Tag Archives: Murder

Double Indemnity (1944)

04 Thursday Apr 2019

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D: Billy Wilder / 107m

Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber

When insurance salesman Walter Neff (MacMurray) meets Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), there’s an immediate attraction on his part, and one that doesn’t go away even when she hints at murdering her husband for a sizeable insurance payout. At first, Neff wants no part of any plan she might have, but when she comes to see him at his apartment, his attraction towards her proves too much to overcome. Knowing the tricks of the trade, Neff comes up with the idea of having Phyllis’s husband appear to fall from a moving train and be killed; this will invoke a “double indemnity” clause in the insurance policy which will mean twice the payout. Together, Neff and Phyllis carry out the murder, but the nature of her husband’s death causes Neff’s boss, Barton Keyes (Robinson), to question its provenance. Matters become complicated further when Phyllis’s step-daughter, Lola (Heather), tells Neff that she suspects Phyllis of murdering her mother in order to marry her father. And when it’s revealed that Dietrichson had his own suspicions, and changed his will so that Phyllis couldn’t inherit any of his money, Neff begins to realise that he cannot trust her at all…

Like all the best films noir, Double Indemnity tells a twisted story of lust and greed and casual immorality, and it does so without apology or due consideration for the feelings of its audience. With its weak-willed “hero” and sleazy femme fatale working at opposite ends of the moral spectrum while at the same time being in tandem with each other, the movie playfully and deliberately explores the darker side of human aspirations, and paints a vivid portrait of what happens when someone reaches too far for something they shouldn’t have. Told in flashback in a similar style to the one used later by Wilder in Sunset Blvd. (1950), its story unfolds perhaps a little too slowly as it sets up the relationship between Neff and Phyllis. But as we get to know them, and what motivates them, it’s no surprise that their affair is as quick to unravel as the murderous plot they’ve committed to. When duplicity is this exciting, everything else seems so dull and trivial, and by making Phyllis glamorous in an obviously phoney way, it speaks volumes for Neff’s own state of mind and moral malleability. It’s psychodrama at its darkest and most nuanced.

Both MacMurray and Stanwyck are playing against the type they were known for, but it’s Wilder’s belief in them that holds firm, and as a result, both actors give career best performances. As the balance of power shifts between them, and both characters act more and more out of self-preservation, Wilder tightens the screws on both of them, but MacMurray and Stanwyck are more than equal to the task, circling each other and just waiting for the slightest mistake to be made and taken advantage of. Complemented by Robinson’s turn as the investigator whose moral compass is as clearly defined as Phyllis’s is fatally corroded, the movie is a cat and mouse game with Los Angeles as a glamorous, enticing backdrop (much like Phyllis herself), and John F. Seitz’s luminous black and white cinematography, with its sharp angles and “venetian blind” lighting. Paving the way for dozens of pale imitations in the years that followed, the movie stands as a prime example of remaining true to the spirit of a story while adapting it for the big screen. James M. Cain’s novella is given a brusque workover by Raymond Chandler, but survives the encounter to provide audiences with a tough, chilly, emotionally austere thriller that is also both tawdry and exciting.

Rating: 9/10 – a movie that features a number of “firsts”, from its point of view being provided by a criminal, to the characters’ emotions being expressed through the lighting in a scene, Double Indemnity is a bona fide classic that still holds up today; increasingly tense because of its main characters’ inevitable downfall and how it plays out, and with a cruel sense of irony to spur it on, this is a terrific movie from a director, and a cast and crew, that were at the height of their powers.

Beast (2017)

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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D: Michael Pearce / 106m

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, Trystan Gravelle, Geraldine James, Oliver Maltman, Charley Palmer Rothwell

On the island of Jersey, three young women have been murdered recently and the killer is still at large. Moll Huntington (Buckley) is a twenty-something tour guide who still lives at home with her parents. On the night of her birthday, she leaves the party her mother (James) has organised, and heads to a nightclub, where she meets a young man (Rothwell), who later tries to take advantage of her on their way home. She’s rescued by local poacher and odd job man Pascal (Flynn), and the pair strike up a tentative romance. That same night, a fourth girl is abducted and later found murdered. Suspicion points toward Pascal, who has a violent history, but Moll has become so infatuated with him that she lies to the police about being with him the whole time she was at the nightclub. However, doubts about his innocence begin to plague her, and when she learns about his past, this causes her to doubt him even more. When a break in the case appears to clear Pascal, it’s still not enough to convince Moll, and she starts to challenge what seems to be the truth…

Based very loosely on the real life Beast of Jersey who broke into homes at night and attacked women and children during the 60’s and 70’s, Beast is a psycho-drama that is heavy on atmosphere, and rife with undercurrents of dread and barely contained mania. There’s madness here too, but the source isn’t what (or who) you might expect, as writer/director Michael Pearce slowly unravels the identity of someone who isn’t the Beast, but who is, in many ways, far worse. Both Pascal and Moll have violent pasts – she stabbed a fellow pupil when she was thirteen as revenge for bullying, he assaulted his girlfriend of the time – and Pearce explores the different mindsets that have kept both of them from having any real friends, or from being in a long-term relationship. They’re both outsiders, Pascal because he doesn’t “fit in”, and Moll because she doesn’t want to. Together their different social exclusions help them bond and this bond allows a twisted form of romance to develop. But as the movie progresses, and we learn more about them, Pearce reveals that their relationship is less of a romantic connection, and more of a strange co-dependency.

Pearce places this odd, and very disturbing central relationship against a backdrop of bucolic imagery that hints at darker deeds to come, and which also offers little in the way of comfort for the easily dismayed viewer. Bolstered by two terrific performances from Buckley and Flynn, the movie works best when it’s exploring Moll’s tortured psychological motivations, with Buckley navigating the kind of dark emotional territory that is both unnerving and frightening for the scale of its intensity. Flynn makes Pascal more of a tragic figure than he first appears, and though his past misdeeds point at the poacher being involved in the murders, there’s an ambiguity that remains in place even when Pearce affects a narrative sleight of hand that changes things irrevocably for both Moll and Pascal. But this sleight of hand also means that the movie goes off at a tangent that isn’t anywhere near as convincing as what’s gone before, and it raises more questions than Pearce’s screenplay has answers for. It’s a shame, as up until then, the movie is a confident, tightly controlled thriller that plays with audience expectations, and which offers complex characterisations instead of the usual thriller-style stereotypes. It’s also beautifully composed and shot by DoP Benjamin Kracun, and features an eclectic but effective score by Jim Williams.

Rating: 7/10 – a compelling, and malice-filled first feature from Pearce, Beast isn’t quite the sum of its parts, but when it’s being mysterious and malignant, it’s hard to look away for fear of missing something either horrible or important, or both; Buckley is outstanding, but the secondary characters, including James’s stern-faced mother and Gravelle’s lovelorn policeman, aren’t as well developed, while Maya Maffioli’s sometimes hesitant editing doesn’t always allow certain scenes to flow as smoothly as they should.

Outside In (2017)

17 Monday Dec 2018

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D: Lynn Shelton / 109m

Cast: Edie Falco, Jay Duplass, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben Schwartz, Charles Leggett, Eryn Rea, Matt Molloy, Pamela Reed

After spending the last twenty years in prison for murder, Chris (Duplass) is paroled and returns to his home town of Granite Falls. At a surprise party given by his brother, Ted (Schwartz), Chris reunites with Carol (Falco), one of his high school teachers and the person whose efforts have helped gain his release. Later, Carol begins to realise that Chris has a crush on her, something that is confirmed when he kisses her outside her home and declares his love for her. Carol insists they can only be friends, but even that proves difficult, as when he and Carol do begin to spend time together, it’s in the company of Carol’s teenage daughter, Hildy (Dever). While Carol does her best to put some distance between them, Hildy becomes interested in Chris and begins to hang out with him. But though he and Hildy get on, Chris still hopes to be with Carol, and convinces her to spend the day with him as a kind of final, one off experience that would allow him to move on. But while the day goes better than they could have hoped for, the following day sees things begin to go badly wrong…

Featuring an original screenplay by director Shelton and star Duplass, Outside In is a subtle, elegantly paced drama that explores the emotional vicissitudes of two people whose close bond has been developed over years in which they have only been able to exchange their ideas and feelings through letters. How much longing would build up over all that time, the movie asks, and how would someone deal with the inevitable pressure of expectation that would bring? Well, for Chris it’s easy: he blurts out his feelings as if it were the simplest thing in the world to do. But for Carol, the pressure she feels is different. Married – though to an indifferent husband (Leggett) – and with a daughter who is trying to deal with her own issues, Carol’s feelings for Chris are tempered by responsibility and their inappropriate nature. While Chris persists in his attentions, Carol feels the weight of her own expectations slowly eroding her will to say no. And though there are no prizes for guessing how things will turn out on their day together, Shelton and Duplass’s sympathetic and revealing screenplay ensures that what follows isn’t as easily deciphered.

The movie is anchored by two terrific central performances. Falco offers a quietly devastating portrayal of a middle-aged woman who is only now beginning to realise just how much she’s settled for in her life. As she struggles with her feelings for Chris, Carol’s inner torment is perfectly expressed by Falco, and the depth of her feelings, and the crisis it’s causing her is beautifully rendered. Just as good, but in a different fashion, Duplass plays Chris as a thirty-eight year old man suffering from arrested development, still the eighteen year old he was when he went to jail, and still viewing much of life through the eyes of a teenager. That he’s not fully aware of this should be tragic, but Chris is so good-natured and kind that it counts almost as a blessing, and Duplass uses the character’s naïvete to good effect. This is a movie that is decisive and impactful in equal measure, and in service to a story that builds momentum while avoiding many of the clichés that you might expect from yet another “small-town story”. Shelton has made perhaps her best movie yet, and the whole thing is given a further boost thanks to a lovely, wistful, engaging soundtrack courtesy of Andrew Bird.

Rating: 8/10 – full of quiet, tender moments that carry an unexpected emotional wallop, Outside In is a beautifully crafted and shot movie (by Nathan M. Miller) that takes its time in developing both the main storyline and the inner lives of its two central characters; a movie about hope and longing, and how there are many, different kinds of imprisonment, the latest from the prolific Duplass brothers reconfirms that when it comes to small scale indie dramas, they’re still in a league of their own.

Brothers’ Nest (2018)

10 Saturday Nov 2018

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D: Clayton Jacobson / 93m

Cast: Shane Jacobson, Clayton Jacobson, Kim Gyngell, Lynette Curran, Sarah Snook

Brothers Terry (Shane Jacobson) and Jeff (Clayton Jacobson) arrive at their childhood home early one morning, and set about preparing to kill their stepfather, Rodger (Gyngell), and make it look like suicide. Jeff has come up with the plan pretty much all by himself: the idea is to stop Rodger inheriting the family home and then selling it when their mother (Curran) passes away (she has cancer and only a few months left to live). Looking at it as a way of ensuring they keep what they regard as theirs, and to honour their biological father who killed himself when he discovered Rodger was having an affair with their mother, the pair work through Jeff’s plan down to the minutest detail. As time passes, the brothers reminisce about their childhood, and the impact Rodger has had on their lives. They also learn things about each other that makes Terry begin to question if what they’re doing is necessary, Finally, and as expected, Rodger arrives at the house, but Jeff’s meticulously devised plan begins to unravel from the moment that Rodger doesn’t enter the house straight away, forcing the brothers to improvise…

A pitch black comedy that starts off slowly before ramping up the tension and making at least two scenes very uncomfortable to watch, Brothers’ Nest is an assured, finely tuned movie that has a lot going on “under the hood”. Reuniting the Jacobson brothers for the first time since the sublime Kenny (2006) (though Clayton had a much smaller role), the movie spends much of its first half in exploring each brother’s reasons for being there, and the complicated family and emotional ties that have led them to contemplating murder as a way of solving problems they can barely articulate (at one point Jeff insists on their being honest with each other, but it’s an idea neither is able to commit to). It’s tempting to speculate that the Jacobsons – working from a script by Jaime Browne – have drawn from their own relationship in order to portray Terry and Jeff, but if that were so then you’d be seriously worried for them: both brothers have enough unresolved issues to keep a team of therapists busy for years. Clayton teases out a number of subtle character moments that point to things going wrong even if they go right, and these are based on equally subtle undercurrents that inform the characters’ motives and the quality of the performances.

It’s when things do start to go wrong that the movie kicks into a higher gear and becomes a dark, uncompromising thriller, with the brothers forced down a path that brooks no return or chance of redemption. The humour, which so far has been a mixture of unsettling and morbid, becomes blacker still, but it’s all in service to the desperate efforts of Terry and Jeff to rescue their plan, and when that’s no longer possible, for one of them to save himself at any cost. The movie does lose its way in the final twenty minutes, when the confines of the house are overtaken by events that take place outside, but there’s a messy desperation to these events that seems appropriate even as the material, and its credibility, is stretched a little too thinly. Throughout it all, Clayton uses low level camera angles and subdued lighting to emphasise the off-kilter nature of the brothers’ plan, while sound designer/supervisor Emma Bortignon provides cues and effects that add to the discomfort the movie promotes throughout. With tremendous performances from both Shane and Clayton, the movie works best when focusing on Terry and Jeff’s fractured relationship, but when it takes a (much, much) darker turn, it still manages to keep them at the centre, while exploring their fragile bond even further – even when it proves increasingly uncomfortable to do so.

Rating: 8/10 – despite a last act detour into violent melodrama that’s tonally at odds with what’s gone before, the bulk of Brothers’ Nest is a quietly disturbing look at fratricidal dysfunction set against a simmering backdrop of unresolved family betrayals; tense and tautly executed, let’s hope it’s not another twelve years before the Jacobsons work together again.

The White Orchid (2018)

02 Friday Nov 2018

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D: Steve Anderson / 88m

Cast: Olivia Thirlby, John Carroll Lynch, Janina Gavankar, Nichelle Nichols, Brendan Sexton III, Rachael Taylor, Jennifer Beals

A freelance investigator for Social Services, Claire Decker (Thirlby) is conscientious and very thorough when it comes to finding relatives of people who have died, seemingly, alone. But when her boss (Beals) gives her a new challenge, it’s not Claire’s usual type of case. The headless, mutilated corpse of a woman has been found on the beach of nearby Morro Bay, and though she appeared to be well-known in the area, the police have discovered that her name and I.D. were fake. Tasked with finding out who the murdered woman really was, Claire spends time at the woman’s home, and finds clues that the police have overlooked, clues that she keeps from the local police chief (Lynch). When Claire talks to some of the woman’s neighbours, she meets Teresa (Nichols), a blind lady who was asked to look after a suitcase the woman left with her before she died. The contents add to the mystery of the woman’s death, but by now Claire has worked out that the woman’s real name was Jessica, and that her murder is somehow linked to a hotel in San Francisco called the Hotel Rex…

Like many thrillers, The White Orchid sets out its central mystery as soon as its central character has been established as one type of person, and then has that same character behave increasingly in ways that don’t seem to match the character’s established personality. All this is in pursuit of the truth, of course, but it does make you wonder why it is that the movies do this. Are we meant to find a flawed heroine more interesting? Will determined and resourceful ever be enough? And what is it about Claire Decker that makes her want to dress up like the murder victim (as she inevitably does; it’s signposted so obviously) and put herself in harm’s way, especially as she knows there’s a potentially dangerous man lurking around who knows what she’s doing and has found out? These are all good questions, but sadly, not ones that writer/director Steve Anderson is interested in answering. Claire’s motivations remain murky throughout, and there’s something of a character swerve late on in her investigation that comes out of the blue, and which has the awkward effect of making the viewer review everything they’ve seen so far (though clues are there).

Of course, with Claire playing dress up in the dead woman’s clothes and wigs, there’s a psycho-sexual aspect to it all, and Thirlby is required to wear the kind of underwear that looks nice but which women don’t sit around in in real life. These voyeuristic moments aside, the mystery develops at a steady pace, teasing out the truth while failing to put Claire in any danger whatsoever. This leaves the movie tension-free, and largely unsure of where it’s going, content to plod along happily until a showdown between Claire and the killer that falls flat bcause of how contrived it all is. Much of the movie’s running time is taken up by scenes that hamper the flow of the narrative, from Claire discussing the case with her roommate (Gavankar), to one of Claire’s neighbours (Sexton III) expressing his worries over his daughter’s safety because a man with a gun was looking for our largely unconcerned heroine. With Anderson’s screenplay unsure if it wants to be a solid mystery thriller, or an exploration of the sexual awakening of a woman with no apparent social life (but a liking for the neck of a particular blonde), the movie is only fitfully intriguing, and rarely gets out of second gear.

Rating: 5/10 – acceptable as a way of filling time until something better comes along, The White Orchid is a laboured attempt at a modern day film noir, but without the skill and ingenuity needed to bring its over-burdened narrative to life; Thirlby and the rest of the cast acquit themselves well enough playing staple characters of the genre, and there’s some good location work along the California coast, but ultimately this is forgettable stuff that jars more than it gels.

Manhunt (2017)

23 Sunday Sep 2018

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Original title: Zhui bu

D: John Woo / 109m

Cast: Zhang Hanyu, Masaharu Fukuyama, Qi Wei, Ji-won Ha, Jun Kunimura, Angeles Woo, Nanami Sakuraba, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Tao Okamoto, Kuniharu Tokunaga

Du Qiu (Zhang) is a Chinese lawyer whose work for Tenjin Pharmaceuticals in Osaka has made him successful and widely admired. At a party to celebrate Tenjin’s intention to launch a new drug on the market, Du is approached by a young woman, Mayumi (Qi), who wants to discuss a trial he won on Tenjin’s behalf three years before. They spend some time together before Du goes home. When he wakes the next morning, it’s to find the dead body of a woman in bed beside him. He calls the police, and Inspector Asano (Tokunaga) arrives. With evidence pointing to Du being the killer, Asano arrests him, but as they leave his apartment building, Asano makes it look as if Du has killed another officer while escaping. On the run, Du tries to stay one step ahead of the police, while trying to find out who’s framed him. Another detective, Inspector Yamura (Fukuyama), is also assigned to the case, and the more he investigates, the more he too begins to believe that Du was framed…

Made as a tribute to the late Ken Takakura, who starred in the 1976 original version, Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare (itself adapted from the novel by Juko Nishimura), Manhunt sees action auteur John Woo return to the style of movie making that made him famous back in the late Eighties and early Nineties. With its typically kinetic action sequences, and blistering bursts of gunfire, the movie acts like a compendium of Woo’s greatest hits as a director, with nods to Hard Boiled (1992), A Better Tomorrow (1986), and The Killer (1989) – which Woo will be remaking soon in an English language version. There’s plenty of slo-mo gunfire, explosions, guns being fired while people spin in mid-air, glass shattering at every turn, extended bouts of chaos, vehicular destruction (on land, on water, and in houses), and bone crunching fight scenes. There’s also the usual themes around identity, trust, honour, and respect; romantic elements that grow as the movie progresses; several moments of otherwise silly and unnecessary humour; and, of course, doves. For fans of the director who has given us at least five bona fide action classics, but whose more recent output hasn’t brought him the attention he deserves (though Red Cliff (2008-09) is superb), this is like welcoming back an old friend who’s been away too long.

That said, the storyline isn’t exactly original, and some of the newer material struggles for relevance (Tenjin doesn’t exist in the original version, and its making a weaponised designer drug strains credulity at every turn). It does all tie together, though the presence of Ha and Woo as assassins, and orphaned sisters to boot, feels like one sub-plot too many, while the ease with which Du gets around suggests a background as a spy rather than a lawyer. It’s all very melodramatic and giddily over the top, but with Woo the movie is also in safe hands. No matter how absurd it gets, Woo is there to bolster things with another expertly choreographed and executed action sequence, with more blood squibs going off than you can count in any one scene. Away from Woo’s trademark balletic violence, the movie is breathtakingly shot by DoP Takuta Ishizaka, and Yohei Taneda’s impressive production design provides the perfect backdrop for all the mayhem. If there’s one area where the movie feels like it’s been let down, it’s in the performances, but this isn’t because the cast are uniformly bad – they’re not – it’s simply because their characters aren’t given enough room to develop.

Rating: 7/10 – with its turgid narrative and unremarkable characters, Manhunt is disappointing on a basic movie making level, but with Woo in the director’s chair, it’s a also a movie that often transcends those issues and makes you forget about them; not, overall, one of Woo’s absolute best, but successful enough to remind audiences that he still knows what he’s doing when it comes to action.

Out of Thin Air (2017)

04 Tuesday Sep 2018

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D: Dylan Howitt / 83m

Cast: Elín Sif Halldórsdóttir, Hinrik Kanneworff, Tómas Kolbeinn Georgs, Tumi Björnsson, Hjalti Steinar Guðmundsson, Arnar Hauksson, Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson, Ingi Hrafn Hilmarsson, Trausti Örn þóróarson

On 26 January 1974, while walking home that evening, Guðmundur Einarsson went missing, and was never seen again. On the evening of 19 November 1974, Geirfinnur Einarsson also went missing, and was never seen again. Despite their surnames, the two men weren’t related. Two such disappearances in such a short period of time prompted public concern in the lack of progress that the police had made in finding the two men, or discovering what had happened to them. In December 1975, the Icelandic police arrested a young couple, Erla Bolladóttir (Halldórsdóttir) and Sævar Ciesielski (Kanneworff), on a minor charge. Erla confessed immediately to the crime she was accused of, but just as she was leaving the interrogation room, the police showed her a photograph of Guðmundur Einarsson and asked her if she knew him. She admitted she did, and when pressed about the night he disappeared, she told them about a nightmare she’d had in which Sævar and his friends were whispering at her window. The police seized on this, and over the ensuing year, Erla and Sævar and four others confessed to their involvement in the murders of both men…

Reviewing the case forty years later, Dylan Howitt’s absorbing documentary is a sober, and sobering, account of a miscarriage of justice that is shocking not just for the deliberate handling of the case by the police, and the methods they used to extract the confessions – one of the suspects, Tryggvi Liefsson, spent 655 days in solitary confinement – but the suffering those suspects endured for years after they were found guilty. Slowly, and with great attention to detail, Howitt reveals the deliberate nature of a police investigation that encompassed physical and mental torture, and where basic human rights were ignored. Much is made early on about Iceland being a country of very little crime, and of how peaceful it is. As the movie unfolds, that assumption is shown to be just that – an assumption – and in a patient, methodical manner that suits the material, Howitt strips away the veneer of respectability that the Icelandic authorities presented publicly. What remains is disturbing for the ease with which it all happened, and the concurrent ease with which the six suspects cooperated with the police in admitting to two murders where there was no physical evidence to sustain the belief that murder had even been committed.

This extraordinary situation begs the question, how could this have happened? Enter Memory Distrust Syndrome, where a person can be led to believe that something happened and they were involved in it, even if they weren’t; it’s like the dark side of the power of suggestion. This is the tragedy that strikes at the heart of the movie, as even forty years on, the likes of Erla and co-suspect Guðjón Skarphéðinsson (who both appear as themselves) still have trouble believing what is true and what was instilled in their memories by the insistence of the police. Hearing Erla express her lingering confusion even now over what she remembers as being true is dispiriting and sad, while the fate of Sævar is far more tragic. Howitt does an excellent job of threading the procedural reportage with strands of the personal that are both affecting and distressing, and the movie takes an observational stance, content to let the material speak for itself. The result is powerful without being melodramatic, and appalling in what it reveals about a police force, and a complicit wider community, that resorts to torture in order to solve two murder cases that were never murder cases to begin with.

Rating: 8/10 – quietly and diligently going about its business, Out of Thin Air not only highlights a terrible miscarriage of justice, but it also paints an affecting portrait of the lives that were ruined in the process; sincere, and peppered with some very haunting imagery, it’s a documentary that isn’t so easy to shake off – and nor should it be.

Gemini (2017)

31 Friday Aug 2018

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D: Aaron Katz / 93m

Cast: Lola Kirke, Zoë Kravitz, Greta Lee, John Cho, Michelle Forbes, Nelson Franklin, Reeve Carney, Jessica Parker Kennedy, James Ransone, Ricki Lake

Jill LeBeau (Kirke) is the personal assistant to famous actress Heather Anderson (Kravitz). Heather has been in talks to make a new movie but has decided to take a break for a while instead. She persuades Jill to tell one of the producers, Greg (Franklin), the news, and he’s predictably angry. Ensuing attention from a self-proclaimed superfan (Kennedy), as well as a paparazzi, Stan (Ransone), adds further stress to Heather’s decision. When Heather asks Jill to borrow her gun because she doesn’t feel “safe”, Jill reluctantly agrees. At Heather’s home one morning, Jill tries to take back the gun but it goes off accidentally. No one is hurt, but Heather keeps the weapon. However, when Jill comes back later, she finds Heather dead from multiple gun shot wounds. It isn’t long before the police, led by Detective Ahn (Cho), deduce that Jill was the last person to see Heather alive, and that only her fingerprints are on the gun. With the residue from the misfire on her hand as well, Jill quickly becomes the prime suspect in the eyes of the police, but she determines to find out for herself just who did kill Heather…

For much of the first twenty minutes of Gemini, the nature of the relationship between Jill and Heather is somewhat blurred, and perhaps deliberately so. There’s a hint that they might be lovers, something that’s given a degree of credence when one of Heather’s ex-boyfriends, Devin (Carney), calls to say that he knows “what’s going on” (and to make a convenient death threat). Later, when the superfan asks if they’re an item, Heather’s response is indignant, but she doesn’t deny it outright. Nor does she when Stan the paparazzi asks the same question. But on another night, they share a bed at Heather’s home, and Heather whispers “I love you” while Jill sleeps. With the possibility of a deeper emotional relationship existing between the pair, writer-director Katz establishes a more profound meaning for Jill’s solo investigation of Heather’s murder: she’s not just keeping herself out of jail, she wants to find the killer of someone she truly cared about. This informs much of Jill’s quest to keep one step ahead of the police, while also providing the narrative with a depth that is both unexpected and entirely welcome.

What also helps is the modern day film noir vibe that the movie gives off, with Jill in the role of erstwhile private investigator, and the list of suspects such that any one of them could have done it. Katz manipulates the various clues and potential culprits with a great deal of skill, even including a scene where Jill speaks to Greg and he tells her who he thinks is the killer – if he were writing the whole thing as a script. Clever touches such as this, along with a number of visual flourishes, keep the movie from feeling stale or inevitable, and it’s further embellished by a terrific performance from Kirke, giving Jill a resourcefulness that keeps her focused and willing to take calculated risks, whether it’s sneaking into Devin’s hotel room or evading the police on a motorcycle. It’s a confident portrayal of a confident woman, and Kirke proves throughout that Katz was right to choose her for the role. In support, Kravitz is sweet natured yet nervy as Heather, while Cho is charmingly off kilter as the detective who would usually believe in the heroine’s innocence but instead is convinced she’s guilty. It’s another quirky, atypical choice from Katz, and like much else, makes Gemini more than just a pleasant diversion.

Rating: 8/10 – an conventional murder mystery given an unconventional spin, Gemini is an unexpected delight, thanks to Kirke’s self-assured performance, Katz’s witty screenplay, and a tremendously atmospheric mise en scene; only occasionally betraying its modest budget, it’s a movie that provides far more than meets the eye for the viewer willing to delve deeper into its seemingly straightforward plotting.

Monthly Roundup – July 2018

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Hereditary (2018) / D: Ari Aster / 127m

Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd

Rating: 7/10 – following the death of her mother, miniaturist artist Annie (Collette) and her family begin to experience strange phenomena that hint at supernatural forces at work around them, and which appear to be malevolent in their intentions; this year’s critics’ favourite in the horror genre, Hereditary does boast a superb performance from Collette, and creates a fervid atmosphere in its first half that is genuinely unnerving, but this is a movie where the sum of its parts isn’t equal to a satisfying whole, and what should have been a tense, psychological thriller becomes a grandstanding Rosemary’s Baby for the new millennium, an outcome that robs it of much of its impact.

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940) / D: Fred Ellis / 64m

Cast: Mary Clare, Edward Lexy, Nigel Patrick, Janet Johnson, Anthony Ireland, Irene Handl, Vernon Kelso

Rating: 7/10 – the predicted deaths of two members of a Psychic Society leads Scotland Yard to assign their lone female detective, Mrs. Pym (Clare), to the case in an effort to track down the victims’ killer; a boisterous little crime caper with a delightful performance by Clare (in her only starring role), Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard retains a freshness nearly eighty years on that some movies can’t manage after eighty days, a feat that can be attributed to Ellis’s sprightly direction, a handful of engaging secondary performances, and a script – based on stories by Nigel Morland and adapted by Ellis and Peggy Barwell – that knows when to be amusing and when to be dramatic, and when to be delightfully daft (which, thankfully, is often).

Backlash (1956) / D: John Sturges / 84m

Cast: Richard Widmark, Donna Reed, William Campbell, John McIntire, Barton MacLane, Harry Morgan, Robert J. Wilke

Rating: 7/10 – while searching for his father’s killer, Jim Slater (Widmark) crosses paths with a woman (Reed) who may be connected to his father’s death, and who may be able to provide him with information that will lead him to the man responsible, an outcome that, when it happens, isn’t as straightforward as he’s been led to believe; a tough, muscular Western with psychological and film noir elements, Backlash is also a taut, uncompromising revenge tale that doesn’t pull its punches and which takes a sudden narrative turn halfway through that puts a whole different spin on Slater’s journey, something that Widmark handles with his usual aplomb, and Sturges – who would go on to helm Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) – handles the twists and turns with confidence and no small amount of directorial flair.

Skyscraper (2018) / D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 102m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan

Rating: 4/10 – the world’s tallest building, The Pearl, is ready to open but needs a final sign-off from security analyst Will Sawyer (Johnson), but when terrorists set the building on fire, Sawyer has a greater problem: that of rescuing his family who are trapped above the fire line; there was a time when a movie like Skyscraper would have been a must-see at the cinema, but this Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno mash-up (scripted by Thurber) is a soulless, empty spectacle that can’t even put Sawyer’s family in any appreciable peril, wastes its talented cast by having them play one-dimensional stereotypes, and which uses Sawyer’s disability as a narrative parlour trick whenever the plot needs it.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) / D: Ol Parker / 114m

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan, Hugh Skinner, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Celia Imrie, Cher, Meryl Streep

Rating: 7/10 – with the reopening of her late mother’s hotel just days away, Sophie Sheridan (Seyfried) is worried that everything won’t go according to plan, while the story of how a young Donna Sheridan (James) came to own the hotel in the first place, plays out simultaneously; if you liked the first movie then you’ll definitely like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, another love letter to the music of ABBA, and a movie that has no simpler ambition than to charm its audience at every turn and provide fans with as good a time as before, something it achieves thanks to generous dollops of good-natured humour, a talented cast giving their all, and an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach that works wonders on what is very familiar material indeed.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) / D: Christopher McQuarrie / 147m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley

Rating: 9/10 – a mission in Berlin to retrieve three plutonium cores leads Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team into a high stakes race-against-time chase across the continents as they try to avert a terrorist attack orchestrated by the followers of arch-nemesis Solomon Lane (Harris); number six in the franchise, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best entry yet, with hugely impressive action scenes, the strongest plot so far, and a surprisingly emotional core drawn from the interactions of the characters that puts this head and shoulders above every other action movie you’ll see this year – and who would have bet on that?

I Feel Pretty (2018) / D: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein / 111m

Cast: Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Rory Scovel, Adrian Martinez, Emily Ratajkowski, Aidy Bryant, Busy Philipps, Lauren Hutton, Naomi Campbell

Rating: 5/10 – when an insecure woman, Renee Bennett (Schumer), who works at an international cosmetics company suffers a blow to the head, she wakes seeing herself as beautiful and capable of achieving anything – but in reality she looks exactly the same; what should be an immensely likeable shout out to the power of self-belief, I Feel Pretty is hampered by the bludgeoning approach of the script (by directors Kohn and Silverstein), and the incredible ease with which Renee powers her way up the corporate ladder, aspects that are at least more palatable than the way in which the men are treated as accessories, something that, if the roles were reversed, would likely cause an outcry.

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.

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.

Bees Make Honey (2017)

13 Friday Jul 2018

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D: Jack Eve / 85m

Cast: Alice Eve, Wilf Scolding, Joshua McGuire, Anatole Taubman, Trevor Eve, Hermione Corfield, Ivanno Jeremiah, Joséphine de La Baume

It’s Halloween 1934, and glamorous socialite Honey (Eve) is hosting her annual Halloween costume party. But this year’s event is tinged with bitterness and revenge, for on the same night the year before, Honey’s husband was killed, and the killer never caught. Tonight, Honey has invited everyone who was there the year before on the assumption that one of her guests was the murderer. Enlisting the help of newly appointed police Inspector Shoerope (Scolding), Honey is determined to uncover the killer’s identity, and see justice done. With the party well under way, Shoerope begins his investigation and soon finds that there a number of possible suspects, from local real estate broker Mr Conick (McGuire), to German businessman Herr Werner (Taubman), and even Shoerope’s own Commissioner (Eve). Matters are further complicated when it’s suggested by one of the guests that Honey isn’t being as honest with Shoerope as she seems, raising the possibility that his investigation is a means to a far different end than justice. But as the evening continues, various clues fall into place, and Shoerope discovers that there’s more to the murder of Honey’s husband than either of them could have imagined…

Something of a family affair – Alice and Jack Eve are siblings, while Trevor Eve is their father – Bees Make Honey is a period murder mystery comedy-drama that flirts with a lot of ideas as to how to present its story visually, and then decides to include them all. And so we have a movie that throws in all manner of cinematic trickery as if someone has opened a Pandora’s Box of visual effects (leaving Hope cowering at the bottom). When a movie is this visually erratic, it’s too often a sign that the material isn’t as lively as the makers have intended, and for long stretches, this is the case with Jack Eve’s honest yet overwrought pastiche of Thirties drawing room mysteries. A huge – and this is no understatement – part of the problem is the dialogue, which is meant to be clever and dazzlingly erudite, but which causes further problems for many of the cast, lumbered as they are with lines such as, “But one can never repeat the past with complete sincerity. There’s is always the possibility, if not inevitability, of a fleeting fancy throwing a spanner in the works.”

There’s also an anachronistic use of music, with the likes of The Libertines’ What a Waster, and The Clash’s Lover’s Rock littering the soundtrack as literal counterpoints to the action, but all these incidences do is to jar the viewer out of whatever temporary mood the material has just got them into. With such a lack of focus, it’s a shame also that any mystery is undermined by a massive visual clue given away when the murder is committed at the movie’s beginning. These and other directorial decisions made by Eve make the movie a stop-start affair that never really gels or fully entertains as the high-spirited romp it could (and should) have been, and viewers may find themselves hitting the fast-forward button more than they’d like. The cast are game, however, and muddle through in support of their director, though Trevor Eve is clearly having fun with a role he wouldn’t normally be asked to play. By the end, a kind of weary acceptance sets in, allied to the knowledge that the movie isn’t going to raise its game any higher. There’s a good idea in there somewhere, but this sort of murder mystery has been done too often before, and to much better effect.

Rating: 4/10 – when a movie tries to make an apple-bobbing competition one of its highlights, you know there’s a problem, and in this respect, it’s one of many that hamper Bees Make Honey from being a success;  one to approach with caution, it’s a movie that never settles on a through line, or maintains a consistent tone – unless not maintaining one was the original idea.

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.

Lavender (2016)

28 Thursday Jun 2018

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aka Trauma

D: Ed Gass-Donnelly / 92m

Cast: Abbie Cornish, Diego Klattenhoff, Lola Flanery, Dermot Mulroney, Justin Long, Sarah Abbott, Liisa Repo-Martell, Peyton Kennedy

1985 – Jane Ryer (Kennedy) is the sole survivor when her family is murdered in their remote farmhouse; she’s found covered in blood and holding a cutthroat razor. Twenty-five years later, Jane (Cornish) is married to Alan (Klattenhoff), and has a young daughter, Alice (Flanery). She runs a photographer’s studio that showcases the pictures she takes of often abandoned rural properties, and is plagued by lapses in her memory. A stay in hospital following a car accident reveals Jane has several skull fractures from when she was a child, but she has no memory of being injured. She also comes to learn that one of the farmhouses she has photographed is one that she owns, even though she has no memory of it, or an uncle, Patrick (Mulroney), who has been paying the taxes on it and maintaining it. Drawn to discovering what happened when she was a child, Jane, Alan and Alice decide to meet Patrick and stay at the farmhouse. Soon, Jane discovers that the house is the source of a series of supernatural occurrences that relate to the murder of her family all those years before…

From the outset, with Patrick being informed of the deaths of his sister’s family and the horrific aftermath being presented in a series of tableaux, it seems as if Lavender isn’t interested in offering viewers another generic rural ghost story. But that opening sequence, culminating in the discovery of a clearly traumatised Jane, unfortunately marks the beginning of the end in terms of originality. Jane’s plight, going from being forgetful to being plagued by supernatural events and visions, is played out in too flat a manner for it to be entirely effective. While the script – by director Gass-Donnelly and Colin Frizzell – takes its time in revealing the details of just what happened in 1985, it does so in a measured, unhurried way that robs the movie of any appreciable pace or momentum. This doesn’t even allow for a slowburn approach to the material, and instead, has the opposite effect, making the viewer wish some scenes would hurry up, while wishing others wouldn’t repeat motifs and experiences that Jane – and we – have already witnessed over and over. As a result, the central mystery is treated with sincerity but lacks verve, and the characters are forced to repeat conversations and actions that harm the movie’s narrative structure.

When presenting supernatural events on screen, many directors and screenwriters adopt a kind of “kitchen sink” approach, and throw in scares and jolts and all sorts of shenanigans because they might look good (or cool), and because even a cheap scare can be a winner. Lavender has a number of these moments, such as when adult Jane and her younger sister, Susie (Abbott), hide under a sheet in the stables. As something wicked comes nearer – cue heavy footfalls – Susie urges Jane to run, and when she does the sheet becomes more voluminous than it should be and when she finally escapes from it, she’s in the middle of a field. The juxtaposition between the expanse of the field after the confines of the sheet works well, but in terms of dramatic effect, it makes no sense (we already know Jane’s mental state isn’t the best). Gass-Donnelly works hard to give the movie a tense, unnerving atmosphere, and employs a grimly portentous score from Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld to help matters along, but the material is too thinly stretched in places, and too flatly handled, for their efforts to be successful. By the time things pick up for the climax, and some energy is injected into the proceedings, some viewers might have already taken their leave.

Rating: 5/10 – with the performances proving merely adequate (Cornish, though, makes a virtue of appearing blank-faced), and the script veering off at odd tangents at odd moments, Lavender is a lukewarm psychological horror that doesn’t follow through on its initial promise; tiresome in places, and with a central mystery that shouldn’t come as a surprise when it’s exposed, the movie struggles to be consistently interesting, and passes on several opportunities to better itself.

The Liability (2012)

21 Thursday Jun 2018

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aka The Hitman’s Apprentice

D: Craig Viveiros / 86m

Cast: Tim Roth, Jack O’Connell, Tallulah Riley, Peter Mullan, Kierston Wareing, Tomi May

Adam (O’Connell) is a nineteen year old Jack-the-lad who lives with his mum, Nicky (Wareing), and her shady businessman boyfriend, Peter (Mullan). When Adam totals one of Peter’s cars, he’s offered a chance to pay the debt he owes: he’s to drive one of Peter’s associates, Roy (Roth), around for a day. They journey to Northumberland, where, deep in the woods they find a caravan where a man called Danil (May) is hiding out. Roy kills him, but as they attempt to make his death look like the work of local serial killer, the Handyman, a young woman (Riley) comes along. She manages to get away from them, and with a bag that contains evidence of what Roy and Adam have done. What follows is a game of cat and mouse that sees the pair trying to retrieve the bag, while the young woman stays ahead of them every step of the way. Before long, Adam learns things about Roy, Peter, and the young woman, that cause him to realise that not everything is as it seems, and that his future depends on the decisions he makes when the truth reveals itself…

A deliberately low-key crime thriller with an acerbic sense of humour, The Liability begins with a subtle clue as to the criminal activity that sits at the heart of the narrative. A man watches as a container is washed out; moments later he’s attacked and killed in his car. He’s the latest victim of the Handyman, and it’s a testament to the efficiency of John Wrathall’s economical screenplay that the identity of this killer and Roy’s despatching of Danil is connected by a generous helping of unexpected irony. It’s surprising moments such as these, where the material plumbs unforeseen depths, that help make The Liability a much more entertaining movie than might be expected. Add in the material’s quirky, often droll line in mirth (Roth and O’Connell do more with a glance than some actors can manage with a three-page monologue), and you have a black comedy thriller that knows when to be serious, when to be uncomfortable, and when to be slyly humorous. It’s not a balancing act that the movie pulls off every time, but it succeeds more than it fails.

The central relationship between the garrulous, over-eager Adam and the more taciturn, fatalistic Roy drives the movie forward, as mutual respect is established, and a degree of inter-dependency grows between them. Roth and O’Connell are a terrific combination, and the way they play off each other, especially in their early scenes together, ensures their characters’ relationship carries a greater weight later on in the movie. Alas, while Adam and Roy grow as characters and invite sympathy and compassion (despite their actions), the same can’t be said for the likes of Mullan’s one-note bad guy, or Riley’s less than innocent backpacker. Both roles suffer thanks to being painted with too broad brush strokes, and their presence offers little in relation to the material featuring Adam and Roy. That said, Viveiros (making only his second feature) shows a deftness of touch that aids the movie tremendously, and he maintains a consistently weary, yet effective tone throughout. The natural beauty of the Northumberland and Teesside locations are muted in order to match the mood of the piece, and James Friend’s cinematography – all dark hues and glowering skies – complements the darker aspects of the narrative. The ending, though, lacks the punch that’s needed to make it work properly – which is disappointing – and it’s further hampered by feeling rushed. But up until then, this is one movie that provides plenty of cinematic nourishment.

Rating: 8/10 – sombre and mournful in places, and yet funny and warm-hearted in others, The Liability isn’t just the standard crime thriller with jokes that it appears to be; an under-rated gem, it’s well worth checking out as an alternative to the East End gangster movies that populate so much of the UK’s crime-based output.

Oh! the Horror! – Kantemir (2015) and February (2015)

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

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Kantemir (2015) / D: Ben Samuels / 81m

Cast: Robert Englund, Diane Cary, Daniel Gadi, Justine Griffiths, Alanna Janell, Stuart Stone, Sean Derry

John Larousse (Englund) is an actor whose career has bottomed out thanks to being an alcoholic. Given the chance to start afresh, he travels to an out of the way country estate where he and a group of actors have been assembled to work on a play. The director, Nicholas (Gadi), is secretive about the play’s content, only revealing that it’s an historical piece and that the characters are involved in a doomed romance. As the rehearsals begin, each actor starts to display the traits of their character, and they often refer to each other by their character names. Only John seems to be aware of the strange transformation that the cast is undergoing, and when he discovers that one of them has been killed, the reluctance of the others to believe him is further undermined by their increasing commitment to the play, and Nicholas’s strange hold over all of them…

If Kantemir has anything going for it, it’s Englund’s performance (though even he struggles with some of the cliché-ridden dialogue dreamed up by co-writers Mark Garbett and Ralph Glenn Howard). Englund is the glue that keeps the movie from coming unravelled altogether, which is something that’s needed, as the script, and Samuels’ sloppy direction, conspire to obscure just what kind of movie it is. On the one hand it’s a horror movie, but at times it’s also a mystery and a thriller, and an historical romance, and at a stretch, a psychological drama. What it isn’t is coherent or able to connect any two scenes to each other without making it seem as if another one has been cut from between them. Englund’s experience carries him through – just – but otherwise the performances are awkward, mannered, and unconvincing. The back story that explains it all doesn’t make any sense either, which further undermines the movie’s credibility, and John Rosario’s gloomy cinematography ensures the movie isn’t attractive to look at either. It’s not entirely a chore to sit through, but any rewards are minimal, and even then, very hard to find.

Rating: 4/10 – with its patchwork screenplay and ill-considered scenario, Kantemir is the kind of low budget horror that gets made hundreds of times each year – and which provides evidence (if it were really needed) that they shouldn’t be made in the first place; admittedly, it’s hard to come up with something truly original in the horror field, and this may be an attempt to do that, but the vast gulf between idea and execution is displayed here a little too obviously for the movie’s own good.

 

February (2015) / D: Oz Perkins / 94m

aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter; The Devil’s Daughter

Cast: Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, James Remar, Lauren Holly, Greg Ellwand, Elana Krausz, Heather Tod Mitchell, Peter James Howarth

It’s February at the Bromford School for girls, a Catholic establishment preparing to see its pupils and staff head off for winter break. Two students however – Kat (Shipka) and Rose (Boynton) – remain behind at the school thanks to their parents being unable to collect them on the allotted day. Kat is a freshman, prone to staring off into the distance and behaving oddly. Rose is a senior who has just found out she’s pregnant; the school head has also asked her to chaperone Kat during the break (though two nuns are there as well). Meanwhile, a young woman named Joan (Roberts) has left a psychiatric hospital some distance away; at a bus station she meets and accepts a lift from Bill (Remar), a good Samaritan who reveals in time that she reminds him of his daughter, who died nine years before. He and his wife, Linda (Holly), are travelling to Bromford to lay flowers on her grave. Kat’s behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre, and Rose begins to fear for her safety, something that is given credence when the headmaster (Howarth) returns to the school and makes a horrifying discovery…

Although it suffers from issues with pacing, and the story it tells borders on being uncomfortably slight, February is a lean and atmospheric chiller from the fertile mind of its writer/director. Perkins has an offbeat dramatic sensibility, and it’s as a writer that he’s most effective – see Removal (2010) and The Girl in the Photographs (2015) for further evidence. Here, what you see isn’t necessarily what you can believe, as the narrative weaves in and out in a non-linear fashion that keeps the viewer from fully understanding just what’s going on and why. The performances, particularly Shipka’s, are accomplished, and they ensure that the mystery is maintained for as long as possible. Perkins also throws in themes relating to grief and personal responsibility, but  is unable to make certain scenes as effective as they could be, mostly due to their being stretched beyond any real benefit. The wintry locations add to the sense of unease, and the way in which the movie escalates the level of violence and horror towards the end is persuasive as well. Some viewers may find the movie’s first hour somewhat difficult to get through, but if they stick around, they’ll find that perseverance is its own reward.

Rating: 7/10 – not entirely successful, but doing more than enough to warrant the casual viewer’s attention, February is a deceptively effective horror thriller that takes its time and doesn’t give away all its secrets at once; too many longueurs hamper the movie’s pace and rhythm, but the material is strong enough to offset these faults and provide a pervasive sense of menace that is handled astutely and in appropriately cool fashion.

The Night of the Wild Boar (2016)

07 Thursday Jun 2018

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Original title: La noche del jabali

D: Ramiro Tenorio / 71m

Cast: Catalina Zahri, Fernando Kliche, Renzo Briceño, Gastón Salgado, Spyros Papadatos

A writer of romantic fiction, Claudia Moratti (Zahri), travels to the southern most area of South America, and the small town where her partner, the horror novelist Guillermo San Román (Papadatos), grew up. Guillermo’s novels were each inspired by a series of murders that took place in his home town, and specific details of the crimes were always included in his books. Claudia has come looking for answers to the question, did Guillermo commit the murders? The local police chief, Benno (Kliche), seems to think so, and is determined to find evidence that he did. Claudia begins her own investigation, looking through Guillermo’s novels and research materials, until she is faced with the serious possibility that he at least had a hand in the murders. The discovery of another body complicates matters as Guillermo has been dead for a year, having committed suicide. With suspicion falling on both Mario (Briceño), who looks after Guillermo’s home, and Sebastian (Salgado), who helps him, Claudia has to work out who is lying to her, and who is hiding a terrible secret. Things come to a head when she discovers materials in Sebastian’s home that point to him being the killer…

The debut feature of writer/director Ramiro Tenorio, The Night of the Wild Boar is that unfortunate beast, the poorly thought out thriller. It begins well, creating a vivid sense of mystery and a tainted atmosphere for its backdrop. Claudia’s arrival is met with the usual customary suspicion in these cases, with Mario offering her glowering looks, and Benno wasting no time in voicing his opinions about Guillermo’s likely guilt. It’s a strong set up, and even though there are few suspects, each – and including the police chief – appear to have their own fair share of secrets, and each of them could be the culprit. With Claudia feeling like she’s made a big mistake in going there, and her interactions with everyone adding further confusion to the notion of Guillermo’s possible guilt or innocence, Tenorio tightens the screws somewhat, making Claudia – and the audience – feel uncomfortable and more unsafe the more she finds out. But having done a fine job in setting up the central mystery, as well as introducing the suspects, Tenorio then goes ahead and spoils things by having Claudia find copies of Guillermo’s novels and his notes and his research – in his home.

At this stage – and bearing in mind these files have lain untouched for a year – Tenorio’s grip on the narrative begins to unravel, and further developments start to collapse in on one another as the script leads the way to the kind of overly melodramatic conclusion that tests the movie’s internal logic, and makes Claudia’s presence from the beginning entirely problematical. With a relatively short running time as well, the need to wrap things up neatly becomes paramount, but the answer to the mystery of the dead girls is awkward and unconvincing; it feels like a fait accompli. Visually, though, the movie is often lovely if a little gloomy to look at, and Nick Deeg’s cinematography highlights the rugged beauty of the area, while also providing the movie with a sense of unyielding claustrophobia that can feel unnerving. The performances are good, though hampered at times by the demands of the material, and Tenorio handles several tense scenes with aplomb, but remains unable to make up for the way in which the movie sheds any credibility it has built up in favour of a denouement that doesn’t make any sense when judged against what’s happened so far.

Rating: 5/10 – a movie with a lot of early promise that is abandoned thanks to an increasingly muddled script, and a couple of very bad directorial decisions, The Night of the Wild Boar could have been a solid, efficient little thriller; a decent premise finds itself wasted, while moments such as Claudia revealing a personal secret, or a cryptic conversation between Benno and Mario, only add to the confusion.

NOTE: The trailer below doesn’t have English subtitles, but it still provides a good sense of the movie’s atmospheric and slightly uncomfortable nature.

Monthly Roundup – May 2018

02 Saturday Jun 2018

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Enemies Closer (2013) / D: Peter Hyams / 85m

Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Jones, Linzey Cocker, Christopher Robbie, Zachary Baharov, Dimo Alexiev, Kris Van Damme

Rating: 5/10 – when a plane carrying drugs crash lands in the waters off King’s Island it’s up to ranger (and ex-Navy Seal) Henry Taylor (Scott) to stop mercenary Xander (Van Damme) and his men from retrieving the cargo; a bone-headed action movie with a flamboyant performance from Van Damme, Enemies Closer is saved from complete disaster by Hyams’ confident direction and cinematography, a script that often seems aware of how silly it all is, and an earnest turn from Scott that eschews the usual macho heroics expected from something that, in essence, is Die Hard on a Small Island.

From Hell to the Wild West (2017) / D: Rene Perez / 77m

Cast: Robert Kovacs, Alanna Forte, Charlie Glackin, Karin Brauns, Robert Bronzi, Sammy Durrani

Rating: 3/10 – a masked serial killer sets up home in a ghost town in California, until a Marshall (Kovacs) and a bounty hunter (Bronzi) team up to end his reign of terror; a low budget horror with an interesting premise, From Hell to the Wild West is let down by poor production values, terrible acting, the kind of Easter eggs that stick out like a sore thumb (Bronzi was a stunt double for Charles Bronson, and his character name is Buchinski), a threadbare plot, and occasional stabs at direction by Perez – all of which make it yet another horror movie that’s a chore to sit through.

Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) / D: Don Michael Paul / 98m

Cast: Michael Gross, Jamie Kennedy, Tanya van Graan, Jamie-Lee Money, Kiroshan Naidoo, Keeno Lee Hector, Rob van Vuuren, Adrienne Pearce, Francesco Nassimbeni, Paul de Toit

Rating: 4/10 – Burt Gummer (Gross) and his son, Travis (Kennedy), are called in when Graboid activity is discovered in the Canadian tundra, and threatens a research facility; number six in the series, Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell marks a serious downturn in quality thanks to dreary plotting, cardboard characters, and absentee suspense, and supports the notion that the franchise should be put to bed (even though there’s a TV series on the horizon), something that not even the continued presence of Gross can mitigate against, or the producers.

The Debt Collector (2018) / D: Jesse V. Johnson / 96m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Louis Mandylor, Vladimir Kulich, Michael Paré, Tony Todd, Rachel Brann, Esteban Cueto, Jack Lowe

Rating: 5/10 – a financially strapped martial arts instructor, French (Adkins), takes on a job as a debt collector for a local gangster, and finds himself elbow deep in unexpected violence and the search for someone who may or may not have swindled one of the debtors on his list; though breezy and easy-going, and replete with fight scenes designed to show off Adkins prowess as an action hero, The Debt Collector gets bogged down by its neo-noir-style script, and a plethora of supporting characters that come and go without making an impact, or contributing much to the story.

Air Hawks (1935) / D: Albert S. Rogell / 68m

Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Tala Birell, Wiley Post, Douglass Dumbrille, Robert Allen, Billie Seward, Victor Kilian, Robert Middlemass, Geneva Mitchell, Wyrley Birch, Edward Van Sloan

Rating: 6/10 – a small-time independent airline finds itself being sabotaged by a rival airline in its attempts to win a transcontinental contract from the government; a mash-up of aviation drama and sci-fi elements (Van Sloan’s character operates a “death ray” from the back of a truck), Air Hawks is the kind of sincerely acted and directed nonsense that Hollywood churned out by the dozens during the Thirties, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless, with eager performances from Bellamy and Kilian, nightclub scenes that don’t feel out of place at all(!), and a knowing sense of how silly it all is.

Supercon (2018) / D: Zak Knutson / 100m

Cast: Russell Peters, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Brooks Braselman, Clancy Brown, John Malkovich, Mike Epps, Caroline Fourmy

Rating: 3/10 – at a TV/artists/superhero convention, a group of friends decide to rob the promoter and at the same time, stick it to an overbearing TV icon (Brown) as payback for the way they’ve been treated; somewhere – though buried deep – inside the mess that is Supercon is a great idea for a movie set at a fantasy convention centre, but this dire, uninspired comedy isn’t it, lacking as it does real laughs, any conviction, and consistent direction, all things that seemed to have been “refused entry” at the earliest stages of production.

The 15:17 to Paris (2018) / D: Clint Eastwood / 94m

Cast: Spencer Stone, Alex Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Judy Greer, Jenna Fischer, Ray Corasani, P.J. Byrne, Thomas Lennon, William Jennings, Bryce Gheisar, Paul-Mikél Williams

Rating: 6/10 – the true story of how three friends, two of whom (Stone, Skarlatos) were American servicemen, tackled and overcame a gun-toting terrorist on a train bound for Paris from Amsterdam in August 2015; with the terrorist incident being dealt with in a matter of minutes, The 15:17 to Paris has to pad out its running time, and does so by showing how the three friends met and grew up, and their progress through Europe until that fateful train ride, a decision that works well in introducing the trio, but which makes this in some ways more of a rites of passage-cum-travelogue movie than the incisive thriller it wants to be.

The Mask of Medusa (2009) / D: Jean Rollin / 73m

Original title: Le masque de la Méduse

Cast: Simone Rollin, Bernard Charnacé, Sabine Lenoël, Thomas Smith, Marlène Delcambre

Rating: 5/10 – a retelling of the classical story of the Gorgon presented in two parts; Rollin’s final project, The Mask of Medusa is much more of an experimental movie than you’ll find amongst his usual work, but it has a starkly defined approach that allows the largely idiosyncratic dialogue room to work, and the austere nature of the visuals has an unnerving effect that works well at times with the narrative, but it’s also an experience that offers little in the way of intellectual or emotional reward for the viewer, which makes this something of a disappointment as Rollin’s last movie.

Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) / D: Victor Salva / 101m

Cast: Stan Shaw, Gabrielle Haugh, Brandon Smith, Meg Foster, Jordan Salloum, Chester Rushing, Jason Bayle, Ryan Moore, Jonathan Breck

Rating: 3/10 – the Creeper targets anyone who comes near the truck he collects his victims in, as well as the members of a family he terrorised originally twenty-three years before; set between the first and second movies, Jeepers Creepers 3 suffers from tortuous sequelitis, with Salva stretching the franchise’s time frame out of whack, and failing to provide viewers with the scares and thrills seen in the original movie, something that, though predictable, doesn’t bode well for the already in gestation Part Four.

Navy Blue and Gold (1937) / D: Sam Wood / 94m

Cast: Robert Young, James Stewart, Florence Rice, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore, Tom Brown, Samuel S. Hinds, Paul Kelly, Barnett Parker, Frank Albertson

Rating: 7/10 – three new recruits to the United States Naval Academy (Young, Stewart, Brown) battle their own individual problems, as well as trying to make the grade; a patriotic flag waver of a movie, and cinematic recruitment drive for the US Navy, Navy Blue and Gold features likeable performances from all three “cadets”, the usual soap opera elements to help keep the plot ticking over, and Barrymore doing yet another variation on his crusty old man persona, all of which, along with Wood’s erstwhile direction, ensure the movie is pleasant if undemanding.

Bedelia (1946) / D: Lance Comfort / 90m

Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Ian Hunter, Barry K. Barnes, Anne Crawford, Beatrice Varley, Louise Hampton, Jill Esmond

Rating: 7/10 – a woman (Lockwood), married for the second time, comes under the suspicion of an artist (Barnes) who believes her husband (Hunter) is likely to end up dead – just as her first husband did; a clever piece of melodrama from the novel by Vera Caspary, Bedelia doesn’t quite ratchet up the suspense as it goes along, but it does offer a fine performance from Lockwood as a femme with the emphasis on fatale, and occasional psychological details that help keep Bedelia herself from appearing evil for evil’s sake.

Peter Rabbit (2018) / D: Will Gluck / 95m

Cast: James Corden, Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Sam Neill, Elizabeth Debicki, Daisy Ridley, Sia, Colin Moody

Rating: 7/10 – when the farmer (Neill) who continually tries to stop Peter Rabbit (Corden) and his friends stealing from his vegetable garden drops dead, so begins a war of attrition with his grandnephew (Gleeson); as a modern updating of Beatrix Potter’s beloved characters, purists might want to stay away from Peter Rabbit, but this is a colourful, immensely charming (if occasionally cynical) tale that is both funny and sweet, and which falls just the right side of being overwhelmingly saccharine.

Insidious: The Last Key (2018) / D: Adam Robitel / 103m

Cast: Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Kirk Acevedo, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Josh Stewart, Tessa Ferrer, Bruce Davison, Javier Botet

Rating: 6/10 – Elise Rainier (Shaye) is forced to come face to face with a demon from her childhood, as it targets members of her brother’s family; another trip into the Further reveals signs of the franchise beginning to cannibalise itself in the search for newer, scarier installments, though at least Insidious: The Last Key has the ever reliable Shaye to add a layer of sincerity to the usual hokey paranormal goings on, and one or two scares that do actually hit the mark, but this should be more way more effective than it actually is.

Deadpool 2 (2018) / D: David Leitch / 119m

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapicic, Eddie Marsan, Rob Delaney, Lewis Tan, Bill Skarsgård, Terry Crews

Rating: 8/10 – everyone’s favourite Merc with a Mouth is called upon to protect a teenage mutant (Dennison) with pyro abilities from a time-travelling half-man, half-cyborg called Cable (Brolin); any worries about Deadpool 2 not living up to the hype and being a letdown are dispensed with by more meta jokes than you can shake a pair of baby legs at, the same extreme levels of bloody violence as the first movie, and the opening title sequence, which gleefully advertises the fact that it’s directed by “one of the directors who killed the dog in John Wick”.

Vapors (1965) / D: Andy Milligan / 32m

Cast: Robert Dahdah, Gerard Jacuzzo, Hal Sherwood, Hal Borske, Richard Goldberger, Larry Ree

Rating: 7/10 – set in a bath house for homosexuals, first-timer Thomas (Jacuzzo) ends up sharing a room with married man, Mr Jaffee (Dahdah), who in between interruptions by some of the other patrons, tells him a disturbing personal story; an absorbing insight into both the freedom of expression afforded gay men by the confines of a bath house, as well as the personal stories that often have a tragic nature to them, Vapors is a redolent and pungent exploration of a milieu that few of us will have any experience of, and which contains content that is still relevant today.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) / D: Ron Howard / 135m

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Paul Bettany, Joonas Suotamo, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Thandie Newton, Jon Favreau, Linda Hunt

Rating: 6/10 – Han Solo (Ehrenreich), a pilot for the Imperial Empire, breaks away from the Empire to work with smuggler Tobias Beckett (Harrelson) in an attempt to rescue his lover Qi’ra (Clarke) from their home planet – but it’s not as easy as it first seems; a movie that spends too much time reminding audiences that its main character has a chequered history, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a series of admittedly entertaining action sequences in search of a coherent story to wrap around them, but hamstrung by a bland lead performance, and another round of secondary characters you can’t connect with.

Prankz. (2017) / D: Warren Dudley / 71m

Cast: Betsy-Blue English, Elliot Windsor, Ray d James, Isabelle Rayner, Sharon Drain

Rating: 3/10 – six vlogs, two of which were never uploaded, show a footballer (Windsor), his girlfriend (English), and his best friend (James), playing pranks on each other, until a planned prank backfires with horrific consequences; an object lesson in how not to make a found footage horror movie, Prankz. is low budget awfulness personified, and as far from entertaining, or scary, or credible, or worth your time as it’s possible to be, which is the only achievement this dire movie is able to claim.

Ibiza (2018) / D: Alex Richanbach / 94m

Cast: Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson, Michaela Watkins, Richard Madden, Nelson Dante, Anjela Nedyalkova, Jordi Mollá

Rating: 3/10 – tasked with clinching a business deal in Barcelona, Harper (Jacobs) not only takes along her two best friends (Bayer, Robinson), but falls for a DJ (Madden) whose next gig is in Ibiza – where she determines to find him, even if it puts the deal in jeopardy; a romantic comedy that is neither romantic or funny – desperate is a more appropriate description – Ibiza is so bad that it’s yet another Netflix movie that you can’t believe was ever given a green light, or that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay stayed on board as producers once they saw the script (or what passes for one).

Bottom of the World (2017)

26 Saturday May 2018

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D: Richard Sears / 85m

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

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

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

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

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

Thoroughbreds (2017)

25 Friday May 2018

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D: Cory Finley / 92m

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

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

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

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

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

Death Wish (2018)

24 Thursday May 2018

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D: Eli Roth / 107m

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Unsane (2018)

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

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D: Steven Soderbergh / 97m

Cast: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah, Juno Temple, Amy Irving, Polly McKie, Gibson Frazier, Aimee Mullins, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Sarah Stiles

In Steven Soderbergh’s first stab at directing a horror movie, Sawyer Valentini (Foy) is a smart businesswoman making a fresh start for herself in a new town and with a new job. The reason for the fresh start is David Strine (Leonard), the man who stalked her for two years before she managed to get a court to issue a restraining order. But Sawyer begins to see him in various places – not directly, but out of the corner of her eye, or at a distance. Troubled by this and seeking a sympathetic ear, Sawyer attends a facility that purports to help victims of stalkers. But instead of helping her, the staff at the facility mislead her into voluntarily committing herself for twenty-four hours. When she realises this, Sawyer’s agitation leads her to strike an orderly; this results in her stay being extended to seven days. Things go from bad to worse when one of the night orderlies turns out to be Strine, masquerading as “George Shaw”. With the help of a fellow patient, Nate (Pharoah), Sawyer gets word to her mother (Irving), but with the facility legally in the right, she must rely on her wits to see out the seven days, and to stay away from Strine…

While watching Unsane it’s worth remembering that as a director, Steven Soderbergh has an eclectic, and distinctly personal approach to his projects. Touted as his first attempt at horror, the movie is actually a psychological thriller laced with horror elements, but even with that caveat, it’s clear from very early on that Soderbergh isn’t really interested in making a horror movie. Instead, Soderbergh – working from a script by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer – appears to be more interested in making a feminist statement, one that supports the idea that women, even now, with the MeToo movement and all, still aren’t being listened to. Instead, the movie is saying, women have to be resourceful and work things out for themselves. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as a theme or a message, but as Sawyer is initially presented as a strong, more than competent businesswoman, the idea that she could be tricked into committing herself into a mental health institution – that she wouldn’t check the small print, as it were – strains credulity from the start.

There is much else that is problematical, from Strine popping up on Day Two (how does he know Sawyer is going to be committed, or that she’ll have her stay extended?), to the intransigence of the facility’s staff, and the uninspired laziness of the local police force (which seems to consist almost entirely of two patrol car officers). At least the script doesn’t belabour the whole is-it-or-isn’t-it-all-in-her-head approach, choosing instead to come down firmly on one side of the fence quite soon after Sawyer’s confinement. This allows the movie to switch from being a woman in peril movie to a woman still in peril but resilient enough to win through in the end movie. Foy is very good indeed as Sawyer, determined and tough even when she’s feeling vulnerable, while Leonard is the epitome of creepiness as Strine, his teddy bear countenance belying his twisted mindset. But while the script is saved in part by the quality of the performances, it’s Soderbergh who saves it the most, his visual approach to the material energising certain scenes and providing an unsettling mise-en-scène in others. There are moments where Sawyer’s sense of isolation is highlighted by having the background stretching away unnaturally behind her, and it’s these kinds of moments that are the most effective. But when all is said and done, this is still just another generic thriller, with too many plot holes, and too many occasions where the phrase, “Oh, come on!” seems entirely appropriate.

Rating: 5/10 – more of an exercise in style and visual representation – Sawyer having a psychotropic break is brilliantly realised – Unsane is a movie that, on the surface, appears to have more depth to it than it actually has; standard fare then, and emboldened in places by Soderbergh’s mercurial direction, but not the edge-of-your-seat thriller that it so obviously wants to be.

Too Late (2015)

02 Friday Mar 2018

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D: Dennis Hauck / 107m

Cast: John Hawkes, Vail Bloom, Joanna Cassidy, Jeff Fahey, Robert Forster, Brett Jacobsen, Dichen Lachman, Dash Mihok, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Crystal Reed, Rider Strong, Natalie Zea

A modern day noir that sports a grim measure of inevitability, the central character in Too Late is not John Hawkes’ determined private investigator, Samson, but Dorothy (Reed), the stripper he befriends then loses touch with for three years. When she asks to meet him, she’s already in trouble, and by the time he arrives for their rendezvous, she’s already dead. So what’s a newly embittered P.I. to do? Why, go after the people responsible of course. Dorothy’s murder gives Samson a purpose he’s been missing, and he’s as dogged and persistent as gumshoes in the movies usually are, but writer-director Dennis Hauck isn’t interested solely in presenting Samson’s woes, he’s equally (if not more) interested in revealing Dorothy’s hopes and dreams. Too often in noir thrillers, the murder victim serves as a modus operandi for the hero’s actions. Here, Dorothy is more than that: she’s someone the viewer gets to know, and in some detail, and that’s because once she’s dead, she’s not really dead.

How is this possible, you might ask? Well, Hauck has a trick up his sleeve. Once the first scene is over and we’ve met Dorothy and gotten to know a lot about her and she’s wound up dead, Hauck brings her back in the third scene, one where we get to see her meet Samson for the first time. The movie consists of five scenes in total, but they’re assembled in a non-linear fashion. This isn’t as confusing as it might sound – though some viewers may feel aggrieved when they realise that scene five is actually a precursor to scene four – and what it does is to allow Dorothy’s character to be present throughout the whole movie, and to leave an indelible impression. That way, Samson’s determination to track down and punish the people responsible for her death becomes understandable in a way that doesn’t often occur in noir thrillers. And Hauck is clever enough through his screenplay to make Samson’s “mission” a personal one that really comes across as personal, instead of something perfunctory in order to get the movie started. There is an air of personal redemption going on with Samson, and his persistence hints at deeper feelings for Dorothy than he might admit.

Each scene has been shot in one single, continuous twenty-two minute take, so there’s a lot of Steadicam work, plus a lot of swinging the camera from one character to another, which can be really distracting (there’s also an impressive zoom in the first scene that is technically superb for the distance it covers). On occasion the need to maintain the integrity of the take makes for some uncomfortable transitions, but overall Hauck and DoP Bill Fernandez have done an impressive job of immersing the viewer in what’s happening, and populating the frame with details that support the emotion of each scene as it unfolds. The performances are very good indeed, with Hawkes, Lachman and Reed all at the top of their game, while the likes of Bloom – re-enacting Julianne Moore’s famous nude scene from Short Cuts (1993) – Zea and Jacobsen all make an impact in minor roles. This being a modern noir thriller, there’s plenty of violence, but it’s always in service to the demands of the narrative, rather than the other way round. As a tale of flawed human beings trying their best to get by in the world with what little they have that’s theirs, Too Late is an intriguing, thought-provoking revenge drama that has no intention of telling its heartfelt story in any other way than with honesty, sincerity and an unfailing commitment to its characters.

Rating: 8/10 – the commitment to continuous twenty-two minute scenes does lead to some pacing issues, and some moments do feel like filler (e.g. the point where Samson picks up a guitar and performs an admittedly lovely song), but Too Late is far too good everywhere else; a meditative, earnest thriller that impresses every time it surprises, this also serves as an example of how character can – and always should – drive the narrative of a movie forward, and how it should be allowed to maintain that ambition right to the very end.

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.

Acts of Vengeance (2017)

22 Thursday Feb 2018

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D: Isaac Florentine / 86m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Karl Urban, Paz Vega, Clint Dyer, Johnathon Schaech, Cristina Serafini, Lillian Blankenship, Atanas Srebrev, Mark Rhino Smith, Raycho Vasilev, Stacey Clickner, Robert Forster

Acts of Vengeance (or, the latest episode in the on-going series, Whatever Happened to Antonio Banderas) is, on the face of it, not a great movie. It’s another low-budget action thriller with Bulgaria standing in for America (and poorly at that; you know that a movie’s in trouble when the sign outside a book store says exactly that: Bookstore). It has a trio of internationally known stars who clearly had a fortnight’s break in their schedule, and nothing better to do, plus a cameo (from Forster) that lasts all of two minutes. The movie is a curious mix of the standard and the bizarre – which at least helps it stand out somewhat from the crowd – and it has a clutch of fight scenes that are well choreographed and shot. It keeps Banderas mute for much of the running time, has a plot that’s so worn out it’s practically invisible, telegraphs its villain with all the subtlety of a stampeding rhino, and features one laughably absurd scene after another. In short, it’s two steps away from being a complete disaster. But the movie has an ace up its sleeve, an ace in the form of its director, Isaac Florentine.

If you’re not familiar with Florentine’s career, and if you’re a fan of DTV movies, then where the hell have you been since 1992? Although he’s never made a mainstream movie, Florentine is more than adept at turning some of the least promising material into something that works in ways that it really shouldn’t do. And the man knows how to put together a fight scene. This is just as true here, with Banderas doing the majority of his own stunt work, and Florentine ensuring that Yaron Scharf’s cinematography provides the best coverage possible. So we have Banderas’ avenging lawyer, Frank Valera – he’s looking for the killer or killers of his wife and daughter (Serafini, Blankenship) – learning a range of fighting techniques, and getting into a number of scraps where his newfound skills are shown off to very good effect. These fight scenes, and Banderas’ involvement in them, are what raise the movie out of the various narrative doldrums that leave the story waiting around to be kickstarted again after stalling. These scenes are also the movie’s modus operandi; if they’re not any good, then what’s the point of watching it in the first place?

There are the aforementioned bizarre elements to help it along, though, such as the story being structured in such a way that quotes from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can be used as chapter headings (“To expect bad men not to do wrong is madness”), and the recurring presence of Russian mobsters for Frank to beat up on – and without any reprisals. Factor in Vega’s handy nurse in a medical crisis, Urban’s illegal cage fighting cop (don’t ask), Frank’s hearing becoming pin sharp within days of his deciding to remain mute until he’s avenged his family (which has him acting like a sighted DareDevil), and the villain conveniently leaving his house key in a planter right outside his front door, and you have a movie that’s only on nodding terms with reality. But even with all that, Florentine has a clean, unfussy visual style that suits the material down to the ground, and he instills the movie with a rhythm that moves things along with a surprising amount of energy. While it’s true that the limitations of Matt Venne’s screenplay are evident in almost every scene, Acts of Vengeance has enough to recommend it as a one-off, just-for-the-fun-of-it viewing.

Rating: 4/10 – yes, it’s bad, and yes, it’s another nail in the career of its star, but thanks to Florentine’s involvement, Acts of Vengeance can be regarded as something of a guilty pleasure; with a handful of well choreographed fight scenes that belie the dire nature of the rest of the material, this is a movie that at least doesn’t outstay its welcome, and wraps things up neatly and concisely.

The Scent of Rain & Lightning (2017)

17 Saturday Feb 2018

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D: Blake Robbins / 103m

Cast: Maika Monroe, Mark Webber, Will Patton, Maggie Grace, Justin Chatwin, Bonnie Bedelia, Aaron Poole, Brad Carter, Logan Miller, Kassia Conway, Sarah Noble Peck

A small town murder mystery with an arthouse feel, The Scent of Rain & Lightning opens with bad news for Jody Linder (Monroe): Billy Croyle (Carter), the man who was jailed for killing her parents, Laurie and Hugh (Grace, Chatwin), twelve years before has had his sentence commuted and is being released from prison. Understandably, Jody and the rest of her family – grandfather ‘Senior’ (Patton), grandmother Annabelle (Bedelia), uncles Chace (Webber) and Meryl (Poole) – aren’t too happy about this, but when Jody confronts Croyle and he accuses ‘Senior’ of getting the verdict he wanted, as well as denying he killed her parents, Jody begins to ask questions around town, questions that make her believe that not everything about her parents’ deaths is as cut and dried as she’s been led to believe. As the town – and her family – start to give up their secrets, Jody is forced to accept that the answers she’s looking for may lie closer to home. But then a senseless act of violence occurs, one that puts Jody in danger, and which threatens her family as well…

A slow burn thriller that looks and feels like an arthouse movie, The Scent of Rain & Lightning (adapted from the novel of the same name by Nancy Pickard) doesn’t offer anything new for viewers with a liking for small town murder mysteries, but it does provide a non-linear narrative that interweaves Jody’s somewhat random approach to investigating her parents’ deaths, with flashbacks to the events that led up to the murders, and finally, what actually happened. These flashbacks are necessary, as Jody proves to be the Rick Deckard of small town murder mysteries, and never learns anything of real value. Thankfully, while she’s looking for answers, the script by Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison (also two of the movie’s producers) keeps the viewer up to speed with what happened, why, how, and who was responsible. It makes for an uneven narrative, with neither strand complementing each other, or finding common moments where they might connect effectively, and as a result, it’s a movie that often feels like it’s been stitched together Frankenstein Monster-style, with no clear idea of which part goes with which. This also leaves some scenes feeling a little lost, or there just to pad out the running time.

Performance-wise, the movie is a bit of a mixed bag also. None of the characters are particularly well developed, and Jody’s expected character arc fizzles out around two thirds in. Monroe, a very talented young actress who’s still looking for that perfect follow up to her breakout role in It Follows (2014), hasn’t much to do beyond ask awkward questions and have those questions go unanswered. As the movie progresses, her role diminishes further and further, and the need to solve the mystery takes precedence. This brings Grace’s character to the fore, but Laurie and her secret prove to be very stereotypical, which leaves any emotional connection the viewer might be looking to make as unlikely as Kevin Spacey winning a Best Supporting Actor award at this year’s Oscars. Elsewhere, the likes of Patton, Bedelia and Poole flit in and out of the narrative, while Webber struggles to make his character ambivalent enough to be considered a viable suspect. Robbins, making his second feature (and appearing as the town sheriff), opts for a muted visual style that is at least atmospheric, but which doesn’t elevate the material, and there are too many occasions where the image is refracted through water as if it has an important psychological resonance.

Rating: 5/10 – with two narrative strands that work independently of each other, and a sense that no amount of screenplay jiggery-pokery could have brought them together, The Scent of Rain & Lightning lacks the impact needed to make its mystery elements work, and its small town milieu appropriately claustrophobic; disappointing then – though not unwatchable – it’s another indie thriller that tries hard to be different while forgetting that it’s using very basic materials to begin with.

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.

The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)

27 Saturday Jan 2018

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D: Matt Cimber / 87m

Cast: Millie Perkins, Lonny Chapman, Vanessa Brown, Peggy Feury, Jean Pierre Camps, Mark Livingston, Rick Jason, Stafford Morgan, Richard Kennedy, George ‘Buck’ Flower, Roberta Collins

As a child, Molly (Perkins) was sexually abused by her father. As an adult, Molly works in a bar called the Boathouse, and is in a relationship with the owner, Long John (Chapman). She has a sister, Cathy (Brown), and two young nephews she adores, Tadd (Camps) and Triploi (Livingston). She regales her nephews with tales of their grandfather and what a kind, loving man he was, a captain of a ship who was lost at sea when she was much younger. The two boys believe her stories completely, but these fantasies are indicative of the struggle that Molly is having in dealing with the psychological trauma of her childhood. She experiences a fever dream in which she kills two famous football players, but when the two men are found dead, Molly faces an even greater struggle to stop herself from falling victim to the murderous rages that come over her whenever she’s around men who remind her of her father, or who project a certain masculine image through television adverts.

A movie that was once regarded in the UK as a “video nasty”, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is an under-rated psychological thriller (with horror overtones) that charts one woman’s descent into madness in a way that is both haunting and disturbing. The movie is directed with great skill by Cimber, and there’s a terrific central performance from Perkins, but the key player here is sceenwriter Robert Thom. During the Seventies, Thom wrote the screenplays for Bloody Mama (1970), Death Race 2000 (1975), this, and several others. All were low budget movies that like this one, thrived on Thom’s ability to exceed audience expectations thanks to his unerring ability to ground even the most extreme incidents, and his sharp ear for dialogue. Thom started out writing for the theatre, and there are moments where the movie feels like it’s a play that has been adapted for the screen. This gives the movie a greater sense of depth, and a greater sense of tragedy as events unfold. As Molly drifts between reality and fantasy, and becomes increasingly unable to differentiate between the two, Thom’s layered screenplay, Perkins’ bold portrayal, and Cimber’s restrained yet visceral direction, combine to create a movie that is hard to look away from – but in a good way.

For an actress who has never been entirely comfortable with the trappings of being an actress, Perkins gives a formdiable performance, investing Molly with a forlorn, anxious appearance that affords glimpses of self-awareness in amongst her mostly irrational behaviour. She’s also able to make Molly’s dialogue sound at times like an interior monologue, an effect that further illustrates the emotional and psychological dysfunction she’s experiencing. Perkins is provided with fine support from the likes of Chapman, Brown and Feury (as another Boathouse waitress who provides Molly with “pharmaceutical assistance”), and Cimber ensures that even the smallest of roles fits in neatly with the overall scenario. The visual look of the movie is quite subdued, with mostly grey and brown tones used throughout, but the cinematography – by Ken Gibb and Dean Cundey – is a good match for the dark emotional undercurrents that pepper the screenplay. Also effective is the decision to distort the audio during those sequences when Molly can’t tell if she’s fantasising about killing someone, or is actually doing it. It’s all done very cleverly, and takes the movie far from the exploitation trappings that viewers might be expecting.

Rating: 8/10 – far better than it perhaps has any right to be on paper, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is a first-rate psychological thriller that is unsettling, and oppressive, for much of its running time; Perkins gives an exceptional performance, and the whole tortured narrative feels disarmingly organic, with any missteps serving only to highlight just how good this movie is, and how well it’s been put together.

Bad Day for the Cut (2017)

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

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D: Chris Baugh / 99m

Cast: Nigel O’Neill, Susan Lynch, Józef Pawlowski, Stuart Graham, David Pearse, Anna Próchniak, Stella McCusker, Ian McElhinney

Donal (O”Neill) and his mother, Florence (McCusker), live on a farm on the outskirts of a small town in Northern Ireland. The pair keep themselves to themselves, and seem to be contented with their lot. But when Donal does go out one evening, he returns to find a stranger leaving the farmhouse and his mother dead inside. Some time later, Donal is surprised by two hooded intruders who attempt to kill him as well. He turns the tables on them, and coerces one of them, a young Polish man named Bartosz (Pawlowski), to help him track down the man who killed his mother. The trail leads to a prostitution ring run by a woman called Charlie (Lynch). Soon, Donal and Bartosz are both hunters and hunted as Charlie targets them, and a game of cat and mouse ensues, one that reveals an unexpected connection between Florence, Donal, and Charlie, and events that took place around thirty years before, events that have a major bearing on Florence’s murder and Donal’s current predicament.

A tough and gritty Western transposed to the wilds of Northern Ireland, Bad Day for the Cut is a modest amalgam of revenge motifs that makes the most of its equally modest production values and its sparsely populated locations, and which benefits further from good performances and Baugh’s measured direction. Along with co-screenwriter Brendan Mullins, Baugh (making his feature debut) has constructed a movie that harkens back to so many other, similar movies from the past, but which still maintains an identity all its own. Donal is a familiar figure, the man rendered alone through the death of his family and consumed with anger. It makes him determined and uncompromising, but Baugh is careful to avoid making him a murderous automaton. When Bartosz reveals that his sister, Kaja (Próchniak), is one of the girls in Charlie’s stable, Donal allows himself to be sidetracked in his mission to make Charlie pay for his mother’s murder. Despite his need for revenge, Donal retains an innate honesty and sense of morality that he fights hard not to compromise. As the beleaguered Donal, O’Neill is a quiet force of nature, taciturn for the most part but capable of moments of irredeemable violence; you wouldn’t want to be trapped in a camper van with Donal and a hot saucepan.

Like all good thrillers, Donal’s quest for revenge doesn’t go as planned (partly because he doesn’t really have a plan), and partly because there are things he doesn’t know, things that he only becomes aware of as the movie progresses. These things stop the movie from being too simplistic, and they also allow the character of Frankie (played with unrestrained vitriol by Lynch) to become more than just a matriarchal monster figure. Baugh plays up the rural isolation that Donal leaves behind in his search for vengeance, but thanks to some well chosen locations, keeps him acting in isolation (even while being helped by Bartosz, who has his own agenda), and adrift from any semblance of a normal life. There’s a real sense that even if he does succeed in getting his revenge, it won’t mean that his grief will be assuaged. Against this, the movie does have a wry sense of humour, and is often funny in a “you-shouldn’t-laugh” kind of way that offsets those moments where the violence is busy being harsh and inflexible. Tough and unyielding then at times, Baugh has managed to put together an agreeable thriller that overcomes several narrative stumbles (which ultimately don’t hurt it as much as they should), and in doing so, he emerges as a director to watch out for in the future.

Rating: 7/10 – with wonderful cinematography by DoP Ryan Kernaghan, and a straightforward approach to the material that works wonders, Bad Day for the Cut is an enjoyable Irish Western that pays due respect to its genre inspirations; anchored by a terrific performance from O’Neill, it’s also a movie whose narrative doesn’t feel forced (except once), and which never tries to be smarter than it already is.

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.

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.

Dismissed (2017)

26 Sunday Nov 2017

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D: Benjamin Arfmann / 87m

Cast: Kent Osborne, Dylan Sprouse, Rae Gray, Alycia Delmore, Chris Bauer, Leslie Thurston, Robert Longstreet, Mark Kelly, Randall Park

Movies where the central character is menaced by someone they’ve upset or betrayed, or just plain let down in some way (at least in the eyes of that someone), aren’t exactly new, and in many ways the format has been done to death over the years. With each new release riffing on storylines and characters and situations that have been done so often before, it’s difficult for any new movie to buck the trend or provide viewers with anything tangible enough to qualify as “original” or even “offbeat”. With so many movies out there having paved such a wide path already, anyone attempting a psychological thriller has their work cut out for them from day one. So what can an aspiring thriller do to overcome such hurdles?

In the case of Dismissed, the first feature from Benjamin Arfmann, the solution is to embrace those already firmly established tropes and values that come with the territory, and in doing so, treat them with a healthy dose of respect. The result is a thriller that is very much aware that it’s not telling a new story, or that it’s venturing into territory that won’t be over-familiar to anyone watching it. But what the movie does do, is to present everything in a low-key, matter-of-fact way that makes it look and feel more persuasive than if it had played as a flashy, strident melodrama. Thanks to Arfmann’s patient direction, and Yong Ok Lee’s deliberately unremarkable production design, Dismissed is that rare beast: a psychological thriller that doesn’t make the mistake of going overboard in its efforts to keep the viewer on the edge of their seats. Instead it builds tension by degrees, and the screenplay by Brian McAuley allows each new development to happen with a grim sense of inevitability, as what starts off with petty acts of revenge becomes more and more sinister and violent.

The central protagonists are high school English teacher David Butler (Osborne), and new transfer student, Lucas Ward (Sprouse). David’s class is largely disinterested in his teaching them about Othello, or Crime and Punishment (though this level, and kind of lethargy is only seen in the movies), so when super-knowledgeable Lucas makes his presence felt, David is only too glad to have a student who actually knows some (if not all) of the answers. But when David gives one of Lucas’s assignments a B+, Lucas makes his displeasure known: he’s a straight-A student, and that’s what David should have given him for his work. David sticks to his guns, and so begins a series of incidents that are the beginning of Lucas’s retaliation. David leaves for school only to find his tyre is flat. In the classroom his marker pens don’t work, and in the staffroom, his lunch is missing from the fridge. But it’s when his application to a prestigious university, one that will make him a professor and give him tenure, is replaced by a version that costs him the position, David begins to realise that Lucas is behind everything.

Now, at this stage, you might be saying, all this is over a grade? And while that does sound a little shallow, or even a little risible as a motive for Lucas’ behaviour, what the movie does really cleverly is to make Lucas’s psychopathy not only about being the best at all costs, but also what it means in terms of his “place” in the world. The opening scene shows video footage of a young child practising facial expressions, and from this we can understand that Lucas wants to fit in, even if ultimately it’s on his terms. The why is more understandable, and McAuley’s script leaves subtle clues here and there as to the details of why, but in keeping with the genre, it’s the how that leaves much to be desired. Lucas may be outwardly charming and persuasive, but like all good movie psychopaths, inside he’s as hollow as an Easter egg. Cue the aforementioned incidents of petty retaliation, plus the emotional manipulation of another student (Gray), attempted blackmail, veiled threats, murder, and evidence of Lucas having done similar things before.

In assembling all this, the movie does suffer from a handful of narrative short cuts that hurry things along, particularly in the last half an hour, and some of these short cuts are awkward in nature and upset the movie’s measured pace. But these are small prices to pay in respect of a movie that is otherwise confidently handled by Arfmann, and which features two central performances that anchor the story and give both central characters sincerity and credibility. Osborne is quietly effective as the English teacher who’s initially out of his depth in dealing with a teenage psychopath, but as the movie progresses his genial, accommodating persona becomes more steely and determined. At the point where he tells Lucas that if he comes near David’s family, he’ll kill him, Osborne delivers the line in just the way you’d expect an average man to say it: not like an action hero, but with genuine feeling. It’s moments like these, where the supposedly weaker character “turns” but it’s done with care and attention to the character’s personality, that helps make the movie more impressive than expected.

For some viewers though, the main attraction will be Sprouse, making his first acting foray since saying goodbye to  the role of Zack Martin in The Suite Life on Deck (2008-11). From TV star to murderous psychopath, one could be forgiven for thinking that Sprouse is doing his best to put behind him the lovable moppet he played for six years, and for the most part he does, making Lucas the kind of over-achiever who really should set off more warning bells than he does. As his plan to get that all-important A inevitably falls apart, Sprouse stays true to the character and keeps him removed from any recognisable emotion until the screenplay requires him to ramp things up for an overly melodramatic showdown that’s as unnecessary as it is unfortunate (the one time the script really drops the ball). Sprouse is on solid ground with his portrayal, and in his own way, is as quietly effective as Osborne. Both actors seem aware of the requirements of the genre they’re working in, and provided with good support from Arfmann, who facilitates the action with a darkly portentous quality that makes it more involving than you might think at first glance, they help the movie overcome some of the more uninspired aspects of the material, and ensure that the game of cat-and-mouse David and Lucas engage in remains as credible as possible.

Rating: 7/10 – a movie that does a lot more with its simple premise than is immediately apparent, Dismissed is let down by the inconsistent way in which it treats some of its supporting characters (David’s wife, Rachel (Delmore), is a perfect example), and those previously noted narrative short cuts; with much to admire, it’s the movie’s decision to adhere to many of the genre’s devices but in a way that’s not lazy or convenient that marks it out from all the other psychological thrillers out there.

2:22 (2017)

24 Friday Nov 2017

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D: Paul Currie / 99m

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Michiel Huisman, Sam Reid, Maeve Dermody, Remy Hii, Simone Kessell, John Waters, Richard Davies, Kerry Armstrong

When a movie provides the viewer with an intriguing concept (and does so early on) it sets itself something of a problem: namely, how to maintain that sense of intrigue the longer the movie goes on, and the more that has to be explained. There are plenty of movies where that intriguing concept flounders soon after being introduced, and plenty more where it doesn’t go anywhere at all. And then there are the movies that keep that concept evolving and expanding, and in doing so, keep the viewer engaged and entertained throughout. But these movies aren’t as prevalent as we might like, and though it does its best to join that elusive and elite group, 2:22 has a basic flaw that stops it from gaining a place at the table: it never decides to settle for one cause out of three or four for the events that take place.

Dylan Branson (Huisman) is an air traffic controller living in New York. He has the ability to see patterns in all things, which makes it easy for him to make predictions out of what appear to be random variables. It also means that some of the flights under his control can sometimes take off and land within yards of each other, something that, frighteningly, his boss and his colleagues treat as more of a trick to be bet on than as an inappropriate way of dealing with hundreds of lives each time. But when a cosmic event – the shock waves from the collapse of a star in space from thirty years before – has an effect on the Earth, Dylan’s attention becomes focused on the patterns that are revealed through the waves, and he is lucky to avoid the deaths of around nine hundred people when this occurs. Rightly suspended, Dylan still goes about his daily routine, but soon begins to notice that the same things keep happening each day, and at the same times. However, it’s a fascination with Grand Central Station, and the time of 2:22pm, that he’s unable to shake.

As the patterns and repetitions become more and more ingrained, Dylan finds himself drawn into the story of three deaths that occurred thirty years before on the concourse at Grand Central. A love triangle that ended in tragedy, it saw a singer and her boyfriend, and a cop, all shot and killed. Dylan becomes obsessed with finding out why he’s seeing all this within the patterns, and why from so long ago. And when he meets Sarah (Palmer), an art gallery manager, he begins to realise that their relationship is in some way connected to the events of the past. What this all means is what Dylan feels compelled to work out, but at first it frightens Sarah, and she distances herself from him, but as their story begins to dovetail with the story from 1985, and too many coincidences occur to dispute what seems to be happening, Dylan tries to ensure that there isn’t a repeat of the concourse tragedy, and that he and Sarah can make it past 2:22pm.

There’s not exactly a glut of intelligent, well thought out science fiction movies available to audiences these days, and 2:22 clearly has ambitions to fulfill that particular requirement, but while it begins well – and with a couple of airport runway scenes that should have even the most blasé of frequent fliers gripping their upright tray tables – it’s not long before it gets bogged down in an unwieldy narrative, and it starts tripping over itself in its attempts to provide a coherent, viable framework for the mystery of thirty years ago and its relevance to what’s happening around Dylan today. At first, it’s clever, but then the movie tries to be too clever, and before long it has Dylan sounding like he’s in need of some serious medication. Sarah avoids him because he sounds crazy, the truth of the past reveals itself piece by piece, and it’s all done in such a way that makes it confusing as to whether or not it’s all in Dylan’s head, or the result of this strange cosmic event, or some kind of reincarnation version of history repeating itself. As to which one of those is the actual reason for Dylan’s visions of the past, the viewer is free to take a guess.

It may be that there is one true answer, but the screenplay by Todd Stein and Nathan Parker (from a story by Stein) is too respectful of its muddled internal logic to settle for a definitive solution. Instead it piles erratic images and mismatched scenes on top of one another, and as if it needs to add a sense of confusion to proceedings, when it does attempt to explain matters, it falls just shy of being convincing (which unfortunately leaves Michiel Huisman holding the exposition bag quite awkwardly a lot of the time). It’s obvious that the movie doesn’t want to come across as a sci-fi variation of Groundhog Day (1993), and so it throws too many extra elements into the mix, but without testing first to see if they match the level of intrigue required, and/or the details. Currie orchestrates matters with an eye for a compelling image at times, but on other occasions, there’s a pedestrian vibe to many of the scenes early on that aren’t exactly involving; thankfully, as the narrative speeds up, Currie’s confidence in his handling of the material increases also.

The well chosen cast do as well as can be expected with some of Stein and Parker’s more utilitarian dialogue, and overall Huisman and Palmer make for an interesting pairing, their characters not quite the star-crossed lovers they’re made out to be, but competently played nevertheless. By the end though, the sci-fi elements have been shoved aside so that the thriller elements can be pushed to the fore, and there’s a stretch where the familiarity of the narrative – or the obvious nature of it – casts a pall over proceedings as the screenplay manipulates the story into getting Dylan and Sarah, and her jealous ex-boyfriend, Jonas (Reid), to the station on time for the 2:22 deadline. Faced with these strong-arm tactics, the movie has no choice but to go along for the ride and hope that the drily philosophical dictum quoted at the end, “A star shines brightest right before it dies”, strikes the viewer as poignant instead of ironic.

Rating: 6/10 – narrative trips and tumbles aside, 2:22 is a modest sci-fi thriller with modest ambitions, but ones that should be applauded nevertheless; that it doesn’t work entirely is down to the lack of focus in the storyline, and some occasionally lazy “hey, kids, let’s connect the dots for the viewer” decision making, but though it’s very rough around the edges, you could do a lot worse, sci-fi wise, than to give this “out of its comfort zone” movie a chance.

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.

Crown Heights (2017)

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

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D: Matt Ruskin / 100m

Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Amari Cheatom, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Bill Camp, Luke Forbes, Zach Grenier, Josh Pais, Ron Canada, Nestor Carbonell, Skylan Brooks, Sarah Goldberg, Adriane Lenox

Crown Heights ends with a sobering statistic: of the 2.4 million people currently in prison in the US, it’s estimated that 120,000 are likely to be innocent. The movie, winner of the Audience Award for US Dramatic Film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, examines a case that, though it all began back in April 1980, could still be relevant today, both for its victim and his friends and family. Following the murder of sixteen year old Melvin Grant in a reported drive-by shooting, eighteen year old Colin Warner (Stanfield), is arrested and accused of being the driver when the murder was committed. Despite his protests, the police tell Colin that they have an eyewitness and they know he’s guilty. The case proceeds slowly but inexorably to trial, where the eyewitness, fourteen year old Clarence Lewis (Brooks), retracts his original testimony and clears Colin of any involvement. But it makes no difference. With Colin connected to his co-defendent (and actual shooter) Anthony Gibson (Forbes), he’s convicted and sentenced to fifteen years to life.

And so begins twenty-one years of incarceration thanks to a combination of mistaken identity, perjury and official misconduct. The police aren’t interested in whether or not Colin is innocent, the district attorney is in cahoots with the police, and it doesn’t matter that there’s no physical evidence or actual eyewitness testimony to place Colin at the scene of the crime – his fate has miscarriage of justice written all over it. Once in prison, Colin pins his hopes on various appeals but they’re all denied. On the outside, his friend Carl ‘KC’ King (Asomugha), tries his best to have Colin’s conviction overturned but encounters setback after setback. It’s not until Carl meets attorney William Robedee (Camp) that there’s a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Robedee examines the case and determines that the only way for Colin to have a chance of being released is not to try and have his conviction overturned, but to reinvestigate the case and prove once and for all that Colin wasn’t involved in the murder of Melvin Grant.

How Robedee and Carl achieve this is forms the basis of the movie’s final half hour, but before then director and screenwriter Matt Ruskin confidently and credibly explores the way in which Colin was effectively framed by the police, first as Melvin’s killer, and then, when Gibson was arrested and admitted committing the murder, as his accomplice. The relentless nature of the police’s efforts to see Colin convicted is reflected in scenes where the lead detective (Grenier) goads and intimidates potential witnesses (whether they are or not) into identifying Colin as the killer. And in some of them the district attorney (Pais) hovers in the background, impassive and implacable. It’s a tragic situation, made all the worse by the implicit sense of impotency that soon settles on Colin as his fate slowly unfolds and the enormity of the injustice he’s facing becomes more and more apparent, and more and more soul-destroying. Once in prison, Colin struggles to find his place, briefly uniting with his Trinidadian brethren, and challenging the authority of the guards before settling into a more stoic existence.

Further injury is added to the insult he’s already experienced when his parole hearing focuses on his previous bad behaviour rather than the strides he’s made since then. Even a blossoming romance involving Antoinette (Paul), a young woman from his neighbourhood (the Crown Heights of the title), isn’t enough to completely dispel the despair Colin begins to feel more strongly as the years pass by. As the beleaguered Colin, Stanfield plays him throughout and is quietly impressive, drawing out a solid portrayal of a man betrayed and ignored by an unjust system, and sometimes justifiably angry at the way he’s treated. It’s not a showy, attention-seeking performance, but rather an attempt to reflect the ways in which Colin sought to keep himself from submitting to self-pity or just giving up altogether (though he comes perilously close to doing both at times). Ever since his debut in the original, short version of Short Term 12 (2008), Stanfield has become an actor to watch, and here he shows an empathy and an understanding for Colin’s situation that is both intuitive and well judged, impassioned and subtly observed as well.

The movie stays with Colin for most of the first hour, and charts the various setbacks he experiences, until it shifts the focus to Carl and his renewed efforts to see his friend restored to freedom. This section of the movie is just as much about one man’s determination to see justice done as it is about the price that justice demands. Carl nearly loses his wife, Briana (Blake), and his children in his efforts to free Colin, and the movie asks the question, is such a selfless and dogged pursuit ever worth the potential pitfalls or drawbacks? Sensibly it leaves the answer for the viewer to decide, but Carl’s commitment and the subsequent drawing together of the people who can prove Colin’s innocence is assembled with a methodical adherence to the rules of evidentiary procedure, and proves unexpectedly gripping. As the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the viewer should be asking themselves, why didn’t the police do this in the first place?

Questions such as these arise throughout the movie, but Ruskin is wise not to explore them too closely or for too long. He even avoids highlighting the obvious issue of the institutionalised racism prevalent in the police force at the time, and leaves it unsaid, more of a given than something that needs explaining. Similarly the pressures of being in prison are given expression through Colin’s attempts to fit in, and Ruskin allows these moments to play out matter-of-factly and with few overly dramatic embellishments. The movie remains steadfast in its approach from start to finish, with Ruskin displaying a command of the material that makes it all the more effective, and all the more emotive when it needs to be. Aside from a handful of sequences where Colin imagines he’s free – sequences that have a hallucinatory, visually powerful feel to them – the movie has a dour, unsettling visual style to it that reflects Colin’s mindset and situation, and which is used with an admirable sense of restraint. Ruskin has put together a modest, yet haunting movie that tells its tale simply but with a depth that’s borne out of the writing and the performances, both of which complement and dovetail around each other with a modest skill that is the hallmark of the movie as a whole.

Rating: 8/10 – a low-key gem that sneaks up on the viewer and gradually reveals just how good it really is, this could have been yet another angry tirade against an uncaring and unfair system, but Crown Heights is more than that, and it deserves a much wider exposure than it’s likely to receive; with Stanfield and Asomugha heading up a splendid cast, and Ruskin able to subvert or overcome so many of the clichés that are inherent in this type of movie, this is sincere, moving, and if those statistics are to be believed, entirely relevant as a commentary on the current US criminal justice system.

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.

Monthly Roundup – October 2017

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

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Miss Tulip Stays the Night (1955) / D: Leslie Arliss / 68m

aka Dead by Morning

Cast: Diana Dors, Patrick Holt, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, A.E. Matthews, Joss Ambler

Rating: 6/10 – a crime writer (Holt) and his wife (Dors) discover that a weekend break in the country is no guarantee that murder won’t come calling to disturb them, and so it proves when the garrulous Miss Tulip (Courtneidge) is found dead in the cottage; an amiable if too leisurely paced murder mystery, Miss Tulip Stays the Night relies on hoodwinking the viewer from the start and keeping a vital piece of information all to itself until the end, but as a vehicle for Dors it isn’t quite as successful as may have been hoped originally, as the actress is too often sidelined in favour of having Holt attempting to solve the mystery before the police do.

Power Rangers (2017) / D: Dean Israelite / 124m

Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, Becky G, Elizabeth Banks, Bryan Cranston, Bill Hader, David Denman

Rating: 4/10 – five teens discover the remains of a space ship buried in a hillside, and also find that they have been chosen to defend the Earth from an evil alien called Rita Repulsa (Banks), something that means wearing colourful outfits and playing with super powers; as if the likes of the Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises hadn’t already shown that there is a dwindling audience for this kind of thing, Power Rangers goes ahead and makes the same narrative mistakes as its confederates, and only makes a decent fist of things when it’s focusing on the inter-relationships of the teens, and not the frankly ridiculous storyline that needed four writers to work on it.

Sunset Murder Case (1938) / D: Louis J. Gasnier / 60m

aka High Explosive

Cast: Sally Rand, Esther Muir, Vince Barnett, Paul Sutton, Lona Andre, Mary Brodel, George Douglas, Reed Hadley, Kathryn Kane, Dennis Moore, Henry King

Rating: 4/10 – when her policeman father is murdered, a showgirl, Kathy O’Connor (Rand), decides to pose as a fan dancer at a nightclub in an effort to find out who killed him; Rand’s presence is the only interesting thing about this deadly dull drama that stops too often for musical interludes, and which seems to run longer than it actually does, making Sunset Murder Case a disappointing exercise that lacks for thrills  and any kind of appeal that might make it look or sound better.

The Guest House (2012) / D: Michael Baumgarten / 82m

Cast: Ruth Reynolds, Madeline Merritt, Tom McCafferty, Jake Parker, Jennifer Barlow

Rating: 3/10 – wild child Rachel (Reynolds), stuck at home for the weekend after splitting up with her boyfriend, gets to know her father’s new employee, Amy (Merritt), when she comes to stay in the guest house…and not just as a friend; a low budget insult to any lesbians who happen to watch this farrago, The Guest House is ludicrous in the way it depicts lesbian lovemaking, and ludicrous in the way that writer/director Baumgarten could have ever thought that his script was even halfway adequate enough to make this worth watching – and that’s without the two terrible performances at the movie’s centre.

Sparks and Embers (2015) / D: Gavin Boyter / 88m

Cast: Kris Marshall, Annelise Hesme, Waleed Akhtar, Valda Aviks, Sean Baker, Len Trusty

Rating: 4/10 – five years after they met while stuck in a lift, Tom (Marshall) and Eloise (Hesme), meet up again just as she’s on the verge of leaving London to go off and marry another man, making this Tom’s last chance to win her back after their relationship has ended; a movie that wants so much to say something profound about love (but doesn’t know how to), Sparks and Embers wastes its two co-stars’ time, and the audience’s, on a story that lacks any kind of spark, and which sees the couple wandering along London’s South Bank, aimlessly back and forth, and oddly, at different times of the year, which is no mean feat when Tom has just forty-five minutes to persuade Eloise not to leave.

My Name Is Lenny (2017) / D: Ron Scalpello / 91m

Cast: Josh Helman, Michael Bisping, Chanel Cresswell, Charley Palmer Rothwell, Nick Moran, John Hurt, Rita Tushingham, Frankie Oatway, George Russo, Martin Askew, Jennifer Brooke

Rating: 4/10 – the story of British bare knuckle boxer Lenny McLean (Helman) as he tries to deal with the demons that still haunt him from his childhood, while also trying to keep his marriage from falling apart, and defeat main rival Roy Shaw (Bisping) – and all at the same time; a raucous, cheaply made biopic that has a good sense of the period it’s set in, My Name Is Lenny is undermined by Helman’s decision (supported no doubt by director Scalpello) to portray McLean as a constantly gurning nutjob with all the self-awareness of, well, someone who’s taken too many punches to the head, and a number of violent scenes that are there to make the movie more interesting (though only briefly) than it actually is.

The Living Ghost (1942) / D: William Beaudine / 61m

aka Lend Me Your Ear; A Walking Nightmare

Cast: James Dunn, Joan Woodbury, Paul McVey, Vera Gordon, Norman Willis, J. Farrell MacDonald, Minerva Urecal, George Eldredge, Jan Wiley, Edna Johnson

Rating: 5/10 – when a wealthy businessman disappears only to return in a semi-comatose state that no one can explain, ex-detective Nick Trayne (Dunn) is persuaded to investigate; eerie goings-on coupled with a lot of broad comedy makes The Living Ghost more entertaining than it has any right to be, particularly as the script flits from one ill-thought out idea to another, and the more than competent Dunn is left to carry the picture on his own, a situation that isn’t any good for him or the audience.

Turn the Key Softly (1953) / D: Jack Lee / 78m

Cast: Yvonne Mitchell, Terence Morgan, Joan Collins, Kathleen Harrison, Thora Hird, Dorothy Alison, Glyn Houston

Rating: 7/10 – three women – lovelorn Monica (Mitchell), selfish Stella (Collins), and good-natured Granny Quilliam (Harrison) – are released from prison on the same day, but though all three have plans to stay on the right side of the law, temptations put them all in jeopardy of landing right back where they started; a nimbly executed drama that poses some unexpected questions about the likelihood of prison being a place of reform, Turn the Key Softly benefits from the performances of Mitchell, Collins and Harrison, and by an assured use of London as a backdrop to the action.

No More Ladies (1935) / D: Edward H. Griffith / 80m

Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Charles Ruggles, Franchot Tone, Edna May Oliver, Gail Patrick, Reginald Denny, Vivienne Osborne, Joan Fontaine, Arthur Treacher

Rating: 5/10 – lovesick Marcia (Crawford) finally lands the man of her dreams, committed Lothario Sherry (Montgomery), only to find that being married hasn’t dampened his ardour for the company of other women; though the script is by Donald Ogden Stewart and Horace Jackson, neither man can make this turgid tale of jealousy and vengeful scheming as credible as it needs to be, and despite the best efforts of Crawford and Montgomery, it fails to impress, leaving only Ruggles and Oliver to elevate the material, and then merely by being present and on fine form.

Rough Night (2017) / D: Lucia Aniello / 101m

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon, Paul W. Downs, Ryan Cooper, Ty Burrell, Demi Moore

Rating: 6/10 – when five friends get together for a bachelorette party, they don’t plan on the male stripper they’ve hired ending up dead, or how difficult it will be to dispose of the body without anyone finding out; an uneasy mix of sweet-natured girl power and the kind of gross-out material that always makes for an equally uneasy combination, Rough Night features a great cast as the five friends (McKinnon is on good form as usual), but often leaves them stranded while the next set up is… set up, making this a comedy that relies on too much exposition to be truly effective, and which is only occasionally funny – though when it is, it is funny.

Geostorm (2017) / D: Dean Devlin / 109m

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Robert Sheehan, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Richard Schiff

Rating: 5/10 – when a satellite system (called Dutchboy) that controls the Earth’s weather starts to malfunction, causing all sorts of catastrophes, it’s up to warring brothers Jake (Butler) and Max Lawson (Sturgess) to save the day, and to uncover the person behind it all – which might just be the US President (Garcia); despite having a ton of sincerity poured all over it, Geostorm is still as silly and as earnestly po-faced as you’d expect, with Butler in full-on macho mode, Sturgess doing perpetual anguish, Cornish wondering if her career will survive this, and all in support of a number of disaster porn episodes that, frankly, have lost the ability to impress thanks to all the other disaster porn movies that have come before it (some of which writer/director Devlin will be all too familiar with).

Oh! the Horror! – Happy Death Day (2017) and Jigsaw (2017)

30 Monday Oct 2017

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Happy Death Day (2017) / D: Christopher Landon / 96m

Cast: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Laura Clifton, Jason Bayle, Rob Mello, Rachel Matthews

For Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Rothe), her latest birthday is not a day to acknowledge, laced as it is by the tragic death of her mother three years before, who also shared the same birthday. Waking up in the dorm room of schoolmate Carter Davis (Broussard), Tree spends most of her day being unpleasant to her friends and sorority housemates, skipping a planned lunch with her father, meeting her lover, professor Gregory Butler (Aitken), and planning to attend a party later that night. But on the way to the party she’s attacked and killed by a masked killer in a subway tunnel. Tree wakes up on her birthday in exactly the same place and in exactly the same circumstances. As the day continues the strangeness of reliving the same day a second time causes Tree to avoid the subway tunnel and stay at her sorority house. There she finds that her housemates have arranged a surprise party for her birthday. Reassured that she won’t be killed a second time as well, she hooks up with one of the boys she likes, but the killer appears and kills her again. And Tree wakes up on her birthday in exactly the same place and in exactly the same circumstances…

Yes, it’s another horror-themed variation on Groundhog Day (1993), with Tree forced to relive her birthday over and over again until she can discover the identity of her killer. Along the way there are plenty of red herrings, almost everybody she knows is a suspect at one time or another (even her father for a few moments), and her efforts to avoid being killed are entirely a waste of time. Eventually she manages to persuade Carter of what’s happening to her and he suggests that she use each day to work out who the killer could be. Of course, he doesn’t know he’s done this and so Tree is still left to work it all out for herself, and when one attempt leaves her in the hospital and not dead somewhere, she becomes aware of the presence, at the hospital, of a serial killer, John Tombs (Mello), and becomes convinced he’s her killer. But that particular idea leads to a quite different revelation, one that provides the movie with its inevitably obvious twist in the tale.

For a movie that was first announced a decade ago, Happy Death Day does at least feel a little fresher than most teen-based horror movies, and it’s blend of terror, college campus hijinks and waspish humour is at least attractive to watch, and the script’s determination to do something a little bit different with its familiar premise is to be applauded, but it’s still a movie that doesn’t follow its own agenda or guidelines too convincingly, as evidenced by the killer popping up wherever they’re needed to on any given day, and leading to the assumption that they’re aware of the time loop Tree is experiencing, and that they’re somehow ahead of it (and especially when they still manage to turn up inside a locked room). Of course, the script also takes the opportunity to show Tree the error of her rude, dismissive ways, and the time loop acts as a learning curve, which at least gives Tree a chance to grow as a character, even if it’s not really necessary.

Tree is played with a great deal of tenacity and conviction by Rothe, and as she’s in every scene, it’s fortunate that she’s as good as she is, as in the wrong hands, Tree could have been a character that the audience might not have had any sympathy for. As it is, Rothe is a terrific heroine, caustic and unlikeable to begin with (“Who takes their date to Subway? Besides, it’s not like you have a footlong”), to responsible and more able to deal with the problems in her life, such as her deteriorating relationship with her father. Sadly, the rest of the characters don’t fare so well, with Broussard’s potential new boyfriend coming across as too fresh-faced and bland to attract Tree in the first place, and Matthews’ obnoxious sorority leader, Danielle, giving new meaning to the phrase, “stupid is as stupid does (and says)”. Landon, who’s yet to make a completely successful horror movie after the entertainingly flawed Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) and the unnecessary Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), shows an understanding of the various masked killer tropes the script relies on, and how to use them to the movie’s best advantage, but he’s not quite able to combat the many non sequiturs that crop up throughout. And if the killer’s look is too much like Ghostface from the Scream franchise – but with a baby’s visage instead – it doesn’t actually hurt the movie, but it’s not an intrinsically scary image either.

Rating: 6/10 – a pleasant enough diversion in these days of overly lacklustre horror movies, Happy Death Day isn’t as bad as it sounds from its tagline, but it’s also not as good as it’s premise may promise; Rothe is a great choice for Tree, and Landon stages the murder scenes with a great deal of visual flair, but ultimately, and despite a good effort from all concerned, it still can’t overcome the familiarity of the material to make it stand too far out from the crowd.

 

Jigsaw (2017) / D: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig / 91m

Cast: Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Emily Anderson, Clé Bennett, Laura Vandervoort, Paul Braunstein, Mandela Van Peebles, Brittany Allen, Josiah Black

John Kramer (Bell), the notorious serial killer known as Jigsaw, and who never actually killed anyone, has been dead for ten years. But now, bodies are popping up all over the city that are clearly the work of Kramer – or is it a copycat? Despite mounting evidence that Kramer is still alive, the police, in the form of Detective Halloran (Rennie) and his partner, Detective Hunt (Bennett), as well as coroner Logan Nelson (Passmore) and his assistant, Eleanor Bonneville (Anderson) aren’t so convinced. After all, Kramer’s body underwent an autopsy – as seen in Saw IV (2007) – so it can’t be him. Soon, as the body count rises, and the finger of suspicion points toward Detective Halloran, Logan and Eleanor find themselves in a race against time to find the remaining “contestants” in Jigsaw’s latest game before they are forced to kill themselves or each other in order to survive and be set free.

By the time of Saw 3D (2010), the most recent in the series, the Saw franchise had become so convoluted that any attempt at following a logical narrative was almost as difficult as working out Pi to the thousandth degree. There were so many acolytes doing Kramer’s work, before, during and after his demise, that it was impossible to keep track of where they all fitted in to the overall narrative. And now we have an eighth movie that presents us with another acolyte doing Kramer’s work, and without spoiling anything for anyone, we have Kramer himself putting another unlucky group of sinners through the usual series of tests that will see them sliced, diced, maimed, tortured, and eventually killed. The how of it all is quite cleverly done, but this is the best thing about a seventh sequel that, like its immediate predecessors, seeks to play games with the series’ timeline, and cause its audience to spend much of the movie’s running time scratching their heads in confusion.

In tone, this is reminiscent of the first two movies, the ones that introduced and then expanded Kramer’s back story in such a way that you could still keep track of things before they got all gnarly and as tangled as the barbed wire in the Twisted Pictures logo. Newbies the Spierig Brothers have certainly got the look and feel of the series down pat, and while they recreate the grim and gloomy texture that infuses the series as a whole with due care and attention, in doing so, what they haven’t done (and neither has the script by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger) is to make this entry stand out from all the rest. The traps are all present and correct, and they are as fiendishly constructed as you’d expect, but somewhere along the way, the production has failed to make them as visually effective, or their outcomes as disturbing as in previous entries. In some ways, the traps in Jigsaw are the least gruesome in the series as a whole, and in that sense, the danger for the characters is lessened, making their ordeal less effective. It also doesn’t help that the confessions that Jigsaw/Kramer is looking for aren’t that effective either, with only one of them having any kind of impact.

If the intention was to kick start a new run of Saw movies, with new characters and new scenarios that could be sent off in a variety of new directions, then Jigsaw isn’t the movie to herald in that new run. Tied too much to the previous entries, and lacking in anything appreciably new that might energise proceedings, what we’re left with is a movie that feels more comfortable as a cinematic version of a Greatest Hits album (look out for one character’s “hobby room”, and the return of Billy the Puppet), and which harks back to the series’ early days almost in tribute of them. In the end, the movie feels tired and unnecessary, adding little to the canon and providing a bland experience for fans and newcomers alike. The performances are serviceable, though Bell is good value as always, and the twists and turns of the narrative aren’t as compelling or persuasive as they’ve been in the past. Kramer is fond of saying that “the truth will set you free”. Well here, the truth is that Lionsgate, who didn’t want to make another Saw movie until they heard a pitch they thought was worthwhile, should have waited a little bit longer.

Rating: 5/10 – lacking tension in its trap sequences, and with even fewer characters to connect with than usual, Jigsaw is a stunted attempt at rebuilding the Saw franchise; Bell’s presence helps, but it’s not enough to rescue a movie that trades on former glories while being too respectful of them, and which doesn’t try to establish its own identity.

1922 (2017)

23 Monday Oct 2017

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D: Zak Hilditch / 102m

Cast: Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, Dylan Schmid, Kaitlyn Bernard, Neal McDonough, Brian d’Arcy James

Hemingford Home, Nebraska, 1922. Wilfred James (Jane), a farmer, owns eighty acres of land. His wife, Arlette (Parker), owns an adjoining one hundred acres of land, an inheritance from her late father. They have a teenage son, Henry (Schmid). Arlette is frustrated by having to live outside of town and wants the three of them to sell their combined land and move to Omaha. Wilfred is against the idea, but Arlette is insistent, telling him that if he won’t agree to her wish then she’ll sell her hundred acres and move to Omaha anyway; and she’ll take Henry with her. Wilfred is against this idea even more, and decides that he needs to do something to stop his wife from going through with her plan.

Now this being an adaptation of a Stephen King novella, Wilfred’s solution is, of course, to murder Arlette and dispose of her body down a well that’s conveniently located on the property. But Wilfred can’t do this on his own, and so he inveigles Henry into helping him. He does this by convincing his son that Arlette leaving will be the ruin of the farm (which is actually true), and that it will mean Henry will no longer be able to see his girlfriend, Shannon (Bernard), the daughter of another local farmer, Harlan Cotterie (McDonough). Henry has reservations about his father’s plan, but as there’s no particular love lost between him and his mother, he agrees. Between them, they murder Arlette, and as planned, her body ends up at the bottom of the well. Realising that he’ll need a reason to fill in the well (or it will look suspicious), Wilfred has one of his cows fall in as well. Then he fills it with concrete. It’s not long before Arlette’s disappearance – Wilfred tells the sheriff (James) that she just upped and left – has its consequences. Wilfred and Henry have trouble dealing with their individual guilt, and they become estranged from each other. And then Henry reveals Shannon is pregnant…

Secrets, and the dead, rarely remain quiet, and this is very true in 1922, the latest feature from Australian movie maker Zak Hilditch, and the latest in what seems to be a neverending conveyor belt of Stephen King adaptations that have been released this year. Once Arlette has been killed, things go quickly from bad to worse to simply terrible for Wilfred, as his relationship with Henry disintegrates, and Arlette’s ghost – aided by the presence of rats that seem to be in league with her – begins to appear with increasing malevolence. Wilfred has no one to turn to, no one he can ask for help, and as he sinks into a morass of terror and despair, he finds that his one fear, that Arlette’s leaving would be the ruin of the farm, is going to happen anyway (though just how he and Henry by themselves were going to manage one hundred and eighty acres remains a mystery). Taunted by Arlette’s ghost, menaced by rats, and abandoned by Henry who runs off with Shannon, Wilfred’s fate is sealed.

Despite its obvious thriller and horror trappings, 1922 is a movie that’s more concerned with its traditional theme of pride going before a fall. Many of the characters exhibit this trait in one form or another, and while it does provide the backbone of the narrative, writer/director Hilditch is clever enough not to overdo it. He adopts a matter of fact approach to the material that serves it well, and especially when pride turns to guilt and then to unavoidable resignation. There’s grief here too, painful, overwhelming grief, and again, Hilditch makes it an organic part of the narrative, and not something to be trotted out to make one or two scenes work independently of all the rest. These emotions are pervasive and tied to the fates of all concerned. When Wilfred comes up with his plan, it’s not just Arlette that is doomed, it’s Henry, and Shannon (they become Bonnie and Clyde-style robbers nicknamed The Sweetheart Bandits), and Harlan too. These emotions also help anchor the movie when it moves into the realm of the supernatural, and they help to make Wilfred’s situation all the more credible in the face of Arlette’s ghostly return.

The supernatural elements do feel a little forced however, with Arlette appearing randomly at first, but always at moments when you’d expected her to. And despite Hilditch’s best efforts, she’s not really that frightening or scary, her presence more of an obligation to the story than something to really be afraid of. Of course, she appears in a post mortem state, with blood and all, but it’s only in the movie’s best sequence, where she relates Henry and Shannon’s fate to a cowering Wilfred, her lips in kissing distance to his face, and shot in close up, that Hilditch makes the most of Arlette’s oppressive presence. As Arlette, Parker has little to do except be a self-regarding shrew for around twenty minutes before being killed off, and quite explicitly at that. Schmid is good as the conflicted yet defiant Henry, rushing off into the world without a clue as to how to tackle it and paying the price for his feelings of guilt and anguish. The other secondary and minor performances range from adequate to perfunctory, but all in all this is Jane’s movie from start to finish. Jane’s now rugged features are a perfect match for Wilfred, and helped by a severe haircut he paints a terrific portrait of a man defined by his pride and his actions, and who does what he does out of loyalty to the land and to his son. That both are taken away from him when he would sacrifice his own life for both of them – something that Jane incorporates into his portrayal with ease – adds to the tragedy of it all. This is by far and away Jane’s best performance in quite some time, and one that maintains a subdued energy throughout.

The era is replicated quite nicely, though the movie does suffer from a surfeit of patently false looking backdrops and CGI surroundings, no doubt a budgetary constraint rather than an artistic decision, but these are noticeable, and they do hamper the sense of time and place that the movie is looking to represent. The movie also moves at a slow, deliberate pace that suits the material in the early stages, but which does it no favours when applied to events in the last forty minutes. The story itself is told in wraparound fashion by Wilfred as he writes everything down in an attempt at a confessional while in a hotel room (not 1408). Here, Hilditch eschews the ambiguity of King’s original ending in favour of one last fright, and while this does provide a frisson to see out the movie, its literal nature isn’t quite as effective in terms of the story as it could have been. But these are caveats in a movie that gets far more right than it does wrong, and which can be added to the list of better than average Stephen King adaptations.

Rating: 7/10 – Hilditch has adapted King’s novella with a great deal of care, and 1922 is one adaptation where the characters and their motivations and emotions are more important than providing just a succession of frights and jump scares; a slow burn build up helps also, as well as Jane’s compelling performance, making this a movie that, while it may not be to all tastes, is still worth seeking out on its own terms.

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.

Devil’s Knot (2013)

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

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D: Atom Egoyan / 114m

Cast: Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Alessandro Nivola, James Hamrick, Seth Meriwether, Kristopher Higgins, Amy Ryan, Robert Baker, Rex Linn, Bruce Greenwood, Dane DeHaan, Kevin Durand, Stephen Moyer, Elias Koteas

There are times when the very existence of a movie proves puzzling, puzzling because the content of the movie has already been covered in greater depth, and with far more fidelity, elsewhere. Such is the case with Devil’s Knot, an exploration of the Robin Hood Hills Murders that took place in West Memphis, Arkansas on 5 May 1993. On that fateful day, three eight year old friends – Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore – disappeared. Their bodies were found in a muddy creek the following day. It didn’t take long for the police and the local community to ascribe the murders to a Satanic cult believed to be operating in the area. It wasn’t long either before the police had three suspects firmly in their sights: teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley Jr. After Misskelley Jr was interrogated for twelve straight hours, he confessed that all three were involved in the deaths of the children, and all three were subsequently arrested. At their trials, Misskelley Jr and Baldwin were sentenced to life imprisonment, while Echols was sentenced to be executed.

The problem with Devil’s Knot is not just that it’s another movie “based on a true story” and with all the limitations that usually apply, but that the story of the Robin Hood Hills murders and the West Memphis Three (the accused) have been so well documented elsewhere. There are currently four documentaries available that cover the case, and which do so in more depth, and with greater clarity of purpose. They are Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), its sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000), a further sequel, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011), and a separate entry which covers the whole story, West of Memphis (2012). With all these excellent documentaries on offer (particularly the first one, which is nothing short of exceptional for the access the makers had), it remains surprising that Devil’s Knot was actually greenlit in the first place, let alone made.

Adapted from the book of the same name by Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot benefits greatly from having Atom Egoyan perched, however precariously, in the director’s chair. He’s a very talented movie maker, but he’s never seemed as comfortable as when he’s working from a script he’s written himself, and this proves to be the case here. Making the most of a script that doesn’t really tell us anything new and which can be found dramatically twiddling its thumbs from time to time, Egoyan shows occasional flashes of the erudite and ambitious director who has given us such modern classics as Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997). But these are few and far between, and there are long periods where Egoyan feels like a jobbing director who hasn’t been able to connect with the material – and doesn’t know how to. And yet, conversely, there are moments where he does, and these contain a quiet power that is indisputably effective (and affecting).

Somewhat inevitably, the script tries to pull in various different directions, and by doing so, tries to cover too much ground all at once. This leads to scenes feeling unnecessarily truncated, and others feeling like filler. In its efforts to tell as much of the story as possible, the movie proves disjointed in its approach to the victims’ families – only Witherspoon’s grief-stricken mother, Pamela Hobbs gets a look in, and then only because she begins to believe Echols and co aren’t guilty – while the holes in the police investigation (and there are dozens of them) are allowed to go by remarked upon but under-emphasised. The trial scenes take up most of the second half of the movie but serve only to show that justice is not only blind in some US courts but sometimes half asleep as well, a situation that we’re already way too familiar with for these scenes to carry any appreciable weight. Egoyan gamely makes his way through them, throwing in an occasionally interesting shot, but relaying events in a style that resembles a TV Movie of the Week instead of a fully-fledged feature.

With the screenplay trying to fit so much in (there’s a reason the documentaries all run longer), it’s inevitable as well that some characters come to feel like observers rather than participants. Terry Hobbs (Nivola), Stevie’s stepdad, flits in and out of the narrative and remains elusive until the movie’s end when we learn something unexpected that relates to him. By the time this happens though it’s too late to have much of an impact as we haven’t got to know him well enough. Likewise for Durand’s scary-stary John Mark Byers, a potential alternative suspect whose day in court is remarkable for the way in which he’s let off the hook by all concerned (even the defence lawyers). Egoyan regular Koteas pops up as an expert on Satanic cults, Linn is the police official who knows his case is full of holes but pushes on regardless, and then there’s DeHaan as another potential suspect, Chris Morgan, who confesses then recants and is allowed to do so while Misskelley Jr does the same and ends up in prison for life. All these roles feel incidental to the overall aim of the movie, which in itself isn’t clear. As an undeniable miscarriage of justice, the movie does more than enough to get that across through some of the evidence that’s presented, but elements such as the local community’s willingness to accept the presence of Satanic cults despite there being no concrete evidence to support this, lands with a thud every time it’s mentioned.

More curious still is the decision to focus much of the movie on an outsider, Firth’s crusading legal investigator, Ron Lax. We see him challenging everyone around him to do their jobs properly, and he behaves like a man with a Messiah complex at times, but if the idea is that he’s the viewer’s guide through the maze of “evidence” and supposition that sees the West Memphis Three convicted, then it’s unfortunate but we don’t need him. There’s an awkward scene in the Robin Hood Hills woods between Lax and Pam Hobbs that is pure Hollywood speculation and has no place in a movie that’s striving to be taken seriously as a re-enactment of true events. It’s moments like these, where the script is trying to manipulate its audience, that it undermines its overall effectiveness and leaves the viewer wondering if the movie will ever settle for a consistent tone it can work with. The answer is a resounding No, and like so many other moments or issues this movie has, it’s in too much of a hurry to squeeze in the major plot points, however indifferently at times, and without giving them room to breathe.

Rating: 5/10 – as the movie equivalent of an unnecessary footnote, Devil’s Knot is only sporadically engaging, and on a severely reduced par with the likes of its documentary brethren; perfunctory in a way that shouldn’t be the case when you consider the story it’s trying to tell, this remains an ill-advised project that could have been a lot worse if it weren’t for the occasionally mindful ministrations of its director.

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.

Wind River (2017)

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

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D: Taylor Sheridan / 107m

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Gil Birmingham, James Jordan, Jon Bernthal, Kelsey Asbille, Martin Sensmeier

The Wind River Indian Reservation is situated in Wyoming’s Wind River Basin and occupies an area of nearly three and a half thousand square miles. It’s surrounded by the Wind River Mountain Range, the Owl Creek Mountains and the Absaroka Mountains, and temperatures can drop to a point where rapid breathing of the cold air can cause death by pulmonary haemorrhage. It’s also a place where the lives of its Native Americans are blighted by a persistent drug problem and sense of aimlessness amongst its youth. These points are all worth bearing in mind when considering the merits of Wind River, the latest movie written by Taylor Sheridan, and his first as a director. Sheridan is responsible for the screenplays for Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016), two very impressive movies indeed thanks to his contributions, and this, his latest, is equally as impressive (if not more so).

This is a movie where the locations are just as important as the characters themselves and the tangled narrative that they inhabit. The backdrop for a tale of rape and murder that takes place on tribal lands, Sheridan takes the inhospitable nature of the reservation in winter and uses it as a way of examining the issues affecting the tribes people who live there, and to provide an unforgiving environment against which the plot unfolds. It begins with an eighteen year old called Natalie Hanson (Asbille) as she flees across the snow, panicked and bloody. Eventually she collapses and lies still, and remains there until she’s discovered the next day by US Fish and Wildlife agent Cory Lambert (Renner). Lambert reports his discovery to Ben (Greene), the tribal chief of police, and he in turn alerts the FBI. Their response is to send rookie agent Jane Banner (Olsen), who arrives completely unprepared for the harsh winter weather, and who has no awareness of, or background in, Indian affairs.

Banner hopes that an autopsy will prove that Natalie’s death was murder but the cause of death, pulmonary haemorrhage, won’t support that contention. Unable to bring in a full FBI investigative team, Banner decides to enlist Lambert’s help in finding out what caused Natalie to be so far from the nearest shelter. They learn from her brother, Chip (Sensmeier), that Natalie had a new boyfriend, a security guard at a nearby oil drilling site. Lambert discovers the track of a snowmobile that leads up into the mountains. He and Banner follow the track and find the naked body of a male that’s been ravaged by the local wildlife. Eventually, Banner and Ben, along with a few local deputies and members of the tribal police visit the oil drilling site on the pretext of wanting to speak to Natalie’s boyfriend, who they now know is called Matt (Bernthal). But the security guards that greet them begin behaving suspiciously, and while Banner staves off an armed confrontation between them all, Lambert is up in the mountains where the male body was found, and where he also finds a snowmobile track that leads down to the oil drilling site…

Wind River is a tough, uncompromising thriller that doesn’t stint on the emotional lives of its characters, even allowing the viewer a glimpse of the life that Natalie could have enjoyed if she’d lived, and it’s this approach that helps to anchor the murder investigation that drives the movie forward. Lambert agrees to help Banner because his daughter also died of exposure in the snow three years before, and he wants to assuage his feelings of guilt at not being able to save her. Lambert uses his skills as a tracker to piece together the events that led to Natalie’s murder, and with step he takes, Renner’s thoughtful, subdued performance allows the viewer to see his sadness slip slowly from his shoulders until he’s in a position to offer advice to Martin (Birmingham), Natalie’s father, that is both affecting and heartfelt. Aside from his supporting role in Arrival (2016), Renner hasn’t exactly been best served by the roles he’s taken over the last few years, but his portayal of the taciturn Lambert is one of his best, and a reminder that when he’s given the right material he can be very good indeed.

Sheridan is also careful to make Banner not just a fish out of water, but someone doing their best in a situation that isn’t ideal for them, but which is pushing them beyond their comfort zone. From arriving unprepared for the harsh weather conditions to the point where she begins to understand both the environment and the social climate of the reservation, Banner visibly grows as a character, and Olsen also reminds viewers that she is one of the best actresses of her generation. Displaying a tough determination, and a commitment to finding the truth, Sheridan and Olsen use Banner’s inexperience as a way of bringing out the clues and the details of Natalie’s murder and making them as fresh for the audience as they are for her. Though Lambert is nominally the lead character, and discovers said clues and details, we still see the bulk of the investigation through Banner’s eyes, and we also see the effect that it has on her throughout.

But while Sheridan concentrates on the characters, even to giving us brief moments that tell their stories concisely and effectively, he doesn’t lose sight of the mystery he’s created and the narrative structure that allows it to unfold at a pace that doesn’t disappoint in terms of detail or leaves the viewer feeling as if they’re being led by the nose. Given the bleak (yet beautiful) nature of the environment, it’s unsurprising that there are some harsh, and somewhat brutal outbursts of violence, and the fate of one character has a pleasing, Old Testament eye-for-an-eye feel to it, but again it’s all in keeping with the milieu that Sheridan has created, and there’s an appropriate sense of nihilism that infuses the movie and keeps any sentimentality at bay, particularly in relation to the fractured outlook of its young Native Americans.

Behind the camera, Sheridan has enlisted the aid of a number of collaborators whose contributions add further lustre to the quality of the movie, and without whom this may not have been as successful. There’s Ben Richardson’s rich, detailed cinematography that also highlights the vastness of the Wind River Basin and its austere, wintry beauty, and a beautifully expressive score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis that is both unobtrusive and eerily soulful at the same time. These collaborators, along with production designer Neil Spisak and editor Gary Roach – and many more – all help make the movie a hugely rewarding and outstanding feature debut for its writer.

Rating: 9/10 – a near perfect combination of mystery thriller and cleverly mounted character-driven drama, Wind River succeeds on so many levels that it would be churlish to say otherwise; Sheridan just keeps on getting better and better, and he draws out terrific performances from his two leads, making this one of the more worthwhile movies out there, and deserving of far more awards than just Sheridan’s Un Certain Regard Director Award at Cannes this year.

Contratiempo (2016)

07 Thursday Sep 2017

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aka The Invisible Guest

D: Oriol Paulo / 106m

Cast: Mario Casas, Ana Wagener, Jose Coronado, Bárbara Lennie, Francesc Orella, David Selvas, Iñigo Gastesi, San Yélamos

Early on in Contratiempo, murder suspect Adrián Doria (Casas) is caught out in a lie by the defence attorney, Virginia Goodman (Wagener), who has been hired to keep him out of prison. Having recounted the circumstances in which he came to be accused of the murder of his lover, Laura Vidal (Lennie), Doria is surprised to find that Virginia isn’t convinced that he’s told her the whole truth. It’s only when she shows him a newspaper article about a young man who is missing that the certainty of his story begins to waver, and the viewer begins to realise that they can’t trust anything that they’re being told. The basic premise – Doria and Laura are coerced into meeting up in a hotel room to hand over money to a blackmailer who knows about their affair, only for Laura to end up killed by an unknown assailant and all the evidence pointing to Doria – is soon expanded on to involve a car accident, a cover up, the aforementioned missing young man, grieving parents, a locked room mystery, and a race against time to get Doria’s story “straight” before he’s called before a judge in a matter of three hours.

The events that have led to Laura’s death are recounted in detail as Virginia goads and cajoles Doria into remembering the details of what happened, and tries to put together a defence that will see the charges against him dismissed. She’s taken his case as a favour to his lawyer, and has a one hundred per cent success rate in keeping her clients out of jail. As the story unfolds, and with revelations coming thick and fast, director Paulo’s script keeps the viewer guessing as to the truth of Doria’s recollections and also Virginia’s assertions when she believes he’s lying to her (often she already seems to know more about the case than Doria has revealed). Paulo has assembled a tale that continually keeps shifting, as each retelling of events adds further layers of uncertainty and mystery to proceedings, and Doria’s guilt – did he kill Laura or was she really the victim of someone who was able to escape from their locked hotel room? – becomes clearer and then more obscure and then clearer again as the truth changes from scene to scene.

Paulo is able to do all this thanks to his tightly constructed script, which packs in so many twists and turns and narrative sleights of hand that the viewer is in danger of missing the most important moments of all, the ones where Doria’s story trembles on the precipice of exposure, but pulls back just in time while also revealing elements of the wider truth that will ultimately be revealed in the final fifteen minutes. It’s an impressive juggling act, one that stumbles only occasionally as Paulo weaves tangled thread after tangled thread in his efforts to bamboozle the viewer and keep things up in the air. Along the way he maintains an enviable level of tension, but it’s not just through the convoluted script, but also thanks to the performances.

As the morally compromised Doria, Casas plays it deadly straight throughout, protesting Doria’s innocence of Laura’s murder with a great deal of conviction while also providing enough doubt for the viewer to be questioning both his motives and his innocence. Casas brings a much needed sincerity to the role, and proves more than capable of investing Doria with a degree of wounded pride in conjunction with a surprising vulnerability when the script requires it. He’s matched by a fierce, uncompromising performance by Wagener as the defence attorney whose zero tolerance for ambiguity or avoidance (“Your testimony has holes, and I need details”) drives the narrative forward as she pursues the truth no matter what it means for her client. Between them, the two actors play an exacting game of cat-and-mouse that sees them engage in the kind of verbal sparring that keeps audiences engrossed and the material flowing inexorably to its one-last-twist conclusion.

But even though Paulo has gone to a lot of trouble in littering his script with more red herrings than it seems possible to include, fans of this kind of mystery thriller will realise what’s going on pretty much right from the start. However, this awareness doesn’t detract from the consistently clever and successful attempts to wrongfoot the viewer in terms of why things happen as they do, and who is responsible for it all. Paulo examines much of what occurs from different perspectives and different angles, and in doing so, manages to add unexpected emotional layers to the story that help to anchor the characters’ motives and reinforce the credibility of certain scenes that might otherwise have fallen short in terms of their effectiveness.

By the time all is revealed, Contratiempo has proven to be a gripping, provocative thriller that never lets up in its efforts to keep the viewer guessing, and it does so with no small amount of skill and confidence on Paulo’s part. He’s aided greatly by Xavi Giménez’s chilly, atmospheric cinematography, and Balter Gallart’s austere production design (this is a movie that eschews bright colours in favour of muted browns and dulled pastels), and these elements all join to make the movie feel appropriately suspenseful in a dour but thankfully arresting fashion. Casas and Wagener are terrific adversaries, and there’s good support from Coronado and Lennie, both of whom provide sympathetic performances as the father of the missing young man and Doria’s unlucky mistress respectively. It’s all rounded off by an unobtrusive yet effective score by Fernando Velázquez, that adds to the overall ambience and sense of subdued menace that the movie promotes throughout.

Rating: 8/10 – a couple of forced narrative moments aside, Contratiempo is the kind of thriller that demands the viewer’s complete attention, and rewards that attention over and over; if there’s ever a Hollywood remake, rest assured it will not be as entertaining or as assured as this version is.