2022 | Weeks 29–32

Posted on November 25, 2022 by badblokebob

2022 may be rushing headlong towards its final stretch (only one month ’til Christmas, people!), but my reviews are lagging behind somewhat: this update takes us all the way back to July and August.

That said, there’s quite a long spread covered here, because I only watched one film in each of these weeks: 45 Years in week 29, The Bucket List in week 30, previously-reviewed Prey in week 31, and Tintin and the Lake of Sharks in week 32. That’s definitely not the right way to go about watching 100 films in a year, but there we go.

45 Years (2015)

The Bucket List (2007)

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972), aka Tintin et le lac aux requins

45 Years

(2015)

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay star as a couple preparing for their 45th wedding anniversary party, when their comfy relationship is rocked by news that brings to the surface events from his past.

What could have been a histrionic drama about the nature of trust in a relationship instead takes its cue from the characters’ advanced age, and so is a more understated consideration of the same. The length and passage of time is relevant, too: if something happened a long time ago but you only just learnt about it, does that change how you react to the news? Should it? And is the real revelation not the news itself, but the realisation that, even if you’ve lived closely with another person for decades, you can never be truly sure you know them. Another person’s true self is fundamentally unknowable, for any one of us.

All of which might sound a bit highfalutin, but 45 Years is the kind of film that revels in ambiguity, with characters who never let on their true feelings — in that sense, it feels like a deliberate Acting Showcase for Rampling — and a vague ending, all of which invites you to draw your own conclusions. The final moment feels pointed, but the openness of what went before means it’s up to you what it means. There’s something truthful about that, but also something frustrating.

The Bucket List

(2007)

I may have written before (but not recently, so let’s do it again) about how Rob Reiner’s directorial career baffles me. He had an incredible run in the ’80s and ’90s — almost back to back he helmed This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men — but then his career suddenly nosedives into a bunch of stuff you’ve mostly never even heard of. What happened? Is there some “John Landis on Twilight Zone“-style ‘secret’ I’m unaware of?

One of the very few exceptions in his later career (which certainly didn’t lead to that being revived) was this, a breakout hit 15 years ago (yes, it’s 15 years old) of the kind they don’t make so much anymore: a mainstream comedy-drama aimed at adults. It’s about two old men (pure star power in Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) with only months left to live, who decide to spend their final days going on a tour of… green screen studios and kinda-low-res stock footage, apparently. I guess you didn’t get location filming on the kind of budget a film like this was made for even back in 2007.

Cheap production values aside, it has an insistent sentimentality — undercut with just a big enough dose of snark to stop it becoming too saccharine — that, unsurprisingly, played well with general audiences but, equally unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to be to the taste of many cinephiles (just look at the middling-to-low scores on Letterboxd, especially of the most-liked reviews, and contrast with its sturdy 7.4 score on IMDb). While I wouldn’t go quite as harsh as many of my fellow Letterboxd users, I do think it’s not that good — it’s broadly likeable, a generally pleasant way to pass 90 minutes, rather than in any way exceptional.

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks

(1972)

aka Tintin et le lac aux requins / The Adventures of Tintin: The Mystery of Shark Lake

Raymond Leblanc | 74 mins | DVD | 4:3 | Belgium & France / English | U

Having adapted several of Hergé’s Tintin books for TV and film, Belgian animation outfit Belvision for some reason opted to create an original story for their second big-screen outing with the character (it was later retrofitted into book form, using frames from the film as the illustrations). Written not by Hergé but his friend, fellow Belgian comics creator Greg (aka Michel Regnier), Lake of Sharks feels like exactly what it is: an imitation of a Tintin adventure rather than the real deal.

Events start out in a typically Tintin fashion, with some crooks after an invention of Professor Calculus’s; but later things take a turn for the Bondian, including an elaborate underwater lair that owes a debt to the imagination of Ken Adam. Eventually it all gets a bit silly, with stuff like an ever-expanding bouncy 3D photocopier, or the villain’s elaborate “you will die in one hour” execution method for Tintin. That kind of adventure serial writing has been so widely mocked at this point (the Austin Powers movies took aim at it 25 years ago; others may have done so before then) that it’s hard to remember there was ever a time when it was still played with a straight face.

The animation is mostly of a slightly higher quality than Belvision’s previous efforts, but the quality of the designs is variable. The regular cast feel faithfully copied from Hergé, and most other characters are in the right style; but there are a couple of major child characters who look out of place, along with their pet dog. It’s a bit like when you were a kid and mixed action figures from different ranges into the same game: yeah, they’re all still plastic figurines (or, in the case of the film, hand-drawn 2D characters), but stylistically they don’t line up.

The English dub is an American effort, and far from ideal. None of the voices are great, but most suffice once you get used to them. The exception is Captain Haddock, who is egregiously bad throughout. That said, we’re also subjected to the kids singing a song about a donkey that is unspeakably awful. Couldn’t they have cast actors who could sing? At least that would’ve taken the edge off it.

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks is the 50th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

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 (2022)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by badblokebob

Nowadays, reviving horror franchises with reboots or continuations that just use the same title as the original film are all the rage — witness The Thing, Halloween, and Candyman; you might also include Evil Dead, Blair Witch, The Predator, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (And it’s not just limited to horror movies: Shaft is a sequel to Shaft, which was a sequel to Shaft.) And where there’s a trend in horror movies, the Scream series must follow, to both emulate and roast the genre’s new status quo. Fortunately, there’s more than merely “we could call a new Scream film ‘Scream’” to the movie’s satirical targets.

Set about ten years after the last film, the fifth Scream (I get that the recycled title is a meta-gag too, but I still think it’s a shame they missed the chance to go with 5cream, or Screams / Scream5) introduces us to a new cast of characters. That’s what every Scream film has had to do (that’s the thing with slashers — most of your cast gets killed off each time), but here we’re in ‘requel’ mode. For those who don’t know, ‘requel’ is a portmanteau of “reboot” and “sequel”, i.e. a film that’s both a reboot (in the sense it’s a new story you can jump onboard with) and a sequel (in that it’s still in continuity with the previous films). “Legacy sequel” is a similar thing — a belated sequel, in continuity, with the original cast, now older — but Scream already targeted that kind of follow-up last time out. What being a ‘requel’ means for this film is we meet all the new characters before the legacy ones are gradually introduced the plot.

A plot summary is barely necessary: someone in a Ghostface mask is murdering people. Who is it? What’s their motive? That’s the plot of all the Scream films — of course it is, that’s how horror franchises work. The devil is in the details, but that can make the details spoilers. There are some neat reveals, and twists on the franchise’s formula, that I’m not going to spoil here because that would ruin the fun. If you’re a fan of the series, the less you know going in, the better. For example, there’s one reveal — which doesn’t come until we’re already in the final act — that was, apparently, blown in the trailer, even after the filmmakers worked hard to keep it secret until the right moment in the film itself. (That’s according to the audio commentary — I haven’t watched the trailer to see if it blatantly blew it or if fans just worked it out from the footage shown.)

Scream being Scream, it gets to both have its cake and eat it by pointing out the laughable clichés and ridiculous tropes of other horror films, then doing them anyway. Some people dislike this approach — “pointing out that what you’re doing is a cliché doesn’t stop it from being a cliché” — but, personally, I think it’s part of the charm of these films. They don’t do the thing and then have someone go “that was so cliché!”, they tell you “wouldn’t it be clichéd if this happened?” and then it does. Too subtle a difference for some, I guess, but it works for me. One thing the previous films have a habit of doing — and it continues in this one — is laying out the entire plot for you, even telling you who the villain is, but you don’t notice because you’re busy playing whodunnit and stringing the mystery together. Of course, they also lay out red herrings, so it’s always easier to spot the “they gave it all away” moments with hindsight.

Whether or not you’re on board with that “point out what it’s going to do then do it” approach will probably dictate how much enjoyment you can get out of a film like Scream. The best bits are the ones that are self-aware, either because characters are expressly discussing the plot or because the filmmakers are playing with our expectations. In the case of the latter, this film has a really neat sequence in which you know for certain the killer is going to jump out at some point, but the character on screen is, as ever, oblivious to this fact, so merrily goes around opening doors, thus blocking our lines of sight, or wandering past open doorways, which are then held in shot for just a moment too long… It’s a gag that builds in hilarity the longer it goes on, and directors Bettinelli-Olpin & Gillett milk it magnificently.

As for the former, this film has an especially neat exchange about “fan fiction”. Without Wes Craven in the director’s chair and/or Kevin Williamson at the typewriter, this film could definitely be dismissed as just “fan fiction” — that’s the gag, really. But, in terms of quality, there’s “fan fiction” and there’s “fans who have become professionals picking up the baton and continuing a franchise perfectly”. If this film is either, I’d argue it’s the latter. Which is a slightly convoluted way of saying Scream (5) nails the tone, style, and — perhaps most importantly — meta humour that makes a Scream film a Scream film.

Scream is the 69th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Scre4m (2011)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

New Decade. New Rules.

Also Known As: Scream 4. Not in the film itself, though. Nor on any of its marketing. But most places on the internet? Apparently. Quite why certain online movie databases are so resistant to listing the film by its proper title, I don’t know.

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 111 minutes
BBFC: 15
MPAA: R

Original Release: 13th April 2011 (Belgium, Egypt & France)
US & UK Release: 15th April 2011
Budget: $40 million
Worldwide Gross: $95.99 million

Stars
Neve Campbell (Scream (1996), Scream (2022))
Courtney Cox (Scream 2, Scream (2022))
David Arquette (Scream 3, Scream (2022))
Emma Roberts (Wild Child, We’re the Millers)
Hayden Panettiere (I Love You, Beth Cooper, Scream 6)

Director
Wes Craven (Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream)

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

The Story
Ten years since the last Ghostface killings, and the tragic events have faded into festivity for the teens of Woodsboro, who now celebrate the anniversary of the first killings. But this year is a special one, because Sidney Prescott is back in town, and someone has donned the mask to go on a new killing spree…

Our Heroes
Sidney Prescott, perennial survivor of multiple Ghostface killers, must face one again as she returns to her hometown for the first time in years to promote her new book. Dewey — now Sheriff — and Gale — now his wife — are back, too, along with an array of fresh faces ready for the slaughter.

Our Villain
After a decade away, Ghostface is back! Except, as always, it’s a new killer (or killers) behind the famous mask. They’re still stalking Sidney, her friends and her family, but who is it and what’s their motive this time?

Best Supporting Character
Each new Scream film has introduced fresh faces (the films have a habit of killing off most of the supporting cast each time round, funnily enough, so you kinda have to), but the “whole new generation” angle of Scre4m makes it feel like there are even more this time round. While many are clear mirrors of characters from the first film (deliberately so), perhaps the one that manages to stand out the most in her own right is Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby, sassy best friend to Sidney’s cousin Jill. Yeah, she’s he new version of Rose McGowan’s Tatum, but, unlike some of the other characters, she doesn’t just feel like a 2011-painted carbon copy of the original. Plus, (major spoiler alert!) there’s a reason that, despite this film leaving her for dead, she’s set to reappear in Scream 6.

Memorable Quote
The Voice: “It’s time for your last-chance question. Name the remake of the groundbreaking horror movie in which the vill—”
Kirby: “Halloween, Texas Chainsaw, Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Amityville Horror, Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, My Bloody Valentine, When a Stranger Calls, Prom Night, Black Christmas, House of Wax, The Fog, Piranha. It’s one of those, right?”

Memorable Scene
The film begins with two teen girls at home choosing a movie to watch, when a mysterious caller with a gravelly voice threatens their lives. What happens next would be a spoiler… but, from the very start, Scre4m sets out its stall as a movie that, in true franchise tradition, is going to play with the rules and expectations of movies.

Previously on…
After a hugely successful and acclaimed first film, Scream did what so many popular movies have done in the past few decades: got turned into a trilogy. Really, it’s only fitting that it got in early on the 2010s trend of “reviving a once-popular but thought-finished film series”.

Next time…
And now it’s getting in on the “just keep making more films forever” trend that once used to be more-or-less limited to James Bond and shitty horror sequels but nowadays is the defining feature of the entirety of Hollywood. First there was a new film simply titled Scream (the fact it’s not called 5cream or Scream5 is a sin), and next is… a second/sixth film that no one seems quite sure what the final title will be. I guess we’ll find out when it’s released next March.

Awards
2 Scream Awards nominations (Horror Actress (Neve Campbell), Best Cameo (Anna Paquin & Kristen Bell))

Elsewhere on 100 Films…
I originally reviewed Scre4m after I first watched it back in 2012, when I felt the film was “kind of old school. It fits better in the era of the original trilogy and/or earlier horror films than with the development of the genre in the intervening decade.” I went on to suggest it “plays best to those who saw the first three at the right age, i.e. mid-to-late teens or so. I shouldn’t think it would engage a new audience all that much, especially ones versed in the gorier Saw and Final Destination franchises. But for those of us with fond memories (to one degree or another) of the first three films, it’s kind of a nice little revisit.”

Verdict

The original Scream trilogy was the defining horror franchise of the ’90s, so reviving it over a decade after its last instalment seemed like the usual Hollywood BS of revisiting any recognisable IP. But with the original last, screenwriter, and director all returning, the film actually did what Scream has always done: be part scary movie, and part commentary on the horror genre landscape. And this time it throws in some social commentary for good measure, with some slightly-ahead-of-its-time satire of social media celebrities. It’s only become more pertinent with the stratospheric rise of YouTubers in the additional decade since the film came out.

One criticism I’ve seen levelled at Scre4m a few times is that it takes on remakes when it isn’t a remake itself. Well, that wouldn’t work, would it? For the characters to know they’re in a ‘remake’, they’d have to know there was an original — which by default would mean it’s not a remake but a continuation. In fact, the film does address this: it points out that we’re back in the original town, with killers who are following the pattern of the original movie (in-universe, that’s Stab, which seems to be a pretty faithful telling of the ‘real-life’ events shown in Scream). Most of the new characters are analogous to ones from the first film, too. So, Scre4m is, in fact, a remake… while also not being one, obviously.

All in all, the eleven years between Scream 3 and Scre4m gave the filmmakers enough fresh material to chew on to make the film a more-than-worthwhile addition to the franchise. For my money, the fresh perspectives make it easily the series’ best film since the first.

Scream 3 (2000)

Posted on October 29, 2022 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

The most terrifying scream
is always the last.

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 117 minutes
BBFC: 18
MPAA: R

Original Release: 4th February 2000 (USA & Canada)
UK Release: 28th April 2000
Budget: $40 million
Worldwide Gross: $161.8 million

Stars
Neve Campbell (Three to Tango, The Company)
David Arquette (Ravenous, Ready to Rumble)
Courtney Cox Arquette (Commandments, Zoom)
Liev Schreiber (Sphere, X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

Director
Wes Craven (The Last House on the Left, My Soul to Take)

Screenwriter
Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road, The Ring)

The Story
As production gets underway on Stab 3 — the latest in the series of horror movies based on the Woodsboro killings — someone wearing a Ghostface costume starts killing the cast. But really, they want to know one thing: the whereabouts of perpetual murder-target Sidney Prescott…

Our Heroes
With Sidney in hiding at a remote location known only to a handful of people, the initial investigation into the new killings falls to the other survivors of the previous films: Dewey, now working as a consultant-cum-security on Stab 3, and his former love interest, intrepid reporter Gale Weathers.

Our Villain
The Ghostface killer is back, now terrorising Hollywood — but who’s behind the mask this time? As with the first two films, this technically counts as a whodunnit, though well done if you guess anywhere near the correct conclusion — it’s hardly Christie-level…

Best Supporting Character
Mark Kincaid (Patrick Dempsey) is the Hollywood homicide detective investigating the murders. As someone who grew up around the movie biz, he’s as au fait with the rules of cinema as most of the characters have had to become — but does that mean he fits right in, or has all the knowledge necessary to be the new Ghostface?

Memorable Quote
“Is this simply another sequel? Well, if it is, same rules apply. But here’s the critical thing: if you find yourself dealing with an unexpected backstory and a preponderance of exposition, then the sequel rules do not apply. Because you are not dealing with a sequel, you are dealing with the concluding chapter of a trilogy.” — Randy

Memorable Scene
Looking for someone, Sidney wanders into the abandoned Stab 3 soundstage — to be confronted by a perfect full-size replica of her childhood home. As she wanders inside, remembering the terrifying events that occurred there, she begins to suspect the killer is also lurking. Cue a clever re-staging of one of the first film’s most memorable scenes, as the new killer chases Sidney around her old home.

Making of
Neve Campbell was busy shooting a TV series and another film during the production of Scream 3, meaning her availability was limited to just 20 days on set. That’s why Dewey, Gale, and the new supporting cast get so much more screentime now, with Sidney mostly by herself. But whoever was in charge of scheduling around Campbell’s availability actually did a pretty good job maximising her presence, spreading her appearances throughout the film, with a few key interactions with the rest of the cast. If you didn’t know the behind-the-scenes story, you might not even realise what they had to do.

Previously on…
The first Scream garnered much acclaim for its amusing deconstruction of slasher movies. Naturally, Scream 2 applied the same modus operandi to sequels.

Next time…
Scream 3 was supposedly the end of the series… but if there’s one thing popular horror movie franchises do, it’s keep coming back. So, a little over a decade later, the series was revived with Scre4m in 2011. Then it was turned into an unrelated TV series that ran for two seasons in 2015 and 2016. Then that was rebooted as Scream: Resurrection in 2019. Then the original movie continuity was returned to earlier this year, in the confusingly-titled Scream. That’s getting a sequel next year. Goodness knows what they’re gonna call it.

Awards
2 MTV Movie Award nominations (Female Performance (Neve Campbell), Comedic Performance (Parker Posey))
1 Fangoria Chainsaw Award (Supporting Actress (Parker Posey))

Verdict

The Scream movies were always noteworthy for the metatextual way in which they addressed and engaged with the tropes and clichés of slasher movies, but actually setting this one in Hollywood on the set of a slasher movie based on the events of the previous movies is perhaps taking the whole self-awareness thing one step too far. It pushes its luck even further with some cameos that are kinda fun, but also kinda too silly (Jay and Silent Bob?! So the Scream movies are canonically set in the View Askewniverse…) Plus, the attempt to retcon in a series-overarching motive for the killer, in aid of making it a true trilogy rather than just “another Scream movie”, is as forced and unsatisfying as it sounds.

All of which said, the film still has effective moments and individual sequences, and a smattering of entertaining gags that are still on the money. Even if it remains the least of the Scream films, but it’s far from the disaster it’s often been painted as.

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 27–28

Posted on October 19, 2022 by badblokebob

Hello! Yes, it’s me — I am still here. I’ve just been finding my time filled up with other stuff: working on the 2022 iterations of both WOFFF and FilmBath Festival (in addition to the ol’ day job); dogsitting for the in-laws; throwing up from eating bad garlic…

Anyway, here are some reviews of films I watched all the way back in July. (Oh dear, I am behind. Well, let’s see if I can catch up…)

Johnny Gunman (1957)

A Better Tomorrow (1986), aka Ying hung boon sik

Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015)

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Johnny Gunman

(1957)

Art Ford | 67 mins | digital (HD) | 4:3 | USA / English

The history of cinema is littered with fascinating asides and dead ends, and this is one of them: an independent film from before independent films were really a thing; from the time when the studio system was beginning to falter, but the film school auteurs hadn’t yet arrived (Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, et al were still in their teens when this was made).

As with the films that would later break similar new ground after the digital video revolution in the ’90s, there are cracks — it’s amateurish and undeniably low-budget in places — but also artistry — every once in a while it’ll whip out an exceptionally well-lit scene or interesting visual. Story-wise, it’s an odd mix: there’s the noir-ish gangster plot line, which is derivative and clichéd; but it takes over the film from what you feel like it almost wants to be, which is a Before Sunrise-style slice of life. Maybe, in a freer world, that’s what the filmmakers would’ve produced; but when you’re one of the first people trying to break in from the outside, hitting the familiar beats of a genre is no bad idea.

Some of the highlights of the film come at the start, with documentary-like shots of New York street life when our heroine visits the Greenwich Festival. It’s a brief little window into the real 1950s NYC, before the rote gangster plot comes to dominate. Indeed, being shot on location, and with an inexperienced cast, lends the whole production a certain veracity that you don’t always get from soundstage-bound studio pictures of the era. On the other hand, that’s also what gives it the rough edges that will make it unpalatable to some viewers.

However you cut it, this is hardly a forgotten gem, but it’s an interesting detour of movie history that I’m glad I stumbled across.

Johnny Gunman is the 45th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

A Better Tomorrow

(1986)

aka Ying hung boon sik

A Better Tomorrow was the first in a run of modern-day gangster action movies that would make director John Woo’s name. Its original Chinese title translates as True Colours of a Hero, which is just as apt: it’s about a pair of mid-level crooks, one of whose brother is a cop, and the ways and whys in which they try and fail to escape the criminal life.

Woo’s style was cutting edge back in the day, but that day is now pushing 40 years ago. Of course, his flamboyant style has never been to some people’s taste (witness the dismissive stance some still take towards M:i-2). Viewed now, this is cheesier and less stylistically polished than his later career-defining HK films like The Killer or Hard Boiled, but, on the couple of occasions it does explode into action, it’s suitably grandiose, and it has an engaging storyline and character dynamics.

In regards to the latter, you can definitely see why Chow Yun-Fat was the breakout star. He’s actually got a supporting role, but his charisma shines off the screen, and there’s a plausibility to the way he handles the action. (Ironically, although it made Chow an action icon, he was cast because Woo didn’t think he looked like an action star.)

Not Woo’s strongest film, then, but a definite sign of someone headed in the right direction — and, clearly, his later work paid off that promise.

A Better Tomorrow is the 46th 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.

Mifune: The Last Samurai

(2015)

Steven Okazaki | 77 mins | DVD | 16:9 | USA & Japan / English & Japanese | 12

At just an hour and a quarter, this biography of the actor Toshiro Mifune feels more like a primer on his work and life (complete with newcomer-friendly contextual asides into the history of Japanese cinema, the career of Akira Kurosawa, etc) rather than the deep-dive exploration of the man and his legacy that some reviewers hoped for. I certainly learnt stuff, but such criticism has validity. For that reason, the less you know about Mifune (and Kurosawa), the more you’ll get out of the film. That said, it might pay to have already seen some of their films — it’s not that director Steven Okazaki doesn’t introduce and summarise them adequately; more that, if you’ve seen them, you know the full context.

Nonetheless, a good range of interviewees ensure the documentary is not without insight, managing to explore both what made Mifune the man tick and what made him such a phenomenal screen presence. Plus, the fact that Okazaki is happy to explain contextual topics (like a history of chanbara films; or matters of social history, like what losing World War 2 was like for the Japanese people) is both education and useful, because I imagine most non-Japanese viewers don’t have much baseline knowledge about this stuff. The film is definitely a biography of Mifune (not, say, a history of 20th century Japan using the actor as a gateway), but there’s much to be gleaned here for the interested viewer.

Mifune: The Last Samurai is the 47th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

The Lost Daughter

(2021)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, based on a novel by Elena Ferrante, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a woman on holiday alone in Greece, where she encounters a young mother (Dakota Johnson) whose daughter briefly goes missing, reminding Leda of her own younger days, when she was played by Jessie Buckley and had a husband and two daughters herself.

It’s perhaps initially difficult to pin down exactly what The Lost Daughter is driving at — I suspect it’s the kind of film in which some people would say nothing happens. But it’s really a kind of mystery, where the mystery is the lead character’s psychology: why is she like this? There’s also the more obvious mystery of what exactly happened in her past, but that isn’t solved so much as gradually doled out in flashbacks. Obviously that kind of story relies a lot on its performances, and Colman is as strong as ever. So much of the importance of the film, which lies in her character and emotion, is conveyed without dialogue. That’s not do down the able support from Buckley and Johnson, mind.

Gyllenhaal’s direction is interesting and effective, using lots of fairly extreme close-ups to give a kind of tactile sensation to the film. On the other hand, I would say it feels a little longer than necessary (especially after the ‘reveal’ scene, where the final piece of the puzzle clicks), and I’m not convinced it knows how to end (or perhaps it’s my fault for not really ‘getting’ the finale).

Overall, though, it’s an impressive debut from Gyllanhaal, and a great alternative perspective on motherhood.

2022 | Week 26

Posted on September 8, 2022 by badblokebob

I’m taking you back over two months here, to the end of June / start of July, for another eclectic batch of films I happened to watch in close proximity to each other…

The Flying Deuces (1939)

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

Ambulance (2022)

Easy A (2010)

The Flying Deuces

(1939)

A. Edward Sutherland | 68 mins | DVD | 4:3 | USA / English | U

I feel like I’m aware of Laurel & Hardy in a way I would say “everyone” is, but I guess that’s probably not true anymore (the kind of stuff I picked up or learnt about by osmosis in my ’80s/’90s childhood is surely very different to what kids got growing up in the ’00s/’10s). But I don’t think I’ve ever actively seen any of their work; certainly none of their feature-length films. The Flying Deuces is “probably their most famous film”, at least according to the blurb on my copy. Certainly, it’s the one you see bandied about the most; but then it’s in the public domain (one of only two Laurel & Hardy films where that’s the case), so it’s inevitably subject to endless cheapo releases. Leaving the quality of the print aside (it was poor; but at least it wasn’t cut, which apparently many are), I can’t say I was too impressed by the quality of the content, either.

Here’s the rub: it’s a comedy, but it barely made me laugh. The humour operates at a basic level, with gags that are either well-worn or repetitious. “How anyone could be so stupid as to stand there and continually bump their head is beyond me,” one of them says at one point. And yet the other does exactly that, because that’s the level most of the film’s humour operates at. Some might say this is the downside of the duo being popular and their work being old — i.e. it’s been imitated and copied for decades, and we’ve moved on. But I don’t find that to be the case with silent comedians —who were equally, if not even more, popular, and whose work is even older — nor with things like the Road to films — which are far from the height of sophisticated comedy, but tickle my fancy more often.

Well, there’s your answer, I guess: it’s all a matter of taste. And it seems Laurel and Hardy aren’t to mine.

The Flying Deuces is the 41st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Apollo 10½:
A Space Age Childhood

(2022)

I guess one of the advantages of being a filmmaker with some degree of clout is you can take your regular-ass childhood and turn it into a movie as if it was somehow special. That’s what the Before trilogy and Boyhood mastermind Richard Linklater has done here, fictionalising his autobiography as the story of ten-year-old Stanley, who lives in Huston, Texas, in the era of the first moon landing. Except, in this version, Stanley is secretly recruited by NASA to secretly train to be a secret astronaut to secretly be the first person on the Moon, in secret. If that sounds like an unusual spin on a traditional nostalgia-driven biopic, don’t get excited: that subplot is moved away from as quickly as it’s introduced, and only pops back up two or three more times, each brief. The film is much more concerned with real memories than imagined ones, and is much less fun for it.

Often, at Christmas or other such get-togethers, members of my family will end up reminiscing about various childhood recollections. I’m sure many other families do a similar thing. What’s shared on these occasions are the kind of mundane memories that mean the world to us but, if you stopped to think about it, you know no outsider would find of much value. Well, seems Richard Linklater hasn’t stopped to think about it. And I really do mean “mundane”: there’s a sequence about which sibling did which chores and how they made their school lunches. As a commenter on iCM put it, Linklater “name checks every TV show and movie he saw, every game he played, everything in his diary […] for long stretches, it just feels like an itemized list of childhood memories.”

One part that’s actually rather good is Jack Black’s voiceover narration as the adult Stanley. There’s probably too much of it (again underlining the fact these are nostalgic anecdotes rather than a true narrative), but the actual quality he brings is very nice. It feels calm and understated, neither giving in to Black’s usual mania nor substituting it for the hardcore tweeness you might expect from such a rose-tinted autobiography.

Maybe Apollo 10½ will be more interesting to young people or future generations, whose technology- and safety-obsessed childhood experiences will be so far removed from what we see here. To them, it’s an historical documentary. I can’t say my childhood was much like this one (especially as it occurred almost 30 years later), but I guess I’ve picked up enough of this kind of nostalgia from other American films and TV series down the years that what Linklater has to share doesn’t feel remarkable enough to be worth sharing.

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood is the 42nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

My Name Is Julia Ross

(1945)

Here we have one of those films that commonly gets called a film noir, but isn’t really (or, at least, doesn’t fit well with the standard conception of what noir entails). The blurb for Arrow’s Blu-ray release describes it as a “Gothic-tinged Hitchcockian breakout hit” (apparently it was produced as a B-movie but became so popular they promoted it to “A-feature status”), which struck me as accurate — it’s less standard noir, more a Rebecca-influenced psychological thriller. While it’s clearly no Hitchcock, it’s a very entertaining substitute.

Nina Foch stars as the eponymous Julia Ross, who takes a job as a live-in secretary for a wealthy widow. But the job is a front: Julia is kidnapped, waking up a prisoner in a Cornish mansion, where the widow (Dame May Whitty) and her son (George Macready) try to convince her she’s actually Marion Hughes, the son’s wife, and she’s having a bit of an episode.

From the way Arrow described the film, I assumed it was going to play to some degree with the idea that maybe she is actually mad. It would be a neat twist, right? That she is Marion Hughes, and the stuff we saw at the start was part of her delusion. But no, the film doesn’t even vaguely gesture at that route: right after Julia meets her prospective employer, we see that she’s plotting something nefarious — and the film isn’t even seven minutes in. Then, even before we really know that something’s up, Julia’s fancy-man is looking into her disappearance. It’s like the film’s playing all the right notes but in the wrong order.

But it doesn’t really matter, because the whole thing is suitably entertaining. Rather than relying on the mystery of what’s happening, it’s more about how Julia can get out of the situation. Will she be able to escape her confinement? Can she somehow get out a message for help? Or will the villains succeed in their scheme? Plus, at just 65 minutes, it moves at a whipcrack pace, so you can sit back and enjoy the absurd plot rather than worrying about, well, how absurd it is.

My Name Is Julia Ross is the 43rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Ambulance

(2022)

When their bank heist goes sideways, two brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) make their getaway in a stolen ambulance — with a policeman they shot and the paramedic working on him (Eiza González) in the back. With the cops immediately on their tail, thus begins an epic ~~car~~ ambulance chase around the streets of LA.

The setup feels like it should signal the low-/mid-budget debut of a new director showcasing their talents with a 90-minute stripped-back thrill-ride that’s mostly contained to the eponymous setting. But it’s not directed by some newbie — it’s Michael frickin’ Bay, back on the form that gave us action classics like The Rock. And so the 90-minute character-focused thriller is in there (honest it is), but augmented with 40 minutes of big-budget Bayhem.

Compared to Bay’s other work in the past 15 or so years, Ambulance feels restrained. Compared to almost any other filmmaker, it’s anything but. When I say “restrained”, part of what I mean is the editing. Not that it takes a leisurely approach by any means, but it doesn’t have that “impressionistic jumble of B-roll” style Bay has tended towards on and off ever since Armageddon, and that became his only mode during a couple of the Transformers sequels. Also, I didn’t notice this until I read it on IMDb, but the film contains a literal Chekhov’s gun — that is, a gun that is a “Chekhov’s gun”. That’s so Michael Bay.

Giving this film 5 stars would be a bit silly… but it was really good. It’s the kind of movie you’d never rate higher than 4, but you love for what it is: magnificent Bayhem.

Ambulance is the 44th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It placed 9th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2022.

Easy A

(2010)

When an overheard white lie about losing her virginity makes barely-noticed Olive (Emma Stone) the centre of her high school rumour mill, she decides to manipulate her newfound notoriety for her own amusement.

As “raunchy teen comedy” plots go, it hits a sweet spot of being neither too prudish nor too lecherous. The dialogue elevates it further in a sharp and witty script by Bert V. Royal (who, it seems, has since only worked on TV shows I’ve never heard of. Shame). In her first lead role, Emma Stone gives a perfectly-pitched, surprisingly nuanced performance. The story really allows her to show off her versatility, believable as both the ‘quiet girl’ and ‘confident slut’. Obviously there’s lots of comedy, but she sells the moments of sincerity too. It’s no wonder she quickly got snapped up for more awards-type work. Plus, there’s Stanley Tucci being what I imagine Stanley Tucci is actually like as a dad, which is perfection.

The only major downside (and it’s a bit of a spoiler, but also so predictable that it barely counts as a spoiler) is that it would’ve been nice if the guy she eventually ends up with wasn’t so stereotypically hot. We’re meant to buy him as a kinda-goofy sports mascot rather than someone who’d actually be playing The Sport? Yeah right.

I’m not always a fan of high school movies or teen comedies, but there are definite exceptions, and this is the latest addition to that rarefied list.

2022 | Weeks 24–25

Posted on August 20, 2022 by badblokebob

Similar to Week 21 last time, Week 23 only included rewatches, so gets skipped in the title. As for the other two, that brings us fundamentally to the end of June (the 26th, to be precise), and so almost to the halfway point of the year. But I’ll leave such discussion to my monthly reviews.

Instead, here are the remaining four reviews of films I watched that fortnight…

The Ghost Writer (2010)

Escape in the Fog (1945)

Pretty in Pink (1986)

House of Gucci (2021)

The Ghost Writer

(2010)

aka The Ghost

Originally released as The Ghost in the UK (the same title as the Robert Harris novel on which it’s based), but now on Netflix under its US title, The Ghost Writer, whatever you call this film, it’s an effective thriller about a subject that might not sound thrilling: writing an autobiography. The key is that the person being biographied is a former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who was involved in some shady business during his time in office, which is beginning to resurface in the news; plus the fact that his first ghost writer was recently found dead, washed up on a beach on the island the ex-PM is currently calling home. It’s into this maelstrom that our hero, the new ghost writer (Ewan McGregor), is dropped, and soon finds himself more involved than he’d like.

So, despite the unique setup, it’s a fairly straight-up thriller plot of political intrigue and buried secrets. That’s not a criticism — this is very much my kind of thing. What elevates it is the film’s style and atmosphere. There’s something odd about it all, which makes the viewer feel as unsettled and out-of-place as McGregor’s character quickly becomes. Some contributing factors to this sensation are likely unintentional — the result of things like half the cast having to labour under different accents, or the excessive green screen used to fill in the views of Cape Cod (the film wasn’t shot in the US, but in Germany and Denmark, for “the director’s a criminal wanted in the US” reasons) — but neither of these elements felt glaringly bad to me, just… off.

As I say, I think such an atmosphere is actually very fitting for a political thriller full of questions about who can be trusted, life-or-death mysteries, and a couple of solid twists. Yes, very much my kind of thing.

The Ghost Writer placed 8th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2022.

Escape in the Fog

(1945)

With the fifth (and, it would seem, final) of Indicator’s Columbia Noir box sets then-imminent, and a new series of Universal Noir soon to begin, I thought it was about time I actually started watching them. So here’s the first, both for me and the series (i.e. it’s the oldest film in box set #1). It’s a quickie from director Budd Boetticher (before he started being credited under that name) about a San Fransisco nurse who has an ultra-specific dream about a murder, then meets the victim-to-be in real life. It turns out he’s a spy about to be sent on a top-secret mission, but his only hope of making it alive is her using the details from her dream to prevent his death.

It’s unfortunate that this 30-film ‘series’ (they’re only connected by the studio that made them and Indicator happening to bundle them together, of course) begins with such a travesty of a film. For starters, it’s barely even a noir, more a melodramatic mildly-fantastical spy thriller. Well, I can enjoy that kind of thing too — goodness knows the number of spy movies I’ve given high scores to, and there’s something to be said for a spot of ridiculous hokum — and Escape in the Fog might have been another such fun example, except it’s been made with a total absence of passion. It’s about as thrilling as a lukewarm cup of milky tea at a cafe that only has outside seating on a drizzly winter afternoon. It’s only redeeming quality is that it’s so daft (though only in places, because it ends up forgetting its own ridiculous conceits) that you can’t help but have a bit of a laugh at it.

Filler in every sense of the word.

Escape in the Fog is the 38th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Pretty in Pink

(1986)

Another John Hughes-penned ’80s teen movie that had passed me by (it’s only in the past few years that I’ve watched The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I’ve still not seen Sixteen Candles or Weird Science). This one stars Molly Ringwald as Andie, a non-popular high school girl caught between the affections of her childhood friend (Jon Cryer) and a rich kid who’s suddenly showing an interest in her (Andrew McCarthy).

No bones about it, plot-wise it’s a pretty standard love triangle romcom; but the devil is in the details, and Pretty in Pink has a lot of likeable ones. For starters, it’s so ’80s. Like, aggressively. Like, if you made a movie set in the ’80s, you wouldn’t make it this much ’80s because people would criticise you for overdoing it. Then there’s the supporting performances. Harry Dean Stanton makes a great ‘movie dad’ — you know, the kind of comforting, supportive father figure you kinda wish were your own. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a role like this before. The relationship between him and Ringwald comes across as really sweet and effective without tipping over into saccharine or implausible. Then there’s Annie Potts as Andie’s older best friend, proving she should be known for more than just being screechy and kooky in Ghostbusters. Plus, James Spader makes for a superb villain. It’s only a small role in the grand scheme of the film, but he does smarmy glibness so well.

Poor Molly Ringwald — she’s fine in the lead, but everyone else is so good they kinda overshadow her in her own movie. Or maybe that’s unfair: Andie is a pretty likeable lead, with a commendable amount of independence and self-worth. Okay, she lets that slip a bit for A Boy, but what teenager hasn’t let such heady new emotions get the better of them? She comes out for the best in the end.

The only major downside is the rushed third act, which makes the ending feel unearned — a feat that’s almost impressive when the ending is so predictable. It’s actually due to a post-test-screening rewrite and reshoot: in the original version (spoilers!) Andie ends up with Duckie, not Blane. Personally, I don’t think either is right: she should’ve chosen neither of them. As I see it, the film doesn’t really set up her getting back with Blane (presumably because it was a last-minute change), so I don’t buy that; but nor does it do enough to suggest she’d suddenly find Duckie a romantic proposition. They should have settled for being BFFs, and Blane should’ve fucked off. But I guess a romcom where the girl ends up single wasn’t done back then. You’d probably still find it a hard sell today, to be honest.

Pretty in Pink is the 39th 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.

House of Gucci

(2021)

Director Ridley Scott tells the true (ish) story of the behind-the-scenes dramas at Italian fashion house Gucci in the mid 20th century. If you think that sounds like some kind of dull boardroom drama, oh boy, is it not. With the amount of scheming and backstabbing that goes on, it’s more like a variation on The Godfather than a staid piece about people arguing in suits in offices. Oh, those crazy Italians, eh?

Of course, none of the main cast are Italian. But they are all doing Italian accents. Or what passes for Italian accents in the mind of us anglophones — they sound about as authentic as a Dolmio advert. Or a Mario game. “It’s a-me, Lady Gaga!” Although, once you get over the humour value of that, Gaga is genuinely very good in her Lady Macbeth-esque role as a woman who marries into the family and goads her husband into dominating the business. And then there’s Jared Leto, buried under prosthetics as well as the dodgy accent. Does he know he’s getting laughs with almost every line, or does he think he’s giving a serious dramatic performance? Who knows. Who cares. No one in the rest of the cast is as memorable — even when we’re talking about actors of the calibre of Adam Driver, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Irons, and Al Pacino — but then, I’m not sure there’d be room for that many Big performances. Scott brings his usual pizzazz too, with the well-shot gorgeous locales looking beautiful and elegant. Parts of Italy are just fundamentally beautiful, and you think it would probably be hard to mess up filming them.

There are plenty of criticisms of the film to be found in pro reviews and viewer comments across the usual sources. Reading them, I don’t necessarily disagree on any particular point. For one thing, it’s definitely too long, and still leaves a load of information to be dumped in the inevitable “what happens next” text at the end. It could also be clearer about what’s going on at times, especially legal stuff, like when they’re suddenly being investigated for financial crimes. That said, it has an energy that often keeps it barrelling along. It’s probably an advantage to not know the real-life events, because it allows the story to unfold without preconceptions about where it’s going, so you’re not waiting for it to get to the bits you know.

Flaws and all, I had a ball watching it. It may really be a 3-star film in some senses, but I got a 4-star level of enjoyment out of it.