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.

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.

American Ultra

Age Of Ultra

American Ultra
2015 USA
Directed by Nima Nourizadeh
UK cinema release print.

Warning: One slight plot point spoiler.

I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for Jesse Eisenberg as an actor. It has to be said, though, in recent years, I’ve had much less time for him as Jesse Eisenberg the human being, due to some footage I saw of him where he seemed to be saying less than respectful, hurtful things to a person trying to interview him. Now, I’m not sure if that’s a black and white issue or what the backstory to that particular interview was, so I am doing my best to approach with caution on his status as a regular person, especially since his behaviour doesn’t really add up with other stuff he ‘does’ in real life. Thankfully, it’s not my purpose to give a summary of the actor in question’s character... whether good or bad. Actually, I’m not really sure what my purpose is, to be honest, but I can certainly say that, as a personality on screen... he can be a lot of fun.

American Ultra is a film very much suited to his personality type. Or at least suited to play around and defy your expectations of what a stereotype like this can be pushed into being in a certain set of situations, that’s for sure. It’s not like any other movie around in the cinema at the moment... which coming from Hollywoodland is both a surprising and good thing. It’s not the homogenised, cliché ridden, formulaic blockbuster you will be getting on the majority of screens at your local multiplex and that’s always going to give it plus points over most of its contemporaries in terms of quirkiness and appeal. Luckily for us, the cast of actors including Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and John Leguizamo (always nice to see him working) are all superb and help sell this, as does the director and the rest of the cast and crew... possibly somewhat against the odds when you realise how disjointed the script might have looked on the printed page (no, that’s only a guess, I’m speculating here people).

This is one of those movies which comes along once every few years and has that almost inherent quality of appealing to a small group of people (relatively, in film terms) and usually locks psychic antenna with audiences of a certain age... if I was still a teenager (alas, those weren’t the days) then I would absolutely be worshipping this movie and seeing it a gazillions times before buying it on home video and rewatching it, seated beneath a poster of the film of the same name etc. It seems like a really bad cliché, also, for me to use this analogy again because I’ve used it before for other films and I don’t want this expression to lose any of its weight but... I would say that American Ultra is the Heathers of the current teen generation and it will probably be absolutely loved by that section of the movie going public. It’s got that kind of cult appeal... not a term I am that comfortable with using due to its inherent contradictions within a box office context (there are no cult movies and if there were, we probably wouldn’t have heard of them)... that captures the zeitgeist like no other.

As a film the plot is simple... a stoner/loser type guy is really a killing machine created by the CIA and has a handler who has left the organisation because she loves him and who poses as/is his girlfriend. However, he doesn’t know any of this because he assumes his lack of memory is due to all the drugs he does. Meanwhile, an enthusiastic, success-seeking higher up in the CIA sees him as a risk and sends some people to eliminate him. Easier said than done though because he gets reactivated and goes on an accidental killing rampage every time somebody tries to kill him or his girlfriend as they attempt to flee the action.

This is a slightly simplified summary of the plot but it’s the basic nutshell of an outline and the film uses this premise to basically deliver a load of violence and drug addled humour wrapped up as a situation comedy where the situations are really f****ed up and the solutions to them usually end up as the path less travelled... most brutal. And it’s a blast... I had a great time with this movie and especially loved the vibrant colours and sense of movement the cast and crew were injecting into every shot. This one really connected with my inner teen and, though I found the musical scoring to be a bit less interesting than would normally work for me, it seems to be appropriate response to the swirl of chaos pictured on screen for the large majority of its running time. A running time which whips along at a very fast pace, there's no doubt about that.

Now there’s nothing truly surprising or astonishing about this movie, in all fairness.... it doesn’t push past any genaralised boundaries that other movies in a similar vein might have tried to do... but it’s blessed with being fairly well executed, so it doesn’t matter that it’s not taking you to places you’ve not seen before. It’s still fairly out there, though, in terms of its sensibilities and, being gifted with a constantly shifting menagerie of characters and events, you certainly won’t find yourself struggling to stay awake through this one. The editing is especially good because, bearing in mind the stuff which is going on all at once in this movie, I didn’t lose track of either the action or the plotting so... well... all I can say to that is that somebody is doing their job right.

Having said that, some of the violence seems to have been edited in such a way that it’s implying something out of sight of the camera rather than showing it in a few cases and I’m guessing that this movie was diplomatically pre-cut to avoid censorship issues before it got a cinema release. It looks like there’s a much harder cut of the movie waiting to be inflicted on an unsuspecting audience and, if I’m right, I’m guessing we’ll have a more extreme version of the movie to look forward to when this thing finally comes out on DVD and Blu Ray.

The one thing that did catch me off guard me about this movie is that it wasn’t based on a comic book... it really looks like it’s come out of the same “play with anything” kind of format that gave us movie adaptations such as American Splendour and Scott Pilgrim Versus The World... it certainly feels like it, in many ways. It’s to the filmmakers’ credit that it achieves this level of substance too, in a way, because it can’t be easy to go through a sustained shoot of something this fragmented without having a previously successful template to reference and give you motivation on a daily basis.

At the end of the day I’d have to say that American Ultra is an all around great movie and something that most teenagers and twenty somethings will find right up their street. As for me... yeah, maybe I’m in touch with my inner child just a little too much but I loved it too and would thoroughly recommend it to most people I know. Go and see it while it’s still playing on the big screen folks... it’s better than most of the other stuff showing out there at the moment.

John Wick

Wicked Game

John Wick
2014  USA
Directed by Chad Stahelski & David Leitch (uncredited) 
UK cinema release print.

Okay. So I find it kinda strange and irritating that a relatively high profile action movie like John Wick has had such a delayed release in this country, especially when the language it’s been shot in is a derivative of the language we speak here in the UK. My cousin lives in Australia and I remember him recommending this film to me when we had a Skype conversation in early November. Why did we have to wait so long for it in this country? Especially since, as is my understanding, there were no censorship issues with it. Note to studios: If I really had wanted to see this film badly enough, I would have just legally bought the US DVD or Blu Ray edition which came out a little while ago over there and had it shipped... pretty much anyone who is a lover of film in the UK has to have at least one multi-region player of some kind laying around because there is so much trouble with censorship and availability in the UK. People less scrupulous than I would, and I’m sure many did, just download it illegally from the internet... personally I don’t do that, for a variety of reasons, but many people do. So you are really hurting your box office take by not releasing these movies more or less simultaneously.

John Wick is a pretty good, broad stroke revenge movie, fuelled very much by comic book style attitude towards the action and violence but shot with a certain amount of care and detail to the point that it is like the close kin of another movie I saw at the cinema recently, the Liam Neeson action flick Run All Night (reviewed by me here). Of course, in every other country, John Wick was the first horse to bolt out of the stable door but, obviously, I’ve had to wait until after the Neeson flick had already been playing for a while before I had an opportunity to see this one.

The similarities between both are quite marked.

Both films start off by showing a central protagonist in a very bad way and then flashback to how he got into this state for the majority of the running time. They are both films which involve an anti-hero ex-killer (Wick’s nickname is Baba Yaga in this) who has a history with the villain of the piece. Wick, by the way, is played by the highly competent actor Keanu Reeves and his ex-villainous connection is played by Michael Nyqvist, who most UK audiences will recognise best from his role as Mikael Blomkvist in the original adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and its subsequent sequels, collectively known as The Millennium Trilogy. Both John Wick and Run All Night have a central protagonist who is forced to go on a rampage of some kind due to the misguided exploits of the young, hot-head son of the film’s principal antagonist and, in each case, that antagonist is only going after the protagonist, very reluctantly, because he has been backed into a corner due to the consequences of those actions of his offspring.

Both films also feature very long action and chase sequences but the way both films go about trying to achieve their adrenalin fuelled, emotional goals are very different. The two have nicely composed and designed shots but, where Run All Night has a kind of modus operandi to the sequences which keeps them cut like an MTV pop generation video on acid - extremely short shots making up all the scenes - Wick uses much longer, fluid shots with a lot of moving camera to capture the more flamboyant scenes of violence. Both films have their pros and cons and are trying to be gritty but with Run All Night, the speed of the shots slightly detracts somewhat. John Wick, on the other hand, is a little more light in tone when it comes to the raw edge of the character and, as I said, much more comic book in its treatment of the choreography of the action sequences. It prefers to use moving master shots to keep you pulled in and focused.

Neither film is wrong in their approach but I find the idea of two films with similar themes being the flip side of the coin to each other, when it comes to the technique used to illustrate those themes, extremely interesting. The fight choreography in John Wick is certainly impressive and it does look like Keanu Reeves is doing a lot of his own “rough n’ tumble” in this one... quite convincingly, I might add. In terms of comparing the two films... I’d consider watching John Wick again because the action sequences seem to be a lot more entertaining, it has to be said.

The main difference to this movie is that John Wick is very much a revenge thriller and it takes a fair bit of the early screen time pulling very hard at the audience’s emotions to establish the connection between Wick and his new puppy dog, sent from his recently deceased wife to bond with Wick after her death. Everyone loves a puppy and so the inevitable scene where John is beaten up, his dog killed* (which is in the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything here, people) and car stolen, is very calculated but, obviously, it works pretty well and you'll get quite fuelled up to see Keanu Reeves’ character leap into action and punish the bad guys. Strangely though, and this is where the art of film comes into play, the amount of time between John Wick losing his wife, gaining a puppy and then having it killed, forcing him out of his self-imposed “kill them all” retirement, can actually be only a week in terms of the events in the character’s chronology. However, the director is skilled, or at least tricksy enough, to give those elements a sense of gravitas even though they take up a pretty insignificantly small amount of time in the principal character’s life. And, of course, Keanu Reeves’ on screen performance is sturdy and assured enough to convince the audience that his personal stake in this is enough motivation for his actions throughout the rest of the film. So, as usual, good work from him.

He’s ably supported by some great actors and actresses in this too, with some good little turns from Willem Dafoe, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Adrianne Palicki and Bridget Moynahan (although, seriously people, 8 seconds of screen time is really not enough for this wonderful actress). He’s also well supported by some striking shots, cool lighting changes (there’s a scene where he goes from neutral whites and beiges to a “full on Bava” of greens and reds at one point), neat editing and... a nice enough score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard. Although regarding this last element it seems, on first listen in the context of the movie, to be a killer baseline missing a central theme which might have given the film a little more lift in places, I felt. Great action coupled with a strong sense of a, kind of, moral heart for the character (despite killing 77 people on screen, most of whom are innocent of any crime against him other than trying to stop him from killing someone else) round out a movie which is actually quite entertaining.

Talk of good box office and a sequel is something which surprises me in the case of John Wick, given that it took so long to get the film out over here. However, it deserves a shot at a franchise, I think... although I’m not sure where they can go with the character after this since the motivation for his misadventures seems to be all used up by the time he’s done with his rampage in this one. Time will tell I guess but, in the meantime, if you like well oiled action movies with lots of loud noise and all the usual punching, shooting and chasing in them, then John Wick should probably satisfy your appetite for destruction for a while. Locked, loaded and ready for traction.

*Just a thought but, if you’re going to take a car ride with your dog and then spin the car around in some death defying, high speed spins and such like, your dog will seriously be looking half dead, at the very least, way before the villains of the piece come into play. That sequence is not very plausible.

One For The Money

Plum’s The Word


One For The Money 
USA 2012
Directed by Julie Anne Robinson
Entertainment In Video Region 2

Okay... so yet again we have a film that I’ve been patiently waiting to come out at the cinema over here, only for it to go straight to the sell-thru market and leap out of the Tesco DVD chart at me. Admittedly, I was only keeping an eye open so I could take my parents, who are huge fans of the books, to see it but, still, it would have been nice to shuffle them into the cinema to check it out rather than get mugged by it in the shops. Pay heed please distributors!

One For The Money is the second of two films (the first was a TV movie in 2002) made of the first of writer Janet Evanovich’s popular series of comical mystery novels about an attitude-gets-you-through-in-the-place-of-competence bounty hunter named Stephanie Plum and her adorable cast of supporting characters. The novels (the 19th in the official Stephanie Plum series comes out this November) are all named after successive numbers... One For The Money, Two For The Dough, Three To Get Deadly etc... and the ones I’ve read (okay then, heard read to me as in-car entertainment as a spoken word CD) have all been pretty well written, solid novels which I’m amazed haven’t been turned into a hit series of films by now.

Well... having seen this latest version, I can kinda see why actually. There’s a little problem here and there’s, absolutely nothing wrong with the movie... I’d recommend it as both a good night in and a brilliant adaptation from the source material, as it happens... but it’s just not an event movie and I’m guessing this is why it had little (possibly none, for all I know) cinema time in this country. It’s a nice, amusing and charmingly comical mystery movie, completely reflective of the source material which has inspired it. Unfortunately, I’m guessing this means it’s not expected to corner the market in teenage ticket sales which, like it or not, is where Hollywoodland have got their sites firmly set these days.

So what can I say... it’s filled with people I’ve never heard of... plus John Leguizamo playing a, typical for him, villainous role (when he would have been better off playing one of the stand up regulars in this one, methinks) and the one and only Debbie Reynolds in the iconic, for the novels, role of grandma. Unfortunately, my one main criticism of this particular adaptation is that grandma, who is obsessed with all things weaponry, is not given enough screen time here. That part needed a lot of expanding, I think, to help the movie along a little more... and it’s a shame if, as I suspect, they stop at just one movie in this series.

The lead character is played by an actress I’ve not seen in anything before called Katherine Heigl... but I can tell you this. She makes an excellent Stephanie Plum and does, indeed, carry the whole production on her shoulders. Not just in terms of being an excellent actress who portrays a likeable character that the audience can identify with but also, as a proper realisation of the character as she is in the book. They seem to have picked the perfect actress for the role. I just hope they give her another shot with a sequel.

Ditto on the screenplay. It’s a well written adaptation with a good ear for Evanovich’s dialogue and any bits where you can guess what’s going to happen next, and I confess there are a fair few moments like this, are not necessarily the fault of the movie as I remember the source novel being a little predictable at times. However, these stories aren’t about their predicability, or lack of... they’re about classic noir-style scripts updated in a modern setting with a cast of characters which raise it above the strengths and weaknesses of the storyline.

I think the main problem in terms of box office potential in this is that there are no real “set pieces” in the movie. It’s not a problem for me because I find that kind of film-making stale, derogatory to the story and obvious anyway, but I think a lot of modern movies do contain “larger than life” sequences and, unfortunately, this seems to be what young audiences have been brain washed into expecting. In stark contrast, One For The Money features a well-rounded script, more than competent (and sometimes excellent) performances, good work-a-day direction and cinematography and it hustles along at a not too slow pace... although a punchier editing style might well have lifted the movie into something a little more marketable or remarkable. In short, a great little movie which isn’t going to start any fires but which certainly isn’t a waste of your time. I’m hoping it will do well on DVD as I do think there’s a fairly sizeable audience for this kind of movie out there... especially when it’s based on such a long running series of books which already have an audience they can bring to it!

I think one of the problems here may also have been the marketing. How many Janet Evanovich or Stephanie Plumb fans are there out there who eve knew there was a movie. Granted, the title of the film is lifted directly from the book, but it’s also a popular expression and you really can’t count on the recognition factor for that specific sector of the market is my guess. What they maybe should have done is called it something like Stephanie Plum: One For The Money and maybe more people would have twigged and turned out for it in the US (where I’m guessing it underperformed, hence the lack of a substantial cinema release over here?).

At the end of the day though, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a nice little movie which is well adapted from the novel and which will appeal to all the kinds of fans of mysteries who would enjoy a little Scooby Doo/Nancy Drew mixed up into smart one liners from a sexy “dame”. And fans of this particular series of novels need not fear that the movie sells the series short... it’s safe to go watch this one people! It does the job. So if you’re looking for something light, breezy and charming... with a little extra sexiness and weaponry thrown in for good measure... Plum’s the one and Stephanie’s your gal!