Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Posted on November 7, 2024 by badblokebob

If you came to Rosemary’s Baby without any kind of context about its place in film history, you might well conclude it had been made in the last few years. Well, if you learnt about it on paper — visually, it’s obviously a film of the’60s thanks to its cinematography and production design (not a criticism; indeed, if anything, that’s praise). But in terms of its plot, its themes, its characters and their relationships, and what they might be signifying, that all feels quite ‘of the moment’. Maybe it did in the ’60s too. Maybe it has in every time period since — maybe that’s why the film has endured so well for over 50 years. (Plenty of other films have endured just as long — and longer — without feeling pressingly relevant to the present day, so I don’t want to overemphasise that point too much.) If it had been made more recently, the usual blowhards would be decrying it as “woke” and that it debases the traditional family unit, or something. The fact you can apply such ‘arguments’ as readily to something made over half a century ago as you can to something produced today is just one reason they’re absolute bollocks. But I digress.

To dig deeper into what the film is saying about such things, and how and why, necessitates some spoilers. I know some people think it’s ridiculous to consider spoilers in the context of a film as old as this, but there are always new generations and more people coming afresh to any film decades later — heck, I’ve only just watched it; that’s the whole point of this. That said, Rosemary’s Baby is sort of a self-spoiling film. We all know it’s a horror movie, so when it starts out like a pleasant slice-of-life domestic drama about a young couple moving into a new apartment building, making friends with their quirky neighbours, and deciding to start a family… well, we already know that’s not all it’s going to be, and the hints at more sinister goings-on are easy to spot.

This is another way one might argue it feels modern, as it’s close to the “elevated horror” sub-genre that’s sprung up in the past few years. Again, the fact works like this have existed since at least the ’60s — and I’m sure there are other horror movies that could be similarly classified — shows that so many “new” things have actually been around before, we’ve just forgotten them, or not bothered to label them. Basically, rather than being an outright schlocky genre movie, it’s restrained and dramatic and realistic (in tone, at least). There’s not even an early fake-out jump scare to reassure you you’re watching a genre piece, a trick employed by so many films where the real frights only come in later. There’s a conceivable version of this film where the big reveal is that everyone’s normal, Rosemary was paranoid, and you’ve been watching a mental health drama, and literally all you’d have to change for that to work is the events of the final few minutes.

Indeed, it’s interesting to sort of take a step back and almost-objectively consider this as “a horror movie”. There are very few (if any) scares, and it doesn’t create the same kind of uneasy irrepressible mood as something like The Shining; although I would wager it can have a different effect on women, especially women of childbearing age, than it does on me, because the horrors are that much closer to home. I don’t think it’s failing in those respects — it’s not setting out to terrify you and then failing to achieve it — I just think it’s going for a different kind of horror. It’s the slow realisation that something is not just ‘not right’ but definitely very wrong; and by the time you grasp the scale of it, it’s too late to do anything; and too insidious to convince anyone else that it’s real. In that sense, it really is a good analogy for things like toxic relationships that look fine to the outside world.

And that’s the way in which the film is most modern, as I was saying at the start. Its central concerns seem to be issues of women’s bodily autonomy, controlling relationships, the way they isolate their victims and lead to abuse. If you want to close your senses to such unmissable subtext, I guess you could still see the film as no more than a genre piece about (spoilers!) a cult trying to birth the Antichrist, but I think you’d be burying your head in the sand to do so. Sure, the film doesn’t expressly call those elements out — doesn’t underscore them, or bluntly explain that’s what’s going on in modern terminology — but they’re inescapably in the mix. I do think that’s a difference between the film having been made in the late ’60s vs today: now, it would be hard to resist thoroughly leaning into those themes and making them more overt, because they’re things we’re much more aware of as a society, and much more concerned with combating. Again, it’s not that they’re exactly subtle here, but you get the sense some of the psychology involved was still not widely understood; that there perhaps wasn’t yet the agreed-upon terminology to explicitly call it out, other than to present it and show how negative it was.

All of which said, the timeliness or otherwise of the film’s concerns is irrelevant to its overall quality. As much as it would be a key point of interest to some, I’m sure it’s of no matter to others. Either way, though, Rosemary’s Baby remains a compelling story because of how it grounds its supernatural goings-on in day-to-day life. Without playing the “is it or isn’t it” angle, it nonetheless renders them almost mundane — these devil-worshippers aren’t wearing robes, enacting elaborate arcane rituals in ancient stone circles in the British countryside: they’re modern-day Americans, living pretty typical lives in a New York apartment block. Horror can exist everywhere and anywhere; it is everyday. Oops, maybe we’ve come back round to making a sociological point again…

Rosemary’s Baby is the 82nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2024. It was my Favourite Film of the Month in October 2024.

Incendies (2010)

Posted on October 10, 2024 by badblokebob

The Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2011 Oscars is, in retrospect, a pretty impressive year. Alejandro González Iñárritu was already well established before his nominated film, Biutiful, but his fellow nominees included Yorgos Lanthimos for only his third feature, Dogtooth, and Denis Villeneuve for this, his second after his career re-start. And yet the winner was In a Better World. Remember that? Me neither. (I don’t even recall it ever being mentioned in the last near-decade-and-a-half; although its director was Susanne Bier, who’s gone on to the likes of The Night Manager and Bird Box, so that’s something). It seems like an odd choice for victor with the power of hindsight, but that’s hindsight for you. On the other hand, watching Incendies, it’s hard to see how anyone could ever have missed its incredible power. (Or maybe In a Better World is even better. I struggle to believe that possibility, but you never know… and probably never will, because who’s still watching it nowadays? It’s certainly not getting a Collector’s Edition-style 4K UHD release from a boutique label — unlike, say, Incendies.)

Incendies is, on the surface, one of those films that can sound off-puttingly heavy: it’s about generational trauma caused by a long-running war in the Middle East. Sure, that kind of thing can be Worthy and Great filmmaking, but egads, hard going. But while Incendies is all those things, it’s also a compelling mystery, which leads to twists worthy of a great thriller. The first of those comes in the film’s setup: Nawal, the mother of a pair of grownup twins has died, and it’s only from her will they learn, first, that their thought-dead father is still alive and, second, that they have an older brother they didn’t know existed. They are tasked with finding both men, and only then will they receive the final letter she has left for them. To do this, they must travel to their mother’s homeland, an unnamed Middle Eastern country (heavily inspired by Lebanon) where the aforementioned war is over, but the scars still linger. As they investigate their mother’s previous life, we see it play out in flashbacks.

While the film at first seems to be about the twins, it’s really most about Nawal. That’s in part thanks to the incredible performance by Lubna Azabal. She has to portray this woman across decades, from a relative innocent to someone changed and hardened by all she’s been through, and charting every step of that journey, too. Plus, she’s left to convey almost all of that silently. Not that she’s mute, but she’s rarely allowed the shortcut of dialogue that discusses or exposes her emotions and motivations. That we still gain so much understanding of the how and why of Nawal is remarkable, really; a performance that, under different circumstances (let’s be honest: if it were in English) would surely have contended for every major award going.

The film is not about a specific conflict — that’s part of the reason playwright Wajdi Mouawad didn’t explicitly set his original work in Lebanon, and why Villeneuve ultimately didn’t change that when adapting it. Rather, as Villeneuve says, it’s “about the cycle of anger, the heritage of anger in a family, where in a conscious and subconscious way anger is traveling among family members, and among a society”. The point is not “what happened in Lebanon”, but what happens when families are torn apart, emotionally just as much as physically; what the fallout from that is, and how healing can be found — if, indeed, it can.

Oh dear, it’s all sounding a bit heavy again, isn’t it? And yes, there is an element of Incendies that is like that. It’s the kind of film that uses Radiohead on its soundtrack multiple times. (That said, this is how I feel that band’s dirge-like ambient-noise style of music functions best: as background mood-creating film score, rather than as, y’know, songs.) But, as I said before, this is also a film that plays as an effective mystery. What, exactly, happened to Nawal? Who and where is their father? Who and where is their older brother? Why was this a secret Nawal took to her grave? Why did she feel the need to reveal it posthumously? Any and all of these are questions your stereotypical “art house” movie would leave unanswered, providing vague prompts for you to consider after the film ends — or, inevitably, provoke you to Google “Incendies ending explained”. But Incendies isn’t actually like that — all of those questions are answered, because they’re essential to what the film is about. That they can also be gasp-inducing all-timer reveals is another bonus.

Within that, Villeneuve also shows off the expert filmmaking that has since elevated him to Christopher Nolan-adjacent levels of big-budget auteurist blockbuster-making. There’s a sequence on a bus in the middle of the film that is as tense as any suspense movie, as scary as any horror movie, and as emotionally devastating as any hard-hitting drama. There’s a reason it’s the inspiration for almost every poster and key art piece related to the film. (The exception is the original American theatrical poster, which shows… a woman standing by some sand. Great marketing, folks. Maybe that’s why it didn’t win the Oscar.) It’s an event of such horror that — especially when combined with the shocking revelations later in the film (which, obviously, I’m not going to spoil) — I imagine this is the kind of movie some people swear off ever watching again, like Requiem for a Dream; a big comparison, maybe, but one Incendies is up to.

Incendies is the 68th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen All of the IMDb Top 250?”. At time of posting, it was ranked 101st on that list. It was my Favourite Film of the Month in September 2024. It placed 4th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2024.

Cecil M. Hepworth shorts

Posted on September 27, 2024 by badblokebob

I know I’m generally quite poor about posting reviews nowadays (“nowadays” being “for the past five years”, considering that’s roughly how long ago my backlog stretches), but I do have the Archive 5 to dig into that, and sometimes post reviews of newer watches too. What really suffers, however, are short films. I have no consistent plan to correct that, but here at least are reviews of three shorts I’ve watched this year with a simple connection: they were all directed by early British filmmaker Cecil M. Hepworth.

Alice in Wonderland (1903)

Explosion of a Motor Car (1900)

The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder (1901)

Alice in Wonderland

(1903)

Cecil M. Hepworth & Percy Stow | 9 mins | digital HD | 4:3 | UK / silent

The first screen adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s beloved novel is a whistle-stop tour of some of its best-known moments. What it loses in not being able to retain any of Carroll’s memorable prose or dialogue, it makes up for by being a neat showcase for some early-cinema special effects — Alice shrinks and grows; a baby turns into a pig; and so on. There’s little doubt that this isn’t the best filmed version of the tale (unless you have a fondness for early cinema over anything made later), but it’s a valuable glimpse into the ambition and skill of the form’s pioneers.

The only surviving print is in terrible shape and missing several minutes of footage (it was originally 12 minutes long), but at least we have some way of seeing this important bit of film history. Talking of which, you can watch it on the BFI’s official YouTube channel, although they only provide it in standard definition. Fortunately, there’s a full HD version here.

Explosion of a Motor Car

(1900)

Cecil M. Hepworth | 2 mins | digital SD | 4:3 | UK / silent

Cars randomly exploding for almost no reason is a hallmark of action cinema, but it begins even earlier than the codification of that genre, as this short from 1900 shows.

We watch as a car full of people merrily trundles along a suburban street… then, suddenly, there’s a puff of smoke and the vehicle is reduced to a pile of parts. A policeman comes over to inspect, at which point body parts rain from the sky. It would be gruesome if it weren’t so obviously comical… especially when the policeman begins to casually pile them up. And that’s the end.

Basically, it’s a comedy sketch à la 1900. I guess it was probably inspired by fears of this modern new invention, the motor car, but at least it plays those for laughs. There are worse ways to spend 90-or-so seconds (depending on the playback speed of the version you watch — the BFI version is here).

The Indian Chief and
the Seidlitz Powder

(1901)

Cecil M. Hepworth | 2 mins | digital SD | 4:3 | UK / silent

So, I bought the 88 Films Blu-ray of ’70s British-produced Western Hannie Caulder (mentioned in my May failures), had a little look at the booklet and, for whatever reason, the opening paragraph of the essay by Lee Broughton caught my eye. To quote: “The British have been making Westerns since the early days of silent cinema (see The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder [Cecil M. Hepworth, 1901]) and they continue to make Westerns today (see The English [Hugo Blick, 2022]).” This, first off, reminded me that I’d meant to watch The English (I find Blick’s work to be both fascinating and somehow off-putting, so I always feel I should watch them but, when there’s such a plethora of choice nowadays, it’s easier to go for something, well, easier). More relevantly, it sent me off to Google this short, having recognised the director’s name (partly from watching the above-reviewed shorts a couple of months earlier) and, more importantly, being interested in the early days of cinema — especially as shorts such as these can usually be found online, if they survive. You often end up with low-quality DVD rips on YouTube, but, thankfully, this one is available on the BFI for free.

All of that said, it’s… not all that. It’s a Western in technicality only: the sole character is a Native American chief; though you’d only infer that from the title, because his costume is terrible. There are no other signifiers that this is a Western — the basic set could be a store or storeroom anywhere, and presumably Seidlitz Powder was a product sold in British shops. I presume that because the short is a one-gag comedy based around the effects of that product, and so British audiences must’ve known about it. As far as I’m aware, it’s not a product still in existence today, so thank goodness for the BFI’s explanatory notes (also at the link above) to illuminate the context of the joke.

Other than that, the film is noteworthy for containing a sequence in slow motion. It’s an inherently cinematic effect, so it’s always interesting to see it deployed so early in the form’s history. Indeed, it stands at odds with how the other ‘effects’ in the film are achieved: the chief’s belly swells by the performer (Hepworth himself, possibly? I don’t know, but I believe he often appeared in his own films; equally, someone is operating the camera) fiddling around inside his costume and shaking it about until it inflates. Then he “bounce[s] around like a balloon”, says the BFI — rather overselling it, as he just kind of leaps about a bit. There is one more cinematic technique: a jump cut to allow for a puff of smoke when his stomach bursts… followed by the performer awkwardly folding up his now over-large costume before darting out the door.

So, two minutes filled with casual racism, 120-year-old topical humour, and some weak theatrical ‘special’ effects. But hey, at least we can experience British cinema’s early forays into uniquely cinematic technique and a key genre.

Archive 5, Vol.11

Posted on May 16, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 515 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, the main emergent theme is “films that weren’t so great” — although there are a couple of bright spots to be found, still.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

Mangrove (2020)

Out of Africa (1985)

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

Dumb and Dumber

(1994)

The nicest thing I can say about Dumb and Dumber is that it does at least live up to its title: it starts dumb and gets dumber.

Despite the film’s later reputation in some circles as a modern comedy… if not “classic”, then certainly “success” — enough to eventually earn it both a prequel and sequel, at any rate — I’m clearly not alone in this view: apparently the original draft of the screenplay was so poor that it gained an enduringly negative reputation among investors; to the extent that, even once it had been rewritten, it had to be pitched under a fake title in order to get people to even read it. I feel like the final result only goes some way towards fixing that, with an oddly episodic structure and some bizarrely amateurish bits of filmmaking for a studio movie (the audio quality is relatively poor; there’s too much reliance on samey master shots).

There are a few genuinely funny bits between all the gurning, guffawing, and scatology. It’s a shame they’re not in an overall-better film.

Dumb and Dumber was #119 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021. It featured on my list of The Worst Films I Saw in 2021.

Bill & Ted Face the Music

(2020)

I wasn’t that big a fan of the original Bill & Ted films, so I didn’t have high hopes for this — after all, most decades-later revival/reunion movies are primarily about trying to please existing fans, not win round new ones; and it feels like a good number of them fail even in that regard. Face the Music is definitely full of the requisite nods and references, both explicit and subtle, major and minor; but they’re all in the right spirit and it kinda works (albeit a bit scrappily at times), bound together by a deceptively simple, pervasive niceness.

Alex Winter is particularly great as Bill. Given all the stories we hear about how awesome Keanu Reeves is in real life, it’s no surprise that — despite being the much (much) bigger movie star — he’s generous enough to be a co-lead and let Winter shine. Brigette Lundy-Paine is absolutely bang on as Ted’s daughter, aping Reeves’ performance in all sorts of ways. As the younger Bill, Samara Weaving is clearly game, but doesn’t carry it quite as naturally (apparently she was cast after Reeves discovered she was the niece of Hugo Weaving, who he’d of course worked with on the Matrix trilogy, so that might explain that).

“Be excellent to each other” is a message the world needs now more than ever, and that’s as true four years on as it was back in 2020. For me, that makes this third outing Bill and Ted’s most excellent adventure.

Bill & Ted Face the Music was #136 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Mangrove

(2020)

aka Small Axe: Mangrove

The line between film and TV continues to blur with Mangrove: a 127-minute episode of an anthology TV series, Small Axe, conceived and directed by Oscar winner Steve McQueen, that premiered as the opening night film of the London Film Festival. It was made for television, but in form and pedigree it’s a movie. Just another example in a “does it really matter?” debate that continues to rage — and is only likely to intensify with the increasing jeopardy faced by theatrical exhibition. (I wrote this intro almost four years ago, and while theatrical is fortunately still hanging in there post-pandemic, I do think the line remains malleable.)

I only ended up watching two episodes/films from Small Axe in the end. I did intend to go back and finish them, especially as they were heaped with critical praise, but the second (Lovers Rock) bored me to tears, which didn’t help. This first was better, but still not wholly to my taste. It tells an important true story about racially-motivated miscarriages of justice, but I found it overlong and with too much speechifying dialogue. That kind of thing works better in a courtroom setting, I find, so perhaps that’s why I felt the film was at its best once it (finally) got to the courtroom. When it’s good, it really is very good.

Mangrove was #246 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Out of Africa

(1985)

This is very much the kind of thing that was once considered a Great Movie, in an “Oscar winner” sense, but nowadays is sort of dated and attracts plenty of less favourable reviews. It’s long, historical, and white — not how we like our movies about Africa nowadays, for understandable reasons.

Certainly, there are inherent problems with its attitude to colonialism, but to a degree that’s tied to how much tolerance you have for “things were different in the past” as an argument for understanding. In this case, just because these white Europeans shouldn’t have taken African land and divvied it up among themselves and treated the inhabitants as little better than cattle, that doesn’t mean the individuals involved weren’t devoid of feeling or humanity. People like Karen, the film’s heroine, were trying to do what they thought was right within the limited scope of what society at the time allowed them to think. With the benefit of a more enlightened modern perspective, we can see that was still wrong and that they didn’t go far enough, but (whether you like it or not) there is an element of “things were different then”.

Morals aside, the story is a bit slow going, bordering on dull at times, but it’s mostly effective as a ‘prestige’ historical romance, which I think is what it primarily wants to be. It’s quite handsomely shot, although not as visually incredible as others make out, and John Barry’s score is nice — you can definitely hear it’s him: on several occasions it reminded me of the “love theme”-type pieces for his Bond work.

Out of Africa was #212 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Rambo: Last Blood

(2019)

Sylvester Stallone’s belated returns to the roles that made his name have worked out pretty well so far, I think, with Rocky Balboa and Rambo (i.e. Rambo 4) being among my favourites for both those franchises; not to mention Creed and its sequel. Unfortunately, here is where that streak runs out.

Running a brisk 89 minutes (in the US/Canada/UK cut — a longer version was released in other territories), the film is almost admirably to-the-point. We all know where it’s going, and more or less what plot beats it will hit along the way, so it doesn’t belabour anything, it just gets on with it. However, you eventually realise why other films ‘indulge’ in the kind of scenes this one has done away with: movies are about more than just plot, they’re about character and emotion and why things happen. Last Blood is so desperate to get to the action that it strips those things back to their bare minimum, thus undermining our investment. And then, weirdly, it hurries through the action scenes too. The climax packs in as many gruesome deaths in as short a time span as possible, meaning none but the most stomach-churning have any impact; and even those disgusting ones are mercifully fleeting. More, it feels rushed and of little consequence. Far from a grand send-off to the Rambo saga (which a slapped-on voiceover-and-montage finale attempts to evoke), it feels like a short-story interlude.

Did Rambo deserve better? Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far. But, on the evidence of this, it might be best if they don’t try again.

Rambo: Last Blood was #74 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

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.

Dune: Part One (2021)

Posted on February 29, 2024 by badblokebob

aka Dune

Trying to write about a film like Dune in a critical context over two years after it was released feels a bit… pointless. I mean, the film was a hit (albeit by mid-pandemic standards); and if you did miss it first time round, the hype around the sequel has surely already piqued your interest and/or left you cold, in which case what I say isn’t likely to be a deciding factor. Of course, yay/nay recommendations are not the only reason for critical writing — far from it — but, if you’re looking to do more than that, you better have something to say. So I confess here and now, for the sake of any readers looking for that kind of article, that I don’t think I have a unique or revelatory or even particularly insightful take on Dune — or Dune: Part One, as I’ve insisted on calling it ever since the wonderful surprise of seeing its opening title card (and sites like IMDb have finally got on board with too). All I can offer is how the film struck me personally, from my particular perspective; which is not nothing, but is what it is.

So what is my perspective? Well, I’m far from a newbie to the world of Arrakis, though I can’t now remember in what order I first encountered the various texts related to it that I’ve experienced. So, going chronologically, I have read Frank Herbert’s original novel. Famously, it’s a doorstop of a tome, so I must have been relatively young because, for whatever reason, I’ve struggled to get through long books for the past couple of decades (I’ve tried Lord of the Rings two or three times and never got much further than Tom Bombadil; I started Shogun over four years ago and my bookmark still sits about halfway through it — and I did enjoy both of those! I just don’t have the staying power to get to the end). But I can’t have been that young, given the book’s subject matter and style, and the fact I enjoyed it. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite novels. I’ve never read the sequels. I’ve long intended to (see: previous comments about lack of staying power when reading).

I’ve also seen the 1984 David Lynch film, naturally — an interesting but fundamentally flawed endeavour — and the 2000 miniseries (and its 2003 sequel), which I remember being widely acclaimed — and I would have agreed with that sentiment — but it does look rather dated now, and so I’m somewhat wary of rewatching it (though I recently bought an expensive Blu-ray edition imported from Australia, so I certainly intend to at some point). The point of listing all that is this: I do not approach Dune free of expectation. Quite the opposite. And yet, I also didn’t have a specific vision in mind. And when you’ve got a director like Denis Villeneuve in charge — a director with a very definite and particular style — you know you’re going to get his interpretation of the material, so the more open-minded and receptive you are to that, the better. I mean, unless you’re on his exact wavelength, your imaginings are not likely to be the same as his, especially if you’ve allowed them to be shaped by one of the previous films, or even the concepts from unmade versions, like the one so interestingly documented in Jodorowsky’s Dune.

All of this a very long-winded and self-centred way of arriving at my point that, on first viewing, Villeneuve’s Dune took some adjusting to, because it wasn’t quite… right. Having said I went in with no expectations, clearly I had some, buried somewhere in my mind. And yet, the film also felt like exactly what one should have expected from Villeneuve if you’d seen his previous work, not least the sci-fi film he made immediately before this, Blade Runner 2049. The worlds of Blade Runner and Dune are very different, but, as filtered through the mind of Denis Villeneuve, there are distinct aesthetic similarities, most apparent in the brutalist influence in much of the world design. That starkness is quite at odds with the fanciful, sometimes even downright weird, takes on the material that came from the minds of creatives like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky; or even the miniseries, which, while I little more staid and constrained by a TV budget, is seemingly as influenced by fantasy TV of the period as by its science-fiction stablemates. With most previous visualisations of Dune leaning into such fantastical choices, Villeneuve’s (for want of a better word) realist take was, initially, a shock to the system.

That’s a slightly disorientating feeling to be dealing with when watching a film for the first time. Thanks to the story and characters and scenes being so familiar, the mind is freed up to focus more on the surrounding decisions. Even when trying to be open-minded about them, there’s then some kind of disjunct between things that are very recognisable being presented in a very unrecognisable way. There’s also a kind of tug-of-war going on between the feeling that Villeneuve has been allowed to interpret the text exactly as he sees fit, and that’s a good thing because we’re getting his vision across the project, and the sense that it’s something of a shame to miss out on the craziness present in previous interpretations. After all, Dune is set 20,000 years in the future (you may recall it’s set in the year 10,191, but that’s not AD, it’s numbered from an in-universe event — look, let’s not get into the backstory here; but when you see articles mindlessly parrot “Dune is set 20,000 years in the future in the year 10,191”, know that the article writer is mindless because they haven’t bothered to query the maths, not because they’ve done the maths dramatically wrong) — think how different technology has made our world from three or four thousand years ago, so how much wilder and weirder could things get if you multiply that by a factor of five or six? None of which is to say Villeneuve’s choices are wrong, or even that I don’t like them, but they took some getting used to. On my recent second viewing, with the benefit of awareness of what I was about to see, I was able to enjoy the overall experience much more; it settled the qualms I had from my initial viewing and made it easier for me to appreciate the magnificence of the achievement.

Another point of contention (if we can go as far as calling it that) was where the film broke off. I’ve read some retrospective reviews recently that expressed their disappointment when the film suddenly ended mid-story, which I guess goes to show how not all marketing and information reaches all people — I thought it was well-known that this was to be Part One, and that a followup conclusion was dependent on its box office success (hence my pleasant surprise when the film so brazenly declared it was just Part One on its opening title card, not even saving that fact for a ‘surprise’ reveal on a closing title card, a la It), but there were definitely people who went in not knowing that and found it frustrating. Should it have been made even clearer? Should the film have formally been titled Part One in its marketing? Well, the reaction to various “Part Ones” released this year (like Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Fast X, and Across the Spider-Verse) suggests that audiences don’t really like only getting “Part One” ever; but, conversely, their acceptance of it depends on how it’s handled — how satisfying the movie leading up to the break is, and how the moment it stops is handled. But this is a whole side debate that I’ve stumbled into without adequate preparation (I’ve not even seen two of the three films I just mentioned), so I’m going to swiftly redirect us to Dune.

Where Dune: Part One ends is, frankly, where I always thought it would. Other fans were more surprised by its choice, so perhaps it’s just too long since I’ve read the novel or watched another version and I just couldn’t remember a better break-point at approximately the halfway mark. The screenwriters could, though, because apparently the film originally carried on a little further in the story, before the endpoint was moved in the edit. It’s not the most dramatic place to pause the story or end a film — it doesn’t come after some big action sequence or major plot twist, nor on a cliffhanger of any kind — but I think it largely works. It reminded me of The Fellowship of the Ring, possibly the greatest “Part One” film of all time, in that in no way whatsoever does it feel like the end of the story — we’re definitely only in the middle somewhere, and there’s clearly a whole lot more to come — but it feels like a solid place to pause; like we’ve experienced the whole of a part, if that makes sense.

There was some minor brouhaha the other day during the press for Part Two when someone asked Villeneuve about telling the story over two films — I didn’t pay it too much heed and it didn’t really blow up, so I forget the precise question and answer — but, as many pointed out, adapting Dune in a single film has been attempted before and famously didn’t work out, so doing it in two on this re-attempt shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Certainly, as a fan, I’d rather a two-part adaptation that gives the story the necessary screen time, even if that means a somewhat limp end to Part One, rather than have the whole book in a rushed three-hour single shot. And if early reviews of Part Two are to be believed, it’s paid off overall.

But more on that ‘next time’, when I see Part Two myself and offer my verdict — hopefully in a more timely fashion than this, rather than waiting several years until the hoped-for Dune: Part Three, aka Dune Messiah (I’m not sure which title I’d rather they go with if/when it happens…)

Dune: Part One was #176 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021. It placed 5th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2021.

Dune: Part Two is in cinemas worldwide from tomorrow and will be reviewed in due course.

Barbie (2023)

Posted on February 10, 2024 by badblokebob

Once upon a time, a movie based on a children’s toy would’ve been IP slop; or, at best, surprisingly entertaining IP slop. Heck, there are dozens of direct-to-video animated Barbie movies that prove exactly that: they look cheap; they’re there to generate money from little girls (primarily) demanding to see the video of the toy they like; but some of them aren’t actually all that bad.

But that was a couple of decades ago. Now, the majority of our mainstream movie culture is based around originally-for-kids IP that people who have reached adult ages still apparently obsess over. And when it comes to “movies based on toys” specifically, we can look back to The LEGO Movie (released a whole decade ago this month) for a work that transcended what it “should have been” (an expensive 90-minute toy commercial) to become something genuinely entertaining; that used its IP in creative and fun and, yes, even meaningful ways. It’s those footsteps that the Barbie movie seeks to walk in.

And, thanks to some savvy behind-the-scenes choices, it succeeds! Heck, it almost succeeds too well. This is definitely a movie primarily aimed at adults, with enough silliness and bright colours on the side to not alienate kids too much. Though by “kids” I mean “teenagers”. Sure, the 12A and PG-13 ratings are permissive enough to take your six-your-old who actually plays with Barbies, but they’re going to be left floundering — or, worse, bored — as the film debates feminism, the patriarchy, and gender roles in general. This is a film about where Barbie, the toy, sits in our culture; what it represents, and what it should represent, and how successful or not it is at doing that. It’s not an essay film — those themes are smartly addressed along the way as part of a storyline about Barbie-the-toy crossing over into our real world, for various reasons — but nor is it a bright-and-colourful bit of fluff to entertain small kids. Maybe it could have been — that’s what Pixar used to excel at — but it’s not the route the filmmakers chose to go down.

As for the meat of what the film has to say and how it says it… oy, I’m not sure I want to get into that discourse. It’s just asking to have annoying people jump up in your replies. Nonetheless, it’s quite bold for an IP title like this to criticise the patriarchy by inverting it and making a matriarchy the oppressive state; but without feeding into right-wing numpties by saying “see, women would be just as bad!”. People say the film is about feminism, which is true, but it’s specifically about what I’d consider the true meaning of feminism — which is really about genuine equality — rather than what reactionaries imagine it is, i.e. “women are best and should be in control”. It could also have hit that note in a shallow, almost accidental way; for example, if it had been a parade of “aren’t men stupid and annoying?” jokes. Put another way, the film cares as much about the Kens and their right to be individuals as it does the Barbies and their right to be powerful. (I said I didn’t want to write anything particularly ‘risky’ and look what I’ve gone and done…)

Also, thanks to my personal predilections, I particularly enjoyed how the film deconstructed itself; or, rather, the fact it was aware that it’s content based on product and engaged with that to some extent. It sits alongside other recent works like The Matrix Resurrections and Return to Monkey Island as works of art that have an awareness of where they sit in culture and why they exist, and are prepared to engage with that, to deconstruct it and analyse it, in quite an overt and meta fashion within the works themselves. Personally, that’s something I’ve wanted and dreamt of seeing, but never expected to get from studio IP — such self-awareness is kinda frowned upon when it’s saying “I exist for no artistic reason, purely to make more money for the studio”, as The Matrix 4 did most explicitly. What’s great about all three of these works is that they go beyond that obvious point, too.

In something of an about turn, others have criticised the film for not being subtle in the way it handles these issues. My friends, you’re watching a movie based on a toy, aimed at as wide an audience as possible. This isn’t an abstruse Palme d’Or contender — it’s a film that can hit your everyman round the face with a bright-pink hammer three times over and they still might miss the point. Sometimes, it’s the right choice to be, if not “on the nose”, then certainly overt. It’s ok for a story to have a point, and for that point to be clear.

The other point of discourse the film has fired up came after the Oscar nominations, when co-writer/director Greta Gerwig and star/producer Margot Robbie were… nominated, actually, but not in the categories some people felt they should be nominated in. Although, if they’d swapped the nominations around, I expect they’d be annoyed the other way too. So, Gerwig gets a screenplay nod (which she might win, I guess?) but not a directing one (which she wouldn’t have, let’s face it), and Robbie is nominated for producing the film (a definite achievement — she’s spoken a lot in interviews about the efforts that went into making the film they wanted to make, and convincing the studio and toy manufacturers to go along with it) but not for acting (which she probably wouldn’t have won anyway). I don’t mean neither would have been deserving of the other nomination, but the directing gong seems almost sewn up for Christopher Nolan (for various reasons), and actress is a two-horse race between others. Besides, the real achievement is that the film exists as it is, with the content that it has — that’s a feat of writing and producing, not acting or, truly, directing (sure, in many other movies the director is ~~king~~ queen, but you get the distinct impression Barbie was significantly powered by Robbie; and when one person is both (co-)writer and director, surely a lot of their conceptual energy is injected at the writing stage).

Competitors aside, the quality of work can always be argued on its own merits. Gerwig’s direction is pacey and bright and fun, but is it as good as what she did in Lady Bird or Little Women? Which is to say, it fits the material well enough, but is it really special enough for an awards win? And also, who the fuck cares? Awards are kinda arbitrary. She did a good job. When it comes to Robbie’s performance, complaints have focused on the fact Ryan Gosling is nominated. Well, he’s in a different category — the fact he gave one of the five best supporting actor performances in 2023 has no bearing whatsoever on whether Robbie gave one of the five best, er, actressing performances of 2023. But yeah, Gosling does almost steal the film out from under Robbie, because he’s consistently hilarious with just enough introspection to add some character. That’s certainly the initial impression, I think. But Robbie is the film’s emotional core (yes, the movie about the plastic doll has emotions), which ultimately allows her to hang on to her own movie. That’s not something to underestimate: a lesser performer could have been overshadowed. Instead, they’re both excellent, particularly when they’re sharing a scene.

By rights, a Barbie movie should’ve been something inoffensively plasticky for little girls, possibly with some trite “you can do anything you want” message in between all the different outfits designed to sell more toys. Instead, Gerwig and Robbie have gone deeper and further in every respect — taking that “you can do anything”-type aphorism and dissecting it to find how true it is, or isn’t, and why. But they’ve wrapped that up in a movie that doesn’t forget to celebrate the thing it’s about, both by acknowledging Barbie’s good intentions and with piles of references to its history (what we’d call fan service if this was a a boys’ IP with tonnes of Lore or whatever). And, perhaps most importantly for a movie that, remember, is based on a toy — a thing that’s supposed to bring joy and fun and entertainment — they’ve made something full of fun and joy and entertainment.

Barbie is the 4th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024. It placed 9th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2024.

Archive 5, Vol.8

Posted on January 26, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a(n insanely huge) backlog of 533 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing (not to mention the 77 shorts, but they’re a problem for another day). This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, it’s killers galore with Korean zombies, comical hitmen, rampaging security robots, and plain ol’ murderers. Plus, dying of boredom in Saturday detention.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

One Cut of the Dead (2017)

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Chopping Mall (1986)

Dead Man’s Folly (1986)

Wild Target (2010)

One Cut of the Dead

(2017)

aka Kamera o tomeru na!

You know, it’s not just my reviews that are tardy: I bought this because it was hyped up, both as “good” and as “see it knowing as little as possible”, and it went on my “must watch soon” pile… where it sat for 14 months. And that’s far from the most egregious example of “ooh, I must get round to that” equally a long, long delay.

Now, it’s taken me another 46 months to write this review. Eesh. On the bright side, perhaps I shouldn’t be so worried about spoilers anymore. I mean, if you’ve not seen it by now, whose fault is that? And it definitely is the kind of film where the less you know the better, because it’s going to pull the rug out from under you. Of course, even knowing that means you’re on the lookout for what’s going to happen; and the film gives you a helping hand, because right from the off there are nods to the conceit. Still, I’ll try to be fairly vague.

It’s a film of three parts. The first is, with hindsight, an establisher; setup and groundwork for what comes next. Alternatively, some genre fans will take that as the purpose of the movie, and what follows as extraneous. Then there’s a long, slow middle section. Again, no direct spoilers, but we know where this part of the narrative ends up, so it feels like it’s over-expounding stuff (we don’t need as much backstory as we get) and consequently goes on a bit. Halfway through, I began to wonder what all the fuss was about. I worried that I’d left it too long to see it and let the hype get the better of me.

But, ultimately, it’s all setup for the final half-hour, and it pays off in hilarity. The middle could still do with a trim, but it’s worth sticking with for the payoff.

One Cut of the Dead was #54 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Breakfast Club

(1985)

Is The Breakfast Club the definitive ’80s high school movie? It’s got to be on the shortlist, right? Personally, I preferred Heathers, or, if you want to stay within the John Hughes universe, Ferris Bueller, but that doesn’t mean this is without its qualities.

If you’re unfamiliar, it’s about a gaggle of misfits in Saturday detention. Over the course of the day, the unlikely group form a bond — well, there’s a surprise. One thing I did like about that: even after they’ve become ‘friends’, the slightest thing can still set off their animosity to one another. They’ve not really changed and it’s a fragile allegiance. The stuff about how they’d never talk to each other in real life after this rings true. So, I don’t want to come down too heavily in the region of the idea that the film might be clichéd. I’ve read other modern reviews criticise it for that, and you have to wonder: when you’re writing about a popular movie 35 years after it came out, was the film clichéd or did it create the clichés? That said, my favourite observation in this sphere was: “if this is cliché, then life is too.” Oh boy is that a sentiment I agree with about so many fictions that are deemed “cliché”.

That said, I guess we’re beyond the film’s era of influence now. I mean, if you made something like this today, it would probably be an arthouse-aimed indie production (in fairness, the original is also an indie), probably produced for a similar (or lower) budget than it was almost 40 years ago; and it would be adored and analysed by 30- and 40-something-year-old cineastes while actual teenagers were at the multiplex watching MCU XXIV. (You can tell I wrote these notes four years ago, because I would not now suggest the latest MCU release as a default popular success.)

On the other hand, I know we all look down on remakes, but if you’re going to remake any popular film, this is the kind of thing that would withstand it. It’s so much about its era that if you took the basic concept and remixed it for the 2020s, there are a several interesting avenues to be explored. I’m sure cliques still exist in American high schools (based on media depictions, they never seem to go away), so you’d still get the contrasting personalities; and you could shift the sexual dynamics, the way different groups view each other, and sort out the ending (the way certain characters are ‘fixed’ is very of its time, and not in a good way); and put a modern spin on it all, of course, with some race and LGBT points. You know, make it “woke”, as dickheads say. That would be a pretty different film, but that’s entirely the point: if you’re going to remake something, make it different, make it new. (To be clear, I’m not criticising the original film for not including those elements — it’s a product of its time and it’s not choosing to be about those things, which is entirely valid.)

I appreciate I’ve talked more about what the film could be today than what it is. Oops. But, look, this is the kind of film where I can’t remember any of the characters’ names — if I wanted to talk in specifics, I’d have to refer to them by their actors (or do a bit of googling, of course). That’s another way of saying I did like it, but it’s not a film that’s stuck with me in the way it has for its many fans.

The Breakfast Club was #56 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020. It was viewed as an additional film in my Blindspot 2020 project, after I failed to watch it for Blindspot 2019.

Chopping Mall

(1986)

Blood, boobs, and berserk ’bots are the order of the day in this campy sci-fi actioner.

That’s right: “sci-fi actioner”. I don’t know where I’d heard about this, or if I’d just made inferences from the title and poster, but I’d assumed it was a regular slasher whose USP was simply “it’s set in a shopping mall”. But nope, it’s actually about security robots who go barmy and start killing a bunch of young people who’d locked themselves in a mall overnight. According to IMDb, it was originally released as Killbots — a more to-the-point title — but it performed poorly, and the producers’ reasoning was the title had made audiences think it was a Transformers-like kids movie (if anyone did take their kids to see it, boy, were they in for a surprise!) So, after cutting over quarter-of-an-hour, they re-released it with the more-clearly-exploitation-y title and… well, I don’t know if it as a major success or anything, but I guess it performed better and that’s the version that has endured.

I don’t know what was in those deleted 15 minutes, but presumably nothing of great import. Indeed, the short running time is a blessing: it gets on with things at the start, and doesn’t try to drag them out later. It knows what we’ve come to a movie like this for, and it delivers that with admirable efficiency. What’s left is so barmy and schlocky that it’s kinda fun, even if most of it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Even allowing for the implausible setup (lightning sends robot security guards berserk), there’s little to no logic in what follows (the robots have turned murderous? Fine, but why are they such shit shots? And why, when they have an easy shot, do they suddenly stop shooting? And so on).

Chopping Mall is no lost gem, although it may make you nostalgic for an era when they actually made stuff like this. Would the world be a better place if people were still churning out low-budget schedule-fillers full of gratuitous-but-clearly-fake violence and unnecessary-but-welcome nudity? I don’t know, but I doubt it could be any worse. At least it might’ve desensitised younger generations enough that we wouldn’t have to suffer endless rounds of “sex scenes are bad, actually” discourse on Twitter…

Chopping Mall was the 13th new film I watched in 2023.

Dead Man’s Folly

(1986)

This second of three TV movies starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot marks the fourth of his six appearance as the character overall, and it might be the low point of the generally-underwhelming bunch. Ustinov was no doubt a quality performer, and I know his version of Poirot has its fans, but, for me, he remains a lesser interpreter of the Belgian sleuth.

This particular film does nothing to outweigh his shortcomings. I don’t know if it’s the fault of the original story, this adaptation, or just me, but I didn’t feel there was enough provided for the the viewer to join in with the whodunnit guessing game, which I think is half the fun of a murder mystery. Events just unfurled until, eventually, Poirot explained it all. Add to that a portrayal of Poirot’s sometime-sidekick Hastings by Jonathan Cecil that verges on the lascivious, and production elements (costuming, hairdos, music) that are painfully ’80s, and the recipe is all-round distasteful.

Dead Man’s Folly was #154 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Wild Target

(2010)

In this remake of French comedy-thriller Cible émouvante, Bill Nighy plays an ageing hitman who falls for his latest target, pretty young thief Emily Blunt. Romance blossoms, in what must be one of the most implausible storylines ever committed to film. That’s partly because of the 33-year age gap between 26-year-old Blunt and 59-year-old Nighy (who, frankly, seems even older — the age gap may be roughly father/daughter, but she feels more like his granddaughter), but also because the movie does little to overcome this blatant shortcoming. If it wants us to buy it, it needs to sell it, but instead it half-arses it. When you learn that Helena Bonham-Carter was originally cast in Blunt’s role (but had to pull out due to commitments to Alice in Wonderland), it all begins to make sense: you can imagine a relationship between her and Nighy working on screen, and presumably they didn’t bother to retool the screenplay in between actor changes.

All of which says, the film just about survives because there’s enough else going on. The hitman and thief wind up on the run from the people who want her dead, with a young apprentice (Rupert Grint) in tow, and the ensuing farcical hijinks are all daft fun, with the great cast (which also includes Martin Freeman, Eileen Atkins, and Rupert Everett, among others) clearly having a good time. Sometimes that’s off-putting, but here it’s infectious.

Wild Target was #59 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

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.