Woods Bares Teeth In Vampire Spoof
The Age
Friday December 11, 1998
Vampires, **1/2 (102 mins) M
Veteran director John Carpenter delivers a funny, slightly above-average take on vampires as the ever-energetic James Woods leads a band of questionable dudes against various blood-sucking types in the dusty badlands of New Mexico.
It's standard stab-and-trickle stuff, with some good flaming effects as the vampires are dragged out to the sunlight to be barbecued by God. The hyperactive, committed performance by James Woods gives the proceedings more verve and humor than they otherwise would have had.
This film also goes by the title John Carpenter's Vampires. This, presumably, is ostensibly meant to alert everyone about exactly who this masterpiece is from. More likely, though, it is simply a way for Carpenter to remind everyone he is still around.
Carpenter has given us some goods films, such as Halloween (1978), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982) and Starman (1984). Of late, however, he's sort of lost his touch and foisted some real junk our way: In the Mouth of Madness (1995), Village of the Damned (1995)and Escape from LA (1997).
To his credit, Carpenter has done a lot to shape the look and feel of the modern horror film. But if he's serious about letting everyone know he's still kicking, he should move on and start making better films.
Waco: The Rules of Engagement ****1/2 (136 mins) M
When this film played to a near-full house at the Forum cinema during the Melbourne International Film Festival there were long spells when the audience sat frozen as the film revealed the truth about what happened to David Koresh and members of the Branch Davidian sect at Waco, Texas, in 1993.
Ghostly footage of the siege taken from a high-altitude surveillance aircraft showed in astonishing detail the nature of the US Government's operation against the sect. Armored vehicles methodically punched holes in the compound to provide proper ventilation for a fire. Men fired machine guns to keep people from escaping.
What makes William Gazecki's exhaustively researched and resourced film so compelling is that we think we know pretty much all there is to know about that fire, in which 76 people perished.
Images were seared into our minds through repetition in the mass-media: the flaming buildings; the government agent dodging for his life as bullets tear through a wall; the ungroomed face of Koresh, the dangerous, psychotic cult leader who caused it all, happy to see women and children die for his beliefs.
This impression, the film demonstrates, was fractured and selective, largely the result of a compliant media.
In The Rules of Engagement, however, Gazecki deliberately goes against the common media practice of brevity and easy answers. The retelling of what happened at Waco is presented without sensation or anger. It simply assembles the evidence, including much material never before shown, such as conversations between Koresh and a double-talking official.
Documentaries that seek to attack the establishment are often badly done. The Oscar-winning The Panama Deception (1992) by Barbara Trent about the US invasion of Panama was a good example of a bad documentary containing much argument, rhetoric and innuendo, but little real evidence.
In sharp contrast, The Rules of Engagement is full of facts, figures and footage to back its claim about an un-constitutional attack on a bunch of marginalised people who did not deserve the fate they were dealt.
Indeed, while the film berates the workings of media and government - or at least the ATF (the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) - it seeks to remind Americans about that bit in their constitution about freedom of religion.
Babe: Pig in the City, ** (94 mins) G
After returning in triumph from the last film, Babe, the pig who can herd sheep, learns that the farm of the beloved Hoggetts (James Cromwell and Magda Szubanski) is in dire financial trouble. So Babe and Magda head off to raise money by winning a sheepdog trial, but are waylaid in the big city where Babe moves into a dingy hotel populated by talking animals.
The effects are good and some of the animal actors cute, but this slow, poorly paced sequel simply lacks the drive, color and humor of the overrated original. The action scene involving the animals' eviction is backed by an inappropriately mordant music score, suggesting the film makers may not have had their minds fully on their jobs.
Legionnaire, **1/2 (100 mins) M
Look, it's no classic, but for what it is - an action movie about the French Foreign Legion - it has all the requisites for helping pass the time: a disaffected hero (Jean-Claude Van Damme) on the run and a lot of well-shot action scenes involving sand, horses, shooting and the inevitable wide shot of the beseiged fortress. To give the film its due, Van Damme breaks from his hero image and is just one of the guys.
TOP TEN at the box office 1 A Bug's Life 2 Saving Private Ryan 3 I still know what you did Last Summer 4 Antz 5 Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels 6 Legionnaire 7 T-Rex 8 Occasional Coarse Language 9 Elizabeth 10 Soldier
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