After A Long Hiatus.... Even More Reviews! Including The Latest From Ti West And Adam Wingard

Best thing: I have mixed views on Ethan Hawke and rarely think he is the best thing about the projects he chooses. Yet here I actually found myself puzzling over why Ethan Hawke has never been used in a Western before. Here he plays a Eastwood-style 'man with no name' type character - only with a dog. (Making it, I guess, a bit more like Mad Max 2?)

Worst thing: I've heard this film criticised for being generic and while I think the film's simplicity is a positive element, I'll admit that if you've seen the Fistful of Dollars trilogy you're unlikely to see anything here that surprises you. (Still personally I find the careful pacing of this film a lot more fun than something like "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" that keeps breaking that deliberate pace with fairly inconsequential action sequences.) And seriously if you put on a Django film, wouldn't you be annoyed if you discovered the Django wasn't actually going to kill everyone? Don't films like this need to stick to that trope?

Ti West brings us a Sergio Leone style western that hits all the right notes. This was simply so much fun.

Who ever would have imagined that Ethan Hawke could be this much of a badass?

It's difficult to compare this with Ti West's other films because it is so different. But this is certainly one of his very very best if not perhaps even THE best.

And if your issue with Ti West in the past has been slow pacing and unsatisfying finales, I think you'll find yourself very happily surprised.

A+

Best thing: Fight our way out? Sneak around to get a phone? No. We should just wait til 3pm! - Genius!

Worst thing: While I found much of the film hilarious, there were some lamer jokes at points too. The poop joke where one character 'forgot to wear gloves' felt particularly egregious to me.

Elijah Woods is choosing some interesting projects and there is much in this child-zombie comedy that is hilarious. But unfortunately there are a number of gags that simply fall flat (though that's no fault of the cast).

So many parts of this film are wonderful and its a real pity that it isn't consistent. The filmmakers also seemed to have no idea how to end the film.

Still I have to say that, even as a film I wouldn't especially recommend to anyone, this was still a pretty enjoyable time.

C+

Best thing: Elijah Woods' character was just wonderful. A geek who thinks he's some kind of zen master.

Worst thing: I guess this is just one silly element amongst many, but the idea that the villains would coerce an outsider to carry a gun and threaten people for them felt a bit odd.

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The opening of this film felt so miserable and nihilistic that my girlfriend actually gave up on it....

Which was a pity because the protagonist then immediately decided to stop moping and to do some personal detective work to track down items stolen from her. And when Elijah Wood gets involved this film becomes a lot more fun.

As dark as this film can seem at times, it's a pretty charming little story. It's odd to suddenly be seeing Melanie Lynskey  in films now when she started out with Kate Winslet in the film 'Heavenly Creatures' all those years ago. In this role she has to do a lot of exasperated sighing and she's consistently very watchable. She's great.

Elijah Wood is a quirky character to contrast her, particularly Wood's optimism in the light of Lynskey's pessimism. An unlikely pairing of characters is a common trope, but it's interesting that, while Wood is clearly the weirder character, Lynskey has the drive to produce the more chaotic results. In some ways, she's the less predictable of the two, even as the ordinary rational character.

A-

P.S. Not seeing an awful lot of mention of Jane Levy’s performance here. Sure, she doesn’t have many lines, but she still has a strong screen presence even in this smaller role.

Best thing: As with Joe Begos' previous film "Almost Human", "Supernatural Forces" (originally released as "The Mind's Eye") has some really effective effects sequences despite its moderate budget. When one guy gets ripped in two using mind powers I was pretty impressed.

Worst thing: Not enough background is given on the main characters. Now actually I think this wouldn't matter if they just made Lauren Ashley Carter (from Jug Face)

the main character. She has really expressive eyes and it's very easy to get on board with her despite the lack of background. (There's a reason Liam Neeson is brought in as important characters who have little screen time in films like "Kingdom of Heaven", "The Next Three Days" and "Silence". If you don't have time for background, you need someone with an especially strong screen presence.) Graham Skipper simply isn't strong enough to carry the film without any backstory or build-up. When we get to climactic scenes where Lauren Ashley Carter is missing, it's difficult to understand the stakes and to care about the protagonist.

I was pretty excited about Joe Begos' latest film. Particularly since he was going from a film inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing to a film inspired by David Cronenberg's Scanners.

Unfortunately the limitations of the budget seem way too obvious and the hamminess isn't really terribly satisfying because we aren't given much opportunity to bond with the protagonist. In Almost Human we get to see him coming into conflict with his boss at work. There's no down-to-earth aspect to our protagonist in The Mind's Eye beyond that he has a girlfriend and a dad (which is pretty thin characterisation however you look at it).

Some parts of The Mind's Eye were a lot of fun and there are some cool visuals (though on my tv the blues and purples seemed way over-saturated at times).

With some better characterisation from our protagonists, I might have adored this. As cool as some of the scanner action was, it was difficult to be fully invested. This should have felt more intense. This was interesting, but it wasn't enough fun for the level of cheesiness.

C-

Side note: When searching for the DVD of this film in the UK, you’ll need to look for a DVD entitled “Loser” starring Woody Harrelson, but when you actually watch the film, you’ll find that it’s still called “The Grand”.

Best thing: Werner Herzog playing a vicious psychopath is always fun and here he is absolutely hilarious.

Worst thing: The final card game has less of a focus on the humour. It's used as an opportunity to give us the emotional payoff for each character, which is fine, but the game itself just baffled me (they don't just look at the players cards but also the cards in the centre of the table, and I'm not entirely sure how that works), so the lack of jokes in that section felt annoying to me.

I had thought this was a Christopher Guest film. This definitely seems to be borrowing from the style of films like "Best In Show", but honestly I don't remember Best In Show being this funny.

Woody Harrelson is great, but he is just one of a number of desperate or intimidating gamblers. We also have some announcers who are very funny too.

So many new comedies try to make the audience laugh by being random or throwing gags in the hope something sticks. But The Grand is a solid comedy that draws its humour from the situation, albeit sometimes using especially quirky characters, with fantastic results...

... except for a brief section towards the end where there are pretty much no laughs at all. The filmmakers decided to finish with a real card game, meaning that I had pretty much no clue what was happening and jokes could not be so easily scripted in. This section does resolve some character arcs, but I'm not sure they needed a real poker game.

But this final card game in no way detracts from the film as a whole. It's just an odd decision. The Grand is brilliant and well worth your time.

A+

Best thing: You've got to wonder why there aren't more zombie films that compare the condition to terminal illness. Gradually transforming into a being without any human dignity makes for such a clear parallel and it makes for a really interesting parallel.

Worst thing: Not only is this film seriously dull (and the grey filter over everything really doesn't help), but thr further the film goes on the less successful it feels as an analogy with real life. Maggie mostly just felt to me like hopelessness for the sake of it.

Starts off interesting but then gets dull. Maggie seems to promise to be an interesting allegory of some kind but, since it doesn't follow through with that, I found it difficult to be enthusiastic about the generally rather contrived family drama.

Arnie Schwarzenegger is fine. I think his strengths are in comedy, but his on-screen charisma always helps a great deal. But when he's reminiscing about their past, not only was I annoyed that the story was being put on hold, but I wasn't really becoming any more convinced that Arnie had really spent the years raising a child on a farm.

Maggie is neither a smart zombie more nor a fun zombie movie. If anything, the drama is undermined by the decision to crowbar zombies in there. Also the pale colour palette doesn't help in any way.

C-

Best thing: The guide they employ has a cool attitude and her interactions with the other characters provide some much needed drama.

Worst thing: A topless scene early on in the film is particularly shameless, but what made its trashiness especially egregious to me was that it was shot like porn. There's a lingering shot straight up at the topless girl while she pretends to be having sex. Clearly the actress was expecting it be artistic, but instead it just looks like porn.

Well I guess that's what I get for trying out my friend's dirt-cheap horror DVD.

I'm not sure why the whole film has a horrible green tinge but I'm fairly sure it's to disguise the horrible quality of the footage they shot.

Sadly I think these actors probably aren't that bad. Unfortunately they are stuck in a seriously cheap and lazy production. The script is utterly dire.

I think I've already written way more than this film deserves.

E

Addendum:

Holy shit, there are sequels to this thing? How can this possibly have sequels?

Best thing: There's a neat twist on the original film's ending which makes good use of the found footage format. I like that this film builds on the original film's mythos.

Worst thing: The original Blair Witch Project had less characters and felt much more personal as a result. As much as Wingard is trying to copy the original Blair Witch Project's style (and setting himself a pretty tough challenge as a result)

Okay so admittedly this is Adam Wingard's worst film. (Well at least the worst of his films longer than 80 minutes. I haven't seen his shorter early films because they seem to be practically impossible to acquire.) However, I have pretty much loved all Wingard's films, especially his previous film "The Guest".

Adam Wingard has tried to recreate the original style of The Blair Witch Project and he has also made some clear attempts to change things up a bit. But it turns out that The Blair Witch Project provides a pretty limited template. It surprises me to see people criticising the introduction of a drone camera. Surely a new type of camera footage is a sensible extension from the original concept. (And while you'd expect it to help them find their way out of the woods, the fact that it fails to help them is another spooky element to the story.

When this was being released I suddenly saw a huge number of people reminiscing about Blair Witch Project as an untouchable classic. I feel like history must be being re-written somewhat. Here in the UK I distinctly remember my first time watching Blair Witch Project and, as someone enjoying himself, I felt somewhat out of place.

I initially saw Blair Witch Project on a bootlegged videotape with Korean subtitles that had been taken into school. It was the end of term and our A Level Religious Education group were allowed to watch the video. But we didn't finish the film in one school period. So this ended up being one of the few times I have ever gone to the cinema alone. I was very keen to see the end of this film.

I found myself sat next to a whole group of horror fans all wearing black t-shirts. I got the distinct feeling that I was being glared at during the film. I don't know if it was because I was laughing and the guy next to me didn't see the humour, or whether it  was because they were just annoyed that I was enjoying myself. Either way, it made me disinclined to identify myself as a horror fan for many years.

When we left the negative vibe from the audience continued. And that's generally how I thought most audiences felt about The Blair Witch Project: negative. The internet was not a big thing in the UK (internet access is still not free in the UK and back then it really didn't look worth the money for your average Joe). And certainly by the time Blair Witch Project reached the UK nobody was about to believe it was real. I don't really know of anyone who was massively blown away by Blair Witch Project. It was fun, but even speaking as someone who enjoyed it (and I really ought to rewatch it to make this judgement) I'd be hard pressed to say the original was superior to this sequel.

I still maintain that there's a sadistic pleasure and dark humour in watching the Blair Witch Project protagonists become ever moreterrified and lose all hope. While I don't think our protagonists in this new sequel have the same level of despair, the film certainly has the same sense of fun (which horror movies are generally better off having).

We don't really get a lot of depth to the characters in either movie, but I found myself caring for the characters in both cases.

This sequel definitely expands on the mythology of the original. How does footage get found without also finding the bodies? What powers do those stick man charms hold? Why do victims stand in the corner? This film points us a little closer to answers, while keeping the mystery. I guess we all hoped Adam Wingard had something a little more impressive up his sleeve when he announced this project. It certainly must to have been amazing for the film festival patrons to see a film called "The Woods" only for it to be revealed - out of nowhere - to be a Blair Witch Project sequel. That surprise would have been something really special.

For the rest of us? Yeah sure, it's a Blair Witch Project sequel. Well done Adam, but I think there are better projects you could be working on.

B+

Best thing: While I'm not so sure that we'd have the military blowing up immigrant camps, it's still a very interesting concept. Rather than being due to bombs, monsters or disease, this is an apocalyptic setting simply because human beings have become infertile. As Grace Jantzen noted, a world without new beginnings is a world without hope. It's a remarkably powerful concept.

Worst thing: Would he really still be saying "pull my finger" that calmly by that stage?

Children of Men is an intensely miserable film, but it is the concept that makes it that way rather than the story itself. For the most part the film is quite dramatic and exciting with some jaw-dropping single-shot action sequences. (Seriously, wow.)

Clive Owen is pretty great as an average cynic. Michael Caine is his eccentric old friend. Considering his upbeat temperament it always feels odd to me when he's elected to listen to "Living In A Glass House" by Radiohead. Naturally Michael Caine is fantastic.

Unfortunately the concept is inevitably pretty miserable, but that leads to some pretty neat creepy quiet moments, such as the empty school that has fallen into disuse and disrepair.

But while the idea that there are no children left is pretty interesting, the idea that the rest of Europe has fallen into violence is less convincing. I guess the idea that the UK is isolated from violent turmoil because of the English channel. And I suppose that worldwide nihilistic terrorism prompted by the seemingly imminent end times is rather more plausible now that Islamic State is already doing just that. Still, the film leaves the circumstances behind the violence intentionally vague and that makes it harder to take seriously.

A+

Best thing: The visuals are incredible. One of the female protagonists (the main woman in the fighting team we follow from the start) looked particularly real to me. And then there's the action sequences. Our protagonist can throw his weapon in order to teleport himself to a distant location. It makes for some seriously exciting action sequences.

Worst thing: The dialogue and the story felt like garbage to me, not least since I found the ending made no sense. Apparently who the princess marries is important? Oh really? And why is that exactly?

I'm apparently quite rare in that I really liked Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The effects were ahead of its time and while the premise of alien souls causing havoc on Earth was pretty weird, it was also quite a cool concept.

The plot of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children did not seem so sophisticated (but then again I've never played the game). However, the action sequences were mind-blowing. Sword fights on motorbikes! So cool!

So how does Kingsglaive compare? Well much of the film is pretty effective. I suspect that I would be a lot more satisfied with it if I had any experience of the games. The action is impressive and the characters are alright. The story though? Um...

I very much like the modern-day fantasy setting that combines a modern city with cars on the one hand, with castles and swords on the other. (They have guns too but magic swords are better.)

Initially the story was very intriguing. The division between the magically protected inner kingdom and the ravaged outer kingdom was quite interesting. However, some later reveals were hard for me to buy into. In particular there's a "Luke, I am your father" level reveal about a major villain that makes me wonder how they could possibly have kept up that deception while a war was going on.

The level of destruction in the third act is so extensive that I was confused as to what they were fighting for. There's some suggestion that if the princess is taken to marry some guy we never see, it will somehow fix everything. Okay, so this is a world of magic, but I still found the proposal of deus ex marriage particularly implausible.

During the fighting sequences the teleporting throwing daggers allow for some very inventive skirmishes. The Final Fantasy filmmakers are very good at clearly depicted action choreography and, while perhaps not quite such an amazing over-the-top spectacle as in Advent Children, it's still pretty amazing.

Final Fantasy: Kingsglaive is confusing and bizarre in a way often found in anime movies and in a way that I couldn't really forgive on this occasion. That being said, it is exciting and beautiful and I suspect those familiar with the games will find this a great deal more rewarding.

D+

Best thing: Denzel Washington is always the best thing in films where he is the star, but Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer and Clive Owen (as much as I found his American accent a bit hard to come to terms with).

Worst thing: It's actually difficult to pick a worst thing here. I loved pretty much everything. I suppose the bit where the detectives are leering at some of the suspects, that was awkward - but breast size IS a clue here and, while it is played for laughs, really we're laughing at the detectives. Perhaps Jodie Foster's storyline could have gone further?

Inside Man is actually better than I remembered it. Clive Owen is an actor I mainly knew from television and while I could see him edging his way into a number of films, I couldn't really take him seriously with an American accent. I think I was being a bit harsh.

Even knowing where the story is going this is a very intriguing mystery and Denzel Washington is able to really lighten the mood with his upbeat yet cynical detective on a case that isn't really proving to be the lucky break he hoped for.

In some ways the story feels unfinished. Did Spike Lee plan on a sequel or is it enough that we know that the investigation isn't over yet? I felt a firmer conclusion could have been given to Jodie Foster's aspect of the story.

Still, overall Inside Man is an excellent heist mystery and an awesome Denzel Washington film with an all-round awesome cast and a very well-constructed script.

A+

Wow, I can’t sum it up any better than this. Watched about half an hour of this film before shrugging and giving up. I heard some refer to this as a comedy. Was I supposed to be laughing? I wondered whether it was a parody and I was just missing the jokes because I was unfamiliar with the material being referenced.

There are a lot of gorgeous visuals (though I’d note that the cars are all very modern-looking and that kind of detracts from the period-piece aspect to the production). The film is colourful and pretty (and the lead actress is undeniably beautiful), but in terms of characters nobody ever seems remotely real. There’s a slow abstract portrayal of a very simple story and I found myself regularly thinking “...so where are you going with this?”

After half an hour I decided I was no longer interested in knowing where the film was going with any of its ideas. I really have to connect with a film’s concepts to accept a slow deliberate pace, so while I was absolutely gripped by “The Witch”, I lost interest in “The Love Witch”.