Get Santa (2014)
Best thing: Jim Broadbent being Santa... in prison.
Worst thing: The unshakeable feeling of boredom.
I've been following Christopher Smith's career for quite a while now, but it's not such a fun journey as it once was. I have to give him credit though, since I can't deny that Santa on the run / Santa trying to look tough in prison is a very cool concept. But it's neither dark enough nor sweet and fun enough to work. I just never really got into it.
Christopher Smith's heyday was back when he made the horror-comedy Severance, the paranormal slasher movie Triangle and the medieval horror Black Death. When Black Death came out shortly after Neil Marshall's much less interesting Centurion, I was convinced that Smith was the superior filmmaker. Now, after a long gap in Smith's career, followed by a godawful mini-series adapting a Dan Brown knock-off, he's not looking anything like so strong. (Meanwhile Marshall is working on high quality tv like Game of Thrones and Black Sails.)
The basic takeaway here is that Smith isn't suited to light hearted comedy. Get Santa isn't funny enough and isn't endearing enough and was plain painful to watch at times. The filmmaking is solid but, even in spite of some clever moments, the script felt weak and I always felt removed from what was happening on screen.
And it's especially sad since there is such a cool cast here. Warwick Davis! Stephen Graham! Jodie Whittaker! Rafe Spall! And they are all great. It’s just that the project itself feels unworthy of them.
Perhaps Smith will have a return to form with his upcoming movie Detour because he seems to be in a creative rut right now.
I could imagine others being able to roll with this a bit better. I couldn't really jive with the reindeer poo gun or the Trunchbull-esque probation worker. But I can't pretend it wasn't rather watchable.
C-
American Ultra (2015)
Best thing: So many funny moments. Perhaps the scene where he kills a baddie by deflecting a bullet off of a frying pan?
Worst thing: Wasn't a big fan of the animated sequence at the end. Also, does Tony Hale have to play the exact same character in everything? Whether he’s in Arrested Development, Veep or this film, while hilarious, he always seems to be the same person.
Max Landis, writer of Chronicle, has now had a few more of his scripts made into full length films. I actually think I preferred this to Chronicle.
This is an action-stoner-comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg. What's not to love? The really weird thing is that Kristen Stewart is actually pretty good in this film. Oh, and she doesn't bite her lip once!
Hopeless stoner gets anxiety whenever he tries to leave, has relationship where he feels inadequate, then suddenly finds he has super fighting ability when he is 'activated'. Jesse Eisenberg plays the central role and is hilarious. What with this and his role in The Double I'm becoming a big fan of Jesse Eisenberg as a comic actor.
In case anyone is unfamiliar MK Ultra was a intelligence program in the US which experimented with controlling people with drugs. It's not looked upon favourably and is seen as a dark and sinister chapter in the history of US intelligence. To some extent, the film reflects that history. On the other hand, things get pretty goofy. Leguizamo's loveable thuggish drug-dealer is quite a wonderful addition.
Quite simply, American Ultra is a hell of a lot of fun. I loved it and can't wait to see more Max Landis scripted films. Sure he's no Charlie Kaufman, but since Kaufman insists on writing more naval gazing fare than ever these days and then insists on directing it himself, Landis is actually a more welcome prospect right now.
A+
Regression (2015)
Best thing: As Ethan Hawke is imagining the "fornication" alleged to have taken place in a barn in the middle of a Satanic meeting, we see his visualisation of a naked couple making out materialise inside the car that is parked in there. The Satanic visions are often (intentionally) hilarious. In another film we might be expected to take those same sequences seriously, but anyone who knows the slightest thing about the Satanic Panic will understand why that is not the case here.
Worst thing: Sometimes imitates the cheesy supernatural BS movies a little too accurately. When a woman is terrified by a domestic cat, I couldn't help but remember the stupidity of similarly styled movies like "The Rite" with Anthony Hopkins or "White Noise" with Michael Keaton. Despite the inevitable reversal, Regression can often feel rather more sincere in its depiction of superstitious hogwash than is really appropriate.
Alejandro Amenabar is a director who seems to hold an obsession with unusual twists on the concept of the afterlife (Open Your Eyes, The Others) and the opposition of faith and reason (The Sea Inside, Agora). It's a little unfortunate that audiences mainly seem to be disappointed by this film when they discover that there WASN'T a massive baby-murdering conspiracy organised by hooded Satanists - as if that were a massive surprise! (For once, a film claiming to be based on real life actually tells the truth.)
The real mystery here is how anyone comes to believe in hooded Satanists if there, in fact, weren't any. It is the subtext that much of what we see in the film is the product of mass hysteria which really made the film interesting to me.
As for performances, Ethan Hawke and David Thewlis are both brilliant. I've actually heard some people claim that Emma Watson is the best thing about this film, but it seemed clear to me that her accent wasn't even as convincing as in other films where she's used an American accent before.
Perhaps a rather odd comparison I'd like to make is with "The Witch". You see, "The Witch" showed events as they were described by settlers. Similarly "Regression" shows events very much from the perspective of Ethan Hawke's detective character. What we see in the film is the hysteria of unfounded fears from an insider's perspective and that is something common to both films.
So what is this film’s take on the satanic panic? Well the clue’s in the title. The key to everyone believing the crazy statements devoid of evidence so completely is the supposedly “scientific” methods of ‘hypnotic regression’. This crosses over with some Satan-centred rhetoric on television and at the local Church to produce an explosive combination. One criticism I’ve heard is that a lot of those coming forth with dodgy statements were much younger than Emma Watson’s character and were fed their stories much more forcefully, but I think the filmmakers are keen to show this from the perspective of a well-meaning relateable police officer who is trying to do his job well. That would be a tough sell if he were shown badgering young children in the interview room.
While I greatly admired many aspects of Amenabar's previous film "Agora" I recognise that it has a number of failings. But Regression was a very interesting and compelling cinematic experience for me and I simply do not understand the hate.
A+
The Final Girls (2015)
Best thing: Central theme of a girl who wants a movie character to be her mother. Very deep (and rather bizarre now I try to sum it up at the beginning of this review).
Worst thing: The comic relief misogynistic character. He didn't really feel so much like a slasher movie character as a comedian brought into this meta-horror film as comic relief and possibly doing a better job making the cast laugh offscreen than he does making the audience laugh.
The premise of a group of movie-goers who find themselves thrust into the world of the movie can easily become navel-gazing, but that doesn’t happen at all here. The neat twist being that one of the girls who enters the film finds herself very attached to a particular character in the film. Why so attached? Well, the character was originally played by her now-deceased mother and therefore, in the world of the movie, it is like being reunited with her.
The Final Girls doesn't really feel like a film from huge geeky slasher fans. It's more like a film that plays with a few very general slasher tropes. To that extent, however, it's a lot of fun. The jokes aren't always that amazing and the characters are alright, but the movie really shines in exploring a world limited by movie rules. There are some neat effects and the slasher killer is genuinely imposing. When the protagonists are failing to run away from the world of the slasher film we genuinely care. While this is a bit average as a comedy, the dramatic timing is very effective, so I was consistently engaged with a few chuckles along the way.
I was expecting The Final Girls to be hilarious, but in the end it was just good fun. For hilarity I'd suggest Tucker And Dale Vs Evil or Cabin In The Woods, but for some intelligent satire with some genuinely touching character moments, The Final Girls is well worth your time.
The way the film thrusts its characters into flashbacks, slow motion and end credits consistently kept my attention and kept me excited. Taissa Farmiga is pretty cool in the lead role, but Malin Åkerman (who people may remember from Watchmen) is absolutely brilliant here as both the exuberant young mother and the naive sexually-blossoming slasher-movie victim.
Spoiler: Is she really the final girl if her boyfriend is still alive?
A-
What We Did On Our Holiday (2014)
Best thing: Acting is good.
Worst thing: Script is terrible. Completely misses out everything which made Outnumbered the series work. The filmmakers seem to care more about gorgeous visuals from Scotland than they do about making a decent comedy.
Worst episode of Outnumbered ever.
No it's not an episode of Outnumbered, but it's the same format and the same writers. A new batch of young children provide semi-improvised interactions with the intention that it will lead to funnier and more naturalistic performances.
Unfortunately Billy Connelly seems to hog the spotlight so the children don't really get the chance to be funny. There's generally none of the chaos of the series. Even when we finally reach the over the top point in the story which should be hilarious, it is played entirely straight (prrsumably with music selected by Scotland's board of tourism in the background) until all the comedic momentum is lost. We are then bizarrely expected to laugh once the joke is old news.
Seriously, if I spoilt this third act revelation for you, it's pretty much inevitable that at least a few people would chuckle at the description alone. It's amazing to me that this section of the film is so unfunny. An episode of the series would never waste a gag like this.
In the original series there's a very well established main character who regularly talks intelligently about crazy things he's researched and incompletely understood from the internet. In one episode he's analysing everyone's behaviour using Freudian psychology. In this movie there's a boy who is obsessed with Vikings and he explains in the most scripted passionless way possible that Odin "goes around testing people's hospitality". It doesn't fit the child's character for him to say this and it doesn't sound like he's parroting from the internet; it simply sounds like the line is in the script and he's doing his best to make this ill-fitting line sound natural.
The actors do the best they can with this terrible material, but all the charm of the series is entirely missing. This must seem pretty mediocre to newcomers, but as a fan of the series I found this to be an unacceptable travesty.
E
Turbo Kid (2015)
Best thing: The female character called Apple; particularly when she's using her fighting techniques. Gnome stick ftw!
Worst thing: While the over-the-top gore was awesome, the excessive swearing got to me. Nowhere near the level of Hobo With A Shotgun, but a similar concern as I had with that new-grindhouse film.
A mixture of Mad Max and Escape From New York. This vision of the future features a viewfinder filled with images of dinosaurs, a power glove, a device seemingly powered by a plasma ball (remember those?) and a walkman playing hair metal. Because in this alternate history, the apocalypse occurred during the 80s and the distant future is the late 90s.
Michael Ironside makes for a great villain, with his unique brand of hamminess. (He has the most incredibly charming evil smile.)
While some people might find the character of Apple annoying (not least since, initially, that is clearly the intention), I found that she really developed as a character. She's such a wonderfully sweet manic pixie dream-droid and so light-hearted without abandoning the black comedy tone of the rest of the film, I just loved every scene Apple was on screen.
The lead protagonist has a tougher role, being naive and unsure of himself yet trying to be tough. But when, for example, he seriously utters the words, "Prepare to take a turbo charge... of justice... in the face!" his naivety and sincerity is funny yet remarkably compelling.
Turbo Kid is emotionally involving, wonderfully fun and overall made for an absolutely great time. Don’t be fooled by the title though. There’s nothing “kiddy” about Turbo Kid.
A+
Bay Of Blood (1971)
Best thing: Italian horror atmosphere
Worst thing: Pretty boring. Twists and turns of who is a villain and who is a good guy were a little confusing, but mostly just uninteresting.
I love a lot of Italian horror, particularly Lucio Fulci (Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond). I recently very much enjoyed Demons. But Bay of Blood is just rather boring.
It's not offensively bad. It even has a bit of charm to it. Yet I simply was not entertained.
D-