Archive 5, Vol.9

Posted on March 15, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 525 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, a couple of Agatha Christie adaptations from very different eras; plus a heist, a horror, and a Hong Kong love story for the ages.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

Evil Under the Sun (1982)

Sneakers (1992)

Us (2019)

Crooked House (2017)

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Evil Under the Sun

(1982)

The third in the run of Poirot adaptations that began with Murder on the Orient Express and continued with Death on the Nile — no, not the recent Branagh ones: this is the first time they did exactly that. But, funnily enough, both third films in their respective series (i.e. this and Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice) take a UK-set Christie and relocate it somewhere more exotic, to fit with the style of the rest of the series. So, rather than a small island off the north Devon coast (which likely stretches the definition of “under the sun”, based on my experience of Devon), here the action is located to the Adriatic Sea, although actually filmed on Mallorca.

All of which is incidental when the rest of the movie is, at best, fine. It doesn’t help that the storyline is ultimately very similar to Death on the Nile, making the whole affair feel like more of a rehash than it needs to. Guy Hamilton’s direction underwhelms, giving a TV movie-ish feel, which is only exacerbated by the less-starry cast — there are recognisable names and faces here (James Mason, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith), but, in totality, it’s not in the same league as the previous two films. It rather prefigures where Ustinov’s Poirot would appear next: literally, TV movies.

Evil Under the Sun was #2 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Sneakers

(1992)

I never paid Sneakers any attention (not that it came up often) — I think, because it’s an American movie called Sneakers, I assumed it was about shoes — until indie magazine Film Stories announced a Blu-ray release (long since sold out, I’m afraid). I’m always keen to support small/new labels doing interesting things. And thank goodness for that, because, turns out, it’s actually very much my kind of film and good fun.

So, turns out, in this context, “sneakers” are not an Americanism for trainers, but good-guy hackers who test security systems. When the team are hired to steal a code breaking device, they get suspicious about the setup and, of course, it turns out they’re right to be. Thus unfurls a tech-based heist thriller with a strong vein of humour, but without tipping over into being an outright comedy. Stylistically and tonally, that’s right up my street — I love a heist movie, and that kind of tone (funny without being silly; what I think of as a ‘real world’ awareness of humour) often works for me. It’s the kind of film that’s just a lot of fun to watch. I can imagine it being highly rewatchable; a go-to favourite for people who do that kind of thing.

Sneakers was #132 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Us

(2019)

Part of what made Jordan Peele’s debut feature, Get Out, such a success was the way it chimed perfectly with the cultural zeitgeist of 2017; indeed, of the whole decade (time may yet add “of the whole century”). This immediate followup doesn’t benefit from a similar boost, but it’s a strong work of horror cinema in its own right.

Us follows a family who are attacked by a group of doppelgängers. That’s the most basic version, anyway — Peele seems to have a lot of ideas he wants to mix in here; almost too many. It seems to operate on the level of a home invasion/slasher kind of movie much of the time, but having more on its mind means it’s a bit too slow to satisfy as something so viscerally straightforward. Thus, all the Meaningful stuff ends up crammed into the third act, which perhaps leaves it feeling back-heavy. There’s also a big twist, naturally. On one hand, it seems really obvious, pretty much from the beginning; but on the other, it does cast the rest of the movie in a different light, which is quite interesting.

If all that sounds rather negative… I blame my notes (I’m writing this review over four years later based solely on what little I wrote down at the time). Us is imperfect, but it’s also great in places, and is at least passably interesting to reflect on in light of the final reveal.

Us was #23 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Crooked House

(2017)

Despite a moderately starry cast (Glenn Close, Terence Stamp, Gillian Anderson, Christina Hendricks fresh from Mad Men; plus Brits of varying degrees of recognisableness) and a screenplay by Julian “Downton Abbey” Fellowes, this Agatha Christie adaptation was virtually dumped straight to TV here in the UK (apparently it did have a theatrical release, but the TV premiere was less than a month later — and on lowly Channel 5 at that). Of course, some of the best Christie adaptations have been made for TV; but when something’s designed for theatrical and ends up skipping it, it’s never a good sign.

Fortunately, Crooked House isn’t a disaster, though it’s far from a resounding success. Quite what attracted the big names I don’t know — it’s a reasonable setup (big dysfunctional family), but the screenplay isn’t exactly sparkling, aside from one or two moments or scenes. There is, at least, one helluva resolution. It also feels disjointed thanks to poor editing and/or direction. If the aim was to keep the pace up, it failed, because it begins to drag after a while. All of this is only partially masked by decent cinematography from Sebastian Winterø, which is the only thing that saves it from looking very TV-ish. Maybe it found its rightful home after all.

Crooked House was #1 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

In the Mood for Love

(2000)

aka Fa yeung nin wah

If my four-years-late review of Us was hampered by largely-negative notes, my four-years-late review of In the Mood for Love is in even worse shape: no notes at all. Some trivia? I can do that! An interesting quote from the director? Got it saved! But anything on my own thoughts beyond settling on a five-star rating? Nope. I would try to repurpose my Letterboxd review, but all I wrote was: “I mean nothing but respect when I pithily describe this as Brief Encounter in Hong Kong.” Accurate but, indeed, pithy.

On the bright side, this is a widely-acclaimed film, so if you’re after in-depth writing I’m certain you’ll find some somewhere else. Indeed, even if I did have more fulsome notes, I doubt I’d contribute anything more insightful. This is a subtle, almost delicate work, and that’s the kind of thing I feel I often struggle to properly get to grips with in my short, usually spoiler-averse reviews. Suffice to say, I concur that this is a very good film indeed; although, as with any understated work, some might prefer if the feelings and emotions were more overt. Each to their own.

In the Mood for Love was #200 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2020.

2024 | Week 3

Posted on February 12, 2024 by badblokebob

I’ve already covered Barbie, so here are the other films I watched during Week 3…

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)

The Best of the Martial Arts Films (1990)

Chicken Run:
Dawn of the Nugget

(2023)

I wasn’t a massive fan of the original Chicken Run (it’s not bad, but it pales in comparison to some of Aardman’s other works, not least any of the main Wallace & Gromit films), so I approached this belated sequel more with trepidation than excitement. You could interpret a near-quarter-century wait as indicative of holding off until someone had a genuinely good idea; or you could see it as a shameless effort to generate a hit by tickling childhood nostalgia through a return to a cult-ish favourite. Behind-the-scenes stories of unnecessary cast changes (the primary offender: apparently 55-year-old Julia Sawalha is now too aged (for a voice role as a hen?) so they recast her with 51-year-old Thandiwe Newton) did nothing to bring confidence.

Anyway, setting all that aside, the end result is… adequate. I’d probably have said the same of the first one, so maybe that’s no surprise. But even that felt like it had some moments that stood out, whereas this is just unrelentingly fine. The plot concerns the chickens having to break in to a farm — yes, it’s taken 25 years to have the genius idea of “what if we just reversed the story?” The immediate point of reference for break-in-type movies nowadays is the Mission: Impossible franchise, which features a noteworthy heist a least once per film. And so Dawn of the Nugget references M:I, and the gag goes thus: “It’s an impossible mission.” “Uh, shouldn’t it be the other way around?” That level of underscored bluntness is about the level all the humour operates at: unsubtle, unsophisticated, unvaried, and uninspired.

The arguable exception in terms of quality is the animation itself. That it’s done well almost goes without saying — Aardman remain one of the masters of stop-motion (Laika having challenged them in recent years) — but, on the other hand, there’s nothing to wow you. It’s more than competent, slick and expressive and so on, but there’s no imagery you’ll take away; no shot or sequence that would make you reach for adjectives like “beautiful” or “stunning”.

Aardman’s next major effort (it’s a bit unclear if it’s a feature or a short, as it’s going direct to the BBC in the UK) is a return to Wallace & Gromit, planned for later this year (no doubt a Christmastime treat, as usual). As I said, I prefer that duo, so I’m always excited to see them back on the screen. I just hope that belated sequel (almost 20 years since their feature film and 16 since their last short) doesn’t feel this… unnecessary.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is the 5th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

The Best of the Martial Arts Films

(1990)

aka The Deadliest Art

Originally released on VHS (back when martial arts films weren’t necessarily easy to come by for consumers, so I’m told), this hour-and-a-half selection of fight scenes is now available remastered / reconstructed in HD, with all the film clips also in their original aspect ratios, included on Eureka’s When Taekwondo Strikes Blu-ray. Hurrah!

It is, primarily, a showcase for fight scenes. Whole uninterrupted sequences are shared, which is at least the right way to do it if that’s what you’re doing; unlike modern TV clip-show compilations, which seem to feel the need to cut the scenes to shreds and intersperse them with inane talking heads. There are a few interviews included here too, but rather than early-career comedians who’ll discuss anything for a paycheque, the interviewees include stars Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Cynthia Rothrock, and, er, Keith Cooke; plus Robert Clouse, director of Enter the Dragon.

“Best Of” is more a titling convention than a fact, considering the film was co-funded by Golden Harvest and so only has access to their back catalogue, thus skipping entirely the output of the legendary Shaw Brothers studio. But then, what else would you expect them to call it — Some Pretty Good Bits of the Martial Arts Films We Had the Rights to Include? Of course, however you look it, 90 minutes of fight scenes is a pretty hollow experience — there’s no narrative; even the interviews offer mostly behind-the-scenes anecdotes rather than, say, a “history of the genre” approach. But if that’s all you expect, you get your money’s worth, because there are some stunners in here.

Mind you, as well as being mostly limited to one studio, it’s also limited by time: having been made in 1990, there’s no Jet Li, no Donnie Yen; Van Damme is mentioned as a “rising star”… You could do the whole film over again — several times — if you were able to encompass a wider spread of studios and stars. But nowadays there’s no need: we can just head to YouTube for our out-of-context fight scene fulfilment… so long as you know what you’re looking for, anyway. That will always be the value of a curated experience.

The Best of the Martial Arts Films is the 6th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

The Return of Archive 5

Posted on January 19, 2024 by badblokebob

Hey, look what else is back! Almost a whole year on from the last instalment in the series, I’ve finally managed to rustle up a new Archive 5. Although, that previous post was also a comeback after a long time off, so I probably shouldn’t celebrate until I mange two in a row.

Being another year on, the pool of possible reviews has increased — quite significantly, as I’ve so far covered hardly anything from my 2023 viewing. But today’s five were chosen (but not written up, otherwise I’d’ve posted it) back when Vol.6 was published, so they were selected (at random) from the backlog of then-443 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2022 viewing.

This week’s hideously delayed Archive 5 are…

The Mummy (1932)

So Dark the Night (1946)

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

A Brief History of Time Travel (2018)

Misery (1990)

The Mummy

(1932)

The third classic Universal Monster film, following Dracula and Frankenstein, The Mummy ditches literary adaptation for a horror based in then-contemporary fears. Nowadays, the notion of digging up of mummies is an Old Thing, but in 1932 they were just a decade on from the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, and it was only in that year that it was finally fully excavated, so that kind of thing — and, of course, the attached curses — were still fresh in the public imagination.

In the wake of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Mask of Fu Manchu, Boris Karloff was now the horror star in Hollywood, and so The Mummy was conceived as a starring role for him. Perhaps that explains why, plot wise, it’s a remix of Universal’s take on Dracula: the villain is after the girl, using supernatural tricks to lure her; the dashing young man is in love with her; there’s even a Van Helsing-esque figure with the knowledge to stop the monster. But originality is not the be-all-and-end-all — overall, I much preferred this to Dracula. Karloff is superb as the antagonist; Zita Johann (and her array of skimpy outfits) makes for an appealing (and, perhaps in spite of said clothing, competent) female lead; and there’s some intensely atmospheric direction from Karl Freund. His name may not seem as familiar as Dracula’s Tod Browning or Frankenstein’s James Whale, but he was already an acclaimed cinematographer, who’d shot the likes of Metropolis and, er, Dracula.

The Mummy presented considerably less bandaged-wrapped foot-dragging living-corpse action than I expected. I guess those clichés come from the sequels (reportedly, their stories are entirely unconnected to this one) or another studio’s efforts (Hammer, perhaps). Instead, it’s quite simply one of my absolute favourites from the initial wave of Universal’s classic monster movies.

The Mummy was #122 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

So Dark the Night

(1946)

How many serial killer mysteries have you seen that spend their first half being bucolic romances? I can’t think of any others than So Dark the Night. The title and setup don’t prepare you for it, but the first half-hour is more of a genteel country romcom, with only the slightest hint there might be darker turns to come. Half-an-hour isn’t long generally, but it’s almost halfway through a film this short — and that’s when things take an abrupt turn for the murderous.

The short running time probably works against the film, on the whole. For example, it makes it easy to miss that there are several interesting supporting characters or facets to main characters. Love interest Nanette is sort of depicted as an innocent ingénue, but we first meet her ogling the expensiveness of Henri’s car, and then she and her mother conspire for her to meet Henri and try to elicit a romantic connection, even though she’s already got a long-standing engagement. That’s not exactly upstanding and sweet behaviour, is it? Then there’s the widowed maid, who’s so lonely and desperate to escape that even after she suspects the killer, she pleads to be taken with him.

Along with a few other factors that are rather spoilersome, this is a film that takes the usual shape of the whodunnit and subverts it to disquieting effect. It’s a film that, on the surface, looks nothing like a noir — it’s set in a pretty French village (created with surprising authenticity on Columbia’s backlot) — but exposes that the darkness and violence of the human condition can exist anywhere. I say “on the surface” because the film’s photography is great, with many interesting shot and lightning choices peppered about, without overwhelming proceedings with unnecessary flourishes.

So Dark the Night was #57 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Adventures of
Ichabod and Mr. Toad

(1949)

Disney’s canon of animated films goes through a weird blip between Bambi in 1942 and Cinderella in 1950. That’s when the six so-called “package films” were released, bundling together short films into themed features. They’re almost a footnote in the Disney animated canon — I mean, before them you’ve got Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, and after you’ve got Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and so on… and on… But it’s not a period of hidden gems: these are films mostly only worth bothering with if you’re a completist. This final one is, perhaps, the exception. At any rate, it’s easily the best of the package films.

Whereas the others contained multiple short features, here there are just two: adaptations of The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. There’s barely any faffing about with linking segments, either: a quick intro from Basil Rathbone (who narrates Willows), and an equally speedy transition from Bing Crosby (who narrates Sleepy Hollow), and that’s it. And that’s all it needs, instead spending time and resources on the stories themselves.

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Wind in the Willows, but this is a fast-paced and fun version, with a particularly entertaining ‘action sequence’ in Toad Hall as the good guys and weasels run around trying to keep hold of the property deed. Then, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow recasts the famous horror story as… a small-town romantic farce. No, seriously. It’s fine if a little dull, but picks up considerably when it reaches Halloween and we get a song about the headless horseman, a highly atmospheric sequence in spooky woods, and an exciting/comical chase between Ichabod and the horseman. It takes a while to get there, but it’s worth it.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was #176 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

A Brief History of Time Travel

(2018)

Gisella Bustillos | 69 mins | digital (HD) | 16:9 | USA / English

It’s a decade this year since I backed this documentary on Kickstarter — how’s that for time travel for you? I mean, technically, “normal and linear”, but also: time flies. It doesn’t feel like Kickstarter’s even been around that long. What the hell is going on with our perception of time (for example, the increasingly widespread observation on social media that everyone’s perception of how long ago things were is stuck somewhere in the early- to mid-2000s) would be an interesting topic for a documentary.

But anyway, that’s not what this is. This is a wide-ranging overview of the concept of time travel, taking in fiction, science (both real and theoretical), and religion, as well as how those things interrelate and influence each other. It’s probably most interested in the science side, using other angles to illustrate rather than be examined in their own right. For example, it details the significance of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (the first story to involve time travel into the future, and one of the first where the travel was achieved via a man-made machine rather than some form of magic), but that’s about the last fictional story it describes. There are clips from Doctor Who and Back to the Future, but no discussion of their influence, nor of the kinds of time travel they present.

At its best, the film draws interesting links and parallels between the different spheres it’s encompassing. This is at its most poignant when we meet a physicist who got into the field because his father died when he was young and time travel stories offered the idea that he might be able to revisit his dad, which developed into him learning the real science and becoming a physicist. Now, he believes he has a workable theory for how information could be sent into the past. I have no idea if that stands up to scrutiny, mind — the film doesn’t vet it with other interviewees’ opinions.

Considering it only runs a little over an hour, it’s unsurprising that there’s not room to cover everything in depth. Nonetheless, it’s so blatantly leaving significant amounts of material untouched that you can’t help but feel disappointed. To be kind, it’s a reasonable primer for the uninitiated, with interesting bits of info dropped here and there, but almost every topic covered would merit a deeper, dedicated examination.

A Brief History of Time Travel was #123 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Misery

(1990)

I feel like Misery is one of those movies that was once very well known in general pop culture, but has since slipped back, if not into obscurity then certainly into a lesser-known status, remembered only when mentioned by people who were there or as one in a list of Stephen King adaptations, that sort of thing. And that also feels fair enough, because it’s very much a movie that’s pretty good but not exceptional. The author whose work it’s taken from, the filmmaker who’s adapted it, and the main players on screen have all been responsible for or involved in even better and more enduring works of cinema, so of course this has become an “and also” note in their careers.

Perhaps transcending that — and, certainly, by far the most famous thing about Misery — is the ankle-bashing scene, which unfortunately means you spend most of the film waiting for it to turn up, and when it does it’s rather unaffecting. That’s time and infamy for you. The former: it’s not as gruesome as it would be if shot today. The latter: I’d already seen the clip a dozen times. I can see how it was striking on the film’s original release, but familiarity has really blunted it.

Fortunately, there’s more to the film than one shocking act of violence. Kathy Bates is excellent as Annie Wilkes, making her wild mood swings terrifyingly plausible. Her Oscar was well earned. Then there’s the subplot with the local sheriff and his unceasing investigation, which also introduces a welcome note of comedy via his interactions with his deputy (who’s his wife) and some of the other townsfolk. He’s brought to life with immense likability by Richard Farnsworth, and I’d’ve happily watched a whole movie based around him. On the whole, the film has a somewhat underwhelming “TV movie” feel to its visual (lack of) style, but there are some nicely done bits: the scene where Annie’s coming home while Paul tries to cover up that he’s been out and about; the final fight, which is just the right mix of tense, scrappy, and believably comical.

Misery was #230 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

2024 | Week 2

Posted on January 15, 2024 by badblokebob

Hey, look, it’s an actual reviews post! Well I never! Wonders will never cease! Etc.

Yeah — I thought, “new year, new start”, and so here I am with short reviews of the first three films I watched in 2024. I was going to call this “Weeks 1–2”, even though they’re all from Week 2, because beginning the year with a post titled “Week 2” just felt wrong. But then I figured I’d begun the year already with my various other posts, so in some respects Week 2 feels natural and right. I could’ve waited for “Weeks 2–3” (there are only three films reviewed herein, after all), but I wanted to set out the stall of “look, reviews are back!” Whether they’ll stay back… I mean, they didn’t in 2023… But we live in hope.

Anyway, onwards to:

Lift (2024)

Only Yesterday (1991), aka Omohide poro poro

Jackass Forever (2022)

Lift

(2024)

Netflix’s latest original is a high-concept heist thriller, in which a gang of art thieves are recruited by Interpol to steal a terrorist’s gold bullion fortune from a passenger flight in mid-air.

I love a good heist movie, and Lift is certainly a heist movie. The joy of the genre, at least for me, is in the almost magic trick-esque way in which our gang pull off the score — doubly so when it’s eventually revealed in a third-act twist that what we thought was going on wasn’t going on at all. Unfortunately, that means someone — the writer, director, whoever’s in charge — needs to have a big, clever idea, and those are hard to come by. Lift‘s heist isn’t bad, it’s just nothing special. On the bright side, it ticks the box of having that last-minute reveal. Again, it’s not a particularly innovative subversion (if you were tasked with guessing it, it would probably be your first idea), but at least it’s there.

Another common aspect of the subgenre is snappy, funny dialogue. Not so here, I’m afraid. Indeed, the dialogue is unrelentingly mediocre, and never more so than when it tries to be funny. Characters’ emotional arcs are built via Screenwriting 101 backstory dumps. You know: “How did you learn that?” “Well, when I was a kid, this very specific thing happened that taught me exactly that.” Perhaps belying a lack of confidence in the screenplay (or perhaps just Netflix realising they don’t need to spend as much as they have in the past), the film doesn’t look particularly expensive either, with middle-of-the-road CGI. Like everything else, it’s not bad, but you’re never going to imagine they went down the Mission: Impossible / Christopher Nolan route of staging it for real.

The cast is headed by Kevin Hart, doing his best to channel whatever he’s learnt from previous co-stars and be a charming leading man type. I’ve seen worse, but it’s not a natural fit. The Interpol agent / love interest at his side is Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who you can feel is doing her best to inject some verve into proceedings. Some of the supporting roles hint at where the budget may actually have gone. Why else would Jean Reno drop in as a villain who’s mostly just on the end of a phone? Or Sam Worthington pop by as a senior Interpol agent who’s not even interesting enough to turn out to be a secret baddie? Plus most of the henchmen are faces you might recognise from British TV, like Torchwood’s Burn Gorman and Peaky Blinders’ Paul Anderson, who you’d think would be getting better offers than Henchman #2 at this point.

If this review sounds full of faint praise… yeah, that’s about right. Lift is nothing special, but if a gang of crooks pulling off a seemingly-impossible score is your bag, then it’s passably entertaining fare for an undemanding Friday or Saturday night.

Lift is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

Only Yesterday

(1991)

aka Omohide poro poro

The fifth feature animation from Studio Ghibli’s other director, Only Yesterday introduces us to 27-year-old Tokyoite Taeko as she prepares to take a short summer holiday working on a farm in the countryside, which brings up memories of her ten-year-old self. The latter were the subject of the original manga the film is based on, with Takahata adding the storyline of the older Taeko reflecting on her childhood as a way of tying the stories together into a cohesive narrative.

I didn’t know that piece of trivia going in, but I sensed something along those lines, because I generally dislike movies that play as “nostalgic vignettes from the author’s childhood”, and this is no exception. The ‘present day’ stuff, on the other hand, is very good, with beautiful moments in and about nature, and superb character beats related to what Taeko really wants and what she’s really like. (“Ever since I was little, I just pretend to be nice,” she says at one point, a sentiment I certainly felt I could agree with. Mind you, it’s in moments like this that the film’s dual timelines pay off, contrasting how younger Taeko behaved and how she has and hasn’t changed.

Only Yesterday is sort of a film of two simultaneous halves, then. Not that I would lose the childhood bits entirely, but I would prefer a version of the film that pared them back considerably, only retaining the material that really enlightens the older Taeko’s storyline. As it stands, the bits I didn’t care for were quite tedious, but the bits I liked were captivating.

Only Yesterday is the 2nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2024.

Jackass Forever

(2022)

A decade and change after their last outing, the Jackass crew are back (minus some members, for various reasons, and plus some new ones; the latter distinctly upping the diversity quotient), doing the same crazy and dangerous shit they always did. Why? I think most of them are asking themselves the same thing. There was a definite sense in the last film that they were getting too old for this and it was time to call it a day, so what inspired them to come back to it — even older, even more prone to injury, with even longer recovery times — I don’t know.

It certainly wasn’t fresh ideas. Despite all that time away to think up new stunts, nothing here feels particularly innovative or freshly imagined. Maybe that’s a highfalutin’ thing to analyse about a franchise that has always been just about doing dumb stunts, but some of them have been memorable, even to the extent of transcending the series itself (surely you’ve heard about the paper cuts, even if you haven’t seen it?) Forever is just variations on a theme; sometimes literally, as they expressly revisit old stunts in slightly different ways, like testing an athletic cup against various fast-and-hard objects, or pitting ringleader Johnny Knoxville against a bull — a stunt that ends rather seriously. Maybe if the film had taken that as a cue to say something about mortality or ageing… but that wouldn’t be so much fun, would it?

So, it is what it is, which is it what it always has been: a bunch of silliness, usually resulting in pain and injury for the cast, and sometimes in laughter for the audience. It’s not the best Jackass film, but it’s not so significantly inferior as to warrant a lower rating. If you were a fan back in the day, you might appreciate the value of hanging out with old favourites for one last rodeo. And if you’re watching the films afresh, presuming you enjoyed them enough to get through the first three, you may as well watch the fourth too.

Jackass Forever is the 3rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

2022 | Week 35

Posted on December 23, 2022 by badblokebob

When I revived 2007’s weekly(-ish) review compilation format at the start of 2022, the main objective was to write shorter reviews (not necessarily as short as the couple-of-sentences-per-film I wrote back in 2007, but not worrying about trying to do full write-ups for everything), which would help enable me to stay more up-to-date. Well, the former has only been partially successful, and that means the latter has slipped, too: here we are, rapidly heading towards the end of December, and I’m only just posting reviews of films I watched at the end of August / start of September. I’m certainly not going to have 2022 finished before 2023 begins.

Hey-ho, there’s nothing to be done about it — other than remind myself I was intending to be more concise and more on top of things, and continue to try to push myself in that direction. In the meantime, on we go, with…

Mona Lisa (1986)

Mirror (1975), aka Zerkalo

Clerks (1995)

Persuasion (2022)

He Walked by Night (1948)

Mona Lisa

(1986)

Neo-noir filtered through a British sensibility — which means you get a character study merely garnished with genre thrills, especially when the character in question is played by Bob Hoskins, adding depth and complexity to your could-be-straightforward protagonist.

Said protagonist is George, a recently-released minor gangster looking for work. He’s an interesting mix of a character: streetwise but also kinda naïve; racist and judgemental, but without really meaning it. It’s like he’s just reciting stuff he’s heard from everyone else, rather than it being stuff he really believes. Well, isn’t that true of so many with horrendous opinions? These days they just get them from YouTube. George’s prejudices are somewhat challenged when he’s assigned to drive around a high-class call girl, Simone, who happens to be black. Although Hoskins took most of the plaudits (including an Oscar nomination and BAFTA win), as Simone, Cathy Tyson breathes an equal amount of life into a character that, similarly, in lesser hands could’ve just been a plot-driving mystery. (She was also nominated for a BAFTA, incidentally.)

The film’s style is an interesting mishmash, in that it has an element of British grit and groundedness — especially being shot on grainy film, all on location in London, in a world of everyday gangsters and prostitutes — but with fantastical and/or genre flourishes — George’s friend Thomas creates weird art stuff and engages in literary discussions; nighttime London is shot to look like a vision of Hell; and then there’s all the noir stuff in the construction of the story. There’s a version of this film that fully gives in to that genre, but the comedy and ‘fantasy’ dilutes the neo-noir aspects, making the film more unique, and distinctly British.

The fact Arrow initially released Mona Lisa as the de facto lesser half of a double-bill with earlier Hoskins-starring gangster flick The Long Good Friday does it something of a disservice (though it’s also is the primary reason I had it in my collection to prompt me to watch it, so swings and roundabouts). This is a film more than worthy of standing on its own; and one that, while not poorly regarded or completely forgotten, merits a wider rediscovery.

Mona Lisa is the 53rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022. It placed 11th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2022.

Mirror

(1975)

aka Zerkalo

Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic evocation of memory and mid-20th-century Soviet history. If that sounds a bit Arty, just wait ’til you hear Criterion’s blurb, which says it’s “as much a poem composed in images, or a hypnagogic hallucination, as it is a work of cinema.” Oh dear, sounds like Hard Work, right? Well, it is.

Calling it “visual poetry” might sound like pretentiousness, but it really isn’t — Mirror definitely plays more like that than a traditional narrative film. And, just like most poetry, I didn’t really get it. I must confess that I was tuning out by the end; partly due to tiredness, which is my own fault; but partly that the film gave me nothing to really latch on to; no (clear) narrative or character or anything for me to focus on to keep my wavering attention in the right place. On the bright side, it avoided being a total disaster in my eyes by having some nice-looking bits, and individual scenes or sequences that kinda work. But I absolutely do not “get it” as a whole cohesive piece of art.

Clearly, this kind of thing works for some people — Sight & Sound’s most recent poll ranked it 31st, and the director’s poll (which I would normally argue errs slightly more mainstream) went even better and placed it 8th. Each to their own. Based on his work that I’ve seen so far, I just don’t think Tarkovsky’s for me.

Mirror is the 54th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

Clerks

(1994)

Kevin Smith | 88 mins | DVD | 1.85:1 | USA / English | 15 / R

There’s no escaping the fact that Clerks is very much a product of its time, both in itself as a work of art, and in how it became a breakout success. (Can you imagine a film like this launching a career like Kevin Smith had (for a bit) if it was made today? Best you could hope for now is being seen by half-a-dozen festival-goers before the director gets tapped to be Kevin Feige’s puppet on some Marvel content.) That said, for all its ’90s-time-capsule-ness, it holds up pretty well as a piece of entertainment. By which I mean, I laughed multiple times and was never bored.

The story, such as it is, concerns a pair of convenience store workers hanging out for a day, and the various little dramas and incidents that occur to and around them. Serving as both writer and director, Smith quite cleverly turns bugs into features. No budget? Make that the whole aesthetic, with grainy 16mm photography and an everyday setting in which ‘nothing’ happens. Non-pro actors? Have everyone deliver all their lines mile-a-minute, thus making the whole thing feel kinda heightened and stylised, to the point where you can’t be sure if most of the cast can’t act or it was all a deliberate choice. This is further fed by Smith often letting scenes play out in long takes with no cuts — if these guys can remember all their lines to do a whole scene in a oner, they must be pretty professional, right?

Impressively for a first-timer behind the camera, Smith doesn’t go overboard with directorial flourishes. There’s the occasional shot or sequence with some extra pizzazz to keep up the visual interest, but he seems to know that less is more; that this is the kind of film that plays best in medium shots. This might sound like basic stuff, but evidence shows that first-time filmmakers with something to prove are regularly tempted to go all-out and make something that feels Directed. That might be nice for a showreel, but for an actual film, restraint goes a long way.

Technique aside, the content just works. These characters are likeable enough to hang out with for 90 minutes, because that’s effectively all we’re doing. But there’s enough variety in their conversations and situations, and enough genuinely funny lines and moments, that it works and is enjoyable, rather than being a dull or directionless slice-of-life piece.

Clerks is the 55th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Persuasion

(2022)

Jane Austen adaptations appear to be perennially popular, so it was probably only a matter of time before Netflix attempted one. Here, they’ve retained the original setting but given proceedings a modern-ish wash, apparently influenced by their hit series Bridgerton style (I’ve never seen Bridgerton, so this is based on the trailers and that others have made the same comparison). The result? A trailer that met with a great deal of displeasure from Austen fans, not keen on the apparent irreverence to the source material. I’ve never read Austen, either, so I’ll leave exact comparisons to the more knowledgeable.

That said, I can’t say the trailer fully won me over, but I thought I’d allow the film its chance. And it’s not terrible — there are lots of nice scenes and moments to be found. Unfortunately, they’re undercut by the bits everyone talked about from the trailer: the clearly-Fleabag-inspired gurns to camera; the banal and misplaced modern-style dialogue. The really sad thing is that there aren’t actually very many of those bits — the ones that were widely cited as “examples” are nearly all of them, in fact — and so there is nearly a very nice film here.

Dedicated fans of Austen’s original work, and those who prefer their period dramas played straight and faithful, will likely still find those moments off-putting. If you’re prepared to overlook the missteps, this Persuasion is largely likeable.

Persuasion is the 56th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

He Walked by Night

(1948)

“A film that started as a humble low-budget offering from a second-tier studio, but wound up being one of the most influential films of its era” is how ‘Czar of Noir’ Eddie Muller describes He Walked by Night in his introduction for TCM’s Noir Alley strand. That’s partly because it inspired the radio series Dragnet, which was immensely significant in the development of police procedural series, a genre that remains a bread-and-butter staple of TV entertainment to this day. But also because it was shot by cinematographer John Alton — “the greatest noir stylist of all time”, says Muller, and here he produced “one of the most dramatically photographed film noirs ever”. There’s debate over whether the film was actually helmed by its credited director, Alfred Werker, or if Anthony Mann actually did most of the work. “It doesn’t really matter,” says Muller, “because the picture’s held together by the stunning visual style of its singular cinematographer”.

Well, I can’t disagree. This is a gorgeously shot film, and a concise exemplar of all we know of film noir style — primarily, abundant shadows. But it’s not just the imagery that makes it work. There are multiple tense suspense sequences, often making great use of silence — this is a film not afraid to be quiet when it’s effective — climaxing with an incredibly atmospheric chase and shootout in the LA storm drain system. We spend a lot of time with the villain, Roy Martin — the film is definitely a howcatchem; no whodunit mystery here — who’s superbly played by Richard Basehart. Coming back to the point about silence, Martin is a loner, so he doesn’t get much dialogue a lot of the time, but Basehart still effectively conveys how smart and cunning he is. Also worthy of note is Whit Bissell as an electronics dealer who unwittingly sold on ‘inventions’ that Martin had in fact stolen. The poor guy is clearly innocent and been duped, but he ends up between a rock and a hard place when the police aren’t sure they believe that.

The overall style of He Walked by Night is intensely procedural and serious about it, but it still finds room for glimpses of character, both from the cops and the criminals; and there’s humour, too. That helps give it a bit of light and shade, and also genuine reality — you’ll find humorousness everywhere in real life, however serious events may be.

He Walked by Night is the 57th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

2022 | Week 34

Posted on December 3, 2022 by badblokebob

Skipping week 33 (when I didn’t watch anything), here are all the films I watched in week 34 — which, if anyone’s interested, was back in August. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to get caught up on my 2022 reviews before the end of the year…

The Winter Guest (1997)

Repeat Performance (1947)

Carousel (1956)

The Winter Guest

(1997)

The writing and directing debut of actor Alan Rickman, The Winter Guest follows four loosely-connected pairs of characters through a day in their lives, all confined to a small Scottish seaside town where the stark winter has turned the sea to ice. It’s the kind of film where nothing happens: the characters hang out with each other and talk, basically, with their issues ranging from bereavement to stereotypical teenage sex obsession (one boy played by a young Sean Biggerstaff wants… a bigger staff, wink wink. Sorry, the pun was too tempting to avoid).

The confined setting and characters means the end result feels theatrical in both style and content — it’s basically just a series of two-handers, with quite mannered dialogue. And yet its staging isn’t so limited, because Rickman and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey do an excellent of of evoking the chilly surroundings (most of the film is set outside), giving the scenery a painterly feel. That’s probably in part due to using digital matte paintings to convey the frozen ocean, but it extends to the beaches and town buildings, too. Or it could just be an unintended side effect of the smoothing conferred by watching in digitally compressed SD; but as it’s just about my favourite aspect of the film, let’s assume it was intentional and skilfully done.

Repeat Performance

(1947)

Alfred Werker | 93 mins | Blu-ray | 1.37:1 | USA / English

On the eve of 1947, actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) shoots dead her husband (original Saint Louis Hayward). She flees, ending up at the home of her producer (second Falcon Tom Conway) in the early hours of New Year’s Day… 1946. Given the chance to re-live the past year, can she make things right?

Repeat Performance gets classified as film noir, but I feel like it’s one of those films that sits on the periphery of what qualifies for the genre. The opening — in which a woman shoots dead her husband, in New York City at night — yes, very noir. But what unfurls over the next 90 minutes is more of a backstage romantic melodrama by way of Twilight Zone-style fantasy. But that’s the thing with noir: as a movement that wasn’t recognised and codified as a genre until after it was over, what ‘counts’ can be a very broad church.

Here, the odd combination of styles makes for an unusual and mostly entertaining film. My only real gripe is that we’re given very little idea what went on in the ‘original’ 1946, so it’s hard to tell how much effort Sheila is actually making to change it, or to follow how successful she’s being. This kind of perspective is perhaps the benefit of a further 75 years of development and refinement in the field of fantastical storytelling — Repeat Performance isn’t a Fantasy film in the true genre sense, more a Thriller with a neat inciting twist, a la Sliding Doors (my go-to example of a Fantasy film that doesn’t care it’s a Fantasy film!)

The plot is bolstered by strong or likeable performances across the board. Some of the lead cast may be better known for starring in B-movie schedule-fillers, but this is proof if proof were needed that to interpret that as a sign of limited skill on their part would be an incorrect conclusion. Which is a rather torturous way of saying “Hayward and Conway were quite good actors, actually”. Hayward is particularly good here, getting to show off his range from loving husband to psychopathic abuser, plus a few other stages in between. Conway is more at the likeable end of the spectrum as Sheila’s kindly producer, while Richard Basehart’s performance (in his movie debut) as queer-coded poet William Williams (in the original novel, the character is a transvestite) was so impressive that the producers gave him more scenes with Leslie and bumped up his billing.

Repeat Performance is the 52nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Carousel

(1956)

Carousel is a spectacularly odd entry in the Rodgers & Hammerstein canon of musicals. Based on a play called Liliom (which was previously filmed by Frank Borzage in 1930 and Fritz Lang in 1934), it tells the story of a carnival barker (Gordon MacRae) who’s been dead 15 years, but in flashback we learn of how he fell in love and married, and how he died, and why he now gets a chance to go back for a day to make amends. That almost makes the film sound focused. As it plays out, the storyline has a weirdly aimless quality, not helped by songs that are mostly mediocre or bizarre. That’s before we get to the horrendously outdated views on domestic violence, or the fact that it’s not actually got very much to do with the titular fairground attraction.

The darker material and themes could work in the right setting, but here they clash with the sunny seaside photography and stereotypically cheerful musical numbers. I mean, this is a story about a physically abusive husband and wannabe small-time crook, who can’t even change his ways when the afterlife gives him a second chance, and we have songs about the beauty of summer and the joys of a clambake (the latter may haunt your memories…)

A strange film, and not in the good way. At least it’s made me curious to see the Borzage and Lang versions — perhaps as a straight drama it will be more obvious why this has merited adaptation so many times.

The 100 Films Guide to Scream

Posted on October 31, 2022 by badblokebob

I don’t always do anything to mark Halloween on this blog… but when I do, this is the kind of thing I do: complete coverage of the Scream movies (so far).

That means all-new “100 Films Guide To”s for the original film, its two sequels, and the 2011 legacy sequel, plus my brand-new review of this year’s, er, new legacy sequel. You know, the film that should’ve been called 5cream, but wasn’t.

Scream

Scream 2

Scream 3

Scre4m

Scream

Scream 2 (1997)

Posted on October 29, 2022 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

Someone has taken their love of
sequels one step too far.

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 120 minutes
BBFC: 18
MPAA: R

Original Release: 12th December 1997 (USA & Canada)
UK Release: 1st May 1998
Budget: $24 million
Worldwide Gross: $172.4 million

Stars
Neve Campbell (54, Skyscraper)
Courtney Cox (Masters of the Universe, Bedtime Stories)
David Arquette (Wild Bill, Eight Legged Freaks)
Jamie Kennedy (Romeo + Juliet, Son of the Mask)

Director
Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes, Cursed)

Screenwriter
Kevin Williamson (Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Cursed)

The Story
Sidney is now at college, but when a movie is released based on the Woodsboro murders, a new killer dons the Ghostface mask and begins targeting her fellow students.

Our Heroes
The sequel natural reunites the survivors of the first film (spoilers!) — target Sidney Prescott, police officer Dewey Riley, reporter Gale Weathers, and film nerd Randy Meeks — while adding a host of new victims / suspects. It’s full of faces that were TV-famous at the time and/or have gone on to be better known since: Jada Pinkett Smith, Omar Epps, Liev Schreiber, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joshua Jackson, Timothy Olyphant, Jerry O’Connell, Laurie Metcalf…

Our Villain
Ghostface — but unlike other slasher franchises with supernatural villains, this is just a mask, worn by different killer(s) in each film. Who is it this time? Well, that’d be a spoiler — the Scream movies are effectively murder mysteries. Not particularly good murder mysteries (they don’t function in that Christie-esque way of laying out suspects and clues so we can have a fair guess at whodunnit), but they’re technically murder mysteries nonetheless.

Best Supporting Character
Some of the new characters give their best shot at being memorable, but sorry, it’s Randy again (see this category in the first Scream). That said, there is a nice little cameo from the ever-excellent David Warner.

Memorable Quote
Randy: “The way I see it, someone’s out to make a sequel. You know, cash in on all the movie murder hoopla. So it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. More blood, more gore. Carnage candy. Your core audience just expects it. And number three: if you want your sequel to become a franchise, never, ever—”

Memorable Scene
Sidney and her roommate Hallie are being escorted to safety in the back of a police car when Ghostface appears out of nowhere, hijacks the car, and crashes it into roadworks. With the car’s back doors locked, the girls’ only chance of escape is by climbing into the front seat and out the driver’s window — right past the unconscious serial killer…

Previously on…
The original Scream was such a hit that this sequel was in production just six months later, and eventually released less than a year after the first.

Next time…
As the horror franchise of the ’90s, naturally Scream has continued into the ’00s and beyond: Scream 3 wrapped up the trilogy in 2000, before the series was revisited with Scream 4 (actually titled Scre4m) in 2011, and then revived earlier this year in a film simply titled Scream. That’s getting a sequel next year, which obviously poses titling issues. There have also been a couple of TV incarnations, both entirely unrelated in story terms: Scream: The TV Series ran for two seasons in 2015 and 2016, and Scream: Resurrection (or season 3, if you prefer) in 2019.

Awards
1 MTV Movie Award (Female Performance (Neve Campbell) — she beat Kate Winslet in Titanic!)
3 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards (Wide-Release Film, Supporting Actress (Courtney Cox), Screenplay)
2 Fangoria Chainsaw Award nominations (Actress (Neve Campbell), Supporting Actor (Liev Schreiber))
3 Saturn Award nominations (Horror Film, Actress (Neve Campbell), Supporting Actress (Courtney Cox))

Verdict

Where the first Scream was a forensic deconstruction of the slasher genre, the second is more of a vague gesture in the general direction of sequel tropes — less focused, less insightful, less funny. But, crucially, it’s still quite entertaining. There are abundant references for movie buffs to enjoy (primarily to other sequels and, er, other Friends cast members), while Wes Craven’s ever-skilful thrill sequences ensure the tension doesn’t slack too much. There are even a few jump scares for the more susceptible. It’s not a genre-(re)defining classic like the first movie, but it’s still a solid scary movie.

Scream (1996)

Posted on October 28, 2022 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

Someone has taken their love of
scary movies one step too far.

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 111 minutes
BBFC: 18
MPAA: R

Original Release: 20th December 1996 (USA)
UK Release: 2nd May 1997
Budget: $14 million
Worldwide Gross: $173 million

Stars
Neve Campbell (The Craft, Wild Things)
David Arquette (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Never Been Kissed)
Courtney Cox (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, 3000 Miles to Graceland)
Drew Barrymore (Firestarter, 50 First Dates)

Director
Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Red Eye)

Screenwriter
Kevin Williamson (I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty)

The Story
In the quiet town of Woodsboro, a mysterious man in a mask starts murdering teenagers, first taunting them with horror movie trivia questions.

Our Hero
Sidney Prescott is an ordinary high school girl… apart from the fact her mother was murdered a year ago, and it was her eyewitness testimony that saw a man sentenced to death. Now, a serial killer seems to be targeting her — could the events be connected?

Our Villain
A slasher movie has to have a distinctive-looking, nicknamed serial killer at its centre, and here it’s Ghostface — although he’s actually only called that once in the film itself. His costume is a generic Halloween outfit bought from any old store, and is technically called Father Death. Why didn’t that name stick instead? Probably because it’s a bit shit.

Best Supporting Character
The film has severable memorable supporting turns, but perhaps the key one is nerd and video store employee Randy (Jamie Kennedy). He knows all the rules of horror films, and when it turns out his friends don’t, he helpfully gives them an explainer — which also works for any audience members who maybe aren’t so au fait with the genre either.

Memorable Quote
“No, please don’t kill me, Mr. Ghostface, I wanna be in the sequel!” — Tatum

Memorable Scene
The opening scene: everyday teenage girl Casey (played by Movie Star™ Drew Barrymore) is preparing to watch a movie when she gets a phone call. It seems like a wrong number, but the man keeps calling back. At first their chat is a bit flirty, but then it begins to get a bit weird, and soon… well, if you haven’t seen it, I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.

Making of
The movie’s climax takes place at a house party the kids are having to take their mind off the killings, or something. But you wouldn’t guess it was the climax to start with, because it begins a little over halfway through the film — the ‘scene’ altogether lasts 42 minutes. It was shot across a gruelling 21 days of night shoots. After it was finally done, the crew had T-shirts made saying “I Survived Scene 118”.

Next time…
Two direct sequels followed in 1997 and 2000. More recently, the franchise has been subjected to the usual rounds of revivals: it took on parodying the ‘legacy sequel’ with a continuation in 2011, then did the same again with another one in 2022. A sequel to that is on the way next year. In between, there was a spin-off TV series that lasted three seasons. Season 1 and 2 were a reboot, unconnected to the movies; then it rebooted itself for season 3, still with no connection to the movies.

Awards
1 MTV Movie Award (Movie)
1 MTV Movie Award nomination (Female Performance (Neve Campbell))
4 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards (Wide-Release Film, Actress (Neve Campbell), Supporting Actress (Drew Barrymore), Screenplay)
1 Fangoria Chainsaw Award nomination (Supporting Actor (Skeet Ulrich))
3 Saturn Awards (Horror Film, Actress (Neve Campbell), Writer)
3 Saturn nominations (Director, Supporting Actor (Skeet Ulrich), Supporting Actress (Drew Barrymore))

Verdict

By the mid-’90s the once-popular horror genre was languishing in a mire of endless sequels to the same old titles — but then Scream came along and gave it a much-needed kick up the rear end. Originally titled Scary Movie (in some ways, a more apt title), Scream is a horror movie that knows it’s a horror movie — a kind of self-awareness, often (arguably mistakenly) referred to as post-modernism, that was ever so popular in the ’90s. But it worked for a reason: it treated the audience with respect. It said, “you know the rules, so let’s not pretend.” And that facilitates two things: by acknowledging the rules, it can play with them to make you laugh; and it can break them to surprise you. Thus Scream is simultaneously a spoof of the slasher genre and a genuine entry in it. It’s potentially a tricky tightrope to walk (several major directors were rejected because they thought the film was just a comedy), but Wes Craven nails the tone so perfectly that he makes it look easy. So what might have been a last-hurrah commentary on what had already been instead turned out to be the beginning of a new wave; one which has helped fuel the genre for over 25 years since.

2022 | Weeks 12–13

Posted on May 15, 2022 by badblokebob

So, it’s already the 15th — fundamentally halfway through the month — and this is just my ffith post in May. (It would’ve been third, but then my West Side Story and F9 reviews felt like they should have their own posts.) In my mind, I’ve raced this batch out as quickly as possible following my start-of-month posts, but it certainly doesn’t feel very speedy when you look at the dates.

And, talking about messing with time, this roundup begins by taking us all the way back to March: week 12 ended on the 27th of that month. I might’ve posted sooner, were it not that week 12 seemed too small to run by itself. For what it’s worth, week 13 ended on 3rd April, so I’m still over a month behind now.

Anyway, here are the rest of the new films I watched that fortnight…

Muriel’s Wedding (1994)

Cobra (1986)

Django & Django (2021)

A Man Escaped (1956), aka Un condamné à mort s’est échappé

Death on the Nile (2022)

Muriel’s Wedding

(1994)

This is one of those films I’ve been sort of aware of forever, but never really paid a huge amount of attention, until suddenly I’m watching it almost on a whim. It’s the story of the misadventures of small-town Australian girl Muriel (a breakout performance from Toni Collette), who doesn’t fit with her family or ‘friends’ and so sets off to the big city for a different life.

I don’t know what I was expecting from the film, exactly — a kooky Aussie romcom, I guess — but not a surprisingly dark, quirky almost to the point of being twisted, black comedy. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it kind of bamboozled me by being a lot odder and more tonally complex than I’d anticipated. I liked it, but it’s a weird one.

Cobra

(1986)

This is the kind of film I might never have watched were it not for my WDYMYHS challenge. It’s a film I’d heard very little about, and what I had heard wasn’t good, but when it came to selecting the 12 most significant films I hadn’t seen from 1986, it scraped in. I’m glad things like that happen, because while Cobra is far from being a new favourite or something, I did enjoy it.

Sly Stallone stars as a hot-shot cop on the trail of a serial killer with cult affiliations. That’s about it for the plot. This is a film that’s all style and no substance — though, when you’ve got this much style, maybe that is the substance. It’s so much a stereotypical ’80s macho action fest that it plays like a spoof of itself in places, with over-the-top editing, performances, and one liners that all seem driven by some sense of ‘cool’. I kinda love it for that. Take the car chase at the halfway mark: it’s a ludicrous sequence (one bit barely connects to the next; cars explode when shot; etc), but it’s filmed and cut with style and packed with excitement. It’s epic.

Remarkably, it’s based on a novel. I say that’s remarkable because novels are devoid of being able to show off flashy visuals or dynamic action sequences, so you think of them as being heavier on things like plot and character — but, as discussed, this has very little plot, and even less character development. The already-brief running time seems to mostly contain music montages and extended action scenes. Reportedly the original cut was around two hours, which was then mercilessly shorn down to the under-90-minute final cut in an attempt to squeeze in more screenings per day. I imagine a lot of what went was the plot, although apparently there was also a lot of graphic violence — and what we’re left with still earnt an 18.

I guess if a “director’s cut” was going to surface it would’ve done so by now (given all the other films that got them back in the ’00s). It’s something of a shame, because perhaps that version would round out the storyline enough to match the flair that’s all we get from the existing cut. Really, it’s a trashy film, but I rather enjoyed its trashiness. As stated, it’s all style and, at just 87 minutes, all business.

Cobra is the 23rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022.

Django & Django

(2021)

The work of the “second-best Spaghetti Western director”, Sergio Corbucci, is analysed by admirer Quentin Tarantino, and supplemented with a handful of anecdotes from a couple of people who worked with him. The small number of interviewees means the film is lacking in the depth you get from having multiple perspectives, but it’s a fine overview of Corbucci’s work nonetheless.

Indeed, the title — implying a focus on two specific films — is a bit of a misnomer. Not only is it about Corbucci’s career as a whole, with Django just one film among many, but there’s only a single clip from Django Unchained, when QT mentions how Corbucci’s style influenced his choice of Southern setting. That’s it for discussion of Tarantino’s own work — barring a lengthy opening aside into the alternate history of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; a ‘short story’ about Rick Dalton’s time in Italy and his meetings with Corbucci. Tarantino relates these events as if they’re historical fact — the guy really did thoroughly imagine his alternate history!

Django & Django is the 24th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

A Man Escaped

(1956)

aka Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut

Most “prisoner of war” movies are about plucky Brits and/or Yanks stuck in jail somewhere behind enemy lines, working out ways to escape almost as a time killer, or at best a matter of honour. A Man Escaped is something different. Based on the memoirs of André Devigny, a member of the French Resistance held in a French prison by the occupying Germans during World War II, and written and directed by Robert Bresson, who was also imprisoned by the Germans as a member of the Resistance, you can’t doubt its pedigree for authenticity. Indeed, Devigny was an adviser on the film, and lent the production the actual ropes and hooks he had used in his escape. More than these points of fact, it’s the film’s overall tone that’s striking — more dour and pessimistic than the usual POW drama, at least as I remember them. Here, the need to escape isn’t a game, it’s literally life or death.

Bresson certainly knows where he wants his focus to be. The film begins with our hero, Fontaine (François Leterrier), arriving at the prison, although an escape attempt on the way there sees him immediately condemned to solitary confinement. Nonetheless, we remain by his side, never leaving him or his point of view, right until the end, when… well, that would be a spoiler. In terms of background, there’s only what we can pick up along the way; the barest outline of who he is, why he’s there, and what awaits him on the outside. That’s extraneous detail — this is all about his time in prison, his mentality in prison, and how he intends to escape the prison.

To that end, Bresson spends a lot of time detailing very little. The process by which Fontaine fashions ropes, or chips away at a crack in his door to facilitate a way out, is shown in almost-excruciating detail. It’s all about the prep. When something truly dramatic does happen — like Fontaine gaining a roommate, and the question of whether that man can be trusted — it’s dealt with quickly, confined to a couple of quick scenes. I can only think that’s part of the point: much of the work to escape prison is tedious preparation, but when a spanner gets in the works it has to be dealt with quickly lest it derail the whole enterprise. Such ‘big things’ are a potential threat, but it’s arguably the little things that are even more dangerous. Accidentally drop something noisily, thus alerting the guards to your suspicious activities, and it’s all over.

As a film, it doesn’t feel as strikingly stylised as the other Bressons I’ve seen, but it definitely has a stripped-back simplicity that’s part of his overall ethos. It’s debatable if we need the semi-monotone voiceover that describes exactly what we can see on screen — I’m no expert, but such an unnecessary and purely cinematic addition seems out of sorts with Bresson’s usual style. That said, at points it adds insight into Fontaine’s thought process, so the narration is not without merit.

A Man Escaped is the 25th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

Death on the Nile

(2022)

Kenneth Branagh returns as both director and star for another Hercule Poirot mystery, after the somewhat-surprising success of his Murder on the Orient Express — “surprising” in the sense that it did better at the box office than I think anyone expected. It performed less well with critics, but I enjoyed it. Sadly, this followup is not its equal… though that’s not necessarily saying it’s bad.

For me, it was a film of two halves — although, often as not, those two halves occurred simultaneously. For example: there’s an over-reliance on CGI for the Egyptian vistas makes many scenes look disappointingly fake; but then there’s a fantastic, huge set for the boat where much of the film takes place, and the real-life elements are quite handsomely shot on 65mm. Story-wise, there’s been a lot of rejigging (try to line up the cast with who played the roles in previous adaptations, for example, and you’ll soon discover a lot of the characters are amalgamations), but Christie’s typically excellent plotting survives mostly intact. That said, the ratio of buildup to detective work feels off, with the murder seeming to occur quite late in the film and the subsequent investigation feeling rather rushed.

The motive behind screenwriter Michael Green’s remixing seems to be a serious attempt to make the film All About Love — not just the motive for the crimes, but all the subplots and whatnot too. I guess they were seeking some kind of justification for why this story is being filmed again, and what makes it worthy of the all-star movie treatment, rather than being just a run-of-the-mill, see-it-every-week-on-TV whodunnit. Plus, there’s a bizarre attempt to provide a backstory for Poirot’s moustache. No, seriously.

Branagh initially seemed miscast as Poirot, but wasn’t bad in Orient Express, and that continues here. His version of the character is rather likeable, imbuing the Belgian with a neat sense of humour that marks his interpretation out from previous incarnations (Ustinov often played it for laughs too, but with less subtlety). There’s the customary all-star supporting cast, but they’re somewhat wasted, with some big names or talented performers left with too little to do. Though, when about half of them are employing dodgy accents, maybe that’s no bad thing.

A mixed bag, then. It’s far from my favourite Christie adaptation; although it might actually be my favourite Death on the Nile by default, because I don’t think the previous versions (a Ustinov film and Suchet TV episode) are the best their respective series have to offer either. Whatever — I love this kind of stuff, and I’m glad to hear they’re intending to forge ahead with a third outing.

Death on the Nile is the 26th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.