Author: BRWC

Five Nights At Freddy’s: Another Review. By Jake Peffer.

Video game movies continue to be an interesting subgenre. It is not an easy task turning a game into a movie and over the years it’s been easy to see why. Outside of a couple movies there really aren’t many most audiences would consider to be good. While the ambition is typically there, often they tend to fall shy of the potential set forth by the game. Five Nights at Freddy’s is the latest game to get the movie treatment and unfortunately it doesn’t do much to improve the genre.

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is a down on his luck security guard who has recently been fired from his job. He is in need of finding something soon as he takes care of his younger sister Abby. Their aunt doesn’t think Mike is a suitable guardian for Abby and wants to take custody of her. To keep this from happening and show that he can find a job he takes a night job at a local run-down family entertainment spot called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The job is presented to him by Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), a job recruiter who can see that Mike is desperate for something. Once Mike starts the job strange things begin to happen inside Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza that may be more than he signed up for.

The overall concept here is an interesting idea. What if the animatronics at a Chuck E. Cheese type place came to life and started killing people? Not exactly an original idea but an interesting one, nonetheless. While the concept is good the execution feels like it never reaches the potential that it could. Following Mike around throughout the movie almost feels like a bit of a chore. Josh Hutcherson does what he can with the role and gives a good performance but there isn’t much to grasp onto with his character or his situation.

There are too many unnecessary subplots going on with Mike and his home life that take away from the actual interesting parts of the movie. The whole plotline with their crazy aunt who wants to take custody of Abby could have easily been left out and nothing in the overall story would really change. We also get dream sequences that Mike has of something tragic that happened when he was a kid. While that plotline does end up tying into the overall story it still feels like it’s unnecessary and not needed.

On the good side the effects for the animatronics look pretty good. It looks like there’s some CGI mixed with practical effects, but it blends well enough for the most part. Outside of Josh Hutcherson the rest of the cast is fine but doesn’t really add anything memorable. The one exception to that is Matthew Lillard, who isn’t in the movie much but does what he can in his limited screen time. Overall, the pacing works well as the movie never feels like it’s overstaying its welcome.

All in all, while there are a couple of good performances and the effects of the animatronic characters look cool, there just isn’t much else here to grab on to. Too many side stories that don’t amount to much and the feeling of the movie never reaching its full potential leave this as a disappointment.

Interpreters Wanted: Review. By Simon Thompson.

Robert Ham’s Interpreters Wanted is a sobering, poignant documentary about both the brave and overlooked sacrifice that Afghan interpreters made in helping the US army in the region, despite being aware of the great personal cost that would befall them if the Taliban ever caught them. The documentary isn’t so much about America’s conflict in Afghanistan but rather the lifelong friendship that Robert Ham formed with two Afghan brothers Saifullah and Ismail Haqmal whom Ham met and befriended when he volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, as well as their subsequent attempts to gain American visas to escape for themselves and their families.

Structurally the narrative of the documentary unfolds in a typical linear three act structure, with the timeline of events beginning in 2001 at the war’s start and then ending twenty years later at the point of the American withdrawal. Within that twenty year timeline we come both to understand Ham’s reasons for joining the US military and the motivations of Saifullah and Ismail to become interpreters, namely, to help rid their country of the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalists, with the two brothers and thousands of others like them seeing foreign western military intervention as their only hope. 

When a specific American foreign policy development is mentioned in the movie and it diverts away from ground level, Ham’s skill as a filmmaker is at its most prominent because he never allows the narrative focus to be dragged away from Ismail and Saifullah’s struggles in applying for visas to safety. Often when you hear about a conflict on the news or read about one there is a kind of dispassionate tendency to present in a dehumanising monolithic fashion, but its through a documentary such as this one that you truly realise the human cost and suffering of war. 

To Ham’s credit he does a good job of portraying the bloody and controversial American intervention into Afghanistan in a relatively nuanced way. He describes going from being an idealistic and angry young man in his twenties who volunteered to fight because of his understandable reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to a man who comes to understand the Afghan people and their struggles through the close friendship he forms with the two interpreters making him realise his errors of viewing the world and foreign cultures in such a simplistic black and white way. 

To conclude, Interpreters Wanted is a balanced, heartfelt testament to the sacrifices that brave Afghans made in interpreting Arabic for the US military, and while the documentary’s central thesis that friendship can be found in the most unlikeliest of places and situations Ham still has the courage to show how badly a lot of the Afghan interpreters seeking visas and asylum have been treated by a government foreign to them that they risked life and limb for in the hope that they may see their country free from the poisonous vice grip of religious fundamentalism. 

While Ismail and Saifullah were lucky to be granted visas and asylum to the US, tens of thousands of others who made the same sacrifice that they did are still stuck in an Afghanistan now back under Taliban control, including Ismail and Saifullah’s own families- a brutal reminder by Robert Ham of the careless damage wrought by America on the region through their haphazard and careless withdrawal in 2021.

Manodrome: The BRWC Review. By Alif Majeed.

When I started watching Manodrome, I was already half-ready to give up on it. It has a lot to do with realizing that Jesse Eisenberg will play his stock socially awkward loner character he has played several times already. It also didn’t help that Manodrome is an easy movie to box into a blurb. Taxi Driver meets Fight Club. You could almost imagine that blurb popping up somewhere. But as the movie progressed, this story of a lonely cab driver and his desperate silent cry for help made it hard to disengage. Sure, it doesn’t quite reach the highest of the movies I mentioned, but it does enough to be judged on its merit.

Eisenberg plays a cab driver, Ralphie, who lives with his pregnant girlfriend Sal (Odessa Young). He spends a good amount of time in the local gym where he secretly longs for another gym rat, Sallieu Sesay. As he deals with his suppressed sexuality and impending fatherhood, he gets introduced to a local self-help group. The group he joins is personally the most amusing part of the movie.

David Fincher recently said he is not responsible for the wrong message people still drive from Fight Club, or how people interpret it. The group he joins comes across as a club started by exactly the sort of person who misinterpreted Fight Club and is clueless about that fact. It even has a Tyler Duden-like leader played by Adrien Brody who might shit his pants when faced with any real disruption. The kind of toxic group where if a guy says his girlfriend left him, the reply would be, of course, she did without trying to understand why or what made her walk away. It is obvious from the get-go that Ralphie is a guy who needs professional help, but it is the help that the group is not equipped to provide or does not know how to.

Jesse Eisenberg’s performances are usually clubbed into two categories: the arrogant smart-ass or the socially awkward loner. Though Manodrome skewers towards the second category, it is one performance where you sense genuine danger to people around him. Take the scene where he watches his pregnant girlfriend’s belly while she is exercising. For a split second, you get mortified at the thought that he might rush to the kitchen to grab a knife to rip her wide open. 

Odessa Young as Sal also compliments him well as the exasperated girlfriend struggling with Ralphie’s mood swings. They have a lived-in quality to their relationship and you can see they once wore their rebellion on their sleeves (or hair considering the matching dyed hair) and are now bogged down by dwindling finances, the pregnancy, and Ralphie’s unpredictable nature. It was amusing how he wanted to look for constant steps to change his life and come up short. But she goes ahead and does it with a simple act of removing the hair dye, symbolizing her willingness to embrace change. It’s a small touch among many others that director John Trengove brings to the table.

It made me curious enough to watch The Wound, his other movie about repressed sexuality, and he is a director you would want to follow. Overall, Manodrome should not only be viewed as a take against toxic masculinity but also its take on the need for the proper help and guidance. 

The Marvels: The BRWC Review. By Jake Peffer.

In 2019, Captain Marvel came on to the scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Her solo movie gave audiences her backstory and introduced the character to a new generation of fans. Since her solo movie Captain Marvel has made a few appearances in other projects. She had a brief but somewhat memorable outing in Avengers: Endgame, then showed up for cameos in both Shang-Chi and the finale of Ms. Marvel. Now, Captain Marvel is teaming up with Monica Rambeau and Ms. Marvel to take on a new villain in The Marvels.

The Marvels follows Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as she sets off on a new mission. While on her mission she ends up having her powers entangled with her old friend Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and teenage fangirl Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). Anytime any of the three use their powers they automatically switch places with one another and end up causing confusion not only to themselves but to everyone around them. Carol, Monica and Kamala must work together to use their power switching to their advantage to stop a member of the Kree named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) from destroying everything they know.

Director Nia DaCosta has put together a surprisingly fun and entertaining movie. While not quite ever reaching its full potential, The Marvels makes for an enjoyable time. Putting the characters of Carol, Monica and Kamala together as a team and watching them play off one another is one of the strengths of the movie. There are multiple dynamics going on between the reunion of Carol and Monica to Kamala getting to meet her idol in Captain Marvel and the three of them bonding and coming together as a cohesive team. Throw in Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) who gets the team together because of their situation and Kamala’s family for comedic relief and you have a pretty well-rounded cast of characters.

With the characters having their powers entangled with one another, this allows for some cool and inventive action sequences throughout the movie. Watching as the characters change places and must figure out how to utilize their powers together makes for some of the best moments. There are some genuinely funny moments throughout, but the movie does also boast some heart as well, making you get invested in the characters. A few sequences here and there feel a little out of place and feel like they could have been cut out as they don’t add a whole lot to the overall story. Specifically, the sequence involving a planet where the entire population only speaks in the form of singing. It makes the movie come to a halt just to have a song and dance number that is not needed.

The biggest issue here is with the villain. Dar-Benn is just not a compelling villain, and her motivation feels like something we’ve seen in so many other superhero movies that it has just become tiresome. It doesn’t help that Zawe Ashton doesn’t add much to the character overall but that isn’t entirely her fault. To go along with the poor villain the writing here is a big weakness. There is some dialogue that feels forced at times and a lot of the story elements never feel as impactful as they should. A few scenes also have some spotty CGI as well but for the most part the effects in most of the action scene hold up well.

Brie Larson does a solid job as Carol Danvers once again. While I do think that the character is a bit underwritten just like in her solo movie, Larson still does what she can with the role. Teyonah Parris gets more depth put into her character of Monica and she gives a really great performance throughout. All the side characters, including Nicky Fury and Kamala’s family are fine with what they are given but they don’t get much to do. The shining star of this movie is Iman Vellani. She is having the time of her life playing Kamala Khan and she knocks her performance out of the park. 

All in all, The Marvels works more than it doesn’t. There are issues with the writing, some bad CGI at times and this has arguably one of the weakest villains in the MCU. With that being said, most of the action sequences are fun and engaging, the three leads all give good performances, and their chemistry together is the highlight of the movie. Be sure to stick around for the mid credit sequence as it is one of the best so far in the MCU.

Alone Together: Review. By Simon Thompson

The advent of Jordan Peele has been a somewhat double-edged sword for the horror genre : on the one hand he has given us one admittedly excellent movie (Get Out), but on the other horror has now become stuffed to the gills like Mr Creosote at an all you can eat buffet with Jordan Peele wannabes, such as Will Kresch, the director of Alone Together. Alone Together can best be described as a Poundland Jordan Peele movie, it’s a meandering, ponderously scripted, predictable affair with twists and turns that are visible from space. 

Set during an even more extreme version of the Covid-19 pandemic, the movie focuses on Nas, a woman who is trapped in an abusive relationship with her controlling boyfriend Luke. As a kill two birds with one stone solution the pair decide to head to Luke’s isolated rural cabin in the woods so that they may both heal their relationship and also wait out the pandemic. Of course, barely any of this goes to plan as it turns out the cabin is, inevitably, haunted by a malevolent supernatural entity which wreaks havoc on anybody who ever stays in the cabin. 

To be fair to Will Kresch he does have a good eye for visuals. Alone Together is a beautiful movie to look at and this is down to Kresch’s instinct for choosing the right colour palettes for each scene, with the more dialogue heavy sections being presented in a naturalistic Children of Men style sepia tone and the tense sections taking on a lurid 1970s quality in the vein of movies like the original Wicker Man or Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975). 

If I had to put my finger on the biggest issue with the film’s narrative it’s that Kresch tries to balance too many narrative threads at once. Horror is at its most effective when you have a simple story to imbue dread and atmosphere into as it chugs along- something which Kresch doesn’t seem to understand as Alone Together fails to juggle its dystopian plot at the same time as the personal drama of Nas and Luke to the overall detriment of the story. Character elements which could be plot points in themselves are brought up via dialogue and then seemingly forgotten about several scenes later, to the point you wish there had been some sort of steroided- to- the- gills script doctor on set intimidating Kresch into finding a single focus. 

The acting of the two leads, Deanna Wright and Matthew Kresch for the most part can be described as competent and believable. Wright does a strong turn in portraying her character’s fear and vulnerability with the scene where Nas breaks her leg in the woods being a particular highlight, with Wright exhibiting both the pain and anguish of the injury and the fear of not being able to find treatment in such an isolated area all at the same time. Matthew Kresch has a much showier part in Luke and although his portrayal isn’t exactly a masterclass in De Niro style understatement, he does bring out the character’s most hateable qualities to the fullest extent. 

While Wright and Matthew Kresch’s performances work, they are let down by the movie’s script. William Kresch’s and AV Bach’s writing is dull and obvious, exhausting every horror cliché in the book as if they were on a 2 for 1 sale. I wouldn’t mind as much if Bach and Kresch took what we have come to expect from the horror genre and did something interesting with it, but the writing is so dull and transparent you can finish large portions of the dialogue yourself before the next line is uttered. 

To conclude, Alone Together can be a gorgeous movie to simply look at but it all falls apart as soon as the characters open their mouths. Kresch tries to tell too many stories at once himself instead of finding a cohesive and singular plotline, and more often than not is content with copying far better filmmakers and writers than himself rather than letting his individual work stand on its own merit.