For It Is Man's Number: ella rubin

Showing posts with label ella rubin. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Until Dawn (2025)

While I am currently trying to pester my partner into allowing me ownership of a sexy and slim PS5, I am very much aware of the fact that I barely have time to play the many videogames I have owned for years already. That includes Ghosts Of Tsushima. It includes some of the more recent Resident Evil games. And it includes Until Dawn, which I once spent about half an hour on. It's not that I disliked it. It's great. As are the other games mentioned. I just don't often have the time required for games that benefit from complete immersion and focus, which is why I end up playing some pinball or Tony Hawks levels instead.

What I am trying to make clear right now is that I don't have much experience, or knowledge, of the Until Dawn videogame. I know how it starts though, and I know that a bunch of young adults end up in an isolated location that starts to present them with a variety of horrors.

The main characters here are Clover (Ella Rubin), Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A'zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abe (Belmont Cameli). They end up in the middle of nowhere while Clover tries to retrace the steps of her missing sister, Melanie (Maia Mitchell). It isn't long until something scary starts happening, but any fear they experience is exacerbated by the realisation that they're also stuck in a timeloop that starts over whenever they die. Is there a way to stop the cycle, and does it have anything to do with Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare)?

While I have seen some complaints from videogame fans who didn't like the direction taken by this, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did it feel as if it at least tried to stay aligned to the essence of the game, certainly in the opening act, but it turned into something bloodier and more twisted than I thought it would be. Writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler work well together, sketching out the characters and premise succinctly enough to pack a healthy amount of scare sequences into the 103-minute runtime, and director David F. Sandberg continues his run of movies that show him to be a very capable pair of hands, if perhaps rarely great (his previous best feature also being written by Dauberman, Annabelle: Creation).

As for the cast, they all know that they're in the film to be put through the wringer. I have seen Rubin in a number of films now. She can do well in the right role, although she doesn't quite feel like a strong enough lead for this. She's not bad, but it's only in the third act that it becomes easier to root for her while the odds against survival grow exponentially. Cimino and Cameli are perfectly fine, I guess, but they're outshone by both A'zion and Yoo, who just have a bit more screen presence, perhaps due to them simply not being as generic as the "himbo #1 and himbo #2" casting calls for their male counterparts. Stormare has fun with his role, and his presence is one of the elements creating, and maintaining, an essential link between the film and the videogame.

From the little I know of the videogame, and I've made clear how little that is, I liked the way it was adapted into a feature. There's still some familiar visuals, the timeloop serves as a way to make everything feel similar to a more standard videogame premise (although it should be noted that Until Dawn is celebrated for NOT being a standard videogame), and things are put together with a healthy balance of fun and frights. Despite the criticisms of some who wanted something more faithful, this is quite a fun crowd-pleaser. AND it makes me want to carve out some more time in my schedule to finally fully play through the game.

8/10

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Sunday, 1 June 2025

Netflix And Chill: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Time is a flat circle. I know that could be applied to many concepts that we face as we journey through life, but I am using it here to explain the fun of enjoying the cyclical nature of horror movie sub-genres, particularly the slasher movie. Everyone knows how things have gone in the slasher movie landscape. They were, at one point, THE main horror staple for a good few years. Then they faded out. They were uncool. Then a healthy dose of self-awareness and loving cannibalism helped them to become popular again, as well as sometimes being cool. And now? Well . . . now we have a mix of slasher movies that try to keep things fresh alongside slasher movies, like this one, that are happy to unironically present fans with something that wouldn't have seemed out of place back in the early 1980s (aka the boom period for slasher movies).

India Fowler plays Lori Granger, a young woman who has spent her school years having a pretty hard time of things. She's a target for the likes of Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza) and her crew of acolytes, often bullied because of the fact that everyone suspects her mother murdered her father. Thankfully, she has a very good friend in Megan Rogers (Suzanna Son). And she has the courage to nominate herself as a prom queen candidate, although there's a masked killer who decides to seriously affect the outcome by killing off a number of the candidates.

Another film making use of source material by R. L. Stine, this is co-written by Donald McLeary and director Matt Palmer, who made his feature debut with the superbly tense Calibre. I have known of Palmer for many years, and always had confident in his ability to deliver great moments for horror fans, but it's good to see him able to step from his more complex and nuanced debut work to this bright, nostalgia-infused, outrageous slice of gory fun.

The cast all do well in their main roles, with Fowler and Rogers particularly easy to root for as the kills start occurring, Strazza an entertainingly loathsome "mean girl", and Ella Rubin, Rebecca Ablack, Ilan O'Driscoll, David Iacono, and Ariana Greenblatt all doing enough to make their characters identifiable enough, yet also just as prone to be killed off as anyone else unwittingly dancing their way to a Prom Night massacre. The older cast members also have some fun, and you get good turns from Lili Taylor, Chris Klein, Katherine Waterston, and Darrin Baker, who are all given enough time and space to mark themselves out as suspects while the bodycount grows.

The main star here is the production design though. This film isn't just set in Shadyside High in the 1980s. It's set in the school that you picture when you think of every classic school-set moment from the decade, whether that's due to other films being set firmly in that time and place (The Breakfast Club, A Nightmare On Elm Street) or allowing viewers to put on nostalgia-goggles to see something akin to that time and place as other characters seem to literally or mentally move back into the past (e.g. Grosse Point Blank, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Guest, etc). The soundtrack also helps, tickling your ears with hits from Billy Idol, Rick Astley, Roxette, Bananarama, Tiffany, Laura Branigan, Duran Duran, and many more, as well as a couple of superb tunes from Power Glove, and the whole package feels as if it could have been made and released forty years ago. That will be a major plus point for many, but some will view it as a reason to avoid the film forever. As I'm sure you can tell, I am firmly in the former camp.

I don't think there's anything more I can say to those who are still on the fence. Things may feel a bit tame in the first act, but you can rest assured that things get bloodier and nastier on the way to the fun-filled, if slightly predictable, conclusion. Palmer and co. really know what they're doing, and slasher fans should trust them to take them on a fun ride back into 1980s glitter and gore.

7/10

Wednesday, 5 June 2024

Prime Time: The Idea Of You (2024)

A rom-com with emphasis on the rom ahead of the com, which is a bit of a surprise coming from director Michael Showalter (who has previously either been balanced towards much more com, or has maintained a very even rom-com equilibrium), The Idea Of You is a fun premise that is lifted by the performances of the two leads, one I am very familiar with already and one relative newcomer who seems to be making hay while he has a couple of years with the sun shining brightly upon him.

Anne Hathaway plays Soléne, a divorced mother who ends up travelling with her daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), to a concert featuring THE hot boyband of the moment. Before seeing them onstage, Soléne bumps into Hayes (Nicholas Galitzine), one of the band members. The two get on well, which leads to fun and complications when Hayes decides that he'd like to try and have a relationship with Soléne. Battling against those who are protective of their pop idol, as well as those who think the age gap is ridiculous, our two main characters look to have the odds stacked against them as they try to move towards a happy ending.

Based on a novel by Robinne Lee, adapted into screenplay form by Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt, this is a film that may well surprise people with the little moments that make it worthwhile. Yes, it's a bit of romantic nonsense at heart, but it's also interesting to watch things play out in a way that highlights the everyday sexism inherent in how things are viewed here, compared to how they could be viewed, both in movies and reality, if the central relationship was a young woman and an older man. Okay, things are a bit undermined by the fact that we're supposed to buy into the idea of Hathaway being viewed as "old, tired, and unattractive", but it's easier to accept those insults being thrown around during the scenes that show the reactions of angry and immature fans.

Hathaway is as likable as ever here, and she tries her best to portray the tiredness and anxiety of her character when pressures are piling up on her shoulders, but she feels cast more for her name than her suitability to the role. I'm in my late forties and Hathaway, despite being at the start of that same decade in her own age, looks about two decades younger than me. That's good for her, but not so good for this specific role. Galitzine, on the other hand, is helped by his useful appearance, looking a bit younger than his actual age. I thought I might find his character a bit annoying, but he has such good chemistry with Hathaway that it was never a problem. Rubin is very good as the understanding teen who eventually struggles to deal with the reality of the situation, and Reid Scott is good at being the selfish, and eventually a bit jealous (of course), ex-husband.

It's fluff, and the very end scenes help to turn it into the fluffiest of fluff, but it's also very enjoyable. There is enough attention to detail to keep the ridiculousness feeling grounded in some kind of reality, the stars deliver star turns, and there are a few moments that will give great satisfaction to anyone who has ever had any kind of dream or fantasy about the situation at the heart of it.

7/10