VOD: Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey (dir: Rhys Frake-Waterfield, 2023)

"Why would they do this?"

With the original story now out of U.S. copyright, this reimaging of the classic children's tale as a slasher film (like the slightly better take on The Banana Splits), Blood And Honey finds our favourite childhood animal friends abandoned by Christopher Robin when he goes to college and turning feral to survive in the 100 Acre Wood (brace yourselves, Eeyore fans).  With an older now-married Christopher returning and the arrival of half-a-dozen young women renting a cottage for a holiday, the scene is set for a trot though standard slasher mayhem.  However, the film largely suffers from uninspired dialogue, painfully flat  performances for the most part, some messily-shot and edited kills and lethargic pacing, all of which make the film's scant 84-minutes running time feel very long indeed.  The film also features perhaps the most inexplicable set of driving skills since Michael Myers escaped the secure hospital in 1978!
 

VOD: The Son (dir: Florian Zeller, 2023)

"You can't just abandon him!"

Zen McGrath plays seventeen-year-old Nicholas, a troubled teen who decides to move from living with his mother (Laura Dern) after their relationship falters to go to stay with his lawyer father (Hugh Jackman), who now has a new younger wife and a baby.  Like Beautiful Boy, this is an incredibly earnest and well-meaning film, but from dialogue to performances to mise-en-scene it is an incredibly beige and restrained experience that feels underplayed and at times dreary, with no real surprises or insight on offer and little done to really open up the material from its theatrical origins.  The real pain in this movie is seeing Nicholas clearly in crisis but the well-meaning adults in his life - who inflicted the damage on him - seem unable to do anything to genuinely help and understand him.  The inescapable final tragedy, however, is truly sad and plays well.
 

VOD: Hatching (a.k.a.Pahanhautoja) (dir: Hanna Bergholm, 2022)

"I hope your everyday life is as lovely as ours!"

In this stylish Finnish psychological horror debut from Hanna Bergholm, a perfect family Scandi-idyll is quickly shattered, leading to driven young gymnast Tinja finding an egg in the woods that she takes back to her bedroom where it grows rapidly and hatches into a nightmarish creature that has a profound impact on Tinja and those around her.  The steady reveal of the underbelly of the superficially perfect and constructed lifestyle, archly juxtaposed with the mother's desperate social media facade, plays like Sam Raimi via David Lynch, led by committed and impressive performances from Sophia Heikkila as the mother and Siiri Solalinna as young Trinje.  The blending of fable, allegory, horror tropes and social comment is handled extremely effectively, and the exploration of family life and the pressures put on young girls today are handled in an interesting and thought-provoking yet entertaining manner. 
 

VOD: Unlocked (dir: Tae-joon Kim, 2023)

"As far as I know, he repairs smartphones."

This unsettling Korean thriller tells the contemporary cautionary tale of a young woman who lives her life through her smartphone and one night leaves it on the nightbus during a heavy night out, only for a stranger to pick it up and use it to completely unravel her entire life, from assuming the online identities of her friends to destructive effect to mapping out every aspect of her life and insinuating himself into her world.  Led by an engaging performance from Woo-hee Chun as the victim and a carefully-controlled portrayal of the coolly psychopathic tormentor from Si-wan Yim, Unlocked is a very deliberate and low-key film that makes the loss of control feel rather sinister.  It uses the technology on-screen to good effect and ramps up the tension in the second half effectively, offering a sobering warning about our reliance on our phones today.
 

VOD: Nobody (dir: Ilya Naishuller, 2022)

"Give me the god-damn kitty cat bracelet, motherf**ker!"

Bob Odenkirk plays a seemingly very ordinary meek everyman whose dull and repetitive failing life is set out in a slick opening montage, until a burglary sets him off on a revenge mission that puts him in the path of an unhinged Russian crime boss and unleashes a surprising set of 'special skills' from his secret past.  Ultimately, Nobody plays on the contemporary popularity of the Taken / John Wick violent vigilante genre, where one man takes down whole armed gangs with grounded violence, set to a selection of deliberately cool and classic cuts playing on the soundtrack.  Nobody is stylishly shot and slickly edited, and the action/violence is very well choreographed, although the whole exercise comes across as somewhat numbing and to little point.
 

VOD: Triangle Of Sadness (dir: Ruben Ostlund, 2022)

"I'm sorry - what?"

After an opening that neatly skewers the nonsensical worlds of male modelling and content creators, the focus shifts to a cruise for the uber-rich and an exploration of privilege and status featuring the infamous extended centrepiece of dinner during a storm (with copious vomiting) which sees the beginning of all artifice and pretension being stripped away.  Dialogue is sharply-written, and there are some delightful and nicely-placed wry visual and verbal observations.  Standout performances can be seen from (as expected) Harris Dickinson as the hapless male model and Woody Harrelson as the blasé but increasingly unravelling captain.  The politics may be blunt and simplistic at times, and the third act cannot match what comes before, but the film makes its points well enough and with a sound degree of wit and thought.
 

VOD: Murder Mystery 2 (dir: Jerry Garelick, 2023)

"Is this...unicorn cheese?"

Now working as failing private investigators following their success as crime-solvers in Netflix's earlier film, Nick and Audrey (Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) get invited to a wealthy friend's wedding at his private island, where a swift murder and kidnapping sees our plucky duo back in action.  Sandler and Aniston are seasoned comedy professionals, and their effortless conversation and relationship again prove to be engine that makes both movies entertaining, and the reliable addition of Mark Strong helps things along this time.  The formula stays the same but in typical sequel style goes larger and is not quite as endearing: Murder Mystery 2 is a simple, slick and breezy caper/mystery-thriller featuring a couple of fair action sequences and a lively Eiffel Tower-set finale that is pleasantly entertaining but nothing more.
 

VOD: Three Thousand Years Of Longing (dir: George Miller, 2022)

"It's not much of a story."
"But it is a story."

Tilda Swinton plays a middle-aged academic of narratology who travels to Istanbul for a conference, buys a old souvenir flask and releases an actual djinn, played by Idris Elba, and a battle between logic versus myth, together with a consideration of the power and importance of storytelling, ensues.   The film is directed with Miller's trademark bravado and confidence, its own narrative is assured and the film maintains its grip as its tight concept carefully and thoughtfully unfolds.  From the moment the djinn is released in a whirl of GCI and grants the customary three wishes, both Swinton and Elba give effective and wonderfully-controlled character performances, delivering their extended duologues with real intelligence, the almost two-hander format punctuated with sumptuously-presented flashbacks of the djinn's long life and experiences.  Not only is the basic premise of the film interesting and unusual, but what we also get is a surprisingly restrained, gentle and engaging love story.

 

VOD: Orphan - First Kill (dir: William Brent Bell, 2022)

"What she needs right now is her family."

This belated prequel takes us back to snowy Estonia in 2007 and an isolated secure institution, at which a new art therapist encounters the murderous woman-who-looks-like-a-child Lena, unwittingly aids in her escape that then gives way to a loose cuckoo-in-the-nest re-run of the first film as Lena convinces everyone that she is the missing daughter (Esther) of a Connecticut family.  With the shockingly effective twist delivered at the end of the original movie, what we have here is a murkily-shot but occasionally energetic low-budget horror that does little except fill in some unnecessary backstory, but this time the audience is in on the set-up, with another rather crudely-delivered twist in this film proving to have promise that is not really fulfilled.  As the history within the film indicates, the title (First Kill) is a misnomer, but bland dialogue and generally unsatisfactory performances dominate this superfluous movie.
 

VOD: Bros (dir: Nicholas Stoller, 2022)

"I feel like getting angry at things is your brand."

In this much-vaunted big-Studio gay rom-com that fizzled out at the box office, a snarky 40-years-old author/podcaster/historian who rails against romantic relationships finds himself falling into a relationship with an attractive muscled-up but self-doubting lawyer.  The film takes a long time to settle down, as the first hour strains to be on trend (dating apps hookups, thruples, sex-pic selfies) and talks itself to death by feeling the need to explain every comment made, not helped by machine-gun-fire dialogue that is mostly shouty or hysterical, like listening to an extended stand-up routine by a somewhat wired performer.  Matters are not helped by having a particularly unsympathetic lead character in Bobby (played by co-writer Billy Eichner), although Luke Macfarlane offers more charm and warmth as his love-interest Aaron.  The film also seems at great pains to point out that gay and straight relationships can be different, yet at times it resorts to such unashamed generic rom-com clichés that it might as well have ended with a run through an airport.  In general, Bros does the 'rom' and 'com' aspects reasonably well, but its unevenness of tone and style and its focus on delivering issues rather than its characters does not make it a total success.  
 

VOD: The Night House (dir: David Bruckner, 2020)

"Beliefs change."

Following the death of her husband at their idyllic lakeside house, it becomes a place of increasing terror as unexplained spooky occurrences become more extreme - or is the bereaved wife imagining things?  As grief and exhaustion start to blur her grip on reality, a dark mystery about their house - which the husband built - starts to unfold.  In her magnificent isolation, sounds become magnified, nothing is as it seems  and it all leads to a surprisingly active and lively final act, the whole thing carried with utter commitment by Rebecca Hall.  The Night House is effectively constructed and well-presented, making it suitably chilly viewing for a dark winter evening.
 

VOD: Empire Of Light (dir: Sam Mendes, 2023)

"It really was beautiful."
"It still is."

Set in the 1980s, Empire Of Light is primarily a love letter to the magic of cinema and the beautiful but dying picture palaces that made cinemagoing a true experience (as opposed to many modern cinemas that feel like a visit to an industrial warehouse).  Couched within is a sincere and carefully-wrought exploration of loneliness, isolation and mental illness.  Olivia Colman - as expected - is exquisite, portraying the shy cinema duty manager Hilary through coping, falling apart and recovery with her usual credibility and honesty, who finds a burgeoning connection with new recruit Stephen, played with enormous sensitivity by Micheal Ward.  The film juggles a lot of big themes, and the blatantly horrible racism of the time plays out rather bluntly (but reflects the stark ignorance of some attitudes of the day).  As Hilary's breakdown progresses, the steady precision of the first half gives way to uncomfortable unpredictability and a much looser style, reflecting her state of mind effectively.  Director/writer Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins have crafted a melancholy but also gently uplifting reflective piece on life and those times.