Top 30 Films of 2024

 

30 Favourite
Films Of 2024

Okay... let me start off this highly dubious list with a big apology to Sean Baker because I really wanted to see Anora and just didn’t get the opportunity to do so before 2024 came to a close. I have a strong feeling it may well have taken my number one spot, to be honest but... yeah, the timing was wrong (and it didn’t help my local Cineworld, quite disgracefully, only showed it for one week). Other films that I didn’t get the time to see but which might well have made the list are Strange Darling, Werewolves and Monkey Man. I feel I’ve let myself down somewhat by not getting out to see any of those ones but, as always, it’s been a busy year and I just couldn’t get there at the right time. So apologies to all those listed there.

Of the 30 films listed here, there seems to be a very trashy/exploitation vibe dominating the list. I make no apologies and it probably says as much about the current climate in cinema (where low budget horror films seem to be the only thing doing well right now because they can turn a quick buck) as it does about my own tastes. That’s my excuse anyway. And, yeah, you won’t find any Marvel or DC films anywhere on this list for 2024. I was at least expecting to put the new Deadpool and Venom movies on there but, nope, they were extremely disappointing, somewhat cynical concoctions which didn’t give me the kind of consistent joy I was expecting from them, to be honest. I also think those two particular titles were the worst of their respective series.

Now, as with these lists, some of them may date from a year earlier in some countries and others might not be getting a proper release here until 2025. For instance, my number 7 spot is something I saw at the London Film Festival ahead of time and, well, I’d dearly have loved to have seen the new version of Nosferatu by now but, alas, it doesn’t come out until tomorrow in the UK (if it’s any good, it’ll probably appear on next year’s equivalent list on this blog). Heck, I’m still waiting for one of my favourite films of the 2023 London Film Festival to get a general release in this country (which I’m told will be early 2025 now) so, yeah, I hate not having simultaneous releases of everything in cinema but, what can I do?

Anyway, I’m sure most people will disagree with this list but, if we all agreed in these things there’d be nothing to talk about. As usual, it’s listed in reverse order, ascending to the number one spot and, if you click on the titles, they will take you to the full review for that title (except in the case of number 21, which is a short capsule review bundled in with others at the same screening).

30. Paddington in Peru
My least favourite of the titular bear’s screen adventures but it still has a lot going for it, I think.

29. Joker Folie å Deux
Ten times better than the first Joker movie, this one has ironically dive bombed at the box office for some reason.

28. Beeteljuice Beeteljuice
I liked this sequel a little better than the first and it’s certainly a much needed return to form for the somewhat erratic Tim Burton.

27. Borderlands
Not being familiar with the computer game it’s based on probably helped me see this film through less compromised lenses as I recognised a nice throwback to mid-1980s movie making when I saw it.

26. Gladiator II (aka GladIIator)
Again, a much better and somewhat welcomingly schlocky sequel to the gravitas burdened first film in this unlikely franchise.

25. The Well
Of the two 1980s style Italian exploitation films on this list, this is the one of the two which actually is Italian in origin and it’s a nice throwback to directors like Lamberto Bava (see number 4 for the other obvious throwback to this period of Italian cinema).

24. Hellboy - The Crooked Man
Much as I love Del Toro, I still loved the previous film in the franchise and this one above and beyond those first two. This one has no substance but is a nicely self contained horror fantasy, suitable for a Saturday night.

23. Trap
The latest movie from M. Night Shyamalan is a nicely executed ‘reverse serial killer thriller’, told through the eyes of the central antagonist. Can’t help but think this may turn out, later on down the line, to be part of the series of films which started with Unbreakable.

22. Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F
Eddie Murphy returns to the role that he was born to play... and it’s just almost as good as the first movie. This one really did need to get a cinema release rather than the shabby treatment it ended up with.

21. Animale
I’m hoping this wonderful ‘lady were-bull’ movie gets a release in the UK or the USA sometime in the next year or two, so I can pick up a nice Blu Ray.

20. Wallace And Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl
Better than the last two TV shorts in the series at any rate and, that’s all it really needed to be. Not as good as the first two shorts, nor indeed the first cinema feature but, yeah, it’s an entertaining diversion for sure.

19. Dune Part Two
A nice continuation of the first of the recent Dune movies. A nice score on it.

18. The Beekeeper
Nice Jason Statham action movie. Why the heck this hasn’t got a proper domestic Blu Ray release is a puzzle. I’ll wait a little while longer and if nothing is forthcoming I’ll just get a Korean bootleg.

17. The Substance
Perhaps a little generic and a little less cutting edge than it thinks it is, this is still a nicely done and somewhat superior version of some of the 1980s films from which it seems to be taking its inspiration.

16. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
We didn’t need yet another apes movie but this quite obvious set up for the start of a new trilogy goes down pretty well. Glad the franchise is not dead in the water.

15. Abigail
Such as shame that the trailer for this film, which is what got people into the cinemas to see it, necessarily gives away the film’s conceptual twist (much like Audition did when that film came out). A nice ‘kidnapping goes wrong’ movie which you are much better off going into with no idea of what is about to come.

14. Smile 2
A much better film than the original Smile and, if it suffers from hitting all the same beats as the first installment, at least it does it better and more competently, I feel.

13. Starve Acre
British folk horror which is actually a lot more watchable than many British folk horrors have been.

12. Blink Twice
Nicely directed take on the recent ‘me too’ phenomenon. Lovely colours and framing on this one.

11. A Quiet Place Day One
This prequel is nowhere near as interesting as the first two movies but still manages to pack a punch, along with a great central performance.

10. The First Omen
I liked this prequel much more than any of the sequels to the great original first entry, even though the film at my number four spot came out a couple of weeks earlier and has pretty much the exact same plot. Loved this too though.

9. Argylle
Not quite sure why the box office audience didn’t recognise that this is one of the great modern action movies of recent years but, well, I guess some movies are just ahead of their time. A nice Blu Ray release would be welcome please. And soon!

8.  Alien Romulus
Easily twenty times better than Ridley Scott’s own prequels, this movie, set 20 years after the very first film in the franchise (in terms of release date rather than chronologically) is what audiences were craving, despite the bad taste of a digitised performance from a long dead actor.

7. Santosh 
This police procedural showing the corruption rife in the Indian police force is something I think will get a release in the UK in 2025.

6. Cuckoo
Brilliant, quirky and surreal horror film. Not sure how anyone was persuaded to give the director the cash to make this but I’m glad they did.

5. Late Night With The Devil
Australia’s somewhat belated answer to the UK’s infamous Ghost Watch, this one takes place in real time and has a nice 1970s period feel to it.

4. Immaculate
Sydney Sweeney stars in and produces what I think must be the closest thing we’ve had to a 1980s Italian video nasty in this country for quite some time. I have a lot of love for this film.

3. Love Lies Bleeding
The second feature by Rose Glass is quirky, stylish and has a lot of good stuff going on for it. Lesbian film noir that goes into places you might not see coming at first.

2. Civil War
Easily Alex Garland’s best movie and one which should provide a lot of debate. It may be a little too close to real life at some point soon though.

1. Hundreds Of Beavers
A nicely put together throwback to the days of silent movie comedies with some clever ideas and brilliant sequences that you just don’t expect. Plus that pole dancing moment!

Identity Unknown

The Long Goodbye
Yellow Brick Road

Identity Unknown
by Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown
ISBN 9781408732618

Warning: Very small spoilers.

So, my annual Christmas ritual of receiving and reading the latest Patricia Cornwell novel is once again complete. This time it’s the latest entry into her long running Dr. Kay Scarpetta books, who is such a popular character that Nicole Kidman will soon apparently be playing her on our TV screens (although, honestly, the more I hear about the production the less I’m liking it, particularly in terms of casting and also time settings... I’ll try not to mention it again in this review and stow it until the proper time to talk about such things).

Identity Unknown is set in the springtime and utilises all the usual suspects of Cornwell’s growing list of regular characters... so her husband Benton, her old partner Marino, her sister Dorothy, her niece Lucy and her newest regular, Lucy’s special agent colleague Tron. And I’m pleased to say Lucy... my favourite character in the series of books, who I’ve read growing up over the novels from being a teenage computer nerd into someone who invents the software and systems that are used on a daily basis in the shadowy underworld of the world’s top security organisations... takes a much more active role, or is at least present most of the time, throughout the course of the novel.

Like a fair few of Cornwell’s most recent, gripping mysteries, this one takes place in a very small timeframe. Not as short as some of the novels but, if my calculations are correct and not including the final ‘Ten Days Later’ section, I’d say the action of this one takes place around two and a half days from the opening of the story, when Kay is called away from her autopsy rooms to go and recover the body of a former lover who has been dumped from a UAP onto the yellow brick road. Specifically, UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon and it’s what the kids are calling UFOs these days. Could this case link to the murder of a child she is currently investigating? And could the fact that the body has been dumped on the yellow brick road of an abandoned theme park based on The Wizard Of Oz mean the case is even more closely connected to Kay than she initially thinks?

Shenanigans ensue as the obvious suspect is Kay and Lucy’s old arch enemy Carrie Grethen, who seems to have taken herself off the government radar again. Is she responsible or is there some other threat masterminding the series of brutal coincidences as the case unfolds and another death happens? Kay is yo-yo’d around from the crime scene to Langley to NASA (although she doesn’t, alas, meet Callie Chase from one of Cornwell's other series of novels there) and even to an underwater body retrieval as she and her friends work the case.

The thing I like about Cornwell is that, along with the healthy dose of imagination required to write, she always researches her stuff throroughly (as indicated by the photos she shares during her research on Twitter) and I tend to think of her as someone on the cutting edge of things which, I suspect, often bleeds into her novels. So when, as expected, the UFO does not turn out to be of extra-terrestrial origin, she also throws in a little incident of Kay’s distant history which tends to throw some positive confirmation that something alien in origin did, in fact, happen during the famous Roswell Incident. So that’s kind of interesting and of note, I think.

Other than that, a short review because, well, Cornwell is undoubtedly the queen of the mystery thriller and they don’t come any better than this. Scarpetta’s first person narrative flows along at a rate of knots, as usual and, there’s also a section when, once the villain in this book (and I won’t tell you who it actually is) is caught, there is still more action to be had as wheels turn and a side character tries to come along and take out Kay and Marino. And I’m not telling you how that goes either.

All I will say is, Identity Unknown is another highly addictive piece of storytelling in a series of novels which mostly all are as good as they get. If this one had its covers covered in glue it would not make the book any more ‘unputdownable’ than it already is. If you’re a fan of these novels then this is more of the same and is definitely worth your time. Now, I have the long waiting time to get through until I can get another Cornwell novel for next Christmas.

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Kashyyk And Carrie

The Star Wars Holiday Special
Airdate: November 1978
Directed by Steve Binder
and David Acomba
USA DVD-R
20th Century Fox

"If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every bootlegged copy of that program and smash it."
George Lucas

Well, this was a bit of a tick box for me... I finally got around to watching my bootleg of The Star Wars Holiday Special which I bought, well, a number of years ago but it’s still easy to find. This special is notorious as it aired only once and then George Lucas tried to buy and destroy all the master copies (somewhat unsuccessfully although, I don’t think more than a few minutes of high quality footage from those masters have ever made it into a quality transfer). I can absolutely see why he wanted to do that and, frankly, I’m surprised this film didn’t do more damage to the franchise, airing briefly, as it did, a couple of years before the release of the second film in the series, The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed by me here).

The film is mostly set on Chewbacca’s home planet of Kashyyk while his family of wookies and a human friend tune into different programmes on their various media equipment, trying to find out what has delayed his return home for Life Day (which is Star Wars Christmas... although not the same thing as the Star Wars Christmas In The Stars music album, for sure). They tune into various sketches, songs and dances set in the Star Wars universe and... there is a kind of narrative thread to the story too, when the Imperial forces raid Chewie’s home.

The show features Mark Hamill as Luke Skywallker (recovering from his car accident and heavily made up to account for his recent injuries), Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, Anthony Daniels as C3PO and a remote controlled R2D2. Most of the cast tried to get out of it but it was originally George Lucas’ idea to do this show, to keep the franchise alive in people’s minds before the first sequel. Well, when he saw what had been made in his name, he realised straight away how terrible it was and, well, his comments at the start of this blog are pretty indicative of his stance on the special. Let me just iterate, the show aired only once in the US and not at all in most countries.

Now I was suckered in from the opening because... hey, that bit was pretty good. It involves Han and Chewie on board the Millennium Falcon, trying to get back to Chewie’s home world and, frankly, it’s just like watching a slice of the original Star Wars (with the effects footage from the first movie dropped in between their dialogue... if you kids these days want to get a taste of what the original special effects in the first Star Wars were like before all the CGI revisionism crap, this is one way to do it). Unfortunately, while Ford and Mayhew manage to enhance nearly all of their scenes and make them watchable, the same is not true for the whole show. Carrie Fisher even sings a song at the end and... yeah, it’s not good.

I think my biggest disappointment with this is, looking at it 46 years later, the show is failing at being both a good production and a bad production. I mean, it’s not good but, alas, it’s not so bad it's good either... it’s just dull and lifeless and the many comedy sketches, songs and dance routines are just drab and, not just unremarkable but deadly boring. Not to mention somewhat inappropriate... I mean, when Chewie’s mum hooks up to some kind of fantasy machine and we see a woman seductively singing and dancing in an erotic manner, it’s definitely a WTF? moment here (I didn’t know this when I was watching it but it was apparently trying to be as close to soft porn as the producers thought they could get away with on prime time television). And don’t get me started on the cooking programme ‘Bantha Surprise’ sequence... a lot of this thing is almost unwatchable.

It never really recovers from this. Now there are some weird things happening in terms of Star Wars continuity. For instance, cassette tapes to power the hologram machines and wookies using framed photos (always weirdly absent form the big screen Star Wars movies... not seen a flat, still used in that universe before, from what I can remember). Completely continuity busting stuff, for sure. But, here’s an interesting thing... a cartoon section, done in the style of the kind of thing you would see in the old Heavy Metal comics of the time, has the first official appearance as a character of Boba Fett. Now, it’s not stated he’s a bounty hunter, he’s just Darth Vader’s ‘right hand man’ but, he’s here all the same, looking pretty much like he would do in The Empire Strikes Back a couple of years later.

Now I watched a bonus version of The Star Wars Holiday Special with all the original American advertisements (plus a news bulletin) left in and, it’s sad to say that I was getting more entertainment value out of the trashy, 1970s American advertising than the actual special itself... which is, yeah... okay. But hey, due to this, at least I now know that the particular week in November in which this aired caused it to cancel episodes of both Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk... both of which I’m sure had more entertainment value than this. Honestly, it’s a wonder this show wasn’t a franchise killer in itself (as the recent Disney TV shows have somewhat become... they’re mostly not much better, I would say).

And I think that’s me about done with The Star Wars Holiday Special. It would be true to say that, while I would welcome an unlikely, official release of this on high definition Blu Ray at some point, part of me is relieved that this will probably never happen. Watching through this felt like a bit of an endurance test, to be honest and, I’ve really no interest in repeating the experience.

Inside

Here Comes
Scissor Claus!

Inside
aka À l'intérieur
France 2007
Directed by
Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Second Sight Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: I felt it necessary to have to include all the spoilers lurking inside this movie to make certain points. So please read or decline accordingly. Spoilers from the second sentence on, in fact.

I’d forgotten that Inside was a Christmas movie. Because nothing hammers home those yuletide tidings like a woman scissoring open a mother’s belly to steel her unborn child, obviously. This must be a French concept of a joyous noel, I guess.

It’s been a while since I first saw Inside... it must have been a year or two before I started writing this blog, I suspect. With the release (and subsequent out of print status on this particular edition, although I believe their standard edition is still around) of a new transfer in the UK presented by Second Sight Films, I thought I’d take a look at one of the more genuine and legitimate movies to find itself under the label of the New French Extremity movement. And looking at the movie a second time, I was able to see the tricks the writers/directors used to manipulate the audience, creating more tension and specifically strengthening the slight twist of a reveal at the end.

The film is essentially a two hander (with a fair few human and non-human victims along the way) between main protagonist Sarah, played by Alysson Paradis and the somewhat psychotic La Femme, played by Béatrice Dalle (who of course has par for the course at depicting disturbed individuals, such as her great performance as the title character of Betty Blue aka 37°2 le matin).

The pre-credits sequence of the movie depicts the relevant back story of both characters although, the directors manage to keep the audience blind to the fact that this sequence is about both of them. The way they cement the sleight of hand is with the depiction of a 3D CGI baby in a mothers womb. During the film, as various traumata are visited on Sarah, we occasionally cut to the baby inside her womb reacting to what’s going on. In this opening, the baby is traumatised as the car in which Sarah is on board crashes. She and her unborn child survive but her husband/boyfriend is dead. Now, the thing is, the directors use the way the human brain decodes and reads the visual language of film against the audience. When we see the baby in the womb, it’s looking towards the right hand side of the picture and when we see the car crash, we also see it from the angle that Sarah’s mangled car is on the left, having been driven towards the right. Remember that because I’ll come back to that point later in this review.

Four months later it’s Christmas Eve and it would be true to say that photojournalist Sarah is not particularly coping well to any impending joy of her situation. She goes home on Christmas Eve and the film is set between that evening and the small hours of Christmas Day, the day on which she is supposed to give birth (which she kind of does in the end, just not in the way she thinks). She is alone in the house but not for long, as she is being stalked by La Femme, who wants her to ‘let her inside’. The rest of the film is a violent and gruelling battle between the two and various other people who come between their quite visceral and explicitly gory battle. Sarah’s hand being nailed to a door with scissors is one of the least gory images in the film, for example.

Between the two of them, they manage to dispatch a few victims in the course of their traumatic and traumatising battleground. Sarah inadvertently kills her mother, mistaking her for La Femme, by stabbing her through the neck with a knitting needle and watching her bleed out, ostentatiously painting the upstairs corridor in her blood (although, to be fair, there’s already a lot of blood on the walls and carpets by this point in the film). And as for La Femme... through the course of the movie she manages to kill Sarah’s boss (after scissoring him in the groin she continues to stab in various places with her trusty scissors), Sarah’s cat, three police officers and also the prisoner they had in tow. Plus one final victim, who I’ll get to in a minute, too. One of her victims has had her pair of scissors plunged into his head and she lights a cigarette to watch him bleed out and die... in a kind of shortened scene homage (I would guess), both reminiscent but also the exact opposite in intent of the scene in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly where Clint Eastwood watches the soldier die.

The film is brilliantly shot in a kind of neutral, dreary pastel pallete (presumably to highlight the amount of red viscera in contrast to the colours and lighting) and is somewhat sparsely scored for long sections, the pulsing electronic score kicking in as and when needed (alas, not available on CD still at time of writing). The film weaves a kind of dream state midst the carnage beginning with Sarah’s initial dream sequence of vomiting up milk before giving birth to her child through her mouth and continuing to various gory set pieces. Another neat trick used is to cut out frames and presumably different takes in a scene concentrating on Béatrice Dalle’s face, to underline the unhinged mental state of this character... which is quite effective, it has to be said.

The directors further enhance the way the audience experiences the drama/trauma by giving them hope by having Sarah first perform a tracheostomy on her own throat with a knitting needle to help her breathe again and then by having her fashion a spear with which to go on the offensive with, after already having burned half of La Femme’s face off. It’s all just to rug pull from under the audience again though...

Sarah stays her hand when La Femme reveals her identity to both Sarah and the audience. It turns out the directors’ broke the 180 degree rule of filming somewhat, by having the baby in the opening sequence pointing towards the right. We rewatch the sequence from the point of view of the other car and find that it was a similarly pregnant La Femme who was driving the other car, which we now see from the opposite angle as to the initial version of the car crash in the pre-credits sequence. La Femme lost her child to the accident and now has come to Sarah on the eve of her child’s birth, to cut it from her womb and raise it as her own.  

Then we have the final punchline of the movie... La Femme gets exactly what she wants. We watch as she slowly scissors open Sarah’s belly, her blood and other fluids waterfalling down the stairs they are on and into the hallway, before reaching inside her and pulling the baby from her womb, taking it downstairs and rocking with it in one of Sarah’s rocking chairs... the final image of the movie.

And it’s all brilliant. I liked this one when I saw it years ago but it takes a second watch to realise the brilliance of the directors’ misdirection to keep La Femme’s true identity a secret until the end. Knowing who she is makes certain things in the film make more sense and it all just gels together nicely.  

Inside is one of those masterpieces which slipped under the radar in a lot of countries (as far as I know it’s still banned in Germany) and so I’m glad companies like Second Sight Films are making it more readily available to see in English speaking countries (I think my previous DVD was a US region copy). Their presentation, transfer and extras are great although, much as I admired the visual essay given by a woman relating it to her two Cesarean section births, I think she missed a trick by including in her theory of dual/shared motherhood a drawing on the wall of two pregnant mothers because, if you look at the art they show, it’s quite easily decipherable as a depiction of the faces in profile of Janus the two headed God so, yeah, maybe not. But I would say that this is a nice package to have and it’s an excellent, if somewhat ferocious film. cinephiles would miss this one at their peril, I think. Oh... and don’t go mistaking this for the 2016 Spanish/American remake, which I’m told totally misses the point and sanitises the whole thing down to disappointingly ridiculous levels. Best to avoid that version, I’m told.

Wallace And Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl

Gnome With The Wind

Wallace And Gromit -
Vengeance Most Fowl
Directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham
UK/France 2024
BBC/Aardman Animation
Airdate: 25th December 2024

Warning: Very minor spoiler.

Wallace And Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl is, by my reckoning, the sixth proper entry into the series of the two titular characters and, although not especially themed for Christmas (it turns out) it is brand new for Christmas and that’s why I’ve included it in my series of Christmas reviews this year. And, I have to say, I thought this one was mostly okay, easily taking my ‘fourth favourite’ spot of the sixth films in the franchise.

This one follows Wallace and Gromit’s further misadventures after Wallace, known for his Heath-Robinson style inventions, invents a robotic garden Gnome called Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith), originally to help out with Gromit in his garden duties but, once he and the general public sees how successful it is... as an invention he can hire to people for Gnome Improvements, so to speak (yep, the film is once again filled with elabourate verbal and visual puns... no wonder this franchise is such a big hit with the British viewers). And what could be more British than Peter Kay reprising his role as Chief Inspector Macintosh from the Wallace and Gromit feature film, The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit?

Meanwhile, however, we have the return of the awesome super-villain from The Wrong Trousers, Feathers McGraw who, using his ingenuity from within his zoo-prison (following on from events in that second Wallace And Gromit short), manages to hack the Norbot robot and change its setting to evil, to help both discredit Wallace and also so he can make good on his escape and return to where he has hidden the blue diamond he stole in the first film. Evil Norbot builds a whole army of evil gnomes and it’s not long before Wallace and Gromit, under suspicion, are chasing after the crafty penguin and coming a cropper of the evil Norbots.

Now let me address the elephant in the room right away... Peter Sallis. Who died in 2017. Now I’ve been watching Peter Sallis in things since I was a kid, my first remembrance of him being from when I was a nipper and seeing him killed in a gory manner in Taste The Blood Of Dracula (reviewed here). And, of course, he was probably the longest serving actor in the long running BBC situation comedy Last Of The Summer Wine for a fair few decades. He was always the beloved voice of Wallace since the very first short film, so I was somewhat trepidatious of some guy called Ben Whitehead stepping into his vocal shoes. But you know what? He does it really well. I wouldn’t have known, if he hadn’t died, that this wasn’t Peter Sallis. My guess here is... and I’m not in any way detracting from the mimicry skills of Mr. Whitehead... that Sallis had such a distinctive voice that it’s slightly easier to get away with parodying his speech, perhaps. That’s my best guess anyway and well done to the new guy for getting it so right.

And it’s all pretty nicely done. From the Cape Fear style scenes of Feathers McGraw preparing himself for his escape from prison (using a close parody of the mighty Bernard Herrmann’s original score for that film) to the smashing denouement featuring a chase on two narrowboats and a villain who escapes to return another day, it’s all pretty good. And talking of the score, regular composer Julian Knott’s themes have been used to full effect by another composer this time around... which seems a shame but the score on this one is by the always excellent Lorne Balfe, so I shall forgive them. And it works a treat, with Knott’s themes referenced in various guises throughout the musical highlights.

A downside perhaps... and it maybe stems from my not realising this wasn’t a 25 minute short when I started watching it... is that for all the wonderful punning, beautful animation and comic timing... it seems a little long for the subject matter, coming in at a walloping, feature length 1 hour and 19 minutes. It doesn’t exactly drag but I did find myself looking at my watch on occasion.

And I think that’s me done with Wallace And Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl... the ending seems to leave the gate open for another Feathers McGraw led sequel and, since the problem around the voice of Sallis seems to have been surprisingly solved... well... why not? Bring it on, I say.

Doctor Who - Joy To The World

The Joy Of Rex

Doctor Who -
Joy To The World
UK/USA 2024
Airdate: 25th December 2024

Warning: Some big spoilers here.

It’s nice having a Doctor Who Christmas Special to look forward to again. Now, admittedly, last year’s show which returned it to the Christmas Day slot was... well... a bit of a disaster and, as it turned out, kind of a harbinger of what was probably the worst series of Doctor Who in quite some time. However, it’s nice to be able to report that this year’s special, Joy To The World, was a pretty good return to form for the show. One can only hope that this signals a better season than the last one... although it was written by Steven Moffat so my expectations were that it would at least be interesting at any rate.

The plot involves an attempt to grow a star seed through various doors in a Time Hotel, which specialises in lodging its guests in different periods. So we have The Doctor and his companions visiting various places like the 1940s in London, the early 1960s on the Orient Express and they even at one point, almost get eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Of course, once the star seed is finished it will go off and burn the planet to cinders to create a new star but, hey ho, that’s what The Doctor is here to stop.

So we have Ncuti Gatwa back as the main man and the beautiful Nicola Coughlan as new companion Joy. Gatwa is given a script he can do a good job with (including a companion saving scene which, I suspect, is inspired heavily by the scene between Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen in the Fourth Doctor story Ark In Space, reviewed here) and Coughlan is pretty good as his short lived companion (yep, all I’m saying is that she ends her story in a similar way to Kylie Minogue in the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas Special Voyage Of The Damned).

Also very good in this episode is another companion who The Doctor spends a year with, named Anita, played by Stephanie de Whalley, who has really nice chemistry with the current incarnation and, all I’m saying is that they should maybe pick her up as a regular companion at some point. Some of the most moving scenes in this special involve her and The Doctor. And then there’s Joel Fry, who I really think a lot of as an actor anyway and who brings his particular comic timing to the story too.

There was some great writing involved as well. Moffat is maybe not taking things as seriously as some long term fans might want him to but, he has a lovely moment where, after a year of not cracking the password code to get Joy out of trouble, The Doctor merely remembers the code his future self told him it was, creating a nice temporal paradox. And then there’s the wonderful line from The Doctor... “Pardon my French but, what the French is going on!” Which was quite brilliant and he used the new ‘curse term’ French later on in the episode too. Along with yet another infuriating reference to Mavity. I mean, when the heck are they going to tidy up that loose end which dates back to the three David Tennant specials from last year?

My favourite moment, however, was a visual reference. Not only was there a costumer’s shop in the Time Hotel which evoked the name of Mr. Benn, but the costume in the shop was the red suit of armour which was from my favourite episode of Mr. Benn from when I was a kid. Nicely done sir.

On the negative side... because you knew I’d have some negative comments, right? Well I didn’t like it too much that the woman on the train in 1962, who turned out to be a lesbian (or must be bisexual right, since she shacks up with Sean Connery in Dr. No the same year)... was Sylvia Trench from the first two Bond films. But what's so wrong about this character appearing here is... the James Bond books and films are already established as fictional works in the WHONIVERSE... so how can she appear as a real character too?

Similarly, although it didn’t bother me too much, I suspect there might be a few noses bent out of shape with The Doctor witnessing the arrival of the three kings at Bethlehem at the end of the story. What did bother me was the fact that, even though they were the best scenes in the show, The Doctor waited around for a whole year from 2024 to 2025 to catch up to the Time Hotel again. Well, honestly, since there is now another incarnation of The Doctor on Earth at exactly the same point, why didn’t he just go and borrow David Tennant’s TARDIS for a little while? This is kind of a sloppy continuity error, methinks.

Still, I did quite enjoy Joy To The World and it’s certainly one of the best episodes Ncuti Gatwa has been in so, yeah, this was a nice treat for a Christmas evening and I am just keeping my fingers crossed that it won’t be the last Christmas special ever. I’m kinda expecting the show to get cancelled any month now unless someone comes to its rescue.

Merry Christmas 2024

 

Merry Christmas
to all my readers!

Above are the three cards I designed last year and at this link is this year’s Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz (right here) if you find yourself with any time to play.

Below are links to the majority of my Christmas themed blogs over the years, again if you find yourself with any downtime on your hands. I shall hopefully be back here tomorrow with a review of the new Doctor Who Christmas Special. Until then, have a good one.

 

Books & Comics  

Alvin And His Pals In Merry Christmas Dell Giant

Carfax House

A Charlie Brown Christmas - The Making Of A Tradition

Christmas And Other Horrors

Christmas At Fontaine’s

A Christmas Ghost Story

The Christmas Jigsaw Murders

The Christmas Murder Game

Crimson Snow

Dark Side Of Christmas, The 

A DC Universe Christmas

Ghosts Of Christmas Past

Giant SuperHero Holiday Grab Bag

Horror For Christmas

It’s A Wonderful Life Book, The 

Murder On The Christmas Express 

Mystery In White

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer - DC Limited Collector’s Edition

The Santa Klaus Murder

The Stupidest Angel


Christmas Movies

The Advent Calendar

Anna And The Apocalypse

Batman Returns

Christmas Bloody Christmas

A Christmas Horror Story

Deathcember

Demonic Christmas Tree (aka The Killer Tree) 

Die Hard/Die Hard 2 Double Bill

Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas

Everly

The Green Knight

Gremlins Double Bill

It’s A Wonderful Knife

It’s A Wonderful Life

Krampus

Rare Exports - A Christmas Tale

Red One

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Santa Jaws

Scrooged

Silent Bite

Silent Night (2021) 

Silent Night (2023)

Sint

Tales From The Crypt

Violent Night  

 

 TV

Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special

Doctor Who Christmas Specials

Doctor Who - A Christmas Carol

Doctor Who - The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

Doctor Who - The Snowmen

Doctor Who - The Time Of The Doctor

Doctor Who - Last Christmas

Doctor Who - The Husbands Of River Song

Doctor Who - The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

Doctor Who - Twice Upon A Time (2017)

The Church On Ruby Road

Joy To The World


Bonus

23 Favourite Childhood Toys

Greatest Christmas Music

John McCLane VS George Bailey Grudge Match

Quizwoz 2024

 

 

The Annual Cryptic
Movie Quiz 2024

Quizwoz ‘24

It’s that time again!

Welcome to  this year’s Cryptic Movie Quiz for the festive period.

How you play...

Check out the grid above and you’ll see spaces for 14 movie titles running horizontally and, below this intro, are the cryptic clues to assist you in working out what these 'non-Christmas' movie titles are. To help out, I’ve filled in a line of letters vertically downwards spelling out HAPPY CHRISTMAS... so you have a letter in its correct position for each of the titles. Please don’t forget to click on the grid to see a larger version of it and maybe print it off to help yourself.

Email your answers to me at nuts4r2@hotmail.com by the end of January 9th 2025 to get your entries in. A few days after that, I’ll stick up the name of the winner (or winners, if it’s a tie or a group effort), along with all the answers, here on my blog. No prizes, it’s just for fun but, if you like solving puzzles and have some down time during the Christmas break, maybe give it a go.

By way of an example, here’s a question from last year’s quiz, followed by the answer...

Example question:
An Ancient Roman cannibal ate his mother in law. He was...

Example answer:
Glad he ate her, so... Gladiator.

Or just check out the January solution pages from the last few years to get a feel for how to put these things together (you often have to make adjustments for the puntastic nature of the solutions). If you keep checking back in the comments section below, I will probably put the odd extra clue down there every now and again to help you out throughout the Christmas period.

Full marks are rarely scored by pretty much anyone so... if you’re feeling a bit stuck, there’s still everything to play for. Some people have won it with less than half the grid correct. So send me what you’ve got anyway.

I hope you enjoy playing. Make sure you have lots of fun this Christmas period, drink responsibly and play irresponsibly. Here are the questions..

1. A place where the deities of armed conflict can go to build sandcastles. 

2. Two donkeys in this killer. 

3. Taking a long and distinct period of history along for a surgical operation. 

4. Arachnid dedicated to God. 

5. New Musical Express but extracted from its initials. 

6. Assassins perilous to dark nylons everywhere. 

7. Kubrick’s black slabs metamorphose into frightening, imaginary creatures. 

8. Jazz legend Fitzgerald goes to see a men’s hair stylist. 

9. Red Cheeked, male offspring of Richard sends health care worker to the dark period following day. 

10. Amorous untruths losing blood from the circulatory system. 

11. Quickly spun around like a spinning top, to the left of the compass.

12. Three kisses in King’s New England state of the US. 

13. Daniel on the bridge on the river.

14. An Englishman’s home is the fluid of his circulatory system.

A Christmas Ghost Story

Somerset Morn

A Christmas Ghost Story
by Kim Newman
Titan Books
ISBN 9781835410691

A short snip of a shout out of a review to the great Kim Newman’s latest, relatively short novel, A Christmas Ghost Story. Heralded on the front cover as “A chilling tale of dark days and long nights”, the story introduces us to Rust (formerly Russell), a teenage-ish boy and his mother Angie, a somewhat successful crime fiction writer. They live at Six Elms in a part of Somerset easily cut off from the rest of civilisation when bad, winter snow hits... which it does throughout the course of the novel, which takes place from the 1st to the 25th of December.

The basic plot is that they, or rather Rust, receives threatening and ultimately supernatural post, one a day for 24 days and, as they carry on over the length of the month, things get decidedly eerie. Is it all related to Angie’s imagined but seemingly fictional broadcast of an edition of Christmas Ghost Stories from the old BBC ones of the 1970s and 1980s, which were often adaptations of the works of M. R. James (amongst others)? Or is something even more sinister taking root in the household (and believe me, that first day advent calendar chocolate is a bitch)? Either way, it makes a good subject for Rust’s paraphenomenon podcast for sure.

The book is playful with shrewd insight and ideas, which is kind of what you expect from a writer with the talent of Kim Newman but, I always forget just how naturally he weaves his words and how his phrases and observations zing off the page. There’s some beautiful stuff in here, such as the idea of the mother using her computer spell check and the young boy’s response that a computer is just a box and it’s a subroutine of software she’s running. And I practically cheered (and quickly highlighted to my friends over whatsapp) when he says, in a scene flashing back to the mother’s earlier years... “Dad and Angie would have already been through the double issues of the Radio and TV Times with highlighter pens, flagging conflicts of interest.” He then goes on to absolutely nail, in the following paragraph, the difference between the golden age of 1970s Christmas TV and the current poor showing these days, when there’s rarely ever anything good on and the chaff hugely outnumbers the wheat, so to speak.

And throwaway lines such as “Supernatural curse delivery isn’t what it was before Brexit.” certainly liven up the prose and helps to build two central protagonists who are completely likeable in every way. People you care about and who the reader wishes to see no harm come to. Subsequently the wit and attitude of the prose blazes away into high gear and, to risk summoning the obvious clichés, makes the book absolutely binge worthy, like a really good TV show.

My only slight criticism is the supernaturally abstract nature of the book’s ultimate denouement. It felt a little less edgier than the rest of the novel but not entirely inappropriate and, to be fair, the good ship Newman did even surprise me with the direction the last part of the book took... which is something so rare that I always respect it in a writer when they are able to take me unawares.

People of my old age will also get something out of the many pop culture references (and even the made up parodies of such things) that litter the pages. References to stuff like Quatermass And The Pit, The Thing, Doctor Who and even The Shining are also all present and correct alongside the company of those old BBC Ghost Stories I mentioned earlier. So there’s a lot crammed into the book’s relatively punchy 150 plus pages, for sure.

So, a quick but also pacey read makes Kim Newman’s A Christmas Ghost Story, bulging at the seams with style and entertaining truths, something of a fulfilling read for the Christmas season, to be sure. This one makes a nice companion to the yuletide meanderings and rituals many of us go through each year and you could do a lot worse than to mark it up on your Christmas list, as far as I’m concerned.

Red One

 

The Long
List Goodnight

Red One
USA/Canada 2024
Directed by Jake Kasdan
MGM

I actually wanted to see Red One when it came out at the cinema but, alas, it was released in November over here in the UK and I really try not to watch Christmas films out of season (aka, out of December!) so I waited a few weeks. Weeks in which my perception of the film was changed by word of mouth... both from audiences who had seen it on Twitter and, yeah, it took an equally bad pasting from the critics too. So it would be true to say that, by the time I got to see this movie for myself (aka, in December!), my expectations for the movie had plummeted way below zero.

But I did see it and, what can I say? Once again I am reminded why the opinions of both fellow audience members and a bunch of professional critics should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt. Frankly, I loved Red One. It was everything I was expecting from a big budget Christmas movie plus, had the unexpected bonus of being cannily well thought through and a lot more clever than I think people realise.

So at the start of the film we are introduced to Jack O'Malley played by Chris Evans (I suspect taking on this role to further shed his squeaky clean Captain America image). He’s a somewhat criminal hacker known as The Wolf who is wanted by organisations like the FBI all over the world (in order to try and recruit him) and who, in his opening heist, shows that he would sink so low as to steal candy from a baby. At some point he is anonymously hired by someone to find the co-ordinates of an undisclosed location. Which he does, not realising he gives the villain of the film, played by Kiernan Shipka, the information required so her team can abduct Santa Claus, played by the always brilliant J. K. Simmons, for her own, world threatening and evil ends.

Meanwhile, Santa’s number one bodyguard Cal Drift, played by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, part of E.L.F (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) needs to get Santa back for his annual Christmas run in two days time. So, working with Zoe, who runs a kind of ‘mythical creatures police’ organisation, played by Lucy Liu, he recruits the cynical, world weary Jack to help him find where Santa has been taken.

Tolerating their differences before the expected male bonding, they follow the leads and punch their way through various adversaries to give a crowd pleasing conclusion to the film, aided by E.L.Fs technology such as a device which shrinks and grows toys and people to be used as equipment for the mission (such as toys like Hot Wheels cars for transport, Raving Bonkers robots... which I think were known as Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots in the USA... and so on). So yeah, you get some Ant-Man style shenanigans in the action sequences too but, apart from getting a nice joke around Jack, who upon seeing how the toys are enlarged and made practical immediately asks a shop owner if he has a Wonder Woman action figure... there actually is a really vital logic as to why Santa and E.L.F would actually have this specific technology in their arsenal in the first place (but I’m trying to do this without spoilers so, just keep a look out in the last sequence of the film to find just how this comes in handy if you are Santa).

And, as I said above, I loved it. It’s got its heart in the right place, has some great action scenes (like fighting giant sized killer snowman on a tropical beach), shoe horns in some nice moments with Krampus and, yeah, in my opinion has some good chemistry going between the leads. Added to this it’s got a great, dynamic score by the great Henry Jackman which keeps things going but, alas, is not issued on a CD at time of writing.

So yeah, sorry if it deflects any credibility on my part but, I had a really good time with Red One and I hope it gets a Blu Ray release at some point soon so I can show it to my folks next Christmas. An entertaining movie, I reckon.

The Christmas Murder Game

Murder Mansion

The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
Bonnier books
ISBN: 9781838775384

The Christmas Murder Game is the first of what I shall, at present, call a trilogy of unconnected Christmas murder mysteries by writer Alexandra Benedict. I read the second and third ones, Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here) and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (reviewed here) last year, not knowing that she’d actually written a trio of books three years running, starting with this one. Alas, there’s no new Christmas mystery by her this year but I live in hope that another one will be forthcoming at some point.

This one starts as the others, with a brief set of rules telling the reader how to play various games hidden within the text of the book. This one has two hidden games in it (plus an acknowledgements word search at the end)... the first being various anagrams of the gifts of the twelve days of Christmas hidden within the text of the relevant chapter and a second game being the titles of 12 of Benedict’s favourite mansion/manor house/family get together style mysteries hidden in the prose.

This book tells the story of main protagonist Lily, who returns after some years estranged from her adopted family to Endgame Manor in Yorkshire, taking the trip up from London near the start of the book. Her mother, who she found dead as a child in the big maze on the grounds of the house was the catalyst for her Aunt Liliana adopting her and taking her away from the manor at a young age. However, now Liliana is dead and her written voice from beyond the grave beckons Lily back to take part in the last of her annual Christmas games against other members of the family... the prize primarily being inheriting the house and grounds but, in the letter sent to Lily, the main stake is to uncover the equally cryptic hidden clues to find that her mum didn’t slash her own wrists as had been reported... but that she was, in fact, murdered.

And it’s just as good as the other two Christmas themed books I mentioned above... in fact, I think this one might just be my favourite of the bunch. Naturally for these kinds of books, the story focusses a lot on the various family characters, their history with the main protagonist and the secrets about various people, including Lily, as the plot goes on. And, also like a lot of these kinds of books, sometimes you can’t see those twists coming and... yeah... other times you do. But I certainly didn’t see an early complication for the central character coming before it’s revealed a few chapters into the novel, so I was pleased and pleasantly surprised by that.

And the writer is very skilled, not just with the puzzles, anagrams and the general enigma of the main plot but, also with the beautiful, sometimes poetic way she expresses things. For instance, in a brief childhood flashback when a character has the complex house of cards he was building knocked down by his sister, Benedict describes “His tears falling like spades down his cheeks.” And another phrase which impressed me with its vivid evocation of sense memory from earlier in the book was, “Lily yanks her bobble hat down over her ears. She’d forgotten how the Yorkshire wind wants to get to know you…”

And I’m doubly pleased to say that I learned something too from this book. I’d never come across the term before but now I know that prosopagnosia is the term for the neurological disorder known as face blindness. Anytime I learn something like this from a novel, I’m always pleased.

However, other than that, I’ve not got much else to add by way of observations on The Christmas Murder Game. The main reveal of a certain antagonist didn’t exactly blind side me, to be honest but, the old giallo ploy of leaving so many suspects on the loose did at least slow me down a little. I very much enjoyed this one and would recommend it as a December read if you are into mystery novels, for sure.

Silent Night (2023)

Silent Hunter

Silent Night
USA/Mexico 2023
Directed by John Woo
A Better Tomorrow Films

Warning: Slight spoilers

Not to be confused with the absolutely brilliant movie Silent Night from 2021 (which I reviewed here), John Woo’s identically titled action movie was something I wanted to see last year but, well, it only got a release via the internet in the UK on 23rd December (by which time I’m too busy) and, frankly, I don’t watch Christmas films out of season. I did, however, manage to snag a signed copy of Marco Beltrami’s brilliant score to the movie when it was released early this year and, what can I say, now that it’s actually December I’ll actually be able to play it too (I don’t listen to Christmas music out of season either, folks).

So this one stars Joel Kinnaman as Brian and the brilliant Catalina Sandino Moreno (from the TV show From) as his wife. The credits roll as we see Brian running in slow motion, his Christmas jumper soaked in blood. As the credits end he catches up with a couple of cars who are shooting it out in a gang battle. When he catches up to them... all I can say is, this is the first Christmas movie I’ve seen where, within five minutes, two people have their heads skewered with forklift truck prongs and the main protagonist has his throat shot out at close range.

A month later, when Brian gets out of hospital, you begin to realise that, apart from diegetic sound from sources such as TV or radio plus a few whispered words here and there, the majority of this film exists with absolutely no dialogue whatsoever... which is just as well considering that the hero no longer has a voice box.

It turns out that the son of Brian and his wife was shot dead from a stray bullet in that gangland battle at the start of the picture and, after he spends a month or so trying to drink his pain away and his wife leaves him, he starts training for revenge... physically, with firearms, with a car, with knives etc, so that he can, as he scrawls on the calendar for December 24th of the current year he’s in (2022 it turns out)... Kill Them All.

That’s the plot, It’s simple and there’s a lot of tension and build up before the first, brutal, hand to hand combat scene used as a prelude to an ultra long series of action scenes culminating in the last 25 minutes referencing Bruce Lee’s Game Of Death, in a way, as Brian (and, to a small extent, a policeman played by someone called Kid Cudi) fights his way up to the top of a building block to get to the final villain’s lair.

And it’s nicely shot, has some interesting framing and some nice, slow camera moves and, ultimately, is a pretty solid film. For instance, there’s a lovely moment where the juxtaposition of two shots forming a transition are really poetic... as a falling tear from his wife’s cheek turns ito the ejected shell from a gun range.

Also, I think there’s a big nod to the cinema of Sergio Leone in this... namely the way he references memories with some of the main protagonists in his films. In this case, his dead son’s music box chimes are used to show him both thinking back to his life before the shooting and also as a reminder/focus of his, as the saying goes, roaring rampage of revenge. It very much reminded me of the use of the watch chimes in For A Few Dollars More, for instance. And come to think of it, the silent hero taking silencing damage to the throat could be seen as being influenced by both Charles Bronson’s character in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s title character in Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence so... yeah, pretty sure John Woo must be a fan of Italian westerns, for sure.

And, yeah, Beltrami’s score was pretty outstanding in places and certainly supports the movie well (although I found the end credits music a little underwhelming). I’m definitely looking forward to giving this CD a spin or two over the next fortnight, for sure.

And that more or less wraps up this fairly short review of Silent Night so I’ll just add that I could have done without the Hallmark movie moment in the villains lair towards the end of the story (you’ll know it when you see it) and that Brian is, fortunately, not depicted as a complete superman in this... he gets hurt and sometimes only luck saves him from death. And Joel Kinnaman certainly looks like he can do this stuff and does a very convincing job of portraying this guy (perhaps a little less convincing when he puts on a smiling face in the flashbacks but, yeah, these moments are luckily kept to a minimum). Silent Night is definitely one to watch from Woo and maybe I’ll start revisiting his back catalogue at some point and looking at some of his classics on Blu Ray (such as The Killer, Hard Boiled and Paycheck... but not Face Off, that was awful). So, yeah, maybe give this one a go.

Christmas And Other Horrors

Frightful Seasoning

Christmas And
Other Horrors
Edited by Ellen Datlow
Titan Books
ISBN: 9781803363264

Warning: Very slight seasonal spoilers.

It was mid-January earlier this year when I received from a couple of friends, this anthology of tales entitled Christmas And Other Horrors - A Winter Solstice Anthology, to celebrate the occasion of my birthday. Showing a canny understanding of my nature, it was given to me with the caveat of “I know you won’t read this until December...” and, of course, they were absolutely right that I wouldn’t but I was very pleased with the book because that would be one less tome to try and source for my December reading (in order to get it up onto the blog). So this is the first of this year’s three Christmas books which will be reviewed, albeit somewhat shortly I suspect, over the next week or so.

Now, it has to be said that while I always look for either horror themed or murder mystery themed books to complement my December reading, I have grown weary of the yuletide horror collections over the years as, they mostly seem to disappoint. So I was pleasantly surprised that this book, which collects all new stories from the end of last year, is actually pretty good. Of the 18 stories bound within its covers, there are very few duds in here. And there are at least two which are actually outstanding. Many of them start well and sustain an entertaining read but, a fair few also kind of taper off towards the end, it has to be said. So while I had a good time with the book as a whole (a very good time, it should be said) there are a few stories where, it felt to me, the writer was holding back on something which could have been a more satisfying ending.

The anthology starts off strongly with The Importance Of A Tidy Home by Christopher Golden. This involves the observations of a man fallen on bad times and homeless in the streets of Salzburg. Here he becomes first hand acquainted with the local myth of the Schnabelperchten, who silently enter the houses of people at night to ensure the house is tidy to welcome in the coming New Year. If not, the creatures will gorily eviscerate the sleeping dwellers with their shears and other sharp implements.

Now this tradition of the Schnabelperchten was previously unknown to me but it has to be said that many of the tales in this tome are utilising various myths and traditions bound to the time of the Winter Solstice and, as such, the majority of this volume (if not all) would mostly fall into the realm of folk horror, which is a sub-genre of horror which has become ‘on trend’ again just lately, of course. Each story is presented with a graphic hanging above the title of a silhouette of a different (and sometimes demonic or bestial) Christmas tree ornament, which is a nice touch.

The book continues with tales of the narrators or protagonists either failing victim (sometimes fatally) to the ‘horror’ of the subject matter or, on occasion, actually turning out to be the horror themselves (such as the Welsh story concerned with Mari Lwyd - the grey mare - in  His Castle by Alma Katsu).

One very interesting piece by Stephen Graham Jones called Our Recent Unpleasantness is very surreal with its tale of a woman who can take her own head off at will (no, it’s not an Indonesian story, surprisingly) and it weaves an atmosphere all its own, although I found the ending somewhat inconclusive or, if not inconclusive then perhaps less interesting than the journey it takes ot get there.

I think my two favourites in the tome also happen to be two of the longest tales in this collection, which are as follow...

Gravé Of Small Birds by Kaaron Warren tells of a notorious, semi-celebrity cook who behaved almost psychotically when she lost on a British cooking programme. She is invited to provide meals for the twelve days of the solstice on the strange island of Brennan. The atmosphere is very similar to that found in the TV show The Third Day (reviewed by me here) and the writer manages to get the sympathies of her audience regarding the central character, even though her responses to certain events (such as murdering someone out of annoyance) are, at the very least, quite questionable.

My other favourite is the last story in the tome, After Words by John Langan, which centres on a tale told by the male in a couple during and after three bouts of sexual intercourse one night. A tale of a long gone former girlfriend and his initial erotic encounters with her. Now, I have to say, I was only about a quarter of the way in when I realised both exactly how this one would end and how the writer would have to shift the narrative (which I also saw for what it was when certain episodes of sudden amnesia are brought up). Nevertheless, it was well done and, like the previous tale I mentioned, manages to put flesh and bones to the handful of characters in the story.

And I’ll leave it just there, I think. If you are in the mood for some seasonal reading with a spooky, folk horror edge then Christmas And Other Horrors is definitely one of the better of the collections I have read in this vein. Certainly I’m very pleased with this unexpected present and would recommend it to friends and readers alike. Good stuff.

Silent Bite

 





Nosferheistu

Silent Bite
Canada 2024
Directed by Taylor Martin
Blue Eyes Media

Okay, this one isn’t great but it’s certainly not too shabby compared to some Christmas horror movies I’ve seen over the years. Silent Bite is a ‘heist aftermath gone wrong’ movie with four bank robbers dressed in seasonal disguises, holing up in a motel (the Jolly Roger Inn) while they wait for their fifth gang member, who is decoying cops away from the scene of the bank robbery depicted at the start of the film, to double back and come get them with the getaway vehicle later.

Well, I say depicted... the film shows its low budget early on as the heist in question actually plays out as a series of motion graphics while the opening credits roll. Which is fine because they look pretty good and you get the idea easily enough. Then the four check in and wait for their friend but, unknown to them, the motel also has a family of female vampires calling the place home, who see the guys as a Christmas present.

Now there’s good and there’s bad on this one. Some of the acting is pretty good and two of the four especially, the leader codenamed Father Christmas played by Simon Phillips and ‘the rowdy one’ codenamed Snowman, played nicely over the top by Michael Swatton - do have a certain British charm and good chemistry to their characters. They kind of save the film in a way and it helps, for them and the rest of the cast, that a lot of the dialogue is quite humorous and smartly written. At least, for the male contingent in the film... the vampire gals are a different story with the credibility of the writing for their characters and the performances of them, well, just about scraping by.

That being said, although some of the dialogue is really nicely done, the story itself is not very original and it doesn’t really do much to rise above its initial premise. There are certainly questions about the use and misuse of vampire lore which one could maybe delve into if one were being picky (of the ‘why did that happen for one person but not that person’ variety) and the film does kinda drag in the last third because of it.

And some of the kills are off camera and don’t really work in a satisfying way... again, I suspect some of these scenes were a casualty of a comparatively low budget and I’m guessing certain things got axed during the shoot (I hope... or the writing really is a lot worse than I realised).

Then there’s the music. The opening animation also has a strong, electric guitar dominant version of Jingle Bells to set the mood which is helpful because, without some of the window dressing employed throughout, such as this music, then the film really didn’t need to be something set at Christmas... it’s not integral to the plot and could have taken place anytime. But Darren Morze’s score throughout the film is not as unsubtle as the opening titles might lead you to expect and it does a good job of supporting the action and keeping things buoyant.

All in all, I don’t have much more to say about Silent Bite. I thought the film was, for the most part, competently made and certainly entertaining enough. I suspect it could have been a much better film if the production company had thrown more money (and also time) at it but I don’t know what the pitch was like. If you like seasonal horror movies however, it fills it’s hour and a half running time nicely and most fans of this sub-genre shouldn’t feel too short changed by it. Definitely worth a look if you have nothing better to do.

Love And Monsters

Chasing Aimee

Love And Monsters
USA/Canada/Australia 200
Directed by Michael Matthews
Paramount Pictures

Love And Monsters is a really cute little film which flirts with the sci-fi/horror genres but manages to retain a lot of humour and heart to still fall within the boundaries of romantic comedy at the same time. The film is set in Earth’s near future and tells the tale of Joel, played by Dylan O'Brien, who writes letters to his once girlfriend Aimee (played by Jessica Henwick) which never get posted but which we hear by way of his narrative voice over to apprise the audience of what they need to know in any given scene.

The reason why the letters never get posted is because, like many survivors in this post-apocalyptic time frame, he lives with just a handful of humans, hiding in an underground bunker. The film starts off with a brilliant, animated sequence filling us in on what’s happened, which is... in the near future, an asteroid named Agatha was due to collide with the Earth and kill us all. So the military sent a load of missiles to intercept it and, job well done, the asteroid was obliterated. However, the many chemicals from all those rockets fell back to Earth and started mutating all the cold blooded creatures... insects, fish. crabs etc... until they quickly became huge and started eating the humans on the planet. It took just a year for almost everyone to die and be left with various scattered outposts, like the underground bunker Joel hides in, as mankind’s last survivors. A place where they’ve now been for seven years. Although, he can still sometimes get radio contact with Aimee’s bunker on occasion.

Then, one day after a bunker breach in which another of his companions is eaten, the very scared and useless at survival Joel decides to go on a seven day trip across the surface so he can be reunited with Amiee. And that’s the main plot and I won’t spoil what happens for you but he does acquire a dog and make two other human friends, played by Michael Rooker and Ariana Greenblatt, who teach him survival techniques against the various monsters, along the way.

And the film is a total delight as we follow the antics of Joel and his new four legged companion Boy across the forest looking regions of the Earth (I’m guessing going through decimated cities would have been too big for the budget) and the various things he does to survive. And, like any quest, the end result isn’t necessarily what he was expecting to find but there are further adventures to be had when he finally reaches his destination, for sure.

The film is not especially interesting in the way the shots are designed, for the most part but, it’s very competently put together and never fails to be anything other than intense, suspenseful, charming and captivating throughout. O'Brien seems pretty good in the lead role and brings a certain warmth to proceedings. It even has a very moving sequence where he finds the last working ‘MAV1S’ robot, which he knows about but has never interacted with in person (he has a dead shell of one back in his bunker) and he shares her last 50 minutes of time with her before the power runs out on her... after which he buries her.

This one also had a nice score by Marco Beltrami and Marcus Trumpp, which really helps move the film along and which is even on CD (that’s one for this year’s Christmas list I think). It’s also edited very well and, despite some really quite scary and drawn out monster encounters, it actually takes a decision to stay away from the gore and is definitely in the ‘family adventure’ category, it seems to me. There are also some nice learning curves in the growth of the characters as we watch Joel go from scared witless to a responsible but daring survivor and possibly leader. There’s a beautiful moment when he’s face to face with a giant killer crab that’s about to eat him which really hammers home the point that the lead protagonist has evolved into someone more accepting and wise as his personal journey has educated him to a large degree.

And that’s all I’ve got to say, really, about Love And Monsters other than it’s an easy film to recommend and that it has a cool, joyful dog character to make sure the poor humans don’t get led too astray (played by two dogs in real life). This is a charming movie with a lot of heart and definitely worth seeking out if you can get an opportunity. Loved it.