Thunderbolts*

The Mild Bunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a couple of problems with it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Working Man

Mortar Him
Than You Think

A Working Man
Directed by David Ayer
UK/USA 2025
Black Bear Films
UK Cinema release print

A Working Man is an adaptation of one of 12 novels featuring the character Levon Cade, as written by Chuck Dixon, who I know best as a comic book writer on the likes of titles like Batman, The Punisher and The Savage Sword Of Conan etc. Now I’ve not read the book this movie is based on so I don’t know how well it holds up as an adaptation but it makes for a great action vehicle for Jason Statham, who plays Levon here. The movie is also co-written by the director and Sylvester Stallone and, you could see how Stallone might have played this character at some stage of his career.

The thing is, if you’ve seen the trailer or, for that matter, any other major Jason Statham action films, you know exactly what you are getting and, yeah, this one does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. But that’s not a bad thing and an hour or two of The Stath in killing and rescue mode is usually quite entertaining.

So yeah. After he retired from the marines due to his wife killing herself and their daughter being taken into care by her grandfather (who’s not a great person it has to be said), Levon spends his time juggling a two hour a week visitation with his loving daughter, sleeping in his car and working on a building site as a well respected leader of a construction team owned by a family who believed in him and gave him a chance to work after his troubles. However, a higher up thug and his client in the Russian mafia, who secures/traffics young ladies to give to his clients, grabs the very clever daughter of this family, Levon’s work friend Jenny (played brilliantly by Arianna Rivas). And so his boss and wife plead for Levon to track down and bring back their missing daughter. It would probably surprise nobody if I then said the main protagonist goes on a killing spree to find the daughter and, yeah, that’s exactly what he does here. Hindered by people like Jason Fleming as a Russian oligarch and helped by his ‘blinded in combat’ weapons expert, fellow ex-marine friend Gunny (played by the always fun to watch David Harbour).

And what else can I say... it’s Statham doing what he does best, making it all look easy (although I bet he went home some days with bruises and abrasions at the very least) and doing a heck of a good job as a ferocious, kick ass killer with some great ways of flushing out the bad guys and getting the information he wants. And, although this should go without saying, the main lead is able to do all this stuff because he’s actually a damned good actor who knows how to make this kind of activity look believable and even credible.

The film is quite crunchy and brutal in its depiction of violence (although not especially gory... it’s a finer balance of elements, I think, to get the trade off right in an action movie, say, as opposed to a horror film) and, of course, you certainly know who the good guys and the bad guys are here. There’s perhaps one loose end I would have liked to have seen tied up and that comes from the first action sequence near the beginning of the piece. Here, Levon has to save one of his fellow workers from some heavy handed criminals in order to signal to the audience that the central character can, as they say in professional circles, kick ass. Now, I personally think that Jason Statham brings enough baggage with him that you don’t even need that kind of set up for him but, you know, this will always be someone’s first film with him in and, they do a fine job setting it up here. However, my loose end is that I would have liked to know why the guy on the construction site was in trouble and, you know, what could be done about it to ensure it doesn’t happen to him again. But the scene serves purely as an introduction to Levon’s ‘special set of skills’, as the saying now goes and, yeah, it's certainly fit for purpose on that count, at any rate.

So, a big action flick which doesn’t skimp on the action, has a central character who has his heart in the right place and a bunch of bad guys you won’t worry about coming to a bone crunching end. A Working Man certainly does the job when it comes to an action packed night at the movies and I hope the writers and lead actor consider adapting another one of the books in the series at some point.

Violent Night

Slay Ride

Violent Night
USA 2022
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
87 North

Warning: Very slight scene detail spoilers.

Violent Night is the latest movie from Tommy Wirkola, the director behind three of my favourite, gory films of the last 13 years, namely Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel - Witch Hunters (reviewed here) and Dead Snow 2 - Red Vs Dead (reviewed here). This film sees David Harbour from Stranger Things... see various series review links in the TV section of the index... the third Hellboy movie (reviewed here) and Black Widow (reviewed here) take on the role of Santa Claus... the real Santa Claus.

The film starts off with Santa hanging out and getting drunk in a bar on Christmas Eve, disillusioned with what the spirit of Christmas has come to mean and thinking that this might be the last year he does this. However, one of the houses he visits, a rich mansion belonging to the multi-billionaire grandmother of a little girl on his ‘nice list’, Trudy (played by Leah Brady), is having a Christmas gathering attended by the whole family, including Trudy and her estranged parents. However, a villain played by John Leguizamo (who’s always great as a villain but I wish they’d give him some proper ‘nice guy’ roles for a change), kills the security team in the mansion and his team hold the family while they break into the main safe. Santa gets caught up in the events and, before you know it, he becomes a brutal ‘action Santa’, intent on saving the little girl from harm and, due to various things that happen, as you kind of know will transpire, he ends up believing in the spirit of Christmas again and, of course, his important role in it.

And it’s a great movie, it has to be said. The whole thing plays out just like a 1980s action movie, it would be fair to say, with Dominic Lewis’ Christmas music infused score sounding a little like one of Michael Kamen’s old action scores for a movie like Die Hard (reviewed here) or Lethal Weapon. The only difference between this and an 80s action movie would be the ramped up brutality of the violence, which fully keeps up with Wirkola’s earlier movies, in terms of the goriness on offer, including the inventiveness behind it. For example, when Santa attempts to take out a thug with a Christmas Tree star through the eyeball and he’s still coming for him, there’s a definite nod to the face off between Odd Job and James Bond in Goldfinger (reviewed here). Looking for a way out of his situation, Santa notices the star is still plugged into the tree lights and flips the switch, electrocuting the guy and setting his head on fire.

There’s also some nice stuff, just a couple of moments, where this version of Santa’s backstory is explored from many centuries ago. Let’s just say that, if such a thing were around then, he would definitely have been on the ‘naughty list’, with the aid of his favourite hammer skull crusher. What’s more important though, is the beating heart of the movie in both the relationship between Santa and the little girl and, also, the hard side swipes at the greed driven commercialism that Santa is, in fact, aiding... in his delivery of the Christmas spirit. Also, although I’ve not seen the Home Alone films myself, there’s a nice homage to these in one sequence in the movie which I think will resonate with people who liked those flicks.

I have two things which are less easy to forgive but they certainly aren’t deal breakers. One is the ‘science’ behind Santa’s supernatural magic not being exactly consistent in places. However, Harbour delivers a certain ‘get out of jail free’ line in regards to the ‘Christmas magic’ which just about manages to cover the inconsistencies in the script and, since it’s such a joyous movie... I’m gonna go with it. What’s more worrying though is the sound mix. One of the more enjoyable lines of the movie, one which featured heavily in the trailer, in fact, is so overwhelmed by the Christmas song playing in the foreground that it’s barely audible. I mean, I guess it could have been the sound system at the cinema I was watching it in but... yeah, I suspect not.

Still, all that being said, fans of 1980s/90s action movies and those still happy enough to maintain the myth of Santa and the spirit of Christmas should find a lot to love in Violent Night which, in spite of the obvious, unorthodox surface detail of the genre, actually buys into the spirit of the season a lot more than it detracts from it... which is what I was hoping for when I saw the trailer and, fortunately, that’s exactly what I got. I hope this one does well at the box office and, yeah, I can’t see this one doing badly at all. This one’s a definite crowd-pleaser and has all the earmarks of being a franchise starter. I’d be surprised if a sequel to this one wasn’t already being prepped and I hope we see David Harbour back in this role again soon. Well worth a visit to your local cinema, for sure.

Stranger Things 4

Ex-stranging
The Experience

Stranger Things 4
USA May - July 2022
Nine episodes

Warning: Some spoilers running right up that hill at you.

Okay, it has to be said that series four of hit show Stranger Things was a little bit hit and miss for me. I didn’t like it as much as the second and third series, for sure but, I still liked it a lot better than the first. That being said, there’s lots of good stuff within it too so... let’s take a little look.

Okay, plot...  it’s Spring Break and various characters are reunited, after the close of the last season meant that some of them had to move away from the sleepy town of Hawkins. Something, though, is killing high school kids in Hawkins, making them see dark visions for a week or so in advance... before levitating them into the air, breaking their bones and then sucking their eyeballs back into their head. However, as with other seasons, the plot strands are split both globally and in terms of character threads, into three or four different groups, which merge and then diverge over the series. You have one lot trying to figure out what’s going on with the bizarre murders that look very much like they come from the Upside Down (the physical manifestation of the alternate, dark version of Hawkins where all the dark things dwell), you have Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) being retrained (through ordeal) to recover her superpowers by both Mathew Modine and Paul Reiser, themselves pursued by an army splinter group, because they believe Eleven is the only way to stop what is coming to Hawkins. You also have three of the kids trying to recover Eleven (along with new stoner character Argyle) and we have Joyce (Winona Ryder) finding out that Hopper (David Harbour) may still be alive after the events of the last series finale but, needs assistance to help break him out of a Russian security prison in Alaska. And, of course, the series concludes with all the characters reuniting but, things go a little differently this time around.

Okay, so lots to like here. The playing of a Dungeons And Dragons game crosscut with a basketball game is pretty well done. There’s a nod to the famous real life Hellfire Club (although mostly just in the name used for a D&D group) and, being as it’s set in 1986, the usual pop culture artefacts such as an Elvira poster, a Halloween mask and, in a series of moments which surprised everyone in terms of the spin off benefits... using the Kate Bush song Running Up That Hill as Max’s (Sadie Sink) favourite song, used to save her life and pull her away from the clutches of the creature at one point midway through the season, resulting in it being number one in the world charts for weeks (and still counting at time of writing). I remember when this song came out in 1985... it turned me on to Kate Bush big time and within the space of about six weeks I’d saved up enough money to purchase all of her albums, of which there were then five in total. Of course, in those days they were vinyl albums but they were certainly among the first non-soundtrack titles I upgraded to CD when the format was introduced.

Another great pop culture moment is when the kids are trying to find a drug supplier by only his first name. The two who work in a video store run it into their computer and narrow it down to about seven people in the area before checking the rental records... when they find the one who keeps renting out all the Cheech And Chong videos, they know they’ve got their man. And Dustin quoting Han Solo in normal conversation (Never tell me the odds!) was a nice touch. Not to mention the casting of Freddy himself, Robert Englund (from the Nightmare On Elm Street films... which don’t really appeal to me, I remember him best in V), as a key character in one episode.

Another thing I liked about the show was that the main villain turns out to be someone from Eleven’s past (she’s repressed the memory for so long) and, not only that, it turns out he’s the prime mover for the villains in all three previous seasons. I also liked that, although it seems for a little while that the day has been saved by the usual suspects... there’s one important character left in a coma and, as the Upside Down has ruptured Hawkins in various multidimensional rifts... well, it starts snowing that kind of ash that is in the air in the Upside Down... it’s clear the kids aren’t out of the woods yet...

Although I really thought they would be because, well, I was under the impression that the fourth series was the final one for the show but, no, it turns out that there’s going to be a fifth and final season at some point and, all I will say about that is, they’d better get their skates on. Those kids are growing up fast and when you compare them to flashback footage from previous iterations, it’s really noticeable. The other thing about that is... usually a year has gone by with each new show but... I just don’t see how they’re going to be able to pick up the storyline again without carrying on from exactly where they left it this time around. Which makes getting it in the can even more urgent, I would have thought.

Talking about the music though... there’s a thing about the needle drop of pre-existing tracks that I really didn’t like. Namely the way they’ve been cut up and looped about. For example, would it have killed them to cut the big Kate Bush scene (out of the many in the show using that song) to the actual track as it exists rather than keep chopping it about like that? And in one long scene where the villain is monologuing for quite a while, the music seems to start off with the last track from Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi score before, bizarrely, jumping into his opera Akhnaten midway through. Not quite sure what’s going on there.

All in all, though, like I said, I still appreciated Stranger Things 4 more than the first season and I have the two volumes of score CD (not the stupid song compilations) on pre-order (which at two discs each makes it the most music we’ve had from a season in one hit). So if you liked the other three seasons you should probably be okay with this one. I’m kind of hoping that Season 5 will be a marked improvement though... and I hope they continue to bring Kate Bush along for the ride.

Black Widow

MOORDER

Black Widow
USA  2021
Directed by Cate Shortland
UK cinema release print.

Okay... here we go.

I have two enduring childhood memories of the Black Widow character, aka Natasha Romanoff, which have always stayed with me. One is of the sticker I used to gaze at on the cupboard opposite my bed in the early 1970s. Along with dozens of other Marvel stickers which I wish I’d kept and never removed from their backing when I was a youngster, this one depicted Black Widow in a heroic pose and with a comic book bubble coming out of her mouth saying, “I’m Natasha, fly me to Miami!” The other thing I remember her most  from is the grim and depressing tale “And To All A Good Night...” which was reprinted in the 1974 inaugural edition of Marvel’s Giant Super Hero Holiday Grab Bag (which is where I originally read it and which I reviewed here). It showed a tragic figure who was unable to successfully save the life of the innocent teenager who came to warn her of an attack on her. It was a grim tale to include in a Christmas special and it really helped set the cold war tone of the character.

Of course, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe reworked the character for her debut in Iron Man 2 (reviewed here), as played by Scarlett Johansson (as she is in this one), a lot of the darkness and cold war was taken out of the character. Some of it was briefly touched upon in both Captain America - The Winter Soldier (reviewed here) and Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here) but, like pretty much all of the characters in their cinematic incarnation of the Marvel universe, she was a severely compromised character.

In this one, she is even more ‘altered’ from her comic book origins in that David Harbour, who plays the Russian super soldier Red Guardian, has been ‘re-cast’ as a father(ish) figure to her, whereas in the comics he was her husband. So, yeah, while it’s true that no card carrying member of the MMMS* would probably be all that happy with this and the former films in the series, I’m kinda getting over the fact that they have compromised the characters so much and am able to just enjoy the films as an entity unto themselves. Which is good because, as it happens and, certainly against my expectations, Black Widow is one of the much better entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It’s a fun and deadly romp which is kind of a supercharged, adrenalised version of the fisticuffs heavy espionage that Marvel does so well and, I had very few problems with it. It also stars Florence Pugh as Natasha’s sister(ish), Rachel Weisz as her mother(ish) and Ray Winstone as the evil Russian bad guy who mind controls agents out of the sinister Red Room. In addition we have William Hurt returning to the franchise as Thaddeus E. "Thunderbolt" Ross and also actress Olga Kurylenko in a slight twist of a role which... I won’t reveal here.

And it’s business as usual in terms of the Marvel action and I had a really good time with this one. The action comes hard and fast and not always when you are expecting it, so that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. And it kinda links into the Marvel movies which are set both before and after it. It’s also got a nice score by Lorne Balfe which I would have liked to have bought but which, sadly, continues the trend of a studio not releasing a real CD soundtrack of the thing so we can hear the music properly... instead it’s locked up in the dungeon and only a low quality digital approximation has been released in the form of the dreaded ‘electronic download’, which is an absolutely awful thing to do to music, people!

I do have a few issues with it though. The first of which is... why should I care? The time setting for the film is somewhere between the end of Captain America -Civil War (reviewed here) and Avengers - Infinity War (reviewed here). We already know Black Widow sacrifices herself for humanity in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here). Marvel fridged** her already so I a) know she is in no real danger at all in this movie and b) know that she’s effectively dead in the current films so, honestly, nothing is really at stake in this movie. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it a lot but, sadly, that character is already dead to me and it looks like she’ll never be coming back.

Secondly, Natasha does something really cool which allows her to overcome some mental re-programming near the end of the picture. I’m not saying what it is but, honestly, I’m not sure the human brain’s survival mechanisms would actually allow a person to do that. I’m not sure, mind you, but... well, it makes for a great little moment in the movie so, what do I care?

Thirdly, there’s a scene near to the end where Natasha is about to have a meeting with Ross and then we cut to a couple of weeks later. The following scene sets up where the jet plane Captain America is using at the start of Infinity War came from but, surely makes absolutely no sense as a credible follow on from the previous scene. They did what now? Again, I’m not spoiling it here but you’ll surely know what I’m talking about when you get there.

Other than this though... good job Marvel. You’ve made another great film and, as I said earlier, one of the better entires in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which also manages to usher in another important character for future MCU movies. Most fans of the series will know enough to stay put in their seats while the end titles run because, as usual, there’s a post credits scene. The scene brings back another character and, without saying who that is, if this film had been released when it was supposed to have been (rather than being delayed by the pandemic) then I’m sure we would all have been a lot more wary of that person when they turned up in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier TV show (reviewed here). Still, I’m amazed Black Widow hit cinemas at all... although I’m glad it did because, with the coronavirus restrictions due to be lifted in a week, I wouldn’t have braved a cinema to see it after then (although, even before I managed to see it, it’s freely available in HD on a load of sites on the internet... this is the world we live in now, I guess). So, yeah, great film in the series and happy I got to see it in 3D on a large screen. Definitely worth a look.

*The Merry Marvel Marching Society, a Marvel fan club started in
the 1960s which was a forerunner of FOOM (Friends Of Ol’ Marvel).

**A term named after a 1994 Green Lantern comic where the main character’s girlfriend is killed
and left stuffed in his fridge, thus empowering him in his rage and motivating the rest of his story arc.

Stranger Things 2

Mazes and Monsters

Stranger Things 2
2018 USA

Okay so... people who read my review of Stranger Things (which can be found here) will know that I... well I didn’t hate it, I was just mostly not impressed with it in any way. Well, all that changed when I finally got access, via a friend, to Series 2 recently. It’s a real change of pace for the show, I felt and it almost feels like the clichés were all gotten out of the way in the first season so we hit the ground running on this one, immediately picking up from the loose end that Will Byer’s was left with ‘something’ from his experiences in the ‘upside down’.

This season won me over very quickly and it was great when you see the montage in the first episode as the four friends (minus Eleven) are seen making preparations for Halloween and go as the lead characters from Ghostbusters. This one felt a little more like the 1980s as I remembered it... in that rose-tinted nostalgia vision we all have for the decades we are growing up in and it was especially nice seeing the kids saving (and stealing) all their money to go down to their local amusement arcade to try and beat the new ‘animated video game’ sensation Dragon’s Lair. For those too young to remember, this was kind of an experimental game using proper cartoon footage which, if I recall correctly, cost about 5 or 10 times more to play than any of the other video games in the arcades, was way too expensive for me to play more than once and... always seemed to have a queue next to it.

Things like this heroic fantasy themed game would be important to those kinds of kids though and I appreciated the nostalgia hit here.

So, onto the plot and... it’s one of those again where you have a few different ends of ‘this season’s problem’ being solved by different sets of regular characters. This one involves a super intelligence, the mind flayer (named after a character from the Dungeons And Dragons manual), who has an army of growing demogorgons (the kids only had one to deal with last season) who are inhabiting an offshoot of the ‘upside down’ which has manifested and grown under the town of Hawkins and who the kids have to find a way of stopping... both helped and hindered by Will Byers, who has the intelligence of the mind flayer sitting inside him, using his mind and body as a host organism. We also have Eleven, who has been secretly living with the Sheriff of Hawkins, who runs off to pursue her own issues and has adventures in the big city, before finally reuniting with everyone at the end of the penultimate episode like the cavalry as she turns up to... if they’re lucky... kick some demogorgon butt by closing down the gateway to the ‘upside down’.

So... lots of things going on and, as you might guess, it’s riddled with loads of 1980s references and even the music, which is usually somewhat inspired by the sound of John Carpenter’s scores anyway, it seems to me, has a couple of moments in Eleven’s big city adventures with her soul sister who also exhibits special powers, where it either goes into a cover version or, more than likely, is straight needle-dropped in from one of my favourite cues from the score to Escape From New York. So, yeah... very much more my kind of thing, this series.

There’s even a new bully character... since the class heavy from last season turned out to be one of the nice guys after all and is now a protector for the main protagonists... and this new guy, who’s sister is the new love interest of one of the kids, is seriously channeling the vibe of Judd Nelson from The Breakfast Club, including looking just like him.

And yeah, good acting from all around including  Caleb McLaughlin, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Millie Bobby Brown, Winona Ryder and Noah Schnapp  but, also, a couple of new characters played by Sean Astin (presumably here because he was in The Goonies, a film I’ve never seen) and Paul Reiser... who seems to be both channeling and also atoning for his role in James Cameron’s ALIENS here. And talking of the A L I E N universe, there are an awful lot of references to various films in the franchise here... or at least the first two... with a particular Harry Dean Stanton skin shedding scene coming to mind at one point in the narrative.

So yeah, I was all over this one and watched it through fairly quickly... although I’m already a season behind again and am not sure when I’ll get access to the third series. This one also has a kick ass final shot which, more or less, has been seen all over the show in the form of a sketch, as the writers revisit some of the tropes from the first series... such as a new bully character and, instead of Christmas tree lights being used as a communication device, we have gazillions of abstract sketches which, when taped up all over the house, give a map of where the creatures of the ‘upside down’ are living. And tonally it plays out exactly like the first series, with the same ‘will they, won’t they’ romance beats and concerns of the main characters. I was surprised at one of the scenes of bloody aftermath when one of the new characters is feasted on by a few demogorgons because, I dunno, we’d already seen it happen once and for some reason the camera decides to back to the carnage, perhaps to explain to the audience that, yes, this character you all worked so hard to accept and started to like has now been shredded but, I dunno, the style of the content choice on that moment seemed a little out of place here.

Still, other than that, Stranger Things 2 is a much better incarnation of the show and, like the series itself, this review is a little short, I’m afraid. Looking to see how the series progresses now and kind of hoping we don’t just get more of the same in the third one because, yeah, this particular set of manifestations of the ‘upside down’ has been a little done to death now, I think. Check this one out if you have the time to binge.

Hellboy (2019)

The Man Who Hell To Earth

Hellboy (2019)
2018 UK/USA
Directed by Neil Marshall
UK cinema release print.

You know, I thought a lot of the last two Hellboy movies, especially the second one so, frankly, the idea of doing a new, rebooted version of the character which didn’t involve the original dream team pairing of director Guillermo del Toro and actor Ron Perlman was pretty much anathema to me. I really wasn’t looking forward to this movie and even more so when I heard pretty much every critic weighing in with headlines saying it was one of the worst messes of a film out there. However, I thought I should witness the train wreck for myself and I had one slightly bright spark of a fact at my disposal which should have tipped me off that, maybe, this was worth a watch after all. That bright spark being director Neil Marshall, who made two of the best modern horror movies going... Dog Soldiers and The Descent.

I got lucky when I went and saw this because, honestly, this is an awesome film and I thoroughly enjoyed it... way more than I thought was possible. So I guess the bottom line from that is... don’t trust the professional critics, even if they all agree on something. This film is a great slice of exploitational horror which is not afraid to blend elements of epic, grandiose plotting with a true pulp/exploitation sensibility. In a way it felt a little like it had a kind of stylistic kinship with movies like Hansel And Gretel - Witch Hunters (reviewed by me here) and The Last Witch Hunter (reviewed here). Two movies which I think were less than enthusiastically received by audiences and which deserved more love.

As does this latest incarnation of Hellboy. I don’t think there were even ten people in the screening I went to and that’s a shame because it’s a solid and fun movie with some outstanding visual flourishes. There was even a jump scare moment which I didn’t see coming at one point.

Now, nobody can really fill the shoes of the mighty acting legend that is Ron Perlman in the role of Hellboy but David Harbour, who plays him here, actually does a really good job with the character and he manages to assuredly bypass the legacy of the role, giving us a nice interpretation of creator Mike Mignola’s comic book character. Both him and his ‘dad’, played by Ian McShane here (it was John Hurt in the last two movies), are totally brilliant and they are, pretty much, the only two regular characters carried over from the last two movies (which suits me fine as I never really got on with the Abe Sapien creature, although he is teased near the end). Instead with have a totally new support team who are working together for the first time here, played by Daniel Dae Kim and the truly beautiful Sasha Lane. They are also pretty awesome and, to round it off as the icing on the cake, we have Milla Jovovich playing the lead villain of the movie. And she does some pretty good work here too.

Now this movie is a complete reboot and is not associated with the del Toro movies. Which is a shame in a way because there was a definite direction for a third part which the director of that last one was clearly heading for. The question posed in Hellboy - The Golden Army was... just how was the title character going to bring about the apocalypse and, well, its a shame that never got resolved by del Toro. Except, it kinda does get resolved, somewhat, because I suspect, having not read the original comics, that this film is based, at least partially, on the same source material that would have gone into that third part that was never made. So, yeah, some of the questions posed by that last movie are, I think, answered here.

And the movie had me right from the start. Opening with a flashback and narrative provided by Mr. McShane which takes us back into Arthurian legend and upping the gore factor right from the outset, the film pulled me in very quickly. This is soon followed by a scene where Hellboy has to fight a masked luchador wrestler with vampire powers and, frankly, by this time I was already hooked on this movie, it has to be said. The action sequences are well put together, solid and, frankly, surrealistic, giant demons completely trashing London in the last reel really put a smile on my face. This is, as I said before, an epic piece of pulpy exploitation and it goes over the top in all the right places it needs to over the course of the story. And the special effects are handled really well too with my favourite being the ectoplasmic undead who are channeled physically from the mouth and into 3D representations via Sasha Lane’s truly epic character. I enjoyed her performance best, I think and her on-screen chemistry with David Harbour goes a long way towards selling this film and giving the emotional weight it requires at certain story beats.

Add into what is an already seductive mix, Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, which is a real corker and gives the movie a solid backbone. Can’t wait to hear this one as a stand alone listen when the CD is released in a few weeks.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about Hellboy 2019 other than... some of the little reveals are a bit too obviously telegraphed but the frenetic pacing and post-modernistic tone more than make up for the lack of subtlety in the writing. This is a fun and entertaining movie and I would expect that, if you liked the last two Hellboy movies, you should have a good time with this one. And no one is more surprised than me that I would be delivering such a positive review of this movie but, there you have it. A little masterpiece of bloody excess and another winner, as far as I’m concerned, from director Neil Marshall.

Stranger Things

Needful Kings

Stranger Things
2016 USA

A friend of mine gave me access to Stranger Things saying “This is a show I think you might like.” Since it’s one of those streaming thingies on a web site (or something like a web site but a bit beyond my understanding), he probably knew I would never bother to try and see this show any other way than him letting me to watch it. I really don’t like the digital world and streaming deprives me of the neccessary ownership of holding a shiny disc in my hand, not to mention allowing me to ignore the studio if they decide to play puppet-master and pull it from their virtual releases schedule. Having now seen it, I’m not sure I’m the particular audience that Stranger Things is catering for... although I did warm to it by the final couple of episodes.

Set in the, presumably fictional, town of Hawkin (named after Professor Hawking, I would guess), this is the story of four teenage friends who are into cool stuff (like Dungeons & Dragons, for example) and it mostly takes place in 1983. However, as we see at the start, some kind of ‘monstrous thing’ is unleashed and, when one of the boys, Will Byers, goes missing, his three friends try to find out what’s happened to him in the face of establishment adversity, even when the boy’s body is found (which will make sense once you start to watch it). Along with their new super powered, escaped Government Research Group experiment friend 011, aka eleven or Elle for short, the friends become embroiled in a fantastic adventure involving an alternate layer of reality, a monster and a sinister, threatening Government conspiracy. And, of course, multiple sets of investigations... where different, older sets of characters get involved with alternate elements of the mystery so everyone can accidentally end up meeting near the end and then, by pooling their resources and discoveries, beat the evil government agency responsible and find the missing character.

So, yeah, it’s trying to tap into exactly the same kind of source material that J. J. Abram’s Super 8 (reviewed here) was trying to get into... and so you have loads of 1980s horror and science fiction references on show here, with many nods to Stephen Spielberg thrown into the mix... along with stuff like ‘Salem’s Lot, John Carpenter, The Evil Dead... basically everything you’d want to showcase in a loving homage to the 1980s. Even some of the music is a little like something John Carpenter might have come up with for The Fog (reviewed here) in a kind of light form. Having said that, the producers have included The Bangles cover version of Simon & Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade Of Winter in one episode and, thinking about it, that’s a bit of an anachronism. Admittedly it’s a disturbing cover for me because The Bangles only cover two thirds of the original song and left out my favourite verse (“... at any convenient time. Funny how my mem’ry skips while looking over manuscripts of unpublished rhyme... drinking my vodka and lime...”) but what really infuriated me as I was thinking about it on the bus coming home from work was that Stranger Things Season One is set in November 1983... but The Bangles didn’t bring that version of the song out until 1987, if mem’ry serves and is not skipping here. So, you know, if you’re going to do 1983... get it right!

So, okay... all this referential stuff is something I should be well into and, normally I would be... but I found it really hard to get into here. Ditto for my dad who only managed to make it a half an hour into the first episode before bailing on it in disgust at the amount of formulaic writing showcased here. I at least made it to the end of the last episode and, I’d have to say from about episode 5 onwards, things start to get a little more interesting in terms of just wanting to find out what is going to happen next. The characters do grow on you.

For the most part, though, all this stuff is dull and clichéd... something you don’t want to have with even the most post-modernly eclectic approach to popular entertainment and, with its obvious plot line, it did feel like somebody had just taken an old episode of The X-Files and expanded it into something unnecessarily longer. The opening of each episode proclaims it to be A Netflix Original Series but, honestly, it’s so far from original it’s not funny.

That’s not to say there aren’t any plus points and, like I said, I did stay to the end with it. For example...

Although the story is pedestrian in nature and not exactly full of surprises (trust me... you’ve seen it all before, sometimes dressed a little differently), it does at least stick rigidly to being an all round, coherent narrative and this is very much improved by having some really warm characters and, frankly, some great actors in it. I’d heard that Winona Ryder was in this one and she does an absolutely phenomenal job as Joyce Byers, the mother of the missing boy. Of course, it took me half an hour to realise which one she was in it because, frankly, she still looks like she’s in her mid twenties and certainly not old enough to be anyone's mother, especially not of the teenage brothers depicted here. She plays a character halfway between losing it at the disappearance/possible death of her boy and a perceived crazy but driven warrior as she becomes embroiled in the phenomena... talking to her absent son through Christmas tree lights etc. Don’t worry... it’ll make sense if you sit down and watch it.

She is more than ably supported by David Harbour as Jim Hopper, the post-tragedy washed up excuse for a town sherriff who, perhaps somewhat predictably, straightens himself up and opens his mind, becoming one of the real good guys when he realises there really is a government conspiracy and that Joyce’s youngest boy may still be alive. And we have Mathew Modine as the head of the Government group who knows much more about what’s going on, and what’s gotten loose, than anyone else in town. Actually pretty much everyone is really good in this and I could just list the whole cast here and say, these people are all doing a swell job... but you’ll see that if you watch the show.

Special shout out to the four kids who are going after the mostly absent Will, though, because they’re awesome... Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, the outstanding Gaten Matarazzo and the quite unbelievably phenomenal acting tour de force that is the eleven year old (at time of filming) Millie Bobby Brown... who plays Eleven with an amazing level of intelligence and understanding that a lot of actors don’t sometimes get when they are over twice her age.

Now, the story is clichéd, it’s true, but it is kinda addictive... mostly in terms of staying around to see if you are right about what’s going to happen next. However, I did think that the 1980s theme was kinda downplayed quite a lot in places and... I don’t know why I didn’t respond to it much since, well, I remember the 1980s pretty well in terms of the pop culture. It’s funny, I really like movies and books that are retro set in the 1960s and I have to wonder if the majority of the people on places like Twitter and the like who are raving about Stranger Things are so positive about it because many of them are quite young and it gives them a sense of borrowed nostalgia for a time they never, actually, properly lived through themselves, maybe? I don’t know whether that’s true or not but Stranger Things has proven very popular with young audiences, it seems to me, and a second series has already been commissioned. 

Which is lucky because, as is the nature of such shows written by people who know that a follow up could always be on the cards, there are still quite a few questions raised about, for example, the strange world of ‘the underneath’ which features so prominently in this as a mystery element. Is it really a parallel realm or is it, in fact, a near future reality of this town in this fictional version of 1983? Is one of the most interesting characters in the show really gone at the end of the last episode or will that person return for the second season? Is one of my favourite characters really dead at the end of episode three or can something be done about that? And what is really going on with that other character everyone has been making such a fuss about? There’s definitely something up with him.

So, yeah, the writers have written it as open ended as possible so they can riff on other genre conventions in the next series along... so there’s that. And that’s going to happen sometime over the next year, I would guess. Meanwhile, I keep asking myself if I’d recommend Stranger Things to any of my friends and, I think, judging from my own reaction and that of my dad, that it will probably play better to a much younger audience than people who actually lived through those times. It does have its moments of intrigue and mystery and, in terms of direction, shot framing and some nice camera movement which echoes some of the props from one of the episode's directors. It’s certainly a competently put together piece, if you can ignore the clichéd nature of this particular postmodernistic beast. So if you’re 30 or under, I suggest you may want to give this one a go and... if you’re over that age, maybe you’ll try to be a little more understanding and forgiving if some of the stuff in this seems painfully obvious and protracted. At that age you’re not necessarily the target audience, methinks.