Tag Archives: Crime

Let the Corpses Tan (2017)

13 Monday Aug 2018

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Original tltle: Laissez bronzer les cadavres

D: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani / 88m

Cast: Elina Löwensohn, Stéphane Ferrara, Bernie Bonvoisin, Hervé Sogne, Michelangelo Marchese, Marc Barbé, Marine Sainsily, Pierre Nisse, Dorylia Calmel, Dominique Troyes

On a remote outcrop of land, an abandoned church and its surrounding buildings has become the home of a once in-demand artistic muse Madame Luce (Löwensohn), her partner, an unscrupulous lawyer called Brisorgueil (Marchese), and a bohemian writer, Max Bernier (Barbé), who was once her lover. One day they are joined by a group of men – Rhino (Ferrara), Gros (Bonvoisin), and an unnamed young man (Nisse) – who, while on their way back from getting supplies at a nearby town, rob an armoured car of 250 kilos of gold bullion. But as they head back to the church, they find themselves picking up a woman, Mélanie (Calmel), her young son, and the boy’s nanny (Sainsily). The woman proves to be Max’s wife, there to hide out after abducting her son from her ex-husband who has custody. Meanwhile, two motorcycle cops (Sogne, Troyes) become intrigued by a sighting of Max’s wife, and decide to ride out to Madame Luce’s, a decision that will prove to have a number of far-reaching consequences for everyone there…

A Franco-Belgian production adapted from the novel of the same name by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, Let the Corpses Tan is a heavily stylised kaleidoscope of unflinching violence  supported by a bravura visual palette that employs all kinds of cinematic trickery to tell its tale of intrigue and betrayal and the legacy of the Golden Woman (Löwensohn’s Madame Luce, albeit in younger days). It’s an absurdist Euro-meta-Western, straight out of the late Sixties and early Seventies, and with compositions by Ennio Morricone from the period that fit neatly into Cattet and Forzani’s excessively mounted pastiche. Replete with every trick in the book to add energy and pizzazz to its flamboyant tale, the movie is exhausting to watch, with the camerawork and the editing designed in tandem to assault the eyes and render any resistance as futile. This is a movie that wants to dominate its audience into submission, to send it reeling away at the movie’s end having been visually assaulted by the extent of Cattet and Forzani’s colour drenched aesthetic. But while it does have an excess of, well… excess, Let the Corpses Tan doesn’t quite reach the giddy heights it sets for itself, and for all the visual distractions, its basic premise lacks conviction.

It’s nearly always the same: the more striking a movie is to look at, and the more its creators rely on creating an overly stylised mise en scene, the more likely it is that the story isn’t on the same level. Here this is unfortunately the case, as Cattet and Forzani (who also wrote the screenplay) forget to make any of the characters relatable or sympathetic, and though you could argue that this might be deliberate, when you don’t even care who gets out alive – or at all – then an opportunity has been missed. Such is the case with a movie where the expected body count happens at regular enough intervals but without any of them making an impact or eliciting an emotional response in the viewer. It’s rote storytelling, with the original source material diluted and weakened by the visual artifice it’s asked to support. The cast struggle too, with Löwensohn behaving as if Madame Luce is still tripping from the Seventies, while the male characters are pretty much indistinguishable from each other. And by the end even the violence has become tiresome. There’s a better movie hidden somewhere inside Cattet and Forzani’s screenplay, but in allowing themselves free rein with the movie’s look, that particular version was always doomed to stay hidden.

Rating: 6/10 – though visually adventurous and on occasion quite audacious – a fantasy sequence where the nanny’s clothes are ripped to shreds by gunfire leaving her naked is a prime example – nevertheless Let the Corpses Tan is only partly successful; a movie with style in (over-)abundance, but without the necessary substance to back it up, this can be enjoyed on a basic level, but those looking for more than just visual panache would do better to look elsewhere.

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The Nile Hilton Incident (2017)

29 Sunday Jul 2018

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aka Cairo Confidential

D: Tarik Saleh / 111m

Cast: Fares Fares, Mari Malek, Yasser Ali Maher, Ahmed Selim, Hania Amar, Mohamed Yousry, Slimane Dazi, Hichem Yacoubi, Ger Duany, Mohamed Sanaaeldin Shafie

January 2011, Cairo. At the city’s Nile Hilton hotel, a man is seen leaving the room of a well-known singer, Lalena. Later, the same chambermaid, Salwa (Malek), who saw the first man leave, hears cries from the same room and another man leave. The singer has been murdered, and the investigation is given to Major Noredin Mostafa (Fares) of the local police. When he looks through her effects, Noredin finds a receipt for some photographs. When he collects them, he finds compromising pictures of the singer with a high profile politician, Hatem Shafiq (Selim). At this point the official verdict is given as suicide, but Noredin confronts Shafiq about his relationship with Lalena. To Noredin’s surprise, instead of arranging his dismissal from the police force, Shafiq uses his position to have the case reopened, and he asks Noredin to continue his investigation. But while a suspect is soon revealed – a club owner called Nagy (Yacoubi) with a profitable sideline in blackmail – what seems like an open and shut case soon becomes something much more insidious, and much more dangerous…

Set in the run up to the Egyptian Revolution of Dignity that began on 25 January 2011, The Nile Hilton Incident is a tense, riveting thriller that also uses the murder of Lebanese Arab singer Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in 2008 as the basis for its main storyline. It paints the Egyptian capital as a hotbed of political avarice and corruption, with bribery, torture, intimidation and murder as commonplace occurrences – and that’s just the police. Once Noredin takes on the case, it’s expected that he will tow the official line as instructed by his boss (and uncle) Kammal (Maher). But though he’ll steal cash from a murder victim, and accepts how important bribery is in keeping the status quo, Noredin is straightforward in his sense of justice: murder is untenable. With Shafiq backing him, he finds himself at odds with his own department, and in time, with the State Security services. And that’s without the added problem of an unexpected relationship with Lalena’s friend, Gina (Amar), who works for Nagy. As he learns more and more, he also finds that he can’t trust what he knows, or anyone around him. And when Salwa is targeted, Noredin has no choice but to keep her alive to ensure justice is served.

A tremendously atmospheric and moody thriller, with a terrific central performance from the ever-reliable Fares, the movie uses its political and procedural backdrop to great effect, and with the impending revolution brewing in the background, has an immediacy that draws in the viewer and maintains its grip from start to finish. Saleh, directing his own script, keeps things tightly focused every step of the way, even if the reason for Lalena’s death remains a mystery right until the end, and the motivation for Shafiq’s hiring Noredin is unnecessarily oblique. These niggling issues aside, the movie shifts and turns relentlessly, throwing Noredin and the viewer off track with smooth regularity, and in doing so, it keeps the depths of its corruption angle suitably obscured. Throughout, Saleh highlights the economic divide between Cairo’s elite and its less better off denizens, and foreshadows the revolution with judicious use of contemporary footage and casual remarks made by the characters. Alongside Fares there are good performances from Malek and Amar, and Pierre Aïm’s gritty cinematography adds to the compelling sense of a time and a place when the political and social norms were on the verge of being swept away forever.

Rating: 8/10 – a powerful and arresting thriller, The Nile Hilton Incident is intelligent and provocative, and coercive in its depiction of the events happening in Cairo at the time; rarely has the gradual exposure of a society’s seedy underbelly been this persuasive, or portrayed so vividly and matter-of-factly.

Hotel Artemis (2018)

25 Wednesday Jul 2018

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D: Drew Pearce / 94m

Cast: Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Charlie Day, Dave Bautista, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Brian Tyree Henry

In the US in 2028, water has become a precious, but privatised commodity. When punitive restrictions are put in place by the company that controls the water supply, a riot breaks out that sweeps through Los Angeles. Using the riot as a cover, brothers Sherman (Brown) and Lev (Henry), plus two accomplices, plan to rob the vault of an up-market bank. Their plan backfires, and during their escape, Sherman and Lev are wounded by the police, Lev quite seriously. They manage to get to the Hotel Artemis, a kind of field hospital for criminals, where they are safe from the police, and thanks to the rules, any other criminals who might be there. Run by Nurse (Foster), with assistance from “health care professional” Everest (Bautista), the Artemis offers anonymity in the form of code names based around the room(s) they stay in. With female assassin Nice (Boutella) and loud-mouthed arms dealer Acapulco (Day) already there, Sherman begins to wonder just how safe he and his brother are going to be, especially when Nurse lets in a wounded police officer (Slate) – otherwise a strict no-no – and word reaches them that local crime boss, and founder of the Artemis, the Wolf (Goldblum) is on his way, and in need of medical attention…

Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way: the Hotel Artemis is the medical facility version of the Continental Hotel in the John Wick movies. But that’s as far as the comparison goes, because in the self-assured hands of writer/director Drew Pearce, Hotel Artemis is a tribute to an era gone by, a high-tech yet nostalgic shout out to a time when honour amongst thieves actually meant something. By pitching the movie ten years on, Pearce is able to draw a distinction between the growing feudal state of affairs outside the hotel, and the semblance of order that Nurse feels compelled to uphold within the hotel’s walls and its rooms. It’s meant to be a neutral base for everyone, but machinations and plotting abound, and it’s not long before alliances are being forged, threats are being backed up, and an escalating sense of impending violence is allowed to bear fruit. The sense of an era coming to an end, imploding in on itself, is highlighted by the encroaching riot, and the swift descent of the hotel “guests” into murderous anarchy. There are rules, but once they begin to be broken, there’s no difference between inside and outside.

Pearce handles all this with a downplayed sense of fun, casting cruel aspersions on the morality of his characters – even the “good guys” do some unpalatable things in this movie – and by making sure everyone suffers to one degree or another. The humour is pitch black at times, but plays in support to the drama rather than overwhelming it, and Pearce draws out strong perfprmances from his cast, with Foster reminding us just how good an actress she is, while Brown continues his rise to the A-list, and Boutella exudes a silky menace that is captivating and unpleasant at the same time. Some things, however, are less successful. Slate’s wounded police officer awkwardly provides Nurse with a back story that feels forced and unnecessary, and Day’s obnoxious, sexist arms dealer seems like a throwback to the Nineties. But the real MVP of the movie is the Artemis itself, a triumph of cinematography, lighting, production design, art direction and set decoration that reflects the tired glory of the premises through the faded glamour of its hallways and rooms. It’s the perfect setting in which to record the end of an era…

Rating: 8/10 – flecked with nostalgia and a wistful harking back to simpler times, Hotel Artemis is a violent crime thriller that has a surprising amount of heart, and which tells its story with a welcome measure of simplicity; boosted by the detailed backdrop of the hotel itself, it’s a welcome entry into a sub-genre of crime drama that has slowly been cannabalising itself for far too long.

Last Seen in Idaho (2018)

15 Sunday Jul 2018

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D: Eric Colley / 109m

Cast: Hallie Shepherd, Wes Ramsey, Shawn Christian, Casper Van Dien, Alexis Monnie, Ted Rooney, Richard Carmen, Eric Colley

When Summer (Shepherd) discovers that her boss, Dex (Colley), is knee-deep in murder and corruption, she does so through finding two bodies brought to him by local crime boss, Lance (Christian), for disposal. When matters worsen, and Lance kills another of Dex’s employees at the same time, Summer – who has captured the murder on her phone – makes a run for it. She gets to her car but loses control trying to get away; she’s thrown clear and her car blows up. When Summer wakes in the hospital, it’s to learn that she has no memory of anything that happened immediately before the crash, that she was dead for five minutes, and that she has begun to be plagued by strange visions that show her events that haven’t happened, including her death. While Lance and his gang wait for a sign that Summer is beginning to remember what happened, she begins to realise that these visions are actually premonitions. Forced to confront the very real possibility that she could soon be dead, Summer tries to piece together the reasons why someone would want her killed…

Written by its star – who also serves as producer and co-editor with Colley – Last Seen in Idaho is a moderately entertaining, but uneven mix of female-centric crime thriller and elaborate mystery drama. There’s a reason the movie runs a hundred and forty-nine minutes, and it’s because Shepherd doesn’t know how to trim a scene – either on the page or in the editing suite. This leads to several moments where the material feels like it’s been stretched too thinly, and certain scenes lack the energy or pace required to keep them interesting. The opening scenes between Summer and her sister, Trina (Monnie), are padded out, and the dialogue soon becomes repetitive, and there are lots of other scenes where some judicious pruning would have been advisable, while in others there are narrative leaps that go unexplained or barely acknowledged. Shepherd is to be congratulated on writing a script that she’s managed to get made (as well as star in, produce, and co-edit), but the services of a script editor during the production’s early stages would have been a major benefit. That said, Shepherd does use Summer’s premonitions to wrong foot the audience from time to time, and the structure itself is sound, but too much feels either extended (for no reason) or superficial.

This being a movie made on a relatively small budget, there are further limitations that harm the movie and make it unintentionally awkward, from the very sudden flip and burn of Summer’s car, to a rooftop conversation between Summer and love interest-cum-possible bad guy, Franco (Ramsey), that is so poorly lit that the background looks false. It does win points for having a strong female central lead, but then wastes that advantage by having the only other notable female role portrayed as a spoilt brat throughout, and by including an unnecessary and uncomfortably misogynistic scene where Van Dien’s callous assassin sexually assaults the girlfriend of one of the gang members. It’s this unevenness of tone and approach that ultimately stops the movie from making any headway or proving sufficiently entertaining except on a basic level. There’s ambition here, certainly, but Shepherd isn’t as good a writer as she needs to be, while Colley’s direction is flat and uninspired, and the performances all appear to operate independently of each other. It all ends in a violent, slightly cartoonish showdown that raises as many laughs as it does gasps of excitement, but is at least, one of the few times when the movie manages to elicit more than a polite reaction from the viewer.

Rating: 4/10 – many’s the time a movie could have been improved by its makers simply taking their time in assembling their picture, and paying close attention to all the working parts, but with Last Seen in Idaho, that hasn’t happened; rough and ready  as a finished item, it’s a movie with plenty of ambition, but without the wherewithal to achieve – or come close to – that ambition, making it yet another movie to be filed under Missed Opportunity.

Monthly Roundup – June 2018

01 Sunday Jul 2018

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Borg McEnroe (2017) / D: Janus Metz / 107m

Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, Leo Borg, Marcus Mossberg, Jackson Gann, Scott Arthur

Rating: 7/10 – the rivalry between tennis players Björn Borg (Gudnason) and John McEnroe (LaBeouf) is explored during the run up to the 1980 Wimbledon Tennis Championships, and the tournament itself; with a script that delves into both players’ formative years (and if you think Borg is a terrific choice for the young Swede then it’s no surprise: Bjōrn is his dad), Borg McEnroe is an absorbing yet diffident look at what drove both men to be as good as they were, and features fine work from Gudnason and LaBeouf, though at times it’s all a little too dry and respectful.

The Ferryman (2018) / D: Elliott Maguire / 76m

Cast: Nicola Holt, Garth Maunders, Shobi Rae Mclean, Pamela Ashton, Philip Scott-Shurety

Rating: 4/10 – following a suicide attempt, a young woman, Mara (Holt), finds herself experiencing strange phenomena and being pursued by a mysterious hooded figure; an ultra-low budget British horror, The Ferryman is let down by terrible performances, cringeworthy dialogue, and a patently obvious storyline, and yet it’s saved from complete disaster by a strong visual style that’s supported by a disconcerting soundtrack, an approach that first-timer Maguire exploits as often as possible.

Red Sparrow (2018) / D: Francis Lawrence / 140m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarán Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp, Jeremy Irons, Thekla Reuten, Douglas Hodge

Rating: 6/10 – Ex-ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is recruited to a secret Russian organisation that trains her to use her body as a weapon, and which then uses her to expose a double agent working in the heart of the Soviet system; a movie made up of so many twists and turns it becomes tiring to keep track of them all, Red Sparrow is an unlikely project to be released in the current gender/political climate, seeking as it does to objectify and fetishise its star as often as possible, but it tells a decent enough story while not exactly providing viewers with anything new or memorable.

Spinning Man (2018) / D: Simon Kaijser / 100m

Cast: Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, Alexandra Shipp, Odeya Rush, Jamie Kennedy, Clark Gregg

Rating: 4/10 – when a teenage student (Rush) goes missing, suspicion falls on the professor (Pearce) who may or may not have been having a relationship with her; with arguably the most annoying character of 2018 propping up the narrative (Pearce’s commitment to the role doesn’t help), Spinning Man is a dreary mystery thriller that has its chief suspect behave as guiltily as possible and as often as he can, while putting him in as many unlikely situations as the script can come up with, all of which makes for a dismally executed movie that can’t even rustle up a decent denouement.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) / D: J.A. Bayona / 128m

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon

Rating: 7/10 – with the volcano on Isla Nublar about to erupt, a rescue mission is launched to save as many of the dinosaurs as possible, but it’s a rescue mission with an ulterior motive; clearly the movie designed to move the series forward – just how many times can Jurassic Park be reworked before everyone gets fed up with it all? – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom concentrates on the horror elements that have always been a part of the franchise’s raison d’être, and does so in a way that broadens the scope of the series, and allows Bayona to provide an inventive twist on the old dark house scenario.

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946) / D: Spencer Williams / 61m

Cast: Francine Everett, Don Wilson, Katherine Moore, Alfred Hawkins, David Boykin, L.E. Lewis, Inez Newell, Piano Frank, John King

Rating: 7/10 – making an appearance at a club on a Caribbean island resort, dancer Gertie La Rue’s free-spirited behaviour causes all sorts of problems, for her and for the men she meets; an all-black production that takes W. Somerset Maugham’s tale Miss Thompson and puts its own passionate spin on it, Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. overcomes its limited production values thanks to its faux-theatrical mise-en-scene, Williams’ confidence as a director, a vivid performance from Everett that emphasises Gertie’s irresponsible nature, and by virtue of the relaxed attitude it takes to the themes of race and sexuality.

Wagon Wheels (1934) / D: Charles Barton / 59m

Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Billy Lee, Monte Blue, Raymond Hatton, Jan Duggan, Leila Bennett, Olin Howland

Rating: 5/10 – a wagon train heading for Oregon encounters trials and hardships along the way, including Indian attacks that are being organised by someone who’s a part of the group; a middling Western that finds too much room for songs round the campfire, Wagon Wheels takes a while to get going, but once it does, it has pace and a certain amount of B-movie charm thanks to Scott’s square-jawed performance, and Barton’s experienced direction, benefits that help offset the clunky storyline and one-note characters.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018) / D: Sam Liu / 77m

Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Jennifer Carpenter, Scott Patterson, Kari Wuhrer, Anthony Head, Yuri Lowenthal, William Salyers, Grey Griffin

Rating: 6/10 – in an alternate, Victorian-era Gotham City, the Batman (Greenwood) has only recently begun his efforts at stopping crime, efforts that see him cross paths with the notorious Jack the Ripper; though kudos is due to Warner Bros. for trying something different, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight doesn’t always feel as if it’s been thoroughly thought out, with too much time given over to the mystery of Jack’s real identity, and a sub-plot involving Selena Kyle (Carpenter) that seems designed to pad out a storyline that doesn’t have enough substance for a full-length feature.

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017) / D: Rick Morales / 72m

Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar, Steven Weber, Jim Ward, Lee Meriwether

Rating: 6/10 – when a laboratory accident turns Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent (Shatner) into arch-villain Two-Face, Batman (West) and Robin (Ward) soon end his criminal activities, only to find themselves battling all their old adversaries – but who is manipulating them?; what probably seemed like a good idea at the time – have West and Ward (and Newmar) reprise their television roles – Batman vs. Two-Face is let down by a tired script that does its best to revisit past TV glories but without replicating the sheer ebullience the 60’s series enjoyed, making this very much a missed opportunity.

Stratton (2017) / D: Simon West / 94m

Cast: Dominic Cooper, Austin Stowell, Gemma Chan, Connie Nielsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Tom Felton, Derek Jacobi, Igal Naor

Rating: 4/10 – a Special Boat Service commando, John Stratton (Cooper), teams up with an American military operative (Stowell) to track down an international terrorist cell that is targeting a major Western target – but which one?; the kind of action movie that wants to be packed with impressive action sequences, and thrilling moments, Stratton is let down by a tepid script, restrictive production values, poor performances, and despite West’s best efforts, action scenes that only inspire yawns, not appreciation.

SnakeHead Swamp (2014) / D: Don E. FauntLeRoy / 86m

Cast: Ayla Kell, Dave Davis, Terri Garber, Antonio Fargas

Rating: 3/10 – a truck full of genetically mutated snakehead fish crashes, releasing its cargo into the Louisiana swamp land, where they soon start making their way to the top of the food chain; another lousy SyFy movie that mixes mutant creatures, endangered teens, a muddled voodoo subplot, and sub-par special effects to less than astounding results, SnakeHead Swamp might best be described as a “no-brainer”, in that it doesn’t try very hard, FauntLeRoy’s direction is rarely noticeable, and the cast – even Fargas – don’t come anywhere near making their characters credible or realistic, all of which is down to a script that should have been rejected at the title stage.

Cardboard Gangsters (2017)

21 Monday May 2018

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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.

Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

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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 Vault (2017)

10 Thursday May 2018

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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).

The Third Murder (2017)

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

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Original title: Sandome no satsujin

D: Kore-eda Hirokazu / 125m

Cast: Fukuyama Masaharu, Yakusho Kôji, Hirose Suzu, Saitô Yuki, Yoshida Kōtarō, Mitsushima Shinnosuke, Matsuoka Izumi, Ichikawa Mikako, Makita Aju

An apparently disgruntled ex-employee persuades the chairman of the company that fired him to go with him to the side of a river at night. There, the ex-employee, named Misumi (Yakusho), kills the chairman and sets light to the body. Misumi is arrested and charged with robbery with homicide (the chairman’s wallet is found on him). Misumi confesses to the crime, though when his initial lawyer Settsu (Yoshida) brings in a hot shot lawyer called Shigemori (Fukuyama), Shigemori begins to have doubts about Misumi’s confession and what actually happened when the chairman was killed. Soon, the chairman’s wife, Yamanaka (Saitô), and his daughter, Sakie (Hirose), are revealed to have things to hide, while there are echoes of a previous crime committed by Misumi thirty years before when he killed two debt collectors. In the run up to the trial, Misumi’s story changes at various times, making it difficult to get at the truth of what happened, and making it difficult for Shigemori to mount a good defence. With his client obscuring matters at every turn, Shigemori finds himself almost desperate to learn if Misumi is really guilty or truly innocent…

A legal drama-cum-thriller, The Third Murder isn’t quite the riveting experience you might hope for – its pace is too slow for that – but it is a compelling examination of the Japanese legal system, where the accused’s guilt or innocence isn’t as important as getting the charges right (or sometimes, the wording of the charges). Of course, the complexities of the Japanese legal system don’t seem like a viable basis for a legal thriller, but in the hands of Kore-eda (who spent several months observing lawyers carrying out mock trials in order to write the screenplay), they form the bedrock on which the wider story is told. With Kore-eda showing us the murder right at the start, and making it clear that Misumi is responsible, doubt is sown through the exploration of the circumstances leading up to the crime. Some of Misumi’s story appears contradictory, and circumstantial evidence appears to paint a potentially different story. And when the chairman’s wife and daughter appear to have colluded in their own separate ways with Misumi, his motive for the murder becomes less straightforward than it had at the beginning. With the narrative shifting at random, the truth – whatever that may be – becomes something that’s slippery and indistinct.

Kore-eda assembles the various layers of Misumi’s story with a great deal of skill, and puts particular emphasis on the scenes where Shigemori visits Misumi in prison. Thanks to Kore-eda’s skill as a director, and Fukuyama and Yakusho’s committed performances, these scenes are less a battle of wits and more a battle for understanding on both sides. There’s a genuine emotional heft to these scenes, and the final confrontation between them sees Kore-eda overlay their heads in a shot that highlights just how important their relationship has become to them. As already mentioned, the movie is slow-paced, but effectively so, and there’s a melancholy feel to much of the material that suits it. The movie looks tremendous as well, thanks to Kore-eda’s decision to shoot in the CinemaScope format, something the writer-director hasn’t used before. As a result, Takimoto Mikiya’s cinematography is often absurdly beautiful to look at, especially when Shigemori and his assistant, Kawashima (Mitsushima) visit the snow-covered area where Misumi committed his first two murders. There’s much more to enjoy, including a fine, understated performance from Hirose, and a subtly emotive score from the under-used Ludovico Einaudi.

Rating: 8/10 – perhaps not everyone will be enamoured of Kore-eda’s latest feature, but The Third Murder sees him on very good form indeed, and creating an intelligent and challenging movie that doesn’t go out of its way to explain everything that’s happening; with its themes of trust and culpability running throughout the movie and affecting how the main characters behave, this is absorbing stuff indeed, and well worth watching if you’re in the mood for something a little different.

Monthly Roundup – March 2018

31 Saturday Mar 2018

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The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017) / D: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan / 101m

Cast: Jackie Chan, Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Fred Armisen, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Abbi Jacobson, Zach Woods, Olivia Munn

Rating: 6/10 – when you’re the despised son (Franco) of an evil warlord (Theroux), there’s only one thing you can do: vow to defeat him with the aid of your ninja friends; after a superhero mash-up and a solo Batman outing, The LEGO Ninjago Movie brings us ninjas, but in the process forgets to provide viewers with much in the way of story, though the visual  innovation is still there, as is (mostly) the humour, making this something that is only just more of a hit than a miss.

Braven (2018) / D: Lin Oeding / 94m

Cast: Jason Momoa, Garret Dillahunt, Stephen Lang, Jill Wagner, Zahn McClarnon, Brendan Fletcher, Sala Baker, Teach Grant, Sasha Rossof

Rating: 4/10 – a trip for Joe Braven (Momoa) and his father (Lang) to their family cabin located in the Canadian wilderness sees them fighting for their lives when drug runners come to claim a shipment that has been hidden in the cabin; an unsophisticated action thriller, Braven has an earnestness to it that sees it through some of its more absurdist moments, but its Nineties vibe works against it too often for comfort, and despite the occasional effort, Dillahunt remains an unconvincing villain.

Passport to Destiny (1944) / D: Ray McCarey / 61m

Cast: Elsa Lanchester, Gordon Oliver, Lenore Aubert, Lionel Royce, Fritz Feld, Joseph Vitale, Gavin Muir, Lloyd Corrigan

Rating: 6/10 – in World War II, a cleaning woman, Ella Muggins (Lanchester), who believes herself to be protected from harm thanks to a magical glass eye, determines to travel to Berlin and kill Hitler; a whimsical comic fantasy that somehow manages to have its heroine save a German officer (Oliver) and his girlfriend, Passport to Destiny is an uneven yet enjoyable product of its time, with a terrific central performance by Lanchester, and a winning sense of its own absurdity.

Hellraiser: Judgment (2018) / D: Gary J. Tunnicliffe / 81m

Cast: Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandra Harris, Paul T. Taylor, Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Helena Grace Donald, Heather Langenkamp

Rating: 3/10 – the hunt for a serial killer finds its lead detective (Carney) coming face to face with the Cenobites – still led by Pinhead (Taylor) – but the solution to the case isn’t as obvious as it seems; the tenth movie in the series, Hellraiser: Judgment at least tries to offer something new in terms of the Cenobites’ involvement, but in the end it can’t escape the fact that Pinhead et al are no longer frightening, the franchise’s penchant for sado-masochistic violence has lost any impact it may once have had, and as with every entry since Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), it fails to introduce one single character for the viewer to care about.

The Final Year (2017) / D: Greg Barker / 89m

With: Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, John Kerry, Barack Obama

Rating: 7/10 – a look at the final year of Barack Obama’s second term as President of the United States focuses on his foreign policy team and their diplomatic efforts on the global stage; featuring contributions from some of the key players, The Final Year is an interesting if not fully realised documentary that never asks (or finds an answer for) the fundamental question of why Obama’s administration chose to concentrate so much on foreign policy in its last days, something that keeps all the good work that was achieved somewhat in isolation from the viewer.

And Then Came Lola (2009) / D: Ellen Seidler, Megan Siler / 71m

Cast: Ashleigh Sumner, Jill Bennett, Cathy DeBuono, Jessica Graham, Angelyna Martinez, Candy Tolentino, Linda Ignazi

Rating: 4/10 – in a series of Groundhog Day-style episodes, the undisciplined Lola (Sumner) is required to rush a set of photographs to her interior designer girlfriend, Casey (Bennett), so she can seal the deal at a job interview – but she has varying degrees of success; an LGBTQ+ comedy that stops the action every so often to allow its female cast to make out with each other, And Then Came Lola doesn’t put enough spins on its central conceit, and doesn’t make you care enough if Lola comes through or not.

The Ritual (2017) / D: David Bruckner / 94m

Cast: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Maria Erwolter

Rating: 7/10 – following the tragic death of one of their friends, four men embark on a memorial hiking trip in Sweden, but when one of them is injured, taking a short cut through a forest puts all their lives in jeopardy; a creature feature with a nasty edge to it and above average performances for a horror movie, The Ritual employs mystery as well as terror as it creates a growing sense of dread before it runs out of narrative steam and tries to give its monster a back story that brings the tension up short and leads to a not entirely credible denouement.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) / D: Jake Kasdan / 119m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Rhys Darby, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Jonas, Alex Wolff, Ser’Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner

Rating: 7/10 – four teenagers find themselves transported into a video game called Jumanji, where, transformed into avatars, they are charged with thwarting the dastardly plans of the game’s chief villain (Cannavale); a reboot more than a sequel, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has the benefit of well-drawn, likeable characters, winning performances from Johnson, Hart, Black and Gillan, and confident direction from Kasdan, all things that serve to distract from the uninspired game levels and the predictable nature of its main storyline.

Paddington 2 (2017) / D: Paul King / 103m

Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Imelda Staunton, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ben Miller, Jessica Hynes, Noah Taylor, Joanna Lumley

Rating: 9/10 – the theft of a unique pop-up book sees Paddington (Whishaw) end up in jail while the Brown family do their best to track down the real thief, Phoenix Buchanan (Grant); an absolute joy, Paddington 2 is just so unexpectedly good that even just thinking about it is likely to put a smile on your face, something that’s all too rare these days, and which is thanks to an inspired script by director King and Simon Farnaby, terrific performances from all concerned, and buckets of perfectly judged humour.

Gangster Land (2017) / D: Timothy Woodward Jr / 113m

Original title: In the Absence of Good Men

Cast: Sean Faris, Milo Gibson, Jason Patric, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Peter Facinelli, Mark Rolston, Michael Paré

Rating: 4/10 – the rise of boxer Jack McGurn (Faris) from potential champion to right-hand man to Al Capone (Gibson), and his involvement in Capone’s feud with ‘Bugs’ Moran (Facinelli); a biopic that’s hampered by lacklustre performances and a leaden script, Gangster Land wants to be thought of as classy but budgetary constraints mean otherwise, and Woodward Jr’s direction doesn’t inject many scenes with the necessary energy to maintain the viewer’s interest, something that leaves the movie feeling moribund for long stretches.

Pitch Perfect 3 (2017) / D: Trish Sie / 93m

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Hailee Steinfeld, John Lithgow, Ruby Rose, Matt Lanter, Elizabeth Banks, John Michael Higgins, DJ Khaled

Rating: 4/10 – the Borden Bellas are back for one last reunion before they all go their separate ways, taking part in a European tour and competing for the chance to open for DJ Khaled; a threequel that adds nothing new to the mix (even if you include Lithgow as Wilson’s scoundrel father), and which is as empty-headed as you’d expect, Pitch Perfect 3 isn’t even well thought out enough to justify its existence and trades on old glories in the hope that the audience won’t notice that’s what they are.

Something Real and Good (2013) / D: Luke Rivett / 81m

Cast: Matt Jones, Alex Hannant, Colton Castaneda, Marla Stone

Rating: 4/10 – he (Jones) meets her (Hannant) in an airport lounge, and over the next twenty-four hours, get to know each other, flirt, have fun, and stay in a hotel together due to their flight being cancelled; the slightness of the story – boy meets girl, they talk and talk and talk and talk – is further undermined by the cod-philosophising and trite observations on life and relationships that they come out with, leaving Something Real and Good as a title that’s a little over-optimistic, though if it achieves anything, it’ll be to stop people from striking up random conversations with strangers in airports – and that’s now a good thing.

Ladies First (2017) / D: Uraaz Bahi / 39m

With: Deepika Kumari, Geeta Devi, Shiv Narayan Mahto, Dharmendra Tiwari

Rating: 8/10 – the story of Deepika Kumari, at one time the number one archer in the world, and her efforts to obtain Olympic gold in 2012 and 2016; a sobering documentary that for a while feels like it’s going to be a standard tale of triumph over adversity (here, relating to Indian culture and gender equality), Ladies First offers a much deeper examination of success and failure than might be expected, and shows that in India, as in many other countries, there are precious few opportunities for women to be anything more than wives and mothers.

Heritage Falls (2016) / D: Shea Sizemore / 88m

Cast: David Keith, Coby Ryan McLaughlin, Keean Johnson, Sydney Penny, Nancy Stafford, Devon Ogden

Rating: 4/10 – three generations of males head off for a bonding weekend designed to overcome the divisions that are keeping them distant or apart from each other; a mixed bag of drama and lightweight comedy, Heritage Falls wants to say something sincere and relevant about father-son relationships, but falls way short in its ambitions thanks to a script that can’t provide even one of its protagonists with a convincing argument for their position, a bland visual style, and even blander direction from Sizemore, making this a turgid exercise in emotional dysfunction.

The Long Dark Hall (1951) / D: Anthony Bushell, Reginald Beck / 86m

Cast: Rex Harrison, Lilli Palmer, Denis O’Dea, Reginald Huntley, Anthony Dawson, Brenda de Banzie, Eric Pohlmann

Rating: 7/10 – when an actress is murdered in the room she rents, suspicion falls on her lover, married man Arthur Groome (Harrison), but even though he goes on trial at the Old Bailey, his wife, Mary (Palmer), stands by him; an early UK attempt at film noir, The Long Dark Hall has its fair share of tension, particularly in a scene at the Groome home where Mary is alone with the real killer (Dawson), but Harrison doesn’t seem fully committed (it wasn’t one of his favourite projects), and the screenplay lurches too often into uncomfortable melodrama, though overall this has an air of fatalism that keeps it intriguing for viewers who are used to their crime thrillers being a little more straightforward.

Ready Player One (2018) / D: Steven Spielberg / 140m

Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen

Rating: 7/10 – in 2045, people have become obsessed with a virtual reality game called Oasis where anything can happen, but when its creator (Rylance) reveals there’s a hidden prize within the game, one that will give overall control of the game and its licence to the winner, it’s up to a small group of gamers led by Parzifal (Sheridan) to stop a rival corporation from winning; an elaborate sci-fi fantasy that provides a nostalgia overload for fans of Eighties pop culture in particular, Ready Player One has plenty of visual pizzazz, but soon runs out of steam in the story department, and offers way too much exposition in lieu of a proper script, a situation it tries to overcome by being dazzling if empty-headed, but which in the hands of Steven Spielberg still manages to be very entertaining indeed – if you don’t give it too much thought.

The Temple (2017) / D: Michael Barrett / 78m

Cast: Logan Huffman, Natalia Warner, Brandon Sklenar, Naoto Takenaka, Asahi Uchida

Rating: 4/10 – three American tourists – best friends Chris (Huffman) and Kate (Warner), and Kate’s boyfriend, James (Sklenar) – are travelling in Japan when they hear about an abandoned temple and decide to go there, little knowing what will happen to them once they get there; even with its post-visit framing device designed to add further mystery to events, The Temple is a chore to sit through thanks to its being yet another horror movie where people behave stupidly so that a number of uninspired “shocks” can be trotted out, along with dreary dialogue and the (actually) terrible realisation that movie makers still think that by plundering legends and myths from other countries then their movies will be much more original and scary… and that’s simply not true.

Chokeslam (2016) / D: Robert Cuffley / 102m

Cast: Chris Marquette, Amanda Crew, Michael Eklund, Niall Matter, Gwynyth Walsh, Mick Foley

Rating: 5/10 – a 10-year high school reunion gives deli owner Corey (Marquette) the chance to reconnect with the girl he loved, Sheena (Crew), who is now a famous female wrestler; a lightweight romantic comedy that pokes moderate fun at the world of wrestling, Chokeslam is innocuous where it should be daring, and bland when it should be heartwarming, making it a movie that’s populated almost entirely by stock characters dealing with stock situations and problems, and which, unsurprisingly, provides them with entirely stock solutions.

All the Money in the World (2017) / D: Ridley Scott / 132m

Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Charlie Plummer, Marco Leonardi, Giuseppe Bonifati

Rating: 8/10 – a recreation of the kidnapping in 1973 of John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer), and the subsequent attempts by his mother, Gail (Williams), to persuade his grandfather (Christopher Plummer) to pay the ransom, something the then world’s richest man refuses to do; Scott’s best movie in years, All the Money in the World is a taut, compelling thriller that tells its story with ruthless expediency and features yet another commanding performance from Williams, something that takes the spotlight away from the presence of Christopher Plummer (who’s good but not great), and which serves as a reminder that money isn’t the central concern here, but a mother’s unwavering love for her child.

5 Headed Shark Attack (2017) / D: Nico De Leon / 98m

Cast: Chris Bruno, Nikki Howard, Lindsay Sawyer, Jeffrey Holsman, Chris Costanzo, Amaanda Méndez, Ian Daryk, Jorge Navarro, Lorna Hernandez, Michelle Cortès, Nicholas Nene

Rating: 3/10 – a four-headed shark terrorises the waters off Palomino Island in Puerto Rico before mutating into a five-headed shark, and being hunted by both the island’s police force, and a team of marine biologists from a local aquarium; operating at the bargain bucket end of the movie business, 5 Headed Shark Attack, SyFy’s latest cheaply made farrago, references Sharknado (2013) early on (as if it’s being clever), and then does it’s absolute best to make its audience cringe and wince and wish they’d never started watching in the first place, something the awful screenplay, dialogue, acting, special effects and direction all manage without even trying.

Gringo (2018)

10 Saturday Mar 2018

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D: Nash Edgerton / 110m

Cast: David Oyelowo, Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton, Amanda Seyfried, Sharlto Copley, Harry Treadaway, Thandie Newton, Yul Vazquez, Carlos Corona, Diego Cataño, Rodrigo Corea, Hernán Mendoza, Alan Ruck, Kenneth Choi

Ah, the underdog. The plucky, conscientious, yet continually overlooked underdog. One of Life’s also-rans, he or she rarely gets ahead because everyone around them is too busy feathering their own nests to do anything other than take them for granted – except when it comes time to make them the fall guy in some nefarious scheme or other. How many times have we seen this scenario in a movie? (Don’t answer, that’s an entirely rhetorical question.) And how many times have we seen the underdog, after many trials and tribulations, find a way to come out on top? (Again, don’t answer.) But it doesn’t seem to matter how often this kind of scenario plays out in a movie, someone will always come along and attempt to provide another variation on such a time-worn theme. Which leads us to Gringo, the second feature from Nash Edgerton, and another example of the underdog story. Here, the underdog is Harold Soyinka (Oyelowo), a Nigerian-born executive at a US pharmaceutical company, Cannabax Technologies Inc, who finds himself in trouble with a Mexican drugs cartel.

It’s all the fault of his duplicitous bosses, Richard Rusk (Edgerton), and Elaine Markinson (Theron). The marijuana-based drug they’ve been developing for the mass market is ready to go, but in their haste to rake in as much profit as they can, Richard and Elaine have decided to sever ties with the drugs cartel they have been colluding with up until now. Harold doesn’t know any of this at first, but he soon gets wise, and he learns that Richard and Elaine are planning to sell the company, meaning he’ll lose his job. So on a trip to Cannabax’s Mexican factory, Harold decides to fake his own kidnapping. He hopes to force Richard and Elaine into paying the “ransom demand” and pocketing the money for himself. Inevitably, things don’t go the way Harold has planned them, and soon he’s being chased by the cartel, getting involved with the girlfriend (Seyfried) of a drug mule (Treadaway) (they’re all staying in the same hotel where he’s hiding out), and finding an unlikely saviour in an ex-mercenary (Copley) who isn’t all that he seems.

Gringo is the kind of black comedy thriller that always seems to attract a great cast, but which then spends a lot of time and effort in giving them hardly anything to do, or to work with. It’s a busy movie, but messy and dramatically uneven, and unsure of what tone to adopt in any given scene. As it plays out, the movie seems committed to providing as many stock characters in as many stock situations as it can, and to adding a thick layer of humour to proceedings in the hope that if the drama doesn’t work, then the audience will be distracted by the sight of Harold’s high-pitched yelping when given an injection (admittedly funny thanks to Oyelowo), or the cartel boss’s obsession with The Beatles (less so). When things turn violent, the movie becomes another beast altogether, and it tries for tragedy as well, something it can’t pull off because by then it’s way too late. The performances suffer as a result, with Oyelowo and Copley coming off best, but Theron is saddled with a thankless “corporate bitch” role that even she can’t enliven. There’s a half decent movie in there somewhere, but thanks to the vagaries of the script (by Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone) and Edgerton’s inability to maintain a consistent tone throughout, it’s never going to see the light of day.

Rating: 5/10 – intermittently funny, but otherwise too predictable and/or derivative of other, similar movies, Gringo wants to be entertaining but lacks the wherewithal to know how; a movie that coasts along at times in its search for the next incident to move it forward, it’s amiable enough, but not very ambitious in its ideas, something that leaves it feeling rough and ready and under-developed.

Monthly Roundup – February 2018

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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‘C’-Man (1949) / D: Joseph Lerner / 77m

Cast: Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Lottie Elwen, Rene Paul, Harry Landers, Walter Vaughn, Adelaide Klein, Edith Atwater

Rating: 5/10 – a US Customs agent (Jagger) finds himself looking for the killer of his best friend (and fellow Customs agent), and the person responsible for the theft of a rare jewel – could they be the same man?; an odd noir crime thriller that betrays its low budget production values, ‘C’-Man is short on character but long on action, and is fitfully entertaining, though the performances vary wildly and the script contains some very po-faced dialogue, making it a movie you can’t really take your eyes from – and not in a good way.

When We First Met (2018) / D: Ari Sandel / 97m

Cast: Adam Devine, Alexandra Daddario, Shelley Hennig, Andrew Bachelor, Robbie Amell

Rating: 3/10 – Noah (Devine) falls for Avery (Daddario) and winds up in the friend zone, but thanks to a magic photo booth, he gets the chance to go back and change their relationship into a romantic one; a dire romantic comedy that struggles to be both romantic and funny, When We First Met can’t even make anything meaningful out of its time travel scenario, and is let down by a banal script and below-par performances.

The Phantom (1931) / D: Alan James / 62m

Cast: Guinn Williams. Allene Ray, Niles Welch, Tom O’Brien, Sheldon Lewis, Wilfred Lucas, Violet Knights, William Gould, Bobby Dunn, William Jackie

Rating: 3/10 – a reporter (Williams) tries to track down the titular criminal mastermind when he targets the father of his girlfriend (Ray), but finds it’s not as simple a prospect as he’d thought; an early talkie that shows a lack of imagination and purpose, The Phantom struggles from the outset to be anything but a disappointment, what with its unconvincing mix of comedy and drama, its old dark house scenario, and a clutch of amateur performances that drain the very life out of it at every turn.

Black Panther (2018) / D: Ryan Coogler / 134m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, Florence Kasumba, John Kani

Rating: 7/10 – the king of outwardly poor but inwardly technologically advanced Wakanda, T’Challa (Boseman), faces a coup from an unexpected source (Jordan), while trying to work out whether or not his country’s scientific advances should be shared with the wider world; though Black Panther does feature a predominantly black cast, and speaks to black issues, this is still a Marvel movie at the end of the day and one that adheres to the template Marvel have created for their releases, making this an admittedly funny and exciting thrill ride, but one that’s also another formulaic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Atomic Blonde (2017) / D: David Leitch / 115m

Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, James Faulkner, Roland Møller, Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgård, Sam Hargrave, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Til Schweiger

Rating: 6/10 – in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a spy (Theron) must find a list of double agents that are being smuggled into the West, a task complicated by the involvement of the Americans, the Russians and a number of other interested parties; an attempt to provide audiences with a female John Wick, Atomic Blonde does have tremendous fight scenes, and a great central performance by Theron, but it’s let down by a muddled script, an even more muddled sense of the period it’s set in, and by trying to be fun when a straighter approach would have worked better.

Beauty and the Beast (2017) / D: Bill Condon / 129m

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Audra McDonald, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Rating: 5/10 – the classic fairy tale, and previously a classic animated movie, is given the live action treatment by Disney; if the latest installment of a certain space opera hadn’t been released in 2017, Beauty and the Beast would have been the number one movie at the international box office, but though the House of Mouse might point to this as a measure of quality, the reality is that Watson was miscast, the songs lack the emotional heft they had in the animated version, and the whole thing has a perfunctory air that no amount of superficial gloss and shine can overcome.

The Case of the Black Parrot (1941) / D: Noel M. Smith / 61m

Cast: William Lundigan, Maris Wrixon, Eddie Foy Jr, Paul Cavanagh, Luli Deste, Charles Waldron, Joseph Crehan, Emory Parnell, Phyllis Barry, Cyril Thornton

Rating: 6/10 – a newspaper reporter (Lundigan) gets involved in a case involving a master forger (the Black Parrot), an antique cabinet, and a couple of mysterious deaths; an enjoyable piece of hokum, The Case of the Black Parrot gets by on a great deal of understated charm, a whodunnit plot that doesn’t overplay its hand, and by having its cast treat the whole absurd undertaking with a sincerity that is an achievement all by itself.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) / D: Kenneth Branagh / 114m

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Derek Jacobi, Marwan Kenzari, Leslie Odom Jr, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sergei Polunin, Daisy Ridley

Rating: 5/10 – the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is faced with a complex mystery: which one of a dozen passengers killed an infamous kidnapper, and more importantly, why?; yet another version of the Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express strands its capable cast thanks to both an avalanche and a tepid script, leaving its director/star to orchestrate matters less effectively than expected, particularly when unravelling the mystery means having the suspects seated together in a way that clumsily replicates the Last Supper.

The Boss Baby (2017) / D: Tom McGrath / 97m

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, Miles Bakshi, James McGrath, Conrad Vernon, ViviAnn Yee, Eric Bell Jr, David Soren

Rating: 6/10 – when seven year old Tim (Bakshi) finds he has a new baby brother, Theodore (Baldwin) – and one dressed in a business suit at that – he also finds that Theodore is there to stop babies from being usurped in people’s affections by puppies; a brightly animated kids’ movie that takes several predictable swipes at corporate America, The Boss Baby wants to be heartwarming and caustic at the same time, but can’t quite manage both (it settles for heartwarming), and though Baldwin may seem like the perfect choice for the title character, he’s the weakest link in a voice cast that otherwise sells the performances with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Game Night (2018) / D: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein / 100m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall

Rating: 5/10 – when a group of friends led by Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) are invited to a game night at the home of Max’s brother, Brooks (Chandler), the evening descends into murder and mayhem, and sees the group trying to get to the bottom of a real-life mystery; like an Eighties high concept comedy released thirty years too late, Game Night has a great cast but little direction and waaaay too much exposition clogging up its run time, all of which makes a couple of very funny, very inspired visual gags the only reward for the viewer who sticks with this to the end.

The Black Panther (1977)

13 Tuesday Feb 2018

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D: Ian Merrick / 97m

Cast: Donald Sumpter, Debbie Farrington, Marjorie Yates, Sylvia O’Donnell, Andrew Burt, Alison Key, Ruth Dunning, David Swift

For a short time in the early Seventies, Donald Neilson (Sumpter) was the unheralded centre of public attention in the UK due to a number of sub-post office robberies he committed, some of which ended in murder. Neilson’s motive for these robberies was purely financial, but they rarely netted him much in the way of consistent reward for his efforts. Then he saw a newspaper article about a sixteen year old girl, Lesley Whittle (Farrington), who had recently inherited a fortune from her late father. Neilson planned to kidnap Lesley and hold her to ransom for £50,000. He located a drainage shaft where he could hide her, and on 14 January 1975, Neilson abducted Lesley from her bedroom, but his ransom plan foundered due to the involvement of the police. Worse was to follow: Lesley died while he was holding her captive, and he was forced to abandon his plan altogether. Her body was found two months later. Still, Neilson might have got away with even that, if it wasn’t for a completely unexpected turn of events that occurred in December of the same year.

For fans of true crimes stories, The Black Panther is something of a must-see, and something of a cause célèbre in itself. The movie has a measured, documentary feel to it that is reinforced by Joseph Mangine’s cinema verité-style cinematography, and Merrick’s matter-of-fact approach to the material. It’s a studious, unshowy movie that highlights the meticulous planning that Neilson put into his robberies and Lesley’s kidnapping, and then contrasts that planning with the various ways in which his plans managed to fall apart once they were carried out. If truth be told, Neilson was an average thief, and Michael Armstrong’s astute, carefully constructed screenplay shows Neilson to be a classic under-achiever, always looking to make it big but having too narrow an outlook or ambition to ever achieve any lasting success. Sumpter pitches Neilson as a man desperate to be in control, but lacking the wherewithal to maintain or build on what little control he does have, and which largely involves verbally abusing his wife, Irene (Yates), and daughter, Kathryn (O”Donnell). In marked contrast, Neilson treats Lesley with compassion and concern for her welfare, and treats her in a far better way than his own daughter. Again, the script carefully illustrates the various ways in which Neilson’s own moral code – however warped – was important to his own sense of who he was (at one point he sneers at the idea of being called the Black Panther).

While the psychological aspects of Neilson’s character are examined to a degree, and Sumpter’s performance supports a psychological approach to the character, where this would be acceptable by modern standards (and some might say it doesn’t explore Neilson’s habits and personality enough), back in 1977 the movie came under attack for daring to even portray Neilson and his criminal activities in the first place. In a case of “perhaps too soon”, the movie was deemed as exploitative (and it does have that vibe in places, particularly when Lesley is abducted from her bedroom), and was withdrawn from UK cinemas. But this is a movie that has a quiet power to it, and which is disturbing not for its violence but because Donald Neilson could be our neighbour next door, or a family member. It’s the otherwise mundane existence he leads that is unsettling, and the milieu he’s a part of. Merrick’s first outing as a director is now regarded – rightly – as a classic of UK true crime, and even now, over forty years on, it still has the ability to fascinate and appal at the same time.

Rating: 8/10 – a grim depiction of Donald Neilson’s exploits, The Black Panther uses its minimal production values to superb effect, and in doing so, emerges as a movie that is challenging to watch but necessarily so also; Sumpter’s performance, all pent up fury and phlegmatic stares, suits the movie to a tee, and Merrick’s confident direction proves to be exactly the right approach for the material, leaving the movie as a whole to get under the viewer’s skin and lodge there like an unwelcome guest.

I, Tonya (2017)

11 Sunday Feb 2018

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D: Craig Gillespie / 120m

Cast: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, Bobby Cannavale, Bojana Novakovic, Caitlin Carver, Mckenna Grace, Anthony Reynolds, Ricky Russert

When a movie is said to be based on a true story, then chances are it won’t bear any resemblance to what actually happened. The movie becomes an approximation, an interpretation of events that took place, of conversations that people had, and their outcomes. Many movies use this idea to tell their own version of what they think happened and why, but often it’s in disservice to the original – and correct – story. If you want the truth, purists might argue, go see a documentary (like they don’t have their own biases). With so many movies released each year that are based on true stories, it’s often difficult to determine which ones are more accurate than others. But the makers of I, Tonya address this issue right from the start, with a caption that states: Based on irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly. It’s a clever, and very effective tactic. By the movie’s end, and with no two individuals agreeing completely on the events that led to Tonya Harding’s fall from grace, the viewer is left to make up their own mind about what really happened. It’s akin to doing cinematic jury service.

Harding’s story (again if true) is another one that’s concerned with achieving the American dream, but it’s also a story that highlights the unspoken class divide that exists in the US and is still prevalent today. Born on the wrong side of the tracks and with a fearsome, domineering mother, LaVona (Janney), Harding (Robbie) was always going to find it difficult to adapt to and fit in with the somewhat rarefied surroundings of US professional figure skating, but even her ability to carry off a triple axel jump (she was the first American female figure skater to do so in competitions) couldn’t offset the disdain that her behaviour both on and off the ice prompted in both judges and followers of the sport. What didn’t help was her relationship with her husband, Jeff Gillooly (Stan). Harding was often the victim of domestic violence – something the movie goes to some uncomfortable lengths to illustrate – and the battles she waged at home were reflected in her demeanour during competitions. The movie doesn’t shy away from any of this, and Harding’s struggles to maintain an acceptable balance on the ice (no pun intended), point toward the reason why she was never entirely accepted by the figure skating cognoscenti.

Steven Rogers’ extremely fascinating and absorbing screenplay tells a mostly linear story but isn’t afraid to take detours that allow the characters to express themselves more fully during recorded interviews. There are other moments where the fourth wall is broken, but these again allow the characters to provide their own opinions on what’s happening, and it’s largely this approach to the material that keeps the movie from feeling routine or a best available reconstruction of recent history. The performances are uniformly superb, with Robbie and Stan giving career-best turns, while Janney almost steals the movie from everyone (everyone that is apart from Hauser, who plays Harding’s bodyguard, and self-professed “spy”, with such unorthodox charm that the character’s innate stupidity remains likeable throughout). Gillespie, bouncing back after the less than stellar The Finest Hours (2016), gives the movie a pace and a vibrancy that is upheld by Nicolas Karakatsanis’s stylish cinematography, and Tatiana S. Riegel’s flawless editing, while the soundtrack is peppered with songs that relate both to the period the movie covers and to the emotional peaks and troughs threaded throughout the screenplay. If Tonya Harding’s story is one that you’re unfamiliar with, then this is a great place to start if you want to find out how someone goes from being arguably the best female figure skater in the world, to someone who ends up being banned from the sport for life.

Rating: 9/10 – a dazzling concoction that mixes high drama with low comedy, and which also has time to be poignant, mournful, ecstatic, sad, joyous, profane, and reproachful, I, Tonya is a whirlwind of a movie that impresses at every turn; based on a true story, and open and honest about its various source materials, this gives everyone involved a voice and treats them all with respect, even when they do things that are irretrievably dumb – and that happens a lot.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)

03 Saturday Feb 2018

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D: S. Craig Zahler / 132m

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Marc Blucas, Dion Mucciacito, Don Johnson, Udo Kier, Geno Segers, Victor Almanzar, Willie C. Carpenter, Tom Guiry, Clark Johnson, Pooja Kumar, Fred Melamed

In Craig S. Zahler’s follow up to Bone Tomahawk (2015), Vince Vaughn is Bradley (never Brad) Thomas, a man who turns to being a drug runner when he gets laid off from his job at an auto-repair shop. Eighteen months later, he and his wife, Lauren (Carpenter), are expecting a baby (their second after they lost the first), and living a pretty luxurious lifestyle; crime has been good to them. Bradley works for an old friend, Gil (Blucas), but when Gil goes into partnership with a Mexican drug boss called Eleazar (Mucciacito), their first pick up ends in a shootout with the police and Bradley causing the death of one of Eleazar’s men and incapacitating another. Despite this, he’s sentenced to seven years in a medium security prison. But Eleazar wants revenge. He has Lauren kidnapped, and through an emissary (Kier), lets Bradley know that unless he kills an inmate at a maximum security hellhole called Redleaf, his unborn baby will be “operated on”. Getting transferred to Redleaf is the easy part however, while surviving it, and the regime set up by Warden Tuggs (Johnson), is a whole other matter…

In recent years, Vince Vaughn’s career has been about relinquishing his comic persona in favour of more dramatic roles, from his appearance in Season Two of True Detective (2015) to his role in the Oscar-winning Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Now he gives his best dramatic performance yet as a drug runner with principles, the stoic Bradley Thomas, a man you can hit with a billy club and he’ll barely flinch. It’s a role that keeps him quiet for much of the picture, but with Vaughn it’s all in the eyes and the way they can convey a range of emotions with clarity and precision. You know when Bradley is angry, you know when he’s trying to keep that anger in check, and you know when he’s about to unleash that anger. This all makes Bradley something of a coiled spring, and Vaughn is a commanding physical presence in the role, expertly channelling Bradley’s propensity for extreme violence while maintaining the character’s deep-rooted humanity. Vaughn is never less than convincing, and he brings an intensity to the part that is mesmerising.

He’s ably supported by Carpenter, Kier and Johnson, but while the performances are good, the movie does suffer from a storyline that, once it picks up momentum and Bradley starts hurting people in ever more violent ways, reveals itself to be more than a little on the slight side. There’s a prologue that proves superfluous, while the stretch that leads up to Bradley’s incarceration is long-winded and could have benefited from some judicious cutting (when will movie makers learn that scenes where characters drive from place to place looking thoughtful don’t add anything to a movie?). But even when Bradley does start showing us what he’s really good at, and the movie’s pace increases, what we’re left with is a succession of increasingly violent (and cartoonish) altercations that are well choreographed and executed, but which also appear to be the movie’s sole raison d’être. With this in mind, and despite the visceral and very effective quality of the fight scenes, the movie reveals a hollow centre that stops it from being as rewarding a viewing experience as intended. Zahler is certainly a director of talent, and the movie’s visual aesthetic becomes more and more squalid as Bradley’s descent into prison hell continues. But this is that difficult second feature that doesn’t quite match the promise raised by its predecessor.

Rating: 6/10 – Vaughn’s imposing performance is the main attraction here, and while it helps elevate the material above its grindhouse ambitions, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is still a movie that doesn’t work as well as it should; overlong, and with Bradley impervious to any blows that come his way, there’s too little in the way of actual jeopardy for the character to find himself in, making this a movie where tension is ignored, and nihilism is the primary order of the day.

West of Memphis (2012)

15 Monday Jan 2018

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D: Amy Berg / 149m

With: Pam Hobbs, Terry Hobbs, Damien Echols, Lorri Davis, Jessie Misskelley Jr, Jason Baldwin, John Mark Byers, David Burnett, Peter Jackson, David Jacoby, Holly Ballard

The case of the West Memphis Three – Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley Jr – is one that has attracted a lot of media attention in the years since they were convicted of the murders of three young boys in the Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis. Their convictions occurred in 1994. Misskelley Jr was tried separately from his friends and sentenced to life plus forty years in prison. Baldwin was sentenced to life in prison, while Echols, regarded as the ringleader, was sentenced to death. Throughout the police investigation and the trials, there was no physical evidence linking the three teenagers to the murders, other potential suspects were ignored, and so-called “experts” on Satanic cults gave evidence that ascribed all three defendants’ behaviours and interests as consistent with involvement in Satanism and ritual sacrifice. The three young men were convicted on a combination of local hearsay, prejudice, police incompetence, and judicial lethargy. The phrase, “miscarriage of justice”, couldn’t be more apt.

There have been three previous documentaries that have followed the case from beginning to near end, and while these are impressive in their own right for being of the moment and for the access to the various people involved – the families of the victims, the police, the lawyers on both sides, interested parties etc. – none of them are able to do what West of Memphis can do, and that’s tell the whole story in one fell swoop. It also has contributions from the likes of Eddie Vedder and Henry Rollins, and one of this movie’s producers, Peter Jackson, as they explain their involvement in trying to get the trio’s convictions overturned. Part of this documentary’s allure is the sense of outrage that it maintains, as each twist and turn in the story prompts an ever-increasing disbelief that the police and the legal system could have knowingly conspired to send three young men to jail on the flimsiest of evidence – and feel justified in doing so. And then continue to see them remain incarcerated even as more and more evidence is discovered that should exonerate them. By the movie’s end, and the details of their eventual release after eighteen years, your faith in the US legal system should be in tatters, so tarnished is its reputation.

Fortunately, in assembling this movie, director Amy Berg has also gained the trust and cooperation of two very important people in this story: Pam Hobbs, mother of Stevie Branch, one of the victims, and Lorri Davis, a young woman who befriended Damien Echols while he was in prison, and who eventually married him. Watching Pam come to terms with her grief and her growing belief in the trio’s innocence, while also trying to come to terms with the mounting evidence that her husband, Terry, may have killed the children, is often heartbreaking to watch. Lorri, meanwhile, is a tireless advocate for Echols, and as she shares her feelings about him, she also reveals an inner strength that is reflected in Pam’s need to know the truth about her son’s death. Both are admirable women, and in their different ways, have managed not to be subsumed by the events of 5 May 1993, when the children were murdered. Berg addresses all the theories about those murders, including other potential killers that the police failed to follow up on, and she keeps a strict focus on the inability of the law and jurisprudence to behave in any other way than appallingly. The West Memphis Three may have their freedom, but as this sincere and gripping documentary points out, the cost to them and everyone associated with that terrible event twenty-five years ago, will remain, and despite an outwardly “happy” ending, the movie also makes it clear that moving on may not be entirely possible for anyone.

Rating: 9/10 – the human element is kept to the fore in Berg’s excellent documentary about a murder case that, despite three convictions, remains unsolved, and which remains endlessly fascinating; with new evidence, new sources, and a fresh take on the whole godawful mess, West of Memphis is the kind of documentary you don’t want to take your eyes from in case you miss something important, and which will have you praying you’re never charged with murder in the state of Arkansas.

Old-Time Crime: The Whistler (1944) and The Mark of the Whistler (1944)

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

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The Whistler (1944) / D: William Castle / 60m

Cast: Richard Dix, Gloria Stuart, J. Carrol Naish, Alan Dinehart, Joan Woodbury, Don Costello, George Lloyd, William ‘Billy’ Benedict, Byron Foulger, Robert Homans, Otto Forrest

The first in a series of eight movies released by Columbia between 1944 and 1948, The Whistler is based on the radio drama of the same name. Each movie begins with the same voice over: “I am the Whistler, and I know many things…”, and each movie features a different story “narrated” by the Whistler (Forrest). In this first outing, Richard Dix plays Earl C. Conrad, an industrialist who decides to have a contract taken out on himself. Guilt-ridden over the loss of his wife at sea, Conrad wants to end it all, and arranges with a career criminal called Lefty Vigran (Costello) to have someone kill him within the next few days. But then news reaches him that his wife is still alive, and of course he tries to call off the hit. But Vigran is unable to call a halt to things, and Conrad must spend the next few days trying to find out who’s been hired, and if he finds him, persuade the killer (Naish) not to go through with it.

As ever with this kind of story, the killer is determined to see out his contract as a matter of personal pride, and to uphold his reputation. This leaves Conrad in a tight spot, and the second half of the movie sees him trying to avoid being killed, while the killer tries – at first – to scare him to death, having read a book about the very same thing. It’s little quirks like these that make The Whistler more enjoyable than you might expect, and Naish’s performance as the killer is an equally enjoyable combination of tortured soul and pedantic assassin. Like many movies he appeared in, Naish is fun to watch, and he throws himself into the role with obvious enthusiasm, and he brings an unexpected level of sincerity to the part. It’s easy to forget, but Naish was nominated twice for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, first for Sahara (1943), and again for A Medal for Benny (1945).

As these kind of things go however, it’s only occasionally effective, and only occasionally gripping. It does have a slightness of tone in the scenes between Dix’s anguished industrialist and his super-supportive secretary, Alice Walker (Stuart) (who’s clearly in love with him), but otherwise it opts for a sub-noir approach full of menacing shadows and drawn-out sequences where Conrad is stalked by the killer. Making only his third feature, future schlockmeister William Castle contributes little in the way of anything substantial, but he does ensure that Dix gets to show viewers his entire repertoire of worried expressions. As with Naish it’s easy to forget that Dix was also an Oscar nominated actor – for Cimarron (1931) – but he’s a long way from that movie, and he looks tired throughout, a reflection on the personal problems he had at the time.

Overall it’s not the most rewarding of franchise openers, but it did establish a template that would see Dix return as different characters in a further six movies, while the last in the series saw the main character played by Michael Duane. Castle would return for the next movie, and direct two more later entries, and he would develop a better approach in regard to pacing and performances. As for the Whistler himself, he would remain in the shadows offering specious comments about the wicked nature of Man, and reminding everyone that he knows “many things”. As a framing device for the stories that are told it’s not entirely successful, and to be fair, these tales could have been made as stand-alone movies without the Whistler’s presence to connect them all, but as the series unfolded, lessons were learned, and the quality – thankfully – improved.

Rating: 5/10 – not the most auspicious of debuts, The Whistler squanders much of its running time by having Naish stalk Dix with little or no consequence or outcome, and by reducing the supporting characters to little more than walk-ons; straightforward direction from Castle doesn’t help, and there’s too much of an air of “contractual obligation” for much of this to work, and without Naish’s involvement, this would be even less interesting than it is already.

The Mark of the Whistler (1944) / D: William Castle / 61m

aka The Marked Man

Cast: Richard Dix, Janis Carter, Porter Hall, Paul Guilfoyle, John Calvert, Matt Willis, Willie Best, Otto Forrest

By contrast to the tired machinations of The Whistler, its sequel (released a little over six months later) has much more verve and energy, and the reason is simple: it’s based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich was a novelist and crime author who during the Forties wrote some of the best noir thrillers of the period, and so prolific was he that more film noir screenplays have been adapted from his works than any other crime novelist. Here, his short story, Dormant Account, is used as the basis for another “narrated” tale by the Whistler. In it, a returning Richard Dix is a bum called Lee Selfridge Nugent. One day, Nugent sees a notice in a newspaper. A bank is looking for a Lee Nugent to come forward and claim the money in – surprise! – a dormant account. With the aid of a tailor (Hall) who provides him with a new suit, and by dint of doing his research into the other Nugent’s background, Lee “inherits” $29,000. But when his picture ends up in the local paper, he becomes the target of two brothers (Calvert, Willis) who are looking for the real Nugent. Suffice it to say, their intentions aren’t exactly good…

Woolrich’s stories and novels are the very definition of page-turners: fast-paced, always intriguing, and practically forcing you to see what happens next. He also understood how to turn the screws on his characters and leave them at the hands of a whimsical fate. This is best expressed when Lee is waiting in the bank while a clerk goes to get some paperwork. Lee can’t help but become nervous, and he begins to overthink things: what if he’s been rumbled, what if the police are being called right then, why is the bank guard always looking over at him, etc. etc. It’s a terrific distillation of the tension that Woolrich could invoke in his writing, and the two occasions when Lee has to visit the bank provide the movie with two very tense and formidable scenes indeed. Dix doesn’t look quite as bad as he did in the first movie, and the actor seems more engaged with the material. He’s even able to have a little fun in his scenes with Hall, whose parsimonious tailor is the movie’s comic relief (something the first movie could have done with).

With the money claimed, the movie changes gear and becomes an out-and-out thriller, with Calvert and Willis tracking down Lee and threatening to put holes in him unless he hands over the money. This all happens while Lee is focused on wining and dining newspaper reporter Patricia Henley (Carter). For the second time, it’s refreshing to see the lead female character kept away from harm, and not interfering in a way that will see her put in harm’s way, but the character is one of the few areas where the script by George Bricker doesn’t know how to proceed. As a result, Patricia is reduced to background traffic while Dix fights off the brothers with the aid of Guilfoyle’s down on his luck pencil salesman, ‘Limpy’ Smith. It’s another example of the institutionalised sexism of the times, and not exactly unheard of, but it still rankles as unnecessary.

With a much better script to get to grips with, Castle’s return to the director’s chair shows a marked improvement on the first movie, and he orchestrates matters with much more vigour than before, and even manages to elicit a better portrayal from Dix than previously. The hour-long running time is free of the filler that hampered the first movie, and the increased production values mean the movie doesn’t look like it’s been shot through a foggy lens or on a cheaply rented soundstage. A sequel then that’s been shown more care and attention than these kind of ‘B’ movies usually received, and very much worth seeking out.

Rating: 7/10 – an agreeable and entertaining entry in the series, The Mark of the Whistler proves that with the right source material, even the lowest budget crime thriller can be successful; tightly plotted and appropriately tense in places, this is that rare beast: a sequel (kind of) that’s better than the original.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

28 Thursday Dec 2017

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D: Martin McDonagh / 115m

Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, Abbie Cornish, Zeljko Ivanek, Sandy Martin, Clarke Peters, John Hawkes, Samara Weaving, Peter Dinklage, Kerry Condon

Every now and then – too rarely, perhaps – a movie comes along and just sucker punches the viewer, leaving them out of breath and wondering what the hell just happened, and was that a movie that did all that? Movies such as these often come out of nowhere, with minimal fanfare, but have the greatest impact. This year, there are two movies that fit that description. One is Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, and the other is Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Both movies have the ability to draw in the viewer within minutes of starting, and both movies have the ability to keep the viewer engaged and involved and wanting to know what happens next. Baker achieves this through his characters, while McDonagh achieves this through a complex narrative that never goes where you expect it to. Both movies are among the finest examples of modern day movie making that you’re ever likely to see. In short, they’re magnificent.

But before you begin to wonder if this is going to be a review of both movies, let’s step away from The Florida Project and focus fully on Three Billboards… It concerns a mother, Mildred Hayes (McDormand), whose teenage daughter, Angela, was killed in a particularly horrific way seven months before. The police investigation has stalled, and to Mildred’s mind they’ve stopped looking for her daughter’s killer. Unhappy with this, Mildred decides to make use of three unused billboards on the outskirts of town. She rents all three and uses them to bring the public’s attention to the fact that her daughter’s murder remains unsolved. The billboards prove divisive, and the local police, headed up by Chief William Willoughby (Harrelson), try to persuade Mildred to have the billboards taken down (well, they are pretty critical of the police, and the chief in particular). But Mildred remains resolute. The reaction(s) she seeks, however, aren’t exactly what she’d hoped, and as the billboards further fan the flames of division and animosity within the town, what transpires over the next few days is both surprising, and in some cases, life-changing.

First of all, this really isn’t going to go the way you expect. Be warned, McDonagh the writer is in cahoots with McDonagh the director, and both men want to keep you on the edge of your seat trying to work out what’s going to happen next. And this isn’t your bog standard, predictable murder mystery where suspects and red herrings and hidden clues are bandied about like house keys at a swingers party. This follows its own darkly comic path while also packing a strong dramatic punch or three when it needs to. It’s brave, it takes chances, it certainly doesn’t lack for confidence, and it features a trio of excellent performances. This is only McDonagh’s third feature after In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012). Those movies are good, very good in fact, but this sees McDonagh stepping up several notches at once and showing a command of the medium that is hugely impressive. In 2012 he was quoted as saying, “…the amount of control for a playwright is almost infinite, so you have that control over the finished product. But in film, you’re the lowest form of life. So that was half of the job of directing, was not letting someone else come in and fuck it up.” He needn’t be worried anymore: Three Billboards… is almost perfectly realised, and is far and away one of the finest movies of 2017.

To reveal more of the plot and how it all plays out would be to spoil the movie completely for anyone coming to it fresh and without any advanced knowledge other than what can be guessed from the brief outline recorded above. But what can be expressed is the strength of the material over all, the precise way in which McDonagh introduces his characters and then takes them on journeys we and they could never expect, how easily McDonagh can change the tempo and the tone of a scene in seconds and still make it all feel organic, and all the while juggle themes of regret, anger, guilt, loss, and pride. This is also about revenge and the need for someone to be accountable (and if not the killer, then the police), and the way in which that anger can hollow out a person. And with all that, McDonagh still manages to include elements relating to racism, casual violence, anti-authoritarianism, self-pity, fate, spousal abuse, peer pressure, and blind chance. That it all fits together so well is yet another tribute to McDonagh’s expertise as a writer and a director.

He’s helped tremendously by the performances of McDormand, Harrelson, and Rockwell. McDormand is as fierce as we’ve ever seen her, commanding our attention in every scene, Mildred’s determination to follow her own path given sympathetic expression through her steely gaze and forthright opinions and sense of justice. She does things that challenge our sympathies, but McDormand never allows us to lose sight of the pain and anguish that Mildred is still experiencing after so long, and in doing so Mildred remains a singular character with a singular goal. As the chief of police, Harrelson gives one of his best performances, infusing the character with a mixture of remorse, hopefulness and resignation. It’s a thoughtful portrayal, one that allows Harrelson to show a more restrained, internal approach to the part, and one that provides one of the movie’s more emotionally compelling moments. And then there’s Rockwell, a wilful force of nature who acts like a whirlwind leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. It’s an unforgettable performance, brash, loud and unashamedly complex in its creation, and Rockwell walks a fine line between arrogance and childish insubordination as Dixon, a man with his own issues to deal with.

The rest of the characters, most of whom orbit around Mildred, Willoughby and Dixon, are all perfectly cast, and McDonagh doesn’t neglect them, instead making them all integral to the story, from Jones’s advertising manager who sticks to his guns when the police try to intimidate him into withdrawing Mildred’s “ads”, to Martin as Dixon’s mother, a wry, darkly humorous turn that explains much of why her son is the way he is. The humour is important here, as McDonagh uses it to diffuse the terrible tensions and horrific nature of much of the material, and to shade the various levels of grief and anger experienced by the characters. Again, it’s a terrific balancing act that McDonagh pulls off, and there are many moments where the viewer has no choice but to laugh out loud or face up to the tragedy that is continuing to unfold even after seven months. All this is beautifully photographed by DoP Ben Davis, carefully edited and assembled by John Gregory for maximum effect, and set to another quietly ambitious score by Carter Burwell. Quite simply, it’s a must-see movie.

Rating: 9/10 – heartbreaking, powerful, exquisite, emotionally perceptive, profane, unpredictable, and unapologetic in tone and ambition, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a masterpiece of modern movie making; a movie to be absorbed into and then released at the end with your heart pounding, it takes big risks and pulls off every single one of them, making this not just a triumph for its writer/director, but a wonderful, magnificent surprise for anyone who decides to engage with it.

Darkland (2017)

08 Friday Dec 2017

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Original title: Underverden

D: Fenar Ahmad / 113m

Cast: Dar Salim, Stine Fischer Christensen, Ali Sivandi, Dulfi Al-Jabouri, Jakob Ulrik Lohmann, Roland Møller, B. Branco, Anis Alobaidi

Two brothers, two different paths in Life. One, Zaid (Salim), is a respected heart surgeon whose wife, Stine (Christensen), is expecting their first child. The other, Yasin (Alobaidi), is involved with a criminal gang. They appear to lead separate lives, but Fate brings Yasin to Zaid’s door one evening after a bank heist he’s been involved in has gone badly wrong. Yasin seeks his older brother’s help but is sent on his way unceremoniously. The next day, Yasin’s badly beaten body arrives at the hospital where Zaid works, and despite the staff’s best efforts, he dies. Zaid grieves for his brother, and with the aid of one of Yasin’s friends, Alex (Al-Jabouri), begins to understand just what kind of criminal gang Yasin was a part of, and why he was so brutally attacked and left for dead. An early encounter with one of the gang’s enforcers, Branco (Branco), leaves Zaid bruised and beaten himself, but at least he’s let off with a warning to leave things well alone. But Zaid isn’t so easily persuaded, and with the aid of close friend, Torben (Lohmann), he trains to become a better fighter, and to show the gang’s boss, Semion (Sivandi), that killing Yasin was a big mistake…

Away from Hollywood, vigilante thrillers tend to be gloomy, atmospheric movies that focus more on the characters than the mechanics of getting them from one action set-piece to the next. Scenes play out in longer fashion, the interplay between the characters is given room to imbed itself within the narrative, and the action set-pieces, when they come, have a more satisfying feel to them. In short, the viewer can make more of an investment in what’s happening, and in the complexities of how and why. (And they can do all this and still cheer when the anti-hero starts kicking ass.) In Fenar Ahmad’s second feature, the very gloomy, very atmospheric Darkland, the main protagonist embarks on a journey that sees him slowly but surely strip away his humanity, the very attribute that has made him so successful, in his pursuit of vengeance for his brother. It all comes at a very high cost indeed, with his marriage and his career put under increasing pressure, and his priorities skewed in one very dark direction indeed.

One of the movie’s strong points is that even though Zaid is the central protagonist and his motives are entirely understandable, he’s not the most sympathetic of characters. Thanks to Ahmad and co-screenwriter Adam August’s considered approach, Zaid’s decision to seek vengeance for the death of Yasin always seems a little self-serving, as if it’s more important for him to be the avenger out of some misguided sense of filial obligation; what would it say about him if he did nothing? Between them, the script and Salim’s pressure cooker performance point up this emotional disparity, and the usual assurances that the central character is looking to avenge someone’s death purely for the deceased’s sake are undermined from the start. This alters the standard vigilante movie dynamic just enough to make the movie more interesting, and more likely to subvert audience expectations.

Ahmad is also clever enough to make Zaid’s immersion into the world of the vigilante one that doesn’t occur overnight. Following his beating at the hands of Branco and his men, Zaid wisely seeks help and the movie spends time with him as he learns to protect himself through a combination of boxing moves, body armour, and mysterious injections that only make sense when the final showdown between Zaid and Semion arrives. As he becomes more confident and more focused, his commitment leads to a deadening of his emotions. His relationship with Stine suffers as he closes himself off from everyone around him, and even when she becomes embroiled in the cat and mouse game that develops between Zaid and Semion he remains remote from her and their unborn child. Where you would expect him to become angrier and perhaps more reckless in his efforts, here Zaid tamps down those feelings and focuses on the job at hand. By the time he faces off with Semion he’s an automaton.

At one point a strong contender as Denmark’s official selection for the Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Oscars (it lost out to You Disappear), Darkland has more to offer than a central character whose motives may not be as selfless as they should be. The contrast between Zaid’s comfortable, ordered lifestyle and his brother’s is perfectly illustrated by Yasin’s visit for help. With a dinner party in full swing, and already having ignored his brother’s calls, Zaid is in no mood to introduce Yasin to his guests. He keeps him outside in the hallway and gets him to leave as soon as possible. It’s when Zaid and Stine are enjoying an evening meal at a restaurant, and Semion and his entourage arrive as well, that the contrasts begin to blur, and in an icy encounter between the two men, Semion chastises Zaid for not being as charitable to the local community as he is. From that moment on, Zaid’s world is Semion’s world, and he has no intention of removing himself from it.

All this is aided by, and benefits from, sterling production design courtesy of Sabine Hviid, and excellent cinematography from Kasper Tuxen. Much of the movie takes place at night, and the semi-deserted streets of Copenhagen are used to very good effect, with the lighting providing an occasionally hallucinatory feel, as if Zaid is interacting with a different “reality”, one that has danger lurking around every corner. Tuxen is particularly good at framing the action so that each incident contains the necessary impact, and in the quieter scenes he uses lighting to create and support the various emotional moods on display. Ahmad directs with a firm understanding of how to avoid the clichés that can so easily make this kind of story seem derivative and underwhelming, and he draws out good performances from all concerned, with special mention going to Salim, and Al-Jabouri. There are times when the script feels like it’s going to cut corners in telling its tale, but thankfully it draws back from doing so, leaving the movie feeling and sounding more considered and thought out than expected.

Rating: 8/10 – with its secondary themes of personal honour and emotional neglect firmly established through its characters and their behaviours, Darkland has a lot more going on than its vigilante-out-for-revenge concept might imply; visually intense in places, and packing a visceral punch when needed, it’s a movie that also has a surprisingly melancholy vibe to it at times, something which adds further to the effectiveness of the piece as a whole.

Monthly Roundup – November 2017

30 Thursday Nov 2017

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Arrest Bulldog Drummond (1938) / D: James P. Hogan / 57m

Cast: John Howard, Heather Angel, H.B. Warner, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive, Jean Fenwick, Zeffie Tilbury, George Zucco, Leonard Mudie, Evan Thomas

Rating: 6/10 – on the eve of his wedding, Drummond (Howard) gets involved in the murder of an inventor of an electrical device that can cause explosions from a distance; another robust entry in the series, Arrest Bulldog Drummond has all the usual elements in place and keeps things moving in sprightly fashion thanks to a spirited sense of adventure, and a well-versed cast who all know exactly what they’re doing.

Blue, White and Perfect (1942) / D: Herbert I. Leeds / 75m

Cast: Lloyd Nolan, Mary Beth Hughes, Helene Reynolds, George Reeves, Steven Geray, Henry Victor, Curt Bois

Rating: 7/10 – ace detective Michael Shayne (Nolan) finds himself on the trail of industrial diamond smugglers, just as his long-suffering girlfriend, Merle (Hughes), thinks she’s finally got him to marry her; the Michael Shayne series hits its midway point and proves just as entertaining, if not more so, than its predecessors, with Nolan fully invested in the role, a number of narrative twists to keep the viewer guessing, Leeds’ easy-going direction, and an appealing sense of humour throughout that makes Blue, White and Perfect an engaging and fun-packed franchise entry.

Tales of Halloween (2015) / D: David Parker, Darren Lynn Bousman, Adam Gierasch, Paul Solet, Axelle Carolyn, Lucky McKee, John Skipp, Andrew Kasch, Mike Mendez, Ryan Schifrin, Neil Marshall / 97m

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Daniel DiMaggio, Barry Bostwick, John F. Beach, Tiffany Shepis, Lin Shaye, Barbara Crampton, Lisa Marie, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Marc Senter, Pollyanna McIntosh, Ben Woolf, Keir Gilchrist, Gracie Gillam, Dana Gould, James Duval, Amanda Moyer, Nick Principe, John Landis, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sam Witwer, Kristina Klebe, Pat Healy, John Savage, Joe Dante

Rating: 4/10 – ten tales set around Halloween in a small, suburban town, and encompassing everything from the Devil, aliens, axe murderers, trick ‘n’ treat, warring neighbours, and psycho imps; ten tales are arguably six too many, with several of the entries in Tales of Halloween proving lukewarm at best (and dull at worst), with Mendez’s Friday the 31st segment standing out from the rest of the pack thanks to its gonzo mix of gore and humour.

The Time of Their Lives (2017) / D: Roger Goldby / 104m

Cast: Joan Collins, Pauline Collins, Franco Nero, Ronald Pickup, Sian Reeves, Joely Richardson, Michael Brandon

Rating: 4/10 – a faded Hollywood star (Joan Collins) hijacks the goodwill of a put-upon housewife (Pauline Collins) in her efforts to attend the funeral of a former leading man and ex-lover; a tepid comedy-drama that meanders from one dispiriting scene to another in its efforts to be entertaining, The Time of Their Lives wastes the talents of both its leading ladies while it insists on cranking out endless platitudes about what it is to be old and unappreciated, something that, at some point, this movie will succeed in being.

Wheelman (2017) / D: Jeremy Rush / 82m

Cast: Frank Grillo, Caitlin Carmichael, Garret Dillahunt, Shea Whigham, Wendy Moniz, John Cenatiempo, Slaine

Rating: 6/10 – a getaway driver (Grillo) finds himself trying to stay one step ahead of the various “interested parties” who want the money he has from a bank robbery gone wrong – and who’ll stop at nothing to get it; an action movie variation on Locke (2013) with much of the action filmed from within the confines of the getaway car, Wheelman strives for a stripped-back, gritty aesthetic, but suffers from having Grillo’s unnamed character repeating the same lines over and over, the action taking place in a strange night-time netherworld where the police are perpetually absent, the unlikely involvement of the driver’s teenage daughter (Carmichael) towards the end, and the car’s speedometer never getting above zero.

Hangman (2017)

23 Thursday Nov 2017

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D: Johnny Martin / 98m

Cast: Al Pacino, Karl Urban, Brittany Snow, Joe Anderson, Sarah Shahi, Chelle Ramos, Steve Coulter, Sloane Warren

Not every movie can be accomplished, original, or a must-see. In fact, the majority of movies – the vast majority – often have the effect of making you wonder just how they got made in the first place. And why. Sometimes it seems that there’s a lot of people out there with money to burn. Other times it’s as if a movie has been made on a dare. Some movies challenge the very notion that quality was ever a consideration when the movie itself was being made. And some movies provoke such an abject response – what the hell is all this? – that there’s nothing for it but to carry on watching in the vain hope that the whole sorry mess will find some way to improve (not that it does though). There are literally thousands of these movies made each and every year, and if there’s an end in sight to all of them, then it’s so far off in the distance as to not to be there at all.

And so we come to Hangman, the latest movie to feature Al Pacino in a performance that makes him look like a disinterested bystander and not the lead character. It fits so neatly into the genre of underwhelming thriller movie that should never have been made, that it’s almost scary. It’s bad in a way that actually elevates average movies into looking and sounding better than they are, and provides further evidence – if any were needed – that if you take a script that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and film it, then the finished product won’t make any sense either. A project that has been in development since at least 2011, Hangman arrives to dispel the notion that if you spend enough time on something then you can iron out all the kinks and grooves in a script and make something of real quality. Let’s make this clear: whatever time Michael Caissie and Charles Huttinger spent on putting the screenplay together, it wasn’t enough.

In a feat akin to shoving a square peg into a round hole, the makers of Hangman have taken one of the world’s most famous and enduring guessing games, and tried to make it the modus operandi of a serial killer (Anderson) whose motivations remain obscure and unconvincing throughout. And not only that, but the word the killer is challenging the police to solve isn’t even in English, a decision that further adds to the confusion created over the killer’s psychological state, and what drives him to murder. All this is as tortuous as it sounds, and the plot – such as it is – quickly surrenders any high ground and goes meekly along with whatever delirious developments Caissie and Huttinger’s screenplay can come up with. This leaves Pacino’s retired detective Archer, and Urban’s moody active detective Ruiney (pronounced Rooney), led by their noses from one staged, and unlikely, crime scene to another while they are gifted clues by a script that really doesn’t care how poorly constructed it is.

The presence of Snow’s Pulitzer-nominated journalist, Christi Davies – no offence, but really? – on assignment to shadow Ruiney for an article, adds a further level of creative insult to the mix as her “signed off by the mayor” involvement sees her included in crime scene searches, put at risk by Archer and Ruiney at almost every turn, and provided with a back story that should be relevant but isn’t. As for the serial killer himself, he’s yet another “brilliant” psychopath who’s always several steps ahead of the police, and can stage the most elaborate murder scenes at the drop of a hat. Thankfully, he’s also susceptible to the kind of cod-psychology musings that Archer comes up with when they finally meet, and Christi’s life is in danger. There are other characters, and much less important ones at that, such as Ruiney’s captain, Lisa Watson (Shahi), who finds herself targeted by the killer, potential suspect, Joey Truman (Ramos), and a raft of even more minor characters who are there to make up the numbers (or the killer’s victims). It’s a measure of the script’s desperate attempts to give these characters some kind of “life” on screen that Ruiney’s wife may have been the killer’s first victim some time before, Watson is in a wheelchair, and Joey and the first victim are lesbians into BDSM.

Wandering through it all, though, as if his reputation as one of the finest actors of his generation, or his position as joint president of the Actors Studio didn’t mean a thing is Pacino. The actor looks permanently surprised in so many scenes it’s hard not to think that each time it happens it’s as if he’s just realising how bad it all is. Whether he’s mumbling his lines or reacting just a beat too slowly to what’s happening around him, it’s a performance that could easily qualify as his worst, even worse than his portrayal as himself in Jack and Jill (2011). There’s no spark here, no animation in his performance, just the sign of an actor treading water and going through the motions. It’s a sad sight, and adds another level of dismay for the viewer to contend with. In contrast, Urban at least tries to inject some energy into his role, but he’s held back by his character’s bull-headed nature and one-note demeanour. Snow fares no better, and the movie wastes her talent as an actress by having her follow her male co-stars around while waiting to be the killer’s eventual last victim.

Making an even worse fist of things than he did on Vengeance: A Love Story (2017), director Johnny Martin continues to show a lack of aptitude behind the camera that, in conjunction with the terrible script, means the movie has no chance of succeeding as the clever, gritty thriller it so desperately wants to be. Whether he’s putting the camera in the wrong place or leaving his talented cast to fend for themselves, Martin does little to lift the material or make it interesting. As a result, the movie lacks pace and intensity, and stutters from scene to scene without any apparent attempt to connect them into a meaningful whole. By the time Archer and Ruiney come face to face with the killer, it’s doubtful just who the average viewer will want to see put out of their misery more: the killer, Archer and Ruiney, or themselves.

Rating: 3/10 – spectacularly awful in a way that, surely, couldn’t have been intended, Hangman is a low-concept thriller that misfires at every step, and makes for one of the  laziest, most apathetic movies of 2017; wrong on so many levels, this should be held up as an object lesson in how not to construct and shoot a movie when the script isn’t there, the director hasn’t a clue, and its main star can’t be bothered.

Small Crimes (2017)

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

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D: Evan Katz / 95m

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gary Cole, Molly Parker, Robert Forster, Jacki Weaver, Macon Blair, Pat Healy, Michael Kinney, Daniela Sandiford, Shawn Lawrence

At one point in Evan Katz’s Small Crimes, the lead character, ex-cop and recent ex-con Joe Denton (Coster-Waldau) sets out to blackmail the local DA (Kinney) by setting him up with an obliging stripper in a motel room. With a camera in place to record the “tryst”, Joe settles back in an adjacent room and waits for the DA, Phil Coakley, to turn up. Coakley duly arrives but just as it looks as if Joe’s plan is going to work, along comes the stripper’s boyfriend – and with a gun. The boyfriend bursts in, Joe hears shots fired, and then looks out the window to see Coakley emerge unscathed with a gun in his hand. Rushing to the room, he finds the stripper and her boyfriend are both dead and the camera is gone. It’s not the first of Joe’s plans to go wrong since he got out of jail (nor will it be the last), but as the movie continues, and there’s no immediate follow up with either Coakley or Joe, it leaves the viewer wondering: where does all that fit in?

This happens several times during the course of the movie, and though it’s all part of Katz’ and co-screenwriter (and supporting actor) Macon Blair’s screenplay, such a non-linear approach – while it can be applauded as a way of making the movie more distinctive than some of its many cinematic cousins – doesn’t help the viewer to become more involved in the plot and with the various characters that pop up here and there, do their thing, and then disappear again. Only Joe is consistent in his appearance and involvement, and while the viewer can be thankful for this, Joe himself is less of a protagonist and more of a violence-attracting bystander. On his very first night of freedom after spending six years in jail for an extremely vicious assault on the same DA he later tries to blackmail, Joe graciously offers a young woman (Sandiford) a ride home from a bar. But it’s a honey trap, one that Joe fights his way out of, only to learn that the young woman is Coakley’s daughter.

Coincidence or set up? A set up is the likely answer, but the script fumbles this, as it does quite a lot else that could be explained by the odd line of exposition, but Katz and Blair aren’t interested in keeping things simple. Instead their brief seems to be the murkier the better. Motivations are kept frustratingly vague, and even when some decisions or events have to be explained, they’re done in such a way that often it makes it even more difficult to understand why something is happening, and where it fits in. Sometimes a scene will play out, and though it may feel important in the grand scheme of things, that scene will find itself isolated from the rest of the script until such time as Katz and Blair decide they can return to it. And sometimes, they never do. What this all means is that Small Crimes often feels arch and tiresome, as if it can’t make up its mind just what sort of tone it should be adopting, and is trundling along in the hope that inspiration will strike and help it on its way.

The movie has been adapted from the novel by Dave Zeltserman, and while it may seem to have all the requirements for a modern day noir – Joe just wants to go straight for the sake of his kids, who he’s not allowed to see – there’s no femme fatale, there’s no devious figure in the background pulling all the strings, and the only mystery involves a death that occurred before Joe went to jail and which he may be responsible for. The machinations that are set up once Joe is out of jail don’t always make sense, and though all the main characters are surprisingly well drawn (even Molly Parker’s superfluous cat lady-cum-love interest), they’re all in service to a narrative that only occasionally flexes its muscles, and which does so only when there’s violence involved. Otherwise, personal animosities are the order of the day, Joe’s efforts to extricate himself backfire then succeed out of nowhere once too often, and the material tries too hard to be ironic when it just needs to be sincere.

There’s humour then, but not so much that it makes watching the movie a more enjoyable experience. It’s often at a cost to the credibility of Joe himself and Coster-Waldau’s performance, which is through necessity, a more passive role than might be expected. Joe makes a lot of noise when he needs to, but that’s all it is: a lot of noise. He’s also surprisingly naïve in his thinking, believing that he can get himself out of the fix he’s in without there being any bloodshed. There’s noise too from Joe’s mother, Irma (Weaver), who seems there only to shout at him in a disapproving, angry manner. Later, she suffers an injury that could have been avoided, but the irony is in the detail of what happens. Alongside her is Joe’s father, Joe Sr (Forster), her antithesis, a man who is calm and confident and coordinated, and apparently unflustered by anything anyone says. Each gives a better performance than might be expected, and though Coster-Waldau is as charming as ever, there are times when he tries too hard, and the result is some obvious mugging.

The movie at least tries to be interesting, but its tired old scenario isn’t gripping enough for it to make a consistent impact, and some viewers may well be asking themselves why, with admittedly a lot going on, that there’s a distance between the material and the viewer. The simple answer is that what’s happening on screen isn’t anything so convincing or compelling that the viewer is ever likely to maintain continued interest throughout, or care about the characters and what happens to them. And even when the movie pulls a surprise out of its hat at the end, what should be a highly effective, and emotional moment, is undermined by there having been so little previously that would warrant that kind of reaction when it’s needed. Things are further hindered by Katz’s low-key directing style and the bland visual palette used to make the characters seem more interesting than they are. When murder and mayhem in a small town are this unaffecting, then it’s time to look elsewhere for your villainy and deceit.

Rating: 5/10 – patchy and rarely absorbing, Small Crimes unfolds patiently but with few moments where the pace quickens enough for the movie to become entirely interesting; the performances help, but the main storyline lacks cohesion and there’s a distinct sense that the material is laboured, something that it never finds a way to overcome.

The Snowman (2017)

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

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D: Tomas Alfredson / 119m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Chloë Sevigny, James D’Arcy, Jonas Karlsson, Adrian Dunbar, Ronan Vibert, Michael Yates

Another week, another literary adaptation, another disappointment… Sometimes it’s hard to understand just what happened when a movie based on a well regarded novel hits our screens with all the turgid urgency of dripping sludge. Who do you blame? The director? Maybe. They are in overall charge of how the movie looks and sounds and how thrilling or dramatic or funny or affecting it should be. Or maybe it’s the screenwriter(s). Maybe they didn’t “get” the novel or work out the best way of transferring it to the big screen. Maybe it’s the cast. Maybe they weren’t “feeling it” and couldn’t find their way to putting in good performances. Or perhaps it’s just something a little less tangible, the tone perhaps, or the pacing, or the emotion of the piece. Maybe – maybe – it’s a combination of all these.

That certainly seems to be the case with The Snowman, an adaptation of the novel by Jo Nesbø, and the first movie to feature his troubled detective, Harry Hole (played here by Michael Fassbender in a portrayal that seems based around Hole having only the one expression). Now, if you’ve read this paragraph up til now and you’ve been pronouncing Hole as in a hole in the ground, then you have the first problem that the movie can’t or won’t overcome: no one can even pronounce the lead character’s name correctly. Harry’s surname is pronounced Ho-ly as in holy scripture, or as with this movie, what the holy hell is happening? When the makers of a movie can’t even get the lead character’s name right, then what chance does the rest of the movie have? In short, hardly any chance at all.

A rushed production that finished shooting in April 2016, but which required reshoots in the spring of this year, the movie quickly gets bogged down by the requirements of a muddled script that wants to be regarded as another excellent example of the awkwardly named Scandi-noir. All the elements are there to be ticked off one by one: the dark, brooding lead detective, the dark, brooding atmosphere, the dark, brooding nature of the murders, the killer’s dark, brooding psychological profile, the dark, brooding visual backdrop – clearly if it wasn’t dark and brooding then it wasn’t allowed to remain in the screenplay. But just as having too much of a good thing can spoil that very same thing, having too little in the way of structure, common sense and thrills can also damage a movie’s chances, and The Snowman sabotages its own semi-focused ambitions at every turn.

For a thriller that should grip like a vice, there are just too many risible moments that offer unfortunate injections of humour, such as when James D’Arcy’s character reveals that he’s “infertile. I can’t have children”, just to make sure there’s no one in the audience who won’t understand what infertile means. Then there are the dreadful, logic-takes-a-beating moments such as when the killer uses a mobile phone they know the police will be monitoring to help them pin the blame on someone else, but who then forgets that they can be traced through the use of another mobile phone later on. Scenes come and go that don’t always follow on from each other (though it’s more disheartening to think there might be a longer Director’s Cut out there somewhere), and Harry’s maverick cop activities keep him in the front line no matter how often he acts independently of the rest of the Oslo police force, while Rebecca Ferguson’s impassioned rookie, Katrine, gets sidelined the first time she uses her own initiative. Some of this is in service of the plot, but mostly it just seems that in piecing together the key points of Nesbø’s novel, screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan, and Søren Sveistrup have decided to only include the events from every other chapter in the novel, and not adapt the novel as a whole.

Characterisations suffer too as a result of this approach, with Harry’s alcoholism only of any relevance in introducing him to the audience, and to provide a degree of drama surrounding his continual inability to spend time with the son (Yates) of his old flame, Rakel (Gainsbourg). Being an alcoholic isn’t allowed to get in the way of showing just how good a detective Harry really is, and so it becomes less and less effective as a character defect the longer the movie goes on. Likewise the relationship between Harry and Rakel is confusing because there’s no back story for the viewer to latch onto (it might have helped if the producers had decided to adapt the first book in the Harry Hole series, instead of the seventh). The killer’s motives remain vague and unconvincing throughout, and their need to build a snowman at the scene of each crime is as baffling at the end as it is at the beginning. It’s as if it’s use as a signature “flourish” by the killer is all that’s needed. (A reason for it? Ah, don’t worry about it; it’ll look cool.)

Alfredson has spoken about the challenges of making the movie within a short period of time, and without a completed script, leading to issues that were discovered in the editing suite. But while it does seem that there are huge gaps in the narrative, and the movie has to work extra hard to maintain any tension or sense of urgency, it’s the flatness of the drama and the lethargy in certain scenes that can’t be explained away just because of a shortened production period. In the end, Nesbø’s page-turner has become a movie that fails to match up to its energy and verve, and which remains a leaden, dreary experience for the viewer. The performances are adequate (though Kilmer, worryingly, looks as if he’s trying to impersonate present day Gary Busey), and Dion Beebe’s cinematography does at least capture the beautiful isolation of rural Norway in often stunning fashion. But otherwise, this is a routine, formulaic serial killer movie that does itself no favours from beginning to end.

Rating: 4/10 – muddled and convoluted aren’t words that any potential viewer wants to hear, but they describe The Snowman perfectly; uninspired and chock full of thriller clichés, the movie stumbles along trying to be clever and effective, but instead ends up putting a finish to any notion of an intended Harry Hole franchise.

Old-Time Crime: Grand Central Murder (1942) and The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942)

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Grand Central Murder (1942) / D: S. Sylvan Simon / 73m

Cast: Van Heflin, Patricia Dane, Cecilia Parker, Virginia Grey, Samuel S. Hinds, Sam Levene, Connie Gilchrist, Mark Daniels, Stephen McNally, Tom Conway, Betty Wells, George Lynn, Roman Bohnen

Back in the Thirties and Forties, many a low budget murder mystery was adapted from a literary source, and Grand Central Murder is no exception. Based on Sue McVeigh’s 1939 novel of the same name, the movie is a sprightly, fun-packed whodunnit that zips along at a steady clip as it builds up a strong case for each suspect in the murder of actress Mida King (Dane). Of course, there’s one suspect who seems more likely to have committed the deed than all the rest, and here it’s convicted killer Turk (McNally). On his way to a retrial, Turk escapes from his police escort while at Grand Central station, and instead of finding somewhere to hide out, he calls Mida and threatens to kill her. Later, Mida is found dead in the private railroad car she has on a siding at Grand Central. Could Turk really be the killer, or could it someone else with a grudge against her?

With Mida murdered, the stage is set for an investigation launched by Inspector Gunther (Levene), but one that will be hampered and helped by private investigator “Rocky” Custer (Heflin), who Turk has hired to prove his innocence. Custer persuades Turk to give himself up, while Gunther assembles several of Mida’s friends and colleagues – and other interested parties – in an effort to find out what happened between Mida getting the call from Turk, and being found dead in her sidecar. Among the suspects are her supposedly psychic stepfather Ramon (Bohnen), her maid, Pearl (Gilchrist), her producer, Frankie (Conway), and her rich fiancé, David (Daniels). As th investigation covers more and more ground, even Custer and his wife and business partner Sue (Grey) have the finger of suspicion pointed at them.

Part of the fun here is the way that the story is told via flashbacks, as each new suspect in Gunther’s firing line explains their previous interaction with Mida, and defends any suggestion that they had a motive for killing her (even though pretty much everyone does). There are plenty of red herrings fed to the audience along the way, and though some of them might seem obvious to modern day audiences, there’s no doubting the enthusiasm with which the cast set them up and then let them loose. What may prove more contentious is the idea that a stage actress has a private railroad car at her disposal, but this is a variation on the old “locked room” mystery, with the cause of Mida’s death baffling both Gunther and the coroner.

Of course, it’s Custer who does the real sleuthing (never let it be said that a cop in a Forties mystery thriller was ever brighter than the amateur detective who eventually solves the case). Heflin invests Custer with a wry amusement at everything going on around him, while his counterpart/nemesis, Gunther (expertly played by Levene, who was the original Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls on Broadway), stumbles on with grim determination even as he gets it wrong at every turn. Dane is good as the victim with a chequered past, while there’s equally solid support from Gilchrist and Conway. Simon, a somewhat journeyman director for most of his career, is on better form than usual, and the movie integrates its flashbacks into the narrative in a way that doesn’t make them confusing or lets them slow things down. The solution when it arrives is quite clever, though eagle-eyed viewers will have worked out the killer’s identity long before then, if not how they (almost) got away with it.

Rating: 7/10 – well-paced and with an underlying sense of humour that helps keep an otherwise dry storyline from becoming banal, Grand Central Murder is pleasant, diverting stuff that keeps the audience guessing, but which doesn’t try to be too tricky; in some ways, a minor classic that doesn’t try too hard to make it completely convincing, it’s a movie that is smart, occasionally irreverent, and very entertaining.

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942) / D: Herbert I. Leeds / 65m

Cast: Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Helene Reynolds, Henry Wilcoxon, Richard Derr, Paul Harvey, Billy Bevan, Olin Howland, Robert Emmett Keane

Three weeks before MGM released Grand Central Murder, 20th Century Fox released this, the fifth in an eventual series of seven Michael Shayne movies starring Lloyd Nolan as a wisecracking private eye. It too was based on a novel, this time No Coffin for the Corpse by Clayton Rawson, but Rawson’s tale wasn’t a Michael Shayne adventure, rather it was one concerning a sleuth (and yes, he’s an amateur) called The Great Merlini. Merlini is reduced to a minor role here, while Brett Halliday’s creation takes centre stage in helping old flame Catherine Wolff (Weaver) solve a mystery involving a vanished corpse, murder, and strange experiments at her father’s home. To this end, Shayne (Nolan) pretends to be Roger Blake, the man Catherine has recently married, and together they investigate shootings in the middle of the night, and much more besides.

The Michael Shayne movies all contained a good leavening of humour, and The Man Who Wouldn’t Die is no exception, with Nolan racking up wisecracks and genuine laughs in such a dry, subversive manner that you don’t want him to stop (or have the script run out of steam). Circumstances allow him to play funny with a skeleton, and poke fun at the rest of the characters, and Nolan displays a deft approach towards the material that allows him to make the most of each scene he’s in, whether it’s comedic or dramatic. As is usually the case, the cast are all experienced hands at this sort of palaver, and it’s great to see ex-silent comedian Bevan as the mildly indignant butler, Phillips.

The mystery elements aren’t handled quite as well as they should be, mainly because the script opts to make them unnecessarily complicated, with a sub-plot involving basement-set experiments that have a distinctive sci-fi/horror vibe to them a case in point. These help pad out the modest running time, but don’t elevate the material in any way, leaving the narrative feeling a little stretched beyond its credibility. But however you look at it, this is a fun movie that plays fast and loose with its characters’ motivations, throws in a couple of fright moments to spice things up, and relies heavily on its cast’s charm and commitment in order to make its convoluted narrative more enjoyable. Nolan is an appealing screen presence, as is Weaver as this movie’s version of a dumb blonde, while there’s fine support from the likes of Harvey (bluff and cranky as ever as Catherine’s father), and Howland as the bumbling Chief of Police Jonathan Meek.

This is at heart an old dark house mystery, with much of the action taking place at night and in shadowy patches of the screen that prove atmospheric and somewhat creepy. The identity of the vanished corpse is not one you’d be able to predict – mostly because of its relation to one of the main characters, which isn’t obvious – while the identity of that main character (and secondary villain) is slightly easier to work out. In the director’s chair, Leeds shows off an occasional visual flourish and maintains an easy pace throughout, without taking it at all seriously. Leeds seems to be having as much fun as Nolan is, and the whole thing often teeters on the point of complete absurdity before dragging itself back at the last moment. But nevertheless, it’s a movie that sets out to entertain first and foremost, and thanks to Nolan’s previous experience in the role, does so regularly and comfortably.

Rating: 6/10 – some flaws in the script aside, The Man Who Wouldn’t Die is a prime example of a franchise entry that doesn’t show signs of the series’ running out of steam any time soon; solid and reliable in terms of its narrative, and quip heavy, it’s another example of a B-movie that has more to offer than it seems at first glance.

Old-Time Crime: The Rogues Tavern (1936) and Lady in the Death House (1944)

23 Saturday Sep 2017

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The Rogues Tavern (1936) / D: Robert F. Hill / 70m

Cast: Wallace Ford, Barbara Pepper, Joan Woodbury, Clara Kimball Young, Jack Mulhall, John Elliott, Earl Dwire, John W. Cowell, Vincent Dennis, Arthur Loft, Ivo Henderson, Ed Cassidy, Silver Wolf

Wise-cracking detective Jimmy Kelly (Ford) is in a hurry to marry ex-store detective Marjorie Burns (Pepper), but has to cross the state line in order to do so. The pair end up at the Red Rock Tavern late one night waiting for a justice of the peace to turn up. Soon, one of the other guests, a man named Harrison (Henderson) has been killed, his throat ostensibly ripped out by a dog (Silver Wolf) that roams around the outside of the inn. When a second murder occurs, Kelly takes charge of the situation, but finds few clues to help him. A third murder, plus the arrival of another guest named Wentworth (Loft), makes things even more confusing, but it’s not long before the inn’s owner, wheelchair bound Mr Jamison (Elliott), points Jimmy in the right direction, and it becomes clear that a conspiracy is in progress and that the guests are all potential murder victims of an unknown assailant. But is that assailant someone who is already there at the inn?

There were literally hundreds (if not thousands) of murder mysteries set in old dark houses during the Thirties and Forties, and they all followed a very predictable formula: a group of people are brought together (some might know each other, most will be strangers to each other) at a remote location, soon their numbers will begin to dwindle as one by one they’re killed off, and one of the assembled guests will prove to be a detective (or amateur sleuth) who will solve the mystery in the last reel (and may even get to sock the villain on the jaw in the process). Along the way there will be the usual amount of red herrings, obvious characters who must be the villain but who will turn out to be innocent, and a leading lady acting as the hero’s annoying, always-getting-into-trouble girlfriend (or if he’s a newspaperman, then she’ll be a rival journalist trying to figure out who the murderer is before he does).

The Rogues Tavern follows that formula very carefully, with its stranded characters arguing amongst each other as the wily murderer picks them off one by one, and the screenplay – an original by Al Martin – seeks to keep the viewer guessing at every turn, and doing a pretty good job of it. The first two murders are blamed on the dog (who looks about as frightening as Lassie), but when it’s in the same room as (nearly) all the others and a third murder is committed, then it’s clear that the movie has something else up its sleeve. This is eventually revealed in the final reel, where the murderer’s identity is uncovered, they laugh maniacally while explaining their dastardly plan for everyone, and are overpowered by Kelly appearing at the last second to save the day. Before then secrets are exposed, Marjorie does her own sleuthing (which pays off), Kelly gets socked on the jaw more than once (and not by the villain), and the inn is revealed to be one big death trap.

Despite its unprepossessing scenario and overly familiar set up, the movie is a sprightly example of what could be achieved on a meagre budget. Hill – who would go on to direct Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938) – refrains from using too many wide shots and keeps things tight, giving the movie an occasionally claustrophobic feel, an effect that’s helped by the camera staying close to the characters and capturing as many close ups as it can. The cast, many of whom are veterans of this type of movie, play their parts with agreeable gusto, while Ford makes for an enjoyable leading man, his easy-going demeanour and vaudeville background ensuring Kelly isn’t the genre’s usual earnest young hero. Pepper is stranded in blonde-bimboland but acquits herself well, and there’s an opportunity to see silent era star Kimball Young in a small but pivotal role that shows off the skills that, by that stage in her career, were criminally under-used.

Rating: 6/10 – despite its familiar setting and occasionally dodgy line readings, The Rogues Tavern is an entertaining old dark house mystery thriller that offers a handful of surprises to sweeten the experience; there’s comedy too amongst the thrills, and the whole thing is a delightful reminder that not every low budget, minor league thriller from the Thirties was a poor excuse for entertainment.

Lady in the Death House (1944) / D: Steve Sekely / 55m

Cast: Jean Parker, Lionel Atwill, Douglas Fowley, Marcia Mae Jones, Cy Kendall, John Maxwell, Robert Middlemass, George Irving

The tag line for Lady in the Death House says it all really: “Condemned to die…by the hand of the man I love!”, and only in a murder mystery from the Forties (oh, okay, and maybe the Fifties as well) would a scenario such as that one even exist. The movie begins with Mary Kirk Logan (Parker) on her way to the electric chair for the murder of a blackmailer. She’s just written a letter to a friend, criminal psychologist Dr Charles Finch (Atwill), who recounts both the details of the letter, and the case, to a group of journalists. We see Finch first meet struggling scientist Dwight Bradford (Fowley), and then they in turn meet Mary. Bradford and Mary soon fall in love but there’s a sticking point to their relationship: in order to make ends meet and further his research into reviving dead tissue, he has a second job as the state executioner (you can see where this is going, can’t you?). Mary won’t marry him while he’s a sanctioned killer, but before they get a chance to patch things up, Mary is sent to prison, and it’s down to Finch and Bradford, aided by Mary’s younger sister, Suzy (Jones), to prove her innocence before she’s executed.

Despite the absurdity of its romantic conundrum, Lady in the Death House is a neat, compelling little murder mystery that packs a lot into its short running time, and is far more rewarding than it has any right to be. A lot of its appeal has to do with the presence of Parker and Atwill, two actors who rarely gave disappointing performances and who should have had much bigger careers than was actually the case. Parker was a very talented actress, and it shows here as she resists the urge to make Mary’s situation one that many other actresses would have decided was ripe for unrestrained melodrama. It’s this very restraint that makes her role all the more sympathetic and credible. Atwill is at his most charming and relaxed, carrying the weight of so much exposition with an ease that most other actors would have wilted under. Like Parker, he divests his character of any melodramatic tendencies, something that for the time wasn’t the norm. When they share a scene together, it’s like a mini acting masterclass, and their performances stand out from those around them.

They’re helped immensely by Harry O. Hoyt’s focused screenplay – from a story by Frederick C. Davis – which culminates in a race against time to keep Mary alive. Bradford has a crisis of conscience along the way, but by then it’s too late for the character, who proves to be the movie’s one weak link. Fowley was a capable actor for the most part, but here he’s cruelly exposed by the constraints of a character who can’t or won’t give up his job as state executioner for the woman he loves (because the script says he can’t or won’t). Whenever it’s brought up, Fowley adopts the look of a man suffering from extreme emotional torment and remains quiet, frowning in apparent pain and wishing he was elsewhere. It’s not Fowley’s fault, but Bradford’s avoidance of the subject makes the character appear wilfully stupid.

That one issue aside though, the movie has a consistent, well developed pace that Hungarian-born director Sekely maintains through using effective cutting to provide a sense of urgency. His use of light and shadow is also much more effective than is usual for this kind of movie (see above image), and though this is a Producers Releasing Corporation production – a company more usually associated with so-called Poverty Row releases – it doesn’t look as washed out or as bland as many other movies made on such a small budget. The mystery elements are cleverly and plausibly established (even if there’s a clear miscarriage of justice at the heart of Mary’s trial that’s likely to have modern day audiences yelling at the screen), and the identity of the murderer, and their motive, is revealed in an equally acceptable and plausible way. On the whole, this is a low budget thriller that’s had a lot more attention paid to it than you’d usually expect.

Rating: 6/10 – good performances from Parker and Atwill, and confident direction from Sekely, help tremendously in keeping Lady in the Death House from becoming a pedestrian retread of every other innocent-facing-certain-death mystery movie; a largely polished exercise in small-scale thrills, it may not strike a chord with everyone, but for those who enjoy this sort of thing, there’s plenty to keep them happy.

Monthly Roundup – July 2017

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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The Hatton Garden Job (2017) / D: Ronnie Thompson / 93m

Cast: Matthew Goode, Phil Daniels, Larry Lamb, Clive Russell, David Calder, Joely Richardson, Stephen Moyer, Mark Harris, Jack Doolan

Rating: 6/10 – a group of aging ex-cons decide to rob an underground safe deposit facility in London’s Hatton Garden, but find that too many interested parties want in on the job, and the proceeds; based on the actual robbery that occurred in April 2015, The Hatton Garden Job is a light-hearted, and often lightweight version of actual events, but gets by thanks to some winning performances, a sense that it’s all too, too implausible, and a broad sense of humour that suits the material well enough despite its low budget origins.

The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017) / D: Niki Caro / 126m

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl, Michael McElhatton, Timothy Radford, Val Maloku, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas

Rating: 4/10 – at the outbreak of World War II, the Warsaw Zoo, run by Antonina and Jan Zabinski (Chastain, Heldenbergh), is commandeered by the Nazis, but it becomes a hiding place for Jews, and an even more dangerous place without its animals; a true story undone by telling it across the whole course of the war, The Zookeeper’s Wife is a turgid, painfully dull movie that is only sporadically interesting and which wastes the talents of its cast by making their characters’ plight seem like its been lifted from an unsuccessful soap opera.

Day of the Mummy (2014) / D: Johnny Tabor / 77m

Cast: Danny Glover, William McNamara, Andrea Monier, Eric Young, Philip Marlatt, Michael Cortez, Brandon deSpain

Rating: 4/10 – an archaeological trip into the Egyptian desert in search of a lost tomb sees its members at the mercy of a mummy, while they try and find a sacred stone said to be worth millions; a found-footage movie that like most doesn’t know how to make the most of the format, Day of the Mummy stretches its audience’s patience at every turn, and literally reduces Glover’s role to the bottom left hand corner of the screen, something that could be construed as “video-phoning” in his performance.

Security (2017) / D: Alain Desrochers / 92m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Liam McIntyre, Gabriella Wright, Chad Lindberg, Cung Le, Katharine de la Rocha, Jiro Wang

Rating: 5/10 – ex-Army veteran Eddie (Banderas) takes a night security job at a mall, and on his first night, finds himself fighting off a band of mercenaries hired to kill the teenage girl who’s taken refuge there; another Die Hard rip-off (when will they stop coming?), Security does have committed performances from Banderas and Kingsley as hero and villain respectively, but lacks sufficient invention to make this anything other than a pale echo of similar and better movies.

Quincannon, Frontier Scout (1956) / D: Lesley Selander / 84m

aka Frontier Scout

Cast: Tony Martin, Peggie Castle, John Bromfield, John Smith, Ron Randell, John Doucette, Morris Ankrum, Peter Mamakos, Edmund Hashim

Rating: 6/10 – when the Army discovers someone is selling rifles to the Indians, it’s down to experienced scout Quincannon (Martin) to get to the bottom of it all; while there’s nothing new here, thanks to Selander’s astute direction, Quincannon, Frontier Scout zips along at a decent pace and delivers on its basic premise, but not even Selander can mitigate for a pretty awful performance from Martin, a singer who really should have ignored his agent on this one.

Cars 3 (2017) / D: Brian Fee / 102m

Cast: Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Nathan Fillion, Larry the Cable Guy, Armie Hammer, Ray Magliozzi, Tony Shalhoub, Bonnie Hunt

Rating: 6/10 – Lightning McQueen’s days on the race track are numbered, but only he doesn’t get it, until racing for a new team begins to show him that there’s more to life than being Number One; Pixar redeem themselves somewhat after the complete and utter disaster that was Cars 2, but this is still tepid stuff that struggles to make the impact it needs, leaving Cars 3 looking nostalgic for the first movie, and trading on that movie’s glories to make itself look good.

Girls Trip (2017) / D: Malcolm D. Lee / 122m

Cast: Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh, Larenz Tate, Deborah Ayorinde

Rating: 6/10 – self-help guru Ryan (Hall) decides it’s time that she and her three best friends (Latifah, Smith, Haddish) should reconnect while in New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, but having a good time proves more difficult than she, or they, could have ever imagined; yet another female-centric variation of The Hangover, Girls Trip wants to be raunchy and out there (the urination scene), but ends up instead as a warm and fuzzy ode to sisterhood that conforms to expectations, but is rescued by the committed performances of the “girls” themselves.

47 Meters Down (2017) / Johannes Roberts / 89m

Cast: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine, Chris Johnson, Yani Gellman, Santiago Segura

Rating: 6/10 – two sisters (Moore, Holt) on vacation in Mexico find themselves stranded in a shark cage at the titular depth, and they only have an hour to save themselves before their oxygen runs out; better than it sounds thanks to Roberts’ hand on the tiller, 47 Meters Down isn’t beyond making some silly mistakes (let’s have Modine’s captain recite the perils of nitrogen narcosis – twice), being too repetitive once on the sea bed, and building up tension only to allow it to dissipate to no great effect.

Death in High Heels (1947)

17 Monday Jul 2017

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D: Lionel Tomlinson (as Tommy Tomlinson) / 48m

Cast: Don Stannard, Elsa Tee, Veronica Rose, Denise Anthony, Patricia Laffan, Diana Wong, Nora Gordon, Bill Hodge, Kenneth Warrington, Leslie Spurling

A cheap and cheerful murder mystery – told by the lead detective in flashback – Death in High Heels is a “quota quickie” designed by Hammer Films (who had been dormant as a production company since 1937) as a way of reviving the company name and helping to fill the gaps in cinema schedules. Made on a shoestring, its tale of murder in a Bond Street dress shop is a perfect example of the material that Hammer looked to release at the time, and though it seems unremarkable at first glance, acts as a snapshot of the period, and what could be done on a micro-budget.

As already mentioned, the movie is set (largely) in a dress shop and is narrated by Detective Charlesworth (Stannard) as he recounts a tale of murder, jealousy and ambition. The dress shop is called Christof’s, and it’s owned and run by a man named Frank Bevan (Warrington). He employs a staff of seven: two supervisors, Agnes Gregory (Rose) and Magda Doon (Laffan); a designer, Mr Cecil (Hodge); three dress models, Victoria (Tee), Aileen (Anthony), and Almond Blossom (Wong); and a cleaning lady, Mrs ‘Arris (Gordon). Eight very different people all together, but with seven of them all united about one thing: their dislike of Miss Gregory. Sharp-tongued and unfriendly, Miss Gregory has earned the enmity of everyone at one time or another. She has attached herself to Bevan though, and when Magda is put in line for a promotion ahead of her, Miss Gregory does her best to get the job instead. When Bevan changes his mind, and gives the job to Miss Gregory, Magda’s unexpected death (which follows soon after), leads to a murder investigation.

The cause of death is poisoning, and by an acid that was brought into the shop by Aileen and Victoria in order to clean a hat. Most of it was spilt on the floor and then cleared up by Mrs ‘Arris who was supposed to have left it in an envelope on a table. But the envelope disappears before Magda’s death, and no one will admit to taking it. Everyone is a suspect, but Charlesworth quickly deduces that Magda wasn’t the intended victim, it was Miss Gregory, the poison added to her lunch but eaten by her rival instead. As his investigation continues, Charlesworth learns that some of the staff have secrets that may or may not be reasons for trying to kill Miss Gregory, and as he sifts through a web of lies and deceit, two main suspects emerge… but did either one of them try to poison Miss Gregory?

The answer is nowhere near as obvious as you’d expect, though it’s not really the point of this fast-paced little thriller, which seeks instead to shine a light on post-War Britain and the social imperatives of the period. Bevan is the haughty self-made man who enjoys the prestige that goes with having titled clients and a shop in London’s exclusive Bond Street. Miss Gregory has ideas above her station as well, and behaves badly towards the others because she rides on Bevan’s coat-tails and presumes an intimacy with him that allows her to feel superior to everyone else. Aileen’s “young man” is “very grand” and it’s her ambition to be as grand as he is, even though she’s from a working class background, the same background as Mrs ‘Arris. Mr Cecil is something of an hysterical ninny, a man whose sense of self-worth is reinforced by his mother. Only Magda and Victoria seem comfortable in their own skin, as even Almond Blossom’s aloof nature seems to be a cover for an unfortunate prior experience with Bevan. All this is neatly laid out in the nineteen minutes before Magda’s death, and all this has a bearing on the nature of Charlesworth’s investigation.

Inevitably, the secrets the characters have been trying to hide are revealed, and just as inevitably they prove predictable and of no relevance to the murder. But Christianna Brand’s screenplay, adapted from her novel of the same name, makes good use of the distrust amongst the characters, and even if to contemporary eyes there doesn’t seem to be anything too striking about the inter-relationships and the society in microcosm approach to the staff and their foibles, nevertheless, someone watching this seventy years ago would have recognised much of the social dynamic on display. They would have felt comforted by it to some degree, and even now the movie has that ability to reassure the viewer as to its intentions. Familiar territory then, and all the better for it; and despite some awkward line readings, it holds the attention and balances its various storylines with ease.

Though the performances range from arch (Wong, Rose) to overtly theatrical (Laffan), there’s still the sense that everyone is familiar with the material and knows what to do. Stannard gives a carefree performance that is amusing and relaxed, while Tee is confident and direct, and in their brief scenes together, a good foil for his breezy attitude. Tomlinson, whose first feature this was, keeps the camera as agile as possible given the confines of the sets, and uses his previous experience as an editor to give the movie a sprightly feel that adds to the pleasant nature of the material as a whole. It’s not a movie that will rock anyone’s world (not that it was ever meant to), but as a calling card to the rest of the British movie industry that Hammer was back and here to stay, it has to be judged a success.

Rating: 6/10 – it’s too easy to be dismissive of a movie like Death in High Heels, and too easy to ignore its obvious virtues, but anyone willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt will be pleasantly surprised by its jaunty nature and effective character building; the low budget and sparse production values do hinder things, and some unnecessary narrative leaps and bounds in the second half don’t help, but overall this is a solid, agreeable mystery that deserves a wider audience. (16/31)

NOTE: Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a trailer for Death in High Heels.

Multiple Maniacs (1970)

03 Monday Jul 2017

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D: John Waters / 96m

Cast: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, Rick Morrow, Howard Gruber, Paul Swift, Susan Lowe, George Figgs

Some movies that garner a reputation for being “obscene” or “perverted” upon release generally don’t have a long shelf life, and soon fade not into obscurity exactly, but rely on gaining a cult following to ensure they’re still watched and talked about. And any such movie certainly won’t expect to be critically lauded, or attain cult status amongst those who’ve seen it unless it has something that no one other movie can offer, and John Waters’ Multiple Maniacs has that something: the amazing, human tornado of strident perversion called Divine.

Waters’ early work – this is his second feature – is synonymous with the rise of Harris Glenn Milstead as the merciless, murderous-minded, savagely anti-establishment grotesquerie known as Divine. This is a movie that puts itself out there as being counter-culture entertainment, a bargain basement, shot-on-16mm trash bag of arch religious references, austere social commentary, and documentary-like footage. It doesn’t look or feel like a standard issue movie because Waters has deliberately chosen to shoot it in such a diffuse, non-professional way that it often looks like a collection of outtakes strung together for convenience rather than a truly finished product where everything was shot as planned and nobody forgot their lines in the middle of a scene (which happens here a lot). There’s also a lot of guerrilla moviemaking, as outdoor scene after outdoor scene reveals a member of the public looking on in confusion and/or horror at what they’re witnessing (Divine in various states of undress and challenging middle class perceptions of good taste).

Beneath all the amateur hour shenanigans and louche bravado of its characters though, Waters’ ode to unrestrained perversion is touchingly conservative in its approach, and nowhere near as bizarre as it wants you to believe. Part of the appeal of Waters’ movies in the early Seventies is their deliberate inversion of public, social and moral standards, and the ways in which Waters’ gleefully attempted to subvert the cultural values of the time. Waters was only twenty-four when he made Multiple Maniacs, but it feels like a movie made by a rebellious teenager taking pot shots at his parents (the religious elements) and the passive determinism of the denizens of his home town of Baltimore. It’s no wonder Waters wants to shake things up and challenge the status quo; he’s a young man still working out his issues from growing up.

In Multiple Maniacs, this kind of celluloid psychotherapy finds its best and truest expression in the form of Lady Divine (Divine, naturally) and her Cavalcade of Perversion, the travelling freak show she fronts as a way of making money (by robbing the poor fools who are persuaded to see the show), and espousing her contempt for society. Lady Divine surrounds herself with “assorted sluts, fags, dykes and pimps” because they share her disdain for more traditional adult roles. They’re the protesters and the dissenters, acolytes who share her (and Waters’) disapproval at the way society treats the disenfranchised and the socially excluded. Lady Divine would kill them all if she could, but Waters’ Catholic upbringing precludes such extreme measures, and though his transgressive alter ego does kill on a handful of occasions, and even feasts on the entrails of one of her victims, when she’s finally consumed by a murderous mania, the most violent act she commits is to take a sledgehammer to a car.

The movie’s more violent excesses are leavened by unintentional moments of levity, such as when Lady Divine attempts to stab her new friend, the Religious Whore (Stole), and begins her attack by stabbing the air above the character’s head, an obvious concession to the fact that Divine is wielding a real knife and doesn’t want to hurt his co-star. And towards the end, when Lady Divine is chasing dozens of people through the streets of Baltimore, her terrifying creature moment is undermined by the number of faces that are displaying laughter instead of terror. But through it all, Waters makes no apologies for the excesses he portrays, and he burns any religious bridges he may have had access to by juxtaposing Christ and the Stations of the Cross with Lady Divine being anally pleasured by a rosary-wielding Mink Stole. It’s profane and it’s crass but it’s still just Waters railing against the formalities and restrictions imposed by organised religion.

When Waters isn’t expressing his dissatisfaction with contemporary morality, he’s holding up a mirror to contemporary issues as well, with mentions of the murder of Sharon Tate – Lady Divine tortures her boyfriend, Mr David (the splendid David Lochary), with the possibility he was involved in her murder – and various references to the war in Vietnam. And he’s surprisingly waspish when it comes to notions of the nuclear family, with Lady Divine doting on her somewhat promiscuous daughter, Cookie (Mueller), while submitting to the attentions of glue-sniffing rapists, Miss Stole and her beads, and a giant lobster (Lobstora) that appears out of nowhere and sets her on the road to sexually-induced hysterical violence. And the idea that Mr David could be seeing another woman, Bonnie (Pearce), whips her into a hypocritical frenzy (and allows Waters’ favourite Edith Massey to provide her first mangled performance in one of his movies).

The dialogue is suitably terse and aggressive, as befits a group of characters who are angry at themselves and the wider world, and though the performances are what you’d have to charitably regard as “authentically naïve”, there’s a rude energy to it all that more than makes up for the deficiencies of shooting on such a low budget. Waters opts for some uncomfortable close ups to highlight the pains and suffering felt by his characters, and doesn’t always worry if those images are distorted or out of focus (one gets the feeling a lot of scenes and shots were the first, and only, take). This adds to the documentary tone the movie adopts and exploits from time to time, and shows that Waters was very much aware of the concept of cinema verité when he was putting his movie together. All of which makes Multiple Maniacs a more heartfelt and poignant movie than may be expected, and shows that, despite all the attempts at shocking its audience, the movie is as much an ode to treating people of all walks of life fairly as it is about exposing the social injustices that stop this from happening. This leaves John Waters looking very much like a social reformer – and who would have thought that?

Rating: 8/10 – a trial by fire for anyone unfamiliar with Waters’ early work, Multiple Maniacs nevertheless works on many levels and is unremittingly earnest in its exposure of small-minded hypocrisy amongst middle-class America and its apologists; for all the sturm und drang on display though, it’s a tract that preaches acceptance but only insofar as you conform to the way society expects you to behave – and if you don’t, then society will call out the National Guard. (3/31)

Monthly Roundup – June 2017

30 Friday Jun 2017

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Attack of the Killer Donuts (2016) / D: Scott Wheeler / 85m

Cast: Justin Ray, Kayla Compton, Ben Heyman, Michael Swan, C. Thomas Howell, Fredrick Burns, Kassandra Voyagis, Chris De Christopher, Lauren Compton, Alison England, Michael Rene Walton

Rating: 3/10 – Johnny (Ray) works in a donut shop, while his mad scientist uncle (Swan) works in his basement lab cooking up a formula that – surprise! – will eventually turn donuts into flesh-hungry, bloodthirsty… donuts; bottom of the barrel stuff that aims for kitschy fun but misses by a mile, Attack of the Killer Donuts wears its sugar-coated heart on its sleeve, but is too awful in its execution to make up for its many, many, many faults, or the fact that it’s run out of steam before the first victim is put out of their misery (unlike the audience).

Before the Flood (2016) / D: Fisher Stevens / 96m

With: Leonardo DiCaprio, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Al Gore, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, John Kerry

Rating: 8/10 – actor and UN Messenger of Peace on Climate Change, Leonardo DiCaprio explores the ways in which the world is still refusing to acknowledge the effects of greenhouse gases and the need to switch to renewable energy; DiCaprio is a passionate environmental activist who has access to many of the “big players”, and his targeted globe-trotting highlights the natural disasters that are occurring all around us, all of which makes Before the Flood a worthy successor to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and an important, and sadly necessary, acknowledgment that we’re still not doing enough to turn things around and ensure our collective futures.

Dough (2015) / D: John Goldschmidt / 95m

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Jerome Holder, Phil Davis, Ian Hart, Pauline Collins, Andrew Ellis, Malachi Kirby, Natasha Gordon, Melanie Freeman, Daniel Caltagirone, Andy de la Tour

Rating: 7/10 – an aging Jewish baker (Pryce) takes on an apprentice (Holder) whose second job as a drug dealer leads to the bakery’s sales going through the roof when an unexpected ingredient finds its way into the dough mix; a genial, inoffensive movie that features winning performances from Pryce and Holder, Davis as the kind of smarmy business developer who belongs in a pantomime, and a pleasant sense of its own shortcomings, Dough is a cross-cultural comedy drama that is amusing for the most part but which lacks the substance needed to make it more engaging.

Grief Street (1931) / D: Richard Thorpe / 64m

Cast: Barbara Kent, John Holland, Dorothy Christy, Crauford Kent, Lillian Rich, James P. Burtis, Larry Steers, Lloyd Whitlock

Rating: 5/10 – there are plenty of suspects, but just who did kill less than popular stage actor Alvin Merle (Kent), and why?; a locked room murder mystery where everyone with a motive is assembled Agatha Christie-style at the end to reveal the murderer, Grief Street is a brash, enjoyable whodunnit whose villain will be obvious to anyone who’s seen more than a handful of similarly plotted movies, but the movie more than makes up for this thanks to spirited performances from its cast, and Thorpe’s relaxed directing style.

The Outer Gate (1937) / D: Raymond Cannon / 63m

Cast: Ralph Morgan, Kay Linaker, Ben Alexander, Eddie Acuff, Charles Brokaw

Rating: 5/10 – when an up-and-coming employee (Alexander) is sent to prison for embezzlement, his employer (Morgan) is the first to believe in his guilt, but when the truth is revealed and he’s released from jail, the employee sets about getting his revenge; directed by Cannon in a crude, rudimentary way, The Outer Gate is nevertheless a movie that plays to the strengths of its gosh-you-won’t-believe-it screenplay, Morgan’s low-key, passive performance, and a surprisingly grim fatalism, all of which make it more intriguing than it appears to be on the face of things.

High Voltage (1929) / D: Howard Higgin / 63m

aka Wanted

Cast: William Boyd, Carole Lombard, Owen Moore, Phillips Smalley, Billy Bevan, Diane Ellis

Rating: 4/10 – when a bus load of passengers is stranded thanks to heavy snow, they take refuge in an abandoned church, only to find they’re not alone; a dialogue heavy drama made in the early days of the Talkies, High Voltage is a well acted if dreary experience that tries hard to make itself interesting but falls short thanks to its focus on (already) stereotypical characters and the period’s need for a neat, everything-wrapped-up-satisfactorily ending.

CHIPS (2017) / D: Dax Shepard / 101m

Cast: Michael Peña, Dax Shepard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rosa Salazar, Jessica McNamee, Adam Brody, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Kristen Bell, Justin Chatwin

Rating: 4/10 – rookie motorcycle cop Jon Baker (Shepard) is teamed up with newly transferred Frank Poncharello (Peña) in the California Highway Patrol, and soon finds himself tracking down a bunch of dirty cops led by veteran Ray Kurtz (D’Onofrio); forty years on from its origin as a TV series, CHIPS is given a big screen reboot thanks to fanboy Shepard, but is only moderately successful in its efforts to drag the show kicking and screaming into the 21st century, leaving it completely dependent on how you feel about Shepherd and Peña as a comedy duo, and its less than inspired script.

Baby Driver (2017)

29 Thursday Jun 2017

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D: Edgar Wright / 113m

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Eiza González, Jon Bernthal, CJ Jones, Flea, Lanny Joon, Sky Ferreira, Paul Williams

There are very few times when directors manage to achieve fully the vision they have for their movies. Some have pet projects that they wait years to bring to the big screen, but when they do, they’re not always successful. Some movies have audiences wondering what on earth the director was thinking of, some can be filed under glorious failures, while others achieve the distinction of gaining a cult following. None of these apply to Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, a movie that zooms onto our screens like a gust of fresh air designed to blow away all the horrendously bloated blockbuster movies that have been foisted on us so far this year.

Wright’s ode to fast cars, old-fashioned meet-cute romance and killer tunes is quite simply, a blast. If this is your kind of movie then you are going to have an amazing time. And if this isn’t your kind of movie… well, that’s a shame, as you’re missing an absolute treat. Wright has made a movie that is energetic, soulful, visually arresting, and chock full of great performances, from Spacey’s criminal mastermind to Foxx’s psycho with extra attitude. The story is a simple one: Baby (Elgort) owes Doc (Spacey) for trying to steal his car when Baby was younger. By being the driver on bank robberies that Doc has set up, Baby’s debt diminishes with each job. With one last job to go before the debt is fully paid, Baby meets waitress Debora (James), and suddenly he has a reason to move on with his life.

Baby takes a job as a pizza delivery driver (no one’s going to get a free pizza after thirty minutes if he’s delivering), and he begins to make plans for himself and Debora to leave Atlanta and hit the road, travelling to wherever it takes them. But Doc appears with another job, one that could see Baby earning a lot more money than before; he’s also aware of Baby’s relationship with Debora and makes it clear that he’s not giving Baby a choice in taking part or not. Doc has assembled Bats (Foxx), Buddy (Hamm) and his wife Darling (González) to carry out the robbery, with Baby as the driver. But in prepping the job, Baby begins to have second thoughts about going through with it. He tries to get away and hit the road with Debora, but he’s outwitted by Buddy and Bats, leaving him with only one choice: take part in the robbery or see Debora come to harm. And then the robbery goes horribly wrong…

From the start, Wright displays a flair and a confidence that elevates the material to greater heights than anyone could have expected. Expanding on an idea he had back in 1994 – and which he first explored in the 2003 video for Mint Royale’s Blue Song – Wright has written, constructed, and brought to life a movie that celebrates love, and a passion for music that is a form of love in itself. Baby suffers from tinnitus, a “hum in the drum”, and he uses music to drown it out. This gives Wright the chance to flood the soundtrack with an array of carefully and aptly chosen songs that punctuate and inform the mood at any given time. Some choices might seem counter-intuitive (Focus’s Hocus Pocus for a foot chase? The Damned’s Neat Neat Neat for a robbery getaway?) but they all work, adding to the clever visual and aural stylings that Wright employs throughout.

But while the soundtrack is the key to much of what is going on emotionally in the movie, it’s the look of it that clinches our involvement. Wright is supremely confident when it comes to placing and moving the camera, and some of the angles and shots that he conjures up are nothing short of breathtaking. An early scene where Baby waits outside a bank and is listening to Bellbottoms by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion offers the viewer a bravura expression of Baby’s love for music and the way it can motivate and uplift him. This is only Elgort’s eighth movie, but his performance is a far cry from his usual pouty roles in a variety of YA movies. The pout is still here but it’s reined in for the most part, and seeing `Baby “rock out” to various songs in the apartment he shares with his deaf foster father (Jones) shows an ease and a loosening of attitude that is a good sign for any future roles.

But Baby Driver isn’t just a visually arresting movie with a terrific soundtrack, it’s also a tender romance and a cracking thriller. The relationship between Baby and Debora could have been a little too saccharine in comparison to the more muscular action elements (of which there are plenty), but Wright is wise to this and keeps it all light and dreamy, a forever fairy tale approach that works well against the macho posturings of the crews Doc assembles. James and Elgort have an easy-going chemistry, and their scenes together are funny and sweet and engaging. On the other side of the fence, Foxx is brusque and confrontational as psycho-without-an-off-switch Bats, Bernthal is another crew member who picks on Baby to no avail, while Hamm goes from amiable robber to avenging killer once the final robbery goes wrong. These are all good performances but they’re topped by Spacey’s sinister yet urbane Doc, a character you actually want to see more of, but who Wright wisely uses sparingly.

The action scenes are all very well choreographed, with the first car chase at the beginning of the movie (and which features that manoeuvre from the trailer) proving to be one of the best action sequences you’re likely to see all year. Wright shows a tremendous sense of space and distance in these sequences, and the camerawork by DoP Bill Pope is magnificent, propelling the viewer along with Baby et al, and providing enough breathtaking moments for two movies. And even when Wright slows things down in order to advance the plot, there’s still a sense of energy waiting to be released, of power straining at the gate to be let loose. And with the next squeal of tyres there it is, and off we go again.

This isn’t a movie though where the characters are secondary to the action, or play second fiddle to a script that doesn’t make sense. It’s a fairly simple, straightforward movie that looks amazing but still manages to retain a heart and a soul thanks to its romantic elements, and to the way in which the characters interact with each other. There are moments of humour, too – how could there not be in a movie by Edgar Wright – and they fit right in with all the other elements, unforced, and keeping the tone from becoming too serious. Wright balances all these elements to perfection, and there aren’t any scenes that either feel extraneous or tonally at odds with the rest of the movie. All in all, a tremendous achievement, and one that at long last proves that mainstream moviemaking doesn’t have to be loud, brash, overly reliant on CGI, and devoid of a coherent story and plot. Hollywood – take notice.

Rating: 9/10 – the first bona fide all-round success of 2017, Baby Driver is a triumph of style, visuals, acting, directing, writing – hell, everything, and a movie to be savoured just as much for the things it doesn’t do as the things it does; and of course it has possibly the coolest soundtrack of the year as well, a feast for the ears that contains so many gems that you won’t be able to decide which one to hum as you leave the cinema.

Motive for Revenge (1935)

23 Friday Jun 2017

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D: Burt P. Lynwood / 60m

Cast: Donald Cook, Irene Hervey, Doris Lloyd, Edwin Maxwell, Le Strange Millman, Russell Simpson, John Kelly, Edwin Argus, Billy West, Wheeler Oakman, Fern Emmett

During the Thirties, crime dramas were a staple ingredient of the moviegoer’s diet, with studios falling over themselves to supply a waiting public with as much product as they could possibly want (and then a lot more besides). Of course, these crime dramas ranged in terms of the production values afforded them, the quality of their scripts, the skill of their directors, and the abilities of their casts. At the independent end of the ladder, these kinds of movies were made fast, cheaply, and with no further ambition than to get into cinemas as quickly as possible, and make as much money as possible before settling into obscurity. Often they were entirely forgettable, with plots and storylines and characters that blended into one, and the kind of resolutely upbeat endings that look and feel entirely cheesy and unrealistic to modern viewers.

Motive for Revenge is exactly that kind of crime drama. Made on a shoestring budget by Majestic Pictures, the movie suffers from an absurd, mind-boggling screenplay that makes you wonder if writer Stuart Anthony was on some serious medication when he wrote it, the kind of absentee direction from Lynwood that could imply he wasn’t even on set during the shoot, and enough woeful acting from its cast to make the viewer wince every few minutes (or sooner, depending on your tolerance). The movie crams a lot into its short running time, but hardly any of it makes any sense, and even more of it will have the average viewer shaking their head in disbelief. Viewers familiar with this type of movie, however, should derive some measure of appreciation for the efforts of all involved in putting this movie together. Because, against all the odds – or maybe in spite of them – Motive for Revenge is much more enjoyable than it seems.

Again, the screenplay is mind-boggling. Barry Webster (Cook) is a bank teller who decides to rob his own bank in order to provide a luxury lifestyle for his wife, Muriel (Hervey). He does this because his mother-in-law (Lloyd) keeps making nasty comments about his lack of money and ambition. Unable to tell his mother-in-law to take a hike, he steals enough money to go on a spending spree with his wife before he’s caught and sentenced to seven years in jail. At first, Muriel tells Barry she’ll wait for him, but it’s not long before a fellow inmate is showing him a newspaper headline announcing her impending divorce from Barry. Then she marries jealous businessman, William King (Maxwell). It’s not a happy marriage, but it’s too late to back out. Meanwhile, Barry falls in with the wrong crowd in jail and when he’s released he uses them to plot his revenge against his ex-wife and her new husband. He goes to their home, and during a confrontation in which all three have guns in their hands, King is killed. Barry goes into hiding, Muriel attempts to take the blame for her husband’s death, and the movie gets sillier and sillier (except for a pretty good speedboat chase that’s marred by some awkward looking model work at the end).

There’s a lot more to it, but despite all its shortcomings, and faults that practically leap off the screen in their efforts to draw attention to themselves, the movie has a certain energy and presence about itself. Yes, the direction is awful, and yes, there’s enough wooden acting going on to give the viewer secondary splinters, but even with all this, the movie has a rough charm that makes up for all its failures. The early scenes zip by at a fair old lick as it sets up the movie’s second half and the murder mystery – just who did shoot William King? (You’ll never guess) – that will become the focus of the remainder of the movie. But along the way the characters all behave strangely, with some motivations and decisions made seemingly at whim, or out of the blue (you get the sense that Anthony was making it all up with no idea of how to piece it all together). And yet with all that, the movie retains a strange, almost hypnotic appeal. You have to keep watching just to see how silly it can get.

On that level, it doesn’t disappoint. Cook and Hervey act like a married couple who spend most of their time avoiding each other, while Maxwell, as the paranoid, controlling second husband, adopts a perma-scowl throughout and chews on his lines as if he didn’t like the taste of them. There’s solid, unspectacular, but also deathless support from the wonderfully named Millman as a District Attorney who won’t look further than Muriel for the killer, and there are “comic” interludes featuring Kelly and Argus as the cops’ answer to Dumb and Dumber. These interludes aren’t as funny as some of the more unintentional comic moments in the movie, especially if they involve Cook having to walk and talk at the same time, but they do break up the otherwise po-faced narrative. With the benefit of over eighty years of hindsight, Motive for Revenge is easily the kind of movie that will be overlooked by casual viewers, and dismissed by afficionados of this sort of thing. But that would be unfair, as the movie – and quite perversely – has a way of worming its way under your defences and making an impact. You won’t necessarily want to see it a second time, but as an example of a movie that shouldn’t make any kind of an impact at all, it’s well worth seeking out.

Rating: 3/10 – unashamedly bad, Motive for Revenge is not a minor gem or in need of critical reappraisal, but a good old-fashioned Thirties crime drama that is strangely entertaining, and despite its seemingly best efforts to appear otherwise; a movie where looking past the obvious brings its own unexpected reward, it’s a rare occasion where a movie somehow manages to transcend its low-budget origins and decides, in the words of Madonna, to “strike a pose and let’s get to it”.

NOTE: There is currently no trailer available for Motive for Revenge.

Shimmer Lake (2017)

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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D: Oren Uziel / 86m

Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, John Michael Higgins, Wyatt Russell, Adam Pally, Mark Rendall, Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston, Angela Vint, Isobel Dove

A low-key yet bristling thriller, Shimmer Lake – another title that is atmospheric yet has little relation to the main plot of the movie – tells its story in reverse. And so we see Andy Sikes (Wilson) in the basement of his own home, and yet he’s clearly trying to avoid being discovered. Upstairs is his brother, Zeke (Walker), the town sheriff. Soon we realise that there’s been a bank robbery, and Andy is involved, along with two other men, Ed Burton (Russell) and Chris Morrow (Rendall). It transpires that Andy has  the money from the robbery, and Zeke is certain that he’s planning to meet up with Ed. He also has to contend with two FBI agents, Walker and Biltmore (Corddry, Livingston), whose approach to the investigation and the hunt for the three men appears less than serious. When they find the body of Judge Dawkins (Higgins), a wider conspiracy involving the death of Burton’s son begins to come to light. Later that night, having avoided being seen, Andy meets up with Ed’s wife, Steph (Sigman), but their meeting doesn’t go the way Andy had hoped.

The day before, Dawkins demands the return of an incriminating tape from Burton, Morrow’s role in the robbery is revealed, Steph deliberately injures herself before talking to Zeke and the FBI agents, and further details of the conspiracy are revealed. The day ends with the death of Dawkins and Andy coming into possession of the money. The previous day, Chris is lured out of hiding by Steph, and the two meet at a motel. Dawkins appears, anxious to secure the return of the tape. Steph has the money from the robbery and she makes Dawkins hide it until it’s safe. Andy hears that Zeke was shot during the robbery, and the FBI agents arrive in town. And on the day before that, all the various threads that have spun out along the ensuing days are shown their origins as we learn what happened during the robbery.

It’s easy to like the structure that first-time writer/director Oren Uziel has employed in telling his tale of small-town corruption, greed, and revenge, but while Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) is an obvious reference point, sadly – and despite the best of intentions – Shimmer Lake doesn’t match it for inventiveness, style, or sheer narrative trickery. Part of the issue is the pacing, with stretches of the movie feeling as if they’ve been played out beyond their natural length. The early scenes involving the FBI agents are tonally at odds with the rest of the movie, as if Uziel doesn’t trust their inclusion unless they’re cracking wise and providing fleeting moments of comedy. This makes them seem like idiots in a movie where everyone else is being resolutely serious. As the movie progresses and they appear less and less, it’s a minor blessing for the material that they do so, and the tone improves immensely.

But if there’s one main, altogether obvious, problem with Shimmer Lake, it’s the lack of any characters to sympathise with or root for. Zeke is a laconic, quietly thoughtful sheriff who lacks any charisma, and thanks to Walker’s laidback performance, often looks bored by having to mount an investigation in the first place. His deputy, Reed Ethington (Pally), is someone who manages to stay just this side of “dim-witted”, but it’s a close-run thing. Andy is shown initially as panicked, which might have provoked some sympathy, but as the movie reveals more and more of his past, we discover he’s a bit of an arrogant prick, and any sympathy dissipates. Chris is an obvious patsy, Steph is the Lady Macbeth character amongst it all, Ed is the “mastermind” who can’t tell an 8 when he sees it, and Dawkins is the devious bank manager whose private “foibles” act as a catalyst for the bank robbery itself (there’s a back story involving the death of Burton’s son, and this is ostensibly the reason for everything that happens, but Uziel refers to it as a motivator far too often for it to maintain any effectiveness).

What we’re left with is a thriller that spends too much time explaining itself, and not enough time posing a broader mystery than the one we can see in front of us. In telling a reverse-linear story, Uziel does well to hide the various inter-connections and relationships that drive the story backward (forward?), but by the time all is revealed, the viewer is unlikely to care too much, and a last-minute revelation (which is meant to be clever in a “ah-ha-you-didn’t-see-that-coming” kind of way), lacks the impact needed for audiences to say to themselves, “now it all makes sense”. Instead, Uziel presents us with a patchwork of moods, tones, dramatic elements, comedic soundbites, and an unconvincing milieu where Zeke and Reed are the only cops in town, and Andy’s daughter, Sally (Dove), can hear the phrase “fat, f*cking bastard” and then apply it to Reed within the very next minute.

Despite the talented cast, and Jarin Blaschke’s often brooding cinematography, what we have here, ultimately, is a movie whose clever approach doesn’t amount to much, and will in all likelihood, frustrate and annoy anyone who watches it. The test of a good reverse storyline is if it plays just as well – or better – if you watch from end to beginning (or beginning to end – you get the idea). Shimmer Lake is certainly a movie that tries its best, but there are few rewards here for the casual viewer, and for die-hard fans of this particular sub-genre of thrillers, too much will remain obvious no matter how much time Uziel has spent in obscuring things. Like so many thrillers with a clever central conceit that isn’t as rigorously applied as it needs to be, Shimmer Lake is more of a disappointment than a triumph.

Rating: 4/10 – what could have been a tense, nail-biting experience is reduced to that of a tepid, unfocused drama, and though Shimmer Lake takes some narrative risks, they’re not enough to make things any more rewarding; shallow at times, and with a casual disregard for any empathy that might be shown towards its characters, the movie is yet another feature that looks good on the surface but lacks the necessary substance underneath to keep audiences hooked until the end.

Top 10 True Crime Movies at the International Box Office

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

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In a very real sense we’re all fascinated by crime, and the behaviour of criminals. We all like to think that we wouldn’t do anything like the things we see in our movies and on television, but as that’s very likely the thinking that every criminal starts out with, it’s not so surprising then that there are all kinds of thoughts and plans and counter measures in place to offset this leaning, but there will always be those for whom the regular rules won’t apply – and they’ll tell you that if you’re unlucky. Thankfully, history is full of criminal activities, and many of them have been adapted for the big screen. And some have been very successful indeed. So, here they are: the Top 10 True Crime Movies at the International Box Office.

10 – Zodiac (2007) – $84,785,914

During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a serial killer operated in the San Francisco Bay area. The unsolved murders he was responsible for, and the manhunt for him, are the movie’s prime focus, with director David Fincher offering a clinical yet thrilling exercise in true crime that grips from its opening scene, and which never lets go. The recreation of the period, and the events that occurred back then, is played out on an almost forensic level, and Zodiac‘s amazing cast – which includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr, and Mark Ruffalo – all give career-defining performances. Gripping despite the absence of a cathartic ending – the Zodiac killer was never caught – this is still a bold and uncompromising movie that remains as impressive now as it was on its original release.

9 – Pain & Gain (2013) – $86,175,291

Body building, kidnapping, blackmail, and torture – three of those things seem like natural bedfellows, but in the mid-1990’s all four elements came together when a Sun Gym employee Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) recruited Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) in a plot to kidnap and extort a ransom from local Florida businessman Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub). It was a plan almost doomed to end in disaster, and Michael Bay’s uneven, and superficially appealing black comedy benefits from good performances, and a sense of its own violent absurdity. Not a hit with the critics, Bay and Wahlberg’s names nevetheless helped Pain & Gain in its success, and if it’s a movie neither mentions very often, then this quote by Ed Harris’s detective perfectly sums it all up: “Unfortunately, this is a true story.”

8 – Black Mass (2015) – $99,775,678

The first of three movies on the list that star Johnny Depp in the lead role, Black Mass charts the criminal life and career of South Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger. His association with the FBI remains an incredible example of real life mutual dependency and manipulation, with both sides certain they were “in control” of the other. As the reptilian Bulger, Depp has the look and gaze of a velociraptor, and his performance is probably his best in a very long time, but ultimately the movie suffers from poor pacing and too many unresolved subplots. There’s terrific support from Joel Edgerton, Jesse Plemons, and Peter Sarsgaard, and the soundtrack supports the tone and the mood of the movie with aplomb, but again, this is a movie where a lot happens but not all of it matters or has any impact.

7 – Gangster Squad (2013) – $105,200,903

A heavily fictionalised account of the LAPD’s attempts to neutralise crime czar Mickey Cohen, Gangster Squad plays fast and loose with the truth in an effort to be as slick and entertaining as possible. Terrific period detail and a great cast can’t compensate for the movie’s many shortcomings, or the emerging feeling that it’s the violent action sequences that mattered most when the movie was being put together. Still, it’s these same sequences that provide Gangster Squad with the crude energy that makes it acceptable on a visceral level, but if it’s well rounded characters, a coherent plot, or credible dialogue you’re looking for, then this isn’t the movie for you’re looking for.

6 – Changeling (2008) – $113,020,256

The 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop case may not be one of the more widely known criminal cases of the twentieth century, but in the hands of director Clint Eastwood it becomes a fascinating, and thought-provoking drama about police intransigence and the determined efforts of a mother (Angelina Jolie) to convince the authorities that the boy returned to her after her son has been abducted, isn’t really her son. Jolie gives a fearless performance, but while the movie is generally compelling in a “what happens next?” sense, as a whole Eastwood’s decision to dial down the inherent melodrama of the case leads to the movie feeling lacklustre and pedestrian.

5 – Donnie Brasco (1997) – $124,909,762

The second movie on the list to feature Johnny Depp examines the career of Joseph Pistone, an undercover FBI agent. During the 1970’s, Pistone infiltrated the Mafia Bonnano crime family, an assignment that led to the convictions of over one hundred Mafia members. Depp is superb in the title role, but he’s edged out – just – by Al Pacino’s portrayal of Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero, the low-level soldier Pistone uses as a way to gain acceptance by the crime family. Both actors challenge each other in their scenes together, and they’re ably supported by the likes of Michael Madsen and Bruno Kirby. With a terrific script by Paul Attanasio and scalpel-like direction from Mike Newell, Donnie Brasco offers ethical and moral dilemmas, friendships borne out of necessary deceit, and a trawl through the criminal underworld that is both attractive and repulsive – and unapologetically so.

4 – Public Enemies (2009) – $214,104,620

Depp 3.0 sees him as notorious Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger, otherwise regarded as Public Enemy No. 1. Michael Mann’s ode to a more lawless, bygone era, plays somewhat as a Western, with Depp as the bad guy and Christian Bale as the good guy, FBI agent Melvin Purvis. Mann’s trademark visual aesthetic is on display as expected, and often to breathtaking effect, and the supporting cast includes the likes of Giovanni Ribisi, Carey Mulligan, Channing Tatum, and Lili Taylor. It’s a movie that has as many detractors as it does supporters, but what can be said with confidence is that it features one of Depp’s very best performances, an impressive level of period detail, and a handful of superbly choreographed action sequences.

3 – American Gangster (2007) – $266,465,037

The life of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and how he became a North Carolina crime lord through his efforts smuggling heroin into the US from Vietnam during the 1970’s, is told in a very heavily fictionalised way that also includes his nemesis, task force detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe). Directed by Ridley Scott, American Gangster is a pungent, gritty examination of the dark side of the American dream, and while the real Frank Lucas was nothing like the way he’s portrayed by Washington, the movie has him take charge of his criminal empire in bold, vicious strokes that highlight the menace beneath the suave exterior. It does drag in places as the script attempts to cram in as much as it can, but this is still an absorbing, meticulously constructed movie that rewards far more than it disappoints.

2 – Catch Me If You Can (2002) – $352,114,312

Crime comes in various forms and is committed by people from all walks of life – as evidenced by Catch Me If You Can, essentially a caper movie about real life conman Frank Abagnale Jr (Leonardo DiCaprio). It’s hard not to sympathise with Abagnale as he leads a life, and several lifestyles, that are far removed from his humble beginnings in New York state. In the hands of Steven Spielberg the movie offers a virtual kaleidoscope of funny, sweet-natured moments that are entertaining and delightfully assembled, making this a movie that celebrates Abagnale’s quick-witted charm and ebullient nature, and which rarely complicates matters by criticising his actions or behaviour. Tom Hanks is excellent as the FBI bank fraud agent charged with catching Abagnale, and there’s fine support from Christopher Walken as Frank’s father. Not necessarily one of Spielberg’s best, but definitely one of his most enjoyable movies, and a more than pleasant way to spend nearly two-and-a-half hours.

1 – The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – $392,000,694

DiCaprio again, as Jordan Belfort, the corrupt stockbroker whose excessive lifestyle, paid for by insider trading, brought him to the attention of the FBI (them again!), and precipitated his arrest and subsequent imprisonment. Directed by Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street is possibly the moviemaker’s most exuberant and freewheeling movie ever, with an ever-increasing number of directorial flourishes being brought into play, and a sense of overriding fun that becomes contagious the longer the movie continues. However, it’s celebration of the hedonistic times Belfort thrived on (and benefitted from) becomes wearing after a while, and too much repetition threatens to harm the movie’s pace irreparably. DiCaprio is on fine form, and the likes of Margot Robbie and Jonah Hill flesh out their slightly underwritten characters to good effect. Scorsese’s most successful movie at the box office isn’t necessarily his best, but it’s a lot better when it’s not focusing on the excess.

Iris (2016)

18 Thursday May 2017

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aka In the Shadow of Iris

D: Jalil Lespert / 99m

Cast: Romain Duris, Charlotte Le Bon, JaliL Lespert, Camille Cottin, Adel Bencherif, Sophie Verbeeck, Hélène Barbry, Jalis Laleg

Maxim Lopez (Duris) is a car mechanic with an ex-wife, Nina (Verbeeck) and young son, Eli (Laleg). He is way behind on his mortgage payments and his work as a mechanic doesn’t bring in enough money to allow him to clear the debt anytime soon. He keeps promising Nina he’ll deal with it, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever be able to. Antoine Doriot (Lespert) is the owner of the bank that holds Maxim’s mortgage. He has an attractive wife, Iris (Barbry), and appears to have it all. But one day, after he and his wife have had lunch together, she disappears. Later on that day, Doriot receives a telephone call. The caller is a man, and he informs Doriot that Iris has been kidnapped. Unless Doriot pays €500,000 for her release, then she’ll be killed.

Despite being warned not to, Doriot contacts the police. Capitaines Nathalie Vasseur (Cottin) and Malek Ziani (Bencherif) are assigned to the case, and immediately suspect someone who holds a grudge against the bank. A list of people who have made complaints contains Maxim’s name. Before they can get around to speaking with him, a ransom drop is arranged at a railway station. Doriot is required to board a particular train but at the last moment he remains on the platform. Vasseur and Ziani continue to work their way through the list until they reach Maxim. They ask him what he was doing the afternoon Iris disappeared but he has an alibi that’s supported by his ex-wife.

The police decide that the kidnapping should be made public. What they don’t know is that by doing so, what seems to have been a straightforward kidnapping will turn into something far more dramatic and deadly. Unknown to them, Iris has faked her own abduction with the aid of Maxim, but when news of the kidnapping is released to the media, Maxim makes a discovery that turns everything he knows upside down, and puts both his life and his continued liberty at risk, and from an entirely unexpected source. Forced to put a plan of his own into action, Maxim must stay one step ahead of his adversary, and hope that everything will work out as Iris originally planned.

Originally planned as a US production, but eventually ending up in France – naturellement – Iris arrives with little fanfare and no shortage of problems in the script department, which is a surprise as the screenplay is by Andrew Bovell, whose credits include Strictly Ballroom (1992), Lantana (2001), and Edge of Darkness (2010). But it’s likely that Bovell’s script lost and gained things in translation, as this is very definitely a Gallic interpretation of what is otherwise a typical neo-noir. Once the police are introduced, the movie’s well constructed and intriguing beginning soon gives way under a welter of dramatic inconsistencies and dubious narrative decisions. There’s a good movie here somewhere, but under Lespert’s guidance, it only gets to shine on occasion, and remains an inconsistent, frustrating piece throughout.

Inevitably with a movie that stands or falls on the quality of its main “twist”, Iris relies on a piece of sleight-of-hand involving Iris herself that should immediately set viewers’ alarm bells ringing (it’s also the point where more experienced viewers will be nodding to themselves wisely and saying “Ah-ha!”). But the movie continues as if no one will have noticed what’s going on and then falls promptly on its sword by introducing Vasseur and Ziani. Ultimately it’s their involvement that ruins the whole tone of the movie, as their attempt at investigating Iris’s kidnapping proves to be both foolish and inane. The French may well be an idiosyncratic race, but it’s unlikely that their police detectives reveal intimate details of their sex lives when interviewing suspects (as they do with Doriot). And you’d certainly hope that if a kidnapper got in touch by mobile phone that they’d try to track him down by tracing his number – not here, though.

There are other instances of police stupidity on display including a dawn raid on Maxim’s workshop-cum-home where they haven’t bothered to check if he’s even there in the first place, and these instances take up too much of the movie’s running time. But even away from all that, things speed up and unravel at such a pace that there’s no time to wonder how all of it is happening, and without the principal characters – let’s leave the police out of all this – knowing about it. It all narrows down to Maxim and Doriot, and what each will do to get what they want. This leaves Iris as a pawn in both their games, but a pawn who has the capacity to ruin either one of them.

On the whole, Iris has the appearance of a thriller that’s been well thought out, but only to a point. Despite some appropriately moody camera work courtesy of Pierre-Yves Bastard, and a plaintive, melancholy score by ambient duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Lespert’s approach to the material remains scattershot and lacking in focus. Too many scenes seem to have been included at random, or for no appreciable reason, and too many dialogue scenes serve only to reinforce what’s already happened rather than to drive the story forward. The cast are often left stranded by the demands of the script, with Duris called upon to grimace his way through Maxim’s domestic crises (which have no bearing on anything else that happens), and Lespert himself prone to playing scenes where he stares off into space as if these moments will add depth to both the character (it doesn’t) and the scene (ditto).

The movie adds another couple of twists into the mix late on, but by then it’s too late, and most viewers will have worked out where it’s all going anyway. There’s also time for a fairly gratuitous and unnecessary sex scene, and the kind of denouement that aims for a combination of psychological integrity and emotional intensity, but instead falls well short of achieving both. The movie weaves various flashbacks into the narrative in an effort to explain certain things that have happened, but even with that clarity it doesn’t help the movie feel any less muddled or ill defined. As thrillers go it’s quite mundane, and plays out with a noticeable lack of energy – which could be forgiven if Lespert had opted for a more considered approach to the material.

Rating: 5/10 – despite a number of narrative and directorial flaws that hamper the flow of the movie, Iris takes its place amongst the movies that have aimed high, and without any clear sense of how those aims should play out; determinedly Gallic in tone but unable to offer anything new, it’s a movie that plays out favourably enough, but without being too memorable.

Monthly Roundup – April 2017

30 Sunday Apr 2017

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Fifty Shades Darker (2017) / D: James Foley / 118m

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson, Marcia Gay Harden, Eloise Mumford, Bella Heathcote, Rita Ora, Luke Grimes, Victor Rasuk, Max Martini, Kim Basinger

Rating: 4/10 – Christian Grey (Dornan) successfully woos back Anastasia Steele (Johnson), tries to go “straight” in the bedroom, and then narrowly avoids an attempt on his life – and that’s it for Round Two; flashy and trashy at the same time, Fifty Shades Darker continues the series’ commitment to providing two hours of inane, tedium-inducing material each time, and by never going as far as it might in the sexual activity department, making this yet another slickly produced teaser for the real thing.

A Street Cat Named Bob (2016) / D: Roger Spottiswoode / 103m

Cast: Luke Treadaway, Ruta Gedmintas, Joanne Froggatt, Anthony Head, Darren Evans, Beth Goddard, Ruth Sheen, Caroline Goodall, Bob the Cat

Rating: 7/10 – a recovering drug addict and talented busker, James Bowen (Treadaway), adopts a cat he calls Bob and in doing so finds a reason to stay off drugs and rebuild his life – with unexpected results; though A Street Cat Named Bob charts a particularly diffcult period in the life of the real James Bowen, the movie avoids being too depressing by emphasising the bond between Bob and his musician “owner”, and by resolutely aiming for feelgood, something at which it succeeds with a great deal of charm, and thanks to an endearing performance from Treadaway.

The Woman from China (1930) / D: Edward Dryhurst / 82m

Cast: Julie Suedo, Gibb McLaughlin, Frances Cuyler, Tony Wylde, Kiyoshi Takase

Rating: 7/10 – a Chinese criminal, Chung-Li (McLaughlin), kidnaps the girlfriend (Cuyler) of a ship’s lieutenant (Wylde) in order to satisfy his lust for her, but doesn’t reckon on one of his accomplices (Suedo) having feelings of her own for the same ship’s lieutenant; a late in the day silent movie, The Woman from China is a British production that has a Dickensian feel to it, narrowly avoids stereotyping its villain (very narrowly), and thanks to Dryhurst’s talent as a writer as well as a director, remains a well crafted thriller that is ripe for rediscovery.

We Go On (2016) / D: Jesse Holland, Andy Mitton / 85m

Cast: Annette O’Toole, Clark Freeman, Giovanna Zacarías, Jay Dunn, Laura Heisler, John Glover

Rating: 5/10 – Miles (Freeman) is terrified of dying and wants incontrovertible proof of life after death, so he offers a reward to anyone who can provide it, but the responses he gets aren’t exactly what he was expecting; a paranoid chiller that doesn’t quite have the focus it needs to be interesting throughout, We Go On nevertheless contains some really creepy moments, and a fiercely maternal performance from O’Toole that elevates the material whenever she’s on screen, but overall it falls short in too many areas, and particularly the way in which it’s been assembled, which leaves it feeling haphazard and hastily stitched together.

Yukon Vengeance (1954) / D: William Beaudine / 68m

Cast: Kirby Grant, Chinook, Monte Hale, Mary Ellen Kay, Henry Kulky, Carol Thurston, Parke McGregor, Fred Gabourie

Rating: 4/10 – when a lumber company’s wages keep being stolen while en route to the nearest town, Canadian Mountie Rod Webb (Grant) and his faithful sidekick Chinook are sent to investigate; a remake of Wilderness Mail (1935), Yukon Vengeance is also the last in a series of ten movies Grant and Chinook made together between 1949 and 1954, and is pleasant enough if you go in not expecting too much, but it’s hampered by poor performances from Hale and Kay, uninterested direction from Beaudine (usually much more reliable), and material that offers no surprises whatsoever (though that shouldn’t be a surprise either).

This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) / D: Kirby Dick / 98m

With: Kirby Dick, Kimberly Peirce, Matt Stone, John Waters, Kevin Smith, Maria Bello, Wayne Kramer, David Ansen, Mary Harron, Allison Anders

Rating: 6/10 – moviemaker Kirby Dick decides to try and find out just what goes on behind the secretive doors of the Motion Picture Association of America, and hires a private investigator to do so, while also eliciting the opinions of moviemakers who have had run-ins with the MPAA; Dick adopts a partisan approach to the material, but in the end, This Film Is Not Yet Rated doesn’t discover anything that viewers couldn’t have worked out for themselves without seeing it, and wastes a lot of time with Dick’s choice of private investigator as they sit outside the MPAA offices and take down car number plates for very little return (both investigative and cinematic).

The Claydon Treasure Mystery (1938) / D: H. Manning Haynes / 64m

Cast: John Stuart, Garry Marsh, Annie Esmond, Campbell Gullan, Evelyn Ankers, Aubrey Mallalieu, Finlay Currie, Joss Ambler, Richard Parry, Vernon Harris, John Laurie

Rating: 5/10 – following a disappearance and a murder, crime writer Peter Kerrigan (Stuart) becomes involved in a centuries old mystery at a country house, while attempting to work out just who is willing to kill to benefit from said mystery; what could have been a nimble little murder mystery is let down by Haynes’ solemn direction, and too much repetition in the script, but The Claydon Treasure Mystery does feature a handful of entertaining performances and a clever solution to the mystery.

Delayed Action (1954) / D: John Harlow / 58m

Cast: Robert Ayres, June Thorburn, Alan Wheatley, Bruce Seton, Michael Balfour

Rating: 5/10 – a suicidal man (Ayres) agrees to play the part of a businessman to meet the crooked demands of another (Wheatley), and forfeit his life at the end of the agreement, but doesn’t reckon on having a reason to live – a woman (Thorburn) – when the time comes; a sprightly little crime drama, Delayed Action never really convinces the viewer that Ayres’ character would agree so readily to the offer made to him, and Ayres himself is a less than convincing actor in the role, but the short running time helps, and Wheatley’s arrogant, preening master criminal is the movie’s trump card.

The Night of the Party (1935) / D: Michael Powell / 61m

aka The Murder Party

Cast: Malcolm Keen, Jane Baxter, Ian Hunter, Leslie Banks, Viola Keats, Ernest Thesiger, Jane Millican, W. Graham Brown, Muriel Aked

Rating: 5/10 – at a dinner party, hated newspaper proprietor Lord Studholme (Keen) is murdered, but which one of the many guests – all of whom had reason to kill him – actually did the deed, and why?; Powell was still finding his feet as a director when he made The Night of the Party, and though much of it looks like a filmed stage play (which it was), it’s exactly the movie’s staginess that robs it of a lot of energy, and stops it from becoming as involving and engaging as other movies of its ilk, and that’s despite some very enjoyable performances indeed.

Office Christmas Party (2016) / D: Josh Gordon, Will Speck / 105m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, T.J. Miller, Jennifer Aniston, Kate McKinnon, Courtney B. Vance, Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry, Vanessa Bayer, Randall Park

Rating: 5/10 – with their office being threatened with closure, manager Clay (Miller) and several of his staff decide to throw a massive Xmas party in the hope that it will help secure a contract with businessman Walter Davis (Vance) and so save everyone’s jobs; only fitfully amusing, Office Christmas Party probably sounded great as an idea, but in practice it strays too far from the original concept, and has its cast going firmly through the motions in their efforts to raise a laugh, although McKinnon (once again) stands out as an HR manager who makes being uptight the funniest thing in the whole misguided mess of a movie.

The Marine 5: Battleground (2017) / D: James Nunn / 91m

Cast: Mike Mizanin, Anna Van Hooft, Nathan Mitchell, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, Heath Slater, Naomi, Sandy Robson

Rating: 4/10 – now a paramedic, Jake Carter (Mizanin) finds himself trapped in an underground car park and fending off a motorcycle gang who are trying to kill the injured man (Mitchell) who has just killed their leader; five movies in and WWE Films have used a low budget/low return formula to ensure that The Marine 5: Battleground remains a dreary, leaden-paced “action” movie that features a lot more WWE Superstars than usual, more glaring plot holes than you can shove the Big Show through, and proof if any were needed that playing hyper-realised athletes every week isn’t a good training ground for acting in the movies, no matter how hard WWE tries to make it seem otherwise.

Incarnate (2016) / D: Brad Peyton / 91m

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Carice van Houten, Catalina Sandino Moreno, David Mazouz, Keir O’Donnell, Matt Nable, Emily Jackson, Tomas Arana

Rating: 4/10 – a scientist-cum-paranormal investigator (Eckhart) can induce himself into the minds of people possessed by demons and cast them out, but he comes up against a stronger adversary than any he’s encountered before: the demon that took the lives of his wife and son; a neat twist on a standard possession/exorcism movie, Incarnate suffers from the kind of muddled plotting, heavyhanded sermonising, and stereotypical characterisations that hamper all these variations on a horror movie theme, and in doing so, marks itself out as another nail in the coffin of Eckhart’s mainstream career, and a movie that lacks substance, style, wit, and credibility.

Crime Doctor (1943) / D: Michael Gordon / 66m

Cast: Warner Baxter, Margaret Lindsay, John Litel, Ray Collins, Harold Huber, Don Costello, Leon Ames, Dorothy Tree

Rating: 7/10 – a man (Baxter) found unconscious at the side of the road wakes with no memory of his past, but over time builds a new life for himself as a leading criminal psychologist – until his own criminal past comes calling; the first in the Crime Doctor series is a solid, suspenseful movie bolstered by strong performances, a surprisingly detailed script, and good production values, making it an above average thriller and hugely enjoyable to watch.

Island of Doomed Men (1940) / D: Charles Barton / 68m

Cast: Peter Lorre, Rochelle Hudson, Robert Wilcox, Don Beddoe, George E. Stone, Kenneth MacDonald, Charles Middleton

Rating: 6/10 – a Government agent (Wilcox) allows himself to be arrested and imprisoned in an effort to make it to an island owned by sadistic diamond mine owner Stephen Danel (Lorre), and then expose Danel’s use of ex-cons and parolees as slave labour; a seedy, florid atmosphere is encouraged and exploited by Barton as Island of Doomed Men allows Lorre to give one of his more self-contained yet intense performances, and which also shows that some Production Code-era movies could still be “exciting” for reasons that only modern day audiences would appreciate – probably.

Anybody’s Nightmare (2001) / D: Tristram Powell / 97m

Cast: Patricia Routledge, Georgina Sutcliffe, Thomas Arnold, Nicola Redmond, David Calder, Malcolm Sinclair, William Armstrong, Rashid Karapiet, Louisa Milwood-Haigh, Scott Baker

Rating: 5/10 – the true story of Sheila Bowler (Routledge) who in the early Nineties was arrested, tried and convicted of the death of her late husband’s aunt (despite a clear lack of evidence), and who spent the next four years fighting to have her conviction overturned; a miscarriage of justice story bolstered by Routledge’s dignified, sterling performance, Anybody’s Nightmare betrays its British TV movie origins too often for comfort, features some truly disastrous acting (step forward Thomas Arnold and Louisa Milwood-Haigh), but does make each twist and turn of Bowler’s legal case as shocking as possible, and in the end, proves once again that truth really is stranger than fiction.

Oh! the Horror! – Vengeance: A Love Story (2017) and Arsenal (2017)

29 Saturday Apr 2017

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A Nicolas Cage double bill this time round, with two of his more recent movies offering him different roles, but both serving as reminders that when Cage is having a bad day on set, there’s really nothing quite like Cage having a bad day on set.

Vengeance: A Love Story (2017) / D: Johnny Martin / 99m

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Anna Hutchison, Talitha Bateman, Deborah Kara Unger, Don Johnson, Joshua Mikel, Rocco Nugent, Joe Ochterbeck, Carter Burch, Charlene Tilton

In Vengeance: A Love Story, Cage is Detective John Dromoor, a veteran Niagara Falls-based cop who meets a young woman, Teena (Hutchison), in a bar and takes a paternal liking to her. Teena is separated from her husband and has a young daughter, Bethie (Bateman). On their way home from a party at her husband’s, Teena and Bethie run into four men who proceed to drag them both into a nearby boathouse with the intention of raping Teena and, possibly, Bethie as well. Though Bethie manages to hide from them, it doesn’t stop her from being a witness to her mother being raped. The men leave Teena for dead, while Bethie comes out of hiding and gets help.

Dromoor is assigned to the case, but doesn’t recognise Teena when he arrives at the scene. But later, when her identity is revealed, Dromoor takes it upon himself to ensure that the four men are arrested and put in prison. Fate, however, has other plans: two of the men are brothers, and their mother (Tilton), protesting their innocence, hires a lawyer, Jay Kirkpatrick (Johnson), with a reputation for keeping violent criminals out of jail. When the trial begins and it begins to look as if Kirkpatrick’s winning streak will continue, Dromoor decides that, for justice to be truly served, he must go after the four men, and ensure they are punished.

Adapted from the novel, Rape: A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates, the more commercially titled Vengeance: A Love Story sees Cage coast along in the role of Detective Dromoor, and look throughout as if the anti-depressants aren’t working. Maybe Cage is attempting to internalise his feelings but it’s hard to tell, as his expression rarely changes and he’s given the kind of dialogue that makes him sound like he’s half asleep. It’s also the kind of performance that could best be described as disconnected. Even when Dromoor’s playing judge, jury and executioner Cage still looks as if he wishes he were somewhere else.

For a while, Cage was set to direct, but scheduling conflicts saw him hand over the reins to Martin. As a director, Martin is a great stunt coordinator (his primary role within movies), and his previous experience has been in directing low budget horror movies. As a result, Vengeance: A Love Story, is a leaden effort that eschews any subtleties that might have been a part of the source material in favour of a by-the-numbers approach. It’s also tension-free, features a performance from Johnson that seems to be taking place in a vacuum, and makes its villains the kind of grinning idiots that should have gone out of movie fashion in the Eighties. All in all, it’s dispiriting stuff that reinforces the notion that, these days, Cage will commit to anything for a pay cheque.

Rating: 3/10 – not even an attempt at creating the moody, stifling atmosphere of a modern noir can help Vengeance: A Love Story gain any dramatic traction; a poorly realised adaptation of Oates’ novel and a blunt exercise in emotional distress, it’s a movie that’s best forgotten as soon as you’ve seen it.

 

Arsenal (2017) / D: Steven C. Miller / 92m

aka Southern Fury

Cast: Adrian Grenier, Johnathon Schaech, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Heather Johansen, Lydia Hull, William Mark McCullough, Christopher Coppola

In Arsenal, Cage is Eddie King, a low-life Southern mobster who snorts a lot of cocaine and gets involved with the lives of two brothers, JP (Grenier) and Mikey (Schaech). As kids, Mikey was always the one ot watch out for his younger brother, JP, but as adults the tables have turned. Mikey has been in trouble with the law, while JP has built up a local construction company; he’s also married with a young daughter. Mikey takes a loan of $10,000 from JP to help him start again, but Mikey’s idea is to use the money to buy cocaine and re-sell it at a profit. But Mikey’s home is raided, and the cocaine is stolen from him. He tracks down the two men who stole it, but is unable to get it back. Soon after, a chance encounter with Eddie King leads to Mikey being kidnapped by King and held to ransom.

Despite being told not to involve the police, JP enlists the help of old friend and local cop, Sal (Cusack). Between them the pair discover that King is the kidnapper they’re dealing with, though they have no immediate way of managing the situation other than to pay the ransom of $350,000. While JP gets the money together, Mikey makes an unsuccessful escape attempt, old alliances are put to the test, Eddie deals with some awkward family ties, and a clue leads to the location where Mikey is being held. Determined not to let his brother be killed, JP comes up with a plan to save Mikey and stop King once and for all.

As opposed to his almost invisible performance in Vengeance: A Love Story, here Cage aims for the opposite end of the spectrum and gives his most over-the-top performance since Bad Lieutenant (2009). With an ill-fitting (and frankly ridiculous looking) wig, bulbous nose, and semi-laughable moustache (that’s rarely in the same place twice), Cage goes full throttle in his efforts to make his character appear dangerous and/or psychotic. He may have aimed for bravura at first, but it isn’t long before he’s shouting his lines at high volume and appearing to be on the verge of having a stroke. It’s a one-note performance that makes Eddie look and sound like the ultimate spoilt child, and in terms of the movie, it undermines his role as the central villain.

However, against the likes of Grenier and Schaech (who are supposed to be brothers, but who don’t look or sound alike, and have little on-screen chemistry together), Cage at least is making an effort. Grenier looks confused a lot, as if the rest of the cast is working from a script he hasn’t seen, while Schaech tries for muscle-bound yet deep-down sensitive and only succeeds in looking like he’s unsure of what’s being asked of him as an actor. Cusack wanders in and out of the narrative, mutters a few lines each time, then disappears until the next time the script needs him to tell Grenier just how bad things are getting. The movie lacks a sense of urgency once Mikey is kidnapped, its action scenes are perfunctory, and an extended prologue goes to great lengths to show the deep, caring relationship between JP and Mikey when a short dialogue scene could have done it in half the time. All in all, it’s dispiriting stuff that reinforces the notion that, these days, Cage will commit to anything for a pay cheque.

Rating: 3/10 – predictable on every level, Arsenal is a dull excuse for an action thriller, and directed in a manner that suggests Miller knew there was little chance of a decent movie emerging from out of the banal nature of Jason Mosberg’s screenplay; Cusack, wearing a bandanna and shuffling around a lot, seems to be acknowledging a debt to Steven Seagal, while any fun to be had is in seeing how many times the movie can set up a promising scene only for it to turn out to be just as bad as the rest.

Mini-Review: Sleepless (2017)

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

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D: Baran bo Odar / 95m

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, Scoot McNairy, David Harbour, Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris, Gabrielle Union, Octavius J. Johnson, Tim Connolly

Vincent Downs (Foxx) is a crooked Las Vegas cop. Sean Cass (Harris) is his equally crooked partner. Together they steal twenty-five bundles of cocaine (though why they do this is a little fuzzy). Their use of department issue weapons gains the attention of Internal Affairs officer, Jennifer Bryant (Monaghan), who immediately suspects Downs of the theft. Convinced by her own intuition that he’s dirty, she brings her suspicions to her partner, Doug Dennison (Harbour), but he’s not convinced. Meanwhile, Downs – who has an ex-wife, Dena (Union) and teenage son Thomas (Johnson) – is trying to maintain a semblance of post-divorce family life when Thomas is abducted by local casino-cum-crime boss Stanley Rubino (Mulroney). The reason for this? Simple: the cocaine is his and he wants it back, or Thomas will pay for Downs’ actions.

Downs takes the cocaine to Rubino’s casino, but in one of those plot “twists” that never make sense, he hides twenty-three of the bundles in the casino, gives Rubino the other two and bargains for his son’s life, stating that he’ll hand over the rest when he knows his son is safe. Rubino agrees, but when Downs tries to retrieve the rest of the cocaine from its hiding place, he discovers that Bryant (who has been following him) has taken it, and in a move that would have her investigated by Internal Affairs as well, has hidden it elsewhere in the casino. But there’s a further wrinkle: the cocaine is owed to gangster Bobby Novak (McNairy), and he’s there to collect…

Nuit blanche. That’s the title of the French/Belgian/Luxembourgian co-production, released in 2011 that, in its English language guise, has become Sleepless. If it matters to you, Nuit blanche (aka Sleepless Night) has a score of 75 on Metacritic, while Sleepless has a score of 33. Which version would you rather see? (Don’t worry, it’s a rhetorical question.) Inevitably, Sleepless – a title that makes no sense without the word “night” attached to it – is professionally made, glamorous to look at, has Foxx and Monaghan working really hard to overcome the preposterousness of Andrea Berloff’s urgent-but-empty screenplay, and never once makes you care about Downs or his son’s predicament. It tries to, on several occasions, but thanks to a combination of Berloff’s writing and director Odar’s reliance on style over substance, it has a shallow, seen-it-all-before vibe that harms the movie more than it helps it, and which stops it from letting the audience in on the – sadly – warmed over intrigue.

Remakes of foreign language movies often suffer in comparison because there are more things that can be lost in translation than just the dialogue. Tone, the original movie’s rhythm, its location, its visual aesthetic, any subtexts – all these and more can be either abandoned or discarded in the process of “re-imagining” a movie for audiences who speak another language (though surely that’s what subtitles are for?). There may be an element of “we can do better” about these remakes, and though that certainly isn’t the case with Sleepless (and despite any intentions its makers may have had), this is still a bad idea that lets down audiences at every turn. Even its fight scenes, which see Foxx get pummelled regularly but to minimal effect even though he has a stab wound to deal with, don’t elicit enough reaction to be successful in themselves. And if an action thriller can’t get those scenes right…

Rating: 4/10 – lacklustre, and padded out with way too many establishing shots of Las Vegas itself (we know where we are, for Foxx’ sake), Sleepless is a run-of-the-mill effort that tries hard but doesn’t know how to deliver; an over-complicated script proves too much for the cast to deal with, and despite its relatively compact running time, you’ll be wishing for a quicker resolution than is actually on offer.

Monthly Roundup – March 2017

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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Fist Fight (2017) / D: Richie Keen / 91m

Cast: Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis Haysbert, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Alexa Nisenson

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Bell’s character wants to have sex with a pupil – and doesn’t think it’s wrong), Fist Fight is a virtually laugh-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

I.T. (2016) / D: John Moore / 95m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott, Michael Nyqvist

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Brosnan’s character is a tech mogul who doesn’t know the first thing about the tech he’s promoting), I.T. is a virtually tension-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

Collide (2016) / D: Eran Creevy / 99m

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Christian Rubeck, Erdal Yildiz, Clemens Schick, Johnny Palmiero

Rating: 6/10 – Hoult’s backpacker finds himself mixed up with rival gangsters Hopkins and Kingsley, and using his driving skills to stay one step ahead of both of them; the focus is squarely on the action, which is a good thing, as Collide‘s plot is as all over the place as the various cars Hoult throws about on German autobahns, but when it’s bad it’s Hopkins intoning “I’m the destroyer of worlds” bad.

Jimmy the Gent (1934) / D: Michael Curtiz / 67m

Cast: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Alice White, Arthur Hohl, Mayo Methot

Rating: 7/10 – in an effort to woo back his former secretary (Davis), Cagney’s brash racketeer attempts to put a classier spin on his finding “lost” heirs business, and finds himself mellowing when a case challenges his compromised ethics; worth watching just for the pairing of Cagney and Davis, Jimmy the Gent is a typically fast-paced, razor sharp romantic comedy that may seem predictable nowadays but is nevertheless a minor gem that is effortlessly entertaining.

Kong: Skull Island (2017) / D: Jordan Vogt-Roberts / 118m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Thomas Mann, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Richard Jenkins, Terry Notary

Rating: 5/10 – an expedition to a mysterious island in the Pacific yields dangers galore for its participants – Jackson’s crazed Army Colonel, Hiddleston’s ex-SAS captain, Larson’s anti-war photographer, Goodman’s duplicitous government official et al – not the least of which is an angry hundred-foot gorilla called Kong; while Kong: Skull Island may be visually arresting, and its action sequences pleasingly vivid, the lack of a decent plot and characters with any kind of inner life makes the movie yet another franchise-building letdown.

The Rezort (2015) / D: Steve Barker / 93m

Cast: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, Martin McCann, Elen Rhys, Claire Goose, Jassa Ahluwalia, Lawrence Walker

Rating: 4/10 – after a viral outbreak that turned its victims into flesh-hungry zombies is contained, an island resort opens that offers survivors the chance to hunt down and exterminate zombies with little or no risk of harm – but the resort is targeted from the inside and a group of holiday makers find themselves becoming the hunted; a strong idea that runs out of steam by the halfway mark, The Rezort leaves its cast stranded with a standard “run from this place to the next and look desperate” approach that drains the movie of any tension and makes it all look as generic as the next zombie movie.

Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939) / D: Walter Forde / 90m

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Linden Travers, Wally Patch, Edward Chapman, Philip Leaver, Kynaston Reeves

Rating: 7/10 – a seaside holiday for Inspector Hornleigh (Harker) and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Bingham (Sim), leads inevitably to a murder case involving an inheritance and a criminal outfit who target their victims with the unwitting aid of döppelgangers; the second of three movies featuring Harker’s irascible policeman and Sim’s less-than-sharp second-in-command, Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday is a simple, easy-going, undemanding bit of fun that manages to combine drama and comedy to good effect, and which still holds up nearly eighty years later.

Inspector Hornleigh Gets on It (1941) / D: Walter Forde / 87m

aka Mail Train

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh, David Horne

Rating: 7/10 – despite being sidelined from regular detective work through a stint investigating thefts at an army barracks, Hornleigh and Bingham find themselves on the trail of Fifth Columnists; the last in the short-lived series, Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It is as sprightly and entertaining as the previous two instalments, and allows Huntley to make this priceless observation: “One of them’s tall, bald, looks intelligent but isn’t. The other’s short, sour-faced, doesn’t look intelligent but is.”

Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato (2017) / D: Eugenio Ercolani, Guiliano Emanuele / 69m

With: Joe D’Amato (archive footage), Luigi Montefiori, Michele Soavi, Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi, Antonio Tentori, Carlo Maria Cordio, Mark Thompson-Ashworth

Rating: 3/10 – Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato)’s career in movies is assessed by some of the people who worked with him closely when he first started out; at sixty-nine minutes, Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato is a documentary that feels like it lasts twice as long, thanks to Ercolani and Emanuele’s decision to let their interviewees ramble on at length (and usually about themselves instead of D’Amato), and a random assortment of clips that don’t always illustrate what’s being talked about.

A Kind of Murder (2016)

05 Sunday Mar 2017

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kind_of_murder

D: Andy Goddard / 95m

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Vincent Kartheiser, Haley Bennett, Eddie Marsan, Radek Lord, Jon Osbeck, Christine Dye

New York City, the Sixties. Walter Stackhouse (Wilson) is a successful architect with a beautiful home and a beautiful wife, Clara (Biel). In his free time he writes short stories about crime and murder. On the outside he’s living the perfect life, but his marriage is strained. Clara has a history of mental instability, and is remote from him. At the same time, though, she’s jealous and possessive, accusing him of having an affair with a young woman, Ellie (Bennett), who attended a party they gave. When Clara is like this, Walter usually ends up in a local bar. It’s on one such occasion that he reads an article in a newspaper about the unsolved murder of a woman outside of New York at a rest stop called Harry’s Rainbow Grill.

Suspicion seems to rest on the woman’s husband, a bookstore owner called Kimmel, but he has an alibi. This isn’t enough for the detective investigating the case, Corby (Kartheiser), who is convinced Kimmel is the killer. While he tries to intimidate Kimmel into confessing, Walter becomes more and more fascinated with the murder, and like Corby, becomes convinced that Kimmel is guilty. He even goes so far to visit Kimmel at his bookstore. But at home, his marriage goes from bad to worse. Clara takes an overdose and ends up in hospital. When she comes home, her jealousy remains firmly in place, and she remains convinced that Walter is having an affair with Ellie. When she’s proved right, Walter tells her he’s going to divorce her; Clara retaliates by saying she’ll definitely kill herself if he does.

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Undeterred, Walter continues with his relationship with Ellie, but when Clara leaves suddenly to visit her sick mother upstate, he follows the bus she takes until it reaches Harry’s Rainbow Grill. But though she gets off the bus, Walter doesn’t see her, and he heads back to New York City. Later, Walter receives terrible news, news that causes Corby to link him to the murder of Kimmel’s wife, his relationship with Ellie to falter, and his business partnership to founder. With his honesty and integrity on the line, as well as his freedom, Walter must find a way of extricating himself from a situation that grows worse every day, and that could ultimately cost him his life.

An adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Blunderer, A Kind of Murder is a good-looking movie in search of a leading character for the audience to identify and sympathise with. Walter’s plight should be one that has the viewer on the edge of their seat, but thanks to both the script and Wilson’s performance, he’s vanilla bland from start to finish, and the movie never really knows how to make his predicament more intriguing or exciting. Walter becomes interested in the murder of Kimmel’s wife because he’s beginning to have thoughts about killing Clara. As he believes Kimmel killed his wife, Walter is supposed to feel some kind of kinship with the bookstore owner, but it’s all psychologically unconvincing. Walter channels his feelings about Clara into his writing, something we see on more than one occasion, and so any idea that he and Kimmel are similar can be disregarded from the start.

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What this leaves us with is a contrived relationship that never develops beyond an uneasy semi-alliance against Corby’s invasive and confrontational detective work. And there’s never any doubt as to whether or not Kimmel killed his wife, or if Walter’s situation will lead to his livelihood being compromised. As the movie progresses from potential whodunnit to unabashed thriller, Susan Boyd’s first-time script forgets to instil proceedings with any tension, as Walter’s predicament never sees him fully in jeopardy, or at risk of having his comfortable world taken away from him. And in conjunction with Boyd’s script, Wilson delivers what may well be one of his least successful performances ever. For an actor who can genre-hop with ease, and who at least doesn’t look out of place in a period drama, Wilson never connects with Walter and gives a wayward portrayal of a man whose calm, outward manner belies a compulsive, selfish individual hidden away on the inside.

It’s this duality that the movie tries hard to promote, with Walter and Kimmel meant to be two sides of the same coin, and Clara and Ellie both representing the best and worst of Walter’s relationships with women. But again, there’s nothing for the audience to connect with. Even when Clara spells out her intention to kill herself if Walter goes ahead with the divorce, and tells him everyone will blame him for not doing enough to help her, there’s nothing there to back up that claim. It carries the weight of an empty paper bag, and as such, loses any validity, so that when Walter receives his terrible news, it doesn’t have the impact that it should have. And this is the moment when the viewer should find themselves completely on Walter’s side… but probably won’t.

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As a thriller, A Kind of Murder stumbles along trying to match Highsmith’s elegant turn of phrase to its early Sixties setting, and only doing so on very rare occasions. It also dispenses with any attempt at providing back stories for any of the characters, leaving us in a void when it comes to understanding their current motivations. Clara is clearly mentally ill, and she’s clearly difficult to live with, so why Walter stays with her is a bit of a mystery (and a better one than if Kimmel killed his wife or not). And why Corby becomes so obsessed with Kimmel and bringing him to justice isn’t explained either. In the end, these are characters operating in a vacuum, occasionally bumping into each other but failing to make a proper connection.

And so it goes for the length of the movie. Wilson’s disappointing turn is matched by Biel’s monotone performance, Kartheiser’s unncessarily angry cop, and Bennett’s subdued turn as Walter’s girlfriend. Only Eddie Marsan deserves any praise, giving the kind of unexpected, yet nuanced performance that this kind of movie needs to be anywhere near successful. His brooding, snake-like approach to Kimmel is a master-class in big screen malevolence. Tying all this together is Goddard, known mostly for his TV work, but not stretching his abilities too far in bringing this tale to the big screen. However, he’s on firmer ground with the movie’s recreation of Sixties New York, with its colourful vibrancy and Mad Men-style glamour of the period, and all despite (or in spite of) the wintry backdrop. But for anyone expecting more substance with their style, this isn’t the place to be looking for it.

Rating: 5/10 – lacklustre in too many ways to even count, A Kind of Murder flatlines for most of its running time, and forgets to make itself interesting for the viewer; with so-so performances and a dull script, this is one thriller that can be given a wide berth unless you’re a fan of Marsan’s, or in an undemanding mood when it comes to choosing something to watch.

Mini-Review: Blackway (2015)

28 Tuesday Feb 2017

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Original title: Go With Me

D: Daniel Alfredson / 90m

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Alexander Ludwig, Ray Liotta, Steve Bacic, Lochlyn Munro, Hal Holbrook, Dale Wilson

Enderby, British Columbia. Lillian (Stiles) has returned to her hometown following the death of her mother. Working as a waitress in a bar she attracts the unwanted attention of Richard Blackway (Liotta), an ex-police constable turned local crime lord. One night he turns up at her house and frightens her so much that she goes to the local sheriff (Wilson). When he learns that Blackway is involved, the sheriff becomes uninterested in helping her, and tells Lillian to seek out a man named Scotty at one of the lumber companies. Instead of finding Scotty, Lillian is offered help by an old man called Lester (Hopkins), and a young man called Nate (Ludwig). Together they try and track down Blackway, beginning with a man Lester thinks will help them, Fitzgerald (Bacic).

But Fitzgerald is just as afraid of Blackway as the rest of the town. He does give them a lead on Blackway’s whereabouts, and the trio find themselves driving from place to place, either just missing him, or on one occasion, finding him but not where he’s alone. Along the way Nate has a fight with Blackway’s accountant, Murdoch (Munro), an incident at a hotel Blackway runs as a brothel leads to its being set on fire, and the trio reach a point of no return, travelling up into the mountains to an old logging camp where Blackway hides out when he needs to. But will they remain the hunters, or will Blackway turn the tables on them instead?

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Post-Lisbeth Salander, Daniel Alfredson’s career hasn’t been as consistent as he perhaps would have liked. Work on the small screen took him back to his roots until Echoes of the Dead (2013) came along, but that movie couldn’t maintain its initial premise and made some questionable decisions before reaching its conclusion. In the same year as Blackway, Alfredson teamed up with Hopkins for Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, a lacklustre account of the true story that must have convinced the pair to work together again. And so we have Blackway, an austere thriller-cum-unspoken revenge drama that has more going for it than first meets the eye. The movie has a gloomy, penetrating atmosphere that perfectly suits the mood of the piece. Everyone in Enderby looks beaten down, defeated, all but Blackway, whose violent, malevolent nature leaves him as the only person in town enjoying himself.

Liotta revels in his evil nature, and he adds another psycho character to his resumé, infusing the title villain with all the rage and sadism he can muster. There’s a scene where Blackway has his hand around the neck of Fitzgerald’s daughter, squeezing it, and Liotta plays it as if he were playing with a doll. It’s disquieting, and uncomfortable to watch, and tells you everything you need to know about him. Against this we have Stiles’s heroine, unwilling to leave town, and at first, emotional and angry at being treated so horribly. But as the movie progresses, she too appears beaten down, saying less and less, until words become superfluous, until it becomes apparent where tracking down Blackway is going to take her; and her newfound allies. Hopkins is taciturn and determined, and gives one of his better performances of recent years, a proud man looking to redeem himself for something we can guess at, but which we never see confirmed. And there’s a lot that’s left unsaid in Blackway, adding to the austerity and the stripped back nature of the material, and making it far more absorbing and intriguing than it looks.

Rating: 6/10 – once you get past some of the more awkward elements in the script – Blackway never sends his men out to find Lester and co, their search for him seems just a little too easy at times – there’s much to admire about Blackway, and Alfredson keeps it agreeably low-key throughout; a mood piece as much as a thriller, it’s a movie that doesn’t deserve to be dismissed as just another DtV backwoods drama.

Trespass Against Us (2016)

21 Saturday Jan 2017

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D: Adam Smith / 99m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Lyndsey Marshal, Georgie Smith, Rory Kinnear, Killian Scott, Sean Harris, Gerard Kearns, Tony Way, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Barry Keoghan, Kacie Anderson, Peter Wight, Alan Williams, Anna Calder-Marshall, Mark Lewis Jones

Chad Cutler (Fassbender) is part of a Travellers community whose patriarch is his father, Colby (Gleeson). Chad doesn’t know how to read or write, but he does know how to drive a car, especially if that car is being pursued by the police and it needs not to be caught. He’s also married, to Kelly (Marshal), and has two children, Tyson (Smith) and Mini (Anderson). Kelly wants more for their children than living in a caravan in a field, and though they go to a local school, it’s the only aspect of “normal” life they’re familiar with. Kelly wants them to move into a proper home – a house – and Chad is in agreement with her: he doesn’t want his children growing up in the same environment he did, and settling for less. But there’s a problem. If Colby finds out what they’re planning, he’ll never agree to it, and he’ll make sure they don’t leave.

While Chad sources a home for them nearby, Colby insists on his involvement in the robbery of a large house that proves to be the home of the Lord Lieutenant for the county. Though the robbery is successful, and Chad evades capture by the police – led by PC Lovage (Kinnear) – he’s not “out of the woods” just yet. Lovage is determined to arrest Chad, but if he can’t do it by fair means then he’ll twist the rules to suit his own agenda. This involves raiding the Travellers’ camp, and intimidating them as well as Chad and Kelly. When Chad learns that his father has intimidated the owner of the home he and his family were going to move into, and it’s no longer on offer, a showdown looms between Chad and Colby, one that Colby wins.

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In the meantime, Tyson and Mini go missing from the school. Chad searches for them, but it’s not until Kelly goes to the police that anyone knows the children are with them, and not actually missing or lost. Lovage tries to use their presence at the station as leverage in getting Chad or Kelly to admit his involvement in the robbery, but it doesn’t work. It’s not until Chad, attempting to buy a puppy as a birthday present for Tyson, is refused due to who he is that circumstances conspire to fix the issue of his family’s future once and for all.

Stories about the Travelling community are relatively thin on the ground, which makes Trespass Against Us all the more welcome. Highlighting the darker side of a life that most people will only know about from TV reality shows such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Adam Smith’s directorial debut is keen to show how hierarchy and loyalty play very important roles in the lives of Travellers, and how aspirations, no matter how much they may be needed, go against the established order of things. Whether or not Chad is a typical example of a “new generation” that sees the traditions of the Travelling community as old-fashioned or no longer socially relevant, isn’t addressed directly by Smith and screenwriter Alistair Siddons, but it certainly fuels the story of Chad’s “defection”.

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Played with grit and determination by an on-form Fassbender, Chad is aware of his limitations and the possibilities available to his children, but he’s fighting a losing battle against his father. Colby asserts an unhealthy authority over his grandchildren, and at times is far more of an authority figure to them than Chad is. He tells Tyson to ignore what his teacher tells him at school, and looks to reinforce the sense of being part of a tight-knit community that keeps its own counsel (or particularly, Colby’s). Chad has no immediate answer to his father’s belligerence, and is too scared to challenge him openly. Chad and Kelly may want better lives for their children, but Colby doesn’t even see it as an issue; he believes the life they all lead is the right one for them, and any other opinion is a betrayal. As Colby, Gleeson delivers the kind of intense, brooding performance he’s so good at, and he shows Colby’s anger at being challenged in a way that mixes resigned authority and the enjoyment he derives from being a bully.

But while the family dynamic, and the battle, between Chad and Colby forms the central storyline, other aspects of the script lack the same intensity or fail to engage the audience as effectively. Kinnear has the thankless task of making PC Lovage anything more than a pasty-faced thug in a police uniform, his determination to arrest Chad made into an obsession that causes him to behave in ways that steer away from credibility at every turn. Likewise, Harris is back playing the kind of role that casting directors seem eager to offer him. Gordon Bennett – yes, really – sports a close-cropped scalp and rat’s-tail extensions, and looks as if he hasn’t had a bath in weeks. He’s the community halfwit, protected by Colby, derided by Chad and the others, and capable of acts of unwitting cruelty. Harris is a very good actor, but Gordon as written adds little to the narrative, and the script uses him on occasion to move things along, but he’s often a distracting presence, and an unnecessary one at that.

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The twin themes of community and tradition are given enough space and time to be explored with a fair degree of depth, and though in truth, this is a story that could have been applied to any number of other, different family units, Smith and Siddons do their best to show how relevant these themes are in Traveller life. The austerity of tradition is touched on to good effect, but the reasoning behind continuing such traditions isn’t explored at all, leaving the viewer to wonder just why living in a field – no matter how much it keeps society away from the Travellers in general – is so preferable to the alternative. It’s an exclusionist stance that needed referencing, if only to provide viewers with a broader perspective.

As a drama, Trespass Against Us sometimes feels forced, as events drift into melodrama and Chad’s dream of emancipation from his father drifts further and further away. By the end, and the unlikely convergence of people and circumstance that provides Chad with a solution, some viewers may well be experiencing a kind of emotional ennui. There’s no payoff, or distinct resolution to Chad’s plight, only a hope that the decision he makes will have the required effect, and allow Kelly and the children to escape Colby’s clutches. But it’s a puzzling conclusion to a story that starts off well, includes a couple of impressively mounted car chases, but which soon loses dramatic focus and traction, and in doing so, looks and feels as if it’s lost sight of that very same story it started off with.

Rating: 7/10 – a mixed bag in terms of drama and the overall material, Trespass Against Us never quite scales the heights of its own ambitions, but it does feature two commanding performances from Fassbender and Gleeson, and a refreshing mise-en-scéne; let down by its own inconsistencies, it’s nevertheless a movie that shouldn’t be avoided, and which may in time, find itself ripe for reassessment.

Mini-Review: Live by Night (2016)

21 Saturday Jan 2017

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D: Ben Affleck / 128m

Cast: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Robert Glenister, Chris Cooper, Miguel J. Pimentel, Titus Welliver, Max Casella

Undermined by a leaden script, Live by Night is writer/director/actor Ben Affleck’s third movie as a multi-hyphenate, but after the successes of Argo (2012) and The Town (2010), his latest project is a plodding affair that looks good thanks to Robert Richardson’s usual exemplary cinematography, but otherwise remains remote and uninvolving. The tale of a small-time Boston crook, Joe Coughlin (Affleck), who finds himself at odds with Irish gangster Albert White (Glenister) through his relationship with White’s girlfriend, Emma Gould (Miller), this adaptation of the novel by Dennis Lehane starts off well but soon gets bogged down by messy plotting and too many characters who randomly come and go.

Coughlin’s romance with Emma ends badly, leading him to offer his “services” to White’s rival, Maso Pescatore (Girone). Pescatore sends Coughlin down to Florida, to Ybor City, with instructions to take control of his rum-running operation and ensure that White’s activities in the area are curtailed. Once there, Coughlin, aided by trusted friend Dion (Messina), soon streamlines Pescatore’s operation and squeezes out all the competition. In the process he establishes a business relationship with a Cuban family, and begins an affair with the sister, Graciela (Saldana). Things run smoothly until Coughlin’s working with the Cubans as well as a group of local Negroes, attracts the ire of the Ku Klux Klan. Coughlin tries to come to an amicable arrangement with them, but the Klan’s leader, RD Pruitt (Maher) refuses to play ball, leading Coughlin to make an arrangement with Pruitt’s brother-in-law, Chief Figgis (Cooper) that has unforeseen consequences.

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The Chief’s daughter, Loretta (Fanning), begins making evangelical protests against a casino that Coughlin is building in anticipation of Prohibition being repealed. Her protests lead to the project stalling, which makes Pescatore angry enough to forget all the money Coughlin has made for him, and travel down to Florida to oversee matters for himself, a development that leaves Coughlin vulnerable, and his future in doubt.

For all the convincing period detail and the impressive production design, Live by Night is let down by Affleck’s inability to craft a cohesive screenplay from Lehane’s novel. While Coughlin’s story is told against a backdrop of violence and betrayal, the movie remains a staid, pedestrian affair that moves at a steady pace despite Affleck’s best efforts to inject some energy and verve into proceedings. Part of the problem is the number of characters that appear for a short time then disappear or pop up again for another short period. Despite the cast’s best efforts, they’re let down by Affleck’s script, which uses each character to advance the narrative, but without investing in them to any great degree. This leaves actors of the calibre of Gleeson, Saldana and Glenister stranded for the most part, with only Miller and Fanning making much of an impression. It doesn’t help that Affleck’s portrayal of Coughlin also lacks range or depth, leaving the viewer hoping that things will improve over time, and that a way in to the material with eventually arise, something that, unfortunately, never happens.

Rating: 6/10 – curiously turgid and flat, Live by Night has clear aspirations to be a crime drama with operatic overtones, but instead, remains resolutely commonplace; with too many strands that make for a stop-start narrative, and characters that aren’t allowed to make much of an impact, the movie keeps its audience at a distance, and never looks as if it will close the gap at any point throughout.

Monthly Roundup – October 2016

31 Monday Oct 2016

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The Legend of Tarzan / D: David Yates / 110m

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent, Simon Russell Beale, Ben Chaplin

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Rating: 3/10 – “meh”; woeful only just about covers how bad this movie is, from the wooden performances, to the haphazard scripting, to Yates’s casual engagement with the material, and all the way to the creaky use of CGI to simulate the African backgrounds – at no point does The Legend of Tarzan ever feel as if it has any intention of putting any real effort into things.

400 Days (2015) / D: Matt Osterman / 91m

Cast: Brandon Routh, Dane Cook, Caity Lotz, Ben Feldman, Tom Cavanagh, Grant Bowler, Dominic Bogart, Fernanda Romero, Sally Pressman, Mark Steger

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Rating: 4/10 – four astronauts are locked inside a chamber designed to simulate the timescale of a planned mission, and the psychological effects of such a journey, but as the simulation nears its finish, the quartet find that things aren’t entirely what they seem; a mystery thriller that doesn’t need its sci-fi trappings (and where the mystery is unengaging), 400 Days plays out like an old Outer Limits episode but without the succinctness that show could provide, all of which leaves the viewer trying hard to make sense of what’s going on, and trying equally hard to decide whether or not they should be bothered about it all.

The Girl King (2015) / D: Mika Kaurismäki / 106m

Cast: Malin Buska, Sarah Gadon, Michael Nyqvist, Lucas Bryant, Laura Birn, Hippolyte Girardot, Peter Lohmeyer, François Arnaud, Patrick Bauchau

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Rating: 5/10 – the story of Queen Kristina of Sweden (Buska), who in the ten years she ruled her country, did her best to bring enlightenment and peace for everyone, and who fought against her advisors’ insistence that she marry and secure her throne for the future; reminiscent of the Euro-pudding movies so prevalent in the late Seventies and throughout the Eighties, The Girl King lacks a coherent shooting style that isn’t helped by Hans Funck’s scattershot approach to the editing, but it does keep things admirably simple (if not too simple at times), and remains unexpectedly watchable thanks to Kaurismäki’s determined effort to convert Kristina’s reign (and her presumed lesbianism) into historical soap opera.

My Scientology Movie (2015) / D: John Dower / 99m

With: Louis Theroux, Marty Rathbun, Marc Headley, Tom De Vocht, Jeff Hawkins, Andrew Perez, Rob Alter

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Rating: 7/10 – Louis Theroux, intrepid (and annoying) documentarian turns his attention onto Scientology, and attempts to understand why the organisation is so litigious and defensive about its practices; Theroux teams up with ex-Scientology bigwig Marty Rathbun to learn about what goes on behind the scenes, but succeeds largely in having childish spats with one of the organisation’s “security” team (very funny indeed), while organising a filmed representation of a meeting where Scientology leader David Miscavage threw a major tantrum, all of which leaves My Scientology Movie feeling arid for long stretches and not quite as illuminating as Theroux might have hoped.

Transpecos (2016) / D: Greg Kwedar / 86m

Cast: Johnny Simmons, Gabriel Luna, Clifton Collins Jr, Julio Oscar Mechoso

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Rating: 5/10 – three Border Patrol guards find themselves in trouble with a Mexican cartel when they stop the wrong car at a checkpoint, and learn that one of them is in even deeper trouble than anyone knew; Transpecos makes good use of its New Mexico locations, and the opening twenty minutes point towards the movie being a tense, tightly constructed thriller, but sadly it soon degenerates into an unconvincing, meandering collection of scenes that are often dramatically inert, and which stretch the narrative in a variety of ineffective ways that it can’t recover from.

End of a Gun (2016) / D: Keoni Waxman / 87m

Cast: Steven Seagal, Florin Piersic Jr, Jade Ewen, Ovidiu Nicolescu, Jonathan Rosenthal, Alexandre Nguyen, Claudiu Bleont

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Rating: 4/10 – retired DEA agent-cum-“ghost” Michael Decker (Seagal) rescues a stripper (Ewen) from her abusive boyfriend (by killing him) and finds himself helping her steal €2m of the man’s money – which doesn’t go down well with his drug czar boss; another Romanian-shot quickie from Seagal that keeps his stunt double, his running double, and his walking double in gainful employment, End of a Gun is made bearable thanks to a good performance from Piersic Jr, and Waxman’s ingenuity when shooting low-budget shootouts, but otherwise it’s business as usual, which is to say, pretty awful (and the less said about ex-Sugababes member Ewen, the better).

The Whole Truth (2016)

22 Saturday Oct 2016

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D: Courtney Hunt / 93m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Renée Zellweger, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Gabriel Basso, Jim Belushi, Jim Klock, Ritchie Montgomery, Christopher Berry, Nicole Barré, Sean Bridgers, Mattie Liptak

In a small Louisiana town, young Mike Lassiter (Basso) is arrested for the murder of his father, Boone (Belushi). Having confessed to the crime, Mike says nothing more, even to his lawyer, Richard Ramsey (Reeves). Obviously this makes it hard for Ramsey to mount a defence, but as a friend of the family, and someone that Boone helped become a lawyer, he has inside knowledge about Boone that the jury won’t be aware of. With his client staying quiet, Ramsey’s only choice is to malign Boone’s reputation as a good father to Mike and loving husband to Loretta (Zellweger).

As the trial begins, Ramsey is joined by a junior lawyer, Janelle Brady (Mbatha-Raw). Together they begin to piece together a defence based on Boone’s abusive behaviour towards Mike and Loretta, while the prosecution – led by Leblanc (Klock) – reinforces the details surrounding the murder and Mike’s subsequent confession. The case seems hopeless until Ramsey calls Loretta to the witness stand, where she confirms just how abusive her husband could be. But as the trial continues, Janelle becomes suspicious about what might have really happened; she comes to believe that Mike is taking the fall for his mother. There’s no evidence to support this, however, and when Mike takes the stand and delivers a bombshell that no one could have prepared for, his testimony takes the trial in a direction that no one could have prepared for either.

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With an introductory voice over by Reeves that sets the tone for the whole movie (he sounds bored and uninterested), The Whole Truth is one of those courtroom dramas where secrets are revealed every so often in an effort to keep the audience guessing as to what’s happened, or is happening, and which should add up to a last-minute revelation that will have said audience saying to themselves, “Wow! I never saw that coming!” Except, in reality, The Whole Truth opts for secrets that have no impact on the movie’s ending, and which are pretty much forgotten about once they’ve been revealed.

You don’t have to have seen hundreds of courtroom dramas to know that ninety-nine per cent of the time, if the defendant has confessed to the crime (but isn’t saying why they did it), then the chances of them actually being guilty are greatly reduced. And while it would be unfair to reveal if this is the case here, let’s just say that there is a formula here that’s being adhered to, and said formula shouldn’t spring too many surprises on anyone familiar with the genre. And thanks to screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (known here as Raphael Jackson, and perhaps wisely), the movie plods along from one unexciting revelation to another in a dour effort to appear exciting. It’s all so sloppily written that, from Ramsey’s “knowing” voice over to both his and Leblanc’s inability to cross-examine witnesses, The Whole Truth acts more as an educational movie about how not to make a courtroom drama than the effective thriller it wants to be.

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Kazan’s script is one of the main offenders, but it’s not alone in handicapping the movie at every turn. Since coming to people’s attention with her well-received debut, Frozen River (2008), director Courtney Hunt has only worked on five TV episodes before taking on the challenge of molding this movie into something that isn’t the cinematic definition of “generic”. That she never gets to grips with the material, and films everything in a bland, TV-movie-of-the-week style, is evident throughout, and the look of the movie – all washed-out and looking as if bright colours were a no-no – further undermines any attempts the movie might make to stand out from the crowd. It’s as if cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin was instructed not to make the movie look attractive.

And then, somewhat inevitably, there’s the cast. Keanu Reeves has the kind of career that fluctuates between godawful and cautiously optimistic with almost absurd regularity. John Wick (2014) was a reminder that when he’s asked to play taciturn and given minimal dialogue, he’s playing to his strengths as an actor. But then he also appears in movies such as Man of Tai Chi (2013 – and which he directed), and Knock Knock (2015), and you’re reminded that he’s only good with certain material. Here he struggles as usual with both his character and his character’s dialogue, with his occasional voice overs further underscoring how often he looks and sounds removed from the movies he makes. He makes for an unconvincing trial lawyer as well, and The Whole Truth teeters on the edge of disaster every time Ramsey gets up to question a witness.

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Making her return to acting after a six-year hiatus, Renée Zellweger is, as many people have already pointed out, hard to recognise as Loretta. Even when she speaks you could still be forgiven for thinking she’s someone else, and this proves to be something of a distraction whenever she’s on screen. Why she picked this movie to make her comeback is a mystery that’s more intriguing than the central mystery around who killed Boone, and though she has second billing, Loretta is more of a supporting role than a lead. She’s not asked to do too much, and when Loretta takes the stand, Zellweger treats us to a glimpse of what she’s capable of, but otherwise it’s a performance that dozens of other actresses could have given. Mbatha-Raw is underused as well, her character the inexperienced, somewhat naïve ingenue who gets her one chance to shine in court before being relegated back to the sidelines.

With the performances unable to lift the movie out of its self-imposed narrative doldrums, and Hunt apparently unable to make much out of the material, The Whole Truth proves to be hugely disappointing, and resoundingly flat. There’s no impetus, no energy in the courtroom scenes, and by the end it’s difficult to care who did what, why or how. Courtroom dramas succeed or fail on the quality of the secrets that are revealed during a trial, and the odds against the defence lawyer winning, but here there’s so much apathy on display that any impact is curtailed before any such secrets are fully revealed. This may be a courtroom drama per se, but someone really should have pointed out that the drama was, in legal terms, misrepresented.

Rating: 4/10 – originally set to star Daniel Craig as Ramsey, The Whole Truth is a movie that wouldn’t have turned out any better even if he hadn’t dropped out just days before production was due to begin; clumsy and dull, the movie is like drudge work for the eyes and ears, and never once feels like it’s going to step up a gear and become even slightly interesting.

War on Everyone (2016)

18 Tuesday Oct 2016

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D: John Michael McDonagh / 98m

Cast: Michael Peña, Alexander Skarsgård, Theo James, Tessa Thompson, Malcolm Barrett, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephanie Sigman, David Wilmot, Paul Reiser

Do you like your cops as corrupt as the criminals they arrest/steal from? Do you like to see cops misuse their position and betray your trust in them at every turn? And do you like them to have so little regard for your (or anyone else’s) dignity or safety that they’d hit a mime with their car just to see if he yells in pain? Well, if you only answered yes to that last question, then War on Everyone is the movie for you. It’s a buddy cop movie where the cops in question, Detectives Bob Bolaño (Peña) and Terry Monroe (Skarsgård), will do everything they possibly can to screw over everyone they meet, be it their long-suffering boss, Lt. Stanton (Reiser), or one of their stoolpigeons, Reggie (Barrett), or just about anyone operating on the wrong side of the law (like them).

When news reaches them that a big heist is being planned, naturally Bob and Terry want to know all about it so they can grab the money once the robbers have done all the hard work. But the man planning the heist is a shadowy figure they’ve not encountered before, and the details are equally shadowy; all they have are the men who’ll be involved but not the location or where the money is to be taken. With Reggie managing to get himself the getaway driver’s job, Bob and Terry think they’ve got it all worked out: follow Reggie, grab the cash at the earliest opportunity, and head off to somewhere foreign with no extradition arrangement with the US. But of course, nothing goes to plan, and Bob and Terry find themselves up against a British aristocrat called “Lord” James Mangan (James), the mastermind behind the heist, and someone who doesn’t take kindly to their efforts to hijack the robbery and take most of the money.

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After the relatively sombre and restrained The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2014), writer/director John Michael McDonagh has decided to cut loose – and quite a bit – with this tale of two ultra-corrupt cops that’s set in New Mexico, is bolstered by the inclusion of Glen Campbell on the soundtrack, and which has a very gritty Seventies vibe to it. War on Everyone is also extremely funny in places, as you’d expect from McDonagh, and there are a plethora of laugh-out-loud moments to keep the audience happy and the script from seeming too formulaic. McDonagh is great at creating a world for his dysfunctional characters to inhabit, and the bright, airy spaces of New Mexico are used to good effect to create a surprisingly natural background for the absurdities that unfold in the foreground.

The plot, such as it is, is acceptable without pushing any boundaries or bringing anything new to the table, and McDonagh is keen to highlight the fact that he knows this, and that the audience should just go along with it. It’s Bob and Terry who are the movie’s real focus, even though their relationship – built as ever on mutual trust and respect while everyone else (bar Bob’s family) is fair game – is one we’re meant to enjoy for its verbal jousting and the pair’s unspoken dependence on each other. Only when it seems that Bob has run out of luck do we see how much Terry depends on him as both a partner and a friend. But in keeping with the characters’ macho exteriors, it’s a necessarily brief glance – and then back to the action.

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With McDonagh having established the bond that unites these two latter-day Robin Hoods (only difference: they don’t give to the poor), he adds subplots and secondary characters to flesh out the drama, but in the process and with the exception of Landry Jones’ twitchy portrayal of Mangan’s right hand man, Birdwell, never quite manages to make them as memorable as they need to be. Despite sending Mangan (literally) on an acid trip that’s designed more to show off some fancy camera moves and elaborate staging than to look into the mind of the character, the villain is essentially colourless and in the end, easily dealt with. Likewise, Terry’s love interest, Jackie (Thompson), who he places under his own personal protection and who he promptly falls in love with. Jackie’s a sweet enough character, and as a counterpoint to all the cynicism on display elsewhere she fits the bill, but McDonagh doesn’t develop her in any way, and she remains a frustrating caricature: the girl who needs to be rescued.

As the two felons with badges, Peña and Skarsgård make a great team. Peña is the erudite, well-read partner who can quote from the Greek classics, and who realises that they can’t keep doing what they’re doing indefinitely (it doesn’t help that he looks a little like a Latino version of the British movie critic Mark Kermode). Skarsgård brings the muscle, folding in on himself a lot of the time and accentuating his forehead, as if he’s about to use it as a battering ram. He’s the more dangerous of the two, unpredictable, and Skarsgård projects just the right amount of bottled-up menace that the role requires. Together the two stars are a joy to watch, and McDonagh ensures that their camaraderie is entirely believable, even when he takes them out of their New Mexico comfort zone and sends them off to Iceland to track down an absconded Reggie.

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Making his first feature away from Ireland, McDonagh shows a confidence in his decision that isn’t supported by the way he handles the material, and on this occasion McDonagh the director doesn’t know quite what to do to combat the problems inherent in McDonagh the writer’s screenplay. But the movie is an enjoyable one for the most part, provided the viewer keeps their expectations to a minimum; then they might be pleasantly surprised by Bob and Terry’s antics, and also more invested in how things turn out. One area where the movie can’t be faulted is in its cinematography, courtesy of the very talented Bobby Bukowski, whose previous movies include Rosewater (2014) and The Iceman (2012). Thanks to his efforts, War on Everyone is often beautiful to look at, and he keeps the camera moving in ways that are often very inventive – and often without the viewer realising it.

Rating: 7/10 – at times a raucous, freewheeling movie with plenty of buzz about it, War on Everyone can’t sustain it’s initial set up for very long, and McDonagh’s script loses its freshness around the halfway mark; good performances from Peña and Skarsgård help things immeasurably, but this has to go down as a missed opportunity from McDonagh, but not so bad that his next movie won’t be as highly anticipated as this one was.

Trailers – Fences (2016), Mean Dreams (2016) and The Free World (2016)

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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In 2010, a production of Fences, August Wilson’s award-winning play, won Tony’s for Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor and Best Actress. The two leads in the revival were Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, so if you think after watching the trailer that their performances look incredibly good – well, there’s the reason why. Set in the 1950’s, the movie examines the effects changes in race relations in the US have on an average African-American family, and in particular the dynamic between Washington’s struggling husband and father Troy, and his teenage son Cory (played by relative newcomer Jovan Adepo). With Washington making his first feature since The Great Debaters (2007), it will be interesting to see just how much of Wilson’s tale of bitter regret and personal despair is retained, and if the movie retains the play’s episodic structure. But from the trailer alone it does look as if Washington has made a challenging, powerful movie, and perhaps a sure-fire awards winner further down the line.

 

In Mean Dreams, Bill Paxton is the kind of backwoods sheriff we’ve seen quite a lot of recently: outwardly charming, seemingly decent, but beneath all that, as callous and conniving as any regular bad guy (and probably more so). But this is a small-town sheriff bordering on the psychotic, which makes his treatment and eventual pursuit of his daughter (Sophie Nélisse) and her wrong-guy-in-the-wrong-place boyfriend (Josh Wiggins) all the more gripping. Given the right role, Paxton is an actor you should never underestimate; he can take a viewer to some very dark places indeed, and often at the drop of a hat. This has all the hallmarks of such a role, and while the movie has a wintry feel to it that appears to suit the mood and tone of the movie, it’s still going to be Paxton who grabs all the attention – and he looks good and ready to do so.

 

There are always actors who pop up in movies and make an impression, but who still manage to retain an air of mystery and have audiences scratching their heads and asking themselves, “Didn’t I see him/her in that other movie?” Boyd Holbrook is one of those actors. He’s been quietly amassing a body of work that’s also been increasingly impressive ever since he first appeared in Milk (2008). Now, it looks as if The Free World, a taut thriller about second chances and personal redemption set against the backdrop of a domestic murder case, could be the movie to catapault Holbrook into the big(ger) leagues. If it doesn’t, then it’s unlikely Holbrook will be too worried. He’ll just carry on giving good performances in whatever movies he makes.