The Handmaiden is on its way into UK cinemas right now. It seems to be getting a great deal of attention and a decent marketing push so hopefully if you're interested in seeing it, you should be able to find it in a cinema near you.
Here's a snippet of my review...
Erotic, emotionally charged and unsurprisingly laced with a splatter of torture, The Handmaiden
is a return to both Chan-wook’s thematic preoccupations and native
Korean language after his English language debut, the wonderfully eerie Stoker. Told in three parts, The Handmaiden
is no step back for the auteur, even if it not only repeats itself in
its own internal structure, but also traverses similar territory to his
previous films. The three parts are central to the twists in the story
as Korean thief Sookee is employed to be the handmaiden of Japanese
heiress Hideko in part one. Sookee is actually in the employ of a fake
Count who is keen to swindle Hideko out of her fortune by seducing and
marrying her and then having the poor woman driven mad and locked up in
an asylum. Sookee’s job is to convince Hideko that she really does love
the Count, and in return Sookee will receive a portion of the fortune.
But when Hideko and Sookee start to feel a growing lust and affection
for each other, allegiances are tested...
A Dark Song seems to be floating around the place recently with a limited release. If you want to see Steve Oram as you've never seen him before, give it a chance.
Here's the gist of it:
Sophia
(Catherine Walker) lost her son three years ago and is now determined
to make contact with him by hiring alcoholic occultist Joseph Solomon
(Steve Oram). When we meet Sophia, she is forking out a large amount of
cash for a secluded old house in the Welsh countryside and asking the
letting agent for privacy. Soon, Mr Solomon (as he is strictly to be
called) arrives and the torturous process of invocation can begin.
Sophia has been prepped for the difficulties that lie ahead, but is
fully committed to submitting to Mr Solomon’s authority and abuse as he
has assured her that she will be able to speak to her son again.
One of my favourite films of the London Film Festival 2016 is released in UK cinemas this weekend. Here's a snippet of my review of Trespass Against Us which stars Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson.
With
its frequent references to Christianity, it's unsurprising to find a holy
trinity of perfect performances at the heart of Trespass Against Us. A towering
Brendan Gleeson plays domineering father to reluctant criminal Chad (Michael
Fassbender), who is hoping for a better life for his own son Tyson (Georgie
Smith). As three generations of the Cutler family, Gleeson, Fassbender and
Smith are a force to be reckoned with in this exceptional crime drama.
The caravan-dwelling Cutlers commit
robberies and clash with the police constantly, led by Rory Kinnear’s P.C.
Lovage. Chad and his wife Kelly (Lyndsey Marshal, also excellent) want out of
the criminal life, attempting to get a secure home and keep their two children
in school. But Gleeson’s ‘Pa’ Cole has other ideas, pushing Chad into a heist
that will bring down the full force of the law upon them all. Like the doomed
kids of American ghetto movies, Chad finds himself torn between the life he has
been born and raised into where criminality is an everyday occurrence, and
another life where he may only find disappointment and prejudice...
Director Xavier Dolan's latest film It's Only the End of the World is currently in cinemas and despite a very mixed reaction from critics, I was very impressed with it. But then, to be fair, I'll watch anything with Vincent Cassell in it! Here's a snippet of my review from the London Film Festival:
Xavier
Dolan becomes the Roland Emmerich of melodrama with his apocalyptic family
reunion in It’s Only the End of the World. Not even a single plate gets smashed
as a French family collide over a single day, but the emotional devastation is
worth more than a thousand alien spaceships smashing their way into the planet.
It might not really be the end of the world, but for these characters, there
may never be another chance for them to express their heightened emotions.
For writer Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) however,
time is most definitely running out. With his terminal illness weighing heavily
on his mind, Louis returns to his family home after a twelve year absence to
tell his mother, brother and sister that he is dying. His older brother Antoine
(Vincent Cassel) is filled with resentment for everyone around him, younger
sister Suzanne (Lea Seydoux) barely knows the brother who left when she was
only a child and Antoine’s wife Catherine (Marion Cotillard) is meeting Louis
for the first time. As tensions boil between the siblings, Louis must find the
right time to deliver his devastating news.
Prevenge is out in cinemas as we speak. No doubt it will be available in other formats very soon as I don't think it is getting a very wide release. If you're thinking about watching it in a London cinema this week, or you are reading this at some undisclosed point in the future and considering watching the DVD, then check out my review below from the London Film Festival...
Alice Lowe writes, directs and stars as the
pregnant Ruth, mourning the man who got her knocked up and hell bent on taking
some revenge on the people she considers responsible for her lover’s death. While
the baby girl inside her eggs her on by talking to Ruth and urging her to kill,
Ruth must balance the ordinary challenges of pregnancy, while simultaneously ticking
off names on her kill list and taking out anyone who gets in her way.
Prevenge plays on every mother’s fears of
bringing a baby into the world. While Lowe was really pregnant as she took on
the lead role, she might have poured out her major concerns about the world around
her, but she still maintains a wicked sense of humour. Prevenge is a slasher
film with a pitch black sense of humour, finding the mirth in murder and
undercutting expectations of what society expects of a pregnant woman at every
opportunity.
Did I ever tell you about the time I followed Paul Schrader from a cinema he'd just given a Q and A in, back to his hotel across Leicester Square? No I didn't, because it's a strange thing to do and this story has a totally unsatisfactory ending. Basically, at LFF this year, I saw Schrader's new film Dog Eat Dog and then the director participated in a Q and A. Afterwards, I saw him walking from the cinema and decided I'd go and shake his hand. For some reason, I didn't just stroll up and shake his hand immediately and instead thought it fascinating that a man as famous (to movie lovers anyway) as Schrader could walk around the centre of London unnoticed. So I followed him, slightly in awe that he was just casually walking around the Square. I thought I'd go and shake his hand in a minute and let him enjoy not being bothered by film fans. Alas, twas not to be as Mr Schrader then walked inside a hotel and disappeared from my life forever.
Anyway, the film Dog Eat Dog is released in UK cinemas on Friday 18th November so here's a snippet of my review:
Based on the novel by real-life criminal Eddie Bunker, Dog
Eat Dog is the tale of three jailbirds fresh out of the joint, who while
looking to make some fast money, become embroiled in a plot to steal a baby
from a rival gangster. With so much stupidity and psychopathic tendencies on
display from the central trio, it's not a surprise that nothing goes to plan.
Opening with a talk show interviewee
spouting some nonsense about making the world safer by having more people
carrying guns, Dog Eat Dog feels like it’s perhaps going to be a contemporary
crime thriller with something interesting to say. No such luck. Stuck in the
typical gangster milieu of strip clubs and sleazy bars, with its grizzled old
ex-cons spouting casually racist lines and engaging in bad taste ‘comedy’
killing scenes, this feels like Schrader trying to emulate Tarantino and all
the hip young filmmakers who probably grew up adoring Schrader’s early output
with Scorsese at the helm.
Trolls was the Family Gala film at the 2016 London Film Festival and was released in UK cinemas in October. Surprisingly, it's not as bad as it sounds. Read my full Trolls review at Starburst Magazine here. Here's the synopsis:
Justin Timberlake’s Branch is the only Troll with an understandable sense of
unease that dreaded monsters the Bergens are desperate to find the
eye-poppingly bright community of trolls living blissfully carefree in
the woods. Twenty years earlier, the Trolls escaped the clutches of the
Bergens, who are such a bunch of miserable creatures that they can only
find happiness when they eat the multicoloured-haired Trolls. Branch
warns his fellow trolls not to have parties full of loud singing and
glittery fireworks, but will the irrepressible Princess Poppy and the
other trolls listen?
No, they bloody won't, the annoying little buggers. No wonder Branch
is miserable and hiding in a hole in the ground. So when the Bergen head
chef finds the trolls and carries some off to Bergen town to turn into
tasty treats, Poppy must enlist Branch to help her in rescuing her
friends so that they don't miss out on anymore scheduled hug times,
singing, dancing, and lest we forget... scrapbooking.
Just a quick note to say I was lucky enough to get to recently interview Jeremy Saulnier, the director of Green Room and Blue Ruin and also actor Callum Turner who plays Tiger, the lead singer of punk band the Ain't Rights in Green Room.
Here's a snippet of my review of the film:
"Punk band Ain't Rights are going nowhere fast, playing crappy gigs
and siphoning petrol just to keep their clapped-out tour van running. After an
interview with a local journalist and a disappointing take from their latest
gig, they hear of a backwoods gig where they can make some quick and easy cash.
The only rub is the clientele at the venue are far right (or are they extreme
left?) nutters and Ain't Right don't help matters by opening with a cover of
The Dead Kennedy’s Nazi Punks.
However, the poop really hits the fan when they witness a murder
backstage in the green room and find themselves trapped in the venue by those
who don't want them to get out alive. Led by Patrick Stewart's gang leader and
venue owner, an army of skinhead 'red laces' are soon lining up to pick off the
band members of Ain't Rights one by one."
The interviews with both Callum Turner and Jeremy Saulnier are both up at Starburst Magazine now and Green Room recently came out on Blu-ray and DVD so if you didn't catch it at the cinema (and not enough people did), then you should most certainly think about getting yourself a copy now. Or I'll send round Patrick Stewart to knock some sense into you.
You've got to wonder where the parents of Heather and James
Donahue are, and what exactly they think they're doing. We didn't see them
before their daughter got lost in The Blair Witch Project and now they've only
gone and let their son James wander off in search of his sister 20 years later.
Surely one of the parents might have advised against this madness.
And so Blair Witch begins with director Adam Wingard (The
Guest, You’re Next) taking us back into the haunted woods of Burkitsville as another
group of camera-carrying crazies go in search of the elusive Elly Kedward. This
time there’s six doomed younglings; James Donahue was four when Heather
disappeared, Lisa wants to make a documentary on James’ ill-advised search for
his missing sister, and their friends Peter and Ashley are just along for moral
support (and to handily up the body count and prove that in horror, black guys
are still first on the kill list). The four friends are then joined by oddballs
Lane (darknet666) and Talia who uploaded footage to YouTube that they claim
to have found on a tape in the woods. The shaky camera video appears to show a
female figure in a house just like the one at the end of Heather’s original
project. Is Heather still alive after all these years, or is the Blair Witch up
to her old tricks again?
No points if you guess the answer, but prepare for another
bumpy ride on you’re way to the climax. Blair Witch ditches much of the
ambiguity of the original film. There’s no room for any real debate over what exactly
happens to this bunch of terrified youths. Anyone still fuming that they sat
through The Blair Witch Project and never got a single shot of the Blair Witch
can rest assured that there is definitely something to see here. Thankfully,
not too much though. Wingard is smart enough to know a little goes a long way
and milks the most suspense possible from his characters’ shaky cameras and
inability to confront the Blair Witch face to face. The sound design is also
racked up a notch, sometimes a little too much as it sounds like the black
smoke monster from Lost might have found its way into the woods of Maryland.
Though the Donahue kids’ parents could have done much more
to stop at least their second child from heading into the woods, at least James
and his buddies are much more prepared for their camping trip than Heather,
Mike and Josh were back in 1994. This new crop of tech-savvy millenials have Walkie-talkies, GPS, wearable cameras, a drone camera, lots of lights, food and just more
cameras than you can shake a spooky stick-man at. Unfortunately, they obviously
didn't watch that footage filmed by Heather and Josh carefully enough as they
don't seem to realise that it's all bloody useless when faced with the power of
the Blair Witch.
And if you thought she was too passive in the original, or maybe you don't believe that there was a curse
and that everything can be explained rationally in the footage from Heather’s project,
prepare to think again. In Blair Witch, the late Elly Kedward really unleashes
her powers. She messes with their technology, messes with time and space,
magics that old house from out of nowhere again and even throws in a few new
tricks that are best left unspoiled. Wingard leaves you in no doubt that the
Blair Witch exists and she's pretty much as terrifying as she ever was.
Fans of the original have to endure a little catch-up
exposition to fill newcomers in on the legend of the Blair Witch, but at least
a little more is added to the mythology. Rustin Parr’s house is also
expanded with previously unseen elements providing one particularly claustrophobic
moment. However, it's what goes down in the house that really gives the sweat
glands a workout as familiar beats (people standing in corners, apologies,
unseen attackers) get new and thrilling updates.
For those sick to death of found footage films, this offers
little to win you over. There’s more cameras and camera technology so a
slightly more varied visual experience than many other similar films. And the
old charge of ‘why would they still be filming in this situation?’ is at least
partially answered by having the characters wear their cameras on their head
requiring them to not have to think about filming when the shit really hits the
fan in the final act. These cameras also provide Peep Show style interactions
as the characters talk to each other but gaze directly into the cameras. This
pays dividends when two characters can only see each other's torch-lit faces
while the space behind them remains in total, terrifying darkness.
So Blair Witch is scary, but it's not as ingenious and won't
be as influential as the original. It's mostly a shame that Wingard didn't use
the ‘method directing’ tactics of original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel
Myrick. Clearly some of the scenes were unpleasant to film, but the actors in
this film got off lucky. Though there is less ambiguity in Blair Witch, there’s
a higher body count and more hysteria to make up for it. It's just a shame that
there isn't anything as iconic, moving and ‘real’ as Heather’s final apology in
the project that started it all. Still, Blair Witch fans won't be disappointed
and newbies will learn that the woods of Burkitsville can be scarier than
Crystal Lake, Elm Street and Haddonfield put together. Go
back to bed Paranormal Activity, the Blair Witch is back with a vengeance and
as terrifying as ever.
Wow... some films take a while to make it from the festival circuit to cinemas. Some films take a while... Some films take over two years. I give you The Blue Room. I saw this at Cannes in 2014 and it seems to be getting a limited release in the UK in September 2016. Probably not a great sign, but hey at least it's getting a release!
Here's a snippet of my review:
Triple threat actor, writer, director Mathieu Amalric explores
infidelity, obsession and a tragic desire that turns from lust into
violence in his latest film, The Blue Room. While the star gives a
worthy performance, the story is slight and adds little to what could possiblly be called a sub-genre of '
secret-affair-turns-nasty' films.
Starting in a hotel room where lovers
Julien and Esther are having a lusty, erotic and passionate affair
behind the backs of their respective partners, The Blue Room then skips
in its chronology between the romance and its later repercussions. These repercussions include
Amalric’s Julien questioned in custody and standing trial for a crime
that remains a mystery for much of the running time. Julien has a wife
and daughter at home while Esther has a sick husband in her own life but
both are more interested in their frequent forays into the blue room
for lovemaking so intense, it even involves biting that draws blood... kinky!
So Adam Wingard, what have you been up to down in the woods today? The director of You're Next and The Guest has finally put his cards on the table. His movie The Woods is now officially titled Blair Witch and IS a sequel to the original 1999 found footage horror.
The trailer takes us straight back into what looks like psycho hermit Rustin Parr's house way out in the woods of Burkitsville where the Blair Witch is known to lurk. If you don't know the backstory of the Blair Witch, (what do you live under a rock?) then check out the original film's website and the mythology section here.
The found footage point-of-view shot shows a frantic rush around the old house, before it is revealed that this is footage from YouTube which a guy called James is watching. The footage was uploaded by another guy who found a tape in the Black Hills woods. There is the distorted sound of screaming and at 11 seconds into the trailer, there is a person visible in the footage. That's all I can tell you about that.
But then James states to whoever is now filming him, 'I think that might be my sister'. I'm not the only one who immediately thinks.... 'You're sister???' Heather Donahue? Did Heather have a little brother in the original movie? I don't think it was ever mentioned, but then this girl's voice, who I assume is the off-camera camera operator filming this guy says, 'You really think you're sister could still be out there after all these years?' That's 17 years by the way if we're counting and assuming this sequel takes place in the present day.
So the Wikipedia page for the film states that this guy's name is James Donahue, so it definitely is supposed to be Heather's brother, but I don't know if this is 100% confirmed. It looks like James and his five college buddies head out into the woods to search for Heather after finding this YouTube footage. They know the legends, they know about the curse, they know about Elly Kedward a.k.a. The Blair Witch.
So then shit hits the fan as you would expect. Those creepy stick men; they're back and they're bigger. The kids start walking in circles again. Somebody (probably) kicks a map in the creek.
There is a shot of one of the girls with a camera in hand, suggesting that there must be at least two characters that will be carrying cameras, and in the great words of Cloverfield's Hud 'documenting everything'. I wondered when I first watched this trailer if the film was all going to be found footage. The shot 7 seconds into the trailer suggests that either these college kids have a nice drone for capturing aerial shots (doubt it, though that would be awesome), or the film won't be all found footage, or it's just a nice shot to insert in the trailer but it won't be in the movie. I'm going with that last one.
Well anyway, then the kids start turning on each other and the woods start turning on them as the (hopefully still) invisible witch works her magic on them all. Looks like this film will have a lot more going on in it than the original. I suspect it will be gorier, more graphic and have more than just traipsing around in circles and arguing going on. There's a shot in the trailer that looks as though nature will attack them more than it ever did in the original. I'm talking Evil Dead style trees. And then there's the shots that remind me of The Descent with one of the girls crawling through a whole load of shite to escape from somewhere.
I hope they don't dare show us the Blair Witch and I hope this film keeps up the ambiguity. I'd love it if there was a link back to the original with Heather appearing in some form, but it needs to be ambiguous and it needs to be done well.
Also in the trailer: we have a person standing in the corner facing the wall, hand prints all over the spooky house and the voice of someone apologising. It sounds more like a bloody remake than a sequel when you put it like that.
More than anything, I hope this honours the original by limiting the gore, having no CGI whatsoever and being bloody scary. I don't want to see the witch, I don't want to know exactly what happens at the end and I don't want this to turn into a franchise that goes on and on and on with new batches of disposable teens. I'm already concerned that some of the six characters in the film are simply there to allow for a bigger body count.
I loved Adam Wingard's The Guest so I'm optimistic that this will have some good stuff in it. But I suspect that Wingard probably didn't go into original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick's 'method directing' techniques and I think that is a huge shame. It will show in the performances, the cinematography and the dialogue and it will make Blair Witch a hell of a lot less believable than The Blair Witch Project is.
Blair Witch fans... it's here! After waiting 17 years and ignoring a pretty poor sequel (Book of Shadows) that already came and went, The Blair Witch Project looks like it might be finally getting the sequel it deserves. Formally titles The Woods, it's now been made official. This is a Blair Witch sequel, and frankly it looks wicked!
If you like your films a little out of the ordinary, then give Independence Day: Resurgence a miss this weekend and see if you can find a cinema playing Remainder instead. Think Donnie Darko meets Synecdoche, New York and you might be getting an idea of what an oddball little film this is.
Here's a snippet of my review from last year's London Film Festival:
Rushing through a city and pulling a black case behind him, an unnamed man (Tom
Sturridge) is hit by falling debris from the sky. After awaking
from a coma and going through extensive rehabilitation, he discovers
that he has been awarded with £8.5 million to keep quiet about the
incident. He is plagued by strange visions of a building, a boy, an old
woman and some cats on a roof, and decides to hunt down these elements
in order to piece together the fragmented puzzle forming in his head.
His recreations are handled by helper Naz and become more elaborate,
including eventually the staging of a bank robbery.
Sturridge's
character becomes like a filmmaker, manipulating and directing these
recreations from his mind, while an ever-expanding roster of 'actors'
are employed to carry out the actions and scripts that he envisions. The
surreal nature of his visions means he must dress extras in morph
suits, have people repetitively play Chopin in the same building and an
old lady constantly cook liver so that the smell will waft up to his
apartment. He is obsessive in capturing the detail, repeating the
process over and over again to the befuddlement of all others involved...
James Wan returns to horror after conjuring Paul Walker back from the grave in Fast and Furious 7. People loved The Conjuring, so it's no surprise to see a sequel. But as someone who found the original film a little bit average, I was surprised to find The Conjuring 2 so scary. It's great to have Wan back working in the genre that made him! Here's a snippet of my review:
"Never play with Ouija boards. Unfortunately, the kids in the 1977-set The Conjuring 2 will have been too young to see The Exorcist,
so inevitably they unleash a demonic force in their home when they mess
with a homemade hotline to unfriendly spirits. Janet Hodgson lives with
her single mother and three siblings in a rundown house in Enfield.
When Janet starts to go bump in the night by being lifted out of her bed
and planted downstairs in the living room, paranormal investigators the
Warrens travel to England to see if they can help.
This isn't supposed to be your average haunting. The fact that the
Hodgson family are poor and English is supposed to make a difference.
But actually, they still live in a typical house with large bedrooms
full of things to smash, a living room with a spooky rocking chair in
the corner, and the all-important set of stairs that can creak whenever
anything (supernatural or otherwise) steps on them. The accents might be
different and the walls could do with a lick of paint, but this is
still your average haunted house movie..."
There is a creeping
sense of familiarity when watching Mon Roi, a drama that examines the complexity
of the relationship between a husband and wife over ten years. Luckily though, Mon Roi
never feels like ten years to watch, and in detailing the ups and downs
of a modern marriage, it demands attention throughout. You can always depend on
Vincent Cassel for a terrific performance and Mon Roi may just be one of his
best yet, even to those with extraordinarily high expectations of the actor.
Mon Roi
tells the story of the turbulent relationship of Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot) and
Georgio (Vincent Cassel), as Tony reminisces on the high and lows of her
marriage while recuperating at a physiotherapy facility with a broken leg. The pair
meet (in flashbacks) after Tony has already freed herself from one previous marriage, and
Georgio’s charm and charisma win her over easily. Much to her brother’s vocal
disapproval, Tony and Georgio fall madly in love, marry and have a child
together. While in the present, Tony makes slow progress in getting her leg
working again, she looks back at what went wrong in her marriage and reflects
on the love she may still feel for Georgio.
Mon Roi
means My King and it is an apt title for this story of one woman’s inability to
move on from the problematic love of her life. Tony can be a frustrating character for not
being able to see Georgio for what he truly is, and for constantly ending up
back in his bed, even after it is clear he is an arch manipulator. The strength
of Mon Roi lies in making Tony sympathetic throughout, even if she does make
some poor decisions. Her love for Georgio is unquestionable and to writer and
director Maiwenn’s credit, it is almost completely convincing that Tony would
keep coming back for more from Georgio.
Vincent
Cassel’s perfect performance is fearless in its deconstruction of this character.
Cassel excels at the beginning of the film, showing exactly why Tony would
fall in love with Georgio. He is funny, successful and devoted to Tony; that is
until one of his exes slits her wrists and cracks start to develop in their
relationship. Cracks become fissures and soon, with a baby on the way, the
compatibility of these once joyful lovers is called seriously into question.
Cutting
back and forth between the past and present makes Mon Roi a well-paced and
involving drama at just over two hours in length. The scenes of Tony having physical
therapy are quick and concise, until later in the film when she develops some
friendships with the other patients with leg injuries. Director Maiwenn flits
through the relationship; it’s like having a peek inside Tony’s memories as
she attempts to heal her leg and her heart. Watching these characters grow, and
more worryingly, repeat their same previous mistakes again and again is never a
chore. The concern for the child growing up between them is felt more keenly as
the film progresses, especially as it becomes clearer just how calculating and
cold Georgio can be. It’s impressive that Cassel manages to keep his character
from being utterly and irreparably infuriating.
The flawed
characters make Mon Roi very convincing. This is a relationship plucked
straight from the real world and by the conclusion, Maiwenn's story has a brief but
potent tug at the heart strings. In a final scene of the film, her direction,
the cinematography and Emmanuelle Bercot’s terrific performance culminate in a
heart wrenching moment of clarity. The message is clear; you cannot choose who
you fall in love with, though life could be so much simpler if only there was an
off-switch for these feelings. It’s not an outstanding film but it packs an
emotional punch without resorting to tragedy.
