Prime Time: Cobweb (2023)

You have to be careful when working with horror material. Sometimes meeting expectations and delivering predictable plot beats becomes part of the fun. Sometimes you need to subvert things. It all depends on what you offer up around the most familiar elements. Cobweb, sadly, doesn’t offer up anything that feels truly worth your time. 

Written by Chris Thomas Devlin, who has one other writing credit so far (one of the writers who served up Texas Chainsaw Massacre), this is a fairly standard tale of some over-protective/maybe harmful parents (played by Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) and a young child (Woody Norman) who starts to feel the presence of someone else living in the walls of his home. There’s a concerned teacher (played by Cleopatra Coleman), a young bully (Luke Busey) who soon moves from the terrorizer to the terrorized, and a third act that becomes disappointingly unambiguous and underwhelming when you realise the squandered potential of the premise.

While director Samuel Bodin, making their feature debut, has a decent eye, they don’t have the ability to elevate scenes in a way that can help to distract from the fairly weak script. Devlin fills the runtime with tired dialogue and one ridiculous contrivance after another. I remember being excited to check this out last year, and then my enthusiasm started to wane as I kept seeing the advertising for it and feeling as if it had nothing new to offer. I could have been wrong, sometimes the trailers and marketing do hold back a surprise or two, but it turns out that I was right. And things are made worse by both Devlin and Bodin wasting the cast.

I am a huge fan of both Caplan and Starr, which made this an even more frustrating viewing experience. Both are asked to act quite ridiculously, because anyone acting normally would end the movie within minutes. Part of me wanted more screentime for them, part of me was glad they didn’t have to carry the whole film on their shoulders. That task goes to young Norman, who is okay, I guess, but has to overdo the nervy and fragile core of his character, which is his entire personality for the duration of the movie. Coleman comes out of this best, playing the standard caring adult who investigates further when she suspects something is amiss. 

The more I think about Cobweb, the less inclined I am to compliment it. I was angry as the end credits rolled. There are positives though. It has some eye-catching visuals, making good use of the shadows and darkness in the finale. There’s also . . . Well, it has . . . Actually, I think that is it. Some decent visuals, two great cast members (both wasted), and a good title. The rest is bad, as bad as any other mainstream horror I can think of from the past few years.

3/10

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The Interview (2014)

You would have to be very isolated indeed to not have heard of The Interview by now, the latest comedy movie involving Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and James Franco. Oh, and Kim Jong-un. Yes, THAT Kin Jong-un. It's the film that seemingly sparked off an international incident, involving threats of terrorism and a release that was halted and then put back on the cards. Some starts to smell a rat, wondering whether or not a lot of publicity had simply been drummed up by Sony for a film that otherwise wouldn't have done great business. I'm not sure what the figures will be when the dust settles, but I am sure that more people heard more about The Interview in the past two weeks than they ever heard about previous Rogen-Franco collaborations.

Franco plays Dave Skylark, a TV chat show host who always tries to get the juiciest morsels of celebrity gossip to work with. Rogen is Aaron Rapaport, his producer and BFF. The two men are approached by government agents (led by Agent Lacey, played by the lovely Lizzy Caplan) when the opportunity arises for them to head to North Korea and interview Kim Jong-un. This has all come about due to the fact that Jong-un is, it turns out, a big fan of "Skylark Tonight". The US government sees this as a chance to pull off a fine piece of assassination work, which is all well and good if only a) Skylark and Rapaport weren't such idiots and b) Skylark didn't have the potential to see a new close friend in the disarmingly charming Jong-un.

There are some laughs to be had here, not least from Franco as he once again shows how perfectly he can play the vapid idiot. The friendship that develops between his character and Jong-un (played by Randall Park) is very funny, especially in the way it puts Rogen's character out of sorts. And a few individual lines of dialogue made me laugh aloud.

Unfortunately, it's all overly familiar to fans by this point. That's not bad in itself, but it is bad when the familiarity removes most of the potential for big laughs. Rogen and Goldberg co-direct with a near-slavish adherence to their usual bag of tricks (celebrity cameos - check, hard party montage - check, Rogen and Franco having the potential to be hetero life partners - check, use of the word "shart" - check). Some of the fault may lie with writer Dan Sterling, but I'm willing to pass the buck along to Goldberg, Rogen and Franco.

Park is a lot of fun as the dictator, Diana Bang is also great (playing Sook, a woman who is overseeing the technical aspects of the interview), and Caplan does well with a fairly small role. This is all about Rogen and Franco, and it plays out as you'd expect, with both leads using personas that they've used at least a dozen times now in the past decade. Which is a great shame, because this vehicle should have been more willing to take some major risks. The central premise isn't that daring as it wants you to think it is, and the political points scored aren't really that worth bothering about. The most interesting aspect of the movie is the discussion it has raised regarding the social responsibility of those with a global platform for their comedy/art. Personally, I don't think that this film should have ever been threatened with a non-release, yet I also think that it could have been just as funny if minor changes were made to fictionalise the main area and character.

I DID laugh. I enjoyed myself, for the most part. But this isn't a great comedy, by any stretch of the imagination. It certainly isn't worthy of the attention it has received in recent weeks. In fact, such controversy and debate deserves a better movie at the heart of it.

6/10

You can rent The Interview on a number of VOD platforms right now, or you could do yourself a favour and buy this film instead - http://www.amazon.com/This-Blu-ray-UltraViolet-Digital-Copy/dp/B00BEJL69U/ref=sr_1_4?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1419687087&sr=1-4&keywords=seth+rogen+evan+goldberg

Bachelorette (2012)

Kirsten Dunst plays Regan, a tense, controlling young woman who starts to fret when she finds out that her friend, Becky (Rebel Wilson), is about to get married. Becky wasn't supposed to be the first one of the group to get married, as Regan reminds Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and Katie (Isla Fisher). Things weren't supposed to happen that way. Regardless, the time comes around for the bachelorette party, something that Becky wants to be a quiet affair. It doesn't pan out that way, of course.

Written and directed by Leslye Headland, based on her own play, Bachelorette is saved from being completely unwatchable by Kaplan and Adam Scott (playing Clyde, the ex-boyfriend of Caplan's character). James Marsden also puts in another great performance - the more I think about it, the more I like Marsden - and Rebel Wilson is likable enough in her role. But that's where the good stuff ends.

While I watched this movie I started to suspect that it was from a first-time director. Some of the mistakes here aren't that bad, but then there are glaring flaws that unsettle the whole thing, and ultimately sink it completely.

First of all, most of the characters are loathsome. Movies can feature loathsome characters, but this lot really take the biscuit. And there's no reason to believe that they would be friends. As the old saying goes: "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Second, stemming from the first, everything that goes wrong and puts the characters under pressure is caused by the characters themselves. Everything onscreen here could have been easily avoided if the lead characters weren't so selfish/stupid.

None of the drama is effective, none of the comedy is funny, and you may spend most of the movie, as I did, just wishing for it to end. It doesn't help that Dunst and Fisher aren't on good form, although they may have simply been unable to overcome the weak material.

The silver lining for Leslye Headland is that she can only get better from here.

2/10

http://www.amazon.com/Bachelorette-Blu-ray-Wilson/dp/B00B17U2VS/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1399528406&sr=1-3&keywords=bachelorette

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