FIFA is in trouble, they are losing money. Only one man can save them: Super-Sepp! You see, he has an ‘ability for finding money’ (films words). He can ‘create new revenue streams’ (films words).

See how Super-Sepp saves the world of football as he:

• -          Brings football to Africa and Asia
• -          Saves FIFA brokering deals with Adidas and Coca-Cola, just by asking for it
• -          Tackles corruption in FIFA by not actually doing anything

Now to give Blatter his dues, in his time as FIFA Secretary General and later President, football has grown massively in Africa and Asia. Women’s football is the biggest it’s ever been. Whether Blatter can take as much personal credit as he does here though is highly questionable.

FIFA is more profitable now than it’s ever been but again that’s more down to its business practices where the host country of a World Cup pay all the costs but FIFA take all the profits.

And corruption. Blatter talks big about corruption in the film, how the gravy train is over but again, he doesn’t actually do anything about it. Maybe this was the film-makers subtle hint to the audience that Blatter is either a liar or an idiot.

Corruption within FIFA was the world’s biggest open-secret, everyone in football knew about it. Where they went wrong though, was screwing over the USA for the 2018 World Cup. Screwing over little European nations is fine but you don’t fuck with America. God bless you, America!

All that remains to be seen is how much Blatter was personally involved.

The film, first half was good but very poor display in the second half. Substituting Rimet for Blatter was a bad idea. The boy Blatter was brought on to be a hero but at the end of the day, his performance left much to be desired.

I'll leave the last word to Tim Roth:

IMDB Bottom 100: Number 18 - Gunday

Number 18: Gunday (2014)

How best to describe this Bollywood offering?

I’d say Gunday is like The Krays meets Scarface with a big serving of rom-com thrown in the mix. And that is as bad as it sounds.

The first thing I want to mention is the music because out of everything this is what bothered me most. Calling it background music would be inappropriate, as this is very much foreground music. It drowns out everything else on screen, dialogue is barely audible. Ok, I have to watch with subtitles anyway but it’s still distracting. It’s not even good music, they just gave some children a variety of instruments and told them to make some random noises.

Ok, plot and this will require a brief history lesson first. In 1971, Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan following a bloody conflict. The aftermath of this with the drawing up of new borders meant in the region of two million people were ‘displaced’. Amidst this turmoil is where our two heroes come in, as two young orphan boys (Bikram and Bala) who have escaped into a refugee camp in India. They do various jobs such as gun smuggling for one of the guards but this arrangement goes pear shaped when one of them is pimped out (Bala I think) for some child abuse.

They kill the abuser and escape to Calcutta where they begin their criminal empire. It seems to be built around stealing coal from trains. British Gas gone gangster. They become the biggest gangsters in Calcutta and grow up into male models, who like nothing more than to run merrily across the plains together (which is kind of true). Bikram (Ranveer Singh) rather reminds me of Steve Coogan character Tony Ferrino. 

Hey, maybe thats one I can pitch to Steve Coogan, Tony Ferrino gets mistaken for a crime boss and is put in prison. Meanwhile, the crime boss is living Tony's life as an international singing sensation but even more annoyingly, is getting better reviews than Tony ever did.

Back to Gunday and a police detective (Irrfan Khan) is put on their tail of the dynamic duo to bring them down. And that's as far as character development goes for him. Seriously, he should act as their nemesis but all we know about him is he exists.

Clearly this first 30 minutes was too grim for a Bollywood movie, so the crime gets parked for the next hour and the film turns into a rom-com. Both guys fall for dancer Nandita, played by the impossibly beautiful Priyanka Chopra. So Bikram and Bala both try various things to impress her, including dancing with a fish. Yeah. That happened. More amazing than that, it seemed to work. So next time you guys want to attract a girl in a nightclub, bring a fish with you.

It all goes a bit pear-shaped when a visit to the cinema ends with Bala shooting a guy. He has to leave Calcutta while the heat is on. This opens the path for Bikram to have Nandita all to himself. Bala hears of this and gets pissed off so he returns to Calcutta to confront Bikram. They have a fight in a warehouse which looks like it came out of a Marvel movie. It’s a good thing they both remembered to oil their chests beforehand. Otherwise the whole thing would have looked ridiculous.

Actually, the Marvel comparison is quite appropriate as a lot of the time it does seem like they are being presented as superheroes.

After a revelation about Nandita that comes as a shock to nobody, the police now feel they have enough evidence to take the not-quite-brothers down.

The two are re-united as they have one final showdown with the police but still make time for a last oiled up run together.

At two and a half hours, it feels short for a Bollywood film but at least 30 minutes too long for anywhere else. It always feels to me when watching Bollywood stuff that every scene could have been done in half the time. I guess that’s just their style.

The uneven tone of going between gritty crime thriller and whimsical romantic comedy does the film no favours. If it knew what it wanted to be this could have been ok but as it is, Gunday comes off as an awful mess.

With awful music. Awful, awful music.

IMDB Bottom 100: Number 19 - Daniel the Wizard

Daniel the Wizard (2004)

Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2vKfxXE7_4

Oh good lord what is this?

I’ve watched this twice and I still don’t understand what was supposed to be going on.

Let’s start with the title, Daniel the Wizard. Firstly, Daniel is not a wizard, he’s a singer. Daniel Küblböck who finished third in German Idol no less. Which obviously qualified him to be in a movie. I’ve dealt with Pop Idol people in films before, From Justin to Kelly, but at least that had some form of structure to it. Daniel The Wizard (or Daniel Der Zauberer in its native German) is all over the place.

There are some members of the magic circle who want to kill Daniel because movie. Seriously, I have no idea why they want him dead, maybe because of his effeminate nature and they really hate that. Or maybe they just didn’t like his music.

So it’s like if Paul Daniels wanted to take out Chico.

*Pitch Idea: Paul Daniels catches Chico having ‘Chico-Time’ with Debbie McGee. So Daniels puts a bounty on Chico’s head and he has to go on the run. David Copperfield and Penn & Teller try to claim the bounty before Chico, aided only by Rik Waller, confronts Daniels in a one-on-one final showdown to the death.

I’m filing that one away with Gates & Young: Vice (see number 30: From Justin to Kelly). I think people will like it, but not a lot (sorry).

Anyway, back to Daniel the-less-than Wizard. A couple of assassins are hired to do the job at a concert but they just can’t go through with it, I guess his songs were just too magical. And then they all end up playing together in the snow. And I wish to God I was making that up but that actually happens.

There are other tiny, minuscule sub-plots about a teen fan of Daniel’s and him auditioning for a Hollywood film (with what to me looks like one of the worst auditions ever but they hire him anyway) but they don’t go anywhere so they are hardly worth bringing up except to point out that all they do is add to the chaotic mess of the film.

We do get ‘treated’ to a number of Daniel’s songs and though much like with Bollywood films I try to stay away from musical criticism, his songs are bad. Really bad. Watching him singing about being a ‘Rock and Roll hero’ the only natural response is ‘No. You’re not. You’re really not.’

The soundtrack is mostly Daniel Küblböck’s songs apart from Tchkaivosky’s Swan Lake. Why that’s there I have no idea but that always reminds me of Dracula. The best Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, if you’ve not seen it, go see it. Then watch Lugosi’s other films, a great actor but typecast in horror films and held back in the Hollywood studio system by his Hungarian accent.

I appear to keep getting distracted but that’s only because I really don’t want to think about this film anymore. Even star Küblböck said in interviews he was so thrilled to have been offered a movie part he never stopped to think about it making no sense.

It’s 77 minutes long but feels like it goes on for six hours. It’s revealed at the end one of the wizard’s is Daniel’s father. Or at least I think it was, I could easily have just been making up my own endings because by that point, I just really didn’t care.

IMDB Bottom 100: Number 20 - Pledge This!

Number 20: Pledge This! (2006)

Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyefc0vJwj4

I’ve been trying to think how to best tackle this review of the 2006 Paris Hilton film about a group of awkward outsiders who want to join a bitchy sorority and I think the best way to go about it is this:

THIS FILM IS HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE! HORRIBLE I TELL YOU! HORRIBLE IS TOO SMALL A WORD TO DO JUSTICE TO THIS CATASTROPHE OF A MOVIE.

RIGHT FROM ITS GAUDY OPENING CREDITS TO ITS STUPID FOODFIGHT ENDING, I WANTED TO SCOOP MY EYES OUT WITH A RUSTY SPOON.

PARIS HILTON, WHO REMINDS ME OF A GIRAFFE BY THE WAY, HAS NO BUSINESS BEING IN MOVIES. LUCKILY HER ‘CHARACTER’ IS JUST PARIS HILTON SO SHE DOESN’T EXACTLY HAVE TO STRETCH HERSELF. SHE SHOULD STICK TO WHAT SHE DOES BEST WHICH FROM WHAT I CAN TELL IS STANDING AROUND BEING RICH. HER CHARACTER, WHO IS CLEARLY THE VILLAIN, DOESN’T EVEN GET HER COME-UPPANCE AT THE END (SORRY, SPOILER BUT IF YOU CHOOSE TO WATCH THIS AFTER MY WARNINGS FRANKLY YOU DESERVE TO HAVE YOUR ‘ENTERTAINMENT’ RUINED). NO, SOMEHOW SHE EMERGES AS THE GODDAMN HERO FROM THIS ALL. IT'S OTHER PEOPLE MAKING HER BAD YOU SEE. SHITTY COP OUT ENDING BECAUSE WE CAN'T MAKE OUR STAR LOOK BAD CAN WE?

NATIONAL LAMPOON! NATIONAL LAMPOON WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? REMEMBER THE GRISWALDS? THEY WERE FUNNY. SOMETIMES. ANIMAL HOUSE! OK, IT MIGHT BE VIEWED AS SEXIST NOW BUT AT LEAST IT WAS ENTERTAINING WITH IT. IF NOT A STAMP OF QUALITY, NATIONAL LAMPOON USED TO AT LEAST MEAN PASSABILITY.

OH AND FHM’S ENDORSEMENT OF THIS! ISN’T THAT JUST THE CHERRY ON TOP OF THE CRAP FILLED CAKE. THEY’RE NOT A THING ANYMORE BUT THEY HELPED PRODUCE THIS SO GOOD RIDDANCE TO THEM.

In short, I didn’t like it.

IMDB Bottom 100: No's 22 & 21 - Final Justice and Ram Gorpal Varma's Ki Aag

Number 22: Final Justice (1985)

You know, it’s hard to keep trying to coming up with ways to describe how dull and unremarkable a film is and Final Justice is dull and unremarkable.

It’s hard for me to describe what happened in Final Justice as I was distracted while watching it by a particularly tricky game of solitaire I was involved in. And then there was some paint I had to keep an eye on so it dried properly. Then I watched a kettle boil which was a big mistake as time stopped moving yet the film kept playing.

Another entry from our Italian friends, the film stars Joe Don Baker as the preposterously named Sheriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III. This is the third film ‘starring’ Joe Don Baker to make it in the Bottom 100 (Mitchell, Leonard 6). If Al Pacino can be taken as a stamp of quality in a movie (Gigli aside, everyone’s allowed one mistake), then Don Baker can be taken as a stamp of shiteness. All hail our bad movie King!

That’s possibly unfair as I haven’t seen every movie he’s been in but in his 50 year plus career, his name does pop up often in films around the lowest part of the IMDB scale.

The film is about him transporting a criminal to Malta, criminal escapes, Sherriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III (think about that, he’s the third person in his family to carry that name and I’m pretty sure they mention he has a son who is presumably Thomas Jefferson Geronimo IV) gets the criminal back after having problems with the local police. They din’t know ha to police ya see? They needed a big ol’Texan to show em how it gets done round these pars.

And oh yeah, Geronimo is fat. They mention it a few times like he’s going to keel over and have a heart attack any moment. He doesn’t and it doesn’t play a part in the overall story at all, so why they made a point of mentioning it and that he has to follow a strict diet I have no idea.

To be fair, there are some semi-decent action scenes but nuttin to write home t’da ranch abou’.

Number 21: Ram Gorpal Varma Ki Aag

Yay, back to Bollywood! They’re films are always so bright and colourful.

Well,…not always.

To clarify, this film is actually called Aag (which I’m given to understand means ‘flames’ but if it doesn’t don’t blame me, I don’t speak Hindi), Ram Gorpal Varma is the name of the director.

Ignoring that bit of shameless self-promotion, there is somewhat a scoop here in that this film features Amitabh Bachchan, which the opening credits cheekily claim to be ‘introducing’. Some might think Bachchan is the star of some 200 movies (even a small cameo in Slumdog Millionaire) and arguably the biggest star in Bollywood history but they’d be wrong as this was where he was first introduced.

There’s a nice twist to this actually as Aag is actually a remake of 70’s film Sholay, which Bachchan was also in as one of the main heroes (he plays a different role here). Except of course he wasn’t in Sholay, because as we know this was his first film.

Aag is about two outlaws recruited by a police chief to take down a mobster. That’s the whole film summarised in 15 words but somehow that gets stretched to nearly three hours. Every scene feels like it could have been done in half the time. I think there's a minimum length requirement for Bollywood and I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or if that is actually a thing.

Songs, of course they’re still there and I have my usual gripes with them. Not the songs themselves (music being very subjective) but never have I felt more like ‘we now interrupt this movie to bring you a music video’ about a Bollywood film then I did here. See, the film is trying to be dark and gritty but the songs just really ruin the atmosphere of it all. I don’t want to see my villain bodypopping.

The background music is all over the place as well. Sometimes it’s 70’s cop show, other times it’s trying to be a western. Which I kind of understand but the levels are all wrong and oft times it drowns out the dialogue.

Where it does shine though, is whenever Amitabh Bachchan is on screen (making his film debut, remember). He plays the main villain, Babban Singh, and he is brilliantly evil. Imagine an older version of Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight and you have a good idea of where he’s at. A strong beginning from Mr Bachchan, I can see him having a bright career.

To go back to what I said at the start about Bollywood films not always being bright and colourful, there are some brutal scenes in this. Such as Bachchan playing a game of Russian Roulette with a rival gang boss and another in which he saws a policemans finger off with a hacksaw (and I have to give the director props for using a dark filter in all of debutant Bachchan’s scenes). Unfortunately, these horrific acts of barbarity are usually followed by scenes surrounding the rom-com subplot, rather spoiling the flow of it all.

Worth seeing for a darker side of Bollywood westerners maybe aren’t aware of but there are almost certainly better examples out there.

Please...no more Minions

This has gone too far.

Once they seemed cute and harmless but now they have infiltrated every level of our lives. I am of course talking about Minions. They are everywhere.

Walk down any street and you’ll see one somewhere. Toys, books, films, posters, mugs, keyrings, T-shirts, hats, stickers, onesies, shampoo, toothbrushes, clocks, watches, this thing:

That would all be bearable, many fads have come and gone so it’s not surprising Universal would cash in while they can. That’s all fine. Where it’s gone too far however, is stuff like this:

Yeah, you remember when they said that in the movie? Of course you don’t, because it’s a quote from Socrates (the ancient Greek philosopher not the Brazilian footballer), albeit slightly paraphrased.

This is no accident of design. The creator of this image had the idea of making an image of this inspirational quote. Problem is no one’s going to share a generic quote. Stick a minion on it though and now we’re talking. So now Facebook feeds are full of images of minions stood next to quotes entirely unrelated to their characters.

I saw Despicable Me, I like it (Despicable Me 2 not so much) and the minions are entertaining. Not entertaining enough to justify their own movie. Their silliness only really works in contrast to Gru’s seriousness. It’s what I call Joey Syndrome. People might have thought they’d like to see Joey on his own but actually he was just a single cog in the Friends machine and that’s (one reason) why his sitcom failed.

Minions have gone too far and have become inescapable. If they are not stopped, soon everyone will be walking down the street screaming ‘Ba-na-na’.

Please don’t Minions become this generations Crazy Frog.

IMDB Bottom 100: No's 24 & 23 - Dracula 3000 and Invasion of the Neptune Men

Number 24: Dracula 3000 (2004)

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od7C8WMLv2Y

A joint effort from Germany and South Africa but don’t be fooled, this is not the 3000^th Dracula film to be made. It just feels that way.

Throughout his film history, Dracula has gone up against everyone from Frankenstein to Billy the Kid to Batman. Heck, even Scooby Doo. It’s hard to maintain total respect for a character who has been outwitted by a dog and his stoner friend.

This should really be subtitled ‘Dracula In Space.’ And actually, I’m amazed it’s taken this long for me to find a film like this. I’m sure there are others out there but it’s the first time I’ve seen the Count on a spaceship. How did he get there? Who knows, just accept it, Dracula is in space finally, just like you always wanted.

There are some semi-famous names involved here. Casper Van Dien (Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers), Erika Eleniak from Baywatch, the rapper Coolio who seems to pop up in just about every early noughties horror film. My favourite though is Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister.

Standing 6’5”, the ‘Tiny’ is obviously ironic. He has had small roles in lots of films such as playing neighbourhood bully Deebo in Friday and as a prisoner in The Dark Knight (he was the one who threw the detonator out the window). But I will best remember him as Zeus in Hulk Hogan film No Holds Barred. This actually led to him having a short-lived career in wrestling, as his character wants revenge on Hulk Hogan for what happened to him in the movie. So it’s an actor playing a fake character in a fake movie he thinks is real and wants revenge in real life on a fake wrestler in a fake sport.

And that’s not even in the top 50 of stupid wrestling storylines. It was all to promote No Hold Barred, which flopped by the way.

Back to Space Dracula, a freighter ship comes across another ship but it’s been abandoned. After some investigation they find the corpse of the ship’s captain who has a crucifix in front of him. None of the crew know what it is as religion no longer exists in the future. This slightly jars as Coolio and Lister’s characters are the same as how black characters are portrayed today. So in a thousand years, we are no longer divided by religion but we are still divided on racial lines. That’s a depressing thought.

Dracula slowly picks them off, turning them into vampires along the way. The character names offer nods to the books such as Van Helsing and Mina Murray but that’s as far as it goes.

Nothing else to say, though it does have an interesting if confusing ending to it.

It’s bearable.

Number 23: Invasion of the Neptune Men (1961)

Hang on a minute, this is familiar.

A Japanese sci-fi film about an alien invasion, fought off by an invincible hero in a spacecraft with no explanation of how he acquired his abilities. Children running around for no reason and generally getting in the way.

This is just Prince of Space (number 44) again but slightly worse.

You might as well just read that again, they’re so alike: http://badmoviehq.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/imdb-bottom-100-nos-44-43-prince-of.html

The only differences are the Neptune men look even more ridiculous than the aliens in Prince of Space with their stupid funnel head helmets. Though they do blow up a building that has a swastika emblazoned on it (?).

And at least the Prince does spend some time in space so it’s probably just as well our hero here has been downgraded to ‘Space Chief’.