Monthly Roundup – January 2018

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

Tags

Adrian Molina, Alexander Payne, Animation, Anthony Gonzalez, Awakening the Zodiac, Chadwick Boseman, Christoph Waltz, Coco, Comedy, Darkest Hour, Downsizing, Drama, Dylan Minnette, Fabrice du Welz, Family Fever, Gael García Bernal, Gary Oldman, Germany, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, History, Home Again, Horror, Jaume Collet-Serra, Joe Wright, Jonathan Wright, Kathrin Waligura, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lee Unkrich, Leslie Bibb, Liam Neeson, Matt Angel, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Message from the King, Mexico, Michael Sheen, Nico Sommer, Peter Trabner, Pixar, Reese Witherspoon, Reviews, Romance, Serial killer, Shane West, Steven Spielberg, Suzanne Coote, The Commuter, The Open House, The Pentagon Papers, The Post, The Washington Post, Thriller, Tom Hanks, True story, Vera Farmiga

Awakening the Zodiac (2017) / D: Jonathan Wright / 100m

Cast: Shane West, Leslie Bibb, Matt Craven, Nicholas Campbell, Kenneth Welsh, Stephen McHattie

Rating: 4/10 – no one knew it at the time but the notorious (and uncaptured) Zodiac killer filmed the murders he committed, something cash-strapped couple Mick and Zoe Branson (West, Bibb) discover when they come into possession of one of the reels, and then find themselves and those around them targeted by the Zodiac killer himself; there’s the germ of a good idea lurking somewhere in Awakening the Zodiac, but thanks to a sloppy script, wayward direction, and an indifferent approach to the Zodiac killer himself (by the end he’s just a generic movie-made serial killer), this never gets out of first gear, and settles for trundling along and signposting each narrative development with all the skill and style of a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Home Again (2017) / D: Hallie Meyers-Shyer / 97m

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitzky, Nat Wolff, Lake Bell

Rating: 7/10 – when middle-aged fledgling interior designer Alice (Witherspoon) splits from her unreliable husband (Sheen), the last thing she expects to do is allow three young men trying to break into the movie business to move into her guest house – and then become romantically involved with one of them (Alexander); it’s hard to criticise Home Again because despite it being almost drama-free and the very definition of innocuous, it also just wants to give audiences a good time, and on that very basic level it succeeds, but it’s still possibly the most lightweight romantic comedy of 2017.

Downsizing (2017) / D: Alexander Payne / 135m

Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Udo Kier, Søren Pilmark, Jason Sudeikis

Rating: 5/10 – the answer to the world’s population crisis is revealed to be shrinking people to the point where they’re five inches tall, something that sad-sack occupational therapist Paul Safranek (Damon) agrees to with alacrity, but being small proves to be no different from being normal-sized, and soon Paul is having to re-think everything he’s ever thought or believed; a closer examination of Downsizing (under a microscope perhaps) reveals a movie that contains too many scenes that pass by without contributing anything to the overall storyline, and a satirical approach to the idea itself that lacks purpose, and sadly for Payne fans, his trademark wit, making it all a dreary, leaden experience that goes on for waaaaaay too long.

Family Fever (2014) / D: Nico Sommer / 71m

Original title: Familien fieber

Cast: Kathrin Waligura, Peter Trabner, Deborah Kaufmann, Jörg Witte, Jan Amazigh Sid, Anais Urban

Rating: 7/10 – when two sets of parents get together for the weekend at the request of their respective children (who are a couple), none of them are able to deal with the fallout that comes with the revelation of a secret that threatens the security of both marriages; a German comedy/drama that doesn’t always go where the viewer might expect it to, Family Fever revels in the awkwardness and frustration felt by its quartet of main characters, and though it sadly runs out of steam in the last fifteen minutes, by then it’s done more than enough to provide plenty of wicked laughs and affecting drama.

Coco (2017) / D: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina / 105m

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau

Rating: 8/10 – Miguel (Gonzalez) is a young boy whose family has rejected any kind of music in order to focus on selling shoes, which leads him into all sorts of trouble in the Underworld on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, trouble that could also mean his never returning to the land of the living; right now you’re never quite sure how a Pixar movie is going to work out, but Coco is a treat, its mix of clever character design, beautifully rendered animation (naturally), heartfelt storylines, and memorable songs making it one to savour time and again… though, be warned, you will be in tears towards the end.

Darkest Hour (2017) / D: Joe Wright / 125m

Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West

Rating: 8/10 – it’s 1940 and Great Britain is faced with a challenge: who is to lead them against the fast-approaching menace of the Nazis, and if it has to be Winston Churchill (Oldman), then what can be done to undermine him and his authority?; the answer is quite a bit – for the most part – but history is firm on Churchill’s success, and so Darkest Hour, while featuring a superb performance from Oldman, has no choice but to succumb to retelling events that have already been retold numerous times before, and in doing so doesn’t offer the viewer anything new except for a number of very good performances and assured, and surprisingly sinewy direction from Wright.

Message from the King (2016) / D: Fabrice du Welz / 102m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, Arthur Darbinyan, Lucan Melkonian, Diego Josef, Tom Felton, Chris Mulkey, Jake Weary

Rating: 5/10 – when his younger sister dies in suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles, South African cab driver Jacob King (Boseman) travels there to find out who caused her death and why – and exact revenge; a throwback to the kind of blaxploitation movies made in the Seventies, Message from the King at least refers to King as an angry brother in the traditional sense, but the movie’s plot is hollow, and the likes of Evans and Molina are wasted in roles that might have seemed fresh (again) in the Seventies, but here feel like caricatures for the movie to focus on in between bouts of King exacting his violent revenge.

The Commuter (2018) / D: Jaume Collet-Serra / 105m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Killian Scott, Shazad Latif, Andy Nyman, Clara Lago, Roland Møller, Florence Pugh

Rating: 4/10 – ex-cop turned insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Neeson) is approached by a mysterious woman (Farmiga) on his train home and tasked with finding a complete stranger who’s also on the train – what could possibly go wrong?; everything as it turns out, with The Commuter going off the rails soon after, and never getting back on track, something confirmed (if there was any doubt before then) when the script throws in an “I’m Spartacus/I’m Brian” moment (take your pick), as well as reminding everyone that Neeson really is too old for this kind of thing.

The Post (2017) / D: Steven Spielberg / 116m

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy

Rating: 9/10 – the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the level of deceit the US government had perpetrated on its citizens about its involvement in Vietnam, is explored through the days leading up to the Washington Times‘ courageous decision to publish despite the threat of imprisonment for treason that the White House was prepared to enforce; Streep is publisher Kay Graham, Hanks is legendary editor Ben Bradlee, and Spielberg is on excellent form, giving The Post a sense of immediacy and potency that other historical dramas can only dream of (and the relevance to today’s US political scene doesn’t even need to be made obvious).

The Open House (2018) / D: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote / 94m

Cast: Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune, Sharif Atkins, Aaron Abrams, Edward Olson, Katie Walder

Rating: 3/10 – a recent widow (Dalton) and her mopey son (Minnette) get away from their grief and their problems at a house that’s up for sale – and find strange things going on there right from the start; an awful thriller that just refuses to make any sense or make either of its two main characters sympathetic, The Open House does everything it can to make you look away… and not in a good way.

Hangman (2017)

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Al Pacino, Brittany Snow, Crime, Drama, Johnny Martin, Karl Urban, Murder, Review, Serial killer, Thriller

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.

The Snowman (2017)

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Charlotte Gainsbourg, Crime, Drama, Harry Hole, Jo Nesbø, Literary adaptation, Michael Fassbender, Murder, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Serial killer, Thriller, Tomas Alfredson

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.

I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Billy O'Brien, Christopher Lloyd, Clayton, Dan Wells, Drama, Funeral home, Horror, Laura Fraser, Literary adaptation, Max Records, Murders, Review, Serial killer, Sociopath

D: Billy O’Brien / 103m

Cast: Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser, Christina Baldwin, Karl Geary, Dee Noah, Lucile Lawton, Anna Sundberg, Raymond Brandstrom, Michael Paul Levin

Welcome to the small US town of Clayton where the mutilated remains of one of the townsfolk ends up at the Cleaver-run funeral home. It’s actually the second such corpse to end up there, but the owner, April Cleaver (Fraser), isn’t too happy about the boost in business – given the circumstances. The same can’t be said for her son, John (Records), who views (literally) the bodies with a kind of excitement. Which isn’t surprising, as John has been recently diagnosed as a sociopath.

John ticks all the boxes for incipient sociopathy: bedwetting, pyromania and animal cruelty, but he’s self-aware and has a set of rules that he follows in order that he doesn’t act out on his violent impulses. He has a friend, Max (Brandstrom), that he hangs out with and does “normal” stuff, and he has a liking for a girl who lives across the road, Brooke (Lawton) (though he doesn’t know how to approach her, or talk to her even when she speaks to him). Aside from his mother, his aunt Margaret (Baldwin), and older sister Lauren (Sundberg), the only other people he interacts with are his therapist, Dr Neblin (Geary), and the elderly couple across the street, the Crowleys (Lloyd, Noah).

After the discovery of the second body, John starts to notice a mysterious man wandering around town and acting suspiciously. One day he follows the man, who bumps into Mr Crowley. Crowley is going ice fishing and the stranger invites himself along. John follows them out to a lake and watches as the stranger makes to stab the old man in the back. But John is astonished to see Crowley whirl round and using some kind of black, stick-like growth that shoots from his hand, kill the man instead. And then it gets weirder still…

What John sees causes him no end of confusion and indecision. But he’s also fascinated, impressed even on one level, and says nothing to anyone about what he’s seen. He begins to follow Crowley around town, until one afternoon the old man visits a barber’s. Once the other customers are gone, and the barber is distracted, Crowley locks the door and puts the Closed sign in the window. While he proceeds to kill the barber, John sets off the security alarm. Two policemen arrive, but when one of them discovers the barber’s body, Crowley kills both of them as well. Shocked, but also scared of putting anyone else in harm’s way, John decides that it’s down to him to do something about Crowley’s killing spree. But can he do it without betraying his own set of rules, and without giving in to the urges he manages to suppress?

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Dan Wells, I Am Not a Serial Killer is a dark comedy/drama that manages to work on several levels, and with a good deal of style and panache. Visually it’s a very dour, moody piece, even when Clayton is buried under a couple of feet of snow. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is an obvious asset, whether it’s capturing the look and feel of a small town teetering on the edge of hysteria, or reflecting on the dark emotions that drive both John and Mr Crowley. (It’s a banner year for Ryan, with Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey also lensed by him and due out.) As the movie progresses and the streets of Clayton become emptier and emptier, Ryan’s camerawork helps increase the sense of isolation experienced by the characters, and heightens the drama. For a relatively low budget movie, Ryan’s work is exemplary and helps elevate the somewhat uneven material.

This unevenness is due to the twists and turns of the story, some of which work perfectly – Crowley’s first on-screen kill – and some of which don’t – John’s mother being put in harm’s way near the end. In adapting Wells’s novel, O’Brien and co-screenwriter Christopher Hyde have rightly emphasised the struggle John has in keeping his impulses in check, but they’re less successful in examining and relating the reasons why he keeps Crowley’s secret to himself. He’s clearly appalled by both the fact of Crowley’s being a serial killer, and the manner in which he carries out his kills, and also that he’s been doing it for a very long time (there’s a nod to Lloyd’s role in the Back to the Future trilogy, as one of Crowley’s younger identities is called Emmett). This is at odds with his sociopathy, which is played with and included as and when the script requires it. Other emotional outbursts are also at odds with Dr Neblin’s diagnosis, and there’s even room for a last-minute joke to further call his condition into question.

Notions of sociopathy aside, John is a wholly sympathetic character that, strangely enough, audiences should be able to identify with. As a teenager, he has trouble fitting in, and as a protagonist he’s pro-active in ways that we’d like to think that we would be in a similar situation. As he and Crowley play their game of cat and mouse, it’s easy to root for him because even when he appears to have killed someone – a definite no-no according to the rules – John’s reaction is one of horror rather than indifference. What’s also very clever (and very cleverly handled) is the way in which Crowley is allowed to go from homicidal maniac to a character every bit as sympathetic as John, and with a compelling motive for his actions as well.

Threaded throughout the story are moments of rich, dark humour – John’s way of dealing with a bully, Max’s father being interviewed on TV while he’s part of an angry mob – and John’s family background is given its fair share of screen time, revealing greater depths to the characters than is usual. As the fractured family, Fraser is under-used as John’s mother, while Baldwin is the strong-willed yet fair aunt, and Sundberg pops in and out of the narrative to remind viewers that John isn’t the only one trying to figure out their place in life. As John, Records gives an intuitive, carefully modulated performance that matches the character’s feelings of paranoia, while Lloyd provides a perfect mix of pathos and menace as the neighbourly serial killer with an even darker secret.

O’Brien ensures the movie is never less than intriguing, and directs at an unhurried, deliberate pace which suits the material and gives the narrative room to breathe. He’s also able to ensure that when things get really weird, the viewer isn’t put off by these developments or left stranded in open disbelief (a likely occurrence if this was in the hands of a less confident director). And the denouement, when it arrives, is unexpectedly touching, a surprise that is pulled off with aplomb, and which makes the movie a much more rewarding experience than usual.

Rating: 8/10 – there’s much to admire about I Am Not a Serial Killer, from its familiar small town vibe to its potent murder scenes, and the many ways in which it manages to subvert those small town vibes in order to heighten the drama; Records and Lloyd make for great adversaries, the special effects in the movie are used sparingly and to good effect, and the whole thing is far more entertaining and enjoyable than its semi-morbid title would have you believe.

Mini-Review: The Legend of Barney Thomson (2015)

29 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Barber, Black comedy, David Lindsay, Drama, Emma Thompson, Literary adaptation, Police, Ray Winstone, Review, Robert Carlyle, Scotland, Serial killer, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, Tom Courtenay

aka Barney Thomson

D: Robert Carlyle / 92m

Cast: Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Martin Compston, Tom Courtenay, James Cosmo, Brian Pettifer, Kevin Guthrie, Stephen McCole

Barney Thomson (Carlyle) lives a sad, awkward life as a Glaswegian barber who doesn’t talk to his customers (or even likes them), has few friends, and lives on his own in a drab flat; in short, he leads a life of quiet desperation. With his attitude at work causing too many problems, his boss, Wullie (McCole), gives him a month’s notice. Barney isn’t too good at accepting this, and pleads with Wullie to keep him on. But Wullie won’t change his mind. Barney’s bad luck gets worse: while trying to convince him, Barney causes Wullie’s death. Panicked, Barney endeavours to get rid of the body, but ends up confessing his “crime” to his mother, Cemolina (Thompson). To Barney’s surprise, his mother helps him by cutting up the body and, at first, putting the pieces in her freezer.

At the same time, the Glasgow police are trying to track down a serial killer who posts body parts to his victims’ families. In charge of the investigation is relocated London policeman, Detective Holdall (Winstone). He’s also tasked with looking into Wullie’s “disappearance”, which brings him into contact with Barney. To offset Barney’s paranoid suspicion that Holdall thinks he’s responsible for Wullie’s “disappearance”, Barney attempts to pin the blame on his colleague, Chris (Compston). But Barney’s plan takes an unexpected turn, and soon matters become even more complicated, leading him to have to count on his mother once more – but in a way that he couldn’t possibly have foreseen.

Robert Carlyle’s first venture into big screen directing – he previously directed an episode of SGU Stargate Universe in 2010 – The Legend of Barney Thomson is an enjoyable if sometimes over-reaching movie that works best as farce, but less so as a straightforward black comedy. Adapted from the novel The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson by David Lindsay, the movie paints a vivid world of meandering lives, muddled relationships and the aforementioned quiet desperation. Barney is the eternal loser, always taking second place in his own life, and too reliant on others to make any serious decisions that would change his life for the better. Carlyle is terrific as Barney: put upon, afraid, going through the motions, and then on edge, anxious and terrified. He’s matched by Thompson, who makes Cemolina a cruel figure in Barney’s life, and whose brassy, couldn’t-care-less behaviour is the antithesis of Barney and his constant worrying. (Winstone and Jensen are less successful, their continual haranguing of each other feeling like it’s been drafted in from another, weaker movie.)

There’s humour aplenty, but too much of it is signposted in advance, and as a result it lacks the kind of impact to have audiences laughing out loud very often. Despite this, the movie moves at a good pace, and Carlyle directs with confidence, even though the material could have been straightened out here and there, and the ending a little less contrived. The Bridgend, Glasgow locations add flavour to the storyline, and there’s solid, suitably dour cinematography courtesy of Fabian Wagner that adds to the often astringent feel of the movie as a whole.

Rating: 6/10 – though not entirely successful, The Legend of Barney Thomson has much to recommend it, from Thompson’s harridan of a mother, to Winstone’s transplanted copper moaning about living and working in Scotland; it’s not a movie that will linger long in the memory after you’ve seen it, but it’s definitely worth watching, and does have an instant classic in the line (directed at Barney), “You look like a haunted tree.”

Oh! the Horror! – The Girl in the Photographs (2015) and The Other Side of the Door (2016)

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

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Ashes, Claudia Lee, Drama, Horror, India, Jeremy Sisto, Johannes Roberts, Kal Penn, Kenny Wormald, Murders, Nick Simon, Photographs, Review, Sarah Wayne Callies, Serial killer, Spearfish, Supernatural, Temple

The Girl in the Photographs (2015) / D: Nick Simon / 98m

Cast: Kal Penn, Claudia Lee, Kenny Wormald, Toby Hemingway, Luke Baines, Miranda Rae Mayo, Oliver Seitz, Autumn Kendrick, Mitch Pileggi

Colleen (Lee) is young, pretty, stuck in a dead-end job in her home town of Spearfish, and has a jerk of a boyfriend called Ben (Hemingway). Her dull, unexciting existence is eased by the discovery of a photograph that appears to show a murdered woman. She take it to the cops but with no clear evidence that the picture is real, it’s quickly dismissed as some kind of prank. But Colleen starts receiving more photographs, all similar in tone and content, and each one more disturbing than the last. News of the photographs finds its way onto the Internet and is seen by LA photographer Peter Hemmings (Penn). He’s the type of edgy photographer who likes to think his work is “out there”, and he’s affronted by the fact that these photographs have been taken by someone else; he’s also from Spearfish so adopts an even more personal interest.

When Hemmings arrives in Spearfish it isn’t long before he meets Colleen and wants her to be the focus of the photo shoot he’s planning. Colleen, having nothing better to do, agrees to take part, and she recieves an invite to a party where Hemmings is staying. Meanwhile, one of Colleen’s friends goes missing, and the photographs keep coming. As the party gets under way, the guests start ending up dead, and Colleen, along with Hemmings’ put-upon assistant, Chris (Wormald), find themselves trying to stay one step ahead of a killer who now seems content to come out of the shadows and create their own murderous “artistic” showcase.

The last movie that Wes Craven was involved with before his death in August 2015, The Girl in the Photographs is one that he may well have been pleased with, but perhaps with some reservations as well. It starts off with the roadside murder of a young woman, the first of many narrative decisions that stop the movie from being an intriguing murder mystery-cum-horror thriller. Instead this helps the movie nail its colours to the mast as another serial killer movie, albeit with a neat twist. Where it wins points for originality is the inclusion of celebrity photographer Peter Hemmings and his selfish attitude to everyone; he’s so obnoxious you don’t know whether to cheer him or not. Penn is terrific in the role, and the script wisely includes him as much as possible.

However, the movie is on less surer ground when Hemmings isn’t around. The murders lack the kind of visceral intensity that the photographs point to, and the decision to reveal the villain’s identity by the halfway mark (after the movie spends a lot of time and energy hiding his face) allows much of the tension to dissipate, especially as the reason for the murders is none too complex. Director and co-writer (with Osgood Perkins and Robert Morast) Nick Simon shows that he’s learnt a thing or two from watching Craven’s ouevre, but the slow, deliberate, and rewarding pace of the first hour is abandoned in favour of the kind of stalk and slash routine we’ve seen way too many times before. The cast are likeable if not exactly memorable – Penn aside – though Lee is a sympathetic heroine, and the movie is enhanced by the contribution of veteran cinematographer Dean Cundey, who shot Halloween (1978) and all three Back to the Future movies. A little too nihilistic perhaps by the end but still something that Craven could, and probably would, have been proud of.

Rating: 6/10 – narrative muddles and tonal shifts aside, The Girl in the Photographs is a valiant attempt to do something different within the overstuffed serial killer sub-genere of horror movies; worth a watch though for Penn’s performance, and some subtle nods to several other horror movies that both Craven and Cundey have been involved with.

The Other Side of the Door (2016) / D: Johannes Roberts / 96m

Cast: Sarah Wayne Callies, Jeremy Sisto, Sofia Rosinsky, Logan Creran, Suchitra Pillai

Michael (Sisto) is an antiquities dealer who visits India a lot. He and his wife Maria (Callies) decide to make Mumbai their permanent home, and start a family. Six years later, the couple are struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of their young son, Oliver (Creran) in a car accident. They still have their daughter, Lucy (Rosinsky), but for Maria the pain of losing Oliver is too much and she tries to commit suicide. In the hospital, their housekeeper, Piki (Pillai), offers Maria a chance of speaking to Oliver one last time. All she has to do is travel to an abandoned temple in the woods near Piki’s home, spread Oliver’s ashes on the steps outside, and wait inside the temple with the door shut. The only proviso: she mustn’t open the door while Oliver’s spirit is there.

Of course, Maria opens the door, and soon strange, supernatural events are happening back at home. Lucy tells Maria that Oliver is back, but it soon transpires that Oliver isn’t the happy-go-lucky boy he was when he was alive. And when Piki realises what’s happened, she berates Maria for her foolishness. Oliver is a malicious spirit now, and will stop at nothing to avoid going back to where he came from. But there’s also another entity to contend with: the temple’s gatekeeper, a supernatural guardian who will also stop at nothing to retrieve Oliver’s soul. With Oliver targeting his sister, and Michael away a lot through work, Maria has to find a way of dealing with Oliver’s return, and the gatekeeper’s increasing presence.

A grim variation on The Monkey’s Paw, The Other Side of the Door wastes no time in getting its lead character to behave unbelievably and without even a first thought about what she’s doing, let alone a second one. When Maria has Oliver dug up in the middle of the night so she can burn his body for the ashes, you know that this is a movie that credibility forgot on its way to the multiplex. It’s the kind of horror movie that relies on a few jump scares, a series of strange occurrences (here all the plant and animal life, except for the family dog (for some reason), dies off due to the approach of the gatekeeper – though exactly why is a tough question to answer), and the occasional appearances of a group called the Aghori, Aboriginal-looking guardians of the dead who pop up menacingly from time to time but are there to do the same work as the gatekeeper (for some reason).

By the time the final showdown comes around, the characters have behaved too stupidly for anyone to care, and the final scene is entirely predictable. Roberts, who also co-wrote the movie with Ernest Riera, never quite grasps the idea that evil spirits disguised as children should look normal instead of covered in zombie makeup, and that long close ups of a children’s toy – for sinister effect – are only disturbing when you realise just how often they’ve been done before. As a result of these and other lacklustre decisions, both Callies and Sisto are left stranded, with Callies, whose post- The Walking Dead career is going from bad to worse – this is her third turkey in a row after Into the Storm (2014) and Pay the Ghost (2015) – unable to do anything more with a character who makes so many bad decisions that the audience will be rooting for Oliver or the gatekeeper – it doesn’t matter which – to take her with them to the other side of the door.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that’s just plain tired in its structure and execution, and with plot developments you can see coming a mile off, The Other Side of the Door tries hard to be different with its Mumbai setting, but lets itself down by being so determinedly prosaic; it also fails to generate any genuine terror, and with the Aghori, creates a mythology that it never fully tries to explain.

Solace (2015)

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Abbie Cornish, Afonso Poyart, Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, Drama, FBI, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Murder, Psychics, Review, Serial killer, Terminal illnesses, Thriller, Visions

D: Afonso Poyart / 101m

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Abbie Cornish, Colin Farrell, Xander Berkeley, Marley Shelton, Janine Turner, Kenny Johnson, Sharon Lawrence

Solace is one of those movies. You know, a movie that dares you not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. It’s a movie that acknowledges the idea of credibility and then tramples all over it with big hob-nailed boots on. It’s so consistently bad that there’s no getting over just how awful it is. And it just goes to show that, sometimes, actors definitely go for the pay cheque rather than the artistic challenge (not that there is one here, unless you count keeping a straight face when the movie gets really silly).

But in amongst all the terrible dialogue and horrible acting, there are lessons to be learnt from Sean Bailey and Ted Griffin’s script, lessons that could prove invaluable if you’ve a mind to write your own serial killer thriller. Here are ten pointers toward making that movie a success.

1 – Always give your central protagonist – here Hopkins’ psychic John Clancy – a heartrending backstory that will have no relevance at all until the final scene, when you can reveal a dark secret that sheds new light on the character and his/her motivations (but which will be redundant in terms of the drama).

2 – If your central character is a psychic it’s important to keep moving the goalposts in terms of what triggers his/her visions. Start off with being touched by others, then move on to have them be practically all-seeing all by themselves.

3 – If your villain is another psychic with advanced “powers”, don’t forget to make sure that, in the end, he/she is no match for your central character, and can be easily defeated, despite having a talent for seeing every outcome of every situation ahead of time.

4 – If you have to involve the police or Federal authorities, then make sure that those characters are at odds with each other in terms of their beliefs; one should be totally behind your psychic hero, while the other should doubt their abilities, and say so more than once.

5 – If you have an agent or policeman who doubts the psychic’s abilities then you should definitely include a scene where their history is laid bare with as much detail as possible, and which should be upsetting for them to hear. (This will ensure that the audience is completely impressed with the psychic’s powers.)

6 – It’s very important that your villain should be able to kill on more than one occasion and never leave any DNA or other forensic evidence at any of the crime scenes. This will make him/her seem invincible/uncatchable until it’s time for them to be defeated with ease by the psychic hero.

7 – Always ensure your psychic hero gets to upstage their police partners by making educated guesses that they can pass off as benefits of their psychic abilities. This will be important when the narrative takes a wrong turn or gets bogged down by its own implausibilities.

8 – When deciding on the killer’s motivations, it’s always best to make them sound like they’re acting with the best of (misguided) intentions. But always be sure to translate those motivations into the kind of dialogue that even the most talented actor couldn’t make convincing.

9 – Never ever insult your audience by including a scene where the psychic refuses to help the authorities because of past traumas. Everyone knows they’ll take the case, and everyone knows their reason for doing so is completely irrelevant (if it’s mentioned at all).

10 – Be sure to include several “psychic montages” that comprise shots and short clips from the rest of the movie interspersed with other, abstract images that have no relevance to the story at all (but which look pretty or ominous). Feel free also to include shots that feature the characters but which don’t actually occur anywhere else in the movie; get away with this by saying these shots are “interpretive”.

Oh, and if you can, get Anthony Hopkins to play your psychic hero. He doesn’t seem to mind what roles he takes on these days.

Rating: 3/10 – originally shot in 2013 and shelved by Warner Bros until it was picked up for distribution by troubled Relativity Media, Solace is a dreadful thriller that deserves to be locked up and never seen again; the cast are wasted, the direction is ham-fisted, and the script refuses to make any sense whatsoever, leaving the viewer with only one option – and you don’t have to be psychic to work out what that is.

Monthly Roundup – June 2015

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Animation, Beyond the Reach, Black Samurai, Blood, Brian Cox, Bulldog Drummond Comes Back, Bulldog Drummond in Africa, Children of the Corn: Genesis, Chris Evans, Chyler Leigh, Crazy Sexy Cancer, Crime, Curse of the Witching Tree, Daphne, Documentary, Dolph Lundgren, Drama, Drunk Wedding, E.E. Clive, Echelon Conspiracy, Ed Burns, Espionage, Every Secret Thing, Faults, Forrest Tucker, Fred, Gambling, Green Dragon, Gunsmoke in Tucson, Horror, Human trafficking, Imogen Poots, Indie movie, Jennifer Aniston, Jeremy Irvine, John Barrymore, John Howard, Kris Carr, Leland Orser, Leticia Dolera, Louis King, Mark Stevens, Martin Sheen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Douglas, Miguel Ferrer, Mojave Desert, Movies, Murder, Noboru Iguchi, Not Another Teen Movie, Owen Wilson, Pamela Springsteen, Paul Bethany, Peter Bogdanovich, Prague, Predator: Dark Ages, Reviews, Rhys Ifans, Riley Stearns, Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword, Serial killer, Shaggy, Shane West, She's Funny That Way, Skin Trade, Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, Thailand, The Four-Faced Liar, The Night Flier, The Posthuman Project, The Reconstruction of William Zero, Thriller, Tony Jaa, uwantme2killhim?, Vampire, Velma, Ving Rhames, Witch's curse, Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead, Zombies, [Rec]³ Génesis

This month, the roundup is bigger than usual thanks to spending three weeks in sunny France, in an area where the Internet was an occasional luxury rather than a constant presence. But in between drinking copious amounts of beer and wine, and sampling far too much cheese and local bread, there was quite a bit of movie watching going on. These are the movies I watched in a gite in the middle of the gorgeous Brittany countryside, almost all of them a reminder that when life is this good you can forgive quite a bit…

The Posthuman Project (2014) / D: Kyle Roberts / 93m

Cast: Kyle Whalen, Collin Place, Josh Bonzie, Lindsay Sawyer, Alexandra Harris, Jason Leyva, Rett Terrell, Will Schwab

Rating: 5/10 – a group of teens develop super powers thanks to a device created by the dastardly uncle of one of them, and must thwart his plan to use it for immoral profit; pretty much a low-budget, amateur version of The Fantastic Four, The Posthuman Project relies on its not inconsiderable charm to help the viewer get past its rough edges, but the acting and the dialogue leave an awful lot to be desired, sometimes too much so.

Predator: Dark Ages (2015) / D: James Bushe / 27m

Cast: Adrian Bouchet, Amed Hashimi, Sabine Crossen, Ben Loyd-Holmes, Jon Campling, Joe Egan, Philip Lane, Bryan Hands

Rating: 7/10 – a group of mercenaries led by Thomas (Bouchard) set off to hunt the mysterious creature killing people and animals in a nearby forest – and find something even more deadly than they expected; a fan-made short that adds a novel twist to the Predator saga, Predator: Dark Ages is a welcome distraction that confirms that, sometimes, the big studios don’t always have the right idea when it comes to their franchise characters.

Drunk Wedding (2015) / D: Nick Weiss / 81m

Cast: Christian Cooke, Victoria Gold, Dan Gill, Anne Gregory, J.R. Ramirez, Nick P. Ross, Genevieve Jones, Diana Newton

Rating: 4/10 – when a couple decide to get married in Nicaragua, they and some of their friends are given hand-held cameras to film it all… with predictably awful, drunken, outrageous, and potentially life-altering effects; if your idea of comedy is seeing someone urinating on another person’s back, then Drunk Wedding is the movie for you, and despite its lowbrow modern day National Lampoon-style approach it still manages to hold the attention and is surprisingly enjoyable – if you don’t expect too much.

Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead (2011) / D: Noboru Iguchi / 85m

Original title: Zonbi asu

Cast: Arisa Nakamura, Mayu Sugano, Asana Mamoru, Yûki, Danny, Kentaro Kishi, Demo Tanaka

Rating: 5/10 – while on a trip to the woods, Megumi (Nakamura) and four older friends find themselves under attack from zombies who have emerged from the bowels of an outhouse – and only her martial arts skills can save them; a wild, wild ride from one of the masters of Japanese Shock Cinema, Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead is equal parts raw, uncompromising, witless, and gross, but it’s also a movie that just can’t be taken at all seriously, and on that level it succeeds tremendously, providing enough WtF? moments to make it all worthwhile.

Faults (2014) / D: Riley Stearns / 89m

Cast: Leland Orser, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Ellis, Beth Grant, Jon Gries, Lance Reddick

Rating: 8/10 – down on his luck cult expert Ansel (Orser) sees a way out of debt and a chance to regain some self-respect when a couple (Ellis, Grant) ask him to abduct and de-programme their daughter (Winstead), but he soon finds himself out of his depth and facing up to some hard truths; a tour-de-force from the always excellent Orser – and with a solid supporting performance from Winstead – Faults is an unnerving look at a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and the ways in which his broken life have led him to a motel room where his own personal beliefs come under as much scrutiny as his captive’s.

She’s Funny That Way (2014) / D: Peter Bogdanovich / 93m

Cast: Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Aniston, Will Forte, Kathryn Hahn, Illeana Douglas, Debi Mazar, Cybill Shepherd, Richard Lewis, Ahna O’Reilly, Joanna Lumley

Rating: 6/10 – theatre director Arnold Albertson has a secret: he gives prostitutes money in order that they can set up their own businesses, but when his latest “project”, aspiring actress Isabella Patterson (Poots) lands the starring role in his latest production, it all leads to the kind of deception and duplicity that will test the notion that the show must go on; a modern attempt at a screwball comedy, She’s Funny That Way doesn’t have the sheer energy that made movies such as His Girl Friday (1940) or Bringing Up Baby (1938) so enjoyable, but Bogdanovich knows his stuff and keeps the movie entertaining for the most part, even if it doesn’t stay in the memory for too long afterwards.

Curse of the Witching Tree (2015) / D: James Crow / 102m

Cast: Sarah Rose Denton, Lucy Clarvis, Lawrence Weller, Jon Campling, Caroline Boulton, Danielle Bux

Rating: 2/10 – divorcée Amber Thorson (Denton) moves into an old house with her two children (Clarvis, Weller) only for strange phenomena to start happening that’s connected to a witch’s curse, and which leaves them all at risk of supernatural forces; woeful in the extreme, Curse of the Witching Tree is amateurish nonsense that is badly directed, poorly acted, contains defiantly stilted dialogue, suffers from below-par photography, is tension-free throughout, and stands as an object lesson in how not to make a low-budget British horror movie.

Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937) / D: Louis King / 64m

Cast: John Barrymore, John Howard, Louise Campbell, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive, J. Carrol Naish, Helen Freeman

Rating: 5/10 – when dastardly villains Mikhail Valdin (Naish) and Irena Saldanis (Freeman) kidnap Phyllis Clavering (Campbell), the girlfriend of Captain Hugh Drummond (Howard), they send him on a merry chase where each clue he finds leads to another clue as to her whereabouts – but no nearer to finding her; the first of seven movies with Howard as the dashing sleuth created by H.C. “Sapper” McNeile, Bulldog Drummond Comes Back is as cheap and cheerful and antiquatedly entertaining as you might expect, and benefits enormously from a cast and crew who know exactly what they’re doing.

Every Secret Thing (2014) / D: Amy Berg / 93m

Cast: Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, Dakota Fanning, Danielle Macdonald, Nate Parker, Common

Rating: 7/10 – several years after two young girls are incarcerated for the murder of a younger child, their return to their hometown is marred by the disappearance of a little girl, and the belief that one or both of them is responsible; a stilted attempt at an indie film noir, Every Secret Thing features good performances – particularly from Macdonald – and focuses on the emotional effects a child abduction can have on everyone involved, but it never develops a sense of urgency, though its key revelation at the end carries a wallop that helps dismiss what will seem like a narrative impasse up until then.

Children of the Corn: Genesis (2011) / D: Joel Soisson / 80m

Cast: Kelen Coleman, Tim Rock, Billy Drago, Barbara Nedeljakova

Rating: 3/10 – a couple (Coleman, Rock) break down on a desert highway but manage to find shelter overnight with a old preacher (Drago) and his much younger, foreign bride (Nedeljakova), but soon find that what’s in the preacher’s barn is much more menacing than the old man himself; placing the action largely away from Gatlin, Nebraska may have seemed like a smart move but this tired, dreary, and just downright dull entry in the franchise shows just how bad things have gotten since the 1984 original, and just why Children of the Corn: Genesis should remain the last in the series to be made.

Skin Trade (2014) / D: Ekachai Uekrongtham / 96m

aka Battle Heat

Cast: Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, Ron Perlman, Celina Jade, Peter Weller

Rating: 6/10 – when cop Nick Cassidy (Lundgren) is powerless to stop his wife and daughter being killed, he determines to go after the crime boss responsible, Viktor (Perlman), and destroy his human trafficking network, which means travelling to Thailand and teaming up with detective Tony Vitayakul (Jaa), who’s also out to put a stop to Viktor’s illegal behaviour; with its human trafficking backdrop giving it an unexpected depth, Skin Trade is not just a brainless, slam-bang action movie, but instead a very well-made (for its budget) revenge flick that features some great fight scenes – particularly one between Lundgren and Jaa – and uses its Thai locations to very good effect.

The Reconstruction of William Zero (2014) / D: Dan Bush / 98m

Cast: Conal Byrne, Amy Seimetz, Scott Poythress, Lake Roberts, Melissa McBride, Tim Habeger

Rating: 6/10 – when the brother (Byrne) of a scientist (also Byrne) wakes from a coma, it’s not long before he begins to suspect that this identity may not be that of the scientist’s brother, and that he’s a pawn in a much bigger conspiracy, but the truth proves even stranger and more disturbing than he realised; a spare, almost antiseptic movie about notions of identity and individual consciousness, The Reconstruction of William Zero features terrific performances from Byrne, but lacks consistency of pace and sometimes feels as if Bush has taken his eye off the ball and taken a while to find it again, which leaves the movie often feeling flat and lifeless.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) / D: Joel Gallen / 89m

aka Sex Academy

Cast: Chyler Leigh, Chris Evans, Jaime Pressly, Eric Christian Olsen, Randy Quaid, Mia Kirshner, Deon Richmond, Ed Lauter, Paul Gleason, Mr T, Molly Ringwald

Rating: 5/10 – at John Hughes High School, popular jock Jake Wyler (Evans) accepts a bet that he can’t take an ugly girl and transform her into the prom queen, but when he picks out Janey Briggs (Leigh), and begins to spend time with her, it makes him begin to question whether he should have made the bet in the first place; a predictably irreverent teen movie that parodies all those dreadful teen comedies from the Eighties, Not Another Teen Movie has more heart than most, and thanks to Mike Bender’s script contributions, is also quite funny in its knowing way, and gives viewers a chance to see the future Captain America back in the day when his skill as an actor wasn’t quite as honed as it is now.

Bloomington (2010) / D: Fernanda Cardoso / 83m

Cast: Allison McAtee, Sarah Stouffer, Katherine Ann McGregor, Ray Zupp, J. Blakemore, Erika Heidewald

Rating: 7/10 – former child actress Jackie (Stouffer) attends Bloomington college, and finds herself having an affair with one of the professors, Catherine (McAtee), until the offer of a comeback threatens to end their relationship before it’s fully begun; an intelligent, finely crafted romantic drama, Bloomington has two great central performances, and an emotional honesty that is only undermined by the clichéd nature of Jackie’s need to return to acting, and Cardoso’s over-reliance on silent longing as a sign of emotional upheaval.

Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (1988) / D: Michael A. Simpson / 80m

Cast: Pamela Springsteen, Renée Estevez, Tony Higgins, Valerie Hartman, Brian Patrick Clarke, Walter Gotell

Rating: 5/10 – Angela Baker (Springsteen), having decimated most of the staff and children at Camp Arawak, and now judged to be safe around others, begins sending unruly teenagers “home” from Camp Rolling Hills – which in reality means killing them for any and all perceived infractions that Angela takes a dislike to; a much better sequel than expected, Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers gets by on Springsteen’s preppy performance, some not-too-gory deaths, and Simpson’s confident touch behind the camera, as well as that dreadful musical interlude: The Happy Camper Song.

Gunsmoke in Tucson (1958) / D: Thomas Carr / 80m

Cast: Mark Stevens, Forrest Tucker, Gale Robbins, Vaughn Taylor, John Ward, Kevin Hagen, William Henry, Richard Reeves, John Cliff, Gail Kobe

Rating: 6/10 – brothers Jedediah (Stevens) and John (Tucker) are on opposite sides of the law, but when Jedediah becomes involved in a land dispute between cattle ranchers and farmers, his sense of right and wrong is put to the test, and he has to choose sides in the upcoming fight for the choicest plot of land; a robust, earnest Western, Gunsmoke in Tucson is a staid, respectable movie that doesn’t stray too far from its basic plot, and skimps on any psychological undertones in favour of a straight ahead anti-hero vs. the bad guys scenario that makes for a pleasant diversion.

Beyond the Reach (2014) / D: Jean-Baptiste Léonetti / 91m

Cast: Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irvine, Ronny Cox, Hanna Mangan Lawrence

Rating: 6/10 – arrogant businessman Madec (Douglas) hires tracker Ben (Irvine) in order to bag some game out of season, but when he shoots and kills an old man by mistake, Madec refuses to accept responsibility for his actions and when Ben stands his ground over the issue, finds himself being hunted instead through the harsh Mojave Desert; an occasionally tense two hander that will do little for either actor’s career, Beyond the Reach ramps up the contrivance levels with each successive narrow escape that Ben makes, and with each missed shot that Madec makes, leading to the inevitable conclusion that this is one movie where credulity needs to be left at the door – an idea that is further enhanced by the movie’s risible conclusion.

Blood (2012) / Nick Murphy / 92m

Cast: Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Stephen Graham, Brian Cox, Ben Crompton, Naomi Battrick, Zoë Tapper, Adrian Edmondson

Rating: 5/10 – when a young girl is found murdered, the police, led by Joe Fairburn (Bethany) immediately set their sights on local child molester Jason Buleigh (Crompton), but when their prime suspect has to be let go for lack of evidence, Joe and his brother Chrissie (Graham) decide to take the law into their own hands, with terrible results; grim, visually depressing, and with a script that has more holes in it than a string vest, Blood has only its performances to recommend it, particularly those of Bethany, Graham and Cox, as well as the sense to know that its tale of a proud man’s downfall is always more interesting when you don’t know just how far they’ll fall.

Echelon Conspiracy (2009) / D: Greg Marcks / 102m

aka The Conspiracy; The Gift

Cast: Shane West, Ed Burns, Ving Rhames, Martin Sheen, Tamara Feldman, Jonathan Pryce, Sergey Gubanov, Todd Jensen

Rating: 3/10 – computer security tech Max Peterson is given a mysterious phone that helps him gain a small fortune, but in doing so he finds himself embroiled in a plot to ensure that the NSA’s super computer, Echelon, gains the upgrade it needs in order to spy on everyone globally; so bad on so many levels, Echelon Conspiracy wastes its (mostly) talented cast, flirts with credibility before running away from it at high speed, offers laughs in places where they shouldn’t be, and is the cinematic equivalent of a car crash.

Crazy Sexy Cancer (2007) / D: Kris Carr / 90m

With: Kris Carr, Jackie Farry, Melissa Gonzalez, Brian Fassett, Aura Carr, Kenneth Carr, Leslie Carr, Oni Faida Lampley, Bhavagan Das

Rating: 7/10 – when aspiring actress Kris Carr was diagnosed with cancer, she decided to make a visual record of the process of dealing with it, and the various ways in which other cancer sufferers have done so, and supported by the cameraman/editor who became her husband, as well as family and friends; an uplifting, positive message for anyone dealing with cancer, or who knows someone who is, Crazy Sexy Cancer is the kind of documentary that doesn’t attempt to overdo the physical and emotional strain of being in such a situation, but which does nevertheless offer plenty of poignant moments in amongst the hospital visits, and shows Carr to be a determined, aggressive would-be survivor.

The Night Flier (1997) / D: Mark Pavia / 94m

Cast: Miguel Ferrer, Julie Entwisle, Dan Monahan, Michael H. Moss, John Bennes, Beverly Skinner, Rob Wilds, Richard K. Olsen, Elizabeth McCormick

Rating: 7/10 – hard-nosed, disreputable reporter Richard Dees investigates a series of murders carried out at small airstrips that appear to be the work of a vampire, but his initial scepticism gives way to reluctant belief as he talks to witnesses, and sees the injuries the victims have sustained; a well-crafted movie that betrays its low budget and scrappy production design, The Night Flier is still one of the better Stephen King adaptations thanks to Pavia’s confident handling of the material, Ferrer’s see-if-I-care performance, and some impressively nasty effects work courtesy of the KNB Group.

Killer by Nature (2010) / D: Douglas S. Younglove / 90m

Cast: Ron Perlman, Armand Assante, Zachary Ray Sherman, Lin Shaye, Haley Hudson, Richard Riehle, Richard Portnow, Svetlana Efremova, Jason Hildebrandt

Rating: 3/10 – troubled by nightmares of murder and sleepwalking, teen Owen (Sherman) undergoes therapy with Dr Julian (Perlman), a therapist who believes that a person’s essential nature is handed down through bloodlines – a theory originated by convicted murderer Eugene Branch (Assante), and who is connected to Owen in a way that causes Owen to believe he might be the perpetrator of a series of murders that mimic Branch’s modus operandi; a thriller that can’t decide if it’s tepid or overwrought, and then settles for both (sometimes in the same scene), Killer by Nature is a humdinger of a bad movie, and proof positive that sometimes the old saying that “if you can, it doesn’t mean you should” relates to far too many movies for comfort – especially this farrago of awful performances, pseudo-intellectual posturing, and deathless direction.

Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009) / D: Christopher Berkeley / 75m

Cast: Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Mindy Cohn, Grey DeLisle, Kelly Hu, Kevin Michael Richardson, Sab Shimono, Keone Young, Gedde Watanabe, George Takei, Brian Cox

Rating: 6/10 – on a trip to Japan, Scooby-Doo and the gang become involved in the search for a mystical sword, while trying to thwart the efforts of the ghost of the Black Samurai to beat them to it; a middling entry in the series that at least provides a different backdrop than the standard old dark house (or mine, or hotel, or funfair…), and which allows Shaggy and Scooby to be the heroes we all know they really are deep down, while displaying a pleasing awareness of Japanese culture.

[Rec]³ Génesis (2012) / D: Paco Plaza / 80m

Cast: Leticia Dolera, Diego Martín, Ismael Martínez, Àlex Monner, Sr. B, Emilio Mencheta, David Ramírez, Miguel Ángel González

Rating: 7/10 – a young couple’s wedding day is disrupted for good when one of the guests takes a bite out of another one, leading to a frenzied free-for-all among the guests and a fight for survival for those not affected by whatever’s causing people to become zombies – including the bride and groom, who have become separated in the mêlée; half found footage, half professionally filmed, [Rec]³ Génesis acts as a prequel to the events of the first two movies but is let down by both the change in location, and the absence of Claudia Silva, as well as a sense that by going backwards in terms of the outbreak and its possible cause, the makers are treading water until an idea as to how to carry the story forward from [Rec]2 (2009) comes along.

uwantme2killhim? (2013) / D: Andrew Douglas / 92m

Cast: Jamie Blackley, Toby Regbo, Joanne Froggatt, Jaime Winstone, Liz White, Mark Womack, Louise Delamere, Stephanie Leonidas, Mingus Johnston

Rating: 7/10 – popular schoolboy Mark (Blackley) leads a secret life on the Internet, where he invests his time and emotions in relationships with people he’s never met, but when of those people ask him to stop their younger brother, John (Regbo), from being bullied, what follows sets Mark on a dangerous path to murder; based on a true story, and told with a glum sense of foreboding throughout, uwantme2killhim? is an engrossing (though slightly frustrating) recounting of one of the strangest cases of the last fifteen years, and features two very good performances from Blackley and Regbo, though they have to fight against a script that favours repetition over clarity, but which still manages to flesh out what must have been a very strange relationship between the two boys.

Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938) / D: Louis King / 58m

Cast: John Howard, Heather Angel, H.B. Warner, J. Carrol Naish, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive, Anthony Quinn

Rating: 7/10 – on the very day that Drummond (Howard) is finally due to marry his long-suffering girlfriend Phyllis (Angel) he becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of his old friend Colonel Nielsen (Warner), and finds himself travelling to Morocco – with Phyllis, butler Tenny (Clive) and old pal Algy (Denny) in tow – in order to rescue him; the fourth in the series is perhaps the funniest, with Howard allowed to spread his comedic wings, and even the villain (played again by Naish) given some splendidly dry remarks to make in amongst the threats of death by hungry lion, and a bomb on Drummond’s plane.

The Four-Faced Liar (2010) / D: Jacob Chase / 87m

Cast: Daniel Carlisle, Todd Kubrak, Emily Peck, Marja-Lewis Ryan, Liz Osborn

Rating: 8/10 – five friends – couples Greg (Carlisle) and Molly (Peck), Trip (Kubrak) and Chloe (Osborn), and single lesbian Bridget (Ryan) – experience various ups and downs in their relationships, especially when Trip has a one night stand, and Molly finds herself attracted to Bridget; a refreshingly honest look at what relationships mean to different individuals, and how they affect the people around them, The Four-Faced Liar is an effective, well-written drama that benefits from good performances all round, a soundtrack that supports the mood throughout, and Chase’s confident approach to Ryan’s script.

Oh! the Horror! – Evangeline (2013) and The Black Dahlia Haunting (2012)

26 Tuesday May 2015

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1947, Brandon Slagle, Britt Griffith, Devanny Pinn, Drama, Elizabeth Short, Horror, Karen Lam, Kat de Lieva, Los Angeles, Mayumi Yoshida, Murder, Noah Dahl, Possession, Review, Richard Harmon, Serial killer, The Black Dahlia, True crime

D: Karen Lam / 83m

Cast: Kat de Lieva, Richard Harmon, Mayumi Yoshida, David Lewis, Kelvin Redvers, John Shaw, Nelson Leis, Dejan Loyola, Madison Smith, Anthony Shim

College student Evangeline Pullman (de Lieva) – known as Eva – shares a dorm room with fellow student Shannon (Yoshida). When they and another college friend attend a frat party, Eva comes to the attention of frat leader Michael Konner (Harmon). Meanwhile, Mr K (Lewis), a teacher at another school is abducting and murdering teenage girls and dumping their bodies in the nearby forest. One weekend, Eva finds herself alone at the college and runs into Konner. He takes her to his dad’s hunting lodge, where he drugs her. When she wakes, she ends up being chased by Konner and two of his friends (Loyola, Smith). They catch her and after savagely beating her, Eva is strangled and left for dead.

Eva is found by a couple of vagrants living in the forest, Billy (Redvers) and Jim (Shaw). They nurse her back to health, unaware that she is becoming possessed by a forest demon. When she’s threatened by Dee (Leis), another vagrant, she runs off and is picked up by Mr K. He takes her back into the forest, but his attempt to kill Eva leads to the demon taking full control of her and setting her on a course of revenge against Konner and his cronies.

While Evangeline has a few good ideas dotted amongst its more risible moments, and Lam shows a certain amount of visual flair, this particular demonic revenge outing is hamstrung by gaping plot holes, trite dialogue, shallow characterisations, and amongst the supporting cast, some very poor performances. Viewers who are familiar with this type of horror movie will be frustrated by Lam’s decisions as a writer, and further dismayed by the way in which the scenes of Eva’s revenge are marred by a myriad of bizarre editing choices.

There’s an Eighties feel to the movie that leaves the viewer thinking of other, better movies from the period, and the obvious budgetary restraints make it seem as if the bulk of the movie was filmed in a variety of basement rooms. With no one – not even Eva – to sympathise with, the movie has less to offer than most and never really succeeds in getting across the horror of its main character’s troubles. There’s a curiously dispassionate tone used throughout, as if everything is being viewed from a safe distance, even when Eva is in peril or taking her revenge.

Rating: 3/10 – a few inspired moments aside, Evangeline fails to capitalise on its basic premise and takes too many narrative shortcuts in telling its story; with a hint of Japanese folklore to give credibility to the idea of a forest demon, the movie doesn’t make much of this approach either.

D: Brandon Slagle / 80m

Cast: Devanny Pinn, Britt Griffith, Noah Dahl, Alexis Iacono, Cleve Hall, Brandon Slagle, Jessica Cameron

Holly Jenson (Pinn) travels to Los Angeles in the wake of her step-brother, Tyler (Dahl), having killed their father and his mother. What makes the case unusual is that Tyler is blind. Currently under the care and supervision of Dr Brian Owen (Griffith), Tyler also draws pictures of a mysterious woman who Dr Owen recognises as Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia murder victim from 1947. Holly has to wait for the DA’s office to allow her to see Tyler, and while she does she finds herself wandering around LA until she loses her way. She asks a woman for directions, but the woman (Iacono) talks inaudibly to herself.

Tyler proves uncooperative and tells Holly to go. At her hotel room she takes a shower and is possessed by the spirit of Elizabeth Short (the woman she saw on the street). Holly is forced to visit a cave in the desert where Elizabeth’s killer (Hall) disposed of her clothes, her blood and the knives he used. Then she visits the home of Dr Owen and waits for him to arrive, now aware – as Tyler is as well – of the connection between the doctor and the Black Dahlia murder over sixty years before.

By taking the real life murder of Elizabeth Short as the basis for its plot, The Black Dahlia Haunting makes a poor fist of squeezing out a revenge story, using muddled coincidences and ill thought out connections to shepherd the idea of Short reaching out from beyond the grave and gaining retribution through the murderous actions of two half-siblings. It’s a poor movie that proceeds at a pedestrian pace, features several scenes that don’t advance the plot or add depth to the characters, and feels like a short movie stretched beyond its limits.

It doesn’t help that the performances seem to have been crafted without the benefit of rehearsals, and that some lines of dialogue sound mannered and/or mis-emphasised. Pinn makes Holly unlikeable from the start, while Griffith is such a dull presence it seems as if the scenes he’s in go on far longer than any of the ones he isn’t in. As the vengeful spirit of Elizabeth Short, Iacono has the more varied role, and can be seen in flashbacks to 1947 talking with a young Norma Jean Baker (Cameron), or being tortured by her killer. But ultimately, these don’t add anything to the story, and merely pad out the already short running time. Writer/director Slagle – who gives himself a secondary role as a young man who finds one of the knives the killer used – strives for relevance but misses by a mile, and never overcomes the sheer implausibility of his screenplay.

Rating: 3/10 – a neat premise wasted by poor execution, The Black Dahlia Haunting has little to recommend it beyond its real life basis; anyone with a keen interest in Elizabeth Short and her tragic murder would do well to avoid this completely.

Child 44 (2015)

04 Monday May 2015

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Daniel Espinosa, Drama, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman, Leo Demidov, Literary adaptation, Moscow, Murder, Noomi Rapace, Review, Rostov, Serial killer, Soviet Union, Thriller, Tom Hardy, Tom Rob Smith

D: Daniel Espinosa / 137m

Cast: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman, Paddy Considine, Fares Fares, Vincent Cassel, Jason Clarke, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Tara Fitzgerald, Sam Spruell, Charles Dance

In post-war Soviet Russia, Leo Demidov (Hardy) is a respected officer in the Secret Police. Along with wartime comrades Vasili Nikitin (Kinnaman) and Alexei Andreyev (Fares) he investigates crimes against the state. When a suspect, Anatoly Brodsky (Clarke) goes on the run, their pursuit takes them to a farm where Brodsky has taken refuge. Against Leo’s wishes, Vasili kills the farmer’s wife and his young son; this drives a wedge between the two men.

A short while later, Andreyev’s young son is found dead by some railroad tracks. Though it’s clear that he has been murdered, thanks to Stalin’s edict that there shall be “no murder in paradise”, Leo is commanded by his superior, Major Kuzmin (Cassel), to tell Andreyev that the death was accidental. The idea doesn’t sit well with Leo but he goes ahead with it. When another child is murdered, Leo learns that there have been even more, similar cases. At the same time, he is tasked with investigating another suspected enemy of the state: his wife, Raisa (Rapace). She works in a school, and is friendly with one of the teachers, Ivan Sukov (Kaas). When his investigation reveals nothing incriminating about Raisa, his report is used as an excuse to strip Leo of his job and his home.

Leo is sent to Rostov to work under the command of General Mikhail Nesterov (Oldman). There, the discovery of another child’s body leads Leo to believe that the killer is responsible for over forty murders and is using the railway line between Rostov and Moscow as a means of hiding his crimes. Convincing Nesterov of his theory, Leo, aided by Raisa, returns to Moscow to seek help from Andreyev and gain access to files that will provide further information. But Vasili, who has been promoted to Leo’s old post, learns of his being in Moscow and tries to track him down and arrest him. Leo and Raisa manage to get out of Moscow and make their way back to Rostov. Now knowing that this is where the killer lives and works, Leo tries to find him on his own, but he has to work completely outside the law to do so.

Based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith, Child 44 looks, on the surface, to be the kind of quality literary adaptation that offers outstanding performances, first-rate direction, a gripping script, and all of it culminating in a rewarding cinematic experience. Alas, this isn’t that kind of movie.

Instead, Child 44 is one of the most lethargic, dullest thrillers in recent years. It’s hard to say just what is right about the movie, cloaked as it is in a thick layer of cod-Russian accents and the kind of amateur thesping expected from a movie with a much smaller budget.

That such a talented cast appears so ill-at-ease is thanks largely to a script by Richard Price that leaves them high and dry in terms of conviction, and rarely links two scenes with any sense that they’re connected. The movie opens with two scenes that show Leo and Vasili growing up and during the war. Anyone who’s read the novel will know the importance of this, but thanks to Price it has as much relevance later on as its clichéd outcome requires (which isn’t much). There are other moments and aspects of the novel that are included and then ignored, such as Raisa’s initial fear of Leo when they first met, and these go some way to making the movie feel uncoordinated and ill-considered.

And the movie feels rushed once Leo has to look into Raisa’s activities, as if the strain of adapting so much wieldy material became too much and Price had to jettison any subtlety in favour of just ploughing ahead with the thriller side of things. The end result is a movie that plods along avoiding any attempt to re-engage with its audience. As such, it becomes a chore, and the average viewer will be regretting the lengthy running time.

As mentioned above, the cast can do little with what they’re given. Hardy – usually a reliably hard-working actor – here fails to get to grips with the character of Leo, and gives a drab, uninspired performance that runs out of steam before even a quarter of the movie is over. Raoace, who really should be picking her roles with more perspicacity, is left on the sidelines too much and only ever registers when taking part in a fight scene. Oldman appears halfway through, has a handful of scenes and then disappears until the end; Kinnaman plays Vasili as a one-note sociopath (and looks increasingly like a young Keith Carradine); and Considine is saddled with the role of the killer, but never looks comfortable when trying to make him seem pitiable.

Perhaps it’s as much Espinosa’s fault as the script’s, as the director never seems to have s firm grip on the material, and shoots several scenes with a peculiarly uninvolved approach that makes them seem as if they’ve been included for the sake of it. Under his wing, the movie lacks any real thrills, and the race to track down the killer is hampered by too many longeuers to be entirely effective. And when you have a cast of this quality, not getting the best out of them is practically criminal.

Rating: 4/10 – with its superficial recreation of Soviet Russia, and cruelly dispassionate approach to the material, Child 44 never convinces; when a movie adaptation is this disappointing it’s a sure sign that everyone was having a very long off day.

Mini-Review: The Calling (2014)

23 Friday Jan 2015

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Canada, Crime, Donald Sutherland, Drama, Ellen Burstyn, Fort Dundas, Gil Bellows, Jason Stone, Literary adaptation, Murder, Religion, Review, Serial killer, Susan Sarandon, Thriller, Topher Grace

D: Jason Stone / 108m

Cast: Susan Sarandon, Gil Bellows, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, Christopher Heyerdahl, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Booth, Ella Ballentine, Jane Moffat

Asked to look in on an old woman as a courtesy, Fort Dundas police inspector Hazel Micallef (Sarandon) finds the woman has been murdered, her throat cut and her mouth manipulated to make it look like she’s screaming. With help from fellow detective Ray Green (Bellows) she begins to investigate the murder but when another victim is discovered in similar circumstances, she begins to suspect a serial killer is responsible. She asks for help on the case and is sent Ben Wingate (Grace), an officer from Toronto; he’s a bit wet behind the ears but eager to help.

As previous victims are identified, Hazel discovers a religious aspect to the murders. She consults with Father Price (Sutherland) who tells her of a biblical portent that relates to the belief in the resurrection of the dead through the sacrifice of twelve willing individuals. Further murders occur but clues lead to a man named Simon (Heyerdahl); they also show the trail he appears to be taking across the country and the way in which he chooses his victims. Armed with this knowledge, Hazel takes a risk and sends Wingate to the home of Simon’s next intended victim…

Pitched somewhere between Fargo (1996) and Se7en (1995), The Calling is a serial killer movie that, like many others before it, takes a biblical angle and makes it sound preposterous. It’s always difficult to provide a religious-minded serial killer with an entirely plausible reason for their actions, but this movie, with its otherwise cleverly constructed script by Scott Abramovitch (based on Inger Ash Wolfe’s novel), has a hard time making Simon’s motive credible, and fares even less well when it comes to the sacrificial elements – why does his victims have to be killed so horribly? It’s all too confusing and muddled to work properly and hampers a movie that goes about its business with a moody, unrelenting seriousness.

There’s a sterling performance from Sarandon as a detective with a drink problem, but even she can’t avoid comparisons with Frances McDormand in Fargo – though her level of world-weariness is more pronounced. Bellows and Grace offer solid support, as does Burstyn as Hazel’s over-protective mother, but it’s Heyerdahl who makes the most impact, his portrayal of Simon both unnerving and chilling in its quiet intensity. One scene with the daughter of a waitress is so unsettling it’ll stay with you long after the rest of the movie has faded from your memory. Stone directs with the eagerness of someone making their first feature (which he is), but reigns in the desire to show off and throw in everything including the kitchen sink. He has a pleasingly straightforward approach to framing and composition, and isn’t afraid to embrace some of the more awkward plot developments (basically, anything involving Sutherland). It’s a confident outing for Stone, but sadly, it only gets him so far.

Rating: 5/10 – an interesting premise that’s let down by its own explanation, The Calling is left feeling overcooked and underwhelming; fans of this sort of thing will see the final scene coming from a mile off, while anyone else will have lost any initial enthusiasm once Hazel consults with Father Price.

A Good Marriage (2014)

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Anthony LaPaglia, Beadie, Drama, Joan Allen, Literary adaptation, Marriage, Murder, Peter Askin, Review, Serial killer, Stephen King, Stephen Lang, Thriller

D: Peter Askin / 101m

Cast: Joan Allen, Anthony LaPaglia, Stephen Lang, Cara Buono, Kristen Connolly, Theo Stockman

Darcy and Bob Anderson (Allen, LaPaglia) are the perfect couple: loving, considerate, still attracted to each other, and with two bright, well-adjusted children, Petra (Connolly) and Donnie (Stockman). Everyone says what a good marriage they have. On their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Bob gives Darcy a pair of earrings that represent her birth sign of Pisces. Darcy is delighted by them. In return she offers to purchase a coin that avid collector Bob has been looking for but he tells her he’d rather wait for it to turn up in some change. Both happy in their affection for each other, their lives continue as normal, with Darcy running a mail order business that sells rare coins, and Bob working as an accountant who often has to travel away.

In the news is a serial killer called Beadie who has just claimed his tenth victim, a woman named Marjorie Duvall. Beadie kidnaps and tortures his victims before killing them and dumping their bodies; later he sends any I.D. cards they had to the police with a note taunting them for not being able to catch him.

One night, while Bob is away on a trip, the TV remote won’t work and Darcy goes out to the garage where the spare batteries are kept. While looking for them she dislodges a box under a bench. She sees some magazines inside the box and pulls them out, as some of them are ones she’s been looking for. She also finds an S&M magazine that shows pictures of women being bound and humiliated. And at the very back underneath the bench is a hole in the wall that contains a box that Petra made for Bob when she was younger – a box that contains Marjorie Duvall’s I.D.

Shocked and horrified, Darcy can’t believe what she’s found. She Googles Beadie and his killings, and becomes completely convinced that Bob is Beadie when she sees a picture of Marjorie Duvall wearing the same earrings Bob got her for their anniversary. And then Bob comes home early from his trip, and the truth about Beadie is revealed. But now Darcy has an even bigger dilemma…

Adapted by King from his novella of the same name (and which can be found in his short story collection Full Dark, No Stars), A Good Marriage is a slow-burn thriller that lights the blue touch paper very early on but which, sadly, never really bursts into flame at any point. As with the original novella, King focuses on the little details and inherent rhythms of the Andersons’ life together, leaving the thriller elements to (almost) fend for themselves. They’re only brought in when King needs to drive the story forwards, but otherwise they seem of secondary importance, whereas the relationship between Darcy and Bob takes centre stage. To some degree this is entirely necessary, but it also stops the movie from being as dramatic as it could have been.

Part of the problem with A Good Marriage is Darcy’s reaction – and subsequent actions – when Bob arrives home and she learns all about Beadie. For some viewers it will appear unconvincing and contrived (it will help if you’ve read the novella), while others will find it completely unbelievable. Even if the viewer gives Darcy some considerable leeway for her behaviour, it still hurts the movie to see her behaving in the way that she does. Even Allen, an actress with more smarts than most, can’t quite pull it off, and the movie’s middle section slows down even further, making a movie that is already moving at a slow, steady pace now almost glacial.

While the audience waits for things to pick up, and Beadie to claim another victim, King and director Askin throw in an unexpected twist that turns the movie on its head and proves to be A Good Marriage‘s standout, bravura moment, a quintessential King literary moment made uncomfortable flesh, and which is reminiscent of that scene in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966). With that moment out of the way, it’s time to properly introduce Lang’s supporting character, a retired detective who thinks he knows who Beadie is, and have him provide quite a bit of extraneous exposition. It all leads to a final scene that – on screen at least – appears entirely superfluous and adds nothing to what’s gone before.

As Darcy and Bob, Allen and LaPaglia at least share a degree of chemistry, and their early scenes together are well played and playful at the same time. As the movie darkens, Allen becomes more distant as Darcy, while if anything, LaPaglia takes the opposite approach and makes Bob seem like he’s permanently on a cheerful streak. If this sounds awkward to watch, and difficult to believe, then it is, but King is too clever a writer to make it appear too incredible, and it suits the mood of the movie as the viewer waits to see what’s going to happen next. Both stars put in good performances on the whole, though it must be said, Allen – who doesn’t always look like herself from certain angles – has the harder job, and she doesn’t always nail it in the way she would normally.

The supporting cast aren’t given much to do – this would work well as a two-hander on stage – and Lang’s detective aside, are interchangeable in terms of their importance to the story. Buono’s saucy neighbour is a potential victim for all of a minute, while Connolly and Stockman fail to make much of an impact, and are sidelined at the halfway mark. Askin, along with DoP Frank G. DeMarco keeps things visually subdued as befits the material, and while the pace of the movie is kept deliberately slow, Colleen Sharp’s astute editing makes each scene, individually at least, interesting to watch. However, the score, by Saunder Juriaans and Danny Bensi is too generic to add much to the proceedings.

Rating: 5/10 – while it’s very faithful to the original novella, A Good Marriage still isn’t the best example of a Stephen King adaptation, even if it is penned by the man himself; some parts are extraneous, while others are meant to increase the tension but fail to do so making the movie – on the whole – a bit of a disappointment.

Joy Ride 3 (2014)

20 Sunday Jul 2014

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Declan O'Brien, Horror, Horror series, Ken Kirzinger, Psychopath, Road Rally 1000, Rusty Nail, Sequel, Serial killer, Slaughter Alley, Trucker

D: Declan O’Brien / 96m

Cast: Ken Kirzinger, Jesse Hutch, Kirsten Prout, Ben Hollingsworth, Gianpaolo Venuta, Leela Savasta, Jake Manley, Dean Armstrong, Sara Mitich, J. Adam Brown, David Ferry

When a couple (Mitich, Brown) decide to lure someone to their motel room so they can rob them, they put a call out to any nearby truckers who might be listening on their CB radios. What they don’t bank on is psycho trucker Rusty Nail (Kirzinger) answering their call. Easily overpowering them, they find themselves chained to the axle of his rig and clinging to the bonnet; if they manage to stay on for a mile, not only will Rusty set them free, they’ll also be okay for coke. Of course, Rusty has a trick up his sleeve, and the couple die. When their bodies are discovered, the police put it down to some kind of animal attack, but newbie Officer Williams (Armstrong) isn’t so sure, especially when another officer talks about that particular stretch of highway being called Slaughter Alley, and the high number of deaths and disappearances that have taken place there over the years.

The movie switches focus then to a group of race car enthusiasts planning to take part in Canada’s Road Rally 1000. Jordan (Hutch) is the lead driver, Mickey (Hollingsworth), the mechanic, Austin (Venuta) the owner of the race car and second driver, Bobby (Manley), Mickey’s assistant, while Austin and Mickey’s girlfriends, Jewel (Prout) and Alisa (Savasta) are also along for the ride. Realising that by taking Route 17 – the aforementioned Slaughter Alley – will shave a day off their travelling time, the group take the road more dangerous, and even after they receive a warning from resident truck stop looney Barry (Ferry). While Austin is driving the race car, he overtakes a truck, causing stones to fly up and hit the front of the vehicle. The truck is Rusty Nail’s and he proceeds to chase them; they elude him however, and continue on to the border.

It’s not long, though, before Rusty catches up with them, and one by one the group fall foul of the angry trucker’s desire for revenge. As the death toll rises, it’s left to the remaining two people in the group to face Rusty in a showdown at a scrap yard.

Following on from Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead (2008), this latest instalment in the franchise is yet another excuse for gory killings and the liberal spraying of blood and grue. Brought in to breathe new life into what wasn’t exactly a failing series of movies – do two movies constitute a series? – writer/director O’Brien brings the overwrought bag of tricks he used to successfully exterminate any fun to be had with the Wrong Turn franchise, and uses it to create a movie that resonates more as an offshoot of the Saw movies than as another chapter in the saga of everyone’s favourite road-based psycho (outside of the one in Duel (1971) that is).

With O’Brien behind the wheel (apologies for the pun), anyone who has seen Wrong Turn 5 (2012) will know that characterisation, consistency, credibility and creativity will all be abandoned in favour of Nail doing what he does best: maiming, torturing and killing various poor unfortunates; or basically, anyone who pisses him off (which it seems is just about everybody). While the set piece killings are this movie’s entire raison d’être, it’s still a shame that the same amount of effort can’t go into developing some characters we can actually care about. Not one character in the entire movie is worthy of our sympathy or regard, and so, all the viewer can do is struggle through the dreary scenes that pad out the movie between killings. As each death occurs, it’s almost with a sense of relief that there’s one less individual each time who won’t be around to spout the inconsequential dialogue that O’Brien serves up as either gratuitous exposition or wretched conversation.

It all adds up to poor performances all round, with Hutch and Prout proving more difficult to watch than their co-stars, both actors seemingly unable to pitch an emotion in such a way that the audience will recognise it. Kirzinger provides the series’ first physical incarnation of Rusty Nail, though O’Brien focuses more on his boots than his mostly obscured features, and “gifts” the stuntman-turned-actor with the kind of quip-filled dialogue that Robert Englund would have rejected/struggled with in his Freddy Krueger days. That said, Kirzinger is an imposing figure, and is quietly menacing, which does add to the required effect. Sadly, though, it’s not enough to save Joy Ride 3 from being as derivative and difficult to relate to as any other horror movie sequel. The killings are as well-staged as you might expect (and certainly not shy about spreading as much gore around as possible), but Michael Marshall’s photography is serviceable and not particularly attention-grabbing. There’s also some dubious editing, courtesy of Michael Trent, that cripples any tension that might have helped the movie seem a little more accomplished, and a few attempts at humour that fall as flat as a burst tyre.

Rating: 4/10 – disposable and relentlessly disappointing, Joy Ride 3 proves an even worse addition to the franchise than its predecessor; gorehounds will probably enjoy it, but this is a horror movie that runs out of gas in the first five minutes.

Fear Island (2009)

23 Sunday Mar 2014

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Aaron Ashmore, Haylie Duff, Horror, Michael Storey, Mystery, Review, Serial killer, Summer vacation, Teens

D: Michael Storey / 95m

Cast: Aaron Ashmore, Haylie Duff, Lucy Hale, Kyle Schmid, Anne Marie DeLuise, Martin Cummins, Jacob Blair, Jessica Harmon, Jim Thorburn

Told in flashback by the lone survivor of a group of teens spending one last summer vacation together, and who find themselves at the mercy of a killer, Fear Island is a mystery/thriller/horror movie that tries to throw in more twists than a Chubby Checker dance competition. When Jenna (Duff) is found covered in blood and clutching a knife she is immediately arrested by Detective Armory (Cummins). Before he can bully a confession from her, police psychologist Dr Chalice (DeLuise) takes charge, and slowly, Jenna – who has very little memory of what took place – begins to tell the story of what happened on the island.

As Jenna recalls the events that led to the deaths of her friends, it looks at first as if there is a killer on the island with them, but then it appears that the killer may be one of the group – but who? A further mystery unfolds surrounding the death of another girl the year before – were the friends involved, and are they being targeted because of it? And is Jenna telling the truth about what happened, or is she warping the story to avoid incriminating herself?

There’s a moment during Fear Island when one of the characters goes in search of her dog – alone – in the woods – by herself. As this hoary old device is trotted out for the four billionth time, the full extent of the movie’s reliance on horror cliches becomes all too apparent. As well as the brooding member of the group who is the initial suspect, through to the ripped devil-may-care lothario who cares only about himself, Fear Island allows itself the merest nod to adequate characterisation, throws in a few red herrings, and tries to make its mystery more difficult to unravel than it actually is. The scenes with Jenna, Dr Chalice and Detective Armory are risible, and as a result, Duff struggles to maintain any continuity of tone or emotional distress. The rest of the cast fare equally as badly, with only Ashmore providing a performance that keeps itself a few notches above adequate.

The island location is underused, and any sense of terror is undermined by director Storey’s inability to create tension or increasing dread. The script is largely to blame, but the execution is so ham-fisted it just makes matters worse. The action is often poorly framed and the editing seems intent on removing all tension or thrills from the murder sequences. By the movie’s end, it’s as much a relief for the audience as it must have been for the cast and crew when filming was completed.

Rating: 3/10 – an underwhelming combination of I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Usual Suspects, Fear Island fails to generate any excitement at any stage of the proceedings; one for single location murder mystery enthusiasts only.

Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.

Shame the Devil (2013)

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Doug Bradley, Horror, Juliette Bennett, Lie detector, Murders, Paul Tanter, Profiler, Review, Serial killer, Simon Phillips, Thriller

D: Paul Tanter / 94m

Cast: Simon Phillips, Juliette Bennett, Will de Meo, Bradford West, Lucy Clements, Doug Bradley, Kellie Shirley, Peter Woodward

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. Really. It’s that bad. I mean, really bad. Sooooo bad.

And once again, it’s all down to THE SCRIPT. An awful… no, god-awful, unholy mess of a script that makes no effort to be coherent, has a passing acquaintance with competence, and contains some of the worst dialogue ever committed to celluloid. The sad thing about Shame the Devil is that the cast and crew are actually trying their best…and failing miserably.

The plot concerns the hunt for a serial killer who hooks his victims up to lie detectors and then asks them a series of questions that will cause them to be killed if they lie. The killer tells them, “The truth will set you free; tell the truth and shame the devil”. The first victim is a supermarket manager, the second a doctor (Woodward), and the third a priest. The police officer investigating the murders, Trent (Phillips) is suspended because he appears to be linked to the victims, and heads to New York to seek help from an old flame (Bennett) who is a profiler. But while he’s there, the murders continue…

Ten things that are wrong with Shame the Devil:

1 – Simon Phillips demonstrates every emotion required of his character by shouting.

2 – Writer/director Paul Tanter allows each actor to play their part independently of any other actor that might be in the same scene with them.

3 – The whole concept of the serial killer being one step ahead is made laughable by the circumstances surrounding the death of the first New York victim.

4 – Lucy Clements demonstrates every emotion required of her character by pouting.

5 – Despite jetting off to New York after being suspended, none of Trent’s superiors have any idea of where he is.

6 – Lines of dialogue are repeated by characters in a vain effort to reinforce the seriousness of the relevant situation.

7 – The photography by Haider Zafar is bland and uninspired.

8 – Writer/director Tanter and editor Richard Colton have no awareness of what makes a scene tense, thrilling, and/or dramatic.

9 – Doug Bradley, one of the few actors capable of injecting credibility into this kind of thing, is reduced to appearing in only one scene.

10 – The music is intrusive and fails to add any menace to the proceedings.

11 – There are moments of childish humour that even the Chuckle Brothers would have steered clear of (apologies to any non-UK readers for the reference).

I know, I know, that was eleven things but that just serves to illustrate how bad this movie really is: I could go on and on and on and on… But I won’t. Suffice it to say, Shame the Devil is an unmitigated disaster – poorly directed and acted, appallingly written, unimaginatively shot and edited, and completely unable to drag itself out of the mire of its own making. Even the nihilistic ending – though welcome by the time it arrives – is badly staged and requires more of Phillips as an actor than he has to give.

Rating: 1/10 – another car crash of a movie from the writer/director of the White Collar Hooligan movies, Shame the Devil founders from its opening scene and never quite breaks the surface; an amateurish, dismaying waste of everyone’s time and patience.

Blind Detective (2013)

03 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Andy Lau, Blind Detective, Crime, Drama, Hong Kong, Johnnie To, Review, Sammi Cheng, Serial killer

Original title: Man Tam

D: Johnnie To / 130m

Cast: Andy Lau, Sammi Cheng, Tao Guo, Yuanyuan Gao

Notable for the re-teaming of Lau and Cheng – they last appeared together in 2004’s Yesterday Once More, also by To – Blind Detective is a mad, eclectic mix of crime thriller, romance, humour Hong Kong style, action, and whodunnit. Lau plays Johnston, a retired detective who lost his sight while chasing a criminal. This setback doesn’t stop him from investigating cases, though, and while attempting to apprehend the perpetrator behind a series of acid attacks he meets Officer Ho (Cheng). She realises Johnston has a gift: that even though he is blind he can still “see” in a way that allows him to solve crimes. Tormented by the disappearance ten years before of a childhood friend, Minnie, Ho asks Johnston to look into the case; she is certain that Minnie was abducted and killed, and hopes Johnston will be able to find the culprit. He agrees to help her but for a fee, and with the proviso that he instructs her in how to become a better detective.

This means Ho finds herself helping Johnston solving a variety of cold cases instead before she manages to get him to focus on Minnie. As events unfold, Ho finds herself drawn to Johnston, and despite his methods being highly irregular, she also finds her respect for him deepen. And one of the cold cases leads them to a serial killer…

For the most part, Blind Detective has all the hallmarks of a first-rate Hong Kong crime thriller: moody photography and lighting (courtesy of Siu-keung Cheng), strong yet unambiguous characters, a linear narrative punctuated by explanatory flashbacks, an unhurried pace, and a serious approach leavened by a combination of often very dark humour and strangely apt slapstick. What it also has is a compelling narrative, a clever visual style – witness Johnston’s “imagining” of the crimes he and Ho investigate – superb performances from Lau and Cheng, and a central mystery that is as challenging as it is artfully resolved. To directs with a sure hand, making each scene count both individually and as part of the whole, taking risks with the material and coming up trumps each time; it’s a bravura display from a director who rarely gets it wrong and whose movies almost always surprise with their virtuosity and confidence.

You can tell that Lau is having a ball playing Johnston, whether he’s instructing Ho to let him hit her with a hammer, or gradually piecing the clues together surrounding Minnie’s disappearance, or realising how dependent he’s become on Ho, with each successive scene Lau brings us a character we grow to like and empathise with, and this despite an initial arrogance that is mostly off-putting. This isn’t the type of role that Lau usually plays and it’s good to see him broaden his range. Cheng more than matches Lau, giving us a rookie officer who grows in both stature and experience, while retaining a soulful vulnerability that makes Ho all the more endearing. Both performances are accomplished, and the chemistry between the two actors adds to the movie’s (already substantial) surfeit of riches. The supporting cast, including Tao as the unfortunately named Fatbo, are uniformly good, and there’s yet another outstanding performance, this time from the young actress who plays the teenage Minnie (alas, finding her name amongst the few available credits is really difficult). It’s a small role but well handled and convincingly played.

On the downside, there are too many “foodie” scenes – it’s supposed to be one of Johnston’s character traits – and the denouement is a trifle rushed, while Johnston makes as many implausible leaps of faith in his deductive reasoning as he does actually interpret the clues around him. You might also question the punishment that Ho allows Johnston to put her through but the guilt she feels for doing nothing when Minnie was in trouble acts as an emotional counterweight for this. There’s also a subplot involving a woman (Yuanyuan) Johnston was in love with before he became blind, but which adds nothing to the movie overall. These problems aside, Blind Detective remains another impressive string to To’s bow.

Rating: 8/10 – given a less than rapturous welcome in its homeland, Blind Detective nevertheless works well on many levels and is entertaining throughout; at times anarchic, the movie presents a new twist on the disabled detective genre and deserves a wider audience.

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

Tag Archives: Serial killer

Monthly Roundup – January 2018

Hangman (2017)

The Snowman (2017)

I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)

Mini-Review: The Legend of Barney Thomson (2015)

Oh! the Horror! – The Girl in the Photographs (2015) and The Other Side of the Door (2016)

Solace (2015)

Monthly Roundup – June 2015

Oh! the Horror! – Evangeline (2013) and The Black Dahlia Haunting (2012)

Child 44 (2015)

Mini-Review: The Calling (2014)

A Good Marriage (2014)

Joy Ride 3 (2014)

Fear Island (2009)

Shame the Devil (2013)

Blind Detective (2013)

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