Shelter

S’Hell Ter Pay

Shelter
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
USA/UK 2026
Black Bear
UK Cinema Release Print

Just a quick shout out on the latest Jason Statham action film... not quick because it’s not good but because it’s a nice, solid, well acted vehicle which hits most of the right spots and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Shelter sees The Stath, as an ex-assassin called Mason, living covertly in a lighthouse on an island with a young girl, Jessie, played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach, being boated over by her uncle once a week to leave supplies for him. She never sees Statham’s character and wonders what his relationship is to her family (she doesn’t even know who her own father was and has been living with her uncle since she can remember). 

Then, one day, she nearly dies on a fierce storm trying to return to her uncle’s boat (which sinks and takes him to his death) and is rescued and resuscitated by Mason. Here starts the almost but not quite True Grit style relationship between the two characters. Then, to get urgent medical supplies, Mason goes to the mainland and gets recognised by the government’s illegally operating facial recognition software (which targets him as someone else, deliberately), run by Billy Nighy’s villainous ‘off the grid’ ex head of British Intelligence and the rest of the movie is a manhunt as Mason and Jessie are on the run while an elite killer and lots of other human problems are hurled at them, as Mason tries to find some way to get Jessie to safety. 

And it’s all very nicely done. The characters are all likeable and, while you’ve seen the whole ‘child bonding with a trained killer who has a heart of gold’ storyline before... because Jason Statham and Bodhi Rae Breathnach have good chemistry together, it’s easy to ignore the cliché and let yourself be entertained by two good actors. 

Added to this, the action scenes are a touch more naturalistic than in something like, say, The Transporter and they hit harder, especially when contrasted with the two central characters. For instance, a car chase sequence between just two cars is well shot and the chaotic and almost clunky brutality of the sequence works really well when juxtaposed with the sensibilities of the two characters reacting to the situation. Like I said, a solid action piece. And it helps to have people like Bill Nighy and Daniel Mays on hand to lend the piece a little gravitas too (both are equally excellent in their supporting roles).

The one big surprise for me is where the story goes or, rather, where the story fails to go. It seemed obvious from the start that Jessie is, surely, actually Mason’s daughter and he’s been keeping her safe by leaving her with her uncle and, although it seems the obvious story choice, it’s never actually revealed here. Maybe because it seems too obvious or, perhaps, maybe they’re leaving that moment for a possible sequel (the film is definitely geared towards a sequel being a possibility in the last scene). In a way, I’m kinda glad they held back that revelation because, it’s way too telegraphed throughout the rest of the film so, yeah, maybe a casual reveal in a follow up movie would be the best way to go into that (if, indeed, we get one). 

And that’s really me done already on Shelter. I tend to like Jason Statham action movies and this one is another of his good ones. If you’re up for The Stath punching and shooting people for an hour or so (after a slow but sure section of character building) then you should have a good time with this one. I’ll certainly be looking out for a Blu Ray at some point.

Fisherman’s Friends 1 & 2

Shanties Inferno

Fisherman’s Friends
UK 2019
Directed by Chris Foggin
Fred Films Blu Ray Zone B

and

Fisherman’s Friends 2 -
One And All
UK 2022
Directed by Meg Leonard & Nick Moorcroft
Fred Films Blu Ray Zone B

These two films were Christmas presents for my dad but I was quite interested in seeing them for myself, as I like this low budget kind of British humour film. It’s based on the story of the real group of Sea Shanty singing fishermen, known as the Fisherman’s Friends, and their meteoric rise to fame. The lead singer, the grump middle-aged man known as Jim, is played by an actor I usually associate with more heroic roles, that being James Purefoy. Playing his singing dad Jago is David Hayman and another prominent band mate is Rowan, played by Sam Swainsbury.

When Danny, a record producer and promoter, played by Daniel Mays pitches up in their home town of Port Isaac in Cornwall for a friend’s stag weekend, he is egged on by his somewhat villainous boss (Noel Clarke) to sign the group, who they see singing in the harbour. Not realising he’s being wound up and also ‘talent spotting’ Jim’s daughter played by Tuppence Middleton, he does actually manage to sign them but, when he is told off by his boss and told to drop it, he realises he believes in their music and puts his job on the line to land the band their first record deal.

It hits all the usual boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy makes good and gets girl again stuff, while simultaneously hitting all the ‘band don’t want to be famous, give it a try, not so sure, oh alright then lets make an album’ marks and ultimately delivers an entertaining movie. It’s a light touch and all the main characters and their co-stars (such as Jim’s mum and grand-daughter) are all people you care about, which always helps enormously in this kind of film.

Covid and other delays to filming scuppered Fisherman’s Friends 2 - One And All for a while and I can only assuming juggling the various actors’ schedules was a nightmare and so this is probably what resulted in the absence of both Danny and Jim’s daughter for the second film (they’re on holiday in Australia for the duration and only mentioned in passing).

This second movie is not just a pale imitation of the first, surprisingly... and has a lot more drama including Jim’s prejudice towards farmers (they need a new singer in the band due to the death of a major character in the first film... a much missed character who is back as a ghost in this installment), his descent into alcoholism and a new girlfriend who has been through the whole fame and public meltdown thing that he also goes through in this story. Plus a high stakes rescue sequence and a really funny section where the band are forced to take lessons in how to be politically correct, courtesy of their record label (who promptly drop them).

It all leads to various sing songs and ‘label invasions’ (just like the first movie) before culminating in a sequence where, as in real life, the band get to support some pop singer called Beyonce at the Glastonbury Festival.

I’d have to say that, as much as I enjoyed the first one and especially the presence of May and Middleton, I actually preferred the second one a little more and I might even be coerced into watching these things again some day. Purefoy shines in them both, too. A great couple of ‘nice films’ that the British seem to have a knack for turning out... half way between drama and half way to comedy but, as always, with a real heart and soul to them. Fisherman’s Friends and Fisherman’s Friends 2 - One And All both get a recommendation from me and, if you’re in the mood for something typically English, then these are a nice way to pass the time.

The Limehouse Golem

To The Victorian, The Spoils

The Limehouse Golem
2016/17 UK Directed by Juan Carlos Medina
UK cinema release print.

The Limehouse Golem is another one of those movies where I looked at the trailer and thought... "Yeah, not quite grabbing me. Not sure about this." However, I then saw that the film was getting some good feeback on Twitter so I thought I’d give it a go after all and... yeah... I quite liked this one. It’s based on a novel by Peter Akroyd called Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem. The usual caveats apply here as I’ve not read the novel and so can’t be a good judge of how sound an adaptation it is. I can judge it as a movie though so... here goes.     

Dan Leno was a famous music hall performer and the film, set in the 1890s, tells of a ‘Jack The Ripper-like’ murderer, nicknamed The Golem by the press and it mixes real life characters and events in a fictional story. It follows the path of Inspector John Kildare, played by Bill Nighy, who has been assigned to the monstrous ‘Golem’ murders because his superior steps down to scapegoat Kildare since it’s a case which is very much in the press and he doesn’t want to be seen to be failing the investigation (Kildare was originally earmarked for Alan Rickman before he passed on). So Kildare and his new assistant, Constable George Flood, played by the always excellent Daniel Mays, get to work investigating this series of gruesome deaths, a case which soon crosses into another investigation where the other main protagonist of the film, an ex-music hall star called Lizzie Cree, played by Olivia Cooke, is held in prison accused with the murder of her husband. Her late husband is now a suspect in the Golem case and Kildare is so taken with Lizzie that he slants his investigation towards her husband in the hopes that finding out the truth of the matter will be a way to beat the hangman’s noose at the inevitable end of her trial.

Simultaneous to the investigation we are constantly, through eye witness accounts and flashbacks, privy to the path from Lizzie’s tragic childhood background to her rise in the music hall, first assisting and then writing/working with Dan Leno (played amazingly well by Douglas Booth) and the path which leads to her retirement from the stage and into a sexless marriage with her husband.

And it’s all very well done and holds the interest. Especially when each of the various witnesses at certain times throughout the movie are asked to provide a sample of handwriting to compare to a book filled with the writing of the killer. As each of the witnesses, including both Dan Leno himself and the famous Karl Marx, are dictated to by Kildare, we see each of the suspects in turn narrating and participating in one of the gruesome murders (well, not that gruesome, to be sure but perhaps a little more bloody than you might get in a non-horror movie like this one).

And it’s in these kinds of intrusions into the narrative and the way the format of the film is played with via the editing and various transitions to and from the flashbacks of Lizzie’s rise to fame and the various murders in the Golem case that the film really holds the interest, even as it tries to pull the wool over the eyes of the audience in terms of who the actual killer is, in this case.

Now, I have to admit, I thought the killer in this movie was obvious from the start and I have to wonder if it’s less easier to detect in the original written form than it is in a screen presentation. However, well done to the director for at least leading me up the garden path towards the end when a different person to the one I’d thought it was is seen to be guilty. They actually had me thinking I’d got it all wrong for a moment until a ‘not so surprising’ revelation moment brought things straight  back to the person I’d suspected all along. Which, in a way is a shame but, at the same time, I’m glad it wasn’t the person they originally said it was because that would have been a real clunky ending. That being said, I would have preferred to be surprised by the identity of the killer at the end but, alas, it just wasn’t to be.

However, because the whole film itself is in some ways framed as a theatrical production in terms of the way the narrative is injected into the story, it makes up for the obvious ending with a certain poignancy and it doesn’t seem to be short changing the audience in terms of the emotional impact on the part of the surviving characters that actually make it to the film’s finish without being slaughtered.

As well as the names I’ve already mentioned, you also have the impeccable Eddie Marsan as the ‘Uncle’ of the close knit group of actors and Sam Reid as the recently deceased husband of Lizzie Cree. All the actors in this film carry a lot of weight and it’s always a pleasure to see professionals of this magnitude sharing screen time to weave a tale as well executed as this. Henry Goodman is also pretty good in his short scenes as Karl Marx but, for some reason, I can’t find this famous character listed on the IMDB in relation to this movie and nor, it seems, is the actor who plays him (at the time of writing this article) visible at the IMDB either. So I’ve no idea what’s going on there.

Johan Söderqvist, who did the score for Let The Right One In (reviewed by me here in a much shorter review from my early days of writing this blog) does a fantastic job at both mirroring and enhancing the atmosphere in this one... it even reminded me a little of Jerry Goldsmith’s landmark score to ALIEN at some points, in terms of its orchestration on the percussion. Alas, it’s fallen prey to the usual travesty/crime against filmanity which seems to have become more common over the last few years in that the wonderful score is not available on CD at the time of writing and only available as a wretched electronic download. Why that is would be anybody’s guess but I’d much rather have the music released in a proper format than all this stupid electronic shenanigans, which I probably won’t have room to download onto my computer anyway. This silly download practice has got to stop (along with vinyl, 8-track cartridges, cylinders and 78 RPMs).

All in all, though, The Limehouse Golem is an enjoyable film for those of you who like watching Victoriana detective fiction portrayed, as it often is in British cinema, as authentically or, at the very least, atmospherically appropriate a way as possible. Not one for those members of the audience who are easily squeamish, perhaps, although it is only a 15 certificate and it certainly wouldn’t warrant an 18, to be fair. Perfect for those who like to spend their cinematic evening out in the company of a serial killer and an entertaining couple of hours at the very least, for most people. A sly wink of a recommendation from me if you don’t have anything better to go and see on your night out at the pictures.

Byzantium

Byzantium Endures

Byzantium
UK/USA/Ireland 2012 (released 2013)
Directed by Neil Jordan
Playing at cinemas now.

I don’t know much about director Neil Jordan, truth be told. I think I saw The Company Of Wolves once, many years/decades ago, but that was it. But I have seen a fair amount of vampire movies and I remember that last year I saw a really good one from Germany called We Are The Night (reviewed here). Since vampire films have become so clichéd again at this particular point in cinema history, I thought the odds of finding a really decent new one like that were pretty astronomical if I’m being honest with you. To discover two such films in such close proximity would, in all fairness, be fairly unlikely.

But, I’m happy to report that Byzantium is just such a film. A truly great vampire movie that people who are interested in this genre will want to see. We also have the invention of a new term for vampires which is pretty cool if you don’t want to just come out with "the V word" and keep a certain distance to a little of the previous genre baggage. In Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s “inspired by” movie “adaptation” of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Scott coined the term replicant to give what became his artificial humans an air of gravitas that the term android just didn’t carry anymore. Similarly, the screenplay to this film by Moira Buffini, based on her own play, comes up with the term “sucreant”... which I really like the sound of, to be honest. It sounds quite filthy, to be sure, and almost instantly conjures up the dark sexuality implicit in the kiss of a vampire.

The film seems to me to concern itself with three main themes, one of which is very typical of a vampire movie.

The first of these is, of course, the question of survival. Vampires survive, and make themselves villains in the eyes of the living, by drinking the blood of the living. Byzantium’s two main female protagonists are vampires sharing a certain relationship (I won’t spoil it by telling you right from the ‘bat’ what that relationship actually is) and managing to survive over the millennia by being ruthless and moving on from place to place when the going gets tough. These two central characters have been running for a long time... but I won’t tell you why, because it will become apparent as you watch.

The second of the themes this movie concerns itself with, it seems to me, is temporal displacement. The movie works on revelations through flashback and sometimes, often in fact, those flashbacks are cross cut with the “present” of the character’s timelines, mixed up in a ghostly fashion through both editing and shots where characters share screen time with other versions of themselves. It sounds clumsy, I know, but actually this director does this with a very nimble touch and the results are pure visual and audio poetry in the mode of some of the great European directors over the years, as opposed to what might have been less confidently handled scenes in the hands of another director.

On the first time I thought I was watching a flashback, for example, which was cross cut with one of the two protagonists talking about the past life of the other... it turned out I wasn’t watching a flashback at all but two separate incidents from the same story happening simultaneously. So the director not only dislocates the characters in time due to the way the narrative leads us in to expecting the possibility of flashback, he also dislocates the very audience who are watching the film. So when the film does go into flashback territory, very soon after, he has already set up the feeling that time is not something which vampires worry about or neccessarily perceive in the same way that we do, despite Gemma Arterton’s alpha female Clara constantly telling her companion not to “look back”. This is a brilliant approach to the telling of the story and it carries all the way through the movie until we get to a certain point near the films beautiful climax.

The third theme this movie is about is... the telling of a story. Now a lot of directors (more than I care for) hold dear the idea that their function as filmmakers is to tell a story. It’s always a statement which causes me to groan loudly because it denies the possibility of cinema to exist without narrative structure... which it clearly can. However, unlike many films, this one isn’t just about the telling of the main protagonist’s story... it’s also about the telling of that story and the consequences of its revelation. And that’s a very interesting thing and, because we have this kind of narrative displacement already in the way that this tale is approached... what could have been a very simple storyline is revealed in tiny pieces and it’s only right near the end that we get the whole truth of the history of the two characters. And it’s even much before then that the discovery and telling of that history becomes a prominent point in the story in and of itself.

And again, because of the juxtaposition of two linear timelines, with one going from A - Z but with the back story scrambled and scattered into a different order and then pitched against it, our sense of temporal structure is shifted in exactly the way that the younger of the two female vampires, Eleanor, played by Saoirse Ronan (perhaps best known for her superb portrayal of the title character in Hanna) experiences it. Time is turned somewhat topsy turvy in a sucreant’s world and this is implicit in the creation process of the species as shown in the place of each vampire’s creation. The very act of becoming a vampire is portrayed as a kind of temporal trick... so this temporal misalignment also becomes part of the narrative thrust which surrounds the world of our main characters. And, of course, because of the way the back story develops as one displaced fragment at a time, it’s sort of like watching a film directed by Nicholas Roeg in some ways, but slowed down to a more relaxed pace which lets itself unfold like the slow opening of a piece of paper with an important word of revelation on it.

The performances are incredible.

I would expect no less of Gemma Arterton now, to be honest. She’s proven herself to be one of the powerhouse actresses of her generation and I look forward to being completely immersed in her character whenever I see her plying her trade on screen. Absolutely amazing.

Brilliant, too, is Saoirse Ronan as the younger of the two vampires. She was brilliant in Hanna and proves here that the performance was no flash in the pan, playing a vulnerable but courageous soul who’s voice-over narrative helps imbibe the already beautiful visual imagery with a deeply poetic feel... and this film is truly a study in the cinema of poetry made flesh. Not quite in the same way as Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman might have achieved that kind of feel but certainly Jordan’s treatment of the text and his faith in his cast and crew delivers a beautiful piece of art that could have easily turned into true exploitation cinema if he and his dark practitioners in the art of collaborative cinema had proven to have a less deft touch. Add in cast members like the always watchable Daniel Mays and the ever changing chameleon actor Caleb Landry Jones and you have a movie which is, in fact, a true masterpiece.

It also, having said all that, doesn’t steer away from the graphic violence or the action set pieces either. A lot of the film is shot with beautifully slow moving camera which slowly reveals the way the actors are related to the space around them and changes your perceptions of that sometimes over the duration of the shot. But when an action piece is called for, Jordan has no problem adjusting the tempo and the editing style to hook us into the hard edged action mode and, similarly, when a piece of vampiric violence is called for, made novelty with a nice little substitute for fangs (which, again, I won’t spoil here) then he really delivers. There’s a decapitation scene at one point which really goes for it and treads the fine line between the poetry of violence and all out unpleasantness which really works well.

The film is not that predictable either, possibly due to the narrative structure, and that’s really something rare these days too. It will have you guessing right up until the end which heads are going to roll, so to speak, and you’ll definitely be rooting for people who may have been portrayed as less sympathetic in anyone else’s retelling of the story.

There’s some nice little shout out’s for vampire fans too, such as Clara going under the assumed name of Carmilla, in reference to Sheridan La Fanu’s short story of the Karnsteins (much filmed in many variations by various directors over the years) and the scene where Eleanour is watching Hammer’s Dracula Prince of Darkness in the hotel she is staying in. Alas, the hotel Byzantium in no way, it seems to me, parallels the hotel in Daughters Of Darkness... but one wonders if that was in the writer’s mind.

It’s also interesting in that, like a lot of modern vampire movies, it plays hard and fast with the “established” rules of the game and picks and chooses just which parts of the myth it wants to retain for the sake of convenience. So, for instance, the vampires in this story are fine hanging around in the sunlight (although they “prefer” the night) but they still need an invitation into somebody’s house to be able to gain entry. It’s always interesting to see which parts modern filmmakers will retain and which they will leave by the wayside... the choices made in this one are all pretty intelligent ones and don’t really hinder the story and it’s telling in any way. Nor set it apart from the established mythology too much either. It invents, adds and enriches without alienating itself too much from its cinematic and literary legacy.

What more can I say? Byzantium is just absolutely bloody brilliant... and I do mean bloody, at times. It’s an absolute must for all true lovers of the vampire genre (and is probably not for Twilight fans, I would guess) and even if you are not a follower of that particular vein of cinema, it’s certainly an intelligently crafted piece of celluloidal delight (as much as that can mean in the digital age) and would still be worth taking a look at whether you’re a fan of these kinds of films or not. An absolute full on recommendation from me. Miss it at your peril.