Mortdecai (2015)

"Juggling angry Russians, the British Mi5, and an international terrorist, debonair art dealer and part time rogue Charlie Mortdecai races to recover a stolen painting rumoured to contain a code that leads to lost Nazi gold."

As I've moved further and further away from the purest forms of the horror genre with nearly every review this year (mainly because there aren't any new horror movies left other than a few bottomfeeder indie ones on the VOD streams which I'm not likely to ever care about anyway), I thought that I might as well watch something completely different for this "Surprise Sunday".

Although I freely admit to disliking comedies in general (especially since the American ones are usually more spiteful and mean-spirited than horror), sometimes people need a little bit of comic relief in their lives. I have no problem with that. Just because comedy isn't really meant for me, it doesn't mean that I can't still objectively appreciate the merits of a film within that genre. Drama is drama, and a good story will usually entertain me regardless.

Thus, I decided to watch "Mortdecai". Having heard nothing but bad things about this R-rated box office flop from the "critics" (and the usual snarky assholes all over the internet), I also set myself a challenge to see if I would agree with them or end up being a contrarian.

This is the poster. Obviously.

Unfortunately, despite "Mortdecai" having a great cast of credible acting talents, a huge budget, and quite beautiful camerawork in places, I have to come down on the side of the critics. "Mortdecai" looks like a Brosnan-era "James Bond" film, but the story is both confusing and drawn out in equal measures, and the best thing it has going for it is the amusing Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany double-act which reminds me (and everybody else) of Inspector Clouseau and Cato (albeit with British accents).

I've never actually watched any of the "Pink Panther" movies in their entirety, mind you, but I saw substantial parts of most of them on television as a child. Mainly due to clip show quizzes such as the BBC's "Screen Test", some of the slapstick fighting scenes stuck in my memory. Therefore, whether the homages in "Mortdecai" are intentional or accidental, I have no real way of knowing. I have absolutely no desire to ever attempt to watch them again. Fans of Inspector Clouseau, however, will know for sure.

No funny caption for this. Something about carrying the film, maybe?

Moving on to things which I can properly appreciate, the stunts are very good, the locations were well chosen and dressed beforehand, and I don't have any real problem with the script. Other than Johnny Depp channelling Terry Thomas, none of it is that funny though, and the moustache gags are very repetitive and overused. "Mortdecai" also clearly suffers from pacing problems and padding more than a few times, but that still doesn't completely wreck the somewhat challenging non-linear narrative which is its own worst enemy.

Including small roles for Paul Whitehouse (who Brits like me tend to love) early on and Jeff Goldblum two-thirds in, the main problem with "Mortdecai" is that it doesn't allow any of the supporting players apart from Ewan McGregor to really stand out. Although I'm pretty sure that nobody involved wanted to create anything other than a Depp-centric product to entertain an audience for an hour and a half, sadly, it shows.

"Mortdecai" won't be winning any Oscars or major awards (unless the world goes even more batshit insane than it has done in the last two years), and it's not the most original comedy-spy movie that I've ever seen either, but it's relatively okay for what it is. It's not as good as any of the "Austin Powers" movies by any stretch of the imagination, but it has many intentionally amusing moments and a couple of extremely nauseating ones.

Frankenstein's Army (2013)

"Toward the end of World War II, Russian soldiers pushing into eastern Germany stumble across a secret Nazi lab, one that has unearthed and begun experimenting with the journal of one Dr. Victor Frankenstein."

As a rule, I loathe faux "found footage" movies, but sometimes there can be an exception. I may moan about the subgenre being oversaturated with crap, but I'll still watch yet another one of these "Blair Witch Project" clones if there's nothing else available. In this case, it's a Dutch horror movie filmed in the Czech Republic with heavily-accented English dialogue. Call me naive, but that sounds intriguing enough on its own. The fact that it's called "Frankenstein's Army" and contains lots of "Soviets versus Nazis" wartime action is just icing on the cake.

Having watched it three times in a row, I'm pleased to report that "Frankenstein's Army" does not disappoint. That's the first time I've ever written that overused, archaic and cringeworthy phrase in one of my reviews, so now you know this movie is even more special.

"Frankenstein's Army" really kind of rocks somewhat, but I'm not going to get too carried away with the overpraise because I still hate the handheld shakycam gimmick. I'm not sure why director Richard Raaphorst took that route for his debut feature, but maybe he wasn't confident enough in his cameraman's ability to use a tripod. The good news is that it isn't even remotely as nauseating to watch as any other found footage movie—well, not in the motion-sickness way—but the bad news is that it doesn't look like real found footage due to the subject matter. The Russians would be speaking Russian rather than English for one thing! It would still look fake if there were subtitles everywhere though because the attention to detail in other areas doesn't try to disguise that it's a modern film. Subtitles would simply alienate the dumber horror fans who don't like to read, so I can accept why it was done this way.

It's probably wise that the "found footage" wasn't made to look too real anyway because I'd hate for any the far-fetched cyborgs to exist in real life. The extreme horrors shown are more than enough for most people without adding another level of cruelty. The monsters are such artfully created nightmares of dead flesh and machinery that I think whoever came up with their designs must have something very wrong with them in all the sick and twisted ways I like, but anyone squeamish who watches this will not be happy. This is certainly not a "date night" movie unless you want to end up sleeping alone. "Frankenstein's Army" is a gorehound's delight, full of truly horrific and gruesome stuff, which makes a refreshing change from the wimpy PG-13s and R-rated punch-pullers lately.

"A man of vision is always misunderstood."

The biggest problem with finding a horror movie which I actually like is writing about why I like it without spoiling it for everybody else. I've also been so negative for so long that having a decent movie in my clutches is a surprise which almost renders me speechless. I want to pull out all the bog-standard descriptive words and phrases such as "awesome", "amazing, "fantastic", "I was blown away", and "the best horror movie that I've seen this year" except that none of them would be applicable in this particular case. "Frankenstein's Army" is very entertaining, practical effects-laden film, and on a purely subjective level, I loved it for its blood and guts, but as usual, there are flaws.

I've already mentioned how the found footage camerawork isn't something which I'm keen on, and the contrivances about who is carrying the camera and why are blatant in every scene. Occasional "Stop filming!" or "Film this!" orders draw more attention to the fakery than is necessary. Once the action kicks in, "Frankenstein's Army" sometimes feels more like playing a "first person shooter" computer game with no ammunition left rather than watching a movie, but that's my only other gripe. Although there's an obligatory "I'm so sorry, Mum and Dad!" homage to "The Blair Witch Project", I can also let that pass because it's quite important to the speaker's motivation.

Apart from the accents and linguistic skills, there's not much to the acting although everyone gets a chance to do something impressive. In particular, Joshua Sasse (a British actor) is very charismatic as the Polish Sergei, and Alexander Mercury is perfectly cast as Dimitri. Andrei Zayats, who seems destined to be typecast as a Russian soldier for the rest of his career, is very realistic as Vassili. Despite having yet more stereotypical character names (Sacha, Ivan, Alexei, etc.), the other cast members are equally strong only in much smaller roles.

The most famous face is Karel Roden as Viktor Frankenstein. Horror fans will probably only remember him as Dr. Varava from "Orphan" (2009), which is a bit of shame since he's been in exactly 100 roles to date. At first, I thought he was Srdjan Todorovic, the star of "A Serbian Film" (2010), because there's definitely a similarity. If there's a weak link in the chain, it's that his performance isn't manic or obsessive enough to appease hardcore "Frankenstein" fans, but this movie is a long way from Mary Shelley's novel in any case.

"Frankenstein's Army" is a nicely paced fusion of classic horror and wartime fantasy which I highly recommend. It's not available on DVD until September 10th, and its very limited theatrical release may not be in your area, but you can watch it now on Amazon's Instant Video service. I suggest that you do so immediately.