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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Uninspired and almost totally lacking in fun.
Listen, I liked the Crystal Skull. It was, in my view, a great continuation of the original three films - full of incident, humour, strong characterisation and boasting a tight plot. As such I was sort of hoodwinked into assuming Dial of Destiny would at least measure up to the preceding instalment. I didn't imagine it would lack all of those qualities and a few more besides.
The first problem is the the rather hollow direction and its associated heavy use of CGI. It all looks rather rushed and sterile, lacking the effective location work seen in the previous four films.
Secondly - Phoebe Waller Bridge. I'm not entirely sure who thought she'd be a good fit for the film but she just isn't. The problem is that she never comes across as anything but her character from Fleabag, minus the swearing. This means that she stands out like a sore thumb throughout, unhappily transposed from the present into an ill-fitting past. This one poor casting decision really weighs down the film.
Thirdly - the script. It's all over the place, pinging from set piece to set piece without much in the way of clarity or any sort of dramatic flow. Characters appear and disappear without ever having a chance to really register. There are also no funny moments so the film is largely charmless too.
The film finds its spark only occasionally before losing sight of it again, time after time. The final scene between Karen Allen and Harrison Ford is beautiful but its very presence just serves to highlight how anaemic the rest of the film has been.
A real shame.
Come Play (2020)
Intelligent spookiness
There are lot of horror films out there, many of which work and many of which do not. This film hits all the right notes - the cast are good, the script is good and the direction supports both.
Part creature-feature, part tale of isolation and loneliness, Come Play offers a pleasing mix of tension and deft storytelling. Playing out the drama through its child protagonists lends the film a kinship with several well-known 80s movies - ET and Poltergeist among them - as well as a few nods to 1999's The Sixth Sense. Of course, such an approach means that good child actors are essential - luckily Azhy Robertson and Winslow Fegley give wonderful performances as frenemies Oliver and Byron, well supported by John Gallagher Jr and Gillian Jacobs as Oliver's parents.
Offering some effective shivers and far more besides, Come Play is a satisfying exercise in family horror.
Deadline (2022)
Budapest is quite pretty isn't it?
Well the Budapest footage is quite nice. Though sadly not nice enough to compensate for the rest of this laughable farrago. And laugh I did, on more than one occasion. Probably not a great reaction when tension is meant to be the prevailing mood.
What's slightly frustrating is that Deadline is not without potential. However that potential is squandered on a script that really needs a few more drafts and a good script editor. As it is, what's been sent into production comes across as a rush job that papers over its flaws, perhaps in the hope that the viewers won't look too closely if the thing moves fast enough. The problem is that the absurdities we're expected to gloss over are just too glaring to ignore, an issue which accelerates as each episode progresses. By the final part you'll be hurling the remote at the screen in protest.
James D'Arcy almost saves the show by dint of his considerable acting chops, but his efforts are just not enough when the premise of the script is working against the cast from the outset.
Deadline wants to be a twisty-turny slow-burner with a killer finale - instead it's a poorly constructed house of cards that collapses in a welter of bathos.
The Rig (2023)
Really quite badly done. 3/10
Oh well. In spite of a great premise - creeping horror on an oil rig - this actually turns out to be pretty poor stuff.
For all the histrionics there's just no real drama, only many contrived scenes where the characters are at each other's throats or behave like pantomime villains for no good reason. Perhaps the writers of this tosh assume shouting equals drama, regardless of whether such confrontation is whipped up out of nowhere with no believable point of origin. And I say "characters" - there are no actual characters here, just ciphers for the dreadful plotting. Only Iain Glen manages to make something of his role, with even seasoned pros like Mark Bonnar struggling to play such thin and badly manufactured scripting.
In talented hands The Rig could have been excellent, sadly what's been produced here is an absolute waste of good actors and of the audience's time.
See How They Run (2022)
Forgettable
The film begins well enough but rapidly becomes quite boring. In spite of Saiorse Ronan's charm and the considerable talents of Adrien Brody, Sian Clifford, Ruth Wilson. Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson and Tim Key, the production suffers because it clearly just doesn't know what it wants to be. It doesn't work as a whodunnit, a comedy or a drama. All one is left with are some quite nice shots and visual composition. The use of Agatha Christie and The Mousetrap feels rather pointless as it fails to add anything that any fictional generic murder mystery couldn't add. Dull, frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying, See How They Run really doesn't have a good enough reason to exist.
The Northman (2022)
A misguided venture from the most surprising of quarters
It's disturbing that some reviewers laud this film on the basis of its perceived realism, or hold it forth as a serious and exultant illustration of heritage. Yes, there is a certain amount of verisimilitude in the depiction of a past best left dead and buried, but make no mistake, this is fantasy, and a warped fantasy at that, in spite of the fact that it's masquerading as history.
Quite what the aspiration of the filmmaker was - I'm really not sure. Whatever those aspirations were, all that The Northman ultimately amounts to is a misguided holding aloft of outdated and dangerous social mores as if they were something noble and honourable. In 2022 that's especially inappropriate - to validate, even unintentionally, so much that is base and reductive is in poor taste given what's going on in the world right now.
Really, if this Wagneresque wankfest had been produced by Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda then I mightn't have been surprised at its reaching for such worrying ideals. The fact that it comes from the man responsible for The Lighthouse and The VVitch - I'm genuinely astonished.
A hollow, inhuman experience.
Swinging Safari (2018)
Flammable Children
Boasting a wonderful cast, amazing photography and production design, and a gorgeous script, Swinging Safari is a vibrant, impressionist collage of a 1970s Australian childhood (and indeed of the UK - I know, I was there).
It looks amazing - the cinematography and editing is first rate, whizzing from one image to the next and bursting with mid Seventies flavour.
The cast are wonderful - all the performances are a joy, but plaudits to Kylie Minogue who is a revelation as the silent, seething and booze-soaked Kaye.
There are a good few laughs to be had here along with the pleasurable wallow in a decade lost to memory.
Glorious.
Archive 81 (2022)
Wonderful piece of work
God this series is good.
It's dramatic without being showy, layered without being impenetrable and engaging without ever having to resort to the sort of cliched grandstanding employed by many a lesser creative team. There's a refreshing lack of lazy characterisation and not a single hamfisted attempt at portraying depth through one-note soap opera tactics. Archive81 works because it has an excellent script, careful direction and some lovely performances, with Mamoudou Athie's steadfast Dan the anchor that holds it all in place.
A triumph.
The Mezzotint (2021)
All over the place
The cast all do well here, especially the ever-reliable Rory Kinnear and John Hopkins. However, the adapter/director fails to deal with the material in a sympathetic way, occasionally getting it right but mostly getting it wrong.
M. R James' ghost stories are an exercise in the careful building of mood. All of the 70s televison adaptations (and all of the 21st century productions until 2013) were clearly produced with an awareness of this, going easy on pace, use of sound and a general avoidance of heavy-handedness. The eerie and uncanny, when it finally arrives, is powerful and affecting because it has been preceded by a very measured, sparse development. This adaptation of The Mezzotint almost totally dispenses with such delicacy of approach. It goes instead for a brisk, superficial choppy style - too many short scenes, most of which are packed with exposition, when what's wanted is a steady laying-on of dread. The shortness of the scenes means there's no time for a slow-build of atmosphere so all the heavy lifting has to be taken up by Kinnear, compensating for the impatient script and direction through performance alone. It's a measure of his skill that he pulls this off.
The tone is all over the place. Both Frances Barber and Robert Bathurst are excellent performers, but here are directed as if they're in The League of Gentlemen, forced into "doing a turn" when someone should be telling them to dial things right down. It's really not their fault but what little mood there is evaporates when they're on screen because of this basic error in tenor.
It really is time to let somebody else have a go at A Ghost Story for Christmas.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (2021)
The foolishness of the masses
On the one hand, this documentary is a standard walk-through of a police investigation into a young woman's disappearance. On the other, it is an illuminating demonstration of how self-appointed "web sleuths" will almost always come to entirely spurious conclusions and then work backwards, justifying their often absurd theories with the thinnest of evidence. The investigative stuff is indeed interesting, but it is the latter angle which is the most successful element of the series, in my view.
Several "web sleuths" and YouTubers are included in this documentary, with quotes shown from others not on camera. It is safe to say that restraint and effective critical thinking do not feature heavily, if at all, in these people's often crazed theories. So caught up are they in their (entirely without mandate) status as amateur detectives, that they're content to espouse their unsupported conclusions without ever pausing for thought. Indeed, one death metal artist has his life destroyed by these unsophisticated and reckless idiots - almost literally, as he attempts suicide as a result of the continual harrassment meted out to him online. These sanctimonious "sleuths" slide into criminal behaviour themselves and seem unable to perceive this (no apologies have yet been made to Pablo Vergara) - clearly not people who are equipped for dispassionate investigation. If I were in Vergara's shoes I would be considering legal action against these self-appointed witch-hunters.
Fascinating piece of work, and at four episodes it's not too onerous in terms of viewing time.
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Fresh Meat
Jim Cummings follows up his excellent debut Thunder Road with The Wolf of Snow Hollow.
Here, as in Thunder Road, Cummings plays a police officer trying to cope with both his job and his familial duties, and in both he excels at portraying a man whose nerves are never very far from the surface, often boiling over to either dramatic or comedic effect (often in the same scene). Cummings' performance is astonishing, moving with ease from high emotion to slapstick to a glacial stillness, carrying the viewer along for the ride. He's ably supported by an excellent cast, all of whom impress throughout, though special mention must go to Riki Lindhome and the late Robert Forster for some brilliantly detailed work.
Comparison has been made with Fargo, and although I can't deny the two films do share a similar sensibility and setting, I find The Wolf of Snow Hollow to be the stronger film. Though Fargo has many admirers, for me it often feels like caricature. Cummings' seems able to create characters who feel as if they have a life beyond the edge of the frame, and don't merely exist to populate a thumbnail sketch of small-town oddity.
There's a freshness to Cummings' direction too; some of the shots are breathtaking, occasionally making use of a staccato visual grammar that might be expected in arthouse but is unusual in a film that presents itself as accessible entertainment, first and foremost. There's no pretentiousness on display - the shots always service the intent of the script, it's just that it's done with such a flair that it really makes you sit up and take notice.
The Wolf of Snow Hollow can be many things to many viewers - a rollercoaster horror/comedy, a serial thriller, a commentary on the relationship between the sexes, a portrait of workplace and family or all of the above. Whatever it is, it's another demonstration that Cummings is a major talent.
Kadaver (2020)
Philosophical Horror
Much as the central antagonist poses questions to his unhappy assembly during the first act, Cadaver asks us, the audience, what it means to be human. What would we really be prepared to do to survive? And would those actions take away some or all of our humanity?
Cadaver plays out the ramifications of these questions through its central premise - in post-apocalyptic Norway a starving family are invited to a mansion that remains oddly untroubled by poverty, where they will be fed and entertained by an unusual theatrical performance. The mansion is queasily reminiscent of such sinister spaces as the Overlook Hotel (The Shining) and the Black Lodge (Twin Peaks), a Grand Guignol nightmare of red walls and masked figures, a trap into which our family wanders through sheer desperation.
The scenario plays on fears familiar to all of us in 2020 - do we really want to know what's going on in the world? How the desperate and powerless sustain the comfortable lifestyles of others, whether through direct personal exploitation or by economic means?. In Cadaver, this exploitation is brought to its logical conclusion and invites us to make a judgement about how far we would go to ensure our own survival, and then asks us to consider if we would go even further for something beyond mere survival.
Cadaver is an intelligent film (ably directed and performed too, and it looks gorgeous) that deserves an appreciative audience.
But are you the audience or a participant?
7500 (2019)
Outstanding
Every now and then a film comes along which doesn't put a foot wrong. This is one of those films. Absolutely nothing irritates. There are no scripting contrivances, missteps in the direction, unrealistic setups or dud performances.
What this film provides is a relentless exercise in realism - it asks the question "How might a hijacking play out from the point of view of the pilots?" and then sticks committedly to honouring that perspective with a detached, cold eye. In this respect, Patrick Vollrath's direction is superb - in allowing the performances to lead the tempo, the tone and the framing, Vollrath produces something that feels almost "real", such is the refreshing absence of aimless flash.
Central to the film's success is an excellent performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who does so much with fairly minimal dialogue and a tiny set in which to operate. Every thought, decision and emotion is there on his face, every acting choice spot on. The rest of the cast are all very good indeed, and are well used, even if they don't have much screen time.
7500 packs a hell of a punch, and it will stay with you long after the credits have rolled.
Dracula (2020)
Wallachian Hackery
The writers have tried to preempt any criticism of this, their latest ill-conceived work, by claiming that they're bringing something new to the table. 'It's a fresh spin on a tired old piece of source material!', they say. ' We're not being tied down by those silly old-fashioned adaptations from the past!', they say. The inference being that should one find oneself disliking this unholy mess then it'll be because you're an unimaginative dullard, unable to accept anything other than a predictable and over-respectful retread of the original. I would love to see a production of Dracula that succeeds in taking an imaginative new approach, or that mines a hitherto undiscovered angle on proceedings, but this bobbins does neither.
In any event, theirs is a transparent and flimsy argument that merely attempts to close off the possibility of negative criticism, and it misses the point. Even if this uneven and embarrassing production were based on nothing other than its authors' repetitive and predictable ideas about what constitutes an acceptable script, then it would still be a failure on its own terms.
Why so? Well, while it's true that choosing to portray the count as a wise-cracking Batman villain is certainly surprising and technically original, it cannot be considered a successful choice - a "new idea" doesn't carry virtue on that score alone when it is just a bad idea. The tone too, betrays a lack of clear directive. Why bother to create an effectively spooky atmosphere in the first act only to undercut it just when tension is just starting to build? Why claim that the intent is to scare when clearly the overriding priority is to recycle all your oldest ineffective attempts at humour, however misplaced? Why bother to cast an actor of Claes Bang's calibre if you've already decided you just want to give the s*it modern Doctor Who schtick another airing? Why not think twice before trotting out trite, bald nonsense like "I'm your worst nightmare; an educated woman with a crucifix"? It is hard to understand why Gatiss and Moffat make such wonky decisions, except perhaps they have little sense of artistic judgement, and whatever they do have is overridden by an immature lack of self-restraint.
Really, this Wallachian hackery deserves no more than two stars, and neither are to be given to its authors.
Dial M for Middlesbrough (2019)
Dial M for Moronic
There are some good actors here, but they don't stand a chance in this under-rehearsed moronic drivel. The whole thing is desperately unfunny. There is far too much quick cutting, which means the director fails to capitalise on his one plus point; the performances.
Highly amateurish, Dial M for Middlesbrough is a abject failure.
Pet Sematary (2019)
Absolutely bloody dreadful.
Possibly the most contrived piece of scripting seen since...well, the last badly written horror film that expects its audience to engage with characters who do stupid things just to service the terrible plot.
Events happen solely because the writer wants them to, regardless of the absurd leaps of logic required to get to his next ill conceived set piece.
It's impossible to watch this film without shouting at the screen in disbelief, so really, save yourself the bother.
The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)
Excellent
It's astonishing that so many reviewers fail to understand what the film is trying to do. This is truly an excellent piece of work, and deserves to be seen, not least because it does not trivialise the horror of what went on in Cielo Drive that night. Nor does it render the victims a mere footnote in the neverending media circus around Manson.
In 1969 Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent were all viciously murdered by the followers of the revolting Charles Manson. This film incorporates those awful events in a script that attempts to free the victims from their fate, to shift the focus back to those who were killed rather than allow the murderers to continue having the last laugh, if you like.
Compelling and made with integrity, The Haunting of Sharon Tate is well worth your time.
The Dead Room (2018)
Not good.
Whether acting or writing, Gatiss seems keen always to have a crack at muscling in on past broadcasting glories. It's as though he believes his love for many an old show is qualification enough for getting out the karaoke microphone again. Doctor Who, A Ghost Story For Christmas and The Man in Black are all examples of classic melodrama that have been subject to this rather smothering sense of ownership, this compulsive "right to overwrite". However, as The Dead Room shows, inclusion into the club cannot be assumed. Gatiss adds his name to the list whether it's wanted or not, but his work falls far short of those involved in producing his childhood favourites.
The saving grace here is Simon Callow, who is wonderful to watch even when working with material this thin. An unrecognisable Susan Penhaligon provides a memorably eerie turn as the completely silent Joan, her blank stare adding most of the minimal chills in the piece. (Unfortunately nothing is made of this potentially interesting character).
As for the rest, well it's business as usual for a Mark Gatiss script. Interesting premise but poor scripting glossed over with some self-referential self-reverence.
Suddenly "The Ice House" won't be quite so near the bottom of the Ghost Story For Christmas league table any more.
The Nun (2018)
Cynically made, not worth your time
If you're drawn to this having seen The Conjuring and Annabelle, and are assuming this will be of the same quality, let me save you the bother.
It's derivative, predictable and resolutely not scary, unless perhaps you're 9. The dialogue is appalling - every clichéd Hollywood phrase is here - and the plot makes very little sense. The director tries to cover this by hurling a barrage of nonsensical set pieces at the audience, producing a film which manages to be too full of action and yet terribly boring at the same time.
Really - avoid this. Unless you have a thing for wimples.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Surprisingly uninteresting
So here we have a rather good cast and some lovely production and costume design. What we don't have is a good script. Or any atmosphere. Or drama. Or, in spite of Kenneth Branagh's undisputed acting chops, a believable Poirot.
Quite apart from the fact that Murder on the Orient Express has been very successfully adapted for the screen twice before (with the 2010 David Suchet version surely unsurpassable), and without any comparison to either, this iteration must be considered a failure, purely on its own terms and conception.