Saturday, 15 February 2020

Robot and Frank (2012)

Touching and funny, with a great performance by Langella.
Rating: Good

Boy (2010)

Sweet and charming if a little one-note.
Rating: Good

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

Similar issues to the first two movies - both the story and the fights have good ideas but are too ill-defined to make good use of them. The story has the cool lore, but flubs it at every turn with characters who love or hate John for no particular reason, often flipping between them for no reason too, bizarre plot-holes and lack of logic to anyone's actions. The fights have some cool ideas, moreso than in the previous movies (super-trained assassin dogs! A multi-storey glass penthouse fight area! Horses as weapons!) but don't make use of them, or else insist on long single takes with Reeves, Berry et al, leading to everything feeling half-speed and opponents waiting for their cues, like we're watching the rehearsals. Assorted silly things complete the insubstantial nonsense feeling, like CG blood, massacres going unnoticed in busy public areas, horses' super-kick action being activated with a pat on the rump, people jumping from their own motorbike to a fellow attacker's for no reason yet getting three of them killed in the process, and people managing to do that disappearing by panning behind something trick in a *room made of glass*.
Action movies don't need to have complex plots or realistic action - Desperado is magnificent without either - but the John Wick movies aim for them and fail at both.
Rating: Bad

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Lots of atmosphere and strong, understated performances (acting and music). Not much of a story - another entry in the 'follow a sad person around' sub-genre.
Rating: Good

Friday, 14 February 2020

31 (2016)

Pretty much the least imaginative film that Zombie could have made at this point, or indeed that anyone could have made with the concept 'some people are kidnapped and forced to play a survival in a compound full of crazy killers'.
Rating: Bad

Thursday, 13 February 2020

3 from Hell (2019)

Very disappointing - it feels like one of those direct-to-video sequels by a different creative team who copy all the wrong stuff from the original. It's just more of the same, but with none of the wit. The victims act stupid, the quips are thuddingly awful, the plot drags and meanders, instead of Michael Berryman playing a regular guy with no mention of his dysplasia there's Richard Edson browning up as a Mexican, and instead of making the Fireflys sympathetic this movie makes them dull. It even tries to recapture the standout Free Bird sequence from Devil's Rejects, but ends up taking 'In A Gadda Da Vida' from Manhunter and putting it over a standard shootout scene.
Although it was apparently unavoidable due to health issues, I suspect the heavily reduced role of Sid Haig plays a large part in how anonymous this movie feels.
It's a shame this didn't jump style again, perhaps to more of a Suspiria feel - there's a glimmer of what could have been when Baby hallucinates a ballerina cat through a crack in her prison cell wall, but sadly Zombie brings no more of his Halloween II/Lords Of Salem weirdness into play.
Rating: Bad

Monday, 10 February 2020

Afternoon Delight (2013)

A well put-together drama - well-acted, directed - but it boils down to 'a privileged couple realise they need to connect a bit more', which they do at the expense of a 22 year old homeless sex worker (we see her laughing with a bouncer outside a strip club so apparently she's fine), and the film doesn't address the fact that the men all get to do what they want and the husband is almost totally absent - a muttered half-apology is all he's held to account for.
Rating: Fine