Netflix And Chill: Time Freak AKA Time After Time (2018)

A romantic comedy with the added element of time travel, and the complications that can bring. It's amazing that nobody has thought of trying this before. Except they have, and most recently with a British flavour in a film called About Time.

Time Freak (which is the title I am going to prefer to use for this, as Time After Time is a different, better, movie) won't remind you of About Time at all though. It's totally different. It may be a romantic comedy with time travel as a major component, but the leads are two fairly well-known Brits, and most of the plotting leads towards a lesson about the risk of ruining everything else while trying to make things perfect for yourself. Okay, it may really remind you of About Time. The biggest difference is that this has much more of a teen feel, which helps. A bit.

Asa Butterfield is Stillman, a young man who has had the good fortune to be in a relationship with Debbie (Sophie Turner). Then one day he gets a text, one saying that they need to talk. It's time for their relationship to be over, which he then attempts to desperately avoid, thanks to his invention of time travel. He doesn't travel back alone though. He takes his best friend, Evan (Skyler Gisondo), and the two are able to try and create positive changes in both of their lives.

The second feature from writer-director Andrew Bowler, and his first with the resources of a half-decent budget and selection of better-known leads, Time Freak is a film that starts off well, it's only moments into the thing that we see the time travel in effect, but seems to become more and more unsure of itself as things play out. Bowler realises that the comedy needs to give way to drama, but he throws up some moral quandaries that he doesn't really answer with any satisfaction, or conviction.

Thankfully, the cast help a lot. Butterfield is a decent lead, and certainly feels like someone who could remain likeable while battling his own compulsive nature, while Turner does some of her best work, in what is arguably the toughest of the lead roles (playing the character who repeats a lot without ever being aware of them being repeated). But it's Gisondo who gets to have the most fun, whether he's using the time to try and chat up an attractive young woman or being inadvertently trapped in a short elevator ride that turns into a timeloop hell, he's a big plus for the whole thing, and helps viewers to forget the more troubling aspects of the film for a while.

There's something good in here, something either a lot funnier or a lot darker, but Bowler doesn't have the sense to take everything in one clear direction. That leaves viewers to have conversations in their own heads, or with others, about the ramifications of the central idea. You could argue that many great movies do the same thing, and you'd be right. But those movies provoke thought and dialogue about what has been presented onscreen. Time Freak leads you to consider everything it gets wrong. I still found enough here to enjoy, but it's a very problematic film, in many ways, and I could completely understand anyone hating it, or even feeling that it was quite repugnant for most of the runtime.

5/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Surrounded (2018)

AKA Frenzy.

I have said it many times before, and will say it many times again. If there's a zombie or a shark in a movie then, for my sins, I WILL watch that movie. Which has led to me watching my fair share of crap. It doesn't always take a lot to put together those movies, and they're all probably guaranteed a certain minimum return, thanks to idiots like me.

Surrounded caught my eye because it had sharks in it. I'd also never heard of it before, which piqued my curiosity further. The plot summary didn't sound great - a group of travel vloggers take a big risk in order to get more viewers, and pay for that risk when their small plane crashes and they find themselves in seawater, surrounded by a few great white sharks - but it sounded good enough to entertain me for the duration.

Unfortunately, it wasn't.

Although things start at an admirably quick pace, I was worried within the first 15-20 minutes, and rightfully so. I wasn't sure if ditching so many characters early on would make the film better or worse, because it then really boils down to the strength of the leads. It made things worse, despite the flashbacks that punctuate the film, none of them feeling like anything other than unnecessary padding once we have assumed that most of the people we are watching are now dead in the water.

Director Jose Montesinos has a filmography that has moved from sex comedy territory (with Barely Legal) to more dramatic and thrilling works, like this one. He has a better handle on the comedic material, in my opinion, and that doesn't require him to work with such variable special effects or film moments that need better pacing and a sense of believability to be more effective. He's also not helped here by the script, by Graham Winter (his first screenwriting credit). Winter doesn't do an awful job, he just doesn't do enough in any one area to strengthen the movie. Characters are thin, the tension doesn't ever build (although that is less to do with the writing and more to do with the ever-changing quality of the sharks being depicted onscreen), and the structuring makes it a chore to get through, despite the fairly brief runtime (it's about 85 minutes).

Aubrey Reynolds is Lindsey, the main character who is at the centre of the majority of the scenes. Her sister, Paige, is played by Gina Vitori, and there's also a character named Kahaia, played by Lanett Tachel. It's a shame that none of them are really strong enough to do the work required of them. Tachel is arguably the best of the three, and has the least amount of screentime.

Look, there are some good moments here and there. The basic idea is good enough, the location is memorable (beside one of those tiny islands that looks as if it's all balanced on a pebble), and you get to see the sharks more than you do in some other movies, for better or worse. It's just a shame that the end result couldn't rise above the level of average.

4/10