kevin-38242's Reviews

Night Sky (2022)

3/10

15 August 2022

It's painful to criticize something that is so splendidly acted, filmed, and directed. In the end, though, a story needs to have a coherent, self-contained plot, even if it's a fantastical one.

The leading characters perform admirably, and managed to keep my interest long after the story stopped making any sense. The story itself deals with many themes -- too many for the writing to keep together. It's not that the writing doesn't make sense -- although sometimes it does not. Rather, it's that so many thematic elements are introduced, and never developed.

The central theme is aging. The central characters are an old-ish couple (but not much older than me) struggling to make sense of their lives, as well all do. The presence of some sort of alien artefact (maybe) in their back yard should act as a focus for that human drama.

It does not, though, because so many other elements intrude.

I suspect that this series was originally intended to span multiple season. It seems to me that at least two more seasons would be needed to develop all the storylines, and tie up the loose ends. However, since it's been cancelled, that's not going to happen.

If you're the kind of person who can read the first third of a book and not worry about the ending, this might suit you. After all, there's a lot to like. If you like resolution, this show is ultimately frustrating.

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The Hole in the Ground (2019)

2/10

The hole is a metaphor for the writer's navel

1 August 2019

Call me old-fashioned, but I preferred it when movies had a plot. Now we have to "explore" this and "introspect" that, and otherwise engage with pointless, post-modern psychobabble. Yes, the cinematography is wonderful, and the acting perfectly competent. There's a great sense of encroaching dread which leads to -- absolutely nothing.

The great thing about mental illness, if you are a lazy, self-obsessed screenwriter, is that nothing needs to make sense. You can present a sequence of unconnected, confusing events with no concern for whether they have any narrative consistency. After all, if you're nuts, you wouldn't expect events to have any temporal or spatial coherence, right?

It's OK for a story to raise more questions than it answers, but there has to be at least a sense that, somewhere, there actually are answers. In this movie, there aren't even any meaningful questions.

If 500 000 people saw this movie, the total amount of time wasted would equal a typical human lifetime. The writer would therefore be guilty of one murder. Fortunately, I think it's unlikely that it will attract such an audience, so the writer's crime isn't actually a capital one. Still, there should be penalties for abusing and insulting an audience this way.

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The Living and the Dead (2016)

3/10

A mish-mash of unrelated, incoherent plot ideas

28 August 2017

Warning: Spoilers

(Contains spoilers)

The first episode was marvellous, and it persuaded me to watch the rest. Sadly, it was downhill thereafter.

The setting and cinematography are excellent throughout, and create a compelling atmosphere of late Victorian creepiness. The actors do a businesslike job, although the delivery is a touch too theatrical in places. The dialogue, considered scene-by-scene, is mostly convincing. You could take a ten-minute snippet from more-or-less anywhere in the series, and it would look like something I could happily watch.

And yet...

It doesn't make any sense -- that's the problem. There seems to be an understanding among contemporary writers -- for any medium -- that as soon as a story involves supernatural elements, there's no need for it to have any kind of internal logic. Let's suppose we accept -- for the purposes of the plot -- that people can sometimes experience events from the past or the future. Many good movies have worked with that assumption. But how does that explain a bunch of Victorian farmers finding a wrecked car? And how does it explain the various mysterious deaths? These seem to be attributed to some kind of evil spirit; but what is the connection between evil spirits and time travel? None that is made clear, for sure.

At some point we learn that a bunch of Parliamentarian troops massacred everybody in the village during the Civil War. That fact just comes out of the blue, with no preceding references, just when the writers thought it would be nice to have some additional violence, presumably. Such events don't seem particularly plausible from a historical perspective, but even less plausible is that it doesn't seem to surprise anybody that the ghosts of the long-term roundheads come back to repeat their villainy. It just seems par for the course.

The male lead character is ostensibly a psychologist, or some form of mental health professional. There was a good opportunity for a plot based on the tension between science and superstition; but that opportunity was ignored, and it wouldn't have made any difference if this character had been a banker or a painter.

Similarly, the show alludes to the impact of industrialization on a farming community, but this plot element is not developed at all -- Mr and Mrs Squire buy a steam engine, which is sabotaged. We never find out by whom, or for what purpose, and it plays no further part in the story.

And the ending... what's that all about? It just comes completely out of left field with no connection to anything that has gone before.

Just think of all the odd plot elements that are crammed into this short series:

time travel - forgotten mines harbouring dark secrets - rationality and superstition - ghosts of various sorts - possession by unquiet spirits of some sort - the impact of industrialization on a rural community

Any one of these elements could have been developed into a compelling story, with real character depth. All the right things were there -- the location, the atmosphere, the cinematography. However, it just looks as if the writers jumbled everything together, and then put some additional ghosts in for good measure.

Many movies are not easily understood on a single viewing. In the best examples, we get an idea that, although the plot might not be simple, or obvious, there is one in the writer's mind at least. In this case, however, it's clear that even the writers didn't care about the story, beyond the immediate relationships between the main characters.

So it's a soap opera with ghosts and time travel. Very disappointing.

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The Kettering Incident (2016)

4/10

Scenic, slow-paced, atmospheric, silliness

19 June 2017

There is a certain kind of person who gets a kick out of suggesting that if a book, or a film, makes little sense, the reader or viewer is lacking in imagination or intellectual capacity. I can see that a few of these bottom-feeders have already been active in this discussion. The reality is that, while a movie or a book need not have a clear, linear plot that is fully explicated, to be credible it must give the impression that there _is_ such a plot. That is, we must at least come away with the impression that the writers knew what they were doing, even if nobody else does. Moreover, to be worth investing time in watching or reading it, it must be possible for an attentive person of ordinary memory and attention span to get this impression in a single reading or viewing, not two or three.

So the original series of Twin Peaks works, even though it leaves many questions unanswered. That, too, was about odd, quasi-supernatural goings on in a scenic logging town. But with TP there was enough coherence in the storyline that, even though we go away baffled, we still think that -- at some level or other -- it makes sense. It might only make sense in David Lynch's head but he, at least, knew what it was all about. Well, maybe.

That's the problem with the Kettering Incident -- there are so many disconnected, unrelated plot elements, that it doesn't give me any confidence that there is any underlying coherence. Rather, it looks like four or more unrelated stories shoe-horned together. It's almost as if the writers didn't really care whether it made sense, so long as they could write scenes where the actors stare moodily at one another with mountains in the background. It's difficult to care about the characters, because it feels as if the writers didn't care about them. Not enough to make them behave like real folks, anyway. The whole thing plods along with a smug, leaden seriousness, as if the slightest moment of levity would make people realize how silly the whole thing is.

What rescues The Kettering Incident from being complete dross is the cinematography and overall atmosphere. Many, many scenes in the movie would look great as still images. It's almost worth watching just for this; but only almost.

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Storage 24 (2012)

7/10

An unpretentious piece of harmless silliness

30 January 2017

I felt I had to write in defense of this film, which hasn't been very favourably received in general.It really does have a few things in its favour.

1. It's set in a place I know, where people tork lark wot ah do. I know that shouldn't be a deciding factor, but with almost everything that comes to our screens originating from the USA, a home-grown effort makes a pleasant change. The environment, acting, and writing really do evoke the realistic essence of Sarf, sorry South, London.

2. It's an interesting idea. The idea of monsters running amok in exotic places like spaceships and Central American jungles has been done to death. All the action of this movie takes place in the most prosaic of locations -- a hired storage lockup.

3. It's unpretentious. It doesn't take itself seriously, or pretend to be a work of profound art. It's amusing in places, although I do wonder whether you have to be a Londoner to understand its self-satirizing nature.

4. There isn't a stupid, cheesy happy ending (sorry, is that a spoiler?) The movie doesn't finish with a long drawn-out face-sucking scene, which seems to be almost obligatory these days.

On the bad side, the monster just isn't scary. But, as others have remarked, few movie monsters are scary when they are dragged out into the light of day.

All in all, it's worth watching, particularly if you have fond (or otherwise) memories of the location.

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10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

6/10

Nowhere near as bad as I feared

23 January 2017

Warning: Spoilers

This movie has "Coverfield" in the name, and shares at least a director with that earlier movie. In fact, I bought it on blu-ray in a double pack. So, having seen the earlier movie, which was a very humdrum affair in all respects except the visual arts, I wasn't expecting much.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised. 10CL centres on the tense relationships between three people confined -- willingly or not -- in a survival bunker. Some unspecified "attack" has taken place, and it seems that the outside world is uninhabitable. It looks OK, however, through the airlock window, so the real situation is unclear. As the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the owner of the bunker is somewhat unstable, and may even be a murderer. The three folks in the bunker are the only actors with more than a couple of lines, and all the performances are excellent.

But (spoiler coming...) Having seen Cloverfield, I always assumed that space monsters or some-such would be involved somewhere. I mean, why would the filmmakers choose this name except to make that exact connection? This rather killed the suspense for me. Had the link been unclear -- had it been uncertain right up until the last moment whether the surface was safe or not -- it would have been a better movie. Sure, "Howard" -- the bunker's owner -- is a fruitcake, and he may have a sinister motive for keeping a young woman trapped. But that in no way precludes a genuine disaster having taken place as well.

There is an FAQ entry attached to this IMDb entry that says, essentially, that the film-makers did not intend any particular relationship between 10CL and Cloverfield. It's true that we don't see the same monsters, and there are continuity problems if the events in 10CL are intended to follow directly after those in Cloverfield. But I assumed right from the start that when Howard suggested the world had been invaded by "Martians", he was referring to the events in Cloverfield. So when the monsters eventually appeared, I was not surprised. I'm only surprised that other reviewers found the ending genuinely unexpected -- I can only imagine that they never saw Cloverfield, or had forgotten its plot.

In short, this is a potentially excellent movie, slightly let down by the plot give-away inherent in its title and authorship.

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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

5/10

Magnificent cinematography and engagingly wacky acting doesn't excuse total lack of coherence

10 January 2017

The cinematography and visual effects go some way to rescuing this film from being a complete turkey. Eva Green and Samuel L Jackson do a fine job of portraying eccentric characters that couldn't possibly exist in the real world, and contrast nicely with the bland, everyday-ness of Asa Butterfield and Chris O'Dowd (who deserved better, frankly).

My grip with Miss Peregrine is the same as it is with most fantastical movies made for a mainstream audience -- the film-makers have assumed that because it is fantastical, there is no need for it to make any kind of sense at all. There's nothing wrong with having an invisible boy or a girl with teeth in the back of her head as story elements, but effect still has to follow cause, and the basic principles of logic still have to apply. Otherwise you might just as well end the story with "and then he woke up." People still have to act like people, unless there is a good reason why they don't.

Any story involving time travel needs to be handled very carefully, because the paradoxes involved easily lead to a stupid, meaningless plot. It needs to be explained how a teen-aged boy can be romantically involved with a woman of ninety who just happens, by some quirk of time travel, to look like a kid. I'm prepared to suspend disbelief to the extent of women who can turn into birds, but I'm not prepared to believe -- even for the purposes of storytelling -- that a person can live ninety years in a repeated day during the Blitz and still have the mannerisms and emotional reactions of an adolescent. Not without some explanation, anyway.

Unfortunately, the movie is full of jarring oddities like this. Film-makers really ought to credit their audiences with at least enough intelligence to know when a plot makes no sense whatsoever.

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Ben-Hur (2016)

4/10

Only even rates 4/10 if you haven't seen the 1959 version

5 January 2017

It's difficult to compete with the 1959 Ben Hur, since it's one of the best movies ever made. So I'm trying pretend that I haven't seen that version at least half a dozen times, and consider this 2016 version on its own merits.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really have many. The chariot race is nicely done -- although there are a couple of CGI glitches, the close-up action is very engaging. It's one of the rare places where this version really does improve on the '59 movie. The cinematography is generally pretty good, although there are a few scenes that were not well lit (although that might have been intentional).

It's really the acting that lets this movie down. Many of the characters almost seemed to be reading their lines from a card. And the lines themselves were pretty weak in places. Even Morgan Freeman couldn't do all that much with his offering. None of the actors -- with the possible exception of Mr Freeman -- really seemed to have the presence or charisma to pull off their roles. Of course, Jesus has big sandals to fill, and few actors have really done him justice; but all the parts seemed a bit, well, thin.

This is a long movie, but it's still not really long enough to do justice to the story. There were a couple of places where the action was so condensed that I doubt I would have been able to follow the plot had I not been familiar with it already. The treatment of Judah's mother and sister was particularly sketchy, to the extent that this part of the story could have been omitted altogether with no great loss.

All in all, had I really been able to ignore the 1959 version, I probably would have been able to consider watching this one two hours well spent. As it is, however, it's simply impossible to avoid unfavourable comparison with the superior movie.

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Pontypool (2008)

6/10

Something a bit different for a change

27 March 2016

Without giving too much away, this movie depends on a plot premise that requires an extremely high level of willing suspension of disbelief. Other reviewers have commented on the scientific absurdity of this key element of the drama, and they're quite right. But it's no more absurd that time travel, zombies or, quite frankly, homeopathy. Get over it.

Pontypool could have been made as a stage play or, as other have suggested, a radio play. They say that as if it's a bad thing; but the fact that a convincing drama can be presented without big-budget Hollywood visuals does not lessen its appeal -- quite the contrary. For a single-set, four-actors presentation to work, it needs strong dialogue and acting, dramatic tension, and an interesting (if infeasible) plot. For the most part, Pontypool has these things.

Part of the movie's appeal for me lies entirely in the unconventional presentation. It is a zombie movie, or at least a zombie-type movie -- a genre that is badly overcrowded with unremarkable gore-fests. Pontypool, however, is not like anything I've seen before in this genre -- It doesn't rely for its effectiveness on visual shocks or violence.

As other reviewers have mentioned, I think that Pontypool does start to unravel a bit in the last half hour. I suspect, in fact, that most of this segment could simply have been cut entirely, with no great loss.

Still, an interesting and unusual movie -- something we haven't all seen a dozen times already.

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Antichrist (2009)

2/10

Eewww

27 March 2016

I've never found it so hard to watch a whole movie all the way through. I'm sure that's not an accident -- I have no doubt that von Trier planned every moment of violence, mutilation, and sado-masochistic sexuality very carefully. The acting is wholly convincing and the cinematography exquisite.

I get all the symbolism and yadda yadda yadda, but if I want to have a crappy time I can spend a couple of hours shopping in Tesco. The message of the movie seems to be that life is crap, the world is crap, and there is no hope, no significance, and no redemption. Now where have we seen that before? I remember -- everywhere! I wonder if von Trier believes he's the first person on Earth to have this kind of existential crisis? That's the real tragedy of the movie -- it plumbs new depths of cinematic shock tactics to say something that, frankly, is not at all shocking. It's old.

Without the sexual violence, Antrichrist would be wholly unremarkable -- just another self-absorbed pseudo-intellectual airing mental health problems that should be kept between himself and his therapist. The sexual elements don't make a boring movie interesting and engaging -- they just make it boring and repulsive.

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The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)

7/10

Charming, amusing, but not really flattering to the source material

26 March 2016

Judging by the low reviews that most movies based on Lovecraft's writing achieve -- on this site and elsewhere -- it must be very difficult to make a movie that works. On the whole, I don't think that Lovecraft's stories lend themselves well to visual presentation -- they rely for their effect on their (often rather overblown) descriptions of characters' mental states and experiences. Such things are notoriously difficult to translate into film.

Whisperer in the Darkness does not really try to replicate the emotional tenseness and claustrophobia of the stories. It isn't particularly scary, or even disturbing. It is, however, amusing and engaging, and tells a Lovecraft story with reasonable fidelity. Mostly, I think, it works because it's presentation -- 1930s writing and acting, but made with modern cinematography -- is so unusual.

The movie is made by the same folks who gave us the "Scary Solstice" album, containing such Christmas favourites as "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Mi-Go." So we know that the movie isn't going to be too self-important or pompous. I get the impression that it was made by people who love Lovecraft's work, but aren't in awe of it.

I suspect that Lovecraft would have hated this movie -- he seems to have been a relentlessly gloomy, self-interested man, with no sense of humour whatsoever. The idea that anybody would make a light-hearted, gently mocking adaptation of his stories would have appalled him. Still, his loss is our gain, I think.

To appreciate this movie I suspect that the viewer needs to be a fan of Lovecraft's work, but not an acolyte, if you see what I mean. An interest in early 20th-century science-fiction/horror cinema certainly helps as well.

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Banshee Chapter (2013)

4/10

Nicely filmed but, in all other respects, rather boring

26 March 2016

A movie about government-sanctioned experiments with psychotropic drugs, and the effects they had on the victims, could be interesting. If the actual events were fictionalized into something with supernatural elements, that also could work, as could a movie that exploited a presumed otherworldly origin for short-wave "numbers stations." As other reviewers have noted, however, Banshee's film-makers seem to have taken a jumble of such plot elements that might have worked on their own, and thrown them together in a way that just comes across as messy. Although the acting is competent, the characters lack any sense of motivation, and they do not appear to be changed in any way by the bizarre events that involve them. By the end of the movie everything is as it was at the start, so we might as well not have bothered with any of it.

Not the worst movie I've seen, by any means, but not particularly engaging. After the first thirty minutes I wanted it to stop.

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Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015)

2/10

What's it supposed to be?

26 March 2016

The opening scene gave the impression that this was going to be a satire like 'Shaun of the Dead' or an outright comedy like 'Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.' The 2/10 I rate the movie is for this opening scene. After that, it's downhill all the way.

Zombie comedies work because the idea of a zombie apocalypse is so utterly absurd. Non-comedy zombie offerings like 'The Walking Dead' work because the drama and human tragedy is sufficient for us to suspend disbelief in the outrageous premise. To make a zombie movie, or book, or TV show work, film-makers have to slap us in the face with comedy, or punch us in the kidneys with drama; there can be no half-measures.

Unfortunately, Watchtower is a half-measure and, beyond that first scene, has nothing to recommend it, unless you're a serious glutton for zombie schlock.

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Cthulhu (2007)

6/10

Lovecraft for the (relatively) modern day

25 March 2016

Some reviewers have complained that the plot of this movie bears little resemblance to Lovecraft's original story, and perhaps they're right. In a sense, the film-makers might have done better to call it something different -- then maybe the same folks would be congratulating themselves on spotting all the Lovecraft references, rather than moaning that there weren't enough of them. In terms of plot, it merely hints at Lovecraft; it isn't -- and I venture to suggest -- isn't intended to be an adaptation.

In terms of atmosphere, however, it's spot-on. The characters are weird, conflicted, and highly-strung, just as Lovecraft's typically are. There's not a lot of comic relief, and you can tell from the start things are going to end strangely, and unhappily. The film's presentation of a decayed, decadent sea-port is a good match for Lovecraft's, despite being set in a different era.

Making the main character gay was an inspired idea. The only human intimacy in the whole movie is between men, and that's still sufficiently unusual in mainstream cinema to be slightly shocking -- as, I imagine, Lovecraft's thinly-veiled references to sexuality would have been shocking to his own readers.

I would have rated this film more highly if it had been technically more competent. I appreciate that it's a low-budget offering, but in some places the dialogue cannot be heard over the background music, and some scenes are so badly-lit that it was hard to figure out what was happening.

If you expect Cthulhu to be a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft, you'll be disappointed. Viewing it as a weird, intense, story of unhappy people in a run-down town, loosely inspired by Lovecraft's prose and characters, is a whole lot more rewarding.

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Absentia (I) (2011)

7/10

An original and genuinely unsettling movie

25 March 2016

It's unusual to see a horror/supernatural movie that isn't packed full of clichés, but Absentia makes a good attempt to be something a little different. The plot is simple enough: a woman has her husband declared legally dead after an unexplained absence of seven years, but then he mysteriously reappears, apparently with little memory of events. Unfortunately, he seems to have brought something nasty back with him.

What makes the movie different, is that the 'nasty' -- whatever it is -- is seldom apparent. We get just the occasional glimpse. It seems to be associated with a spooky tunnel, but in ways that never become clear. In fact, at the risk of being a spoiler, I think I've just summarized the entire movie.

This isn't an action movie, and it has few outright scary moments. Very little happens that is out of the ordinary -- most of the story focuses on the odd, rather strained relationships between the central characters, all of whom have things to hide and may -- or may not -- know more about events than they let on.

From start to finish there is an atmosphere of brooding menace, which becomes increasingly intense as the story unfolds. Everybody is scared of something, although it is never made particularly explicit whether the nasty thing actually exists in objective terms, or is just a figment of one or other characters' overwrought imagination.

Unlike many modern horror movies, this one does actually have a proper ending; that is, events come to a clear conclusion. It's not a conclusion that makes a whole heap of sense, in narrative terms, but at least I didn't get the impression that the film-makers just carried on until they had enough stuff for a movie, and then went home.

All in all, one of the best horror/supernatural movies I've seen for a long time.

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The Lazarus Effect (2015)

4/10

Good, until she comes back from the dead

24 March 2016

Given the title, I guess it's not much of a spoiler to give away that one of the characters comes back from the dead. This takes place about half-way through the movie and, until that point, it's quite good. Until then it's about a bunch of young, feckless medical researchers (with whom I identify, as I was one myself back in the day) trying to carry out ground-breaking and unorthodox experiments in the face of opposition from their institution and exploitation from their sponsors. Sounds vaguely familiar, in fact.

The experiments involve reanimation, and there are some mildly interesting philosophical discussions about life and death and all the rest of it, although they aren't developed as thoroughly as they might have been. The dialogue is believable (although the science is a bit jumbled) and the acting convincing.

Then one of the characters comes back to life, and the whole thing goes to pieces. How that character behaves thereafter has no connection to the earlier scenes. Although there is plenty of creepy material, and a few genuinely scary moments, it all seems pretty formulaic after this point.

In short -- watch the first half, and then the last five minutes. The rest of the movie has little you haven't seen before.

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The Gallows (2015)

5/10

It's really not as bad as people are saying

24 March 2016

OK, so it's not going to win any Oscars. But is it so awful, as some reviewers have suggested (in jest, I hope), that suicide would be preferable? It's surely not the worst movie ever made, as somebody commented.

It's an unpretentious, slightly silly, high-school horror movie. The acting is way better than the plot deserves -- in fact, I think every one of the cast puts in a credible performance. The dialogue is amusing, and convincing. The story isn't Tolstoy, but it's not as vacuous as most movies like this. There is (unless I blinked) no nudity or overt sexuality, which film-makers are often compelled to sprinkle around, to brighten up an otherwise hopeless film. What drama it has, it has through decent acting and production values.

For the most part I don't really like 'Handycam' movies -- where the film-makers try to simulate amateur recording -- but I think it was tolerably well done here.

One criticism I would make is that there isn't enough plot to carry the movie through its full length -- it does get a bit samey after the first hour.

On the whole, I prefer honest movies that offer what they claim to offer -- even when that isn't much -- to those that pretend to be more than they are, and fall short. I had pretty low expectations of this movie, and it exceeded them. I've certainly spent my time less well than in watching this.

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Do You Believe? (2015)

4/10

As good an argument in favour of atheism as I ever saw

24 March 2016

You don't have to be a Christian or, indeed, a believer of any kind to enjoy movies (or books, or plays) that have Christian themes, or that clearly promote a message. Such themes are very subtly played out in Gabriel Axel's 'Babette's Feast,' less subtly in the Narnia stories and Lord of the Rings, and rather blatantly in, for example, Ben Hur, to give only a few examples. All these have in common that they tell engaging stories in either dramatic settings, or with vivid, engaging characters, or both.

'Do you believe?' has insipid, cardboard-cutout characters and no genuine drama whatever. I can't trash it completely, because it's decently acted with competent cinematography -- a slick package, in fact. So slick, in fact, as to be suspicious. This is a movie that is clearly designed to push a product, and any artistic or dramatic interest it might raise is clearly a device, directed toward that end.

Although the movie is frequently described as "Christian," in reality it promotes a particular kind of US, affluent, protestant Christianity. One of the characters is a tame pastor whose role is merely to expound the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and keep everybody on message. I suspect that if you were, say, a Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, that message would grate on you almost as much as it would on an atheist.

It wouldn't be so bad if the message were not delivered in such a plodding, heavy-handed manner. All the Christian Characters are shown as self-sacrificing, noble, and charitable; everybody else as in some way defective. The non-Christians exist solely to act as foils to the Christians, and highlight their Godly virtues.

I know from personal experience that most Christians are as prone to be conflicted and self-interested as anybody else, even if they aspire to higher ideals. But there's little sense of that aspiration in the movie -- even the putative "bad guys" are just good guys who have fallen in bad company, and just need a little nudge from the Big G to become fully-fledged saints. There's no sense that anybody struggles with his or her faith, or is put into real danger by it. The biggest risk that any character in the movie faces for standing up for his principles is to lose his job. Big deal -- it's not example martyrdom, is it? If you are already a Christian -- in particular, a protestant evangelical Christian -- then I guess this movie might give you a warm fuzzy. Anybody else, anybody who can look beyond the slick facade and see the not-very-subtle manipulation, will wish we hadn't stopped throwing Christians to the lions.

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Ted 2 (2015)

5/10

Same sh*t, different day

1 February 2016

I can't deny it -- I find something inherently funny about a cursing, pot-smoking teddy bear. It's a format where you don't have to do much to get laughs, if the viewer is likely to respond to that kind of thing. If the viewer doesn't see the humour, there really isn't a huge amount that can be done -- these movies do rely on finding an audience with a particular kind of sense of humour.

The problem with Ted 2 is that it doesn't really distinguish itself from the original Ted. So, while the jokes still work, if they ever worked, they lack novelty. The film-makes seem to have realized this, and responded by amping up the crudeness and the overall yuck-factor. Fair enough, I guess, but Ted is already as crude and yucky as he needs to be -- enough is a feast, as we say around my way, There's a ghost of a hint of a plot, based around the question whether a talking bear can be considered a "person" for the purposes of law. What defines person-hood is an interesting question, and one that lies at the heart of a number of number of contemporary ethical problems. However, this aspect of the movie is treated with such a junior-high (lack of) depth and insight that it's almost offensive. It would perhaps have been better if the film-makers had just cut this stuff and squeezed in some extra knob gags and farting.

So, yeah, if you laughed at Ted, most likely you'll laugh at this. But probably not as much.

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Pay the Ghost (2015)

2/10

First half is watchable

1 February 2016

I found this movie quite credible for the first forty minutes or so. A child goes missing in odd circumstances at hallowe'en; his parents split up (all too common when there are tragedies involving kids), and dad's desperate, fruitless attempts to find his son lead him to near collapse. Had the unfortunate child turned up (say) drowned in a ditch, and movie ended there, it wouldn't have been bad.

It was when the supernatural elements started ramping up that it all went wrong. Why is it that film-makers think that, just because the supernatural is involved, they can put in any old rubbish instead of a plot? Even in a supernatural story, people still have to behave credibly like people. There still has to be narrative continuity.

Why is it that film-makers think that, just because viewers are willing -- at least for a short time -- to accept that there are evil ghostly presences at work in the world, they will also be willing to accept that 2+2=5? The plot doesn't fail for lack of realism -- well, not entirely -- but for lack of logical, narrative consistency.

Watch the first half, then make up your own ending. It can't fail to be better than the one we're given.

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Jurassic World (2015)

4/10

Stop the press: dinosaurs are still scary

1 February 2016

It's a 1960s B-movie with 2015 special effects. The basic plot premise is that a giant, genetically-engineered dinosaur goes postal and starts eating everybody. A small band of plucky folks have to save the day. Well, whoopie-doo.

What salvages the film is that the dinosaurs are amazingly well-executed, and very frightening. There's a real sense of dread, even though we know that in a movie of this type the heroes ... well that would be a spoiler, I guess, although I'm sure everybody knew how the movie would end after the first ten minutes.

All in all, a thoroughly one-dimensional movie -- long on dramatic effects, short on everything else. But enjoyable enough, so long as you're not expecting great art.

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The Veil (I) (2016)

4/10

Difficult to suspend disbelief enough to enjoy this

1 February 2016

Warning: Spoilers

The good ol' willing-suspension-of-disbelief is a necessary element of any fantastical story; but while we're willing temporarily to accept the reality of ghosties and ghoulies and all the other things that make up a traditional horror flick, it's harder to accept a stupid, illogical plot.

On the mundane plane, so to speak, we have all sorts of medical problems. pancuronium bromide is indeed a neuromuscular blocking agent and, as a poison, does act as described. But it can't be administered orally -- it has to enter the bloodstream. In the group poisoning episode that turns out to be a bungled attempt to inducing a near-death experience, who the heck was supposed to be administering the antidote to the dozens of participants? A single woman? How was that supposed to work before they all asphyxiated? In a major incident involving the FBI, why was a dead body left to rot in the house, along with a bunch of tapes that were, presumably, evidence? And how did the character of the suicide survivor recognize the corpse as that of her mother? If she had secretly lured the film-makers to the site to allow the ghosts of the victims to take their dreadful revenge, why is this woman portrayed as being scared or alarmed by anything that goes on? At a more ethereal level, so to speak, why did the suicide/poisoning victims want to take over the bodies of other people? There was nothing about their portrayal in life to suggest that they had such designs. And how would killing the film-makers help them to achieve this objective, anyway? Who would want to be reincarnated as a person with his head bashed in? The film is nicely made, and the portrayal of a charismatic cult leader by Thomas Jane is reasonably compelling; but in the end there's just too much wrong with the plot for this film to be enjoyable by a person who actually thinks about whether a story makes sense.

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Cooties (2014)

5/10

Lord of the Flies, with zombies

1 February 2016

In many respects this is a dreadful movie -- the biggest problem is almost inevitable: there's already a huge glut of mock-zombie schlock available, so it's difficult to do anything original. The plot is totally predictable, as are the usual bucketfulls of guts and gore.

And yet...

There's just a hint of something more here. First, there are some unexpectedly good acting performances, notably from Elijah 'Frodo' Wood. Second, some of the gags are just plain funny, and in a moderately intelligent, rather than slapstick, way.

But third -- I've always had the slight impression that school-kids wouldn't need much persuasion to turn on their teachers and rend them limb from limb.

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Inland Empire (2006)

3/10

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

1 February 2016

The 3 out 10 I rated this film is for the performance of Laura Dern; when she was given a chance to play a recognizable human character doing credibly human things, she was excellent. If there is any sense to be dragged out of this movie, it's because she put it there. In most other respects, it failed to impress.

It gives me no pleasure to say this, because I very much like most of Lynch's other work. I have a feeling that IE is the movie that Lynch always wanted to make, but was at least to some extent constrained to follow the conventions of mainstream film-making by the studios. In IE, however, the brakes are off. It's as if the studio bosses said: "Go on David, do whatever you like." And, oh boy, he did. What we've ended up with seems to be a jumble of all the least comprehensible bits of his other movies, all stuck together in no particular order.

Even though we haven't always been able to follow the plot of Lynch's films -- if they even have one -- we could generally rely on exquisite visual artistry. IE, however, lacks even that. I'm told that it was filmed on a mid-priced camcorder; I don't know if that's true, but it surely has the worst technical cinematography of any serious movie ever made by grown-ups. I assume that this is intentional -- it takes work to make something this unappealing. I mean, a bunch of school-kids with a Handycam will sometimes succeed in creating a scene that is properly lit and in focus, even if by accident.

And the characteristic, understated humour of Lynch's other films also seems to be missing here -- it's relentlessly grim and gloomy from start to finish.

If this movie had been made by anybody other than Lynch, I would have given up after fifteen minutes, and just assumed it was a heap of self-indulgent, pseudo-intellectual nonsense. But because I know that Lynch can make a great film, I toughed it out. I'm not at all sure it was worth it.

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Pan (2015)

6/10

Another movie that should only be seen in a decent cinema

27 January 2016

Like the recent "The Force Awakens," this is a movie that should really only be seen in 3D on a 100-foot screen and all-around loudspeakers. Why? Because where it excels is in its visual and audio presentation, which is simply superlative. As a viewer, you need to be captivated by this aspect of the cinematography because, in all other respects, it's a so-so film.

To be fair, it's decently acted, although perhaps not outstandingly so. None of the acting performances stank, but the actors weren't given a lot to work with so far as character depth was concerned. Some of the parts were played for laughs which, of course, is fair enough in a film of this genre. The part of Hook was ambiguous -- we all know that Hook turns out to be a villain, so it isn't clear why he's a good guy (and a rather insipid one) here. Still, perhaps the film-makers are already planning a sequel that will do for Hook with "Revenge of the Sith" did for Darth Vader?

In the end, what lets Pan down is the storytelling. If this were a children's book, rather than a blockbuster movie, by about page ten you'd be wondering what the heck was going on. So much of the plot makes no sense. Why is it such a big deal that Peter can fly? What does it prove if he can? The fantasy world is full of ships that fly about with no visible means of support, so clearly magical flight is unremarkable. Why do the characters keep bursting into song? It's not a musical, right? The characters in the original book have a certain amount of depth, and as a reader you can't help wondering what their back-stories are (which, of course, is a hallmark of great character writing). Pan ought to answer that question, but it doesn't -- we don't really learn anything about why Peter, Tiger Lily, Smee, et al., are who they are.

You can have the original Peter Pan performed on a packing-crate stage by high school kids, and it can still be magical. But if you take all the high-tech whizzbangery away from Pan, I wonder what is left? Not a great deal, I suspect.

For all that, worth watching in the right environment.

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