The Gorge

 

Gorgeoumaflip*

The Gorge
Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK/USA 2025
Apple

Warning: All the spoilers.

The Gorge is a new film made specifically for a streaming TV channel… which is not my favourite way to view a new motion picture, for sure.

It stars Miles Teller as Levi, an ex-marine sniper, one of the top five in the world, who takes jobs on a freelance basis but doesn’t really care much for doing anything anymore. But he’s called in by, he assumes, his government to do a job briefed by a higher up, somewhat shady private contractor (played by Sigourney Weaver), after it’s established he has no loved ones or family ties. His job is to spend a year in one of two towers overlooking opposite sides of a gorge in an undisclosed location (which is never revealed but the film was shot in Scotland, I believe).

What he doesn’t know, but given the nature of the questions asked at his mini briefing the audience will surely rumble this five minutes before it happens, is that each previous agent being relieved after their year of guarding the gorge is shot dead and dumped in said valley by their pick up helicopter. And so Levi begins his one year tour of duty, knowing that an agent from ‘another side’ will be guarding the gorge from the opposite tower. Each can see each other through their binoculars but they are forbidden to communicate.

Manning the other tower is Lithuanian sniper assassin Drasa, played by one of my favourite modern actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy… who is even better at her job than Levi, it would seem. And, of course, over the year they bond through writing messages and playing chess etc through their binoculars, slowly falling in love. But they also have to defend themselves and each other when the ‘occupants’ of the valley try to get out of the gorge. And those occupants are pretty terrifying, presenting as kind of half decayed/half regrown vegetable textured soldiers (and horses) left over from the Second World War.

Of course, after a while, Levi finds a way of crossing the valley on a zip line so the two can ‘couple up’ but when he tries to return, he falls into the gorge and, naturally, Drasa parachutes in after him, armed to the teeth.

And in the gorge are what the very first guard in 1941 dubbed, The Hollow Men, named after the T. S. Eliot poem. And then, via a film canister marked up ‘God Forgive Us’ they find that the zombie creatures are fungal resurrections of soldiers resulting from experiments approved by the US, UK and Russian government, collaborating during the war. One which got out of hand when the viral agent used contaminated and engulfed the researchers too. So Levi and Drasa decide that this can’t go on, with private companies still trying to study and create these super soldiers… and so they try to stay alive long enough to destroy the gorge, despite Sigourney Weaver and a few goons arriving in a helicopter to kill them.

And, yeah, it’s a pretty nice film. The special effects work and designs of the undead soldiers and their equally sinister and vegetative environment is apparently based on the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski, who I’d not heard of before this but I think I need to check his work out now (he reminds me a little of my favourite artist H. R. Giger). They’re quite terrifying, it has to be said and pose a real, credible threat to the two main protagonists of the film.

So all that’s great and the acting is pretty solid as well which, to be fair, I would expect from those two leads. And things are eerily and propulsively supported by the score from the popular duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross… sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. All in all I think it’s a well put together film which would have been much better served by an initial cinema release. I do, however, have two slight criticisms, which I’ll get into now…

Firstly, it could do with some trimming. It’s a long film and I think it would have had much more impact if a few of the lengthy combat scenes towards the end of the picture were whittled down a little more.

Secondly, it’s full of terrible Hollywoodland clichés geared to making it all seem sunny and happy in its outcome. Two things in particular annoyed me. One is getting the human villain helicoptered out to the gorge so she can be brought to violent justice… I really could have done without that, to be honest. And similarly, the seemingly impossible happy ending ripped straight from The Bourne Identity remake is not the most credible, to be honest. I would have had a ‘wake up dreaming that happy ending as a mutated monster on a laboratory table’ kind of rug pull rather than the way it’s left here which, like I said, really does strain credibility.

But there you have it, these things happen and I don’t think they detract too much from a movie which, I’ll say it again, really should have been given a theatrical release rather than being relegated to a barely watched streaming channel. The Gorge is definitely worth a watch if you like sci-fi action thrillers with a dash of romance. Maybe give it a go sometime.

*Okay, that title was meant for one specific person who I know reads this blog. For everyone else, you can take Into The Valley Of Death as an alternate title.

Furiosa - A Mad Max Saga

The Fast And
The Furiosa

Furiosa - A Mad Max Saga
Directed by George Miller
Australia/USA 2024
Warner Brothers
UK Theatrical Print

I’m not that enamoured with either the Mad Max movies or of George Miller, truth be told. I thought Mad Max was okay  (reviewed by me here), Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior was the standout film (reviewed by me here), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was... um... what it was, I guess (reviewed by me here) and then the much lauded Fury Road was, honestly, pretty dull and uninspiring (reviewed by me here).

So I really wasn’t expecting much from this one, Furiosa - A Mad Max Saga, which is a prequel to Fury Road and tells the back story of the character played by Charlize Theron in the previous movie, Imperator Furiosa. The real reason I decided to go see this one is because one of my favourite new actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy, is playing a younger version of Furiosa (and also, as it turns out, an even younger actress who’s absolutely brilliant in this called Alyla Browne, for the first hour). It also has Chris Hemsworth playing a villain here too (which I’ve seen him do before and he tends to do villains pretty well... this one isn’t his most evil, I reckon).

So, yeah, I was only here for the Joy of Anya Taylor but, I have to say, this new movie is a lot less duller and much more watchable, up to a point, than the last movie.

There are just more interesting story beats and ideas in this one, it seems to me... although probably a lot less action... which is fine in itself but, the main problem with this is the way the action is structured because, those action set pieces are pretty good but, the climax of the movie in terms of that specific kind of action spectacle comes maybe a half hour before the end. The big ‘war’ which we are expecting to happen is mostly just a quick montage before we get to see Furiosa go and continue her quest for vengeance. So the end 30 minutes or so, felt a little less like a climax and more of an afterthought it seemed to me.

Okay, about that ending which, literally leads into just a minute or so before the action of the last film, even going as far as to play scenes from Fury Road over the end credits... well, it’s pretty lame. I’m talking about the specific vengeance meted out to Hemsworth’s character by Furiosa at the end... it’s a kind of grim, fantasy vengeance and I’ve got no problem with that sort of far fetched penchant for whimsy thrown up into a movie... bring it on... it’s just that it seemed both tonally off and not that well integrated into the spirit of the post-apocalyptic Mad Max films, it seemed to me... so I left on a low rather than a high, it has to be said.

Anya Taylor-Joy is absolutely brilliant in this as Furiosa and she has said it’s the most gruelling shoot she’s ever done... which I guess would be the case if you do most of your own stunts (hanging underneath big, scary vehicles etc) as she seems to have done here. She’s always great in whatever she does, though but, I didn’t necessarily think she was the best casting choice for the film. Not in terms of a bad ass actress who can look believable in the role... she’s got that covered in spades. But I think she is a slight mis-match for Charlize Theron’s portrayal of the older version of the character in Fury Road. Theron played it mostly emotionless but calm and measured... Taylor-Joy has so much personality and energy crackling in every performance she gives that she can’t help but look way more intense than who the character turns out to be in the former film. I guess you could argue the years and experiences have mellowed the character somewhat, later in life but, for me that was a stretch.

Other than that, Tom Holkenborg’s score (aka Junkie XL) to the film seems more listenable than the score for the last but, alas, there’s no CD release as yet so I guess I won’t be able to listen to it at all. Which is a shame. When will these companies learn what people want? Ban downloads and give us proper discs please. Music shouldn’t be a transient experience.

But no, Furiosa is a fairly good and entertaining film and I’m sure most of you, like I did when I saw they’d added the words A Mad Max Saga to the title, will be expecting Max to somehow turn up in a scene where he and Furiosa don’t actually meet. Yep, it’s in there... welcome to Jacob Tomuri as the third actor to play Max in the films, after Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy. He strikes a good pose, for sure (which is all you will get but, I’m guessing you would have guessed that).

One last thing though... if you want to see a George Miller movie that really is a masterpiece (an underseen masterpiece, at that) then check out his last film, the absolutely brilliant Three Thousand Years Of Longing (reviewed by me here) because, that truly was ‘cinema’!
 

The Menu

Saving It
For Dessert

The Menu
USA 2022
Directed by Mark Mylod
Fox Searchlight

Warning: Here be spoilers.

Just a quick shout out of a review of a movie I missed on its release towards the end of last year, The Menu. I kinda wanted to see this one but ran out of time on it. One of the reasons I wanted to see it is because I like Anya Taylor-Joy as an actress (Ralph Fiennes is none too shabby as a great performer either) and the other reason was because, from the trailer at least, you can tell something is really off. To me, it looked like a modern remake of The Hounds Of Zaroff (aka The Most Dangerous Game) and, yep, it’s doing something ever so slightly different but it’s certainly, in some ways, exploring the same kind of concept. Just without the manhunt (or at least, a highly abbreviated one).

This film, however, is set in the world of gourmet cooking. I’ve never really understood or appreciated the world of culinary delights. To me, food is something you shovel in quickly to stock up on energy so you can get the next thing done. I don’t fetishise it myself like a lot of people seem to do. This film involves 12 guests (just like the last supper, right?) who travel to Hawthorne Island to sample The Menu of the great Chef Slowik, played by Fiennes, at huge expense (some may say the ultimate expense). Guests such as a character played by Nicholas Hoult, his companion for the evening played by Taylor-Joy (yeah... you’ll get there real fast as to the nature of their relationship, well before the reveal) and a big league but washed up movie star played by John Leguizamo, who said he based the performance on Steven Seagal (apparently there’s no love lost between the two actors in real life).

The film is wrapped up in the language of food criticism and the slow, smooth, languorous shots which make up a lot of the running time are punctuated between scenes by the typographic announcement of menu items, which grow more humorous and ‘on point’ as the movie progresses. It also becomes clear, I think, that while the film is aimed at the kind of rich customers and their lack of true appreciation of food... those hated by Slowik... it’s also a send up of the entire food industry in some ways. Certainly, the restaurant which is the only structure on its own island (the rich clientele gathering on the docks to be picked up by a boat to take them to their gourmet experience) is based on one which the writer went to and realised he was technically captive their until the meal was over and the boat came to pick the customers back up.

And it kinda works. It’s maybe just a little overlong but it manages to land the humour and horror of the situation in which the guests find themselves and it also shows the keen intelligence of ‘the person least likely’, who has more in common with the chef and his army of helpers, in that she understands the foreshadowing of events (such as when the guests are served no bread as a bread plate, being just left the sauces that go with it... which she correctly perceives as an insult rather than a piece of conceptual food art) and is able to figure out a way to put herself on the same footing as the madman running the whole show.

And I said it was a short review... I only have to shout out Colin Stetson’s fine score (sadly not on CD... honestly, Milan Records were a great label once) and conclude that, those four courses of paragraphs that I just served comprise the entire meal of this review. I quite liked The Menu and, though it’s maybe a close cousin to the many movies which steal the plot of The Most Dangerous Game... it’s certainly something else too and that shouldn’t stop you from taking a bite out of this particular food themed film.

The Northman

May The Norse
Be With You

The Northman
UK 2022
Directed by Robert Eggers
Universal

The Northman is director Robert Eggers third full length feature film and, as a big studio release, is also around ten times more the budget of his previous two movies put together (at least). Now, I really liked his feature debut The VVitch (reviewed here) but I had some problems appreciating his follow up feature, The Lighthouse, truth be told (reviewed here). Having now seen The Northman, which has been receiving a lot of good word of mouth as being this generation’s equivalent of Conan The Barbarian (no, it really isn’t), I can say that for me, this one pretty much lays somewhere in the middle of both of those. Like many Hollywood released movies of recent months, I’d have to say it isn’t a great movie and, again, it’s not a bad one either. It feels a little compromised somehow (which fits with some things the director himself has said about it) and it doesn’t feel quite epic enough in scope to be counted among many of the big fantasy films which have gone before (and it’s certainly a fantasy version of a tale rather than a straight historical one, for sure, despite much authenticity to certain scenes depicting historical customs).

Another thing I’d heard about it was that it has a very complex story... um... really? No it hasn’t. It’s a very basic revenge movie where a son witnesses his father’s death (in this case, the father is a king played by Ethan Hawke) and escapes to a distant land so he can return to avenge his father many years later.  And, yes, you’ve seen the story done a hundred times before by now on screen, I should think. The grown up son is played by Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, his mother is played by Nicole Kidman, his favourite seer is played by Willem Dafoe (from Eggers previous film), his father’s killer is played by Claes Bang and Skarsgård’s quirky love interest is played by the always incredible Anya Taylor-Joy (another Eggers collaborator). They’re all very good, the story is very simple... in that Amleth has to track down a legendary sword with semi-mystical properties (think of it as a lightweight, Stormbringer wannabe from Moorcock’s Elric Of Melnibone stories) and slay his father’s killer. So he brands himself as a slave and makes himself useful in his enemy’s community, to hide himself in plain sight and keep close to his target.

There’s literally nothing much to say about the plot but the comments that it has similarities to Conan The Barbarian, are not completely unfounded in terms of some of the content and the occasional (I believe, deliberate) nod. For example, the son living a hard life away from his slaughtered kin to return to avenge his father is pretty much the same as the first movie version of Robert E Howard’s literary creation. The scene where Amleth comes across his magical sword is very much reminiscent of the short Conan story The Thing In The Crypt, written by  L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, it seems to me. Also, the pre-credits sequence starts off with the similar, low percussion element on the music followed by the growly tones of voice over narrative introducing the character, which is again very similar to the first Conan movie... although, stylistically and in most ways, this is where the similarity ends.

It’s an entertaining enough yarn, though and it looks very good. Eggers has used something almost black and white for many of the shots set in the moonlight (which is the only time the sword can be properly used to feed on opponents blood... in darkness). So some shots will be completely monotone while others, midst the grayness, will have things like coloured torch flames, very much reminiscent of the style of pitching the colour and monotone together as seen in the Sin City movies.

So, yeah, the film looks pretty spectacular, rattles along at a hasty pace and, you are pretty much rooting for Amleth the whole way through the movie. It doesn’t, as I said earlier, feel really epic but this is more to do with the scope of the story, I think... as I said, it looks pretty spectacular.

Despite the opening bars of the score, this doesn’t go the full on, rich epic Hollywood sound of the Basil Poledouris music for Conan The Barbarian either. If anything, it’s much more stripped back and ‘of its time’ in terms of the way the music is functioning in the film (and when I say ‘of it’s time’... I don’t necessarily mean that literally, I mean that it’s more transparent, uncomplicated writing with simple orchestration). So it surprised me somewhat... since it sounds just the kind of score Eggers’ previous collaborator on his first two features, Mark Korven, would have written for this... that it’s actually composed by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough. I need to hear this one again and, at time of writing, it’s been announced that there will be a CD release of this coming soon, so I may just get a chance if they stick to their guns on that.

And I’m sorry this is such a short review for this film but that’s me pretty much done with The Northman. Like The Lighthouse, I doubt I’ll be revisiting this one for a second watch but fans of this kind of stuff should have a strong liking for it, I would have thought. It’s an entertaining, bloody depiction of a familiar trope which people should lap up. I’ve certainly not given up on this director... and I’m happy to see what he comes up with next (I think the big studio experience has somewhat him soured to taking on something like this again, by the sound of it).

Last Night In Soho

Puppet On A Sting

Last Night In Soho
UK 2021
Directed by Edgar Wright
Universal Pictures

Warning: I guess this has some mild spoilers.

Trust modern wonder director Edgar Wright to make a movie which transcends initial expectations of what it actually is... perhaps an homage to 1960s British horror, Italian giallo etc... and deliver something which actually only nods to those kinds of movie more as an acknowledgement... instead bringing something fairly new (although not strictly too far out of the box) into the mix. Last Night In Soho is probably not the film most people may expect it to be and although some of those touchstones are in here... there are certainly elements of a ‘Dario Argento Meets Mario Bava’ influence in both the lighting (which is even given an on screen rationale in terms of a character’s bedroom window in proximity to a flashing neon sign) and odd half winks to their various movies (are the mannequins in one shot juxtaposed to the previous a little nod to Bava’s Blood And Black Lace... reviewed here... for example?)... this one is so much more than the sum of any stylistic parts and very much its own thing.

Now, I have to admit, it took me about 25 mins to get into this one and I’d have to say, my first impressions of the central character were quite bad. For a little while, the way sixties obsessed main protagonist Eloise (played brilliantly by Thomasin McKenzie) was written, in terms of her dialogue... well I was having a hard time liking the character for a bit. However, she did grow on me fairly quickly once she leaves her grandmother’s house (her grandmother played by wonderful 1960s icon Rita Tushingham) to come to London to the famous London College Of Fashion (I think I went there to use their library once when I studied Graphic Design at the London College Of Printing back in the day). It probably helped that the majority of her fellow students are just really horrible and so she seems way better than them anyway and, I soon got used to the naivete of the character to the point where she became the reason why I was watching.

It’s pointed out very early on in the movie that Eloise is one of those people who can feel and see psychic/spiritual vibrations from objects and things quite vividly and, when she rents a room off of a landlady played by another 1960s icon, Diana Rigg, she starts tripping back to the past in her dreams and becomes Sandie, played by the always watchable Anya Taylor-Joy, as she tries to be a to singer emerging from the Soho scene in 1965. However, Sandie falls in with a ‘manager’ played by Matt Smith and things don’t go exactly as she planned. Meanwhile, back in the present day reality, Eloise starts to pick up on people and things from the sixties Soho of her dream life and starts to unravel a long standing mystery leading to a darkness at the heart of Sandie’s world... while fighting for her own life as the dreamworld she has let in begins to splinter into her day to day reality and take her mind.

Okay, so I really can’t say anymore about the story because, a) it will spoil it and b) you’ll probably work out most of the twists and turns a fair bit before the film gets you there. The film is obviously referencing the 1960s a lot and includes another couple of iconic performers of the time... these being Terence Stamp and Margaret Nolan (both she and Rigg have dedications on the film... one before it starts and one after it’s finished, I think this was both of these two actresses last movie role and it’s a shame neither of them lived to see how well the film has been received by the critics). However, the one way this film disappointed me slightly was by telegraphing (despite some obvious misdirection on the part of one of the male leads) the true identity of two of the characters and their actual relation to Eloise’s dream adventures.

And, after my initial reluctance to follow the central character which, as I said, was soon overcome, I have to say I found the film to not only be a tight and technological marvel in terms of the art of putting together something like this but also a thoroughly entertaining romp too. If horror is your bag (which this film plays on the periphery of but, due to the ‘visions’ experienced by the central protagonist, it certainly gets there in terms of slipping into that genre pretty well by the end) then you will probably have a good time with this although, I have to say, it’s a very slow burn of a movie which really doesn’t push any of those buttons until a good way through, when things begin to emerge and bleed over from both worlds. That being said, it doesn’t take long before some really beautiful and stunning non-horror set pieces are visited on the audience. Such as the first introduction to Eloise’s dream world as the character watches bewildered, becoming the mirror image of Anya Taylor-Joy and vice versa.

 And, yes, I’d like to say ‘it’s all done with mirrors’ but there looks like there was some clever, practical stuff which was done ‘in camera’ here to use the actresses mirroring each other to both interact with the same co-star at the same time and so on. What’s more, the ways those actresses both reflect and then sometimes not, as they watch each other, shows a real intelligence from, not just the performers but from the way Wright has obviously worked out that you can enhance a scene by using the actions and expressions of each of the two female leads to add a commentary to the events they are caught up in. I was very impressed, for example, when McKenzie apes Taylor-Joy for part of a scene but then is left surprised or doing her own thing as the character splits away from her to fill her in on what may, or may not, be somebody’s back story. Not to mention the technical brilliance (and timing) of the scene where Matt Smith dances with both girls simultaneously by swinging each of them around the camera to transform into the next person and then back again... I expect it took a fair few rehearsals to get right and it certainly wears its trickery on its sleeve but it doesn’t make it any less impressive and well timed, for sure.

And, of course, there’s a sonic backdrop of old 1960s hits such as two of my favourite Sandie Shaw songs... Puppet On A String and (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me... to get the nostalgia receptors engaged and even, in one sequence, an actress playing a young Cilla Black (what a shame that Work Is A Four Letter Word never made it onto the songtrack, to revive interest in both the song and the movie). The film really hits a nice groove and I’m sure a lot of the younger audience will be discovering the ‘sounds of the sixties’ on the back of this movie, for sure... if Wright can hook them on it. I’m not sure its box office has been all that it could be (well... we are still in a pandemic) but I’m sure this is going to do very well on Blu Ray sales and I, for one, can’t wait to grab a copy of this one to show my folks.

So, yeah, that’s me done on Last Night In Soho. It’s a lot of fun and it looks absolutely beautiful. The twist reveals, such as they are, are maybe not too cleverly done (you probably will be ahead of them) but it really doesn’t hurt the film any because they are also inevitable points that the film needs to hit and it all gives some of the nightmarish, Roman Polanski inspired (surely there’s a little bit of Repulsion in here?) supernatural dream vibrations a good sound logical reading within the context of the story and especially the characters as they are represented later. I’m also pretty sure that, now I’ve processed the content of the film a little bit, I am going to really enjoy watching the heck out of it on subsequent viewings... I reckon this is one of those ‘fine wine’ kind of films that get better with age and familiarity once you start noticing the accumulation of details which you missed the first time around. This is definitely one for fans of spectacular and well crafted cinema, for sure.

The Queen's Gambit

The Pawn Identity

The Queen's Gambit
Netflix 2019 Directed by Scott Frank
Mini Series Seven Episodes

The Queen’s Gambit is a seven episode mini series about a fictional chess player from a somewhat damaged background who goes on to compete against the Russian Grandmasters on their home turf. Now, I’ve never been much of a chess player, it has to be said. I learned the game when I was about 6 or 7 but I lost pretty much all the games I played so I never really bothered getting into it properly. I could only see the game for four or five moves ahead and don’t have the kind of mind able to focus on huge combinations of moves and their consequences simultaneously. I’m more of a Maths person so, despite the ‘chance’ element of a dice roll, I’m much more of a Backgammon friendly competitor, truth be told.

That being said, I’ve always been fascinated with the way it’s been portrayed in film, with two of my favourites of the many chess movies out there being The Luzhin Defence (a very early, very short review from the dawn of NUTS4R2 can be found here, don’t judge me, I was just starting out) and Knight Moves with Christopher Lambert, which I haven’t seen since it played in cinemas back in the early 1990s... but I remember it made some kind of impact on me.

Another thing which drew me to finding a way to see this one was the actress playing the adult version of main protagonist, Beth Harmon. She’s portrayed here by Anya Taylor-Joy and I’ve been looking out for her work since seeing her in films like The VVitch (reviewed here) and Morgan (reviewed here). I’ve seen her in a number of films since (I’m really not going to list all my reviews with her in this blog article) and I have to say that, she’s one of those rare actresses who come along, just occasionally, possessing real star quality... like the old titans of cinema from an age long gone. Sure, there are some great actresses out there and I love them all but the strange, almost alien look of this actress and the fact that, when she’s on screen it’s hard to look at anybody else, is something else. She’s pretty good at her craft, for sure but, she’s also a ‘star’ and those are very few and far between these days. This mini series really cements that aspect of her, in my opinion.

That being said, it would be easy to fall into the trap to think that she somehow carries the weight of the series on her shoulders here but, she doesn’t. This is so well presented and directed, for one thing, that the somewhat dazzling technique of the work really pulls all the elements together. Plus there’s a hell of a crew of good actors and actresses who more than hold their own alongside the main protagonist and they also deserve a shout out and a rousing round of applause... I’ll name check Annabeth Kelly and Isla Johnston (as younger versions of Beth Harmon), Moses Ingram, Marielle Heller (brilliant as the ‘mother’ who adopts the orphaned Harmon), Harry Melling, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Marcin Dorociński and, in a small but impactful character role, Bill Camp as the caretaker who teaches the young orphan the rudiments of chess.

The show starts off with a short bookend section set in the 1960s (when the majority of the show takes place) which we catch up to again in episode six, to introduce Anya Taylor-Joy... but then very quickly switches to the younger version of her character growing up in the 1950s, in an orphanage, for the reminder of the first episode (Taylor-Joy gets to shine in all the other episodes). The episode deals with how the character becomes dependent on tranquiliser pills to open up the part of her already Mathematically brilliant head to see chess moves in her mind’s eye (often presented as a literal interpretation and appearing on her ceiling, a shorthand which the director gets you used to so he can fall back on it to make quick plot points at a later point in the show). After she’s adopted and is starting to become successful as a chess player, she also starts taking up the booze favoured by her heavy drinking new mother and this further fuels her dependence on mind altering substances.

Now, when I started watching the first episode a credit came up on the screen that the show is based on a novel by Walter Tevis. So, yeah, of course, the whole drugs and alcohol thing made perfect sense. I haven’t read Tevis’ original novel so I can’t say how faithful this adaptation is but I have read his more famous novel, The Man Who Fell To Earth (which is also a wonderful movie, reviewed by me here, again... it’s an early review by me, don’t bite my head off). That particular story deals with an alien who is trying to get enough money to put together a spaceship to take him back to his own world and family but who ends up stuck on Earth after wrecking his life on booze and pills. So, yeah, I’m not going to give away the trajectory of Beth Harmon here but, I will say their characters share similar journeys in their respective tales... up to a certain point, at least.

And I’m really not going to spoil this for you and give you a move by move account of what happens throughout the seven episodes... but I will say it’s perhaps more than just a little predicatable and clichéd in content for most of the time. I will also say that this aspect of it really doesn’t matter because the execution is so well done and it certainly holds its interest as the writer/director lifts the lid on the obsessive thought processes and behaviours of international chess players. In terms of that aspect, a very special friend of mine complained that the conclusion was way too Disney-like and, I 'd have to agree on that to an extent, it’s a bit syrupy but, at the same time, it’s pretty much the only ending I was hoping for by the time it got there so, I’m not going to complain about that. Because it’s just done so well.

The drained pastels and check patterns found in the way the colours are sedately aligned in an almost mechanical and precision manner are a good solution to showing the way a chess playing mind might see the world. The chess games themselves are quite lively, with the main ones never being constructed the same way twice. In one important competition, for example, the director goes ‘full on’ into The Thomas Crown Affair mode in terms of using a kind of adrenalised split scene sequence vaguely reminiscent of the Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway chess scene (without the erotic overtones, these are competition matches). Another tournament has a wonderful shot where a top down view of Beth Harmon against a competitor at one table is panned across past some audience members (some of whom dissolve out of shot to be replaced with different ones to show the passage of time while the camera is still making the slow pan) to finish up above the table opposite to reveal, when the camera then moves down into shot, that this is also Beth Harmon finishing up another opponent on the opposite table. And stuff like this and the audio cues of the clock timers running through non-chess scenes with equal abandon keeps the series sharp and constantly watchable.

Another thing the director does, which shows a very mature understanding of the use of drama in literature but, it can be extremely powerful in the world of the moving image too, is to have a big lead in with a lot of chess games in a specific tournament until the character gets to play the final against the opponent you are waiting for her to beat (after twice setting up the moment by having her lose to him a couple of times previously in the show)... only to see the very first, opening move (as a pawn is slammed down with a fake echo to accentuate that, yeah, this a big one) before cutting away from the game completely and just going onto the aftermath to explain, via the two players in a bar, what actually happened. This was a great way of doing things and really showed me the director knew how to ‘throw film around’ to heighten the tension and release of the drama. Great stuff.

Also, as an added bonus to cinephiles in the first episode, the director really ramps up the tension by having Beth attempt to steal some locked away tranquilisers while all the other staff and kids at the orphanage are busy watching The Robe (which I reviewed here). The thing is, if you’re familiar with the movie, you’ll know that Harmon goes to do her stuff when the movie is on the final scene... so it’s a mite more suspenseful, I suspect, if you know that the film has only a few more minutes to run before the possibility that she’s caught.

And I don’t think there’s much more I want to reveal about The Queen’s Gambit... you need to watch this little slice of genius for yourself. I will say that Carlos Rafael Rivera's score is wonderful but, alas, not available on CD at time of writing (only in a stupid, electronic download format) and the needle drop songs throughout out the show are... well, it’s mostly set in the sixties so, of course they’re going to be pretty good. Also, I love that they use a Donovan song in this because, hey, he’s one of the all time great artists who truly encompasses the spirit of the 1960s. So, yeah, this show comes with a definite recommendation from me and you should all check this out. One of the great mini series of our time. 

The New Mutants

The Fear Hunter

The New Mutants
USA 2020 Directed by Josh Boone
20th Century Fox

The New Mutants is the latest and last of the 20th CenturyFox X-Men movies, by way of being a spin off, much like the original comic was. I can’t talk about the original source, though, because I’ve never read it. It’s also had a very troubled production history. I first saw the trailer three years ago in cinemas as a ‘coming soon’ and then it was pulled and there were reshoots and it continued to get pulled and rescheduled around other tent-pole superhero movies until, the last time it was moved, was because coronavirus hit. It finally got a cinema release, for the few cinemas still open, in August of this year but it wouldn’t have done much at the box office, I would have thought, because, you know... Coronavirus guys!

The film follows the adventures of five new mutants who are being held prisoner, under the guise of being treated medically to find their powers and determine whether they are a menace to others (spoiler, that’s obviously not the real reason they’re being held there... well, not quite). The five are played by Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga and, the newcomer to the ‘patients’, Blu Hunt. The ‘questionable’ doctor who seems to be the only person locked in with them and who has mutant powers herself is played by Alice Braga (I'm not sure where the cleaners are supposed to be). However, a day after Blu Hunt’s character comes to stay, things start going wrong for the mutants and it looks like their collective pasts are catching up with them in the form of various fears and, frankly, some very cool looking creatures which look a little like the Slender Man but with big, gnashy Venom teeth. Can the five learn to work together to defeat their mysterious foes?

Well, yeah, of course they can. And, as it happens, it turns out to be a quite entertaining movie. Not bad at all, though, certainly it is a troubled film, as you can see from the number of times it got pulled and rescheduled. Even further reshoots were required at some point which, due to the teens having aged since the original footage was shot, didn’t happen in the final instance.

Like the other X-Men films put out by Fox, the time frame continuity on this is shot to hell. There is evidence to suggest it was supposed to take place during the events of X-Men: Apocalypse (reviewed here) and, also, evidence on screen to support it taking place after the events of Logan (reviewed here... even though I’m still not sure how the heck these films even join up credibly themselves). It makes no sense at all and... well... I’m not sure what year it’s supposed to be set but I do know they have my old Cathode Ray Tube TV up in their attic so... yeah, your guess is as good as mine.

Unfortunately, it’s not just timeline continuity that’s the problem here. There’s a scene early on in the film where Blu Hunt slams into a force field at full pelt, causing her to bash her nose in, starting it bleeding from both nostrils. Unfortunately, there’s a couple of close up shots in the same scene where the blood from her nostrils has gone. Her power is she’s a quick healer then? Oops, no, apparently not because, in the very next scene, her nostrils are back to bleeding from the accident. Hmm... I don’t know if this continuity was a casualty of the reshoots or was just slack the first time around. No clue but... it’s very noticeable. Maybe they'll digitally correct this for the Blu Ray release.

Another thing which puzzled me is when the gang of five start bonding and get all The Breakfast Club on the audience. They find a polygraph in the attic and start playing a kind of non-dare version of 'truth or dare' with it. I just can’t figure out where they suddenly got all the paper from to keep the polygraph running? Quite strange, in all honesty.

Now, you may remember the film was pitched, very definitively, as a horror film when the trailers came out and... well it’s kind of like that, in a way. It certainly uses the cinematic language of the horror film to weave its simple story but, the problem is, the source of the evil things that go bump in the night is pretty obvious after the first ten or twenty minutes... so it all seems somewhat less concerning. I honestly thought the director was trying to lull me into a false sense of security and that he was suddenly going to pull the rug from under me at the last minute but... no, alas. The source of all their problems is actually the one you figure out from the start so, yeah, it could maybe have strived to be less obvious, to be honest. It kind of takes the dark sting out of things.

There were a couple of nice little things in it though. At one point, Blu Hunt is told that she’ll get out of there... “Probably before the rest of us cuckoos.” This is almost a double reference, I felt. One, because the five are being held in something like a psychiatric facility (which is where some of it was shot in real life, apparently)... and so it could be considered a reference to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. However, given the special talents of the teenagers, I couldn’t help but think it might also be a reference to John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos so, yeah, a nice double reference, I reckon.

And there’s also some nice stuff happening with the music (including a very Glass-like end credits piece). Going from X-Files to X-Men, we have a nice score from composer Mark Snow (sadly not on CD at time of writing), which is pretty good. There’s a lovely moment when Charlie Heaton’s character notices something up with one of the washing machines and as the sound design of the washing machine continues, you notice a rhythm which blends into the percussion on the score. So, yeah, as obvious as this film is, it still has some nice ideas and moments like this that elevate it to a point farther than some of the shoddier X-Men films.

And, yes, not much else to say about The New Mutants other than, it doesn’t get dull and I liked it enough to hopefully buy the Blu Ray when it hits the mid-year sales. It has a wonderful bunch of actors doing their thing and, although it doesn’t quite get into the realms of horror as much as it seems to want to, it manages to entertain and I would have liked to see where the other two parts in what was supposed to be a trilogy might have gone. Alas, before this film was even finished, the director nixed the idea of a post-credits teaser because, by then, the rights to the X-Men had reverted to Disney when they bought 20th Century Fox so, while I’m sure this is not the end of the X-Men movies, I’m guessing they’ll be redeveloped to dovetail into the main Marvel Cinematic Universe and recast with new faces and adventures. So we’ll never get an actual sequel to this one... which is a shame because it’s quite enjoyable, for the most part.

Glass

Glass Action

Glass
2019 USA
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
UK cinema release print.

Well this is somewhat disappointing, it has to be said.

I have a kind of love/hate relationship going with the films directed by M. Night Shyamalan. As a director I think he’s brilliant... able to tell his stories with a visual simplicity that communicates his intentions very quickly and easily. Alas... the stories themselves are generally very predictable... ranging to about 10 - 20 minutes into The Sixth Sense before you can easily figure out the ‘twist’, right the way through the ‘obvious scale’ of... at the start of the second camera shot in The Village, which immediately gives away the ending of that movie. I think the only time he ever really caught me out... and it’s a good thing when he does, by the way... was with Unbreakable, where the slight twist of Mr. Glass turning out to be a super villain actually hadn’t occurred to me. Consequently, Unbreakable has always been the film which I have held in the highest regard of his films (that and Devil which, ironically, he only wrote and didn’t direct himself).

Alas, the stealth sequel to Unbreakable released a couple of years ago, Split (reviewed here), which only revealed itself to be such during the cameo of Bruce Willis for the last few seconds of the post-credits scene... while having amazing central performances by Anya-Taylor Joy and James MacAvoy... was somehow pretty mediocre, I thought, in terms of the story. However, at least that one did right by the characters these two played. When both these two return with their characters in Glass, I dunno, it felt like they’d lost something in translation and become more cardboard in their intent as merely ‘story functions’ as opposed to three dimensional characters. And I don’t believe that’s due to the performances, because they are still excellent. I think it’s either due to the writing being somewhat less willing to explore what’s going on in their heads or, just as likely, that a lot of footage was cut, which may well have been character building stuff (I understand the first cut of this, like most movies, was a lot longer that the final release print).

They are joined, of course, by Bruce Willis reprising the central superhero character and Samuel L. Jackson as super-villain Mr. Glass. Both are excellent but Willis’ understated character seems a little too subtle here, I felt. He’s probably the least interesting character in the movie and comes off the worst of the three. Jackson’s Mr. Glass, on the other hand, seems to be the only one in the film who really sticks to his guns, so to speak, and really resembles the character he played in Unbreakable but... yeah, at the end of the day, all these characters are kind of wasted, in my opinion, in an endgame by the director which probably isn’t going to be a crowd pleaser when it comes to fans of the series as a whole, I suspect.

They are also joined by Spencer Treat Clark (still playing Bruce Willis’ son in the 19 years since the first movie), Charlayne Woodard  (reprising her role as Samuel L. Jackson’s mother, even though she is younger than him in real life, I believe) and Sarah Paulson as the psychiatrist who is seen to be trying to cure the three main protagonists/antagonists from what they are supposed to believe is a delusion of their super powers.

Shyamalan also makes a cameo appearance playing the same character he played in Unbreakable and, it turns out, also the same character he played in Split. So that must be an unusual film statistic, to have the director play the same cameo character three times in three different movies. Has anybody else done this? He also puts in flashback scenes from footage that didn’t make it into Unbreakable (much the same way as Coscarelli does in some of his Phantasm films) so that’s kind of a nice thing to do.

Once again, though, the director puts things across very nicely visually but, I think, his strength is also his weakness because the way he positions certain characters in the spotlight means he gives the game away far too soon. In this case, when I saw the trailers for Glass I was pretty sure there was going to be a twist ending (of sorts) and I was pretty sure I could tell from the promotions what that reveal would be. Alas, it’s even more obvious in the movie which, actually, starts out really well but when a certain character shows up very early on, you know something fishy is going on right from the start. Just as you know that, despite appearing to be a vegetable for the first half of the movie, Samuel L. Jackson’s character already has his brain working so he can stay one step ahead of the so called ‘twist’ before it, eventually, happens at the end of the film. And that’s pretty much the main reason, I think, why I’m so down about this movie. I was looking forward to something at least worthy of the original film and, instead, we have something which really isn’t even as good as Split.

The other thing is that the sleight of hand of a big, final showdown of the movie is teased but never used and that’s a deliberate mechanism of the plot... fair enough. However, it also sets the audience up, in an age of very good superhero movies dominating the International Box Office receipts, for a big ‘final fight’ when, in fact, we’ve already witnessed it... we just didn’t know it yet. Glass finishes with a bit of a damp squib of an ending and, although the implications of the very last scene are quite a nice thing to end on in some ways, I just felt like the writer had betrayed the characters in the original movies and pulled the rug from under the audience when, it has to be said, the audience wasn’t even standing there anymore... they’d mostly all figured it all out from either the trailer or from very early on in the movie. So, yeah, a less than satisfying conclusion to a movie which, I feel, drops the ball quite often and says the one or two things it has to say in a fairly lethargic and slightly dull way.

And I’m really sorry I have to say that but, there you have it.

West Dylan Thordson provides a nice score which includes thematic elements from James Newton Howard’s original Unbreakable score and, presumably, his own score for Split (although I wouldn’t know since, like Glass, it didn’t get a proper CD release, just a download thing, so I haven’t had the opportunity to listen to it away from the movie). It’s an appropriate score, though, and serves the film well in a lot of scenes.

And... that’s all I’ve got to say about Glass. I was disappointed and I suspect that I may not be alone in that. Glass is not a big budget looking superhero film and it certainly feels like it belongs to the same universe as Unbreakable but, at the same time, seems like a dumbed down version of it with maybe a little less icing on the cake than may have been required to make this a fun, entertaining, cinematic experience. Which it pains me to say but... well there you are. I hope this film does well at the box office for Shyamalan because I think that, even though some of the movies are a bit dull, he does provide some beautiful visual moments and I would like to see him mature as a writer. Alas, this doesn’t hold up as one of the great Shyamalan movies I’ve seen and I just hope he can go somewhere more interesting from here.

The Secret Of Marrowbone

The Fours Of Perception

The Secret Of Marrowbone
(aka Marrowbone)
Spain 2017 Directed by Sergio G. Sánchez
UK cinema release print.

Surprisingly... since I didn’t rate the trailer for this one much and especially in regards to the fact that I generally expect films that have had a name change before they’re released in England to be quite bad (thus warranting said name change in the first place... this film was originally titled, plainly, Marrowbone in the stateside release)... it turns out that The Secret Of Marrowbone is actually quite a well put together movie.

Following a quite long pre-credits sequence involving a mother and her four children fleeing to a new, relatively isolated home after allegedly horrendous events involving her husband, the film’s credit finally comes up (after the mother has died and the children’s worrying father has just found them), with the titular secret still firmly in place. Time has moved on after the credits and the four children are waiting out the months, hiding in plain sight and maintaining the fiction that the mother is still alive until the oldest of the four, Jack, turns 21 and they can no longer be separated by the authorities.

The solid cast of four... Jack (George MacKay), Billy (Charlie Heaton), Jane (Mia Goth) and Sam (Matthew Stagg) have already befriended local librarian Allie during that opening sequence... played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who I’ve loved in everything I’ve seen her in so far with special shout outs to The VVitch (reviewed here), Morgan (reviewed here) and, to a lesser degree (although she was no less brilliant in it), Split (reviewed here). She is their ally but knows nothing of the hidden secret lurking in the new family unit, the discovery of which will eventually lead to a shift in her perceptions of what’s happening, to some extent.

Now, it would be inaccurate to say that I didn’t figure out the conclusion of the movie’s reveal here as we are getting fed clues as to what’s going on with regards to the ghosts of the house and such like all the way through the narrative. However, it would also be true to say the film took me by surprise at the end purely because, like one of those good old giallo thrillers of the 1970s, The Secret Of Marrowbone kind of presents us with so many possibilities of just what that secret could be that, by the end, you are bound to be focussing on one more than the other and, alas, I somehow failed to concentrate on the solution to the mystery that lay within for favour of another. So, unusually for me, the film retained its secret to some extent because of the almost needle in a haystack pursuit required to hit upon the right combination of story elements. Of course, once all is revealed you can look back at how things have been referred to in the story and how the true facts of things can sometimes lend possibilities which aren’t necessarily signposts to the true destination. For instance, when the importance of avoiding mirrors is raised a number of times early on in the film, it threw me off my original solution due to other possibilities that could be deduced from such a warning and all I can say about this is... very well played Mr. writer/director Sergio G. Sánchez.

The cast of the film all acquit themselves more than admirably and help lend credence, with the smoke and mirrors of their trade, to the mystery which slowly unfolds, in its own good time, as it is revealed to the audience a little before the people in the story, regarding their secret. And if that seems an absurdly enigmatic thing to say about the film here... I’m sorry but I don’t want to post any spoilers so these kind of verbal gymnastics are necessary to protect the secret as much as the Marrowbone children in the film would.

In some ways, the main protagonists, especially the four children who live in the house, are just like the inhabitants of an old Enid Blyton book like the Famous Five or Secret Seven and, honestly, I’d say that this is exactly how the movie plays out, in some respects. Like a children’s Enid Blyton adventure but, using the syntax of horror cinema in a few key places to add coal to the fire of the secret at the heart of the mystery. Whether this is, or is not, an actual horror film I shall leave for you to decide... except I shall say that, within my own strict definition of what comprises such an affair, I would argue that it definitely isn’t in any way a horror movie but that’s not to say the film doesn’t have some sinister and scary moments which horror fans will appreciate. And that stuff is all fairly well done here, too.

Mr. Sánchez’ direction, editing and use of slow camera over some nice shot compositions are all excellent and the score by Fernando Velázquez is typical of that composer’s work in this vein... that is to say it’s excellent, appropriate and possibly great as a stand alone listen (although I will have to wait until the CD arrives before I can confirm that last comment). Also, although she isn’t in it as much as the four other main protagonists, Anya Taylor-Joy’s presence lends the production a certain weight, not just in terms of her acting, which is always fine but, also, in the striking and slightly off kilter beauty she manages to project to the camera... a face not easily forgotten.

Perhaps the most unusual thing about The Secret of Marrowbone, though, is that it manages to tip its hat on the most important of the end reveals in a way that doesn’t provoke disappointment (at least not in this viewer) but in a way that one could go back to the film again and watch it as a completely different kind of experience to the first viewing. That is to say, the weight of the finality of the end solution and the, strange but possibly welcome ray of hope for at least two of the characters at the end of the movie, is not something that crushes the weight of the build up of the rest of the film and, instead, works hand in hand with the central logic of the piece in a way that doesn’t stifle your interest in the characters. Which sometimes happens in films with this kind of 11th hour plot reveal, it has to be said.

The Secret Of Marrowbone is a better movie than it’s currently being given credit for and certainly worthy of your time if you like a good old fashioned mystery with elements of the horror and supernatural thrown in as seasoning to the dish. Definitely one to check out if you have nothing else on.

Split

Split In Image

Split
2017 USA
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah... this pretty much has all the spoilers

Okay, so... if you’re a regular reader here then you probably already know my track record with M. Night Shyamalan is not all that great. He really gets me angry because, in almost every film, his ‘famous twist’ at the end is really obvious and telegraphed right from the start. The Sixth Sense, for example, takes only ten minutes to crack on first viewing. The Village was the worst one for that stuff though... it’s literally the second shot of the movie (which is a reverse shot to the previous if I’m recalling correctly) which is about 30 seconds or so into the film, when the trick ending is made pretty clear in the way the director uses his camera. So I’m not the biggest fan of his storytelling because it’s always so easy to pick up on and his last movie, The Visit (reviewed here) did nothing to change that opinion of his work. About the only time he did surprise me was in Unbreakable, where the nature of Samuel L. Jackson’s character was revealed at the end... so I probably have more respect for that movie than any of his others. I also liked Devil (reviewed here... although that wasn’t actually directed by him, just written from his story idea).

So Split was a movie I kind of put myself through because I quite like James McAvoy but I was pretty sure, on seeing the trailer last year, that it could only have one of two possible endings and so, even before I set foot in the cinema, I was berating Shyamalan for being too obvious. However, the truth be told, he seemed to be banking on me thinking that on this one and... well, I’ll get to that later.

As the trailer suggests, Split is about a man, played by James McAvoy, who is seriously schizophrenic in that he’s holding a multitude of split personalities in his head (23 or possibly 24, to be almost precise). He kidnaps three women, locks them up and is going to do something ‘bad’ to them. And so that’s the general idea and, after the trailer, I realised it could go either way on an ending.

I was pretty certain that one of these two options would be the film’s supposed twist here...

1. Every character in the movie, not just the obvious ones played by James McAvoy, would be another manifestation of his split personality... including the so called victims he had purportedly kidnapped. That seemed like a bit of an easy one even for Shyamalan, though, so my alternative was...

2. Near the end it would be revealed that McAvoy was, in fact, identical twin brothers taking on a large number of personalities each. While the victims had been talking to one or the other manifestations without realising they were talking to differently motivated sets of personalities throughout the course of the movie. This might have made things a little more interesting... was how I was thinking.

As the movie began, from the first shot in fact, I realised Shyamalan had probably gone with the easier option of nobody being real outside of McAvoy’s head. Certainly the way the film was shot and the isolation and lack of interaction in some scenes, plus the constant flashbacks to the abused childhood of the primary kidnap victim played by Anya Taylor-Joy (who was so good in The VVitch which I reviewed here and as Morgan, which I reviewed here) seemed to point right to this kind of denouement.

As it happens, though, M. Night Shyamalan did manage to surprise me but, alas, it was in the least interesting way possible. I had hoped the director may have come up with a third, much more clever option for an end twist but it was not to be. Instead, it was more of a surprise by ommission. Do you remember his movie Signs? I spent the whole of that movie trying to figure out what the explanation was behind the aliens in the movie. What the twist was that turned everything on its head and surprised the audience in an interesting way. However, Signs didn’t have a twist ending, as it turned out. Instead, it basically said that everything in that movie was to be taken as face value and we should just live with the idea that it’s a sci-fi movie. Which didn’t sit well with me, to be honest. Well, in Split, the director heads back to this territory in that there is no twist ending on this movie... everything is there to be taken at face value. Where Shyamalan does get a little clever, then, is by finally adapting his cinematic syntax to mislead the audience to a different conclusion from the correct one, rather than just passively let them ride along second guessing it. The red herrings of the mise-en-scene make the lack of surprise a thing in itself... so, okay, I can at least respect him for this.

I guess my one real grumble out of all this, though, is that just like Signs before it, this makes the film seem somewhat anticlimactic. I wasn’t very happy at the lack of twistedness to the plot here, it has to be said. However, Shyamalan does redeem himself somewhat with a little punchline moment at the end of the movie which, at least, changes your mind about the kind of movie you have been watching up until that point.

So... okay, good things? Well McAvoy is as good as you'd expect as various manifestations of the antagonist's multiple characterisations and Taylor-Joy is also pretty great here, it has to be said. There are some nice shot set ups which, when not trying to make you second guess a different ending, caters to the title with some nicely framed vertical elements which split the shots from time to time. So that’s all good.

The music by West Dylan Thordson is okay too, although I would have preferred to have seen Shyamalan carrying on his immensely creative relationship with composer James Newton Howard, who I think did his best work for the Shyamalan films. Especially since I think that in the last few seconds of the movie they've maybe re-used or tracked in an old theme from an earlier film. I’d certainly buy this score if it was made available in CD format but, alas, it seems once more that I’m not likely to hear it as a stand alone because the only way it seems to be getting a release right now is via electronic download (don’t do it kids... it sucks... make them give the music a proper release.

One of the more stand out moments of the whole experience is that it does have a nice little epilogue scene after the first couple of credits which do put a new slant on the way the movie has been playing out. You do, after all, see one of McAvoy’s personalities eating various people and walking around on walls and ceilings like Spider-Man and once it’s been established that this manifestation is not, surprisingly, in anybody’s head, it then delivers up one little nugget of an end coda which kind of puts the movie into perspective. That being that this whole movie was, in some ways, an elaborate set up for a new supervillain. Yeah, that’s right, it’s an ‘origin story’ for a character called ‘The Horde’. And this is what we take away from the last five or so seconds of the little punchline scene at the end. Set in a diner, some folks are talking about the escaped maniac and one of the diners says it reminds her of that guy that got caught years ago, but couldn’t remember his name. As the diners leave they reveal Bruce Willis in a cameo, reprising his role from Unbreakable and simply saying... “Mr. Glass”. So there you have it... if, and I doubt this but you never know, Shyamalan and Willis ever get around to making their ‘proper’ sequel to Unbreakable, we have a new supervillain for the movie. In the meantime though, this scene firmly identifies Split as an Unbreakable sequel so, for now at least, that’s what we are left with.

Other than that one truly bright moment, however, the film has a lot to admire in it but don’t expect too much from it and don’t expect a twist ending for sure. This is a fairly entertaining ride for a lot of the time (with the usual fun at seeing Shyamalan himself do one of his cameo appearances) but it’s not a great film like... um... well, like Unbreakable was. That being said, it’s not as chronically disappointing as most of his other films either (the jury is still out for The Lady In The Water because I haven’t seen it yet... it’s in the ‘to watch’ pile as I type) and it’s worth a watch for seeing the way McAvoy manages to manifest his various personalities. Not one I would be too bothered with seeing at the cinema but if you’re already a fan of this director then it may be something you enjoy. Not his best but, certainly, not his worst.

Morgan

Guten Morgan

Morgan
2016 USA Directed by Luke Scott
UK cinema release print.

Typical. You wait ages for a movie to play at your cinema with Michelle Yeoh in it and then two come along within seven days of each other (see my review of Mechanic Resurrection here for the other).

Morgan is the feature length debut of Luke Scott, son of Ridley (and I promise I won’t mention that fact again... there’s a lot better things to be than someone living in the shadow of somebody else). After the totally chilling teaser trailer and the somewhat less scary full trailer for the movie, I was pretty much hooked on seeing this and went on its opening evening. I have to say that, although I do have some big criticisms of the movie, for the most part it’s a quite compelling, well oiled machine which would probably bear repeat viewing well.

The trailer makes the film look a science fiction tinged horror movie but... it’s not quite. There’s a lot of punch, chase, stunt work in the last third of the movie and so it’s more along the lines of a sci-fi fuelled action movie in some ways. The strength of it is... even though it’s “not quite a horror movie”, it’s kind of shot in the cinematic style of one. The director is pretty great in keeping to that methodology too and, although some of the editing seemed a little choppy in places, the shorter shots dovetail nicely into the longer ones, delivering an overall satisfying experience, at least in terms of story content and the visual and audio style in which it’s executed.

He also does some nice things with the design of the compositions in places, making full use of the widescreen aspect ratio to present characters on opposite sides of the screen, often leaving the middle of the shot bereft of movement and nicely forcing the collective eye of the audience to work at it and, thusly, propel themselves into the immersive experience a little better. That kind of tactic doesn’t always work for directors, to be honest, but it does in this movie and, at the very least, makes for some real eye candy in terms of the look of some of the scenes.

More compositional retinal soda pop comes from Scott’s decision to use surrogate visual planes to frame important parts of the action... such as putting the focus of a scene as something playing out on a screen somewhere or using reflections in panes of glass to enhance the look of the shot. Indeed, some of the work he does with reflective surfaces in the movie reminded me of some kind of enhanced “Ingmar Berman on acid” style of composition, in the way faces are superimposed either next to each other or directly over the top of one another... which in the case of certain shots I’m thinking of actually are a clue to something which you’ve probably already guessed but which isn’t finally spelled out until near the end of the movie. More on that ending in a few paragraph’s time.

Morgan also has a terrific cast and they are all working very well together. It’s very much, until the last third, an ensemble piece and hardly anyone gets more screen time than anyone else. Here you have the likes of Kate Mara, as company Risk Assessment trouble-shooter Lee Weathers, Anya Taylor-Joy  as the titular created superhuman... and other wonderful performers such as Toby Jones, Rose Leslie, Vinette Robinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, the aforementioned Michelle Yeoh, Boyd Holbrook, Chris Sullivan and even Brian Cox, among others, all playing corporate employees in one guise or another. And everyone is turning in amazing performances... especially Toby Jones, whose role may get a bit overlooked but who I believe gives one of his finest and understated performances as Dr. Simon Ziegler.

The film tells of Kate Mara’s Lee coming into a locked down facility where a home grown product, the now five year old Morgan of the title (although at five years old she already has the physical appearance of a late teen and a keen intelligence much greater than a lot of grown adults), has been confined to her quarters after an incident involving Jennifer Jason Leigh. In this incident, which is executed in a single, top down view and which comprises the pre-title sequence, Morgan is sullen and then, as seen in one of the trailers, suddenly compelled to leap into action and stab out one of Leigh’s eyes. Kate Mara’s character is there, seemingly, to see if the company product needs to be ‘terminated’ or if, in fact, Morgan is, indeed, a suitable case for treatment. Something which the company psychiatrist, played by Paul Giamatti, will be able to evaluate when he comes the day after Lee’s arrival at the facility.

As I said before, Scott pitches the movie to the audience couched in the trappings of horror/suspense films and he does it pretty well, ratcheting up the tension to the sequence where Giamatti arrives and interviews Morgan... something the well prepared audience will already guess goes horribly wrong from the indications in the trailer. From here on out, the film is a hunter/prey kind of movie and the action sequences come to the fore... there’s even a car chase at one point. The director keeps these action sequences playing out in the same visceral but low key visual style, though, which means that the change of pace in the last act doesn’t jar with anything you’ve seen before... which, again, is deftly handled.

However, one of the problems with the movie, and one that I alluded to earlier, is that one of the characters you are introduced to in the first few minutes is obviously holding some kind of secret and... it’s pretty obvious what that secret is liable to be. One of the other characters, more or less, partially calls it out early on in the film too and we really didn’t need that hint so early on. Also, the story seems to treat this minor revelation as some kind of ‘twist’ at the end of the movie when, in fact, you already know this half an hour into the procedings, if you’re paying attention. And with absolute certainty by the time the aftermath of a slightly grizzly impalement scene kind of proves a point. This, in itself, is kinda forgivable because, really, that’s one of the few places the script could logically go to anyway. However, the really big problem with this movie is the “post ending”, which seems tagged on as a “let’s bring Brian Cox in to re-explain it for the exceptionally slow people in the audience too” kind of conclusion. This ending is completely false and it doesn’t just insult the intelligence of the audience, it bludgeons their intelligence repeatedly over the head and then pokes it again with a sharp stick just to make sure it’s done. I was really offended at the way everything was recapped at the end and I think the film would have been a much stronger experience if the last five minutes was just scrapped and the film ended as one of the characters gets in a car and drives away. This really did put a dampener on a film that was, really, pretty great up until this point.

The other aspect of the movie which I found a little disappointing stems from my expectations raised by the trailer campaign. In the first teaser, the Morgan creature starts repeatedly humming a little fragment of melody and its really quite chilly and creepy. Somewhere in between that first trailer and the second, I’m guessing, where this was not heard again, the people behind the film must have decided to eliminate that creepy character quirk from the final product. Now, I can almost understand this as it maybe it’s too pointed about certain aspects of Morgan’s psychological profile but... I honestly think the trade off would have been worth it because that humming sent a real shiver down the spine.

Another thing that those trailers promised was a Morgan who “is still evolving” and, possibly by sheer editing alone, hints at an almost psychokinetic ability from the title character. Now, this idea seems to have been eliminated mostly from the final product too. Certainly there are still big trace elements of this character’s meta-human powers, such as the fact that the character can tell when she is being watched through a video camera or the revelation that she knows all about various people who are coming to visit her for the first time. However, I suspect there might have been a much different cut of the movie originally delivered and the character was somewhat toned down or reshaped in the final cut, at some point. Possibly when that terrible post-ending explanation scene was added into the mix. I’m not sure if this possibility of a more invincible version of Morgan would have been a good thing or not but... well I guess we’ll find out over the next few decades if there was, in actual fact, a different slant on the character... as stories get told about the production over the years, maybe.

As it happens, despite that awful ‘explanation ending’,  which nearly ruined the whole movie for me (note to studio heads... if you don’t spell it out for the audience, some of them might pay admission a second time so they can work it out for themselves and you get more profits), the film is actually a great piece of work and a startling full length feature debut from Luke Scott. Amazing performances aside, there’s a lot to recommend about Morgan and, even if it does have a kind of Ex Machina (reviewed here) meets Splice (reviewed here) vibe going for it, it’s also a better film than either of those and well worth a visit to the cinema with a possible Blu Ray pick up at a later date. I only hope Max Richter’s score for this thing gets a proper CD release at some point. He’s a great composer and seriously under-represented in soundtrack releases. Either way, though, give Morgan a go... it’s a nice little movie.

The VVitch

2V Or Not 2V

The VVitch
2016 UK/USA/Canada/Brazil
Directed by Robert Eggers
UK cinema release print.

“There’s a creepy VVitch, in your neighbour’s wood.
Who you gonna call? Goat Busters.”
Traditional New England Folk Song

I’ve been looking forward to seeing The VVitch, subtitled A New England Folk Tale, for a while now, not knowing quite what to expect from it. I’d have to say that, what it delivered, while maybe not as over the top as the trailer at first seems to promise, is actually quite a nice little genre movie. However, before I go on to elaborate on this, I have to say that I was not seeing this film in the most ideal circumstances... bizarrely.

I saw The VVitch in my local cinema on the first night of its official UK run which, frankly, you would maybe be forgiven for assuming, as did I, that this would be the absolutely best place to see said film. Not so. Well, certainly if I’d have been in the cinema alone, it might have done the trick. Unfortunately, this film has got to have had one of the worst audience reactions I’ve ever been witness to. In terms of horror movies I’ve seen in cinemas, I’d had three audiences which stuck in my mind up to this point. The first was the original cinema run of the zombie spoof Return Of The Living Dead back in the 1980s, where the full house audience were collectively screaming and laughing throughout the movie in all the right places... a magical experience. The Blair Witch Project provoked a reaction in the audience of general disappointment, at least on one of the screenings I went to, although I really loved that movie also. The first Paranormal Activity film was the third one that sticks in my mind. It’s a great film, although, not that scary but I‘ll never forget the audience and the lady who ran from the front of the screen, screaming loudly as she dashed for the rear exit.

Well I can add The VVitch to memorable audience reactions in a screening. I was kinda enjoying the movie for what it was but, after about fifteen walkouts from the mid-point of the movie onwards, I began to notice that the audience were getting so badly behaved they were even talking back to the screen and clapping mockingly in certain sections. They started off at bored and ran the gamut through to generally ridiculing everything on screen as it happened... about the only moment which seemed to stun them was a small scene involving a crow which, I have to say, I didn’t actually myself find scary but which managed to shut them up for a minute or so. At the end of the movie and from the feedback I was hearing all around me, I think if they’d have been armed with something they were able to throw at the screen then I suspect they would have been pelting it for all it was worth.

Now, as I said, I quite enjoyed the movie but this didn’t make for the most ideal cinema experience in the world, to be honest. I was trying to figure out afterwards what set off a mass of nearly two hundred people (the film was pretty well attended) to act this way and I can only assume it’s the lack of shock/jump scares that customers have come to expect from modern horror movies combined with a certain intensity surrounding the lack of anything scary really happening a lot of the time that maybe caused the unrest. I’m not qualified in a psychological capacity to be able to fathom what caused this collective outrage, to be honest, but that’s my theory. For whatever the reason... it wasn’t pretty.

The film itself concerns a family of six: Kate Dickie (I’ve always had a soft spot for Kate) as the mother, Ralph Ineson as the father, the oldest daughter Thomasin, played by Anya Taylor-Joy (pretty much the main protagonist, given that it’s very much an ensemble piece), the next eldest brother Caleb, played by Harvey Scrimshaw, a very young brother and sister and a baby boy. Set in New England of 1630, the family are banished from their community due to, as far as I could make out, being too fervent in the practice of their Christian religion. So they take their leave and build their own small farm far from the people who have thrown them out, next to a wood. Of course, it’s a wood housing a witch, or so they believe.

One day, Thomasin is in the field next to the wood when the newborn suddenly vanishes, almost before her eyes. This is the first hint of a supernatural phenomenon in the film and it’s an important one, backed up by the appearance of a more tangible presence in the wood about halfway through the movie. This is because, later in the film, when we are witness to exactly the same kind of paranoid accusations in microcosm that bring to mind Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (not a favourite of mine, it has to be said), the audience does at least have some idea that there is, indeed, something uncanny going on. This isn’t a film about  hysteria... this is a bonafide horror film and those two sequences I mentioned are the main clues to begin with, along with certain visual signifiers which are strengthened by this knowledge.

For instance, the brilliant way in which the camera’s eye focuses on certain animals in the movie is disquieting. It’s as if the director is saying to us... look here, these are supernaturally possessed creatures and that’s what’s going on here. These are witches’ familiars, which feature in lots of tales of this ilk, and the camera brings the same kind of unmoving and sharp focussed intensity in the study of these creatures as it does when focussing unflinchingly on the various actors in this movie. So the goat which is featured so heavily on posters and in the trailers, known as ‘Black Philip’, is an obvious indicator of satanism afoot but it’s the rabbit which keeps turning up and fixing the camera with a stare which really works so effectively in some of the earlier scenes.

The acting by the cast mentioned above is first rate... and that even includes the two younger siblings Mercy and Jonas played by Ellie Granger and Lucas Dawson. In fact, there’s a point in the movie when you wonder if you should really be hating these two or whether they are just victims of their circumstances like everyone else in the movie. When things start to go pear shaped at the end, the director leaves it to your imagination as to what exactly is their final fate.

Now, it has to be said that the content of the film as written is not, really, in any way scary, to be honest. For the majority of the time it’s more like a study of the breakdown of a family unit which just happens to involve a strong supernatural element in its genetic make up. What makes it scary in certain places... or at least unsettling... is that composer Mark Koven’s score is absolutely astonishingly good. Two of my all time favourite pieces of music are by composer György Ligeti (both were used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, at least in part, as a matter of fact), Lux Aeterna and his Requiem for Soprano and Mezzo-soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra (which I was lucky enough to catch in concert once). Koven’s score conjures up exactly that kind of atmosphere for The VVitch, perfectly unsettling the audience with a kind of presence of creeping dread which can then be ratcheted up to 11 when the choir comes on more strongly at certain points. Absolutely wonderful and the first thing I did when I came home on the Friday evening after I saw it was to place an order for the CD recording. I can’t wait to hear this one away from the movie... it’s going to get a heck of a lot of spins this year and might even end up being my number one pick of scores for 2016. Time will tell, I guess.

The end of the movie is pretty near perfect as well. Now the bizarrely behaved audience I saw this with seemed to be really complaining about the ending of this one right after it finished but, honestly, I can’t think why. I don’t want to give anything away here but the ending made perfect sense to me and it finishes at exactly the same point that I would have cut to the first credit. Perfect ending, which I obviously won't reveal here, with just the right amount of supernatural wonder combined with the celebration of falling from grace that I would have wanted from a story set up like this. No complaints from me here but plenty, as I already said, from the audience.

So there you have it. The VVitch is a pretty nice little genre piece which deserves to find its audience... an audience who obviously weren’t in attedance at the 9pm screening on the first Friday at the Enfield Cineworld. I can only assume these strange souls were unprepared for the atmosphere of intensity throughout the movie and reacted to it by ridiculing it out of their own lack of understanding of the kind of material that is rarely examined in the way that this movie does it. If you’re expecting a jump scare kind of movie then there are plenty of other, lesser horror films out there at the moment that can give you that... if you want something a little more sedately paced and honest in its intentions, however, then maybe you should go check out the Va Va Voom of the Va Va VVitch. I'm glad I did.