Review Category: Movie

DIRECTOR: DOME KARUKOSKI | SCREENPLAY: DAVID GLEESON, STEPHEN BERESFORD | STARRING: NICHOLAS HOULT, LILY COLLINS, COLM MEANEY, DEREK JACOBI | RELEASE DATE: MAY 3RD

It would be exceptionally glib of us to describe director Dome Karukoski’s biopic of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s early years as Bilbo Begins, but let’s be honest, without The Hobbit, the movie Tolkien would never have been made.

Let’s be clear from the start. This is a biopic that begins with a young Tolkien and his brother playing as knights in the woods with toy swords. Within the first five minutes we get a dragon-sized load of visual callbacks to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, though not in a particularly disruptive way.  Instead, this is a dramatisation of a young man looking to make his way in the world through difficult circumstances.

Though privileged, Tolkien’s early life wasn’t easy, and the bulk of the drama takes place during his school years. We meet the famous author’s childhood friends and the narrative makes much ado about choosing the more difficult routes in life. The creative path and living one’s life with freedom is lauded and actor Nicholas Hoult turns in a great performance as the intensely intelligent and determined to be free Tolkien. Anthony Boyle is particularly compelling as GB Smith and there are some particularly heart-rending scenes between the two.

Other standout performances include Derek Jacobi as a very peculiar professor and Colm Meany as a Catholic Priest, a role that Meany has seemingly performed so many times that it just seems natural and right.

Tolkien’s story could not be told with mentioning the singular love of his life, Edith Bratt. Lily Collins is mesmerising in the role, both sweet and fiercely intelligent throughout. Fans of Middle-earth will be disappointed to learn that Tolkien’s fantasy version of his courtship of Edith, Beren and Luthien, is only mentioned in the end credits, but then that is a tale that deserves its own feature.

There is good chemistry between Hoult and Collins and the story winds and twists around the pair, forming the bulk of the narrative. The other backbone of the tale is the constant flashbacks to Tolkien’s experiences in World War I, and throughout the all too real horror of that conflict, we see flashes of the monsters that the good Professor would later write about.

Much in the same way that Tolkien’s skill at mythic storytelling shaped much of his life, this movie leans into fantastic elements as metaphor for a very real story. It is a compelling tale told well, but it is not meant to be anything like the blockbuster movies that came before it. It’s a gentle tale with terror and love as its central theme. Epic storytelling at its best.

DIRECTOR: MICHAEL CHAVES | SCREENPLAY: MIKKI DAUGHTRY, TOBIAS IACONIS | STARRING: LINDA CARDELLINI, RAYMOND CRUZ, PATRICIA VELÁSQUEZ | RELEASE DATE: MAY 3RD

With already twice as many spin-offs than sequels, The Conjuring franchise continues to flourish financially while sadly waning in quality. This latest entry, The Curse of La Llorona sees crispy-skinned villain The Weeping Woman lead a creaky CG spectre schlep loosely linked to the Annabelle series. Its grey, flaking antagonist stems from Latin American folklore but is best left to legend, shadows, or viewers’ imaginations as she is here insipidly rendered into a generic phantom lacking the presence and prowess of The Nun and Annabelle, despite existing within a slightly stronger storyline.

The plot kicks off in Mexico 1673 where the soon to be ‘Weeping Woman’ drowns her children in a river / frenzy, cursing herself into a child singeing spirit during a quite chilling prologue. Years later, in 1970s LA, unhinged mum Pat Alvarez (Velasquez), is believed to be abusing her kids by widowed Social Services worker Anna Tate-Garcia (Cardellini). Pat claims her children are being haunted by the Weeping Woman. Deemed preposterous, they are taken away from her and into care. Soon after, Anna and her family also become targeted by Pat’s phantom, which she must then defeat before it claims her own children’s lives.

As with The Nun, La Llorona stammers due to textbook execution. The sight of a black blood bleeding eyed hag searing kids’ skin is obviously unsettling but nowhere near as much as it should be. You can see the frights a mile off, then sigh as they land inelegantly with the numb, drunk thud of a lug stumbling backwards over crumpled trousers. The Weeping Woman lurks in shadows before hurling herself at victim’s faces, but we know she’s there and what form she’ll take because we’ve seen this stuff a thousand times in shoddy horrors that haunt the darker recesses of streaming sites; whipping cheap, jittery CGI to dilute frights into synthetic PG-like jitters.

It’s ineptly fashioned, but the script ticks along due to short scenes which maintain / retain attention and pace without stalling the swift and pithy plot. During later acts, Anna meets Father Perez (Amendola) a returning, supporting character from Annabelle, who enlightens her on La Llorona’s origins. This leads to a climax which looks set to fizzle into slapdash Exorcist swizz, but thankfully swerves to a surprisingly satisfactory yet perfunctory finale, with a little (too late) suspense and innovation.

Sadly, The Curse of La Llorona is mostly mediocre, but avoids being terrible and just about betters its bar-lowering predecessor The Nun by a whisker, despite lacking its arresting Gothic imagery. After La Llorona, director Michael Chaves is next set to tackle The Conjuring 3, so could wither the franchise further if his fright fashioning skills aren’t heightened to James Wan standards. But with more Annabelle and Nun films also on the horizon, there will be other opportunities to re-set the franchise to the levels of the brilliant first two Conjuring films, then possibly pave the way for more spin offs and follow ups.

James Cullen Bressack’s latest film, Blood Craft, is long on ideas, and short on ability. The story is fairly straightforward, and has a certain twisted charm to it: sisters Grace (Madeleine Wade) and Serena (Augie Duke) were abused horribly by their minister father (Dave Sheridan) all their lives, a situation exacerbated by the death of their mother, Hilde (Dominique Swain) when the girls are young. Their father dies years later, Grace comes home for the funeral, and Serena decides she wants to use the witchcraft learned from their mother to reanimate their father and torture him, so as to achieve some sort of posthumous retribution.

It’s an intriguing idea, but so poorly executed as to be cringe-worthy. The topic of childhood abuse is played like it came straight from the mind of an armchair psychologist, with Grace working as a private dancer for a series of men who verbally abuse her and ask her to perform degrading sexual acts with phrases too filthy to print (one involves placing the heel of a strappy shoe somewhere improper).

The conceit is, supposedly, that the now-grown sisters are the heroines of this story, but even they fight and bicker and argue so much that it’s difficult to find likeable aspects to the pair of them, much less the never-ending stream of incredibly awful men which peoples Blood Craft. The sheriff is abusive towards his son, the sheriff’s son is abusive toward the sisters, the father is both abusive to his family and stealing from the parish’s donation box – as a matter of fact, the only person seemingly beyond reproach is mother Hilde, who coughs into a hankie in one of her first flashback scenes.

The hankie, of course, comes away with a spattering of blood on it. Evidently, consumption is still a thing in the mid-’80s. Sadly, that’s about the only blood the audience gets until well near the end of  Bressack’s film. While the mutilation of the father after he’s been reanimated is pretty gruesomely impressive, it’s a long slog of poorly-acted flashbacks, expository dialogue, and incest before there’s anything approaching solid entertainment.

In the beginning, there was an idea. To bring together a group of remarkable people; to see if they could become something more. The Avengers. Twenty-one movies later (and counting), it’s safe to say that, for both Nick Fury and the folks behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that idea paid off. Building towards, working together and culminating in this… Endgame.

Of course, the MCU isn’t going anywhere, but it was left in ashes by the time the Mad Titan Thanos was done with it in Infinity War, wiping out half of the universe with only a click of his purple great sausage fingers. With the job done and Thanos seemingly retired to his farm (wearing a slobby t-shirt, no less) we’re left with only the original Avengers line-up, plus Captain Marvel, a Guardian of the Galaxy or two, and Ant-Man. If they can’t undo the Snappening, you can be damn sure they’ll avenge it.

Easier said than done, of course, with Scott Lang still trapped in the Quantum Realm, and Tony Stark floating around in a tin can, light years away from home. Then there’s the Hulk, left licking his wounds and hiding out in Banner’s psyche after Thanos smashed the green goliath good. Endgame begins with the surviving Avengers shattered in their defeat; mourning their losses and trying to figure out a way to repair the damage done. Some have moved on and accepted their lot, others, decidedly less so.

Where Infinity War scattered its pieces far and wide across the board, Endgame brings them back together again, assembled for what might be their final battle. Whatever else happens in the film is best experienced first-hand rather than spoiled or in an extensive plot synopsis. Suffice to say that there’s a plan, and that neither the Avengers nor Thanos are done with each other yet.

Structurally and tonally, Endgame is a very different film to its predecessor, and not the brooding great Infinity War extension many will have expected or wanted it to be. This is the MCU’s victory lap, celebrating the past and tying up loose ends as much as it sets up future instalments. As such, it’s surprisingly light and fluffy during its midsection, relying on silly plot devices and bearing more in common with an Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy outing than Winter Soldier, Civil War or any of the Russo Brothers’ previous movies. Infinity War was very funny too, but whole sections here are structured like broad hijinks comedy, with the Russos using the entire MCU as their play box.

Which leaves Thanos somewhat diminished; a lesser threat than he was previously, and side-lined for most of the movie. And by cutting down just to the core Avengers, others get the short thrift too, with new favourites and older faces getting shockingly little to do. Don’t go expecting Captain Marvel to come flying in to save the day, cosmic powers or no.

That it all comes down to a murky grey CGI slapfest is disappointing, given how beautiful the MCU has been in the past – and the action fails to live up to past highlights, even as the stakes have never been higher. The interplay, too, falls short. Even at three hours, there’s not enough time for everybody, and pivotal characters won’t even have shared two words by the time the credits roll.

But for the old guard, Endgame is a triumphant celebration in which everyone rises to the occasion, with some of the crew putting in their best performances yet. Hemsworth is a constant delight, the story taking him to surprising new places, and Evans and Downey Jr. prove to be the film’s beating, vulnerable heart. The film makes up to Renner for having him sit the last one out, giving Hawkeye some of its most potent, heartbreaking plot twists.

Even with one’s quibbles in mind, the film is a success and an astonishing achievement, true blockbuster cinema packed with laughs, action, fun cameos and breathtaking emotion on an incredible, unprecedented scale – delivering and subverting fan service in equal measure (and occasionally to irritating effect). It has too many pieces and too much to do to please all of the people all of the time, but most will be satisfied, if not overjoyed by what has been achieved here.

Avengers: Endgame is both the end of an era and the beginning of a new one; a briefly closed door; a definitive end, but with a caveat. What comes next is anybody’s guess but, Marvel, like Thanos serenely taking in the sunrise at the end of Infinity War, have earned a moment’s breather.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME / CERT: 12A / DIRECTORS: ANTHONY RUSSO, JOE RUSSO / SCREENPLAY: CHRISTOPHER MARKUS, STEPHEN MCFEELY / STARRING: ROBERT DOWNEY JR, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, CHRIS EVANS, ELIZABETH OLSEN, BRIE LARSON / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 25TH

Expected 10 out of 10

DIRECTOR: STANLEY KUBRICK | SCREENPLAY: STANLEY KUBRICK | STARRING: MALCOLM MCDOWELL, PATRICK MAGEE, ADRIENNE CORRI, MIRIAM KARLIN | RE-RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW IN SELECTED UK THEATRES

Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 big-screen adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange was for its time a film of the future. Given the highly-charged political climate we find ourselves in, not to mention recent concerns over street crime, it now remains a film for the present. British audiences will get yet another chance to view and review the film when it is re-issued as the latest Kubrick classic by the BFI as a UK wide release and the first in nineteen years from April 2019.

Kubrick conceived a heightened fantasy when he produced the film as a follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyssey, when his long-cherished Napoleon project fell through, but its unique mix of design (by the late John Barry) and weird language provided a tasty attraction to the youth of the early 1970s, leading to its notorious reputation in this country. There is little that this writer can add to the immense backlog of historical reference that has been written about A Clockwork Orange and readers can more or less rely on so much stuff out there about its troubled first-run history and its withdrawal by Kubrick before it’s re-issue in 2000 after his death. There is, of course, the excellent Taschen volume The Stanley Kubrick Archives which has a whole chapter dedicated to the film with official stills and interviews.

To the uninitiated, A Clockwork Orange is the tale of Alex (Malcolm McDowell), an unapologetic youth who presides over his gang of ‘Droogs’ in a crumbling London metropolis and pulls no punches when it comes to depicting the heinous acts of violence they participate in. However, Alex’s fellow ‘Droogs’, Dim, Georgie, and Pete (Warren Clarke, James Marcus, Michael Tarn) are beginning to question his motives and desire more legitimate means…

Although A Clockwork Orange does have a rather dated look nowadays, the electronic score by Walter Carlos, its universal themes of disenfranchised youth, and the subtext of political forces trying to find a solution to the malaise on its watch still resonate nearly half a century on.

The film uses violence in a purposeful way to make a constructive analysis of what inhabits an individual’s true nature, to an extent greater than any number of violent offerings before or since. Of course, much of the impact and quality of the film’s artistic intent is still down to Malcolm McDowell’s legendary performance as Alex, complimented by a great ensemble of supporting actors. From the opening stare through to the climax, McDowell owns the screen throughout and interprets Burgess’ words with enthusiastic vigour.

Better think fast: that expensive ladies’ handbag someone’s left on the metro is bound to be swiped by the first wastrel who sees it. Do you rescue it and to see where it leads you? Well of course you do, and especially if you’re Chloë Grace Moretz as bored New York waitress Frances, who clearly needs bit of intellectual excitement in her life (that’s what hanging out with Brooklyn Beckham does for you). Like an angel of mercy, Frances does the right thing and, ignoring the protestations of her flatmate (a feisty Maika Monroe) who sees the chance of a night splashing the anonymous cash ebbing away, she takes it back to its owner, a widowed European eccentric called Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert). What Frances really seeks is a mother figure and the lonesome Greta willingly fits the bill – at least at first. But the girl has, of course, stepped straight down a rabbit hole. There’s a signpost up ahead, next stop: the psycho-bitch zone!

After a seven-year absence from the big screen (since 2012’s Byzantium), the mercurial undulations of Neil Jordan’s career plateau somewhat with this handsomely-shot but clichéd psychological chamber piece.  From a story by Ray Wright (who co-wrote the screenplay with Jordan) it’s small in both scale and budget, unfurling  from that tasty Roald Dahl-style proposition of an opener into an all-female three-hander. As the unhinged Greta, Isabelle Huppert gets all the best lines and all the darkest laughs, proving yet again that she’s at the top of her game and getting better with age. The obligatory Stephen Rae cameo (this being a Jordan movie) is engineered for the sole purpose of providing Huppert a moment of demented nastiness so splendid you’ll wish the whole movie could pirouette away with such unselfconscious glee.

As it turns out, the oodles of class Huppert brings to proceedings aren’t served by a script that crunches through the gears rather too predictably once the big ‘ah-ha!’ twist is out the way early on, and runs out of originality completely come the ending, which relies on a thriller trope so creaky you’ll want to spray WD40 at the screen. A bit of a let-down given its credentials, but there’s still enough macabre high-jinks and deft directorial touches from Jordan to make it just about the sum of its Polanski-esque parts.

GRETA / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NEIL JORDAN / SCREENPLAY: RAY WRIGHT, NEIL JORDAN / STARRING: ISABELLE HUPPERT, CHLOË GRACE MORETZ, MAIKA MONROE / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 18TH

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

Hellboy, Mike Mignola’s most famous creation, is a generally beloved character amongst comic book readers, and had a pretty good run in the past when it comes to film adaptations. Guillermo del Toro delivered a superbly-crafted duology, and even the direct-to-DVD animated films were pretty decent. But, with little over a decade since the end of del Toro’s duology, as well as a failed attempt to deliver a third chapter, the decision was made to push the dreaded reboot button with filmmaker Neil Marshall at the helm. Normally, you’d expect something expect something amazing seeing this is the guy that gave us The Descent, Doomsday, and some of the best episodes of Game of Thrones, but sadly this is not just Marshall’s worst film but one of the biggest misfires in comic book movie history.

This is a sprawling abomination of a film with a sorry excuse of a story that sounds as if it was cobbled together by a bunch of half-crazed monkeys, making the messy Suicide Squad look like a coherent masterpiece in film making. Tonal switches happen left and right, being light and comedic one second and then serious and horrific the next, and each and every character just goes through the motions while the audience is left bored out of their minds.

Prior to the film’s release, Mignola and company bragged about how this film would be more faithful to the comics than del Toro’s duology, but the narrative is nothing more than a scruffy, unfocused patchwork of scenes barely hung together by weathered string. We have Nimue wanting to destroy humanity yet also wanting to claim Hellboy as her king, then we also have to deal with a vampire in Mexico, then we deal with giants located in England, then Baba Yaga turns up, then we deal with some Arthurian myths and legends, and so on. It’s nothing more than a series of unfortunate events with so much happening that it never once feels tight or cohesive in the slightest.

Not only is this non-comprehensible, but it’s also embarrassingly cheap to look at. The film is sugar-coated in CGI sploosh with horribly rendered creatures and monsters, gore, and green-screened edges so obvious that it makes CGI short films on YouTube look better by comparison. The colour palette is beyond atrocious, and combined with the cheap CGI delivers nightmarish flashbacks of Justice League.

Hellboy is painful to watch, but also painful to listen to thanks to its wooden dialogue and humour which induces a noisy, headache-inducing experience for the viewer. Speaking of noisy, despite lead David Harbour trying his best with the material that’s given to him, he lacks the unique quality that Ron Perlman had in spades and actually spends a lot of time shouting his way through the film, almost as if he too is annoyed to be in it. Even the ever-reliable Ian McShane looks fed up as he spends a lot of the film bickering with Harbour’s Hellboy as if they’re an old married couple, plus the talented Stephen Graham comes off as annoying in the vocal part he’s landed with. However, with the unlikeable characters on display, one gleaming beacon of light is Milla Jovovich as the camp, villainous Nimue, but she’s on screen far too little to make that much of an impact.

In the end, Hellboy is a joyless mess of a movie that lacks the heart, soul, passion or creativity that the iconic comic book hero deserves. Everything about it comes across as inept, ill-advised and annoying, right down to its characters, visuals, story and editing. There have been recent reports of behind the scenes turmoil, and regardless whether or not that’s true, you can almost tell that this must’ve been a troubled production that had no right being in the cinema. This is a film that should either be sent straight to DVD, Netflix or just the bargain bin.

HELLBOY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NEIL MARSHALL / SCREENPLAY: MIKE MIGNOLA, ANDREW COSBY / STARRING: DAVID HARBOUR, MILLA JOVOVICH, IAN McSHANE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW