Shudder Saturday: Repression (2020)

Although I was aware of the fact that their screentime would probably be limited, the presence of Peter Mullan and Bill Paterson in this cast was enough to put Repression (which is also known by the title Marionette) on my radar.

It is the tale of a woman (Thekla Reuten) who ends up working with a young boy (Elijah Wolf) who seems to have strange and dangerous powers. But does he make things happen, or does he just have the ability to foresee things? And can he help our leading lady to fix a recent tragedy in her life? Or . . . did he cause it?

This is nicely put together, an enjoyable slow burn that has enough darkness in it to make it a solid horror/thriller viewing choice, and starts to really impress when you get to the meat of the central idea being poked at and explored. Riffing on that famous tale from The Twilight Zone, “It’s A Good Life”, this gradually makes the central theme bigger and bigger on the way to an ending you suspect won’t be a happy one. 

Director Elbert van Strien (who also gave us the excellent Two Eyes Staring) sometimes struggles to capture just the right visuals that would be most impactful, but his work on the script, co-written with  Ben Hopkins, is where the film is strengthened.

What could have been a child-centric reworking of The Medusa Touch instead turns into a film that muses on ideas we could consider with every major horror movie character. Can someone foretell things that will happen, or does that information being put out there mean that someone else turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy? How can you prove that you have free will if your actions are guided by the thought of just reacting to what you think others have predicted you to do? And if we consider the tale of Schrödinger’s cat then surely that means that everything out of our line of sight is permanently both dead and alive until they come back to us.

Interesting and heady ideas, I hope you agree, and the cast do a bloody good job of having conversations about them, in between moments of tension and dread. Reuten is a decent lead, playing her pained character well enough, and believably becoming more and more desperate as the situation around her looks set to drag her down via some spiritual kind of riptide. Wolf is also good, admirably allowed to play his part without too many sympathetic moments. Mullan and Paterson have a few scenes each, doing their usual great work, and there are very good performances from Rebecca Front, Emun Elliott, and Dawn Steele. Sam Hazeldine is also given a vital role here, but he doesn’t get to make as good an impression as anyone else, partly to do with the script and partly to do with his lacklustre turn.

It’s a shame that the very end of Repression goes for something we have seen, in one way or another, many times before, undercutting what came beforehand. It’s perfectly fine, but nowhere near as good as the rest of the movie. Although unspectacular, this is well-made, well-acted, well-written (maybe more in terms of the ideas than the dialogue spoken), and well worth your time.

7/10

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Comfort And Joy (1984)

Bill Paterson stars as a radio host, Alan "Dickie" Bird, who isn't having a very good Christmas in this gentle comedy from writer-director Bill Forsyth. Alan has just been ditched by his girlfriend (Eleanor David), he's feeling pretty low, and then he gets caught up in the middle of a strange attack on an ice cream van while simply buying a cone for himself. This incident leads to him becoming involved in the middle of an "ice cream war" between Trevor (Alex Norton) and Mr. McCool (Roberto Bernardi), relaying coded messages through his radio show that makes his employer (Rikki Fulton) start to worry about his sanity.

If you've seen both Gregory's Girl and Local Hero then you'll be familiar with the way Forsyth likes to approach his material. Unfirtunately, this film isn't as good as either of those movies, but it's still enjoyable enough. It just runs the risk of being so low-key and light that it could blow away, like a dandelion in a strong breeze. Most of the humour is derived from the fact that the people involved in this "war" take it so seriously, despite the fact that it's just about ice cream, and Paterson is the outsider looking in on the whole thing. It's also worth noting, for anyone who doesn't know, that the movie is loosely based on some running turf wars in Glasgow that WERE dubbed "The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars". That situaton wasn't as pleasant, but Forsyth does well in transforming it and making everything more palatable while still being able to point at the underlying ridiculousness of any business competition that escalates to such extremes.

Paterson is very good in the lead role, initially watching events unfold with sheer bemusement before deciding to take a more pro-active stance. He also has a great voice for radio, making him all the more believable in the role. Norton and Bernardi are both fine as the warring rivals, Fulton is as wryly amusing as usual, and Clare Grogan has a small role, catching Paterson's eye and inevitably dragging him into the whole mess. David is also very good, albeit not in the film for that long, and Patrick Malahide does well as Colin, a friend who just wants Alan to move on with his life after a break-up that he assumes must feel pretty sore.

There's another great soundtrack supplied by Mark Knopfler, a great running gag about a car constantly being damaged, and a final act that feels as logical as it is amusing. There are also a few unnecessary dream sequences, one bizarrely awkward conversation between Alan and Colin about Colin's young daughter, and the feeling that every scene has space for some more humour to be added. I'm not JUST creating a clumsy analogy by saying that it's almost like receiving an ice cream cone with only half a scoop sitting on the top. Well, okay, maybe I am.

6/10

Keep hunting for a cheaper disc than this R2 release - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Comfort-Joy-DVD-Bill-Paterson/dp/B0002W19VA/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1417913464&sr=1-1&keywords=comfort+and+joy

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The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

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The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988)

I admit that I was hesitant when I slid the Blu-ray of The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen into my player. When it was (barely) released in 1988 I saw a few clips that just didn't sell it to me. In fact, it looked a right mess and the poor performance at the box office did nothing to make me doubt my first impression of the film. Fast forward to all these years later and I now know that boffo box office results aren't always a sign of a great movie, but I still thought I was about to watch a mess. An entertaining mess, perhaps, but a mess nonetheless.

Piffle! The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen is a fantastic film. Directed by Terry Gilliam, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles McKeown (based on the character created by Rudolph Erich Raspe), it is his usual mix of wild imagination, wonderful visuals and warped humour. Apparently, it forms a thematic trilogy after the excellent Time Bandits and the masterpiece that is Brazil, something to do with the ages of man and the power of imagination, but the most important thing to know is that it's a rip-roaring adventure full of spectacle and larger than life figures.

It is a time of war, a time of misery for the occupants of a city being attacked by a large Turkish army. It is "The Age Of Reason". For the benefit of those seeking a distraction from the war, a play is being performed that's all about the life of the adventurer known as Baron Munchausen. Unfortunately, the play is interrupted by the Baron himself, who is unhappy at the way his adventures have been adapted and proceeds to tell the audience the truth, including how he was responsible for starting the war on the city. Mind you, it's not surprising that few people believe his words when he goes on about his sidekicks - the fastest runner in the world, an eagle-eyed sharpshooter, a man with excellent hearing and the ability to exhale gale force winds and the strongest man in the world. Reality then reasserts itself as the war interrupts the Baron and he wanders off to die. Thankfully, that plan doesn't work (or it would be a very short film indeed) and so the Baron decides to save the city, meaning that more adventures are about to unfold.

This wasn't an easy movie to get made, but from what I've seen and heard over the years, few Terry Gilliam movies are. Having seen his work method, I think it's all down to the fact that he yearns to find the fastest way possible to put his constantly inventive imaginings on to film and that makes for very hard work indeed. He has it all there in his mind and you can see how fast it all wants to come out whenever he quickly sketches a new idea or a revision of the scene before him (check out both Lost In La Mancha and The Hamster Factor And Other Tales Of Twelve Monkeys to see what I'm on about). The difficulties behind the camera just don't show themselves, however, and viewers are simply left to enjoy a great final product.

The cast is wonderful, full of so many familiar faces as well as those who just fit their characters perfectly. John Neville is the Baron, the very heart of the film, and he makes for a wonderful companion and narrator throughout. Sarah Polley is only a teeny tiny girl here and she's very good in her teeny tiny girl role. Eric Idle, Winston Dennis, Jack Purvis and Charles McKeown have a lot of fun playing some rather unique characters while Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, Robin Williams, Alison Steadman, Oliver Reed, Bill Paterson, Valentina Cortese, Peter Jeffrey and many others populate the screen in a variety of weird and wonderful roles.

Fans of Gilliam's films should love this one, fans of films such as Big Fish (which has quite a similiar structure) should love this one and fans of fine cinema, in general, should find plenty to enjoy. I didn't expect to say this before putting in that Blu-ray, but I highly recommend this film.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adventures-Munchausen-Anniversary-Edition-Blu-ray/dp/B0012OTRYI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357696323&sr=8-2