Review Category: Movie

FAST & FURIOUS: HOBBS & SHAW / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: DAVID LEITCH / SCREENPLAY: CHRIS MORGAN, DREW PEARCE / STARRING: DWAYNE JOHNSON, JASON STATHAM, IDRIS ELBA, VANESSA KIRBY, HELEN MIRREN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There’ve now been so many Fast & Furious movies that they’ve stopped adding numbers to the titles. Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is the latest addition to the franchise that is apparently too quick and too angry to die. This time around, we have Hobbs (Johnson) and Shaw (Statham) reluctantly teaming up to take on a bad guy called Brixton (Elba). The plot revolves around a world-ending super virus, held by Hattie (Kirby). They are then a series of fights and explosions as the various heroes square off against each other. This being a Fast & Furious movie, we also have some ridiculous car chases and some amazing stunts. It’s basically a fireworks display with punching.  It’s also a lot of fun.

The plot is nice, but let’s be honest, it’s just there to take us from one macho action moment to the next. The movie knows exactly what it is, acknowledges it’s flaws, laughs at itself then moves on. The result is highly entertaining. We can watch Statham and Johnson go at it all day, and that’s pretty much the point here. Two action heroes, a superfluous plot and one brilliant actor being the bad guy.

Ryan Reynolds has a brief turn as special agent Lock, and it’s pretty much the standard quick-fire nonsense we expect to see from Reynolds these days. Action fans will be relieved to hear that Hobbs and Lock simply wisecrack, rather than philosophise on the nature of society. We also get a cameo from Helen Mirren as Shaw’s master criminal mother. Seeing Mirren being a bad-ass never grows old.

There’s some mythology here of course. We learn a bit more about the various characters, and it all neatly slots into the growing meta-narrative. It’s nice that the movie producers think we care, but we are all here for the very well-choreographed fight moves, the witty one-liners, the rude words, and odd moments of comic relief. The only way any of these movies will get an Academy Award is if they pull off an elaborate heist for one. You never know, it could happen.

Arguably, this is a movie about the dangers of technological utopianism; Brixton is a cyborg who believes humanity should be upgraded. The heroes are ‘un-enhanced’, and many of their solutions are decidedly analogue. Cyborgs versus muscle men, or Iron Man versus Pumping Iron. Dumb, fun, and worth the wait. Go see it on a big screen so you can take in all the explosions.

DIRECTOR: KELLY ASBURY | SCREENPLAY: ALISON PECK | STARRING: KELLY CLARKSON, JANELLE MONAE, BLAKE SHELTON, WANDA SYKES, GABRIEL IGLESIAS, EMMA ROBERTS, WANG LEEHOM, BEBE REXHA, CHARLI XCX, LIZZO, NICK JONAS, PITBULL | RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 16TH

The UglyDolls are a popular toy range of misshapen and wacky-looking plush toys, aimed at young children. Apparently they’re meant to teach the young that appearances aren’t that important. However, given that these funny looking characters are soft and adorable, we can see why they’re so popular.

UglyDolls can be found on t-shirts, lunch boxes, stationary and so on, so obviously they now have their own animated movie. A musical, no less.  The feature follows the story of Moxy (voiced by Kelly Clarkson)a bright pink rag-doll like thing with an overbite.  She is a reject doll living in UglyVille, a place where all the imperfect toys end up. Moxy believes some day she’ll have the love of a child.  Her quest for acceptance leads her (and her friends) to the place where the prettier dolls live. They meet the seemingly perfect  Mandy (Monáe) who learns to embrace their inner beauty. Of course, the vile Lou (Jonas) does everything he can to stop our heroes from achieving their goals. Because otherwise we don’t have any conflict to keep this by-the-numbers story going.

Eventually, the adorable plushies take on the appearance-obsessed perfect dolls and let their freak flags fly, learning the true value of self-worth. The message is simple enough, and the whole thing is pretty harmless. It does put a lot of focus on appearances while telling the viewer that none of that matters. It’s pleasant enough that most adults will stay awake throughout – at least the first time they see it, anyway. There is not a single plot device you won’t see coming, nor is there a single joke that you can’t predict from the set-up. The songs are catchy enough to keep a child entertained, and the narrative is bouncy and brightly coloured enough to keep the whole thing together for 90 minutes.  There is nothing here for an adult audience, except for a few nods to the parents who will also have to sit through this.

Does UglyDolls do anything that hasn’t been seen before? Well, no. It’s certainly not Toy Story, though draws from the same well. We doubt anyone under the age of 10 has seen The Raggy Dolls or know where The Island of Misfit Toys is, so to young minds it’ll appear amazing and fresh. UglyDolls’ worst feature is that it’s rather bland. For a movie about embracing one’s differences, it does seem to be pretty much identical to the many other ‘summer holiday kids movies’ out there.

THE VAST OF THE NIGHT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ANDREW PATTERSON / SCREENPLAY: JAMES MONTAGUE, CRAIG W SANGER / STARRING: SIERRA McCORMICK, JAKE HOROWITZ, GAIL CRONAUER, BRUCE DAVIS / RELEASE DATE: TBC

On the night of a town basketball game, a local radio host and a switchboard operator discover a strange signal being intercepted on the airwaves. As they investigate the source, they begin to uncover the details of a conspiracy hiding the fact that life on earth might not be all that’s out there. With such a familiar-sounding premise, you’ve probably got a pretty clear idea of the kind of direction in which this story is going to go. And you would be entirely correct.

There is nothing especially wrong with The Vast of Night. On the contrary, it’s an eerily-shot slow-burning mystery with a gradually revealed plot and creepy visuals. Its plot and story might also have been a compelling and innovative experience taking you in new and exciting directions, if only it had been made about 60 years ago. The film is a meticulously reconstructed throwback to the kind of ‘50s sci-fi that was all desert town mystery, shady government cover ups and steadfast belief in life from the stars, and in the respect of recreating that feel of wonder and paranoia it’s a perfect achievement. Unfortunately, the film gets so bogged down in ensuring that every aspect about it is such a perfect imitation that it forgets to find anything new to say.

An opening sequence doesn’t do anything to truly introduce the story, but does set you up well for the lengthy meandering tracking shots that must be endured without break, as well as overwritten dialogue that aims for a naturalistic feel by way of people talking at length about things that have no relevance to anything, forcing you to concentrate on every insignificant detail in the hope of gleaning something relevant to an actual story. The static framing and interminable monologues make the story feel as though it were initially written as a stage play or an audio drama, the accompanying visual component of the cinematic medium causing you to expect content of greater substance that the film doesn’t deliver.

The conceit is that the events are a televised recreation of a pseudo-Twilight Zone TV show, beginning with an introduction that is a clear riff on Rod Serling’s seminal anthology series, and also periodically reminds you of this by having the film image fade to the monochromatic, cathode ray flickering of retro TV sets. Not only does this take you out of the illusion of the film, but it also never pays off in any meaningful way.

Technically speaking, The Vast of Night is a well-made film that perfectly evokes the time and place in which it’s set, but narratively everything about it feels too familiar to stand out, ultimately failing to distinguish itself in any way from the dozens of decades-old works to have inspired it.

DARLIN’ / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: POLLYANNA McINTOSH / STARRING: LAURYN CANNY, POLLYANNA McINTOSH , NORA-JANE NOONE, BRYAN BATT / RELEASE DATE: TBC

After a feral teenager is left at a hospital, she ends up being sent to a Catholic orphanage, the bishop of which is determined to civilise her as a demonstration of the healing power of religion in an attempt to gain more funding. However, her mother, the nameless matriarch of a small tribe of wild humans, begins a search for her missing daughter and will not let anything or anyone stand in her way.

Although Darlin’ acts as a sequel to Lucky McKee’s 2011 piece of nastiness The Woman (which was itself a follow up to 2009’s largely unrelated Offspring), narratively the film is completely its own thing and seeing its predecessor is in no way necessary to follow its events, although knowing what previously occurred does provide some context for the Woman’s contempt for men who try to control her actions.

The Woman was a very straightforward story of abuse and vengeance and, thematically, Darlin’ covers similar ground of dealing with men denying women autonomy and believing they somehow deserve the right of dominion over their development and to decide when they are deserving of entering society. However, the structure of Darlin’ is far subtler than its predecessor’s blunt force misogyny, drawing you into a world of sanctimonious hypocrisy so gradual in its unveiling that at first it seems like the potential has been completely overlooked. But, as the story progresses, it becomes clear this is the whole point, the cunning of what the film shows and hides mimics the insidious deceit with which perpetrators of abuse manage to conceal their actions from the world.

The eponymous girl is a blank enigma for much of the film. While being tutored in Catholic doctrine she is allowed little personality of her own, all of her time instead being spent told who and what she is supposed be, regardless of the choices she might make herself if anyone bothered to ask her. She has no concept of life beyond the wilderness in which she grew up, and so the religious teachings she is required to digest give her a skewed perspective of reality, knowing no other beliefs beyond those fostered upon her. When a revelation makes it clear the extent to which her naïveté has fused her personal circumstance with the enforced theocratic education, it raises the question of just how much attention anyone has actually been paying to her.

Since the Woman tries to keep her makeshift tribe away from civilisation, it’s not immediately clear why she felt it necessary to bring Darlin’ to a hospital as there doesn’t actually seem to be anything wrong with her, but when this is addressed everything immediately falls into place. Likewise, there is a niggling issue with there being little with which to judge the passage of time, but this is also later dealt with, and makes the Woman’s determination clearer when it becomes apparent how long she has been searching for her missing daughter.

Darlin’ is an enthralling mix of incisive social commentary and unapologetic violence that surpasses its predecessor with more to say about issues of abuse, autonomy, religion, homophobia and misogyny, and most strongly suggests that the very least women deserve is to simply be left alone to live their lives without interference.

CARMILLA / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: EMILY HARRIS / STARRING: HANNAH RAE, DEVRIM LINGNAU, JESSICA RAINE, TOBIAS MENZIES / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Lara is a lonely teenage girl on a country estate, living every day taught how she should behave in society with her stern governess keeping her on the path expected of young ladies of the time – mainly to do as she is told and sit around doing needlepoint. When a carriage accident in the nearby countryside results in the mysterious Carmilla recuperating at the estate, her presence awakens desires in Lara she was unaware she had, while the nature of the new girl becomes ever harder to pin down.

Carmilla is based on a vampire novella of the same name published in the early 1870s, predating Dracula by over 25 years. However, the film removes aspects of the story that explicitly deal with the eponymous character’s nature and history, and instead allows it to remain ambiguous. It’s entirely possible that it’s mere chance Lara’s decline in health coincides with Carmilla’s arrival, but equally possible is that the girl is some kind of vampire or succubus slowly draining Lara’s life and soul to maintain her youth and beauty.

It feels a little uneasy that a teenage girl is portrayed as a paragon of desirable femininity, but since almost the entire story is told from Lara’s perspective, Carmilla’s exotic beauty is how the young woman perceives her new obsession, a personification of the desire and excitement she has been taught to suppress and a reflection of the sensuality she now feels able to express. Lara’s dreams manifesting her morbid curiosity of the natural world become merged with her fledgling desires of burgeoning sexuality, resulting in lurid depictions of lust and gore that terrify and excite her in equal measure, while the gothic ambience of the setting keeps the atmosphere suitably sinister.

The story is largely an emotional affair, driven by Lara and Carmilla’s fledgling romance which, for the most part, consists of longing glances by flickering candlelight, heavy breathing as new and exciting feelings take over, and shots of each girl filling the frame as if there is nothing else existing in the world than each other. Although the physical aspect of their relationship and the development towards it is important – and when it comes is tentative rather than exploitative – it isn’t as significant as Lara simply having someone to whom she can relate and talk to as an equal who won’t judge her for thinking or speaking about things a young lady is not supposed to. The film also inevitably deals with the period setting holding any kind of same sex relationship as even more unnatural and unacceptable than they’re viewed now by modern day bigots in their eternal ignorance.

Carmilla is a different sort of lesbian vampire film than the subgenre’s more notorious entries conjure images of. It portrays its central relationship as playful, sensual and exciting rather than driven by plain lust and is all the more an affecting tale as a result, while the performances from its young leads are mesmerising in their raw empathy.

BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ROXANNE BENJAMIN / STARRING: KARINA FONTES, CASEY ADAMS, EMILY ALTHAUS, MIRANDA BAILEY / RELEASE DATE: TBC

After swapping tasks so her friend can spend all day flirting with an attractive colleague, trainee park ranger Wendy heads out on a remote mountain trail she is too inexperienced to deal with. After realising she has become lost, she encounters a corpse and must stay where she is until help arrives, which won’t be until well after nightfall.

Despite the countless horror movies that take place in remote wilderness locations wherein are hidden the murderous crimes of numerous maniacs soaking the earth with the blood of their victims, Body at Brighton Rock is careful to avoid playing into the tropes of such films. It remains largely a psychological affair, the natural world that Wendy wants to be a part of conspiring against her to create a symphony of terror. With a dead body laying nearby, her perception of her surroundings becomes warped into a nightmarish parody of nature, the perfectly innocuous sounds and movements of the forest around her becoming transformed into gnawing scratches, ominous noises on the wind and echoes unidentifiable in their source, while every movement and shadow glimpsed out of the corner of her eye threatens to reveal unforeseen danger as her sanity is gradually clawed away at. It also doesn’t take until after the sun has gone down for the encroaching forces of nature to begin their mental assault; even when the sun is still bright in the sky, the eeriness of Wendy’s situation begins chipping away at her perspective of reality.

The closest the film comes to more familiar horror movies is the ambiguity over whether or not the mysterious person Wendy has been intermittently glimpsing is real and means her harm. The bloodied and mauled features of the corpse itself act as a constant reminder of the unforgiving power of nature, and that there are deadly dangers hidden within its barely touched beauty that could emerge from the trees at any moment. As night descends and Wendy’s isolation becomes ever more overpowering, her ability to tell rational reality from fevered imagination becomes ever diminished.

This would all be less affecting if you didn’t care about Wendy, but her initial outgoing enthusiasm and friendly personality makes you quickly warm to her. She is further sympathised by her clear enthusiasm for her job, and her staunch determination to undertake everything expected of her employment is admirable, despite remaining blithely oblivious to the fact she is woefully lacking in the skill to do it properly. Even though the situation she finds herself in is more or less entirely her own fault, you’re still able to feel for her since she hasn’t done anything to in any way deserve it.

Every aspect of the film’s descent into psychological torment is played completely straight, but such is the extremity of the featured situations it wouldn’t take much shunting to tilt the film in an unintentionally funny direction. However, a perfectly-balanced tone manages to maintain the mounting fear while avoiding their occasionally ridiculous portrayal from deteriorating into farce.

Body at Brighton Rock is a insidiously sinister piece of psychological horror. Although eschewing traditional gore and terror and with very little actually happening throughout, it remains an enthralling crescendo of paranoia that drags in the viewer and grips them until the closing moments.

THE BUMBRY ENCOUNTER / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & WRITER: JAY K. RAJA / STARRING: LAUREN McCFALL, SKIPPER ELEKWACHI, ROSS TURNER / RELEASE DATE: SCREENING AT SELECTED FESTIVALS (CLICK FOR INFO)

The Bumbry Encounter is based on the story of Betty and Barney Hill who had the first well-publicised alien abduction in 1961 and, like them, the Bumbrys are a mixed race couple who are driving at night when they see a UFO. The following day, in their own home, the shady Dr Bancroft – with police officers lurking in the background – interviews traumatised Jackie Bumbry, while husband Terry is dealt with in a separate room. Jackie is confused by the line of questioning. Dr Bancroft is particularly suspicious about her torn dress and black eye, and regards it as the work of an alien – but possibly not an extraterrestrial one!

The scenes in the ‘safety’ of their home are as creepy as those in the car when they first saw the UFO. The passive presence of the police underlines – or at least suggests – Dr Bancroft is working for the authorities. It makes us wonder if he is on a mission to suppress and cover up their story, or is he helping them understand what really happened? This ambiguity takes director / writer Jay K. Raja’s production beyond the usual clumsy ‘aliens are invading us’ scenario.

It does make it worthwhile to compare and contrast this with The UFO Incident, a made-for-TV movie that was the first cinematic portrayal of the Hill encounter with James Earl Jones as Barney Hill and Estelle Parsons as Betty Hill. The 1975 movie shows psychiatrist Dr Benjamin Simon interviewing them, with Barney acknowledging that he had suffered racial abuse during childhood. Under hypnosis, it is revealed they were abducted and medically examined by extraterrestrials who treated them like intriguing biological specimens.

The alien abduction theme has since become an established part of ufology and ET believers, and for countless films, so it is refreshing that The Bumbry Encounter takes a different view of the subject.

Although it only runs for 15 minutes, this film is outstanding in its use of the historical setting, costume, special effects, lighting, music and storyline. The blinding light of the UFO and the opening sequence owe much to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the ’60s setting is much like that of the Mad Men TV series. The Bumbry Encounter cleverly blends science fiction with the racial politics and racism of the period. See it at the first opportunity before the MIB get you.