Review Category: Movie

Pious young nurse Maud is assigned to provide palliative care for a terminally ill former dancer, becoming intent on also saving the older woman’s soul while there is still time. As the relationship between the pair develops, the connection to the divine power she shares with her creator becomes ever more intense, while a supernatural storm gathers around her.

Saint Maud would be quite an achievement for any creative, but with it being the debut feature of writer/director Rose Glass, its multi-faceted structure is even more impressive. Variously a character study, supernatural mystery, psychological thriller and religious reflection, the elements of the plot weave in and out of one another, yet all manage to coalesce into a distinct whole rather than remaining disparate fragments.

Sanctimonious and judgemental yet also lonely and vulnerable, Maud’s faith is an integral aspect of who she is, but her desire to do good is undercut by her tendency to look down on others for their decisions. Nevertheless, her flaws are what make her so compelling, allowing her to fashion a narrative where she is the hero at the heart of her own story, blind to both her own hypocrisy and the realities of her ersatz perceptions.

Of the latter, when most people talk about feeling the power of God and his love it’s typically a simple sense of being guided by a nebulous presence, but for Maud the feeling is literal, an erotic bliss that pushes her to climax. Equally, she might have some extreme form of epilepsy, with the potential duality tacitly invoking times not that long past when people’s fervent religious experiences were what we now understand to be mental illness, issues by which Maud appears afflicted but have gone unnoticed and untreated.

As every moment in the film is from Maud’s perspective, the objective truth of events is unimportant. It’s all real to her, and we are able to empathise with the plight of her psychological suffering and confusion even if we don’t completely understand what it is she’s going through. Little is spelled out and the whole story is not made apparent, but we are able to piece together the significant aspects to form enough of her personal history we need to get a handle on what she’s enduring. Hints are dropped of a triggering trauma in her recent past that compelled her to reinvent herself, but specific details are sparse, only adding to the mystery of exactly where lies the truth about who this young woman is.

Saint Maud is an accomplished debut of thoughtful introspection and quiet intensity, its meticulously maintained balance between mundanity and divinity and lead performance of mesmerising subtlety announce both its director and star as talents with untapped potential.

Somewhere between 1993 and 2020, Groundhog Day went from being a beloved Bill Murray movie to a fully fledged genre.
Case in point – “Groundhog Day, but it’s a slasher movie” (Timecrimes);
“Groundhog Day, but it’s a mystery on a boat” (Triangle);
“Groundhog Day, but there’s a bomb on a train” (Source Code);
“Groundhog Day, but with aliens” (Edge of Tomorrow);
“Groundhog Day, but it’s a different slasher movie” (Happy Death Day).

Enter Palm Springs. This one is Groundhog Day, but there are two characters (Nyles and Sarah) experiencing the time-loop at the same time. It’s one of those ideas so perfect that it makes you wonder how it took over a century of filmmaking to get round to it.

Much like Groundhog Day, the film is a romantic comedy, but the two-person dynamic turns it into something completely unique. For example, at one point, Nyles disposes of a bomb he’s hidden inside the cake at a wedding, just to entertain Sarah. It’s a perfect example of the delightful time-travel shenanigans the pair get up to, throughout, but the film still manages to throw a few surprises at you to keep things from being too predictable as they inevitably develop feelings for one another.

Playing these roles are Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti: two incredibly charming actors who share a great chemistry. As if they weren’t enough, though, rounding out the cast is J.K. Simmons who is never anything to watch but an absolute joy.

An uplifting and optimistic piece of escapism that looks to the future after realising we can’t just dwell in the present forever, Palm Springs is arguably the perfect film to watch in 2020.

CERT: PG | RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 23RD

Five specially selected teenagers must battle a super-computer to win the ultimate prize in this family sci-fi adventure. Max Winslow (Sydne Mikelle) is a high school student who spends most of her time in her room, hacking computers and being a grade-A student when one day, local billionaire Atticus Virtue (Chad Michael Murray), invites five of his old high school’s students to take part in a game of wits, guts, and intelligence at his teched-out mansion. But, as Max and her opponents begin to realise that this isn’t as easy as it may seem, the group of flawed characters are pushed to their boundaries and changed forever.

The easiest way to describe this low-budget and choppy title is ‘Willy Wonka meets Escape Room’ – a simple premise that we’ve seen before but updated to incorporate the tech generation with such 2D generic characters as the brainiac, the gamer, the social media-obsessed, and the bully. Whereas this may seem like an interesting take on the formula, what lets this film down is the poorly written unnatural dialogue between the characters, their unlikeable personalities, and an overall tone that feels very ‘Nickelodeon’.

At times it shows a glimmer of intrigue and some impressive effects to hammer home the sci-fi nature before devolving into a disappointing anti-climactic mess with PS2-style VFX and laughably bad pacing. Max Winslow was definitely inspired by some classic ideas that have come before it and will ultimately provide some thrills and a strong moral message for a younger audience, but it sadly misses the mark due to the mediocre screenplay and performances.

CERT: PG | RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 16TH

 

It’s been three decades since the Wyld Stallions last rocked, and while Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey remain cult favourites, it seems odd to bring them back now – are they not, to put it kindly, past their best?

 

But Face the Music is well aware of this; we rejoin Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s duo in their 50s, with their band split up, marriages failing, and enthusiasm dwindling. Worse, they’ve never written the song prophesised to unite the world, and it’s looking unlikely they ever will. What they need is a deadline, and when reality starts to collapse, they’re given one – 75 minutes.

 

Rather than writing, Bill and Ted set off to steal the song from their future selves, prompting both zany antics and poignant reflection on a life not gone to plan. Have no fear; screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, who penned the first two films, know what they’re doing with these characters.

 

But this isn’t just a nostalgia fix, thanks to Billie and Thea – Bill and Ted’s daughters, played by Brigette Lundy-Paine and Samara Weaving. Their boundless enthusiasm out-Bill-and-Teds the actual Bill and Ted, as they travel through time putting a band together for the imminent performance (and what a band!). If anything’s amiss, it’s that Lundy-Paine and Weaving don’t get equal billing with Reeves and Winter; they certainly earn it.

 

Bill and Ted Face the Music shows how its done – a delight for fans and newbies alike. It’s also the perfect catharsis for audiences nervous about returning to cinemas, full of music and comedy and hope. Bill and Ted are back. Cinema is back. Excellent.

 

CERT: 15 | PLATFORM: DVD, DIGITAL DOWNLOAD | RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 5TH

Once again the Hollywood remake machine regurgitates another classic for contemporary audiences but botches every attempt to make it unique and invigorating. This predominantly drab and pallid “re-imagining” of Adrian Lyne’s brooding drug horror does at least try to deviate from the 1990 original, but does it so artlessly and with disregard to – or obliviousness of – what made Lyne’s film so compelling. Director David M. Rosenthal shreds Lyne’s striking style, substituting his urban goth / noir palette for a weak insipidness similar to that of a TV movie.

The remake’s story tells a similar tale of husband / father / doctor Jacob Singer (Michael Ealy) who is approached by a frazzled ex-army vet, Paul (Joseph Sikora), claiming to be a friend of Jake’s late brother Isaac (Jesse Williams). Paul tells Jake that Isaac is still alive, and leads him to a secret society of troubled ex-vets linked to a military-sanctioned drug called HDA. Jacob investigates, but soon starts experiencing intense hallucinations which warp his reality and make him distrust his once close friends and family.

Writers Jeff Buhler and Sarah Thorpe’s script courageously strays from Bruce Joel Rubin’s original, but through a frayed tale that wanes, vacillates and fails to align into an engaging narrative. This fragile foundation is an epic detriment that makes Rosenthal’s film discombobulate, maybe to put the viewer in the mindset of its protagonist, but whether or not that was the writers’ intention is almost irrelevant as this cessation leads to tedium, apathy and dazing despair.

The plot philanders with novel concepts but fails to utilise them efficiently. A conspiracy relating to Jake’s family intrigues but isn’t proficiently employed to convey the potent paranoia that permeated Lyne’s original. The characters are also not as complex or played as credibly as they were in 1990. Key sequences (one set on a train and another in an ice bath) are inelegantly replicated and feel enforced and wedged with a brazen lack of care and élan.

Jacob’s Ladder (’90)‘s ominous air was a key component to its nightmare surrealism working so well, and made weird scenes with monsters and demons more tangible. For director Rosenthal to not retain that, or replace it with something equally distinctive, is an unpardonable blooper. The lack of dynamic visual prowess or teeming menace which made the original so terrifying is patent, as Rosenthal and the writers fail to fashion an apt vision or captivating story. Like the remakes of Poltergeist, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Flatliners, Jacob’s Ladder languishes as a flat and flaccid re-imagining that regurgitates clichés, prunes surrealism and so dispassionately detaches itself from Lyne’s original that it seems wrong they share titles.