FILM: Killers Of The Flower Moon (dir: Martin Scorsese, 2023)

"Money flows freely here now."
"I do love that money, sir."

Recounting the true story of the insidious murders of the native Osage people for their land rights and oil in the 1920s through interracial marriages and blatant organised hits, Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hours epic might not exactly fly by but it is absolutely wonderful and captivating.  Focusing on one main story of a returning soldier (Leonardo DiCaprio) manoeuvred into marrying a strong Osage woman (Lily Gladstone) by his powerful local-big-shot uncle (Robert De Niro) but clearly representative of more widespread abuse, it reflects a time between the old Wild West and emerging modern times beautifully both in mise-en-scene and its ability to tap into more modern themes and audiences.  It is again to Scorsese's credit here that he can make lengthy talk-heavy material so cinematic, and the careful steady pace allows the story to unfurl with powerful precision and for the characters to truly breathe and develop.  This film contains one of DiCaprio's best performances and Lily Gladstone is excellent as his wife, with both actors delivering genuine and demanding character arcs across the movie, and De Niro is on form as the gently calculating and manipulative kingpin.   Both respectful but shocking, Killers Of the Flower Moon plays out a terrible episode in history with themes and characters that feel at home in Scorsese's body of work and one of his best pieces.

VOD: Awareness (dir: Daniel Benmayor, 2023)

"I'm sure there's a clue in here somewhere."

In this Spanish Netflix sci-fi drama, (old-looking) teen Ian does small-scale scams and robberies with his father using his gift of being able to plant deceptively real illusions in the minds of their victims.  The opening robbery draws the attention of a shady government agency and a seemingly rogue 'Perceiver' out to destroy Ian and anyone like him, thus turning into a fairly routine cat-and-mouse action thriller with sci-fi overtones as allegiances change regularly and the boy also tries to solve the mystery of his family's past.  With occasional echoes of Scanners and The Matrix, it has a relentless blue/grey/black colour palette and is quite low-powered, but the central premise is used and executed well and the film passes the time reasonably.
 

VOD: Appendage (dir: Anna Zlokovic, 2023)

"You can't really have people over when you have something in the basement..."

Overtired, overworked and overstressed twenty-something fashion designer Hannah tries to juggle her demanding unpleasant boss, distant parents and her relationship with nice-guy Kaelin, and finds her anxieties manifest physically in the form of an ugly, mocking creature in a very Cronenbergian fashion.  This is more a psychological thriller with an element of body-horror thrown in, as Hannah's life crumbles and her mental and physical disintegration becomes increasingly troubling whilst the parasite grows stronger.  Appendage evokes the style and spirit of Frank Hennelotter's Basket Case, not just in its lo-fi physical creature aesthetic but also in its themes of urban alienation, isolation and paranoia.  The pacing can be a little too languid at times, but Appendage is a generally solid movie with sound performances (and sound design/score is strong), with a nicely-placed twist that enables the third act to play out well. 
 

VOD: The Boogeyman (dir: Rob Savage, 2023)

"Maybe you don't want to creep people out either."

After a tragic accident leaves a counsellor father and his two daughter (one teen, one younger) without a mother and dealing with grief, a distraught man turns up claiming his family was killed by a 'shadow monster' and promptly hangs himself, leaving the family as new targets for the titular entity.  Sombre, ponderously slow and dreary, the film unfortunately makes the grieving family somewhat dull and uninteresting, and this standard monster-under-the-bed/in-the-closet potboiler offers little beyond its basic premise, two effective jump scares and a messy finale.  It also somewhat labours the thinly-veiled metaphor for the potentially mentally destructive effects of bereavement on children if not dealt with and handled properly, making the film overall worthy in intention but hardly entertaining to watch.  
 

VOD: Cassandro (dir: Roger Ross Williams, 2023)

"Don't f**k with lucha libre.  We have our traditions, got it?"

This Amazon drama focuses on the true story of Saul Armendariz, a low-rent 1980s Mexican wrestler who adopts a flambouyant 'exotico' character Cassandro that shoots him to fame and challenges homophobic attitudes in the macho-centric sport and society of the time. It is a well-rounded portrait of the protagonist, not only showing his evolution but also exploring his key relationships, notably with his close mother, absent father and another (married) wrestler.  The story follows a fairly well-worn trajectory but portrays the character with sincerity and sympathy.  The excellent Gael Garcia Bernal always finds the vulnerability in the characters he portrays, and here he also conveys an almost naive joyfulness balanced with sadness in an extremely nuanced and finely-tuned performance.  The film has a reasonable amount of grit and honesty within its standard rags-to-riches tale and is well made, but the real reason to watch is the central performance.  

 

VOD: Sisu (dir: Jalmari Helander, 2023)

"The general said, and I quote: he's one mean motherf***er you do not want to mess with."

Towards the end of the Second World War, as the Nazi make their scorched-earth withdrawal from Lapland, a loner living in the wilderness with his dog and horse discovers gold - all he has to do is to get past the murderous invaders and get it to a bank.  With its sweeping widescreen landscapes, epic music score and tense bouts of silence, the film imbues the man with mythic status as he turns out to be a legendary one-man military killing machine who goes through anybody who gets in his way in very violent fashion, like a sleek Scandi John  Rambo.  Split into tight and concise 'chapters', the film's simplicity is its absolute strength, and the ultra-violence becomes almost comedic in a Sam Raimi/Tommy Wirkola manner.  Jorma Tommila is an absolute powerhouse in the central role, combining strength, stillness and cunning whilst clearly haunted by the horrors of war, making Sisu very entertaining and much more than a standard violent action film.
 

VOD: Dark Harvest (dir: David Slade, 2023)

"It's Halloween - you know what that means..."

The small-town legend/curse of Sawtooth Jack sees the town's teenage boys pitted against the creature in a kill-or-be~killed annual Halloween ritual called The Run to protect the cornfield crops - so far, all very The Purge meets Children Of The Corn.  Here, however, the film is set in the late 1950s, with accompanying gangs, racial tensions, religion and S.E. Hinton sunsets, and the unfurling of the mystery surrounding The Run and Sawtooth Jack unravels carefully with an almost Lynchian take on the underbelly of straining-to-be-perfect American society.   It is boosted by a very strong and confident central performance by Casey Likes as troubled teen Richie, and the film is surprisingly thoughtful and well shot for its budget, using all the necessary elements of slasher and rites-of-passage movies but offering an interesting take on the central idea.  All the ideas might not fully hang together, and the creature itself is a tad underwhelming visually at times but works well as a presence (although it has to be said that the kills are full-on and well-realised on-screen).  Overall, Dark Harvest offers an unusual and quite interesting twist on what could have been a standard horror tale.
 

VOD: Fair Play (dir: Chloe Domont, 2023)

"You know this is just a game?"
"Mm-mm, you play it very well."
 

Opening to the strains of Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby sets the tone for torrid battle-of-the-sexes Netflix drama, with an opening sequence that vividly establishes the battleground of romance and sex for this upwardly-mobile couple - both financial analysts - in a long-term illicit workplace relationship.  With the man in line for a big promotion, the post is instead offered to the woman, and thus cracks and ultimately chasms start to enter their relationship, as well exposing attitudes in a male-dominated industry.  This is proper adult drama, shot beautifully and with two terrific nuanced central performances from Alden Ehrenreich and particularly Bridgerton's Phoebe Dynevor.  Skewering toxic masculinity and gender politics unmercifully, Fair Play quietly and decisively pulls apart both big business and this particular personal relationship with uncomfortable and very engaging precision.

VOD: Totally Killer (dir: Nahnatchka Khan, 2023)

"How much do you know about quantum mechanics?"
"I saw Endgame, but I didn't really understand it."

Starting off on present-day Halloween, this knowing and fun horror is set in a small town where thirty-five years ago, three girls were killed by the Sweet Sixteen Killer, and when the killer seemingly returns and strikes again close to home, student Jamie gets taken back to the original scene of the crimes in 1987 via a friend's science fair time machine and has to confront the killer, 80s high school and its students, including her future parents, and try to save the victims before they are killed.  In Freaky we had the body-swap tropes applied to the horror genre, Happy Death Day was Groundhog Day, and here we have Scream meets Back To the Future, and a lot of fun is had with the (high) concept.  Narratively, the strength here is the interplay between the generation of parents who experienced the original spree and their children/the next generation, together with Jamie's 80s culture-clashing 2020s perspective and attitudes.  The film is made with love for the genre and horror fans, with some sly (and some less subtle) references to classic films, a few good chuckles along the way and it does not stint on the violence.  Playing like a more playful version of Scream, it is not designed to be profound or intellectual; Totally Killer is simply light, breezy fun that aims to please and entertain, and on those fronts it certainly scores.
 

VOD: Mates (dir: Arno Craus, 2023)

"I'm always quiet."

In this micro-budget British indie, three stereotypes (the Alpha one, the sporty one, the quiet one) go on a hiking weekend, and the more introspective man attracts the attention of another (gay) hiker - and that's about the sum of it.  It is all very gentle and restrained, with repetitive dialogue, uninteresting performances and a soporific soundtrack; the slow pacing and editing also contributes to making the dialogue sound stilted and awkward at times.  The South Downs scenery is used to its full advantage and looks great, and the film does mildly challenge toxic masculinity occasionally, but overall the film just floats by with little impact or point.

 

VOD: Haunted Mansion (dir: Justin Simien, 2023)

"Ghosts don't exist!  Life is dirt!  We're all dirt!.....Sorry....."

The New Orleans setting and vibe is a promising start to Disney's reboot of their theme-park property, as a mother and young son move into a, well, haunted mansion, and a dissolute 'ghost photographer', quirky priest, out-there medium and a professor all become bound to the house and try to solve its past mysteries in order to be released from it.  The fundamental issue, as with the previous movie iteration, is that it wants to be so child-friendly that it is not remotely scary and the comedy is beyond twee, rendering the whole enterprise bland and somewhat uninteresting, in spite of a solid cast (Rosario Dawson, Danny DeVito, LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson and even Jamie Lee Curtis).  The film is saddled with an over-talky script, a numbingly relentless melodramatic score and a lot of murky visuals.  It is not that a PG-13 movie cannot provide requisite scares; maybe this incarnation should have concentrated more on creating genuine thrills and chills rather than a convoluted and elongated backstory. 

VOD: Planet Dune (dirs: Glenn Campbell and Tammy Klein, 2022)

"Happy crew, happy ship - right?"

This unashamed mockbuster from The Asylum completely eschews the mythos and mysticism of its titular influence and instead simply strands a rescue squad on a planet where they become under siege from giant sandworms in a desert sci-fi rerun of Tremors meets Aliens.  There are some reasonably rendered and quite ambitious VFX and there is a lot of unusually acceptable sound work for this level of film.  The throwback star this time is Sean Young, who has a good time chewing the control room scenery, and Emily Killian in the troubled pilot lead role shows commitment to the task.  Of its type, Planet Dune has a reasonable energy and a generally tolerable cast, but do not raise your expectations beyond that.
 

VOD: Battle For Pandora (dir: Noah Luke, 2023)

"I've seen some stuff, and I've seen even worse stuff, but this..."

This very-cheap and not-very-cheerful sci-fi actioner sees a U.S. Space Force team sent on a rescue mission to one of Saturn's moons (i.e. Pandora) where they get attacked by the water tentacle effect from The Abyss and try to stop the sentient water - hell-bent on infecting the squad - from getting off the planet. For a lot of the film it is effectively a bottle show, as the rescuers get holed up in the spaceship's medical bay and shout at each other, but there are some occasional ambitious and reasonable  CG effects on offer.  There are some interesting and wildly varied interpretations of the art of acting on display, with sounding angry and unwarrantedly hysterical seeming to be the default mode that becomes very wearing to watch. 
 

VOD: No One Will Save You (dir: Brian Duffield, 2023)

(screaming)

In this reasonably interesting sci-fi thriller, a young woman living in an idyllic isolated house in a forest one night finds herself at the mercy of an alien invader... and seemingly ostracised by the community nearby, it becomes an exercise in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers paranoia and ultimately survival as the scale of the threat grows bigger.  The USP here is that there is no dialogue. therefore three main factors become crucial: sound design works very well indeed throughout, the story pieces come together gradually and effectively, and the (almost solo) lead performance by Kaitlyn Dever is strong.  In spite of quite a lot of murky night shooting, the film acts as a technical exercise in giving a different take on the well-established alien abduction/invasion sub-genre and displays good effects work but, central gimmick aside, this is a standard alien/home invasion film that shows commitment but offers little that is new.
 

VOD: Marry My Dead Body (a.k.a. Guan yu wo han gui bian cheng jia ren de na jian shi) (dir: Wei-Hao Cheng, 2023)

"I'll be waiting for you..."

In this Taiwanese supernatural/cop comedy, a homophobic hotshot young cop picks up a red envelope from the pavement when collecting evidence and finds himself supernaturally 'married' to a dead guy's ghost, and together they try to find the spirit's killer.  Presented in the broadest of comedic strokes, with some culturally-dated attitudes akin to 1970s TV sitcoms, the film's strongest aspect is Greg Hsu's relentless energy and obvious leading-man quality in the lead role, balanced nicely by Po-Hung Lin giving a sensitive performance as the ghost.  When it is not trying too hard to be self-consciously wacky, there are many really nicely-played scenes, and although the sudden tonal shifts may prove jarring to some Western viewers, overall Marry My Dead Body is at its heart quite sweet and entertaining. 
 

VOD: Clifford The Big Red Dog (dir: Walt Becker, 2022)

"Step aside - I know sheep!"

The beloved children's book character comes to the big screen, as 12-year-old Emily is left in the care of her unreliable Uncle Casey (played by Jack Whitehall) and inadvertently takes ownership of a cute little red puppy which - in a 'careful what you wish for' scenario - grows very large and high jinks ensue.  Saddled with a weak villain, the rather uninteresting script chugs along listlessly but delivers some effective sight gags, and the film aims for the charm and whimsy of something like Babe but is just too underpowered.  The CG rendering of the titular character is about as convincing as Whitehall's interestingly wayward American accent, but look out for Emily's friend Owen (Izaac Wang) who is quite good fun when he appears.  Overall, Clifford is a very mild film, patience-testing at times, but pleasant enough.
 

VOD: Spy Kids Armageddon (dir: Robert Rodriguez, 2023)

"I never cheat.  I use creative sportsmanship!"

The fifth Spy Kids movie skews even younger than its predecessors in its Bond/Mission: Impossible-for-the-very-young quest.  Here, the spies' all-powerful codebreaker Armageddon Code is stolen by a megalomaniac tech giant who wants to control the world's tech-reliant lives.  At times barely rising above TV Power Rangers level, the film looks cheap and somewhat empty, and even given its target audience, Armageddon is rather over-talky, the action and villain are anaemic, and the very simple messaging - it's good to be good, kids are better than adults at videogames - is mindbogglingly basic. Sadly, even the sense of fun from the earlier franchise entries is missing, making it quite a grind to watch, but it would likely hit the target for its intended audience.
 

VOD: Elemental (dir: Peter Sohn, 2023)

"Sorry, buddy.  Elements don't mix."

With Pixar's Golden Age well and truly over, Elemental takes on immigration and identity with moderate results.  Opening with a Fire couple arriving at New Yo.. - sorry - Element City and facing a tough start, we see their new-born daughter grow up in the space of ten minutes in true Pixar fashion and become a fiery-tempered young woman, whose encounter with a Water guy leads to a Shakespearean-style relationship of opposites.  The film is presented with all the expected vibrancy, detail, inventiveness, colour and attention to detail, and the different elements and their districts are realised wonderfully on-screen.  Thomas Newman's smart multi-cultural-referencing makes the family's immigrant experience relatable to anyone.  With generations and cultural identity at the fore, the film does nothing really wrong and is pleasantly enjoyable enough, it just, um, fails to catch fire.  Maybe the lead voices sound a little too old?