Because Everybody Else Has One

Dodgy accents, weird tonal inconsistencies and Die Antwoord: Chappie is Neil Blomkamp's most South African film yet. There is some good news, however... Playing out as a mix of Short Circuit and Robocop by way of District 9, Chappie is a glorious mess of a film that looks all the more bizarre to anyone even remotely aware of South African culture. Not only is it a film that is flawed on every technical and storytelling level imaginable, it's portrait of South Africa is so head-scratchingly wrong-headed, I'm surprised that the ministry of tourism hasn't outright banned it. Now, I know there's probably no such thing as the "ministry of tourism" but a) I can't help but think of government in Orwellian terms and b) this weird Bizarro-world South Africa presented in the film probably has one so why shouldn't we? To backtrack a little, the plot of Chappie is simple enough: something like three months in the future, Johannesburg is so utterly ove...

This was posted pretty early already at Channel24 so I might as well post it here early as well. Don't mistake this for excitement though... What it's about When a young man finds an old baby photo of his on a missing persons website, he soon finds his life unravelling as he tries to hunt down the truth behind who he really is. What we thought I like trashy thrillers. Indeed, I dare say that the less seriously a thriller takes itself, the more likely I am to get behind it. It's why I will always prefer the ludicrous nonsense of something like the Liam Neeson vehicle Unknown to the more dramatically daring but overly serious and tonally inconsistent The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (glorified Bond villains and brutal sexual violence make for very uncomfortable bed-fellows). I love bonkers plot twists, explosive set-pieces, camp villains, head-kicking action and, of course, that complete and utter suspension of disbelief that these one-man-against-the-world ...