Year: 2015 Director: Henry Hobson

Me, I love zombies, but even I have to admit to being a bit over them by now. And after ‘Zombieland’, ‘In The Flesh’ and ‘Warm Bodies’, I’ve had my fill of ‘a new take’ on the genre as well. However, for one reason or another, I made an exception for Maggie, ‘a new take’ on the zombie genre starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m always a bit wary of praising performances in films but Arnie is really good in this, like maybe the best he’s ever been. Really it’s only the accent to reminds you that he’s Sir Arnold of I’ll Be Backshire. Otherwise he pretty much inhabits the role of a loving father who must come to terms with his daughter’s impending zombie transformation, not to mention his inability to do anything about it. As you might imagine, seeing the man who played John Matrix made powerless in the face of a mere virus is the real kicker here, adding a layer of autumn-years nuance that really lifts the film, while Abigail Breslin as the pre-zombie in question is outstanding. Nevertheless, the film itself doesn’t quite rise to the level of its stars. The zombie-integration » Continue Reading.

Year: 1971 Director: Robert Altman

The psychological horror film, Images, is one of Robert Altman’s lesser-known films. It was released in 1971, between more familiar and popular films from the director; his revisionist Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and his revisionist and ironic treatment of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.

Images is not typical Altman. In many respects it is a more conventional and commodified film to the style of film-making closely associated with him: multi-layered stories, characters cross-talking, a withering and languid “anti-establishment” gaze that suggests everyone involved, including the viewer, is gingerly working their way through a stalled recovery from a bad 60’s trip.

Images is a tight chamber piece, filmed mostly with interiors and with a limited cast. The plot, such as it is, is simple and functional. So far so normal. The conventionality and simplicity of plot and setting are important because what Altman wants to do is to warp our perceptions of normality. What we witness in Images is how different another person’s normality can become over the course of the film. That person is Cathryn, portrayed by Susannah York. She is a children’s author, married without children and living what appears at first » Continue Reading.

Year: 1949 Director: Carol Reed

This is a review of the new Blu-ray 4K restoration.

I think that most people know the story of The Third Man. Divided Vienna, Black Market Penicillin (in fact Black Market everything) , the loyal Anna, the everyman Holly, the evil Harry Lime, a man so bad he isn’t in the gutter he is literally in the sewer and of course the Cuckoo clock. Add the Dutch angles, the decent(ish) Major Calloway, the mainly German speaking wonderful supporting cast and one of the best soundtracks in Cinema history from Anton Karas and this is a perfect movie.

This new edition is sparkling (as much as a film this dark in places can be) and clean as a whistle. The soundtrack is clear and as good as a 66 year old film will ever get.

The extras include audio commentaries with Guy Hamilton (who chased Welles all over Europe when he didn’t turn up on time) and few docs including a really interesting one on the restoration plus interviews with Graham Greene and Joseph Cotton. Also included is a neat and informative booklet, some really nice art cards and a small poster. And the set » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Bill Pohlad

Though it’s been out for at least 6 months, it seems the Brian Wilson bio-pic ‘Love and Mercy’ has only now reached Australia, or at any rate, just reached me. Bio-pics as a genre are always a bit hit and miss, the best ones I’ve always found tending to be about people no longer with us, the exception to that particular rule being the magnificent ‘Raging Bull’. Part of the difficulty is the sensitivity required to portray the subject in a positive light; not many Directors have Scorsese’s ability or perception to depict light and shade without overdosing on one or the other. Therein lies the problem with Bill Pohlad’s approach to Brian Wilson, who’s represented as a genius, no more no less throughout (albeit a tortured, fucked up, victimised but ultimately rehabilitated one). Played by 2 different actors with no similarity whatsoever – Paul Dano as the young BW – slightly goofy, chubby but obviously mega-talented and John Cusack as the older version, thin, overmedicated and needy but quite clearly a genius – this ubiquitous assessment is slapped on as thick as the pancake makeup Cusack is evidently wearing. ‘Who do you think you » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Some vampires reveal the day-to-day minutiae of vampiric life in the run down squalor of their New Zealand house – having to do household chores, not getting into nightclubs, falling out with friends, etc.

Comedy is the most difficult cinematic genre to get right. There are very few modern comedies that work really well. Spinal Tap, obviously, is one. Shaun Of The Dead another. This New Zealand film has the deadpan mockumentary style of the former and the spoof horror theme of the latter. And it also shares the same relentless quality of hilarious scenes, laugh-out-loud moments and quotable dialogue as both those films. High praise indeed, but it’s one of a small group of genuine lol 5 star classic comedies. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a must-see.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Aside from Tap and Shaun, I see vague comparisons with Wes Anderson, Kusturica, early Woody Allen.

Year: 2015 Director: Asif Kapadia

No matter how short a life is, you can’t tell the whole story in 165 minutes and that’s the main problem with Asif ‘Senna’ Kapadia’s documentary of the short, tragic life of Amy Winehouse. Not that it’s a bad movie, it’s anything but. Through the use of copious, highly revealing home videos provided by her first manager, Nick Shymansky, Amy’s obvious talent and undoubted charisma effortlessly emerge, leading through to her horrific, public decline as fame, addiction and isolation exact their costly price. As someone with not much more than a general awareness of her music, I was highly impressed by Amy’s oeuvre, a fantastic voice when on its game and a surprisingly (for me anyway) poetic feel for words; most of which were so starkly literal it’s hard to understand why no one saw fit to anticiapte the problems ahead. Though, of course, they did. Everyone, it seems, knew there were likely to be troubles afoot – friends, management, family, even it seems, fans. ‘Rehab’ is discussed in detail, both the song and the potential intervention. This is where the film starts naming names, Amy’s dad, Mitch, one time cabbie and VIz magazine character » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Ana Lily Amirpour

I had several hours to kill in London yesterday so I thought I would take in a matinee. This being the capital I had the choice of more arthouse fare so decided against films starring WWE wrestlers and went for ‘The first Iranian Vampire Western’. The streets of Taft, California stand in for Bad City in Iran, eerily quiet and deserted in best Sergio Leone style, whose only figures are junkies, pimps, hookers, losers and those dying to escape. Arash is definitely the latter, working as a gardener for a rich family, putting most of his earnings into buying a car which is cruelly taken from him by the local drug dealer and the rest to support his drug addled father. The town is haunted by a vicious female vampire who preys on the immoral male members of the community. Arash meets the titular girl walking home alone at night stumbling from a party, coming down from a drug trip and their intense relationship is the film’s heart. Shot in black and white it gives off the air of a classic 1930’s horror with little dialogue exchanged between the two – its all in » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: George Miller

The long delayed Fury Road finally hits the UK and so I went to see for myself whether it lives up to the hype. Tom Hardy is suitably taciturn as the titular Max, who we meet chomping on a two-headed lizard, and we are plunged headlong into the action as Max is pursued and captured by the Warboys of the hideously deformed Immortan Jon. Taken back to The Citadel, Max is shorn, tattooed and used as a “Universal Donor”, pumping his blood into Warboys in need of a top up. Things don’t stay still for long as Charlize Theron’s Furiosa decides to kidnap Immortan Jon’s favourite “wives” in a War Rig tanker and head out across the desert for The Green Place, hotly pursued by all manner of crazies, including Max strapped to the front of a car on a pole as a mobile “blood bag”. There ensues one almighty car chase across the post-apocalyptic wastes. The look of the film is gorgeous, all metal and diesel and searing red desert and it obviously harks back to the feel of Mad Max 2. This is a good thing. The action set pieces are astonishing, made » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Levan Gabriadze

Ahh getting a bunch of teenagers together, make them annoying and offing them one by one – its a dance as old as time. This super low budget, $1million thou looks like 1000, fright flick happens on the laptop screen of one of the annoying teens as they are stalked online by someone (or something?) seeking revenge for their friend who committed suicide. I have seen a couple of reviews saying it will be incomprehensible to anyone over 25 due to its use of Skype, Youtube, Spotify, Chatroulette and Facebook. Purrrleasssee, granddad. Perhaps a younger audience may have some sympathy with the teen cast but I did share an internet troll attitude to their suffering – kill yourself and get over it. The novel presentation may be the most interesting part raising this above straight to DVD fare but as some good old teenage slaying quiet, quiet, BANG fun its worth checking out.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

The Blair Witch Project or similar “found footage” horror. The fact the two main characters are called Blaire and Mitch can’t be a co-incidence

Year: 2015 Director: Brett Morgan

In the 21 years since he shot himself Cobain, like Lennon, has been mythologized until the living breathing person ceases to exist under the weight of books and conjecture. This film attempts to tear that down and show us the man. For someone who complained bitterly about always being under scrutiny he didn’t half spend a lot of time filming or being filmed whilst at home. From early Super8 footage of the toddling Kurt through to early embryonic Nirvana gigs to crowning glories like Reading 1992 and MTV Unplugged.

Most revealing of all is the footage with Courtney & Frances and the Christmas 1993 of the trio taking a bath contains no hint of the downturn in their fortunes. Rather than forensically rake over the events leading to his death, the film ends with the painful echo of ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’. The film reveals a man not built for fame – his fear of being ridiculed, his sense of abandonment mixed with illness and a long heroin habit to make everything bearable all ultimately becoming too much. You are reminded of the great power of the music he left behind and » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Jonathon Glazer

Glazer’s third film, the product of ten years work, topped many best-of-year lists in 2014, without setting the box office on fire. Watching it it’s clear why, it’s a sombre, beautiful and largely wordless experience that remakes Glasgow and the Highlands as deeply alien worlds. Scarlett Johansen, unearthly in beauty in most contexts, here is an alien wandering the streets of Scotland tasked with abducting willing Scotsmen. We see her don a dead woman’s clothes, then stalk her prey in a white transit van – picking them up on pretexts and taking them back to a house that appears to house an enormous subterranean oil tank, into which her victims sink. The plot is slender, so I won’t dwell on it too much. Glazer isn’t interested in the details of why the aliens are here and what happens to the abductees – this is explored much more in Michael Faber’s source novel. Rather, he’s interested in how Johansen’s predator moves through the human worlds of shopping centres, ring roads and hotels as a tiger might through a herd of gazelle. It was much noted on release that Glazer used non-professional actors and hidden filming – » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: William Eubank

According to legend, Kevin Rowland stormed into Dexys’ rehearsals one day, slammed a load of classic Stax records on the table, and said his band’s ambition should be to sound “like this, but better”. William Eubank’s first feature “Love” seemed like an audacious attempt to out-Kubrick Kubrick. 2001-style, it came in three parts – the first historical, the second set aboard a space craft (in this case The International Space Station) and the third a trippy finale which dared to walk the line between profound and pretentious (did I mention it was his first feature?). Like 2001, it divided its audience sharply, with as many infuriated or bewildered as awestruck. For Eubank’s second film The Signal we are in more familiar genre territory. Three young friends have traced a hacker who has jacked into their computers and curiosity causes them to pay him or her a visit. When they arrive at the location something weird happens and in the next scene the main character, Nic, awakens in what appears to be a government containment facility surrounded by men in decontamination suits but with his friends nowhere to be seen. From here the plot twists in » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead

2 American films were set in Puglia last year. The execrable Walking On Sunshine and this rather cool indie horror/scifi/romance. Starring indie darling Lou Taylor Pucci (‘Thumbsucker’) -seemingly recovered from the horrific violent attack he endured in 2010- as an American who comes to Puglia to escape, only to fall in love with a very mysterious, enigmatic beauty, German actress Nadia Hilker. Mostly filmed around where I live, the scenery is, of course, stunningly beautiful! But aside from that, it’s one of the most original ‘horror’ flicks I’ve seen for a long time. Sensitive and thoughtful rather than scary.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

It has perhaps a tiny bit of a Doctor Who vibe to it, but slower and creepier. A touch of Under The Skin too.

Year: 2014 Director: Shinobi Yaguchi

Yuki Hirano has just failed his university entrance exams, and been dumped by his girlfriend. After a drunken night out with his college bound friends he stumbles upon a flyer for a one year forestry course. In no small way encouraged by a picture of a pretty girl on the front, he signs up, and leaves the busy metropolis for rural Japan on a succession of smaller and smaller trains. The first intimation of disaster comes at journey’s end, when he realises there is no cellphone signal at his destination shortly before his first encounter with a pit viper…

We follow him though a month’s training, and several failed escape attempts, until he takes an apprenticeship that turns out to be under Iida-san, the toughest of his instructors and the one with least patience for pampered city boys. Even when he finds the model from the pamphlet cover she is scornful, believing he will head back to Tokyo as soon as he can. It’s probably no great surprise to say that as the year progresses he becomes more enamoured of the rural life, and begins to integrate with the village, but the pleasure is in » Continue Reading.

Year: 2009 Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura

In 2012, a giant comet is about to hit the Earth, bringing total devastation. Japan is expected to be totally submerged by a huge tidal wave. The population have fled to high ground, but as one doom loving character reminds us, that won’t help. The streets of Tokyo are deserted. But one small record shop is still open, and the owner is confident the apocalypse will not come. His certainty is rooted in Fish Story, a forgotten record made in the 70s by a band no one remembers. This song will save the world, he insists.

A good chunk of the film is the story of Gekirin. They are a proto punk band, stealing a march on the Sex Pistols by twelve months, but this is 1975 Japan and no one is interested. They gradually succumb to low sales, record company antagonism and a dispute with their singer, but not before recording the song Fish Story. The song disappears without a trace, but other parts of the film set in 1982, 1999, 2009 and 2012, just hours before the comet’s impact, follow its afterlife, and show how it does indeed save the world.

» Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: The Wachowskis

On a rainy day at the end of half-term I accompanied two 12-year olds to the Wachowskis first original sci-fi script since The Matrix. The 12 certificate is probably an indicator that there would be less cod philosophy and more pecs. The set up sees Mila Kunis as Jupiter, eking out a life as a frankly unconvincing house cleaner whose life is changed etc when she discovers she’s a member of an aristocratic family who rule the galaxy. But of course as many people want her dead as want to help her, and only Metallica-roadie look alike Tatum Channing and – oh my it’s Sean Bean as a roguish world-weary ex-cop – are really on her side. It looks great – at times a bonkers mix of cyberpunk, medieval gothic and Boris Vallejo fantasy. Mila gets hitched in a spaceship that appears to have been cut and shunted with Salisbury Cathedral. Bean and Eddie Redmayne chew the scenery most satifactorily as the Brits Who Can Act. Mila Kunis does not have much to do except look scared, control the world’s bee population, and run away again in the company of some male saviour. Until the » Continue Reading.