Film REVIEWS
COMEDY THE WATCH (15) 102min ●●●●●
Akiva Schaffer’s comedy sees nosey neighbours morph into a force to be reckoned with, as a gang of suburban misfits go from investigating a murder to thwarting an alien invasion. After a colleague is killed in bizarre
circumstances, proud resident and Costco manager Evan (Ben Stiller) vows to solve the crime and, faced with incompetent police (including Will Forte’s hilarious Sgt Bressman) and uninterested citizens, he forms a neighbourhood watch. Evan is joined by a trio of curious characters: psychotic twentysomething Franklin (Jonah Hill), affable family guy Bob (Vince Vaughn) and oddball Jamarcus (Britain’s own Richard Ayoade). During the course of their investigations they make a number of strange discoveries, indicating that the culprits may be far from local.
The Watch is an unabashed crowd-
pleaser, cheerfully channelling The ’Burbs, Ghostbusters and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That it triumphs, despite being a slave to formula, is squarely down to its uproarious banter, co-scripted by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and delivered with aplomb by an on-form ensemble. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 24 Aug.
SCI-FI TOTAL RECALL (12A) 118mins ●●●●● HORROR BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (15) 92min ●●●●●
If only the futuristic service that drives the plot of Total Recall really did exist. For implanting fake memories is just what you’ll need after spending two hours in the company of this noxious remake. Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 original was a colourful, ultra-violent trip to Mars; this dreary, deadly-dull retread remains rooted to a rain-soaked Earth.
Farrell plays Douglas Quaid, a factory worker living on Earth at the end of
the 21st century. When Quaid decides to take a ‘memory vacation’ from his monotonous life, he visits the Rekall facility. He wants to be a spy – but when the procedure goes wrong, it emerges he already has implants. Wiseman makes nods to the original film, but they only serve to make you
wish you were at home watching it. The few nice touches (Farrell reads a battered copy of The Spy Who Loved Me) are washed away in a final act that free falls into a series of explosions, each longer and louder than the last. Even with low expectations, you’ll find this a wretched experience. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Wed 29 Aug.
Films that address the artifice, fakery and manipulation inherent in their own medium obviously offer geeky thrills for knowing buffs, but they also draw out the intriguing emotional complexity of the filmmaker/viewer relationship. This intriguing new film from Peter Strickland is set in an Italian sound
facility that provides schlock effects for nasty giallo thrillers, and emphasises the strange power of pretence, as well as enjoyably reconstructing a particularly peculiar corner of European film history. Toby Jones embodies the viewer’s growing unease, as the unassuming, seemingly meek British sound engineer enlisted to work on a 1976 flick that ushers him gradually into the inexplicable. Appropriately diligent sound design and a creepy score by Broadcast add to the unsettling atmosphere of a film that will confound those who like their horror straightforward, but compel more intellectually adventurous types – as well as sound buffs and fans of the bloody netherworlds of pulp horror. In just two films Strickland has established a striking, unusual voice; long may he continue to make this boundary-stretching, genre-fuddling work. (Hannah McGill) ■ Selected release from Fri 31 Aug. See interview with Toby Jones, page 14.
52 THE LIST 23 Aug–20 Sep 2012