Welcome to Leith (2015)

30 Wednesday May 2018

Tags

Arrest, Christopher K. Walker, Craig Cobb, Documentary, Kynan Dutton, Lee Cook, Michael Beach Nichols, North Dakota, Review, Ryan Schock, True story, White supremacy

D: Michael Beach Nichols, Christopher K. Walker / 86m

With: Craig Cobb, Ryan Schock, Lee Cook, Kynan Dutton, Michelle Schock, Gregory Bruce, Jeff Schoep, Deborah Henderson, Ryan Lenz, Heidi Beirich, Bobby Harper, Todd Schwarz

In May 2012, a white supremacist by the name of Craig Cobb bought twelve plots of land in the small North Dakota town of Leith – population twenty-four. Cobb’s intention was to build a community of like-minded people which would allow them to gain an electoral majority in Leith, and be “in charge”. Once the people of Leith became aware of Cobb’s background, as well as his intentions, they banded together to protect themselves from the prospect of seeing their town overrun in this way. The mayor, Ryan Schock, along with the rest of the town council, implemented an ordinance that required Cobb and those who’d come to Leith to support him, to be connected to the mains water and sewage supply or be evicted from their properties (none were). Following this decision, in November 2013, Cobb, along with a fellow white supremacist, Kynan Dutton, were arrested after walking the streets of Leith carrying loaded weapons. Charges of terrorising the citizens of Leith were brought against both men, and a trial was expected to begin the following year. But not everything went according to plan…

In Welcome to Leith, the battle lines are clearly drawn: an influx of white supremacists versus horrified townspeople increasingly afraid for their lives and livelihood. For most viewers it’s an easy decision to make as to where any sympathies should lie, but the undeniable power of Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker’s gripping documentary is not that this decision is so obvious, or cut and dried, but that it highlights the irony of a section of society fighting for its place in the world by displacing another section of society in order to do so. This is an aspect that seems to escape Cobb and his followers and supporters, but it’s made abundantly clear by the white supremacist’s actions and behaviour. At a town council meeting, Cobb impugns the involvement of a father, Lee Cook, in the murder of his seventeen year old daughter. It’s a particularly horrible moment in a movie full of moments where negative racial profiling is exposed for the hate crime it is, and so-called Christians defend their First Amendment rights as if they are the only ones entitled to them.

Another irony exposed by the movie is the way in which Cobb and his followers behave, as if by spewing bile and hatred towards others, that it makes their cause all the more agreeable or acceptable. While Nichols and Walker don’t delve into the psychology of Cobb’s beliefs (it’s not really necessary), they do show the ways in which a small group of townspeople became affected by those beliefs, and the fear and mistrust engendered by them – for example, Cook wouldn’t let his family stay in their home while he was at work. More importantly, Nichols and Walker approach the material using a balance that offsets any accusations of bias, instead presenting events from all sides, even if as a viewer, you don’t agree with some of them. Also, what happens after Cobb and Dutton are arrested, and the subsequent legal wranglings that went on, shows just how committed both men were to their beliefs (and there’s irony there too). But if there’s any one moment where Cobb’s white nationalist observance is punctured for good and all it’s when the results of a DNA test he undertook for The Trisha Goddard Show reveal he’s genetically fourteen per cent sub-Saharan African. Now, how’s that for irony?

Rating: 8/10 – a formidable examination of an attempt to subvert a small township for a cause’s own subversive ends, Welcome to Leith is chilling, breathtaking to watch unfold, and a cautionary tale for our times; forget the Insidious horror series, what Cobb and his followers tried to do is really insidious, and the fact that it could happen elsewhere is a message the movie makes very loud and clear.

Batman (1943) – Chapter 10: Flying Spies

29 Tuesday May 2018

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Action, Columbia, Douglas Croft, Drama, J. Carrol Naish, Lambert Hillyer, Lewis Wilson, Radium, Review, Serial, Shirley Patterson, The Sphinx Club, Thriller

D: Lambert Hillyer / 18m

Cast: Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson, William Austin, John Maxwell, Ted Oliver, Lester Dorr

Having survived being crushed by a ship’s gang plank (by simply rolling out of the way), Batman, along with Robin, returns to the Bat Cave, and decides to drop off their (not forgotten) captive, Marshall (Oliver), to the police. Meanwhile, Daka learns that another supply of radium has become available. Batman learns of the radium too, in a secret government message. Believing that his recent disguise as Chuck White is still a better way of infiltrating Daka’s gang, he returns to the Sphinx Club. From there he’s taken to another of the gang’s hideouts, where he’s observed by Daka and given approval to go along with the henchmen assigned to retrieving the radium; this is going to be dropped by parachute from an airplane that night. At the drop site, Chuck gets away from Daka’s men and changes into Batman. With Robin’s help he gets the radium package before they do, and drives off in one of their vehicles. With a tire shot out, and the Caped Crusader unable to control the steering, the vehicle crashes down the side of a hill and bursts into flames, sending Batman to certain death…

With two thirds over, and no end game in sight still, Chapter 10 is a curious installment. It’s better than Chapter 9, but not so good that it matches the standard of Chapters 6-8. For all that, though, this is another filler episode, but one that somehow feels that it has more momentum and more incident than the last time out (it doesn’t, but still, there’s a definite sense of the serial somehow upping its game). Perhaps it’s the serial’s weird sense of humour, which makes itself felt throughout, or the way in which each scene seems to be operating at speed. Hillyer appears to be in a hurry, as is the script, but it’s hard to work out why. It follows the standard formula for a filler episode, so perhaps the humour is an unexpected by-product (though Hillyer is too experienced for that to be entirely true). There’s the scene where Linda comes to see Bruce, gets jealous of White (don’t ask), and then leaves in a huff – and that’s it for Linda in this chapter. There’s Daka assessing Bruce as Chuck through the eyeholes in a painting, and the radium package (which Daka’s agent has trouble lifting) being attached to the kind of parachute that is the epitome of inadequate.

Credibility has never been the serial’s strong suit, and it’s highly unlikely that anyone making it thought they were making anything other than a B-movie with a better than average budget – even if you’re not sure where the money went. However, Chapter 10 does prove entertaining overall, from Alfred posing as a cab driver, to Marshall’s abrupt dismissal from the story, and the inclusion of yet more radium to be hijacked/stolen (which begs the question, just how secure is this stuff?). One aspect that does appear to be getting worse is the recap of the last episode, which this time means that Chapter 10 doesn’t get started properly until after three minutes have elapsed. Of course, this is to ensure that the required couple of bouts of fisticuffs still occur in each installment, but it’s becoming more and more of a liability, especially as the fight choreography remains as laughable as ever. Bruce’s disguise as Chuck is still something of an unacceptable caricature (that nose), but at least the chapter ends on a much more dramatic note than usual. An exploding vehicle? Just how is Batman going to survive this time…?

Rating: 6/10 – neither very good or very bad, but strangely acceptable as a moderately entertaining episode, Chapter 10 of Batman always feels like it could go either way, but it actually holds to the middle ground with some elan; if one wish could be granted, though, it would be for no more talk of radium, a plot device that has now been run into the ground.

Mad to Be Normal (2017)

28 Monday May 2018

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David Tennant, Drama, Elisabeth Moss, Gabriel Byrne, Kingsley Hall, Mental illness, Psychiatry, R.D. Laing, Review, Robert Mullan, Schizophrenia, True story

D: Robert Mullan / 105m

Cast: David Tennant, Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon, Gabriel Byrne, David Bamber, Adam Paul Harvey, Olivia Poulet, Jerome Holder, Lydia Orange, Tom Richards

Beginning in 1965, the noted psychiatrist R.D. Laing (Tennant) was the head of the Philadelphia Association, a community-based psychiatric project based at Kingsley Hall in London’s East End. There, therapists and patients lived together, and the aim was to provide a restraint-free, drug-free environment for those afflicted by schizophrenia. It was a pioneering experiment that drew plenty of criticism from the psychiatric establishment of the time, which decried Laing’s rejection of traditional treatments such as constant sedation and electro-convulsive therapy. For the purposes of Mad to Be Normal, Laing’s relationship with his girlfriend at the time, Jutta Werner, is transposed into one with an ambitious American student called Angie Wood (Moss). Their relationship provides the backbone of Robert Mullan’s movie, a serious yet distant piece that only superficially explores both Laing the man and Laing the health care professional. While he deals with the dynamics of their relationship, Laing also fights off challenges from the establishment (in the form of David Bamber’s blinkered traditionalist), and the patients at Kingsley Hall itself.

These patients include Sydney (Gambon), an elderly childhood trauma sufferer, Maria (Poulet), who can’t forgive herself for losing her baby, John (Holder), who hears voices, and Jim (Byrne), whose obsession with the moon belies violent tendencies relating to childbirth. The movie works well when it focuses on the patients, and there’s a terrific scene set in New York where Laing coaxes responses from a young woman, Sarah (Orange), who doesn’t speak or eat or otherwise engage with anyone. But away from these interactions, Laing’s life and commitment to his work don’t have the same impact, or come anywhere close to it. This is a major drawback for the movie as a whole, because though there is plenty of tension and dramatic incident borne out of Mullan and co-screenwriter Tracy Moreton’s script, Mullan doesn’t seem to know how to present these incidents in such a way that we get a clear insight into Laing’s own mental processes. He’s eloquent enough when challenged, and Tennant displays a passion and commitment to the role that gets the character through several moments where the drama lapses into soap opera, but as to the man himself, and his reasons for doing the work he does, this isn’t necessarily the forum for that kind of revelation.

This leaves the movie focusing mainly on said challenges, and the slow descent into violent madness experienced by Jim. Despite a terrific performance from Byrne, though, Jim’s story is predictable in the extreme, and the irony of his eventual treatment is hammered home with all the subtlety of an ECT session. But while Byrne is gifted with possibly the best role in the movie (it reminds you just how good an actor he is), Moss is left stranded by a role that keeps her sidelined for much of the running time, and which reduces Angie to the status of a secondary character, even when she has Laing’s child (though not his first; a subplot involving the five children he already has is thrown in for good but not lasting measure). Mullan and the script rarely attempt to explore the efficacy of the work carried out at Kingsley Hall, or show if there is any improvement gained by any of the patients there, and so we see patients behaving erratically though consistently, while Laing becomes more and more depressed himself. That there’s no real dramatic conclusion to all this – the movie ends very abruptly – doesn’t help either, leaving the viewer to wonder if there was any point to the movie, and on which level.

Rating: 6/10 – an uneven and dramatically unsatisfying look at a pivotal moment in the annals of “alternative psychiatry”, Mad to Be Normal is predicated on the assumption that Laing knew exactly what he was doing – and then doesn’t show the viewer how or why he was doing it; rescued by a clutch of good performances, the movie short changes Laing in favour of a routinely mounted biography that only skims the surface of its controversial and charismatic central character.

Every Day (2018)

27 Sunday May 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Angourie Rice, Body swapping, David Levithan, Drama, Instagram, Jusice Smith, Literary adaptation, Lucas Jade Zumann, Michael Sucsy, Owen Teague, Review, Romance

D: Michael Sucsy / 97m

Cast: Angourie Rice, Justice Smith, Lucas Jade Zumann, Jacob Batalon, Colin Ford, Owen Teague, Maria Bello, Michael Cram, Debby Ryan

Rhiannon (Rice) is a sixteen year old schoolgirl whose boyfriend, Justin (Smith), surprises her one day by convincing her to skip classes and go to the beach. It’s a wonderful day, one that ends with Rhiannon believing that Justin, who isn’t normally so spontaneous or thoughtful, has changed for the better. However, the next day sees Justin finding it difficult to remember what happened the day before, and back to his usual self. Over the next few days, Rhiannon meets a handful of new people, all of whom are different but who also exhibit similar behaviours. One girl she meets tells her that these people have all been one person, inhabiting each body for a day, and that day at the beach has caused this person – who calls himself A – to want to spend more time with Rhiannon. Though at first she’s incredulous, Rhiannon begins to believe A’s story, and in the process starts to fall in love with him, despite the obstacles between them. But it’s when A finds himself able to stay in a body for more than a day that things become even more complicated…

A Twilight Zone-style scenario given a teen soap opera makeover, Every Day is the kind of inoffensive, and somewhat blandly presented movie that wants its characters to be better versions of themselves, but through the intervention of a body swapping entity instead of going on a personal journey of self-discovery. Rhiannon’s parents have their issues – dad had a breakdown some time before, mom now “works late” a lot – but it’s only when Rhiannon is substituted by A for a day that “she” does anything about these problems. Similarly, a teenager with suicidal thoughts is saved by A’s stepping up and saving the day. Every Day wears its wish fulfillment heart on its sleeve, and Jesse Andrews’ adaptation of David Levithan’s novel is keen to ensure that any drama is cleared away as tidily as possible, and as soon after it’s introduced, as if real life is ever that simple. What this means is that the material remains mostly good natured throughout and any lows are compensated for by the next high waiting around the corner. With the structure and the plotting laid out in such a straightforward, no frills way, the movie rarely moves out of second gear, or gains any real dramatic traction.

However, one area where the movie does excel is in its assembled depiction of A. Played by a total of fifteen actors and actresses (including Rice), it’s this aspect of the movie that works best. Watching so many different people playing the same character, and with all of them, even those with a limited amount of screen time, providing a consistent personality and mannerisms, is the movie’s trump card. A is handled with a great deal of care and attention throughout, and Sucsy and his talented cast ensure that his predicament is handled with a degree of sensitivity and even gravitas that is both unexpected and sincere. With A’s character feeling and sounding so grounded from the beginning, it helps the rest of the movie in terms of the drama surrounding his relationship with Rhiannon. As romances go, it’s not ideal, or practical, and the script doesn’t shy away from the likelihood that not everything will work out as it does in most other teen romantic dramas. But again, things run a little too smoothly, and any tension or close examinaton of A’s condition is passed over, making this a teen romance that can’t quite muster enough passion or depth to stand out from the crowd.

Rating: 6/10 – though the challenge of having fifteen different actors play the same role is achieved with a great degree of skill and confidence, it’s the overall story of Every Day that stops it from being better than it is; lacking in substance and/or dramatic thrust, it’s a movie that ambles along comfortably, while offering just enough to keep viewers interested until the end.

Bottom of the World (2017)

26 Saturday May 2018

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Disappearance, Douglas Smith, Drama, Evangelist, Jena Malone, Murder, Mystery, Review, Richard Sears, Ted Levine, Thriller

D: Richard Sears / 85m

Cast: Jena Malone, Douglas Smith, Ted Levine, Tamara Duarte, Kevin Owen McDonald, Jon McLaren, Mark Sivertsen

While on their way to LA and travelling through the South West, young couple Scarlett (Malone) and Alex (Smith) find themselves staying at a hotel overnight where they appear to be the only guests. At one point, Alex sees a man in a hoodie (McDonald) outside their room, looking up. When they leave the next morning, the man is there again. Back on the road, Scarlett becomes ill and they turn back, staying overnight at another hotel. The same thing happens again the next day, but this time, Scarlett disappears while Alex is in the hotel bar. When he tries to find her he meets the man in the hoodie who takes him out into the desert where he tells Alex there are bodies that he’s buried there at a certain spot; he then vanishes. Certain that Scarlett is with a locally based evangelist (Levine), Alex tracks him down to his church, but their confrontation offers more questions than answers, and Alex is forced to accept (or deny) that his trip with Scarlett has all been a dream when he wakes up and finds he is married to Paige (Duarte), and his next door neighbour looks exactly like Scarlett…

Early on in Richard Sears’ mystery mindbender of a movie, Scarlett asks Alex what’s the worst thing he’s ever done. His reply is boring, and no match for her tale of her mistreatment of a severely brain damaged cousin that she was meant to be looking after when she was younger. It’s a disturbing account, and feels somewhat out of place so early in the narrative, but it’s key to the events that transpire once Alex finds himself searching for Scarlett and then trying to decide if his life with her or his life with Paige is his true reality. With elements of both seeping and bleeding through and into each other, Alex’s quest for “the truth” becomes something that threatens to undermine his sanity. Through it all though, Brian Gottlieb’s script keeps bringing Alex back to Scarlett’s grim admission, and the mystery of her complicity – real or not? – becomes an obsession. It also leads Alex (and the viewer) to question the veracity of his memories, and the nature of his relationship with Scarlett. In his “dream” were they running away from a guilty truth, or toward one?

The answer(s) aren’t all forthcoming. Gottlieb’s script isn’t entirely successful when it comes to explaining just what exactly is going on, and while a fair degree of ambiguity is necessary to keep the scenario intriguing, a couple of narrative corners require a “one bound and he was free” approach to resolve matters. This leaves some moments feeling contrived and less than completely credible, and though Sears keeps things resolutely cryptic through a combination of hallucinatory visuals and an unsettling soundtrack, too much comes across as forced and/or unnecessary (Alex obsessing over the one black pea in a can is a case in point). So while the mystery of Scarlett’s story is eventually decided on, it’s at a disservice to the characters, who are required to behave bizarrely just to match the requirements of the plot. Playing two roles, Malone is a captivating presence as Scarlett, and ice cool as the more traditional femme fatale Alex has for a neighbour. As the tortured and conflicted Alex, Smith copes well with a role that could have been too arch and mannered for comfort (though it’s a close call at times), while Levine provides brief but effective support, and Adrian Langley’s apposite cinematography creates two distinct worlds for the price of one.

Rating: 6/10 – there are echoes of David Lynch here that aren’t as successfully integrated as they might have been, and the fusion of dream and reality doesn’t always gel, but there’s enough in Bottom of the World to make it worth watching; a valid attempt to create a waking nightmare, it nevertheless relies too heavily on the kinds of narrative “claim jumping” that requires too many occasions where belief has to be tempered thanks to narrative necessity.

Thoroughbreds (2017)

25 Friday May 2018

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Anton Yelchin, Anya Taylor-Joy, Black comedy, Cory Finley, Drama, Friends, Murder, Olivia Cooke, Review, Stepfather, Thriller

D: Cory Finley / 92m

Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks, Francie Swift, Kaili Vernoff

Amanda (Cooke) and Lily (Taylor-Joy) were once the best of friends, but circumstances affecting both their lives have caused them to drift apart. But those same circumstances now see them brought together again as Lily provides tutoring to Amanda, and they begin to re-establish their friendship. Amanda is emotionally crippled, while Lily is quite the opposite, and feels too much. When Amanda realises that Lily despises her stepfather, Mark (Sparks), it’s not long before she’s asking why Lily doesn’t murder him. Shocked at first, Lily begins to come around to the idea when her mother (Swift) tells her that she’s being sent to a boarding school for children with behavioural issues. Needing an alibi, they enlist the help of convicted felon, Tim (Yelchin), a hapless would-be drug dealer. With their plan set up for a weekend when both will be away, it’s down to Tim to carry out the crime, but things go awry and Mark remains very much alive. The plan, though, undergoes something of a change, one that sees Lily take charge by herself in an effort to resolve the situation once and for all…

A deliciously bittersweet, and biting, black comedy, Thoroughbreds is the debut feature of writer-director Cory Finley, and is as confident and assured a debut as you could hope for. Originally conceived of as a play, Finley’s exploration of two teenagers and their emotional differences, and the path both find themselves intent upon pursuing, is a striking and beautifully composed ode to teenage disaffection (and purposeful affectation). Amanda and Lily’s relationship provides challenges to both young women in terms of their emotional growth, and Finley provides an object lesson in how to create and develop two separate characters whose own individual needs quietly and inevitably dovetail until both are able to express those elements each other have been lacking. Amanda learns how to empathise, and Lily learns how to rationalise. These things make both of them stronger, and part of the pleasure of Finley’s finely judged screenplay is the way in which Amanda learns how to bond while Lily learns how to be alone. Throughout the movie, the tense dynamic established between them never quite settles comfortably into a groove that allows the viewer to predict what will happen next, and Finley manipulates the material accordingly.

It’s a movie that contains many examples of black comedy, and darkly satirical thriller elements that often subvert the modern day noir feel that Finley ascribes to the narrative. The glossy yet all too orderly environment of Lily’s home provides a trenchant backdrop for the largely muted passions on display, and Finley’s careful but invigorating direction ensures the movie is as visually arresting as it is emotionally powerful. As the murderous-minded Amanda and Lily, Cooke and Taylor-Joy both give excellent performances, while Yelchin (in one of his last roles), is marvellous as Tim, a man with dreams that aren’t matched by his ability or skill to see them through. It’s also worth noting Sparks’ performance as Mark, the ostensible bad guy who wears a frown on his face like a damaging accusation; it’s a tightly controlled portrayal, and all the more effective for not being the stereotype it so easily could have been. On the technical side, there’s much else to recommend the movie, from Lyle Vincent’s crisp, artfully composed cinematography, to Jeremy Woodward’s austere yet evocative production design, and Erik Friedlander’s memorably haunting score. With a sharp, calculating nature bubbling just below the surface, Thoroughbreds is a welcome addition to the usually underwhelming teen angst movies we normally get, and is all the better for managing to avoid the genre’s many pitfalls.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that creates a precise and prescribed milieu on which to hang its tale of what happens when stifled emotions meet murderous ambition, Thoroughbreds is a genuine surprise, and a bona fide pleasure as well; with terrific performances wringing every possible nuance from his razor sharp screenplay, Finley’s debut highlights the arrival (hopefully) of someone with a great career ahead of them.

Death Wish (2018)

24 Thursday May 2018

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Bruce Willis, Burglary, Chicago, Dean Norris, Drama, Eli Roth, Murder, Remake, The Grim Reaper, Thriller, Vigilante, Vincent D'Onofrio

D: Eli Roth / 107m

Cast: Bruce Willis, Vincent D’Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Camila Morrone, Dean Norris, Beau Knapp, Kimberly Elise, Len Cariou, Jack Kesy, Ronnie Gene Blevins

Paul Kersey (Willis) is a trauma surgeon working at a Chicago hospital. He has a wife, Lucy (Shue), and a teenage daughter, Jordan (Morrone), who is about to go off to college. One night, while Kersey is working, three burglars break into his home while everyone is out, but Lucy and Jordan return while they’re still there. Lucy is killed, and Jordan suffers a skull fracture that leaves her in a coma. The police, represented by Detective Kevin Raines (Norris) and Detective Leonore Jackson (Elise), offer hope that they’ll catch the men responsible, but with no leads, time passes and Kersey begins to wonder if he’ll ever have justice for his family. Angry at the police’s inability to protect people, Kersey becomes a vigilante, and earns the soubriquet The Grim Reaper. When a gunshot victim is admitted to the ER and is wearing one of Kersey’s stolen watches, it provides him with enough information to begin tracking down the men the police can’t find. But as he hunts them down, Raines and Jackson become suspicious of his actions, and the leader of the men (Knapp) targets him directly…

The idea of a remake of Michael Winner’s exploitation “classic” has been mooted for a while now (since 2006 when Sylvester Stallone was set to direct and star). There have been a few stops and starts along the way, and now we have the combination of Eli Roth and Bruce Willis, and a movie that has all the charm and appeal of applying haemorrhoid cream. There’s no other way of putting it: this incarnation of Death Wish is appalling, a right-wing political tract that lacks the courage of its own convictions, and strives for relevance in a day and age where violence is a sad, every day occurrence in the good old US of A. While talking heads debate the merits of having a vigilante on the streets of Chicago, Willis’s monotone Kersey goes on a journey of violent wish-fulfillment that screams “under-developed!” For a surgeon with no previous experience of handling a gun even, he’s able to act with impunity (he takes out a drug dealer on the street – in daylight – without being shot at by anyone), and even when he takes on the burglars, he leaves no evidence of his involvement.

So while Kersey gets away with murder, the police amble through proceedings like unwitting sleepwalkers at a narcolepsy convention (they even have time to joke about their investigation with their boss). It’s laughable, and something of an insult to the talent and skill of Joe Carnahan, the sole credited writer of this farrago, whose original script was re-written once Roth came on board. With a plethora of poorly written characters (D’Onofrio plays Kersey’s brother, but why he’s even there is impossible to work out), dialogue that sounds like a deaf person’s idea of dialogue, and Kersey’s motivations remaining murky at best, this is further sabotaged by Roth’s inability to maintain a consistent tone or invest proceedings with any appreciable energy. Willis continues to look bored out of his skull (a too common occurrence these days), the bad guys are straight out of generic villain central casting, and the action scenes are the nearest the movie comes to waking up. It has all the hallmarks of a movie that was rushed into production before the rights ran out, or worse, was rushed into production without anyone having a clear idea of what they were doing. So they truly did have a death wish…

Rating: 3/10 – abandoning any notion of moral ambiguity from the outset, Death Wish – Roth’s exploitation-free remake – is as dull as they come, and as ineptly handled as you’d expect; if you need any proof, just watch the early scene where Kersey “consoles” a cop whose partner has just died – and then hang your head in dismay.

Poster(s) of the Week – A Tribute to Bill Gold

23 Wednesday May 2018

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Bill Gold, Career, Graphic design, Poster of the week, Posters, Warner Bros.

If you had to identify a link between Casablanca (1942) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) – other than that they’re both classics – it’s unlikely that you’d opt for the graphic designer Bill Gold. But Gold designed the posters for both movies as part of a career that began in 1942 with Yankee Doodle Dandy and continued until 2011 with J. Edgar (for which he came out of retirement at the age of ninety).

He began his design career in 1941, working in the advertising department at Warner Bros., and eventually becoming head of poster design in 1947. When the New York offices of Warner Bros. advertising unit was disbanded in 1962, Gold created his own company, Bill Gold Advertising, and continued designing posters for movies as varied as Camelot (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Breathless (1983), and In the Line of Fire (1993). He designed the posters for pretty much every Clint Eastwood movie from Dirty Harry (1971) onwards, and when he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Hollywood Reporter in 1994, it was Eastwood who presented him with the award. Involved in the design and creation of around two thousand movie posters during his near seventy year career, Gold passed away on 20 May 2018 aged ninety-seven. In tribute to Gold and his work, here are ten posters that sum up both his talent and the reason why he was held in such regard by the likes of Laurence Oliver, Elia Kazan, and Ridley Scott.

Batman (1943) – Chapter 9: The Sign of the Sphinx

22 Tuesday May 2018

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Action, Columbia, Douglas Croft, Drama, J. Carrol Naish, Lambert Hillyer, Lewis Wilson, Review, Serial, Shirley Patterson, The Sphinx Club, Thriller

D: Lambert Hillyer / 16m

Cast: Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson, William Austin, John Maxwell, Ted Oliver

Surviving the explosion in the mine thanks to a pair of well placed cross beams, Batman and Robin rescue an also lucky Linda, and one of Daka’s henchmen, Marshall (Oliver). They take Marshall to the Bat Cave, but he won’t talk – at first. Leaving him alone, he escapes his bonds (as planned) and uses a conveniently situated telephone to make a call. Expecting this, Batman uses a device that details the number called and uses it to find out the location of Marshall’s hideout. It proves to be a riverfront joint called the Sphinx Club. Bruce decides to infiltrate the hideout disguised as a criminal called Chuck White (his disguise is so good it fools Linda). Once inside the Sphinx Club, Bruce/Chuck meets Fletcher (Maxwell), one of Daka’s lieutenants. At the point where he has to prove he’s a friend of Marshall’s, Bruce is rescued by Robin distracting Fletcher and his men. While Bruce changes into his Batman outfit, Robin is chased through the nearby docks. Batman joins the fray, but is overpowered and knocked unconscious. Then one of Fletcher’s men cuts the rope for the gang plank, sending it crashing down on the Caped Crusader, and sending Batman to certain death…

The end of the Colton-radium mine sub-plot (which sadly sees the end of Charles Middleton’s involvement in the serial), means a change in direction for Batman, and a return to the not so heady days of the earlier episodes. Instead of a story arc designed to play out across several chapters, we’re back to another installment where Batman and Robin locate another place where Daka has a connection, they head over there after gaining any relevant information with ease, and engage in a punch up with Daka’s goons. It’s a makeshift, or make-do, entry that marks a major backward step for the serial, and which feels as if – once again – Messrs McLeod, Swabacker and Fraser need to pad out an episode as best they can before, hopefully, a new and stronger sub-plot can be introduced to see the serial through to the end. Even Hillyer, the serial’s chief energiser, can’t do anything with this chapter, and his direction is perfunctory at best and uninspired at worst. It’s an episode that goes through the motions in a way that seemed to have been left behind in Chapter 4.

Despite all this, though, there are a couple of moments where the serial’s penchant for unexpected mirth is to the fore, and where suspension of belief is not only required, but practically demanded. The scene in the Bat Cave, where Marshall finds and is able to use a telephone is a corker, a real moment of inspired lunacy on the writers’ part that has to be seen to be believed. It’s possibly the serial’s funniest, silliest moment so far, an occurrence so far-fetched and incredible that in some ways you have to acknowledge the brazen absurdity of it all (and by the way, that henchman is still there, possibly without food or water, while Batman and Robin are being duffed up at the docks). The other moment is where Linda is presented with Bruce as Chuck, and doesn’t recognise him. It’s funny because it’s obviously Bruce with a putty nose and unflattering eyebrows; anyone can see it. The serial’s sense of humour has always been a little bit hit and miss, but here it’s so far off kilter that you can’t help wondering if it’s all been done on a dare. And dropping a gang plank on the Caped Crusader? Just how is Batman going to survive this time…?

Rating: 6/10 – replete with too many absurdities – “We never got to the cave. It was so hot out, we laid down by the roadside and took a nap” – Chapter 9 undoes all the good work of the previous three episodes and resigns Batman to another round of repetitive storytelling; once again, there’s no option but to hope that things improve in Chapter 10.

Cardboard Gangsters (2017)

21 Monday May 2018

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Best friends, Crime, Darndale, Drama, Drugs, Fionn Walton, Ireland, John Connors, Kierston Wareing, Mark O'Connor, Review

D: Mark O’Connor / 92m

Cast: John Connors, Fionn Walton, Kierston Wareing, Jimmy Smallhorne, Paul Alwright, Ryan Lincoln, Fionna Hewitt-Tramley, Toni O’Rourke

Having grown up together in the small town of Darndale, four friends, now in their early twenties, find themselves at a crossroads. Jay (Connors), Dano (Walton), Glenner (Alwright), and Cobbie (Lincoln), are either unemployed or working for cash (or both) in order to get by. Dano wants them to knock off the local crime boss, Derra (Smallhorne), believing it would be “easy”. Jay and the others think it’s a bad idea. But when Jay is forced to rob an off licence to pay off his mother’s debt to Derra, it’s not long before the quartet are selling drugs on Derra’s patch, and doing so with relative impunity. To complicate matters, Jay’s girlfriend Sarah (O’Rourke) is pregnant, but he’s also having an affair with Derra’s wife, Kim (Wareing). Soon enough, Jay and his friends’ successful “business” venture attracts Derra’s attention, and he makes Jay an offer that Jay flatly refuses. What follows is a series of events that become more and more violent, and which threaten the lives of Jay, his mother (Hewitt-Tramley), his friends, and Sarah – events that will change their lives, and Derra’s, completely…

A rough-edged drama that often betrays its low budget roots, Cardboard Gangsters is still a robust Irish movie that is far more ambitious than you might expect. It’s a familiar milieu that we’re exposed to, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the script by director O’Connor and star Connors, provides enough familiarity for audiences to assess the movie’s narrative dynamic at a glance, while also adding several unexpected emotional layers for good measure. There are the usual themes of loyalty and brotherhood, as well as trust and betrayal, but shot through with a knowing vitality that invests even the most dramatically prosaic of scenes with a pace and an energy that elevates the material immensely. The various inter-relationships are handled well, and O’Connor displays a knack for stripping back the characterisations to a bare minimum while allowing the performances to grow from them. Even a character such as Dano, a mile a minute loudmouth with big ideas but little courage to back them up, is allowed to grow and develop as the movie progresses, and Walton seizes the opportunity to make him as memorable as possible. Again, the movie may appear predictable and rote at times, but the approach offsets this entirely.

Where the movie does excel is in its depiction of Jay and his violent nature, something he’s aware of but not always able to control. He’s a naturally cautious young man (he’s twenty-four but according to Kim he looks thirty), but his more aggressive, don’t care temperament puts him in many more dangerous situations than he needs to be in. His affair with Kim is a case in point; knowing she’s married to Derra doesn’t faze him in the least, even though he’s aware it’s unlikely to go well for him if Derra finds out. Connors portrays Jay with a quiet, deep-rooted sense of concentration, as if he’s constantly working out all the angles – only to ignore all the best ones for the bad. He’s a thinker who’s in thrall to his emotions, and Connors is very good indeed as the up and coming gang boss whose personal issues threaten the lives of everyone around him. Set against a small town backdrop of social listlessness, O’Connor imbues the movie with a modicum of hope for the four friends but is wise enough to know that youthful ambition isn’t always enough to guarantee success. And though the outcome is necessarily bleak, the demands of the narrative mean there’s no other option, either for O’Connor, or Jay.

Rating: 7/10 – better than average, and scoring points for the deftness of its characterisations, Cardboard Gangsters tells an overly familiar tale with verve and no small semblance of rugged style; some may find the Irish accents impenetrable at times, but the gist of the story (and individual scenes) shines through, making this easier to follow than expected, and shot through with moments of quiet power.

Tehran Taboo (2017)

19 Saturday May 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ali Soozandeh, Animation, Arash Marandi, Drama, Elmira Rafizadeh, Iran, Prostitution, Review, Sex, Tehran, Virginity, Zhara Amir Ebrahimi

D: Ali Soozandeh / 96m

Cast: Elmira Rafizadeh, Zhara Amir Ebrahimi, Arash Marandi, Bilal Yasar, Negar Mona Alizadeh, Morteza Tavakoli, Alireza Bayram, Hasan Ali Mete

Pari (Rafizadeh) is a wife and mother whose husband is a drug addict and in prison; she wants a divorce but he won’t agree to it. Sara (Ebrahimi) is a wife and mother-to-be who wants a job; her husband, Mohsen (Bayram), won’t allow it. Babak (Marandi) is an aspiring musician who has a one-night stand with Donya (Alizadeh) who is due to marry in a week’s time; this means she is no longer a virgin, something her fiancé is expecting her to be when they marry. Babak must arrange for Donya to have an operation to “restore” her maidenhood. Pari resorts to prostitution in order to get by; a chance encounter with a judge (Mete) sees her and her son, Elias (Yasar) set up in the same apartment block that Sara and Babak live in. Pari and Sara become friends, while Pari finds herself helping Babak and Donya. As their lives intertwine, and secrets are revealed, each of the four must make decisions that will affect each of their futures, some of them irrevocably…

A movie that perhaps could only be presented in the rotoscoping animated format that director Ali Soozandeh has opted for, Tehran Taboo creditably and credibly explores the hypocrisy and double standards inherent in Iranian society today. Just how deep-rooted this is, is best illustrated by an early scene where Pari negotiates a sexual favour for a taxi driver. With the act and its price agreed, Pari sets to only for the taxi driver to spot his daughter walking along hand in hand with a boy. His sense of outrage is almost incandescent. That Iranian society is overwhelmingly patriarchal, and its laws designed to keep women firmly in the places prescribed for them, is nothing new, but the way in which Soozandeh and script collaborator Grit Kienzlen have constructed the interlocking stories of Pari, Sara, Babak and Donya, is to show just how far-reaching its effects can be. This is reflected in the lengths that Pari will go to to provide for herself and Elias, and the desperation that Sara feels at Mohsen’s unwillingness to agree to let her work. Likewise, Babak’s good intentions in supporting Donya lead him into unfamiiar social and political territory. They’re all trying to do what’s best, but at a continual cost to themselves.

Soozandeh is savvy enough to ensure that not everyone makes the best decisions, and though some of what transpires can be guessed at way in advance, the situations his characters find themselves in are compelling enough that the movie’s obvious lack of subtlety isn’t a hindrance (plus you could argue that with Iranian laws lacking their own subtlety, why bother?). At one point, Babak’s friend Amir (Tavakoli) says, “Saying no is more important than breathing in Tehran!”, and it’s the most persuasive observation in the whole movie, a moment of carefree discourse that sums up the oppressive nature of Iranian law as a whole. With its focus on various sexual proclivities, and moments of female nudity, this is definitely not a movie that could have been made in Tehran (or anywhere in Iran for that matter), and the rotoscoping effect adds an emotional currency that might not have been present otherwise, with expressions highlighting the characters’ feelings in ways that feel far more intriguing than usual. Soozandeh is aided immensely by a very talented cast, with Rafizadeh particularly impressive as the world-weary yet still optimistic Pari, while it should be noted that, thanks to editors Frank Geiger and Andrea Mertens, the movie has a brisk sense of immediacy about it that helps make it absorbing to watch.

Rating: 8/10 – while some of the traditional background animation feels flat and in need of development, and some of the more political elements are laid on with the proverbial trowel, there’s no denying that Tehran Taboo is a timely reminder of the undeserved restrictions imposed on a certain section of its population; thought-provoking despite some of its more soap opera-style elements, it’s a movie that also offers hope and sympathy along the way.

Stephanie (2017)

18 Friday May 2018

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Akiva Goldsman, Anna Torv, Blumhouse, Drama, Frank Grillo, Horror, Review, Shree Crooks, Thriller

D: Akiva Goldsman / 86m

Cast: Shree Crooks, Frank Grillo, Anna Torv, Jonah Beres

A young girl, Stephanie (Crooks), is alone in her family home, her only companions a stuffed toy turtle called Francis and a rabbit called Mr Hopper. Her parents (Grillo, Torv) have disappeared, and she doesn’t know if and when they’ll be coming back. She channel hops between her favourite TV shows and occasionally sees a news channel that is reporting on some kind of global epidemic. While she seems happy to be on her own, if she becomes sad or upset, it draws the attention of a monster that lives in the nearby woods. When this happens, Stephanie has learnt to hide and keep absolutely quiet; then the monster will go away. When her parents finally come home, her father is overjoyed to see her, but her mother is guarded and uncertain. There are issues surrounding her brother (Beres), and there are implications for Stephanie and her parents that are related to the epidemic. While her father erects a fence around the property to keep out the monster, Stephanie begins to suspect that there are things her parents aren’t telling her. But when they do, it puts a whole new perspective on everything she thought she knew…

Originally shown at the 2017 Overlook Film Festival, Stephanie is a Blumhouse production that is much more low-key than usual, but which also has a number of unfortunate elements to it that provide a good indication as to why Blumhouse’s usual distribution deal with Universal has resulted in around a year’s delay in getting the movie out to audiences (the movie hasn’t had a theatrical run). While the central notion of an isolated young girl at the mercy of a predatory monster has the potential to provide the requisite scares and thrills needed to make the movie work effectively, issues with the script – by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski – are further compounded by the erratic nature of Akiva Goldsman’s direction. The first twenty-five minutes, where Stephanie is shown getting by on her own, or avoiding being caught by the monster, are drawn out and lack the necessary impact that would allow the viewer to be really concerned for her. While the monster certainly makes its presence felt (and Jamie Hardt’s sound design helps immensely here), the ease with which Stephanie eludes it neuters any possible tension.

With the arrival of Stephanie’s parents, the movie picks up a certain amount of speed, but in the process begins to offer more questions than it has answers for, least of all in terms of the nature of the monster, and more so in relation to what’s going on in the wider world, and why. The script never properly explains why Stephanie was abandoned, and it never recovers from a third act-providing twist that makes no sense when weighed against what occurred in the first act. Throughout all this, Goldsman directs at a safe distance, disallowing any real emotion to find its way through the fog of misconstrued intentions on the parents’ side, and specious motivations on Stephanie’s side. The movie ticks over acceptably, but fortunately has a very good performance from Crooks as Stephanie, her childlike behaviour matched by more adult qualities handed to her by the script (though not consistently). Grillo and Torv cope well with characters that come across as convenient though not essential, while the denouement is frustratingly predictable once the twist is revealed. The script does attempt to show the fears governing both Stephanie and her parents’ actions, but while there are potential themes and sub-plots that could have been included – and would have made the material richer – in the end, the movie is too innocuous to be anywhere near as potent as it should be.

Rating: 5/10 – with the pace and tone of the movie at odds with its thriller aspects, Stephanie struggles to maintain a consistency likely to keep the average viewer fully engaged; a shame then, as the basic story – or its potential – could have made this a small but accomplished horror thriller, rather than the distant, unfulfilling feature that it really is.

NOTE: Currently, there doesn’t appear to be a trailer for Stephanie available, just the short scene below:

Broken Gardenias (2014)

17 Thursday May 2018

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Alma S. Grey, Comedy, Drama, Father/daughter relationship, Jack Morocco, Kai Alexander, LGBTQ+, Los Angeles, Review, Road movie, Romance, Suicide

D: Kai Alexander / 89m

Cast: Alma S. Grey, Jack Morocco, Caroline Heinle, Louis Dezseran, Nathan Douglas, Khelsy Raymond, Marlyse Londe, Geoffrey Kennedy, Amanda S. Hall

For Jenni (Grey), life isn’t something that she feels entirely comfortable with. She’s shy, has a somewhat childish attitude to her work in a plant nursery (she tells awful jokes to the plants), lives with a housemate (Heinle) who thinks she’s weird, and has a crush on a fellow nursery worker (Hall) that she’s too insecure to act on. When circumstances result in her losing both her home and her job, Jenni decides that suicide is her only remaining option. She goes to the park to hang herself but is stopped from doing so by Sam (Morocco), a free spirit who gets Jenni to open up about herself. Jenni tells Sam about her father, who she hasn’t seen since she was six years old. All she has is an old photo of him outside the house they used to live in in Los Angeles. Sam persuades Jenni to try and find him, and they travel to L.A. There, a number of distractions hold up their search, and their new-found friendship is put to the test…

A comical quasi-road movie that features a brace of enjoyable performances from its leads, Broken Gardenias is a good-natured comedy drama that doesn’t provide viewers with anything out of the ordinary, and which isn’t trying to be too profound either. It’s an indie movie with a surplus of charm that is in service to a script (by Grey) that sets out its stall very early on. It’s about acceptance, and on various levels. Jenni is afraid of taking chances, so travelling to L.A. is a big deal for her, especially as she has no idea if tracking down her father will be successful, or provide her with some, or all – or nothing – of the answers she’s looking for. Sam has a more positive outlook, but that’s because she’s compensating for Jenni’s lack of confidence, and her own nature allows her to accept Jenni’s uncertainty without necssarily supporting it. For once, the script isn’t concerned with whether or not both women learn from each other and grow as individuals accordingly, but with the singular journey that Jenni takes in gaining the confidence that has eluded her for so long. There’ll be tears, there’ll be laughs, and there’ll be unexpected sexual encounters, but above all, there’ll be emotional, cathartic outbursts.

Grey and Morocco play off and against each other with considerable skill, which is beneficial on those occasions when Grey’s script wanders off course (an encounter with a stoner lady who gives Jenni and Sam a lift), or scenes that drag on without adding anything to the narrative. There’s also a risible sub-plot involving Jenni’s housemate – and her boyfriend – who are visiting L.A. at the same time, a set up that has a less than satisfying, and very contrived resolution. With this in mind, though, Broken Gardenias has much more to offer, from the aforementioned performances, Alexander’s relaxed yet en point direction, some colourful L.A. locations, Meena Singh’s bright and airy cinematography, and a winsome, whimsical score by Tiffanie Lanmon. It’s very much a movie that wears its lesbian laurels on its sleeve, but it’s also a story that could be just as enjoyable and just as relevant if both Jenni and Sam were straight (though the romantic aspects might need adjusting). In the end, Grey has fashioned a knowing script that doesn’t take either Jenni or Sam for granted, and makes their growing relationship – with all its stumbles and strides – something to cherish, and relish, for its easy simplicity.

Rating: 7/10 – a small triumph of LGBTQ+ movie making, Broken Gardenias overcomes a handful of narrative hiccups to provide an engaging and entertaining look at one woman’s journey to gaining self-confidence and self-reliance; Grey and Morocco are an attractive pairing, there’s a good mix of drama and comedy, and it’s all set against a familiar indie backdrop that helps anchor some of the more wayward aspects of the script.

Trailer – Leave No Trace (2018)

16 Wednesday May 2018

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Ben Foster, Debra Granik, Drama, Literary adaptation, My Abandonment, Peter Rock, Preview, Thomasin McKenzie, Trailer

In a summer that will be dominated again by mega-budget blockbusters, trying to pick out a movie or two (or even three) that offers something a little different from heavily edited fight scenes, numerous explosions, and the same characters we’ve seen several times before, is something that will probably require a little persistence. One movie that fits this particular bill is Leave No Trace, the latest drama from Debra Granik, the director of Winter’s Bone (2010). Adapted from the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock, the movie stars Ben Foster as Will, an ex-military man living in a Portland, Oregon forest with his thirteen year old daughter, Tom, played by Thomasin McKenzie. The pair eschew civilisation, and Will has educated Tom himself. Inevitably their “idyllic” lifestyle is discovered and they are forced into a “normal” life through the intervention of social services. Unable to adapt to their new lives, however, they decide to journey back into the forest.

A movie that looks to be engrossing due to the dynamic of the relationship between Will and Tom, and their commitment to each other, the trailer sets up a number of questions for the potential viewer to be thinking about ahead of seeing Leave No Trace – not the least of which is why are they in the forest in the first place – and it promises excellent performances from its two leads. As a substitute for the usual fare seen in our cinemas during the summer months, this has all the hallmarks of a movie that could quietly gain everyone’s attention, and prove to be an attractive, rewarding alternative to the flash, bang, wallop on offer pretty much across the board.

Bombshell (2017)

15 Tuesday May 2018

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Actress, Alexandra Dean, Anthony Loder, Beauty, Biography, Denise Loder-Deluca, Documentary, Fleming Meeks, Frequency hopping, Hedy Lamarr, Review, Vienna

aka Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

D: Alexandra Dean / 88m

With Hedy Lamarr, Anthony Loder, Denise Loder-Deluca, Fleming Meeks, Robert Osborne, Wendy Colton, Diane Kruger, Stephen Michael Shearer, Jimmy Loder, Jeanine Basinger, Peter Bogdanovich

In recent years, Hedy Lamarr and her life and work have been the subject of a critical reappraisal, from her role as an actress in Hollywood, to her other work as an inventor. This duality has been examined and explored through plays and photographic exhibitions, and her influence has extended as far as being the inspiration for Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Bombshell charts Lamarr’s life from her childhood growing up in Vienna (as Hedy Kiesler), through to her early movie career and the production that brought her both fame and notoriety, Extase (1933), in which she appeared nude. Her family’s Jewish background put them at risk from the Nazis and so she fled Vienna to Paris where she met Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. She began her Hollywood career soon after, but she made a more lasting contribution through her work as an inventor, coming up with a system – in conjunction with composer George Antheil – called frequency hopping, something that stopped torpedoes from being tracked or jammed.

This occurred during World War II, and up until this stage, Bombshell is something of a standard biopic, charting Lamarr’s rise as an actress, and highlighting the Viennese background that propelled her, unexpectedly, to international stardom. Lamarr’s determination to succeed is also highlighted, as is her belief in herself and her abilities. But it’s the invention of frequency hopping – and its eventual use by the US Navy – that proves to be most intriguing. The documentary tells a story of bad luck and bad timing as Lamarr’s work proves too difficult to be adapted during the war, and when it is finally adopted in the early Sixties it’s too late for Lamarr to capitalise on its use financially. By this time her acting career has come to an end, and she has begun to withdraw from public life, becoming something of a recluse. Her children from her marriage to John Loder, Anthony and Denise, tell a story of ill-advised plastic surgery – footage of Lamarr in her later years shows just how much it was a bad idea – family estrangement (another son, Jimmy, believed he was adopted and chose to be brought up by someone else), and arrests for shoplifting.

Bombshell brings all these strands and aspects of Lamarr’s life together in a cogent and deftly considered way thanks to a mix of recent interviews, archival footage and photography, and recordings made by journalist Fleming Meeks in 1990 when he interviewed Lamarr, but which he thought were lost. The movie gains depth and a large degree of poignancy from the way in which Lamarr’s life played out in such a sad way in her later years, and the bittersweet emphasis on her beauty (knowing where it will lead) adds pathos as well. In the end, and despite the setbacks in both her careers (only a handful of her movies have stood the test of time), Lamarr’s story is one of huge promise that was only moderately and temporarily realised. Making her feature debut, Dean assembles the highs and lows of Lamarr’s life – married six times, highly regarded for her beauty if not her brains, more interesting away from acting – and paints a compelling portrait of a woman who was perhaps born two or three decades too soon. Ultimately it’s a sad tale because of its outcome, but thanks to Dean and the participation of Lamarr’s family, it’s also a celebration of an extraordinary woman who was much, much more than just a great beauty.

Rating: 8/10 – with an honesty about its subject that is sincere and affecting, Bombshell is a fascinating look at Hedy Lamarr the person, rather than just the actress or the inventor; a biography that examines much of her life in detail, and with a sympathetic approach, it’s an absorbing tale that does Lamarr justice in a way that, in many ways, she wasn’t granted while she was alive.

Blade of the Immortal (2017)

14 Monday May 2018

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Action, Drama, Japan, Kimura Takuya, Manga adaptation, Review, Samurai, Sugisaki Hana, Takashi Miike, Thriller

Original title: Mugen no jûnin

D: Takashi Miike / 141m

Cast: Kimura Takuya, Sugisaki Hana, Fukushi Sôta, Ichihara Hayato, Toda Erika, Kitamura Kazuki, Kuriyama Chiaki, Mitsushima Shinnosuke, Tanaka Min, Yamamoto Yôko

Manji (Kimura) is a man haunted by a tragic past involving the death of his sister, an incident that left him unable to die thanks to the intervention of a mysterious woman (Yamamoto). Fifty-two years later, a young girl, Rin (Sugisaki), approaches him to be her bodyguard and help gain revenge for the death of her father at the hands of Kagehisa Anotsu (Fukushi), the head of a new martial arts school. Manji refuses at first, but when Rin is attacked by one of Kagehisa’s men, he changes his mind. When news reaches Kagehisa that his man is dead, so begins a series of encounters as Kagehisa’s followers – aware that Manji cannot be killed – try various ways and means to defeat him. Meanwhile, Kagehisa attempts to influence the Shogun training school into joining his own school, but his plan fails. As Manji’s body suffers more and more from each encounter, circumstances bring him and Kagehisa together against an army of Shogun warriors, and if fate has a hand, then against each other…

Blade of the Immortal is Takashi Miike’s one hundredth movie, a feat that he’s achieved since his debut in 1991 (and he’s made two further movies since). Returning to the samurai arena he visited so effectively in 13 Assassins (2010), Takashi takes on another manga/anime adaptation and throws the audience headlong into a world of treachery, violence, political intrigue, vengeance, and misplaced codes of honour. As expected, it’s a bravura piece of movie making from Takashi, visually striking – the opening sequence is in black and white – bold in its execution with several stunningly mounted action set pieces, and a central character in Manji whose plight is weighing him down with every passing year. There’s a melancholy air to Manji’s situation that the script by Oishi Tetsuya maintains throughout, imbuing the character with a fatalism that gives depth to the part and helps ensure Manji isn’t just another invincible hero. Kimura is terrific in the role, Manji’s scarred features reflecting the pain of being immortal, and his interaction with Rin (who is a dead ringer for his sister; as she should be, as Sugisaki plays both roles) offering him both unexpected hope and potential redemption.

These themes play out against the kind of feudal backdrop that we’ve all become familiar with, and it’s these elements that don’t have the effect they should have. Kagehiso’s plan to appropriate all the teaching schools under one banner (and leader) never quite grips as a villainous ambition, though the personal reasons for his actions revealed later in the movie almost make it more convincing. The middle section of the movie suffers accordingly, as Kagehiso’s machinations and an unlikely alliance between Manji and members of a school who’ve yet to be assimilated stretch out the running time unnecessarily. Thankfully there’s a handful of superbly choreographed action scenes to offset what feels like too much filler, particularly in terms of the various examples of exotic weaponry on display, and the endlessly roving camerawork of Kita Nobuyasu. The performances are uniformly good as well, the quality of the characterisations allowing the likes of Sugisaki, Fukushi, Tanaka (as a duplicitous advisor to Kagehisa), and Toda (as a repentant member of Kagehisa’s clan) to add layers to their roles that might not otherwise have been possible. But at the end of the day it’s Takashi’s movie, and while this may be one of his more accessible movies, it’s clear that the enfant terrible of Japanese cinema is showing no sign of slowing down or avoiding challenges.

Rating: 7/10 – though Takashi’s propensity for extreme violence is dialled down, there’s still more than enough bloodshed on display in Blade of the Immortal to keep long-time fans, and newer viewers, happy; bold and thrilling (for the most part), this is stirring stuff supported by strong characterisations and a knowing sense of how outlandish it all is.

Toc Toc (2017)

13 Sunday May 2018

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Alexandra Jiménez, Comedy, Drama, OCD, Paco León, Patients, Review, Rossy de Palma, Spain, Theatrical adaptation, Therapy, Vicente Villanueva, Waiting room

D: Vicente Villanueva / 96m

Cast: Paco León, Rossy de Palma, Alexandra Jiménez, Nuria Herrero, Adrián Lastra, Oscar Martínez, Inma Cuevos

Six patients of the same therapist find themselves in his waiting room and all with the same appointment. With his receptionist (Cuevos) blaming the mix up on a new computer software programme, and the doctor himself delayed on his way back from London, the sextet decide to wait for him to arrive. Bianca (Jiménez) has a fear of bacteria and continually cleans both herself and her surroundings. Emilio (León) is a hoarder and someone who counts everything. Otto (Lastra) can’t step on lines and is obsessed by symmetry and balance. Lili (Herrero) has to repeat everything she or whomever she’s talking to says – twice. Ana Maria (De Palma) is susceptible to the power of suggestion and mis-repeats what other people say without realising it. And there’s Federico (Martínez) who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome. As the wait for their therapist carries on, they begin to find out about each other, and the various issues that blight their every day lives. And then one of them suggests they take the opportunity to do a bit of group therapy, something that brings forth some very unexpected results…

A seriously funny movie that avoids making fun of its characters by painting their various plights with sympathy and understanding, Toc Toc is an adaptation of the stage play by Laurent Baffie. It’s sensitively handled, and takes its time in establishing each character’s problem and how they attempt to deal with it. It’s these defensive mechanisms that the script (by Villanueva) exploits in the beginning, and a great deal of the early humour is in seeing how much more difficult these defence mechanisms make their individual lives. Bianca cleans the lab where she works which raises the ire of the cleaning staff. Ana Maria crosses herself every time she hears a profanity, which is tiringly often. Otto can’t maintain a relationship if his partner is deliberately and unthinkingly messy. As each character explains just how their obsessions can have a negative effect on their lives, each illustration is conveyed in a humorous and yet melancholy way that allows the movie to be both necessarily exploitative but also sincere and mindful. It’s a delicate balancing act, but thanks to Villanueva’s assured direction and the unwavering commitment of the cast, these characters are never less than treated kindly, and with a great deal of compassion.

This allows the interaction between them – though still imbued with a staginess that can’t be avoided – to flourish in rich and rewarding ways. There’s a budding romance between Otto and Lili that is as sweet and unassuming as you could hope for, and Ana Maria’s initial reluctance to admit she’s a patient reveals a resourcefulness that proves to be a benefit to the whole group. These and other aspects are carefully drawn out by Villanueva and the cast, and even though there are farcical elements that are enacted with undisguised glee, the underlying seriousness of the situation isn’t ignored, making this often beautifully observed and trenchant at the same time. All the cast are on good form, with León’s garrulous, jokey cab driver and de Palma’s uptight religious hausfrau particularly enjoyable to watch, and Villanueva maintains a light, frothy tone that’s supported by a whimsical score by Antonio Escobar, and David Omedes’ fluid cinematography. Even the most casual of viewers will be able to work out where all this is heading, but it’s how it gets there that’s very much part of the fun.

Rating: 8/10 – some staginess and predictability aside, Toc Toc is a delightfully engaging meringue of a movie that knows exactly what it’s doing, and does it very well indeed; good-natured and agreeable, it’s the kind of movie that, like many other foreign language movies, deserves a wider audience than it will most likely attract.

NOTE: Sadly, there’s no subtitled trailer for Toc Toc currently available.

Batman (1943) – Chapter 8: Lured by Radium

13 Sunday May 2018

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Action, Columbia, Douglas Croft, Drama, J. Carrol Naish, Lambert Hillyer, Lewis Wilson, Radium mine, Review, Serial, Shirley Patterson, Thriller

D: Lambert Hillyer / 17m

Cast: Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson, William Austin, Charles Middleton, John Maxwell, William Wilkerson

Thanks to Robin’s quick thinking in turning off the power to the lift, Batman avoids certain death again. Worried by Colton’s disappearance, Linda decides to try and find him; Bruce and Dick agree to go with her. Meanwhile, back at Dr Daka’s lair, Colton (Middleton), to avoid being turned into one of Daka’s zombies, agrees to reveal the location of his radium mine. The next day sees Colton and six of Daka’s henchmen arrive at the mine, but Colton gets away from them and heads deeper into the mine. At the same time, Bruce, Dick and Linda, accompanied by Alfred, arrive at Colton’s cabin. While Linda and Alfred wait there, Bruce and Dick go to the mine, where they discover Daka’s men are there. Changing into their Batman and Robin outfits they enter the mine and a fight ensues. Back at the cabin, Colton appears from below a hidden trapdoor intent on blowing up the mine so that Daka cannot use the radium. Back down in the mine, he primes the explosives, but during the continuing fight, one of Daka’s men falls on the detonator, the blast collapsing the mine and sending Batman to certain death…

Now at the halfway point, Batman still feels as if it’s hitting its stride and comfortably so, with the sub-plot involving Colton’s radium mine providing continued excitement. As with Chapter 7, this has a shorter runtime than is apparent, thanks to the inclusion of the whole fight scene from the end of its predecessor (and not to mention the opening titles etc.). But again, everything is played out more concisely, and with a lot more verve, even though the script takes time out to introduce Steve (Wilkerson), a Native American who helps Bruce et al with directions to Colton’s cabin and the mine. It’s hard to work out why the character is there at all – Colton can provide directions by himself, and Linda has a map showing where the mine is – but his presence is a pleasant enough diversion, and doesn’t interfere with the overall pace of the episode. It does give Wilson and Croft a chance to be seen more as Bruce and Dick than in most chapters, and gives Wilson in particular a chance to break away from the earnestness that comes with being Batman.

But while these are relatively new elements – improvements even – the script still has plenty of tried and trusted moments for fans/viewers who haven’t given up yet to enjoy, from Linda accusing Bruce of being too lazy, Alfred behaving like the milquetoast he so clearly is, Croft’s stuntman having way less hair when dressed as Robin, and Naish’s make up giving Daka a perma-sneer. It’s still all in service to the kind of story that appears to have been made up from chapter to chapter, and it still benefits from Hillyer’s grasp of the absurdity of it all. As the serial continues it’s Hillyer who’s proving to be Batman‘s most valuable player, offsetting even the most risible moments with a straightforward, unfussy style that helps override the inherent silliness of it all. There’s even the odd, unexpected camera angle that belies the idea that camera set ups were purely of the one-and-done variety. Now that the serial has found its feet, there’s a consistency and a purpose about it all that augurs well for the second half of the serial as a whole, even though this chapter will see the end of the Colton sub-plot, and maybe the last time we ask the question just how is Batman going to survive this time…?

Rating: 7/10 – continuing the more confident approach first seen in Chapter 5, Chapter 7 is another solid, enjoyable chapter in a serial that has been mostly the opposite up until now; while not stretching the boundaries of serials made at the time, Batman is still worth watching, and still the kind of basic, no-frills entertainment that can be entirely its own reward.

Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

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Action, Adventure, Alain Guiraudie, Alberto Cavalcanti, Amen Island, Animation, Anthony Russo, Assassin, Avengers: Infinity War, B-movie, Babak Nafari, Bank robbery, Barbara Britton, Billy Brown, Blaxploitation, Blue Sky, Brad Peyton, Bullfighting, Burglars, Carlos Saldanha, Children of the Corn: Runaway, Children's Film Foundation, Chris Evans, Christina De Vallee, Comedy, Crime, Danny Glover, David Paisley, Drama, Eugeniusz Chylek, Ferdinand, France, Genetic experiment, Hafsia Herzi, Horror, Jake Ryan Scott, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Russo, John Cena, John Gulager, Johnny on the Run, Kate McKinnon, Le roi de l'évasion, Lewis Gilbert, Literary adaptation, Ludovic Berthillot, Maggie Grace, Marci Miller, Mark Harriott, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mike Matthews, Naomie Harris, Pine-Thomas, Proud Mary, Rampage, Reviews, Rival gangs, Rob Cohen, Robert Downey Jr, Robert Lowery, Romance, Ryan Kwanten, Sequel, Sydney Tafler, Taraji P. Henson, Thanos, The Hurricane Heist, The Monster of Highgate Ponds, They Made Me a Killer, Thriller, Toby Kebbell, Unhappy Birthday, Video game, William C. Thomas

They Made Me a Killer (1946) / D: William C. Thomas / 64m

Cast: Robert Lowery, Barbara Britton, Lola Lane, Frank Albertson, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, Edmund MacDonald, Ralph Sanford, James Bush

Rating: 5/10 – a man (Lowery) drives across country after the death of his brother and gives a lift to a woman (Lane) who tricks him into being the getaway driver in a bank robbery, a situation that sees him on the run from the police but determined to prove his innocence; a gritty, hard-boiled film noir, They Made Me a Killer adds enough incident to its basic plot to keep viewers entertained from start to finish without really adding anything new or overly impressive to the mix, but it does have a brash performance from Lowery, and Thomas’s direction ensures it’s another solid effort from Paramount’s B-movie unit, Pine-Thomas.

Proud Mary (2018) / D: Babak Najafi / 89m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey

Rating: 3/10 – a female assassin (Henson) finds herself protecting the teenage boy (Winston) whose father she killed years before, and at a time when her actions cause a murderous dispute between the gang she works for and their main rival; as the titular Proud Mary, Henson makes for a less than convincing assassin in this modern day blaxploitation thriller that lets itself down constantly thanks to a turgid script and lacklustre direction, and which has far too many moments where suspension of disbelief isn’t just required but an absolute necessity.

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018) / D: John Gulager / 82m

Cast: Marci Miller, Jake Ryan Scott, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lynn Andrews III, Sara Moore, Diane Ayala Goldner, Clu Gulager

Rating: 3/10 – arriving in a small Oklahoman town with her teenage son, Ruth (Miller) attempts to put down roots after over ten years of running from the child cult that nearly cost her her life, but she soon finds that safety still isn’t something she can count on; number ten in the overall series, Children of the Corn: Runaway is yet another entry that keeps well away from any attempts at providing anything new, and succeeds only in being as dull to watch as you’d expect, leaving unlucky viewers to ponder on why these movies still keep getting made when it’s clear the basic premise has been done to death – again and again and again…

Johnny on the Run (1953) / D: Lewis Gilbert / 68m

Cast: Eugeniusz Chylek, Sydney Tafler, Michael Balfour, Edna Wynn, David Coote, Cleo Sylvestre, Jean Anderson, Moultrie Kelsall, Mona Washbourne

Rating: 7/10 – after running away from his foster home in Edinburgh, a young Polish boy, Janek (Chylek), unwittingly falls in with two burglars (Tafler, Balfour), and then finds himself in a Highland village where the possibility of a new and better life is within his grasp; an enjoyable mix of drama and comedy from the UK’s Children’s Film Foundation, Johnny on the Run benefits from sterling performances, Gilbert’s astute direction, excellent location work, and a good understanding of what will interest both children and adults alike, making this one of the Foundation’s better entries, and still as entertaining now as when it was first released.

Ferdinand (2017) / D: Carlos Saldanha / 108m

Cast: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, David Tennant, Jeremy Sisto, Lily Day, Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, Gabriel Iglesias

Rating: 8/10 – a young bull called Ferdinand (Cena) whose disposition includes a fondness for flowers and protecting other animals, finds himself temporarily living with a supportive family, until events bring him back to the world of bullfighting that he thought he’d left behind; the classic children’s tale gets the Blue Sky treatment, and in the process, retains much of the story’s whimsical yet pertinent takes on pacifism, anti-bullying, and gender diversity, while providing audiences with a rollicking and very humorous adventure that makes Ferdinand a very enjoyable experience indeed.

The Hurricane Heist (2018) / D: Rob Cohen / 98m

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona, Ben Cross, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Christian Contreras

Rating: 4/10 – thieves target a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 hurricane, but don’t reckon on their plans going awry thanks to a Treasury agent (Grace), a meteorologist (Kebbell), and his ex-Marine brother (Kwanten); as daft as you’d expect, The Hurricane Heist continues the downward career spiral of Cohen, and betrays its relatively small budget every time it sets up a major action sequence, leaving its talented cast to thrash against the wind machines in search of credibility and sincerity, a notion that the script abandons very early on as it maximises all its efforts to appear as ridiculous as possible (which is the only area in which it succeeds).

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961) / D: Alberto Cavalcanti / 59m

Cast: Sophie Clay, Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Ronald Howard, Frederick Piper, Michael Balfour, Roy Vincente, Beryl Cooke

Rating: 6/10 – when his uncle (Howard) returns home from a trip to Malaya, David (Wade) gets to keep a large egg that’s been brought back, but little does he realise that a creature will hatch from the egg – a creature David, his sister Sophie (Clay), and their friend, Chris (Raven) need to protect from the authorities until his uncle returns home from his latest trip; though the special effects that bring the “monster” to life are less than impressive, there’s a pleasing low budget, wish fulfillment vibe to The Monster of Highgate Ponds that allows for the absurdity of it all to be taken in stride, and thanks to Cavalcanti’s relaxed direction, that absurdity makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

Rampage (2018) / D: Brad Peyton / 107m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy

Rating: 5/10 – a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are all exposed to an illegal genetic engineering experiment and become massively bigger and more aggressive thanks to the corporation behind the experiment, leaving the gorilla’s handler (Johnson) to try and help put things right; based on a video game, and as brightly ridiculous as any movie version of a video game could be, Rampage uses its (very) simple plotting to bludgeon the audience into submission with a variety of exemplary digital effects, while also trying to dredge up a suitable amount of emotion along the way, but in the end – and surprisingly – it’s Johnson’s knowing performance and Morgan’s affected government spook that trade this up from simple disaster to almost disaster.

Unhappy Birthday (2011) / D: Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews / 91m

aka Amen Island

Cast: David Paisley, Christina De Vallee, Jill Riddiford, Jonathan Deane

Rating: 4/10 – Rick (Paisley) and his girlfriend, Sadie (De Vallee), along with their friend Jonny (Keane), travel to the tidal island of Amen to reunite Sadie with her long lost sister, only to find that the islanders have a secret that threatens the lives of all three of them; a low budget British thriller with distinct echoes of The Wicker Man (1973) – though it’s not nearly as effective – Unhappy Birthday highlights the isolated nature of the island and the strangeness of its inhabitants, but reduces its characters to squabbling malcontents pretty much from the word go, which makes spending time with them far from appealing, and stops the viewer from having any sympathy for them once things start to go wrong.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 149m

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Idris Elba, Danai Gurira, Peter Dinklage, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Letitia Wright

Rating: 8/10 – Thanos (Brolin) finally gets around to collecting the Infinity stones and only the Avengers (and almost every other Marvel superhero) can stop him – or can they?; there’s much that could be said about Avengers: Infinity War, but suffice it to say, after eighteen previous movies, Marvel have finally made the MCU’s version of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The King of Escape (2009) / D: Alain Guiraudie / 90m

Original title: Le roi de l’évasion

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascal Aubert, François Clavier, Bruno Valayer, Jean Toscan

Rating: 6/10 – when a middle-aged homosexual tractor salesman (Berthillot) falls in love with the daughter (Herzi) of a rival salesman, this unexpected turn of events has further unexpected repercussions, all of which lead the pair to go on the run from her father and the police; as much a comedy of manners as an unlikely romance, The King of Escape is humorous (though far from profound), and features too many scenes of its central couple running across fields and through woods, something that becomes as tiring for the viewer as it must have been for the actors, though the performances are finely judged, and Guiraudie’s direction displays the increasing confidence that would allow him to make a bigger step with Stranger by the Lake (2013).

The Escape of Prisoner 614 (2018)

11 Friday May 2018

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Comedy, Deputy Sheriffs, Drama, Escaped convict, George Semple III, Jake McDorman, Martin Starr, Review, Ron Perlman, Shandaken, Zach Golden

D: Zach Golden / 97m

Cast: Martin Starr, Jake McDorman, George Semple III, Ron Perlman, Sondra James, Michael Sirow

In the quiet southern town of Shandaken, crime is at an all-time low. Going back seven years, the town’s two deputies, Jim Doyle (Starr) and Thurman Hayford (McDorman), have what might be considered an envious record: in all that time they haven’t made one single arrest. However, this doesn’t sit well with the sheriff (Perlman). With their record giving him the opportunity to get rid of them, Jim and Thurman find themselves suddenly unemployed. But fate throws them a lifeline in the form of a convict, Prisoner 614 (Semple III), who has escaped from a nearby prison. Determined to capture the escapee, and use his capture to get their jobs back, the two ex-deputies set off into the nearby mountains to track him down. This proves easier than expected but getting back proves less so. Soon the trio are lost, and while the sheriff waits on their return, Jim and Thurman discover that Prisoner 614 was wrongly imprisoned. Aware that if they bring him back, the sheriff is likely to find a way of ensuring that Prisoner 614 doesn’t make it back to the prison – at all – they come up with a plan to keep him safe…

When we first meet Jim and Thurman they’re playing cops and robbers, chasing each other throught the woods and using prop guns to shoot at each other. These are grown men, but with one foot in a lingering childhood that keeps them from engaging fully with the world around them. They’re inept, foolish, naïve, and irredeemably good-natured. They’re also immensely likeable, and thanks to Zach Golden’s sincere and affectionate screenplay, the kind of gentle, unassuming heroes we can all get behind and root for. They have modest ambitions, and modest hopes. All of this goes to make The Escape of Prisoner 614 the kind of guilty pleasure that comes along every so often, and which allows the viewer to just enjoy a movie for its own sake. Golden’s debut is pleasantly free of subtext or hidden meanings, and it skirts around wider issues such as institutional racism because they’re not part of the story Golden wants to tell. This is a carefree, slightly unbelievable tale that succeeds thanks to a surfeit of unforced charm, and terrific performances. It may feel slight, and even under-developed at times, but it has an often wicked sense of humour, and it doesn’t set out to be more than it is. In and of itself, it’s a movie that’s as good-natured as its two main characters.

As the hapless pair, Starr and McDorman are on fine form, exploiting their characters’ naïveté with disarmingly skillful precision. Starr is terrific as the cautious Doyle, his deadpan delivery and pessimistic demeanour offering several understated yet hilarious moments, while McDorman portrays Hayford as the more generally upbeat and positive half of the duo, complementing Starr’s performance with aplomb. As the bully-boy sheriff, Perlman takes a role that could have been reduced to caricature and adds comic layers to the part that are both unexpected and enjoyable. It’s all played out in the kind of non-specific yet generic small town milieu that allows for quirky goings-on and equally quirky characters to come and go – James’ diner waitress, Marla, is a particular treat – while treating the main storyline with equal affection. It’s not for everyone, and some viewers may find the slightness of Golden’s tale to be unsatisfactory, but sometimes a movie that doesn’t concern itself with frills or unnecessary layers is all the better for being so purposely restrictive. And this is one such movie.

Rating: 8/10 – a knowingly arch comedy of errors, The Escape of Prisoner 614 is a gentle, low-key movie that has modest ambitions, and a confidence that augurs well for Golden’s next feature; bolstered by Adam Lee’s textured cinematography, and a naturalistic feel that underpins the deliberately whimsical nature of the material, this is a small-scale winner that’s both delightful and entertaining.

Trailer – The Predator (2018)

10 Thursday May 2018

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Action, Boyd Holbrook, Sci-fi, Sequel, Shane Black, Trailer

The long promised fourth entry in the Predator series is now a step nearer (after being delayed from its planned February 2018 opening). And what do we have in store come September? Well… alarm bells should be ringing like a campanologist’s convention at Notre-Dame Cathedral. A young boy just happens to receive – in the mail, no less – a beacon that attracts a Predator to Earth? Shane Black is a terrific writer, and there’s likely to be a perfectly plausible explanation for what appears to be one of the clumsiest set ups in sequel history, but right now, the jury has to be out. And the various action beats we can see don’t exactly augur well either. With most of said action apparently set in yet another small American township (that will be likely smashed and blown to smithereens in the process), this doesn’t look or feel as tense or as thrilling as the original. But who knows? This is meant to be a teaser trailer after all, and it does feature Boyd Holbrook (always a good thing), and it does bear witness to Black’s sardonic way with dialogue (or maybe co-writer Fred Dekker’s), so there may be more to the movie than meets the eye. Let’s hope so, because at a time when third sequels – let’s forget about those awful Alien/Predator movies – don’t elicit that much of a positive response, this could be one to buck the trend.

The Vault (2017)

10 Thursday May 2018

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Bank robbery, Crime, Dan Bush, Drama, Francesca Eastwood, Horror, James Franco, Review, Scott Haze, Taryn Manning, Thriller

D: Dan Bush / 91m

Cast: Francesca Eastwood, Taryn Manning, Scott Haze, James Franco, Q’orianka Kilcher, Jeff Gum, Clifton Collins Jr, Keith Loneker, Jill Jane Clements, Michael Milford, Conal Byrne

Just as a bank is about to close, a customer and an applicant for one of the teller’s positions, as well as three firemen, reveal themselves to be robbers, intent on emptying the safe. They’re expecting to grab around a million dollars, but find only $70,000 instead. It’s at this point that the assistant manager (Franco) tells them about the old vault located in the basement, one that holds six million dollars. The robbers – sisters Leah (Eastwood) and Vee (Manning), their brother Michael (Haze), and their accomplices, Cyrus (Loneker) and Kramer (Milford) – begin the process of breaking into the vault, but as soon as they do, strange things start to happen. It all appears to tie in to another attempted robbery at the bank in 1982, when a man in a white mask “snapped” and killed some of his hostages by burning them alive in the old vault. As the robbers find their numbers dwindling, it becomes a race against time to evade both the police waiting outside, and the supernatural forces at work within.

It’s something of a given that if you try and splice two genres together, then it’s a rare occasion when both benefit. The Vault is one such movie. An uneven and unsuccessful mix of crime and horror genres, it’s basic premise – robbers get more than they bargained for when they pick the wrong bank – is played out with all the subtlety and consideration of an idea that’s only been partly thought through, and which serves only to highlight the paucity of the premise’s development. Make no mistake, this is yet another horror movie where paranormal events occur because they can, and not because they should or if they make sense given the overall set up. Co-written by director Bush and Conal Byrne (who has a small role as a bank employee), the script lumbers from one unconvincing scene to another, and fails to make any of its characters memorable or more than cyphers. Leah and Vee have an adversarial relationship but apart from Vee accusing Leah of planning to disappear once the heist is over, there’s nothing of substance to support Vee’s distrust. Likewise, Michael is presented as an inherently good man, but as we’re never granted an insight into why he’s with his sisters, it’s all for nothing.

The longer the movie continues the more muddled it gets. Fans of the horror genre will spot a glaring “twist” very early on, and will be spitting fake blood over a final scene that is so hackneyed and predictable – as well as betraying the movie’s own internal logic – that it has to be seen to be believed. Meanwhile, fans of the crime genre, and particularly those who like a good heist caper, will feel short-changed by the derivative nature of Bush and Byrne’s set up and the various ways in which tried and trusted genre elements are trotted out without making any impact at all. Against all this, the cast have no chance but to keep their heads down and hope for the best, with Eastwood especially ill-served in a role that lacks both depth and a clearly defined character arc. Movies such as The Vault will continue to be made, and audiences will continue to be disappointed by the ways in which their makers fail to understand the basic needs and requirements of such genre movies. And therein lies both the real crime, and the real horror…

Rating: 3/10 – with its muddled storyline and questionable theatrics, The Vault offers little in the way of authentic thrills or chills, and soon becomes irredeemably tiresome; another genre hybrid that makes a disappointing patchwork out of its good intentions, it’s an unfortunate backward step for Bush and Byrne following their much better work on The Reconstruction of William Zero (2014).

10 Reasons to Remember Anne V. Coates (1925-2018)

09 Wednesday May 2018

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Anne V. Coates (12 December 1925 – 8 May 2018)

That Anne V. Coates went into the movie industry shouldn’t really have been a surprise. The niece of J. Arthur Rank, she wanted to become a director, and after a brief stint at a pioneering plastic surgery hospital, she began working for a production company that dealt in religious shorts. Often restoring old prints for re-distribution, the work she did there helped her to land a job as an assistant editor at Pinewood Studios. This was in the aftermath of World War II, and at a time when any female working as an editor within the British movie industry was a rarity. She was soon working alongside the likes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and making inroads within the male dominated environment of a major British studio.

Throughout the Fifties, Coates worked steadily, honing her craft even when she had a less than satisfying experience thanks to directors who couldn’t see the advantage of having her work on their projects. One director she did have a great professional relationship with was David Lean, and her work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – assembling the movie from around four miles of celluloid – earned Coates her first Oscar nomination, which she won (she would be nominated a further four times). As her career continued, Coates sought to work with directors and movie makers she found interesting, and over the ensuing fifty years she collaborated with directors as varied as Sidney Lumet, John Sturges, Hugh Hudson, and Adrian Lyne. She worked on a diverse range of movies, from The Horse’s Mouth (1958) to Aces High (1976) to Masters of the Universe (1987), and her last movie was Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). Often her involvement was the best thing about some of the movies she edited, and though she wasn’t always able to rescue the thinnest of material, she was always able to give a movie a rhythm and a structure that aided the narrative as much as possible.

Coates also liked to assemble a movie with regard to the performances, using them to find the necessary pace and tone of the movie as a whole, an approach that not every director appreciated. She was also fiercely determined – when challenged – to do what she felt was right for the movie: “I don’t care if a director tells me to take 10 frames off – because I don’t take 10 frames off. I take off what I think would be appropriate.” Over the course of her career, she became a name to trust because of this attitude to her work, and seeing her name in the credits of a movie was often reassuring; if nothing else, you could be certain that scenes wouldn’t exceed their natural length and that the narrative would flow as required. If you accept the idea that, after the director, the editor is the most important person who works on a movie, then in Anne V. Coates, the industry has lost one of its most valuable players.

1 – The Pickwick Papers (1952)

2 – Tunes of Glory (1960)

3 – Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

4 – Becket (1964)

5 – Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

6 – The Elephant Man (1980)

7 – Chaplin (1992)

8 – In the Line of Fire (1993)

9 – Out of Sight (1998)

10 – Erin Brockovich (2000)

Another Brief Word About thedullwoodexperiment

09 Wednesday May 2018

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Some of the more observant among you will have noticed a lack of any new content on thedullwoodexperiment over the last couple of weeks. This has been due to a bout of ill health that meant my staying in hospital for a while. Thankfully I’m on the mend now, and itching to get back to providing more reviews etc. I’ve really missed being able to write up my thoughts about the movies I’ve seen – and I’ve managed to see quite a few over the last two weeks – so over the next few days there will be an increase in the number of daily posts I’ll be putting together. The Monthly Roundup for April will be one of those posts, and for those of you still on tenterhooks waiting to see how Batman survives having a lift fall on him, the answer to that mystery will be addressed as well. Otherwise, it will be business as usual – and that’s exactly where thedullwoodexperiment should be.

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

Monthly Archives: May 2018

Welcome to Leith (2015)

Batman (1943) – Chapter 10: Flying Spies

Mad to Be Normal (2017)

Every Day (2018)

Bottom of the World (2017)

Thoroughbreds (2017)

Death Wish (2018)

Poster(s) of the Week – A Tribute to Bill Gold

Batman (1943) – Chapter 9: The Sign of the Sphinx

Cardboard Gangsters (2017)

Tehran Taboo (2017)

Stephanie (2017)

Broken Gardenias (2014)

Trailer – Leave No Trace (2018)

Bombshell (2017)

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Another Brief Word About thedullwoodexperiment

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