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A few reviews

TM2YC

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Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
This is the 'The Last Crusade' of this trilogy, the one after they tried something different that not everybody liked, so they recreate the ingredients of the first movie but are content to coast a bit on our affection for the characters. 'Ocean's Thirteen' is back in Las Vegas for another casino heist and has some proper emotional stakes to get invested in. Elliott Gould on his death bed and Al Pacino as the man who put him there, give us and the team something to work for and against. It's basically the Lonnegan/Luther impetuous from 'The Sting', so we don't need to care that the team have a financial victory, as they're out for a moral one. Don Cheadle's cockney accent is still pretty dire but now he's moved on to inventing British slang terms, because presumably he thought the American audience wouldn't know the difference. I'm almost tempted to say 13 equals 11, it's an action-heist-comedy blast that made me smile all the way through. It's bigger and brighter but it hasn't got quite the same semi-believable atmosphere, sexiness and panache.

 

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The Time Out 88th best British film ever made...

This Is England (2006)
I've meant to watch this first film in the 'This is England' series for ages but every time I thought about it, Shane Meadows added another few hours on to the story. It's every bit as good as it's reputation. The film looks so authentically like footage from the 80s, it's almost difficult to believe it was shot in 2005 and not a period piece. I'm too young to remember the UK "skinhead" scene being anything other that notoriously racist. The film begins just before that with the kind-hearted Woody bringing lonely young boy Shaun into his multi-ethnic, multi-gender, apolitical, skinhead gang, which is then taken over by the scary, racist Combo. Stephen Graham as Combo is so intense, it's not just that he's unpredictably violent, it's that you see glimpses of how much pain and suffering is beneath the surface. His final explosion of jealous, violent rage is brought on by somebody simply telling him about their parents having loved them. From good to bad, Meadows looks at all the characters with empathy. 'This Is England' is also extremely funny and the jukebox Ska soundtrack is sensational.


I was kinda assuming the film would feature 'This is England' by The Clash somewhere on the soundtrack (it doesn't), as it's from the right period, covers similar subject matters and is the last great Clash track. This incredible fanedited YouTube video could be a montage from the film:




The BFI 84th best British film ever made...

Educating Rita (1983)
This sometimes feels like a sort of stealth remake of 'A Star is Born', with Michael Caine as the bitter, self-destructive, borderline-alcoholic, older talent, who starts to rediscover his love for his art (in this case poetry/literature), though mentoring the younger, enthusiastic and out spoken Rita (Julie Walters). The stuff about Rita's working class background being an almost insurmountable barrier to her seeking higher education, seems less relevant today. I'm not saying class isn't a thing any more, but people in the film react as if Rita has said she wants to lead an expedition to Mars, rather than just wanting to read a few books. Caine and Walters ring every drop of laughter, sadness and joy out of the script. I was not expecting the strident Prog synth score, for a comedy drama, it's different but it works very well.


A great track from the score:

 

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For my money the best Sherlock film and a terrific pair of actors in the leads.

Again, I liked it, but the best Holmes film? I'm no Holmes film scholar, but yikes. Is, say, Murder by Decree, starrting Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson, no good?? 😛


Most Dangerous Game (2020)

waltz.webp


This contemporary spin on Richard Connell's famous short story was originally released in 15 short episodes on Quibi, but can now be watched on Amazon Prime as a 127-minute film. So, two questions: one, is it any good, and two, does it feel like a movie?

Happily, the answer to both questions is a definite yes. The flick stars Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz and its modern-day Detroit setting is a welcome change of scenery from just about everything taking place in NYC, LA, or maybe Chicago. The plot is pretty well thought out: the prey must stay within Detroit's city limits, with a cell phone that gives hunters hourly pings to their location, guns are not permitted, nor is going asking for police assistance, and they start out without their own phone or cash. In exchange, they get increasing bank deposits every hour, and, if they survive 24 hours, the game ends, and they get a grand prize. Hemsworth accepts the insane offer, of course, but only because he's got inoperable brain cancer, and a family to provide for.

Liam Hemsworth still doesn't have his Asgardian brother's charisma, but he's entirely satisfactory in this straightforward, All-American role, with a pretty solid accent to match. Waltz is exactly what you want from the game master role; his turn here is a better Bond villain performance than he was permitted to give in both his actual Bond films. The supporting cast is solid, and the production, despite being commissioned for mobile phone viewing, is solid. This is pulp action done right: I liked it better than the first John Wick (which had a lame third act) or Wrath of Man (which also got less interesting as it went along). Well worth a watch.

Grade: B+



Lightyear (2022)

image.jpg


I'm not much interested in stories about kids, non-biological objects such as toys or cars, or lame afterlife/pre-life fables. As a result, Lightyear was the first Pixar movie I've bothered to watch since Toy Story 3, and the last time I really enjoyed one of their flicks was 2008's Wall-E (which, despite being mainly about non-biological robots, is very good.) So, the Question of the Year in Pixar becomes: how the Zurg do you eff up a Buzz Lightyear movie?! Well...

1) Setting it on a single, uninteresting planet.
2) Featuring zero sentient aliens, despite animation making that easier to do than in live action.
3) Giving your movie the same inciting incident as Alien: Covenant, only without the English-language transmission.
4) Making your protagonist an unlikable prick from the outset, who scarcely improves.
5) Stretching the first act to fully half an hour in lenth.
5) Not making your antagonist Zurg a hissable, theatrical baddie.
6) Introducing a philosophical third-act plot twist that redefines the whole movie, but diminishes the fun quotient even further.

All in all, Lightyear is a big ol' mess, and a big ol' fail. That said, it is stunning to look at, even while the visuals themselves are mostly drab and unfamiliar. Maybe it'd be worth putting in on a language you don't know, or even muting it altogether and spinning your favorite psychedelic/space-age playlist, and appreciating the visuals alone.

Grade: C
 

TM2YC

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Is, say, Murder by Decree, starrting Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson, no good?? 😛

The Hammer Baskerville's is a close contender but I've not seen Murder by Decree yet.



The Time Out 48th best British film ever made...

Hunger (2008)
I wouldn't describe Steve McQueen's 'Hunger' as an enjoyable watch but it's powerfully acted and directed. The structure is odd, beginning by exclusively following two fictional (I think) prisoners at the Maze, then about a quarter way in, it switches over entirely to depicting Michael Fassbender's portrayal of Bobby Sands. If you don't go in already knowing who Sands was and the political and cultural context in which he undertook his hunger strike, I think this film might leave you a bit lost. It's mostly focused on depicting brutality and the physical act of voluntary starvation and less on the political reasons for doing so.

 

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Black Sea (2014)
I love the submarine thriller subgenre because the situation usually magnifies the action with it's inherent claustrophobia and nose-to-nose interpersonal conflict. Kevin Macdonald's 'Black Sea' has all that in spades and a great cast of actors. It's a mix of 'The Wages of Fear' and 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. The desperation of this ragged band of sailors is what drives them on and holds them back. The characterisation of everyone below Jude Law was a little lacking and Scoot McNairy has the thankless task of being the guy who repeatedly asks "Why are you doing that?", "What is that for?" etc. I also struggled with sympathising with some of the crew, as they are immediately being awful as soon as we meet them, instead of us being given a chance to like them first, before the paranoia and greed starts affecting them. There was bit towards the end, after we learn the dark truth about the mission, where I began really rooting for them to win, it would've been better to feel that earlier on.

 

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The Time Out 92nd best British film ever made...

Dead Man's Shoes (2004)
Considering how much I liked 'Dead Man's Shoes' back in 2004, I don't know why it's taken me so long to catch up with the rest of Shane Meadows' filmography. Paddy Considine is so threatening as Richard, the film's anti-hero on a "roaring rampage of revenge" in rural Derbyshire. It's clever the way Meadows first has us sympathise with him, then start to feel empathy for the fairly awful men he's out to kill, even as we find out more about their cruel deeds. You feel that nobody, whatever their crimes, deserves this and not this pathetic group of losers. There is a lot of humour too, the gang of dealers cruising to some gangsta rap in a little green 2CV really made me laugh. I'd forgotten that it was young Toby Kebbell playing Anthony, he's so believable, he should go back to doing more films like this and less Hollywood stuff. Also I didn't remember the religious underpinning and that beneath the realistic, lo-fi, low-budget, documentary video aesthetic, this is very much a Clint Eastwood-style Western plot, transposed to grey Midlands England... a companion piece to 'Straw Dogs' perhaps.




Northern Soul (2004)

A short Shane Meadows "mockumentary" included on the 'Dead Man's Shoes' DVD. Possibly a muck about that they had in-between making the longer film? I'm not sure that Toby Kebbell putting on a silly voice to play a weakling wannabee wrestler is as funny as they think it is but it's amusing enough. It's not like Rocky where you want him to win, because that's never going to happen for this guy, you just want him to give up and be okay.

northern-soul-2004998094-ci.jpg
 

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Erin Brockovich (2000)
For 'Erin Brockovich', Steven Soderbergh seems to contain some of his more stylish impulses and simply goes for making a really well crafted, well structured, well acted, legal drama. Julia Roberts is good in the title role but not so good that I couldn't imagine a hundred other actors doing it just as well. Because my brain works like that, when it gets mentioned that Brockovich and Masry's law firm will take 40% of the settlement and the number of plaintiffs keeps climbing to around 600, I couldn't help but keep reaching for my calculator to breakdown the figures, the percentages and potential shares. The film mentions the final total settlement of $333M but doesn't mention that 40% of that is $133M, which I'd already worked out, so in the big happy end scene when Erin gets a cheque for $2.5M from her firm, after the film portrays her doing about 950% of the work towards the victory, it seemed like a low number to me and an unintentional downer on the end. Of course $2.5M isn't to be sniffed at though!

 

DigModiFicaTion

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I was only really interested in the first three just because it's Soderbergh but I might give that a go too.

Ocean's Twelve (2004)
'Ocean's Twelve'
has been described as one of the worst sequels ever, which it isn't but it's not great either. It feels like a classic case of shooting with an unfinished script and expecting the mere presence of your all-star cast and talented director to magically fix everything. If you don't know what you're doing, or where your going, just stuff more stuff into the movie and let your Hollywood stars improv dialogue. It's like one of those difficult albums where the band have spent all their time touring and going to celebrity parties, so now they don't know how to write about normal life any more. Steven Soderbergh amuses himself (if nobody else) with meta jokes, such as the character played by Matt Damon (who was now a much bigger star thanks to two Jason Bourne blockbusters since the first movie) asking for a bigger role in the next heist. The thieves bicker about their gang actually being referred to as "Ocean's 11", movie genre cliches are pointed out in the dialogue and you know everybody thought having Don Cheadle coach Julia Roberts about doing a convincing accent was just the funniest thing ever. Cheadle's cockney accent doesn't seem quite as stunningly bad this time and he's at least using slang correctly. All that being said, the scenes featuring Bruce Willis as himself and Julia Roberts' character impersonating the "real" Julia Roberts were a lot of fun. The smugness that was mostly contained to just Brad Pitt in the first adventure infects most of the cast here. However, I can't deny I wasn't entertained for 2-hours.

Twelve was such a let down for me. I'd describe it as an inside self indulgent joke. I loved 11 and enjoyed 13. I don't know if I truly "fixed" 12 with the edit I made, but it at least is something that is enjoyable to me now. It does excise Bruce Willis' character, but retains Julia Roberts as herself. I too thought that bit was funny.
 

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Twelve was such a let down for me. I'd describe it as an inside self indulgent joke. I loved 11 and enjoyed 13. I don't know if I truly "fixed" 12 with the edit I made, but it at least is something that is enjoyable to me now. It does excise Bruce Willis' character, but retains Julia Roberts as herself. I too thought that bit was funny.
The Julia Robert’s stuff was the bridge too far for me in the self-indulgent, meta, look-how-much-fun-us-wealthy, good-looking-actors-are-having-making-these-movies aspects of the movie.
 

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The Time Out 75th best British film ever made...

A Room for Romeo Brass (1999)
Shane Meadows'
3rd film is good but it feels like a less polished draft of the kind of thing he does even better in later works like 'This Is England' and 'Somers Town'. It's surprisingly unusual for a film not to suggest how you should feel, to not hint where it's going, or give you easy answers by the end. Paddy Considine's performance as oddball Morell, weaves uncomfortably between Napoleon Dynamite and Norman Bates. While Romeo's violent, estranged father, eventually resolves the plot and brings the family together using violence. Plus you've got Meadows' trademark off-beat humour, so the film keeps you on your toes.

 

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High Life (2018)
Robert Pattinson and his crew of fellow prisoners are on a one-way interstellar mission to be sent into a black hole. It sounds interesting, but it ends up being kind of like a tedious mashup of Sunshine (2007) and 2001 A Space Odyssey without any of their good aspects. Sets are limited, pacing is a crawl, characters are rather one-note. A seriously wasted opportunity.

The Love Witch (2016)
A modern-retro style cheesy horror romance (?) that is dragged down by an excessive run time. A witch arrives in town after her husband leaves her and he mysteriously dies. She's an expert at love magic and sex magic, and there is frequent nudity (but it's rarely sexy) as she and her fellow witches and wizards perform ceremonies and initiations. The costumes and sets are deliberate throw backs and it looks great, but this should have been 80-90 minutes rather than 120. Some of the dialogue is great, especially the policeman/love interest Griff, and some of the acting is (probably) bad on purpose for comedic affect and I really liked that aspect, but it does drag on too long.

The Batman (2022)
Robert Pattinson is the Batman and he's pretty good, but I was less impressed by his mopey Bruce Wayne. This movie looks great and most aspects are very good, but wow it's long and it feels long. I was already checking the time left before the 40 minute mark. Sometimes they play up the "world's greatest detective" aspect of Batman, but sometimes he feels like an idiot. Batman and Gordon struggling with the Spanish, and Batman standing right in front of the guy with the bomb on his neck when it goes off. The police carrying the knocked out batman all the way back to the station without ever unmasking him, bulletproof batman (just don't shoot him in the face). There's too much realism here for such stupidity. The big explosive finale has been criticized already, and I agree, but I'd also like to point out how silly it is that almost all of the villain wannabes have bolt action hunting rifles with, I think, just one AR-style rifle to be seen. I guess this can't be used as the typical Hollywood "ban scary black rifles" though. Catwoman is pretty cool and sassy, and I think Zoe Kravitz looks great (I have an unhealthy love of girls with pixie cuts), but one line about White Privilege notably stuck out to me as obnoxiously forced into the script.

Many people have mentioned the similarities to Fincher's Seven, but I don't see many people mentioning the similarities to Zodiac (although the director has admitted the strong influence). I felt this worked really well and liked the exposed corruption. It was much better and more realistic motivation for a villain in a more grounded world than the typical over-the-top take over the world evil plot. Maybe they could have also thrown in a bit of Natural Born Killers about the Riddler's narcissism and need to be seen and become famous for his actions?

Burst City (1982)
A wild and crazy anarchistic punk movie from Japan about punk bands in a post-apocalyptic slum world vs. the Yakuza and their Battle Police enforcers. It's loud, energetic, extremely gritty, but also meandering and overly long with very little plot. Rival punk bands (played by real life punk bands including The Rockers, The Roosters, and The Stalin) drink, play wild shows, drag race, and get in fights. Meanwhile, a gang of crazed squatters take jobs from the Yakuza as construction workers to build a nuclear power plant (or something). Things come to a wild end when one of the squatters realizes that the head of the Yakuza family killed his brother and instigates a revolt against the Yakuza. At the same time, the rival punk bands are playing dueling shows when the Battle Police arrive to tear down the slum. A massive riot follows.

The film is crazy, using wild filming techniques and extremely grainy 16mm film. When there's a riot or a crazy show, the camera is right there in the middle of the action. I don't know how the cameras weren't getting smashed or knocked to the ground. The first 20 minutes is almost like a strange musical. It made me think of Streets of Fire as directed and edited by the guy that did Tetsuo the Iron Man. The punk costumes are great and the sets are frequently old abandoned factories and graffitied shanty towns. It looks and feels real, even though it's on a minimal budget. A scene that stuck out to me was the band walking in the hallway backstage to the stage trampling on old Beatles posters lying on the floor.

The problem is the lack of plot or forward momentum. It's almost more like a documentary. The ending riot is crazy, but it goes on for 30 or so minutes and could have easily been cut down. Some scenes seem to happen without any follow up or resolution. In one scene, the singer for the punk band gets in a fight with a cop and it seems like he gets shot with a shotgun, but a few minutes later it's as if it never happened.
 

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The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
There is more than a hint of 'Dracula' to the plotting of this above average Hammer Horror zombie film. André Morell plays the Van Helsing-alike doctor character with authority and gravitas, he's 50% of why the movie is entertaining to watch. These are still your old fashioned "because voodoo" zombies but they act and look a lot closer to the trademark 1968 Romero-zombies we know today, than earlier films I've seen. The HD transfer on Amazon Prime is sharp and colourful but I really questioned whether some of the grade was correct, the night scenes were just day-for-day, apart from some owls hooting on the soundtrack.

 

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The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)
For me, half the fun of watching this low-budget 70s Italian zombie film set in the North of England, was spotting which bits were, or weren't shot there. It mostly looked pretty authentic but there was one house location with fish-scale roof tiles, cypress trees and window shutters, with biscotti being served with black coffee that was definitely an Italian location. Also, many have noted that although the opening titles were filmed in Manchester and a morgue does feature towards the end, the title is highly misleading (to be fair, that's not the original Italian name). A zombie outbreak caused by a sonic pest control ray, only occurs when our blameless hero and heroine are about and never when the police are on the scene (which starts to get a bit ridiculous). As a result, they are the prime suspects for mass murder in the eyes of the local irrational right-wing Police sergeant, who goes around angrily ranting about homosexuals and long-hairs. There is a decent amount of splatter gore and some neat practical FX. Giuliano Sorgini's soundtrack is pretty cool, like a lot of Italian movies of the period. By the way, I noticed the end credits scroll includes "Vicente Vega as Dr. Duffield". I wonder if Tarantino got the name from this guy?


 

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The Company of Wolves (1984)
This dark, fairy tale, werewolf, sexual symbolism filled, reimagining of 'Little Red Riding Hood' all looks beautiful in a Ridley Scott's 'Legend' type of way but it rarely held my interest. I was beginning to drift off a bit until 25-minutes in, when a guy suddenly starts ripping off his own face, down to the skull, then metamorphoses into a wolf. There are many such imaginative uses of special FX, some look a little too much like puppets but some are really icky and cool. The banquet where we see people turn into wolves through warped and shattered mirrors is fantastic. The shot of a startled (real) peacock doing a double-take was unique. It's a similar stories-within-stories conceit to the 1965 Polish film 'The Saragossa Manuscript' but this isn't as well structured, or clever. But I feel sure that 'The Company of Wolves' would be Terry Gilliam and Guillermo del Toro's "jam".

 

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Blonde (2022)
In the early 2000s the BBC did a spate of high-profile, serious biopic dramas about celebrated comedy actors from the 60s/70s (e.g. 'Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!'). They were focused so much on the misery, depression, bitterness, animosity, repression and isolation in the lives of their subjects, that they rang false. No life is as all consumed by misery as this, real people have a laugh sometimes. Andrew Dominik's 'Blonde' is in the same category. From the little I've read, the basic facts of Mariyn Monroe's tragic life aren't that wide of the mark in the movie but the absence of any carefree fun, creative and professional fulfilment, or genuine friendship, make it half a life and so not a credible one. The only glimpse we are given of something that approaches a close relationship is with Marilyn's makeup man 'Whitey'. I was craving more scenes between him and her because they contained some actual believable human warmth. In real life, he apparently was her personal makeup artist from her first screen test, through 16-years, including for her funeral. This detail suggests that she did have at least one loyal person that cared for and about her but that's not what 'Blonde' is interested in, just wallowing in misery and abuse.

Much has been made of this being "the first NC-17-rated film to be released via a streaming service" but apart from two FX shots (which have caused some offence), it's comparatively tame (there is a third shot that's borderline). Which makes one wonder if after the NC-17 fanfare, the MPA just said "Yeah that's fine, here's your R-rating" and the director realised he had to add those extra shots to deliver the "extreme" vision he'd promised? I love the 4:3 aspect-ratio and black and white movies, plus I generally don't mind films changing ARs but the constantly flitting between four different different ARs, and between colour and b&w in 'Blonde', for no obvious reason, sometimes for a single shot, comes across as pretentious.

It's been said that streaming gives art-films better access to their audience, over the old art-house cinemas but it also has the potential to invite a mass audience along to a party they were never going to enjoy. So Netflix putting such a challenging, experimental, art-film, front and centre on their home page, with much media promotion, has inevitably drawn a flurry of angry and frustrated responses from viewers. But maybe controversy and clicks is all Netflix care about and it doesn't matter if people hate the movie. Given an old-fashioned limited theatrical release, the few people that were interested might have seen it and loved it, then it could have been forgotten about, or ignored by everyone else.

I can't decide if Ana de Armas' performance is good, or bad. Marilyn's voice and demeanour were often like a parody, so it's a challenge to recreate them (which de Armas does with astonishing accuracy) without feeling parodic. She's also asked to deliver intense, unrelenting levels of tortured crying hysteria for 2.5 hrs. One scene in isolation (the audition for example) is very powerful but a whole film on the same level becomes meaningless. The film finally reaches it's absurd zenith when Marilyn simply temporarily misplacing her purse to pay a delivery boy, gets turned into an extended disorienting nightmare sequence. You could cut from her signing for the package, to her opening it (the contents of which are actually important to the plot) and nobody would notice anything was missing. It's self-indulgent and unfocused film-making. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis was nice though.


Kermode mounts a fascinating defence of 'Blonde' as a sort of demonic-possession Horror film, not a biopic:

 

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Witchfinder General (1968)
A rollicking good 1960s Horror from Hammer rival Tigon, that is always a good rewatch for the Halloween season. 24-year old Writer/Director Michael Reeves (who sadly died soon after the film's release) takes a particularly bloody chapter of real-world English history and piles on even more blood, sex and torture. Vincent Price plays the title's real witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins (a man who literally 'wrote the book' on witches, one that was used as a manual for the infamous Salem Witch Trials), who uses the chaotic backdrop of the English Civil War to wage a quasi-official reign of terror on the credulous and superstitious villagers of East Anglia. Unlike his partner in crime, torturer John Stearne (also real) who is entirely motived by sadism and money, Hopkins, like many charlatans, seems to partly believe in what he's doing on some level, beneath the obvious surface corruption. 'Witchfinder General' is generally more brutal and cynical than most British Horror flicks of the period but it's the ending that's really striking, featuring our good guy, romantic hero being finally driven mad by what he has witnessed and endlessly hacking up a body with an axe, before his wife just screams insanely until the credits role.

This fun Roger Corman trailer for the US release has a different title and blatantly lies about it being based on an Edgar Allan Poe book:

 
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Gods and Monsters (1998)
A high quality, refreshingly different and illuminating bio of Director James Whale. The film is mostly Ian McKellen's Whale and his gardener played by Brendan Fraser talking about their lives but with two terrific actors like this, armed with such perceptive and powerful dialogue, that's all you need to hold the viewer on the edge of the seat. Allusions to Whale's 'Frankenstein' films don't feel over played but I could also see parallel's with Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard'. Both are about an outsider who gets drawn into the closeted life of a once famous Hollywood outcast, who are living alone in their mansion, save for a dutiful servant and both end with somebody drowning in a swimming pool.

 

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Dog Soldiers (2002)
Neil Marshall's
low-budget Horror debut's limitations are cleverly dealt with at the concept stage, so it's set in the woods and in a woodland cottage, leaving what money there is to be spent on lots of blood squibs, guns and surprisingly brilliant and scary werewolf costumes. When the creatures first appear Marshall quickly cuts around them and shows very little, in a handheld documentary style, which I thought might be because they wouldn't hold up but he's keeping the creature reveal back, when you do finally get a full look at them, it's impressive. Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd and Liam Cunningham head up a great little cast of characters. Their dialogue is full of squaddie banter and military nomenclature that sounds authentic. The film is a mix of 'Night of the Living Dead', 'Predator', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Aliens', 'The Evil Dead' and 'Zulu', and holds it's own next to those classics. The only problem for me was that there were several plot twists and plot reveals in the second half, that I'd 100% guessed an hour before.

 

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Dracula (2020)
I meant to watch Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat's BBC reimagining of 'Dracula' when it screened, there was a lot of social media hype on the first two films, then people being cross about the third one. Indeed it does take a big narrative swerve away from the traditional Dracula setting but having watched Hammer's 'Dracula A.D. 1972', it didn't feel that odd to me. It's still sometimes a frustrating watch as the script insists on injecting quippy dialogue into all scenes, when thanks to Claes Bang's central performance it's capable of being genuinely sexy, scary and threatening... until the inevitable joke deflates all that dramatic tension. Claes Bang is so good as Dracula that you wish there wasn't so much plot getting in the way of him swaggering around, delivering seductive speeches. There are elements where it seems like the writers aren't just writing convoluted nonsense but inventing nonsense just to give them an excuse to write more nonsense to explain it. The idea to spend the whole middle film onboard the Demeter was a refreshing new take on the source material. Generally this isn't as good as Gatiss & Moffat's 'Sherlock' but sometimes when the everything is working, it's better.

 

TM2YC

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The Descent (2005)
The saying "familiarity breeds contempt" sprung to mind due to the too-long intro for the characters that are ultimately imperilled in Neil Marshall's 'The Descent'. I began hoping we'd soon get to the part where these irritating one-dimensional 90s characters (I know this was 2005) started dying, however, the instant they get trapped in the caves, I was on their side. I started to see how each of them dealt with problems differently. I'd chop the whole intro out, go from the short prologue, to a year later and them already entering the cave and we find out their backstories and personalities from seeing how they cope with stress. I bet the film would have no plot holes from doing so. The couple of lame jump scares inserted into that intro grated too because you know they are there to keep the audience awake. When the first genuine jump scare happens, after a long period of slow ratcheting up of the tension and claustrophobia, I nearly leapt out of my seat! The use of sound and the lack of light in the caves is used effectively to unerve you, as are gallons of icky gore. I watched the original, slightly longer, UK theatrical cut with the cool, darker, more artsy ending, which for some reason is dubbed the "Unrated Cut".

 
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