Author: BRWC

Butcher’s Crossing: Review. By Daniel Rester.  

Nicolas Cage has been venturing into interesting territory with his choices of roles the past few years. He occasionally still turns out some direct-to-video dreck, but he has also been embracing fascinating characters in indies and genre pictures. From Pig (2021) to Renfield (2023) to Dream Scenario (2023), Cage has been delivering lately. He has even taken on Westerns, with The Old Way (2023) earlier this year and now Butcher’s Crossing.

Butcher’s Crossing is based on the 1960 novel by John Edward Williams. It has been adapted here by Gabe Polsky and Liam Satre-Meloy and sees Polsky in the director’s chair as well. Polsky is mostly known for directing sports documentaries, so it’s intriguing that he decided to dive into Western material. This story obviously struck a chord for him, and it mostly shows on the screen. 

The plot unfolds in the mid-1800s as Harvard dropout Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) heads to a small town in Kansas called Butcher’s Crossing. The town survives on buffalo hide trading, with McDonald (Paul Raci) cornering much of the hunting territory. The naive Will wants to go on a hunt as he seeks the so-called adventure and romanticism of the Old West. 

Will decides to finance a hunt led by Miller (Cage, with a beard and shaved head), an experienced hunter who wants to find a valley in Colorado that supposedly holds hundreds of buffalo. The two team up with an old cook named Charlie (Xander Berkeley) and a cantankerous skinner named Fred (Jeremy Bobb). The crew does in fact find many buffalo, but arguments begin to arise when Miller refuses to head back until he has killed all of the buffalo in the area. 

Cage has been known to dive into over-the-top madness for roles. Here he gives Miller more of an understated obsessiveness while Bobb ends up being the one who goes wild with anger more often. The two going head to head is gripping at times. Hechinger and Berkeley get less to do in their roles, but they aren’t weak links. 

Polsky can’t quite decide if he wants Butcher’s Crossing to be traditional or revisionist, so he dips his toes in both. Many classic tropes of the genre make appearances, but Polsky also provides slick sections of over-edited flashbacks and he slightly explores the psychological deterioration of Miller and Fred. The flashbacks and visions I could have mostly gone without, but I do wish Cage had a bit more time to flesh out Miller’s darker psychology. I kept waiting for a juicy monologue from Cage that never came. 

The main goal of Butcher’s Crossing is to show the wastefulness of the white hunters who obliterated the buffalo population in North America. Polsky succeeds in getting this point across as he shows the hunts in unflinching ways that are occasionally hard to watch. Miller could have all he needs within two weeks, but he forces his crew to slaughter more buffalo beyond that for little reason beyond greed.  

Butcher’s Crossing is a simple but solid Western with beautiful locations. Cage turns in another intriguing performance to go along with his recent output, even though Miller never quite pops as much as he should. Polsky’s film can be muddled at times, but the director mostly shows confidence despite this genre being unfamiliar territory for him. 

Rating: 7/10    

War Movie: Review. By Richard Schertzer.

Summers dives deep into the heart and psyche of the art, history and cinema of war pictures that have shaped our society with bravura and style that looks like something from an old 1990s PBS series that people used to binge on back in the day.

The series takes on how war in cinema has evolved over time and the effects of war on its soldiers and how history has affected the landscape of war films. Going from year to year and era to era truly shows how far war films have come in the landscape and cultural zeitgeist of the cinema world.

The series serves as a testament to such great feats in filmmaking and images to the wars that cultivated the grounds of such amazing storytelling, which makes this series impossible to ignore.

I highly recommend this series to up and coming filmmakers if they are looking to break out into the field as they will need this knowledge in learning film history and understanding the concepts and basis for the majority of this genre of film and how filmmakers approached this craft when working and tackling the subject of a certain type of war because no war is ever the same.

All in all, this series has got to be seen by a wider audience to understand the full scope of its stories and the legacy that each war film left behind in the Hollywood pantheon that shaped and reshaped generations many times over.

The After: Review. By Simon Thompson.

Misan Harriman’s short film The After is a work which manages to balance the emotions of acute grieving sadness with a sense of muted optimism at the same time. The plot of centres around Dayo (David Oyelowo) a successful businessman with a loving wife and daughter, however it’s clear that Dayo has had to sacrifice time that he could be spending with his family in the pursuit of success. David is understandably frustrated by this dynamic so he decides to delay a business meeting so that he can attend his daughter’s dance recital. Tragedy strikes however, when a masked assailant ambushes David and his family slaying his wife and daughter in front of him. 

The plot then picks up sometime later where we now see that David is a rideshare driver wracked by an understandably strong sense of survivor’s guilt as he tries to find some semblance of meaning and comfort after suffering a horrific tragedy. Despite its taut nineteen minute run-time, The After is sadly a bit of a mixed bag, but what it really has going for it is David Oyelowo’s performance as Dayo and Misan Harriman’s strong sense of cinematography. Oyelowo gives a masterful performance in this movie, unlike a lot of other actors who I imagine would be a lot showier in their portrayal of Dayo’s grief, Oyelowo plays it as impossibly understated. 

Oyelowo doesn’t go for big gestures or smouldering intensity, instead opting for an almost zen like sense of quiet and restraint up until the climax. His acting here is at it’s best when he isn’t even speaking at all and just looking into the camera, allowing the audience to see the pain etched onto his face in a masterclass of De Niro- like understatement.  

The other strong suit of The After is Misan Harriman’s cinematography. Harriman’s background in photography is very much on display in The After-he has both an excellent sense of where to position the camera and a keen eye for using natural light which given that the movie is mostly shot in outdoor locations is of great benefit to the visuals. Harriman’s use of close-ups, however, is what really struck me as I was watching the movie, with the shot of Dayo sitting in his car listening to his wife’s voicemails being a beautiful combination of Harriman’s visual flair and Oyelowo’s acting ability. 

In spite of how good Oyelowo’s acting and Harriman’s directing is, the biggest issue I have with The After is that it veers too often into a kind of schmaltzy sentimentality. After the jarring events of the first five minutes which I genuinely didn’t see coming, the film becomes disappointingly clichéd for most of the narrative to the extent if it weren’t for Oyelowo’s performance and Harriman’s visual’s The After’s slightly too maudlin script wouldn’t be able to stand up to scrutiny. The bulk of the issues with the script however largely come from the fact that this is Harriman and co-writer John Julius Schwabach’s first script, so a lot of the cliched dialogue and predictability probably stems from this.

Script issues aside, I would actually recommend The After on the strength of David Oyelowo’s performance alone- in nineteen short minutes he manages to run a gauntlet of emotions saving an inconsistent script through his sheer ability. 

Ferrari Review – 5/5. By Samhith Ankam.

For its opening minutes, the recreated telecast of Enzo Ferrari winning a race as it slowly loses motion on a still image of his smiling face, to the quiet eeriness of the “Ferrari” title in blood red, you can feel the gears spinning as the film tries to find something worth telling. Scripted from a book – Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine – Troy Kennedy Martin’s script punched up by Michael Mann feels, appropriately, like they’ve shuffled through the pages of someone else’s book and slowly realized how someone can lose all remnants of life even before they do their physical body. Michael Mann is a man running out of time, and he finds a period in which his character is a man who’s losing his grasp; Time is luck, luck is running out. 

Only takes place over the course of one year, 1957, where Mann can bend time like putty into a ball, where Enzo’s past and future can be extrapolated from the bubbling of tensions in the present. There’s a blunt vitality to the scenes for the first act of Ferrari, showcasing his relationships, strained between his wife over the inevitable death of their kid and budding over his mistress over his illegitimate child, and the encroaching bankruptcy of Ferrari, the company, itself. Context building of both of these facets of Enzo’s life sees Mann having a blast with his apathy that’s rejuvenating in the seriousness that usually pervades most of his work. “You’re broke” “How” “You spend more than you make”. The stoicism veers on the line of satire. Laura, Enzo’s wife, pointing a gun at Enzo is treated with such nonchalance that it feels like the creation of a new kink, and the death of a driver sees Enzo merely annoyed that he has to ask a new driver to report to his office. 

Getting onto the wavelength of late-era Michael Mann is partly the joy of his work, given that his scenes are often gestural instead of tracking a story in its most logistical form, but at the core of his work is the trap of greatness and the escape hatch that is romance. Ferrari is past the honeymoon stages of that of Miami Vice, Blackhat, and Public Enemies – his recent trilogy of digital experimentalism to embrace change even as it swallows his protagonists whole – and wallows in the loss of the life-affirming embrace of another human’s touch. Even within the bounds of these two hours and 10 minutes, this change in ethos manifests itself in the filmmaking during moments of romance; Michael Mann closely lingers on skin in the soft hues of daylight with Alfonso, an up-and-coming racer the likes of which could be a typical Mann protagonist, and his lover whereas his camera is bolted onto the table for Enzo and Laura. No movement, no emotion. 

Getting on the wavelength of Ferrari is realizing that Michael Mann is following a walking corpse. Making this movie at this point of his career, despite being a passion project in the making for years on end, inadvertently fits right into his catalog as a meta-textual realization that he’s lost himself to the shackles of the world as well. Michael Mann’s worlds in fiction are full of detail that suffocates the characters within, but he’s always extrapolating the desire to be out of it – the desire for domesticity – and Ferrari is seeing that desire to its most hellish point with relationship drama, trite but real. Adam Driver closely holds the devastation of Enzo even in Enzo’s moments of wit, the movie wouldn’t work without him.

Ferrari isn’t back to basics for Mann after his experiments in digital filmmaking, but the hyper-realistic tendencies are toned down for a much more classical look – served well by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt who’s worked previously on Mank. Mann’s guide has always been emotion, even if that means revoking logic from his frames. Take the skyline in Heat (1995), for example, while Neil and Eady reminisce about a possible future on a terrace, which is almost flattened into a singular plane like they’re walking on a glowing map. In the same vein, a freak accident perhaps can only be recounted by impossible physics. In Ferrari, take shots out of context from the races it brings to life and it can feel glaringly fake, maybe misjudged physics in the CGI when tracking how a car flips off the ground while crashing, but how it feels in the heat of the moment is so shocking, you’ll become hyper-aware of your own body especially when Michael Mann opens up his victims to the innocent instead of participants of the world he creates. An accident serves as the film’s centerpiece for its central fear – people can die so easily, in both emotional and physical forms. 

But, up until the moments of metal clashing with the roads in destructive fashion, the racing is filmed in such an exhilarating way. The camera is framed to emphasize the objects quickly whipping out of the frame and constantly moving to keep objects in the frame creating a breathlessness in these sequences only compounded by the roaring engines. One shot, in particular, of the racer’s POV driving through a road bounded by trees feels revolutionary; subjectivity is Mann’s true love after all. Not a blockbuster by any means, but a drama that strives to be as exciting as possible. 

The Micro Scalextric Batman vs Joker set is an action-packed, downsized racing experience that brings the epic battle between Batman and the Joker to life in your own home. This review will break down the key features of this exciting racing set.

This set contains everything you need for an exciting Scalextric adventure. It includes two cool character cars inspired by Batman and the Joker, a battery-operated powerbase (batteries not included), and a substantial 5.7 meters of track. The track features two thrilling loop-the-loops and a fun half pipe, allowing you to create a whopping 12 different track layouts. With this set, the possibilities are almost endless, ensuring hours of exciting gameplay.

The attention to detail in the design of the character cars is impressive. Both Batman’s sleek black car and the Joker’s vibrant purple vehicle faithfully represent their comic book counterparts, adding authenticity to your races and delighting collectors and fans alike.

The set also includes two easy-to-use hand controllers that allow you to control the cars’ speed. These controllers are perfect for beginners and kids, as they make it easy to keep the cars on the track without constant crashes. This feature ensures that players of all ages and skill levels can enjoy the set.

One of the coolest things about this set is the variety of track layouts you can create. With 12 different configurations to choose from, you can keep things fresh and challenge your racing skills in different ways. The addition of double stunt loop tracks and a vertical stunt ramp adds extra excitement and unpredictability to the races, keeping the fun going.

Since the set is battery-operated, you’re not tied to a power outlet. You can set up your racecourse wherever you like, whether it’s in your living room, on your dining table, or even outdoors on a sunny day. This flexibility enhances the overall experience and makes the set even more appealing.

In a nutshell, the Micro Scalextric Batman vs Joker set offers an awesome way to bring the iconic Batman vs Joker rivalry to life through miniature racing. With detailed cars, customizable track layouts, and user-friendly controls, it’s a blast for both newcomers and experienced racers. Whether you’re a Batman fan, a Scalextric enthusiast, or just looking for a fun and dynamic racing experience, this set is a great choice. Get ready for some thrilling races in the world of Batman and the Joker!

Pick this treat up here!