Nobody

My Name Is...

Nobody
2021 USA/Japan
Directed by Ilya Naishuller
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some minor spoilers.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, Nobody is not a sequel or remake for the character in the famous Terence Hill movie. Nor is it, like a lot of reviewers have been suggesting, similar in style to the John Wick franchise... although, to be fair, it does have a few minor plot similarities and, sure, it’s loaded full of hard action sequences. This is nothing, if not an action flick with an upper case A! I’ve also read it’s a very humorous take on the action genre and, although it does have its moments, nope, I wouldn’t pigeon hole this movie as some kind of comedy thriller either. It does its own thing and it does it with a certain amount of style.

So we have a central character, Hutch, who was also known in the old days, for reasons revealed later in the film, as Nobody. He’s played by an actor who I’ve not seen before called Bob Odenkirk, who gives a very thoughtful and considered performance, I thought. Making what is, actually, the fairly fantastical, over the top, killing machine which productions like this have as their central role, a fairly believable person. Also, the writing helps out considerably here because, although he is the very definition of one of those super soldier action types found in a lot of cinema these days... he does take considerable hits and damage while he’s 'actioning away' and there are a few points when you think he’s not going to make it.

He lives with his wife played by Connie Neilsen (Wonder Woman’s mum... and I can guess why they’ve cast her as his significant other, if they get around to a sequel), his son and his daughter. His dad, played by Christopher Lloyd, lives in a care home and Hutch works a humdrum job for a boss played by the legendary Michael Ironside (who I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t even recognise... he looks so different in this).

The director takes a lot of time setting up Hutch’s bland, almost humiliating daily grind in a running day-by-day montage detailing his days Monday to Friday in short, quick cuts which get shortened with each repeat as the film goes through the days a few times more to hammer the message home (along with percussive, musical stings) that Hutch is not leading his best life. They then pile things on with a home invasion scene were Hutch doesn’t perform up to the expectations of his young son, a further blow to his ego (there’s a good reason he doesn’t defend himself as well as he might, revealed a little later in the movie) and, when he goes to track and reclaim a valuable item from one of the criminals, we see just where his heart is. On the way back, a young lady is threatened by a mob of thugs on a bus and then we get a quite spectacular scene where Hutch takes out the aggression pent up by everything we’ve seen thus far and he demolishes his opposition (while getting pretty beaten up himself). The problem is, one of the hoodlums he hospitalises is the younger brother of a very high up and extremely nasty ‘Russian mob bad guy’ and, when said villain finds out what’s been done, he comes for Hutch and his family. Which turns out to be, for the Russian and as you would expect in these kinds of movies... a bad idea. And that’s as much as I’ll say about the actual plot here.

The movie starts off strong with a heavily damaged Hutch in a police interview room, as we watch him, still in handcuffs, pull out a tin from a pocket and open it with a can opener, then pull out a little kitten from inside his jacket and put it on the table to eat from the tin. The two police detectives ask him who he is and then we (but not they), get the whole story as a flashback.

And it’s a nicely done movie with some solid performances and a crowd pleasing turn from Christopher Lloyd as the ex-FBI father who is pretty much a lethal weapon himself. There’s also an appearance from RZA of the Wu Tang Clan (who I remember seeing in a cameo in the Jim Jarmusch movie Ghost Dog - The Way Of The Samurai many years ago) and another cameo from Colin Salmon. It’s a solid cast and Aleksey Serebryakov, as the villain Yulian, also turns in a suitably unhinged performance.

The film rolls along very well and there’s a lovely bit of... hmm... what do I call this... inverted foreshadowing, where Hutch catches one of his co-workers trying to get something down from behind one of the ceiling tiles at some point and, towards the end of the film, it’s revealed just what it was she was trying to find and there comes a realisation that, yeah, we kinda knew that was coming all along. A nice little surprise which was hiding in plain sight, so to speak.

Also, the action sequences are handled very well. There’s never any confusion in the way it’s been edited so you know exactly where you are in a fight scene and you have the added bonus of never really knowing just how badly off any of the good guys in this are going to end up as nothing too ‘superhuman’ happens. Don’t get me wrong, the stunts and choreography are suitably over the top, as you would expect from a modern day action yarn but, there are no times in the scenes where you think that maybe any of the characters were performing in a way contrary to what a person would be able to sustain in a real life fire fight of this nature and... it feels very grounded a lot of the time.

Also, the ending of the film sets up the possibility of any number of sequels and I hope, if that happens, the writers won’t forget that Connie Nielsen can be a bit of an ‘action gal’ too and bring her in as her and Hutch certainly seem to have a ‘shared history’ in terms of their old professions... oh yeah, forgot to mention, there’s a very good reason why the central character can do what he does but I don’t want to spoil the character back story reveal here, other than to say that there’s a nice running joke in the movie as, every time he tries to explain his past to one of his opponents, they end up dying before hearing the end of the story.

So there you have it, Nobody is a nice action movie with, actually, a lot of heart in it. This could easily be made into a franchise and I’m hoping the very small audience numbers I saw it with don’t stop a sequel from happening in terms of box office takings. Oh... and stick around after the first minute of credits because there’s another nice little epilogue scene featuring Christopher Lloyd and RZA which isn’t essential but certainly lays more groundwork for any other sequels which may be coming. I’d definitely recommend Nobody to fans of the action genre, especially to those audience members who are getting a bit long in the tooth. A fine movie and I hope we see some more of these characters before long.

The Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard

Virus, The Angels Fell

The Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard
2021 UK/USA
Directed by Patrick Hughes
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some small spoilers.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is, obviously, the sequel to The Hitman’s Bodyguard (which I reviewed here)... well now, hey, it’s better than giving it a 2 on the end. Now, I’d heard that this sequel is not as strong as the first film but, frankly, although there’s one slight issue I have with it, I think this second movie is far superior to the first and gets some things right which were thrown away as kind of a missed opportunity in the first.

Okay, so the plot is that a big bad guy played by Antonio Banderas is going around various countries in Europe, drilling into their electrical supply lines and then crippling their countries in a very explosive, Hollywood style over-the-top manner by injecting a computer virus into the various systems. None of it sounds that do-able in real life (in this fashion) but, well, it’s a movie plot set up so it works just fine. We’re in fantasy land here after all... as demonstrated by the amount of physical punishment that Ryan Reynolds takes in this movie, which would surely hospitalise a real person for months at the very least (he’s run over with a car at least twice).

Anyway, somehow Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character gets kidnapped and mixed up with this whole scheme and it’s down to the always wonderful Salma Hayek, reprising her role as Jackson’s wife, to get him out. So she gets to the psychologically troubled (due to events in the last movie) Ryan Reynolds bodyguard character, forcing him out of his ‘new, stress free life’ because she misunderstands her husband’s request of who to get to help her get Jackson away from his captors. And, of course, in the process of this initial rescue, the three become ‘travelling companions’ as they get embroiled in the whole caper and tasked with saving the world from Banderas’ evil scheme.

And it’s a hoot. This one retains the wonderful, disagreeable chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson and then ramps it up by expanding Salma Hayek’s role from the first film to really add the craziness. Salma is on fire here and she’s easily the best thing about the movie, it has to be said... the three leads are all great and make a perfect team in this one.

And it’s a bit ‘business as usual’ for a Hollywood action film but the various gun battles, fist fights, car chases and stunts are all quite watchable and this one does the one thing the first film should have done more of. I remember complaining the first time around that Jackson and Reynolds were so good playing off one another but that, for some reason, they rarely shared any action sequences together... the writers always seemed to split them up and cross cut between two separate action sequences for each character. Here, I’m happy to say, we have none of that. All three leads... Reynolds, Jackson and Hayek... share a lot of screen time together and collaborate on all of the action scenes really well (and they’re all quite funny performances too... which helps anyway).

There’s perhaps an over reliance on a kind of visual punchline to many of the scenes, perhaps... where we, and usually the characters, perceive something to be happening and then the camera will pull back to reveal a different picture, such as the fact they've just been surrounded by a section of the secret service holding guns on them... or something will happen to just change the situation suddenly, like all three getting tranquiliser darts in the neck (of course, Reynolds gets about six shot in his face) but it’s not too distracting and it provides the required humour as intended so, I can’t complain too much about this stuff. Nor possibly on the use of ‘unexpected dream sequences’ being used in a similarly humorous way.

What I can complain about is that some of it isn’t all that funny in places and there is an over reliance on way too much swearing, perhaps but...yeah, a lot of comedy in general is hit and miss, to be honest but the joke to laugh ratio isn’t bad here and, frankly, one woman at the screening I was at was laughing hysterically throughout the whole movie so, I’m maybe a little humour-light myself, in all fairness.

Other than that, there’s a nice Steve McQueen reference and a silly but watchable guest role for Morgan Freeman as Ryan Reynold’s ‘ultimate bodyguard father’... but I don’t want to say too much about that character here, to be honest.

Ultimately, if you liked the first movie, then you should have a fair amount of fun with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard... and Salma Hayek seems to be in so few things these days that it’s always good to see her in anything new, especially humorous roles (I always loved her as ‘the muse’ in Kevin Smith’s Dogma). I had a fairly good time with this one and, from the sound of the audience, everyone else had an even better time with it than me. So, yeah, if you liked the first one, then definitely don’t miss out on this one. And if you do, be forewarned, there’s a mid-end credits scene plus a little joke on the very end of the movie, if you are so inclined to stay.

The Stylist

Death On The Style

The Stylist (2016 - short)
The Stylist (2020 - feature)
USA Directed by Jill Gevargizian
Arrow Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some very light spoilers of stuff you probably already know.

I’ve wanted to see Jill Gevargizian’s The Stylist for a while now, as I’ve seen it promoted on my Twitter timeline fairly frequently during the pandemic lock down. I was going to just try and see a copy for free but when Arrow recently put it up for pre-order, they touted a specific extra that is always a deal maker for me when it comes to sealing a purchase. Now, I have to say in terms of what Arrow had said about an element of their otherwise brilliant package, I was a little disappointed. However, I’m happy I went ahead and pulled the trigger on this anyway because both the feature length version of The Stylist... and Gevargizian’s original short film which inspired it (which is also included in this package)... are absolutely stunning and I would have probably have ordered a physical copy anyway, once I’d seen it (okay, I would have waited for the sales but I would have got there eventually). So, in a way, I’m a little grateful to Arrow for mis-marketing this thing to me because, well, these two thrillers are just exquisite.

I decided to watch the short film first and, as it happens, this turned out to be exactly the right way to do this. It’s a small scale portrait of an unusual serial killer who is a hair stylist... which apparently used to be Gevargizian’s profession although, as far as I’m concerned, she’s a fully fledged superstar director now. The film starts off with a lovely, fluid moving camera at a Dutch angle to give the establishing shot of the hair salon that the main protagonist/antagonist Claire, played by Najarra Townsend, works in (I’ll say more about Townsend in a little while).

The film looks perfect and the director builds her frames with a leisurely pacing in terms of motion, some beautiful colours and some amazing compositions which sometimes pitch the action in just one half of the screen, leaving the remainder of the frame with just a background which immediately draws the focus of the eye in to what she wants you to invest in (she does this, also, in a slightly less subtle manner in the main feature, by way of changing the differential focus of a shot to highlight some keys, for example).

Anyway, she’s staying on late, on her lonesome in the salon to see a last client for the day and she plies her with wine as she’s working on her hair. At this point, as the client drinks her wine, the edits build and fade out to be replaced with different close up angles of the client, to give a soft realisation that something is not right. Soon she is out like a light as Claire has drugged her drink. Claire then ties her (something she doesn’t do in the main feature) and proceeds to kill her in a very specific way (which I’m trying not to spoil for you here)... and then we see her in her home environment as the extent of her madness is manifest more apparently in the character. At some point she reveals that her neck is scarred around the back and sides and she also starts crying, although it’s hard to tell if she’s empathising, showing remorse or something else. Nothing is really explained and I like it that way. Indeed, the director manages to preserve the ambiguity of some of the character elements in the main feature version too... and my hat off to her for that.

Okay... so onto the main feature, which took another four years to get to a release. Well, if you were worrying as to whether the short film would spoil your experience of watching the main feature film based on it, don’t be, it’s the perfect way to watch these (in fact, watching them in reverse will surely take the wind out of the sails of the short). The reason being that the first 15 minutes of the movie are an augmented remake of the 15 minutes of the short... as everything else after the first fifteen minutes is a continuation of Claire’s story (again played by Townsend) and not just an extended rerun which could also have been a possibility.

The film starts off with a wonderful shot of Claire approached by a slow zoom in her salon, drinking from a plastic cup which is similar to the ones you get in a Starbucks, where the barrista writes your name on the cup (we later, in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ look at a poster, find out the name of the coffee chain in this film is Splitlog). It’s a nice, visual introduction to the name of the character and it almost makes it redundant that Claire immediately introduces herself to the feature’s incarnation of the first victim by name... I kinda wished the vocalisation of the name was held back for a scene or two.

We then get a remake of the short (minus Claire’s neck trauma, for some reason) and then it goes into an exploration of both Clare and another character, a future ‘wedding hair’ client called Olivia (played by Brea Grant, who I think I mentioned in my review of Video Palace - In Search Of The Eyeless Man, here). There’s a lovely split screen moment which the director uses a couple of times to point out the similarities in the lifestyles of Clare and Olivia (to some extent). Then the director starts to establish a building relationship between the bizarrely off-kilter Claire and Olivia, which of course comes to a head with a kind of perceived rejection of Claire (who I’m pretty sure has a crush on Olivia or, at the very least, is obsessed by her) later in the movie. And I don’t want to say too much about where the story goes although, I will say something non-specific about the ending in a little while.

Okay, so lets look at the style of The Stylist, so to speak. The feature eschews some of the things I liked such as the dutch angled opening and the soft cutting fades to different angles to visually replicate a drugged stupor... but it does a whole lot of other good stuff and looks absolutely wonderful. The colours throughout are simply ravishing juxtapositons which really throw themselves at the audience, culminating in intensity in a night club scene where Gevargizian pitches bright red, green, blue and orange lighting (so, two sets of opposite ends of the colour wheel, nice!) together in a series of shots where, to give it my term for this, she goes ‘the full Bava!’ There seems to be a lot of directors using this kind of Italian giallo and horror lighting style just recently and, it usually looks pretty good but, honestly, it looks absolutely first class here. The director and cinematographer obviously have a really good handle on how to push this kind of lighting without it being too ‘in your face’ but still manage to give you maximum vibrance in the shot. I was very impressed.

There’s another beautiful shot a little later where the colour scheme really smacks you in the face without phasing you, when a park bench Claire is sitting on has been painted bright yellow, which perfectly matches the beret she is wearing in the shot.

Another stylistic flourish brought in here... and it’s a similar thing I’ve seen done in one of my favourite early 1990s movies, The Hairdresser’s Husband (which I saw about five times at the Lumiere cinema back in the day)... and that is to show long and lingering shots of the handling of a woman’s hair in a sensual, almost fetishistic way. I dunno, maybe it’s just a thing films about hair stylists tend to do but, you know, it works for me so, no complaints.

Let’s talk about the performances then. Brea Grant is wonderful as Olivia and there’s also a nice, gory cameo from Gevargizian, the director herself, in one role... but it’s Najarra Townsend who really knocks it out the park here. If you’re going to have a movie where the narrative is almost entirely told from the viewpoint of the somewhat psychotic title character, then you need to get an actress who can make this work and Townsend certainly does this in both the short and feature length versions of The Stylist presented here. She really knows how to, quite subtly through gradual facial expressions, turn on the madness and then put the mask back on. There are some moments when you can just tell the character is completely overwhelmed by her emotions and Townsend really nails it here. Even though she’s a serial killing ‘loony toon’, there is a strong does of empathy/sympathy for the character coming through here which, obviously, really comes down to the brilliance of the performance. It’s a little like those old horror movies like King Kong, Frankenstein and Creature From The Black Lagoon... when you kind of feel sorry for the monster and want him/her to win? This performance ranks up there in terms of the way the character is handled and explored, even though she’s inevitably less of an iconic character than those big three I just named.

Now then, it has to be said that it was about half an hour before the end when I figured out how this story would finish.... even to the last shot of the film. This would normally irritate the hell out of me but, I then realised two things about the ending that countered my initial feeling of disappointment if, indeed, the story did end the way I thought it would (which it did). One is... well, there’s no way of getting around it, just because it’s a tad predicatable in its end game, it’s still the perfect ending for the feature length version of this film. It absolutely had to go there and... yeah it did. The other thing though, is that the director got me to that point in a totally different way to what I thought she would do. It was way more subtle, understated and held back from audience view than I thought it would be, playing the exact ‘reveal’ in its moment rather than building to it with a grisly bit of foreplay like many movies might... so that was unexpected and welcome, for sure, in terms of execution. So, again, well done to all involved for going about this in a way far from the usual expectations of this kind of piece.

And that’s all I have to say about the two versions of The Stylist but I will say that, the package disappointed me a little because the reason I pre-ordered this the day it went up online was because it includes a CD of the soundtrack... which I’d assumed to be the full score... which is wonderful, by the way, composer Nicholas Elert does a spellbinding and, more importantly, appropriate job on the score to both versions of The Stylist. Alas, even though it says on the back of the box in small print, “CD containing the original The Stylist soundtrack by Nicholas Elert”... only around four minutes of his score, represented by a single track, is present on the disc. The other seven tracks are just songs by other people... so, yeah, the main reason I purchased this wasn’t actually included at all, other than just those few minutes. I can’t get too angry at Arrow though because, as I said earlier, it made me buy the film and, frankly, it turns out The Stylist is always one I was going to want in my Blu Ray library. That being said, it’s stacked with the usual wealth of Arrow extras which I haven’t got around to exploring yet, including a visual essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, someone who I rate very highly in terms of critical writing (although I can never afford her books, sadly). CD aside, it’s a beautiful package and even includes a poster, which is nice for those who have any wall space left.

So yeah, my takeaway from this is that The Stylist, in all its forms, is a fantastic movie and I would have loved to get the opportunity to see this play on a cinema screen because it just looks so exquisitely beautiful that I would have gone back a couple of times, I think. As it is, I’m certainly going to need to remember to keep an eye out for Jill Gevargizian’s films in the future because she’s someone whose career, I think, will be very interesting to follow. And that’s me really done now. The Stylist gets nothing but a huge recommendation from me and if you’re a fan of the thriller genre then you really should take a look at this one, for sure.

A Conspiracy Of Bones

Through A Web Darkly

A Conspiracy Of Bones
by Kathy Reichs
Simon And Schuster
ISBN: 97809850235841471188848

Warning: My significant other asked me to put a
spoiler warning on here because, apparently,
there is a spoiler. So please consider yourself warned.

A Conspiracy Of Bones is the latest of Kathy Reichs’ novels about bone detective (as I like to call here) Temperance Brennan. This is the original version of the character that Reichs has now on TV in a show called Bones but, there are as many differences as their are similarities to the two characters and, while I’ve never indulged in the TV show (maybe one day... so many things to see and do), I always like to think of these original core books, which have an entirely different set of supporting characters and which are set, spiritually at any rate, a substantial time after the stories depicted in the TV show, as being the real deal when it comes to Temperance Brennan. Although, an interesting little nugget of information I did glean recently is that the version of Tempe in the show now writes thrillers about a character called Kathy Reichs. Oh yeah... totally not going to go there... especially since Reichs models the character on herself and her own profession (her non-writing profession).

If you read my blogs regularly you’ll know that, up until a few years ago, I would settle down to the new Patricia Cornwell book on Christmas day and then follow it up straight after with a chaser of the latest Kathy Reichs novel. Well, something disturbed my routine in that both authors took a year or two off for various reasons. In the case of Reichs, she had been diagnosed with an unruptured cerebral aneurysm which has slowed her down somewhat, to a degree, by all accounts. And so, now she’s finally written Tempe’s latest exploits here (the book was published midway through last year), Temperance Brennan also has exactly the same ailment... and is also trying to take things slow.

Not so slow that she doesn’t get involved in yet another nasty case, this one involving a suicide, the adversity of a grand standing new boss who won’t let her near her workplace or work any cases and, ultimately, the discovery of murder and intrigue involving child pornography websites. And, as usual with this writer, it’s another, 'unputdownable', top notch thriller which pulls you in for a ride and won’t let go until you’ve turned your last page.

There’s not much of her lover Ryan in this one, as the retired policeman is away working another case in France to establish his new Private Investigation company, although he does pop in for a while when things get really rough around two thirds of the way in. Not as a cavalry figure this time but, more as moral support. Once again, Tempe is aided in her unauthorised investigations by 'Skinny' Slidell, who is also retired but volunteers at the homicide department still (or some such).

And it’s the usual, excellent pot pourri of clues and ideas, some of which are skillfully held back due to dramatic inventions until the right moment in the story, involving all kinds of interesting things like MK Ultra, The Men Who Stare At Goats and the real life Stargate project. It was also a voyage of discovery for me as I read, not only chilling things about the Dark Web and places like Truthfinder.com but, also, learning for the first time that Tempe’s favourite movie is Woody Allen’s wonderful Annie Hall.

And there’s all the usual dramatic story points including a possible stalking of Brennan, a fire, a possible drugging or unusual flare up symptom of Tempe’s own unruptured cerebral aneurysm... where she goes missing in action (and in her own memory) for ten hours... and an arson attack on her home which manages to destroy almost every bit of evidence she’s spent a good deal of the book acquiring. Reichs also continues, in many chapters but not all, that kind of cliffhanger foreboding statement which means you just simply have to get right on to the next chapter and never mind what else you wanted to do that day. These included little nuggets of chapter endings such as “I turned to the photos on my phone. Had been scrolling a while when I spotted an image that froze my breath.”  or “I read them. And felt a chill wash over my body.” and “Life was about to go from bad to pure hell.”

One thing which was a little different was that, although the writing style is still enthusiastic and upbeat, Tempe seems to be in a very bad place emotionally in this one. Things are getting on top of her in the worst way and it’s a little unusual to hear her acknowledge that her life is more of a complete mess than usual. So that’s interesting and I am really looking forward to where the character ends up next in her life... hopefully in a novel coming soon.

One other thing which I found interesting is that coronavirus isn’t mentioned once in the novel... and this has got me to thinking when the novel is actually set. I’ve always assumed that they’re set the year they are released but a chapter title date stamping the day as Friday 13th July at one point pulled me up short. I checked and, apparently, the last occurrence of a Friday 13th July was in 2018 so, yeah, maybe... at least that would explain the lack of Covid 19 references.

All in all, fans of Reichs and her long running Temperance Brennan series of novels have got nothing to worry about with A Conspiracy Of Bones. It’s business as usual for Reichs, which means a compelling thriller which you won’t want to put down until you’ve finished racing towards the finishing line. As always, a hearty recommendation from me and I look forward to hopefully reading another in the series before long. I cant wait to see what Tempe gets up to in the future.

Destroy All Monsters

 

Crouching Eiga,
Hidden Dragging

Destroy All Monsters
aka Kaijû sôshingeki
Japan 1968 Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho/Criterion Collection
Blu Ray Zone B

Well, the next up in my rewatch of The Showa Era Godzilla films, courtesy of Criterion’s lovely Blu Ray Book Edition, is Destroy All Monsters and... well it’s a bit of a curio. Especially since only one monster is actually destroyed in it.

Depending on which version of the film you are watching (Japanese or American), the film takes place in Earth’s far future... at the end of the century (Japanese) or 1999 (American). After being introduced to some of the characters on the moonbase we are straight into a title sequence that, for some reason, I have no recollection of in terms of visuals but... well... the opening title music is absolutely stunning and you can tell right away that Akira Ifukube was back on board. One of the biggest strengths of this film is its wonderful score and, even if the visuals and drama in this were terrible, it almost wouldn’t matter because I spent most of the film tapping my toes along to the music.

As it happens, it doesn’t have terrible visuals or drama. Like Honda’s previous films in the series, this one is strong on story and plot twists but, unlike his earlier works, this one gets straight to the monsters after the end credits. It seems that in our future, the monsters from various Toho films all live together on Monster Island... so Godzilla, Minilla, Baragon, Mothra, Rodan, Varan, Manda, Gorosaurus and Kumonga. Eagle eyed monster movie spotters will no doubt wonder why some of these creatures are still alive, having been killed off in earlier kaiju eiga but, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you on that one.

Anyway, tragedy strikes as the people in the control sections of Monster Island (referred to as Monsterland in this iteration) are gassed... along with all the monsters. What is going on? Then tragedy strikes as the ‘escaped’ monsters start attacking the rest of the world. Rodan attacks Moscow, Baragon (kinda) destroys Paris, Mothra sorts out Beijing, Manda is malevolent in London and Godzilla takes out New York. What’s going on?

Oh, wait. The monsters didn’t escape at all. Instead they, along with the human staff of the island, are under the control of the Kilaaks, a race of space aliens who want to take over our planet. It’s up to Captain Katsuo Yamabe (played by series regular Akira Kubo... who you might recognise from films like Mantango - Attack Of The Mushroom People and some of Kurosawa’s masterpieces) and his trusty moon rocket crew, with the aid of Dr. Yoshido (played by another Gojira and Kurosawa regular, Jun Tazaki) to help the military resist and get up to all kinds of shenanigans as each twist and turn of the plot is revealed.

Luckily, the humans finally defeat the aliens who have been calling the shots on the moon and then regain control of the various ‘Earth kaiju’ so they can lead a big, all out monster attack on the alien’s not so secret base under Mount Fuji. One complication is, as an eleventh hour surprise for everyone, the aliens summon space monster King Ghidora. There is much glee from the alien antagonists as they tell their human enemy, “Earth’s monsters are no match for him.” Which seems to be a bold claim and I can only assume the aliens haven’t watched the previous Godzilla films to feature King Ghidorah. The Big G has needed much less aid than he has in this one to try to take down his old, three headed foe and, predictably, the ‘big monster team’ fight ferociously and suffer no casualties as they defeat the behemoth. Little Minilla, Godzilla’s son, puts in a finishing touch by blowing one of his cute, trademark smoke rings over Ghidorah’s last, surviving head, which proves to be the surprising last straw that breaks Ghidorah’s defensive back. What’s more surprising though, for a film set in the Earth’s far future in the year 1999, is that little Minilla hasn’t grown to become a big Godzilla like his father already.

This film probably has both more monster and human VS alien action in it than the majority of Honda’s work in the Godzilla series but, in amongst all the set pieces, he still finds time to give us bright colours, nicely lit sets and some creative shot designs. There’s a scene where a doctor who has been taken over by the aliens is being interrogated by Katsuo and Dr. Yashida, in which a kind of decorative screen is placed between the three actors and the camera. The elabourate screen has three circles in a row going the whole width of the shot and from the top to the bottom of the screen. The back of the doctor’s head is large and more than fills the middle circle. However, with the perspective of the shot, the other two actor’s heads are perfectly framed in the centre of the two circles on either side of this character. Yeah... there’s some great stuff here.

This was supposed to be the last hurrah for the Godzilla films as the box office returns for the kaiju eiga were diminishing with every new entry... thus the idea to have a load of monsters in the one film (it would be many decades later before this many monsters in the series would be matched... or exceeded, in fact). However, this was a pretty entertaining movie and, I guess the audience thought so too at the time because, this one was a huge financial success for the company and kept them going with the Godzilla series for quite a few more films comprising the Showa era.

And I honestly don’t have much more to say on that. I think Destroy All Monsters is one of the most fun in the series of films and, despite the unintentional hilarity of many of the scenes (or possibly because of it), it’s certainly one I’d watch more enthusiastically than some of the others. Next up for the series, though, would be a very different kind of Godzilla movie indeed. I’ll let you know about it after I’ve watched it again soon.

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man

Creature Crossover

Frankenstein Meets
The Wolf Man
USA 1943 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Well this is a great little movie. Affer the bravery of Universal's previous classic monster picture, The Mummy’s Tomb (reviewed here), where they killed off both male leads from the previous movie within the first 20 or so minutes, here they came up with what was, I think, another first. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man was the first time that two sets of characters from different franchises under the same company had crossed over in a movie.

So, yeah... remember when Universal were trying to resurrect their monsters a few years ago to make a Dark Universe so they could ultimately pitch all their monsters together in each other’s films (something I still wished had happened because I thought the Dracula Untold and The Mummy reboots were fine)? And remember when everybody said they were just trying to build an interlocking franchise in the style of Marvel’s Avengers movies? Well I was angry about that accusation then and I still am. If anybody has a right to cross over their franchise characters it’s Universal with their classic monsters. They were doing it before anybody else was, back in 1943 (and for the rest of the 1940s, as you’ll see in some future reviews) and, like I said, I’m pretty sure this was the first time that this kind of cross pollination film was done.

This movie serves as a proper sequel to both The Wolf Man (reviewed here) and The Ghost Of Frankenstein (reviewed here). It starts off with something unusual for these particular films at the time... the credits are over a ‘moving background’ of a hand which fills a smoking test tube, which carries on frothing as the credits continue... instead of the usual static shots one would associate with a Universal horror picture title sequence. Then we get a shot of something which, although constantly mentioned in The Wolf Man, was never actually seen in that film. Namely, a shot of the full moon. And don’t’ worry if you miss it... there’s lots of shots of it, to make up for its absence in the prior picture, throughout Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man.

So the film starts off four years after The Wolf Man with two tomb robbers in Llanwelly cemetary... “Here rest the dead of Llanwelly” we read on a stone as we look at the establishing shot. The tomb robbers break into the Talbot family vault in the hopes of finding Lawrence Talbot’s coffin and stealing the gold watch he was buried with. They find the correct one easily enough because it bears the legend... “Lawrence Stewart Talbot who died at the youthful age of thirty one R.I.P.” However, instead of a skeleton they find that Talbot has been somehow preserved, with wolfsbane placed over his body. When they remove the wolfsbane, this and the full moon shining through the tomb resurrects Talbot and transforms him back into The Wolf Man... played once again by Lon Chaney Jr (who is billed, as he is in a fair few of these movies now, as just Lon Chaney).

After ripping the throat out of one of them, Larry Talbot’s half living body is found in Cardiff the next morning by police and taken to the hospital. After much questioning by both Patric Knowles as Dr. Mannering and... “Why if it isn’t Mr. ‘Olmes”... that’s right, Dennis Hoey as Inspector Owen (best known for his continuing role as Inspector Lestrade in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies), nobody believes his story so, after more inadvertent murdering, he gnaws his way through a straight-jacket and flees to Europe in search of Maleva, the gypsy woman whose son, played by Bela Lugosi in The Wolf Man, bit Talbot in the previous werewolf film. He finds her and they go looking for Dr. Frankenstein, who Maleva says will know how to cure him by death, since Talbot seems to be invincible now. Maleva is, once again, played by the wonderful  Maria Ouspenskaya.

Cut to... the Frankenstein plot. The Monster has had the brain of Ygor (played by Bela Lugosi in the previous two Frankenstein movies) put into his head and it turns out he’s somehow escaped the fire and is preserved in a block of ice under the ruins. Talbot finds him and breaks him loose. And, yes, Bela Lugosi is the actor who, this time around, is underneath the Frankenstein monster make-up. Meanwhile, Dr. Mannering shows up in Vasaria, having tracked down Talbot to see if he can help him but, instead, becoming fascinated by the secrets of the Frankenstein monster.

Added to this cast of characters and actors we have the gorgeous Ilona Massey from Invisible Agent (reviewed here), taking over in the role played by Evelyn Ankers in The Ghost Of Frankenstein, to play Elsa Frankenstein in this one. We also have a justice of peace kind of character played by Lionel Atwill (who was in a load of these Frankenstein flicks, of course) and a charmingly outspoken pitchfork brigade villager played by Frankenstein movie stalwart and Renfield extraordinaire, the always watchable character actor Dwight Frye. This would be his final movie as he was struck down with a fatal heart attack just a couple of months after shooting, at the age of 44.

And its the usual shenanigans of the standard Universal monster picture with two monsters for the price of one and with the added bonus of Lon Chaney Jr’s continuing ‘doom laden hysteria’ take on Larry Talbot. This guy is on a downer in every film and, even in a song and dance number for a festival he’s attending, he manages to have some kind of aggressive depression fit and tells everybody off for singing at him that they should all live forever. He only wants to die... so leave him alone folks.

The film has some really lovely stuff going for it too. There’s some great use of shadows and the director gets a lot more depth in the shot than is usual for these kinds of movies, using a lot of upright foreground verticals such as stone columns or trees to help create more interesting frames. It’s not as spectacular as, say, Son Of Frankenstein (reviewed here) but this is certainly some quality work and I think this film gets somewhat overlooked in the hierarchy of Universal horrors. Also, the inevitable fight scene between the two monsters at the end of the picture is just that. This film in particular really goes for it... as we see the Frankenstein monster and the Wolf Man tossing each other around like a couple of wrestlers. The confrontation scenes in these kinds of films are often a bit lacking but... not here. Even though it’s only one scene right at the end of the picture.

If you remember the last one... the ‘Lugosi’s brain’ version of the monster is supposed to be blind but he could talk. Well, there were a number of scenes where Lugosi has conversations in the movie but, due to preview audiences laughing themselves silly every time Lugosi’s thick accent would come from the Frankenstein monster, all of those scenes were cut from the movie and we’re left, once again, with a dumb creature. If you look carefully, though, you can still find evidence of those scenes where the story would have suffered if the shot had been cut... where Lugosi’s mouth is moving if you look closely but his audio is eradicated. It would be nice to finally see these scenes restored but, alas, it’s probable that the excised footage has been destroyed because, well, it’s not like Universal hasn’t looked for this stuff.

My only real complaint is with a scene where Dr. Mannering and Inspector Owen are talking in Mannering’s office in Cardiff. We see him reading from a hardback book and then he goes to a shelf, takes out another, similarly hardbound tome but, then replaces it on the shelf with the book he’s reading. What the heck? What kind of filing system is that? How are you supposed to keep everything in a nice order if you just re-house books will nilly on a shelf. Complete madness. Maybe I should have seen that as a sign that he’s going to be up for ‘fixing’ the Frankenstein monster later in the movie because, surely, the mis-filing of books makes for totally ‘mad scientist’ material!

Okay, that’s me done with Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman. I still love this movie and always cherish the chance to watch it in sequence with the other films in this series. The next one in this particular Frankenstein franchise would, of course, feature three classic Universal monsters for the price of one but... you’ll have to wait for my review of House Of Frankenstein before I get onto that.

Exit

Egress
Wounds

Exit
UK 2019
Directed by Michael Fausti
Unrated Blu Ray release

British writer/director/producer Michael Fausti’s feature length slice of angel cake Exit has become something of a cause célèbre on social media over the past year. Garnering a few awards it’s the very epitome of both micro-budget movie making and also just how good you can get it to look while still bound by the many pitfalls that the resources available to that level of movie making will always command and inspire people to escape. For many, this will possibly be seen as something of a simplistic human drama played out in a hotel room over the course of one evening and, okay, it is.

On the other hand... and without wanting to give away the obvious here... the film itself is also a literal metaphor standing in for something else and, although I had figured out the course trajectory of the ramifications of the exit of the title a minute or two into it, it certainly clearly marks its own intent very early on when the list of rooms on the doorbell buttons on the entrance to the hotel, in which the entire film is set (with the exception of a few brief shots here and there) includes the names, Abbadon and Gehenna. And if you don’t take anything away from those terms and you want to watch Exit then, okay, do yourself a favour and don’t look them up until after the film. In the words of a famous Gallifreyan tainted human... “spoilers sweetie”.

The film deals with two couples who are accidentally double booked into a hotel room for the same night. The owner of the place who is showing them around, played with relish by Tony Denham, offers the room to both couples free for the evening as long as they share... and he will sort out the error with further accommodation provided in the morning.

Now I’m not going to summarise the plot here other than to say... it deals with what happens when a half uptight English couple, Stephen (Billy James Machin) and Michelle (Leonarda Sahani) are left alone with a drug imbibing, wine guzzling French couple, Christophe (Christophe Delesques) and Adrienne (Charlotte Gould) who allow their passions to surface and clash against the sensibilities of their nocturnal cohabitors. There is sex and then the inevitable violence as the encounters bring the expected consequences and, if you are buying into the metaphor fully at this point, it becomes a horror film or metaphysical movie about the way the mechanics of the hotel and the outside environment work in ‘stark balance’.

The film does a few interesting things, the first of which I will say started to irritate me at first and which is in the form of constant and extended flashes forward and backwards, in slow motion with a heavy reliance on composer Nick Burns diabolically maniacal and hellish scoring of various cross cut sequences (with perhaps not quite the gravitas of a Nicholas Roeg exploiting a similar array of invading imagery). However, once I realised where the analogy was going, from very early in the picture, I realised it made sense to cut the picture this way so... yeah, stick with it, the style will probably grow on you.

Another thing the director does is to do what the old Universal horror movies did and to use objects from slightly different periods in a kind of post-modern melange... which again makes sense with the overall ‘world view’ of the drama. So for instance, old dial telephones which are even older than myself, an early typewriter, the presence of four channels on television (augmented with the latest channel called Sky), the joke about Ikea. It might seem like deliberate taunting at first, on the part of the director but, like I said, stick to the end and it makes sense that this kind of controlled anachronism is put out front and centre.

The director is also one of those who likes to wear his influences on his sleeve... or at least it seems so to me. The coloured lighting within the hotel using pinks, blues and greens etc (including a shot where the four guests are lit in pink but the owner somehow escapes the lighting effect) speak to the big giants of Italian genre cinema, Mario Bava and Dario Argento and I’d be very surprised if this director and the cinematographer weren’t fans of their movies. However, just like the mixture of period styles, the ending shots of one of the characters in the street after making a personal, titular exit from the scenario also provides a motive for employing this kind of lighting scheme to the movie too (which is just as well, actually, because something tells me they would have probably gone down this route with or without that contextual component). There’s also a fairly pointed reference to Hammer’s Dracula Has Risen From The Grave in one shot towards the end which I’m sure many fans of the classic British studio will appreciate.*

Another thing in favour of the film is that the performances are pretty nicely done from most of the cast and, while a fair amount of the film relies on image and sound without words, the writer demonstrates a good ear for dialogue. It certainly feels typically British... while throwing about references to Donald Trump juxtaposed with the death of Napoleon... which again makes perfect sense by the end of the movie. The film certainly has a personality all its own and, in this day and age, that kind of quality is important.

And there’s not much more to say about this one. Exit is a nice attempt at something slightly different with some definite nods to genre films in general and purchasing a copy is a good step into helping out the smaller, independent film makers working without the backing of large movie corporations. And if you want to show your support and get a copy of the film, signed by the director and with various bonuses like a mini poster and stills, then you can head directly to his website here at Fausti Releasing... https://faustireleasing.bigcartel.com/product/exit-special-collector-s-edition-blu-ray and treat yourself to a copy. However, if you’re going to do it, do it quick because it’s a limited edition and its selling out fast.

*Although possibly not the idiot on the IMDB who says that the shot of Gogo Yubari’s death in Kill Bill Volume 1 was an homage to Lucio Fulci’s City Of The Living Dead. Um... yeah mate... I think Hammer got there first, somehow. I’m really losing a lot of respect for the IMDB... as you’ll see in a lot of my upcoming reviews. I think the acronym for IMDB should forever read ‘Idiots Make Disastrous Blunders’, to be honest.

Spin

The Chase Race

Spin
by Patricia Cornwell
Thomas And Mercer ISBN: 9781542044783

Warning: There will be some major character spoilers in here... so you have been warned.

Spin is the second of Patricia Cornwell’s novels about her new character Captain Calli Chase, who works for a kind of high level, space investigation team linked with NASA. I found myself once more deprived of my regular routine of reading the first chapter of the new Cornwell novel on Christmas morning in 2020, due to the fact that this book was not released into the wild until a little after my birthday in January of this year.

Now, after over half a lifetime of reading her latest books on the exploits of her most famous character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, I’m always the first to criticise Cornwell about straying from her Scarpetta character... which is why I was pleasantly surprised when I found the first novel in this new series, Quantum (reviewed by me here), to be just as compelling and breakneck as her signature series. 

Nothing could have prepared me for this one though. 

While the first book set up the characters to an extent, it turns out it was only a meet and greet of a novel and the real strengths of this new character are finally caught up with here. This one is a full ‘origin’ story, to coin a term which is more at home in a superhero comic and, frankly, that’s pretty close to what this novel does with Chase. I say this only with affection and admiration when I see that the character is changed and developed in this tome to the point where she wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a 1970s prime-time weekend television show and, frankly, while there are certain similarities with what Cornwell does here and her other writing, this one takes her new creation into another realm, not just in terms of where the reader might have been expecting her to go (no real hints on that from me but the last chapter of this book certainly sees the character already surpassing the potential she was trying to live up to in the first novel) but also in terms of creating a character that really wouldn’t look out of place in a popular comic book and who would certainly, I think, come under the umbrella term of post-human. Or perhaps... superhuman would be a better way to say it.

First things first though and as an answer to those who have read the first in this series... yes, we do finally get acquainted with her twin sister Carme in this book, after having heard of her exploits and possibly compromising activities in Quantum. And she’s not just a twin in terms of who she is but also in terms of the ‘enhancements’ to Calli’s character this time around. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

There are quite a few new characters but also the return of some regular ones like her friend Fran, who gets involved in the investigation while, as a necessity, still being quite in the dark as to what is actually going on. This involves a near fatal miss of an attempt on Calli’s life near the start of the novel and various plot deviations which, once again, involve Cornwell’s characters going through a story which is compressed into a fairly short space of time... no more than about five days in this case but, bearing in mind that Calli has about three days kind of wiped out, almost, from her memory... well, it’s an incredibly short amount of time again. There’s also a new character called Lex and, I’m pretty sure that he’s possibly going to grow up as the novels progress and become the Captain Chase equivalent of Kay Scarpetta’s niece Lucy... but time will tell on that one, I guess.

Okay, I don’t want to spoil the story so let me get onto the main thing which I applaud Cornwell for while also being left, frankly, a little scared due to Cornwell’s reputation for very rigid research which, presumably and as I’ve found in the past, leads to very factual representations of cutting edge technology which already exists (we just don’t necessarily know about it yet).

Basically, Calli is ‘knobbled’, in terms of she’s equipped with what I would best describe as modifications and a whole bunch of nano-technology running around her blood stream (plus contact lenses and glasses) which allow her to talk to the computer inside her head, who is constantly showing her stuff in her vision which is a constant information feed. A supercomputer called ART who can give her any data that’s authorised to her, hack in instantly to camera feeds from anywhere and a whole lot more besides. Not to mention her ‘wand’ features where she can just make various motions with her fingers to open any lock, hack any system and so on. I’m not going to get into all of the things that this new, advanced Calli can do but, suffice to say, she’s basically Iron Man but without the suit or the super strength (and for all I know, the latter might also be coming at some point). Just before I reached the end of this novel, a story hit the news that Artificial Intelligence software was being used to monitor and predict patients with heart problems and there’s not a doubt in my mind that Cornwell is not ‘just’ making things up here. Like my favourite 1930s pulp writer Lester Dent, she knows what’s on the cutting edge and she has a glimpse at what’s coming or, quite probably, is already here. So, yeah, this idea is kind of scary too, to be honest.

And, of course, since these novels are told in the first person by the lead character (just like the majority of the Scarpetta series), we get to learn all about Calli’s new ‘enhanced’ abilities along with her. And it’s smartly handled by Cornwell, as it usually is by a writer of her high calibre. I loved the way Calli is annoyed that ART seems to be forcing ‘functionality introductions’ on her in the same way that a person playing a character in a computer game might be introduced to the various rules and game mechanics at the start of a new level. But, of course, she’s also treating the reader in the same way, as a necessity.

What this also means, in terms of dramatic writing, is that she can monitor what her friends and enemies are doing in her head through various live feeds provided by ART and, therefore, Cornwell manages to break the confines of the first person viewpoint by Chase providing a running commentary on two or more absent characters at different scenes simultaneously. In a third person book you’d just crosscut between characters and that’s a luxury you don’t usually have in a first person narrative. Here, though, Cornwell has managed to find a plot mechanic which she’s built into the character which allows her to do exactly that while still staying with that same person. Mrs. Cornwell is nothing, if not a clever writer, for sure.

And that’s all I’m going to say about Spin other than, it’s another ramped up rush to the end game in this one and it’s amazingly entertaining and almost ‘unputdownable’ if you’ll allow me the luxury of making up words to fit the subject. I can’t wait to read another of these and so now, of course, I’m torn. As I follow her Twitter feed, I’m more than aware that Cornwell is currently working on her next Dr. Scarpetta novel, due out in November so... yay! I’ll be able to get back to my regular Christmas morning ritual this year. However, I also am beginning to love this new character almost as much as Kay and Lucy from those books so, yeah, I wish she could clone herself and write faster so we can have a new Captain Chase novel to read at some point soon too. I’ll leave it at that but, honestly, Spin is just another example of Cornwell doing what she does best... being a really great thriller writer. Still waiting for some movies to come out and, as always, I can’t wait for her next novel.

Army Of The Dead

What dies in Vegas,
stays in Vegas!

Army Of The Dead
USA 2021 Directed by Zack Snyder

Warning: Very slight spoilers here and there.

Army Of The Dead is the second new Zack Snyder movie I’ve seen this year (after his new version of Justice League, reviewed here) and it’s his second zombie movie after his quite astonishing ‘reimagining’ of Dawn Of The Dead. Now, tempting as it might be to call this a sequel to that movie (rather than just the spiritual sequel it surely is), the two films are set in very different versions of a zombie outbreak so are definitely not taking place in a shared universe... although, of course, all these kinds of post 1968 iterations of zombie movies owe a debt to Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead (with a small shout out, of course, to Hammer’s Plague Of The Zombies, 1966).

Actually, the film starts off with more of a shout out to Return Of The Living Dead when a top secret army cargo is compromised, due to a newly married couples in-car blow job (so it’s a military cargo gone wrong kind of zombie movie). An ‘alpha zombie’ called Zeus, presumably discovered or created by the army, escapes and takes out what’s left of the military escort. Then the credits roll where we see Dave Bautista’s character Scott Ward and a team of soldiers killing zombies by the armful (and becoming disillusioned with their job even as they earn more medals or die in the process) and Las Vegas is totally overrun and walled up by the end of those credits. We soon are also shown a back story where Bautista had to kill his wife in front of their daughter when she turns zombie and, this sets up the background where those two characters haven’t been communicating well for a while. Bautista has medals of honour but has now chosen to live his life flipping burgers in a fast food shop.

However, he’s then recruited, a little reluctantly, by a powerful billionaire who wants him to recover 200 million dollars from a safe in a hotel in Vegas. So he puts together a team and in they go, 24 hours before the final military solution of a nuclear bomb being dropped into Vegas is going to go ahead (in another call back to the denouement of Return Of The Living Dead, of course).

When he gets to the wall, his daughter negotiates to go in with them, due to her friend going in to the zombie city 24 hours before and not returning and, yeah, I won’t say too much more about the plot but it does go through some of the clichés you would expect from this and it’s not exactly unpredictable. That being said, though, it’s still pretty spectacular and plays out exactly as you’d want this kind of ‘zombie heist’ movie to go. Snyder’s direction is great, it looks very glossy and the violence is very gory (they go for that whole, ‘blood on the camera lens’ aesthetic at one point but, that’s okay, it works here). This film also has the two levels of zombie menace which seems to have become almost a convention in recent years. So you have the standard, easy to kill ‘shamblers’, which are basically the Romero type of zombies... and then you have the more ‘alpha zombies’, which are kind of agile, reasoning versions of the undead (the army of the title), who are more like the versions seen in Romero’s Land Of The Dead more than anything else... although they’re much faster.

There are some nice elements about the film too... such as a zombie tiger who is mentioned to have been one of Siegfried and Roy’s creatures. And speaking of a Siegfried, a different one this time, the safe in the film is called Götterdämmerung (at which point I would have been more tempted to title the movie Twilight Of The Zombies). The nice thing is, whenever the safecracker ‘has a moment’ with either the safe or a blue print of it, Siegfried’s Funeral March from the Götterdämmerung section of Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen plays in the background, which is a nice touch. And I don’t know who the idiot who filled in the IMDB trivia for Army Of The Dead is but... for your information, that music is not called ‘the theme from Excalibur’, right? I dunno, the IMDB seems to have been written by three year olds lately... I’m finding more and more wrong or idiotic information on there the more I use it. So much for an internationally respected database. There’s also a nice shout out to the Headpiece of the Staff of Ra near the beginning, for fans of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

All in all though, apart form what I consider to be a not too good cover version of the excellent song The End (originally by The Doors), the film is a sure fire winner. Having Bautista in this really helps. He’s a hell of an actor and, while he does this ‘thinking man’s action man’ stuff really well, I’m still waiting for Hollywood to start giving him some roles less focused on his physique and more on his incredible acting talents. He’s one of the true ‘stars’ with a capital S that Hollywoodland has these days and I think more producers need to realise this. He’s supported here by a fine cast including stand out performances by Ella Purnell as Scott’s daughter and Tig Notaro, who wasn’t even on set with the actors but CGI ‘added in’ later (to replace an actor whose reputation has been ‘compromised’), as the gang’s helicopter pilot. Not that I would have noticed the replacement, to be honest.

The film is glossy and very easy on the eye but also, I’d have to say, quite grim and dark. There aren’t many characters who walk away from this one unscathed (or at all) but, even so, I’d certainly have to recommend Army Of The Dead to anyone who likes zombie movies. I mean, yes it’s not particularly scary and it becomes, in some ways, a bit of a body count movie but, you know, those two elements ('not really scary' and 'count the number of zombie corpses') are pretty much staples of the genre at this point and, like I said, there’s nothing really original about the movie but its nicely done and just works very well. Certainly not a feel good movie but it’s definitely a crowd pleasing one, for sure... depending on what crowd you happen to be in.

The Unholy

On The Trail Of
The Lonesome Shrine

The Unholy
2021 USA
Directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos
UK cinema release print.

I first read James Herbert’s novel Shrine when it was released in the UK in 1983. I would have been 15 so I don’t remember if it’s the first of his novels I’d read... but it’s one of the first. I found a common thing over here in the UK is that boys in their early teens devour a lot of horror novels. I remember Herbert was one of the ‘big two’ who pretty much everyone at school was reading. So you’d read all of Stephen King’s catalogue (which was obviously a lot less back in those days) and then you’d read all of Herberts, which weren’t necessarily quite as well written but, he had two things Stephen King didn’t have as a writer... one was that the were all set in England, in places we knew about (such as Epping Forest in The Rats, for example) and also they had loads of sex in them. And violence but, it was mostly the sex which kept the pages turning in those days. So the pattern would continue and you’d read everything that Herbert had written at that stage and it was only then that you’d branch out on other writers delivering similar horrific thrills such as Dean R. Koontz, Shaun Hutson, Guy N. Smith, John Farris, Tristan Travis and John Halkin etc. Eventually, within the space of about a year and a half, you’d read all the major horror writers and you were on to picking up horror books to feed your obsession in way out locations based purely on the covers. So if you were holidaying in Wales, say... and their local, quirky bookshop had a cheap copy of a book with a nude lady being attacked by a slime coated jelly fish, you knew you were still probably onto a winner.

Anyway, I remember Shrine coming out in its New English Library imprint, sporting a white cover with a little girl levitating on the front. It was much thicker than the average Herbert book, more like the kind of doorstop Mr. King would write but, I remember I didn’t think all that much of this one. For starters it had no sex, which was always a downer. Also, it had a truly horrific scene, from what I remember. Horror books never really freaked me out but, for some reason, there was a passage which haunted me for a long time. It was when a car crashed and became a blazing inferno. My memory is that one of the passengers was trying to push their way out of the back windscreen but it had already become molten glass so instead, when they tried to push their way out, the glass just coated their face and hands and filled their now eyeless sockets. It was a horrible death scene and it stayed with me for a while.

So, in all honesty, I’m not sure whether I should be pleased or disappointed in the fact that this new movie adaptation of Herbert’s Shrine, called The Unholy, has no such scene or incident taking place. In fact, there are a few differences I can think of which, although I barely remember the novel at all, tell me this isn’t exactly a faithful version of Herbert’s work. For instance, the village of Banfield where this is set has been relocated to America... so the unique ‘Englishness’ of Herbert’s work has been lost in translation to some extent. Also, the little deaf/mute girl called Alice (played here quite brilliantly by Cricket Brown, it has to be said) has suddenly become a lot older in this version, it seems. More of an advanced teenager here. So, yeah, I won’t harp on about the pitfalls of the craft of adaptation. Decisions have been made and I suspect, if you’re a big fan of Herbert’s original work, then you may be a little disappointed.

Here’s some good news though. If you take the source material out of the equation, you get quite a nice little horror movie which, although full of conventional horror tropes and clichés, is a really fun watch. It doesn’t get all its scares right... the jumps often don’t work but, you know, some of them (enough of them) do and, I have to admit that, though it doesn’t really offer anything new to the mix (most films don’t anyway, these days) its a nice kind of old fashioned horror film.

The plot is of an evil witch who manifests herself doing miracles by appearing to Alice and curing her of being deaf and mute and also allowing her to bring others to her death site to be cured. The trade off is that people have to believe in her and commit their souls to her before she starts killing them all off. As it is, she starts with the people who doubt that she’s the Virgin Mary and a 'down on his luck', trash journalist has to find his way to the truth and stop this ancient evil (well, not that ancient, to be fair), from gaining power in the village which now holds her shrine... to stop her from exacting a vengeful destruction on everyone. And that’s about it... it doesn’t outstay its welcome as an entertainment experience.

Although the style of shooting is more modern in tone, it almost feels like it comes from the 1970s and this would make an excellent companion piece to something like The Omen, I felt. There are the obvious set ups to various set pieces such as when you are confronted by a room full of sheet covered statues (no prizes for guessing how these are going to soon be used in the scare department) and, like a lot of horror movies but maybe a tad more irritating in this, nobody seems to want to do their research on what’s going on in a place with actual good lighting, preferring to stick to dark places so they can be easily surprised by any creature of Satan hanging around.

I have to add here that the opening, pre-title sequence really is a throwback to a true staple of early 1960s horror, Mario Bava’s ‘official’ debut feature, the oft discussed and much influential Black Sunday (aka The Mask Of Satan... reviewed by me here). You may recall that this film starts off with a particularly visceral moment where the witch played by none other than horror queen Barbara Steele has a spiked, iron mask hammered onto her face. Well, the opening of this movie is a direct steel from this although, surprisingly, it doesn’t match the severity, somehow, of Bava’s black and white opening but, it’s definitely a nod in his direction for sure.

And there’s the odd, really nice scene included in the movie such as when the reporter finds a visual anomaly in some video footage he’s shot when he’s playing the digital file back on his laptop... which is perhaps too quickly thrown away as an easy scare but it’s a nice moment. And the relationship between this character and this new, slightly older version of central figure Alice is well done here too.

Added to this, there are a terrific bunch of actors in the cast. I’ve already mentioned Cricket Brown as Alice but, as the ‘journalist’ Gerry Fenn, we have Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Morgan is someone who I’ve been championing for a while and, once again here, he knocks it out of the park. He’s one of those actors who seems to be able to inhabit any character he takes on and I can’t figure out why he’s not getting much bigger roles by this point in his career. He’s pretty cool in everything I’ve seen him in (even when the film itself may not be up to scratch). We also have William Sadler (Death from the Bill and Ted films) as the priest Father Hagan (Alice’s uncle) and Cary Elwes as Bishop Gyles. Not to mention the wonderful Katie Aselton as the local doctor, who is working with Fenn to confirm the miracles are taking place... before they realise the truth about Alice’s ‘visions’.

There’s also a nice score by someone who’s become a bit typecast with horror music in recent years, Joseph Bishara. I was surprised he was on this production, actually, because it feels a lot lower budget than films which are usually scored by him, such as the Insidious or Conjuring franchises and spin offs but, yeah, a top quality score which I’ll more than likely not get to listen to away from the movie because they’ve only released an electronic download rather than release it on a proper CD. What a shame.

All in all, though... and putting the film’s source novel aside... The Unholy is a nicely put together low budget shocker which I’d be happy to watch again. I can see straight away that this would go on my list of ‘comfort horror movies’ which are nice things to just stick on the Blu Ray player from time to time. Also, the film has a nice redemptive quality where the reporter lies and diminishes his own, recovered status and poses as what everybody else sees him as rather than let the horror continue... so that’s a nice theme for the ending which elevates this one a little more in terms of the way the story has been handled. And if you’re going to go for that kind of slightly more subtle shade to a main character, then Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the guy you’re going to want playing the role for sure. If you’re a fan of ‘old school’ horror movies then you should probably get yourself down to your local cinema (if you can do it safely given the present... ‘almost on our next Covid lockdown’ status) and give this one a go. I kinda had a good time with it.

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)

Just Ace League

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)
aka Zack Snyder’s Justice League
USA 2021 Directed by Zack Snyder
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers here.

I’ve already reviewed Justice League once,  back in 2017 when the theatrical cut, which was mostly reshot and retooled by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder had to drop out for tragic reasons, was released. However, this new version released, due to fan pressure and with a lot of money spent on it, allowing Snyder to reintroduce something approximating his original cut, runs over four hours long and, although the reshoots weren’t extensive, Whedon cut out and reshot so much footage for his ‘rescue version’ (which I reviewed here and didn’t like all that much... it was okay), that there was a lot of original material both left out or existing in alternate forms and that’s why the film deserves both another look and a new, if shorter, review.

So what have we got here? Visually the film looks very different. For starters it’s in a 4:3 classic, old school movie and TV ratio which, frankly, didn’t take long for me to get used to. I suspect the film may even have been shot in this ratio for reducing optically for an original widescreen release as opposed to cropping the footage down here. It looks pretty good, in fact. I don’t know why the director has done this though. I mean, I guess I can see a point for it if he wants to say he was approximating Golden Age comic book panels but, if that was the case, why weren’t his previous two DC Universe films... Man Of Steel (reviewed here)  and Batman VS Superman: Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) also in that aspect ratio?

Secondly, the colours in this version are quite dark and muted. Not as muted and dark as they possibly are in Snyder’s alternative black and white version of this movie (which I think is only available on the UHD release) but still pretty near to as greyscale as you can get it and still have colour in it for many of the scenes.

There are pluses and minuses here too. Because of Whedon scenes which have been excised, there’s much more continuity with the previous and following films in the DC Universe. Granted, some of my favourite dialogue exchanges and action moments are gone completely but there’s a much more organic feel to the final product and its connective tissue with the other movies. That being said, a lot of the scenes which have changed are put into a completely different order. Early scenes from the first version might turn up three quarters of the way through the film and vice versa. There’s also a really problematic continuity error in this too which I can only suspect comes from the way the story now plays out. It comes when, near the final set piece of the movie, Alfred The Butler (played once again by Jeremy Irons) is introduced by Ben Affleck’s Batman to Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa)... regardless of the fact that, in the way the film plays out here, he has already met at least two of the team by this point. It felt like a bit of a jarring mis-step, to be honest. When he meets Henry Cavill as Superman, it plays out far more naturally.

The story has been enhanced by not only featuring Steppenwolf but also Darkseid in the film as ‘the big bad super villain’ behind the scenes (much like Thanos was to Phases One and Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). This all works really well though and, for the most part, the whole storyline involving all the previously unseen elements and the new, enhanced CGI on pretty much everything, is actually a heck of a lot better than the studio cut, I have to say. This version makes a lot more sense and is much more attention grabbing, I thought.

Other things of note are as follows...

Well, it was nice to see more action from one of the Green Lantern Corps but I think the first appearance here of J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter was problematic at best. Why in heck would he be checking out Lois Lane? His appearance at the end of the film is not something which solves this conundrum either and I think his first transformation to show he was posing as Martha Kent really undermined the scene where Martha and Lois Lane are bonding in grief over Superman’s death.

The scene where the newly formed Justice League bring Superman back from the dead is by an entirely different method and makes much more sense, integrated into the Motherbox plot line in a much more believable way... although it has pretty much the same outcome as it did in the theatrical cut, it has to be said.

The replacement music by Junkie XL is interesting. The director jettison’s Danny Elfman’s original score which had recycled John William’s Superman The Movie theme and Elfman’s  own Batman theme from the Tim Burton films and uses the established leitmotif of the current DC Universe, like Zimmer’s Man Of Steel and Wonder Woman themes, in a much more appropriate manner. Again, the music seems more integrated into the DCU movies as a whole. Alas, it’s only been released as a compromised, electronic download rather than as a proper CD so, I guess I won’t get to hear it as a stand alone listen anytime soon. Which is a shame.

All this adds up to a much more dynamic and satisfying version of Justice League, I have to admit... which was a little surprising. Also, although some of my favourite Wonder Woman/Diana Prince scenes have been excised, there are other scenes with her in and even the ones which did make their way into the theatrical cut, such as her rescue of the school kids in the Old Bailey in London, are much more interestingly handled here and seem like light years away from the Whedon cut. And Snyder even manages to restore the London skyline to something more resembling the real London, in that shot where Gal Gadot is standing by the Scales of Justice, as opposed to the more pastiched caricature of a US guess at the London skyline from the theatrical release... which is kind of nice, actually.

The last ten minutes or so are Snyder laying down the threads for what would come in what was to be his proposed continuation of the series. It’s got a lot of stuff going on and seems pretty bleak, it has to be said. It’s also there, I’m sure, just to get the fans ramped up again so he can get to make the next one but, well, it remains to be seen, I think, whether the suits at Warner Brothers are ready to indulge him or not. As it is though, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a much better movie than its predecessor and I certainly found it entertaining. It’s certainly nowhere near the best of the DC superhero movies by a long chalk but it’s pretty good and worth catching up with if superhero movies are your thing. Definitely worth another, augmented glance, for sure.

A Quiet Place Part 2

Silence Running

A Quiet Place Part 2
2020 USA Directed by John Krasinski
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Spoilers for the first movie, if you’ve not seen that one.

A Quiet Place Part 2 is, obviously, the sequel to John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place from a few years ago (reviewed here) and, like Krasinski, I was somewhat sceptical of the idea of a sequel. The first film is such a brilliant, modern version of an old 1950s style sci-fi horror movie, with well timed scares galore, that a sequel involving the giant, grasshopper like aliens (and they do seem to be aliens, it’s visually confirmed at the start of this movie) who have the weakness of sounds in a certain tonal range seems a bit of a one trick pony in terms of what you could do for a follow up and, in truth, it kind of is. However, when the trick is repeated in variations equally as convincingly and as potently as this one... well I’m glad Krasinski was finally convinced to write and direct the sequel because, frankly, he’s made another one of the best of these sci-fi horror movies and the two work together so well as an organic whole that, well, I don’t have enough words to say how brilliant this sequel is.

Once again he directs his real life wife, the always amazing Emily Blunt as Evelyn, Noah Jupe as her son Marcus and last, but by no means least, the remarkable Millicent Simmonds playing the deaf daughter Regan. Blunt and Jupe are absolutely brilliant in this but, like the first one, Simmonds is just so impressive here that her screen presence just sets the film ablaze whenever she’s on.

Now, the cynic in me would ask why we’d also need the acting presence of John Krasinski in the movie. After all, the father had died, sacrificing himself for his children’s survival at the end of the last film. However, he’s found a way to really make it work in an extended pre-credits flashback sequence which is anything but redundant. It’s a look at Day 1 of the giant bug invasion and we see it all starting, leading into some elements from the last film and with some nice call backs... such as his other young toddler son who we saw killed brutally in the first sequence of the last movie. This pre-credits section does two important things...

One, it reminds the audience just how lethal these creatures are, who have no sight but hunt by sound, re-enforcing the idea that people should all be very quiet when they’re around. So the tension is set up straight away and you remember to fear the presence of these monsters all over again. Secondly, though, it introduces a new character called Emmett, played by the wonderful Cillian Murphy. It’s a chance to see how his character was before the invasion and what his relationship with the central family is, so we can later witness how his character has become slowly devastated and desensitised by the act of his own survival. It’s a nice touch and really sets up things emotionally for the audience.

After this it’s a simple story but shot in a slightly convoluted way, taking on a  few dark turns as it weaves its way from the closing day of the last film into a progression towards two objectives, one of which is just to find other people, the other of which is... something which should be obvious but which is given as a big dose of hope to ensure that one of the characters ‘swallows the pill’, so to speak... and accepts the mission. Like any good horror movie director, Krasinski manages to divide the new group of five... the original family minus the dad but plus the youngster born towards the end of the last film and Cillian Murphy’s new character... so that we have three terrifying story elements going on at once in extended set pieces cross cutting with each other. These include some beautiful transitional shots and edits such as the swing of a rifle and torch to the right of screen becoming a door in another location being opened at the same speed and direction. It’s deft and wonderful stuff, to be sure.

 At some point Krasinski merges two of the groups back together for more horror while Millicent Simmonds and Cillian Murphy are off facing both the big bugs and new dangers I won’t go into... while also meeting up with Djimon Hounsou and accidentally bringing horror to a colony of survivors before their mission is accomplished, such as it is. And while both remaining pieces of action are still crosscutting, we have the lovely moment where the actions of one character in one strand of this adventure, due to an acceptable contrivance, saves three other characters in a totally different location two days journey from themselves. It also is a nice moment which shows the children in both segments as the hope of the future as much as anything else and the shot of a hearing aid next to a broadcast microphone probably says something much more clever than the likes of myself could understand as some kind of a metaphor for the hearing impaired saving the world... in some ways.

And all this with Marco Beltrami’s wonderful follow up score too, which is suitably terrifying and moving when called for and which, I’m happy to say, has been released as a limited edition CD from La La Land records... I’ve got mine on order from the US and I’m looking forward to appreciating the score away from the images it helps support.

And I don’t have much more to say on this one, I guess. John Krasinski has once again managed to fashion a truly stellar horror movie which works on pretty much all levels and which is, surprisingly, the equal of the first. I’d recommend A Quiet Place Part 2 to pretty much anyone who likes these kinds of movies (as I would the first) and I can’t wait to grab a Blu Ray when it’s released. But, honestly, go see it at the cinema because, once again, the sound design is superb and Krasinski plays with it to enhance the fear and also throw in a few audio red herrings here and there. A prefect cinema film and that’s where it initially needs to be seen. Go tell your friends!