The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023)

Based on one specific chapter from Dracula, this is an old-fashioned horror movie that makes great use of modern effects to depict, and enhance, a classic bit of text. Directed by André Øvredal, who is yet to helm a real stinker in his filmography, it's as easy to appreciate and enjoy this as it is to, sadly, see why it failed to find a big audience.

Corey Hawkins plays Clemens, a man who ends up getting himself hired as a crew member on the Demeter. Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) is a fair taskmaster, but he soon finds himself overwhelmed by numerous incidents that make everyone suspect their voyage may be cloaked in misfortune. It may well have something to do with their mysterious cargo, which won't be a surprise to anyone familiar with the source material.

Despite the inherent limitations of the source material (meaning the film takes place mainly in one location and with a fairly limited cast of characters), The Last Voyage Of The Demeter manages to come up with a number of inventive and entertaining ways to wander through very familiar territory. Writers Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz have less consistency than Øvredal, but they seem to work together well on something that approaches the trappings of the vampire movie with an impressive sense of reverence and earnestness.

While the cast are a mixed bag (I don't want to spend too much time discussing the accent work by David Dastmalchian, nor do I want to try to list those who play the more forgettable characters), the leads are excellent. Hawkins is the right person to carry this on his shoulders, especially when he can occasionally share the burden with Cunningham, Aisling Franciosi does very good work as a stowaway who knows the danger of the "cargo" being transported, and Javier Botet delivers yet another physical performance under heavy make up that puts him right alongside Doug Jones when it comes to being able to bring supernatural beings to life in solid humanoid form.

The runtime may be a touch too long, as the runtime clocks in at just under the 2-hour mark, but there's plenty to enjoy here, from start to finish. There's wonderful music from Bear McCreary, gorgeous cinematography from Tom Stern (although I did thing things a bit hard to see in a finale that sets everything in the middle of a dark and foggy area of the sea . . . but maybe that's more to do with my ageing eyes than the professionals working to create the visuals), and beautiful design work throughout every department, from sound to wardrobe, and everything in between.

It's far from perfect, especially when the screen has too many characters that aren't really memorable enough to do more than add to the bodycount, but this is an enjoyable and surprisingly bloody little film that makes good use of modern movie-making techniques to deliver something comfortably old-fashioned at heart, yet garnished with some impressive effects and bloodshed. Not recommended for the impatient, but tentatively recommended for vampire movie fans.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Guard (2011)

The directorial feature debut of the very talented John Michael McDonagh, The Guard is also a film that gives Brendan Gleeson one of his best movie roles. In fact, between himself and his brother, Martin McDonagh, Gleeson has spent the better part of the last fifteen years in roles that help to solidify his place in the list of all-time great actors. He was already a strong contender, as evidenced by pretty much any role he's taken on throughout his career, but his work with the McDonagh brothers have elevated him to another level.

Gleeson plays Gerry Boyle, an Irish policeman who spends his time getting through each work day with minimal effort. He's sharp though, no doubt about that, and also rarely bothered about the feelings of others. This causes some friction when FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) comes to the area, on the trail of some serious drug smugglers. As Boyle and Everett work together on the case, the FBI man starts to realise that Boyle is hiding his talent and instincts behind a well-maintained wall of rudeness and derision.

It can be harder to review a film as good as The Guard, a film which could be discussed in nothing but a cavalcade of pleasant words and deserved compliments. Basically, don't think you're going to get anything here that's particularly eloquent or enlightening. I'll leave that kind of thing to people like the McDonagh brothers, who have given us some perfect scripts throughout their careers.

Although it feels like stating the bleeding obvious at this point, especially after my opening paragraph, Gleeson is great in the main role here. He gets to be at his grouchiest, but also delivers all of his dialogue with a twinkle in his eye, clueing viewers into the mischievous nature of his character that keeps others around him unbalanced. Cheadle works very well alongside him, trying to remain cool and professional while being occasionally flustered by what Gleeson blurts out. He also has some scenes on his own that mine humour from his "fish out of water" status on the isle. The supporting cast includes Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, David Pearse, Rory Keenan, and quite a few others, and everyone has fun in roles that they feel perfect for.

Maybe not as emotionally resonant (or emotionally devastating) as some of the other movies that have paired Gleeson up with a McDonagh brother, The Guard just serves as a reminder that you don't always need to fill the screen with pain and emotional manipulation to make great cinema. This is great cinema, easily on a par with 100 other films that people would offer up as a peak example of the artform, and it is also great entertainment from start to finish. A lot of that is down to the script, full of so much comedy gold and so many great characters that make it eminently rewatchable, but a big part of it is also down to the stellar work of Gleeson.

9/10

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The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor (2008)

The third instalment in this particular selection of Mummy-centric tales, focusing on heroic Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his family, is pretty much what you'd expect it to be, considering the turnaround behind the cameras. It's now Rob Cohen directing, and the writing duties have been taken over by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, but the central concept is still all about someone wanting to come back from the dead and take his place as a beloved warrior and leader. 

There's an opening sequence that explains who the new villain is this time around, the titular Dragon Emperor (played by Jet Li), and then it's time to catch up with the O'Connells once again. Rick is sort of content, but also kind of bored, while Evelyn (Maria Bello replacing Rachel Weisz in the role) seems to be just fine about a life where she's not being put in mortal danger every so often. Or maybe she's just better at keeping up a pretence. Young Alex (Luke Ford) is now old enough to be gallivanting about on his own adventures, which is why he is in Shanghai, as is his uncle, Jonathan (John Hannah). The whole O'Connell family soon ends up in Shanghai, and they end up having to work hard to stop the resurrected Emperor from becoming immortal.

Fraser, Li, Bello, Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, and Isabella Leong, and even Liam Cunningham, all do pretty good here, in relation to the script that they have to work with. It's a messy film that wants to recapture the spectacle of the previous movies without slavishly repeating any of the set-pieces, but it ends up falling flat. I'll put a small part of the blame for that on Ford, playing the youngest of the O'Connell clan. Whether it's a weak script that he can't overcome or just his own inability to emanate any sense of real charisma, Ford is the least of the cast members onscreen here, and that is a problem exacerbated by the way in which his character is foisted upon us as if he could somehow become a natural successor to Fraser's character. I'm maybe being a bit unfair to Ford here. He's certainly not terrible, but he cannot overcome the failings of the script in the same way that everyone else can, because we already know, and already like, most of the other main players.

Gough and Millar obviously wanted to work with a certain structure, but also wanted to keep things at a certain distance from the previous two movies. They want to deliver a nice, comforting, helping of filmic fun that is the same . . . but different. Unfortunately, they completely forget to add the actual fun. Even the fact that the villain doesn't really have any seriously misguided motive for his actions, other than his selfishness, brings everything down a notch. You don't watch this movie for the script, or direction. You watch it to enjoy some of the stars, mainly Li and an underused Yeoh.

Cohen can be a dependable pair of hands for this sort of thing, but he doesn't seem to have any enthusiasm for this story. The plotting has a number of predictable moments you have to trudge through, the set-pieces have their entertainment factor hidden by horrible CGI and cack-handed editing, and any amusing calbacks to past events in the movie series just make you wish that you'd spent your time revisiting the previous films.

It’s a shame that this ended up being the end of this series (although there are a good number of separate The Scorpion King movies by now) because it almost turns the entire trilogy into a warning to others, perfectly illustrating the standard law of diminishing returns for this kind of stuff. I hope to never watch this again, but the completist in me is happy enough that I finally marked it off the list.

4/10

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Mubi Monday: Good Vibrations (2012)

This is the story of Terri Hooley, a man with a passion for music so great that he ended up opening a record store in Belfast, and forming a label, that would support, and hugely influence, the punk music scene in Belfast. Not that either business made any money. Profit was never a motivation for Terri. It was always just about the music.

Hooley is certainly someone who deserves to have their life story shared and celebrated, whether you read any books written about him or (like me) just watch this movie. Taking place during the infamous years of bloodshed and death in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles, Hooley did his best to stay apart from everything he viewed as unnecessary distractions from the music. It was a view that ended up being infectious, allowing him to gather together a number of like-minded individuals, all of them using music in different ways to the same ends. Escape. Whether that is physical or mental.

With the role of Hooley played by Richard Dormer, Good Vibrations is a film lifted by that performance and, appropriately, the music pumping through it. Dormer has a blast, portraying Hooley with charm and savvy, if a lack of business sense, and there’s a lovely supporting role for Jodie Whittaker, playing his partner, Ruth. Aside from the people portraying some key figures in the industry, Kerr Logan as Feargal Sharky and Kieron Forsyth as John Peel, the cast also has consistently solid turns from Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, Karl Johnson, and many others. 

Directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn do a fine job of capturing the time and the place, and conveying that feeling of stumbling on to some life-changing music, and the script, by Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson, keeps the humour, that seems to have been a central part of Hooley’s nature, juxtaposed alongside the very real threat posed to so many people in Northern Ireland during that time. 

It may not be an essential story, although it will inevitably be essential to those impacted by it, and it may not be a standard feelgood film, with the highs and lows leading to a fairytale happy ending, but Good Vibrations mixes the authentic with the fantastical and perfectly illustrates that way in which we can all be transported from mundanity by one great song that resonates through our entire body. It also has a predictably great soundtrack.

You could say that . . . it's well worth keeping an eye open for it.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: 24 Hours To Live (2017)

Ethan Hawke stars in this action thriller, the kind of slick, violent fare that you would be forgiven for assuming had Luc Besson in a producer role. It's generic stuff, but it's fairly well put together and has a very small role for Rutger Hauer (always welcome).

Hawke is a top assassin named Travis Conrad. He wants to enjoy a holiday but is pestered back into the field by his colleague, and friend, Jim (Paul Anderson). It's an important job, and the pay available for it reflects that. Despite his skills, Travis is shot and killed. But that's just a temporary setback, and the company soon have him back on his feet and ready to finish the job. For 24 hours anyway (hence the title). Travis quickly realises that there's more to this job than just taking out someone who deserves to be dealt with. There's something not right about the whole thing.

Directed by Brian Smrz, 24 Hours To Live is fast-paced and full of decent action moments. Considering the premise of his previous feature, Hero Wanted (his directorial debut), it would seem that Smrz has an affinity for movies in which guys drag themselves out of hospital beds to head off and kill lots of people. Nothing wrong with sticking to what you know, and as I have yet to see Hero Wanted I cannot say if there are many other similarities.

The plotting, although obvious, is perfectly acceptable in the way the premise is set up and played out. Writers Ron Mita and Jim McClain (who have been writing together for a few years now, judging by their filmography), and Zach Dean keep everything at just the right level of enjoyable silliness. This is not a film designed for anyone who wants to overthink things, but it manages to avoid seeming completely unbelievable, even during some of the bigger set-pieces (with a sequence showing Hawke trying to keep his "target" safe from various sharpshooters being a definite highlight).

Hawke is fine in the lead role. He's surprisingly believable as a shooter who can also win out in hand-to-hand combat, especially when the odds are stacked against him. Andersdon does okay in his role, although he's hampered by some of the more predictable script elements, and Liam Cunningham has a lot of fun in his limited amount of screentime. Xu Qing (playing a guard of the main target) should have been given more to do, instead of becoming the main motivator for Hawke's character, but she fares better in the first half of the film, when actually given some of the action, than in the second half.

I doubt this is going to be a film that will be remembered years from now, and it's not one that anyone should rush out to make their top priority, but it's a decent way to spend 90 minutes. And if they found a way to extend the lifespan of Hawke to give him Another 24 Hours To Live then, yes, I would be up for watching that.

6/10

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Harry Brown (2009)

Daniel Barber's first full-length feature could, at a casual glance, be seen as a lazy way to fast-track him into the growing collection of great UK film-makers such as Shane Meadows, Danny Boyle, Christopher Smith, Neil Marshall, Guy Ritchie (YES, I said Guy Ritchie), Michael Winterbottom and others. It's a crime movie, it's done with a measured amount of gritty realism and it's got Michael Caine in it. So far so seen-it-all-before. But Harry Brown brings a bit more to the mix than just that.

Michael Caine IS Harry Brown, an old man living on a rather dilapidated council estate, spending his time either visiting his ill wife, playing chess with his friend Leonard (David Bradley) or simply filling the lonely, bleak hours in between such little moments of pleasure while, around him, the local area is going to ruin thanks to local teenagers playing with knives, guns and drugs and terrorising those who try to get on with their daily lives. When things happen that directly affect Harry he is then forced into making a decision he never thought he would make . . . . . . and to start cleaning up the estate. But it's not long before one good policewoman (Emily Mortimer) starts to suspect Harry's hand in the latest, bizarre events.

Michael Caine is an icon, an untouchable living British legend who can get by simply by being Michael Caine nowadays. Which is why it's been all the more impressive to see him put in damn fine performances in recent years and his portrayal of Harry Brown is one of his very best. Vulnerable and weak one moment, tough and dangerous the next, it's all believable thanks to Caine's performance. It helps that he's surrounded by the likes of Emily Mortimer, Liam Cunningham, Sean Harris and a group of young actors who all put in excellent acts, even while playing people you hope to never, ever meet in your life.

The character motivation feels real enough, the twists and turns don't leave you feeling cheated and the script stays truthful (sometimes disturbingly so) within the environment created for the movie so that's a success for writer Gary Young and director Daniel Barber that goes beyond any that a mix of standard crime antics and flashes of style could have provided.

The overall experience may be a little bit cold and bleak for some viewers but this is still a movie worth seeing, one that both entertains and makes you wince while also raising a number of moral questions as events move towards the climax.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harry-Brown-Blu-ray-Michael-Caine/dp/B002XWV3C2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1372487268&sr=8-2&keywords=harry+brown

War Horse (2011)

This Steven Spielberg movie, based on a popular play written by Nick Stafford which was based on the children's book by Michael Morpurgo, is an easy target for critics to take aim and fire at. There's no denying that it has many moments that exemplify the very worst of Spielberg's predilections and there will be many people for whom this is just absolute anathema. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it.

Peter Mullan plays Ted Narracott, a farmer who doesn't really have much luck in life. Mind you, he doesn't always help himself, like when he decides to outbid his landlord (David Thewlis) for a horse that everyone knows will be of no use to him for ploughing purposes. He gets the horse, but is also indebted to his landlord. It looks grim, grim indeed, but his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), has faith in the horse and sets out to prove everyone wrong by leading it around the field and getting it to pull the plough. Sadly, despite the horse showing great tenacity, there's not enough done to keep the farm safe and so Ted sells the horse to an army Captain (Tom Hiddleston). Albert is determined that they'll be reunited one day and he signs up for the army as soon as he's old enough, but there's no guarantee that he'll ever actually see his horse again or, indeed, survive the perils of war.

Yes, it's overloaded with sentiment in places (thanks to Spielberg and the music of John Williams) and yes, there are too many shots with rays of sunlight just providing an aura for the lead characters, thanks to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, but this is still an enjoyable family adventure that will take you through a range of emotions before the end credits roll.

The best thing about it is the quality of the cast. As well as those already mentioned (Mullan, Thewlis, Irvine, Hiddleston), viewers gets to see the following actors in a variety of small and large roles: Emily Watson, Niels Arestrup, Benedict Cumberbatch, Geoff Bell, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell and Liam Cunningham. Even the lesser-known (and unknown) cast members do a great job, with Celine Buckens making a good impression as young Emilie, a girl who also makes a connection with the titular horse.

There are one or two moments of darker content in the movie, but they're handled with kid gloves and moved aside in plenty of time for the next uplifting sequence. People will accuse the movie of being far too sugary and heavy-handed for its own good and it is, but it's also just a nice, old-fashioned adventure story with plenty of great moments throughout.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Horse-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B00742SSEW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356070669&sr=8-1