Review Category: Movie

When a UFO is shot down over Russia, the crash landing obliterates several Moscow tower blocks and kills hundreds of people. Teenage girl Yulia, whose father is the military commander in charge of overseeing the crash site, encounters an alien scouring the rubble, and upon revealing himself to be an injured and rather hunky human-looking young man named Hakon, she does all she can to help him survive in the newly paranoid streets of the Russian capital.

 

Most alien encounter movies involve an extraterrestrial species who have come to conquer, enslave or exterminate, but this scenario is an interstellar equivalent of someone with a broken down car who just wants to fix it and be on their way, but suspicious locals won’t let him. It begins as an interesting idea, and one that allows focus to be placed on the human reaction to the situation. When people die those left behind need someone to blame, and the accusatory fingers are pointed at the alien presence as vitriolic resentment swells within the city now placed under martial law. Refreshingly, Yulia’s father isn’t the kind of gung-ho officer who presses military intervention on the extraplanetory visitors, but is instead reluctant to begin an assault and attempts to resolve the situation peacefully, perhaps conscious of the lives already lost unnecessarily and trying to pre-emptively save more.

 

However, whatever potential the story had is soon squandered. Once Hakon makes himself known and Yulia becomes increasingly attracted to him, the story quickly degenerates into the familiar YA tropes you’ve seen a dozen times before. Yulia ends up with a choice between two standard male archetypes, her current boyfriend who’s dangerous and exciting, or a potential new one who’s tender and emotional. No prizes for guessing which way her affections end up swinging. There’s no justification given for why Hakon looks so human, and aside from his being immortal there seems to be no difference in biology, to the extent that he’s even able to receive a transfusion of human blood. It seems like the only reason for it is so Yulia can find him irresistibly attractive without getting into some faintly disturbing interspecies romance territory.

 

To give the film credit where it’s due, the CGI work is exquisite, the realisation of the alien technology opting for the smooth curves of advanced sci-fi equipment rather than the rough grey heavy industry image set. A brief sequence showing the beauty of Hakon’s home planet, all verdant serenity and gravity-defying upward spirals of water, is like the cover of a pulp fantasy novel from the 1970s.

 

Towards the film’s end it attempts to drag itself from the teenage romance and tries to make a point about the sanctity of life and the aggressive and self-destructive nature of the human race, but really doesn’t provide any greater insight than far more talented sci-fi authors have been writing about for the best part of a century. Like its protagonists, Attraction is very pretty to look at, but gives us little to care about beyond surface detail.

 

ATTRACTION / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR: FEDOR BONDARCHUK / SCREENPLAY: ANDREY ZOLOTAREV, OLEG MALOVICHKO / STARRING: IRINA STARSHENBAUM, RINAL MUKHAMETOV, ALEXANDER PETROV, OLEG MENSHIKOV, EVGENIY MIKHEEV / RELEASE DATE: TBA

 

Expected Rating: 7/10

 

Actual Rating:

Taiwanese mule Nadow makes a living transporting drugs across the country for his gangster employers in a variety of inconspicuous manners. This time opting for a taxi, he is picked up by pushy driver Old Hui, a man down on his luck and craving any kind of human connection. As the two make their way on the lengthy journey, they find themselves in increasingly bizarre situations.

 

Godspeed takes a while to properly get into, for a number of reasons. It’s not until after two lengthy scenes that Nadow’s story even starts, initially making it a little confusing exactly who the main characters are supposed to be. Once the taxi ride road trip gets going and it becomes clear this will be the main crux of the film, there is not enough going on to properly maintain your interest.

 

The resultant tale is something akin to an organised crime riff on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with the main pair seeming to be bit players in a much larger story. The major events of a crime saga mostly take place off-screen without them, and it’s only in the few scenes that their story overlaps that we have any idea of exactly what’s happening. For the rest of the time, we are left with a somewhat absurdist road movie where character interactions take up most of the time, but not to any meaningful degree.

 

Hui’s desire to strike up conversation comes across as painfully desperate, the man not actually realising it’s quite possible that the reason nobody wants anything to do with him is that he’s really, really irritating. Characters tell long and rambling stories to make relatively simple points, and while this can certainly be an interesting method of characterisation if done right (like, say, in Quentin Tarantino’s films) here it just ends up seeming like laboriously overwritten dialogue that leaves you practically begging for them to get to the point so something might actually happen.

 

It’s a little difficult to properly classify exactly what kind of film Godspeed is trying to be, as it jumps between several things, often at jarring moments. It’s not exciting enough to be an action movie nor is it really funny enough to be a comedy, even one as dark as its humour is painted. It’s possible that there may be cultural issues lost in translation, but for the most part it seems to merely be a meandering tale that takes what feels like a long time to not really go anywhere.

 

GODSPEED / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MONG-HONG CHUNG / STARRING: MICHAEL HUI, NA-DOU LIN, LEON DAI, CHUNG-HUA TOU, MATT CHUNG-TIEN WU / RELEASE DATE: TBA

 

Expected Rating: 7/10

 

Actual Rating:

In the mountains of South Korea, young girl Mija lives with her grandfather and Okja, a genetically engineered ‘superpig’ who she grew up alongside. Okja was created as part of a marketing scheme run by a multinational bioengineering company, and after they return to reclaim her, Mija sets out to rescue her only friend.

 

Korean visionary Bong Joon-ho’s first feature since the magnificent Snowpiercer, Okja is as indefinable a beast as its titular creature. With its initially straightforward plot, child hero and cute CG animal co-star, in the beginning it seems to be a perfect family film, a pleasant yet exciting adventure story of a girl and her superpig. However, as it progresses it becomes increasingly grim and more than a little distressing, and by the end has morphed into something you most certainly wouldn’t want your kids to watch.

 

Despite her obtrusive size, Okja is an adorable creation, her appearance something akin to a hybrid of a hippopotamus and Falcor from The Neverending Story. It’s established early on that Okja has just as much affection for Mija as the girl does for her, and it’s also made clear that she possesses more than a rudimentary intelligence. In establishing her identifiable personality, it makes the plight to rescue her all the more meaningful, but also everything she is forced to endure all the more harrowing.

 

The film asks questions about the nature of industrial-scale farming and the ethics of raising animals for slaughter, but doesn’t actually go as far to take any moral stance, possibly acknowledging the issue to be too complicated to address without being seen as hypocritical. The simple story of Mija attempting to rescue Okja becomes overcomplicated after she encounters a band of some of the most polite animal rights activists you’ve ever seen, whose determination to expose the mistreatment taking place within the corporate facilities takes precedence over the safety of one animal, calling into question their priorities. Other adult characters, such as Tilda Swinton’s ambitious CEO and Jake Gyllenhaal’s jittery celebrity TV vet, are just as self-absorbed in their own ambitions, and with everyone else pursuing their own agenda to one extreme or another, Mija and Okja are the only innocents in the film. They want only to be left in peace and away from the scheming and selfishness, but are constantly denied at every turn due to what others want from them.

 

It’s difficult to establish exactly who Okja is aimed at. As previously mentioned, it really doesn’t work as a family movie, and its lack of clarity over anything it might be trying to say makes it a challenge to find anything to take away from its events, while its climax just fizzles out to an ending of rudimentary satisfaction, but not one satisfying enough to justify its lengthy running time. It’s an intriguing and entertaining movie, certainly, but also one where a little more focus could have made it so much better.

 

OKJA / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BONG JOON-HO / SCREENPLAY: BONG JOON-HO, JON RONSON / STARRING: AHN  SEO-HYUN, TILDA SWINTON, JAKE GYLLENHAAL, PAUL DANO, STEVEN YEUN, LILY COLLINS, GIANCARLO ESPOSITO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Expected Rating: 7/10

 

Actual Rating:

The concept of the getaway driver in the crime/heist sub-genre has been inherently appealing throughout the history of cinema, particularly the idea that a skilful driver who drives for crims may not be wholly bad himself and is just simply an active accomplice caught within an out-of-control criminal web. Cinema has dabbled with this idea from time to time, whether it’s Walter Hill’s The Driver, Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point or Peter Collinson’s The Italian Job. These genre conventions were utilised greatly recently with Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and now it’s Edgar Wright’s turn to take a crack at the genre, and boy, does it pay off with outstanding results.

 

Edgar Wright is a director who has made a huge impact in cinema thanks to his phenomenal Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End) and the fantastic yet highly underrated Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; what has made these films so unique and influential was their high concepts, fast energy and creative use of music, all identifiable traits crucial to the success of this particular outing. This doesn’t fall into the traditional trap of becoming too stylised that the narrative and character development ends up getting lost; instead, Wright uses his own unique and creative style to fuel and power up his story and characters, almost like the cars in this movie that have slick and stylish bodies whilst having powerful, functioning, well-oiled engines inside. Wright’s writing and characterisation clicks throughout to the point where you do understand and unravel the mindset of each of his characters, right down to their motivations, where they come from and what their dreams and desires are.

 

Skilled cinematographer Bill Pope (who previously worked on Wright’s Scott Pilgrim and The World’s End) once again proves his credentials by giving each frame of the movie life, vibrancy, and story, as every single frame of the movie tells its own little narrative which works perfectly within the mechanism of the movie. The car chases seen here are some of the best seen on film, harkening back to the great car chases of cinema yore such as Bullitt, The French Connection and The Blues Brothers, and resulting in a ballet of burnt rubber and screeching tyres. The soundtrack in this film is quite extraordinary, having been armed with “killer tracks” from Queen’s ‘Brighton Rock’ to Bob and Earl’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’, and each and every song included serves as something like a heartbeat to drive the pace and flow of the movie forward, as well as complementing the movie’s narrative almost in the same matter as a musical akin to Scott Pilgrim.

 

Each and every performance in this film is on-point and complements the film massively, and Ansel Elgort gives a breakout performance as the titular Baby. Having already given a charismatic performance back in The Fault In Our Stars, Elgort gives Baby real genuine confidence and vulnerability that makes you believe in him as a getaway driver with a heart of gold. As usual, the luminous Lily James excels as the object of desire for Elgort’s Baby, exuding an innocence and sweetness that instantly makes you fall in love with her. Kevin Spacey is simply phenomenal as the cold and calculating mastermind, polishing off his wry and slimy act that served him well in House of Cards, while Jamie Foxx is pure dynamite as the unstable shotgun-wielding cohort (then again, anything would’ve been better than Electro!). However, the standouts may be the electrifying duo of Jon Hamm and Eiza González, who feel like Bonnie and Clyde mixed with Joker and Harley Quinn. Hamm goes through an evolution of emotions that makes him both suave and terrifying in equal measure (certainly different from his Mad Men days), whilst González uses both her magnetic presence and sultry beauty (which helped her well with TV’s From Dusk Till Dawn) to give off an alluring yet deadly performance.

 

Edgar Wright has been an influential presence in cinema and once again, he delivers in spades with Baby Driver rocketing upwards into the higher echelons as one of the best films to come out of this year. Everything in this movie works across the board – the direction, the stylisation, the character dynamics, cinematography and so forth. It’s evident that a lot of heart and passion has gone into this and the results are truly awe-inspiring; this is a pedal-to-the-metal rollercoaster that’s not to be missed.

 

BABY DRIVER / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: EDGAR WRIGHT / STARRING: ANSEL ELGORT, KEVIN SPACEY, LILY JAMES, JON BERNTHAL, JAMIE FOXX / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Expected rating: 8/10

 

Final rating:

The Cars franchise has always been Pixar’s weakest series, and it’s debatable how much it even needed a third instalment (or after the cynical cash grab of Cars 2, deserved one). However, whether we wanted one or not here it is. Thankfully, the story has wisely ditched the espionage nonsense of the sequel – not even referencing its events so everyone can pretend it never happened – and takes the film back to its racing roots.

 

Time has gone by and Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) has gotten old, and now faces fresh competition from a new generation of technologically advanced vehicles with inherent advantages over older models, in particular obnoxious champion Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer). Incidentally, exactly where this new technology is developed or how it is implemented is another aspect of how we are required to ignore just how much the structure of Cars’ self-contained world makes absolutely no logical sense (our favourite theory is that the sentient cars rose up to overthrow and obliterate humanity in a great and terrible war, and the structures in the films that it’s physically impossible for vehicles to have constructed are the crumbling remnants of the once proud human race… but we digress).

 

After his sponsors sell their company to business magnate Sterling (a magnificently smarmy Nathan Fillion), Lightning is required to become more of a corporate mascot, but is still determined to prove himself worthy as a racer, so begins a fitness regime with upbeat young trainer Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo) to win back respect from others and himself by defeating his new rivals.

 

The setup is one familiar to any fan of sports films, that of the old champion struggling to find his place in a new world that has passed him by, everything that was once familiar having gradually eroded and only now that he has become obsolete does he even realise any change was underway. Like the first film, there is a meditation on the wisdom that comes with age, but even though Lightning is getting older he is evidently still to reach the point where this growth occurs, as he is just as reckless, impulsive and thoughtless as he ever was. Dissatisfied with Cruz’s training methods he decides to do things his own way, and then when unforeseen problems compound upon each other he gets angry with her for all the time wasted, despite the detours being things he decided he wanted to do, blaming her because she was there and got in the way.

 

Lightning eventually learns exactly the same lessons he did in the first film, that his arrogance is his own greatest weakness and that he needs to appreciate everyone who stands by him. As the film progresses he comes to understand that there are other achievements in life than simply winning. It ultimately boils down to Lightning realising that his legacy is not the number of victories he has or how long he can maintain them for, but is instead how much he acts as an inspiration to those around him and so their accomplishments become a reflection on himself as a mentor. Through the limited character development of Cruz there’s also a message chucked in about how girls should feel they have the right to do all the things they want to, even if the undertaking is traditionally male or perceived as being not feminine enough for them, but it’s poorly presented and more of an afterthought than an actual plot line.

 

Cars 3 is a jumble of ideas that never settles on any particular one, and as a result feels like a half-hearted effort from the typically reliable Pixar. In all honesty, you’re likely to get just as much out of the film as you’re expecting to. If you thought the previous films were entertaining and harmless fun then you’ll think this one is much the same. If you feel the series is a notable low point indicative of a typically inventive studio coasting along on its previous successes, then you’ll find it mildly distracting, but ultimately nothing special.

 

CARS 3 / CERT: U / DIRECTOR:  BRIAN FEE / SCREENPLAY: KIEL MURRAY, BOB PETERSON, MIKE RICH, BRIAN FEE, BEN QUEEN, EYAL PODELL JONATHON E STEWART / STARRING: OWEN WILSON, CRISTELA ALONZO, NATHAN FILLION, LARRY THE CABLE GUY, ARMIE HAMMER, CHRIS COOPER / RELEASE DATE: 14TH JULY

 

Expected Rating: 7/10

 

Actual Rating:

When their scheming uncle decides he has a right to their rural Pakistan home, teenage sisters Nazo and Saeda attempt to fight off his invaders with the help of their mother and their brother’s friend. With their neighbours warned off from providing assistance and the corrupt local police offering no help, they are truly on their own in their fight to survive and protect their home.

 

You can say one thing about My Pure Land: it does not mess about. The bullets begin flying mere minutes into the film, and the claustrophobic intensity of the situation is made apparent soon after. Although the size of the girls’ farmhouse and its outer walls function pretty well as a fortress, they are trapped within as much as the army of bandits are denied entry, and what was expected to be a simple claiming of property swiftly escalates into a full-on siege.

 

The action is regularly punctuated by flashbacks detailing the circumstances that led to them becoming a house of women, also showing the girls’ interactions with their father, who raised them with love and affection, ensuring they developed independent minds and notions of honour. The contrast between their characters at the two points in time is stark, particularly with elder sister Nazo, who forces her own transformation from idealistic girl to stoic warrior, taking responsibility for the home’s defence despite her youth.

 

Although it may not have been intentionally made as one, the film feels very much like a western, and certainly has all the hallmarks of one. The isolated setting, the outnumbered heroes, the ruthless villain and the faceless henchmen all echo the likes of Assault on Precinct 13, or that film’s progenitor Rio Bravo. However, this true story is a far cry from the macho overkill of such films. Bullets are used sparingly and are very much a finite resource nobody can afford to waste, and it is acknowledged that despite what action movies would have us believe, taking a life is not something to be done lightly.

 

The story suggests that land is not just a patch of dirt where you live, it’s also the life you’ve led and represents the potential for everything you hope the future could become, shown most clearly in one shot of bandits advancing across a field juxtaposed with Nazo’s memories of the happiness of a wedding that took place there. The defence of the sisters’ home is not just meeting a militant enforcement of a property dispute, but a fight for their right to live in peace, and as time wears on and despair begins to set in, you begin to wonder how the story can end in anything other than tragedy.

 

An important story beautifully told that highlights the inequality of Pakistan’s patriarchal society, My Pure Land is exciting, tense, uplifting and tragic, and uncompromisingly grips you right up to its final moments.

 

MY PURE LAND / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SARMAD MASUD / STARRING: SURAHEE ABRO, EMAN MALIK, SYED TANVEER HUSSEIN, RAZIA MALIK, ATIF AKHTAR BHATTI, TAYYAB AZFAL, AHSEN MURAD / RELEASE DATE: TBA

 

Expected Rating: 7/10

 

Actual Rating:

The recent release of the Director’s Cut of Raising Cain ably demonstrated that, given some points of reference and a bit of ingenuity, anybody can create something special from a different source point for their work. This is no truer than with this new online presentation of a popular character in the video game domain.

 

The makers of the brand new fan-made extended short (44 minutes in total) Max Payne: Retribution, producer Chloe Chudasama and multi-hyphenate talent Leroy Kincard, who writes, directs and co-stars in the film as the lead bad guy Jack Lupino, are to be applauded for this well-made, slickly shot adaptation of the video game which, if given the right platform and exposure, will appeal to both fans of the game and people who have been reared on the likes of Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino.

 

Max Payne (Joan James Muixi) is determined to get to the bottom of why his life has been turned upside down, thanks to old acquaintance Mona Sax (Grace Tyrrell) who approaches him with information that could be vital to the capture of (and possible revenge upon) drug lord Lupino, as vicious and brutal a baddie as you can get in this kind of film. Inevitably, given the nature of Payne in previous incarnations, violence is going to rear its ugly and vicious head and a confrontation is on the cards….

 

Max Payne: Retribution demonstrates what can be achieved with limited resources. Amazingly, for a film that was apparently shot (according to the producer) over three years, the continuity and stylishness is consistent enough to hold the attention. Shot in Kent, but made to look – with inserts – like New York City, the film moves at a fair pace and leaves the audience wanting more at the very end.

 

The filmmakers are intending to launch this with some fanfare, considering the amount of love and effort that has gone into it and with some online encouragement from fans and interested parties, they are certainly on the way to achieving a lot more beyond the world of Mr. Payne.

 

MAX PAYNE – RETRIBUTION / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: LEROY KINCAIDE / STARRING: JOAN JAMES MUIXI, LEROY KINCAIDE , GRACE TYRRELL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Newsflash! The big screen adaptation of the legendary (yes, we are being generous) TV series (or Action/Drama as many call it) Baywatch, received bad reviews! We know, talk about a shocker. Seriously though, while it is unsurprising the critical masses tried to drown this Action/Comedy, is it really deserving of the scorn? Or is there a joyously silly and hilarious beach set caper here in the same cheesily charming vein as the original show?

The plot sees Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) lead his Florida lifeguard team with a big smile but a stern sense of duty, a hero among his colleagues and the beach dwellers, Mitch soon finds his feathers ruffled by former Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer-come-celebrity Matt Brody (Zac Efron) who thinks he can just coast (so to speak) on his past reputation, however he soon finds there is more to working the Emerald Bay than towel thieves. That’s your plot and from therein we have drug smuggling, burning boats, dicks caught in wooden loungers and all manner of bombastic sequences, as Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon attempts to hit lewd gold with this update. Sadly the results seem to sink, as the film is admittedly not as aggressively awful as realistically feared but nor is it anywhere near as good as optimistically hoped, it just is ‘there’.

 

The biggest issue with Baywatch is that while passing gags are made at the expense of the show (ludicrous TV episode plots brought to task, slow-mo, referential cameos) the script never seems sure as to what level it is operating on. The action heavy and CGI assisted set pieces feel abstract to the kind of stuff the show used to tackle, as do the mega dirty gags. Then, on the flip side of that, despite some references, the film really misses countless opportunities to create a genuinely affectionate and funny homage, recalling David Gordon Green’s failed Fantasy/Comedy Your Highness in that respect. Instead it feels like a ho-hum remake of Bad Boys II (with a bickering male lead duo, loads of swear gags, explosive chases and even a morgue scene), which results in a very muddled affair, that’s less Baywatch and more Michael Bay-watch.

 

There are some laughs to be had but they are not of the gut busting kind, although this can hardly be blamed on a very game cast. Dwayne Johnson livens the film up with his consistent charm, just as Efron is committed to his savage self-mockery. Jon Bass as techie turned lifeguard Ronnie is also up for a bit (ok, a lot) of self-deprecation, Kelly Rohrjach and Alexandra Daddario are less well blessed with development as CJ and Summer respectively (but do what they can), which is strange considering the film’s strangely feministic villain in Priyanka Chopra, which feels a touch randomly inserted.

 

Overall Baywatch has a committed, beautiful and charming cast but fails to give them a fun story to work with, instead we are left with something that is not offensively bad just intermittently daft, not particularly hilarious and unfortunately instantly forgettable. So, not quite the cancerous boil on cinema some have made it out to be, just not all that good, mind you, at least it is an improvement on the hope destroying dreck that was Dirty Grandpa. Then again so is rectal surgery.

 

BAY WATCH / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: SETH GORDON / SCREENPLAY: DAMIAN SHANNON / STARRING: DWAYNE JOHNSON, ZAC EFRON, KELLY ROHRJACH, ALEXANDRA DADDARIO, JON BASS, PRIYANKA CHOPRA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 2/10

Actual Rating:

In This Corner of the World feels like a pair of movies spliced together. It first jumps through the 1930s and 40s, watching imaginative girl Suzu grow up, her artistic soul capturing the everyday wonder she sees in the world around her in a nostalgic rush of childhood innocence. Not long after she is married at eighteen and goes to live in the port city of Kure, the Second World War comes home to Japan and her creativity is put to different use as she takes on the responsibilities of spouse and adult, her youthful dreams making way for adult duties.

 

Despite similar thematic content of survival in wartime Japan, the film is nowhere near as emotionally crippling as Studio Ghibli’s Grave of the Fireflies (and let’s face it, what is?), but it nevertheless refuses to shy away from the grim tribulations faced by the people caught up in the destructive might of the faceless and unfeeling war machine.

 

As the war progresses life becomes increasingly harsh, first with rationing becoming ever more stringent and the undercurrent of paranoia gradually increasing (at one point Suzu is accused of spying by the military police after being caught sitting on a hillside idly sketching the battleships moored the city’s harbour). Then things take on a decidedly more frantic pace when the American air raids begin on Kure and the threat of bombardment remains omnipresent, along with the requirement to run to a shelter at a moment’s notice. The relentless onslaught is made all the more poignant by knowing full well the fate that awaits the nearby city of Hiroshima (also Suzu’s hometown where her family still live), and is made even more tense if you’re not sure of the exact date on which Oppenheimer’s nightmare was realised, so when the moment arrives it almost comes as a relief so you can stop dreading it.

 

Unlike most films set during wars, it takes no sides nor makes any statement of morality, since for civilians the larger issues of what exactly is being fought over remains mostly irrelevant. Even the Americans constantly bombing their city don’t exactly register as the enemy, or even as actual people. All the townsfolk see is the squadrons of bombers soaring overhead as the air raid sirens wail their interminable song heralding imminent destruction, and then the aftermath as they have to just pick up and carry on. It may not be the most dramatic of achievements, but Suzu’s quiet determination to not be run down by adversity and keep doing what little she can to aid her family in getting by makes her just as much a hero as anyone, her dauntless optimism an understated superpower.

 

Like one of Suzu’s artistic sketches, In This Corner of the World is a beautiful and compelling portrait of real life, and despite its harsh portrayal of the realities of war it’s a story in which hope remains paramount, where in one way or another the humanity of ordinary people will always prevail.

 

IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SUNAO KATABUCHI / STARRING: NON, YOSHIMASA HOSOYA, NATSUKI INABA, MINORI OMI, DAISUKE ONO, MEGUMI HAN / RELEASE DATE: 28TH JUNE

 

Expected Rating: 7/10
 

Actual Rating:

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy is a sequel to 2012 trashfest Bad Kids Go To Hell (originally released in the UK as The Haunting of Crestview High), itself adapted from a schlocky comic book of the same title featuring bloody shenanigans at a posh school. It doesn’t actually matter if you haven’t seen it because the straightforward plot is recapped in an opening faux-comics montage, there’s not exactly a vast amount of pertinent details needing understood, and much of it can be inferred from dialogue anyway.

 

The basic plot sees a quintet of ethnically diverse teenage stereotypes arrive for Saturday detention, and one by one begin dying in increasingly brutal fashions. The crux of the story comes from rebel girl Siouxsie having hacked her way onto the detention list so she can investigate the death of her sister at a party, which was written off as a suicide but she believes was murder, with each of her fellow stuck-up Breakfast Club holding a piece of the true story.

 

Ben Browder returns from the previous film as creepy janitor Max, but once again doesn’t have enough of a presence, especially considering the suggestive flashes that there is much more to the man hidden beneath his dim-witted façade. This film also marks Browder’s directorial debut, and while he manages to create an atmosphere of surreal chaos using sinister lighting and tilted camera angles, it isn’t enough to maintain interest in a straightforward story that long outstays its welcome.

 

To be fair, there is some effort to expand the setting and avoid the story being a complete retread, but unfortunately it’s precisely this extra material that causes the film to drag. Watching thoroughly unpleasant and utterly unlikable people be killed in imaginatively gruesome ways is one of the joys of watching slasher movies, especially in this case where their being rich and entitled gives them an inflated sense of self-importance, but the ratio of death scenes to time passed is not enough to satiate even the most patient of gorehounds, especially with a lengthy climactic sequence that throws in two too many plot twists in an attempt to make the story appear craftier than it actually is.

 

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy is certainly a film aware of how inherently daft it is, but it’s nowhere near good enough to praise, nor does it reach the levels of endearingly bad in the way a legion of cult movies have remained popular, and it’s this frustrating middle-of-the-road quality that makes it difficult to recommend to anyone. The film finishes with a story thread unresolved and ends with a stinger strongly suggesting that ideas for more films are in the works, and while this isn’t exactly the most auspicious jumping off point for a series continuation, there really isn’t anything to stop another of these films from getting made. After all, this one did.

 

BAD KIDS OF CRESTVIEW ACADEMY / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR: BEN BROWDER / SCREENPLAY: BARRY WERNICK, JAMES R HALLAM / STARRING: SAMMI HANRATTY, COLBY ARPS, SOPHIA TAYLOR ALI, ERIKA DALY, MATTHEW FRIAS, BEN BROWDER, GINA GERSHON, SEAN ASTIN / RELEASE DATE: TBA

 

Expected Rating: 6/10

 

Actual Rating: