Author: Joel Fisher

Terminator: Dark Fate – The BRWC Review

In 1991 after the success of Aliens, the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day once again proved that there can be such a thing as a successful sequel. No doubt due to having James Cameron at the helm. Since then, much like the titular character, The Terminator kept coming back over and over and the results were not a patch on the release of The Terminator and its blockbuster sequel.

Cut to 28 years later and finally James Cameron has decided to come back to the franchise to executive produce Tim Miller’s new take on The Terminator series. Terminator: Dark Fate proves that perhaps Cameron should never have let anybody else get their hands on his creation in the first place.

Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) works with her brother, Diego (Diego Boneta) living a simple life in Mexico City. However, little does she know but a new terminator – a rev 9 (Gabriel Luna) has been sent from the future to kill her because her very existence holds the key to the future of the human race.

However, the human resistance has also sent someone back to protect Dani, an augmented human named Grace (Mackenzie Davis) who will stop at nothing to ensure Dani’s safety. The trouble is, ever since Judgment Day was averted, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has been fighting to keep the peace all on her own and her dislike of those who are less than human hasn’t softened over the years.

Terminator: Dark Fate picks up in the modern day and thankfully ignores all the previous sequels that came after Judgment Day. There are no more red leather clad blondes hunting down an adult John Connor, no post-apocalyptic stories of a hard and embittered Christian Bale… uh, I mean John Connor trying to save humanity.

Nor are there any plots revolving around a tablet computer being the thing that destroys all of mankind (I think that was the plot of Genysis anyway). Instead, Terminator: Dark Fate stays with the tone and the themes of the original and its sequel, giving its audience just what they wanted. However, it does have its flaws.

For those familiar with the franchise and a particular love for the first two films, Dark Fate will feel familiar to them as the story unfolds. Very familiar. So, as the beats of the story play out there may be very little surprises. The movie also seems to think that a particular twist in the plot is very important and is hammered out in great detail.

However, besides a certain subset of men on the internet, this twist will not surprise or outrage anybody. Although somebody among the people who made the film clearly thought that it might. A minor issue but one that I’m sure the audience would have figured out and accepted long before it’s addressed in the movie.

The success of Judgment Day was partly due to the movie flipping the script, turning The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) into a hero on a road to redemption. As the movie plays out, the audience warms to him as do Sarah and her son John (Edward Furlong) and it gave the film not only a thrill ride of explosive set pieces but also a beating heart under the cybernetic exoskeleton. Unfortunately, however much Dark Fate reminds its audience of the franchise’s better days, the emotional connection between the characters is nowhere near as strong.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie does indeed play out as a worthy third episode in the series, but the times where the script wants the characters to feel anything for each other come across as more mechanical than the T-800, thus missing out that important ingredient that made Judgment Day so special.

All in all, there have been far worse Terminator films done in the past twenty years and perhaps Dark Fate should have been the closing episode of a trilogy that ended before the 21^st century began. The movie has large set pieces which will impress action fans and Sarah Connor probably has the best entrance of any character I’ve seen this year.

However, with nostalgia comes retrospect and Dark Fate undoubtedly shows that the franchise will never be as good as it was all those years ago.

Eli (Charlie Shotwell) is living with autoimmune disease. His mother, Rose (Kelly Reilly) and his father, Paul (Max Martini) do everything they can to keep him safe, they sterilise everything in the house, keep Eli in a controlled environment and do their very best to make sure that the outside world doesn’t get in, making his condition worse.

Then one day Paul hears about a clinic led by a Dr. Horn (Lili Taylor) who claims that she can cure his condition. Overjoyed with the prospect of having a normal son, Eli’s parents drive him to the clinic immediately so they can start giving him the treatment that will make give him a better quality of life. However, once the treatment starts working, Eli starts seeing ghostly apparitions and the more treatments he has, the stronger the visions of the supernatural become. Also, Eli soon starts to believe that the doctors and his parents aren’t telling him the whole truth.

Eli is the second feature from director Cirian Foy who had the unenviable task of directing the sequel to atmospheric horror hit, Sinister. Keeping up with the creepy, atmospheric tone of his previous work, Eli sets the tone straight away as Foy shows Eli’s experiences living with his condition right from the word go – and they aren’t pretty.

Also, the setting for the clinic couldn’t be better suited, with its foggy surroundings and ominous, towering trees the movie tells the audience just what they’re getting from the start and there are plenty of scares to follow. The movie plays well as it guides the audience through Eli’s experiences, often relying on the tropes of what a protagonist in a horror movie usually shouldn’t do and Shotwell puts in a great performance.

From being jump scared by ghosts, frustrated by being ignored by those around him and leading up to a final twist that the audience may never see coming, Shotwell manages to carry the movie and his performance makes the audience feel the right things for him when he thinks all hope is lost.

The ending of the movie may divide some people, but I can safely say that it isn’t something the audience was expecting. For horror fans, the way the final scenes revel in its madness is something of a pleasure by how much the movie decides to build to a crescendo of unapologetic hyperbole.

Many may tire of the clichés and predictable jump scares that litter the movie, but for those who know exactly what they want from a horror movie and are not expecting to be blown away, Eli is enough fun to entertain its audience on a dark and stormy Halloween night.

Armando (Tenoch Huerta) is in charge of a group of builders while his boss, Tadevos (Karren Karagulian) is away. Then suddenly, one of the men has a serious accident whilst on the site and Armando has to think fast to decide how to deal with the situation.

The builders are all illegal immigrants and are afraid that this latest incident will mean that their carelessness at work may incur another needless punishment. However, when Tadevos finds out, the repercussions of their actions are far darker than they could have ever imagined.

Debris (or Desecho in Spanish) is a short film from director Julio O. Ramos and writer Lucas Mireles, an award-winning film that tells a very compact story, showing exactly how somebody’s life can change in mere moments, all because of the trust we put in others. Ramos’s latest short film shows a realistic and somewhat high concept story told in the space of less than fifteen minutes where all characters are established quickly, building the story up to a shocking finale that leaves the audience wanting to know more.

Immediately the audience is pulled into the situation because it does not feel so far-fetched and as the story plays out, the end will either appal its audience or they will realise that this is just another part of how horrible life can be. Debris does not necessarily set out to have a message, but the audience can certainly take it that way considering the issues around immigrants and their demonization in our modern society.

Instead, Ramos shows his audience a side of life that they may be unfamiliar with and gives them a situation that they may never have considered before. The straight forward, matter of fact nature of the events never over dramatizes the situation, nor do they give the audience a chance to think too deeply about the likelihood of something like this really happening. Instead it creates something in the mind that suggests that it may not be that far from the truth.

Whatever side of the fence you sit on in regards to the probability of this being a true reflection of real life, there is no denying that not a single second is wasted on the characters and story as it reaches its disturbing conclusion.

Harvey Harrington (Dave Coyne) is a nice guy. He has a simple job, he never does anything wrong and always sees the best in people. He also happens to know a lot about those tiny by-laws that nobody really pays attention to anymore – nobody but Harvey anyway. Then one day after Harvey collapses at work, he goes to the doctor and finds out he has an inoperable brain tumour, giving him about a month to live.

Realising that he has never really lived, Harvey heads for the nearest bar to drown his sorrows and that’s where he meets Luke (Nick DePinto), a con artist who convinces Harvey that as he has never lived before, then now is as good a time as any. So, the pair get into Luke’s car and head for Miami with the intention of breaking as many of the laws that Harvey knows along the way.

Meant to be Broken is a hilarious buddy comedy with a simple premise. A premise that may have been done many times before, but Meant to be Broken is good enough to have its own originality while harking back to earlier buddy comedies.

Coyne and DePinto have great chemistry and as I said, their characters may remind the audience of similar characters in bigger budget comedies, but the pair play off each other just as well and are a likeable duo, even when the dynamic of their partnership changes.

With some hidden surprises along the way, Meant to be Broken is a comedy that has a well-crafted, witty script, great performances and best of all it has a heart. Audiences may think they know just how the film is going to play out, but with some clever moments of character development the audience is shown something new and intriguing just when they need it.

These kinds of buddy comedies are rare these days and Meant to be Broken clearly takes its influence from some of the best such as Dumb and Dumber and the underrated Kingpin. The tone is perfect, not a single scene is wasted or feels out of touch and the jokes come thick and fast. Meant to be Broken could possibly be the best feel good buddy comedy that you need right now.

Based on the play of the same name, Scarborough is about two couples who go to a hotel for a weekend in the seaside town of Scarborough. The film follows Liz (Jodhi May) and Daz (Jordan Bolger), Aiden (Edward Hogg) and Beth (Jessica Barden) as they talk about their relationships. However, their relationships are not the conventional type, as Liz and Aiden are teachers and Daz and Beth are their students.

Scarborough sets out to follow the two relationships but does so at a distance, never judging the couples as their relationships start to mirror each other. The dialogue feels realistic, with each couple talking about things and getting along as any couple would, the only difference being that besides their age gap, their affairs started in a place that if anyone were to find out, one of them would go to prison.

All the cast are great, the film feels as if the audience are watching real couples who may be in way over their heads when temptation overcomes them. The way the film plays out feels natural, never contrived or forcing the audience to feel one way or another about the couples. However, the stand out performances are from Jodhi May and Jessica Barden.

The former being a middle-aged teacher caught up in the excitement of a younger man finding her attractive, but still worrying about how things will work out. The latter being a portrayal of a happy-go-lucky teenage girl with a dark sense of humour who doesn’t understand the consequences of her actions. Overall the story follows the cast as their lives reflect each other almost perfectly, with some scenes even having exactly the same dialogue.

However, despite the couples feeling so realistic, there is a sense that the situation is still a little cliché. There are a couple of surprises along the way, but because they feel so grounded there is never anything that really blows the audience away. Despite the attempt at letting the audience decide whose side they are on, by making the cast so even handed the audience never gets the chance to feel strongly for either one of the couples.

Scarborough plays at a distance to its audience, making them feel like observers rather than getting them involved and so the end result feels somewhat empty. There are many relationships like this all over the world, not just in Scarborough, sometimes they work out and sometimes one person in the couple sets out to corrupt the other.

Unfortunately, despite its great performances and realistic script, Scarborough’s story doesn’t really give much to its audience that it hasn’t already seen or imagined before.