The Guest

Guest To Kill

The Guest 
BBC Four Episodes
September 2025

Warning: Mild spoilers.

The Guest is a four episode mini series put out by the BBC and, truth be told, it’s not the kind of show I would usually watch. However, my parents had it on in the background while I was doing something for half an hour and I made a note of it and came back to it a few days later to start it off from scratch on the BBC iPlayer. Because I found myself drawn to it, not so much by the story as I was by the acting of the two female leads, who were really giving some subtle and interesting nuances to their characters. 

These were Gabrielle Creevy as the down on her luck, poverty stricken Ria, who is not making enough money out of being a cleaner to keep herself and her boyfriend in food and, her new benefactor, the rich and powerful Fran, played by the great Eve Myles (who I best remember from Doctor Who spin off Torchwood).

Fran throws large amounts of cash in Ria’s direction and has her come to work in her… well it’s a bit of a mansion house with a neighbouring guest house. Her husband is away most of the time, seeing to his part of their company business overseas and, Fran takes to Ria and, cautiously, Ria also is somewhat seduced by Fran’s lifestyle. But there’s always a catch and as she starts to explore the fate of the previous cleaner, the contents of the ‘forbidden, locked room’ and starts paying attention to what business Fran’s public facing job is fronting (especially when she’s promoted to being her PA), things take on a sinister turn.

Not least of which is when Ria accidentally murders, in self defence, a suitor who at first seems to be just someone she met on a dating app but, it’s not too long when, despite her investigations and text messages from his phone after he’s very much deceased, she realises he also has a link to whatever’s going on at the house that Fran and her husband Simon built.

The story did not, I have to say, go where I wanted it to go… I was expecting more of a very classic horror element to creep into this by the third episode (I thought they were just being really clever about things, okay?) but it’s more than made up for in the chemistry between Fran and Ria. These are not two dimensional characters and they both carry hidden secrets. Creevy plays it very understated but less is definitely more and you can see her working things out behind her eyes as she progresses further down the rabbit hole. And as for Eve Myles performance as Fran… it’s probably the best I’ve seen her. You can see how her character has let herself become something of a monster over the years but there are also some heart rending scenes where you realise just how she’s gravitated to this and Miles take on the role is so pinpoint on the more, turn on a dime, slightly unstable parts of her personality that... well, like I said, best performance I’ve seen her do. Both actresses rely on the physicality of their expressions and the way they express and change their attitude from minute to minute... well, it’s just a pleasure to watch. 

And I think that’s me done with this one, actually. Like I said, The Guest is not my normal go to for TV entertainment but serendipity shone and I stumbled on a really interesting piece of work here. I think the story could have been a little more complex or, perhaps, a little more explored as there are some very short hand emotional beats on some of the supporting characters (perhaps another episode would have been beneficial) but, yeah, this one has some breathtaking acting performances and I will certainly try to put this one onto people’s radar, I think. 

Video Nasty

The Long List Goodnight

Video Nasty
BBC
Six Episodes
Ireland/UK/Germany
January 8th 2025 2024

A short shout out to Video Nasty, an interesting show which kinda passed everyone by at the start of the year.

Two friends, Billy (Justin Daniels Anene) and Con (Cal O'Driscoll) are school kids in Ireland in the early 1980s. As anyone interested in film will know, this was the time of the tabloid dubbed ‘video nasties’, when a list of titles was being used by the police to seize and confiscate said items as people were getting fined, prosecuted and even jailed for renting out certain tapes on an official list deemed harmful to the general public (I’m still ashamed of my country for this period, read more here and here). So Billy and Con are collecting these through the ‘back of a van’ black market (ahhh... the days where you could rent any tapes from the back of a van... this brought back memories) and they have almost put together a full, pristine set of the 72 banned titles on the main list. The opening of the show sees them buying their 71st tape, Nightmares In A Damaged Brain (as it was known over here, review coming at some point)... with Billy, having been in pen pal mode with a girl in England called FangoriaFanGirl (ahh... the days of the original Fangoria), setting up a trip to England to meet up and exchange tapes.

The object being that once the lads get their last tape on the list, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (or Nightmare Maker, as I think it was known in the UK), they can sell the collection for a tidy sum. So they and Con’s sister Zoe (Leia Murphy) run away from home for a bit, having problems of their own back there anyway... and get to England, only to find the girl has been murdered with a power drill and a sinister conspiracy within the village is at work. Can they escape from their twisted Christian captors and their Mary Whitehouse style mantra with their lives and clear their own names of the murder... and can their parents find them in time?

Okay, so I appreciate that someone has even done something themed around the censorious evil of the video nasty witchhunt campaign but, I have to admit, I’d have wanted something, perhaps, a little less subtle than what we get here. I mean, the acting is very strong with all the main and supporting cast and, also, the research is mostly good (Severin films in America supplied some of the footage/tapes and advice, I believe although, apparently the sleeve on the Nightmare Maker tape has slightly different packaging to the original, first generation pre-certificate version)...  but the main story could easily be a stand alone, cautionary tale with any other conceptual window dressing, it seems to me.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that, although there is the proper judgement made on the ‘humanistically challenged’ aka nutters who tried to ban these so-called ‘dangerous films’ (95% of which can now be bought in a bricks and mortar store in the UK with no cuts, nowadays), it all feels like almost an afterthought and, though it ticks certain boxes for the people who remember those dark days, it just feels like more emphasis and enlightenment about why this happened at the time and how wrong it was (and still is, in the case of films like The New York Ripper, which is still censored in its useless UK edition) to have gone through this exercise in the first place.

Everything feels like the writing is just holding back too much. There’s a line one of the characters says in terms of the nature of the predicament they find themselves in, where he’s alluding to the fact that they don’t know if they’re dealing with just one psychotic family or a whole village conspiracy, where he says “We don’t know if we’re in Texas Chainsaw or Wicker Man here.” And while I appreciate the terms in which that sentiment has been couched, I can’t quite feel like it’s a little on the nose in some ways because, as I watched the drama play out for six, half hour episodes, it did feel like I was watching a group of characters from Grange Hill walking into a cast of characters from The Wicker Man. And while I was certainly rooting for the main group of kids... I didn’t really care too much about what would happen to them by the end of the show. Live or die, I wasn’t fussed... everyone had their own shades of grey and I just wasn’t invested in them. And the last scene of the show seemed a little ludicrous too... possibly an homage to a certain style of film but, honestly, a kind of hollow threat of a possible sequel rather than anything I could be bothered with, truth be told. Not the BBCs finest hour, I would say so... yeah, nothing much to see here.

The Last Showgirl

Off The Razzle

The Last Showgirl
Directed by Gia Coppola
USA 2024
Picturehouse Entertainment

Once again, one of the famous Coppola clan takes to directing. This is not Gia Coppola’s first movie but, it’s the first one I’ve personally heard of directed by her.

The Last Showgirl is an interesting piece, starring Pamela Anderson as an ageing showgirl dancer for a casino in Las Vegas. Her friend, an ex-performer and cocktail waitress there, is a harridan of a woman with too much make-up and an irresponsible side to her, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who also does remarkably wel here… although Pam is absolutely the star of this one, in what is possibly her best acting role she’s ever performed. Once again she is pigeon-holed a little into a dumb blonde kind of role but, in this case, one who has a lot of knowledge and interest in her art. But wrestling simultaneously with trying to repair an estranged relationship with her daughter (played by Billy Lourd), looking after some of the other showgirls (to an extent) and struggling, as always, to pay the bills.

Then, one day, their show runner, played by the always incredible David Bautista, breaks the news that the show, Razzle Dazzle, is being ditched after a 38 year run (Pam’s character has been working it there for almost that long) and they have only three weeks to go before their last show and, definitely in the case of Pam’s character Shelly, a future of probable unemployment.

The film starts off strongly with the intro to an audition that Shelly has to put herself through to try and get work, before the opening credits roll and then flashing back to just before the girls hear the news the show is closing and spending almost all of the movie catching up to that devastating audition. And it’s very good. All the actors are top notch including the aforementioned Pamela Anderson (and check out her recent Criterion Closet entry on YouTube if you have a mind to). And, yeah, everyone is just so good in this, somewhat low key set of incidents but, a special shout out to Bautista who really is one of his generation’s best actors. I first realised this in his performance opposite Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis (reviewed here) and, yeah, what he does with his facial expressions and the way he reigns in his physical presence to make himself seem like a somewhat run down, awkward man is absolutely amazing… and he certainly plays well opposite the main lead.

The photography is great too, with a lot of the visual information in the centre of the shots being in deep focus with the periphery of the frame at the margins kind of blurring somewhat… I’ve seen this photography style used in films before (it’s probably got a very specific name) and it gives everything a nice texture and contrast. And the naturalistic acting styles of the various characters is matched with a constant moving camera, often with lots going in on the shots and the hubbub of the backstage world of the showgirl nicely picked up, pulling the audience in voyeuristically without breaking the spell once it’s got you. In this respect, it reminded me a little of the films of Robert Altman, with his overlapping dialogue and shots packed full of people before, in this case, pulling back to a safer distance and observing the odd character alone in their environment.

I liked some of the scoring by Andrew Wyatt too which, to my mind, sounded somewhat reminiscent of some music at a certain stage in the career of Philip Glass, which certainly doesn’t do the film any harm and underlines some of the melancholic moments without lapsing into full on melodrama (which is a neat support from the music on this one, for sure).

Perhaps my one criticism of the film might be that I felt, somewhat, like it didn’t give any real closure or sense of an ending. It felt like it needed a little more happening towards some kind of resolution… positive or negative… at the end but, surprisingly, a few hours after watching this one, I was plagued by nightmares featuring some of the characters from this film. I must have taken things in more than I thought I had here so, already this film is haunting me a little and I’m surprised it didnt get more of an Oscar nod at this year’s Academy Awards (not that I like awards ceremonies or anything to do with them, to be honest... but I'm glad Anora did well, it's well deserved, read my review of that one here).

So, yeah, The Last Showgirl is a slow moving, thoughtful film with great acting, beautiful cinematography and a somewhat, deliberately muffled style to it, I thought. I really liked this one and you might want to take a look at it, if you are of a certain mindset.

The Sacred Spirit

Eye Society

The Sacred Spirit
Spain/France/Turkey 2021
Directed by Chema García Ibarra
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Full on spoilers so I can discuss this one properly.

Written and directed by Chema García Ibarra, The Sacred Spirit is his first feature length movie following on from a number of shorts. I asked for this one for Christmas because Arrow have given it a nice double Blu Ray release, including many of the director’s shorts and because, from the way it’s been marketed, I assumed it was a science fiction movie of some kind. So imagine my surprise when, after tearing off the wrapping paper, the consumer advice next to the 15 rating provided by the BBFC read, “Contains child sex abuse references”. Yeah, right... because nothing sums up the season’s greetings better than child sex abuse references, I guess. Actually, having now seen the film I’m glad I got this because it is absolutely riveting stuff although, I’m now not sure why the BBFC have classified this as anything other than a U or PG, since there is no visual imagery in this which could be in any way offensive to anyone. Are the BBFC now censoring things because of ‘a sense of gravitas’ maybe? Who knows what gets into their weird minds but, yeah, this is a really interesting film, for sure.

The film looks at central protagonist José Manuel, played by Nacho Fernández, who is part of the Ovni-Levante Association of UFOlogy, who meet weekly. Those meetings are hosted by José’s elderly alien abductee friend, who has been running the group. Simultaneous to this is the parallel tale of José’s sister Charo, played by Joanna Valverde. One of her twin, 10 year old daughters has gone missing and she is trying to cope with the situation. Then, when the president of the UFO group dies and leaves the documentation of the group to José, to continue the meetings (literally one box file with a few artefacts... including a mysterious key), things start to come to light. As the story progresses we learn that José’s bar, Bar Charley, filled with iconic Egyptian iconography matching the UFO and occult interests of José, has been where the long since gone twin daughter has been kept. Similarly, as José grooms the other daughter for going off with a new character with throat cancer, who talks to José through a voice box and claims to be channeling the dead UFO group president, it becomes clear... to the audience at least... that the late head of the group and his business partners were abducting children.

Now, I’m sure some people will see José as responsible for the evil things done to the kids... which turns out to be harvesting their corneas for the mafia to sell to people in need of these, after they’ve been sexually molested and used for child porn by the former ‘abductee’ and his associate but, if you look at this film carefully, while it’s certainly true that José is aiding and abetting this infernal practice, there’s a lot pointing towards the fact that he may be just as much a victim of these people as the girls he has prepared for them.

As we go through the ritualistic minutia of José’s UFO and paranormal obsession... the film is full of occult references and symbolism, with José’s dementia ridden mother herself once a powerful clairvoyant (with all evidence pointing towards her still possessing those talents)... it becomes clear from things he has to ask the ‘reincarnated/channelled abductee’ as part of their preparation that he genuinely believes he is helping people prepare the ‘special children’ to be subjected to an ancient ritual and be reincarnated as a sphinx-like creature who will make all their lives better. So, while not innocent of the crime of abduction... and I’m sure people will have differing views on this... he seems innocent, or rather oblivious, of the real use that these children are being put to.

And it’s not a film which makes its point and story beats in a straight forward, in your face way, for sure (otherwise it might well have deserved that ridiculous 15 certificate rating the BBFC have saddled it with) but rather through the use of what is not said as much as anything. There are random incidents which interrupt the narrative (such as explosions in the distance, distracting conversations) and it’s often through what’s not made clear that story indications are driven.

This follows through on the visual compositions too which, with an almost overdose of eye symbolism leading the idea of voyeurism or surveillance as a visual metaphor... not to mention tying into the whole Egyptian symbology... also helps focus on the suggestion that there is more going on than what might at first appear on the surface. Indeed, the director does tend to dislocate the viewer from expected modes of visual engagement on occasion. So he’ll throw a big object up in front of the camera which will be moving (or in the case of the last shot of the film, growing/expanding) to either conceal visual information or reveal fresh details as the specific shot plays out. Or he might put so much visual layering on the majority of the screen that the audience is forced to concentrate on a small area of the screen to catch the main action... such as in a long shot where José goes to the kitchen, represented as a vertical slab of doorway in the centre of the screen down a long corridor, while the second daughter is being ‘interviewed’ in another room of the house.

It’s all interesting stuff and, I suspect, it is this indirect way of communicating the bigger story beats, rather than bringing it all out onto the surface at once (like a lot of modern cinema does in the English speaking world), which makes the grim subject matter all the more palpable and just generally more disturbing... way more than it might have been captured as by a lesser writer/director. So good for him.

So yeah, I’d have to say that, while the subject matter of The Sacred Spirit is less than palatable for most people, I would have thought, the film is certainly an important and slow burn presentation of these story beats and, because of the interesting visual style, also a pleasure to watch (if you can divorce yourself from the problematic content lurking below the surface).

Arrow’s new two disc presentation of the film is brilliant with a load of the director’s short films presented on the second disc (I’ve watched the first three so far and they’re very funny, absurdist, low budget masterpieces) and with a first disc that includes a full raft of extras, including an excellent visual essay by the great Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on the Eye Of Horus and the use of the eyeball and surveillance elements dotted throughout the visual landscape of the film. So, yeah, despite being taken by surprise in terms of the underlying content of the picture, I was really pleased with this one and would certainly recommend it to people. Grab the two disc edition with the extra disc and the booklet from Arrow while you still can, would be my advice.

Sex And Lucia

Penetration &
Interpenetration

Sex And Lucia
aka Lucía y el sexo
Spain/France 2001
Directed by Julio Medem
Palisades Tartan DVD Region 2

Warning: Look, to try and get this one
straight in my head as I review it, I think
it’s going to have to have some spoilers...
for which I apologise.

Sex And Lucia is one of those movies I managed to miss in the cinema when it came out back in 2001. Years later I found a DVD of the movie going as part of a ‘£3 when you buy something else’ offer in Fopp records and now, a few years after even that, I’ve finally caught up with the film, not realising I’m not entirely unfamiliar with this director’s work, actually... although, barring one other, I haven’t seen much else by this director since the 1990s.

The film sets things up with an uncomfortable telephone conversation between Lucia and her long term lover, a published but tormented writer, as she is trying to balance her waitressing job while fearing for his life through an act of suicide on the other end of the line. When she gets home she discovers him gone, a half heard phone call from the police confirms her suspicions that he is dead. Then she goes to an island that  he always loved, to come to terms with what’s happened but then starts to travel back in her mind to how she met him and we start to see a series of narratives around the writer, his fictionalised (or is it) account of the narratives and the various women in his life who weave in and out of the story.

The writer is Lorenzo, played by Tristán Ulloa. The four women... well, three women and one little girl... are Lucia (played by Paz Vega), Elena (played by Najwa Nimri), Belen (played by Elena Anaya... who I knew from Wonder Woman, reviewed here and this director’s own Room In Rome, reviewed here) and Lorenzo’s young daughter Luna (played by Silvia Llanos), who he only meets for the first time quite a while into the narrative.

The film is a beautiful example of different interpenetrating story lines, as each of the narratives which you are watching cross cut in the most bizarrely coincidental of ways until, by the end, you realise that even though most of them don’t know it until they’re at the finishing post, that everyone in the narrative is actually connected to each other as the story strands transcend the audience’s initial perceptions of how the time settings of each tale are playing out. It’s a deliberately chopped and fragmented look at the narrative and it must have been hard to keep everything working in this way... but it does work and the sense of things coming together one after the other is part of the charm of the film, it has to be said. This includes a massive perception switch near the end... a trick played on the audience which is heralded quite a few times as the structure of the writer’s account is discussed and, although I could kinda see it coming from a long way off as a result of that, it’s a nice moment because it helps the film find a resolution of sorts. It’s also, perhaps, saying that some narratives can retain an illusion of flexibility to head towards something which is not, entirely, unlike a Hollywood ending, it has to be said.

The film is beautifully shot and colour palettes sometimes offset each other (I suspect I’ll pick up an underlying design scheme matching the story structure on a second watch) with very early scenes, for example, favouring warm browns and reds which are immediately contrasted, when Lucia arrives at the island, with largely washed out blues and icy whites.

Another thing which makes this absolutely hypnotic is the amount of wonderful performances by all the key players. They all work together absolutely brilliantly and it all helps maintain the illusion of a story which feels like it could suddenly go in any direction with scenes of tragedy and devastating loss making strange but comfortable bed fellows with scenes of joy and laughter.

There’s also a fair amount of nudity and sex and I was kinda surprised that the DVD I bought is actually uncut, now I’ve seen it. It’s been given a standard 18 rating over here but some of the sexual content is usually only reserved for an R18 certificate (which means something is only allowed to be sold in a sex shop... unless that’s been changed recently but this is an old disc now). For example, the use of erect penises and things being done to them is rarely allowed in commercial cinema over here (I was originally going to call this review Writer’s Cock but then decided against it for... a couple of reasons). Apparently the original US release of this was censored by two minutes.

Perhaps my only real criticism of the film is the score by Alberto Iglesias. For some reason this just felt a little anemic next to events on screen and I felt the music distracted rather than served the drama in this case. It’s rare for me to say something that critical about a film score, to be honest, so... yeah, I must have really hated that aspect of the film, I guess.

All in all, though, I would certainly recommend Sex And Lucia to pretty much most ‘friends of film’, both to ardent cinephiles or semi-casual viewers like myself. There’s a lot to love about this movie and, honestly, Paz Vega is particularly cute as the character by whom we are introduced to the initial threads of the interwoven story components. Definitely check this one out if you get the opportunity.

Oxygen

 

Get Me O2 Here

Oxygen
France/USA  2021
Directed by Alexandre Aja

Okay, I’m going to try and do this without spoilers... although, by about 20 mins into the film, most people would have figured it all out anyway. One day I’m pretty sure Alexandre Aja is going to make a film which I actually like and which doesn’t let me down somewhat in the last act. Alas, Oxygen is still not that film but it comes close in terms of, if it wasn’t so darned obvious what’s going on and if it had a much better solution to the initial hook of the film, then it might have got there. But, well, yeah, as it stands it’s almost like an exercise in finishing up a film even though you know the audience got there an hour or more before so... hmm.

Okay, Oxygen is basically a one woman show apart from the odd other characters who turn up as either visual memories or voices on a ‘telephone’ call but the central lead is Mélanie Laurent, who I loved in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, playing Liz. Liz wakes up in a... well, let’s call it a chamber for the sake of this review... a small chamber on some kind of life support but with only about 36% of her air left. She can’t get out of the capsule and she doesn’t know who she is or why she’s there... although, as I said, the audience will have figured out the main plot ‘twists’, such as they are, by about 20 minutes in. Her only companion is the chamber’s computer MILO, voiced by Mathieu Amalric.

So the majority of the action in the film is all set in this small chamber with the occasional cut to what’s outside the chamber and the odd, wordless memory. From the outset, the film becomes about how Liz is to survive both the oxygen running out and how she can escape the inevitable while also trying to remember just who she is and what she’s doing there... her memories being a process that becomes part of the solution to the movie, as well as her personal downfall, in some ways. Along the way she also has to battle with various protocols and dangers from MILO, negotiating certain things and battling automated processes which will lessen her chances of survival.

And there’s not much else I can really tell you about the story itself because, it is very simplistic and also revealing anything else will just spell out what’s happening to you right away without you needing to even see a frame of film. So, yeah, in terms of the story and the follow up to the compelling hook, the film sucks in that department, it has to be said.

However, let’s not focus on the negatives because, aside from the story, Aja does a really quite good and interesting job with the materials that he does have to work with (and, out of all the ones I’ve seen by him, this one is still my favourite of his films).

For example, the film opens strongly with a lab rat in a maze leading into a pull back revealing a bigger maze, while the title of the film comes up over the top of it in very clinical whites and, while the metaphor being pushed this early in the film is somewhat sloppy in tipping the hand on certain elements of the later 'twists', it looks great. Then, in a series of shots that introduce the character waking, we get flashes of her in a red lit environment (for a while) in a kind of stroboscopic reveal of her situation, with odd memories of her life also cross cut and crashing in on the action in the same manner. So, yeah, a nice pulse theme going on there.

Later on, the idea of a pulse is revisited when, as we hear Liz’ heartbeat on the audio to increase suspense as she loses more oxygen, the camera does little mini zooms in and out in time with the rhythm... which really pushes the intensity of her plight and her state of mind.

Another big plus is the acting from Laurent which is, admittedly a bit histrionic in places but, ultimately, pretty good. She manages to engage the viewer and carry the film on her shoulders very well. I mean, it’s a bit of a ‘one note’ character in terms of how she develops (or doesn’t, more accurately) during the course of the movie but there’s an obvious, limiting reason for this which is bound to her identity and which the audience will figure out maybe an hour before she does, so it’s certainly not the acting at fault. Like I said, she does a great job... it’s just the story which is the weakest link here.

The other good thing is the score by ROB, which is something I would immediately rush to purchase on CD as a stand alone listen except, nope, it’s only available as a stupid, electronic download (which really doesn’t count as a great representation of music as far as I’m concerned). It seems that the once reliable Milan record label have now joined the ranks of Watertower and such like as ‘the bad guys’ of their field... the enemies of music in its proper form on CD. Which is a shame... so they won’t be getting my money while only this rough facsimile is available, for sure. I would have liked to hear it as a stand alone.

All in all, Oxygen looks spectacular, is well acted, is well told by the director and has a terrific, if unavailable score... it’s just the obviousness of the story which annoys me. Don’t get me wrong, if I’d seen this film when I was six years old or had managed to grow up having never seen any movies my whole life, then I probably would have been blown away by it but, alas, I think it’s one of those works that, on a story level at least, will only appeal to the young or less cine-literate and I find it a bit sad that a director such as Aja, who certainly seems to know how to get the best out of a production, is choosing to shoot material which seems somewhat beneath him in terms of contributing something new or personal to the cinematic landscape. And I can’t find anything more to say about this one. Ten out of ten for style, three out of ten for story content.

Saint Maud

Burning Faith

Saint Maud
UK 2019 Directed by Rose Glass
Escape Plan Productions

Well, this film is absolutely amazing.

Saint Maud is the feature debut (after helming a few shorts) of the writer/director Rose Glass and, it has to be said, I’m a little worried for her. Simply because, whenever a first time director debuts with a film this perfect, you have to wonder when in their careers they are going to come up with the inevitable dud and how it will affect them. This is, frankly, an astonishing piece of art. Not least because, in some ways, it doesn’t take any prisoners when it comes to challenging the audience to bring their own baggage to the party. Indeed, the final shot of the film, which I won’t go into here because I don’t want to drop any major spoilers, doesn’t pull the rug away from the audience... or even tries to have it’s cake and eat it at the same time... it just forces you to reflect inwards on your personal interpretation of the events that take place in the movie. Or maybe it doesn’t and I’m just reading too much into it so, apologies to the director if there is supposed to be a clear stance on this movie and I just didn’t see it.

The film stars Morfydd Clark as Maud (and when I say ‘stars’, I really mean it), who is a private carer coming to look after a dying dance choreographer called Amanda, played by Jennifer Ehle. Following on from an opening sequence giving us our first look at a troubled back story for Maud, which will become more apparent as the movie progresses and flashes back to it a few times, she accepts her assignment along with her new found religious visions of a loving but testing God. And that’s where the doubt creeps in for the audience because, at first, it’s easy to take Maud’s heavily religious slant as a possible mental aberration of the character but, as the film unfolds, you’ll find the imagery the director chooses to confront the audience with quite pointed in some ways but, similarly, also quite untrustworthy in it credibility as soon as we see possible signs that Maud is in some way God’s chosen one.

And, I really won’t say anything more about the story barring that initial set up because a) I really don’t want to ruin anything about this one and b) there’s more than enough other stuff to talk about in terms of how the film has been shot and presented that I don’t have to resort to concentrating too much on the story.

Right from the opening prologue I could tell I was in good hands. The director seems to have an obsession with junctions creating central vertical lines such as... well, especially... the corners of rooms. But the other thing she does is either look down or up slightly at the content of the frame for quite a lot of the film (surely at least half the shots of the film are taken from a viewpoint slightly above or below the subject of a shot). It also pulls you into the picture even more when the shot changes to another scene and you are suddenly looking down at the character in a deeper shot, such as walking up or down a big flight of stairs in the surrounding neighbourhood. And it’s this, I believe, which is one of those things, completely subconsciously, that starts to nicely unsettle the viewer as the film unfolds.

You know how Arthur Penn deliberately withholds the establishing shots in Bonnie And Clyde so that, when you do finally see a decent one, the relief for the audience is coupled to a sense of empathy with the central outlaws of the film? Well, I believe that’s very similar to what Glass does here, where the majority of the establishing shots are at an angle so that, when the occasional shot does come from straight on in front of a subject... and they get more frequent as the film progresses so might well be, I suspect, a metaphor for Maud’s ‘spiritual journey’ as told in the choices of angles... you do get a sense of ‘finally, something which isn’t off kilter’ when they happen.

And as I say, they’re frequent at first but they’re not the only device the director uses to unsettle us. She seems to display a penchant for those corner angles and reflects them excessively in the use of geometric patterns on screen, with the wallpaper in Maud’s bedroom at the place she is working really throwing it up there from early on. This all comes to a head about ten minutes into the movie, when Maud sits in a cafe and the angular verticals of the windows seem almost overkill and really pushing the visual point... by which I mean, the shot looks exquisite and, once again, made me grin.

There’s a big ‘bam’ of a moment which starts off what I shall simply refer to as the ‘Christ’s temptation in the Judaean Desert’ sequence, where Maud falls into the darkness which is almost comical in its resemblance to Taxi Driver. You know that shot where, if memory serves because it’s been decades since I last saw it (mental note... re-watch it for this blog), Scorcese suddenly cuts to the ‘street musician’ banging on the drums to give us this jarring edit? The same thing happens here and then the scenes, filmed around areas of Scarborough which I remember from holidaying there over the years, almost takes on the browns, reds and oranges of ‘Scorcese-land’ for the rest of the sequence.  

And even when the shots are taken straight on, there is usually something just slightly off about them. For example, in a conversation between Maud and Amanda at one point, we see Maud’s head in the centre of the frame but then realise it’s just a little over to the left of the shot. After cutting to Amanda, we see she’s just a little right of the centre of the shot. From then on though, when we cut back to Maude, we see she’s framed quite a bit more to the left than earlier in the shot and this kind of pitching of elements against each other in places where the eye needs to play catch up (which is a trick I wouldn’t want to brave in a widescreen aspect ratio for fear of popping the audience out of the movie), forces the viewer to adapt to the constant visual shifts and its an uneasy alliance between viewer and film-maker. At least that’s how it felt to me.

There’s even a moment when a slab of a rectangle of an alleyway, with Maud walking down it and black screen on either side, is presented initially as a horizontal strip within the shot before we see it, very slowly, turn 10 or so degrees anti-clockwise within the frame. The director is really making  our minds work throughout this movie and, frankly, I was pleased to have the exercise.

Added to this, the director uses deliberately arresting imagery which almost teases the audience. So a close up on a bubbling bowl of soup recalls the bloody incident as yet fully unrevealed at the start of the picture (and it’s a shot which comes in the first minute or two as a segue into a time shift). Similarly, the angle of a head on a gurney, the long hair hanging down to the ground and dripping with blood, is beautifully echoing the angle of Amanda’s head and hanging hair in one of her old dance routines, even used as a poster to promote one of her shows. These nice visual echoes occur throughout and, even if this thing had no story, I’d still call it the best new film I’ve seen in the last 12 months because the imagery is so rich in terms of the design and placement of objects against the environment within each scene.

And, all those visuals are complemented by some good sound design and an absolutely blisteringly great score by Adam Janota Bzowski which, alas, is not available on a proper CD. So, you know, I won’t get to listen to it away from the movie, which is a shame (hey film companies... don’t try and foist your lousy vinyl and digitally lacking downloads at me, we need this released in a real format please).

The music just adds to the way the director builds tension by pitching our expectations of the character of Maud against the powder keg we know she can become. This makes for some very suspenseful scenes and you will possibly, like me, be fearing for the lives of some of the other people in the movie because you really can’t always keep track of where Maud is, mentally (although the settling down of the visual design should maybe help at certain points). Of course, some of that credit is due to the sheer brilliance of the performance of the central character. When I first started watching Morfydd playing Maud as the repressive, disciple of God she presents herself to us as, I thought to myself, “Yeah, quite a good actress... she’s doing a good job here.” However, when you see her become a normal, screwed up person during her ‘last temptation’ sequence, the one I mentioned earlier, you realise just how brilliant an actress she really is playing this part. If somebody this year deserves some kind of award for acting (and regular readers will know I really hate awards so don’t take this stuff lightly), then Morfydd Clark wholeheartedly deserves to get one. This is an amazing performance.

But then again, Saint Maud is an amazing film and Rose Glass deserves a huge round of applause for this and, yeah, I really want to know where she is going to go next with her art. This is a film I will certainly be visiting again over the years. I can’t really class it as a horror film (although some people will definitely go there with their genre classifications) because I’m just not sure that the ‘Maud’s eye view’ of the reality of the situation in certain scenes is necessarily the real story and, like I said, the very last shot of the film compounds that uncertainty to an extent. Frankly, though, I don’t care what genre people want to stick the film into... it’s enough for me that it’s plain brilliant. If you’re into the art of cinema, then this is truly one you won’t want to miss.

Shirley

Not

Shirley
USA 2020
Directed by Josephine Decker
Killer Films

Shirley is not the film I thought it would be. That is to say, I went into this movie with the assumption that it would be a biographical picture about author Shirley Jackson, who wrote a fair amount of short stories and novels, among them such famous works as The Lottery, We Have Always Lived In The Castle and, the only book I’ve personally read by her but, it’s one of my favourite horror novels, The Haunting Of Hill House. That one was also the basis for the 1963 movie The Haunting, which is the best horror movie ever made as far as I’m concerned (and reviewed by me here)... as well as being remade under the same name (couldn’t bear to even look at it but may visit it someday for the Jerry Goldsmith score) and was also turned into a weird kind of ‘inspired by’ TV show, The Haunting Of Hill House, which was fun but... well, the less said about that one the better (but if you do want to hear me say it, you can read my review here).

True, Elisabeth Moss most certainly does play Shirley Jackson here but, it turns out, this is not a ‘full on’ biopic but a slice out of her life over the course of around a year (possibly just a little longer) and, furthermore, a fictional slice at that. It’s actually based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell and it looks at a period in Jackson’s life when a young, fictional couple are ‘put up’ at her house in exchange for services while the husband works with Shirley’s unfaithful college lecturer husband at the local college and as she struggles to write her second novel. 

So this is an exploration of an... well, I’d like to say ‘incident’ but, truly, nothing much happens and the drama of the thing comes from the cynical, paranoid and acerbic Shirley’s relationship with the young, pregnant wife Rose Nemser... and also the writer’s growing obsession with a young woman who went missing from campus at the time (an unsolved mystery). It’s been said, though, that even this incident giving inspiration into the construction of the novel, especially as depicted here, is somewhat less easy to prove or verify so, as I said, a completely fictional account.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing of Shirley Jackson in this, of course. I’ve not seen Elisabeth Moss in much and, almost all of the films I’ve seen her in other than the recent iteration of The Invisible Man (reviewed by me here) were from the early to mid nineties, it turns out... completely belying my assumption, going by her on-screen looks, that she was only in her early twenties. However, I do know she’s a very good actress and I can only assume that she’s thoroughly researched the personae of Jackson to prepare for the role (as much as one is able to), especially since she’s one of the producers on this. So I trust her that there’s a lot of the writer in this. And, as you would expect from Moss, she puts in a towering performance which is, in some ways, more like a silent actress because, although she does have vast stretches of dialogue here, a lot of the time her character and the power of her personality comes through looks and gestures... which is always welcome in the modern cinematic landscape (if I’m still allowed to use that term during these times of Covid), where often the words rule the visuals too much.

That being said, Odessa Young, who plays both Rose Nemser and, in odd dream-like flashbacks, the missing woman, is absolutely the person you can’t help but look at here. The film is told through her eyes and, as good as Moss is in this (and she is amazingly good), Young gives an outstanding performance which I won’t easily forget. In fact, the film is more about her fragile spirit transforming itself into someone who will no longer play the little ‘wifey’ to her husband played by Logan Lerman... just as Shirley doesn’t to her own husband, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. She does this well and, of the two lead female roles, this is easily the better part.

Josephine Decker’s direction is pretty damn great too, with patches of dreamlike imagery and possible prophecy inserting themselves into the narrative via Jackson’s ‘mental set backs’ in subtle ways, a little like a slower, more elegant use of the way director Nicholas Roeg would suddenly dislocate the viewer from the time frame of the movie and use the contrasting imagery to attempt to give a little insight and possible judgement into the character’s future destinations. There’s some nice stuff here and, for a film which disappointed me in terms of expectations but thoroughly entertained me while doing so, I was impressed with the whole package and was surprised, given the insubstantial content of the piece, that she does genuinely lead the audience into an illusion of a somewhat abstract climax to the movie... which in a way is more a Hollywood expectation rather than a necessary film-maker’s agenda.

Less subtle, perhaps, is the suggested ‘undertone’ of bisexual romance between the two women, perhaps as a nod to the character of Theo in The Haunting Of Hill House or, possibly not but, alas, that’s my only point of reference here. This is an interesting dimension to the film because, just as it threatens to go over the top into a full on, uncompromising sexual relationship, the director chooses to just step back and leave the topic, letting it fizzle away, possibly to marinate in the background while the film plays out.

I was very impressed, though, by Tamar-kali’s somewhat skittish score, which weaves in and out in playful and simplistic ways which sometimes approach atonalism but never quite get there. Instead it kind of plays in the edges and gives us a somewhat nervous, questioning stimuli while the visuals are playing. Not something which one could easily categorise but it does a good job for the film. Alas, it’s only available commercially as a compromised, electronic download of the music rather than an actual score on a proper CD, at time of writing, so it doesn’t look like I’ll get to hear this as a stand alone listen anytime soon. However, I’d like to hear more of this composer’s work in films in the future.

And that’s my look at Shirley. I’d probably recommend it to most cineastes because the way in which the film is put together far outweighs anything lacking in the area of story or content. I would say that, if you don’t go in expecting anything in the horror genre and, similarly, not assuming this is going to be some biopic as opposed to a piece of fiction utilising a real life person as one of the main characters, then you will probably get something out of this movie. I’m not sure it’s a film I could watch a second time but it certainly kept me entertained enough that it didn’t drag at all. Give this one a go.

Video Palace

Leader Of The Stack

Video Palace
Created by Nick Braccia and Michael Monello
A Shudder.com Original Podcast 2018 - Ten Episodes

Warning: Some spoilers due to discussion of the structure of the show.

Okay so... I never review podcasts. This is my first time and I’ve even had to create a new section in the index to accommodate it... scroll down on the indexes page and you’ll find it jammed between the TV and the almost empty (and somewhat out of date) Music section. Podcasts aren’t really my kind of thing but this one functions more as a radio or audio drama in the horror category so, in some ways I guess it’s not a traditional podcast although, honestly, I wouldn’t really know.

So there are two reasons why I don’t review podcasts on here. Reason one is because I’m not used to reviewing dramas which are based purely on audio content and I’m not sure if I can talk about one in a relatively interesting manner for more than a paragraph (I’m about to find out I guess). The other reason is... well... who has time to listen to podcasts in this day an age? Life moves too fast and this would just be another distraction to getting my day done. So there’s that too.

Why did I bother with this one then?

Well, all I can say is I was fed up with hearing, for two years on Twitter now, absolutely nothing (almost nothing) but high praise for Video Palace and, since I found that I could download it and listen to it for free on Apple iTunes, I figured I might as well see what all the fuss is about. I’d heard a few people say the ending is not good or, it doesn’t have an ending... well, it does have an ending and, although I feel it has very slight problems in that regard, it certainly is valid as an ending and a natural stopping point for the show. If you wanted to do a follow up using the same kinds of characters, the style and pacing of the audio adventure would have to be totally different from what was explored in this series or more or less a repeat with different characters so... yeah... we’re probably better off without a second season because I’m sure the prospect would have to be a lot less intriguing.

So anyway, I gave it a go and, after finally having to visit Shudder to find out what the running order of the episodes is (because the labelling seems to be completely incorrect on iTunes), I settled down to listen to it. I did two evenings on my headphones in the pitch black of night in bed. Three episodes on the first evening and then I binged the other seven the evening after.

The story is narrated first person by one of the two lead characters for most of the series... Chase Wiliamson playing Mark Cambria, who lives in a New York apartment with is girlfriend Tamra, played by Devin Sidell. It starts off really ‘silly B movie style’ (which is nice and probably intentional) with the sound of Mark sleep talking, which gives the first episode its title, Somniloquy. However, once you’ve heard it a few times in the show it begins to take on a ‘sinister threat’ kind of punctuation as Mark’s investigation into the cause of his strange sleep talking begins.

The cause? Well, Mark is a collector of old VHS video tapes and he buys a job lot where one of them is an unmarked tape in a white clamshell showing TV static footage with shapes and pretty much the exact same chanting that Mark is doing in his sleep. He’d watched what he thought was this bizarre, unmarked experimental film the day before and it was affecting him in this strange way. So he decides to investigate and Shudder, the website putting this podcast out, allow the fictional Mark to publish (if that’s the right word) his podcast on their site as the investigation proceeds. So the narration he gives in each new episode is ‘up to the minute’ from where he was last time.

This, of course, allows the show to ‘have its cake and eat it’ structurally because it’s like reading a book in first person narrative which usually gives the reader the advantage of knowing the narrator can’t die but, if it’s up to the minute in short chunks as this is... and this is kind of also a 'double edged sword' weakness of the show... you know the narrator could possibly be ‘changed’ if he gets in trouble or perish... so the format doesn’t completely rule out the possibility that Mark will die before the end of the last show... although there is music and editing all fully on board in the concept. Something which Mark calls attention to for the listener himself in one of a few charming, fake metatextual moments in the show. Heck, there’s even a fictional composer of the score for the series who helps Mark and Tamra out with certain aspects of their investigation and... oh, wait, I don’t want to spoil it.

Anyhow, Mark finds out about the legend of the ‘white tapes’, spoken in hushed tones among the world of VHS collectors. They seem very rare and people have paid high prices for them but they seemed to originate from a video rental store in another state, called Video Palace, which no longer exists after certain ‘events’ which occurred twenty years prior to this investigation. And, as the mystery deepens, Mark and Tamra are taken deeper into the world of clam-shelled ‘White Tapes’, ‘The Devil’s Tritone’ (or Diabolo as it is also known in musical circles), the eight doorways to ‘The Stack’, the Eyeless Man and various other strange things including dangers and deaths which they weren’t expecting to have a part in. It’s a little bit like John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns mixed with the kind of mystery format of 'M. R. James’ legacy' viral curse movies like Ringu. Which, if you are already familiar with, of course, then you already know that Video Palace is right up your alley.

And as I listened, the series did have some real scares and dramatic moments to it. The second half is a bit of a terrifying climb but, when it came to the last episode... yeah, okay, I can see why some of the audience might have some problems. The format is changed about half way through the episode for reasons which I won’t go into here but which I was fully expecting because of the way the show is presented. The climax of the series seems, to me, to come roughly half way through the final episode and then, the next half seems just to be about explaining and clarifying what the audience saw... or heard in this case. So there’s a lot of explanation posed in the form of questions but much of this just seems like an autopsy of the story because, honestly, the stuff revealed in the final quarter of an hour or so of that last episode seems to be just telling us stuff we already had known or figured out. It’s not really necessary and I can’t really see how you can set up a credible sequel to this thing, to be honest, so... I wonder why the last half of the final episode seems so laboured when compared to the rest of it.

Still, I didn’t feel cheated in any way, that’s for sure and I’ve already recommended Video Palace to a couple of people. Getting to that end point was a lot of fun and, as I said, nicely terrifying if listened to in the right setting (no light source and just letting the darkness work with the audio). It’s certainly intriguing and, although I was expecting to hear a lot more movie talk and to listen to the bizarre minutia of VHS collectors, it tells its tale well and leaves each episode on one kind of cliff hanger or another. Really glad I took the time to listen to this one and, who knows, I might find myself downloading another podcast sometime in the future.

List of Episodes
1. Somniloquy
2. Obsession
3. The Piano Tuner
4. Dissonance
5. Pilgrimage
6. The Hidden Basement
7. The Code
8. Life Support
9. Revok
10. The Stack

Video Palace can be enjoyed via Shudder.com and iTunes and a new collection of short stories inspired by the series, Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man, hits Amazon UK in October.

Apropos Of Nothing

Sleeper Beauty

Apropos Of Nothing
An autobiography by Woody Allen
Arcade Publishing ISBN: 139781951627348

Woody Allen was always my number one hero when I was a kid. I found just a few of his films almost unwatchable over the decades (Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, Bullets Over Broadway, Match Point) but, out of the 33 films I’ve seen of the 51 films which he both wrote and directed, I’d say the rest of them were... at their worst hugely entertaining, well crafted films and, at their best, works of cinematic genius. Now, it’s very clear Allen wouldn’t agree with me on that one and it’s made more than evident in Apropos Of Nothing, his autobiography, that he never watches one of his films after it’s done and never looks back at them. In fact, I think he might even have got the release date order wrong in one case so, yeah, that all rings true.

This book really isn’t about him specifically as a film-maker though and, I don’t think he’d ever write that book. Indeed, I’m surprised he’s wanted to write a memoir at all but I guess he wanted to address some issues about certain accusations which have been hurled at him over the years. You know the ones I mean.

When I first heard that he’d been accused of molesting an adopted daughter I really didn’t think it sounded right. Admittedly, I don’t want to confuse the real life person (who nobody could really ever know much about unless you were a friend or lover) with his on-screen writing but, there are enough loaded one-liners and tonal observations dotted about his back catalogue of work which suggest the absolute opposite. So my thoughts were, since the accusations have twice been disproved in court quite concretely, that he really probably didn’t and I couldn’t understand why so many actors turned on him and publicly denounced him in spite of what I assumed was overwhelming evidence to the contrary of his possible guilt of the accusations.

Still, I like to keep an open mind so, for a while he was just a fallen hero and someone I still admired as a writer and an artist. I didn’t ever expect an autobiography to come along and I certainly didn’t expect to see publishing houses falling over themselves not to publish it. I knew I wanted to read it though... not just to hear his side of that story (which I expected not to be included, actually) but because I really did want to know a little more about his films (more than I finally got here but, that’s okay, there’s still 'gold in them thar hills'). When a little publisher called Arcade finally made the book available, to such little fanfare that it was already up for pre-order a week or two before I found out about it, I hit that order button as soon as I knew, even though the times were a changing and the UK was in lock down.

Having read the book... and one would obviously expect the writer to defend himself in some way and so maybe not all the words could be completely trusted (that’s the mindset I had going in)... I can honestly say that I am in no doubt in my mind now whatsoever that a) all the charges against him were untrue and completely fabricated and b) he is a victim of one woman with a far reaching clout and her smear campaign against him. How do I know that? Well, stick with me for the rest of this review and I’ll get there.

Okay, so the first 20 or so pages of the book are dealing with the life of his parents and Mr. Allen’s childhood and, I have to say, I was in a state of shell shock. It’s a bit ropey for a while. The writing style didn’t seem like the Woody Allen I knew at all. Not the cultured and sophisticated writer of short story collections, plays and, of course, screenplays. It seemed completely unpolished and I struggled for just a little while... until, suddenly, once he starts talking about his career going into writing gags for comedians and upwards from there and into the career he’s known for today, it snaps back into the version of Allen I am familiar with and it suddenly becomes a bright and breezy, well written tome. All was well again... after a fairly shaky start.

Now, as I said, if you’re expecting to hear relevant minutia about the way his films are shot, what lenses and lighting set ups he employs, how he crafts a plot idea... you may be a trifle disappointed. However, instead we have little details about the various women in his life (including his current wife Soon Yi, with whom he’s lived in married bliss for over two decades), directors and actors who he’s worked with or met (he still thinks Mia Farrow was excellent in the films they made together), various legal shenanigans and, well, just about everything else... and it’s a trade off which, if you’re anything like me, will leave you thinking you came out a lot better on the deal.

The book is gold and I do get the illusion, at least, that I know certain parts of his personality a little better. The mask probably doesn’t slip much but, the mask seems to be a wafer thin one anyway as he tends to put a lot of stuff out there in his usual, self depreciating manner. It also jumps around a bit so, the sometimes chaotic structure is sometimes the lesser of two evils, I feel, when it comes to reading the book as if you’re face to face with someone recollecting their adventures to you in person. Which is not a bad thing.

Then there’s the issue of those troublesome and tainting accusations. I was surprised at how much ink he’s written on the two periods of his life where these accusations slammed into him but I did have some take-aways with his account of these incidents. Number one is that... and I certainly don’t wish to slander anyone here... Mia Farrow comes across a lot of the time as manipulative, vindictive and... perhaps... mad as a bag of frogs. The reason that Allen went through the court system twice and was acquitted was because there was nothing to acquit him of. There are numerous witnesses and enough evidence that, anybody who wants to just check what’s on file will know how the accusations made couldn’t possibly be true but were, instead (and also in the opinion of a fair number of experts, it seems to me), the harshly concocted and re-enforced grudge campaign of a vengeful mind. Not only that but the story made up seems to have been based on a song written by the ex-wife of a former husband of Ms. Farrow (Dory Previn) that was performed many years before the two even met, from what I understand.

And there are more horrendous things which have been left unpunished but which were certainly nothing to do with Woody Allen, it would appear. There’s some stuff I don’t want to go into about Ronan Farrow and some of the other kids that... I think are worth reading about from this book. I also think I understand now... or am at least reminded... how corrupt a system is in place in certain professions in the United States and have an inkling why, with so much evidence around to the contrary, Mr. Allen is continually depicted these days as some kind of devil’s spawn. I also found it interesting to know which of the actors who denounced him told him they were only doing that under orders, so to speak, from their overlords. All I’m saying is, I hope I’m alive when certain facts do finally see the light of day and I hope Woody is around to see himself redeemed in the public eye too.

But as a parting shot on that particular subject... let me just remind you that Woody and his current partner have two adopted children. Standards are quite strict and many fiery hoops have to be negotiated before an adoption agency will let you adopt someone, from what I can tell. A child molester would absolutely not make the grade and the evidence is all there that this is just not the case with Mr. Allen. He’s has been stringently probed and allowed to adopt. So, yeah, maybe just think about that.

Something that did surprise me about the relationship between Woody and Mia was that, by his account (and I believe him), he never even spent the night at her home. They were never married and the relationship was very relaxed to the point that she would spend each summer completely away from him and it sometimes sounds like the worst kind of failing relationship at best. And that really is the last I want to say about that toxic relationship because, although Allen produced some really great art in that period, it couldn’t have been the easiest working environment to be in emotionally.

Yeah, there is a lot about that whole non-incident but there are some great nuggets of interest too. For instance, I said there wasn’t much on his film work but, that being said, I know now what to look out for if I want to see Michael Keaton in the final cut of The Purple Rose Of Cairo (he was replaced by Jeff Daniels early on in the shoot). I was also vaguely aghast to discover that Allen completely re-shot one of his films again with some different actors before it was released because he just wasn’t happy with the film the first time he made it.

It’s also kinda telling that he remains friends with, or on good terms with, various ex-wives and girlfriends over the years, including of course Diane Keaton, who is also an excellent photographer and, indeed, a recent photo of Woody by her is used for the back of the dust jacket to this book (the front is designed like a typical Woody Allen set of film title cards, monotone with white American typewriter style font and no images). And I found all the stuff about Louise Lasser simply enthralling too. I always liked her in her starring roles in his films, a while after they’d divorced, in Take The Money And Run and Bananas... not to mention her little cameo in my all time favourite Woody Allen movie, Stardust Memories (I fractured my foot trying to see that movie but, that’s another story).

So yeah, this is a longer review than I expected but I certainly came away from this book knowing in my heart what I was only suspecting before, Woody Allen is completely innocent (of any of those infamous charges at the very least) and I don’t have to have any kind of problem re-evaluating his work as an artist again. Which is handy, actually, because I have three uncracked Blu Ray box sets of his to watch for this blog and so now I can do so with a clearer mind. It’s nice that I can start to think of him as a hero again.

In conclusion, all I can say is, allowing him a fairly shaky start early on in the book, if you’re a fan of this comedic genius then you should have... at least an informative time with Apropos Of Nothing and, certainly in my case, an entertaining and unexpectedly enlightening one. I hate the various media and news outlets just a little more after reading this but, you know... I’d rather know. Definitely a strong recommendation from me, especially if you’re one of those who have been condemning this man without actually checking out the evidence, which seems to have been inevitably ruled in his favour in court a few times. I think this is a true account and I think you should maybe give it a read.

Killing Eve Series 3

Eve It To Griever

Killing Eve Series 3
UK/USA BBC
Eight Episodes 13th April to 1 June 2020

Warning: Spoilers on this one.

It’s funny... I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the third series of Killing Eve. People seem to think it’s lost it’s edge or is deathly dull and even my mother, who avidly watched the first couple of series with my father and I, stopped joining us after episode two of this third season. I can kinda understand the drop off in attention in some ways... this series possibly doesn’t match people’s expectations of what this one might have been in terms of the somewhat hollow but still quite strong statement of Villanelle being rejected by Eve and shooting her in the back as an end of season cliffhanger last year.

That the title character would survive was never in doubt but while the simple resolution to this where Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) meet on a London bus as Eve passionately kisses and then head butts her it’s, alas, not par for the course for this particular series in terms of dramatic resolutions. Truth be told, that’s about the only time Eve and Villanelle share screen time together until the last episode... which is kind of a shame because, while both the first two series kept the sexual/killer tension between the two strong by keeping them apart for most of the running time, it’s almost like the writers couldn’t think of anything else to do except keep them apart even more this year and... rather than bringing the ‘distance relationship’ to life, it just kind of drains the show of any real punches this time around.

Not that it hasn’t got a lot going for it... I just think people were expecting something different to what they got.

This one starts off with an episode which, on the aftermath of Eve surviving her wounds, Kenny (Sean Delaney), who worked for his mother and Eve’s boss Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) in the last show and who has quit the bureau to take a job at as a trainee journalist at a magazine, befriends Eve and is her only contact with her old espionage life... which she does not want back. However, when Kenny takes a fatal dive off a roof at the end of the first episode, all the players come back as Eve and Carolyn try to find the killer who they assume is a member of the mysterious but deadly ‘Twelve’, who Villanelle works for. That being said, Carolyn is still under my suspicions as being the ultimate leader of The Twelve so we’ll see how that goes in the next series, I suspect.

Meanwhile, Villanelle has a new and deadly set of bosses but wants to quit her assasin’s life and do something else, preferably with Eve but neither of them are that sure of each other, obviously. Hence the brutal head butt on their first, brief meeting. And, it’s all a bit familiar but with less at stake, it seems to me. Eve has to reconcile with the fact that her husband just doesn’t want her around anymore, after the way events played out for him last series and, though he gets a pitchfork through his throat for his trouble (he survives, it seems)... as a last ditch attempt by Villanelle’s employers as a frame up job to make it look like Villanelle has killed him, in order to drive a wedge between them... the whole thing seems a little less dramatic as, I suspect, most of the audience has probably written off Eve’s husband as a source of interest at this point anyway.

That being said... the whole cast are stunning. Especially Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw and Kim Bodnia (as Villanelle’s former director Konstantin, who’s having his own troubles this series). There’s even a staggeringly interesting ‘Eveless’ episode where Villanelle finds her lost mother and then, as one might expect, kills her. To be honest though, the whole series does feel a bit like padding. The producers were already making series four, I think, at the same time as this one so the whole thing feels like much more of a fine tuning of the main players in the cast (and the setting up of a ‘big boss’ danger character for Villanelle to have to contend with in the next series) so that a dramatic resolution to the show may, if they don’t go for series five, be a possibility. It’s not dull, in other words but, at the same time, it’s not packing the punch of the previous two. Also, the end of the very last shot this year is something which is really easy to see coming. I new exactly where the credits would start rolling as the sequence started and, frankly, that’s not much of a cliff hanger either, in all honesty.

So there you go... a short review for a short series. Back in the 1970s the first three series combined would have made up the episode count for just one series so I don’t when or why having such short numbers of episodes became the norm here. Doctor Who and Sherlock are guilty of such minimalism too. Who the heck is controlling these budgets? However, Killing Eve is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the jewels in the BBC crown and although this third series may be a little sluggish in terms of character resolution or the thrills and spills of previous seasons, I think it’s still an absolutely necessary watch for fans of Killing Eve and, hopefully, the writing will pay dividends in the fourth season when, presumably, things that have been planted this year come to fruition. So, you know, maybe give it a go.

Parasite

Parasite Lost

Parasite
2019 USA Directed by Bong Joon Ho
UK cinema release print.
I really loved Bong Joon Ho’s giant monster movie The Host back in 2006 but that’s the only movie I’ve previously seen by this director (okay, I have a Blu Ray of his post-apolcalyptic sci fi thriller Snowpiercer on order so expect a review of that one sometime this year). I was therefore initially very interested in seeing his new movie with the title Parasite, which I assumed from the title was returning to similar territory as The Host. So when I went to see this at the cinema I went in totally blind. I didn’t catch a trailer and knew pretty much nothing about it.

My first rumblings that this possibly might be a disappointment was when it won both the the Best Foreign Picture and Best Picture double at the Oscars. I really hate awards ceremonies, especially the Oscars but, they have had a few decent picks in the last ten years, occasionally awarding, perhaps more by luck than anything like effective critical judgement, some truly deserving films such as The Shape Of Water, Spotlight and Birdman. For the most part, though, the Oscars tend to award well made pieces of mediocrity with not much thinking required from the audience. When my friend Chris phoned me and told me Parasite was not half as clever as it thinks it is... it kinda set me up for there to be some kind of twist ending... he obviously didn’t like the film all that much and he’s usually all into the kinds of films that win those kinds of awards.

Alas, Parasite falls well into the “well made pieces of mediocrity with not much thinking required” category of movie. That’s not to say it’s a bad film... just kinda unremarkable which, for me, can sometimes be worse (because I can enjoy the odd bad movie more than a bland one). Also, I don’t know where the idea that it has any kind of surprises or twist endings comes from because, frankly, there are absolutely no surprises or even dramatic reveals that I could find in this film. It pretty much telegraphs itself from the start and almost, with the music in certain sections, announces itself long before something is going to happen.

But lets concentrate on the good stuff. Great acting from a cast of people with familiar faces, some of them who have worked with the director previously on films like as The Host, such as the ‘poor family father’ played by Kim Ki-taek and some really great direction. This is a well made movie, no doubt about it... just as The Host was. There are some beautiful shot designs too and I especially liked when the ‘poor family son’ approached the gate of his future employer’s house for the first time... the door and all the surrounding areas are made up of a plethora of vertical strips which he places the actor in and then, when the gate opens for him, he is framed against yet another vertical strip. So stuff like this is nice.

On the down side, the parasites in the movie... which are actually pretty much all the adults in the film, rich and poor alike (especially the rich)... are unable to recognise the difference in each other’s situations and this film is pretty much just about the class divides and the antagonism this creates. Which to me was just baffling as something worthy of exploration to this degree these days. It’s a given that there are horrible, unending divides created by affluence and poverty and nobody likes it but... I dunno, why are we still talking about this? It exists and honestly is not something we’ll be able to change unless we reach a proper money-less (not the same as cashless) society. So I found it kinda disappointing that someone who is obviously a highly skilled and artistically creative director such as Bong Joon Ho is making light weight Oscar-bait such as this.

Now, I did recognise a couple of strong similarities to The Host but, since I’ve only seen that one film other than this by this writer/director, I’m not sure if these are signatures or just coincidences.

‘Thing one’ was the introduction of archery into the story. Only minor in this but the bows and arrows of the ‘rich son’ were definitely something the director chose to focus on... and archery was, of course, a major character set up for a finale piece in The Host.

The other thing is the writer’s clear penchant for showing us the strength of the family unit. It was the underlying and certainly not subtle strength of the family in The Host and it’s certainly a dominant theme which comes across in all the families depicted in this movie. The way the family unit will work together in total harmony to achieve their goals is something which is a definite theme in these two movies and I am interested in seeing if this idea is pushed in any of the director’s other works.

And that’s me just about done on Parasite. This is a well oiled machine that is ultimately an elevated piece of fluff which doesn’t require you to think at all... just like the Oscar voters tend to like, it seems to me. Strong acting, direction throughout and I even liked the soundtrack, even if it is complicit in taking away any surprise from the story... it’s just overall never really a great movie, just a nicely put together one. In fact, it gets a bit dull at times, it has to be said. Not something I’d ever need to see again (whereas I could probably watch The Host every ten years or so). If you want to go see a well made film at the cinema then this is certainly something you should consider... just don’t go expecting to be surprised.

The War Of The Worlds - BBC

War Of The Wells

The War Of The Worlds - BBC
2019 UK Directed by Craig Viveiros
Three episodes. Airdate: 17th November 1st December

Just a heads up that there have been two TV series based on H. G. Wells’ famous novel The War Of The Worlds in 2019. One is produced by Fox/Canal, runs for eight episodes and, as far as I can tell, has not yet been screened in the UK (although it has aired in a lot of other countries, by the looks of it). The subject of this review, however, is the recent BBC, three episode mini-series. I was originally going to write three reviews, one for every episode but, after I saw the first installment and knowing I really don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, I decided to just do one piece encapsulating the whole series. Why post three miserable reviews when one could suffice?

Now, I‘ve had my problems with both The War Of The Worlds as it’s been adapted for the screen over the years and the current state of BBC created science fiction. Let’s briefly mention the previous adaptations first...

I’ve not seen all of the screen versions of the novel but I have seen many of them. The George Pal movie of the 1950s is something I would probably enjoy watching again but the last time I saw this, when I was a kid, I remember being disappointed with the lack of the tripods from the book in it and, obviously, the change to the time period. I remember seeing a couple of episodes, too, of the semi-popular TV series in the 1980s which, if memory serves, used pretty much the 1950s George Pal version of the martian machines and, again, it seemed to have not too much to do with the book. Even Spielberg had a go with it but his contemporary version with, again, some pretty hefty changes to the concerns of the book, was somehow closer than the other versions out there. In fact, in all cases I’ve seen so far, the closest to Wells’ original novel would have to be the rock concept album produced by Jeff Wayne in the 1970s... which really is a work of earworm perfection if you listen to it in its original form.

The new BBC series, despite claims of period authenticity (which is dubious but close) is somehow even further removed from the source material than even Spielberg’s version, it has to be said. The science fiction of the BBC always used to be a wonderful thing. They had the Quatermass serials, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and a whole host of other hot and interesting sci-fi shows done with creative flair and panache which helped make them a leading representative in the field of televisual science fiction. Alas, standards have slipped over the years and there seems to be a lot of ‘not up to it’ productions going on lately. For instance, the state of Doctor Who over the last seven or so years in terms of the quality of the writing (nothing wrong with the way the Doctors are played at all, which has been consistently brilliant) has been pretty ‘Bleah!’ and you only have to compare the BBCs vibrant and exciting, ‘definitive’ adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids back in 1981 to their ‘dire to the point of being almost unwatchable’ 2009 adaptation of the same novel to see how far standards have fallen.

And I have to say, the trend continues with this new adaptation of The War Of The Worlds. This is pretty much nothing to do with Wells’ original story other than it a) has martians on it... looking nothing like the original martians, b) has tripods in it which have somehow been designed to look as bland as possible instead of the robust, steampunk creations which might have served the spectacle of the story better, c) has something similar but really not right in terms of the way of ending the martian conquest was inadvertently thwarted in the books and d) has token references to the red weed.

Now, the writer here has obviously decided he can write something different and more relevant than H. G. Wells here and you can even see where he’s been trying to do something different with the material to set it apart from what we’ve seen before. Well, my big argument with that would be... we’ve never had a faithful adaptation as far as I know. You’re trying to run before you’ve proven you can walk and people wanted to finally see a straight adaptation of the original rather then some half baked, non-linear depiction of something barely inspired by the events of the novel in a way that’s deliberately structured to take away any surprise whatsoever from anyone not familiar with the source... which, bearing in mind it has never been properly adapted, is probably less well known than the writer here thought.

So yeah, we have the death by disease coming up in the flash forwards to years after the initial invasion and giving away the real ending before it’s barely begun. It’s also not a common cold virus that knocks the martians out in this either... it’s a carefully worked at and cultivated mish mash of viral ingredients that, in this version, spells the end of the red weed. So even Wells’ brilliant punchline of the deadly foe being taken out by accident, by something as relatively docile as the ‘common cold’, is revealed way too early and has had its real sting removed. So yeah, not happy and that’s just the tip of the iceberg in regards to this version.

Then there’s the acting. It’s bad but I’m not blaming the various cast for their performances here... I’m blaming the writing and direction. Some of the lines are bad enough... not to mention the introduction of a subplot about divorce coupled with an extra marital affair culled from H. G. Wells’ own life and a ridiculous, bizarre guilt trip about the achievements of the British Empire. However, the way the physical performances are often left as dangling, visual non-sequiturs was, perhaps, the editor having nothing to cut to in the next shot or, I dunno, just some strange decisions on the part of the director.

Seriously, the main cast consisting of Rafe Spall, Eleanor Tomlinson, Rupert Graves and Robert Carlyle are all brilliant enough but, apart from having to deliver some ridiculous lines at times, they all seem to have a penchant for looking away or staring at something out of shot, sometimes at amusingly inappropriate times. Such as when Tomlinson might be asked by the director to ‘look up and out past that line of trees there’, perhaps... I was waiting for something to maybe materialise or at least show us what she was looking at but, nope. Just staring into space, I guess. And Spall seems to often pause in thought and pull faces without letting us know what’s precisely on his mind at regular intervals, for example. And, honestly, I’m happy with visual storytelling where characters can think and convey their inner turmoil without having to vocalise it and often enjoy these kinds of movies but, yeah, I really didn’t feel like playing guessing games for a show which, somehow, manages to skirt around the real heart of the source material it is busy ignoring and ends up as just, I have to say it, a deadly dull affair.

That being said, the second episode picks up the pace a little, only to jettison it by the time the third episode rolls around, with its unimaginative creatures and its slew of unnecessary, wholly preventable deaths of various characters, In fact, bearing in mind the ending of the original novel is kinda revealed and slightly side-stepped early in the story, I have to say I found the last shot of the last episode particularly confusing. Here we have the lovely Eleanor Tomlinson staring up at the sky and I’m left thinking... okay, what’s she looking at? Is it the... wait... is she patiently awaiting the approaching, inevitable end credits of this monstrosity to turn up at some point? Yep. Pretty much. I didn’t get anything else out of that last sequence which, considering it’s supposed to be The War Of The Worlds, left me a little disappointed.

Added to all this is the fact that, honestly, the special effects and the design of the martians isn’t all that great. I did find myself clock watching at a number of places in the narrative and overall, I can’t help but think that overly ambitious substitutes for a decent, working version of ‘the heat ray’ would have been a lot more satisfying than this dull carnival ride of a weapon that they’ve presumably spent a lot of time and money on dreaming up for this version.

So there you have it. I’ve always quite liked The War Of The Worlds but this is pretty far removed from anything H. G. Wells wrote, to be honest. Yeah, it’s time to do a proper, big budget version of this but, seriously, let’s not try to deviate so far from the story that it’s got so little in common with the original text that it’s almost unrecognisable. I’d been looking forward to seeing this production for a long time and I suspect I know why it’s had a fair bit of a delay in its release to the general public now. This one definitely wasn’t my cup of tea and I’d perhaps suggest going back to the musical album if you want a more palatable version of Wells’ original classic.