Robocop Returns

Robocop is even better than you remember it, trust me. This one genuinely undervalued film. Same goes for Starship Troopers. Of all of Verhoeven's work, these are two most ridiculously underappreciated. Edward Neumeier's angry, hilarious scripts are a good part of the reason why they succeed so much - just indeed as Joe the Hungarian Bear's scripts were the central reason for Basic Instinct and Showgirls to turn out so dreadfully.

You'll get another chance for Robo reappraisal soon enough, it seems. Twentieth Century Fox seem to be working on a new DVD of the film, for the UK at least. No idea of the full spec so far but some features from previous releases - the 1987 featurettes, Phil Tippet providing commentary on storyboards - remain while others do not - MGM's Flesh and Steel documentary appears to be gone, for example.

The 'making-of' doc this time around is called Creating a Legend. It runs about twenty minutes and features Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Verhoeven and all the usual suspects.

I'm hoping there's more to this release to make it really worth the new purchase. As soon as I find out anymore, I'll let you know. A low price point and pristine transfer would be a good start, however.

Maxim Misjudgement

For their March issue, Maxim have brewed up a list they're calling "The 20 Greatest Awful Movies of All Time" - but there's a little problem. You see, there's a number of films on the list that are, simply put, rather less awful than some of this year's Best Picture contenders at the Oscars.

They Live and Big Trouble in Little China give John Carpenter a couple of black marks, the latter in the number one spot. That's just ignorant.

Peter Jackson's Brain Dead / Dead Alive is listed at number 5, Starship Troopers at number 12. Again, very silly. Meet the Feebles, maybe, but Brain Dead? I'm not being glib when I call it a genuine classic.

So, Maxim... what on earth is supposed to be awful about these films?

A few mediocrities make the list too - Tango & Cash, The Beastmaster and Hard Target. Admittedly, Hard Target is the least of John Woo's work but it's not a total wash out by any means. I could name about a hundred action films that aren't one tenth as good and find a thousand more in the bibliography appendix at the back of the Hot Fuzz script.

I do wish people would stop smugly panning films on the basis of their genres, a couple of cast members, their basic iconography or milieu and get down to thinking about the quality of the filmmaking. Of course, I've been wishing that for decades, and I'm starting to think that it's never going to happen.

See the full list online and find out if there's anything else there you want to make a case for.