VOD: Choose Or Die (dir: Toby Meakins, 2022)

"It knows you!  Don't let it play you!"
 

Taking inspiration from The Ring, A Nightmare On Elm Street and even Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers, this small-scale, simple and efficient throwback horror/thriller sees a cursed 80s early computer game called Curs>r being rediscovered and bleeding into real life, giving the player options of making terrible choices or being killed.  Whilst clearly limited on budget and scale, the film is quite well-written and handles its central idea effectively, building in useful backstory which pays off nicely in the finale.  Although a British film, the blatant attempt to Americanise through dialogue. accents and music does not always convince, with its recognisably British cast and locations feel.  With the stunt casting of horror legend Robert Englund as the voice of the game, the film does succeed in capturing the reality-blurring sense of the Elm Street films and delivers on its limited effects work quite well.  Whilst hardly earth-shattering, Choose Or Die is a straightforward but generally satisfactory small-scale low-budget effort.

VOD: Jackass Forever (dir: Jeff Tremaine, 2022)

",,,and twenty years later, we're still doing the same old s**t!"

Here is one of perhaps the more predictable reunions ten years on, as the older but definitely not wiser crew get back together plus some new friends to throw themselves into another round of wholly inadvisable stunts and pranks for our guilty entertainment.  Right from the Godzilla-with-a-twist opening, the old formula swings into action and simply delivers what they and the fans want, and the film delivers very well indeed on that score.  Forever displays the same strengths as the previous outings: deep friendship, total immaturity and utter gleeful recklessness, with setups ranging from elaborate to simple and from silly to downright sadistic, but there is no filler in this film.  There are updated plays on favourite past sketches, with highlights including Steve-O getting a bee-beard (and not on his face), effective hidden-camera stunts and an extraordinary sequence with a bear.  Jackass may still be one of the simplest (and some might say lowest) forms of entertainment, but the joyful camaraderie and childish reliance on genital/scatalogical/pain-inflicting humour also makes it consistently laugh-out-loud entertaining.

 

VOD: Uncharted (dir: Ruben Fleischer, 2022)

"You have to believe the lie you're selling."

Going for an early-years story for popular videogame character Nathan Drake has resulted in a junior-skewed story that is a lightweight caper/treasure hunt which makes The Da Vinci Code seem positively complex.  Opening mid-air with a strong set piece (revisited later in the film), we go back to meet young grifter/bartender Drake (Tom Holland, well cast here) as he is recruited by treasure hunter Victor Sullivan (an oddly subdued Mark Wahlberg) to hunt for long-lost gold.  The first act is a blandly sentimental origin set-up (with a twee score) with Tom Holland slightly dialling down his on-screen charisma and a largely uninteresting over-extended auction-house scene, but once the action moves to Barcelona and the treasure hunting really begins the pace starts to pick up a little.  Exposition is frequent and conveyed with irritating simplicity, and the action feels a little anaemic, from a rooftop parkour-style chase to a tepid near-drowning sequence, although the final galleons-in-the-air battle sequence has some creative moments.  Overall, the film is adequate but anodyne, ultimately saved by the winning presence of Tom Holland, and the post-script/mid-credits sequel-baiting sequences suggest that if a sequel is made, then there is work to be done.
 

VOD: The Addams Family 2 (dirs: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon and Laura Brousseau, 2021)

"Are you having fun?"
"I'm staring at Canada, if that answers your question."

...or as Gomez puts it early on in the film: The Addams Family Vacation!  Sensing a widening generation gap, Gomez and Morticia decide to take the family on a road trip, which leads predictably to places like Niagara Falls, Miami Beach, a Texan beauty pageant and the Grand Canyon with expected fish-out-of-water consequences, but like the Hotel Transylvania franchise, it does not feel quite as true or effective when the central characters are removed from their natural environment.  Nevertheless, this sequel tries hard to match the energy and attention to detail that worked in the first film, although the story is less focused and fresh as it resorts to the standard road-trip format.  A number of plot strands compete for time and attention, ranging from Fester coaching Pugsley in the ways of women to Wednesday's possible hospital-room switch at birth and even Fester slowly mutating into an octopus (!), making the film feel frantic and cluttered at times and leading to a chaotic finale.  Whilst it is not as strong as the 2019 outing overall, this sequel does sometimes hit the mark and delivers some jokes well.
 

VOD: Black Crab (dir: Adam Berg, 2022)

"Not everyone will make it, but that doesn't matter."

After an attention-grabbing opening sequence, the film moves forward to a wintry, dystopian militaristic Swedish near-future fighting against an unnamed invading enemy, in which the ever-reliable Noomi Rapace is summoned to join a team with a mission to transport a couple of vital war-changing cannisters across the frozen icy archipelago behind enemy lines...on ice skates.  This unusual high-concept premise gives rise to some interesting and striking visuals, the glacially sombre synth score packs a punch, and the war/battle scenes have a compelling sense of sharpness and urgency.  The sub-plot involving Rapace's daughter feels undeveloped and mechanical, but by pitching its protagonists in a fight against both the elements and the ever-present threat of ememy forces, Black Crab is a tight and at times surprisingly grim and gripping Scandi-thriller that maximises the story concept and great location work very effectively overall.
 

VOD: Who Killed The KLF? (dir: Chris Atkins, 2022)

"They just did it and we enjoyed it - we enjoyed the moment."
 

Through previously-unheard audio interviews and a wealth of archive footage, the story of late 80s/early 90s music industry anarchists Bill Drummond and Jimi Cauty is revealed in this interesting documentary.  Like The KLF and its many incarnations, this is a beguiling, energetic and well-constructed patchwork of sound and image that mixes old footage with cannily-used reconstruction to show the evolution of their rebellious challenges to art, culture, society and the music industry and ultimately their short-lived but brilliant run as music chart stars before deliberately self-destructing.  Many of the key moments are covered well, including the ill-fated trip to Sweden (and a surprising appearance of a brief audio clip of The Queen And I), the press junket to The Isle of Jura, and the ill-fated Brit Awards debacle, but it leaves you wanting more about the abandoned film project The White Room...and there is no mention of the wonderful Kylie Said To Jason!  Nevertheless, there is plenty for fans to enjoy, including behind-the-scenes music video footage and delightful recounting of Tammy Wynette's involvement in one of their biggest hits, all in an attempt to capture the time period and their freewheeling unplanned journey as the ultimate independent artists, even though the film is shot through with a real feeling of sadness and emptiness as it seems the pair reached the point at which even they had no idea why they were doing their increasingly random acts.  Given that this is The KLF, one cannot help but wonder if some of this is yet another joke on the world, but overall the film is a bold attempt to convey their fleeting but enormous moment of zeitgeist-fuelled rebellion.

VOD: Moonfall (dir: Roland Emmerich, 2022)

"Well, that's not possible."

Emmerich's latest disaster-fest takes his usual tropes and tries to mash them up with a very silly hard-sci-fi concept with very mixed results.  Opening in 2011, when a Space Shuttle satellite repair mission is nearly destroyed by a strange cosmic entity heading for the Moon, the film then jumps forward a decade which sees the Moon mysteriously changing orbit and wreaking havoc on our planet.  With perfunctory set-up of our three main mis-matched protagonists - Halle Berry going from Shuttle pilot to Head of NASA, Patrick Wilson the disgraced and broken former astronaut, and John Bradley the comedy-relief everyman genius conspiracy theorist - the first half-hour is so simplistic that it feels as if Emmerich cannot wait to unleash the mayhem as the film posits the notion that the Moon is a hollow alien construct and the first effects of its errant orbit start to manifest themselves in the usual huge-scale destruction.  Moonfall is in many respects very much a formula Emmerich film that feels tiredly familiar.  Here, however, the focus is more on the preposterous narrative premise than global destruction, making human life seem carelessly inconsequential as the film shifts to the sub-2001 exploits of our plucky space heroes as they embark on a mission to 'fix' the Moon and thus save Earth.  This film is a classic demonstration of huge-scale shiny special effects unable to save a silly story.
 

VOD: 365 Days - This Day (dirs: Barbara Bialowas and Tomasz Mandes, 2022)

REVIEW No. 1,300!

"Sometimes I act irrational."

This inevitable sequel to the surprise lockdown hit Netflix Polish erotic potboiler is impossible to take seriously, delivered with peculiar performances and a barely-existent script.  It is shot and presented in a glossily dream-like haze of a succession of laid-back music videos to sub Ed Sheeran-style songs, punctuated by murkily-shot and dull sex scenes.  The film is quite remarkable in its wilful absence of a plot that leaves the characters - and the viewer - adrift for most of the film.  The final act is so random and preposterous that is veers from silly to eye-rollingly daft, and the film as a whole is little more than a passing glance at the sex lives of a bunch of rich, unlikeable and pointless characters.
 

VOD: The Father (dir: Florian Zeller, 2021)

"What is going to become of me?"

This is the tasteful upper-middle-class take on the awful effects of senile dementia - wealth, opera, a spacious and artfully-decorated apartment - but the trappings cannot conceal the terrible human effects of the condition in this remarkable film.  It is very still, mostly taking place within a flat, making it feel theatrical, confining and intimate.  There are wonderful performances by Anthony Hopkins as the elderly father and a superb supporting cast of recognisable established British actors.  It plays with time, memory, location and identity with aplomb, conveying the confusion and disorientation of dementia through similar-looking actors playing the same character and the constant shifting of apparent truth and reality.  The script is heartbreakingly sharp and at times darkly humorous, turning on a single sentence at times, making it a delight for the talented actors on display.  If  you think it is emotionally hard-going by the halfway mark - and it truly is - then the second half is increasingly devastating and with it the cruel reality it represents for many.
 

VOD: All The Old Knives (dir: Janus Metz, 2022)

"You know, I get the feeling you're trying to educate me about something - I'm just not sure about the subject."

This Amazon Original opens with a tragic plane hijacking that does not end well, and then fast forwards eight years to the re-opening of the case and a potential CIA mole being investigated, pitching Chris Pine against ex-agent - and his former lover - Thandiwe Newton.  The film then effectively becomes a two-hander over dinner in a restaurant as Pine tries to ascertain Newton's role in the whole affair, accompanied by extensive flashbacks.  It is slick, stylish and beautifully shot, if all a little careful and restrained.  Thankfully, Pine and Newton are well-matched and play their verbal games with nuance and careful consideration as plot details unfold slowly and the narrative puzzle-pieces slot neatly into place.  All The Old Knives is a talky, dialogue-heavy and satisfactory thriller, held together by its solid central performances and its stylish presentation.