Godzilla VS Biollante

Biollante Night

Godzilla VS Biollante
aka Gojira vs. Biorante
Directed by Kazuki Ômori,
Kôji Hashimoto & Kenjirô Ohmori
Japan 1989
Toho/Criterion Collection
Blu Ray Zone B

I’d not seen Godzilla VS Biollante before this new Criterion Collection Blu Ray version of the film but, while I am certainly most grateful to finally get to see it, I do have a couple of criticisms of Criterion’s handling of it... which I’ll get back to later.

While this is mostly known as being the second entry in the Heisei wave of Godzilla films, after 1984’s The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1985), it’s technically actually the first, since the 1984 reboot was released during the Showa era. But it really doesn’t matter and lumping it all in gives a clearer delineation of how this second wave of films all fit together.

After some eerie music while the typography on screen tells us about the four official government warning signs of The Big G (which read in a similar vein to the three rules which make up UFO close encounters) accompanied by some more eerie music playing in the background, we are then treated to some credits which have what is presumably the denouement of the previous film playing out, as Godzilla is trapped in a volcano. After this, a scientist’s daughter is killed while he is experimenting with genetic cells taken from the monster.

Cut to five years later and his invention of an anti-nuclear weapon bacteria using said cells is at the violent centre of a conflict for control of the material, between the Japanese government, the clueless Americans and the evil people from the fictional land of Saradia (which I think is meant to be a pointed reference to Saudi Arabia). There’s a lot of convoluted plot and action here, leading to the reawakening of Godzilla from his volcano slumber but, while this is all going on, the scientist accidentally creates a new, giant plant monster called Biollante, by mixing the cells of Godzilla with those of a rose and his late daughter. All the expected shenanigans ensue as gigantic monster battles are fought.

And, it’s not the best of the Godzilla films (contrary to what a 2014 poll of the Japanese people said) but, after a very slow lead in, it’s not a bad one either. Although I would have to say that the giant monster battles between Godzilla, Biollante and a Thunderbirds-like submersible air craft called Super X2, which looks like just what International Rescue might have sent, are actually pretty dull. Lots of water splashing, reflected heat breaths, tentacle grabbing and tail wagging theatrics. But it’s just not on a par with some of the sillier (and therefore cooler) Godzilla films of the Showa era. Although, there is the welcome return of the maser cannons from those earlier films.

There are also some nice shot compositions including a cool moment where some big, building windows going back to one point perspective in the foreground of a shot are used to house the establishing moment of people arriving at the building. There are, however, also some not so great things about the movie.

For example, the score by Kôichi Sugiyama seems somewhat out of place in a Godzilla film. Sounding more like the kind of score Ron Goodwin might have written for a British war movie, for the most part. Great as a stand alone listen but, yeah, it really doesn’t help the movie any, for a lot of the time. Toe tapping but a bad support for the visual image. Which would explain why there’s also a lot of tracked in music from Akira Ifukube’s brilliant Godzilla scores included too, a fair bit of the time. And in comparison to the new stuff, this reappropriated stuff sounds magnificent. There’s a great moment in the tale where, after a fairly dull opening, I really started investing in the film and a good deal of that was due to the re-use of Ifukube. There’s a scene where two of the principal leads go and see a classroom of children who all have extra sensory perception (that’s ESP to you and me folks) at the Japanese Psyonics Centre (don’t ask) and they are busy drawing what they have all individually dreamed of the night before. In a wonderful moment foreshadowing the reawakening of Godzillla, when they are asked what they have drawn, the kids all hold up very differently styled illustrations of The Big G and, as they do so, Ifukube’s wonderful Godzilla march swells up in, to overpower the mix and, as it did, the film finally had its hooks in me.

I’ve got two more complaints to level at Criterion. Various people speak English a lot in the early parts of the film but, they are clearly not speaking their first language because, honestly, the accents and mutilation of the language is so bad I could only understand about every eighth word. Which is unfortunate because, in these sequences, the subtitles are in Japanese rather than English like the rest of the movie. So, yeah, I had no idea what was going on for a lot of the time during those scenes. I would have thought Criterion would have been all over that.

And the other thing, which is problematic to me as a fan, is the existence of an individual release of the film from Criterion in the first place. Sometime during the pandemic (or was it just before?), Criterion put out a beautiful book/box set of the entire run of Showa era Godzillla films and very welcome it was too. We have all been patiently waiting for them to release the other two big waves of Godzilla films in similar presentations. Why, then, are we getting this little individual release? The fan base is obviously there and chomping at the bit for a proper release of this stuff so... this really is annoying you guys! It almost feels like a drug dealer giving his customers a taste of the product before waiting to get them hooked properly later on. These other two Godzilla waves need to happening soon... is that not obvious to the marketing people at the label?

Anyway, that’s me done on the new Criterion release of Godzilla VS Biollante. If you are a fan of these kinds of movies then you will probably enjoy this one. If not then, well, probably stay away is my best guess.

Doctor Who - The Story And The Engine

 

ScheWhoRazade

Doctor Who -
The Story And The Engine
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 10th May 2025

Warning: Story and cameo spoilers.

Yeah, go on then. Some films or TV shows have absolutely terrible trailers which practically warn you away from the idea of watching them but, if you do end up seeing the final product, they actually turn out pretty great... the Terry Gilliam movie The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen would be a typical example for me (and, of course, the opposite effect can, more often be true). And this latest episode of Doctor Who, The Story And The Engine, is a good example of just this phenomenon. I watched the preview trailer last week and my heart sank. It looked absolutely dire and I finally gave up on the thing. But, since I’m guessing that this will be the show’s final season before cancellation (I sincerely hope not but the ratings are the lowest the show has ever had in its 62 year history), I soldiered on and just wanted to get through this experience as quickly as possible because... well, I’ll miss it when it’s gone.

So I’m thankful that this particular episode was actually a nice change of pace and a breath of fresh air for the continuing adventures of The Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa and Belinda, played by Varada Sethu. And it’s all set in a barber shop in Lagos. Well, not just in Lagos.... because once you enter through the door and become one of the customers in the small shop where 99% of the show takes place, you are held there indefinitely because the shop is also part of a giant mechanical spider travelling through space and powered by the stories that the customers tell, to keep it going on its journey and keep themselves alive (so, yeah, a spin on the story of Scheherazade for sure).

An it’s a talkie one which doesn’t rely at all on any action (although the special effects team powered by the Disney money certainly couldn’t resist an explosive conclusion to the tale) and instead it’s all about why the new owner of the shop is involved in all this in the first place and how he is, with the help of the daughter of a God, on a special agenda of his own making. And, okay, maybe it dragged just a little towards the end and couldn’t, perhaps, bring in a denouement quite worthy of the prolonged build up but... I have to say I was mostly intrigued by it and also pleasantly surprised that the appearance of Mrs. Flood this week (played by Anita Dobson) seemed almost coincidental to the story and less sinister (saying that, I don’t think the idea of delving into stories, is quite done with for this year’s series).

And, when the various tales were being told, we got a nice mixture of live action coupled with unfolding animations which were rendering the words of the story as each person spoke. This was nicely done and added rich texture to the episode, for sure.

Now there were some slight down beats, since the main character once again lived up for my new name for this incarnation, The Crying Doctor. But, there was also a nice surprise in the brief cameo return of Jo Martin as the incarnation known as The Fugitive Doctor. I’m thinking we may not be quite done with her yet... or at least that might have been the long term plan. It’s nice to see her in a story outside of the Jodie Whitaker era of the show and perhaps we will see her at the end of this season. It was also nice to hear and see clips from the lives of past incarnations of the Doctors once again... good stuff.

But that’s me done with The Story And The Engine and I thought that was one of the best, if not the best, of this new series by far. And once again I’m in the position where the trailer for next weeks show, which takes place in and around a kind of Intergalactic version of the Eurovision Song Contest, looks absolutely dire and unwatchable. So who knows, perhaps it will be a good one after all.

Demons

Screening Doom

Demons
aka Dèmoni
Italy 1985
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Mild spoilers I guess... but it’s not that kind of film.

It’s been a while since I first saw Demons, which was one of the first Italian horror movies I saw when I was catching up on Dario Argento’s gialli (and his very occasional foray into horror with films like Suspiria, reviewed here and Inferno, reviewed here). I remember I purchased this when all the international barriers were dropped at the dawn of the ‘DVD age’, and acquiring it bundled together with the sequel along with two other Argento double features on the US Region Anchor Bay releases. Not that this film is directed by Argento but, he did produce it in a very ‘hands on’ fashion (from what I’ve been able to find out) and also co-wrote the final screenplay version. The film was partially shot in Berlin but it’s interesting that, in Germany the films were released back to front... so Demons 2 was released as Demons and it was followed by this first movie, released over there as Demons 2. Which is strange but I remember loving this one a couple of decades ago and thought I’d revisit it on the latest of Arrow’s double bill Blu Ray releases of the movie, which has even more extras on it than their previous release.

The film is actually directed by Lamberto Bava, whose father was the great Mario Bava and, while you may say that the bright, coloured stylistic lightning could be seen as an Argento signature on the production, it’s more than likely inherited from the very strong lighting schemes used by Lamberto’s father, who Argento was also heavily influenced by.

The film starts off with Claudio Simonetti’s addictive Demons theme, which also incorporates elements of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue and D Minor (if I’m not mistaken) and Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King as part of the driven synthesiser melody, playing on the soundtrack as one of the lead characters, Cheryl (Natasha Hovey), is given a couple of free cinema preview tickets after a train ride, before meeting up with her friend Cathy (Paola Cozzo). There’s a nice replica of said ‘golden ticket’ in the latest Arrow box. Incidentally, the guy in the mask who gives her the ticket is played by future director Michelle Soavi and, there are actually three masks in this film which help drive the plot. One on his face, the one in the Metropol cinema where Cheryl, Cathy and a load of other customers converge to see the new horror film preview (and which, importantly, one of the customers cuts her cheek on) and the one in the ‘movie within a movie), where one of the characters on screen also cuts their face on a mask and subsequently turns into a demon. Something which also happens to the audience member who cut her cheek, as she’s examining the cut in the bathroom. Then, we find that the scratches and bites of the demon infects other people and turns them into demons (much like the bite of a zombie in a zombie movie, which the demons in this film are just another iteration of really, except they obviously move a heck of a lot faster).

When the second victim, trying to tend to the scratches on her neck from her friend, stumbles behind the screen, a sequence is playing in the movie where a demon is trying to cut through a white sheet and, of course, victim number two promptly rips and stumbles through from the other side of the screen at the precise moment the on screen demon tears through. Panic soon ensues as the surviving customers, who aren’t able to get out of the cinema which has bizarrely walled itself up (at least, that’s the way it appears from the inside) attempt to fight off the demons and then attempt to escape the auditorium somehow. It’s a simple enough plot and the film did huge business when it was released, prompting one true sequel and a fair few others which were retitled as Demons sequels in various territories (and which were not actually connected to the Demons films in any way... although I heard very recently that the original director is currently working on some kind of reboot of this one).

And there’s lots of things worth noting about the film. Such as a whole host of posters in the cinema lobby, for films like the Giorgio Moroder recut of Metropolis (if I’m remembering it right, the timing would be around then for that version of the film), the Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu and even one of Dario Argento’s classics, Four Flies On Grey Velvet (which I reviewed here). Also in this and a fair few other scenes, we have the smartly dressed cinema usher played by none other than Nicoletta Elmi, who played the nasty little girl in Argento’s Deep Red (reviewed here) as well as child appearances in other famous gialli like A Bay Of Blood and Who Saw Her Die? The film also features one of Argento’s daughters, Fiore, in a small role (his other very young daughter, Asia, would have a lead child role in the sequel).

Another nice little joke is that there is a gang of thugs driving around outside in the city and one of them is sniffing cocaine through a straw from a Coca Cola can. So it’s definitely ‘the real thing’ but I can’t imagine Coca Cola being that happy with that particular piece of product placement.

Demons is a nice enough, entertaining film and it has some cool photography plus a certain ‘teen horror’ vibe to it. However, now I look back at it, I can’t help but feel that the photography is harmed quite a lot by the rapidity of the editing. It feels really choppy and some of the cuts back and forth are quite jarring now, it seems to me. Also, this time around, I was noticing a lot of the long shots and closer takes just weren’t matching all that well.

The choppiness isn’t helped much by the gang of thugs riding around the city who do finally make their way in to the cinema but, well, they needn’t have bothered, it seems to me. Their only real purpose in the narrrative seems to be to drive around in the car so we can cut back to them with a different pop song by the likes of Billy Idol or Motley Crue playing on the soundtrack, so the record company can make a killing on the tie in album. But the songs sound atrocious most of the time and don’t help the film. I’ve had at least two versions of the soundtrack over the years but none of the ones I own have ever featured the songs... just Claudio Simonetti’s brilliant score.

Bits of the film work but bits really don’t, such as Urbano Barberini ridiculously riding a motorbike over the cinema seat backs and somehow still staying upright (they must have built a hidden ramp to do this... which is a cheat as far as I’m concerned because there’s no way, surely, you could do this in real life) and the bizarre non-sequiter of a helicopter crashing through the roof of the cinema and providing a convenient escape route for the two surviving (up to that point) characters.

So, yeah, mixed feeling on this one. Demons is not quite the film I remember but it does have a certain something in that the gore effects are all practical effects and the photography is great. I’d still recommend it to certain ‘horror friends’ but I had less of a good time with it now than I did 20 odd years ago. It will be interesting visiting the sequel soon as I remember being very disappointed in that one from the outset... what’s the betting that I like it more than the first one now? I shall soon see, I guess.

Thunderbolts*

The Mild Bunch

Thunderbolts*
Directed by Jake Schreier
USA 2025
Marvel Disney
UK Cinema Release Print - IMAX version

Warning: Yeah, there’s some spoilerage here... big one at the end.

Thunderbolts* is the final part of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic universe and it’s almost but, not quite, a good film too. This one involves straggling characters from previous films and TV shows coming together to form a ‘rag tag’ group of C-list Marvels going up against a larger power and, ultimately, winning the day... in a fashion.

So we have the brilliant Florence Pugh being interesting as ex-Black Widow Yelena (sister of Natasha), David Harbour returning as her father, the hilarious Red Guardian, Sebastian Stan back as main staple character Bucky Barnes (still a million miles away from the Bucky I know from the comics but a pretty good character and actor, nonetheless), Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt) as failed Captain America substitute gone rogue American Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster (also from Black Widow, reviewed here and Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr (from Ant-Man And The Wasp, reviewed here). All working for and against (it gets blurry) the MCU TV and movie character Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

And I’m telling you now, don’t get too attached to these characters until half an hour has passed because the one I was most interested in seeing developed as a character gets killed very early in the film (I won’t reveal who here, though)*. We also have, spoiler alert, Lewis Pullman playing Bob (aka The Sentry and The Void)... I’ve not read any of the comics of this character so can’t tell you if he’s a good version of him or not.

What I can tell you is that I was really engaged with this movie and having a good time for the first three quarters... which involved setting up the characters, trapping them all in an armoured bunker and following them as they escape and make their way back to New York for a final reckoning. Alas, the last quarter of the movie seemed pretty dire to me and really took the wind out of my sails. As soon as they’re back in New York, things got both ridiculous and dull. For me anyway.

So, I didn’t quite like this as much as the last Marvel movie, Captain America - Brave New World (reviewed here) but I do like the characters better. Although, it has to be said, the dialogue writing on this  was not a patch on any of their previous appearances.

There are a couple of problems with it.

For instance, the film starts out with Florence Pugh jumping off the second tallest building in the world and she fought to do this sequence for real herself (pulling a page from Tom Cruise’s book) and, yeah, she really does it. The down side is that I’m telling you this because, if you didn’t know this, you wouldn’t have been able to tell. It looks like a stunt double doing it due to the way it’s cut and lack of close ups on her face. If you’re going to throw your lead actress off such a tall building for a movie, then you might as well shoot it to make it recognisable as such, no?

Another thing is that, while it has a nice gritty aesthetic for the majority of the movie, there’s a certain point... a big battle scene where we first meet The Sentry in his ridiculous costume... where the aesthetic is just clashing with the action on screen. The result was... and to be fair I would have thought of this no matter how the rest of the movie was filmed... I sat there in the cinema thinking, for a good few minutes, that I was watching Superman IV - The Quest For Peace. Honestly, The Sentry to me just looked like Nuclear Man from that unfortunate movie. It popped me right out of the film and I had a hard time climbing back into it. It also didn’t help that the resolution of the film reminded me of Ang Lee’s muddled ending of Hulk. It’s all about fighting your inner demons folks, right? A more philosophically based internal battle was not the conclusion this movie needed. At least, I didn’t think it worked that well.

Now, one of the things the trailers and even the IMAX countdown opening were pushing was the next movie in the MCU (which comes out in a couple of months)... and there are two post credits scenes in this one. All I’m saying is, if you want to be surprised by the second one then, seriously, don’t look at the music credits on this movie (it’s a complete spoiler). What it also does, in my opinion, is take the wind out of the sails of the reveal of the time period of the next movie by throwing out the term ‘interdimensional’. I mean, I expected the next movie would be a multiverse movie anyway (and the trailers look terrible) but this is pretty much confirmed here.

Finally, you’ll notice that the title of Thunderbolts* has an asterisk on it. Now I’m sure there must have been some people wondering what this means but, I’m sure there must have been as many people thinking... “no, please don’t do the obvious here because this would be such bad news for the franchise". But, yes, they totally go there with the whole asterisk thing and, well, it kind of takes away hope for decent screen time for certain returning characters in future installments, in a way. All I’m saying is... I'm guessing Purdey and Gambit will not be turning up in the future of the franchise (and if you’re British you’ll probably know exactly what I’m saying here).

And that concludes my review of Thunderbolts*. Starts off good, continues that way for a while... has a terrible last act. But it was nice seeing Yelena and Red Guardian again... although there seems to be no explanation for the absence of Rachel Weisz here (did I miss something in a TV show?).

*Although it’s not stopped the marketing team from adding that character into a scene that doesn’t include said person for some of the publicity shots... see above.

Doctor Who - Lucky Day

Suit Pursuit

Doctor Who - Lucky Day
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 3rd May 2025

Warning: Very light spoilers.

Well, like I said in my review of the first episode of the current series of Doctor Who... these are probably going to be no more than very short capsule reviews for this new iteration of the show from hereon out. Mostly because the miss part of the hit and miss element of any bunch of episodes of a TV show has been somewhat elevated for this show for a few years now and, certainly with this latest story, Lucky Day, while better than last week’s shenanigans (reviewed here), it kind of winds up in the miss camp once again.

This one starts off with a boy, played by the excellent Benjamin Chivers (from The Devil’s Hour, reviewed here and here), although the IMDB is not listing him as being in this episode as yet, it seems*. Anyway, he stumbles upon The Doctor and then, because of his obsession with the encounter, grows up into someone who, it turns out, is just a wrong ‘un. Unfortunately, Chivers only plays the part for a couple of minutes before being replaced by an actor playing a grown up version of him for the remainder of the episode.

Now, this one is a Doctor lite episode and so I was kinda looking forward to this one because, two of my all time favourite episodes of the modern era of Doctor Who were similarly Doctor lite. Those being the wonderful fan favourite Blink and the equally wonderful, fan reviled Love And Monsters. So I was expecting more from this one, which is yet another story of the aftermath of an old companion getting left behind... and this time it’s the turn of this Doctor’s previous companion from last year’s series, Ruby Sunday (played once again by Millie Gibson).

And I don’t think I want to give any spoilers away on this one. It’s a clever story idea up to a point, with a central twist that you’re probably going to see coming a mile off and some questionable ways in which the story is pushed forward (in terms of future continuity of the show, I reckon). One of the bits of business in this episode shows two men in suits pretending to be aliens. Alas, when I first saw the real aliens, before this minor twist, I also thought they looked like men in suits so... yeah, where did all that Disney money go in this episode? The monsters look kind of pathetic, it has to be said.

Gibson was good in her role though and had good support from Jemma Redgrave as regular UNIT chief Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and a few of the other regular UNIT members. It was almost a good episode but... yeah, it just didn’t cut it and, if you care about what happens to the Ruby Sunday character, then you’re probably not going to be happy with the direction of her story arc in this one. I can only assume that we will be seeing her again in this year’s series finale (show finale?) because there are a few elements to this one that look like writers just positioning building blocks to set up for later use... including, of course, the now regular appearance of Anita Dobson as Mrs. Flood, once again turning up in places she shouldn’t be.

And that ‘s me done. Like I said, the best I can say about Lucky Day is... it’s not as bad as last week’s episode. I just wish Doctor Who could find a credible way to recover from what the show has now become. I guess I’ll keep watching ‘til the bitter end now.

*Okay, they’ve put it up this morning? Why was it not on there months ago? It’s not a spoiler.

Opus

Day

Opus
Directed by Mark Anthony Green
USA 2025
A24

There have been a lot of A24 movies coming out recently. Now, the word of mouth on Opus seems to be quite bad but, I reckon this is to do with two specific elements. Firstly, the expectation that it’s a horror film. It’s not. Now, it could have gone that way for sure and the trailer hints that it might have had the possibility to veer towards that direction but, my own reaction to the trailer was that, yeah, this one did not look like a horror movie and, certainly, A24 have been moving away from those a little too. So I suspect all the people going to the cinema to see a horror film may have been a little disappointed. Not me though, I got exactly what I was expecting to see… a fairly tight, well made and very unsettling thriller.

It starts off pretty strongly with a credit sequence that focuses on people dancing at a pop concert. But it doesn’t really look at crowds, just sequences of individuals against a dark background (much like some of those old Shaw Brothers kung fu movies) and focussing on their movements and faces, almost like a direct call back to the kind of ‘typage’ shots Sergei Eisenstein was pumping out in his films back in the 1920s.

After that fairly lengthy sequence, we’re then thrown quickly into the main plot and the character of a young journalist called Ariel, played brilliantly by Ayo Edebiri, whose boss has not been giving her the breaks she needs to advance her career, after three years with her newspaper. And then, out of the blue, an old, legendary pop star phenomenon, Alfred Moretti (played in much exaggerated fashion by John Malkovich, I’ll get to him in a minute), comes out of retirement after thirty years in the wilderness and a handful of journalists are personally invited to stay the weekend at his ranch, which amounts to an enclosed village community, in order to hear his new album, Caeser’s Request. Included in the invites are Ariel, her boss (played by Murray Bartlett), a TV show host (played by the always watchable Juliette Lewis) and an influencer played by Stephanie Suganami.

And when they get there for their weekend programme of learning, manicures, fashion pampering etc, they are even assigned their own concierge… Ariel’s being played by the always cool Amber Midthunder. But here’s the thing… the whole place worships Moretti (he even has a CLAP4ME numberplate on his private bus) and so do his guests, apart from Ariel who seems to be the only one who has her head screwed on, even when things start to seem slightly off. In fact, the whole thing shows the signs of being a ‘cult’ set up, which is a religion practiced by Moretti called Levelism (any digs at rubbish like scientology are, I’m sure, well earned).

And like I said at the start of this… it’s very unsettling but, also, quite expertly put together. For example, there’s a scene which is a close up montage of a man cracking open Oyster shells with a knife and it’s very intense and aggressively edited to get a certain mood across. And while the film is peppered with some great and silly throw away lines such as “You have Pam Greer’s bone structure.”, the off kilter tension keeps building as Ariel realises how much of a prisoner she has become this weekend.

And then there’s Moretti himself… the legendary music star who has a reputation greater than Prince, Madonna and The Beatles combined. Malkovich plays him intensely but, I would say, thoroughly tongue-in-cheek and has a lot of scenery chewing fun with it. I think some people maybe missed this distinction in his interpretation because there’s a thoroughly preposterous scene where he does an up close and personal song and dance performance for his small group of guests and, yeah, it’s one of the most over-the-top performances I’ve seen. And I suspect this is the other thing where the audience is either going to lose it or stick with it. I embraced the silliness of it because I realised it was a joke (I hope) but.. yeah… I suspect this is where the film loses a lot of people. Which is a shame because, from this point on, the story gets really sinister and, for all the guests, pretty life threatening. It’s very similar in tone to the earlier A24 hit which I didn’t much care for, Midsommar (reviewed here), but for me that kind of intimidating atmosphere of lurking threat really pays off here.

Also, the editing is good and there’s some nice directorial choices made here which you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see in an American made movie. For instance, a crucial and quite brutal fight scene between to characters towards the end of the movie is not, except for a small amount of the opening of the fight, shown on camera. Instead, the camera focuses on a locked door outside the room in which the fight is taking place and held for a long time while the audience hears the rawness of the struggle occurring behind the door. And it’s moments like this that make the film worth sitting through, I would say.

Now the end is a mixed bag. It has kind of a triple ending when I was only expecting one but, in terms of the second ending which takes place two years later, I thought there was a missed opportunity to greatly turn the tables on the main protagonist and I can’t help but think that a certain interview scene may well have been originally scripted to end in a much different (and perhaps more obvious) way. Having said that, the final little scene where a surviving protagonist (I won’t tell you which one) is being interviewed does have an echo of what this other scene might have been but, by that point it feels more like an after thought or, you know, a director trying to please his producers but also give a hint of what really happened next.

Either way, though, I really enjoyed Opus and I think it’s easily the best of the A24 films I’ve seen put out this year (although I haven’t seen Warfare yet, which is supposed to be quite uncompromisingly gruelling). This one, though, hits all the right thriller vibes and has some great performances in it. A very well put together piece of movie making. 

Amélie

Tautou’d Life

Amélie
aka Le fabuleux
destin d'Amélie Poulain
France 2001 Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Sony Blu Ray Steelbook Zone A

Amélie or Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain* as it was known in its own country, is easily one of the greatest movies ever made, as far as I’m concerned. It came out at a time in my life when I’d pretty much stopped seeing films more than once at the cinema... I made an exception for this film. In fact, I went to my local film emporium thirteen times to see this and I was still moved to tears every time I saw it. And the fact that it was playing long enough in the cinemas here that I was able to revisit it every weekend demonstrates what a huge smash of a film it was... even here in the UK. Of course, it helps that my local cinema was not the gaudy Cineworld it is now (and I don’t know how long there will be a cinema near me, to be honest... there are rumblings coming from the owners of the chain again). Instead it was a UGC cinema who, while still a multiplex, were much more friendly to the idea of showing non-English speaking films and they also had money sunk into this movie.

The film stars the great Audrey Tautou as the titular Amélie, a part written originally for Emily Watson, who had to decline due to scheduling reasons. One night the news of the death of Princess Diana  on the TV causes her to accidentally discover the lost treasure of a boy who used to live in her apartment decades before... a box of playthings hidden behind the wall containing things like a miniature racing car and bicycle... which leads to her, once reuniting this box of goodies with their original owner, onto a path of doing anonymous good deeds for people... and visiting comical retribution on certain others. But can she find her way to the heart of the oddball man she has spied from a distance, played by director Mathieu Kassovitz?

Director Jeunet brings a few of his old cast form Delicatessen (reviewed here) back for this one, such as Rufus and the always watchable Dominique Pinon plus a cast of strange faces playing off kilter characters, weaving together a breakneck paced story of strange incidents (as is his style) and filling the story with enough charm and heart to make even a cold hearted blogger like myself weep uncontrollably.

It would not be amiss to describe the film as a magical experience, with the surreal experiences of the strong imagination of the title character juxtaposed with a world populated, sometimes, with manifestations of her psyche such as a friendly crocodile or a pig lamp which turns itself off in one scene. The colouring of deep reds, deep greens and yellows are almost Bava-like but maybe a bit richer and surprisingly coherent in the way they hang together in their perfect compositions. And beautful imagery... like bunnies and teddy bears made up out of the clouds as an infant Amélie takes photos of cloud formations or, when devastated in one scene as an adult, Amélie transforming and collapsing into a puddle of water... are what makes cinema the art form it’s always been.

Now there’s way too much going on in this film for me to talk about in the somewhat limited space of a blog post but I would like to say one thing about the status of the movie (or what I believe it is) and then give two samples where I think Jeunet excelled himself in pushing the art of the motion picture forward (among may other examples to be found in the film).

Firstly, when Citizen Kane came out in 1941, a film usually found at the top of most director polls of the greatest films over the decades, it was certainly innovative but it was also, in many ways (I believe), a summation of where the art of the motion picture was at the time... presenting various clever and sometimes invisible (in what went on to get certain shots, for example, into sharp focus) technical solutions which were state-of-the-art at the time. I believe that when Amélie was released in 2001... it did exactly the same, It’s certainly innovative and full of imagination but also did things which either represented or, in the case of two sequences I want to talk about next, creatively pushed what you could do with film. And remember, there’s a lot more CGI in Amélie than people realise. Objects like a small lamp being a certain colour were digitally dropped into shots to balance the colour schemes, for example... and, well, all I’m saying is Audrey Tautou does not, in real life, have a knack for skimming stones (which her character collects everywhere she goes in the story for just that purpose).

So, there are two moments (or three because one is comprised of a set up to a later moment) I want to talk about. One is a scene right near the end of the film where the director has a second piece of film playing in a quarter of a shot behind Amélie as we watch her make her ‘famous plum pie’. We see her but we also see what she’s imagining in the film over her shoulder. A day dream of her future lover coming into her apartment and creeping up on her while she’s preparing her pie. So at one point we see him creeping up from behind her (the same scene from a reverse angle) and he moves the bead curtains directly behind her to announce his presence... but Amélie snaps out of her dream because the beads behind her have simultaneously moved at the exact same time... only to look around and see it was just the cat moving the curtain. It’s a wonderful moment and the juxtaposition of two narratives, one real (in the context of the film) and the other imaginary suddenly matching up is, absolutely brilliant.

The other thing I want to talk about is the sound design in two scenes (and I’m not talking about Yann Tiersen’s absolutely amazing score, most of it needle dropped in from his old albums but some of it original and written for the film). Amélie’s landlord was abandoned by her husband in the late sixties and then died in a plane crash before reconciling with her. Amélie ‘borrows’ her old wartime letters from her once future husband, photocopies them and then pastes various words together to create a ‘lost letter’ found after forty years by the post office... a letter reaffirming the landlady’s husband’s love for her. But listen to the sound design on the scenes... once where Amélie is reading all the letters in a montage of moments and then again, later, when the landlady (played by Yolande Moreau) reads back the faked up ‘new letter’ which has arrived...

When Amélie reads each letter, a different ambient sound is heard playing in the background, signifying what country the gentleman in question was stationed at or what was going on in the background at the time the original letters were written. The photocopies are then cut up and reassembled to make a new message and aged. But later, when the landlady reads the letter for the first time, the background sound from the originals of each word are replayed, colliding in bits to signify the hodge podge nature of what she’s reading to the audience. Again, it’s a moment of brilliance in what, frankly, is a movie of brilliant moments that never let up.

I could probably go in all day on this one but I won’t... Amélie is one of the few films I know, such as Blade Runner (reviewed here) and Wonder Woman (reviewed here) where I believe I could actually write a quite thorough and enthusiastic book, if given the time and money to research. As it is, I’ll leave it here (with much more unsaid) and assume that the reader has gathered that, if Amélie is a film they haven’t seen then, they should maybe give themselves the opportunity to be won over by it in much the same way many people were (my understanding is the box office on this one was huge.... and for good reason). This one’s a real piece of cinematic art... don’t let it slip through your fingers. 

*One last thing, for those of you waiting for a super high definition version of the film. The great Severin films in America wanted to put out a high definition, 4K scan of the film last year as a companion piece to their release of Delicatessen. Alas, when they and Jeunet approached the company who owned the original negative, they were told it had been thrown out... because why would anyone need the negative once a digital scan was already in existence. So there you have it... such ignorant crimes against filmanity do still happen. I guess we won't be getting a 4K scan then.

Doctor Who - The Well

Tennant To Midnight

Doctor Who - The Well
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 26th April 2025

Warning. Yup... spoilers from the outset.

Oh rats! What a shame. 

The first two episodes of this latest series of Doctor Who were actually better than anything we got last year but, just when I thought it was safe to go back in the Whoniverse, we get an episode, The Well, which is... while still better than pretty much all of last year’s episodes... just a bit of a mess, to be honest.  And that’s made more irritating by the twist reveal, halfway through the episode.

Okay, so we have Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu on form as The Doctor and Belinda, at least. Although Gatwa’s performance as The Doctor is once more tempered by the bad writing, which means he is tearing up at the drop of a hat again (this has to stop at some point... surely?). And we have a good supporting cast around them when they accidentally find themselves as part of a group of marines dropping onto a planet which they don’t name right away for fear that viewers will see the twist coming a mile off. With good reason because, the twist only works as a kind of call back to the name of a former, David Tennant episode called Midnight (there’s brief footage flashing back to the 2008 episode, just in case people don’t ‘get’ the joke). I didn’t see it coming and that’s probably because...

Okay, so I was having misgivings s about the episode being shoddily written right from the start but the reveal that it’s the unnamed ‘mimic antagonist’ of Midnight actually makes things worse. For one thing, the antagonist of the original story did not have the same modus operandi as the version of it in Midnight at all. So it really is a sequel in terms of labelling only, it seems to me. Secondly, Midnight was one of the best stories of the original Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who... so turning this into a ‘by name only’ sequel invites comparisons to that original and, honestly, this thing isn’t a patch on that one in any way, shape or form. Invoking the name almost denigrates the original episode.

The other thing about this one which was really bad was the damned costumes that The Doctor and Belinda choose to wear. When they find out the TARDIS has landed far in the future, without knowing anything about what or who they are gong to run into... they decide to dress up in future garb. And they choose these very specific matching jumpsuits which immediately had me thinking... “wait, what?” Are they going on a space expedition or something. To which the answer was immediately, yes because... well the suits they are wearing are an exact match to the uniforms being worn by the troops they go down with to the surface of the planet Midnight. Which... um... what? That’s pretty crazy. They accidentally dress in some uniforms belonging to the group of random strangers they then go on to meet? What happened to the writing on this thing? Explain this, please because, this makes no sense.

The only decent part of the episode was the surprise appearance of Anita Dobson as Mrs. Flood at the end of the story, as a character turning up in situ with other characters. So that was a novelty but, honestly, makes me start thinking of the inclusion of Susan Twist in every episode of the last story. And we all know how completely terrible and stupid that reveal turned out to be. But, it does look like she’s gathering intel on The Doctor here.

And I think that’s me done on The Well. This has got to be one of my shortest Doctor Who reviews ever but, I just don’t have much of anything positive to say about it, truth be told. This was definitely something and, I think that somethings was... just another unremarkable episode of modern Doctor Who. I won’t be revisiting this episode again any time soon.

Magic Crystal

Rock Alien Line

Magic Crystal
aka Mo fei cui
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by Jing Wong
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Magic Crystal is another of these great, 80s Hong Kong action films that companies like Eureka Masters Of Cinema and, in this case, 88 Films have been releasing onto a largely unsuspecting public over here in the UK. This one co-stars a young Andy Lau and a young Cynthia Rothrock as two of ‘the good guys’ who are out to stop the shenanigans of a Russian gangster played by Richard Norton (who’s lethal and ruthless but who has a magnetic and likeable personality in this one)*. Norton would also go on to co-star with Rothrock in her big break out US hits, China O’ Brien and its sequel, among others.

In this, Andy Lau plays... um... Andy Lo, part of a special, ‘get in trouble and we’ll disavow all knowledge’ police force unit called Falcons. After setting up his character and his comic relief side kick (we’re back to very broad toilet humour in this one... yikes) he gets involved with an archeologist friend in Greece, who is killed because of a green crystal he has found in an underground cavern. However, said crystal is hidden secretly in Andy’s sister’s kid’s luggage and, when they return to Hong Kong, the rock bonds with the kid, starts talking to him and uses its powers of mind control and the ability to grant superhuman powers, etc, to try and stay out of the clutches of the bad guys.

By now, Andy’s dead friend’s sister has gotten involved, as well as his own expert fighter sister... not to mention two Interpol agents, one of whom is Cindy, played by Cynthia Rothrock (why the heck is she always playing a character called Cindy in half of the Hong Kong movies she was in?). So there are action and chase scenes aplenty in this movie and, yeah, it’s really not bad.

I did find a lot of the humour way too crude for my liking (which seems to be a problem I have with a lot of these Hong Kong movies... I prefer it when they rein it in) but a lot of the fight choreography is impressive and there’s a quite surreal sequence where a licentious, comic relief character has his feet and hands swapped... which makes for some, well, interesting viewing.

There are lots of little Easter eggs in this for movie lovers too. For instance, when the young kid is given super kung fu skills by the crystal so he can defeat the school bully, he runs his thumb over his nose before going into action, just like Bruce Lee used to. And the end sequences, where several characters gather for a big fight in the underground chambers in Greece, is full of straight rips offs of the archeological trap scenes from the Indiana Jones movies... not to mention a bit of a rip off, both sonically and, perhaps, a little in the look of... the final alien of Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. But on a much diminished budget, obviously... this is beyond bargain bucket in terms of the films it’s... um... homaging.

But I honestly didn’t mind it... despite the tone of a lot of the humour, I quite liked this and it’s another entertaining ‘beat ‘em up’ from Cynthia Rothrock, doing her thing on a blown out knee for a lot of the time, apparently... having to go full on kung fu after she’d injured said knee doing a scene earlier on in the shoot. Although, why the heck an Interpol agent would just happen to be carrying a case holding an unfolding spear rather than, you know, arming herself with a gun, is anybody’s guess.

Like many of these Hong Kong action movies of the time, Magic Crystal has a synth-pop kind of soundtrack but, it’s not the most irritating one I’ve heard and it pulls it weight when it needs to, helping the pace of the film when it most needs it. So, yeah, I’m glad I’m finally piecing together these early Hong Kong action films of future stars courtesy of some of the UK (for a change) boutique labels. Keep ‘em coming.

*Alas, Mr. Norton died a few weeks before this review was published, at the end of March 2025.

Bear McCreary Live

 

So Sang We all

Bear McCreary Live
Themes & Variations Tour
Indigo at the O2
London
18th April 2025

It was Friday the 18th of April, a Good Friday in more ways than one it turned out, when I saw one of my favourite living composers, Bear McCreary, on the very first night of his new Themes and Variations Tour. And I was pleased it was a Friday night, for sure... meaning I didn’t need to get up early for work the next morning and so could dwell on the previous night (at time of writing, although this review will probably go up a few days later) without having to worry about post-concert recovery time, so to speak.

And it was a concert I was half expecting and half wasn’t, in terms of the size and sound. Seven men formed the band including McCreary himself, of course, helming guitar, keyboards, accordion, hurdy gurdy and, as all were, chipping in on some of the vocals. Included in this small line up was Morgan Sorne, who also had a short set as a supporting act before the main show. He did some amazing stuff with his five octave ranged voice, recorded in little bursts and then repeated electronically as he added layers of harmony and percussion. He’s pretty talented and I really liked the stuff he performed. I’d go all in and grab a load of his CDs but, alas for me, it looks like you can only get his stuff digitally these days... so I’m going to have to miss out, it looks like.

Then he was joined by ‘Bear and the gang’ as they performed a large variety of songs from Bear’s recent rock concept album The Singularity (which I finally bit the bullet on and bought a CD of from the merch stall at the show, accompanied by the supporting graphic novel of the same name, along with the obligatory Bear McCreary t-shirt, of course) and these very heavy tracks were interspersed with equally weighty interpretations of music from Bear’s various TV show and video game scores.

Now, I’ve been an admirer of McCreary since his Battlestar Galactica days but, most of the TV shows and games were ones I’ve not heard of (a programme with a set list would have been really helpful and would have got me to part with even more of my money) but I enjoyed them all none the less, tapping my fingers and stomping my foot as much as my somewhat gammy knee would allow for, sitting down at the front near this huge speaker, as the group of artists on stage tried to hasten the atrophy of my inner ear (it was awesome).

And for these various cues (numbers?) they also brought out their secret weapon, Bear’s brother Brendan McCreary, who not only screamed out the accompanying vocals in harmonic ways that perhaps the human voice was not meant to explore but, also, he was jumping, dancing and otherwise gallivanting back and forth across the stage in the most energetic manner I’ve seen since Voice Of The Beehive played Kentish Town back in the 1980s. This guy was so enthusiastic about his performance that he was, on his own, one of the primary entertainments of the show.

But, honestly, all musicians shone in this outstanding performance and, as I said above, I didn’t know a lot of it but I was so consumed by the energy and melodic harmony of the thing that it just carried me away. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen so many film composers live, often multiple times, over the last 45 years... such as Williams, Goldsmith, Barry, Bernstein (that’s the Elmer of the two ;-), Glass, Nyman, Mansell and too many to mention in such a short review but McCreary’s show was easily up there with some of the best of these, including modern favourites such as Brian Tyler and Hans Zimmer. This guy and his band were absolutely amazing... as were the animated visuals accompanying the show, one of which looked a little like something Rick Griffin might have designed in the 1960s at his most surreal. 

And what an encore... his cover version of All Along The Watchtower from Battlestar Galactica followed by his cover of Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla, which he transformed for his score to Godzilla - King Of The Monsters. I was really pleased he did these ones that night.

And that’s that. I shall leave this short review in awe now as my tired old mind is having trouble thesaurusing the satisfactory superlatives but I and my companions for the evening had an absolute blast with Bear McCreary’s Themes And Variations Live concert and we all made noises to the effect that we’d definitely jump at the chance to see him again, next time he’s back in good old London town... hope we don’t have too long a wait on that.

Resurrection

Easter Shuffle

Resurrection
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
USA/Canada 1999
Interlight Pictures

Warning: Some spoilerage on this one but I dont reveal the killer’s identity.

So I was looking around for something to watch for this year’s Easter themed blog review and I came across a movie which... I don’t think I’ve seen before (although, to be fair, having now watched it, it’s fairly forgettable) and which has an interesting premise.

Resurrection is all about Detective Prudhomme, played by Christopher Lambert and his latest case, which he works, for the most part (until the inevitable moment you know is coming), with his partner Detective Hollinsworth, played by Leland Orser. Hollinsworth is the more sympathetic of the two while Prudhomme is pretty humourless and dry, with a marriage to his wife halfway on the rocks due to the recent loss of their son through an accident. It’s almost exactly the same tragic back story as that in John Woo’s recent Christmas action flick Silent Night (reviewed here) but, yeah, the whole film is pretty cliché ridden, to be fair. Anyway, a serial killer starts going about his business and taking bits of his victim’s bodies with him week after week, because he believes he can rebuild the resurrected body of Christ in time for Easter, using the collection of body parts with which he’s absconding and then piecing them together, Dr. Frankenstein style. It’s up to Prudhomme and Hollinsworth to try and stop him, aided by people like a criminal profiler played by Robert Joy (who I believe plays Victor’s father in the recent, third series of From, reviewed here) and, playing the local priest, trying to get the detective to set foot in a church again after the death of his son, we have the great director David Cronenberg giving a pretty credible performance.

Okay, so the film is definitely looking like something which is trying to cash in on the success of David Fincher’s Se7en, with the detectives finding mutilated bodies in places while the rain hammers down on them and with a lot of the film being shot in very muted, dull grey colours. And I’d like to say it feels very 1990s but, if anything, it kinda feels very 1980s but, this is not a criticism at all. The film dashes along at a fairly breakneck pace and, although some of the characters are quite likeable, Prudhomme is not really the hero I’d like to follow in this one, I’d have to say.

Now it’s not a bad film… it’s quite respectable in execution and I certainly was kept entertained for a fair amount of it. But it does have some problems such as some very bad, stilted dialogue which, although possibly keeping in tone with the characters, becomes almost laughable in the early stages of the film. However, the biggest problem is the way it telegraphs itself to the viewer constantly. There are literally no surprises here. For instance, when the serial killer is shown to have killed Prudhomme’s wife, you know way before he does that the killer actually got the wrong person because of some of the details of situations set up earlier in the film. Similarly, when the serial killer enters the picture as a character fairy early, you know right away that this is the person responsible for what’s going on and you have to wonder why it takes the police so long to twig just what’s going down. So, yeah, you do feel the main characters are not the smartest and having to play catch up to the audience a lot of the time.

But, it is atmospheric and, as Easter themed movies go, it’s one of the more unusual, it seems to me. Composer Jim McGrath’s score also keeps things going and glues the sections of the movie together pretty well so, while it’s neither a barrel of laughs or, really not all that much fun, the film does entertain and holds the attention a certain amount so, I can’t complain about this one too much. It’s not that good but it’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen of this kind of police procedural thriller so, it is what it is, I suppose. Resurrection is not a film I’d recommend unless you want something a little different for Easter time.

Doctor Who - Lux

The Doctor Lux Out

Doctor Who - Lux
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 19th April 2025

Warning. Some possible spoilers on overall arcs here.

Well colour me surprised. Yes, the latest Doctor Who story Lux is the clichéd old concept of a character, in this case a cartoon character called Mr. Ring-A-Dong and voiced by Alan Cumming, walking out of a cinema screen and coming to life to wreak havoc... but it’s also well done and, despite having a scene where the Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, is tearing up yet again... it’s a pretty great episode. So that’s two in a row good ones now, since the debacle of last year’s series. I’m so pleased this was this well put together.

And it’s a somewhat engaging story as The Doctor rigs up a Vortex Indicator, which he shortens to ‘the Vindicator’ to act as a slingshot from wherever he and his cool new companion called (for now) Belinda (played brilliantly by Varada Sethu) next land, to get her home to the date from whence she came in 2025, since the TARDIS keeps bouncing off from the spot.

And then they stumble upon a mystery of an officially locked up cinema in Miami in1952. There they encounter the latest in the long play story arc of The Harbinger in Lux, who is one of the Gods of The Pantheon, as indicated to the audience by vocalising the notes of The Giggle from the episode of the same name from 2023 (and reviewed by me here).

There was a lot of great stuff about this episode with the cartoon manifestation of Mr. Ring-A-Ding being just one of the more epic effects being squeezed into, what was actually a fairly intimate episode, I thought. I could have perhaps done without the joke where, being accused of being Scooby Doo by Belinda, The Doctor identified more with Velma but, it was certainly a fun way of referring to any sexual politics encompassed by the show in its current form, rather than shoving it down everyone’s throat like last year.

And I loved the whole, long sequence where The Doctor and Belinda were trapped in a film, initially as cartoon versions of themselves, before they realised how to get a mindset where they become more shaded and defined before they return to their normal 3D shape and way of thinking... albeit still trapped in the film for a fair time.

Another pleasure of the episode was a scene in the same sequence where three fans of Doctor Who watching at home were, quite respectfully I thought, shown to take an active part in the proceedings, even if it turned out that they (aka we watching at home) were a fiction too. But considering the way a lot of the fan base of the show has been turning against it in recent years (especially last year), I was impressed there weren’t too many blatantly sly digs at the viewers and I especially loved that the favourite episode of all three of them was one of the show’s classics, Blink, much to the current Doctor’s chagrin.

Now I thought the segregation of black and white people in places like diners and cinemas in 1950s America was either pushed too strongly or, I dunno, maybe not pushed strongly enough... I still can’t quite make up my mind. But it might be a matter of time that it was not pursued in a more damning way, when you’ve only got 45 minutes to present a story. That's okay though...  it didn’t feel all that loosely balanced against the rest of the episode and I thought they just about got away with it.

I also loved that Mrs. Flood, once again played by Anita Dobson, turned up at the end in 1952 America (unseen by The Doctor and Belinda) and I’m guessing the importance of her character on events may be coming to the fore here. It’s interesting that she noted that the Doctor’s run would be coming to an end on May 24 this year, which is presumably the day on which this last series is due to put out its final episode. Is this hinting at my long suspected cancellation of the show? Quite possibly but I guess we’ll see in six weeks or so.

And that’s me done with Lux. The ending with the release of 15 captured presumed dead people seemed a little like the writers wanting to have their cake and eat it (a braver conclusion might have been to have their existences as trapped in celluloid burned up in the fire which occurs near the end of the episode) but overall I have to say I really enjoyed this one and am somehow looking forward to the third episode with a new sense of optimism... or at least hope. Fingers crossed the series continues in this light from hereon.

Novocaine

No Pain, No’caine

Novocaine
Directed by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
United States/Canada/South Africa 2025
Paramount
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: One mention of an injury spoiler.

Well now, I saw what I thought wasa particularly harsh review of this one so I was going into Novocaine concentrating on how good the trailer was, as opposed to the word of mouth. And I have to say that, while it has some slight technical problems, I thought this one was actually pretty good.

Novocaine deals with a bank manager, Nathan Caine (played by Jack Quaid and nicknamed Novocaine) who falls in love with one of the new workers at the bank, Sherry (played brilliantly by Amber Midthunder). Nathan is called Novocaine because he has a condition in that he doesn’t feel pain (like the villain from The World Is Not Enough, reviewed here). What this means is, when the bank is robbed by three quite vicious criminals and Sherry is carted away as a hostage, he can go on a ‘somewhat apologetic’ manhunt to get Sherry back without worrying about the pain inflicted on him, while the police also hunt him... because it’s not long before he’s accidentally killed one of the gunmen in a brutal fight.

That’s it, in a nutshell and the film has been accused of being a ‘one joke’ wonder in terms of the kind of brutal violence the hero can just take and walk away from in a playful manner and... yeah, okay, in some ways it is. But that being said, the writers get a lot of mileage out of it and it really doesn’t get dull throughout the course of the picture. It’s also got some nice chemistry and strong performances from the two leads, Quaid and Midthunder... and some pretty charismatic and downright hateable villains too. Jacob Batalon from the recent Spider-Man films is pretty good as Novocaine’s ‘guy in the chair’ and Betty Gabriel does a really good job as one of the sympathetic cops pursuing both Caine and the bad guys.

Now, there are some problems. For instance, there’s a twist moment with one character that, in terms of the movie as a whole, should have been revealed much later on in the story than the halfway point because it kind of detracts from the motivation of the main character you are following. That being said, both myself and my friend,* who went with me, saw that twist coming as soon as the character first appeared (and I’m pretty sure I got a sense of it from the trailer too) so I was somewhat disappointed with that direction. Also, once you have the twist confirmed on screen, you figure that ‘this incident’ and ‘that incident’ now have to happen in order to get the characters worth believing in again and, sure enough... !

One other thing is the editing is a bit choppy and obfuscating in some sequences. 

Plus, there’s a gun in a room suddenly appearing on the floor of a kitchen when it should have been in the alley outside of the building at one point... so I’m guessing the first big fight scene of the movie was deliberately cut down by the director to speed things up for this sequence and the by-product of this decision was having a gun suddenly turn up where there couldn’t possibly have been a gun at this point. Or did I just miss something here? Answers on a postcard.

The biggest problem, however, is that it doesn’t matter how little pain you feel, if a man takes some of these over the top injuries... such as half an arm breaking off like a broken Pez dispenser but then using the long bone protruding from the flappy stump as a weapon... then I don’t buy that a lot of bandages and a few months rest is going to mean you’re all stitched up and good as new. There are some life changing injuries in this film (it may be an action comedy but it doesn’t skimp on the brutal violence) and there’s no way a person just gets up and then is right as rain a little while later.

So, yeah, beyond the execution and limits of the premise, there are huge credibility issues with Novocaine for sure (including characters that just seem to dissappear for the rest of a scene when they’re not wanted and some super extra slow response times from the pursuing police). That being said though, I had a great time with this one and would be happy to see a sequel to it if it comes to pass. The main leads were likeable and I’ll happily pick up a Blu Ray for my parents to check out at some point, I suspect.

*We were the only people in the audience... which would possibly explain why Starbucks has suddenly upped stakes and left all cinemas last week, leaving a huge space which my local cinema doesn't know what to do with. 

Video Nasty

The Long List Goodnight

Video Nasty
BBC
Six Episodes
Ireland/UK/Germany
January 8th 2025 2024

A short shout out to Video Nasty, an interesting show which kinda passed everyone by at the start of the year.

Two friends, Billy (Justin Daniels Anene) and Con (Cal O'Driscoll) are school kids in Ireland in the early 1980s. As anyone interested in film will know, this was the time of the tabloid dubbed ‘video nasties’, when a list of titles was being used by the police to seize and confiscate said items as people were getting fined, prosecuted and even jailed for renting out certain tapes on an official list deemed harmful to the general public (I’m still ashamed of my country for this period, read more here and here). So Billy and Con are collecting these through the ‘back of a van’ black market (ahhh... the days where you could rent any tapes from the back of a van... this brought back memories) and they have almost put together a full, pristine set of the 72 banned titles on the main list. The opening of the show sees them buying their 71st tape, Nightmares In A Damaged Brain (as it was known over here, review coming at some point)... with Billy, having been in pen pal mode with a girl in England called FangoriaFanGirl (ahh... the days of the original Fangoria), setting up a trip to England to meet up and exchange tapes.

The object being that once the lads get their last tape on the list, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (or Nightmare Maker, as I think it was known in the UK), they can sell the collection for a tidy sum. So they and Con’s sister Zoe (Leia Murphy) run away from home for a bit, having problems of their own back there anyway... and get to England, only to find the girl has been murdered with a power drill and a sinister conspiracy within the village is at work. Can they escape from their twisted Christian captors and their Mary Whitehouse style mantra with their lives and clear their own names of the murder... and can their parents find them in time?

Okay, so I appreciate that someone has even done something themed around the censorious evil of the video nasty witchhunt campaign but, I have to admit, I’d have wanted something, perhaps, a little less subtle than what we get here. I mean, the acting is very strong with all the main and supporting cast and, also, the research is mostly good (Severin films in America supplied some of the footage/tapes and advice, I believe although, apparently the sleeve on the Nightmare Maker tape has slightly different packaging to the original, first generation pre-certificate version)...  but the main story could easily be a stand alone, cautionary tale with any other conceptual window dressing, it seems to me.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that, although there is the proper judgement made on the ‘humanistically challenged’ aka nutters who tried to ban these so-called ‘dangerous films’ (95% of which can now be bought in a bricks and mortar store in the UK with no cuts, nowadays), it all feels like almost an afterthought and, though it ticks certain boxes for the people who remember those dark days, it just feels like more emphasis and enlightenment about why this happened at the time and how wrong it was (and still is, in the case of films like The New York Ripper, which is still censored in its useless UK edition) to have gone through this exercise in the first place.

Everything feels like the writing is just holding back too much. There’s a line one of the characters says in terms of the nature of the predicament they find themselves in, where he’s alluding to the fact that they don’t know if they’re dealing with just one psychotic family or a whole village conspiracy, where he says “We don’t know if we’re in Texas Chainsaw or Wicker Man here.” And while I appreciate the terms in which that sentiment has been couched, I can’t quite feel like it’s a little on the nose in some ways because, as I watched the drama play out for six, half hour episodes, it did feel like I was watching a group of characters from Grange Hill walking into a cast of characters from The Wicker Man. And while I was certainly rooting for the main group of kids... I didn’t really care too much about what would happen to them by the end of the show. Live or die, I wasn’t fussed... everyone had their own shades of grey and I just wasn’t invested in them. And the last scene of the show seemed a little ludicrous too... possibly an homage to a certain style of film but, honestly, a kind of hollow threat of a possible sequel rather than anything I could be bothered with, truth be told. Not the BBCs finest hour, I would say so... yeah, nothing much to see here.

Drop

Date Expectations

Drop
Directed by Christopher Landon
USA/Ireland 2025
Blumhouse
UK Cinema Release Print

I have to admit, I saw the abominable trailer for Drop and decided to give the movie a wide berth, even thought it’s directed by Christopher Landon, who made the brilliant Happy Death Day (reviewed here), Happy Death Day 2U (reviewed here) and Freaky (reviewed here). However, I then found out the score is by one of my favourite living composers, Bear McCreary (who I am seeing in concert a the O2 in London in four days from now) and, yeah, I don’t see or watch many of the projects to which he’s attached so it seemed worth it to go and check this out for the music.

I was not disappointed, either. And when I say that I mean... I was really surprised because, the trailer made it look like a thriller relying on a very old, clichéd plot which, to be fair... it absolutely is.

The story set up is about a domestic abuse survivor called Violet (played brilliantly here by Meghann Fahy) who, after a year or two, leaves her young son (played by Jacob Robinson) in the care of her sister (played by Violett Beane) at home while she goes on her first date in a very long time. So she meets her prospective ‘match’ at a very expensive, high up in a skyscraper restaurant but, soon she starts getting message drops on her phone showing her house broken into and the lives of her son and sister under threat... with increasingly intimidating instructions that she must kill her date (played by Brandon Sklenar) before the night is out. So, yeah, told you it was an old plot. The last time I remember this being done just recently was the 2018 movie The Commuter with Liam Neeson (reviewed here) and, yeah, I really wasn’t looking forward to this for the story, for sure.

But, as I said above, this one surprised me. I mean, it’s one thing to be revisiting the same tired old ground but it’s quite another when the execution of the concept and the way in which the film is directed, shot and edited is so immaculate and gripping, as this one is. For example, the phone drops are presented as texts which are superimposed with the correct perspective onto various elements of the photographic compositions as the restaurant bound protagonists go about their business. Which is nicely done, for sure (and I bet there were some hard choices made by the director about placement and duration made with these on screen messages).  

But the real brilliance of the film is the sweeping photography, taken from various unusual angles to push the story along. Now, I rarely use the term Hitchcockian for many modern movies made past the 1990s but, this one certainly would earn that title. This does look and feel like something Alfred Hitchcock would probably enjoy if he saw it and I don’t even mean that in a second-hand Brian De Palma way, which would be stylish enough. This one just felt like something Hitch would possibly do or, as I said, certainly approve of.

And the acting on this one really holds up too, which certainly helps push the cinematography and shot design into ‘great’ rather than ‘good’ territory. Fahy and Sklenar really help sell this as two innocents who are fighting for their lives (one of them not even aware of what is going on) and the chemistry between them is so good that it really sells the idea that these two people are just wanting to go on a fun date. And their co-stars are very good in this too, with special shout outs to Gabrielle Ryan and Reed Diamond in this.

And then there’s that Bear McCreary score. I hope this one, someday, gets a proper, physical CD release so I can hear it as a stand alone piece (and not the stupid digital only version which I won’t be downloading) because it’s really incredible and supports the visuals in the best way. He’s not pulling a Bernard Herrmann here, which is a direction he certainly might have gone in and it would have been valid... but it does have the kind of sweeping tones which, while being completely contemporary sounding, a 1950s suspense movie might have had and it really complimented, supported and enhanced things very nicely.

So yeah, that’s me done and extremely surprised by Christopher Landon’s Drop. My expectations were low but I really had a good time with this one and will certainly be picking up a Blu Ray when it becomes available so I can show my folks. Catch this one at the cinema if you can because it looks great on a big screen.