Amsterdam (2022)

Writer-director David O. Russell seems to be coasting along lately, to put it nicely. His films have become an excuse for an ensemble cast to put on some glad rags and have some fun together, but without saying anything of substance. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, not every film needs to be substantial, but it’s odd that they are still being presented as praiseworthy and interesting when they, sadly, are not. 

Maybe I am part of the problem, considering I gave American Hustle a pass and genuinely enjoyed Joy, neither of which were on a par with his better films. So this disappointment was probably inevitable, and I suspect many others will have felt the same way when they finally watched Amsterdam, a pretty, but ultimately hollow, distraction.

The plot is more convoluted than it needs to be, which is why I am not going to properly summarize it here. Let’s just say that a suspicious death alerts one or two people to the idea that certain individuals may be plotting to overthrow the US government. This puts the people (played by Christian Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie) in a lot of potential danger.

This material could have been done any number of ways, from tense thriller to farce, from straightforward historical drama to action movie, but Russell, in all his wisdom, decides to do just what he’s done before. You get some humour, you get a lot of drama, and you get a cast allowed to indulge themselves as long as the director is also happy with their work.

As for the cast, it’s more of a mixed bag than you might think. Bale doesn’t feel enjoyable in his main role, his character defined by the false glass eye he wears, but both Washington and Robbie improve every scene they are in, both avoiding that sensation of just repeating tics and tricks from their own back catalogue that Bale conveys. Zoe Saldaña is good in her small role, Robert De Niro is fun without being funny, and Timothy Olyphant brings the added bonus of, well, being Timothy Olyphant. If there is ever a film in which I don’t welcome the appearance of Olyphant then I want to be slapped repeatedly around the face until I see sense again. There are also supporting turns from Rami Malek, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift (just a cameo, really, but she’s decent), Alessandro Nivola, Matthias Schoenaerts, Anya Taylor-Joy, Michael Shannon, and Mike Myers.

The production design is very good, as are the wardrobe choices and the musical score, but this is a film that needed more than just the visual distractions and a couple of key performances to make it worthwhile. It needed a better-written, and better-performed, lead, and it needed a much better approach to the story, which is an interesting and intriguing tale. Instead, we get to once again look on as Russell and his cast appear to be enjoying some in-jokes that nobody else is privy to. To sum up . . . disappointing, but pretty.

4/10

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There's Something Wrong With The Children (2023)

I will admit to going into There’s Something Wrong With The Children with some trepidation. Although I had enjoyed previous films directed by Roxanne Benjamin, trust me when I tell you that she is someone that horror fans should be always looking out for, I wasn’t as familiar with the work of writers T. J. Cimfel and David White. It also didn’t help that the trailer made me think it was just an unofficial remake of The Children. And as for Amanda Crew (aka disobedient younger sister in Final Destination 3) now settling into movie roles that cast her as an onscreen mother, that will just never stop feeling odd to me while she still looks about 20.

Anyway, no need to worry, There’s Something Wrong With The Children is REALLY good. It’s an interesting and fun horror movie, but it also has an underlying message about the pressure that can be put on couples to have children, presenting a pretty compelling case for respecting the decision of those who choose not to have children.

Crew and Carlos Santos are the parents, Ellie and Thomas, spending some time away from the rest of the world with their kids, Lucy (Briella Guiza) and Spencer (David Mattle), and two close, and childless, friends, Margaret (Alisha Wainwright) and Ben (Zach Gilford). Ellie and Thomas obviously need a bit more time to themselves, which leads to Margaret and Ben babysitting for a night, but that doesn’t work out as planned. The kids head off into nearby woods alone and, when they reappear, something has changed. Spending some time messing around with Ben, who is taking medication for ongoing health issues, the kids eventually become more and more overt with their taunting and aggressive behaviour.

While it isn’t the most visually interesting horror movie, and the script allows viewers to stay a step or two ahead of the main characters, what you get here is a brilliant central idea that everyone involved fully commits to. This isn’t your typical “bad seed” movie, although that is the easiest label to put on it, because it sets things up in the first act with that clear and obvious divide between the parents and those without children. While focused on the horror, and on being entertaining, this is also a film that highlights the ridiculousness of a society that, for example, automatically assumes that those without parenting experience know nothing about the behaviour of children. It also pits the maternal/paternal instinct against one of self-preservation.

Benjamin helps herself a lot by assembling the right cast, setting aside the notion that Crew will forever look too young to play a parent (that’s just on me) and that Santos feels a bit underused. Wainwright and Gilford are involved in most of the best scenes, and both do good work, but young Guiza and Mattle have enormous fun being malicious little brats who start to behave more like animals as they establish their new power over adults they want to terrorize. 

I really liked this. It’s both a straightforward horror movie, albeit one with some added weirdness driving the plot, and a deliciously sly commentary on the way society seems to value the views of parents over the views of anyone else in so many different scenarios. I would be happy to hear that someone was currently working on a sequel script entitled “There’s Something Wrong With The Parents”, as long as Benjamin was back in the director’s chair for it.

8/10

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Prime Time: The Take AKA Bastille Day (2016)

If you have seen other films from director James Watkins then you have seen some decent films, particularly if you enjoy horror movies. As of today, The Take is the last film from Watkins, who has moved towards working in TV in the last few years. There may be a good reason for that. The Take (which you may have also seen, or heard of, under the alternate title of Bastille Day) isn’t very good.

Richard Madden plays Michael, a very talented thief, able to work his way through a crowd and dip into pockets to find passports and wallets. Spying an opportunity when he observes Zoe (Charlotte Le Bon) crying on some city steps, a bag unattended by her side. Michael lifts the bag, rifles through it, and then ditches it elsewhere. And that’s when it explodes. Zoe was part of a group aiming to cause tension and anarchy, but she was supposed to plant the bomb somewhere without anybody nearby, and the incident now puts a target on Michael’s back, with everyone assuming that he is part of the same terrorist group. The French authorities want to get their hands on him, but Sean Briar (Idris Elba) hopes to get to him first. He is supposed to apprehend Michael and hand him over in due course, but the situation quickly changes as Briar finds himself just as quickly targeted as the man in his custody. 

Elba and Madden can do good work when given the right material, and I will always give time to anything that the former is involved in, but they cannot do enough to make this worthwhile. There are one or two moments here and there, and there’s fun to be had watching Elba commit to fully to such a cliché-ridden role, but they are weighted down by the dire script and poor execution of the material.

Watkins, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Baldwin, isn’t suited to action thrillers. This is a film made by someone who has spent a year watching Taken 3 on repeat and reading “Action Movie Tropes For Dummies”. That’s a shame, particularly when the main premise feels like such a tantalizing one. Almost every opportunity is squandered here, from the tension and thrills that could have been created from Elba trying to pursue Madden to the disappointingly predictable real villains of the movie. The only surprise is how much eyeliner they put on Madden.

As for other cast members, they are equally weighted down by a screenplay that puts a pair of concrete boots on them before throwing them into water. Le Bon is left to look sad and vulnerable, Kelly Reilly is given a role that allows you to say “maybe this won’t be so bad, Kelly Reilly’s in it”, and Thierry Godard at least gets one or two decent moments on the way to an underwhelming finale that once again wastes the opportunity to make things more exciting.

I can imagine that many will be able to enjoy this as undemanding fun. It at least has decent pacing and one or two action beats that should entertain anyone after something familiar and comfortingly simplistic. I didn’t actively hate it while it was on. I just never enjoyed it as much as I wanted to.

4/10

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Unwelcome (2022)

Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) are a young couple who we see going through a terrible ordeal at the start of this movie. So when Jamie is informed that he has inherited a house in Ireland it seems as if things are looking up. There’s only one catch, explained to them by a local woman. An offering has to be left out every night for the little people. A bit of liver or some other raw meat, making it a blood offering. Maya and Jamie roll their eyes at this idea, but decide to go along with it. They have just been given a house, it’s the least they can do. And it may end up saving them when they end up inadvertently hiring the wrong family of builders to work on renovating their home.

Directed by Jon Wright, who once again worked with Mark Stay on the script (the two also co-wrote Robot Overlords), Unwelcome is a horror movie laced with moments of comedy that sadly fails to get the balance right. And it’s not as if Wright shouldn’t be able to handle the mix, given how well he did with the wonderful Grabbers. 

The problems start with the script, which spectacularly fails to give you anything that feels plausible, as well as making the main characters too annoying to root for. But you have to root for Maya because she’s pregnant. Okay, the themes of motherhood and protection run through the entire the film, but I still cannot help feeling that making a main character pregnant is an easy and lazy way to force viewers to be on their side.

Things aren’t helped by the weak acting from our leads. I have seen John-Kamen and Booth give decent performances in other works, but they are both quite poor in this, with the latter suffering from the script going too far to show his inability to be the protector that his partner needs. In fact, almost every decision that is made by Booth’s character makes any situation worse, and I spent a lot of the movie hoping to see him be killed off, which I don’t think was the intention of the film-makers. The antagonists do a much better job though, headed up by a fun Colm Meaney. He is the patriarch (“call me Daddy”) and has fun as he weaves between being jovial and menacing. His children are played by Kristian Nairn, Chris Walley, and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, with the latter being the best of the bunch, and getting away with a bit more inappropriate behaviour as she toys with the new man in the village. Niamh Cusack also has a small role, but she is leading a supporting cast of players who all seem to have been pulled from the “to be sure, to be sure, shamrocks and shillelaghs, every green-eyed Irish stereotype casting company”. The dialogue and character types populating the rest of the movie will have many cringing with embarrassment.

There’s a 5-10 minute segment in the third act that hints at how good this could have been. It feels fun, there are some entertaining bits of bloodshed, and the effects work well enough for what the film wants to show. That’s all you get though, and that glimpse of something better just makes the rest of the film all the worse. It’s really bad. I sincerely hope that Wright gets back on track with whatever he directs next. 

3/10

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Mubi Monday: Wajib (2017)

This tale of a father and son reconnecting, and disagreeing, as they travel around Nazareth, delivering wedding invites by hand to friends and family (as is tradition), is an interesting spin on very familiar material. It’s basically a road movie, but one with much more substance constantly running underneath the main narrative strand.

Mohammad Bakri and Saleh Bakri are the real father and son playing the onscreen father and son here. Saleh plays Shadi, a young man who has spent a fair amount of time away from his hometown. He has a slightly different look and vibe, complete with arguably cooler wardrobe choices and a manbun atop his head, but his anger at the situation in his homeland remains the same, especially when it comes to people he thinks have been convinced to spy and inform on their neighbours. Mohammad is the father, Abu-Shadi, and he may share some of his son’s concerns, maybe, but he knows how he needs to conduct his life in his hometown, being unable to get away and start over.

Directed by Annemarie Jacir, who also wrote the screenplay with Ossama Bawardi, the beauty of Wajib, in a way, is in the lack of major events. This is a film about Palestinian people that shows how they are defined by their homeland, yet also keeps showing how they are much more than that. Their conversations, arguments, and fears are tainted by where they live, but their everyday life is often the same as everyday life for all of us. On the surface.

Both of the Bakris are very good in the lead roles, carrying the film with great screen presence and natural chemistry between them, proving what a good decision it was to cast a real father and son. I won’t name the other cast members, some get a few seconds while others get a minute or two, because, as good as everyone is, they are never the real focus of the scene. The focus is a father and son, both of whom are now in very different places, mentally, but both also striving to meet in a middle ground that they can both see, even if they don’t want to spend too much time there.

Unlikely to be a top viewing choice for anyone wanting a standard comedy drama, or a standard road movie (this is no John Hughes script, as much as I also like those for what they deliver), Wajib is a peek into the lives of people who are often portrayed in more extreme circumstances. It’s an important snapshot of normality, and normality, if done right, can be just as effective onscreen as the fantastical and cinematic. Wajib is a special film, and it becomes one by not striving to show anything traditionally defined as special.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

I often get in trouble for my stance on military life, and the automatic respect afforded to those in uniform who are enforcing the will of politicians and rich businessmen (soldiers and police, mainly). I do respect individuals who have made efforts to do their best for others in a role that sometimes asks them to forget that they are encountering other humans in their main interactions, but it's not automatically given. Just look at the state of the world right now - note, for future reference, we're currently just over a year on from Russia invading Ukraine and having us all worried that it will end with an act of absolute lunacy - and think of how different it would be if the bravest soldiers refused to act automatically on orders given to them. That might hurry things along to the use of long-range, even nuclear, weaponry, you might think. Yes, but think of how much braver someone needs to be to refuse a dictatorial maniac who wants someone helping him to launch missiles. I believe they would know that it would mean the end of their life, and every subsequent next person in line would need to be even braver, but doing the right thing is rarely the same as taking the easy option. 

We see the best that soldiers can do when they help deliver emergency aid, when they present themselves as examples of the best and kindest kind of patriots. We don't see the best of them when they're in battle, particularly when that battle is due to the greed of one or two madmen who want to move borders and swallow up the assets of those they can overcome. Films have always struggled to show this, the dehumanisation of men that turns them into more effective fighting soldiers and the insanity and horror of throwing those who have barely reached adulthood into a mincer, meat to be slopped into the blood-soaked and hazy hellscape of a battlefield. Some have worked better than others, but it's almost impossible to make a war tale both cinematic and suitably condemnatory of the whole situation.

All Quiet On The Western Front (based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, and filmed a number of times before, although I have sadly neither read the source material or seen any other film version yet) gives it a better go than most. I was halfway through this 148-minute movie when I wondered if I could make it to the end. Not that the pace was dragging, nor was it weak in any department. I was finding it too difficult to watch. The constant mounting of horrors that couldn't be escaped, the cacophony of weaponry, the excruciating pain of the deaths (whether in the sheer volume or the individual moments showing how long it can take). It was all becoming unbearable, despite clearly being nowhere close to the experience of actually being a soldier put into those situations. In terms of reminding you of what it must take to be in the midst of battle, few films, if any, come close to making the same impact as All Quiet On The Western Front. And, yes, that includes the best war films you are already thinking of right now.

Viewers follow the journey of Paul (Felix Kammerer) as he signs up for an active role in the military, faking a signature to pretend that he has the permission of his parents. There are one or two moments of good cheer and camaraderie, and then the reality starts to sink in. Other characters come and go, and you might already suspect why that is, but Paul goes through a wide variety of wartime experiences: battling a physical enemy, battling hunger, and battling to hold on to his nerve as he has to force himself through one trauma after another.

Director Edward Berger, who also wrote the superb script with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell, has delivered something here that I think might be as timely as it is flawless. It is not only deserving of all the praise it has been getting, it's worth more. This is another very strong contender for the best film of 2022, which means I have to slightly rearrange my list AGAIN, and I fear that I would just be searching for unnecessary adjectives trying to heap all of my praise upon it.

The script is structured well to show some main characters, to underline relevant moments, and to move between the fighting and the politics (Daniel Brühl playing the main character trying to negotiate peace with the French, realising that the German death toll makes the ongoing situation unsustainable). The camerawork and effects throughout are astonishing, putting viewers in the midst of the action without becoming too disorientating, or feeling too focused on the technical trickery of the shots and onscreen content. And the music by Volker Bertelmann . . . well, it's very possibly my favourite movie score from the past few years. Stunning stuff.

Kammerer is a great lead, especially for the jarring effect of his youthful appearance juxtaposed against what is being asked of him, but nobody in the cast does a bad job. I'll namecheck Albrecht Shuch, Aaron Hilmer, Moritz Klaus, Adrian Grünewald, Edin Hasanovic, and Brühl, but an effective depiction of wartime needs hundreds of people to show the soldiers being fed through the war machine, and this has a very lengthy cast list that I wish I could just copy and paste here. 

War is hell. War is madness. War is used as the solution to problems that don't exist before madmen create them. And it's worrying that so many people keep forgetting the lessons that are right there in our history, not even ancient history. So it looks as if war is a mistake we are doomed to repeat for a long time to come, or until someone does the unthinkable. Before that happens, and apologies for not ending on a cheerier note, everyone should make time to watch All Quiet On The Western Front. 

10/10

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Shudder Saturday: Spoonful Of Sugar (2022)

Between the two of them, director Mercedes Bryce Morgan and writer Leah Saint Marie have amassed a considerable body of work. Most of their films seem to be shorts/music videos, but there are also some TV movies in the mix. You wouldn't guess that from watching Spoonful Of Sugar, however, which is a horrible and unentertaining mess of a film.

Morgan Saylor plays Millicent, a young woman who starts a job as nanny for young Johnny (Danilo Crovetti). Johnny has a number of severe allergies, all explained to Millicent by his strained mother, Rebecca (Kat Foster). Although present, Johnny's father (Jacob, played by Myko Olivier) seems more focused on recapturing the days when he had a much more active and exciting sex life than helping to care for his sickly child. Hired without being asked too many questions about her lack of experience, or her own medical situation (as she is currently taking prescribed LSD because that is what the film requires), Millicent is soon creating tension in the household while developing a worryingly close connection to her young charge.

I can see what Morgan and Marie were aiming for here, I think. If Spoonful Of Sugar leaned further into hallucinations and surrealism then it might be worth a watch. If everything we saw was through the eyes of Millicent, and we knew that she couldn't always trust her senses, then the concept may have worked. That's not the way the film is presented though. The scenes with Millicent front and centre work the best, and there's a great early moment when she is talking to her doctor (Keith Powell) while keeping an eye on a lively, dismembered, finger moving around the room. Nothing else works though, and viewers will struggle to care about anyone, or anything, on the way to a punchline that would have worked much better in a more satisfying movie.

Saylor does well in her role. She's certainly the best presence onscreen, weaving between her mask of sanity and her unhinged potential threat to those around her. Foster and Olivier, on the other hand, aren't good. They're just not giving anything decent to work with though, the former being shown as constantly tense and the latter just trying to retain his ability to emanate some alpha male sex appeal bullshit. As for Crovetti, he is somehow both more and less annoying than he could be, depending on the scene.

Having seen her in one or two other movie roles, Saylor remains an interesting actress to keep an eye on. It's just a shame that I've not yet seen her in a movie that feels worthy of her talent. I hope that changes soon. She's the main reason to give this a go. Morgan and Marie are probably pleased with the end result, having clearly set out to make a trippy and strange psychological thriller that riffs on both bad babysitter movies and the "[insert noun here] from hell" subgenre. 

If you really want an experience similar to watching this, but without wasting too much time, then I highly recommend instead seeking out, and listening to, "Babysitters On Acid", a superb song by Lunachicks that genuinely delivers a better atmosphere and story in 4 minutes than this does in 90.

3/10

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Women Talking (2022)

Written and directed by Sarah Polley, based on a book by Miriam Toews that was based on a real-life incident, Women Talking is the heavy-hitting Best Picture nominee that I was least looking forward to watching. It felt like the subject matter would be too grim, and the presentation of the premise (summed up by the title, it is essentially just women talking for most of the runtime) didn’t cry out to me as something cinematic. But I have been wrong before, and I suspected that Women Talking would be worth the time and emotional investment, even if it wouldn’t be high up on my “best films of 2022” list.

I may have to wait until I one day muster the strength to revisit this, but the obvious “surprise” that I should reveal now is that Women Talking WOULD actually end up on my “best films of 2022” list. It’s an incredible and impressive work, and easily the best directorial work yet from Polley.

I should provide a bit more information about the plot. The setting is a small, isolated, religious community. The women in that community are horrified when it is revealed that many of them have been drugged and raped by the men. They have to gather together to discuss their options. They can stay and do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. And they only have limited time to decide, while the men of the community are away to help the rapists avoid any serious repercussions. The rest of the film shows the women debating two of the three choices, whether to stay or leave, and they are helped in their debate and discussion by one man who is still trustworthy and supportive.

Although showing a horrific situation specific to a certain setting, Women Talking uses the premise to inevitably show the difficulties that face any woman stuck in an abusive situation. The variety of viewpoints, all from women considering their own situations, show the full range of emotions and thoughts that would probably go through the mind of any one woman finding themselves in this awful situation.

The focus is very much on the dialogue here, in terms of both individual lines and exchanges between people of opposing views, and Polley helps herself no end by assembling a cast of talent who all rise to the challenging material. Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, and Judith Ivey (my personal favourite of the nominal leads) are all given at least one moment to metaphorically punch viewers in the gut, Ben Whishaw is very lovely and sweet as the man helping them to gather their thoughts and make a final decision, and there’s a small role for Frances McDormand that allows her to make a strong impression with only a few minutes of screentime. Others worth mentioning are August Winter (playing someone transgender who provides yet another interesting nuance to the ongoing conversation), Michelle McLeod, Sheila McCarthy, and Shayla Brown, all helping to show more and more ways in which the lives of the women have been impacted over the years by the behaviour of the men.

As weighty and dialogue-heavy as this is, Polley excels at knowing how to treat the material onscreen. We’re shown the aftermath of horrific events, not the abuse itself, and there’s enough movement to stop it from feeling like a stage play, which could so easily have been the case. A lot of scenes are visually drab, as you might expect with a film about this kind of community, but moments of sunshine make infrequent appearances, providing welcome respite from the pain and sadness. I would like to read the Toews book one day, but this feels like a great achievement in how it has been moved from the page to the screen.

Women Talking may not be a film that you want to rush out to see, but it’s a strong and confident work of art. And you might find yourself considering a repeat viewing of it as soon as the end credits roll. I certainly did.

9/10

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The Whale (2022)

I tend to like the films of Darren Aronofsky, even if just for the visuals, and The Whale is a film I was happy to see provide a resurgence for Brendan Fraser, an actor that I (as well as many other people) have always had a soft spot for. A lot of people were quick to praise it, quick to praise Fraser, and it seemed like I was going to find plenty to enjoy here, putting aside the ongoing debate about actors wearing “fat suits”.

I didn’t enjoy The Whale. It has a couple of big problems, and the fat suit is the least of them (although I should note here that I view those items as I view any other make up or wardrobe choices made to help turn any actor into a character, personally). 

Written for the screen by Samuel D. Hunter, adapting his own stage play, the biggest problem is the script. This tale, of a morbidly obese man (Charlie, played by Fraser) looking to reconnect with his daughter (Ellie, played by Sadie Sink) as he searches for something honest and real before his heart gives out, just resonates throughout with an inauthenticity that would make the central character belt out a primal scream. It also has a message at the centre of it that feels like it could have been written by any disenchanted teenager. 

Aronofsky feels redundant in his role, failing to bring much to the table to stop this from feeling like the filmed stage play it is. We rarely leave the confines of Charlie’s home, and there are too few flourishes to make it feel worth actually being presented as a film. Just set up one or two cameras and present a raw, “live”, version of the play. That might have been better. It might have even rendered the use of the fat suit unnecessary.

Fraser is good, and I am happy for the praise he has been getting, but his performance is supported by the make up. Ty Simpkins does well in a few scenes, playing a stranger who enters Charlie’s life at quite a strange time, and Samantha Morton delivers her usual greatness with her all-too-brief screentime (playing Charlie’s ex-partner, and the mother of Ellie). But the best performances come from Sink, a mix of resentment, sass, and intelligence, and Hong Chau, playing Liz, a woman who is trying to help Charlie, despite him not really caring about his own quality of life. Sink and Chau are the highlights of the whole film, and I wish their performances were a larger part of the conversation during this award season, but nobody does bad work, despite working with a pretty bad script.

I know that Aronofsky isn’t exactly known for his subtlety. He is a director who works best when delivering a powerful message through a selection of powerful visuals. I can see why The Whale appealed to him, but I think he made the wrong choice. This needed either more fantastical imagery to distract from the irritating simplicity of the writing or it needed a director willing to strip it down to the bare bones of a naked performance piece.

A film that is saved, if not elevated, by the main performances, The Whale misses so many opportunities to say something really worthwhile. The people involved ensures that many will see it, and many will love it. I would be very surprised if it is well-remembered more than a decade from now.

5/10

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Prime Time: Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)

There are some titles that just grab you. Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is one of them. When I saw this during some time spent once again browsing the internet for my next viewing choice, I knew I had to check it out. Seeing the cast also helped, with roles here for Shelley Winters, Ralph Richardson, and Lionel Jeffries, as well as quite a few other familiar faces.

Winters plays the titular character, although her name is actually Mrs. Forrest. Having survived both her husband and her young daughter, Mrs. Forrest isn’t in possession of every single one of her marbles, but that doesn’t stop her from doing some good deeds, with an annual tradition being her meal and party for a group of randomly-selected orphans from a nearby home. But the latest visitors feature a young girl (Katy, played by Chloe Franks) who seems to resemble Mrs. Forrest’s daughter, which ensures that Mrs. Forrest keeps trying to give her extra attention. Something doesn’t seem right, and Katy’s bother, Christopher (Mark Lester), suspects that Mrs. Forrest is a witch who means to harm the children.

Directed by Curtis Harrington, who seemed to spend the ‘60s and ‘70s helming many films in this vein (his previous feature is titled What’s The Matter With Helen?), and written by David Osborn, Robert Blees, and Jimmy Sangster, this is a mix of character study, melodrama, and psychological thriller that manages to do a good job with every individual aspect being blended into the narrative. It’s also quite different from what you might expect, with viewers being wrong-footed by the first half of the movie before realising exactly who might end up being painted as heroes and villains.

Winters is very good in her role, playing a typically warm-hearted and loving matriarchal figure. She gets to overact occasionally, but that really helps with what is sometimes a twisted panto atmosphere. Lester and Franks are both very good, making great use of their angelic little faces as they scheme to escape someone they view as a major threat, and both Richardson and Jeffries excel in small roles that still give them enough time to make their usual strong impressions. The other person to mention is Michael Gothard, a member of the household staff who plans to get himself a much bigger payday than usual from his vulnerable employer.

There are many other ways this could have gone. The whole thing could have been much darker, it could have been played comedically, it could have been a more straightforward game of cat and mouse (and it’s worth noting the extra satisfaction of seeing Winters cast in a central role in something that seems to subvert The Night Of The Hunter), but I am pleased with the strange delight that we got. I may not recommend it to many people, but I hope others give it a try, and some may enjoy it as much as I did.

7/10

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Knock At The Cabin (2023)

Taken on a purely superficial level, director M. Night Shyamalan has kept to his usual remit over the past few years. He has delivered thrillers that are centered around an intriguing idea, pleasing or displeasing viewers with his approach to executing the material. Dive under the surface though, which is easy to do when the surface level doesn’t seem anywhere near as emotional or complex as his best work, and you start to see some worrying ideas (almost propaganda) at the heart of them. I am not here to point these aspects out to everyone, but I do think that Shyamalan is now focusing on his subtextual messaging ahead of straightforward storytelling, which makes it necessary to start acknowledging where he seems to be expending more of his energy.

Knock At The Cabin is a tale of four people who arrive at a cabin and request entry. They are headed up by Leonard (Dave Bautista). The people already in the cabin are Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their adopted daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), and they are blissfully unaware that there is an impending apocalypse, apparently. Leonard and his cohorts have had visions. They don’t want to harm people, but they have been asked to knock on this cabin door and ask those inside to make a sacrifice. If they can choose a loved one to sacrifice then they can save the whole world. That’s hard to believe though, obviously, and the film is essentially a lengthy dialogue in which the believers try to convert the non-believers to their cause.

Adapting a book by Paul Tremblay, Shyamalan and co-writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman certainly have their work cut out for them, dealing with an implausible scenario that is mostly confined to the one location. They give it an admirable attempt, helped by a cast that deliver on the acting front, but there just isn’t enough mixed in to the plot to distract viewers from the ridiculousness of the central idea. At the risk of moving further away from the source material, this needed to have characters more fleshed out, more debate about the choice to be made, and more ambiguity in the third act.

Shyamalan directs competently, happily keeping viewers in the cabin with the main characters, and I was pleased that he didn’t require his cast to deliver some of their worst performances this time around (as he did with Old), but he doesn’t elevate the middling script. This would arguably work better as a stage play, allowing a focus on the ideas and conversation, but Shyamalan wants a film. He manages to do that, only just, but the end result, if being ranked, sits almost right in the middle of his filmography.

Bautista is quite brilliant in his role, a gentle giant who is as sad about his actions as he is determined to carry them out. He is flanked by Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Abby Quinn, who all do good work. It’s a shame that they aren’t given more screentime, but Bautista is the spokesperson for the group, and that’s how he ends up being the most impressive onscreen presence. Groff and Aldridge are also very good, required to spend most of the movie in a state of fear, and young Cui is a very sweet little girl that you hope will be kept safe from any harm, be it interpersonal or global.

I enjoyed this while it was on. The cast make it work, often being good enough to improve dialogue that could have seemed goofy and ridiculous. That’s all there is to it though. It’s an acting showpiece, directed by someone who seems too distracted to make the most of what could have been a much more impressive, and much more tense, killer thriller premise.

6/10

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Mubi Monday: Gregory's Girl (1980)

There are some films that you immediately love, some films you grow to love, and some films that you not only grow to love, but also grow to appreciate rewatching, because of everything it delivers throughout multiple viewings. Gregory’s Girl isn’t a film I immediately warmed to, mainly because I saw it before I had gone through a number of moments that would make it more relatable. I grew to love it though, and every subsequent viewing has made me love it a little bit more.

It focuses on Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair), a Scottish teenager going through the usual trials and tribulations of any schoolboy in the 1980s. His main interests seem to be football and girls, which leads to him feeling very conflicted when it looks as if he might lose his place on the school football team to Dorothy (Dee Hepburn). Dorothy is both attractive and very good at football, but will she take a liking to Gregory? Will Gregory, meanwhile, notice that Susan (Clare Grogan) has taken a liking to him?

Feeling both wonderfully surreal and yet beautifully observed and authentic, Gregory’s Girl is one of many brilliant works from writer-director Bill Forsyth that uses specific characters and locations to tell a story that appeals to a high percentage of viewers. We may not have all grown up as a teenager in Scotland (okay, I did, but I appreciate that many others didn’t), but we’ve all navigated those tricky years of trying to engage with members of the opposite sex while also being absolutely terrified of them. Some manage it better than others, but it’s a scary time.

While Sinclair, Hepburn, and Grogan all do well in their roles, and are supported in scenes by equally  wonderful turns from Robert Buchanan, Caroline Guthrie, and Allison Forster, Forsyth allows time for some of the older cast members - Jake D’Arcy, Chic Murray, Dave Anderson, and Maeve Watt - to get involved with some of the highlights of the film. If I start making scenes then I won’t stop, but one early treat is the conversation that Gregory has with his dry-witted father during a driving lesson (Gregory is outside the car, having caused the young man that his father is teaching to have to conduct an unplanned emergency stop).

Whether you’re watching a young boy waddle around the school dressed as a penguin, learning about the amount of cornflakes that are driven daily along the busiest road shown in the film, or just watching a young man put his school shirt back on before applying deodorant to the material beneath his armpits, Gregory’s Girl is full of treats from start to finish. Local Hero may be the film that many view as Forsyth’s best work (helped by the gorgeous location and that beautiful score), but it’s Gregory’s Girl that does the better job of mixing film moments with plenty of details that resonate with authenticity. The only reason I don’t rate it as a perfect film is because I eagerly await what extra details I will notice during my next viewing.

Great performances all round, a script that may well be perfect, and unfussy direction from Forsyth. It may seem very dated now, in some ways, but Gregory’s Girl has themes at the heart of it that are, for better or for worse, quite timeless. And it makes me SO glad that I never have to be a teenager again.

9/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Strays (2023)

As much as I love the internet at times, and have been positive about it here a few times recently, it also manages to occasionally depress me. Take The Strays, for example. It's a film that leads to an interesting, thought-provoking, ending. It's not ambiguous though. So it is disheartening to see a number of articles all appearing with headlines that claim to be helpful in explaining the ending. If you need the ending of The Strays explained then you aren't old enough to have watched the movie. I'm not being rude. The ending of the film is THAT unambiguous. 

Let's begin at the beginning though. Ashley Madekwe plays a black woman we see leaving a bad situation. She has placed a note on the fridge door, an excuse buying her some time, and she's gone. Years later, Neve (the named that Madekwe's character is now using) seems to have a perfect life. She has a loving husband, Ian (Justin Salinger), a teenage son and daughter (played by Samuel Small and Maria Almeida, respectively), and a prime position of authority and respect in her community. It seems to come at a price, however, as Neve works hard to cover up aspects of her appearance that highlight her race, and she becomes more and more unnerved by people who seem to be very interested in observing her well-maintained "perfect" life.

The feature debut of writer-director Nathaniel Martello-White, The Strays is a fascinating and brilliant look at race, class, and unconscious bias. It's such a slow burn that viewers may not realise just how affecting it is until the very last scenes, but it's meticulously put together in a way that maximises the impact of that finale. There are a couple of obvious big movie touchstones, by directors as diverse as Douglas Sirk and Michael Haneke, but it does a great job of blending a couple of familiar central ideas into something that feels new and fresh. The commentary is clear throughout, but not in a way that gets in the way of the unfolding plot, which Martello-White presents in a non-chronological way to allow for some playfulness before things get darker and darker on the way to the end credits.

Madekwe is so good here that I'll definitely be looking forward to seeing her in other lead roles. I'm not familiar with anything else that she's done, as far as I'm aware, but she's quite flawless here. Salinger, Small, and Almeida are all very good, and all believably alarmed by the potential breakdown of Madekwe's character. Then there are the two characters played by Bukky Bakray and Jorden Myrie, perhaps "the strays" of the title, or perhaps the title means much more than that. Both Bakray and Myrie are effectively unnerving, and yet both get a chance to explain why they are acting the way they are acting, which makes them more interesting than the kind of mysterious strangers you could find in films with a similar third act to this one.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone looking for easy entertainment. This isn't a standard thriller or chiller. It's a heady mix that creates tension from the constant nervousness and insecurity that viewers see being controlled (sometimes) by the main character. I'd also like to temper my praise with some criticism though, because The Strays is sometimes turned into a tougher viewing experience, a bit of an endurance test in places, than it needs to be. Everything is just right, technically, but there are one or two strands that are stretched close to breaking point, with the performances doing enough to compensate for Martello-White's misplaced idea of exactly how far he can/should push things. 

Ultimately worth your time, and the ending (that ending that doesn't need explained) is good enough to underline and amplify everything that the film has said throughout the rest of runtime, The Strays is an impressively confident feature debut that marks out Martello-White as an intelligent and exciting new director to keep a very close eye on.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: Nocebo (2022)

Director Lorcan Finnegan has been delivering quality movies full of strangeness for a few years now. I wasn't a big fan of Without Name, but I did like the wild ride that was Vivarium. I also recommend the short film he did just over a decade ago, Foxes. Knowing that he was once again working with long-time collaborator Garret Shanley, who has been his main collaborator as far back as that aforementioned short, and that there was a central role for Eva "I don't really do sane" Green, I was optimistic about this one.

Green plays Christine, a fashion designer who has spent some time suffering from a mysterious illness. It makes her home life difficult, where she lives with her husband, Felix (Mark Strong), and their young daughter, Bobs (Billie Gadsdon). So everyone should be relieved when some home help arrives in the shape of Diana (Chai Fonacier), a Filipino woman that Christine cannot recall actually hiring. Diana seems to be able to help Christine, but Felix suspects that she's up to something. As the story is fleshed out, viewers also start to wonder about her, but it's hard to keep track of what the truth is, especially as Christine suffers from episodes where she cannot trust her own mind.

Standard stuff in many ways, especially when you think of the classic psychological thrillers that are centred on a "hysterical" woman, Nocebo is a solid script by Shanley that is turned into a slippery and twisty fever-dream by Finnegan, making use of nightmare imagery mixed with elements that are shown to be very deliberate choices by the time the grand finale comes around, and what a finale it is. I can understand people being put off by the confusion of the middle section, a lot of ambiguity and subterfuge without any apparent motivation or endgame in sight, but I'd encourage everyone to simply enjoy the oppressive and disorientating atmosphere on the way to a very satisfying payoff.

Green does so well in the kind of role that you'd expect her to do so well in, allowed to occasionally lean hard into the kind of physical acting and raw emotional outbursts that she has shown us a few times already. Strong is a good choice for the husband role, being an anchor trying to keep his wife safe during turbulent times, but also bringing with him the baggage of his filmography. I am always happy to see Strong appear onscreen . . . but trusting him is another matter entirely. Fonacier is excellent, acting overly sweet and delicate for a lot of the runtime, but showing a steely determination and strong will when she has to. As for Gadsdon, she gets better as the film allows her to move from bratty child to understandably perplexed and worried child.

Although I wish that this went further, with both the scares and the thematic layering, there's another part of me that thinks, yes, both Finnegan and Shanley knew exactly what they were doing. That is why they made this movie, and why I am just sitting here writing up my thoughts on it. I still prefer the more extreme strangeness of Vivarium, only slightly, but Nocebo is another excellent film that allows Finnegan to remain someone that film fans should always be valuing for his growing body of thrills and horror. 

7/10

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The Munsters (2022)

Yes, the trailer for The Munsters was terrible. Yes, having Rob Zombie at the helm meant that many people were wary of the project. Yes, I knew I would have to watch it one day anyway. That day was today (theoretically . . . reviews are sometimes scheduled a long time after particular viewings). While I would never class this as a new favourite, and while I wouldn't put it at the top of any ranked list of Rob Zombie movies, I had much more fun with The Munsters than expected. Love or hate it, Zombie has delivered something more in line with the spirit and tone of the TV show than any other attempts to reboot or revamp it over the years. 

The film is split into roughly three sections. First of all, Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) seems unable to find someone decent to fall in love with, despite the advice of her father, The Count (Daniel Roebuck). Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang (Richard Brake) and his assistant, Floop (Jorge Garcia), are busy working on what the doctor hopes will be an astonishing creation. That creation turns out to be Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips), a bit less astonishing than hoped, due to the fact that his piecemeal body has been reanimated with a less-than-stellar brain implanted in his skull. The second section has Lily and Herman falling in love, all thanks to Herman charming her with his mix of rockstar attitude and entertainingly lame "dad jokes". Third, it's time for The Munsters to find a new home, and fans may already know the address they will end up making their own.

This isn't necessarily going to win over people who dislike the films of Rob Zombie, and it's not guaranteed to change your mind if you decided to give it a chance after hating the awful trailer, but I'll take a chance on saying that fans of The Munsters may be pleasantly surprised by how much this gets right. The cast, with one notable exception, feels pretty perfect, helped by superb make-up on everyone, and the script is unashamedly cheesy and creaky in a way that emulates the TV show without being slavishly obsessive about trying to deliver a carbon copy.

There's plenty of people ready to criticise Sheri Moon Zombie, a woman who has her husband to thank for the great majority of her acting career, but she's not actually a bad fit for the role of Lily. She makes some strong choices in her performance, a lot of hand movement being the most obvious, and she's the weakest of the leads, but she works quite well. I also enjoyed her small secondary role, as I enjoyed the secondary roles for Phillips (who actually plays three characters here), Roebuck, and Brake. Moving from the weakest to the strongest, Roebuck is so good as The Count that you can imagine Al Lewis giving his blessing to the performance. Phillips arguably has the toughest task, nobody can ever truly replace the beloved Fred Gwynne, but his version of Herman Munster is an enjoyable mix of the familiar - his childishness and sense of humour - and the ever-so-slightly new - the performer - that still embodies the spirit of Herman. Brake has a lot of fun (particularly as Count Orlock, in some scenes throughout the first act that are some of the funniest moments in the film), Jorge Garcia and Sylvester McCoy are the kind of assistants/employees you expect to be alongside these characters, and there are some enjoyable cameos from Catherine Schell, Cassandra Peterson, and a few others you really have to keep your eyes, and/or ears, open for.

Feeling more like a TV movie than a, well, non-TV movie, The Munsters cannot ever make you forget that you're watching something quite cheap. That's fine though. Adapting the show into a film doesn't mean throwing money at it. Zombie and co. make use of well-dressed stages, plenty of accessories you would find in any Spirit Halloween store, and a nice selection of brightly-coloured lights, including some fun neon signage (and I'm referring to Count Orlock again). Everyone involved knows that they're not trying to make a classic slice of cinema. They're trying to make a Munsters movie. While not getting every single decision right, they largely succeed.

Would I watch this over the original TV show? No. Would I rush to rewatch this? Also no. I would rewatch it though, and I suspect I will enjoy it a bit more during a repeat viewing, especially knowing that I don't have to worry about anything being as bad as that trailer implied.

6/10

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Blood And Bone (2009)

Sometimes there is an upside to scrolling the internet and viewing random video clips. Yes, there are the movie snippets that are appropriated by people who try to present them as some real incident with an underlying moral message. Yes, TikTok is full of fake laugh tracks and people filming themselves reacting to other popular videos. But sometimes you see something good, whether it is a clip of sloths being washed and dried, a very gnarly bit of skateboarding, or a moment showing how hard Michael Jai White can kick various people in the face. When I saw that last clip, a highlight from Blood And Bone, I knew that I had to see the movie. I was already a fan of White, and this film looked awesome.

Directed by Ben Ramsey and written by Michael Andrews, two men who seem to have peaked with this violent action flick (and that isn’t a backhanded compliment, this is a hell of a peak), Blood And Bone tells the tale of an ex-con named Isaiah Bone (White). Bone ends up getting involved in a dangerous underground fighting scene, guided from fight to fight by a friendly hype man, Pinball (Dante Basco). Bone’s strength and skill soon get him noticed by James (Eamonn Walker), a middle-man crime figure who would rather be positioned higher. James thinks he can make good use of Bone, which may be exactly what Bone wants.

I could namecheck a lot of action movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s, anything throwing a tough, but noble (sort of), hero in to a fighting tournament, but any action movie fan will already know the main reference points. One or two of them involve Jean-Claude Van Damme. All you need to know is that Blood And Bone easily ranks alongside any of those other movies. It’s well-paced, the storyline does enough to give a purpose to the fighting without feeling as if it is keeping viewers away from the violence for too long, and White easily looks capable of every move he delivers.

There are a number of highlights dotted throughout White’s filmography, but this is definitely one of his best. The film uses him in the best way, showcasing his martial arts prowess and allowing him to effortlessly fill every scene he’s in with his watchability and forceful presence. Walker is a great kingpin, and you know that he will be ready to change the rules any time a fight looks to be going the way he doesn’t want it to go. Basco adds some humour, there’s an entertaining small role for Julian Sands, and Nona Gaye and Michelle Belegrin play women who both end up admiring our muscular hero as they realise that he is up to more than just trying to beat people up. Bob Sapp is the other performer worth mentioning, playing a huge fighting opponent named Hammerman. These movies always need huge fighters who feel like a viable threat, and both Sapp and Walker do that in different ways.

There’s nothing here that is special, not in cinematic terms, and those not after action movie thrills might not want to rush to this one, but, and this is a big but, the fights are frequent, and the choreography and shot choice maximizes the visceral entertainment of each encounter. So if you want a film full of superb fights then this is one for you. And if you’re a big fan of Michael Jai White then you should already have this one marked off your list. It isn’t a great film, in many ways, but in other ways . . . it’s a GREAT film.

8/10

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Prime Time: Shock Waves (1977)

If ever there was a film I should have seen before being in my mid-40s then Shock Waves is it. Underwater Nazi zombies that seem to be powered by their goggles. A big “ghost ship”. Peter Cushing in a small role. A lead turn from Brooke Adams. There’s nothing here that I dislike.

The feature directorial debut of Ken Wiederhorn, who only has a handful of features to his name (although all of them seem designed to appeal to me), Shock Waves is fully explained by my first paragraph. You should already know whether or not you want to see it. It’s ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous AND well handled.

Things begin with some general spookiness. A boat is struck by another, larger, boat, during the night and everyone is bemused the next morning by the disappearance of the captain. Heading off to a nearby small island, because action is required due to the small boat being damaged, people start to wander around and get themselves noticed by a threat they could never have imagined - underwater Nazi zombies.

Aside from the small roles for Cushing and John Carradine (as the captain who goes awol), the main recognisable star here, for most people, will be Adams, playing a woman named Rose. Adams has to be bemused and afraid for most of the runtime, Cushing provides the explanation for all of the horror, and everyone else is there to be stalked and (possibly) murdered by the waterlogged baddies.

The screenplay, credited to John Harrison and Wiederhorn, works much better than you would think. The central idea is treated in a straightforward way that allows the movie to avoid feeling campy, and the expository moments are kept to a minimum, leaving plenty of time and space for the effective sequences that show characters being terrorised.

Alongside the script and eerie visuals, and kudos for keeping the eerie atmosphere throughout a film set largely on a sun-bathed island, there is an enjoyably odd score from Richard Einhorn. The entire soundscape helps to maintain the consistent spookiness, and I will keep my ears open for the other soundtracks that Einhorn worked on (not many, but he did work on Don’t Go In The House, which I will revisit one day with the aim of being more attentive to the score, and fans of Blood Rage and The Prowler will already know some of his work).

As odd as the premise is, I struggle to think of any part of Shock Waves that I disliked. It’s a brilliant little horror movie, and one that I suspect many people, like myself, may have decided not to prioritise on any viewing list. If you are one of those people, please change that situation. You won’t (or shouldn’t) regret it.

8/10

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Long Time Dead (2002)

Some days I remember the younger me as an idiot. That is true in many different ways (and the younger me can be the me of decades ago or the me from the last time I drank alcohol), but I am sometimes reminded of it unexpectedly. Take Long Time Dead, for example. This is a British horror film I was looking forward to revisiting, having enjoyed it on VHS when it was first released and remembering it fondly over the intervening years. I believe I have probably mentioned it whenever people have asked for lesser-known horror gems. So getting to rewatch it was a treat. Then I remembered that the younger me was an idiot. Long Time Dead is not good.

Directed by Marcus Adams, someone with only a small selection of features interspersed throughout the many music videos he has helmed, Long Time Dead has a decent, and simple, idea at the heart of it. A group of relatively young and carefree people play around with a home-made ouija set-up (using an upturned glass and letters written on pieces of paper) and unleash something supernatural and dangerous. The problems start with the mix of annoying characters, but things get worse when the writers, and it took about four people to write this thing, decide to complicate their story by making the leads suspect that the killer entity could be a djinn.

Joe Absolom, Marsha Thomason, Lara Belmont, Melanie Gutteridge, James Hillier, Alec Newman, Lukas Haas, and Mel Raido make up the core group, with Absolom, looking to move from TV into movies, given what feels like the central role, but jostling alongside Thomason and Newman as the film-makers shift focus and spend the runtime turning what should have been a lean and entertaining horror into something that feels baggy and loose, and occasionally even laughable.

I am not going to name all of the writers, none of them have the biggest filmographies worth exploring, but the script certainly feels like too many chefs spoiling the broth. There are a couple of great moments - one highlight, although it may not sound as good written down here, shows the exterior of a house where some lights are being turned on by someone fearing for their life, only to see them being turned off again - but they are very few and far between. And even when the script is working well, the dark visuals can make it hard to enjoy what should be a nice bit of tension.

There’s one great death scene, as entertaining as it is preposterous and illogical, but everything becomes tiresome by the time the third act starts to play out. Revelations don’t feel surprising, repeated sequences of characters being stalked just become boring, and there’s nobody who feels worth really rooting for. 

Is it unwatchably awful? No. It’s just not worth your time. It clocks in at just over the 90-minute mark, which is a plus, but it feels like it runs longer than that. I still like that central idea though. Someone should take it, strip away all the fat, work with a better visual palette, and give us a much better end result.

3/10

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Mubi Monday: Los Bastardos (2009)

An early film from Amat Escalante (director of The Untamed), co-written with Martin Escalante, Los Bastardos is the cinematic equivalent of a short, sharp shock the body. It’s a relatively quiet film, and doesn’t seem troubling or disturbing until things take a very sudden turn into a third act that is positioned in much more dangerous territory than anything else preceding it.

Jesus Moises Rodriguez and Rubén Sosa play Jesús and Fausto, two undocumented immigrants trying to work in the USA. They have financial obligations (we hear conversation about a loved one who needs help), but they also don’t want to devalue themselves, nor any of the other workers who wait at the same spot every day to pick up jobs. The capitalism machine keeps trying to cheapen lives, however, so it can constantly grind bodies down into the fuel it needs to keep running. Things turn troubling when Jesús and Fausto enter the home of Karen (Nina Zavarin).

There isn’t much to say about Los Bastardos, on the surface. It has a short runtime, a number of scenes feel as if nothing is really happening, and the Escalantesn refuse to offer a clear and clean explanation of everything. Character motivations are implied, but only when leads are asked questions that create a narrative they decide to go along with. Whether that narrative is true or not is a different matter entirely, although some viewers may watch this and happily accept everything onscreen as it is presented. Perhaps the ambiguity is something I added to the film, but I find the whole thing much more interesting when motives aren’t entirely clear.

The small cast do well in their roles, especially when having to act out some of the more uncomfortable moments, to put it mildly. Rodriguez and Sosa, both non-professional actors, feel completely natural and real for every minute of the movie. The decision to use non-professionals in those roles could have easily backfired, but it works brilliantly. Zavarin, on the other hand, has an acting career that spans over two decades, and she is the one performer required to show absolute vulnerability and helplessness, something she does admirably.

Without too much here, if anything, that feels cinematic, Los Bastardos is best approached as something akin to a filmed stage play. It would be just as easy to dismiss it entirely as it would be to read too much into it, and I tentatively recommend it to those who don’t mind something that provides more questions than answers. Perhaps, and I realise this may be a stretch, the focus of the film isn’t really the narrative. Perhaps it was created to challenge how viewers perceive immigrants, to show how humans who are treated as disposable and discardable may view the lives of others as having the same pitifully low value. 

Whatever you think of the film, you will think about it. That doesn’t guarantee that you will like it though.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Pride (2014)

This is the kind of thing that we get every so often in British cinema. A little gem of a film that works as well as it does because of the way in which various characters manage to maintain a sense of humour in the face of overwhelming derision/hatred from others. Having finally reminded myself to give Pride a watch, my timing could not have been any better. Remember that saying about those not remembering history being doomed to repeat it? I hope more people watch Pride this year. Not only is it a wonderful and satisfying viewing experience, it's a reminder of why those being held down and pilloried by authorities should help to support one another, hence the importance of unions, and also serves as an important reminder of the attitude people used to have towards gay people, a rush to demonise someone unknown because they weren't familiar with the concept in their own life. There's a LOT that is shown in Pride that still goes on today, the only differences are the main targets.

Anyway, let's get to the crux of the tale. It's the mid-1980s. The miner's strike is taking a huge toll on small mining villages all over the country. The LGBTQ+ community are busy trying to be treated like the normal human beings they are, something about to be made even harder by the rise of AIDs (which was seen by many as a "gay disease", and I suspect many still think that way). Seeing how the UK government have directed their resources and threats towards the miners, when it had previously been so busy crusading against the imaginary gay agenda, one young man (Mark Ashton, played by Ben Schnetzer) has the idea of supporting the miners and raising some money for them. Others don't immediately see the point of his campaigning, especially as the many small towns that would have mining at the heart of them would tend to be most unwelcoming, and outright hostile, to gay people. Mark keeps at it though, eventually getting more and more people on his side, and the charity group he heads up soon start to make a positive impact on a struggling Welsh town. Dai Donovan (Paddy Considine), a main spokesman for the miners in that town, is very happy to meet and thank them, and invites them to be thanked by the rest of the townspeople. The rest of the townspeople, however, aren't as eager to admit that they are receiving a lifeline from the gay community.

While director Matthew Warchus may not have an extensive filmography, he tends to aim for quality over quantity, and while this is the first screenplay by writer Stephen Beresford to be made into a film, Pride couldn't feel much more comfortable and assured. A large part of that is down to the casting, which I will get to shortly, but Beresford knows how to make the most of the laugh out loud lines that he intersperses throughout the film, Warchus moves viewers swiftly through the timeline of events without giving anyone whiplash, and the whole thing manages to maintain a constant bittersweet tone throughout, especially if you have any idea of how things ended for the main characters. This is a "feel good" film, but that's an impressive achievement when you consider just how many things aren't necessarily going to lead to a happy ending.

Is it all factually accurate? I doubt it. I'd imagine that the heart of the story is true, and some liberties have been taken to give us a better mix of characters and some dialogue that emphasises what everyone was striving for, be it tolerance from others or an ongoing attempt to smash through the iron fist of Margaret Thatcher. Yes, it helps that this often aligns with my own political leanings, and it's a very political film that offsets that with a focus on the humans at the heart of the machine being turns by cogs of government and the law, but it's hard to think of anyone watching this and absolutely hating it. 

Schnetzer is fantastic as the lightning rod for everything that unfolds, helped by the fact that he is surrounded by so many familiar faces. The Welsh accents are all fairly well executed, and you cannot go wrong with a cast that includes Considine, Imelda Staunton, and Bill Nighy, all of whom are doing absolutely fantastic work, and all of whom have fun with their new allies. Menna Trussler and Jessica Gunning are also wonderful, being inspired to do a bit more with their time as they see how the LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) live their lives, while Lisa Palfrey gets her teeth into the role of Maureen Barry, a character used as a personification of the intolerance and ingratitude that the LGSM come up against. George MacKay is Joe Cooper, a young man getting to grips with his own sexuality, and the film is helped by often placing viewers in a position to see his nervousness giving way to a sense of purpose and happiness, Dominic West steals a few moments, playing the flamboyant and carefree Jonathan, and there's also excellent work from Andrew Scott, Joe Gilgun, and Faye Marsay, the latter two portraying other core members of the LGSM.

What else can I say? There's a very good soundtrack, featuring a number of songs you'd expect to accompany this story, a hefty emotional weight to everything, and a real feeling of, well, pride in watching what can be accomplished by people connecting and working together instead of letting their lives be defined by what makes them different from one another. And there are few things funnier than Imelda Staunton's sharp retort to someone trying to be a smartass while she drives a bus donated to the community by the LGSM, but I won't spoil it by quoting it here. Enjoy it for yourself, and do it as soon as you can.

 8/10

Here is a link to Switchboard (the LGBT+ helpline).
And here is a link to the website for the Durham Miner's Association.

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