The Color Out of Space - the movie

I suppose I should say something about the blu-ray copy of The Colour Out of Space starring Nicolas Cage that I said I had ordered a few days ago.
As an adaptation of a Lovecraft story it wasn't the worst I have ever seen (The Dunwich Horror from 1970 starring Sandra Dee and Dean Stockwell still holds that dubious trophy). But apart from its opening sequences where the narrator actually quotes some lines from Lovecraft, describing the country west of Arkham, etc., there is very little that could be described as Lovecraftian in the film, and whoever wrote the screenplay missed umpteen opportunities to use scenes from the story to great effect, instead, as usual, going their own way with their own narrative.
The farm in the film struck me immediately as wrong, It wasn't so much a farm as a mansion. And why the lamas? Instead of a long established farmstead with local people, we had out of towners who were trying to get away from the rat race, a cliche that's getting staler by the film. Okay, so the farm once belonged to the main character's father, but none of the rest of his family were anything but townies who hated being where they now were from the very beginning, even before the meterorite crashed onto their land and things start to go strange. Unfortunately, even when this happens, I was given the impression that whoever wrote the screenplay didn't really know what to do with the story, interposing some rather naff horror scenes, like someone "accidentally" chopping off some of their fingers while preparing a meal! And then spending only one night in hospital where, we are told, surgery went well!
Not much tension, not much character empathy either, with the usual "rebellious" teenage daughter. A missed opportunity, so much so that, unlike the earlier version starring Boris Karloff (Die, Monster, Die!) I doubt I will feel inclined to watch it again. 

Midway

Watched Midway last night on amazon prime and was very impressed. Well acted and scripted, full of action and drama about a battle that saw the turning of the tide in the war in the Pacific. The special effects used for the action scenes and the recreation of the planes, aircraft carriers, etc in this epic battle were excellent.
It was a battle I had heard about but about which I knew very little. I didn't realise just how easily things could have gone quite differently so that Japan would have been left in a position to cripple the United States for years to come. Nor did I realise how much depended on accurate intelligence to determine just where the Japanese would strike.
It was interesting to see some of the storylines of some of the key people in the drama at the end, though what striuck me most was how many Chinese were killed by the Japanese because they were suspected of having helped the 80 American airmen who bombed Tokyo to escape back to the States. This was an incredible 250,000!
Defintely recommended for anyone who likes war films, history and action movies in general.

Red Lights - review

Watched Red Lights, starring Sigourney Weaver and Robert De Niro on Friday night.
The film has a great cast, besides the ones mentioned above, but is such a waste of all the talent in it, perhaps because the writer/director hadn't a clue about the word subtlety. De Niro's performance was pretty bad too, I must admit, with too much OTT acting, though it would be hard to match Cillian Murphy who shouts too much at everyone, and there is one particular scene where his character attacks, humiliates and bullies his department boss, Toby Jones (who is quite a bit smaller than him) in front of witnesses - and without repercussions. It came over as a nasty piece of arrogant bullying, unjustified by anything that had happened. My credibility in the film, already fairly well stretched, passed breaking point after this. In no real world would something like that either be justified or tolerated, either by the man subjected to it or by any of the witnesses. Just one example of a stupid script that wasted what could have been an interesting concenpt. 
Not recommended at all.

Movie - The City of Life and Death

Watched The City of Life and Death on Amazon Prime last night, a brilliant Chinese movie about the Nanking massacre of 1937 by the brutall invading army of the Japanese who slaughtered over 300,000. Filmed in stunning black and white, this 2009 movie depicts events from both sides, including a Japanese soldier who finds himself sickened by the excesses carried out by his comrades and superiors. Well worth watching, especially for its unflinching realism.
The link below is interesting but if you want to avoid spoilers don't read it till after you have seen the film.
The City of Life and Death - Wikipedia

M. Night Shyamalan's The Village

Watched M. Night Shyamalan's The Village last night for the first time. What a long, boring film this was. Well acted, with some first-rate sets, but the story was far too thin to sustain a full-length movie. As an episode of something like The Twilight Zone it would probably have been memorable. Instead it will be memorable to me for 100 minutes of tedium. Shame, because the "creature" outfits were genuinely imaginative and scary.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

One of the best films I have watched recently must be Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, courtesy of having a DVD of it loaned to me by Jim Pitts.
This really is an excellent film, a bizarre slice of life of three people following the rape and murder of Frances McDormand's daughter. Woody Harrelson plays the well-meaning local sheriff who is charged with investigating the crime, though he struggles against a lack of evidence that can be used to track down the killer - and who is also suffering from terminal cancer. The other main character is played by Sam Rockwell, one of Harrelson's deputies, whose character develops during the course of the film in a surprising direction.
This is a fascinating movie, unlike any other I can think of - which is like a breath of fresh air.
Heartily recommended.
And Frances McDormand certainly deserved her Oscar for her role in this - as should the others, especially Sam Rockwell.

How did The Shape of Water win so many Oscars?

It was a long time after most other people that I recently got round to watching The Shape of Water. And while it was beautifully filmed from a photographic angle, I cannot understand how such a dire mess of a story gained so much attention and respect.
Even (spoiler alert for anyone who has still not watched this film) the scars on Elisa (Sally Hawkins) Esposito's neck were an immediate giveaway about what would happen at the end. That they would turn out to be gills was the biggest non-surpise in the film! It was so obvious it was ridiculous - and unexplained. And if she was somehow kin to the "creature" how come she otherwise looks so human? And, apart from the gill slits, so unlike the "creature" in every way, apart from having two sets of limbs, a head with the usual placement of eyes and mouth, etc, like virtually every other creature on the planet?
Michael Shannon, an actor I don't particularly care for anyway, gives a phenominally one-dimensional, almost comic-strip portrayal of the jailer in charge of the "creature", pantomime-style in its grotesquery. I must admit that didn't surprise me. It's in line with virtually every other role I've seen him play.
Indeed, for me, this is one of the film's underlying and most common failings - all the portrayals are one-dimensional, almost pantomime in style - and unconvincing. As is the basic plot - which makes me look back with increasing fondness on the comparatively subtler stories and portrayals in the three "Creature from the Black Lagoon" movies of the 1950s! At least in them you could begin to feel empathy towards the "creature" and its plight, something I felt incapable of doing for this CGI version.
So, again, I am left wondering what it was about this film that gained it so many Oscars - and I'm baffled.

Voice from the Stone - film review

Just watched Emilia Clarke in Voice from the Stone.
At first sight this looked an intriguing supernatural movie set in Tuscany. But what a boring one and a half hours it was! The direction was so wooden and so slow-paced it made its 94 minutes feel twice the length. This might have worked as a TV feature of around 50 minutes or less, though the director gave little scope for any of the characters to spring to life, so perhaps it wouldn't even then.
Definitely not a movie I would ever watch twice!

Hereditary

Just watched Hereditary on amazon prime. Excellent production values, well scripted, very well acted and definitely well cast (it was great to see youngsters in a family without the usual overly pretty Hollywood faces), but that ending really let the whole thing down. The last few minutes and the climax broke the tension entirely and were not far short of laughable. What a damn shame.

Cargo - A brilliant short Australian zombie movie

I have often thought that the best medium for the zombie tale is in the short story form. I am now beginning to wonder whether it is also ideal for the short film format too, as shown in this brief but excellent Australian movie Cargo, which is both poignant and clever in its use of a mere seven minutes and no dialogue. Directed by Ben Howling & Yolanda Ramke, it was a Tropfest Australia 2013 finalist. It's so short that a review is superfluous except to say that it is well worth watching.

Need for Speed - review

Need for Speed - awful, idiotic nonsense

After thoroughly enjoying all five seasons of Breaking Bad, I was looking forward to seeing Aaron Paul in whatever movies he made as a result. Recently I saw and mildly enjoyed A Long Way Down, which was a light comedy about suicide (!). In this, though, starring parts were divided between Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul.

Need for Speed saw Paul starring in his own right.

The pity is that this is a terrible movie. Morally, it's downright awful. The idea that a group of people who may be superb drivers can drive high powered cars, not only at incredibly dangerous speeds on public highways in illegal races, but endanger other road users by driving the wrong way down roads, cross pavements, etc., is so morally reprehensible that I can't imagine how anyone should think producing a film that makes heroes out of people like this is right, especially when the only audience this film is likely to appeal to are impressionable wannabe boy racers. Worse still are the sheer stupidities in it, such as the idea that a car can hurtle through the air at high speed, land and still be in a fit condition to drive or that a car can be refueled while racing at high speed on a public highway. It's not only morally reprehensible but downright stupid, with a plot that is an insult in its cliche-ridden naivety to every intelligent (or semi-intelligent) viewer.

Please, Aaron Paul, think twice before taking on something as bad as this again - or whatever kudos you amassed in making Breaking Bad will be thrown away.

Dredd

Just got round to watching the 2012 Dredd on DVD and really enjoyed it. Much better than the Stallone version years ago. Of course it does have the advantage of having Lena Headey as the main villain, who isn't only my favourite Sarah Connor (from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) but also Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Karl Urban as Dredd does an excellent job and, unlike Stallone, keeps his helmet on throughout the film - and looks suitably ruthless and hard. 

Unlike Stallone's version, too, there is a down at heel grittiness about Mega City which makes the scale of crime much more credible. The Judges are only just managing to keep the lid on things - and their grasp is slipping. And the story is a good one, very much reminiscent of The Raid in an oblique way - with more lethal gunfire than even most of today's action films. Olivia Thirlby as rookie Judge Anderson, who has psychic talents, is excellent too, giving her role a toughness yet possible vulnerability. 

The good news is that it looks likely, despite a lacklustre performance in the States, there will be a Dredd 2. I hope so.

Ender's Game

CGI has been both a blessing and a curse for many SF films in recent years. It's been a blessing because it has enabled them to have special effects that could only have been dreamed about years ago. But it's been a curse because too many film makers have relied on it at the expense of good scripts and intelligent storylines. Thankfully, though obviously CGI figures hugely in this film of interstellar war on a grand scale, the characters and storylines have not suffered as a consequence and this is one of the most intelligent, gripping and well told SF films I have seen for a long time.

Based on the novel by controversial SF author Orson Scott Card, the film is set in the aftermath of an abortive invasion of the Earth by an insect-like race called the Formics, who were only narrowly defeated. All of Earth's resources have been focused on preparing us for another attack, especially in recruiting youngsters whose minds are deemed best able to handle the computer-based military hardware required to fight the Formics. We follow ten-year-old Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) as he advances through all the various stages of recruitment and training to enter the vast military machine that has been created. With a ruthlessness verging on the callous, Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) thrusts Wiggin to the limits of his abilities, seeing in him one of the best hopes we have to defeat the Formics.

But this is no mere Starship Troopers. There are more complications in what is going on than meets the eye, building up to a satisfyingly stunning conclusion. With some top notch acting, especially amongst the younger cast members, and some amazing special effects, this is a thoroughly enjoyable science fiction film which never once undermines the seriousness of the tale it is telling.

Film - Who Can Kill a Child?

The Spanish film, Who Can Kill a Child? (1976), directed by Narciso Ibanez Serrador, starring Prunella Ransome, Miguel Narros, Antonio Iranzo, Lewis Fiander, and  Marisa Porcel, is a strange movie, starting with a series of documentaries about the outrages of war since the 1940s and the massive numbers of children who died in them. It is so grim, based on fact, from the death camps of wartime Germany to the monumental famine in Biafra, that the film which followed would have a massive task to justify the prelude. Suddenly, from the gritty black and white footage we have been regaled with thus far, we are suddenly thrust into an over-bright world of dazzling colour as our two protagonists arrive in Spain during a festival, with the loud blasts of firework displays and crowded streets around the resort's harbour. Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) is heavily pregnant and she and her husband, Tom (Lewis Fiander), are looking forward to leaving the chaotic resort to sail to the island of Almanzora, which Tom remembers fondly as quiet, unspoiled by tourism, where they can rest and relax. Everything seems perfectly normal. They even manage to hire a boat in which Tom can sail them across the stretch of sea to the island from the local postman who regularly takes mail there. The only disturbing occurrence are a couple of bodies washed ashore in the resort - bodies which show signs of having been savagely attacked.

The crossing to the island, though, is easy. On the quayside the only inhabitants in sight is a group of children, one of whom appears to be inexplicably hostile. The small town by the harbour is typical of the region with white plastered walls which reflect the sunlight with blinding brilliance. The town is oddly quiet as Tom and Evelyn make their way through it, looking for their lodgings. On their way they enter a shop. Unable to find anyone there to serve them, though, they leave money behind for a number of provisions they help themselves to from the shelves, then head further into the village. The only people they have still seen are children, including a young girl fascinated by Evelyn's pregnancy. The tension is built up with unnerving stealth. None of the children have so far said one word, even to answer direct questions by Tom, and we know there is something seriously wrong with the island. The absence of any adults is inexplicable, the more so because a rotisserie has been left unattended so long, cooking some chicken, that they have been burned black, and an icecream cart, abandoned in the sun, contains only melted icecream. It is not till some time later that Tom and Evelyn see their first adult, an old man walking down the narrow alley outside their lodgings, who is suddenly attacked by a girl, who tugs his walking stick out of his hands and beats him to death with it before running away, giggling. From now on the true horror of what has befallen the island becomes graphically clear. With scenes chillingly reminiscent of The Village of the Damned (The Midwich Cuckoos), it is not long before Tom and Evelyn are fighting for their lives.

Though an increasingly violent film, it never trivialises what it portrays or indulges in cheap shocks. With keen insights into the horrors it portrays, it is uncomfortable, cheerless and tense, all the more so for the sharp brilliance of the light in which most of it is shot. This is a horror film in which little is seen in shadow. It is out there, shockingly clear, with nothing hidden. The finale, when you think things may finally be cleared up, has one final twist which makes what we know will follow even more horrifying than we have seen so far. 

Martyrs

Martyrs is a French movie starring Morjana Alaoui, Mylène Jampanoï & Catherine Bégin, directed by Pascal Laugier.

I do not like films that rely solely on scenes of torture, what have sometimes, perhaps sensationalistically, been termed torture porn. Films like Hostel and its sequel do nothing for me. And, when I first started to watch this film, I must admit I did have misgivings that this too may come under that category.

It doesn't, though it shares many of the characteristics. There is graphic violence, but for me what sets it apart is the quality of acting, the naturalism of the filming and the startling twists in a well thought out plot, all of which makes sense at the end of the film, which never fails to shock and surprise. Even the extremes of suffering which some of the protagonists are forced to undergo has a thoroughly understandable if bizarre explanation by the climax.

Well worth the effort of putting oneself through the harrowing scenes that fill so much of it. It's a film that never pulls its punches or sells itself out and leaves you thinking about it long after it's finished.

The World's End

I first became aware of Simon Pegg when I watched his two series on British TV, Spaced (1999-2001), which was an amazing saga of a young wannabe comic artist, Tim Bisley (Pegg), his flatmate Jessica, a would-be writer played by Jessica Hynes, Bisley's best friend, gun-mad, part-time soldier, full-time lunatic Mike (Nick Frost) and other eccentric oddballs, an inventive, endlessly funny series which amply displayed Pegg's love for science fiction, etc. His parodaic funeral pyre for his Star Wars collection after the release of The Phantom Menace is unforgettable - and spot on true.

He went on to make one of the best ever zombie comedies with Shaun of the Dead (2004), and Paul (2011) is a witty, enjoyable take on aliens and UFOs which could have been a follow-on to Spaced.

His track record, though, seems to me to have been uneven, with some downright dire films, such as Run, Fatboy, Run (2007) and the very uneven Hot Fuzz the year before, not to mention the very unfunny comedy Burke and Hare (2011).

The World's End is again, for me, a bit uneven, though mostly it succeeds. It's a frenetic tale of old mates being coerced by Pegg's Gary King into going on a mammoth pub crawl which they started but never finished decades ago when they left school. Pegg is on top form, as are the rest of the cast, as they revisit pubs that have altered out of all recognition since the halcyon days of their youth, morphing into characterless modern day wining and dining establishments rather than the earthy pubs of their memories. This, though, isn't the worst they need to worry about, because a mind-chilling disaster has begun to take over their old home town, a place none of them have visited in years. Hence the title, The World's End, which isn't only the name of the last pub on their crawl but maybe the fate that awaits us all...

This is a return to comedy science fiction for Pegg, a high-octane, frantic, ever more chaotic tale that makes even Shaun of the Dead look tame by comparison! If I have any complaints it would be that some of the well-orchestrated fight scenes go on for too long - but that's not uncommon these days. These and chases invariably seem to go on forever in films nowadays.

Still, putting this quibble to one side, the action, humour, and plot twists go on at a relentless rate and there is barely a second within which to get bored. Whether it's the kind of film, like Shaun of the Dead or Paul, which I would gladly watch again some time, I'm not so sure. But it's definitely a film I enjoyed first time round.

Schalken the Painter

As a dual format edition from the BFI this came in both blu ray and DVD. Only having a DVD player, this was obviously the version I watched.

What you get is Schalken the Painter, based on the Le Fanu story, broadcast by the BBC in 1979, two short films: The Pit (Edward Abraham, 1962, 27 mins) and The Pledge (Digby Rumsey, 1981, 21 mins), interviews with the director of Schalken, Leslie Megahey, and director of photography John Hooper on the making of the film (Look Into the Dark), some original production sketches for The Pit (which is based on the Poe story), and a fully illustrated and very informative booklet with essays by Ben Hervey, James Bell and Vic Pratt.

Obviously the main feature is Schalken the Painter, a gorgeously filmed adaptation of the Le Fanu story, narrated by Charles Grey, and starring Jeremy Clyde as Schalken, Maurice Denham as his mentor Dou, Cheryl Kennedy as Rose, Dou's ward, and John Justin as the sinister Vanderhausen. Leisurely paced, yet filled with details, this would have easily fit in the well respected Ghost Stories for Christmas based on the tales of M. R. James, if perhaps more akin to Jonathan Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You, which like this was an Omnibus production.

If because of its source (the arts program Omnibus) there could be suspicions that the full horror of this story might have been diluted or made obscure, the final scenes dispel this completely and I think this was probably the most shocking ghost story I had ever seen on television when I first saw this in 1979. It has lost none of its impact now. Nor have the high production values in making it been exceeded either. This is a meticulously researched film with an impressive air of authenticity. Everything not only looks right, every beautifully designed scene could have come straight from a Dutch painting of the era in which it is based, from the sets, costumes and lighting.

No fan of Le Fanu will be disappointed by this rare adaptation of one of his stories.

The two short films accompanying it are not of the same class, but are interesting in their own right. My favourite of the two has to be The Pledge, a tale of three eighteenth century thieves who argumentatively decide to take down the rotting body of their friend, a highwayman captured, tried and executed and left hanging by the authorities in a gibbet on a lonely, windswept hill. The images of the body as it is glimpsed during the months it spends there, losing its feet to decay, are nightmarish and ugly. But there is a grotesque comic relief to all this when the three friends set out at the dead of night with a ladder to bury him in consecrated ground, even if it means dumping someone else's body elsewhere...

Frankenstein's Army

Sometimes you come across a film that is incredibly realistic but as whacky as hell - and they don't come much more realistic or as whacky as Frankenstein's Army. Filmed on the dreaded hand held camera, this technique works for the most part here because it's in the hands of a cameraman in the Red Army during the closing months of the Second World War. Ostensibly there to make a propaganda movie for Comrade Stalin, there is more to this than meets the eye. The small group, fighting their way forwards against the retreating German Army stumble across a factory whose huge underground cellars house a frightful secret: the redoubt of mad scientist Dr Victor Frankenstein, recruited by the Nazis to create a monstrous army of the dead to fight the Russians. Not only does he reanimate patched up corpses, though. He goes one stage further - and creates an even more nightmarish concept of bodies welded to a bizarre range of bladed weapons, including chainsaws.

The Russian soldiers are brilliantly depicted, with some outstanding performances by the actors, so that they come over as real people, however insane everything else becomes. And the insanity of the place they are trapped in is remarkable, with flickering lights, grotesque machines within grotto-like concrete passages through cellars that lead to rooms filled with body-parts, gruesome surgeries and homicidal mash-ups between men and machines.

I must admit I have never seen anything like this before. Yet, for all its craziness, it works. As does the plot, where there are plots within plots, culminating in a final twist at the end. Even the hand held camera works, lending an even more nightmarish touch at times. Recommended - though not for the faint at heart.

The Casebook of Eddie Brewer

Eddie Brewer (Ian Brooker) is a one man psychic investigator who has a regular spot on the local radio station, spending his days travelling from place to place to check everything from inexplicable bumps from an adjoining empty house to the malevolent activities of what could be a poltergeist.
When the story starts Eddie is  accompanied by a film unit doing a documentary about him.
The unit follows Eddie as he visits a mother whose young daughter, a strange, sometimes sinister little girl, may be responsible for poltergeist activities in their home, aided by an invisible "friend" she calls Mr Grimaldi, an eighteenth century clown. Next Eddie visits a rundown mansion which the local council is renovating, some of whose offices are already there, though there doesn't appear to be more than a handful of people working in the building yet. Old coins seem to appear from nowhere in the building's cellars and Eddie, while inspecting them by himself, glimpses what he only realises later must have been the ghost of a woman. From now on odd things begin to occur more frequently, culminating in a sort of Most Haunted visit by a film crew,  a psychic medium (obviously mimicking the dafter aspects of Derek Acorah), a hostile academic skeptic, and Eddie. With a mixture of normal and handheld cameras reminiscent of The Blair Witch, the film retains a semi-documentary realism, using minimal special effects. As the night progresses members of the cast and crew panic at inexplicable events inside the cellars, with the psychic medium falling into a fit induced by some sort of diabolic possession.
Excellent naturalistic acting and a story that never reveals too much - or offers any comforting explanations - help to build an atmosphere of supernatural dread. Eddie, our nominal hero, is disturbingly and all too obviously vulnerable, with no easy solutions to offer anyone for what is happening, And, indeed, in the aftermath, it is clear he too can become a victim of supernatural enmity as easily as anyone else. The final words in the film, when you think everything is finally over, will chill you, when it becomes obvious that what has happened so far is only the beginning for Eddie.
An excellent film, that is both engrossing and disturbing. What more can you ask than that?

Urban Ghost Story (1998)

Not a new film by any means, but its blend of supernatural horror and gritty working class conditions are just up my street, and often these days just the kind of thing I ham-fistedly try to create in some of my own fiction.

After a terrible car crash which leaves her boyfriend dead, consumed in flames, Lizzie Fisher (Heather Ann Foster) starts to attract supernatural incurrences, with furniture moving of its own accord, inexplicable disgusting smells and noises. She lives with her mother (Stephanie Buttle) in a grim block of flats in Scotland. With her mother threatened by a vicious loan shark and surrounded by people hooked on drugs, she finds little sympathy with her plight until her mother contacts a journalist (Jason Connery) who recently wrote articles in the local paper about poltergeists - which is what, at this point, seems the likeliest thing to have been drawn to Lizzie.

To me this has one of those all but perfect supernatural horror story plots, complete with believable characters and grimly realistic backgrounds. The acting is great, the dialogue convincing, and the area in which it is set a nightmare in itself without the incursion of a hostile supernatural force. The twists in what happens are riveting, as is the final revelation, which pulls no punches.

I saw this film for the first time at the Halifax Ghost Story Festival and was so impressed with it that I immediately ordered it on DVD. Highly recommended.