In Darkness (2018) Dir. Anthony Byrne A blind pianist has a very vague acquaintance with a seemingly troubled young woman in her apartment building, who occupies the apartment right above hers. One night, she hears what sounds like an argument and a subsequent struggle coming from upstairs, followed shortly by her neighbor seemingly leaping from her balcony to her death. When the police come to interview her, she somehow decides to not tell them what she heard, but instead seemingly starts an investigation of her own for motives which are initially unclear, which leads her to the girl's shady father. This started out decently but then got increasingly silly. Some of the camera work and lighting is obviously meant to reference De Palma, only the director lacks De Palma's talent. It is saved somewhat by Natalie Dormer, a terrific actress who can shine even in material that isn't quite up to her talent. I suspect most viewers will have seen the twist at the ending coming from a mile away. Features Neill Maskell in a good performance as a police inspector who turns out to be much sharper than he appears at first glance, though Maskell has to watch out not to be perpetually typecast in such roles. There's even a small Belgian factor with Jan Bijvoet playing the main villain of the piece, unfortunately he lacks the dark charisma required to pull off this role.
Don't Hang Up (2016) Dir. Damien Macé & Alexis Wasjbrot A small group of teenagers spend some of their free time getting drunk and creating videos in which they make cruel prank calls which they upload to the internet. Some of these prank calls manage to truly scare their victims but none of them seem particularly bothered by this reality, merely amused. One night, two of them start getting phonecalls of their own, which become increasingly threatening and sinister until they spill over into actual physical violence. A pretty derivative horror thriller that is almost devoid of likable characters (apart from the girlfriend of one of the two protagonists). This is a creative choice that makes it harder to keep the audience interested, since it's hard to root for victims that are almost as terrible as the Big Bad. You can get away with that choice, but then your writing has to be a lot better than this screenplay. As a side-note, what happened to Sienna Guillory's career that she now has to take on small supporting roles in small-budget horror films? Not that she was ever the biggest movie star, but she had a very respectable Hollywood career not too long ago. Incidentally, her presence in this film also means that this cast has two actresses who at one point in their career played Helen of Troy, which is a totally useless but fairly unique bit of trivia.
Blow-up (1966) Thomas Hemmings gets his Swinging London fame from his fashion photography, but his true passion is photography of all kinds. Strolling though a wooded park looking for a counterpoint image for his art book of world suffering, he sees a couple kissing playfully and starts taking pictures. They see him - the man is slightly perturbed, the woman is visibly upset, and goes to Thomas to get the negatives, which he doesn't want to give up. She later shows up at his studio and uses every trick in the book to get the negatives. Thomas gives her an empty roll. There must be something interesting in those images. Time to make some really big pictures. Full of fantastic mod style, but don't think this is some paean or celebration of it. It feels flimsy, tacked onto what came before and only built to last the moment and no more. And while Thomas is deep into the style and drugs and women and thinking, he craves something more - he has (wait, what was my catchphrase 5 years ago? oh yeah) la passion du réel. That's why he made that art book full of suffering. But this thing in the park was even more real - it was right there, life and death, and he could touch it. Maybe(?) influence it. But it (rather brilliantly, I think) just poofs as if it was a dream. Maybe it's the difference between American and British thinking. In Blow Out and The Conversation, we colonials get out noses right in there and maybe it won't work out, but by God we are going to know. In Blow-Up, he just gets the knowledge that bigger things than him take place, and then the emptiness of never being able to know anything about it. We are all so tiny. Better to get back to the illusion. The real isn't all its cracked up to be.
The Fall - season 1 (2013) A coldly rational criminalist goes to Belfast to review a stalled investigation into the murder of the ex-wife of the son of a wealthy and powerful industrialist. It turns out that the murder is just one of a series of deaths in which young, early thirty-something professional women are strangled in their bedrooms and then elaborately posed. The woman's review of the investigation turns into her becoming the lead investigator into all linked crimes, due to her greater experience and seniority in such cases compared to the resident officers and inspectors in Belfast. At the same time, we meet and follow the murderer, both during his nightly crimes and his day life, in which he holds up the facade of a kindly grief counselor and loving family man. Finally got around to checking out the first season of this. Whilst it's definitely well-acted by both Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan (who is genuinely terrifying as the killer) I thought this was far more conventional than I thought it would be. It doesn't really break the mold of a serial killer drama so much as it mostly conforms to it, albeit in a manner that is well done all around. Not just the acting, but also the directing (I believe this was Jakob Verbruggen's first high profile foreign gig). I'm curious about the second season but on the other hand, I have heard that the first season is by far the best and I fear that this means the two other seasons will descend into silliness.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) Dir. Christopher McQuarrie Ethan Hunt's new mission is to retrieve three nuclear warheads which have been stolen from a Russian base. The remnants of Solomon Lane's Syndicate, which has now redubbed itself as "The Apostles" is also after the warheads, with the express aim to use them in one coordinated nuclear attack. An attempt in Berlin to retrieve the warheads fails because Ethan prioritizes saving a member of his team over keeping the warheads out of The Apostles hands. Because of this, the IMF is no longer deemed trustworthy and the CIA assigns a watchdog to their team in the form of wetwork specialist Walker, with whom Hunt immediately forges a mutual dislike. When the team lands in Paris for a second attempt to retrieve the warheads, they run into a familiar face in the process. Like all of the Mission: Impossible sequels this is very silly. But if you go into it in the right frame of mind and try not to focus on the silliness of the plot, which includes double- and triple-crosses, facemasks, characters showing up at certain locations because it's convenient for the plot and not because it makes sense, ... if instead you should choose to accept the almost unrelenting forward momentum of this film and the quick progression of action set pieces, many of them done almost entirely with practical effects and spectacular stunts, you will find out that this is an especially well-made action movie. With a Tom Cruise who is frankly doing insane stunt for a then 55-year old man. Also, Ilsa is now the most interesting female character this franchise has produced, by some margin. This movie left me wanting more, which is frankly not what you'd expect the sixth movie in a now 22-year old movie franchise to do.
Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Dir. J.A. Bayona Years after the events of "Jurassic World", the dinosaurs left behind at the former site of the park on Isla Nublar are threatened by an impending volcanic eruption that will likely wipe out the animals. There is a fierce debate among the governments of the world if they should intervene and save the animals or let them go back extinct. Owen and Claire have both moved on in their own way: Owen has chosen to more or less leave society behind and live on his own whilst Claire works to convince government officials to save the dinosaurs she was once the de facto caretaker of. An unexpected chance arrives in the form of an offer by the company belonging to Benjamin Lockwood, John Hammond's old business partner and friend. He wants to save the animals and bring them to a sanctuary. To do so, they need the help of both Claire and Owen. Claire for her access to the park's monitoring system and Owen because of his personal connection to Blue, the sole surviving Velociraptor. I agree with the criticism that much of this film is total nonsense that has little to do with the almost old-fashioned charm of Spielberg's original film. On the other hand, I found much of that nonsense quite entertaining. From the recurring visual motif of Claire's heels/sensible shoes (an inside joke at the expense of "Jurassic World") to the nods made to Spielberg's original films, to the references to the "Alien" franchise (especially in the third act) I thought this was an effective action adventure film with two charming leads in Bryce Dallas Howard and Christ Pratt. The villains are a bit lightweight in comparison but this is mostly about the dinosaurs anyway. Though there is a certain truth to a line of dialogue from the previous movie, "These days, kids look at a Stegosaurus like an elephant from the city zoo". The same applies to our supposed sense of wonder when seeing these animals rendered realistically on screen. However much that worked for the original film, after five films in this franchise and countless other movies that have drawn from the same well, that aspect of the series is all but tapped out. Still, I found this a laudable effort if you are content with a movie that is merely entertaining and not necessarily memorable.
Skyscraper (2018) Dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber An FBI hostage negotiator get seriously injured during an intervention in which he misjudges a situation causing the death of the hostage taker, the hostage taker's child and several of his team members as well as causing him serious injuries. Years later, the man has somewhat rebuilt his life by marrying the surgeon who saved his life, having started a family with her and managing to make a new career out of doing security audits for buildings. A former friend of his FBI days gets him a high-paying high doing such an audit for a futuristic new highrise in Hong Kong that is set to open once it gets the all clear. Unfortunately, a group of criminals is trying to blackmail the developer of the building and our hero gets in the middle of this huge mess. 'Lets make a hybrid of "Die Hard" and "The Towering Inferno" (with some "The Lady from Shanghai" sprinkled on top) starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson' is actually not the worst movie pitch in the world. I don't know how the Rock makes these things work but he does. Obviously almost every action set piece is completely ridiculous to a certain extent (though the one in which climbs the side of the building using duct tape is an epic instant classic in that regard) but it's the Rock doing those stunts so you can't look away. Also, Neve Campbell as his wife was kind of good? Hannah Quinlivan plays a quasi-clone of the character played by Maggie Q in "Live Free or Die Hard", but she has more charisma in her pinkie than the rest of the bad guys put together so it's unfortunate her screen time is so limited.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018) Dir. Susan Johnson Lara Jean is the middle child to a widowed father, stuck in between her more confident older sister Margot and her popular younger sister Kitty. Shortly after Margot departs for college in Scotland, dumping her boyfriend - the boy next door - in the process, Kitty gets Lara Jean in trouble by sending a box of unsent love letters that Lara Jean wrote over the years to all the boys she ever had a crush on out to the boys in question. Among them are a popular jock at school as well as her older sister's now ex-boyfriend. To keep the latter at bay, she agrees to the jock's idea of pretending to be a real couple to make his ex-girlfriend - who has moved on with a college boy herself - jealous. This got a lot of love on social media, enough that I thought it worthwhile to check it out. I would say that the writing is pretty straightforward and not necessarily very original for high school rom-coms. The films biggest asset are its two leads, two incredibly charming young performers in Lana Condor and Noah Centineo. Centineo in particular has charisma to spare. Whilst I thought this was far from terrible, I don't really see how it's the movie that might revive the genre somewhat, as some have made it out to be.
Call the @!%&^*$#@ Midwife Season Seven Holy M********* ***** ******* ********. What a ********* ********** *************** these charlatans ********* ********* ********* us. What was once *********** ************* ***** ***** ******** mawkish ***** ********* derivative ***** *** *******. ****** ***** ****** and ****** **. Sigh.
When BBC shows go bad, it's usually because of a change in the writing crew. Worst I ever saw was the 3rd and last season of Lenny Henry's show, Chef, which was horrid. Now I want to start watching this series . . . It might be worse.
What Keeps You Alive (2018) Dir. Colin Minihan Jules' wife Jackie takes them a trip to a lakeside home in the woods that has belonged to her family for generations, to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary. What is meant to be a romantic trip turns into something else when the stay reveals certain things about Jackie: a neighbor who knows Jackie from her childhood addresses her as Megan and subtly suggests to Jules that there were some dark episodes in her wife's past. Then Jules finds out that she doesn't know her wife at all and is in fact married to a veritable monster. This was pretty good. It's basically a genre exercise that we have seen before but the role played by Hannah Emily Anderson here is usually played by an actor and not an actress. She is genuinely terrifying and Brittany Allen makes for a good foil. Both of them need to be good, because they are the only two actors on screen for the large majority of the movie. If I have one quibble with it it's that the final fifteen to twenty minutes require another degree of suspension of disbelief from the rest of the film, which makes this a jarring transition. Not that any of this is mean to be realistic. I believe the blood-soaked state that Jules is in for much of the film as well as her styling are both references to "Haute Tension" (know as "Switchblade Romance" in English-speaking territories).
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Dir. Ron Howard Han Solo is a young man surviving on Corellia, intent on escaping with his love Qi'ra. When they do attempt an escape after having stolen something from their captor, only Han makes it out, with Qi'ra being recaptured. To escape Corellia, he joins the Imperial Navy, but is kicked out and reduced in status as an infantry grunt in some backwater war on a muddy planet. By chance, he meets a group of mercenaries who are there on a job and who - quite reluctantly - hire him and the Wookie he also happens to encounter on the same planet due to a shortage of reliable hands. Han and Chewie accept because they want off the planet and this is their best chance at doing so. This puts him on a path which will eventually reunite Han with his old lover, but is she still the same woman he left behind on Corellia years ago? As the first of the Disney Star Wars movies to fail at the box office and considering its lukewarm reception by critics, I went into this with low expectations. Especially since I thought that giving us the backstory to Han Solo is a terrible idea in and of itself, since part of his mystique is that we don't know his exact background. The movie hasn't changed my mind on that front, I don't think Han Solo is a more interesting character due to this film, but I did find out that "Solo: A Star Wars Story" is a surprisingly charming and effective action adventure with some terrific performances (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover outshine everyone else in their supporting roles). It borrows heavily from several sources (the Indiana Jones trilogy, Le Salaire de La Peur, the western 'Seven Men from Now') but it's very much its own film as well. I think I have to rank this as my second favorite of the Disney Star Wars films, with only "Rogue One" ahead of it because that movie had a dramatic gravitas in its third act especially that "Solo" lacks. It's actually amazing how good this film could turn out considering its very problematic production history, which include a change of director in the middle of the shoot. I think Ron Howard gives an advert that they perhaps should not give this franchise to young auteurs but capable old craftsmen. But then, since Irvin Kershner directed the best ever Star Wars film back in 1981, we have kind of always known that.
Blood Fest (2018) Dir. Owen Egerton Dax grew up watching horror movies, a passion he shared with his mother prior to her death. His father hates the movies, mostly for their glorification of violence and the fact that his wife died in a violent incident. When Blood Fest arrives, a huge horror festival, Dax' father is dead set against his son attending. Dax ignores his father's wishes and goes to the festival with his two best friends, Sam and Krill. Shortly after their arrival, it is revealed that the night of horror they are meant to experience is more real than they might have wished for and what started out as a night of fun turns into a fight for survival. A pretty average exercise in horror-comedy. They obviously want to have fun with horror tropes but either they had no real interest in doing it properly or no real knowledge of the tropes they were hoping to spoof. It means that the true laughs are few and far between and the horror aspects of the story aren't potent enough for this to work as a straight horror movie. As such, the most enjoyable moment in the film is a certain cameo I won't ruin here but which is made entirely by the performer's innate charm.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) Dir. Stefano Sollima Years after the events of the first movie, Matt Graver gets carte blanche to use the skills he honed over his time fighting dirty wars in the Middle-East to exact revenge on a cartel which has used its resources to help smuggle Islamist terrorists into the U.S. who carry out a successful attack in Kansas City. The 250aim is to facilitate a war between the cartel who carried out the human trafficking of the terrorists in question and his competitors. To do so, they aim to kidnap the cartel leader's 16-year old daughter and make it appear as if a rival cartel is responsible. To that end, Matt once again seeks out Alejandro to help him with the dirtiest aspects of the job. But when things go south during the execution fo their mission, the two men go apart and find themselves on opposites sides of the conflict, with the girl they have kidnapped as the prize. In general I am not as enamored with Taylor Sheridan's so-called border trilogy as some are. "Sicario", "Hell or High Water" and "Wind River" are all decent films, but the quality of the writing was not proportional to the critical praise that was lavished upon them. In this "Sicario" sequel, Sheridan sheds all pretenses of any intelligent subtext to make a movie that sensationalizes and at times glorifies the violence that the drug trade and human trafficking have caused in their wake. The performances are still good, but the writing is too lacking to elevate this above merely an action thriller that side-steps a few tropes of the genre.
American Vandal - Season 2 (2018) After the success of their webseries "American Vandal", Peter and Sam find their show purchased by Netflix. They also get the opportunity to make a second series, which their teacher approves of as a way for them to earn credit in his class. After going through a selection process in which the weirdest cases are offered to them from people all over the country, they are contacted by a girl in an out-of-state Catholic private school who offers them the chance to cover a case that is too good to pass up: an individual calling themselves the Turd Burglar has been committing poop-related pranks on school campus. The blame is quickly shifted to an awkward loner named Kevin McClaine after his best friend rats him out to the school administration. The girl who contacted the teen documentarians, Chloe, is also a friend of Kevin's who believes he is innocent. The two boys do their thing, discovering lots of weirdness and hilarity along the way, as per usual. I wasn't sure that a second season of this would work, but it does. I do still prefer season one, for the newness of it all as well as the terrific lead performance by Jimmy Trato as Dylan Maxwell. There isn't such a stand-out performance this year, but they have replaced the dick jokes with poop jokes and it actually gets quite dark and serious at times when they cover subjects like teen loneliness, code switching, the effects of class and wealth and the trappings and dangers of social media use. Also, shout-out to the "Horsehead Collective".
The Black Panther Meh. I think BG called this movie the triumph of character over plot and he'd correct, as far as it goes. But, it's still a super hero movie, so let's not presume that anything is going to be too deep here: this is a simple revenge story where the bad guy's father was killed when he was a kid, and now he's come home to conquer the world. I am soooooo very tired of super hero movies with a magic power source.... One of my hopes for a "new" kind of super hero movie is that we'd be spared the obligatory car chase. No such luck here. I am completely baffled as to how this film could be considered Oscar Worthy. I'm all for blacks being cast as leading and secondary and tertiary actors. This movie is just, umm, bland. Plus, that action sequences are lame. The armored, charging rhinos are CGI'ed at the level of Jumanji (original) animation. They were hard to take seriously. I've read that Marvel will no longer show their movies on Netflix in 2019. I don't think I'm going to miss them.
I think Walter Chaw eloquently touched upon the conundrum of fully appreciating the realization of this film from a non-black perspective (he himself is an Asian-American):
Mandy (2018) Dir. Panos Cosmatos Red and his wife Mandy live in a secluded home in the woods. One day, Mandy attracts the attention of Jeremiah, the leader of a cult. With what appears to be a supernatural assist, the cult members descend upon their home. In the aftermath, Red goes on an existential rampaging bout of vengeance. To call this movie a bit bonkers is an understatement in the same category as calling Donald J. Trump not the greatest of American presidents. Especially the second half of the movie is a crazy, trippy mix of general nuttiness that includes but is not limited to demonic biker gangs, prophetic acid cooks, chainsaw duels and a mother********ing tiger. This is the movie that Nicolas Cage has been working up to star in for the past decade, decade and a half. It's completely nutty, but in a good way and it's hard to think an actor of a similar stature who could conceivably star in this, at least if it is meant to work to a similar extent. His delivery of the line "You ripped my shirt" is going straight into the Nic Cage pantheon, as well as the bathroom scene in which he is treating his wounds with vodka whilst chugging the drink in equal measure. Andrea Riseborough gives a similarly great performance, which requires her to shed all vanity and go for some truly weird vibes. There are too many references for me to even try to list them all, but things I'm fairly certain to have influenced Panos Cosmatos for this film are "City of the Dead", Italian Giallo cinema in general (mostly for the visual style), "Possession" and "Braindead". Then he used a good helping of Heavy Metal comics as the cherry on top. When the credits rolled, I noticed quite a few Belgian names among the crew and I was right about that. Not only that, but I subsequently found out this was largely shot in Belgium, in the area of Chaudfontaine. To my shame, I did not know this until now.
Damsel (2018) Dir. David Zellner & Nathan Zellner Samuel arrives on the frontier with a clear mission in mind: tracking down his long lost love Penelope and marrying her on the spot. To that end, he hires the services of a preacher, a bereaved, alcoholic man who is to marry Samuel and Penelope once his quest is finished. But is Samuel telling the truth about the goal of mission as well as the nature of his relationship with Penelope? A tonally quirky dark comedy that is held together by three strong performances: Robert Pattinson (who has become a very interesting actor over the past decade), Mia Wasikowska (reliably good) and co-director/actor David Zellner. Some parts of it reminded me of similarly quirky westerns like "Slow West" and the Coen brothers' remake of "True Grit".
I am an American-educated Chinese male from Hong kong. Seriously, the topic of the movies was interesting for me. I am an alumni of "X" University in the US. The University in the 1990's was seen as a place of rich Asian foreign students. I grew up with a lot of kids similar to the ones portrayed in the movies. Yes, I did. I was radicalised by Asian Americans while I was a graduate student in another college. I knew a lot about the portrayal of Asians in Hollywood. So I do understand the racial aspect of the movie. It is more than a comedy. Let's say i saw things that normal Asian viewers cannot see. Are they trying to say something here? I will probably need to spend anther 3 hours writing what I thought of the movie.
This film as well as "To All the Boys I Loved" before are credited with causing a rom-com renaissance. I will definitely try to see it when I get the chance.
He's Out There (2018) Dir. Quinn Lasher Laura drives ahead with her two young daughters to her family's lake house in a secluded forested area, with her husband intending to join them later that night due to his job keeping him in the city a bit longer. A strange figure appears to be watching them during the day and then as night falls, he starts to harass them in increasingly more frightening ways, until it becomes clear that they will have to fight for their lives until morning comes. Not a very original horror thriller but still somewhat worthwhile seeing thanks to the strong leading performance provided by Yvonne Strahovski. I would say she is a criminally underrated actress but it appears that her turn on "The Handmaid's Tale" has finally earned her some long overdue recognition. The two young performers are also quite excellent. The story is too paint by the numbers for this genre to leave any lasting impression.