X (2022)

I have a strange relationship with film-maker Ti West, and I suspect I am not the only horror fan to feel this way. He has been working on his craft for just over two decades now and the good stuff is often very good, but there’s a feeling throughout some of his work that he just wants to mess with people. And let’s not even mention his dubious honour of delivering arguably the worst horror anthology segment I have ever seen (in The ABCs Of Death). This meant that I started watching X with some trepidation, despite it having a potentially great premise. There was no need to worry though, thank goodness, as X is easily the best thing that Ti West has ever done.

The plot is fairly simple. A group of people rent a small farmhouse property in the middle of nowhere. It is the late 1970s and the leader of the group, Wayne (Martin Henderson), wants to make a fortune in the world of porn, which he knows is possible with this location, the people around him, and the equipment that will allow them to make an immediate impact on the new and lucrative home video market. Wayne has two starlets with him, Maxine (Mia Goth) and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), as well as a well-endowed leading man, Jackson (Kid Cudi). Then you have the sound technician, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), and RJ the cameraman (Owen Campbell). All bodes well for the group, except for the fact that the man they are renting from, Howard (Stephen Ure), takes an instant dislike to them, and there may be problems caused by his wife, Pearl, who doesn’t always have her mental faculties working as well as they should.

If you haven’t seen any of the X marketing yet then you may want to look away now. Just trust me, it is worth your time. For everyone else, you already know what the set-up is here (a porn film crew get themselves caught up in a bit of peril that could easily turn into a full massacre) and I can reassure you that West delivers on it.

Taking his time with the first half of the movie, what you get is a nice slow burn that, in a pleasantly surprising turn of events, really rewards patient viewers with a third act full of grisly deaths and enjoyable “punchlines”. West seems to be having a lot of fun, with recreating a period style and sneakily layering his script with some interesting commentary on beauty as a coveted commodity, and that fun is infectious. X will make you wince, but it will also make you grin as you enjoy one gory set-piece after another. And realising how the movie has been cast will make you think about the main point that West is making, helping to appreciate further a film that has some unexpected depth beyond the nudity and bloodshed.

The cast all do great work, with Snow and Goth being the ones who have to be the least inhibited. Both of those ladies are excellent, and very believable, but Goth also has some more to do in helping West get across his main point, and she deserves some extra kudos for that. Cudi is also very good in his role, playing his character with a mixture of confidence and wariness, considering the time period and the setting, and he is matched by Ortega and Campbell, who feel a bit like supporting players, despite the former being a bit more involved in things in the second half of the movie. Henderson is an easygoing charmer, or at least tries to be, and his energy helps a lot, and Ure portrays the typical sullen “farmer” type who can barely stand the presence of younger folks anywhere near him, let alone on his land. Having just the right mix of anger and sadness, Ure acts in a way, like everyone else here, that allows him to feel like more than just an archetype.

While not feeling overdone in a pointed way, the clothing and design of the film feel nicely of the period, there’s hair and make-up on the characters that is just spot on, and the editing, music, and other aspects of the film all contribute to a nice recreation of something that was filmed in the seventies before being spruced up and presented to modern audiences.

Obviously not for the prudish, X could well be the best horror movie of this year. It’s certainly a strong contender, thanks in no small part to the intelligence hidden away under the exploitation garb. The more I think on it, the more I loved it. Easily the best movie yet from West, and I hope many other horror movie fans check it out. You may end up as pleasantly surprised as I was.

9/10

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Netflix And Chill: Bushwick (2017)

I've seen a lot of love in recent months for Bushwick, a film that throws together two characters (played by Brittany Snow and Dave Bautista) and shows part of America heading to civil war hell in a handbasket around them. Co-written by Nick Damici and Graham Reznick (the former having been a vital component in the filmography of Jim Mickle over the past dozen years), it's an interesting "what if?" scenario.

Snow plays Lucy, a young woman who starts the movie about to get on a train with her boyfriend. Moments, and at least one explosion, later, her boyfriend is dead and Lucy has to find shelter while wondering just what is going on. Circumstances lead her into the home of a war veteran named Stupe (Bautista) and that's when the two begin to get a clearer picture, as hard as it may be to believe. It seems that a small military force has decided to help a number of states secede from the rest of the USA, and that will be a turbulent, painful, process.

Directed by Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott, Bushwick may be far removed from their previous work (Cooties) in content but it's similarly problematic when it comes to the execution of the script. This is a film that wants to be serious and sombre throughout most of the runtime, yet it very quickly piles on one wildly implausible moment after another. I'm not going to pretend to know how things would pan out if a new civil wore ever broke out in America but even I would be surprised if it led to such quick and sudden complete anarchy, and individuals so devastated by the fighting around them that they would rather commit suicide.

Snow and Bautista are both excellent in their main roles, believable as, respectively, the naive youngster quickly out of her depth and the professional ex-soldier who knows how is prepared for the worst and keeps clear aims in mind. It's easy to imagine Mickle in Bautista's role, and I wonder whether he deliberately decided to just stick to the writing this time around or whether Bautista's name helped in terms of funding and ensuring that the film was made. Angelic Zambrana and Jeremie Harris are two of the main supporting players, and do just fine, with many other faces just appearing for one or two scenes in between skirmishes.

Bushwick is not a bad film. It's just a film that doesn't ever seem to be sure of how it wants to put things across. If you want something based in a grim reality then it has moments of that, yet it also has far too moments of nonsense that feels like they've been pulled from a book entitled "101 Classic Doomsday Scenario Moments". And the ending doesn't help. It just feels like a sucker punch, and undermines a lot of what came before it.

6/10

You can buy the disc here.
Americans can buy it here.

Hairspray (2007)

Hairspray (1988) was my mild cinematic introduction to the wonderful world of John Waters. I had heard of him before then, having seen an episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show that had host Jonathan Ross interviewing the great man, but it would be some time before I started to delve deeper into his filmography. To be honest, I still need to see a LOT of his pre-Hairspray films, often forgetting that I haven't seen them because of already being familiar with some of his more (in)famous moments.

Despite Hairspray being quite possibly the tamest film that Waters has ever done, I was still surprised when it was turned into a stage musical. And when that musical version was adapted into a film I was more than just surprised, I was ever-so-slightly outraged. This was also before I was more at ease with the internet. I had less spaces to verbalise my anger and metaphorically stamp my feet about the whole thing. Thank goodness.

Because Hairspray is a lot of fun. Directed by Adam Shankman, it's a film that retains the simple, and wonderful, plot of the original film, adds a selection of decent tunes, and allows a number of stars to have a great time playing larger than life characters.

Nikki Blonsky is Tracy Turnblad, a young girl who dreams about a chance to dance on her favourite local TV dance show, hosted by Corny Collins (James Marsden). That chance comes to her at last, unbelievably, and she starts to do well on the show, which makes her an enemy of Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who has been doing her best to ensure that her daughter (Brittany Snow) is the star dancer on the show. Tracy also finds herself in trouble when she becomes active in the growing movement to end racial segregation.

With a tweaked screenplay by Leslie Dixon, and the play by Mark O'Connell and Thomas Meehan to work from, Hairspray works so well because it translates the (I assume) upbeat and fun sense of the live show to the screen with canny casting and vibrant production design throughout that provides 1960s Baltimore as the setting for the proceedings, as well as populating the city with plenty of colourful characters.

And what a cast of characters we get. Blonsky is a sweet lead, and does well with the singing and dancing. Her parents are played by John Travolta (Edna) and Christopher Walken (Wilbur), and both of them have a lot of fun with their characters. Marsden is also having a whale of a time, playing Corny Collins as a sweet and cheesy host with the most, while Snow and Pfeiffer attack their "baddie" roles with great relish. Amanda Bynes, Elija Kelley, Zac Efron, Queen Latifah, and Allison Janney fill out the cast, with all of them given enough good moments to make them worth spending time with.

As unexpected as the origin of this movie is, just be thankful it got made. I still prefer the original, it's a bit sharper and more twisted, but this is a brilliant reworking of the material to appeal to a potentially much wider audience (who might also eventually check out the 1988 film).

8/10

You can buy it here.
Or, in the ol' US of A, buy it here.

Would You Rather (2012)

Horror films that are based around forcing people to make unpleasant choices have been increasingly popular since the Saw series became a huge hit. We've had some good ones (although I admit that there isn't a title springing to mind right now) and some not so good (Choose being a pretty lacklustre effort). Thankfully, Would You Rather is a good one, helped enormously by a typical performance from Jeffrey Combs that mixes charm with more than just a hint of lunacy.

The plot revolves around a young woman (Iris, played by Brittany Snow) who is desperate to turn her life around. She needs money, and a lot of it. Not for herself, you understand. She has a younger brother who is very ill. Combs is Shepard Lambrick, a very wealthy man who occasionally invites a number of people to dine in his home, before revealing to them the particulars of a game that he likes to play. A game that sees how much people can be bought for, and how quickly they can change the nature of their ways for a large enough reward.

There's a solid cast of supporting players onscreen here, including John Heard and Sasha Grey (not the best actress ever, but she acquits herself just fine), but there's no mistaking that Snow is the leading lady and plenty of time has been set aside for Combs to grandstand as he so easily can. The fact that the likes of Eddie Steeples, Robin Taylor, Enver Gjokaj and Jonny Coyne all still manage to make an impression is testament to the capable script (by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen) and direction (by David Guy Levy) giving everyone at least one memorable moment.

A number of moments made me really wince, so kudos to the warped minds who came up with the increasing pain meted out to everyone involved, but it's a shame that Would You Rather undermines its own premise far too early, making everyone a forced participant in the sadistic game rather than having their conscience eroded gradually by the riches on offer.

Well worth a watch, even if you look away during the harsher moments.

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/Would-Rather-Blu-ray-Brittany-Snow/dp/B00CBFB8WG/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1389209604&sr=1-3&keywords=would+you+rather