2023 | Weeks 3–4

Posted on February 4, 2023 by badblokebob

“Wait, did I miss Weeks 1 and 2?”, you may have asked yourself upon seeing this post pop up wherever you see my posts. And the answer is: no, I missed them, because I failed to watch a single film in either Week 1 or Week 2 of 2023. Most extraordinary.

Anyway, I wrote about that in January’s monthly review, so let’s get on with reviewing. I will note that I’ve skipped a couple of films from these weeks. Normally I only do that when I’ve already written their review and it’s long enough I feel it should be posted solo. I haven’t formally started writing about either The Girl Who Knew Too Much or Black Girl yet, but I have an inkling they’re both going to be quite long (the latter, definitely), so I’ve set them aside for the time being. Which leaves us with…

The Magician (1926)

Glass Onion (2022)

My Year of Dicks (2022)

Shotgun Wedding (2022)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

The Magician

(1926)

Rex Ingram | 80 mins | Blu-ray | 1.33:1 | USA / silent

Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, itself inspired by the antics of real-life occultist Aleister Crowley, The Magician concerns a mad scientist, Oliver Haddo (Paul Wegener), trying to complete an alchemical spell to create life by kidnapping a pretty virginal sculptor, Margaret (Alice Terry), so he can cut out her heart and use her blood. But why just kidnap a young woman when you can hypnotise her into marrying you? And why just kill her when you can use your hypnotic control to, er, take her gambling in Monte Carlo and make lots of money?

Wait, what?

Yeah, The Magician is kind of an odd film. Whether that’s due to Maugham’s original work and his desire to write a takedown of Crawley, or if it was the impetus of director Rex Ingram fancying a jolly around Europe with his wife, who he’d cast in the lead female role, I don’t know. Either way, the varied asides (before the eponymous Haddo even turns up, Margaret is paralysed in a sculpting accident and goes for experimental surgery to get it fixed) slow the pace, possibly to pad out what is really quite a slight story. On the other hand, there are some atmospheric sequences scatted throughout, like a demonstration of Haddo’s powers at a snake charming show, or a devilish orgy (yes, you read that right; no, it’s not at all shocking by modern standards). Plus, as if to balance out all the stuff with dark magic, Ingram finds room for dashes of humour, giving a bit of texture and stopping the film from becoming too self-serious.

However, The Magician remains most noteworthy today as a stylistic precursor to Universal’s initial run of horror movies in the early ’30s — James Whale’s Frankenstein, in particular, seems to have taken some cues from this film’s climax. It’s a fairly entertaining melodramatic fantasy-horror in its own right, but is primarily worth a look for those interested in the early development of the horror genre in Hollywood, or for silent movie fans who’d like something with a supernatural edge. General audiences are probably fine sticking to the established classics it influenced.

The Magician is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

Glass Onion

(2022)

aka Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

In some respects, Glass Onion delivered a movie closer to what I’d been expecting from the first Benoit Blanc mystery, Knives Out; that is to say, a proper murder mystery that is also unabashedly a comedy. Don’t get me wrong, I found Knives Out amusing — even more so with subsequent rewatches — but it has a kind of dry humour, with a wit more likely to raise a wry smile of acknowledgement than a guffaw. Glass Onion surely has such moments too, but it also has big, broad laughs that stand out more on a first viewing.

The mystery at its core remains a true Christie-style puzzler, with enough about-turn twists to keep you off balance — you can try and guess what’s going on if you want, but it’s just as much fun to be swept along for the ride — but the surrounding material is satirical almost to the point of parody. Kate Hudson’s airhead influencer is more caricature than character, for example, while there’s no doubt that Edward Norton’s billionaire is a merciless pisstake of Elon Musk. That’s annoyed certain right-wing commentators. The rest of us can just enjoy the accurate pillorying.

This overall shift in tone will, I think, dictate which of the two movies viewers prefer — i.e. whichever one hews closer to your personal taste. On the other hand, maybe you’ll be like me, and enjoy them both for their own particular quirks. I’ve already watched Knives Out three times, so I’ll have to watch Glass Onion a couple more to make any kind of fair comparison. Fortunately, I intend to.

Glass Onion placed 1st on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2023.

My Year of Dicks

(2022)

Sara Gunnarsdóttir | 26 mins | digital (HD) | 1.78:1 | USA & Iceland / English

One of the standout moments of this year’s Oscars nominations announcement was when Riz Ahmed read out the Best Short Animation nominees, thus having to proclaim “My Year of Dicks” to the world — especially as it was immediately followed by “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”. Only one of those is currently available to watch online, so I did.

The autobiographical story of screenwriter Pamela Ribon trying to lose her virginity in early-’90s Texas, My Year of Dicks unfolds across five vignettes, each telling a different (but connected) story of sexual misadventure. The chaptered structure gives away that this is kinda five short films strung together; but they’re also a series, with a definite through-narrative (if you’ve ever watched any narrative film before, you’ll easily spot the early supporting character who’s destined to have greater significance). So, while it doesn’t fully work as a single ‘film’ (it feels like binge-watching a series of short episodes), there is at least a reason to lump them all together as a unit.

The parts are further differentiated by employing a variety of animation styles to depict Pam’s fantasies and inner feelings. It’s an effective use of the medium to help overcome the fact that the actual stories are relatively rote “coming of age” tales. The most successful of all is the excruciating “sex talk” with Pam’s dad, in which a bombardment of animated self destruction reflects the desire for escape we’re all feeling at that point.

As a story based around female sexuality, My Year of Dicks has an air of timeliness about it. Equally, it feels like such barriers have been continually been being broken down for the past 20 or 30 years now; in which case, one does wonder if its success has as much to do with the amusement value in seeing that title on the Oscar short list as it does the film itself.

You can watch My Year of Dicks for free on Vimeo.

Shotgun Wedding

(2022)

Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel are about to get married in front of their family and friends at a remote tropical resort when pirates turn up demanding a ransom. Action and hilarity ensue. How exciting the action and how hilarious the hilarity is where opinions may differ.

For my money, the end result is a perfectly serviceable star-driven action-comedy. It’s the kind of middle-of-the-road, made-for-date-night fare that people keep bemoaning we’re losing thanks to Marvel’s box office dominance, even though Hollywood actually seems to keep making them (for another example from just last year, see The Lost City), and they get fairly widely slated every time one actually comes out.

Okay, the vast majority of the film’s funniest ideas and moments were in the trailer (heck, the way the first promo was edited to make the film look like a rom-com, only to about-turn into an action movie, is probably the best gag associated with the entire project), but the film itself has held back a couple of laugh-worthy moments, and even a few plot twists. No wheels are reinvented, but it’s fine as bit of non-demanding, Friday-night, never-going-to-watch-it-again, easy viewing.

Shotgun Wedding is the 5th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

The Banshees of Inisherin

(2022)

The new film from the writer-director of Three Billboards reunites the star pairing from his first movie, In Bruges, for an altogether different — but equally as hilarious — tale of two Irishmen. Here, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play lifelong friends on a small island off the coast of Ireland in the 1920s; that is until one day Gleeson decides he just doesn’t like Farrell anymore. Cue a serious of escalating encounters as Gleeson tries to get his former mate to just leave him be.

After the quite heavy, discourse-provoking narrative of Three Billboards, Banshees feels somewhat like McDonagh heading for smaller-scale, less contentious waters. Not that I think he’s running in fear — he doesn’t seem like one to avoid confrontation or provocation around his art — but I think that Banshees feels more of a piece with Bruges, in that it’s focused on just a handful of characters and their fairly everyday lives. That said, things do get a bit… outrageous; and the Irish civil war is ticking away on the mainland, suggesting at least one thematic interpretation of the friends’ fallout. That’s not to mention the subplots involving Farrell’s sister outgrowing her place on the island, or the woes of the local village idiot (played superbly by Barry Keoghan) and his abusive father, who happens to be the island’s policeman.

All of which might begin to sound a bit serious. But then, juggling life-and-death issues and hilarity is almost McDonagh’s trademark. Indeed, the film’s biggest laugh is related to the story of a woman’s death; meanwhile, its saddest moment involves not the abuse or self-mutilation of any of the human characters, but rather the fate of a beloved animal (that might read as a spoiler, but I consider it fair warning for animal lovers). In viewing, it’s consistently very funny, but creeps up on you with Stuff To Think About, too. I enjoyed it a lot; maybe not as much has In Bruges or Glass Onion (no relatable comparison there other than I watched them both this month), but enough that my score rounds up.

The Banshees of Inisherin is the 6th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

Archive 5, Vol.6

Posted on January 25, 2023 by badblokebob

Hey, wouldja look what it is! After getting off to a fairly strong start back at the beginning of 2022, I allowed my Archive 5 strand to fall by the wayside while I made a concerted attempt to stay up-to-date reviewing my new viewing (with mixed success). But now it’s back, hopefully on a more permanent basis. And I guess going forward it should include what’s left of 2022, because otherwise I’m stuck trying to catch up on those reviews before I can even begin 2023. But not just yet, because I selected today’s five films back when Vol.6 should originally have been posted (last February, gasp!)

For those who’ve forgotten, I have a backlog of 421 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2021 viewing (448 if we add in 2022 too). This column is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, some films sizzle with heat or tension, while others fizzle into disappointment. This week’s Archive 5 are…

Paris When It Sizzles (1964)

7500 (2019)

The Rhythm Section (2020)

Carefree (1938)

The Lie (2018)

Paris When It Sizzles

(1964)

William Holden and Audrey Hepburn are clearly having a whale of a time in this marvellously cine-literate romp about a struggling screenwriter (Holden) and the secretary (Hepburn) hired to type up the script he hasn’t actually started. With the deadline just two days away, the pair rush to put a script together, which plays out as a film-within-a-film, also starring Holden and Hepburn, and allowing them even more fun as they get to overact extraordinarily. The “inside baseball” feel of the thing is furthered by a handful of surprise cameos.

Perhaps it’s me just misjudging the era, but the whole thing feels somewhat ahead of its time. In the way its such an insider’s riff on the movie industry, it feels like something you wouldn’t expect to have emerged until maybe the ’90s (The Player being an obvious point of reference). How well that worked for audiences at the time, I don’t know — maybe it did come across as too esoteric — but, viewed today by anyone with an idea of the history and inner workings of the Hollywood machine — it’s a lot of madcap fun.

Paris When It Sizzles was #129 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020. It placed 20th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2020.

7500

(2019)

After a title sequence that uses security camera footage to follow some shifty-looking blokes around Berlin airport, the film fades up in a passenger airplane cockpit as the crew arrive and begin their regular pre-flight routines. It’s a location we won’t leave for the next 80 minutes, as the unremarkable flight to Paris takes a turn when the aforementioned shifty-looking blokes attempt to invade the cockpit mid-flight, leaving it up to copilot Joseph Gordon-Levitt to try to rescue the situation.

A tense thriller set entirely in one confined location and told in (near-as-dammit-)real-time? This film could have been made just for me. Suffice to say, I was suitably pleased. This kind of style and pace clearly won’t be to everyone’s taste (I mean, the first 15 or so minutes are almost entirely about watching the pilots just doing their everyday job), but there’s something about the format that does it for me. I think it’s something to do with the inescapability of real-time — that what’s happening and what will happen is going to last as long as it lasts, no shortcuts — that serves to underscore the tension of a thriller storyline. That said, in this case the final act does lose some of the momentum and tension, as much as it tries to maintain it, meaning it feels like it limps to the end, with the really suspenseful stuff having expired a little after the hour mark. It’s not that this final act is bad, just that it feels like a comedown from what’s gone before.

Still, Gordon-Levitt is great throughout, carrying a large chunk of the film singlehanded, and there’s ultimately a more nuanced treatment of the terrorists than you might expect. I saw someone criticise it for trying to humanise one of them, as if that was problematic. Sure, terrorists are bad guys, but they’re still human beings underneath, and they’ve been plenty demonised enough in plenty of less thoughtful media — I’m not sure it should be considered controversial or a step too far to suggest that one of them (out of four) might be a misguided teenager rather than Evil Personified. On the flip side, I read another review that trashed the film for “featuring brown terrorists again”. I imagine those two reviewers would have a lot to disagree about…

7500 was #144 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Rhythm Section

(2020)

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I watch movies with a bad rep in case I see something in them that everyone else* missed — because that does happen. In that vein, The Rhythm Section isn’t some overlooked masterpiece, but I don’t really get why everyone hated it so much.

Blake Lively uglies up and forces an English accent to star as Stephanie Patrick, a drug-addicted prozzie who used to be a pretty Oxford student until her family died in a plane crash three years earlier, which a journalist now tells her was a terrorist attack that MI6 have covered up. Events lead her to a disgraced agent (Jude Law) who agrees to train her to hunt down the people responsible.

Hardly the most plausible storyline ever, but it’s no more ludicrous than many a thriller. So, as a genre piece, well, it’s certainly not the greatest action-thriller ever made, but it’s decent overall with a couple of neat twists on the usual formula. The primary one is that our heroine isn’t actually very good at being an action hero and keeps fucking up. Normally these films are about highly competent super agents (Jason Bourne, John Wick, etc), or newbies who take to it like a duck to water. Stephanie’s borderline incompetence is not only a mite more realistic, it makes a refreshing change, and at times is even successfully used to heighten the tension.

Unfortunately, other aspects were stale on arrival. For no reason, it begins halfway through and then does the “8 Months Earlier” thing. This is a personal bugbear of mine, because it’s a trick that’s been used to death at this point, routinely trotted out to no real purpose. Usually it’s used as a cheap way to deliver some action upfront because otherwise there won’t be any until somewhere in Act Two, which is just an insult to the audience’s attention span. In other cases, the film just got unlucky. I imagine when they conceived of a single-shot car chase it seemed like an original idea — as it probably did to all the other filmmakers who attempted the same thing around the same time; not least Netflix’s Extraction, which did it bigger and therefore better. Oh well.

Ultimately, I suppose The Rhythm Section is fundamentally derivative, with only fleeting moments of originality. But I still thing everyone else was overly negative — it’s not bad, just not strikingly fresh. I think if you enjoy Bourne-esque action-thrillers, you should enjoy this.

* It’s never everyone else, but you know what I mean. ^

The Rhythm Section was #138 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Carefree

(1938)

Fred Astaire is a psychiatrist prone to misogynistic views and unethical practices who mimes playing the harmonica and performs dance routines with golf balls, and Ginger Rogers does a song & dance about yams (because Astaire thought it was so silly, he refused to sing it. He was right). Yeah, I think it’s fair to say this isn’t the couple’s finest hour. The public agreed: this was the first Astaire-Rogers film to lose money on its initial release.

That said, it’s not without the occasional charm. Rogers still shines — the sequence where she goes around playing naughty pranks with a cheeky grin while under the influence of anaesthetic is a delight — and there’s a slow-motion dream-sequence dance that is rather lovely. But these are fleeting pleasures amongst the distasteful storyline (see: my description of Astaire’s character) and less refined moments (there’s a song about yams).

Carefree was #97 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

The Lie

(2018)

Although it debuted to most of the world as one in a series of eight Blumhouse original movies that premiered together on Amazon Prime in 2020, The Lie is listed as a 2018 film because that’s when it premiered at TIFF under a different title (Between Earth and Sky). The fact it went from being a standalone production to one of a series released en masse provides a clue as to how well it went down.

The film has a solid premise that starts out well enough: a father (Peter Sarsgaard) and daughter (Joey King) are driving to a ballet retreat when they spot her best friend waiting by the side of the road, so they offer her a lift. Later, they stop in the middle of nowhere so the friend can go to the bathroom, but she falls off a bridge into an icy river. Or possibly the daughter pushed her. Either way, presumably she couldn’t survive the fall, and her body has washed away. Fearing how all that would look, they set about covering it up… which is where things go awry, both for the characters and us viewers. The longer the story goes on, the further it departs from actions and consequences that feel plausible. It’s not ludicrously far-fetched, it just doesn’t feel right; like people wouldn’t make those decisions, or those decisions wouldn’t have those consequences. The lead cast give it their best shot, but they’re battling against material that’s below their skills.

Then there’s an inevitable last-minute twist that just hurls the whole thing off a bridge. Kate Erbland for IndieWire wrote that it “should rank among the all-time great fake-outs,” and she’s sort of right: it could have been a reveal for the ages, but rather than eliciting a pleasant “OMG I don’t believe it!”, it plays as “ugh, I don’t believe it.”

The Lie was #245 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Best of 2022

Posted on January 6, 2023 by badblokebob

And so my review of the year reaches its end in the usual fashion: with the best films I watched for the first time in 2022, plus a few honourable mentions, and a list of notable new releases I missed.

Regular readers may have noticed there’s no “worst” list this year. As I wrote last year, the idea of singling out a list of bad movies has become highly unfashionable in recent years, especially when big-name publications do it. I don’t think such lists are wholly without worth (they acknowledge that, as a film viewer, it’s not all sunshine and roses), and there’s a big difference between a major publication slagging off some recent releases (which may affect those films’ continued financial success and their makers’ careers) and a one-man blog picking a couple of lesser films from what he happened to watch that year (which rarely includes recent releases, and wouldn’t have an impact on them even if it did). Nonetheless, in the spirit of celebrating what you love and staying quiet about the rest, I’ve decided to ditch my “worst” list. (If you want, there’s still the “Least Favourite” award in my monthly Arbies.)

With that said, it’s on with…

The Eleven Best Films I Watched for the First Time in 2022

Continuing with the methodology I’ve used since 2016, this list features the top 10% of my first-time watches from the year. In 2022, the total was 111, which means there are 11 films on this year’s “top 10”.

As ever, it’s not just 2022 releases that are eligible for my 2022 list. Consequently, in recent years I’ve included a ‘yearly rank’ for films that had their UK release during the previous 12 months. However, I watched so few of the year’s big hitters in 2022 that I felt to rank what I did see would be misleading. There are too many acclaimed films omitted only because I’m not able to consider them, not because I don’t think they’re worthy. Hopefully I’ll get back on top of seeing new releases, so a yearly ranking can return in the future.

11 Mona Lisa

Take a noir storyline then run it through gritty “kitchen sink” British sensibilities, and you get this: a film that works as both a neo-noir gangster thriller and a character study of a man revising his views of the world. [Full review.]

10 Prey

Studios keep trying to rehash their ’80s sci-fi/action IPs, and they keep producing mediocre results. Thankfully, someone has finally bucked the trend. Prey works in part because it abandons continuity and takes a back-to-basics approach to its alien menace. Setting it in a completely different time period adds more opportunities for fresh perspectives and developments. It’s such a seemingly simple idea that works so well, and one that’s eminently repeatable. Predators vs knights? Predators vs samurai? Predators vs cowboys? Yes, yes, and yes, please, and anything else you can think of. [Full review.]

9 Ambulance

Michael Bay has always been a divisive filmmaker. His brash, bombastic style isn’t for everyone. But I think there’s a method to his madness (even when it results in trash) and so, when he’s on form, he remains one of the most exciting action filmmakers. Ambulance shows he’s still got the goods. You could imagine the storyline — after a bank heist goes wrong, two crooks escape in an ambulance, along with the cop they shot and a paramedic trying to save him — being from a 1940s film noir; a grim character study of men under pressure. That side of it is still in there, just dressed up with all the wildness of only-semi-restrained Bayhem. [Full review.]

8 The Ghost Writer

A thriller about… writing a book? Ah, but when the book in question is the autobiography of a disgraced, potentially criminal former Prime Minister, and the book’s new ghost writer has been brought in because his predecessor died under suspicious circumstances, well, you begin to see where there are questions to be answered. Pierce Brosnan is perfect for the role of a former politician who is 50% charming and 50% believable as a scheming villain, while Ewan McGregor leads us through the twisty plot as an everyman who needs the money but still has a conscience. Will the truth out? [Full review.]

7 West Side Story

Spielberg, man. If you’d told me a remake of West Side Story would end up in my top ten of the year, I’d have given you a funny look. I didn’t love the original film version, but I also didn’t think it could be bettered — it’s a classic for a reason. Surely any remake was doomed to be lesser? But ah, here comes Steven Spielberg, a director whose style clearly chimes with my taste (in fairness, his work helped define my taste, thanks to watching the likes of Indiana Jones, and Spielberg-produced/-emulating movies such as Back to the Future, at a formative age). His version screams Movie in a way so few films do nowadays, and the changes he and his team have made to the material elevate it even beyond the ’61 film, for my money. [Full review.]

6 High and Low

Toshiro Mifune plays a man presented with a life-changing moral dilemma in this thriller from director Akira Kurosawa. It’s a film of two halves: the first, contained almost to one room in near-real-time, sees Mifune’s business executive grapple with a conundrum that could ruin his career; the second becomes intensely procedural as it follows the police investigation and fallout from Mifune’s actions. With its precision attention to detail and healthy dose of mundanity, Kurosawa conjures an intense realism — the film could almost be a documentary; only, a documentary could never be this finely controlled. [Full review.]

5 Mass

Disappointingly relegated to “Sky Original” status here in the UK (usually a dumping ground for low-quality genre movies), Mass is a film that deserves to be more widely seen (the story of too many films buried on random streaming services nowadays, I fear — how many people have actually seen Best Picture winner CODA when it’s locked away on Apple TV+?) The less you know going in the better to be hit with the film’s full emotional weight. And it is a heavy film, but only in a way the befits its subject matter. Made up almost entirely of four people sat round a table talking, it is nonetheless “a blisteringly emotional gut-punch … but, with that, it’s ultimately cathartic.” [Full review.]

4 Encanto

I do enjoy a Disney animation, but one has never broken into my top ten before (Zootropolis was 15th in 2016 and Moana was 16th in 2017). That’s partly the luck of the draw (I watched over 50% more films in each of those years), but also something about how well Encanto works — which, frankly, I can’t quite put my finger on. I mean, all the obvious elements are there: catchy songs, likeable characters, impressively fluid animation, a strong message about what matters. But there’s something else, too; a sprinkling of magic that, for me at least, elevates the film to be something even more special. I say I like a Disney film, but I don’t revisit them too often. I’ve already watched Encanto twice. In one year? That’s not like me! So, hopefully you see my point. [Full review.]

3 Top Gun: Maverick

I feel the need — the need for actors doing their flying stunts for real! Striking usage of the IMAX aspect ratio! Memorable callbacks to the original movie! Cheesy music that fits the tone perfectly! Actual humour! Proper subplots! Top Gun: Maverick is old-fashioned blockbuster moviemaking done with modern sensibilities (can you imagine them actually putting actors in jets back in the ’80s? For one thing, where would they have put those great big film cameras?) Actor/producer Tom Cruise has spent decades now perfecting this brand of big-screen entertainment, and here he shows the next generation how it should be done — both in-film, as a pupil-turned-teacher trying to get a class of the best pilots to be even better, i.e. as good as he is; and in real life too, rocking up in an era when the box office is dominated by previz- and CGI-driven superhero theme-park-rides-as-cinema, and giving us a done-for-real spectacle that kicked all their asses at the box office. The movies, and movie stars, are only dead when Tom Cruise says they are.

2 Les Enfants du Paradis

According to IMDb, when Children of Paradise (to use its translated title) was initially distributed in the USA, it was promoted as “a sort of French-made Gone with the Wind”. It’s not a bad comparison. Not in a literal sense — this isn’t about a spoilt rich girl getting caught up in a civil war on the wrong side — but as an epic, years-spanning romantic melodrama? There are some similarities. It’s the story of a courtesan-turned-actress and the four men in her orbit — a mime artiste, an aspiring actor, a wannabe crook, and a moneyed gent — in and around the theatrical scene of 1830s Paris. It’s told with a style that feels adapted from a novel — it’s got that kind of scope, with its timespan and array of characters, and depth, which feel more like literature than something conceived directly for the screen. In fact, most of the characters are based on real people, which I suppose is neither here nor there, but does add another layer of interest. Whatever makes it work is enough to keep it thoroughly compelling even with a running time over three hours.

1 Manhunter

I first became aware of Manhunter many moons ago, as a piece of footnote trivia in the history of movies: “did you know there was a Hannibal Lector film before Silence of the Lambs?” What a crazy idea! How bad it must have been to be so thoroughly overshadowed by Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning version. Well, the history of the movies is rarely so straightforward; and as the immediate acclaim for Lambs has died down, and its various sequels and prequels have petered away, Manhunter has been able to reemerge somewhat. And so it should, because this is a great movie. Maybe not a great Hannibal Lector movie (Brian Cox is very good in the role, with less of the ticks and tricks that made Hopkins so memorable, but he’s not the focus of the story), but a superb “hunt for a serial killer” thriller. It’s dripping with ’80s style thanks to a director who helped define what that even meant (via his involvement with Miami Vice), while the hero cop, played by William Petersen, feels ahead of his time, struggling with the mental toll of previous cases as he tries to do the right thing and stop another killer. Such a mix of style and substance makes for an all-round fulfilling film; one that I think deserves every bit to be celebrated alongside Jonathan Demme’s more widely-acknowledged movie.

To celebrate it topping my list, Manhunter is on BBC Two tonight at 11:05pm, and on iPlayer for 30 days afterwards.*

As usual, I’d like to highlight a few other films.

Firstly, I wrote this little paragraph not sure where to use it, but here seems a good place. That’s to say: I love a minor film noir. Just a solid, competently made, usually 60-to-80-minute programmer. The highly-regarded Classics are all well and good — I appreciate their quality; why they’re ‘better’ — but, in many respects, I get more actual enjoyment (certainly in a relaxed, easy-viewing sense) from a run-of-the-mill type film. Not bad ones, you understand, just average fare. And here seems a good place to say that because 2022’s Challenge compelled me to watch a few noirs of that ilk. All of them were on the long list for my top ten, but none quite made it. I’m talking about the likes of Christmas Holiday, He Walked by Night, Killer’s Kiss, My Name Is Julia Ross, and Repeat Performance. (I also liked The Killing, but that’s in no way a “minor” noir.) Mr. Soft Touch grew on me as it went on, too, but that’s probably one to only be watched in December.

Next, here’s a recap of the 12 films that won the Arbie for my Favourite Film of the Month. Some have already been mentioned in this post, but some haven’t… In chronological order (with links to the relevant awards), they were Mass, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, West Side Story, High and Low, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Ghost Writer, Ambulance, Repeat Performance, Top Gun: Maverick, The Mission, Manhunter, and Les Enfants du Paradis.

Finally, something I’ve always done in this section is list every film that earned a 5-star rating during the year. In part that’s because there’s normally far too many to include in my list, even if it weren’t for the fact 4-star films usually sneak in too. But this year, there were only six films that received full marks, and all of them made the top 10%, too. Nonetheless, they were Les Enfants du Paradis, High and Low, Manhunter, Mass, Top Gun: Maverick, and West Side Story. Additionally, there were also full marks for my rewatch of the original Scream.

I’ve been creating these “50 Unseen” (as I call them for short) lists for 16 years now, and it doesn’t get any easier to choose what to include — or, rather, what to exclude.

It became a little easier in the past few years, because I was watching so many movies that the number of wide-release titles I’d missed fell, leaving room for more arthouse-y ‘hits’ — films the masses didn’t see but Film People were chatting about. But I watched very few new films this year — just 18 with a 2022 UK release date, down from 30+ in the last few years (with a high of nearly 60 in 2019). Those are small numbers compared to people who watch multiple brand-new films every week, but it had been enough to cover a significant percentage of ‘major’ releases. 18 is… well, not.

With an initial long-list of almost 150 films, I did consider increasing this list to 100 titles. It would be in keeping with the site’s theme, after all. But 100 is such a big number… I mean, history suggests I won’t manage to watch the 50 listed films within the next decade or two, so how long would 100 take? No, 50 simply feels about the ‘right size’ for a list of this type, whereas 100 feels excessive. Besides, something is always going to get left off, it’s just how far down the list that cutoff comes.

So, with the caveat that I’ve inevitably forgotten or misjudged something really noteworthy, here’s an alphabetical list of 50 films designated as being from 2022 that I haven’t yet seen. They were chosen for a variety of reasons, from box office success to critical acclaim via simple notoriety, and hopefully represent a spread of styles and genres, successes and failures.

Aftersun
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Batman
Black Adam
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Blonde
Bullet Train
Crimes of the Future
Decision to Leave
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Don’t Worry Darling
Downton Abbey: A New Era
Elvis
Empire of Light
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Halloween Ends
Jackass Forever
Jurassic World Dominion
Lightyear
Men
The Menu
Minions: The Rise of Gru
Moonfall
Morbius
Nope
The Northman
Pinocchio
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical
RRR
She Said
Smile
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Strange World
Thor: Love and Thunder
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Turning Red
Tár
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Uncharted
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Wendell & Wild
The Whale
X

And that’s another year over.

I gotta say, I’m quite pleased with how quickly I wrapped it all up — I haven’t got my “best” list out by January 6th since 2017. It shouldn’t feel like a rush to get this stuff online, but when many people are sharing their lists before the end of December (or even earlier, in the case of some publications), a week or more into January feels “late”.

Anyway, I’m going to leave a couple of days to let the end of 2022 finally sink in, and then I’ll start waffling on about my targets for 2023.

* Obviously it’s not actually because of my list, just a coincidence. ^

2022 | Week 35

Posted on December 23, 2022 by badblokebob

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

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

Mona Lisa (1986)

Mirror (1975), aka Zerkalo

Clerks (1995)

Persuasion (2022)

He Walked by Night (1948)

Mona Lisa

(1986)

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

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

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

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

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

Mirror

(1975)

aka Zerkalo

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

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

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

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

Clerks

(1994)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Persuasion

(2022)

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

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

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

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

He Walked by Night

(1948)

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

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

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

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

2022 | Week 34

Posted on December 3, 2022 by badblokebob

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

The Winter Guest (1997)

Repeat Performance (1947)

Carousel (1956)

The Winter Guest

(1997)

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

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

Repeat Performance

(1947)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carousel

(1956)

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

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

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

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.

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.