This Is Christmas (2022)

Director Chris Foggin is at the helm of this Christmas movie, another in a line of modern British rom-coms that add all of the festive trimmings, lots of familiar faces, and the kind of busy city life that keeps hustling and bustling without being anywhere near the misery of commuting and working in non-movieland Britain. Writer Alastair Galbraith may not have a lengthy selection of screenplay credits, but he knows how to work his premise around a great central cast.

Alfred Enoch plays Adam, a young man who holds on to the strange belief that commuters might just find their day improved if they chat to one another and communicate about their talents and lives. In fact, he believes that this applies to all people. We'd all have better lives if we just made more connections. And he's willing to throw a Christmas party for his fellow commuters to prove his point. He is helped by Emma (Kaya Scodelario), but everyone has something to bring to the occasion, whether it's a particular skill or a particular story to reveal as the third act plays out.

Although it may seem completely implausible to anyone who has experienced a long train ride through parts of London, Christmas is a time of miracles. That allows This Is Christmas to be an enjoyable and diverting piece of work. It's a complete fantasy, and that much is clear from the very beginning. Commuters DON'T want to make accidental eye contact with one another, let alone start conversing and forging meaningful connections. 

Enoch is a likeable lead, all good manners and good intentions. Scodelario is very good opposite him, feeling like a natural pairing even while both leads have partners who need to be moved out of the picture before everything can be fully consummated (not in THAT way, this is still a Christmas movie, after all). Timothy Spall handles a Liverpudlian accent well enough, and his story pairs him with young Jack Donoghue, both doing much better in the scenes they share than the few moments they go solo, and Joanna Scanlan, Ben Miller, Sarah Niles, and Clinton Liberty do good work when they get to add to the intertwining story strands. There's also a welcome, if far too small, role for Steve Oram, playing a conductor who helps the commuters initially band together against "a common enemy".

It may be a bit overlong at 111 minutes, and some of the more bitter moments feel a bit too spiky for this kind of thing, but This Is Christmas is, overall, a safe and enjoyable bit of winter warmth to enjoy on a cold evening. It won't necessarily make it into the annual rotation for anyone planning their viewing schedule, but it's worth a watch. Once.

6/10

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Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (2021)

Despite my inherent awfulness when it comes to playing videogames, and I know I have said this before, Resident Evil has been my all-time favourite gaming series since I first started battling zombies and solving puzzles when I first got a PSOne. I have enjoyed the games on various consoles since then (mainly different Playstations, but I also had a Nintendo Gamecube for a while) and have also taken some pleasure from the main live-action movie series, most often kept in the hands of Paul W. S. Anderson. The animated movies haven't been quite as good, but I can't deny finding enough in each one to ensure I have had to own them all, at least in digital form.

This, however, is a film that finally feels like the games (well, the first 2 anyway). That's not to simply dismiss all of the other movies now, not at all, but this is arguably the definitive cinematic interpretation of so much of what players love about the Resident Evil game series. And I am happy that we can enjoy both the other movies, often full of bombastic slo-mo and CGI-laden silliness, and this movie.

Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, although most of the events depicted here were already written for the videogames, what you get here is an adventure that throws together Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), Jill Valentine (Hanna John-Kamen), Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia), a young girl named Sherry Birkin (Holly de Barros), and Dr William Birkin (Neal McDonough). Raccoon City is about to become a very dangerous place to stay, full of infected people, dangerous dogs, and other mutated dangers, and not even the Police Station can offer safety for long. That's before we even  get to the reported disturbance at the Spencer Mansion.

While none of the cast may be causing Oscar-winners to start looking over their shoulders, they all do an excellent job with the material. Scodelario, Amell, John-Kamen, and Jogia show a variety of skills, and they seem to enjoy portraying the nominal heroes, while McDonough is an enjoyably untrustworthy potential villain. Tom Hopper makes for a good Albert Wesker, and it's nice to have a small role for the likeable Donal Logue, playing a Police Chief who knows that everyone should get the hell out of the city while they can.

It's the attention to detail here that really impresses. This is not really a great movie, but it IS a great Resident Evil movie. The characters all feel very much in line with their videogame origins (okay, Leon Kennedy may be overdone slightly, but his first adventure did have him as someone pretty heartbroken and hungover who just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time when the zombie nightmare began), the creature design is on point, making me wish we could see more of the monsters that cropped up in the games (please give me a giant snake or sharks in the next movie, and definitely a Plant 42), and the environment often feels as if it has been surgically transplanted from a console directly into the movie.

There's a good score by Mark Corven, great work done by the costume and makeup department, and everyone generally works in service to a script that allows viewers to feel a sense of familiarity without the potential accompanying boredom. Changes that are made are ones that make sense, cinematically, (the main one being how a character named Lisa Trevor is used, which is very clever) and I can't imagine any fans of the series thinking that any character or element has been done a major disservice. Even the relatively small amount of screentime for Ada Wong (played by Lily Gao) feels in line with her impactful involvement in the RE 2 game.

Roberts has a varied filmography, in terms of quality, but his best horror work is well worth your time. This is up easily there with his best. I really hope that it has done well enough to kick-start a whole new movie series in this vein. I'll still revisit all of the other movies available, but I already know that this is the one I will go back to most often. At least until I need my next fix of watching Milla Jovovich kick ass.

8/10

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Mubi Monday: Wuthering Heights (2011)

I have some issues with the tale of Wuthering Heights, that classic moors-set tale of love and psychological torture written by Emily Brontë. My biggest problem with it is that I sometimes confuse it with the superior Jane Eyre, the great gothic romance written by Charlotte Brontë. I know, I know, entirely my fault, but I can't ever just let go of the fact that this is the weaker of the dark works from any of the Brontë sisters, despite it giving us a bloody great Kate Bush song.

There have been many TV and film adaptations of the tale, and this time around it is the turn of Andrea Arnold, who directed and reworked the material with Olivia Hetreed. It got some awards, some critical acclaim, and probably doesn't stand out to anyone as an embarrassment to her filmography. Unfortunately, I really didn't like it.

We first meet Heathcliff and Cathy as youngsters, played by Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer, respectively. It is then up to James Howson and Kaya Scodelario to portray them in adulthood. There are other people involved in the plot, but it's all about Heathcliff and Cathy. The main twist given to the material here is that Heathcliff is played by a black actor (close to the source material, but separates it from many other adaptations), and he is allowed to use the word "cunt".

Perhaps I wanted something more traditionally cinematic, or perhaps I felt that the new twists on the material felt disappointingly like someone desperate to shock viewers (I'm on about the language and one or two sexual scenes here, not the casting). Maybe I am just sick to the back teeth of films that shove the realism in your face by having far too many scenes of characters getting their fingers caked in mud, delivering ugly and irritating camerawork, and, of course, having the soundtrack feature a lot of heavy breathing. Because nothing says "critically-adored cinema verité" like murky cinematography and a lot of breathing sounds.

The leads don't do a bad job in their roles, considering what they're given to work with, but they're hampered by the script and shooting style. Howson, who was not acting before this (and has done nothing since), is admirably confident throughout scenes of growing intensity, and Scodelario makes an appealing Cathy, with both leads certainly selling chemistry between them as they take turns to treat one another with love and apparent loathing.

I am sure a lot of people will love this. My own reaction to it is simply based on the fact that I know showing some bleak, ugly scenery doesn't mean your film has to necessarily be bleak and ugly throughout. Arnold made a stylistic choice, and it's one I disliked intensely. Add the "try hard" elements to that, and this just really wasn't for me. The strength of the source material still manages to barge through at times though, so there's that.

3/10

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Crawl (2019)

As a major hurricane starts to move into the area, Haley (Kaya Scodelario) ignores all of the warnings to drive further into the danger zone and find her father (Barry Pepper). She hasn't been able to get a hold of him and it's a worry. She eventually finds him, underneath a house and badly injured. Oh, and there are a number of alligators that have also decided to pop round for a visit. Can Haley, with her exceptional swimming skills, help both of them to survive this ordeal?

Crawl is a fun creature feature, but it's not one you can watch with without making an effort to consciously switch your brain off. If you know anything about alligators then this may be harder, but if you go with the flow then you're going to have a good time.

The main cast members to enjoy here are the alligators, impressively realistic CG creations that remain feeling like a physical threat as soon as their presence is made known. That's not to take anything away from Scodelario though, who gives a performance that requires every ounce of her focus and strength. Pepper, by comparison, gets to spend a lot of the movie fairly prone and relaxed (well, as relaxed as you can be after being bitten by alligators that are still prowling around your home). He's good, but he's mainly there to motivate Scodelario in different ways. Other people do appear, but they're really just there to become a snack for the dangerous predators.

Written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, the structure is nice and tight (the runtime is 87 minutes), with the premise being set up quickly enough before the tension and thrills start to be added on. It becomes clear early on that they don't really care about the reality of the situation, instead doing enough to ground the movie reality of the situation (one in which a human can outswim an alligator, which is just one of the differences between reality and what is depicted here).

Director Alexandre Aja is no stranger to this type of thing, having provided superb tension and thrills in many of his previous movies (and at least he keeps this a lot more grounded than the enjoyable silliness of Piranha 3D). He knows how to set up the geography of the cramped location, how to get everyone where they need to be, and how to shoot some great set-pieces that alternate between having the alligators front and centre in a way that provides some jumps and having them gliding underwater to be an invisible menace.

This is not a serious study of what happens when a large predator is suddenly added to an environment normally fairly safe for humans. It's just fun, and manages to be fun from start to finish. We've already had sharks being used this way (in the likes of Deep Blue Sea and Bait), so it's good to see the alligators getting some time to shine. And when I say time to shine I mean time to hunt down humans and try to bite massive chunks out of them.

7/10

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