VOD: Brian And Charles (dir: Jim Archer, 2022)

"I just started making stuff."

This quirky, funny and utterly charming off-kilter British comedy is an extremely effective expansion of the 2017 short film, in which single and lonely Brian, living alone in his isolated rural cottage, creates strange inventions in his workshop, eventually making a robot called Charles with a mannequin's head and a washing machine for a body, and so the tale of their developing relationship unfolds.  Shot with an effective mockumentary style, our narrator/subject Brian is a quintessentially likeable downtrodden British eccentric, but here he represents everybody's need for friendship and company, alongside providing a big old metaphor for parenthood as we follow Charles from an infant state through childhood to teenagedom.  Essentially a two-hander for the most part, this is an absolute tour-de-force performance from David Earl as Brian, taking the viewer not only on the journey of looking after the initially child-like Charles but also his burgeoning relationship with a local woman and finding the strength to stand up to the local bullying family, and Chris Hayward's comic timing as Charles is superb.  The film has moments of daftness, laugh-out-loud hilarity, sincerity and heart-breaking emotion - you will be amazed how attached you can become to the hulkingly awkward robot - all of which makes this film an unexpected and utter delight.   
 

VOD: Smile (dir: Parker Finn, 2022)

"I promise this is a safe place."
"Not for me."

This delightfully disorientating psychological horror/thriller works through its clever use of camera, unnerving soundscape and convincing performances.  An over-worked female psychotherapist in an emergency psychiatric ward encounters a distraught young woman patient (who claims to be pursued by a sinister smiling figure) with tragic results and then seemingly becomes haunted by the same vision as her grip on reality starts to disintegrate.  Sosie Bacon gives an exhaustingly-committed performance as the unravelling psychotherapist Rose.  Reminiscent of the transferable-curse concept behind It Follows, Smile manages to make smiling utterly creepy, and by playing reactions to this high concept completely straight, Rose's increasing paranoia is effectively credible in this unsettling film. 
 

VOD: Bullet Train (dir: David Leitch, 2022)

"Nut up or shut up, bruv!"

Welcome to Japan for a ride on this unashamed Tarantino/The Raid/John Wick-styled action potboiler, with Brad Pitt as a returning-to-action gun-for-hire on a job to retrieve a briefcase on a bullet train that happens to contain an eclectic mix of wacky characters, including a selection of hitmen-and-women on their own missions, all tied together by the briefcase and crime boss The White Death.  The high concept runs out of steam around the hour mark, but the film has an entertaining self-aware sense of devil-may-care frivolity along with an attractive glossy neon-lit sheen.  The physically-contained but freewheeling violence is slickly choreographed and marries copious blood with humour quite well, all leading to a hugely-ambitious CG-fuelled finale.  The big plus here is a Zen-like Brad Pitt clearly having a whale of a time, but ultimately Bullet Train is throwaway lightweight entertainment for fans of mindless action violence.

VOD: The Pale Blue Eye (dir: Scott Cooper, 2023)

"I don't get round to poetry much."
"Why should you? You're an American."

This well-presented period mystery-thriller finds Christian Bale playing a gruff investigator brought in to look into the murder of a cadet at a remote military academy, who gets teamed with a young Edgar Allan Poe in a Holmes-and-Watson style tale.  The winterbound candlelit mise-en-scene gives an atmospherically chilly feel, the dialogue is wordy and at times dense but builds the story well if in a somewhat over-deliberate manner that insists on taking its time to explain every step very carefully.  Christian Bale imbues the detective Landor with a captivating world-weary stillness, contrasting with Harry Melling's somewhat theatrical and eccentric take on Poe.  The film is rather languorous and occasionally awkward, veering between sincere procedural and sudden melodramatic histrionics, but the overarching mystery is played out cleverly with Christian Bale providing and extremely touching final and clever reveal.

VOD: Samaritan (dir: Julius Avery, 2022)

REVIEW No. 1,400!

"It's not always IF you hurt, but WHO you hurt!"

Stallone plays Mr Smith, a reclusive and curmudgeonly neighbour to a young boy Sam in a run-down inner-city neighbourhood, whom the youngster befriends and Smith is the believed-long-dead superhero Samaritan, who needs to face a new version of his former nemesis - called, er, Nemesis - as the city descends into lawlessness.   The opening comic book-styled backstory sequence sets up the movie effectively, and visually the whole film is shot appealingly with strong widescreen compositions.  Young Javon Walton conveys an engaging mix of youth and street-smarts as Sam, who holds his own well against Stallone giving good solid character work here, and the relationship between them plays very well.  As is usual with this type of film, the villains are less convincingly written, but not so much as to detract from the developing central relationship, which is strong enough to make this small superhero/action film gently enjoyable.
 

VOD: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (dirs: Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, 2022)

"All good things require patience."

Del Toro's gorgeous stop-motion re-telling of the Pinocchio story is an absolute delight.  As ever, del Toro's storytelling ability is note-perfect, as it balances whimsy, sunny innocence and pure happiness with grief, war and loss effortlessly, weaving in his allegorical touchstones of war and religion purposefully and meaningfully.  David Bradley (as Gepetto) and Ewan McGregor (as The Cricket) voice their characters with aplomb, and young Gregory Mann imbues Pinocchio with a wonderfully energetic and inquisitive youthful tone.  Alexandre Desplat's charming score and brief songs are lovely, and the rich and vibrant design (and particularly use of lighting effects) is executed superbly.  It all leads to an understated but very poignant ending that is simply beautiful and a perfect conclusion to this exquisite film.
 

VOD: Malignant (dir: James Wan, 2021)

"You've been a bad, bad boy, Gabriel."

James Wan returns to the pure horror arena with this energetic and muscular horror-thriller.  After a lively old-school 90s-set pre-title sequence set in a cliff-side research hospital, the film moves to the present day and finds a pregnant abused wife with her partner in a fog-bound house seemingly facing a violent entity...but that is just the beginning of this very unpredictable and seemingly reality-twisting tale that really does keep the viewer guessing.  The narrative puzzle-pieces fit together slowly and effectively, leading to a couple of shocking sudden reveals that are great fun.  Wan is a director who is never afraid to deploy the camera in interesting ways, which he does to good effect here, and the pulsing old-school synth-and-strings-styled soundtrack plays very well.  Malignant is spooky and unsettling, with touches of Frank Henenlotter and Stuart Gordon, and it offers a very interesting and knowing twist on what initially appears to be a familiar horror sub-genre that is hugely entertaining for genre fans.  

 

VOD: Bodies Bodies Bodies (dir: Halina Reijn, 2022)

"You just shot me!  With a gun!"

The set-up is straightforward - a group of largely-obnoxious rich young twentysomethings meet up at an isolated mansion, a big storm and drink-and-drugs ensue, lights and phones fail - but after a routine first act things liven up when a game of Murder leads to one of the group actually being found dead, relationships rapidly disintegrate and the bodies start to pile up.  The film is shot with an uneasy mix of naturalistic and conventional styles that do not quite gel, and a lot of the interactions seem unnaturally hysterical - although the characters themselves admit that they are 'coked-up' - and lack a sense of real antipathy.  Occasionally a sharp line of dialogue cuts through, but overall the film feels a little too uncontrolled in the writing and delivery to really have impact.  The final reveal - signalled quite early in the film - will probably raise a smile, however. 

 

VOD: Big Boys Don't Cry (dir: Steve Crowhurst, 2020)

"We become what we think we deserve."

Based on the real-life experiences of a young boy abandoned to the care system as a baby, this bleak and plaintive British film is a sobering experience that addresses bullying, institutional abuse, suicide and toxic masculinity, juxtaposing the boy's life in a children's home in the 1970s with his life as a young post-prison male in the 1990s.  Michael Socha plays the broken, haunted adult Jacko with his characteristically invested, heartbreaking sensitivity and depth, and Mitchell Norman plays the younger version with a sympathetic conviction.  Although there is an apparent mainstreaming of some facts to fit a more generic narrative here,  with its washed-out colour palette and mournful soundtrack Big Boys Don't Cry is a small, quiet and very sad film that coveys its difficult subject matter in a careful, unflinching and sombre manner that at least finds an element of hope and positivity for its protagonist.
 

VOD: Glass Onion - A Knives Out Mystery (dir: Rian Johnson, 2022)

"It's like an actual huge glass onion!"

Mercifully, lightning does strike twice with this delightful sequel to the refreshingly enjoyable Knives Out.  A group of people - including detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, being great fun again) - receive puzzle-box invitations to a Greek island for a murder mystery weekend by an eccentric billionaire that plunges them immediately into a ride of games within puzzles within mysteries that is simply great fun to watch throughout.  Every element - from dialogue to music to use of camera - is playfully and wittily deployed, and the intricate use of flashbacks and re-telling of scenes from different perspectives are both engaging and entertaining.  With a to-die-for cast which is clearly having a ball, Glass Onion is perhaps lighter in tone than the original Knives Out but still light-heartedly entertaining.
 

VOD: The Big 4 (a.k.a. The Big Four) (dir: Timo Tjahjanto, 2022)

"Get the bazooka!"
"Which one?"

The Big 4 is an Indonesian action-comedy that delivers the highest of high concepts, as a young cop joins forces with a quartet of vigilante assassins to bring down an unhinged killer.  Its opening sequence introduces the team with rescuing children from a dodgy orphanage with unapologetic gory violence and a ridiculously high body count within the first ten minutes and then sets up the revenge story that plays out for the rest of the film.  The leads are amiable, the fight choreography is sharp and lively, and the frequent lurches from weak humour to bone-crunching and bloody violence are dizzying.  The film is by turns daft, cheesy, ridiculously violent and melodramatic, but nevertheless The Big 4 possesses a certain deranged but energetic charm.
 

VOD: In From The Side (dir: Matt Carter, 2022)

"Oh, because that's so simple?"

A festival favourite and partly crowdfunded, In From The Side is a simple portrayal of a love story that happens to be about two rugby players who play for a local team, one new to the B-team and the other an recovering-from-injury A-team-player and who fall for each other, in spite of being in existing relationships.  The film seems to want to find differences between the two men to create points of drama, but essentially we are presented with two fairly ordinary pleasant blokes who try to negotiate their way through a possible relationship.  The film is well-shot, it has a typical middle-class romantic drama sheen (penthouse views of the city at night, Christmas skiing holiday), the stereotypical rugby-world antics are inoffensive and the two lead performances from Alexander Lincoln and Alexander King are grounded, solid and likeable.  Whilst the film is somewhat unnecessarily long, it does a good job in presenting the highs, lows and dilemmas facing these prospective partners. 
 

VOD: Barbarian (dir: Zach Cregger, 2022)

"I had no choice."

A young woman turns up at her Airbnb in a dark and rundown part of Detroit at night in the middle of a thunderstorm, only to find a man already in situ.  As they decide to make the best of it together overnight, it does not take long for strange events to occur, which sets in motion a truly unsettling and unpredictable horror ride.  With its wonderfully ominous soundtrack, the careful slow-burn set-up gives way to its disturbing discovery of unpleasant secrets about the house, its past and its present.  The very careful and deliberate direction controls the viewers' experience very effectively, building suspense nicely and delivering its shocks and unpleasant moments in an interesting way, particularly with the mid-way reset and introduction of a tonally different character.  There are strong performances from Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgard and Justin Long, making Barbarian a well-told and effective horror flick for genre fans.
 

VOD: Troll (dir: Roar Uthaug, 2022)

"I don't believe in fairy tales any more."

Essentially Norway does Roland Emmerich in this Netflix offering, in which a feisty paleontologist finds myth meets reality as an underground tunnel excavation unleashes a giant troll in the present day.   It is played deadly straight but with occasional knowing touches of humour, presenting the material as a nifty action-thriller/creature-feature that delivers its outlandish premise with aplomb.  The film makes full use of the stunning Norwegian scenery, effects work is used sparingly but very effectively - even taking the troll to Oslo itself - and whilst it is hard to determine if this is a deadly serious venture, an affectionate mickey-take of Hollywood blockbusters or somwhere between the two, Troll is well-made and effectively entertaining of its type.